CLASS
VOL
FREE
PUBLIC LIBRARY DECATUR
ILLINOIS
ACCESSION
Overland
(FOUNDED 1868 ^ BRET HARTE)
TEN CENTS'
The Price of Progress
THE Panama Canal stands as one of the most marvelous achieve- ments of the age. Into its construc- tion went not only the highest engi- neering skill, but the best business brains of the nation, backed by hundreds of millions of dollars.
Suppose conditions not to be fore- seen made it necessary to i ..place the present canal with a new and larger waterway of the sea-level type, to be built in the next ten years.
Also suppose that this new canal would be the means of a great saving in time and money to the canal-using public, because of the rapid progress in canal engineering.
This sounds improbable; yet it illustrates exactly what has happened in the development of the telephone, and what certainly will happen again.
Increasing demands upon the
telephone system, calling for more extended end better service, forced removal of every part of the plant not equal to these demands. Switch- boards, cables, wires and the telephone instrument itself were changed time and again, as fast as the advancing art of the telephone could improve them.
It was practical to do all this because it greatly increased the capacity of the plant, reduced service rates and added subscribers by the hundred thousand.
In ten years, the telephone plant of the Bell System has been rebuilt and renewed, piece by piece, at an expense exceeding the cost of the Canal.
Thus the Bell System is kept at the highest point of efficiency, always apace with the telephone requirements of the public. And the usefulness of the telephone has been extended to all the people.
AMERICAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH COMPANY AND ASSOCIATED COMPANIES
One Policy One System Universal Service
The Overland Monthly
Vol. LXVI— Second Series
July-December 1915
OVERLAND MONTHLY CO., Publishers
21 SUTTER STREET
SAN FRANCISCO, CAL.
5
i
N D EX
A BORN PIONEER IN CULTIVATING MUSIC
Illustrated from a photograph. ACROSS THE DESERT TO MOENCAPI
Illustrated from photographs .
AD MATREM. Verse
A MEDITATION. Verse
A MOTHER'S HAND. Verse
AN ANTE ON TELEGRAPH HILL. Story
AN IRISH LOVE LILT. Verse
ANITA. Story
ANOTHER DAY. Story
A POEM OF PEACE. Verse
A REMINISCENCE OF NORTH PLATTE A SHORT-CIRCUITED LOVE AFFAIR. Story A WOMAN'S TRAMPING TRIP THROUGH THE YOSEMITE .
Illustrated from photographs.
BREEDING INSECTS FOR THE USE OF THE FARMERS .
Illustrated from photographs. BRET HARTE AND TRUTHFUL JAMES
Illustrated from photographs. CALIFORNIA IN EXPOSITION ART
Illustrated from photographs. CALIFORNIA IN SEPTEMBER. Story CANADIAN INDIANS AND FUR TRADE
Illustrated from a photograph.
CHILI CON CARNE. Story
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AS IT IS CHOPIN'S NOCTURNES. Verse .
CHURCH'S BIRTH DUE NOW
CIRCLING TAHITI
CLAYTON, HALF-CASTE. Story .
CLIMBING MT. WHITNEY
COMPENSATION. Verse
COMPENSATION. Verse
CONGRESS OF AUTHORS AND JOURNALISTS
Illustrated from photographs.
DAYBREAK. Verse
EDWIN MARKHAM
Illustrated from photographs.
EMPEROR NORTON I
FATE. Verse
FEATURES OF THE PANAMA-PACIFIC EXPOSITION .
Illustrated from photographs. FOUR GREAT COMPOSERS
Illustrated from photographs.
FRONTISPIECE.— Council of Blackfeet Indians FRONTISPIECES
''Alchemy" (Verse)
'Truthful James and His Partner" FRONTISPIECE. (A Restful Arm of the SilentSea)
Illustrated from photographs. FRONTISPIECE— Craft Used by Pearl Smuggler FRONTISPIECE. The Sand Dunes of Carmel .. GAS, THE NESTOR OF PUBLIC UTILITIES
GOD'S LIGHT. Verse
GOLDEN AGE AT HAND
GOLDENROD. Verse
HESTER'S HOLLY HEDGE. Story
HUNTING THE BUFFALO
Illustrated from photographs.
JEAN MAHAN PLANK TESSIE R. FERGUSON
GERALD CUMBERLAND ELLA FLATT KELLER ELLA FLATT KELLER LANNIE HAYNES MARTIN AGNES LOCKHART HUGHES MAUD B. RODGERS NELLIE CRAVEY GILLMORE EMILY VINCENT WHITE GRACE A. SEABECK LANNIE HAYNES MARTIN
MARION RANDALL PARSONS
JOHN L. COWAN ROBERT L. FULTON JESSIE MAUDE WYBRO
WILLIAM BOYD GATEWOOD MAX McD.
LUCIA E. SMITH CLIFFORD .P. SMITH MARIAN GILKERSON C. T. RUSSELL LEWIS R. FREEMAN BILLEE GLYNN W. E. HUTCHINSON ELEANOR DUNCAN WOOD ARTHUR POWELL MARION TAYLOR
AGNES LOCKHART HUGHES HENRY MEADE BLAND
FRED EMERSON BROOKS BRET HARTE
EDWARD H. HURLBUT ALMA D'ALMA
ARTHUR WALLACE PEACH
C. S. S. FORNEY
RUTH E. HENDERSON
C. T. RUSSELL
AGNES1 LOCKHART HUGHES
AGNES LOCKHART HUGHES
CHARLES B. KAUFFMAN
360 279
127 305 349 392
52 137
31 455 416
41
421
77
89
517
209 171
224 532 122 456 187 214 23 262 332 439
131 333
114
378
379
157
2 87-88
186
364 461 350 396 542 432 512 165
>graph.
INDEX
"ICH DIEN." Verse
I KNOW A VALLEY. Verse
INA COOLBRITH INVESTED WITH POET'S CROWN .
Illustrated from a photograph. INKEEPER TO BIRDS AND SQUIRRELS
Illustrated from drawings. IN MARCEAU'S CABIN. Story ....
IN MINOR KEY. Verse
IN THE PLAZA DE PANAMA, Verse IN THE REALM OF BOOKLAND .
IN QUIET VALES. Verse
IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE REASONABLE? IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE SCRIPTURAL? JOAQUIN MILLER. Verse. (Illustrated)
JOY. Verse
JUWA AND AW ASUS. Story . . . LAD O' LAUGHTER. Verse . . . .
LAN I. Story
LEST WE FORGET TO PLAY . . . .
LIL. Story
LOVE'S MOMENT. Verse
MEMORIES OF MARK TWAIN .
Illustrated from a photograph.
MONTEREY. Verse
MOONLIGHT WINE. Verse
MY EXPERIENCES ON A SINKING SHIP MY EXPERIENCE WITH GERONIMO'S INDIANS IN THE SUMMER OF 1885
MYTHS OF MONTEREY
MYTHS OF MONTEREY. (Concluded)
Illustrated from photographs. MY YELLOW BUTTERFLY. Verse .. . .
NOCTURNE. Verse .. .... . . .
ODE TO CALIFORNIA. Verse . ...
ONE DAY'S ROMANCE. Story .
PANAMA-CALIFORNIA EXPOSITION \. .V-
Illustrated from photographs. PANAMA-PACIFIC EXPOSITION
Illustrated from photographs. PEARLING IN THE AMERICAS .. -. .
Illustrated from photographs.
PORTOLA'S CROSS. Verse ... "'.> V. .
PORTRAIT. C. S. S. Forney , . . . REMINISCENCES OF BRET HARTE
Illustrated from photographs. SAN FRANCISCO. Verse . * . . SAN FRANCISCO. Verse . . . • . . SANTA BARBARA BY THE SEA , . .
Illustrated from photographs.
"SHELLS OF MEN." Verse ....
SIDELIGHTS IN A CAFETERIA. Story
SKIN DEEP. Story
SLANEY'S NIGHT OF GLORY. Story STERLING, THE POET OF SEAS AND STARS
Illustrated from a photograph. STEVENSON'S TAHITIAN "BROTHER"
Illustrated from photographs. SUNSET ON SAN FRANCISCO BAY. Verse
SYMPATHY. Verse
TAKING A TIMBER CLAIM ....
Illustrated from photographs.
TAMALPAIS. Verse
TANTALUS. Verse
THE ALTAR PLACE. Story
THE ANGELUS. Verse
THE ASSIMILATION OF THE IMMIGRANT .
THE AWAKENING. Verse
THE CANYON TRAIL. Verse
THE CAVES OF KAUMANA ....
Illustrated from photographs.
THE CLIFF DWELLERS. . Verse .... THE COWBOY'S INAMORATA. Verse
MARION TAYLOR ELIZABETH A. WILBUR
JOSEPHINE C. McCRACKIN AMANDA MATHEWS
ALEX GARDINER HARRY COWELL EDWARD ROBINS
LILLIAN H. S. BAILEY C. T. RUSSELL C. T. RUSSELL RICHARD LEW DAWSON EVERETT EARL STANARD A. J. ASHEN
ELEANOR DUNCAN WOOD GENEVIEVE TAGGARD JAMES EDWARD ROGERS GEORGTE BROOKS ARTHUR WALLACE PEACH WILLIAM ALFRED COREY
MARY CAROLYN DA VIES SARAH HAMMOND KELLY CLARA M. NICHOLSON
G. W. MILES
GRACE MacFARLAND
GRACE MacFARLAND
THEODORA A. EDMOND THEODORE SHAW HARRY COWELL JESSIE WOOD LEWIS H. FALK
HAMILTON WRIGHT WM. A. REID BRET HARTE
JOSEPHINE C. McCRACKIN
BRET HARTE
ELIZA JARVIS NAGLE
JOSEPHINE BLACK WE'LL
MARY CAROLYN DA VIES SARAH H. KELLY WALDO R. SMITH WILLIAM FREEMAN HENRY MEADE BLAND
PAUL GOODING
ULA BURFORD BARRIE BELLE WILLEY GUE MIRIAM E. McGUIRE
WILLIAM NAUNS RICKS WILLIAM FRANCIS MANNIX JEANNETTE TENNYSON BRET HARTE FRANK B. LENZ AGNES LOCKHART HUGHES MILDRED C. TALLANT ALFRED KUMMER
ST. GEORGE BEST NEWELL BATMAN
404 268
448 258
115 541 503 546 420 269 363 363
56 142 358 401
83 306 511 263
208
37
329
44 418 535
278 86
234 38
451
244 365
462 277 463
12 136
70
69 389 319 323
475
64
160
82 147
197 391 301
288 240 170 227 428
427 516
INDEX
Verse
THE COMMODORE. Story
THE COSMIC MOTIF. Verse
THE COURT OF THE UNIVERSE.
THE CREED OF AH SING. Story ....
THE CRIMINAL IN THE DRAMA ....
THE DOOR OF YESTERDAY
Illustrated from photographs.
THE END OF THE TRAIL. Verse .... THE END OF THE TRAIL. Verse
Illustrated.
THE EXPOSITION BUILDERS. Verse . THE FIRST PETROLEUM REFINERY IN THE UNITED STATES
Illustrated from photographs. THE GIRL WHO NEVER WAS. Story THE GREAT ORATIONS OF THE EXPOSITION.
Illustrated from photographs. THE HARBOR OF THE SUN. Verse
THE HORSETHIEF. Story
THE INFLUENCE OF THE WAR ON POETRY
THE LIGHT WITHOUT. Story
THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP ....
Illustrated from photographs.
"THE LURE." Story
THE MAKING OF THE WEST. Verse .
THE MAKING OVER OF CHAS. BAXTER. Story .
THE MONTEREY CYPRESS
Illustrated from a photograph.
THE MOTHER. Verse
THE NEUROTIC. Story
THE NEW EXECUTIVE IN FEMININE CLUBDOM
Illustrated from a photograph. THE NIGHT OF THE KONA. Story . .
THEN I'LL COME BACK TO YOU. Verse THE OFFERING TO THE VIRGIN. Verse
THE OPIUM FIEND. Story
THE PANAMA-PACIFIC EXPOSITION IN ITS GLORIOUS PRIME
Illustrated from photographs. THE PASSING OF THE COWBOY ....
THE PROSPECTOR. Verse
THE RAILROADS AND THE PEOPLE . . . THE REAPER. Verse ......
THE RIGHT OF WAY. Story
THE SAND RAT. Story . . . . .
THE SCAR. Story
THE SEQUOIA'S CREED. Verse ....
THE SHADOW. Verse
THE SPIRIT OF THE RUSSIAN HUNTERS
DEVISED
The "Song of Baranov," 1799. THE TRAGIC SEQUEL TO THE FIRST WHITE
SETTLEMENT IN THE SITKAN ARCHIPELAGO THE SONG OF THE TICKET-OF-LEAVESTER THE TIDES OF LOVE. Verse ....
THE TORCH. Verse
THE TWELFTH MONTH. Verse .... THE WAY OF UNDERSTANDING. Verse
THE WEB. Story
THE WELL-BELOVED. Verse
TO A SEA-BIRD. Verse TWILIGHT. Verse ...
TWO ESCAPE FROM HELL THE UNWRITTEN LAW. Story UTE FIESTA IN GARDEN OF THE
Illustrated from photographs.
VALUE OF IDEALS
VASCO NUNEZ DE BALBOA ....
Illustrated from photographs. VASCO, THE BANDIT OF THE PINNACLES
Illustrated from photographs. WHAT IS A NATIONAL PARK?
Illustrated from photographs. WORLD'S ADVANCE SHOWN IN EXHIBITS .
Illustrated from photographs.
YOUR NEED OF ME. Verse ....
Illustrated.
H. P. HOLT ARTHUR POWELL JESSIE MAUDE WYBRO FRANCIS J. DICKIE ELLA COSTILLO BENNETT ANNA BLAKE MEZQUIDA
STANTON ELLIOTT ELIZABETH CRIGHTON
AMY W. HAMLIN M. C FREDERICK
ARTHUR WALLACE PEACH HENRY MEADE BLAND
EMMA FRANCES SWINGLE ALICE L. HAMLIN STEPHEN PHILLIPS JOHN AMID BRET HARTE
LEWIS A. WENTWORTH KENNETH A. MILLLJCAN ELIZABETH VORE LEONORE KOTHE
ELEANOR DUNCAN WOOD NELLIE CRAVEY GILLMORE ELIZABETH WHITFORD
WILLIAM FRANCIS MANNIX ROSE DE VAUX-ROYER LANNIE HAYNES MARTIN W. R. WHEELER
HAMILTON WRIGHT
MAX McD.
L. W. BARTLETT
WM. A. SPROULE
AGNES LOCKHART HUGHES
ALFRED BRUNK
HELEN RICHARDSON BROWN
BAILEY MILLARD
LUCIA E. SMITH
ARTHUR WALLACE PEACH
LEWIS R. FREEMAN
BELLE WILLEY GUE
ALFRED NO YES
AGNES LOCKHART HUGHES
JO. HARTMAN
VAN WAGENEN HOWE
VIRGINIA CLEAVER BACON
BRET HARTE
EMMA VESTI MILLER
C. T. RUSSELL
YETTA BULL
HOWARD C. KEGLEY
C. T. RUSSELL
CAPT. H. ROWAN LEMLY
W. W. CANFIELD CLIFFORD TREMBLY BENTLY PALMER DOROTHY De JAGERS
25 141 257 407 266 3
1
534
340 353
132 526
11 501 331
228 198
397 409 128 469
43 504 161
236 362
482 405
289
53 438 410 400 123 491 311 223 417
522
524
60 531 233 490 481 479 265
99 328
87 485
57
175 341
433
14
101
185
Please Mention Overland Monthly When Writing Advertisers.
Victrola is the life of the summer home
Wherever you go for the summer, you'll be glad of the companionship of the Victrola.
It brings to you the world's greatest bands and instrumentalists, the most famous opera stars, the popular comedians of the day, to charm and cheer you with their music and mirth; or it becomes at will the best of dance orchestras to furnish the music for the newest dances.
Always, everywhere, the Victrola is a constant delight.
Any Victor dealer will gladly play your favorite music for you and demonstrate the various stvles of the Victor and Victrola— $10 to $250.
Visit the Victor Temple of MUSK
Palace of Liberal Arts Panama -Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, CL!.
Victor Talking Machine Co. Camden, N. J., U. S. A.
Berliner firamophon^ Co., Montreal, Canadian Distribute
Always use Victor Machines with Victor Records and Victor Needles- t*e r^mbi-Hnfi'n*,. There is no other way to get the unequaled Victor ton;.
New Victor Recorcis demonstrated at all dealers on the 28th of each mo^th
Vol. LXVI
No. 1
OVERLAND MONTHLY
An Illustrated Magazine of the West
CONTENTS FOR JULY, 1915
THE END OF THE TRAIL. Verse .
Illustrated.
FRONTISPIECE.— Council of Blackfeet Indians THE DOOR OF YESTERDAY
Illustrated from photographs. THE HARBOR OF THE SUN. Verse
SAN FRANCISCO. Verse
WHAT IS A NATIONAL PARK? ....
Illustrated from photographs.
CLIMBING MT. WHITNEY
THE COMMODORE. Story .
ANOTHER DAY. Story ,
MOONLIGHT WINE. Verse . . . .
ONE DAY'S ROMANCE. Story .
A SHORT-CIRCUITED LOVE AFFAIR. Story
THE MOTHER. Verse
MY EXPERIENCE WITH GERONIMO'S INDIANS IN THE SUMMER OF 1885
AN IRISH LOVE LILT. Verse
THE PASSING OF THE COWBOY
JOY. Verse
UTE FIESTA IN GARDEN OF THE Gv
Illustrated from photographs.
THE SONG OF THE TICKET-OF-LEAVESTER STEVENSON'S TAHITIAN "BROTHER"
Illustrated from photographs.
"SHELLS OF MEN." Verse
SANTA BARBARA BY THE SEA .
Illustrated from photographs.
BREEDING INSECTS FOR THE USE OF THE FARMERS .
Illustrated from photographs.
SYMPATHY. Verse
LEST WE FORGET TO PLAY
NOCTURNE. Verse
TWO ESCAPE FROM HELL
STANTON ELLIOTT
2
ANNA BLAKE MEZQUIDA 3
EMMA FRANCES SWINGLE 11
BRET HARTE 12
CLIFFORD TREMBLY 14
W. E. HUTCHINSON 23
H. P. HOLT 25
NELLIE CRAVEY GILLMORE 31
SARAH HAMMOND KELLY 37
JESSIE WOOD 38
LANNIE HAYNES MARTIN 41
ELEANOR DUNCAN WOOD 43
G. W. MILES 44
AGNES LOCKHART HUGHES 52
MAX McD. 53
EVERETT EARL STANARD 56
HOWARD C. KEGLEY 57
LEWIS R. FREEMAN 60
PAUL GOODING 64
MARY CAROLYN DA VIES 69
JOSEPHINE BLACKWELL 70
JOHN L. COWAN 77
BELLE W1LLEY GUE 82
JAMES EDWARD ROGERS 83
THEODORE SHAW . 86
C. T. RUSSELL 87
NOTICE].— Contributions to the Overland Monthly should be typewritten, accompanied by full return postage and with the author's name and address plainly written in upper corner of first page.
Manuscripts should never be rolled.
The publisher of the Overland Monthly will not be responsible for the preservation of unso- licited contributions and photographs.
Issued Monthly. $1.20 per year in advance. Ten cents per copy
Copyrighted, 1914, by the Overland Monthly Company.
Northwestern offices at 74 Hilbour Building, Butte, Mont., under management of Mrs. Helen Fitzgerald Sanders. Entered at the San Francisco, Cal., Postoffice as second-class mail matter. Published by the OVERLAND MONTHLY COMPANY, San Francisco, California.
• 21 SUTTER STREET.
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iii
THE PICTURESQUE
SHASTA ROUTE
Three Daily Trains to Portland, Tacoma, Seattle
SHASTA LIMITED
Extra Fare $5.00
Leave San Francisco, Ferry Station, ]1:00 A. M.
PORTLAND EXPRESS
Leave San Francisco, Ferry Station, 1:00 P. M.
OREGON EXPRESS
Leave San Francisco, Ferry Station, 8:20 P.
Dining Car Service Best in America
SOUTHERN PACIFIC
THE EXPOSITION LI NE— 1 9 1 5— F I RS T IN SAFETY
iv
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HOTEL CUMBERLAND
NEW YORK Broadway at 54th Street
Broadway cars trom
Grand Central Depot
7th Ave. Cars from Penna. Station
New and Fireproof
Strictly First-Class Rates Reasonable
$2.50 with Bath and up
Send for Booklet
10 Minutes Walk to 40 Theatres
H. P. STIMSON
Formerly with Hotel Imperial
Only N.Y. Hotel Window-Screened Throughout
HOTEL LENOX
North St., at Delaware Ave.
Buffalo, N. Y.
Patrons who visit this hotel once invariaby tell their friends that— for Fair Rates, complete and perfect equipment and unfailing courtesy
BUFFALO'S LEADING TOURIST HOTEL
unquestionably excels. Beautifully located in ex- clusive section — North St. at Deleware Ave. Thor- oughly modern— fireproof. Best obtainable cuisine — quiet, efficient service.
EUROPEAN PLAN— $1.5O per day and up
Special weekly and monthly rates. Take Elmwood Ave. car to North St. Write for complimentary "Guide of Buffalo and Niagara Falls," also for Special Taxicab Arrangement. C. A. MINER, Manager
HOTEL ST. FRANCIS
SAN FRANCISCO
/ ,000 Rooms — Largest Hotel in Western America
M AN AGEMEN T — J AM ES WOODS
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Three Refrigerator Impr o vem en t s
Shown in this Book
Write today for this new book by Mr. Leonard. Learn about
(1)
(2) (3)
The new method of lining that does away with corners n "hard-to-get-at" places, and makes cleaning easier than ever The new one-piece door lining; and The (Self-Closing Trigger Lock that auto- matically shuts the door TIGHT, ALWAYS and insures the efficiency of the refrigerator
sV nnrPPiTiVTii^4"*0^"? the ^eonar^ is absolutely perfect. Its beautiful glistening- white, seamiess, porcelain lining makes it as sanitary, clean and easv to carp for as n. HnvilnnH PhiiTa Hicv, There is not a nook or crevice in which grease or dirt can collect!
Write for book and sample of Porcelain
used in the Leonard Cleanable. Compare this lining with any other kind. Put it to hard tests. Then you 11 understand why the Leonard Cleanable outlasts ten ordinary refrigerators and is
Like a clean ckma cSsk
5O styles $15.OO and up
This style
35x21 x45
in Oak Case
$35.OO
Freight Paid
to Ohio and
Mississippi
Rivers
For sale by good dealers everywhere, or direct from factory with money-back guarantee if not pleased
SEE OUR EXHIBIT
at the Panama Pacific Exposition. It is in block 11, Pure Food Palace.
Mangrum and Otter, Agents - - San Francisco, Cal.
Barker Bros., Agents - - Los Angeles, Cal. Benbaugh Furniture Co., Agents, San Diego, Cal.
Tull & Gibbs, Agents - - Spokane, Wash. John Breuner Co., Agents - Sacramento, Cal.
Prael Hegle, Agents - - Portland, Oregon Seattle Hardware Co., Agents - Seattle, Wash.
If you can 't visit our Exhibit, ivrite today and full information will come by return mail. A. postal will do.
GRAND RAPIDS REFRIGERATOR CO.
130 CLYDE PARK AVENUE GRAND RAPIDS, MICH.
\Vorld's Largest Refrigerator Manufacturers
vi Please Mention Overland Monthly When Writing Advertisers.
Miss Hamlin's School For Girls
Home Building on Pacific Avenue of Miss Hamlin's School for Girls
Boarding and day pupils. Pupils received at any time. Accredited by all accredit- ing institutions, both in California and in Eastern States. French school for little children. Please call, phone or. address
MISS HAMLIN
TELEPHONE WEST 546
2230 PACIFIC AVENUE
SAN FRANCISCO, CAL.
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vii
Hitchcock Military Academy
San Rafael, Cal.
One of the Four Main Hall*
A HOME school for boys, separate rooms, large campus, progressive, efficient, thorough, Govern- ment detail and full corps of experienced instructors, accredited to the Universities.
Ideally located in the picturesque foothills of Marin County, fifteen miles from San Francisco.
Founded 1878. Catalogue on application.
REX W. SHERER and S. J. HALLEY, Principals
viii
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Welcome To Camp B.V. D.:
Copyright, U. S. A. 79/5, by The B.V.D. Company.
FIRST they named it cCamp Comfort,'1 but they've changed it to 'Camp B.V.D.", because nothing calls up the thought of Summer Comfort so instantly as B.V. D. It's the Underwear of red-blooded, right-living men who find clean fun in keen sport, from tramping to camping.
You — welcome to Camp B.V. D. even though you're desk-bound and town- chained! Wear it, and be cool and comfortable all summer long. It won't bind or irritate. It lets the air at your body. It wears long and washes fine. You are sure of its quality of material, integrity of make and true-to-size fit.
On every B.V. D. Undergarment is sewed This Red Wo<vcn Label
B.V.D. Union Suits (Pat. U.S.A. 4-30-07) $1.00, $1.50, 152.00, $3.00 and $5.00 the Suit.
B.VD.
BEST RETAIL TRADE
B.V. D. Coat Cut Undershirts and Knee Length Drawers, 50c., 75c.,$l. 00 and$l. 50 the Garment.
{Trade Mark Reg. U S. Pat. Off. and Foreign Countriei)
Firmly insist upon seeing this label and firmly refuse to take any Athletic Underwear without it.
The B.V.D. Company, New York.
London Selling Agency : 66, Aldermanbury, E. C.
Equestrian Statue by James Earl Fraser at the Entrance to the Court of Palms in the P. P. I. E.
The End of the Trail
By Stanton Elliot
The hope that held thee to thy course is spent, As when the sun has reached the brink of day, And weary night obliterates the way That led thee on a barren trail's descent. Resolve which spurred thee now is impotent To stir thy shattered spirit's blind dismay, And faith no longer holds her tortured prey To paths that fate has made indifferent.
Thy race is run. No longer shall a goal Betray a sleepless pulse, nor any meed Of joy enmesh desire. There is no need Within thy deep despair that could enroll Thee in life's lists, nor rouse thee to some deed Of greatness that would animate thy soul.
Fish Wolf Robe addressing Blackfeet Indians at a council. Right to left- Cream Antelope, Medicine Owl, Chief Gambler, Lazy Boy, Two Guns White Calf, and Fish Wolf Robe.
OVERLAND
Founded 1868
JUN2
MONTHLY
BRET HARTE
VOL. LXVI
San Francisco, July, 1915
No. 1
Chief Three Bears, one hundred and two years old, enjoying a pipe of peace.
THE DOOR OF YESTERDAY
An Intimate View of the Vanishing Race at the Panama-Pacific
International Exposition
By Anna Blake Aezquida
GRASS DANCES, medicine cere- monies, pow-wows! Through it all a strange searching for the understanding and friendship of the white man — a naive, tragic pride in the customs of a day gone by.
In permitting six full-blooded Black- feet chiefs to visit the Exposition as delegates from their tribe, the United States Department of the Interior builded more wisely than it knew. That the descendants of the first Americans
The Circle Dance : Blackfeet Indians dancing on the sands of the Pacific Ocean a mile below the famous Cliff House, near the Golden Gate, San Francisco. The women are allowed to join in this special dance.
should be allowed to share in celebrat- ing America's greatest achievement is common justice. That the latest Americans should be given an opportu- nity to draw near the heart of this sor- rowful race, whose moccasined feet are marking time in the land of shadow, is a matter for rejoicing. As the author of "The Vanishing Race" has said, "We belong to the last gen- eration that will be granted the su- preme privilege of studying the Indian in anything like his native state."
From the gentle Pueblos and Nav- ajos living their life in miniature on the Zone, to the daring Sioux in the 101 Ranch, these North American In- dians have a lesson for their con- querors. But it is from these friendly Blackfeet, members of the only tribe of red men that has ever shed the blood of the Pale-face, that one may learn most. Fully accredited delegates t^ the Exposition, brought here as the
guests of Mr. Louis W. Hill, under heavy bonds to the Government and in the personal care of William Blonder, the Indian Agent, these magnificently painted, feathered and beaded chiefs have erected their tepees, and entertain visitors, in the Glacier National Park exhibit of the Great Northern Rail- way.
So typically characteristic, yet so widely diversified, are the life stories of these Indians, that they might form separate chapters in the history of the race that is fading into oblivion.
"Behold! I call Os-kin, the Great Spirit, to witness that I have a true story to tell."
Hand flung upward, dark eyes burn- ing, ninety-two-year-old Many Tail- Feathers chanted the chapter on war — Many Tail-Feathers of the wrinkled face and long silences, who looked when a child upon the first white men that came among the Blackfeet, and
Blackfeet chiefs depositing money in a branch depository bank on the Exposition grounds, San Francisco.
whose early life was one long record of battles with hostile tribes.
"It was many years ago when Major Young was the Indian Agent," he said through the interpreter. "He let the warriors go down into- the hills to hunt game, and gave us permission to search other Indians for some horses which had been stolen. The tribe went down and camped in the Bear Paw Moun- tains, which are south of the Reserva- tion and toward the Cheyenne country, for we saw that it was a good place to hunt buffalo. The next morning it was known that more horses had been stolen. The Blackfeet followed the tracks and came upon the war party of the enemy, the Yank-ton Sioux. There were thirty Blackfeet and seven in the party of the enemy.
"When the sun was quite a way up the battle started. The first to shoot was a Sioux. The first to die was also a Sioux. Then the battle grew
fierce. I, Many Tail-Feathers, was in the center, and both parties were shooting pretty rapidly. My horse was shot, and I fell with him. I rose and chased the Sioux that killed my horse. His name was Blue Cloud. I shot him three times, so that he was full of holes. Weasel Moccasin was the only Blackfoot killed. But we killed and scalped all the Sioux save Blue Cloud. He was shot through with holes, yet he lived. When Chief Strangle Wolf of the Blackfeet saw this, he ordered Blue Cloud sent away alive to tell his tribe about the battle, that it might serve the Sioux as a lesson forever.
"This is what happened to Blue Cloud: On his knees and arms he crawled to the river a mile away. There he found a dead buffalo. All winter he lived on the meat from this skeleton. Toward spring, when the ice had melted and the river was high, he crawled on a log and floated down
OVERLAND MONTHLY
stream until he reached his home on the bank of the river. His squaw had come down to get water, and when she saw him she was frightened and asked if he was Blue Cloud, and he answered 'yes.' So the squaw ran back, crying, 'Blue Cloud is here!' That is the story of Blue Cloud. He is living to-day, an old man, shot through with holes.
"After the battle the Blackfeet re- turned to the Reservation and told the agent what they had done. Old Chief White Calf told the agent that the Blackfeet were not looking for trou- ble, but the Sioux ought all to have been killed for stealing horses and dis- obeying the orders of the United States Government."
Battle stick waving, low voice inton- ing, Chief Many-Tail Feathers swung backward and forward in the peculiar hopping tread of the war dance.
The chapter on the sacred mysteries of the race could be given by solemn- faced, dreamy-eyed Medicine Owl, Holy Man of the Blackfeet. He it is who asks the aid of the Great Spirit to heal the sick. It is Medicine Owl who sucks the poison from the wound and applies the curative sweet grass, sage, juniper and 'Indian roots amid song and prayer. He leads in the song and dance upon the recovery of the sick man. He is the Council Man and the holder of the peace pipe. Four times in the past he has smoked this pipe with other tribes, and recently with the Sioux. Under the leadership of Medi- cine Owl the Blackfeet, a short while ago, ascended Mt. Tamalpais to pay their weird ceremonial tribute to the long-unhonored god of the extinct Ta- mal Tribe.
The oratory of the Indian, with its wonderful imagery born of his pure nature worship, his love for his kind, and the imperishable knowledge of the justice of his cause, is exemplified in the fiery speech of Two Guns White Calf. With a magnificent presence, a face of rare intelligence, a voice of great beauty and power, he pours out his soul to his race, and pleads for his people with those who hold the future of the Indian in the hollow of their
hand. He was present when his father — also a noted orator among the red men — helped to make the famous treaty with the whites, by which the Government, for a million and a half dollars, acquired the Sweet Grass Hills country.
He was likewise present at the mak- ing of a later treaty, by which for the same price the Government bought a strip of land from the Indians exclu- sive of the timber, water and game upon it. This land is now a part of the Glacier National Park, and one- half of the purchase money has been invested at four per cent interest in 'the United States Treasury for the use of the Indians. It is the latter treaty, however, that worries White Calf. See- ing the encroachment of the whites upon the timber land and game pre- serves which belong to his people, he is awaiting the day when another treaty shall be made, and through his eloquence, which, unfortunately, loses somewhat by interpretation, he may persuade the Government to buy these privileges of the red man, or protect him in his right to them.
The chapter on the dance, with all its mystery and spirituality, express- ing a thousand phases of Indian life, may be inscribed by the swiftly thud- ding feet of Fish Wolf Robe— Fish, who smiles with the trusting sweetness of a child and dances with the passion and abandon of a Comanche — and in the graceful, rhythmic stepping and sinuous swaying of Many White Horses, the sun dancer.
It is Fish Wolf Robe who is respon- sible for the revealing for the first time to the white people of the strange tale that had been going the rounds of the Reservation just before the Indians came to San Francisco. It is the story told by a full-blooded Blackfoot Indian from the Alberta country, Canada, the original home of the tribe. This In- dian was so gentle and kind-hearted that he did not know what quarreling was. About two years ago, as he was walking about the earth hunting a black-tailed deer, he heard the noise of a strong wind from the heavens. He
OVERLAND MONTHLY
looked up and saw two women with wings. They spoke to him, saying: "We have come down to tell you something. Close your eyes."
So the Indian closed his eyes, and when he opened them he was standing in a different world. He saw a tepee lodge and a person looking out, but every time it was a different face. Then the person called to him, saying : "I have sent the angels to bring you to heaven because you are a good Indian, and I have a message for your people. Tell them all to wear feathers in their hair, because there are many people on earth, and I want to know which are Indians." He said to the Indian: "Do you know me?" and the Indian an- swered, "You are the Great Spirit."
The Great Spirit then told the In- dian of the war which would devastate Europe, how there would be trouble and fighting over all the earth, and how the white people would continue killing one another until there were only a few left. The Great Spirit urged him to gather all Indians together into one tribe, that when the white people dis- appeared the land might be given back to the red men to whom it originally belonged. At the command of the Great Spirit, the Indian closed his eyes and went down to earth on a cloud.
When he reached his home he told his people all about it, and every one laughed at him and said that he was crazy. That night he had a vision. The next day he called all the In- dians together, and he made a pile of dirt and stood on it, and all his people stood around him, watching. Four times in succession he went up to heaven, and the last time the people believed.
"That Indian," said Fish Wolf Robe, "is a great man. He knows before- hand what is going to happen the next day. This year he has promised to visit our Reservation in Montana and tell our tribe what the Great Spirit said to him. I heard his story from a Canadian Indian who knew him."
The chapter on the present, the one chapter which may seem to justify the white man's methods, is written in the
life of Pe-ta-ne-sta, Chief Eagle Calf, the official interpreter of the Glacier National Park Indians.
When fifteen years old, Eagle Calf, with eight other boys and three girls, ran away from the Reservation and journeyed on horseback one hundred and forty-five miles to Helena, Mon- tana. Here they entered the Mission Industrial Training School for Indians. "I was taught," says Eagle Calf, "not to become intoxicated, because that's the bad life for the Indian, nor to steal, because that's the bad life, and not to smoke nor chew tobacco, because that makes consumption and affects the nervous system. To-day I'm glad that I don't use this bad stuff."
Eagle Calf stayed in this school two and a half years, and after a year at home, spent another twelve months in the Government boarding school. Here he successfully passed the examina- tions, physical and mental, which ad- mitted him to the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. After two years in Carlisle, he attended a high school for white boys in Trenton, New Jersey. Since then he has worked as a farmer in the agency, as a surveyor under the Government civil engineer in Montana, as helper in the Govern-' ment hospital, and for the last four years he has acted as interpreter. He owns 3,900 acres of farming land, and two lots and a house in the town of Browning. Since coming to the Expo- sition he has been sending money home for the use of his wife and for the fur- ther education of his two children, and has been depositing a goodly sum in the bank on the Fair grounds.
An Indian in heart, manner and be- lief, he has acquired under enormous difficulties the best that the Pale-face has to give. A remarkable man, this Eagle Calf! A blending of the old with the new, a figure who shares the aspirations of the white man, and whose feet are forever placed on the lonely pinnacle of the red.
There are two squaws in the party of Blackfeet— jolly Mrs. White Calf, and serious faced Mrs. Medicine Owl. They are the cooks, the housekeepers,
Indian girl on the old travois trail in the country of the Blackfeet, Montana.
and burden bearers, like those of old who followed the travois trail. And flashing her bright way into one's heart is Ec-p-m-ke, the three-year-old papoose.
On the day of the dedication of the building of the Great Northern, the Indians were enthusiastic participants in one of their native ceremonies. The Medicine Lodge was erected in honor of the Sun and the Great Spirit, and the little son and daughter of Mr. Low Hardy were admitted with due rites into the tribe.
This unique ceremony of initiation was the result of an incident which happened a short time previous. As Chief Many-Tail Feathers was walk-
ing on the Marina one day he dropped his battle-stick, and little Lowell and Rosemary Hardy, who were near, ran and picked it up. So pleased was the old warrior, and so significant did he regard this small act of courtesy, that he invited the children into his tepee. He then called a council, at which it was decided to admit the boy and girl into the tribe. This meant that the children were to adopt Indian names in place of their own, and were to agree to aid the Blackfeet whenever called upon to do so.
The boy was given the name of
Morning Star, from the legend of the
Indian Scar-Face. This is the story
as it fell from the lips of old Chief
2
10
OVERLAND MONTHLY
Many-Tail Feathers: Because of his marred countenance, Scar-Face had been refused in marriage by the mai- den he loved. That night he had a dream, and in the dream he was told to go to the land of the Sun. So he went away, traveling day and night. But the paths were strange to him and he lost his way, until Morning Star, the child of the Sun, found him. Morning Star led him in the right direction un- til they came to the medicine lodge of the Sun. Then Morning Star said to his father: "I am going to have this young man for a friend." And the Sun answered: "Bring him in."
Scar-Face went in and told his story to the Sun, and the Sun promised to try and make the young man beauti- ful, although it was a difficult task. Four sweat houses were built, and four times was Scar-Face put through the ceremonial sweat-bath, and at the end of the fourth time he was brought out and placed beside Morning Star. Then the Sun asked Morning Star's mother, the Earth, to pick out her son. The earth looked and looked, and she pointed out Scar-Face as her son. Thus it was that Scar-Face, the ugly, became Morning Star, the beautiful.
Mr. Hardy's little daughter was named by the Indians Evening Star after the papoose that was born to Scar-Face and his Indian sweetheart, whom he married when he returned from the land of the Sun.
There is one other "legend of the atmosphere," as the Indians charac- terize it, that is worthy of repetition. It is the story of Sun-woman, the daughter of the Sun. One day when her father was entertaining friends in his tepee, Sun-woman stepped outside and saw an Indian standing there, and she loved him. So they were mar- ried and set up a tepee of their own. But Sun-woman grew lonely oftentimes and went home frequently to visit her father, the Sun. This made her hus- band angry; so he hung a buffalo robe over the door, that Sun-woman might never go out again. This made Sun- woman very sad, so when the fire was lit in the tepee she leaned over it, and
Ona-Steh-Pa-Kah, Two Guns White
Calf, a famous Blackfeet chief
and orator.
as her husband watched, she ascended in smoke. Then the husband bowed his head and was filled with grief to think what he had done. When even- ing came, he went out from his tepee and stood looking up into the heavens, and as he looked, a strange new light appeared — the moon — and it was Sun- woman herself. Every night the sor- rowing husband went out to look for his wife, and each night she shone
THE HARBOR OF THE SUN.
11
down upon him to comfort him, but she never came back.
A hundred years from now the de- scendants of those who made possible the Panama Canal will be performing still greater feats for the world's ad- vance. "The door of the Indian's yes- terdays opens to a new world — a world unpeopled with red men, but whose population fills the sky, the plains, with sad and specter-like memories —
with the flutter of unseen eagle pin- ions. We have come to the day of audit — a swift-gathering of all that is life, in the gloaming, after the sun- set."
He who visits Jewel City, and fails to make the acquaintance of the bronze-faced Blackfeet delegation, has missed knowing the most interesting and the most pathetic figure at the Ex- position.
THE HARBOR OF THE SUN
I walked beside the waters of the "Harbor of the Sun,"
I saw the King of Day go down when the hours of day were
done,
And the sea was bathed in glory, and rainbow-hued the sky, When like a golden ball of fire, I watched the Day-King die; While o'er the foaming billows the changing colors run, And I caught a glimpse of Heaven from "The Harbor of the
Sun."
But the sunset splendor faded ; and in her silvery might, Over the purple mountains, up rose the Queen of Night; While a million stars looked downward and seemed to show
to me
The shining face of Heaven, deep mirrored in the sea; And the miracles that meet us when each glad day is done, Assumed sublimer meaning in "The Harbor of the Sun."
'Neath the sunlight and the moonlight the tireless breakers roar, Still surging, swelling, sweeping the uncomplaining shore; Eternal, swift, unstaying, forever on they roll, Til the Voice of God is sounding in the Harbor of the Soul. And I'm nearer to His presence when the beauteous day is done, As I listen to the waters of "The Harbor of the Sun."
EMMA FRANCES SWINGLE.
San Francisco
Prom the Sea By Bret Harte
This being the Panama- Pacific Exposition year, in which everything of merit in California is being reviewed before the world, the management of Overland Monthly has decided to republish in its pages the stories and poems that made the magazine famous through the genius of Bret Harte. He was its first editor, and it was his keen discernment and originality which gave the contents of the magazine that touch of the spirit of the West, and especially of California, which made it distinctive and enkindled the enthusiasm of discerning readers the world around. These early contributions of his cover sev- eral years; they will be published monthly in the order in which they appeared, beginning with the first issue of Over- land Monthly, July, 1868. Very appropriately, Bret Harte's first contribution was the poem, "San Francisco."
Serene, indifferent of fate,
Thou sittest at the Western Gate;
Upon thy heights so lately won Still slant the banners of the sun;
Thou seest the white seas strike their tents, O Warder of two Continents !
And scornful of the peace that flies Thy angry winds and sullen skies,
Thou drawest all things, small or great,
To thee, beside the Western Gate. * * * *
O lion's whelp, that hidest fast
In jungle growth of spire and mast,
I know thy cunning and thy greed, Thy hard high lust and wilful deed,
And all thy glory loves to tell Of specious gifts material.
Drop down, 0 fleecy Fog, and hide Her skeptic sneer, and all her pride !
Wrap her, O Fog, in gown and hood Of her Franciscan Brotherhood.
Hide me her faults, her sin and blame With thy gray mantle cloak her shame !
So shall she, cowled, sit and pray Till morning bears her sins away.
Then rise, 0 fleecy Fog, and raise The glory of her coming days ;
Be as the cloud that flecks the seas Above her smoky argosies.
When forms familiar shall give place To stranger speech and newer face ;
When all her throes and anxious fears Lie hushed in the repose of years ;
When Art shall raise and Culture lift The sensual joys and meaner thrift,
And all fulfilled the vision, we
Who watch and wait shall never see —
Who, in the morning of her race, Toiled fair or meanly in our place —
But, yielding to the common lot, Lies unrecorded and forgot.
Tourists resting on the trail
What is a National Park?
By Clifford Trembly
BE IT ENACTED," even with the President's approval attached, doesn't create a National Park. A thing, whether it is a park or a banking system, to be "National" in its scope and character, must be for the entire nation — the man of wealth and the man of modest means, to say nothing of his wife, cousins and aunts. To localize a so-called national park destroys its purpose and functions. I have no quarrel to pick against the various national parks in different parts of the country, or the manage- ment of the government relating to them, but circumstances often create their own opportunities, and it is for- tunate indeed when men and nature can work together and thus bring about the best results. This is true of Gla- cier National Park, and I shall try to
tell you why it is a "National" park in every meaning of the word.
In the first place, it is a park, a play-ground — not a show-place, al- though the things are there to be seen. I mean by this that a person isn't taken there, told to look at a lake, a waterfall or glacier, and then told to go home. Instead, you can turn them loose for a day, a month or six months, let them look at the wonders and beau- ties of the place to their heart's con- tent, and, be they twelve or sixty years of age, play. That is what a park or recreation place is for — recreation and play. Those poor unfortunates who have lost the spirit of play can "do" the place with all of the comforts of good hotels, autos, stage and steamers. The other kind — and they really make up the great bulk of the people — can
On the shores of Iceberg Lake; summer.
discard the easy ways and just have a good time. It's a wonderfully fine ar- rangement— everybody gets just what they want and everybody is satisfied. It's a satisfaction to get into your old clothes, and forget that somebody is looking at you. That's how we felt one morning when we started out in single file, on horseback, over the winding trail from Lake Macdonald to Avalanche Basin. We reached there by noon and forgot everything else save the wonderful blue lake set in its surrounding walls of granite down which plunged many cascades from Sperry Glacier, two thousand feet above — and the fact that we were due to supply the trout for dinner. And we got them, too. Can you imagine that being done at a "show" place? And yet, everything of wonderful beauty was spread out before us and above us, lake, waterfalls, snow capped mountain peaks, the deep green of the forests, dashing mountain streams and foam-lashed gorges. We were not all young, as years go, but I know we were all boys on that day. We clam- bered out on the jutting rocks by the lake, intent on landing a trout, or jumped from stone to stone in the
brook casting into the pools. We played.
Did you ever go up a mountain trail a straight mile in mid-air ? It is some- thing to remember. An almost perpen- dicular climb up a chute in the rocks at the summit landed us at the edge of Sperry Glacier, a land of snow and ice, sweeping out beyond us like a Tugged carpet, blue-bells and Indian pinks nodding at our feet, and grim December a foot away from us. Over all was the blue of a summer sky; a green decked valley spreading out be- low us as far as the eye could see. A snow-ball game in July is not an ordi- nary event in this country, but we had it.
We had trailed along the rocky shore of Lake Ellen Wilson until, at the up- per end of the lake, we boldly mounted higher up on the rocks, waded through the water on a rocky ledge that broke the fall of a cascade from the snow lands above. The sky was of a blue that was intense; below, the lake nes- tled like a great green emerald, and still up, up and up we went. Winding in and around great boulders, picking each step taken, still up into the very heavens. Above was Gunsight Pass,
Top o' the world.
the crest of the Continental Divide, which was our goal. Another final spurt — and we were there. Before us, all was blank; we were in the clouds. A region of lace and gossamer envel- oped us completely. Behind us, all was fair and beautiful — before us, wrapped in the silence of the mists, spread an unknown land. And then, the miracle happened. A golden shaft of sunlight pierced the filmy curtain, there was a parting of the draperies of mist, and backward rolled the lace and gossamer. Below us, two thousand feet, slept Gunsight Lake, another em- erald with a fringe of darker green of the forests Snow-capped peaks were on either side, a panorama of fully one hundred miles spread behind and be- fore us, the clear air enabling us to see for many miles. Crag after crag, some rugged and unkept, others clear as those chiseled by a sculptor, spread their proud heads, not for admiration or praise, but for the worship and homage which was their due. Oh, yes, there's plenty to see there — while you are playing.
If there is a more beautiful place than Red Eagle Lake and Red Eagle
Creek I would like very much to see it. We camped out in a meadow by the creek. Mountains hemmed us in like a wall ; at our tent door swept the creek, a merry, mad, irresponsible kind of a creek that plunged over ledges every now and then, and sang a song of forgetfulness and abandon all its own. Great green pools were there be- low each small cataract, and in those pools were great cut-throat trout. Standing on the rocks by the pools we whipped the waters with our flies. A four-pound cut-throat is not to be trifled with, I assure you. And they certainly did taste good when cooked.
Early in the morning we tramped along the shore of Red Eagle Lake. Not a ripple disturbed its surface, and mirrored in its depths of green and blue the snow-capped mountain peaks on the opposite side stood upside down as clear and distinct as they stood right side up above it.
The nights were cool. We gathered dead timber, even chopped down dead trees, and built a fire that lighted up the meadow and the forests around it. Not a conventional little camp-fire, around which one had to crouch — but
Mirror reflections in Red Eagle Lake
a great big thundering blaze of logs and brush. Did you ever have a sleep in mountain air after sitting around such a fire, with your appetite satisfied with fresh-caught trout? There isn't anything else like it in the least. I think of it now, in the city, and a steam-heated room and a soft bed seem like a prison and a pillory.
Cut-Bank Canyon, where one of the hotel camps is located, is a place of rest, if one can make themselves do such a foolish thing in that region. At least, it invites to rest if one is so in- clined, although I never saw anybody that remembered what that word was when in the park. Cut Bank Creek tears through the valley, winding in out of the hills, around the bends where great green pools are formed by it, natural trout ponds. I waded that little stream for many a mile, some- times waist deep in the icy water, cast- ing many a fly into an eddy below some boulder, or in the deeper pools. The cook heaped them on a big plat-
ter, a golden brown, caught from the ice-cold water an hour before — trout that really were trout.
At Two Medicine Lake we spent one evening trying to induce a mountain lion to go into a shed where we had placed some fresh meat. We watched in the darkness for a couple of hours, but he evidently understood our game, for he stayed away. At least, until we were all sound asleep for the night. Then he amused himself by prowling over the roofs of the buildings and making a general disturbance.
One evening we were out on the lake in a row boat, drifting around and not doing much of anything in particular. The sun went down behind the wall of a rugged peak, and the stillness was something to remember. The lake was like a bit of polished glass, and it seemed an act of profanity to dip the oar into its waters and break the pic- ture of mountain, forest and waterfall reflected therein. They were all there, the real ones surrounding the lake
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
duplicated in the water. This has its advantages, for nearly all of the beau- ties of the park are seen twice; if you don't fully appreciate them the first time, you surely will the second time they appear.
At The Narrows, on Lake St. Mary, we thought that we were in another land. The lake narrows at that point to a third of its usual width, with a tree-covered neck of rock extending out into its blue. One side of the lake is bound by solemn looking mountain peaks, snow-crested and severe, lined up like sentinels to guard the turquoise entrusted to their care. On the other side, going-to-the-Sun Mountain, with its hanging glacier, proudly proclaims that the gem has nothing to fear from that side of its resting place. The hotel camp is on a bluff overlooking all of the beauties spread out before one. I cannot imagine any more beautiful place in the world. I don't believe it exists. It is all there : mountain, lake, streams, waterfalls, forests, glaciers — all of the glory-making spenders of the great outdoors.
The trail from St. Mary's to McDer- mott is one of especial charm — at least it was for me. Over hills, down vales, winding in and out of little valleys, fording rushing mountain streams that had a song entirely of their own, and altogether forgetting that the world wagged on. Whether afoot or on horseback or by the more prosaic and round-about stage line, it is the same wonderful trip — a forget-maker of the world that used to be.
It must have been an inspiration that selected the McDermott Lake site for a chalet camp. With a rugged, unkept mountain for a background, the comfy little chalets nestle at the base, or boldly cling to its lower side. Below the chalets runs the outlet to McDer- mott Lake, a plunging, maddened vor- tex of water and foam, making five wonderful waterfalls through a rock- bound gorge ere it enters into the tran- quility of the sedate mountain stream below. McDermott Lake, on a stilly summer night, is a sight that lingers long in one's memory. A shimmering
sheet of blue or green, flanked on nearly all sides by towering mountains, a spill-way at the lower end letting out the surplus water for fear one would have too much of beauty, the eternal thunder of McDermott Falls, and over all the wonder and glory of a moun- tain night.
After one has climbed five thousand feet in mid-air, up the rugged side of some mighty mountain, lashed the foam decked stream for his share of trout or just idled the time away, the late evening, cool and sleep producing, is a wonderful thing. Just to sit around the great stone fireplace in a chalet, with a few friends about — and every- body is a friend there — a comfortable pipe or cigar — what more could life bring to a fellow or a fellow's wife or best girl?
I lay flat upon my stomach upon the rocks of the rim of McDermott Falls, or rather the gorge down which they
Hooking a big one in the pool below McDermott Falls
Ready for dinner.
20
OVERLAND MONTHLY
tore their way, and snapped a good picture of them. Far below, one of our party was casting for the four-pound- ers that inhabit the lower pool. To me, there is something wonderful in the abundance of water in Glacier Park. To lie there on the brink of that chasm, with a maddening torrent of cascades below me fully two hun- dred feet, with the stars coming out and a wonderful moon lighting up the entire place, was something that comes to a fellow only once in a whole life. Beyond the lake, up on the sides of Grinnell Mountain, clung Grinnell Gla- cier, a land of ice and snow only equaled by Blackfoot Glacier. At our hand was every comfort and conven- ience, good beds, comfortable fires, wonderful big meals, and all of the things that make life pleasant; on the other hand was the mighty things of the Big Outdoors. I often wonder how man would have arranged the scene if he had been consulted — the wilderness of mountain, lake, glacier, waterfall, gorge and streams, surely he could not have gathered them all together in the wonderful panorama that is there stretched forth for his pleasure and admiration. I'd like to stay there twenty years, just taking little trips, every now and then, to the near-by places of charm and beauty. I think every other day I should go up to Cracker Lake.
It is a fine hike, or, if you prefer, a splendid trip on horse. Through the old, abandoned mining town of Altyn, over a lush meadow, and then — but words are such silly little things. Up through a narrow gorge or valley, rimmed in on both sides by towering mountains, some snow-crested and gaunt, others verdure clad and smiling, for some five miles we went. The lit- tle stream that tore down that valley was the most wonderful thing I ever saw. In the first place, it was the most irresponsible little stream — it just didn't care where it went or what hap- pened to it. It sang its way, free from care or concern, over boulders or around them, plunging over an endless number of ledges, resting for a moment
in some quiet pool, and then again on its merry way. We crossed it a num- ber of times, fished in the pools, and fairly learned to love it. I should like to spend a month, wandering up and down that little stream, fishing in the pools below some mighty boulder, rest- ing on some friendly tree-trunk by it, and getting better used to its ways. I am sure that little stream had a real mission in life — the mission of Banish- ment of Care. One couldn't help for- getting, in its company, everything that one ought to remember, and remember- ing only that life was fair and good, and that it was pleasant to be alive — and there.
A rise in the trail and before us was Cracker Lake. We actually laughed. A lake? Surely that patch of blue paste, stuck in the walls of granite, was not a lake ? But it was. About a mile long, blue as a turquoise, smooth as my lady's mirror, Cracker Lake slept in the sun, walled in on three sides by towering mountains down which tore mad little cascades from the eternal snows. There is nothing else like it; there cannot be a duplicate anywhere. It would not be possible, for I'm sure the model was destroyed after Cracker Lake was fashioned.
They said there were trout in it. We didn't have to be fishermen to prove that, for we could see them along the shores, and we saw them more clearly on the board table when they were turned to a wonderful brown, and the bacon was smoked hot on their sides. Oh, life is a wonderful thing, and Cracker Lake is a wonderful thing, and the two together cannot be resisted.
Into the shadows of the deep forests we started on another morning, lost in the silence of the wood. It was a quiet and a rest from the wildness of the other trails that was really needed. I felt that I could not be alone with the bigness, the mightiness, of the scenes I had been a part of without losing my balance. So, the long ride through the woods, on the way to Iceberg Lake, was really needed as a sort of calmer- down. In and out of the forest, now on a rise that overlooked the valley,
1
3
22
OVERLAND MONTHLY
now on the edge of Red Gorge where the water foamed and hissed a hundred feet below in its narrow confines, or, coming into the open, we caught sight of a towering wall of granite, a mile high, just beyond us, we trudged along. Then a stiff climb, up, up, the rugged steps of a sharp incline where the horses literally had to climb a flight of stone and earth steps, with a mad torrent of water dashing down the rocks at our right, and
The smallness of words almost ap- palls me. They are such little things, and things, themselves, are so big out there. To see Iceberg Lake, on a sum- mer day, with the breath of summer- time all around you, the flowers bloom- ing at your feet, and fantastic ghost- forms floating on the blue of the lake near by, is almost too much for one day. Iceberg Lake is the last and final effort of nature to outdo herself. And she has succeeded, too. An oval lake, blue as indigo, resting without a ripple at the base of an immense cup of granite nearly a mile high, sleeps in the silence of her guardian rocks. At the farther side, a glacier hangs on the rim of the rocks. All through the sum- mer, as the sun's rays reach the fast- ness in midday, great pieces of the glacier drop from the parent ice field and find a lodgment in the lake. There they float, white spirits of the solitude, summer sun above, flowers fringing their grim coldness, back and forth, phantom ships of fairyland without port or pilot. The real world, where work and toil and worry abound, has ceased to exist.
Far up on the topmost ledge of the mountain we saw a speck of white out- lined against the blue of the sky. Three mountain goats were watching us from their resting place, five thousand feet above us — nearly. They were safe, and knew it. We were happy, and knew it. Everybody was satisfied.
From the rocky shore we gathered great stones and sent them skimming over the lake, knocking some fairy ship to tatters or meeting an irresist- ible berg that sent the missile plung- ing to the bottom of the lake. With
the tang of the ice air in our faces, we sat on the rocks and ate our luncheon, our feet deep in the lush grass, our heads in the clouds, and our thoughts where they had never been before.
This is all disjointed and discon- nected. I know it : I meant it to be so. Vacations are all that way if they are worth the while. Things in the city are connected, properly joined — and fearfully tiresome. Things in Gla- cier National Park are directly the op- posite.
This brings me back to the question : What is a National Park? I believe it is a place for everybody, for the man and woman of wealth who wish to see the wonderful things of nature with the least discomfort, or, rather, with all of the comforts; for the man and woman of moderate means who wishes to spend a reasonable amount of money, and yet get full value for such expenditure ; for the man and wo- man of small means who loves the Great Outdoors and longs to play in it. Ride through the best part of Glacier Park with your autos, or go by stage and boat, ride its trails on a horse, or, I believe best of all, "hike" through it at your leisure. Do it on a dollar a day, camp out of doors, smell the breath of the pines, feel the touch of the mighty aspects of nature in that place, forget everything save that you are young, life is good, and that it's good to be alive. That is a National Park. A place for everybody of the nation, a playground that cannot be duplicated, a treasure house of scenic wonders that Switzerland cannot du- plicate.
In the office, with the steam heat turned on and all of the silly little frills of city life close at hand, I often turn myself, in fancy, back into that re- gion, and —
Then it's Ho! for the trail when the sun's just up,
And the dew's on the grass in the valley —
When the sky's all blue like a tur- quoise cup,
And the spirit of youth is our ally.
Climbing At. Wilson
By W. E. Hutchinson
TO THE SUMMIT of Mt. Wilson, six thousand feet above sea level, runs a narrow and crooked trail. The ascent may be made either by saddle horse or burro, and even the more fastidious may, if so inclined, take an automo- bile as a modern mode of locomotion, and attain the top, but he must needs drive slow and have his machine un- der perfect control, for a false turn of the wheel would surely mean dire disaster. But a nature lover like my- self decries the use of the foregoing, and trusts to his sturdy legs to place him upon the very pinnacle.
There are two reasons why the lat- ter are to be recommended; first, you are your own master, and do not have to conform to the wishes of a given number that make up your party. Second, you can make the ascent lei- surely, and if a bit of scenery pleases your fancy, you can spend as much time as you like over it without in- conveniencing the others, and sate your soul with the beauty of canyon and peak, and study the birds, trees and flowers at your leisure.
Of course, all this takes time, but time is of secondary consideration to the nature lover while on the trail, for mother earth is his bed and the stars and his blanket are his only coverlet, and he camps down wherever night overtakes him.
I had often wished to make the as- cent on foot, and now that the occa- sion offered, I made my hurried pre- parations, donned my khaki suit, shouldered my well filled knapsack, and with my good stout staff in my hand, began the ascent.
A mockingbird perched on a tele- graph wire was pouring forth his
morning hymn to cheer me on my journey, and a green- tailed towhee on a clump of chaparral sends forth his rich, bell-like music in a manner dis- tinctly his own.
As I approach closer, his song changes to a cat-like mew, as if in protest at my intrusion on his pre- serves, but as I pass on my way, not without first studying him as best I may without seeming to be too much interested in his affairs, he bursts forth anew with his thrush-like mel- ody as if to speed my lagging foot- steps.
Toiling up the trail in a leisurely way, for one must of necessity go slowly at this high altitude, wondrous formation of cliffs and dizzy crags confront me at every turn of the trail.
Far across the canyon a jagged peak rises out of the purple haze, and around its top a sylph-like cloud as gauzy as a lady's veil floats above it, and rests like a halo upon the giant forehead.
All about is utter silence as if the massive mountains were brooding like sleeping sentinels resting after their mighty upheaval, broken only by the querulous cry of the blue-fronted jay as he flashes across my pathway.
Farther on a mountain brook comes tumbling down among the rocks, sing- ing its plaintive tremolo, or breaks in- to a deeper tone as it tumbles in glee over a waterfall. Its voice is always changing from a shrill treble to a baritone, but always singing its liquid melody and never out of tune.
Suddenly, rounding a projecting spur, I see the lights and shadows working their magic colors upon the rocks, transforming them into minar- ettes and towers until they stand out
24
OVERLAND MONTHLY
with all the beauty of a Turkish mosque against the turquoise blue of the sky. A fleecy cloud sails over- head, casting its shadow over crevice and coulee, then floats away majesti- cally like some white winged argosy to linger for a moment around the highest peak and touch with trailing fingers its massive brow.
The evening shadows are beginning to gather as the sun sinks below the distant peaks, as I make my camp in a wooded dell where the aromatic odor of bay tree and leafy mould rise like incense, and here I spread my blan- ket and sleep the sleep so refreshing to a mountain climber, with the song of the brook for my lullaby.
I am up with the sun in the morn- ing, for one who camps on the trail is no sluggard. The sun shines bright- ly all about me, but I rub my eyes to dispel the delusion, for I have awak- ened in a veritable fairyland. Below me everything is wrapped in a blanket of fog that rolls and billows like the waves of the ocean, and a peak here and there push their rounded domes above the clouds like desolate islands.
What a wonderful panorama lies below me, and stretches away as far as the eye can reach! One can al- most realize how the Omnipotent might have looked down upon the world He had just fashioned, and see it slowly assume shape out of the chaos. I stand in awe and wonder at the grand spectacle, until Thor in his onward march cleaves the clouds asunder and scatters them like sheep before his chariot, and as they roll away to right
and left, I gaze below me, and see the valley lying like an emerald at my feet.
Towns, vineyards and orange groves are scattered like jewels over the land- scape, and gradually as the light grows stronger away out on the horizon's rim, the blue waters of the Pacific break upon the shore.
All at once it is borne in upon me that it is the Sabbath morn, and as I stand lost in reverie and wonder at the grand spectacle, surrounded on all sides by towering peaks whose top- most pinnacles glow with the gold of morning sunshine, there comes faintly to my ears, wafted on the morning breeze from some church in Pasadena, the chime of church bells, and as I listen to catch the melody, I can make out the tune, though a note here and there is lost by the shifting of the wind.
"Come Thou Almighty King, Help us Thy name to sing, Help us to praise."
How fitting a hymn at such a time and place, and one almost expects to hear the Hallelujah chorus echoing from peak to peak, sung by an angel chorus; it filled me with a reverent mood, for who could be otherwise than worshipful amid such surroundings? The fatigue of the trail is forgotten, weariness falls from me like a gar- ment, and I bare my head in homage before the Ruler of the Universe, and feel thankful that I have been per- mitted to view His handiwork from an exalted position on Mt. Wilson.
The Commodore
By H. P. Holt
I WONDER what would become of you if you were suddenly thrown on your own resources," said the exquisite Mrs. Graham.
Gerald St. Vincent looked up lazily from his deck chair and smiled. He always had sufficient energy to smile and to select a fresh cigarette from the gold case he carried. Sometimes he even went so far as to polish his eye-glass, but that was an exceptional form of exercise.
"Dunno," he replied, lazy even in speech. "It would be a jolly experi- ment, though, wouldn't it?" Mrs. Graham had befriended him, perhaps because he seemed utterly incapable of looking after himself. She glanced from him to her husband, a leonine type of creature, and for the twentieth time found herself contrasting the two. Mr. Graham had a large head and shaggy eyebrows. He was big physi- cally, and he had a ruthless will. For twenty years he had "managed" ne- groes on his estate in South America with merciless precision. There were stories, to which none dared refer in his presence, of brutality — and worse. But the life of a black in South Amer- ica is not as sacred as that of an hon- est citizen in San Francisco. Mrs. Graham shuddered slightly.
She had known of planters who drank more heavily than her husband — not much more heavily, it is true — and there were times when he was even amiable. Four years of matri- mony had, however, considerably mod- ified several of her views on life, and now, in her twenty-eighth year, she was rapidly developing into a cynic. So far, her wonderful face had not been marred by sorrow, but for an elu- sive something which crept into her
eyes now and again. In her early life she had held happy ideals, and she re- membered a conversation with her husband soon after they were jnarried when, with almost childish frankness, she had spoken of the pleasure a wo- man finds in being mastered by her strong mate. Oh, yes, he had mas- tered her; he had also mastered his negroes, and with methods which did not differ materially. From that stage she had gone to another, in which she became quietly self-reliant for the pur- pose of preserving the best that was in her and preventing constant asso- ciation with him from crushing out the loftier part of her nature.
Gerald St. Vincent was 32 — four years younger than the planter. It was said of him that he only had one real vice, laziness; but he was so artisti- cally lazy that every one forgave him. Mrs. Graham regarded him with good- natured scorn.
"I am afraid you are hopeless," she said. "You would positively expire if you were deprived of cigarettes and chairs for a day."
St. Vincent's retort was a smile. He generally disarmed his critics that way.
Mrs. Graham turned to go to her cabin, hoping to enjoy the first good night's rest for nearly two weeks. The steady beat of the Indian Queen's an- cient engines was a powerful consoler. Thirteen days before, during half a gale in the Pacific, the propeller had ceased to revolve and the chief engi- neer sought out the captain, told him what he thought of the company for sending a vessel to sea with a bunch of scrap-iron inside her, and informed him that it would take the united ef- forts of the engine room staff several 3
26
OVERLAND MONTHLY
days to put things right. The ship wallowed in heavy seas, drifting like a log until she was hundreds of miles out of her course. When the engines were re-started they held together for half an hour and stopped with a rattle and a jar. There was a further and longer delay, but now the machinery had been working all day, and al- though a heavy sea was running, the spirits of every one on board were ris- ing.
A haze hung over the water, thick- ening towards midnight. Gerald St. Vincent remained for some time in his deck chair, enjoying the cool breeze after a scorching day, and then went below to turn in. He had barely reached his cabin when a shock threw him violently against the door. There came a harsh, rasping sound, and he felt the vessel heel over.
"Well, that's one way of going ashore," he murmured quietly. "I fancy there won't be much left of the Indian Queen after this." He turned back along the alleyway and climbed up the companion. The steamer lay still, but for an occasional heavy bump — and her deck sloped considerably. It was very dark, and the fog made it impossible for one to see from one end of the vessel to the other. The sailors were attempting to lower a boat, and the captain was supervising the operations. St. Vincent walked to his side.
"Are we anywhere near land?" he asked.
"Must be," replied the captain. "I reckon this is an outlying reef off one of the Marquesas Islands we have struck."
St. Vincent went back to his cabin.
"And. now," he soliloquized, "I sup- pose we shall all be Robinson Cru- soes." He put on an overcoat, in- stinctively tucked his silk pajamas in- to the pockets, and picked up one or two things which he considered might prove useful. Then he returned to the deck. The first boat had just been lowered into the water. A few mem- bers of the crew and a dozen or so of the passengers were helped or
jumped into it, and an angry comber swept round the ship, licked the small craft up, and crashed it against the side of the Indian Queen. St. Vincent heard cries — cries which it was hard to forget afterwards — and for a while he got an occasional glimpse of a white face in the sea. The ocean was claiming its toll. The remaining pas- sengers, all wearing lifebelts, were custered on the lee side of the steamer. Some of them had dressed hastily in the first garments that came handy. St. Vincent's; overcoat was open; he was still wearing his evening dress, and his monocle was as firmly planted in his eye as ever. He wore his lifebelt over his overcoat and was utterly unconcerned. Even in such desperate circumstances Mrs. Graham, when her eyes fell on him in the glare of a lantern, could not resist the sus- picion of a smile. He hung back as the second boat was being lowered, while Mr. Graham bawled noisily, and without any effect, at the crew. Mrs. Graham's turn arrived to get into the dancing little craft. She wondered whether St. Vincent would lose his last chance before the Indian Queen broke up. She beckoned him and he nodded. The woman did not know how he managed it, but when the boat was pushed off, St. Vincent was one of her party.
Driving spray blinded every one in the boat. The sailors began to pull, going with the gale. Twice angry seas lifted the craft like a toy; the third time it heeled over in the hissing com- ber and capsized. Mrs. Graham could hear her husband bellowing like an in- furiated bull as the seas washed her from the boat, and then she felt a strong hand grip her arm. There was a terrific wrench, but the grip held. Her throat was full of sea-water, and she was half-choked; but as there came a lull, she saw that it was St. Vincent who was holding her. With his other hand he grasped the up- turned boat. Then she lost conscious- ness.
Wild water swirled around the man. The fog was lifting, but darkness re-
THE COMMODORE
27
mained. Only a glimpse of light was visible now and again when the scud- ding clouds swept clear of the moon momentarily. St. Vincent fancied they were drifting into breakers, but could not be sure, for the waves were curl- ing everywhere. Suddenly a sea larger than the others caught the boat on its crest. The man's arms were almost torn from their sockets and the breath was beaten from his body, but he held on until a gleam of moonlight showed that they were almost on a sandy beach. With a last effort he carried Mrs. Graham beyond the reach of the sea, put his overcoat under her head, and then sat beside her to regain his breath.
As soon as he had recovered suffi- ciently he turned his attention to the woman. He had some knowledge of artificial respiration, and she quickly recovered consciousness. He made her sit up, and then his hand wan- dered to his cigarette case, which for- tunately proved water tight. He was equally lucky with his match box. Peering round into the darkness, and adjusting his eyeglass carefully, he blew a cloud of smoke.
"And now," he said to himself, "where is Man Friday?"
CHAPTER II.
"Feeling better?" St. Vincent quer- ied, after a few moments.
"Yes, I'm all right now, thanks," replied Mrs. Graham somewhat weak- ly; "I suppose the worst is really over?" she added.
"Can't say exactly till dawn," he re- plied. "But we aren't drowned, so that is something to be grateful for. Will you stop there a little while? Some of the others are certain to be washed ashore. They may need help."
"I would rather come, too," she re- plied, and they walked along the beach. Mr. Graham was lying ex- hausted on the sand. He had been swept through the breakers clutching an oar. He growled when asked how he was. St. Vincent passed on to the others, some of whom had been drowned before their bodies were
washed up. When dawn filtered over the sky and the haze was gone, it was found that there were fourteen sur- vivors out of the fifty-two men, wo- men and children on the Indian Queen. They included a passenger named Ben- nett, with his wife and daughter; the second engineer; Griggs, the carpen- ter; two sailors and four half-caste firemen. Their clothing was varied and wonderful. Mrs. Graham had hurriedly donned a tweed coat and skirt. Mr. Bennett had on his boots, trousers and an overcoat.
As the sun rose it revealed the re- mains of the Indian Queen, now settled down and rapidly breaking to pieces, nearly half a mile from the shore ; and it bathed in a golden glory the slopes leading to the higher part of the island. There was rich tropical foliage 'everywhere, and a flock of parrots, startled by the visitors' appearance, screeched and hid themselves in the trees.
"It seems to me the first thing we ought to do," said St. Vincent to the two sailors, beaming through his mon- ocle, "is to haul the small boat above the high-tide mark," and the aid of the half-castes being requisitioned, this was soon done.
"I'm afraid it's knocked about too much to be very seaworthy," com- mented St. Vincent, "but it will at least do as a store room for anything washed ashore, and later we might be able to patch it up a bit. Will you fellows come along the edge of the sea with me? We might be able to pick up some useful odds and ends."
Mrs. Graham surveyed him in quiet wonder. Her husband, meanwhile, was sitting in taciturnity on a rock, gazing out to sea and bemoaning his fate.
The searchers reaped a rich harvest. Barrels of biscuits and other provi- sions were eagerly rescued from the waves. St. Vincent, with his coat off, worked as hard as any of them. Every- thing was carried above the high-tide mark. The work was terribly hard, and the men had eaten nothing since the previous day, but St. Vincent urged
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
them on by pointing out that they might not find a wreck at their back door every day. One of the sailors whom he sent with a bailing can in search of fresh water reported the dis- covery of a clear brook. A cask of biscuits and one of bully beef were broached, and after a rough and ready meal all hands returned to their labors.
"That isn't half a bad morning's work," commented St. Vincent, as he surveyed their captures by the time the tide turned. "Can't we rig up some sort of a tent with part of this tar- paulin for the women to sleep in to- night?"
The men were weary, but they acted on his suggestion as a matter of course. Rough but weather proof shelter was erected for the women, and later in the day the men were provided with a sleeping place on canvas under the trees. As the sun slipped below the horizon suddenly in tropical fash- ion, every one turned readily to their primitive couch with aching limbs.
"Good-night, Mrs. Graham," said St. Vincent as naturally as though they were still on the old Indian Queen. "I hope you will be fairly comfortable. There has not been time to do much yet, though, has there ?"
Mrs. Graham looked at him thought- fully. She was developing a tinge of shyness towards him. This was not the lazy individual she bade good- night to the previous day. She was still wondering when she closed her eyes in sleep.
The moon rose over a still crazy sea. St. Vincent was wakeful in spite of his labors. The little camp was silent, but for the dull, perpetual roar of the breakers on the sand. He walked along the beach to the place where the wreckage and casks had been salved, and ran his eye over the supplies with a feeling of satisfaction.
"Considering we are just about as far from the track of regular steamers as one could possibly be," he mused, "we shall probably be remarkably grateful, before we all get home again, for anything there may be among our stock."
He stopped suddenly and remained motionless, for a few minutes, his eyes fixed on one portion of the beach. He could have sworn he saw something moving in the shadow. So far they had seen no sign of natives on the island; at that distance he could not see whether it was man or beast, but he meant to find out what it was that had moved. Picking up a stout stick, round which his fingers closed firmly in readiness for emergencies, he ad- vanced cautiously, making no noise on the sand. When he got within ten yards he saw the figure of a man, and he thought he recognized something familiar in the broad shape of the shoulders. He was puzzled, but went forward more quickly.
"Stopping out all night?" he asked in a cheerful voice.
The man wheeled round clumsily. It was Graham. In his hand he held a small tin, at his feet lay a cask. Even in that uncertain light there was no doubt what he had been doing. He brandished the tin in the air.
"That is all very well," said St. Vin- cent quietly, "but you do not seem to realize that everything washed up, be it rum or anything else, is common property."
"This is mine. I found it," shouted Graham truculently. "I defy you or any one else to rob me of it. We're going to die like rats in this hole."
"All right," replied Vincent. "If you chose the alcohol route that is your affair," and he turned on his heel.
At dawn on the following morning he went out to empty the liquor onto the sands. Graham, however, had foreseen some such possibility. The cask had vanished.
CHAPTER III.
The tropical summer waxed and waned, and the refugees remained on their island with only birds for com- pany. They had suffered some hard- ships, if being deprived of luxuries constitutes hardship; but for a ship- wrecked party they were remarkably happy. There were but thirteen of
THE COMMODORE
29
them now: Graham, convinced that there was no likelihood of escape, at any rate for a number of years, gave way to melancholia and his keg of rum. St. Vincent and Mrs. Graham en- deavored to reason with him, but the evil side of his nature developed rap- idly. Then he disappeared. One day St. Vincent, during a ramble, came across the body. When he broke the news to Mrs. Graham she shivered slightly.
Griggs, the ship's carpenter, proved a veritable God-send. Very few of his things had been recovered from the Indian Queen, but by sharpening pieces of iron taken from the wreck- age, he fashioned several useful tools, and under the guidance of St. Vincent — whom they called the Commodore by common consent — several rough bungalows sprang up. Very soon af- ter they were wrecked he and the car- penter made bows and arrows, and regular contests were instituted. Be- fore long some of the party became sufficiently proficient to go in quest of the small wild pig and a species of guinea fowl which were found on the island. Primitive fish-hooks were eas- ily constructed from pieces of wire, and lines were made from fibre — crude tackle which; however, answered its purpose excellently.
Their original attenuated wardrobe, distinctly unsuited for life on a tropi- cal island, had undergone such modi- fications that it was no longer recog- nizable. A most precious thing found among the flotsam was a quantity of needles, and fortunately they had an adequate supply of sail cloth. All rents and tears were quickly put into the hands of one of the sailors, who had a profound belief in patches, and by the time he had exercised his art for the better part of a year on all the costumes, from the Commodore's evening dress to the half-caste fire- men's garb, they had an odd appear- ance.
Through all the period of their cap- tivity it was St. Vincent who organized everything, He never gave a word of command, even to the firemen and
sailors. They leaned instinctively on his quiet judgment. If a dispute arose, the fact was put before the Commodore, who tactfully simplified matters. Only on one occasion did he assert authority. On the highest peak of the cliff a constant look-out for a sail was kept. A beacon, which could have been seen almost thirty miles away, was always in readiness for sig- naling at night, and there was also a flagstaff. Every man on the island took his watch for four hours. There was a half-caste named Svenk in whom the Commodore had little faith. One night he wandered to the look-out point and found Svenk lying asleep. St. Vincent awoke the man and made him stand up; then gave him the soundest thrashing he had ever had in his life. The Commodore said nothing about it to the others, but no man was found asleep at his post again.
A curious change had come over Mrs. Graham by the time they had been on the island a year. The ab- sence of things so dear to the femin- ine heart did not apparently affect her. The occasional look of sadness in her eyes had disappeared. She was an exceptionally beautiful woman when St. Vincent first met her, but a year's life in an atmosphere of perfect peace had almost restored her to girlhood. As the months rolled on, she lost her feeling of shyness towards St. Vincent — the new St. Vincent, resourceful and utterly unlike the man she first met on the Indian Queen. He was bronzed now, almost beyond recognition, and Mrs. Graham thought he had grown taller and broader.
Latterly they had had many serious conversations while he was at his post near the flagstaff. The feeling was now growing upon them that it was quite possible they might remain on their out-of-the-way island for a dozen years or more.
"And yet," said St. Vincent to her as they watched the early sun stain the sky and sea with brilliant hues, "some- times I doubt whether I should be glad to leave the island."
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
"Who could fail to be contented here.?" she replied. "I think this is the first time I have been really happy for any length of time."
He looked at her quickly. A suspi- cion of tears welled into her eyes, and he knew she was thinking of Graham. The man put his hand on hers quite naturally.
"Why not let the dead past bury its dead?" he asked.
"I think it is forgotten — quite for- gotten now," she said. There was silence for several minutes as the new- born sun shot above the rim of the sea and steeped everything in his fiery rays.
Suddenly the man rose to his feet, and going to the flagstaff, ran the bunt- ing to the top of the mast. Then he returned to the woman's side.
"I more than suspect, Mrs. Gra- ham," he said very quietly, "that this may prove our last day on the island. Do you see that tiny spot on the hori- zon?"
"Yes, yes, a little dark mark," she cried.
"I have been watching it for several minutes," he added. "It has hardly moved towards north or south, but it has been growing steadily. That means the vessel is coming straight to- wards us, and the curtain is being rung down on — on our island holiday."
They watched the distant speck for a quarter of an hour, and then went, in a strangely subdued frame of mind, to give the good news to the others. Some of them laughed; others cried hysterically as the vessel grew larger. St. Vincent eyed the craft — a large
yacht — critically for a long time, and then chuckled quietly to himself. The sound of the chain rattling as the an- chor dropped half a mile from the beach could be heard distinctly, and a small petrol launch shot across the intervening water. Every one had crowded excitedly on the beach. A man remarkably like the Commodore leaped ashore and gripped St. Vincent by the hand.
"I knew you'd be on one of these islands," he said. "We've been cruis- ing about for eight months poking our noses into all sorts of odd places."
"You're a brick, Alec," the Commo- dore replied, still wringing the other's hand. "This is my brother, Mrs. Gra- ham. He's been taking a liberty with my yacht searching for me in it with- out my permission. Under the circum- stances, however, I forgive him. It
was a distinctly brainy idea."
* * * *
St. Vincent and Mrs. Graham leaned upon the rail at the stern and watched their island home gradually disappear. Neither felt inclined to break the silence for a time.
"Barbara," the man said at last in a low voice, "is this to be the parting of the ways? Will you come to San Francisco with me, dear?"
"If you promise not to relapse into your lazy ways," she replied softly, with a smile.
There was nobody near them. St. Vincent took her into his arms.
"I never could be lazy again since I found some one who was worth doing things for," he declared emphatically. And their lips met.
Another Day
By Nellie Cravey Gillmore
THE mid-winter heavens, sagging indigo draperies throughout the raw, sunless morning, had just opened their vaults and released a blinding whirl of white feathers.
Eunice hurried along the broad snow mantled avenue with brisk, buoyant footsteps, the harsh, cutting air whip- ping peonies into her cheeks and kind- ling blue flames in her violet-gray eyes.
Suddenly she halted, brought to a pause by the sharp, strangled cry of a woman, meanly clad and pinched with cold, leaning against the granite cor- 'ner of a bleak skyscraper. Out of her emaciated face, the eyes haggard with misery, followed the receding form of a man, muffled up in furs to his ears and swinging with easy, satisfied stride toward the gayly-lighted thoroughfare beyond. The girl stifled a shudder as she spoke to her.
"You seem to be in trouble," she said kindly. "Can I help you in any way?'" The richness and warmth of her own garments rebuked her strange- ly, as a fuller glance comprehended the stricken woman's pitiful lack of even the barely necessary clothing to protect her against the icy wind. A hotter shade of crimson flashed into her cheek as she felt the jealous glare of the other's eyes upon her, and sensed the sickening odor of stale liquor through her shivering lips.
The woman smiled — a horrible little twisted smile of piercing irony. Her strained gaze, still fixed on the vanish- ing figure of the well dressed stranger, flickered and fell away as he disap- peared in the throng. She bit her pur- ple lips till the blood sprang through them, shrugged and uttered a little, mirthless laugh that struck terror to the girl's sensitive heart.
"I guess you're an aristocrat like him," she said sullenly, jerking her head in the direction he had gone. "Maybe you saw him refuse me a quar- ter for a drink to keep me warm a min- ute ago? God! I used to have all those things like you and him — until he came along. I was pretty, too, and young and happy, though you wouldn't believe it now, eh ? Hell, ain't it ?"
Eunice felt her eyes dilate and her hands, tucked snugly in her great fox- skin muff, grow tense and cold. It was by an effort she spoke calmly
"I'm genuinely sorry for you," she said kindly. "I can see that you are suffering. I am not trying to patronize you or to question you ; I merely want to do something for you Here !" Im- pulsively she whipped the long, thick cape from her shoulders and folded it about the other woman's scant shoul- ders She fumbled in her bag and drew forth two crisp five dollar bills. "Take these and get you some warm gloves, any little things you may need, and something to eat. I wish I had more to give you. Just — just please don't drink any more — than you have to. If you are in need of further assistance, come to my rooms, 313 and 314 Emery Apartment." She laid her hand with a little sympathetic touch on the trem- bling arm of the derelict. The latter looked up and into her eyes, shame and gratitude battling for the mastery of her working features.
"You are good," she said unsteadily. "I don't deserve much, but thank you. And I'll remember what you ask."
Eunices heart was beating very fast as she entered the elevator a few mo- ments later and was whirled up to her flat on the third floor of the apartment house. She fitted the key to the latch
32
OVERLAND MONTHLY
with shaking fingers, went in, switched on the light and hurriedly removed her things. The cozy warmth of the steam heated rooms helped to dissipate the inward chill of foreboding and to re- store the normal color to her face. She slipped on a soft, lavender tea gown, adjusted the shade of the reading lamp and seated herself by the table with a book. But she could not read. The words on the page rushed together in a mocking blur and the leaves of the volume quivered under her nervous touch.
The woman's leering face haunted her ; the bitter abandon and naked des- pair shocked her to the soul. She sat pale and still on her chair, facing this bare aspect of human misery — and its eternal origin — with startled, horrified gaze. After the roses the rue; after the wine the dregs; the lilac lane — and thorns ! Suddenly within her swell- ing breast, the truth came home to her. She glanced up at her exquisite reflec- tion in the tiny oval mirror across the room. That woman — she had once been pretty, and happy and young. She had had her day of pleasure and passion and youth and beauty, and that other day had come. Yes, there was always "another day."
Some such passion, then, wrecking body, destroying soul, blighting and searing and utterly corroding — some such passion might bring to her — an- other day!
She was thinking deeply, quickly, clearly, trying to disentangle the gnarled threads of her old sophistries and let daylight in on her glamoured brain. She recalled the vision of this broken-up, wrecked human vessel, stranded, battered by the same gale through which she herself was riding on the top of its buoyant waves! A force which, finally engulfing, rending, would sweep on in its course, leaving only a quivering remnant of worthless flesh to .bleed and suffer.
A short, sharp rap on the door broke off her reverie.
Chiswick entered briskly, shaking himself like a drenched terrier.
"Sleet, rain, mud and ice!" he ex-
claimed. Ugh ! I was headed at break neck speed for the club, but skidded clean across the avenue, landed by act of Providence at your very door, so rushed up for a rejuvenating cup of your famous Tokay."
Eunice had gotten herself together by a tremendous effort. Bob Chis- wick's arrival, with his breezy person- ality and big, fine smile, were just what she needed to bring back her tottering balance. She heaved a little sigh of relief and gave him her most winning smile — a smile most men found it hard to resist.
"You shall have the whole pot full if you wish," she laughed. "Such a com- pliment deserves its reward." And she lighted the percolater and began to busy herself among the cups.
Chiswick slid out of his coat, tossed his hat on a chair and slapped his dis- heveled hair into shape with two pow- erful hands.
"By the way, I have a letter here from Tom Medford. Funny fellow, Tom — always up to some new wrinkle. Pretty good friend of yours, eh ? Want to read it?"
Eunice felt her poise slipping a little, but caught herself up; in Chiswick's tone were only friendly camaraderie; his suggestion, under the circum- stances, was quite natural. He had been a constant visitor at the flat for over two years, and his meetings here, with Medford, had been frequent and cordial, that was all. He could not sus- pect their relation; it was absurd to have the color flying into her face like this! She held out her hand, steady enough now, received the letter with a little amicable smile and laid it on the table. Calmly pouring two cups of the steaming beverage, she dropped the surgar, two lumps, in each, and seated herself opposite. Then she reached out carelessly for the letter. With the same careless abandon, she unfolded the sheet of business paper, glanced at the superscription and read :
"Chicago, January 3d. Dear Bob :
Just a line to advise you that the deal went through without a hitch. Werder
ANOTHER DAY
33
was a little stubborn at the beginning, but finally came around O. K. They have appointed me manager of the Western office, and I am making my plans to move out to Nevada by spring.
The prospect of the change is very exhilarating. As you know, I have never relished the cramped existence in New York City, and have always had a leaning for the geographical West. It is my intention to cut out the old life altogether and start new. I intend to marry, if "she" will have me, and settle down in a home of my own in the Nevada hills.
Wish me luck, old fellow. You can safely do so, for I see it coming my way.
Shall arrive home about the middle of the month and begin to make ar- rangements for pulling up stakes. Sincerely yours,
MEDFORD.
Eunice read the contents through without the moving of a muscle. A frightful paralysis of the senses seemed to hold her in grip ; she felt as though enveloped in a cold ice wave, numbed, frozen.
She sat quite still, hedged about by a feeling of stunning dismay, much as a helpless bird might crouch to the earth, awaiting the descent of a vora- cious hawk. Incapable of word or mo- tion, mute, helpless, crushed, she crouched among the ruins of her own life, awaiting the ravenous talons of destiny.
Chiswick's vibrant tones aroused her;
"Another cup, lady. You promised, you know."
With the smile that women have al- ways, somewhere hidden, to mask their breaking hearts, she accepted the empty cup and quietly refilled it. Af- terwards she returned the letter to the envelope and handed it to her compan- ion. Every drop of blood in her body seemed to have centered about her heart, hanging in her breast like a ton of lead. But her voice, when she spoke, was singularly clear and self- controlled.
"How fortunate, indeed! And do you really think he'll like it out there so much?"
"Of course. With a dear little wife and a home of his own and a get rich quick job, who wouldn't ? Seems queer to think of old Tom getting married after all these moons. I had about figured him out for a confirmed bache- lor."
The ormolu clock on the mantle tin- kled merrily. Chiswick jerked out his watch. "What! Already? Well, this is much more than pleasant, but I must be off to my eight o'clock engagement, and it's twenty minutes after right now." He rose and held out both hands.
Eunice somehow got to her feet and gave him the tips of her little, cold fingers.
"I'm so glad you came in, Bob," she said, "for I was feeing blue and cross. Come often, won't you?"
Chiswick crushed her fingers in his big, warm palm. "I'd come every day if I thought there was any use," he re- plied earnestly. His frank blue eyes sought her evasive gaze eagerly. Then he dropped his hands and turned away shaking his head. "But I know there isn't — so."
Eunice helped him on with his coat, fetched his hat and walked with him to the door. When it had closed be- hind his towering form, she stood still in the middle of the room, stricken, dazed, conscious only of the agonized billows of torture sweeping over her storm-tossed soul. At last she got to a chair and dropped into it. Alone, she sat among the wreckage and faced the stark, abysmal depths yawning at her feet.
It was not a new story. Thomas Medford belonged to the ranks of the aristocratic and influential few, while she was a mere dot among the masses of the less fortunate millions. He had grown to love her, and she — well, she cared for him in a way she had never thought it possible she could care for any man. She cared so much that she had refused to hamper him in his ca- reer by becoming his wife. And then
34
OVERLAND MONTHLY
she found she could not give him up! The renunciation was complete. Self, honor, reputation, the future — all were merged and lost in the great love she bore him.
For four years they had been happy, without a cloud to mar the sunshine. She had kept resolutely at her work, winning a solid place for herself in her little world of art; he, in his public life winning laurel after laurel, and adding credit and honor to both name and position. His undivided confidence and devotion had repaid her a thou- sand fold for the sacrifice she had made — and her unfailing sympathy and affection had tided him triumph- antly past many a rugged boulder.
That he must some day seek a wife in his own world was a fixed, though vague, fact in Eunice Waring's brain. Hitherto it had been a merely imper- sonal thought, without tangible pro- portion. The hazy moments of form- less terror she recalled as having vis- ited her in grisly, unexpected hours of the past, flashed back upon her now in all their blinding significance. Their love was no longer a vital, living qual- ity, but drifting fast — as an exquisite dream — into the dim, vast arena of the Unreal. And yet his kisses seemed still warm and sweet upon her lips, and every nerve thrilling to the vibrant touch of his encircling arms
She buried her convulsed face in her hands, shaking with racking, tear- less sobs. Another day was coming. It had already come.
Along toward midnight she dragged herself to bed. The shutters were turned, and a waning moon bursting through the scattered clouds fretted the walls and floor with pale, yellow light. For hours she lay staring dully through the half-closed blinds, watch- ing the great planets burn and flash in the soft, dark sky. Toward daybreak, from sheer exhaustion, she lapsed into stupid unconsciousness.
It was broad daylight when she roused with a dull, inexplicable sense of misery, the knife-thrust of fuller consciousness wrenching a little cry of the mortally wounded from her lips.
She rose and tottered across the room to her dressing table. A glance into the glass above it showed her face chalky and sunken; her skin had a dried, burnt-up look wholly foreign to her usual bloom, and the violet-gray eyes gazed hopelessly back at her from their hollow sockets.
With cruel satire, her mind re- verted to that other woman of the streets: the haggard eyes and liquor- stained lips and cracked, sneering voice. She had envied her, and called her "good." Well, she would not envy her now, and she was not one whit bet- ter than the wretched outcast to whom she had tossed her pitiful alms. The thought seared her like a firebrand; every vein in her body ran scalding blood. How she had worshiped him, with that blind, unselfish devotion that seeks only the good of its object, deeming no sacrifice too great in the greatness of its self. It was her own folly and quixotic notion of nobility and bigness that had thus plunged her to her ruin; left him this chance to wring her heart and throw it aside as a worn-out garment. Well, he should pay; she was not a child to be played with and dismissed, nor the pariah he would make of her in return for the love she had lavished upon him. She was a woman . . .
Yes, more a woman than she knew, for already the paroxysm of tears was upon her, washing away all harshness, all resentment, all anger.
He had always been good to her, al- ways protected her. He had been faithful while their compact lasted, and what more had she asked? She had no claim, no rights. It had been her way, not his. In her youth and in- experience, she had done what she thought was brave and heroic. A wo- man, yes — and she must pay the wo- man's penalty. A little dry sob caught in her throat as she dried her tears and began mechanically to put on her clothes. She ordered her breakfast sent to her rooms, but barely tasted it. She crossed the room to her writing desk and sat down to frame her fare- well letter to Tom Medford. After
ANOTHER DAY
35
more than an hour, she had evolved the following:
"Dear Tom:
"This is good-bye, dear. Our life is all wrong, and it cannot go on. I cannot be a drag upon you for a single day longer.
"They tell me you are to marry soon and settle down to a life and home of your own, out West. This is as it should be, naturally.
"I had hoped when the time came you would be the first to tell me, feel- ing that I would — as always — under- stand. But the fact remains the same, and I want to make everything easy for you by just dropping out of your life with this little word of farewell. To meet again would only be painful for us both, and I go without bitter- ness, leaving your future unmarred.
"I have been very happy here, Tom; happier in these all too short four lit- tle years than most women are in a lifetime. Why, it has been all of life to me, and I know, too, that you have been happy with me.
But another day has come, the past must be fenced away and a new life begun. And so, again — good-bye.
"EUNICE."
She re-read the letter, folded it and placed it in an envelope bearing his name in her bold back-hand. Her de- cision had lept sharply and clearly in- to her mind; there must be no flimsy compromise with sentiment and condi- tions. And with a certain virility of strength and thought that was always there, she immediately set about mak- ing preparations to give up her studio and rooms, and slip quietly out of the old life. What this severing of old ties, this frightful uprooting of her whole being was going to mean to her — and bring to her — in the future she gave herself no time to consider. Life was empty, unlivable; yet somehow, somewhere, it must be lived. One
thought was paramount : she must go ! * * * *
Medford did not wait for the eleva- tor, but ran up the three flights of
steps, applied his key to the latch and pushed open the door. He flung his hat on the rack and parting the por- tierres, entered the little blue and gold sitting room.
Eunice lifted startled eyes at the sound of the familiar step upon the threshold. The book she had been trying to read slid to the floor. Every atom of color foresook her face. Eter- nities of suffering had cut lines of age about the soft, sensitive mouth; sunk the violet eyes in purple shadow and drained the life from her limbs. She made no move to rise, and Medford stood there waiting, the light dying out of his face.
"Eunice!" He held out his arms.
After the first shock of recognition, she met his eager gaze with one of list- less sadness. "You should not have come, Tom," she said.
Medford's empty arms dropped to his sides. "You did not wish to see me?" he asked, a sudden accent of sharpness upon the words. Then more calmly: "But you — waited. You re- ceived my telegram?"
"Yes. But it were better not. You should have let me go on. It is all a mistake, our meeting again, as I wrote you."
He checked a swift impulse to go up to her and take her to his heart. Her coldness struck a chill to every nerve. Was she, after all, so indifferent? In his self-centered blindness he failed to see the quick quiver of her lips.
He came and stood beside her chair, looking down on her bowed head with its wealth of glossy, waving hair. One hand rested on her shoulder, but she shrank back sharply from his touch.
"All that is past, Tom. You no longer have the right to — to do such things, nor have I to accept them. Four years ago when you gave me the chance to become your wife, and I re- fused— for reasons which you under- stand— a — I took the step with a thor- ough knowledge of what the future would one day bring to me. It has come. And it is right. Let us build a little fence around the past — and start another day."
36
OVERLAND MONTHLY
Medford smothered a smile. "What a gigantic little philosopher you are, dear. Yes, build a fence, even though it be a prison fence, with broken bot- tles cemented all over the top, and every time you go to climb out, you'll cut your hands to pieces . . . pay the piper who is playing his siren music outside and bidding you rejoice in the sunshine which never penetrates your dungeon!"
A faint flush of color stole into the girl's white face; the muscles about her mouth tightened visibly. But she made no response.
Medford bent quickly and folded her in his arms.
"I love you, girl. I cannot give you up!" he cried fiercely.
But she fell back, sick and trem- jlmg beneath his passion.
"What — what are you saying? What are you asking ? It is horrible. Think of the girl who "
He drew her to her feet and crushed her against his breast. "I think of nothing but you. The past, the future — let them go. Now is the time!"
Gently but firmly she put him from her, drew him over to a sofa and pulled him down beside her. "Try to be calm, Tom. Now is the time — to face the situation. The time has come for you to take up your life openly in the world, among the men and women of your own class. For four years I have been unspeakably happy in your love. Why, what is a life to give in exchange for so much happiness? A little thing. I still have my work — "
"Foolish child! Your work!"
"Yes. And you have yours. I have thought it all out — and — and I hope you are going to be very happy and very successful in the new life. That is my whole wish — now. You know I have loved you, though even you will never know how much. I could have died for you without a re- gret. I can do even more, dear. I can give you up — to another, knowing it is for your own good."
Medford was fighting hard for self- control, for the power to speak calm- ly, courage to conquer the breathless
rush of passion her very nearness in- spired.
"There's little doubt I shall be "both," he said matter-of-factly, "out there in God's own country, where a man is as free as the blue sky above him, with some one to work for — and a wife to love him and wait for him "
Eunice writhed under his carelessly spoken words. She thought that in the past two weeks she had endured the extremity of human suffering; had ex- piated her every wrong; had wrested strength from her crucible to battle with the future, but . . the words poured over her soul in rivers of fire — "for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave . . . many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it ..."
She sat up, weak and trembling, hearing as in a daze the quietly spoken words of the man at her side.
"It is only too true that I have com- mitted a great sin. But it is not too late to start afresh. My decision has not been sudden. I have felt it to be the only way, for a long time. I have asked her to become my wife. But I believe, I hope she will; in this strug- gle for the supremacy of right, she is the One Woman in the world who can help me."
The girl's icy fingers twisted in her lap. Schooling herself, she raised her eyes and looked into the other's face. It was wet. His own eyes were brim- ming, and the scorching tears had left shining tracks on his cheeks. She laid a row of shaking finger-tips on his sleeve.
"Don't," she said. "I think I under- stand, Tom. It is the eternal warfare between Duty and Desire. I shall help you to win the fight." She forced a little smile to her lips. "Now, tell me all about her; is she tall or short, dark or fair, plain or pretty?"
"I can't answer all that in a breath. But — she's just a woman — adorable, with a woman's charms, a woman's weaknesses and — a woman's Soul. In my pocket here I have a picture of her. Would you like to look at it?"
MOONLIGHT WINE
37
Eunice shivered. A sickening dread was upon her. Already he was draw- ing the photograph from his pocket; now he was holding it out to her. A terrible voice seemed to be shouting in her ears, the Voice of Doom, and the words beat their maddening way into her brain like successive blows from a merciless, unseen hand: "You have had your day. It is over. You must go on. You must suffer like the rest of humanity. You have trans- gressed the law and must pay the price. Too long you have lingered on the banks of Life's stream, and watched its golden ripples. Another day has come. You must plunge into its turbulent deeps and let them toss you along till you strike the rocks. It is irrevocable. Lay down the prim- rose wreath and don the crown of thorns. They are yours."
Medford's keen gray eyes that had so often looked undying love into hers were gazing rapturously toward the bit of silk sheathed cardboard she held in her numb fingers. She slipped off the covering.
When the girl came back to con- sciousness, the room was purpling with twilight shadows, and she was lying limp upon her lover's breast with an
unutterable sense of rest and peace in the pressure of the strong arms about her. For an instant the world seemed to swim in golden space. Their eyes met, clung, plumbed the innermost depths of one another's soul.
"Dear Tom!" she whispered.
"You poor little girl," he was mur- muring in a low, tremulous tone, vi- brant with emotion, "did you for one moment think I was the sort of man who would accept a woman's greatest gift, and in return for it cast her back in the mire into which I had dragged her? You do not know me, dear. But you will, you will. I am crushed, shamed, humiliated. But my fighting blood is up and I mean to retrieve the past — with God's help and yours, if you will give it to me. For always there is a new life, a new light, a big- ger, a brighter, a better day. Shall we start — to-night?"
For Eunice a spoken word then would have profaned the sublimity of her hour. Through empty darkness had burst transfiguring light; out upon Life's gleaming highway a winged soul had soared upward from its chrysalis.
With a little cry of infinite joy, she gave him her lips.
/AOONLIGHT WINE
The fairies mixed us such a potent cup, Their wine of moonlight madness, on that night,
As we but touched it to our lips to sup, The world became a riot of glad light.
The magic oak was silver-green, and low Down in its branches softly 'gan to play, —
The wildest music man may ever know, Could not be half so sad, so sweet, so gay.
The midnight elves had left their shelter soon,
And danced, and floated, each to each, and swayed,
And bent — aye, there beneath the moon,
They danced the dance that hidden music played.
And we ? — The spell was perfect — to the last, We drained the full cup of its witching charm.
God ! had we but heeded as that whisper past,
"Who seeks the fairies, seeks his own soul's harm."
SARAH HAMMOND KELLY
One Day's Romance
By Jessie Wood
HOWARD BRONSON looked across the breakfast table at his wife, shrugged his shoul- ders, smiled grimly, and reached for another piece of buttered toast. He broke the toast into bits, staring into forlorn vacancy, then stirred his coffee savagely.
"See here, Nell," his voice was pain- fully polite, "I should think you could let those letters alone for a few min- utes. I hate to eat breakfast all alone and I won't see you all day. And Nell," his tone became grim and de- termined, "I wish you wouldn't wear that thing on your head to breakfast. You used to have time to comb your hair. Say, are you paying any atten- tion to me?"
The pretty little woman in the bou- doir cap laid down her letter, smiled vaguely and sweetly across at her irate spouse.
"Did you speak to me, darling?" Nell's voice was always liquid when she asked a question: she always tilted her curly head to one side and pursed her smiling red lips in a most alluring manner.
"Oh, nothing much," Howard smiled back as he always did, and gulped down his cup of luke warm coffee. "Ugh! Say, Nell, that coffee is cold as ice!"
"Oh, I'm so sorry, dear. Let me get you some more. Or — all right, get me some more, too — and Howard, please be more cheerful about it. Are you getting to the 'cross at breakfast' stage? Thank you, dear. Yes, two lumps. Oh, no, it doesn't make it a bit syrupy. I like sweet things. Kiss me, dear!"
Howard Bronson laughed as he took his seat at the table again. "Say, it's
a fright the way you wind me around your finger, little girl. I was pretty much riled at you ten minutes ago, and here you've got me so I'd eat out of your hand. Oh, Nell, eat your grape fruit like a good little girl — don't read those abominable letters."
"Abominable letters? Why, How- ard, what do you mean?" Nell's big blue eyes opened wide, and she looked up in amazement. "This one is from Ada, and she is coming to see us on her way East, and "
"Ada, coming here? Ada!" How- ard rose quickly and flicked his nap- kin nervously at his chair back. "Why is she coming? When? Why?"
"Why, Howard, don't you act queerly about it? Why shouldn't she come ? She was my best friend when
we were in school, and Oh, I see.
Oooh!" Nell's happy little smile faded suddenly. Her red lips became a straight line, her big blue eyes nar- nowed quickly at the corners. She looked up at Howard with a queer breathless little quiver, and said: "I never asked you and I never wanted to know before — but Howard, were you and Ada engaged? Were you, Howard?"
Howard laughed boyishly, threw down his napkin and strode across to Nell's side. He placed a hand on either shoulder, looking squarely into her blue eyes.
"Yes, Nell. I never told you be- cause— well, because it never seemed necessary. Oh, don't look like that, dear. You know that Ada has been en- gaged to most of the men she knew. She had the habit in college. She cut notches in an old sombrero rim — same idea as collecting scalps, you know. Oh, Nell, don't look like that. You
ONE DAY'S ROMANCE
39
know I've never asked you about Jim Montgomery. You and I are "
The old clock in the hall struck the half after seven o'clock hour, and Howard looked quickly at his watch, patted his dejected little wife's shoul- der, kissed her lightly and turned quickly. "Got to catch that car in two minutes. Good-bye, dear. See you to-night. I'll bring some violets or chocolates or something. Good-bye."
The door slammed. Nell heard the interurban car's shrill whistle, heard it stop grindingly, then start off again with a clatter. She stared unseeingly out of the pretty, long French win- dow. Her hands fell into her lap, her shoulders drooped pathetically. The clock struck eight — half-past eight — nine. The door bell rang suddenly. Nell came to herself with a start.
"Gimine! it's nine o'clock. What if it should be Ada? And the dishes aren't washed or — or anything. Oh, darn it; there goes that bell again. And I haven't combed my hair yet."
Nell went to the door slowly and opened it furtively. A big motor car stood out in the road — a liveried chauffeur stood cap in hand at her door.
"Mrs. Howard Bronson?" and he handed her a card. Nell gasped as she read aloud, "Mr. James Montgom- ery."
"Mercy! Jim! Well, what a mess! What on earth is he coming here for? Oh, dear! Why, of course, come in, Jim. I'm glad to see you. Goodness, it's been a long time. You're so ele- gant, Jim — your big limousine and chauffeur and everything, almost scare me. Sit there by the sun window. Excuse me just a minute while I call Howard up. He'll be so glad that you are here."
Nell hurried out of the room, closed the door firmly, then leaned against it and clutched her hair dramatically. Talk about your problem plays! Why, I'm having one of my own. Heavens!" She looked tragically at her reflection in the long mirror. Her expression was so hopelessly forlorn that her saving sense of humor came
to her rescue, and she laughed rue- fully. She hurried to the 'phone and called her husband's office number.
"Yes, of course, it's Nell. Why, Howard, you sound so worried What's the trouble, dear? Oh, I'm all right. Listen, I want to tell you something awfully funny. What? What did you say? Ada! Why, Howard! Why, certainly you must take her to lunch- eon down town if you choose. Oh, nothing — only I think it's queer she stopped down at your office before coming out here. Shopping to do! Yes, I imagine! Of course I'm not angry, dear. No, I can't come, too. I can't, I said, Howard. Well, because I have company. That's why. Jim Montgomery is here. Yes, he came in his limousine. I'm sure I don't know why he should have gone to your of- fice first. He knows you are busy. Why, of course we'll have a pleasant day. Good-bye — dear," but he had hung up with a bang and didn't hear
the last word.
* * * *
At one o'clock Nell and Jim Mont- gomery sat down at her daintily ap- pointed luncheon table. Nell's cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright, her lips smiling, but she was tremendously un- happy. She and Jim had had a de- lightful "old times" talk; he had ad- mired her garden, he had compli- mented her upon her clever housekeep- ing and her splendid adaptability as a suburban wife. But all the morning Nell had remembered that Howard was displeased with her and that he and Ada were renewing old friendships too.
"This is living!" Jim took another tiny hot biscuit and a heaping spoon- ful of strawberry jam. "Howard is a lucky dog, Nell. I tell you money is a paltry matter. A man can't buy hap- piness. Now, this is what I call "
"Yes, Howard and I are very, very happy. But Jim, isn't the war terri- ble. The English are "
"Oh, hang the English! Nell, I wan't to tell you something I came here just to tell you. Maybe I should not — probably it is wrong. But Nell"
40
OVERLAND MONTHLY
— he leaned toward her and looked in- to her frightened blue eyes. "Jim! What can you mean?" "I mean just this : I am the unluck- iest man in the world. I'm in love with the grandest little woman — the best — the cleverest — the wittiest — the
dearest Why, don't look like that,
Nell; if it distresses you I won't men- tion it again. War in Europe? Er — yes, it is appalling. The English loss
has "
And the afternoon dragged slowly on toward dinner time.
At one o'clock, Howard Bronson es- corted his wife's attractive friend, Ada Monroe into a tea room. Men looked up admiringly and women stared criti- cally. Ada was as gay and laughing as ever.
"You order it, Howard. I don't care what I eat — nothing ever tastes good any more. Yes, I'm in love. There's no use trying to deceive you. You al- ways did know me better than I knew myself. Oh, it seems good to be sit- ting here with a big, handsome man again."
"Flatterer! Nell says you aren't Irish, Ada, but you must be. Tell me about yourself."
"There's nothing to tell. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Oh, Nell's a lucky girl. Just think of how happy she is — • and look at me !" She sighed woefully and looked across at him accusingly. "I can't help loving, can I? And it doesn't do a bit of good. The man has to take the first step "
"Oh, cheer up, Ada. Say, do you mind if I get a war extra. That kid is saying something about the English loss of "
"Oh, yes, get a paper, of course. Read it to me. I didn't mean to inflict my unhappiness and loneliness upon you. Read about the English loss of "
And the afternoon dragged on. How- ard went back to his office disgruntled and distinctly uncomfortable. Ada made him feel like a villain, and Nell was at home renewing old friendships
with the wealthiest man of her girl- hood days.
% % % %
It was nearly six o'clock. Nell had dressed carefully for dinner and had combed her pile of fluffy gold hair in the way Howard liked it best. She went out on the front porch and sat down beside Jim.
"His car will be here in just six minutes. I always like to be waiting for him here." Her voice was just a wee bit anxious.
"The lucky dog. Does he appre- ciate "
"Oh, yes, yes, of course. I appreci- ate him, too. Oh, here they are — and doesn't Ada look charming?" Which is the stock phrase a woman has if she is afraid she is a little bit jealous.
Jim turned quickly and looked down the block. He rose suddenly. He grasped Nell's arm. "Who is that? Tell me quick. Ada who?"
Ada saw the tall figure on the porch. She stopped instantly.
"Howard," she whispered breath- lessly, "who is that man?"
* * * *
It was several hours later and Jim had taken Ada for a spin through the park before Howard and his tired, be- wildered wife had an opportunity to straighten things out. They sat silently before the grate. Howard in his big Morris chair, Nell on a stool at his feet, her curly head on his knee. His fingers played caressingly through her hair.
"This has been a deuce of a day!" Howard finally spoke.
"Oh, dreadful! I'm so ashamed! I really thought he cared for me, and it seemed so wicked, and "
"Yes, and I thought she — but let's not talk about them. They are per- fectly happy. And I guess I was pretty cross this morning — maybe — "
"You don't know how to be cross! And lean down here. I want to tell you something. I burned my boudior cap this morning, and, no, don't kiss me for a minute — and I told the post- man not to bother with the early de- livery."
A Short-Circuited Love Affair
By Lannie Haynes Martin
DEAR SIR"— the letter ran— "I am not writing for myself. I am not a marrying woman, and am well fixed besides, but I have great sympathy for them that has no companion and wants one, and seeing your advertisement for a wife, and having a lady friend not married, but who would like to be, I thought I'd write and see if I could fix it up be- tween you two. She is a mighty good cook, and would be awful kind to a man. She has brown hair and eyes, weighs 185, and is about 45, and has a home of her own with cow and chickens. She don't know a thing about me a-writing to you, and prob- ably would not like it, but I thought that maybe if I could talk it over with you, and we could get kind of ac- quainted I could take you over to call on her and never let on how I knowed you.
"She's a mighty fine woman, if I do say it myself, and any man would be doing well to get her. She's got ex- pectations, too, of inheriting money, and she has a lovely voice for singing hymns. You say you have a loving disposition — well, that would just suit her fine. As the poet wrote :
"There ain't no warbling in it If the nest ain't built for two,
If you want a home what is a home, Git a mate to sing with you !
"And as Solomon said : 'It ain't good for a man to be alone.' This lady that I am a-writing you about has a very loving disposition, too, and she is very fond of poetry. If you want to get her name you will have to write to me very soon, as I am going away. But I
will stay a day or so and take you to see her, if you are interested. "Address,
"MRS. MARY BLAIR, "General Delivery, Pikeville."
The next day the general delivery clerk handed out a letter to an eager woman who, tearing it open in the Post Office, read the following :
"My dear Mrs. Blair:
"I am a rather shy sort of man for one of my age, and expected to trans- act all of my matrimonial affairs by letter, but the lady that you describe seems to be so uncommon fine I'd like to meet her, but I will first send a friend over to talk with you about it, and if you will send your address he can come right away. I am not much of a hand to blow my own horn, but I think the lady who gets me won't be making any mistake. You must be a very kind-hearted lady yourself to take so much interest in getting a hus- band for your friend ; most women are trying so to get one for theirselves that they ain't got no time to waste on anybody else. Now, this friend of mine that is coming to see you is such a popular man with the ladies that he most has to run from them; they are always a proposing to him, but he is a woman hater, and I warn you in ad- vance, don't 'make-up' to him in any way. As soon as you send your ad- dress I will send him to see you. "Very truly yours,
"GIDEON JONES, "Box 79, Pikeville."
"P. S. — My friend's name is John Hunter."
4
42
OVERLAND MONTHLY
A few days later when Mr. "John Hunter" and Mrs. Mary Blair were sit- ting in front of a cozy fire in Mrs. Blair's sitting-room, with a canary-bird twittering in the window and the odor of cookies coming in from the kitchen, Mrs. Blair hitched her chair a little and said: "That friend of your'n must be powerful bashful, not to come his- self."
"Well, I don't know about that," said Mr. Hunter. "You see, he knows I've got mighty good judgment, and under the circumstances could look at the matter in a calmer kind of way. I've known a lot of women in my day, and you can't always judge a woman by the first foot she puts out; you've got to sort o' come; up on the blind side of her and catch her when she's not thinking about the thing she's a-tryin' to make you think she is. I think if you'd take me over to see that friend of yours and pretend that we'd come to buy some chickens or a calf I could find out a lot more about her than my friend could by callin' on her."
"Oh, you don't need to give yourself any uneasiness about my friend. She's all right. It's your friend that I'm wantin' to know the size of. I wouldn't think of takin' no steps towards gettin' them acquainted unless I knowed he was all right."
"Well, now, just what would you call all right?" said the man. "Would that friend of yours object to a pipe and a little toddy now and then?"
Mrs. Blair gave a little gasp like a pain had struck her in the back. "Oh, no ; I guess not," she said rather weak- ly; "not if your friend is as good-look- ing a man as you are," she wanned up a little.
"Well, that's just a matter of taste," said the man, batting his squinty little eyes and smiling in spite of the snag- gled teeth he was trying to hide. "And now supposing," he continued, "sup- posing my friend wanted to keep a dog or two, your friend wouldn't ob- ject to that, would she ? You said she had a lovin' disposition."
"I didn't say nothin' about her lovin' dogs," bristled Mrs. Blair.
"Then she don't like dogs?" queried the man.
"No, I'm sure she don't," said Mrs. Blair emphatically.
"Well, I'm afraid then there won't be anything doing with my friend. He is mighty fond of dogs. He's got about eight. He's got a little goat, too, and some guinea pigs and a little pet bear, and "
"For Heaven's sake!" interrupted Mrs. Blair, "what do you think a wo- man would want with a menagerie like that hangin' around?" Red of cheek and blazing of eye, Mrs. Blair stood up as if to close the interview. "If your friend wants a wife," she said, "you can tell him he will have to chuck some of them animules. No woman would stand for it."
"You think there's not any use talk- ing any further about the matter, then?" asked the man.
"Not if your friend is as pig-headed as you are?"
"Me ? I haven't anything to do with it!" exclaimed the man.
"You could try to persuade your friend, I guess, to give up some of them varmints, couldn't you?"
"Oh, no, I couldn't think of such a thing. I believe a woman ought to love a man well enough to love any- thing he loves."
"Oh, you do, do you? Well, I'd never like him well enough to be jest crazy about the kind of fool friends he's got, so you might as well clear out. Do you hear!"
Unless he had been stone-deaf it would have been impossible not to hear the crescendo, fortissimo tones hurled at him as he picked up his hat, and, without a word, walked from the -room. "Tell him to advertise for a Zoo keeper," were the last words he heard as he went out the front gate.
The next day a big bulky letter came for Mrs. Blair. As she opened it, some kodak pictures fell out. One was of a goat, one of some guinea pigs and another was of a group of dogs. She hastily began the letter. "These pic- tures," is said, "are the only animals I have got. Most women get worked
THE MOTHER. 43
up over the pipe and toddy, but I had about me. Now all the objections I've to trot in all the four legged critters I got to you is them false bangs you could think of to get you a-going. I wear. You'd have to take them off, just love a woman with brown eyes and and I'd expect you to feed the chick- a reasonable amount of temper. And ens and do the milking." the mistake a man makes is taking a The letter that he got in reply by wife without ever seeing her mad. special delivery next day ran thus : Now I've seen you mad and know just "You ornery little end of nothing what to expect. I knowed all along whittled to a point, the only objections there warn't no friend concealed in the I've got to you is that you are a bald- jack-pot, but that you was the lady headed, bow-legged, snaggled-toothed, you was a-trying to disguise. But I squint-eyed runt with a wart on your don't believe you suspicioned anything nose and laziness in your bones."
THE /AOTHER
She had grown jealous of the years that aged her, That had made lover husband, husband lord, And so, to woo again lost love assuaged her Faint-hearted fears, and spent her scanty hoard. She bought a bonnet, surely 'twas a beauty, Sweet pale arbutus clustered 'neath its brim. Twas like the one she wore when Love, not Duty, Drew his eyes to her when she walked with him.
Trying it on, of coming joy persuaded, Her feeble candle lent its friendly ray. "He will not notice that my eyes are faded, He will not notice that my hair is gray." Love, that had bloomed and faded with her roses, Should her dull life again with fragrance fill. Time's mocking finger all his scars discloses, But leaves the Heart of Woman hungry still.
Old days should come once more ! A stifled wailing Drew her swift-footed to the chamber where Her daughter wept, her girlish heart unveiling, "Mother, he does not care, he does not care !" "But he shall care. See what I hold above you. And underneath it you will bloom a rose. The lad shall turn and look, and looking, love you. Be comforted, my child, for Mother knows."
When church bells rang she donned her old black bonnet. (It had turned brown in spots, but what of that?) Her daughter's face, Youth's lovely flush upon it, Glowed 'neath the saucy blossoms of her hat. She prayed the heavy hours might hurry faster — The kind night took her to its breast once more. But through all heart-break, crowning all disaster, She heard the lovers whispering at the door.
ELEANOR DUNCAN WOOD.
Ay Experience With Geronimo's
Indians in Arizona in the
Summer of 1885
By G. W. Ailes
I ARRIVED in Silver City, New Mexico, on Monday, June 2, 1885. I soon formed friendships that have lasted till the present time. Among them were C. E. Conway (Cab Conway), a retired grocery merchant, and Wm. P. Dorsey (Horn Silver Bill), a prominent mining man and property owner. These two "gilt- edged" men were partners in some sil- ver mines at Camp Malone, a mining camp about 35 miles southwest from Silver City. I often met Dorsey and his partner, "Cab," and soon realized that I had found friends in both, espe- cially "Bill Dorsey/
One day Dorsey made me a propo- sition to go prospecting in Arizona for a month or two.
An evening later I was to dine with friends, Judge and Mrs. George F. Pat- rick— Judge Patrick was a prominent attorney and cattle owner of Silver City, and a former school mate of mine. We discussed matters concern- ing plans for the trip to Arizona, and decided that it would be a good out- ing for me. "But how about the In- dians?" asked Mr. Patrick. "Chief Geronimo and his band have left the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona, and have killed over fifty people in Grant County, New Mexico, three of them near Silver City." "Why," said I, "you know that Captain Lawton (later General Lawton in the Philip- pines) is on their trail going south to Mexico. He may capture them any day."
Dinner was soon over, and as I had
decided to see Bill that night, I ex- cused myself and went to his rooms in the Dorsy building. I found him and Cab at their rooms, packing supplies and arranging things necessary for the trip.
"Hello, old man; come right in," said Cab. "We were just discussing you. Can you go?"
"Yes; any time after the Fourth."
"Right-o; we will start Tuesday. Now, professor, look over that list of things I've ordered; make any sugges- tions you can about supplies."
"Have you any 'slickers/ Bill?"
"Slickers ? No— that's so ; tne rainy season is just beginning. Put down three slickers and a horse shoeing out- fit."
On the list were guns and ammu- nition, bacon, beans, flour, soup, matches, towels, sugar, coffee, canned meats and vegetables, potatoes, tin- ware and cutlery, salt, tobacco, one gallon of brandy for snakebite, fry- ing pans, Dutch oven, water keg, axle grease, etc.
"Great Scott, Bill, are you going to open a store at Malone?"
"No," said he. "We may make a strike, and we don't want to run out of grub."
On Tuesday morning we started for Malone. Bill and Cab rode in the light wagon, and I rode the little black mule, Jack.
Malone is a beautiful, picturesque spot, situated just below the box in Thompson Canyon in the foothills of
MY EXPERIENCE WITH GERONIMO'S INDIANS
45
the Burro Range. The massive walls of the canyon are composed of brec- cia and sandstone overlying a bedrock of granite and porphyry. The camp went down with the fall in the price of silver.
We immediately set to work to un- loading our goods and arranging the small frame house for a few days' rest and comfort. Soon after our arrival an Indian scout paid us a call. He had been shot through the thigh by a hos- tile. A company of soldiers was camping nearby, waiting orders from Captain Lawton and expected to start south any day on the trail of Geron- imo and his band. The Apaches were last seen going toward Skeleton Can- yon, Arizona, where Lieutenant Gate- wood, under Captain Lawton, nearly two years afterward, captured their band after one of the most sensational campaigns in the history of Indian warfare. I also heard that Judge Mc- Comas, a prominent attorney and min- ing man, had been killed by Indians about two miles down the canyon, a short time before, and his little son carried off, probably alive, as his body was never found.
The wounded scout was an Arapajo Indian and spoke some English. Of course I was interested in hearing the story of his recent escapade with the Apache hostiles. "How did it hap- pen?"
"You see, like this. I see tree In- dian ; he see me first, he shoot, kill my horse, shoot me. I shoot, kill 'em one horse, maybe so, one Indian. No see. He run, I stay out all night; next day, find camp. No difference, no hurt much; soon I be well."
After a night of rest and. a good sleep, for surely I slept well, notwith- standing the Indian excitement, we rose early, had a good camp break- fast, and started out to inspect the camp and vicinity.
After a few days of preparation we loaded our effects into the little spring wagon and started for the "Gila Country" in Arizona. We drove out about twenty miles, and camped on the plains about ten miles from Hart's
Ranch, where the Lordsburg road leads into the Lower Gila. There we re- mained over night on the grassy plains with the clear blue July sky for our canopy.
About dawn next morning I was awakened by a low, deep howl, not far away. Raising myself cautiously, at the same time grasping my Winches- ter, I looked in the direction of the sound, and saw a large, grey wolf sit- ting on his haunches watching camp, no doubt "prospecting," but afraid to approach nearer. One sharp crack from my gun, and the Lobo bounded into the air and fell dead.
Both my companions sprang up, each reaching for his gun. "What's that?" said Cab.
"I got a wolf."
"By gum," said Bill, "a good omen. That's the way we'll do the Indians."
"I am not sure, Bill. That wolf was only prospecting; we are only pros- pecting. Wait." We did not have to wait long.
We continued our journey westward, reaching Wilson's ranch by noon. "Uncle Billy" Wilson treated us to fresh butter, milk, eggs and fruit for lunch, and gave us a supply to take along. Everybody in the Gila coun- try knew Uncle Billy. He was with Quantrell during the Civil War and became one of the first settlers on the Lower Gila. The Indians knew him and kept a respectful distance.
By nightfall we reached York's cat- tle ranch a few miles below Duncan, Arizona. Mr. York had been killed by the White Mountain Apaches not long before, and his widow was on the ranch, keeping an eye on the busi- ness. Mrs. York was very courteous to us, and invited us to stay over a day or two and catch Gila trout and "fry fish." We remained till the sec- ond day, July 14th, in the afternoon, spending most of the time in one veri- table fish fry.
But we were bent on prospecting. About ten miles to the north in Apa- che canyon were some old copper workings where an Eastern company had spent a fortune and gained some
46
OVERLAND MONTHLY
experience. Bill had heard that there were silver prospects in that section, and we decided to hunt for them.
We reached a good spring near the old copper mines in time to make our- selves comfortable for the night. As there was a little time to spare, Cab and I took a short round in the foot- hills near camp and killed enough small game for supper, while Bill looked for silver. He found some copper rock which he first thought was chloride of silver (greenhorn sil- ver.) Cab called it "Green Eyed Mon- ster." We kept a close lookout for Indians, as they usually passed down Apache Canyon on their way south from the San Carlos reservation. But they had been reported some distance south of the Gila a week before this, and we considered ourselves quite safe, for the time, at least.
Next morning after breakfast I went to the brakes to hunt deer. Bill started out with his pick in search of silver and Cab went fishing up the canyon. About noon we all met, Cab being the only successful hunter among us. He had a string of nice trout, which were soon ready for the frying pan. We made a meal of fish, crackers, fried potatoes and tea, and took a rest through the heat of the day. About three o'clock in the after- noon Bill called time. "By gum, boys, rather poor prospect for mineral. I do not like the formation. I'll try it this afternoon on the other side. If there's nothing better than I've found so far, I am ready to go south to Ash Spring. There's a better show over there."
"I saw some bear signs about a mile up the canyon. I believe I can find a bear," said Cab.
"All right; I'll go with you," said I. "Lay out a course for me. "See that cedar brake?" said Cab, pointing to a motte of timber about a mile up a small ravine to the northwest. "You go to that and work across east to the canyon. I'll work across the foothills east of here and meet you up the can- yon where the running water sinks. When you reach the main canyon, fol- low up or down, as the case may be,
till you find where the water sinks, and wait till I come. If I arrive there first I'll wait for you. I saw bear tracks going in all directions."
I found some old signs, but no bears. By five o'clock I found where the running water sank in the sand. I did not have to wait long.
In about ten minutes after I reached the meeting place I was aroused by a shot, a loud whoop, and the crashing of breaking brush approaching me from the canyon. I fell behind a pro- jecting rock and made ready for ac- tion. I expected to see Cab in a run- ning fight, coming down the canyon, with a dozen Red Skins chasing him. But instead he came running, hat in one hand and gun in the other. "Bears," he shouted excitedly; "four of them."
Just then I heard the rocks rattling down the hillside to the west. Look- ing quickly in that direction, I saw a large cinnamon bear about two hun- dred yards away running in the direc- tion of the juniper thicket which I had left about half an hour before. Cab and I both began firing, he shoot- ing twice and I three times, when bruin rolled down the hill into a little ravine and disappeared from view.
"I hit him. I saw him double up when I shot last," said Cab.
"Yes; and I saw him fall when I shot last," said I.
On reaching the spot, we found a large he-bear which weighed probably 750 pounds. He was hit twice, and as the two wounds corresponded in range respectively to the positions which we each held at the time of shooting, evidently both of us had hit him.
We were late returning to camp, and found Bill waiting supper for us. We broiled cuts of bear meat on the coals and added to the supper already pre- pared by Bill.
It goes without saying that we en- joyed our supper, as we had not en- joyed a meal since leaving Silver City. Cab related his experience with the bears, while Bill and I enjoyed the joke on both Cab and the big bruin
MY EXPERIENCE WITH GERONIMO'S INDIANS
47
whose ill-luck had brought us so much sport.
"Say, boys, you remember that I told you when we killed the wolf that it was a good omen. We are playing in good luck. But I am not sure that we are not taking chances right now. I saw some fresh horse tracks going down the arroyo just over that divide south of here. You notice there are no range horses around here. Strikes me that it's Indians. I don't like the sign. I think we had better get out of here to-morrow. You know this is their old hunting ground, and we are liable to run into a big bunch of them," said Bill.
After some discussion, we put out the fire and retired for the night. I slept in the wagon and Cab and Bill made their bed on the wagon sheet and slept on the ground.
About two o'clock we were aroused by a hoarse sound only a few feet away. We all rose up simultaneously, every man reaching for his gun. Right in camp, rummaging among the pots, was a large dark object, evidently a huge bear. Cab's gun flashed; while Bill made for the nearest tree, and I lay still, with my finger on the trig- ger, considering myself safer in the wagon than on the ground.
With a snort and a bound, the black animal went hobbling off down the canyon. "Gee whizz, boys, I believe you've shot our mule," said I.
"Sure. Couldn't you see that was Jack?" said Bill.
"Guess you are right. But it's too late how," said Cab.
It was all plain enough now that it was the little black mule Jack. Cab and I started out in pursuit, but al- though the mule was hobbled, he kept out of our reach. So we returned to camp and awaited daylight to ascer- tain results.
As soon as light came we were out and rounded up our stock. The mule was not hurt, save a slight flesh wound through the mane just back of the ears. However, he was not at all sociable, and it was not till I had saddled one of the horses and chased him some
time that I was able to catch him.
Hurrying through breakfast we struck camp and drove up as near as we could to the place where we had left our bear the night before. Every- thing was there just as we had left it. The question now was, could our little wagon carry five hundred pounds, in addition to the load on it? There was room to pile it on if the springs would bear it. This problem we soon solved by cutting two poles and secur- ing them on either side between the bed and hubs to prevent collapse of the springs. This accomplished, we headed for York's.
On arriving at the ranch about 9 a. m., Mrs. York and several of the men 'greeted us. "Glad to see you alive," said Mrs. York. "The Indians have been here. They chased our horses to within shooting distance of the house ^yesterday, and the boys exchanged 'several shots with them, but no one was hurt. We thought once that they "would get our horses." • "How many were there?"
"We saw seven. There were prob- ably others. We did not dare to leave the house. They crossed the river about half a mile above here and went south towards Ash Peaks."
"Is that so? We want to go to Ash Springs, too. How far is it?" And they told us, but advised against the trip.
One of the men said : "Three differ- ent men have located Ash Springs as a cattle ranch. They have all been killed by Indians. The last one was buried near the door of his cabin only six months ago. You will see the the fresh grave if you go up there. About five miles up Ash Canyon you will see two large piles of rock. They mark two large graves. In one of them are the remains of thirteen Americans; in the other seventeen Mexicans. You will also see the bones of horses and cattle scattered along the canyon. In April a wagon loaded with mescal and sotol came up from Casa Grande, Mexico, going to Clif- ton, Arizona. Just as they were pass- ing through the box where you will
48
OVERLAND MONTHLY
see the graves, bones, etc., Victoria's Indians attacked them and killed the last man and animal in the train. Not a living thing escaped. Don't go to Ash Springs, gentlemen. But, if you must, wait a few days until those In- dians get out of the country. We would like to have your company, any- way."
"By gum, boys," said Bill, "looks bad for us. There's some good pros- pecting out there, but we'd better wait a day or two and see what develops."
So we spent the next two days fish- ing, near the house, eating watermel- ons, telling bear stories, etc.
Shortly, word came from Duncan that a troop of soldiers and scouts had gone to head off the Indians in the San Simon Valley and either capture them or chase them back to the reser- vation. So supposing that the Indians had had time to clear the country and get out of the way of the soldiers, we decided to go to Ash Springs.
As we were leaving, Mrs. York said : "You know how I dread Indians. Since the death of Mr. York, seems to me it has been one continuous raid and murder. I have a purchaser coming soon and intend to sell all of my prop- erty then and go to California to live."
With this view of the situation, we left them, and arrived at the spring about 8 a. m. We observed the road carefully, especially with a view to coming back in the night or making a rapid retreat to the river, if neces- sary. There were no obstructions or bad places we could not easily get around even at night. It was well for .us that we took these precautions.
We found plenty of good, cold water near the little rock house built by the last man, Jack Smith, killed by the Indians a few months before. Af- ter a little reconnoissance of the camp- ing ground, and seeing no signs of In- dians, Bill took to the hills with his pick. Cab made a broom of brush and long grass, and cleaned out the cabin, while I put a shoe on one of the horses which had been torn off coming up the canyon. Together, we arranged
our goods comfortably in the house, and had a good dinner ready when Bill returned at noon. Bill brought in some iron quartz showing small traces of gold and considerable traces of sil- ver sulphurets. He had selected two claims on a ledge which he said he would show us later. (He never did.) After dinner we lay down for a little rest before going the rounds of the afternoon, which we had not yet de- cided upon. The days were long and warm, and as we had lost some sleep over the Indian excitement, bear and mule affair, we were far from being anxious to get out too early in the heat of the afternoon.
Shortly, Cab and Bill went up to clean out the spring, which was full of mud, and incidentally talk over plans for a few days' work, and I lay down to catch a little nap in their absence. I had not slept long when I was roused by a rattling and scratching in the rocks near my head, sounding like a rattlesnake about to strike me. Jump- ing up, I saw one of the largest centi- pedes I ever saw. Instinctively I drew my pistol and shot, breaking both the articulate and bullet to pieces on the rocks. Cab and Bill came run- ning to inquire the cause. I pointed to the fragments of lead and centipede and simply said "centipede."
"Another good omen," said Bill. "We are ready for all comers."
"Wait," said I, "the Indians have not come yet." We did not wait long.
The excitement having abated, Cab and Bill returned to the spring, and I concluded to take a stroll up the can- yon in search of "big game." I had seen some deer tracks around the spring and saw a good chance to get one. Bucking on my revolver and tak- ing my rifle in my hand, I started out south up the canyon. I had not gone far when I discovered the tracks of our mule and horses going in the same direction that I was going. It occurred to me for the first time that I had not seen our live stock since we turned them loose in the morning. Further- more the tracks indicated that the ani- mals were walking fast instead of graz-
MY EXPERIENCE WITH GERONIMO'S INDIANS
49
ing along. I became concerned, and followed the trail probably a mile and a half, when it turned out of the main canyon and up a ridge westward to- ward the foothills. I had not gone but a few hundred yards when the trail turned to the north, crossing the gul- lies running into the canyon eastward. This looked good to me, because I expected that in a short distance the trail would turn down into the canyon in the direction of camp. But there was a discouraging feature; it was growing late and rain began to fall in torrents, and soon washed out all signs of the trail. I had not taken along my gum coat. I soon found pro- tection in the form of a large, leaning live-oak tree. Fortunately, the tree was inclined from the direction of the wind and protected me amply both from the driving rain and the fury of the wind. My principal concern was the care of my gun. I realized that I might need it seriously at any time, and it was important that I should keep it dry. Finally, about sundown, the rain ceased and the clouds began to break away. I was about to leave my shelter when suddenly I caught sight of several deer coming out from the brush on the left and moving slow- ly across the glade. I could scarcely resist the temptation to shoot, but asked myself the question: "Are any Indians lurking anywhere near here?" Just then I saw two or three figures slip around a bunch of brush to get a shot at the deer.
At once I decided to remain in hid- ing till dark, and then make my way toward camp as best I could by moon- rise. Suddenly there came puffs of smoke and the report of guns from the brush concealing the Indians, and one deer dropped dead, the others disap- pearing in the brush. This was evi- dence that the Indians had not seen me or they would not have taken the chance of shooting the deer and re- vealing themselves. The Indians se- cured their game and dived among the brush almost exactly in the direction I had intended to go. I decided to go around to the left; for they seemed to
be traveling in the opposite direction, southward,
I did not dare to leave my hiding- place till dark, an hour later. Nor was it really dark either; the moon was shining at about the first quarter. Apaches seldom seek their foe after nightfall, so I felt comparatively safe in trying to make my way around them in the direction that I supposed camp to be.
I worked my way westward to the opposite side of the glade where I saw the deer, and found a narrow ravine with its sides covered more or less with brush. It concealed my course fairly well from the view of any Indians that might be lurking in the vicinity.
I was working my way down the bed of the gulch when suddenly I came on an opening reaching out on a bench. On the farther edge of it I was dumb- founded to see the shadowy forms of a number of Indians. Near me was a large rock covered with vine and pro- jecting several feet in the air. I crept behind it and waited developments. In a short time I saw several dark forms moving into an open space about fifty yards away. Among them was a hu- man being evidently not an Indian. They were dragging and pushing him along; his hands were bound behind his back, and a gag was tied over his mouth. The prisoner looked like a white man, and judging from his smothered groans and the actions of the Indians they were preparing to tor- ture him. They tied him to a small tree and began to form a circle, about a dozen of them in all. They tor- mented the prisoner for some minutes by brandishing their weapons in his face. Then a tall Indian stood up and mumbled something. The others bowed around him in a half-bent posture and repeated the gutturals uttered by the leader, their bodies swaying up and down like top-heavy saplings in a storm. The chief then raised the ob- ject which he held in one hand high into the air with both hands, and gave a whoop. The others whooped also, and began hopping, Jumping and shouting in an indescribable manner.
50
OVERLAND MONTHLY
After looking on for a while in won- der, I realized that I was witnessing an Apache Indian death-dance.
Suddenly their antics ceased, and the big fellow faced the prisoner, holding his lance in a threatening po- sition, evidently intent upon torturing the victim as a cat tortures a mouse, before striking the final blow. The strain was too much for me. Some in- fluence prompted me to shoot. The Indian leader pitched forward to the ground. The others, crouching in various positions, gathered around him. I fired several shots more in rapid succession at the group. As the smoke cleared away, I saw several dark forms running into the brush. The prisoner at the tree tore at his fastenings, and rolling down the slope disappeared in the gulch below. I did not dare go to him, but turned and ran, jumping over boulders, blunder- ing across washouts, till finally I fell into a deep wash, where I remained some time, too weak to pull myself together. I noticed a small motte of thick brush in a little sa'g just to the left and crept into it, and remained there thinking over the situation till the moon disappeared behind the crest in the west. Then taking advantage of the darkness, I started westward in the direction that I knew camp must be. In a little while I found myself in a broad, open valley which I recog- nized as being the way over which I had passed that afternoon. Knowing that the rock house must be a little farther on down the canyon, I pushed on, reaching camp about a mile below, just before daybreak. Cab and Bill were standing guard, and gave me a warm reception. They had heard the shooting and feared that the Indians had "got" me. I related my experi- ence, while Cab and Bill prepared a light breakfast. We swallowed it hur- riedly, and gathered our traps to leave the place.
Bill and I went out to get the stock. I had noticed a small clump of brush on the point of the foothill about three hundred yards away. Presently from it came a puff of smoke, and I fell to
the ground, yelling to Bill: "Fall down !" Bill failed to understand what had happened, and the next bullet whizzed over me and passed close to Bill's head. "I felt my hair stand on end," he said later.
"Look out, boys, that means busi- ness," said Bill. And, dropping the rope which was tied to one of the horses, he ran to the rock house, where Cab met him, carrying a Winchester rifle in one hand and a six-shooter in the other.
I lay on the ground and called to the boys to open fire on the clump of brush where the shot came from, till I could get into the house for protection. The boys climbed up back of the rock house where they could get a better view of the country on the opposite side of the canyon, and began "shell- ing" three objects running up the ridge towards the mountains west, about half a mile away. I soon joined in the 'sport, but saw that it was no use. There was nothing left for us but to get out as quickly as possible.
We loaded everything into the wagon and started for the Gila River, as fast as we could travel. I rode the little mule, Jack, and kept in the lead about a hundred yards, while Cab drove the team and Bill walked in the rear, about a hundred yards be- hind. We knew that the Indians were more likely to attack us if we were all together than they would if we were scattered out a hundred yards apart. The Indians never showed up. We soon made our way to the Gila. About 9 o'clock we arrived at Duncan, Ari- zona, the nearest railroad station, just in time to witness a street duel be- tween old "Coon Skin," an old pros- pector who wore a coonskin cap, and a cowboy who had started in to shoot up the town. The duel did not last long, and ended disastrously for the cowboy. Coon Skin used a shotgun, and the cowboy used a six-shooter. At the end of the first round the cowboy fell, with his face badly mutilated.
We had seen sufficient tragedy for one trip, so we purchased some needed supplies and left for Uncle Billy Wil-
MY EXPERIENCE WITH GERONIMO'S INDIANS
51
son's ranch, up the river, which we reached about noon. Uncle Billy re- ceived us with a smile as usual, and gave us to understand that the latch string was always out. We watered and fed our team, had a good dinner with Uncle Billy, at his expense, and, after relating to him some of our ex- periences on the trip, turned in for an afternoon's rest.
We reached Malone, 35 miles away, next morning at 2 o'clock, July 21st. Being tired and sleepy, we hurriedly moved our traps into the cabin, wat- ered and fed our stock grain, and re- tired for a few hours' rest and repose. In a few minutes we were all cuddled down in the "arms of Morpheus." The next morning we decided to remain in Malone a day or two and prospect the claims that had already been located, and gather a few specimens to take back with us. As Lawton's command had left Malone only a few days be- fore our return, we considered our- selves safe to move around the hills near camp.
We slept through the heat of the day, and about four o'clock we had a good dinner of bear meat and bread and some of the good things that Un- cle Billy Wilson had given us. Din- ner being over, I left Bill and Cab to "clear up things," and, taking a pick and sack under my arm and my Colt's 45 in my belt, went up to the Big Wal- lipes mine about half a mile away^ to gather some specimens. On arriving at the mine, I took the precaution to look around the vicinity a little to satisfy myself that there were no In- dians anywhere. Climbing up on a high point of rock near by, I care- fully looked over the surrounding country, and had about decided that there was no danger whatever of In- dians, for the time being, at least. Just then I noticed a small group of horses tramping around behind a small motte of bushes, about a half a mile away. I observed them carefully for a few seconds, when I discovered that there were men standing on the ground on the opposite side of the horses from me, apparently preparing to mount.
To my terror, I realized that they were Indians. I waited a short time to see what they would do, but they re- mained almost in their tracks. I dreaded that they had caught sight of me, and had sent a squad of their number to cut off my retreat to camp. The first impulse was to run for camp and take a chance on fighting my way through with my revolver. After a little reflection I decided to conceal myself in a prospect cut near by, where I could see and watch their movements long enough to form some idea what they were trying to do. For some minutes they remained stationary — apparently deliberating upon some course or waiting for something ex- pected to happen.
Suddenly I heard the rustle of leaves on the dump back of me. I looked quickly in that direction, and saw two black, beady eyes under a cluster of heavy, dark hair, peering down at me from behind the ore dump. Instantly, with a loud whoop, the savage bound- ed up and, grasping a long lance in his hand, bore down upon me. But my right hand was too quick for him. I drew my revolver, and shot him through the head. The body rolled down towards me. I rushed down the path leading to camp, jumping or blun- dering over everything that came in the way, and reached camp more dead than alive.
Cab and Bill were out with their guns and covered my retreat most of the way from the mine to camp. They lost no time in pulling me into the house and securing everything against attack. The question may be asked: Why did the Indian risk a lance when he could have used a gun ? The reason no doubt was this: there were only a few Indians, and they probably were not sure of conditions around Camp Malone. The soldiers had left there only a few days before, and there were still several men in camp, and the Indians did not wish to risk detec- tion by firing a gun.
After a brief consultation we brought in our live stock and Bill and I tied them to trees near the house, while
52 OVERLAND MONTHLY
Cab went to notify the other men in early next morning. Our friends met
camp of the nearby Indians. Colonel us with open arms, and asked us all
Donohue and several men stopping kinds of questions about our experi-
with him were in camp at the time, ences.
and they began preparing for a night Bill married in the fall of the same
drive to Lordsburg, 16 miles south, year, and they now have several grown
that night. up sons. Shortly afterward Cab mar-
We were bound for Silver City, ried Miss Schaublin of Las Cruces.
and also decided on a night drive. As Their union brought them one son who
we had plenty of supplies and water is now a man. Poor friend Cab and
in the house, we remained indoors till his good wife have long since passed
some time after dark. In the mean- into that Realm of Many Mysteries,
time, we prepared and ate a hearty May God bless them all.
supper, and gave our horses all of the I have had some thrilling experi-
grain they could eat. ences during my long term of life, but
About 10 o'clock p. m. we loaded nothing else will compare with my
the wagon and set out for Silver City, experience with Geronimo's Indians in
.arriving there in time for breakfast Arizona.
AN IRISH LOVE LILT
It was fair in dear old Erin, when the furze were steeped in
gold,
And heather buds spilled diamond dew from every purple fold. When you, my blue-eyed colleen, with your trusting hand in
mine, Wandered o'er the flowering hillside, where the shamrock trailed
its vine. Sure the lark that soared above us, trilled his sweetest song that
day — For spring smiled through the bogland blooms — and in our
hearts 'twas May.
Whist! Mavourneen, dear — the blue waves that danced along
our way,
Are dark with sullen longing, as they croon in shrouds of gray. For an ocean rolls between the land where blooms my Irish
rose — And the city where I wonder lone 'midst faces blanched like
snows.
Oh, there's not a sound of laughter — nor a song bird trills a lay, For in my heart 'tis winter, while in Erin, sure, 'tis May.
To-night I watched the moon, Colleen, your letter in my hand — And laughing waves with caps of lace danced on the glistening
strand. Then o'er the bridge of silver beams that spanned the waters
blue,
In dreams, I sped, love's wine to quaff, from Irish lips so true. Now the world with song is ringing, and the bog with bloom is
gay— For spring, Mavourneen, smiles again, and in our hearts 'tis
May.
AGNES LOCKHART HUGHES.
The Passing of the Cowboy
By /Aax /AcD.
EVERY type of man or beast has its value in the make-up of the history of the world. The word type is here used with reference to character evolved from peculiar circumstances or conditions. When such conditions change, the type natu- rally disappears. In speaking of the old-time life of the western half of this continent, the international boun- dary line, needless to say must be largely disregarded. The natural con- ditions which shaped the lives of the living beings that played their parts on that vast stage knew nothing of man-made boundaries, any more than the driving rain storms of summer, or the blizzards of winter, or the migrat- ing herds of buffalo knew or cared that in the years to come there would be international boundary pillars at half-mile intervals strung across the continent from Lake of the Woods to the Rockies.
First and foremost of all the types that have made the West famous, the cowboy must be spoken of with all honor. He has been the most misrep- resented of all those that have braved the frontier in an effort to establish le- gitimate business. He is the man that really carved the way and proved that the country was one of vast realiza- tion. He lived on the outskirts of the farthest police patrol, away from the help of the sheriff and guardians of the law, herding stock and guarding it against untamed Indians and the wild beasts of the mountains and hills. Mud roofed shacks were his only shelter, his food was rough, and he had none of the luxuries that are to-day consid- ered necessities.
The people of the East have been led by ignorant or careless writers,
or sculptors to confuse trie cowboy with the cattle "rustler" or raider. He has been pictured as a desperado, go- ing about shooting up towns and leav- ing a trail of carnage behind. He was not all that writers of fiction and ro- mance would have him. Not always was he picturesque in hairy schnapps and wide sombrero; always vicious and dissipated. Nor did he always have a dialect. He had a vernacular of his own, the same as a lawyer or a doctor has a vernacular of his own. He was ever rough and ready, with many of the graces of an angel, and many of the attributes of a devil. His life called for hardihood and daring, so only the hardy followed it.
There is a type of the cowboy who comes to the ranch in the spring and fall, and at all other times is a vaga- bond, "riding the grub line." Such characters have existed and do exist in connection with the cattle industry of the West, but they are not the domi- nant type. There are, however, the type that the people of the East have had thrust upon them. If there is any- thing that a first-class Western man resents, it is the assertion that this particular type of disreputable cow- puncher belonged to his section of the country. As a matter of fact, these ruffians were almost invariably drafted from the cattle-yards of the Eastern markets.
Science is crowding out the old type of desperado cowboy. A better breed of cattle is being developed, and the men selected to care for them must know their business. The real type of cowboy is the man who makes his occupation as much a business as the farmer or the manufacturer, and he is quite as much an important factor in
54
OVERLAND MONTHLY
the economy of the West as either of the others.
Probably the only accurate concep- tion of the real cowboy that now can be obtained may be seen in the pic- tures of Russel and Remington; the one a cowboy himself, with an artist's eye and skill; the other a man of the schools and cities, but with the in- stincts of an out-of-door lover of nature and of Western life. Their paintings of the camp and round-up, of all that pertains to a cowpuncher's life, are duplicated in the memory of every man who has ever seen much of life upon the open range.
Colonel Theodore Roosevelt knows a good deal about cowboys. He has lived their life on the Western plains and written much from his personal knowledge and experience. Of the cowboy he says :
"Cowboys resemble one another much more and much less than is the case with their employers or ranch men. A town in the cattle country, where it is thronged with men from the neighborhood round about, pre- sents a picturesque sight. Here are assembled men who ply the various industries known only to frontier ex- istence, who lead lonely lives, except when occasion causes their visit to the "camp." All the various classes — loungers, hunters, teamsters, 'stage drivers, trappers, shepherds, sutlers, and men drawn from all classes, plainsmen and mountain men — are here to be seen. Most prominent of all is the cowboy. Singly or in twos or threes, they gallop the wild little horses down the street, their lithe, sup- ple figures erect, or swaying slightly as they sit loosely in the saddle ; their stirrups are so long that their knees are hardly bent, and the girdles not taut enough to keep the chains from clinking."
As picturesque as is the get-up of the cowboy, there is not an article en- tering into his outfit that has not a practicable and essential application to the comfort of the man of the plains. His extravagance would seem to be shown in the number and variety
of the big silk handkerchiefs which he wears knotted about his neck. And yet the handkerchief is an important part of his outfit, covering his mouth and nose when riding the range be- hind a herd of cattle. Three thousand cattle make a lot of dust, and the al- kali dust of the Western ranges is not very pleasant stuff to get into the lungs.
The cowboy likes a fancy bridle, an ornate saddle, good pistols and fine spurs. The heavy leather cuffs are usually most ornamental, but their decorative effect is only incidental. When the cowpuncher throws his rope to lasso a steer, the lariat sometimes comes in contact with his wrist. If his arm should be bare and that whirl- ing line should run over it, the flesh would be cut to the bone.
The sombrero is another of the plainsman's pet articles of apparel. It is extremely picturesque, and it lends the man a romantic air. But he does not wear it for these reasons.
He uses the big-brimmed hat be- cause it is the only sensible thing for him to wear. The broad brim keeps the sun out of his face on his long rides, and shelters him from rain when he runs into stormy weather. The hat is held on by a "G" string. Without it the hat would be off the puncher's head as much as on, and once under the hoofs of the herd there wouldn't be even a ribbon left. The high heels on his boots are essential to his com- fort, as without them his feet would constantly be slipping through the stir- rups.
There is the little whip which the boy has tied to his left wrist. It isn't meant to be used on his horse; it is for the steers, and is called a "bull whip." In a herd there will be one or two ring-leaders in mischief that will stampede the herd on slight provaca- tion. One end of the whip is loaded, and when the rider sees trouble brew- ing, he spots the bad steer, and riding up to him, whacks him over the head with the butt end of the whip. Fre- quently it is sufficient to fell the beast 'and then the cowpuncher is off his
THE PASSING OF THE COWBOY
55
horse in a jiffy, ties the animal's feet, and so stops the mischief.
The fiscal year of the cowboy be- gins in the early spring, just after the snow has melted from the hills and the grass gets a good start and the season for feeding the poor stock is over. Then it is that he puts aside his winter ways and recklessness, and buckles his belt to a hard six months' work. As soon as weather permits, the "weaners," and old cows that have been feeding at the home ranch, are driven to the fresh green grass on the hillsides, and the round-up begins.
The range is systematically ridden, and every beast accounted for. The "chuck wagon" is loaded with a "grub stake," and follows after the punchers as they clean up miles of country for branding. In most sections of the West the spring round-up is a beef round-up as well, for the mild winters and abundant pastures of the foothills make beef on the range, while the stall-feds of the East are munching their corn and roots.
Corralling the saddle horses each morning is an interesting part of cow- boy experience on the round-up. A corral is made of lariat ropes tied to the camp wagons, and into this the horses are driven. Each "buckaroo" picks out his string of four or five, one or two of which are usually bronchos fresh from the bunch grass. The well known Remington picture, "The Chuck Wagon," illustrates what often hap- pens when the bronc is saddled at the rounci-up camp.
One might think that where cattle are kept on range within a few days' ride from the home ranch the process of searing an ugly, big brand deep into their hide and hacking off a big frac- tion of each ear and cutting loose the skin of the jaw or neck or brisket so that a bloody piece of themselves would grow in a chin waddle or neck waddle or "dewlap" — one might think that all this college fraternity initia- tion heartlessness were useless.
So thought a historic, tenderhearted man named Sam Maverick, who came from Boston to Texas in an early day
to scatter seeds of kindness and to make his fortune in the raising of cat- tle. He didn't have a close home range, but he trusted humanity, and his calves and cattle carried their ears and their hides whole as nature had given them. As the old story goes, the catching up of Maverick's "slick ears" became very popular among the worldly, get-rich-quick, ambitious stockmen of the section. The story became sectional parlance, and to-day Webster tells us that a maverick is a "bullock or a heifer that has not been branded, and is unclaimed or wild." Also the lesson of Maverick's loss of his herds seems to have been remem- bered. So it is to-day that the brand of the cattleman must be registered with the proof of ownership, unless, of course, theft can be proved. But the days of stock rustling are over in the West, largely owing to the rigid brand inspection of the larger market cen- ters.
Driving beef to the railway is, how- ever, the climax of the cowboy year. Perhaps it is also the most interesting, though physically wearing, work the puncher has to do. Many of the steers are very wild, and a herd has been stampeded by the fright of one animal that was surprised by a bird flying suddenly from a bush. Every effort is made to keep the beef from wearing away their tallow. It is the greatest of cowboy sins ever to allow them carelessly to go faster than a slow walk. To afford a better trail, the cat- tle are strung out single file when the country is open. From a high point one can then look down the road some- times for three miles and see the same living, vibrating, slowly moving thread.
