I

*3S6»ar*#ssi

^ *5fO"**7

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2011 with funding from

LYRASIS Members and Sloan Foundation

http://www.archive.org/details/lantern1619stud

'• ■

f

I;

f: ■ ■')•■?

Os

#• lF^h| S

SSI

ot=t

'

THE LANTERN

BRYN MAWR COLLEGE

1907

THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO. 1006-1016 ARCH STREET PHILADELPHIA

EDITORIAL BOARD

MARGARET EMERSON BAILEY, 1907,

Editor-in-Chief.

EDNA SHEARER, 1904,

Graduate Editor.

MARGARET FRANKLIN, 1908.

THERESA HELBURN, 1908.

LOUISE FOLEY, 1908.

BUSINESS BOARD

MAYONE LEWIS, 1908,

Business Manager.

SHIRLEY PUTNAM, 1909,

Assistant Business Manager.

JULIE BENJAMIN, 1907,

Treasurer.

64819

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGB

Editorial 7

William of Hatfield Ethel Bennett Kitchens, 1905 10

The Testament Georgiana Goddard King, 1896 13

From a Letter Sara Montenegro, 1902 14

To a Chapel in Brittany Mary Butter Towle, 1S99 25

The Gold of the Temple Margaret Emerson Bailey, 1901 26

The Decision Mary I sal ell e 0' Sullivan, 1907 38

A September Storm E.B. Lewis, 1905 39

To One Asleep Louise Foley, 1908 42

The Denationalisation of American Art . . . .Margaret Franklin, 1908 43

With Eyes of Eaith Theresa Helium, 1908 49

The Sea-farer Louise Foley, 1908 56

Academic Eomanticism Mary Isalelle 0' Sullivan, 1907 57

Velin Dore Margaret Franklin, 1908 61

Empty Wells Louise Foley, 1908 62

Guanajuato Hope Emily Allen, 1905 69

Sun-dial Motto Caroline Beeves Foulke 72

A Freshman's Impression of College. .Katherine Forbes Liddell, 1910 73

The Prairie Caroline Seymour Daniels, 1901 77

In Memoriam 79

College Themes 80

Collegiana 90

"Leviore Plectro" 104

The Lantern

No. 16 BRYN MAWR Spring, 1907

EDITORIAL.

IF Mr. James, in his summing up of America as a place of collective activity, of clear-voiced, light -limbed youth, without a doubt in the world and without a conviction, seems at first too paradoxical, he

gives to our second thoughts his accustomed measure of truth. If he overlooks, that is, the initial conviction of so many Americans, that action for action's sake is right, he perceives the abundance of physical energy born not of thought, but mere impulse. He summarizes, indeed, from a large class of men who never pause to consider the reasons for their cock- sureness, who choose their professions less from a feeling of preference than from a wish to be busy at something, who work with no conscious motive, no well-weighed allegiance, and fail even to see connexions between their toil and attainment.

Such lack of thought, which is the cause of our scruples, and should be of all of our certainties, has often in the amorphous world of getting and spending, of hurried giving and taking, a valid exctise. The force of necessity drives many to struggles in which a goal, well defined and desired, would bring but an added pain, a further renunciation. To them, by virtue of youth, the world lies open for choice, and in a sense they may be its potential possessors. But there is no time to reflect, nor in occasional intermissions from work is there much use in choosing a road to pass by, though it lead to a special salvation.

If this, however, is true of the busy lives in a larger existence, a university, so Cardinal Newman has said, "should educate the intellect to reason well in all matters, to reach toward the truth and to grasp it."

COPYRIGHTED, 1008. ALL RIGHTS IIEaERVEO.

THE LANTERN.

It should make, that is, of reflection, which leads to doubts and convic- tions, to the dissipation of slight and slovenly thought, its purposed achieve- ment and aim. To attain this result, indeed, since alternatives are the first cause of reason, each university offers its students the widest extension of choice. Bryn Mawr, for example, forces few bonds on our conduct and no strait-jackets upon our belief. It allows us, indeed, to oppose and to try all unfounded prejudices, to weigh them against the opinions of others; to modify, keep, or surrender them after the trial struggle. It encourages, too, the spirit of organisation, which has increased with each year, as if seeing in each institution and group the greater spur for a careful selection. Each new course of action, each chance for potential allegiance, it sanctions, so it would seem, to stir up consideration and doubt. Most frankly intentioned, however, as a goad, not as a mere spur, to reason and choice, is the elective system ; the reaction from the old doctrines which took no account of a difference of mind. Eeckoning, indeed, with the maxim, that after all the prefection of one is not the prefection of anyone else, it exists to inspire in each girl a rigid examination of individual temper, and a consequent knowledge of self. Applying, too, as it does, in a different manner to each different person, it should awake decisions not borrowed from books, nor overheard in the market; should achieve an individual search and a wrestling with thought. It should, indeed as should everything else at a college, help to produce a more philosophic habit of mind: one which should in the end facilitate problems, enable each student to grasp each matter in hand.

Here, moreover, at college, where, as Emerson said of himself, "we are not wholly in the busy world, nor quite beyond it," the conditions of life which force many from thought, do not hold. If near to our homes, we are so remote by a difference of interests and customs, which build in the end a seclusion, that we are in great measure protected against all disturbing claims. Even those of us, the least fortunate, who are forced to look to the close of scholastic training as the end of apprenticeship, who cannot help but acquire their learning less for itself than the future practical value, keep the pressure of their eventful aims so remote, as to have but little effect on their college careers. We all achieve, that is, for the time, a certain detachment from the sense of flitting and precious hours in the face of a present if relative leisure. Not only, that is, do we become

EDITORIAL.

oirx own masters, able to go as we will, unhindered by old traditions, but we possess an abundance of time to look before leaping, or, if unwary, the time to pause and consider the cause of our falls.

If, however, here at Bryn Mawr, both the solitude and the incentive are conducive to the completest mental awakening, they are seldom put to so good a use. Spare hours are seldom employed in reducing unfounded beliefs into doubts, or turning mere confidence into conviction. Tenden- cies, so it is said, are stronger than men, and because of a natural indo- lence many students put through with scant discernment their required college work, drift through their spare hours in careless and insolent blindness. If they give their adherence to any one cause, it is from a spontaneous impulse, not from discrimination, nor from the value of one institution argued from the relative merits of others. Even, indeed, the elective system given to them as a chance for finding a task to their mind, resolves itself into a way of avoiding hard labour and work; a way by which they quickly escape many difficult courses. They never, that is, seek out the chances for choice, but shrink rather from such cogitation.

More interesting far than this class, and full of as serious purpose, arriving, however, at the same end and result, is another body of stu- dents: passionate pilgrims after broad-mindedness, and possessing a con- sequent interest in each matter in hand. Continually off on the wing, in a search after knowledge, examining now this and now that, they have no moment of pause to reflect upon merits; to arrive at conclusions after inspection. They only accumulate treasures for future reflection. They pause at the threshold of doubts and convictions, blocked at the entrance by a great number of things stored up there for prospective thought.

"While, then, it is well to achieve a large-minded tolerance, and to weigh and examine all creeds, let us not forget, in this place of opportunities given for increasing the powers of one's mind, to put the same powers to use. Let us pause in the constant additions we make to our columns, to do a few sums, lest we put off the day of our final reckoning to the point of utter confusion.

10 THE LANTERN.

WILLIAM OF HATFIELD.

"William of Hatfield, second son of Edward III., died at York in 1344, aged eight years."

— Guide-Book.

LITTLE WILLIAM OP HATFIELD reclines stiffly in his high niche, carved with the emblems of the Plantagenets. His childish limbs -^ are clad in doublet and hose, an ermine mantle droops from his shoulders, his feet in their pointed shoes are cushioned on a lion. Truly he lies like a king, but decorously withal, facing the great altar with small palms folded on his impassive breast.

How long, my prince, since thy pompous cortege passed from these gray aisles, since the royal tears shed for thee were dried by other griefs, how long ago was chanted the final mass for thy young repose !

Through the slow centuries, in time of peace, in time of war, when insurrection beat upon the minster doors, when the holy shrines were desecrated and the religion of thy fathers was made a mockery — still hast thou prayed thus, ever unmoved! The great achievements of thy house are dim as the emblazoned shield above thy head, thou thyself hast been called other than thou art, so utterly art thou passed from memory; yet perpetually thou profferest thy mute petition !

When, at the final day, my prince, thy white and virginal soul shall issue from the ancient sepulchre, thou shalt bear cup-like between thy hands this oblation of unceasing prayer. Amid the thunder of celestial trumpets thou shalt join the assemblage of thy house, kings and queens and princes, splendid in their jewelled grave-clothes, and take thy stand beside that stooped and pallid monarch who, leaning on his sceptre, turns to thee a glazed and absent gaze. One by one are thy kinsfolk summoned, one by one they depart, till thou and he are left solitary. And then hurtles through the dense air the call —

"Edward the Third of the House of Plantagenet, King of England, Lord of Ireland and Duke of Aquitaine," and he is snatched away, thou

WILLIAM OF HATFIELD. 11

following blindly with the precious thing enshrouded in thy mantle. Then shalt thou hear a voice falling from Heaven in monotonous recital —

"The crimes of Edward Plantagenet, King of England, against tbe most High God: —

"His wars — " Battle by battle, siege by siege, massacre by massacre, the relentless catalogue goes on. The king's head droops. Fifty years of war are long in the telling. What else ? Nay, the half is not read. What of his oppression of Ireland, what of his heavy taxation, what of his dissolute old age? The voice continues to proclaim his sins to the listening universe while the child looks still on that within his cloak which casts a light upward upon his small features.

At last the accusation is ended. What can Edward Plantagenet offer in defence? He sways upon his sceptre, his thin shoulders are bowed beneath the mountain of his offenses. He does not lift his head, he does not speak, though each hurrying moment thrusts him nearer to condemna- tion, to endless agonies of penance. Who then will offer, who then can offer, a sacrifice for him? Will a lifetime of virtue outweigh the misery of half a century of misgovernment, half a century of oppression, half a century of slaughter? Yet if there be any in all the assembled earth who dares proffer an existence of goodness for this sum of royal transgression, let him not hold his peace; let him speak quickly ere the time is past.

What doest thou here, William? Haste, before the sentence of un- appeased justice is pronounced, and hide thy tender eyes from its fearful execution. For thou art the son of this wretched king; it is not meet that thou should'st behold his punishment.

It is the ultimate moment. Edward of England looks supplicatingly toward the ranks of the heavenly host rising higher and higher in the dim vastness of the judgment hall: thrones, dominions, powers, cherubim, seraphim, that fix on him austere eyes of condemnation. He falls prone on the earth beneath, grovelling feebly with his hands at the feet of his son. And thou, prince, stepping out before that awful company, dost raise, in view of all, the gleaming chalice of thy sacrifice.

"I, William of Hatfield, of the House of Plantagenet, do offer in behalf of my father's sins, these, my intercessions. For fifty years of misrule, four times fifty years of prayer; for fifty years of oppression, two hundred years of appeal ; for fifty years of battle, two centuries of penance."

12 THE LANTERN.

In the chill night, when cold moonshine illumines palely thy gray monument, cease not thy petitions; when sunlight from the great east window paints again blue and red and gold, the chiselled quarterings of the shield; when evening draws its shadows from pillar to pillar, and from the choir rise strange-tongued plaints of carolings; seal thine eyes, close fast thine ears, repeat ever thy miserere — that the sacrificial cup, which, on the last day, thou shalt raise imploring before the tribunal, may, perchance, by a warmer effulgence soften the Divine Justice to compassion.

Ethel Bennett Hitchens, 1905.

THE TESTAMENT. 13

THE TESTAMENT.

Comrade, if when to-morrow came The breath called Me this heavy frame ~No longer stirred, what should be done With these things that I called my own Before God shut the little door?

Be you my soul's executor. My Truth unto the schools I give, Without which sages cannot live, ISTor poets flourish, no more than where A plant pines, wanting heaven's blue air. Next of my Patience I impart Unto the strong : the high, quick heart To other gifts shall add from me The grace of longanimity. To aged souls I give Desire, An inextinguishable fire Warming them when the hands are cold, And the eyes dry, and the flesh old, And the heart slow : but to the young Faith, that the sound of chants unsung, Flowers of an unfound Paradise, Be to their keen warm ears and eyes More real than all the glad great earth Gives in abandonment of mirth. Sole unbequeathed remains at last Love: my chief good so long time past, That, as babes take their toys to bed, I must still hold it, being dead.

Yet I bethink me how the tomb Is a chill, hushed and lightless room, And love, that is a warm live thing Like quivering birds that grieve and sing, Must with the living-hearted bide. So, whose it was before I died, With two lives' fragrance gracing one, Hers be it still while years go on, —Whom should my love, if not to you, My Very Dear, come home unto?

Georgiana Goddard King, 1896.

14 THE LANTEBN.

FROM A LETTER.

. . . Follies of friendship ! You deliberately put aside all con- sideration of self and ask me that question which — with a sinking of the heart, I warrant — you know I shall answer most gladly — and at greatest length. Not by any persuasion could I be deterred now; let me but detect a glimmer of curiosity in you concerning the bookish part of me, and my pen leaps — I am unable to control an exuberant responsiveness — my letter which might otherwise have been modestly brief, waxes, expands, until lo! it is in danger of itself attaining a book's proportions. Outrageous likeli- hood ! May I who reverence good books so highly and find no justification for intrusive, usurping, misguiding bad ones, be always able, in spite of my tiresome leisure that cries out for occupation, to resist the prevailing temptation of the day. I of course am immoderately absolute: I should like to see literature, that magnificent dominion without bounds of time or influence, in the power of a benevolent tyrant — with infallible judgment. There would be slaughter unheard of, from end to end of the world a sweeping-out and devastation. Many a sorry gap made on many a pre- tentious shelf, many petty writers relieved, to a silly public's benefit, of the pen and ink they abuse, many an over-grown ambition improvingly nipped; and then! — back into their proper obscurity the pushing musb- room growths would go, leaving space clear as it should be for the immortals.

My fancy conjures beguilingly; but, as so often, between fancy and reason is a fatal discrepancy. I had the hopelessness of critical justice too keenly pointed for me lately when I learned that to Tolstoi, so soberly fair and so lofty of understanding, Shakespeare, so vastly and sublimely imaginative, reservoir of all moods and emotions, seer into the deepest mysteries, appears for the most part tiresome and vulgar. To-day's greatest genius despising the unequaled genius of the past! and one looks for a single standard of good books !

Tolstoi's judgment against Shakespeare, brutally sincere and to the extent of the sincerity significant, plunged me first into a state of bitter dismay, caused in me overwhelmingly a sense of tragedy and eternal defeat,

FROM A LETTER. 15

of the futility of human effort and the fallacy of inspiration. Indeed, if the cloud upon me had not lifted, I am afraid I should have given over reading for the rest of my life. But behold the sun — in the shape of the spirit of controversy: I turned argumentatively from depressing reflections upon the limitations of the mind to very exhilarating reflections, on the other hand, upon the mind's unmeasured reach; upon depths and heights and spaces of knowledge and feeling, sunk into which, one — the richest — life- time's steady accumulation of wisdom shows in the dimensions of an atom ; upon the mazy wealth in points of view, all looking to the same end, not any two along the same line of vision or through the same medium of color. And so I was comforted; peace existed again between me and my troublesome literary world. If you take me very seriously, now or ever, I shall be appalled.

I have read much of Tolstoi lately— I have, indeed, as always, read in the most haphazard, helter-skelter disorder, gaily capable of approaching KLopstock and Keats, Schiller and de Maupassant to within five minutes of each other; but the main direction of my thoughts for some months past has been determined by Eussian writers. And a graver significance is carried by these words than you imagine, a significance of the life-blood spilled by my hope and happy ignorance and young, rash trust in human kind. Dearly have I paid, with long moods of depression, moments of intense despair, for my fevers of enthusiasm as I read, my ecstasies of appreciation when I was exalted out of the commonplace, whirled into a passion of sympathy, when my brain burned with a fire, illuminatingly brilliant, if borrowed and temporary, of reason and understanding. The fevers cooled, the ecstasies passed, and I was left in each case sadder, sadder, with a broadened vision for the sorrows and follies and injustices of the world, a strengthened conviction that life, which for the most part we take so lightly, is from foundation to surface, from beginning to end, in every phase and every ultimate purpose, a profoundly serious thing. Even Gogol's humorous sketches with their diverting spriteliness of satire are framed in gloom, an inevitable Eussian edge of sardonic mourning. Indeed I am not sure that he, so spirited and audaciously derisive, does not at times surpass Turgenieff and Tolstoi and the sturdily miserable Gorky in the dreariness of his final impression — as the comedy of realism is apt to surpass admitted tragedy. What is there to say? The truth about this

16 THE LANTEBN.

big, selfish, blind, hurrying world must be dreary or worse, it seems, and only the truth is worth telling.

As for Gogol, he has an eye for truth that there is no deceiving; a groundwork of earnestness that makes his airiest word a force; a skill in the delineation of character — skill is a poor word here: all the skill ever acquired would fail of producing Gogol's men; for the power that embodies an actual type in a genuine living individual, precisely human in his attributes, his blending of faults and virtues, his susceptibility to environ- ment, his submissiveness to ruling passions, subtly vitalized, gripping at our emotions and sympathies with warm strong real hands, is the inex- plicable, undefined power of genius. It has been months since I read one of Gogol's books, but my ardor mounts as I write till I wonder that I do not have him constantly under my eyes. If the days were only longer! The truth is they are far too short for half the delightful books, and to reach my Gogol shelf I must — I can't — pass by Ibsen and Maeterlinck and Lamb and Jane Austen and a persuasive impertinent little green copy of the Sentimental Journey and such a marvelous, resplendent Don Quixote as few could resist, and Vie de Boheme and Les Trois Mousque- taires which for my part I never did resist, and a Joseph Andrews and Humphrey Clinker, and so many more captivating names that as I consider them, I am obliged to realize how very disadvantageously my Gogol is placed. You know what a helpless vagabond I am along literary high- ways.

But Tolstoi — in letters I wander, too, it seems — quite as badly as among shelves. If Gogol was the father of Eussian realism, in Tolstoi what an outstripping and superior child he had ! "When I think of Tolstoi', I permit myself this very lamentable weakness — I fall into metaphor— for your misfortune : a great, staunch, indestructible tree of truth, its roots in the most secret depths of the human heart and mind, its branches enclosing in their nearly boundless sweep the minutest details of the sor- rowful, laughable, wonderful, terrible history of daily life, its summit touching the sublime height of moral reform — Tolstoi, the author of Anna Karenina, Resurrection, War and Peace, The Kreutzer Sonata, that re- markable, horrible drama, The Tower of Darkness, remarkable and horrible as life darkened and degraded is capable of being.

Probably for no cause again shall I ever experience such a peculiar

FROM A LETTER. 17

joyous delirium as came upon me one day last winter after I had read in quick succession War and Peace, Master and Man, The Cossacks, The Fruits of Enlightenment and The Power of Darkness. I was at the moment well advanced into Childhood, Boyhood and Youth. Half a dozen pages of superb observation, touched to something like lightness by Tolstoi's large life-like humor, controlled by underlying purpose to admir- able coherence," ended in a passage of particular acuteness. My apprecia- tion had been swelling, swelling for days — suddenly it passed bounds. I sprang up ; I paced my room in a frenzy of pleasurable excitement ; I sought in my mind for some sacrifice to offer this surpassing realist; and I found a victim properly splendid. You will not believe it of me — at the feet of Tolstoi I laid Balzac. Don't scoff — you with your one steady worship. In cooler moments, I modified the judgment until Balzac had again in great measure his pre-eminence: but with Tolstoi's spell upon me, realizing freshly his clairvoyant understanding, Ms strong, just critical faculty, the massive security of his self-confidence, his almost superhuman superiority to illusions, above all, his unfailingly dominant moral purpose, without an inner qualm or remonstrance to my credit I perpetrated the disloyalty.

Later, when the rapture had languished and I could remember in all their greatness Le Cousin Pons, Le Pere Goriot, Illusions Perdues, Eugenie G-randet, Splendeurs et Miseres des Courtisanes, and the rest, I sorrowed over my apostasy, admitting that no stern reformer with his fingers always at the moral pulse of society, who for his fine height must pay inevitably with some narrowness, could have given us the glorious Comedie Humaine. Bal- zac with nothing more trammelling than an ingenious scheme of meta- physics to underlie richly without limiting his realism poured out at will from his inexhaustible mind the flood of his thoughts and knowledge, set up a world and peopled it, showed every kind of man and woman in their various relationships, let the analysis of not a single sensation escape him, bled hearts mercilessly to feed living warmth to his pages, saw, in marvelous intuitive flashes, the seed of an act, the act developing, the act full grown, bearing its results, then a thousand spreading ramifications to those results, and from his pen's end spun the whole progression with its tremendous far-reaching significance and its reference to the governing laws of the human soul.

But Balzac, who is not the moralist and whose elaborate metaphysics,

THE LANTERN.

like metaphysics in general, are not for practical application, wants in that fact one of Tolstoi's great values — my Bussian reasserting his claim, you see. Tolsto'i, having broken our hearts with his uncompromising truth, at least brings to the wound a more or less easing balm in his creed, not luxurious but wise, of resignation and simplicity, both of which it is to be supposed we may come to with striving — as Tolstoi, firmly setting his example and independently solving his problem, has come to them. Balzac tosses us into a hideous, seething, black well of facts — there he leaves us to flounder. If there is perhaps a golden ladder leading out of the well to light and a salvation of our instinctive ideals, it is our own desperate floundering that must bring us to it. You, I know, draw endless inspira- tion to work from Balzac. For my part, I find myself after prolonged reading of him collapsed and without genuine substantial hope of either myself or my fellow-creatures. And yet, a season having been allowed my spirits in which to exercise their elasticity, back I fly to him. And equally I cling to Tolstoi, who has brought me to the verge of chronic melancholy — resignation and self -sacrifice, utter simplicity and the healing power of work, not being the philosophy of all others which I can most jubilantly take refuge in.

For Anna Earenina, that "dull, commonplace" book, which its author found intolerably tiresome, and so gave arbitrarily piecemeal to a hungry public, I reserve a special pinnacle: if it is not the greatest novel I have ever read, at least I faithfully esteem it such. Its role of authority, from the first word to the last, calm, assured, unfailingly sustained, is that un- mistakable role of an immortal masterpiece. On every page there is a gigantic pressure of significance, and through the whole a greatness which springs from truth unbeautified, unsoftened, unexaggerated, simply told, carrying inevitable conviction with it; from a clear, bold, vastly compre- hensive reason penetrating and controlling every word and from time to time manifesting itself directly in profound earnestness; from a fearless revelation of the strongest emotions of the heart and the most intricate workings of the mind. I have heard the possibility of a long future for Tolstoi questioned; — so long as hearts feel and minds work and truth is our ideal, I cannot see why he should die.

But a sweetness and fineness of pleasure not to be found for me in the other Bussians I know, I draw from the writings of Turgenieff. Bealist,

FROM A LETTER. 19

too, mournful, discouraging realist as he is, there is all about Turgenieff an enchanted air of poetry and romance that addresses my soul rather than my reason. The mysteries that Tolstoi relates so firmly and capably to life, in Turgenieff retain their most subtle elusiveness; the flame of ardent vitality burns bright and strong through his books, but enveloping the flame is a dim and shadowy penumbra of miracle — and this I love: I love to realize curious and impalpable powers bearing everywhere upon us with the steady secret force of Fate. Isolated from mystery, we are far too uninteresting, a sorry handful indeed of wayward, purposeless creatures. For my part, I had rather hold a mediaeval belief in witches and hob- goblins, Merlins, Calibans, every antiquated sprite and fay, than never to feel the air charged with strange compelling influences. I can see your expression of dismay as you read — pray don't despair of me — I have not turned spiritualist since my last letter; it is only the spirits that hover and haunt in TurgeniefPs wonderful, glamorous pages that I am thinking of — spirits of youth and love, of visionary hope and torturing melancholy, of the past and progress and decay and death.

Conceive what human personality may become in the hands of a writer whose temperament compasses every shade of feeling, to whose delicacy of fancy and fervency of imagination there is no perceptible bound, in whom sympathy with every phase of life, whether of men or of women, attains the proportions of a wide, deep sea of generous understanding. Being a true realist, and a true lover of his kind, Turgenieff is incapable of refusing to the least of his characters the respect which we all owe — and do not give — our own importance is so overshadowing — to every indi- vidual with a soul, of whatever rank or force; and being Turgenieff, he creates as heroines the most entrancing women, so vividly living, so swaying to wild moods and turbulent emotions; as heroes — -if one may so call them — the saddest, weariest men, symbolising failure but appealing almost with a magnetism of weakness in their final proneness before life to whose struggle they were inadequate.

As I read Turgenieff I feel that there is no region of literary art wherein he falls short of supremacy. He penetrates his natural descriptions with a loveliness of color and stir of growth that should be the despair of painters; he does something more and infinitely harder — he shows the soul which man claims for himself projected beyond man into the external

20 THE LANTEBN.

•world and establishing a universal harmony; he sweeps passion into his pages like a destroying whirlwind, or he insinuates it to a tune of immortal sweetness; he burns the torch of patriotism that is capable of firing a nation; he is infinitely sad, with a pathos that brings the tears and leaves the heart impressed forever; and he is gay with a tender, beautiful humor. What I like best of his I scarcely know: some of his longer novels have bewitching passages — I believe when I say this I am thinking especially — though I might choose countless other instances — of quaint, absurd, old- fashioned Fomushka and Fimushka in Virgin Soil; and there are stretches that take the heart and mind by storm — Old Portraits, a reminiscence reviving the past in exquisite picturesqueness and with a delicately loving touch for ancestral follies. Mumu, a relentless, heart-crushing tragedy of the dumb — a sermon to us all, for the dumb about us are without number, and our mercy is scant; Enough: A Fragment from the Note-booh of a Dead Artist — you, guarded and fortressed as you are in your cheerfulness, will wonder possibly why I love this sketch, all aching, morbid intensity, but indeed it has great charm for me. — I might set down still a score of names with for each a lingering, luxurious page of recollections — you are helpless, and I am selfish — but another indulgence tempts me. I am going to copy into this interminable letter one or two of TurgeniefFs prose poems ; they will lend worth to the packet, and I shall love to exercise my pen over their incomparable perfection.

The Dog.

We two in the room; my dog and me. . . . Outside a fearful storm is howling.

The dog sits in front of me, and looks me straight in the face.

And I, too, look into his face.

He wants, it seems, to tell me something. He is dumb, he is without words, he does not understand himself — but I understand him.

I understand that at this instant there is living in him and in me the same feeling, that there is no difference between us. We are the same; in each of us there burns and shines the same trembling spark.

Death sweeps down, with a wave of its chill broad wing

And the end !

Who then can discern what was the spark that glowed in each of us?

FROM A LETTER. 21

No ! We are not beast and man that glance at one another. . . . They are the eyes of equals, those eyes riveted on one another. And in each of these, in the beast and in the man, the same life hud- dles up in fear close to the other.

A Conversation. "Neither the Jungfrau nor the Finsteraarhorn has yet been trodden by the foot of man!"

The topmost peak of the Alps. ... A whole chain of rugged precipices. . . . The very heart of the mountains.

Over the mountain a pale green, clear, dumb sky. Bitter, cruel frost; hard, sparkling snow; sticking out of the snow, the sullen peaks of the ice- covered, wind-swept mountains.

Two massive forms, two giants on the sides of the horizon, the Jung- frau and the Finsteraarhorn.

And the Jungfrau speaks to its neighbor : "What canst thou tell that is new? Thou canst see more. What is there down below?"

A few thousand years go by: one mimite. And the Finsteraarhorn roars back in answer: "Thick clouds cover the earth. . . . Wait a little !"

Thousands more years go by : one minute.

"Well, and now?" asks the Jungfrau.

"Now I see, there below all is the same. There are blue waters, black, gray heaps of piled up stones. Among them are still passing to and fro the insects, thou knowest, the bipeds that have never yet once defiled thee nor me."

"Men?"

"Yes, men."

Thousands of years go by: one minute.

"Well, and now?" asks the Jungfrau.

"There seem fewer insects to be seen," thunders the Finsteraarhorn. "It is clearer down below ; the waters have shrunk, the forests are thinner."

Again thousands of years go by : one minute.

"What seest thou?" says the Jungfrau.

"Close about us it seems purer," answers the Finsteraarhorn, "but there in the distance in the valleys are still spots, and something is moving."

22 THE LANTERN.

"And now?" asks the Jungfrau, after more thousands of years: one minute.

"Now it is well," answers the Finsteraarhorn, "it is clear everywhere, quite white, wherever you look. . . . Everywhere is our snow, un- broken snow and ice. Everything is frozen. It is well now, it is quiet."

"Good," says the Jungfrau. "But we have gossiped enough, old fellow. It's time to slumber."

"It is time indeed."

The huge mountains sleep; the green, clear sky sleeps over the region of eternal silence.

And this one more:

"How Fair, How Fresh Were the Roses. . . . "

Somewhere, sometime, long, long ago, I read a poem. It was soon forgotten . . . but the first line has stuck in my memory —

"How fair, how fresh were the roses ..."

Now is winter; the frost has iced over the window-panes; in the dark room burns^a solitary candle. I sit huddled up in a corner; and in my head the line keeps echoing and echoing —

"How fair, how fresh were the roses ..."

And I see myself below the low windows of a Eussian country house. The summer evening is slowly melting into night, the warm air is fragrant of mignonette and lime-blossom; and at the window, leaning on her arm, her head bent on her shoulder, sits a young girl, and silently, intently gazes into the sky, as though looking for new stars to come out. What candour, what inspiration in the dreamy eyes, what moving innocence in the parted questioning lips, how calmly breathes that still-growing, still- untroubled bosom, how pure and tender the profile of the young face! I dare not speak to her ; but how dear she is to me, how my heart beats !

"How fair, how fresh were the roses ..."

But here in the room it gets darker and darker, . . . The candle burns dim and gutters, dancing shadows quiver on the low ceiling, the

PROM A LETTER. 23

cruel crunch of the frost is heard outside, and within the dreary murmur of old age. . . .

''How fair, how fresh were the roses ..."

There rise up before me other images. I hear the merry hubbub of home life in the country. Two flaxen heads, bending close together, look saucily at me with their bright eyes, rosy cheeks shake with suppressed laughter, hands are clasped in warm affection, young kind voices ring one above the other; while a little farther, at the end of the snug room, other hands, young too, ply with unskilled fingers over the keys of the old piano, and the Lanner waltz cannot drown the hissing of the patriarchal samovar . . .

"How fair, how fresh were the roses ..."

The candle flickers and goes out . . . Whose is that hoarse and hollow cough ? Curled up, my old dog lies, shuddering, at my feet, my only companion. . . . I'm cold . . . I'm frozen . . . and all of them are dead . . . dead . . .

"How fair, how fresh were the roses ..."

So much — in so many pages ! — for my beloved Eussians. What I have gained from them, more than heartaches for the sorrowful world, I think I cannot yet fairly estimate; but this I realise — they have enlarged im- measurably my knowledge of men and women, taught me tolerance and sympathy through understanding, and more than the writers of any other nation whom I have read have with their own sincerity inclined me to an ideal of honesty and straightforwardness, the wisest of aims, I have come to believe, in a world where perhaps the great preponderance of ills is the fruit of our wilful complexness.

You have a grave charge against me at this moment; you are about to launch it at my head like a thunderbolt; but you are wrong. For all these new allegiances of mine, this devout prostration before new shrines, I have not abandoned old idols; I still can weary you with paeans of praise for Galdos; and a lighter chant for Valdes, who — may eternal fame reward him! — takes pity on my natural frivolity and amuses me; and a flight of notes in rhapsodic crescendo to immortalize Flaubert; and a tribute to

24 THE LANTEEN.

de Maupassant, another to Huysmans, another to Maeterlinck, another to Bordeaux. A confession — my last two weeks have been quite, even ficklely, withdrawn from Eussian worship and given to these very authors whose names I have tumbled pell-mell into my page.

As for Galdos and Valdes — when I read my great Spanish people, I always wonder, and regret more than I can say, that beyond national confines Spain's literature is so little known. It is a surpassingly wonder- ful literature in its magnificent beginnings of some centuries ago, and to-day its first rank is by no means below the highest standard of any na- tion. For a language of unequaled grace, eloquence and dignity, couched in which the simplest thought receives a measure of weight and beauty; for a peculiar pointedness of wit and charm of humor, and a Latin flexi- bility of mood to be safely and enjoyably anticipated, I love the literature of Spain.

In Galdos and Valdes, realists — with reservations — and possibly the two most famous of Spain's modern novelists, the tone of mind is high and pure; their themes throb with all possible vitality, their views are broad and just. Galdos, seeing mainly the tragedy of life, but seeing it majestically and dominatingly, is superb; Valdes, with an eye resolutely for the brighter outlook, the problems that solve, the threads that untangle, is delightful. If my benevolent tyrant of unerring justice were governing as he should be, industriously thumbed and conned would be Galdos and Valdes in every household — together with many another writer of Spain ! On all sides we should hear melodious Castilian echoes. Not the humblest book-stall but there inviting our American fancy with the seductiveness of centuries would be Madrid, Granada, the flowery ways of Andalusia. Alluring dream to one who has heard those echoes and wandered petal- pelted in those ways! Alas for the sad folly of dreaming. Alluring dreams are never, never realised.

Flaubert, Huysmans, Bordeaux. With memories not a fortnight old of Bonvard et Pecucliet, Les Soeurs Vatard — unlovely book — and Les Roquevillarde, I could find it in my heart — but upon even the maddest enthusiasm bounds must be imposed at last. My desk is littered with scrawled impatient sheets : I gather them up resolutely and send them to you, asking again the indulgence you have so often granted me. . . .

Sara Montenegro, 1902.

TO A CHAPEL IN BRITTANY. 25

TO A CHAPEL IN BRITTANY.

Thou chapel old and grey and wreathed with vines Beside whose solitude the river flows, There hast thou weathered thrice an hundred snows With crumbling buttresses and niould'ring shrines.

Gilded and gleaming through the glossy leaves Thy spire seeks the sun; thy windows deep Shelter the birds. There dost thou lie asleep Shielding the past beneath thy failing eaves.

Within thy walls what dreams in days of old

Were dreamed ! How straight the road to Heaven seemed then

To knight and lady, hermit, priest, and squire,

As, kneeling there upon thy pavement cold,

They heard what terms the church accords to men,

And thou, above them, pointed with thy spire!

Mary Rutter Towle, 1899.

26 THE LANTEBN.

THE GOLD OF THE TEMPLE.

"For whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold."

Chapter I.

THOUGH the same little gasp of interest was given by Julia Lippitt to all her surprises, Jasper Brandt felt that he had at last pro- longed its perplexity, deepened its meaning. It did not, he knew, as yet reveal a belief in his earnestness. It even implied that connections between them had been of so light a nature, as to make his remark but a part of that levity. At the same time, however, it showed a spirit candidly curious in all matters concerning itself.

"But why," Julia asked, as she leaned from her chair, her brows lifted high in perplexity under the yellow droop of her hair, "Why, may I ask, are you doing it? I don't, of course, know, or pretend to guesss from my ignorance, whom you ought most to marry. I only know well from my knowledge, most whom you oughtn't. And — you'll laugh at my frankness — this conviction, on my part, is not the result of your question just put me. It's one of a longer duration. You know my habit, no doubt, of inventing possible lives for myself. You know how I speculate and find reasons for the likelihood of events, which may ever accrue to me. It makes up so for those which don't, that it's become in the end my diversion. In one of my flights of fancy, I happened on just this occurrence. Much, however, as I knew you liked me, and much as my ingenuity and vanity were both concerned, I couldn't find the least little reason for your wanting more of me than just this : our short little talks and our tea."

Jasper Brandt laughed as he faced her in the twilight, watched the line of her chin when the bright glow caught it, her clasped white hands with their heavy rings, and the gleam of her neat braids of hair. It pleased him to think, not only that he should have so touched her fancy, but that he should when considered appear like some rare old trinket, too dear to be even desired.

"It's like you," he began, indulgently, wishing in his turn to do for

THE GOLD OP THE TEMPLE. 27

her all that he could, "to abandon my question in search of the motive involved. It's like you, too, to leave me restlessly pacing the shore, while you go on your voyage of discovery. But it's vastly more like you to have pushed off in advance; to have set out to sea with nothing to warrant the toils of departure. I even believe that while most of us stupidly take things just as they come, placidly when possible, and with folded hands, you even prefer that they shouldn't come. Their arrival after the play of your fancy must make them such vain repetition." He paused to laugh again, as he watched her. "Here, however, in any case," he pursued, "is the longed for exception."

She nodded slowly over it, as she moved her chair, with its big faded expanse of dull red, a little more close to the fire. "Yes," she said, as she again sat down and stretched her hands to the glow. "You've your mystery, no doubt." Then, as she looked before her with the air of a person forced after apparently skilful clutching to gaze at an empty palm, she continued : "With any one else it might be the mere wish for adventure and novelty, the love of one's distant Antipodes, the knowledge, exhilerating to many, that the huntsmen are up in Australia. But you are so peacefully, urbanely content with your own present prospect, that for the life of me I can't make yon out."

Some of her difficulty Brandt himself realized, and felt himself able, in consequence, to see from her point of view. Delicate and fastidious as he was, hating all things sordid or dingy, he had never wishes to look over his pleasant horizon; to indulge in a larger vision than his own inherited view. Julia Lippitt, herself, indeed, stood as his single peep into another world, a peep taken timorously, with a refuge close at his hand, a retreat to which he might go at the first sight of glooms. If, however, he had been in prospect afraid, she had at once reassured him. She had shown herself, indeed, despite her bare little room, and even because of it, so brave, unappalled, that she left him slight reason for fear. Even the meagreness of her life, which he saw there before him, in the dullness of two tiny windows and dimness of flickering candles, was enhanced by the gaiety. So joyous, indeed, had she been as she gave her droll comments and various views on all subjects, that he soon felt convinced that with her, at least, lay cheerfulness, optimism. If her apartment, then, high as it was, and shut off from the rest of the world by the length of its narrow

28 THE LANTEBN.

stairway, stood to her least of all for a refuge, why mightn't it be for him, in his turn, a rare extravagance, a rich opportunity?