From six to ten miles is a day's drive, and if the range is good before dark the cattle will have satisfied their desire for grass and water. Then they are bunched, and soon lie down in one compact, cud-chewing mass. In the early days of the drive they must be night-guarded, the men being grouped in shifts, each to spend half of the night in riding slowly around and
56 OVERLAND MONTHLY
around the herd from one camp-fire to farmer and the railroads. A grand
another. Later the cattle can be left country, a wheat empire, the land of
alone after they have quieted down, the future ; but the ranches have gone,,
and they will not stir until daybreak, wild cattle no longer roam at will
But the cowboy's day is past. The across the broad sweeps of the prai-
open ranges of the West are no more, ries, and the cowboy has no part in
and the vaquero of Argentina and this great development. The old days
Mexico no more like the real article have passed into oblivion never to re-
than an Indian cayuse is like a nerve- turn. The days of the cow-punchers
strained thoroughbred. The rolling and lassos are forgotten in the ashes
hills remain, the snug river bottoms, of the past, and where the endless
the springs in the hills, the streams herds of cattle grazed, great cities are
and rivers, but the range is gone for- springing up and planning their des-
ever, cut up by the fences of the tiny.
JOY
When old woes assail thee,
And thy sorrows crowd, When thy dear friends fail thee,
Low thine heart be bowed — Leave thy sorrows, listen
To the waters loud, See the sunshine glisten
In the silver cloud.
Be a child of Nature,
Share her hymns of praise, Lift up thy soul's stature
To the heights and ways Where those hymns are thy hymns,
Thy low voice upraise Saying : "These are my hymns,
Joy hath crowned my days."
Earth and air and ocean,
Flowers and leafy trees, Clouds of lightest motion,
All work for thine ease. Leave thy woes behind thee,
Live like birds and bees, Then will sweet Joy find thee,
Calming life's rough seas.
So, when woes assail thee,
And thy sorrows crowd, When all dear friends fail thee,
Low thine heart be bowed- Leave thy sorrows, listen
To the waters loud, See the sunshine glisten
In the silver cloud.
EVERETT EARL STANARD.
Indians forming for the parade in the c elebration, Garden of the Gods.
Ute Fiesta in Garden of the Gods
By Howard C. Kegley
AMONG the historic fiestas of the West to-day, the Shan Kive annually held in Colo- rado's far-famed Garden of the Gods holds well deserved promi- nence. Shan Kive week is a great event for the white settlers of Colo- rado, but it is a greater epoch in the life of the Ute Indian, for during the week of the fiesta he is taken from his reservation at Ignacio, transported to Colorado Springs and permitted to mingle with his tawny brothers in tri- bal dances at the Sacred Springs of Manitou.
Shan Kive is an Indian term which designates the carnival time of all
nation. The fiesta originated four years ago, and in four successive jumps it has leaped well to the fore- front among the great and popular jubilations of the West. It is the spontaneous outburst of glorious, healthy life in the Pike's Peak region, and the one event of the year in which rich and poor, aristocrat and plebeian mingle on a common level and with one purpose in the court of King Car- nival.
Each year the Utes and whites join in celebrating at the Shan Kive some event which had to do with the his- tory of the State. Two years ago they united in dedicating the Ute Trail, 5
Indians dancing, Garden of the Gods. "Buckskin Charley" on the left of the Indians who are drumming.
which is the oldest Indian highway in America. The celebration brought to Manitou several hundred famous pio- neers and scouts, who spent the week as guests of the Shan Kive committee. Last year the Indians and cowboys erected a tablet in Colorado Springs' beautiful Cascade avenue to mark the spot where the last great massacre of whites by Indians took place on Sep- tember 3, 1868. The fiesta closed with a mixed Marathon race up Pike's Peak, both Indians and whites partici- pating. Broncho busting and all of the varied kinds of Wild West per- formances common to the Frontier Day's celebration at Cheyenne, and the round-up at Pendleton are fea- tured at the Shan Kive. The perform- ances are "pulled off" in the Garden of the Gods, and when the weather is favorable, as it usually is, the vast throng of spectators turns the hillsides into amphitheatre seating sections. During the frontier performances, the red rocks of the Garden of the Gods are usually hidden by spectators, for
fifty thousand people visit the Shan Kive each day while it is in progress.
The rapidly disappearing Ute In- dians fit appropriately into the Shan Kive plans, for the reason that they have witnessed every epoch in the his- tory of Colorado. The Utes, as far back as history dates, held the region around the Garden of the Gods — and held it sacred because of its health giving soda springs. Game abounded in the region, and the white settlers were welcome to as much of it as they cared for, because the Utes were very friendly to the whites, but life for the Utes was one never-ending battle against the Arapahoes, Cheyennes or Plain Indians, who constantly sought to drive out the Ute and gain posses- sion of the Sacred Soda Springs and the happy hunting grounds of the Pike's Peak country. As a manifes- tation of their friendliness toward the whites, one hundred Ute braves an- nually muster at the Shan Kive and indulge in their tribal dances of peace.
"Of all the Indians of the great
Bronco busting contest for prizes. The bucking horse on the right is named "Peaceful Harry." No one has ever succeeded in riding him.
West," remarks an old scout who has lived among them long enough to know their habits and customs, "none have been more difficult to understand than the Utes. Everything they do or attempt to do of a personal nature is kept a secret among themselves. They would not permit an outsider to learn anything about their personal characteristics if they could possibly help it.
"A Ute would not willingly tell his name or that of any member of his family, nor would he mention the price placed upon one of his daugh- ters when she was to become the wife of one of the. tribe. Such an item of importance concerns the father and husband alone. Everything a Ute does seems to be surrounded with mystery, and for that reason less is known of it than of any other Indian tribe in the West to-day. Before they were placed upon the reservation at Ignacio the Utes had one peculiarity which was unlike any other nation or tribe, namely, the great secrecy they ob-
served in conducting their funeral ceremonies. No white person, so far as I am able to learn, ever witnessed the funeral of a Ute. Whenever one of them died the corpse mysteriously vanished.
"Whether even they themselves generally knew the resting place of their dead is a question that would be difficult to decide. It is believed that the bodies of their dead use to be re- moved during the night and buried in caves; though this is merely a sur- mise. It is the opinion of many that the Utes used to bury their dead rela- tives in deep holes in the ground, af- ter nightfall, carefully covering ' the graves so as to leave no trace of the burial places. The men wore their hair long, and sometimes braided it in- to queues, while the squaws cut theirs short. The Utes never did paint their features like other Indians have done. The men wore breechcloths and moc- casins, and threw buffalo robes around their bodies to protect them from the chilling winds of winter."
The Song of the Ticket-of-Leavester
By Lewis R. Freeman
AUTHOR'S NOTE. — James Forbes-Brown was once a member of a wealthy and prominent Australian family, and later, in turn, ticket-of-leave man, beachcomber, slave-trader, pirate, cut-throat and fugitive from justice. On March 18, 1901, as a climax to one of the most remarkable careers of adven- ture in the history of the South Pacific, he dynamited, at its anchorage in Apia harbor, the yacht of a wealthy young German with whom he had quar- reled over the possession of a Caroline girl of great beauty. Forbes-Brown escaped in a dugout canoe to the neighboring island of Savaii, but in elud- ing a hot pursuit, fell from the rim of an extinct crater and injured himself so severely that further flight was impossible. As the Samoans and Germans closed in upon him, he coolly opened an artery in his wrist with a pen-knife, and died in the midst of a mocking recitation of his countless escapades. Saving only that of the notorious pirate and "black-birder," Bully Hayes, the career of Forbes-Brown is the most remarkable in the picturesque annals of South Sea outlawry.
I came from the South with a Ticket-of-Leave,
A Ticket, a Ticket-of-Leave; An' I left a few of 'em there to grieve,
A few of 'em there to grieve. The pater, whose bank went up in smoke, An' the Brisbane girl whose heart I broke, Are some of the simple southern folk
That I left with a sigh to heave.
I staked my wad on the Melbourne Sweep,
The opulent Melbourne Sweep. The bally favorite went to sleep,
The favorite went to sleep. The frisky wife of a Sydney bloke, An' the Pitt street girl I had to choke Before she'd give me her ring to soak,
Are some that I left to weep.
They shipped me off in a Blackbird brig,
In the hold of a Blackbird brig. Bunked with niggers an' fed like a pig,
With niggers an' fed like a pig. The Obi girl with the fuzzy head, The bo'sun I punched until he bled, The mate that I knifed because he said
That I had the air of a prig.
THE SONG OF THE TICKET-OF-LEAVESTER
61
Will not forget that voyage for aye,
They will not forget for aye. It came to an end in Suku Bay,
In the beautiful Suku Bay. The anchor watch who I had to hush When he blocked the way of my forward rush, The black whose head I had to crush
When he blundered across my way ;
Will hardly recall the fight that I made,
The exquisite fight I made — How I dropped the mate with a paddle blade,
The edge of a paddle blade; How the skipper tripped on a water-pail An' emptied his gun in half-furled sail, While I jumped over the starboard rail,
An' swam for a mangrove glade.
I dodged a 'gator and ducked a shark —
The rush of a gray-green shark — While they used my head for a rifle mark,
My head for a rifle mark. The bullets fell in a shower of lead, But they splashed the 'gator and shark instead Of me, who dove to the coral bed, An' made the swamp in the dark.
They landed a boat at break of day,
At the break of a tropic day. I soaked in the swamp till they went away,
Till they cursed and went away. Then I swam the strait at the turning tide. (The sharks and 'gators were nought beside The leeches boring my precious hide
As hid in the mud I lay.)
I made the Mission of Father Pete,
The genial Father Pete; With a shipwreck tale that was hard to beat,
A tale that was hard to beat. Twas in the days before Pete went wrong, But he winked an eye at my dance an' song, An' bade me stay till a ship came 'long,
An' eat of his bread an' meat.
62 OVERLAND MONTHLY
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The world never knows the good that is hid, |
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The good that is ofttimes hid; |
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An' I'll never forget the work that I did, |
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The excellent work I did — |
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I taught the school of Pete's frowsy flocks, |
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An' hammered lore in their blowsy blocks — |
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Till I sneaked the key of his treasure box, |
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An' sloped with a half-caste kid. |
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I lost the pearls on Makata Reef, |
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When we struck on Makata Reef — |
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The girl was nabbed by a Fiji chief, |
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A cannibal Fiji chief; |
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Then over the seas for a thousand miles, |
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From Suva up to the Bismarck Isles, |
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Where the houses are built in the sea on piles, |
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I left a wake of grief. |
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I shot the chief of a pirate band, |
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Of a Papuan pirate band; |
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An' took his proa, all under-manned, |
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His proa but half-way manned; |
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An' headed off to the Gilbert Group, |
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Got next to the King and made a coup |
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Of a girl he fattened an' fed for soup |
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Because she'd refused his hand. |
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Twas a Caroline girl with heart of flame, |
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A heart an' a glance of flame ; |
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Fair as the islands from whence she came, |
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The Carolines whence she came — |
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Eyes of a seraphim when she smiled, |
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Soul of a devil, face of a child, |
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Movements lithe as a tiger wild, |
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An' as fierce an' hard to tame. |
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Beautiful, passionate, strong of will, |
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A woman a man must win or kill — |
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I loved her then, as I love her still, |
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Though she went and blowed my game. |
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THE SONG OF THE TICKET-OF-LEAVESTER 63
We started south in the King's canoe,
In the King's great war canoe, With fifty paddlers to drive it through,
Full fifty to drive it through. I laid a course for Apia Bay, Where the jade took up with a German jay With a private yacht an' a taking way,
An' never a thing to do.
I scuttled his schooner with dynamite,
A barrel of dynamite, A blown-up yacht is a cheerful sight,
A cheerful, fearful sight. A keg of giant makes a goodly gash, But the girl and her lover escaped the crash I felt the cut of her curses lash
As I paddled into the night.
I paddled hard till the sun was high,
Till the sun was hot an' high ; An' crossed the channel to green Savaii,
To the beach of green Savaii. They put a gunboat upon my track, The natives came in a swarming pack An' found my trail where I doubled back,
For 'twas sworn that I should die.
I shook them off in a bank of fog,
A sweltering bank of fog ; I fought my way through a mangrove bog,
A bottomless mangrove bog ; I slashed a path through the jungle dim, An' had all but scaled the crater rim, When I lost my grip on a maupe limb
An' fell like a hard stuck hog.
I've drained it deep, Life's full-filled glass,
To its last, least bitter dreg ; I'm lying here with a fractured arm,
Strained back an' a broken leg. I'm drunken, dissolute, damned an' broke, My girl has gone to another bloke, So I cut this vein with a penknife stroke,
An' drink — my — final — peg.
Stevenson's Tahitian 4t Brother*
By Paul Gooding
Ori a On.
Stevenson's brother.
'Tahitian"
NO ADMIRER of Robert Louis Stevenson is likely to feel that a journey to Tahiti is complete without a visit to that spot on Tautira's bruised arm where the Terii- tera of Chief Ori a Ori lived for a short time before his second and final voyage to Samoa, his last earthly home. On my first trip to the Society Islands I took particular pains to find
it. It may be well to say here that if the visitor does not employ the novel- ist's Tahitian name in his inquiries, he probably will not be able to locate the place, unless accompanied by some one who knows, for no memorial marks its turfed green.
The disappointment I felt over the absence of stone and board to indi- cate the site has led me to believe that if readers of "R. L. S." were to raise a simple monument to him there it would provide a deal of satisfaction to Tahiti's tourists, who, within the next decade, will number thousands. For this alluring island is now on a world trade route and believes itself to be the new gateway between Europe and Eastern United States and Australasia via the Panama Canal.
It was with Ori, to whom he dedi- cated the stirring "Song of Rahero," that Stevenson lodged for the greater part of his stay in the island where, with his mother, his wife, and his step- son, Lloyd Osbourne, he arrived in 1888, in the yacht Casco. The chief, who, Graham Balfour says, was "a perpetual delight" to the entire party, had a deep affection for his guest; and the esteem in which Stevenson held his host is reflected in the dedication of the song as follows :
"Ori, my brother* in the island mode, In every tongue and meaning much my
friend, This story of your country and your
clan,
(*Stevenson was adopted into Ori's tribe, the Tevas, and the two ex- changed names. The chief called him- self "Rui," there being no "L" in the Tahitian alphabet.)
The Falls of Tautaua, Tahiti
56
OVERLAND MONTHLY
(*Stevenson was adopted into Ori's tribe, the Tevas, and the two ex- changed names. The chief called him- self "Rui," there being no "L" in the Tahitian alphabet.)
When the novelist first saw this ver- dant shore, it was the fairest of all Ta- titi's headlands, "the most beautiful spot" he had ever seen. I found it a patched ruin. Years before a hurri- cane had demolished its simple homes, ravaged its prolific groves and strewn it with wreckage. Where palms, man- goes and breadfruit trees had dark- ened gently sloping beach and merry promenade, only stumps and stubs of trunks and isolated waving fronds re- mained. The single road was over- grown with grass; it bore no impress of carriage wheels, and no more was it trodden by festive youth foregath- ered there to chide and court. The dwellings, which, I was told, had been surrounded by pretty yards, were now chiefly makeshifts of bamboo, wood, thatch and galvanized iron. Back of these, and to some extent in their midst, was a wilderness of grasses, pandanus, vanilla, bananas and palms, in the case the products of a low, moist soil.
Through this coursed the Vaitapiha River, draining a valley of the same name framed by precipitous moun- tains, some of singular form. Through- out this vale, oranges, lemons, giant passion fruit and feis (plantains) were plentiful, and ape plants, exposing thick roots from three to four feet long, were abundant. On the lowlands and on mountain top spread an un- broken canopy of trees, and at a height of two thousand feet the great- est of the grass family, the bamboo, grew in isolated patches ; while equally as high waved the plantain.
In Tautira my host was Oriioehau Toofa, according to my guide's spell- ing. I reached his home when he and his family were eating a four o'clock dinner on the platform of a dilapi- dated kitchen. Within an inclosure in front, three pigs were fighting for the scraps thrown to them, and hungry, ill-
bred poultry were bothering the din- ers. My guide was a friend of Mrs. Toofa's, and from her he received a vigorous kiss. As for myself, I was surprised by a greeting in English from Mary Evans, Toofa's mother, spare, wrinkled and old, who was the daughter of a white man and a native woman. I ungallantly asked her how old she was, whereupon she hesitated, then said : "I think I am fifty-six." De- spite her years, this tottering, forget- ful creature did nearly all the house- work, though truly that did not ap- pear to be very burdensome. During my stay she was very solicitous of my comfort, and greatly amused me by advising me several times daily to go to bed and rest.
At six o'clock, on a table set with dishes from the family chest, Mary placed fried chicken and fish for my guide and me. These were followed by raw fish, but since I was unable to appreciate it in the Polynesian way, I left it all to my pilot, who dipped it into a sauce of cocoanut milk and sea- water, and ate it with keen relish.
In my search for Stevenson's for- mer home, I was aided by Mary, who accompanied me to Ori's house as my interpreter. As we left on our mis- sion rain was falling, and I raised my umbrella over the old lady. At that instant I was startled by a hilarious commotion in our rear. Turning, I saw that Mrs. Toofa and a girl who worked on her husband's plantation were laughing at us ; and this they con- tinued to do until we were out of hearing, probably because my intend- ed courtesy was so unusual and unex- pected.
The chief's residence was a wooden villa standing between the public road and the sea, and was the best dwelling in the village. It had a front door, but Mary took me round to the back, just as a native policeman had done in Papeete when I had sought the home of Marau Salmon, last queen of the Tahitians. There we found Ori, sitting in a chair on the veranda, with his feet on the railing, and smoking a native cigarette. On the floor near
Along the beach.
68
OVERLAND MONTHLY
him were his wife and three other wo- men, who were soon joined by two men. As I reached the steps the chief quickly rose to greet me.
"Haere mail" said he, extending a welcoming hand and motioning me to a rocker.
"lorana!" I rejoined, as I surveyed the six feet and more of dignity "be- fore me. The powerfully built frame of the chief was clad in a duck suit, completely buttoned, and a black kilt; the feet were unshod. The countenance was thoughtful, firm and wrinkled, and the expression honest. The high, sloping forehead met closely cropped gray hair, and a spare, whitening mus- tache adorned the lip.
After his greeting, Ori sat down and looked expectantly at his visitor. Evi- dently he felt the weight of his three score years and fifteen, and when I saw him a few days later in the capi- tal, old age was still further empha- sized by lagging feet and trembling hands.
"Ask Ori if he remembers Terii- tera," I commanded Mary.
"Yes," he replied with brightening eyes. "Teriitera good man. All the people like him, and come often to see him."
"What did he do in Tautira?" I inquired.
"He did much writing," the chief re- plied. "For long time he sick in bed, and there he did much work. Then he got up and went about among the peo- ple."
Indeed, Stevenson had such a good time here, among people whom he once declared to be the most amiable he had ever met, that he neglected his journal, to the world's loss. But what was more natural for a convalescent who went sea bathing daily, visited his neighbors frequently, and was of- ten entertained with native songs, dances and traditions ?
Continuing his remarks in a sad- dened note, "Rui" said: "One day Teriitera go away over the great sea. I was sorry to see him go, and he said he was sorry to leave me. He wrote me a letter, but it was lost in the big
storm. This destroyed my house, where Teriitera lived. It was near the Catholic Church, but you cannot find anything; the sea swept it all away."
At my request, Ori commissioned a young man to show me the site. There was little to see at the place pointed but to me. Where the house had been there were only two pieces of timber, fend on every side were relics of devas- tation. Eastward rose the white stubs of trees ; south and west stood patched dwellings built of wreckage; in front only a few palms breasted the north- ern winds.
On my return to the chief's house I besought him to give me a photograph of himself. This he did not have, but he agreed to sit for me in Papeete, fifty miles distant, on a certain day.
Mary's efforts as an interpreter had fatigued her. As we started back to Toofa's, she said to me as we headed for a Chinese store: "Come. You get bread and tea for you and me."
Ori was on hand in Papeete at the appointed hour. He was dressed for the occasion, too. Although he was barefooted, he made a presentable ap- pearance, with clean overalls, white coat, straw hat and a cane. With one of his friends or kinsmen accompany- ing, he walked with me very slowly to the studio. There he was plainly un- easy, but his embarrassment was partly relieved by his amusement at the photographer's efforts to get a sat- isfactory pose. At the ordeal's con- clusion, he asked if he might have a copy of his likeness, and I promised him that he should.
Upon reaching the street again, I invited Ori and his companion to have coffee and rolls with me at a restau- rant. The only one open at that hour was conducted by Chinese, and we got there about the time employer and employees were accustomed to break- fast, to my subsequent confusion. We were not more than half finished when we were asked to shift to another table, for ours happened to be a round one, at which our disturbers wanted to sit because all their dishes would be within reach of every chopstick. I
"SHELLS OF MEN."
69
thought we would not be troubled again, but there was an overflow, and we had to move once more.
As we progressed with our meal, Ori spied one of his acquaintances in the street. Immediately he shouted to him to join us, which he did. Such is the simple hospitality of the South Seas. The old gentleman seemed thoroughly to enjoy himself. Clearly he was hungry, but not more so than one of his friends, who, finishing his own roll before I had ordered another, calmly appropriated part of Ori's. The
latter had a penchant for sugar. He used an astonishing quantity in one cup, and seeing that I did not want all mine, he reached across the table and took what I had left. True, he first asked for it, but had it belonged to either of his countrymen, he probably would have dispensed with ceremony, and without giving offense.
When we were ending our meal some one called for Ori. Thereupon he rose, and grasping my hand as he said farewell, he shuffled into the street, and I saw him no more.
"SMELLS OF A EN "
Life. and laughter have been swept
From this face; Ants and nameless creeping things
Take their place.
Jests and kisses from these lips
Now have fled — What a strange, sad thing this is,
Being dead!
See this little bloody curl
On his cheek — Would he say a bitter thing
Could he speak?
Would he curse the men who took
From him light, Color, music, merriment,
Tore the white
Arms of women from his neck ;
Sent him far So to lie upon a hill
'Neath a star?
MARY CAROLYN DAVIES.
Santa Barbara by the Sea
By Josephine Blackwell
Illustrations by the Author
"The mighty mountains o'er it, Below, the white seas swirled —
Just California, stretching down The middle of the world."
HAD the tower of Saint Barbara been located on the foothills of the Santa Ynez Mountains she would have asked for more than a third window to view the beauty of her surroundings — the chan- nel calmly slumbering under a cloud- less sky, the islands of Santa Cruz, San Miguel and Santa Rosa at peace in the misty distance, the city itself resting between the ever-lasting hills. The very name of Santa Barbara con- veys to all who have been there an unmeasured sense of rest and peace to be found in few other places. Over one of the spacious fireplaces of the handsome new Arlington Hotel is a painting showing the towers of the old Mission, while in a path at the side wanders Santa Barbara herself, much as Palma Vecchio painted her for that Venetian altar on the other side of the world.
In 1603, long before the founding of the Mission, Sebastian Vizcaino sailed into the channel with his exploring fleet of Spanish vessels, and gave to the broad passage between the islands and the mainland the name of El Canal de Santa Barbara, thus follow- ing the custom of the time by naming the place from the saint claiming the day of his discovery, the 4th of De- cember being sacred to that saint's memory. Vizcaino then had a call from an Indian who urged the visitors to land, and noting the absence of wo- men in the party, offered ten for each
man, but history does not relate whe- ther the gift was accepted. Nearly two hundred years later the famous old Mission was dedicated to Santa Barbara, Virgin and Martyr, the pa- troness of fortifications and the Span- ish army. It is this Mission that forms one of the chief attractions of the little city, for it is not only the best preserved of all the twenty-one missions, but it is the only one in which, since the founding, daily min- istrations have not ceased nor the fire gone out on the altar, its commanding location along the line of the Camino Real making it a beacon for many sailors in the days when lighthouses were unknown on the coast. In 1812 a series of earthquakes, the severest ever known in this valley, completely destroyed the old adobe church, and it was then considered best to construct the new building of sandstone, the walls of which are nearly six feet in thickness, and are further guarded against future similar disasters by heavy stone buttresses, thus making it the strongest mission church building in California. A statue of Santa Bar- bara, cut from native sandstone, was placed in a niche of the facade, while at each angle and at the apex are statues representing Faith, Hope and Charity, the whole being a pleasing composite of Roman, Byzantine, Span- ish and Moorish architecture. In the towers still hang the ancient bells brought from Spain, and from these towers one gains a marvelously beau- tiful view of the city set in an amphi- theatre of hills, with the sparkling sea at its feet, while from the other side can be seen the sacred garden which
SANTA BARBARA BY THE SEA
71
no woman has ever been allowed to enter, excepting only the wife of Presi- dent Harrison and the Princess Louise of Lome. Less than a year after the dedication of the new building a most brutal massacre occurred near the Mis- sion by the Mexicans, and to-day the spirit of an Indian with shaded eyes peering intently and fearfully into the distance, or listening with ear to the ground for the oncoming foe, seems to haunt the paths and the corridors where once they lived several hundred strong, learning the arts of industry hand in hand with their new religion. One asks indeed: "What has become of the Indians for whose civilization and conversion the Mission was founded?" But they are sleeping, four thousand of them, in the ancient cemetery where long trenches were dug, and they were laid away four and five deep. In the vault are buried the deceased members of the brotherhood, but it is many years since it was used as a public cemetery. The Mission is filled with historic associations of the days of the Spanish and Mexican oc- cupation. The chapel itself is most interesting, with its carved Indian or- naments, its frescoes and paintings, some copies of the old masters, and other originals from Mexico and Spain. The beautiful altar now in use has recently been built entirely by one of the brothers, and it was used for the first time at their last Christ- mas service. On removing the wain- scoting which had decayed, original frescoing was discovered and re- touched, thus restoring to the chapel something of the native air of Indian art The unusual preservation of this Mission is due to the fact that the Franciscan superior had sent to Santa Barbara some priests who were natives of Mexico, and not Spanish, in this way keeping it in the hands of the Franciscans, while other missions were being sacked, their books and records burned, and valuable manuscripts used as gun wadding. After Colonel Fre- mont came over the mountains, and the town peacefully passed into the hands of the Americans, the Mission
knew none of the annoyances due to Mexican rule, though only a small pro- portion of its once great possessions now remains. Having established a classical school in 1896 for the edu- cation of young men for priesthood, the cornerstone of St. Anthony's Col- lege was laid three years later on St. Anthony's day, the fathers, clerics and lay brothers living in the building ad- joining the church.
• But of fair Santa Barbara itself, where find the words to picture it in all its lovely simplicity? Not the slowly moving thoroughfare of shops, where one wanders at times because one must, but the hills, the mountains; it is when these heights are reached and "the mists have rolled in splendor from the beauty of the hills," and the soft-lapping sea murmurs of cease- less summer delights, when unex- pected vistas appear around the sud- den turn of the road and a new glory is revealed, that one feels the meagre- ness of mere language to express a nameless charm that fills the air and haunts the memory even long after it must be numbered among our past de- lights.
It has often been called the world's climatic capital, Santa Barbara, "just around the corner out of the cold," for running almost east and west as it does the sun from rising to setting shines directly into the valley, and we find ourselves traveling across the conti- nent to the western sea to behold the sun rise from the ocean! The chain of rocky islands act as breakwaters, and protect this sun-kissed shore of Santa Barbara from the northwest trade winds that blow with great force along Point Concepcion. On this twenty-five mile wide channel, Uncle Sam tests his Pacific-built warships for speed in their trial run, and rising high above the coast are the cliffs that make the shore so picturesque. On the north rises the rugged range of the Santa Ynez, with an average height of more than 3,000 feet above the sea, and at the base stands the Mission where the Franciscan Fathers built wisely and well, overlooking this won-
72
OVERLAND MONTHLY
derful creation of mountain, valley and sea.
When the Spanish rule met its Waterloo in Mexico, and California became a province of the Mexican em- pire, the oath of allegiance was taken in Santa Barbara. This was in 1812, and Governor Sola was elected as dep- uty to the court at Mexico. But in all this golden State there was then no name better known than that of Don Jose de la Guerra, the plucky com- mandante, in whose home visiting magnates were usually entertained, though the Carrillos and the Ortegas were also among the principal families
stopped in 1846. This was the first hotel built here, and was much the most interesting building along the whole length of State street; yet no photographer had considered it worth taking, even though its days were num- bered. The accompanying illustra- tion was taken by the writer, who saw with much regret on leaving after a five weeks' visit, that the work of de- vastation had already commenced to make way for more modern buildings. The fate of Fremont's headquarters was quite as deplorable, for that being also of adobe, fell to pieces during an attempt to move it. Nearly all of the
Old San Carlos Hotel, where Colonel Fremont stopped in 1846.
in whose honor the streets of Santa Barbara are to-day named. Indeed, one needs a Spanish lexicon to find one's way intelligently, but there is no better method to trace the footprints of the pioneers of those early times. Far too few of the interesting adobes are left, and absolutely no interest is apparently felt in those that remain. The writer will always consider her- self fortunate in having visited Santa Barbara in time to see the old San Carlos Hotel where Col. Fremont
other adobe houses have been des- poiled of their roof tiles by wealthy builders who paid large sums for the old tiles to adorn their modern homes, replacing them with ordinary shingles. These adobe houses were generally built in the shape of a parallelogram, the more pretentious ones being after the Spanish style, and if the walls were not all of adobe, they were some- times made of a framework of timber filled in with adobe. In the patio or court of the finest houses could be
SANTA BARBARA BY THE SEA
73
found plants and sometimes a foun- tain; if the owners were sufficiently wealthy, there was glass in the win- dows, but as a rule only gratings were used, while fireplaces were still a dream of the future. . The court gen- erally opened toward the east, and the kitchen was a separate shed or hut. The poorer homes boasted of very lit- tle furniture — beds of rawhides spread on the ground, a table and stools or benches, a handmill for grinding corn, which was an indispensable article, and a few pieces of pottery for cook- ing. However, a dozen years later, af- ter the earthquakes that played such serious havoc, we find the richer fami- lies living in homes handsomely fur- nished, with tables and chairs inlaid with shell brought from Peru and China. The wearing apparel, too, Was costly, not only that of the women but the men as well, the gentleman aristocrat wearing a dark cloak of broadcloth profusely ornamented with rich velvet trimmings, for the cloak was the criterion of the rank of the owner, as well as the standard of his bank account. From this gay gar- ment of the gentleman there were all grades of cloaks gradually descending to the primitive blanket of the Indian. As for the ladies, they arrayed themselves in rich and expensive shawls of silk, satin or Chinese crape, according to the prevailing English fashion. The dainty shoes of velvet or satin had points turned up at heel and toe, while the skirts were then — as now — so narrow as to impede walk- ing with comfort. In those days, the horse was the only means of commu- nication between the ranches or set- tlements, and for this reason they were constantly kept saddled at the door of the dwelling, as well as the place of business. The Spaniard be- ing always a man of leisure (for all the hard work was done by Indians) he was likewise an expert rider, and even to-day there are no better riders or better horseback trails than those that thread in and out and around and over the rock-ribbed Santa Ynez mountains.
As for music, the guitar was the only musical instrument in use until just previous to the American occupa- tion, when a few harps were intro- duced.
Nothing is now left of the presidio or fort of Santa Barbara, which was a closed square surrounded with houses of a single story, the commandante oc- cupying the northwest corner, which was built a little more prominently than the others. Two years after, Stockton raised here the American flag and left a garrison of ten men, thus formally putting Santa Barbara under the rule of the United States, comes the somewhat amusing story of "the lost cannon." This brass gun, which had belonged to the "Elizabeth," was intended for the fortifications at Mon- terey, but was left on the beach wait- ing shipment, when suddenly it dis- appeared. So great was the excite- ment that Governor Mason imposed a military fine of $500 upon the town, which sum was to be repaid upon the discovery of the guilty parties. In the course of time it was found that five men, with the help of a yoke of oxen, had dragged away the gun and buried it in the sand, but none of the five be- ing able to locate the spot, it was not until 1858 that a heavy rainstorm caused the waters of the Estero to cut through the sand bank and thus dis- closed the protruding cannon, still bright and uninjured after its ten years of burial. In triumph, they hauled it up State street to De la Guerra, where it was sold for $80. A ready market for it was found in San Francisco at a large profit. To com- memorate this event, three streets in Santa Barbara bear these names: Mason, Quinientos (five hundred), and Canon Perdido (lost cannon) ; but how much better to have kept the gun!
The accompanying illustration shows only half of the Casa de la Guerra, which is still occupied by the descendants of Don Jose de la Guerra, who was born in Spain in 1776, the other wing being now used as gift shop and tea room. This gift shop was for- merly the private chapel of that illus-
A portion of the Casa de la Guerra
trious family, and over the door is a stained glass window representing the coat of arms of the de la Guerras — a crown under crossed swords sur- mounted by the head of a Moor, while the original beamed ceiling of Spanish wood, brought around the Horn one hundred and five years ago, still re- mains. To Richard Henry Dana we are indebted for a very vivid descrip- tion of a wedding celebration in this very courtyard. Don Jose de la Guerra had married in 1804 the daugh- ter of Don Raymundo Carrillo, then commandante of the Santa Barbara presidio, by whom he had seven sons
and four daughters. It was his third daughter, Ana Maria Antonio, whose marriage to Alfred Robinson of Bos- ton, Mr. Dana describes in his "Two Years Before the Mast," during his journey to California on a trading ves- sel in 1836-38. It is said that a salute of twenty-three guns was fired from Dana's ship when the bride appeared in the church doorway of the Mission after the ceremony; then followed several days of dancing and general merry-making, as best described in Mr. Dana's book.
Among the homes of interest in Santa Barbara is that of Stewart Ed-
SANTA BARBARA BY THE SEA
75
ward White, author of "The Blazed Trail," "The Silent Places," "Arizona Nights" and many other Western stories. Nestled in a perfect bower of many flowers, with Cherokee roses climbing in profusion, the house com- mands a splendid view of mountains and valley.
Seven miles eastward lies Summer- land on a portion of the old Ortega Rancho. Here in 1893 oil was dis- covered. The oil industry now ex- ceeds in value all the other products of the country combined, and the sub- marine wells form one of the sights for tourists to see. Summerland started with the good intention of be- ing a resort, but ended in being an oil center with a colony of citizens of spiritualistic belief. Near here, too, is Carpenteria, there having been, a carpenter shop on the shore in earlier days. Carpenteria boasts of possess- ing the largest grape vine in the world. The circumference of the trunk of this wonderful vine is nine feet, and it bears ten tons of grapes annually. Planted in 1842, its branches now cover half an acre.
Of Montecito and Miramar, much might be written, of their setting in a flower garden of such marvelous color, jewel-like, with the placid summer sea at their feet. All these picturesque places, with many others, form de- lightful drives, nor must Hope Ranch be forgotten. This tract comprises two thousand acres of hill and mesa, with canyons and groves, with moss- draped oaks and tablelands sloping off to the high cliffs by the shore, beyond which spreads the broad Pacific. Here will some day arise a rival to Monte- cito, though more beautiful than that favored suburb of homes it cannot be. Hope Ranch is the site of the Potter Country Club, an adjunct to Hotel Potter. Here are the golf links and polo field, and their broad acres are the rendezvous for riding and motor- ing parties. With the flute-like notes of meadow larks floating on the air, one drives through the exit where is seen the parting sign: "Thank you. Come again" — on out along the famous
cliff drive, back to the heart of slum- bering Santa Barbara two miles away. It is said that there are in Santa Barbara and its environs a different ride for every day in the month, and verily it must be true. Monotony of that kind is not one of its sins. For the home-seeker it has an abundance to offer; for the farmer, still greater opportunities. The Santa Barbara Valley is the land of the walnut and the lima bean; indeed, the Mission fathers made of their gardens experi- mental stations in their efforts to adapt the soil and the climate to the produc- tion of. the fig, olive, grape and walnut. The so-called English walnut is a native of Persia, from which country it was probably introduced into Eng- land by the Romans; this being the first of its appearance commercially, it became known to the world at large as the English walnut. After tnat we find it flourishing best in Italy, France and Austria-Hungary, finally being carried by the Spanish settlers into South America and Mexico, from which country it was, naturally, intro- duced into California by the Francis- can monks about 1769, when the mis- sions were founded. Unlike the wal- nut of European countries, where it lives to a ripe old age, not beginning to bear until 15 or 20 years old, the walnut of California begins bearing at about the eighth year, the crop in- creasing until the tree is in its prime at 15 years of age, thus making it a comparatively short-lived tree, as in Persia. Requiring but little care, as well as very little, if any, irrigation, it is one of the most profitable pro- ducts of the Golden State, much more so in this valley than the orange in comparison with the amount of labor expended. With the commercial de- mand daily increasing, especially since Joseph Sexton originated the Santa Barbara soft shell, the walnut still bids fair to be the basis of many for- tunes. The fact that Southern Cali- fornia has the most favorable climatic conditions for walnut-bearing is a pro- tection to the grower, the amount of land planted to walnuts in the State
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
being estimated at about 20,000 acres, yet the consumption in the United States exceeds the production.
The olive grows luxuriantly in the Santa Barbara Valley, the first olive oil produced in California having been made in Santa Barbara in 1872. Here where the winters are mild and the summers cool, lemons also grow vig- orously, to which we must add numer- ous other varieties of fruits, such as pears, peaches, prunes, persimmons, apricots, loquats, pomegranates, limes, figs, plums, strawberries, raspberries, loganberries and blackberries.
Add to this the fishing in the Santa Ynez river, where yellowtail, albicore and bonita abound, as well as the deep sea fishing where large catches of bar- racuda, tuna, sea bass and rock cod delight the angler's heart ; hunting, too, in the fastnesses of the mountains, and the bathing in a surf that is remarkable for its absence of undertow, together with the pleasant temperature of its water, the current in the channel be- ing the return one from the south, and one can readily understand how var- ied are the charms of this city nestling among the hills. The evenness of the climate, where the difference between the mean temperature of summer and winter is only twelve degrees, making open air life enjoyable the year round ; the rarely natural beauty of the scen- ery as God made it and unmarred by man, the marvelous growth of fruit and beautiful flowers, exhaust our superlatives.
Nor is one's bodily comfort forgot- ten. On the site of the historic old Arlington hotel, which was burned three years ago, has arisen a beautiful structure built after the Mission type, forming with its five acres of lawn,
shrubbery and palms a pleasing recol- lection, to which the courtesy of its inmates adds not a little. In bas- relief, on post and pillar, in all con- ceivable ways one sees a Spanish gal- leon to celebrate the coming of Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, who cruised this shore more than three centuries ago. This forms the Arlington emblem of distinction. While crowning the knoll, once known as Burton Mound, stands the Potter, built over a sulphur spring said to be of wonderful medicinal quality; a thousand feet from the front veranda dances the sea with its soft, unending murmur, and northward, rear the lofty, sheltering mountain peaks and spurs that break the force of the trade winds. Here, indeed, are comfort and pleasure combined in their most satisfying form. The pity of it all is that three thousand miles divide the Atlantic from the Pacific. But once the wine of the golden Cali- fornia sunshine enters the veins, it means, as a rule, farewell to the frozen East. From the trailing mists that hover over and shut away the channel islands to the mountain crags of the Santa Ynez and far away over hill and dale, over mountain pass and fertile valley, hovers the charm that will not rest, the charm of the mission bells, the charm of the sweet-scented idling air, the charm of God's great out-of- doors, that creates in the heart an echo forever calling and forever at peace.
"In thy valleys the winds are at rest, On thy mountains the storms are
asleep; To the soul comes the peace of the
hills, With the calm of their measureless
sweep."
Breeding Insects for the Use of the
Farmers
By John L. Cowan
FROM TIME to time, the attention of readers of newspapers and other periodicals is called to odd and curious industries, such as the Alaskan fox farm, the Texas snake farm, the Iowa goldfish farm, the tur- tle farms of Japan, the seaweed farm- ing industries of Japan, the snail and frog farms of France, the alligator farms of Palm Beach, Hot Springs and Los Angeles, the ostrich farms of California and Arizona, duck farms, pigeon farms, pheasant farms, goat farms and others that are striking be- cause of their novelty. Nevertheless, it would be difficult to find an activity that the average person would regard as more extraordinary than the sys- tematic breeding of insects, for no other purpose than to put them to work fighting other insects.
This remarkable line of effort is car- ried on at the California State Insec- tary on a much larger scale than any- where else in the world. It represents one of the very newest of the applied sciences — the science of parasitism, the object of which is to control insect pests by means of their natural insect enemies. These are either parasitic or predacious in their habits, and are al- ways small in size — sometimes micro- scopic. To breed them in confinement, in commercially important numbers, and distribute them to regions suffer- ing from the ravages of agricultural or horticultural pests, is the task set for the parasitologist.
Scientists — or those devoted to par- asitism at least — now regard it as a well established fact that every form of life has a natural check that limits
its increase in numbers. Birds consti- tute one of nature's important checks upon the multiplication of insect life; but the extermination of many species and the decimation of the numbers of nearly all species have seriously in- terfered with nature's scheme of things. It appears, too, that every in- sect species that feeds upon vegeta- ble tissues (and is, for that reason, capable of developing into a pest) has its insect foes that prey upon it. Were it not for these natural checks upon insects that devour vegetation, so great are their powers of reproduction that their numbers would become so, vast that they would devour every green thing.
Some of the checks upon plant-eat- ing insects are predaceous in their habits — that is to say, they pounce upon and devour the pest insects. Of this nature are the Coccinelidae, or ladybird beetles, of which there are about 2,000 species. These are the natural enemies of all forms of plant lice and scale insects. Sometimes the insect foes of insect pests are para- sitic. That is to say, they deposit their eggs in the grub of the pest, and as the young hatch and develop, they feed upon the surrounding tissues, and the victim (technically known as the host), is destroyed long before it reaches maturity. It might be thought that the science of parasitism had to do only with the last named class, but, as a matter of fact, parasitologists con- cern themselves with any insects that destroy other insects of an injurious nature, whether predaceous or para- sitic.
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
The most common way of fighting pests is by means of sprays, washes,
Twig infected with cottony cush- iony scale and the insects that sub- dued the scale.
m
Orange leaves and twigs with scale insects and insects bred at the Cali- fornia Insectary for their control.
dips, powders and gases, or by the laborious method of hand-picking and sometimes even by digging up plants or trees by the root and burning them. In very many cases, these methods are the only ones available. Yet every one who has tried them knows that they are clumsy, expensive, inefficient, and at best of only temporary effect. These methods have never yet resulted in the extermination or permanent subjection of a single insect pest. The orchard that has been treated with liquid, pow- dered or gaseous insecticides this year must be similarly treated next year, and every year thereafter. The mo- ment the vigilance of the horticulturist is relaxed, the pest multiplies to the proportions of an all-devouring army, and sweeps everything before it.
The advocates of the new science of parasitism claims that this recurring annual expense is unnecessary. His remedy is to find the natural foe of the pest, even though the uttermost end of the earth must be ransacked to do so. Then, when found, it must be in- troduced, bred in confinement and dis- tributed wherever needed to tight the farmers', fruit growers' and market gardeners' battles. In the absence of either natural or artificial checks, the only limitation placed upon the multi- plication in numbers of an insect pest is its food supply. Similarly, the only limitation placed upon the increase in the numbers of a beneficial species of insect is its food supply — the pest up- on which it feeds. Consequently, the more numerous and destructive the pest insects, the more rapidly will its natural check multiply, once it has been introduced and naturalized.
It might be thought that the benefi-
Bugs from left to right — Scutellesta Cyanea, greatly enlarged, female and male. Rhizabins Ventralis (black lady bird] enlarged, and larvae. Black scale on orange twig. Encyrtus flavus, enlarged. Coccophagus lecani, en- larged. Comys fusca. Leaf and twigs affected by brown apricot scale.
(By permission of California State Commission of Horticulture.}
BREEDING INSECTS FOR THE USE OF FARMERS
79
cial insects might, under certain con- ditions, multiply until they themselves became as serious a pest as the one they were designed to check. That is, one might think that after they had subjugated the pest that formed their natural food supply, they might begin to devour vegetation. However, para- sitic insects thrive only upon the in- sects that nature designed as their hosts, and predaceous insects have di- gestive organs that make it impossible for them to subsist upon vegetable tis- tues. No matter how numerous either class may become, as soon as their ap- propriate food supply is lessened, their numbers decline in proportion. When the pest disappears, they disappear al- so, because there is nothing for them to eat.
In every life zone, nature has estab- lished a balance between vegetable life, insect pest and parasitic or pre- daceous foes. As long as this balance is undisturbed, the insects that are cap- able of developing into pests (and this includes all that feed upon vege- table tissues) do no appreciable dam- age, owing to the activity of their natu- ral checks. But man disturbs the life- equilibrium established by nature in many ways. The planting and cultiva- tion of fruits, cereals, vegetables and forage crops is itself a disturbance of this equilibrium. Then in the newly irrigated regions of the West, by irri- gation and cultivation vegetation is brought forward at a time when des- ert conditions were natural. With an abundant food supply thus provided, plant lice thrive at a time when their natural checks are dormant. This is the reason why the melon aphis gained such a foothold in the Imperial Val- ley of California that the entire de- struction of the great industry of grow- ing melons, cantaloupes and cucum- bers for early shipment to Eastern markets seemed imminent.
The danger was met and averted by the scientists of the State Insectary. Field agents of the Insectary were sent to the canyons of the high Sierras in midwinter. Hunting places on the sunny sides of the canyons where the
snow had melted, these scraped away the dead leaves and pine needles, ex- posing to view millions of hibernating ladybird beetles (Hippodamia conver- gens.) These were separated from the rubbish and debris, placed in bags, and shipped by express to the Insec- tary. There they were placed in cold storage (in which condition they re- mained dormant.) Then when the melon aphis appeared in the Imperial Valley in April, the ladybirds were shipped for liberation in the melon fields.
During January, February and March of 1910 (the first season in which ladybird beetles were collected) 1,707 pounds of the insects were gath- ered in the canyons of the Sierras and shipped to the Insectary. The actual number of insects is estimated at about 43,000,000. On April 6th of the same year, 81 cases, each containing 60,000 insects, were shipped from the insect- ary to Brawley and Calexico, in the heart of the melon fields. This ship- ment of more than 4,800,000 ladybird beetles was by far the largest single shipment of beneficial insects that has ever taken place in the world. During the same month, 11,369,000 ladybirds were shipped to the melon fields, and millions more in May. These saved the melon crop; and ever since then the melon growers of the Imperial Val- ley have relied implicitly upon the scientists of the State Insectary in times of insect peril. An idea of what the saving of this minor industry means may be gained from the fact that last year's crop (1911) of canta- loupes shipped from the Imperial Val- ley amounted to 2,950 carloads, worth to the growers about $2,225,000.
Another way in which the natural balance of all forms of life in particu- lar regions is disturbed is by the im- portation of foreign insects. Practi- cally all the serious pests that worry the farmer, the gardener and the fruit grower — such as the cotton boll weevil, the San Jose scale, the Gypsy moth, the codling moth, and hundreds of others, have been brought to America frcm foreign countries. In their natu-
80
OVERLAND MONTHLY
ral homes these insects probably did little damage, because their natural enemies kept down their numbers. But in a new environment, with no natural foes, and with an abundant food sup- ply, they increase amazingly, and work widespread destruction, some- times menacing the very existence of important fruit growing or market gardening industries.
In emergencies of this kind, all known mechanical means of control are resorted to; but permanent and complete relief comes only through the introduction of the same insect foes of the pest that held it in check in its natural habitat. In recognition of this fact, California has for years kept an explorer in the field, ransacking every country in the world in search of beneficial insects. This is Mr. Geo. Compere, for years employed jointly by the Horticultural Commission of California and the Entomological De- partment of West Australia, for no other purpose than to search the world for the insect foes of insect pests.
Similar work is performed by the field agents of the Federal Bureau of Entomology, through whose agency some of the most important beneficial insects have been introduced. How- ever, California has systematized this work to a greater extent than any other State or country, and breeds beneficial insects for distribution to farmers and orchardists on a greater scale than has ever before been attempted. The real "battle of the bugs" in that State con- tinues from April until September. It begins with the sending of millions of ladybird beetles to the canteloupe fields. A little late, millions of the same species are sent to the apple and peach orchards of the State to combat the aphid pests that infest them. Through the month of May, many thousands of a parasitic insect (Comys fusca) are shipped to the apricot, prune, peach and orange orchards to combat the soft brown scale and the brown apricot scale. So it continues throughout the summer, each month witnessing the culmination of the ac- tivities of particular pests, and calling
for the despatch of cohorts of benefi- cial insects to combat those pests. No similar institution in the world has ever before attempted to carry on the breeding and distribution of beneficial insects on a scale of such magnitude.
The breeding of beneficial insects in captivity on any scale desired is a much simpler matter than might be imagined. It is largely a question of supplying an abundance of the right kind of food, with the right conditions of heat, light and ventilation for insect development. The insectary consists of glass-walled rooms arranged around a central court. Each room is heated and ventilated independently of all the others, and so arranged that the air can be pumped out and fresh air sup- plied from the basement at any tem- perature desired. The only food upon which the parasites flourish is the pest that nature designed them to control. It is, therefore, necessary to keep a number of pest-infected leaves, twigs or fruits on hand, in order that the beneficial insects may have a suffi- cient food supply.
Most insects, whether beneficial or injurious, may be kept in a dormant condition, of practically suspended ani- mation, simply by keeping them in a room with a temperature too low to promote their development. In this way, the breeding operations of the in- sectary are reduced to the lowest pos- sible terms. When a pest is inactive, its parasitic foes in the insectary are kept in a dormant condition. Just as soon as word is received that a pest has broken out in any part of the State, the foes of that pest are taken to an apartment where the proper con- dition of heat, light and ventilation may be supplied, and an abundance of the appropriate food is furnished. Very soon the dormant insects begin to awaken to activity; soon the females begin to deposit their eggs; and in a very few days the scientists in charge of the insectary are ready to make shipments of thousands of insects. These are distributed free wherever in the State of California their ser- vices may be required.
BREEDING INSECTS FOR THE USE OF FARMERS
81
Breeding is usually carried on in breeding cages, made by covering a light wooden frame with insect netting. When the matured insects issue, they alight upon the walls of the cages. The parasitologist then opens the door of the cage, and quickly places a wide- necked vial over the tiny insect. The insect instinctively flies back into the vial, and the operator repeats the pro- cess again and again until he has as many as he desires. Usually about 25 insects constitute a "colony," but in case of a particularly destructive pest much larger colonies are shipped. The colonies are released in pest-infected regions, where, of course, the appro- priate food supply of the beneficial in- sect is superabundant. Under such conditions, the beneficial insects mul- tiply with amazing rapidity, so that in a few days each colony of 25 insects is represented by millions of descendants — each one of which attacks its natural foe with inexorable ferocity.
In California, nearly all the fruits, vegetables and forest trees of all tem- perate and semi-tropic lands have been naturalized. The State, therefore, suf- fers from the ravages of pests intro- duced from almost every quarter of the globe. To combat these pests, benefi- cial insects have been introduced from Japan, China, India, Australia, South Africa and many other parts of the world. When a beneficial insect is re- ceived at the insectary, it is bred and studied to make sure that it is really beneficent in its operations; and also that it is not infested with a secondary parasite, to prey upon it and limit its increase, and thus defeat the object of its introduction.
To give a complete resume of what has been accomplished by the State In- sectary in California would require more space than can here be devoted to the subject. It may be well, how- ever, to mention a few of the pests that have been subdued.
More than twenty years ago the cot- tony cushion scale appeared to threaten the very existence of the great industry of growing citrus fruits. Shipments of oranges fell off from
8,000 carloads in one season to 600 the next. Pest-infested orange groves looked as if a snowstorm had fallen on them; and hedges, deciduous fruits and forest and shade trees were at- tacked, until it was feared that large sections of the State were about to re- vert to desert conditions. This terrible scourge was brought under subjection by several species of ladybird beetles imported from Australia, assisted by a dipterous parasite, Lestophonus icerya, and a hymenopterous parasite, Ophilosia crawfordii. These insignifi- cant appearing insects unquestionably saved the citrus fruit growing industry of California. That it was worth while is indicated by the fact that the citrus fruit crop of the State, for the season ending October 31, 1911, amounted to 46,585 carloads, worth the sum of $33,737,000 to the horticultural inter- ests. Similarly the black scale that threatened the ruin of the olive or- chards, and spread to many other varieties of fruit, is controlled by a small ladybird beetle (Rhizobius ven- tralis) and a minute internal parasite (Scutellista cyanea.) The San Jose scale has spread from ocean to ocean, and has given rise to more legislation among the various States and on the part of foreign countries than all other insect pests combined. It is no longer considered a serious menace in Cali- fornia, because when it appears in any part of the State, the scientists of the insectary ship colonies of its enemies, which quickly cause its disappearance. Several species of ladybird beetles prey upon it, materially reducing its numbers, but its most inveterate foe is Aphelinus fuscipennis, a minute hyme- nopterous parasite. The soft brown scale on citrus fruits and the brown apricot scale are controlled by Encyr- tue flavus and Comys fusca, two small internal parasites. Pulvinaria innu- merabilis, once considered a menace to the apple growing industry, has been completely subjugated by Coccopha- gus lecani. There are still insect pests in the State that can, as yet, be combatted only by means of mechani- cal checks; but it is the confident be-
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
lief of Superintendent E. K. Games of the State Insectary, and his able as- sistant, Frederick Maskew, that there is a natural check for every insect pest in existence. They mean to find that natural check, introduce it into Cali- fornia, breed it in sufficient numbers to be of economic value, and thus save horticulturists of the State the millions of dollars worth of crops now de- stroyed by insect pests, and the other millions of dollars now expended an- nually in the application of inseccti- cides.
To prevent the introduction of new pests is as much a part of the Califor- nia plan of campaign as to subjugate the old. For that purpose, ironclad quarantine laws are rigidly enforced. No vessel is permitted to enter any port in the State without having its cargo examined and inspected by the horticultural quarantine inspectors. Trees, plants, bulbs, seeds and pack- ages of fruit, found to be infected with the eggs or larvae of injurious in- sects are either fumigated or burned, as the circumstances seem to demand.
Then each county has a horticul- tural board, which appoints as many local inspectors as may be needed. It is required that every orchard be in- spected at least once a year, and the board has authority at any time to or- der the inspection of any nursery, or- chard, trees, plants, vegetables, pack-
ing house, storehouse, or other place suspected o± being affected with insect pests, and to take the necessary steps for the suppression of such pests, wherever found.
In the development and application of the science of parasitism, California is far in advance of any other State in the Union. This fact, no doubt, is due to the overshadowing importance of fruit growing in California. Neverthe- less, it may be regarded as a certainty that sooner or later every other State in the Union will be compelled to fol- low California's lead, and enlist the aid of beneficial insects to fight the billions that destroy. It is nature's way to employ "bugs to fight bugs." It is the only way that gives wholly satisfactory and permanent results.
It is estimated that the annual toll levied by insect pests amounts to one- tenth of all products of the soil. It is evident that this is an item that cuts no small figure in the much-discussed cost of living; and that insect control constitutes a problem in the conserva- tion of our national resources not sec- ondary to the preservation of the for- ests, the safeguarding of water power and the protection of our mineral re- sources. It is, in fact, a matter more worthy of thoughtful consideration than most of the concerns that occupy the attention of the solons of our State capitols.
5Y/APATHY
I have seen the face of a free, wild thing;
I have looked in eyes that have not known fear; I have watched a spirit wandering
Where it willed to go with no safeguard near.
The steadfast gaze of those clear, calm eyes — The cool intent of unconscious power —
Made the great, gray wolf kin to strength that lies In a lonely heart at the twilight hour.
BELLE WILLEY GUE.
Lest We Forget to Play
By James Edward Rogers, Secretary oi the Recreation League
of San Francisco
MAN is a play animal. He is not a work animal, as some Puritans would have us be- lieve. Indeed, man has al- ways played and will always continue to play.
Play is instinctive, elemental, pri- mary. The civic value of this play in- stinct has long been neglected, much to the loss of nations. The nurturing of this human demand for amusement is most vital to the welfare of any people, and Percy MacKaye, in his charming book, "The Civic Theatre," tersely stated the problem when he so well said: "The use of a nation's lei- sure is a test of its civilization." Pub- lic amusement is indeed public con- cern.
Communities have been quick in this country to realize that they must take care of the leisure time of young and old. The great amount of leisure that has been thrust upon the working classes is potent of much good or much harm. The use of leisure is a training, an accomplishment, so it behooves us to bestir ourselves to see that these new classes unused to leisure, rightly spend it in healthy and wholesome re- creation rather than indulging it in wasteful and wild dissipation.
Philosophers and historians in their interpretation of the rise and fall of nations fail to consider this human de- sire for recreation. Some of these wise men, like Kidd, have explained social development through the med- ium of religion. Others, like Darwin, through science. Others, like Tarde, by way of psychology. To the writer the explanation is found in how nations have used their leisure time. Those
nations have counted where the peo- ple have played hard in healthy sport and found intellectual enjoyment in wholesome amusements. Those nations have fallen that have not played, and, if they did, played wrongly.
In the dawn of history, man was a hunter and. fisherman. This was his work and pleasure. Work and play was one — the ideal combination. In the good old days, man roamed the hills and sailed his boats as part of his daily labor. Hence we find him large in frame and strong in muscle. The human race was vigorous. That individual or nation decays that spends all its time in all play or in all work. The secret of success is not in making your play simply play or your play hard work, but in making your work play.
The Greeks knew well how to play and to exercise. His city state was based upon the physical education of the people. She rose to power and glory as the leading race of the an- cients because of her wise and temper- ate use of leisure, and it was only when the Greeks turned from their health giving recreation to their health destroying vices, that the Greeks were forced to give way to the more vigorous Roman.
The Greek schools were her stad- iums; her teachers were her athletes; her heroes were her Olympic victors. Greece was the abode of the Muses: the home of poetry, dancing, music and drama. The Ivre of the poet and the harp of the singer are always found in accompaniment to the chisel of the sculptor and the rule of the ar- chitect. The very life of the Greek
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
was his day full of wholesome exer- cise and intellectual amusement that strengthened his life and filled it with full measure.
Athens flourished because her peo- ple sought wholesome pleasures. The Athenians were found at the public baths, at the Stadium, at the theatres and the music halls. The Spartans, too, triumphed because they pursued a vigorous outdoor life of exercise that trained them to be splendid soldiers.
The fall of Greece came through Alexander when her people neglected to take any interest in the pastimes of the gymnasia, and the sports of the Stadium. It came when they became slaves to the passive sensual pleasures that came from the deserts and valleys of the Oriental East. It was the in- sidious passive pleasures of the effete Oriental that overthrew the vigorous active sport of the Occidental. There is perhaps no more unique bit of his- tory than this conquering of the vigor- ous Greek — strong in limb and manly in character — by the pleasure loving Oriental — feeble in body and weak in morals.
It was the substitution of wine, of sensual dance, of painted women, of hours spent in useless debate and pleasures of banquet that paved the way for the coming of the strong Ro- man, who found his outdoor life in the woods, fields and on the marches. Rome, too, at first was untouched by the vicious passive pleasures of the East, but she, too, fell because in the fourth and fifth centuries, overcome with opulence and power, she neglected to seek the vigorous outdoor life of the field and the woods.
In place of the hunter and soldier, he becomes the habitue of dance hall and public bath. He wants hot water in place of cold water. It was with an imperial army of Romans, trained to the hardships of battle and march that permitted Caesar to make the world a Roman Empire. But it was under such pleasure loving emperors as Nero that internal decay set in and Rome rapidly declined. They were neglecting the vigorous sports. They were forgetting
how to work. They were forgetting how to recreate. In brief, their sport, fighting, work and recreation were per- formed by slaves. It was the slave, and not the Roman, that took part in the gladiatorial combats.
The Coliseum marks the decline of Rome. Here 80,000 Romans would flock and sit for hours basking in the sun to watch two stalwart gladiators fight for life. These gladiators were not Romans, but Barbarians. The Ro- mans only cared to sit and watch and to comment. Their taste degenerated into a love for gruesome killing as a form of public amusement. Like the Greeks, they also were captured by the charms of riotous living and sensual pleasure. The banquet hall and the public bath were the undoing of the Roman Empire.
Spain was the next country to rise in glory and to establish a world's em- pire at the time of Ferdinand and Isa- bella. She, too, follows the law "That the test of a nation's civilization is how it uses its leisure." For in the beginning its people were strong and virile, and interested in outdoor life and healthy, intellectual pastimes. As a consequence, they created a vigorous art and literature, for her people were energetic and strong. But they, too, with the growth of power and wealth, turned away from the active forms of recreation and dissipated their energy in foolish pleasure and passive amuse- ment. After Philip II, the decline of the Spanish Empire is well marked, and Spain, like the Greek and Roman Empires, rapidly declined when her people ceased to play hard. ^ Then in the footsteps following Spain came France as a world's em- pire. At the start, an active people full of vigor and a love of out of doors — a race that was playful and bub- bling with joyous pleasures. Under Louis XIV, France rose to the highest eminence, but soon after decadence set in as with the other countries, and she, too was forgetting to keep up the healthy, out-door recreation life of her people, gave place to England as the first power in Europe.
LEST WE FORGET TO PLAY
85
The people began to overgamble, overeat, overdress and overplay. An age of self indulgence and passive amusement set in, and seemed to take possession of all the upper classes. It is during this period of French his- tory that the student of society finds all the signs of weakness and degen- eracy that led finally to sending the Star of Empire across the English Channel to the British Isles. It was the extravagant and wasteful pleasures of the nobility that ushered In the French Republic and made possible a Napoleon.
England has persisted as the world's great power because her people have persisted in play and active sport. The English are a nation of sportsmen, and it is their sports that have saved them from early decay. In fact, the Teu- tonic races of the world dominate in politics and power because they enjoy the outdoor life and participate in vig- orous play. The insipid nations of the Orient long died with their effete pleasures. However, China, Japan, the Philippines, are rapidly adopting west- ern civilization to the extent of tak- ing over football, baseball, cricket, golf, and the active games of the child- ren of the Occident. The Teuton rows, hunts, swims, skees and fishes vigor- ously.
Yet some people would have us be- lieve that there are symptoms to-day in England that would transfer the Star of Empire across the Atlantic to the Americas. They tell us that she is following the footsteps of Greece, Rome, Spain and France in that her people as a whole are no longer re- creating. The village green is either occupied or vacant. The public house is filled. If this be true, England should hearken to the voice of history and should see to it that all her peo- ple actively participate in healthy games and sports.
There are many signs to point that the Star of Empire will settle on the United States, for the American people are young, active and strong. We are a nation of athletes. Our universities and schools produce them by the thou-
sands. We capture the world's cham- pionships. More than this, the people as a whole seek the woods, take vaca- tions, walks, and seek the pleasures of the water.
Yet we are suffering from the bad results of modern industrialism that has ushered in the concentration of large capital, large cities, the over- crowding of population that has given rise to a host of other evils, such as tuberculosis, child labor, crime and insanity. In many of our large popu- lated centers there has already leaped into being many of those same evil signs of decay that we find in the na- tions gone before when they began to neglect their leisure.
The American cities, however, have met the challenge and are to-day pro- viding recreation parks, centers, pub- lic baths, social school centers, and other forms of public amusement so as to provide for the new leisure that has been thrust upon the classes Not only are our cities providing all facilities possible to keep the young and old actively at play, but they are also, through police boards, censor and license boards, controlling and regu- lating all forms of commercial recrea- tion that cater to the recreation instinct of the race, such as motion pictures, pool rooms, dance halls, skating rinks and theatres.
The recreation development in the American civilization has been most remarkable, and it seems that the Star of Empire will long rest within our borders until that time shall come when we shall forget to play.
Millions of dollars are now being spent out of public taxes for play fa- cilities, out of door and indoor. Most of our cities have recreation commis- sions and highly developed systems with a corps of trained experts. There are over 7,000 men and women, most- ly university graduates, in this new profession of taking care of the lei- sure hours of the people. Over a hun- dred millions of dollars has been spent by our cities in the past ten years for public recreation. Chicago alone has spent over thirty million dollars, and
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
the cities of the Pacific Coast fifteen millions.
If the Star of Empire, in obedience to the law controlling nations, should continue to move west from the At- lantic to the Pacific borders of these States, it is destined to long find re- fuge in California. California, per- haps more than any other State in this country, through its communities is making ample and necessary provision for the recreation of its people. Chico, Sacramento, Stockton, Kentfield, Ber- keley, Oakland, Alameda, San Fran- cisco, San Jose, Fresno, Santa Bar- bara, Los Angeles, San Diego, and many other communities have a highly developed recreation system that in- cludes schools, parks, playgrounds and athletic fields under men and wo- men as leaders with vision and sym- pathy.
At the last assembling of the State Legislature, California took the first step toward providing for a re- creation commission or commissioner to develop and co-ordinate the recrea-
tional facilities of the State. No doubt the next Legislature will permanently establish such a commission, and it is not far distant when other States will follow suit. The recreational facilities in the mountains, rivers, shores and valleys of this State are yet un- touched, and much yeoman work is to be dene.
It looks as if the law of nations, which says that the Star of Empire shall rest upon that nation that plays long, hard and well, will hold true in California, and that in the future upon these Pacific shores will rise up the people who are destined to rule the world unless they forget, and like others before them seek decadent pleasures that lead on to vice, disease, crime and other civic disorders. It behooves us, therefore, to guard and take care of this great amount of lei- sure that has been given to people un- accustomed to it. California is doing well, therefore, in building for the fu- ture by taking care of the leisure of her people.
NOCTURNE
The lingering rose with faint reluctance sighs,
Resigns her petals to the garden bed, Blushing a deeper crimson ere she dies
For shame that all her sweetness has been shed Upon a vagrant breeze that whispered soft above her head.
Kissed by the evening breeze the primrose shy
Slowly unfolds her beauty to the sight, And turns her eager chalice towards the sky
To stay some furtive dew-drops' trembling flight And quench her golden thirst again before the East grows light.
The nightingale with throbbing notes awakes
The dreamy quiet of the charmed night In quick response, an answering quiver shakes
The rustling poplars wrapped in silver light Of moonbeams stealing through the web of mystery and night.
THEODORE SHAW.
Two Escape From Hell—No Torment
There !
By C. T. Russell
Pastor New York, Washington and Cleveland Temples and the Brooklyn and London Tabernacles
*7/i Hell he lifted up his eyes." — Luke 16:23.
THOSE who wrote the Bible did their duty well. The Old Tes- tament, covering the history of over four thousand years, tells us that all mankind at death go to Sheol — the tomb. The New Testament — written in Greek — tells the same story, using the word Hades as the translation of the Hebrew Sheol. It is in modern translations of the Bible that difficulty is encountered, particu- larly in the English. Nearly all these translations have been made within the last five hundred years. For 1300 years before the Bible had been little known, because not translated into the lan- guages of the people, and because few could have read it if it had been trans- lated.
In the Second Century the theory prevailed that the bishops were as much inspired as the Apostles and Je- sus; for they were called Apostolic bishops. Bible study was considered unnecessary, because these Apostolic bishops were on the spot to give up-to- date information and communications from God. Then followed thirteen centuries of no Bible study, during which time, as the Apostles had fore- warned, grievous wolves had come into the flock, making merchandise of the sheep for their own profit. (Acts 20: 26-31.) Gradually the doctrines be- came so mingled with errors that the
false teachers enslaved the people with fear, and then extorted money for the relief of the fears.
When Bible study revived in the Fifteenth Century, the errors were so intrenched in men's minds that their thoughts were colored respecting every feature of faith. Those who trans- lated the Bible doubtless did their best to set forth its meaning, but uncon- sciously gave little twists, in their en- deavor to have the Bible say what they thought it meant. As an illustration, note John 5 :29. There the translators have given us the expression, "resur- rection of damnation," when nothing in the Greek justified the word damna- tion. The Revised Version renders it properly, "resurrection of judgment" — trial.
When the Hebrew word Sheol was being translated, Hell was the nearest word to fit their ideas. Hence they translated it Hell as many times as possible; and only when this was im- possible did they give something ap- proaching the proper translation — the grave. There is another word for grave — qeber, a sepulchre, a mound, a monument. But do their best to make Hell out of Sheol, they could only so translate it less than one-half of the whole number of occurrences. The Revised translation retains the He- brew Sheol and the Greek Hades, say- ing, Let the reader find out what it means; doubtless he will think that Sheol is the "hot place," and so the
88
OVERLAND MONTHLY
common people will not know what an eggregious blunder was made by the theologians.
Good men who know better permit their congregations to think that they believe in a burning Hell of torture, when privately they confess to the con- trary. But they say, Let us not do good, lest evil follow — let us not tell the people, lest fewer would then come to church, and the power of supersti- tion, which holds so many, be broken. Poor men! They seem blind to the fact that these devilish doctrines are driving intelligent people away from God, from the Bible, and from the churches.
Two Escape from Hell.
The Bible tells of several who were released from Sheol, but of two the very word is used. The Prophet Jo- nah, swallowed by the great fish, was in its belly parts of three days. He calls it his tomb-belly — a sheol-belly. While there entombed, he cried unto the Lord in prayer, and the Lord de- livered him. Jesus tells us that Jonah's experiences typified His own — that as Jonah was buried in the sheol-belly of the fish, He would be buried in the Sheol of earth. As Jonah came forth on the third day, so Jesus came forth. St. Peter points out that this was pro- phesied of Jesus, saying, "Thou wilt not leave My soul in (Sheol or) Hades"— the tomb. He says that God fulfilled this by raising Jesus from the dead."— Acts 2:27.
Whoever gets the proper focus will see that all, good and bad, go down to the tomb — to Sheol, Hades, called in our Bibles Hell. The Scriptures very distinctly tell us that "the dead know not anything;" that "their sons come to honor, and they know it not; and to dishonor, and they perceive it not of them." Why? Because, as again the Scriptures say, "There is nei- ther wisdom nor knowledge, nor de- vice, in Sheol, whither thou goest" — whither all go. This exactly accords with the divine statements, "The wages of sin is death;" "The soul that sinneth
it shall die." There is not a word in the Bible for the commonly accepted thought that those who die go to Heaven or Purgatory or eternal tor- ment. All these teachings are found in the various creeds; the Bible alone tells the simple story, reasonable, har- monious.
Gehenna Fire — Second Death.
It is true that Jesus used the words Gehenna fire, and that our translators mixed up the English reader by trans- lating this word Hell, the same as Hades. But as all scholars will admit, Jesus used the word fire here symboli- cally, just as we use it, to represent destruction. Thus our newspapers tell about the great conflagration in Europe — not literally fire, but war, causing great destruction.
So Jesus pointed out that, although He had come to save men from death, and eventually by a resurrection to lift up all who had gone down to Hades, nevertheless the relief would be only temporary, except to those who would conform to Divine Law. All others under the Second Trial would be con- demned as unworthy of everlasting life and would die again. This Second Death would be everlasting, because Christ would not die again for those who would sin wilfully after being re- leased from the first sentence.
Pointing to the valley outside of Je- rusalem, used as a garbage furnace and called in the Greek Gehenna, and in Hebrew Valley of Hinnom, and also Tophet, Jesus declared that it illus- trated the fate of all wilful sinners. Dead cats and dogs, etc., were thrown into the Valley of Hinnom, Gehenna, where fires were kept burning, and where brimstone was burned to kill the germs.
It is said that criminals of the worst type, after execution, were thrown into that valley, as intimating that they would not share in the resurrection. This thought Jesus emphasized — the utter destruction, in the Second Death, of any found incorrigible after hav- ing leceived full opportunity of return
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to God through the merit of Christ's sacrifice. The Bible everywhere holds out the thought that the Church now, and the world in its trial Day future, will be in danger of Gehenna destruc- tion— the Second Death. Speaking of wilful sinners against full light, St. Paul says: "Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction." (2 Thess. 1:7-9.) St. Peter says, they shall perish "like natural brute beasts."— 2 Peter 2:12.
Release from Sheol, Hades, the Tomb.
Bible students know that Sheol and Hades could not be places of eter- nal torture; for the Scriptures say that they shall be destroyed. If Sheol and Hades are to be destroyed, how could anybody be tortured there everlasting- ly ? The clergy know these things very well, but hide them from the people. Hosea 13:14 reads, "0 grave (Sheol), I will be thy destruction!" 1 Corin- thians 15:55, "O grave (Hades), where is thy victory?" Revelation 20:14, "Death and Hell (Hades), shall be cast into the Lake of Fire. This is the Second Death."
These Scriptures mean that the grave shall not always triumph over the human family, that mankind will be delivered by Messiah's Kingdom from the power of the tomb, that we can rely upon God's promise that ul- timately Hades, the tomb, will be de- stroyed in the Second Death, sym- bolically represented by the Lake of Fire. Note that the symbol is ex- plained— "the Lake of Fire, which is the Second Death."
In other words, all that are in their graves, in the tomb, the prison-house of death, shall ultimately be set free by the great Deliverer, the glorified Christ, who already has laid down His life as the Ransom-price, that sinners might not perish, but have the oppor- tunity of everlasting life.
This opportunity has yet come only to the Church, and to her by promise. Her covenant is to follow in her Mas- ter's footsteps unto death, and the promise is that she shall have a super-
ior resurrection, because of greater trials of faith and obedience to sacri- fice. "The gates of Hell shall not pre- vail against her." (Matthew 16:18.) That is, as the Heavenly Father raised up Jesus Christ from the dead, so the gates of death shall not prevail against the Church.— 1 Cor. 15 :42-44.
With the world it will be different. Everything under the New Dispensa- tion will prove that the reign of sin and Satan has terminated, that the Reign of Righteousness has begun. They will find themselves, not only coming back from the tomb, "every man in his own order," but gradually raised out of imperfection and weak- ness back to all that was lost in Adam and redeemed at Calvary if they will follow instructions. The great prison house will give up the prisoners; for He who died on Calvary obtained the key of Hades, as He tells us.— Isaiah 49:9; Revelation 1:18.
The Rich Man in Hell.
The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus would seem very simple if our minds had not been perverted with error; but, filled with the perversion, many find this parable difficult to un- derstand and are inclined to throw away the entire Bible because of it. We hope to make the matter very plain. To be thorough, we must note the fact that lovers of the eternal tor- ment doctrine insist that this is not a parable, but a literal description. Let us see. Does it seem reasonable to say that with nothing said about his character as being either mortal or immortal, but simply on account of his fine clothes, his sumptuous food and his riches, a man should be eternally roasted? Is that a logical interpreta- tion?
Similarly, it is not said that Laza- rus was moral or immoral, but merely that he was poor, ate crumbs at the rich man's gate, and was full of sores, which dogs licked. Is it reasonable to suppose that sores and destitution, without character, would be qualifica- tions for Heaven ? Surely not ! If all
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rich people go to eternal torment, if all people who wear fine linen and purple clothing and have plenty to eat must suffer to all eternity, what an aristo- cratic place Hell would be, and how full it would be! On the other hand, if only those who have sores and dogs to lick them, who lie at a rich man's gate and eat crumbs from his table, go to Heaven, how few of us will get there! Moreover, if it is a literal statement, then Abraham here is a lit- eral person, as well as Lazarus; and when Lazarus would get into his bosom, how many more could Abra- ham hold without letting some drop? Surely this is not a literal statement, but a parable. Let us treat it from this viewpoint, remembering that a par- able never means what it says. For instance, in the parable of the Wheat and Tares, the wheat does not mean wheat, but "children of the Kingdom;" the tares, "children of the Wicked One." Accordingly, the Rich Man does not mean a rich man, but stands for some class; and Lazarus does not mean a poor man, but stands for some class. Let us thus apply the matter.
Interpretation of the Parable.
»
We suggest that the Rich Man of the parable represented the Jewish nation, rich in God's favor. They "fared sumptuously" as no other peo- ple did. To them belonged the prom- ise of the Kingdom, represented by the purple raiment of royalty. As a peo- ple they had the purging of their sins, typical justification, accomplished on their annual Atonement Day. This was their "fine linen," representing that righteousness was thus imputed to them as a people.
In A. D. 70, the Rich Man, the Jew- ish nation, died, when the last vestige of their government was destroyed by Titus, the Roman General. The nation has been asleep in Hades ever since, though the Jews have been very much alive and have suffered many things, especially amongst professed Christ- ians of the tare class. Zionism, which has sprung up within the past thirty
years, is the revival of hope that the Rich Man will be resurrected from Hades; and present indications point to this as a matter of speedy accom- plishment— as soon as the fulness of the Gentiles shall have come into" Spir- itual Israel.— Romans 11 :25-32.
Lazarus represented outcasts who desired favor with God, but were "aliens and strangers from the com- monwealth of Israel" — Gentiles. They had no table with Divine promises from which to "fare sumptuously every day," no share in the promises of roy- alty represented by the purple robes, no "fine linen," representing justifica- tion from sin. Those things belonged to the Jew exclusively, until his na- tional rejection and the subsequent opening of the door to the Gentiles, that they might become fellow-heirs with the saintly Jews, and followers of Jesus in the glorious things of God's arrangement.
As the Jew died to his favors, so the Gentile died to his disfavor. As angels carried Lazarus to Abraham's bosom, so the early Jewish Church, messen- gers of God and Christ, received be- lieving Gentiles into full fellowship as brethren of the Seed of Abraham. This figuratively is described as Lazarus in Abraham's bosom — treated as his child.
The Rich Man represented especi- ally two tribes — Judah and Benjamin. Proportionately, the five brethren would represent the ten tribes. The parable represents the Rich Man as saying, I have five brethren. May not something be done for them? The answer shows that only Israelites could be meant — "They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them." Only the twelve tribes of Is- rael had Moses and the Prophets. The Gentiles had them not.
"In Hell He Lifted Up His Eyes."
The dogs licking the sores in the parable represent that the Lazarus •class were companions of dogs — in- deed, "dogs" was a name which Jews commonly gave Gentiles. Jesus Him-
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self used it, and gives an illustration of how believing Gentiles occasionally ate crumbs from the Rich Man's table. The Syrophenician woman re- quested healing for her daughter, but Jesus declined, saying, "It would not be proper to take the food from the children's table (the Jews) and give it to dogs (Gentiles.) She answered, "Yes, Lord; yet the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs." Then Jesus said: "O woman, great is thy faith!" and He gave her the crumb of relief which was not hers by right; for He testified, "I am not sent save unto the lost sheep of the House of Israel." The time had not yet come for giving Gentiles a place in God's family as children of Abraham.
Who cannot see in this beautiful parable a teaching in full harmony
with God's Wisdom, Justice, Love and Power as it has applied during this Gospel Age? The parable does not show how God's favor will return to the Jew in due time; other Scriptures, however, clearly teach this, as we have pointed out. May our eyes of under- standing open to a true knowledge of God's Word, and to a true appreciation of his glorious character! Then we shall love him better, and serve Him, not from fear, but as dear children.
I offer free of charge a booklet writ- ten with a view to making these figu- rative statements clear. Whoever will address me — Pastor Russell, Brooklyn, N. Y. — requesting a copy of a pam- phlet about Hell, will be promptly served free of charge. That pamphlet will clearly and concisely settle all your questions.
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"The Scarlet Plague," by Jack Lon- don, author of "The Call of the Wild," "The Mutiny of the Elsnore," etc. Illustrated by Gordon Grant.
The author's fantastic conception in this book is the present civilization ef- faced by a great plague which sweeps over the earth. Only a few scattered human beings survive the terrible ca- tastrophe. The scene is laid in Cali- fornia, and there some score of the survivors gradually meet each other, intermarry, and form the nucleus of a new civilization. The story opens with one of these survivors recounting his awful experience during the plague to one of his grandchildren, a lad clad in skins and skilled in the use of a bow and arrows for procuring the necessary food for the family.
It has been suggested that out of this great European war a great pestilence may arise. The germs of this plague set free, penetrate to every clime, and most of those who have not surren- dered up their lives in battle perish with the disease. With our present specialized knowledge — one man, for example, is versed in letters but knows nothing of machinery, another is a skilled mechanic, but is wholly ignor- ant of farming — what would be the result when only a few are left to grapple with the complexities of mod- ern culture? The relapse of civiliza- tion into barbarism is a theme which, as those familiar with Mr. London's style will at once see, is admirably suited to his powers as a novelist. He has well realized its tremendous pos- sibilities. "The Scarlet Plague" is not only one of the most vivid and grip- ping books Mr. London has ever writ- ten; it is, at the same time, a tale of very great present significance.
Price, $1 net. Published by The' Macmillan Company, New York.
"Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons," a Personal Experience, 1864-5, by Homer B. Sprague, Ph. D. Bvt-Colonel 13th Connecticut Volunteers, Sometime Professor in Cornell, and President of the Uni- versity of North Dakota. This narrative of prison life differs from the usual run of such experiences in that it is careful to put the best pos- sible construction upon the treatment of Union prisoners by the Confeder- ates, and to state and emphasize kind- ness and courtesies received by the Confederates from their opponents. The book is accurate, as it is based on a diary kept from day to day by the writer; all his references are from the best obtainable records. The author sheds illuminating side lights on the terrible expedients exercised in war, where thousands of men at a time are allowed to perish. Read in the light of the present war, this book shows how terrible and cruelly exacting is the toll of life on the combatants ; that war is Juggernaut destroying life relent- lessly to attain certain ends.
$1.50 net. Published by G. P. Put- nam's Sons, New York.
"Pals First," by Francis P. Elliott.
Danny and the Dominie are outcasts — escaped convicts both, but both men of originally good antecedents. The Dominie is a graduate of an English university and was once the pastor of an English church. Danny, too, has had a college education; he was for- merly a bank teller, and is now a pick- pocket. The Dominie is old, sour, and cynical. Danny, on the other hand, is young and full of the joy of life; hardened, indeed, to his own kind of wickedness, but essentially clean- minded and with something of un- tainted boyishness in him. The older
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man is wholly dependent upon the younger, and between the two there exists an affection that is genuine and deep. Plodding along a country road in Tennessee, they find themselves at nightfall in what seems a houseless re- gion. Groping forward through the darkness, they find an iron fence through which they see first a moving light and then the dim outlines of a large manor. In response to their hail an old negro carrying a lantern comes to the closed gate outside of which they are standing. Danny borrows a match of him, and as its flare lights his countenance the negro in joyful surprise greets him as the long-absent master of the house, who has been given up by some of his friends for dead. This effective beginning with its immediate appeal to the reader's curiosity, with its suggestion of mys- tery and its complete surprise, prom- ises an intriguing story, and the story that follows fully meets one's expec- tations.
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"Rabindranath Tagore": A Bio- graphical Study, by Ernest Rhys. Mr. Rhys is a critic of recognized standing, and more than ordinarily sympathetic in his appreciation of Tagore's viewpoint; he has written a volume that every reader of Tagore's wcrks will wish to know, a volume that not only shows us the man behind those works, but one which adds not a little to their own significance. Mr. Rhys begins with the story of Ta- gore's boyhood, after which he tells us of his youth and young manhood, and then his later years. Interspersed with the purely autobiographical are found interpretations of the books now so widely known and loved, with an indication in each case of how they express the ideas which their creator held on the big matters of life and death at different periods. Mr. Rhys also shows Tagore's relation to other Indian writers and to the civilization of his own land. Illustrated with eight half-tone plates, this little study,
as Mr. Rhys modestly calls it, is pos- sessed of an interest that is more than passing to all who keep up with the trend of modern letters.
Published by the Macmillan Com- pany, New York.
"The Panama Trade and International Trade Competition," by Lincoln Hutchinson, of the University of California.
In this volume the author sketches in broad lines the economic and com- mercial geography of the two trade areas which the new waterway con- nects. He analyzes the interchange of goods between the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean basins and seeks by an examination of the trade statistics of the past ten or fifteen years to illus- trate the tendencies of development both as to specific goods and specific countries. These tendencies, already manifest, will, in his opinion, be modified or accentuated by the opening of the new route in such a way as to offer opportunities, especially to manu- facturers, to expand their foreign mar- kets. The statistics which he pre- sents afford many illustrations as to the classes of goods in which and the countries with which efforts to promote trade give promise of greatest success. The volume is one of primary appeal to business men and students interest- ed in the commercial aspects of the canal. There have been many books about Panama, but this is the first one of authority to treat of its relation to trade.
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"The Myths of the North American Indians," by Lewis Spence, author of "The Myths of Mexico and Peru." With 32 plates in color by James Jack.
Students of ethnology and folk-lore will at once recognize in this volume a work of prime importance. Although treating a theme by no means new to literature, it brings to bear a scientific viewpoint, and sums up the results of painstaking investigation, of the North American Indian, which will prove of lasting value. The author frankly con- fesses his indebtedness to the United States Bureau of Ethnology, stating that he has found of utmost value its treatises, "written by men who pos- sess first-hand knowledge of Italian life and languages, many of whom have faced great privations and hard- ships in order to collect the material."
From this and other authoritative sources the author has produced an extremely thoughtful work, and also one of genuine entertainment. He first considers the divisions, customs and history of the Indian race ; next its mythology; and finally presents a ser- ies of Algonquin, Iroquois, Sioux, Paw- nee and other tribal legends. This is followed by a bibliography of sources, of twelve pages — very valuable for succeeding investigators — and a care- ful glossary and index. The above summary will serve to indicate the thorough-going character of the book, but gives no idea of its exterior at- tractiveness. It is well-made in every respect.
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The author has a shrewd understand- ing of the American girl as she is, and a clear conception of what she lacks. Commendable as is the American young woman for her wonderful adapt- ability, she has in a marked degree the fault of that particular virtue — a fact that sometimes becomes glaringly ap- parent, when she is seen, as she often is, in a European environment. Her rampant individualism is an American trait that needs modification through service and through truer enlighten- ment. Times have changed in Amer- ica, and the American girl must change with them. Through co-operation and co-education she must learn to do her part, and to attain to the fulfillment of an ideal based upon sex equality, but by no means upon sex similarity.
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"Productive Vegetable Growing," by
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Vegetable growing shows up very well in comparison with gold mining as a wealth producer in this country. Its total value in one year is estimated at $216,257,068. Of this grand total,
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"In the Oregon Country," by George Palmer Putnam, author of "The Southland of North America." With an introduction by James Withy- comb, Governor of Oregon. The mission of this volume is to convey something of the spirit of the out of door land it pictures — a land loved by those who know it, and a land of limitless welcome for the stranger who will knock at its gates. The book suggests not a few of the many attractions that may be encoun- tered in Oregon and the State adjoin- ing it, the references to which attrac- tions are woven together with threads of personal reminiscence pertaining to characteristic phases of the Western life of to-day. The chapters chronicle the author's enthusiasm for the land they concern, hint the pleasurable pos- sibilities of its out-of-doors, and offer a picture of the new West of to-day in the preparation for its greater to-mor- row.
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"Germany in the Nineteenth Century"
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This Second Series of Lectures con- tains contributions by Professor A. S. Peake on Theology; Dr. Bernard Bo- sanquet on Philosophy, and F. Bona- via on Music. With a Prefatory note by T. F. Tout, M. A. The lectures on these subjects were delivered in the university during the course of last spring, and by the summer of this year all three studies were in type. The sudden outbreak of the present calamitous war frustrated the hopes of those who had steadily believed that the best method to promote interna- tional good will was to dispel the cloud of suspicion by the spread of sound knowledge. If no longer a friendly eirenicon, the book remains as an his- torical document, which retains what- ever validity it ever possessed, not- withstanding the frustration of the hopes with which it was originally put forth. It may still have its value as suggesting what a group of British scholars, trained in various schools of learning and different branches of knowledge, thought, and in essentials still think, was a just tribute to pay to the activities of the German nation.
8vo, $1.25 net. Published by Long- mans, Green & Co., New York.
"How to Use New Thought in Home Life, A Key to Happy and Efficient Living for Husband, Wife and Children," by Elizabeth Towne.
Every one of the thirty-nine chap- ters in this book was written in re- sponse to a definite human need. Mrs. Towne has here answered almost every conceivable question relating to the home life, to the problems of hus- bands, wives and children. She shows how to apply New Thought in the home to promote happy and efficient living, to make the home a successful and happy co-operative colony versus an individualistic hades. The author is the well known editor of Nautilus Magazine. Published by Elizabeth Towne Company, Holyoke, Mass.
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$1.50 net; postage extra. Published by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.
"Merry Andrew," by Keble Howard, author of "Lord London," etc.
Chronicles the ups and downs of life in a great metropolis, as experi- enced by a young college man with
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"Victoria," by Martha Grace Pope.
Victoria's development from an un- tried girl into a charming woman of culture who justifies her husband's choice, is the central theme of the story. There is, however, much of in- terest beside. The delineation of homely types introduced is particu- larly well done, honest, slow moving, good natured Amos Greer; wholesome, red cheeked Ray, who loves her more sensitive sister without trying to un- derstand her; the unfortunate Doak Tibbs, whose avoirdupois proves the undoing of his romance; and Grand- mother Greer, straight-backed, effi- cient, and tart of tongue, whose doc- trine of "praise to the face is open disgrace," is badly taxed by her pos- session of two such comely and de- sirable granddaughters as Ray and Victoria.
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ALCMEAVY
By Arthur Wallace Peach
I hear the voice of evening on the hills,
Like sound of pilgrim pipes on distant ways; Sweet from the misty meadows' silver haze
Brook answers brook with song, and childish rills
Are calling each to each. There night distills
Her dews, and 'mid the rushes each pool lays Its chart of starry skies; there evening plays
Upon the trees a song that soothes and thrills.
At evening's summoning, what sprites arise, What pixies, fairies in the woodlands meet
Of course cannot be known or even guessed, For they no more are seen by profane eyes; But magic is abroad and fays discreet,
When common ways with twilight's charm are dressed!
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Founded 1868
AUGi •
MONTHLY
BRET HARTE
VOL. LXVI
San Francisco, August, 1915
No. 2
Joseph T. Goodwin in the '60's. James W. E. Towrtsend (Truthful
James), in the early '80*$.
Bret Harte and Truthful James
By Robert L. Fulton
IN ONE of Bret Harte's earliest and wittiest poems, Truthful James takes the floor and introduces him- self to an admiring world in these lines:
"I reside at Table Mountain, and my
name is Truthful James. I am not up to small deceit nor any
sinful games; And I'll tell in simple language what
I know about the row
That broke up our society upon the Stanislow."
James appears, at intervals during the succeeding dozen years as re- porter, author and interpreter, speak- ing always in the first person, each effort different in manner and each of high excellence in its way.
In his all too brief literary career he drops no hint as to his identity, but it is very evident that the poet in-
William R. Gillis
tended him to shine among the Ar- gonauts of California as one of the red-shirted brotherhood, made immor- tal by his pen. Harte himself gives no suggestion of biography, and yet he gives Truthful James a distinct in- dividuality, worthy a place alongside the characters created by Dickens, Cooper and Washington Irving. He reflects his surroundings most vividly and partakes of the pioneer life in a manner both wholesome and genuine. He sums up as a diamond in the rough a large-hearted, guileless child of na- ture, patient, generous and brave, with a regard for the realities and a humor that dominated him completely. He was a healthy animal with faults on a big scale, such as should go with his boisterous disposition and the turbu- lent times in which he lived. In con- stant contact with armed men, he rec- ognized danger as quickly as any one, but was ever ready to take a chance in fun or in earnest, and he measured the outcome with a practiced eye. He was no hypocrite, no caterer to the crowd, no fakir. He loved life and never let an opportunity go by. He
shared his confidence with all comers, regardless of the conventionalities of polite society. He was nobody's fool, and mingled, a welcome guest, in groups widely separated in interest and taste. He had a knock-about edu- cation which stood him in good stead, and take him all in all, he was a man of parts, a John Bunyan, unconverted; an original character, of great strength and fine consistency, with an artless method of moralizing all -his own. That he makes no mention of his own lapses from the straight and narrow path is quite in keeping. He refers to those of his friends with an entire candor, taking them as a matter of course, and doubtless looked upon his own in the same indulgent way.
He did not become addicted to prose, perhaps fortunately, but in Harte's poems he shows the even tem- per and penetrating mind of the phil- osopher. Henry Childs Merwin, in his life of Harte, says:
' 'Plain Language from Truthful James' is remarkable for the absolute- ly impartial attitude of the writer. He observes 'The Heathen Chinee' nei-
Angels Camp, Calaveras County, Cal.
ther from the locally prejudiced Cali- fornia point of view, nor from an ethi- cal or reforming point of view. His part is neither to approve nor condemn — but simply to state the fact as it is, not indeed with the coldness of an historian, but with the sympathy and insight of a poet."
Whoever he was in real life, it is certain that Truthful James was more than a passing acquaintance of Harte's — although the latter nowhere gives the slightest intimation of the man he had in mind. A legend grew up, a little at a time, that James Norman Gillis, a pioneer miner operating near Table Mountain, was the original of the picture, and with no one to con- tradict it, the belief became general, much to Mr. Gillis' dissatisfaction. He only heard of it after it had become rather widely spread, and he did not like it. It is easy to see how such things travel. Mr. Linscott, an am- iable farmer living near Tuttletown, stood a cross-examination by the writer quite patiently for awhile, then said:
"When anybody like you comes along we tell him what we think he
wants to know. I have told many peo- ple that Jim Gillis was Truthful James, and that my children went to school to Bret Harte in the little Tut- tletown schoolhouse, although I never saw Bret Harte in my life. He left here long before I came, if he was ever here at all."
Harte's historians, Merwin, Clem- ens and Beaseley, were led to believe that Gillis was Truthful James, al- though his close friend, Pemberton, does not mention him as such, nor does Mark Twain, who associated with Harte just at the time when he was working up his materials for the poems in which he makes Truthful his model. Mark, who cabined with Gil- lis for four months, speaks of him in- timately, but never as Truthful James, nor at all in connection with Bret Harte. The truth is, there was no in- timacy between Harte and Gillis. Steve Gillis, the present owner of the Jackass Hill mines, tells the tale ex- actly. He says:
"Bret Harte and my brother made but a very slight impression upon each other, and that not very favorable. Their intercourse began when Harte
92
OVERLAND MONTHLY
James Norman Gillis in the '80*5.
limped along the road one hot after- noon while Jim was digging into a pocket of gold quartz he had just dis- covered, right by the wagon track. Harte was tired, sweaty and foot-sore. He was not dressed for the part, and his tight patent leather shoes were punishing him severely. He wore fine linen and a dressy suit, surmounted by a fashionable hat, the most unsuitable gear he could have found. After a few remarks, Jim led the way to his cabin and invited Harte to make him- self at home, which he did for a cou- ple of days. He said he was looking for a job as teacher, but had about made up his mind to give it up and try to get to the Bay. He had no money, and when he took the stage for Stockton, Jim loaned him twenty dol- lars and gave him a letter to me, as I was setting type in the National of- fice. He was a poor printer, never drawing down over ten dollars a week. The next time he saw Jim was after his appointment as Secretary of the United States Mine. Jim was talking with Judge Hardy, afterwards im-
peached for treason, when Harte walked by. He spoke to Judge Hardy but took no notice of Jim. The slight piqued Jim, and he followed along to the Mint, where he demanded the pay- ment of the old loan. Harte assumed a lofty air and asked what the amount was, making a check for it. When Jim waked up to find himself dubbed 'Truthful James' he was very angry, and did a lot of canvassing to stop it. Neither he nor Harte ever pretended it, and Jim resented being placed in that category."
Fred Sutton, of Sonora, a very in- timate friend of Gillis, says the mis- take occurred when Charley Parsons, another friend, gave a city reporter the materials for a write-up of the men of the mountains, in which he al- luded to Gillis as Truthful James. Mr. Sutton says:
"I thought nothing of it at the time, but shortly afterwards a brother of mine visited me, and meeting Gillis, I said: 'Hello, here comes Truthful James,' and introduced him. He opened up on me with a tongue lash- ing, and wound up by saying, 'Fred, I believe you are a friend of mine, but if I thought you meant that I would never forgive you. You know very well that I am not Truthful James. Bret Harte means Jim Townsend be- cause he's the damndest liar in the mountains, and you know it. Charlie Parsons put that on me, and I won't forget him/ "
Following up this clue, the first in- quiry reached the wrong Mr. Parsons, who replied: "I don't know Jim Gillis and never heard of Truthful James."
The proper Mr. Parsons said: "I don't know how my friend Gillis came to be called Truthful James. I always thought it was a libel."
At the time of his death the Sonora Democrat said: "Jim Gillis came to California in 1850 and drifted to the mines. On Jackass Hill he built a cabin, in which he, Mark Twain, Pren- tice Mulford, Lyon Jim Townsend, and other brainy fellows fraternized. Gillis always positively denied that he was Truthful James of Table
V
Recent model of Bret Harte
Mountain, passing that honor on to Townsend, a clever newspaper man who made lying a profession and a fine art."
Mr. Gillis was undoubtedly justified in passing the honor along to -Town- send. The latter was just the man to impress such a one as Harte. He was a few years older, a brother printer as well as a writer, an original genius and an adventurer of class. He claimed to be a forty-niner, and a Townsend does appear in the list of Argonauts sailing from Boston and
landing in San Francisco in October, 1849, but no one could trace Jim back, and he did not try, so it carried little weight. He and Harte undoubtedly worked alongside each other at the case just after Harte came down from the mountains, and for him, at that time to put "Plain Language from Truthful James" and "The Society Upon the Stanislow" into the mouth of Jim Townsend seems the most natu- ral things in the world to the men who knew them both.
One thing is certain, and that is that
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
Steve Gillis, Jackass Hill, California. The pistol at the left is one carried by Mark Twain all through the mines.
Bret Harte never saw nor took part in the times of which he wrote so won- derfully. He got everything at sec- ond hand. By the time he came to California the age of romance had passed into history, and everything had settled down to a dull routine. The placer diggings had petered out and quartz mining had assumed but little importance. Farming was re- ceiving some encouragement, and manufactures were just beginning to attract capital. Journalism was at a low ebb. and the magazines came later. James King of William had only recently been murdered for his sup- port of law and order, and the outlook, from a literary standpoint, was gloomy. Harte himself drew the pic- ture. In "Bohemian Days" he says: "The press was sober, materialistic, practical — when not severely admoni- tory of existing evils; the few smaller papers that indulged in levity were considered libelous and improper. Fancy was displaced by heavy arti- cles on the revenues of the State, and inducements to the investment of capi- al. Local news was placed under an implied censorship, which suppressed
everything that might tend to discour- age or caution capital. Episodes of romantic lawlessness or pathetic in- stances of mining life were carefully edited — with the comment that these things belonged to the past, and that life and property were now as safe in San Francisco as in New York or Lon- don. Wonder-loving visitors in quest of scenes characteristic of the civili- zation were coldly snubbed with this assurance."
Under conditions such as these, with none of the inspiring influences which would have appealed so strong- ly to his imagination, we can imagine the brilliant Bret Harte turning to his young men associates and listening with eager ears to their tales of the Argonauts, still fresh in their memo- ries. He had seen just enough of the mountains and mines to inflame his imagination, and with ample time and an unoccupied mind he was hungry for more. Mr. Roman, the founder of the Overland Monthly of which Harte was the first editor, often said, and he re- peated it when interviewed at the time of Harte's death:
"I don't believe Harte ever served in the mines. I have seen interviews with men who said they knew him in Jimtown, but I never could place him in any mining camp. He may have walked through the mines somewhere ; I think it quite possible he did. He was not a man to go to work or rustle around and mix with the miners. He was a dandy : a dainty man : too much like a woman to rough it in the mines. He wanted everything just so. I fur- nished him far more materials about the mines than he ever gathered him- self. I sold books through the mines from Shasta to Mariposa from '51 on for several years."
Apropos of the belief of Mr. Roman and Steve Gillis that he had only glimpses of the Sierras, Harte's story of the avalanche carrying The Three Truants down the mountain-side, in the course of which : "They seemed to be going through a thicket of under- brush, but Provy Smith knew they were the tops of pine trees," shows
The Stanislaus River below Jackass Hill.
how innocent he was of mountain lore. An avalanche sweeps trees before it like straws, breaking them off or bending them to the ground, never gliding along gracefully among the branches, bimilarly, his laulty geo- graphy and fictitious names show that he knew but little about the country. That he owed much to Truthful James is very evident, though he gives him no credit. The man mentioned by so many as being the original was James W. E. Townsend, who, himself, ad- mitted the soft impeachment. He had every qualification, and was consid- ered the genuine James by all of the old residents along the Mother Lode. Steve Gillis knew him well, and says : "We stuck type together on the Golden Era in 1859. He came to Cali- fornia when he was about twenty- three years of age, though he claimed to be thirty-five. That was one of his foibles, always pretending to great age. He came around the Horn in a clipper ship, and claimed that she; had been chased by the Alabama in the South Atlantic Ocean. He was in the Indian Mutiny, and took gold from
the British. He lived in Sonora off and on, working as type-setter, re- porter and editor, and started a few papers himself. He was a great poser — and would enjoy nothing better than to be known as Truthful James. He "had a rude wit and a demonstrative manner which brought him to the front in every crowd."
William R. Gillis, another brother of James, in a letter dated Tuttletown, Nineteen Fourteen, says:
"When I became acquainted with Jim Townsend, in the neighborhood of sixty years ago, those who were most intimate with him speculated as to whether he was thirty or three hun- dred years old. From his own ac- counts of his journeyings and experi- ences, up and down and around the world, many were led to believe that he lived contemporaneously with the Wandering Jew, some expressing the belief that he was that unhappy indi- vidual himself. But later that sur- mise proved incorrect, as he died in ninety-five or six. He was the origi- nal of Bret Harte's Truthful James. His last venture was the Homer In-
£
Joaquin Miller in camp in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
dex. He guaranteed it to be the highest paper on earth, altitude thir- teen thousand feet. Among the sam- ples of his style I remember:
" It is so dark in the Table Moun- tain Tunnel that a piece of charcoal looks white.'
" 'Our townsmen are complaining about mosquitoes. Friends, if you want to see mosquitoes, go up to Alaska. They are so thick up there that you can swing a pint cup through the air and catch a quart.'
" 'A tramp stole a pair of pants off a scarecrow in a corn field. A swarm of hornets had built a nest in their broadest part, and when he tried them on he got out of them in one time and two motions.'
' 'Some of the butchers were brag- ging about their fat cattle when Lou Dean said : 'Why, boys, I have a steer down in my pasture, and he is so fat that when he lies down and breathes on the grass I can cut the timothy and use the stalks for candles.' "
Joseph T. Goodman, the patron of
Mark Twain, writes from Alabama:
"I first knew Jim Townsend in 1858 when I was a compositor on the Golden Era. He drifted in one day, claiming to have been first mate on a sailing craft he had just left after sailing the seven seas for years. He
St. Ann's Church, Columbia, a few miles east of Table Mountain. Truth- ful James was married in this church. The ground was immensely rich, and 'the miners dug out the gravel right up to the edge of the graves, and it is said that some miners ivere caught tunnel- ing under them.
Mark Twain
may have worked with Bret Harte, for I went East in August, 1859, and when I returned, Harte was learning to set type at my old case. The next I knew of Jim he held a case on the Enterprise in Virginia City, Nevada, for some years. On May 1, 1864, he married Lizzie Lindsay, a beautiful girl from Dayton, Nevada. Lizzie and he quarreled and separated, and I don't remember seeing him again un- til I met him in Carson in 1888. He was a native of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. I am positive of that, for he used to boast repeatedly of having thrashed Thomas Bailey Aldrich when they were schoolmates there. This would show that he was about Al- drich's age, and he was born in 1836, though Townsend always claimed to
be an antediluvian. He had a wonder- ful gift of original expression, and was about the biggest liar I ever knew."
The reader can imagine the effect upon one of Harte's disposition of his association with a roysterer like Town- send — a world traveler, who knew every country and every people, a free lance in all matters intellectual, a natural entertainer, with an eye for the picturesque in man and nature. He must have afforded the young writer a stimulating companionship, almost an inspiration. With no settled aim in life, and none of the high literary associations which came later, what more natural than that Harte should pattern Truthful James after the bois- terous, talkative boomer, bursting with epigrams, with pithy anecdotes and
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
bizarre comparisons, with no rever- ence for anything in this world or the other two?
That Harte was able to develop such materials into the marvelous tales that he gave to the world seems even more wonderful than it would have been for him to write them from his own observation. That he re- quired some such companionship is shown by the fact that later on he tried the same methods upon the Con- tinental, the New Englander and the British, with but partial success. That he concealed the sources upon which he drew was characteristic of the man.
It is not easy to fix the extent of his relationship with Townsend, but it is reasonable to suppose that they spent more than a little time together. Both had recently been over the same ground in the interior; both were en- gaged in journalism, with ambition as writers ; both were bachelors, with idle time on their hands.
Aside from any distinction reflected by his more gifted associates, Town- send had a most interesting personal- ity. It is no injustice, not even a re- flection, at this late day, to give a true account of Mr. Townsend and to picture him as he really was. If he could be consulted, nothing would please him better than to contribute to the gayety of nations in the manner he is made to do in the comments of his former associates. He would demand no apology from those who paint him
as he really was in order to set his- tory straight. In his lifetime no one was readier than he to enlighten his hearers upon his own idiosyncracies and adventures. Life seemed one long joke to him, and Rabelais himself never was quicker to see its grotesque side. He was usually mellow by the time evening came, but never morose or dull. No one ever saw him dis- couraged or heard him complain. He became very deaf toward the last, and said in cheerful tones: "The damned old ears have lost their draft."
During the early eighties he was as- sociated with the writer in Nevada, and at that time he was obsessed with the flying machine. Long before it •came into use he dwelt by the hour upon the wonders it was to perform, 'carrying passengers and mails, pick- ing up loads of merchandise, car and all, razing cities and sinking ships in time of war were to be only parts of the day's work.
One sunny summer morning a mod- ern Yuba Bill straightened his single- line over the backs of his ten mule team, and started his wagon train for the new gold camp of Bodie, two hun- dred miles from the railroad. High up on the seat beside him was perched Truthful James; wide awake as ever, shouting his "Good-bye, boys" to the early birds along the sidewalk. The outfit disappeared in the dust of the desert, and he was seen no more in Washoe.
This being the Panama-Pacific Exposition year, in which everything of merit in California is being reviewed before the world, the management of Overland Monthly has decided to republish in its pages the stories and poems that made the magazine famous through the genius of Bret Harte. He was its first editor, and it was his keen discernment and originality which gave the contents of the magazine that touch of the spirit of the West, and especially of California, which made it distinctive and enkindled the enthusiasm of discerning readers the world around. These early contributions of his cover sev- eral years; they will be published monthly in the order in which they appeared, beginning with the first issue of Over- land Monthly, July, 1868.
To a Sea-Bird
By Bret Harte
Sauntering hither on listless wings,
Careless vagabond of the sea, Little thou heedest the surf that sings,* The bar that thunders, the shale that rings —
Give me to keep thy company.
Little thou hast, old friend, that's new, Storms and wrecks are old things to thee ;
Sick am I of these changes, too ;
Little to care for, little to rue — I on the shore, and thou on the sea.
All of thy wanderings, far and near,
Bring thee at last to shore and me ; All of my journeyings end them here, This our tether, must be our cheer — I on the shore, and thou on the sea.
Lazily rocking on ocean's breast,
Something in common, old friend, have we ; Thou on the shingle seek's thy nest, I to the waters look for rest —
I on the shore, and thou on the sea.
COLUMN OF PROGRE.TJ1
ON THE MARINA
PORTION OF CAL1PORKIA STATE BUILDING SHOWING ON RIGHT
PANAMA-PACIFIC
INTERNATIONAL EXPOSITION
SAN FPANG1JCO
OPENED FEBRUARY 2O» CLOSED
NICHE IN THE COUPT OF THE TOUR
World's Advance Shown in Exhibits
By Bently Palmer Illustrations by Courtesy of Standard Oil Bulletin.
IF ONE inquires what striking epoch does the Exposition represent, what flaming progress does this giant exposition predicate, the best answer is, perhaps, that it foreshad- ows an era of marvelous forms of in- tercommunication and of transporta- tion. Since the Exposition opened, on February 20th, the first telephone mes- sage across, the continent passed be- tween Mayor Mitchell of New York and Mayor Rolph of San Francisco. The conversation was made possible by many improvements in electrical installation, one of the improvements being the marvelous audion amplifier which relays telephone messages. Many electrical experts are of the opinion that it is only a question of time, and possibly of a very short time when men will be able to utilize the wireless for the long distance tele- phone. The utility of the present long distance telephone passes the bounds of comprehension. It is one of the important discoveries since man has been upon the earth.
At the time of the great exposition in St. Louis the aeroplane was com- paratively new to the world, and yet in the brief space of ten years the aerial motor has become a tremendous agent in the most fearful conflict ever waged. Since the Louisiana Purchase Exposition the utility of the automo- bile has been developed until it is to- day a tremendous factor in the indus- trial life of the country. The era of the motor truck is here, and it, too, is a formidable agent in warfare. Throughout the nation the automobile
is becoming almost a part of the rail- road. Automobile freight and passen- ger lines are serving as feeders to the railroads, bringing otherwise remote country districts into direct touch with the world's markets. Of such vast importance is the motor truck industry that it is given recognition by a sepa- rate building at the Exposition.
In the domain of education the world has advanced as rapidly. Child- ren are taught more and more to think and to execute for themselves. In art American painters are producing work which, in the opinion of notable crit- ics, will bear favorable comparison with the many masterpieces of the Old World. But there is another form of art which finds distinct expression in the Exposition. Indeed, several of the greatest American and European art critics declare that there is revealed in San Francisco the birth of a new ideal in American art. The revolu- tion exists in the Exposition itself, in the wonderful co-ordination of its architecture, sculpture and landscaping — and one might also add in the co- ordination of two other notable fea- tures, that of the night illumination and the marvelous use of colors upon the vast exhibit palaces. The fairy- land produced by the exquisite en- semble of the color, illumination, sculpture and landscaping, will no doubt have its effect in more beautiful cities, parks, public buildings and pri- vate homes throughout the United States. At the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago sculpture was freely used as a form of outdoor deco-
SHERRY FRY
SCULP TOP
GROUP AT BA/E OP FOUNTAIN, COURT OF ABUNDANCE
ration, and there followed throughout the country a growing appreciation of its surpassing decorative value when employed in conjunction with great ar- chitectural works. Since the wonder- ful world's Columbian Exposition, more and more attention at each suc- ceeding exposition has been devoted not only to sculpture but to the adorn- ment of public buildings and of cities.
TOWER OF JEWELS FROM THE PALACE OF HORTICULTURE
l
GROUP AT BATE OF FOUNTAIN. COURT OF ABUNDANCE
The great exposition at Chicago marked a Renaissance in American ar- chitecture, and now it does not seem too much to predict that the even more beautiful Exposition at San Francisco will be followed by a recognition of the aesthetic effect produced through the marvelous co-relation of architec- ture, sculpture, color and landscaping. Is it too much to expect that we may
I
SHERRY E TRY
.LPTOTSj
I
STATUE OF CERE.T IN THE COURT OF THE FOUR J-EATONJ'. BY EVELYN BEATRICE LONGMAN-
AYE OP PAlWBETWEEN EXHIBIT BUILDING/ .AND JOUTH GAT2DE1W
see whole cities bound together in a wonderful color scheme ? And if such a result may not be accounted as one of the world's most notable achieve- ments, what phase of an art so univer- sal in its application that it may be employed to render their homes and cities more beautiful may constitute an achievement?
In their exhibits the world's nations display the products in which they ex- cel. Grouped in eleven huge exhibit palaces are the examples of the art, science and industry of the forty-two nations officially participating, while further displays are presented by in- dividuals or groups of individuals from every civilized country. The eleven palaces are those devoted to- Fine Arts, Education and Social
DETAIL OF FOUNTAIN IN THE COURT OF ABUNDANCE
OT PROGPE// SHOWING PALACE OF MINE/1
Economy, Agriculture, Food Products, Mines and Metallurgy, Transportation, Manufactures, Varied Industries, Ma- chinery and Horticulture. The art ex- hibit is notable. From Europe has come an especially fine collection, em- bracing a loan collection of many paintings of the old masters. The French exhibit in the Fine Arts Pal- ace is the finest ever shown in the United States. Among the foreign ar- tists represented are Bonheur, Corot, Millet, Velasquez, Reynolds, Romney, Tissot, Gainsborough and others. In the galleries given to American artists is a room for John S. Sargent, a James McNeil Whistler room, displaying the vivid and beautiful pyrotechnics of that Bernard Shaw among artists; the late William Keith, master of Califor-
Ate/^ SCULPTURE
OUTiTIDE rf . ^ -^ PEJ-TIVAL HALL
^
DETAIL OF FOUNTAIN" IN THE COURT OF ABUNDANCE
THE PACIFIC OCEAN A. STER.LIKC5
S C U L P T O
nia landscape, also has a room, and also Joseph Pennell, the foremost etcher of the day. Other famous Americans rep- resented by special rooms are Frank Duveneck, William M. Chase, Childe Hassam, Gari Melchers, Alson Skinner Clark. In the Palace of Fine Arts the visitor becomes im- pressed with the frequent ver- satility of men of genius. Rob- ert Fulton, inventor of the steamship, is shown to have been an artist of note, engrav- ings by Paul Revere are dis- played, and also sculptures by Samuel F. B. Morse,' inventor
ION TO TTUR.AL ON OPPOSITE PA6E
THI/ FRIEZE. DECORATING THE HL DORADO FOUNTAIN" THE WORK OF MRJ1. HARRY PAYNE. WHITNEY
THE J-OUTH
A STERLING
of the telegraph. Had not this famous man become discour- aged when starting out in life he would assuredly have been known as a great sculptor. A section shows the historical development of art in Amer- ica. In the Palace of Fine Arts you note the influence of foreign schools upon Ameri- can art, and also of the action of American art upon Euro- pean and other schools. Our inspirations have passed across the oceans. But the Palace of Fine Arts is in it- self an inspiration, a temple worthy to hold the works of
"LEAVING HOME," MURAL DECORATION BY FRANK V T>U MOND
"P12ARRO'
LEO LENTILL1
5CULPTO RJ
COLONNADES OF FINE ART/ PALACE,
the artists of the day. In the Palace of Liberal Arts behold the Audion Ampli- fier, most extraordinary of innovations, and not more imposing than a suit case, which, as has already been mentioned, plays a great part in the transcontinental telephone. On the opening day of the Exposition, thou- sands of persons upon the grounds heard the voice of President Wilson as he spoke into a telephone at Washington. By the use of the "amplifier" the Presi-
ITALIATT TOWER AT ENTRANCE, OF COURT OF FLOWERJ1
dent's voice was sent in re- lays across the continent.
In the Liberal Arts Pal- ace, too, the government makes a noteworthy exhibit of that most enduring and useful of engineering works — the Panama Canal; color photography, an invention of the present era, which is being rapidly developed, flashes the brilliant hues of nature into the permanent records of the camera; ar- tificial limbs of such utility that the wearer has almost the full use of the fingers,
END OF THE TRAIL"
JAMEX EAUL FRA.TER.
TOWER OF JEWELS
PALACE OF HORTICULTURE.
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
are exhibited. The United States Gov- ernment here occupies a fourth of the entire floor space of the huge struc- ture. The operation of the various State departments, including those of the Treasury, War, Navy, Commerce, Civil Service Commission, Department of State and the Commission of Fine Arts are shown.
Those who have followed the work of the American Red Cross Society will have an especial interest in its display. Models show the methods of applying first aid to the injured, field camps and hospital equipments, and disclose the methods taken by the so- ciety to remove unsanitary conditions and the spread of disease.
Classified as among the Liberal Arts exhibits, though on the "Zone," is a marvelous working model of the Panama Canal. The exhibition covers five acres of ground. Its main feature is a huge topographical map of the Panama Canal Zone, giving a complete ocean to ocean perspective, such as one might obtain from an aeroplane. Through the center of this giant relief map, on which the tropical foliage of Panama, the streams and lakes of the Canal Zone are reproduced, runs a re- production of the Canal itself. Tiny vessels seemingly proceed under their own steam to the locks, but in reality by magnets beneath the water. You watch the miniature craft passing from ocean to ocean, from a movable plat- form situated high above the map, and making a complete circuit of the five acre display in twenty-three min- utes. At each of the theatre chairs upon the platform is a telephone trans- mitter, through which you may hear a lecture describing each object of in- terest as you pass it. A startling im- pression one gets of the trip is a mat- ter of psychology. When first you take a seat on the platform, you are looking simply at a vast colored model of the Panama Canal Zone, with its miniature mountains, rivers, lakes, lighthouses, steamers, wireless tele- graph towers in operation and distant vistas. But as you look longer and longer, the mountains seem to rise,
the colors of the panoramas give the effect of mists, the distances become increased, parts of the map hundreds of feet away seem hundreds of miles. You watch the tiny craft and locomo- tives as one gazes from the top of a mountain. You feel that you are real- ly looking at the canal itself. You leave the great enclosure with a little gasp of wonder and surprise.
In the great Palace of Food Pro- ducts the visitor learns of new meth- ods not only in cooking and preparing foods, but the means taken by various regions, the great State of Washington among others to produce food — Wash- ington notably to increase the supply of fish.
A fish hatchery is shown in opera- tion. The salmon is revealed in all the stages of its life, from the spawn until it is delivered to the cannery. Dozens of tanks containing living fish of many species are shown. There are also trays containing the fry sal- mon from the time it develops from the spawn until it becomes a minnow. One marvels at the resourcefulness of nature, and also at the supreme vi- tality of the breed which attains de- velopment from such fragile begin- nings. The Food Products Palace is, indeed, popular with women visitors. It is even more popular with the men. It is a Paradise for the children. A young San Francisco lad, lured by the glories of the fair, ran away from home and secured a job on the Zone. In the Palace of Food Products he managed every day to pick up enough to make three solid meals. Such a boy eats the dishes of all the world. He becomes a cosmopolite in menus with no bills to pay nor waiters to tip. He eats enchiladas, tortillos, tamales from Mexico, Han Far cake from Can- ton, Hebrew matzos and noodles, Sen Pei or tea cakes from Japan, Perosky and Vereneke from Russia, and innu- merable other dishes to delight a far more exacting critic than a small boy. If he wishes something in Southern style he may get from a smiling, ex- pansive mammy, corn pone, corn bread and hoe cake. In the Food Pro-
WORLD'S ADVANCE SHOWN IN EXHIBITS
111
ducts Palace is a three story flour mill in operation, and you may see the cooks of all nations. Without the ef- forts of the types they represent, king- doms would fall, dynasties perish from the earth. If the cooks of the world went on a strike the European war would come to a standstill. In this palace the latest cooking devices, including fireless cookers, are dis- played on an elaborate scale. The foreign nations have made wonderful exhibits here. Argentine, Spain, Italy, France, Cuba, Japan, Greece, Great Britain and Portugal make elaborate displays. One of the finest of the Japanese exhibits is a tea garden with tea plants, and the pickers reproduced with a fidelity that makes them seem real. In this palace also are shown a thousand steps in the preparation of food.
Another marvel is the mighty Palace of Transportation. Here are vast and comprehensive displays of the great railroad and steamship companies. Here we behold huge Mogul locomo- tives, giant electric engines, the air- ship that first flew over the Panama Canal Zone, trolley lines, switch- boards, insulating cloths and papers, sections of transcontinental liners, showing the actual size and furnish- ings of their first, second and third cabin rooms. Hundreds of models of steamships attract the eye, an espe- cially interesting model being that of the Brittanic, Great Britain's hugest passenger carrier, a vessel of 50,000 tons. The epochs of transportation are exalted. An early Wells-Fargo coach that carried passengers and treasures across the Western plains before the railroad came suggests the historic contest between the painted warrior and the daring stage drivers. The automobile exhibit is a drawing card. In one section of the building skilled mechanics assemble an auto- mobile before your very eyes. So rapidly is the machine put together that you do not wonder why there are so many autos. The work goes hum- ming. Each mechanic performs a dif- ferent task. Each has to finish his
part within a given time, for the ma- chine travels along a runway, and each of its parts must be assembled by the time it reaches a certain point in its course, when the next man does his portion. And almost miraculously the whizz wagon is completed. In Trans- portation Palace, too, you find a United States railroad mail car, with a crew of Uncle Sam's most efficient men in charge. In another portion of the Palace is a giant globe, the world in miniature, with the routes of a great railroad system shown on its ex- terior. By an ingenious method of lighting the visitor may follow the train from San Francisco to St. Louis. Inside the globe is a series of illumi- nated panoramas of interesting places along the line, while the vault of the sphere is illuminated with lights that twinkle like stars. The visitor is al- most persuaded he is beneath the heavens. But the marvels of the Pal- ace of Transportation may only be hinted. The operation of giant loco- motives is shown, the exterior cover- ings being frequently removed so that one may see just how the steel horse operates internally. All in all, the amazing, whizzing, moving exhibits thrill every visitor. When Vincent As- tor, idling with his bride up the Paci- fic coast in his palatial yacht, the Norma, finally dropped anchor off the Esplanade, he made a bee line for the 'Palace of Transportation, visited the cabs of the great locomotives, pulled the throttles and asked questions of the experts in charge that would have entitled a division train master to promotion.
The Palace of Mines is a wonder. One of its most interesting and most appropriate feature is a coal mine be- neath the floor of the Palace. The visitor in descending the shaft feels the thrill that accompanies the descent into a real mine. One feels himself sinking toward the center of the earth with only a cable to prevent the car from plunging thousands of feet be- low. The mine, as a matter of fact, is below the level of San Francisco Bay, for the ground upon which the Palace
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
stands was dredged in from the har- bor. Once in the mine you behold all features of a mine's equipment, including drilling rigs, coal cars, min- ers' lamps and miners at work. The various features of the equipment are provided by large mining corporations and represent the last word in the methods employed in mining. Life savers, too, are shown at work. Boom! That is an explosion! Gongs ring, an ambulance dashes to the portals of the palace, and a crew of life savers, clad in non-combustible suits, with faces protected against deadly gases, rush to the mine to save the lives of the victims imprisoned far beneath the earth. The scene is dramatic, and it draws the crowd. Thousands who do not know the daily program imagine an accident and follow those who are rushing to the mine.
If you have a boy who is interested in mining take him to the Palace of Mines. He will see the great electro- lytic refiner reproduced in miniature, lead and zinc separated from their complex ores by every practical method used — dry and wet ; he will get a wonderful vision of the possibilities of the mining industry, of its fascina- tion, of the vast mineral wealth of the United States and of many other lands.
One could not make a complete in- spection of all the exhibit palaces in six weeks, and it would take an ency- clopedia to describe them. If you were to spend five minutes at each ex- hibit it would take you two years and three months to view the marvels on display at San Francisco. There are in the main palaces alone forty-seven miles of aisles. Thus the reader will pardon a more abridged description of the Palace of Horticulture than its merit deserves. The building is to- day the eighth wonder of the world. It is surmounted by a colossal dome of opalescent glass 186 feet in height and 152 feet in diameter. Beneath the dome is a vast conservatory — a section of tropical jungle. Cuban Royal palms 65 to 75 feet in height, Royal Creole palms 50 to 60 feet in height, rise like
giant hairbell ferns; their delicate fronds are as exquisite in detail as the traceries of hoar frost upon a winter's window. In the shelter of the palms rare tropical shrubs, plants from the far corners of the world, brilliant flow- ers and strange exotic growth trans- port the visitor to a new realm.
Opening into the prodigious conser- vatory, huge enough to contain the greatest palms that ever grew, are four lesser conservatories. Here are rare orchids from the dark forests of the Philippines, the Strait Settlements, and from the tangled jungles of Borneo. In other parts of the palace is illustrated the commercial side of the fruit indus- try, showing 'all steps in the manipula- tion of the product from orchard to consumer. Japan has an interesting fruit display. Americans show a can- ning factory in operation. Nearby, or- anges are boxed and crated and sent to any address you wish. Also in the palace are roses, the rarest in all the world, entered in the International Rose Growers' Contest, with a prize of $1,000 for the grower who originates the finest new rose. Among the con- testants are growers from France, Ger- many, Scotland, Ireland, England and the United States.
In the Palace of Education across the Avenue of Palms, you will see classes of school children reciting. Other children are in the palace, too; sick or ailing little ones at the office of the United States Health Bureau, brought by their parents to receive at- tention from the Federal physicians in charge. One mother came with her child a thousand miles to secure treat- ment from the Government physicians. Daily hundreds of children are brought to this exhibit. It is the expression of a new thought in public work; it heralds the day when the movement inaugurated by the United States to care for its future citizens will find expression, among other ways in the appointment of a resident physician for every great public school in the United States. The Department of Immigration, on the other hand, shows the care which is taken of the immi-
WORLD'S ADVANCE SHOWN IN EXHIBITS
113
grant and his family. In the Philip- pine section we learn with what amaz- ing success the Government has edu- cated its Filipino wards. Another of the absorbing exhibits in the Educa- tion Palace is that of the Rockefeller foundation. Here are shown, among other features, the steps taken by the Rockefeller foundation to eradicate the hookworm in the South. In the past three years, through the efforts of the foundation, more than one million cases of hookworm have been cured, and the former patients, no longer without vigor and shiftless, approach the tasks of life with new confidence and energy. All these features lead to a single goal: The keynote of the Palace of Education and of the whole Exposition is social service. A fam- ous motto, originated by Commodore Vanderbilt, has been altered. "The Public Be Pleased," is the shibboleth of to-day. More and more are the schools and other agencies dedicated to the education of children. One can hardly realize how extensive is the wonderful work accomplished in this field.
But we have almost omitted to touch upon the thundering Palace of Machin- ery ! Here giant motors, huge engines, great presses, turbines, pumps and endless batteries of other modern me- chanical devices employed in the world's industrial conflict are exhibited
in operation. One of the most valu- able of all is the Diesel engine, cap- able of propelling the largest steam- ship through the ocean. Already the ship without the smoke stacks is mak- ing its appearance on all seas. Whether or not it will supplant the steamer as the steamer has supplanted the wind- jammer no one may yet predict with certainty.
And now to another building. Do not neglect to visit the Palace of Ag- riculture. It is far from being dry or prosaic. It holds some of the most interesting, and, of course, necessary exhibits ever shown at a world's ex- position. Here you see the world of agriculture in epitome; here you see the basis of all life; here you learn not only what the United States has accomplished in agriculture, but what the Argentine, Australia, New Zealand and other far away lands are achieving that the earth may yield more boun- tifully of her harvest. Hundreds of agricultural implements, which operate with almost human intelligence, are shown, among them being a seeder, which selects the seed for the soil, de- posits it and covers the earth.
And at this the most surpassing of expositions, you learn how closely are the nations related, and that a great invention, a wonderful work of art, or the production of the best potato grown is a work for all humanity.
Emperor Norton
By Fred Emerson Brooks
Monarch by choice of the Golden West,
Usurper by right of his own behest,
What though his reign was a world-wide jest —
This wise old Emperor Norton — There never was monarch so kindly as he, So lordly in rags, democratic and free, With never a battle on land or sea —
Our good old Emperor Norton.
His soldierly dress we can never forget, With its tarnished and old-fashioned epaulette, A white plug hat with a side rosette —
One suit had Emperor Norton — With a monster cane as a regal mace, Entwined with the serpent that tempted the race, This monarch of mystery held his place,
Majestical Emperor Norton.
Exacting no bounty but moderate need,
While the light of his life was an excellent creed,
For he never had done an ignoble deed,
This raggedy Emperor Norton. There never was tribute more modestly laid, By banker and merchant more willingly paid, And never were titles more cheerfully made
Than those by Emperor Norton.
All men are usurpers somewhat in their way, But the high and the lowly acknowledged his sway, And even the children would pause in their play
With greetings for Emperor Norton. No King ever ruled better people, I vow — Those old San Franciscans were peers, anyhow — For none but the noble would smilingly bow
To a mock-regal Emperor Norton.
In Aarceau's Cabin
By Alex Gardiner
THE WORDING of old Mar- ceau's "night letter" made me smile, for he had thriftily sent the full fifty words for his money; but I fairly chuckled at its meaning, which exactly fitted but three — Trackin' snow. Come.
A tracking snow! Jules had prom- ised to v/ire from Cedar Spur when he judged the weather signs propitious; but I had not hoped for a tracking snow so early; and now it seemed im- possible— looking from office win- dows, through warm, foggy rain, down on a ridiculous throng of scurrying um- brellas. But from Seattle eastward into the Cascades temperature — civi- lization, too, in a sense — varies in- versely as the square of the altitude; and that rises.
I called up Schuller, who was to accompany me on this hunt; his big voice boomed over the wires : "Should say I can be ready! Meet you at the depot."
Joyously rough-garbed and gun- burdened, we caught an early morning, fussy little train, which jolted us by nine o'clock into Cedar Spur, where Marceau or his pardner, Ben Otway, was to meet us. Neither was on hand ; but the storekeeper knew something.
"Oh, you're Mr. Boman," he said. "Why, Ben isn't up there right now. He was down and took out some hunt- ers up to Fir Lake ; but Jules, he aimed to be in to-day. He sent that wire to you down by Joe Pew, and a list of stuff he wants. It's all ready; but he hasn't showed up yet. You just wait around, though, gentlemen; Jules'll breeze in before long."
But waiting around ill suited the mood of two office slaves unchained on a tracking snow — a tracking snow in
the middle of the open season. The Lord had given it; and with three hours' "chinook" the Lord might take it away. We took that view of it, and descending upon the local liveryman, readily convinced him that we thought aright and had five dollars.
As he was cranking Cedar Spur's one automobile, the storekeeper came running with two lusty cans of to- bacco of a brand notoriously power- ful. "Jules might not want to come down right away," he explained, "once you're up there; and he might "get along if he run plumb out of any- thing else of his list, but not without this ; so if you can take it "
"Give us a bunch of cigars, too," laughed Schuller. We had little to carry besides our rifles.
The machine rolled us merrily up beyond the last logging outpost, then churned and wallowed through the few miles farther of alleged road. Thence we must walk, by rough pack trail, winding up and around the base of a timbered great mountain, for both Ot- wav and Marceau, as a side issue to their serious business of trapping, hunting and some guiding of favored ones, were homesteaders, bucking a corporation land grant for their richly forested claims.
It was a hard climb for soft men; but our hearts were light as our pack- sacks. When leveler stretches allowed him to breathe, Schuller lifted up the voice that was of the Teutonic portion of his mixed inheritance and poured down the dark aisles of fire and hem- locks a melodious jumble of rag-time foolishness and German solemn song, until I, too, must carol a little, an<* both of us cackled at the absurd anti- climax, for I am no songbird.
3',
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Beyond the snowline we were im- peded slightly, and for the last two miles the flakes were thickly falling, dimming the failing daylight; but we could still make out the trail when we came into Marceau's clearing, and the cabin loomed black before us, an oc- casional spark flickeding above the flue of the great stone fire place, and, fronting us, a cheery fire glow from window and open door.
Jules was at home, then. I thought a big, hungry thought of his biscuits and his venison. In the schoolboy humor that had pervaded the whole trip I signed to Schuller; and we sneaked in the soft, new snow to the doorway; then I leaped the step, and with a foolish great yell, landed square on the threshold.
As if to the jar of this boisterous entrance, the dimly burning logs on the hearth rolled together, sending up a brilliant flare which lighted all the cabin interior and revealed broken chairs, overturned table, scattered fragments of a smashed lamp ; and be- yond this horrid, still disorder, in the far corner under the antlers where Jules racked his guns, some sprawling dead thing lay.
With a smothered "God!" Schuller strode in abreast of me, and together we eased the body over.
It was Jules Marceau — had been. No — I thought he still lived, though all his blood seemed out upon the floor. He was badly cut on arm and shoul- der, and the real trouble we soon found in a long slash on his left side — we could not tell how deep, but that looked serious.
Well it was that I knew the cabin, knew where to jump for water, ban- dages, light. We jerked out his bunk from the bedroom lean-to, hustled him onto it, and did what we could with the rough tools and knowledge at our command ; for that worst wound it was not much. I forced whisky down him, I thought, and I thought he breathed thereafter more perceptibly.
"One of us must burn right out for a doctor," I said; and Schuller nodded, soberly.
"And it had better be me," he added. "That gives you the worst end of the job, and I hate to suggest it; but you know the place here and the man. If he comes to, that might help — especially if he doesn't eventu- ally recover. You might find out v/ho did it."
"I'll find out someway — sometime!" I promised. "Poor old Jules! A bet- ter-natured old cuss never breathed."
"Yes, you must go, Fred. Beat it down to Pew's farm — where the ma- chine left us. They'll give you a horse or go with you on to the log- ging camp. You can 'phone from there. Better wait there and come back with the doctor. Make him hurry."
Schuller grabbed the lantern and started without another word; but at the door he paused, came back, and with an apologetic lift of eyebrov/s, got his rifle from its case. Bidding me "good-bye, then, and good luck!" he departed, loading it as he went.
For the first time, then, it occurred to me that danger might still be upon the mountainside. The mystery of this thing that had befallen Marceau weighed suddenly upon me. My first thought when the firelight had flick- ered over him, so sprawled out and still, had been of fierce beasts; al- though there is scarcely, in the Cas- cades, any wild thing open to such suspicion. But neither was murder there, within the scope of my imagin- ing. Had it been in the city, now; but who would come here to kill this sim- ple hunter — and so nearly succeed?
Though old Jules was a light wisp of a man, he was tough, with absurdly long, muscular arms and sturdy legs; all the disorder of things declared that he had defended himself ; and his own rifle had been under him where he lay — a short, powerful autoloader, in skilled hands nearly as handy at close quarters as a revolver. I could not im- agine any knife-fighter rushing Jules while he held that "gatling." I had seen him perform with it.
I picked it up now. It had been fired, but still held three cartridges. I
IN MARCEAU'S CABIN
117
found one bullet hole in the front wall ; I searched for ejected shells, and found two, which it seemed to me would indicate that one bullet at least had hit its mark; and the position on the floor of those empties, taken with my knowledge of the rifle's action, told me that Jules had fired from about where we found him.
But there my detective ability ended. I found a bloody palm-print on the door jamb, and could make nothing ,»f it. I stepped outside — still, I admit, carrying the wounded man's rifle. Snow was yet falling; and though I made out many tracks about the cabin, covered but not obliterated, they might have been anybody's, and probably were mostly Jules' own. Re-entering, I saw the knife, in a corner by the fireplace — a strong hunting blade, red and wet to the home-made haft; but I recognized it as Jules' property, and his wounds were certainly not self- inflicted.
For the present, at least, I gave it up.
I built up the fire, and set about cooking myself a meal; but first I loaded the automatic full, and my own gun, too, and laid them in different and equally handy places. I do not know what I feared — don't know that I was exactly afraid as yet; but I — well, my experience included a little battle once, in Cuba, and a big train wreck nearer home; but there death came with a great, important bustle : I had no stomach for this business.
Having choked down what food I could, I loaded a corncob, and began the all-night vigil; and — have you ever lam wakeful in some lonely place, near, but not too near, to the roar of waters ?
A tremendously energetic creek rolled down the mountain just beyond that cabin — so far beyond that it dulled no effect in my ears of my friend's gasping breath, of any creak- ing of the cabin structure or other mysterious night sound whatsoever, yet near enough that half-merged in its rhythmic tumult was every weird, un- happy sound my horror stimulated
mind could conjure. I heard faint, far- distant shots, persistent and spaced out in time, as by some man lost and signalling distress; I heard the wail and the sobbing of human grief and the scream of a tortured horse. Again it was a woman's scream, and then the lonely, horrid cry of a couger; and that might be, but I knew it was not. I heard faintly the clamor of mis- handled bells; and then I heard the mournful melody of a hound cold-trail- ing or lost from its master.
It came to me to wonder at the ab- sence of Marceau's dog, for he and Otway had always each kept one and ran them together. I thought likely that both were with Otway on that Fir Lake trip, which the storekeeper had said engaged him now; but I listened again and went to the door.
When I stepped outside, the song of falling water gained much in vol- ume; but there was no other sound. The night was but more utterly still for a whisper of air in the tree-tops. The snow had ceased; even all clouds were gone from a sky that seemed so high there, where the narrow horizon was peaks and ridges, right overhead; and the tiny stars looked cold and far, for, though no moon was visible above the mountain rim, it was moonlight, and with that elfin brilliance given only when God adds to his full moon a clear sky, too, and snow new-fallen. Each near tree stood out from its fel- lows, its sombre beauty accentuated by light drapery of snow; but the tim- bered mountain opposite was too far off to show its finery; it loomed blue- black against the lighter sky.
I shuddered and went in. There was no change in Marceau.
In effort to shut out troubling fancies I sorted a dirty magazine from the woodbox; but common sense suggested that it really might be well to watch. I watched — until the cheap little clock on the shelf became an insult in its maddening sloth. I coveted the whisky but did have just sufficient will to put that from me ; and presently I thought I heard the faintest scratch upon the cabin door. I knew this, too, wa»<?
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fancy; yet I listened with swift-pound- ing heart beat until my patient fetched a louder gasp than common, and brought me back to earth, for I won- dered if he had died. But he breathed on as ever, and like as ever to the im- age of death. I poured a little of the liquor in his throat, instead of mine, and felt the better for it.
Again I could not choose but listen. Again I heard a slight scratch on the door, and it seemed very real; but so impatient had I become with imagi- nation's tricks that I could not quite believe it was. Again I sat forward, one hand gripping the rifle on the table before me, and all my abnor- mally sharpened senses projected into the eerie moonlight without the walls.
Some alien thing seemed rustling all around the cabin; and then I thought I heard a low-pitched whine; and some of this I knew was fancy, but some I had to think was not, even before a sudden soft shock came against the door, trailing off into pad- ding sounds.
That brought me up standing, with weapon poised. But all was quiet. I think I was less fearful now, in knowl- edge that I faced some tangible thing to fear. I took one forward step, but paused, as from out in the clearing some little way rose clearly the shud- dering, long drawn howl of nothing more alarming than a sorrowful dog.
I damned myself quite cheerfully, and, stepping outside, whistled and called "Cap." A gaunt, huge-looking hound slunk into the moonlit open, and approached suspiciously; it was Mar- ceau's dog. I coaxed him to me; whereupon another appeared — a black and tan that I knew for Otway's pup.
Could Ben be coming, I hopefully wondered. Unlikely at this midnight hour; and yet the pup behaved oddly. He refused to enter, although thor- oughly at home there, as I well knew; and it was evidently not that he feared me. Finally, I shut the door on him.
Cap., for his part, took one cast about the room and went snuffling to the bedside. There he plumped down, aimed his muzzle at the rafters, and
began to howl. His disciple answered him from outside, and again I tried to coax him; but though he came several times thereafter to scratch on the door he would not pass the sill.
I soon relinquished hope of Otway's coming, choosing to think that the dogs had been hunting on their own account. Cap. was company enough, anyway ; though after his first outburst he cried only at intervals, puttering between whiles uneasily about the room. He would not be still, and I certainly had no heart to punish him for his honest woe.
He had been with me perhaps an hours, perhaps less — with the distrac- tion of his antics, I had been watch- ing the clock less closely — when at last he came to me of his own accord; and I talked to him, as a man will alone with a smart dog, of where he had been and of this thing that had be- fallen Jules, his boss; but Cap. cared little for my notice. He shivered un- der my hand, then raised his head in a low-voiced, heart-shaking wail almost in my face.
As I straightened away from him, my eyes came to bear directly on the tiny window, near beside the door. It was about the level of a tall man's head outside, and quite naked of cur- tain or blind.
Once more that night my chair crashed backward, and I was crouched warily with cocked gun in my hands, for gazing in at me, intently, through that dark square was a white, dis- torted human face, its eyes wide and dull. It was corpselike.
What subconscious hold on sanity kept me from pumping bullets through the wall, or whether I was just too horrified to crook a finger, I do not know; but I did nothing; and the face slipped slowly, very slowly, below the ledge. Again came the soft thud as of some creature against the door, and the scratching. Not until it ceased did I realize that this was but the pup outside. And would he act just so, if any hostile thing were out there — if that thing were any way uncanny?
I turned to Cap. It occurred to me
IN MARCEAU'S CABIN
119
that Cap's hackles would stand on end to-night at the presence just through that wall of even a living man who was strange to him; and, living or dead, a face I had seen; yet the dog was barely interested. Like a memory in- stead of recognition of a thing seen but the previo'is ^econd, it came to me that the face in the window had been Ben Otway's face.
Ben Otway?
I bent over the body slumped down in the snow beneath the window and kicked away the crowding dogs. It was Otway; and his face was indeed like that of death. I dragged him in with difficulty, for he was heavier than Jules — a powerful, big-boned old chap. He was quite unconscious.
He was shot below the heart. One rib, at least, was smashed, but I thought the bullet had followed it around. I was not sure. If so, I rea- soned, he must be mighty tough and mighty lucky; perhaps he might prove lucky and tough enough to live.
His dog consented to come in now; and I realized remorsefully his canine reasoning in staying out, yet appar- ently scratching to come in. It was I who had been the "dumb" one.
Doubtless the dogs had found Ben before I first heard them; but where had they found him? I remembered those shots I had thought I heard, and had set aside as my own imagining, remembered the strange cries I had thought, too, were imagined; but sure- ly, he could have come no distance af- ter the shock of such a wound. I could scarcely credit my own senses that he had taken three consecutive steps since receiving it.
Soon as I had the new patient cleansed and bandaged on a second bunk, I went out again. And I went armed, and this time took no shame to it. It seemed entirely possible that Ben Otway had been shot somewhere on that mountain since I had come to the cabin.
But his wavering back-trail led from the window only some six or eight rods, thence a stride or two to one side the trail ; and there, like the "bed"
of some cruelly wounded deer, was the blood-stained depression in the snow whence he had lately risen. I could make out no tracks coming into it; but he might have come up the trail, scored with the snowed-over plowings of Schuller and myself ; he might have already been lying there when we came. There was no way of knowing. No way of knowing how or at whose hands either he or Jules came to this sorry pass. Otway's presence here at all? aside from his hurt, but deepened the mystery that I could not but feel it might be incumbent upon me to solve, for these two elderly woods- dwellers— Otway little less than Jules — had given me great measure of their friendship ; and I believed neither had a close relative.
I was in no position to say if either had an enemy; but they were not men to make enemies. Harmless old souls — at least they seemed old to me. Both were, I think, around fifty, but with the tough resilience of seasoned forty; and if both had been present I could understand both getting hurt in the quarrel of either, for they were broth- ers to a degree blood brothers seldom are.
When I returned to the cabin, Jules' eyes were open, and he spoke thickly in delirium. I caught references to "cat" — or "Cap" — and to the Virgin Mary, and, I thought, the word "knife." But all was incoherent; I could make no clue of it, and he seemed not to know or even notice me. He was soon quiet again.
Otway still lay his great length like one dead. He looked grotesquely helpless, with grizzled, tobacco-stained mustache against so pale a leathery cheek, and his gangling limbs all a- sprawl.
I could really do nothing for either, and passed the remaining hours of vigil in keeping up a fire, quieting the ever restless hounds and in butting my head against the blank wall of what could have brought all this to be. Looking back, I do not wonder that I failed to guess, nor — so vivid is the picture still of the two stricken old
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fellows — do I wonder that I enter- tained the personal indignation and re- vengeful plans that did come to me.
It was from an odd, unwholesome reverie that I was startled when, just as dawn began to pale the lamplight, I heard the far off yell of Schuller.
Two strangers accompanied him, one obviously the doctor, the other a tallish, gaunt-faced man whom I thought I could place, too; and I was not mistaken.
Schuller introduced them, and we moved inside. "Good gosh!" ex- claimed Cales, the deputy sheriff, "I thought it was only Jules!" But Dr. Atwood stripped off and went to work with cheerful industry good to look upon.
He soon pressed me into service, Schuller, too, at times, but Schuller was all in, as he had cause to be. By simple arithmetic, the deputy sheriff was cook, and I must credit him that for a small county office holder he proved to be a worker.
His first call to breakfast came when the doctor still stitched and wrought with Jules ; and Atwood grimly punned that he could scarce be expected to make two whole men before breakfast.
I ventured to inquire what he hoped for them. He shook his head, but then chuckled professionally : "I know Jules," he said. "Went hunting with him once. You'd have to cut him in two to kill him; and he's only cut half in two. See here" — indicating a bruise on the hurt man's chin, which I had not previously noticed — "that's what put him out — that punch in the chin; and he bled enough to keep him out. Whoever rushed him the knife swung in one hand and his fist in the other."
I gathered that he thought Jules' case not quite hopeless, and felt ac- cordingly relieved.
"Any idea who did it?" the doctor asked, casually.
"I can't figure out a thing, but if they live "
"They both ought to live — tough old scouts like them; but they may nei- ther of 'em be conscious, and sane, too, for some days; and meanwhile
some one's gaming time to escape.
"Now this big fellow" — approach- ing Otway and surveying him with ar- tistic interest — "he's got a worse wound than all Jules' gashes put to- gether; but he's a man with tremen- dous hold on life. After a smash like that from a high-powered gun, you or I would have stayed put; yet, from what you say, he took at least one little stroll under his own steam. He's stronger right now than Jules; but at that another shot won't hurt him."
Atwood thrust a hypodermic needle in his patient's arm, and I thought I could note the strengthened respira- tion he assured me resulted.
"But for all his bob-cat constitu- tution," asserted the doctor, "I fear he won't be telling what he knows for quite a while."
He still held Ben's wrist, but he was looking at me as he spoke ; but now he suddenly turned with an inquiring glance at the patient, which, of course, I followed.
Ben's eyelids fluttered, then opened wide; and his eyes were not the star- ing eyes of delirium.
"Ben," I said. "Don't you know me, Ben?"
He tried to sit; and both Atwood and I lunged forward to support his head ; but he fell back with a writhing face. "How are ye, Boman?" he gasped. Then, like an after thought: "I got shot."
I made what cheering reply I could muster; but his own remark must have brought with it full memory of all that had befallen. He attempted to look toward that corner where we had first found Jules. His bed faced from it, and from where Jules now lay. He could not do it; but I read his thought.
"Jules is badly hurt, too, Ben," I told him, "but the doctor says he will get well."
It seemed to ease his mind. He contemplated us in silence for a mo- ment.
"Got any tobacco?" he asked.
I turned to Atwood for answer to this somewhat astonishing request, and found that cheerful surgeon a little
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confounded by the resurrection he had witnessed; but his jaw snapped shut now, while amusement glimmered in his eye.
"Shucks! Give it to him," he said.
I considered the powerful stuff the Cedar Spur merchant had sent up by us, but compromised on a cigar; held it to Ben's lips and lighted it. He took a few strong puffs, then put it from him.
"Don't taste very good," he com- mented weakly. "I must've got shot badder'n I thought."
I declare he seemed stronger for the smoke. Why not ask him, I thought. I whispered to Dr. Atwood. He pursed his lips, hesitantly; and I opened mine for further urging.
"All right/ he sanctioned, impul- sively. "We must know who did this thing; and he can stand it — stand any- thing— confound him!"
So I addressed the witness : "You're pretty bad hurt, Ben; so is Jules. You will get well fine ; but you're going to be sick first. Now if you could just tell us while you're able who did up you and Jules this way ? Tell me who it was ; and I'll see the — the person put where he belongs."
The ghost of a smile flickered in Ben's eyes. Then he spoke up:
"That there outfit I had over to the lake, they was called off to Seattle; so I just hunted acrost over the divide. It taken me three days ; and I lost my tobacco right at the start."
The doctor would have interrupted here ; but I shook my head meaningly. I had heard old Ben tell hunting yarns and well knew his exasperating meth- ods of narration, also that he could not be hurried. Atwood understood me well enough to subside; and he waved back Schuller and the deputy, who were crowding curiously in from the kitchen shed — held them with a warn- ing sign, beyond Ben's range of vision, lest their unexplained presence dis- tract him.
The weak voice went steadily on, and shorn of pauses and many repe- titions, this is what we heard :
"There wasn't none at my cabin; so
I come on over here; but Jules, dog- gone him! was out, too, and a-want- ing it worse than me. I was for hit- tin' out after some ; but Jules aimed to go down so soon anyway, to meet you boys; and he wanted to lay in meat while the trackin' snow lasted. Said he wasn't no slave to tobacco — reck- oned maybe we could get some over to Dorffner's cabin.
"We hunted over that way and busted in ; but there wasn't none there. Out all day, too, and we ought to have got a deer, but we didn't. We was right mad and squabbled ; but then we laughed.
"We aimed to go down to-day sure" (Otway meant the day previous. He had lost the night), "but when we started, the dogs jumped a cat and took out up the mountain. We fol- lered along a ways, and went along. It must've been a wise old he one. We follered along and follered along, till first we knew we'd plumb lost the dogs and it was pretty late to go down and back to-day.
"I was for going anyway; but Jules reckoned you boys'd be up just the same; and you'd sure have tobacco. I knowed that was so, too, but I hated to take chances. We argued, and knowing that Jules was right, o' course I got sore.
"We set around and set around, and Jules, he'd say something, and I'd say 'ha-ow?' And I'd say something, and Jules'd say 'wha-at?'
"It commenced getting dark, and no one come ; so I thrown it up to Jules it's his fault we hadn't went down be- fore. I guess he thought that was so too- — anyhow, he got awful sore. And we hadn't had any tobacco — no smok- in' nor no chewin' — now for four or five days.
"Jules, he called me a liar and then jumped for me, and I jumped for him. I had his knife, that I'd been whittlin', makin' us a rollin' pin — but hell! I didn't aim to use it. But Jules, he jumped back for his firearms. I started for him again — to get the gun, but" — proudly — "you know how nim- ble Jules can handle her, from the
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hip? He got me the first time, and like to downed me. Then I got in too close. The old- thirty-five went off again, and I guess I seen red then.
"All I know is, my best friend a- layin' there and I had knifed him — me that always hated a knife-fighter! I was wabbly, too; but I reckoned if I run right fast I might meet you boys, and you could help Jules, maybe. I started ; but everything went a way off
sideways."
The old fellow's voice trailed off to nothing, and his eyes closed. I thought he had fainted; and, wonderingly, I peered across the bed into Atwood's wondering face. But Otway was speaking again.
"It was more my fault than his'n," he stated, judicially, "but we was both to blame. We was right plumb out of tobacco."
CHOPIN'S NOCTURNES
The twilight hour — beside a casement low a maiden waits: a
girl bewitching, fair, Her dark eyes lifted to a distant star, a single rose within her
unbound hair. When, hark! upon the perfumed summer air, the first faint
echoes of the light guitar,
And then a burst of purest melody, swift-borne upon the listen- ing breeze, afar. And through the open lattice window falls, as if responsive to
the singer's powers, A tiny, half-blown rose of crimson hue, the old, old symbol —
Love's sweet passion flower. More confident, more weird, the music now, more intricate and
graceful the design, Half-filled with earth's young ecstacies and pain, half-filled with
heaven's own harmonies divine. A hush: a chord twice-echoed, of despair, a martial strain, a
lover's glance, a sigh, — A note of pain, a hint of mystery, a moment of farewell, and
then good-bye.
MARIAN GILKERSON.
The Right of Way
By Alfred Brunk
MRS. COPLIN sat on her front porch looking off to the south west. The sun was sending his slanting rays out over or- chard, vineyard and stubble fields. In the distance a mirage played upon the plain, showing an illusive pool of water in the midst of which dwellings and other buildings rose several times their actual height through the sheen of waters. Still further to the west, Mount Angelo, his two peaks alter- nating brown and green, overlooked the broad stretch of plain to the east, and like a hydra-headed giant, com- manded the approach to the western sea. Far to the east the Loma Grandes range of mountains showed dim through the thickening haze, while here and there a towering sentinel reared his snow-crowned head, around which played the pine-perfumed breezes.
The woman inhaled a deep breath of mingled satisfaction and regret. Years before, when she and her hus- band were young, they had migrated west, bought the land and built the house where she now sat. Here they had reared their large family. Here two years ago her husband had died, leaving her with the care of the child- ren and the management of the ranch. While she was thinking of these things, her daughter Myra, aged sev- enteen, came from the other end of the porch. Laying her hand upon her mother's shoulder, she said : "Mamma, there's an auto coming up the drive- way."
The car stopped in front of the house. Two men alighted and came to the house. The one, tall, slender and neatly dressed, removed a shining derby from his head and bowed. The
other, clad in rough garments, without coat or vest, pulled off a slouch hat which he held loosely in his left hand while he waved slightly to the ladies with his uplifted right hand, but did ''not bow.
"Mrs. Coplin?" asked the smartly dressed man.
"That is my name," returned the widow.
He bowed again. "My name is Mil- hite, Joseph S. Milhite, of the Moun- tain and Valley Telephone Company. And this," turning to his companion, "is Sam Girder, auto driver and handy man."
Girder did not even acknowledge the introduction, but looked daggers at Milhite. "Could you let me have a drink of water?" he asked.
Myra went to a faucet on the east side of the house and handed each of the men a glass of water. Girder handed back the glass without a word and went to the car. Milhite was pro- fuse in his thanks, praised the water, the scenery and the farm.
"Mrs. Coplin," he began, "you of course know that the Mountain and Valley Telephone Company expect to run one of their main lines from Santa Dorinda to San Jasper. We will come through Rosewood here, then as straight to San Jasper as possible. Our engineers have marked a route right through your farm, about forty rods south of the house here. For a very few dollars you can connect with our lines out there and have both local and long distance service. It will be a very great convenience, I assure you. Now, we want a right of way through that quarter section, and I know you will win the lasting gratitude^ of the company, as well as your neighbors.
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
Besides that, we will treat you right. In fact, I am authorized to tell you that for the right of way we will stretch a wire to the house here, and put in a 'phone at bare cost to us. Then for a small rental per month, you will be served by the largest and best company west of the Rockies."
"Better come up out of the sun," re- turned the woman. "Tell Mr. Girder to come up here on the porch and not sit out there. It is more pleasant here. Myra, get chairs for the gentlemen."
"Mr. Girder has a grouch on to-day and can't be civil," smiled Milhite, as, with a low bow, he seated himself on the porch. "You will excuse the slang expression," he continued. "Now, Mrs. Coplin," he resumed, "you can see what it means to your section and to you, personally, to be in direct com- munication with the whole country. And as 'phoning across the United States is no longer a mere possibility, but an accomplished fact, you may yourself speak to friends in New York, Washington, and all other points, right here in your own home. Here is our agreement, which you will per- ceive is already made out, in which you give us the right of way through this half-mile stretch of land, in con- sideration of which the company guar- antees to bring a wire and install a 'phone in your home at cost. The monthly rental of the 'phone will be very small, I assure you." Here he took his fountain pen from his vest pocket, adjusted it, and handed both pen and paper to her.
She took the paper but ignored the pen. "You sign right here," he added, suavely. She looked at the document long and carefully. Finally she hand- ed it back to him.
"When did you say the line would be put through?" she asked slowly.
"We have two large crews at work now," he returned. "One coming from Santa Dorinda and the other from San Jasper. We have the complete right of way from Santa Dorinda to Rose- wood, and expect to be here next month," and he looked out toward Rosewood, which glistened in the sun
about a mile to the west. "Of course, if we did not have the right of way through your place by that time we would go south to Edgarville, then east and north to Riverdale," he added meaningly. "But such a contingency is impossible," he continued, with a bow, "for since you know the very liberal policy of our company, you will gladly grant the right of way."
"What do you call liberal?"
"Why," he replied in considerable confusion, "you understand that we place a 'phone in your house — "
"And do you give a contract for free service ?"
He looked at her searchingly. "Why, as to that, in some cases where the sit- uation was — ah — peculiar, we have given free service."
"What were the peculiar circum- stances?" She looked steadily at him.
He had regained his self-possession. "Why, for instance, when we go through the heart of a person's land, or cause them any special inconven- ience, we add free service along with our other munificent concessions," with a smile and a bow.
She rose to her feet and handed him the paper. "I will think it over," she slowly remarked.
"You will do well to sign now, madam," and there was a pleading note in his voice.
"That is all to-day, thank you," and he knew by the decisive tone of her voice that the interview was over.
Whirling along to the west, Girder turned his eyes for a moment to Mil- hite. "The next time you introduce me like you did back there I will pitch you over the car," he thundered.
Milhite laughed lightly, and slapped him on the shoulder. "All right, old man. I wanted to have a little fun with you ; didn't know you would take it to heart so. The introductions shall be perfectly prim and proper from this time, and henceforth." A mock- ing smile was spread over his face, but Girder did not see it, as his eyes were upon the road straight ahead.
"But wasn't that some girl for you?" Milhite continued.
THE RIGHT OF WAY
125
"Forget her!" roared Girder. "How did you come out with the old one?"
"Curse her!" exploded Milhite. "She thinks she is mighty smart, but I'll bet my hat against your corduroys that I'll get her yet. The old cat?"
"I'll take you, sonny," laughed Gir- der. "Been a long time since I wore a derby. It's a shame, though, that you can't have these trousers and do the dirty work you were cut out for; but you are making good most of the time, as it is."
The next day Mrs. Coplin visited her attorney in Lewiston, the county seat. She was evidently well pleased, as she smiled all the way home.
In a few days Milhite returned Bow- ing as politely as ever. "Yes, ma'am," he was saying, "I took your case up with the Division Superintendent at Santa Dorinda, and alter much hard work convinced him that you should have special recognition. At last he very reluctantly agreed to my request to pay you two hundred dollars for the right of way, with the understand- ing that if you wished a 'phone, we will let you connect with the main line, you paying for the work and material. I am very glad for your sake that I have been able to secure such advan- tageous terms for you. I have the check here, signed by Mr. Simpson, himself," and once more he handed the pen and contract to her.
She refused to take them, looking at him intently all the while. "Are you acquainted with Mr. Pearson, at Lewis- ton ?" she finally asked.
He frowned, remembered himself, then smiled and bowed. "Slightly, only slightly," he lied. "You see, Mrs. Coplin, I am so busy I have little time to devote to social pleasures."
"Well," and a twinkle of amusement played in her eyes, "Mr. Pearson is my attorney. Any business you may have with me you can take up with him. I am glad it is cooler than when you were here the other day." She looked at Mount Angelo, whose two peaks were crowned with fog.
He pleaded with her very earnestly for some time, but in vain. "See my at-
torney," was all she would say.
"Where away now?" asked Girder, as they went down the driveway to the county road.
"To Santa Dorinda, as fast as this old junk machine can take us. Never mind speed laws."
Turning into the main road, Girder let the car out, slowing down slightly through towns. "How did my Lord Chesterfield make it with My Lady?" asked Girder, as they raced along.
"You attend to your own business," was the reply.
Girder laughed. "Take good care of that hat," he bullied. "Myra Coplin will think I am some pumpkins when she sees me in a fine gentleman's hat. For the love of Mike !" he exclaimed, whirling the car to the left, and just missing a little girl who had run into the road ahead of them.
"That's enough for me," he contin- ued, with a quiver in his voice, and slowing down the machine. "No more racing like that if you never get to S. D."
Division Superintendent Simpson sat at his spacious desk in his spacious suite of rooms in the spacious Hutchin- son building in Santa Dorinda. These were the offices of the Mountain and Valley Telephone Company.
"So you could do nothing with her," he retorted, when Milhite finished his story. "Referred you to her lawyer! If you would quit your everlasting smirking and bowing and get down to business it would be better for the M. & V. Co."
"Haven't I brought in every con- tract but this one?" flashed Milhite in anger. "And I would get this one if I had time. You told me to rush back if she didn't sign, and you know I lost no time."
"We will see her again," Simpson replied. "We must have that contract, and we fool with no lawyers, either."
Next day a large touring car drew up in front of Mrs. Coplin's house. A portly, well fed man alighted, fol- lowed by the suave, bowing Milhite. Girder remained at the wheel while the two men went to the house.
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"So you can see, Mrs. Coplin, that the extension of our line through your beautiful country will go a long way toward its further development. It means more settlers, and that means advancing prices for your real estate. Truly, it would pay you to give us a bonus to run our line through here; but instead of that we are paying you two hundred dollars for the right of way, besides stringing a wire from our line to your house, and installing a 'phone. Really, the company is very generous with you." Having thus de- livered himself, and looking like a kind hearted philanthropist, Division Superintendent Simpson leaned back in his chair.
"Sir," returned Mrs. Coplin, some- what awed by the august presence, "you will have to see my lawyer." And no amount of argument or persuasion could shake her from that determina- tion.
Harold Pearson was a spare built, hollow cheeked man, with eyes that bored their way into the heart of things. He could spot a grafter two blocks away. So when Milhite called about the Coplin right of way he said, in his jerky fashion: "Who are you trying to do this time?"
Milhite spent no time in bowing and smirking, but went straight to the point.
"So you offered Mrs. Coplin two hundred dollars for the right of way, and to put a 'phone in her house to boot," Pearson continued. "What a lovely lot of grafters and crooks you fellows are! How I would like to put the last one of you in the pen."
Milhite smiled. "When there's a cleaning up in this State you'll be first to wear striped suits; but to business. What do you propose to do ?"
Pearson looked out the window and watched a river boat as she glided across Waverly Bay. Turning to Mil- hite, he replied: "A 'phone without rental throughout Mrs. Coplin's natu- ral life ; five thousand dollars in cash."
Milhite bounded from his chair. "You — you hog!" he blurted out. "Why don't you ask us to turn over the whole
works to you? We won't pay it! We will condemn it first."
"I scarcely think you will," retorted Pearson with a grim smile. "If you must go, good-bye!"
He held out his hand to Milhite, which that gentleman ignored.
The company sent their attorney to reason with Pearson, but to no avail. Then Simpson himself tried it. When the large touring car drew up to Pear- son's office it contained only Simpson and Girder. Milhite had abandoned the fight.
The two men shook hands warmly. "Why, you skin-and-bones," began Simpson, "it's good to see you again. I want you to come and lunch with me. Come," as Pearson glanced anxiously at a large pile of papers before him, "you don't get off that way. Man alive! you starve yourself to death. Throw those papers in the fire. You have enough now to keep you if you never did another lick of work. But look at me now ; have to work my fin- gers off to keep the wolf away," and his huge body shook with laughter.
During lunch neither man broached business. They talked of old times, of events both humorous and serious; of politics; of the two California Ex- positions. Back again in Pearson's office Simpson began:
"Pearson, you and I have had our battles to fight, and it is pleasant to look back at victories won, but now to business. You know we are doing great things for the Rosewood coun- try. Why, those people ought to pay us for going through there; but as it is, some of them want to hold us up. Now about Mrs. Coplin. What's her best figure?"
"You have already received our proposition a number of times; there has been no change," and Pearson shut his lips tight.
Simpson never turned a hair. "You remember, Harold," he began, with a far-away look in his eyes, "coming to me for help when you were a young lawyer? Did I, or did I not, help you?"
"You did," returned Pearson.
AD MATREM 127
"You know I did. I loaned you the not bring myself to do it. I have told
money and helped you to get a start, you what we will do in the Coplin
Now you are a successful lawyer, matter. You can either take it or leave
thanks to my assistance. And now, it alone."
when that old hen, Mrs. " After Mrs. Coplin had received the
Pearson stamped his foot. "Hold company's check for five thousand dol-
on, Simpson," he exploded, his eyes lars, Milhite accosted Girder with:
blazing. "You loaned me the money, "Old man, the hat is yours. Will you
yes. I paid it back with compound take this old Derby of mine, or would
interest. All told, about three times a nice, soft, new Exposition Special
as much as I borrowed of you ! And suit you better ? That's the latest, you
you have held it over my head ever know."
since. More than once I might have "Sure, the Exposition Special,"
prosecuted you for fraud, but I could laughed Girder.
AD /A AT R E/A
When I'm a man full-grown
You'll reap the joy you've sown.
Your wrinkled hand in mine will rest,
Your head will lean upon my breast;
I'll tell you all my dreams that come
With their brave pageantry,
For you will be too old for dreams —
Too old for other worlds than this ;
Whilst I shall still be young and warm
And have a hundred worlds to kiss.
Oh, mother, you'll grow old, I know ;
Before the fire you'll sit and sew,
Bringing to-day unto that far to-morrow
To ease your ancient soul of all its sorrow.
And when the window dulls with fading light,
I'll stir the fire, make ready for the night,
And place my head upon your knee,
And be the boy you'd have me be.
For in that far-off wintry day,
This lad of yours will know the way
To stir your heart to memories of me
As I am now, but cannot always be.
Dear, you have done so much for me,
So faithfully, so joyfully;
So, when you're old,
And laden with your memories,
I'll bring you gold,
And white, sweet linen for your wear,
And hold your hand and smooth your hair,
And gossip with you by the fire,
And help you up the stair,
And tuck you in your bed.
Oh, mother mine, when you are old,
Pray God I be not dead.
GERALD CUMBERLAND.
The Aaking Over of Charles Baxter
By Elizabeth Vore
YES," said the young Easterner, pushing his straw hat back on his crisp, curly hair. "I came to California to buy land and climate." He laughed pleasantly. "The last winter in the East was too much for me — came within an ace of finishing me, in fact — pneumonia. On top of that I went in too deep on Wall street; when stocks went down I went down also — nervous prostration, and that means rest for a long time."
The older man nodded gravely. He was a soldierly looking man with a gray mustache, and an aristocratic air. When he spoke, his accent was decid- edly Southern.
"It is easiah, suh, to break down than to recuperate. But California is the right place foh you. We make ovah men, heah. I predict that you will be a new man. You ought to try ranching, suh."
"So my physicians have assured me," said the young Easterner. "But I lost a neat fortune in twenty-four hours, and the Governor" — he blushed slightly and laughed — "my father, I should say, has allowed me just fifteen thousand dollars for this Western ven- ture. I want to be cautious this time and not sink my capital. It is not much to begin with."
"It is not a sum to be scorned, suh," said the older man politely.
The young fellow removed his cigar and leaned forward eagerly. He was very young, and in spite of ill-health full of the enthusiasm of youth.
"Frankly, I am extremely interested in this deal," he said confidentially. "I want to prove that I am worth some- thing, for, to tell the truth, if I had not been so ill and frightened my father nearly to death, I should be in
tremendous disgrace at home. As it is, I am on probation — to be honest," he blurted out. "I lost a cool fifty thou- sand. It was a gamble, I suppose — Wall street speculation. The Governor sums it up at about that estimate."
The older man regarded him with a kindly twinkle in his deep eyes.
"Experience, suh, comes deah," he said courteously. "I have a son at home about youh age — his ability foh coining experience, suh, I have found somewhat expensive." A lenient smile illumined his fine old face.
The young Easterner held out his hand with a straightforward smile.
"If he resembles his father, I would like to know him, sir," he said ear- nestly. "You are a Southerner, are you not?"
The old gentleman squared his shoulders with unconscious pride.
"Thank you kindly, suh. Yes, I am a Southernah, by birth, — something no Southernah ever forgets. But we are all Californians heah. May I ask if you intend locating permanently."
"That is just the point that troubles me," said the young fellow. "Cali- fornia real estate agents tell me such tremendous tra-diddles."
"Pahden me, suh. There are good men and bad in all lines of business in all countries. Wall street men in New York did not all tra-diddle, I sup- pose?" he asked with a shrewd glance.
The young man laughed.
"You are right, sir. I deserved that hit. If a fellow's been swindled once he becomes suspicious of everybody."
"And yet that is not wise — nor just right," said the older man kindly. "It a man is square himself, suh, he knows there must be plenty of othah square men. It is not probable that the Al-
THE MAKING OVER OF CHARLES BAXTER
129
mighty incarnated all the principles of integrity in you or in me, suh."
A pair of startled but very honest young eyes gazed back into the kindly, shrewd old eyes regarding them.
"Thank you, sir. I never thought of it like that before," said the young fellow, earnestly. The older man's words were like a tonic — a moral tonic, and he would not forget them.
"The question that interests me most just now," he continued after a moment's silence, "is does farming pay in California ? If I followed my phy- sician's advice and my father's com- mands, I am to be a bona fide rancher for the next two years. If I wish to retrieve my past blunders and regain my father's confidence I have got to make a success of it."
The Californian tossed his cigar out of the window.
"Have you made a thorough investi- gation of ranching in the San Joaquin Valley?" he asked. He pointed toward the rolling fields of wheat seen from the window of the smoker. The train sped onward. "This is where ranch- ing pays. We have all the conditions conducive to successful farming — sun- shine, climate, the best of soil, and the most extensive irrigation system in the State of California, and with less cost than in the majority of districts.
"Take Fresno County alone, suh. Here we have a system of canals, the main canals oveh 300 miles in length, with myriads of distributing canals. The snows and glaciers of the Sierras feed this inexhaustible water supply."
"Have you had personal experience in California ranching, sir?" asked the young man, keenly. This cultivated, polished old gentleman was not his idea of the typical California rancher.
The old man smiled indulgently. "A little, suh — a little. I own a few thou- sand acres in the San Joaquin Valley. I came heah from Virginia twenty- three yeahs ago, suh, with about as lit- tle experience as a young man could have — and not half of youh capital — and I have made ranching pay. I had to wait yeahs before reaping the re- ward of my labors, for the country
then was not at its present state of de- velopment, and conditions were less favorable. The rancher of to-day has the benefit of the struggles and toils of the old settlers; they do not meet the obstacles and difficulties which we have overcome. One great advantage of the present over the past is the transportation facilities. The Southern Pacific Railroad extends throughout the entire length of the San Joaquin Valley, and the rancher has a home market for his produce."
The young Easterner regarded him with open admiration.
"Would it be an imposition on your good nature to ask you to give me the benefit of a little of your experience — as to the profits of farming here, for instance ? It means a good deal to me to purchase in the right place, and I have confidence in you, sir."
The older man bowed gravely.
"I trust, suh, that no one evah placed confidence in Richard Peyton who re- gretted it. It affords me pleasure to give you any information in my power, and on my honah as a Southern gen- tleman— and a Californian — it will be a conservative statement, suh.
"My ranch is located neah the cen- ter of the San Joaquin Valley, a little nearer San Francisco than Los An- geles. This district, throughout the entire county, is remarkable for its variety of soil and climate. My home is scarcely more than a hundred miles from the Pacific Ocean, which lies just beyond the irregular line of the Coast Range ; to the east lie the lofty Sierras — not more than ten or twenty miles distant.
"For one who seeks health I would heartily recommend this valley, for in but few places in the State can one find such unrivaled health conditions. On an average, out of the 365 days in the year we have 275 days of sun- shine. Sixty degrees is the average mean temperature. Our hottest days are followed by cool nights.
"Nervous people come here because they can sleep, and that means health. The man who can sleep like an infant all night long, suh, cannot be ill long
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— he is made ovah in a mighty short time. That is partly what I meant when I said 'we made men ovah, heah.'
"As to the profits of ranching, suh— and the best kind of ranching for prac- tical results, that is a difficult question to answer. Naturally, every man would be inclined to answer it accord- ing to his own experience in his own line. Many kinds of farming are en- gaged in heah, and each with good re- turns according to the industry, thrift and common sense of those engaged in them.
"In our county we have wheat, oats, and barley ranches; rye, broom corn, Indian corn and Egyptian corn are also successfully grown in some parts. Many farmers are engaged in sheep raising and cattle raising. There are also a great many dairy farms and bee ranches. Every sort of deciduous fruits, as well as citrus fruits are raised heah. The Eastern portions of the valley at the base of the foothills is particularly adapted to the raising of oranges, of the highest qualities, which ripen six weeks earlier than in any other "district in the State, giving us the benefit of the highest Eastern prices.
"Our vineyards are another promi- nent feature, and raisins form one of the most extensive industries of this country.
"How about the profits, generally speaking of fruit raising?" asked the young Easterner.
"Satisfactory, suh. Statistics and observation bear out this statement; but again, naturally, a man speaks au- thoritatively from his own experience. I have a number of acres of raisin grapes, and during the past eight yeahs they have netted me from $60 to $125 to the acre. The profits on tree products are better. I count at a reasonable estimate $100 to $200 per acre on such fruit.
"In our county alone we have in the neighborhood of 4,000 ranches. But the best way to gain practical knowl- edge in ranching, suh, is to see foh yourself — and, pardon me, but I no- ticed your name on your suit case —
Charles Baxter — can it be you are the son of the New York banker — Charles Baxter, my old chum at Yale?"
The young Easterner's face was aglow with surprise and delight.
"By Jove! My father's friend! What a pleasure!" he exclaimed.
The older man handed him a card, which bore the name of Colonel Rich- ard Peyton engraved upon it.
The hands of the two men met. In the older man's face was a smile, the meaning of which the younger man did not know. At that very moment a let- ter was reposing in the pocket of the Californian which read as follows :
"1-2 Fifth Avenue, New York.
"July 6, 19— "Dear Dick:
"My son Charles has managed to go through with the fortune his mother left him in his own right, and has broken down generally in the crash. I have sent him to California for his health and to get a little common sense knocked into him. I have cut him off (for the present) with $15,000, and given the heedless young beggar to understand that he is cut adrift to sink or swim. On my advice, he will in- vestigate land in the San Joaquin Val- ley— have been reading this particular
section up. He will be in F at
Hotel on the 18th. Please call
on him and give him the benefit of your experience — he expects to hunt you up sooner or later, but don't wait for him. Keep an eye on him, won't you, and don't let him make a bigger fool of himself than he necessarily would anywhere.
"Fraternally yours,
"CHARLIE BAXTER."
"P. S.— For the Lord's sake, Dick, be good to the boy — he is all I have, and his heart is all right. I don't care for the money he's lost, if he will only profit by his experience. I expect to be proud of him yet, if his health im- proves. Keep me posted by wire or mail.
"c. B."
The Colonel was thinking of that postcsript, as he leaned forward and
DAYBREAK
131
said, with a rare smile on his kind old face:
"If you have finished youh cigar, suh, will you come into the Pullman and meet my daughter? Of course, we shall expect you to be our guest while you remain in this part of the country. Pahdon me, suh, I will take no refusal!"
A few minutes later the young man was in the drawing-room car, standing before a radiant young creature with the soft, dark eyes and gold-blonde hair of Virginia, and the sun-kissed cheeks and bewildering smile of Cali- fornia's native daughters.
"This is the son of my old college friend, Charles Baxter, Dorris — Mr. Baxter, my daughter."
Dorris Peyton extended a slender, patrician hand, and the young East- erner bowed over it, his eyes full of unconscious admiration were upon her glowing face.
"Mr. Baxter is thinking of purchas- ing land in our part of the country, Dorris, and I have asked him to be our guest while he remains. You will join me in the invitation, my deah."
"We shall be very glad to have you, Mr. Baxter, and I hope — " she raised her soft, dark eyes with a radiant smile to his own — "that you will decide to purchase land here."
"I think/' said the young Easterner,
with more earnestness than the occa- sion seemed to require, "that I'm al- most sure to."
That was four years ago. The Bax- ter place lies near the heart of the San Joaquin Valley. It is a tangle of roses and jasamine, and the deep porches are one mass of bloom and color. Un- der the shade of the trees a radiant young woman with a coronet of gold- blonde hair piled high upon her queenly head, is sitting with arms ex- tended to a wee, dark-eyed midget in white.
"The most wonderful child in the world" is contemplating her first jour- ney.
"Just one step, darling," comes the young mother's voice. "Dear, she has taken it!"
A breathless pause, a flutter of white — and with a crow of delight the little traveler is in her mother's arms.
"Bravo!" cries a deep bass voice. Charles Baxter, the picture of health and happiness, is clapping applause, his eyes, full of adoring light, are upon the faces of mother and child.
"I would give a hundred dollars if father could have seen that!" he said.
The making over of Charles Baxter was evidently as successful as his Western ventures.
DAYBREAK
Night glides away in a silver-rigged ship —
With pearls gleaming white on her prow: Then, pale the gray morn slips 'twixt quivering green leaves,
Caressing the maple trees' brow. A-tremble the meadow with clovers dew-drenched,
Flaunts gems that gay elfin bands spun — And the corn whispers low as her gold tassels sway,
'Neath the glow of the crimson-fringed sun. Uneasy the wind stirs a velvet-cheeked rose,
And she opens her bud with a yawn, — Then day speeds red arrows athwart the gray mist —
While birds trill Love's welcome to dawn.
AGNES LOCKHART HUGHES. 4
The Girl Who Never Was
By Arthur Wallace Peach
MARKS was given credit in the office of the Merle Company for possessing two attributes : one was a nature so humble and meek that it never rebelled at the most practical joke of the office joker or the keenest sarcasm of the office head; another was a face so homely that the younger and lighter minds of the force were led to dub Marks "Apollo."
He was the butt of much fun in the office, but one day when his lank, stooping, sandy-headed form did not appear, Wellington, in charge of the office, knew something was wrong, for Marks had not missed a day before in the seven years of his service. Word came later to Wellington that Marks had been injured in a street accident that he was in an unconscious condi- tion in the city hospital, and that his nearest of kin should be notified.
Stafford and Barton were assigned the duty of attempting to find in Mark's room something that might give a clue as to the injured lad's parents or relatives, for no one in the office had known him well enough to gain such in- formation.
When Stafford and his co-searchers were ushered into the little bare, un- comfortable boarding house room, which had been Mark's home for the lonely years in the city Stafford ex- plained the errand to the landlady, and she left them to their search. But be- fore he made any beginning, he looked around the room soberly.
"Bart, it's a shame the way we have treated the lad! Think of it — calling such a place as this a home; it's al- most like a cell in a jail. I'm mighty sorry I didn't try to do Marks a little favor by asking him to run around with
me a little," Stafford said regretfully.
"Yes, but you might as well have taken a wooden broomstick along for company. Come on, let's hustle this up. I don't imagine he had a soul in the world who cared for him," an- swered Barton, carelessly.
Stafford started to speak, then shook his head as if deciding it were better to say nothing, and turned his atten- tion to the room.
For a long time they searched in silence, finding nothing that gave them any hint of the knowledge for which they were in search. The room was like any man's room whose tastes are limited as are his means. Finally, however, Barton rose from a small box he had been examining, and with a packet of papers in his hand, extended his arms dramatically, and exclaimed :
"Behold! I have it here — love let- ters! What do you know about that, Stafford ? Apollo in love ! Of all mir- acles ! Come on, let's read them." He settled himself on the edge of the bed, and shifted the letters.
Stafford hesitated. "I wonder if it wouldn't be better to — why, to let Wel- lington look them over. I hate to think of reading anything of that kind."
"Bosh! come on. Man, you may stumble right on a romance," Barton said, grinning and reading. "Yep, sure as you're born, here it begins — My dear, dear Will!"
Stafford dismissed his scruples with the thought that he might be of use to the unconscious fellow in the great hos- pital, and with Barton he examined the letters.
The letters had been taken from their envelopes and placed one upon the other in some attempt at order. The letters were written in a girlish
THE GIRL WHO NEVER WAS.
133
hand, a little large but perfectly leg- ible, and were full of the thousand lit- tle things that are dear to the heart of the lover and his loved one. There was no over-reaching in a sentimental way, simply the happy expression of hope and faith in another. There were little incidents mentioned that went to show that, sometime or other, Marks must have been with her on little ex- peditions in the country. As Stafford read, he was touched, for in every line was the quiet note of happiness tinged with a subtle echo of longing.
At last, with the letters read and no address found, they were about to con- fess themselves defeated, and return to the office to report the results of their fruitless quest, but Barton sug- gested that they call up the hospital by telephone and see if Marks had re- gained consciousness. Word came that he had, and they decided that it would be a good plan for one of them to go to the hospital, see Marks and get from him the address of the girl.
Stafford was delegated to go, and Barton agreed to pack up the few be- longings in Marks' room and see to the storing of them.
By quick use of the trolley and sub- way, Stafford was able to reach the hospital in a short time. On the way, the pity that he had felt for Marks in- creased as he thought the man's situa- tion over — alone and badly hurt, in need of tender care and love, if ever a man were. Stafford felt a little bit- ter toward Barton for his light accept- ance of Mark's situation, and more so because of the joking attitude he had taken toward the crude little letters that had been examined. Stafford de- termined to do all that he could to aid the stricken man.
The surgeon in charge of the ward gave Stafford only a few minutes in which to question Marks.
When Stafford stopped beside the bed and looked down into the pain- filled face of Marks, he found himself facing an ordeal, and to have it over with as quickly as possible, he told Marks of the finding of the letters, and asked for the address of the girl.
As Stafford spoke, Marks' white face flushed with the blood that crept slowly to the surface. His lean, clumsy fingers picked nervously at the cover- let; his eyes were turned away.
Stafford knew what was wrong; the shy nature was confused at the thought of what had happened — the baring of intimate secrets that heart keeps with heart, alone.
Thinking to ease the situation, Staf- ford said, hurriedly:
"Never mind, Marks, old chap, we'll never let the secret out to another soul, I promise you ; and — I want to do any- thing under the sun I can for you; it doesn't make any difference in the world what it is. Say the word "
The hurt eyes of the injured one grew dim, and his face set with pain. It was the first kindly word, sincerely, wholeheartedly offered, that Marks had heard in the years of his memory.
The nurse touched Stafford's arm, as if to tell him to go, but the fingers paused as Marks, his hands tightening, began to whisper :
"Staff, I'm glad to hear you say that. It — it cheers me up. But to tell the truth, I — I was lonely; evenings I — I wrote those letters myself. I just im- agined "
"You'd better go," said the nurse, gently but firmly; and Stafford, his senses reeling as he realized the mean- ing of the sentences, his heart wrung by the sick man's anguish, was glad to obey.
From the hospital, Stafford went directly to Barton's room. He found that individual perched comfortably in the window seat of his bachelor apart- ment, smoking.
"Bart, you are in for a shock — "
"I am? Well, you look as if you had traveled with one!"
"Never mind: I'm hit hard. Here it is — I saw Marks for about two min- utes. The surgeon said Marks told him there was no one who had any interest in him, but no mention had been made in the conversation of a girl. So I went in.
"Well, Bart," Stafford went on, turning his gaze from his friend to the
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window, "guess what that poor chap had been doing while you and I were out having our times : he was writing a letter to a girl who never was!"
"What!"
"Yes, that's it. Sitting there writing letters to an imaginary girl. Not a soul in the world to love him, so he made some one whom he could love — "
"Well, that's the limit. But the handwriting — that looked like a girl's."
"A little; but you know he was quite a penman. I've seen him, once in a while, writing in different hands in the office, while he was waiting for them to verify his books."
"Yes, and come to think of it," Bar- ton went on, throwing down the paper in his hands, "I found a pen that made just the tracing that the one did in the letters, and ink of the same shade. I was a little suspicious, and yet, Staff "
"It's hard to believe it/" Stafford said, quietly, "but there Marks is. I wish I could do something for him."
Barton sat in silence, evidently in thought. "We ought to have done something for him before," he said, absently. "If he ever gets back I'll try to reform."
"That little word 'if was coined in Hades," began Stafford, but he was interrupted by the ring of Barton's bell.
Barton disappeared and reappeared, holding in his hand a yellow slip of paper, on his keen, careless face a smile that was enigmatic. He paused in the middle of the room.
"I don't know what I have kicked up, chum, but I found in a little book in Marks' room the name of a person — E. L. Wait, and the name of a little up-country town. I took a long chance that it was the girl, and if not the girl, some one whom Marks knew. It may have been a book the chap bought second-hand. I hardly know what to think. But I sent a telegram to the address while you were at the hospi- tal, and here's the reply. It simply says that the person I telegraphed for will be here at midnight."
Stafford looked dazed. "But it
couldn't be a girl; Marks was never known to lie, and I shall hear those broken words on my own deathbed; I know just what he said."
Barton rolled the telegram up and tossed it into the basket. He shrugged his shoulders. "Well, it must be some one who knew Marks."
"Did you give his name in the mes- sage?" questioned Stafford.
Barton stopped on his way to his seat, put his hand to his chin, and dropped into the chair. "By Jove, I've done it. I just said, 'A friend of yours is ill. Come!' It dawned on me sud- denly that, of course, the girl must be Elizabeth L. Wait, with her nickname 'Bess,' but I was in too great a hurry to think — and thinking isn't my long suit," he added, bitterly. "I'll bet it's just my luck to have some one rushing here who doesn't know Marks from a heathen Chinee. That book looked like a second-hand affair, come to think of it; rather worn out, as if it had been thumbed a lot. It was some love story or other. Gad, I guess I've mixed things up."
"Never mind, Bart," Stafford said to soothe his friend's distress and dis- gust. "I suppose you put your ad- dress in."
"Yes, I did that— force of habit. I suppose he or she will show up here. You must be on hand, Staff," Barton said, looking anxiously at his friend.
"I shall be here. I hope it will prove to be some one who knows Marks ; he looked as if he weren't very far from the land where, thank God, I guess there is Some One to love the unloved of earth."
The great clock, which on one of the towers was within the vision of Bar- ton's room told off the hours. Night descended from the great upper spaces, and covered the city with the thick dust of darkness. All the other myriad changes that mark day's pass- ing in a place where men dwell in mil- lions took place. In the room, Barton and Stafford watched the changes, realizing that into their carefree, irre- sponsible lives something was enter- ing that would leave them different
THE GIRL WHO NEVER WAS.
135
men; in the hospital a life they knew was hovering over the gulf whose depths have not been plumbed; to- ward them was speeding another life, strained with anxiety, with thoughts reaching ever forward faster than the whirling express was cleaving the shadows; coming to what purpose? On that question neither of the friends let his mind dwell.
It is waiting that throws the spin- ning balance wheels of poise out of alignment; and the waiting told on the two men. They thought of all pos- sible schemes, it seemed, of reaching the unknown "E. L. Wait" and finding out for a certainty whom the name represented. But the schemes which they did try failed. It was simply waiting for them; waiting for time to answer their questionings as he an- swers all with his moments and years.
A little after midnight a taxi-cab whirred into silence down in the street before the building. Barton, his lean face sharper still, left the room.
"I'll see what's up," he said, briefly.
Stafford nodded.
When he came back from the tele- phone, his face was set. "It's 'E. L. Wait sure enough.' Come on; down with me."
When the elevator left them on the first floor they stepped across to the reception room door; Stafford hung back and let Barton go ahead.
As they stepped in, a figure rose to meet them.
Barton sighed audibly. The figure became, as it advanced from the cor- ner of the room, a girl.
Swiftly Barton's voice spoke, giv- ing his own name, then : "I was so hur- ried I did not tell you whom I re- ferred to in my message, and I have made a great mistake. The one who is ill is William Marks."
Barton's voice was harsh with its tension.
The girl straightened stiffly. "Oh, tell me, he isn't— isn't?"
Barton almost laughed as the ten- sion broke; a hideous laugh it would have been in contrast to the fear and
hope in the girl's voice. He checked it, however. "No, he is living; and we will take you to see him, if we can have permission from the surgeon in charge of him."
"Don't let him know that I'm here. Really, it is all rather strange," she said in a half-frightened way.
"No, nothing will be said to him. I will see to that," Barton agreed.
Mystery was still in the air, but enough was known; here was a girl who knew and wanted to be with Marks.
Quickly the necessary preparations were made, and Barton, his careless, handsome face haggard with his care and vigil, but ennobled with some in- ner light that had been fanned into being, started for the hospital with the girl.
When they had gone, Stafford took up the watch in Barton's room. He knew that Barton would bring back from the hospital the final solution of what mystery there was remaining. As Stafford pondered the situation, his theories did not quite fit the facts, nor could he make them, and he gave up his attempts to do so.
At last when Barton appeared, his tired but happy face told something of the outcome. "Yes, it was all right. He met the girl when he was on his vacation last summer in the hills — only one Wellington could get him to take, you remember — and he fell in love with her ; but he never got up the courage to propose to her — doesn't that fit in with what you know of him? She was a helper in the farmhouse where he boarded, and she is just as shy as he is: so they never even got near the Tm going to tell you I love you' stage. That book was one she bought somewhere — second-hand, by the way. She said she had thought she had lost it."
Barton smiled a wistful smile at his friend. "It's a case of love, all right, Staff. He must have kept the book in much the same spirit as you have a glove you refuse to give up, and I a little trinket. The letters she wrote — that's the odd part of it — were writ-
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ten as he said, by himself to himself from her."
"And in them it seemed to appear that she was scolding him for calling her beautiful," Stafford continued. "She's as homely a girl as he is a man — even more so."
"What difference does it make?" Barton asked a little hotly. Then his tone changed and softened, and his eyes darkened into the hue of a misty
twilight. "I was there by Marks' bed just long enough, as he recognized her, and understanding came, to get such an idea of what Heaven is that I'm not going to miss any chance of getting there if I can help it. She looked beautiful enough then, as she — But what difference does it make ? If she is beautiful to him, and he is to her, why the rest of the world doesn't count."
SAN FRANCISCO
Enthroned above a sapphire sea —
Watcher beside the Golden Gate, New-born from dust and misery,
Triumphant over fire and fate — Fairer than ancient Rome she sits
Upon her many-times "seven hills," The strength of youth is in her heart,
Her blood with Western vigor thrills.
Perpetual roses in her hair, Jewels of light upon her breast, —
Queen of the ocean and the air, Her destiny is manifest.
Her shimmering robes of sunset hues
Fall in soft tints from hill to shore ; White ships crowd up about her feet,
Her music is the ocean's roar. Symbols of power are in her hand —
The gleam of gold from hidden mines; The purple splendor of her fruits,
The fragrant chalice of her wines.
ELIZA JARVIS NAGLE.
Anita
By Aaud B. Rodgers
IT WAS a dry year in the Santa Clara Valley. Anita Romero con- stantly heard it so declared on every side, her father and mother looking out upon the brown, sere fields, wondered what would follow all this dire desolution; the padre prayed for rain.
She had never fully realized the seriousness of the situation, however, until to-day, when unexpectedly two travelers had crossed her path, as she gathered lupins in the lane aglow with these brilliant and deeply fragrant blossoms for all the drought. First had come old Mr. Gray, the nursery man, returning from the forest clad hills with sacks of leaf mold in his long, deep wagon, and with baskets of fern roots, yet fragrant of the woods. He drew up as he neared Anita, and noting the mass of flowers she had gathered, shook his gray head and re- marked in his slow, even voice : "There are those who are born with great love for flowers. You are one, Anita ; I am another. Do not let this passion pos- sess you until it becomes a mania, as it has become with me. Look at my gardens. When a rare palm dies, a fragile lily fades, it grieves me. When the wind rends and snaps some limb I, too, am wounded. When a year of drought like this comes, I am driven to extremes, and far beyond my strength to save every root," and he glanced at the sacks of leaf mold which were in- tended to hold the moisture about the roots of some of his finest bulbs. She did not reply, but gazed at the flowers she held, the words of the old man merely causing her to look upon the blossoms with added tenderness, for she was young, and mercifully the young cannot fully comprehend fa-
tigue, disappointment and hope long deferred.
As he gathered the reins together and bent over for his willow switch, he finished the conversation:
"And my lily bulbs: what is to be- come of them. I have laid awake nights trying to solve the problem, but there is no way out. Two hundred Bermuda lily bulbs, and the spring gone dry. Not much profit for me next year.
He moved on, too absorbed in his thoughts to notice that the girl who stood before him had been rendered dumb by his hopeless statements. She watched the old man, whom she had known since her babyhood, go out of sight, and was about to continue on her way home when there came to her ears the resounding echo of approach- ing horse's hoofs — rapid, persistent, as if the rider traveled in the utmost haste.
In a few minutes, Antonio Diaz ap- peared at the top of the hill that led down into the lane, and although Anita was at the extreme end, he instantly perceived her, and at once began to rein in the mad beast he rode. Even from the distance, Anita could see he was not in his usual frame of mind, for his dark, handsome face wore an harassed, defiant expression. Know- ing her fear of his mustang he dis- mounted some little distance from her and approached leading the horse by his lariat.
"Antonio, what is the matter? Where are you going?"
"To the dogs, Anita, along with everything else."
As his was an entirely different tem- perament from that of old Mr. Gray, so was his outlook upon life entirely
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different. Her startled, inquiring look bade him proceed.
"For the dust is blowing up in whirlwinds in the wheat field and the springs have gone dry in the pasture. I'm on my way now to take what I can get for the cattle, and that won't be half what they are worth."
"But the padre said there would be rain."
"Bah! it's all right for him to talk of rain from out his sheltered slopes. Why, the dew that gathers there would raise all he needs."
"God will not forget us; the rain will come."
Antonio broke into a mocking laugh.
"God will not forget us — there is no God to forget!"
Instantly he saw his mistake, for the girl suddenly drew away from him and involuntarily raised her armful of flowers as a barrier between them. Her eyes expressed her astonishment and her horror.
He spoke in a calmer voice. "For- give me, Anita: I have scarcely slept for two nights, for above all that I might lose might be you. The crops of this year, had they been fair, would have finished paying for the ranch, and try as I may now, I shall be two hundred dollars short on the mortgage. Just think: a home within my reach and unable to claim it, and I've earned it — yes, many times over. I had even made the plans for you for a house; it was all for you. I love you, Anita, better than life itself!"
He still held the horse with his left hand; he stretched out his right arm to the girl he loved, but without a word she turned and ran from him. So light of foot was she that she was soon far up the lane, scattering the lupins as she hurried on, leaving An- tonio gazing after her speechless, and as amazed at her mood as she had been at the mood of old Mr. Gray. At first his impulse was to follow her, but realizing that his words had driven her from him, he silently watched her unlatch the gate opening from the lane into her father's home, and saw her go out of sight among the orchard
trees; then he remounted and gath- ered up his reins, his brain in a whirl as he galloped in reckless fashion on to his destination.
On his way back he stopped at the ranch, but the small house was dark and silent, and another disappoint- ment was added to the list of the long day of Antonio, for he had fully ex- pected to see Anita for a few minutes that evening. Days and even weeks went by, however, without his being able to find her ; often he would snatch a few hours from his work, mount the mustang, and hurry down to her home, but she was never there. He even left his dry fields, dressed and went to Mass. Each time she had already come and gone. Always he asked the same question of Anita's father, and always the kindly old man would make the same reply, as he paused in his work, removed his hat and brushed his tired face with a worn handker- chief:
"She works, all day from morn un- til night. She kisses me good-bye at sunrise; at twilight she returns and smiles at me. She is happy; she does not tell me her life; her mother alone knows, and she, too, will not tell!"
Antonio gazed perplexed.
"Where does she go?" he inquired eagerly.
"I cannot say. Somewhere in her oldest dress and wearing a heavy apron. Always old Blanco, the dog, goes with her; many times the little neighbor, little Manuel."
"And he will not tell? I would make him tell!"
For an instant, Antonio saw the same expression burn in the old man's eyes that he had seen in Anita's eyes the day she had left him in the lane.
As it faded away, the old man said : "It is her pleasure, her secret; some day we shall know."
But one day at twilight Antonio found her. She was coming toward the house, walking underneath the al- mond trees, whose overhanging branches were now covered with fra- grant blossoms. Blanco was with her ; on her arm she carried a basket; in
ANITA
139
her hand a broken trowel for her father to mend.
Antonio clasped her suddenly in his arms. It was as if the long years had rolled between them.
"Where have you been all this time, Anita? Why do you hide from me?"
"I do not hide from you, Antonio; it is you who are the one who hides. And you hide from God himself!"
She drew away from him as she spoke, and her low voice sounded so accusing that he stood silently re- garding her. He sought for an answer to her words.
"God has hidden His face from me. He has forgotten me. I cannot find Him."
The pity for the disconsolate that is uppermost in the heart of every wo- man stirred within her.
"He is always with us, Antonio. Be- cause our way is not always easy, it is not that He has forgotten us. The padre says we must bear the cross to gain the crown. If He remembers the sparrows he will not forget us, Anto- nio."
"He has forgotten us — look at our valley, our fields, our animals."
"He is yet above us." She lifted her face to the soft, twilight sky, and from the serenity of her expression Anto- nio gathered faith.
"And He loves us," he said softly, almost to himself
"We cannot comprehend his love, so deep it is."
"But with all my heart I love you, Anita. I love you better than I love God himself. I should swear an un- truth did I say differently."
"Listen, Antonio," she answered slowly, "before I marry you, you must come back to God, else neither of us could be happy. Do you not remem- ber that you once said He had led you to this valley where you found a home and me? You felt His presence then and you thanked Him. Come hard- ships and disappointments, you turn from Him. It has only made me turn to Him the more, and I have found happiness and peace."
"With all your faith in God, Anita,
you must have a little more faith in me. When all this blackness rolls away, I may feel His love again. Love me until then!" he pleaded, and his face was pale as she kissed him.
April arrived with a long desired downpour, after which the clear, fresh earth, with its many wild flowers, its tender green blades, and its singing larks emphatically proclaimed the springtime.
The padre prepared for Easter, and he came one day to talk with Anita. She had promised him an Easter lily. It was waiting for him, and as she placed it before him, she did not note his expression of surprise that she had so successfully grown this perfect flower and did not hear his thanks. She spoke of Antonio.
The padre had many such as he in his parish ; the coming year would find him not so tolerant of their indiffer- ence. He returned to the lily. It must be well wrapped; not a petal must be broken; one could not rely upon the perfection of a spring day, and this flower was perfection itself. He bent to inhale its wonderful perfume. "And I have over two hundred such as that, or rather they are not mine. I grew them for old Mr. Gray. He had no water; he could not grow them. Our spring never fails."
The padre glanced through the win- dow by which they stood, as if ex- pecting to see the lilies standing in the sheltered garden without.
"Two hundred," he cried, in aston- ishment; "where are they?"
"Back of the pasture is the slope with the spring. In the shelter of the slope, where I could make use of the water, I grew them all underneath a thin canvas."
The padre thoughtfully regarded her.
"Two hundred lilies! My child, how you must have worked."
"Early and late."
"It is coming night. I cannot go to see them now; to-morrow I will come."
He came as he said he would on the morrow, toiling up the path that the girl's feet had worn smooth.
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In his soft, flat shoes he made no sound ; he lifted the strip of loose can- vas that marked the entrance, and stepped within the lily house. Blanco, asleep just within, gazed sleepily upon the well known figure in the old cas- sock, and slowly closed his eyes again. Anita, busy at the far end, did not perceive him.
The old man looked slowly about. Tall lilies stood on every side, a soft, bright light falling through the thin white canvas rested upon the whiter flowers. A charming perfume filled the air.
In the silence the old padre spoke as to himself :
"It is heaven," he said softly.
Anita turned, undisturbed by his presence. She knew he would appear just so, and she went on watering the lilies.
"Then you like it, Padre Anselmo?"
"Just so the lilies bloom in Paradise. He has lent us these glorious flowers to make us long for those fadeless flowers of the other world." He passed softly from one spot to another comparing, praising, wondering at the girl's toil and patience, and finally paused not far from her.
"Among these pure flowers the sin- ner could not fail to turn to God and praise Him. Looking upon their ma- jestic beauty risen from the dust, he could never more doubt the resurrec- tion of the soul."
From these flowers the padre gath- ered more faith, and when he departed he left among them a peace like a benediction. Anita stopped work, and put down her sprinkling pot, absorbed in meditation.
She believed all the words of the padre, and here she now knew the fierce and wayward soul of Antonio could be brought back to God. She must bring Antonio here, and at once, for very soon old Mr. Gray would call to forward the lilies to the florist. But she had no need of sending for An- tonio, for as the padre was departing he met him entering the ranch gate.
The padre discoursed upon the beauty of the lily house, secretly be-
lieving that Antonio might have had a hand in its construction, for his eyes had grown too dim to note that only a woman's and child's hands could have constructed the canvas house, which would have fallen long since had it not been for the sheltering boughs of the many old oak trees clus- tered all about. Antonio listened at- tentively to the padre's words, and to his order to appear at Mass the fol- lowing Sunday. So deferential was he to the aged man that the padre went on his way with his heart at peace, re- garding the future of Antonio, and An- tonio possessed of a heart filled with hope started for the lily house, care- fully following the padre's directions. The hesitancy of the unbidden pos- sessed him as he neared the peaceful spot of sheltering bough, of drooping vine and fragrant flower. As he lifted aside the canvas entrance he was sur- prised to see Anita just before him, and more surprised to hear her voice filled with joy at beholding him in her little world of silence and bloom- ing lilies.
"Antonio!"
He took her face in his hands and kissed it.
"Anita mia."
She stepped back and looked intent- ly at him.
"Antonio," she said, slowly, "the padre says that God can be found here among the lilies; that these flowers, that mean so much to us, have been lent to point us the way to the land where the flowers never fade. That they represent all that is most beauti- ful in life, and typify the resurrection of the soul."
Antonio looked out upon the mass of blossoms. His face wore an ex- pression of humility and shame. "Did you do all this, Anita, work day after day that I might be healed of my faithless heart. That through your sacrifice and your toil I might be brought to a realization of my sins?"
"I did not realize how far-reaching my work would be — at first I prayed that I might be able to help you, An- tonio. See how good God has heard
THE COSMIC MOTIF.
141
my prayer. I planted the bulbs so carefully, pot by pot, and watched them come slowly up and grow. Thank- ful, as I watered them, that each day saw them taller and finer. Finally came the flowers, and old Mr. Gray to see them. Then I knew that I had succeeded, that they were valuable. And while I knew they would mean much to old Mr. Gray, I knew they would mean far more to you and to me, Antonio. That they would save the home you despaired of gaining."
Antonio, tall and strong of frame, looked at the slender girl with the
glowing, eager face. For once he turned from her, then he wiped his eyes, so that he might more clearly behold all the light and life and beauty of her face and of the lilies all about her. He reached out supplicating hands to her and fell on his knees be- side her.
"Forgive me, Anita, and may God forgive me. I almost wish it were the eternal paradise. I could be content •with you for all eternity."
And with her hands folded upon his head, she bent and kissed his soft, dark hair.
THE COSMIC AOTI F
Once was a boy, and wonderful
The light that dwelt his eyes within. Can Stygian darkness quite annul
This glint of Jove's own javelin? Must yon high-soaring, air-borne gull
Be subject to malign chagrin?
From eyes once young and conquering-bright Tears, fed by hidden fonts, now start;
The spear-glint wanes before the night ; The arrow bites the sea-gull's heart.
Wrong scorns the menace of the Right; Greed tears the flesh and soul apart.
O Powers of Evil, have a care!
Though Jove may through the long night nod, Jove and his javelin wait thee there,
And dawn, the huntress, comes, wing-shod! Youth, Spring — the Principle — by prayer
Preserved, lie sleeping in the clod.
ARTHUR POWELL.
Juwa and Awasus
By A. J. Ashen
T
HE STORY of Juwa and Awa- sus has been told many times
at the Fort K Indian School
until it has attached itself to that institution as a sort of legend. The primary teachers tell this story to their young pupils, and of all the stories they like it the best. In the cemetery just behind the chapel are the little graves of Juwa and Awasus, and once a year on the day set apart for decorating the final resting places of the dead, the little graves of these Indian boys whose childish devotion for each other caused them to face death, rather than be separated, are strewn with flowers — with the tender care of many hands.
There are only two persons now at
Fort K Indian School who were
there when Juwa and Awasus began their education at that institution, the principal, grown old and gray, and the matron, now the principal's wife. It was the matron who first told me their story, which I have heard many times since from other lips, and as she drove me to the station, after one of my pro- longed visits in that beautiful valley, she pointed out to me a pile of rocks, on the right side of the road, as the spot where the shack had stood in which they found the two little boys on that cold, blizzardy day — but I am
anticipating my story.
* * *
It was almost dark on a rather bleak autumn evening in the latter part of September when Awasus was led into the principal's office to be registered. Miss Ophelia, the primary teacher, brought him in. She had taken the little fellow in charge the moment the supervisor's wagon had left his shiv- ering form on the parade ground.
The principal, picking him up and seating him on his desk, said he was a "strapping little fellow." Awasus did not know what a "strapping little fellow" was ; in fact, he cared not, for many strange things were attracting the attention of his big brown eyes, which roved from one object to an- other in open wonder.
He was entered in the principal's large book. Name, Awasus; age seven years. Tribe, Blackfoot. Father's name, Chief Awawu.
"I see there's another little fellow from the same reservation," the prin- cipal said, as he referred to the regis- tration book. "Juwa, age eight. He'll make a good companion for Awasus. Have the two put together, Miss Oph- lia. It will help to keep away home- sickness."
Miss Ophelia turned her charge over to the matron, and that lady, taking him under her wing, washed, cleaned and then dressed him in a brand new uniform.
''There you are," the matron said, after completing his toilet. "Now you look like a little civilized boy."
Awasus merely blinked his eyes and slyly ganced down at his new clothes. He looked so sweetly self-conscious and ill at ease that the matron, with her motherly soul, could not help grab- bing him in her arms.
"You cute little thing, I could just squeeze you," she cried, and then held him out at arms' length half-playfully. "We'll make a heap fine educated man of you."
It was after bed-time when she car- ried him into the dormitory and tucked
him in beside Juwa.
* * *
A week before the same buckboard
JUWA AND AWASUS
143
had dropped Juwa in front of the prin- cipal's office. No warm greeting had awaited him as in the case of Awa- sus. Miss Ophelia had taken him by the hand without a word, and had led him into the principal's office, where she had left him. The principal, giv- ing him a cursory survey over his eyegless, had proceeded to take his name from the slip of paper handed to him from the supervisor, and then had turned him over to the matron without further ado. That lady had dressed him in silence.
This cool reception was due to a lack of that physical charm which the Maker endows some children: for Juwa was no physical beauty. Large of limb, rather high cheek bones and with a slight squint to his eyes, his homeliness was of the commonplace.
"He's not even homely enough to be cute," the matron had said.
He came from the tribe that lived in the mountains, whose rugged peaks you could see on a clear day ranged against the blue sky, far to the north- west. Awasus, on the other hand, came from the tribes that roamed the plains, where the sluggish yellow streams wound their way, snake like, in between the bench lands. They spoke the same tongue, and belonged to the one great Blackfoot race.
Those days, before Awasus came, were lonesome and not at all pleasant for Juwa. The older boys were rough and talked only Whiteman's tongue, which he did not understand, and there were no other little boys with whom he could play. When school was over and the other boys were yelling and shouting at their games on the parade ground, he would go off alone, trying to amuse himself by throwing stones at the great flock of blackbirds that covered the stable yards. His little heart was heavy, and in his loneliness he thought of his father's tepee in among the mountains; of his dog that used to cuddle up beside him at night and keep him warm; of his pet deer that his father caught while hunting for the caribou in the Rockies. He wondered if he would ever see them
again; then it was that a large lump would steal into his throat and stick there; big tears would come to his eyes.
At night when the matron tucked him in the immaculate white sheets of his bed, he would softly cry himself to sleep, and then he would dream — dream of his father's tepee, and that he was once more playing with his little sisters, or trailing with the other Indian boys through the clear water of the river. When he awoke, how- ever, and saw only the white walls of the dormitory that large lump would rise and stick in his throat, and try as he would he could not choke it down. Tears would come to his eyes and roll down his cheeks, big, scald- ing drops; and then burying his face in his pillow he would cry as if his lit- tle heart would break. The days were long and dreary for Juwa, those days
before Awasus came.
* * *
The morning after Awasus arrived
at Fort K , Juwa slowly became
conscious that there was a little black head on the pillow beside him. He lifted the blanket to get a better look at his bed fellow, and his heart leaped with a glad surprise on seeing a little boy about his own age. Awasus' first impulse, on opening his eyes and find- ing himself in a strange place, was to cry.
"What's your name?" Juwa asked in Blackfoot.
Awasus did not answer, and the cor- ners of his mouth began to drop.
"What's your name?" Juwa asked again.
"Awasus," came the half-timid re- sponse.
Juwa, at first, could hardly believe his ears. At last some one to whom he could talk.
"You come from up there?" and Juwa pointed to the north.
Awasus by this time, recalling the long ride in the supervisor's wagon, nodded his head. A few more ques- tions by Juwa and answers in mono- syllables on the part of Awasus, and the two became friends.
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
Juwa, making faces at Awasus from underneath his blankets, or else cov- ering himself entirely and then burst- ing torth with a loud "booh" soon had Awasus shrieking with laughter. You may be sure it was a much surprised matron that found the heretofore mo- rose Juwa, laughing and playing with his new found companion in childish glee.
Having a playmate, some one to whom he could talk, made all the dif- ference in the world to Juwa. The skies became bluer, his loneliness and little heartaches vanished with the coming of his little friend; one to whom he could speak his thoughts and musings which he had fostered in his heart for days and days.
School over for the day, he and Aw- asus would go off arm in arm, chat- tering like two magpies. They would spend hours playing numerous little games mostly of their own invention. Never for a moment were those little boys separated. They slept together, ate together, and in school sat in the same seat. Juwa, being the larger, looked upon Awasus as his charge, and took care of him in a big brotherly way.
At night, after lights were out, he and Awasus would lie in bed, and in subdued voices tell each other of their homes on the reservation. Awasus, in his childish way, would relate the stories that Wapoosh, the medicine man, had told him; of Muskawah, the bear, and Mahiggan, the wicked wolf that ate small boys. Juwa in his turn would tell of his pets.
"Wait, Awasus," he would say. "some day we'll go home and become great hunters like my father."
Alas, for Juwa and Awasus, this hap- piness was not to last, for even then the Fates were putting their heads to- gether and their shrouds were nesting about you.
The principal, standing at his office window one day, watched the little fellows as they played near by. Miss Ophelia came in.
"Did you ever in your life see such childish devotion, Miss Ophelia?" he
said. "The two little fellows seem perfectly contented."
Miss Ophelia approached the win- dow and looked out at the two boys who were making numerous little sand mounds, with twigs and small sticks placed at the top of each, jabbering contentedly as they worked.
"They're just too dear for anything," was her reply. "I came in to see you about them. I'm afraid we'll have to separate the little fellows. They have been in school two months, and they have not made a bit of progress in their English. As long as they are to- gether they talk nothing but their own tongue. For their own good I think we ought to separate them for a while, at least."
"It would be a shame to do that, Miss Ophelia," the principal replied, without taking his eyes off the two boys. "Poor little fellows, it would break their hearts."
"Yes, I realize that it will be hard on the little fellows,'" Miss Ophelia went on. "But by having them sepa- rated for two weeks at least I believe I could get them started and little in- terested in their English."
The principal said nothing for a mo- ment, still keeping his eyes on the little boys, and then finally said :
"Well, Miss Ophelia, you ought to know. If you think it's for the best, I suppose that's the thing to do."
It was left to the motherly diplo- macy of the matron to wean the two boys from each other. She waited until they were asleep, then bundled Awasus away to another bed. In the morning she found him crying for his playmate. She tried to soothe him by offering him a cookie, but he pushed it away.
"Juwa, I want Juwa," he cried in Blackfoot.
"Don't cry, Awasus. You must stay away from Juwa. Some other day you can play with Juwa," pleaded the ma- tron. Awasus did not understand these tender solicitations, and cried all the more.
To please him she brought out a large doll and some other playthings,
JUWA AND AWASUS
145
but his interest was only for the mo- ment, and try as she would she could not expel the tears that coursed down his cheeks, big glassy drops. His heart was broken, and for the first time there came to him, as it had come to Juwa, the loneliness of a homesick boy.
The matron's motherly heart went out to this little child, and under her breath murmured about "the heart- lessness of some people."
Juwa, left in the care of Miss Ophe- lia, was equally heartbroken. She tried to soothe him, in her old-maiden- ly way, and soon lost patience, and in rather curt tones told him to :
"Hush up, you crying child!"
It was then that Juwa rebelled. In the school room he refused to repeat after her the names of the objects she held in her hand. That lady, beside herself, grasped him by the shoulder and gave him a shaking.
"You naughty boy, sit down," she cried, and pushed him roughly in his seat, much to the delight of the older boys.
Never before, Juwa, had a rough hand grasped you in anger. Down deep in the heart of this little child there kindled for the first time the .spark of hate.
That night, while lying sobbing on his pillow, an idea formulated in Ju- wa's little black head. He would run away and go back to the reservation; he would take Awasus with him and never again would he be separated from his little friend.
Two days later, after classes were dismissed, when the matron was busy directing the preparation of the even- ing meal and Miss Ophelia was con- ferring with the principal about her work, two little forms stole away from the great white barn and were soon hidden from view by the bushes along the river. Screened by the wil- lows, they gained the bridge, and once across, disappeared with the road around a small hill.
They ran as fast as their little legs could carry them, and amost out of breath they came to a walk. Awasus
barely keeping up with Juwa's long strides, half walked and half ran be- side his companion.
"Which way is home, Juwa?" Awa- sus asked.
"Over there, Awasus," said Juwa, pointing to the mountains, but dimly visible on account of the hazy sky.
"Will we be home to-morrow?"
"Yes, Awasus, we'll be home to- morrow."
It was the rumbling of a wagon that caused them to leave the road, and to 'go out into that great expanse of yel- low rolling plains. The coach driver, seeing the two boys, shouted out to them good-naturedly:
"Hey, there, you little rascals!" and as he saw the little fellows terror stricken running as fast as they could, he chuckled at his joke and rolled on with his coach, puffing a cigarette.
The two boys ran; fright was writ- ten on their faces. Every minute they expected to feel an arm reach out to grasp them. At last, stumbling and breathless, they reached a little de- pression where the buffaloes not many years before used to gather in great herds to wallow in the soft mud. See- ing that they were not followed, they sat down, weary and spent, on a pile of rocks near a prairie dog village. The little denizens peeped and barked at them from a thousand small mounds. Awasus, tired and sleepy, dropped his head on Juwa's shoulder, and Juwa, putting his arm around his compan- ion, pressed him close to his side. No more would he be separated from his little pal. In another day they would reach his father's tepee in among the mountains, and there they would be as free as the wind.
While the two little boys sat thus, the Chinook, the warm wind of the south, was battling with its arch enemy —the Wind of the North. All sum- mer the Chinook had been master, but now the North wind, waxing strong, was routing the Wind of the South, causing it to beat a hasty retreat.
The North Wind, driving the Chi- nook before it, came in short, sharp blasts : with it came great black clouds
146
OVERLAND MONTHLY
which all but obscured the sun. Juwa as he sat on the rocks with his com- panion noticed the change in the tem- perature. A snowflake fell on his hand. He watched it as it slowly melted; then he saw other flakes. He jumped to his feet. Koona! The snow — he knew what that meant. He remembered how it had piled around his father's tepee, and also the stories his mother told him, about hunters having been lost in the snow and had been frozen.
All around them there was nothing but prairie. While on top of a knoll, just before they had reached their resting place, Jewa recalled seeing what appeared to be a small shack, far to the north.
"Come, Awasus," he said. "We must be going ; the snow is falling up- on us.
He took Awasus by the hand and started in the direction he had seen the shack. The wind grew cold and blew the snow, which was flying thicker every minute, in their faces, almost blinding them. Awasus, who was chilled by the wind, began to cry.
"I'm cold, Juwa," he cried.
"Hush, Awasus, just a little ways and we'll come to shelter," Juwa re- plied, trying to comfort the little trem- bling form of his companion.
It grew dark. The wind became fiercer, sending the snow flying through the air, until they were not able to see ten feet ahead. With his coat drawn up before his face, and at the same time trying to shelter Awasus by holding him close to his side, Juwa struggled on in face of the blinding storm. A barb wire fence blocked their way. Juwa took hope. Where there was a fence there might be a house. Crawling underneath the wires they again faced the cold north wind. Awasus was crying.
"I'm tired, Juwa. Let's rest for awhile," he whimpered.
"No, we mustn't do that. Just a
little farther, Awasus. Just a little farther." He put his arm around his little friend and struggled on with him.
They went but a short distance, when Awasus not able to move another step, sank to the ground. His little legs refused to move. Juwa, losing hope, looked about him and saw a black object outlined through the whirling snow. It looked like a house of some sort. He reached down, picked up the lifeless form of Awasus, and staggered on with him. The cold north wind cut his hands. His arms became paralyzed, and the form of Awasus slipped through them to the ground. The shack was but a few feet away. He could see the door. Picking up the lifeless form of his companion, and, with almost super- natural effort, reached the side of the building. He knocked at the door with his foot, and it flew open. The shack was empty. In a corner he saw a pile of old clothes, and dragging the body of his companion there, covered him over with them. Lying down be- side him, he drew some of the clothes over himself and cuddled beside his little friend to keep him warm.
A gentle warmness crept over his body. How drowsy he was. He felt himself slipping from reality. He was back on the reservation, playing around his father's tepee with his lit- tle sisters. Awasus was there. It was summer; the grass was green and the air was soft and warm. Thus he fell asleep.
They found him two days after- wards in a deserted cabin within three hundred feet of the great white barn. The principal, lifting up the old clothes, disclosed the two little hud- dled forms locked in each others' arms, and on both their faces was a smile of perfect content. Something tightened around the principal's heart as he knelt down beside them.
"Poor little chaps," was all he said.
Getting a line on the timber prospect.
Taking a Timber Claim
By /Airiam E. AcGuire
IT WAS NOT a mere business trans- action. Taking my timber claim was an experience, an adventure; therefore, another memory-treasure for the Castle-Invisible where myself and my day dreams dwell.
In my philosophy of life, every new interest created in any direction, each bit of beauty etched indelibly upon the memory, or of precious dream- fabric culled from human association, Nature or books become significant as material to use in the architecture or furnishing of this Home of the Mind. Travel, observation, effort, success, failure, no longer end in blind alleys of unrelated fragments, but each has its fitting place in some part of the
structure. Visible scenes, ephemeral experiences along the way are but sources from which to draw enduring memories and impressions. And so, as I journey through the days, I find ever-increasing pleasure in "collect- ing" these immaterial materials and in trying to fashion them into a Place- Beautiful. The idea lends new mean- ing to daily incidents and events. It gives immediate purpose to life; it becomes a fortification against ennui in later years.
No doubt this habitual point of view influenced my decision when, one April day away out in romantic Seat- tle, my friend. Thelma, confided to me her intention to take a timber claim in
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Northern California, and suggested that I should go along and do likewise. I had never "taken a claim" of any kind. The Shasta region, where the lands under consideration lay, was a part of California that I had not vis- ited. The trip appealed to me, and so did the idea of calling my own a tiny portion of that vast stretch of virgin forest. Thus it came about that, a few days later Thelma, Caroline Jones, an acquaintance whom we had per- suaded to go with us, and I started out in high spirits on our small pioneering expedition.
Crossing the broad Columbia river was the first special diversion that I recall en route. A delay of several hours in Portland gave us time to make an excursion up the winding trolley way to Portland Heights. The day was superb. Snow-covered Mount Hood and Mount Helena stood out in clear-cut silhouette against the blue sky and even a shoulder of distant Mount Rainier could be seen through field glasses by any one with an imagi- nation.
Next day at Shasta Springs an amusing incident occurred. As the train stopped there only a few minutes passengers poured from the coaches with cup or glass in hand, eager to get a taste of the famous Shasta water. Caroline thoughtfully brought out a jar from our lunch basket and filled it, remarking as we went back to the train that Shasta water was said to make excellent lemonade. Of course we must have lemonade at once. The porter brought a table. Caroline insisted up- on preparing the beverage herself, and went about it in a systematic man- ner, while Thelma and I contributed numerous helpful suggestions, which she calmly ignored. She set the jar of Shasta water at one side, and placed three glasses anticipatively in the middle of the table. Then with nice precision she squeezed the proper amount of lemon juice into a fourth glass, carefully added just enough — not a spoonful too much — sugar, and stirred the mixture with deliberation. So far everything had proceeded ac-
cording to Hoyle, the passengers around us enviously watching the pro- cess. All eyes were following Caro- line's hand as she lifted the glass of lemon juice and nonchalantly turned the contents into the jar. The effect was instantaneous and startling. A miniature Shasta fountain shot to the ceiling of the car and came down in a beautiful cascade all over us and the table. For an instant we looked at one another in consternation and ruefully at the empty jar, but after the first gasp we joined in the laughter at our expense, while the porter rushed to the rescue and mopped up with a cloth all that was left of our precious lemonade. We resolved to take a few private les- sons in chemistry before we "handed a lemon" to any more mineral water.
A stalwart "timber" cruiser met us at Redding, where the U. S. Land Of- fice is located, and our party was still further increased by two or three more prospective "timber claimers." A "lo- cator" took charge of the party there, and the rest of our journey, a forty-five mile drive up the gorge of the Sacra- mento, we made in carriages.
This was an interesting trip over the "trail of the '49ers," first traced out when those pioneer prospectors were searching at fever heat for gold. We passed through the old town of Shasta, which still bears suggestive marks of the "good times" the miners had in those exciting days. Most of the buildings are covered with sheet iron. The doors are of iron, and the win- dows have iron shutters, all of which present a dented and battered appear- ance, challenging the imagination to repicture the wild-west scenes enacted there a few decades ago. The dilapi- dated old town is silent enough now.
Along the winding gorge road the scenery is wild and in places rugged. The trail, now developed into a very good road, follows the Sacramento River much of the way. Given a mountainous landscape, combined with vegetation and water, the result is us- ually pleasing to the eye. In the North- western pine regions the vegetation it- self is not varied enough to be as at-
In the timber country of California.
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150
OVERLAND MONTHLY
tractive as that of countries further south. Though the great masses of evergreens against the mountain sides are effective at a distance, the individ- ual trees have a stiffness and monot- ony more readily translated in terms of lumber and dollars than of beauty. Nature evidently used one of her coarser brushes when she portrayed these landscape scenes.
I by no means devoted all my time during that drive, however, to a study of the landscape. In many places the grade of the road was steep, the curves often short and dangerous, and our driver, the stalwart cruiser before men- tioned, proved a veritable Jehu. At times he cracked his whip and made the horses tear down abrupt declines and around dizzy corners in a manner to absorb the passengers' whole atten- tion. To save myself from bouncing out like a rubber ball, I clung to the carriage with both hands and shut my teeth so hard together that even if I should escape sudden death, I thought lockjaw would surely seize me before the journey's end. But to the cool- headed Jehu it was all in the day's work. The skill with which he man- aged those plunging horses without seeming to manage them at all became positively fascinating. Der Erlkonig's ride or Tarn O'Shanter's flight when the witches were after him could hard- ly have seemed more exciting than ours. Yet in spite of indications to the contrary, Jehu, with a jerk of the lines and a mighty "whoa!" that brought the horses almost down on their haunches, did at last stop before an old inn that marked our destina- tion.
At this inn, one of the first houses built, we were told, by a successful '49er, our party spent the night "fifty years ago" sounds like ancient history on the Pacific Coast, and looks like it, too, when compared with the accom- plished wonders found there at the present day. This old house stands in a small valley closely shut in by mountains. The place had a cozy, home-like appearance after our long ride through an uninhabitable stretch
of country, and the motherly woman who, with her husband and sons, had lived there for years, made us very welcome.
After we had eaten supper the whole household, including the family proper and a .hired man or two, sat with us around a roaring log fire — for the nights there in the mountains were still cold — and tales galore of the early times were told. Before the evening was over I was quite convinced that there were giants in those days. Surely there were heroes and heroines.
The following morning we set out with importance "to locate our claims." We drove several miles to the boun- dary line of our prospective lands, where we had to begin our "cruise" on foot, for Uncle Sam requires every person who takes a timber claim to swear that he or she has walked over each "quarter" of the land for which application is filed. Before the day was over I could most conscientiously have taken my oath that I had walked over a good many "quarters" of some- thing, for it was no small pedestrian feat to keep even within sight of that long legged cruiser.
By and bye our Forest Rover — Jehu rechristened — did indulgently let us all sit down on the dry pine-needle carpet to get our breath. I had heard so much by this time about fortunes that had been made out of timber lands, and in particular about the great value of the forests through which we were tramping, that I began to see dollars instead of "tongues in trees." The commercial spirit with which I was temporarily imbued was respon- sible for the cold-blooded manner in which I asked the cruiser how many feet of lumber a tall yellow pine near our resting place would make. He re- plied by challenging me to figure it out for myself, giving me his estimated height of the tree and the number of logs it could be divided into, while I measured the circumference and found the diameter. I innocently inquired if the problem had to be solved by log- arithms. To the cruiser's evident sur- prise, however, I did make the calcu-
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
lation correctly, and rose accordingly in his estimation.
Jehu was to me a new genus of man. From snatches of conversation between himself and members of the party to whom he talked indiscriminately along the way, I gathered something of his character and history. It seemed that he had grown up from childhood in that locality. He had been a cruiser for a good many years, and told thrill- ing tales of days and nights spent alone, except for his faithful dog, in those mountain forests, and of his ad- ventures with rattlesnakes and cou- gars. Not a trace of either of these creatures did we see, though he took care that we should not forget their possible presence. It was unsafe, he insisted, to tramp through those woods without a bit of whisky "as a remedy for snake bites." He was unprepos- sessing in appearance, except that he was very tall, as erect as an Indian, and walked with the free stride of a born mountaineer, yet romance had not passed him by. There was a syni- cal reference now and then to an early marriage that had ended unhappily. The woman was "beautiful," but she very soon grew tired of her absen- tee husband and had run away with another man. When he again married he choose an Indian girl, the descend- ant of a chief not unknown to history. With her and a large brood of child- ren he was living at the time of this story. His devotion to them all seemed very real, and he spoke with touching pathos of the death of one of his lit- tle girls.
We tramped and tramped. My com- panions had each decided upon a claim but, so far as I found, nothing that came up to my pre-conceived ideas of what a timber claim ought to look like. I wanted more trees and bigger ones on mine. At last, when it began to appear that I would have to remain claimless, the cruiser and locator ad- mitted that there was a "dandy claim" farther on, which they thought would just suit me. And so we tramped "far- ther on."
For some distance we followed a
small mountain stream that hurried jerkily down its crooked, rocky way. Finally the cruiser halted, and with a wave of his hand curtly announced, "Here's the claim." I drew a deep breath of satisfaction. "Ah, this is something like!" I said. There the stately yellow pines stood sociably close together and towered high. Prac- tically no undergrowth existed. The place looked almost as clean and well kept as a city park. With the first thought of calling that beautiful spot my own, mercenary ideas vanished, and all my love of trees returned. I felt like a conspirator in a crime against my friends, as a sudden vision of the one lumber camp I had ever visited flashed through my mind, and transferred itself to these forests as yet unmarred by man's greed or need. I winced as again I seemed to hear the fateful sound of the woodman's axe, the never-to-be-forgotten fall of noble forest giants as they went one after another crashing down to earth, and the hideous shriek of fiendish saws as they ravenously ate their way through huge logs at the mill. Soon, doubtless, a similar forest tragedy would be enacted right there in that Shasta region — and what desolation always follows in the wake of a lum- ber camp!
The contrast between the peace and the beauty at that moment surrounding me, and the depressing vista that would meet the eye after the life of those yellow pines had been sacrificed for yellow coin, carried a sudden wave of sadness over me.
Though the forest must pass, I could at least imprint upon my memory a picture of its present charm and keep that forever. With this thought upper- most, I began to explore, observing every detail of certain objects which would occupy the foreground of my "masterpiece;" that group of three very large pines, standing so closely together that their trunks touched at the base and their rich green needles mingled in a thick canopy far over- head; the large boulder at one side; and the tiny lake opposite, with just
One of the natives that insisted on prior right to the timber claim.
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enough open space between for a pic- turesque bungalow!
Treading softly, like a true denizen of such a sylvan solitude, I ventured farther. Beyond there were stretches of 'Tines and pines and the shadows of pines, as far as the eye could see." Again I felt myself close to the pul- sating heart of nature and in the midst of the enchanting mysteries that hu- man beings through all ages have as- sociated with forests. A miniature gorge heavily wooded and prettily filled in with smaller trees and shrubs cut diagonally across one corner of my claim, just back of the "aerial bungalow" — a pleasing variation in my landscape garden. It was all quite perfect. I would have no artificial im- provements. A bit of debris over there, and that dead limb which had fallen into the edge of the little lake perhaps might be removed, but other- wise the soft brown carpet of pine needles lay smooth and clean in every direction. Going back to "Three-Tree Lodge" — as I had concluded to name my bungalow — for a last survey, I found that on the side from which we had approached, there were just enough openings among the trees to command a fine view out over the nar- row, irregular valley below and the hills on hills beyond — the one finishing touch which my picture needed.
I had become so absorbed in my own musings as I wandered about that I was half oblivious to the presence of my companions, though the cruiser was beginning to show unmistakable signs of impatience. He had dutifully pilot- ed me over each quarter of my claim, and could appreciate no further object in delay. At length he broadly told me that unless I had decided to stay there alone with the cougars and rat- tlesnakes, I'd better come along down the trail with the rest of 'em!"
The same old story! My Eden had a serpent in it, and worse still, there was no Adam as compensation! With a sigh of resignation, I reluctantly turned my back upon the Garden and started after the vanishing party, spec- ulating as I went upon what a forlorn
world this must be to a person with no poetry in his soul. "Dreams, just dreams" are to me one of the real joys of life.
At Redding the following day we did the necessary swearing and then began our return journey Puget Sound- ward.
Some hours later I sat down at a desk in the Observation car to write letters. I looked at the calendar hang- ing before me. It was Friday the 13th. We were then traveling over one of the most mountainous sections of the road, and the two powerful engines at- tached to our train were asthmatically coughing their way up a very steep grade. As I glanced out of the win- dow, the nose of the first engine came into sight around a short curve, and I began idly to count the coaches as they followed. I was sitting in the thirteenth coach. You who may have a super- stitious dread of Friday and the num- ber thirteen, mark the sequel : we ar- rived in Seattle promptly on time : not a mishap of any kind on the way; and we unanimously voted the whole trip a success and a pleasure.
Three months afterward, in July, we had to go again to the U. S. Land Of- fice in Redding and "prove up" on our claims. When we arrived, we found the thermometer registered 110 degrees in the shade. Naturally our chief con- cern this time was to dispose of the Land Office red tape and get out of To- phet as speedily as possible. No one, as good fortune would have it, had in the interval since our first visit entered any counter claim to our trees, struck gold on our lands, or otherwise complicated the proceedings, and so by the next afternoon our business was finished.
My friend Thelma and I intended to take the earliest morning train out of Redding, but upon consulting a time table, we found that a local train ran that evening to a station near Shasta Springs. Impatient to be off, and knowing that we would find a comfort- able hotel, a higher altitude and a lower temperature at the latter place, we resolved to go. This decision
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proved later to have been a brilliant idea.
After a good night's rest in the quiet hotel, we leisurely ate our breakfast and congratulated ourselves that we did not have to rush for an early train in sweltering Redding. When we in- quired at the hotel office how soon the through train would be along, we learned that an accident had occurred a short distance out from Redding, and that the train was reported three hours late. Thelma and I gave each other a comprehensive look, then turning to the clerk, asked in a breath : "Can we get a carriage to take us to Shasta Springs?" While sorrowing for those poor souls stranded down in that pur- gatory, we would "do" the Springs! The clerk assured us that we could get a carriage, and we promptly ordered one.
Such a morning drive as that through the cool woods to Shasta Springs, and the hours we spent at that summer re- sort would have been a pleasure at any time. In contrast to what we had so narrowly escaped, our enjoyment of the experience was much intensified. We had previously skirted the base of Mt. Shasta — the centerpiece in the land- scape of modern California — but the views from the train had been disap- pointing. From several places on our carriage drive, however, the snow-cov- ered peak towered grandly above the lesser mountains, and the great white cone with the dazzling sunlight upon it was a magnificent object.
Shasta Springs hotel and the cot- tages clustering about it stand high above and almost overhang the rail- way station. We found the pine- scented air deliciously cool and the surroundings restful. As soon as we had checked our suit cases, left an or- der for luncheon later, and despatched some post cards, we went out to see what we could see. An alluring path led us down the mountain side. Down and down through shady woods, zig- zagging back and forth across a hurry- ing, foaming stream, we followed it. But the hurrying stream bade us to loiter along its way, listen to its music,
and feast our eyes upon the lovely mosses, lichens and ferns that decked its banks. A rustic bridge spanned the stream at every crossing, and each had its special point of vantage from which to watch the leaping water as in frolicksome mood it dashed spray over the waving ferns and us, or swirled swiftly around some obtruding boulder as if to make up for the time it had spent in play. We wanted to stay there and play forever, but the force of gravitation gradually carried us as well as the sparkling water downward, until at last we stood again beside the familiar, cold-boiling spring from which we had first drank three months before. We did not make any more lemonade.
1 How much and how little one sees from the windows of a fast express! A rough, perhaps impressive outline of landscape, a fleeting glimpse of inter- esting objects in passing, a few min- utes' flirtation with coy beauties of nature as the train halts here or there, but no time to get acquainted. We were "getting acquainted" with Shasta Springs, and at every turn we discov- ered some new attraction. No con- ductor stood beside a panting train ready to shout "All aboard!" and we were having as much fun as any two truants from school. The fountain up on the mountain side above the station seemed to shoot much higher and the springs to gush from a hundred more places than we had noticed when we passed through on the train. Eagerly our eyes tried to follow the thousand rivulets hurrying, scurrying, uniting, dividing, racing as if alive through yielding green obstructions, seeking outlets by which they might escape the snares man had laid to catch and im- prison them in commercial bottles. We strayed into a curiosity shop to buy some photographs, but the mental pic- tures that I had been "taking" all the morning I preferred to any work of a camera.
Happy hours wear winged sandals, and we began to realize that it was high time to return to the hotel away up there somewhere out of sight in the
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sky. Oh, no, we did not have to go back by way of the long, steep, zig- zag path. We went up on a "rapid transit" in a few of the thrilliest mo- ments I can recall. The iron track runs altogether too near the perpen- dicular for the small car to glide up in any sedate, ordinary manner, without spilling the passengers all out behind, and so the daring little beast kicks up its heels, and paws its way up the rails on its front feet. Anyway, that was the sensation I had as an invisible something, apparently alive under- neath the saddle-like construction in which we sat lifted us into the air while the tree tops around us and the mountain wall opposite sank swiftly down into a nether world. After the lapse of five centuries — five minutes, I mean — of that heavenward flight we paused beside a tiny platform on a level with the hotel.
Luncheon over, we were informed that our train was due in a minute. No time, then, to saunter down that pretty zig-zag path again as we had planned. Out we rushed, climbed into the little car and tobogganed down to the sta- tion, just as the belated train came puffing in to carry us on northward. When I saw those coaches full of
flushed, tired and cross-looking passen- gers, I felt half guilty over the delight- ful lark we had been having.
In due course of time Uncle Sam sent me a "patent" to my timber claim with "full right, title and interest" in the same. Several years have since passed. From a financial point of view my attitude toward the transaction is somewhat like that of the darkey to- ward the lottery ticket for which he had paid a dollar, and at the end of a month drew a blank. Sambo was something of a philosopher, and so- liloquized thus : "Anyhow, I'se got a dollah's worth o' hope out o' dat ar ticket!" I am still drawing hopeful financial returns from my investment in the form of occasional requests for "options" on the part of prospective buyers, but the "big deal" in which a few hundred thousand acres of that Shasta region are to be sold en bloc to some multi-millionaire lumber king has not as yet been consummated.
I hold in permanent possession, how- ever, all the pleasant associations with the venture, and down deep in my heart there is a secret satisfaction in knowing that "my trees" still proudly stand, unmolested, in the heart of those virgin wilds.
Saint-Saem.
Giocomo Puccini.
Four Great Composers
By Alma D'Alma
THE COMING to the Panama- Pacific International Exposi- tion of Camille Saint-Saens, the foremost musician of France, leads me to believe that a brief sketch about him and three other great composers of the present time might be interesting to the readers of your fine monthly.
The octogenarian, Camille Saint- Saens, as he was born in October, 1835, aside from his wonderful musi- cianly qualities, might have won fame in any other calling of life. A well
read man, with a profound knowledge of science and art, he is greatly ad- mired and respected by other grand old men of France, such as the as- tronomer Flammarion, the sculptor Rodin, and others. He is a great lover of the Orient and dreads the cold weather, passes his winters in Egypt, Algeria, the Canary Islands, Majorca or Southern Spain. The warm, sunny climes and lovely nature of these coun- tries have been the source of inspira- tion for many of his innumerable or- chestral and operatic works, including
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among his operas Samson and Delilah, Ascanio, Phryne, Timbre d'Argent, Prosperine, Etienne Marcel, La Prin- cesse Juane, and Henri VIII.
Like other composers, he has had his successes and non-successes. His greatest opera "is, of course, Samson and Delilah, and perhaps La Princesse Jaune the least attractive. Speaking of these two latter named, I don't think this little episode will be amiss.
One day, while walking up the bou- levard in Paris, Saint-Saens met his musical publisher, attired in an ele- gant up-to-date overcoat, but very dilapidated hat; after the usual greet- ing, "Bonjour, bonjour, comment c'a
the event, a little manuscript of a score.
Saint-Saens abhors over-publicity and ostentation, and was greatly an- noyed one day by a certain prima donna who came to him with a letter of introduction, and at the same time introduced a gentleman friend of hers, who had secreted a kodak. While he was trying over one of his composi- tions with Madame X, the prima donna, the gentleman in question snappel the photo of the distinguished master accompanying the lady singing at his side. This picture was after- ward circulated without the consent of the master, who has since a profound
ILLS
Facsimile of an autograph score presented to Alma D'Alma by Saint-Saens.
va," etc., Saint-Saens, admiring his friend's coat, exclaimed: "Tres beau, tres beau!" "Yes," responded the publisher, pointing to his coat, "Sam- son and Delilah," but, pointing to his hat, "La Princesse Jaune."
The two Frenchmen had a great laugh, referring to the master's success and failure, which ended in a good dinner together.
It was one day while in London dur- ing the time of Saint-Saens' engage- ment there, that I had the pleasure of attending a luncheon given in his honor at the Cafe Royal. Among the guests were Joseph Hollman, the 'cell- ist; Johannes Wolff, the violinist; An- dre Messager, the composer and con- ductor, and his wife, Hope Temple, the song writer, from whom he is since divorced, and many others. It was there that he gave me as souvenir of
disgust for the lady in particular and kodaks in general.
Massenet, the late lamented com- poser of Manon, Werther, Roi de La- hore, Herodiade, Cendrillon, Esclara- monde, Don Quixote, Cleopatra, The- rese, Sapho, Navarraise, Jongleur de Notre Dame, Thais, etc., was most un- affected. I remember on one occa- sion, when calling on him in Paris, I told him of the great success in Amer- ica of his orchestral works, "Scenes Napolitaines," and others. He said: "What! Do they play my music in America!"
I never knew a more prolific com- poser and yet he was ever ready to extend a helping hand or give advice to a striving artist; ever courteous and keen to recognize talent, he always found time to answer a letter.
His aversion to crossing the Atlan-
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tic was most pronounced, although any number of offers had been made to him for tours in the United States and for whose people he had great admira- tion, yet he was never persuaded to cross the dreaded ocean.
On one occasion his baggage was all checked for Algiers, where he was to superintend rehearsals of his Thais. Upon the arrival of the train at Mar- seilles, where he was to take the boat, he found the sea so rough that he im- mediately summoned his valet to have his baggage placed on a train which he alighted, that was about to leave for Paris.
I consider myself singularly fortu- nate to have had the advantage of studying some of his operas and songs with him. He was an extraordinary coach, and on one occasion, in the "Navarraise," he thoroughly electri- fied me with his wonderful portrayal of the intensely dramatic situation of Anita's scene at the close of the opera.
It was Madonno Pauline Viardot Garcia, one of my teachers in Paris, and whose salons on the Boulevard St. Germain were frequented by 1'hante Monde of Paris, both social and artis- tic, who created among other roles Massenet's "Marie Magdalene" part of the original manuscript.
It was during the time that Maestro Giacomo Puccini was composing that very dramatic and melodious opera, "La Tosca," that he called on me one day in my apartment on the Corso Ve- nezia in Milan. I had met with an ac- cident while riding, and was confined to my room, with my foot in a ban- dage and my arm in a sling. I was well acquainted with his librettist, Luigi Illica, who had read me the li- bretto at a luncheon a week previous. Sitting down at the piano and turning to me, Puccini said: "What do you think of this?" and I heard the chim- ing of the bells of old St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome, intermingled with beautiful melodious and dramatic music splendidly expressed, depicting the realistic situation of the scene of Scarpia and Tosca, at the end of the first act of "La Tosca." I exclaimed :
"E immense Maestro! have you writ- ten anything else?" "No," he said, "lo faccio e taccio" (I do, but say nothing), meaning a retort for some of his colleagues, who talk much, and do little. And so from' this point was developed the splendid three act opera "La Tosca."
Sometimes the composer conceives his music in a certain tempo and often- times the conductor takes it at an- other. This so happened at the first performance of "La Tosca" at the Scala in Milan, at which I was pres- ent. When the great Toscanini took, at this very point of which I speak, the tempo much faster than the com- poser intended, eliciting the enthusi- astic applause of the audience and the hearty congratulations of the composer himself, who was dragged out with the artists and the perspiring Tosca- nini, who contributed so much to the success of this great work.
Maestro Puccini has accrued a for- tune from the successes of his operas, Boheme, Tosca, Manon Lescaut, But- terfly and The Girl of the Golden West. His two earliest works, Le Villi" and "Edgar," never attaining great favor with the public.
He is very fond of wild duck shoot- ing, and spends most of his leisure time in this, his favorite sport, upon a lake near his palatial residence at Torre del Lago near Lucca in Tus- cany, Italy.
Maestro Umberto Giordano, the youngest of these four composers, was fortunate enough to have his latent opera, "Madame Sans Gene," first pro-
Facsimile of an autograph score pre- sented to Alma D'Alma by Puccini.
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duced at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, last winter. I en- joyed the performance and beautiful production immensely.
Giordano, born in Foggia, Italy, of very humble parentage, was almost at the point of starvation before the suc- cess of his first, and I consider best opera, "Andrea Chenier." The li- bretto of this work was written by the well known author, Luigi Illica, who extended his hospitality to young Gior- dano while he was composing the music. By a very fortunate coinci- dence, which decided the fate of this young composer, one day, while call- ing on the venerable Maestro Verdi, at the Hotel Milan in Milan, he was in-
troduced to the daughter of the hotel proprietor, Spatz, a very wealthy man, and interested also in a chain of hotels scattered throughout Italy and Swit- zerland.
Love was kindled at first sight, and the young Maestro lost no time in woo- ing and winning the fair lady, whose father thereupon straightened out the ardent suitor's financial difficulties.
"Andre Chenier" was first produced with very great success at La Scala, the famous opera house in Milan. Other of his operas, Siberia, Marcella, Fedora (which is dedicated to his wife), have all been successful, but none have obtained the popularity of "Andrea Chenier."
SUNSET ON SAN FRANCISCO BAY
Beyond the "Gate" the slanting, Western sky
Blazed with the splendor of a forest fire !
A feast of glory! dazzling to the eye!
Magnificently luminous! The pyre
On which Time "offered up" the dying Day!
The "Gate's" dark portals caught the ruddy flame ;
While th' shimm'ring waters of the noble Bay
Mirrored the blood-red stains within its frame.
A ship sailed in; bird-like, so swift and light;
Her white sails glinted by the crimson glow;
She seemed the herald of descending Night;
Who dropped, on silver wings, as pale as snow,
As the last embers of the fires died out
From sky and "Gate" and bay. Then day, more fair;
She scattered moonlight magic all about;
On mountains, sea and bay, and in the air.
ULA BURFORD BARRIE.
The New Executive in Feminine
Clubdom
By Elizabeth Whitford
Mrs. Emily Hoppin.
(Photo by Bushnell.)
THE RECENTLY elected presi- dent of the Federation of Wo- men's Clubs of California is a clubwoman of long standing, but she is far more than that. No idle city woman is she, seeking but an- other diversion in club life, no dilet- tante in the world's strenuous work- shop, but rather a real industrial factor, a woman who has for years success- fully managed a large ranch ; and who is, through natural endowment as well as experience, mentally and physically capable of large things ; an efficient ex-
ecutive whose well laid plans are not apt to remain only pleasant visions.
Mrs. Emily Hoppin has the forceful personality which distinguishes the leader, and her intelligent face holds much of cheerful friendliness. Emi- nently cordial, but without disagree- able fulsomeness, she seems of the best Western type — Californian, we like to call it, and why not, since Mrs. Hop- pin's years of maturity have all been spent in the Golden West, and her in- terests have been identified with those of the State for full forty years ?
She was born in Michigan and was educated at the Kalamazoo branch of Mt. Holyoke Seminary, for four Mt. Holyokes there were all imbued with the same atmosphere as that original New England one which was a pio- neer in woman's education. Her father was favorably known throughout Michigan as Judge Bacon, he having been judge of the Circuit Court for seventeen years at the time of his death. Her mother came of the Lord family of Maine, and was a sister of Dr. John Lord, whose "Beacon Lights of History" is known to every lover of readable books which are also au- thoritative. Always of a literary turn, always interested in educational mat- ters, the Lord family has furnished many well known teachers to the coun- try, including one president of Dart- mouth College and one executive head of Harvard University.
The best of sturdy Englishism, dat- ing back on the mother's side to ten hundred and sixty-six — to the time of that Norman conqueror named Wil- liam, and on the father's to the sixteen hundreds, was transmogrified into an
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even more sturdy and hardy New Englandism in the first quarter of the Seventeenth Century.
Shifting the view point to the newly acquired territory of California, we find that with the early Argonauts came to the land of promise Charles Rossiter Hoppin, his brother John, and Mat Harbin — true forty-niners. "The fierce rush for wealth" had carried them along in its course to the golden shores of their dreams; but, wiser per- haps than many of their comrades in adventure, they did not confine their efforts to panning for dust and dig- ging for nuggets. Such treasure is all too easily squandered in any primitive country, and particularly in a mining country, where generosity and open- handedness are the accepted virtues. Land is not quite such a universal me- dium of exchange, not quite legal ten- der. Harder to acquire, it is also a thought harder to exchange, therefore a little easier to retain.
The beautifully rolling and forested lands of the Sacramento River Valley attracted the attention of the young pioneers, and in eighteen-fifty they were made happy by the grant of a tract of land three leagues square on picturesque Cash Creek. This tract, called "El Rancho Rio de Jesus Maria," proved to be of the finest and deepest alluvial soil, and now boasts the prosperous towns of Woodland and Yolo. It was one of the few old grants of that period the title to which has proved good, and the present Hop- pin ranch of six hundred and fifty acres is part of the original grant.
To this ranch came the bride, Mrs. Emily Hoppin, some forty years ago, a mere girl in years and in experience. We can imagine with what pleasure her vigorous young mind recognized the large opportunities of this West- ern land, and with what willingness she entered upon its exacting duties. Not daunted by the novelty of farm life and of California conditions, the young matron took up her cares and dedicated herself with entire heart to her family and to California. Four children were born to her, and many
happy years rolled by before her hus- band's failing health unmistakably foretold his passing. Thereafter, the Rancho Rio de Jesus Maria became a school, in which the husband, Chas. Rossiter Hoppin, was the teacher, and the wife, Emily Hoppin, was the pupil. There was not a branch or detail of farming in which the wife and mother was not instructed, so that when the sad parting came, she was amply qual- ified to safeguard her own and her children's interests.
How infinitely wise was this prepar- ation for stewardship! How broad the father's mind, how tender the mother's heart that conceived it! How foolishly inane it makes those women who pride themselves on knowing nothing of business, how wanton those men who deliberately keep their wives in ignorance! We trust that the new awakening of woman, which is preced- ing and attending her enfranchisement, will teach her that she is an equal partner with her husband in each busi- ness emprise, and has a right to know its proportion of risks — its chances of success. For she "stands for" failure as well as he, and indeed failure and the incident poverty are apt to bear more heavily on the wife than on the husband. Hers usually must be the retrenchments; hers the economies; hers the task of keeping up the stand- ard of living no matter how shrunken the budget.
Mrs. Hoppin disclaims having run her ranch with "success," for she says the unpreventable chances in farming are too great. I judge she means by her disclaimer unqualified success, for it is admitted that the ranch is in bet- ter shape now, as to equipment, as to productiveness, and as to finances than it was when she took up her steward- ship. The ranch is now considered a very valuable property. The State University, in fact, thought seriously of taking it for its experimental farm, and the Davis farm was selected in the end, almost entirely because of its bet- ter railroad connections.
That Mrs. Hoppin has for many years been frequently called on to
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163
contribute papers to all manner of Farmers5 Institutes is proof that she is generally accorded the very success which she modestly disclaims. Her new club duties will not be allowed to interfere with her interest in farm mat- ters, and she expects to read a paper before the State Horticultural Con- vention to be held at Stanford Uni- versity in June.
A few years ago, however, this ac- complished woman rancher resigned the active management of her ranch, wishing to devote more time to work for the betterment of country life con- ditions. She is now, as it were, "rancher emeritus," and only ex-officio chairman of a farmers' institute, which is comprised of her four children, each of whom now manages a quarter of the ranch. And here again we see that wise look into the future, for the sons and daughters are getting most practical training, and Mrs. Hoppin is now only the head of the advisory board, which is the family conclave, but here she still has the deciding vote on questions of large moment to the board.
One of this capable woman's many activities has been the editorship of the "White Ribbon Ensign;" another, a vice-presidency of the Farmers' Protective Association; still another, the holding of a position on the Coun- try Life Commission, together with one other woman, a number of practi- cal farmers, and such noteworthy men as Professor Hyatt, Dean of the Uni- versity Farm, and Prof. Ware, of the Chico Normal.
"I attended every meeting of the Commission," said Mrs. Hoppin, "and helped by my appreciation, if not by my ideas." When asked if she thought the Commission had accomplished anything, she said they had made a beginning. "Some remarkably clever ideas were expressed and we listened to a number of very good talks, but it is almost impossible to do anything without funds; and that is the reason that I am so determined our Federa- tion shall keep on working for an en- dowment fund. The Federation as-
sessments are purposely kept small, and it is impossible to accumulate a sinking fund from them; therefore, we are continually hampered by lack of capital. Fifty thousand dollars does not seem an impossible sum to raise among all the Federated Clubs of our great State, and it would make us in- dependent."
The new Federation president thinks the expenses of attending the conven- tions should be paid for the Chairmen of the Departments, for many of the women most capable of handling these departments are not financially able to attend the meetings, a fact that seriously hampers the President in making appointments.
This brought us directly to the sub- ject of "patronage." Mrs. Hoppin laughingly says that she knows just how a new president of the United States must feel with so many hun- dreds of appointments to make, so de- terminedly anxious is she to put the very best possible woman in each place.
"No," she replied, in answer to a question, "there are no salaried posi- tions in my gift, but that makes the competition no less keen, and me no less anxious for wisdom in the choos- ing."
And, with some dozens of women to appoint as the heads of departments ranging from Education to Legislation, from Philanthropy to Public Health, from Home Economics to the Conser- vation of Forests and Waters, a con- scientious president may well feel the responsibility.
"I do not," added the new executive, "intend to be guided entirely by my own judgment — still less by my own inclination in making these appoint- ments. I expect to have the advice of those who know the work and the abilities of the individual women. I am looking for experts along these lines, and I do not intend to be con- tent with less than the best possible chairman for the head of each de- partment."
Mrs. Hoppin has for years, almost as many as the years of her life, been 6
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a worker for temperance. So thor- oughly consistent is she that it is said she had all the wine grapes on the Rancho Rio de Jesus Maria uprooted many years ago, although they had been a profitable crop. It is not her intention, however, to endeavor to force her convictions upon the club women of California, who have not, as yet, taken action in this matter, al- though the General Federation of Wo- men's Clubs at its last Biennial meet- ing, which was held in Chicago, adopt- ed a resolution "for the controlling and eradication of the drink evil, both in State and nation." Although these words might be susceptible of slightly varying interpretations, they are still strong enough to satisfy even an en- thusiast. In fact, there seems little danger, when the aroused conscien- tiousness of the nations is pronouncing the consumption of spirituous liquors a great evil in the most strenuous terms and measures, that the educated women of our progressive nation will be anywhere but in the van of the re- form movement.
"You may quote me as saying," said the new Federation President, seriously, "that I mean to endeavor to work along the lines of industrial and economic reform, and at the very bot- tom of all evils lies the factor of drink.
"I believe that the women of Cali- fornia are taking- the franchise seri- ously and that they are trying to in- form themselves in matters of State economics. I am proud of the women of California, for they have accepted the franchise intending to make their vote an influence for good. I believe that the women of the State stand for fairness; for straightforwardness in politics ; for measures — not party lines ; for moral principles — not men."
Mrs. Hoppin's forty years' experi- ence on the farm, her temperance work throughout the State, and her investi- gations while a member of the Coun- try Life Commission, make her su- premely recognize the needs of the country woman. She wishes, there- fore, to emphasize this department,
hoping to bring the country woman to the front.
"The country woman greatly needs the city woman's viewpoint, but no more strongly, perhaps, than the city woman needs the country woman's. It is my ambition that they shall become mutually helpful."
Another department in which the State president is particularly inter- ested is that of conservation both of waters and forests.
"Water is the very foundation (per- haps I should say the very fountain- head) of California's prosperity. Our waters must be conserved to the peo- ple. This I should like to have brought home to the consciousness and the conscience of every woman in the Federation especially, and to every woman in the State, if possible; for the franchise that will make women a power with knowledge may make them a menace without it.
"This is very close to my heart — this, and the carrying out of the ideal of the Federation, which is service. The Federation tries to serve not only its own members, but is a practical sisterhood united for service to the world at large."
Mrs. Hoppin is an optimist, as one could but know when looking into her countenance, so cheerfully animated; and even in the face of the greatest war of all ages, she still hopes that work for peace, which she feels must be largely woman's work, will not — cannot — be in vain. She anticipates that the condition we pray for, the prevalence of an effective sentiment for universal peace, may come about suddenly and unexpectedly, likening it to the movement for the abolition of slavery, which seemed a far, Eutopian vision in the minds of its supporters. Practically all they dared hope for was the restriction and limiting of the traffic — and then, of a sudden, Eman- cipation!— more glorious than their fondest dreams! And so she prays it may be with the peace sentiment.
Let us all join with this gracious optimist in a heartfelt "So be it" — a sonorous "Amen."
Hunting the Buffalo
By Marian B. Kauffman
For the following description of the buffalo days the writer is in- debted to Mr. James H. Hanrahan, now of Lost River, Idaho. "Jim" Hanrahan is seventy-four years old, and one of the few remaining plainsmen who fought the Indians and played an important part in the winning of the Southwest. It was he, with Bat Masterson and twenty- six other buffalo hunters, who defeated five hundred Comanches and Kiowas at the Battle of the Adobe Walls in 1874 — one of the fiercest Indian fights in the history of Texas.
UP TO 1870 there had been little demand for buffalo hides among the white people, West or East; they had not yet learned their value. Most of the skins had been obtained from the Indians by the post-traders — legitimate trad- ing, so-called. Besides the post- traders there was a class of men who lived chiefly by exchanging with the Indians for buffalo robes, guns, am- munition and whisky. It is safe to say that both "outfits" cheated the In- dians. The post trader was recog: nized by the post-commander and kept under wages men familiar with the Indians and their methods of trading. These sub-traders mingled with and often intermarried with the Indians; and were authorized to assemble the chiefs of the tribes at intervals for the purpose of fixing schedules. Af- ter a feast furnished by the trader the price for each buffalo robe would be agreed upon, and this price would hold good for the season — often longer in times of peace. A fine robe often brought seven pint cups of brown sugar, or so many pieces of pipe clay ornaments for the breast, or German silver ornaments for the scalp-lock, or a couple of yards of cloth for a breech-
clout; a gaily colored blanket often brought three or four good hides. This desultory trading had not diminished the vast herd of the buffaloes.
During the first seventy years of the past century the buffaloes ranged over an enormous territory — from the Gulf north nearly to Hudson Bay, and from the Mississippi westward to the Rock- ies. There were always buffaloes in the Rockies, but few as compared with the herds that ranged the Llano Estacado and Great Plains. The plains with rich forage and compara- tively little snow made an ideal home for the buffaloes. Before the settling up of the West it is estimated that there were fifty million head of buf- faloes in this country — or more than there are domestic cattle to-day. Yet it took only seven years for the white hunters to wipe out the great herds of the Southwest; and by 1883 the north- ern bands were destroyed. In thir- teen years from the time the destruc- tion began, the buffaloes were almost entirely exterminated; a wholesale slaughter of big game that has never been equalled. Now there are not more than a few wild buffaloes left on this continent, and most of these live under protection in the National parks.
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The destruction of the buffaloes was chiefly the work of the skin hunters — not the Indians or settlers. Most of the killing by the Indians had been done from horseback, with very little damage to a herd. The Indian with his native aversion to work, never hunted on foot.
With the completion of the Union Pacific Railway in 1869, and the con- sequent inrush of settlers to the West and Southwest, there sprang up an im- mense demand for buffalo robes and hides. To meet this demand there arose a class of hunters, unique in the history of big game killing. These men, killing buffalo as little for the sport of it as the Easterners who slaughtered them by the hundreds from the car windows of the Union Pacific and left them to rot on the plains, hides and all, were intent only on the profit to be made from the sale of the hides. Necessarily they were a hardy and efficient lot. A hunter with sufficient capital generally out- fitted himself with a couple of wagons, ten or twelve head of horses, and four partners to skin. The outfit (outfit is one of the most frequent words in the expressive vocabulary of the West, and it is hard to find a substitute that will do as well) usually camped on some stream or near a spring, and in the early morning the hunter climbed the highest point and scanned the country. Having sighted a herd of buffaloes, he noted the direction of the wind and the lay of the country, and if the distance were not too great, started out on foot, keeping himself under cover and following the course of a ravine if possible. If no cover afforded, it was necessary to get down on hands and knees at once, and crawl within range — rather a ticklish job, as more often than not a rattlesnake barred the path. In this event there were two alternatives : stare the snake out of countenance until he retreated, or crawl slowly around him. The lat- ter was the safer choice ; with care not to get nervous and jump, for the day's work would then be over. A crawling man had a peculiar fascination for
watching buffalo, but the sight of a man erect would stampede them in an instant. The matter of range depend- ed upon the judgment of the hunter and his ability as a shot — anywhere from two hundred to four hundred yards. The first shot had to be a dead one, for then the beasts would behave much like cattle, gathering around the unlucky member of the herd, pawing and bellowing, but not, for a few mo- ments, stampeding. Then would come quick work for the hunter, his success depending upon the number of shots he could get in before the herd would break to run — still lying flat on his stomach and shooting from that posi- tion. A buffalo could carry a surpris- ing amount of lead, so long range shooting after the band would stam- pede was not very effective.
In hunters' parlance the foregoing is known as a "stand," and the abil- ity to kill a large number of buffa- loes at one stand made the successful hunter. Sometimes when a herd broke from a stand the hunter's partners came up on horseback and gave chase. Their part was to rope and stake down as many calves as possible, thus caus- ing the mothers of the respective calves to drop out of the herd and stay with their offspring whence they could be killed at leisure. It was useless to follow a stampeding herd far on horse- back, as the buffalo, in spite of his bulk, covers ground swiftly; and on a down grade has considerable advan- tage of the horse, because of his huge shoulders and short, stocky forelegs. The record for the greatest number of buffaloes killed at one stand seems to have been held by Charlie Rath (in the Southwest) — one of the best hunt- ers of his day, and one of the twenty- eight who fought at Adobe Walls. Rath shot 107 head of buffaloes at a single stand on the Canadian river in 73. Hanrahan's record was 52, and no doubt many good hunters equaled that. Hanrahan had that year given up his position as Government wagon master, to enter the more lucrative field of skin hunting. His experiences and those of Masterson, Billy Dixon
t
I
Qi
O
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On the Montana plains, where the
buffalo once ranged by the hundreds
of thousands.
and other hunters and Indian scouts in northern Texas are romantically chronicled in Mr. Alfred Henry Lewis' book, "The Sunset Trail."
The buffalo hunters used the old Sharps rifle, 55 calibre, and weighing fourteen pounds; the heaviest and most accurate rifle ever made. Now- adays a Sharps is very hard to find, even as a curiosity. The careful hunter always loaded his own shells. Firing a heavy charge, a Sharps would kill at fifteen hundred yards, a neces- sary power, for the neck of a buffalo bull offers more resistance to a bullet than a pine board. Against an army of hunters equipped with such for- midable weapons the buffaloes had lit- tle chance. The slaughter was tre-
mendous. Hanrahan says that he has often seen enough buffalo carcasses scattered around a single camp at the close of the hunting season to keep the city of Salt Lake in meat for a month — and it all went to waste. The hides netted the hunters all the way from three to five dollars apiece, rarely more than that in the 70's. Now of course an overcoat made from buf- falo skins can scarcely be obtained at any price. A friend of mine has a buffalo robe that he has repeatedly re- fused two hundred dollars for.
The mercenary killing of the buf- faloes seems most unsportsmanlike to the big game hunter of to-day. Yet in the words of Hanrahan, "No set of pioneers from Boone down ever lived in such constant danger of their lives. Not a day out hunting but the two uppermost thoughts in their minds were: to make a big kill, and what should they do if the Indians attacked them — and generally the latter was the paramount idea. The hunter while ap- proaching his game always kept one eye open to the military advantage of the ground in the event of an ambush, and he felt safer after he had killed several buffaloes, which might serve as a barricade in an emergency." There was no little danger from the buffaloes themselves. A wounded bull some- times charged the smoke in headlong anger, and it took steady nerve and accurate shooting to finish him in time. The buffalo is surprisingly agile for his bulk, and a maddened bull has been known to gore a horse to death before the frightened animal could evade him. The hunters were also in danger from stampeding herds. All animals that go in herds are subject to wild fits of terror, during which they become completely mad and rush blindly over obstacles, often to their death. The cowboys were compelled to be perpetually on guard against stampedes among their cattle. One of the Indian's favorite methods of kill- ing buffaloes was to stampede a herd over a cliff, and pick out the carcasses they wanted. Colonel Roosevelt, in "The Wilderness Hunter," describes
Old-time Indian method of killing the buffalo. (From an old print.)
the narrow escape of his brother and cousin from a buffalo stampede. Out hunting, the two men had just mounted a low swell on the prairie, when they heard a low, rumbling noise, like far- off thunder. Hurrying forward to the top of the rise, they saw the whole prairie before them black with madly rushing buffaloes.
''They knew that their only hope for life was to split the herd, which, al- though it had so broad a front, was not very deep. If they failed, they would inevitably be trampled to death. Waiting until the beasts were in close range, they opened a rapid fire from their heavy breech-loading rifles, yelling at the top of their voices. For a moment the result seemed doubt- ful. The line thundered steadily down on them; then it swayed violently, as two or three of the brutes immediately in the front fell beneath the bullets, while their neighbors made violent ef- forts to press off sideways. Then a narrow, wedge-shaped rift appeared in the line, and widened as it came closer, and the buffaloes, shrinking from their foes in front, strove des- perately to edge away from the dan- gerous neighborhood; the shouts and shots were redoubled ; the hunters were
almost choked by the cloud of dust, through which they could see the stream of dark, huge bodies passing within rifle length on either side; and in a moment the peril was over, and the two men were left alone on the plain, unharmed, though with their nerves terribly shaken. The herd ca- reered on toward the horizon, save five individuals which had been killed or disabled by the shots."
The only traces of the buffaloes to be seen to-day are the whitened skulls that dot the pains here and there, and the trails or ruts formed by the pass- ing of countless individuals in single file. Many of these are so deep that a horseman riding in them can touch their edges with his stirrups. These old trails are still followed in riding across uneven country, because the buffaloes, like cattle, always took the easiest course, instinctively.
The encroachment of the white peo- ple after the easy transportation af- forded by the railway, and the killing of the buffaloes by the skin hunters were bitterly resented by the Indians. The Indians of the plains had been al- most wholly dependent upon the buf- faloes for their living. Buffalo meat was their chief food: at the close of
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the hunting season they cut it into strips, dried it or "jerked" it, and subsisted on it during the winter. They used the skins for their clothing, for their beds, for covering their wicki- ups, and even for shields. The war shield of a brave was made of two thicknesses of the neck of a buffalo bull, so tough that it would turn a bul- let from any rifle but a Sharps. Yet the Indians had killed only enough
buffaloes for their needs; they had never depleted the herds. Small won- der that the red men fought the com- ing of the whites with such despera- tion, for the extermination of the buf- faloes meant the -loss of his chief means of subsistence. Yet the passing of both the Indian and the buffalo was inevitable. The great development of the West could never have begun un- til their occupancy ended.
THE AWAKENING
I built a castle high in air
Deeming it firm and strong.
I peopled all its rooms with dreams,
And filled its halls with song.
Upon a throne I placed my love —
The love I thought so true,
And twined about my idol's brow
The fairest flowers that grew.
Alas! my castle shattered, fell —
My dreams as swiftly fled.
The songs were hushed — and silence
reigned —
The silence of the dead. Amidst the ruins, then, I sought My love — ah, there it lay — A broken, shapeless idol — And its feet, alas, were clay!
AGNES LOCKHART HUGHES.
Canadian Indians and Fur Trade
By /Aax
Twenty-five thousand Red Men are without income owing to closing of the fur markets of Europe, and the refusal of trading companies to ad- vance the usual "debf of provisions for the year. The Canadian Gov- ernment has made grants of money and food supplies.
IN THE EARLY days of fur trade in Canada the posts of the fur com- panies depended chiefly on Indians for hunters and trappers. The pros- pects of good bartering, the advances of goods and provisions, and the prom- ise of more, induced the Red Men to go forth in large numbers for furs and hides.
What the fur trade meant in these far-away times may be gleaned from reports of the companies doing busi- ness. As early as 1784, the Northwest Company had imported supplies for a year's trade amounting to $125,000, and by the close of the century the gross amount of goods for barter in the store houses of Montreal companies was $600,000. In 1780, Mr. Charles Grant, in a letter to General Haldi- mand, stated that the fur trade, taking one year with another, was producing an annual return to Great Britain of furs of $1,000,000.
The Hudson's Bay Company was trading in furs as early as 1670, and about 1800 the French firm of Revillon Freres entered into competition. Other smaller traders came in later, and there was always keen rivalry among the companies. Spies were sometimes placed around the habitations of new- comers and Indians and half-breeds on their way with furs were intercepted, bribed and terrorized. There was much drunkenness, quarreling, boasting, and the like among these fur traders. The union of the companies in 1821 cut adrift a large number of Indian hunt- ers and trappers.
Some idea of the frightful slaughter of fur-bearing animals about this time is given in the following figures which represent the catch for an average sea- son : 106,000 beavers, 32,000 martens, 11,800 mink, 17,000 musquash, and other pelts that make a total per sea- son of not less than 184,000 skins. Hunting and trapping for the fall of 1913 and winter of 1914 proved very lucrative, the income from this source amounting to $1,176,540 in the prov- inces of Canada alone. Prices for fur were on the increase, and the catch, compared with the ten years previous, had not perceptibly diminished. Musk- rat fur was steadily increasing in value, and, apart from Hudson's Bay Com- pany sales, there were 4,646,500 skins offered on the London market in March, 1913, the price paid being 50 cents per skin.
Farm products and wages earned are the only sources of income to the In- dians of Canada that exceed hunting and trapping. Fishing amounts to only about half; stock raising to about a quarter; and all other industries to about half that of the fur industry. The Indians are beginning to manifest an interest in raising of foxes for breeding purposes, but fur-farming has but reached the experimental stage.
Hudson's Bay Company Breaks a Custom of Two Centuries.
Last fall, when the first news of war reached the Hudson's Bay Company, it, with the other fur companies in the far north, stopped all advances to the
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Indians. It has been the custom of this company for two centuries to stake the Indians in the fall in the form of a "debt" of provisions, which was fixed according to the hunting abilities of the debtor. When the season opened the following year the Indians and Es- kimos redeemed the debt with furs. In good years a neat balance would be left over for the Indian and his squaw, and the family reveled in new blan- kets and gewgaws, became possessed of more guns and traps, much powder and many balls (for they hunted with the old ball and cap guns), and grew fat from well-feeding.
With these advances cut off, the na- tives were in a serious predicament, and if the government had not come to their assistance, many would actually have starved.
W. E. C. Todd, of the Carnegie Mu- seum, Pittsburg, spent six months last fall on the shores of James and Hud- son's Bay. On his return to civiliza- tion he stated that the Indian trappers of that region were suffering to a great extent through being robbed of their fur market and shut off from supplies through the fur companies. Mr. Wil- son, the Hudson's Bay Company's manager at James Bay, showed the scientist a store-house of furs, which at ordinary times would be worth $100,000, but which at current market prices could only be sold for $17,000.
At White River the Indians were in a distressing condition. When Mr. Todd arrived in a sailing boat the natives came out in canoes to meet him, and by diverse means, mainly by pointing to their mouths, made him un- derstand that they were badly in need of food. A white whale and some por- poises were caught later, which tided them over till a packet arrived with government supplies. As it was, Mr. Todd's flour was confiscated and dis- tributed among the trappers. Had it not been for the timely aid given, wholesale starvation would have pre- vailed, for the country bears but the minimum of meat animals.
In the territories north of Alberta and Saskatchewan, the Indians are in
a very bad condition. Jack Hughes, a well known trader and trapper, has just completed a 1,000 mile "mush" with huskies from Chippewayan, north of Great Slave Lake, to Calgary, Al- berta. Discussing the situation in his country, the pioneer says :
"I came out because there was noth- ing to do. The bottom has dropped clear out of the fur market; in fact, there is no market for furs at all, and the trappers have been in a very bad way this winter. The Indians are in especially bad shape, as an Indian never has anything anyway, and as a rule gets very little for his furs at the stores. This year he has got practi- cally nothing, and would have starved unless the government had come in with supplies."
Worse Since Whites Came.
"God made the game and the fur- bearing animals for the Indian, and trade goods and money for the white man," said an old Indian recently, "and they shouldn't be fixed, for when they do, the Indian always gets the worst of it." The situation could not have been more aptly summed up.
Commenting on the condition of the Red Man to-day, a recent writer has this to say:
"Before the white man came, the In- dian lived successfully by what he gained from the chase. Then, fur gathering was merely a side line with him. With the establishing of fur posts by the white men the Indian be- gan gradually to trap more and hunt less, depending on the proceeds from his fur, which would buy white man's grub and thus make up the deficit caused from his neglecting the hunt."
In the old days, an Indian, to buy one of the old-fashioned long-barreled rifles known as "trade guns," was re- quired to pile up skins one upon the other until they reached in height from the butt to the end of the rifle barrel. At Fort Nelson, British Co- lumbia, a place far in the interior, the following prices were in effect in Oc- tober, 1910: Flour, 30 cents a pound; tea, $1 a pound; bacon, 50 cents a
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pound; rolled oats, 50 cents; and sul- phur matches, $2 per quarter gross. At Fort Murray, much nearer civilization, 1914 prices were per pound: tea, $1; flour, 20 cents; sugar, 25 cents.
Considering these prices, which are a very fair sample of prices charged to the Indians in many parts of the North, it is to be doubted whether the Indian is as well off as a trapper for the white man as he would have been by remaining an independent hunter.
Fur Values by Provinces.
There are nearly 25,000 Indians in Canada engaged in hunting and trap- ping. Of this number about 6,000 are Indians and Eskimos in the far North outside the boundaries of the prov- inces. Quebec and British Columbia each have 4,660 ; Northern Ontario has nearly 4,000; Manitoba and Alberta, 2,000; Saskatchewan, 1,200; and the remainder are in the Maratime prov- inces. These hunters are equipped with 10,000 shot-guns and 8,500 rifles, while the trappers are using nearly 150,000 traps of various sorts.
The total value of the fur catch for 1914 was estimated at $1,176,540. Manitoba led with a trade estimated at almost half a million dollars. The Indians at Norway House alone had $333,500, and Fisher River $62,000 from the sale of furs. Saskatchewan in 'its northern reaches was responsible for $242,174, and the largest producers were the Indians at Isle la Crosse with $65,000 credited through the sale of skins. Touchwood Hills reserve fol- lowed closely with an income of $62,- 000; Onion Lake had $42,000; Carl- ton, $24,000; and Duck Lake, $20,000. The wilds of Northern Ontario, which, however, are sparsely settled with In- dian population, gave up to the Red Men furs valued at $160,000. Savanne Reserve is credited with $53,000 of this ; Kenora and Fort Francis, beyond the Great Lakes near the Manitoba boundary, each had between $25,000 and $30,000; and Sturgeon Falls, $16,- 000. The province of British Colum- bia, while lying largely in the Rockies,
is not a large producer of fur in so far as this industry affects the Indian. The total for the province is $143,700. New Westminster Indians trapped to the value of $30,000; Nass, of which Met- lakatla is the Indian village, gleaned $20,000 from pelts ; Stuart Lake ran to $20,000 in value; while Babine and Up- per Skeena produced to the worth of $15,000. Quebec had $116,000 in traps and chase, Bersimis and Lake St. John getting about $44,000 each of this amount.
Figures that would , accurately rep- resent a season's fur trade among the Indians of Yukon territory, the North- west territories, and Ungava, are not available and are not included in the total estimate of the Indian fur trade in Canada. With these outposts in- cluded, the aggregate would probably run to a million and a quarter of dol- lars. With these figures in one's mind it will not be difficult to realize the dire results of a dead fur market. The De- partment of Indian Affairs, of course, has been able to draw on a reserve or "Trust Fund" amounting to some $7,- 653,000, but this is available only for treaty Indians living on reserves with- in the nine provinces, and $5,000,000 of this is alloted to Ontario alone.
The circumstance which makes the situation unfortunate is that the In- dians most needing aid are not treaty Indians, and so, in the strict sense of the term, not wards of the government. Provision, however, has been made for these by special grants of money and supplies distributed through agents of the Hudson's Bay Company, and other fur companies, the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, and other sources. With the passing of winter in North- ern Canada, the suffering will not be as severe, and with lakes and rivers open to navigation, food supplies will be more easily secured and trans- ported to those in need. The Canadian Government has always made provi- sion for its Indian wards, and in this crisis in the experience of the Red Men of the gun and traps, the legisla- tors at Ottawa have not been found wanting.
Value of Ideals to Church and World
By C. T. Russell
Pastor New York, Washington and Cleveland Temples and the Brooklyn and London Tabernacles
"Shapen in iniquity, in sin did my mother conceive me." — Psalm 61.5.
BE FRUITFUL and multiply" was the Divine commission to our first parents before they sinned. The entrance of sin and its pen- alty, death, brought serious impair- ments, mental, moral and physical, to our race. It is no longer natural to us to do right, but contrariwise, as St. Paul declared, "We cannot do the things that we would." In other words we are constitutionally defective, be- cause of mental disloyalty to God. Yet the mind can rise to loftier heights than it is able to lift the body and its functions. "To will is present with me, but how to perform I know not." —Romans 7; 14-25.
Many are grasping after this great truth, and attempting human uplift through eugenics, etc., but neverthe- less imperfectly appreciate what they teach, failing to see the matter from the Bible standpoint. The mind, the will, the body, should be entirely sub- mitted to the will of God. Thus only can the highest good be possible. This was God's requirement of our first par- ents. In this they failed; and in con- sequence mental, moral and physical impairment have come to us as a race. "All have sinned and come short" of the glorious standard which God es- tablished.
Best Ideals for Sinners.
The Bible divides the world into two classes; the mass of sinners con- demned by God and out of relationship
with Him; and the few who have, by covenant with the Lord, come back in- to relationship with Him through the merit of Christ. We shall first address the world of sinners, with the sugges- tion that, while they cannot hope to lift themselves up to perfection and ever- lasting life, they can do much toward the uplift of themselves and their children by conforming to certain Scriptural ideals. The world already recognizes this in considerable meas- ure, but not sufficiently.
All should know, and do appreciate to some extent, the value of a good example, good training in the family. The child who continually hears coarse, rude expressions in the home will surely grow up not much better than those surroundings, if not worse. But while encouraging high ideals in the home — cleanliness, gentleness, kindness — we call special attention to the duty of parents toward their child- ren before birth. Few seem to realize that the general attitude of a mother's mind birthmarks her child either for good or for ill. With this fact recog- nized, surely every couple would feel their responsibility as creators of a family. If they realized that coarse, brutal, selfish words, acts and thoughts would be impressed upon their unborn child, surely they would strive to avoid these before their child's birth as well as after it. If they realized that noble words, conduct, thoughts and ideals during the period of gesta- tion, would be imprinted upon their child, how greatly would they strive to have children that would be not only
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beautiful in appearance, but noble in character.
Horsemen recognize this principle; and when a racing mare is in foal, her intelligent owner, desiring to breed a fine colt, will give the mother every attention. Her condition will be hap- pifying and comfortable. She will be led to the race track, there to see other horses running, trotting, etc., that thus her colt may be birthmarked for speed. How much people will do for money, and how often they forget to do for their own families what they think to do for their horses! But the world is awakening. A New Dispen- sation is about to be ushered in, and its light has been streaming over the world during the past forty years, giv- ing us increasing knowledge and higher ideals of the good, the true, the noble, the beautiful.
Our horticulturists have already caught the fever of the New Age, and are presenting to us fruits and flowers that are marvelous. Our newspapers are giving us beautiful photogravures. Art is becoming cheap. Every home should be well supplied, when the cost need be no more than the time to clip from the paper and to arrange taste- fully upon the wall. Ideal homes are everywhere being arranged, and even the poorest to-day have much in life to cheer and refresh. Let us lift our ideals, and make the most of life, however cramped our financial condi- tion. The will to do is what is needed, and where there is a will there is a way.
Christian Ideals the Best.
Before the Christian, our Lord sets the very highest ideals: "Be like unto your Father in Heaven" — not that Christians can be all that the Heav- enly Father's character expresses, but that this is to be their ideal or aim in life. Only God can know when they are doing their best; and He assures them that He will judge them, not ac- cording to their success, but according to their endeavor to live up to their ideals, and the sacrifices they make in order closely to attain those ideals.
What we have said of the home and ideals of sinners — of those who have not come into relationship with God through the Lord Jesus Christ — is still more true of real Christians, begotten of the Holy Spirit and adopted into the family of God. Ideal homes, ideal children, ideal relationships every way, are pre-eminently their privilege and duty; and they have much advantage over others in respect to this matter. Have they not received the begetting of the Spirit? Have they not become followers of the Lord Jesus Christ? Have they not been taught in the School %of Christ? (Romans 8:9.) Have they not knowledge to under- stand that the Spirit of Christ mani- fests itself in meekness, gentleness, patience, long-suffering, brotherly kindness, love ! Have they not learned that any other spirit than this — such as anger, malice, hatred, envy and strife, works of the flesh and the Devil — is contrary to the Spirit of Christ ? Have they not resolved to put away all these and to put on the fruits of the Spirit of Christ? They have adopted these ideals and are working along this line.
True, some of them by nature may be very deficient, very degraded; but because God is no respecter of per- sons, He accepts all who come to Him through Christ. Those naturally de- ficient, those naturally much fallen, may have the more difficulty approxi- mating their ideals, but they will surely be making progress; and those who have known them before will take note of them, that they have been with Jesus and learned of Him. God will perceive the thoughts and intents of their hearts; and they will have His blessing in proportion as they are striving to be God-like.
Let Us Awake to the True Situation.
The children of Christians should be pre-eminently beautiful, both in fea- ture and in character; for Christians have the highest ideals, and should, more than others, put these into prac- tice. Moreover, they have Divine as- sistance, through the Scriptures and through God's providential direction in
VALUE OF IDEALS TO CHURCH AND WORLD.
177
their affairs, that they might know, appreciate and use the things freely given to them of God as His children.
But alas! Many are Christians only in name, having never entered into a covenant with the Lord. They have neither part nor lot in the things of God. Others, who have truly given up themselves to the Lord, have been sadly neglected as respects lessons in the School of Christ. The great re- ligious institutions of the world are not teaching the highest ideals, but in- stead are separating the people from those highest ideals by misrepresenta- tions of the Divine character and the Divine Plan.
Let us awake to the true situation, awake to our privileges as children of God, awake to the true teaching of the Bible. These direct not only that our conduct toward men shall be in har- mony with the Golden Rule, but that we shall go beyond this and have a love which will delight in doing good unto all men, as we have opportunity, especially unto the Household of Faith. It will go further, and take hold upon the very thoughts and in- tents of the heart. The Christian is under direct obligation to the Lord to do His will ; and that will, he is in- formed, takes notice not merely of his actions and words, but of his very thoughts as well. — Philippians 4 :8.
Happy the child who has such par- entage, and especially so if the par- ents have been guided by an apprecia- tion of the fact that the mother's mind during the period of gestation will mark the child for life. Happy the child who has a mother thus fully com- mitted to God, intent upon doing His will and appreciative of His high ideals! Happy the child who has a father similarly devoted to God and noble ideals, who will help his wife at this, the most critical time of her experience as a mother, not only by providing for her comfort of body and rest of mind, but by assisting her to noble sentiments of justice, mercy, love, kindness, and, by drawing her attention to things beautiful, lovely, happifying! Oh, what a beautiful
character might not such a child have ! What a blessing to be born with such a heritage, and then to be consecrated to God and His service!
"Forbidding to Marry."
St. Paul calls attention to the fact that some, getting out of harmony with the Divine arrangement, will forbid marriage. Such should remember that God originally said: "Be fruitful and multiply," but we may well urge upon them the importance of seeing that the children they bring into the world come into it with as much blessing as possible — as free from the curse of sin as possible.
Be it remembered, however, that St. Paul pointed out that the Church of Christ has a different mission in the world from others. Her mission is not the propagation of the human species, but co-operation with God in the work of the present time ; namely, the devel- opment of the New Creation. The coming Age will be the time for Christ and the Church, as the Heavenly Bridegroom and the Heavenly Bride, to take over the world of mankind by resurrection, regeneration. Now, as the Apostle suggests, is the time in which the Church is to make her own calling and election sure to the Divine nature, that she may become "the Bride, the Lamb's Wife." It is her privilege, also, to carry the Message of this High Calling to those who now have ears to hear. Thus she becomes God's mouthpiece, or ambassador, in finding, calling, instructing and help- ing all who accept the Divine invi- tation, and enter into covenant rela- tionship with God through Christ as New Creatures.
It is in view of this important work that the Apostle suggests that those of the Church who can do so should con- sider it a privilege to forego marriage, that they may live celibate lives as Jesus did, and as St. Paul himself is supposed to have done — not that celi- bacy of itself need be considered a necessity for the perfecting of the Divine character, but that its practice will give increased opportunity for
178
OVERLAND MONTHLY
serving the King of Kings. Many zealous Christians feel, as St. Paul felt, that the time is short and their oppor- tunities few for rendering service unto the Lord and His Cause. Hence if marriage would interfere in any meas- ure with this, their highest privilege, they would gladly forego a measure of earthly happiness and privilege, to be more efficient servants of the Lord.
This same thought is expressed by Jesus, saying : "Some have made them- selves eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake." (Matthew 19:12); that is, have denied themselves their privileges and rights as human beings, in order to render the better service to the Lord. But such a matter is a sac- rifice, a privilege, and not a command, not an obligation. Whoever chooses may sacrifice, and should not be criti- cised therefor. Whoever prefers not to sacrifice should not be criticised on that account. To his own master each servant stands or falls.
Business Ideals.
We must remember that the Bible has no communication whatever for those who are not Christians. The Christian business man may to some extent be copied by his neighbors. But his own responsibility is the matter in which he is interested most. A busi- ness man's ideal is the Golden Rule. "Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you," applies to his buying, his selling, to his dealing with his clerks and with his customers. It includes his advertising, and the ideals which he sets before his clerks.
We believe that more and more the Golden Rule is coming to be appreci- ated by the public, and that those who follow it will more and more receive a blessing. We do not mean that it will make them richer than their neigh- bors, who may follow the other rule sometimes quoted: Do your neighbors as you believe he would do you; but do him first, before he can do you. But whether following the Golden Rule shall bring little success or much suc- cess, the business man who has given his heart to the Lord and become a son
of God must follow the Golden Rule. He can do no less, though he is privi- ledged to do as much more as he chooses in the way of benevolences.
A business man's ideals should have some bearing upon his manner of doing business, as well as the character of the stock he offers for sale. The Christian business man's store should be known as a place where trash and injurious things would not be found.
Social and Neighborly Ideals.
The true Christian is to remember that nothing less than the Golden Rule may be followed by him under any circumstances. He must see to it that his children, his chickens, his dogs, etc., do not disturb his neighbors in their proper rights. The same Golden Rule requires of him that he shall do a neighbor's part for any one in dis- tress, even as he would have a neigh- bor do for him if he were in trouble. "Do good and lend, hoping for noth- ing again," is to be exemplified in the Christian, with the understanding that he is not to do lending that would im- pair his own credit, nor seriously inter- fere with his own obligations to his family. Moreover, proper lending would be merely in cases of necessity. He is not to be neighborly because he hopes the neighbor will return the compliment, but because from the Word of God he has received high ideals of a proper neighbor, and be- cause he wishes to live up to the Divine requirement, doing good as he has op- portunity, and especially unto the Household of Faith.
The Christian may not have time to waste in some of the social amenities common to our day. He is a repre- sentative and ambassador of the King of kings and Lord of lords. His time, his influence, his talents, are not his 'own. They are to be used according to his judgment of the Lord's will. He may not, therefore, seem to be as so- ciable as some might desire. He will have no time to kill in games or amuse- ments. He has come to a realization that "Life is real, life is earnest;" and that while there is so much sin and
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
sorrow in the world, he may not fritter away his precious moments in idleness or in that which is merely pleasurable, but not really profitable. This will not mean that he shall not take any time to look after the interests of his fam- ily in a social way and to keep in touch with his social obligations as a neigh- bor. It would make him dignified, and first of all, loyal to God.
Our ideals are merely fantasies, floating clouds without rain, until we bring them to the point of determina-
tion— until we consecrate our lives to these ideals and resolve to live in har- mony with them. Here the Christian has much advantage every way, for he not only has his ideals from the Lord, but the promise of Divine over- sight, blessing, guidance and assist- ance in working out these ideals in his own heart and in his life.
On post-card request I will loan my readers a book on "Practical Eugen- ics." Address me, Brooklyn, N. Y.
In the Realm of Bookland
"Literary California," by Ella Sterling
Mighels.
When Mrs, Ella Sterling Mighels, then Ella Sterling Cummins, issued the "Story of the Files," in 1893, under the auspices of the California Columbian Exposition Commission, the exigencies of space and time prevented Mrs. Mighels from giving as broad a survey of California letters as she wished. The scope of that work was, as the title indicates, limited to the files, meaning by that the history of the early Cali- fornian magazines, as well as the daily press of the State. While to a more or less satisfactory extent, the litera- ture of the State was represented in the specimens and extracts collected and exhibited of the various Californian writers whose name and fame are in- dissolubly associated with the history of our State, nevertheless the limita- tions indicated prevented the represen- tation from being as broad or as thor- ough as could be desired.
From that time, nearly 23 years ago, Mrs. Mighels has been working stead- ily upon her scrap books, notes and files. She has always had in mind the project of presenting a broad sur- vey of Literary California, but not until the opening of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition was this hope in any measure to be fulfilled. This work, pronounced by Mr. George Ham- lin Fitch as being perhaps the most im-
portant literary achievement of any Californian for Literary California, will be dedicated to the Native Sons and daughters of California, by per- mission accorded from those organiza- tions through Hon. John F. Davis and Mrs. Margaret G. Hill, their respective Grand Presidents.
The title selected for the book is "Literary California;" portraits, to- gether with extracts in prose and poe- try of California writers.
Present plans contemplate three edi- tions. The first issue, limited to 26 copies, lettered from A to Z, to be known as the Patrons' Edition. 74 copies, from number 27 to 100, num- bered and signed, will be known as the Contributors' Edition, no copies to be sold to other than those whose work appears in this compilation or to the relatives of those whose work appears in "Literary California." Two thou- sand four hundred copies of the "Cali- fornia Edition" will be issued for pub- lic sale.
Published by John J. Newbegin, San Francisco, California.
"The Near East from Within."
"The Near East" is just now attract- ing the attention of the world. The Balkans, Roumania, Turkey, Italy and their relations to Austria, Germany and Russia, form a large part of the Euro- pean war situation, and must be con-
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
sidered as vital elements entering into the mighty problem. What influences have been moving them, under the sur- face of things, what personalities have dominated them, by what intrigues they have been effected, cannot fail to be of profound interest; and a book revealing these, written out of large familiarity, will certainly command respect and popularity. The contents of this new and timely volume con- sist, we are told, "of the diplomatic reminiscences of a former political agent," who is said to have been in Constantinople during three separate crises, and who claims to give in "The Near East from Within," the under- current facts about Turkish conditions, and about the men responsible for these; about Russian and German en- tanglements; the failures of Balkan and other subordinate nationalities to achieve their purposes, etc. His anonymous recitals begin with Abdul Hamid, in 1888. Thirteen photogra- vure illustrations present as many fig- ures notable among conspicuous char- acters in "The Near East."
Published by Funk & Wagnals, New York.
"A History of Persia," by Lt.-Colonel Sykes.
According to the author, just a cen- tury has elapsed since the publication of Sir John Malcolm's "History of Persia." In this long period the mys- tery of the cuneiform inscriptions has been solved, Susa has yielded up its secrets, and in many other directions a notable advance has been effected. Each important discovery has been embodied in some work of special value, but no book has been written dealing with Persia as a whole and em- bodying the rich fruits of this modern research.
"After much hesitation I have at- temped to fill what is undoubtedly a serious gap; for Persia has exercised considerable influence, extending over many centuries, on Greece, on the Ro- man Empire, and consequently on Europe. My primary aim has been to furnish fellow officials serving in Per-
sia and adjoining countries, and stu- dents, with a work which is, as far as possible, self-contained and complete. With this object I have focused what is known of the ancient empires in their relations with Elam, Media, and Persia; and I have dealt somewhat more fully than would otherwise have been necessary with such subjects as the rise of Macedonia. Having en- joyed the great advantage of twenty- one years' residence and travel in Per- sia, I am able to present certain facts more vividly than would have been possible, without the special knowl- edge thus gained. I also claim to have acquired to some extent the Persian point of view.
Price, $15; by post extra. Published by The Macmillan Co., New York.
"Bred in the Desert," by Marcus Horton.
This story ought to satisfy all lovers of animals and especially those who love a good horse. Seldom is a story of this kind so free from merely su- perinduced sentiment, so genuine in its feeling, so evidently inspired not merely by real affection, but by real and intimate knowledge. Mr. Horton writes with a keenness of observation and a gift of sympathetic interpreta- tion that is possible to few. He gives us pictures of the colt, in his kittenish pranks, his affections, and his dejec- tions, that are as lifelike as they are freshly attractive. He reveals his mo- tives, too — his fears, his curiosities, his resentments, in a manner that com- pletely wins one's interest. And at the same time that he keeps the horse, with wonderful naturalness, almost al- ways in the foreground, he tells a story of human beings that is well worth reading in itself.
Pat was born in the Southwestern desert, the property of a quite worth- less Mexican. He soon revealed the fact that he was an "aristocrat;" in- deed, so handsome was he that his master expected to realize what was to him a small fortune from his sale. But on the way to market Pat man- aged to lose himself at a crowded
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
crossing. But it was a lucky thing for him, on the whole, for now Pat was adopted into a rich family, and his new mistress, Helen Richards, loved him very dearly. How Pat grew and found himself, how he learned his world and inspired respect both in the other horses and in the stableman, are told with sympathy and humor.
Published by Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square, New York.
"L. P. M., or The End of the Great War." By J. Stewart Barney. Il- lustrated with frontispiece in color, by Clarence Underwood. J. F. Edestone, an American million- aire scientist, who has decided that war must cease, succeeds in perfecting a startling invention, which, properly used, places the controller of its power in a supreme position.
Armed with credentials from the United States — acquired after an in- teresting and amusing interview with the Secretary of State — he sails for Europe to gain a hearing from each of the belligerent powers.
England receives him at first skep- tically and then in amazement; finally agreeing to accept him as a Minister Extraordinary to arrange terms of
peace ; France also accepts him in this role; but in Germany he meets with serious complications, culminating in a word-war with the Kaiser, followed, as becomes necessary, by a thrilling escape and a demonstration of the great power at his command.
The author has given us a story which really lives and moves. His characters are convincing, many of them being evidently drawn from real life, and his situations are most plaus- ible. The exposition of the workings of the German Secret Service in Eng- land is especially interesting and pro- vides the "peace at any price" Ameri- can with food for thought.
Published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York.
"The Auction Mart," by Sydney Tremayne. The story of a girl of tem- perament, "modern-looking — the per- sonification of twentieth-century fem- ininity," who, dissatisfied with her home environment, sets out to earn her living and becomes a famous dancer. The end of the story proves that the ties of home and love were stronger than she had supposed.
Published by John Lane & Co., The Bodley Head, New York.
Great Success of the Swiss-Italian Colony in /taking Fine Champagne
IN THE judgment of successful California vineyardists the wine making of this State is only 40 years old. Its practical success be- gan when Arpad Haraszthy was com- missioned by the Legislature at Sac- ramento to visit Europe and select the best vine cuttings to graft on the home stock. Thereby Haraszthy introduced the Zinfandel grape wine that proved so successful in pioneering the way for a better variety and grade. The next conspicuous lift given the indus- try came six years later, when An-
drea Sbarboro organized the Italian- Swiss Agricultural Colony, and estab- lished the immense vineyard and cel- lars at Asti, Sonoma County. The success of the venture was so remark- able that other vineyards were estab- lished by the company in sections "of the State where the soil and sun ex- posure were best adapted for certain varieties of rich wine grapes.
This royal success in wine making was crowned recently in the greatest of all wine contests held in the world, the competitive exhibits of wines at
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For the half year ending June 30, 1915, a dividend has been declared at the rate of four (4) per cent per annum on all deposits, payable on and after Thursday, July 1, 1915. Dividends not called for are added to the deposit account and earn dividends from July 1, 1915.
GEORGE TOURNY, Manager.
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The Hibernia Savings and Loan Society. For the half year ending June 30, 1915, a dividend has been declared at the rate of four (4) per cent per annum -on all deposits, payable on and after Thursday, July 1, 1915. Dividends not drawn will be added to depositors' accounts, become a part there- of, and will earn dividends from July 1, 1915. De- posits made on or before July 12, 1915, will draw in- terest from July 1, 1915.
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
the Panama-Pacific Exposition. The Superior Jury of Awards conferred on the Italian-Swiss Colony five "Grand Prix," seven Medals of Honor, and thirteen Gold Medals for their unusu- ally fine California wines. These twenty-five awards mark the extraor- dinary high position attained by the Italian-Swiss Colony in the production of superior varieties of wines, the best in the State, and that implies America.
Golden State Extra Dry Champagne was declared the finest champagne produced in California. It was the only white wine awarded a "Grand Prix." This award makes the fourth "Grand Prix" obtained for Golden State in the past five years. The prior awards were granted at the Interna- tional Exposition at Turin, Italy, 1911; Ghent, Belgium, 1913; and Genoa, Italy, 1915.
The complete list of prizes received by the Italian-Swiss Colony at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in the re- cent international contest were as fol- lows:
"Grand Prix," Golden State, Extra Dry Champagne; Tipo Red; Asti Rouge (Sparkling Burgundy); Cha- teau d'Asti; Chablis.
"Medals of Honor": Tipo White; Burgundy; Muscat; Madeira; Ver- mouth; Grapinac, Grape Brandy Bot- tled in Bond; Grape Brandy (Cognac.)
"Gold Medals": Claret; Zinfandel; Cabernet; Gutedel; Sauternes; Pinot Blanc; Chateau d'Asti Blanc; Port; Sherry; Angelica; Marsala; Grape Brandy (Muscat) and Grappa Brandy.
Untiring patience, perseverence, in- domitable energy, a keen sense of the fundamental values of vine and wine values and the expenditure of enor- mous sums of money in the develop- ing of their original idea are the base which sustains these twenty-five awards of high merit. In the experi- ence and successful development of the Italian-Swiss Colony lies the com- plete story of the high accomplish- ment of fine wine making in Califor- nia. Most of the credit is due to two men, Andrea Sbarboro, the man with the idea, and the late P. C. Rossi.
Prior to 1875 the wine industry had been struggling along in a haphazard way in desperate endeavors to develop the old time Mission grape so that it would produce a superior quality of wine. The Mission grape was indige- nous, and the Franciscan Fathers brought cuttings from Spain for graft- ing purposes in order to improve the juice. In the '40's these grapes were furnishing a strong and heavy wine that quickly developed intoxication. Later shipments of these heavy wines found their way East and gave Cali- fornia such a black eye in the wine in- dustry that the trade languished for fifty years, and it was only through the most strenuous efforts and the de- velopment of far superior grades of wine that this battered reputation was gradually dislodged. In 1875 came the first united attempt to elevate wine making into a State industry. That year the Legislature at Sacramento commissioned Arpad Haraszthy to go to Europe and bring back the best se- lection of grape cuttings to be had. A few years later Andrea Sbarboro, on organizing the Italian-Swiss Colony, sent an expert agent to bring back the choicest cuttings adaptable to the Cali- fornia stock and climate.
Twenty years ago the Italian-Swiss Colony began experimenting with mak- ing champagne. P. C. Rossi, a pro- found student of wine making, was commissioned to go abroad to discover the inside secrets of making the best brands of champagne. After a series of sore trials and disappointments he succeeded, and brought back with him an expert champagne maker of wide experience and well versed in all the requisites of making the true cham- pagne. Carte blanche was given him in expense; his orders were to get re- sults. A big plant was erected at Asti, and in three years' time the first sam- ples of Golden Seal Champagne, the same champagne that has since taken four prizes at four great expositions, was put on the market, and has been rising in the estimation of the best connoisseurs of champagne ever since.
YOUR NEED OF AE
Just this I know:
Your need of me! And that is what has held My spirit bound and chained and witchly-spelled : Your need of me !
Ah, you who have thought that beauty, sovereign-sure,
Or eager youth the summoning allure
That to your shrine my footsteps captive-led,
Not knowing, dreaming that it was instead
Your need of me!
And when your youth's effulgent day has past,
And age's dingy dawn enskied at last,
When years have ravished beauty's rose and snow,
You'll sway me yet; Time's touchstone then shall show
The ageless essence of that sorcery :
Your need of me!
DOROTHY DEJAGERS.
A restful arm of the silent sea.
OVERLAND
Founded 1868
U,
MONTHLY *
BRET HARTE
VOL. LXVI
San Francisco, September, 1915
No. 3
Moonbeams on a passing night storm.
CIRCLING TAHITI
By Lewis R. Freeman
CHIEF ITEM in the visitor's pro- gram in Tahiti — after he has called on the Governor, ap- peared at the club, and spent a small sack of Chilean pesos to see a hula that has been so completely ex- purgated and legalized as to make a Maypole dance on the village green appear Bacchanalian in comparison — is the hundred-mile drive around the
island. The roads are bad over half the way, and the vehicles all the way, but the ride itself unfolds such an unending panorama of sea, surf and lagoon; of beach and reef; of moun- tain, cliff and crag; of torrent, cascade and waterfall, and of reckless, riotous, onrushing tropical vegetation as can be found along no similar stretch of wagon road in the world.
188
OVERLAND MONTHLY
Tahitian driving is pretty near the most reckless thing of its kind in ex- istence. It really isn't driving at all; rather it should be called "herding." If your vehicle has more than one seat there will be three or four horses to haul it, driven "spike" in the former case, by twos in the latter. These ani- mals are attached to the rig by traces running to their collars, which, with the reins, constitutes all of the har- ness. There is nothing in the way of breeching for holding back, and, as a Tahitian vehicle never has a brake, there is no way the wheel horses can save their heels but by beating the pursuing rig down the hills. A "good" driver will handle two horses; beyond that number a boy is required on the back of each addition. With your driver and post-boys wearing each a gaudy hibiscus or tiare behind his ear, with their braided whips cracking mer- rily at everything from stray dogs and blossoms to their horses' ears, and with all of them raising their voices in "hi- mine" after "himine," with the inde- fatigability of a frog-pond chorus, your progress, on the score of picturesque- ness, at least, has no odds to ask of a Roman Triumph.
The ride from Papeete to Hiteaea is a break-neck performance. In a mile or two the last straggles of houses are left behind, and the road disappears in the jungle, turning to two wavy yellow ruts enclosing an endless ribbon of velvet verdance. If they would only keep to the ruts it would be smooth sailing; the rig would rattle along like a railroad train on a track. But this is not so easy as it looks. Tough banana roots straggle over the ground in a fashion that would make a Cali- fornia stage road seem like an asphalt boulevard. The fact, also, that the work has to be done in a sort of dusky twilight, a dim religious old cathedral kind of a glow, makes it as uncertain as exciting. No matter how highly recommended your Jehu comes to you, his driving is not a thing to be de- pended upon; nor is the road ever alike for a week at a time. Just as your pilot gets to what he remembers
as a smooth, level stretch suitable for speeding and puts his horses at a gal- lop, a lurking banana or maupe root pushes its nose out, and the old shay brings up with a jolt that sets your ears to ringing and necessitates a half- hour's halt for repairs to rolling stock or harness.
Like all the rest of the South Pacific Islands, Tahiti has an abnormally large rainfall. There is a river tobog- ganing down to the sea for every inch of rainfall, and the number, if one varies, in direct proportion to the other. The precipitation rarely falls under a minimum of a hundred inches, and there are certainly never fewer than that number of rivers. In wet seasons, both are doubled. The rivers are as capricious as the tropical show- ers that feed them, and change their beds almost as often, if less regularly, than a professional hobo. Once away from the district about the capital there is no sign of a bridge at any point. The natives cross on logs and stepping stones, the wagons in various ways. The most approved plan is for the passengers to join the driver and post-boys in their cannibal war-whoop and make the horses take the stream by storm. If all goes well — as occa- sionally happens — there is a splash, a sun-shot halo of flying spray, and you dive again into the tunnel of the jun- gle, wet but unscathed. If, as gener- ally happens, things do not go right, you miss the ruts of the ford, hit a boulder, something gives way and you are marooned in mid-river.
Here is where the synthetically con- structed harnesses — bits of old straps, wire, tough lianas and vegetable fiber — show their usefulness. A chain is no stronger than its weakest link. Nothing short of a charge of dynamite will move the boulder against which the rear wheel is securely jammed; with the horses going Berserk at thirty miles an hour, therefore, some- thing has to give way, and the Tahitian has wisely figured that it is easier to patch a harness than a wagon. The rig stops short, the harnesses dissolve like webs of gossamer, and the horses
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go right ahead. The driver, and any- one who chances to be in the front seat with him, usually follows the horses; those upon the back seat tele- scope upon one another. Native as- sistance is almost imperative at this juncture, and, strangely, with the in- fallibility of St. Bernard dogs in Al- pine stories, always seem to turn up at the psychological moment.
From one such predicament our party was rescued by a bevy of girls on their way to market, who manfully tucked up their pareos, waded into the water, put their sturdy brown shoul- ders to the wheels, and literally lifted us through to the bank. An hour later, after a similar mishap, we were all carried ashore on the broad cocoanut- oiled backs of the half-intoxicated members of a party of revelers, who left a dance unfinished to rush to our rescue. They were "real mitinaire boys," they said, and "ver' glad to help Crisyun white vis'tor." And to show that these were not idle words, they offered to carry us across the stream and back again in pure good- fellowship.
One of them, in fact, a six-foot Apollo with his matted hair rakishly topped with a coronal of white "tiare," had our lady guest over his shoulder and half-way down the bank before we could convince him that we were fully assured of his good-will without further demonstration. The lady, be- ing island bred, accepted this impetu- ous gallantry with the philosophical passivity of the sack of copra which she might have been for all the Ka- naka Lochinvar's care in handling her. This was our only experience of any- thing approaching roughness in a Ta- hitian, and the victim's charitable in- terpretation of the act as a mistaken kindness saved the offender from even being denied participation in the divi- sion of a handful of coppers.
Hiteaea, a village situated half-way down the windward side of the island from Papeete, is as lovely as a steam- ship company folder description; the kind of a place you have always sus- pected never existed outside the im-
agination of a drop-curtain painter. Half of the settlement is smothered in giant bamboos, the remainder in flam- buoyant, frangipani and hau trees, which carpet the ground inches deep with blossoms of scarlet, waxy cream and pale gold. Nothing less strong than the persistent southeast trade- wind could furnish the village with air — nothing less bright than the equa- torial sun could pierce the dense cur- tains with shafts of light. Toward the sea the jungle thins, and in a palm- dotted clearing, walled in with flower- ing stephanosis and tiare, are the houses of the Chief, true Tahitian houses — oval tents of bamboo with thatches of woven pandanus and sides of reeds and interlaced cocoanut leaves. A rolling natural lawn leads down to the beach of shining coral clinkers; then the lagoon in blended shades of lapis lazuli, chryoprase and pale jade, a warm, wide loop of coral, a flashing necklace of reef, the shading sapphire of the open sea, and the blue hill of Teravao dissolving in the after- noon mist.
The squealing of chased pigs and the squawk of captured chickens welled up to our ears as we topped the last divide and saw the blue smoke of the Hiteaean flesh-pots filtering through the green curtain which still hid the village from our sight, sounds which, to the trained ears of our island friends, told that our herald had car- ried the news of our approach, and that fitting preparations for our recep- tion were being made. The wayfarer in colder, grayer climes sings of the emotions awakened in his breast by the "watch-dog's deep-mouthed wel- come" as he drew near home, or of "the lamp in the window" which is waiting for him; to the Tahitian trav- eler all that the dog and the lamp ex- press, and a great deal more besides, is carried in the dying wails of the pigs and the chickens, the inevitable signal of expected company.
Our driver and post-boys answered the signal with a glad yell, and our jaded horses, a moment before droop- ing from the stiff climb to the summit
I
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of the divide, galvanized into life and dashed off down the serpentine trough of roots and tussocks which answered for a road at a rate that kept the tugs which connected them to the madly pursuing chariot straightened all the way to the beach. Some of us were yelling with excitement, some with fright, and some of the less stoical — at the buffets dealt them by the half- padded cushions and the swaying sides — even with pain. Most of the unse- cured baggage — cameras, suit-cases, hand-bags, phonograph records and the like — went flying off like nebulae in our comet like wake; a man with a load of "feis" was knocked sprawling, a litter of pigs ground underfoot, a flock of ducks parted down the middle, and a bevy of babies just avoided be- fore we brought up in a shower of tin- kling coral at the door of the Chief's house. It was as spectacular an entry as even our post-boys could have de- sired, but our natural pride in it was lost a moment later when two grave- faced young women in black "holo- kaus" came out to tell us that their father, the Chief, had died the night before.
The good souls, in spite of their sor- row and the endless amount of cere- mony and preparation incident to the funeral of a Tahitian chief, had made all the arrangements for accommodat- ing us for the night, and would neither permit us to take the road again for Teravao, nor to put up with anything less than the best which Hiteaea had to offer. So the evening of feasting which would ordinarily have been our portion, was dispensed with, and we spent the night quietly and comfort- ably in the house of mourning.
Beyond Hiteaea the road dips into the vanilla bean zone, and from there to the Taiarapu Isthmus the gushing trade-wind smites the nostrils like a blast from a pastry cook's oven. Van- illa is one of Tahiti's budding indus- tries, and like everything else indus- trial in the Societies, seems likely not to get far beyond the budding stage. The vanilla vine requires little but heat, moisture, a tree to climb upon,
and a little care. The natural condi- tions are near ideal in the jungle sec- tions of Tahiti, but the hitch has come on the score of care.
A number of Chinamen, with planta- tions sufficiently small to allow them to do their own work, are making a considerable success of vanilla, but where Kanakas have had to be em- ployed there has been nothing but fail- ure. A native set to pollenize a lot of vines is more likely than not to pick the orchid-like flower to chew or stick behind his ears, or to weave the new tendrils into garlands for his Olympian brow. They tell you in Papeete that the vanilla industry is not flourishing because of the increasing use of arti- ficial flavoring extracts in America; the real reason for its backwardness is the non-use of an artificial — or any other kind of labor extractor on the Kanakas.
At the Isthmus of Teravao the gird- ling highway which you have followed swings back down the leeward side of the island to Papeete. Tautira is reached by a spur which is, however, much better kept up than portions of the main road. The bush is not so dense in this portion of the island as along the road you have just traversed, but the mountains, especially in the vicinity of Tautira, assume an even wilder aspect than any down to wind- ward. Knife-shaped pinnacles of every conceivable shade of blue, green and purple are tossed together in an aim- less tumble, showing the skyline of a battered saw. Here a mountain has been rent by some Titan to let a river through; there a mountain has refused to rend, and a river closes its eyes and launches itself over a thousand foot cliff, paling with terror as it realizes the magnitude of its leap and changing from a bar of green jade to a fluttering scarf of gray satin, to end up in a rum- ple of white gossamer.
Unfathomable gorges with over- hanging sides tunnel into the heart of unclimbable mountains; sheer preci- pices drop curtains of creepers that dangle their tesselated skirts in the quiet river reaches hundreds of feet
The reefs of Tahiti on a moonlight night.
below; ghostly castles, scarped and buttressed and battlemented, now of mist-wreathed rock, now of rock- pierced mist, fade and reappear with the shifting of the cloud scenery; and above is the flaming sun-shot sky, be- low the wind-tossed, diamond-sprin- kled ocean. What does the French- man want of absinthe and the China- man of opium when they both have a place like this to look at? It is a dream that nothing but a flying Tahi- tian chariot brought up short by a four foot mid river boulder can bring you out of.