At first, however, she simply amused him, became a new recreation in the midst of his drowsy life. She existed, he felt, but for his delectation. She went off on adventures, wandered about the dark crooked by-paths of existence, to report later to him her strange encounters and startling dis- coveries. But, except for this part of spy, of reporter on life and all people, she made no stronger appeal. He even had thought her, with her air of assurance, her defensive hardness, and her tongue that played laughingly, fluently over all subjects, a little bit lacking in refinement and tact. As his visits became more frequent, however, her freshness was what most impressed him. It was hard to escape it, indeed, when once he had found it. It lay in the fall of her hair, sleek as the wing of a bird, as it drooped on her temples, in the rich bloom of her cheeks, in her deep blue eyes, which, despite her awareness, her inner sophistication, still had preserved a childlike candour. It even extended into her mannerisms, the affirmative nods of her head, the opposing lift of her hands, the hundred and one little gestures which she used to express her thought. If, however, he had been slow to perceive her sprightliness, he had been slower still to react to its charms. It was only lately, indeed, that he had found her charming in spite of her freedom; had seen what he himself might do for her, since she did so much for herself. Now, however, as he watched her, bending toward him, her chin deep in her thin polished hands, he found himself wondering where her grace wouldn't take her, with the help of his affluence and ease. Then, as he watched her, transferred by his fancy, fulfilling omitted growth, perfecting a blighted loveliness, in richer and deeper soil, her last words came to him.

"Yes," he said, at last, determined to give, from his own pleasing picture, a little the light of romance. "Of course, you can't see my reason. Except for the vision, the hope which actuates all men to just such a question, I haven't any, you see. If you must have one, if your longing positively has to be satisfied, why not call it simply my love for you, or, if you wish, my selfishness, my desire to prolong our beautiful hours. At least," and he gave to his voice a tone of insistence, "believe in me. Use some faith."

She gave him a sorrowful shake of her head, one clearly meant to

THE GOLD Or THE TEMPLE. 29

show her desire in regard to his wishes, as well as her sad inability for their compliance. '"'Faith/' she sighed. "Some one said, you remember, that the Eyes of Faith see things as they wish them, not things as they are. And what have I at my age to do with blurred sight. Of course, when one has grown old, one then has acquired a willing blindness, an inability just from one's weariness to see things quite as they are. Faith becomes, then, the evidence of things unseen. It's when one is young that it is still the substance of things hoped for. It's happy, however, in children, repre- senting, as it so charmingly does, their desire for concrete and possible objects. One wants so many things, too, that the elimination of some only perfects and develops the rest. But when one is middle aged, has long ago surrendered desires for an earthly Paradise, and not yet achieved the wish for an immaterial heaven, one is simply hopelessly lost. One strives to be neither a child nor a dotard; and much as one wants to bandage one's eyes, one keeps them wearily opened against all possible shocks. In what," she repeated again, "should I have any faith?"

It was impressive, this little gust of her grimness, which had swept away all her gaiet}', and had forced her up on her feet. It made her, by reason of what she had so long concealed, the more deep and abysmal. In his eagerness, however, he gave it only the shortest of pauses.

"In what should you have faith !" he cried. "In me, in my ignorance of you ; in the fact that I'm asking you now to marry me, without knowing the least little thing of you, or your life. If you want a basis for faith, you can — one surely could — make something out of just that."

Already in the silence that followed he felt that she did; that after much weighing, deciding, reflecting, she had reached at last her result. In her very pause by the window, in her silent droop of her head, as she looked at the sunset, and the huddled roof that cut with the sky line, he knew he had caught her, had bound her fast.

"Yes," she said, without turning yet from the light that outlined her trim purple gown and small compact figure. "You are the special case, the exception. But there are, after all, so many apparently special eases that one hates to let up on one's vigilance. It isn't, of course, that I don't see all of your generosity. I see nothing, in fact, but the vision of you giving me all that you have, offering it to me, like some benevolent saint, with both hands."

30 THE LANTERN.

Clearly, from the bright smile which she sent him over her shoulder as he rose and stood close behind her, the picture she saw was a pleasant one; one which, save for her fear of its vanishing, she would willingly watch for some time. In an instant, however, she had turned from its contemplation.

"But, after all," she broke out in perversity, "I'm at least detached. Shop-worn and soiled as I am, I'm not in the least among remnants. I'm simply a piece which might have its edges trimmed, be hemmed to con- ventional neatness. But what if I weren't detached, had had surroundings from which I could never be severed ; a past which I couldn't possibly lose."

If he had given to her, in her doubt and her disbelief, a reason for faith, she had shown him a way in which to make good his statements. Strangely enough, however, though he felt his task might be difficult, might, by a life of sordidness suddenly placed before him, force from him a bolder front than that which he usually wore, he had only a sense of exhilaration. Never even in his young days, of brimming beakers and dregs disregarded, had he filled so boldly his cup.

"It wouldn't," he nodded, "make for me the least little difference. You might as well spare yourself." Then, to make his task appear not light, but heavy, one which, though arduous, he bravely put through for her sake, he added: "Yes, I should mean every word I have said, if I thought I might give you happiness."

Again he caught her, and this time he held her for good.

"Would you come to my home?" she questioned eagerly, her eyes full of a deep, solemn glow. "It's only a little New England village. It's a risk. Will you take it?"

Again he nodded and again there was silence. As they stood there, however, face to face in the gathering darkness, he knew that at last she believed him.

"You've only to let me know when you wish me and give me direc- tions," he said, softly, taking her into his arms, "and you'll see how soon I shall come."

She interrupted him, staring wistfully up at him with her wide open eyes.

"No, not soon," she insisted, "not at least for three weeks. I'm not even yet cured of all doubts. I want all that time to mix facts with

THE GOLD OF THE TEMPLE. 31

illusions. I want, no matter what happens later, to have had my happi- ness, even if based tin the falsest security ; to have been sure, that is, so long of you."

"Ah, you!" he returned, as he released her, confidently implying to her what in time he should do for her, the wonders, in regard to her trust, he should soon effect. "And what am I meantime to have for my comfort ?"

She held out her hand as he made his way toward the door in the darkness. Then, as he took it, she said quite softly :

"The knowledge that you are the cause of these weeks; that I've believed in you enough to accept them. If s surely enough to have led me back to even a childish belief in Paradise, to have so completely renewed my youth."

Chaptee II.

At the end of a stated time, after a long dull journey, Jasper Brandt found himself left on a blazing platform, gazing about him at small flaring beds of petunias, neat pointed firs, and a road stretched through the dust to the distance. A muddy trap stood before him, with a dingy fringed lap robe and a horse that blinked lazily up at the sunlight. So apprehensive, however, had he grown of the task which now lay before him, that he passed by the carriage and walked down the road. Though the past weeks had gone by so slowly, had tried his patience by the extent of his mystification, his object was now to gain time. By walking, he might go quite as he chose, be as dilatory as his fancy dictated; might consider, moreover, his plans more clearly than if jostled over the highway.

As he passed by the first stretch of singed fields, where the dust lay caked on tall scrubby weeds and on rusty plantains, it came to him how wonderful in her humility, in her unselfish veracity, Julia Lippitt had been. He had been astonished at her reluctance, in receiving him at once in her home; in getting the worst quickly over no matter how bad; in putting him, with the shortest delay, to his test. Later, however, he saw, so he thought, that this respite had been but for him. She had seen his position, had seen it, too, with the aid of her greater knowledge, more clearly even than be could perceive it himself. If she knew that he had waded in far deeper than he had in the first place intended, she knew, also, just where and with how great a burden he must valiantly totter out. This

32 THE LANTERN".

time, then, which she gave him, with a tact so rare that it showed but a trace of her generosity, was less to secure for herself hours of prophetic happiness, than to show him the better part of his valour. The lesser portion, however, was what in the past slow days, and in the slower stroll which he now took across the country, he was most determined to prove. It might be indiscreet, absurd, foolish, but it gave him a positive sense of pleasure. These weren't the old ballad days, of course, when one flung one's all to the winds for the sake of one's love; and his love was stirred by much calmer strains than those of traditional heroes. Julia, however, might lead him to sights and to places with which he was not familiar; might show him a father stout, pompous and red; a mother flurried and awkward; a home more vulgar than dingy, more cluttered than meagre; but she could not scare him away.

By this time he had reached the town, and found himself pacing along a broad village street, where small similar houses and square enclosed yards were darkened by the spacious shade of tall elms. There, before him, at last, lay the mill of which Julia had told him, and in which, from some dim idea he had formed, he saw her father as superintendent, dealing out to the men on Saturday night, piles of small coins. Beyond this, he knew, lay her home. Gazing straight at the ground, he hurried to meet it.

When he looked up, he saw at the top of a terrace, whose sides were cut into sloping banks and stretches of emerald sward, a large white mansion. Its great roof, cut by gables and sheltered by hemlocks, as well as its broad brick chimneys, gave it an air of dignity, a sense of space, of high ceilings, bare rooms and echoing footsteps. The place, moreover, in its drawn curtains, pulled down against the glare, its rotting gateway, over which old-fashioned roses twined small blighted pink flowers, its cracked but neat flagstones, had the sweetness born of antiquity. He had never before seen anything like it. He had, however, an idea that in past years his own people might have lived in just such a place, in some home such as this, have dozed by trimmed lamps and been hushed to sleep by the crackling of dying fires. Not pausing to think of what he was doing, he made his way up the path to the door, with its circle of small glass panes, and lifted the knocker.

In a moment he stood in a room, as large as the outside betokened, where the sunlight rifted through shades, mellowing the white glare of

THE GOLD OF THE TEMPLE 33

the paint, and dulling the gleam of the polished mahogany furniture. The adornments about him were spare and distributed; two sofas with high-cushioned backs and with buttons; chairs, whose upholstered tops protruded in squares from their woodwork; pale samplers, and long oval mirrors, with reflections quite dim and distorted from the long course of years. An ascetic spirit, he felt, had been here at work, had removed all objects less good than those which he saw before him. Clearly, however, a little old lady, as the rarest and oldest of all the possessions, had been allowed to remain, and was coming forward to meet him, holding out to him a stiff, small hand.

fTm afraid," he said, as he took it, half timorously, and bowed gently over it, "that I've made some stupid mistake. I had but the vaguest directions, and I blundered into your pathway. And once there — " he paused, thinking that so much was the house a part of herself and she of the house, that his remarks might become too personal. "Once there I couldn't turn back. I had to come up and knock. I was looking — perhaps you might know where she lives — for a Miss Julia Lippitt."

Her gray eyes covered him in a look which, though searching, even inquiring, had the frail austerity born of long shyness.

"Yes," she said. "I know you are Mr. Brandt."

As he spoke he heard the rustle of skirts, the hurried click of high heels over polished floors, and Julia stood there before him, filling the large silent room, tainting its paleness with the colour flashed from her hair, and her eyes, and bright lavender dress.

"So you thought," she laughed. And he saw at a glance that the weeks he had had, had left her little enough of her gravity; had given her rather the power and the potency of renewed youth. "So you thought, when you saw all this and my aunt, you had made a mistake. I did scare you, of course. I meant to scare you enough to make my test superb and supreme, something large enough, in fact, on which to build in the future. If you came after all that I didn't say, but suggested, I knew I might count on you. And this — " she wheeled gaily, "is to be your proper, your fitting reward."

Brandt felt himself quite bewildered, not only by the house and its quaintness, its hush and its little old lady, all softened and hallowed by years, but by Julia sounding her note of enthusiasm, high and clear in the midst of the silence.

34 THE LANTERN.

"You'll have to explain this to me. I expected something so different/' he said quite slowly, turning from Julia to watch the small shrunken figure, apparently lightening its steps so as not to disturb them as it walked to another room. "I don't in the least understand where we are, why we are here. I'm quite completely at sea."

Again Julia showed him an irritating enjoyment, one expressed in the gleam of her eyes, in the lines at their corners, in the inscrutable smile which just moved her lips.

"Poor man," she said, leading the way to the porch, from which might be seen perspectives of box, graded rows of red hollyhocks and white latticed arbours, placed in the glare at the end of the pathways. "You think that I don't belong here, that the prize for your valour, which you so justly deserve, isn't mine to give, that I'm only pretending to rights of donation. But, though I admit I fit into my background with the roughest of edges," and she went to the end of the porch leaning out from the shade, in which they had both been standing, "this is, it really is, my own home."

"But why then," Brandt broke out, with the petulant air of one quite weary of practical jokes and bewildering blindness, "are you what you are ? Why aren't you the product of this, why doesn't the past reflect itself on the present? And why, most of all, if, as you say, this is your home, did you so foolishly leave it ?"

Julia turned from her gaze at the gardens to spread out her lavender dress in a low wicker chair. Clearly she wished him to see, by her air of repose, that the first frisk of joy at her joke was now over.

"Why did I leave it?" she said, as he sat down beside her. "Because I never perceived its beauty. I only saw its austerity; its harsh stiff lines, which straightened each edge of the pathways and clipped all their strag- gling branches. It's only since I came back that I've seen the opportuni- ties it offers; the chance, for example, it gives in its neatness to rest with- out closing one's eyes."

Then, after a pause, she began again, in a tone that carried to him, as he sat there beside her, still watching, still waiting, the note of a deeper seriousness :

"Of course, you don't see how I belong here, how my harsh and crude outlines fit into this time-worn frame. You, like most of the world, see only the older ISTew England, that of the Puritan blood, and the consequent

THE GOLD OF THE TEMPLE. 35

Puritan grimness. You seldom see the chance for revolt and reaction. But of just that legend, the old inherited laws, and the new rebellion, my parents and I were the sad and pathetic picture. Fond, in a formal way, as they were of me, I was always to them a small, naughty, and seldom, I fear, a repentant child. I never belonged to their race, so they said. I had always hankerings after things neither sanctioned nor safe. After adventures, that is, and encounters. I wanted to live, and to see, and to know, to get the fruits of experience by actual contact. I had none of the lofty mottos and texts which they formed, so I thought, from a querulous egotism. They went on the plan, for example, that for all one got one paid, and that the price that one paid was high, heart's blood or a pound of flesh. I didn't object to that. I've always hated in abstract life, more than in concrete affairs, the avoidance of debts. What I objected to merely was the close watch they kept on their coin, the way in which, in their deep apprehension, they saved it up for emergence, and missed by their too careful guard the pageantry of their existence. I was romantic, you see, to the point of absurdity. I even wanted to spend my all on my first great choice, and to spend all my life in regretting. My poor dear mother, who called such a wish unmoral, and even turned, from her lack of sympathy, that term to its harsher name, kept me from my extravagance, until she and my father had died."

"And your purchase then?" Brandt broke in, not quite conscious of what he was asking, but getting a few faint glimpses of his final elucida- tion.

"Was what you saw, the place where you found me, my high little room. It wasn't much of a wish, was it? to stand as one's highest. But it gave me a place from which to look out, if I might not take part in life, to watch the world as it passed on its way. It was there that I sought to lead the life of untrammeled youth; youth responsible to no one but itself. I sought, indeed, in all possible harmless ways, ways suggested by curiosity and by my intuition, to find quite the other side of the world from that I had lived in. I was foolish, of course. I didn't see that the only perma- nent love one has is, after all, for one's home, not for Antipolar realms. It took me some time to see that the other side of the world, its distant, fantastic Australia, is only the other side before one has reached it. To keep its one charm, it must also keep its far distance. It must always

36 THE LANTERN.

stay a dream only dreamed, a vision but mistily seen, a land quite over the sea."

Brandt stared his perplexity, following Julia blindly through the drift of her metaphors, feeling himself quite foot-loose in the midst of symbolic words.

"But you weren't even poor," he began, answering her with a state- ment of fact, which, if crude, he felt to be concrete. "You might have come home. You must have lived as you did, in the cramped unconven- tional way in which I so often found you, either through preference or through perversity."

"Perversity in the beginning," her head-shake assented, <fbut pride and perhaps even bravery in the sad end. Mine, as I said, was the leap of youth, suddenly finding itself quite free of restrictions. But for all that, it wasn't a leap quickly taken without the least little look. And when one has looked and measured the distance, one can't, from one's pride, retrace one's own foolish steps. I stayed and learned all the bitter- ness of my rash bargain, paid my high price. The gain, of course, was awareness and knowledge, but the cost was my young idealism and my high faith. I had to see things not at all as I wished them, but quite as they were. I couldn't keep my illusions. And clearest of all I saw the life I had planned, laid before me; saw that even my work mattered to no one now but myself. There was no good in making the best of my lot, in putting things through without a bit of applause. There was no good even in being bad, without a soul to be sorry. At last, as I once had so wished, I knew what it was to be quite adrift, alone and detached. There was no chance, moreover, for any future connections. I couldn't go home. One man, I think, wanted at first to marry me, but when it came to the point of learning the truth about me, of coming, that is, to see me — " Here she gave him a smile which showed him the depths of her commenda- tion. "He hadn't a bit of your courage and bravery. But I've made it up to you, haven't I. And isn't your reward all the greater for having been put to the test, having shown me yourself as so fine?"

She had risen and started toward him with the end of his speech, but she paused, stopped, Brandt dimly felt, by something she saw in bis face.

"Aren't you glad? You don't seem so." She put the question quite simply.

THE GOLD Or THE TEMPLE. 37

Brandt felt quite convinced that he ought to be glad; ought to meet her joy with the burst of a like enthusiasm; receive what she offered him ■with a sigh of relief, after long suspense and with the deepest gratitude. She had taken away, however, so much by her gift, things not tangible yet, but of whose loss he was conscious, that he could only nod her a negative, shaking his head quite sadly from side to side.

"I wanted so much to help you," he said, "to give you all that, when I first knew you, you seemed to need. I wanted to grant you all your desires. You see, I thought these very possessions you have were the very surroundings which you had never known, but which you most wanted. And now, by owning them all yourself, by having all that I've got to give you, you've taken from me my chance. I didn't want you for what you could do for me, but for what I could do for you."

As the words he had uttered echoed into the silence, Brandt expected them to be met by another praise of his nobleness. Clearly, however, they carried to Julia a wave of meaning quite unintentioned ; one from which he saw her at first recoil, then lift herself bravely to meet. When she spoke the note of joy in her voice was quite quenched.

"Oh," she moaned. It came as her first drowning breath. "So that is why you were brave, why, after all, you came to me. You were prepared for heroic actions, to take me and marry me, no matter what. You told yourself that the task would be hard, but you never admitted it sweetened quite through by the sense of your bravery. It gave you, of course, a sense of complete satisfaction, to think of your sacrifice. And now that I've proved something else than that which I seemed, have shown myself to be born at least of conventional parents, to have my inherited place in the world, I've turned your crisis, to have been so triumphantly acted, into a mere anti-climax. I've left to you not one bit of romantic glamour, no chance even to show your generous spirit." She paused; then, with the final burst of her bitterness, she said quite slowly: "It shouldn't be blessed are those who give, but those who receive. Theirs is, after all, a far lesser selfishness."

In her next remark there was not even resentment, and nothing of protest.

"To think," she murmured, "that I had hoped to make you so happy."

Margaret Emerson Bailey, 1907.

38 THE LANTERN.

THE DECISION.

(Reprinted from "Tipyn o' Boo.")

The End to the Beginning said: "Of all glad men I choose the dead, — The tongue is still the slave of sin, Good is the bandage round the chin, For one alone the victor's place, For all, cool earth on feet and face."

Said the Beginning to the End — "To live is still to hope to mend, They that have run must want to rest — And yet the running is the best. All men are born to lose at last, The fun comes in the running fast."

Here the Beginning and the End, Shook hands and called each other friend.

Mary Isabelle 0' Sullivan, 1907.

w

A SEPTEMBER STORM. 39

A SEPTEMBER STORM.

HEIST the birds fly all ways at once, a storm's nigh at hand." This is what the fishmonger told me when I asked for news of the weather.

The heat had sucked all colour from the world. Out at sea the faint blue of the sleek swells was lost in the white incandescence of the sky; the sand was a pale glare; the trees on the mainland, the motion- less yellow grass on the dunes, melted in the heat blaze. Only the telegraph wire struck by the sun burned fiercely, and on the wire, huddled side by side in a black, serried company, drooped the prophetic birds, the harbingers of storm. They sat silent until with one accord the birds lifted together, and, tumbling in frenzied circles with a beating of wings sharper than the rasp of the locusts, they scattered to the four winds and returned to sit again in close formations. Thus they did all day. The thick night blinking with haloed stars was full of unrest. Morning was flaringly bright, but before midday darkness closed in the sky, a wind arose whirling the sand in spirals, sank, and then, with a volleyed peal of thunder and a rosy flame the rain blotted out the sea.

Towards dark the wind returned. Hitherto the ocean had lain torpid, receiving the thrusts of the rain with panting acquiescence, but now the tide was running strong and the waves swelled. Through the rain-blind night the ocean shouted to the shrill tune of the wind. At dawn a patter of bare feet drummed on the board-walk, and looking out I caught a glimpse of the coast-guards hurrying by, more than mortal tall in the shadowless greyness. The ocean was a welter of short, high-crested waves that shouldered one another and churned hissing. Drifts of sands blocked the gangway; placid pools of salt water spread under the piles on which the houses stood. The bay was rough black streaked with white, the southern shore was blurred. All that morning our little neighbor came pluDgin^ in with new tidings. "The water is over the board-walk in the old town," "Tbe bay is beyond tbe dunes." His final message was shrill with a crescendo of triumph. "The bay and the ocean have met!"

We tumbled out, adolescents, children and dogs, and were swept down the beach. A trail of fine grains of sands stung our faces, tossed balls of

40 THE LAJTTEBN.

bitter foam clung to our hair and rolled under our feet; in the cannonade of wind and water speech was a shriek. Barrows heaped with luggage from hastily closed cottages trundled past us, for who could tell how long the railroad bridge would resist the hammering of the meeting waters?

Down in the fishermen's town the houses stood knee-deep in a green lake raked with cross-currents. The boats, half floating and half lurching against one another, strained at their tethers and tried to right themselves. The usual group of lounging, smoking men were gesticulating violently with hoarse mumbles of excitement. In the middle of the largest knot of men a woman was standing, her eyes set on the sea.

"They've been blown down into Verginy, I tell you," she shouted. "They'll be picked up or they'll make shore. I tell you they'll come home by rail from Newport News."

The men looked at one another shamefacedly, then at the waves that were pounding against the boats. At last one of them spat and began to mumble something of the "Lord's mercy."

The woman shrieked at him, "They're coming home by rail from Newport News, I tell you." And with that she flung out her thin fist, whether at him or at the lashing ocean, and turned away.

Sophia plucked up courage to ask one of the men if the storm might not soon end. For answer he swung her first to the drowned beach, where gigantic snowballs of foam were dancing, then toward the bay.

"Do you hear the wind?" he asked. "Can you see where hit comes from? Well, God sent that there wind and you cyan't ask Him when He'll stay it."

He descended to the commonplace with a hint of "three, fo' days."

"And then, if the bridge's gone, sister, all the boats for sure won't be broke and we'll get you acrosst."

There is a fatalism in the men who painfully pluck a living from the "unfilled field." Far more than the farmer, they must wait on what even those who have not "got religion" call the will of the Lord. The wind brings the fishes, the wind carries them away; to-day the baskets are not large enough to hold the plentiful bounty of the sea, for days to come the boats cannot put on, the baskets remain empty. Want, never to be evaded or propitiated, dogs the fisherman's heels. And, always, there lurks in him the dim foreboding of that hour when he will not be "picked up or make shore," when the ocean shall claim him forever.

A SEPTEMBER STORM. 41

We ploughed our way home through mounds of drifting sand. There was enough to justify the fugitives. With the close of the day the wind gained in violence and its battle cry outscreamed the surf. And beneath the raving of the wind the under noises, the bang of a shutter, the thud of a swinging door, a child's cry of fear, were strangely unfamiliar. We stopped to look around us. The land lay helplessly now beneath the level of the threatening waters. Darkness was setting; the great waves that scarcely broke before their back wash was again hounded on and flung forwards, towered with a gleaming menace. And to us, shivering in the cold wind, there came a prickling of the terror with which our primeval fathers looked out on a shapeless world. For to-night, in this war of tempest and ocean, forces were abroad that had no heed for the smootb order of established laws.

No lamps could be lighted that night. Between the darkness and the first light the sound of guns forced its way through the full orchestra of the storm. Every ten minutes it came' again, but nothing could be seen through the mirk. Someone remembered it was the day for the Charleston steamer. All through the night the call continued and in the profound darkness stories crowded to the mind of the winter storms and their brutal fury. One year the town had been choked with wreckage, another winter a hotel, well acquainted with political conventions and with the hopes and fears of State Senators, had been lifted from its foundations and its twisted frame tossed down in mockery many yards inshore. And on a wilder night even than this, the horror had come upon the coast-guard and driven him inland away from the pulse of the sea.

For as he went his round one March night he saw a body come riding the crest of a mighty wave. And, as it lay swaying in the shallow water, he waded out and with his grappling hook seized it by the arm. The arm came away with the iron. Then a great sickness filled the man, but he was resolved to do his duty, and when again the corpse bobbed toward him he laid hold of it by the leg. And this time the leg, in its turn, parted from the trunk and dangled at arm's length.

The firing grew fainter or more infrequent. Now the blackness was thinning and the sea-birds gave long hoarse calls. Soon the dawn would come.

E. B. Lewis, 1905.

42 THE LANTEBH.

TO ONE ASLEEP.

The sleeping worlds are whirled through space, Through many a windy azure place

Where crystal planets spin and gleam ; Somewhere among those whirling globes, Wrapped in star-inwoven robes,

You whom I seek now sleep and dream.

Your brow is bound with poppies bland, You crush the seeds within your hand

That bring oblivion and rest ; Dim gracious forms about you throng, Dream forms of youth and light and song;

But pain finds harbour in my breast.

Beneath their soft, thin lids, your eyes Are radiant of Paradise

And joy of distant vanished things; In dreams you walk beside the rills Of springtime fields through daffodils,

The golden flag that April flings.

Ah ! could I find you, reach your side To tell you of my passion-tide,

Unbind the poppies from your brow, Loose those Lethean seeds, and see Your opened eyes look up at me,

And hear the music of your vow.

When you aver your dreams were death Which love has vanquished with his breath,

That youth was but a passing day, — Ah! then the worlds might whirl their while, When you would look at me and smile

And walk with me the sombre way.

Louise Foley, 1908.

THE DENATIONALISATION OF AMERICAN AKT. 43

THE DENATIONALISATION OF AMERICAN ART.

WE HAVE little retort to make to foreigners like an Englishman, who, the other day, asked whether we really had any artists of distinction. He was answered with the names of Abbey, Sar- geant, Gari Melchers. "Why!" he exclaimed, "you will be claiming Whistler next !" So completely, in fact, have our best American painters become identified with foreign life that only we who are eager to claim them as our own are sure to remember their American birth. Of our writers indeed the same statement may not be so unreservedly made; there are not many among them that have become completely expatriated. But when we compare the achievement of those who have identified them- selves with their national life with the achievement of him who, more than any other, has cut himself off from it — the achievement, I mean, of Mr. Henry James — we cannot but be inclined to judge from results and to conclude that in the realm of letters, too, the way of American advance leads to Europe.

And if we are right in our conclusion we are at once confronted with a curious problem. If as we advance in our skill in expressing beauty we really lose our nationality, we shall find ourselves differing most radically from other nations. Our art may be truly, though paradoxically, said to differ from theirs because it is like theirs. For the great art of other nations has generally had a distinctly national character, and if our art is to become great without developing a character of its own, it will be making a new departure. The question then arises whether the growing tendency among our artists to lose their nationality in dependence upon Europe for material will stand in the way of our producing great art.

The question is one of those about which, as Sir Eoger de Coverley would say, there is a great deal to be said on both sides. There are, how- ever, some few generalities that both sides will, I think, readily admit. I suppose not even the most ardent partisan will demur at the statement that America has as yet produced no art of the first order. This fact can be used by neither side in argument, however, since it cuts both ways. If it proved anything — as of course it does not — it would prove that neither

4A THE LANTEEN.

by originality in work nor by imitation can we produce great art — for both, methods have been tried. There are two other assertions that both sides will agree upon, and these are more pertinent to the discussion. Those who favour expatriation, as well as those who oppose it, will admit that Americans may go to Europe for training without losing their own national temperament. If this were not admitted they might justly claim that the advantage of learning from the great European masters would outweigh any strength that might come to us from working out a technique of our own. On the other hand, those who regard expatriation as a danger will admit that no art can be great that has not a universal significance. How- ever faithfully one portrays the life about one, one does not accomplish great things in art unless one can engage the sympathies of the larger world.

We now come to the main arguments on both sides of the question. Those who hope for a cessation to the current that sets towards Europe contend in the first place that all great art is national in character. This is, they think, not merely a general habit, brought about by the accident of convenience; it is a quality of art that arises from the nature of men. They claim, moreover, that there is no good reason why American art in particular should not be national. It is not necessary, they say, to look constantly to other countries for subjects, since America offers an abund- ance of material. Neither of these points, however, is fully established, and those who think there is no danger to our art in expatriation are sure to deny them both. They consider that great art is, in virtue of its great- ness, wholly independent of conventional boundaries; that it is capable of using material from one place as well as from another, that every artist should, therefore, scour the universe until he finds such subjects as are suited to his temperament. Moreover, they maintain that the subjects offered by America are most often antipathetic to the artistic tempera- ment; hence it is but the natural course of events that American artists should soon weary of trying to draw water from stone.

These, then, are the two main contentions which those who oppose expatriation uphold and those who favour it deny. If we are to come to a clear idea as to the worth of their conclusions, we must reach a decision as to whether, in the first place, all great art is national in character, and whether, in the second, America offers material that is worthy of artistic treatment.

THE DENATIONALISATION OP AMERICAN ART. 45

I think that as the arguments in favour of a national art are examined, they will at least be found not to have their origin in the blind jingoism of which Americans are often justly accused. It is not, of course, to be desired that American painters and sculptors and writers should not profit by the achievements of other countries. Many of the greatest artists have been strongly influenced by foreign art. But on taking up, one by one, those artists who have been most strongly so influenced, we shall find that even they have still retained essentially national characteristics and have drawn much material from their own countries. No poet certainly has ever more thoroughly appreciated the culture of foreign lands than Chaucer. In nearly everything he wrote we can trace either an Italian or a French influence. Yet Chaucer's spirit remained so thoroughly national that after five centuries we still point to him as the first poet to give expression to the typical English feeling for nature, the typical English gift for gentle satire. Italian art affected Albrecht Diirer much as Italian literature affected Chaucer. Diirer, after having made a journey to Venice, and learned much from the painters of the Italian renaissance, came back to Germany and founded a typically German school of art — not idealistic, after the Italian fashion, but full of rude strength and realism. England and Germany must have been in those times far more uncouth in com- parison with Italy, than America is now in comparison with Europe. The fact that "in spite of all temptations to belong to other nations" Chaucer and Diirer became great by living and working in their own countries and depicting the life about them, is one of the many indications that great art is essentially national.

Another indication that it is impossible to overlook as we review the art of other nations is the fact that, when imitation has been carried very far, it has put a great restraint upon artistic achievement. The most obvious example of such an imitative period is, of course, the English eighteenth century. And the period illustrates the double danger of imita- tion— the danger that spontaneous expression of the genius peculiar to the country will be stopped, and that imitation itself will become perfunctory and unappreciative. The Englishmen of the eighteenth century failed to get inspiration from what is best in classic literature ; as Keats says :

"They swayed upon a rocking-horse And thought it Pegasus."

46 THE LANTERN.

If they had had a warmer feeling for their own national life and for the demands of art they would have understood better the classic spirit.

But no one will deny that great art has in it always something of universality, and from this some conclude that it cannot be definitely national. They take it for granted that, because universality is a quality to be desired, the wider the field that comes under an artist's vision, the greater his art must be. But when we say that great art must be universal, we mean simply that it must have a universal significance, not that it must portray the looks and manners of many peoples. Great artists have shown their power in no more signal way than in imparting to a narrow field a significance that is felt by all nations and in all times. Take the old Dutch women that Bembrandt so often painted. How unspeakably borne and uninteresting they would seem to us in real life ! And yet Bembrandt does not idealise them in the sense of investing them with qualities that are not theirs; he simply makes us see the charm that they intrinsically have but that we should not discover unaided. He shows the universality of beauty.

Even many lesser men than Bembrandt have had much of this power ; Sudermann and Hardy are striking modern examples. The life on German country estates that Sudermann describes is so much a thing apart from the rest of the world that a foreigner might easily lose himself in the details of it and fail to grasp its real significance. It is much the same with Hardy's Wessex farms. But in reading Sudermann and Hardy we feel not only the differences between the characters in their books and ourselves, but also the more fundamental resemblances.

Now imagine an Englishman writing "Frau Sorge" or a Frenchman writing "Far from the Madding Crowd !" It is simply inconceivable. However eager his mind and faithful his observation and sympathetic his comprehension, an artist cannot possibly develop for men of foreign coun- tries that complete sympathy and understanding which is necessary for the production of great art. To us in America it often seems, of course, that no one could treat European life with greater sympathy and understanding than Mr. James. But are we, after all, the proper judges? And would not the judgment of Europe itself perhaps throw a damper on our enthu- siasm? Certainly such a summing up of our recent achievements as appeared in a recent number of the Athenceum should at least make us

THE DENATIONALISATION OF AMERICAN ART. 47

pause. After considering the greatness of earlier American art and learn- ing, the writer says: "The culture of America is now a borrowed thing, animated by no life of its own. Their art is become a reflection of French art, their literature a reflection of English literature, their learning a reflection of German learning."

But, it will be said, it is useless to lay down general laws about it; if there is no inspiration to be had from this country, our artists are forced to go abroad to seek it. It will be claimed that the fact that no art has, at least of late, been produced by Americans who have identified them- selves with their national life, clearly indicates the lack of productive capacity of the country. But the tendency to expatriation has created in America an unsympathetic atmosphere, which is by itself sufficient to account for the lack of success of those artists who have withstood the tendency. When the country has sent its best talent to Europe, when even the public in America insists upon buying only European pictures, it is not surprising that the artists that remain, having neither the incentive that comes from a large body of colleagues, nor that which comes from a sympathetic community, should "gasp for vital air" — nor that the work that results from such a condition should be mediocre. We cannot, there- fore, conclude from results that America does not offer material that is worthy of artistic treatment, until there has been a more earnest and sus- tained effort to use the material it does offer.

There are, however, many who, without arguing from results, will maintain that the civilisation of America is not susceptible of artistic treat- ment. They will probably sum up their objections by the word, "commer- cial." It is a commercial age, they say; in America one is reminded of nothing farther back than the last century, and everything produced in the last century is commercial and unpicturesque ; an artist's only salvation, then, lies in lands that still retain something of the romance of the past. But is it so obvious that a commercial age must be inartistic? It seems to be often taken for granted, and yet the experience of former times does not warrant the assumption. In Venice, Florence, Holland and Eng- land, as well as in Borne and Greece, periods of great commercial activity have been periods of great artistic achievement. The excitement that was felt about commerce during the Renaissance probably, indeed, made men more alive to beauty and interests of all sorts. It is not when men are

48 THE LANTEEN.

uninterested in the ordinary events of life and have time to discuss art that they paint great pictures and write great books. "When people jabber so much about art as they do here/' says Lowell, "and have all their terras so cut and dried, they are only playing cards on art's coffin — just as Aristotle's Poetics was the funeral oration of Greek poetry."

America is indeed full of a commercial spirit, but this should be no hindrance to our artistic life. Moreover, though our civilisation is, of course, entirely without the mellow European charm, it has a compensating freshness and vigour that it would be hard to find in Europe. Another element that gives American life a peculiar interest is the combination of many nationalities. Here is, indeed, a wide field for painter or novelist. Types of all sorts are here, and not the least interesting are those in which different races are joined, — the amalgamating process, too, has its interest. The original American stock came, of course, from many sources; and we have, besides, the immigrant and negro populations. There is a romantic charm about the immigrant and the American negro which is quite distinct from any qualities that may belong to the African negro or to the immi- grant before he has come to America, and which should appeal to artist? of all kinds. The very fact, too, that America is, as compared with Europe, an untried field must, one would suppose, be an incentive. The uncertainty of the adventure must lend it spice — the great possibilities and what many would call the great risks.

But I shall not try to establish by detailed proof the artistic quality of American life. All I have hoped to do is to point out a few of the directions in which the real romance at the heart of our civilisation will, I think, be found to lie, and to show how essential a quality of really great art is that sympathy with one's environment which comes only when art is national. Those whom my plea has failed to convince — and I fear they will be many — will, I think, if they consider the matter for themselves, reach the same conclusion to which I have come, by way, perhaps, of better arguments. They will agree that the tendency among our artists to ex- patriation stands in the way of our producing great art, and will do what they can to create a sentiment favourable to the growth of an American art that is thoroughly national.

Margaret Franklin, 1908.

WITH ETTES OF FAITH. 49

WITH EYES OF FAITH.

JOHN EITTER'S forceful, unmelodious voice ceased in a sudden dramatic climax. The audience recoiled a moment gasping, as if from a blow, then broke its hour of tense silence with loud, lasting applause. Men stood stamping and beating the chairs in front of them on the groud, but scarcely anyone moved from his place till John Eitter, coming down from the platform, spoke to a few roughly dressed men in the front row. In a moment he was surrounded by a mass of workmgmen, roughly jostling each other and overturning or standing upon chairs in their eagerness to get a closer view of the speaker. Mean- while the gentlemen in the audience either went directly out or gathered in low-voiced conversation near the door. Only Alan Manners, heedless of the motion around him, sat quite still, his elbows on his knees, as he had been sitting throughout the whole lecture. At last a woman's voice spoke beside him.

"Come back to reality, Alan. Everyone is going."

He sprang quickly to his feet and helped his sister into her cloak.

"I have been in reality," he said with a little embarrassed laugh, "and you have called me back to the world of shams."

"Thank you for the implied compliment," she rejoined lightly, but he refused to follow her mood.

"You know I meant nothing of the kind," he protested, holding her eyes with bis wide, brilliant gaze, "and, thank God, I never could."

She laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. "You must not let yourself get so worked up at these meetings, Alan."

"I am not worked up," he replied quickly, "but it struck me more than ever this evening, when I saw you here alone among all these men, how much stronger your devotion must be than any other's, how much deeper your feeling, how much greater your sacrifice."

"I do not see it in that way."

"No, of course not, that is the beauty of it. You see it so perfectly in

50 THE LANTEBN.

the right way, and another woman would have seen it so perfectly in the wrong. He was wonderful to-night, was he not?"

"Yes. How enthusiastic the men are !"

They turned towards the noisy, shuffling group near the platform, which, dispersing at last, permitted John Eitter to come towards them from its midst, a tall, loosely-built man with thick, dark hair and features that looked as if they had been blocked out of stone by a sculptor and never fin- ished. He gave them a quick, smiling, intimate glance as he passed; then turning, spoke to Alan:

"Cynthia looks fagged, and this room is like a baking oven," he said. "Go on ahead, and I'll follow you later."

"We will wait for you in the carriage," said Alan, as he led his sister to a side door. A few minutes later Eitter joined them and the long drive to Cedarhurst was made in comparative silence. Eitter made no effort to talk, and Cynthia restrained her brother's energy with a plea of fatigue. But when they drew up before the broad steps of the lovely old house, her vitality seemed to return. Taking a lighted candle from a table in the broad entrance hall, she led the way gaily through the great dim drawing-rooms, where the polished wood and rich damasks of the furniture glimmered as she passed, to the panelled dining-room beyond. Here she moved softly about, touching into flame the tall candles on the chimney-piece and in the bronze brackets fastened to the wall. As she threw off her cloak and came to dispense hospitality from the daintily spread supper table she seemed entirely in keeping with the old-fashioned beauty of the room. The quaint stiffness of her rich little gown set off with odd emphasis the delicate youth of her face beneath its crown of pale hair, braided and massed on the top of her well-shaped head in dignified intricacy. Alan, as he watched the swift, quiet motion of her white hands among the glass and china, tried in vain to remember a time when his tiny sister had been less stately, less like a princess of mediaeval fable than now. That very evening he had remonstrated with her on the inappro- priateness of her gown to the occasion. "But Alan," she had answered in mild astonishment, "it is high-neck." And when he had dared to persist, she had — though still unable to comprehend his objection — reminded him that one's clothes did not matter so long as one's heart was in the cause. This old argument, so oddly inverted in her hands, had silenced Alan. His

WITH EYES OP FAITH. 51

superficial objection appeared to him suddenly foolish and petty in the light of their deeper feelings. She was indeed, as she had said, heart and soul in the cause of the people, for was she not going to marry their leader ? For a while, now, in silent enjoyment he contemplated this achievement of a long cherished ideal. How much, he wondered, had his influence availed in bringing it about? He glanced suddenly, almost apprehensively, across the table, where John Eitter was bending over towards the straight little figure of his sister. Alan had missed the thread of their low conversation, but it came to him even from the tone of their voices that the respon- sibility he might possibly have incurred in the past was erased by his present isolation in the face of their self-sufficiency. Then almost imme- diately he checked this incipient bitterness and denied its right to exist- ence. The tie that had brought them together bound them also firmly to him. They were — he recognized it with a rebirth of gladness — indis- solubly a trio, formed and held together by a common purpose, a single ideal. And then the memory of Bitter's rare speech that evening returned to him and drowned every thought in the flood of his hero worship.

"Will you come into the library and smoke?" he asked his guest as they rose from the table. There is much I want to ask you."

"Promise me, John," said Cynthia, as she bade them good night, "that you will not let Alan stay talking too late. It is bad for him — for you both."

They promised obediently, while John lighted her bedroom candle and Alan held the door open for her to pass out. Cynthia had the faculty of throwing an atmosphere of ceremony over her smallest actions. Then the two men went out by another door, down a little hallway and into the large mahogany-lined library that took up the lower floor of the wing. Alan stirred into flame the glowing logs in the wide fire-place and drew a great damask chair near it for his friend. But Bitter was in no hurry to sit down. He lit a cigar and moved slowly about the room, looking at various books, handling some of the curious bibelots that stood on the shelves, and now and then stopping to admire the soft rich coloring and stately proportions of the room, that loomed dimly vast in the firelight. At last he returned to the chimney-piece and took the proffered chair. He leaned far back and smoked in slow comfort, but Alan, bending forward

52 THE LANTEBN.

on the low stool where he sat, put his hands on the arm of the other's chair.

"I want to ask yon," he began, "exactly how this fund you spoke of to-night is to be managed."

"My dear Alan, aren't you going to let me off the platform for a while, even here?" said Bitter.

The eagerness on Manners' face softened into a boyish tenderness.

"I am horribly rude," he apologised, "I did not realise how worn out you must be. After a speech like yours any one has a right to be ex- hausted."

Bitter smiled his appreciation. "That's a good fellow, he said. "Let's just sit here for a while and enjoy the fire and these cigars — they are very good — and the quiet of this wonderful room. I wonder whether you, who have grown up in this house, realise what a treasure you possess."

"Yes, I think we do — just because of that. I promise you I shall not see it go without many pangs."

"See it go?" demurred Bitter.

"Oh, I shall be properly steeled when the time comes," rejoined Alan, half lightly. "But I am deferring it so that I, too, may seem to have a little irrevocable ceremony of my own. The fancy pleases me."

"I don't see — when is this to be?" demanded Bitter.

"When the longed-for comes to pass," Alan mused. "That is, of course, when you marry Cynthia."

"And what has that to do with it? Isn't it your house?"

"Certainly it is, but did you think I would let Cynthia be alone in the good work?" He was very serious now, bending forward towards the fire, his eyes on the ground. "Surely, John," he said softly, "you did not rank my devotion so much lower than hers."

Bitter sat up in his chair and dropped his cigar into the tray beside him. "Frankly, Alan," he said, half angrily, "I don't understand you."

The young man looked at him a moment in surprise. Then he seemed to comprehend.

"Ah, I thought you knew," he said. "But it is simply this. The money went to Cynthia and the house and land is all I have. They tell me, however, that it will bring a high price in the market. The little of

WITH EYES Or FAITH. 53

it that I shall need will make scant difference in the final result, and when it is joined to Cynthia's — then our great fund will no longer be a thing of dreams, will it, John? What shall we not do with a power behind us to support our plans till we have proved to the world that they are able to walk alone ? Before the mere thought, the loss of one's silly luxuries seems far too small a sacrifice, does it not? One might do so much more." He had risen and was standing before the fire, his outstretched arms resting lightly on the chimney-piece. "Did I tell you I had been down to the factory and seen Palmer — " he continued, but Eitter interrupted him.

"Wait a minute, Alan," he said. "Do you expect Cynthia to get along without the 'silly luxuries' of life, as you call them?"

Alan faced him quickly.

"Do you doubt her ?" he asked. Then, as Eitter hesitated, he went od in sudden eagerness. "Ah, of course, you have always seen her as the fine lady — you cannot imagine her otherwise, and, to be sure, Cynthia will never lose that atmosphere. It is part of her nature, but for that very reason it is something quite independent of externals. I have seen that very clearly since your engagement, haven't you?"

"No," replied Eitter shortly, "I haven't."

Manners passed his hand quickly across his forehead as if in pain, and he spoke very quickly.

"But you must have. How else cordd she have expected it to be possible. Surely, she has not failed to understand — "

"She has not failed because there has been nothing to understand. Did you expect I would ask such a sacrifice of my wife? Or were you going to permit a woman like your sister not only to marry a poor man, but to pauperize herself in so doing. I am very blunt, but it is you who have misunderstood."

Alan had paled slightly and drawn away from his companion, but his dark eyes still held the other's glance.

"Perhaps I have misunderstood you," he said slowly after a pause, "but not my sister. I am sure Cynthia shares my mistake."

"Ah, my ears are not burning in vain. What are you saying about me?" and Cynthia entered the room, a lighted candle in her hand. "I sat up reading, waiting to hear you on the stairs, but you did not come as you had promised, and then I remembered that Alan had not fastened

54 THE LANTEEN.

the inner bolts when we came back." She had put her candle down, and as she drew near the men at the fire she became aware of the strangeness of their silence.

"What is the matter ?" she asked simply.

"Nothing. Alan is a little mad to-night," said Bitter.

"Ah, you have excited him again with your dreadful plans," she reproached, and, going swiftly to her brother, she attempted to place her cool hands on his forehead. But he caught her wrists tightly and held them.

" 'Dreadful plans,' " he repeated. "Do you really think them dread- ful, Cynthia ?"

"Of course not. Only when they excite you. Foolish boy, let me go. I didn't mean to insult you."

"I am not insulted. We were just talking of these plans — " his voice was tensely quiet — "and of what would become of them after your mar- riage. Are they not to go on?"

"What do you mean, Alan?" she wondered. "Of course they are to go on. Why, we are going to make the whole countryside into a model county, are we not, John? — and there are to be the most beautiful play- grounds for the mill children on our land, and in the house — "

"Alan expects there is to be no house and no land," said John tersely.

"And no Lady Bountiful." Manners dropped his sister's hands and turned away. For a moment no one spoke. In gradual comprehension Cynthia moved slowly back towards John Bitter.

"Alan has the beautiful dreams of a child," she said at last, "but equally impractical. Don't you see, dear boy, that we can do much more good without going to extremes?"

"ISTo," he answered, "not if you use as tools the principles you are fighting against."

John Bitter came, manlike, to particulars. "To the fund we shall give what will encourage others to give also, not what will frighten them away."

"And the rest is ours, of course, only in trust, Alan," said Cynthia. "But how could we accomplish anything, if we were to cripple ourselves utterly in the outset?"

Alan turned again to where they stood close together confronting him.

WITH EYES OF FAITH. 55

It seemed to him, suddenly, as if they were hundreds of yards away. He wanted to cry out to them that they were begging the question, that they were cheating themselves with a superficial aspect of the thing. But in a second the impulse died. The pain of loneliness came into his eyes, joining the misery of disillusionment which was already there.

"Perhaps you are right," he said quite simply. "You will probably accomplish much more in your way than I could in mine. And that after all is the tragedy of it," he added.

Theresa Eelburn, 1908.

56 THE LANTEBN.

THE SEA-FARER.

Guide my ship, 0 Aphrodite! Goddess, hear my prayer ! Winds and waves and rains are mighty, Hold me in thy care !

To the distant pearled West, Where my heart leads now, Goddess of the coral crest, Steer my weathered prow !

Ah, shores of Greece that fade from sight,

Three await me there,

Who will keep thy altars bright,

If my course be fair.

Indian incense shall be thine, Found upon my quest, Blue and sweet before thy shrine, Aphrodite blest !

Louise Foley, 1908,

ACADEMIC ROMANTICISM. 57

ACADEMIC ROMANTICISM.

TO react against one false point of view is, often, to fall under the influence of another that is equally false, and, in the revolt of suc- cessive generations, each against the old ideals, the truth is in danger of eclipse from the mere passion for change. For women, whose lack of balance is a proverbial reproach, this casting aside of old idols, — necessary and right as it often is, — should be preceded by a serious and dispassionate consideration of purposes and of results.

Two generations ago women lost the larger vision of life through an overstrained sentimentality. They were taught to see life in pink and blue, to love ostentatiously the delicate and unessential things. Between Laetitia Landon and us there is a generation of women who fought for a real intellectual life, and more and more, in each successive year, we are coming into possession of the rewards of their struggle. For us, however, it is necessary to beware lest we retain the fighter's attitude when it is no longer necessary.

The first women who were educated were forced into the almost mechancial getting of facts. As an assigned task, they had to prove their right to education, to endeavor to equal men on their own ground. For us these claims are, for practical use, axiomatic. The privileges of education have been gained. It remains for us to decide what to do with them.

The extreme of the pendulum's swing away from sentimentality is represented by the attitude of many women students. Women come to college because it is customary to come or because the college graduate has definite advantages over other women in the earning of money. These women, then, go through their four years in a spirit of give and take. With a canny commercialism, they pay certain bills and pass certain examinations and obey certain rules, and in return they expect a business- like A.B. with rights, privileges and immunities. The fallacy of this con- duct lies in the notion that there is a more intellectual process involved in trading in Greek than in groceries.

The capable and useful personalities of the followers of this strenu-

58 THE IANTEEN.

ous creed tend to blind our eyes to their failure to get the most valuable things either in college or in life.

Goethe has said, "Woe unto that culture which only leads a man towards an end without making him happy by the way." The happi- ness of students who cultivate a commercial attitude towards their work is not to be denied. To accomplish a given task, finally and securely, with no raw edges, to fill one's day with definite duties, is to find happiness of a certain quality. But this happiness can be gotten as well in any place as in college. Its sources are quite unacademic. The happiness of the student is happiness in the things of the mind, happiness in relating the scraps of information which we can acquire to the great idea of truth, "the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge."

The academic life can give to us no exemption from the ordinary functions of humanity, and the student in no less degree than the worker must live and suffer. To look at life in a larger and braver light than others should be distinctive of the student. Not knowledge, nor a degree, nor habits of industry, can make the sordidness of life bearable, can make dingy days

"As glorious as a fiery martyrdom;"

but a recognition of

"The light that never was on sea or land, The consecration and the poet's dream."

For, in its way, the spirit of Eomanticism is a spirit of mysticism, getting at truth more through the imagination than through the intellect — urging on, as it were, the work of the spade by revelations of the glory of the hidden treasure. If the years of a student's life are to be a help for the "meaner years" to come, they will work rather through the inspiration of the remembered vision than of the remembered digging.

Larger and more widely essential than the intelectual life of any individual is the intellectual life of collective humanity. For the rest of the world, for the workers who give their energies to a lower but no less essential side of life, the students make the intellectual standards. If things of the mind are not respected and loved in colleges, their hold on the life of the multitude is doubtful and insecure. In a sense, the intel-

ACADEMIC ROMANTICISM. 59

lectual life of students is the salt of the earth, and it is for us to decide whether a portion of it shall lose its savour or not. In a community where business principles regulate the reading and the thought, a genuine culture of the things of the mind cannot exist. It is, in the mind as well as in the world, the letter which tells.

It has been asked, with a disagreeable suggestiveness, why intellec- tual and spiritual movements in America most often originate in an un- academic atmosphere. That the charge is deserved must be acknowledged, but that its insinuated cause is the true one may be doubted. The modern students who are busied in getting grades and degrees and numerals have but short time for the reading and thinking out of which movements arise. Our fault towards the world lies not in the superfluity of our intellectual life, but in its barrenness. Out of nothing comes nothing, and the life of the spirit does not grow out of memorised notebooks.

To seek for practical rules to help us to get this wider vision of our life in college, to develop our intellectual life so that "Veritatem Dilexi" may not be absurd is the practical outcome of any recognition of the relation of the romantic and of the academic ideals.

In the first place, although it is an issue by the way, we should feel a spirit of loyalty towards the actual college. It is here in especial that our flight from the bogs of sentimentality leads us into a hideous checkerboard of common sense. We have heard of "beloved Alma Mater" and "loyal classmates" until, by a nervous reaction we take malicious de- light in the weak places of the faculty and in the faidts of other students. The most nearly ideal attitude is perhaps to recognize the facts, but to feel that the college itself, the spirit of the place, is a big enough thing to overshadow the faults of individual professors or of students. What we should do is not to shut our eyes in uncritical admiration, but to recognize a vast ideal in a more or less faulty reality.

Moreover, we should try to see in our work, not so many chances for failure or high credit, but, rather, opportunities for systematic effort to attain to more knowledge. There is no question, of course, whether we should work or not, but upon work it is well for us to impose the motives of a large imaginative grasp of its purpose.

Most of all, perhaps, do we need to read and to think seriously. To comprehend the larger issues of life is impossible to anyone whose outlook

60 THE LANTERN.

is limited to the interests of an individual's life — whose reading and think- ing are not serious and wide. To make an enforced effort after intellec- tuality is to open to the mind the stimulation of the thoughts and ideals of the widest minds in the world, to make one able to see a single life in its relations. To see knowledge as a part of life and life as a part of an infinite relation of things is the best result of wide reading, and, in its way, the essence of the romantic elements in the academic ideal, of a power which can

"Uphold us, cherish and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal silence."

Mary Isabelle 0' Sullivan, 1907.

VELIN DORE. 61

VELIN DORE.

Translated from Heredia.

Dead binder of old books, the ruddy gold Upon their backs and edges chiseled, Despite the tools your skilful fingers led, Has lost the brilliance that it had of old.

The twisted figures that the twine doth hold Are from the leather almost vanished; My eyes can hardly follow where the thread Of ivy winds about with careful fold.

And yet this supple ivory I seem

To see through was by loving hands caressed,

By Marguerite and Diane and Marie ;

And this pale gilded vellum brings to me,

I know not through what magic charm expressed,

Their perfumed breath, the shadow of their dream.

Margaret Franklin.

62 THE IANTEBN.

EMPTY WELLS.

WHEN" the funeral was over, Veronica Churchill found herself standing in the drawing-room with Cecil Marcham. She had a sudden desire, when she saw him there beside her, to send him away, but immediately after she realized that he furnished a sort of refuge where she might rest and gather her forces before begin- ning the weary task of constructing her future out of the ruin of the past. That this work must immediately be undertaken she didn't for an instant question; it presented itself to her, moreover, as a means of escape from that sea of grief which she now felt surging over her. The past, she told herself, was her only heritage of worth, and it, she resolved in her bleak despair, should be so stripped of every disfigurement, should so have every beauty brought into its proper high light and every rough spot so softened by shadow, that it should be without question the perfect heritage which she felt her brother had left her. She looked back upon her existence up to this time and saw it as a tapestry that in the very moment of weaving had suddenly been ravelled before her eyes. Now she stood looking at the mass of threads before she should set to weaving them again. That she might do otherwise did not for a moment occur to her. As soon as she could, she must firmly weave those ravelled threads into an enduring fabric whose woof time could not destroy, although it should deepen and enrich the colours.

A noisy fluttering in the black haw tree outside the open window roused Veronica from her reflections. She became aware that she had been standing beside Marcham without speaking for some minutes.

"Will you wait for me here," she asked, "while I change my dress?" She hesitated a moment and then, as if she could not resist her desire to speak, "Basil never liked black," she said.

Marcham's eyes followed sadly the small figure in its long black drape- ries. The hopelessness of his own case was lost in his pity for the distress of hers. He turned to the window and stared into the still, scented garden, so fine and exquisite with all its delicate pale flowers tended by Veronica's

EMPTY WELLS. 63

hands. He mused, as he stood there, upon the likness between Veronica and her garden, and wondered if all quiet lovely things would always remind him of her.

Upstairs in her silent room, Veronica took off the black draperies and put on a gray dress. As she looked at the gloomy heap of mourning laid on the couch, she retraced the last two hours, the long drive through the village to the little old cemetery among its tiny pointed firs and crumbling ivied walls; she could remember the formal speeches of the people from the houses about, how they had chilled her with their cold, set phrases; the artists who had come down for the funeral pleased her because they so openly and sincerely mourned Basil Churchill, the artist, and were not betrayed, out of commiseration for her, into expressing a sorrow they did not actually feel. As she looked into the mirror, she was glad that she showed no signs of her grief, save an added stillness of expression and deeper shadows about her eyes. She smiled a little as she saw her brace- lets on the table, and she clasped them on, remembering how Basil had always liked to see the dark bands on her slim wrists and the warm polish of the onyx through the lace of her sleeves.

Downstairs she found Marcham waiting in the drawing-room, now filled with yellow sunset light. She had a sense of timidity as she ap- proached him, a fear that what she now intended to do might seem to him too fanciful for reason, tinged even by a morbid grief; that he would not understand this straightening process, this putting of things in their proper places, of discovering exact proportions and relations. It might, she reflected, be sounding for depths of sympathy he did not pos- sess to ask him to help her put this strange inheritance in order, and that it was a service of love which must either go unrequited or be paid in full she clearly recognised. Marcham's kind eyes as they met hers, how- ever, and the faint look of pleasure he gave her changed appearance, re- assured her, and with a grateful confidence that her pilgrimage through the lonely house and garden was not to be solitary, she put her plan to him.

"Cecil," she said, "I am going now to walk through the garden and the rooms and get my last clear impression of them, for you know I'm going up to Mrs. Penfield's in the morning. I want to get it all in my mind as it was when each thing happened; I don't want to forget any- thing, but to treasure up every small bit and put it again into a perfect

64

THE LANTEBN.

whole. Ah! you must see — you know how we lived; you know now that there can't be any future for me except the one I make out of the shat- tered bits of the beautiful past."

"An architect with so loving a hand can construct a beautiful future/' said Marcham, as he followed her into the garden. They walked down the brick path together, between the borders of sweet, colourless flowers, mignonette and lavender and alyssum.

"It was like this the day we came," said Veronica. "There was the same yellow sunset, the same odours were in the air. It was the first time Basil had been out after — after — and as we wheeled him up the path he said- — " Veronica hesitated.

"Of course he said," began Marcham, but Veronica went on, smiling to think how she had scolded Basil:

"Of course, he said 'My God ! Veronica, smell the alyssum !' I always pulled him a handful of it after rain." She paused, seeming to muse to herself, and then, as if with some effort, she put her musing into words.

"He said often when I gave it to him, TTou would be exactly like it if you cried sometimes, but, thank God, you never do.' "

So Basil Churchil, too, had seen in his sister the likeness to these frail, beautifiu flowers, Marcham started to find himself pondering over this trifling coincidence. He had, in his own selfish mood, accused Basil of not appreciating his sister, he had forgotten the look with which he had been wont to follow her, the anguish it was to him to be such a bur- den to her, the almost childish, affectionate way the two had teased each other, the contentment they seemed to feel in their restricted existence.

"If Basil had been left with any other woman — " Marcham ventured.

"Oh! no one could have been different; it was too terrible for any- thing else. Do you remember the time when we thought that he could not even use his hands?" She winced at the cruelty of her own bare words, but she was brave and she would remember it all as it had really been. Marcham winced, too, for he was wondering what Veronica's life would have been had Basil Churchill not been able to forget himself when he painted.

They went on along the even paths. Each corner of the prim, fra- grant garden had its memory, which Veronica reviewed with a loving and passionate exactness, sanctifying the more placid ones with an overflow

EMPTY WELLS. 65

of affectionate recollection, making tender excuses for the stormy ones. Marcham talked, too, adding here and there to her reminiscences from his own scanty store, helping easily enough, it seemed, to put the odd inheritance in proper order. The man whose sympathy in her undertaking Veronica had questioned was enriching the result of her fond labour. The poplar shadows were long and dark on the grass and the yellow sunset had faded to dull purple rifts when they entered the cottage again.

"Come and light the candles in the drawing-room," said Veronica. "Basil was exceedingly cross when I asked him what I should do with the drawing-room, and told me to arrange it to suit myself, but I tormented him until he painted the panels for me." She ran her small, smooth hand over one of the delicate, decorated panels which separated the wall into cool gray spaces. On the chimney-piece and tables yellow roses were falling in small showers of petals from gray crockery bowls. The slim, white furniture, with its covering of soft gray satin, looked rather ghostly in the uncertain light. Marcham thought to himself that he liked the room more than any other in the cottage. It, again, was like Veronica, so still and pale, a little faded, but more charming in its dimmed love- liness than many fresher things.

"We hardly ever used the room. When we had visitors from the houses about, I made Basil come in here by telling him that if he didn't I would take the visitors to the studio. But there never were many visit- ors. Basil didn't encourage those who were brave enough to come once, and I didn't care. When Letty Penfleld used to be staying with us, she would come in here to sing. I often wondered why Basil would come to listen to her, for he hated music; but he would rather have talked to Letty than to any one else."

"Ah! he was brave," said Marcham. At Letty Penfield's name a flicker appeared in Marcham's grave eyes, and the look he held turned upon Veronica became a trifle searching. He seemed to seek for something, the existence of which he suspected, but could only blindly grope after.

"You have known Mrs. Penfield a very long time, haven't you?" he asked. "I am glad that you are going up to her to-morrow."

"Even longer than I have known you, Cecil." Veronica smiled faintly at him. "In fact, I think I've always known Letty. Before — before we came down here she used to stay with us. Basil was fond of her then,

66 THE LA.NTEBN.

even though he disliked young women, and he liked to paint her. She was very beautiful when she was younger, you know. She was the only person except myself who could go to the studio as she pleased. But how they used to argue!"

"It is tragic that such beauty should go as hers has," said Marcham.

"Ah! it was a tragic ruin in her case," replied Veronica," no mere fading and wearing away. The first time we saw her after her marriage was the first time she came down here. She hadn't been with us for four years. Her beauty was gone then, and Basil never painted her again, although she stayed with him in the studio when I couldn't be there."

A silence fell between them. Finally Veronica broke it.

"I am going up to the studio," she said, "and I think I'll go alone. It was good of you to stay down; I don't know what I should have done if I had had to face it suddenly alone."

Marcham longed to make her let him face it with her; he felt that he could make her see her situation in his saner light if only she would let him try. But as he looked at the still misery of her face, now grown very white, his desire changed to pain and his confidence faded again into hopelessness.

"Good-bye," he said, "remember that there is one — " Veronica didn't let him go further.

"Ah!" she pleaded, "you see, you must see, that I shall never do any- thing more, need anything more, — it is all finished. I shall spend my life cherishing the devotion, even though the shrine is destroyed. I think it would have been so for him, it cannot be different for me."

"You might, you know, have need of some one sometime, and then — "

"No," said Veronica, quietly, "when you say 'need' you mean trouble of some sort. Only one other trouble is possible to me now, and if it should come, then I would, indeed, be alone forever. But it will not be long until I see you again, and in the meantime do not think of me as quite unhappy. Good-bye."

When the sound of Marcham's footsteps had died away, Veronica found her way up the dark' staircase to the studio. She crossed the big bare room to her chair near her brother's and sank into it. In the silence and gloom, she tried to think of all that had happened here in the years she had been so rarely contented. But her memories seemed to slip away

EMPTY WELLS. 67

from her, and although she groped after them, they escaped her; her grief surged over her, drowning all else, and she could only sit there, alone and silent, while the night passed.

The next day, in the gray, rainy dawn, she left the cottage and went up to London to Mrs. Penfield's. Her affairs kept her so late at the lawyer's that the dreary afternoon was wearing into dusk when she arrived at the house, and she longed for the comfort of Lefty's friendly presence and kind, beautiful eyes. She wondered if she might not even weep when she was alone with this woman, who had been her friend for so many years and who, she felt sure, was the only one who understood why she had found so much joyousness in an existence that the world probably had called dull. The servant took her upstairs to Mrs. Penneld's room. As Veronica entered she saw Letty sitting before the fire, her long, pale hands clasped in her lap, the golden, gray-streaked hair about her pallid face touched brightly by the firelight. At the sound of Veronica's step Mrs. Penfield rose and came to meet her. Veronica saw the traces of tears about her friend's large, tired eyes and she laid her fingers softly on them. Mrs. Penfield took Veronica's hands and kissed them lightly.

"Ah! Pm so glad you have come," she said. "It will be very quiet; I am alone again."

The two women sat together by the fire. Letty now and then put a question to Veronica, but apparently she was unable to rouse herself from a sort of sorrowful, almost tragic, revery, into which she had fallen. Oc- casionally, in little outbursts of tenderness, she seemed to attempt to make atonement for her neglect. Veronica felt a cold, strange loneliness settling over her; her disappointment at Lefty's attitude gave place to a feeling of apprehension; she seemed to wait with her friend for some dis- aster. Her extremity, she told herself, was now indeed pitiable, and she fain would have had recourse to the deserted cottage.

In the midst of her sad reflections Veronica heard Mrs. Penfield sud- denly speak her name. She looked up. Lefty's hands were locked together in her lap, a flush had appeared high up on each cheek.

'Veronica," she asked, "did Basil send me anything?"

"I found a canvas packed and addressed to you in the studio, Letty. If you will send your maid to unpack my large box you may have it now."

68 THE LANTERN.

Again they sat in silence until Mrs. Penfield's maid brought her the canvas. Letty took the scissors from her embroidery basket and cut the cords. Veronica calmly watched her trembling haste. A great curiosity, that precluded all other thought, seized her as to what the picture might be. She leaned forward as Letty held up the canvas. Veronica gazed won- deringly at the picture. It was a portrait of Letty, of her ruined, tragic beauty; it was painted with so marvelous an understanding that things which Veronica had only dimly guessed at were now clearly revealed to her. The beauty and the skill of the picture held her enthralled.

Suddenly, as she gazed, she saw her universe falling into ruin. The past lay about her in crumbled fragments that could never be put together again. The work that she so lovingly had just taken up must now be put down again. Through all the years to come, she would have to sit alone among the ruins, guarding them, building up a wall around them which should prevent the beholder from seeing what was behind it. Letty's voice came to her as from a distance.

"Do you like it, Veronica',''

Veronica gathered her forces herself to deal the final blow at her world.

"It is the best thing that Basil ever did," she said. "None but a lover could have painted it."

Louise Foley, 1908.

GUANAJUATO. 69

GUANAJUATO.

MINING TOWNS like mediaeval fortresses are driven into narrow corners. Yet for all their picturesqueness of site, until I came to Guanajuato, I had never seen a mining town beautiful. There had been lacking the mellow tone of old walls, the slenderness of church towers to vary and enrich the outlines; order and dignity were by situation always lacking. Therefore, mining towns all huddle in their gulches. Nothing can harmonize Cripple Creek; no bejeweled Colorado air, no lengths of Sangre de Cristo peaks in splendid panorama, hundreds of miles of them jagging a clearer, bluer sky. Guanajuato alone is a mining town grown old and beautiful. It is a city beautiful with a sort of faded mediseval splendour.

For the life Guanajuato has been mediseval and splendid beyond the life of mining towns. It has been no Eoaring Camp. In the three hundred and fifty years in which it has produced over one thousand millions of silver dollars, the full flood of life and death of new Spain, of the Mexican Eepublie, has swept across it; bitterness of Indian wars, the chivalry and rapacity of great cavaliers, the heroism and the butchery of the bitter beginnings and the bitter endings of Mexican independence and Mexican revolutions. The priest Hidalgo, the "Liberator," rang his grito of Mexican independence in his parish church of Dolores in the state of Guanajuato. He came at once to storm the Spanish garrison at the great mines, — "not as enemies but as obstacles," — as he wrote them in advance. While the men of Guanajuato sat to watch the issue around the amphitheatre of hills, the Spaniards stood a siege to defend the Crown in the great state granary — the Alhondiga de Granaditas — which is still a massive Spanish landmark, set high in the town. They fought, wrote the Intendente to his old friend Hidalgo, because they were "officers and honourable." They were butchered and in Guanajuato the Indians of Hidalgo's army took their first revenge. Revenge followed revenge, for in a year the heads of Hidalgo and his generals hung on hooks at the four corners of the Alhondiga. Now they lie under the Altar of the Kings in the great

70 THE LANTEBN.

cathedral of Mexico. One sees to-day far across the city of Guanajuato dark tablets at the corners of the white-walled Alhondiga, placed to the glory of Hidalgo, Allende, Aldama and Jimenez. Guanajuato lies to-day in "careless quiet far from enemies," from revolutions and rebellions. The rurales, old bandits, have hunted down their brothers who ten years ago ranged about the hills to the outposts of the city. The old life of Guana- juato has become obsolete. Thus the seal is put upon its antiquity and its romance.

To-day the square white houses of Guanajuato fill up the hollows before pale desert hills, run white over the foothills, where narrow stairway streets go up and down. Green palisades of round-leaved cacti grow in hedges; coarse tawny grass and rows of gaudy potted plants grow over the roof tops under a deep blue sky and flashing sunlight. At the end of the city, already high up the hillside, great marble houses face a plaza densely grown with green and flowers. There are delicately wrought balconies and marble fagades; a brilliance of blooming vines — bright blue or purple — grown over black iron rails; a brilliance of plants deep set in arched recesses. Seen from the hill of the Catacombs, high loggias, faced with Moorish arches, here and there across the city, hold depths of darkness. The slender towers and Moorish domes of old Spanish churches mark across a rich irregularity of lines. The church walls, the garden, the orchard walls behind are dimly rosy; the great domes are tiled and glazed, delicately rainbow-like. All between, the city lies run into the hollows of the pinkish hills in white blurring patches of marble and stucco, dashed with bloom.

Down the dark and crooked city streets the stream still passes of burros laden with sacks of ore. Trains of them still wind out along the river gulches where the floods come down, generation after generation, to distress the city. The silver still flows into old coffers and the hacendado of the mines flourishes in his Guanajuato still. But the leaf of history has been turned forever. For old rebellion and revolution, slave and master, we have the full cornucopia of Porfirio Diaz; for old mining in the patios of great haciendas, trampling out the ore by droves of ponies, we have great new reduction plants and the cyanide process. About the time when the last inundation came down that process was discovered. Under the hills since then the broken haciendas have crumbled and fallen.

GUANAJUATO. ] ,' 71

Their broad walls, chapels, long sheds and irregular towers, the whole mass of a weather-beaten rosiness, were altogether enclosed by great sculp- tured gateways emblazoned in faded colourings that open as at a moat over the river bed. They now, by fading beauty, dim gorgeousness, match the old Spanish churches of Mexico.

That all this is North America seems passing strange. For sometimes we come near forgetting that the Pilgrim Fathers did not discover the New World. The sight of Guanajuato, divinely meridional, shivers such accustomed half-truths. For Guanajuato is North American by all the poignant rightfulness of three centuries of occupation. In such a pla°e the memory rises high of our Spanish beginnings; of the ardour and the hardihood, the valour and the chivalry, of old Spain; of the slowing down of that triumphal progress.

Hope Emily Allen, 1905.

72 THE IANTEBN.

SUN-DIAL MOTTO.

On me, by day, my lord the Sun doth smile And show his stately pageant of the hours;

By night he doth forsake me for awhile To empty vigil 'mid the sleeping flowers.

— I number but those hours whereon hath shone The glorious visage of my lord, the Sun.

Caroline Reeves Foulke.

A FRESHMAN'S IMPRESSION OP COLLEGE. 73

A FRESHMAN'S IMPRESSION OF COLLEGE,

DURING her long years of preparation for college — that "Land of the Heart's Desire" — every girl forms some idea of what things will be like when entrance examinations are no more than unpleas- ant memories, and she has really become part of that big, delight- ful, mysterious college world. If the sub-freshman is imaginative and inexperienced, — and she is apt to be both, — her dream of college is vague in form and rosy in hue. It is a sort of concentrated expression of all her dearest wishes for happiness, and is large and flexible enough to cover everything she most longs for.

It may be that the sub-freshman visits the college sometime during the summer before her entrance, and if so her joyous anticipation mounts higher than ever. The fear lest everything should not be as halcyon as she would have it, disappears like a cloud before the brightness of the reality. Never has her imagination pictured anything so perfect in its rich, har- monious beauty as the wide, smooth, sunlit campus in its deep, vivid greenness, and the spreading stone buildings, with their rustling garments of ivy. Eeassured and exultant, the sub-freshman escapes from her com- panions and wanders about the quiet campus with something like the joy and pride of proprietorship swelling her heart. It is all to be hers, this big, beautiful, wonderful place ; hers by right of her ardent desire for it ! She mounts with reverent foot the stairs of the academic hall, and peeps half afraid, yet full of the confidence of future success, into the empty, echoing lecture rooms; under the leadership of the janitor, she explores the dismantled dormitories, and her lively fancy sees them peopled and furnished, full of the friendly, happy life of her dreams. Never was a soldier more eager for battle, or a youthful prince to enter into his king- dom, than the sub-freshman is eager for the time when she shall take pos- session of her rightful place in the college; for somehow she feels that there is a place all ready and waiting for her to step into it. Already she sees herself highly successful in work and play, brilliant, popular, figur- ing extensively in every sort of college activity.

74 THE LANTEEN.

Of course there is a disappointment in store for the ambitious young dreamer. She must take a tumble from her dizzy heights of fancy, and the tumble comes when she finds herself an unknown, uncared-for, and in- significant member of a big class. Then she comes plunging back to reality with a hard and painful thump, which knocks the illusions out of her heart so completely that she forgets they have ever been there. She no longer treads the campus with the proud step of a proprietor. There are so many other proprietors now who seem to have a better right to it than herself that she feels heart-breaMngly lonesome, and completely out of place. The upper-classmen are kind to her, but it is not the sympathetic friendliness she half unconsciously expected. It is, rather, a large, imper- sonal, superficial sort of kindness which carries with it absolutely no sense of real individual interest. The freshman wonders, indeed, if she has any individuality, or if she lost it all when she passed her entrance examinations, and if from henceforth she is to be only a freshman, — one of a hundred others, with no right to think and feel in a different way from her hundred companions.

The rush and confusion of the first few weeks of college life leave her in a sad state of bewilderment; there are so many things she does not understand about the strange new community into which she has been sud- denly plunged. She must learn an entirely new point of view, a new scale of proportions, a new code of etiquette, a new modus vivendi. Small wonder that she should be dazed, bewildered, not herself ! Even the work is unfamiliar and confusing. She is apt to do badly at her books at first, and wonders why she was ever considered '^bright" at school. Altogether she lapses into a state of hopelessness and helplessness. Helpless is indeed the best word to describe her conditon. It is perhaps the first time in her life when she has been absolutely dependent upon herslf. There is no one to give advice or encouragement; no one, indeed, who cares whether she sinks or swims. Her first impulse is to stay submerged, so to speak; to let the busy college world, which seems to have no room for her, go its own way; to bury herself in her own affairs, and live her life as nearly as possible as she has been accustomed to live it. No one would care, and she is free to do as she pleases.

There are two reasons why she cannot carry out this plan. The first is the completeness with which college consumes all one's time and energy,

A FRESHMAN'S IMPRESSION OP COLLEGE. 75

and swallows one bodily as far as the outside world is concerned. This makes it impossible to do the things one used to do, and throws one's whole life within the limits of the campus, where the freshman has dis- covered that people care for her only so far as she makes herself interesting or useful. She sees that she will remain a stranger in a strange land unless she adapts herself to surrounding conditions, and becomes part of the community in which she has come to live; and so she begins to accept her position and try to make the most of it. The second force which draws her quickly into the life of the college is the call to action. The position as member of a class which has a definite place in the world and definite things to accomplish brings duties and responsibilities to even the most insignificant. If one does no more than attend class meetings, cast one's vote, and cheer the upper-classmen on proper occasions, these are neverthe- less duties which must not be neglected, and they rest on each one person- ally. Furthermore, there is a perpetual demand for individual effort and action. There are hundreds of things which the class must do, and this means constant activity on the part of each member of the class. The weight of the whole college world seems suddenly to rest upon the fresh- man's shoulders. She no longer feels as if there were no place for her, but rather as if there were a thousand places all clamoring for her to fill them, and that it is her duty to respond as bravely as possible. What mat- ter now if she be only one of a hundred others? There is plenty of room for a hundred more beside, and the class could not have too many devoted members, or the college too many to bring to it loyal affection, and to sing its glory. The freshman no longer rebels against her insignificance, but rejoices if she be able to do anything, however slight, for her class or her college. Not to throw herself into the stream of action and expend her energies where they are needed would be to acknowledge herself selfish, cowardly, or inefficient.