Tautira, though the second town of the island, is almost entirely a native settlement, the foreign colony consist- ing of but one missionary, one trader and one French official. This does not mean that the town is backward or de- cadent; quite to the contrary. The missionaries, as a pretty general rule, will always be found thickest on the firing line, and where affairs are in the hands of a single white or native
preacher, it may be taken to indicate that the natives, professedly at least, are well within the fold. There is but one trader in Tautira because the na- tives are shrewd enough to own their own cutters and trade directly with Papeete. The official is there because the majesty of France requires one representative in each district, not be- cause he is really needed. As far as morals are concerned, there is more mischief to the square foot — or should I say the rounded ankle? — in Papeete than all of Tautira.
Tautira's chief claim to distinction is Ori, and Ori's chief claim to distinc- tion is the fact that he was the host for a month or more of Robert Louis Stev- enson's party on the novelist's first cruise to the South Seas in the "Casco." Stevenson, still weak from overwork and hardly yet beginning to feel the beneficial effects of the cruise, was ill during nearly all of his stay in Tautira. No account of this visit appears in his South Sea book, but 2
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in the published letters of his mother it is written of at length, and most en- tertainingly.
From Mrs. Stevenson's account it would appear that the party was ten- dered the usual round of feasts, dances and gifts, and countered with feasts and gift-givings of its own. They tell you in Papette that Stevenson's illness during this visit made him see their island through dark glasses, and that this was the reason that he ultimately settled in Samoa instead of Tahiti. From the standpoint of picturesque and tropical loveliness, Tautira, and even Papeete, is distinctly ahead of Apia, but it is more likely that the greater attractiveness of the incompar- able Samoan native who, then as now, was much less touched by white in- fluence than the Tahitian, turned the scale in favor of the more westerly location of the novelist's home.
Ori — a wily old hypocrite whose six feet four of stature, unlike that of most Tahitians, was not cumbered with an ounce of superfluous flesh — made a great point of assuring our party that his whole plan of entertainment was patterned on that which he had pro- vided for the Stevensons. We were quartered in one of the houses that the Stevensons had occupied; quite as many pigs and chickens were slaugh- tered for our native feasts as for those of the Stevensons; full as many sing- ers were mustered for our "sing-sings" as turned out for the Stevensons; he would lavish quite as rich gifts upon us as he did upon the Stevensons, and — the Stevensons had given him such and such things, ad infinitum. Inas- much as we were paying for our en- tertainment at a rate which we knew to be about a hundred per cent above the normal, there was little of base in- gratitude in the remark of one of our number who, when his knife blade turned on the rubberoid leg of one of Ori's broilers, asked that venerable rascal if it came from one of the chickens left over by the Stevensons.
For some reason, chickens, like wine, refuse to age properly in the South Pacific. It may be the heat; it
may be the humidity; at any rate, a chicken of any greater age than two months, however cooked, makes a piece de resistance in a most painful literal sense. Luckily, the Tahitian pig, cooked in island fashion, is as much above the average porker of tem- 'perate latitudes as the Tahitian broiler falls below the standard in his class. Any kind of a cut from a six months old cocoanut fed pig, cooked on hot stones and served with the inimitable "miti-hari" sauce, will awaken an ec- stacy in the palate, the memory of which a year of ordinary food cannot eradicate. The recipe would go some- thing like this:
Dig a hole in the ground big enough comfortably to bury a pig in, and fill it with smooth, round river bottom stones. Collect half a cord or so of dry wood and start a fire on the stones. Leaving a boy to stoke the fire, take the eight or ten hours in which the stones are coming to a dull cherry red to find just the right sort of a pig. From three to six months is the best age, and, if possible, get an animal that has been penned and fed on noth- ing but young cocoanuts. If there has been a few odd bread-fruits, bananas, mangoes, papayas, mamees, star-ap- ples and the like, thrown in to him oc- casionally, it will not make much dif- ference, but avoid the porker that has rustled for himself about the copra shacks and along the beach.
Kill the pig and dress in the usual manner, but without cutting off the head and feet, or removing the skin. Wrap the body several inches deep in banana or plantain leaves, and plas- ter the whole thickly with sticky mud. Now, if the stones are red, remove them with a pole, throw in the pig, and push back the stones again. Best to let a native watch the progress of the cooking, as a great deal depends upon 'taking it out at the right time, and it requires a lifetime of experience to forecast absolutely the condition of the pig from a whiff of the steam.
You might try your hand with "miti- hari" before leaving the rest of the feast for the natives to prepare. This
Expurgated "hula" costumes, specially arranged so as not to shock tourists.
is the sauce par excellence of the South Pacific, and in my own experi- ence, quite without a peer in any other part of the world. Send for a quart of grated cocoanut meat (most of the native houses keep it on hand), and after soaking it for a few minutes in sea water, pour it out on a square of stout muslin, twist the corners of the latter together and bring all the pres- sure possible to bear on the contents. The result is a cupful of thick, rich milk which, on the addition of a cou- ple of limes and a red pepper or two, becomes the marvelous and transmu- tative "miti-hari."
I recall hearing in Papeete a story of the amazing things that tourists have eaten under the gastronomic in- toxication incident to a taste of the wonderful "miti," with which they — the things — were dressed. I believe a piece of rubber blanket was on the list. I don't exactly recall what else, though I do remember hearing some one say
that a dash of "miti-hari" on the story itself might make it easier to swallow.
The Tahitian "native" feast does not differ in any salient particulars from the often described Hawaiian "luau." The guests sit on the ground and eat the various "dishes," which are spread before them on banana leaves, from their fingers. In addition to pig, chicken and the inevitable bread-fruit, the menu always includes a liberal supply of fish, both cooked in wrappings of the fragrant "ti" leaves and pickled raw in lime juice; taro, boiled and mashed; bananas and plantain of a dozen different varieties ; fillet of devil fish, very exquisite prawns, and a fruit list which, being harder to write than to eat, is omitted.
If the feast is given you by a per- son of wealth or importance, or if you are paying a person like the canny Ori a sum sufficient to make it an inducement, you may get a taste of cocoanut sprout salad. The raw fish
The natives on the right are dancing the hula.
is good, the prawns distinctly so, but the cocoanut sprout salad is the only dish of the lot worthy to be mentioned in the same breath with the "miti- haried" pig. Unfortunately, as every tiny sprout in the salad means the death of a young cocoanut tree, the dish is more often discussed than di- gested. A substitute, made of the tender fronds of young ferns, is itself pretty near a high water mark in sal- ads until you have tasted that of co- coanut sprouts. As for the pig and the "miti-hari," if it doesn't prepare your face for a look of distant super- iority whenever again you hear men extolling this or that culinary achieve- ment as worthy of a place on the top- most pinnacle of gastronomic excel- lence, it is because you are suffering from atrophy of the palate.
Kava, so popular in the Samoas and Fiji, was not — Byron to the contrary — and is not much drunk in Tahiti. Feast- ing with natives outside of missionary
circles, you will probably have a chance to "experience" orange wine. This is a harmless looking beverage of insinuating ways, in the lucent depths of the first three or four cups of which lurks no hint of the devil which is curled up in the bottom of the fifth or sixth, and all thereafter. The pro- verbial ungentlemanliness of the on- slaught of a "battleship" punch on a debutante at her first dance on board, is nothing to the "assault from am- bush" of orange wine upon the un- wary stranger who dallies overlong above its cup.
Cocoanut wine, fermented from a juice drawn from the heart of the trunk of that palm, is expensive and hard to obtain at any cost. It is a gentleman's drink, however, with none of the "behind the back" tactics of the soft-footed orange thunderbolt. It romps down the throat like a torch- light procession, and promptly starts a conflagration which spreads like
TAMALPAIS. 197
wildfire from the head to the heels. An In America, a man showing the same American Indian after a couple of symptoms as a native under the influ- drinks of cocoanut wine, would com- ence of cocoanut wine, would be mence murdering his fellows ; the gen- gagged, strait-jacketed and thrust in a tie Tahitian, in like instance, quite as padded cell. In Tahiti, the smiling much uplifted, both mentally and phy- policeman, if the offender becomes too sically, as the Indian, is content to boisterously obstreperous, accom- murder sleep — his own and every one plishes a similar result by pitching him else's. He enters upon a period of off the seawall. This strikes the visi- song and dance, which lasts as long tor as being a somewhat drastic pro- as the supply of wine, and there is no ceeding, but I have the assurance of peace within a quarter of a mile ra- a prominent merchant of Papeete that dius — or farther, according to his num- "you would be surprised how few of bers. these fellows are really drowned."
TAAALPAIS
Day after day I tramp thy side, And from thy crest I view the tide Of sea-born fogs or sun-kissed bay, And in thy silence feel thy sway. The mighty hills have ever held Great mysteries for me unspelled But guessed; and here I seek to find, Communion with that master mind Who lifted up thy sun-crowned head And in the ocean laid thy bed.
In rock-bound majesty you stand A sentinel to guard the land Encroaching waves and north-bred wind In thee a taming master find. Here in each sheltered cove or glen I find the homes of thoughtful men, And here a grove primeval, wild; By man's destruction undefiled. Guardian of the Western gate You challenge men and bid them wait.
A Pisgah thou, on which I stand, And see anew that promised land; Which Moses saw in days of old Where His great truths shall be unrolled When swords are turned to pruning hooks, And peace flows on like honeyed brooks, I see all men as brothers meet, And hold thanksgiving at thy feet. O guard thou well the greater plan, Thou monument of God for man.
WILLIAM NAUNS RICKS.
On one of the old river mining courses.
The Luck of Roaring Camp
By Bret Harte
This being the Panama- Pacific Exposition year, in which everything of merit in California is being reviewed before the world, the management of Overland Monthly has decided to republish in its pages the stories and poems that made the magazine famous through the genius of Bret Harte. He was its first editor, and it was his keen discernment and originality which gave the contents of the magazine that touch of the spirit of the West, and es- pecially of California, which made it distinctive and enkindled the enthu- siasm of discerning readers the world around. These early contributions of his cover several years; they will be published monthly in the order in which they appeared, beginning with the first issue of Overland Monthly, July, 1868.
THERE was commotion in Roar- ing Camp. It could not have been a fight, for in 1850 that was not novel enough to have called out the entire settlement. Ditches and claims were not only deserted, but "Turtle's" grocery had contributed its gamblers, who, it will be remembered,
calmly continued their game the day that French Pete and Kanaka Joe shot each other to death over the bar in the front room. The whole camp was col- lected before a rude cabin on the outer edge of the clearing. Conversation was carried on in a low tone, but the name of a woman was frequently repeated.
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It was a name familiar enough in the camp: "Cherokee Sal."
Perhaps the less said of her the better. She was a coarse, and, it is to be feared, a very sinful woman. But at that time she was the only woman in Roaring Camp, and was just then lying in sore extremity when she most need- ed the ministrations of her own sex. Dissolute, abandoned and irreclaim- able, she was yet suffering a martyr- dom— hard enough to bear even in the seclusion and sexual sympathy with which custom veils it — but now terri- ble in her loneliness. The primal curse had come to her in that original isolation, which must have made the punishment of the first transgression so dreadful. It was, perhaps, part of the expiation of her sin, that at a mo- ment when she most lacked her sex's intuitive sympathy and care, she met only the half-contemptuous faces of her masculine associates. Yet a few of the spectators were, I think, touched by her sufferings. Sandy Tipton thought it was "rough on Sal," and in the contemplation of her condition, for a moment rose superior to the fact that he had an ace and two bowers in his sleeve.
It will be seen, also, that the situa- tion was novel. Deaths were by no means uncommon in Roaring Camp, but a birth was a new thing. People had been dismissed the camp effec- tively, finally, and with no possibility of return, but this was the first time that anybody had been introduced ab initio. Hence the excitement.
"You go in there, Stumpy," said a prominent citizen known as "Ken- tuck," addressing one of the loungers. "Go in there, and see what you kin do. You've had experience in them things."
Perhaps there was a fitness in the se- lection. Stumpy, in other climes, had been the putative head of two famil- ies; in fact, it was owing to some legal informality in these proceedings that Roaring Camp — a city of refuge — was indebted to his company. The crowd approved the choice, and Stumpy was wise enough to bow to the majority. The door closed on the ex-
tempore surgeon and midwife, and Roaring Camp sat down outside, smoked its pipe, and awaited the is- sue.
The assemblage numbered about a hundred men. One or two of these were actual fugitives from justice, some were criminal, and all were reck- less. Physically, they exhibited no indication of their past lives and char- acter. The greatest scamp had a Ra- phael face, with a profusion of blonde hair; Oakhurst, a gambler, had the melancholy air and intellectual abstrac- tion of a Hamlet; the coolest and most courageous man was scarcely over five feet in height, with a soft voice and an embarrassed, timid manner. The term "roughs" applied to them was a distinction rather than a defini- tion. Perhaps in the minor details of fingers, toes, ears, etc., the camp may have been deficient, but these slight omissions did not detract from their aggregate force. The strongest man had but three fingers on his right hand; the best shot had but one eye.
Such was the physical aspect of the men that were dispersed around the cabin. The camp lay in a trian- gular valley, between two hills and a river. The only outlet was a steep trail over the summit of a hill that faced the cabin, now illuminated by the rising moon. The suffering woman might have seen it from the irude bunk whereon she lay — seen it wind- ing like a silver thread until it was lost in the stars above.
A fire of withered boughs added sociability to the gathering. By de- grees the natural levity of Roaring Camp returned. Bets were freely of- fered and taken regarding the result. Three to five that "Sal wou(ld get through with it;" even, that the child would survive; side bets as to the sex and complexion of the coming stranger. In the midst of an excited discussion an exclamation came from those near- est the door, and the camp stopped to listen. Above the swaying and moaning of the pines, the swift rush of the river and the crackling of the fire, rose a sharp querulous cry — a
An outlook in the Bret Harte Country, California.
cry unlike anything heard before in the camp. The pines stopped moan- ing, the river ceased to rush, and the fire to crackle. It seemed as if Na- ture had stopped to listen too.
The camp rose to its feet as one man! It was proposed to explode a barrel of gunpowder, but, in consider- ation of the situation of the mother, better counsels prevailed, and only a few revolvers were discharged; for, whether owing to the rude surgery of the camp, or some other reason, Cherokee Sal was sinking fast. With- in an hour she had climbed, as it were, that rugged road that led to the stars, and so passed out of Roaring Camp, its sin and shame forever. I do not think that the announcement disturbed them much, except in speculation as to the fate of the child. "Can he live now?" was asked of Stumpy. The answer was doubtful. The only other being of Cherokee Sal's sex and maternal condition in the settlement was an ass. There were some conjec- tures as to fitness, but the experi-
ment was tried. It was less prob- lematical than the ancient treatment of Romulus and Remus, and apparently as successful.
When these details were completed, which exhausted another hour, the door was opened, and the anxious crowd, which had already formed themselves in a queue, entered in single file. Be- side the low bunk or shelf, on which the figure of the mother was starkly outlined below the blankets, stood a pine table. On this a candle-box was placed, and within it, swathed in staring red flannel, lay the last ar- rival at Roaring Camp. Beside the candle-box was placed a hat. Its use was soon indicated. "Gentlemen," said Stumpy, with a singular mixture of authority and ex officio compla- cency— "Gentlemen will please pass in at the front door, round the table, and out at the back door. Them as wishes to contribute anything toward the orphan will find a hat handy." The first man entered with his hat on ; he uncovered, however, as he looked
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about him, and so, unconsciously, set an example to the next. In such com- munities good and bad actions are catching. As the procession filed in, comments were audible — criticisms ad- dressed, perhaps, rather to Stumpy, in the character of showman: "Is that him?" "mighty small specimen;" "hasn't more'n got the color;" "ain't bigger nor a deringer." The contribu- tions were as characteristic: A silver tobacco-box; a doubloon; a navy re- volver, silver mounted; a gold speci- men; a very beautifully embroidered lady's handkerchief (from Oakhurst, the gambler); a diamond breastpin; a diamond ring (suggested by the pin, with the remark from the giver that he "saw that pin and went two diamonds better"); a slung-shot; a Bible (contributor not detected) ; a golden spur; a silver teaspoon (the initials, I regret to say, were not the giver's); a pair of surgeon's shears; a lancet; a Bank of England note for five pounds; and about $200 in loose gold and silver coin. During these proceedings Stumpy maintained a silence as impassive as the dead on his left — a gravity as inscrutable as that of the newly-born on his right. Only one incident occurred to break the monotony of the curious proces- sion. As Kentuck bent over the candle-box half curiously, the child turned, and in a spasm of pain, caught at his groping finger, and held it fast for a moment. Kentuck looked fool- ish and embarrassed. Something like a blush tried to assert itself in his
weather-beaten cheek. "The d d
little cuss!" he said, as he extricated his finger, with, perhaps, more tender- ness and care than he might have been deemed capable of showing. He held that finger a little apart from its fellows as he went out, and examined it curiously. The examination pro- voked the same original remark in re- gard to the child. In fact, he seemed to enjoy repeating it. "He rastled with my finger," he remarked to Tip- ton, holding up the member. "The
d d little cuss!"
It was four o'clock before the camp
sought repose. A light burnt in the cabin where the watchers sat, for Stumpy did not go to bed that night. Nor did Kentuck. He drank quite freely, and related with great gusto his experience, invariably ending with his characteristic condemnation of the new-comer. It seemed to relieve him of any unjust implication of senti- ment, and Kentuck had the weaknesses of the nobler sex. When everybody else had gone to bed, he walked down to the river and whistled, reflectively. Then he walked up the gulch, past the cabin, still whistling with demon- strative unconcern. At a large redwood tree he paused and retraced his steps and again passed the cabin. Half way down to the river's bank he again paused, and then returned and knocked at the door. It was opened by Stumpy. "How goes it?" said Ken- tuck, looking past Stumpy toward the candle-box. "All serene," replied Stumpy, "anything up?" "Nothing." There was a pause — an embarrassing one — Stumpy still holding the door. Then Kentuck had recourse to his finger, which he held up to Stumpy.
"Rastled with it— the d d little
cuss," he said, and retired.
The next day Cherokee Sal had such rude sepulchre as Roaring Camp af- forded. After her body had been committed to the hill-side, there was a formal meeting of the camp to discuss what should be done with her infant. A resolution to adopt it was unani- mous and enthusiastic. But an ani- mated discussion in regard to the manner and feasibility of providing for its wants at once sprung up. It was remarkable that the argument partook of none of those fierce per- sonalities with which discussions were usually conducted at Roaring Camp. Tipton proposed that they should send the child to Red Dog — a distance of forty miles — where fe- male attention could be procured. But the unlucky suggestion met with fierce and unanimous opposition. It was evi- dent that no plan which entailed part- ing from their new acquisition would for a moment be entertained. "Be-
Working on a water flume at Cherokee, the home of Tennessee's Pardner* (From an old daguerreotype taken in the early '50's.)
sides," said Tom Ryder, "them fel- lows at Red Dog would swap it and ring in somebody else on us." A dis- belief in the honesty of other camps prevailed at Roaring Camp as in other places.
The introduction of a female nurse in the camp also met with objection. It was argued that no decent woman could be prevailed to accept Roaring Camp as her home, and the speaker urged that "they didn't want any more of the other kind."
This unkind allusion to the de- funct mother, harsh as it may seem, was the first symptom of propriety — the first symptom of the camp's re- generation. Stumpy advanced noth- ing. Perhaps he felt a certain deli- cacy in interfering with the selection of a possible successor in office. But when questioned he averred stoutly that he and "Johnny"— the mammal before alluded to — could manage to rear the child. There was something original, independent and heroic about the plan that pleased the camp. Stumpy was retained. Certain arti- cles were sent for to Sacramento. "Mind," said the treasurer, as he pressed a bag of gold dust into the
express-man's hand, "the best that can be got — lace, you know, and fili- gree work and frills — d — m the cost!"
Strange to say, the child thrived. Perhaps the invigorating climate of the mountain camp was compensation for material deficiencies. Nature took the foundling to her broader breast. In that rare atmosphere of the Sierra foot-hills — that air pungent with bal- samic odor; that etherial cordial, at once bracing and exhilarating, he may have found food and nourish- ment, or a subtle chemistry that transmuted asses' milk to lime and phosphorus. Stumpy inclined to the belief that it was the latter and good nursing. "Me and that ass," he would say, "has been father and mother to him! Don't you," he would add, apos- trophizing the helpless bundle before him, "never go back on us."
By the time he was a month old, the necessity of giving him a name be- came apparent. He had generally been known as "the Kid," "Stumpy's boy," "the Cayote" — (an allusion to his vocal powers) — and even by Ken- tuck's endearing diminutive of "the d d little cuss." But these were
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felt to be vague and unsatisfactory, and were at last dismissed under an- other influence. Gamblers and adven- turers are generally superstitious, and Oakhurst one day declared that the baby had brought "the luck" to Roaring Camp. It was certain that of late they had been successful. "Luck" was the name agreed upon, with the prefix of Tommy for greater convenience. No allusion was made to the mother, and the father was un- known. "It's better," said the philo- sophical Oakhurst, "to take a fresh deal all around. Call him Luck, and start him fair." A day was accord- ingly set apart for the christening. What was meant by this ceremony the reader may imagine, who has already gathered some idea of the reckless ir- reverence of Roaring Camp. The mas- ter of ceremonies was one "Boston," a noted wag, and the occasion seemed to promise the greatest facetiousness. This ingenious satirist had spent two days in preparing a burlesque of the church service, with pointed local al- lusions. The choir was properly trained, and Sandy Tipton was to stand godfather. But after the proces- sion had marched to the grove with music and banners, and the child had been deposited before a mock altar, Stumpy stepped before the expectant crowd. "It ain't my style to spoil fun, boys," said the little man, stout- ly, eyeing the faces around him, "but it strikes me that this thing ain't exactly on the squar. It's playing it pretty low down on this yer baby to ring in fun on him that he ain't going to understand. And ef there's going to be any godfathers round, I'd like to see who's got any better rights than me." A silence followed Stumpy's speech. To the credit of all humor- ists be it said that the first man to acknowledge its justice was the satirist, thus estopped of his fun. "But," said Stumpy, quickly, follow- ing up his advantage, "we're here for a christening, and we'll have it. I proclaim you Thomas Luck, accord- ing to the laws of the United States and the State of California — So help
me God." It was the first time that the name of the Deity had been uttered aught but profanely in the camp. The form of christening was per- haps even more ludicrous than the satirist had conceived, but strangely enough, nobody saw it and nobody laughed. "Tommy" was christened as seriously as he would have been under a Christian roof, and cried and was comforted in as orthodox fashion.
And so the work of regeneration began in Roaring Camp. Almost im- perceptibly a change came over the settlement. The cabin assigned to "Tommy Luck" — or "The Luck," as he was more frequently called — first showed signs of improvement. It was kept scrupulously clean and whitewashed. Then it was boarded, clothed and papered. The rosewood cradle — packed eighty miles by mule — had, in Stumpy's way of putting it, "sorter killed the rest of the furni- ture." So the rehabilitation of the cabin became a necessity. The men who were in the habit of lounging in at Stumpy's to see "how The Luck got on" seemed to appreciate the change, and, in self-defense, the rival establishment of "Tuttle's grocery" be- stirred itself and imported a carpet and mirrors. The reflections of the latter on the appearance of Roaring Camp tended to produce stricter habits of personal cleanliness. Again Stumpy imposed a kind of quarantine upon -those who aspired to the honor and privilege of holding "The Luck." It was a cruel mortification to Kentuck — who, in the carelessness of a large nature and the habits of frontier life, had begun to regard all garments as a second cuticle which, like a snake's, only sloughed off through decay — to be debarred this privilege from cer- tain prudential reasons. Yet such was the subtle influence of innovation that he thereafter appeared regularly every afternoon in a clean shirt, and face still shining from his ablutions. Nor were moral and social sanitary laws neg- lected. "Tommy," who was supposed to spend his whole existence in a persistent attempt to repose, must not
An old miner in his cabin, near Table Mountain, Tuolumne County, California, the center of the Bret Harte country.
be disturbed by noise. The shouting and yelling which had gained the camp its infelicitous title, were not permitted within hearing distance of Stumpy's. The men conversed in whis- pers, or smoked in Indian gravity. Profanity was tacitly given up in these sacred precincts, and throughout the camp a popular form of expletive,
known as "D n the luck!" and
"Curse the Luck!" was abandoned, as having a new personal bearing. Vocal music was not interdicted, being sup- posed to have a soothing, tranquilizing quality, and one song, sung by "Man- O'-War Jack," an English sailor, from Her Majesty's Australian Colonies, was quite popular as a lullaby. It was a lugurbrious recital of the ex- ploits of "the Arethusa, Seventy- four," in a muffled minor, ending with a prolonged dying fall at the burden of each verse, "On b-o-o-ard of the Arethusa." It was a fine sight to see Jack holding The Luck, rocking from side to side as if with the motion of a ship, and crooning forth this naval ditty. Either through the peculiar rocking of Jack or the length of his song — it contained ninety stanzas, and was continued with conscientious de-
liberation to the bitter end — the lullaby had the desired effect. At such times the men would lie at full length un^ der the trees, in the soft summer twilight, smoking their pipes and drinking in the melodious utterances. An indistinct idea that this was pas- toral happiness pervaded the camp. "This 'ere kind o' think," said the Cockney Simmons, meditatively re- clining on his elbow, "is evingly." It reminded him of Greenwich.
On the long summer days The Luck was usually carried to the gulch, from whence the golden store of Roaring Camp was taken. There, on a blan- ket spread over pine boughs, he would lie while the men were working in the ditches below. Latterly, there was a rude attempt to decorate this bower with flowers and sweet smelling shrubs, ard generally some one would bring him a cluster of wild honey- suckles, azalias, or the painted blos- soms of Las Mariposas. The men "had suddenly awakened to the fact that there were beauty and significance in these trifles, which they had so long trodden carelessly beneath their feet. A flake of glittering mica, a frag- ment of variegated quartz, a bright
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pebble from the bed of the creek, be- came beautiful to eyes thus cleared and strengthened, and were invariably put aside for "The Luck." It was wonderful how many treasures the woods and hillsides yielded that "would do for Tommy." Surrounded by playthings such as never child out of fairyland had before, it is to be hoped that Tommy was content. He appeared to be securely happy — albeit there was an infantile gravity about him — a contemplative light in his round gray eyes that sometimes worried Stumpy. He was always tract- able and quiet, and it is recorded that once, having crept beyond his "cor- ral"— a hedge of tessallated pine boughs, which surrounded his bed — he dropped over the bank on his head in the soft earth, and remained with his mottled legs in the air for at least five minutes with unflinching gravity. He was extricated without a murmur. I hesitate to record the many other instances of his sagacity, which rest, fortunately, upon the statements of prejudiced friends. Some of them were not without a tinge of superstition. "I crep up the bank just now," said Kentuck one day, in a breathless state of excitement, "and dern my skin if he wasn't a-talking to a jay bird as was a-sittin' on his lap. There they was, just as free and sociable as anything you please, and a-jawin' at each other just like two cherry bums." Howbeit, whether creeping over the pine boughs or ly- ing lazily on his back, blinking at the leaves above him, to him the birds sang, the squirrels chattered, and the flowers bloomed. Nature was his nurse and playfellow. For him she would let slip between the leaves golden shafts of sunlight that fell just within his grasp; she would send wandering breezes to visit him with the balm of bay and resinous gums; to him the tall redwoods nodded fa- miliarly and sleepily, the bumble-bees buzzed, and the rooks cawed a slum- brous accompaniment.
Such was the golden summer of Roaring Camp. They were "flush
times" — and the Luck was with them. The claims had yielded enormously. The camp was jealous of its privi- leges and looked suspiciously on strangers. No encouragement was given to immigration, and to make their seclusion more perfect, the land on either side of the mountain wall that surrounded the camp, they duly pre-empted. This, and a reputation for singular proficiency with the revolver, kept the reserve of Roaring Camp in- violate. The express-man — their only connecting link with the surrounding world — sometimes told wonderful stories of the camp. He would say: "They've a street up there in 'Roaring' that would lay over any street in Red Dog. They've got vines and flowers round their houses, and they wash themselves twice a day. But they're mighty rough on strangers, and they worship an ingin baby."
With the prosperity of the camp came a desire for further improve- ment. It was proposed to build a ho- tel in the following spring, and to invite one or two decent families to reside there for the sake of "the Luck" — who might perhaps profit by female companionship. The sacrifice that this concession to the sex cost these men, who were fiercely skepti- cal in regard to its general virtue and usefulness, can only be accounted for by their affection for Tommy. A few still held out. But the resolve could not be carried into effect for three months, and the minority meekly yielded in the hope that something might turn up to prevent it. And it did.
The winter of '51 will long be re- membered in the foot-hills. The snow lay deep on the Sierras, and every mountain creek became a river, and every river a lake. Each gorge and gulch was transformed into a tumul- tuous water course that descended the hill sides, tearing down giant trees and scattering its drift and debris along the plain. Red Dog had been twice under water, and Roaring Camp had been forewarned. "Water put the gold into them gulches," said Stumpy.
.5
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"It's been here once and will be here again!" And that night the North Fork suddenly leaped over its banks and swept up the triangular valley of Roaring Camp.
In the confusion of rushing water, crushing trees and crackling timber, and the darkness which seemed to flow with the water and blot out the fair valley, but little could be done to collect the scattered camp. When the morning broke, the cabin of Stumpy nearest the river bank was gone. Higher up the gulch they found the body of its unlucky owner, but the pride — the hope — the joy — the Luck — of Roaring Camp had disap- peared. They were returning with sad hearts when a shout from the bank recalled them.
It was a relief boat from down the river. They had picked up, they said,
a man and an infant, nearly exhausted, about two miles below. Did anybody know them, and did they belong here ? It needed but a glance to show them Kentuck lying there, cruelly crushed and bruised, but still holding the Luck of Roaring Camp in his arms. As they bent over the strangely assorted pair, they saw that the child was cold and pulseless. "He is dead," said one. Kentuck opened his eyes. "Dead?" he repeated feebly. "Yes, my man, and you are dying too." A smile lit the eyes of the expiring Kentuck. "Dying," he repeated, "he's a-taking me with him — tell the boys I've got the Luck with me, now;" and the strong man, clinging to the frail babe as a drowning man is said to cling to a straw, drifted away into the shadowy river that flows ever to the unknown sea.
AONTEREY
The bugles of the present never wake the town ; It hears only the chant of priests, The cries of fighting And the voice of lovers Of long ago.
The 'dobe houses, bullied by the winds, give up their beauty
But cling jealously to their memories;
The crumbling tiles are mindful of the past.
The Mission bell calls to them all, Remember!
The four winds sojourn here And murmur of the past; In the sea sleep many memories Drowned by the years.
The winds bring back soft snatches of old songs — And who can say that at twilight no ghosts of Spanish lovers walk the sands?
The still town lies
Dreaming of those whose strong hands made its dreams :
The fishing boats fly like white moths around the candle of
the sun, The ocean sleeps upon the sand and dreams.
Town with your memories, I, too, dream and remember,
MARY CAROLYN DAVIES.
California in September
By William Boyd Gatewood
HE WAS READING when the Chicago Limited drew in at Emporia. Perhaps if he had known that that pretty little city in Kansas was the home of Wil- liam Allen White and Walt Mason, he would have been staring out the win- dow. Mayhap then he would have seen her trip aboard his coach. But he was away with Dana Gatlin, and wondering in his heart why it was "The Way of all Mothers" was raising such a lump in his throat. He would not have put down the magazine for a set of Morgan Robertson's works. At least, that was the way he felt at the moment.
The train had gotten under way and was roaring over an autumn brook when a clear young voice pulled him from his reverie. It sounded awfully sweet, that voice. It was singing, "Don't you remember California in September," and its fair young owner was sitting in the seat next to his own.
He put down his magazine and took a good, frank, uncovetous look. The girl was most certainly good to look upon — twenty and trim; chic, with the biggest, brownest eyes and the fairest skin and hair he'd ever seen. And the complexion — well, he told himself it looked like the kind the girls had at Santa Monica. And then he got ashamed of himself ; he's been looking so steadily and long. So he turned to the window to ease his chagrin.
September was still young, very young — like a wee babe that sleeps and sleeps and sleeps after it has been expelled from the no where into the here. And so the golden fields of Kan- sas slept, under a lazy, friendly, som- nolent sun.
The Limited tore through Elmdale
and kept its iron nose racing for Kan- sas City. And presently, tired of the wheat fields, he turned again to his magazine. He finished with "The Way of all Mothers," and began to turn the pages aimlessly. Then he caught her humming again, and listened until she wound up with "California and you."
"Say," he began unceremoniously, "I'm strong for that tune."
"It's awfully catchy," she returned quickly, giving him a smile that would have brought $6.35 at a Methodist bazaar.
"Catchy!" he exclaimed. "It's given me the high jinks, that's all. Maybe it's because it's about 'Cali- f orny and you/ " And they both laughed merrily.
"But on the level," he resumed, "anything about good old California gets me on its hip."
"Then you're from California, too."
"From California! Say! Why, we are Native Sons and Daughters for 'steen generations."
"I'm from Los Angeles."
"From L. A.? Immense! Shake!"
They had a good-fellow handclasp, and he hung onto her hand just a wee bit longer than was necessary. He kidded himself into believing that he did it "just to see if she'd let him." And she did. That is to say, she did not jerk it away as if she'd grabbed some seaweed in the surf. It's funny how women don't like the feel of that stuff.
"You know, it's just like being back in Levy's to meet you," he told her directly he had freed her hand. "There is whole schools of your sort to be seen there — good, clean, wholesome, desirable looking girls; girls a fellow would rather ball the jack with than
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find an honest-to-goodness maraschino cherry in a dry Martini."
"Levy's," she lingered over the word. "I haven't been to Levy's since Joe Rivers trounced The Turk. The crowd of swells that poured into Levy's that night! It was in Septem- ber."
"California in September," said he. Then he rattled on :
"But it isn't all Levy's. Remember those long days on the beach? The sea — why, it's bluer than — than — but your eyes aren't blue!"
She laughed. It was a dead swell laugh she had, he thought. He bet himself she could sing sweeter than Laurette Taylor in that song scene in "Peg o' My Heart."
"You're not very observing," she said, merrily.
"Deny the charge. Right oft the reel I said to myself: "She's got cheeks like California paints."
It wasn't California that painted the color that rushed to her cheeks at his remark. It was that young nymph, Delight.
"That was nice of you."
"Nice of me! It was only being honest with myself."
"Is honesty one of your virtues?"
"Yes, indeedy! And so's not to de- ceive myself and throw mud on my character, I'm just going to come right out and say that you were so darned good to look at that you made me quit a dead swell heart-throb yarn that I was reading."
"I'm so sorry."
"Well, you needn't be; I'm glad.'
"You seemed to finish the story," she accused.
"Sure I did— had to. Couldn't sit and stare at you all day. That'd be too bally rude of me. I'm not a bloom- in' boundar, y'know."
She laughed at his English affecta- tion. "I think you're bally bold, any- how," she said, joining into the fun.
"Aw, that's tough! I was figuring on playing the gallant young Ameri- can and guiding you safely to an hon- est lodging house, far from the snares of the vile 'White Slaver.' But
now — He made a deprecating
gesture.
"I shan't need your kind services — not in K. C."
"Oh, bound for old K. C. That's nice. Going there myself."
"Of course."
"On the level," he protested. "Was going there anyhow."
The train ran screaming through a village. The sun dropped behind a heavy cloud, as if affrighted at such blatency, peeping out again in a mo- ment to slyly watch the Limited tear on. It was clouding up outside, and the wind that beat in at the window's every aperture bore a distinct bite in its teeth.
"Don't look like California — in Sep- tember," he said, pointing to the as- sembling clouds and the fading sun.
"Oh, no place looks like grand old California!" she cried. "It hasn't an equal on the face of this old earth."
"No equal," he agreed. "Californy and you."
"I'd like to go back again, some day."
"Well, why don't you? Gee, I'm go- ing soon."
"Why don't I? Why don't I go to the Bermudas, or Havana, or Palm Beach, or yachting to the South Sea?"
"Gee, it's tough!" he exclaimed un- derstandingly.
The Limited hurried into Kansas City after a time, and they made their way through the great terminal and uptown in a jitney 'bus. When he left her at Twelfth and Main they had ex- changed cards and more than ordinary smiles. His card told her only that he was J. Hamilton Lines; but his smile told her he was quite good look- ing, devilishly attractive and decent — and that he was interested in her. That was the nicest thing his smile had to say. Her card told him that she was "Miss Marian Norton, Vocalist," and that she lived at "Rockhill Apart- ments," where she had a studio. It was a neat, unpretentious little thing, that card; and what it told made him pat himself on the back as a first-rate judge of good voices, and what was
CALIFORNIA IN SEPTEMBER
211
better still, of good character. He knew "Rockhill Apartments" for re- spectable, homely flats where repu- table people lived, and he was quite glad she lived there. Then he fell to considering what her smile had told him. Why hadn't he insisted on see- ing her to a quiet little dinner for two at the Baltimore? What a chump he was ! At least he would call her up on
the morrow.
* * * *
That evening, after watching a fair burlesque show at the Gayety, J. Hamilton Lines and an old pal saun- tered out on Kansas City's gay Broad- way. Now, Kansas City is quite proud of her night life. It reminded Lines of a photoplay he had once seen Mary Pickford in. Rather, it reminded him of Mary Pickford acting in this play, "The Sorrows of the Unfaithful/ or some such melodramatic title.
"In this particular play," Lines told his friend as they sat in Edwardes's munching Saratogas and sipping "something light," as the friend had called it — "in this particular play, Mary Pickford was the darndest flirt I ever saw. Now, that's Kansas City's night life. I'm not complaining; I've had lots of fun, but I've been flirted with."
"If that's the way you feel," said the friend, "I'll take you to the Jef- ferson. You've been 'most every place else."
"All right; go as far as you like. But ever since I met the girl I was telling you about — well, I'd just rather be up in Rockhill Apartments listening to her sing 'California and You/ "
"Can it!" growled the friend. "We're off for the Jefferson; you'll forget Rockhill and California over there. And girls! They're there for the ask- ing— all of them."
They had been in the Jefferson an hour. It seemed longer to Lines. He was extremely bored. And what a riot reigned! He had seen a good cabaret and listened to the most popu- lar stuff of the hour. But he told Nor- vell, his friend, that it was rotten, all of it. He pointed out the prettiest
girls in the cafe, and inquired very sarcastically if there were any more at Coffeyville like that. Norvell was doing all possible to show him a good time, and failing. This blase young writer of rags was continually visual- izing Rockhill Studio and its fair young vocalist.
Their table, quite removed from the performers' stand, was probably the most obscure in the cafe. It was hard to see the musicians from it, and harder to be seen.
The Jefferson is, perhaps, Kansas
City's At any rate, the Jefferson
wouldn't be quite the proper place for a good Presbyterian, because the flow- ing bowl slops over at the edges there and the music borders just a little on the daring, and the pretty girl with the two big blonde ropes of hair down her back will wink at you when she comes around singing "Adam and Eve Had a Wonderful Time," and the girls paint a little and dance about with in- triguing eyes, and altogether times are not stupid at the Jefferson.
Lines and his companion were tak- ing in all this and passing generalities about the hilarity when the orchestra struck up the prelude to "California and You." Lines became interested.
"O-ho! Now maybe you'll cheer up," chided his friend.
But the song was the bearer of ill news. The voice that carried him the melody was the voice he'd heard hum- ming it on the Limited — her voice. First he was too surprised to be hurt; and then he became too hurt to think to be surprised. So he ordered a heavier drink and tried to pass it off. My, how she sang it!
"Don't you remember California in September?"
His memory of California in Sep- tember, or October, or November, was vivid and pleasant. It would be quite less pleasant now, and more vivid. Un- til he met the "vocalist" it would have remained unchanged. He argued to himself that he shouldn't have ex- pected much more of her. Why had he? Her card had said "vocalist."
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Presently he suggested that they leave, he and Norvell.
"What!" demurred the friend. "Go now ? Why, mister, things are just be- ginning to pick up!"
"I know — but I've had enough."
They were at the check room when he saw her swinging down the aisle, responding to a hearty encore to her number. She had lots of grace of body; she was young and fresh and wholesome looking, and her voice was the sweet, clear voice of an honest girl's. She swung past a handsome young rake who smirked up at her and passed a side remark. Lines saw and heard. With a nasty glint in his eyes he made for the man at the table. Nor- vell jerked him back.
"Don't be a fool!" he said. "She's used to that. Probably she'll go out with that same guy after her turn's done."
The remark of his friend went through his body and sank heavily in his stomach. It made him sick and dizzy.
"Do you know her?" he asked.
"Oh, no," was the nonchalant re- sponse. "She's new here. But they're all just the same."
He felt a little better. Watching her swing around among the tables helped some, too; she was that fresh looking. She approached the good- looking young rake, flushed with wine. As she did, he rose unsteadily to his feet. Lines made for him without fur- ther thought.
The three of them met simultane- ously. The girl stifled a little gasp of surprise, coloring. The rake made an affectionate pass for her; and Lines knocked him down, grimly delighted when he hit the floor.
It was quite the roughest riot the Jefferson had seen. Lines fought his way to his friend, and together they fought their way into the check room. She was in there with several other girls, quite pale and frightened and humiliated. She immediately went to him.
"I — I don't know how to thank you," she began.
"You don't need to," he returned, blindly rearranging his tie.
"You were surprised to find me here?" she asked.
"Well, yes," he replied, after an awkward silence.
"I knew it!"
"How?"
"If you'll pardon me," Norvell broke in, "I'll leave it with you two. I guess it's quite safe to venture out now. These squalls usually blow over very quickly in the Jefferson. Ain't I right, Miss — er — ain't I right?" He winked broadly, moving off.
Lines could have strangled him for the wink. But he called : "Oh, all right, old man." Then he turned to her again. "How did you know it?"
"You looked it — when I first began to sing."
"I was. But let's get out of this. Here, boy, our things."
They were snug in a taxi and whirl- ing toward her home, when he sug- gested that they return for a bite. "Hadn't we better turn around and have a bite and a jolly little chat at the Pennant?" he asked.
"Oh, my no!" she returned quickly. "I'm never out so late as this."
"No!" he said sarcastically.
vShe flushed and dropped her eyes. "You don't believe me."
"Oh, sure." But he smiled, and it wasn't altogether a believing smile. "There's no harm in breaking prece- dents."
"Oh, well," she exclaimed, suddenly emboldened, "we'll see if there is by breaking one to-night."
In a velvet gown of a deep lavender, with her fair hair shimmering like pale gold, and her brown eyes so bright with the magic of the glitter and gay- ety of her environment, Marian sat at a little table in the Pennant. Across from her was Lines. About her was the odor of lovely women and the en- chanting harmony of soft-toned music. It was her dream night, comparable only to the night at Levy's in Los An- geles.
"You're the loveliest woman here," he declared. "California beats the
CALIFORNIA IN SEPTEMBER
213
world with women. It's the natural beauty. Look at your cheeks, rosier than a floral pageant. And your hair! And eyes! You've everything, even a corking voice."
"You like my song, then?" She was radiant, breathing deeply of the joyous atmosphere.
"Of course. But not quite as well as when you hummed it on the Lim- ited."
"It didn't go so well to-night," she murmured disappointedly.
"Then you sing every night?"
"Every night."
"I didn't know you sang at — that is, I thought you were more of a 'society' vocalist."
"You never know a woman."
"I know quite enough of you."
"I wonder just what you know?" she said, archly.
"George! I don't have to know much to love you to death."
"Nor almost any other attractive- girl," she returned.
"I'm not quite that bad," he said. "Lord! Not quite."
"I'd love to be in love; but I'd hate to be like that."
"Aw, that's tough! All men are more or less polygamous, you know. But they all get an honest-to-goodness case sometimes; and now's my time."
He laughed triumphantly.
Marian laughed irresistibly.
He leaned over the little table with a caressing intimacy in his gaze. Mar- ian thrilled to it strangely, and her eyes softened and smiled into his. Then she took them away, and with them the hand which he held in both of his.
Then she suggested going, to which he demurred. But when she in- sisted he acquiesced.
"Very well, then," he said. "But where shall it be?"
A strange chill went through Marian — a little chill that snuffed out the warmth which he had built up in her heart, that left the evening quite gray and chill and desolate.
"Anywhere you say," he said, fol- lowing up his question.
"To my home, of course," she said simply.
"Oh, I guess I didn't understand."
She made no reply, and permitted an attendant to assist with her coat while he stood by awkwardly.
The trip out to Rockhill Apartments was quite frosty. There was little said between them: mere commonplaces and false sorties at conversation. But when she started to leave him at her door, he caught at her arm.
"I hope I haven't offended too deeply. You'll accept apology, of course."
"Of course. I suppose your mis- take was somewhat justifiable, my be- ing at the Jefferson and all that."
"Well, I hardly expected to meet you there. I don't know why, but I just formed a different opinion of you."
"I'm glad you did. You should have."
"How came you there ? I — I thought you were a different sort of vocalist."
"And so I am. But engagements — decent engagements — aren't so numer- ous I have to fend them off. And there's California in September, and October, and November. Oh, there's Callifornia all the time, and the Ex- position going on; and it's a long way back home." She laughed a nervous little laugh, as if she were about to cry.
He was suddenly all tenderness and drew closer to her.
"Oh, so that's the racket. Forgive me, won't you? Maybe we could go to California together— in September; just you and I on a little honeymoon. I wonder if we couldn't?"
She let him take her hand. He took advantage of the permission to squeeze it tenderly. "George ! Nothing would suit me better than California and you."
"But it's too late to talk of that now," she said.
"But, Marian!"
"To-morrow — Hamilton."
"Fine !" And then he kissed her un- resistingly and walked reluctantly away.
Clayton, Half-Caste
By Billee Glynn
THE STERN-WHEELER, Okra, behaved very well for a maiden trip. With promising steadiness the beat of her paddles woke the eerie silence of the delta archi- pelago. Hills, foliaged in palm-frond and aerial balletted, whenever the sun shone, in the soft flight of myriad but- terflies, cropped up in constant view and passed astern to give place to other isles of exactly the same nature. In the words of the young Lancashire engineer, who was nursing the engines into their stride before entrusting them wholly to the native crew, "The scen- ery was all right — if there wasn't so much rain and so many blooming mos- quitoes in it." But for myself, the fascination of that rain-pearled, varie- gated world held me entranced. I could now credit all those garish stor- ies of palm-oil ruffianism, and ju-ju fetish, and strange practices of witch- craft I had heard — stories unbelievable in the beaten paths of civilization, but easily possible to this African jungle setting. Suddenly the Okara jarred from stem to stern-post. There was a breaking sound as of a piston rod crashing through solid casting. Then the vessel wobbled weakly, and the current catching her, swung her onto
entwined mangrove roots. Brimah, the captain, quickly got out an anchor.
The Lancashire engineer came on deck.
"Smashed a cylinder head. We'll have to return to the shipyard — float on the stream. What'll you do?"
"How far to the nearest trading sta- tion?" I asked.
"Attaba is about six hours by canoe — but where are you going to get one?"
Scarcely had he spoken when there glided out of the scenic phantasma- goria three cumbersome, burnt-out canoes. Brimah explained that it was a chieftain going to Attaba to trade his cargoes of ebony, rubber and kernels. He suggested that I take passage with him. The engineer "reckoned it was all right." So was I tumbled — guns, mattress and cooking pots — into a canoe with the pot-bellied, bow-legged, enormously fat chieftain (cannibal, for all I knew) , and three studies in bronze who administered to his comfort in de- mure obedience. Never before nor since have I felt so alone in the world — so entirely cut off from civilization and security — as when the white decks of the Okara were lost to view around the bend. I was expectant of any- thing. Fortunately, however, we had
CLAYTON, HALF-CASTE
215
no common language, and therefore escaped the most prolific of causes of quarrel. The chieftain proved to be a dull, phlegmatic sort of animal. Once only did he show animation — when I drew out a silver match-box to get a light for my pipe. He examined it with much grunting and very covetous eyes. I discreetly "dashed" it to him. Following the custom of the country he "dashed" me in return a bottle of palm wine.
I mentally resolved not to show any more of my treasures. Nothing else happened. The hours crawled tediously away. Then came Attaba — just as quick-falling night blotted out color and shape.
I sprang up the high clay bank, and would have slipped down into the mire had not a hand reached me out of the dark and hauled me to firm footing. I found myself standing beside a figure in white, and a cultured, genteel voice said limpidly: "How do you do!" The words were drawled out in the vacu- ous foppery of the ultra Englishman.
I answered as dryly: "Very well, thank you."
There we were deadlocked. But I remembered that wretched self-con- sciousness which often makes an Eng- lishman cold-appearing when he is really anxious to entertain. I ex- plained the accident to the Okara. The figure in white welcomed me to Attaba and introduced himself as Arthur Clay- ton, the agent. We went along to a low-roofed, baked-clay bungalow cen- tering a compound walled in with sheet iron sheds set against the dense black of the jungle foliage. Ducking our heads under a low entrance we passed to a sort of central hall whence arches, draped in native mats, led to side rooms, after the manner of Moor- ish mosques. There, on carved native stools that might have been purloined from an operatic company's Tannhau- ser furniture, we seated ourselves to a mahogany table. Hospitality took the usual West African initiation through the whisky bottle. An imp- ish, irresponsible boy, with cheeks scored with the tribal mark I had
learned to associate with the Nupians, waited on us.
In the warm glow of a heavy brass lamp, such as one sometimes finds in old country churches, I quietly studied my host. He was perhaps twenty-five or six years of age, of athletic build, six feet or over in height, and hand- some in a Byronic way; a head that might have served, indeed, for the ori- ginal of a miniature of the poet — sen- sitive, mobile mouth and weak chin, large, dark, flashing, Southern eyes, modelled nose, tumultuous forehead, and crisp-curling, jet-black hair. Yet, in spite of this brave exterior, I felt a quick, instinctive dislike to his per- sonality. His affectation of indolence, the precocious familiarity in his "old man" form of address, a sallow, evil- living skin and cigarette stained, nerve twitching fingers, and an egotism that amounted almost to insanity — these things all antagonized me. Besides, though his manner lacked nothing in politeness, there seemed an undercur- rent of secretiveness about him — an ef- fect heightened probably by his indif- ference to the voices I heard in one of the side rooms; though he must have known my surprise at the clear, trill- ing-tongued English dropped from the lips of a woman, or girl, its thrill in- clining me to the latter, and, as well, my speculation as to the second voice, a masculine falsetto. But he talked self, cursing his present circumstances and boastfully relating the glories of the days when he owned a tea planta- tion in Ceylon. Then he was at pains to impress the standing of his family. "The Kent Claytons, old man ! Squire Clayton of Clayton Manor refused a baronage from the last government." Dormitory and playground incidents of a public school celebrated for its train- ing of gentlemen, he exploited pom- pously. But for the mystery of that feminine English, the situation had been tedious to yawning.
Suddenly the voices within ceased. A stool scraped the floor, and a man pushed aside the hanging mat, crossed the hall, and passed out into the night. I caught a side glance of a small sun-
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tanned face with petite features and close-set eyes. The man could not have been much above five feet in stature. My comment escaped me ere I was aware.
"So you're not entirely isolated from white companionship?"
Clayton's lips curved into a snarl. "White — that fellow! Yes, he had a white father — but I swear they never made a blacker nigger." He glared for a moment toward the door where the half-caste had disappeared, then proceeded to pedigree him with brutal earnestness. ".You've heard tell of 'Ivory' Stone, the Scotch skipper who first traded to the Oil Rivers and turned a half of a million out of the ivory trade? You could buy a forty- pound tusk in those days for a penny mirror. Well, Stone picked up a Por- tuguese-Sierra Leone for a wife. That pup is the male offspring. When he had made his pile, Stone sold out to the Royal Sokoto Company and went home — married into the aristocracy, and lived philanthropically and re- spectably as Sir John Stone."
The head waiting boy approached just then and cut short the history with an inquiry about "chop." Clayton went into the details of a several- course dinner with an elaborateness of detail that showed how uncustomary it was, and gave me an uncomfortable feeling as the cause of the bother, as well as increasing the unhappy sense of intrusion I already suffered. The boy stalked importantly away. I en- ticed Clayton back to "Ivory" Stone.
"Didn't he make any provision for the boy?"
"Oh, yes; put the fool on a coffee plantation in Liberia. He failed at that, and finally drifted into the com- pany's service."
"Then the poor devil is practically without a relation in the world?"
"He has a sister," Clayton snapped, jerking his finger to the side room.
"Heavens! She must have heard every word !" I remarked, sotto voce.
He laughed a dry, unpleasant laugh.
"Do you think that will hurt her — 'after twelve years in the nigger play-
"I came on the girl angled in a rude
seat in the shade of a clump
of plantains,"
ground of a mission school? Two- thirds white, and white missionaries to reveal to her the chasm — I think Alice Stone knows just about what Hell is."
His sympathetic understanding of the girl's tragedy seemed significant of something in the background. But why did he not extend the same sym- pathy to the brother? He began tell- ing me anecdotes of that playground — wretched stories of a child's purgatory which he must have heard from the girl herself. At the same time he tried to disguise the anger evoked by feel-
:LAYTON, HALF-CASTE
217
ings of which he was either ashamed as a weakness, or fearful of being mis- interpreted on my part. Distinctly I was to understand that he was speak- ing of some one in whom he was not personally interested. But he was not actor enough to carry conviction.
Again the head boy interrupted us. He carried a strip of calico. Clayton arose, laying his hand on my shoulder in that abominable, insincere familiar- ity. "Come along to my room. We'll talk there while Jumbo lays the table."
The idea I had already formed of him was endorsed rather by the char- acter of his room. Questionable "art" postals were tacked to the clay walls, one group of them making a nest for a picture of England's king resplend- ent in field marshal's uniform. A col- ored print, advertising soap, portrayed an Irish lassie who was a revelation in buxomness, and on a rude dresser half a dozen French novels topped a set of Kipling.
My host took up a leather case. "Some pictures of Ceylon that might interest you." He shot a lot of ama- teur prints on to a wicker table.
I went over them leisurely. The pictures presented Clayton in every heroic pose and boastful circumstance — on the polo field, before the cricket stumps, on the diving board, centering a group of plantation coolies, on the porticos of clubs, and very often in company with a girl, evidently an American. In one instance the lady laughed from silken folds of stars and stripes — showing tantalizing, twin rows of ivory, dimpling cheeks, and a pair of the most captivating eyes that ever stirred a man's soul. And you could see her buoyant health in the happily caught snapshot of the polo field and the white strength of her shapely wrists as her mount took the fence. Clayton lingered over the sweet, fresh face with a wolfish, devouring hunger that caused me to turn my attention abruptly to other pictures — rustic scenes of India, temples and pagodas. I came on a photo of a Ceylonese prin- cess, a plump, olive-skinned, dark-
browed woman in a rich native cos- tume garlanded over with a king's ran- som of pearls. The large, flashing black eyes struck me, held me, with a queer sense of familiarity. Sud- denly the photo was snatched out of my hands. I looked up to see Clay- ton speechlessly livid, and to recog- nize in the likeness of the black eyes bent upon me the reason for my in- stinct.
Clayton attempted apology. "I — I beg pardon. Didn't mean to be rude — but there's a history attached to that picture!"
No apology, however, could wipe out the ugly passion I had surprised in his face. The situation was oppor- tunely relieved by the head boy an- nouncing, "Chop, sah!"
I went to dinner, deeply thoughtful. I was not only thoroughly uncomfort- able, but wholly mystified. As I could sense it, there was a far-away Ceylon- ese princess near enough related to Clayton to transmit him her eyes and temper — there was an American girl with whom he was on an intimacy ac- corded only to engaged couples — and there was a venomous, raucous hatred on his part toward his half-caste as- sistant, and a sneaking affection for the sister. The mystery was height- ened, if possible, a few minutes later, when Clayton introduced the girl to me at the table. Miss Stone put out her hand — the daintiest, veined, velvet- soft hand I had ever clasped — and smiled. An elfish slip of a thing she was, her long-lashed lids modestly sweeping her cheeks, and freeing me to take good stock of her. Never had I seen anything so fragile, so will-o'- wispy, so fearfully crushable — unless it might be the violet on the sidewalk the morning after the dance. But far more significant than her physicali- ties was the patient resignation, the pain-dramatized expression of the deli- cately molded features. I think a medical man would have diagnosed her as being neurotic. However that may be, she awoke in me strong compassion and itching anger against the self- centered Clayton. The latter motioned
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us to be seated. The girl drew his at- tention to the brother standing timidly at the foot of the table. It had been Clayton's intention to deliberately ig- nore the man — he even hesitated now. But the girl shot him a swift look from her large, luminous eyes that brought about a reluctant and surely introduc- tion.
"This is John Stone, my assistant." I gave the half-caste a grasp of os- tentatious warmth, and felt a small- boned replica of the girl's hand. The structural features of the face, too, were hers, but, while forming such a dainty and pleasing feminine picture, they acted contrariwise in the brother to produce a manikin. A full-faced view showed me how greatly I was mistaken in taking him for a white. The eyes were black and blood-shot, the lips thick, and the pippin-like, conical head covered in tiny curls.
With Clayton at the head of the table, we ceremoniously waded through several courses of tasteless canned foods and aromatic messes. It had been tedious beyond description but for the by-play of the three contrast- ing personalities. Clayton endeav- ored to drag me into enthusiasm over certain Meccas in England where he had spent different "times." As often as I attempted to introduce a general subject into which I might entice John Stone, he as quickly sheered off, with snarling criticism and the lie direct to the African's timid contributions. The other took the abuse quietly, seeming to have been long hectored into submission. Not so the girl, how- ever— again and again she flashed Clayton those admonishing looks. Plainly she stood between her affec- tion for her brother, and her love for the handsome egotist — for her man- ner showed that she loved him beyond a doubt. She caught his moods with that intuitiveness of soul-attuned peo- ple, and even in her flashed admonish- ings there was a homage to the faults they corrected, and which love col- ored to heroic weaknesses. What a turn for drama — those three meeting here at that table day on day, wet sea-
son and dry season, tornado and sun, and ever bringing their hate, love, fear and pride. How was it when the re- straining presence of a guest was not there? Did Clayton always so far command himself? I did not think so. I had an insistent suspicion that on this occasion he was sitting down on himself — keying himself to white- man behavior. Then what of that American girl? It was a relief when black coffee came at last, and Clayton slipped his arm through mine and led me out to the veranda. There we smoked and talked desultorily, and I felt more and more the dark mystery of the man.
The night gave dramatic setting to him, as it were. Inky-black, bulging, hurricane spiralled clouds, deluging torrents of rain alternated with clear, starry skies lighted by a two-thirds moon that bathed the jungle flora in ethereal magic witchery. Over on the river bank, opposite the foot of the compound, danced the grotesque priests of the ju-ju fetish to frenzied tom-toming. Behind them reached the black, death-like depths of the jungle. Clayton, his chin sunk in his palms, his eyes on the oily sweep of the Niger, had fallen to arguing against Christian theology. Why, he tried to make me admit, were not these sav- ages, with their superstitions and in- stinct, as near to the truth as the white race with its ceremonial creeds. He labored eagerly to prove his conten- tion by quotations from the Indian sagas and weird accounts of black-art as practiced by the Africans. I could understand well enough an isolated mind being warped by the constant as- sociation with that Primeval Night; I could understand, too, it falling into morbid speculation on the Immortali- ties; but with Clayton it was some- thing deeper, something uncanny in his nature, and of which he was aware and fought down — or, rather, tried to fight down. Tiring of dragging me into an acceptance of his theories, he called at length to the girl to bring her gui- tar. She came at once, and, without urging, sang "A Hymn for Children"
CLAYTON, HALF-CASTE
219
delight that was hers when she first discovered her soul in language — she with her third reader English, so woe- fully inadequate to interpret her throt- tled sensibilities. But she was not minding me — her whole soul was on the handsome, supercilious Clayton. Suddenly she sprang to her feet, lips parted, breast heaving, eyes starting, hands clutching her work. Looking whence her alarm, I saw Clayton in the midst of an excited, fighting group of black figures in barter quarrel. The next moment his white helmet dropped from view. The fighting stopped in- stantly. The negroes fell back from the prostrate body. The girl shrieked and ran forward, throwing herself on the unconscious man in a senseless abandoment to grief that exposed her negress taint as nothing else could have done.
I, too, hurried to the scene. Clay- ton, only stunned by a mis-aimed rock meant for one of his clerks, was al- ready recovering. He got to his feet, petulantly freeing himself of the girl's entwining arms, and commenced mete- ing out punishment to the guilty with theatrical sang froid. The girl did not recover so easily; there was a fainting fit, hysterics and a sobbing that tore her v/hole being.
The accident gave a climaxing touch to my uncomfortable feeling of intru- sion. I determined not to wait for the Okara; but to hire canoes and push on to Illara. Clayton was so eagerly ac- commodating in getting me away, fur- nishing both canoes and men, that I felt justified for my discomfort. I left Attabar at noon. But I did not leave behind its mysteries. I reached Il- lara in five days, and almost the first remark I met was the laughing query of the young sub-agent:
"How did you find Clayton — still playing white man?"
The agent — the real, mellow-ton- gued, indolently good natured English gentleman Clayton affected to be — re- proved his junior mildly:
"Bobby, let the poor devil rest."
We had walked to the house and were sitting on a wide veranda over-
looking sky-horizoned sweeps of stilly, glistening lagoons spotted in pampas- plumed isles, and were seductively sipping whiskies. I make the state- ment with one exception, for the Rev. Ebeneezer Chortle, a missionary from far Idaho, maintained a censuring ab- stention. He was, I understood, "sit- ting down" at Illara waiting passage to Old Calabar, thence to the Liverpool boat.
"Shucks!" the irreverent junior pooh-poohed. "All the river knows the story." He turned to me. "If you saw anything of the regime at Attaba you must have brought away a huge mystification."
I admitted a certain curiosity over the pictures of the American girl and the Ceylonese princess — but did not care to make gossip of the passion of Miss Stone.
He shot an amused glance to the agent. "So you got the whole thing — including the sporty American beauty ? How the poor beggar does cling to his fairy story!" I elevated my brows. "Oh, it's true enough in a way," he went on; "he's a Clayton of the Kent Claytons, all right, but as little likely to be acknowledged by them as a brown spaniel sleeping on a neigh- bor's door mat. His college boast is also true. His father set out to make an English gentleman of him, but Clayton, it seemed, hadn't it in him. He had inherited certain sins — ah, hem! wildnesses from his Ceylonese strain — that would not lie down in the starched bed of English respectabil- ity. Stories have drifted out here (we have several officers in the company who have served on the Ceylon tea plantations), ugly stories of lapses from grace. You've seen a man fight- ing the booze with all his soul, steer- ing a straight course for a couple of months maybe, then falling again? Well, Clayton clenched with his devil in just that way — but when he did fall it was to the bottom of his hell. On one occasion, lost from his habitues, he was discovered in a hut with three native wives. Again he was discov- ered in abject worship before heathen
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from the Episcopal hymnal, lisping the simple doggerel in the parrot-like meaninglessness in which she had been taught. The painful ludicrousness of the contrast between the hymn and the tragedy of the girl's face it is impos- sible to convey. It was a relief when she fell into a native song, a theme- less, tuneless rendering of vowel sounds — man's first groping for soul language. When it was through, Clay- ton made a welcome move for bed.
As we entered the house, John Stone rose from the table, leaving open a quarto volume of Robinson Crusoe with intentional expose of the fly-leaf inscription. As a matter of courtesy I picked up the book, on a pretext of finding out what it was, and read: "Presented to John Stone for Diligent Study and Exemplary Conduct — The Mission School, Sierra Leone."
So the half-caste was not without his pride!
Clayton pointed to my mattress in a corner of the dining hall. "It's the best we could do, old man."
The girl said "Good-night" and passed in under a hanging mat through a side room to a room beyond. John Stone took his book under his arm and went in behind her with a deliberate- ness that was suggestive of a sort of guardianship. Did he wait thus every night to put his person between his sister and Clayton, I wondered.
I slept only fitfully. The cramped hours in the canoe, the infernal tom- toming and shrieking across the river, the challenge of the watchmen, the spluttering, guttural masculine laugh- ter and shrill feminine trills from the colored employees' quarters, all served to keep me awake. Then was there the persistent train of thought conjured by the mysteries of the evening. So it was that during a lapse of silence my alert senses caught the fall of a velvety, careful step, and I glanced about carefully to see a small white foot peep under the mat at the en- trance to John Stone's room. Then an ethereal slip of a thing in cotton print kimono stole noiselessly across the hall to my corner, pressing two large, lumi-
nous eyes against the mosquito cur- tains. I watched between half-closed lids, spell bound with excited curios- ity, whilst she devoured my every- day countenance. I use "devoured" advisedly, for never saw I such hunger — which I interpreted to be hunger of kind for kind, the yearning of her white inheritance. Suddenly the brother came out. He caught her roughly by the shoulder, and drew her back into the room. I heard whis- pered admonitions and a half-smoth- ered protest in native tongue. The in- cident ended there. On the morrow, I thought, I will cultivate her acquaint- ance.
The morning, as it happened, pre- sented favorable opportunity. Clay- ton was engaged in "barter palaver" with the bow-legged chieftain, and John Stone was busy with a gang of sweating, jabbering Kroomen refining rubber and casking kernels. I came on the girl angled in a rude seat in the shade of a clump of plantains. She was crocheting, a little nervously, it seemed, her ears cocked to the tiny piping notes of a gay-plumaged bird in a cotton tree. She arose at my ap- proach in shy hesitation. Then she put her work basket down from the seat, by the action inviting me to sit by her. I picked up a small Bible, another mission school "award." It fell open at thumbed pages — the Song of Solomon. I made the Shulamite a conversational opener.
"Do you like this?"
Her eyes were following Clayton's stride across the compound. Without lifting them from their object, she an- swered my question by declaiming two verses with a passionate revelation of wild love that had inexpressibly shocked the orthodox souls of her in- structors.
"Behold, thou art fair, my love; be- hold thou art fair "
I gaped rudely — the wonder of it! That outpouring, voluptuous song from the sensitive lips of that spirituelle face falling on the dreaming, opales- cent morning — the ringing joy she put into the words ! One could imagine the
CLAYTON, HALF-CASTE
221
gods. There is, too, a very un-English story of a knifing. Whether true or not, it's a fact that he never thinks of using his fists when angered, but claws and clutches like a savage, and he wears a Ceylonese dagger worthy any dago. But still he seems to have been fairly decent up to a period. He was accepted at the planters' clubs as a white man, and was accorded other privileges, mostly, I suppose, for his father's sake ; though there was a tact- ful understanding among the whites that he should not be given too much freedom from their sisters. There's the situation, then, when there turns up on the scene, on the neighboring plantation, a fellow from America — Louisiana, I think — and his sister. The neighborhood soon sat up to see Clay- ton in constant* attendance on the girl — those snapshots he boasts tell the story pretty well. The brother was initiated into the mysteries of Clay- ton's mixed ancestry, and advised the lady. Maybe he did it clumsily — any- way, it made no difference. Never a day passed that she was not out riding or walking with Clayton just the same. Perhaps she wanted to show American independence, or resented interference, or really liked the man — maybe it was just feminine perversity, or deviltry. Of course, the inevitable followed — a bust-up all around. The Americans sold out and went home. Clayton, surrendering bestially to his Ceylonese inheritance, shamed his father into death, converted the estate to cash, and shot away to London, living a life of passionate pleasure till his finances ran out, then came into the service of the company here. Behind that bust- up there's another story again, but it's in the keeping of the American girl." The sub-agent reached for his glass, and added, reflectively: "And there's a bust-up due at Attaba soon, too. We have a situation there worthy a Drury Lane melodrama, with its thread of comedy. If you happened on Attaba unsighted, you'd surprise Clayton in carpet slippers and pajamas, and sur- rendered to the law of his own fantas- tic will like a lazy living, mission
schooled clerk." He pulled himself up and turned to the missionary in quick apology. "Beg pardon, Mr. Chortle."
The Idahoan waved a huge paw. "We know the local estimate of our work — no apology is necessary," he primly returned.
The sub-agent hastily continued. "As I say, it is his Ceylonese inheri- tance. But he is always ready, in white duck impeccability and civilized manners, to play white man before white people. That's the comedy. The tragedy lies in the girl's worship of him — and you've got to know her kind to fully appreciate that worship. As for Clayton, his desire for her is strong enough, but his wretched fear of identifying himself with his real half-caste world, his nursed hope of white women, keeps him from indulg- ing it by marriage. Then, think of the alert watch of that marionette brother with his ready knife forever guarding his sister. It's a nice situa- tion for a dramatist.
I objected that Clayton showed no great affection during my stay.-
"No; he wouldn't do that. He'd hide his real self just as he has been trying to do all his life. I know — you see, I was hung up there for three weeks and saw the mask off. He could not sus- tain the effort, couldn't deny himself the girl's caresses — caresses with a strict boundary line guarded by the dangerous brother." He finished in the unfeeling curiosity of unimagina- tive youth : "I'd give a month's pay to see the curtain drop."
The missionary startled us with his comment: "For my part, I fail to see the humor in such a picture of sinful passion. I will make it my duty to stop at Attaba and endeavor to per- suade them into sanctified marriage." He excused himself and went to his room.
The sub-agent's eyes sparkled. "By Jove, I'd give two months' pay to see the curtain drop now."
As luck would have it, I was fated to see the finale myself. Word came that the Okara would be at Attaba in
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a few days, to sail thence up river by a channel that missed Illara. So I doubleld back, with the missionary, to that post. I do not know whether the reverend gentleman disapproved of me or whether it was that he was shaping his thoughts for the coming battle with the forces of evil, but he was strangely silent all the way down.
Canoes approaching Attaba are in view a long hour before arrival. Thus we had no chance of putting to proof the sub-agent's theory of Clayton's heathenish living. As on the former occasion of my arrival, he greeted us, to use the sub-agent's words, in his white-duck impeccability from the top of the bank. The Idahoan he received with reverent deference.
We had started up to the bungalow together when the missionary imperi- ously signaled me to drop behind. Re- gretfully I did so, and remained out- side the house, endeavoring to interest myself in the kaleidoscopic life of the compound, but speculating on the scene within.
' Presently a boy came dancing on the balls of his feet towards me with breathless message: "Massa Clay'on wanta go look you, sah."
As I reached the door I heard a stri- dent, assuring bass voice in street cor- ner exhortation :
"Bury the Old, take up the New, for- give and forget!"
Entering, I saw Clayton sitting at the table, chin propped on elbows, eyes hypnotized to the Idahoan's face, com- batting and surrendering to the mag- netism of the man's terrible, positive earnestness and inflection. Sometimes he threw out a protesting hand, at others shrugged his shoulders in a badgered way, or again he would slip out a groping hand for the support of the elfish girl who stood at his side staring and shrinking at the mission- ary's volcanic emotionalism. The Reverend Ebeneezer Chortle had the forces of evil completely at his mercy. Authoritatively he motioned me to a stool beside John Stone at the bottom of the table.
"... Confess the past, look to the
future, take the love of this pure girl, and be happy . . ."
Suddenly Clayton seemed to lose himself to it, as it were. He jumped up excitedly.
"Confess, is it!" he exclaimed dra- matically. "I'd be glad to tell you the story — a priest of that faith which cursed me for the accident of birth." He dropped back on the stool, drawing the girl affectionately against his coat, and fell into quiet, bitter narrative. "Some of my history — as others think they know it — you seem to know al- ready. What you don't know is how it was to me. I might have played the game, as father made me promise, tell- ing me of the ideals, the greatness of his people, but they took away my only chance. Weaned on pride, they set to work torturing me through that pride — pride of family and religion. God! my youth was saturated with it ! While father told me of his ancestry and took me on Sundays to the English church to squirm on a hard seat, my mother every week-day used to instruct me in the glories of her people, her descent from a long line of princes. And she had a little bronze god hidden away in her robe chest which she would take out and teach to my heart real things —things which I afterwards openly scoffed at, yet inwardly believed; just as I believe now that she, my mother, knew as much of the hereafter as the priests of the thousand and one quar- reling creeds of civilization. That lit- tle bronze god I took to England with me when father sent me there to school to be made into a gentleman. Yes, and I curled up on my knees to it under the bed clothes every night and prayed for revenge on the boys who yelled 'nigger' at me. In the vacation I went down to Clayton Manor — to know my- self for the family skeleton. I asso- ciated with English girls — such girls! —but if I paired off with the same one twice, she was taken aside and whis- pered to. It was the same when I re- turned to Ceylon. The planters' clubs 'took me in as one of themselves, but always they drew the line with their sisters. All my life my desire has
THE SEQUOIA'S CREED
223
been to associate with white women, for I felt I was nearer to them than to their males. But I played the 'game,' disguised my heart and simu- lated enthusiasm, accepted the life they lived and denied myself my life, took the morning cold tub, cased my- self in their stiff shirts and manners, worshiped the army uniform and dei- fied its traditions. Then came that damned girl and shattered me with her intimacy. . . God, what times we had together ! How she would laugh — and ride! No wonder I fooled myself; it was her nationality. I thought maybe the Americans cared little for birth — her actions looked that way. Then her brother was real friendly, too — took me for myself. Our plantations adjoined, and when I wasn't at his place he was usually at mine. I un- derstood his game later, after he had trapped me into exposure and brought his sister to the hut where I kept a native girl. I could have killed him! Oh, but he was cool about it! Said he hadn't dared oppose his sister or she'd have plunged and married me out of pity. Perhaps he was right, per- haps he wasn't. Anyway he had me fixed good and plenty. The sister turned me down like a very wild-cat. Yet she still walked and rode with the whites, and every one of them had known native girls. Well, there it was. Since I was to be condemned to my half-world, I decided there shouldn't
be any pretense about it. Oh, I went what that American would call 'the limit,' I tell you. Father gave me five thousand pounds and told me to go and hide myself. I went to London and bought white love with it — five thousand pounds' worth, Christians every one of 'em." He leapt to his feet suddenly, and threw up a hand in the manner of the Scotch oath. "But here and forever I bury white man, Christian, gentleman. My mother's son I'll be. Allie will be my wife. And pimple-head there" — he pointed to John Stone — "my dear brother-in- law." He turned on the missionary. "If you've got your book, sir, we're ready."
The missionary demurred. "I can- not administer the rites of my church to one publicly repudiating the faith. Indeed, I feel it my duty to strongly warn this poor girl "
Clayton cut in savagely. " 'This poor girl' wants none of it, understand. We'll take canoe right away for the Resident at Abombo." He ran to the doorway and shouted without: "Ho, there, Sabbo! Get canoes ready one- time."
He turned back, looking doubt- fully at John Stone. For several sec- onds they exchanged hostile glances. Then Clayton flung out ungraciously: "All right; come along."
So the manikin brother accompanied —watchful, silent, knived.
THE SEQUOIA'S CREED
Shut not thy soul in walls to pray
The prayers that others wrote, but let it stray
Where the Sequoia lifts to Heaven the creed
It breathed in mighty Caesar's day of need :
"Grow strong. Grow straight, and upward on your way.
Look to the skies alone — never away.
If some calamity should cut thee down
Rise round thy ruin with a vernal crown
In an eternal circle, richer for the blow
From puny power that laid thee low."
LUCIA E. SMITH,
Chili Con Carne
(AVcat With Hot Sauce)
By Lucia E. Smith
AS FLORITA, looking indeed like a little flower, came sway- ing into the low-ceiled room, Carlos, late water-carrier to Don Estes of Durango, smote his lean brown hands together and scowled at the gay ribbon in her hair she had donned in lieu of the roses that could not be made to grow in the sandy stretches about their humble abode.
"What is it?" he demanded, show- ing white, flashing teeth; "a fiesta — no ?" And he pounded his brown fore- head to drive out such a thought.
But Florita undaunted hung on his arm, smiling into his face. "A fiesta surely. Has my father forgotten it is the day of my coming to him so long — ah, yes, twenty years ago, not quite? Well, twenty or less, it must be a day to remember."
"A day to remember, si; who knows?" and he shuddered.
The nodding of her head bobbed the gay ribbon into his scowling face, and her eyes sparkled with mischief as she drew him by a strong brown hand to the cupboard, a rude thing made of boxes, and pushed his unwilling hand into the corner where lay their little hoard. It was knotted in a red cloth and jingled as they drew it out. Still reluctant, Carlos was urged to the table where the coins were poured out.
"Not so many," he grumbled, count- ing them slowly. "And we will need them to-morrow — a fiesta indeed. What is it you wish?"
"A bit of meat," Florita pouted. "If we are to cross to safety in another day — we need it. It is a long way to the border."
Carlos turned to take his jacket
from a nail and drew out a cigarette. "It. is not wise," he complained.
"What is there about a bone of meat to bring trouble?" she scoffed, and pushed him playfully from the room. "A large bone," she called, and gaily her feet danced on the sill of the door as she watched him stalk away along the yellow, winding, sandy road, his feet stirring up puffs of dust at every reluctant step. When he had passed the turn she went inside, and soon there was a fine odor of frying onions and garlic, with red peppers from the string that hung from the roof, for the hot sauce was an essential to the meat. Carlos was one of the humblest among the many who had worked for Don Estes, and the usual fare of Florita and her father was the frijoles or Spanish beans with chili sauce.
Now Florita, as she cooked and sang fell to thinking of her father's words. To be sure, there were terrible things happening about them, and Don Estes himself had warned them he was going to leave; since he had incurred the displeasure of Hilna, the rebel leader, there was no doubt there would be trouble for them all. Don Estes hoped to cross the border within a few hours.
Working, the time passed quickly, and soon Florita heard her father com- ing, this time swiftly, almost running. Something was spurring him on, and she ran to meet him. He must have heard bad news.
But she would not have him think she was afraid, so she took the pack- age he handed her with a gay laugh and tossed it to the table, while she
CHILI CON CARNE
225
lifted the kettle over the bricks of her primitive cooking arrangement, stir- ring up the fire beneath to a fine red glow.
"A wonderful bit of meat!" she com- mented, as she popped it into the bub- bling water in the kettle. "Now rest you — it was a hot walk, si?" She pushed him out and into the shade of the little adobe. She did not ask him what he had heard, but when she went inside to fashion the flat cakes for their meal she did not sing nor dance, and her face looked pale. Al- ready she was reproaching herself for having delayed their departure on ac- count of a bit of meat.
It was bubbling merrily, and she tried it from time to time, prodding it with a dexterous twist of her wrist as she handled the crude iron fork of home make having one long prong. All the while she kept saying to herself, "Hurry up, hurry up." Yet she did not know why. When at last it was tender she went to awaken Carlos and saw that he was sitting with wide-open eyes watching the road. Far away a dust cloud was rising. She did not speak of it, although she felt he too had seen it, but called gaily for him to come in.
"A brave bit of meat," she chattered. "How fortunate we are to-day!" Yet all the time she was thinking she wished they were on their way. But the sight of his face made her cry out in spite of her wish to be silent. "What worries thee, padre mio ?" She flung her arms about him.
He pushed her away gently, more so than usual. "Nothing," and he made a great show of sharpening the knife in his belt and preparing to carve the meat, tearing it into large pieces in clumsy fashion while Florita surrounded it with the red rich sauce.
She paused before her first mouth- ful. "Surely it was something you heard in the town, si?"
He nodded. "They are after Don Estes — since yesterday morning."
"Ah, and they will come like blood- thirsty dogs. Woe to those who op- pose them! You " She sprang
to her feet. "You do not think they will come this way."
Her father did not reply, but she noticed he was not relishing the meal. "It were better we went this morning and had not this," he pointed to his plate.
Florita laughed. "Let us be gay. If they come they come. It is a good fiesta. See how tender?" and she thrust a naughty finger into his dish. "Hilna cares only for the rich. Why should he bother with us?"
But Carlos repeated : "It were better we went this morning."
"If so we will eat fast else we may not live to feast," she scoffed. "You are spoiling it all. Shall we give it to the dog?"
Guessing their meaning, that lean creature came nearer and let out shrill staccato barks, his eyes blazing with hunger, watching the smoking meat. Just then a horse galloped down the road and his rider pulled him to his haunches in front of the door. It was Don Estes, their master, and he was drooping in his saddle. "Food, drink," was his feeble cry.
Quickly a package was stuffed into his pocket, and he was off down the road, the two watching him from the door, watching with strained faces, for already a yellow cloud showed coming nearer on the road he had ridden to them. Neither spoke ; they knew only too well who it was, and they turned inside, not knowing whether to stay or to flee. The dog passed them swiftly with the rest of the meat, left after the portion given Don Estes. The fiesta, was ended, yet both seated them- selves at the table.
"If Hilna should ask if we gave Don Estes meat?" began Carlos.
"He would shoot thee," sobbed Flo- rita, "and all through my foolishness."
"We must say no, no," commanded Carlos, listening. "They are here — be quiet. Do not tremble so. They must not think we fear them — they will suspect." He lighted a cigarette and strolled to the door.
Florita took out some cloth from a box and began drawing threads. She 3
226
OVERLAND MONTHLY
sang, keeping time with her foot. She saw 3 fierce-looking man in the door. He came towards her, a short, swarthy man with whiskers and long mus- taches, and she knew it was Hilna. Outside she heard voices, laughs min- gled with curses.
Carlos, calmly smoking, did not look at her. He greeted the leader with a low bow, and assumed a stupid air when questioned, smiling all the time as at some jest. "Si, Don Estes he went that way, riding like the evil one, si, sitting very straight and strong. To the border? I think no — he rides not that way."
Florita answered in listless fashion without looking up. She was afraid to have this man read her fright of him.
Hilna frowned as he went outside and called to his band.
Florita heard him shout. "This man lied; they both lied. Go half of you as she said, on the chance it be right, and the rest to the border. Gold to the man who gets Don Estes. I will stay here and wait for you." She heard the company clatter away, and the work dropped from her nervous fingers. The time for their escape had passed.
Just then the dog trotted in with a package in his mouth — it was the food they had given Don Estes, and he must have dropped it. Not being as hungry as usual, the dog had brought it in and began digging a hole in the earth floor. Florita rose to drive him out when a man entered with Hilna. He kicked the dog and took the pack- age away. "It is warm," he remarked with a grin.
Hilna turned to Florita. "I fear thou hast lost thy dinner — or was it stolen from thee?"
In the meanwhile the man had snuffed at the kettle, discovered the bone outside, and Florida felt she and Carlos were already convicted, tried and sentenced, in Hilna's mind — he brooked no opposition from any re- tainers of Don Estes.
With a gesture, Carlos was com- manded to be bound and Hilna smil-
ingly remarked: "Thou hast a false tongue, friend, and I must discipline thee for thy good." He wagged his head, and two soldiers took Carlos out- side and away.
Florita felt a shriek rise in her throat, but it would not come out; she could not utter a sound. Slowly she moved to the door and stared to where Carlos stood blindfolded against the wall. She saw the dazzling glint of his gilded buttons as the sun struck them, and his sash floated in the breeze, com- ing cool and fresh with the evening. The dog sat, tongue out, watching his master.
Suddenly Florita went back, and, taking the kettle, filled it from the spring, her back to the soldiers and Carlos, singing all the time. She took the kettle inside and placed it over the warm bricks.
Hilna's hand dropped and he went to the house and began watching her 'curiously. The men around Carlos laughed and joked.
But Florita paid no heed to any of them. She stirred the water in the kettle with the fork, stabbing it at in- tervals, and singing gaily, her foot keeping time.
Hilna turned to a man at his side and tapped his forehead questioningly. The man nodded. Hilna crossed himself piously, and drawing a purse from his breast, laid it on the table.
At that Florita came toward him.
Anger flushed his face and he snatched up the purse and started to go outside to Carlos again, but she had stepped to the kettle, and he heard her say: "A fine bit of meat, si, for my fiesta."
Her mouth had a foolish droop — her eyes stared straight ahead.
This convinced the superstitious Hilna that he had come across the most unlucky of all things — a person without a mind. He could not rid himself of her too quickly. Flinging the purse to the floor he ran to his horse, called to his men and was off in a whirl of dust, flying from the only thing on earth he feared.
Carlos tore the bandage from his
THE CANYON TRAIL.
227
eyes, and ran lamenting to Florita. He had heard the cries of the men — the orders of Hilna, and heard the retreat. He could not doubt that Florita's mind had gone, driven out by fright. He caught her to him, overcoming his own superstitious fears.
But she flung her arms about him. "Let us go quickly, while it is yet safe. It has surely been a day to remember. And after all the dog ate that fine bit of meat." . Still regretting, she began preparations for their speedy departure.
THE CANYON TRAIL
In stogie boots .and khaki suits, With spirits waked by wiles of Pan, We lift our eyes to sunrise skies And drink as deeply as we can The morning's breath on Dalton Trail.
The mocker's song the morning long Enlivens thicket, glade and rill ; Red robins call from alders tall, Brown buzzards sail above the hill And sweep across the canyon trail.
And as we pass through sun scorched
grass
Across a half-cleared mountain space In hurried ranks, a gay phalanx Of chirping crickets leap apace Along the open hill-side trail.
And butterflies from mid-day skies Through leaf-lace shadows thread their
way
From tidy tips to lupine lips Then back they skim to sages gray Beside the Dalton canyon trail.
We cross the slope at easy lope And swerve around the mountain side. Then down the steep we firmly keep A tightened rein, and slowly ride Along the rough-descending trail. Down, down, zig-zag, each faithful
nag,
Intent, a foothold firmly feels. The loosened shale drops down like
hail,
On stones below and strikes and reels, Where winds the Dalton canyon trail.
A deeper shade we now invade Beside the brooklet's sweeping source, The creek we cross floats low with
moss, And ferns grow frail twixt brakes
more coarse Along the wooded canyon trail.
Long shadows creep adown the steep, The daylight slips from cleft to crest, The woodland dove coos of his love, Home steals the quail unto her nest Beside the brush-bound mountain trail.
The evening breeze moves through the
trees
And willow leaves to silver turn; From stirrup free, on bended knee, We stoop to drink 'neath swaying fern Along the Dalton canyon trail.
The ways grow dark, coyotes bark And race among the chapparal; The day is spent, we pitch our tent, Careless of man or animal, Along the Dalton canyon trail.
Though rough the ground our sleep is
sound, Dreamless and deep 'neath sky and
tree,
With days full long and spirits strong Life holds all wealth for you and me Who take the winding canyon trail.
MILDRED C. TALLANT.
The Light Without
By John Amid
MAXWELL Beacon Thorpe was born just one week after his mother, Harriet Beacon Thorpe, completed her fam- ous novel, "Miniature Men."
From the time he was able to crawl across the floor and eat the shavings of sharpened lead pencils, he was treated to what his eccentric, hard- working, nut-eating parents called a literary education. He never went to a public school until he was fourteen years old. Then, both his parents drowning, quite theatrically, in a steamship accident, he was left under the protecting wing of a common or garden variety of uncle, who ate meat.
Previous to that time he had been taught at home by methods that would have made even Madame Montessori sit up and take notice. He was started with blocks on which were words in- stead of letters, and led successfully through years when he was compelled to add ten new words to his vocabu- lary each day. By the time he had received his first bloody nose he had thrown over the childish works of Scott, and was deep in his first reading of "The Old Curiosity Shop."
In spite of these mental achieve- ments, however, he remained in most v.ays a normal, active boy. He liked to mess around with other boys of his age, and he rejoiced for many years in a large and prosperous collection of assorted turtles, the thriving head of which — a regular whopper of a big brown snapping turtle — enjoyed the pilfered name of Maj. Goliah O'Grady Gahagan, H. E. I. C. C., Commanding Battalion Irregular Horse, Ahmednug- gar.
By the time he finished high school young Thorpe had developed into like-
ly athletic material, and was snapped up for his punting possibilities by the football enthusiasts of a big univer- sity. But before he made fullback on the 'Varsity, he had devoted himself successfully to the worship of Keats, Meredith, Browning, Stevenson, Mae- terlink, Tolstoi, and a few fleeting others. He admired also, in passing, Turgenev, Hauptman and Daudet, and graduated at last into a more perma- nent affection for a strange, old-fash- ioned miscellany. The classic flotsam of favorites accumulated on this aston- ishing literary voyage included Alice in Wonderland, John Halifax, Gentle- man, Captains Courageous, Our Mutual Friend, Dream Life, The French Revo- lution, the Book of Job, and Water Babies.
Once safely out of college, young Thorps descended from his proud po- sitions of President of the Associated Students, Leader of the Combined Musical Clubs, Secretary of the Inter- fraternity Conference, Manager of the Athletic Organization, Chairman of the Prom Committee, and Captain of the Chess Team, to become office boy and cub reporter of the sporting de- partment of a freshwater daily.
As the latest addition to the Bugle's sporting staff, Maxwell's duties were to edit the long-hand athletic news of the country correspondents, to cover the absorbing contests of the Bowling League, and in the sporting editor's absence to write those stirring accounts of local baseball games in 32-degree terms of fandom, beginning: "When Berlioz clouted the pellet on the nose for a full circuit in the sixth, yester- day's game was neatly packed away in the refrigerator for the Yellow Jack- ets."
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229
During his first year on the Bugle, Maxwell did two important things : he fell in love with 'Gail Maloney, and decided to write a masterpiece.
A couple of years afterward he mar- ried 'Gail and lived happily ever af- terwards; but that has nothing to do with us here.
We are here following his literary development. His first full-fledged at- temps to scale the peaks of literature must hold our absorbed attention.
He named his great work "The Man Who Founded Caesar," and he built it in a unique and terrible manner quite his own. Hours and hours he spent on its construction, working through the wee sma' portion of the night that succeeded the closing bang of the night editor's desk and preceded the sudden stillness that came when the presses stopped rumbling in the basement. When the tale was completed in all the glory of its ten thousand words, he read it over, then tore it up and wrote it again. After that he wrote and re-wrote it half a dozen times be- fore admitting to himself that he could do no more. Finally he typed a neat copy and signed it with his chosen pseudonym, Wade Jenkins.
Then, and not until then, he showed it to 'Gail, and received her tremulous assurances that it was truly wonder- ful.
That same day he received a strenu- ous calling down from the city editor for Alighting his Bugle work, accom- panied by the threat of a lost position if he failed to show immediate im- provement. Even while realizing that "The Man Who Founded Caesar" would, the moment it came under the enthusiastic eye of the first great mag- azine editor, elevate him at once to fame and affluence, Maxwell felt shiv- ers run up and down his back at the thought of being fired from his first job. For a fortnight his typewriter snapped out column after column of copy, while "The Man Who Founded Caesar" lay undisturbed in a desk drawer.
At last, for a "feeler" before des- patching the manuscript on its way,
he showed it to Fred Higgins, the Bugle's literary critic and dramatic edi- tor. Higgins lugged it home with him and honored it with a long, careful reading and a long, care-free laugh.
"It's all right, kid!" was his remark to Maxwell when he passed it back next day. "Stay at it, and you'll get there some time. But for the love of Shad, don't show this thing to anybody else. Your job wouldn't be worth the peeling off a dried apple. Then, too," he added seriously, "they might kill themselves laughing, and you'd be held as accessory to suicide."
Of course, Maxwell gave Higgin's opinion little weight. How could a literary critic understand true great- ness, anyway? Still, he left "The Man Who Founded Caesar" in the drawer. The absorbing game of writ- ing heads, to which he had been pro- moted, after his spurt of the past month, engrossed for the time his en- tire attention. When 'Gail asked him what magazine he had decided to send his manuscript to, and how soon they could be married on the proceeds, he put her off with an evasive answer.
As the days went by, and he came continually into closer touch with lit- erature as she is in her home life, happily wedded to the great American dollar, the glamour began to fade from "The Man Who Founded Caesar." Dust accumulated steadily on the im- mortal pages.
A year later, when Hichborn, the sporting editor, threw up his job and headed for New York, Maxwell stepped into his place. This necessi- tated the transfer of his miscellany from the ramshackle desk in the cor- ner to the littered roll-top contraption that more than any other one thing was the badge of office of the sporting editor of the Bugle. It was with some- thing akin to surprise that Maxwell ran across "The Man Who Founded Caesar."
"Almost forgotten the blame thing," he muttered. "Ought to send it out if I'm ever going to." He shuffled the pages idly, glancing at lines here and there. "Not so darned bad, you know.
230
OVERLAND MONTHLY
Some crude, but at least original. Be- lieve I'll show it to Billy."
Billy was a college acquaintance who hailed from the Bugle's home town, and who, since graduation, had been making good among the maga- zines.
So to Billy "The Man Who Founded Caesar" went, for prolonged reading.
"I don't know what to say, Maxey," explained Billy, when the two next met. "I never ran against anything like it, so it's hard to make a com- parison. There's lots of good in some parts of it; and yet, on the whole, I think it's pretty punk. You certainly were green when you wrote it."
"Hang it, Billy, that's the very trou- ble! I wasn't green at all — not in the way you mean. I did every one of those darn fool things on purpose — every one of 'em. Higgins thought the same thing — acted as if I'd never read 'beyond the story of Noah's Ark in "words of one syllable. Those brilliant departures from precedent do seem rather asinine, though," he ended, doubtfully.
"Tell you what you do," said Billy. "You send it in to the Milton Bureau. I'll give you the address. They'll criticise the blame thing for three or four dollars, and if there's anything to it they'll sell it. They can sell anything down to the mulings of a three year old for real money. They can tell you more about your darned yarn on two pages than I could in a hundred years. That blamed bureau has been the making of me — I never waste postage on anything they put the nix sign on."
With a certain pleasurable sense of exhilaration and excitement, Maxwell drew a check for four dollars against his slender bank account, and des- patched it, snugly folded inside "The Man Who Founded Caesar" to the Milton Literary Bureau.
In due time the bulky return envel- ope came back to him, enclosing his precious manuscript and eight neatly typed pages of careful criticism. His story, the Bureau critic explained, would be taken up under the following
heads: — here the maker of authors neatly took off his mental coat, rolled back his metaphorical cuffs, and pro- ceeded to enumerate in the abstract the things that he would do to the unfor- tunate manuscript in the concrete. Then he proceeded to do them — four dollars worth — very neatly, very scientifically, and, according to his lights, painlessly.
When Maxwell finished the eighth page he looked about him a little wildly, as if half expecting to see tow- ering above him the form of his liter- ary antagonist, ready to deliver a final blow if he rose to his knees before the count of ten. "Well," he muttered to himself, pulling at his collar to get more air. "They don't seem to be holding it for immediate sale! That's clear enough, anyway." Then he read the criticism again, more carefully. "Darn 'em!" he said, when he had finished for the second time. "They don't get the thing at all. Why, Heav- ens, Maude!" as the full realization of certain passages came to him, "they suggest it would be stronger with that Hector cuss left out, and here he's the whole thing! Well, I'll be diddle-dee- dog-goned and tee-totally horn-swig- gled ! Yes, sir !" he ended, nodding his head affirmatively. "I have been!"
When he told his troubles to Billy, that rising individual indulged in a cheerful chuckle.
"Maxey, you poor young ass," he said, "if you don't get wise now, you never will. Some people don't," he continued confidentially, "and later on they run 'em into the bug-house. Why, hang it, Maxey! You don't need to take it so hard. There isn't a single inhabited square rod of this great and glorious country that doesn't hold its poor little hero, who sets out at the mature age of twenty-three . to crowd the world's classics off the shelves. They all do it, Maxey. They all write their masterpiece before they're twenty-five, and then they come back to earth with a dull gray thud, and continue to lay bricks — or shoe horses — or teach the young mind to sprout — as the Lord always intended they should. That is, most of 'em do; a
THE LIGHT WITHOUT
231
few — and I guess it's a lucky thing for mankind that they are blessed few — try it again when they get wise. They learn the game from the bottom, and by and bye they do something worth while and get paid for it — paid for it! Do you hear me, Kid? Cold, round dollars — simoleons — iron men! And that's where that Bureau will land you if you'll stay with 'em, if you really have the goods. Don't talk to me about this game of starving to death in a garret — there's nothing to it, boy. The guys that have the goods get the plunks. It's only the candidates for the loon palace that hang on to the work that's going to shake the world — and when it comes back, write sassy letters to the editor. You take my ad- vice and heave this piffle into the gar- bage can. I thought it was pretty punk when I read it the other day; but it's worth four dollars of any man's money to have it broken gently. You stick to that sporting job. I was talking to one of the men up there the other day — Whitney: know him? — and he says they've got their eye on you. Why, man!" he began to get enthusiastic — "some of that baseball copy you're throwing at 'em is simply great! Oh, I know," he impatiently waved aside Maxwell's unspoken protest — "I know all about that — debauching the noble art, and all that. But don't tell it to me! I've heard that kind of froth from literary cockerels ever since I sold four lines of bleary verse to the Golden Eagle. You keep snapping them over on the old Bugle until you hit your gait, and then tackle the mags, again. Why, Maxey, you've got 'em coming! I tell you after you get started you'll push me clean under the table!"
The sporting editor's salary was enough to marry on, but the sporting editor's work was hard and tiring. There was little zest left at the end of the day for indulgence in vain literary aspirations. However, Maxwell, loy- ally encouraged by 'Gail, pegged dog- gedly away at his magazine copy.
Gradually, as he came to understand the requirements of the various maga-
zines, and won into touch with the lit- erary market and the editors them- selves, he began to break through the line here and there. Some clever per- sonal sketches of prominent sporting celebrities brought him his first real magazine money; yet they were sold,, not to magazines proper, but to one of the smaller syndicating agencies that retailed them out to a dozen little struggling rural dailies scattered across the face of the country. After, a short, cleverly written baseball story was ac- cepted by the Slam Bang Magazine; and when, two weeks later, a check for five dollars tumbled out of a blue en- velope from "Merit" (and for verse, too) Maxwell felt his first real thrill of exultation.
A series of pithy two-hundred word descriptions of certain innovations in the way of advertising, that had been adopted by local sporting good houses, drew neat little sums from technical magazines. Indeed, this branch of his side work rapidly developed into a steady income-producing literary mine. Maxwell began to think seriously of throwing over his job as sporting edi- tor, which had failed to carry him to anything beyond, and devote his whole time to the magazines. But there was a little Maxwell Beacon now, and a still littler Abigail Harriett, as well, and he concluded to stay by the old desk until he could see clear sailing ahead.
He gained ground steadily, holding magazines when once he had "landed" them, and continually making new friends among the editors.
Seven years from the time the syn- dicate sent him his first check, he ar- rived, in a blaze of glory, clear to the top. An essay: "Athletics in Ameri- can Journalism," was accepted by that pinnacle of American magazinedom — the goal of every struggling writer — "The Mausoleum." Maxwell Beacon Thorpe, now in a fair way of being a local celebrity, gave up his position as sporting editor of the Bugle, and settled down to life as an author. He was still young and the world was before him.
Right here is a good place to put
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this story down, yawn and stretch, and cheer up : we're going to skip twenty- five years.
Maxwell Beacon Thorpe, author, white haired at sixty-five, with sad- ness lingering behind the wrinkles around his eyes, can sell his work where he pleases. His checks are never stupendous; he has never writ- ten a "best seller;" he has never torn the world apart and reconstructed it anew; but he has quietly continued to make good in the literary world, until his name is known throughout the land as the creator of contained, classical, structurally perfect stories, and articles of American work and play. There is nothing brilliant or exotic about his productions. Occasionally he smiles, a little grimly, at the dollar a word stories that circulate from nowhere concerning the literary orchids of his period. Two hundred dollars is his conservative estimate of the commer- cial value of his average short story. Frequently, of course, he gets more; rarely will he take less. He is com- monly supposed to realize several times that amount on his work but we are looking at the matter from the in- side. The largest amount he ever re- ceived for a single short story was six hundred and twenty-five dollars, and even that was back in the days when the demand for his work was not nearly as steady as it is now.
A few weeks ago he received a let- ter from the editor of "The Seer," with a request for a story somewhat longer than he was in the habit of writing. "Preferably well up towards ten thou- sand words," was the phrase Sagamore used. As was his custom, Maxwell Beacon Thorpe turned first to the drawer containing his unused manu- scripts, to see if by any chance he had anything that might fit the require- ments. Finding nothing suitable, he was about to close the drawer when he noticed the edge of a pile of slightly brown manuscript sticking out from un- der some note books at the back. He grinned with delight as for the first time in several years he pulled "The Man Who Founded Caesar" from its
resting place, and looked through the once cherished pages.
"Crude!" he said aloud. "And good Lord! How I did break away from the accepted standards! What a fool I was to think that any editor would have looked at that! Lucky thing I didn't send it out — it certainly would have broken my heart."
"Why don't you send it out?" asked his wife. "The Seer will very likely take it. It doesn't make any difference to them what it's like as long as it's yours. You know you can sell any- thing you put your name on."
Maxwell shook his head.
"That's what you think, dear, but it's not entirely so. Even Sagamore would send my work back if he thought it didn't come up to the Seer standard."
"Well, then," triumphed Mrs. Thorpe, "you certainly aren't running any risk by sending it out. Just send it along and say nothing about it. If they don't like it they can send it back. Your reputation is too good to be hurt by anything like that, now. If they should use it because of your name, we'd have the fun of hearing what people say about it — and the money besides."
"I'll do it," said the author.
At the end of a fortnight two letters from the Seer Publishing Company were delivered to him. The first one he opened contained a brief note from the editor.
"My /dear Thorpe," Sagamore wrote, "a fortnight ago I wrote asking for a ten thousand word story; not having heard from you since, I take it that you have not yet prepared anything for us. If this is so, consider the ur- gency clause in my last letter repealed, as we will not need your manuscript for the October edition. Send it in when you are good and ready; we can use it later on.
"Sincerely yours,
"C. G. SAGAMORE."
Somewhat bewildered, Maxwell Thorpe tore open the second envelope.
"Dear Mr. Jenkins," it read, "I have
THE TORCH.
233
been reading with pleasure your manu- script, The Man Who Founded Cae- sar.' " — Maxwell pursed his lips in perplexity, then picked up the enve- lope again and received enlightenment, "Mr. Wade Jenkins, P. O. Box 401, New London, Penn." Wade Jenkins! His old discarded nom-de-plume, that in his days as sporting cub on the Bugle he had signed to "The Man Who Founded Caesar." He had for- gotten to scratch it out and substitute his flourishing "Maxwell Beacon Thorpe," so his old manuscript had gone to its first magazine reading sole-
ly on its merits. "I have been reading with pleasure your manuscript, 'The Man Who Founded Ceasar,' " the let- ter continued, "and wish to congratu- late you, and ourselves, on your unique and brilliant conception. I hope that you will soon favor us with more material along similar lines. I am en- closing our check for" — Thorpe picked up the piece of bank paper that had slipped into his lap — "two hundred and fifty dollars.
"Sincerely yours, "C. G. SAGAMORE, Editor."
THE TORCH
(Sussex Landscape)
Is it your watch-fire, elves, where the down with its darkening shoulder Lifts on the death of the sun, out of the valley of thyme?
Dropped on the broad chalk path, and cresting the ridge of it, smoulder Crimson as blood on the white, halting my feet as they climb.
Clusters of clover-bloom, spilled from what negligent arms in the tender Dusk of the great grey world, last of the tints of the day,
Beautiful, sorrowful, strange, last stain of that perishing splendor. Elves, from what torn white feet, trickled that red on the way?
No — from the sunburnt hands of wha t lovers that fade in the distance ?
Here — was it here that they paused ? Here that the legend was told ? Even a kiss would be heard in this hush; but, with mocking insistence,
Now through the valley resound — only the bells of the fold.
Dropt from the hands of what beautiful throng ? Did they cry Follow after,
Dancing into the West, leaving this token for me — Memory dead on the path, and the sunset to bury their laughter?
Youth ? Is it youth that has flown ? Darkness covers the sea,
Darkness covers the earth. But the path is here. I assay it.
Let the bloom fall like a flake, dropt from the torch of a friend. Beautiful revellers, happy companions, I see and obey it;
Follow your torch in the night, follow your path to the end.
ALFRED NOYES.
Ode to California
By Harry Cowell
Hail, California, land of dreams come true,
Where Life is wonder still and Earth yet young, Retaining much of its first mornings' dew
And that primordial melody God sung For very gladness, self-moved to create! Hail, Golden State,
Triumphant strain of His creative tongue
That blinking stars among Rang formative, for aye reverberate! Thou Eden of His ecstasy, as new
As on that dawn when thy gold poppies sprung
From His red-gold voice flung Afar, rich notes that glad the eye And dying do not die;
Thou formed of song that stand'st uncurst apart, Lone lyric of His love, I hymn thee from my heart!
Thou poem set to music of the spheres,
Sung ere man was athwart the morning stars — In Time's vast womb that heir to many tears —
Or ever Envy rumoring red wars ; Before black Hate, abominable Lie, Or loosed Love-tie ;
When glowed magnificent in beauty Mars,
No visioned note that jars, A ruby God-rejoicing in His sky; I hymn thee as though ne'er in Heaven's ears
Had blared harsh brass of battle, shrilled those bars
That back of victors' cars The tortured mouths of victims make With every gasped intake, Sighed exhalation, of mad fevered breath That falls on upturned faces cold as dews of death.
I hymn thee for a fresh fair garden-spot,
An undefiled Eden that has stood Remote from Evil as though Sin were not
Since first 'twas evening, and lo very good,
And very good the glad voice of Daybreak Crying Awake!
To each hushed wold and every slumbering wood. God's spirit still doth brood On thy great waters; ne'er a lake
But holds, is hallowed by, the creative mood.
Of awful magnitude, Thy immemorial trees have heard The wonder-working Word That from the void evoked fair formful things : At eve 'tis echoed in their solemn whisperings!
Hail, California, land of beauty bright,
Land fair with flowers, fruits! thy sinless skies Obey as then thy Lord's Let there be light!
Reflect as then the glad smile in God's eyes When He sang into being beast and bird And man deferred
For final self-expression! The surprise
Of Life new-waked that tries
Wide-eyed to solve its Where, what am I? — stirred To undredged depths of wonderment at sight,
Sound, smell, taste, feeling — seeks to realize
Itself, its Paradise, Still lends a pristine purity and grace To thy rare virgin face
Sweet glowing with the flush of Earth's first morns Before Sin sowed it thick with thistles sore and thorns.
Hail, land of loveliness, still good to see
As when thy Poet, the Maker, saw thee first As contemplative of His work stood He
In silence vibrant with His song's outburst ! All hail, thou Hope-land of the human race, Thou cradle-place
Of a great rebeginning for man athirst
For joy, to stand uncurst And sing before the Lord of Song a space And dance a measure of his destiny
As born of God's blithe singing, Nature-nursed,
In His best world, not worst; Thou garden-close of gladness, man's true fate, No angel guards thy gate Against the eternal dreamer: big of breast, Thou mak'st him feel at home, once more his Maker's guest.
The Night of the Kona
By William Francis Aannix
M
ELE herself witnessed the long-feared combat between Kimi and Kamauela, the rivals for her slender brown hand. She was seated in the little green plot before her home, taking such respite as she dared from the bedside of a sick mother, when Kimi came through the vine-grown pucapa of the stone wall.
"Ah, Mele! And how is your good mother?" he asked politely, removing his brown straw and standing deferen- tially before her.
Her dark eyes lifted to his, and a wan smile fluttered in the tired lines of her pretty face.
"It is good of you to ask — and so often, Kimi," she answered, "but mother is no better, no worse, Kimi."
The gentle half-white youth drew nearer.
"Let me tell you, Mele," he whis- pered earnestly, "it is my learned father who says that more of 'the medicine, Mele, more of the medicine, will make her well again."
"And what think you, Kimi?" she asked, looking up into his olive face hopefully.
"I think as my father does, Mele."
The words had not been spoken ere a frightened look came into the eyes of the girl, and Kimi turned to see Kamauela, the son of the great ka- huna— the spirit doctor — enter the yard. The full-blood Kanaka's visage burned with hatred, and his thick lips parted evilly.
"More of the apothecary's medi- cine, eh?" he blurted to Mele, his vengeful gaze upon Kimi.
Mele turned her face away, and her fingers, toying with a wreath of leis, in her lap, trembled.
"I do not wish to speak now about such things, Kamauela," she said, scarcely above a whisper; "please go -away."
"Yes, I will go away, but not be- fore "
Deep-throated Hawaiian impreca- tions finished the sentence, and Ka- mauela's strong right arm wound Ka- naka fashion about the neck of Kimi in an attempt to strangle him, while his right fist rained blows upon his face. Struggling fiercely they went to the ground together.
"For shame!" cried Mele, rising quickly and going to the stone steps of the hale. "For shame, I say, that you will fight within hearing of my dying mother."
Almost as an echo of her words came the faint calling of her name from within the house.
As the girl hurried through the open doorway the young men ceased strug- gling and rose to their feet. Kimi's neck was bleeding, and about a closed eye a great ugly lump had risen. His neat attire was in dirt and disarray.
He looked steadily at Kamauela.
"You might have found some other place than here to do your fighting," he said.
"Enough of that!" retorted the fel- low, angrily. He approached, threat- eningly. "If you dare to fight, I will kill you!"
"I have too much respect for "
He glanced with his one eye toward the house. Then, hearing Mele's slip- pered feet again on the stone flooring of the hale, he passed out through a vine-grown pucapa and made his way down the narrow street in the direction of the apothecary.
"The pua-a!" muttered Kamauela
THE NIGHT OF THE KONA
237
just then, as Male's face, pain drawn and white, appeared in the doorway.
"He is not, but you are — and a cow- ard," she breathed, looking upon the vain-glorious youth. "But go away — my mother will not live."
"My father will save her. Is it best that I go quick and tell him?" It was his gentlest, most pleading tone. He hoped in her hour of greatest trial and of his blackest disgrace to win one look, one word of forgiveness.
"No!" she cried. "No, I say; 'tis neither his medicine nor your conduct that will help my poor mother. Go, and please do not come back!"
A sneer overspread his features. "Ah, you, Mele, you will be sorry. The old man of Kimi's medicine will kill your mother and you will love Kimi then, heh? Ha, ha! you are a fool, you Mele. That Kimi would be glad she die — then he have you and the hale, and all the land your father work so hard to get! Ha, ha! you don't see —but I see!"
While Mele stood in the doorway of the little hale, bravely holding back her tears, the crafty Kamauela, pleased with the thrust he had given, strode from the yard.
Meanwhile Kimi, having appeared somewhat later than usual at the drug store, was met by his father's irritable- query :
"What kept you ?" Then in a differ- ent tone, noting his son's bruised face : "Why, what is this, Kimi?"
When Kimi explained the unusual occurrence, the father's anger rose and bitter words were used about the ka- huna and his family.
"Ah, but Mele is worth fighting for, Kimi," he consoled, "and you were right as to the medicine, my son. If the widow will take it she will surely live."
Kimi was doctoring his face, and seeing that his father lingered, urged : "Do not stay on my account, father. You are weary after the long, hot day. Go, for mother will be waiting and the kona will soon break."
And so the father, agreeing that the kona would in all likelihood keep cus-
tomers indoors, and pressing his lips to the swollen face, passed out of the little apothecary, and was soon lost to sight in the fast-falling darkness.
The hours that followed were the longest Kimi had ever known. Only the wild beating of the rain against the front windows of the little store, dashed in bucketfuls by the fierce kona coming up from the south, and the thundering of terrific waves on the beach, bore him company during the first hours of the night. Scarce a soul moved abroad in the dark, water- drenched streets. Even little Willie Punahoa, who lived but a few doors .away over the bakery did not visit him the hour after supper, as his cus- tom was. It was indeed a hard storm when it kept Willie from feasting his eyes upon the candies in their card- board boxes in the covered glass show- case.
How Kimi wished that the storm would cease and that Willie would come! Then he would offer him an extra portion of the long sweet sticks to carry a message to Mele; just a few words to ask of the mother, for it would never do to speak of love after the events of the evening. Oh, to think of the insult that had been offered her in that boisterous conduct! Perhaps she would think him a coward, unwill- ing to do battle for his lady love ! Oh, if he had only not gone!
At the hour of ten, the usual time for turning the key in the lock of the street door, and for extinguishing all the lamps save one, which cast its dull glare through the globes of green and red in the window, Kimi sought his narrow couch in the small room at the back, and after connecting the bell- cord, which at night reached to the street entrance, he threw himself wear- ily upon the coverlet. He had decided that he would not undress, and that in case the kona would mitigate its fury he would climb the long hill to Mele's home, even though it might be late, and ask of the mother. But it seemed as if the storm grew louder in its fury with each passing moment, and its very music lulled him in his pain and
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perplexity. And he fell into a trou- bled sleep.
As he slept he dreamed: He saw himself standing in a far-off grave- yard, and a vast concourse was there. A body, covered with flowers and with leis about the feet and arms, was be- ing lowered into a grave. The face shone quite white, and at first he knew not who the dead person was. But as he shifted his gaze, he saw Mele, the tears streaming down her beautiful cheeks, her hands clasped in agony. And beside her stood Kamauela, close to her, giving her support. And on the face of Kamauela was a fearful look — a leer, a something of inward satisfaction. The people who had gathered were listening to the words of a man who was talking rapidly and waving his arms. He could hear the man's words, and they drove into his soul. "My friends," the man was say- ing, "my friends, this is what we see when our people disown our gods, Lo- nopuha and Koleamoku! The sick die, the well are made sick ! Our peo- ple go to the false god of the haoles, the god that was hung on a cross, and they ask us to think he can save us. The haoles give us their false medicine and we die! She — this one here — did take their red liquids and she is dead."
The man stopped speaking. His tawny face was covered with sweat; cold beads stood out upon his massive forehead. Cold beads were upon his hands. And with one of these hands he pointed to Kimi as he turned about. And all eyes, save those of Mele, were upon Kimi.
"There is the murderer of this wo- man— he and his father, with their vile concoctions. This wahine would not listen to the akuas whose good words and healing balm it was in my power to bring her. No ! but she gave her spirit into the keeping of a strange god, and her body to the ministrations of such as he — that Kimi there!"
Then it was that the crowd turned upon Kimi, standing afar off and alone, and would rend him to pieces. But he cried aloud to Mele : "O Mele, thou dost know I did not kill thy dear
mother! For love of thee and of her I would not! I call upon the Virgin to be witness of the truth!"
Suddenly he was wakened by the tingling of the little night bell above his bed, and he wondered who could have a mission so urgent as to brave the fierce kona.
While he was thus thinking he lighted the candle upon the nearby table, and then passed sleepily, fever- ishly, out into the little store. He stumbled along, and the flicker of his candle lighted up the rows of flagons, bottles and jars upon the shelves.
Though the night was black and the rain fell like a moving film down the glass panes, the faint light showed him the storm-drenched form of Mele standing outside. Pain and subdued terror were in her face, and her hair fell in long, wet wisps about her thinly clad shoulders.
"Mele! What brings you here?" he asked as he opened the door and let her in.
"Oh, Kimi, my mother — my mother — she is so still and white ! You must hurry, Kimi — here "
She thrust into his hands a little white paper, much soiled.
"You must hurry, Kimi, poor boy" — even for the moment she looked up- on the swollen face — "mother is so still, so white, and I must be back soon!"
With the paper spread before him on the rude counter, Kimi was already mixing the well known formula. He tried to be wide awake, but his dream was still before him, and with ner- vous hands he worked. Once he even introduced the wrong ingredients, and he had to commence all over again.
Though he worked quickly, the time was interminable to the girl, and when he handed the phial to her she re- warded him with but a sad smile; and before he could say more than a word she was gone in the outer darkness. He followed to the door, and peered anx- iously into the kona filled night, and his heart wildly urged him to follow. But that, he thought, would be useless, knowing that already Mele had flown
THE LIGHT WITHOUT
239
with the fleetness of the wind on her half-mile journey.
"Such a night, too!" he whispered to himself. "May God care for her in the storm and for the sick one on the hill!"
Slowly and painfully the youth closed the door, turning the key as he did so, and picked up the yellow «candle shedding its dim glare from the nearby counter. Then he remembered that in his haste he had not returned the flag- ons to their shelves. He was tired and worn, but it would not do to leave them thus out of their places. Perhaps his father might arrive earlier than usual in the morning and he would not be pleased to see such evidence of carelessness.
As he held aloft the candle, almost idly scanning the shelves, he was sur- prised to note that a large flagon filled with a brownish fluid, one of the chief items of the prescription, was in its place. He did not remember having taken it down. He was sure he had not put it back.
A sudden terror gripped his heart. The space adjoining that of the black flagon was empty — and there upon the counter was the glass retainer that be- longed in that place.
"Oh, good Jesus!" cried Kimi. He reached with trembling hands and took the great bottle, with its red liquid, and anxiously examined it. Yes, it was plain that he had poured out that leer- ing red stuff : the fiery skull and cross- bones seemed to be looking at him with bloody eyes. He would have fallen but the jutting brass shelves gave him support. He still held the mocking flagon between his trembling hands, his eyes fixed in a stare upon the warning emblem pasted to its side. Then, with a muttered word, half curse, half prayer, he threw the flagon crashing to the floor.
In an instant he was vividly awake, and as he realized the awful conse- quences of this mistake, the perspira- tion streamed from his heart, to be frozen upon his face and hands.
"She will die Oh, the dream! —
and I am the murderer!"
For a moment he fell to his knees and lifted his eyes to the dark ceiling in appealing, agonizing prayer — heart- rending words begging for mercy and forgiveness. For the time being his very life seemed to have lurched from him, and his soul looked upon him as the destroyer of all that was good and beautiful.
He rose again to his feet, and for- getting coat or hat, rushed in the direc- tion of the door. But again the bell in the little back room was tinkling a feeble but urgent message. Impulsively he turned to go and inquire of its wants, but once more he faced the wet panes of the front, and there, in the dim outside, but more feverishly anx- ious than ever, was again the face of Mele. Her hands were pressed wildly against the door glass, as if she would push it in. Tears mingled with the rain from her hair, coursed down her cheeks.
"Oh, my little Mele, have you come rightly to accuse me?" gasped Kimi, forgetting that she could not possibly have reached her home and returned in the brief interval.
"Accuse you, Kimi?" she wailed. "No, 'twas he, Kimi, that kahuna's son — 'twas he who broke the bottle and spilled the good medicine in the dark- ness. But, oh, hurry! Kimi, hurry! for mother was so still and white!"
"Thank thee, O Jesus!" murmured the boy. And he kissed her face, her hands and her hair.
Then once more, but with steady and sure as well as deft hands, he filled the prescription lying still upon the counter, scarcely conscious of the anx- ious mien of Mele, so filled was his heart with a double joy. And when he had finished his work he smiled reas- suringly into the face of the drooping girl.
"Now I will go with thee, Mele," he said, "and the phial will not be broken and your good mother will live and bless us! We shall hurry, Mele!"
And together they sped away in the kona.
The Assimilation of the Immigrant
By Frank B. Lenz
Immigration Secretary Y. /A. C. A., San Francisco
IN THIS PAPER I shall not attempt a discussion of the immigration problem, either in regard to re- striction or non-restriction of immi- grants. It remains for the Federal government to determine our policy on this point. It is the duty of Congress to restrict the undesirables from other countries, and this, I think, it has done to a satisfactory degree. But the fact remains that there are to-day some fifteen million foreign born peoples re- siding in the United States who have come from practically every country of the globe. What is our attitude to- ward these people ? Do we wish to see them become a part of the American body politic ? Is it our desire to grant them naturalization, thus giving them the privileges of American citizens? Can we assimilate them? Will they make desirable citizens?
I am of the firm opinion that the vast majority of the foreigners now in the United States can be successfully assimilated by our American institu- tions.
We here in California should give the closest attention to the question of assimilating the alien because at the present time twenty per cent of our population is from across the seas. The new gateway across Panama makes California almost as accessible to the Southern European as the Eastern States are now. In San Francisco at the present time seventy-five per cent of the population is foreign born or children of foreign born parents.
Any sudden influx of aliens will af- fect our political, industrial, social, economic and religious life very acutely. We cannot say that the for-
eigner brings with him many severe problems, but we can say that his pres- ence in large numbers will greatly in- tensify and aggravate our existing problems.
What are the assimilative agencies ? Some of the most important are the libraries, playgrounds, the press, the churches, the political parties, the so- cial settlements and the labor unions. But to my mind the most potent factor in the assimilative process is the school.
Libraries. — Libraries tend to assimi- late only those classes of immigrants which are far enough advanced to take advantage of books and magazines. If the books printed in foreign languages deal with subjects that are truly Ameri- can, then the library becomes a vital force. But in the city of Los Angeles I recently found that the Russian peo- ple of Boyle Heights were circulating a subscription list among themselves to provide newspapers, books and mag- azines in their own language, because they wished to keep in touch with the social and economic development of their own country.
In the city of San Francisco there are six branch libraries, fifteen deposit stations and one main library. The McCreary branch is in a district in- habited largely by Scandinavians. The North Beach branch is in the heart of the Italian quarter, and the Potrero station furnishes reading matter for Russians and Italians. Each of the deposit stations carries about six hun- dred books, a number of which are in the French, Spanish, German, Italian and Russian languages. Few of the books, however, deal with things
THE ASSIMILATION OF THE IMMIGRANT
241
American. Most of the books drawn from the North Beach branch by the Italians are on travel, history and biography.
The County Library Law of Cali- fornia made it possible for every county in California to provide itself with good literature. Alameda County seems to have taken the lead in the development of this idea, and at present has seventeen branch libra- ries in the following towns: Alameda, Alvarado, Centerville, Decoto, Hay- ward, Irvington, Livermore, - Mission San Jose, Mt. Eden, Newark, Niles, Pleasanton, San Lorenzo, Sunol, Warm Springs, Dublin and Albany. During 1912 the total circulation of books from these branches was 44,968.
Many of the small towns have noth- ing in the way of entertainments in the evening. A radioptican and four hundred interesting postal cards were purchased, and with this equipment "picture shows" were given once a week in the different towns. The people attended in large numbers, and the experiment proved a success, es- pecially in Alvarado, San Lorenzo and Decoto, where the majority of the in- habitants are Portuguese. The attend- ant at Decoto is a native of Portugal and has done good work among his people in interesting them in the li- brary. The selection of Portuguese books and periodicals was left largely in his hands. Books and bulletins on civics have been made accessible at practically all these branches.
The libraries can do much more to educate the foreigner than they are doing at present. They should in- crease their number of foreign vol- umes, that deal with American life and industry, and then distribute them to the various factories and districts where the foreigner works, in order to cultivate his taste for reading. They should open their spare rooms for club meetings and classes in English to foreigners.
Playgrounds. The recreation cen- ters and playgrounds are of great edu- cational value in the immigrant's life. To counteract the desire to go to sa-
loons for drinks and meals, we find many playgrounds equipped with lunch counters and a few inviting tables in an especially fitted room, where simple meals and coffee and co- coa are served. Public comfort sta- tions with each playground and field house are a great comfort as well as an educational means for cleanliness. They also keep men from going into the saloons.
The libraries in connection with the playgrounds, with their stock of for- eign books and magazines, play an im- portant part in the development of the emigrant.
The field house auditoriums are al- ways available to clubs and societies which want to entertain by theatricals, musicales and dancing.
It is no uncommon sight to see the Russian, Jew, Greek and Italian use the auditorium for theatricals of their own.
The objects of playgrounds are (1) to keep children off of the streets; (2) to give them wholesome play without compulsion; (3) to develop a law abid- ing spirit to offset the widespread gang movement which cannot be controlled by police methods.
The city of Los Angeles maintains a splendid system of fifteen play- grounds. The playgrounds, at Violet street, Recreation, Center and Slauson are in or near the foreign districts, and are constantly in touch with Mexicans, Spaniards, Italians, Negroes and Rus- sians.
San Francisco operates nine play- grounds, an insufficient number, but equipped with good apparatus and grounds. Three playgrounds, the Jackson, the North Beach and the Hamilton, are doing a great deal for the foreign children of the city. A special and very important feature of the North Beach playground, which is located in the Italian Quarter, is the open air swimming pool.
Oakland's system of fifteen play- grounds is reaching practically every district in the city. The following playgrounds are located in distinctly foreign districts : Bay View, de Frem- 5
242
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ery, 32d and Peralta, Franklin and Tompkins. The predominating attend- ance at the Tompkins playground is foreign. The playground is a big fac- tor in the Americanization of the im- migrant, for it gives him American standards of recreation and social life.
The Press. Foreign papers printed in this country convey American prin- ciples to the foreigner. Some of them discuss political, social and economic issues such as English papers do, and in this way tend to change the immi- grant's thought and activity. There are more than twenty-five foreign newspapers and journals printed in San Francisco. Most of these publi- cations render good service to America by putting the immigrant in sympathy with our ideals and institutions.
The Church. The church does some- thing to Americanize the immigrant, but in another sense it acts as a hin- drance. Its greatest influence is in molding the morals of the immigrant.
Many nationalities comprising the great bulk of immigration belong to the same denomination — the Catholic. The church tends to bring American- ized immigrants into association with un-Americanized immigrants. It tells him v/hat the new laws are, and how they differ from those of his na- tive country. It tells him what the new country expects of him socially, politi- cally and industrially. The church does something to obliterate slum con- ditions, thus raising the immigrant's standard of life and also making it possible for other Americanized forces to affect him.
The Protestant churches exert con- siderable influence among immigrants, particularly among the Germans and Scandinavians. Their influence is more rapid and permanent than in the case of the Catholic and Jewish churches because they do not offer much resistance to the introduction of the English language.
Political Parties. The influence of politics has done much to assimilate foreigners. In 1900, 56.8 per cent of foreign-born males of voting age in the United States were naturalized, 83 per
cent had filed their first papers, 14.9 per cent were unknown, and 20 per cent were aliens. Thus politics direct- ly affects considerably more than the majority of immigrants.
The effect of politics depends upon local conditions. On the one hand, in many of the large industrial centers the political "boss" has some control over the immigrant job. He orders him to vote for a certain candidate, and the immigrant, through fear, votes as he is told. Under such conditions the bal- lot is not an exercise of a right but of a compulsory order; such a condition does not mean the participation in government by the multitude, and cer- tainly does not lead to a condition in which the workmen will participate in the control of industry. It tells the immigrant that his "job" belongs to him not because of his right to work, but because of the pleasure of some other person.
On the other hand, in the case of those immigrants who are not under the control of the political "boss," poli- tics is one of the most striking differ- ences between American life and life in their native country. When they vote it is an expression of their will, and inevitably spurs them on to learn how to express that will more intelli- gently. It tells them that they are a part of society; that they have a choice in the control of their actions and that their interests are not merely private, but are public. Every important step in our political system, to them, means further adoption of American life.
Social Settlements. I found in San Francisco four settlements which are constantly doing work among the im- migrant class. The names of these settlements are as follows: Telegraph Hill Settlement, People's Place, San Francisco Settlement Association, Nurses' Settlement. All have visiting nurses who do valuable educative work among the immigrant families in mat- ters of hygiene and sanitation. Dis- pensary service is a large part of the work. Socials and plays are held at regular intervals at the Settlement houses. Classes in cooking, sewing,
THE ASSIMILATION OF THE IMMIGRANT
243
garden work, gymnasium and folk dancing are held.
In Oakland, the East Oakland Set- tlement and the Oakland Social Set- tlement are located in foreign districts, especially in districts inhabited by Italians and Portuguese.
Labor Unions. The influence of la- bor unions is generally limited to the first generation. Their effect has hitherto been of short duration because of the movement toward unskilled labor in the large industries does not permit laborers to be organized.
But some of the most important ac- tivities of the trade unions which are Americanized factors are as follows:
The union teaches the immigrant self government. It is the first place where they learn to govern their own actions and to obey officers which they them- selves elect. Here he can state his grievances, and here he can vote with no fear of punishment from a superior force, as in his own country.
It throws different nationalities into united groups, so that the foreign na- tionality of any one of them becomes lost. They then adopt the common way of thinking and acting, which is American.
It often brings foreigners into direct association with members of the unions who have already been assimilated. The new comers then see the differ- ences between the customs of these as- similated workmen and their own.
Many unions require that every member be a citizen of the United States,' or to have declared his inten- tion of becoming one. This is an in- ducement to the foreigner to become naturalized.
Unions raise the immigrant's wages, reduce his hours and improve his phy- sical working conditions. It enables him to adopt the American social and moral standard of living.
The School. The importance of the
day school as an Americanization force lies chiefly in its effect upon the sec- ond generation. Yet, indirectly, it af- fects the adult in that the children take home to their parents that which they have learned at school. The following are some of the main assimilative ac- tivities of the public school :
(a) The school at once throws the -children of various nationalities into mutual relationship. This breaks up the standards and habits of any one nationality, and in order to progress, the child finds that he must adopt a common way of thinking and acting, which means that he must adopt the American standard. Newcomers to foreign colonies see very soon that his friends become partly Americanized, and will learn American customs and habits from his foreign brother.
(b) The public school teaches the children the English language, which enables him to associate with Ameri- cans and various other nationalities, even outside of the school and his own district.
(c) The schools tend to break up hostilities between nationalities. The teacher prevents hostilities in the school room, and this does away with strife on the playground.
(d) It teaches American traditions and the history of our institutions, un- der which comes a growth of patriot- ism. Race ties are broken up and a social solidarity is secured.
(e) The public school by the intro- duction of manual training not only gives the child some idea of American industrial methods, but teaches him that manual work is here the universal rule and not a stamp of inferiority.
Other Forces. The theatre, popular amusements, clubs, private societies, all act as assimilators. The American child meets some of the most potent Americanizing influences on the streets of our large cities.
Panama-Pacific Exposition
The /Aecca of the Nation
By Hamilton Wright
WITH the summer season in full swing and the advent of tens of thousands of visitors from all parts of the American continents and the Orient, and with many from Europe, the Panama-Pacific International Exposition to-day pre- sents a scene of unrivaled activity and splendor.
Notable men in every branch of en- deavor are thronging to the city of Palaces at the Golden Gate, and the verdict is that nowhere in Ihe world is assembled a series of such monumen- tal architectural marvels as is now to be beheld at San Francisco. The rec- ord attendance from all parts of the country which met the opening days of the Exposition has been followed by the still greater attendance of the summer months, and tens of thousands who have not yet beheld the Exposi- tion, but who have had news of its
progress, are preparing for the journey during the early fall.
Of all periods in which to visit the Exposition, the season which will en- sue between August and the closing of the portals of this greatest and most comprehensive of world's expositions is the most attractive in which to be- hold its glories and partake of its pleasures. The weather during these months is equable and sunny, and the charm of Indian summer lingers long
er that period has passe- i Eastern States.
Up to the first of August, 9,250,000 persons had passed through the Expo- sition turnstiles, while large numbers of others had been admitted on passes, in parades, and through the special gates. The income from admissions from February 20th to July llth amounted to $1,568,126.80. The re- ceipts from concessions amounted to
$676,810.02; the miscellaneous income was $775,337.40. The gross income since the opening on February 20th un- til July llth is $3,020,274.22.
With the advent of August, the num- ber of special trains and special par- ties from all parts of the United States is greatly augmented, while the indi- vidual travel from remote sections is astonishingly large. For the first time thousands of Americans are crossing the Rockies and viewing the far West of the United States.
Not alone are the vast exhibit pal- aces which contain more than four hundred thousand displays garnered from all parts of the globe, being eagerly inspected by visitors, but thou- sands from the States of the Union are registering in the pavilion of their State. From the thundering Palace of Machinery, with its giant engines, pumping plants, batteries, printing presses and linotype machines in ac- tion, through the vast Palace of Trans- portation, where the earliest types of locomotives contrast with the giant mo- gul engines of the present day, where sections of huge ocean liners are seen
in contrast with tiny models, into the great Palace of Agriculture, where threshing machines, harvesting ma- chines, reapers, sowers, are beheld in operation, into the Palace of Food Pro- ducts where the closely packed throngs watch every step in the preparation of edibles, and into the other vast pal- aces an amazed and delighted throng daily progresses from the opening of the Exposition in the morning until the close of the exhibit palaces at night.
A feature pleasing to the many thou- sands of visitors is that active meas- ures are taken for their entertainment. There are upon the grounds no less than fifty-four moving picture shows, wherein are daily displayed without charge in the exhibit palaces and in State and national pavilions, well se- lected and attractive photographs showing the activities of the various States and countries. Lectures ac- company many of the displays, and the visitor is enabled to enjoy scenes from Argentine, China, Japan, the Philippines, the Netherlands, Cuba, Sweden and forty-three other lands,,
while cinematographs of important works such as the Panama Canal, the New York State lock canal, the manu- factories of the great corporations of the United States, and of other inter- esting scenes are displayed without charge.
Wherever practicable throughout the Exposition, machinery is shown in operation, and all steps in the pro- cesses of production from the raw ma- terial to the finished product are illus- trated. A giant laundry operated by latest methods, a knitting machine, a broom factory, a fire hose factory, a coin stamping machine are among other manufactories illustrated in the Palace of Manufactures. In many of the exhibit palaces as well as in the State buildings and national pavilions phonographs add music to the enter- tainment features. Many famous mu- sicians are constantly reaching San Francisco, and band concerts, recitals on the great pipe organ in Festival Hall, or on the pipe organ in the Illi- nois building, or that of the United States Steel Corporation in the Palace of Mines serve to rest visitors after a
tour of the palaces and grounds. Na- tive musicians, such as trained sing- ers from Hawaii, the Hampton Jubilee Singers from the Southern States, the Mormon Choir, the Marimba Band in the Guatemalan Pavilion, the strange chants of the Maorians in the Maori Village, and the war songs of the Sa- moan Islanders, serve to instruct and entertain. Hundreds of open air meet- ings are weekly held upon the grounds, and the sound of ringing salvos and loud cheering echoing through the courts and over the vast exhibit pal- aces is no uncommon event. The bril- liance of full dress uniforms of many nations, the blare of brass bands, the glitter of epaulets and the sight of thousands and even tens of thousands of men in the uniform of the trades or of the fraternal societies, of the United States army or militia make inspiring spectacles at the great center of world events in San Francisco.
In the Palace of Food Products, thousands of visitors daily receive samples prepared by the cooks of many nations, and distributed to the delighted throngs. The free pyro-
Northern rving Court of the Universe.
technics at night, a part of the great illumination plan, where lightning and thunder are simulated with a sem- blance of vivid reality, together with the new uses of night illumination as a decorative art casting the colors of the rainbow in shafts of light far against the heavens, serve to entrance and mystify the visitors.
Many special functions are weekly held in the many State buildings and national pavilions upon the grounds. Dancing, recitals, banquets, luncheons, and other gatherings constantly bring together visitors from similar parts of the world, and serve to instill the Ex- position with sparkle, life and bril- liancy. Giant parades and pageants are of almost daily occurrence, and dozens of important conventions meet in San Francisco every week, either in the Festival Hall upon the Exposition grounds or in the auditorium at the Civic Center. A constant series of sport events, athletic and marine events, music recitals and receptions are staged. Each of the States and nations holds open receptions, and many important personages, including
governors of States, senators, diplo- mats, dignitaries, captains of industry, leaders in art and science, are con- stantly reaching San Francisco, while hundreds of special trains are throng- ing to the Golden Gate city bearing delegates from all parts of the United States. In every State building visi- tors from the home State are regis- tering, and as many as three thousand names are registered from one State in a single week.
The grounds of the Exposition were never more attractive than at the pres- ent time; and from now on until its close the vast swards of green, and many acres of flowers in riotous fields of color, the palms and pines from distant portions of the globe, will be beheld in vivid contrast with the lofty spires, colonnades, domes and turrets of the Exposition city.
Many thousands of visitors who have thought that because of the war the European nations would not be adequately represented at San Fran- cisco are surprised not alone at the ex- tent and diversity of their representa- tion, but by the care and excellence
CQ
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a I
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
with which each nation has selected its most beautiful and representative products. How many visitors, for ex- ample, would have expected that the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, inde- pendent kingdom in the midst of Eu- rope's turmoil, would have been able to display her glories and her pro- ducts? Though not vast when com- pared with the representation of other countries, Luxembourg has presented a fine display of her arts and indus- tries. Contained in the beautiful booths of Luxembourg are many textiles, rare embroideries, jewelry, perfumes and manufactured wares. A distinct fra-
are upon exhibition. The Persian ex- hibit in this palace is becoming the mecca for thousands of persons who desire to see the rare offerings of that country, whose ancient art treasures are even now sought by thousands in preference to the modern machine- made works. In this exhibit are shown bits of pottery taken from the site of the ancient city of Ragga. For many years workmen have been busily en- gaged in digging and bringing forth the hidden treasures from the thou- sand-foot depths. A single royal vase which was found scattered over a wide area, and which is glued together in
Method by which full-grown trees were transplanted to produce effective
backgrounds.
grance pervades the booth and envel- ops it with an enticing aura.
One of the features of the Luxem- bourg exhibit is a peasant's cottage, before which are counters with goods, and young typical Luxembourg misses dispense the wares that are for sale.
In the Persian exhibit, in the Palace of Manufactures, many bits of exqui- site pottery, pieces of ancient armory, silver bric-a-brac and wonderful woven rugs so rare and priceless that their real value will never be determined
pieces, is worth not less than $15,000. In the royal pottery collection are 150 pieces, with a total value of not less than a quarter of a million dollars. This includes the famous Bowl of Contemplation, 900 years old and one that could not be duplicated by a sin- gle collector. The famous Persian rugs represent every possible school of weaving and embroidery. There are velvets, brocades and cashmeres of every century, from the ninth to the fifteenth. There is the cloth of gold
£
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!
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
of the 14th century, including one that shows Adam, Eve, the tree of lite, the cypress and the apple, a rare bit of embroidery that has been sought by every collector in the world, but which still remains in the possession of the Shah of Persia. The royal rug of camel's wool that has been used but once each year during the past two centuries during the royal reception, is on exhibition. More than one hun- dred women worked upon this creation for twelve years; and as it is spread before the visitor, he is informed that it is not for sale, but that its value is in excess of $100,000. The priceless gir- dle worn by the Shah Abbie in the 16th century is displayed, as well as a reproduction of the Shah's room, set up in tapestries, tables, chairs and desks, none of which are less than four hun- dred years old. Many of the rugs have experienced the tread of a million feet during all the centuries; but the handwork of the ancient Persians had been wrought so well that there is little or no indication of wear.
In the Italian pavilion, in the Italian section of the Palace of Varied Indus- tries, and in the Palace of Manufac- tures, is a display of what is pro- nounced to be one of the two finest col- lections of laces in the world. Only one other collection in the world, it is said, is its rival — that now owned by the Dowager Queen Margherita of Italy, to whom the world is indebted for the revival of the rare art of Ital- ian lace making. The laces were all made in Venice or on the island of Bu- rano, close by. Hundreds of skilled employees have made them on cush- ions by needle. Among these magnifi- cent exhibits is a point de Venice table cloth of the 14th century, valued at $15,000; a Burano lace scarf of the 13th century, with a* foundation of tulle and a border of Rosselina lace. This piece is absolutely priceless, and it may be said that the thread used to make Burano lace is so fine that the girls working on it are obliged to wear two pairs of glasses; a teacloth from the 17th century represents Raffaelo's painting of the twelve hours in point
de Venice and filet; a small lace cush- ion top about 20 by 39 inches depicts Botticelli's "Spring," and is valued at $400. A beautiful tea cloth represents Guide Reni's "Aurora." A parasol of Burano lace modestly represents $800, while when one is shown a small strip of Argentan and is told it is worth $1,000, and a small metro of Parpari- zenice is $1,100, the visitor realizes how milady cannot help being extrava- gant. No wonder she must be almost forcibly dragged away from this dis- play, and she begins to wish she also were a collector of laces. Their charm is irresistible. The exhibit is in charge of Pietro Cattadori, the largest col- lector of laces in the world, represent- ing the Scuolo Burano, which is undei the patronage of Dowager Queen Map gherita.
In addition to the unusual collection of laces, Italy displays many valuable bronzes, marbles, specimens of carved furniture, painted velvets, silks, hats, musical instruments, motor cars, wines and food products. A large and beau- tiful collection of modern Italian sculp- tures by many of the foremost sculp- tors of the day is displayed in the Pal- ace of Manufactures. These include the famous statue, Christ emerging from the Pagan Temple, by Professor Raffaelo Romanelli, who is pronounced by many notable critics to be the fore- most of European sculptors ; the Foun- tain with the Frog by the same sculp- tor; Napoleon at Moscow, by Prof. Venetti; the Pompeiian Girl and Al- gerian Girl, Maternal Love, and other striking decorative groups. The bril- liant contrasts in the statuary are se- cured through the combined use of marble and bronzes, which give a life- like effect to the figures. The beauti- ful Italian pavilions which won the grand prix for foreign pavilions at the Exposition, is always crowded with eager and enthusiastic throngs of sight- seers. In the pavilion, which is in reality not one, but eight interconnect- ing structures grouped around Italian courts, one finds the architecture of typical cities at the height of the Ital- ian Renaissance.
C. C. Moore, President of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition.
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
An elaborate exhibit of especial in- terest at this time is that of Switzer- land, which, although a neutral nation, has 350,000 men in arms guarding her borders. In the adequate commercial and artistic representation of Switzer- land, there are represented the chief watchmaking companies of the Re- public, as also hundreds of displays illustrating the household handicrafts. The Berner Wood Carvers Association of Marringen has an exhibit of the marvelous wares which only the Swiss, in their winter nights, have learned to execute. Tiny figures of a thousand sorts will be borne away from the Ex- position to the ends of the earth as sou- venirs of the remarkable Swiss exhibit. Rare laces, skillful embroiders, hand- carved ivories from Bale, fans and bric-a-brac are in the display. A char- acteristic Swiss chalet has been erected in the Palace of Varied Industries by one of the leading chocolate com- panies.
The displays of the Scandinavian nations, Norway, Sweden and Den- mark, each of which is represented in a State pavilion in characteristic ar- chitecture, have never been surpassed at an American Exposition. The art exhibit of Norway, part of which came from Venice on the Jason and the rest of which was shipped on the Jultan- dra, which took an Arctic course far to the north of the Orney Islands to avoid the war zone, is displayed in the annex of the Palace of Fine Arts, and occu- pies five rooms devoted to painting and sculpture, and two rooms to graphic art. The Norwegian Pavilion, always crowded with visitors, is filled with dioramas and panoramas portraying the scenic charms of the country, the northern fjords, the lofty, spruce-clad mountains, the fishing industry; and there are many models of ships of the fleet of merchant steamers which carry the shipping of the kingdom. Du- plicates in miniature of ancient war craft used by the berserkers of the early days and ancient galleys of the type the Norwegians used when they first learned of the shores of North America are exhibited.
Another European display of extra- ordinary interest is that of the Repub- lic of France. This is largely portrayed in the French national pavilion, al- though France has made an elaborate display of art works in the exhibit palaces including the Palace of Fine Arts, and is notably represented with her wines, her machinery and laces in the Palace of Manufactures. One of the interesting exhibits in the latter palace is a new type of rapid firing gun now employed by the legions of France. In the French pavilion are many priceless relics and antiques, as well as displays of modern commercial art, the latter including remarkable exhibits of life size models draped in the latest Parisian fashions. The most noted modistes of Paris reveal the lat- est gowns, and the styles which they decree are accepted as the ultimatum of the fashionable world.
Included in the French display are models of the famous French dolls, priceless Gobelin tapestries of Louis IV, relics of Rochambeau, Lafayette, Balzac, Victor Hugo and other French notables. The four great tapestries which, with many modern tapestries, are in the pavilion, belong to a suite of eleven, the cartoons for which were the work of Le Brun, the great painter, who was appointed to take charge of the Gobelin factory in the reign of Louis XIV. They were made between the years 1664 and 1683, and represent different scenes in the life of Alexan- der the Great, the conquests of the wild tribes of Asia being the theme of the scenes, a theme which lends it- self to graphic portrayal because of the slaves, elephants and mighty though crude implements of war employed at that time. These tapestries are of enor- mous value, reaching into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, not only on ac- count of their age and the softness of their colors, but because they are ex- ceedingly rare, and are, as well, the achievements of the greatest artist of the period of Louis XIV.
The superb Netherlands pavilion, its giant towers rising far into the air and surmounted by many flagstaffs,
Byzantine door, Palace of Education.
OVERLAND MONTHLY
is attracting the attention from visi- tors in all parts of the world. Fish- ing scenes in Holland are reproduced in magnificent panoramas and dio- ramas. Models of railway cars, of steamships, displays of tin and rubber and sugar from the Netherlands' opu- lent possessions in the East Indies, to- gether with illuminated dioramic
terraces up their precipitous sides. One is here borne into a far country, into the Orient of spices, of rich mines, and vast plantations with all its fasci- nation and strange life.
Portugal is represented by an attrac- tive pavilion; and Belgium, through the co-operation of France, has a great section entirely its own in the French
scenes with alcoves from which the sightseer may gaze down upon appar- ently distant fields dotted with tiny factories, great irrigation flumes ; while nearer, as though upon the edge of some frowning cliff, is seen the tropic foliage of the country, and farther away rise the lofty mountains indented by rice fields that rise like steps in
national pavilion. Spain is represented with many priceless paintings and works of art, and in the commercial section by her wines, tapestries and valuable antiques.
Thus it is that the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, despite the greatest war in the history of the world, presents a brilliant and unexam-
THE COURT OF THE UNIVERSE. 257
pled display of the artistic achieve- never been the good fortune of Ameri-
ments of the European nations, and he cans to behold in America so wonderful
who visits the Exposition may rest as- and comprehensive a collection of Eu-
sured that each has displayed those ropean displays as at this Exposition,
arts and crafts in which it has at- in which thirteen European nations are
tained prominence, and that it has participating.
The Court of the Universe
(Panama-Pacific Exposition)
Beautiful as morning on the hills
Its gleaming columns soar against the light,
The Court to cosmic service consecrate.
About it blow the winds of all the seas.
Beneath its feet in strong-lipped melody
The waves purr out their far-brought song.
Above it spheres the blue of cloud-sailed sky
As fair as dreams of heaven on summer morn
That stir with tremblings as of angels' wings
Dipping afar from some far-gloried sphere.
And in the air about it is a chant
All made of golden sounds that lift the soul —
Bright stairs of melody the spirit mounts
To catch the wing-tip gleam of Things Beyond.
Night-high above it in the purple deeps
Stars the bright planet of its destiny —
To offer wide-flung hospice to the world,
Where peaceful in a peaceful land may meet
All men, all tongues, all nations, and all climes.
While in the elder hemisphere War rolls
His bloody thunders on the groaning earth,
And cries of men, and prayers of anguished wives,
And helpless children's innocent, starved wails
Go up in hideous clamor to the skies,
Here there is peace, and welcome, for all men.
Here, in this high-set Court, whose columns
Seek aloft into the blue, Grecian in line,
Gothic in height of heavenward aspiration,
Of all the world, for all the world, in all,
They meet, all men, heavy-handed with their gifts;
With trophies — not of war, nay! never that! —
But gains of peace in bloodless conflict won
By work of hands, and might of brain and will;
The precious things that they have patient wrought,
Or delved for, carven, welded, painted, hewn —
All things that mean the onward, upward course
From out the Darkness to the Light beyond,
Hither they bring, man's offering to man.
JESSIE MAUDE WYBRO.
Surveying the table from an overhead branch.
Innkeeper to Birds and Squirrels
DRAWINGS BY ANDREW P. HILL.
By Amanda Aathews
THE FURRED and feathered guests cared not a wheat grain for the traditions of the hospice, though even within their brief memories it had been Jack London's outdoor dining-room. That was before the story writer left Wake-Robin Lodge at Glen Ellen, to dwell on his own ranch hard by.
The room which I occupied during a stay at Wake-Robin Lodge last fall looked directly into this deserted syl- van place of refreshment. On the other side of it flowed Wildwater Creek. The refectory was sheltered and partly inclosed by manzanita, buckeye, oak and maple. Its furnish- ings were of the rudest — a rusty cook- stove which no longer sent smoke up into the branches, a roughly-carpen- tered kitchen table and a larger dining table covered with weather damaged oilcloth. Two home-made benches and a prostrate tree trunk were still hospit- ably in place about this abandoned board, just as when in Jack London's time, laughter, socialism, jests and
Spencerian philosophy mingled with the wind in the tree-tops and the trill- ing of the creek.
"Why not perpetuate the good cheer of this already dedicated spot by enter- taining here humanity's little cousins of the wood?" thought I, and scattered grain on stove and tables.
The birds and squirrels were right- fully distrustful. All summer the vicinity had been pervaded by noisy and disturbing campers. Fall had banished the campers but had brought the hunters in their stead. Small won- der that the wood folk did not trust their human kin!
The blue jays flew by the bower with mocking screech. "Nothing doing! Nothing doing!" I must crave indul- gence for the bluejay's language. He is a natural rowdy and his raucous squawk can be translated only into slang.
Then I tried the experiment of plac- ing wheat in troughs made of fluted moldings, which were fastened among the branches above the tables. Thus
INNKEEPER TO BIRDS AND SQUIRRELS
259
a bird fluttering casually about would find himself perched, as it were, at a quick-lunch counter.
These molding troughs proved good advertising, for gradually the birds took note of the feast below. After flitting to half a dozen nearby twigs to survey the proposed destination from as many view points, a bird per- son would flash down, snatch a grain or two, and be off in a self inspired panic. Often, after all these prelimi- naries, one would change his mind in mid-air and shoot back to an upper branch for still further cautionary con- sideration.
It was fully a week after my birds had become somewhat accustomed to the stove and small weather-darkened table before they ventured to alight on the oil cloth and this table con- tinued less popular to the end of the season. Did their instincts warn them that they were dangerously conspicu- ous against this whiter ground ? There seemed no other reason for this avoid- ance than the non-conformity of the oilcloth background with nature's pro- tective color scheme.
After registering a number of regu- lar patrons, my next step was to make the spread still more popular by in- creasing the menu with fruits and nuts, lettuce leaves and bits of bread. At once the tables were deserted, and the jays flew off, jeering : "It's all off. It's all off!" Sure enough the sillies were afraid of this strange conglomeration. The intruding objects, however, be- haved with such comforting stolidity that by the end of a week confidence was restored.
' Indeed, it increased most charming- ly : no longer was it look and peck, look and peck, look and — away for no rea- son at all. The guests got past their constrained company manners, and acted out their several natures with free-hearted hilarity. At times the caravansary would be thronged and seldom was it entirely unfrequented during the daylight hours.
Juncos, blue jays and towhees were my regular patrons from the first. The juncos came singly, doubly, trebly
"Righteously distrustful."
and lastly in flocks. The junco be- longs to the fringilline connection, and is so closely related to the snowbird of the Eastern States that "western snow- bird" is another name by which he goes. The variety found about Glen Ellen is a plump little dark tan bird with lighter breast. The males wear navy-blue monklike hoods, while the females affect hoods matching the rest of their plumage.
The juncos' table manners were ex- ceedingly demure — no conversation — only the tapping of their tiny bills. But when they had dined and were perched on adjacent branches, they kept up a "tut! tut!" for all the world like the favorite disapproving inter- jection of old-fashioned people. No one could hear this "tut! tut! tut!" and doubt that they were gossiping about the other guests.
They surely could find nothing to deplore in the conduct of the towhees who behaved most decorously, unless it was that the male towhee usually came alone, and the gossipy juncos may have felt commiseration for the female who must have had to be sat- isfied with hearing what her lord had for dinner. The towhee is a plump, brown, robin-sized bird of simple, un- ambitious spirit and humble habits. He would fly up to the table from be- neath the bushes, where he was ever- lastingly hopping and pecking, help himself modestly and moderately from vthe edge of the table, and fly down home again.
But the buccaneer blue- jays! What opportunities they offered for the eter-
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nal tut-tutting of the juncos! They came in gangs — the jays — and were of two distinct varieties, the Steller and the California, equally striking and picturesque. The Steller jay wears a jetty helmet with high crest, the cloak of a cavalier, short, round and of a velvety black, while the rest of his active person is enveloped in dark, purplish blue. The California jay has no crest, and wears a coat of the brightest imaginable blue, the lapels of which almost meet in front over his light gray waistcoat.
The females of both species dress exactly like the males — tut! tut! tut! shame on them! The Steller jay, with his rakish crest, seems the greater rowdy, but such is not the real case. The California jay, notwithstanding the elegant genuflection he invariably makes when helping himself to a grain, is the low-browed brigand who commits the more atrocious crimes against the eggs and young of other birds. With all their moral shortcom- ings, both jays are nevertheless jolly good fellows, and their dash and bra- vado are most captivating.
Of my furry patrons, the common ground squirrels were the first to ap- pear. The gray and black fleckings of their fur are decidedly pretty, but according to the canons of squirrel beauty their heads are disproportion- ately large and their tails are scrubby. Their manners are correspondingly plebeian. They would fill their cheek pockets so full of wheat that they looked like bad cases of double mumps — scooting to their holes, and back again for more. Slices of apple, how- ever, they would sit up and nibble on the table, holding them genteelly in their front paws, thus showing that, after all, they knew somewhat of squirrel etiquette. Nor were they al- together greedy, for they would delay after dinner to disport themselves most gleefully. One, the most ven- turesome, investigated the stove, and even went so far inside the stovepipe I did not look for him to emerge un- assisted, but part way down, with a mighty scratching and scrambling, he
evidently righted himself, since he emerged covered with soot.
A belated comer at my inn was that tiny electric flash of animal life, the California chipmunk. The dear, perky little chap would dart from stove to tables, and tables to stove, every mo- tion a lightning jerk.
But the "lions," to speak in human parlance, I most desired to entertain at my board were the gray tree squir- rels, with their glorious bushy tails, like curled ostrich plumes. But unfor- tunately they had long been the target for every hunter, and consequently they were the shyest of all the squir- rels. I was aware that several were living in a grove of young redwoods across the creek, and hopefully noted that, day after day, their clucking bark could be heard nearer. Finally an oc- casional one would cross the creek on an air-route of overhead branches. For some days he would not venture down to my bowered tables, but would sur- vey them from his branch of safety, barking and pounding the bough with his tiny front paws in earnest denun- ciation of the whole institution. At last it came about that the tree squir- rels would trail their magnificent brushes through my corridors or curl them over their backs as they partook of the nuts on my board.
It was the way of all the squirrels to hold long, loud, barking or cheep- ing soliloquies off in the brush, appar- ently anent the dangers of the under- taking, but their actual coming was always swift and silent. Chipmunk and ground squirrel came with the short run alternated with full stop which is the characteristic gait of many wild denizens, but the big gray tree squirrel billowed along in a con- tinuous poem of flowing motion.
A covey of mountain quail that ranged up and down the bank of the creek happened to discover the inn late one afternoon, and flew up to the low limbs of a buckeye for chittering con- sultation. Afterwards they made their supper from the wheat scattered on the ground and then went to roost in the buckeye so as to be on hand for
INNKEEPER TO BIRDS AND SQUIRRELS
261
an early breakfast. Such confidence was touching when one considers that the poor things were, at this season, hunted daily from cover to cover.