It is at this period that the freshman's first ideal of college comes back in all its exalted, romantic brightness. The possibilities are all there, the opportunities for doing the splendid thing, the material for making one's college life what one wishes it to be. The freshman has also begun to be acquainted with her companions, and to find numberless congenial spirits among those about her. And, best of all, she has gradually become accustomed to the broad and independent methods of study which are

76 THE LANTERN.

pursued at college, and has experienced the thrill of joyous power which comes when one is for the first time conscious of doing vigorous, original work. Altogether, the world has never before seemed to her more worth while, more full of hope and promise. Once again she sees her future radiant with friendship and success.

This elated state of mind lasts till well on toward the end of the year. The coming of spring on the campus, indeed, the return of the warm, lin- gering, golden days when the very air is brimming over with a subtle sense of great things to come, the stir of excitement which attends the college year drawing to its close, — all this quickens the freshman's imagination, and gives to the most trivial occurrences a dignity and a glory. It is, how- ever, entirely an affair of her imagination, and not of her sound judgment, for by this time the freshman has regained, in large part, her normal sense of equilibrium and proportion, which was so sadly disturbed at the begin- ning of her college career. She no longer sees things from the distorted point of view of a freshman, but has begun, at least, to appreciate in a sensi- ble and rational way the true importance or unimportance of her life at college, of her relations with her companions, and of the work she is doing. She has come to realise that out of perhaps twenty delightful but hastily- formed intimacies only two or three are real friendships; she has learned that she is a favored mortal if she can be highly successful in even so much as one branch of college activity; she has even come to see that college is not the most important fact of her existence, but is only of value in so far as it brings to her a love of learning for its own sake, a deeper insight, a clearer judgment, and a broader sympathy for other people. And so at last she begins to concentrate her scattered and exuber- ant energies and to find herself; to make her own peculiar place, small though it be, in the college world.

Eatherine Forbes Liddell, 1910.

THE PRAIRIE. 77

THE PRAIRIE.

YOU need a long acquaintanceship to learn the charm of the Illinois prairie. If you must extol the beauties of our continent, you describe at once the massive, bulky mountains of Colorado looming before you in their baldness and commanding you to hold your breath in the presence of the creations of the Almighty, or the rumbling, rolling ocean which, while playfully splashing at your feet, draws your eyes treacherously out to its merciless immensity; likely you tell of the wooded bills of Vermont, of their whims and moods of clouds and sun- shine, light and shade, of prattling brooks, and unexpected vistas of delight; or perhaps of the full-bosomed, rolling farm country of Penn- sylvania or Iowa, of broad rivers and grazing cattle. But even have you crossed and recrossed this eastern middle west you have probably no word to say of our low-horizoned level prairie which stretches away before you in quiet monotony of good orchards, rich farms, and low woods-.

For the mountains, like prophets of old, warn you at your peril to be heedless of their message ; the sea, like some powerful monarch, gracious to you, but under whose feet you are no more than a worm if your way crosses his pleasure, fascinates your attention; the hills, like playful girls, awaken your laughter; the rolling farm country, like an old mammy, lulls you to rest. But the prairie is an acquaintance who never commands, nor hypno- tizes, nor plays, nor sings, nor bids for your notice. Be observant of her, expecting neither thrills, nor threats, nor merriment, and she will repay you by her unassuming beauties, and the modesty of her demeanor.

At this time of year she wears a dress of dull yellows, bronze golds, and copper reds. Fields of winter wheat show green in the foreground, while stacks of grain and shocks of corn in the distance are the ornaments of her prosperity. In winter most characteristically herself, she is arrayed demurely. The dead leaves clinging to the trees the entire season give the patches of wood which, no matter how slow you travel, always stretch a straight low border at the horizon. A deep tone of brown and the dried grass everywhere covers the fields with lighter shades. All in sight clothed

78 THE LANTERN.

in a warm monochrome suggests not death but sleep, over whose security the silent corn stands sentinel. And sometimes in late winter the fields change their brown dress for a garment of dazzling white adorned with ice- laden trees, seeming aigrettes when near and great masses of ostrich plumes in the distance. During the long cold spring the trees slowly come to leaf, the upturned earth takes a soft green, the orchards put on a dainty mantle of pink and white. Delicate and graceful, in long tapering lines, the prairie shows her gentle beauty; and even in the summer, under the bright noonday sun, when the fields are ripe and bending happily to the breeze, when horses canter in the pastures, and the woods are rich in the fullness of their foliage and the depth of their shadows, she shows no startling line, and wears no vivid color, but with a pleasant expression will keep your thoughts at peace and your heart full of affection.

Caroline Seymour Daniels, 1901.

IN MEMORIAM. 79

%n fflL&nx&Ki&tti*.

Died, in Bryn Mawr, January twenty-third, David Irons, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy in Bryn Mawr College, 1900-1907.

THE LANTEBN.

COLLEGE THEMES.

"Besides, as it is fit for grown and able writers to stand of themselves, so it is fit for the beginner and learner to study others and the best ; . . . . not to imitate servilely .... but to draw forth out of the best and choicest flowers with the bee, and turn all into honey, work it into one relish and savour : make our imitation sweet." — Ben Jonson : Discoveries.

THE BURYING GROUND. Since the first Lawson brought his young family by difficult stages to the heart of the Virginia wilderness there had been a Lawson burying ground. From one small grave at the foot of a primeval cedar it had grown through years of tending and generations of neglect to a plot of perhaps thirty mounds. Anne Lawson could see from her bed during the brief futile struggle of her last illness the black tops of four fir trees against the wintry sky. She knew in just what corner of the little cemetery each grew ; they would bury her beneath the second one on the right, for that was the only place left. She wondered how they would get the coffin through the miry fields if a thaw set in. She remembered at her mother's funeral watching through blurring tears the struggle of the six bearers up the hill. Once they rested the coffin on two fence rails, once a man, slipping, jolted it to the ground, and she had cried out as with a physi- cal hurt.

Whenever she closed her eyes she saw the place distinctly : above it the trees bent in the wind like plumes of a hearse ; there were gaps in the

bleached paling fence; the crazy moss- grown headstones were tilted at every angle and the mounds they marked were half obliterated. And over it all lay the matted growth of last year's weeds.

She recalled her last visit with a horrible revulsion. In the slow nights when her drowsy nurse nodded beside the oil lamp she walked again the hill path to the burying ground. It was the late afternoon of a hot, breathless day. Her tired arms held a geranium for her mother's grave. She half groped her way in the thick shadow of the firs to the one tended grave in the corner. She knelt down to pass her tender hands in an accustomed caress- ing gesture across the mound, but she recoiled, shuddering at the first touch. The grave she had left so rounded and green and blooming, had sunk into the ground. A rim of earth outlined its former shape, but the center had col- lapsed ; here and there raw fissures gaped in the turf. For a moment the full significance of this change did not strike her. She thought of desecra- tion. Then her eyes fell upon the other graves that had in the course of years taken on likewise that sinister

FROM THE TRIFORIUM.

81

aspect, and she was filled with sud- den uncontrolled loathing for the earth where she knelt

Ever since her mother's death she had solaced the sting of loss hy tend- ing this grave. She had deliberately chosen to imagine her asleep beneath the level hillock, with limbs relaxed in the final rest and wrinkled face smiling placidly beneath its woolen shroud. Though she could not reach her, she could approach her, she was, as it were, in an adjoining room, and there was comfort in the thought of such near- ness. That evening in the lugubrious twilight she had comprehended with tor- turing completeness the horror of mor- tality. A few feet below, among bits of splintered wood and mouldering cloth lay what had been her bone and her flesh changed to that which love itself must abhor.

And nightly she fled the place in sick panic, stumbling on the familiar road and stretching trembling hands to clutch the kindly threshold where, safe within upon her tumbled bed, she might wait the tardy morning.

It was late dawn of the fifth day when she died. Her thin chest heaved in gasps — the hill road had been longer and the threshold harder to cross than before ; she turned dim eyes to the east where the sentinel trees reared their heads into the cold red sky.

"Their long roots find the deepest grave," she whispered hopelessly. Sud- denly she sat upright. A dreadful frenzy crossed her grey face. "This earth, this earth," she screamed, "ah. It Is crushing my coffin." She fell back ; for a moment her hands plucked at the heavy coverlid, then they were still.

Ethel Rennet Bitchcns, 1905.

FROM THE TRIFORIUM.

"Xou'll get a fine view," said the verger as he handed Latimer a little iron lantern. "Just bring the keys any time before tea, sir, if you please."

The door closed upon him and Lati- mer commenced the dark ascent to the triforium. He went up the worn steps, deliberately casting the light of his lantern on each, that he might see where to set his foot. Some there were that offered practically no hold. He reflected as he climbed that it was customary to sentimentalise over stones such as these, literally trodden out of shape in the passing of genera- tions ; and that he merely felt an- noyed that they were not mended here, as at Ely. He had put the two great keys into his coat pockets, and they swung as he walked, striking some- times against the narrow walls and sending dull echoes through the ma- sonry. He continued to mount, and other passages opened upon that he was following, alluring flights of steps ascending or descending into shadow, and occult recesses yawning in the unsunned darkness of the tower wall. At the third turning he needed his lamp no longer, for the low cor- ridor which he now entered was lighted by a pale, reflected sun. He passed on a few steps and stood daz- zled by a beam that poured from the gigantic west window through a nar- row gallery into the heart of the min- ster. He shaded his blinded eyes and perceived how it mellowed the gray pillars of the nave and brightened the dull colors of the ancient monuments. It went higher, streaming upon the graceful columns of the triforium and the clerestory and sending slender rays

82

THE LANTERN.

into the intricate tracery of the very roof.

As Latimer watched it he was pos- sessed by a sudden vertiginous terror of the height upon which he stood, of the edifice stretching beneath, above, beyond him, of the long procession of arches leading to the distant tran- septs, to the remote choir, to the far- • off Lady Chapel that crowned the whole. He glanced beneath, where the tombs of bishops and prebends ranged themselves in the side-aisles, and saw the recumbent figures in their solemn posture dwarfed and petty ; and he grasped tighter the single rail of the gallery — an iron bar of the thickness of a finger — that alone seemed to pre- vent his headlong fall.

He averted his eyes and they rested on the capital of a pillar close by. It was formed of one large stone — Lati- mer could not have stirred it with twice his strength — and coarsely carved in a motif that he at first failed to recognise. Then he remem- bered having seen it from the floor of the nave, a delicate bit of design, pro- jecting against the groinery of the roof. He shut his eyelids and stood unable to move, to think, only feeling the whirling plunge of descent upon him, the rush of air in his ears, the desperate clutching at emptiness.

Somewhere below there was the sound of an opening door. Then he became aware of a melody that floated past, faint yet distinct, an articulate melody of young voices, questioning, replying, spiritualised by remoteness.

"Lord, who shall dwell in Thy taber- nacle or who shall rest upon Thy holy hill?"

He trembled and opened his eyes — the invisible chant continued, deliber- ate, sweet, infinitely comforting.

"Even he that leadeth an uncorrupt life and doeth the thing which is right and speaketh the truth from his heart."

The rigid panic that had found his limbs relaxed, he felt the solid floor once more beneath his feet; he was as if supported and safeguarded on his pinnacle by this psalm of promise :

"He that hath used no deceit — " the door closed, the plaintive declamation ceased abruptly.

He drew a long breath and stood looking unafraid now into the darken- ing cathedral. Certain things before alien and indifferent he now compre- hended with a kind of humility. This church was not a mere embodiment of the aesthetic ideal of one sect among many ; it was a living thing vital with the toil and breath of those long dead. British Saxons had laid its founda- tions, their descendants plowed the glebe lands round about. The red- cheeked choir-boys piped Gregorian chants that mediaeval schoolmen had taught their childish predecessors ; even the Ritual, translation though it was, retained the sonorous roll of the Latin.

The building and the services alike were a monument, the one a mighty tomb, the other an epitaph to those innumerable unmarked existences.

It had grown very dark. He took the little lantern and found his way again by the passage and the difficult steps, and as he went his shadow gam- boled about him, now leaping out of the blackness above, now burying it-

THE WORSHIP OP EXPEDIENCY.

83

sell in tlie obscurity beyond that yielded ground only step by step as he went down. The light guttered in a wind that came out of the cross pas- ages and he thought of it as the breath of dead builders whose vanished hands had mixed the mortar grating beneath his feet. They were close about him as he reached the last step, and though he had no fear, he shut them in with the massive keys and lifted his face to the bright evening sky above the close with a sensation of relief from ancient things.

Ethel Bennett Hitchens, 1905.

THE WORSHIP OF EXPEDIENCY.

To be rather painfully conscious of the moments of life as they go, of the days as full of decisions that each turns a scale, however slightly ; to be, therefore, never very free; such is the fate, partly self-imposed, of persons of a certain type of mind. A dispropor- tionate sense of the weight of choices, of their meaning and effect, the fallacy toward which this temperament in- variably tends, does not come from a devout allegiance to rigidly held moral or religious principle, or from faith in any vision of the glories of true con- scientiousness, but rather from a blind adherence to a strange god that has slipped in, or formed itself out of mists and nothingness in a niche straight before the gaze; a god whose worship dictates a strange principle of conduct, or rather a strange habit of action that takes the place of principle.

The worshippers of expediency, in fact do not look to anything so remote and general as a principle, but are

guided by considerations of the mo- ment. They neither make sacrifice for some ultimate good for themselves or others, nor do they give themselves up to following the mad beckonings of impulse. Their servitude, moreover, does not begin as it ends, but knows a slow development. The love of ease, at first, a dislike of the effort of think- ing, which prompts a search for some simple method of action not requiring a careful and painful analysis of every situation, together with a sense, gained from experience, of the baffling futility and error of decisions made with most careful thought, marks the first stage. The next is the impassioned period when expediency first clearly appears, hailed with joy as the apostle of peace and comfort, counselling always the easiest way out, its decrees seeming so practical, so important and immediate that every gleaming vista of the future is shut out as with a heavy veil. Lastly comes the calm satisfaction, when ac- tion is all expedient, all matter-of-fact, when extreme excitement as well as doubt and uncertainty are past, and ex- pediency is enthroned in full, authority.

In the end, too, all spontaneity van- ishes, and imagination loses its guiding power over action, for when expediency asserts an all-powerful sway, there is no need for the liberty and scope of the imagination, nor any room for it. So at length it dies a lingering death, leaving the poor victim only a dim con- sciousness of the happiness of freer and more untrammeled ways of living.

It all begins with real conscientious- ness of a certain sort ; but a lack of a sense of proportion, and perhaps also of a sense of humour, and a spirit of

84

THE LANTEBN.

daring and energy, makes all the fidel- ity vain. Because decisions are shaped by the exigencies of particular cases, any inclusive, far-reaching view is lost. Stability of purpose and consistency be- come impossible. When once the distant view and the other fruits of the imag- ination are crushed out, commonplace- aess and stupidity come dragging along to take its place. The future is mort- gaged because action has not been shaped with regard to it. Peter is robbed to pay Paul, and Paul, too, might better have been paid in another coin. The love of pleasure and ease, moreover, which seems at first to have no place at all, crops suddenly out and prompts the giving over of true ener- getic thoughtfulness, though it is re- signed at the price of freedom.

There is, however, one compensation for this weary, too fruitless careful- ness. If ever the devotee is swept off his feet by an irresistible impulse, his joy, by very contrast with the level of his ordinary experience, is greater than any the jaded Epicurean, though he is so admirably educated in pleasure-get- ting, can ever know. There is also a constant stolid satisfaction for him in the fact that, by virtue of his practical point of view, he is often able, in the ordinary affairs of life, to hit the nail on the head.

Elisabeth Bogman Pope, 1907.

"THE WORLD IS STILL DECEIVED WITH ORNAMENT." Strong as is our first childish faith that things are always what they seem, a very little experience of life is enough to disabuse us of it; reluctantly but inevitably, we come to see that "all is

not gold that glitters." Yet the original presumption that a thing that glitters ought to be gold retains a certain hold on us ; so that we continue to be more struck by the cases where fine appear- ances deceive us than by those in which they fulfil their promise. The latter event we pass over as a matter of course ; the former rankles in our memories.

Thus there are many of us who de- velop a tendency to put more trust, other things being equal, in the thing that is unpleasing than in the thing that is pleasing. Such were the men whom Iago's blunt manners and gruff speech led into thinking him an honest man. Such, too, is the worldly-wise Bassanio, the discerning suitor, who chooses the leaden casket rather than the silver or the golden one, for the very reason that it "rather threatens than doth promise aught." There are, of course, the caskets' mottoes to aid him in the choice, but he pays no heed whatever to them — does not, for all we know, even read them. What guides him is the bare fact that the leaden casket is leaden, while the others are silver and golden. 'Thus," he says,

"Thus ornament is but the guiled shore To a most dangerous sea ; the beau- teous scarf Veiling an Indian beauty ; in a word, The seeming truth which cunning times

put on To entrap the wisest."

"Choose not by the view" meant for Bassanio not merely "Take account, when you can, of other things than the view," but "when the view is absolutely the only guidance you have, choose in

THE PEAKL-DIVER.

85

contradiction to it." In other words, a thing is much more often gold when it does not glitter than when it does.

This fallacy — due, surely, to nothing but the failure to observe the cases in which glittering things do, after all, turn out to be gold — has been carried to its utmost extreme by Mr. Bernard Shaw. It is the warping influence through all his work, and vitiates, to my mind, his otherwise keen powers of observation. For no sooner does Mr. Shaw espy from afar off a glittering object than he pronounces without fur- ther examination "That object is cer- tainly not gold.' After reading a few of his plays, we become so used to his method that he has only to bring upon the scene a man respected by his friends and the world, — and we know at once that this man is to turn out the veriest blackguard. All things in the world — at least all apparently nice things — were, according to Mr. Shaw, named on a luctis a non lucendo prin- ciple. Surely this is going too far — prudence is here defeating its own end. If we must be "deceived with orna- ment," let us by all means be deceived in the pleasanter way, let us not be deceived Into thinking that nothing is gold that glitters.

Margaret Franlclin, 1908.

THE PEARL-DIVER. The pearl-diver, a young Greek from the north of Africa, stood upon the small gray promontory that juts out on the Arabian coast between Hasa and Oman. The lucid, ehrysoprase-coloured waters of the Persian Gulf swayed be- low him, temptingly cool and placid.

But the boy had turned his back upon the water and was gazing after a cara- van that wound across the scorched plains toward Riadh. The file of horses bearing silk-turbaned riders, the cur- tained litters, the waving peacock fans, and the band of musicians and danc- ing-girls, made a very different caravan from those he had seen in Africa, whence he had lately come. There the camels stalked noiselessly and swiftly along, while the riders, swathed from head to foot in white, sat upon their rugs, always motionless and silent, always gazing toward the horizon.

Suddenly, the boy turned toward the gulf and the moment after his young, supple body cleft the air like a flash of copper. He cut the surface of the water with a quick splash, the circles of ripples closed above him, and he was slipping easily down and down through the lucent green depths. Here and there the slant lights from above streaked the green with gold. A school of tiny, gleaming fish passed him, some of them even touched him with their little fins. A long, graceful serpent caught his glance and while he watched its bright, mazy progress, he did not see the end of the coral reef that stretched past the coast of Hasa into the pearl waters. He cursed the pink branch that grazed his foot and then smiled as he remembered that from this reef his half-brother got the rosy trinkets which he sold at Moham- merab. Then down again, down, down, until the water stung his eyes, and seemed to crush him with its weight! Long, slippery plants with starry blos- soms twined about his arms. Far off he could see a huge form moving slowly.

86

THE LANTERN.

He knew that it was a whale and wondered if he really were on his pil- grimage about the world. Then he found himself on a bank where shells and starfish, weeds ana sand, were mingled and interwoven. He put forth his hand and seized an ugly gray shell. Then up through the green water, up, up, with swift, strong strokes, up toward the light and the air, up to- ward the hot sky and sands and rocks ! When he reached the surface, he swam to shore and clambered up the steep path to the promontory. He sat down upon the warm rock and opened his shell. There, in the blackened folds of the ugly creature within, lay a round object, its yellowish surface tinged with a dull pinkish gleam. The pearl-diver laughed as he took the treasure from its hiding place. The shell rattled down the rocks. Then the boy, clasp- ing the stone in his hand, put his arms around his knees, and dropping his head upon them, slept, while the sun dried his dripping body.

Louise Foley.

SI JEUNESSE SAVAIT, SI VIEIL- LESSE POUVAIT. Certainly it is the old men that have given us most of our proverbs — not the hale and hearty old men, but those whom life has jostled from pillar to post and old age has found at last not mellow but sour. For while we have but a handful of sayings that give voice to the daring and light-heartedness of youth — such spurs to our intent as "Strike while the iron is hot" and "Paint heart ne'er won fair lady" — the number of proverbs that teach us the

prudence and disillusion of age could never be reckoned. We are told that discretion is the better part of valour. The better part! better than valour, if you like, but never, since the world be- gan, a part of valour ! Only a man too weak to fight would have tried to de- ceive us thus. We are told that speech is silver, but silence is golden. Who that had not lost — and forgotten — his last friend would have dealt such a blow at the delights of conversation? We are told that there is no new thing under the sun. Who that still has eyes to see will concur in this? So they run on, without an end ; old men invented them, and old men ever since have sounded them as warnings to the ears of youth.

But of all the familiar sayings that they have cherished and handed down, there is none more completely armed with the triple brass of their wit and cynicism and conceit than this : Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait. With what complacency do the old here lay claim to funds of wisdom of which they need never give proof ! They know how to construct a perfectly happy world, forsooth, — but old age, bearing the long-sought gift of wisdom in one hand, renders the gift profitless by rob- bing them with the other of the power to act! There is much consolation in the thought, but little truth. As a rule men do, to be sure, accumulate knowl- edge as they grow older, and some- times the knowledge ripens into wis- dom. But there is danger that it obstruct the free workings of the mind, and that superfluity of theory end in a host of doubts and reserva- tions. There comes a time, too, when.

SI JETMESSE SAVAIT, SI VIEILLESSE POUVAIT.

87

whether from the fatigue of having learned too much or from the gen- eral listlessness of age, one indulges in a final intellectual rest and learns no more. And then it is that we com- fort ourselves with saying, "There is no new thing under the sun." In age, as Meredith says, we have "ceased to be jealous of the ancients" — but we have become jealous of our contempo- raries, and scoff at the discovery of a new planet. It is only in youth that we are abreast of our time, and are willing to run for miles on the barest chance of seeing the Thames set on fire. Let us, then, be glad if we are not yet so old but we may learn.

There is, to be sure, a pride of youth as well as a pride of age, and I fear lest this paper be thought but too clear an illustration of it. But youth is, more often than age, ready to admit that its pride has, after all, not the surest of foundations. "Young men think old men fools, and old men know young men to be so." Is it perhaps that the pride of youth is tempered with the thought that the young will one day be old, and are perhaps des- tined to eat their words, while the pride of age rests in the assurance of a final consistency?

Margaret Franlclin, 1908.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE VOL- SUNGA SAGA.

(A Freshman Critical Paper.)

If we look back over the years that are past and the races of men that have gone before us, and try to dis- cover just what thcsi- by-gone ages and

peoples were like, we find that it is by no means an easy task. History, in- deed, tells us what each race has ac- complished, but their thoughts and feel- ings, their peculiar way of receiving life, and the things which seemed to them beautiful, and fitting, and worth while, are too often hidden from our view by the dust of the long, interven- ing centuries. A book like the Vol- sunga Saga, therefore, which comprises many of the heroic legends and tradi- tions of the early Norse people, — leg- ends that were loved and cherished for generations, and then written down by the people themselves, — is invaluable to every earnest student both of litera- ture and of life. The Volsunga Saga gives us a glimpse into the very heart of the primitive Norsemen ; lets us into his mind and ways of thinking. It is 'like a fragment of the old Norse life preserved unchanged through all the ages. Time has not dulled the bright vividness of the colors in which it is painted, and all the crudeness, fierce brutality and brilliant, vigorous imag- inative power which it displays stand out with sharp, unfaded edges. In the Volsunga Saga alone we can almost read the answer to the question : What was the primitive Norseman really like ; what were his moral standards ; and just how far did his appreciation and understanding of beauty extend.

The first thing that strikes our at- tention, on reading these splendid old barbaric tales, is the supreme im- portance of personal strength and brav- ery. The Norse code of morals per- mitted no subtle gradations and dis- tinctions. There was a hard, fast, and inflexible line drawn between virtue

88

THE LANTERN.

and crime. The brave man was the virtuous man. He might be cruel, treacherous and licentious, but so long as he was bold and fearless he met per- fectly all the requirements made by the Norse sense of honor and morailty. In fact, his wrong-doings, according to our modern point of view, were not then considered wrong. In those days the only crimes were cowardice and weak- ness. Joined to great strength, brav- ery, and endurance, a certain amount of reckless daring was required, and to the Norseman discretion was never the better part of valour. The hero Sigurd was far from discreet when he plunged through the leaping flames that surrounded Brynhild's castle, or when, alone and unaided, he lay in wait for the dragon. It was part of the old Norseman's religion to risk fearful odds, to match himself against great and acknowledged superior strength, and if he could, in any way, get the better of the opposing force, he was likely to be exalted into something like a god.

There is yet another side to the Norse idea of heroism and virtue ; subordi- nate, it is true, to the necessity of per- sonal bravery, but nevertheless a vital component part of the moral standard of the time. This is absolute and un- questioning loyalty and devotion to one's own family. When Gudrun killed her own sons and offered them up at her husband's feast in revenge for his slaying of her brothers, she was acting in accordance with the accepted stand- ard of her people. This terrible deed excited in the Norseman's heart ad- miration, rather than horror and dis- gust. The most brutal and atrocious

actions, when undertaken from motives of loyalty to kin, were esteemed hon- orable and holy. So these two ele- ments,— ■ bravery and loyalty, — make up the Norse ideal of virtue ; not a bad ideal by which to guide our lives, when it has been softened by time and civilization, and purified of its savage and incongruous elements.

In this brief discussion of the moral preferences of the Norse people we have seen that it was the stern and terrible side of life that appealed most strongly to their minds. Their imagi- nations were stimulated and their hearts stirred by the stories of fierce passion and fierce strife. But a glance at the way in which the Norseman treated these stories shows that his was not merely a crude and barbarous narration of bloodshed and slaughter, but rather the most dramatic, striking and picturesque representation possi- ble of the life of the day. There is a great deal of art in the way these stories are told. They are made beauti- ful. There is quick, graphic narration, vivid and glowing description, skilful delineation of character and, over everything, a luminous splendor of light and color. External beauty and brightness, in fact, is as essential and characteristic part of these old tales as is gloominess and melancholy of thought. It is interesting to note that however stern, incongruous and terrible were the Norsemen's ideas of virtue and morality and his attitude toward life, his intellect showed grow- ing signs of vigor, brilliance, and in- dividuality.

They are a fascinating study — these old legends and tales of a by-gone age,

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE VOLSUNGA SAGA. 89

and they lead to many interesting dis- eras native tendencies yet unchecked

coveries in regard to the people who and undirected. The Volsunga Saga,

produced them. We are given an op- as I said at the beginning of this paper,

portunity to study these people in the gives us a glimpse into the very hearts

freshness and bloom of the morning of and souls of the Norse people, their existence ; to see all their vigor-

90 THE LANTERN.

COLLEGIANA.

[The reports here printed are for the year 1906-07.]

THE GEADTJATE CLUB.

DURING the year 1906-1907 the Graduate Club consisted of fifty-six members. There were four formal meetings, at which the following guests ad- dressed the club: President M. Carey Thomas, on "Woman Suffrage"; Professor Jeremiah Jenks, of Cornell University, on "The Amassing and Spend- ing of Great Fortunes" ; Dr. William B. Huff, of Bryn Mawr College, on "Recent Discoveries in Physics" ; and Dr. Felix Shelling, of the University of Pennsyl- vania, on "Elizabethan Drama."

Graduate hockey and basketball teams were formed; the custom of serving tea in the clubroom on the first four afternoons of the week was continued; in addition, one formal tea was given to the faculty.

B. M. L., 1906.

THE BRYN MAWR CLUB OP NEW YORK.

URING the past year the Bryn Mawr Club of New York has remained at

D138 East Fortieth Street, three tenants occupying its only available sleep- ing rooms. The great demand for more rooms resulted this spring in the purchase of a house — 37 East Fortieth Street— directly opposite the present apartment. This will provide six rooms for tenants, as well as two for transient guests. The latter may be either members of the club or any guests of club members not themselves eligible to membership.

A. H. D., 1902.

$ :fj ;j;

THE PHILOSOPHICAL CLUB.

THE Philosophical Club has had thus far two formal meetings ; the first in November, when Dr. Norman Smith, of Princeton, spoke on "Balfour's Defense of Philosophic Doubt," the second in December, with an address by Dr. George M. Stratton of Johns Hopkins University, on "Optimism and the Scientific Method." Dr. W. S. Seldon of Princeton is to address the Club on the third of May on "Pragmatism and its Heresies." Dr. William Jones was to have lectured to the Club on January 26th, but the meeting was given up on account of the sudden death of Dr. Irons, which not only was a grief to those who knew him, but cast a shadow over 'the entire College that will not quickly pass away.

B. W. S., 1906.

COLLEGIAJST 91

SUNDAY EVENING MEETING.

THE Sunday Evening Committee in April of 1906 was increased from three to seven members, and a chairman was elected. It was decided that as the new committee members were chosen with special care to represent the various classes and interests in college and were now so numerous, they should hold office for a year's time. Three new members were added this fall to take the place of those who retired in the preceding spring, and the plan which had been suggested in June for the first semester of this year was executed, — ten subjects of philosophical and religious character and four miscellaneous subjects, being posted in advance with the names of their several leaders, alumnse and undergraduate. In the second semester the committee, keeping more closely in touch with the wishes of the college by having a box for proposed subjects in the new library, acted as sponsor for meetings held on such subjects as "Class Distinctions in College," "The Keeping of Sunday in College," etc.

(?. S. B., 1907.

* # #

CHEISTIAN UNION.

JN only two respects has the past year differed materially from other years in the history of the Christian Union. The new features have been plans for

a conference, and the Christian Union Library. There have been, as usual, Bible classes, mission classes, and fortnightly religious meetings.

The greatest interest of the members during the past six months has centered in the summer conference which is to be held at Bryn Mawr College from June fourteenth to twenty-second, in connection with the session of the Friends' Sum- mer School of Religious History. While Pembroke will be occupied by the Summer School, Radnor will be kept open for the use of the Bryn Mawr con- tingent— forty or fifty undergraduates and alumna?, and a few sub-freshmen. Joint meetings will be conducted in Taylor Hall, and, in a few cases, out of doors on the campus. Separate meetings of the student conference will be held in the gymnasium. The program of lectures, classes, etc., has just been arranged, and It contains the names of interesting and inspiring speakers.

The occupation of the library building last autumn meant a new acquisition for the Christian Union, in the form of a very convenient and attractive reading- room. On the shelves are books belonging to the Christian Union and to the League, and books from the main library which are kept on reserve there.

The philanthropic committee has continued work among the factory girls of Kensington, classes for the laboratory boys, and the maids' Sunday School. The evening classes for the maids have been more thoroughly organized and more successfully carried on this year than ever before, and the weekly class in sewing, an innovation, has especially aroused Interest.

The membership of the Christian Union includes twenty-four auxiliary mem- bers from among the alumnse.

L. M., 1908.

92 THE LANTERN.

COLLEGE SETTLEMENT CHAPTEE.

ALTHOUGH the membership of the College Settlement Association has slightly decreased during the past year, in other respects the season has been very successful. A subscription has been made to cover the ex- penses of the Bryn Mawr fellowship. This amount, raised partly by subscrip- tion but chiefly by selling ice cream and sandwiches at the match games, is still in the treasury, owing to the fact that no eligible candidate has applied for the fellowship.

The fellowship, which is designed to interest beginners, has been held for the two years during which the Bryn Mawr Association has offered it by Miss Frances Keay, and is now open to any graduate of the College.

The yearly subscription from the membership fees amounted to approx- imately $100 and besides this §30 was sent to the Philadelphia Settlements at Christmas.

As usual, students have gone in to the Front Street and Christian Street houses to help take charge of the children on Saturday mornings.

K. G. E., 1909.

# * #

THE ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION.

MUCH interest and enthusiasm has been shown in college athletics during the year 1906-1907. A great variety of games and sports have been carried on, in which an unusually large number of people have taken part.

In hockey each class had at least two teams out for the practice games that led up to the final games, the championship in which was won by 1907. The hockey Varsity played five games with outside teams, winning four of them and being defeated by the Ladies' Hockey team of the Merion Cricket Club.

Enough enthusiasm was shown for lacrosse — especially by the two lower classes — to warrant the belief that it will grow in popularity as a form of outdoor exercise after the hockey season is over.

In the tennis tournament the systematic arrangement of the matches by the class tennis captains in interclass doubles and singles resulted in an orderly and satisfactory tournament, the pleasure in which was also increased by the use of the three new courts. Gertrude Hill, '07, won the singles, and is to play Grace Hutchins, '07, who holds the cup for last year. The doubles were not begun until the spring, and are now being played off.

In the swimming contest, which was won by 1907, records were broken by Schaefer, '08; Woerishoffer, '07, Baker, '09, and Ashton, '10. Water polo was played to the extent of having a series of match games between the classes.

The track meet was noteworthy for the fact that the world's record for women in the shot-put was broken by M. Young, '08, her distance being 33 feet 1 inch. The Bryn Mawr College records were broken in the rope-climb by A.

COLLEGIANA. 93

Piatt, '09, and in the three broad jumps by I. Richter, '08. The meet was won by 1908, and the cnp for the highest individual number of points was awarded to A. Piatt, '09.

A mock track meet and a mock swimming contest were held a few days after the regular ones, and they proved most amusing both to those who took part and to the spectators.

Cricket has been started this spring with much enthusiasm, and it promises to become increasingly popular.

Basket-ball has begun with great interest and in earnest, there being at least two teams out from every class. Practice games are being played every afternoon and Saturday morning, with the exception of one afternoon that is reserved for Varsity practice in preparation for the game with the Alumnse.

Although the gymnasium contest does not come under the auspices of the Athletic Association, it is not wholly out of place to mention it here, for its great success this year and the unprecedented interest shown in it are only one more tribute to Miss Applebee, to whom the association owes more than it can express for the interest she has shown us and for her work with us.

E. W., 1907.

GLEE CLTJB.

THE Glee Club for the year 1906-1907 numbered fifty-two members. All the classes have been well represented, except the Senior Class, which has con- tributed very few. The annual concert of the Glee and Mandolin Clubs was held in the gymnasium on the twentieth of April, and brought in $167.50. Except for the fact that the Glee Club sang without notes, the concert was similar to that of previous years.

O. H., 1907. * * *

TROPHY CLTJB.

THE Tropby Club this year has sent out blanks to all the former students of Bryn Mawr, asking for the names of those people who have occupied the various rooms in college, in order that small individual brass name- plates, half an inch broad and three inches long, may be put up between the windows In every room. Many alumna? and former students have already answered, and it is hoped that the rest will answer as soon as possible so that the plates may be put up next year. The undergraduates are in sympathy with the scheme, and the club thinks that the plates may be a means of keep- ing the former and the present students of the college in closer touch with each other. It hopes, too, that the plates may make the older students feel that they are remembered and have a place here still, although they are now living away from the college.

G. S. B., 1907.

94 THE LANTERN.

THE ENGLISH CLUB.

THE English Club during the year 1906-1907 has held its customary fort- nightly meetings. At these were read papers written for the advanced writing courses in Argumentation and Narrative Writing, and separate chapters of the novel, which was the production of the entire club. As a change has been made in the constitution, by which a full membership of nine is no longer necessitated, the club was confined to the number of seven. At the meetings there were occasional visitors — Miss Hoyt once, and several graduate members ; Maud Temple, 1904 ; Ethel Bennet Hitchens, 1905, and fre- quently Edna Shearer, 1904. One formal meeting was held in December, at which Mr. Hammond Lamont, of the Nation, spoke on the Daily in a Democracy. Another was held in February, at which Dr. Puller, of Harvard, delivered a lecture on Shakespeare.

M. E. B., 1907.

THE LAW CLUB.

THE Law Club was founded with the primary purpose of furthering an interest in debate. In view of this fact, it may seem strange that during „»! the past year only two debates were held, although the club has met every month. There are, however, serious obstacles to be overcome here at col- lege before we can have as many good debates as we desire. In the first place, debating devours more time than people can easily give ; there are books to be read, arguments to be gone over, papers to be planned, team-work to be rehearsed. In the second place, the Law Club is but a small organization — the number of members ranging from fifty to seventy — and it is hard to pick from it more than a few girls who have the time and ability that debating requires. Notwith- standing these obstacles, we think that, now that an interclass debate has become an established event of the year, the interest in debating will grow stronger and stronger until ultimately people will be as eager to "make" the class debating teams as they are to make the hockey and basket-ball teams.

Besides the debates, in which the members of the Law Club alone take part directly, there are frequent addresses held under its auspices, to which the entire college is asked. Prominent lawyers and economists are invited to speak and afterwards to meet the members of the club. This year we were fortunate enough to secure as our speakers Dean Ashley, of the New York University Law School ; Dr. Prank Goodnow, Professor of Law and Economics at Columbia ; Mr. James McKeen, of Brooklyn, and Mr. Hampton Carson, of Philadelphia, all of whom gave most interesting and enjoyable lectures.

L. E., 1908.

COLLEGIANA. 95

THE BETE" MAWR LEAGUE FOR THE SERVICE OF CHRIST.

THE Bryn Mawr League for the Service of Christ has an active membership of ninety-two, an associate membership of five, and an auxiliary mem- bership of forty. The activities of the League are its weekly meetings on Sunday afternoon, its Bible and Mission Study Classes, its work in the study of Japan under Mr. Tonumura, and its Kensington work.

Three Bible Classes have been held this year. The class in the Life of Christ has an enrolment of twenty, the one on "The Twelve Minor Prophets" an enrolment of twenty-four, and the one on John of ten. One of the mission study classes, led by the student volunteers on "Mission Fields of To-day," had an enrolment of seventeen. The class on "Social Problems" has eighteen, that on "The Evangelization of the World in this Generation" had seven members, and an interesting class on "Japan" has an enrolment of fourteen. The class on "Missionary Biographies has eight members.

Every year the League sends Mr. Tonumura, a missionary in Tokio, $200. This year we have been able to send him $250.

At the suggestion of Mrs. Bradford, who is connected with the "Light House" work in Kensington, Philadelphia, two girls are sent in by the League every week to lead religious meetings in the homes of the Kensington women.

This brief account of the work of the League during the year 1906-07 will be sufficient to show that it is filling a large place in Bryn Mawr, and is begin- ning to fulfil the purpose for which it was founded.

, j J On behalf of the officers (1906-07).

M. M. B., 1907.

THE ALUMNJ3 ENDOWMENT FUND.

THE need for an endowment for academic salaries at Bryn Mawr was never more urgent than to-day ; the living expenses in Bryn Mawr, as elsewhere, are constantly increasing, and other colleges and universities are, by reason of great gifts and endowments, offering more and more attractions to members of our Faculty, who are bound sooner or later, to accept greater facilities for their work, and the possibility of living more easily.

The organized work of raising the $1,000,000 that the Alumnae have set as the least possible sum that will be really effective in maintaining the acade- mic standard of the College, has been carried on by committees, in various cities and local centres since 1904, and the money promised is to be paid be- fore 1910. The Boston Committee has obtained in all $53,000.00; Chicago, by a week of opera, $7,000.00; Washington, by a sale of autographe"d books over $700.00; and Philadelphia by a concert by Mme. Milba $1,000.00, besides $10,000 in contributions and a promise of $50,000.00 from the Baldwin

96 THE LANTERN.

Locomotive Works Company. The general feeling among the Alumna? that have done most work for the fund is that:

1st. The fund must be raised largely by large subscriptions.

2nd. The appeals must, if possible, be made in person. The Finance Com- mittee does not wish to discourage small contributors where it is impossible to get large ones, but it does maintain the advantage in attempting to get large contributions first if possible.

It has been estimated that only part of the cost of tuition in a college is ever covered by the tuition fee. Therefore does not every graduate of Bryn Mawr owe a debt to the College and to the Faculty that gave her her educa- tion? And it is not only fair that this debt should be paid by means of the Endowment Fund.

Signed for the Finance Committee.

Martha G. Thomas, Chairman

THE CONSUMEKS' LEAGUE.

THROUGH the efforts of Dr. Mussey and Miss Dorothy Congdon, the Con- sumers' League was established as a separate organisation in the spring of 1906. A large number of members were enrolled and $120 was sent to the Philadelphia Consumers' League, with which the society here is affiliated. This year the membership has been increased to 196. The League made all of the charts for the Philadelphia Industrial Exhibit, which was held in December. Since then the charts have been shown at exhibits in other cities, and have attracted much attention.

There have been two formal meetings this year. The first one was addressed by Mrs. Frederick Nathan, the secretary of the New York Consumers' League, and the second by Miss Florence L. Lanville, the general secretary of the Phila- delphia Consumers' League.

It has been decided to send out cards to each of the members of the League when they leave college asking them to join the organisation in thir own home, should there be one there. The League thus hopes to keep up the inter- est of its members in the work.

E. 8., 1907.

GEEMAN CLUB.

THE German Club of Bryn Mawr College was founded in December, 1906, by several girls of the Major German Class interested in German. The purpose was twofold : first, to help girls to obtain a conversational knowl- edge of the language, and, secondly, to further an interest in modern German literature. President Thomas's approval was obtained, a short constitution formed, and the club soon in working order. With a small membership to begin with,

COLLEGIANA. 97

it soon increased until now it consists of about thirty active members. There are regular informal meetings every two weeks — where the club is entertained by reading from modern authors. Afterwards refreshments are served, two of the girls acting as hostesses, and a lively conversation is carried on entirely in German. These evenings are made as informal as possible, and have proved successful. One formal meeting is held during the year, at which some out- sider is asked to lecture. On the twenty-seventh of April, 1907, the first formal meeting, Dr. Karl Detter Jessen will lecture on "The Scandinavian Influence in German Literature." This meeting promises to be of great value in the his- tory of the German Club, as Dr. Jessen has won much appreciation as an inspir- ing lecturer.

There is no danger of a financial failure of the club, as no dues are required. In case of expenditure, the situation is discussed at a business meeting, and an assessment is made to meet the demand.

On the whole, the German Club has apparently obtained a fairly good hold in the college in this its first year, and promises to continue its career.

G. G. H., 1907. * * *

CHESS CLUB.

ANEW interest has been taken in the Chess Club during the year 1906- 1907. From November to February, meetings for practise were held every fortnight. Of the twenty-six members, twenty-one entered the tournament in the Spring.

A. T. C, 1908.

OEIEXTAL CLUB.

FOR the last few years there has been an increasing desire among the stu- dents of Oriental History to found a club to arouse and stimulate inter- est in the East. Accordingly in the early part of this academic year the subject was brought up and it was decided that such a club should be formed. Therefore a committee was appointed to draw up a constitution, and at the next meeting the constitution was adopted and the officers elected. They are as follows: President, Marjorie Newton Wallace, 1908; Vice-President and Treasurer, Elizabeth Wilson, 1907; Secretary, Lydia Sharpless, 1908.

Four formal meetings were held in the chapel, and the club invited all who were interested to attend. On December seventh, Dr. A. V. Williams Jack- son, of Cornell University, lectured on "The Early Drama in India, with Parallels from Shakespeare." On January eleventh, Dr. A. T. Clay, of the University of Pennsylvania, gave an illustrated lecture on "Recent Explorations in Baby- lonia." On February fifteenth, Dr. E. Grant, of Boston University, gave a stere- opticon lecture on "Village Life in Palestine," and on March fifteenth the club

98 THE LANTEBN.

held its last formal meeting and was addressed by Mrs. Cornelius Stevenson, her subject being "Recent Discoveries, Showing the Development in the His- tory of Egypt."

The club owes a large debt of gratitude to Dr. Barton for his kind assistance and advice in this first year of its existence. Moreover the student body as a whole has shown a gratifying interest in the welfare of the new organization, which we hope will increase each year. M. V. W., 1908.

COLLBGIANA. 99

THE GRADUATE CLUB.

President — Helen Schaeffeb.

Vice-President — Louise Dudley.

Secretary — Helen Paddock.

Treasurer — Sue Avis Blake.

Executive Committee — Helen Schaeffeb. Louise Dudley, Lillian V. Moseb, Geetbude Smabt, Maby Swindles.

THE PHILOSOPHICAL CLUB. President — Helen Willeston Smith, 1906. Vice-President and Treasurer — Louise Milligan, 1908. Secretary — Louise Foley, 1908.

* * *

COLLEGE SETTLEMENT ASSOCIATION CHAPTER. Elector — Kathebine Ecob, 1909. Secretary — Cabola Woeeishoffeb, 1907. Treasurer — Anna Welles.

* * *

THE ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION. President — Estheb Williams, 1907. Vice-President and Treasurer — Anna Platt, 1909. Secretary — Mabqabet Copeland, 1908. Indoor Manager — Mabjobie Young, 1908.

* * *

CONFERENCE COMMITTEE. Chairman — Bebtha M. Laws, 1901. Undergraduate Members — Louise Milligan, 1908. Louise Congdon, 1908 Mabtha Plaisted, 1908. Anna Platt, 1909. Fbances Jackson, 1910. Alumn® Members — Mabion T. Macintosh, 1890. Elizabeth Blanchabd, 1889. Content Siiepaed Nichols, 1899. Ida Langdon, 1903. Elma Loines, 1905.

100 THE LANTERN.

GLEE CLUB. Conductor — Miss Mabtha C. Babet. Leader — Gebtbude Hill, 1907. Business Manager — Evelyn Holt, 1909.

* * #

THE ENGLISH CLUB. President — Margaret Emebson Bailey, 1907. Elizabeth Bogman Pope, 1907. Eunice Morgan Schenk, 1907. Maegaeet Ladd Feanklin, 1908. Theresa Helbubn, 1908. Louise Folet, 1908. Mabtha Plaisted, 1908.

* sj: #

THE LAW CLUB. President — Louise Hyhan, 1908.

Vice-President and Treasurer — Grace S. Brownell, 1907. Secretary — Hazel Whitelaw, 1908.

THE BRYN MAWR LEAGUE FOE THE SERVICE OP CHRIST. President — Margaret Morris Reeve, 1907.

Vice-President and Secretary — Maegaeet Rteeson Maynard, 1908. Treasurer — Caroline Minor, 1909. & # *

ALUMNA ASSOCIATION OF BRYN MAWR COLLEGE. Directors. President — Evangeline Walker Andrews, 1893 (Mrs. O. M. Andrews). Vice-President — Edith Thompson Oelady, 1902.

Recording Secretary — Elizabeth M. Bancboft, 1908 (Mrs. Wilfred Bancroft). Corresponding Secretary — Maetha Boot White, 1903. Treasurer — Jane B. Haines, 1891. Cleric of Records — Ethel Walker.

* * *

THE ACADEMIC COMMITTEE OF THE ALUMNiB. Chairman — Elizabeth Pearson.

Eleanor Louisa Loed.

Evangeline Walkee Andrews.

Louise Sheffield Brownell Saunders.

Maeion Edwaeds Paek.

Susan Bbaley Franklin.

Marion Reilly.

Nellie Netlson.

COLLEGIANA. 101

UNDERGRADUATE ASSOCIATION. President — Ellen Thateb, 1907. Vice-President and Treasurer — Myba Elliot, 1908. Secretary — Maetha Plaisted, 1908. Assistant Treasurer— Edith Bbown, 1909.

* * *

SELF-GOVERNMENT ASSOCIATION.

President — Mabgaeet Bakes Mobison, 1907. Vice-President— Eunice Schenck, 1907. O-raduate Member — Edna Shearee, 1904. Secertarv — Mabgaeet Copeland, 1908. Treasurer — Louise Congdon, 1907.

SUNDAY EVENING MEETING COMMITTEE. Chairman — Geace S. Bbownell, 1907. Eunice M. Schenck, 1907. Mabgaeet Ayee, 1907. Helen Dudley, 1908. Mabgaeet Feanklin, 1908. Caelie Minoe, 1909. Feances Bbowne, 1909.

THE CONSUMERS' LEAGUE. President — Emma Sweet, 1907.

Vice-President and Treasurer — Melanie Athebton, 1908. Secretary — Maby Lacy Van Waqenen, 1909.

GERMAN CLUB. President — Gladys C. Haines. Vice-President — O. Floeence Lexow. Secrteary — Alice Sachs.

102 THE LANTEBN.

CHESS CLUB. President — Adelaide T. Case, 1908. Vice-President — Maecet Haldeman, 1909. Secretary — Anita Boggs, 1910.

EUROPEAN FELLOWSHIPS FOE THE YEAE 1907-08. Bryn Mawr European Fellow — Virginia Greer Hill. Presidents European Fellow — Esther Harmon.

A.B., University of Michigan, 1906 ; Graduate Scholar in Teutonic Philology. Mary E. Garrett European Fellow — Alice Middleton Boring.

A.B., Bryn Mawr College, 1904, and A.M., 1905 ; Graduate Scholar in Biology and Assistant in the Biological Laboratory, Bryn Mawr College, 1904-05 ; Moore Fellow in Zoology, University of Pennsyl- vania, 1905-06.

SPECIAL EUROPEAN FELLOWSHIP IN TEUTONIC PHILOLOGY. Awarded for the year 1906-07 to Anna Sophie Weusthoff. A.B., Woman's College of Baltimore, 1906.

EESIDENT FELLOWSHIPS FOE THE YEAE 1907-08.

Greek.

Mary Swindler. A.B., University of Wisconsin, 1906.

Rose Jeffrees Peebles. A.B., Mississippi State College for Women, 1891. French.

Florence Donnell White. A.B., Mount Holyoke College, 1903. History.

Margaret Shore Morriss. A.B., Woman's College of Baltimore, 1904. Philosophy.

Margaret Mary Anne Melley. B.A., University of Ireland, 1905. Mathematics.

Elva Cooper. A.B., University of Wisconsin. 1904. Chemistry.

Dorothy Halin. A.B., Bryn Mawr College, 1S99.

COLLEGIANA. 103

UNDEEGEADUATE SCHOLAESHIPS. Maria L. Eastman Brooke Hall Memorial Senior Scholarship.

Mayone Lewis, 1906. James E. Rhoads Junior Scholarship.

Anne Garrett Walton, 1908. James E. Rhoads Sophomore Scholarship.

Ruth Anita Wade, 1910. Mary E. Stevens Junior Scholarship.

Elise Donaldson, 1909. Maria Hopper Scholarships.

Josephine Chapin Brown, 1910.

Marion Shelmire Kirk, 1910. George W. Childs Essay Prize.

Margaret Emerson Bailey, 1907.

GEADUATE SCHOLAESHIPS FOE 1907-08 AS FAE AS ANNOUNCED. G-reek.

Anna Ward Aven. A.B., Mississippi, 1905.

Clara Lyford Smith. A.B., Bryn Mawr College, 1907. Latin.

Edith Florence Rice. Bryn Mawr College, 1907. German.

Lilian Virginia Moser. A.B., Bryn Mawr College, 1893. Mathematics.

Margaret Elizabeth Brusstar. A.B., Bryn Mawr College, 1903. Physics.

Helen Lamberton. Bryn Mawr College, 1907. Geology.

Julia Anna Gardner. A.B., Bryn Mawr College, 1905. Chemistry.

Helen Williston Smith. A.B., Bryn Mawr College, 1906. Semitic Languages.

Helen Hawley Nichols. A.B., Marietta College, 1906. Foundation Scholar in Semitic Languages.

Eleanor Densmore Wood. A.B., Penn College, 1897. English.

Helen Moss Lowengrund. A.B., Bryn Mawr College, 1906.

104 THE LANTERN.

"LEVIORE PLECTRO."

COME, SWEETHEART, COME.

(Reprinted, from Tiptn o' Bob.)

"Come, sweetheart come, till I show thee where the violets grow :

Come, sweetheart, till I show thee where they grow.

Down within the sweet green hollow.

Where no breath of wind shall follow,

That is where they grow."

"But, no, ah! no,

To-day I cannot go.

in the sun and in the shade

Fair white linen must be spread.

Have patience and to-morrow we shall know."

"Come, sweetheart, come, till I show thee where the daisies grow :

Come, sweetheart, till I show thee where they grow.

Out beyond the pasture bars,

Sky of green with silver stars,

That is where they grow."

"But, no, ah ! no,

To-day I cannot go.

By the hearth-side soon must lie

Piles of cake, all savoury.

Have patience, and to-morrow we shall know."

"Come, sweetheart, come, till I show thee where the asters grow :

Come, sweetheart, till I show thee where they grow.

There beneath the mellow sun,

In dry grass with webs o'erspun,

That is where they grow."

"But, no, ah! no,

To-day I cannot go.

Many a fabric soft and thick

Waits my needle's dainty prick.

Have patience, and to-morrow we shall know."

LEVIORE PLECTRO 105

"Come, sweetheart, come, till I show thee where the snows do lie:

Come, sweetheart, till I show thee where they lie.

Over all the asters fair,

Roof and stack and branches bare,

And they creep in thy fair hair,

That is where they lie."

"Ah! dost thou sigh?

All the year is come and gone,

Swift the ending draweth on,

For each to-morrow a to-day must die."

Mary F. Nearing, 1909.

TO ELEVATE THE CLASSES.

(Reprinted from Ttptn o' Bob.)

I should like to be a pedant, and always get H. G,

To talk a mystic language, have the Faculty to tea,

To give aesthetic parties of a simple bill of fare,

To walk with the Department, and watch the Freshmen stare.

But, most of all, I think I'd like to get off sage remarks, With that unstudied manner that is natural to sharks : To offer apt opinions that were true but never trite, Without the guilty knowledge I'd composed them overnight.

We all wish we were pedants ; but alas we wish in vain, We cannot be uplifted above our common plane — At least not by our efforts ; but why could there not be To keep up the tradition, a class in pedantry.

Suppose we common mortals should give a tea each day. Invite the geniuses to come, take notes on what they say — And notice how they take their tea, and how they dress and walk. We too might grow pedantic in all our thoughts and talk.

And if we are too stupid we'd at least be glad we tried To help keep up the pedants, our greatest joy and pride, So that in future ages, oh will it not be nice To point to Bryn Mawr College as the Pedants' Paradise!

0. L. Meigs, 1907.

10!) THE LANTERN.

LETTER-MAGIC.

(Reprinted from Tipyn o' Bob.)

You tell me that the skies were gray? I thought I saw a purple light, That dyed the hilltops warmly bright, And vanished far away.

You saw from streams the cold mist rise ; But at my foot the grass was green, And from beneath the hedge's screen Peeped May, and violet's eyes.

What though to you the trees were bare? I only saw the beeches old Weighted down with rustling freight of gold, Like lovely Enid's hair.

For in my hand — you did not know —

A talisman would paint the world

With moonbeams, and from buds upcurled,

Make fairy gardens grow.

Mary F. Nearing, 1909.

GUDRUN.

(Reprinted from Tipyn o' Bob.)

The year is young and the day is fair, Gudrun, Gudrun, bind up your hair ; See who stand in the court below.

Brothers of mine! Can this be so?

Maids, have they not returned too soon? But look who comes with them, Gudrun.

Open the windows wide for me,

Think you the gods are such as he?

My heart has whispered the time is nigh

When I must leave you here and go ;

But shall I care,

When we are together, he and I? Too early yet is it to know, Only the future years can show,

LEVIORB PLECTRO. 107

Beware of asking the Fates too soon, Alas, Gudrun! alas, Gudrun!

Why do you say alas and weep?

Weep for yourselves, I need no tears,

I have neither sorrows nor fears. Gudrun, beware of double sleep, Remember the cup one drinks is deep.

Deep and sweet and a drink for two. When the year is late and the night is drear, And you are pale as the waning moon, And have drained the cup of sorrow and fear, Remember your maidens wept for you, Alas, Gudrun ! alas, Gudrun !

Louise Foly, 1908.

ON A PORTRAIT OP BEATRICE CENCI.

(Reprinted, from Trpyw o' Bob.)

O innocent, sweet eyes ! Twin mirrors of the soul

Of maidenhood, Tender and only wise

In doing good. O shadowy, shy smile!

So faint it seems A glimmer caught the while

Thou wert in dreams. O angel smile and eyes ! Fountains of purity.

And can it be

That such wild deeds Within thy weary heart

(O Beatrice rare,

Child of despair!) In thy desperate needs,

Thou dost devise!

Louise Foley, 1908.

108 THE LANTERN.

BRYN MAWR IS GOING A-MAYING.

(Reprinted from Twyn o' Bob.)

(From the point of view of the Decoration Committee.) With apologies to

Robert Herrick.

Get up, get up for shame! The blooming morn Upon her wings presents our banners torn With which last night we decked each hall, Fresh quilted colours, tattered all ; Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see The men about the scenery, They've waited us in front of Pembroke West Above an hour since, yet you not drest? Nay, not so much as out of bed? Come, take the donkeys to the shed, And trim the floats, and carry chairs, And drag those borrowed rugs down stairs. For now five hundred maidens on this day Spring sooner than the lark to fetch in May.

Come, all my classmates, come; and coming mark

How crook'd we hung those banners in the dark.

Some one run up and mend that tear.

The reds upon that throne will swear.

Hang out the pennants from the towers ;

Deck Merion fire escape with flowers ;

And make that grandstand gay with gren percale,

And cut the ropes around that largest bale.

Do something for those wretched sheep

Behind the Gym, and try and keep

Them quiet while you make them gay

With garlands for the first of May.

And sin no more, as we have done, by staying

But, come, my classmates, come, let's go a-Maying.

Come let us go while we are in our prime

And take the harmless jolly of the time!

We shall grow old apace; and then

We'll never give this F§te again.

Poor old Elizabethans. They

Had every year to greet the May!

As long as they could totter to the green

LEVIORB PLECTEO.

109

They had to dance with joyous mien.

Now older, wiser, than of yore,

We give but one fete to their four.

And future undergraduates

Will have to give the future Fetes.

Then while time serves, we are but decaying,

Come, all my classmates, come, let's go a-Maying.

Margaret Helen Ayer, 1907.

QUO USQUE, TANDEM! (Reprinted, -from Ttpytt o' Bob.)

The motto of the world is no longer to be up-to-date, but to be ahead-of-the- date. The modern age does not stop at calculations about the future; it actually turns the future from a pos- sibility to a reality, a reality of every- day life.

No sooner does the public inaugurate one President than it begins to cam- paign for the next. No sooner does the baby boy lisp his first syllable than the provident parent takes pains to secure him a place for fifteen years hence at Groton or St. Mark's. In order to guard against the unpardonable error of being "behind the times," our even- ing newspapers appear at noon and our morning issues run a close race with the dawn. The April number of Me- et ure' a is on the newsstands on the fifteen of March, and we have no pa- tience with the Theatre which keepg

us waiting until the twenty-fifth. We lay in our store of winter flannels in the mellow fall, and woe to the one who, not having previously fortified herself against the snows of February, hopes to provide for her needs as the season impels them. With frostbitten fingers she seeks to buy a muff, but finds the fur counter decked with "lin- gerie" hats — and why ! Because next summer will be upon us in four months ! The world decrees that a man shall have no chance of finding an umbrella after the storm has begun, but must provide for the rainy day while the sun is still shining.

Surely this era of anticipation must be one of hopeful enlightenment. What could better bespeak the progressive- ness of the age than this outdistancing of time itself! Perfection and perfect happiness will, no doubt, be reached, when we have completely drowned the evils and sorrows of the present in the fast-encroaching tide of the future. Shirley Putnam, 1909.

THE LANTERN

BRYN MAWR COLLEGE 1908

Press of

Thb John C. Winston Co.,

Philadelphia, Pa.

EDITORIAL BOARD

MARGARET FRANKLIN, 1908.

Editor-in-Chii

EDNA SHEARER, 1904,

Graduate Editor.

THERESA HELBURN, 1908.

LOUISE FOLEY, 1908.

SHIRLEY PUTNAM, 1909.

KATHARINE LIDDELL, 1910.

BUSINESS BOARD

MAYONE LEWIS, 1908,

Business Manager.

GRACE WOOLDRIDGE, 1909,

Assistant Business Manager.

IZETTE TABER, 1910,

Treasurer.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Frontispiece: The May-daj' Pageant Pleasaunce Baker, 1909

Editorial 7

Fallow Ground Theresa Helburn, 1908 11

Over the Hills Mary Isabelle 0' Sullivan, 1907 21

Alone Content Shepard Nichols, 1899 22

The Sage of Eationalism Maud Elizabeth Temple, 1904 23

Demeter's Lament for Persephone Louise Foley, 1908 37

The Eevelation of a Bond Helen Dudley, 1908 40

Sappho Clara Lyford Smith, 1907 45

The Tie of Blood Martha Plaisted, 1908 46

The Faun Mary Nearing, 1909 56

A Time to Eead Grace Branham, 1910 57

The Cat Georgiana Godclard King, 1896 59

In the Shadow Louise Foley, 1908 60

The Defeat Theresa Helburn, 1908 61

Song from La Princesse Lointaine Margaret Franklin, 1908 66

Yolkslieder Margaret Franklin, 1908 68

In Miirchenland Caroline Reeves Foulke, 1908 68

College Themes 91

Collegiana 96

"Leviore Pleclro" 106

The Lantern

No. 17 BRYN MAWR Spring, 1908

EDITORIAL.

WE are far removed from the time when college women were sufficiently occupied in proving to an incredulous world their ability to deal with philosophy and the higher mathematics. Yet we who are at college now still take pride in the mere repetition of such proofs until the world, whether willing or reluctant, must by this time have learned them by heart. We are slow to perceive that there is no longer any novelty in the process, and that the spur that should be goading us to greater exertion is not the old question — Can a woman go through college? but the new one, asked just as insistently as the other was forty years ago — Is it worth while that she should? If, now and then, to our surprise, we hear such a question put by an older person whom we had thought not at all behind the times, we dismiss it with the assurance that after we have won our degrees we shall soon prove their value beyond possibility of question. The best thing we can do for the present, we say, is to bend all our energies upon our college life and not try to cross our bridges before we come to them.

We build up, therefore, along the boundaries of the campus the walls that shall enclose our world, and commend ourselves for not attempting to scale them. We apply to ourselves Horatian maxims about the beauty of being contented with little, and rate ourselves high in capacity for enjoyment because we do not sigh for fresh fields. We even make a virtue of what is, in reality, the easiest course. We tell ourselves that the four years at college are of inestimable importance as preparation for the years to come; that it is impossible to rate the opportunities they offer too

COPYRIGHTED, tSOS. ALL RIOHT6 RESERVED.

THE LANTERN.

highly, to throw ourselves too unreservedly into the business of spending them to best advantage. But this is not the real reason for the fixedness of the attention we give to our life here; it is only the facile justification we make to ourselves for taking the course we prefer, after inclination has already launched us upon it. For we cannot seriously believe that we are giving ourselves the best training for the future by concentrating all our thoughts upon the present; — if we did we should be as presumptuous as an archer who should be confident of hitting the mark while fixing his gaze not on his target but on his bow and arrow. We are not, in point of fact, thinking of hitting a mark at all; if we were we should keep it in view.

The necessity for foresight would, I think, be more present to us if we did not look upon teaching as the best means by which a woman can prove her college education of practical use to the world. For in order to qualify ourselves for teaching all that is absolutely necessary is to imbibe what we ourselves are taught; we need not puzzle over questions of how we are to convert our knowledge into a useful commodity, — the process is too simple. But in storing up our own learning merely that we may prepare others to acquire it, that they, in their turn, may lead others again up to the same ordeal of entrance examinations, we are, in fact, proving the value of a college course by an endless argument in a circle. It is flatly obvious that a college education is the most valuable preparation for preparing others to receive a college education; we must not let it rest there. What we really need to prove is that the equipment is of value even to those whose activity is beyond the pale of academic protection.

As soon as we recognise this necessity, and decide that if we are not especially fitted for teaching, we had better seek some other occupation, we shall be forced to look carefully ahead of us while we are still in college, that we may train ourselves very definitely, if need be, for the life we expect to lead. As long, however, as most of us look upon the education we are receiving merely as a treasure that we shall carry with us through life and perhaps help others to acquire, we shall feel justified in fixing our attention with the traditional academic narrowness on our college careers. And the pleasantness of the path we travel is always enough to keep our spirits high; we need not look to the end of our journey for encouragement.

EDITORIAL. 9

Here at Bryn MawT we are not, it is true, cut off from visions of the larger world, of more vital activities. It is not the narrowness of our horizon but the narrowness of our gaze — as if we were perversely looking through the wrong end of a telescope — that is to be deplored. Instead of constantly trying to relate the college world to the larger world, we are more apt to seek out for notice elsewhere only such points as have some application or parallel here. We look upon the distant view as a pano- ramic display, which we may gaze on, appreciate, discuss, but with which we quite forget that we are ever to have a personal concern. When, as often happens, we make an excursion into the country ahead of us, we enter upon it as upon a sort of Campus Martius for the exercise of our wits. We look upon politics as material for debates and argumentative papers, upon books as models for style or as a field in which we may display our turn for sophistry. With judicial aloofness we line up the arguments pro and con, or, in the spirit of a lawyer, we are often glad to employ our wits in supporting the side for which we think there is least to be said. Present crises in the world's thought and action affect us no more than past ones; we are so far removed even from what is now going on about us that twentieth-century labour struggles, socialism, woman suffrage, — all these things have in reality no sharper edge of immediate significance than the wars of the Middle Ages. "As if,"" says Bacon, "there were sought in knowledge a couch whereon to rest a restless spirit; or a tarasse for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down with a fair prospect; or a fort or commanding ground for strife and contention; or a shop for profit or sale; and not a rich storehouse for the glory of the creator, and the relief of man's estate."

In our own narrow world, on the other hand, there is nothing so trivial that it has not for us a tang of importance. A world in miniature,. we are fond of calling the place; and we suppose that if we achieve any sort of success here we are playing a prelude, as it were, to success in the larger world. But this is by no means a world in miniature. The differ- ence is not one of size alone; for we have not here, even on a propor- tionately small scale, any such mountains and ravines, streams and precipices, as form the striking features of greater landscapes. College is a world of difficulties eliminated and problems solved. Here our work i-. for the most, part, mapped out for us; if it is not always easy, there is

10 THE LANTERN.

at least always the simplification of knowing what we have to do. Social intercourse, too, is obviously simplified, not only by the fact that we are all of the same age and sex and engaged in the same pursuit, but further by the freedom with which each can drift into the group to which by 'character and interests she naturally belongs; we need not, as in other places, make constant efforts to conform to the tastes and ideas of persons unlike ourselves.

All these differences we should keep in mind if we really regarded these four years as a means, not an end. "Gras ingens iterabimas aequor" is a reflection that should heighten the gayety of the banquet only if the ships are known to be fully equipped for the voyage. We are all too content, while strolling in the shade of collegiate Gothic walls, to forget for the time that there is any world but this one; or else to think of this one, not as a point of vantage from which we may survey the ground ahead before we take to the highway, but as a pleasant garden without the city walls, where it is sweet to linger, letting no wandering thought fly to regions unexplored.

FALLOW GROUND. 11

FALLOW GROUND.

THE scene is a large, light, sparsely furnished room, which gives the impression of being a cross between a comfortable office and an uncomfortable living room. At the right is a large business desk, on which stands a neat row of books and several orderly piles of papers arranged beneath paper weights. On the opposite side of tha room the wall is half concealed by a great many book shelves covered with a varied assortment of reading matter, obviously ranging from volumes on law, philosophy, and sociology to the ten-cent periodicals. Near a solid looking table in the centre stands the one comfortable easy chair in the room — the others are straight-backed and forbidding. There are two doors visible, one on the left opening into the hall of the house and one on the right which leads into an inner room. There is, moreover, at the back a square recessed window provided with an uncushioned window seat. This is at present occupied by a young girl, Honoria Yane, who has managed, by leaning against the wall and curling her feet up under her, to make herself comfortable or else perhaps to forget the inconvenience in a book. This is more probably the case, for a gentle knock at the door fails to disturb her, and only when it is rather noisily pushed open does she drop her book on the seat and her feet on the ground and assume a straight conventional posture. By this time Cudwith Moore has entered. He is a tall, very thin man, somewhere about thirty, with a rather languid but very graceful carriage. Honoria, a well built girl, with a clear skin and fine features, and a suggestion of immense vitality about her, has risen as she recognises the identity of the intruder.

Cudwith. — Honoria ! I didn't know you were here. They told me Jerry was out and I came up to wait.

Honoria. — I sometimes appropriate Jerry's room in his absence. No one ever comes in here, so it's a refuge from interruptions.

Cudwith. — That is not over tactful. Have you no welcome for this interruption ?

Honokia (laughing). — Of course. Only T don't want to be senti- mental.

12 THE LANTERN.

Cudwith. — An apprehension you have caught from the over-practical Jerry! (Going to her.) Well, I shall not be sentimental, only sensible. (He kisses her.)

Honoeia (gaily). — I'm not a bit like Jerry. It is because I have an over-weening tendency toward sentimentality, not aversion for it, that I am afraid of it. Oh, I am glad to see you !

Cudwith. — Well, what was the absorbing occupation I broke in upon?

Honoria. — A book.

Cudwith (turning to the window-seat on which a pile of magazines is now discovered and picking one up). — Not these, I hope.

Honoeia. — No, I have to use those for cushions. Jerry's room is so inconveniently ascetic.

Cudwith (throws down the magazine he has been looking through with an air of disgust). — Soft enough, I should imagine! Well?

Honoeia. — You have guessed.

Cudwith. — You are flattering, but I have not.

Honoeia (pointing to the book that has dropped on the floor). — There it is. (Cudwith stoops to pick it up. She moves forward and sits in the easy chair.)

Cudwith. — -Oh !

Honoeia. — Is it sentimental to read your books over again, now?

Cudwith (pleased). — Silly child!

Honoeia. — Do you know, I like them even better on a second reading.

Cudwith (absently, as he looks through the book in his hand). — Do you?

Honoeia. — Yes, they wear well. And then of course I'm so much more interested in you. Won't you tell me something, Cudwith, about this new thing you are doing? Jerry has just mentioned it.

Cudwith (putting the book down quickly). — Oh! he has?

Honoria. — Just enough to rouse my curiosity. I've come to you for the rest.

Cudwith. — Of course. (He leans over the back of her chair.) Well, how shall I begin? Oh, the heroine's name is Honoria.

Honoeia. — Eeally ?

Cudwith. — That is, if you don't object ?

Honoeia. — Object ! It's delightful. But go on.

FALLOW GROUND. 13

Cudwith. — Well then — but how much has Jerry told you ?

Honoria. — Nothing, save that it exists.

Cudwith. — Ah! (Ee sits near her.) It doesn't even do that. It's scarcely begun. It concerns a man who falls under the influence of Buddhism. His childhood is bare, gloomy, hampered, and his ceaseless attacks on the walls of limitation that surround him end only in futile pain. Through it all he cherishes a love of beauty that has always been especially fascinated by the splendid color of the East. But later his sudden dazzling glimpse of Eastern beauty is followed by a finer perception of its inherent ugliness. In his disillusionment he is ready for pessimism. Nirvana becomes the only solution.

Honoria. — I'm not sure that I follow you as I should. It is a trifle vague.

Cudwith. — Oh, don't ask me to be concrete and detailed at this stage, Honoria. It is hard enough for me to discuss it at all.

Honoria. — Forgive me. I should have known. But Cudwith, it is so absorbing to me. I had no idea you were interested in Buddhism. Why did you never tell me of it ?

Cudwith. — JBeeause there were other things to talk of — as there are now.

Honoria. — Reproved again. Cudwith, you must not expect me to know all your literary idiosyncrasies, even though I have known you for years and we have been engaged —

Cudwith. — Three days.

Honoria. — Yes, and (do you know?) I have felt outrageously wicked all that time.

Cudwith. — Why so?

Honoria. — Because of Jerry.

Cudwith. — Oh, Jerry shall know in good time. Do you find no pleasure in keeping our secret to ourselves for a while? I find a great deal. And there are other reasons. Just now with this book on my hands I want to keep a clear head. Jerry is my friend and my publisher. I have to see a great deal of him at present and I don't want to complicate the relationship. It is confusing. Call it eccentric if you will, but let me have my way.

Honoria. — Do you know, Cudwith, in our case the usual situation

14 THE LANTEEN.

seems to be reversed. Instead of baffling you as they say a woman should, I spend my time trying to keep up with your subtleties. Well, do what you will. I suppose there are inevitable disadvantages in being engaged to a genius.

Cddwith. — And I suppose you know you are charmingly absurd and absurdly charming. (The sound of a motor is heard outside.) Here's Jerry now. Bun away and let me talk business to him for a time; but don't forget to come back again.

Honoeia (at the door). — And you will give me a stick of pepper- mint candy and a kiss for being so good. Thank you, Grandpapa. (She goes out. After a moment Cudwith follows her, hut returns almost imme- diately with Jerry Morgan. Jerry is a small , thin man, with very bright eyes set in a face rather suggestive of an alert fowl. His quick, nervous gestures carry out the impression.)

Jerry. — Sorry to be so late, Cudwith. Couldn't help it. Hope you found something to keep you busy.

CuDwrra. — Oh, yes. You weren't long.

Jerry. — I left the papers out for you on my desk. Did you notice them? (He sits at the desk. Cudwith, his back turned, is lighting a cigarette from a match box on the table.)

Cudwith. — No, I didn't look. I thought they were probably locked away in one of those innumerable little drawers.

Jerry. — Well, here they are, and we might as well get to work at once. (He fills and lights a short stubby pipe as he talks.) I've mapped out a pretty clear scheme of chapters here. You remember all I told you.

Cudwith (carrying a chair up to the desk). — Yes. (With a Hash of recollection.) Only generally, that is, I don't think I ever really grasped the details.

Jerry.— I thought you had better ruminate for a while on the general idea. Besides, most of the finer points must be left for the dialogue itself to settle. Speaking of dialogue, don't be chary of epigrams in the case of the hero.

Cudwith. — Maxwell Chesborough by name.

Jerry. — Call him what you will, but remember the public is keen for paradoxes at present. Moreover, it suits the ease. Now, how much do you know about Buddhism?

FALLOW GROUND. 15

Cudwith. — In comparison with the average reader, something to boast of; in comparison with the average Buddhist, nothing at all.

Jerry (rising and crossing to the booh shelves). — I expected as much, and I've provided you with some fairly enlightening literature on the subject. It will help for atmosphere.

Cudwith (whose attitude all along has been one of tolerant con- tempt).— I shall, to say the least, make myself conspicuous by coming out as the champion of the eastern faith.

Jerry. — But you're not its champion, you know. In the end its inadequacy is proved by the heroine

Cudwith. — Honoria Massinger by name.

Jerry. — Honoria? Why Honoria?

Cudwith. — Why not?

Jerry. — No reason. Does she know?

Cudwith. — Yes. Surely I owe her that tribute

Jerry. — Owe her?

Cudwith. — I mean it is only a due compliment to a woman I have known so long and so pleasantly.

Jerry. — Humph ! Four years. Well, what were we talking about ? Oh, you as the champion of Buddhism. But it doesn't matter anyway. Notoriety only increases the selling list.

Cudwith. — There's no need to be disgustingly sordid.

Jerry. — Surely not. I simply bow to the spirit of the age. What i.- art without advertising?

Cudwith (sadly) .■ — And you have the makings of a genius in you, Jerry! With all your skill in that line and all your other cleverness, why don't you express yourself directly to the public instead of making me the vehicle? (Rising.) Pah! I wish you would. Sometimes I sicken at the whole affair and at myself above all. I'll see myself in Grub Street before I write any more of your confounded little

Jerry. — My dear fellow, how absurd you are! I can't write. I make no pretense of it. Is it my fault I see life in situations while you see it in words?

Cudwith (bitterly). — Perfect words, you must admit.

Jerry. — I do without hesitation. Witness the way you take my poor skeletons —

16 THE LANTEBN.

Cudwith. — And clothe thein in such alluring garments that, as you would say with your blatant frankness, the public is willing to pay one dollar and forty-eight cents apiece for them, net.

Jerry. — You are regarding a perfectly justifiable partnership in a false, theatric light.

Cudwith. — If it's a partnership, why don't you share the credit or the blame?

Jerry. — -I shoulder the responsibility; isn't that enough? Besides, yours is the important contribution. It is form that really counts. What is plot after all but a mere plagiarism from life?

Cudwith. — Ah, yes. And style but a petty theft from grammars ?

Jerry (impatiently). — Well, if you don't like it, why did you ever begin? You wouldn't be in Grub Street without me. Look at your first book, the one that really opened my eyes to you. That had immense possibilities.