Their first ceremonious investiga- tion was not repeated; day after day they would file directly up the trail to the bower, led by a self-important little cock with pon-pon crest float- ing proudly backward. As the entire covey scratched among the leaves, manifestly at their ease, they were ab- surdly chicken-like.
By this time the study of social re- lations at the inn was most fascinat- ing. Quail, ground squirrels and blue- jays would all be eating separated by distances of less than a foot. Not once did I observe the least show of hos- tility on the part of any banqueter to- ward another of a different sort.
There were, however, certain rules of precedence observed without their being actively enforced. In general, less in size made way for greater. When the blue- jays came to one table the juncos moved over to the other; when ground or tree squirrel appeared the chipmunk twinkled himself out of the direct path.
On the other hand, the squirrel held himself the social superior of the bird regardless of size. Quail and blue- jay would sidestep a bit for squirrel, but never squirrel for quail, nor blue- jay. Even the chipmunk realized his squirrelship, and would feed blithely right under the beak of a blue-jay, who could have lifted him off the table by the scruff of his neck, but did not, although it is hard to credit the arro- gant jay with deference for his betters.
Family bickerings, however, were endless. There were peckings and chasings among the quail. The blue- jays were engaged in continuous quar- rel. No jay would think of feasting without screeching his call note over and over. Yet when another jay re- sponded, the first would change his cry to one suggesting the crescendo of tomcats threatening combat. The din- ing table was large enough to seat eight humans, but it would hold two jays just long enough for them to set-
tle which one should go and which re- main.
The greater amiability of the juncos may be measured by the fact that six of them could feed peaceably on the yard-square table. The seventh comer, however, was evicted, or stayed at some other junco's expense, the matter being decided by a chippering duel in mid-air above the table. Are they superstitious regarding seven at table, or do six juncos to the yard constitute company and seven a crowd?
Beside the regular boarders, my inn had many transients. A beautiful pair of woodpeckers lighted one day on an oak sapling close by the cookstove, looked the institution over at their •ease, held a consultation, and flew away, never to return. I can only sur- mise that they were on a diet, and also believed in pecking wood for an hour before meals. Other transients that came on rare occasions for a hasty grain were those exquisite scraps of bird life, the wren, titmouse and "wild canary." The last named, gaily suited in gold and olive green, is more cor- rectly designated as the California 'wood warbler. The titmouse, while neutrally colored as the wren, is a piquant chit on account of his very large round black eye and his gray crest, cut quaintly like the Steller blue-jay's.
"What fire burns in that little chest, so frolic, stout and self-possest," writes Emerson of his New England cousin.
These birdlings acted much more at home in the trees close about my win- dow than at the inn. They seemed too timidly domestic for such hurly-burly public feeding. Indeed the wren chirped something about their being, "Content with a little beetle on a quiet bough."
The water thrush, dwelling among the alders of the creek just below my 'spa never showed himself even once. Who can blame this nature poet? Im- aeine his being elbowed by the Philis- tine jays and measured up by the com- placent "tut! tut!" of the juncos! ' After a fortnight observance from
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my window, I managed to introduce myself into the midst of my small peo- ple by taking up my station a few feet 'closer each day. Abrupt motions frightened them, but gentle, swaying movements like wind-stirred boughs did not disturb them. But the first day that I ventured to sit on the autumn leaves between table and stove, the blue-jays were my undoing. The tables were occupied by juncos and towhees, while some quail and a ground squirrel fed at my feet, and a gray squirrel at the top of an oak was considering an approach. The jays darted through the diningroom, squall- ing this warning: "Jigger! Jigger! That's no stump! That's. no stump! Jigger! Jigger! Jigger!"
The gray squirrel heeded, and put four trees between himself and me before he paused to voice his indigna- tion. Juncos and towhees heeded and flew away ; the quail scuttled down the bank. But the braver ground squirrel sat up at attention and looked me over. Seeing no harm in me, and concluding *he was smarter than any blue-jay, he let himself down comfortably and re- sumed his meal. I laughed. The squirrel fled with a comical shriek of
dismay, which I interpreted: "Zounds! That is no stump! I am betrayed."
Nevertheless, it was not long before the jays, too, would feed within reach of my hand — almost. The tree folk accepted my presence, but not with- out more or less constraint and anx- iety. The birds never lighted on me, nor did the squirrels climb me.
If I played at being a sort of Provi- dence to fur and feathers, Stuffed Cal- ico, the Lodge house cat was certainly their Devil. I protected them from him as best I could, but one day in the laundry there was discovered a chip- munk tail which would whisk no more, and my one chipmunk never disported himself about the stove and tables again.
I could not feel myself entirely guiltless of helping to bring about the catastrophe. I had cajoled Stuffed Calico's victim to this doom; he was "butchered to make a writer's holi- day."
< Unfortunate wildlings! It seems that when for our passing pleasure we humans win their confidence, we do but increase their risks already dis- tressingly numerous in a world which they must find most ungentle.
CO/A P E N 5 ATIO N
They pruned my sheltering tree.
I loved each low, wide-spreading, graceful bough, Through which the sunshine sifted down to me.
I mourned them all. But now —
Mine is a wider view,
The opal river, and the brooding sky, The hills in strange, supernal splendors new.
Day's glories flashing by.
So when some fair joy goes Radiant with bloom and blessing, till 'tis past, Love's Hand may to our tear-filled eyes disclose A dearer joy at last.
ELEANOR DUNCAN WOOD.
/Memories of Aark Twain
By William Alfred Corey
W. W. Barnes.
IT WAS Emerson's contention that all history is contained in the bio- graphies of the men and women who participated in or helped to mould events. If so, reminiscence has its historical value, and as the "days of gold" period in the chronology of the West recedes and the pioneers of that romantic time grow older and fewer, their reminiscences grow more valuable.
Herewith are set down some hitherto unpublished incidents culled from the recollections of Mr. W. W. Barnes, of Oakland, concerning Samuel L. Clem- ens while the great humorist was "Roughing It" in Virginia City, Ne- vada. Incidentally, Mr. Barnes is nearing his eightieth year, and has
been a newspaper man ever since he was large enough to hold a stick and reach the cap boxes and old enough to push a pencil. He worked on the Vir- ginia City Union in the early '50's, and he has published or been con- nected with various newspapers in the San Joaquin Valley and other parts of the State until very recent years. In his capacity as a newspaper man, Mr. Barnes has seen much of the history of the West in the making, and has known intimately many famous men.
Barnes met Clemens in Virginia City, Nevada, during the later years of the Civil War. Barnes was then working on the Union, while Clemens was doing his first reportorial work on the rival paper, the Enterprise.
Real news was scarce in Virginia City at times in those days, and as readers of "Roughing It" will remem- ber, the author frankly admits that many of his stories were fabrications. Clemens, it will be remembered, men- tions the load of hay which was made to enter the town from many different directions, and to encounter a wide variety of strange adventures so as to make "news" and fill space.
Mr. Barnes remembers a more sen- sational case in point. Readers of the Enterprise were astonished to find in the paper one day the story of a man named Brown who had massacred his whole family, consisting of a wife and seven children. The killing, said to have been committed on some isolated mountain ranch, was described with all of a young reporter's gory fidelity to detail. After the butchery, the mur- dered had scalped all his victims, filled himself with corn juice and rode into town, where he proudly exhibited his string of scalps and finished the cele-
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bration. Of course, not the smallest part of the story was true, but it sold the paper and helped the reporter to hold his job. Clemens was probably the original yellow journalist.
Mr. Barnes has something to say about the famous Jumping Frog story. This story, "The Famous Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," was the original corner stone of Mark Twain's fame as a humorist. Barnes says Clemens stole the story. The story, before Clemens ever heard of it, was written by Samuel Seabough, and was published in the San Andreas Inde- pendent, the leading newspaper of Calaveras County. Seabough was edi- tor of the Independent. Incidentally, Seabough was himself a picturesque character in that period. He had been a school teacher, was a brilliant writer, and had a marvelously retentive mem- ory. He was author of articles on vari- ous phases of the Civil War that at- tracted national attention. Like so many other newspaper men at that time he was a victim of the liquor habit.
Seabough got the story of the Jump- ing Frog from a man named Parker, who was afterwards a member of the Legislature from Mono County. Par- ker had lost money in betting on the jumping abilities of a frog in a saloon at Mokelumne Hill, which was the county seat of Calaveras County. To recoup his losses, Parker procured a croaker very much resembling the jumping frog of the saloon from Chili Gulch, a frog infested locality near Mokelumne Hill. He pried open the frog's mouth, filled its bulging body with shot, and carrying it to the saloon, boldly challenged the owner of the champion frog to a contest. Then he adroitly managed, without letting the move be seen, to substitute his "loaded" frog for the famous jumper. Naturally, when the line was chalked on the bar-room floor, and the frogs, under the interested gaze of the on- lookers, were simultaneously tickled with a straw, Parker's frog won in a jump, as it were, and he had the laugh and the glory and the coin on his side.
Seabough, Mr. Barnes says, wrote the story and published it in his paper. Clemens simply warmed it over, dished it up as his own, and got all the credit.
Mr. Barnes also well remembers the episode of the Sanitary Sack of Flour, which is a part of Nevada's annals. A mayoralty election was to be held near the town of Austin. A man named Gridley was the Republican candidate, while the Democratic candidate's name was Beal. It was agreed between the rivals that the unsuccessful aspirant was to carry a fifty-pound sack of flour to the top of a hill near the town.
Beal was elected, and Gridley cheer- fully toted the sack of flour to the top of the hill, under the eyes of most of the town's population. Having done this, he proposed that the flour be sold to the highest bidder for the benefit of the National Sanitary Commission, which was the forerunner of the pres- ent International Red Cross Society.
This was agreed to by all parties, and the sack of flour was sold and re- sold many times. It was carried about all over Nevada and California, and sold again and again. It was the means of bringing many thousands of dollars to the humane cause represented by the Sanitary Commission. When it was sold in Virginia City the em- ployees of the rival newspapers, the Union and the Enterprise, clubbed to- gether and started bidding against each other. There was more or less feeling between the two publications, professional, political and otherwise, and the employees of the Enterprise were in the habit of referring to the Union crowd as "Rebels," "Copper- heads/' etc. Nevertheless, the Union boys came to the bat with a purse of $100 for the sack of flour. Clemens passed the hat in the Enterprise office and raised the Union's bid by $50. Not to be outdone, the "Democrats" brought their bid up to $213, and car- ried off the prize. Incidentally, this historic sack of flour eventually came into the possession of Gridley, who first carried it up the hill at Austin. Gridley's descendants, who live at Mo-
THE WELL-BELOVED.
265
desto, are said to still have this sack of flour enclosed in a buckskin bag.
Something of the old rivalry be- tween the "boys" of the Union and those of the Enterprise, in the historic days of the Comstock Lode, must still linger in the heart of one of them who, though feeble with age, yet maintains the spirit of the old days. For the old pioneer tells a story of Mark Twain which has never before seen print, and which, while a characteristic prank of the young fun-maker, and typical of the West that was all wild and very woolly, still was considered a rather coarse joke.
Artemus Ward, then on his Western lecture tour, had reached Virginia City and was billed to lecture in the princi- pal hall. Naturally, he found con- genial spirits in the city of sudden for-
tunes. Among these was "Sam" Clemens. The visiting humorist also found spirits in bottles which were more than congenial.
But it was hardly fair in Clemens, with the lecture hour drawing near, to get Ward hopelessly drunk, black his face with burnt cork and then thrust him out before his waiting au- dience. In fact, it was, as Mr. Barnes tersely characterized it, "A damn dirty trick." But so be it. There is a burnt cork period in every man's life, and both Mark Twain and Artemus Ward were in that period of their lives at that time. It was also the burnt cork period in the life of the West in gen- eral, and so the audience itself, prob- ably, regarded the matter as a great joke, and alone worth the price of ad- mission
THE WELL-BELOVED
"Until death do us part" —
Ah, dearest heart,
We scorn the ancient lie
And death defy,
You and I !
Mayhap you journey far From star to star; On earth the paths you trod Led up to God, Spurned the sod :
Mayhap you know the rest We deemed was best; But you and I are one — Such love begun Is not undone,
And be we flame or dust, Serene I trust That one same fate will be For you and me Eternally !
VIRGINIA CLEAVER BACON,
The Criminal in the Drama
By Ella Costillo Bennett
EVERY few years there is a de- cided change in the drama, and the playwright who starts the change — that is, gets his play before the public first — either blazes the trail for a new style of play, or, striking a chord of popularity, is the keynote for floundering playwrights. Seeing what takes, they proceed to supply the supposed demand. It would be difficult to determine, if those who follow are imitators, and naturally fall in line, when somebody starts the procession, or whether, with a similar idea, long germinating, they proceed to the firing line when they discover the field has been made ready. Any- way, new plays along the line of a "hit" follow in rapid succession. And the why and wherefore does not con- cern us so much as the type of play the present vogue has foisted upon us. The criminal is in the limelight, not as a specimen of the race to be studied under the microscope; not as a sub- ject for pathological examination, nor yet as a part of society to exemplify the truth and facts, and problems; but as a victim, a martyr, a product of ill- treatment; No one will gainsay that there are many people who commit crime — "criminals by occasion," as Lombroso calls them, who are not ad- dicted to crime, but under excessive rage, jealousy or great temptation, commit a crime — not crimes. Then there is the criminal of circumstances, who under the stress of dire misfortune — either unable to bear continued suf- fering, or in a weak mood, chooses be- tween two evils — not necessarily the lesser — and commits a crime. For these there is naturally sympathy, and should be moderate leniency; but these are not the types in the drama. The
playwright seems to prefer to deal with the habitual criminal, or the criminal who considers himself a victim of so- ciety, because he prefers "easy money" to that obtained by the slow, hard pro- cess of work — the common lot of man.
Many of us can look back to the day when the melodrama held the boards, likewise the breath of the pub- lic. In this type of play the heroine was the gentle, lovable, erring daugh- ter of poor, unsophisticated country parents, usually the victim of some city scoundrel of loud clothes, red ties and black, plastered hair; and who was unduly addicted to the cigarette habit. Indeed his favorite pose was to coolly smoke a cigarette in the face of the detective — in the last act, when he was led off in handcuffs, amid the rejoicing of the boys in the gallery, while he was almost ignored by father, mother and the returning erring daugh- ter— usually the victim of a mock mar- riage— now happily married to her old sweetheart, who had remained faithful throughout. This was in the time of "Hazel Kirk," which many of us re- member in our bread-and-butter days, and which was one of the best of its kind. Then there was the erring wife. "East Lynn" and "Frou-Frou" came, and still come every other year, re- gardless of style — like Shakespeare. "Young Mrs. Winthrop," "Parted" and various other plays followed, where husband and wife quarreled and made up over the child, or the dead child's shoes, or something along that line.
Later, the West loomed large upon the horizon, and the "Silver King" and "Arizona" and "Tennessee's Pardner" and various others, some of them very good and wholesome, followed in suc- cession. Usually about two types of
THE CRIMINAL AND THE DRAMA
267
plays are popular at the same time. Now it is the Symbolic play — and the stories of the underworld, neither with much to recommend them.
And so on, down through various styles of society plays, problem plays, until some years ago, the thief in the drama became popular. This was go- ing far, and was a false appeal to the sympathies, but it drew, which is more to the point in the estimation of the playwright, actor and manager; and the moralist had little or no audience in his condemnation of this sort of drama, reason, logic, ethics all were side-tracked when "In the Bishop's Carriage," "Raffles" and such, capped by "The Thief," held the boards and swelled the box office receipts. Then followed "Alias Jimmy Valentine," a play not in the least true to life, but pleasing, amusing and not one that is apt to do any particular harm, for certainly no banker is going to be so false to his trust, or so foolish as to hand over all the cash funds of his bank to an ex-convict and safe- cracker for safe-keeping!
This thief glorification, however, started something that is now in full swing, viz., plays of the underworld, where, as in one or two of these, the dramatist has held near the truth and not idealized the criminal, good may be accomplished, but in the great ma- jority of the plays in which the crimi- nal holds the center of the stage, the dramatist demands, nay, clamors for your approval, consequently much harm may be done.
The really thinking, reasoning per- son cannot be hurt by them; but will any one contend that the audience is constituted of this class of people ? On the contrary, a large number of boys and weak men, as well as a fair sprink- ling of women whose sentimentality needs only a few more sob sentences to make them maudlin, makes fully its pro rata of the audience.
"The Crime of the Law," the latest of the atrocities, is an appeal — pro- logue and epilogue, as well as the body of the play — to the public for Prison Reform, yet no better argument has
ever been written for the cold-blooded opposite side — which believes, once get the criminal behind the bars, keep him there.
Any one who has posted himself, even casually, on the prison system, knows that it is foolish and cruel, and a glaring expose of poor economics. It does not need either sentiment or deep thinking to acknowledge the apparent facts; on the other hand, no thinking person classes all criminals — nor even a large per cent of them as victims of circumstances. The facts do not bear out the theories of the sentimentalists, and in putting on plays where the criminal is practically given a license to continue in crime, and all blame placed upon society, is to go to the other extreme and thereby retard, in- stead of assisting prison reform. "The Crime of the Law" is about the best brief presented for those who oppose any leniency or parole to the criminal ; meantime, the young author, Rachel Marshall, who evidently has imagina- tion and considerable dramatic ability, and did a good, strong piece of work in "The Traffic" (excepting the finale) makes through this play a plea to the public for the criminal, thinking his ill treatment in the penitentiary is suf- ficient excuse for any subsequent crime — or crimes; but the plea falls flat. The play is not as a whole true to life — indeed, it is far from it. It is ex- ceedingly inartistic, and its criminals are so nauseating as to mitigate, if not justify, their ill treatment.
A much stronger and more artistic play along the same line, is "Within the Law," but even here, with that fine emotional actress, Margaret Illington, who shows a decided predilection for thieves — in the drama — having starred in Bernstein's "Thief," "Kindling," and "Within the Law" consecutively, there is such a repugnance to the thief, or in this case bunco woman, or semi- blackmailer, extortionist, etc., that not for one minute does sympathy go truly to Mary Turner. Had Mary taken re- venge on the Father alone, one's sym- pathy would have been wholly with her, for despicable as the passion of
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revenge may be, it can yet be dignified when the provocation has been great, as with Shylock and as with Mary Turner; but when the criminal makes the innocent suffer for the guilty, what right has he or she to challenge the same unjust attitude in those who brought about his suffering? Wherein was Mary Turner any better than her cold-blooded employer? Rather she was more despicable, for at least her employer believed her guilty of theft, but she, knowing his son true, kind and honorable, deliberately plans to make him suffer anguish and humilia- tion to revenge herself upon his father. Then, too, Mary did not hesitate to live in luxury off of her dishonest schemes, justifying herself because "only the dishonest were hurt," but those, again to reimburse themselves, proceed to bunco some more honest people, who in their turn are indirect- ly helping to pay for Mary Turner's luxury, and the gay little chum Aggie, is supposed to be excusable for black- mailing because she is virtuous!
Playwrights are getting their morals sadly mixed when a lapse from the high standard of virtue — or purity — is considered the unpardonable sin, but bunco dealing, stealing and black-
mailing are considered quite respect- able, if you are discriminating in se- lecting as your victims only those who are not admirable or lovable, or more exactly speaking, do not meet with the approval of the aforesaid thief and blackmailer.
"The Deep Purple" was a plea for sympathy and to let the criminal es- cape— and there followed others, and still they come! But of all types and styles of the drama that have passed before, this present fad of making the criminal a hero, martyr or victim — what you will — is by. far the worst we have had. Sentimentality can go no further, and these plays and the les- son they strive to teach, would fail because of their fallacy, if it were not that two-thirds of the audience consists of the young, and therefore impres- sionable. It is not the habit of youth to think deeply, and the inexperience of the young makes them incapable of correct induction or deduction, so the damage done by the idealizing of the criminal is yet to be calculated, but this much good we can count on, its vogue will soon be ended, for styles come and go in the drama — even as other things — and the uglier the style the earlier its demise. Dei Gratia!
I KNOW A VALLEY
I know a little valley, far away, so far away,
And my heart, my heart is longing to be back home in May.
Oh, the purple of the mountains, with their tiny caps of snow,
And the fragrance of the breezes, where the orange blossoms blow.
There's a mocking bird a-trilling, his song of pure delight,
From an old oak where the roses climb, and wave their branches white.
There's a road within this valley, winding on with twists and turns,
Dipping through a rocky hollow, green and fresh with dainty ferns.
On beside brown tumbled fences, and an old adobe wall,
Where the Cherokees climb and cluster and in festooned garlands fall.
Oh, this valley where my heart is, far away, so far away,
With the memories and stories of its olden Spanish day,
This I know, though well I love it, that no words could ever tell,
Half the languorous, dreamy beauty of my own San Gabriel.
ELIZABETH A. WILBUR.
Is Christian Science Reasonable?
By C. T. Russell
Pastor New York, Washington and Cleveland Temples and the Brooklyn and London Tabernacles
( This is the first of a series of two articles on Christian Science. The second will appear in our next issue.)
"Come, now, let us reason together, saith the Lords though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." — Isaiah 1 :18.
WHEN a number of people as- sociate themselves, adopt a name, publish their doctrines to the world and invite mem- bers, their doctrines are properly sub- ject to public criticism. They still preserve their individual rights, how- ever. What a man believes or disbe- lieves is his own business, and not subject to public criticism. Doctrines only may be criticised; and these should be honestly treated, not misrep- resented. This applies to every creed, every cult; and all honest people should welcome such investigation and truthful criticism. We assume that Christian Scientists, therefore, will ap- preciate what we now have to say as much as, or more than, others. We trust that we always have this attitude toward any criticism leveled against our public teachings. We are there- fore following the Golden Rule laid down by the Lord, and acknowledged by all.
The growth of Christian Science has astonished the world. Its teachings seem to have appealed to a very in- telligent, well-to-do class of people, of considerable mental independence, possessed of considerable "backbone." So far as we have conversed with them we find that physical healing seems to have been more or less associated with
their conversion to their cult. Either themselves or their friends have been healed. Their realization of the cure brought them religious conviction in- stead of the doubts and wonderments of their previous experiences. The awakening to this conviction that there is a real power outside of man, a super- natural power, aroused a religious sen- timent such as they had never known before. It seems to them that they have started a new life.
The reason for this is that nominal Christianity is merely a form of god- liness, without power or conviction. This form of godliness has spread to such an extent that the whole world is styled Christendom — Christ's King- dom. In countries like Great Britain, Germany, Russia and Scandinavia, ap- proximately ninety-five per cent of the population are rated as Christians, even though some of these are in prison, some in insane asylums, and some too young to think at all or be -anything. In Italy, everybody is rated a Christian — although amongst some of the Italians who come to our shores flourish works of the Devil, such as the Black Hand, the Mafia, etc.
Bewildered Christendom.
Additionally, a sincere class of Christian people have, during the last fifty years, been in great perplexity because of the stupendous nonsense in- termingled with Truth which was handed down to us from the Dark
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
Ages. Under the increasing light, thinking people have not been able to swallow some of the monstrous state- ments of the creeds as readily as did their forefathers. The persecution of Baptists gave place to toleration — that they might baptize as they chose, even though their teaching that immersion is the door into the Church implied that all the unimmersed are outside the true Church, outside the pale of salvation, and hence prospectively sub- ject to eternal torture. Presbyterians and Methodists, unable to down each other on the subject of Election or Free Grace, agreed to "live and let live."
The great churches which formerly persecuted all others as heretics, for- bidding any to preach except by their ordinations, gradually found them- selves compelled to desist from mak- ing their tenets too prominent. Thus people are more or less bewildered as to what are the differences between the various denominations; and many conclude that the only difference is in forms, ceremonies, ordinations, etc.
The doctrine that God had foreor- dained 999 out of every 1,000 to an eternity of torture in fire was gradually looked at as too horrible to believe. The alternative doctrine, that God did not foreordain the matter thus, but had not the wisdom or power to avoid such a catastrophe for His creatures, was equally repugnant. As a consequence, preachers began to tell that the destiny of the world was not literal fire, but gnawing of conscience, etc. — each manufacturing a Hell according to his own wisdom or ignorance and to suit his congregation.
Under such conditions Christian Science was born, and has grown to its present proportions. Three things es- pecially favored it: (1) Its acceptance of the Bible. (2) Its rejection of ever- lasting torment, mental or physical. (3) Its teaching respecting Divine healing. Mrs. Eddy, the acknowledged head of Christian Science, had a keen mind and considerable wisdom in its exercise. She would hold to the Bible even though she needed to pervert its
teachings. She would not make her teachings respecting the future life too pronounced or too antagonistic to other theories. She contented herself with vague, ambiguous statements re the future life. She laid principal stress on healing, and settled all doc- trinal difficulties with the dictum that there is no evil, there is no sin, there is no death ; that what have been called sin, death and evil are merely errors of the mind.
The very absurdity of some of these ^statements advertised them. People said : What does it mean — There is no death, no sickness, no pain, no sorrow, no evil of any kind? Absurd! Later they said, We will see how Christian Scientists explain death, sickness, pain, sin. Thus curiosity led them into the metaphysical labyrinth which Mrs. Eddy had skillfully constructed. Hav- ing no intelligent knowledge of the Bible, they were just in condition to fall an easy prey to "Mother Eddy's" errors. If some of her definitions were fanciful, far-fetched and unscriptural, they were no more so than the teach- ings to which people had been accus- tomed from childhood, and which sub- stantially claim that the more unrea- sonable and illogical a matter is, the more faith is implied by the believing of it.
C. 5. Readers and Practitioners.
Christian Scientists feel what might be termed spiritual pride in connection with their healing practices and with the public reading of the Scriptures and Mrs. Eddy's comments — as much spiritual pride, perhaps, as is some- times felt in other churches by preach- ers, elders, deacons, vestrymen, dea- conesses, etc. To be lifted from the ordinary walks of life to places of dis- tinction in Christianity, especially in scientific Christianty, would surely ap- peal to the majority. Once elevated to positions as readers or practitioners or healing practitioners, it becomes their duty loyally to support and de- fend the system which they represent. And so, just as earnestly as with other
IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE REASONABLE
271
sects, the establishment and defense of Christian Science goes courageously onward.
Still another class is interested, financially — those in control of the Christian Science literature. It sells at good, stiff prices; and anybody questioning the merchandizing of the truth is given to understand that he is unappreciative ; and with the majority of people the price regulates the value, anyway. Having, we believe, fairly stated the facts and claims of Christian Scientists, we now inquire whether or not their teachings are logical. We hold that they are not, and will en- deavor to show in what respect this is true.
7s Christian Science Logical?
Striving for a truth, "Mother Eddy" declared that there is no pain, no sick- ness, no sorrow, etc. The truth she was feeling after, but did not fully grasp, is that sin, sickness, sorrow, death, are abnormal conditions. There could be none of these, except for the curse that came upon our race at the beginning, because of disloyalty to God. We agree with Mrs. Eddy to the extent that these conditions are not de- signed by God to be everlasting. He does not recognize them as proper for those in fellowship with Him.
Nothing gives any reason to suppose that there are prisons, insane asylums, hospitals, doctors or cemeteries in Heaven, where all is perfect and in fullest harmony with God. Messiah's great work of Redemption will oblit- erate these unsatisfactory conditions from the earth. Jesus Himself tells us that their abolition will be the result of His Kingdom work of a thousand years. — Revelation 20:6; 21:4; 22:3.
But is it wise for us to say in one breath that all these will pass away, and in the next breath that they are non-existent? Surely we all value consistency and logic! Otherwise, language would bring us only confu- sion, instead of intelligence. Let us then say that, with mankind in proper relationship with God there would be none of these things; that they exist
now because man is out of relationship with God through sin; and that God's provision, according to the Bible, is that mankind shall be delivered from this bondage of sin and death into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. — Romans 8:21.
In this view, too, we see that the perfect earth was represented in Eden, and that eventually Eden will be world wide. The perfect race was repre- sented in Father Adam before he sinned ; and through Christ, eventually the earth will be filled with perfect human beings, such as Adam was. Then whoever will not come into full- est accord with the Lord will die the Second Death. Theirs will be perish- ing like natural brute beasts, which St. Peter mentions — the punishing with everlasting destruction, mentioned by St. Paul. (2 Peter 2:12; 2 Thessalo- nians 1:9.) But nothing in the Bible implies an everlasting torture of any members of our race or even of Adam himself.
In the Bible presentation there is a special place for the Church of the Gospel Age, called out of the world before the Restitution Times. Her ac- ceptance of the Call implies her at- tempt to live in fullest harmony with the Lord under present imperfect, un- satisfactory conditions — even to the extent of laying down life for the brethren, for the service of God and His Word. To this Church class, the Bible assures us,, will come a still higher blessing than that of Restitu- tion. The Church is to have spirit na- ture— yea, the highest form of spirit nature— the "Divine."— 2 Peter 1 :4.
Truth Biblical, Scientific, Sanctifying.
We commend Christian Scientists for their endeavor to hold fast to the Bible, but remind them that not the letter of the Bible merely will en- lighten and sanctify, but its spirit, its real meaning. This is obtainable, not by confusing definitions, but by sim- plicity of mind in accepting the words for what they are and putting them together in logical order.
Let us give Mrs. Eddy credit for de-
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
siring to be logical; but let us notice that, whatever she thought, her lan- guage was confusing when she said: "There is no death, no sickness, no pain." The most that can be conceded by the most generous logician would be that there should be no death, no sickness, no pain, no sorrow, if things were in right condition. But they are not in right condition, as the Bible de- clares, and as all can see. And they will not be so until the Savior, who redeemed the world by the sacrifice of Himself, shall assume His kingly of- fice and right the wrongs which sin has brought us. As a result of His work, there will then be — at the close of the Millennial Age — no sin, no death, no sorrow, no pain.
But since Mrs. Eddy and Christian Science fail to recognize and state these facts clearly, it follows that how- ever attractive some of the teachings may be to some people, they cannot be relied upon, because they are off the true foundation — recognizing neither the facts of sin and death, nor the ne- cessity for a redemption from these conditions by the sacrifice of Jesus, nor appreciating the necessity for the coming Restitution.
Furthermore Christian Science does not clearly differentiate between the Church, which has been in process of calling and election for more than eighteen centuries, and the world, which still lies in the Wicked One, and which will not be dealt with until the Church shall be glorified, and with her Lord shall constitute the Kingdom of Righteousness.
Jesus prayed for His Church, "Sanc- tify them through Thy Truth; Thy Wordjs Truth." While Christian Scientists and people of other denomi- nations, and some of the heathen as well, are, many of them, moral, exem- plary, honorable, nevertheless few of them, surely, claim to be sanctified. Indeed, the sanctifying features of the Truth they ignore or do not see. We 'are not to think of church attendance or of rejection of profanity, liquor, etc., as sanctification. The putting away of the filth of the flesh is indeed com-
mendable, but is only a primary step in the right direction.
God is now calling a sanctified class — a set-apart people — whom He is testing under the promise, "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a Crown of Life." This does not signify faithfulness to a denomination or a cult, but faithfulness to the Lord, to the testimony of His Word, to the principles of righteousness, to self- surrender to God to walk in Jesus' footsteps.
We will not discuss at length the scientific element of Christian Science. To some it seems very unscientific — inharmonious with the Truth. We be- lieve the only way that anything scien- tific could be associated with it is by adding to it the thought that sorrow, sin and death are in the world only temporarily, by reason of transgres- sion of Divine Law, and that they are to be rooted out and destroyed as nox- ious weeds by Messiah's Kingdom.
Christian Scientists tell us that they have received great benefit mentally and physically from following Mrs. Eddy's theory denying that there is any pain, etc. We quite agree that the will is a powerful factor in resisting disease — that if we brood over sor- rows, difficulties, aches and pains, they 'are increased by the operation of our minds. We agree, as do all physi- cians, that the mind should be lifted as much as possible from our diseases, and placed upon happifying subjects. This is rational and logical; but it is irrational, illogical and, above all, un- truthful, to say that we are without pain when we have pain. The lover 'of the truth can never consent to this. Honesty must be first with all right- minded people, and surely is pleasing to God. Let us then not go to the ex- treme of untruthfulness or to the other 'extreme of exaggerating our ills; but, Let every man think soberly. — Romans 12:3.
A Very Pernicious Teaching.
There is one doctrine held by Chris- tian Scientists — and for that matter by many of other denominations, who
IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE REASONABLE
273
state themselves less positively — that is very pernicious, very injurious, very untrue, very unscientific, very unscrip- tural. This is the teaching that God is omnipresent — present in everything and in every place. Nothing in the Bible so declares, and when we attempt to be wiser than what is written, we are surely making a very great mis- take.
Whoever thinks of God as omni- present necessarily thinks of Him as impersonal; and the more he thinks, the more vague his God becomes, until gradually he has no God, but merely (as some Christian Scientists, includ- ing Mrs. Eddy, express it) believes in a principle of good, and calls that principle God. Such wish to believe in a Supreme Creator, but by this erro- nious reasoning they mislead their own
intelligence into the denial of a per- sonal God. Whoever believes in a God who is everywhere believes in one who is not a person.
The Bible teaches a personal God — a great Spirit Being. The Bible gives Him a home, or locality, and does not teach that He is everywhere. It was Jesus who taught us to pray, "Our Father, which art in Heaven." Oh, how different this is from saying that God is in everything that has use or value — in the soil, because it is useful for the development of fruits; in the chair, because it is useful to sit upon; and in the table because it is useful as a con- venience! Such teachings are faith- destroying, and surely lead away from the sanctification of heart and life and from the faith which the Bible incul- cates.
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Price $1.25 net. Published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York.
"Delia Blanchflower," by Mrs. Hum- phrey Ward.
As a social history of her own times the novels of Mrs. Humphrey Ward should prove invaluable to later gener- ations. She caught and crystallized between covers the greatest religious movement England has known since the days of Wesley in her first notable novel, now a classic, "Robert Els- mere." In her last "Delia Blanch- flower," she has recorded the most re- markable political movement since the Chartist riots and the conversion of England to Free Trade— the Women's Militant Suffrage Movement. It may be that she penned it just in time, and that no later writer will have the same chance to observe this phenomenon — for since the war engulfed Europe, the militant women have turned their energies into exactly the channels Mrs. Ward has hitherto pointed out as their natural outlets for public activity. The Militant Movement is, if not dead, sleeping, and one is therefore the bet- ter enabled to view "Delia Blanch- flower" and her violent and devoted friends — Mrs. Humphrey Ward grants them both adjectives — in the calm light of historical prospective. Of
course so finished a craftsman as Mrs. Ward never descends to making a novel a mere piece of propaganda. "Delia Blanchflower" is a human and interesting story first, and an expo- sition of the suffrage movement only secondarily. The heroine, who gives her name to the book, is a kind of Ar- temis in London, beautiful, willful, wealthy and almost infatuated with one of the brilliant leaders of the ex- treme suffrage group.
Published by The Hearst Interna- tional Library Company, New York.
"What is Wrong With Germany?" by William Harbutt Dawson, author of "The Evolution of Modern Ger- many," "Municipal Life and Gov- ernment in Germany," etc. The author, who has for a quarter of a century made a special study of German affairs, upon which he has written more than a dozen volumes, traces the tendencies of German na- tional thought and policy which have for some years been making irrevo- cably for war. He writes of Treit- schke's influence as an old pupil of that historian. Regarding Prussian militarism as the enemy of Germany and Europe, he shows its ultimate de- pendence upon Germany's semi-abso- lutistic system of government, and in a concluding chapter considers the political forms necessary to the peace of that country and of the world, and how they should be brought about.
Second impression, crown 8vo, $1 net. Published by Longmans, Green & Company, New York.
"Ruggles of Red Gap," by Harry Leon
Wilson.
Ruggles' views of life in general and American life in particular are simply rich. There is no other way of ex- pressing it. Lovers of humor should not miss them. His inability to re- gard matters other than seriously led him into many misconceptions. Hear- ing the Negro (blackamoor as he termed him) referred to as a "coon," he immediately seized upon the word "racoon," and henceforth always re-
Please Mention Overland Monthly When Writing Advertisers
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The German Savings and Loan Society
(The German Bank) Savings Incorporated 1868 Commercial
526 California Street, San Francisco, Cal. (Member of the Associated Savings Banks of San
Francisco)
The following Branches for Receipt and Payment of Deposits only:
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June 30th, 1915:
Assets $60,321,343.04
Deposits 57,362,899.35
Capital actually paid up in Cash 1,000,000.00
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For the 6 months ending June 30th, 1915, a divi dend to depositors of 4% per annum was declared.
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
ferred to our colored brethren in that way. When Ruggles reached Red Gap some one called his attention to the fact that in America he was a for- eigner. To this he strongly demurred. He was not a foreigner, it seemed, but he was alone among foreigners. He had difficulty in convincing his in- formant of the distinction. Numerous things in American life Mr. Ruggles said would "never do with us." In fact, such a description applies to North America in general. It might be interesting, even picturesque, but it certainly was not "vogue." Neverthe- less, in time Mr. Ruggles grew to like us very well, and even to see some- thing of truth in the Declaration of In- dependence, which he had at first con- sidered an absurd document.
The Ruggles humor is of the unc- tuous kind. Sometimes, Mr. Wilson makes it a little obvious, leaving noth- ing for the reader to do, but that is, of course, in keeping with the character of his mouthpiece.
Published by Doubleday, Page & Company, Garden City, New York.
"Biography of Professor Baird," by
Dr. William Dall.
The magnificent halls of the Na- tional Museum at Washington contain some remarkable collections, a na- tional treasure that belongs to every loyal American. The museum was created by Spencer Fullerton Baird, one of the two foremost American naturalists and scientists: the other was Louis Agassiz. In his biography of Professor Baird, Dr. William Dall tells the story of Prof. Baird's ser- vices to his country. They were very great, and include the formation of the
United States Fish Commission, the building up of the National Museum, the direction for years of the Smith- sonian Institute, and work for the con- servation of the animal and vegetable life cf this continent. He did more for America than any ten men of af- fairs.
Published by J. B. Lippincott Co.
Great was the surprise of a certain New York woman doctor recently when a frail, gentle, appealing young woman with a strong foreign accent told her that she had been operated on for appendicitis "in a dreadful place, a preezon." Her surprise was not lessened when she found later that the frail little woman had killed a reac- tionary Russian General, and that she had escaped from Siberia and finally became known in America as Marie Sukloff, author of "The Life Story of a Russian Exile."
Published by The Century Co., New York, Union Square.
J. B. Lippincott Company will pub- lish within a couple of weeks a book of timely interest, "Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War." The author is Frederick A. Talbot, who has written a number of popular books on the pro- gress of the world in various lines of invention. Lippincotts published last winter his "Oil Conquest of the world/' the story of the remarkable de- velopment of the oil industry, with its astonishing effect upon modern indus- try. The illustrations for the new book were many of them taken on or near the battlefields of Europe, where the airship of every kind is undergoing a baptism of fire.
Mr. C. S. S. Forney —See Page 350.
MY YELLOW BUTTERFLY
A bit of yellow drifting by; Overhead an azure sky, Underneath, a carpet, green; A winged sunbeam flits between.
A nodding clover head near by Beckons my yellow butterfly; He sips the honey; sips again And rests until refreshed, and then ?
A bit of yellow drifting by; Overhead an azure sky, Underneath, a carpet, green; A winged sunbeam flits between.
THEODORA A. EDMOND.
ODT4.
OVERLAND
Founded 1868
MONTHLY
BRET HARTE
VOL. LXVI
San Francisco, October, 1915
No. 4
Three little Hopi maidens who never saw a seminary.
Across the Desert to Aoencapi
By Bessie R. Ferguson
CHAPTER I
ONE EVENING, as we sat on the porch of our little log cabin far in the mountains, listening to the pure, silvery song of the white-throated sparrow coming deep from within the dark shadow of the forest, my father said in a voice filled with enthusiasm, "Well, boys, what do you say: let's try it?" at which the "boys" agreed so heartily they had to give vent to their high spirits by
breaking into a jolly rollicking song.
My blood danced and sang in my veins, for I knew once more we were going out on the trail. To ride all day in this great, glorious out-of-doors, then at night to crawl into blankets and watch the thousand twinkling stars, to feel a breath of cool night air brush your cheek like a caress, and to see the hills wrapped in the cloak of night clearly silhouetted against the glowing sky as the moon first peeps timidly over their summits.
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
So we four made ready for the trip. The artist, the tenderfoot, my father and I. We were to ride through what part of Northern Arizona we could, in the short time we had, and stop among those fast vanishing people, the Hopi Indians and their ancient
villages.
* * * *
For a day we had been following the road across the burning sea of des- ert. Long since, we had passed down from the cool shadows of the pine forest, with its carpet of delicate-col- ored, swaying flowers, onto a plain of scrubby cedar trees with their refresh- ing olive green, which now were far behind us, and we found what en- joyment we could out of the alkali dust covered sage brush which now stretched out before us to the horizon.
Little quivering spirals of heat rose from the hot sands which seemed to sizzle, and which made the men pull their hats low on their foreheads, while I braved the sun's glare, squint- ing ahead at the wavering road until the skin, tight and drawn on my fore- head, seemed tied in a knot and the lower part of my face I felt sure was stretched to the breaking point. Liz- ards scurried across our path to the shelter of sage brush, and once we passed the bleached white bones of a skeleton, which the men said were the remains of an old government mule. A quite notable landmark along that way for every one traveling these is always directed by that.
We expected to reach the half-way house by dusk. Each one of us thought about it often; then, too, it sounded nice as we talked and men- tioned what we intended doing upon reaching it. It cheered the tenderfoot remarkably. Now, he certainly need- ed something cheerful to think about, for^every time he shifted into a new position he gritted his teeth, having found a fresh tender spot. He would then try to assume a cheerful expres- sion and grin, which threatened to crack his sun-baked face.
The artist painfully hooked his leg over the pommel of his saddle, then
talked of the misty rainbow colorL.^s of the painted desert, after which he would equally as painfully unhook his leg again and swear softly under his breath. He tried this at frequent in- tervals, but finally gave up, sitting in a haunched position the rest of the afternoon. In fact, all of us were sit- ting limply in that position, for if there was such a thing as comfort then, we had come as near to finding it in that particular way.
The shadows were slowly lengthen- ing, but the air became no cooler. The sun beat down as mercilessly as ever, and we rode on in the heat. The sun had sunk below the long top of the mesa in the distance when we topped a slight rise, to see a few miles before us a square store house with a corru- gated iron roof, which proved to be, upon reaching it, the half-way house, this being built by the government for the use of the employees working at the reservation school situated at Tuba, which is ninety miles from the nearest railroad.
Standing there, we could see miles around us, and nothing but grey des- ert, thickly dotted with sage brush. Then what an overpowering silence! It seemed to grip you, to hold you in its grasp, at which you wanted to shout — to make any noise to break that spell.
The tenderfoot was first to voice his opinion. On his face was stamped a look of utter disgust. "So this is the half-way house, then," he said, look- ing at the bleak grey stone house with a lost hope expression in his eyes, "and to think that I had pictured it as being surrounded by cotton wood trees, a cool spring near by and plenty of green grass to stretch out on." At which he sat weakly on a nearby rock.
We were all disappointed, for that matter. There was no shade, not a sign of water, and we were so tired we even dreaded to unpack our cooking utensils.
Later on the men discovered a love- ly pool of water some hundred yards from the house, hidden down in a for- mation of rock. After watering the
A popular old Indian pastime, "a chicken pull"
horses and fixing them for the night, we turned our thoughts to ourselves.
Soon the camp-fire was burning briskly, while over it hung the coffee- pot sending out fragrant odors, while the bacon and beans sizzled merrily. We had ravishing appetites, and when the supper call was sounded on an old tin bucket, we simply "laid to." The quantity of food that was con- sumed amazed us; never before had anything tasted so good. Yet one cannot eat forever, and at last the men lazily stretched out on their blankets, smoking, and swapping rather alarming snake stories.
Forgotten was the weariness of the day's trip, with still another one be- fore us. What if we did have disap- pointments? Here in the cool of the evening, around the glowing coals of a camp fire, was peace and content- ment. The sky blazed with a million clear-cut, twinkling stars, and it seemed as though you could all but reach up and pluck one of these beau- tiful, glowing jewels of Heaven from its place.
The desert lay wrapped in a great purple shadow, dotted here and there by the soft, quivering camp fires of
the sheep herder, and once way off in the shadow somewhere, came the faint barking of a shepherd dog.
The night grew chilly, very chilly in fact, so lighting our way with candles we investigated the interior of the half-way house. A window boarded up, a stone fireplace and a bolted door leading into another room, were what we found. Some one before us had left some straw scattered over the floor, and I knew when this was scraped up into a pile it would make a bed that would be hard to equal in warmth and softness. The men de- cided to crawl in their blankets and sleep around the fire, so I crawled in
my blankets and slept on the straw. * * * *
Gusts of sand-laden winds started to make life miserable for us.
The men had no more than wak- ened and gathered the things together before the desert swept onto us with all its fury. The moon was no more, nor the hills; everything had vanished and in their places was an inky black- ness that howled and shrieked, into which we stumbled on our way to the shelter I had just left, the sand sifting under our clothing, causing a friction
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
equal to a nutmeg grater. We reached our shelter, tumbled through the doorway and fixed ourselves as bomfortably as possible. The greater part of the night the wind moaned like some lost soul. Drowsily I pulled the blanket over my head.
Dawn came all too soon, bringing us out of our blankets long before the sun rose to hurl down its rays of heat. Life throbbed through our veins as we breathed deep of the cool, pure air, arousing in us keen appetites.
The hills were a riot of ever-chang- ing colors. Rose, orange, pale green and soft pinking red melted into one another, bringing the hills out in bold relief and then softening them until they appeared as only floating mirages on the horizon.
"All hands" prepared breakfast. Hot biscuits, bacon and coffee soon disappeared. Everything was sea- soned plentifully with sand, but we could have eaten lots worse. The dishes were washed and packed. Everything was in readiness for the day's ride, and with much laughter and joking we started. Toward noon we were joined by a Navajo cow-puncher, a splendid fellow, with a physique that is hard to find among the Indian men, now that civilization is taking a firmer hold upon them. His strong, clean-cut features and keen black eyes truly made him a son of the red man who first inhabited our continent. In the lobe of each ear was tied a piece of turquoise, and even in his silver handband these lovely stones were set in. On his long, slender fingers were silver rings, wrought in crude design, with also a setting of turquoise. His hair was fastened at the back of his neck in that peculiar figure eight twist that is always worn and rarely taken down. Whenever his pony trotted, this would bob up and down in an alarming fashion which seemed as if it would come down any moment. Full six feet he stood. His broad-brimmed sombrero, leather chaps and high- heeled boots with silver spurs fastened to them, made him a picturesque fig- ure to be remembered. In vain I tried
to get his picture, but for the small sum of two dollars he would only con- sent to it. He left us soon afterward, bidding us good-bye, and striking out across the desert, following a dim trail. All during the rest of our trip we did not see another such type.
Late that afternoon we dipped down into the Moencapi, a place of delight- ful surprise. On one side rose the red clay hills that had been worn by wind and rain into rounding towers, caves and ridges of striking formation.
Summer hogans (huts) of brush were built along the roadway, with now and then a sheep corral added to it. Indian women sat around the door- ways in highly colored groups, sort- ing over yellow ears of corn, while a few sat under brush sheds weaving blankets of many colors and quaint design. When we would ride by, greeting them, they would giggle like so many school girls, and turn their backs on us in their shyness.
Little naked children, their hair hanging in stringy mats over their faces, which were masses of dirt, ran shouting from us with barking dogs at their heels, suddenly to disappear behind a rock or wagon to bob out every few minutes to watch us.
Fragrant fields of alfalfa stretched far out over the land, paths of nodding yellow corn rose high above the heads of the Indian farmers who patiently tended each row, while golden pump- kins and squashes lay ripening in the sunlight. The air was heavy with the perfume from the delicate pink blos- soms of the apple trees in the or- chard. Over on the banks of the creek and along the irrigated ditches, cottonwood trees grew, filled with cho- ruses of warbling black birds.
What a picture ! It was far beyond our wildest dreams of what we had expected. Everything lay clothed in the richest colorings, giving us a spice of the Orient. It was not hard to realize now that artists from all over the world had come to that por- tion of the country in search of new material. Slowly we rode, watching -the shadows come and go as after-
The village of Mo e neap i
noon gave way to evening, and finally, just at dusk, we made camp at the foot of the ancient Indian village of Morncapi, the place of running water.
The following morning we awoke to the sound of falling rain, a down- pour which caused our spirits to sink clear to our heels. We watched a couple of dejected blanketed figures ride through the wash which had taken on the appearance of a river.
We bemoaned our fate, and while we were doing so the "God of Luck" stepped in with all the material of a perfect spring day. The sun in a re- pentent mood shone gently; the hills shyly hid in a floating rosy veil of vapor which now and then broke as though caught and torn on a sharp crag of jutting rock.
With bounding spirits we splashed up the trail to the village, past the lit- tle foreign looking mission, with its setting of wild rose hedges and ram- bling, old-fashioned flower garden, with its hive of bees which were al- ready droning their song in the warm air.
Before us on a mesa top, with its clay brick dwellings built almost on the very edge, stood the pueblo
"Moencapi," with a history brimming of romance and adventure a century old. Always will that picture remain in my mind of that little sleepy vil- lage tucked away from all the harsh- ness and bitterness of an outside world.
Far down the valley, like a slender silver thread, a stream of water played hide and seek, finally disappearing in the great sand slides which rose to the top of the cliffs. Then the desert, as far as the eye could see, fascinat- ing, yet horrible, for the endless bar- ren waste seemed to be calling — al- ways calling.
Strings of red peppers drying in the sunlight made brilliant blotches of color against the dull adobe walls of the Indian homes. Piles of yellow corn, rows of golden pumpkins cov- ered the house tops, mellowing in the warm air. Young Indian girls were going to and fro, sunning their glori- ous bluish black hair, their rippling laughter coming to us full of the joy of living.
Bedlam broke loose as we rode into the main street. Dogs barked and swarmed around us, snapping at our horses' heels. Babies cried, causing
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
us to believe that was what most of the population consisted of, and that impression still remains.
Tying our horses, we knew that candy, and much candy, would be needed of many colors, so being di- rected by some yellow posters adver- tising canned goods and chewing gum we entered the cool, dim interior of the trading store.
Through the chinks in the walls sun- light sifted, and the soft deerskin moc- casins with their fastenings of silver burtons, hanging from the great walls overhead, caught the stray gleams and reflected them in added beauty. Every- where were baskets, some gorgeously colored, others a duel brown and black. Dogs were curled up in some, and regarded every one with surly in- terest. With the reddish tinge of adobe walls for a background, hairy blankets hung, fastened in bunches, their rich colorings allumingly half- hidden, enough to arouse the buying curiosity. On the shelves were sheep- skins, piles of wool ready to be dyed, and bolts of calico and velveteen goods. Herbs hung everywhere, caus- ing us to snuff the fragrant air. By a pile of silky fox skins, on a very dirty- floor, squatted an Indian man, who spat tobacco juice most viciously, his long, slender fingers wandering caressingly through the soft fur, find- ing any defects, if there be any, while his sharp eyes followed our every movement.
In a mixture of English and very bad Hopi we carried on a rather jum- bled conversation with the Indian trader, who was attired in a brown velveteen shirt fastened with silver buttons, and very tight overalls. Sev- eral strings of shells and silver neck- laces hung from his neck, and in each ear fastened with strings were tur- quoise. He laughed a very great deal and talked with his hands mostly.
With pockets laden with the pre- cious sweets, we made our way out into the dirty street. Our crowd was waiting for us, the majority seeming to have the fiercest of colds and know- ing not the meaning of a handker-
chief. Upon seeing us no near, all at once, they fled in terror, some sprawl- ing headlong and giving vent to lusty hair-raising yells.
The news had already spread like wild-fire throughout the village of the "white" visitors. Already fat old squaws were squatting under brush- sheds, with baskets and plaques to sell; all at once everything had taken on an air of industry. We shied clear of all this, but without a great deal of trouble, and found shelter in what appeared to be a living and sleeping room for a family of eight, adding numerous dogs, cats and chickens.
On a legless cook stove dinner was being prepared, the inevitable mutton and coffee. A part of the family had already formed a circle, and were dip- ping crackers in an open can of to- matoes and eating them with relish. With blessings being showered on us by the old blind grandmother, who had all but two teeth gone, and so dirty as to the extent of being im- possible, we squatted on the dirt floor to partake of the mid-day meal.
The dwelling was well worth study, for even though civilization had crept in, marring the beauty by way of the cook stove and pieces of lace curtains draped over the small glass windows, there still remained beneath it all the Indian spirit of long ago. The dirt floor was swept as clean as could be considering the number of animals that came and went, and the adobe walls were spotless with their coat of whitewash. Baskets filled every niche and corner; some held the blueish ground corn flower, others held fruit and kernels of freshly roasted corn. At the end of the room stood a long, oblong loom with a half completed squaw sash, and by it stacked high lay ears of corn with Navajo blankets piled on them. On the walls, hideous grinning idols stared at us. We imme- diately wanted to buy them, but clinked the silver in vain, for if the baby should wake and find them gone she would cry, for they were her dolls. The gowds which dangled by the door and gave forth such queer grating
A Hopi dwelling and Hopi girl.
sounds as they swung in the breeze, were not to be parted with either. They were rattles, and the one so wondrous- ly colored and carved was used in the ceremonial dances.
From the logs overhead hung the family's footwear. The usual soft brown deer skin moccasin in all sizes and shapes, with all the different-made silver fastenings one could wish. All of the silver necklaces, bracelets, but- tons and rings are made by the Indian men out of the Mexican pesos, some of which are very beautiful, and of which a great, many are sold to the tourist.
The young bucks chatted with us and were very much at their ease in too tight overalls and velveteen shirts. All spoke very good English, and told us of when they had attended school, but of how now they were going to stay at home.
The young mother, only fifteen she
was, with her blueish-black hair drawn snugly back in two pendant rolls at the nape of her neck, symbolical of the ripened squash which is the Hopi em- blem of fruitfulness, the dull red beauty of her rounded neck and shoulders, the bright blue of the vo- luminous calico skirt, the deer-skin moccasins, made a picture worth gaz- ing on as she watched us with brown eyes filled with childish interest.
When a Hopi girl reaches the mar- rying age, which is twelve or thirteen years, she must arrange her lustrous black hair in two huge coils above each ear, typifying the squash blossom which is their emblem of maidenhood. At night thereafter her pillow is no longer of down, but a wooden head- rest in order that her hair must not become disarranged.
How coy she becomes then with only her bright eyes showing above 2
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
Ho pi dancer.
the brilliant shawl around her shoul- ders; she shyly looks at a young buck admiringly, then in embarrass- ment hides there, only to peek forth again and stay the passing glance of her suitor. When she is to be married, excitement reigns. Three days she grinds corn constantly, a tribal cus- tom which so far remains through the upheaval caused by civilization; then the feasting begins. It may last two days, maybe two years, but however long as it lasts, the young couple are not married until it is over. It is then she must rearrange her hair in the manner such as I have already spoken of, the ripened squash, symbolical of the squash blossom.
Never before have I seen such beau- tiful necks and shoulders as these wo- men have, due, no doubt, to the carry- ing of water in earthern-ware jars on their shoulders. On the mesa Araibi, which stands five hundred feet high,
with a Hopi pueblo on its summit, where the famous Snake Dance is held, which is a prayer for rain, ^ the women carry water up the steep, dizzy trail, gracefully balancing these jars filled to the brim with as much ease as though walking on level ground.
We wandered down a trail and found ourselves in the burial grounds. On mounds of earth, old kettles, pottery and articles of clothing were lying to help the soul on his sad and lonely journey to the "Great Spirit." The faint silver tinkling of bells could be heard quite often, and after searching for a considerable length of time we found a string of tiny silver bells hanging under a rock, and also the remains of a skeleton. It was very easy then to find grave after grave in the rocks, a method used with the dead because of the thieving coyote, and to find all manners of things to frighten away evil spirits.
We found a new trail, climbed up it, and found ourselves entering at the rear of a different village, for it so ap- peared to us. Adobe walls straight above us and far down near the end some steps had been built in and were worn in the center to the shape of the foot. We discovered a few of the dwellings facing this direction, but these had long since ceased to be in- habited. Then we stumbled on the roof of an underground room, with an ancient wooden ladder with iron rounds leading down into it. We stuck our heads down through the opening and withdrew them as quickly as we had put them in. What an odor rose upward! It all but swept us off our feet, for it carried with it all the un- pleasantness one would ever wish to remember.
Curiosity again proved stronger than we, so. descending, we found ourselves in the "Kiva," a place where Ihe ma- jority of the ceremonial dances are held. A few of the sacred fox-skins hung on the wall, otherwise the place was bare. Hurriedly we ascended the ladder and filled our lungs with air that even though not of the purest, revived us considerably.
A camp at night.
We climbed the ladders to the house tops, visited with the families there, and watched filthy old squaws, their bare feet with the toughness of a horse's foot doubled under them, weav- ing baskets and not paying the least attention to us.
It was there the last rays of the set- ting sun found us. On a house top, watching the little panorama in the street below us, of the youths sitting in the shadows, idly smoking and watching through indolent eyes, the girls in brilliantly colored shawls and hair wound high over each ear, play- ing among themselves. Then to look out over the fields and seeing the In- dian farmers leaving the tilling of the soil and slowly climbing the trail to- wards home, to hear the bleating of sheep, and finally seeing them in a
hazy dust cloud with the old shepherd hobbling behind them with his dog. Young married women, their sleeping children tied on their backs in shawls, glanced up at us and smiled a greet- ing as they hurry on to the evening service at the mission.
The shadows deepened until only the dim outline of the pueblos could be seen. Lights appear in the win- dows, a sleepy cry of a child is heard, and from the chapel come the sound of happy voices singing.
Silently we mounted our horses and rode down that lonely starlit trail. Way out in the darkness somewhere came the wild, haunting cry of the coyote. Turning in our saddles for one last look on the sleepy village, we see it high on the mesa top clearly outlined against the light of the rising moon.
The Angelus
Heard at the Mission Dolores, 1868 By Bret Harte
This being the Panama-Pacific Exposition year, in which everything of merit in California is being reviewed before the world, the management of Overland Monthly has decided to republish in its pages the stories and poems that made the magazine famous through the genius of Bret Harte. He was its first editor, and it was his keen discernment and originality which gave the contents of the magazine that touch of the spirit of the West, and es- pecially of California, which made it distinctive and enkindled the enthu- siasm of discerning readers the world around. These early contributions of his cover several years; they will be published monthly in the order in which they appeared, beginning with the first issue of Overland Monthly, July, 1868.
Bells of the Past, whose long-forgotten music
Still fills the wide expanse. Tinging the sober twilight of the Present
With color of romance :
I hear your call, and see the sun descending
On rock, and wave, and sand, As down the coast the Mission voices blending
Girdle the heathen land.
Within the circle of their incantation
No blight nor mildew falls; Nor fierce unrest, nor lust, nor low ambition
Passes those airy walls.
Borne on the swell of ycur long waves receding,
I touch the further Past— I see the dying glow of Spanish glory,
The sunset dream and last!
Before me rise the dome-shaped Mission towers;
The white Presidio; The swart commander in his leathern jerkin,
The priest in stole of snow.
Once more I see Portolas cross uplifting
Above the setting sun; And past the headland, northward, slowly drifting
The freighted galleon.
O, solemn bells! whose consecrated masses
Recall the faith of old— 0, tinkling bells! that lulled with twilight music
The spiritual fold!
Your voices break and falter in the darkness;
Break, falter, and are still: And veiled and mystic, like the Host descending,
The sun sinks from the hill!
The Star Goddess, a figure repeated on sev- eral of the buildings.
The
Panama-Pacific Exposition
in Its Glorious Prime i
By
Hamilton Wright
WITH almost three months to follow before its close, De- cember 4th, the Panama-Pa- cific International Exposition has more than met the highest hopes of its projectors. More than twelve million entrances had been clicked by the turnstiles before the half of the first week in September was passed,
and during June, July and August more than 500,000 persons passed through the Exposition gates each week. This result has been achieved amid condi- tions unprecedented and unparalleled. A year ago there were thousands who predicted that the huge Fair would be postponed. And yet to-day it is ex- pected that before the Exposition
A glimpse of the west facade of the Palace of Education. The trees in the foreground border one end of the beautiful lake fronting the Palace of Fine Arts} which the city of San Francisco is planning to preserve as a memorial.
closes more than twenty million per- sons will have passed through its turn- stiles. Early in September there were more than 750,000 visitors from east of the Rockies on the Pacific Coast. Most of the travelers are getting their first glimpse of the West. On September 3d, former President Taft burned can- celled notes aggregating $1,200,000, which had been loaned to the Exposi- tion before its opening day last Feb- ruary.
A resume of this greatest of world's Expositions shows forty-one nations officially participating, and practically every civilized portion of the world represented by individual exhibitors. Forty States are taking part, and in- dividual exhibitors from every State in the Union are represented. More than 500,000 different exhibits are dis- played by more than 7,000 exhibitors. The Exposition cost $50,000,000, and the value of the exhibits will probably exceed $450,000,000. The French ex- hibits in the Palace of Fine Arts alone
are valued at $3,500,000.
The present fall season is the most attractive of the year to visit the Ex- position. The giant tree ferns brought from New Zealand and Central Amer- ica, the huge beds of hydrangeas, the large groves of firs and eucalyptus trees are thriving in their new environ- ment ; the grounds seem a vast park on which years of cultivation have been expended. Great beds of begonias in riotous bloom spreading their flaming colors over forty acres, adorn the vast South Gardens. Creepers and flower- ing vines wind upward on the spread- ing palms. From now until the close of the Exposition, sunny days and mild weather are the rule. As an additional incentive to those who have not yet visited the Exposition, the low round- trip ticket, good for the journey to San Francisco and return, may be pur- chased up to November 30th.
Over three hundred conventions and congresses are yet to be held on the Exposition grounds. Of special inter-
The Spanish patio of the California State building. It is beautifully laid out in flowers, fountains, shrubs and trees on lines of the old Mission gardens.
est will be a giant live stock show, be- ginning September 30th, and conclud- ing with the Exposition. One-half million dollars are offered in prizes for this show, and many valuable pre- miums will be awarded by prominent breeding associations in the United States and abroad. In the live stock pavilions covering forty acres are valu- able animals from almost every part of the world. Hundreds of prize-win- ners are reaching San Francisco daily to get into condition for the show. Many State dairy colleges will be rep- resented. There are more than six miles of aisles between the different rows of stalls in the live stock pavil- ion.
In the Palace of Liberal Arts is the amazing Audion Amplifier, without which the transcontinental telephone would not have been possible. Through its use the voice of a man speaking into the telephone in New York may be "stopped up" so that in San Fran- cisco it will fill a large hall. The
transcontinental telephone is one of the striking features of the Exposition. Every afternoon at two o'clock a large audience gathers in the Palace of Lib- eral Arts, and with receivers cupped to ear, listens to a man in New York read- ing from the headlines of the after- noon papers. The new line transmits sound at 56,000 miles per second; speech is carried thousands of times faster than its natural speed. Charles S. Whitman, Jr., aged three months, gurgled from Albany, N. Y., to his mother at the Exposition, a distance of 3,400 miles. Also Mrs. Whitman talked to the nurse about the baby.
A Swedish inventor named Poulson has struck something new, the tele- graphone. This will record a question asked over the 'phone so that the busi- ness man may answer at his conven- ience. It also does away with the disk used in the ordinary dictaphone or music box. As one talks into the re- ceiver a thin steel wire is magnetized at the actual point of contact with the
Dedication ceremonies, Avenue of Palms, south esplanade, the most spacious review ground at the Exposition. The dome in the distance marks the site of the Horticultural Building, another beautiful structure which San Fran- cisco is planning to preserve as a memorial of the Exposition.
needle. The wire shown in the Palace of Liberal Arts is six miles long. It runs between two small revolving drums, which will take down 75 min- utes of continuous conversation. The wire may be de-magnatized and used over and over again.
Visit the Norwegian Pavilion. Here you will see how oxygen and nitrogen in the air are combined and converted into nitrates, the entire manufacture being based on power from waterfalls and nitrogen from the air. The exhi- bition is based on the big power plant at Rjukan, the greatest power station in the world, where 140,000 horse- power is derived. The current is con- ducted to the furnace house through sixty cables of a length of three miles each. The heat of the furnaces ex- ceeds 3,000 degrees centigrade. Any chemist can tell you about the process. One thousand million gallons of air are driven by blowers through the electric
furnaces every twenty-four hours, and more than two thousand barrels of nitrates are produced each day. The bi-products of the factory are nitrogen of soda, used in the dye and aniline in- dustries, nitrate of ammonia, used for fertilizer and explosive purposes, and refined nitrates used for explosive, and numerous other industrial purposes.
Many advances in agriculture are shown ; one of the most entertaining is the calf -way milker in the live stock section. Here daily cows are milked by this method, which is clean and seems not to annoy the cow.
One should not overlook the exhibit of mesothorium in the German section in the Palace of Liberal Arts. This is a derivative of radium, but much more radio active, and consequently more dangerous to handle. It is used mainly in the cure of cancer.
In the giant Palaces of Machinery, see the huge Diesel engine, operating
Night scene of the yacht harbor on the Marina, overlooking the Golden Gate. The column in the distance is surmounted with the figure of Adventure.
by internal combustion, one of the most revolutionary innovations in the last few years. As most readers know, Diesel driven ships are now being em- ployed on trans-oceanic runs.
No one should miss the exhibit of 1916 automobile models and of cycle- cars in the Palace of Transportation. Here not only American, but French, Argentinan, Italian and other foreign makes are on exhibition.
A year ago it seemed impossible that Europe would be well represented. While the industrial exhibition is not as large as it should have been nor- mally, it is still large enough to fill every available space and larger than at most world's expositions. The ar- tistic exhibit upon which greater atten- tion was concentrated, is very compre- hensive. And many of the European countries are very active in issuing propaganda. In the Palace of Liberal Arts, French tourist resorts and hotels have a big display, and handsomely printed and well illustrated booklets
exploiting, in both English and French, the charms of the French hostelries, are being distributed gratis to hundreds of visitors each day. Some of the booklets are printed in three colors. One free book has 348 pages.
Every one should make a round of all the foreign pavilions. The Gold Medal winner among the pavilions is that of Italy. It consists not of one, but, in reality, of eight different struc- tures grouped about attractive piazzas and presenting typical architectural types of the Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Sixteenth centuries. The buildings present both the monastic and commu- nistic styles that flourished during the period of the self-governed cities, and during the religious revival following the passing from Italy of the impress of pagan Rome. The architect of the pavilion was Signer A. Piacentini. Of especial interest to women in this pa- vilion is the exhibit of Italian laces, woven under the patronage of Dowager Queen Margherita of Italy.
Facade of the California State Building.
The French and Canadian buildings draw the two largest crowds of any foreign buildings on the ground. The French building is after the famous Palace of the Legion of Honor selected by Napoleon I as a fitting headquarters for those soldiers who had won dis- tinction in the field. This imposing structure was built by the Prince de Salm, a member of the nobility be- headed during the revolution, and after
his death it was raffled off. The holder of the lucky ticket was unable to re- tain the building, and it passed to the government. Attractive features of the French exhibition are Gobelin tap- estries both ancient and modern, woven upon the great scale of about 35 by 22 feet, most of them depicting the vic- tories of Alexander the Great during his Asiatic incursions. The most val- uable of these — they are originals —
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are worth perhaps $300,000 each. A table, desk and lamp used by Victor Hugo are shown, as are also some of his hand-written manuscripts. Relics of Balzac, Lafayette and other famous personages are displayed, including the sword used by Lafayette while in America. Among the modern exhibits is a prodigious display of latest Paris- ian styles. Wax models of women and girls are draped in this year's latest fashions. The exhibition, encased in glass, occupies an entire section of the pavilion and is always crowded. A dis- play in another wing shows upholstered furniture, jewelry, furniture of the Louis XIV period, satin, silks, laces and hosiery. Illustrated charts show the status of the French manufactories up to the time of the war, while the famous French doll theatres with mani- kins attired in court costumes, appear on illuminated stages. Also there are
grounds artificially built up to resem- ble nature, fading away insensibly in- to a painted scene, comprise the chief feature. In one scene is a dam with live beavers, trees, rocks, running water with live trout which combine in an ensemble that gives way to the painted scene, revealing the stream rising far in the misty hills. Other rep- resentations are of the prairies with their harvests, of wild game, apple or- chards, grain elevators feeding freight trains, prodigious water powers, the Canadian Rockies, Victoria, B. C., har- bor, wheat raising in Edmonton, the Northern lights, the minerals of the Dominion. The wonderful presentation has never been surpassed nor even equalled.
The Argentine has made its finest exhibition. The chief feature is the showing of the stock and agricultural industries, although forests, mines
No photograph may adequately picture the wonderful night lighting effects on the Exposition. All visitors agree it is the most attractive effect furnished. The great rays of light in the distance are contributed by a great battery of electrics, and cut the darkness at all angles and in changing colors. Part of their diversions is to join the elaborate fireworks display on the Marina.
reproductions of scenes in the trenches exquisitely done in miniature. Illu- minated dioramas of French watering places are given.
The Canadian Building, which cost more than $300,000, contains a perma- nent exhibit. Portions of this display have been shown at former exposi- tions, and each year the exhibit is brought up to date. It is in charge of a permanent commission. There are no cut and dried exhibits, and the California newspapers are urging that this method be substituted for jars of processed fruit. A great number of illuminated dioramas with the fore-
and schools' are well exploited. Chilled meats are encased in refrigerators; the great sections of polished tree trunks, huge slabs and boards — all of hard- woods— give a big idea of the timber industry. Argentina has five thousand separate exhibits at the Fair.
Although Australia is taking no in- considerable part in the war, the Do- minion has been recommended for no fewer than 165 prizes, including one grand prize, 11 medals of honor, 60 gold medals, 37 silver medals, 33 bronze medals, 23 honorable mentions. See the frozen beef and mutton in the Australian pavilion, and the mine dis-
Vestibule, main entrance to the Palace of Machinery, the largest building
on the grounds.
play, including exhibits from the world's largest silver field at Broken Hill in New South Wales, and gold from wonderful Mount Morgan in Queensland. Australian gems and pre- cious stones collected from mines in New South Wales and Queensland may be seen with jewel cutters at work. Here, too, are Australian diamonds.
In the Danish pavilion, reproducing the famous Kronberg Castle at Elsi- nore, are displays of Denmark's mari-
time progress. This building is really a great social hall. You will find the most interesting Danish displays in the Palace of Manufactures. Proba- bly the finest exhibit is that of the Royal porcelain factory at Copenha- gen. Exquisite silver work is shown in profusion.
Every one visits the Chinese build- ings, which are enclosed by a wall and reproduce a portion of the Forbidden City of Peking. There are five struc-
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297
tures, one being an exact model of Pai-ho Palace, built in the Tsing dy- nasty.
See the Netherlands pavilion in characteristic Dutch architecture. It has one hundred flag poles, and con- tains a wealth of exhibits from the Dutch East Indies, including great panoramic scenes where one seems set upon a mountain top with its prospect of far away valleys and rich tropical plantations. Here is a Java tea room, where refreshments are served by pretty Dutch Misses.
The Swedish building, designed by Ferdinand Boberg, one of the great architects of Sweden, presents the Swedish architecture in the Fifteenth century. It is furnished with the home woven carpets and bedding of the Swedish peasants, commingling state- liness with simplicity.
Grown-ups pay fifty cents to enter the grounds; children between 7 and 12 twenty-five cents, and under that, admission is free. Good meals may be had in San Francisco or on the Ex- position grounds for fifty cents. Ten thousand people take their luncheons every day; there are fine lunching places on the grounds, while settees and tables are provided in the Japan- ese Pavilion, the Palace of Horticul- ture, and in numerous other gardens, where coffee, tea or sandwiches may be obtained. In the Palace of Food Products, hot scones and snails may be had for five cents each, and across the aisle a good cup of coffee for ten cents. Hotel prices in San Francisco are the same as those in other cities, and within a quarter of a mile of the Exposition grounds good rooms may be had for $3.50 per week and up.
Entertainments are going on in dif- ferent portions of the grounds all day after ten in the morning. For ten cents you may hear Edwin Lemare of London, pronounced the world's great- est organist, give an hour's recital up- on the huge organ in Festival Hall. Half a dozen of the famous bands of the country give daily free concerts. Each of the States hold open house, and here visitors in constant numbers
from all portions of the world register. All of the State buildings and foreign pavilions are equipped with grapha- phones. In the Cuban building, for example, dances are held almost nightly, and all are welcome. Girls appear in Spanish costumes, giving ex- hibition dances upon the floors of the great inner court to the strains of a Spanish orchestra. During the visit of the midshipmen from Annapolis, the ballroom of the Illinois building became a rendezvous for the young tars, where daily dances were held.
The Zone, the Midway of Chicago days, is well worth visiting. It cost $10,000,000, and 2,000 people are em- ployed there. Of special interest is a four-acre topographical map of the Panama Canal zone, through which runs a faithful miniature of the Pan- ama Canal, on which steamers are seen entering and leaving the locks in going from ocean to ocean. The ex- hibit is viewed from a traveling plat- form set about twenty feet above the map, which is the largest topographi- cal map in the world. A dictaphone at each chair, with ear drums, de- scribes each point of interest as it is passed. The splendid illumination of the huge map lends it an effect of dis- tance and perspective.
In the Maorian, Samoan and Ha- waiian villages bands of tribesmen give native dances. In the Grand Canyon of Arizona the visitor rides on a standard gauge train and beholds a succession of great illuminated dia- ramas presenting the scenes of the Canyon as observed in a ride of one hundred miles along its brink. Girls in picturesque costumes of the Nava- jos stationed at different points de- scribe the scenery as the car comes to a stop in its long trip.
The aercscope is like a giant see- saw, with a double-decked passenger car on its long arm and a huge mass of concrete on the short arm. It is four feet higher than the Ferris wheel, and lifts the visitor 264 feet above the street and 316 feet above San Fran- cisco Bay. When once the great car has been raised almost upright, it de-
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scribes a circle parallel to the earth. At night, illuminated, it seems as though a Zeppelin were circling over the Zone. A tank beneath the car au- tomatically discharges or takes on an amount of water equal in weight to that of the passengers leaving or en- tering, so that the balance is always evenly maintained.
The illumination of the Exposition is its most marvelous feature. Former President Roosevelt said it was the most wonderful illumination in the world's history. It marks tremendous progress in the art and science of lighting since the last great exposition in St. Louis. The advance in appara- tus makes it possible to get about three times the amount of light by the same amount of current, while the de- velopment in methods has been mar- velous. Vast areas are decorated by luminous colors; the whole Exposition takes on an indescribable lustre and brilliancy; the huge Tower of Jewels, 435 feet high, stands out satin-white against the heavens. And yet nowhere is the visitor obliged to look directly at an unshielded light. So widely is the light diffused that it is possible to read a letter or an envelope any- where upon the grounds. Huge search- lights concealed on the roofs of the ex- hibit palaces, and a battery of forty- eight search-lights, the largest made, on a jetty in the bay hurl their rays against the facades of the exhibit pal- aces, the giant groups of statuary, the lofty colonnades, the towering domes and minarets, bringing out every de- tail. This battery has three billion six hundred million candle power. At night the palaces become radiant, as though they themselves were sources of light. Under the play of the bril- liant shafts, the Exposition assumes a mystical, elusive quality. In addi- tion to the searchlights are the con- cealed colored lights set behind the columns and colonnades, their reflected hues standing out in the maze of white light like garnets in a field of snow. The search-light battery on the harbor is manned by seventy-two United States marines, and the light
has been seen one hundred miles from the Fair Grounds.
The Exposition has still almost three months to run; but so universal is the appreciation of its beauty that a move- ment is under way to save several of its most attractive features; more es- pecially the beautiful water frontage before the exhibit palaces known as the Marina (Villa Gardens.) Through the Marina runs a boulevard connect- ing with Van Ness avenue and also with the Embarcadero, a boulevard that extends along San Francisco's water front beyond the Ferry Building at the foot of Market street. On the west, the Exposition boulevard runs into the broad presidio drive that winds through the reservation along the bluffs overlooking the ocean. All that portion of the Exposition occu- pied by the State and foreign buildings is on United States government land (the presidio), and it would therefore be possible to permanently retain many of these structures. It is said that Japan proposes to dedicate her beauti- ful gardens, reproducing those that surround the temple of Kinkajuji at Kioto, to the government as a lasting testimonial from Japan to America. The Palace of Fine Arts, a semi-cir- cular structure describing an arc 1,100 feet in its outside perimeter, will prob- ably be saved. The building proper, which encloses the galleries, was con- structed of steel and concrete as a protection for the art treasures within, and will last for an indefinite period. The colonnades upon its east facade, and the great dome rising before it from the lagoon, are of staff upon wire mesh, and it is said that these can be resurfaced and permanently preserved. It is also probable that many of the imposing sculptures of the Exposi- tion, as well as several of the State buildings and national pavilions upon the presidio grounds, will be preserved — thus giving the city at the Golden Gate the basis of an unsurpassed in- dustrial museum through which the world, seeking wider trade upon the ocean now opened to the world's trade routes, may take advantage.
THE ALTAR PLACE
By Jeannette Hamilton Tennyson
I MUST CONFESS I was feeling wretchedly bored, homesick, and intolerably lonely my last Saturday afternoon in California, dear."
Stanley Earle unfolded his evening paper, laid it across his knees, smoothed out its creases, stretched himself in his substantial Morris^chair, smiled reminiscently, and fell into a reverie.
Mrs. Earle, who had but just entered the room as her husband spoke, ad- vanced to the open fire-place, a low song on her lips, and grasping the fire tongs, skillfully navigated a charred and smoking log into a bed of living coals. The flames leaped from the lazy spirals of smoke and the pleasant room brightened into a rosy glow. Still humming, Isobel Earle put aside the brass tongs, and moved in a fragrant atmosphere of mignonette to a waiting chair of willow and cretonne. As she passed her husband she gently patted his smoothly brushed hair, and stoop- ing, kissed with exaggerated accuracy an undisguised clearing on the crown of his brown head. .
Isobel Earle was a woman of thirty or there abouts, and a year or two her husband's junior in appearance, but as she settled down in her chair, with its armful of fluffy and mysterious needle- work, she confided to her stitching a complacent smile which betrayed a peace and contentment in them.
As she shook out the soft folds of her embroidery, she crooked an arched eyebrow a fraction of space above its fellow, and darting a twinkling glance at her husband, she exclaimed softly, as though she had just heard him speak: "Ah, but that was what you were expecting, wasn't it, Stanley? Then you were not disappointed ! What
did you do? I thought San Francisco was a Lorelei so beautiful and fasci- nating that to see her was to succumb instantly to her charms! What did you do, dear?"
"Well, for one thing," he reflected leisurely, as he piled the bowl of his pipe full of tobacco from the cupped hollow of his hand, "I stood on the steps of the Hotel St. Francis and peered discontentedly at the slender column that reached heavenward from the heart of Union Square."
"How exciting! Was that all?"
Earle lighted his pipe, and having puffed profoundly a moment or two, tranquilly proceeded:
"Well, no, dearie. I was impelled as I stood there, from sheer ennui, to join the city's vaudeville contingent; so I strolled down Powell street, dodged across Market, got a ticket, and found myself drifting on a human tide in through the guarded doors to the seat assigned me. I never was in a San Francisco theatre before, and be- ing but a blunt male, I have never laid much stock on my own intuitions, but I tell you, pettie, the moment I breathed the atmosphere of that house I knew it would have been better for me if I had gone out and hanged a mill stone around my neck and dropped into the bay."
Mrs. Earle burst into a soft rush of laughter. "You blessed idiot," she ex- claimed. "Where had you left your fancy for the captivating bounce and gusto of the Melodeon circuit?"
Earle smiled musingly. "Well, never mind; you needn't laugh," he said, striving to appear aggrieved.
"I'm not laughing, darling; I'm cry- ing, only your modest intuition is not so obvious to you as my tears are to 3
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me! However, that by way of paren- thesis. You were speaking of your de- pressed spirits. Was your theatre too sad to respond to your festive mood, or were you too melancholy to re- spond to its levity?"
"My dear, my theatre from the stage to the last seat slammed was a Satur- nalia of cigaretted and cocktailed fem- ininity. You know yourself, Isobel, my sense perceptions are not touchy; I am neither Quaker nor Sybarite, but to my already homesick spirit the sig- nificant splendor of hullabaloo ladies deepened and increased my heimweh, until I could see, feel, hear, think only you. I looked at them, Isobel, mas- saged and satiated, varnished and tar- nished, and through the heavy atmos- phere my crystal wife impressed her- self upon my consciousness in contrast — 'Sweeter than honey in the honey- comb.' '''
"Stanley! Do you know that we are positively eccentric. Here we are sit- ting at home like a Darby and Joan, you with your pipe, and I with my needle, and what is worse, you are making extravagant love to me. Don't you know, dear, that at this very mo- ment we should be two of the impec- cable diners at the Lords' impeccable board? Poor impeccable diners! I always think of that wail of Steven- son's when I see them lined up in sol- emn, would-to-be-gay array, consum- ing their perfect and imposing dinners — 'Home, no more home to me, whither shall I wander?' These adventures into the realm of assorted amusements seem only to stimulate within us a fiercer determination to bide a wee more persistently by our own comfort- able hearth, don't they, man-o-mine?"
"True, dear, and had it not been that in that paste-pearl audience I discov- ered a genuine jewel-like face, even my lonely sitting room would have been preferable."
"Ah! You made such a discovery, Stanley?" inquired his wife, her brown head suddenly absorbed over the work in her hands.
"'Yes, dear," replied the man, flash- ing an illuminating smile at the low-
ered face. "But perhaps it would be much more nearly correct to say that the face was flower-like, for there were really none of the brilliant quali- ties of a jewel about it; it was like a gem only in that it was distinctly good, rare, genuine — but more like the flower of the Scriptures that cometh forth and is cut down."
"Was it a beautiful face, Stanley?"
"It was a face that was learned in suffering, Isobel, and yet it was not a woebegone face. It retained the out- line of youth (perhaps she was about your age), and it was not doleful; it was simply stamped with the certain tracery of deep sorrow. Hers was a face with a story : a story hushed : a story significant of her demeanor, un- assuming, aloof, apart."
"And did that awful yawn abate, Stanley?"
"Inquisitor ! I fell absorbed the mo- ment my idle gaze discovered her. She sat only across the aisle from me, and a row or two nearer the stage. I sup- pose I should have stared — her sensi- tive face so compelled my attention — but I was interrupted in my study of it. The seat next mine was not yet occupied, and I was forced to stand to allow its belated occupant to pass. Do you remember ever having heard me speak of Arthur Wilmington, Isobel?"
"Very distinctly. I particularly re- call having heard you speak of him in connection with the Hope Mines in Pennsylvania. I remember that you planned to bring him back with you here to New York on one trip you made, and were disappointed. Does he do tables and chairs on the Me- lodeon circuit now?"
"I fancy he does not claim so pre- tentious a talent, although he did par- ticipate in an attraction not billed on the program that afternoon. It was he who interrupted my engrossed oc- cupation of the face opposite. I did -not recognize him until after he had addressed me. He was considerably changed since my connection with the Hope mines. Our acquaintance at that time was most cordial. I liked him for a quiet, gentlemanly fellow, conse-
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quently I was not prepared to instantly recognize this stern-faced, serious, grave person who spoke my name in a voice of polite interrogation. He seemed distinctly pleased to see me, and we fell into intermittent talk when- ever the bill allowed. I soon saw that he, too, seemed to be laboring under the spell of a profound melancholy, and not only from his appearance did I judge, but his manner as well. His hair, coal black when I knew him, was quite gray; his eyes were years older than his age; his mouth had a deeply engraved parenthesis about it; and I noticed that even in the midst of a superficial laugh over an unusual far- cical stunt he seemed infinitely re- moved from it all — absent — and really silent, even when he talked. I fell to wondering about him, and presently during an intermission I asked if his home were in the city. I was con- scious immediately that I had stum- bled on a clue. He did not answer for just one chilly moment, then he said, smiling queerly, and looking straight into my eyes: 'No, I have no home/ Of course I felt like the devil, and muttered an apology which must have made him see I was far more embar- rassed than he, for he turned to me quite warmly immediately, and said: 'I have not had a home since before the exolosion. My wife left me.'
"'What explosion?' I asked, think- ing it much safer to avoid domestic topics. Then: 'Ah, I recollect having heard of an explosion in the Hope mines. Yes ! Yes ! And now I recall that you were at first reported killed. Afterward the papers stated that you were not injured severely, that is why your share in it escaped me for the moment, and the whole affair proved eventually not to be serious. Did you come out quite alright?' I asked him.
" 'Oh, yes,' he answered, casually enough, but I noticed his face darken, and the eyes that were once so particu- larly amiable grow sharp and hard, I began to cast about in my mind for a diverting topic. I could see the in- cident, or something about the whole thing, distressed him — when he spoke
again, quite calmly, but in that austere manner that he had acquired.
" 'I was in the hospital for several weeks,' he said, 'and when I got around I was seized with the spirit of the wanderlust. I've been jogging about ever since. Rotten show, isn't it?'
"The footlights were gleaming again and a couple of make-believe gods and goddesses were disporting themselves in riotous and commercialized vivacity under some impressionist oaks and beeches. I so thoroughly agreed with him that I was about to abruptly ter- minate my stay, when my eyes were again, magnetically, drawn to the one distinctive face within the circle of my vision. She stood out against the dark background like the central fig- ure of an artist's canvas, distinctive, solitary; a rather formidable uncon- scious dignity enveloping the appeal- ing softness of the delicate form. Her eyes were closed as nearly as I could see in the half light, and she did not open them again until the act had changed and the pictures of current events were dancing across the great white canvas.
"Suddenly I saw a vital change pass over her. She sat up quickly and leaned forward. Her body seemed to stiffen and grow rigid, as though to for- tify itself against some shock. She fixed her eyes fiercely in the direction of the canvas, and I could see she was almost panting. I glanced quickly in the direction of the stage to see what had upset her, and was just in time to
catch the words ' Mine Disaster/
before they flashed off, and in orderly succession the details of a mining ac- cident began to be shown. With every view I could see her agitation deepen. I saw her resistance wavering. I glanced at the films. On a stretcher two men were carrying a white-sheeted form. I glanced back. In another in- stant I saw a quiver uncontrollably run the length of her delicate body. I heard a slight moan and saw the little lady crumple into an unconscious heap. Somebody screamed (I think it was the woman who sat next to her) ,
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and the lights flashed on. Instantly I was beside the limp form, and stoop- ing was about to lift it when I felt a vice-like grip on my arm. I glanced up in amazement, to see Wilmington crouching over me like a tiger. 'I will take her,' he said, in a voice like vel- vet and steel. I gazed at him fasci- nated. 'It's alright,' he answered my look. 'She's my wife.' I stepped back.
'"What's the matter?' came in trembling accents from all over the house. 'What's the matter? What's the matter?'
"Wilmington stood up in the aisle with his wife in his arms. 'Nothing's the matter,' he said, in a voice of sin- gular distinctness. 'A lady has fainted — that's all.' The crowd breathed and craned forward to see.
"Wilmington squared his shoulders, lifted his head, and marched up the aisle like a triumphant Roman laden with his victorious spoils.
"I followed after, conscious of noth- ing but his transformation and the curi- ous delight his indifferent strength commanded. I found a taxicab, and in two minutes we were in the hotel. In another two or three the little lady was occupying a bed in my suite with the house doctor and a soft-voiced nurse in attendance.
"Wilmington paced the hall. He had kept in the background and his wife had not seen him. His magnifi- cent confidence had left him. Instead a rasping system of raw nerves seemed to lay themselves bare. I thought he would go to pieces when the doctor told him he might go in to her. He stood for an eternity outside her door — fumbling — groping for poise — and mopping the perspiration from his forehead. Suddenly I saw resolution touch him. He turned his head and gave me a long, quiet look, and with- out further ado walked triumphantly, eagerly, in to his wife."
Shanley Earle paused for a moment and drew violently at his pipe. Against the windows a gentle gust of rain spattered. The log fire burned brightly, bathing the softly lighted room in a
luxury of warmth. The man turned an intent gaze on the lovely face of his wife as she sat silently stitching with- in the circle of the table's rose-shaded light. It was an eloquent look, and there was just a suspicion of a glim- mer as his eyes fell from the charming face to the wee silken-flannel garment in her hands.
He spoke again lightly, but his voice was deep.
"Well, you know, Isobel, there is as much happiness to be found in an ex- cellent dinner as in the discovery of a lost wife — if she doesn't happen to be your own — so I set about ordering a feast to be served in my sitting-room that made old Omar's sketchy menu look like codfish and postum. I waited, of course, till the chef said 'when,' then I tiptoed valiantly to that silent door and tapped. I called through the panels that I had a health to toast, and while I was still signal- ing, the door was flung open and Wil- mington was on the threshold with heaven in his eyes and that demure lit- tle lady following after, her small face aflame.
"After dinner she told me the story while she sat with her hand in her husband's, and we smoked beside the open window.
"It seems that a cruel and silly lie had been flung into their home by a cloven-hoofed angel. Wilmington had haughtily refused to explain, and his wife quivered with the hurt and sting of it, had crept away to hide. Arthur searched for her in vain.
"At the end of six months she de- cided that she had a greater capacity for love than denial, so she stripped her pride and telegraphed him that she was returning. She boarded a train, jubilant in the decision that her duty held no alternative. To compel her trembling to silence she purchased a daily paper and was confronted in the first headlines she saw with the news of the explosion in her hus- band's mine and his reported death. She collapsed. They carried her from the train and took her to a hospital. She lay for weeks in intimate touch
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with death. When she ultimately re- covered, she turned her face away from the desolate past, her strength still too infirm to investigate the crush- ing end of her happiness. Wandering from town to village and from village to city, ever finding the thing she fled, she strayed that Saturday into the stronghold of the laughter loving, thinking, possibly, that she could es- cape from herself. I have told you the result.
"You know they say, Isobel, that the quarrels of lovers are the renewal of love. As we sat there in the smil- ing moonshine, the light that never was on sea or land fell across their faces, imparting an ineffable content. I thought as I looked at them how sor- row and happiness had transformed them into creatures too big, for all time, for petty things; how that long way round would prove to be the short cut to heaven here and hereafter."
Lifting the unperused paper from his knees, the man laid it on the table, and beside it on a bronze tray he placed his pipe. He stepped to where
his wife sat stitching in the soft light, and bending over her took her hands in his.
"I suddenly perceived," he said, "that the mood of the afternoon was directing me also toward a beckoning road, and all at once I only knew it led me home."
"You wondered, when I came, and were comforted; now you know and are satisfied."
He exerted a gentle force and his wife stood before him.
As she did so, a dainty bit of creamy flannel fell to her feet. Stan- ley Earle stooped and picked it up. Very carefully he held it outstretched at arm's length before him.
His face became transfigured. "Iso- bel!" he exclaimed, awe and wonder in his voice. "Isobel, what is it?"
His wife gave a tremulous little laugh and caught the soft robe to her breast.
"That," she said, with a catch in her voice, "that is to be henceforth a sym- bol of home — Home that our feet may leave — never our hearts."
A /A E D IT AT I O N
As I sat all alone in the quiet —
The quiet so still and so deep, And watched the moon silver the landscape —
The moon that has secrets to keep, I was calmed by the magical stillness,
My heart was lulled softly to rest, And my thoughts were a-wing like the swallow,
When homeward it flies to its nest.
Back to the days of my childhood,
Back to the days when I Had known but the bloom of the roses,
And seen but the blue of the sky ; When my mother's lap was a haven,
At every hour of the day, Where childish sobs were forgotten,
And the bruises were kissed away.
Slowly my gowns have been lengthened,
And now I am taller than she, And yet how I long for the comfort
That I found on my mother's knee. As I sat all alone in the quiet,
The thought seemed to come, somehow : That mother is holding me always,
Tis her heart that is holding me now.
ELLA FLATT KELLEP
LIL
By Georgie Brooks
LIL COULD NOT control her im- patience as she peered out of the little square window of her room for the fortieth time, per- haps, at the strong, muscular man who had engaged her father and her brother Bill in a lengthy conversation. She knew why he had come. She knew why he was so persistent, for this was his second visit to her home since sunrise. Nor could her uneasi- ness be lessened when she realized that the high water, which had flooded the low land in the night, must have driven Luke Bell, her fugitive lover, from the thickets near the river, into the danger of arrest.
To fly to Luke, to warn and save him was her one consuming desire, but how could she when this grim, deter- mined man was waiting outside for just such an opportunity as she might give him, should she attempt to put Luke on his guard. To wait was tor- ture, but there was no other alterna- tive, until she saw the sheriff ride leisurely down the oak-lined road to- ward Hampton, carrying with him her hate, and not the information he had sought. For she knew that her father and her brother had had too much experience in the past in giving out incriminating evidence, unintention- ally, to fall into that error again. Her Uncle Sam, her father's brother, was now serving a term in the penitentiary because of a blunder of this kind. She felt that the sheriff could not have de- veloped sufficient cleverness, in the meantime, to get from them the infor- mation that he wanted as to Luke's whereabouts.
As soon as her enemy was hidden from sight by a turn in the road, she hurried out to the tumble-down fence
in front, where Bill, her elder brother, a strapping fellow of nineteen or twenty, with a round head set firmly on a short neck attached to broad shoulders, continued to lounge in the sunshine. She lost no time in making known to him her wishes.
"I want to sell Dandy," she cried. "Don't you think Dan Hart'll buy him ? He wanted to give me fifty dol- lars for him last summer."
Nonplussed by her abruptness, Bill looked at the jgirl. He saw that a struggle was going on within her, and although he had not the keenness to analyze her agitation, his reply was not unkind, as was his usual attitude toward her when he thought that she was over-stepping her woman's place.
"I don't see what you want to sell him for?" he stupidly inquired. "What will you do for a saddle horse? If he was mine I wouldn't take that for him."
"You know Luke took Jim Cane's steer," she went on, determinedly, "an' sold it for fifty dollars, because I asked him to help pay the in'trest on our mortgage, as Dad is sick so much an' couldn't get the money. If I could pay Jim fifty dollars, mebbe he would not send Luke to prison." Then she added, by way of apology for Luke: "Luke allus said (Jim stole his roan horse — the one he could never find."
She did not look at Bill while she was speaking. Her anger was fast vanishing, and tears were near. Ashamed of her emotion, and to divert Bill's attention, she looked down at her foot, which she rocked in the sand. "Won't you help me sell Dandy an' pay for the steer?" she pleaded.
"I dunno but I will," he answered, with an interest that she had not ex-
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307
pected. "But I don't believe Jim Cane'll take the money. He hates Luke like pizen."
"I guess he will," Lil replied. "But I'm afraid Dan won't buy the horse, an' I don't know anybody else who would want him. Mebbe he will, though."
"Mebe he will," acquiesced Bill, as he rose with a lazy yawn. "I guess I'll go right away an' see if Dan'll buy him."
Lil entered the house again, but an instant later slipped out by the rear door, and took a circuitous route along the newly risen water line. Screened by the clumps of weeds on the high ground, she darted forward, close to the margin of the water, and as rap- idly as her clinging calico skirt would permit. Hurrying on, she clambered over piles of driftwood, scraggly and damp smelling, and trunks of fallen trees. Soon she came to the bank of the river. Here she paused, and thrusting her flapping gingham sun- bonnet from her face, listened intently. Wisps of her dark, curling hair es- caped from the loose coil at the back of her head and fell over her ears. A frown, ill-suited to her sixteen years, gathered between her brows, marring her prettiness.
She turned abruptly to the left and went cautiously forward, as a mother- bird might approach its nest in a time of danger. Stopping beside a growth of young willows that lined the outer edge of the thicket, a barrier between detection and any secrets which the deep woods might hold, she glanced round to make sure that she was not being observed.
Her dog had followed her without her knowledge. Crowding his way to her side, he sniffed at the package, wrapped in a newspaper, which she carried in her hand.
"Hist!" she scolded in a half-whis- per. The animal crouched at her feet.
Her pulse throbbed; her breath came in soft, hurried jets. Moving farther into the thicket, she gave a low, short whistle, as musical as that of a bird, and with the same intona-
tion. Having lived all her life in the woods, to imitate the call of a bird was an easy and perfect thing for her to do. She parted the young willows and looked for a secure footing.
"Luke !" she called in a quick, eager voice. But there was no response.
"Luke!" she called again, and a lit- tle more boldly. "It's Lil. Where are you?"
Slowly the head and shoulders of a young man rose above the undergrowth a few feet in advance of her, and in a dazed way plowed his way to her side, his large frame reeling in the effort. Hardship told in his face, and his fur- tive glance and hungry look appealed to the girl. His eyes brimmed with love.
"Are you all right?" she anxiously inquired, looking up at him. "The water didn't shut you in?"
He laughed carelessly, betraying a stolid indifference to his situation, rather than courage.
"I swum out," he answered, with conscious pride in his prowess, looking down at his moist garments as he held up his arms for her inspection. "The water come up when I was asleep. My bed's in there now," he nodded toward the inner thicket, "an* I guess it'll stay there. I don't care if it does," he added with a finality, translated to mean that he was chagrined to confess to Lil that even the water had out- witted him. "I'm awful hungry, Lil. Where's my grub?"
She thrust into his hand the pack- age that she had brought. The action may have resented Luke's abruptness, 'or she may not have known the deli- cacy of presenting it in a gentler way. She mutely watched him with grave, far-seeing eyes as he eagerly un- wrapped the food.
"I couldn't come sooner," she said, after a silence. "He was there twict this morning. I guess he thought the high water'd run you out. Anyway, I was afraid he'd watch me." She stood facing Luke while she talked, bruising the young willow tops as she nervously twisted them about her fingers.
"Where's he now?" Luke presently
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inquired with indifferent interest.
"I guess he went back to Hampton. He started that way."
"Was he by himself?"
"No. Jim Cane was with him."
At the mention of his enemy's name, Luke's breath came with a sudden ef- fort. His steel-gray eyes glittered as he tried to steady his trembling hands.
"Didn't he say nothin' about me — 'bout arrestin' me?"
"I don't know/ she responded. "He talked to Dad, an' I hain't seen Dad since. I come as soon as the sheriff went."
Characteristically unmindful of the girl's comfort, Luke had seated him- self on an old tree trunk, gnarled and scarred, reclining against the slope of the bank, and was quietly munching the bacon and biscuit, which had been crushed into a soggy mass by the ner- vous gripping of Lil's hand.
"This tastes mighty good to a feller, I can tell you," he remarked. "Speci- ally as he's had nothin' to eat since yisterday. Lil, you're a mighty good girl, and I'll have a mighty good wife when we're married. I'll bet Hank Mason'll hate me. He thinks a lot of you."
"Oh, bother!" fretfully exclaimed the girl. "What do you want to talk about Hank for? You know I don't like him." She turned partly away, and anxiety again settled in her eyes.
Luke grinned. He was not the one to determine whether Lil's pettishness grew out of annoyance at his implying a doubt of her affection, or whether her woman's instinct repelled all at- tempts at jesting in a time of danger, but her answer greatly pleased him, as, secretly, he was somewhat jealous of Hank.
Again Lil broke the silence, which was becoming oppressive.
"Luke, I wish you hadn't took Jim Cane's steer," she complained as she continued to twist the willow tops, and Luke went on munching his food. It had cost her an effort to say those words, for Luke usually resented, in no mild way, all her criticism of him or his acts.
"Why?" he inquired blankly. It did not occur to him to resent her inter- ference, so great was his surprise at her unreasonableness. "You know I got fifty dollars for that steer, an' be- sides, Jim stoled my horse," he finished meekly.
"Yes, I know," replied Lil, unpla- cated. "But I wish you hadn't."
"I don't see why," he urged, his point of view utterly outside her hori- zon, carrying him over any scruples which she might harbor or put for- ward.
Turning so that she directly faced him, she looked at him with deep, un- flinching eyes, her heart wildly beat- ing in anticipation of the worst.
"If the sheriff catches you," she choked, in an effort to control her emo- tion, "you'll have to go to prison for a long time, an' then mebbe we'll never be married." The hitch in her voice was not lost upon Luke.
"Never do you mind," he hurriedly answered, and with much bravado: "Catchin' before hangin', you know. The first time Jim Cane gets drunk he'll forget I stoled his steer. Don't you mind, Lil. I'm all right. He'll never get me."
Barely had the words escaped from Luke's lips when Lil's dog, lying near waiting the pleasure of his mistress, rose with a snarl and a lunge, heading for the clearing in front. The next instant Lil's startled eyes beheld the sheriff, followed by Cane, plunging neck-deep to their horses into the growth of young willows. So complete was her surprise that she stood spell- bound.
"Oh, Luke!" she helplessly wailed.
"No use to get scart," sullenly droned Luke, finding his voice. He, too, seemed to have lost all power of volition. "If I'm took, I'm took," he faltered, while awaiting the approach of the sheriff as an ox yields to the unavoidable yoke.
The finality of Luke's words roused the girl from the paralyzing fear that had overwhelmed her. Her habit of being ready for any emergency came back to her. "Down, Tige !" she called
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309
as the dog rose to the defense of his friends, by keeping the horses of the intruders at bay. She saw that in an- other instant Tige would have felt the keen sting of a bullet from Cane's rifle which he held ready.
"This looks bad, Luke," remarked the sheriff, in easy familiarity, as he advanced with the handcuffs. Cane had not dismounted, but sat quietly overlooking the proceedings.
Luke made no reply nor offered any resistance, but as the smothered sobs of the girl reached him, a quiver, half voluntary, half involuntary, passed over him.
The girl caught his glance, and her tears were stayed. In an instant she was transformed. Hate, determina- tion, vengeance, shone in her eyes and settled in the quick lines of her face. The fury of her soul was roused. It was not a time to weep. She must save Luke.
They filed out of the thicket, Cane leading, and Lil and Tige following at the last. Once upon open ground Cane dismounted and assisted Luke into his saddle, a feat not easy of accomplish- ment, considering Luke's great size and weight, and his manacles. Cane gave one end of the strong rope, which he had tied round the neck of his horse, to the sheriff, while he himself prepared to keep near on foot.
Lil waited until she saw there was nothing that she could do there to help Luke; then, like a startled quail, she darted toward home, actuated by stronger emotions than those which forced her onward in search of Luke a short time before.
How had the sheriff learned of Luke's whereabouts? That was the question which was burning into her soul. Had the officer followed her in spite of her caution? Surely the two men were well on the road to town when she had started for Luke's hid- ing place. But she had not seen Hank Mason lurking in the edge of the thicket near where she entered it. Nor had she seen him gallop after the sher- iff and Cane, guiding them to the place where he knew Luke could be
found, then hurriedly ride away to- ward Hampton.
As she drew near her home, she saw Bill and Dan Hart by the fence in front, and that Dan had hold of the rope which was fastened round Dandy. Her heart gave a leap. She knew now that Dan would buy the horse. Sor- row at the loss of Dandy stung her for a moment, but it could not linger with her, as joy that she was to possess the precious fifty dollars with which to purchase Luke's immunity from ar- rest and imprisonment rose supreme within her.
She soon came up to the two men. After she and Dan had exchanged greetings, he remarkad:
"Well, Lil, you'll miss your saddle horse, but you must get Bill to give you another one. Dandy is just the horse I need to ride after my cattle. I need another good horse, as I don't like to ride one too hard. Yesterday I was at Upper Kings River, and I saw that little roan that Luke Bell used to own, ranging with Henry Knowles' herd. Henry wasn't at home, and his new foreman didn't know whether the horse was for sale or not. I'm going up that way again in a few days, and I'll see if Knowles will sell him."
Lil and Bill exchanged glances at this piece of information which Hart had unconsciously given them.
After a little further conversation, Dan gave Lill the fifty dollars in gold, and led Dandy away.
Lil and Bill talked together for a little while after Hart's departure, then Lil went into the house to make some preparations, and Bill hurried away to saddle another horse. They were soon headed for Knowles' ranch, fifteen miles away.
As luck would have it, they had gone but a mile or two when they met Knowles, who was on his way to Hampton. It did not take Lil many minutes to tell him of their errand, with the result that he wrote out a copy of a paper that he had in his bank book and gave the copy to Lil.
Lil and Bill then turned and gal- loped to Cane's ranch, where they
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found Cane sitting in the shade of some poplars in his yard, talking to two oi his friends. As his ranch was on the road to Hampton from Lil's home, he had stopped in when he and the sheriff had reached there with Luke, intending to saddle another horse and follow the sheriff into town. But finding his friends waiting for him he remained to visit with them for a while.
Lil and Bill dismounted and hitched their horses to the willows in front by the fence. As the brother and sister came toward the group under the trees the men stopped talking. Lil moved rapidly forward and in advance of Bill, as if the least delay might deprive her of the pleasure of the onset. Soon she stood before Cane, two crimson spots burning in her cheeks. Her black eyes, gleaming with a defiant light, flashed a challenge to those who would oppose her. With the gaze of all the little company riveted upon her she dropped the fifty dollars on an empty chair be- side Cane and said, as she caught the questioning glances of the others:
"That's to pay for your steer."
"What steer?" inquired Cane who, as usual, was partly under the influ- ence of liquor. "You hain't bought any steer of me."
"The steer you're putting Luke in prison about," she answered, standing lithe and straight, and looking down upon him as if she were an avenging angel.
"No. That don't go," replied Cane, now that the true situation had dawned upon him. "Here's your money. I don't want it. You don't owe me. I'd ruther have Luke as I've got him than to have the money. I know he won't steal any more of my cattle if I get him in prison." Cane gathered up the gold pieces and attempted to return them to her.
But Lil snatched from her pocket the paper that she had got from Knowles, and held it up before his be- wildered eyes.
"What's that you've got there?" he demanded, his tones quavering slight- ly. He rose to take the paper from her,
Lil stepped back out of his reach, holding tightly to the paper. When at a safe distance she read it aloud so that the others might know what it was about. It was a copy of a bill of sale, which Cane had given Henry Knowles and the written description of the ani- mal sold by Cane was so accurate that those who knew Luke's horse could recognize it as the one which had been stolen.
Cane sat silently down, with the air of one who was monentarily helpless.
"Now, Jim Cane," said Lil, as she still gripped the paper. "You take the money I give you, an' then give me a written paper saying that Luke has paid you for that steer, and that he is not going to jail, or I'll go right to the sheriff and tell him you stoled Luke's horse, and this paper proves it."
Not seeing an easier way out of the difficulty, Cane reluctantly took pencil and paper from his pocket and wrote as Lil requested. When he had fin- ished, she spoke again:
"You've said in this paper that you got sixty dollars for Luke's horse that you stole. You got more for the horse than the steer was worth. You give me ten dollars. You owe Luke that much, and I'll collect it for him."
Triumph shone in her eyes as she received the paper Cane had written for her, and the ten dollars she de- manded of him. Turning to Bill, who had stood silently by while she was dealing with Cane, she said : "Let's go," and with the air of one who had settled accounts with her enemy in a manner eminently satisfactory to her- self, she marched to her horse, mount- ed it without assistance, and with Bill, started toward town, not deigning to look at Hank Mason, who had just ridden up, and who looked question- ingly after her.
THE SCAR
By Bailey AVillard
THE FIERCE tropic sun, the sea glare, the stare of the stark coral beaches, and the loneli- ness of the great briny blue, gnaw at the nerves of white men in the South Seas. But it was not al- together these things that had un- strung Walter Fanning and sent him to bed to toss and turn about all through the hot night in his bunga- low under the feather duster palms.
An island schooner may be two weeks overdue without taking all the urbanity and glee out of a young man awaiting its arrival on a mid-Pacific island, but when that schooner is a month behind time and the man's wife happens to be aboard, there is good cause for apprehension.
"If that Alice Robinson wasn't such a rotten old tub," groaned Fanning, when he and Gideon Ruggles, his part- ner, the only white man beside himself on the lonely little atoll, stood on the beach at five the next morning and searched the vacant summer sea with their glasses, "I shouldn't fret so much — but her masts are apt to snap in a ten mile breeze."
"Oh, well, a matter of masts "
began Ruggles, in a big, wholesome, reassuring tone to the disheartened husband.
"But you know she isn't a safe boat, Gideon," cried Fanning in a peevish voice. "You heard Captain Nielsen say the last time in that he expected she'd pile her bones upon some reef inside of a year."
The two men made an odd study in contrasts as they stood there on the white beach, facing the eastern sea, fringed with the fire of the up-leaping tropic sun. Big Ruggles, thirty-five and thewed like a Vulcan, had a fine
large head, and a clear, hopeful blue eye. But what marred the man was a side-long knife gash that ran the full length of his right cheek above the beard line, showing an ugly diago- nal band of white through the tan.
Fanning, though not a small man, measured only to Ruggles' shoulder, and was trim, light and youthful look- ing. Both men were in white duck, in which they had dressed every day of late in readiness for the schooner.
Clarice Fanning had not wanted to leave San Francisco and come to the islands. She had been married five years, and for three years Fanning had been shipping copra out of Upolulu, in the Tuamotu group. Fanning had be- gun there in a very modest way with Ruggles, whom he had first met in Manila, and who had appealed to him instantly as the kind of man he al- ways had wished to know. The big man knew Browning, also he knew how to butt two mutinous Kanakas' heads together so as to smash them both. When he had told Fanning of far- away, over-looked Upolulu, with its jpearl possibilities and its copra cer- tainties, there was nothing for it but that the two should bunch their sav- ings, rent the atoll from its native owner, who lived on Laraka, forty miles away, and go into the island trade together.
Fanning's wife had protested. She looked upon the island enterprise as a desperate adventure. But Fanning had shown her how he could come home once a year for a few weeks, and how they soon would be rolling about in a big limousine. But though there were plenty of pearls in the lagoon they were in deeper water than Rug- gles thought, and at first they had to
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rely upon copra, which meant fighting robber crabs, punching up tired natives and awaiting shipping returns from ports afar. So that letters had had to stand for visits, and Fanning had not seen his wife but once in three years. Every letter from him was a plea for her coming down, and at last she had consented and had sailed in the Alice Robinson with a missionary and his wife. And that was why the impatient, palpitating Fanning had been haunting the beach and straining his eyes, day after day, for the schooner that had not come.
"Better go back to the job, Walter," his partner was advising him that morning as the two stared out upon the vacant blue. "It will make the time go faster."
"Time!" gruffed Fanning. "Six weeks from Hawaii, and it's been done in ten days! I know what I'll do if another schooner happens in. I'll charter her and make for Honolulu."
"Not on your union suit!" objected Ruggles. "Why, the Alice would come nosing in before you were out two
days. And then " He shut his
eyes and clenched his big, strong hands. For he had a secret, this great ugly man — and it concerned Fanning's wife. Never had he breathed to him the fact that he knew Clarice — that he had not merely known her, but had loved her and loved her still. The pic- ture of her sailing tardily in while 'Fanning was absent on his idle search — they two, Clarice and he, alone upon the island — for the Kanaka didn't count — was too much for his imagina- tion. For the last walk they had taken together along the willowed ala- meda at San Jose years agone was still vivid before him, and the wistful look in her sweet brown eyes when she had said:
"You are going so far away, dear! It's a tragic distance to the Philippines. Will you love me, away off there, and come back to me again?"
"I will always love you and I will come back to you," he had promised.
But he had not come back. He had stayed to make his fortune in the
South Seas — his fortune and hers. In the Micronesian group he had bought a little schooner and had gone into the island trade. But the island outlaw, Bully Hayes, had seized the vessel one night at Butaritari, and after a hard fight had put to sea in her, leav- ing Ruggles insensible on the beach, with the awful knife-gash in his cheek.
Ended were all his hopes of Clarice. How could he go back to her with that hideous scar upon his face — to the woman who had told him over and over again how proud she was of her hand- some lover? He was glad when he read in a San Francisco paper of how he had been slain on the beach by the pirate.
And now Clarice was coming to Up- olulu. Well, there was but one thing to do, and that was to keep clear of the Alice Robinson until she was ready to leave the island and then to sail in her.
"I'm going to do it, Ruggles!" in- sisted Fanning, referring to his pro- posed search for the overdue schooner. "The Tropic Bird will be here from Tahiti soon, and I'll buy up old Wil- kins and go scouring the sea for Clar- ice. You're such a hog for work you can keep on the job. It won't be spend- ing much money. A handful or two of those pearls will do it. God! I'd give all my share to know where she is!"
"You could have mine, too, Walt," declared Ruggles in fine, friendly tones. "But you'd better wait a week. Come back to work. We're getting up some beauties now, and there'll be all the more to show Mrs. Fanning when she comes in."
For at last the lagoon had been yielding up its treasure. The new suits, bought with the copra returns, had admitted of the divers going down in many fathoms, to search out "shell" on virgin banks of which the island's former fishers had only dreamed. Fan- ning and Ruggles had been toiling like demons, but the looting of the lagoon had made them rich.
"Here comes old Safety Matches!" boomed Ruggles, as the tall, wonderful
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figure of a naked Kanaka came over from the lagoon. "What's wrong now, Safe?"
Safumassee, the native foreman, blinked his eyes and shook his head.
"Man go down — man no come up. Mebbee shark get him."
"Lord!" growled Fanning, turning quickly. "We can't afford to lose one
of those suits just now when Run
down, Rug, and see what can be done."
"The man's something, too," ob- served Ruggles, hurrying down to the boat.
It was only a matter of ten minutes' work to disentangle a fouled line and get the diver up, but the man's bulging eyes and spasmodic intake of breath told the story of how near he had come to death. Fanning, tragically inter- ested in the work again, brought in a boat load of mother-of-pearl. Then he went over to where Ruggles, who had come ashore in another boat, was superintending the opening of a pile of rotted shell, keeping well to wind- ward, for it smelled loudly.
"Look a-here, partner!" cried Rug- gles. "See what we're getting out of this mess! Look at this one! Some pearl, eh!"
"Yes, but what's that brown devil trying to put into his mouth?" Fan- ning frowned, seized the Kanaka's hand and wrenched from it a great white gem. It fell among the coral, and both partners plumped down upon their knees and began poking about for it, Fanning finding it at last.
"The biggest yet!" he cried with de- light. "The very biggest!" He held the white jewel aloft, and as he did so his eye ran down the lagoon and out through the rippling inlet. "Hoo- ray!" he yelled ecstatically. "There's the Alice! Bless her rotten old tim- bers, they held together this trip."
"Right-oh!" boomed Ruggles in in- stant glee. Then his face fell, and the great scar on his cheek grew a ghast- lier white. She was coming — she would soon be there. And he must go.
"Wish you'd send word over to the house and have Gotolo get up a big
feed," said Fanning. "We'll treat Captain Nielsen well while he's here, and when he sails "
"When he sails I go with him," broke in Ruggles, abruptly.
"Go with him?" cried Fanning, star- ing hard at his partner. "Are you crazy, man? What d'yeh mean?"
"I mean I'm going!" Ruggles watched the growing hull. "I've been planning to set up shop down in Mel- bourne— something in the freighting line."
"But you wouldn't leave me in the lurch here with a lot of Kanakas, would you, old man? Mrs. Fanning would not have it."
"Why, there'll be the missionary and his wife — they're a heap better company than I am. She won't be lonesome." He looked wistfully across the lagoon to the incoming Alice, now nearing the anchorage.
There was a fond meeting aboard the schooner, at which Ruggles ashore glanced with a great heaving sigh, then, turning, fled for the palms. He was nowhere in sight when Fanning reached the beach with Clarice and the Reverend Alex Montgomery and his wife. Nor did he appear at dinner in the bungalow, where little, round, red-faced Captain Nielsen ate heartily of green turtle and told about the head winds which had delayed his arrival.
"And pray, where is that interesting Mr. Ruggles of yours, Walter?" asked Clarice, curiously, after dinner. "I'm dying to see him."
"Perhaps he isn't well, dear," re- plied Fanning. "I'll go look him up."
He found Ruggles in one of the cabins under the palms.
"Say, Rug, what in the world have you turned recluse for?" he cried, shaking the big man by the shoulder as he sat upon the edge of a couch writing in his note book by the light of a candle. "Making your will?"
"No — just figuring up my share."
"Your share! Why, there's the whole lagoon! Nobody knows what's in it. "If you're chump enough to go away now "
"You can have the rest. You're
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married — you need more than I do. Minute I saw that schooner the old wanderlust got me again."
"The devil got you, you mean ! Why, Rug, you can't leave this island — it's incredible."
"Of course it is — that's why I do it," came the inept reply. "Go back to them, and leave me to my figures."
"All right, Old Inscrutable! But come in when you're done with 'em. Clarice wants to see you."
Ruggles' big frame thrilled again at the name, but he only nodded.
"Oh, you and she are sufficient for each other to-night!" he sighed. And as Fanning withdrew, he crushed the notebook in his great, strong hand.
Up until the very hour of the schooner's departure, three days later, Ruggles kept away from Clarice. On his urgent plea, Fanning had settled accounts, giving him a check on a Sydney bank for his share of the pearls and copra.
It was in the cool of late afternoon and the palms were waving in a light off-shore breeze when the Alice sailed.
"Clarice thinks it's mighty strange you haven't showed yourself to her," complained Fanning to Ruggles in the captain's cabin while the anchor was coming up. Suddenly he turned upon his friend. "Are you afraid of wo- men?" he demanded.
"That's it, old man, precisely — I'm afraid of women." Ruggles' eyes roved wildly about the little cabin. Fanning did not see that they were wet when he said: "Tell Mrs. Fanning — tell her — say that I wanted to see her,
but— well, that I'm different— I "
And he pointed to the scar.
"Oh!" cried Fanning. "You're away off. Why, Clarice wouldn't mind that at all."
"If you knew — if you only knew." Ruggles held up his big hands des- pairingly. Then he reached down and caught Fanning's fingers and gripped them hard. "Good-bye, my boy! Good-bye!" And he went into his own cabin and shut the door.
They all waved their adieux as the schooner made her slow way over the
lagoon and down the creek, and Clar- ice waved with them; but Ruggles made no reply.
As the Alice dipped her nose into the first souse of spray outside, he heard eager voices. Captain Nielsen and his mate were staring at a strange schooner that came bounding over the waves.
"Vot ship is it? Ay bane seen her before, Ay tank." The Captain passed his glass to Ruggles.
"The Southern Star — my schooner," gasped Ruggles, almost unbelievingly. "The same that was stolen out of Bu- taritari by Bully Hayes five years ago."
"Bully Hayes!" A look of dark anx- iety crossed the face of the Captain. "Vy, Ay bane hearing of him yoost a few weeks ago to Honolulu! He shooted the captain of the Islander and stole all his copra. Ay tanken ve put on leedle more sail."
"No; he's heading for the inlet!" cried Ruggles, seizing the Captain by the arm; "and you're going right back to protect those women of Upolulu! He's heard about our pearling, and he is interested in that. You're going back and help fight him off, d'yeh hear?"
The Captain protested. He had no women or pearls to protect. Upolulu could take care of itself. But as Hayes headed in, and the Star showed her stern, he grew a little braver, bouted ship on Ruggles' insistent plea, and was sailing into the inlet behind the outlaw when of a sudden a shower of rifle-shots riddled his mainsail and the angry voice of Bully Hayes bellowed through the megaphone:
"On your way, old horse! Or I'll send you to Kingdom Come!"
In a wild panic Nielsen ordered the Alice about, despite the urgent prayer of Ruggles, and she was making off down the inlet again in the failing evening light, when the big man dropped gently overboard and swam for shore with great swinging strokes.
In twenty minutes he was on the beach in the gathering murk; in a half hour he had passed the Star where she
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lay quietly at anchor just inside the lagoon, and within an hour he was calling to Fanning from the shelter of the palms.
"Great Scott, Ruggles, back again?" Fanning stared at the returned voy- ager in amaze. "Montgomery thought he saw the schooner sailing back up the creek, but I told him he must be mistaken, for she showed no lights."
"She isn't the Alice and she shows no lights because Bully Hayes com- mands her," said Ruggles quietly. "That's why I swam ashore."
"Bully Hayes!" cried Fanning, in dizzy horror. Then he shot an anxious glance toward the house.
"Yes — in the very boat he stole from me five years ago. He's here and he's after those pearls. Now, there's a dozen rifles in the rack. Better see that they're cleaned up and that the cartridges are all right. Give me a gun right now, and I'll go back and do some scouting."
He took the rifle handed out to him and disappeared in the direction of the schooner.
Fanning stirred up the natives and tried to make them understand the situation. Perhaps they understood it better than he, for the name of Bully Hayes was a terrible one to them. The half-a-dozen rifles placed in the hands of the more trusty ones were gladly received. Fanning stationed his men on the veranda of the bungalow and went in to consult with the missionary. Clarice and Mrs. Montgomery, to whom the unpleasant news was last to come, were listening to the minis- ter's tales of Bully Hayes. Fanning, who feared the effect of these stories upon Clarice, got Montgomery outside, and while they waited, rifles in hand, upon the veranda where the silent Ka- nakas lounged and smoked and cast worried looks toward the lagoon, the missionary resumed his history.
"As I was telling the ladies," he said in his dry, precise tones, "this Bully Hayes is the worst man who ever came into the South Seas. He stole a barkentine out of Callao, sailed her to San Francisco, loaded her up
with lumber, sold it in Acapulco, and then "
"Yes, I know," broke in Fanning im- patiently. "But instead of dealing in ancient history we ought to be schem- ing to outwit the beast. Here comes Ruggles. Perhaps he has learned something."
"All quiet," reported Ruggles from below the veranda rail. "Guess he'll wait till morning before he shows up."
He went back to the little shed by the lagoon beach, where he had watched before, and took Safumassee with him.
Ruggles was right. Not until after sunrise next morning did Hayes leave the schooner. The big sentinel rushed back to the bungalow to tell the news.
"He's coming ashore with a boatload of men," he told Fanning, who came out alone to meet him. "Where are all your Kanakas?"
"Lit out, every cowardly mother's son of 'em!" groaned Fanning. "Must have seen Hayes leave the schooner."
"There they go — in the boats !" cried Ruggles, pointing toward the lagoon, "and they're taking the rifles along with them. Hayes won't bother about them. He wants us and the pearls. They're off for Laraka — -Safety Matches and all. I thought that chap
would be loyal, but Say, this isn't
the pleasantest situation in the world, is it! Wish now we'd paddled out in the night for Laraka. It's only forty miles."
"Brilliant hindsight!" fumed Fan- ning. "If we'd only got the idea last night. Too late now, eh?"
"Perhaps not," mused Ruggles, glancing across the veranda to where a sweet, pale face showed inside the window. Clarice! His pulses leaped. He took an involuntary step toward her and stopped. Then he stepped for- ward again boldly. "We'd better try for Laraka," he said in low tones to Fanning; "it's about the only chance we have."
"Clarice!" Fanning called to his wife. "Where are the Montgomeries?"
"Gone down to the landing," she cried back in the old musical tones —
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only there was a quaver of fear in them.
"The batty old duffer! He was to stay here. I'll go call 'em." And he ran down the coral walk.
Ruggles stood in vibrant hesitation as Clarice came out upon the veranda, her white skirt fluttering in the morn- ing breeze. His sensitive soul shrank at the thought of the horror that would fill those familiar sweet brown eyes — those eyes which once had shone with love and pride for him — when they should behold his pitifully mutilated face. Slowly and painfully he turned toward Clarice, who was now standing by the veranda rail not three yards dis- tant from him, and saw the look of mild inquiry fade from her face, leav- ing it white with terror and amaze- ment.
"Edgar Vail!" she breathed, her hand clutching the rail beside her. "Ed- gar! Then you're — you're not dead!"
"I am worse than dead, Clarice," he said, turning his marred cheek to the woman before him.
"And it was because of that scar that you never came back to me ? Did you measure my love at so little as to think that that would make any difference to me? Oh, Edgar! Was that all that kept you away from me — only that?" Her voice died away in a little sob, and Edgar Vail read in the eyes upturned to his all the fullness of life and love which his foolish pride and sensitive- ness had sacrificed.
"Yes, that was all! But wasn't it enough? I planned that you should never see me again, after it happened. I thought a woman couldn't love a man so multilated as this, and you, Clarice, above all women, with your dread of the unlovely so strong in you. And I loved you so! God, how I've loved and longed for you all these years, yet T was too cowardly to come back to you and see in your eyes the horror and revulsion that I thought they must hold for me when they beheld this. But now you say it would have made no difference! Bless you — bless you!" His eyes shone proudly for a moment, then they took on a look of pain as he
thought of his great loss. "Say it again, Clarice — say it again."
"It would have made no difference to me," she repeated, "not the least in the world!"
"Thank you!" he cried with a half- sob, as he clenched his hands and his whole frame trembled.
Pity for him and his suffering brought the quick tears to her eyes. "Oh, my poor boy, my poor boy!" she whispered.
The sound of Fanning's footsteps hurrying back from the beach brought them rudely to the realization of things as they were and of their present danger.
"You'd better get ready, Clarice," said Vail. "We're going in a boat to Laraka. Hurry, there's not a minute to waste!"
Fanning came running back, and while he and Clarice gathered up some light belongings, including their pearl treasure, Vail filled a demijohn with water and flung some sea biscuit into a bag. Then they hurried down to the little palm sheltered cove where the Montgomerys were baling out a native canoe.
"They've taken everything but this little old boat," cried the missionary. "I hope she'll hold us all."
They stowed the luggage and got in.
"She's pretty well down by the stern," Vail undertoned to Fanning, "and I don't believe there's a foot of freeboard forward. I'm such a weight — you never can get to Laraka with me in her." The three men plied the pad- dles vigorously, Vail on his side pull- ing singly against the other two.
"There they are, at the landing!" cried Fanning. "They haven't seen us yet. If we hug this bushy shore until they get up into the palms we can make a clean getaway."
"That's our game," said Vail, quietly. "Better keep the whole la- goon between us and the schooner."
"But if we get outside they'll be sailing down after us," suggested Montgomery.
"Not on this tide," said Vail, con- fidently. "The schooner can't get
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through the creek for two hours. But their small boats are another matter."
He glanced back at the calm, sweet face of Clarice. She looked at him hopefully, proudly, as to one who would see them safely through this desperate adventure. As they swung around the point, and out of the cove, they saw the boats of the landing party lying at the little dock, with only one man in her. At first the man did not observe them, but when just opposite 'him and less than a quarter of a mile away, he sprang to his feet suddenly, and set up a warning shout to his mates.
"Pull away!" cried Vail, tugging so hard at his paddle that the big mus- cles stood out upon his bare, bronzed arms. "Lively, now. It's going to be a race."
But in the time that intervened be- fore Hayes and his men could return to the boat, the canoe was well out in the lagoon. Though down in the water, with her overload, she was mak- ing good headway under the stout strokes of the paddles.
"Good Lord!" cried Fanning, his face graying; "here they come!"
"We're all right!" came the assur- ing tones of Vail. "We're out of range, and if we work hard we'll stay out."
He stole another glance at Clarice, and her eyes met his in radiant faith. She saw what this big, strong man was doing in pushing his one paddle against the other two, without a single swerve of the bow to his side, and her frank pride in his great strength and un- daunted courage was reflected in her beautiful eyes.
They passed the schooner, half a mile away, and glanced anxiously to- ward her, but she put out no boat, for the Kanakas were all napping on the deck. The little isle near the head of the creek loomed white before them with its tuft of palms. Toward this isle, Vail, by a still stronger sweep of his paddle, and by dexterous feather- ing, headed the canoe, unobserved by the others. For, glancing astern, he had seen that Hayes' boat was gaining
upon them, and he had determined up- on a new course.
"Here, we're not going to the isl- and," protested Fanning.
"Yes, we are!" came the vibrant tones of Vail, and on toward the white beach they sped.
"But he's gaining — we can't stop there." Fanning tried to head the canoe off shore.
"Only a moment!" insisted Vail.
"But did you hear that bullet?" gasped Fanning, ashen white.
"I heard it, and I heard that one!" calmly replied Vail, as another whirl of lead zipped over the low waves. "We're going to the island, so's to block his game — at least I am. Mrs. Fanning, will you take this paddle!" He passed it aft to her and plumped overboard in water up to his breast and began to wade ashore, holding his rifle above his head. "Go ahead Good- bye!" His backward gaze was all for Clarice.
"No, no!" she cried, agonizedly, turning the boat with her paddle, while the two men paused confusedly.
Vail grasped the stern of the boat and gave it a mighty push that sent it flying down toward the mouth of the creek.
"What a man!" cried the mission- ary, picking up his paddle and plying it vigorously, while another bullet tore over their heads. "He knew that his weight was loading down the canoe."
"It was a noble act," commented his wife.
"That's putting it mildly," cried Fanning. "He'll never leave the isl- and alive. He's going down there to make a stand." He pointed to the nar- rows below. "He's going to keep them from following us."
He could not have dreamt what his words, "He'll never leave the island alive," meant to Clarice, though she winced visibly, and her eyelids tight- ened as those of one in torment.
Vail was now ashore and running along the beach ahead of them. Soon he came to the lower end of the islet Where a drift log lay white in the morn- ing sunlight upon the dazzling coral. 4
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As they passed he sang out to them in his big, easy, good humored tones :
"Good-bye, folks! Take care of yourselves! Keep her due east, Wal- ter. You ought to be there safe before night. It isn't rough outside, and the wind is with you. Good-bye!" His eyes were upon Clarice as he spoke, and as the canoe passed within biscuit toss of him he looked fondly and ab- sorbedly upon her. Her soul was in her face, and he saw it — the pure soul of the woman who might have been his but for the very depth of his love for her — a love that would have spared her linking with a man so marred.
And she accepted his deed. Her love shining forth to him through her calm, brave eyes. She accepted, too, the delicacy of the great, strong man who kept toward her, for her last view of it, the unblemished side of his face. She waved her white hand to him and the canoe fled down the gleaming creek in the swift outward current.
"Well," said the man on the beach, "Hayes won't get those pearls, and here's another thing he won't get." He fished a bank check out of an in- side pocket tore it into little bits and -watched them flutter away with a smile. A bullet sang through the air near his head and another tore up the coral at his feet. "Going to be a pretty hot fight, but they won't go very far after he's potted." He sank down be- hind the drift log and hugged the stock of his rifle between cheek and shoul- der. "It would have made no differ- ence,' she said to me.' His face brightened at the thought. ' 'It would have made no difference — not the least in the world.' "
He turned his eyes seaward where the distance diminished canoe showed its dark fleck upon the blue, and smiled
once more. Then he turned again, and the smile grew grim as his eye glared over the gun sight.
"And now to settle things with Bully Hayes! Wonder what he'd say if he knew that the man upon whose face he made this scar — the man whose ship he stole, and whose life he wrecked — was waiting for him behind this piece of drift. . . And 'it would have made no difference — not the least in the
world!' '
* * *
When the Tropic Bird fluttered into Upolulu three days later the skipper yelled from the forward deck :
"What's that thing out there on the beach? Looks like the body of a man! Get out a boat, you fellows, and we'll see."
A few minutes afterward, when he stood upon the beach, bending over the body, the Captain exclaimed:
"Well, boys, it's Gid Ruggles! I know him by that scar! Shot all to pieces. Poor devil!" He stood up and stared toward the station. "Ware- house and cabins all gone. Burnt to the ground. Bet it was Bully Hayes' work. He was seen over in the Tan- gas a week or two ago. Wonder where he is now."
The sea-birds that circled over the lagoon near their nests on its tufted iselet did not wonder. For they had seen the body of Bully Hayes con- signed to the placid waters by his crew on the afternoon of the same day he fell before the rifle of the man be- hind the drift log, the unceremonious burial taking place only a half-hour before the Southern Star sailed out again upon the blue Pacific waters in her vain, belated search for the canoe and its pearls, safe away on her voy- age to Laraka.
SKIN DEEP
By Waldo R. Smith
UPON the level prairie stood a long oval of tepees, inter- spersed with wall tents, the white canvas shining in the glaring sunlight. Indians, clad in the buckskin and the feather head-dress of olden time, their ceremonial costumes bright with may colors and much bead work, glided about the great camp. Dogs, of every size and variety, ran here and there, quarreling over scraps, or dozed in the heat. Brown-skined youngsters chased each other in and out among the lodges, yelling in shrill excitement, It was the annual Give Away camp of the Oglala Sioux.
Now, the Give Away is an institu- tion. The Sioux of to-day have aban- doned the old tribal life. Nearly all are owners of ranches, and eleven months out of the twelve they live scattered about the reservation in shacks, log cabins and, occasionally, frame houses. But during the Give Away, they gather in force at four or five selected spots, and for a period live again the old days. It is an occa- sion for the giving of many presents, hence the name, and for much feast- ing and dancing; and many are the stirring tales that are told about the lodge fires in the evening.
To Billy Stoddard, newly arrived from the East by the invitation of the doctor by whose side he now sat in an automobile, it seemed as if the buffalo days had returned, and he were sud- denly set down in the midst of them. Almost he looked for the tall scaffolds of drying meat and the fresh, brown- haired hides that would tell of a suc- cessful hunt. Only the steady thrum of the cylinders beneath the car re- minded him that he was living in the twentieth century.
He drew a deep breath. "Gosh!" he remarked, "I'd give a good deal to have seen this country — and this peo- ple— fifty years ago."
The doctor grunted. "You'd 'a' been scalped," he asserted, pessimist- ically.
"Not if I was living with 'em," de- fended the young man. The doctor — his name was Kent — grinned.
"Think you'd like to be an Indian, daubs of paint upon you and a war- club in your hand, eh?" he bantered.
"Something of the kind," Billy grinned, rather sheepishly. "You know I always was strong for that kind of thing. Remember when we played Indian in old man Jackson's cow-pas- ture?"
"Yes — and you got us chased out by running the cows around for buf- falo," the doctor returned.
"Well, I'd still like to play Indian."
"And end up by marrying some beautiful Indian maiden, I suppose," Kent jeered.
"Well, "
"Nice lookers, ain't they?" The doctor jerked a contemptuous thumb at a group of passing squaws. "How'd you like to be married to one of 'em?"
"Oh, I don't know," the young man defended. "I've seen worse — among white wonmen, too. And you said yourself that there was a heap of dif- ference in looks among Indians. Any- way," he concluded, philosophically, "beauty's only skin deep."
"Huh!" Kent grunted. "Well, beauty may be skin deep, but race isn't, and you'd find that out before you had lived with these people a week. There's a heap of difference between an Indian and a Caucasian, Billy. They don't look alike, act alike
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or think alike. You'd have a gay time tryin' to dance like that, wouldn't you?" nodding toward a group of old warriors who were circling around a tall, flag-topped pole in the center of the camp.
"What's hard about it?"
"Looks easy, don't it?" the doctor agreed. "But that's where the Indian blood comes in — one of the places, that is. I never saw a full-blooded white man that could get that step. And theres a lot of other differences."
Billy considered.
"Didn't you ever hear of a white man living with Indians?" he queried.
"Sure. But he never acted like an Indian. If he married a squaw, she got herself up like a white woman right away. Jim Bridger came nearest to acting like an Indian, but he dressed like a white man."
"There was Frances Slocum "
"She was captured as a baby, and grew up with 'em," the doctor cut in. "You were speaking of a full-grown man, weren't you?"
" 'Still I stand on my feet and fight,' " quoted Billy, laughingly. "Say, there's a fine looking old fellow," he broke off abruptly, indicating an old warrior just leaving the dance shel- ter. The old man was dressed from head to foot in beaded buckskin, and wore a long-tailed war bonnet. His step was elastic, his head erect, his whole bearing that of a chief.
"That's old White Beaver," the doc- tor explained. "I was up to his place once last May. His wife came near having pneumonia."
"Say, he wants to see you, I guess," remarked the young man suddenly. The old Indian had turned in their direction, and was approaching with rapid strides.
"Ho, kola," he greeted, when he was near enough. Kent replied to the salutation, and the old man began to speak in Sioux. As he finished, Kent turned to his companion.
"We've got an invitation, Billy," he interpreted. "White Beaver wants us to join the circle around his lodge- fire this evning. It's a sort of social
meeting — telling stories, and all that. Everybody will talk Sioux, but "
"Don't let that worry you," Billy smiled. "I can talk a little myself."
The amazed doctor stared. "Where in blazes did you learn it?" he de- manded.
"Picked it up from a young Indian at college," was the answer. "I told you before I was always strong for such things."
Kent turned to the waiting Indian.
"My father is kind," he said. "We will come."
"Ho," acknowledged the other, and turned away.
"Now that's what comes of being a doctor," grinned Kent. "The old chap wants to pay me back for bring- ing his wife through, last spring. It's something of an honor, Billy. I'll bet there isn't another white man in South Dakota that'll get an invitation to an affair of this sort during the Give Away. He's a queer old cuss," he added thoughtfully. "Understands English, but won't talk it unless he has to, to make himself understood."
He shoved in the clutch.
"We'd better be raising a dust," he remarked, "or we won't get supper in time for the stag party."
The sun dropped slowly down from the western sky, finally disappearing in the gorgeous colors of a western sunset. Out at the Indian camp, the smokes of many cooking fires rose in the cool air. A hush fell on the prai- rie.
As dusk came on, the lodges began to light up one by one like huge Chi- nese lanterns, as the fires kindled with- in them. Only the wall tents stood dark, their owners, almost to a man, having been invited to spend the even- ing in the tepee of a friend.
A drum at the lower end of the vil- lage began its rhythmic throb. The evening had begun.
Over in White Beaver's tepee, the guests were arriving, singly or in twos and threes. Billy and the doctor ar- rived early, and were assigned their places about the fire by the old war- rior with grave courtesy. Gradually
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the circle filled, as the guests took their places.
When at last it was complete, old White Beaver produced a long-stem- med red stone pipe, lighted it, took four puffs and handed it to his neigh- bor. It passed around the lodge, Billy and the doctor whiffing it in turn. Then the old man reached for his drum, which hung upon one of the tepee poles, and the company struck up an old-time song.
Immediately Billy discovered anoth- er point of difference between the rac- es: the keen, high-pitched timbre of the singing was utterly beyond his vocal powers.
With an abrupt "E-yo!" the song ended. Their host refilled his pipe and passed it as before. Then he spoke.
"Matononpa," he said, "tell us of the fight with the Crows on the Wakpa Sica." (Bad River, S. D.)
The man addressed remained silent for some minutes, until the pipe had passed him. Then he arose.
The story he told was of the early days of the tribal wars, and of a fight in which the Sioux warriors had put to flight a war party of Crows who had attacked them while they were hunt- ing buffalo. Billy followed him read- ily enough, although the language he spoke was the Teton dialect, whereas Billy's friend had been a Santee. As the Indian spoke, the old, warlike times seemed to live again in the young man's imagination, and as the narra- tor finished, he found himself leaning forward, his breath coming quickly and his face flushed by the stirring recital.
Evidently the story had been en- joyed by the whole company, for the warrior resumed his seat amid a cho- rus of approving "Ho's!" All was quiet for a space, each man gazing gravely into the fire.
^ Suddenly old White Beaver lifted his head and looked at Billy.
"Let my young friend tell us some experience he has had," he invited.
Billy was nonplused. The idea that he would be called upon to tell a story
— and tell it in Sioux — had not occur- red to him. Indeed, the old warrior had called upon him in direct oppo- sition to one of the cardinal rules of Indian etiquette : in a company of old- er men, the young ones are silent.
In his confusion, he did the best possible thing; he stared contempla- tively into the blaze for full two min- utes. He had no experiences worth relating — at least, none that would in- terest these old warriors. Then, all at once, a story came to his memory — a tale that his grandmother had told him.
He rose. The doctor regarded him with a dubious expression, for his faith in Billy's mastery of the Sioux tongue was not great.
"My friends," the young man be- gan hesitatingly, "my father has ask- ed me to tell a story. I have no ex- periences, for I was born too late. But my grandmother once told me a story of the old days, and I will tell it."
He paused, groping for the Sioux to express his meaning. The narra- tive was told simply, with many paus- es, and much blind feeling for words. His grandmother had come West with her husband in 'forty-nine, and the wagon train had been attacked by the Sioux.
"The men were all killed," Billy finished, "but when my grandfather's wagon was set afire, my grandmother leaped out, and ran into the arms of one of the Indians. Then she faint- ed. When she came to she was wrapped in a blanket, lying beside a little stream, and the Indian was cook- ing some deer meat over a fire. She tried to escape, but the Indian caught her, and seemed to be trying to tell her that he would not hurt her, but that she might be killed if she ran away.
After this she did not try to get away. The Indian had only one pony and my grandmother rode behind him for four days, never knowing where he was taking her. Then at last, on the morning of the fifth day, they came to a settlement. The Indian rode to the nearest house, helped her down,
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then sprang on his pony again and rode away. She never saw him again. The white people welcomed her back, but she has wondered many times why the Indian brought her to her people, instead of taking her to his tribe."
He ended abruptly and sat down. Exclamations of applause burst from the listeners. The doctor caught his eye and nodded approvingly. Silence fell again in the lodge.
The firelight danced and flickered, throwing fantastic shadows on the tepee wall. One of the warriors leaned forward and shoved a stick far- ther into the blaze, sending a shower of sparks whirling through the smoke-hole.
Then old White Beaver dropped his blanket from his shoulders and got slowly upon his feet.
"My young friend has told his sto- ry," he began, "and it has reminded me of something that occurred about the same time."
He paused and glanced about the circle.
"Many winters ago," he continued, "there was a young man of the Ogla- las who loved a maiden of the Waseca (white people). Her heart was hard, and he had come to the land of the Sioux to forget her. When the La- kotas took the warpath against the whites, the young man went to war with the others for a time, but at last he would go no more. He had had a dream, he said, and feared it would come true. But at last they persuad- ed him to join one more war party.
"Three days after the warriors left the camp they came upon a wagon train of the Wasecas. Just at day- break they attacked, and the white men were all killed. But as the war-
riors rushed in, a frightened woman leaped from a burning wagon and ran into the young man's arms. At once he knew her for the girl he had loved in the land of the Waseca. His dream had come true."
Billy half rose, with a suppressed exclamation, but settled back again at a reproving look and a meaning headshake from the doctor.
"He took her to her people," the narrator went on. "Five days later, far to the east, they came to a village of the Waseca, and the young man left her with them. Then he returned to the Sioux camp. But he never would go on another war party against the white people. Henala!" Enough, i. e., it is finished.
The old man resumed his seat and gazed dreamily into the fire. There was a long silence. The stillness in the tepee became oppressive. At last Caucasian patience snapped.
"But if he loved her why did he not take her to the Ogala camp?" blurted Billy. The old warrior raised his head.
"White Beaver has lived long with the Sioux," he replied softly. "He has hunted the buffalo, gone on the war path with his brothers. Cloud Girl, the daughter of a chief, found him good in her eyes, and she waited for him in the tepee. His skin is white — " he pushed up one bead- banded sleeve to disclose a milky forearm, " — but his heart is red. White Beaver is an Oglala. Why should he wish to marry a daughter of the Waseca?"
Again the silence fell. The fire rustled, and a wind fluttered the smoke-flaps. Across the tepee, Billy met the doctor's eyes.
Slaney's Night of Glory
By William Freeman
CORPORAL SLANEY sat under a furze-bush, rubbing a bruised ankle. In the valley below lay the camp he was leaving; an isolated light, winking from the win- dow of a whitewashed building, which until half an hour ago had been his abiding place, marked the guard- house.
Corporal Slaney had been in the army five years; and the second-lieu- tenant, who had called him an unman- nerly hog, had held his commission rather less than four months. The fault had been the lieutenant's, and Corporal Slaney had a temper. There had been a certain amount of plain and personal language. The face of the lieutenant changed from pink to purple, and he had reported the matter to the colonel. Slaney, for the first time in his career, found himself a prisoner, sentence postponed for con- sideration.
That it would involve the loss of his stripes he had no doubt whatever. His wrath smouldered fiercely. The guard was being changed, and the Fates or- dained that only M'Vane, standing sentry in the doorway, should be in sight. M'Vane and Slaney had termi- nated a long friendship with a quarrel, and M'Vane had commented freely on his prisoner's prospects. Corporal Sla- ney, deciding that he might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, had knocked M'Vane's helmet over his head with one terrific punch, and, real- izing that the British army was no lon- ger the place for a man of proper spirit, stepped over his plunging body into darkness and freedom.
He had no plan. He was as much the sport of Chance and Destiny as any swaggering soldier of fortune of
ten generations earlier. Of the coun- try around he was profoundly ignorant. He knew that he would have various sentries to evade, and that after evad- ing them he might come into contact with an enemy that had hitherto been singularly chary of attack. All of which should have made him pause. But he was too grimly exasperated to pause at all.
He continued his journey, at right angles to the camp, under a moon hid- den by rolling banks of clouds. The country looked vaguely spacious, and beyond the lines of tents utterly de- serted. The gentle hill slope he was climbing might lead to anywhere. It was as though a benevolent Provi- dence had placed the whole continent of Europe at his disposal.
He passed, in all, five sentries, only one of whom gave him any real anx- iety. There were bushes here and there behind which a slight, khaki-clad figure crouching on all-fours was prac- tically invisible. His thoughts were chiefly on the guard house and the time it would take for M'Vane to give the alarm.
He reached the crest of the hill, found that the ground on the farther side rose and fell in a succession of smaller hillocks, and pushed on. He had gone a mile in the profoundest silence and solitude, when he noticed two lights on his left. They shone like the eyes of some big animal. Since the general commanding does not con- fide his more intimate plans to his cor- porals, Slaney had no idea as to whe- ther the lights belonged to an advance outpost of the Allies or to the Ger- mans. With excessive caution he edged near enough to see that the lights came from the high windows
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of a dilapidated shed. He could not look in, but he could hear the mutter of voices. Acute and consuming curi- osity possessed him. He had crawled round three sides of the shed in search of a door, and had begun the fourth, when something hit him an excruciat- ing blow on the temple, and he dropped backwards into black unconsciousness.
From this he emerged slowly, to dis- cover that he had been carried or dragged into the shed, and was now lying propped with his back against the wall.
At a table in the centre three men were seated, talking in undertones. A lamp with a tin reservoir stood in the center, revealing the remains of a hasty meal, together with various scat- tered plans and documents. The rest of the place was in comparative dark- ness.
None of the men took the slight- est notice of Slaney. His head still swam. Investigating gingerly, he found a large and contused wound over his right eye.
A f attish man, vaguely suggestive of Mr. Pickwick, got up from the table and came forward. "Better?" he in- quired.
"Still groggy," said Corporal Slaney. "Fell down a bloomin' well, didn't I?"
The f attish man laughed. "On the contrary, you came into contact with a brass knuckle duster wielded by my- self. It is a pity that so useful a wea- pon should have gone out of fashion. We are an intimate party which does not desire uninvited guests."
Corporal Slaney's gaze wandered dully to the others. One was a tall officer, with an upstanding gray mus- tache and fierce eyes; the other a young man of about thirty, with a thin, pale face, a retreating chin, and an air of intense impatience. All three were in uniform. Corporal Slaney realized that he had fallen into the hands of the enemy. It seemed a tame and stupid enough ending to the night of enterprise and glory which had begun so promisingly.
The Pickwick-like person spoke again. His accent left nothing to be
desired. "You come from the English lines?"
"That's so, sir."
"And being a spy '
"Spy?" Slaney's indignation was too immense to be anything but genu- ine. "Not me! Silly blighter of an officer got me shoved into the guard- room, and I 'ooked it, same as you'd 'a done."
"Doubtless. You have been for some time in the army?"
"Five years."
"Then you may be useful to us. There are certain particulars which — "
"Meaning that I'm to turn traitor?"
"My good imbecile" — it was the el- derly officer who spoke, and his voice had a flat, metallic note which jarred on Slaneys nerves and made him shiver — "believe me, you will either tell us the things we wish to know this evening, or you will be given no op- portunities of telling anything at all."
The young man with the retreating chin intervened. He addressed the others in German, waving his hands imperiously. He made Slaney feel that he was accustomed to be obeyed, and in a hurry.
"So!" apologized the f attish man when the young man ceased. He turned to the prisoner again. "You are still dazed — ill. I forgot." He took a flask from his pocket, uncorked it, and pushed it into Slaney's hands.
Slaney swallowed a generous mouth- ful. It was heavy stuff that stung his throat and brought tears into his eyes ; but it made him his own man again. "Thanks !" he said, returning the flask.
"You are hungry?"
"I could do with a bit," said Slaney graciously.
The fattish man glanced at the pale young man, who nodded. "Come to the table, then, and eat."
"And when you come" — the voice of the gray-mustached officer cut like a whiplash — "salute. You understand? Salute!"
Slaney stumbled stiffly to his feet, and crossed to the table. He saluted and sat down on the packing case that the fattish man dragged forward. The
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325
other pushed a plate, bread, and the remains of some sort of pasty towards him. Slaney settled down to an excel- lent meal. He did not hurry. He wanted to think the position over as well as the buzzing in his head would let him. Also, he was hungry. The others watched him with rising impa- tience.
"And now," said the fattish man, "you will tell us the things we desire to know."
"Right-o!" said Slaney.
The man with the gray mustache — his name appeared to be Colonel von Blum — began a series of questions. They dealt with nothing that could not have been gleaned from the first stray prisoner or a decent ordnance-map, and it was plain to Slaney that they merely wished to discover how much he knew, and whether he were lying. His answers were conscientious and exact. Glances of approval flashed from the pale-faced young man to the colonel.
"To continue " said the fattish
man.
Slaney wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Talking is dry work, gents."
"You forget your- position!" began Von Blum angrily.
The pale-faced young man leapt to his feet. "Give the fool enough wine to flood Paris; it will loosen his ton- gue!" he said impatiently.
From a wicker basket at his feet the fattish man took two square stone- ware bottles.
"Let us," commanded the pale young man, "drink to the eternal confusion of the enemies of Europe!" He filled four glasses.
' 'Ear! 'ear!" said Corporal Slaney.
"To the day when her fleets may be a legend, her army the laughing stock of the world!"
" 'Ear! 'ear!" said Corporal Slaney.
Again they all drank heartily, all but Slaney. "To the day when the half-fed, white-faced rabble she breeds may be swept back to their hovels !"
"Ah!" said Slaney, "now you're talking! I'm rabble, right enough; a
bloomin' conscript." The memory of his wrongs burned in his eyes.
"Let him speak," said the young man. "Let him tell us from the be- ginning— the very beginning."
The gray-mustached colonel growled objections. He was silenced with a gesture. Corporal Slaney found him- self with a flushed, attentive audi- ence.
"It's this way," he said confidently. "In the blighted 'ole of a country I come from things ain't nothing like what they're made out to be. Kitch- ener says, 'I want men — three million of 'em;' but what he don't explain is that if the men don't come of their own free will he'll make 'em. Conse- quently"— Slaney sawed the air to give his words emphasis — "when the re- sponse aint up to expectations, there's armed parties go out of a dark night, and when mornin' comes the barracks is full, and whole streets of houses is empty."
The pale young man glanced at the others, with bright, eager eyes.
"I am not surprised. Go on."
"About a mile off Margit," pursued Slaney, warming to his work, "you'll see a row o' penny steamers, same as used to potter up and down the Thames before you fellows sowed it with mines an' hung up navigation. In them steamers is the recruities, guard- ed by a Japanese contingent. They daren't trust white men, for year they'd —they'd "
"Fraternize?" suggested the fattish man.
"Fraternize is the word, sir, with the prisoners as have been carried off from their homes to learn their drill. When they know enough to avoid killin' one another, they're transhipped in what merchantmen we can rake together."
"I understand," said the young man. "It is plain — quite plain — why we have been able to advance so far with so little opposition. And now "
"Concerning the range of those field guns on your right?" said the colonel.
But Corporal Slaney did not appear to hear him. His eyes had grown dreamy and reminiscent.
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"There was me, makin' two quid a week driving a motor-bus "
"But — but you said you had been in the army five years."
"Beg pardon, sir. Territorial called up for service." Slaney thanked Heaven that the colonel did not look at his shoulder strap, and went on quickly: "Now we're half-starved, half-clothed, and knocked about by drunken swines that ain't fit to take a bullock-wagon into action. Lor', the things I could tell you!" He nodded his head with the solemnity of one anx- ious to prove that he was entirely sober.
"Give him more wine," said the pale young man. His voice was high and eager. "This — this scum interests me. I suspected a good deal, but not so much as this."
Slaney, his glass refilled, rose to his feet. The movement showed him that both the elder men carried revolvers. The pale faced young man had only a sword.
"Here's luck!" said Slaney; "best o' luck ! Grand German army ; may it get all the vic'tries it deserves!"
Again they all drank solemnly, all except Corporal Slaney.
"Now for the guns!" said Von Blum.
"Explanations concerning artillery," Slaney said sententiously, "is like matrimony, not to be entered upon lightly. If you've pencil and paper — "
They gave him both. Three heads bent forward. Slaney put his hand on the nearest stoneware bottle.
"This," he said, "stands for the main German army; this" — he took up the second bottle — "for a mobile strikin' force."
Of the three, the pale young man was the only one who had anything like a clear impression of what followed. Even that was momentary. He saw the bottles rise and fall with two light- ning-like blows, one fairly upon the skull of the fattish man, the other up- on Von Blum. The fattish man dropped with a faint grunt; Van Blum flung up a protecting arm, and received a sec- ond blow on the temple which sent him headlong, and smashed the bottle
off short at the neck. Then the pale young man perceived the figure of this mad English corporal leaping at him panther-fashion, and prudently ducked. The table and everything upon it shot over sideways, the lamp providentially went out, and Slaney landed awk- wardly on his hands and knees. The only consolation — from the Slaney point of view — was that the pale faced young man was underneath.
"If you shout," said Slaney — for his prisoner was making strange, strangu- lated noises — "I'll bash your silly face inside out, so that the tip of your nose will tickle your tongue. Get up."
The pale young man, feeling his way uncertainly in the darkness, got up slowly.
"Put up your hands."
He put them up, and Slaney, grip- ping him by the collar, steered him outside to where an uncertain moon was climbing above the clouds. There he removed his prisoner's sword and belt — his own belt was in the guard- room— jerked down the rigid arms, and with great efficiency and thorough- ness bound the wrists of the pale young man behind him.
"Wait here!" he commanded.
He plunged into the building, and emerged with a handful of papers.