Cudwith (miserably). — Ah, my first book — yes. I — I think it must have used me up. I haven't had a decent idea since.

Jerry (cheerfully). — Well, you see Providence evidently made us for each other and Providence threw us together, so there's an end.

Cudwith. — Another crime laid at poor Providence's door. Forgive my beastly mood. If you don't mind I'll take these papers and a book or so and look over them in the inner study.

Jerry. — Certainly not. Here you are. I think you'll find this most worth while. (Cudwith takes the preferred book and papers and goes to the door on the right.) Oh, you'll find a decanter in the cabinet. Here's the key. (He detaches a key from a keyring and throivs it across to Cudwith.)

Cudwith. — Thanks. (He goes out. Jerry rises and stands absorbed in thought till he suddenly realises that his pipe has gone out. In crossing to the table for a match his eye is caught by the magazines on the window- seat. He sends a quick, puzzled glance at the door through which Cudwith has disappeared and then with a smile begins to finger the periodicals. Suddenly he finds a tortoise shell hair pin on the seat beside them. He picks it up and moves slowly forward, holding it in his hand, when the sound of footsteps approaching the outer door is heard. At this he delib- erately pockets the hair pin, sits down at his desk, and begins to write a letter. Some one knocks at the door.)

FALLOW GROUND. 17

Jerry. — Is that you, Honoria? Come in.

Honoria. — Yes, it's I. Isn't Cudwith here?

Jeeht (who has risen as she enters, resuming his seat). — He's in there at work. Do you want to see him ?

Honoria. — Not particularly. (She lightly kisses his bald spot as she passes behind him.) It gives the house a decided flavor to have Cudwith come here to work, doesn't it ? In future days we shall be quite historic.

Jerry (laughing) . — Oh, not quite so bad as that, I should say.

Honoria. — You mean you object to literary pilgrims?

Jerry. — I mean I object to Cudwith's already being spoken of as their idol.

Honoria. — You don't think he deserves it?

Jerry. — Do you?

Honoria (like a child). — I asked first.

Jerry. — Well, there's no denying his style. He has an excellent com- mand of language and a fine, subtle power of expression.

Honoria. — And that's just what makes the vitality of his substance so remarkable. One would so naturally expect it to have something remote or scholastic about it. But it hasn't, it's strong and vigorous. He seems to combine wonderfully the ardour of the fighter and the calmness of the onlooker.

Jerry. — This you get from his books — but the man himself?

Honoria (looking at him half questioningly, half divining). — Oh, of course, you can't get all that from him in casual contact. He is not a man who gives himself readily, even to his intimates, I should think. The deepest personalities are usually — don't you think so? — those that find disclosure most difficult.

Jerry. — No, you have fallen into a very common fallacy. In reality the more a person has, the more he gives.

Honoria (puzzled) . — You mean to disparage Cudwith.

Jerry. — Not at all. His first book, Fallow Ground, struck me as quite remarkable. There was something very fresh and fine about it, and the point of view was delightfully unusual.

Honoria. — Ah, you really liked Fallow Ground?

Jehky. — Yes. Didn't you?

Honoria. — Somewhat. But it's slight compared with his later things.

18 THE LANTEBN.

Jeeet. — You feel the man's growth?

Honoeia (annoyed at the note of attach in Jerry's tone). — Surely. But what are you after, Jerry? You speak as if you were pulling some dead author to pieces. What right have we, anyway, to sit here and discuss his character ? It's disgraceful !

Jeeet. — Nonsense. That's another fallacy. Every right, because just at present it's the most interesting subject we can think of. There's very little worth talking about in the world except people, and surely it's better to sit in judgment on their characters than on their clothes. (Seri- ously.) Won't you acknowledge, Honoria, that Cudwith's character is the subject most interesting to you at present?

Honoeia (after a pause). — Yes — and that is the reason for my not wishing to discuss it.

Jeeey. — Honoria, Cudwith has asked }'ou to marry him?

Honoeia.— Yes.

Jeeey. — And you have said you would?

Honoeia. — Yes.

Jeeey (rising). — You might have told me.

Honoeia (following him). — I know, Jerry dear, I wanted to. But, oh — I shouldn't have, now. Cudwith did not wish it.

Jeeey. — Why not?

Honoeia. — I — I don't know. I didn't quite understand. He said he wanted to wait till he had finished the book he is working on now.

Jeeey. — Oh — he did!

Honoeia (pleading). — Jerry, don't be angry. You must allow for Cudwith's eccentricity. Won't you say anything nice to me, now you know? (As Jerry does not answer she begins to grow angry.) You won't? You don't approve. I don't know why, but I shall not attempt to defend Cudwith. He is perfectly able to do that for himself. (She goes to the door of the inner study.)

Jeeey (starting from his reverie). — Honoria, I

Honoeia (opening the door). — Cudwith! (He appears on the threshold.) Cudwith, I have told Jerry of our engagement. (After a moment's pause on the part of the two men she adds, ivith a glance at Jerry.) He wishes to congratulate you.

Cudwith. — You should have let me do that, Honoria.

FALLOW GROUND. 19

Honoria. — I know. I couldn't help it. I will leave you together now.

Jerky. — Don't go.

Honoria (with a glance at Cudwith, who neither answers nor looks at her). — Cudwith wishes it. You may call me if you want me. (She crosses to the door of the study. Jerry ceremoniously opens it for her — then, shutting it, turns and faces Cudwith. He rakes his eyes. The hvo men look at each other in silence for a few moments.)

Jerry.— Well ?

Cudwith. — You said it was perfectly justifiable, you remember.

Jerry. — All the more reason she should not be kept in ignorance of it.

Cudwith. — Thafs impossible. It needn't go on, but that's impos- sible.

Jerry (drily). — But also necessary, however.

Cudwith. — You would suffer by it as much as I !

Jerry. — Perhaps. But that's my affair.

Cudwith. — You are in love with her yourself !

Jerry (unable to conceal his contempt). — Good Lord! Cudwith, how

can vou

Cudwith (breaking out angrily). — Well, who's responsible for this anyway? You invented the scheme! You lured me into it! And now it's your affair to get me out.

Jerry (patiently). — I don't suppose I can ask you to be reasonable, but listen. (He goes on as if he were explaining to a small child.) That's exactly what I am trying to do. Can't you see it's preposterous that Honoria should marry you with her eyes closed ?

Cudwith. — I can't tell her.

Jerry. — Then I will, and as gently as I can. If she cares for you and not your work she'll get over it.

Cudwith (with a ray of hope). — Ah!

Jerry. — And if she doesn't, then for God's sake swallow your medi- cine like a man.

Cudwith (impotcntly miserable). — Can't you see this is all your fault ?

Jerry. — Perhaps I am partly to blame. And at all events I'll do the best for you I know how. Now, will you go?

20 THE LANTEEN.

Cudwith. — I suppose I must. (He moves slowly to the door, then turns impulsively.) I can't go. I'm going to wait outside. (He goes out. Jerry waits a minute, then he slowly crosses to the other door and opens it.)

Jerry. — Honoria! (Honoria enters.)

Honoria. — What is it ? Where is Cudwith ?

Jerry. — He has gone. I want to speak to you. Won't you sit down ?

Honoria (sitting in the easy chair). — What is the matter? (Then, quickly.) You are going to tell me something terrible about Cudwith. I won't hear it !

Jerry (lightly). — Don't be absurd, Honoria. What I have to say doesn't really concern Cudwith at all — only certain illusions you have about his writing.

Honoria. — What do you mean?

Jerry. — I mean simply that the substance of his books which you professed to admire so much isn't entirely his. I must claim some share of your praise.

Honoria (slowly). — You gave him his material?

Jerry. — Yes — but, of course, only in outline. He worked it up and made something of it — so the credit is really his. (He waits for her to speak, but she only stares at him with a strange, disturbing look in her eyes, and he goes on to drown the silence.) The fine work, the delicate shadings are his — and the dialogue, you know. And after all it was my fault he began. I suggested it and I suppose, as he said, I lured him into it. For he has stuff in himself, you know. Look at the promise of Fallow Ground. (He goes on eagerly developing this new point.) I hadn't a finger in that. It showed me his incipient greatness and made me mark him for the man to develop my cherished schemes. I suppose I've simply delayed and hampered him for the time being. When I leave him alone he'll probably fulfil his original promise with the added skill he has gained in the interim. Don't look at me like that, Honoria. Can't you see what I mean?

Honoria (dully). — Yes, I understand, Jerry, but you don't. There is no promise there. There is only a shell that is empty and — and de- ceives. And (pitifully) oh, it pains!

Jerry. — Tell me. I don't see.

OVER THE HILLS. 21

Honoria (passionately) . — I know what your share in his work means. It means the thought drawn from your experience, it means the feeling taken from your emotions, it means the life springing from your vitality. I know because I gave him all that for Fallow Ground.

Jerky. — You ! (Honoria covers her face with her hands and remains silent. Jerry walks slowly lack to the window.) You! What a fool I was never to have suspected (turning) — a fool — a fool — and, by Jove! what a situation! I beg your pardon, Honoria. (He looks out of the window, starts, draws back, then slowly and deliberately draws down the shade. Honoria remains motionless in her chair.)

Theresa Helium, 1908.

OVER THE HILLS.

The winds that blow at sunset

Across my meaner years, They blow away the city streets,

They blow away my fears.

The hills we know of rise again Up to the gay March west; The untouched world lies open And the farthest way seems best.

Mary Isabelle O'Sullivan, 1907.

22

THE LANTERN.

ALONE.

All alone I sit While the fire dies : While the swallow cries, While the lamps are lit, All alone I sit.

All alone I sit, And my thoughts are loud While the shadows crowd Where my fancies flit. All alone I sit.

All alone I sit : Once a heart was mine, Once a love like wine To my lips was held; And I drank untired, And I lived inspired.

0 the rapture knelled! 0 the dream dispelled! Now with fingers knit All alone I sit.

All alone I sit.

Ah ! the fire burns bright

Where they laugh to-night,

Sitting side by side

In the evening-tide.

Unadorned, unfit,

All alone I sit.

All alone I sit.

How the charred logs crack

As the ash drops back.

In a dark unlit

All alone I sit.

Content Shepard Nichols, 1899.

THE SAGE OF RATIONALISM. 23

THE SAGE OF RATIONALISM.

H. Taine : Sa vie et sa correspondance.

La vie n'est plus une fete dont on jouit, mais un concours oil, Von rivalise . . . plus un salon oil Von cause, mats un laboratoire o-u Von pense. Croyez- vous qu'un laboratoire on un concours soient des endroits gaisf Les traits y sant contractus, les yeux fatigue's, le front soucieux, les joues p&les.

Causeries de Lundi. XIII.

THE four stout yet discreetly edited volumes of Taine's correspon- dence,, of which the singiilarly attaching last volume has only recently been published, form a long, a touching and informing, commentary on the words of veiled apology and generalised con- fession I have quoted from one of his earliest essays. In the fifty years since they were written, the young apostle of scientific methods has himself in a sort gone over to the ranks, and has inherited the great, though damaged, prestige, of the academic and classic philosophers he was busy at this time with undermining. His scientific heresies we have all encoun- tered as stubborn superstitions, as a clinging academic bondage in our- selves. He contributed to stamp his era, — -at the least to pin a label upon it ; the era has apparently passed.

Conceivably now, however, in place of the battered doctorial bonnet and dingy professorial toga, there is ready for him a garland not tran- siently green. Sainte-Beuve, who liked even his "thinkers" with not over- much of effort on their brows, might have ranged him on the simple showing of the Letters, among a certain line of French classics — the small transfigured band of the informal moralists, not uncongenial to Taine's inmost preference and piety. La Bruyere is his high forefather; Montes- quieu, Vauvenargues, de Tocqueville, it is surely not unfair to name as at least his collateral relations. De Tocqueville in especial and obviously de- fines with precision "the moment and the milieu" that ended with Taine's troubled first appearance upon a stage of thought and performance the Coup d'Etat had swept dismally clean; by contrast it defines his own. Crushed in body and spirit, the delicate and vanquished patrician left the

24 THE LANTEEN.

painful rummaging of national archives, the trial and strict summary justice upon Ancien Beginie and Revolution, to a haler, and a more indomitable, if scarcely a more cheerful, or a more sincere and conscientious, intelligence. The Coup d'Etat that for the moment seemed to finish what the Terror and the Empire had begun, drove the one critic into premature retirement; it clouded the other's beginnings. Its shadow, far more than that of thought itself, sicklied o'er the lives of both. It explains in itself the pallid cheeks and anxious brows.

I mention particularly this natural affiliation because the more con- ventional formulas for French talent and character have no natural and complete application to the personal quality and manner Taine's Letters at any rate exhibit, howsoever it may seem convenient to docket still the main body of his hitherto published work. "Gallic salt'4 is somewhat notably absent; so is "Celtic sensibility." No doubt there is present sufficient structure, order, and more than sufficient straight-line advance. These things it is easy to call, as Taine calls them, Latin; — at least after him, it is easy. Products of system and discipline, of honest parentage and sane early training, it is perhaps as intelligible to call them. They are seen as much in Scotland as in France.

There may be some justice in addition in remarking how with Taine, as with his natural literary ancestors, the simple resources of Paris in books and men, museums and associates, went for a very great deal. La Bruyere implies Moliere and Saint-Simon, Bourdaloue and Madame de Sevigne, — in a word, half Versailles and le grand siecle, merely now to fairly understand him; Vauvenargues, Christian and Stoic, still agonised and schemed and borrowed merely to get to Paris. Taine, vowed already to austerity of mind and body, to consuming his own smoke even, in Puritanic and bourgeois recognition that this is a modern law of life and success, Taine, even, exiled to the provinces, to mud and gloom and to colleagues whose failure to have more than assez a" esprit was to all intents failure to have any, found tobacco, Hegel, and music no sure receipt for manly fortitude. But due allowance once decently taken for our poor and inconsistent human nature and youthful tendency to dramatise something, if only sterility and ennui, the normally impressionable reader is struck by a notable evenness of tone. The high and tonic ethics of the suffering schoolboy, and the despondent professor, remain those of the suffering

THE SAGE OF RATIONALISM.

celebrity; we have to do with the moral history of a sage under modern conditions.

For if Mill was the "Saint of nationalism,"— Gladstone's phrase is more than verbally striking, — weak in the saintly vagaries, the hysterical crises and weaknesses, strong in sanctity's sense of election, and all within the pale of Logic, Taine was surely its Sage. While even a proclaimed disciple of Mill, the late Leslie Stephen, felt impelled, when writing of Mill, to pause and consider that "a philosopher owes more than is generally per- ceived to the moral quality that goes with masculine vigor" and due acquaint- ance with the masculine passions; and while Sainte-Beuve, quasi-maternal as is his forbearance towards de Tocqueville's almost feminine sensibility and fragility, still can never take him quite gravely as a personage, Taine should satisfy the plainest men. He was neither mystic nor martyr; neither "kid glove apostle," "porcelain all through," as Mrs. Grote said of de Tocqueville, nor doctrinaire. He had passions, and a very human bent of will. Both he was able to control; the passion for truth was ascendant, and the will was turned to pursuit of truth. As honest as Mill, and as stainless and blameless as de Tocqueville, his worldly affairs were naturally much less apt for the display of a delicate sense of virtue and patriotic obligation than those of either of the other philosophers. He had neither a country estate nor an East India Company berth. He had to work hard for his living, often in weariness and suffering, — to teach even after he was famous. Yet he married, discreetly and happily; he had children; and though not without much fatigue and the usual losses, he managed to fill out in fair prosperity a fair measure of his three score years and ten. His probity, independence, and good judgment — qualities "rational" in the everyday sense — but elevated the common lot in his own.

It cannot be particularly profitable to push deeper or carry farther the well-worn question of Taine's perhaps rather bourgeois fibre. A majority of such Philistines would save France, as England could endure, her social order unshaken, a large body of such doctrinaires as Mill.

And it is wholly too late or too early to fret oneself with defining Taine's rank among thinkers. The tide of methodology ran high; now it runs low. Meanwhile a large body of practical folk, for whom chiefly it is worth the while of thinkers to think, use as innocently, as blithely, as M. Jourdain his prose, Taine's broader and juster formulas. But these

26 THE LANTERN.

preoccupied and sensible and straight-seeking "men of action" are not the ones to whom it is growing daily more important to reiterate what at the time of their first brilliant literary exploitation Walter Bagehot was at pains to remind us, that "national characteristics," namely, as commonly understood and handled, "are the greatest commonplaces in the world." The time is certainly passed when they can be worn as literary feathers in the cap. Taine himself was only too conscious that a general idea, like a ready-made label, has for feeble or ill-furnished intelligences great and dangerous attractions, ^productive of mental paralysis or idle nervous coruscations. In a less wary moment of glory in his own athletic prowess he exclaims that "Germans make intolerable hypotheses; Frenchmen make none; and Englishmen do not even suspect that any could be made."

But Frenchmen learned the pastime very promptly from him; and they have ever since found no better vehicle for eloquence and esprit than a battledore and shuttlecock demonstration in connection with these same battered general ideas.

Meanwhile we in America, having heard by way of Arnold and Eng- land a goading, fascinating gospel of Grace by Ideas, that seemed to have much reference to Taine, and to France; and Taine having been put into sprightly English and upon open shelves even in High Schools, — we Americans have fallen to applying his hypotheses with abundant good- will and energy. They have long done us yeoman service as pegs to sustain our own adventurous disquisitions and dissertations, and inci- dentally in saving our brains for the serious business of inventing, and making money, or "appreciating" things overseas.

All this cannot well be helped. We cannot all attain to ideas for ourselves, even with the best intentions. What we yet can quite readily accomplish, if only we care to take the time to read now and then in some patience a few s\ich records as this of intellectual achievement, is a simpler, a more grateful, spirit towards those ideas by whose grace indeed, and beyond our knowledge of them, we live. Such vital ideas above all as that mental labor is not wholly futile, and that perception of truth, in some measure, rewards its faithful pursuit.

I shall run through the volumes of his Letters less on the outlook for the rare resonance and bravery of thought which still remind here and there of the splendid and strident Centurion of the English Literature,

THE SAGE OP RATIONALISM. 27

dazzling into passing subjugation a hitherto dreary province, than for traits of the citizen, and tokens of the sage, at work in his "laboratory of ideas."

There is one really capital story of Renan, which Taine says "m'a paru sublime" (August, 1871). I quote this brief trait des mceurs un- translated. It is worth while at the start to be conscious that the critic's high and austere function was performed through the dubious splendours of the Second Empire, — as trying and disciplinary an hour for heroic intellectualising as any gallant spirit could require.

Vous savez que Renan, en Juillet, 1870, est alle au cap Nord avec le prince Napolfion. II a trouve sur le navire Mile. L., jeune actrice que le prince honorait de ses bontes. Tous dinaient ensemble. Au bout de quelques jours Mile. L. prit le prince k part, lui dgclara que "sa conscience etait troublee, que c'Gtait mal a lui de la faire diner avec un renegat, un impie."

In connection with Eenan, this is an acute yet a very sympathetic note-book analysis. The two famous critics had just been, for the first time, much thrown together.

He is above all a man passionately possessed by his thought, — nervously obsessed. He kept walking up and down my room as if it were a cage, with the gestures, the incisive, eager, impetuous tone that belongs to surging, rushing invention. He is very different from Berthelot, who remains still and quiet like an ox, bearing toil with patience, chewing the cud of his idea and resting upon it. . . . Renan is not of "the world." He doesn't know how to talk with women ; he has to have specialists to talk with. He has no tact for seizing and using opportunities, for intrigue. He is above all a man charged with his idea, a priest full of his God. It is thus that he esteems himself, — and autant qu'il faut.

Taine finds him, too, without philosophical principles, with "impres- sions";— the next critical generation lies already in the bosom of the last. But still in the lecture room he rather gave, — too much, Taine thought, — "a priestly benediction" along with plain lessons in construing Hebrew that emptied the benches of curious and idle mondaines.

Here is another note-book definition as suggestive for contemporary preciosity :

All our criticism seems to me a thing belonging peculiarly to France. It Is not, as Gaston Paris alleges, simple rhetoric and agreeable fantasy. The

28 THE LANTERN.

basis of its tone and temper is found in the fine intelligence of Sainte-Beuve, Stendhal, MerimS, Balzac. . . . The author is a psychologist, in ardent pursuit of moral information. His centre is intimate acquaintance with the human intelligence and the human heart. Hence his style, — that is, a form delicate and accurately shaded, — is a simple necessity for him. If he writes well it is not merely for the sake of writing well ; it is precisely that he may render the shadings, and make his pictures genuine portraits. Psychological portraits, that is the phrase exactly to express our need and our talent.

There is possibly present a slight, if well-warranted, professional arrogance. Here is a study, after as excellent documents, of that opposite spirit, the philologist. Indeed more than even Kenan or Sainte-Beuve or any other, he held his German friend, the Orientalist, Frank Woephe, worthy of respect.

But according to Gaston Paris I am wrong iu regarding as self-abnegation and distinguished virtue the life and pursuits (la conduite) of the true philo- logist. . . . His is not simply the masculine virtue, the zeal of the stone- cutter dreaming of the future cathedral, but a passion, a veritable instinct and taste. . . . Gaston Paris says he is not interested in the individual, in the awkward and rasping voice of the barbarian laming a Latin articulation, nor in the costume and attitude of jongleur reciting a clwnson de geste at a feudal court. . . . The vowel itself is the point . . . and the laws revealed.

In these extracts we have of course simply the celebrated "method," if not in all its splendid panoply, at least without its worst aspect of rigidity, so to speak, in its making, where its value is most positive. Some- what more in outline of its preparation may be in place.

The first volume of the Correspondence is entitled Jeunesse — Youth. But one must not look for the ordinary elements of that period, for color, or motion. Yet youth for Taine was not without a sympathetic bloom. One ma}' quote the delicate verses of Victor de Laprade, less in reproach than as the natural picture of the boyhood of a gentle French sage, and of French education in ideally typical expression:

II est beau d'etre un raisonneur, De tout lire et de tout entendre, De remporter les prix d'honneur ! C'est, je crois, un plus grand bonheur, D'etre un enfant, aimant et tendre.

THE SAGE OF RATIONALISM. 29

Taine, like both Sainte-Beuve and Renan, lost bis father in his early childhood; remporter les prix d'honneur was not without practical obligation. His patrimony amounted to 1200 francs a year. For the rest, he had an intelligent and wholly devoted mother, and capably sympathetic uncles and aunts. He was his sister's tutor until and even after he entered the Ecole norm-ale superieure, where his gentle and domesticated bearing won him the nickname of ''Mademoiselle."

A great deal of speculation has been spent on the probable conse- quences, had Mill been sent to a public school and a university. Both Taine and de Tocqueville were so sent, and besides winning scholastic dis- tinctions, they made devoted, appreciative friends. Taine was wretched at first, and shortly exceedingly happly. "The first by a long way in all classes and in all examinations," according to the Professor of Philosophy, M. Vacherot, who left a memorandum analysis of him quite clairvoyant in its delicate prevision of just what the man would be famed for and attacked for being, Taine was none the less cherished by his brilliant fellow-students with warmth and fidelity. The infatuation of and for the dazzling Prevost-Paradol, the tender affection for the finer natured Edouard de Suckau, show pretty well Taine's natural human gamut; with these two friends, both of whom died early, the younger Taine seems most himself. The letters from and to Prevost-Paradol have become a legend not unlike that of Mill's precocity.

It is unnecessary to recapitulate the many grievous academic disap- pointments Taine suffered from politics and excessive originality. But much of his later nervous suffering, if not due as he sometimes fancies precisely to hope deferred, has yet its quite natural explanations in mental work taken as opiate in the provinces, and in efforts to circumvent failure on tbe principle dear to Vauvenargues and other honest men, "that the best way to win success is still to deserve it." Thirst for more scientific knowledge — anatomy in view of psychology — and a dumbing laryngitis together led shortly to his complete retirement as a Professor, and his return to Paris again.

Meantime the volume on the classic French philosophers, prize essays written for Academic notice, the Voyage aux Pyrenees — in quest of health and to pay its cost — and finally the "History of English Literature," were written in intervals between long wastes of cerebral exhaustion and pain,

30 THE LANTEBN.

lasting in extreme severity for five or six years, and in mitigated form for his life.

Like others even of the sages, he traces now and then the vicious circles of nervous depression. Knowledge only is valuable, and knowledge is productive of headache. When one's head aches, one cannot think clearly. Ergo, knowledge is unattainable, and the world is a painful enigma. However, there is always Marcus Aurelius, the Evangelist of the weary and wise.

In the full flush of fame, on the practical completion of the English Literature, he writes these introspective notes :

Perhaps I am mistaken, deceived, and am following a deceitful course. The Critics generally say about me : "Oversystematic, forced." They have said this, even when well-disposed. One ought to pay great attention to, and to place great reliance in, the general impression of the public.

He resumes his fatigue from writing:

Probably my manner of writing is contrary to Nature, since it does me such harm. . . . When I study myself it strikes me that my state of mind has changed, that I have destroyed in myself a talent, that of the orator and rhetorician. My ideas no longer take on logical connection as formerly ; I have flashes of insight, strong sensations, perceptions, words and images, — in a word, my state of mind is much more that of an artist than of a serious writer. I struggle against both tendencies.

He describes the method of the English Literature, —

Paint like an artist, and construct like a philosopher. The idea in itself is just and sound ; moreover, when one can fairly put it into practice it produces powerful effects. I owe my success to this, but it unhinges the mind, and it is not one's duty to destroy oneself.

There is fortunately a natural issue-r-a natural and a logical also, from the horns of this cruel, but perhaps not uncommon, dilemma. Taine, like many another since Thucydides and no doubt some before him, took refuge in historical study. There intervened a moment of exhaustion, and of various flirtations with fiction, travel notes, and social sketches after the model of La Bruyere. These notes of Paris and London are not without real and lasting value, — but Taine's head ached, he liked domestic life, and the necessary high spirits are now and then considerably forced.

THE SAGE OF RATIONALISM. 31

The Taine of the last two volumes of the Letters has the note of authority and certainly the note of distinction that is wanting in "M. Graindorge." The assumption of the role was imperfect; the choice of the masque, inapt.

In such passage as Taine's, moreover, from the "History of English Literature" to the Origines de la France contemporainej we mark clearly once again his "moment," — clearly, but not, I think, speciously. Taine was to learn the necessary lesson Germany had to teach, — "the German gift," as he calls it, "for boring oneself," — from the Franco-Prussian War, and from grief, anxiety, preoccupation with the moral destiny of France. A "modern" who finds in History his escape from a too painful present is not nowadays in danger of erring on the side of partiality, unscrupulous- ness, and optimistic visions. Sincerely sensitive to the honest criticism his English Literature had met with, fortified by psychological research for his favorite work, L' Intelligence, he turned to those same immense stores of political and moral data under whose burden de Tocqueville had fainted and which Thiers and Michelet only had borne with apparent gallantry, because German thoroughness and patience was virtually un- known as constraining historical example in their day.

The same mood of crushing sadness, the same world-weariness at the disclosures of Eevolutionary documents that had hastened and predicted de Tocqueville's collapse, assailed Taine often and heavily, at times, in dis- charging his Herculean task. Their words are often strangely identical, above all their stern moralist's judgment of Napoleon, and the social havoc wrought by his Code. Taine as always finds a formula: "The greatest genius of modern times; an egoism equal to his genius."

Taine, however, laboured on for a score of years. And during these years he finally emerges, patriot, philosopher, sage. Ambition became purged, and effort, with him, almost wholly disinterested, lofty, serene. The incidental expressions of the man become more attractive. His fame, to be sure, was established, and he lived in much domestic peace and content. His friends were the elite of France. He was honoured by the rest of the learned world.

The picture of an Oxford dinner, with Swinburne present, Jowett and Arnold, and Taine making his "plus douce patte de velours" — his softest' velvet paw — to Miss Mary Arnold, whom he finds so wise yet so winsome, till he gets from her the modest confession that she also has written "a

32 THE LANTERN.

maiden article," is not without interest and charm both for itself and for the personal side of the philosopher. Much more significant is the whole correspondence concerning his election in November, 1878, after a pre- liminary failure the previous spring, to the French Academy.

To oblige Eenan and variously to save his feelings, Taine consented to stand in the first place for the fauteuil of Thiers, Eenan standing at the same time for another, more congenial to him, while Eenan's personal friend, Henri Martin (who was, in the event, elected), appeared as a rival to Taine. In token of formal candidacy Taine wrote to his sponsor, Dumas fils, signifying his own perfect willingness to pronounce an eloge of Thiers, if elected to fill his seat. He writes :

As to M. Thiers, like every Frenchman, I remember what he did in 1870 to prevent the War, and in 1871 to put down the Commune. I feel a deep sentiment of respect for and gratitude towards him ; moreover, speaking as a critic and historian, I admire his flexibility of mind, his almost universal capacity, his gifts, practical and oratorical, his lucidity, activity, and courage ; and I believe that few men have loved France as much and as well as he.

Taine was not yet immersed to the ears in the documents and data for the history of Consulate and Empire — the ground Thiers had covered in his time. Later,— not in connection with the convenances et bien- seances of an Academy election, — he becomes more austere towards Thiers. In 1883 he writes:

I already knew something of the chauvinism and frivolous facility (I6geret6) of M. Thiers. . . , but I did not know to what degree he had carried this facility. He was a Southern (un meridional) with a great power of assimilation and of drawing conclusions. This explains how, otherwise so much occupied, he was able to achieve these twenty volumes."

The formula, and a valid one, laid down, Taine proceeds to show Thiers at work by means of secretaries and memory, chiefly; the "scien- tific method" single-stick flies fast and falls hard on the old, easy, the pleasant, picturesque, the vague, and vulgar waj', of history-making.

The judgment is almost as terrible and nearly as fine a bit of invective as Lord Acton's upon Macaulay for supreme talent and moral base- ness in the use of his materials. Anyhow the two judgments of Taine, "controlling" one another, give much the same evidence of splendid

THE SAGE OF RATIONALISM. 33

critical talent in pla)r, rejoicing more in its own sinew and reach than in final critical wholeness.

Yet Lord Acton has also another brief word for Macaulay, larger, serener, juster after all at this distance, and allowing for the fact that German intervention has come wholly since Macaulay's day. "Macaulay," he wrote to Miss Gladstone, "and Mackintosh are simply Burke trimmed and stripped of all that touched the skies." Taine would have granted this readily, holding still that Burke's mere mundane wisdom was a good tiring to get itself repeated, and that England should be happy and grateful for so much of plain political wisdom vouchsafed to its present needs. Thus to M. de Vogue, in later life Taine's friend by ties of genuine affec- tion across their marked and many differences of faith, he writes with strong catholic conviction:

You do well to love Macaulay ; his head and heart are both of the sanest and soundest; and as to art, style, he has not (he quite agrees here with Lord Acton) his equal in Europe. In England they find him less than once to their taste. So much the worse for the English public.

The Speeches he especially considered, — precisely what Lord Acton even prized, — as more stamped with the seal of authority in the ancient sense than any European writing since Pascal. And indeed if the Provin- cial Letters be taken as predicting modern personal morality and private rectitude, the Speeches may conceivably be found prophetic for that national honour and international equity towards which so many just sustaining hopes now set.

Indeed, for the last decade of his life all of Taine's influence is thrown — courteous!}', with open and fair curiosity, never crossly, but still with fervour and conviction — to stem the tide of mental and moral confusion, impressionism and naturalism, run riot, and half-truths of passing emotion, hysterically advanced as the whole.

The most winning phase of this elderly, conservative, yet sympathetic temper comes out in his intimate letters to his fatherless nephew, M. Andre Chevrillon, a young universitaire and litterateur, suffering from ennui in the provinces as Taine himself at the same age had suffered ; and in advice to his own young daughter. Some of this is too just not to quote.

One profits by persons (i. e., serious writers, notably historians) who are

34 THE LANTERN.

not "sympathetic" ; it is enough if they are accurate and instructive ; this par- ticular writer (Havet) is besides very able and excellent as such, and his point of view, admiration for antiquity, is among the most acceptable of the possible points of view.

Another letter is among the notably charming in point both of style and of temper. I quote its beginning in French:

Je suis bien contente que tu sois si heureuse; profite de ta verve et de ta jeunesse. De tels souvenirs te resteront; j'en ai quelques uns surtout rapportes de Fontainebleau, l'un des derniers est d'un amphitheatre a neuf heures de matin, au debut du printemps, des myriads de jeunes arbres, et des millions de jeunes pousses dans un voile mince de vapeur bleuatre, avec la sensation de la vie universelle. . . .

And since you talk with me of your reading, I beg Andre (M. Chevrillon) not to recite Verlaine to you, and you yourself not to read the lyrical poems of Elizabeth Browning. All this sort of thing, and Rossetti and Swinburne in England, with the Goncourts and Daudet and Bourget and the decadents in France, is in itself unhealthy, unsound. . . . They all leave out the half of art and are like lame men who having atrophied one leg should be proud of hobbling on the other. There are always two parts to a work, the one imme- diately perceptible, consisting in lively, intimate, and vehement expression, giving the writer's personal and direct and instant mode and manner of feeling, the other intellectual, consisting of a general notion and a sense of relative propor- tion, in rigorous structure, in the logical co-ordination of all the elements and of all the effects produced, in view of a final and total effect. Daudet at the head of the list, values and understands only the first half ; they deny the second from inability to reach it . . . they will pass away like a fashion ; no artist has ever endured except by uniting the two capacities, and the second is even more essential than the first if one wishes to last and to be intelligible.

The case of rational canons for Art could not be more temperately and persuasively put; nor the case of the reverence owing to the young, more discreetly and candidly at once. Both the veteran critic and the father speak in all sobriety.

To M. Bourget himself there are letters as sound, as friendly, and even more earnest. Taine seems to have been shocked in his inmost sensibilities by M. Bourget's famous Le Disciple, and the practical conse- quences therein deduced from a psychology and deterministic creed that were bound to pass with the profane as standing indeed for Taine's own. He had hesitated to express his uneasy regret. "Pourquoi faire de la peine, et inutilement, a un homme qu'on estime, a un esprit qu'on aime?"

THE SAGE OP RATIONALISM. 35

For sum total impression the novel, however, strikes him as bound to seem to a fair-minded reader as an attack, a valid attack, either upon morality (with young and anarchic persons) or, with the conservative, upon science. The Master, Sixte, is not justly presented as a philosopher; he has neither positive attainments nor practical experience behind his philosophy.

En fait d'etudes sur le inonde moral il n'a pas fait une seule monographic historique, une seule de ces preparations anatomiques par lesquelles on etudie de premiere main, avec ses propres yeux, un homme, une affairs, un fragment de soeietS actuelle ou ancienne. . . . Sixte . . . n'a vu du monde r6el que la boutique de sou pere et les badauds du jardin des Plantes. . . . Les noms de bon et de mauvais, de vice et de vertu ne sont pas des termes de convention, des qualifications arbitraire ; ils expriment l'essence des actes et des indi- vidus. . . .

The Puritans for three centuries, the Stoics for five hundred years, were the most penetrating observers, the most learned physicians, the severest hygien- ists, of the soul ; nay, more and better, they gave the fairest examples of austerity, virtue, and moral energy, and they were, the ones predestinatorians, the others pantheists, fatalists. To my mind, true science and complete philos- ophy concludes not with Sixte, but with Marcus Aurelius.

Here is the definitive Taine. The same man, — the Puritan of all the ages and races, shall one venture to call him, — objects to the Goncourt version of the Magny dinners, — he would not have gone twice if the talk had been as recorded, — in reality it passed above the heads of the note- takers. Already dubbed of some "classique et Prudhomme " "old-fogy and Philistine," he is yet not in doubt for an instant with respect to Tour- genieff, "the man and the artist were both so rich and so complete in him." Objecting as he does to Le Disciple he rejoices in the pathos as in the psychologic truth of even Virgin Soil. And in the matter of classifi- cation (again to M. Bourget) of himself, "he would wish," not the label of pessimist, but to be classed along with, though still of course below, Stendhal and Sainte-Beuve, "who find the world, if not good, still pas- sable." His final eulogy for Sainte-Beuve is for "the perfect probity of his literary life," — the human wholeness of all his portraits. He esteems him his Master to the end.

If life, as he repeats to bis closest friend of forty years, M. Emile Boutmy, "is not gay," and if modern increased sensibility to pain is a

36 THE LANTERN.

doubtful good and a doubtful token of "progress"; if indeed to be a sage is to be "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," fatigue still vaut mieux que delire.. Better with Mill to be "Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satis- fied." To the end the weary Titan responded to Kenan's exhortation: Redoublons de travail!

These are the high days of Pragmatism, implicit where not yet pro- claimed. No doubt it will dredge up its data from the wastes, the deeps. Will this add to or overthrow "the dykes that our fathers built?" — equity, sobriety, philanthropy— the Puritan ideas that so readily pass into ideals. It is of course too soon to be sure. Meantime:

Old things need not be therefore true ! O brother man, — nor yet the new; Ah! still awhile the old thought retain, And yet consider it again!

The boon of Taine's Letters at the moment, their minute history of a Rationalist's career, is that it drives one to certain reconsiderations. Conceivably here and there they may give an almost persuaded Pragmatist pause, and ordered thinking yet a short reprieve.

Maud Elizabeth Temple, 1904.

DEMETER S LAMENT FOR PERSEPHONE. 37

DEMETER'S LAMENT FOR PERSEPHONE.

I am Demeter that hath lost her child,

The fair Persephone of numbered years, The yellow-tressed, the tender-eyed and mild.

I weep, but there is none in pity hears,

None offers comfort for my groans and fears, None guesses me a goddess, nor divine

This bowed and unbound head, these stricken tears; None pays a sacrifice nor asks a sign, And no one tends the fires of my deserted shrine.

The God of Hades saw Persephone,

In Enna's fields among her maids at play. Violet-lidded and white-ankled, she

Was fair to eyes of men as waking day,

And Dis, inflamed with love that knew no stay, Bore her with speed to gloomy halls below,

And weeping loud, her maidens fled away. Then I in anger quenched the eager glow Of spring, withered the earth, and sent the winter snow.

No more will sunshine, strengthening and bright,

Stir all the hidden life in wood and plain, No more will April change her robes of light

To misty dimnes& of the sudden rain

That flashes into radiance again. No more the hearts of men shall strangely yearn

Tow'rd something prophesied when spring shall wane, Nor yellow stars, signs of the summer, burn, Until Persephone return, till she return.

38 THE LANTERN.

The silken wind that fanned the poplar leaves To silver whispers in the fragrant air

Among the blighted branches wails and grieves. The little birds that once made merry there Have fled from homes so desolate and bare,

Silence has followed that sweet-throated throng And she shall reign until Demeter's pray'r

Have moved the gods to pity for her wrong

And young Persephone return with light and song.

To rouse the blossoms from their wintry beds

No more will southern winds their clarion blow, Nor daffodils raise up their golden heads,

The first to answer, through the melting snow.

No more, when prisoned rivers seaward flow. Will youthful shepherds in the valley tune

Their oaten pipes and, wand'ring to and fro, Tending their flocks through the long afternoon, Pipe to their dryad loves that spring will be here soon.

Ah ! none will sing the merry songs of spring, Loosing the bonds of hearts too long oppressed,

Nor air will throb to beat of fragile wing, Nor any rise to call Demeter blest That she hath suckled earth at her own breast,

Given new life and promised rich increase, Nor shall her altar with reward be dressed,

Until grim Dis be wrought on to release

Her child Persephone and she return in peace.

Oh ! give her back unto these empty arms

That pillowed once her little golden head, That sheltered her from childhood's vague alarms,

That she, play-wearied, made her nightly bed.

0 cruel Fate, cut not the slender thread That binds the life of young Persephone,

Number her not among the shadowy dead, But from the iron fetters set her free And from the fields of asphodel send her to me.

DEMBTEE'S LAMENT FOR PERSEPHONE. 39

0 my Persephone, come back to earth,

To her who waits all desolate and drear, — Then shall I give the year another birth,

When you, 0 nay beloved child, are here,

Kaising the buried days from their sad bier; And men shall marvel and at first be dumb,

Then whisper swiftly : "Lo ! the spring is here/' jSTot knowing yet the miracle : that from Dis to Demeter glad Persephone is come.

Louise Foley, 1908.

40 THE LANTEEN.

THE REVELATION OF A BOND.

AS the carriage drove along the white and moonlit road, Laurence Dwight eagerly seized his last opportunity to wonder and puzzle over his coming situation, one that involved on his part the oddest agreement, and on his employer's the strangest demand. These were the very words he had used a few days before, in his interview with the latter's lawyer. "A Mr. Humphrey Ladd," the old man had concisely stated, "formerly a client of mine, writes from his estate, Highlands, asking me to hunt up a tutor for his son. The child, he says, was severely injured a year ago, and has been ever since confined to his room. The salary is absurdly large." He mentioned a sum which fairly staggered Dwight, and taking up a letter went on : " 'The man must be able to suppress completely any outward signs of curiosity which events may stir in his mind.' " The old man looked sharply across at his companion. "In other words, to put it briefly, unless you realise the meaning and the value of discretion, you are certainly not the man for this place."

Dwight, however, soon managed to convince the lawyer that he was, after all, the man, and, a few days sufficing for his preparations, he at last found himself approaching his destination. It was late in the fall, yet a night, notwithstanding, of warm and dying wind from the south that faintly swayed the leafless branches. As they left the village and the railroad far behind, from time to time he interrupted his reminiscences to glance at the woods on either side of the ascending road, or the distant light from some lonely house gleaming for a moment through the trees. But at last they turned from the steep high road, passed through open gates and finally stopped in front of a large square house, almost sur- rounded by pine trees. The moon had now gone under a cloud, and Dwight as he went up the steps could see little of the further character of the place. He had barely rung when a servant ushered him into the hall, which, to the young man fresh from the darkness outside, seemed to glow with candles and with firelight. From a half-opened door on one side of the room he became aware of the sound of two low voices, first a

THE REVELATION OP A BOND. 41

man's voice reading aloud, " 'All cannot be happy at once, for because the glory of one state depends upon the ruins of another, there is a revolution and vicissitude of their greatness, and men must obey the swing of the wheel, not moved by Intelligence, but by the hand of God, whereby all — ' " then a woman's voice interrupting, "How very wonderful that is ; but Humphrey, I think he has come."

Dwight's first glimpse of the room was to remain with him for many years, as would the remembrance of certain paintings. Though the light was far more tempered than in the hall, it sufficed for him to make out the strange and beautiful tone of the walls, the many rows of books, and near the hearth, where the embers still shone, a fragile woman, leaning back in her chair, with her long, pale face, reddish hair, and hands loosely clasped in the silver gray folds of her gown.

"Jessica," said Mr. Ladd, as the two men approached her chair, "this is Mr. Dwight. We are fortunate, are we not?"

She looked up at this, and Dwight marvelled at the changing green of her eyes. "Yes," she replied in a sweet and monotonous voice, "we are very fortunate. I hope so much," she went on, "that you will not mind being so away from the world. We must seem to you quite removed. I'm sorry you may not see Ivan this evening, but he is surely asleep by now."

At her mention of the child a look of pain passed momentarily over her husband's face, which sharply and vividly recalled to Dwight the accident.

"But how thoughtless of us," Mr. Ladd hastily threw in, "to keep you up, when you must be longing to rest after your tiresome journey."

"We are putting you next to Ivan," said Mrs. Ladd, turning again to the young man. "Good-night." Her voice had now lost for him its former monotonous quality, these few last words revealing almost miracu- lously her rare and charming candour.

Later in the evening, after he had become somewhat familiar with the arrangement of his two rooms, had somewhat appreciated their obvious yet not jarring air of selection and elimination, he began to look over the books in his study, to find one presently quite to his mind. But a sound from the next room, which he had already surmised was Ivan's, soon roused him. Some one had evidently entered very noiselessly from

42 THE LANTERN.

the hall. Laying down his book, he listened intently, and recognised the voice of Mrs. Ladd. "Ivan, Ivan," she was softly repeating, and then, "How soundly he sleeps to-night." Some one else, at the same moment, hurried past his door : it was Mr. Ladd calling "Jessica." She joined him at once in the passageway.

"You promised me," Dwight heard him exclaim, "not to go to Ivan at night. You might so easily disturb him; and he must, he must sleep. Come to bed, it's very late."

These were the last words that Dwight could distinguish as the two moved slowly away. An hour later a sound from the child's room again drew him from his book, this time evidently a shutter loosened by the rising wind. "They said the child must sleep," he reflected, as he opened the door connecting his study with Ivan's room, to see to the fastening. The moonlight streamed through the windows, falling in cool fantastic patches on the walls and floor, revealing the toys in one corner of the room neatly arranged on their shelves; the books on the low round table; the goldfish by the window, gleaming through a large glass bowl, and in another corner a small white bed. But the child, Ivan, for whom Dwight looked eagerly, was not there. The little bed, with soft coverings and pillow intensely white in the moonlight, stood smooth and empty. Dwight's first impulse was to arouse some one in the house; once outside, however, in the dimly lighted corridor, he stood for some time in silent indecision, as the strange agreement he had made with the lawyer flashed across his mind. "I promised," he murmured, retreating to his rooms, "to suppress completely any outward signs of curiosity."

The next morning after breakfast, at which Mrs. Ladd did not appear, her husband accompanied Dwight back to his study, where, imme- diately entering Ivan's room, he crossed over to the little empty bed. The younger man, likewise, after a moment's hesitation, followed his example, and from the foot of the bed gazed enquiringly across at his employer, waiting for him to break the silence, a silence fraught with a strange and heavy significance, a solemnity fairly sacramental, a silence full of fine vibrations for the inner ear. And at last he spoke in even, dispassionate tones.

"I suppose," he began, "you are somewhat astonished not to find Ivan here, or possibly you have already discovered his absence."

THE REVELATION OF A BOND. 43

Dwight hurriedly explained about the shutter, and Mr. Ladd went on, still in the same dispassionate wajr, his face, however, betraying pain at dragging from their darkened hiding place his tragic memories to the light of day. "Ivan died three months ago. You were told of course of the accident — an injury to the spine. The doctors all agreed that in time he might recover, and to the very end we believed it, my wife and I; to the end we clung desperately to the hope they offered us." After a pause, in which he looked toward the windows, away from Ivan's bed, as if shrinking from the vision to be conjured there, he murmured, "Ivan died, yet the flame of our hope lives on, survives, the blue distorted flame which only springs from ashes." He was silent then, while his companion, not venturing a sound, a motion, gazed likewise through the windows, and saw, in the garden below, the tall and wasted figure of Mrs. Ladd, moving slowly through the withered bushes. In the cold glare of the morning light, her frail presence brought to him unswervingly the key to these last words, intimations of what he was soon to know, words which the wan silence had rejected, had flung back to him. He longed to cry out, "I know, I understand, you have told me everything." But the older man, resuming his former position, again took up the story.

"Mrs. Ladd was constantly with the child : for weeks, do what I could, she rarely left this room. After Ivan's death, she herself became ill, dangerously, almost fatally. And now, for her, the child has never died." At this moment Dwight looked involuntarily at the figure in the garden. She was standing motionless, with her eyes raised toward the windows of Ivan's room. "For her he lies here now, as he lay through the month of her long, devoted vigil, living and eventually to recover. They ask me for a time at least to humour her in this obsession, though keeping her away when possible from Ivan's room. I have told her that she is not strong enough to stay with him as formerly, I have told her a hundred things, lied to her a hundred times. Possibly by this time you have made out your task. You, of course, are to join the conspiracy: you are to stay with Ivan. It is only thus that I can keep her mind at rest about the child."

The irony of the situation seemed almost to escape him as he moved quickly around the bed and seized Dwight by the shoulder. "But you are jroing to refuse, I see it in your face."

4A THE LANTEBN.

"No," said Dwight, overcome by a sudden rush of pity for the older man, "I won't refuse; I'll stay while you need me."

As the time went on, however, he grew increasingly to regret these words, words that had placed him in a situation the grimness of which threatened every day to reach a monstrous height. The child's room came to swarm for him with ominous and lurking possibilities, as well as with morbid certainties that never faded. Often at night, awaking sud- denly, he would helplessly and slavishly allow his mind to brood upon the image of a little bed, always smooth and empty, in the midst of a room and possessions which bore crying witness to a living owner. Sometimes he dimly felt that he was aiding to establish a strange and unnatural relation, one that could only end in misery; that by his mere presence in the household, his part in the conspiracy, he was but strengthening the links of the tragic chain. In such a mood, he could not bring himself to cross the threshold of Ivan's room, but sat for hours in his study, lonely and despondent. Yet the entrance of Mr. Ladd, whether alone or with Ivan's mother, rarely failed to stir in him again an irresistible impulse to be faithfid to his promise. He met a challenge not to be questioned, nor avoided, in the worn face and weary, baffled eyes of his employer, mute signals of his constant effort to soothe and mitigate the visitation of his wife.

Thus the long winter months passed slowly by, until in the garden below the last snow drifts had melted away and a faint green network covered all the bushes. On a certain morning, as Dwight lingered at his open window, contrasting the meagre traces of the winter with prompt and vivid suggestions of the spring, he heard footsteps on the path beneath, and presently the voice of Mrs. Ladd. "Our shrubs and bushes," she was saying, "will soon be blossoming, and Ivan is so fond of flowers." He watched her as she pointed out her fresh discoveries to Mr. Ladd, who followed close behind. This incident perhaps brought home to Dwight more keenly than ever the tragedy of his employer's lot; and during his hours of freedom, later in the day, he walked the roads, oblivious to his surroundings, moved by a blinding sense of revolt against the cruelty of such a fate.

One evening in the early spring, as he remained reading far beyond his usual hour, Mr. Ladd entered without knocking and silently passed

SAPPHO. 45

through to Ivan's room. There, in the bright moonlight, Dwight watched him bending over the little bed. At last he came back to the study, and said aloud, "Jessica told me that Ivan looked better this afternoon. I really think he does."

The young man faltered, overcome with pity, and with a passionate sense of his utter helplessness in the face of this last vicissitude. Then he saw in the eyes of the older man a new peace, a new serenity, and instead of answering he murmured, " 'For the glory of one state depends upon the ruins of another.' My task is ended."

Helen Dudley, 1908.

SAPPHO.

" MvdaeaOai Tivd <^>a^.i KaX vcrrepov djU-^ecuv. "

"Hereafter we shall be remembered still," Sang Sappho, as, in Lesbian groves apart, She taught her band of eager maids the art Of song: — of how to catch, with magic skill, The note of nightingale; or to distil The fragrance from the tender violet's heart ; And render all in liquid verse, with dart Of love-lit eyes. But "just as, on the hill, The shepherd's foot treads down the purple bloom Of hyacinth," so erring Time hath bruised Thy loveliness, 0 Sappho, and diffused Thy precious syllables, though even now More sweet and rare than Springtime's faint perfume, Or ruddy apple on the topmost bough.

Clara Lyford Smith, 1907. I'r-printed from Tipyn o' Huh.

46 THE LANTEBN.

THE TIE OF BLOOD.

THEEE was a deep hush throughout the house of the deceased Jane Willis, as, two days after the funeral, the heirs filed into the drawing-room of their late mother. It was not the silence of passionately controlled sorrow; for these heirs had long since passed the emotional period of youth; and they realised that parents, no matter how dearly beloved, are apt to grow weary of life when it has been very long, and one ought not to begrudge them their rest. Nor was the silence one of repressed expectancy. They had all known from childhood the just impartiality of the woman who had reared them. It was as if the whole afflicted household were uniting in a final gasp of respectful solemnity before going on in the ordinary routine of its way.

The witnesses and the attorney, who were already in the room, rose and stood with heads slightly bowed as the heirs entered. First came the eldest daughter Jane, accompanied by her husband. She looked the embodiment of respectable affliction, with her streaked black hair drawn smoothly down beneath her small, straw bonnet; her worn, narrow face; her mourning garments that fitted snugly across her huddled shoulders and rustled about her feet with a new and ominous importance. They were followed by Susan, portly and solemn, on the arm of a stalwart son; then Maria with the young face and the wealth of white hair. She occa- sionally removed her spectacles to wipe the tears from her lashes; for it was she, the unmarried daughter, who had always been at home, and had soothed her mother's last hours of pain. Last of all came Lottie, who lived in New York, and had an automobile and five servants; and behind her, her husband in a fur-lined coat. When they had seated themselves, Mr. Fiskins, the attorney, opened his packet and scanned the faces before him in some impatience.

"Is not Mr. Willis coming?" he asked.

"Ferdinand is late as usual, I suppose," Jane replied. Her voice possessed the rather unusual quality of being at the same time low and sharp.

THE TIE OF BLOOD. 47

"Then perhaps we ought to wait until he arrives;" Mr. Fiskins snapped shut the cover of his watch, and again there was deep stillness. The heaviness of the fading flowers mixed with the faint odour of the black dyes in the mourning garments gave a peculiar oppressiveness to the atmosphere. Mr. Fiskins yawned, the men shuffled, and the women exchanged glances of growing irritation. Then the heavy green plush portieres were pushed aside and Ferdinand entered the room.

He was evidently a little ashamed of his tardiness, for he stood a moment clutching the curtain and looking rather nervously at his sisters before finding a seat. He was tall and finely built, unless perhaps he erred a little on the side of corpulency. But he could hardly be called hand- some. His hair was too sparse for that, his glance too lifeless; and his moustaches, though tawny and luxuriant, drooped too dejectedly. His pale, flabby face and weak blue eyes showed, it is to be feared, some signs of dissipation; but it could not for a moment be thought that Ferdinand Willis could have pursued an intemperate course through viciousness or brutality. It was, without doubt, due to the weakness and irresoluteness of his temperament.

But for all this, he held his shoulders with faultless rectitude; and the spruceness of his neat black coat, the jauntiness of the gray-checked trousers with their immaculate new crease down the front, gave a touch of incongruity to the mourning badge upon his arm.

"If you will be seated, Mr. Willis," the attorney said suavely, "we can proceed to the business at once."

Ferdinand, drooping his eyes beneath the reproving gaze of his sisters, obej'ed, and Mr. Fiskins, who had arranged his papers, began to read. It was as they expected. Maria was to have the homestead; the rest of the property was to be sold and divided share and share alike. As he paused, Maria sobbed aloud, and even Jane wiped her eyes. Mr. Fiskins did not, however, sit down. He crackled his papers nervously. "There is a — a — little more here, in fact a — er — a codicil." The heirs glanced at each other, startled. "Are you ready to bear the codicil?" Mr. Fiskins asked.

They signified that they were.

"'To my son Ferdinand, who has already obtained from me money equal to the sum his sisters will receive at my death, I do hereby bequeath the renting-house in which he lives. I do hereby instruct my lawyers to

48 THE LANTERN.

see that his debts up to the present date are absolved, but under no condi- tion to allow any money to pass into his hands.' "

Twenty curious eyes were fastened upon the unfortunate object of this codicil. Ferdinand stared miserably at the floor. The hot blood surged about the roots of his thin hair and coloured his ears scarlet. He ran his fingers up and down the crease in his trousers, but he could find nothing to say.

Mr. Fiskins drew a large silk handkerchief from his pocket and dabbled it over his brow. "Ladies," he said with a deep bow, "we shall now leave you, in case you may desire some private discussion, and to- morrow we shall return to hear whether you have decided to accept the terms. Gentlemen," — he glanced at the witnesses, — "shall we go?" They rose and departed, followed rather uncertainly by the other men, with the exception of Ferdinand Willis, who, it is true, made several motions toward departure when he saw that he was being deserted by his sex, but at length, deriving courage, as it were, from some unseen source, settled himself doggedly.

There was a long pause. The sisters were waiting for Jane to speak. She had always been their spokesman, and they knew she would not fail them now. She rewarded their confidence by drawing her thin shoulders forward as far as physiological limitations woiild permit. This was, with her, a sign of action. Several tall, supple spines that reared themselves up from her bonnet trembled visibly, although she herself made no per- ceptible motion with her head. At last she began with generous self- control : "Well, Ferdinand, you see what you have brought on yourself."

"Yes," he replied slowly. "It's f-fair enough." Ferdinand always spoke slowly. When he was a child the doctor had said his tongue was too thick. And he had never outgrown his difficulty in getting things out in moments of excitement.

"I am glad to see you take that view of it," Jane went on. "Probably now, for the first time in your life, you will begin to work."

"Y-yes I w-will, b-but I say g-girls, listen here." He had risen to his feet and stood looking at them out of his pale blue eyes, which, through weakness or self-pity or something of the kind, were blurred with tears. "I know I haven't d-done much to be p-proud of in my life, but I've had a s-scheme in my head for some time p-past. I meant to speak to m-mother

THE TIE OF BLOOD. 49

about it ; but she was so s-sick- before she d-died. It's this. They offered me a j-job as m-manager of a new concern that's being started up. It's s^sure to p-pay if it once gets on its f-feet. It's to m-make p-patent clasps for shoe-strings."

"Have yon accepted the position?" asked Jane suspiciously. She had heard the word "patent" before.

"N-not y-yet. The j-job's mine if I can get $500 capital. There's a g-good salary, too."

"How much?"

"Fifty dollars a month and dividends."

Jane laughed. "You were going to ask mother for the $500, were you?"

"I was g-going to ask her to 1-lend it to me. Of c-course when the thing began to p-pay, I'd give it back."

"Poor lady," Jane murmured. "It is well she was spared that. She couldn't have refused you. She never refused you anything."

"I-I th-thought p-p-perhaps," poor Ferdinand was growing painfully confused, "you g-girls might m-make it up b-between you."

Jane gasped. Then she remembered her role of dignified interlocu- trice. "Eeally, Ferdinand, you are preposterous. You wormed more than your share from mother before she died, and now you expect us to lay our purses at your feet. I might as well warn you that we aren't quite so soft- hearted as dear mother, even if you have always been the only son and the youngest."

"Oh, Jane," Maria protested weakly.

"Maria dear, you had better leave this to me. You always would allow anyone to wind yon around his little finger. It is plain to see where our duty lies. What mother has intrusted to us should be sacred. We have no right to give away what is thus placed in our hands by the holy dead. Am I not right, girls?"

As there was no answer, Jane continued evenly : "It isn't as if Ferdi- nand hadn't had plenty of chances. Of course I pass over his leaving college and all that." Here her millinery spines began to vibrate violently as the result of an otherwise successfully concealed shudder, for she was thinking, although her words were so politely veiled, of her brother's sensational elopement from the university with his janitor's pretty daugh-

50 THE LANTEBN.

ter Hester, who had thought to mount into a very high world indeed on the arm of her good-tempered prodigal lover. But Jane had shown her that the capturing of a husband is not a stepping-stone to everything. Indeed, the hussey had never entered her house.

"There was the banking business," Jane went on, "that father started him out in after he came home. It cost poor father over $1,000 when the day for balancing accounts arrived. Then there was the position in Dr. Jenkins' office; but Dr. Jenkins wanted a young man of steadier habits; and there was the oil-well concern, for which he had to pay double liability, and the business for making 'Pure Flower' soap labels, which was to yield so enormously; and the whip-snapper firm, and bells for pony- bridles, etc., etc." Jane had hard work keeping her voice calm as she went over this list. Indeed, it had a distinct ring of asperity as she ended up. "And all this time father, and, after his death, mother, was giving him and his wife a house to live in and money for their food and clothes. So you see, it isn't as if he hadn't had his chance and his good, fair share of the property, too."

Ferdinand had shown no signs of animation during this speech. At its close, however, he rose slowly to his feet, and extending his huge, fair hands, palm outward, before him, as if to show their emptiness, he faltered :

"But g-girls, Het and I have to l-live. I've g-got to g-get m-m-money in some way. What c-can I d-do ?"

"Do !" echoed Jane. "Do !" and she pointed her forefinger as if aim- ing it at his eye. "Ferdinand, you have still time left to retrieve yourself. Get out and work. Be a man." Jane became more and more moved by her own impressiveness. "Feel for the first time that you are eating the sweat of your honest brow."

Poor Ferdinand looked as if he were much more likely to eat the tears from his honest eyes. They coursed unchecked down the creases of his cheeks until they were lost in the labyrinthine thickness of his moustache.

"J-Jane," he sobbed, "who w-would have th-thought you c-could be so d-disloyal to our father's m-memory? He was a gentleman. Oh, what would he think, if he heard you command his only son to work by the toil of his hands?"

This was unwonted eloquence for Ferdinand. It had always been so

THE TIE OF BLOOD. 51

difficult for him to speak, and there had always been so many people to save him the trouble. His effort this time was not without its effect on his sisters. They watched him with something like awe as he withdrew, bowed in grief, from the room.

The silence was broken at last by Lottie. It had always been said by the people about the town that Lottie was the last one of the Willis girls to make the match she did. She had never been pretty, nor even pretended to any style at all. Indeed, she hadn't been clever enough even to amuse the young men of her set who, goodness knows, demanded little enough intelligence in women. How, then, she could have captured the heart of the gilded, tailored Mr. Hedges, remained a mystery to them — unless, perhaps, for all his wealth, he was less clever than the ordinary — indeed, they had rarely heard him utter a syllable. At all events, Lottie's good fortune had not made her proud, even if it had done nothing to relieve her dullness. Her clothes were made of silk and broadcloth now, but they never knew how to meet properly in the middle, and her smart little ties were as apt to be under her ear as under her chin. She was as careless and good humoured as ever.

On this occasion, as on all others with which she had to do, Lottie's brow was placid.

"Girls," she began, "I think I'll just let Ferdinand have the money he wants myself. That certainly wouldn't be going against the will, and, after all, we can't let the poor fellow starve."

Maria had stopped weeping to listen, and Susan's dull eye glowed with approval. Jane, however, shook her head with a motion that threw all her spines into a state of bristling excitement.

"You are generous," she began. "But that isn't the question. Of course it would be very easy for us to make up the money among us, easier by far than refusing poor Ferdinand. I hope we all know it isn't a question of generosity. It is a question of principle. Mother, I know, felt bitterly at the last that she had not done right by Ferdinand, that she had never made him depend on himself. But she was too ill then to face the facts, and she kept on giving him money. It is her will that he should now have one last chance to retrieve himself, and we must respect her wish."

"But Jane," Maria began feebly, "we all know that Ferdinand can't

52 THE LANTEBN.

be different from what he is. He can't begin now. You forget that he is not a boy; he must be forty years old by now."

"And we can't let him and Hester die," Lottie put in.

Jane stiffened. "Oh, they won't die; you'll see. Let the woman take in washing. If her husband is such a fine gentleman, she hasn't the same excuse for not wishing to work. If we should give Ferdinand the money, he would swamp it in some rigmarole patents, and be asking for more before we could turn round. I tell you, girls, we must consider the p-in- ciple of the thing. It all depends on our leaving Ferdinand absolutely to himself. Will you do it ?"

There was silence. "Promise," Jane insisted, and they promised.

With that the conference ended. The Willis estate was settled up with exemplary amicableness and, after a few days, Lottie returned to New York. Maria remained quietly in the old house, taking pride in pre- serving it exactly as it had been in the days of the past. The sisters never spoke of Ferdinand. They had communicated to him a gently worded but unmistakable refusal of his request; and he, to his credit, had appar- ently recognised the futility of any personal visits. That he had not died, however, as Lottie so dismally predicted, was obvious. Jane had seen him several times sitting tipped back in a chair in front of a building called "The St. James Hotel." This was not a place one would pick out to spend the winter in, if one had suddenly decided to let out one's house for the season. Indeed, it was in a part of the town that most ladies seldom found it necessary to visit except when they were on a quest for new servants, or in search of a certain dingy butcher-shop which was reputed always to keep sweetbreads in stock. When, on such occasions as these, Jane had passed her brother in front of the St. James Hotel, he had always politely lifted his hat; but she, in all the virtue of offended family pride, had turned her wrathful eyes away. She had noticed, however, that he had not lost his plump outline, and that his trousers were as freshly creased as ever. Jane could remember having once been rather touched and pleased that Ferdinand, for all his shiftlessness, would keep up appearances. Now, however, she could feel nothing but irritation. The fact that she knew he manipulated his own flatiron did not help matters. It was insufferable to think that the ungrateful fellow could find nothing better to do than crease his trousers and black his boots.

THE TIE OF BLOOD. 53

And so the clays went on in the native town of the Willises. With the death of Mrs. Willis, naturally, the integrating force of the family had been withdrawn, and, as time passed, the various members came to see less and less of one another. There was, of course, the feeling of blood which could, in a family so closely united, never be quite obliterated ; and, in the cases of Jane and Susan, this feeling found expression in hurried visits to Maria, who lamented very much, in her gentle way, that brothers and sisters could not always remain affectionate children. But she recognised the absurdity of her wish; she knew that when men and women are grown and enter the great world, they must put away childish things; and, while she resented the state of affairs that so sundered the ones she loved, she questioned nothing and resented nothing.

The sisters were destined, however, to be jolted out of the smoothness of their track, and the jar came from none other than the prodigal and indolent Ferdinand himself. Jane was walking down the street one day on her way to visit Maria. She was passing through a very fashionable part of the town, when her attention was caught by a smart yellow trap that stood drawn up before an ornate stone house. The horse was pawing prettily and jingling the metal of his harness. As Jane paused to look at the turn-out, she became aware, with a shock, that the splendid individual on the seat was Ferdinand. He held the bright tan reins in one gauntleted hand, and the whip, jauntily drooping, in the other. His checked trousers, with their many reminiscences of the ironing-board, and his shiny black coat had been discarded for a neat blue suit of the latest cut. The ends of his moustaches, formerly so dejected, now stood out in waxed spruee- ness; his whole figure radiated fashion. Jane grasped the iron fence- railing for support. "Ferdinand !" she cried.

Her brother had removed his hat, and was evidently ready enough to speak; but at that moment a lady, as elegantly dressed as Ferdinand himself, swept out of the house and into the trap, said something in a low tone, and away they sped, leaving Jane still clutching at the paling. In a moment, however, she hitched her narrow taffeta jacket with a jerk of her shoulders and started off rapidly down the street. She did not turn in at Maria's gate, as had originally been her intention. Instead, she kept on until she came to the old white cottage that had housed Ferdinand Bince his precipitous departure from paternal shelter. It was

54 THE LAKTEBN.

a solid little brick thing, built in the style of the pioneer farmhouse, and it had a childish, rather than an antiquated, appearance, lodged in, as it was, between factories and shops that had grown up about it.

Jane's quick knock was answered by Hester. It had been long since these two women had really seen one another — their paths lay so far apart. Hester had substituted for her youthful rosiness that featureless coarseness and pallor which comes so early to women of her class. Poor Jane, who had never had any beauty to lose, was not slow to observe the change. She noticed, too, that the room, in its bare tidiness, showed no signs of Ferdinand's sudden prosperity. She waited just long enough to recover her breath. Then she began:

"Hester, you must tell me what this is all about !"

Hester, though as much surprised, doubtless, at the arrival of her guest as Jane could have been at the unwonted appearance of her brother, was yet, in her way, as much master of a certain crude stolidity as Jane was master of her practised self-control, and she managed to reply with unmalicious dignity:

"I don't know what you mean, Mrs. Nutting."

"It isn't possible that you don't know. Come, tell me what has happened to Ferdinand."

Hester started. "Has he been hurt or — "

"No, no, he's all right. I just now saw him. But surely you can explain — the trap ! And what was he doing in those clothes ? He couldn't have stolen them, but who, for mercy's sake, could have given them to him?"

"Do you mean," asked Hester calmly, "why was he driving about in Mrs. Largiss's trap?"

"Yes, exactly."

"I supposed you knew that. It's your fault."

"Quickly tell me. Don't keep me waiting!"

"Why, he's driving now for Mrs. Largiss."

"Do you mean that he's her — her coachman ?"

Hester nodded. "And it's your fault, too," she repeated.

"You're telling wicked lies to get money out of me. I know what kind of people you are." Jane was rapidly losing her composure. "Why is it my fault?"

THE TIE OF BLOOD. 55

"Why, you told him to work — to do anything— and it would make a man of him. He does look more like a man now, doesn't he?"

"Why, in goodness name, didn't you let me know before?"

"I supposed you knew and were pleased."

"Pleased to have a Willis, my own brother, a — a — " But Jane could not finish. She jerked herself out through the doorway, without even vouchsafing a good-bye for politeness' sake. She made straight for Maria's house and demanded that Susan be sent for at once. When that lady appeared, stout and breathless, Jane, in a few voluble sentences, explained the situation. "And now, girls," she ended, "we must save the family honour. We've given Ferdinand his chance, as dear mother wished, and in return he has dragged our name in the dust. Our duty is plainly now to remove the power of harm from his worthless hands. There is but one course open to us."

Susan and Maria strained forward to hear their brother's sentence.

"We must deprive him of his liberties." Jane pronounced it omi- nously, and gloomy pictures of shackles and prison bars rose before the listening sisters' eyes. They were dumb with apprehension. "He must give up those — clothes he is wearing," Jane continued, "and he must move out of the house he lives in."

"Oh, Jane," Maria murmured.

"He and — and Hester must come here and live with you, where they can be watched. They can't be trusted alone."

"Here in this house with me!" Maria's voice shook with excitement. "Oh, Jane dear, thank you, thank you. I shall be so happy." And she made a motion to kiss her sister. But Jane brushed her aside, and con- tinued as if there had been no interruption.

"Of course most of the burden will rest upon you, Maria; but Susan and I will do what we can to help. It seems to me the only way to deprive Ferdinand of his liberty."

And so Ferdinand Willis came to be established, with his wife and his belongings, in the home of his boyhood. He fared sumptuously at Maria's bountiful board. The little white house that had so long sheltered him now brought him in a revenue, very small, it is true, but sufficient to enable him to transfer his allegiance from the St. James Hotel to the Manhattan Club, where he now spends many of his idle hours. On Wed-

56 THE LANTEBN.

nesday evenings, however, he always escorts Maria and Hester to prayer- meeting, and on Sundays the family pew is never without his imposing form. In the afternoon he drives with the ladies in Maria's carriage, and sometimes, of an evening, he reads to them from Maria's newspaper while they sew. But he never considers speculation as an employment, and makes no allusion whatever to the business world. This is what it is to be deprived of one's liberties. There is one thing more to be said, how- ever, for Ferdinand Willis. Whenever he meets Mrs. Largiss on the street he takes off his hat with his courtly sweep; and she, on her part, flings at him her most gracious smile and nod.

Martha Plaisted, 1908.

THE FAUN.

Dryad, from thy willow tree Come thou out and dance with me, Where the yellow crocus gleams And the sunlight slantly beams On fresh buds and new-sprung grass, Through twigs of fragrant sassafras. From the sweet brook's marshy edge Wild forget-me-nots and sedge I will bring to make a rare Circlet for thy clinging hair. Lo ! what gifts I bring to thee : Coral from the far-off sea, Robin's eggs, and strings of pearls, Golden clasps to bind thy curls. Come, then, leave thy hollow tree, Lovely nymph, and dance with me.

Mary N earing, 1909.

R

A TIME TO READ. 57

A TIME TO READ.

TJSKIN somewhere allows himself to grow astonished at the con- summate idiocy of a man who had rather talk commonplaces with a great writer than read his books. He works himself into a passion of indignation and mortification at the vulgar unreason- ableness of it, and yet even Buskin must have known that it is only human to prefer a man to a book. Companionship, gestures, inflections, and above all personality, are more agreeable things than printed pages, which appeal only to the inhuman part of us — the intellect. A book as a book is never human, because it is immortal, and our communion with the immortals is almost necessarily stilted. To insure eternity to our thoughts we must invert the process of Pygmalion and his statue and, divesting them of motion, sacrifice life to deathlessness.

So the business of the reader becomes to revivify as he may these mummified things. Through his eyes he may never hear the voice of their author, but at least he is at liberty to invest what he reads in some measure with human attributes. Companionship, in man or book, is the desirable thing, and this we may find out by reading in surroundings congenial to our author. Like our other friends, he should have a background. Before he will open his heart freely he must be at home and at his ease. Nothing affects a book more than incongruity of our surroundings. The poems of Sidney Lanier were spoiled for me by being read in a hotel library and Cranford by being read in a doctor's waiting-room. No one, not even a Methodist revivalist, would care to read the Bible while he was walking down the street, and indeed of all books it is the one we are most ashamed of being caught with. Who could bear to be found alone, in conspicuous seclusion, with a glaring-backed modern novel? Not that we are ashamed of the novel, but we are not quite comfortable. It is like wearing a new hat to church during Lent.

Again and again I have heard it repeated that we should do all our reading out-of-doors. For my part, I think almost everything goes better in the house — except poetry. Wordsworth and Shelley — unlike as they

58 THE LANTEBN.

are — both gain immensely on the seashore, because the sea is so mighty and so serious and washes away all that is trite and absurd. But Keats and poets like him require green trees and quiet landscape and should, if possible, be read up a tree where the leaf shadows fall on the white page of the book. Except for Izaac Walton, who is taken with the fishing- tackle, and Buskin, who is irritating indoors and edifying without, I can think of no prose author not as well, or better, read in the house. Even some poets belong by the hearth ; the Brownings, and Boe, and Swinburne — who seems less elemental in the presence of the elements — are better appreciated by fire-warmth and candle-light.

When we have secured appropriate surroundings we must make up our minds how to dispose of ourselves. The position of the body, irrelevant as it seems, has a subtle influence on our enjoyment of the book. The Morte d 'Arthur can be properly enjoyed only when one is lying prone in front of a fire ; and when I grow too old to lie in front of a fire I shall read it no longer, just as I shall give up the Fmrie Queene when I grow too stiff to climb trees. But it is fortunate that most books can be read with outward grace and propriety; if it is uncomfortable to read the Morte d' Arthur sitting upright in a chair, it is impossible to read Matthew Arnold sprawling on the floor. I have known those who put a room in fair order before sitting down to read Bater and never think of crossing so much as their ankles.

All this deliberate arrangement may sound artificial and to some readers may seem irksome. But to read a book is to perform a ceremony where outward signs are almost as important as inward communion. It is only when we have found for a book all that it requires that it will return to us all that it has to give.

Grace Branham, 1910.

59

THE CAT.

Midway the steep and sun-flecked street, Undisturbed by passing feet, Incurious what they loiter at, Couches on cool stones a cat. Wheeling, circling swallows oft Cross the pale blue rift aloft; Faintly heard, their airy calls Glancing down the grey, straight walls Hardly check the sleeper's purr, White, superb philosopher.

Furry brother, pain and pleasure Mete your gods in unjust measure; Pitiful your sum of good, — Warmth, the chase, and sleep, and food. In pain you bear a human part, Body's anguish, stricken heart, Hunger, terror, love and grief, Never our dream of swift relief, Nor the conscious proud assurance Of unalterable endurance.

Brother, yet you brood there still, Motionless, inscrutable.

Georgiana Goddard King, 1896.

60 THE LANTEBN.

IN THE SHADOW.

The golden bowl is broken, love, And spilled the sacred wine,

Ere we had time to quench our thirst And know relief divine; Broken ere we had time to prove How sweet the taste of youth,

Or bend our lips to quaff the first Clear draught from wells of truth.

0 love, stick yew leaves in thy hair And come with me away,

To wander on from tide to tide, In weather ever gray. No rest shall we know anywhere For many a long to-morrow,

Nor slake our thirst except beside The bitter springs of sorrow.

Louise Foley, 1908.

THE DEFEAT. 61

THE DEFEAT.

PEESCOTT WAKE entered the room with his usual glad greeting and kissed his mother tenderly. "How are you, dear, this morning? Am I very late?" "Not very/' she replied gently. "How have things gone?"

"Well, I have the position."

"Ah!" It was a low, expressionless exclamation. "And are you glad?"

"There was nothing else for it," he rejoined. Then — "I must go and get ready for dinner. If you are reading let me move your chair nearer the light. No, don't stir." He gently pushed the big chair back towards the window, arranged the shade and gave his mother a farewell kiss.

"Preseott, why will you not talk of this to me?" she pleaded as he turned to go.

"Mother, what is the use? It only pains you and besides it is so inevitable. I can't marry without money and the career of a musician is too precarious — "

"But a great one — " she began.

"Dies all the more surely in want," he interrupted smiling. "There's no use counting the cost to myself. I can't ask Faith to wait for me indefinitely."

"The price is, then, to you so great?"

"Mother, how can you ask?" he reproached as he went out of the room.