"Ail quiet and peaceable," he re- ported, and secured the door with a convenient iron staple. The papers he bestowed in an inner pocket. The prisoner watched him dazedly.
"Now then," said Corporal Slaney, "by the right; quick march!"
The words galvanized the other into speech. "I will not go."
"There," said Slaney, "we bloomin' well differ. I've met your high spir- ited kind before. Gen'rally they ends with blubberinV
"Let me free, I tell you!"
Slaney took a pace forward; the pale young man gave a shout and tried to run. Five seconds later he was ly- ing breathless, and his head was be- ing systematically and steadily bumped up and down on the sun- baked earth.
"Say when," said Corporal Slaney
SLANEY'S NIGHT OF GLORY
327
invitingly. His arms were beginning tc ache.
"I— I die!"
"Not yet! Get up and behave de- cent, an' we'll push on. It's a long way to Tipperary."
He helped the prisoner to his feet. For some moments they walked in silence, Slaney a trifle in the rear. Sud- denly the pale faced young man came to a halt again.
"What will you take to let me go ?"
"Alsace, and any old colonies you've got left over," said the flippant Slaney.
"Tchtt, you are childish ! I will give ten thousand marks."
"An* that's more than I ever got at school !"
"Twenty thousand, and a safe con- duct to your own lines!"
"That there fizzy stuff," said Slaney severely, "has been an' got into your alleged brain. You'll be offering a million next, with a seat in the House o' Lords thrown in. An' then I shall lose my temper, an* there will be an accident."
"But — but do you know who I am?"
"Not me. Nor don't want to. We're all incog, 'ere. Chase yourself — quick!"
So they journeyed by stages that seemed endless to where the first of the khaki-clad sentries faced the com- ing dawn — a lonely little figure on the hill crest. At the sharp challenge the torpor which had fallen on the prisoner vanished, and he plunged violently and broke away. He and Slaney came to the ground together. The sentry challenged a second time, and then fired. Luckily for the pair of them, the shot went wide.
"Hold hard!" shouted the exasper- ated Slaney. "It's only me an' a young fool I've been dinin' wiv. Come up, unless you want me to sit on your head!"
Five minutes later they stood, des- perately dusty and disheveled, in the presence of the sergeant. He listened to Slaney's story with obvious disbe- lief, and marched the pair of them to the captain, who could speak German with an Oxford accent. The captain
gave most of his attention to the pale- tace young man, and fetched the col- onel. This, to Slaney, was manifestly absurd. A prisoner was merely a prisoner all the world over. Immedi- ately afterwards the pale-faced young man's wrists were unfastened, and he was escorted to a separate tent. He did not even glance at Slaney as he passed.
"As for you," said the colonel, blink- ing at the backslider, "I gather that you broke out of the guardroom to commit this — this escapade. Taking the full facts of the case into consideration, it had not been my intention to punish you further. Even now, if you were to apologize "
Slaney fidgeted with his feet and avoided the colonel's eye. He was back among his own people again; al- ready his night of glory had begun to seem a dream, an incredible dream. Indubitably he had behaved like a fool. The second-lieutenant was newly joined and raw. It was the duty of old soldiers to teach the young ones manners.
"I'm sorry, sir."
"Very good. You will be glad to hear that Private M'Vane is none the worse for his — er — fall. I shall con- sider the matter closed. Go to your tent, and get what sleep you can."
Slaney fumbled with his tunic. "The papers, sir."
"Ah, thanks. Good-night!"
"Good-night, sir."
Thereafter for three hours Corporal Slaney slept the sleep of one who has squared accounts with his fellow-men, and whose conscience is clear. He saw nothing more of his prisoner. For two days the machinery of camp life ran as usual.
Then, late in the afternoon, his ser- geant appeared. "You're wanted, Sla- ney."
Slaney reluctantly abandoned his tea and stood up. "Who by?"
"Gen'ral-commandin'. Brush them crumbs off your coat, and look slippy."
Colonel Slaney looked slippy. He was ushered, somewhat breathless, into the presence of a short, sturdily
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built, gray-haired man, who regarded him with twinkling eyes.
"So this is the redoubtable corporal ? Dear me, but some people are born lucky! Ever occurred to you to qualify for a seat at the sergeants' mess, Sla- ney?"
"N-no, sir — yessir!" The turf seemed rising and falling under Sla- ney's feet.
"Because I've asked Colonel Hip- white to see to the matter. I think you deserve a place there. And that's all."
Slaney saluted and reeled out into the sunlight again, drunk with unana- lyzable emotions.
M'Vane overtook him. "Here," said
M'Vane, who bore no malice, "this is something that might be of interest to you."
It was an advance copy of the of- ficial news-sheet which circulated among the troops. M'Vane, who had been a compositor, had a hand in its production.
"His Imperial and Royal Highness Prince Albrecht Fritz of Prussia," read Slaney, "was, on the 5th instant, mak- ing a midnight reconnaissance in com- pany with two members of his staff, when he encountered an unofficial pa- trol of the Allies. He is at present a prisoner in the British lines."
The paper slipped from his nerveless fingers. "Golly!" said Slaney.
TWILIGHT
Now the twilight glow is resting On Lone Mountain's lofty peak, And there comes the peace of silenc< When the voice of God can speak
In the quaking of the aspen, In the purpl'ing of the sage, In the twitter of the night-bird. And the clouds' low pilgrimage,
As they trail and wind and color, As they float and fade away — As the mist steals o'er the canyon And the glint is turned to gray.
As the Rocky range grows darker Comes the hush of twilight glow And the murm'rings of a chorus Echo in the river's flow.
In the whisp'ring of the grasses, In the hum that ever sings Through the quiet hour of ev'ning Comes the peace that silence brings.
EMMA VESTI MILLER.
Ay Experiences on a Sinking Ship
By Clara A. Nicholson
AFTER weeks of most careful packing, making doubly sure that I leave nothing behind which might add to the comfort and pleasure of our new home in Val- dez, Alaska, and with joyous anticipa- tion of seeing my husband (whom I had not seen for two years) , the day at last arrived for Catherine (my little girl), and I to bid good-bye to our many dear friends and relations. Af- ter being most cordially entertained, we were driven to the dock at 8:30 p. m., there to be met by another host of friends, who showered us with candy, flowers and magazines, and all good wishes for a delightful voyage. But as a heavy mist hung low over all, a strange feeling came to me, and as the last good-byes were said, I could scarcely keep back the tears, not so much at parting (as the thought of be- ing with my husband once more seemed to compensate for all.) I know not what it was, but that strange, indescribable something seemed to tell me that I was going to pass through some great crisis, and when my little girl and I went to our berth about 11 :30, sleep and rest were far from me — so after disposing of our baggage, and on finding that our boat did not leave the dock until about 4:30 a. m. (owing to a very heavy cargo which was being shipped to the mines at Ju- neau, Alaska), we decided to sit on deck for a short time. While there, we made the acquaintance of a very nice ,Dr. and wife, who were on a hunting and sight - seeing trip to Alaska. After a few moments of pleas- ant conversation, we decided to retire, as most of the passengers were not of a very desirable type, it being late in the season for business men and
tourists to make the trip.
Sleep would not come to me, and about 4:30 a. m., as the echo from that last big whistle died away, and the sound of the men's voices in the quiet still of the morning, calling "Good-bye, Joe," "Good-bye, Tom," "So long," "Good-bye, Cap, good luck to you, old man," came to me, the thought, so "strangely," also came, "will it be good luck, Cap., or other- wise."
Little they dreamed that in a few short hours they would all be frantic with fear, and that dreaded S. O. S. call would be heralded far and wide — a few minutes later to know that their idolized "Cap" with his beloved ship had gone to their watery graves.
We steamed slowly from dock, as a very heavy fog hung close to the Water, making it impossible to make more than three knots an hour. Being very restless and unable to sleep, I would look at my little girl every few minutes and see if she were sufficient- ly covered, and as she lay peacefully sleeping, I thought to myself, "Oh, how foolish you are to lie awake; noth- ing is going to happen," but scarcely was the thought from my mind when our fog horn began to blow incessantly — frantically, in fact — it was almost human in its appeal to the oncoming vessel; but before I could realize our danger, I was thrown almost out of my berth by the impact of the Princess Victoria with our boat, which was rammed stern end about three feet from my stateroom (being the last on upper deck.) I needed no warning to get up and out; the crash was so ter- rific that I knew our boat must be al- most severed. I at once caught Cath- erine from her berth so quickly that
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the child was quite dazed, having been sound asleep and unable to grasp what had happened. By that time every one was frantic. I was told to get out, not to dress, but when I stepped on deck, and saw that mad stampede of people trying to reach the ladder that had been lowered over the wreckage from the Princess Victoria to our boat, my heart failed me. It seemed as though I ran more risk in that mad rush for the ladder than staying where I was. Many were pushed into the water, women were dazed, men were wild, not caring whom they trampled on or what they did. (When I say men I must not include all the men.) The crew were panic stricken, and thought only of themselves; the officers did noble work; and a few real "men" (two that come vividly to mind), one being thrown into the water three times in his efforts to save others, another not leaving the sinking vessel until a rope was thrown him, both could have been among the first off. They were real heroes, although the world will never know.
By putting on some of our clothing we avoided that first wild stampede, and were able to get up the ladder with very little crowding, although I could not go with Catherine. When I saw her climb onto that swinging ladder over wreckage and water onto a burn- ing ship, my heart sank, and I turned away with the thought: "Will I ever see her again?'* When it came my turn to go (being the last woman up the ladder), amid the rush of the water into the fast sinking vessel, the crashing to the cargo, as it shifted to the sunken stern, and the roar of the fire (which was caused by the bow of the Princess Victoria entering the Ad- miral Sampson where the fuel oil was
contained, the friction of the two ves- sels causing the oil to ignite and burn most fiercely) — I will never know how I reached safety. The first I fully realized was that I once again had my darling child in my arms. As I turned for one more look at our stricken ship, I saw her noble captain and some of his men at their post of duty — I turned away, I could not look — it was all over — I knew that he with many others had gone to their last rest.
We then made our way inside the Princess Victoria, and were there told to put on life preservers, as it was not known to what extent she was dam- aged. Very few passengers from the Admiral Sampson had put them on, their only thought being to get off. Those not reaching the ladder were compelled to jump, as there was only time to lower one life boat from the Admiral Sampson. Others being low- ered from the Princess Victoria saved many lives.
Oh, it was all so sudden, all so hor- rible— all over in six minutes — a life- time of agony! And underneath that calm, deep water were sixteen bodies, their idolized "Cap," our ship with all my keepsakes, treasured from childhood up, heirlooms, clothing, fur- niture, all that it had taken years to collect — gone. Yes, gone — almost be- fore we could turn around, but with it all my "dearest treasure" saved, and life — and I am thankful.
After patroling the water for an hour or more to see if there were any bodies to recover and ascertaining the damage to the Princess Victoria, we slowly steamed into dock, reaching Seattle about 10:30 a. m., there again to be welcomed by loving friends, who so few short hours before had bidden us "bon voyage."
The Influence of the War on Poetry
By Stephen Phillips
HOWEVER perilous it may be to prophesy, there are one or two changes in both the spirit and style of English verse which may with some safety be predicted as following on the close of the present conflict. One certainly can be reck- oned on with little hesitancy. That spirit of introspection, of terrible doubt as to the real purpose of this world, that inward agony almost of the human soul as to its individual re- lations with its Creator which remains embodied for us in the verse of Ten- nyson's "In Memoriam," will almost surely pass. For the conflict there is between the fear created by the recent discoveries of science and the old transmitted faith of many generations of the just. Tennyson was not a great original thinker — is it necessary that a poet should be? — but he undoubt- edly reflected more clearly than any poet that has ever written the very age and embodiment of the time. It would perhaps be too narrow a criti- cism to make if one said "he was not ior all time but for an age." Let us put it rather that, whether or not he was for all time, he was certainly for an age.
' Now, broadly speaking, one might say that the Tennysonian appeal to the elect of his day was a very beautiful lament at what seemed the loss of faith. He exclaims:
"And he, shall he, Man, her last work, who seemed so
fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes, Who rolled the psalm to wintry skies Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,
* * * *
"Who loved, who suffered countless ills,
Who battled for the true, the just, Be blown about the desert dust, Or sealed within the iron hills?"
These verses raise the grand- ques- tion which agitated the men and wo- men of his generation. Nor was he alone in voicing this receding of an- cient faith as the greatest of problems, the one matter most important to man- kind. Matthew Arnold, next to Ten- nyson the singer most in touch with his age, speaks in a well known pas- sage of the time when "Faith was at the full," and can hear only now its
"Melancholy long withdrawing roar."
But now suddenly, though probably after long preparation, the whole of Europe is plunged into a struggle of which the issue is even now uncer- tain, and which for bloodshed, brutal- ity and ghastly triumphs of chemistry is unparalleled in history. For the time at least no man has the leisure to examine his own soul in its relation to its Creator; he must be up and do- ing, rendering service not necessarily of a military kind, but service of some 'kind to an Empire which is seriously threatened. Then, in the Tennysonian day, it was possible to dream, and if the dream were a nightmare, still to dream. Now it is a time for the coun- try to put its house in order, a process carried through always in England with no indecency of haste, and the more slowly the greater the immediate peril. But when this tremendous event has passed, with whatever issue, how will English poetry be affected, a possession no less dear than our military or naval glory? Personally, the present writer's belief is that once the strident wave has hoarsely with- drawn, and gradually, and it must be
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most gradually, the human mind be- gins to resume a clear tranquility, there will be, by that great force of reaction which keeps the earth stable, a return to the vision, and the gleam, to the light that never was on sea or land. To the old spiritual speculations which so vexed our forefathers? In a manner, yes, but with a bolder and more scientific momentum. One hates to use the words "psychic," "super- natural," "spiritualistic," yet this jar- gon must be temporarily employed. Suppose then this war to be, and there is some warrant for the supposi- tion, the last rally and grand onrush of the powers of darkness and force against the earth, may it not be pos- sible that this will be followed by a clearer light on these things that truly matter, the things of the spirit; that we shall largely by sheer reaction and defeat of force, gain some nearer in-
-sight into that world which, invisible though it be, both enwraps and con- trols this? It is not too much to sug- gest that we may after such noise clasp a more precious silence than be- fore, that after such storm and wreck- age we may gain a clearer sea and a more transparent deep. If this sug- gestion should at all prove to be true, and there will be many who will de- ride it, then a more wonderful poetry may be given to man than possibly in any previous age. Did not the French revolution give us that transcendent group of poets whom it is not neces- sary to name? And what was that shock compared to this? It is per- missible to forecast an era of verse 'which shall be the deeper, the clearer and the more gentle because it has been born of such unexampled vio- lence and such an unparalleled life- ' waste.
COMPENSATION
Fear ye lest sickness vex awhile thy clay? Think, rather, health is with us every day.
There are a thousand happy, laughing boys For one who, crippled, shudders at their noise.
Some ills there be, as known to human sense, Yet each is mother to sweet recompense.
When thrones pall, interest centers in a glove ; Brief dawn for parting; all the night for love.
Varied the motion of this life's wide sea, Yet hath it poise in action, bounds while free.
Alike for freedom and for freedom's bounds Faith's song of harmony resounds.
Be thine the pain? the bonds? the loveless night? Ingrate ! God offers thee clairvoyant sight.
ARTHUR POWELL.
Edwin Aarkham
The Boy, The Man, His Art
By Henry /Aeade Bland
Photographs by the Author.
ONE TIME in pioneer days on the far West Coast, in the won- derful heart of Mendocino Mountains, two boys with the passion for adventure, danced a mystic ring around a flaming redwood fire. They were naked as when first nestled on their mothers' bosoms; for on horseback, a half hour before, tying themselves to their saddles, they had just swum the raging winter Eel River; and, since every thread of their blankets and clothing was soaked, they thus were performing their imp- ish rites before the flames.
It was well these bold young rangers even at the risk of their lives had placed the rolling, unfordable Eel be- tween them and the narrow stretch of civilization where they lived; for one of them had, a day or two before, an- nexed a horse and saddle, and no doubt a posse was already after him. In those days to steal a horse was as dangerous to the perpetrator as to take a shot at one's fellow. No sheriff could have dreamed his quarry would have crossed that tempestuous stream, however; and as the runaways, once their outfit was dry, promptly lost themselves in primeval redwoods, they were for the time safe.
Many a mile they continued to ride. Everywhere about them was game, from the shy quail to the fearless griz- zly. No Indian ever reveled in his own deep forest shades with wilder incantations to his hunter-god, or drunk deeper drafts of the glorious Sylvan, than did these woodsy va- queros — devotees of Freemont and Kit Carson.
Their goal was the summit of the range; and they were even now con- juring up the wild adventures awaiting them. But they were not to be al- lowed to look over this height to the splendid ocean beyond, for a gentle snow began to fall, threatening to ob- literate every vestige of their trail; so they veered off along the eastern slope of the blue range, and found themselves among Indians. These, however, were not dangerous; more- over, they were on a government re- serve; and the superintendent, be- lieving the boys run-aways, wheedled them into a stay, till searchers might arrive.
But the pursuers the Indian super- intendent expected did not come; and after a two-weeks' stay in this primi- tive paradise, where there was plenty to eat and nothing to pay, the rovers moved on.
Down into the rich Sacramento Val- ley they went among the broad farms of Colusa. And now the avenging ne- mesis, a sheriff's deputy, who had been carefully tracing their vague trail, caught them, and recognizing the stolen horse, detained its rider; while the black-eyed younger escapado lis- tened in terror to the exciting confer- ence.
Then the deputy looked down the road to see a streak of dust and "greased lightning," for although the younger boy had had nothing to do with the stolen horse, he had decided to take no chances with the rope- swinging vigilant committee, and, put- ting spurs to his horse, saw his part- ner no more.
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So this modern knight-errant and poet-to-be, having side tracked his unfortunate companion, who had thus been cut short in his career as a free- booter, rode on among the rich farms. Harvest was at hand. He was al- ready hardened to toil on his mother's farm, and was glad to join a threshing crew, with which, till the end of the season, he toiled at the good old- fashioned job of "straw buck." When the "run" was over, and the crew paid off, a new adventure opened, wilder than he yet had dreamed of.
He was saddling his pony to leave when a strapping, more than six foot member of the threshing crew, a man of wonderful stride, of the jettest hair and of keenest glance, said:
"Wait a minute, young man. I've studied you for six weeks; you've got the head on you and just the grit of the fellow I want. Look here, now! I hold up stages."
The straw-buck at this startling speech was all ears.
"I want a man of nerve to hold the gun. I've watched you, and you can do it."
Thus the mighty Black Bart went on, for this was the famous bandit :
"Up to this time I've had to do it all alone — hold the gun in one hand, take the coin and jewelry with the other, and drop the loot into a sack tied around me. All you've got to do is to hold the gun," the robber further explained, assuming the attitude of the hold-up man.
"You can do it," he said, by way of clinching the argument.
A fiery question shot through the young man's mind. He was tempted but amazed; but it is not to be sup- posed that Markham considered the bandit's proposition for more than an instant, when his desire to be a high- way robber was at an end.
At this opportune moment a frantic mother, who had traced her romantic boy-adventurer almost from the time he left home, seized him with a firmer grip than ever a bandedero could have held him with, and (joy to his hungry heart), ordered him peremp-
torily to return home and prepare at once to go to school. Was not this woman truly a mother, who thus wrestled with her wayward born, stud- ied him, shaped him, mastered him, and opened a righteous path before him?
This mother of Edwin Markham had herself the spark of literary gen- ius. She once wrote verse for the newspapers of Oregon, where Edwin was born, whence she moved with her orphan boys to California, settling in the hill-circled Lagoon Valley a few miles north of Suisun, Solano County. The meagre collection of books in the home contained "Byron," and the sad musical "Melodies" were doubtless his earliest nurture. The Black District Public School began his education, and three teachers, all men, had him under tuition. One of these appar- ently left no impress upon the pliant child, and his name is forgotten; but the other two, Samuel D. Woods and William H. Hill, are now held in grateful memory by their pupil. Both were deeply interested in literature, and touched the boy with fire from their favorites.
William H. Hill taught him to love "Lalla Rookh" and Tennysonian lyr- ics as "Tears, Idle Tears;" Byron and Bryant, too, were this teacher's favor- ites; and "The Past" and "A Dream" (not "A Dream of Darkness") were poems the boy was taught to cherish. Thus there grew a demand for new books in the Markham home library. Tom Moore, Bryant and Webster's Unabridged being among the desirable volumes.
Yet when the money for the pur- pose was not to be had in Mistress Markham's frugal home, he was by no means daunted. He rigged up a team, hitched to his plow, and hired to a neighbor, breaking up twenty acres at a dollar an acre ; and the cov- eted books were secured.
Mrs. Markham determined after the cowboy episode to put her boy where he could learn broadly and at the same time make his learning im- mediately useful. She moved all her
Edwin Markham, from a photograph taken about the time he wrote "The
Man With the Hoe."
Edwin Markham entertained by the Pacific Short Story Club on his Cali- fornia visit last February. On the left of the poet is William Herbert Car- ruth, of "Each in His Own Tongue;" on the right is George Wharton James historian and lecturer. The poet has a floral piece resting on his lap.
worldly goods to San Jose, California, and there put the vigorous and lively Edwin into the State Normal School, that he might become a teacher.
The time from 1872, when Markham graduated, to 1889, may be called the formative period of the young poet. His home during this time was Santa Clara Valley; but as he was truly an itinerant teacher, his work took him into many different parts of the West. Once he went again to a private col- lege and studied the classics. More- over, quaint and sometimes exciting experiences continued to come to him, and not a few sorrows mingled with these early adjustments to actual life. He was an idealist; but he was able to put touches of realism, too, into his work when the situation demanded. His first work was in a district in San Luis Obispo County, and on present- ing himself to teach, he found no sign of a school house. Without hesitation he selected a wide-spreading live oak,
drove stakes in form of a fence around it, improvised seats and a desk, and thus, in probably the first open air school house of the West, proceeded to conduct classes. Not a drop of rain could penetrate the thick perennially leaved branches of his covering, while the impromptu wall of posts served to cut off the winds. He had scarcely opened school when the one aristo- cratic lady of the district appeared to enroll her little boy. Markham, feel- ing somewhat awkward in his rustic environment, was delighted to see her condescend to put the child under his sylvan tuition.
When the lady left she called the teacher aside for a sage word of part- ing, saying: "If Reginald misbehaves, you whip the boy next to him, and then he'll be so scared he'll be good!"
During all these years Markham as he could borrow a moment was prac- ticing his poetic art. He early learned the necessity of being self-critical,
EDWIN MARKHAM
337
sometimes keeping his productions by him, not only tor months, but years, till he had developed their genuine aroma. He was an unwearied student, not only of books but of men; and a good conversation was his chief joy. Once he arrived at night fall at the house of an old friend who was just recovering from scarlet fever. Tak- ing a seat far across the room to es- cape infection, the two talked until neighboring householders began to burn their early morning lights.
His later years in the school room carried him into the high Sierra Ne- vada mountains, where he was a school superintendent. His impres- sions of nature were thus enlarged, shifting from the kindly touches drawn from the Coast Range to an appre- ciation of the loftier, grander stretches and vistas of the Sierra. His imagi- nation grew and deepened.
"There at a certain hour of the night, A gray cliff with a demon face comes
up, Wrinkled and old, behind the peaks,
and with An anxious look peers at the Zodiac."
In all this work a definite theory of art is consciously developing. His method is first, a search for a su- premely poetic idea; and second, in- cessant toil upon the expression of it till his soul tells him "it is finished." From 1889, the third era of his growth, when the idea first took pos- session of him till 1899 — a decade — he shaped and re-shaped the "Man With the Hoe." The right word must be found; the polish must be perfect, the real fire must burn. (So well does he have his poetic theory in hand that it may be said, with no fear of over- drawing, he is in criticism in the class with Poe and Stedman as an arbiter of literary elegancies. Some may even say that a book is made by his sanction as a reviewer; or unmade if, when it is called to his attention, he is silent.
The intense seriousness of his work is clearly illustrated in both "The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems," and
in the collection containing "Lincoln." His poetry is his religion — each is in- terchangeable with the other. In fact it is persistently held by him that since the function of art is to complete designs of nature (not to imitate na- ture) great poetry enters the realm of prophecy. Its antipode is not prose, but science. Science can go no fur- ther than the powers of sense allow it; poetry with its subtle inner vision reaches into the unknown. It is an intense yearning for the perfect^
"(It) comes like the husht beauty of
the night
And sees too deep for laughter; (Its) touch is a vibration and a light From worlds before and after."
— Markham.
It is the gentle sadness that gives the face of the muse her best appear- ance; and perhaps the best reason for this deeper attitude of the poet is that behind everything is the divine es- sence which constantly challenges to thoughtfulness. Humor, conceits and gawds, as well as their more exqui- site relative, the fancy, have a pass- ing significance. They are but the early stepping stones by means of which the hungry intellect leaps on to the mystic and sublime truth.
Mr. Markham, the critic, thus broad- ly establishes three canons, as the basis of his poetic judgment: The poetic conceit is the lowest — a form in which the thought is concealed by the machinery of its expression.
Browning'aureferene to spring in "Sordello" is to the point:
"As in the slumbrous heart o' the
woods Our buried year, a witch, grew young
again
To placid incantations, and that stain About were from her cauldron, green
smoke blent With those black pines."
As also are Holmes' odd lines:
"Day hath put on his jacket, and
around His burning bosom buttoned it with
stars."
^<<«C<(«<CC<(«^^
i &
/ s
Henry M. Bland.
A fancy is many degrees in poetic value beyond the conceit, as will be observed in Longfellow's famous ex- tract from Evangeline, beginning:
"Silently one by one;" or in McDonald Clark's:
"Night drew her sable curtain down, And pinned it with a star;"
or in Tennyson's :
"Jewels five words long
That on the stretched forefinger of all
Time Sparkle forever."
Conceits and fancies belong to ear- lier phases of literature.
Thirdly, passages which are shaped at white heat in the forge of creative imagination form the highest type of poetry. Such are Lowell's :
"Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne;"
Browning's characterization of himself as:
"One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward;"
And Shakespeare's :
"Why, what should be the fear? I do not set my life at a pin's fee; And, for my soul, what can it do to
that,
EDWIN MARKHAM
339
George Wharton James
Being a thing immortal as itself?"
and lines from "The Man with the Hoe," also illustrate this class of poetry :
"How will it be with kingdoms and
with kings — With those who shaped him to the
thing he is — When this dumb Terror shall reply to
God, After the silence of the centuries?"
It is now fifteen years since the poet issued the two thin volumes which embody his ideal of poetry, and it seems strange that while many a magazine has used his lines, only now is the new collection, "The Shoes of Happiness," to appear. Shall we not say that devotion to splendid ideals has caused the continued silence; that the feeling that the old standards must be passed has caused the hesitation in hazarding the new attempt?
The "Hoe-Man" period of Edwin Markham's life was passed as princi- pal of the Thompkins School, Oak- land, California. Here the spirit of his teaching was suggested to the vis- itor by the figure of the Christ-Child, always before him on his office desk.
The spirit of his school was said by the superintendent to be above re- proach; and he undoubtedly was a pioneer in making children's litera- ture an approach to what it should be, using it to give tone to his school. He truly had not forgotten the spirit of his own teachers back in the primitive lagoon district. His method was im- pressional, and no doubt many a child now grown looks back with pride at once being seated at the feet of this literary Gamaliel.
Unmeasured success came to Mark- ham on publication of the "Man with the Hoe." Besides being reproduced in practically every periodical of the English tongue, one hundred and fifty thousand of the book, "The Man with the Hoe, and Other Poems," were sold.
That he might be where he could work to the best advantage in a broad- ened field, after this success, he pro- ceeded to New York, leaving his wife and child to keep the California home at anchor. As metropolitan editors, after six weeks' stay in the East, con- tined to send orders for work from his pen, he sent the telegram to Mrs. Markham which meant the breaking of all old Western ties:
"Sell everything but the baby and the books, and come on," he said.
It was a great store of wisdom, na- ture and experience the Hoeman car- ried with him across the continent, for in California he had loved man, books and nature, with all his soul. He had developed skilful mastery of the right use of the vehicle of his art. In his wooded retreat in East Oakland hills he had absorbed history, art and philosophy. He had touched Joaquin Miller, Charles Warren Stoddard and others of the early Californian school in the secret places of their best thought. Not only this, but, that he might know what it was to toil, he had learned the blacksmith's trade, and in truth in his early farm life he had not shirked the hardest harvest labor. Hence his sympathy with the poor. All these elements were com- bined as a basis to make his virile
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thought of the past fifteen years, which in truth make his fourth life- era.
There is an all-important lesson, to the earnest student, in Edwin Mark- ham's intellectual life. No student of the superficial and insignificant he! He has thrown himself into Aristotle, into Shakespeare, into the Bible (wit- ness his "Poetry of Jesus"), and into the masters of modern science. As a result, instead of being overwhelmed by the contradictions and disputes he found, he has arrived at certain defin- ite, simple, optimistic beliefs. We find him definitely and positively as- serting immortality. He holds tena- ciously to his old faith in the brother- hood of man, and holds with fidelity to the spirit of beauty which is an- other name for truth. He lives a sim- ple, spontaneous life, continually rec- ognizing the "give and take," the eter- nal law which goes with every life : "There is a sacred Something on all
ways — Something that watches through the
universe ;
One that remembers, reckons and re- pays,
Giving us love for love, and curse for curse."
It ought to be said, finally, that Markham's inspiration owes a great debt to his contact with nature in primitive California days, when the Western land was still an approach to what it was in primeval simplicity, when the Indian, the grizzly, the elk, and the mountain lion companioned in places where now are the clear marks of civilization. This wild and won- derful freedom was his — such as never can be of the same kind again in these his boyhood haunts. This delight in the wild and primitive has tempered the sorrow and rage which has so of- ten possessed his soul as he has stud- ied the clash of his fellowmen in the maelstrom of modern civilization.
This impress of the younger day can not wear from his mind, and he comes back again and again, as when he lectures, and as in his "California the Wonderful," to his restful "Mendo- cino Memory," his shining "Lyric of the Dawn," his gentle "Blossoming Bough;" and his loving "Heart's Re- turn."
THE EXPOSITION BUILDERS
Thus said the Master Builder to the Artisan: "Go, thou, and build a city great and free, Upon the borders of this Western Sea;
Build columns, courts and stately walls, that men
May come and gaze, then come and gaze again," Thus to the Artist: "Catch the tints that be In rosy dawn, in turquoise sky, from lea
Of sun-dried grass; ochres from moor and fen.
"Paint thou this city with a touch so fine That art shall rival nature. Architect,
High over all these domes and walls erect A tower incrust with jewels, that shall shine
Even as the stars. Turn the great arc lights high."
Behold! Earth disappears and heaven is nigh.
BY AMY W. HAMLIN.
Vasco Nunez de Balboa.
(Courtesy of the Outlook)
Vasco Nunez De Balboa
By Captain Henry Rowan Lemly, U. 5. Army, Retired
THE proximity of the official opening of the Interoceanic Canal should lend interest to everything pertaining to the Isthmus, and not least to the discov- erer of the great South Sea, to whom San Diego and the Republic of Pan- ama are about to erect statues (the
latter counting among its subscribers the King of Spain), and for whom the new port at the western extremity of the famous waterway has just been named.
Vasco Nunez de Balboa was the first European to pass from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, but the scene of
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this exploit was farther south than the site of the canal, in that part of the isthmus then named and still called Darien. Born in Jerez de los Cabal- leros, of a distinguished family, Bal- boa passed his early youth as a page in the palace of the Lord of Moguer, in whose service he learned practically all that a Spanish hidalgo of that per- iod was expected to know and which naturally fitted him for the career of arms. The time of (his birth is not definitely known, but he is first heard of in 1501, when still very young, upon the expedition to the mainland made by Rodrigo de Bastidas, who navi- gated the coast from Cape Vela to the Gulf of Uraba. Doubtless with his share of the proceeds of this voyage, Balboa purchased an estate in Hispan- iola (to-day the island of Haiti-San Domingo), where he engaged for sev- eral years in agricultural pursuits. These, however, were evidently not suited to his adventurous character, and he was so burdened with debts that, when he wished to join the ex- pedition of Enciso who, in 1511, pro- ceeded to the Gulf of Uraba to succor Alonso de Ojeda, either to escape his creditors or from fear of rejection, he had himself secretly carried aboard in an empty cask and thus shipped as a stowaway. Not until the high sea was reached was he discovered. Enciso threatened to leave him upon a desert island for his temerity, but was so captivated by the gallant bearing of Balboa and his knowledge of the coun- try to be visited that he not only for- gave him, but appointed him to a place of trust and honor.
At Cartagena they found Francisco Pizarro (later the conqueror of Peru) and his companions, who had been sent by Ojeda for supplies. Seeing that their party would more than fill the two boats at their command, they had quietly waited for disease and the arrows of the natives to reduce their number, which accomplished, they had set sail from the Gulf of Uraba, when one of their vessels foundered with the loss of all on board. Pizarro and his men were now persuaded to re-
turn to Enciso in search of Ojeda.
Near the mouth of the River Sinu they remained several days examining the Indian sepulchres for gold, which had been reported so abundant that the natives were said to take it from the mountain torrents with fish-nets! And, indeed, some years later, Pedro de Heredia, the founder of Cartagena, secured more gold in the aboriginal tombs along the Sinu, according to the historian Acosta, than was obtained in the conquest of Mexico or Peru. En- ciso fulfilled religiously his instruc- tions to have proclaimed to the natives the formula prepared by the Spanish Government, briefly as follows: That there was but one God, whose vice- regent on earth, the Pope, had given these lands to His Majesty, the King of Spain, and that any resistance to his mandate should be punished by death and spoliation. To this proclamation the chiefs listened attentively, but En- ciso himself reports that they replied : As to there being one God, who gov- erned the heavens and the earth and was Lord of all — this appeared to them to be true; but as for the Pope who was said to rule the universe in the place of God, and who had given this land to the King of Spain, he (the Pope) must have been drunk when he did so, since he gave what was not his own, and the King who asked for and acepted such a gift must have been a fool, as he asked for what was an- other's, and very bold, since he threat- ened those whom he did not know.
Enciso immediately gave orders to attack, but when two of his best men had been killed, he precipitately em- barked, resolved not to lose more time or lives in what appeared to be too difficult a task at that moment. Upon entering the Gulf of Uraba, one of his vessels was wrecked, and although the men were saved, the animals, provi- sions, arms, and ammunition intended for the colony were lost. Arriving at the settlement made by Ojeda and abandoned by Pizarro, it was found completely destroyed by the Indians.
Balboa now offered to conduct the expedition to a fertile and salubrious
Courtesy of Military Service Institute
Balboa discovering the Pacific Ocean.
region, where the natives did not use poisoned arrows (the terror of the Spaniards), and which he had visited ten years before in company with Bas- tidas. To this proposition, although he knew the territory was beyond the boundaries of his province, Enciso consented, and soon they passed the
mouth of the Atrato River and arrived at a spot where they rejoiced in the sight of cultivated fields at a short distance from an Indian village, which Balboa pronounced to be the land he was in search of. Enciso disembarked with his men and attacked the natives, dispersing and driving them into the
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
forest. He then solemnly took posses- sion of the country, baptizing the fu- ture city with the name of the virgin venerated in Seville as Santa Maria de la Antigua. This was the first settle- ment that existed for some time with- in the limits of the actual Republic of Colombia, but it was abandoned fin- ally because of the insalubrity of its climate.
The success which had attended the indications of Balboa contributed greatly to his prestige. Moreover, he was young, valiant, gay, decided, frank with his companions in arms, amiable with his inferiors, polite to his super- iors, humane with the natives as were few of the conquerors of that epoch, unselfish, not covetous of gold, al- though ambitious of command and of glory, which last quality he shrewdly managed to conceal; but he prepared the ground for future eminence by ex- ercising a great influence among the soldiers, by whom he was especially beloved because of his generosity in the division of booty.
Enciso, an elderly lawyer, was the very opposite of Balboa, inflexible in his opinions, disputatious as are all of his profession, rigid to excess, unpopu- lar, and with the covetousness of a man who abandons a tranquil life for one of adventure merely to acquire gold with which to resume his former peaceful existence. Balboa, it must be admitted, exploited these defects of his chief with great cleverness and diplomacy (which latter he possessed in a high degree), for what he aspired to was the supreme command of the colony.
At the proper time he attacked En- ciso upon his own ground, that of the law, alleging that the government was illegal, since the site of the new city was in territory which rightfully per- tained to the jurisdiction of Diego de Nicuesa. Thereupon, he convened an assembly of the principal colonists, to whom he presented this argument and demanded that Enciso should be de- posed as a usurper. This was decreed almost unanimously, and thus was con- summated, says the historian Soledad
de Samper (from whose interesting work the incidents of this narrative have been chiefly derived), the first of the many revolutions which have since afflicted the Isthmus of Panama. No other region in the New World was so fatal to the Spaniards.
However, Balboa was only partially successful in this insurrection, because the colonists resolved that he should share the government with one Samu- dio, and this dual administration ex- isted for about a year, during which period a fort and a church were erected and the poor Indians were compelled to surrender a quantity of gold, one- fifth of which was set aside for His Majesty, the King of Spain, and the remainder equally divided and distrib- uted.
Early in 1511 the colony was agree- ably surprised by the arrival of two small vessels, well supplied with pro- visions, under the command of Rod- rigo de Colmenares, but consigned to Nicuesa, whom the sailor summoned after having persuaded the settlers to accept him as their rightful governor. This naturally suited neither Balboa nor Enciso, who now successfully in- trigued and combined against Nicuesa, preventing him from disembarking and forcing him to set sail with only seven- teen men, poorly equipped and pro- visioned, in a small and unseaworthy vessel. The unfortunate Spaniard was never seen again. His party, it was currently reported, were shipwrecked and lost upon the coast of Cuba, in whose inhospitable forests, upon the bark of trees, sundry writings were subsequently discovered which told of their wanderings.
Balboa, whose humanity has been praised, did, indeed, intercede for Ni- cuesa, after having been principally instrumental in raising the storm about his head; but apparently his prestige did not suffer thereby, for shortly af- ter, when Enciso had proceeded to Spain to complain of his own deposi- tion, Samudio was despatched to an- swer his accusations, and Valdiva, an- other possible competitor, was sent to Hispaniola in search of additional sol-
Courtesy of Silver, Burdett & Company
Balboa taking possession of the South Seas.
diers and provisions. Thus Balboa finally got rid of all four of his rivals and succeeded to single and supreme command, an event which, under the circumstances, proclaimed him to have been a very remarkable man. In a few months the stowaway had become governor.
While awaiting events, Balboa was not idle. An expedition was under- taken against Careta, who possessed cultivated fields and presided over a very industrious tribe of Indians. His support was won, however, by kindly treatment, and, indeed, he agreed to furnish sufficient provisions for the Spaniards if they would assist him to subdue a neighboring but hostile chief, to which proposition Balboa readily assented, accepting Careta's daughter in marriage as a gage of the father's fidelity. Both of the high contracting parties religiously fulfilled the com- pact.
A second expedition led Balboa into the territory of Comagre, a rich caci- que whose people were more civilized than any natives the Spaniards had
yet encountered. These Indians dwelt in small but comfortable wooden houses, wore cotton cloths and adorned their persons with golden ornaments, of which they gave a great many to the invaders. It was here that Balboa first heard, from the son of the old chief, that there existed upon the other side of the mountains, to the south- ward, a vast sea, upon the coasts of which lived a great and thriving people (Incas) who wore clothes like the Spaniards, navigated its waters in boats with sails, and possessed gold and pearls in abundance. This sur- prising intelligence, which Balboa de- termined to transmit immediately to Spain, caused his prompt return to An- tigua, from which point he wrote for reinforcements and provisions with which to go in search of the great South Sea. Pending their arrival, however, he explored the banks of the Atrato, in search of the famous but probably fictitious idol of gold called Dobaiba, which was never discovered. On the contrary, he found his passage obstinately disputed by the natives,
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
and, but for the timely information brought him by an Indian girl whose good graces he had won (as happened to Hernan Cortes in Mexico), all of the Spaniards might have been am- bushed and massacred. Instead, Bal- boa surprised their camp, captured and hanged their chiefs and dispersed their united followers among the dense and almost impenetrable forests. This was, perhaps, the only sanguinary ex- ploit of his career as discoverer.
Shortly after this affair, Balboa learned that the Spanish authorities had resolved to send another governor to Antigua, and he determined to delay no longer his southward journey. Leav- ing the colony at peace, with the sick and least warlike within the gates of the city, he sallied forth with ninety picked men and a dozen dogs. These latter were more feared by the Indians than the Spaniards themselves; and among them was one belonging to Bal- boa called "Leoncico" (Little Lion), son of Becerro (Calf), famous in his- tory for his terrible slaughter of the natives in the Antilles. To the owners of these ferocious canines double pay and booty were assigned, and Leoncico drew those of an officer.
During nearly four weeks Balboa wandered among the wilds of Darien, daily fighting the Indians, who stub- bornly disputed his progress; but at last, on the 25th of September, 1513, from the crest of a high promontory, he beheld for the first time the Pacific Ocean. "A little while before reach- ing the summit," says the historian Gomara, "he ordered his party to halt and ascended alone. Looking south- ward, he beheld the sea, and kneeling, gave thanks to our Lord for His great mercy." Having then been joined by the Spaniards, they united in praising God, and erected a monument of stones surmounted by a wooden cross, surely the first Christian sign ever raised on these shores.
But it was not sufficient to behold the Pacific; it was necessary to take formal possession of it in the name of the King of Spain and of his daughter Juana. This was accomplished a few
days later, on the 29th of September, 1513, the day of San Miguel, which name was given to the gulf that Balboa entered, with drawn sword, resolutely wading through its waters. After sub- duing various caciques and collecting a large sum in gold and many pearls, Balboa returned in triumph to Anti- gua, where he was given a public re- ception by his friends and followers, among whom were Pizarro and Alma- gro, respectively the future conquerors of Peru and of Chile.
Until now the star of Balboa had been in the ascendant. His discovery of the Pacific made him famous, and not without cause, he despatched a vessel to Spain with a report of his success, accompanied by a gift of gold and pearls for the king and an earnest request for his appointment as gov- ernor of the regions he had made known. Unfortunately his messenger arrived too late. So slow were the communications with the New World that when Balboa's commissioner reached Spain to report the great dis- covery of September, 1513, a new gov- ernor of Darien, Pedro Arias Davila, had already been named, and had set sail from Cadiz in April, 1514, in en- tire ignorance of what had transpired in the colony seven months before.
Pedrarias (Pedro Arias), as he is generally called, arrived at Antigua in June, and was hospitably received and entertained by Balboa, who loy- ally surrendered the command of the colony, restraining his soldiers from manifesting their natural discontent at such apparent unjust treatment of their distinguished chief. The new gov- ernor, on the contrary, actuated by envy or jealousy, and perhaps by both, instead of reciprocating this kindly treatment upon the part of Balboa, caused him to be arrested; and al- though his judges declared him inno- cent of any crime and ordered him to be released, two factions were imme- diately created in the colony, the one embracing the friends of Balboa and the other the adherents of Pedrarias. Up to this time the natives had con- tinued to supply the colonists with
Balboa, drawn from an old painting.
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
provisions, but the new governor treated them so cruelly that soon they desisted from bringing in supplies. Famine and disease were the natural result; and although Pedrarias had been accompanied by 1,500 men, be- fore the expiration of the year 1514, their number had been reduced to 700, the most of them sick and complain- ing. Balboa, now deprived of all com- mand, submitted without a murmur. Pedrarias was sustained throughout by the Bishop of Burgos, Juan Rodriguez Fonseca, the Patriarch of the Indies, who was a gratuitous enemy of Bal- boa, as he had been of Columbus, and was presently to be of Hernan Cortes. Finally, to rid himself of Balboa, Pe- drarias sent him with a few men, bad- ly armed and provisioned, to further explore the banks of the Atrato, where the Indians were known to be very numerous and were noted for their ferocity. The expedition was natu- rally a failure, and Balboa was se- verely wounded, at which news the governor made no attempt to conceal his joy. However, Balboa recovered, and one day a ship arrived with a let- ter of congratulation from the king and his appointment as governor of the newly discovered territories; but to this the Patriarch of the Indies had at- tached a nullifying provision to the ef- fect that Balboa could not act inde- pendently or command any expedition without the consent of Pedrarias, and such permission was withheld.
Matters remained in this unsatisfac- tory state until the first Bishop of the Mainland, Juan de Queredo, succeeded in bringing about a truce by arranging a marriage (notwithstanding his In- dian wife) between Balboa and a daughter of Pedrarias remaining in Spain. The irate and unjust old gov- ernor finally gave his consent for Bal- boa to cross the isthmus, build ships and explore the coasts of the South Sea, but this permission was coupled with the obligation 'to found a colony upon the Pacific side, and only eighty Spaniards were permitted to engage in the enterprise. Balboa supplemented these by Indians and negroes, some of
whom had been recently brought from Africa; and as the west coast did not possess suitable timber for his pur- poses, it was cut upon the eastern shore and laboriously dragged across. To add to his difficulties, a freshet car- ried away the first supply. Various in- habitants of Antigua furnished the necessary funds, but not until 1517 did Balboa succeed in building two small caravels.
In a preliminary cruise he had sailed some fifty miles to the south. Pedrarias, meanwhile, had established himself in Acla, the fortified colony founded by Balboa upon the Pacific; and when the latter returned from his first voyage, the good Bishop Quevedo being now in Spain where Balboa's promised wife still remained, Pedra- rias wrote to his prospective son-in- law affectionately urging him to visit Acla before his final departure, in or- der that he might receive his blessing. Balboa immediately started alone for Acla, but before his arrival he was met by a party of soldiers under Fran- cisco Pizarro, arrested, placed in irons and carried before Pedrarias, who ac- cused him of conspiracy against the king in harboring the intent to declare independent such regions as he might discover, an accusation, under the cir- cumstances, as ridiculous as it was false. Balboa indignantly denied the charge and begged that he might be sent to Spain or to Hispanola, to be judged, but Pedrarias ordered, in writ- ing, the reluctant Mayor of Acla, Gas- par de Espinosa, to condemn him, and three of his followers, to immediate death, fearing that any delay might prove fatal to his diabolical project. Such was the fear inspired by the san- guinary old governor among the colon- ists that not a voice was raised against this cruel and unjust sentence. When the executioner announced : "This is the justice which the king, our master, and his lieutenant Pedrarias, command to be done to this man, as a traitor and usurper of the lands subject to the Royal Crown," Balboa, indignant, could not restrain himself and ex- claimed: "It is a lie! It is false! I
A MOTHER'S HANDS 349
swear it before God, in whose pres- Thus perished the discoverer of the
ence I am about to appear, and before Pacific Ocean.
every man who hears me. I pray that Pedrarias, concealed behind a fence,
all the king's subjects may be as loyal witnessed and seemingly enjoyed the
as I have been." execution. Because of his influence
Immediately his head was cut off, with the Patriarch of the Indies he was
but his body remained unclaimed upon never punished, on earth, for this atro-
the scaffold for twenty-four hours, cious crime.
A MOTHER'S HAND
The hands that were soft and dimpled,
Are weary and worn and scarred; The palms that were smooth as a baby's
Are calloused and rough and hard; The tapering, slender fingers
Are bruised and stiff and old, And veins that were once but a tracing,
Are prominent, rigid and bold. But the touch of those hands is as gentle
As the lullaby words of a song, With a love that's divine they have labored
In a ministry, noble and strong.
Oft while the others were sleeping,
They mended a little torn frock, And worked at discouraging stockings,
Till long after twelve by the clock. They glued the doll's curls that were cherished,
And fastened a wheel on a cart, And hoed at the weeds in the garden,
Though blisters, when broken, would smart. They anxiously nursed in a sickness,
And toiled o'er the heat of the range, Then, folded in prayer, they pleaded
For strength — but not for a change.
Only the mother who travels
O'er the mountainous road of the years, Can know with what tremulous longings
She brushes aside the stray tears, With hands that are tender and loving,
With hands that have never complained, But have lifted and carried the burdens
Till they tremble and ache with the pain. The heart of the world pays a tribute,
Oh, not to the hands that are fair, But to hands that are daily reflecting
The glory of motherhood there.
ELLA FLATT KELLER.
Gas, the Nestor of Public Utilities
By C. 5. 5. Forney
Mr. C. S. S. Forney, who contributes the following article on the develop- ment of the making of gas and gas processes, is prominent among those who have been successful in making and distributing gas throughout the in- terior towns of California. His ingenious and broadening suggestions in this line of endeavor have attracted wide attention among those who under- stand and appreciate the intricate problems he has solved. Mr. Forney is identified with those public utility experts of the United States and Canada who have called attention to the advantage of high standards and the pos- sibilities of economic achievement in the gas business.
LINE UP the Public Utilities of the country in any order that you will, and gas will unques- tionably be placed as the con- sistent and natural leader of the group. There is sound reason for this.
Public service, through various forms of gas enterprise, is over one hundred years old, and holds its own as securely and confidently as it did on the day the first user awakened to its possibilities of usefulness. The ordi- nary man does not usually recall that our oldest public utility has an honor- able record of one hundred years of service.
Gas has been the leader in the util- ity field from its inception. It is the pioneer of utility enterprises — the pio- neer that paved the way for the utili- ties that have since weaved their way over the land. Because of its inherent properties, all absolutely useful and ofttimes necessary in every household it has easily maintained its position in the forefront of the most needful utili- ties. The years roll by only to find more fields of usefulness for gas.
Though the telephone was invented forty years ago it has only found its place and acquired general recognition in the last twenty-five years. Elec-
tricity, as a commercial entity, has found itself only in the last twenty years. The telegraph only in a limited sense is a public utility. Water is not a public utility in the true sense, for the reason that as there is no substi- tute for water, it is a slave rather than an eager, willing servant.
There are two methods of manufac- turing gas: from coal, which is the general method used throughout the world, and from crude oil, a distinc- tively Californian development, and a process that, because of its cheapness, has to an unusual degree aided gas development throughout the State. California leads the States of the Union and the countries of the world with an annual production of crude oil of more than 100,000,000 barrels, and under pressure of demand can eas- ily increase this flow. Hence the State is in a position to furnish the cheap- est gas, aside from natural gas, which favors a few communities in the world. As regards gas possibilities, Califor- nia is among the most favored, for it possesses untold stores of petroleum and has a number of natural gas fields, but the latter, of course, exhaust them- selves in comparatively short times.
Pipe lines, tank cars and tank
GAS, THE NESTOR OF PUBLIC UTILITIES
351
steamers transport this oil practically to every village of any consequence throughout the State, to the great ad- vantage of those small communities which avail themselves of an opportu- nity to manufacture gas at the lowest possible rate. To pay from $10 to $14 a ton for coal and to provide for other expenses, including interest, would re- quire the rate in San Francisco to be approximately $1.20 per thousand cubic feet for coal gas, as against the present rate for oil gas at 80 cents per thousand cubic feet, a money saving of 33 per cent.
In the larger Eastern cities, with coal selling at prices ranging from $4 to $6 per ton, and with a ready market for the coke, which is a by-product of the coal gas process, gas is sold at from 20 per cent to 35 per cent higher than under comparable conditions in Cali- fornia.
This brings up the question: What is the value of a thousand cubic feet of gas?
Ordinarily, value is what a thing can be sold for, or what amount it will earn. But ordinary terms have no ap- plication in public utility matters. The fact has been established that within a certain range the value of a public utility property is its cost and the value of its service is the cost of that service including, of course, interest on the investment necessary to pro- duce the service. Manifestly this is a proper basis of value for all property, but the establishment of such a basis for all property is Socialism. It is not Socialism with respect to public utility property, because included in the agencies necessary to public utility ser- vice is the property of the public, meaning the thoroughfares of the com- munities themselves. In addition to the streets used by a gas company, for instance, each and every person using that company's service provides a necessary agency in the form of an appliance, and therefore has a direct collateral investment which, for its value, depends on an agency beyond its owner's control. This evidences that if a public utility has the power
to influence the value of its consumers' property it is obviously just that the consumers, collectively, should have the power to influence or restrain the value which a gas company may place on its product.
Compare the relation between the in- vestment of one of the smaller gas companies, which amounts to $500,000 and the investment in gas stoves, water heaters and lighting appliances of its consumers, which amounts to $100,000, both these amounts being in round figures.
The life of the average gas appli- ance is five years and that of the aver- age gas plant twenty-five years, so that the consumer is obliged not only to provide interest on the company's in- vestment, but, included in the price of gas, an amount sufficient to keep the company's investment intact, and, in addition, the consumer, on an average, will, in twenty-five years, have re- peated their original investment in ap- pliances often enough to have equalled the company's investment, because five times the present investment in appli- ances is $500,000 and another $500,- 000 is the amount of the company's in- vestment.
Water, electric, telephone and rail- road utilities of course do not repre- sent so nearly an approximately equal investment on the part of the con- sumer and the utility, but other com- parisons than investments might be made to show as distinctly as has been shown by illustration with the gas company mentioned, that there is ab- solute equity in principle that public utilities should be regulated.
Selling gas, unlike real merchandis- ing, where quality of product affects the standing of the merchant, and, if not his profits, at least his social satis- faction, is a sort of standardized mer- chandising. The same gas is sold to the mansion as to the hut, and there is no such opportunity to "cater to the best trade" as there is in the grocery business, or the jewelry business, or the dry goods business.
Lack of opportunity to "raise the level of the business" exists as to pro-
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
duct, but there is opportunity to raise the standard of service, and the con- scientiousness of the particular opera- tor must provide an incentive for high standard.
The best service, of course, is the service which is least annoying and least obtrusive, and a gas company which is so operated that its consum- ers on an average have not each more than one complaint a year has attained a high position as to service. This does not refer to complaints as to price, but to complaints of poor pres- sure, stoppages, leaks, etc. A com- plaint of slow delivery by the grocer's boy, unsatisfactory meat from the butcher, and unsatisfactory work from the laundry, will serve for a good, broad determination of the general av- erage excellence of gas service.
There is not now, and never has been, opportunity for making any con- siderable sum of money in the gas business in California, but it has come to be recognized that low rates and high output mean safe net earnings. As a general proposition, under skillful management, it has been possible to earn a fair return on actual investment, but interest on investment is not profit.
Taken as a whole, the public util- ity business in California has yielded poor rewards to those who have de- voted their time and energies to the development of utilities. We have in this State some men who are reputed to be oil millionaires, cat- tle kings and timber barons, but not one public utility millionaire, nor any group of men who have made any con- siderable money from exploiting pub- lic utilities. Large amounts of money may have been made elsewhere in the gas business, but comparatively small units of population and diversified ownership, together with the rapid growth of population in California communities, have imposed a burden
of social and economic service on pub- lic utility owners entirely out of pro- portion to the remuneration enjoyed for such service.
The task most difficult of accom- plishment is the providing of funds for more and more mains and machin- ery, but that task has generally been well performed in this State, as is evi- denced by the fact that there is not a town in California having an excess of 3,000 population which does not have a gas company, and further by the fact that California gas companies have more miles of main per thousand consumers than do gas companies of any other State in the Union. With the rapid development in this State, it is remarkable that there have been so few mistakes made in the upbuilding of the various gas properties, espec- ially when it is considered that there has been no general influx of young men technically trained in the busi- ness, while, on the other hand, that very circumstance may be a contribut- ing cause to the general success of gas property development.
The chief need to-day in operation is for young men, who, having a knowledge of the technical side of the business, are able to make actual house to house canvasses and increase the useful consumption of gas by present consumers, and that field offers a splendid present opportunity with a prospect later of occupying the higher executive positions now filled by men who some day will retire.
With uniform accounting, it soon will be possible to draw comparisons between the different companies and enable skillful management to have the satisfaction, if not the benefit, of proved relatively better operation.
All things considered, California to- day has recognition as being a State of worthy achievement and high de- velopment in the gas business,
The First Petroleum Refinery in the United States
By AV. C. Frederick
BY NAMING the gasoline automo- bile as one of the ten greatest patentable inventions of the last twenty-five years, a winner of a "Scientific American" prize placed due emphasis on the motive power that makes the wonderful machine possible. It seems almost ludicrous, consider- ing the economic magnitude of this "by-product" of petroleum, that no longer ago than when John D. Rocke- feller was a baby, petroleum was val- ued only as a medicine. It was col- lected by the Indians and sold in small quantities at a high price, under the name of Senica or Genessee oil, to the early settlers of New York and Penn- sylvania.
It is true, the inflammable nature of "rock oil" (petra, rock; oleum, oil), had long been known. Under the name of bitumen the ancient Greeks and Romans must have come close to the secret of its power, for we are told that it was burned in lamps in a town in Cicily. And excavators in Baby- lon have unearthed fragments of tab- lets referring to the temple tower of Babylon, on which Nebuchadnezzar, the king, recorded that he had made the temple "brilliant as day with bitu- men and blue, glittering bricks."
Day, in his History of Pennsylvania, says that the commander of Fort Du- quesne, in a letter to Montcalm, de- scribes an Indian ceremony on the banks of a creek at night. A part of the performance was firing the scum of oil on the water, lighting up the woods with flame, the Indians greet- ing the manifestation with shouts and great rejoicing.
As early as 1826, a Dr. Hildreth, of Marietta, Ohio, saw a future for oil as an illuminant, it being then used some- what in workshops. But no one then found or sought the magic key — dis- tillation— by which it finally burst up- on the world.
We know the story, how scientific experiments in England, in 1694 pro- duced an oil by distillation of bitumi- nous shales and coals. The product was used only as medicine, until Reich- enbach, of Germany, made extensive investigations and recognized its illu- minating qualities, giving the world the results of his labors in 1830. Two years later a French firm patented the application of these oils for illuminat- ing purposes. In 1846, Abraham Ges- ner made oil from coal in Prince Ed- ward's Island, and was the first to call it kerosene.
The first factory in the United States for the distillation of coal oil from coal was on Newtown Creek, Long Island, opposite upper New York, 1854. Others followed.
In the meantime, one Samuel Kier, a Pittburg druggist, had been inter- ested in selling petroleum as a medi- cine, apparently without much suc- cess. He then turned his attention to its inflammable qualities, trying to sell it as an illuminant, with little better results. Realizing that if the smoke and odor could be elminated his sales would increase, and noting its simi- larity to Abraham Gesner's rock oil, it occurred to him to try Gesner's pro- cess on his own commodity. Edwin C. Bell, an authority on oil history, thinks Professor Booth, a chemist of
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
The Honolulu gusher.
Philadelphia, gave him the scientific process of how to convert the oil into an illuminant. The following para- graph is quoted from Bell's "Life of Col. Edwin L. Drake."
"It was not until 1850 that an effort was made to refine petroleum oil. This was accomplished by Samuel M. Kier, in the city of Pittsburg. His first at- tempt was made with a cast iron still holding one barrel. This pioneer re- finery was located on Seventh avenue, above Grant street. Finding sale for the distillate, he enlarged his works to a still of the capacity of five barrels. Afterwards he removed the refinery to Lawrenceville, a suburb of Pitts- burg. This was found necessary be- cause the people in his vicinity, on Seventh avenue, became alarmed for fear of fire in the refinery. The oil that Mr. Kier used came from his own and other salt wells at Tarentum. And this was the only petroleum refinery in existence when Col. Drake struck his well on Oil Creek in 1859."
In the years immediately following
1860, manufacturing coal oil from coal was entirely abandoned, and the estab- lishments changed into petroleum re- fineries.
But there is another little story not so well known. Readers of California history are familiar with the name of General Andres Pico, brother of Gov- ernor Pico Pico, a Spanish Californian prominent in the history and politics of the State in its most eventful per- iod. We know him as a customs offi- cial and as military commander for a time at Monterey and Los Angeles. He was one of the commissioners to make inventory of Mission property at the time of the secularization of the Mis- sions by Mexico, and a subsequent lessee of the San Fernando Mission lands for a term of years.
At the victory of San Pasqual he was in command, and concluded with Fremont the treaty of Cahuenga, clos- ing the war in California.
At the front in whatever was going on, in 1848 and 1849 he had a com- pany of miners at work on Mokel- umne. Was elected to the Assembly in '51, and a presidential elector in 1860-61.
At the time when gold was the all- absorbing thought of the California populace, Pico's mind was attracted to what is now one of the chief sources of the wealth of the State. The value of the petroleum products at the pres- ent time is more than twice the out- put of gold and silver.
Petroleum seeps out of the ground and stands in pools or falls down the hillside in many places in California. In Pico Canyon, on the farther side of the San Fernando mountains, back of the Mission, were seepages of oil re- ported to have sometimes reached as much as ten barrels a day. (This is in the famous Newhall region.)
In the early fifties — authorities dif- fer as to the exact date — Pico col- lected this oil and distilled it in a cop- per still and worm, making burning oil for the Mission, where there may have been seventy-five or a hundred souls, all told. This included the retainers with which every well-to-do Califor-
r~
Ten thousand barrels of oil on fire. Loss $50}000.
The famous Lakeview gusher, the second largest gusher ever tapped in the world. The petroleum is shot high under terrific natural gas pressure.
man loved to surround himself, Mexi- cans employed on the ranch, and Mis- sion Indians who still lingered after the Fathers departed, some of them old and helpless, some too young to be of service, but all welcome to remain.
If Pico started the refinery in 1850, as stated, in Petroleum in Southern California, page 159, issued by the California State Mining Bureau, 1913, then with Don Andres would Samuel Kier share the honor of operating the
first oil refineries on the American con- tinent. This would antedate by four years the plant at Newton Creek for the distillation of oil from coal. At the very latest date given, it was still sev- eral years before the great oil strike in Pennsylvania. Two or three years after Pico, one Morrell established a refinery at Carpinteria, but it was not very successful, and did not long sur- vive.
The success of the oil business in
Petroleum flowing into a sump at the rate of 1,500 bbls. a day, approxi- mately $750 every twenty-four hours. Some of the gushers earned $10,000 a day for months before the gas pressure decreased.
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
Pennsylvania stimulated efforts in California, and by 1865 there existed 70 oil companies, operating chiefly in Humboldt County. That year oil was $1.75 per gallon, retail; $1.40 whole- sale. Wells were sunk in Kern County and refining done in a small way, but the difficulties were so many, chief of which was the high freight rates, that the work was abandoned. Thomas Scott, the Pennsylvania railroad king, with associates, leased the great Ojai grant, but did not find oil in paying quantities.
Operations by modern methods were not begun in the Newhall district, San Fernando Mountains, until 1876; but by 1891 a strip of land in Pico Canyon,
840 feet wide and 3,800 feet long, was reported to have yielded more than a million and a half barrels of oil, and still producing without any appear- ance of giving out. In '83, oil was worth from 15 to 17 cents a gallon.
By '99 California had come into her own. The output for 1913 was 97,- 867,183 barrels— nearly half the out- put of the United States — and in 1914 it reached the enormous total of 103,- 623,695 barrels, an increase of more than five and three-quarter million barrels. Had there been sufficient de- mand and the wells permitted to flow their full capacity, the Standard Oil Bulletin places the probable yield at more than 110,000,000 barrels.
LAD O' LAUGHTER
I am weary of my callers, all day long they come and go, Grandsire Grouch with loud complainings, Granny Grief with head bent low. Father Fear has gloomed and doubted, Mother Memory's hands bear rue, Come, oh, come, dear Lad o' Laughter, I'll fling wide the door for you.
You are still the Guest of Honor, cumbered cot or haughty hall, Burdened hearts leap at your coming, beds of pain keep festival. Strew. your heartsease o'er Life's nettles, breathe of Courage and of Cheer. Let your boyish shout re-echo round the world, and through the year.
Come, and from your radiant presence shapes of gloom shall flee away. Speak your wisdom of the ages: "Past is past, be glad to-day." Love has crowned you with her roses, Hope has kissed and set you free, Wander o'er the world that needs you, but at even bide with me.
ELEANOR DUNCAN WOOD.
A Born Pioneer in Cultivating Ausic
By Jean /Aahan Flank
Mrs. David Campbell
TO SEE visions and dream dreams is one thing ; to have the quietly directed will that works or waits for their fulfillment is another. In the first years of this century, a modest young woman with a sweet, absent smile, and a 'cello-like voice, was living a simple, domestic life on a Colorado ranch. Her days were spent in doing her own housework, training her three little sons to be splendid men, and for recreation, jumping upon a pony and riding breathlessly across the broad mesa, or along the narrow canyon trails, and — dreaming. Be- ware of that word "dreaming!" It ex- presses something that is like yeast in a pan of dough.
Her whole life was attuned in one keynote: Contentment. Here on the
ranch she was to spend her days. It was her delight — that ranch-life with her husband and the boys; and the 'cello voice sang merrily while her whole being rejoiced in the freedom, the rarified air, and the wildflowers and crystal torrents of the Rockies.
The yeast, however, did not fail to do its work. In this second decade of the century, the absent smile, which deepens at the slightest call into one of understanding friendliness, and the 'cello voice, which never rises to sharp- ness under the most extreme provoca- tion, are to be seen and heard before a desk in a tiny private office in one of the tall, beautiful buildings which face the vast Lake Michigan in Chi- cago.
It is Mrs. David Campbell — for she is one of those rare moderns, a woman who prefers to be known by her hus- band's name — who sits and works, without haste, without rest, in the in- terests of the National Federation of Musical Clubs, and of its organ, The Musical Monitor, of which she is the editor.
Mrs. Campbell came out of the West, but behind her she left a blazed trail of splendid pioneer work. "A born pioneer," she calls herself. One of her associates calls her " a live wire in the Federation."
It was the Federation that did it. How could she stay on the ranch when the voices were calling to her to come and make the dreams real? All through a richly generous and wholly selfless life, music had been the su- preme passion next to her husband and the children. It was inevitable that the most fragrant flowers of her work should bloom in the effort to give to others the privileges that her day and
A BORN PIONEER IN CULTIVATING MUSIC
361
environment had made so difficult for herself.
A glance at what was accomplished, nevertheless, in spite of handicaps, by a girl who was married at nineteen, be- came an exquisite home-maker, and raised three fine sons, gives cause for marveling. A foundation had been laid for the musical development of little Viola Vaille Barnes by lessons, choir singing and organ playing be- tween the tender ages of five and nine years. Then came piano study and harmony. The deep contralto voice, however, was not brought to its full glory until after the early marriage. Seconded by her husband's enthusi- asm, Mrs. Campbell, with electric en- ergy and earnestness, not only fulfilled admirably her duties as wife and mother, but she studied voice-training with three excellent American teach- ers, went to London and worked under Mme. Cellini, and finally made her debut in that city in 1897 in a concert under the patronage of H. R. H. the Prince of Wales.
Her study for equipment in musi- cianship, personality and voice had been made, with characteristic thor- oughness, for a professional career. But when the worshiping quartet which formed her family gathered about her with loving calls upon her time, she snapped her fingers at the career. The sweet voice was given to the church and to her friends, while the blue eyes under the bronze hair sparkled with that curiously joyous contentment that has bloomed like a flower along the whole pathway of Mrs. Campbell's life.
She had been saved for a bigger thing — a work that gathers its mater- ials from the realm of Creation. The musical interpreter's life touches other lives from the outside; but through Mrs. Campbell's enthusiastic thought and activities personal expression of the power of music has been made possible to thousands.
Here, in brief, is her record, which as pioneer work has taken the courage of a Lionheart, and the faith of a John the Baptist She has to her credit:
The first presidency of the Matinee Musical, Lincoln, Nebraska; of the Matinee Musical, Coffeyville, Kansas; the Tuesday Club, Bartlesville, Okla- homa; the Musical Research, Lander, Wyoming; numerous choral clubs or- ganized and conducted; while not the least of the benefits she has showered about her was at the gathering on the ranch, where the cowboys and mesa people used to come eagerly to hear the beautiful songs and listen to the only piano within many miles. Along with this outpouring of free service goes a curious reserve as to her own achievements. It was necessary to camp for two months on Mrs. Camp- bell's trail, so to speak, in order to get these meagre items; but when she can be got to talk, nothing moves her to greater enthusiasm than telling about these cowboy gatherings, and how the men's hearts opened to the beautiful in the form of good music.
The crowning work of her life, nevertheless, is the service she is now giving in the National Federation of Musical Clubs. This organization has become a power to reckon with in the musical world, and the history of Mrs. Campbell's late activities is really a history of the Federation.
She was a charter member of the Federation; its first Western director; its first librarian ; first chairman of pub- lic school music ; a member of the first American Music Committee; for four years first vice-president, now honor- ary vice-president. She was one of the projectors of the idea of offering a $10,000 prize for the best American opera, the prize that was finally given to Horatio Parker of Yale. To her in- ventive imagination is due the contest for young American professionals that is now meeting with the united support of press and public. She was the one to see a vision of a magazine for an official organ for the Federation. When others shrank back from so precarious an undertaking, Mrs. Camp- bell had the courage and faith to finance, edit and publish the Musical Monitor. The first year she blazed the trail, the second made the road, and
362 OVERLAND MONTHLY
now in its third year the way is made out.
pleasant and profitable to its accumu- Mrs. Campbell is an example of lating supporters, and the work is es- what one individual possessed by an tablished. idea, and brave enough to stand be- In spite of the manifold labors en- hind it at all times, can accomplish in tailed by these responsibilities, Mrs. the struggle with that inertia that Campbell is always accessible to an seems to be a fundamental element of appeal for help or advice. To her human nature. Music, beauty and re- friends she has become an ora- ligion are thoroughly commingled in cle. When a stranded foreign musi- her mind; her faith in God's provi- cian, or the president of some big or- dence is a living thing which has ganization, or a mere problem harassed "worked through a great culture to a writer seeks the little private office, great simplicity;" while in harmony it is to receive the friendly smile, the with this, she cherishes an ardent love warm hand-clasp and a swift, intui- for our country and a clear vision of tive suggestion which the seeker will our ultimate supremacy in matters always be wise and safe in following musical.
THEN I'LL COWE BACK TO YOU
As the faint ray of morn
Breaks from the night, So is man's spirit born
Into the bright Immortal world above, Back to the goal of love,
Into the light.
Death's fatal fair caress
The door unbars ; One moment's perfectness
Beneath the stars; The voices of the spheres Sing softly through the years —
No sound that mars.
Like Night, low whispering,
Crystal and fair; Lulled where bird-vespers cling
Upon the air; Held in the hazy mist Of memory's fond tryst—
Our lost are there.
Day's glamour fades and goes;
A shimmering track Wavers at dusk and glows —
Grows sombre — black. "Then I'll come back to you In the soft twilight's dew —
Then I'll come back!"
ROSE DE VAUX-ROYER.
Is Christian Science Scriptural ?
By C. T. Russell
Pastor New York, Washington and Cleveland Temples and the Brooklyn and London Tabernacles
(This is the second and final article on Christian Science, written by the famous author of "Studies in the Scriptures." The other appeared in last month's issue.)
"There shall be no more death, nei- ther sorrow, nor crying; neither shall there be any more pain." — Revelation 21:4.
IN MY ARTICLE of last month hav- ing, I believe, fairly stated the facts and claims of Christian Sci- ence, and having pointed out the unreasonableness and inconsistency of some of its statements, I now proceed to inquire whether its teachings are Scriptural. This is the question of special interest to us. The others are merely incidental. I hold, and will en- deavor to show, that Christian Science is in conflict with the Holy Scriptures.
The Bible distinctly avers that God created man perfect — in His own like- ness, morally, intellectually. It de- clares that Adam's disobedience was sin, punishable, not with eternal tor- ment, but with death. — Romans 5:12; 6:23; 1 Corinthians 15:21, 22; Genesis 2:17; 3:17-19; Ezekiel 18:4, 20.
Christian Science denies these facts, declaring that there is no death and that whoever dies merely commits "mortal error." It is surely against Christian Science, but confirmatory of the Bible teaching that for more than six thousand years mankind have been dying! Even "Mother Eddy," who was expected not to commit "mortal error," finally succumbed to it. What answer can our Christian Science friends make to this? We know of
none, except that they might claim that the unreasonableness of their position is no greater than the unreasonableness of any of the other sects and creeds. Logic never seems to be taken into consideration in religious matters; the more illogical a statement the more commendable the acceptance of it.
If all disease is error, if death is the greatest of errors, and if the es- caping of "mortal error" — death — brings the reward of everlasting life, how do our Christian Science friends expect to get everlasting life, when at the last moment of their trial they make failure ? For those of them who are at all logical, this must be another very perplexing problem. The Bible declares that whoever fails in one point is guilty of all the Law. (James 2 :10.) Surely he who commits "mortal error" has failed in attaining the desidera- tum of Christian Science more than in all the other failures of his life in com- bating all other things! If "mortal error" thus takes hold at the dying mo- tnent, what hope would there be for such a person as respects everlasting life, if only to overcomers will be granted that life and if none of them overcome, but all succumb to "mortal error?" The corollary of the argu- ment would be hopeless death for all mankind. In this conclusion, the Bible agrees. "The .wages of sin is death;" sin brings death, "mortal error." — Ezekiel 18:4; Genesis 2:17; Romans 6:23.
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What the Scriptures Say.
The Bible logically and beautifully points out God's compassion for our race, and His provision in Christ for our recovery out of this death condi- tion by a resurrection from the dead. The Bible logically shows that the Divine sentence of death (not torment) must be met either by humanity or by a Redeemer, and informs us that for this purpose Christ left His Heavenly glory, that He might redeem Adam and his race from sin and its death penalty. So the Apostle writes by inspiration: "As by a man (Adam) came death, by a man also (Jesus) comes the resur- rection of the dead. For as all in Adam ,die, even so all in Christ shall be made alive." (Corinthians 15:21, 22.) What is this but a declaration that the sin leading to "mortal error" is atoned for by Divine favor, to the intent that all sinners may be rescued from "mortal error" — from death ?
The Bible is so much more reason- able and beautiful that, we believe, Christian Scientists, seeing its teach- ings with clear vision, will gladly ex- change an inferior for a superior. Why should they bind themselves too closely to "Mother Eddy," who, ac- cording to her own theory, failed in the highest degree in committing "mor- tal error" — and hopelessly? Would they not rather take the older and still better teaching of God's Word, and realize that Jesus' resurrection from the dead was the Divine recognition of His perfect sacrifice and a guaran- tee that His death had accomplished the designed purpose of providing a way for the removal of "mortal error" — death — from all ?
Those who accept Jesus' death and resurrection as the satisfaction for sin provided by God, and who believe the Bible teaching that the actual resur- rection is to occur after the Second Advent of Jesus, may by faith speak of themselves as already risen with Him. But those who deny that there is any death must of necessity deny that Jesus died, and hence would be, whether intentionally or otherwise, de-
nying the Ransom-Price — the Redemp- tion Price — given for the sins of the whole world.
Cannot our Christian Science friends accept the Redeemer and His work, and by faith look forward to the Res- titution, which St. Peter declares will follow our Lord's Second Advent? (Acts 3 :19-21.) It will be for all man- kind, and will last a thousand years, dealing with "every man in his own order" — bringing them back from the tomb and from all their weaknesses, which are the blemishes of sin — back to the perfect image and likeness of God, as originally represented in Father Adam.
Healing the Sick Not a Sin.
Christian Science healers necessar- ily acknowledge that there is sickness when they speak of healing; for how could any one be healed who is not diseased ? We have already conceded that sickness, sorrow and pain would not be proper for any who are God's people; and that the prevalence of these conditions attests the fact that God is dealing with the world as crim- inals under death sentence. The ques- tion arises, Is not the Church an ex- ception to the world in this matter? We answer that those who believe in Jesus' redemptive work and who fully consecrate their lives, are counted as separate and distinct from the world. (John 17:16.) Nevertheless, to the surprise of some, it is not the Divine Plan that those received by God as sons should be released from sick- ness, imperfection or death.
Take the case of Jesus. "Holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sin- ners," the Son of God by a full out- ward attestation (Matthew 3:17; John 1:14), He was weary, He hungered, He agonized in the Garden, He died on the Cross. Nor were these errors; rather they were the very things for which He came into the world, as He Himself declared; and without Jesus' suffering as our Redeemer, Adam and his race could never be recovered, ac- cording to the Divine arrangement.
Joaquin Ailler
November 1 Oth, was Joaquin Miller Day at the Exposition
By Richard Lew Dawson
Proudly erect as is a lodge-pole pine.
Tallest and kingliest tree of wilds divine,
Topping the peaks and chanting to the sky,
Tossing in sun and wind its arms on high,
Holding through beating storms its dauntless crown^
From lofty rugged Western hights came down
The poet, singing such a strange new song
Of wild, sweet beauty that he thrilled the throng,
Who paused and listened in delight and awe,
And as they gazed at him amazed they saw
The brave, grand head of a Norse sea-king bold,
Faring to dare and conquer as of old,
He with his harp, the Norseman by his sword;
Or like the glorious Moses he adored
Bringing from God the tablets of command,
Leading his people to the Promised Land !
Down from the Hights again one day he came,
Put on immortal raiment, and in flame
His mortal ashes floated to the breeze,
To bear his fame again o'er the Eastern seas,
And out the Golden Gate into the dawn,
And now we watch his spirit sailing on
To reach the City Beautiful that smiles
Where he goes singing to the tropic isles,
And as with straining eyes we wait alone
For one more glimpse, to catch one precious tone,
His presence seems to fill the twilight air,
And all his song-creations hover there,
From the Sierras and Hawaiian bloom,
From Italy and Amazon forest gloom,
From Palestine and decks Columbus trod,
From human hearts he filled with love of God!
Craft used by a notorious pearl smuggler, finally caught by the government officials using a swift motor boat
NOV •»
OVERLAND
Founded 1868
MONTHLY
BRET HARTE
VOL. LXVI
San Francisco, November, 1915
No. 5
Pearling in the Americas
By Wm. A. Reid
OVER in Ceylon the loyal natives have long called their beautiful island the "Pearl-drop on the brow of India." A name most appropriately bestowed when we recall that in Ceylon waters lie probably the oldest pearl fishing grounds known to man. For thousands of years they have sent forth the choicest gems to add lus- ter to the crown of royal ruler or to adorn the bosom of the fairest queen of culture and wealth.
Shortly after nightfall on a pleasant evening our little steamer sailed out of the harbor of Colombo, bound for the "pearly shores," for an anchorage a few miles off the port of Arippu, near which place the pearl fishing fleet was to begin operations at the rising of the sun. In Ceylon the oyster beds are under government, supervision, and about March of each year a great pearl fishing expedition hovers over the waters of the Gulf of Mannar. The
Diving suits used by Americans on a pearl fishing concession
Diver in suit prepared to remain under water to gather pearl oysters
personnel of the fleet is made up of Malays, Arabs, Indians, Singalese, and those from various other branches of India's teeming millions.
The experience of the stranger with this unique fleet is not disappointing. The sight of thousands of divers from hundreds of little boats, plunging into the water or riding downward astride heavy weights, rising with their treas- ures, others returning to the watery depths, the Babel of strange voices, combine to paint a picturesque and lasting impression upon the mind of the visitor.
The waters around Ceylon and those of the Gulf of California have the rich- est pearl producing oyster beds in ex- istence. Situated on opposite sides of the earth, it is interesting to compare the work of the pearl hunters or divers, so far separated, yet pursuing many methods in common in the search for precious gems beneath the waters. In Ceylon upon a given signal the diving begins; the boats are small and hold comfortably 8 or 12 persons. The men wear few clothes, and each man takes
a turn at diving, for all of them appear to be experts. A rope with weight at- tached is thrown over the side of the boat, the diver attaches himself to the rope, and his assistant lowers him into the water. Other divers plung down- ward unassisted. Around the diver hangs a bag, within which he places the oysters as rapidly as he can pick them from the sea bottom. He may re- main under water for two minutes or even longer, according to the depth of the water and his ability to exist with- out air.
On the Mexican coast, of which La Paz is the general rendezvous, the method of pearling is much the same as in Ceylon. Many of the vessels used are larger and the modern diving suit is more in evidence. There is us- ually a large sailboat called the "mother" and probably a half dozen small ones termed "luggers." The lat- ter are manned by a crew of six or eight men, one or two of whom are divers. The small boats transfer their catches at frequent intervals to the larger vessel standing by, where the
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Opening large pearl oyster shells
shells are opened and carefully exam- ined for pearls.
What is a pearl? Before consider- ing other pearl fishing grounds, espe- cially those of the Americas, it may be of interest to know just how the pearl is produced; that is, so far as the un- scientific reader is concerned. One of the shortest and most striking defini- tions is that suggested by a French sci- entist, who says "a pearl is the brilliant sarcophagus of a worm." Others go more into detail and declare that the growth of the pearl is often associated with a possible degree of annoyance or pain. The tiny deposit that finds itself within the shell of a mollusk or oyster may be introduced accidentally or pur- posely, as we shall see later. The for- eign substance within the shell is be- lieved to irritate the oyster and he be- gins to cover it with a series of thin layers of calcium carbonate. Little by little these peculiar layers are formed, and in a few years a beautiful pearl
may be the result, or the formation may prove absolutely worthless.
Pearl-forming mollusks are widely distributed over the world, and they may be univalves or bivalves; in the former shape we sometimes find them in conchs and in the latter classifica- tion in clams and oysters. The subject in various ramifications has proved in- teresting and fascinating to investiga- tors; but this story is only a general talk about the pearl, and the scientific details are left to those who make a serious study of the nature of this fam- ous and much prized ornament.
Salt water pearl fishing in the Amer- icas has been pursued from our earliest history, and while these pearling waters may not be as ancient as the fisheries of Ceylon or those of the Persian Gulf, Columbus and those who followed in his wake often found un- civilized natives wearing pearls of great value. Indeed, so many pearls were found off the Venezuelan coast
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A station on the pearl grounds
that early explorers gave the name of "El Gulfo de las Perlas" to certain waters where the pearls appeared to be plentiful.
To-day the pearl fisheries of Marga- rita Island, off the Venezuelan coast, become active each autumn, when hun- dreds of small boats present a scene not unlike that of the pearl season of California or Ceylon. The Venezuelan waters, however, have been so thor- oughly worked and the divers so skilled that the government found it necessary to take precautions to pre- vent the complete extermination of the beds. Accordingly, few divers were licensed to work last season, but sev- eral hundred men in boats were per- mitted to use rakes; the latter method is not so thorough as the hands of the expert diver, and the smaller oyster is left behind to propagate. Cubagua, Porlamar, Maracapana, Coro, etc., are other Venezuelan sections of more or less note.
Many of the expert divers of Venez- uela have engaged themselves to an Ecuadorian company which is develop-
ing pearl fishing along the coast of that country. Near the little port of Manta the results have proved quite satisfac- tory, and during a recent year about $20,000 worth of pearls were shipped to European markets.
About the shores of numerous is- lands in the Bay of Panama there are pearl fisheries. One of these islands, to which the name of Pearl has been given, has long been supplying pearls of greater or less value. The work about this and other islands of Panama Bay is carried on like that of Lower California. One of the great difficul- ties encountered is the heavy tides of this section of the Pacific, which pre- vent steady work. A valuable pearl find in Panama waters was that made by a boy who accidentally picked up an oyster a few hundred feet from the shore, in which he discovered a pearl that brought locally $3,000. Later the same pearl was sold in Paris for $12 - 000.
There are various other sections of the oceans that supply fine pearls, such as the shore of Queensland Australia,
t
Oysters drying out in a government storage bin
the Red Sea, New Guinea waters, about the island of Madagascar, and elsewhere. Generally speaking, an or- dinary fishing boat party expects to se- cure several tons of shells a day, and possibly one shell in a thousand con- tains a pearl. The Mexican waters in which fishing is done are from 30 to 50 feet deep, and the fleet is active four to six months in the year, begin- ning operations in the autumn. A pearl- ing expedition as equipped for the Mexican waters often costs $10,000 to $15,000 to outfit, and possibly at the end of the season the catch may not be worth half the amount expended. But if no mishap occurs to any of the little vessels the supply of mother-of-pearl shells obtained should be of a sufficient value to repay the general outfitting expenses.
One of the allied industries of pearl 'fishing is that of obtaining valuable shells, which we know as mother-of- pearl. The latter are found generally along with the pearl fisheries; and of- ten when no pearls exist within the oy- ster the shells themselves may be of considerable value.
Mother-of-pearl is defined as the "in- ternal nacreous lining of the molluscan shell." This shell, as is well known, is seen in general use in our homes, where it is highly prized for toilet ar- ticles, for handles to knives, for but- tons and countless other services where a high polish and lasting qualities are desired. The monks and other inhabi- tants of Bethlehem are said to be among the world's most skilled work- ers in mother-of-pearl shells ; the beau- tiful ornaments that come from that
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Native Cingalese experts boring pearls for stringing
ancient city are highly valued in lead- ing cities of Europe and America.
Pearls in the Americas, as in other countries, should now be within the reach of those of modest means. To- day in world markets of London, Bom- bay, Paris or La Paz the pearl is sell- ing for about half its ordinary value. The pearls of American fisheries have long found the best market in Euro- pean countries, and dealers have brought them back to American shops, from which sales have always been ex- tensive. The English company that for a number of years held the pearling concession off the Mexican coast shipped its products to London; but since that concession was canceled a few years ago the pearls have come directly to markets in the United States. At present the market is open and American buyers can doubtless find a large and varied assortment at La Paz, Mexico, from which have come in the past many beautiful blue, black, green and pink pearls of great value. These pearls have a variety of shapes and colors, such as flat on one side, ba- roque or of irregular shape, pear shaped, round, etc.
It is said that pearls from waters of the Americas are to be seen in the crowns of most European rulers. One of the most valuable pearls ever ob- tained in Mexican fisheries was sent to Paris and there sold to the Emperor of Austria for $10,000. On another oc- casion the government of Spain pre- sented to Napoleon III a black Mexi- can pearl valued at $25,000. The com- bination tints of black, blue and green are quite rare, and the Mexican and Panama pearls often combine these colorings, and apparently have reached pearl perfection. Many valu- able pearls are secured by ignorant div- ers who, not knowing the real value, part with their finds for a mere pit- tance; often beautiful gems are sold for $10 or $20, only to be resold in the markets of the world for $10,000 or $20,000.
The Venezuelan fisheries produce annually more than half a million dol- lars' worth of pearls. Many of the world's most beautiful gems have come from that country, and it is said that in 1579 King Philip of Spain obtained from near Margarita Island a pearl weighing 250 carats, which was vari-
Chinese pearl buyer in his office on a junk
376
OVERLAND MONTHLY
ously estimated to be worth from $40,- 000 to $100,000. The most perfect pearl in the world is said to be "La Pellegrina," a rare gem that is pre- served in the Zosima Museum in Mos- cow; it weighs 28 carats, is globular in form, and originally came from Indian waters. The world's largest pearl is in the Hope Collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. It weighs 3 ounces and has a circumference of 4l/2 inches.
One of the world's leading authori- ties on pearls is Dr. George F. Kunz. According to a recent writer, the for- mer says that a pearl of the finest grade should have "a perfect skin, fine orient or delicate texture, be free from specks or flaws, and be of translucent white color, with a subdued iridescent sheen. It should be perfectly spheri- cal, or if not, of a symmetrical shape. White or pink pearls are the finest, ow- ing to their delicate sheen."
In China and Japan the mention of the pearl occurs in the history of those countries as early as 1000 B. C. Pearl- ing industries in both nations have passed down through the ages, and even to-day it gives employment to many workers, skilled and unskilled. Visitors to Japan will be especially in- terested in Mikimoto's pearl farms at Argo Bay; they are marvels of scien- tific accomplishment in the propagation of pearls. The methods pursued are more or less as follows: The young oysters are brought from the water, a serum is injected into the shell; this substance sets up irritation within, and the oyster, it seem, then begins to coat the offensive foreign matter with layer after layer of calcadeous deposits. A few years pass, and the same oyster is fished from the waters and his pearl- making work examined. Possibly a beautiful pearl may have been formed.
Many so-called pearls seen to-day are but imitations of the genuine arti- cle; and some of them are so cleverly constructed that a trained eye is re- quired to see the deception. This ar- tificial substance is made by injecting a chemical composition into small, thin
glass spheres; the substance adheres to the glass walls, and the minute cen- tral cavity is filled with a white plas- ter; the glass covering is then removed, the article skillfully polished, and the spurious pearl sent to market to be im- posed upon the innocent purchaser.
River or fresh water pearls are found quite generally in temperate climes of the Northern Hemisphere, especially in the English Isles, Saxony, Bavaria, Bohemia, Canada, and in many States of the Union. In several of the rivers of Ohio, in those of Wisconsin, Illinois, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Texas, Michigan and other States, mus- sels have been found from time to time that contained good pearls.
According to a monograph of the United States Bureau of Fisheries, there are more than 500 species of fresh water mussels in North America, and a considerable number of these yield pearls of value. The general public, however, seems disinclined to purchase these domestic pearls, and unscrupulous dealers frequently offer them as "oriental pearls;" it is said this designation is responsible for an increased number of sales of the do- mestic article. Some of the jewelers of New York and Milwaukee have made the United States fresh water pearl better known, and the latter are gradually becoming more popular with the masses.
The business of fishing for pearls may be described as precarious. The degree of uncertainty that attaches to many enterprises is ever present in the search for pearls ; yet it has certain at- tractions that lure thousands of fol- lowers from more stable occupations. On the occasion of the opening of the pearling season in Ceylon, mentioned in the beginning of this story, the mot- ley throng encamped along the shore and aboard the boats was variously es- timated to number from 20,000 to 30,- 000. In Panama, Costa Rica, Venez- uela, and Colombia waters the fisher- men are not so numerous, but on many occasions pearls of great value have been secured.
o
FATE
By Bret Harte
This being the Panama-Pacific Exposition year, in which everything of merit in California is being reviewed before the world, the management of Overland Monthly has decided to re- publish in its pages the stories and poems that made the maga- zine famous through the genius of Bret Harte. He was its first editor, and it was his keen discernment and originality which gave the contents of the magazine that touch of the spirit of the West, and especially of California, which made it distinctive and enkindled the enthusiasm of discerning readers the world around. These early contributions of his cover several years; they will be published monthly in the order in which they ap- peared, beginning with the first issue of Overland Monthly, July, 1868.
"The sky is clouded, the rocks are bare, The spray of the tempest is white in air; The winds are out with the waves at play, And I shall not tempt the sea to-day.
"The trail is narrow, the wood is dim, The panther clings to the arching limb ; And the lion's whelps are abroad at play, And I shall not join in the chase to-day."
But the ship sailed safely over the sea, And the hunters came from the chase in glee ; And the town that was builded upon a rock Was swallowed up in the earthquake shock.
* * *
n v
William Jennings Bryan delivering the Panama-Pad fie Exposition Indepen- dence Day Address, 1915
Features of the Panama-Pacific
Exposition
By Edward H. Hurlbut
IT IS DIFFICULT to select any in- dividual thing and declare it to be the signal feature of the present Exposition. As an instance, the Diesel engine would be considered by many as marking possibly the most im- portant advance in the field of power development since the Babcock-Cor- liss combination of the Philadelphia centennial in 1876. The Diesel engine
is undoubtedly one of the big features of this exposition as marking a sen- sational advance in the increase of power efficiency in proportion to fuel.
But in the Liberal Arts Palace, for instance, is the daily demonstration of the New York to San Francisco tele- phone. Tens of thousands of people have heard the New York newspapers read to them over this telephone, and
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have thrilled to listen to the human voice bridge the long stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
These are both epochal advances in the respective fields of power and word transmission. Equally important are the advances featured in wireless tele- graphy and telephony while, in a more unfamiliar field, but one better known to the average readers since the war, is the demonstration of the processes by which nitrates are developed from the air.
In the decade that has passed since the St. Louis Exposition progress in the electrical field has touched a point where it now is possible to develop three times as much light from the same amount of current as would have been developed a decade ago.
The electric engine, placed in the Palace of Transportation, and all of the ramifications of the automobile in- dustry, furnish sharp and visual dem- onstrations of the advance in trans-
portation. The contrast is still more sharply defined in this building, where, beside the electric engine is the behe- moth mallet compound steam engine, and in the Wells-Fargo exhibit, the old Concord coach that blazed the trail that the transcontinental railroads since have followed.
There are improvements in the elec- trical world too numerous to catalogue, but of the more important are the im- provements shown in dynamos. In ag- riculture, sanitation and public health, education — the Montessori system of specialized individual instruction is given large attention — in factory work and the economic conditions surround- ing labor, in horticulture, live stock, liberal arts and fine arts there are countless attractions evidencing the giant strides taken in the last decade in all fields of human endeavor.
It is probable that the two things for which the Exposition will be known are the Diesel engine and the long-
Ex-President Roosevelt addressing seventy thousand people in the Court of the Universe, Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco, July 21, 1915
Part of the Court of the Universe) looking toward the Column of Progress in the distance and fronting the Marina
distance telephone, the one signalizing a mighty step forward in reducing the cost of power production, the other in bringing the Atlantic and the Pacific, as it were, face to face in daily conver- sation. What wireless telephone will do cannot be definitely said at this time. At least it has not been demon- strated with the practical results that the wired telephone has.
An exposition with forty-seven miles of exhibit aisles, and dozens of State and national structures housing dis- plays, cannot be disintegrated in a few columns of type. To the work of de- scribing this exposition, already sev- eral millions of columns of printed matter has been spread before the readers of the world. And yet, the daily remark of tens of thousands of visitors who have read newspaper and magazine accounts, perused guide books and heard personal descriptions, is that the actual fact is a magnificent and a monumental revelation of things but half anticipated.
It was the garb in which the Expo- sition was dressed that gave the theme to the earlier discussions rather than what now is the important thing, the educational factor. That San Fran- cisco was to have an exposition in color was generously heralded. Hith- erto, expositions had been handled in one color. But so far have the sci- ence and the art of illumination been carried that results were possible here that hitherto could have existed only as visions in a dreamer's mind. Those who witnessed the earlier demonstra- tions of the lighting effects were moved to extravagance in endeavoring to interpret in type the enchanting pic- ture.
Combined with the lighting effects was the color scheme, without which the full glory of the tonal diapason would not have been possible. Here again, those who attempted to describe this Aladdin's city were subjected at least to the suspicion of an enthusiasm either inspired by a patriotism for a
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native city or by the commercial im- petus of the paid press agent.
Contributing to the external features of the vast exposition area was — and is, for the exposition is at the height of its success and remains open until December 4th — the architectural treat- ment, and, as is requisite in any grand outdoor scheme of embellishment, the landscape effects. Corollary to these major phases of color, light, architec- ture and landscape, comes the detail of landscape effect, the sculptures and mural decorations. It has been called many things : the miracle city, a dream city by the Hellespont, the jewel city, the fabled city of our childhood's im- aginings, a chalice of price by the Western sea. But it is an opal city, shimmering by day, glowing by night, iridescent always, with ever unex- plored beauties to reward the gazer.
I have seen it in the first purplings of the rising sun on the fairest of Cali- fornia's summer mornings, and I have
seen it washed by the spring rains in the trade winds, a naiad arising from the crested waters of the storm lashed bay, a thing of clean beauty with wind blown tresses. I have seen it looming, vague, reposeful, in subdued color and suggested strength, through the fogs that swing across the Golden Gate. I have seen it in the full glory of a soft moon night when nature indeed felt that man had looked in the face of Diety and stolen something of the mighty and unfathomable secret of creation. I have seen it in blazing sun- light when two hundred thousand peo- ple massed into the great south gar- dens, a sight to stun and awe, and I have seen it after the last lone visitor had passed out the turnstiles, and the majestic entity brooded in communion with nature.
It is a part of San Francisco, a por- tion of the blood and the bone of the breed of the pioneers, the concrete embodiment of the spirit of a people
Blackfeet Indians getting their first view of the Pacific Ocean. The famous Cliff House, overlooking the Golden Gate, in the distance
Indians of the 101 Camp putting their savings in a bank on the grounds
who know no discouragement, imbued with the elan of a perpetual youth that seeks to do, and does, homer ic deeds.
San Francisco's pride in this Expo- sition is a natural pride when it is re- called that it was only nine years ago that 436 square blocks of the heart and lungs of this city were burned — and promptly rebuilt. This is the second epic accomplishment of the resilient city by the Golden Gate, and that is why, when visitors come to San Fran- cisco, when they see the actuality, they marvel.
It is in this perfect setting that the world has brought its goods to mart, in a combination of beauty and utilitari- anism never equaled in world's exposi- tions.
And to get down to concrete facts, it is this combination that enabled President Moore of the Exposition, on September 3d to officiate at the for- mal burning of the last bond of in-
debtedness of the Exposition company. The salvage after the close of the Ex- position saved St. Louis. Chicago had her slate cleared only a few weeks be- fore the closing time, but San Fran- cisco, fighting apparently insurmount- able odds after the declaration of war in Europe, wipes clear her slate three months before the close of the Expo- sition gates. Even before the war definitely stopped much foreign par- ticipation and withheld tens of thou- sands of visitors, there were those who openly declared that San Francisco was too isolated geographically from the centers of population to hope to make successful a $100,000,000 ven- ture.
And yet the statement stands uncon- troverted that there are a greater num- ber of foreign nations participating than participated at any previous ex- position, and this in spite of the war. To-day, nine months after the opening of the Exposition, 15,000,000 visitors,
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from the counties of California, the States of the United States, the nations of the globe, have gone through the turnstiles.
It is not only in the commercial ex- hibits by thousands of competitive manufacturers, from patent milkers to aeroplanes, from granite slabs to $100,- 000 pearl fans, from crude oil to rare French perfumes, from range finders to typewriters, from acousticons, that magnify the voice a thousand fold, to the exquisite porcelains of Copenha- gen, from the silks of China, the sat- suma of Japan, the arts and crafts of France, to the pyramids of golden yellow corn of Iowa, the monster 15,- 000 pound cheese of New York, the molasses of Louisiana, the hides of Brazil and the refrigerated beef of Australia. It is the panoramic of a decade; the decade that marks a greater stride forth in the things that go to contribute to human welfare than any of the other nine decades of the last one hundred years. It is the ka-
leidoscope of the crowning decade of a century that has done more for so- cial progress than have all the cen- turies of the Christian era.
Imagine, after the first flush of aes- thetic impulse has lessened when view- ing the vast completion of light, color architecture, landscape and sculpture, penetrating into the exhibit palaces where the things of utility and pleas- ure are exhibited. Take any palace at random. But if, after the pleasuring outside impressions, you prefer to take your practical pabulum by a softened gradation, enter the Palace of Food Products. If you have not already an appetite, this will titillate your palate for the many cafes of the grounds. The aroma of savory cooking takes you to the Sperry Flour Company's $100,000 exhibit, where cooks of many nations prepare the dishes for which each nation is noted. Here are the famous Indian dishes, Paukauri and Khati, enchiladas, tortillas and ta- males; Japanese sen pie or tea cakes,
Tourists lunching in the South Gardens, Horticultural Palace in the distance
A scene ort the Zone
Russian perosky and verokeke, South- ern corn bread, corn pone and corn cake ; Hebrew matzos and noodles, the han far cake, olive cake and yuksum of China; the dainties of all nations are here.
A flour mill in operation takes the wheat and grinds the flour that goes into these edibles prepared by re- nowned chefs.
Almost adjacent, and furnishing a
sharp contrast to the finished products of the kitchen range, is the fisheries exhibit of the State of Washington. A hatchery in active operation shows the salmon from spawn through all stages. Dozens of tanks contain living fish of every species, native to the Washington waters. There are steel- head trout, green tench, sturgeon, dog fish — just by way of showing the va- riety— bass, carp, perch, rock fish,
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lampreys, and all varieties of shell fish; clams, craw fish, shrimps, oys- ters and crabs.
Close by this raw food exhibit is the exhibit of a nationally noted beer company, and next is the booth of a famous chef, Lenher, the booth being devoted to a showing of menus that Lenher has created, many of them for banquets graced by the crowned heads of Europe. There is a refrigerator plant, a vast showing of California's native wines, a huge pot in which a mighty pother of mush is always boil- ing, a Japanese tea garden, a Chinese cafe, mango and guanabana preserves from Cuba, chocolates, confections, cordials, bay rum. Everything is here that goes into the kitchen or the din- ing room for the family table, whether it be the table of peasant or prince.
It is the same with all of the palaces, and there are eleven major exhibit pal- aces, from Fine Arts, where the crea- tions of palette, chisel or the engra- ver's point thrill the imagination, to the mighty turbines, shafts and wheels of the Palace of Machinery, the larg- est frame building under one roof in the world to-day.
Drop into any of the other palaces,
say the Varied Industries Palace, where the lover of arts and crafts, of things dainty and rare for the person or the house will find the more refined and artistic products of manufacture. For instance, there are here silks of exquisite pattern and finest workman- ship, porcelains of price, ceramics, em- broideries, needlework, tapestries, clocks, watches, stationery; and along with these go the commoner things of the household: sewing machines, gas and electrical appliances, steam radia- tors, furniture, carpets, carpet sweep- ers. Most of the States of the United States are represented, Indiana show- ing that she can do something besides produce authors, for this State has a collective display of over one hundred individual exhibitors of arts and crafts. Denmark, Spain, Uruguay, the Balkan States, Germany, Austria, China and Switzerland are particularly well rep- resented.
These are but two of the eleven ex- hibit palaces. All of the others, man- ufacturers, agriculture, mines, liberal arts, horticulture, fine arts — particu- larly notable is the collection of can- vases, etchings, sculptures and bronzes in this palace — education, machinery
A Fadgeol Trackless Train on its way over the asphalt pavement of the
Exposition grounds
FEATURES OF THE PANAMA-PACIFIC EXPOSITION 387
and transportation offer opportunities equally rich and varied for the inquisi- tive, the curious or the professionally interested.
When the sightseeing is done, there is the amusement zone, where idle dol- lars help to while away idle hours, and restaurants where Parisian service may be secured at any price, or menus of- fered where the most diligent visitor, nursing a thin pocket book, may find full repletion at modest prices.
With the great South gardens glo- rious in acre after acre of old rose be- gonias, with the alternate sunshine and refreshing fogs giving to temporary palaces the age of Italian travertine, with hosts and guests in a thorough harmony of appreciation, the Panama- Pacific International Exposition stands as a prophecy not only that San Fran- cisco would stage the greatest exposi- tion of history in beauty and in ser- vice, but that San Francisco would live up to the reputation she has earned since the splendid days of the Argo- nauts for hospitality and good cheer.
THE NEW FADGEOL
TRACKLESS TRAIN
The most original, ingenious and popular transportation problem solved at the Exposition is credited by ex- perts to the Fadgeol Trackless trains, something entirely new and original in passenger service. R. B. Fadgeol, an Oakland automobile man, originated the idea after nine months of experi-
menting to solve the problem of safely transporting the increasing crowds of pedestrians eager to view the pano- ramic wonders of the big Fair as expe- ditiously and comfortably as possible.
A company was organized and suit- ably capitalized with E. P. Brinegar as president, which quickly met with extraordinary success both in trans- porting sightseers along the extended and spacious avenues of the Exposi- tion, and also through ready sales of these convenient, handy and economi- cal little trains to interior towns in the big valleys of the State, where the streets and roads are in normal level conditions. Street traffic passenger experts declare that these cleverly adaptable little trackless trains will solve the present perplexing transpor- tation problems of the smaller towns of the country that cannot yet afford electric passenger cars or auto service Previous to the appearance of these little trackless trains, some nine months ago, the cheapest common street carrier along this line was the irrepressible jitney, but the Fadgeol trains readily and easily shouldered the jitney out of the lead the moment economy of service, safety and the like were compared.
The motor used in the Fadgeol trac- tor is the same as that used in the jit- ney, but the Fadgeol train handles three trailers, carrying 64 passengers, or as many passengers as 16 jitneys would carry, and with the same ex- pense for tires, gasolene and one
Caterpillar train, Exposition grounds, San Francisco
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chauffeur. The Fadgeol train shoots ahead of the jitney again when the saving of seat space and the safety and convenience given passengers is compared. As against electric cars and other forms of passenger service carried on the regulation street car rails, it is a pioneer of its kind in dem- onstrating the unneedfulness of tear- ing up the streets for rail traffic pur- poses. Gasoline and the new kinds of motor cars have shifted transporta- tion ideas in street traffic, and this lit- tle Fadgeol Trackless Train is pioneer- ing the way. Though its cars are con- nected in trailer shape, they are con- trived by expert engineers to turn a corner as readily and easily as does a 'train on a steel track.
The company has been running twenty trains daily on the avenues of the Panama-Pacific Exposition for the past nine months, each train consist- ing of a tractor and three trailers, seat-
ing 1,200 passengers. The schedules are worked out and operated by means of a chart similar to that employed by street railway companies, the fare from terminal to terminal being ten cents.
The cars are built close to the ground with a view to securing the maximum of safety and convenience. This stepless construction of seats re- duces loading and unloading delays to a minimum, and also reduces the risk of accidents to passengers. Safeguards have been introduced wherever the shadow of a possibility might occur. The simplicity of construction, elimi- nation of passengers' risks, conven- ience and ease of collecting fares, economy of expense, places the service of these Fadgeol trains easily in the lead of town and sections of big city 'passenger transportation where the streets and roadways provide thor- oughfares for ordinary vehicle traffic.
Sidelights in a Cafeteria
By Sarah H. Kelly
OF COURSE," I said, as Zella dropped wearily on my front steps, "of course it's all right to teach in summer school, as a prelude to your life work" — here she made a wry face — "but you can't deny that we had more fun working at the 'caf .' and didn't get any tireder, either."
"Fun, to say the least! Do you re- member the Man-who-sang-over-the- counter?"
"The one who always asked for 'shortberry strawcake' and 'pie all over mud?' Yes."
"And curly-haired Billy?"
"He went back to the war and was killed."
"What a shame — he was so funny. And the man who always wanted a chunk of ice in his milk?"
"And the woman who wanted her milk in a bottle, and then decided on hot milk, but insisted that 'in the city they always give it to me in bottles !' '
"Hot milk? Oh, no, not hot milk, but in the city "
"Ah, them was happy days. You haven't seen the new place yet, have you. It's simply wonderful. 'Utterly different,' " I explained, glancing at an advertisement in her open magazine. "Dainty — exquisite — are the most suit- able adjectives I can think of. All old blue and ivory, with mahogany finishings and tables and chairs."
"Is it bigger than the old place?"
"Oh, yes, and has a big mezzanine, besides. The woodwork and all is fin- ished in ivory, and the walls have panelings and a border of the old blue, and the indirect lighting lights have a delicate tracing of blue, and blue vel- vet carpets and a darling little office, and — oh, let's go down for lunch some day and see it."
"But how about Marion?"
"Oh, I've taken her before. Just put her to sleep in one of the big wicker chairs in the rest room, and she's all right. And the kitchen girl! It's the most efficient kitchen imaginable — the kind you see in dreams or in canned goods advertisements. It's downstairs — simply immense — food, linen, dishes go up and down in dumb waiters. Everything moves along in succession — the storeroom, the refrigerators, the ranges, cook tables and sinks and ma- chinery, straight on to the dishwashing machine. Nice big locker and dress- ing rooms, too!"
"I imagine it'll make a marked change in the cafeteria idea. Instead of just a shiny, sanitary, quick-lunch, it'll be a quiet, luxurious place where you doll up in your best clothes to go for dinner."
"And it's so much lovelier than the ornate and gilded cafes and restau- rants."
"Let's make a date for lunch some day the first of the week."
It's funny what a sense of proprie- torship in the business an employee will get. I remembered "our last sum- mer in the caf." Just before college closed, Zella and I started out to hunt for a vacation job. Of course we went to the cafeteria first, and lo! the checker was about to be married, and also, somehow, the place of dessert as- sistant was vacant. So there we were.
The other years we had worked at "the little place" — an eighteen table affair that the Colonial had taken over because the men that started it thought that a cafe was made into a cafeteria merely by dismissing the waiters and installing steam tables and trays — and somehow there seemed to be something 3
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wrong about it. We had the same idea too, until we found out. It's the wo- man influence that makes the cafe- teria. The managers should be real housewives — farmer's wives make good ones, and I know a number of emancipated schoolmarms — who, how- ever, did much housework between times — who are pre-eminently success- ful. Then the cooks are all women who have learned their accomplish- ment in their own kitchens. That's what gives people the "cafeteria habit" — it tastes just like home.
How well I remember those noon rush hours — the long line, ever chang- ing, but never lessening, each one with tray in hand quickly selecting his food — from the shop girl's thirteen cent salad, cake and biscuit, to the big busi- ness man's sixty-nine cent dinner. I learned to be marvelously quick at fig- ures those days.
I had been cashier the first two years and had held myself, as is the manner of cashiers, superior to "help," mana- gers and patrons. Now, in the "big place" and at the other end of the room I began to really be interested, and wished I hadn't wasted so much good time before. I was realizing the hu- man side of the cafeteria now. I had learned nothing but plain facts before, though they were rather interesting, too.
In 1905 the first one had been opened in Los Angeles, in an enor- mous basement room on South Hill street, by three women, only one of whom had the most meagre knowledge of the business. It was the crudest af- fair imaginable, with paper napkins, the dishes washed by hand in ordinary porcelain sinks, and the diners carry- ing back their own trays. They really didn't have to wash the dishes, too, though awestruck strangers were al- ways so warned. It was simple and crude, but it took. Within three months they had to entirely remodel the place and others had sprung up all over the city, at the beaches, everywhere. And now, why, that's the only way you can eat in Los Angeles. If you ask a direction in that city, you're told, for
instance, that it's "six cafeterias north and eight east."
In 1909 they reached Oakland — the Colonial, that I was talking about at first — and, in 1910, the Victoria opened across the bay in San Francisco. Be- fore this, quite a few little cafeterias had sprung up and died down sporadi- cally. Shortly after the Victoria, the B. E. M. was started by the same wo- men who had begun the whole thing in the southern city. There was bitter rivalry between the two, until so many other big cafeterias came in that jeal- ousy was absurd.
We read the "Philistine" and smile over the picture presented of Elbert Hubbard during his San Francisco visit leading the boycotter's burro up and down the street before the Victoria while the picket went inside for his dinner. However, these things were not actually interesting to us girls, ex- cept as they in some way related to "our place."
How excited I'd be when my day's checks totaled up 500 to the previous day's 490! And how excited the present checker would be to have only 500 ! What a contrast in every way is that big, barnlike room with its bare floor, plain wooden rail, and simple fit- tings, to the beautiful new place ! There were five on the payroll, and the first day's checks totaled 100, a number of them deadheads.
Of course, gradually the first place was improved and fixed up, but it can never be anything except big, clean and simple, which has been, up to now, the essential outward semblance of the cafeteria.
I never knew a place where the "help" were so contented. It's the per- sonality of the manager that does it. It pervades the whole establishment, from the office to the pot-washer's cor- ner. It makes the "cafeteria habit," and it breeds that chummy spirit of proprietorship among the employees.
There was always lots of fun in- dulged in between-whiles behind the counter. I remember one broiling hot holiday, when we only had a few peo- ple for lunch (I'll admit that our cus-
TANTALUS. 391
ternary phraseology was rather canni- known it anywhere else, and as a re- balistic in tone) that Zella and I took suit I'm a real, ranting, Saturday-night turns sitting on the ice-cream cabinet street corner soap box Socialist, with to keep cool. We characterized all the a most tender feeling for all capital- regular patrons by some descriptive ists!
name — Apollo Belvedere (he was a It's kept on spreading all over the
bookkeeper in a laundry), Annie State, this cafeteria habit, north to
Rooney, "Clarence," the nice little man Portland and Seattle, too, and back to
with the pretty wife, and there was its original sources, lunch rooms for
some amusing story or adventure to go girls, Y. W. C. A.'s, and the like.
with each one. We were all friends "For them as likes it," there's cer-
and brothers together, patrons, mana- tainly no nicer way to eat — and most
gers, employees — there must be some- of us like it.
thing in the cafeteria atmosphere to Here's to the cafeteria — long may
make that feeling, for I have never she wave!
TANTALUS
Take thou a path, a green walled way, At dawntide's gold or even's gray, Whence gaze upon the summer sea — Mad or laughing joyously — From Tantalus!
Climb far beyond the lifted trend, To thrill in rapture at the end : Far valleys at your tired feet, Dim sky and wave in nuptials meet, From Tantalus!
On Beauty's mountain sit and rest; Heart-glad, eye-seeking, vision-blest! Dream pictures of fair land and sea Made into songs of mystery On Tantalus !
The yearning sail, the answering foam, Yon tumbling waters from mountain home, Soft-singing clouds from out the blue — Hawaii's minstrelsy for you From Tantalus!
So peaceful then ! So hushed, so high ; So harbored round by leaf and sky, By whisper of the ocean breeze, By fragrant prayer-songs of the trees On Tantalus!
Ah ! visions of the soulful clime, Come back, come back from yonder time ! Return in luring strength to me And bear me far away with thee To Tantalus!
WILLIAM FRANCIS MANNIX.
An Ante on Telegraph Mill
By Lannie Haynes Martin
TO WHOM the gods decree sepa- ration they first send the barb of doubt. She doubted if he were as pleased with their bourgeous Sunday afternoon diversion as he was pretending. He, man-like, looking to the future, doubted whether she would be as radiant over a two-bit, sans- Zinfandel dinner as she had been the night before with champagne and a repast that began with glorified arti- chokes and ended in ambrosial berries with a whipped-cream halo.
They had planned it all with equal abandon and a carefully estimated sub- sequent expense account; a thing not often done simultaneously. Between them there had always been enough for seventy-five cent table d'hote din- ners, a movie and ice cream after- wards. There had always been enough for carfares to the park, where they sat and talked silly twaddle about the ducks, or walked decorously along the driveways, their speech punctuated by automobile honks or punctured by vacuous silences.
There had always been conversa- tion enough of its kind, too much, per- haps, over their Zinfandel washed down dinners, where the oft repeated tinkle of surfaces echoed the mechani- cal music of the place. Just so often as they heard "Tipperary," and with as many variations had she told him what corking good stuff he was going to write — what wonderful things he was going to do — when he once got a shot at the feature end of the paper. Just so often as the sextette from "Lucia" had been jangled forth from discordant keys had he told her what wonderful luck she was having in put- ting over fiction stories with the maga- zines. And all the time he knew that
it was bigger things he wanted, things he scarce dared confess to himself; and all the while she knew that he knew the stories she wrote were medi- ocre and purposeless, reeking with conscious effort, containing no hint of the personality which at times she felt she possessed and at intervals he im- agined he saw.
One of the times was when they sat and ate beneath the spell of the candle- stick— the magic Manger candlestick with a thousand and one Arabian night legends spilled in hieroglyph down its sides; waxen stalactites that had dripped away the love and laughter of others like themselves, perchance, seeking life but shrinking from her face. There, as the red wine flowed and the crimson candle melted, a neb- ulous, fused desire came into her breast like the drops of the melting wax. There, flickering like the flame in him, came a flash glimpse of pur- pose. But their speech was as inar- ticulate as the sound of the goirglm^ pigeons strutting on the floor, and all in an instant the illusion of the place had vanished, for the waiter said: "Would the lady like a beer?"
That their collaborated plan for the epicurean feast was a tacit confession of mutual boredom neither suspected. It was just to do something different and then see what happened. To her, when they were planning to spend their combined remnants of a week's sala- ries on a Saturday night dinner, it had seemed that one of the most delightful sensations resulting therefrom would be to walk around Sunday afternoon with only a half dollar between them, pretending to rhapsodize over the opa- lescent wings of Fashion fluttering in the shop windows, when in reality they
AN ANTE ON TELEGRAPH HILL
393
would be searching for a hungry man's tantalizer in the shape of a sign that would say, in substance, the largest grub for the least money!
But now, having looked at all the thirty-five dollar hats in the Geary street windows and the forty dollar black and white checks for the jeu- nesse doree on various corners, the in- cipient doubt began to fester in her mind. If they looked at pale Geor- gette crepe blouses and a hallelujah chorus of hosiery in the little shops, she imagined he was bored by the pre- ponderance of feminine finery. If they stopped for a moment to gaze at Palm Beach ties and plaited bosom shirts, or ran on to a moderately priced Tuxedo, she wondered if he regretted the squan- dered week's salary. If they strolled aimlessly along, jostled by the aimless afternoon crowd, she wondered what kind of reaction she was going to have wHen he left her after the dinner and went to the opera with the other wo- man. It was always the thought of the other woman that made her doubt- ful of the present and distrustful of the future.
And all the while he swore savagely under his breath at the two two-bit pieces jingling derisively at each other in his pocket, and saw neither hats nor haberdashery, but searched eagerly for a friendly face in which he might discern the latent possibility of a five dollar loan. No such state of mind, however, was betrayed by his coun- tenance, and no such financial condi- tion was ever more skillfully disguised by a high crowned straw hat, shell- rimmed glasses, black and white striped shirt and tie, and Sunday morn- ing pressed clothes that sank in at the waist line like a colonial belle's bodice. So opulent indeed was his appearance that of all the carefree, strolling throng he was most frequently singled out by the avid alms seekers — the down-and-outers.
"Please, mister, won't you ?"
they had begun, but got no further.
"Sorry I can't do anything for you," bruskly. "Sorry I can't do anything for you." He had repeated it so many
times that now she looked the other way to save him the embarrassment of knowing that she had heard. But just as she was turning away for at least the eleventh time and her attention was really fascinated by a perfect dream of a dress, a pink, full-flounced taffeta in a big Grant avenue shop, something going on behind her made her turn. He was giving a man a quarter ! Actually the thing was being done right before her eyes. And one of those quarters, which one it did not matter, belonged to her. What had possessed him?
Then she looked at the man. He was tall and young and gaunt, and his upper and nether garments, besides be- ing ill-assorted in color, were mis- mated in size. His hat was too big for him, and his lean hands hung down limp and long, too far below the frayed sleeves of a ridiculous frock coat. In his face there was something other than the real and ravenous hun- ger that strangely twitched and twisted it. And it was this indefinable some- thing that had magnetized the quarter. The moment the man received the money he was off at a run.
Neither he nor she spoke, but the even strides of their quickened pace chorused we must follow him. Out Grant avenue they went, panting with the pavement's upgrade slant, on up to the top of the hill where Grant re- sumes her maiden name and retains a little of the older atmosphere, dipping down into Chinatown where they could see the flying frock coat tails dodging in and out between slow-shuffling fig- ures, or swerving beyond the curb to pass a toddling, miniature mandarin. As the high crowned straw hat was jammed down more tightly for swifter flight a fluttering remnant of mascu- line breath gasped: "Hop-head, may- be!"
But the flying figure did not stop in Chinatown. Past Pacific, across Broad- way it now swung into a narrower, cut- on-the-bias thoroughfare where ravioli signs, snatches of song and black-eyed children filled the street. Now it was only by doubling their speed that they could keep him in sight. Then with
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new impetus they saw him spring for- ward with a sudden spurt.
A little ahead, swaying toward him with unsteady steps, fluttering like a pink, wind-torn poppy, ran a little girl. The emaciated figure of the man seemed to engulf the child as, with- out slackening his stride, he swept her into his arms with a convulsive hug and continued on to the corner, where he disappeared into an uninviting door- way. The instigators of this mad race followed more slowly, and when they reached the point where the beggar and the child had disappeared from view, a dingy, ill-lettered sign was visible, which read: "Grow fat like Flambeau," followed by the picture of an enormous, grossly fat man and the words: "Eat raviola and tagliarina." Just within the doorway stood Flam- beau himself, but his pictured repro- duction was an injustice, for Flambeau in the flesh was his own best adver- tisement.
Through the doorway and over the fleshy mountain of the proprietor's shoulder the two were discernible, the beggar and the child, seated at one of the uncovered tables and eating, eating with a ravenous disregard for their surroundings, but in a manner was a joy to their two observers, who watched for a moment with mingled emotions, pity and a seething, surging rebellion against conditions as they are, predominating. It was a real emo- tion.
"He wasn't a dope fiend," said she, finally, in a tone that attested her pre- vious convictions were confirmed.
"No. He wasn't a dope fiend," re- peated he in a tone that held no re- gret. Aimlessly, silently, they con- tinued their way, each engrossed in thought, dominated by emotions too deep for utterance. To the right was a cobble-paved roadway leading up- ward, with a steep roof-like slope. In- stinctively they turned with the half- formed, unexpressible idea that physi- cal exertion might relieve their men- tal oppression. It was the approach to Telegraph Hill.
Then up a rocky, winding path they
went, silent, tense ; he reaching back a hand at times to steady her when the footing was insecure. On top the wind swept the long, lush grass and the bay below was wind swept, too. The waves like a great green meadow seeming to pasture the shepherded ships. When they had reached the top she stretched out her arms with a wide, wild, all-embracing gesture and then sank down in a shapeless heap in the grass. "Dios!" she gasped. "I feel as though I could melt back into the elements."
He flung himself down, but did not speak. Presently she sat up. "Do you sense it?" she demanded. "The feel- ing here, the spirit of the place ? This gay, debonnair wind like the echo of a soul laughing itself out at death? What is immortality worth if debonair- ness has to die ? To what port, I won- der, did Stevenson take his." The man said nothing, and she continued: "It is wonderful, wonderful, here. Look at the sea. Can't you feel Miller's 'on and on' heroic urge upon it now?"
The man sat up and looked at her. His eyes were narrowed to mere slits and his mouth was set in brutal lines. "Why, in Heaven's name," he said, "when you've got what you have in you, why have you written such damn- able rot?"
The tragic tenseness of the moment was relieved by the woman's rippling laugh. "Say it again," she cried. "Tell it again ! Salvation's story repeat o'er and o'er," she went on half hysteri- cally. Then with sudden seriousness : "Why? Why? Because of the ful- some flattery of friends who 'minister to my mediocrity. Because of the sac- carine, soporific sedatives of platitudi- nous people who feel constrained to of- fer one painless pellets in the shape of praise. Because "
He saw she was simply bubbling words and he stopped her. "All sorts of soda pop and ginger ale bottled up in you isn't there?"
"Yes, and it's the bottling process, too, that accounts for a lot more than the other. I've never had a natural, spontaneous idea that some one, usu-
AN ANTE ON TELEGRAPH HILL
395
ally a member of my family, didn't clap a cork over. I've never had an effervescent, exuberant bubbling over of joy that some one of them didn't come along and pour dark brown seal- ing wax all over me."
"I had forgotten about that," he said.
"Forgotten?" she echoed. "How could you know anything about that?"
"It was in your voice," he said, "the first time we talked over the telephone. It was so tentative, so suggestive of re- pressed emotions. As we talk now, face to face, you have lost it, but it is that same muffled mumbling that crops out in your work. You are afraid of making your characters human beings because you're afraid of becoming one yourself." There was scorn as well as passion in his voice.
"This thing of becoming a human being," she said slowly, "is, I fancy, a case of regeneration. Can regenera- tion take place any more than genera- tion, without two polar currents ?"
Her frankness was the "open ses- ame" to his own walled up confidence. "I have never confessed it before," he said with sudden impetuousness, "but I have hoped, earnestly, that some time — some way — I shall be able to render some definite service to humanity as a whole. Does that sound foolish?" She shook her head encouragingly.
"It can be done," she said, and he continued :
"I believe that I know a way that will relieve much misery and clear up many misunderstood conditions. There are so many women like yourself, afraid of life, afraid of themselves, failing to get hold of the possibilities within themselves simply because of the need of a little specific knowledge. I gave you a hint once of my interest along scientific lines. It is the science of life, psycho-analysis, that I have been dabbling in for years, reading everything I can find — Brill, Charcot, Freud, Ellis, all of 'em — and if only I were not such a coward, if I could only forget my own present prospects, hap- piness and desires and could wrench myself away from the useless things I am doing now, I might "
"Yes?"
"I might give that definite help to humanity, I might reach the highest qualitative level of my own being, I might " He broke into a whimsi- cal laugh: "I might be able to offer more than a two-bit dinner to the wo- man " He almost said it, but he,
too, had his reservations, reticences, repressions, and changed it to: "The woman to whom I should love to give everything."
To her the translation meant the same, for the vibrations in the voice told more than words. It brought her back to present, personal problems. "You can't even do that to-night," she said, wondering how he was going to meet the situation.
"Oh, yes, I can," he replied with a firmness that indicated a well-defined pre-arranged plan. "You are to take the two-bit piece and have your din- ner."
"And you?"
"Oh, I don't need any; don't want any."
"And you think I'll do that?" she demanded.
"Of course you will/ with fatuous, masculine conviction.
"Indeed I will not," she cried, de- fiantly.
"But I say you will." The slow, de- liberate imperative of the male thrilled her, but it was not with an impulse to obey.
But how was he to know when she held out her hand and said : "Then give it to me now." Of course, he had meant it all. There was nothing else that could be done. He had never thought of anything else. But — but — why couldn't she have waited? Why demand it so imperatively. He passed her the coin without so much as touch- ing her hand. This was a strange re- sponse, he thought, to the things he had just said to her, things that were not easy for him to say.
She took the money and stood up. In her face there was a look he had never seen in a face before. So priestesses have looked when they poured libations to the gods. So gam-
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biers have appeared as they threw their souls along with their last cent into the game. And so Sappho might have looked when she flung herself over the cliff. But it was not herself that the woman flung over the cliff — it was the two-bit piece !
"Was that why?" he gasped. In an instand he understood. It was just one of the million ways a woman has of saying whither thou goest, there I will go, and in him there was all the wild, surging elemental joy the savage 'cave-man captor felt. It filled him 'with a superhuman sense of strength and a purpose which, although involv- ing complicated lines of reasoning, crystalized in an instant. In another moment he was scrambling down the sides of the cliff.
She looked after him in horror, not so much at the imminent and actual danger he was in as because of un- certainty of the motive which was prompting him. Could it be that his dominant, masculine desire to rule would send him to such lengths, or was it simply a sordid instinct to save money? Or could it be that he had sensed the passion with which she had consecrated the symbol and his senti-
ment was seeking it as a talisman ?
In the tormenting agony, she sank down in the grass and buried her face in her hands. When she looked again, a panting, disheveled, dust-covered figure was furiously scribbling on a scratch-pad leaf. Nearby stood a small, ragged boy, with an eager, ex- pectant look in his face. The flutter- ing piece of paper was held out for her to see.
"My dear Mrs. Montgomery," it read, "I am out on a big assignment to- night and cannot accept the hospitality of your box at the opera. Am awfully sorry. Would you mind writing that letter of introduction to the doctor in Vienna. I'm going to leave to-mor- row. Please send a reply by the boy so that I may know that you get this."
The man looked at the boy and said : "When you bring back an answer — " He did not finish the sentence, but held up the two-bit piece.
"Was that why?" she gasped. Then he took another leaf from the pad and wrote :
"For the exorcism of the devil Doubt. — Take two two-bit pieces, give one away to a beggar and throw the other over the edge of Telegraph Hill."
GOD'S LIG HTS
God's Sun hunts out the brooklet clear and bright To make the water gleam within its dell And shine the beauty that it cannot tell ; And so God's Moon looks lovingly by night Till finding flowers that are pure and white— A rosebud or a drooping lily-bell — Caresses them and proves their chasteness well By glorifying them with glinting light.
God's Love hunts out some hearts we might not deem
Held beauty, thinking we descried some mar,
Till He finds whiteness we did not esteem
Within their hidden depths ; and from afar
His love shines warmly with a gentle beam
And turns each heart into a joyous star.
RUTH E. HENDERSON.
"THE LURE'
By Lewis A. Wentworth
IT WAS a gay crowd that filled Louis' that night — gayer than us- ual. Harvard does not win every year, but when she does, something happens. Something was happening that night. Wine, Women and Song held sway. Pleasure was King. Oc- casionally the Harvard yell rang out, and immediately the air was full of multi-colored streamers crossing and re-crossing the room, confetti fell like snow, wooden noise-making machines added to the din — and over all sounded the popping of champagne corks.
When the Bachelor strolled in, his round, jovial face wreathed in smiles, the revelry was at its height. It may be remarked in passing, however, that the Bachelor was, in reality, not a bachelor, the name being one that he had once tacked onto a literary venture as a non de plume and awoke one morning to find his book, himself and the name famous, and the latter had always clung. He now paused just inside the door, looking over the gay crowd, and for the fraction of a sec- ond a shadow of disappointment clouded his smile; then he caught the eye of the head waiter and the latter at once led the way to a table in a far corner. It was the only vacant chair in the room and faced a man who seemed an alien in that gay throng, for he sat with bowed head, lost in thought, apparently unconscious of his surroundings, toying with the stem of his wine glass, rolling it back and forth between the thumb and fore- finger of his right hand.
"Some bunch!" exclaimed the Bach- elor, genially, settling himself com- fortably in his chair. "The usual thing, Martin," he added to the waiter who hovered near. "Beg pardon," he
continued, turning his attention again to the man opposite.
The other lifted his eyes, cold, tired looking eyes, set in a face which gave the reason, and favored the speaker with a long stare of inquiry; not the cold, suspicious look which the ma- jority of Bostonians bestow upon those who dare accost them when the for- malities are lacking, but simply a look which said: "And who the devil are you ?"
"Yes," was the reluctant reply, as he again bowed his head and resumed his dreaming, a suspicion of a sneer curling the corners of his thin lips. The Bachelor watched him in silence a few minutes, undecided. He wanted to talk. He had an hour to spend and he wanted to make the most of it. Fin- ally he made up his mind to try again.
"Looks good to me," he declared, lighting a cigarette and drawing in a deep breath of appreciation. "Believe me, Europe's no place for a fat man these days. He looms too big on the horizon! Yes, sir! And I'm mighty glad to get back." He blew two tiny feathers of smoke from his nostrils and smiled reminiscently.
The man opposite lifted his head again and took a thoughtful survey of the speaker, then: "I thought," » he said, talking into his empty glass, "by the way you gave your order you were one of the regulars."
"Oh, no ; I meant the usual thing for this sort of an occasion."
"And called the waiter by name?"
"Did I? Well, one hits the nail on the head sometimes. No. I've seen but little of this sort of thing for some time. Been over the other side looking for local color."
"Artist?"
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
"No. Writer. Ever read 'Still at Large?'"
"Sounds like a bid for applause," thought the Bachelor, disgusted at him- self for breaking his life-long rule of not talking about himself or his work. But to-night was different. He wanted to talk about his books and he wanted to arouse the man opposite.
"You are not The Bachelor?'" queried the other, suddenly waking up and showing a gleam of interest.
"Guilty," was the smiling admission. "But here's the wine! That's right, Martin, pour my friend a glass, too. Oh, yes, I insist! Couldn't drink a quart of the stuff alone, you know. Well, here's how!"
The glasses were raised and the eyes of the two men met over them: one's beaming with geniality, enjoyment and good-cheer, the other's reflecting curi- osity, weariness and a gleam of in- terest strangely intermingled.
"Of course," he ventured, after thoughtfully sipping his wine for a moment, "you took that Lorrimer case here in Boston some years ago for the foundation of that story. I've of- ten wondered, though, if it was all fact or— er — only partly so! I recall that it was practically the same as the newspaper accounts up to a certain point. The rest was fiction, I assume."
"Well, yes, partly. I am working on a sequel at the present time that is all fiction, but which should be the rightful outcome of the case. It was all finished except the last chapter when a little discussion arose between my publishers and myself regarding it, and bowing to their mature judg- ment, I agreed to write it in accord with their views — unless they discov- ered that they had made a mistake. You see, I claim that a criminal, sooner or later, returns to the scene of his crime, that curiosity proves a man's undoing as it does a woman's. My publishers claim it is not so, that your criminal of the present day, once he makes his get-away, does not come back — and they cite the very case of the man I took for the villain in my new story, 'The Lure/ "
"And that was — "
"The broker, of course, who ruined the Lorrimer girl, sent her brother to prison on a trumped up charge of theft, deserted his own wife and got away with fifty thousand in cash be- longing to his customers."
"Then young Lorrimer really did not steal that money?"
'"'Oh, no; it was discovered later, three years later, that the broker him- self did it, taking that method of get- ting the boy out of the way."
"And the fellow was given his lib- erty, of course."
"Yes — liberty. But broken in health, penniless and with the memory of a prison wall to haunt him all his future life — and nothing on earth can blot it out."
The Bachelor paused to light an- other cigarette. The other shuddered and drained his glass, then said: "To go back to the other subject, I am in- clined to agree with you in one matter, and with your publishers in another. For instance, do you suppose that the man would be recognized after ten years if he should come back? Why, a man could so change his looks, hab- its, voice even, that he would not be recognized by his own wife after ten years. That is, a man in the twenties as this fellow Vernane was. Of course, at my age one could not. It's easier to get lines and wrinkles than it is to get rid of them."
The Bachelor nodded thoughtfully and a silence fell between the two. The other man drew a pencil from his pocket and began absently tapping his front teeth with it, his attitude and expression settling back into that un- conscious, preoccupied state which had been his when the Bachelor first sat down at the table. The latter looked up, smiled, then filled the glasses once more.
"Yes," he admitted at last, "you may be right. But there's one factor you have overlooked : the woman in the case. If you will go deep enough into the history of any crime you will find that somewhere there is a woman con- nected with it. She may stand out
THE LURE
399
boldly in the lime-light or she may be hidden far in the background — but she is there somewhere. And when the criminal is brought to justice, as he is bound to be sooner or later, look around again and you will see — a wo- man. In 'Still at Large' the villain was not caught — the reason is obvious. But since writing that the boy has come out of prison, the wife of Vernane has divorced him and re-married, the Lor- rimer girl has become famous as a singer and has married, also."
"You seem well informed of their private affairs. How about Vernane himself ?" asked the other, coming out of his reverie.
"He is the only one whose confi- dence I did not share," laughed the Bachelor, as he drained his glass and looked speculatively around the room. "Guess this wine is getting a trifle cold," he added, smacking his lips sharply.
Many of that noisy, gay crowd was preparing to leave. A young fellow who made one of a party of four at a near table arose unsteadily to his feet, lurched against the table where the Bachelor sat, then went slowly down the room to the door. The Bachelor watched him till the door closed be- hind him.
"But I still insist," went on the Bachelor, after a moment, "that my theory is right. In the book I intended to have the broker, Vernane, come back, lured by the press notices of the girl's wonderful beauty and her bril- liant success as a singer; come back to look once more into the eyes that had made a fool of him, a thief and a fugitive. And he would be recognized and captured."
"Well, theory is all right, but facts are stubborn things. I think in the present case your publishers were right, and even if the fellow did come back he would not be recognized."
"It would so seem, unless "
A slight commotion near the door caused the Bachelor to pause and look around. The young fellow who had lurched against the table as he went out had returned, and with him was
one who was instantly recognized as Madaline, the singer. A dozen tables were instantly vacated that she might be seated, but she only bowed, shook her head and smiled, a smile in which lay that which would cause any man to lay his heart at her feet, a smile that would lure a man on to destruction or raise him from the pit as she willed. Then turning to the head-waiter she said something, and he bowed, stand- ing to one side, and she slowly made her way across the room.
"Come," she murmured, laying a hand on the Bachelor's shoulder; "it's time for old married people to be at home." The Bachelor and the other instantly arose.
Then turning quickly to his com- panion she flashed a smile at him, a smile in which lay hidden things that no pen can describe, and said:
"Why, good-evening, Mr. Vernane !"
"There is some mistake," returned the man, easily, his eyes wavering between the two smiling faces oppo- site.
"Yes," the Bachelor returned, quick- ly, "but my publishers made one and you made the other. Characteristics are prone to crop out even when the face and the voice are changed beyond recognition. Wait! One may sit in the same seat in the front row of the orchestra six nights in succession with- out attracting particular attention, but when one sits and taps his front teeth with a pencil an hour at a time it may attract attention, especially if someone is looking for that sort of thing. I guess that is all." And the Bachelor nodded slightly to the three men who still sat at the table that the young fellow had recently left, three men who looked suspiciously like police officers in plain clothes as they got to their feet and began donning their coats, and, incidentally, block- ing the passage to the door. "Come, Pet," the Bachelor murmured, in a caressing tone, "we'll go now. I've got to finish that last chapter before I go to bed."
At the door the two paused to wait for young Lorrimer who had stopped
400 OVERLAND MONTHLY
for a word with the three men as they ing. And as they climbed in, there
stood around Vernane, who had came floating out on the night air the
dropped into his chair in a limp heap, sound of many voices taking up the
and as he joined them they passed chorus of Madeline's famous song:
quickly out to where a car stood wait- "It's a long, long way to Tipperary."
THE REAPER
Chattering squirrels in creaking boughs
Of maples splashed with red — And a hedge aglow with goldenrod
Where summer's wild rose bled. The fir trees pitch their wigwam tents
Of shadows, amber-kissed — And waving ferns like emeralds gleam
Through the spangled purple mist.
All silver-stoled the birches stand,
While chirping crickets cry, And stately oaks rain silken leaves,
Where dreaming violets lie. Then bearing sunshine on his wings,
A butterfly, grown bold, Woos a belated crimson rose
And breathes love's story old.
The giant trees clasp hands on high,
And down the moss-fringed aisles — A sunbeam steals, all golden fused,
To cast his magic wiles. Skirting the velvet pathway's edge,
The pearl-tipped waters sing, While day betrothes night's stately queen
With a jeweled silver ring.
Then, bent of form, a figure creeps
Through all the tangled braes, And gathers softly, one by one,
The fleeting golden days. The rainbowed drifts of silken leaves,
All shuddering, watch him pass, For autumn's red claims sands of gray
In Time's frail hour glass.
AGNES LOCKHART HUGHES.
LAN I
By Genevieve Taggard
LANI clasped the child astride her hip. "And what for do you laugh so," she matched her father's scornful thrust of the head, "why do you laugh like that way when I tell you my Hendry's going?"
Her father preferred the meaning of silence. His thick hands threaded the ilima flower on a spear of grass and patted it snugly against its fellow. The girl bent to select the reddest mango from the pile on the steaming side- walk. She knew her father's eyes were following her in narrowed amusement. The child bit off the thick toe of the skin and smeared the yellow paste about his brown nose and stained the loose sleeve of his mother's holoku. But for once she neglected to scold or even notice.
"Hendry's going come again," she argued resentfully.
His shrewd eyes made answer, skipping over the warm curves of her body. He shoved a pointed finger at her smooth neck, bare where the care- less holoku fell apart, free of the throat. Her fingers caressed her low bosom.
"In a few years," he wagged his great head jovially, "the same every time. Haole men go sailing off to the Coast to make love to haole girls who got tight clothes with swell style."
"Hendry say he like better holokus," she said, and caught up daintily the long sheer train and fanned the lan- guorous curves of her body into wav- ering ripples.
"Hendry," sneered her father; "Hendry is a haole."
"Hendry's going come again, I tell you. Hendry's father got a drug-store
in California. He must stay over there awhile. Till he can sell any- way."
The fat man sniffed.
She let the long train droop and studied her bare foot absently, jog- ging the child higher now and then and pressing his chubby legs about her body.
"White girls work in the drug stores?" she questioned, turning her head suddenly.
"Sure, haole girls in all the stores," ,he responded. "And they can make swell style when they walk around."
The flower man heaved his stiff round legs out of the sun and chuckled. She questioned no more, as he threaded the flowers narrowed close to his eyes, but watched sullenly.
"You poor kanaka fool," she said. "You don' know about haoles."
"When the soldiers go," his body shook with his words in one huge tit- ter, "when soldiers go it is one big joke for all — on eh? — the kanaka girl/
She drew the child closer.
"I'm going home now to make the lei," she said. "And don' you ever say things like that about my Hendry again."
He laughed and eyed her shrewdly as she drifted past.
She waved about confidently on the gutter's edge.
"And how do you know," she said. "Maybe Hendry's not going."
That night the garden was too still. Hendry seemed to have so little to say.
She stirred warmly against his shoulder and dropped the marigolds she had gathered into her lap.
"How long, Hendry? Many years?"
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
She thought he moved away rest- lessly; but then it was not their cus- tom to talk.
"Well, I don't know exactly," he said slowly. "You see, my folks — well, of course, my folks don't know I'm mar- ried. Pa's always said I could have the store, you know. But I guess I'll have to stay there awhile. Till I can sell, anyway."
She sighed. The sentences were as ever the same. But his voice seemed to weigh them for the first time with a vague accent. She watched gravely as he turned aside to pluck at the fronds of grass. A black beetle crawled up his legging and sawed its fingers at him, for shame.
"I'll leave a little in the bank, you know," he added hurriedly, for she had said no word. And he ran a long stemmed marigold lightly into her hair. A nervous mosquito came whin- ing, insinuating from the tree-heavy shadows.
"I will make leis. I will not go to the bank." She leaned nearer, search- ing his face in the finely sifting gloom. ^ "Oh," she drew back when she met his fumbling hands.
The child was sunk in a tangle of sweet ginger, mouthing a long spicy stem, appraising his father, wide- eyed.
"In California many girls wear tight clothes with swell style?" she gathered the sheer muslin about her throat and stealthily hid her feet among the white gardenias.
"Oh, yes. Lots of style, I guess, but none so pretty as you, Lani. Come over here."
She laughed softly and shook out her hair. And he smiled to see her arch her neck to look over her shoul- der as she leaned toward him laughing and pointing at the child.
^"See, Hendry, the baby is making leis in the ginger with his feet. You making leis for papa, eh, baby?"
And they sat more closely together as they watched him solemnly thread the sprays in and out through his toes.
"You will miss the baby, Hendry."
He seemed annoyed.
For a long time she strung the pet- als in silence while the beetles ticked noisily about.
"The baby will miss Hendry."
"Come here, you little devil," he commanded, and the child, smoothing his flimsy dress over his round body, wobbled toward them, unsmiling.
"Going to miss Hendry?" he de- manded, clutching the squirming brownie in the air. "Eh? Going to miss Hendry, are you?"
She was gathering swift courage now as she pierced the flowers deftly one upon the other. She murmured his name. He did not hear. She reached her foot timidly out, to touch his leg- ging.
"Eliza's man," she breathed, bent low over the lei, "he promised alright. But he never came again, Hendry." Even the birds had ceased to whisper in the mango tree above, but Hendry was chucking the child between the ribs and swearing absorbedly. "Hen- dry, won't you listen ? I tell you sure, Eliza's man never came again."
"Well, I guess she isn't kicking," he shot over his shoulder as he dan- gled the child in the air. "She's not sorry. The way he used to beat her."
Her finger tips were cold again, but she only said : "I be sorry, Hendry."
She knew he would toss the child lightly into the ginger and sit back on his heels to laugh for an instant be- fore he swung her up into his arms. And then the laughter died slowly out on his lips and he held her motion- less while the beetles ticked off the swift moments and the long drive of the night wind drifted her hair about him in a black cloud.
She chided him softly as she shook out the marigolds that clung among her garments, crushed to yellow pollen among the clinging folds, and dodged merrily the rude kisses that were snatched at her mouth. But she smiled — she remembered that even Eliza's man had loved Eliza's lips.
He found the half strung marigold chain and wound it playfully about her bare foot.
"I must make another lei," she mur-
LANI
403
mured suddenly weary, and pulled her hair about to hide the strange tears.
He was gone with few other words. The rigid figure seemed to throw, in spite of itself, a lingering shadow back toward them at the gate. But his leggings were creaking briskly down through the interlacing shades. And not once did he turn to look back.
Her father heaved up suddenly from behind the vines of the lanai.
"Damn fool to say he come again," he sneered, and then fell to chuckling when she tore off the marigold anklet and flung it away in the dark.
The baby wondered that night why his mother wept no more, but sought ankle deep in the lush grasses of the garden for a certain heavily-lidded flower few men touch. And he watched from among the ginger, drowsed by its heavy incense, as she sat through the dewy night, weaving them in a lei.
It was fresh morning when her father found them. The level sun at his back sent his long shadow rollicking over the ginger. When he saw the lei coiled about her feet he chuckled once again.
"The kanaka girl too smart for haoles, eh?" he sniffed the perfume delightedly. "He's sure going?"
"Don' you talk like that way about my Hendry," her slight fingers let the heavy rope slip.
"Hendry will like the lei," he as- sured her, large in silent chucklings. She bowed her head wearily.
"Hendry is a poor red-faced hoales. He never fool me once."
"You don' know about hoales," she drew her feet from among the bright coils, and covered them smugly with the holoku train. "You a poor ka- naka fool."
"Too bad," he droned on, as his thick hands sought out the yellow- eyed flowers leisurely. "Too bad Eliza's man never had a girl so smart to make a sweet lei when he went sailing off."
"My Hendry is not the same as Eliza's man," she dashed the stray poison petals from her lap as she
sprang up before him. "Am I a fool like all you kanakas? Do you think I take Hendry's money like all the kanaka girls? You ever see me smile at all the soldiers when I sell leis on the sidewalk? You think I am lazy, like Eliza, eh?" She jerked up the lei and it wriggled like a live thing in her hand. "Lani making leis all night like old fat woman." She was beat- ing the heavy, scented rope on the ground before him like a flail. "I can be the same as hoale girls if I want," she flung the black cloud of hair from her face, "and I tell you, my Hen- dry is not like Eliza's man."
She hurled the dusty, ragged thing at him.
"If haoles go," he snarled and dodged aside, "I tell you sure, they never come again."
She was binding up her hair with swift purpose.
"Maybe Hendry's not going yet." She caught up her dewy, fluttering skirts and held them high as she picked her steps daintily tip-toe toward the gate.
"See, I can walk the same as haole ladies. Haole ladies walk so, with much high heels," she whirled about before she slipped through the tall pickets. "You old fat kanaka," she mocked. "And I am going to beg some tight shoes from Eliza. How do
you know Hendry's going?"
* * * *
One does not kiss one's wife good- bye on a great wharf — if she is a ka- naka. It is well to have it over quietly, and get aboard.
But Hendry lingered, while the blood thundered at his temples above the jar of the last hoarse whistle, and still gazed down at her, unconscious that the whole regiment was snicker- ing across the rail above. Her breast was heaving as proudly as the sea.
"Say good-bye to Hendry," she softly urged his child once again, and tried to shake his eyes from the bright row of buttons on his father's uniform. The child even twisted about erect in her arms when she turned aside to snarl scornfully at her father.
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"The little devil don't want to say good-bye." Hendry shifted his feet apologetically. "Maybe he'd just as leave I wouldn't go."
"Aw, the baby will forget to know Hendry's face. It is too bad." Her eyes darkened, and cleared again. "But we must not linger now."
She was standing all aslant under the one-sided weight of the child. He could not read her face, tipped up to him as in a dream. And yet her eyes were as ever, clear as golden wine.
"Have a lei?" her father's fat arm shoved at his ribs. "Can have choice on me."
The gongs were clattering impa- tiently.
"No," he said shortly. "I won't need it."
"All aboard!" The regiment took up the cry and waved their caps wildly. Henry warily advanced a long finger. The baby surrounded it with his fist. He bent closer. She slanted out a stilted little foot shyly. "Hendry, you like my haole shoes?"
He jerked back rudely. She turned quickly as she heard a high voice shrill out:
"Why, if Bolliver ain't still down there with his Kanak!"
The vast place seemed crushed still with a ringing silence. Henry shouted back and dashed up the gangway. He shoved in among them at the rail. A
bright coin flashed in the air and fell on the dock.
His red perspiring face grinned down at her from above.
"Get you some socks," rasped through his fists.
The wall of steel edged itself into the circling ripples. There was a strag- gling fringe of khaki at the stern. A swarm of black heads popped up about the rudder below, and shouted with waving arms for diving coin. Now and then a bit of silver flashed over the side and a brown body cut down out of sight into the green depths, be- neath the mottled sunshine. The noon gong banged impatiently over the water, and the lines of khaki streamed below. There came a lap of laughter from the open ports. A lone deckhand was sweeping a shower of bright flow- ers over the side. They reddened the crests of the swells as they rolled and drifted lazily after.
Lani jogged the child higher and bent to pick up the coin. Her father came circling down the wharf, swing- ing his ropes of yellow leis and chuck- ling as he spat with a certain oath upon the timbers.
"Poor Kanaka fool, eh? He — he! Poor Kanaka fool!"
She waved past, languidly fanning to and fro with the long train. "Poor Kanaka fool," she mocked. "Eliza got another man!"
"ICH DIEN"
I ask a sign!
But kindly eyes that cheered me many a day, Are hostile now and from me turn away. It matters not that I for conscience stand 'Gainst evil, that would devastate the land,
Few hands clasp mine!
E'en those whom I through life have held most dear, Misunderstand and hold aloof in fear. But through it all, God's Truth is still my goal, And I remain the "Captain of my Soul."
MARIAN TAYLOR.
The Opium Fiend
By W. R. Wheeler
"And my soul from out the shadow That lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted nevermore."
SAN FRANCISCO was wide open. "Everything goes" was the glad tidings which brought gamblers, sure-thing men, thugs and thieves and the derelicts of the un- derworld flocking thither from the four corners of the earth. The Barbary Coast was a blaze of light and a car- nival of music and dancing, of laugh- ter and song, when I sought the com- parative quiet of Portsmouth Square by Stevenson's memorial. Turning at an arresting hand upon my arm I be- held the shrunken body, corpse-like features and staring eyes that spoke in unmistakable tones of the ravages of destructive vice.
"Please, mister, give me a dime," he whined, as I shook off his touch in disgust.
"What is it?" I asked finally, pity overcoming my repugnance. "Dope?"
"Yes. Fifteen years of it. Stake me to a dime. I'm all in for a shot."
Scenting a story I said, handing him a dollar: "Bring your dope up to my room. Tell me your story and I'll give you another."
He came shambling up the stairs fifteen minutes later.
He was nervous and said: "You'll have to wait till I take my shot; then I can talk."
"Go ahead," I said.
He took a hypodermic syringe and a spoon and a bottle of morphia from his pocket and placed them on the floor. Then he poured nearly a spoon- ful of the morphia into the spoon and cooked it over the flame of lighters made of twisted paper. When the
drug was dissolved he filled the syringe, and bared his arm and shot the contents into it. He repeated the injections until the spoon was empty. When the drug commenced its work, his eyes brightened, the slouch went out of his form and he seemed a differ- ent man. Then he told the following story :
"I was born in San Jose, and my life until I became of age held noth- ing out of the ordinary. I graduated in the grammar grade of the public school, which did me but little good, as I knew no trade. I worked when- ever I could find anything to do, but was forced to lose so much time that I soon despaired of getting anything ahead. Then I began to hang around the pool rooms and the saloons, and try to make a living by the various tricks which rounders use to escape work. I realize now that this was the main cause of my downfall. I be- gan to despise the man who labors with his hands and exalt the grafter who was smart enough to get through the world without it. My best friend and chum was a man of my age, named Barney Munroe. One day I was hor- rified to discover that he was using co- caine.
"I was very fond of Barney, and made many fruitless efforts to make him quit. One day when I was in a fit of despondency he induced me to try it; the sensation was so pleasant, it seemed to raise me out of all my troubles, that I tried it again and again, and soon the habit got upon me. We sank lower and lower, and the de- mands of the drug became so insistent that we were put to all kinds of shifts to get the money to buy it. At last we were jailed for a petty theft. We were
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out of dope, and begged the jailer for a shot, but like most men in his posi- tion he was a heartless brute, and laughed at us.
"We were soon in desperate straits. The next time the jailer appeared Bar- ney begged him with tears in his eyes to give him a small shot. The jailer got mad and shouted: "I'll give you something to close your trap." He struck poor Barney in the mouth.
"In the next cell were a negro named "Spats," and an Italian named Lum- bado. They were fiends. It was cus- tomary to give them a dose every even- ing, but for some reason they missed Spats and his partner that night. When they found that they were not to get any dope they got frantic and began to scheme. They told the other pris- oners to beat on the doors with their shoes until the jailer came. When he finally showed up to find out the cause of the racket he was as mad as a hor- net, and threatened to turn the hose on us if we didn't quit.
"When he went away, we yelled and kept up such a racket that he came back and turned the hose on us, which quieted us, but did not lessen our craving for the drug. Then Lumbado whispered to Spats:
"You throw a fit, Spats; that's the only way we'll get any dope to-night."
"Spats immediately fell down, feign- ing a fit, moaning and writhing like one in mortal pain. He was a good actor, and he rolled his eyes and frothed un- til he presented a horrible spectacle. I really thought he was going to die. At this Lunbado began to shout: 'Go get the jailer; Spats is dying.'
"The jailer looked at the writhing man. 'Oh, he's only shamming,' he said contemptuously.
:' 'No, he ain't; give him a shot or he'll surely croak,' insisted Lumbado. They finally convinced the jailer that Spats was in a bad way, so he brought in a lump of dope. Lumbado cooked the morphine and shot it into the other's arm; Spats recovered miracu- lously, and they sat up till midnight, talking and laughing at the way they had fooled the jailer.
"What I saw in that jail so disgusted me that I resolved to quit. I did quit cocaine, but I asquired the opium habit, which was almost as bad.
"The first person I met when I was released was "Spider" McDermott. He was an ex-prize fighter and was wise to all the tricks to get money and dope without work.
"One of them was to stand in front of a drug store where there was a lot of traffic and have a fit. At the right moment a confederate would cry: 'Spider's got another fit; give him a shot or he'll croak.'
"Usually the sympathetic bystand- ers would carry him into the store, where he would almost always get dope or money from some one in the crowd. Finally Spider sold his body to a doctor who agreed to give him all the dope he wanted as long as he lived. Maybe he was of some use after death. He surely was of no use to the world when alive.
"Kelley was another fiend I met in jail. He used to feign sickness so as to be sent to the doctor's office, where he would steal pile salve. This he boiled and strained through a cloth,, in this way getting his opium.
"While in jail I learned that many boys who were confined for small of- fences were taught the use of dope by the older prisoners. It looks as if any one with the least sense would know better than to confine boys with hardened criminals ; they couldn't do worse if they wanted to make crimi- nal wrecks of them.
"Finding that there was no chance for me to break away from the habit as long as I associated with dope fiends I determined to break away from their influence and try to make a fresh start under other conditions.
"I boarded a freight for Portland, but got ditched at Red Bluff. I was broke and hungry, and asked a hotel keeper for some work so as to earn a meal ; he turned me over to the mar- shall, who took me to jail and I got thirty days for vagrancy. I found con- ditions worse here than those I had left. The jail was full of dope-eaters
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of every character. I found these con- ditions everwhere in all the medium- sized towns.
"After wandering around California for awhile, I drifted back to San Fran- cisco, where I learned to smoke hop. I soon became an expert in the art of cooking opium for smokers, and made my living at it for some time. The Toboggan House used to be a hang-out for opium fiends, and I met smokers there from all walks of life.
"Even top-notchers in society came into this part of the city to hit the pipe. There were dozens of places where opium smoking was carried on almost in the open, under the very noses of the police, who must have had a good reason for overlooking these joints. Besides the public places, smokers all over the Barbary Coast had layouts in their rooms so that they could indulge in their favorite vice when the public layouts were closed.
"I was a wreck and had given up all hope of recovery when I was called home to the bedside of my dying mother. She died of a broken heart over my disgrace.
"When I entered the room the seal of death was already upon her brow. I was torn with remorse. She held out her wasted hands and I fell upon my knees, begging for forgiveness, and I promised to stop using drugs. I lost the best friend on earth when she passed away. Her death made such a powerful impression on me that I re- solved to quit using drugs and be a man.
"When I returned to town after the funeral I was suffering the tortures of the damned. Every fibre of my be- ing was insistently calling, calling for the drug. I was going with a girl who was also a fiend. She had drifted from a job in a department store to various employment till she became a "biscuit shooter" in a cheap restau- rant. She was as good as I, no matter what she was. She was an orphan who had come to the city from a coun- try town. The city had engulfed her 'as it had swallowed thousands of her
kind. When I came into her room the morning after the funeral she asked me where I had been.
"To my mother's funeral," I an- swered shortly. Then I told her I was going to quit.
"'You quit?' she laughed. 'You can't quit, and you know it.'
"Finally I convinced her that I meant it. She had not yet taken her morning shot. When she got out her outfit and started to cook the dope, the sight of it fairly maddened me, and I ran from the room. Then I hunted up an old friend of the family who lived in the suburbs, and explained my plan. We hunted up a vacant house where I intended to confine myself while I was overcoming the habit. We found a basement room with a single window which was barred, and a heavy door. I moved in my few belongings, with a stock of tobacco and some maga- zines. My friend carried the key and brought me food twice a day. I got along pretty well the first day and be- <gan to congratulate myself on my easy victory.
"I slept some the first night, but awoke before morning with a fit of sneezing which shook me from head to foot. Then I began to stretch and yawn and shiver until I was seized with cramps. I walked the room al- most double, gasping for breath. Then nausea came on. Violent pains shot through my body, and I sweated from every pore. I could not eat; extreme restlessness tortured me all day and my body felt as though it had been beaten with clubs.
"I got no sleep that night except fit- ful snatches, with all sorts of horrible dreams. When my friend arrived I tried to slip by him and beat it for Chinatown.
"How I lived through the day I don't know. With darkness came again those distorted visions, and I seem to have lost my reason. When my friend came in the morning a look at the room told him better than words what had occurred.
" 'Frank, what can I do to help you ?' he asked, as he noted the wreck about
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me. 'Don't you want a small bit of morphine. You can't expect to break off all at once.'
" 'No, I insisted, 'I don't want any more of the damned stuff. I'm going to break away from it or die.'
" 'You ought to have a doctor.'
" 'It wouldn't do any good; he'd give me morphine, and I would have to go through it all again."
"He urged me to taper off, and left me to my torment. I spent another day in bed, almost too weak to raise my head, my body racked with pains. That night I got a little sleep. The next morning I was hungry and my appetite gradually came back and I lost my craving for the drug. At the end of a month I felt that I was cured. When my friend came to take me away he was overjoyed at my deliverance. 'Frank/ he said, 'you have won. Only one man in ten thousand ever does that. But you should have been in a hospital. If society cared as much for its citizens as it does for its domestic animals it would provide a place where dope fiends could be cured.'
"I dressed in a new suit which he had brought. Arm in arm we took our way toward the twinkling lights of the city and to his home. He got me a job, and I soon repaid my debt. His kindness and help in my hour of trou- ble I could never repay. I felt like one who had been born again, as the professing Christians say, and faced the future with high hopes. But hu- man resolves are as unstable as chaff. I had over-estimated my strength; it could not withstand the power of en- vironment.
"I had been keeping clear of Fanny, but one day met her in the street.
" 'Frank/ she exclaimed with glad surprise. 'My, but you're looking fine. Where have you been? Let's go somewhere where we can talk/
"I went up to her room. Then I told her that I had quit drugs and that if she expected our relations to continue she would have to quit too.
' 'Frank, you don't mean it, do you ?' ' 'Yes, Fanny, I do. Not only be- cause it is right, but because it is a
matter of self-preservation — you are destroying yourself and you know what the end will be/
"She was silent for awhile, then got up and handed me her outfit. I opened the door of the stove and threw the accursed things into the flames. To- gether we watched it burn and re- solved to start anew. She would have made me a good wife had she been able to break away from the habit. No doubt we would have got something out of our warped and twisted lives to- gether which we could not have got alone, if we had kept to our resolve.
"Poor girl; she did her best, but the habit was too strong and she soon got back into the old ways.
"I was in the habit of taking a social drink occasionally, which was the cause of my undoing.
"One night I went to a party given by a friend. There was liquor on the table and I took too much. Passing Fanny's place on the way back, I went up to pay her a visit. When I entered the room I found an outfit on a chair. I reproached her harshly and told her that I was done with her.
" 'Don't shut me out of your life, Frank. I tried to quit. I'll swear I did. I stood it for a week until I was nearly crazy," she moaned.
"A cold hand seemed to grip my heart. How well I knew what she had suffered. By this time the liquor had made me sick, and I lay down till I felt better. I fell asleep and awoke the next morning feeling much worse.
"When I reached the street I took a drink of liquor to brace me up, and, finding that this did me but little good, took another and another. I kept this up for a week, getting more restless and cranky every day. I had felt some small scars on my breast during the week, but paid but little attention to them. When I bathed on Saturday I saw that they were punctures. At once the reason for my restlessness flashed on me. Some one had sfiven me dope. I knew at once that Fanny had done it. She denied it at first, but finally confessed.
"'My God, girl; what have you
THE MAKING OF THE WEST.
409
done? Why did you do it?'
" 'I was afraid that you would leave me/ she sobbed.
"There was a long silence, broken by her sobs. I reviewed the suffering which I had endured for nothing. The memory of that month of torture, the realization of its futility and the shat- tering of my hopes, was maddening, and again I fell under the spell of the drug demon.
"I was soon chained to my idol as firmly as ever, and became more reck- less. Finally, I got a letter which brought to my mind a realization of the depths of Fanny's love and despair. It read :
;' 'My dearest Frank : When you read this, I, who have done you so much harm, will be no more. Forgive me for ruining your life, and remember that I loved you. As I can no longer hold your love, I am going to end it all.
'From your devoted
'FANNY.'
"She kept her word, and her body was found the next morning. Since then I have made no effort to reform; I care not what becomes of me. My only thought, my only desire is to get my daily drug."
THE AAKING OF THE WEST
It seems to me God took a part of Eden
And purged it of the things that should not be;
Then moulded on it gentle hills and valleys, And placed it by His own most wondrous Sea !
He builded mountains, traced around them rivers : And sowed it with a lavish hand in grain :
He touched it with the energy of Ajax And tinged it with the laziness of Spain.
He conjured fruits and flowers into being, And all His work was with Perfection blest:
He bathed it in His melted Golden Sunshine — And so God made this Great Pacific West!
KENNETH A. MILLICAN,
The Railroads and the People
By Wm. A. Sproule, President of the Southern Pacific Company
( This address was delivered recently at the annual convention of the Ameri- can Bankers' Association, Moore Thea- tre, Seattle, Wash.)
THE SUBJECT assigned me by your committee is "The Rail- roads and the People." I like that statement of the subject, particularly the conjunction "and," be- cause there is more in conjunction be- tween the railroads and the people than most of the people realize. The sub- ject would not be correctly stated if it had been entitled "The Railroads or the People," although that would bet- ter fit the tongues of the glib.
A recent writer about Banks and Railroads said that the great American public is not unfair; that in fact it is eminently fair where reasonably well informed, but has been misled, con- fused and only half-informed at the best. He said that both parties to the controversy are at fault: the govern- ment for too much publicity of the wrong kind, the railroads for too little publicity of the right kind; that ele- mentary education of these great live, national subjects, education that can be grasped by the busy man, is the one great need in the present juncture. Without it, the questions cannot be settled right, and no question is ever settled right until it is settled with jus- tice to all concerned.
It may be assumed, accordingly, that it is wise for us to address ourselves to the duty of setting before the peo- ple a few elementary facts and princi- ples rather than spend the time in de- ploring unhappy conditions. In the end it is the people who regulate and rule under our theory of government in this nation.
The primary relation of the railroads and the people is that the railroads sell transportation to the people. To many minds this relation disposes of the subject. The common notion is that the people have nothing more to do with it than may be necessary to ob- tain their transportation at the lowest price. If the buyers of bread had a voice in the fixing of its price, bread would be cheaper indeed. If the buy- ers of meat had a voice in the price of meat, it would not be long before the price would drop so low that the farmer would find it without profit to grow livestock. But the people have indeed a voice in the fixing of rates for transportaton and the buyer of transportation concerns himself little with the question as to what effect the price has upon the railroads. The price is seldom low enough to satisfy the purchaser. If he is satisfied, his satisfaction with any given transpor- tation rate or rate condition is only temporary. The mere lapse of time suffices to create further demands that the service be rendered for less money. This follows the impulse of self-in- terest. We all know that this impulse is not always safe or sound.
There is an epigram that in a king- dom of the blind a one-eyed man is king. A hard task before the rail- roads is on the one hand to correct the impressions which serve for opinions among people blinded by what ap- pears to be their self-interest, and on the other hand to contend against that kind of one-eyed domination of the railroads which keeps one eye upon popular opinion without an eye of vis- ion for what is necessary to bring the greatest good to the greatest number. Yet there is a conjunction of interest
THE RAILROADS AND THE PEOPLE
411
which so far has hardly been per- ceived, but which is sufficient to war- rant the railroads and the people in taking counsel together for promotion of the common safety.
Let us see why. Allow me to give you a few figures, here and there, which I will state in round numbers, because they serve the present purpose without needless detail.
There are in the United States over a quarter of a million miles of steam railroad, which have about six hun- dred thousand shareholders and about a million and three-quarters of em- ployees. This figures roughly one shareholder to three employees. So little is thought about the shareholder that I would wish to say more about him, and I take this opportunity to tell you that if you will average the railroad shareholders according to the railroad mileage they will stand with- in seven hundred yards of each other along every mile of steam railroad in the nation. This means that through- out the United States each shareholder would be in plain sight of two other stareholders along the right of way, under conditions of normal vision. Yet because of the free and easy way in which the public has attached to the railroad properties the names of well known men, the people generally have a vague belief that the railroads are owned by a very few very wealthy people.
The facts run to the contrary. The railroads are owned by a great army of the people; people who have put all their savings into railroad shares until six hundred thousand of them are direct owners. It requires no argument — unless we argue the obvious, to show that if the savings the people have had thus entered into railroad ownership prove to be secure, and the returns to them, as the owners of the money, prove to be attractive, there will be little trouble in obtaining from them and others like them more money for improving the railroads which now serve the people, and for extending them into sections whose development is standing still because of the lack
of railroad service. As a question of public policy it is not fundamentally sound that the rights of these hun- dreds of thousands of saving and pru- dent people should be given as serious consideration as any other factor in the railroad question? Is it not obvi- ous that there should be accorded to them the same full measure of solici- tude which is extended to other hu- man factors prominently before us in all industrial discussions?
But there are still other hundreds of thousands of the people who have a personal interest in the railroads. Those whom our political saviors call the common people (why they are called common I do not know) are the chief users of the savings banks of this nation. These savings banks have for their depositors about eleven mil- lions of the people.
The depositors rely upon the abil- ity of the savings banks to earn with safety and certainty enough money on their deposits to pay to the depositors a satisfactory rate of interest, with such a banking profit added as will maintain the integrity and solvency of the bank without question.
These savings banks carry between eight hundred and nine hundred mil- lions of dollars in railroad bonds and stocks.
Upon the earnings derived from them, these savings banks properly, and in accordance with the laws of their respective States, are dependent for an important part of their income, and their income is for the benefit of their depositors.
To state it in another way, if these railroad securities owned by the sav- ings banks were to be averaged among the depositors, each depositor would have an interest in the railroads of be- tween seventy-five and eighty dollars.
Every depositor is thus interested in exercising his influence to prevent de- cline in the value of these securities which safeguard his deposit.
Is it not plain that it is unfair, and in fact dangerous as a matter of pub- lic policy, to lose sight of the inter- ests of these hosts of the people, who
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have a personal though indirect rela- tion to the railroads?
Is it not rather the function of the government in its superior knowledge to the watchful of their interests even when they themselves may but dimly realize their own interests and rights with respect to those things?
It is hardly necessary to refer to State and other banks and trust com- panies, whose holdings in protection of their depositors and in the conduct of their business count up to several hundred millions of dollars more. This aspect of the subject carries up into still wider fields.
Among the large holders of railroad securities the life insurance companies are of vast importance to the people. Nearly every man of family carries insurance of some sort. It is the duty of the insurance companies to find profitable investment for the millions confided to them by their policyholders - — and what form of investment should be more secure and more profitable than that which appertains to the greatest industry in this country or in any other, the American railroads.
In the United States there are over thirty-four million life insurance poli- cies. Every holder values dearly his insurance, whether for himself or those dear to him who may later be dependent upon the proceeds of that insurance, and so every policyholder is interested in the railroads and the stability of their securities.
When the efficiency and standards of railroad properties are impaired and their income cut, the path of reduction leads to the income of the insurance companies, and it is upon that income the insured must rely.
Let the policyholder bear this in mind.
I will not dwell upon fire, accident or other insurance, since similar rela- tions exist with respect to them.
As already stated, there are over a quarter of a million miles of steam railroad in the United States, with a roster of about one and three-quarter millions of men.
This is a vast army, even in these
days of vast armies that affect us with awe. This army of the people relies directly upon the railroads for its live- lihood. It has the right to adequate consideration by the government. This consideration it has only in part re- ceived.
There has been no recognition of the fact that working hours may be short- ened, conditions of labor may be made ideal, safety may be attained, crews may be stuffed full to overflowing, and yet the prosperity of this army of the people fail simply because the rail- roads lack the ability to earn enough to keep the man at work, much less to expand, improve and extend the lines and the service. It is to the direct in- terest of the employees and the means dependent directly upon them for their subsistence that the railroads have prosperous earnings.
It is to the further interest of the employees that shareholders also have prosperous returns, for the employees cannot safely forget that, averaged over the American system of railroads one shareholder means three em- ployees. To maintain and operate tne railroads takes not the shareholders alone or the employees alone; it re- quires them both, and they stand as to numbers only in the ratio of three to one. Theirs is in reality a common in- terest in obtaining adequate earnings. It is not exaggeration to say that dan- ger to the railroad as employer cannot forever or for long be averted by the employee. No matter who own the railroads, earnings and expenses, or in- come and outgo, are two blades of a shears.
One blade cannot for long cut into gross earnings without bringing into 'activity the other blade which cuts ex- penses. Of expenses over forty-five fcer cent are for wages. In fact, seventy per cent of all the disbursements of the railroads, even when taxes, inter- est and dividends are included, are for three items of wages, fuel and sup- plies. The railroads give good wages ungrudgingly. The contentions are rarely upon the wage schedule itself, but upon needless and embarrassing
THE RAILROADS AND THE PEOPLE
413
and complicated incidentals. What the railroads have to contend and urge, notwithstanding their desire to pay their employees well, is the plain tact that the railroads have not adequate income out of which to pay these wages. In the two decades from 1894 to 1914 the revenues from operations of the steam railroads increased 183 per cent, but expenses of operation in- creased 200 per cent. The number of employees increased 118 per cent, while the compensation of employees increased 213 per cent. I will state it in another way: with the rates of 1904 as a unit, the railroads would have earned about one hundred and sixty millions of dollars more than the earn- ings on 1914. While the railroad reve- nues were thus reduced in the sum of one hundred and sixty millions of dol- lars, the compensation paid to em- ployees was in the same time increased by something over one hundred mil- lions of dollars.
This process cannot keep up indefi- nitely. As an economic question it is impossible that the compensation of employees can continue to increase while the compensation of employer continues to decline. There are in consequence millions of people con- sisting of railroad employees and those dependent upon them, who can justly insist that the interests of the railroads be nurtured rather than ignored in the adjustment of transportation questions. So we could move along into the vari- ous phases of human activity, only to find that the railroads and the people have interests in common to an extent the people do not yet realize, but when they do realize it they will wake up in their might to the fact that the rail- roads' prosperity is their prosperity. The people will rise to acknowledge that it is the function of the govern- ment to be watchful of their interests as a whole, and then the one-eyed man no longer can be king. The people will demand breadth and scope and con- structive purpose, they will demand that both sides and all sides of the railroad question be given equal and unprejudiced consideration.
They will insist, in the interests of all the people that the railroads be maintained in a condition of physical and financial strength, and that they be released from "the tyranny of pre- judice," and relieved from the paraly- sis of uncertainty. Whether it be the shareholder, the bank, depositor, the holder of insurance policies, the rail- road employees and their people, or the public generally, all will do well to remember that amid the loose and casual talk about watered stock, over- capitalization, it is no longer seriously contended that the railroad properties of the United States are worth less than the amount of their capital. Yet the earning power of the railroads up- on the capital employed has so de- clined that at the present time out of every hundred dollars of gross earn- ings which comes into the treasury, fourteen dollars has to be set aside to pay interest upon bonds, although the bonds bear but a moderate rate of in- terest. These bonds were taken up on faith in the earning power of the prop- erties and were issued in compliance with the laws of the land. They are held in this country and abroad, and this young and great nation can well see to it that the earning power of its railroad activities is maintained. Es- pecially is this so since it is known throughout the world that the railroads have been under governmental scru- tiny and control for more than a gen- eration. It is true that railroad finan- cial administration may be criticised in spots, and just criticism is wise, but they are like certain dramatic points in a picture; they catch the attention, but they do not tell the story. The people, instead, may be invited to sur- vey the whole history of American railroading, from its pioneer begin- nings, through unmapped difficulties and through periods of crisis when great administrators pledged their per- sonal fortunes to save the properties, down to the present moment, and in a wide survey of fifty years it will be acknowledged that as a bank may fail without imperiling the banking sys- tem, so the long ordeal through which
414
OVERLAND MONTHLY
the American railroads have passed still finds the moral basis of railroad management upon a very high plane in which the American people may take becoming pride. In 1904 these rail- roads killed one passenger in carrying eighty-one millions the equivalent of one mile. Ten years after, in 1914, but one passenger was killed in carrying four hundred and ninety-five millions of people the equivalent of one mile, or the whole population of the nation five miles. In the same year, 1914, thirty-five thousand millions of pas- sengers and two hundred and eighty- eight thousand millions of tons of freight were carried the equivalent of one mile, and at a cost per passenger and per ton of freight which compares more than favorably with the great empires of the world. I have purposely stated in such terms figures which are so large as almost to bewilder.
There is just one thing which the railroads and the people cannot es- cape in any event, namely — taxes. Railroad taxes have risen from less than sixty two millions of dollars in 1904 to one hundred and forty million in 1914. That is, they have risen 127 per cent in this ten year period, until now out of each one hundred dollars the railroads collect they have to pay in taxes four dollars and sixty cents. This means that of their net income, after paying their operating expenses only, the railroads have to pay in taxes sixteen dollars out of every hundred, and that is before paying any interest on money borrowed or a dividend to any shareholder. The railroads ex- pect to pay their share of the taxes, but the variety and extent of taxes paid by the railroads is of interest to the people simply in this, that the in- creasing burdens of railroad taxation, now aggregating over one hundred and forty millions of dollars, have to be met by the railroads out of their earn- ings. Consequently it is in the public interest that the margin between oper- ating income and operating expenses be wide enough to enable just taxes to be paid and just compensation given to employees, without impairing the
physical property and equipment which should be maintained at a high standard of excellence. As matters stand, a comparison of the ten year interval, 1904 with 1914, shows that operating revenues of the railroads in- creased fifty-four per cent, while taxes and operating expenses which do not include wages increased sixty-six per cent. The net revenue remaining to pay wages and for other purposes in- creased but forty-nine per cent. Of this forty-nine per cent, which repre- sents an increase of six hundred and eighty-seven millions of dollars, sixty- eight per cent or five hundred and fifty-five millions of dollars, sixty- eight per cent or five hundred and fifty-five millions was the increased expenditure for wages, although the number of employees increased only thirty-one per cent, and the mileage of the railroads operated increased less than seventeen per cent.
Youth will be served. A young na- tion and vigorous country demand de- velopment. Investment precedes con- struction, and construction precedes de- velopment. The money can be had if the people who own the money believe the investment safe and the returns de- sirable. If assured of this, railroads will be built. The people with savings to invest judge by the treatment ac- corded the savings already invested. An adequate return to the share- holder who puts his money in the rail- road business should be assured him. He should have the greater assurance, because, being private money devoted to public service, that service is regu- lated by government itself, and gov- ernment thereby can fairly be held sponsor for adequate returns. We must come to a point or basis at which 'railroad rates shall be deemed fair 'and not subject to the attack of any one who chooses. The no-bottom basis of the present is false in principle and dangerous in practice. Sooner or later the agencies of government will have to stand behind the stability of rail- road revenues, not for the benefit of the railroads merely, but in the pub- lic interest.
THE RAILROADS AND THE PEOPLE
415
In this nation the people are the source of all power. The popular will is, and will be, reflected in the treat- ment of the railroads at the hands of government. At times that popular will has amounted to willfulness, as in the treatment of a wayward child, but the railroads were young then, and parental regulation was inexperienced. We have all grown older together. Ex- perience is the only teacher. We are learning that the greatest industry in this nation, affecting directly millions of employees and shareholders and af- fecting indirectly many millions more of security holders and those depend- ent upon the credit and income those securities afford, cannot be affected in- juriously and let the rest of the busi- ness of the country go unscathed.
When to the condition of the present in the railroad business, involving so many millions of men and money, are added the uncertainties of the future; when to the cumulative force and effect of successive reductions, extending throughout several decades, there are added the uncertainties of reductions, none know how many or how great, which may come this year, next year or the year succeeding, is it any mar-
vel that the business of the nation is repressed and that all business men stand in suspense and deep concern as to what the future holds for them.
It is time for the railroads and the people to take counsel together for the uncertainty which touched the rail- roads first has now reached to the people.
This country needs prosperity more than it needs anything else. No busi- ness prospers by repression. The ef- fects and influences of government should be stimulating or they are a failure. The American people pros- per together. When we prosper we are all prosperous. The pursuit of life, liberty and happiness has pros- perity for its reward, the railroads and the people in conjunction and alike.
The common sense of the people can be relied upon to bring about the con- ditions that make prosperity. They are merely looking for light. When they find it we shall have enlightened prosperity, all the brighter for the dark uncertainties through which we have been passing. There is no room for pessimism. The country is all right and the people are all right. We are in their hands.
A Reminiscence of North Flatte
As Told by an "Old-Timer"
By Grace A. Seabeck
NEBRASKY was a wild place about twenty-five years ago. I was living back in old North Platte in them days, and I could tell yu, stranger, tales of more'n one goin's-on that would shock yu, traveled and all as yu are. North Platt's Bill Cody's home town, yu know.
As a usual thing, a feller could make a fair livin' from his crops and a few head of cattle turned out on the range. About the time of which I'm tellin' yu, though, the crops for several sea- sons had been burned up — no rain, yu understand — and the farmers became quite poor, with nothin' to tide 'em through the winter.
I remember one year they sent into the town some aid-coal, which was given out by the half-ton to those who made application for it and were needy. I was down on my luck and poor, but, by time, I was proud, and I'd 've froze before I'd 've asked for charity. There were some others in the town that felt the same way about it.
One night, seven or eight men stole a load of coal from the railroad yards. That same night my nephew and I hitched up and got a load also. The night watchman made it his business to keep out of the way as far as I was concerned. But every man of the other outfit was caught, arrested and put on trial.
The next day the Sheriff, a friend of mine — name was Smith — see the coal back of my house. He crossed the street and come up to me. I waited for him to say the first word.
"Teller, where's yu get that coal?"
S'l: "I stole it."
Smith laughed, looked around to see if any one was within earshot, then said : "Better let me swear out a war- rant fer yu, and yu go on trial. They'll probably fine yu five dollars and then yu can get another load."
I agreed, and went for trial. When I appeared in the court room, Beck- with said to me : "Hello, Teller, what yu doin' here?"
S'l : "There's a warrant out fer me."
"Nothin' on the books."
"Well, sir, I stole a load of coal. I'm here fer trial."
Beckwith looked at me severely, al- though I could see his eyes twinklin'. Then he said : "Teller, you'e an o'nery citizen. You hain't got no public- spirit whatever!" Then he laughed outright. "Stole it, eh? Well, that's more'n these other fellers'll admit. Anybody helpin' yu?"
"No, sir!" My nephew helped me load it, but I didn't see no need to tell about it. Don't look so shocked, friend — we Westerners ain't always truthful when it comes to the matter of pardners, and I reckon there's times when the questioners ain't expectin' us to be truthful, neither.
"Well, I'll fine yu five dolalrs. Don't know as I blame yu. Guess I'd rather steal aid-coal myself as beg it."
Money was scurce, so I worked out the fine. That same night, I went up to the yards and told the watchman I was intendin' to get another load of coal. He was excited, and said to me in a hoarse whisper :
"Keep away from here to-night,
THE SHADOW
417
Teller. They're watching me more'n they are yu!"
"Sorry, sir, but I came for coal, and I'm goin' to get a load before I leave to-night!"
He thought a moment, and then he said:
"Well, come back about two o'clock to-night and get a load from the north end. The road'll be clear by that time." And I did.
That was a hard winter. One night, in a driving blizzard, seven of us, masked, flagged a train, made the
engineer back the train onto a sidin' and unloaded the coal. Had to — we were freezin'.
Stranger, that's a queer yarn to ex- pect you to approve of. Yu don't un- derstand times like them. But I reckon that if you ever live through a grasshopper plague lastin' several sea- sons and each time eatin' the fields bare, or droughts that burn everythin' up before the summer's over, same as I have, yu'll realize how 'tis a chap'll steal aid-coal to keep his family from freezin'."
THE SHADOW
Across the dial a shadow moves
A ghostly finger, and I know That thus it crept in Babylon,
In Grecian gardens long ago.
A childish palm held in the sun —
And lo! the shadow is no more, And yet it moves unseen around,
Tracing the moments as before.
The marble fanes and kingly thrones
Are shadows, not the finger there, Counting away the hours that go
Forever down Time's thoroughfare.
So silently does Justice move,
Though Wrong's dark clouds obscure the skies; So Truth is present, though afar
From earth and right men say she flies.
Across the years a Shadow creeps,
Though none at times its motion sees; It marks the passing of the kings —
The burdens of the centuries!
ARTHUR WALLACE PEACH.
Ayths of Aonterey
By Grace /AacFarland
Legends of Junipero Serra
The seeker after legends of Padre Junipero Serra and Mission San Carlos Borromeo del Carmelo de Monterey, goes in vain to the half-deserted Mis- sion. In a very modern, flower-surrounded cottage, San Carlos' first custo- dian and prince of story tellers will recount the quaint old tales by the hour. Many of them he has heard from the lips of neophytes who were taught by Padre Serra himself. Through them all, from saddest to fun- niest, runs his own great love for the memory of Padre Serra and the Mis- sion where he labored so long and faithfully.
1 — The Cross of Fire
AN INDIAN woman, a hundred years old, or more, when she died, always maintained that Portola and his party were not the first to plant a cross on the Bay of Monterey.
Long years before, in the time of her grandfather's father, white men, dressed in strange costumes, three of them with bare feet like the Indians, came to their shores in odd vessels similar to that in which Padre Serra came.
The Indians were frightened, for these men spoke a language they could not understand, and dealt death to the deer and other game from afar, with- out hurling spear or stone or knife. While the white men tarried, no Indian ventured along the open beach. They crouched among the rocks to watch or hid amid the pines on the hills back from the coast.
One day the barefooted white men put up a big wooden cross on the shore. All the white men knelt before it, making strange signs and sounds, then they sailed away.
It seemed to the superstitious watch-
ers that a new God had been left on the pine-clad ensenada (bay.) Weeks passed and they dared not go near it. The Sakone (a Carmel valley tribe) chief's son became very ill. Medicine men and witches of the tribe could not help him.
At last they took him to the beach, dug a shallow pit, placed the sick man in it, laid food and water beside him, muttered a few hasty incantations, and left. Such was the ancient custom of the Coast Indians.
That night the whole bay was light as midday. Trembling, they crept out from their tule huts, then terrified, stole back in again. The Wooden Cross was on fire, whiter and clearer than sunshine, yet softer than moon- light, it illumined the shore for miles around. All night long, in fear, they watched it. Before daylight it faded, seeming once more merely a Wooden Cross.
When the squaws were building fires to cook their acorn cakes and fish for the morning meal, a great shout went up from the men of the Sakones. Along the dusty road walked the Chief's son, whom they had left on the beach to die.
MYTHS OF MONTEREY
419
Seeing the magic power of the cross that could become light, he had crawled to it, and kneeling at its foot, had prayed for help to the God of the Wooden Cross. He was cured.
For many moons and many seasons all the tribe of Sakone and the neigh- boring tribes brought daily gifts to the new God, and worshiped him in their own wild fashion. The sick were healed, there were no wars, the tribes multiplied and grew rich.
One winter a storm came and washed the Wooden Cross far out to sea beyond the reach of all. Their prayers to bring it back availed noth- ing. Their God, Giver of Light, was gone. Never since that day has the tribe of Sakone nor their neighbors on Monterey Bay prospered, for they could never find the lost God of the Wooden Cross.
Such was the legend they told Padre Serra when he came, bringing Him back to the heathen who had so long desired His return. (This legendary lighting of the cross is explained by the phosphorus which had formed on it, making it appear light. Phosphorus is still found in large quantities around Monterey Bay.)
2 — Padre Serra's Cure
For several years before Padre Serra began the long journey from San Bias, Mexico, to found the mis- sions in California, he had been af- flicted by an incurable sore on his leg. The long marches made it exceedingly painful. Finally the suffering became so severe as to prevent his walking. Some one suggested making a litter and carrying him. He refused.
"So," says his friend, Padre Palou, "he prayed to God fervently for help, and calling Juan A. Coronel, a mule driver, said, 'My son, can you find some remedy for my sore leg?'
" 'What remedy can I have?' re- plied Coronel. T am only a mule- driver and can only cure the wounds of my beasts.'
" 'Well, son,' said the Father, 'im- agine that I am one of these beasts
and this is one of their wounds ; apply the same remedy.'
"The mule driver said, smiling, 'I will do so, Father, to please you.' Tak- ing some suet, he mixed it with herbs, making a kind of plaster or poultice, which was applied according to direc- tions. God rewarded the humility of His servant and the leg got better."
3 — An Unseen Bell Ringer
Fifteen years the great Padre had toiled and suffered in his beloved Cali- fornia, and now, after a last visit to all the missions, he had come back to his own San Carlos del Carmelo. His old limbs were weary, and body al- most worn out, his head and daunt- less heart still clamored to go on to save more heathen souls.
One night on his hard bed of straw he dreamed that in a few days he would be called home.
Quietly as he might have requested the making of a new chair, he gave directions, next morning, to the bewil- dered neophytes (Indian converts) for making his coffin. "That others may not be troubled on my account when I am dead," he told his lifelong friend, Padre Palou.
When the coffin was completed, Fra Serra made his last confession to Frau Palou, said his last Mass and sang his last "Resurexit," went alone to his chamber and fell asleep. With the first rays of light falling across the eastern hill, priests and neophytes were startled by the tolling of the mis- sion bells. All hurried to the church. No one was in the belfry, not even a passing bird. Still those six bells tolled. The sombre strains echoed even to Monterey, where the soldiers were holding a merry fandango. Hear- ing the bells, they stopped their danc- ing; gambling, wine drinking and love making and rode to Mission San Carlos.
"The Saints themselves tolled the bells," they whispered reverently, "for in the night our dear Padre Serra died." (It is supposed that the wind, blowing from a certain direction, set
420
IN QUIET VALES
the bells in motion. Their slow ring- ing resembled the regular tolling of a funeral.)
4 — Sena's Grave
Among the descendants of some early Montereyans there is a legend about the grave of Junipero Serra.
After he had been buried, according to his own wish, behind the altar rail of Mission San Carlos, word of his death was sent to Mexico. Thence, in course of time, a report was forwarded to the King and the Church authorities in Spain.
There were a few living relatives of Padre Serra in Spain. Some of them, though not of the highest rank at court, were somewhat rich and influential. It
seemed a terrible thing for their kins- man to be buried in a distant land, where heathen savages might at any moment plunder his grave.
Through much scheming and plan- ning, one of them came to Mexico, and from there took passage on the first boat sailing for Monterey. With a handful of bribed sailors he went to San Carlos at night, stole the body of Junipero Serra from its grave ; put the Padre's vestments on the dead body of a criminal they had brought with them, put this body in the grave, covered it up again and went away unnoticed.
So runs the legend, not in San Car- los del Carmelo, but in the family cemetery in far away Mallorca, Spain, Padre Serra lies buried.
(To be continued]
IN QUIET VALES
In quiet vales the wild flowers dwell apart,
The faithful keepers of the unknown way,
With flags and pennons to bedeck the day. Their glowing ranks assail the gladdened heart To capture it, a tribute to such art;
In flawless forms voluminously gay
They bring to earth the pageant of May While bloom and color into beauty start.
Does Man or Nature most to Heav'n relate ?
As lift the blossoms in the glitt'ring dew, In quiet vales the thoughts of mystery wait ; For man yet errs, the subject of his fate,
While tiny seeds are marvelously true
And rise in perfect type beneath the blue.
LILLIAN H. S. BAILEY,
Ready for a ride on the trails.
A Woman's Tramping Trip Through : jf| Yosemite
By /Aarion Randall Parsons, Treasurer of Sierra Club
IN JUNE, Yosemite Valley is at the •very height of its beauty. The de- ciduous trees are in new leaf, maples and dogwood in tenderest, green, oaks tipped with pastel shades of pink and red in prophecy of their autumn glory, azaleas in full bloom, and the meadows a rippling mass of exquisite grass brightened with flow- ers. In June, too, the rivers are at their highest and the falls in wildest beauty, while the fast melting snow still lies deep in the upper forests and on the higher mountain slopes.
After a week or more in the valley, following the better-known trails, get- ting muscles in condition again after
city-bound days, we were anxious to see what spring was like in the snowy upper country. Accordingly, as pack animals were not to be obtained for love or money, we prepared to make pack animals of ourselves, and knap- sack over to Mount Clark (11,509 feet) on the southwestern boundary of the park, the most prominent peak of the Merced group.
There were four of us in the party, two men and two women, and we planned to be out two nights with a comfortable margin of provisions for a third night, if necessary. Bacon, hardtack, and that blessing to moun- taineers, soup, made up the bulk of our 5
Campers on a flat located near the Wawona entrance to Yosemite.
commissary, re-enforce^, however, by raisins, chocolate, dried fruit, beans, spaghetti and cheese. Our personal outfits, of course, were reduced to bare essentials. A sleeping bag, weigh- ing about eight pounds, a sweater, a change of hose, toothbrush, hairbrush, towel, a box of matches, and a tiny roll of adhesive tape would about complete the list. Tin buckets, a small frying pan and a tin cup and spoon apiece comprised the camp equip- ment.
We women who "knapsack" pride ourselves on being able to do our share —so while we do not pretend to carry such heavy packs as the men, we carry our own outfits and a part, at least, of the general commissary supplies. Short-skirted, flannel-shirted, with hob nailed boots to the knee and "shocking bad hats," we are as easy in our own clothing and as regardless of wind or weather as the men themselves.
It was rather hard for us to nerve ourselves to meet the stares and quer- ies of the tourists we met along the valley trail over which our trip must begin. All the way up to Little Yo- semite we were beset with question: Where were we going ? Didn't we find it very hard work? Wouldn't we get lost? Weren't we afraid of getting sunburned ? We had an inclination to slink shamefacedly by these proper- looking folk.
In Little Yosemite we made a camp beside the smooth-flowing Merced, and after lunch set out on a ramble up to- ward the base of Half Dome. Up the Cloud's Rest trail we climbed, and then pushed through the forest to the brink of Tenaya Canyon, a gorge al- most as deep as Yosemite Valley itself — inaccessible to all but the hardiest mountaineers. The great chasm, more than 2,000 feet deep, lay at our feet. Half Dome towered majestically
Camps of U. S. soldiers patroling the valley. Yosemite is located in large region reserved as a National Park
Packers preparing for a trip on the trails.
against the sky, and still farther we could see the shadowed cliffs of El Capitan and the Cathedral Rocks.
My companion on this ramble elected to climb Cloud's Rest before returning to camp, so I made my way back to Little Yosemite alone. Near the foot of the trail, in a glorious little mountain meadow, I surprised a beau- tiful buck, the largest I have ever seen in the Sierra. His horns were in vel- vet, and he stood so near me that I could see the quick, nervous move- ment of his nostrils as he watched me. For two or three minutes we stood there regarding one another. Then, with a nonchalant wag of his funny little tail, he turned and made off through the woods, as unhurriedly and indifferent as if I, too, had been a woodland creature. Perhaps I looked it. After his departure I examined the meadow more closely. It was a little gem of its kind, sloping from a ledge of granite that was covered with
gnarled and crooked junipers. At the first glimpse I thought it an unbroken sheet of the tiniest blossoms of yellow mimulus, but, on kneeling down, 11 species of flowers revealed themselves, all the daintiest and most delicate of their kind — yellow violets, white for- get-me-nots, gilias, white saxifrage, and the smallest pink pea I have ever seen.
A knapsacker's camp is a simple af- fair— a bed of pine needles, a few stones rolled together to make a fire- place, a pile of firewood gathered to- gether; and there is home. By five o'clock next morning we were astir. As our energetic leader busied himself with the breakfast fire, a doe came out of the woods and stood motionless for a long minute watching him before she quietly stole away.
Where one's possessions are so few, washing dishes and packing is a mat- ter of scant ceremony. In less than an hour we were 'ready for the trail,
Yosemite blanketed in Winter snows.
Campers on trail leading to Yosemite Valley.
or for the march, rather, as we ex- pected to leave trails behind us and strike cross country to the base of Mount Clark.
We held it to be but a tribute to our skill as mountaineers, however, when we found an old sheep trail following the very route we had planned to take. For many miles we followed it through the rolling forest east of Mount Starr King, through Starr King Meadow, and out near the crest of a granite ridge near Clark Fork. Here we left it be- hind and struck across the open coun- try, over ridge after ridge, across stream after stream, until we came to the northerly fork of Gray Creek, where we made a camp. We had reached the altitude of about 8,500 feet, and snowdrifts lay deep all about us. But firewood was abundant, and our little nook among the tall firs promised every comfort that a knap- sacker need expect.
In default of extra bedding we took hot rocks to bed with us.
The night passed comfortably, and we were up at dawn ready for the as- sault on Mount Clark, confident also of success. As we climbed the snow lay
even deeper about us. The forest of fir and mountain pine gave way to the hardier white-bark pine, the tree of timber-line. Up to the top of the ridge it crept, at the top a mere shrub, bent and twisted beneath the winter's weight of snow.
As we climbed, our horizon to the south and west widened. We were looking across the valley of the Illi- louette toward the snowy divide sepa- rating us from the South Fork of the Merced, where lies Wawona and the splendid Mariposa grove of sequoias. Yosemite Valley was but a blue rift in the forest, with only its great domes, Half Dome, Sentinel Dome and Starr King, rising into any prominence.
Far different was our view to east- ward from the crest. Our ridge ended on the east in an abrupt precipice. Through a broken "chimney" or win- dowlike aperture in the rocks, we looked down 500 feet into a great snow field filling all the eastern basin, and beyond this lay the cleft of the Merced Canyon, and, still beyond, the magnificent snowy peaks of the sum- mit crest, Lyell, McClure, Ritter, Dana, a host of others, all above 13,000 feet,
THE CLIFF DWELLER
427
all shining and gleaming in the bril- liant sunshine with a radiance that hardly seemed to belong to this world.
Well for us that this glorious vision was compensation for all the many miles we had climbed, for we got no farther that day — and Clark still re- mains unconquered. For we had an- ticipated the season for mountain climbing by a fortnight or more, and the slope that should have offered an easy rock climb to the summit was now a precipitous wall of treacherous snow. We had no rope, no ice axe, not even a knife with which we might have cut steps, and the icy edge where rock and snow met proved an invinci- ble barrier to the summit.
Up and down the ridge we prowled, over every ledge, into every chimney, only to admit ourselves defeated in the end.
For an hour or more we remained upon the ridge, feasting our eyes on
the marvelous panorama — a hundred miles of snowy range, a magnificent al- pine region, the greater part of which is now almost inaccessible, soon to be opened to travel by the construction of the John Muir trail.
After luncheon in camp a 15-mile walk back still lay ahead of us. Our defeat lay lightly upon us, for many mountain summits have been ours in the past, and we had had, after all, the inspiration and the uplift of the glo- rious upper regions of snow even if the exhilaration of the summit had been lacking.
Far down among the great below of yellow pines, under the spreading arms of sugar pines and out upon open crests covered with manzanita and chinquapin, we hastened past Nevada and Vernal and down through the Happy Isles, where thrushes sang their evening songs, and into our Yosemite Valley camp.
THE CLIFF DWELLERS
Mute remnant of a long-departed race,.
Perpetual sleeper from the entombed cliff,
That liest yucca-wrapped, immobile, stiff, With shriveled limbs and meagre, shrunken face! Robbed art thou now of thine athletic grace,
That laughed at dizzy heights, and urged thy skiff
O'er many a watery precipice, as if Fear in thy naked bosom had no place. Little didst thou dream long centuries ago,
The white man's eyes should sometime gaze on thee, Striving with curious interest to know
The secret of thy birth, eternally Locked up within thy narrow, earth-worn shell, Leaving thy tale for these poor tools to tell.
ST. GEORGE BEST.
On the road to Kaumana
The Caves of Kaumana
By Alfred Kummer
NOTHING, in the way of travel, is more full of interest than a visit to the Hawaiian Islands: to see Honolulu, Hilo, Kilauea, the great sugar plantations, the rice and banana fields, the colors of the waters, the rainbow-colored fishes, the sunsets and dawns, the flora and fauna, to ascend Haleakala, the high- est extinct volcano in the world; the seven days' voyage from San Fran- cisco, through the Golden Gate on to Honolulu, every hour is full to over- flowing of interest and delight.
I had lectured for the Young Men's Christian Association at Honolulu, then again at Hilo for Dr. Cruzan, the pastor of the Congregational Church
there, who proposed that we make a visit to the caves of Kaumana, and as these caves are little known and have been rarely explored, I hope to be able to interest the many readers of this magazine by my narrative.
The caves of Kaumana are located some five or six miles from Hilo, and the drive to them, like the much longer drive to the crater of Kilauea, thirty miles from Hilo, is perfectly unique, and cannot be duplicated on this con- tinent: the surface configurations, made by the rivers of fiery lava as they flowed from the active volcanoes and gradually cooled into many fan- tastic sculptured forms; the high trel- lisses to carry conducts or flumes for
THE CAVES ONF KAUMANA
429
the great plantations; the strange flora, especially the ferns of every variety, and always so pleasing in the delicacy of their structure ; the vast cane fields ; the cocoanut trees, strange trees with aerial roots ; and, at night,, the South- ern Cross, there are only a few of the unusual things one sees on this drive.
The caves were formed by the contortions of the lava in the volcanic eruptions of this island. Hilo is on Hawaii, the largest of the islands, while Honolulu is on Oahu, one of the smaller islands ; there have been many volcanic eruptions, and some great ones in quite recent times. Mauna Kea is the highest peak in the Pacific Ocean, 13,760 feet high. Mauna Loa has been very active, and has had many notable eruptions in 1843, 1868, 1877, and in more recent times; this mountain peak is 13,393 feet high, and is southwest of Mauna Kea.
We reached the caves in time to explore one in the forenoon and left the larger one for the work of the af- ternoon. The first one is only about one-fourth of a mile in length, but is typical of all. We are led by a guide who has been in this cave often, but had never been in the one we explored in the afternoon, and for that reason we entered it with some anxiety. Each person in our little party carried a candle; we also had one lantern, an abundance of matches, and a ball of twine.
In our forenoon work we found our- selves in some very tight places, where we were compelled to get down on our knees, or prone upon our stomachs, wriggling along like fish-worms, mak- ing very slow progress, and wonder- ing how we would ever, if ever, get back again.
But the main purpose of this article is to relate an experience of the after- noon in our second venture, an ex- perience which might have terminated fatally for us all.
^ When we had finished the explora- tion of the first cave, and came out again into the open air and the sweet sunshine, the two ladies of our party soon had an appetizing lunch spread
upon the lava for us. Here, however, the lava is completely covered with ferns of every variety, large and small, and with mosses, vines and flowers forming a beautiful tapestry or cov- ering for an enticing lunch to which we brought a royal appetite.
After this refreshing picnic lunch- eon, we were soon off for the second cave, the cave of Kaumana. A rope ladder is necessary to let us down to its mouth; there is a large rectangu- lar space in front of the opening to the cave; this space is closed in by walls ten or twelve feet in height and overgrown completely with ferns, en- tangling vines and many flowers ; from this open space there are two open- ings, and we select for our entrance the one in which the guide has never been; the guide and his wife, who is of our party, too, live in the near vicin- ity, and their presence and help inspire us with confidence and courage to pro- ceed. We enter the black mouth of the cave, and go on until the light of its opening, as we look back, is sud- denly cut off by a sharp turn ; here we stop and carefully fasten the end of our ball of twine, light our candles and lanterns, unrolling the twine as we proceed with our exploration. We soon find that which astonishes us beyond measure: great halls and chambers, narrow alleys and byways, grottoes and fissures; one very large space we call "the throne room," for there are thrones and polished seats and chairs; stalactites abound, and they are of varied lengths, slate blue in color as a rule, though some are dull red and of other sombre colors; water trickles through the roof everywhere, some- times extinguishing your candle; then were we glad for the abundant supply of matches in our pouches. Though these stalactites and stalagmites are quite heavy and difficult to break off, we managed to secure some of the more delicate and shapely ones, and bring them home as souvenirs of this most strange subterranean place.
The contortions of the lava, the various forms and rooms and halls, large and small, the sombre colors, the
Palm Avenue.
weird effects, are interesting but in- describable; in some the surface is smooth, as if it had been polished by art; in other places it is very rough and corrugated; in a number of places you must take your choice of direction, not knowing which will prove the bet-
ter, or whether any will be safe, but your passage will branch off into two or more directions; in other places, again, you will be thrown back upon yourself by some dead wall in front; then you are compelled to wind . up your cord and strike out some other
Road to Volcano Home and Crater Hilo.
way; in more than one place we had to wriggle prone as in the forenoon, and then would come the terrorizing thought that possibly some jagged rocks, like a trap in which fishes are caught, might make it impossible for us to wriggle back. If that should be the case, and well it might be, then what? A serious reflection, but, like most such reflections, too late to be of any value. There is only one thing for us to do, and that is to wriggle on, often on our knees, then erect for a few steps, then down again on our knees or bellies, then soon again with room enough for a great company; in such places we gladly halt and shout and sing, waking the echoes and rever- berations many fold, and, while we pause, we can but admire what heat and motion and gravity have left here in enduring and marvelous sculpture.
When we had exhausted our ball of twine, the desire to go on was so strong with every member of our party that we agreed to proceed, the difficulties already overcome giving us the neces- sary courage. We therefore fasten a
burning candle firmly to some lava rocks at the end of our string; then, turning our backs on the glimmering light so placed that no drops of water could extinguish it, nor any chance current of air blow it out, we marched and crept on and still on, overcoming many of the difficulties already ex- plained, but discovering new and strange beauties in every foot of that subterranean passage. But, at last, one of our party, not a woman, de- clared that he would go no farther; that it was positively dangerous to do so, and unjustifiable temerity, for we had now no string to lead us back to our lone candle ; in fact, he was fright- ened. But just as we were about to take his advice and turn back, Mr. C. exclaimed: "I see a light! We can get out here!" That was a most start- ling exclamation. What could it mean —is there another mouth to this cave ? No one has ever heard of such a thing. Or, possibly, there may be another party in the cave whose light we see. But that, too, is an incredible hypothesis, for this is a very solitary
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and unfrequented place, and we be- lieve ourselves to be pioneers in this exploration. But we quickly follow Mr. C., when lo, his great light proves to be nothing more or less than our own little candle faithfully illuminat- ing the lava around and the end of our string. But now we are more per- plexed than before. In all our march in this labyrinth we had our backs to the light, and here it is before us. How can this be? There is only one possible solution to this Chinese puz- zle or problem: We have traveled in a circle, or loop.
Then came the sobering thought : what if, from any cause, our candle had gone out? Then we should never have found the end of our string, and might have traveled around in that circle or loop until our strength was gone, and life itself have gone out like our light.
I have picked up a good many strings in life, and of many kinds, but never before and never since have I picked up any string of any kind with such unalloyed gratitude and pleasure as in that lonely, dark and deceitful cave of Kaumana. Theseus, when Ariadne gave him the clue by means of which he found his way out of the Labyrinth, was not more happy than we as once more we held the end of our twine.
However difficult and torturous the path before us might be, what care we : it will lead us back again into the blessed light; with that string in our hand we hold the Ariadne clue, and every step will infallibly lead us to the rectangular space where our rope-ladder is secured against the vine covered, flower gemmed, sun kissed wall, now to us as attractive as Para- dise.
GOLDENROD
Like brave, bold knights in armor clad,
And helmets fused with gold —
Your glittering spear-points amber-tipped
Light mountain, wood and wold.
You line your armies near the shore,
Though rugged cliffs loom gray,
And wave your shimmering banners high,
Where tawny sumachs sway.
The pine trees hurl their javelin points,
And cupless acorns fall,
But through the forest glades you march,
Undaunted by them all.
Then, when you pitch your yellow tents
By maple camp fires, red —
You taper all the kneeling flowers,
That pray about your bed.
AGNES LOCKHART HUGHES.
Vasco, the Bandit of the Pinnacles
By W. W. Canfield
POBRE VASQUEZ! Forgotten as he is by the world; a differ- ent life should he have lived, and would have, saving his im- petuous temperament. With a life sen- tence in place of hanging, the intrepid little bandit might have equaled the once famous outlaw — now respected — Bob Dalton. In their unsavory profes- sion the latter had no equal probably with the rifle, as was demonstrated in his last and famous bank raid, yet Vasquez would have cut a "broad swath" on the Orpheum Circuit in "17 minutes in Arizona" with his revolver and riata. Rightly said California's last and greatest cattle King, Henry Miller, of San Francisco, when the judge at San Jose sentenced the little Mexican to death: "That's too strong! Too much good in that man. I will give $20,000 if you give him life im- prisonment instead of the rope." Alas for Vasquez and the stern,' cold de- cisions of early days ; yet, then, it was better so.
At the age of nineteen Vasquez lived a quiet and respected social life in Monterey, and there at a ball com- mitted his first deed of lawlessness which fully warranted his subsequent fate. Yet there's good in the worst of men if we look for it.
The old capital, Monterey, was for Tiburcio Vasquez, on that memorable night, the starting point in his wild, lawless and romantic career, which forced him for his life's sake to be the pioneer of the coast mountain trails and finally as leader of his desperate band to repulse the posses from his Palasiades or "Pinnacle" stronghold. Brightly shone the lights in Monterey. The ball room was filled with dashing vaqueros and black-eyed senoritas.
Many were the spectators, Senora So- and-So with watchful eye, and cabal- leros from town and outlying ranches. It goes without saying that the sheriff was among the merry-makers to pre- serve order and to have a swing with- the dark-eyed beauties.
After the midnight fiesta of tamales, enchiladas, wine and stronger side drinks, Vasquez, all too conspicuous, became a mark for the sheriff, who warned him to be less noisy or leave the ball room. The little fellow re- sented the warning as an insult, where- upon the officer tried to force him to the door. "You are not man enough to put me out!" said the Mexican. The sheriff drew his gun, but Vasquez was too quick; a flash, a report, a dead man, and Vasquez, mounting, escaped to the bosom of nature, there to re- flect and to collect a few of like na- tures to his own, and he became from that time the leader of one of Califor- nia's strongest and most daring bandit gangs, making friends with the promi- nent cattle men of the outlying ranges, they can tell you why, on 'their part, and you, reader, would have known the wisdom of the friendship, had you been in their boots.
Tiburcio was no novice. He was at home in the saddle and knew the mountain trails from Sierra Madre to San Francisco, and across to the fast- nesses of the snow-capped Sierras, as we know the streets that bound our block. Brought up in comfort and lux- ury, Vasquez determined to continue in his wonted life of plenty.
Dropping down the trail early one afternoon from Loma Prieta, Vasquez alone drew rein at a wayside tavern south of Santa Cruz, only for a drink and to stock up with material for the
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native cigarritos. Restlessly champ- ing the bit, his horse pricked up his ears, and the eagle eye of his rider was ready as a horseman turned the corner and drew near. Peace settled over the features of the bandit — sim- ply an old acquaintance, and the usual greeting followed: "Que hay Tomas?" "Coma esta amigo?" (What's the news, and how are you?) Throwing his spurs by the veranda steps the old man remarked : "Alas ! Cuando yo era joven y tenia dinero me decian 'Como esta Don Tomas/ pero ahora que soy pobre y ya no tengo me dicen no mas Tomas." (Alas, when I was young and had plenty of money I was Don Tomas. They accosted me : "How do you do, Don Thomas." Now I am poor, my money all gone, I am only Tom.) The speech caused a laugh, and Vas- quez, after putting up for the drinks, gave a low whistle and his horse was ready at the steps leading to the bar- room. Something must be doing — "Adios amigos!"
One subordinate temporarily sta- tioned on "Moro Cojo" Rancho near Castroville was to be in Salinas at three in the afternoon by appointment, and now the valley road offered no shelter. Carelessly trusting to luck, the little Mexican rode to the suburbs of Salinas, meeting his confederate at the gate of Senora — who handed the pair a disguise of black whiskers. The men exchanged a few words in under- tones, commended the lady to God and turned into the main street, where their horses were stabled.
" PBueno y ahora que ?" (Well, now what?) Strolling into a prominent bar room, Vasquez sighted a familiar face from San Juan Bautista, a well-to-do merchant, Thomas McMahon, who at the moment was treating the house. Indiscreetly the San Juanite revealed too many "yellow boys," seven of which he slipped down his boot leg before leaving town at five o'clock. Two other men left soon after, without creating any disturbance. A strange armed rider or two coming in or leav- ing town in those days caused no more comment than a jitney on Market
street would to-day. Our belated trav- eler, on reaching the foot of the old San Juan, then called Monterey Grade, noticed two horsemen leisurely ap- proaching. It was dusk of evening — no one else in sight. Soon the jingling of spurs mingled with the song of crickets and chorus of the frogs on the stream below — the merchant became conscious of a nearer approach. Sud- denly a noose settled under his chin and a musical voice broke the stillness. "Good evening, Tom. I'm sorry to trouble you, but we would like to have what money you have." Vasquez, seated on his horse, was spokesman, and while the merchant's pockets were emptied by the other Mexican he had the usual drop. Lucky for Tom, his boots were not inspected. However, his ring and watch were demanded, as Vasquez said: "We like to know the time in the mountains, and let us have that overcoat, please. You can get another when you get in town. It's cold in the hills at night. Thank you very much, Tom. Good-evening to you!"
When ex-Sheriff John L. Matthews, of Monterey County, was a small boy he was sent on an errand up the San Benito River entrusted with forty dol- lars with which to pay for a cow pur- chased. Nearing noon, two horsemen overtook the lad, and as conversation warmed up, little John recognized in one of them the notorious Vasquez, so- liloquizing the while as to the fate of his two twenties. About noon-time, the Mexicans turned aside to the shade of some friendly live oaks, produced some bread and wine with a can of sardines, inviting the coming detective to partake of the repast, little dreaming that the lonely boy had what they were looking for, and doubtless in need of at the time. Shortly after lunch the three arrived at the "parting of the ways," and Johnny paid his bill with a grateful heart.
Leaders of the several bandit gangs in those days in the coast mountains of California used to scatter confed- erates at times to play good as va- queros on the cattle ranches, and some
Tiburcio Vasquez, early California bandit.
of them even went home (if they had one) into the towns. In this way they were enabled to gather information of value to their chiefs and keep them posted, also if searching parties were out — necessitating their retirement to the fastnesses of the mountains, to procure and deliver fresh meat and provisions to the camp.
Needless to name those cattle men in large outlying ranges, some of whom the writer has had the pleasure of knowing, whose ranch headquarters were often the scenes of hospitality to the bandits. At such times fresh horses were supplied to the members of re- treating bands ; in fact, before my day, the notorious Jack Powers with his men stayed over night in my father's
living room in San Juan Valley, dined, slept before the log fire, declining bed- rooms, and left like gentlemen early in the morning, offering to pay for the hospitality shown them. Later, when I adorned the cradle, Chavez and his men put up at our house for the night. At day break, as my father watched them wending their way through the glen on their way to a cut-off on the bid hill road to Santa Cruz, he caught sight of the approaching posse on their trail. Chavez could also, and did at least at times, play the part of a gentleman; and thus it was that by such kindness, or a greater one, per- haps, the Cattle King's life was saved by Vasquez, who was ready to pay the debt of gratitude even with his life.
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One Ruiz — with a force of subordi- nates— having got word through one of these that Mr. Miller was to leave Blookfield Farm (his private property on the Las Animas Grant south of Gil- roy in the Santa Clara Valley) on a certain date, to go by way of Pacheco Pass to the San Joaquin Canal Farm at the foot of the Sierras, to make first payment on said property of twenty- five thousand dollars, determined to hold up the cattle king on the summit, knowing about the time that old fur- coated "Buggy John" (Miller's famous driver) would draw rein at that point. Vasquez had also been informed, and determined to intercept Ruiz to save his benefactor of former days. What thoughts must have been in "Buggy John's" mind that cool morning as they ascended into the fog of the Pass. Be- fore that day he had had to draw rein to accommodate a lawless claim by two horsemen in the open plain nearing Firebaugh's Ferry. The fierce, cutting east wind as they approached the sum- mit, again and again forced back the driving fog till a swirling shroud en- veloped the mountain. What was in Mr. Miller's mind at this time? We who know him can imagine. Being a man of nerve, meeting danger as it came, he was reconciled to it; yet at this moment, contrary to the thoughts of his driver, he no doubt was thinking of his business, the volume of which would have addled the brains of a hundred common men. Mr. Miller is a man of few words but many thoughts. With all the attention personally paid by him to the voluminous affairs of the thousand and one ranches scattered over four States, his observation and attention to details has been marvelous.
Vasquez the while was hastening to the scene with four confederates. On reaching the summit he saw a solitary rig by the roadside. Was he too late ! The sound of rolling stones caught his sharp ears, and advancing to the edge of the canyon he saw and recognized Mr. Miller with his hands bound be- hind his back being led by Ruiz and his men. They had gotten but two hundred dollars, and the leader was
infuriated to the extent of taking his life.
"?Que va Ud. a hacer con este hombre?" (What are you going to do with this man?)
"?Que diablos le importa. Noso- tros solamente vamos por la Canada." (What the devil is it to you? We are only going down into the canyon.)
Riding down on their trail and up in front of Ruiz, Vasquez gave order for the Cattle King's release, then address- ing the prisoner: "Mr. Miller, you can go and get on your buggy. I will send two men to see you safe as far as Fire- baugh's Ferry." With his right hand convenient to his hip, addressing his adversary, the chief said: "Ruiz, you and I are outlaws together. I am no better than you, perhaps, and you are no better than me. I am not afraid to die. If you have anything against Mr. Miller settle it with me now." Ruiz was backed down with eight men against Vasquez with but two left. Wouldn't you, friend, in like circum- stances, have offered twenty thousand to save such a man from the gallows ?
One of Mr. Miller's most trusted va- queros operating at Las Animas most of the time during my boyhood days was a reformed hold-up, and the Cat- tle King turned him to the good.
As I said, "Buggy John" had to stop on the open plain in San Joaquin Val- ley when two Mexicans covered them. Said Mr. Miller: "You want money? I give you what I have, one thousand dollars." The two hold-ups were some distance out on the plain when "Buggy John" was told to turn round and over- take them. Approaching, Miller sig- naled the horsemen to stop. "I want to borrow ten dollars. I'll pay you back. I need it when I get to the ferry." One of the Mexicans handed over the eagle. Some two years later, Miller, in com- pany with Judge Tully on Main street in Gilroy, recognized the lender of the gold piece. Turning aside for the mo- ment, he beckoned to the vaquero. "Here, I owe you ten dollars." "I don't know you," was the rejoinder. "Yes you do ; you remember I borrowed this amount of you to cross the ferry in the
A group of bandit hunters.
Valley. Take it— don't be afraid." A month later the two met at Soap Lake. "How are you getting along?" said the Cattle King. "Well, Mr. Miller, I am broke and I want to go to work." "Go to the ranch, tell the foreman I s&nt you, and he will give you work." And work he did, handling cattle over the ranches and driving bands on the road till the call came to cross the Great Divide, sometime in the '80's. His ir- resistible impulse to hold up overcame him one day. To avoid a bad piece of the county road near Sargent, tempo- rary travel was made along the edge of Las Animas Grant. Orders were given to keep out the travel, and "Jesus," the vaquero, galloped up as Mark Re- gan, with the U. S. mail aboard his coach, took the field track. Nothing much was said, except by Mr. Regan, as the noose of the riata settled down on one of his leaders. Answering the complaint incident to the stopping of
the mail stage, Mr. Miller said : "I will spend ten thousand dollars to defend that man!"
Motoring comfortably on the four per cent scenic boulevard over the so- called San Juan Hill, the tourist of to- day little dreams of the perilous cross- ing over the mountain in early days. The first road crossed the summit west of the present road. In 1870 the sec- ond road was built, and Vasquez pa- trolled it, to the sorrow of more than one San Juanite. However, one good man outwitted him on the summit and beat him into Salinas. George Moore, Sr., it was, manager of the beautiful six league San Justo Ranch, near the Mission of San Juan Bautista. It was on the occasion of Mr. Moore's under- taking to purchase some sheep, by or- der of Flint, Bixby & Co., at Salinas. At a turn of the grade, Moore dodged the hissing riata, none too soon. Vas- quez wouldn't shoot, trusting to a sec- 6
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ond throw; but the San Justo horse won the "free for all" to the plains be- low, and on to town.
The noted Tres Finos raid by the Vasquez band aroused the whole coun- try. Three men were killed and some wounded, though it was said Tiburcio Vasquez shot only to subdue by wounding.
Vasquez's capture took place not a great way from Los Angeles, and the woman in the case cast the net. By her the sheriff was given the clue. The bandits remaining were known to be at a wayside tavern on a mountain road. The sheriff overhauled an old Mexican in the mountains who was driving home with a load of branch wood. Secreting himself back of the wagon seat under the wood the officer
ordered the old man to drive to the tav- ern and stop at the water trough in front of the bar room. As the horses pulled up to the watering place, the sheriff threw up his gun, covering the unsuspecting chief, and a running fight ensued. Vasquez, being wounded by the first shot, failed to reach his horse and went behind the bars for the rest of his natural life.
It has been said that Vasquez was a man of no great nerve ; I challenge that statement. He proved in his last mo- ments that such assertions were un- founded, for when the sheriff on duty clumsily adjusted the noose, Vasquez told him that the knot was poorly made — and he readjusted, with his own hands, the noose upon the rope that swung him into eternity.
THE PROSPECTOR
A slowly-moving speck against the dull, Forsaken, lonesome hills of desert gray —
A dream! A strike! A surge of youthful hope! The man and burro thread a pathless way.
The miner daily moves from camp to claim, And daily picks and pans and scans the dust,
As shuttles move when threadless, weaving not — Thus fades his gainless life and fails his crust.
The purple shadows creep upon the hills,
And noiseless night enshrouds his cabin home —
There passed within the desert's speechless depths A wasted life, that came, and went, alone.
L. W. BARTLETT
Miss Ina Coolbrith
Congress of Authors
and
Journalists
at the
Panama-Pacific
International
Exposition
By /Aarian Taylor
OH, HOW your wonderful city resembles Greece!" exclaimed a distinguished Eastern visitor recenty, as we motored through the Presidio to the Exposition. "There is the same sapphire sky, the same beautiful marine view. Yes, and even some delightful flat-roofed houses by the waterside to complete the picture of Athens."
This being so, then San Francisco provided just the right setting for the recent presentation of "The Trojan Women" — Euripides' great tragedy, so poignant in its appeal to the emotions, and its twentieth century application — and for the unique and uplifting cere- mony of crowning Ina Donna Cool- brith Poet-Laureate of California.
The latter, though the revival of an ancient Greek custom, marked an epoch, it being the first time such an honor had been conferred upon a wo- man. The splendid idea originated
with a San Francisco poet, Richard E. White, who communicated it to his fel- low members of the California Litera- ture Association, where it met with instant favor, and whence it spread to all classes, culminating in the inspiring investiture of June 30, 1915.
In keeping with the dignity of the occasion, Senator James D. Phelan, Mr. Arthur Arlett and President Ben- jamin Ide Wheeler represented in their order, the United States, the State of California, and the University of Cali- fornia.
Senator Phelan, in his eloquent ad- dress, referred to Ina Coolbrith as one whom Bret Harte, her associate of early days, had called "the sweetest note in California literature." He said of her work : "She has not flooded the press with her compositions. She has written little, but that little is great. It is of the purest quality, finished and perfect, as well as full of feeling and
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Charles F. Lummis. (From an unfin- ished bust by Julia Bracker Wendt).
thought. She has never given her fine talents to an unworthy cause, nor written a word that she need ever wish to recall."
In emphasis of the poet's high call- ing, Edwin Markham next gave a most eloquent address on "The Saving Power of Poetry." He said in brief: "The poet points away from the sel- fish, ephemeral concerns to the higher issues of life and death. He thunders his averments that to be something is more than to get something; that to make a life is more than to make a living; that we must put back into the world more than we take out of it ; that we are all the conscripts of an unseen Kingdom, the Comrade Kingdom that is to come."
It was a magnificent protest against materialism, and will long be remem- bered as a noble and fitting prelude to the crowning of one who has ever kept her gift spotless and undefiled.
Eyes were wet throughout the large audience as the chairman, Dr. Benja- min Ide Wheeler, stepped toward Miss Coolbrith with the laurel wreath, say-
ing: "Upon thee, Ina Coolbrith, by common consent of all the guild of those that write — upon thee, sole living representative of the golden age of California letters, coadjutor and col- league of the great spirit of that age, thyself well worthy by natural and in- herent rights to hold place in their for- ward rank, upon thee I lay this poet's crown and name thee our California Poet-Laureate."
Clad in a handsome dress of black satin, touched with the rich gold of the copa de oro and fashioned by loving hands, the stately lady stood for a mo- ment before the hushed and reverent people — who had, with one accord, risen to their feet — and, in a voice broken with emotion, made reply: "Anything I have done has been a labor of love."
The Governor's representative came next, with felicitations most happily expressed, and then the writer had the honor of speaking on behalf of the Pacific Coast Women's Press Associa- tion— of which she is a charter mem- ber— and of presenting a basket of roses from her associates. Charles A. Murdock followed, with an able paper on Bret Harte; Charles Phillips read Miss Coolbrith's Bret Harte poem, of which Edwin Markham says : "Nothing more finished has ever come out of our golden land," and Yoeth Eldredge, the California historian, made a speech that delighted everybody.
One of the lovely incidents of the afternoon occurred when Miss Cool- brith, extending her hand toward the floral offerings heaped beside her, said, "There is one woman here with whom I would share these flowers," and Mrs, Josephine Clifford McCracken, of Santa Cruz, was led forward to the platform — that veteran writer who was associated with her in the early days of the Overland Monthly, and who writes for the magazine still. It was a dramatic moment and one supremely touching. Resting against the wall was the picture of Bret Harte, and in her modesty and loyalty, the Poet-Lau- reate was not content without sharing her honors, as it were, with both "the
CONGRESS OF AUTHORS AND JOURNALISTS
441
quick and the dead."
It recalled another scene, one equal- ly striking and worthy of record, set in the month of May, 1914, at the Ebell Club, Oakland. Mrs. C. W. Kinsey, who is chairman of the California History and Landmarks' Section, had invited Miss Coolbrith to give an address. True, as ever, to the memory of her old friends and associates, she chose the subject of Charles Warren Stoddard, delighting the audience with her personal reminiscences. It was her first visit to Oakland in years, and she received an ovation, the Chatau- qua salute mingling with the hand- clapping. But the climax was reached when Mrs. Kinsey stepped forward, her face aglow with tenderness, and presented a bouquet of lilies of the valley to Miss Coolbrith, quoting, as she did so, the poet's own lines in "Blossom Time:"
the love my heart would speak I will fold in the lily's rim."
A wave of emotion passed over the audience, causing tears to spring to many eyes. The Oakland Coolbrith day will be remembered, and that in- cident, linking 1914 with 1915, places .on the walls of memory a picture that will never fade.
As the Overland Monthly is calling attention to the life and works of Bret Harte, its founder, this Exposition year, special interest attaches to the valuable paper of his old friend, Chas. A. Murdock, who knew him when he was a struggling young man, and who kept in touch with him until Harte left 'California in 1871. He briefly sketched his life and career up to the time he went to Humboldt County, where he became a printer and associate editor of the "Northern Californian." His personal reminiscences were interest- Ing, picturing a young 'man of refine- ment and good breeding, well educated, kindly, humorous, reserved, willing to do, but somewhat helpless.
"There seemed no place for him, since he was untrained for doing any- thing that needed doing in that com-
Edwin Markham
munity/' said Mr. Murdock. "Learn- ing to set type in a printing office was the solution of the problem. When he returned to San Francisco he found employment on the 'Golden Era' as a compositor, but was soon transferred to the editorial department, where he was paid a dollar a column for his prose and poetry. He soon attracted notice and won the friendship of Starr King arid Jessie Benton Fremont. Robert E. Swain made him his private secre- tary. From the 'Golden Era' he went to the 'Californian/ and in 1868 to the 'Overland Monthly/
" 'The Luck of Roaring Camp* gave him his first great popularity, which was well sustained by his other stories and sketches, and by his humorous and patriotic poems. In 1870 his 'Heathen Chinee' gave him world-wide recogni- tion, and he left California hoping to realize on his reputation. For eight years he wrote and lectured with vary- ing success. He then went abroad as consular agent, spending seven years in Germany and Scotland, afterwards living seventeen years in England, pa-
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Exterior of her home, Russian Hill
thetically alone, writing to the last, but with lessened power.
"The Riverside edition of his works comprises nineteen volumes. He painted pictures of life in matchless beauty, and that is his great service. California failing to honor him suffers loss. He should be cherished as her early interpreter, if not her spirit's dis- coverer. He is the representative fig- ure of California, and deserves to be held in grateful memory."
The idea of the Congress of Authors and Journalists originated with Mrs. I. Lowenberg, past president of the Pa- cific Coast Women's Press Association and member of the Women's Board of the Exposition. Its committee included the leading men and women in the do- main of literature, as well as the heads of the two California Universities. Miss Ina Coolbrith, president of the Pacific Coast Women's Press Associa- tion— under the auspices of which the Congress was held — was appointed President, and at once began the her- culean task of sending out more than four thousand invitations to writers
and journalists all over the world.
There were acceptances from such authors as John Galsworthy, Robert Hichens, Hall Caine, Anthony Hope, Sarah Grand, Albert Kinross (editor of the London "Outlook"), Lord Cur- zon, Beatrice Harraden, Louise Imogen Guiney, Sir Arthur Pinero and others, numbering about a thousand in all; but, alas! war robbed us of the privi- lege of their presence. In spite of this, however, the Congress was an unqualified success, and was attended by a few from abroad, some from Eastern and Northern States, and by a large number of Californians.
All the sessions were held in Hall D, Exposition Auditorium — with the exception of the last one, which was transferred to Recital Hall, Exposition Grounds — the Congress extending from Tuesday, June 29th, to Friday, July 2d, inclusive. Three ladies alter- nated in the chair, Miss Coolbrith and Mesdames I. Lowenberg and Laura Y. Pinney, each one filling the place with dignity and ability; the president giv- ing, in addition, a most excellent open- ing address.
The subjects dealt with embraced the literature of all nations; the pre- liminary speaker being Mr. James A. Barr, director of Congresses, P. P. I. E., who in the course of his address stated that the very first application sent in to him was that of the Con- gress of Authors and Journalists. Mrs. North-Whitcomb followed, with a most schalcrly paper on "Norse Litera- ture," tracing it from ancient to mod- ern times, and stirring one by the strength and beauty of her presenta- tion. Sin Lun, ex-Speaker of the Chi- nese Senate, next gave an exceedingly comprehensive outline of "Chinese Literature" — a subject with which the majority are unfamiliar — and Dr. Ed- ward Robeson Taylor, Dean of Hast- ings College of the Law, in a fine paper on "The Value of Poetry," said among other things :
"The poet must come to feel in the very bones of him that there are other things than dollars; other things than material splendor; than wasteful lux-
Living room, Miss Coolbrith's home, San Francisco
ury; and that while the materialities are not to be despised, and are indeed necessary, yet the springs of life which poetry feels are the real springs of one spiritual being, the foundation of all saving service, and the true source of every regeneration. When we become absorbed in externals we lose sight of the internals, of those spiritualities in and by which we are made one with the Divine Mind."
At the afternoon session, Redfern Mason, the well known music critic, gave a most illuminating address on the "Song Lore of Ireland," with ex- quisite violin illustrations by Hother Wismer. Sweetest, perhaps, of all, was the fairy music given in connec- tion with the Celtic story of "Mider and Etain," a story that gave Wm. But- ler Yeats his "Land of Heart's De- sire."
The next subject was "The Secret of Successful Dreams," by Richard Walton Tully, who analyzed it from the days of Aristotle to the present time, and incidentally proved himself
an eloquent extemporaneous speaker as well. He seemed to think that the poet has a much easier time than the dramatist, stating that it takes all the divine attributes and emotions, as well as a year and a half of hard labor to produce a successful drama. As this handsome, modern, altogether up-to- date young man delved into the past and traced the drama down through the ages, we could not help thinking:
"It's a long, long way to Aristotle* But our 'Dick's' right there!"
Spain was the theme that followed,, Professor Espinosa, of Stanford Uni- versity, reading a paper on "The Na- tional Spanish Drama," reviewing it from the days of Lope de Vega to the present century. One of the notable points he made was that Cervantes, famous for his "Don Quixote," was universal rather than national.
Gertrude Atherton's paper, "Liter- ary Merchandise" — read by T. Coch- ran, in her absence — was a direct at-
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
tack on the inferior quality of many of the contributions to periodicals. She said there should be a special editor to regulate the slipshod English of our magazines, which may be specified as split infinitives, vulgarisms and grammatical errors. "These may be found," she said, "even among writers who are receiving incomes almost as large as that of the President of the United States."
On the second day, Yoeth Eldredge — who is a veritable mine of informa- tion concerning things Californian, and who is as modest as he is wise — gave a most interesting paper on "The Gene- sis of California History." He was followed by Professor William Dallam Armes, of the University of Califor- nia, on "The Beginnings of California Literature," who said, among other things : "The old devil may care, free- hearted California is passing away rapidly, and with it is passing the old literature of Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Ina Coolbrith, Joaquin Miller and others of the golden era. Since 1890, others have entered the field with dif- ferent subjects and styles, but they are all imitations of the free, spontane- ous and simple craftsmen of the old days. They are poseurs and nothing more."
Charles Phillips, editor, author and playwright, next gave a masterly re- view of California poets and their work. We cannot conceive of a finer handling of the subject, but then he is a poet himself, though modesty pre- vented mention of the fact. We were glad indeed to hear his appreciative reference to Joaquin Miller and others who have "crossed the bar."
Herbert Bashford, poet and journal- ist, concluded the morning session with a most enlightening paper on "The Sonnet in American Literature," in which he classed Dr. Edward Robe- son Taylor as the finest sonnet writer in America. Mr. Bashford's genial personality and analytical mind made this subject one of the treats of the Congress.
On the third day, Takuma Kuroda, art critic and author, was heard on the
interesting theme of "Japanese Litera- ture," and Professor Frank E. Hill, of Stanford University, ably defined "Free Rhythm," mentioning that the trend of the present day is toward sim- ple, direct speech and the elimination of set forms.
Mrs. Harriet Lothrop, author of "Five Little Peppers," and whose pen- name is "Margaret Sidney," next gave personal reminiscences of Nathaniel Hawthorne in a paper entitled "Haw- thorne in Old Concord and Home," which proved very interesting, owing to the fact that "Wayside," his old home in the former city, is now Mrs. Lothrop's property and occupied by her in summer-time, her winters being spent in Boston. The morning session concluded with a paper by the writer on "Stratford and the Shakespeare Festival."
The afternoon session commenced with an address of unusual interest by Rabbi A. Meyer, Ph. D., on "Some Medieval Jewish Poets," in which he said: "Jewish people are thought to be without humor, whereas they not only have a keen perception of human character, but possess, also, a great deal of humor, one might well say wit." In proof of his statement, the Rabbi — who is a forceful speaker — gave examples of wit and humor in Jewish poets, medieval and modern.
Professor R. M. Alden, of Stanford University, followed with a very timely paper on "The Victorians and Contemporary Literature," during the reading of which he scored what he termed the self-dubbed "modern writer," who holds the writers of the Victorian era in amused contempt be- cause of their old-fashioned views of life and their more ponderous style, which seem in direct contrast to the present-day liberality of sentiment and freedom of expression. "But," he added, with splendid sarcasm, "the modern writer will be as great as those of the Victorian era only when he can write as well."
P. E. Quinn, Commissioner foi New South Wales, brother of one of Aus- tralia's best poets and a poet himself,
I
Miss Ina Coolbrith, 1894
in his subject, "The Poetry of a New Continent," performed a real service for his country. We have become so accustomed to thinking of Australia as merely agricultural that his excel- lent address was both enlightening and instructive.
Alfred E. Acklom, editor and poet, should be congratulated on his choice of subject and on the able manner in which he handled it: "Are Poets Un- practical." In the course of answering
that question he said: "Society con- ceives a poet as an utterly unpractical being with his head in the clouds, but this is not really the case. In the ma- ture periods of each civilization poets have evolved from the crude bard of the harp to an artist." Mr. Acklom's main argument was that the habits of concentration and condensation, with the tricks of the rhymster added, de- veloped the "divine afflatus" into an art, and in the process made the poet
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practical, even in a sense, business- like; the development being accentu- ated by the pangs of hunger caused by the insufficient compensation.
As instances of poets who showed practicality by acquiring fortunes and holding responsible positions, Mr. Acklom gave the names of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Addison, Sam- uel Johnson, Southey, Byron, Sir Wal- ter Scott, James Russell Lowell, Wm. Cullen Bryant, John Greenleaf Whit- tier, Dr. Wendell Holmes, Longfellow, Stedman, Joaquin Miller and others.
A paper by Charles F. Lummis, sci- entist, historian, naturalist, one-time editor of "Out West," and former city librarian of Los Angeles, created a mild sensation, even though read by kindly Yoeth Eldredge. It was the genuine pill of the Congress without any sugar coating. In it he said : "The clink of coin and rustle of the check is drowning the still, small voice which was once the only song that Art could hear. What ails us is pathological as well as psychological. American art of all sorts has developed nervous in- digestion. Worse still, it has fallen victim to the complications of our so- cial hyperaesthesia along with our manners, our poise and our humanity."
At the last session, held in Recital Hall, P. P. I. E., a commemorative bronze plaque was presented to the Congress by Commissioner Vogelsang, and Mrs. North- Whitcomb gave a comprehensive review of the Pacific Coast Women's Press Association, the members of which make moral and intellectual worth, instead of social status, the criterion in their judgment bf each other — surely a most com- mendable rule. Among other things, Mrs. Whitcomb said that no other State has sent forth such an array of brilliant men and women in all walks of life as California, and as she gave name after name, applause greeted her.
It was a delightful program. Mrs. Vincent Cator, Sen., recited Dr. Ed- ward Robeson Taylor's Exposition poem, and the author, being called to the platform, paid a tribute to Miss Coolbrith, saying of her that she is a
born lyricist, that her "Perfect Day" is a perfect poem, and that her "Cali- fornia" will have a lasting fame. Chas. Phillips then read the latter with much expression, and two of Miss Cool- brith's songs were sung, "In Blossom Time," by a sweet-voiced choir boy, and "Quest," by Professor Hervey of New York, accompanied, with great expression, by Herbert Bashford's gifted daughter.
The social features of the Congress began with a reception in honor of Senator James D. Phelan on June 15th, a date that marked the opening of the club headquarters in the Forum Club, and on which occasion there was an ex- cellent program by professional talent, with Mrs. Charles H. Smith in charge.
The second gala evening was on June 28th, when a Spanish-California Fiesta was held in the Cuban Pavilion by the kind courtesy of General En- rique Loynay del Castillo, Commis- sioner General of Cuba, who shared the honor of receiving with Miss Coolbrith and the officers of the Women's Press Association.
What a charming host he made, this hero of eighty-seven battles, who is poet as well as soldier — and with what lavish hospitality he entertained ! Long will the brilliant scene be remembered as something akin to an Arabian night's dream. It must have recalled to Miss Coolbrith that red-letter night of her girlhood, when she was the chosen one to open a ball in Los An- geles, with Don Pio Pico, the first Governor of California.
There was a wonderful program un- der the management of Mrs. Augusta Borle, whose splendid training of the group of young ladies and gentlemen of Alameda revealed itself in Spanish songs and dances that aroused enthu- siasm. She also secured the services of several well known professionals, including Senorita Flora Mora, the gifted Cuban pianiste, who has ap- peared before the King and Queen of Spain.
The closing function of the Congress was a dramatic recital at the Sorosis Club under the able management of
Group of Alameda young folks who were drilled by Mrs. Augusta Borle in Spanish songs and dances that aroused great enthusiasm
Mrs. Eugene H. Folsom, when Miss Daisie Kimball Adams gave a very re- markable interpretation of Oscar Wilde's version of "The Tragedy of Salome," and Miss Anita Peters- Wright revealed her artistry in "The Dance of the Seven Veils."
The lights are out, and the last lin- gering farewells have been said, but the lesson learned, and the friendships formed, remain with us, to lead us to higher ideals, and to strengthen us for better service in the days that are to come.
Ina Coolbrith Invested With Poets'
Crown
By Josephine Clifford AcCrackin
among the grand celebra- tions that have occurred in Cali- fornia through and together with the Panama-Pacific International Exposition was Ina Coolbrith Day, -during the week of Authors' and Jour- nalists' Congress in San Francisco.
The Pacific Coast Womens' Press Association, of which Ina Coolbrith is President, had extended thousands of invitations, to every part of the Union .and across seas, to writers and jour- nalists to attend the Congress, of which Miss Coolbrith was president, Mrs. I. Lowenberg past-president of the P. C. W. P. A., was vice-president, and Mrs. L. Y. Pinney second vice-president. Mrs. Gertrude Atherton was vice-presi- dent at large.
The sessions of the Congress of Au- thors and Journalists were held in the Exposition Auditorium, and on the af- ternoon of the day on which Ina Cool- iDrith was to be crowned queen, one of the largest halls in the building was filled to overflowing. And as the early ""Overland Monthly" had mirrored faithfully the work and the literary status of every contributor to its pages, I think it of interest to the readers of this latter day "Overland Monthly" to find chronicled the names of those dis- tinguished in literature, art and learn- ing, who had contributed to the success of the week of Authors and Journalists' 'Congress, and witnessed the historical episode of the crowning of the poet who had made glorious the pages of Bret Harte's "Overland."
On June 29, 1915, Miss Coolbrith, as president, spoke her greeting to the Congress, and was followed in an ad-
dress by James A. Barr, Director of Congresses, Panama-Pacific Interna- tional Exposition. Mrs. M. E. North- Whitcomb next read a paper on Norse Literature, and Sin Lun, ex-Speaker of the Chinese Senate, spoke on "The In- fluences of Chinese Literature on the Political Development of the Coun- try." Doctor Edward Robeson Taylor, Dean of Hasting's College of the Law, closed the session with an eloquent ad- dress emphasizing the "Value of Poetry."
The next session was presided over by Mrs. Lowenberg, and opened with Redfern Mason's discourse on "Song Lore of Ireland." He was followed by Richard Walton Tully, who could well speak on "The Secret of Successful Drama." Professor Aurelio M. Espi- nosa, Department Romanic Languages, Stanford University, spoke on "The National Spanish Drama," and Ger- trude Atherton's paper on "Literary Merchandise" was read by T. Cochran.
On Wednesday morning Charles Phillips, poet, read Ina Coolbrith's "California," and Zoeth S. Eldredge "Author Beginnings of San Fran- cisco," presented the "Genesis of Cali- fornia History;" and Professor Wm. Dallam Armes, University of Califor- nia, spoke on "Beginnings of Califor- nia Literature;" Herbert Bashford, "The Sonnet in American Literature."
At another session, Mrs. Pinney pre- siding, Takuma Kuroda, Japanese Art Critic and Author, presented a paper on "General Idea of Japanese Litera- ture;" Professor Frank E. Hill, of Stanford University, spoke on "Free Rhythm in Modern Poetry," and Chas.
INA COOL3RITH INVESTED WITH POETS' CROWN
449
Mrs. Josephine Clifford McCracken
Lummis asked "What's the Matter With California Literature?" Mrs. Marian Taylor closed the session with a very able paper on "Stratford and the Shakespeare Festival."
At the next session, Martin A. Meyer, Ph.D., Rabbi Temple Emanuel, had for his theme "Some Mediaeval Jewish Poets." Professor Raymond Macdonald Alden, Stanford Univer- sity, spoke on "The Victorians and Contemporary Literature." Harriet M. Lpthrop (pen name Margaret Sid- ney) spoke of "Hawthorne in Old Con- cord and Rome." P. E. Quinn, Com- missioner for Government of N. S. W., Australia, to P. P. I. E., spoke on "Poetry of a New Continent," and A. E. Acklom propounded the question "Are Poets Unpractical?"
The session in which Ina Coolbrith was invested with the poet's crown was presided over by Dr. Benjamin Ide Wheeler, President University of California.
If I have seemed pedantic in my re- cital of the subjects that were pre- sented in papers and addresses at the Congress of Authors and Journalists,
held under the auspices of the Pacific Coast Women's Press Association, during the Panama-Pacific Interna- tional Exposition, 1915; and have been particular to mention the names of those who were distinguished by an invitation to appear before this most critical audience of authors and jour- nalists assembled from near and far, it is because I feel the responsibility of the chronicler in contributing to the history of California literature this memorable event in the life of Ina Coolbrith, the sweetest songstress on Pacific shores.
From the day that Miss Coolbrith, the slender, graceful girl, whose face held an expression too serious for her years, was presented to me, the more mature woman, her dark eyes haunted me, for I could not understand the shadow in their depths. It was in the Clay street office of the "Overland Monthly," to which I still felt a stranger, as I felt to Bret Harte, who introduced us; and I learned then of the friendship that had already bound the three together, Ina Coolbrith, Charles Warren Stoddard, and Bret Harte— the Golden Gate Trinity. It was through Stoddard, whom we all called Charley, that I learned later of the heavy burden borne on this girl's shoulders; borne without a mur- mur, for it was her mother first who leaned upon her; later her sister, and then her sister's children. She had never had time to think of happiness for herself. But what the poet lost the world has gained; and only once the bitterness that would have marred a lesser poet's verse, finds words that seem to have been written while the scalding tears dropped on the score, "The Years." I, too, have felt the scalding tears fall from my eyes.
In something written about the early "Overland" people, I had said of the poetess that she was like a butterfly, to be shielded and watched over, that no rude hand might brush the bloom from its wings. And when a mutual friend read the paper to her, she spoke sadly, "a butterfly, crushed, and with its wings broken."
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There are two German poets to whom I have compared Ina Coolbrith ; Joseph Victor von Scheffel, and T. Resa, which latter is the non de plume of a very gifted woman. In Scheffel's "Frau Aventiure," in his songs of Heinrich von Otterdingen, she might have written "Am Traunsee," "Sch- weigsam treibt mein morscher Ein- baum," or the lines that close the gay "Tanzweisen" : "Im Garten der Non- nen." And when I add that Resa's "Zweifel" might have been translated from our own poetess, I have given words to the deepest admiration I could feel.
And so I hastened to San Francisco from my Santa Cruz home, to do honor to the crowning of Ina Coolbrith. The greatest and the noblest of the land paid tribute to her: Governor Johnson had deputized Arthur Arlett to repre- sent him; Senator James D. Phelan, man of letters, honored her; Edwin Markham, Zoeth Eldredge, Charles Phillips, Charles A. Murdock and Pres- ident Wheeler in the chair.
From the platform, Mr. Mur- dock read his paper on Bret Harte, a most fitting introduction to the cere- mony of crowning the friend and ad- visor of the illustrious writer.
I had but a few hours to stay in San Francisco, and I had come for just this ceremony, so I had at once proceeded to the Exposition Auditor- ium. I had been a stranger to San Francisco for long years, but a dozen hands were stretched out in greeting to me as I entered, and a seat was se- lected for me near the stage. Miss Coolbrith, I was told, had not yet come, so I paid close attention to the paper read.
Then the reading stopped, there seemed a stir in the audience, and sud- denly I felt a hand on my shoulder and some one said : "Jo !" My impulse was to jump up and throw my arms around her neck, but remembering where we were, I could say only : "Ina — oh, Ina!" And as I drew her hand to my lips, I felt I was sobbing; and in my heart there was bitter pain to-
gether with rejoicing, for I kept say- ing to myself, "The Years," "The years, what have they brought to both of us?"
Then she moved on, a stately figure robed in black, but with a sash in which was worked a garland of the Copa de Oro, the flower adopted as emblem by the Pacific Coast Women's Press Association.
Senator Phelan, the Californian, had now spoken, and in his usual brilliant manner had paid his tribute to the queen to be crowned ; and then Mr. Ar- lett told of the admiration Governor Johnson entertained for the Queen Poetess of California. President Wheeler, amidst enthusiastic applause, waving of handkerchiefs and hearty cheers, presented the wreath of laurel to Ina Coolbrith> who, overcome with emotion first, formed fitting words with which to fill the reverent silence that had fallen.
The stage was banked with flowers ; the most beautiful of all the beautiful flowers California offers, were laid at Ina Coolbrith's feet. In front of their President the members of the Pacific Coast Women's Press Association had placed a basked filled with dark red roses and delicate fern; and touching these, Ina Coolbrith spoke, and what she said fell on my ear as in a dream, and like a dream it seemed when the gentlemen led me to the stage, and I stood beside Ina Coolbrith and she clasped my hand; and what she had said was still like a dream, though she spoke clearly and distinctly. And the words will still sound in my ears when I cross the Great River, for she said: "There is one woman here with whom I want to share these honors, Josephine Clifford McCrackin. For we are linked together, the last two living members of Bret Harte's staff of 'Overland' writers."
And standing in the reflected glory of the star that had shed lustre over the pages of Bret Harte's "Overland," who can wonder that I too felt the pride of having held a place in its pages.
The Pigeons
Panama
California
Exposition
at
San Diego
By
Lewis H. Falk
AN ALL-YEAR visitor to San Diego wrote back East as fol- lows : "The strangest thing here is that electric fans and coal scuttles are passe."
All of which is a reminder that in building an Exposition Beautiful in a land where climate allows the most extraordinary feats of landscape ar- chitecture, the Panama-California Ex- position at San Diego has not confined its efforts to passing sensation. It has built its exhibits with a view to pre- senting in striking form the resources of the American West — resources de- veloped to show what has been done; resources undeveloped, to show what remains to be done. This feature, per- haps the most noteworthy from the viewpoint of permanent economic ad- vantage, is set forth in a way that is destined to appeal with gripping force to banker, to manufacturer, to educa- tor, to settler, and even to the casual tourist. The tourist may come for amusement, but he is going away with an education.
It was announced soon after work was started on the San Diego Exposi- tion that a new idea would be intro-
duced. There was talk of "processes, not finished products." There were suggestions of showing progress made and progress still to be made. These were slogans. In themselves they con- veyed little information, but from these slogans have evolved some ideas which do convey information, ideas which are certain to have a mighty effect on the upbuilding of a Great West.
Statistics have been compiled con- cerning the hinterland of the West, vast sections of which are entirely un- developed, waiting for water to make crops possible, and for railroads to make marketing possible. The figures show what can be done in each of these sections, what each valley is best adapted to raise, what the gross pro- ducts should be, what the initial and what the operating cost will be. There is shown what will be the total expen- diture for lumber, for hardward, for roofing, for furniture, for implements.
Hence, the prospective settler can learn :
What it will cost him to get started.
What it will cost him to keep going, whatever his crops.
What his gross returns should be.
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Fourth of July Celebration. Children carrying flag
What his net, after all deductions, will be.
And the business man will learn :
What will be the probable farming population eventually in a given sec- tion.
What will be the value of products shipped out.
What will be the demand for manu- facturers of various sorts.
The tabulations are exhaustive, and have not yet been made public, but enough concerning them has been given out to indicate the serious char- acter of their purpose. Detailed analy- sis of these statistics is deferred. The mention of them is made to show that the Exposition looks to permanent effect.
Capital to develop the land is not the main requirement. More import- ant is the rallying of earnest, active men and women to take up the land, chiefly in small units, to put the pro- jected irrigation systems to use, to furnish long and short haul transpor- tation for the railroads, and to become a permanent factor in the West's de- velopment. These men and women are in the East. They know vaguely the farmer is profiting. They wish to go back to the land. They do not know, however, how. They do not know what they will find when they get back to the land. They have an idea that the labor is too arduous and that social life must be abandoned. The real
state of affairs has been outlined in the magazine articles and set forth in the government land shows — indoors. There have been no offerings of first land impressions.
This is where San Diego is different.
Near the north entrance of the grounds is a large reservation taken by the International Harvester Company. It is not a building in which is stand- ing machinery. It is an open tract, and on that growing tract will be shown the heavy machinery of the Harvester Company in actual operation. Your Eastern city man, who wants to go back to the land but is a bit timid, will see the tractor and the motor driven reapers at work. He will see one man and a machine doing in one-half day as much work as kept the old time farmer and five men busy for an entire week. He will see why the progres- sive farmer does not live in terror of weather changes. He will see why profits are large and expenses light.
His wife, walking through the Home Economy Building, will see that the same mechanical power which saves labor in the meadow also can be put to work in the kitchen and laundry and sewing room to relieve her of the ardu- ous labors she had feared.
By the Home Economy Building
PANAMA-CALIFORNIA EXPOSITION
453
By the Home Economy Building
Together husband and wife can go to the model small-unit farm, where a model bungalow is set in the center of an intensively cultivated area, where grow fruits and vegetables and cereals and poultry in the narrowest confines. The point is that they can see all this in operation. In a single day they can observe and study the demonstra- tion of facts that no amount of read- ing would ever make clear; and there is born the irresistible desire to go back to the land.
On the interior wall of each State building is placed a great contour map of the entire commonwealth. The vis- itor shows an interest in a particular exhibit of barley. A guide shows him on the map exactly where that barley was grown. The guide points out the nearest route to market, whether by highway or railroad. He describes what other crops can be raised with profit in that valley. He locates the nearest water supply, and points out the nearest school and church of the visitor's denomination. In other words the visitor can stand before that map and learn everything he can wish to know about any and every section of the State.
This is the economic aspect of San Diego's Exposition. It is a big mes- sage to give the world, and it is being delivered from a gorgeous stage. Pic- ture the impressions of a northern visi- tor who walks or rides up the slope to the 1,400 acre Balboa Park, in the heart of the city, glides down the lane of acacias, and crosses the great Pu- ente Cabrillo, close to 1,000 feet long, with its arches rising from the pool 135 feet below. He passes the rose trellised gateway, and — presto !
The hum of a thriving American city is gone. He has stepped backward three or four centuries, full into a city of old Spain, sprung by magic, domed, towered, castellated, from the top of the mesa. Dancing girls laugh at him from beside the fountains. Somber- clad monks stalk down the colonnades. Gaily attired caballeros saunter out from sunny prado and cool patio. Pig- eons flutter down from an antique tower by the Plaza de Panama in a shower of confetti. Crimson and gold and purple flowers clamber high over the walls of the missions and the pal- aces, all built in the beautiful style of the Spanish Colonial.
The delicious fragrance of the big citrus orchard, which is a spectacular exhibit of the Southern counties of California, floods the air. From the open plazas can be seen below the canyons filled with cypress and palm and eucalyptus, beyond the rolling hills and in the distance the snow capped peaks of California and old Mexico. To the west lies the Harbor of the Sun, then Coronado and Point Loma, and
In the Hawaiian village
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
Street scene on Broadway, San Diego, California
still further, the blue Pacific. It is a resplendent stage from which to de- liver a great message.
Convention bodies from every in- dustry and profession are rallying in force at the Exposition. Since Janu- ary 1st it has housed a veritable pot- pourri of personalities, the layman, the scientist, the scholar, the educator, and continuing on down to and even includ- ing the butcher, the baker and candle- stick maker.
With Europe's gates closed on ac- count of the war, the cosmopolite is an every-day visitor, and he declares: "Italy cannot boast of the sunshine ; your architecture does not suffer by comparison with that of the old world ;
your flora is like century old planting ; and in all of this you have associated that restful spirit that rejuvenates the vacationist." The Exposition, while not international in is scope, touches on the foreign countries sufficiently to furnish the visitor with a comprehen- sive travalogue in a sort of "vest pocket edition." He sees Japan, parts of South America, the Hawaiian vil- lage, while before him at every hand in science, literature and art is exem- plified the history and progress of the United States.
Diversity of the Exposition is one of its most appealing points. It is capable of entertaining a scientist who would determine the psychological ef- fect of music on flowers, and likewise it is interesting to one who would study the military, mining, agriculture or the 'evolution of man.
It has been written that "nothing succeeds like success," and this rather homely phrase is found in a receptive mood at San Diego's Exposition, with its gates thrown open January 1st, marking the beginning of the period in which the first all-year exposition in history will be held. The attendance has reached expectations. The million mark in attendance has long been passed, and the record is reaching out towards two million.
While San Diego takes much pride in its finished product, it derives great satisfaction when it reflects that at the
Spanish troubadours in front of Cali- fornia Building
A POEM OF PEACE 455
time this Exposition project was beaches are among the best on the launched it was a city of less than 40,- Pacific Coast; its automobile drives 000 inhabitants. To be exact, San are of boulevarded roads which con- Diego's population was 39,578, accord- tourenate through sylvan wilderness, ing to the Government's 1910 census, Its land-locked harbor is large enough and now this city, after building and to anchor the fleets of the world. Its fostering an Exposition of incompar- history is associated with the estab- able beauty and pronounced success, lishment of civilization on the Pacific has increased its population to 100,000. Coast, and its missions reverently re- Naturally, the Exposition — oft-times call the vistas of the good Fra Junipero referred to as the "Exposition Beauti- Serra in 1768. Truly San Diego has a ful," or "The Dream City on the Hill," diversified entertainment for its guests, is the magnet which is drawing thou- The effete Easterner, the open-handed sands each day to the city, which is the Westerner, the sentimental Southerner, farthest southwest in the United States, and the business going Northerner, Yet San Diego has something to offer gather within its gates and rejoice in aside from its big project. Its bathing the entertainment afforded.
A POE/A OF PEACE, OR THE SERRA OF AONTEREY
"He being dead — yet speaketh"
Nestled within green hills' embrace, O'erlooking hence the sparkling space Of her fair bay, lies Monterey,
Far famed in history. Long years ago Vizcaino came, He raised the cross, flags fluttering gay On Spanish ships, then sailed away. The cross remained; the glory passed; The vision fair had paled : at last It lived again; with mystic light, As Serra knelt, the cross shone bright.
He taught its motives blest
That peace and love are best : The vision fair abode in Monterey.
So long ago; yet surely still Serra looks down from yonder hill, A figure grand, with sculptured hand Upraised to bless that same fair land
He loved so well. Spirit of light, source of his might,
Revisit earth in power
And hasten the glad hour Of universal peace.
EMILY VINCENT WHITE.
NOTE.— The history of Monterey is closely linked with that of early days in California. Vizcaino first landed on the shore of the beautiful bay and raised there the cross. And when, one hundred and sixty-eight years later, Father Junipero Serra re-discovered Mon- terey, he addressed the Indians under the same old oak that still sheltered the cross.
Through the generosity of the late Mrs. Stanford, so widely known as the founder of the University of that name, a monument has been erected to the memory of Serra on Presidio Hill at Monterey. The following is a part of the inscription:
"In memory of Father Junipero Serra, a philanthropist seeking the welfare of the hum- blest, a hero, daring and ready to sacrifice himself for the good of his fellow-men, a faith- ful servant of the Master."
Church's Birth Due Now; World's Due Later — During /Millennium
By C. T. Russell
Pastor New York, Washington and Cleveland Temples and the Brooklyn and London Tabernacles
"Ye which have followed Me, in the regeneration when the Son of Man shall sit in the Throne of His Glory ye also shall sit upon Twelve Thrones."— Matthew 19:28.
NONE are members of the Church of Christ except the regenerate. This fact is emphasized by our Lord Jesus, to the effect: "Ye must be born again," if ye would be My disciples. This teaching has prac- tically disappeared from the pulpit, for the reason that the hearts of Christian people seem to be more tender than were those of their fathers; they can- not bear to think of the great mass of their relatives, friends and neighbors and of the heathen unregenerate as subjects for eternal torment at the hands of the Devil. Hence they ig- nore the Scriptural doctrine of regen- eration, and endeavor to convince themselves that it cannot be necessary; for they know many, many people not regenerated, who are deserving of a far better fate.
The difficulty met with in consider- ing this question is the same with which we so often meet on other ques- tions; namely, an error firmly held so biases the mind as to make Bible truths seem impossible. Now, how- ever, Bible students begin to see that there is a regeneration promised in the Bible for the world in the Millennium, quite separate and distinct from the regeneration now possible to the
saintly church. When we get the Bible focus upon the condition of the dead, and see that they are unconscious — or, as the Bible says, sleeping, wait- ing for the Resurrection Morn, when the world in general will be granted opportunities of regeneration, we see that the regeneration of the present time, that of the Little Flock, will not hinder the masses from regeneration by and by. On the contrary, the re- generated Church of the present time will be associated with Messiah in the regeneration of the world.
This puts a new aspect upon the whole matter. Those now being re- generated are an elect, or select, class. Not only have they a special love for righteousness and a special hatred for iniquity, but additionally they exer- cise a special faith in God and His promises. By means of these prom- ises and the trials and disciplines of life, these regenerates become espe- cially qualified for God's service now and hereafter.
Regenerated to Different Natures
Another item to be noticed is that the regenerating processes of the present time are with a view to bring- ing the Church class, the Elect of God, to a new nature. Their regeneration began when God imparted to them the Holy Spirit, following their full con- secration to His service in the name and merit of the Redeemer. The re-
CHURCH'S BIRTH DUE: WORLD'S DUE LATER
457
generative process continues during their lifetime, as they grow in grace, in knowledge and in love — in the char- acter likeness of God's dear Son. This means a transforming and renewing work, referred to by St Paul, saying: "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, by the purifying of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Spirit.— Titus 3:5.
No well informed person will dis- pute the fact that the regenerated con- stitute a very small proportion of man- kind— yea, that they constitute a very small proportion of the religious church membership. The Apostle re- fers to these, styling them New Crea- tures in Christ Jesus, and declares that to these "old things have passed away, and all things have become new" — new hopes, new aims, new ambitions, new desires, new affections. Such have been "transformed by the renew- ing of their minds." — 2 Corinthians 5:17; Romans 12:2.
New Creatures in Christ Jesus
Surely it is not an empty statement on the Apostle's part that all these re- generate ones are New Creatures in Christ Jesus. The Apostle, referring to this class, tells us that they have been begotten by the Holy Spirit through the Message of Truth. Again St. Peter says, God hath "given unto us (regenerates) exceeding great and precious promises; that by these we might become partakers of the Divine nature." (2 Peter 1:4.) There it is! — these by nature were humans; but God's grace in Christ, through this be- getting, they become of a different na- ture— "partakers of the Divine na- ture." In comparison with the world, therefore, these New Creatures — a fresh creation, entirely aside from the human family to which they once be- longed.
But the Scriptures everywhere re- mind us that the New Creation is merely an embryo and will not be per- fected until the resurrection. They in- form us also that some, by repudiating
their covenant with the Lord and turn- ing willfully to sin, may become sub- jects of the Second Death. They in- form us that many begotten of the Spirit may never attain the full meas- ure of their possibilities — may never become joint-heirs with Jesus Christ, their Lord. Because of slackness, worldly mindedness, they may attain only to a lower spiritual degree or na- ture— like unto the angels and not like unto the Son of God, who is the ex- press image of the Father's glorious Person.
We perceive, therefore, that the steps of consecration and spirit beget- ting are not trifling propositions, but serious ones; and that with this op- portunity of so great an exaltation go also conditions, limitations, trials, test- ings of faith and loyalty. "If we suf- fer with Him, we shall also reign with Him"— "be glorified together."— 2 Timothy 2:12; Romans 8:17.
"Sit on Twelve Thrones, Judging"
In our context the Redeemer assured His faithful Apostles that, after being tested, the worthy ones would be as- sociated with Himself in His Heavenly Kingdom — His Millennial Kingdom. These they would sit on twelve thrones judging or ruling. No doubt some special glory and honor is provided in God's great Plan for the twelve faith- ful Apostles — St. Paul taking the place of Judas. Nevertheless the Lord af- terward declared that all of His faith- ful followers would be granted a share with Him in His Millennial Kingdom and in His glory and power. Mark His words : "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me in My Throne" — I will give Him power over the nations" —the Gentiles.— Revelation 3 :21 ; 2:26.
This is doubly interesting to us : first because it is the reward of those who are now regenerated and who prove faithful to the spirit-begetting which they now receive — to those who even- tually shall be born of the Spirit in the First Resurrection. As every be- getting in the flesh must have a birth,
458
OVERLAND MONTHLY
else it will be valueless, so the be- getting of the Spirit must reach the culmination of the New Birth in the Resurrection. Jesus describes this Resurrection, saying, "Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the First Resurrection: on such the Second Death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years. —Revelation 20 :6.
But this is not all. The time when the Church will be reigning with Christ in His Kingdom glory will be the time of the world's regeneration — the Millennium. This is the lesson of our text, "Ye which have followed Me (in the narrow way of self-sacrifice in the present life), in the regeneration, when the Son of Man shall sit upon the Throne of His glory (during His Millennial Reign), ye shall sit upon twelve thrones." How plain! How simple ! How beautiful ! How grand ! Could any of the Lord's people who have experienced the purifying of their own hearts by the regenerating influ- ences of the Holy Spirit have a selfish or an unkind thought toward the un- regenerated world — so that they would object to the thought here presented! Would not all such, on the contrary, rejoice to know that the Heavenly Father has a Plan by which the non- elect of mankind may be regenerated in due time? We hold that this is true.
Selfishness and every desire to ex- clude others from blessings and favors which God has promised us signify so much of sin in control of the mind. Love not only thinketh no evil, but it hopeth all things, and is glad to find in God's Word various promises to the effect that all the families of the earth shall yet be blessed through the Spirit- ual Seed of Abraham — Christ and the Church.— Galatians 3:8; 16:29.
All Mankind Need Regeneration
Some may see that the Church need regenerating now, but fail to see the need of the world. They see that the Church's regeneration is necessary be-
cause "flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God" — we "must be born again." But there would be no Kingdom of God, there would be no Millennium, there would be no regen- eration of the world, if God purposed only the salvation of the Church. On the contrary, however, everywhere in the Bible God tells of His compassion toward the world, while telling of His particular love for the true Church, dear as the apple of His eye. — Zacha- riah 2:8.
Note that favorite text, "God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son, that whosoever believ- eth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John 3:16.) The whole world was loved of God. The whole world has been provided for in the glorious sacrifice of Jesus, and the whole world is to have the benefit re- sulting from that sacrifice. Christ's death is not in vain, nor merely for the Church, the Elect few. Through these Elect the great mass of mankind, non- elect and unfit for the Kingdom, are to be blessed — blessed with an opportu- nity for regeneration as men — not to a new nature, as the Church, but to the nature once assigned humanity, in the image of God, lost through sin.
The world's regeneration, therefore, will be to perfect human nature, lost in Adam, redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ's human life. Moreover, God's provision of Times of Regeneration — years of Regeneration — is ample — a a thousand years. Satan shall no longer be the prince of this world. At the beginning of Messiah's Reign, we have the assurance that he will be bound, restrained, that he may deceive the nations no more — that he may put light for darkness and darkness for light no more.
The great Life-Giver will provide the opportunity for regeneration to all the thousands of millions of our race who died in Adam and who were re- deemed to this opportunity for ever- lasting life through Messiah's death at Calvary. (1 Corinthians 15:21-23.) Ignorance and superstition, darkness and sin, will flee before the rising Sun
CHURCH'S BIRTH DUE: WORLD'S DUE LATER
459
of Righteousness, which will flood the earth with the knowledge of the glory of God. Then all mankind, whosoever will, shall have the opportunity of coming to a knowledge of God and of the way of life, and of being begotten again by the Life-Giver.
The regenerated Elect of this Age will have nothing to do with giving the life to the world. That life must come from the Life-Giver, who has secured the right to be the world's Everlasting Father by the sacrifice of Himself. But as Christ will be the Second Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45) to the world for its regeneration, so the Church will be the Second Eve, to nourish, to care for, to guide, direct, instruct, all the willing and obedient, desirous of com- ing back into harmony with God dur- ing the Millennial Age.
At the conclusion of that blessed Epoch of a thousand years, when all wilful sinners shall have been de- stroyed in the Second Death, the Rev- elator's words will be fulfilled — every creature in Heaven and on earth shall be heard saying, Praise, glory, honor, dominion and might be unto Him that sitteth upon the Throne and unto the Lamb, forever. There will be no dis- cordant note. God's will shall then be done upon earth, even as it is now done in Heaven; and the reward of His favor — everlasting life, with no sickness, sorrow nor pain — will then be with humanity, even as it is now with the angels.
Mankind's New Trial for Life
It should not be forgotten that Adam did not lose everlasting life. Although he had a perfect life and was free from all elements of death, nevertheless he was placed in Eden on probation to see whether by obedience to God he would develop a character in harmony with God, and so be accounted worthy of everlasting life. Consequently, when Adam and his posterity are redeemed from the curse of death, this salvation does not entitle them to life everlast- ing, but merely to a fresh trial as to worthiness of everlasting life.
This fresh trial will indeed be more favorable for Adam and his race in some respects than was Adam's ori- ginal trial, because of the large in- crease of knowledge. Man has had an opportunity to learn the lesson of the exceeding sinfulness of sin. He will soon have an opportunity to learn the blessedness of righteousness and to know of the grace of God in Christ, This knowledge will be of great ser- vice to all who will use it during the Millennial Age, when for a thousand years the whole world of mankind will be on trial for everlasting life before the great White Judgment Throne. — Revelation 20:11, 12.
God wills that all men should be saved, not only from the Adamic death sentence, but also from the ignorance 'and blindness with which Satan has darkened their minds. (2 Corinthians 4:4.) He wills that all should be so saved from the train of evils which has followed Adam's sin and its penalty of death, in order that they may come to a knowledge of the Truth. This He does to the intent that having a clear knowledge of the Truth they may make the very best possible use of the new trial for life secured for them by the Redeemer's Ransom-sacrifice. It is for this very purpose that the Mes- sianic Kingdom will be inaugurated, which will first bind Satan and then release mankind from their blindness, as it is written. (Isaiah 35:5.) For the same reason it is the Divine ar- rangement that the Kingdom work shall be done gradually and shall re- quire a thousand years for its com- pletion.
The Regeneration of Mankind
Throughout the Millenial Age it will be the work of Christ Jesus, as the Second Adam, to regenerate mankind. The regenerating influences will begin with their awakening from the sleep of death, in harmony with the Master's declaration, "The hour is coming in which all that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Sen of Man, and shall come forth."— John 5 :28, 29.
The coming forth from the tomb
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will be merely the beginning of the work of regeneration. It will be only a preparatory work. The awakened sleepers will be in the same condition of mind as when they fell asleep in death — in a very similar condition to those who will be living on the earth at that time. But before they can be regenerated they must be brought to a knowledge of the Truth. Their eyes and ears of understanding must be opened. This the Scriptures assure us shall be accomplished. "Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be un- stopped." "The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." — Isaiah 35:6; 11:9; Habakkuk 2:14.
The good news of Divine Love and of the possibilities of return to the fa- vor of God through the atoning work
of Jesus having then been clearly dem- onstrated to all, each one will have the opportunity of deciding for himself whether or not he desires to return to human perfection and the blessed priv- ileges of life everlasting. To do so he must be begotten again by the Life- Giver, who will beget again only those who are desirous of having the new life. All wilful rejectors of the oppor- tunity will die the Second Death. But those who accept the Savior's proposi- tion will come under the helpful and disciplinary experiences which will gradually lift them up to human per- fection— mental, moral and physical — to all that was lost for them in Adam's disobedience and that was regained for them by the Redeemer's obedience and the Divine arrangement of His Mes- sianic Kingdom for the regeneration of the world.
In the Realm of Bookland
"Undercurrents in American Politics/' by Arthur Twining Hadley, Ph. D., LL. D., President of Yale Univer- sity.
This unusually illuminating book is based on two lectures delivered by President Hadley. The Ford lecture shows how a great many organized ac- tivities of the community have been kept out of government control alto- gether ; the Virginia lectures, on Politi- cal Methods, show how those matters which were left in government hands have often been managed by very dif- ferent agencies from those which the framers of the Constitution intended. Both lectures were delivered at Ox- ford, England, in 1914. From them the casual reader of American history will glean a great deal of new and fruitful information regarding the de- velopment of the idea of democracy in this country and of the mental, social and political ideas which prevailed at the time the thirteen States cast their fortunes with the Federal Constitution in 1788. At that time, "neither the United States as a whole, nor any of
the commonwealths of which it was composed, was a democracy in the modern sense of the word. Ever since their original settlement, the political and social system of the English colo- nies in North America had been essen- tially aristocratic. Nowhere among them do we find universal suffrage. The right to vote was confined to tax- payers, and almost always to free- holders. The higher administrative officers were either appointed by the crown or elected by councils composed of a few of the richest and most influ- ential citizens. The man of small means and unconsidered ancestry had very little direct participation in the affairs of State."
A clear and succinct statement is given of the aristocratic form of gov- ernment, influenced by property hold- ings, which prevailed for many years. The first tide of democratic spirit swept over the country in the flaming patriotism which arose to meet the is- sues of the war of 1812. The next and final wave which ushered in the mod- ern spirit of democracy swept through the nation with the election of Jackson,
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Old Hickory, a shoemaker, and the first candidate of the common people to be elected to the highest office of the land. . This spirit was intensified and broadened by the opening of the western land to settlement. The stock of citizens born there knew nothing of the traditions and precedents of New England and the Southern States. Brains and character hewed their way to success, and the only form of gov- ernment they knew and recognized was in the democracy set forth in the clauses of the Declaration of Inde- pendence.
Along these lines the author traces the salient influences which have de- veloped this democracy, among them industrial property rights, the indus- trial unrest of the Civil War, the con- test between the shippers and the rail- way powers, and the serious move- ment towards State socialism.
In the chapters devoted to Political Methods, the author discusses the de- velopment of the growth of party ma- chinery and the good and bad influ- ences it has had in a Democracy where influential winds blow from many di- rections. Party machinery has passed through several stages since its incep- tion in this country, and the merits and weaknesses are shown. The extraor- dinary influences of Aaron Burr and Tammany Hall, dominant powers in nominations, are shown, and the sys- tem "to the victor belongs the spoils," inaugurated by Andrew Jackson. All the varying influences on the political game are set forth and criticised, from the days when a representative voted as he thought best down to the pres- ent day, when a representative is sup- posed to vote as his constituents wish. The reaction against the party ma- chine and the revolt of the grangers and other political protests which bridged the way to the Progressive movement, the initiative, referendum and recall, with all that those preg- nant movements manifested, are logi- cally explained and their merits dis- cussed.
Price, $1.35 net, postpaid. Published by Yale University Press, New Haven.
"An Art Philosopher's Cabinet : Being Salient Passages from the Works on Comparative Aesthetics of George Lansing Raymond, L. H. D., Former Professor of Aesthetic Criticism in Princeton University." Selected and Arranged According to Subject by Marion Mills Miller, Litt. D., Edi- tor of the Classics, Greek and Latin, etc.
Readers interested in the elements and relations of the arts will find in the wide range of this book much to illu- minate their understanding of the finer shades and co-relations. It is con- veniently paragraphed and arranged for this special purpose. Of George Lansing Raymond's system of art-in- terpretation there can be no question: it is at once critical and philosophical. Every reader of his books is impressed by the manner in whHi he resolves form existent in art into their essen- tial elements, and from these recon- structs the ideal forms; and a student who has examined his entire system will realize, as never before, the inter- relation of all the arts and their com- mon foundation on broad physical and physiological principles, which may be harmonized in a general aesthetic phil- osophy applicable to every branch of the subject. Professor Raymond is now living in Los Angeles, still delv- ing in his favorite line of work. For busy, every-day workers who have not the time to devote to the ?tudy of Pro- fessor Raymond's theory of art and its influences, this book will be of excep- tional value. Thirteen illustratons have been selected from the books of Professor Raymond on account of the self-explanatory testimony which they all furnish to the truth of one of the most important of his fundamental propositions. That is the primary and most useful endeavor of the imagina- tion when influenced by the artistic tendency is to form an image that is 'made to seem a unity by comparing and grouping together effects that, when seen or heard, are recognized to be wholly or partially alike.
Price, $1.50 net. Published by G. P, Putnam's Sons, New York.
I
PORTOLA'S CROSS
Pious Portola, journeying by land,
Reared high a cross upon the heathen strand,
Then far away Dragged his slow caravan to Monterey.
The mountains whispered to the valleys, "good!" The sun, slow sinking in the western flood,
Baptized in blood The holy standard of the Brotherhood.
The timid fog crept in across the sea,
Drew near, embraced it, and streamed far and free,
Saying: "O ye Gentiles and Heathens, this is truly He!"
All this the Heathen saw ; and when once more The holy Fathers touched the lonely shore —
Then covered o'er With shells and gifts — the cross their witness bore.
BRET HARTE
OVERLAND
Founded 1868
MONTHLY
BRET HARTE
VOL. LXVI
San Francisco, December, 1915
No. 6
Reminiscences
of Bret Harte
and
Pioneer Days in the West '
By /Ars. Josephine Clifford /AcCrackin
Mrs. Josephine Clifford McCrackin,
taken at the time she joined "Overland
Monthly" staff under Bret Harte
SEVERAL years ago, when the Sesnons celebrated the house- warming of their new residence on their old estate, Pino Alto, I was introduced to William Greer Har- rison. Looking at me in the most quiz- zical manner, he burst out laughing at last. "Why — good Lord!" he said.
"Mrs. McCrackin is Josephine Clifford, and I said she was dead!" "I know it," I made reply, "and I forgave you, and did not protest when I read the kind things you said about me."
Mr. Harrison is not the only writer who believed I was dead. But I am not only not dead, but have remained
After the big forest fire of October 8, 1899
true to my first love, the "Overland Monthly." It was only that I wrote under the new name I had acquired, and which, I flatter myself, I had in- troduced to California, at least, in quite a practical manner.
For nearly a quarter of a century the Santa Cruz Mountains were my home. Monte Paraiso Ranch had quite a for- est within its wide-spread lines ; and as there were many acres of fruit and grapes, I learned early in my ranch career how ruthless were the methods by which farmers destroyed their best friends, the birds. And together with a few women who were educated be- yond the stage of savagery that de- mands bird feathers for hat ornaments and the life of any bird that dared pick at a cherry, I entered the lists of bird protectors. The Ladies' Forest and Song Bird Protective Association was formed — the first organization of its kind in California.
That I wrote volumes, in every paper and magazine I could stick my pen into, I need hardly say; but it was under the name McCrackin. Nor need I add that I became the first woman member of the old California Game and Fish Protective Association.
"Who's Who in America," in volume VI tells about this, as well as about the part I took in saving the Big Basin, to-day the California Redwood Park. Most of all, I feel proud of the words of Mrs. Lovell White who, in her paper read before the audience gath- ered on Sempervirens Day, at the Panama-Pacific Exposition, said that "the initial step for the acquisition of this unparalleled piece of woods was taken by a woman, Mrs. Josephine Clifford McCrackin — on March 7th, 1900, by an appeal made to the people of California through the Santa Cruz Sentinel." She might have added the saving of the Redwoods was brought
Fort Wingate, New Mexico. Taken from the hill back of the Post
about by one of the tragedies which seem to dot my life, irregularly, but quite frequently.
A forest fire, lasting almost a week, October, 1899, in the Santa Cruz Mountains, had laid waste beautiful Monte Paraiso, among other valuable and highly cultivated ranches; and with the description of the forest fire the "Wide World" of London wanted pictures of California redwood trees. As the beauty of our forest had been destroyed — though the redwoods were not burned to death, A. P. Hill, whose name as photographer had already reached England, was engaged to pro- duce photographs of large redwood trees. Visiting the Big Trees near Santa Cruz, he was told by the man then owner that he would not be al- lowed to take pictures, as he, the owner, intended to cut the trees down in the course of the next season.
Mr. Hill was broken-hearted, and wrote me that we must do something to save the redwoods; and while he was ploughing his way into and
through the Big Basin, I was writing my appeal to the Californians to "Save the Redwoods!"
That became our slogan. And of all the famous people who were promi- nent in this fiercely fought fight, An- drew P. Hill will live forever in the heart and memory of the tree-loving people of the world.
Again I wrote volumes, under my name McCrackin; and I wrote other things, perhaps not of such practical value. But when the habit of story- telling has once fastened on a person it is not easily shaken off.
I had published my second book, "Another Juanita," in 1893, before the forest fire; but that Moloch had de- voured what few volumes I still owned of "Overland Tales," my first book, published in 1877, as well as the MSS. I had collected for a third volume.
But I had lost so many, many other things; everything was destroyed, ex- cept the memory of halcyon days at the ranch. At the time of the forest fire, Ambrose Bierce, Dr. Doyle — who
OVERLAND MONTHLY
Herman Scheffauer
wrote "The Shadow of Quong Lung" — and Herman Scheffauer, were all three in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the latter two the guests of the former. Bierce had been there all through the summer, one of the few men whom Mr. Mc- Crackin hobnobbed with. Herman Scheffauer was one of his proteges, and I like to feel that Herman, our "complimentary" nephew, recovered from a dangerous illness all the more quickly for being with us on Monte Paraiso.
Mr. McCrackin and I had several "complimentary" grandchildren in common. They were really grand- children of McCrackin's old mining and pioneering "pardner," William Oury of Arizona, but as I had been fortunate enough to win the friendship of his daughter while we were "com- rades" in the Army, all the children of Colonel and Mrs. G. C. Smith be- came our grandchildren. And as the Smiths were a strictly Army family, visitors who, at a hotel, would have written U. S. A. behind their name, were not infrequent at Monte Paraiso. Even Major-General Barry, then Cap- tain, and Mrs. Barry, knew Monte Pa- raiso before the fire.
I may claim that I came by my taste for the Army element in a perfectly legitimate manner. While I was the wife of Lieutenant Clifford — in the
days of my youth — I had met many of the prominent officers in Washington, and had met Kit Carson in New Mex- ico. My experience in Army circles, as in other circles, has been that the truly great are unassuming; and that only the near-great "put on airs."
General Sheridan, General Grant, General Sherman, General Meade, even President Lincoln, and later President Johnson, I have spoken to all of these great men. And no less great to me were the men of our own command when on the march to New Mexico and the frontiers, at the close of the Civil War, General Sykes, Gen- eral Carleton and General Alexander.
Joins Bret Harte on Overland Mionthly
The tragedy that brought my Army life to a close did not estrange me from the Army. Quite the contrary; I learned, in trial and tribulation, to es- teem the chivalry of the men, and re- vere the loving, faithful hearts of the women.
Kit Carson, the famous scout and
pioneer, who cut new trails
into the West
Joaquin Miller in his home at the "Mights" Fruitvale, California.
But a new life lay before me, in which I had to find my own paths, and seek means of support for myself. It was like being thrust out into the world, this seeking a livelihood. I did not fear work; but I dreaded the ask- ing for it. Mother, with a mother's pride, thought I could write ; and when I could keep from crying long enough to write of some of the things I had seen and learned, I took heart one day, still at mother's urging, went to San Francisco, and tremblingly submitted a handful of written sheets to the edi- tor of the new Magazine, Bret Harte of the "Overland Monthly."
The editor's office was at that time in Roman's bookstore on Montgomery street, Anton Roman being owner of the magazine. Later, there were edi- torial rooms on Clay street, and here I first became acquainted with the older writers, some of whom were younger in years than myself. Ina Coolbrith, the star always, beautiful in form and figure as she was brilliant in mind; Charles Warren Stoddard, a beardless youth, a poet born, loved by
all other writers of that day. Hattie Dolson, who wrote under the nom de plume Hilda Roosevelt. Laura Lyon — now Mrs. Lovell White; all these had written before; and though they were younger, I was the newest writer on the "Overland Monthly" in 1869. Among my earliest sketches were "An Officer's Wife in New Mexico," and "Down Among the Dead Letters." This latter article was returned for more of it.
Joaquin Miller I met some time later, and quarreled with him always, on sight. Which did not prevent us from being good friends. Not many years ago, when I had accused him of writ- ing his MS. with the broken end of a match, he sent me the quill with which he claimed to do his writing. I have it now.
Ambrose Bierce was first introduced to me by Bret Harte in the Clay street sanctum. Years later when I met him again, he laughed over his youthful folly of that time: he had worn a black lamb's skin cap. Bierce was such a thoroughly lovable man. I
368
OVERLAND MONTHLY
have never had a better friend, and I fear he is no longer on this earth. I hold his letters as great treasures, more especially the last two he wrote in September, 1913. He had learned to call me Jo, from Mr. McCrackin, whom he aided and assisted in tor- menting me. I am glad now that he could laugh, even at my discomfiture, for his life was by no means a happy one. Bierce was like Goethe in many respects, and he was always addressed as "beloved Grossmeister" by me in letters.
In spite of self-interest or vanity of which I may be accused, I believe there was never anything grander and more touching written than the lines Ambrose Bierce wrote as introduction to my last book, "The Woman Who Lost Him." Dr. George Wharton James, who published this book for me, had submitted the idea to Bierce, and Mr. Bierce said he thanked him for the suggestion.
The Bierce letters, the letters of Charles Warren Stoddard, those of Joaquin Miller, and some of the Ina Coolbrith letters, were written after the forest fire. The wonder is that I have any of the Bret Harte letters still in my possession. A special Provi- dence must have watched over some apple-boxes into which the fire-fighters "chucked'1 things that were handy and not too big to "chuck" easily; bundles of letters and old Congressional Re- ports, alike.
Bret Harte was kind to me in many ways; and together with that historic letter from Chicago, in which he writes of the "provincial spirit" of the people there, he incloses a letter from the edi- tor of the "Lakeside Monthly," in re- gard to money due me for contribu- tions. For I had in time written for other magazines, even in those early days: for Baltimore and Philadelphia publications, and for Harper's Maga- zine.
After mother's death, in December, 1882, I married Jackson McCrackin, a
miner from Arizona; discoverer of the McCrackin mine, pioneer and path- finder. We moved at once to the ranch. The first tragedy I encountered after coming there was the unexpected, sud- den death of my only living brother, who had prepared to remove to the land he owned next to ours; had set the day when he and I would select the spot for his house to stand; and instead of his coming, came the tele- gram that he lay dead.
George had lived in Salinas almost since the beginning, or founding, of the place. He had virtually been banker there before banks were estab- lished; and he had always money to pay vouchers with if there happened to be ebb in the real treasury. At that time witnesses were paid fees in crimi- nal cases; and when the bandit, Vas- quez, was tried in Salinas, many wit- nesses were brought up from the more southern country, and they all had to be paid. These people all wanted to go back home as soon as possible, and George bought their scrip and vouch- ers. They were mostly Spanish people, and as George spoke their language well, he told me many things he had heard from them, outside of their evi- dence on the stand. After years, I utilized this material for "The Wo- man Who Lost Him," which was first published in "Neale's Monthly" of New York, and was pronounced one of the best short stories, by Walter Neale.
One of the stories in the book to which that story gave title should be il- lustrated by one of Remington's "Done in the Open." The picture, "Caught in the Circle," shows the two mail riders, soldiers from the Fort, where they have killed their horses to make breastworks of them; and the Indians, riding singly, drawing the cir- cle closer and closer. In the story, "The Colonel's Young Wife," I have spoken of Fort Greengate, which is not the correct name of this army post. ( To be Continued)
The
Aonterey Cypress
By Lconore Kothe
II
A
1
fa
1*
A
Witch Tree
EXPOSED to the winds and storms of the Pacific Ocean, the Mon- terey cypress have grown into queer, unreal, fantastic forms. The weird fancy of Dore combined with the imagination of Dante never depicted anything more startling, more uncanny or more picturesque. They twist and turn and writhe in strange, wild attitudes ; they toss their distorted branches, they rock to and fro, they bend in the west wind as if, fleeing in despair from an invisible enemy, they had become rooted, where they stand doing eternal punishment for some mysterious crime until the Judgment Day.
The Monterey cypress is peculiar to California, and is found only in Mon- terey County on a narrow strip of coast land two miles long and two hundred yards wide, extending from Cypress Point to Carmel Bay, with a small grove on Point Lobos. In appearance
it is totally unlike its Italian cousin, the cypress of history and mythology. If this tree had been known to the an- cient races in pre-historic days, its weird appearance would certainly have been the theme of many strange tales and legends, and their imaginative minds would have endowed it with supernatural power and given it a prominent place in their mythology. The drive to Cypress Point over the famous Seventeen Mile drive, through the "land of a thousand wonders," is a good preparation for a view of the trees. The road winds around among rolling sand dunes, blown into fantastic mounds and hummocks, where the white sand glistens blue in the reflec- tion of the sky above. Along the rocky shore where the restless ocean breaks in huge white capped rollers or dashes in clouds of spray over enor- mous boulders. The cypress stand perched on a rocky promontory, queer, 2
470
OVERLAND MONTHLY
spook-like apparitions of trees, waving their scraggy branches and defying the elements.
Several of the most conspicuous have been appropriately named. One is called the "witch-tree." Here, above the leafless branches of a barren stump a bunch of live foliage forms the per- fect silhouette of a witch shaking her broomstick, while the hoofbeats of Tarn O'Shanter's galloping horse can be heard in the roar of the surf.
In another place two trees that have become entangled together resemble a
branches that invite the traveler to pause and rest in their refreshing shade. Here and there, scattered among the dunes, small distorted, wind blown trees, almost shrubs, struggle for existence, half-buried in the shift- ing sand.
To the non-scientific observer, who loves nature and who listens to the secrets she is ever whispering, trees possess individuality. This trait seems to have been recognized in the olden days when tree worship held a prominent place in religious ceremon-
The Twin Sisters
gigantic ostrich strutting on the bluff. Hence the name "Ostrich Tree."
High up upon a steep rocky cliff a solitary cypress stands, majestic in its isolation, forever a lone sentinel on that bleak shore.
In sheltered places we see the tree in a different aspect, protected, in an agreeable environment it has devel- oped entirely different characteristics. Instead of a weird spectre of a tree, it has grown beautifully round and sym- metrical, with its wide spreading
ies. Different trees were endowed with different attributes, and the cy- press on account of its striking ap- pearance and the remarkable durabil- ity of the wood, figures extensively in the mythology of that period. The early Persians reared it as a symbol of Ormuzd, and associated it with fire- worship.
It is frequently represented on an- cient gravestones in conjunction with the lion, the symbol of the sun-god Mithra. In Phoenicia it was sacred to
The Ostrich
Astarte, and the famous cypress tree at Daphne is supposed to have been planted by the god Melcarth.
The cypress grove on the acropolis
at Phluisin Pieloponnesus was held so sacred that fugitives from justice came here for refuge, and the escaped pris- oners who succeeded in reaching its
A sheltered tree
On the dunes
shelter hung their chains on the branches and were safe from pursuit.
The cypress enters extensively into Greek and Roman mythology. It was
sacred to the rulers of the underworld and their companions the fates and furies. It was used as a symbol of death, and was associated with the
i
Among the dunes
THE MONTEREY CYPRESS
473
god Pluto. Its branches were placed on the funeral pyres, and either before the house or in the vestibule as a sign of mourning.
There is a legend that Cyparissus, a beautiful youth beloved by Apollo, was transformed into a cypress tree, where he mourns forever.
In some countries the wood was also considered sacred. It was used exten- sively for mummy cases, and images of the gods were often carved from it. The wood is extremely durable. En- graved cylinders are found in Chaldea, some of which date back to 4,000 B. C. Pliny mentions a statue of Jupiter made of cypress wood six hundred years old, in perfect preservation. Laws were engraved on it, and objects of value were preserved in recepticles made of it.
The cypress doors of old Saint Peter at Rome, which were removed by Eu-
genius IV, were in perfect condition, without a sign of decay, although near- ly eleven hundred years old. Super- natural power seems to have been at- tributed to the cypress in all countries where it grows.
In Mexico the Indians ascribed mys- terious influences to an old cypress tree, and its spreading branches were decorated with votive offerings, locks of hair, teeth, strings, arrows and the various trinkets prized by the natives. It was many centuries old, and had been decorated long before Columbus discovered America.
The cypress of the Old World, known as the "mournful tree," is very unlike the Monterey cypress. It is a tall, symmetrical tree, dark hued, gloomy and forbidding, but its spirial form is wonderfully stately and pic- turesque, and is a conspicuous feature in all Italian landscapes.
Georgd Sterling (From a photo by Arnold Genthe.)
Sterling, the Poet of Seas and Stars
By Henry AVeade Bland
AT CARMEL, the King's High- way touches upon the eternal beauty of the sea. Then it winds through a shallow can- yon in the sandy hills — hills which are overgrown with pine and live oak, whence it emerges and looks upon a fair prospect of Carmel Valley. It is here that the poet's house rests in its narrow niche sentineling the fields and flock of the little plain below.
It was on the porch of this house that I first came to really know George Sterling. All one summer afternoon we sat and talked, he and I and the dearly-beloved of California letters, Charles Warren Stoddard. Stoddard was in the late autumn of his life. In- deed he told me that every day his mind was not as productive as he could have wished, an there was a note in his voice prophetic of "the day of rest."
But Sterling was then in the glamour of the light around him from the bril- liant criticism of Ambrose Bierce; and he was then working on three sonnets, entitled "On Oblivion." As I read those sombre lines that day, I saw how he had been touched by the philosophy of Persian poetry; and I recognized, too, a quality of his verse — a deep har- mony of movement — a quality which is, doubtless, the basis of Bierce's dic- tum.
I saw in "The Night of the Gods," one of the three on "Oblivion," how great a medium poetry is in the por- trayal of a majestic overwhelming all- sweeping thought:
"Their mouths have drunken the eter- nal wine — The draft that Baal in oblivion sips.
Unseen about their courts the adder
slips, Unheard the sucklings of the leopard
whine ; The toad has found a resting-place
divine. And bloats in stupor between Ammon's
lips. O! Carthage and the unreturning
ships, The fallen pinnacle, the shifting Sign !
Lo, when I hear from voiceless court
and fame
Time's adoration of eternity — The cry of Kingdoms past and Gods
undone — I stand as one whose feet at noontide
gain A lovely shore; who feels his soul set
free, And hears the blind sea chanting to
the sun!"
At the same time I knew I had felt that note before, and dug round in the haze of sub-conscious memory till the thought was paralleled from the "Ru- baiyat":
'"They say the lion and the leopard
keep Watch where Jamshyd gloried and
drank deep, And Bahram, the great hunter, the
wild ass, Stamps o'er his head and he lies fast
asleep."
Perhaps Eglamor's idea, as por- trayed by Browning:
"Man shrinks to naught
If matched with symbols of immensity,
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
Must quail, forsooth, before a quiet
sky Or sea, too little for their quietude."
enables us to get the perspective and value of such poetic eyes as in the lines on "Oblivion," which grow from a neglecting of the value of the soul. True, the idea makes poetry, but not the greatest poetry. We must not pause to consider too deeply the sea's im- mensities or the sky's infinities lest we stumble.
"What are the seas or stars com- pared with human hearts?"
This phrase of Sterling's thought arises from two conceptions with re- gard to man; first, as I have indicated before, that, compared with the im- mensity of the suns and their limitless sweep across the sky, man is the ver- iest atom and sinks into infinitessimal insignificance. Secondly, judged from the physical fact that all matter is un- dergoing ceaseless change, the human organism, as a portion of the physical, is destined to destruction. Thus he writes :
"Let us forget that mortals, one by
one,
At last must driftwood be, Cast on the beaches of oblivion By Time's rejecting sea."
Besides this dark philosophy of George Sterling, this "Somber Lethe rolling doom" is a simpler and kindlier note, the influence of his college teacher, the poet, Father Tabb. Fol- lowing the steps of an elder brother, Sterling had as a youth decided to be- come a priest, and entered St. Charles College for the purpose of beginning preparation. Here his literature in- structor was Father Tabb, whose teach- ing developed a trend of life which drew him away from the very ideal the professor would have had him most strive for. The young priest evolved into the poet, and when the transfor- mation was complete, there remained only in the singer the extreme serious imaginative view of life which the priest entertained.
Drifting at last entirely from church tenets, when he came West the young thinker fell into the group of robust socialistic scientists which centered in the home of Jack London in Oakland, California, where Sterling became cul- tured in the extremes of modern ma- terialism, absorbing Nietsche and other lines of hard Germanistic philosophy. In poetry, as I have pointed out, he was strongly tinged with the Rubaiyat, and found himself confronted by an ag- nosticism almost unthinkable.
With these two influences in mind, we may approach with a chance of un- derstanding Sterling's first volume, "The Testimony of the Suns."
Here, first, we find touches of his earlier college influence. The lines to "Constance Crawley" and to "One Asking for Lighter Song" when care- fully studied, show these earlier graces.
In the former, Sterling begins to be the singer who touches the heart:
"Thine is the frailest of the arts And like the flower must pass ; Its empery in human hearts Dies with the voice, alas !
"The poet tells to years unborn His dreams of joy or woe ; His crown is of a farther morn, From hands he shall not know.
"Tho' time, is tardy reckoning, Place laurels on my brow, Sing as I might I could not sing A fairer dream than thou —
"Who by thine art and haunting face Hast filled a thoughtful hour With somewhat of the passing grace Of twilight and the flow'r."
And in the latter there is that tender human longing which is many times the essence of the true poetic:
"A gentle sadness best becomes The features of the perfect muse : The shock of laughter but benumbs The lips that crave immortal dews.
STERLING, THE FOET OF SEAS AND STARS
477
"For she hath known diviner fears, And she hath held her vigils far; But never in untroubled years, Nor world that grief came not to mar.
"For joy is as the wreaths that lie Foam- wrought along the sterile sands ; And sorrow as the voice whereby The ocean saddens all the lands —
"That calls afar to pine and palm, The changeless trouble of the deep; That murmurs in the gentlest calm And haunts unknown the realm of sleep.
"But pleasure's foam, so fondly prized We strive to keep. (Unduly dear — Its very touch scarce realized) With hands unwarned, till, lo ! a tear."
A closer study of Mr. Sterling's verse reveals two sources of power in addition to the sombre poetic philoso- phy, and the poem which touches the heart to which I have already re- ferred. The first is in the minuter construction of his thought and con- sists of a most unusual and deeply harmonious music in his line. To get a parallel to this quality we should go to such thunderous Miltonic lines as :
"Gorgons and Hydras and Climeras dire"
or,
"Who durst defy th' Omnipotent to arms,"
or,
"And from his horrid locks shakes Pestilence and War."
After all else has been said, the chief merit of "A Wine of Wizardry" lies in this word music or sonorousness of in- dividual lines, and one who reads this poem must expect to find his chief pleasure in this kind of harmony, thus :
"A cowled magician poring on the damned;"
or,
"And treasuries of frozen anadems;"
or,
"The bleeding sun's phantasmagoric gules."
Where there is the emptiness of plot as in the Wine of Wizardry, this super- ior quality of harmony does not ap- pear to the advantage it does in "Tasso to Leonora," or in "Duandon," both of which are based on tremendous dra- matic situations.
In the former the story is of how the Italian poet, Tasso, in love with the high-born maid Leonora, is thwarted by the lady's brother, who considers the poet too poor and ignoble a match for his sister. Through the machina- tions of the brother, Tasso is confined in a mad-house charged with insanity. It is here that Tasso gives word to the love monologue which Sterling weaves into the poem. Leonora died before 'Tacco, who was imprisoned seven years, was released. Here the striking word pictures and deep harmony of line are evident:
"Daphne thou; Psyche that waits her lover in the
night; Calypso and the luring of her lyres."
"Songs archangelic panoply of light."
"Thrills with the rose of unremem- bered dawns."
"Never had lovers dusk such moon as
thou! Never had moon adoring such as
mine!"
"Thou seemest farther from me than a
star, The morning star, that hovers like a
flame Above the great dawn altar."
The chief merit of "Duandon" lies in a wonderful description of the sea. Both Lord Byron and Bryan W. Proc- tor have sung, one of the ocean in its might and magnificence, the other of the sea in its gentleness and calm; but to my mind the color of the sea worked out by Sterling in the following is un- rivaled :
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
"Afar he saw the eddying petrel sweep
O'er reefs where hoarser roared the thwarted deep,
And soon before his eyes, exultant, fain,
Heavy with azure gleamed the invest- ing main,
And quick with pulsings of a distant storm,
Strong as that music floating Troy to form.
Splendid the everlasting ocean shone
As God's blue robe upon a desert thrown ;
Landward he saw the sea-born break- ers fare,
Young as a wind and ancient as the air;
August he saw the unending ranks up- roll,
With joy and wonder mastering the soul,
With marvel on the hearing and the
sight- Green fires, and billows tremulous with light,
With shaken soul of light and shud- dering blaze
Of leaping emerald and cold chryso- prase, —
The surge and suspiration of the sea,
Great waters choral of eternity, —
The mighty dirge that will not cease for day,
Nor all the stars' invincible array —
The thunder that hath set, since Time began,
Its sorrow in the lonely heart of man.
Duandon, the hero of this poem, goes at dawn, at the call of a mystic rapturous voice, down to the wonder- ful sea. The voice again and again calls him into this Eden under the waves, but Duandon hesitates in spite of the luring persuasion of the voice. He dare not make the plunge. Then comes his warlike son fresh from a wonderful quest and rich adventure, hears the call, and unhesitatingly leaps to the wave in answer to the siren call, leaving his father, Duandon, to repent the fearsomeness of his heart. The story is symbolic of the gain and vic- tory that comes from daring.
It does not take much more than a glance at Sterling's volumes — now four in number — to discover him as the "poet of sea and star," and he is at his best when he is down by the eternal beauty of the sea, or gazing into the infinitude of the night. This restless, never to be satisfied longing for these lies double verity of beauty he has put into a sonnet on
Beauty
The fairest things are ever loneliest: The whitest lily ever blooms alone, And purest winds from widest seas are
flown.
High on her utmost tower of the West Sits Beauty, baffling an eternal quest; From out her gates and aerials un- known,
The murmurs of her citadels are blown To blue horizons of the world's unrest.
We know that we shall seek her till
we die,
And find her not at all, the fair and far. Her pure domain is wider than the sky And never night revealed her whitest
star; Beyond the sea and sun her feet have
trod; Her vision is our memory of God.
George Sterling's books of poetry are "The Testimony of the Suns," "A Wine of Wizardry," "The House of Orchids" and "Beyond the Breakers," published, in order named, by Robert- son, San Francisco. Each volume con- tains not only a long poem or two, but a complement of shorter productions. As his work advances the lyric human element becomes more conspicuous, as in his last collection. After all his soaring after the infinite and diving after the unfathomable, it is a rest to run upon some rare Wordsworthian touch — for example, the simple elegy to the lost friend of childhood, "Willy Pitcher;" and I am not so sure that it will not be some little human song like this that will keep our poet's name alive, rather than the complex music of more pretentious harmonies.
The Web
By Van Wagenen Howe
WE WERE cruising off one of the Ellice Islands. The day was calm, and there were hardly any ripples stirring the surface of the ocean. The first mate was the one that saw him. He was floating on a piece of planking or log, and behind him, partly submerged, was something else that we couldn't make out.
A boat was lowered and we rowed out to him. He showed no signs of seeing us approach — he proved to be unconscious. How long he had been floating is a question, but it must have been days. The queer part about it was that he seemed to be tied on with a whitish kind of cord. This cord was attached to the floating body behind him. It seemed to be silk or some- thing of that quality, and heavy, like packing twine. We did not at first know what it was, but pulled on it un- til we came to the other object. Then was the surprise. It was a huge spider — fully two feet across, covered with a slick hairy skin of a pure black color. We didn't know whether it was dead or not, so the mate emptied his revolver into it.
But to return to the man. He was covered with slime that stuck to our hands and made everything that we touched afterwards sticky, and pieces of his skin were gone as if something had been trying to eat him. He showed no signs of life, but we rushed him to the ship doctor to make sure, and then asked permission of the captain to return for the spider, which was re- fused.
A couple of hours later the doctor came out and said that his patient had opened his eyes, but that he did not believe that he could live long.
Then again towards evening he came out and said that the man was very anxious to talk, and judging from the fragments that he had picked up, had something to say of interest to us, but that he didn't advise letting him speak as yet. However, if he was no worse in the morning he could tell his story.
When morning came, we officers of the ship gathered about him in the cabin to listen. His face was of a ghastly pallor, with bright, pink spots in the cheeks, but his eyes were clear and brilliant, and sparkled when the doctor said that at last he could begin.
"Chapin's my name — only white man living at Soaga, Soaga. All the rest natives. For God's sake keep away from there and warn everyone else to do the same. Natives all per- ished except those that escaped in boats."
He stopped for a moment and stared wonderinlgly at us to see if we had understood. "We had warning before they came. Men killed one of them back in the interior and brought it to the village. Then some of the natives began to disappear. Didn't think much of it at the time, but it must have been those critters that got 'em. One morn- ing I ran ino a piece of sticky string across the road on one of my walks. Before I could get away from it I was tangled up in others. Then I saw him. He was big and black, like a huge potato-bug with wicked yellow eyes that blinked at me. He came creeping towards me on the string, opening and closing his mouth as he came. Thank God, I had my revolver. I shot him and then cut myself out of the strings — must have been his web.
"I told the natives, and warned them to be careful, but they only laughed —
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the fools. A couple of days later I ran across several mounds of brown mud that had been neatly erected in an open field near the village. I went up to one of them and began kicking it to see what it was, when another of these black critters came out of a hole in the top and began edging towards me. I didn't stop to ask questions.
"I tell you I was scared this time and didn't go out of the village, but the natives began telling of how the whole valley several miles back was dotted with these mounds. I explained to them what they were, but they wouldn't believe me. If they only had — but they didn't, and more of them vanished. Our cattle began to go, too.
"Then came the day they invaded the town. I woke in the morning with a queer feeling in my stomach. There was a strong, sickly stench in the air. I opened the window, but that was 'worse, for the smell came from the outside. I had hardly closed it when the face of another of these critters was pressed against the window. He 'was puzzled by the glass, and tried iseveral times to get in before going away. I looked out. There were doz- ens of them crawling about the house and in and out of the natives' huts. There was no one in sight, but I think that some escaped.
"Then a group of them came strug- gling out of Salla's hut, dragging something that I couldn't see, and the rest made a rush for it. It must have been her — she was a little brown girl that had befriended me. Possibly it wasn't she — I hope so, God I do. They imade a seething mass of black over her so that there was no chance to see her again. I would have liked to save her, but I knew I couldn't, so as this was my chance, I opened the door and made a dash for it. One of them saw me and followed. They couldn't move jrapidly, so I gained on him. Then I ran into more of their confounded (ropes. One of them wound about my neck and others about my legs. I got free just in time before the spider came up. Lord, how he leered at me!
"I was more cautious after this, and
kept looking for them, but they were strung over the whole country like huge nets. I tried to reach the ocean, hoping that they couldn't swim, but ahead of me on the beach were mov- ing black dots. I knew what they were — and turning ran for the river. Again I was confronted by a spider. It was my last chance, so I drew my revolver and shot. I didn't kill him, but was able to get past and then for the river. How good it looked, glistening there ahead of me. I turned my head to see how far ahead of them I was, and doz- ens of them were after me. Those in the village must have followed, or else they were joined by some on the way. I used up my last strength to reach the river, for they were gaining on me now, and dove in.
"They had sense enough not to fol- low, but lined up along the bank and watched. I couldn't stand this for- ever, so began floating down stream, hoping to come out on the beach and get my boat if possible, but they were too clever for me, so when I found a log lodged under the overhanging branches of a banyan, I crawled on top of it and set it adrift. It was most too big for me to steer, and I couldn't pre- vent its drifting up by the shore. One of the spiders made a rush for it and nearly made it, some of his feet did touch it, but the rest of him fell in the water, and slowly he lost his grip and let go, but the critter had fast- ened on by one of those ropes. I tried to break it, but then he began to reel in — and as we were in comparatively still water again he managed to get on to the log before I could prevent him.
"I tried to push him back off, and kicked and jabbed at him, but it was no use. I reached for my revolver — it was gone! Then one of his arms reached out and grabbed a hold of me. The long claws sank into my flesh, and try as hard as I could I couldn't free myself. He began to creep up on me and bite at my foot. Such sharp little teeth. It was like a mouse gnawing at you, and oh, how it hurt.
"This didn't seem to satisfy him,
THE WAY OF UNDERSTANDING
481
so he kept crawling up my body while I was fighting him as best I could. I got my fingers embedded in his soft, fuzzy face with his teeth clicking and his round eyes blinking at me. I held him away as long as my strength lasted — but my foot was paining frightfully, and then my leg. There must have been poison in his bite. My strength gave out, and I ceased resisting. I felt his legs wrap themselves about me and he began biting at my body. I fainted.
"When I came to, we were crossing the bar and waves were breaking over us, but the spider had left me. I raised my head and looked — he was gone. However, I was tied firmly to
the log with his strings, so that I could not get up. This must have been the best thing for me. I don't know what had happened to him, but he must have been washed off the log when we hit the breakers.
"My head began to swim, my mouth seemed parched, although it was moist. It tasted bitter and salty. Then it dawned on me that I was swallowing sea water. I don't remember any more."
He ceased speaking, closed his eyes and was soon asleep. The doctor mo- tioned us to leave the room. He never again regained consciousness, but died during the night, mumbling "Spiders! Spiders!"
THE WAY OF UNDERSTANDING
Had you not failed me in my hour of need, Fled, leaving me for lost beside the way, Perhaps I had not struggled through the mire That lines the Primrose road — a little higher Climbing, with prayerful heart, each toilsome day : Paying the age-old debt, a woman's meed!
Then I had known no vistas save your eyes,
The human soul not known nor understood —
For life had meant just love, the whole world you !
The mystery of sorrow, ah, how true,
'Tis often but the travail of great good
While joys deceive us with their fair disguise !
But so I learned. When dusk falls on the sod
Like some rich, fragrant mantle of old lace,
A faint pain plays o'er memory's stringed harp —
No longer quiv-ring with its grief so sharp —
And stirs the mother in me, gives me grace
To help another up the steeps I trod !
Jo. HARTMAN.
The Offering to the Virgin
(A CHRIST/A AS POE/A)
By Lannie Haynes /Aartin
So holy was the place, you felt, When there in reverence you knelt, An angel in it might have dwelt With folded wings, content to be There guardian of its sanctity. Close by the church lived Hannah Lee, A mother, whose fair daughters three Were taught to walk acceptably Before the Lord. From infancy Her babes unto the church each morn With dew-wet flowers to adorn The shrine of blessed Virgin there The mother brought with many a prayer, And urged, when older, some gift mete They bring and lay at Virgin's feet.
Aida, eldest of the three,
Adept in rare embroidery,
Upon an altar cloth of silk,
As soft as cloud, as white as milk,
Wrought day by day with patient skill,
And prayed the Virgin to fulfill
Her heart's desire — her gift to be
Not offering, but bribery.
At last the shimmering cloth all done,
It gleamed as if by fairies spun
Of starlight on a loom of gold;
And from the fabric's ev'ry fold
A perfume like sweet incense came.
Aida's heart leaped like a flame When at the Virgin's feet she lay The cloth, and made pretense to pray. She went at eve forth from the place, And lo! aglow upon her face Was Beauty, that one gift she sought — All else on earth to her was naught — Then eyes of all men followed her, But not their hearts. A sinister, Proud, cruel smile turned hearts to stone. Through all the years she walked alone.
The flowers that Loretta sought
Were not now to the Virgin brought,
But in the market-place she sold
Their fragrant breath for clinking gold.
The gold was hid and hoarded up
To buy a costly, jeweled cup,
To set before the Virgin's eyes
That she the giver's zeal should prize
And in return a favor show
So great that all the world might know
The greatness of the giver's name —
Her prayer: "Oh, give me wealth and fame!"
And on the blessed Virgin's face
Were tear-drops, for from out the vase
No daily flowers, as of old,
Loretta's love, in perfume, told.
And then came youngest, Evelyn,
To Virgin to confess the sin
That she no gift had yet brought there ;
There, kneeling, she made simple prayer:
"Oh, Virgin, when thy gift I bring
Accept my humble offering,
But do not, oh, I pray of thee,
Put any special mark on me!
For I would not my path should be
Away frcm earth's humanity,
But kindred-hearted let me see
The children at their joyous play,
The youth and maiden on their way
To love, and all the old who wait
The opening of heaven's gate.
But if thcu must do some good thing
For ev'ry little offering,
Bring back old Jotham's boy to him,
And cure poor Martha's crippled limb,
And give clear sight that Hilda's eyes
May see the beauteous earth and skies —
Ah ! there's a little song I sing
Of them when I'm a wandering —
I wonder if I sang to you
You'd bless the song" — Then near she drew,
So close that not a priest could hear,
And whispered in the Virgin's ear :
"I love the earth, the brown, bare earth, the breast I lie upon;
I love the whispers of the wind, the kisses of the sun;
I love the wide, wide stretching sky — my love as wide and clear,
And not a thing in all the world have I to hate or fear.
And ah ! of all most blessed things I'd love to be like thee
With baby always in mine arms to smile its love at me !"
And then a wonder there was shown !
The Virgin stepped down from her throne,
And put her babe upon the breast
Of woman. "See, I give thee best
And send Love in the world to be
A balm for all adversity,"
The Virgin said, and then the child,
With love, looked on the world and smiled!
The Unwritten Law
By Yetta Bull
BEFORE the door of an old cabin an Indian woman sat, shading her eyes and looking down the valley. The sun beat merci- lessly on the wide, dusty flat with its scattered brush, and the little cabin, huddled on the side. From across the yellow, silent river came the far-away ringing of the school bell as the child- ren, glad of escape from the sun, trooped into the cool white building. The woman before the door did not stir until the faint sound of a horse's hoofs approached, nearer and nearer. As they became more distinct, she raised her head moodily, and made an effort to see who was coming, but the bright light on the yellow river warned her again.
The cloud of yellow dust grew larger and larger, and the sweating pinto pony with his heavy rider drew up, stopped with stiffened legs, and then slumped as the rider jumped off. Not noticing the woman he passed, he stepped over the box that served as step and entered the dark little cabin. The pony, left to himself, reins hang- ing, went to sleep. Now and then, lazily flicking at the flies on his dusty sweaty sides, he stamped his foot in exasperation or shook his head, and then dozed off again.
Inside the house there were heavy footsteps with the jingling of spurs — now and then another noise, as though a box were dropped or a chair shoved, and the man appeared. Slowly he pulled out a red bandana and wiped it over his shiny forehead — then pushed it back in again. She sat still, with her hands loosely folded in her lap, and body slightly tilted forward, for the box was not sitting squarely on the ground. He looked at her, and
then at the pony, which was standing as he had left it, reins dragging in the dust.
"Well, I'm off again. That bunch that went through here last week — you know?" She nodded. "Well, they have a couple of horses we're not sure of, and I'm trailing 'em up. Guess it'll take a week. They're over toward the Summit. I don't know just how far."
"Going alone?"
"No; Joe and Roger are going with me. Don't want a big bunch, as we don't expect trouble. Got everything you need ? I told 'em at the store you would be in for things. So-long." "So-long."
He strode over to the pony, picked up the reins and mounted. The horse opened first one eye and then the other, with a slight effort toward in- dignant resistance, but at the prick of the spurs, was off — leaving a cloud of dust, which settled slowly over the flat, on the cabin and on the woman.
After he had left, she picked her- self up slowly and went into the house. Her eyes were blinded from the glare outside, but she groped over to the bed in the corner. Clasping her hands over her knees, she sat on the edge, eyes on the door.
So he had really come back after all — and for her! When dashing Jim Black, the auarterbreed, with his yel- low hair, had left the reservation seven years before he had promised he'd come back and very soon — and they hadn't heard from him for years. Slow- ly and methodically she went over it all.
Her return from school at Riverside, the talk and envy of the valley and the object of attention of all the swain
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thereof, Jim Black had easily been first, and being sure of his conquest, had dallied. There was plenty of time to think of marriage, but now was the time for love-making. In his gay, empty, light-hearted way, he had done it successfully, and the weeks had flown, for both of them. Other girls and other men were forgotten, but were not so forgetful. That Mary Fuller and Jim Black should be in love was to be expected, but that they should be so far forgetful of the feel- ings of others as to openly snub and ignore them was not to be forgiven.
Then Jim had come to her one night and her whole world had been changed. He felt a restless desire to get out and see something of life; of the world on the outside. She had been to school out there, and had had what he now wanted. Never would she iorget that night. The moon had been "high behind the Summit, and large, large as only the moon in the high mountains can be; and they had walked down to the river, while he had told her everything. Excited, eager and confident of her understanding, he had not noticed her silence. Seated in the shadow of the bank, by a little bend in the stream, he had planned their future.
She had been away to school; she knew the limitations of the valley as well as he. There was no future for either of them there. He had been satisfied with it until she had come, and then he had begun to see about him more clearly. Magnetically, he drew a picture of her, mistress of the home of his dreams, far away from the hateful Reservation where envy and jealousy were so strong. He placed her in gardens, the kind she had seen on a few excursions from school; as mistress of servants — and as his wife. She thrilled to the last; he had known she would and had used it so — but in her heart she had mis- givings. She had not lived out there for long but, had learned some things she would never forget.
One day in Los Angeles, on a shop- ping trip, she had overheard a con-
versation between two men.
"Look at that girl there. Stunning, isn't she with that hair and coloring." The companion turned.
"Oh, her — well, they're common enough where I come from. 'Breed,' we call 'em. Product of the old re- gime 'when soldiers wooed dusky mai- den,' " and he turned away carelessly. The other man had stared curiously, and she, with throbbing blood, real- ized where she stood in the world.
As her lover went on, the incident came back to her and she shuddered. He, deep in the world of plans, did not notice, and she was glad. The humil- iation which she felt at the recollection of that scene covered her body with shame.
So they had parted, he happy in the unknown future and she in her love for him, but under all the deep uncer- tainty in that future. At first, he had sent her cards, but they had ceased, and she had gone steadily on with her teaching.
As time passed, her position became more or less anonymous — from the sweetheart of Jim Black, the finger of the scorned drew the attention of the idle to the "woman that Jim Black had left," and the time dragged on.
There had still been plenty of suit- ors, but supersensitive as to her posi- tion, she had been so cold and distant as to be repellent. Among them; had been Jack Wilson, playmate of her early childhood, product of the same environment and training. Slow, plod- ding, but steady and faithful, by these very Qualities he had reached and maintained his present position of dep- uty sheriff, and they now served him well. Finally, completely worn out, she had accepted him and the tongue of gossip wagged more slowly. In a place like the Reservation, it never ceases permanently. There had been sudden flareups of the old story, but they had been farther and farther apart, and now were almost ceased.
To-day, however, she had got a card from the Postoffice, and she knew by the undertones of the idlers on the porch of the store, as she went out.
She would look very attractive with his bungalow as a background
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that they shared with her the few lines beneath the picture of the Giant Red- wood. She stooped forward, and the stiff thing in the front of her dress bent, so she drew it out. The post- mark was Eureka a week ago, and she knew that even now he was on his way back home.
It had grown late, and a tiny breeze from the river made the air bearable. Outside, seme little children were playing, and their shrill little voices roused her. Down the valley, the bell at the Hoopa Valley Hotel clanged out the supper hour, and there was loud talking and joying as the men crowded around the sink or the one towel, in a desperate attempt at cleanliness be- fore filing into the dining room; the voices of mothers calling their child- ren, and then the lull that follows these preparations. The shrill barking of several Indian dogs told the initi- ated of the approach of a stranger, but she did not heed it.
Behind the ridge the moon, the same big, round, autumn moon, came up, and she sat on the box before the door watching it. There was a soft step at the corner of the cabin, and he had come. It was just a repetition of the old, and she wasn't startled or sur- prised.
She had known he was coming and he was here — the same Jim Black ; but she held him off and looked at him again. Was this really he? There was the same careless look, but the confidence was lacking; new lines around the mouth and eyes which did not add to the strength of the face; her eyes shifted and took in his fig- ure. Surely the clothes were of better cut, but there was a stout flabbiness, and she looked back to his face.
His eyes were on her, and he made a motion to draw her to him. All the years of waiting, the desire for expla- nation, were gone, but there was still a feeling of reserve that puzzled them both.
"Mary, I'm back. It's been a long time, but I couldn't help it." She was in his arms, and every thing was set- tled. The moon rose higher and
higher, and a lone coyote in the hills back of the river set up his shrill, sharp bark and long drawn cry.
She shivered and drew him into the house. There were only two chairs, and as he took one, she reached for the lamp.
"No, don't."
"Why?"
"Well, some one may see us, and you know how they talk here. Glad of any excuse."
Startled by his reasoning, but see- ing the logic of it, she set the lamp back on the shelf in the corner. It came to her that he knew all about her and she hadn't asked a thing of him. Questioningly she turned, and he an- swered her.
"Yes, it's all right, dear. I'm getting along fine. The boys all like me, and will give me a lift any time. And the town : you'll like it. None of these old 'before the war' dumps, but new. New, that's it. They don't care where you come from — who you are — or any- thing."
"But— with Jack "
"Oh, I know, but they won't ask any questions, and if they do, why, they don't care. They don't have time to worry about things like that. I tell you, it's different. A man don't have to explain his whole life, down there. He's just what he is."
"But it takes a long time to get a divorce, and money, and maybe Jack "
"Divorce? What are you talking about? Do you suppose I'm going to
stand around here while you wait
Oh, pshaw, it's no use talking. I can't. Come, dear," his voice changed, "can't you see what a fuss that would make, and anyhow I can't, wait so long. There are things that need me down there. I knew that Jack had gone, so that's why I came now."
"Oh, Jim, you didn't think I'd do that."
"Why, dear, there's nothing to worry about. I've made all the plans. Told the boys I was coming up for my wife, and they'll give us a bang up reception when we get back. We'll stop in the
THE UNWRITTEN LAW
489
city so you can get a few duds — you know what you need."
"Oh, but Jim, you don't understand. Listen to me," she clung desperately to him. "I couldn't. Can't you see? Why, I couldn't leave him that way. He's always been good to me. Why, he came when the whole alley talked and said " She stopped.
"Well, what did they say? Go on; I'm waiting."
Desperately: "That you went off and left me. Do you know what they called me until he came? 'The wo- man Jim Black left,' and he married me after that."
"Well, weren't you good enough for him?"
She couldn't make him understand, so gave up trying. He talked on, con- fident of his influence over her, ex- plaining that they would have to leave on Monday at the latest. Jack would be back in a week, and they would leave before he came, thus mak- ing matters simpler than he had an- ticipated. It would have taken much more care to have gotten away with Jack on the scene, but he had trusted to luck, and it had been with him. Here was Jack gone ; Mary a little re- luctant, but he had expected that, and with his former arrogance went on with his plans. He took care that his visits were not noticed, not out of con- sideration for her, but rather to sim- plify matters for them both. Little did he know of what was going on in her brain — that the silence she had maintained was not due to womanly hesitation, as he imagined, but to a struggle based on deeper things than he dreamed of: the conflict arising from the knowledge that she was about to injure her very best friend — the man who had done the best as he saw it for her. When she was worn with the ceaseless continuity of reasoning, she always had to face this "giant gratitude." It wasn't love for her hus- band, all of that had been given to her early lover. Balance love and gratitude, and the scales turn easily, but here the love had been choked and thwarted, while the other balance had
been added to daily with the waking sense that she could go through that day without the finger of derision pointed at her.
On Friday night there was to be a dance at Long's, over the store. She hesitated about going, because without Jack she lost her sense of security, and she was not popular with any of the women. However, Friday even- ing, Jack returned, tired and dusty, but exultant over a successful trip.
"Go on, Mary, it'll do you good, and I'll drop in for you later. Have to see Goodrich, and I'm too tired to clean up to dance. Joe's going, and I'll have him look after you there." • Totally unprepared with any excuse she went with Jack, and Joe, her hus- band's lifelong friend. At the foot of the stairs, Jack spotted his man, and left them to go upstairs to the dance.
There was quite a crowd, and she nodded coolly as they walked down the room. Around the walls the old women squatted, gay with their plaid blankets and gingham aprons and their little, tight caps perched on their heads, while their husbands, types of the old mountain settler, swung gaily on the corners the daughters of similar unions.
Outside the door, looking in and laughing, with much nudging of el- bows and good-natured shouldering aside, were brothers of the same daughters, striking contrast in their heavy, coarse clothes, to their pink be- ribboned sisters. The fiddle twanged on, though the organist stopped period- ically to mop his forehead and get a rew grip on the keys, while above them all, "George Washington Cross- i"? the Delaware" looked supremely do^m.
Down stairs on the porch, Jim Black leaned moodily against the door, smok- ing. There was a step beside him, and Joe passed, entering the store where Jack, Goodrich and a half dozen others sat, talking. Leaning aeainst the counter, he listened idly until :
"Black — yes, he's back. About a week. Hprigfing around. Never went much on him. Too taking with the
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women." Realizing what he'd said, he stopped, but the fuse was lighted. Jack Wilson looked up.
"Women, what do you mean?" "Oh, nothing; only he's always hanging around."
"Who — what do you mean?" Waiting to hear no more, Joe went out just in time to see Jim Black walk- ing slowly across the campus, past the pine grove toward the hotel. Think- ing to have a word or two with him, and perhaps give him a word of ad- vice, he followed. Just as he got to the clump of pines, he turned and saw a figure silhouetted in the doorway, look across the campus and come down the steps. Realizing the explanation due Jack, if seen pursuing Black, any turn of which would bring on compli- cations, he slipped into the grove.
The footsteps came on and then stopped. There was a pause, and then,
"Who's in there?" Only a silence.
"Who's in there, I say?" A little breeze rustled through the trees and across the campus came the music from the dance.
"Who's there, I say? Answer, or I'll shoot."
A step — a shot
"My God— it's Joe!"
Down the stairs, across the campus, they came running, and out of breath, but the figure kneeling beside the one on the ground never turned.
"God, Joe — I thought it was Black, They said in the store "
"I know, old man — don't let them blame you. I'm going "
Ar.d the Indian woman sits in the "door of her cabin, waiting.
THE TWELFTH AONTH
The gems that grace December's brow
No other queen may wear;
And ermine-clad she writes "Finis" —
While speeds the fleeting year.
Upon her breast, the holly beads
Like rubies, flash their red,
And gleaming pearls of mistletoe
Are haloed 'round her head.
The months have winged their cycle,
December brings the morn,
When Christ — the world's salvation
On Christmas Day — was born.
So, down the star-hung spaces,
A song of joy she sings —
While bidding hearts "put by dull grief,
And greet the King of Kings."
AGNES LOCKHART HUGHES.
The Sand Rat
By Helen Richardson Brown
WILLIAM HARRISON rose from the supper table and mounted his horse for a ride to El Centre. It was twenty miles from the Harrison ranch to the county seat, but he preferred to ride by night, for the heat had beaten down fiercely into the Imperial Valley that late August day. The air was still hot and parching, but this rider was not conscious of any discomfort. He was in a particularly satisfied frame of mind. He had received that morning from the Brawley post office the last returns from his cantaloupe crop, and they were far in excess of his expecta- tions. And as he passed his great stretches of fragrant green alfalfa fields and noted the cattle grazing therein, he realized that here, too, were represented three or four thousand dol- lars more that he would receive that year. He had certainly arrived; his conquest of the desert was complete. He found himself wondering vague- ly what he should do with the sur- plus money. When he had come into the desert seven years ago, a young man of twenty-five, fresh from the Eastern centers of civilization, the ex- penditure of practically any sum of money would not have baffled him, but so long now had he denied himself every luxury, so long had he lived with but one great thought in mind — that of getting out of debt — that he could not at first conceive of returned affluence. Presently he passed a rec- tangle of palms and pepper trees which he had planted the first year he got his irrigating water, and he was reminded of an old dream — that of a pretty bun- galow rising amongst the trees, and of a broad stretch of green lawn in front — of a sweet, bright-faced girl to keep
the bungalow and a child or two to roll about the grass.
But that was seven years ago. He had expected to have his land and water stock paid for in three years, but delays of one kind and another had occurred; he had had a bad "wash" one year, one or two crop experiments had, due to inexperience, proved fail- ures, and by degrees his dreams had faded. He had worked harder that he might forget his loneliness, and gradu- ally he had become accustomed to- solitude. He had reached that point where human companionship was no- longer necessary to him. He smiled as he thought of his dream now — he was too old, he told himself- — just an old "sand rat," as the more recent comers called the pioneers of the des- ert.
Passing the extreme southern boun- dary of his land, he noticed a group of cowboys gathered about some object. He drew rein a trifle to see what the cause of the excitement might be.
Billy Stone, one of Harrison's own men, who was a member of the group, seeing Harrison, stepped to his horse's side.
"What is it, Billy?"
"It's a strav horse that's wandered over here. He's an outlaw — nobody can ride him. Never been broken. Beida says he was foaled down in Mexico ; you can tell by his small ears set wide apart that he's got a little of the old Arabian blood in him that came over with the Spanish horses into Mexico. He was foaled too late in the season for branding with the other colts the first year; the second year he dodged into the tules and hid till after the branding was over. After that he
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body to break him. There are lots of different ones have tried it, but no- body has succeeded. Three or four men have been killed, they say. He's got a long black mark across his hip that Beida says means 'El Diablo,' and signifies a horse that can't be broken. I guess he's 'the devil' all right. Sev- eral of the boys have been trying him, but they don't get their leg across his back till they go into the air. Beida's just got his wrist sprained."
"Better let him alone," adjured Har- rison.
"Yes. Say, Pete Conway borrowed a lariat from me when he was up here last week and he hain't returned it. He lives down near El Centre; if it ain't too much out of your way, would you call and get it fer me? This other one I got ain't no good."
Harrison nodded and rode on.
At a little after nine the next morn- ing he left El Centro Hotel and rode to Conway's ranch, the other side of town.
He found Conway, a long, lean in- dividual, with a huge roll of tobacco in his cheek, driving a herd of cattle very audibly from one pasture to an- other. Harrison rode up to the fence, and as the lariat was then hanging from the horn of Conway's saddle, he obtained it without difficulty.
"Sorry to trouble ye to come fer it," apologized Conway, "but I been kind er puttin' it off. Jake Carruthers has been talkin' of go in' up that way, an' I thought maybe he'd take it. Excuse me fer goin' on, but I've got one very contrairy steer here in this bunch, an1 if I don't watch him he's liable to git away. He's cantankerous when he gits a-goin'."
As Harrison rode off his attention became attracted to an object by the side of the road some distance ahead. He could not quite make out what it was. It was pink; it might be a girl or a woman in a pink dress, but if so, she was sitting low and working at something in front of her. While he was looking, a steer, probably the one to which Conway had referred, broke through the fence a short distance in
front of him and started down the road. The animal presently stopped. He, too, had sighted the pink object. He paused a moment, then lowered his head, shook it, and with a deep bellow started toward it on a swift run. At the sound of the bellow the girl rose from her seat with a shriek of fright and ran down the road, the animal in pur- suit.
Harrison saw her flight would be cut off by the irrigating canal which crossed the road. He spurred his horse, as he unwound the lariat and swung it in slowly widening circles about his head.
The girl reached the ditch — stopped — turned
Harrison threw the lasso, and jerked the steer to his knees. The girl sank in a heap upon the bank.
He gave the rope a quick turn on the pommel, dismounted and hurried to the girl. She lay quite still. He looked at her, and felt that he ought to do something, but he did not quite know what. He thought of sprinkling her face with water from the irrigat- ing ditch, but to touch anything so fair and delicate as that round white cheek with that muddy water seemed like desecration.
Presently she slowly opened her eyes, then more full recovering con- sciousness, she attempted to sit up. Harrison slipped his arm under her shoulders.
"Was it you who stopped him?"
"Yes," said Harrison. He felt the blood stirring through his whole body. If the girl had looked beautiful as she lay inanimate, she was doubly so now that the color was returning to her cheeks.
"Well, I— I thank you." She at- tempted to rise. Harrison lifted her to her feet. The contact thrilled him; had he thought the night before that he was old!
"I just came out to sketch — that dear little house with its palm-leaf thatch was so cute I just had to have it," she said. "I didn't suppose those cattle could get out."
"Couldn't have, if the fence had
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been in proper shape," said Harrison, picking up her jaunty Panama.
"I wonder what I did with my easel," she said.
"Guess it's where you left it; didn't notice you stop for any baggage," laughed Harrison. The girl laughed.
Harrison secured the easel and re- turned. "If you'll allow me, I'll carry it to your home."
She hesitated a moment, and gave him a comprehensive glance. His dress was rough, but his speech and manner were those of a gentlemna.
"You are certainly most kind," she said.
That it should be any kindness on his part struck Harrison as ridiculous.
During the walk he learned that she was from Keutucky ; that she was stopping at the same hotel where he was registered, that her name was Farrington, that she had come West with her aunt and uncle, who stood in the place of parents to her. They were tourists, he gathered. It appeared that they had some object in coming to the valley, though just what she did not state.
As they reached the arcade of the hotel he paused.
"Won't you come in and meet my aunt and uncle," she asked. "I know they will be glad to know you."
Harrison demurred. There was his horse to look after, then he had some errands for his neighbors to attend to, he would meet them later in the after- noon, if agreeable.
She consented, and taking her easel went in.
Harrison rode directly to the best clothing store in town. When he came out he wore, instead of his "chaps" and sombrero, a suit of light grey tweed, smart tan ties with silk socks to match, a white silk shirt and a fifteen dollar Panama hat. He made an extended visit to the barber's, and lastly, by a circuitous route through the back yards, entered a manicure parlor. He could not help but think what Bud Longworthy, whom he had seen on Main street, would say if he were to see him visiting a manicure's. He
would lose caste in the eyes of his boys forever should such an evidence of weakness and effeminacy be dis- covered. The white shirt and silk socks might be forgiven him, but the manicure — never !
It was half-past five when he re- turned to the hotel. He made his way through the crowd about the desk, and reached the stairway. As he started up a party of three — a middle-aged man and woman and a young girl- — were just starting down. He drew back and waited. As the girl turned her face toward him he saw with a leap of the heart that it was she. She had changed her pink gown for a white one of 'some gauzy material, sprinkled over with blue flowers and cut a little low in the neck, from which fell back a filmy ruffle of lace.
She looked at Harrison for a moment without recognition, then she looked again, and her face lighted with a smile. Such a smile Harrison thought he had never seen.
"Oh, Mr. Harrison, it is you. I did not quite recognize you at first — you — you look — well, you were in your rid- ing clothes this morning, you know — "
"Aunty, this is Mr. Harrison, of whom I told you this morning. He saved my life." The woman extended her hand and made some polite ac- knowledgment, but her tone was for- mal and reserved. The glance she gave him struck Harrison as a trifle ap- praising.
The uncle was unreservedly cor- dial. He wrung Harrison's hand warmly, and expressed several times his appreciation of what he had done. "Mighty clever trick you did, from what Phyllis tells me."
"Oh, nothing; any one in the cattle business could have done it."
Snowden invited him to dine with them. He accepted.
The conversation during the meal was devoted mostlv to the va^ev, its unique history of flood and drought, and the wonderful agricultural achieve- ments under irrigation of the past few years. Snowden asked many Questions, which Harrison answered. The girl
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seemed a most interested listener.
As they rose from the table, Snow- den suggested a game of bridge for the evening, but Mrs. Snowden pleaded a headache, and after a few words of formal leave, went upstairs. Snowden then suggested a smoke in the chairs outside upon the sidewalk, and Harri- son agreed. The girl lingered a few moments by the coat hooks in the lobby. Harrison paused also.
"I want to tell you how interested I was in your story of the valley," she said, giving him her hand. "It was nice of you to tell us so much about it."
The words were commonplace, but something in the girl's eyes struck him as being anything but that. A great hope sprang up in his heart.
"I have some pictures which I will be pleased to show you to-morrow," he said; "some that I brought down for a neighbor to be developed ; they will give you a better idea of the steps in progress than I can by telling. I will have them in the morning."
They shook hands once more. She turned and followed her aunt up the stairs, and he joined Snowden out up- on the sidewalk.
Later, when he had gone to his room, Harrison sat by his window a time before retiring. His reverie was very different from that of the night before. He saw now the bungalow, handsomer than he had ever dreamed it, rising amongst the palms and pep- per trees, and there was being moved in a complete outfit of the finest furni- ture, including a grand piano. He found himself wondering vaguely what make of automobile she would like best. That he was assuming a good deal in thus planning he realized, but if he did not win her for his wife, it would be because he could not get her. His mind was made up. She had not shown any aversion to him, and that look in her eyes as they stood in the hallway had appeared to him a good deal in the way of encouragement. Gratitude, perhaps, it was, but if any- thing could be done to make it develop into love it should be done.
He was down in the lobby by six
o'clock the next morning. He ate his breakfast, looked over the morning paper, and then went out to the photo- grapher's. The pictures were not fin- ished until ten. When he obtained them, he returned to the hotel. There were still no signs of the Snowdens or Miss Farrington. He waited till eleven ' — then, unable to stand it any longer, went to the desk and asked the clerk if he had seen them.
Yes: Mr. Snowden had gone out about nine o'clock — had taken one of the auto stages up the valley, he thought. Miss Farrington had gone out soon after; had an easel or some- thing under her arm, and he guessed she was going to stay over lunch-time, as she had ordered one put up. Mrs. Snowden, he thought, was confined to her room with a sick headache.
Harrison's heart sank. He did not see how he could wait even a few hours to see her. But he employed the af- ternoon in making some purchases for the new bunk house — mattresses and blankets and various other fittings.
When he returned to the hotel, about five, Phyllis was standing at the desk making some inquiries of the clerk about the laundry. He stepped up and they greeted each other. He produced the pictures, and then drifted into the ladies' parlor and sat down upon the shiny black leather sofa. He showed the pictures, one by one : first the cat- erpillar engine dragging out the brush and roots, then the "Fresno," scraping and leveling the land, the mule teams, plowing, the turning of the irrigating ditches, the building of the head-gates, the methods of turning on and shutting off the water, and finally the cotton and alfalfa, growing. Then there were the more intimate scenes on the ranch, the Mexicans eating their tortillas and fri- joles in the shade of their rough weed ramades, the boys cutting each other's hair in the shade of the cook shack on Sunday morning, the whole crowd making their toilets out of a single wash basin in the mornings. She was interested in them all.
"It's pretty rough, at the first, any- how," he said.
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'T think it is grand," she replied; "to think how they have turned this whole desert into a garden; I admire the strength and perseverance. I feel as though I would like to help."
Harrison was gratified. It encour- aged him, for he had felt sometimes as he looked at her that she was too delicate for such a country; perhaps she would not like it, even with the comforts and luxuries that he could give her.
"I would like to take you and your aunt and uncle out and show you some of these things. I can get a machine from the garage in the morning, and we can drive up to the North End and you can see the actual work going on; that is better than the pictures."
"That is very kind of you," she said, turning her face away a little, from him. "But I will tell you — I think per- haps I ought to tell you that I am en- gaged— engaged to be married."
Harrison drew back abashed. Af- ter all, the look the night before had meant nothing.
"I — I didn't know," he said. Then added quckly: "You are no doubt very happy. Let me congratulate you."
The girl did not reply. She sat look- ing down into her lap.
"Yes, I have been engaged for years — ever since I was a child. Our fami- lies lived next door to each other. His mother and my aunt were great friends from girlhood, and they always had it arranged that when we were grown we should be married."
"Yes," said Harrison. "And you love him?"
She did not reply immediately. Again she sat looking down into her lap. Then she raised her head reso- lutely. "He is a good man; at least he comes from a very good family. I haven't seen so very much of him since I was grown, for I was away at semi- nary during the high school age, and about the time I got back he went away to college, and he hasn't been graduated long. Uncle doesn't seem to entirely approve of him, but Auntie thinks a great deal of him, His fam- ily are very nice, one of the oldest
families in Kentucky. Aunty thinks that family is everything. I guess it is — isn't it?"
He did not speak.
"Warren — Mr. Langley," she pur- sued, "came to the valley with us — or rather we came with him. He thought he would like to buy some land here, and we came with him to look about. He has a piece selected now which he thinks he will buy. Uncle was up there to-day; Warren is still there. When Uncle came back this afternoon he said that Warren had about decided to buy it. I think it is up your way."
"That so?" responded Harrison. "Well, I hope that he gets in right; if there is anything I can do to be of as- sistance, let me know."
"You are very kind. The piece is marked on this map," she said, taking an orange colored sheet from her wide girdle; "you can take it — keep it, if you like — we have another." She rose. "I will go up and see how Auntie is. Thank you for showing me the pic- tures— and for your assistance yester- day— and your kind invitation."
She turned suddenly away and went to the stairs leading up and he to those leading down.
As he turned the first landing he could not resist the temptation to pause and look up. She had stopped on the top landing and was looking down. She turned quickly, but not before he had caught the gleam of a tear in her eye. He felt an impulse to rush up and gather her into his arms, but she vanished.
He left the hotel .weighted with a deep sense of disappointment. He had had disappointments of many kinds — no man could conquer the des- ert without them — but this one, some way, seemed heavier than the others. He could not shake it off. He went into a restaurant and ordered some supper, but he rose, after a brief time, leaving most of the food upon his plate. As he walked along the road to shake off his feelings, it occurred to him to look at the man. He unfolded it, and lighting a match, looked at the marked section.
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He stopped in the middle of the road. "That piece!" he gasped. "That lemon that every real estate dealer has been trying to work off on every tenderfoot for the last four years." Why, it was totally worthless —the man would be ruined if he pur- chased it. He turned half way round. He would go back to the hotel and tell them so. But he paused. The possibilities came to him. Suppose Langley were ruined, would it not be better for him, Harrison? Would it not give him the chance he wanted? It was not likely that the aunt would persist in urging the girl to marry a ruined man. The aunt's influence re- moved, he felt but little doubt of his own success. He turned again, then for some reason, perhaps because the moon shone down upon the road with unusual brilliancy, he paused and raised his eyes to the sky.
"No," said the man as if in answer, "that's right. It isn't giving the man a square deal. Whatever else is true or isn't, she's his. He's won her; she's promised to marry him, and if he's worthy of her he's entitled to her. He ought to have a square deal."
He turned once more and walked rapidly toward the hotel.
There were none of the Snowden party about, but he wrote a brief note and asked the clerk to put it in their box:
"Miss Farrington — Don't let Mr. Langley buy that piece. It is good land, but he can never get any water on it, for it lies higher than the ditch. Buy anywhere to the south, east or west. Good-bye. I am leaving for the ranch to-night. William Harri- son."
He went to the stable for his horse and rode for a while with a sense of exaltation — that sense that a man has when his conscience tells him that he has done the right thing ; but later, as he got on to the homeward half of his journey doubts began again to as- sail him. Suppose the man were not what he should be; suppose the grl did not love him; suppose she were persuaded against her own best feel-
ings and married this man and was un- happy; would it not be his — Harri- son's fault? He could have prevented ;it, he believed.
He was still revolving this question in his mnd when he was addressed by a horseman that rode up from a cross- 'road. He looked up and saw it was Billy.
"I see you got it, Mr. Harrison."
"What?" Harrison looked puzzled.
"The lariat."
"Oh, yes." He took it from the horn of his saddle and threw it to Billy.
"How's everything?" asked Harri- son.
"All right," said Billy, "as far as the ranch is concerned. We had a lit- tle excitement late this afternoon, though. A man killed."
"Who?"
"A feller from the East — or rather from the South — Atlanta. Langley : know him?"
Harrison started.
"He was up here lookin' at land," continued Billy. "He bought that piece on Section 8 — that piece that's no eood."
"How — how did the accident hap- pen?" asked Harrison.
"That outlaw horse. Langley tried to ride him, and he threw him and killed him."
"Why — why didn't you stop him?"
"We couldn't. We warned him, but he was a headstrong, opinionated sort of feller; he'd been drinking, too."
"Bad work," Harrison added, as he started up his horse. His mind was confused for some time, then presently he came opposite the rectangle of palms and pepper trees, He paused and watched them waving gracefully in the moonlight. He sat still for some time. And as he sat he fell to dreaming once more the old dream. Again he saw the bungalow rising amongst the trees, still finer and hand- somer than ever before, and this time it was so real that before he went to bed that night he wrote to an architect in Los Angeles, sending a sketch and asking for plans and specifications.
The Creed of Ah Sing
By Francis J. Dickie
IT WAS early evening when we fin- ished dining. Strolling out to the big rotunda, Hawley and I dropped with contented sighs into a couple of the roomy leather chairs that faced the big window looking out onto Hast- ings street.
It was five years since either of us had been in the city. A changed city it now was; but despite that, the old air of at homeness, which had always seemed to permeate the town of the early days, was still about. For sev- eral moments we smoked in lazy rest- fulness, watching the ever-changing flow of pedestrians. It was very quiet within — the rotunda almost deserted.
Suddenly I started. A man was passing. As he did so, our eyes met. For a moment I thought he would rec- ognize me, but, turning his head away, 'he passed on^down the street without a sign. I turned to find Hawley's eyes upon me, gazing with odd questioning.
"Did you see that man?" I queried.
"Just an ordinary Chinaman?" Haw- ley's voice was indirectly questioning.
Yes; it had been just an ordinary Chinaman, dressed in the loose, large buttoned kimono like coat so common- ly worn on the street, with trousers and slightly turned up brimmed hat of black felt combining: a garb half of the Orient and Occident.
Yet, in passing, he brought back to me once more the realization of the strange, inscrutable ways of the East; wavs born of an unprogressive civili- zation three thousand years old. Be- fore taking up the study of law I had wandered far afield, holding at one time a position with a large firm in Hong Kong. I think it was because of my knowledge of the Chinese lan- guage and by reason of an oddly
scrolled gold ring I wore — the present of a Confucian priest given for a chance done favor — that Ah Sing had made me a confidant during my former stay in the city. And with the memory of those happenings as told to me by him that night five years ago I cannot but believe that in his heart there was no consciousness of wrong for his deed — rather it was a thing that had to be. It was according to his code of life. And I, being only a white man, off- spring of a late sprung, precocious civilization, do not attempt to judge him.
Busy with my memories and oddly wondering why he had refused to rec- ognize me, I had forgotten Hawley Now his voice called me back to pres- ent things.
"Well, tell us the story," he re- marked, casually. Knowing me, as Hawley did, he knew there was one forthcoming. The only occupants of the rotunda were a somnolent bell-boy and the night clerk, so I proceeded.
"In the old days here, shortly after I had gone in for law, sometimes be- ing tired of poring over musty relics of Blackstone, I used to wander down to Fender street. It was not called that then, but no matter, the locality is the same. And there, mingled among the groups collected in the various 'joints,' Ah Sing— that was he that passed up the street to-night — ran a chuck-a-luck and 'hop* joint off Co- lumbia avenue. You entered from that street at least, and after going through endless doors and passageways, and descending sundry flights of stairs, you finally reached the room where Ah Sine sat night after night on a high stool behind a wire netting and shook the little wooden box with its three
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ivory dice. Here he sat, taking in and paying off, unsmiling, immutable as a wooden god. Beside him were little piles of silver ranging in value from five cent pieces to American dollars. It was not a big game, for his patrons were composed for the most part of small salaried white men; teamsters and clerks and the like, who had not a great deal to lose. All 'Chinks' are great gamblers, and as a game keeper Ah Sing was a wonder. Night after night he sat there, paying and taking in, and never once do I remember of him making a mistake. With his right hand he would pick up a stack of coins and slide out to the winner the exact amount. His long-nailed index finger allowing just so many coins., down up- on the board, with an automatic touch as exact and precise as a penny in the slot gum machine. He never looked — seeming to do it all by some sixth sense, just as you may have seen a veteran faro dealer snatch a given number of checks from his rack with- out ever a glance. Only in Ah Sing's case the feat was more difficult, the money being smaller and of various sizes.
Once in a while I staked a few cents more because I did not want to appear as always standing around watching than from any desire to gamble. I did not always wear this ring, the pres- ent of the Confucian priest, but one night I had it on when playing at his board, and then I saw those strange little eyes of his, that peered out al- ways from half-shut slits of lids, light; the barest surprised gleam shone in them for a moment, then was gone. For awhile I played indiffer- ently until what money I had before me was gone. Then I stood aside and idly watched the others. There were not many in that night, and presently only two remained. They at last turned to go. I was about to follow them when Ah Sing sooke. Very softly, his eagerness well hidden, with only casual interest did he remark: "You likee sell lille ring?"
He did not know me for anything then but a casual player at his tables,
He swung open the door of the foul den and we came out into the alley
did not know that I spoke Chinese. Probably he thought I had found the ring or bought it without knowledge of its intrinsic value. However, I did. The priest, when giving it, had told me that while it was upon my hand no harm would ever come to me from any of his people, and with it I could com- mand their friendship or aid in time of stress. I shook my head carelessly. 'No, I don't think so.' This is said in English. I stood a moment till the other two players had disappeared through the door, when I spoke in Chi- nese. He seemed pleased, and for many minutes we conversed.
After that I came often and sat in Ah Sing's cozy little den back of the chuck-a-luck room. Sometimes he would smoke, and lying on his side tell me many tales. It's queer how a 'hop'
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499
smoker likes to have some one beside them to talk to.
One night the police raided Ah Sing's place. Up till then the lid had been pretty well off, but a change at the City Hall had come, and with it promptly the lid was put on tight.
"While the rest of the occupants were madly tearing out through the main doorway, and also straight into the hands of a waiting squad of police, I felt a touch on my arm; Ah Sing was at my side. The lights had gone out, but I knew his voice. He clasped my hand, and together we fled. It seemed to me through the very wall.
However, Ah Sing was not invin- cible in his cunning. Just as he swung a door open and the fresh night air struck our faces, a burly form barred the way and a hand clutched each of us. It was fairly light in the alley- way, and I recognized O'Toole, one of the plain clothes men whom I had met often while attending some case at the police court. For a moment he stared at me.
" 'For Hivin's sake, what are you doing in that heathen hole?' he gasped not ill-naturedly. 'Getting a little lo- cal color,' I grinned.
" 'Well, you better beat it before any one else comes, or else you'll get a little local cooler,' and he released my arm.
"'And my friend?' I questioned, gazing at Ah Sing, who stood placidly now that escape was cut off. For a minute the detective stared at me, the light of suspicion creeping into his eyes. Even his knowledge of me as a lawyer was hardly proof against this prima facie evidence of interest in a heathen Chinee. However, O'Toole only shook his head very slowly, re- marking as he did so, 'Better beat it now while you got the chance.'
"I looked at Ah Sing and he nodded. 'Better go!' he said in Chinese; 'you can do me no good by staying!' And again I caught O'Toole's eyes upon me, his suspicions deepened to a cer- tainty. He made no offer to retake me, however, so I turned and sped down the alley.
"Well, to make a long story short, they took Ah Sing and kept him in jail a week. You see, they had had their eyes on him for quite awhile. He was mixed up in a little of everything that was not within the law, but chiefly opium smuggling. Of this he was head of an organized gang. They had not really anything definite against him other than keeping a gambling house, and after all, in those days that was not much of an offense. A hun- dred dollar fine was about the worst he'd have got, and that next morning in the police court. But the detectives wanted to get at the bottom of the opium business, and as they had Ah Sing in the toils on another charge, they had him remanded for a week without bail, figuring to worm the par- ticulars out of him by various cute little methods that police officers sometimes use.
"They were away off when they fig- ured on getting anything out of Ah Sing. He was little brother to the Sphinx. So finally after about a week they let him go, after he had pleaded guilty to the charge of keeping a gam- bling house. I guess during that time they gave him their particular brand of the third degree, with all the varia- tions, and in the proceeding O'Toole was the most energetic of the lot. I'll give you Ah Sing's own words for it. I shudder even now with the remem- brance of sitting watching his face and listening to him as he told of it, a few nights later in a lottery joint down Shanghai Alley, he having deserted his old quarters after the raid.
"His face was drawn and gray, and the lids clung even lower than ever, but even then I saw the terrible smoul- dering wrath that lurked within.
" 'For six days they keep me,' he said, speaking in English. 'Six days they keep me, no let me smoke, with- out it I no can eat, no can sleep ; I al- most clazy. And all the time they talk, talk, want me to tell them tilings.' He paused. A brief second his voice lost its usual dead monotone and rose to a high pitched scream. 'They stlike me lots times, and all time I
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sit on. never speaking. They never learn nothing.' He stopped suddenly, staring into space. 'All time I no have smoke/ he went on in his usual low voice. 'And that Irish devil police- man, I lose my face to him and nod — well — he pay. I kille him — save my face.'
"I stared at him without speaking. After all, there was nothing I could say that mattered. Nothing could change him from his set purpose.
"That indefinable thing which the Oriental calls face, a thing that is akin to our honor, self-respect and personal esteem, yet which is different with a difference we cannot understand, that had been outraged. He had lost face, and OToole must pay. That was the only possible solution.
"And OToole! They found him one night in an alley with a knife thrust through his heart. It was many months after that raid on Ah Sing's joint. There was no clue to the perpetrator of the deed. Only I, when I read of it in the morning paper, knew, and I — well, Ah Sing was my friend. In a little way I understood. In the past I had gained a little insight into their ways; as much as the white man per- haps ever does of the yellow; and knowing the Orient and the strange creeds of its people, judged leniently and was silent.
"During all these months from that night in the joint in Shanghai Alley I had never seen Ah Sing. I had kept away from Chinatown, for, with the putting on of the lid it had lost much of its interest, its nightly picturesque- ness.
"One night a couple of days after the mysterious death of detective O'Toole, as I sat in my room the door opened quietly. Noiselessly, without knocking:. Ah Sing slipped into the room. How he knew where my room was I do not know. He had never been there before, nor had I ever in the past mentioned where I lived.
"Closing the door softly, he came across the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. I thought he looked a little thinner, more haggard than of
old, but his face was the same inscrut- able mask. His eyes, that looked ever out from beneath half-shut lids, were those of a dreamer. Yet to-night his whole mein, despite his quietness, un- consciously conveyed an air of subtle triumph. For a long moment he sat in silence, then spoke in Chinese. 'He's gone!' he said, very quietly, without a trace of feeling or exultation. Just as you might remark of some friend who had just left the city on a short trip.
" 'I saw it in the paper,' I replied, without sign of approbation or disap- proval.
" 'Yes,' he repeated, 'he's gone. I saved my face!'
"For awhile he sat on, staring into empty space, without apparent realiza- tion of my presence. At last he rose. "Well, I go. Good-night!' He was at the door and gone before I could speak.
"That is the story of Ah Sing; the same man that passed up the street to-night. I have never seen him since till now. Why he did not recognize me to-night I do not know. Why he came to me that other night five years ago I also do not know. Perhaps it was just a desire to confide in some- one, to voice his success. Some one whom he thought would understand and receive appreciatively the infor- mation of a necessary undertaking suc- cessfully carried through. It is, after all, a very human trait, common to us all.
"It was only five words he sooke. 'He's gone; I save my face.' Still, in them was constituted all that he need- ed to say to convey his success to me."
Outside, the slow dying summer night had faded to dun darkness, and suddenly the lights blaze out^ in the rotunda. Somehow, the coming of these lights brought us back to the world around us, which I, at least, had forgotten, rapt as I was with those happenings of the past^ Hawley scratched a match, lit his cigar. To- gether we rose, and in silence strolled out onto the street.
The Morsethief
By Alice L. Hamlin
NORA BRADFORD sat holding her baby . "Father will come to thee soo-oon; Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep," she crooned, as she rocked back and forth.
"Why doesn't he come. All this long day he has been gone. Dinner and supper passed, and no father. Sh — , my little one, mother will care for her babe, even if father doesn't comse. But why doesn't he come?"
Quietly she lay the sleeping child in the crib. Then she turned the light a little lower, placed a shade between the baby's head and the lamp, and be- gan clearing away the supper. She had not tasted the supper. Somehow, her long day of anxiety had taken away all want of food. Joe Bradford had left early that morning, saying he hoped to be back for dinner. He had not told her where he was going. It was not unusual for Joe to be gone, but he usually told her where he was go- ing. That is, he told her something. On one or two occasions, Lora had found that Joe had not told her the truth as to where he had spent his time.
The supper things cleared away, Lora stepped to the bedroom. In the corner stood the gun. She loaded it and stood it where she could reach it easily from the door into the sitting- room. She glanced backward into the bedroom. On the table near the bed lay Joe's revolver. "Strange," thought Lora. "I never knew Joe to go away without that. I wonder if he thought I might need it. He never forgot it, that's one thing sure." She picked it up. It was loaded, so she placed it back on the table. Once again she walked back into the sitting-room.
Billie was sleeping peacefully. She opened the door and looked out. The full moon had risen and things outside looked as bright as day. Out toward the horse corral she walked. "I'll see if everything it all right for the night."
A strange whinny greeted her ears. "Oh, I bet he's coming." On walk- ing farther, however, she saw a large, beautiful horse coming toward the cor- ral. "Where could he have come from?" thought Lora, "and why does he come here ? How tired he is ! Here, you beauty, come here while I pump some water for you." She walked up to him, took him by the forelock, and led him to the pump. She pumped and pumped into the tub, while the thirsty animal drank. Then again she took his mane. She led him to the corral, took down the bars, and put him in with the other horses. "I wonder where he came from. I wonder if his coming has anything to do with Joe's staying away. Oh, dear! I wish Joe would come."
She went to bed, but could not sleep. Restlessly she tossed from side to side, listening, waiting hoping that Joe would soon come home. Once she thought she heard him coming, and rushed to the door to listen, but the noise was that of the horses in the corral, and not Joe. At last, exhausted, she dozed fitfully. But hark! "Lora," called a voice. "Lora," very quietly. "It's me, Joe. Don't light the lamp. Get some dark thing on and come out here in the shade."
It didn't take Lora long to do as she was told. Trembling, apprehensive of danger, she picked up the revolver and hurried out.
"Whatever is the matter?"
"Sh! I can't take long to explain. I
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met Hap this morning, and he told me he had some horses he wanted to sell or trade, and for me to go and look at them. So I went. I didn't know the blamed things were stolen. The sheriff had followed the men who took the horses, and he caught the men down in the brush trying to dispose of them. Hap and I were at the corral at the time. There was some shooting done; I got away, but they're after me. Say, where did that big black come from? That's one of them horses. They'll never believe I didn't know the horses were stolen, and worse, some fellow fired at the sheriff; he fired back and Hap was killed, but they think I was the guy fired first. It was Hap done it. The sheriff's pretty bad hurt. I got away, but I heard one fellow say I might swing for it. Say, Kid, have you got some canned stuff you can give me ? Don't light the lamp. They'll sure be watching the house before long. They thought I was back there in the mountains, but when they find I'm not, they'll come here mighty quick.
A ray of intelligence spread over Lora's usually placid face. She looked keenly at the man before her trying to run from justice. Large, brute, lazy — she remembered her marriage to him a few years before. His physique had yon her for him, but she had learned in the five bitter years that a husband must be more than mere body. She thought of all the new beautiful horses that he had been buying; of all the days he had been away from home "when she didn't know where he was; •of all^the food they had been able to have in the house, and she knew that Joe hadn't worked to earn. She had wondered where he had gotten his money to buy these things. Now she understood. Now was her chance for freedom.
"You'll not get away from here now, Joe Bradford," said Lora, leveling the revolver at him. "You've had your say; now I'll say mine. You married me when I was young and inexperi- enced, and could have had a decent .man. For five years I've worked for
you, worried for you, endured your poverty or eaten your stolen food. You never cared for me further than to have me get your meals. For the last three years you've been in this horse busi- ness, with the ranch here to mislead people. I don't know whether you're telling me the truth or not. I hope you are. But you're going to prove it. I'll help you prove it if I can, but I'm go- ing to hand you over to Lubbuck and get the reward, for I suppose there is one, and then I'm going back home. When you can live a decent man's life ^and farm the land the government gave you, then I'll come back. I wouldn't do that even except for Billie. But my child needs a father." With that she raised the pistol high in the air and fired twice. The still night re- sounded with the noise.
Joe, when he realized what she was doing, made one jump in attempt to get the revolver, but Lora was too quick for him. "Don't you do that again, Joe Bradford, if you know what is good for you. I'd hate like every- thing to have to hurt you, you're Bil- lie's father, but it isn't more than you deserve if I should. Listen! They're coming now. When they get here, we will talk over this matter and see what can be done for you."
"Lord! Lora, don't do that. Let me hide. I'll do anything for you. I'll leave and let you have everything. I'll — but there was no time to finish. The sheriff and his deputies galloped up to the side of the house. "What's the trouble here ?" said Lubbuck, the dep- uty, alighting from his horse.
"Do you want this man?" said Lora. "I'm holding him for you." Lubbuck looked at her puzzled.
"You bet I do want him. But what's your game, little woman?"
"Nothing," said Lora. "He tells me he is innocent, and if he is, he can surely prove it. I don't believe he did anything, and there are enough of the fellows in the gang who can tell, and they'll free him. Is there a reward for him? I'm desperately in need of money. I want to take the kid and go home.
IN THE PLAZA DE PANAMA
503
"Can't you come in ? Joe hasn't had anything to eat." At the invitation the men shuffled into the room. Once again Lora spread out the untasted supper. She opened some canned stuff and sat quietly back while the men ate. When the meal was finished, Lubbuck rose from the table, drew from his pocket a check book and wrote a check for two hundred and fifty dollars. "The reward," he ex- plained. "I'm mighty sorry you did it, little woman, it may make it worse for
him, but I'll do my best to clear him for you."
Lora made no answer. Mechanically she took the check and watched the men depart with their prisoner. When they were well out of sight, she stooped — poked the check under the edge of the carpet and walked over to the sleeping baby. "Billie boy," she said, "it's the only way. He's guilty as can be, Billie, and we'll go away and for- get it all. Mother will care for her babe in the nest "
IN THE PLAZA DE PANAAA
(San Diego)
I walk, I know not where or when, Save that I'm in some far-off fairyland Conjured by wizard's potent wand, Where Spanish arch and dome, in
silver sheen,
Or dazzling white, with now and then A splash of red, or gold, or green, Shine out against the azure sky Near San Diego's Harbor of the Sun. Here mission chimes, silent but
eloquent,
Take one in fancy back to times When cowled Franciscan prayed with
penitent.
Here let me dream of Saint Inez, Of cloisters, roses, senoritas' eyes, And never wake from such a Paradise.
EDWARD ROBINS.
The Neurotic
By Nellie Cravey Gillmore
MRS. BRADLEY abruptly left her chair, a sudden light of determination glowing in her eyes. She hurried across the room to her desk, rummaging in the drawer of letters for one that had come tp her in the morning's mail. She re- read it again and again, eagerly, fever- ishly, finding her resolution reinforced with every line : the resolution that had long since germinated in her mind and strengthened gradually, month by month.
The appeal which had put the "fin- ishing touches" upon her decision ran as follows:
New York, October 10, 1915. Eola Bradley,
Cedar Rapids, N. C. My dear Madam :
I wish to compliment you upon your story, "When Silence was a Virtue," appearing recently in one of our mag- azines.
I seldom give more than perfunctory attention to the hundreds of produc- tions which pass through my hands, but this dainty bit of fiction impresses me as an exceptional composition : un- usual in design, pathos and virility. And it is so strongly and simply human withal, that I cannot resist the impulse to congratulate you.
In this day of woman's progress and position, I feel that I am justified in predicting for you a brilliant future.
I trust you will favor us with a read- ing of further manuscripts from your pen, and can assure you that should you ever visit New York, your genius will be accorded an enthusiastic wel- come.
Most respectfully,
J. MORTON WELLS.
Yes, the arrival of Mr. J. Morton Wells' letter was undoubtedly the one thing necessary to complete the struc- ture of determination that had been building itself in Eola Bradley's mind for a long, long time.
It must have been fully a year ago that she had reached the deduction that she was totally out of step with the prosaic, humdrum life she was lead- ing. The well-ordered, comfortable "house-cat" existence that was the epitome of happiness and satisfaction to the average woman of domestic tim- bre was but a prison wall to one of her highly-keyed sensibilities, intellectual cravings and soaring ideals. The spirit of the Great Unrest was upon her.
After five years of uneventful, too serene, association with the man she married, the revelation flashed upon her with the startling force of an elec- tric shock: she was mismated. The seething tide of long-pent-up emotions swept turbulently to her brain; the aching restlessness of tortured nerves flamed into fierce rebellion. She wanted the excitement, the whirl, the kernel of life. This deadly, velvet ex- istence forced upon her by her phleg- matic husband was driving her mad. She felt buried alive.
Even a derelict life, she told herself, was preferable to being "safely an- chored in the domestic harbor" — a gal- ley slave to the sordid and common- place.
With every fibre of her aroused be- ing she longed for the bigness of things ; her very soul cried out against its dungeon confines.
It was true, just as J. Morton Wells had said: this was a day of progress for women ; they were no longer bound by old-fashioned hearthstone notions:
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505
creatures of passivity — a cross between a servant and a plaything. The thought of her wasted years was intolerable. She could almost hear the rattling of the chains that bound her!
She recalled many stories she had read of women who had the courage to strike out for themselves and achieve. New York was the axis about which life in its every phase eternally re- volved. She would find a welcome there, and with courage and tenacity and natural ability, why — she could not fail!
The frightful conditions of her present life appalled her. She was soul-sick. Sick of her good-natured, complacent husband ; he had never un- derstood her, never appreciated her. Sick of the daily ordering of the deadly three meals; the row of flower pots, with their ever-blooming varieties, on the front porch ; the running in and out of tiresome neighbors, bent in their simple way on being "sociable." Oh, she was dead sick of it all — even the busy little clock ticking noisily away on her bed room mantel — and that had to be wound up every night — sickened her beyond endurance. It was all sameness, sameness, sameness. Every day when the court-house bell chimed six, Billy stepped up on the veranda; always he had the identical pleasant smile with which to greet her — and ever the same, habitual kiss!
Well, she was done with it all. She had beat her wings against the cage long enough; the door was open at last and the world was before her. Had not Mr. J. Morton Wells said so him- self ? She had a soul to be satisfied, a mission to perform — and an indomi- table spirit, risen to the bursting of its bonds at last. She would put it all behind her, trample it down and soar upward to those heights for which the great god, Nature, intended her.
She would go to New York. Further- more, she would go at once. She would not even wait to communicate her intention in person to her husband. A few written words would be final and self-explanatory. Besides, an ar- gument with Billy, cut and dried pro-
duct as he was of a long line of stolid New England ancestors, would only be productive of the inevitable clash of fixed tenets against the expanding ori- ginality of true genius. And the die was cast.
With exultant new life tingling throughout her sensitive little body and her tumultuous brain afire with it, she sat down before her desk and drew up pen, ink and paper. She wrote :
Dear Billy:
I have threshed the subject out from every point of view, and have come to the final conclusion that we are liv- ing all wrong. It is not in me to settle down to the two-by-one life you have mapped out for me, and find happiness in an existence that is killing me by inches with its wretched monotony and ruffleless details. I need excitement, adventure, a stimulant. I would rather have the sharp edges of life — and life itself — than to end my days on its rounded surfaces asleep.
I do not think you have ever quite known me as I really am. I have no complaint to make of your goodness, your generosity or your treatment of me. It is just that you do not (because you cannot) understand. There are within me tremendous forces for achievement. I was never created to adorn the Lares and Penates of any man's home ; or that is to say, any man of your calm and unruffled poise. I am sorry that I have not succeeded in filling the place in your home that you have wished, and left nothing within your power undone, to bring about. The fault is in me. But it is only too fatally true that our feelings make our world, and the struggle has been a hard and a bitter one for me. My decision is not hasty, but the result of mature deliberation. I am going away. I want to be somebody.
We are too temperamentally at vari- ance ever to meet each other upon com- mon ground; therefore, it is far better that we live our separate lives as best we can. Indeed, the very absence of friction that has always marked our association is one of the strongest
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proofs of our mutual unsuitability. You have my best wishes for your happi- ness, and one of these days I hope you will see things as they are, and give me yours.
Farewell,
EOLA.
Mrs. Bradley re-read what she had dashed down, with the scarlet throb- bing in her cheeks. A passing twinge of conscience caused some of it to ebb away, but she pulled herself together sharply. She had reviewed the situa- tion too often and too fully to allow any silly squeamishness to throw stum- bling blocks in her path now.
True, Bradley loved her, she sup- posed, in a simple, affectionate way — would have laid down his life for her if need be; but of all those thousand subtle longings of the brain and de- sires of the soul, he knew nothing — and cared nothing. They could not have been further apart with oceans rolling between them, and never, never again — her resolution once taken — could she be induced to give up the golden infinitudes stretching before her to return to the old petty routine !
Her hands were trembling with ex- citement as she folded her letter, ad- dressed it and placed the envelope in a conspicuous place on the mantel. Then she hurried up to her room and began to pack her trunk. She felt a little numb and cold when she had finished and her reflection in the mir- ror, as she rapidly dressed her hair for the journey, showed tears glittering between the curly black lashes. But she dashed them away with a little gesture of self-disdain and concluded her toilet with feverish alacrity.
The three-forty limited whirled out of Cedar Grove promptly on time. It had paused at the station just long enough to swallow up a solitary pas- senger, then thundered on its way.
Eola shrank back in the corner of her brown-plush seat and slowly unwound the thick veil from about her face. Her cheeks were pale enough now for all their rosy warmth of an hour or two ago; but the determination in her wide,
gray-black eyes was undiminished, and the heart in her bosom throbbed excit- edly. She looked out at the flying landscape, and felt her courage go up with triumphant leaps and bounds. She had left her chains behind her. The prison doors had opened, emitted her and closed again. The tired, cramped wings stirred, fluttered softly, eager to
unfold themselves for flight . . . * * * *
As the last stroke of six died away, William Bradley stepped up on the front veranda of his home. The door stood ajar and he passed through the house, not pausing till he reached his wife's room. It had been a hard day at the office; more than the usual col- lection of frets and trials had seemed to bunch up to raw his nerves and up- set his patience; but the thought of Eola waiting for him, dainty and fresh and sweet in one of her white muslin frocks, cheered him and brought the unfailing smile of pleasure to his lips. He called her name, but there was no response. He entered the room, only to find it strangely empty, with articles of discarded wearing apparel scattered about in unprecedented disarray.
For a moment he stood still in the middle of the room, his eyes drawn to- gether in a puzzled frown. What could it mean ? It was the first time in years — the first time in his life, rather — that she had gone out just at their sup- per hour, without saying something to him. Perhaps she was hiding, just to tease him . . . perhaps one of the neighbors was in trouble and she had been hastily summoned . . . perhaps something — some terrible accident had happened to her. . . . Bradley's heart chilled at the bare thought, illogical as it seemed. He turned and hurried into the kitchen. That, too, was deserted, and instead of the fragrant aroma of coffee — one of the many pleasant little details associated with his home-com- ing at evening, the coffee-pot stood up- side down on the stove, and the stove itself was cold. Filled with a nameless anxiety, he turned back and entered the little front sitting room where their evenings were spent together. He
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507
She flung herself upon the pillow in utter hopelessness
switched on the light and looked about him eagerly for some sign . . . ah, there it was : the note she had written him, explaining her absence. His heart gave a lurch of relief, and he began to whistle softly as he tore the edge off the envelope.
He read it over twice, three times; blinked hard, then read it again. He smiled whimsically. She was playing a joke on him, of course ; but he rather thought, in view of his rasped nerves, that she was carrying the thing a little too far. But he controlled his irrita- bility, drew up a chair before the smouldeing fire and reached for a mag- azine. He lighted a cigar, but the flavor disgusted him and he tossed it in the fire place and turned the pages of the periodical absently. Presently he rose, went out on the veranda and looked up and down the oak-lined vista of the village street. It was quite de- serted. He walked down into the flower-garden and peered eagerly be- hind rose-bushes and hedge-clumps; no laughing, flower-like face flashed into tantalizing view.
With a dead, sick feeling he went back into the house, to the telephone, and took up the receiver. He called for the ticket office of the union station. Yes, the clerk informed him bruskly,
a ticket had been sold to Mrs. Bradley, for New York. She had caught the three-forty train.
Bradley turned away, with the per- spiration oozing from every pore. It was inconceivable ; like a blow between the eyes. Then it was all true: she didn't love him, had never cared for him, and the life he had thought such an ideal thing had been only a farce and a misery to her! If she had only waited and talked to him — only given him a chance to say something — he was quite sure he would have been reasonable. When had he ever denied her anything she had asked? When he came to think of it, his entire life with her had been one long effort — and delight — to give her the things she wished, whatever the sacrifice. And now . . .
His first impulse was to catch the next train and bring her back home. His first emotion was a mixture of an- ger and despair; his next, of fear. With all her boasted independence, Eola was as helpless as a kitten. What might, or might not, happen to a woman of her childish, impulsive nature in a place like New York, unprotected, ig- norant? But by degrees he disentan- gled his excited thoughts and mar- shalled them into logical line. Her
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very innocence would shield her from disaster. As far as money was con- cerned, he had always kept her sup- plied with a full purse; besides, they had friends in the metropolis to whom she could appeal in case of distress. But what puzzled him most was just what she expected to do in a city like New York to achieve the distinction of becoming "somebody." And what hurt him most was the thought that her life with him had grown unendurable, and that because of it she had gone out into the world alone. A miserable sense of loneliness and anguish settled upon him, but he thrust it aside de- terminedly, and set about devising plans for the most discreet course to pursue.
At the end of an hour he went into the deserted dining room and un- earthed some bits of stale toast and a pitcher of stale cold tea. With these he fortified himself against the sense of physical weakness that was stealing over him, then hurried down to the telegraph office and dispatched a night letter as follows :
Dear Thorp :
My wife left on the afternoon train for New York. For months she has been suffering from a case of neu- rotic nerves, and has all at once con- ceived the notion of trying her wings in the city. I will esteem it a great favor if you will be good enough to keep an eye on her, unobserved. No doubt a few days will suffice for her experiment, but I cannot tell until I hear from her. If she comes to your house, kindly humor the situation; if she decides to go to a hotel, look out for her in a quiet way and keep me advised.
Yours sincerely,
BRADLEY. * * * *
The days that came and went were eternities of torment to William Brad- ley. The line he had received from Thorp assured him merely of his wife's safe arrival and of the fact that she was registered at one of the prominent hotels. No word had come from Eola
herself, and the sickening certainty grew upon him that she had gone out of his life forever. More than once he made up his mind to seek her out, force an explanation and demand her return. Then the biting unconsciousness would come to him that life for them under such conditions would be no life at all ; that she must return willingly — or never! And so a fortnight passed.
As for Eola, the first few days of her new life were spent in such a whirl of preparation for the prodigious work she was going to accomplish that little time was left for other thoughts. The fact that her nights were for the most part restless and dream-haunted, and her solitary meals in the cafe tire- some and unappetizing, was only to be expected in the beginning. Her labors and successes, once under way, the big, spiritual life unfolding itself to her starved vision, material things would no longer count; would, in fact, be completely submerged by the loftier things.
She rented a brand new typewriter, laid in a supply of all sorts of paper, purchased a pint of writing fluid, a dozen press pencils and a fountain pen. Then she visited several of the promi- nent publishing houses and returned to her rooms with the exhilarating as- surance that they would be pleased to look at (anything she would care to submit !
For a week she worked unremit- tingly. At the end of the second week, she sat tearfully reviewing the pile of rejected manuscripts piled on her desk. In the first flush of composition they had seemed to her vital, immense, teeming with human life and human appeal. Re-reading them in the criti- cal light of calm judgment, her heart dropped several fathoms in her breast. The soul in them seemed with- ered, if soul there was at all. Or was it the ruthless brutality of merciless editors that, through the vision of her collapsed hopes, had succeeded in strangling all life out of her little tales ! She did not know; she only felt in a wretched, helpless way that Fate had dealt her a cruel blow.
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Time and again her efforts were re- peated, only to meet with the same heartless response. And suddenly she found herself at the end of her re- sources, both mental and financial. She tried vainly to write, but her pen stuck to the paper, and instead of inspiration there were only tears.
All about her was life, to be sure; life in its every phase. And she ? She was just one of the million atoms of humanity tossed about on its tide — of, not above it. She occupied spacious apartments in a big hotel in the big- gest city in the States; about her were hundreds of thousands of human souls — and yet she had never been so alone in all the twenty-eight years of her life. Away back somewhere, some- time, she had lived in a little village among happy, free-hearted people — a strong arm had been behind her — al- ways there were things to do to fill in the ^ spaces of long afternoons and evenings; the supper to be prepared, the fire tended, the noisy little clock to be wound up for the night.
She wondered in a detached sort of way how Billy managed about the sup- per and the flowers and the chickens. She began to wonder with a sinking heart if he would ever come home at six every day, and kiss some other woman! Some woman more worthy.
Well, she would make one more effort. It would never do to be a quit- ter. She had dealt her own hand in the game of life, and she must play it out Tucked away in a corner of her trunk was Mr. J. Morton Wells' letter. She had kept it as a last resort in case of emergency. At first she had wanted to justify his predictions: to burst up- on his notice in the full-fledged colors of her triumph. Now it seemed that her only hope lay in seeking assistance at the hands of the only person who could help her! And so she dressed herself painstakingly, caught a Broad- way car and was whirled down to his office.
Bitter disappointment awaited her. She was informed by the office boy who responded to her timid inquiry that Mr. Wells was no longer with the
Crescent Company; he had sailed for Europe a month ago.
Eola retained her self-composure by a mighty effort. But her knees trem- bled beneath her frail weight. The last straw had floated beyond her grasp. She managed to articulate a polite "thank you," and was on the point of turning away when a flashy stranger, pausing suddenly before her, said courteously:
"I beg your pardon, madam, but you seem to have met with some diffi- culty. If I can be of any service — ?"
I swift thought leapt to her throb- bing brain. It was a chance, and she grabbed at it.
"Thank you. I am in trouble. I expected to see Mr. Wells, and have just learned of his absence from the city. I am an author by profession, and had hoped to secure orders for my work through him. I — am in rather an embarrassing predicament. Are you — his successor?" She was fumbling in her hand for the letter, unconscious of the bold eyes fixed upon her flushed, downcast face.
She tremblingly unfolded the type- written sheet and held it out to him, convinced that such an expression from the well known magazine man was an open sesame to editorial favor.
He accepted it with a gesture of en- nui, merely glanced at the contents, and handed it back to her.
"Ah, I see. You have come all the way to New York to try your luck." He laughed softly. "And you aren't the first one, not by any means. He looked at her sharply, gathering in the details of the petite, attractive figure and lovely, flower-like face. "Now it's just too bad that I don't happen to be one of your literary clan. But see here : if you're hard up, I see no reason why you should have difficulty in find- ing agreeable occupation. Ever — posed?"
Eola flushed scarlet.
"I — I beg your pardon!" she cried sharply, "but I'm afraid you misun- derstood me." As her shamed glance met the leering eyes fixed insolently upon her, the blood suddenly left her
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face. She turned as though to sweep past him, but a detaining hand was laid on her arm.
"Come now, don't go up in the air over a trifle. Why, there are dozens — hundreds — of girls in this town who'd jump at the chance to be an artist's model. It's a respectable enough pro- fession."
Tears of indignation swam in Kola's eyes; she shook off his touch with a gesture of repulsion. She turned and hurried toward the elevator, the stranger at her heels.
As she pressed the bell, she flashed round upon him.
"How — how dare you!" she ex- claimed angrily.
But the man merely shrugged his bulky shoulders and laughed amused- ly. A wave of darker purple came to his florid face.
•'What a little cyclone it is, to be sure ! I assure you, dear lady, I spoke only with the best intentions and the deepest respect. I bid you good-morn- ing and — good luck. If, however, you should find yourself in need of assist- ance, I am always happy to come to the rescue of lovely woman in distress. Box No. 321 X."
Eola never knew how she got back to her hotel. The first thing that brought her to herself was that, just as she entered the lobby, a familiar voice accosted her and a pair of friendly gray eyes were searching her white face.
"Mr. Thorpe!" she gasped.
He held out his hand, smiling. "De- lighted to see you in New York, Mrs. Bradley, though I must confess to a bit of surprise, considering Billy's seri- ous illness."
Billy's illness !
"Why — why — what do you mean?" she blurted out faintly. "I "
"Ah! Then possibly you haven't yet gotten your mail ? I've only a few moments ago received a letter from Fred Andrews, mentioning it. A — er — sudden attack, perhaps."
"Yes, yes ; that must be it. And oh, Mr. Thorpe! I thank you so much for telling me— in— time to catch the noon
train. I " she broke off, made a
terrific effort toward self-control and turned away to hide the fast-gathering tears. Billy ill! Perhaps dying, and she hadn't enough money in the world to get to him. The thought struck her between the eyes, and stirred her wits to swift ingenuity.
"Oh, dear. This is a catastrophe. Why — why, I've lost my purse contain- ing all of my money and my railroad ticket." She snapped her bag to with a little gesture of consternation. Then she ventured embarrassedly: "If you could loan me sufficient to make the trip, I — I would appreciate it im- measurably, Mr. Thorpe. You see, there won't be time to telegraph home and "
"Certainly. It will be a pleasure to do so. And furthermore, I shall be delighted to drive you to the depot and help you with your luggage. My limou- sine is outside. Shall I wait in the lobby?"
Eola was too full for words, so she left him with a little nod and a smile of gratitude, hurrying to her rooms in a feverish daze. She did not stop to change her dress, nor to pack any of her belongings, but stuffed a few things in a suit case and hastened down to join her benefactor.
They entered the car and flashed down Broadway. Eola did not open her lips to speak. Her set eyes were fixed with a strange unseeingness on the whirling streets. A hideous black- ness enveloped her. The stopping of the machine roused her from her torpor of misery.
Thorpe conducted her to the ladies' waiting room and went to purchase her ticket. When he returned, she thanked him dully and suffered him to escort her to the train.
A few minutes later, the Limited Express was tearing on its way south, and Eola sat huddled in the corner of her seat, her little cold hands gripped together in her lap. Events, one af- ter another, piled themselves on her aching brain. There was no sleep for her that night, and she spent a year for every moment of the interminably
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dragging hours, waiting for daylight. It came at last. In a little while they would reach Cedar Grove. Would she find him dying — dead? And if alive — would he even receive her now, af- ter the thing she had done? An icy shiver passed over her. Suppose he should turn from her — cast her out?
The conductor presently came through the car, shouting the name of the next stop. In a few seconds the train blew. Gradually the wheels ceased moving. Home at last!
Twenty minutes later she was mount- ing the steps of the little bungalow. She noted mechanically that every- thing was in punctilious order about the place and that the autumn roses were tumbling over each other in show- ers, of gold and white and crimson. She pushed open the front door and en- tered the corridor with noiseless step. There was not a sound to mar the still- ness; an ominous hush pervaded the air. He must be very, very ill. A lump rose in her throat. Tremblingly, she crept forward and passed before the sitting room door, her breath con> ing and going in little dry pants.
Bradley, seated before a crackling fire, cigar in mouth, was leisurely scan- ning the morning paper. The pungent odor of broiling beefsteak was in the
air. The curtains and tidies were crisp and snowy, and the furniture and wood work polished and gleaming.
Eola felt her self-control slipping away. She put one shaking hand to the door-facing. Her nerveless fingers relaxed their grasp on the suit case — and it crashed to the floor.
Bradley started up, looked round, caught sight of her thin face and hol- low eyes — and suddenly checked the laugh with which he had intended to greet her (for Thorpe's telegram was reposing snugly in one of his vest pockets.)
"Have you — missed me, Billy?" she asked faintly, as he folded her in his arms.
"Missed you? Well, rather. But I didn't want to spoil your fun, dear, by urging you to return home prematurely. Dinah came to look after things for me and I've been comfortable enough. I fancied you were having a big time, seeing life, finding your soul, and all
that " He held her from him and
looked with exceeding tenderness into the depths of her misty eyes.
"Oh, Billy!" she cried miserably, crumpling up against him like a broken leaf. "Don't! What a little fool I was. I left my soul behind me when I — left — you!"
LOVE'S /AO/AENT
A silence has the mountain peak,
A silence has the star, A silence has the tide that dreams
Above a deep-sea bar.
But one hush sweeter far there is
Than quiet of the star ; A peace more holy than the peak's
Or tide's on silver bar.
It is the first charmed hush of hearts
Who on love's threshold stand, And with clasped hands and dreaming eyes,
Behold love's promised land!
ARTHUR WALLACE
PEACH
Hester's Holly Hedge
By Agnes Lockhart Hughes
WHAT beautiful holly, and such quantities of it. I never saw so much of it together in my life," cried Alice Graham, halting to gaze at a scarlet studded hedge, behind which retreated a low, rambling house.
"You've never visited this part of the country before," replied the girl's com- panion. "That's why — nearly every- body hereabouts has one, or more, holly bushes."
"Yes, but surely not in hedges like this, Aunt Emily — the waxen foliage, and gleaming berries, seem almost too perfect to be natural. But who lives here?"
"An old skinflint — Hester Herne — so sour and bitter it's a wonder a row of rue doesn't spring up between her and the highway instead of a holly hedge ; but that's been there for years, planted by some of the departed Herns — no one's ever been known to get so much as a berry given to them off that hedge, let alone a spray of holly. That stingy mortal wouldn't let you look at the hedge if she could help it."
"Does she live alone?"
"Sure. Nobody could live with that vinegary old maid, without being turned into a pickle of some sort. She never receives callers, so everybody just lets her alone."
"Too bad!" muttered the girl, re- flectively; "perhaps she's left too much alone; maybe she's had a sorrow, or a disappointment of some sort, to make her 'vinegary/ as you call her. Any- way, she ought to have a vote of thanks from every passerby, for the breath of Christmas exhaling from that hedge. I've a good mind to run in and tell her "
"Heaven forbid — she'd eat you.
Come along and leave Hester and her prickley hedge to themselves."
The voices died away, and Hester, from her crouching position beside a window, just behind the hedge, arose tall and stern. "Vinegary old maid," she snapped, "after me selling her cracked eggs all last winter, for almost nothing, and then letting her have a setting hen at a bargain, too — the old cat. But the girl," she added, softly; "wish I'd got a better look at her. Her's were the first good words I've heard 'bout myself for many a long day. Yes, and I'd have given her all the holly she wanted, into the bar- gain." Talking to herself, as was her custom, Hester went out to look after her feathered stock, but drew back under the shadow of the hedge, on again hearing voices.
" Twould never do to go home with- out Mary's doll; I must have dropped the package somewhere about here, or else left it at the Postoffice."
"Christmas shopping's a nuisance," complained the older voice.
"Not at all. if done in the right spirit. Why, I just revel in making some being happy, at this season. It isn't the amount of money lavished, but the kindly thought that gives genu- ine pleasure ; that's the real meaning of Christmas — to make others happy."
"Mebbe, but I don't believe it. Christmas has gotten to be a time of showing off who can give the best pres- ents, and of wondering what's coming in return. But I'm clean done my buy- ing: money's about gone."
"I agree with you, Aunt Emily, it does consume a quantity of coin, shop- ping at this time; but think of the pleasure of sacrificing for somebody else. I've just been thinking what a
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vast amount of pleasure one could give from such a holly hedge as Miss Herne's." So said Alice Graham.
"Don't talk about that old miser. I guess the doll's not around here; we'd best go back to the Postoffice and see if it's there. We'll never get it dressed in time if we don't hurry."
"I've just been wondering if Miss Herne ever had a favorite doll."
A loud laugh greeted Alice's remark : "A tabby cat's about as far as she ever
got with a pet ; but come " and the
sound of receding steps told Hester that the speakers had passed on.
"Christmas," she muttered, rising from behind the hedge; "Christmas, and what do folks around here know about it. Stingy mortal — humph — and me giving a pair of chickens to our minister for nigh on to twenty years. Talk's cheap, but that's not here nor there when poultry's to be fed. But what's this?" she added, as in her en- deavor to lock the little picket gate in the hedge she noticed a package. A few minutes later she was dancing about her kitchen, hugging an inani- mate form and kissing it repeatedly. "Never had a doll — humph — only a tabby cat. I'll show them," and with the little, naked thing still held close in her arms, she climbed the creaking stairs to the attic storeroom. Unlock- ing an old horsehair trunk, she ex- plored its depths, drawing forth a spick and span doll dressed in the style of some thirty years ago. She laid it beside the French beauty, but its glit- tering china face seemed opaque — its steely blue eyes stared unsympatheti- cally into hers, and the painted black hair lay coldly on its brow. Yet this had once been her cherished prize — through childhood days. The French doll smiled engagingly at her, showing pearly teeth. Its eyes were of a heav- enly blue, that opened and closed, while the hair was soft and fluffy.
With an exclamation of disgust she thrust the china doll roughly back into the trunk and laid the French beauty gently on a mink muff beside her. A fur coat and a bonnet, then she in- spected; both had seen many seasons
of wear, and now seemed miuch out of date to Hester, who intended donning them for the festive day. "What's Chistmas, anyway?" she cried. "What is it, anyway ? It's a time when every- body's trying to beat the other giving gim-cracks, all right. I want none of it. Plain Hester Herne I was born — plain Hester Herne I'll die; and no- body'll ever say I tried to outdo my neighbor giving presents. That's all there is to Christmas, anyhow; but no, it isn't, either. Now what was it she said?" And jumping up, Hester pondered with knitted brows. Then she moved to a little window under the eaves and peered out. Snow was fall- ing softly, and nestling like pearls amidst the scarlet berries on the hedge. "She said something about making others happy — something about the hedge, too — and I will," she added, hurrying down the winding staircase.
Shortly afterwards she was walking up the road with a basket of glittering holly sprays and gleaming berries on her arm. She was actually on her way to call at a neighbor's house, and her heart went pit-a-pat. Turning the cor- ner of a lane, she almost collided with another figure hurrying in the opposite direction. Hester, recovering herself, said : "Beg your pardon, Miss. I was on my way to Mrs. Wylie's to ask where you were stopping. I'm Miss Herne, and I overheard you and your aunt talking while you were searching for a lost package. I found it after- wards, and was bringing it to you, with some holly from my hedge that you fancied so, this morning. You seemed so kind-like of speech that it set me thinking about Christmas, for you see it hasn't meant much to a lonely crea- ture like me. But here's the holly, Miss, and I hope you'll enjoy it."
"How perfectly lovely, Miss Herne ; my name's Graham, Alice Graham. I am so glad to meet you, and very grate- ful for the package and especially for the holly. I was on my way to the Postoffice, and if you're going right home, would like to walk along with
you.
Reaching the hedge, they stopped
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for a second, when Hester invited Alice to enter the house behind the hedge. Soon, the two were chatting pleasantly over a cup of tea. After- wards, Hester brought forth Jemima, the china doll, and beamed with de- light when Alice went into ecstacies over it. Before Alice left Miss Herne's home she had promised to come soon again, and when the door closed after the smiling young caller, Hester, too, smiled until she scarcely recognized her reflection in the mirror. It was years since this quicksilvered glass had reflected so happy a face. Long Hester sat, smiling at her reflection, and repeating: "Christ was a little child once — at Christmastide. His mission was to feed the hungry, clothe the poor, and make glad the hearts of the oppressed; and I'll do it, too," she added, with a shake of the head.
The next day, while everybody was supposed to be busy about her own af- fairs, many of Hester's neighbors were gossiping about the strange hap- penings behind the hedge. A boy had been seen carrying forth a basket heavily laden with holly. Another had emerged with sundry packages, and it was whispered that Hester had contributed a Christmas tree and the "fixins" to the Sunday school. She had also given orders to have groceries delivered to several needy families, and the gossips were unanimous in their decision that Hester Herne must be going to die. But Hester was never more alive, as any one might have seen who made bold enough to peep through one of her windows. Her erstwhile tightly drawn back hair was gathered loosely about a brow that to- day looked wonderfully fair, and ten years seemed to have dropped from her appearance of a few days ago. The old melodeon creaked, as she played the accompaniment to a Christ- mas hymn, that she sang in a cracked voice, while the cat, unused to such sights and sounds, arose from its ac- customed place beside the hearth, and arching its back, watched in amaze- ment. Then the mistress of Holly Hedge, rising from the instrument,
looked almost apologetically at the china ornaments, standing stiffly in a row on the mantel. It's Christmastide, you know," she spoke softly, address- ing a daguerrotype of her mother. "A time to be happy and make others so," and she fancied the picture smiled up- on her.
Alice Graham dropped in as she had promised for a cup of tea, and to give a touch of modernism to Hester's an- tique hat.
"Your own mother wouldn't know you now, Miss Herne. You don't look like the same person; that hat suits you fine, and your hair is wonderfully becoming, arranged so."
The village church had never looked more attractive than on this Christmas day. Holly was in evidence every- where, and many eyes turned towards Hester, who wore a spray of the scar- let berries pinned on her coat, and even dared to flaunt some on her hat.
For years the congregation had been accustomed to seeing Hester soberly dressed, sitting alone in the old fam- ily pew, but today the order of things was reversed, and another Miss Herne — -younger, brighter and happier, fairly beamed with joy from the shadowy pew.
Back of the Hern's was a pew that had not been occupied by any of the original holders for a decade of years, or since Will Shelton, the last of his family, suddenly left the village. It was then rumored that he had been "keeping company" with Hester Herne — but whatever the surmises, they were never affirmed nor denied by Hester, who, after Shelton's depart- ure, became even more reticent than before, until holding aloof from her neighbors, they gradually shunned her entirely. To-day the Shelton pew had an occupant, and many eyes wan- dered toward him, and back again to where Hester sat, oblivious of the new church arrival.
The last hymn had been sung, and the church was being emptied of its congregation. Then little knots gath- ered here and there, many nodding in Hester's direction. She walked aloof,
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and had gone but a few paces when the Shelton pew occupant overtook her. Oblivious of the many eyes watching, Shelton strode after Hester, and raising his hat, said, as though they had parted but yesterday. "A merry Christmas, Hester!" She turned in confusion, to look at the man be- side her, but could only articulate in gasps: "Will — Will — you?" "Come, Hester, dear, it's I, all right— Will Shelton in the flesh, and I've traveled all the way from New York just to wish you a Merry Christmas, for after ten years of the world I find my heart still beats for the mistress of Holly Hedge; and this time I'll not take 'no' for my answer. Hester, I want to walk home with you, and through life, as well. May I?"
"Yes, dear," she answered smilingly, "and it'll be the happiest day I've ever
known if you'll come in and help eat the Christmas dinner cooked by the mistress of Holly Hedge."
The narrow picket gate in the hedge clicked softly; the seldom used front door of the rambling homestead opened to Hester Herne and Will Shelton, then, shutting behind them, left the village gossips wondering how swell, generous Will Shelton could ever have fancied the miserly mistress of Holly Hedge — "but there's no ac- counting for taste," said Mrs. Wylie.
"And his," answered Alice Graham, "I think admirable. Miss Herne's ex- terior may appear cold like the leaves on her holly hedge, but her heart, like its berries, is red with human love and charity. She has learned, too, what many of you have failed to learn — the true spirit of Christmas, the gaining of happiness through the giving of it."
The Cowboy's Inamorata
By Newell Batman
Near the western line of Texas, Where the cactus dots the sand, And the desert winds are blowing 'Cross the muddy Rio Grande,
In a little 'dobe ranch house, There beyond the river line, Just a pasear o'er the border Lives a Spanish girl of mine.
She's as pretty as the desert, And there's roses on her cheek; And her voice is like the murmur Of a little mountain creek.
And I rest there half a dreamin', With my arm about her, so; While we talk in lovin' whispers Till the southern moon is low.
And sometimes I get to thinkin'
Of one night a-goin' home,
When I'd almost reached the river —
I was ridin' on the roan —
How the mare heard some one comin', And her balkin' saved my life; 'Cause she pranced around in terror, So he missed me with the knife.
And she says she's always lonely Then my forty-four's a-blazin' When I'm ridin' on the range ; Told the skunk he'd missed his mark,
Though I think she's sometimes lyin',But the light was bad for shootin' 'Cause it seems almighty strange And he got off in the dark.
That a pretty girl like Chita 'D ever miss a cuss like me, Just an ordinary puncher That rides the double E.
But still the way she greets me When I ride across to call, Dispels my doubt and wonder, And I think she means it all.
And it's fine to sit there evenin's, 'Neath the droopin' pepper's shade, And listen to her singin' Like a fairy in a glade.
With her eyes a softly shinin', Like the lonely desert star, And those pretty fingers tremblin' On the strings of her guitar.
So when Chita told me after
How a Mexican cashed in,
'Cause she wouldn't be his sweetheart,
Then I knew that man was him.
And I kind 'a felt half sorry, For somehow I didn't see, Just the reason I should blame him For the game he tried on me.
Anyhow when it's past midnight, With the east a-growin' light, And the stars a-slowly fadin' As they drift on with the night,
It's adios, my Chita! Just a kiss and then I'm gone; Spurrin' up the drowsy pinto, Lopin' homeward with the dawn.
California in Exposition Art
By Jessie /Aaude Wybro
CALIFORNIA has long been rec- ognized as the happy hunting ground of the artist. But it is only when one discovers the great number of canvases devoted to Caiifornian subjects in the galleries of the Palace of Fine Arts at the Pan- ama-Pacific Exposition that one real- izes how happily the artist has hunted. Not only the Caiifornian artists, but men who have painted the world over. Men, for instance, like Childe Has- sam, who has sought inspiration in France, Spain, Italy, The Netherlands, find their repertoire incomplete with- out the inevitable bit of California.
William Keith — our own Keith, who has perhaps seen deeper and more beautifully into the soul of the Caii- fornian landscape than any other — oc- cupies one of the largest of the galler- ies set apart for individual exhibitors in the Palace of Fine Arts. Here a long array of canvases live from the touch of his brush, all of them either done directly from Caiifornian scenes or showing the trace of Caiifornian color and influence. His soft, rich tones, his poetic interpretation, his fine and sensitive handling of the in- most beauty of the land he loved are too familiar to need discussion.
Arthur F. Matthews has a most dis- tinctive charmi — a way of seeing and of expressing himself that sets his work apart from that of any other artist. There is a kind of hushed still- ness about his pictures, a poetic at- mosphere in which he envelops them that seems to say to the beholder: "Peace! This is Beauty's temple! Humble your soul and listen!" He sees in subdued tints. For those who like vivid tones — who sympathize, for instance, with the bright joyousness of
Hassam's color vision, Matthews will have no message. But for those who can subdue their consciousness to his individual key, his peculiar coloring and soft nuances of tone will be full of charm. Unlike Keith and Ritschel, he does not confine himself to landscape. His greatest achievements are un- doubtedly in the realm of figure paint- ing. His "Masque of Pandora" and "The Carnation" are full of creative beauty, and his mural in the Court of Palms — "The Victorious Spirit" — has attracted much attention for the origi- nality and power of its conception.
One of the most delightful of his California pieces at the Exposition is "Cypress Grove." It is characteristi- cally dull in tint, poetic, full of a beau- tiful, dreamy suggestion. "Monterey Hills" presents low slopes of rounded modelling under a subdued light, the trees showing as dark masses that melt almost to black. The flowing lines have a soft cadence, fitted to the dull harmony of tone and the simplicity of composition.
William Ritschel's interpretations of the California landscape differ as much from Keith's and Matthews' as these two from each other's. Keith and Mat- thews are both poetic in their contrast- ing ways. Ritschel is dynamic. He sees in terms of action and grandeur rather than in soft lights and flowing lines. He is comparable in the realm of nature to Brangwyn in the realm of figure painting, whose canvases ex- press so well the feverish activity, the chaos of movement that characterize modern life. He gives us no sympho- nies of soft tones, no tender moods of nature that invite the soul with their poetic harmonies. His is the full crash of Wagnerian orchestration —
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the vigor and swing of the elements in action. His vision is utterly sincere, and he has a facile technique with which to express himself. "In the Shadow of the Cliffs: Monterey" is a splendid thing, of great power and vitality. The blue-green water, the white of the hurled surf, the stern cliffs, are rendered with a vigor that carries conviction; it is the very splen- dor of the sea itself in a mighty mood. "Tide Pool : Carmel" shows a swirl of noble water, with the light falling strongly upon the dull yellowish-gray of the sea-beaten cliffs. "Summer Night: Point Lobos" approaches the poetic more nearly than any other of his compositions. It is a portrait of the sea in a softer mood — a thing of beautiful lights and shadows and fine gradations of tone. In the foreground the gnarled old trees of the shore catch at the remaining gleam of day, at the same time that their foliage gathers the shadows darkly. Off shore the breakers curl white against the glim- mering half-light. Beyond them is a space of quiet water, green and deep, that gives the last word of the linger- ing dusk before it is absorbed in the waiting night. It is a composition full of feeling, with a particularly skilful handling of light and shade. "Fog and Breakers: Carmel" gives again the swirl of the blue-green water, the gleam of the dull-toned cliffs, and the white of dashed spray — all the rhyth- mic, rugged splendor that the artist sees in the spot he loves best to paint.
E. Charlton Fortune exhibits "Car- mel Mission," the interior of the fam- ous ^ old structure beloved of Padre Junipero Serra. It is charmingly done with a simplicity of composition and a harmony of tone that delight the eye. All extraneous material is cut away. The perspective leads the eye in a sweep of space across the body of the church to a focus at the altar, where the dull tones are relieved by the vivid coloring of the altar pieces. It is fresh and spontaneous in technique, and car- ries instant appeal.
"The Pier," another of Mr. Fortune's canvases, forms a very decided con-
trast to this. It is strongly impres- sionistic in style, done in broad strokes and vivid colors. The pier itself does not seem to be a very seaworthy af- fair— but that really is no concern of the artist's. It affords an opportunity for some swinging brush strokes, and a wet surface that catches the light satisfyingly. It is also an excuse to which to tie the green and orange boats that float vividly on the bright blue water. Its vivacity of tone and its out-door freshness furnish a certain pleasure.
"The San Gabriel Vine," the third of Mr. Fortune's exhibits to present a California theme, shows the marvelous old grape-vine planted so long ago by the padres of San Gabriel Mission, and grown into one of the seven won- ders of the vegetable world. The ar- tist, however, is not particularly con- cerned with either its size or its age. To him it is solely an opportunity to depict a joyous springtime mood — fil- tering gold of sunlight through vivid green, shimmering lights and warm shadows — all the luxuriance of tints characteristic of California.
Benjamin Chambers Brown has taken a most astounding view of things in his "Cliffs: Golden Gate." The spot lends itself naturally to the he- roic. At the very least, to the strong and vigorous. Mr. Brown has chosen to see it in a mood so peaceful — not to say anaemic — as to render it prac- tically unrecognizable. The brown cliffs and quiet waters he portrays might be anywhere, for any sugges- tion they contain of the characteristic splendor of the spot or the vividness of Californian coloring. From a hun- dred different view-points the cliffs of the Golden Gate can be seen as splen- did masses of rock foamed about by a dramatic fury of waters. If the artist wished to paint a quiet scene, why he should have selected this particular spot is beyond solution for the merely intelligent.
Maurice Braun's "Hillside Morning" has nothing in particular to say, but says it rather gracefully. The color- ing is delicate, and the tones well har-
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CALIFORNIA IN EXPOSITION ART
521
monized. His "Sunlit Hills: Southern Calitornia" is much more vivacious. It even savors of impressionism in its vivid greens and its blue treatment of shadow. Like the "Hillside Morning" it is light in tone, and somewhat in- consequent. The same is true of "Hills and Valley: Southern California."
A very decided contrast to these is "Late Afternoon in the Sierras," by Maurice del Mue. The coloring is deep and the sweep of line suggests strength and grandeur. He sees the hills in much the same mood as Ritschel the water and cliffs of his beloved Carmel.
Childe Hassam's "California Hills in Spring" is a charming bit of color, done in the vivid tints that translate so well the glow and charm typical of California. He has chosen to portray the hills when they are fresh washed by the rains and lift their wonderful living green against a sky that sings in the bright glory of its azure.
Mr. Eugen Neuhaus and Mr. Fran- cis McComas must doubtless be for- given for their color-vision, since we can only hope for forgiveness in the degree that we forgive. But how sane eyes can see nothing but gray-browns and dull-golds and clay-whites — and other combinations of low tones that the dictionary knoweth not — in the vivid colors in which the ordinary eye sees the Californian landscape, these artists might possibly be able to ex- plain. But assuredly no one else can. Mr. McComas' "Oaks of the Monte," "Pines at Monterey" and "A Los Oli- vos Oak Tree" are all done in these characteristic tints. He elects to ex- press shadow in a peculiar, vivid dull- blue — if an oxymoron may be coined to describe the indescribable. It must be confessed, however, that he uses this in a most effective — not to say startling — way. "The Broken Oak" shows a more ordinary color-vision, portraying a splendid old oak tree in the poetic tragedy of its ruin.
Mr. Neuhaus' "A Corner of Lake Merced" gives a delightfully rhyth- mic swirl of water, the dull tones re- lieved a little by the glowing green of the bank, but so overshadowed by the
prevailing tonality as not to be at once perceptible in its own color-value. "Monterey Dunes" is a subject that lends itself admirably to his vision ; the low tones of the sand dunes — a dull pinkish-gray, as he sees them — and the low curves of their contour fitting together in a harmony that is distinctly pleasing to the eye. His "Eucalypti at Berkeley Hills" is well composed, with a particularly beautiful perspective ending at the sky of dull gold — a thing whose harmony carries a certain conviction, however little one may sympathize with the low tonality.
In both of these men is to be dis- cerned a certain poetry of interpre- tation, though each attains it in a very different way. The only thing that links them, in fact, is their overween- ing use of low tones. As to that — Abraham Lincoln hit the nail of a similar situation precisely on the head •when he used one of his famous aphor- isms : "If you like that kind of a man — well, that's the kind of a man you like!"
Giuseppe Cadenasso also inclines to the use of low tones. His "Summer" is rather a pleasing thing, of gently bending trees and flowers glimmering white in the half-light. "The Reflec- tion," showing the same color sense, is especially successful in its presenta- tion of water — no mere surface glisten, but limpidly beautiful depths that in- vite the eye.
Clark Hobart's "Blue Bay: Mon- terey" shows characteristic vividness of tone. George W. Smith in "Euca- lyptus Trees" also expresses himself in bright blues and greens. Lucy V. Pierce's "Carmel Landscape" harks back again in theme to the artistic paradise of Carmel ; it is rich and deep in tone, contrasting strongly with the canvases just mentioned.
The list of notable interpretations of the charm of Californian landscape might be elaborated almost indefin- itely. Those mentioned have all been oil paintings. The long array of water colors, prints and etchings con- cerned with that theme have not even been touched upon in this discussion.
The Spirit of Russian Hunters Devised
THE "SONG OF BARANOV," 1799
This publication by Zagoskin, in the Muscovite for 1849, is the only rec- ord made of what the "song" was; it had never been translated, or even re- ferred to in any of the subsequent publications regarding Baranov, either be- fore or after his death.
Bancroft, in his "History of Alaska," 1889, quotes one of the officers of the sloop-of-war Kamchatka, in which Captain Golovnin arrived at Sitka, a short time before Baranov left (November 27, 1818) with regard to the manner in which the old chief manager received and entertained Golovnin and associates : On pp. 5, 6 — 517, we find that young officer of the Kam- chatka saying:
"We had just cast anchor in port and were sitting down to dinner when Baranov was announced. The life and actions of this extraordinary man had excited in me a great curiosity to see him. He is much below medium height. His face is covered with wrinkles and he is perfectly bald; but for all that, he looks younger than his years, considering his hard and trou- bled life. The next day we were invited to dine with hirr*. After dinner, singers were introduced who, to please the late manager, spared neither their own lungs nor our ears. When they sang his favorite song, 'The Spirit of Russian Hunters Devised,' he stood in their midst, and rehearsed with them their common deeds in the new world."
THE INVOCATION OF BARANOV
Composed and chanted by him at the dedication of Fort St. Michael (Old Sitka) on the occasion of the first settled occupation of the Sitkan Archi- pelago by white men, August 20-30, 1799.
(Translated from "The Muscovite," March, 1849; No. 5, Book I. St. Peters- burg. By Henry W. Elliott, January 29, 1915.)
"Song by A. A. Baranov, 1799."
"The Russian mind has devised many avenues and plans of trade ;
It has sent free people out all over the uncharted seas To discover and acquaint themselves with every grade
Of benefit therein, for Holy Russia, and the glory of her dynasties.
"The Almighty God, in His mercy, has helped them, and helps us here!
He has strengthened the Russian's courage, then, now, and everywhere — Even here — tho' only just surveyed — see! — 'tis settled without fear,
To soon become an important place on Mother Earth — yes, important and most fair.
"In forming our fraternal societies in this unknown wilderness,
We did not need to invoke the splendid Grecian muse- Only must we know how to obey, then never will we transgress The laws of nature, or the simple rights of men, confuse or abuse.
THE SPIRIT OF RUSSIAN HUNTERS DEVISED 523
"Rise, ye buildings! oh, rise up in this part of a new world!
For Russia is most ambitious — and, see! Nootka meets her ends! The savages — people of all these barbarous clans, who at first hurled
Themselves against us, have now, willingly, become our friends,
"Oh, Peter the Great! Were you to be among and with us here, and now, You would behold proof of your faith in Russian spirit and persistence.
For, behold us as your own descendants — we who have all known how
To discover this new land for the glory of an Empire, and its rich in- heritance !
"The Argonauts were attracted by glittering visions of golden gains : They, too, like us, went in search of many gilded hides.
Had they only known then, of these undiscovered hills and plains,
They would have served their country far better, and themselves besides,
"Although there are no 'golden fleeces' here, nor do visions of them obtrude,.
Still, the otter's fur is, as precious gold, poured in to us from all around* And, if our friends, the Europeans, did not, and do not intrude,
Then our gains would be greater and yet plentiful from the sea and ground..
"The tall 'Sookarev Towers' are standing to adorn Moscow, where we find,.
'The Bell,' and 'Tsar of Cannons,' which united, amaze the people there,, With many wonders, as 'Ivan the Great' — but, never mind —
There are others, too, vastly greater all around, as we view them every- where.
"We are drawn together on this spot by wish for honor and for fame;
We are united here, by our manly friendship and our common brotherhood. So, let us build here wisely, then, when done, go forth again to proclaim
Our intention of occupying more of America for Russia's glory and her good,
"Altho* nature seems so very wild — so savage, so lonely here, and The habits and the lives of the natives are most sanguinary and bad;
Yet securing these advantages of this virgin wealth for our own Fatherland, Make our lonesomeness with perils, vanish while our hearts are very glad.
"In this new world — in this wild new land of the midnight sun,
We stand lined up for fame, as strong as any willing loyal man could; The savages around, all see it — and they will make peace for what we have
done.
So, be wide awake! — remember what you are, and then do as Russians should.
"We are not caring as we labor here, for rank or eulogistic story;
Well we know that all we want, or need, is peaceful brotherhood; What we have and shall secure for Holy Russia's gain and glory,
No matter how, or what, will be placed by patriotic minds to our honor and our good."
Note — This "song" or chant, or invocation, was composed by Alexander Baranov, who, as the Governor of the Russian American Company, or "Chief Manager," recited it at the dedication of Fort St. Michael, Alaska,
524 OVERLAND MONTHLY
August 20, 1799, which was the first building erected by white men in the Sitkan Archipelago; and it was located just six miles north of the present town of Sitka. He landed there May 25, 1799, and then set half of his hunting party at work building this block house or "redoubt/' which was finished by the middle of August. When finished, Baranov, with his whole party, twenty Russians and some 300 native Aleutian and Kodiak hunters, held a solemn dedication of it. He prepared the chant or invocation (as above translated from the Russian text) which was first intoned verse by verse, in Baranov's own voice, then each verse was repeated after him in rhythmic chorus, by all of his associates. Copies of it were carefully made and given to all of the Russian traders, not only at this time and place, but were distributed all over Russian-American territory, where the traders were busy with the request by Baranov that the words be repeated on every occasion of a new post or station being established. To this fact we owe the possession of this copy of Baranov's invocation; for when the Russians founded the post of St. Michael on St. Michael Island, Norton Sound, Bering Sea, in 1830, it was recited then and there by Tebenkov and Glazunov. A copy was given to Lt. Zagoskin, who explored the upper Yukon River, and the Kuskowkwim in 1842-43. In 1849," Zagoskin published it at St. Peters- burg in a Russian semi-monthly magazine known as the "Muskovite," issue of March, 1849; "No. 5," "Book I." The above translation I have made from this publication, as stated, and it is the only translation of it that has ever been made, so far as I can learn. Washington, D. C., July 2, 1915 . HENRY W. ELLIOTT.
The Tragic Sequel to the First White
Settlement in the Sitkan
Archipelago
Not many of our people who, as American Company (which received
tourists or on business, leave Seattle, its complete control in 1799) deter-
Portland and San Francisco nowadays mined early in the season of 1799 to
to visit Alaska, ever think as they fit out a party and go down from Ko-
pass through the silent fiords of the diak to build a post, and take active
'Sitkan Archipelago, that a white set- possession of all the coast and islands
tlement was made there in the summer as far south as Noobha, or Vancouver
of 1799, and years and years before Island. He knew that he could not
one was made at Seattle or in Portland, prevent those "European traders"
When the Russians who were settled vessels from coming in shore waters,
at Kodiak and Prince William's Land but he knew that if he was on the
ever since 1763-64, learned that Eng- ground there all the time with supplies
lish and French trading vessels were which the natives coveted, he could an-
busy in the waters of the Sitka Ar- ticipate and secure all their trade, chipelago during the seasons of 1797- Stimulated by that idea, Baranov
98, Baranov the Chief General Mana- left Kodiak and Prince William's
ger and "Governor" of the Russian- Sound early in May, 1799, with a
THE SPIRIT OF RUSSIAN HUNTERS DEVISED
525
large party of his own Russian hunters — some 20 of therm, with a priest, and more than 300 Kodiak and Aleutian Sea otter hunters. The natives all trav- eled in their hunting canoes or "bidar- kas," while Baranov kept company with them in two small sloops or brigs of about 150 or 200 tons each.
The progress of the party was slow, because it was compelled to closely skirt the coast, and camp ashore every night, and if the weather was stormy, to remain there in those camps till it was clear and favorable. It was not much before the middle or end of June when Baranov decided to locate his new post on a site just six miles north of what is now so well known as the town of Sitka.
The reason why he did not locate then on the present Sitka site was due to the fact that it was the place of chief residence of the Sitkan tribe, which was the largest and most ener- getic as a sea otter hunting village that Baranov had knowledge of, north of Vancouver's Island, or "Nootha."
He therefore determined to put his trading post as near to this large Sit- kan village as the lay of the land per- mitted, and yet to be at a safe and not too great a distance for trade with it.
It should be said that the Sitkans, and indeed all the natives of the Ar- chipelago, resented and objected to the appearance of those Aleutians and Kodiak hunters who came with Bara- nov. But when the Russians assured them that these strangers were not go- ing to remain as hunters — were only there to build a trading post, and to go home as soon as it was erected, the skies cleared up, and the Sitkans be- came friendly.
Soon the sound of axes and thud of mallets was heard in the virgin forests of "Old Sitka," on Baranov Island, and by the middle or end of August, 1799, a conventional "redoubt" or palisaded post was erected : this consisted chiefly
of a main store, or block house, in the center of a large stockade, with smaller cabins facing it, for the shelter of the employees and their families.
On or about the 30th of August, the redoubt "St. Michael" was finished and ready for occupancy. Baranov had arranged for a formal dedication of it, and had composed the accompanying chant or invocation, which he recited when the place was consecrated and named on this August day aforesaid.
It will be observed that Baranov be- lieved that he had concluded a lasting peace with the Sitkan natives, for he declares that belief in verses 4 and 11 of the foregoing invocation.
It seems, however, that Baranov did not live up to his agreement with the •Sitkans. He continued to bring Aleu- tian and Kodiak hunters down, and turn them loose after sea otters every- where in the Archipelago. This, of course, cut into the volume of trade which the Sitkans believed themselves entitled to.
So, taking note of the fact that Fort St. Michael was not on guard against them, and wholly unsuspicious, and that it could be easily destroyed, the Sitkans resolved to make way with it and its few defenders. They surprised and massacred the 16 Russians who were in charge one June Sunday in 1802, and after looting all the stores, they burned the buildings to the ground.
The story of how Baranov received the news while absent at Kodiak late in the season, and how he returned in 1804 to rebuild by destroying the Sit- kan village at the present site of Sitka, is another well recorded chapter in the life of this remarkable man. But this record of his dedication of Ft. Saint Michael has never been published be- fore, and is as remarkable and striking as anything he ever did during his long, stormy administration of the Rus- sian-American Company's affairs from 1799 to 1818 inclusive.
The Great Orations of the Expositions
By Henry /Aeade Bland
IT IS strikingly significant that the two central personalities in Ameri- can thought, Theodore Roosevelt and William J. Bryan, should come to the West to deliver the two most important Twentieth Century messages to the American people. It illustrates more than anything in recent years the position the West is to occupy in the work of the Republic. And this is well: not only because California is naturally a land of striking position and adapted to the performance of stir- ring deeds; but the wealth and glory of San Francisco and the daring and
genius of her citizenry makes great thought sure of ready response. These two masterful orations are well worth serious consideration.
The recently retired Secretary of State came on the invitation of far-see- ing President Moore and the Directors of the Exposition to deliver the Inde- pendence Day address. That he had something vital to say, no one doubted — nor could it be doubted the time and place had been well chosen. On the edge of the westmost city by the shore of the westmost sea, amid marvels commemorating the mightiest triumph
Roosevelt talking straight and direct from the shoulder.
Bryan striking a highly exalted note.
of peace — this was an occasion wor- thy of a great oration, a scene worthy of a great orator.
The crowd that had waited, some as long as three hours, filled the broad open air auditorium from the Jewel- Tower to the Fountain of Energy, and numbered not less than fifty thousand — not an ordinary sightseeing, pick- nicking crowd, but a concourse of thoughtful Americans. After the read- ing of the Declaration there were clamoring shouts for "Bryan, Bryan!" and a change of program brought the speaker's immediate in- troduction. The murmur of voices al- most instantly ceased, and those who could hear began to close in a giant human ring, bent on catching the least word.
It was truly a wonderful sea of hu- manity he faced, the greatest convoca- tion, he himself said, he had ever spoken to. There had been but slight
attempt on the part of the Exposition officials to marshal foreign, State or national officialdom. The tens of thou- sands were from every walk of life, and they came spontaneously.
The Commoner struck a highly ex- alted note in the first few clear sen- tences. Pausing to speak of the Ex- position as unparalleled, and then set- ting aside all intention to adulate or indulge in happy felicitation on na- tional greatness, or on the success of a great celebration, he solemnly set himself to his task, saying: "Never before have I had an opportunity to speak to such an audience as this. I dare not miss this opportunity or fail to improve it."
The unmeasured seriousness of Wil- liam Jennings Bryan in devotion to high ideals was manifest in this con- secration to his sacred duty. He was every inch an orator. It was the living ideal of ethical truth bodied forth —
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
none other than the exalted doctrines of the Prince of Peace. "This nation," •he said, "more than any other nation is at liberty to put God's truth to the test, and in international affairs try the efficacy of those methods which prove successful among individuals." He spoke as if divining what was in the inmost hearts of his hearers, one who had the responsibility of their souls upon his; as if he were saying the things which should lift the shadow of war from his country.
He founded his argument deep on abstract principles of right, putting the value of human life — the human soul — before every physical consideration. He pleaded for the growth of the in- dividual. "All life is a triumph over the law of gravitation. Precedent says "I fear;" progress says "I'll try."
He went to Thomas Jefferson, from whom he drew the principle "That hu- man life is greater in value than prop- erty." He pointed out that Abraham Lincoln emphasized this principle more clearly than Jefferson. Then he traced it back to .the Bible and Christ. ' 'Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?' When you strike the man down there is none left to use the property."
It was the old, old gospel of love he spoke.
The matchless orator's message sunk most deep when he pointed out the po- sition the United States occupies among nations. "We must solve the problems of to-day for the benefit of all the world. We are like a city set upon a hill. God has given us an op- portunity to-day such as no other na- tion ever had, that may never come again, to lift the world out of bondage of brute force.
"And we cannot overlook another important fact, namely: that we have the machinery by which peace can be preserved, while the nations of Europe have only the machinery of war. We have thirty treaties linking us to three- quarters of the inhabitants of the globe and pledging us to the investigation of every dispute before a declaration of war or the commencement of hostili-
ties. The plan embodied in these trea- ties gives us an honorable means of avoiding hasty action; it gives us an opportunity to appeal to the sober sec- ond thought of those with whom we have a controversy. These treaties do not make war impossible. We can, under these treaties, have war if, af- ter due deliberation, the people really want war, but they give the parties to the treaties a chance to think before they shoot."
At last in the climax of his oration, raising his voice till it re-echoed far into the Court of the Universe, and till those on the far outskirts of the listen- ing thousands caught its surge, he ut- tered the benediction : "And may the God of our fathers give us light and keep our feet in the path of truth as we strive to fulfill the high mission to which he has called our country."
In judging of the views on war and peace of both these distinguished statesmen, it is difficult to get beyond the pales of prejudice. One critic, with an eye turned into the political past, tempers his judgment by saying, Bryan is an idealist; and the other questions his judgment; but the fact remains that he is a man of lofty ideals, and when the life of the nation is in dan- ger, to whom shall we look, if not to men of high ideals ?
Theodore Roosevelt came to the Exposition as the guest of the Expo- sition directors and of the people of the West, because his was the presi- dential proclamation that made the 'construction of the Panama Canal pos- sible, and consequently made the Pan- ama-Pacific Exposition possible. Im- portant and unique as was the "Bryan Day" of the Fair, "Roosevelt Day" was even more striking and unusual. There was more of military pomp and gorgeous parade, all in harmony with the spirit of the hour. The Court of the Universe became the vast amphi- theatre in which gathered the seventy thousand who crowded in to hear. As on the former occasion there was much to suggest splendor of occasion and glory of message. The wisdom of the ages look down upon the throng from
THE GREAT ORATIONS OF THE EXPOSITION
529
splendid facade, spire, and dome. Here was civilization, with the highest accentuation, on the very ground where a century and a half ago lapped the timeless tide upon savage lagoons and shores.
The very sea upon which, in plain sight, great warships rode, seemed conscious of the presence of the New World spirit, which, since the days of Balboa, had dreamed of the great gate- way at Panama between the Atlantic and Pacific.
The one man in California whose oratory could rise to the spirit of such an occasion — Governor Hiram W. Johnson — presented the ex-President, and from that moment Rooseveltian spirit dominated the hour.
There could scarcely be a greater contrast than between the oratory of retired Secretary and of the ex-Presi- dent. There is the logic of Bryan, fin- ished, measured and polished to the last syllable, with an unconscious use of the arts possessed by historic world orators ; pointed with epigram, weight- ed with period, and rounded with pero- ration, carrying his hearers to the sub- lime heights of enthusiasm or to the depths of passion, holding his audi- ence upon the needle-balance of a sin- gle word. This is Bryan driving home his Arcadian, Christ-like ideal.
On the ether hand, the oratory of Roosevelt ignores or is unconscious of traditionary art. He is the man with a burning idea, who takes the shortest cut to drive it to the hearts of his hearers. He talks as straight and as unconventionally to ten thousand as to ten. His zeal is to have his idea known and absorbed and believed. He believes in himself, strikes straight from the shoulder, divests language of all conventionalism, drops into the language of the street that he may be more clearly understood, thunders and stamps, and by sheer weight of enthu- siasm carries his hearers with him. Even the seemingly uncontrollable fal- setto which creeps into his voice, is utilized to accentuate flashes of irony or sarcasm.
His personality is catching, and it
has arrived before him. The 70,000 who listened to him in the Court of the Universe knew what was coming, and that they were going to touch a live wire. They were pregnant with the spirit of Rooseveltianism. The spirit of a man in the audience who was knocked -down by the accidental fall of a heavy glass electric globe, and yet who insisted on returning to hear the speach to a finish after the surgeons had fixed him up, was typical of the entire concourse; they were Roosevelt- ized, and ready to respond to Roose- veltian ideas.
There are two world types of man- kind, the ideal-realists and the real- idealists. The first approaches his problem from an ideal standpoint. If he succeeds he must ultimately have his idealism touched and modified by realism. The second begins with the real, and if he amounts to anything at all must continually pull himself on and up by the ideal.
Both types of men are of great ser- vice to humanity. Both Colonel Roose- velt and Colonel Bryan are doing an immense service to humanity by in- terpreting two all-important, signifi- cant points of view. Bryan is prob- ably doing what no churchman could do, and Roosevelt's voice is stronger than the realistic, materialistic press. Both go to the Bible to give point and authority to their doctrines. The ex- President's reading from Ezekiel, 33d Chapter, was one of the most effective presentation of scripture-texts ever presented from a platform. The ex- traordinary thing about this reading was that the Colonel's voice, which at times during the two-hour oration seemed about to break, in this final ef- fort came out round and full, and rolled like peals of thunder.
One secret of the ex-President's power is that he is clear-headed and knows where he is going. Nor does he ever forget his attitude of fairness, which is his ruling passion. It is not a wonder that he moved in his Exposi- tion oration in the role of popular fav- orite. The photograDher who, in tak- ing his picture during the speech, shut
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
off the view of hundreds, is peremp- torily commanded to stop because he is in the way of a square deal to the audience.
Roosevelt picks up and hurls at his auditors the points of his address as if hurling so many bowlders. The fin- ished orator rounds out a period, pauses and gives time for applause. Not so with this kind of an orator. He is never ready for the applause about to come, and shakes his head or waves his hand impatiently when it breaks in. Put with his vehemence, his objection to the recent international peace treaties is, to the Western voter, practically unanswerable.
The essence of Roosevelt's doctrine of war and its relation to the interest of the country, as we glean it from the two hours' oration at the Exposition, is to be found in his personal life motto : "Be ready." Wordiness to him is er- ror, and weakness has the effect of crime. His doctrine does not include militarism for the sake of militarism — the danger always arising from a pro- fessional standing army — it includes a body of strong citizens alive to and trained for the necessity of defense; but also alive to the necessity of happy hearths and rich and useful homes.
Such are the plain messages of the Commoner and the ex-President to the men and women of America — mes- sages of greater import than we can now conceive, clouded as are our views by the cynicism of a daily press which names one interpretation a "ser- mon," the other a "harangue." Yet out of the discussion of the two views let us hope there shall come the light which shall safely guide our national destiny.
It is fortunate for patriotic America that these acknowledged leaders in national thought should unselfishly put the relations of peace and war so clearly before the people; and it is eminently notable that out of the Pan- ama-Pacific Exposition should come two of the most striking messages of recent times. It is also significant that the Panama-Pacific Exposition, on its face a celebration of the greatest achievement of modern times of peace, has brought out these orations, not as ornate eulogies upon the riches and glory of the nation, but as thoughtful and intellectual analyses of the means of conservation and perpetuation of the nation's honor, riches and glory — discussions of the vital policies which shall lead the nation to endure.
The Tides of Love
By Belle Willey Gue
Love is a sea — so wide — so deep — That in its bosom wild things sleep : All the emotions of the soul Beneath its placid surface roll: All the strange longings of the heart Are of its mystery a part.
The strength of love must ebb and flow, The waves are high, the waves are low. Love's call is shallow when it dies From promises to speechless sighs: But, with self-sacrifice and right Love's tide may rise to heaven's height.
• Christian Science As It Is
By Clifford P. Smith, Committee on Publication of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston
THE BELIEFS of Pastor Russell are so fundamentally different from Christian Science that he could hardly be expected to speak of it accurately, but his articles on this subject, which you published recently, were not fair even to him- self, for they put him in the position of speaking in an oracular manner without insight or appreciation.
The main thread of Pastor Russell's argument was woven about a series of mistaken suppositions regarding the position of Christian Science toward the item of human experience called death. The philosophy of Christian Science was supposed to be as fol- lows: Whoever dies commits mortal error; death is the greatest of errors, and one's failure to overcome it here and now leaves him hopeless — he has failed in the last moment of his trial. The conclusion drawn from these pre- mises was that the death of Christian Scientists disproves the truth of Christian Science. The fallacy of this conclusion, however, begins with the falsity of its premises, for they do not represent the teachings of Christian Science in a single particular.
The position of Christian Science with reference to the change called death is simply that of original and unadulterated Christianity. When Christ Jesus said : "If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death," and when he said, "Be ye therefore per- fect, even as your father which is in heaven is perfect," he lifted up an ideal which will sooner or later draw all men. But it is not only in the be- lief called "this world" that we have
hope in Christ; the true idea must reign in your thoughts until the mortal qualities of human consciousness are wholly eliminated. The passing on of a Christian Scientist no more dis- proves the truth of Christian Science than the same event in the experience of St. Paul disproves his statement that "we live, and move, and have our being" in God. Like St. Paul, Chris- tian Scientists have perceived the truth of being ; they have complete au- thority for it in the teaching and ex- ample of the Master. They have themselves experienced a satisfying degree of proof, and they do not re- gard any human event as final or cap- able of closing the door of opportu- nity. Jesus said, "I live by the Father," and, "All live unto Him."
One of the difficulties encountered by our critic while speaking of Chris- tian Science is due to his insistence on its being a system of negative think- ing. Take this illustration : "Christian Scientists declare that the ten most po- tent words ever written are the first ten words of Mrs. Eddy's scientific statement of being: "There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter/' I have been a daily reader of Christian Science literature for over fifteen years, and have talked with sev- eral thousand Christian Scientists, yet I never read or heard such an esti- mate from a Christian Scientist. If anybody will read the "Scientific state- ment of being," on page 468 of "Sci- ence and Health, with Key to the Scriptures," to which this critic re- ferred, the reader will find it to be a paragraph of six sentences, in which
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AS IT IS
533
positive and negative statements are evenly balanced. In form and in sub- stance the entire paragraph corre- sponds to these words from Christ Jesus, "It is the spirit that quickeneth (giveth life) ; the flesh profiteth noth- ing." For any one to say that Chris- tian Scientists regard the ten words in question as the most potent ever written, would be like saying that Christianity is founded on the un- profitableness of the flesh — on the nothingness of Spirit's opposite.
When Mrs. Eddy chose a single form of statement corresponding to the words quoted by Pastor Russell, she slpoke affirmatively: "Christian Sci- ence . . . rests on the conception of God as the only Life, substance and intelligence" (Science and Health, p. 185.) It is doubtless true, however, that both affirmations of truth and cor- responding denials of error are requi- site for clear thinking when thought has been confused. This was particu- larly the case when Christian Science was introduced to a world that was ac- customed to regard matter no less than Spirit both real and good.
Another mistake that this critic in- sisted on making for Christian Scien- tists was expressed by him as "their teaching that God is in everything." There is no such teaching in Christian Science. Mrs. Eddy has said, "Spirit, Soul, is not confined in man, and is never in matter" (Science and Health, p. 467.) Christian Science is based on infinite Spirit, and the infinitude of Spirit means, as expressed by Mrs. Eddy, "One God and His creation, and no reality in aught else" (Chris- tian Science versus Pantheism, p. 9.) Therefore the entire argumentative structure that Pastor Russell built on the supposition that "God is in every- thing" as the teaching of Christian Science, must fall for lack of founda- tion.
His cavil at Mrs. Eddy's use of the word "Principle" as a synonym for God, showed that he had given but very superficial consideration to the different meanings of this word and the propriety of giving it a new mean-
ing. In the larger dictionaries, the primary meaning of the word "princi- ple" is origin, source, cause; that from •which anything proceeds; fundamen- tal substance; primordial substance. It has been used by lexicographers in their definitions of Soul, or Spirit, as follows : "Soul, the principle of thought and action in man" (Oxford English Dictionary) ; "Spirit, the principle of life" (Century Dictionary) ; "Spirit, the universal principle imparting life from the creator" (Hastings' Diction- ary ,of the Bible) ; "Spirit, the princi- ple of self-consciousness, self-activity and of rational power in general; that which signifies a likeness in man to the Divine Being" (Webster's New In- ternational Dictionary.)
Taking the word "principle" as thus in use, Mrs. Eddy gave it a distinctly deific meaning which she distinguished by means of a capital letter, and em- ployed the word "Principle" with sev- eral other terms "to express the na- ture, essence and wholeness of Deity" (Science and Health, p. 465.) That is to say, Mrs. Eddy did with the word in question what St. John did with the 'word love. Such is "the process with every great, creative religious mind," writes Professor Rauschenbusch on page 57 of his "Christianity and the Social Crisis;" the connection with the past is maintained and the old terms are used, but they are set in new connections and filled with new qualities."
Pastor Russell also found fault with Christian Science because it does not agree with him on the following prop- ositions: "God is dealing with the world as criminals under death sen- tence." "The church should not ex- pect divine healing, which is so much of restitution, and will belong to the world by and by, after the Messiah's kingdom shall have been established." Christian Science agrees that true healing depends on the will or law of God, but emphatically differs from everything else expressed or implied in these propositions. Such doctrines were repudiated over five hundred years before the Christian era, indeed
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they should have been obsolete from the days of Moses, for he said, speak- ing of God, "He is thy life."
According to the teachings of in- spired prophets whose sayings are re- corded in the Old Testament, God is just to each individual, and does not punish any one for what another has done, nor condemn any one after the occasion for punishment has ceased. (See Psalms Ixii. 11, 12; Prov. xxiv. 12; Isa. Iv. 7; Jer. xxxii. 19; Ezek. xviii. 1-3, 30-32; xxxiii. 14-20.) Some of these teachers perceived that God's will is to heal or restore, and to give life to all men. (See Psalms xxiv. 12-22; xxxvi. 7-9; xc.; ciii. 1-6; cvii. 15-22.) With the advent of -Christ Jesus, the law of divine Love was fully revealed in its universal relation to human interests — "Even the very hair of your head are all numbered," and in its universal availability to all men — "It is not the will of your Father
which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish." As for the postponement of healing until after the establishment of a Messianic kingdom, Tie clearly taught that the kingdom of God comes upon you in the very pro- cess of healing. (See Luke x. 9; xi. 20.)
The rejection of Mark xvi. 15-18 by recourse to "higher criticism," as pro- posed by the same critic, would not help him to controvert the present pos- sibility of Christian healing, for two parallel sayings would still remain in- tact.
No criticism has yet found a rea- son for expunging the Master's com- mand to his disciples, "Heal the sick," and his extension of it to "all nations," as recorded by St. Matthew, nor any reason for deleting these words pre- served by St. John, "He that believeth in me, the works that I do shall he do also."
THE END OF THE TRAIL
Far spent and bowed with travel toil; Of lure and "wanderlust" the spoil, Or broken by dire Want, were they — These hardened travelers at bay?
How fresh and daring came they forth One blushing dawn and journeyed
north ;
The tang of Earth, the rush of Air Matched to the senses of the pair.
How to this desperate plight they fared Till man and beast nor knew nor cared. What stress of storm, or tortuous way Gripped, harrowed them; ah, who shall say?
The "trail" perchance, too far and long, That first was followed with a song, Beset by some relentless foe, Became a "trek" of pain and woe.
ELIZABETH CRIGHTON.
Ayths of Aonterey
(Concluded) By Grace AVacFarland
Junipero's Healing Handkerchief
OF ALL the relics given, after Padre Serra's death, to the grief stricken soldiers and civ- ilians and heart-broken neo- phytes, perhaps none was more ten- derly kept nor proved more wonderiul than the silk handkerchief which was apportioned to the young surgeon at Monterey.
Many years after, the surgeon was called upon to attend a sailor who had been unable to sleep for several days on account of a violent headache which all drugs had failed to cure. He tried the usual remedies and found them useless. A sudden thought came to him. Taking the sacredly guarded handkerchief from its hiding place among his treasured possessions, he very carefully bound it on the sailor's aching head. The man immediately fell asleep. For hours the surgeon sat by his side and watched for some sign of returning life. Toward evening his patient awakened, his headache gone, with a ravenous appetite in its place. Ever after, when some case baffled the skill of the surgeon, he took the handkerchief and bound it on the patient. His faith was always re- warded. Padre Junipero's handker- chief never failed to heal the sick.
The Night Watch
The Commandante long wondered why his soldiers were so eager to ob- tain a place on the night guard, but never could learn their reason. At last he decided to start a strict inves- tigation of motive. There had been trouble with smugglers all along the
coast. He feared that there were more valuable prizes to be won by helping land contraband silks and other im- ports than could be coaxed from the Monte table.
Each man was questioned about his experiences on the preceding night and other nights of his watch. No re- sult. Each was offered a change to the day watch. All refused. It was suggested that the time of each watch be shortened. All eagerly agreed, and there was a general excitement. The very best men of his command wanted the extra night watches.
Baffled at every point, the Comman- dante called a young private of whom he was especially fond to his own quarters. "Why do you all clamor for the night watch Miguel ?" he asked.
"Because, Commandante, whenever the watch is changed, Padre Serra, the great Padre Serra who loved us all so much, comes and pronounces a bless- ing upon us as we take our places. Only in the night watches, Comman- dante, can we receive his blessing, for only then does he come."
Through many weeks the Comman- dante himself stood watch with his men during the long, lonely hours of the night.
Rosary
The little sacristy of Mission San Carlos was never so entirely neglected as the main chapel. When people were stealing Mission tiles for barns and woodshed roofs, a thatched roof was put over this little room. Sand was not allowed to drift in heaps upon its floor, and weeds found no haven there.
No one was ever seen entering or
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leaving the Mission, but at night trav- elers along the road sometimes heard sounds as of some strange, unearthly singing. There was no light in the church, and wayfarers feared to inves- tigate lest the songs prove only a snare set by the Evil One.
When one, braver than the rest, crept cautiously to the chapel, he found a group of aged Indians in the chapel. They were singing as best they could from memory, some of the chants Pa- dre Serra had taught them when they were children. In their midst was a sick man.
In response to the visitor's gentle questions, they told how, since the Mis- sion was deserted, and no one ever said Mass there any more, they came alone, in the night, when no white man knew, to "say Rosary" as Padre Serra had taught them. Sometimes, they said, especially on San Carlos ,Day, he rose from his grave behind the altar rail and blessed them as of old. They always brought their sick with them, for when he appeared the sick were healed by his blessing.
San Carlos Day
A similar legend of Padre Serra's miraculous appearance and participa- tion in ghostly ceremonies is told in Richard White's poem, "Midnight Mass."
November 4th is San Carlos Day, ;t apart in the Cathe^ic calendar as the special day on which to honor San Carlos Borromeo for whom Mission San Carlos was named. This legend relates that, on that day, Padre Serra and the whole company of priests, sol- diers and neophytes who lie buried in and around the old mission, rise from their graves "Midnight Mass to cele- brate."
When this ghostly ceremony is ended, all return to their weed grown resting places, there to stay for an- other year, when they rise again to do honor to the patron Saint of Mission San Carlos del Carmelo de Monterey, formerly chief of the Missions of Cali- fornia.
The Padre's Eyes
Among the superstitious neophytes, Padre Serra and his fellow Franciscans were worshiped as supernatural be- ings, second in power only to the God they bade the Indians adore. Even the simplest device of the white man seemed to these people a miracle of the gods.
It was a never-ending source of amazement to their simple minds that if one grew restless and inattentive while the Padre said the long Latin sentences of Mass, he was sure to be called and sternly reproved, after the services, for his sin. Now the Padre stood with his back toward the neo- phytes during Mass, and they said he must have eyes that could see around corners, like God's.
On either side of the main altar hung a queer shaped, bright object which the Padre carefully covered be- fore leaving the chapel after Mass. No one noticed them, even seemed aware of their existence.
These objects were a convey and a concave mirror, in which the Padre could see his neophytes, but so hung that they could see nothing but the brilliance of these discs as they hung on the chapel wall.
An Avenue of Crosses.
When Commodore Sloat captured Monterey, Mission San Carlos was, in the language of an American officer who visited it at that time, "A quaint 'old church, falling to decay, with crumbling tower and belfry, broken roofs, and long lines of mud built dwellings, all in ruins." Its doorways were choked with sand, its paths hid- den by weeds, for there were no wor- shipers at San Carlos.
All who journeyed from Monterey southward along the coast must travel the old Mission road, which came to be called the Avenue of Crosses.
Almost every tree and stump beside the road bore its rude cross made of twigs or tules, or whatever other ma- terial the traveler had found handy.
Monument erected at Monterey to commemorate the arrival in California, on June 3, 1770, and founding of the early Mission in California. The monu- ment was erected by Jane L. Stanford in 1891.
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The Evil One held high carnival among the ancient cypresses and moss hung pines on the road to Carmelo, and only by erecting crosses could they es- cape his baleful influence and skilfully hidden snares.
Even with all these precautions, many weird adventures befell the wayfarer who was so unfortunate as to be compelled to travel the forest road after dark.
Satan's Chickens
An old lady, Senora Migueles, living on a ranch below Carmelo, once came to Monterey to do some shopping. She stayed in town rather late, and just as she was starting on the Mission road, homeward bound, a heavy fog blew in, making it dark as night.
At the Avenue of Crosses she stopped her noisy cart, got out, fast- ened a twig cross to the nearest tree, climbed back into the cart and drove on, all the while devoutly telling her beads.
When she rounded the turn at the hill top which shut Monterey from view, Signora Migueles heard the soft "cluck-cluck" of a mother hen and the frightened "peep-peep" of a lost chick. She recalled stories of traps set by Satan for unwary ones, and listened long and earnestly. There was no mis- taking that noise.
No harm could befall her, she felt sure, because of the cross and her carefully numbered beads. One more hen and a brood of chicks would help greatly on the ranch. She got out and began peering among the bushes. No sign of either hen or chick.
She finally decided to abandon the search, and much perturbed, clambered back into her cart. As she grasped the reins ready to start off, the long sought hen flew into a nearby tree.
Senora Migueles said the hen had a forked tail and one foot was a cloven hoof.
The Cloven Hoof
A cloven hoof where some other sort of foot should have been was very fre- quently the only way in which travel-
ers recognized the manifestations of Satan.
Young Senor Galverez was gallop- ing along the Mission road on his way to a fandango at the Washington Hotel in Monterey, singing and thinking of Marie, the pretty maid whom he was courting. So busy was he with these thoughts that he forgot to fasten a cross on the Avenue of Crosses.
In the midst of the forest, he was startled by a baby crying. It was such a pitiful cry that he pulled his horse up short, listening intently. The cry- ing continued.
Some more of the Indians' doings, he thought. They must have stolen the baby, then become frightened and left it there.
He searched among the weeds and bushes and soon found the baby. With it in his arms, Senor Galvarez mounted his horse and galloped on.
As he cuddled the baby closer to keep it warm, he crossed himself. Im- mediately one tiny foot peeped out from the long dress. It was a cloven hoof.
Realizing that this was a snare of the Devil, and no human baby, he hurled it against the nearest tree. The babe, with an awful shriek, vanished into thin air. Senor Galvarez contin- ued his journey without further moles- tation, but henceforth did not neglect to put a cross on some tree along the Avenue of Crosses.
A Dare
Some of the weirdest of these haunt- ed road legends are told in "Monterey, Cradle of California's Romance."
A group of young profligates were scoffing one evening at the tales of adventure on Carmel road. The bold- est suddenly startled them all by say- ing that he had just as soon walk that road alone at midnight.
The others picked up his idle words and proposed to put him to the test that very night. He agreed. As proof that he actually went to San Carlos, he was to drive a specially marked nail into the Mission wall.
Shortly before midnight he wrapped
The famous adobe of the rosebush, a romance of the Spanish regime.
On the beach at Monterey
his Spanish cloak about him, took hammer and marked nail, and set out, singing a love song as he went.
Every rod of the way grew longer than the last; at each step the black- ness seemed heavier; his feet dragged; the night was full of noises; his song died away in a frightened cry.
At last he saw, close ahead, the dim form of the Mission, staggered up to it, raised his hand and drove the nail into the wall. Terrified by the sound of his own hammer he turned to run away. He could not move; something 'held him fast as though bound with iron to the wall.
Next morning his friends, coming to see the outcome of their "dare," found him still standing by the wall, dead. The nail was driven through one corner of his cloak, holding him there, even in death.
Such vengeance was wreaked on those who desecrated the Queen of California's Mission.
Mission Meadows.
Dire punishment frequently fell on the heads of those who desecrated even the Mission grounds where the neophytes and Padres slept.
When the Americans took posses-
sion of California the Missions had al- ready been deprived of most of their land by Royal Decree. There was no one to fix the boundaries or defend the rights of these fast crumbling build- ings. The Franciscans had been driven out. The pressing need of es- tablishing and maintaining a govern- ment left the American officials no time for attending to land claims.
In the fertile valley of El Rio Car- melo many Gringo ranchers settled. One of these, being very greedy for land, carefully plowed the fields to the very walls of San Carlos. The thrifty farmer did not pause in his furrows when his plow turned up skulls and skeletons. Land was worth almost a dollar an acre, and he wanted a big crop.
Buzzards came to wail over the bones, long stripped of any flesh, which his plowing laid bare. Indians refused to work there. Crows and ravens feasted on the broadly scat- tered seed. Harvest time found the field as barren as spring had left it.
The farmer's wife died before an- other planting season. Two sons who sowed the second spring went insane in the midst of their work and killed each other. A daughter ran away with a man who only abused her, and be-
IN MINOR KEY
541
fore harvest time she, too, was dead. The Mission Meadows bore no crop.
Then the farmer ceased to plow and plant on the graves, and reaped no more punishment for his wanton dese- cration of the tombs of San Carlos. .
Silver.
Bancroft, the historian, recounts a mining legend of the Monterey hills that has persisted until the present day.
While California was still a Mexi- can province, many Americans settled and established trading companies at Monterey and other ports. It was easy for the Mexicans to dispose of many things to these Gringoes about which they might have had to answer embar- rassing questions had the government officials been consulted.
Senora Marie Romero, a widow who had gone to some hot springs back in
the hills to cure her rheumatism, was one who took advantage of this op- portunity.
With the aid of her two children she mined a little silver near her house, smelted it and sold the crudely shaped bars to Captain Cooper, a Gringo trader.
Some of the Mexican officials, learn- ing from the Captain the source of his silver bars, determined to find the mine and take it as contraband mining. They found Marie Romero in bed with her rheumatism and unable to get up at all. The children denied all knowl- edge of the mine. Though the officers searched every nook of the nearby hills, they could never find it nor catch them at their mining.
Yet, somewhere in the hills just back of Monterey near the hot spring is Marie Romero's silver mine with an undug fortune for its finder.
IN AINOR KEY
When I am dead and gone, bright May
Will beckon children out to play
Among her flowers ; and joyous June Lure lovers 'neath her plenilune ;
And Mother Earth keep holiday.
At morn, the lark light winged and gay Will flood the meadows with his lay, Men's hearts athrob take up the tune, When I am dead.
No whit the world its work will stay ;
My friends will go their wonted way;
E'en she who'll weep me most, how soon She'll smile because mere breath's a boon,
Love ris'n from out love's ashes gray, When I am dead !
HARRY COWELL.
Golden Age at Hand
By C. T. Russell
Pastor New York, Washington and Cleveland Temples and the Brooklyn and London Tabernacles
"And He that sat upon the Throne said, 'Behold, I make all things new' " — Revelation 21 :5.
BIBLE chronology shows that in 1875 we entered upon a great Sabbath of one thousand years. Six great Days, each a thousand years long, were behind us, and the final one thousand years there began. This great Week of seven thousand years will witness, neither the end of God's dealings with humanity nor the destruction of the world, but the com- pletion of the creation of our race. By that time the earth will be a world- wide Paradise; the human family, brought to perfection, will have filled the earth, according to the original Divine Program, and propagation will have ceased. Originally man was in God's likeness and "very good." The sex division was merely for the propa- gation of the race, and not designed to be permanent. — Genesis 1:28; Luke 20:35,36.
It was never more the Divine pur- pose that man should contend with sickness, sorrow, pain, weakness and death itself than that the angels should be thus afflicted. The same God that created the angels, and gave them hap- piness and perfection, created men and properly endowed him at the begin- ning. The present difference between the perfection of the angels and the decrepitude of humanity — mental, moral and physical — is explained by the Bible alone. It tells that Adam was originally perfect and pleasing to God, and that his rejection by God and his subjection to death and all its con- comitants are the results of his dis- obedience in Eden. — Romans 5:12.
The Turning Point — Divine Mercy
There was no turning point so far as the Divine Purpose was concerned.
The Bible assures us that God pur- posed human redemption from sin and death from the very beginning. But the first manifestation of that Purpose was the turning-point so far as human observation discerned. That turning- point was the birth of Jesus, who was born into the world, not sinful and im- perfect like Adam's race, but especi- ally born "holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners," that He might become the Redeemer of men and thus make possible their recovery from imperfect, dying conditions. His birth of the Virgin stands related, therefore, to the great Divine Plan re- specting His death, which really began at Jordan, when He consecrated Him- self to death, and was baptized by John, and which was completed when on Calvary He cried, "It is finished!" The next step in the Divine Pro- gram was Jesus' resurrection. Put to death in flesh, He was quickened in spirit, still more glorious than before He was made flesh. (Philippians 2:9-11.) The next step in the pro- gram was the anointing of the most holy of His followers to be fellow- members of the same glorious com- pany under His Headship. This took place at Pentecost, and the work there begun has continued for more than eighteen centuries. As our Lord there anointed the most holy of the Jews and continued to anoint all who would be members of the Body of Christ, so in due time He began to anoint the most holy amongst the Gentiles — those who would become members of the same Body, which is His Church.
The Divine Purpose is that the risen Christ, the Second Adam, shall have a Bride class, the second Eve — a Divine- ly foreordained number. These eigh- teen centuries have been used of the Lord for the selection, or election, of
GOLDEN AGE AT HAND
543
this Church to be His joint-heirs in His Kingdom; and as soon as this elect number shall have been demonstrated, their loyalty proved, etc., this Age will end and the New Age be fully inau- gurated. Many Bible students agree with me that we are very near the time when the Church will be completed, and by the glorious change of the First Resurrection be made like the Lord — spirit beings, "partakers of the Divine nature." (1 John 3:2; 2 Peter 1:4.) This will usher in the next step of the Divine Program — the Messianic King- dom, with Christ and His Church- Bride associated with Him in the power and great glory necessary for the ruling, judging and uplifting of all the families of the earth.
If the Divine Program has consumed so much time in getting ready for the blessing of the world, what a great blessing must be designed! This is fully attested by both the Old and New Testaments. They speak of the New Dispensation now dawning as Times of Restitution, Times of Refreshing. (Acts 3:19.) They tell us that the earth will yield her increase; and this we see already beginning, as abund- antly testified. They tell us that the knowledge of the glory of God will fill the whole world, breaking the shackles of ignorance and superstition. This we see abundantly witnessed on every hand.
Earth's Coming Glory
The next step in the Divine Program which is about to begin will require, the Bible says, a thousand years, and will accomplish all that God has de- clared. The earth will be brought to perfection. Even now we see evidences of this in the wonderful fruits and flowers of our day, far superior to those of the past in general, since Eden's bloom and beauty were lost.
The point I am emphasizing is that Millennial blessings are not coming to the world by a process of evolution, but as a result of God's lifting the veil from our eyes and permitting us to see what to do and how to do it. The same operation of Divine providence is
manifested in all the great inventions of our day. These were not gradually evolved during the past six thousand years, but have practically sprung into existence before our eyes — very many of them during the past 40 years; all of them, I might say, within the one hundred and sixteen years from 1799, a period known in the Bible as the Day of God's preparation. (Nahum 2:3.) During this period God has been pre- paring the world for the Millennium.
Our great inventors acknowledge that their work is not so much the re- sult of personal effort, but rather a kind of inspiration. Their eyes of understanding opened, and things kept secret since the foundation of the world stood plainly before them, and were readily put into practical form. It is the same respecting the progress in Bible study and in the understand- ing of the Divine Plan of the Ages. It came, not by plodding study, but rather as an illumination of the mind by the Holy Spirit; for God's due time had come when those of honest mind should know the Truth.
It is difficult for us to imagine that such wonderful conditions as have be- come common in our day — such won- derful knowledge of the Bible as is now possible to God's Elect, and such wonderful fruits, flowers, etc. — should be only the beginning of God's bless- ings. Yet it must be so; it must be that we are merely on the verge of still greater things — physical and mental blessings for all mankind.
Doctrines of Demons Interfere
We now see clearly that the horrible doctrines of the Dark Ages so be- clouded our mental vision and so stag- nated thought as to handicap the world in respect to every matter of progress and intelligence. Our creeds of the Dark Ages deceived us into thinking of the Almighty as a cunning, power- ful Being who had planned our injury before the foundation of the world, who purposed to torture eternally more than ninety-nine per cent of the bil- lions He had created. Under these mental delusions, the Bible came back
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to God's people after it had been ex- plained by the creeds for twelve hun- dred years. When our fathers began to study the Bible afresh, their minds were so impregnated with what the Bible styles "doctrines of demons," that they were looking for devilish things and made them out of Scrip- tural statements which had no such significance.
Our Unscriptural Expectations
Christians have long realized that God does not purpose to leave the world forever in a sin and death con- dition. But they have looked for Divine victory in the wrong direction, because they have accepted the theo- ries of the Dark Ages formulated when the Bible was not in the hands of the people. The theory was that God wished the church to establish the Mil- lennium by converting the world from sin to righteousness. An endeavor has been made to follow that theory. In- quisitions and persecutions were in- voked to force the people into church membership. How successful it was is witnessed by conditions in Europe at the present time.
• Great Britain claims 95 per cent Christians, Germany the same, Russia about the same, while Italy claims that all her people are Christians. In this fashion they have been attempting to convert the world — by calling people Christians who were not Christians at all, and by including their names on church records. By these methods they have counted up a total of 400 million Christians, as against a total of 1600 millions of earth's pouulation. Thus the world is not half Christian, even of the nominal sort; and instead of the heathen coming rapidly to Chris- tianity, we find that they doubled dur- ing the last century.
Let us glance at the character of those thus forcibly brought under the name Christian by making them Christians as infants. We perceive that many of these are in jails, peni- tentiaries and insane asylums; and while we believe that in every nation and denomination there are some true
saints of God, members therefore of the true Church of God, nevertheless, taken as a whole, can we not see that what Jesus said of some in His day must be applicable in what to-day is styled Christendom — "Ye are of your father the Devil; for his works ye do?"
We ask ourselves, Are the people of Europe doing the works of God or of the devil? The Apostle tells us that "if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His;" that the fruits of Christ's Spirit are meekness, gentleness, patience, brotherly kind- ness, love; that anger, malice, hatred, envy, strife, are works of the flesh and of the Devil. "By their fruits we shall know them," said the Master. Surely, we ought to know that some huge mis- take has been made when the peoples of Europe have been styled Christen- dom— Christ's Kingdom — and why they are enrolled as Christians.
How sad was the mistake which oc- curred when the "doctrines of demons" were brought in ! Now we see that the Bible tells a very different story. It tells that God's time for saving the world from sin and death will be dur- ing the thousand years of Messiah's Kingdom; and that then they shall have every good opportunity that Di- vine Wisdom, Love and Justice will arrange on their behalf.
The dead are not in Heaven nor in the Catholic Purgatory, nor in the still worse Protestant eternal torture. They are asleep, as the Bible declares. But for Jesus and His work they would be dead in the same sense that a brute is dead. Because Jesus died for sins, therefore there is to be a resurrection from the dead ; and therefore the dead are spoken of as beinsr asleep, uncon- scious, waiting for the Morning of Messiah's Coming and for the glorious blessings of resurrection promised.
The Seventh Trumpet — The Last
With our minds filled with the fears of the Dark A^es, we once thought of the "trump of God" as though it were a trumoet of the Devil, as though it implied horrible disaster to the human
GOLDEN AGE AT HAND
545
family. But now, the eyes of our un- derstanding opened to discern more clearly the Bible teachings, we are amazed to find that the trumpet of God is symbolical, like the preceding six; that it stands related to Messiah's Kingdom and to the world's release from the bondage of Sin and Death. Thank God for the Seventh Trumpet, the last trump, the trump of Love !
In the past this was pictured as the Jubilee. Under the Jewish law ar- rangement, God provided that every fiftieth year should be a Jubilee year, in which all debts should be cancelled and all bondages terminated. This was not only a beneficial arrangement for the Jews, but was a type of the future. It pictured the full forgiveness of sin and the full release of humanity from all the consequences of Adam's dis- obedience.
At the opening of the year of Jubilee the fact was announced by the priests, who blew upon silver trumpets, pro- claiming that the Jubilee had come, and that all might return to their for- mer estate. The great Seventh Day, a thousand years long, the antitypical Jubilee Year, began in 1875, according to Scriptural chronology. It is the proper time for all the servants of God, members of the antitypical Priesthood, to blow the silver trumpet of Truth and to make known to the people the character of the bondage to Sin and Death, and to inform them that it is God's will that they go free from these.
Such proclamations have been go- ing forth from Bible students the world over during the past forty years. The matter has been opposed by many. As among the Israelites there was a nomi- nal priesthood who opposed the Mes- sage of Jesus and the Apostles, so there is to-day a nominal priesthood who oppose the Message of Truth, the Message that Messiah is about to take His great power and reign.
All Things to be Made New
Meantime, humanity has been in- creasingly anxious concerning its
bondage, and has restlessly been seek- ing liberty — sometimes wisely, some- times unwisely. Some employers and teachers have realized the impending change, and have governed and taught accordingly. Others, realizing the change, have invoked still further the powers of ignorance and superstition, with a view to continuing the present order of things, which God has de- clared shall give place to the New Christ is now taking to Himself His great power and is about to begin His Reign ; and in our text He tells us that toy that Reign He will make all things new.
Happy would it be for all classes if they would recognize that the great Clock in the Divine Plan has tolled out a change of dispensation; that the New Order is due to come in and the Old to go out. But because selfishness has hardened their hearts, the world is not ready for the Restitution blessings, and hence God, foreknowing this, has foretold the Time of Trouble which even now is at our door.
According to the Divine Word the present great European war is but the prelude to Armageddon, as Armaged- don will be the prelude to Messiah's Kingdom. According to the Bible the present war, without bringing special advantage to any nation, but bringing discontent to all, will prepare the world for the most wonderful revolution ever known, symbolically styled in the Bible "a great earthquake." (Revela- tion 16:18.) Following this revolution will come the symbolical "fire" of the Bible, not a literal fire that will liter- ally burn the earth, but the fire of An- archy, which will consume our present civilization; and except those days should be shortened, no flesh would survive. (Matthew 24:22.) But our Lord assured us that those days will be shortened — that the Elect will take the Kingdom and establish righteous- ness and peace on the firm foundation of Justice. Man's extremity will be- come God's opportunity, wisely pro- vided before the foundation of the world.
"Memories of a Publisher, 1865-1915," by George Putnam, Litt. D., author of "Memories of My Youth," "Books and Their Makers in the Middle Ages," "Abraham Lincoln," etc. George Haven Putnam has already given us a memoir of his father, Geo. P. Putnam; following that interesting volume came the "Memories of My Youth," which gave his experiences as a soldier in the war of the Rebellion, and the present volume completes the trilogy in point of time and life sur- vey to 1915. All three books have been written for the benefit of his children and for those who are inter- ested in the biographical and histori- cal material gathered at first hand. As the author expresses it, "Each man is in a position to pass on something to his fellows and to those that are to follow him."
His position as a prominent pub- lisher and his interest in political and social affairs brought him in intimate touch with many of the prominent men and women of his day, and he provides many delightful etchings of their idio- syncrasies, ambitions, failings, strength and aspirations.
In a few scalpel-like sentences he cleverly lays bare a skeleton of the man's character, and these sketches are intensely interesting to those who incline to be more intimately acquaint- ed with such men as Grover Cleveland, Andrew Carnegie, Theodore Roose- velt, Carl Schultz, Joseph H. Choate, Henry Villard, William H. Baldwin, Judge Roger A. Pryor, Chester Arthur, Edwin Abbey, Lord Kitchener, Walter Besant, Robert Louis Stevenson, and a score of other celebrities. Very in-
teresting, too, are the accounts of the varied uses and abuses heaped upon publishers by authors and of the pub- lishing undertakings of the firm of G. P. Putnam's Sons. The book closes with an appendix furnishing a num- ber of letters covering main issues of .the present European war, which the author had occasion to bring into print. When eighteen years of age, he enlisted in the Civil War as a pri- vate and was mustered out a Major. With this experience, he is competent to offer opinions on war and warfare, and these are set forth forcefully. Long before the reader reaches the close of this interesting volume he will be im- pressed with the kindly humor, pene- trating observation, fine sense of dis- crimination and ripe wisdom of the author.
Price $2. Published by G. P. Put- nam's Sons, New York.
"How to Live. Rules for Healthful Living, Based on Modern Science," authorized and prepared in collabo- ration with the Hygienic Reference Board of the Life Extension Insti- tute, Inc., by Irving Fisher of Yale University, and Eugene Lyman Fisk, M. ,D., with a Foreword by former President Wm. H. Taft. The purpose of this book is to spread knowledge of individual hy- giene, and thus to promote the aims of the Life Extension Institute. Great results are certain to be won along these lines of sane, concentrated and persistent effort for the work already done has cut the supposedly fixed death rates by one-half. This manual considers the relation of hygiene to
IN THE REALM OF BOOKLAND
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health rather than to disease, and on this line it is treated in its relation to the preservation of health, the im- provement in the physical condition of the individual and the increase of his vitality, all on positive lines. The various questions and influence of air, food, poisons, work, play, rest, sleep and others are discussed plainly and to the point.
12mo, cloth, 345 pages, indexed and illustrated. Price $1 net; by mail, $1.25. Published by Funk & Wag- nail Co., New York.
"The Hundredth Wave, Written to Accomplish Two Strongly Inter- linked Purposes," by Grantly Stan- derson.
The two purposes blended in the book are for "truth seekers": the one to arouse spiritually thousands of de- vout, honest followers of a false re- ligion (Mormon) to the real degrada- tion of their religion, and the other "as high a purpose as ever can move a human being." The author believes he has a sacred message for the hu- man race; it is clothed in this book for the purpose of reaching many readers. He wishes to be considered as a composite of the many philoso- phers whose thoughts and labors have been assimilated and used in this book.
Price $1.35 net; added postage by mail. Published by Charles H. Kerr Company, Chicago.
"The Woman Question Again/' by
Ida M. Tarbell.
Under this title the author seeks to interpret informally certain activities and responsibilities of the average nor- mal woman of to-day. It is not sur- prising that in an age characterized as ours is by changes in outward habits, conduct, points of view and ways of doing things, there should come a cer- tain contempt for the great slow cur- rents with which mankind has moved since the world began. But to con- clude that these old currents are lost and that the new world of machines and systems, the world of Kultur, has
wholly replaced the old, is, Miss Tar- bell maintains, to reason only from the surface. She holds that the few great currents of life persist as do the tides or the Gulf Stream, and that they carry with them the human life oi the world. There persists, too, as an in- evitable, unescapable result of the cur- rents certain obligations and activities. Published by the Macmillan Com- pany, New York.
"How to Add Ten Years to Your Life, and to Double Its Satisfaction," by S. S. Curry, Ph. D., Litt. D. The pith of the book is that no mat- ter how old you are, you may add to your years by taking a simple exer- cise while dressing in the morning. The author cites the poet Bryant as adding ten years to his eighty by adopting this simple method. The au- thor has always been greatly inter- ested in the matter of human develop- ment, and contributes abundantly and wisely in practical information gar- nered in that field. For instance, he has discovered that "true exercises are all mental and emotional, and not physical, and that both body and voice can never be truly improved ex- cept by right thinking and feeling." Accordingly Professor Curry embod- ies a few points about health. With- out going deeply into the points in- volved, a short program is given, the practice of which has already accom- plished wonderful results. The book embodies his own experience and obeys the scientific principles involved in training.
Price $1. Published by School of Expression, Pierce Building, Copley Square, Boston.
"The Smile," by S. S. Curry, Ph. D.,
Litt. D.
Professor Curry is the author of many standard books in the art of ex- pression of which the recent issue is prominent. The book is an encyclo- pedia on smiles in all its moods and kinds of expression, what it stands for, what it accomplishes, and its func- tions, ethics and influences. The ob-
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ject of the book is to emphasize the fact that action as a language is more important than words; for instance, what phrase can translate as smile? Professor Curry stands high in the in- struction of dramatic expression, and has delved hard in that field to dis- cover the basic truths. You will find most of them in this book, backed by the authorities and by their present usage by the most prominent orators, after dinner speakers and actors of the day. The Smile, of course, is only one form of expression, but it covers such a remarkable field that the au- thor uses it for his text. He backs his points with apt and interesting anec- dotes illustrative of how the great men of the past and present used the smile and other forms of expression to score happy advances to success.
Price $1. Published by School of Expression, Pierce Building, Copley Square, Boston.
"Goethe's Life-Poem, As Set Forth in
His Life and Works," by Denton J.
Snider.
The contents of the book are com- pletely covered by the title, and gives in detail the leading events in the life of Goethe, which developed and moulded his character and mental and spiritual vision. Goethe confessed that he had had two births, the one of nature and the other of spirit, between which two births he placed the primal grand sweep of his whole career. These two births are used by the au- thor to mark the two great periods in Goethe's development. The first per- iod naturally covers the range of his young manhood to his thirty- seventh year. The achievements of Goethe are taken up seriatim in these periods. The author is sympathetic and shows an appreciation of those floods of emo- tion which played such an important part in the life of this German genius. His criticisms and comments are to the point and happily illuminate many of the points in the involved and com- plex character of Goethe.
Published by Sigma Publishing Co., 210 Pine street, St. Louis, Mo.
"A Dictionary of Simplified Spelling," by Frank H. Vizetelly, Litt. D.f L. L. D., Member of the Advisory Council of the Simplfied Spelling Board; author of "Essentials of English Speech and Literature," etc. This compact little volume is based on the publications of the United States Bureau of Education and the rules of the American Philological As- sociation and the Simplified Spelling Board. For several years past there has been a constant demand on the part of writers for some such rational and simple authority as this for quick and convenient consultation. It covers all the simpler forms of spelling rec- ommended by the leading association societies of the country and those of the United States Department of Edu- cation in its bulletins. Accordingly it will supply the needs of those persons who have been sufficiently interested in the simplified spelling movement. The book is so arranged that it may be enlarged at will by following the ordi- nary rules laid down. Printers' signs are given by which words may readily be segregated in the group where they belong. Editors, teachers and others interested in this important movement to simplify our nonsensical spelling should support this work.
Price, 75 cents. Published by Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York.
"George Bernard Shaw: Harlequin or Patriot?" by John Palmer, author of "The Future of the Theatre," etc. Of every famous men there are two — the legendry and the real. The le- gendary Shaw is more or less well- known. The real Shaw is just as inter- esting, but he is practically unknown. This book is about both the Shaws, especially about the unknown one. Is Shaw an original thinker ? He says he is a picker for other people's brains. Is he a cold-blooded egotist? Or is he humble and passionate? Is he a jes- ter? Is he an anarchist?
Price 50 cents net, postage 5 cents. Published by the Century Co., New York.