She watched his slim young figure move away with a strangely sad expression, and when he had gone she covered her face suddenly with her hands. How he had evaded her last question! The thought of it hurt her like a blow. It was but one of many such wounds which she had received lately, ever since the plan of giving up his music and going into business had been projected, but each one seemed to her more painful than the last. Again and again she had created for him the opportunity of meeting the situation fairly face to face and each time he had slipped through it like this. With his sweetness, his tenderness, it was so easy

62 THE LANTEEN.

for him to find a means of escape. For a moment she even regretted his virtues, feeling that, were he stern and hard, he might have, too, the courage of self-confession, which, as it was, he lacked. Even as a child, she realised as she looked back, he had been given to inventing and believing excuses for himself, and as time went on the habit had, in spite of all her care, only increased. It appeared to her as a sort of conscious self-deception, a deliberate setting aside of the real issues, which had ultimately of course led to the duping of others less familiar with his character than she. Now — it came to her with an odd clutch at the heart — the crucial situation was at hand, and that he must be forced to meet it honestly with open eyes had been for days the all-important purpose in her mind. If he once evaded an issue as vital as this there would, she felt, be no hope of his recovery in the future. The responsibility he was now laying so completely on the shoulders of the woman he was going to marry belonged, she was aware, entirely on his own. For real as was his love for Faith Landor, the question of his marriage and consequent need of money offered a very acceptable pretext for the change he had long been desiring. She felt sure that, in the bottom of his heart, he was really desirous of giving up his music. For some time past she had known that he revolted at the drudgery it entailed. She was, indeed, forced to acknowledge that nothing short of the consciousness of genius could render bearable the countless hours of nerve-racking effort he was obliged to devote to the most trivial element of technique. This consciousness, which he had had so wonderfully in the beginning, and which his master still continued to encourage, seemed of late to have dwindled. Was it, she queried, simply that he was unwilling to work, or had he really lost faith in his own power? Probably a combination of the two, she decided. But, under any circumstances, he must be forced to face the truth of the matter, to acknowledge that he was giving up his profession, not as a noble sacrifice to a noble love, but for the simple reason that he was tired of it.

Her thoughts passed for a while to the other person involved in the act, Faith Landor, the girl she had known long and loved dearly. To no one else would she so gladly entrust her son's happiness, and yet her consideration of the marriage was often clouded with a doubt of its fairness to this simple, straight-eyed girl. As is the way with strong

THE DEFEAT. 63

women, Faith had, as far as possible, sunk the claims of her own indi- viduality in her love. Her belief in Prescott could not, no matter what he might do, be lightly shaken, and yet — here a new thought came sud- denly to Emily Ware — would the girl, in the underestimating of her rights, feel justified in accepting the apparently enormous sacrifice her lover was making? The answer came clearly in the negative, and, with her knowl- edge of Faith's character, Emily realised in momentary horror that sooner or later she would make the effort to give him up. Then her horror, caused by her intuition both of the suffering that would ensue and the vanity of the sacrifice, changed suddenly into a strange hope, and she found in its coming the solution of her problem.

As she had foreseen, Faith Landor came to her with the burden of renunciation heavy upon her. For a moment Emily, in her love for the girl, was tempted to show her the absence of the high motives she had accredited to her lover's decision. Then she realised that her duty to her Mm was paramount, and that it would, after all, be hindered rather than helped by such a course. For, when Faith once realised the futility of her sacrifice, she might, in spite of many lost illusions, cling all the more strongly to those that still remained. But to Emily the hope of her son's salvation lay in the girl's renunciation of him. Since this must be, it were better for Faith that she should at least have unbroken idols and the belief in the effectuality of her deed to look back upon. Wherefore Emily gently seconded the girl's suggested offer of release to Prescott,, presenting it to her in the light of something not necessarily ultimate, but as a further opportunity owed to her son on the ground of his youth, and before the girl left she had practically received from her a promise of its being granted.

Shortly afterwards Faith Landor sailed for Germany, leaving Prescott ed at the sudden change in his outlook. The reasons Faith had given him for the breaking of their engagement had been vague and unsatis- factory, and he appealed to his mother to clear away his confusion. But she, in deference to Faith's unspoken wishes, also remained silent as to the real motive. Then, after what she considered a sufficient time for at least the beginning of his recovery from the blow had elapsed, she alluded, with some trepidation, to the violin that had remained practically un- touched since the <nrPs departure. Now at last he must meet the real

64 THE LANTEBN.

issue. The immediate need of money no longer provided an excuse for the neglect of his music. Either he must return to it or, as she prayed, acknowledge frankly his unwillingness or inability, and go on in business without the attitude of the martyr. But he did neither. He postponed the decision until he should feel better able to cope with it. Still the girl was serving as a screen for his weakness, and, as time went on, Emily began to realise with a dawning despair that she would always do so. Prescott was working regularly and well — though a bit automatically perhaps — in business. He was miserably unhappy, she saw, and to the pain of her disappointment was thus added the keen sorrow engendered by the sight of his suffering. One day, however, she brought him again and for the last time to bay. With no allowances for his unhappiness, she spoke strongly, directly to the point.

"Prescott, I cannot understand how, since you care so much for your music, you can abstain from serious work on it, now that there are abso- lutely no obstacles in your way."

"Mother," he replied sadly, "you can't understand. It is because I cared for it so much that I dread it. It means Faith for me, and happi- ness. The idea of it now with her gone, who was its life and soul, is unbearable."

Then in her strenuous need, in her last effort to save him from himself, Emily trespassed on forbidden ground.

"Eaith, I think, went away because of your music. She felt that she hindered your devotion to it. She wanted you to have the chance to develop your talent unimpeded. Oh, Prescott, do you not think you owe it to her at least to make the attempt ?"

Prescott stood a moment silent, gazing at the ground. At last he answered.

"She chose the wrong way, mother," he said. "Don't you see that it is more than ever impossible for me to return to it, now that I recognise in it the cause of my misery? She has succeeded in almost killing my love for it. Oh, that is tragic, cruel!"

Emily Ware gazed at her son a moment astonished. Then she turned away, acknowledging the bitterness of defeat. In this last ingenious parry she recognised a master hand, against which it would be useless to struggle more. His salvation was impossible. All that was left to her —

THE DEFEAT. 65

and she clutched at it eagerly in the chaos of her abandoned hopes — -was the assuagement of his sorrow.

Prompted by this idea and the unhappy tone of Faith's letters, she suggested the girl's return. But when she heard that this had been accomplished, fresh doubts as to its advisability assailed her. Had she a right to let Faith, still in possession of her illusions, renew the relation- ship? A glance at the misery of the girl's face decided her. She could not, probably, be more unhappy than she had been, and, after all, a tender, sweeter, and in the usual sense of the term, better son than Prescott did not exist. She left them together, conscious that in some way they would break down the barriers between them. Life was, in truth, but a series of compromises, she said to herself, and a perfect Arcadia was not possible in a human world. The bitterness of her own portion had, indeed, been deferred, but it had come in the end with all the greater strength. It would perhaps be better, she decided, that they should learn their lessons more quickly.

Theresa Helium, 1908.

66 THE LANTERN.

SONG.

From Rostand's La Princesse Lointaine (" C'est chose bien commune").

Many there are that care For maidens dark or fair, Many for chestnut hair

Do sigh; A maiden grave or gay One may have any day, — My love dwells far away,

On high.

A little thing, I wis,

Is faith as strong as this,

If sometimes one may kiss

Her train, If now and then one may Touch hands; — my lady gay Dwells in a far away

Demesne.

67

This is a noble thing

63

Unloved, unknown, to bring Passion unvarying

And high; With love that never may Even in death decay, A princess far away

Love I.

Love that I call divine Dwells in a fancy fine.. Dream love will still be mine

Alway ; Dull care may never mar Life where sweet fancies are; — I love a princess far

Away!

Margaret Franklin, 1908.

THE LANTEBN.

VOLKSLIEDER.

Written not with ink and pen, Not in haunts of learned men, Not in hope that you might be Bonds of immortality, — Never in the world, I know, Were your verses fashioned so. Men of simple griefs and pleasures Freely wrought your ringing measures; Millers to the water's clamour, Blacksmiths to the beat of hammer, Soldiers to the din of battle, Mothers to their children's prattle, Maids to whirr of spinning-wheel, Set your time in woe or weal.

Now, wherever you are heard, Hearts are gladdened, spirits stirred; None so wise and none so dull But your notes his grief may lull, Or may set his pulses prancing, Every least delight enhancing.

Merry wanderers you have been, Never prisoned up between Narrow covers of a book Where the vulgar may not look. And so readily you spring To the lips of men that sing, And so simply you express Each man's grief and happiness, That indeed it seems that you Every day are born anew. Songs that tell their maker's name Have not half so sweet a fame.

Margaret Franklin, 1908.

IN MAHCHENLAND. 69

IN MARCHENLAND.

(A Midsummer Day-Dream.)

THE Landstrasse lay, miles on miles of it, — a swept and garnished monotony of neatness. Hoofs and wheels would have been a pollution as profane as muddy boots in a mosque, could hoofs and wheels have intruded their slightest impress upon anything so solidly unimpressionable as that white endlessness. I had come no great distance upon it, but already I knew it quite by heart; I knew just how the two straight rows of well-pruned young lindens along the roadside would keep doggedly on and on in infinite succession; I knew at what intervals the prim little white stones checked off the kilometres from tidy village through tidy village and on to immaculate prosperous town. I knew, too, past a doubt, that there would be no waste of time en route, no pleasant loitering in and out along shady river-banks, no winding about on wooded hillsides, no sudden turns, no surprises, no mystery. For what has the Macadam Path of Prosperity to do with the detours and all the devious ways of nature? The Landstrasse was a triumph of well-to-do ofder and good government in all the length of its gleaming straight- ahead march — a handsome, tiresome short-cut to bricks and stones and factory chimneys and gaudy top-heavy Art-Kouveau — to thriving, admir- able, ugly Xew Germany.

To approach in this wise the medieval castle which was my destina- tion seemed out of the question. Such a sharp jolt through the centuries as the junction of this garish modern high-road and those ancient moats and battlements must occasion, would tax the most elastic sensibilities. Aghast at the mere thought of it, I dismissed my rubicund "Kutscher" rather summarily, and stood with a sigh of relief watching his patent- leather hat twinkle off into the distance, as the carriage bowled its smooth straight way out of the picture. Then I turned aside into the open country. I found a peasant's path across the fields and was soon drifting shoulder-deep in a tide of yellow oats that flowed on and on interminably,

70 THE LANTEBN.

waving and whispering to the breeze. But here at last the hand of thrifty man had not done everything, for the grain had grown and ripened above a tangle of corn flowers and yellow daisies with here and there a bold gypsy flash of poppies — such a wantoning of spendthrift Nature in sheer riot of color ! I could have shouted for delight.

But a skylark did that for me, rising from the golden billows just beyond — and I stood transfixed while the ethereal fountain gushed forth its rapture in showers and jets of sparkling song. The very air about me seemed crisped and cooled by the delicious crystal splashing back to earth of that ecstatic outpour. Caught by the transport of it, I almost flew, I scarce knew whither, in blind response to the soaring Joy far out of sight above me.

And when at length I stumbled breathless and half -intoxicated into the castle wood, I had left far behind the Germany of model highways and appalling cheap manufactures; of over-solid Art and eatables and civic virtues; and had made my transition into that dear Germany of romance that children know and love best, the Germany of Christmas trees and dwarfs and fairy princes, where every castle is enchanted, and an elf peers forth from behind the bole of every fir tree, and where little birds can speak, as the skylark had to me with his message of a bliss ineffable.

One might find one's way into Marchenland through this wood. It was quick with a hint of hiden life — an elfin life, sudden and whimsical and full of quaint surprises. Oak trees everywhere with gnarled gray roots, fit lurking-places for the tiny forest folk who doubtless were hiding there to watch me pass. And the way the sunlight came in — such a different matter from sunlight in certain beechwoods I know best, where through the long afternoons it drips slowly down into the green gloom below and lies in warm lazy pools among the moss and leaves. Here it was all quick motion — the sharp tooth-edges of the oak foliage fractured it into keen little splinters of light, and the glitter from every glossy leaf- point seemed to pierce the shade with tiny swift arrows of flame.

Decidedly a fairy forest this, with all manner of gay fantastic things going on, no doubt, quite near at hand. I felt surprised when a squirrel that ran across my path and a bird that flew chirping from bough to bough overhead, never paused to address me in nursery-doggerel — as, by authority of the Gebriider Grimm, they really should have done. But

IS SIAKCHENLAND. 71

that disappointment was more than atoned for when I emerged from the wood for a last pull up a steep little hill to the Schloss on its crest.

I had not dared hope for such an untouched bit of that fabulous Germany of the pictures and the story books. Indeed the absurd contour of the hill itself, as it rose sheer and sharp out of the level, just as a Primitif would have stuck it into the background of an altar-piece; and the improbable angle at which the castle had perched itself with ivy- grown machicolated walls scrambling up the hillslope, and a big bastion tower with four tiny sentry-box towerlets set about the upper platform like salt and pepper pots in a cruet, and a tall pointed candle-snuffer roof to top off with — surely it was all just something Albrecht Dtirer had once cut into a wooden block some hundreds of j'ears ago ! Involuntarily I glanced back over my shoulder to see if the Knight of the resolute face and the Devil, and Death on the skinny horse were not indeed passing by along the edge of the wood — and I half hesitated about going on — I had never tried walking bodily into a wood-cut before.

The foreground was a tangible fact, however — so I plunged into it and my first illusion was soon merged in the delightful reality of the Schloss itself. You crossed the bridge over the grassy, daisied moat and went under the great entrance arch. Inside, at the foot of the big tower, was a low plastered and cross-beamed porter's lodge, with steep-pitched tile roof, and a tiny triangular bay-window with leaded panes peering inquisitively out to guard the gate. The gable above the entrance turned a solemn round clock-face down upon the scene, while from its peak an ancient weather-cock creaked and twisted jerkily in the breeze. Beyond, through a wicket gate ajar in the machicolated wall, a path led into a little garden, a tangle of neglected grass, rank with weeds, and clambering, flowering rose-vines, which made the air delicious in the deserted place. In the centre rose on a column from a battered fountain basin the mailed figure of a knight, a plumed, slim-waisted St. George, with sword upraised to strike the fanged and winged and forked-tailed dragon coiled about his feet. A water-spouting dragon, evidently, once upon a time— though now dragon and knight alike were rusty and moss-grown from long disuse.

"Once upon a time" — it was the phrase that fitted best each detail of the place, the miniature gable-end of the porter's lodge, its precipitous roof almost reaching to the ground, and a low door, out of which the

TA THE LANTERN.

crooked, red-eyed old witch might easily have pounced upon "Hansel and Gretel" — "once upon a time." It fitted the moss-grown fountain and the vine-covered battlements, and above all it fitted the long stiff row of family tombstones (transferred possibly from some demolished chapel) set in the garden wall near the tower, and bearing each one its marble figure of a knight in uncomfortable-looking armour, with a great chain about his neck, hand on sword, helmet visor raised above grave eyes — an eternal vigilance in stone; while last in the line, an absurd little figure, came the effigy of a prim German "Wickelkind," its baby body bound mummy-tight, tapering toward the toes, and a great top-heavy frilled cap, from under which the fat half-obliterated features stared solemnly.

I was scratching away with a twig at the mouldering inscription on one of the stones when suddenly the lodge-door opened and a little old woman in a white cap came hobbling forth, carrying an earthen-ware crock full of meal. She was bent half double and mumbled to herself as she set down her burden on the doorstep, seated herself beside it and, drawing forth a white woolen stocking from under her apron, fell to knitting. A tortoise-shell cat that had lain asleep in the sun came to rub itself against her knees, purring loudly. To make sure that she was not a hallucination, I accosted her and asked if I might rest here awhile in the garden after my long walk. She peered at me from under her cap, nodded, and pointed me to a half-ruined arbor, high in an angle of the garden wall, half hidden among the trees, and approached by a flight of moss-grown steps. I felt myself dismissed, but ventured one more ques- tion, "Had the dragon really ever spouted water?" She quavered, "Yes, Gnadige Frau — -once upon a time." The very words ! I suppressed an impulse to ask her whether Eed Eiding Hood was not a little late this afternoon. She would probably not have heard me, for she was mumbling over her knitting again and seemed quite to have forgotten my existence. Indeed, why should she step out of her Marchen-book to gossip with every impertinent intruder who chose to trespass in Wonderland?

I climbed to the eyrie by the wall, stooping low at the foot of the steps in deference to a big spider that had built itself between two trees across my path a splendid mansion which swayed and glittered in the sunlight. I hoped it appreciated my tribute to good architecture, though it sat stolidly on, enthroned in the midst of its palace, and gave no sign.

IN MARCHENLAND. 73

From my arbor bench I could discover the cause of a tremendous din going on just then on the drawbridge below — the ungainly squawking of a flock of geese, who, toes turned in and heads high, were waddling in under the gateway. A goose girl, who had driven them up from their pasture down by the brook, followed close behind, hazel switch in hand, a cotton kerchief over her flaxen braids and the tap of her wooden shoes echoing on the bridge. They passed, a garrulous procession, across the flags of the court and in through the wicket gate to the garden. There they broke their martial file, and fell to nibbling among the rank weeds and grasses. The goose girl herself, a loiterer like the rest, paused beside the fountain, pulling apart idly the petals of a daisy, and scattering them like snowflakes at her feet. "Eosemarie I" shrilled the own woman sharply, roused from her half-doze by the doorway, "What are you about, child? Hurry and drive the geese into their pen. Here is the meal for their supper !" Listlessly the girl fetched the earthen bowl and marched her noisy charges to an enclosure back of the lodge — all save one, at least, who had stra}red apart and was half hidden among the rosebushes. It was very quiet in the garden now — save for the occasional subdued "quock'' of the lone goose, and the rusty creak of the weather-cock as it turned in the breeze. The old woman nodded over he knitting, the tortoise-shell cat was washing its face in the sun. A small brown bird chirped among the branches of the chestnut tree near by.

Then I noticed a peculiar fact — the dragon was spouting water — spouting it squarely upon the breastplate of the knight; it must have been doing so all the while, for the fountain basin was full quite up to the brim. As I was contemplating this phenomenon, Eosemarie turned from her business among the geese and crossing to the fountain halted and gazed pensively up at the knight and his watery antagonist. Then she turned in among the rosebushes and hurriedly filled her apron with pink and white blossoms. With surprise I saw her return to the fountain and begin with passionate eagerness to pelt the knight with a volley of fragrant missiles. One rose lodged on his helmet, one in the curve of his uplifted arm, two in the dragon's coils — but the rest fell and floated idly on the surface of the pool below. At length her ammunition was ex- hausted, and still the warrior of stone brandished his sword aloft, and still his scaly foe bathed him in copious crystal streams. Then the girl

74 THE LANTEBN.

dropped on her knees beside the basin and fell to weeping. I could see great tear-drops splashing in the water. Presently, with much flopping of fins and tail, a big catfish, all mouth and whiskers, rose half out of the water, and after some preliminary gurgles its wet, snuffly tones shaped themselves into words :

"Swish, swish !

Can't you see we're fresh-water fish? And because you chance to feel despairing Must we all turn into cod and herring? If you must shed brine to express emotion, Do shed it in the Atlantic Ocean — For we are fresh-water fish, Swish, swish!"

It poised on its tail, quite quivering with indignation. "Oh, dear Mr. Fish," apologised Eosemarie, "do forgive me ! I never thought how you'd feel about salt water — and I'm in such trouble, I couldn't help crying. Perhaps," she added, "if you are the Nix of this fountain, you would do something for me?" The catfish twirled his whiskers with both fins and snorted pompously:

"Swish, swish, I'll permit you to state your wish!"

Eosemarie began very humbly:

"You see I'm not really a goose-girl at all. I am the daughter of the King of Par Away. But I was always dreadfully proud and particular, and when foreign princes came to marry me I used to turn up my nose and send them packing — they were all such ordinary creatures ! But one of them — he was the best — I almost forgot and said 'yes' to him — only he did look so absurd on his knees— so I laughed instead and said he must first cross the Wonder Wood and the Mystery Moors and the Spurious Sea and kill the dragon and get the mirror from the Perilous Princess in the tower. He got on very well, I've heard, and finished off all sorts of ghosts and monsters and was just making way with the dragon, when the Perilous Princess (spiteful thing!) looked out of the tower and turned him and the dragon both to stone. His fairy godmother was furious;

IN MARCHENLAND. 75

she came riding up on her broomstick the very next day, and with a wave of her wand fastened these nasty clothes on me tight" (this with a -tug at her cotton dress and kerchief and a stamp of a wooden shoe), "and vowed they shouldn't come off until I could make the stone prince on the fountain kiss me three times to show he had forgiven me. So here 1 am ! Of course I had to leave home, for what's the good of having a golden frock and a starry crown when no one can see them under your rags — and who'll believe you're a princess when you look like this? Nobody but geese, of course! And so nobody but geese will have any- thing to do with me now. Oh, I'm so miserable ! Please, good Mr. Fish, bring the prince on the fountain back to life, and help me out of this mess." Eosemarie wept piteously, though she took care now to cry into the corner of her apron and to wring the tears out neatly on the grass. The fish began in his snuffly sing-song :

"Splash, splash, What you ask is rather rash. But If you'll bring fresh eggs of gold All into golden eruuiblets doled, Seven gold eggs, one egg each hour, Just on the stroke of the clock by the tower. The fairy fish will grant your wish, Swish, swish !"

Eosemarie fell to sobbing louder than ever. "Golden eggs, indeed !" she wailed. "You. might as well have said 'no' outright! Where am I to find golden eggs, I'd like to know?"

Just then the white goose waddled forth from the rosebushes. "Quock," it began,

"Quock, quock. Promise by six o'clock To do whatever the white goose begs And you shall have your golden eggs, Quock, quock !"

"You!" cried Eosemarie. "Why I thought you were just a common goose like all the rest."

76 THE LANTERN.

The goose held its head high and looked important:

"Quock, quock, Prepare for a dreadful shock— I, too, was a princess proud and rich, And I have to thank the spider-witch For this ugly white-goose-frock — Quock, quock !"

"Dear, dear," said Kosemarie, "how unfortunate! But how about the golden eggs, please, and what must I promise to do?"

"Quock, quock !

From her web where the plane-trees rock The spider-witch you must bring to me And I'll finish her off in a bite for tea ; — Teatime is six o'clock, Quock, quock !"

Rosemarie glanced up at the clock. "Let me see," she mused; "six o'clock, — that's an hour off — and lots of things can happen in an hour — besides it mightn't be so difficult to catch that ugly spider, and I must have the eggs." Then, turning to the goose, "Yes, I promise," she said, "and, please, would you mind hurrying a little?"

I looked to see how the spider-witch was taking it, but she never stirred — though I caught the gleam of a hard, bright eye from the centre of the web.

Meanwhile the white goose had bustled off behind the rosebushes. Just then the clock began to strike five and the whole garden woke into a momentary bustle. The weathercock flapped its wings with a tinny clatter and crowed lustily; the brown bird in the branches above cried "Swee-et, twirtle twirtle !" over and over in excited haste, like a mechanical top wound up too tightly; the lazy cat grew suddenly alert and, fixing its yellow eyes on the girl, moved toward her, crouching stealthily; the spider- witch made a few hysterical darts back and forth across the web; the cat- fish splashed impatiently about the fountain and opened a significant hungry mouth at Rosemarie. But high above all rose a tremendous commotion from among the rosebushes. Such a deafening squawking and

IN MABCHENLAND. 77

flapping of wings! And at length the white goose emerged with a most tremendous strut of pride. Eosemarie hastened to its hiding place and presently returned radiant, carrying in her apron seven shining golden eggs. Six of these she laid tenderly aside in a heap by the fountain. The seventh she crumbled with trembling haste into tiny fragments and scat- tered them into the water. As fast as they fell the fish snapped them up greedily, and his ugly black surface began to glow with glittering scales, until, at length, no goldfish was ever half so brilliant. And while he swam proudly to and fro in all his new magnificence, the water, too, as it touched him, was transformed into liquid gold. First the water in the pool and, gradually, the streams that poured forth from the dragon's mouth began to glow, golden at first, then ruddier and ruddier, till they lit up the face of the knight with the rosy hue of life, and their splashing sound turned to the hissing and crackling of flames. The dragon's scales glistened gorgeously and he fell to lashing his great forked tail. Just then the mailed arm with the brandished sword fell, and the knight struck home. With a deafening roar the wounded dragon leaped from the pedestal, the knight in close pursuit, and the combat continued hot and fast all about the garden. To and fro from end to end they raged, the dragon belching smoke and fire and bellowing horribly. But at length the knight drove his sword square into the monster's mouth and down the fiery throat, and, with the plume of his helmet singed and smoking, he stood triumphant, one foot planted on the inert form stretched at his feet in a pool of blood.

It was but an instant of triumph, for, alas, the hand that struck the fatal blow had pierced unawares the web of the spider-witcli and torn it quite in two. Forth from her lair she darted, out along a branch of the plane-tree, swung herself down to the knight's shoulder, and stung him between the joints of his armour till he fell a lifeless heap at the dragon's side. At this, up rushed Eosemarie and flung herself on her knees by the prostrate warrior. In vain she chafed his brow and hands and bathed him with her tears — she could not bring him back to life.

She was so pre-occupied that she did not at first notice the tortoise- shell cat, who, its tail high and its spine arched to a Gothic peak, was rubbing itself with a slow stateliness among the folds of her petticoats, and

78 THE LANTERN.

purring in a gradual crescendo that at length took form in something more intelligible:

"Pur-r — pur-r ! To a little advice defer ! The principal hitch is the spider-witch, You'd better make up to her ! If a brand-new web of gold you spin And deferentially ask her in,

She'll repent of Her spite and revive your knight I'll wager my whiskers and tail and fur, Purr, pur-r !"

Eosemarie only gave the cat an impatient little push away with her wooden shoe. "Oh, do stop plaguing me !" she moaned. "Every one asks the most impossible things of me to-day! Who ever heard of spinning gold spiderwebs? And if you weren't just a stupid porter's cat, you'd know perfectly well that princesses can't spin. Why, I've never done any- thing but skip a golden rope and toss a golden ball and — and run after geese — in all my life!" Then, after a moment's pause, — "And even if I knew how," she added, "where are the wheel and distaff and the golden flax to come from?"

The cat, unruffled by Eosemarie's rude manner, purred louder than ever and replied with insinuating politeness :

"Mew-w, mew-w! I'll attend to all that for you, If you'll requite my appetite With a trifling tid-bit or two. To wit : the comb of the cock From the gable over the clock, And the tongue of the twirtling bird ; You've only to give your word In the form of an I. O. TJ. Mew-w, mew-w !"

Eosemarie wavered for an instant. "But it's not really any more out of the way than golden eggs and enchanted spiders," she hesitated. Then, with a desperate glance at the unconscious knight, "Oh, I'll do anything, anything you like," she cried, and stood eagerly watching while the cat, with his right forepaw extended and one sharp little claw held at the correct Spencerian cop3r-book angle, engraved neat characters in the

IN MARCHENLAND. 79

bark of a birch tree. When he had finished he offered his paw politely to Eosemarie, who, grasping it, added her signature below with a determined flourish. Then, majestically, the cat moved toward the door of the lodge, drew his claws thrice across the panels and uttered a low, imperative "Meow." The door flew open and out stepped a tiny woman clad in a scarlet cloak, with a peaked hat over her cap, and bearing in her arms an ivory spinning wheel, studded all over with bright gilt nails. She hobbled to the fountain and, seating herself on the basin edge, watched with the greatest unconcern the cat, who was clawing small tufts of mottled brown fur from his breast and dipping them daintily in the golden water of the fountain. As he drew them forth again, little gilded bits of wool, he tossed them into the old woman's lap, where they lay glowing among th& scarlet folds of her petticoat. When at length he paused, he held out his two forepaws to her, and she fell to carding deftly the golden tufts on the ten sharp claws and winding them thereafter about the end of his tail, which he held rigidly erect in an improvised distaff. Then, with a sudden whirl and flash of the wheel, the old woman began to spin.

As the bright thread drew out long and fine under her skilful fingers, the spindle glittered in the sun, and its whirring fell into a sort of rhythm to which the cat stepped slowly round and round in a stately measure, unwinding the golden floss from its stiff tail-distaff. And to this whirring accompaniment and the slow-paced rhythm of the dance and the tread of her foot as she turned the wheel, the old woman's voice rose singing, high and shrill :

"At the edge of the world where the sky droops low We ply our wheels, the spinners of light, The rainbow end for a distaff bright, And cloud-flax, gold with the noon-day glow. But woe to the mortal who enters in, For blinding-bright is the thread we spin !

"All the worn-out sunlight cast away On the heavenly ash-and-rubbish-heap, Off to the edge of the world we sweep,

And patch and polish it up by day, And fashion it over for use at night, As silvery moonshine cool and white.

80 THE LANTEBN.

"We gather the rays of starlight, too, And the cast-off beams of the waning moon, We stir them well with a comet-spoon, And melt them down to a creamy brew, And spread them there in the sky at night — The Milky Way and the Northern Light.

"At the edge of the world with a magic loom We weave the garment of light and shade That over the bosom of earth is laid, With woof of glitter and warp of gloom. And we toil forever by day and night, Spinning and weaving and fashioning light."

The song ended. The whirring of the spindle died away; the tortoise- shell cat came to a dignified standstill as the last end of the golden thread wound itself about the flying spindle. Then, as the little old woman, her wheel under her arm, withdrew with a curtsy through the cottage door, the cat approached Eosemarie and began winding the shining filaments from the spindle into a sort of skein about her idle fingers. In a moment they were deep in a game of cat's-cradle — the gleaming strands caught back and forth between them and meshed into an intricate lace-work. And at length Eosemarie, exultant, crossed to the two plane-trees, where the spider-witch hung sulking on one long, slender thread above her ruined mansion. There, in the full blaze of the low sun, the girl stretched the golden web and clapped her hands in childlike exultation as the big brown creature swung lower and lower and dropped at last full into the center of her new dwelling-place.

"Oh, good Madam Spider-Witch," she implored, "couldn't you please have pity now on the poor prince? I'm sure he never really meant you any harm."

The spider-witch appeared entirely mollified. She lowered herself forthwith to the ground, and, hastening to the side of her lifeless victim, she drew the poison from his wounded shoulder, until with returning consciousness the warrior sprang to his feet and laid his hand upon his empty scabbard. For a moment he paused irresolutely, half bewildered. "Let me see," he murmured, "where was I? Oh yes — the dragon! The princess comes next, then, and the silver mirror." He recited it as a

IN MiRCHBNLAND. SI

child does a lesson it has by heart, and raised his eyes to the uppermost window of the tower. But the lattice was tightly closed, and whatever -might be lurking there behind it gave no sign.

The prince cast about him for weapons of attack. A glitter from the grass by the fountain met his roving eye, and with eager haste he gathered the six golden eggs into his helmet and moved toward the foot of the tower. Eosemarie looked alarmed, and laying a timid hand on his mailed arm strove to stay him. "Oh, if you please," she stammered bashfully, "may I ask a great favor of you?" But his gaze never wavered from the tower window as he answered with perfunctory politeness, "Delighted, I am sure, at any other time — but, a previous engagement — perhaps a little later — " and striding past her he began his assault with a volley of hard, bright missiles. The tiny windowpanes were shivered to fragments, and as the last of the golden eggs crashed through, the lattice swung slowly open and a pair of strange soft eyes looked out full into his own.

The Princess!

With swift hand she loosened the gleaming coils of her hair which, unwinding, rippled downward and touched his shoulder as if with a caress ; and smiling upon him most ravishingly, she beckoned him to climb.

Poor Rosemarie stood transfixed, watching him as he went hand over hand, sailor-fashion, up the golden rope and sprang at last through the window into the tower room. She saw him drop on his knees, and the princess, as she bent above him, hid him quite away beneath the shining curtain of her hair. Then the girl awoke from her daze and fell to wringing her hands. "Oh, oh," she moaned, "what shall I do ! The princess will bewitch him — she'll turn him back to stone! And how am I ever to stop her?" She rocked to and fro in a perfect ecstasy of distress, her eyes fixed always on the lovely bending golden head framed in the open window. But the little brown bird, who had been chirping excitedly all the while and fluttering back and forth from tree to tree, now alighted on a branch just above her head and cried :

"Twirtle, twirtle swee-et, Look down at your feet!"

"Ropomarie obeyed mechanically, and started back in disgust, for she had been standing with one foot in the pool of the dragon's blood. She

82 THE LANTEBN.

was wiping her wooden shoe fastidiously in the grass when the bird went on:

"Swee-et, twirtle twirtle ; Dip up the blood with a leaf of myrtle And sprinkle the corner of every tomb, If you'd avert the prince's doom."

The myrtle grew thickly at the foot of the garden wall, and the girl, hastily snatching one of the glossy leaves, scooped up what she could with it from the dark pool, and, running to the long row of tombstones, scat- tered its contents on the first of the line. It was the tablet on which the "Wickelkind" reposed. As she filled her little myrtle cup a second time and returned to sprinkle the next stone in order, the "Wickelkind" sat bold upright and began to pipe in a tiny shrill quaver:

"My mother she was a princess fair, (Tresses of gold in the sunlight shone) High in the tower window there She combed the strands of her long, bright hair, (Oh, cold, cold the cradle of stone!)

"She combed her hair the livelong day, (Tresses of gold in the sunlight shone) And every knight who passed that way Turned aside to the tower grey, (Oh, cold, cold the cradle of stone!)

"She lowered the coil of her long bright hair, (Tresses of gold in the sunlight shone) She meshed the knight in a golden snare And drew him up to her casement there, (Oh, cold, cold the cradle of stone!)

"Her twining arms to fetters grew (Tresses of gold in the sunlight shone) And with her kisses' poison-brew Forth through his lips the soul she drew, (Oh, cold, cold the cradle of stone!)

"She turned her silver mirror bright, (Tresses of gold in the sunlight shone) Full on the face of the soulless knight And laughed as he stiffened to marble white, (Oh, cold, cold the cradle of stone!)

IX MARC'HENLAND. 83

"On a strand of her shining hair she hung (Tresses of gold in the sunlight shone) Two-score souls in a necklace strung ; Close to her fair swan-throat they clung. (Oh, cold, cold the cradle of stone!)

"Two-score gems in the necklace glow; (Tresses of gold in the sunnght shone) Two-score tombs in the garden low ; Two-score knights in a marble row. (Oh, cold, cold the cradle of stone!)

"My mother she was a princess bright, (Tresses of gold in the sunlight shone) With strangling arms so long and white She drew me close at the dead of night. (Oh, cold, cold the cradle of stone!)

"She hushed my cries in the darkness there (Tresses of gold in the sunlight shone) With the smothering coils of her long, bright hair And laid me to rest in a cradle bare. (Oh, cold, cold the cradle of stone!)

"Four stone sides to the cradle high, (Tresses of gold in the sunlight shone) One stone cushion whereon I lie, And the winter wind for a lullaby. (Oh, cold, cold the cradle of stone!)"

Meanwhile Kosernarie had kept on down the line, diligently refilling and emptying her myrtle leaf upon each tombstone; and as she did so, the knights arose, one by one, from their resting-places, and with a great clanking of armour, betook them to the foot of the tower, where they climbed one upon the other's shoulders until they reached, a human ladder, almost to the lattice-window of the princess. Almost — not quite.

But as the "Wickel kind's" song came to an end, its quaint little body dropped from its tablet and rolled stiffly along to the feet of the lowermost knight. He took it in his arms and lifted it to the knight above him, who passed it along in his turn, until at length it stood upright at the very top, its frilled cap just touching the window-sill. While Rosemarie

84 THE LANTEBN.

was gazing in astonishment at this strange pyramid towering there erect and motionless, the weathercock suddenly flapped its wings and crowed :

"Kick-er-i-ki, kick-er-i-ki ! Climb the ladder, Rosemarie !"

Eosemarie turned grateful eyes toward her counsellor. "Oh, I under- stand," she cried, "thank you, thank you, dear weathercock!" And, grasping the mailed shoulder of the first knight, she began to climb. Each warrior in turn stretched her a helping hand for the long ascent, and in a few moments she had drawn herself up to the casement-ledge, and stood by the side of the princess and her prostrate victim.

Alas, alas, was she not all too late?

As the enchantress raised her deadly-sweet face from his, the knight's head fell backward with closed eyes upon her arm. He seemed asleep and in his dream he smiled. The princess's white hand fumbled at her girdle for the silver mirror and with a gesture rhythmic as an incantation she drew the shining disk close to his face. Once more the weathercock crowed shrilly :

"Ki-ker-1-ki-i ! kl-ker-i-ki-i ! Turn the mirror, Rosemarie!"

An ashen rigidity was already overspreading the smiling features of the knight, as the girl grasped the end of the mirror-handle and with a swift twist reversed it in the princess's own hand till it caught squarely the reflection of her startled eyes. She never stirred, but, still clasping the mirror, froze to a marble whiteness where she stood — a lovely petre- faction of terror and surprise. And from her hand there fell just then something that glowed and flickered like an imprisoned flame— a great opal-like gem which caught under the edge of the knight's breastplate and nestled there; the last of the magic soul-jewels, destined never to hang beside its sparkling fellows at the throat of the princess. The knight's head slipped from her stiffened arm to the floor at her feet, and as the jewel fell upon his breast, color and consciousness came flickering back into his face. He opened his eyes and Eosemarie, leaning over, helped him to rise. He seemed to recollect himself at once, and turning toward the stone princess he stretched out his hand for the mirror — the object of

IN MARCHENLAND. 85

his long quest, which twice had been so nearly his undoing. But the marble fingers had closed about it like a vise; try as he would, he could not draw it away. There was but one thing to do — he must cut ofE the marble hand. He reached again for his sword, and again encountered only the empty scabbard. Then he glanced out into the garden below. There was the sword, buried to the hilt in the dragon's throat, and without it he could do nothing. In an instant he was out through the casement and descending from shoulder to shoulder down the ladder of knights. As Eosemarie stood watching him, the brown bird flew to the window- ledge beside her and began to sing excitedly :

"Twirtle, twirtle, swee-et! Rosemarie, be fleet! The dragon's blood is nearly dry And back to their tombs the knights must hie ; Time to retreat! Swee-e-et !

The idea of being left stranded at the top of the tower alone with the marble princess seemed to appal Eosemarie, and without delay she scrambled through the window and down the ladder. She had barely reached the ground when there arose a stir and a rattle of armour among the hitherto motionless knights. The drops of dragon's blood on the stone tablets had been slowly drying away, until now only faint brown- ish stains remained. The charm was at an end. One by one the knights descended. The uppermost carried the "Wickelkind" in his arms and laid it tenderly back upon its little stone. Then, returning to his own, he mounted and, stretching himself out stiffly, folded his hands upon his breast. The others followed his example, and as the clock struck six the confusion had quite subsided, and the long row of effigies stared stonily forth from the garden wall just as they had done half an hour before.

At the first stroke of the hour, Eosemarie in alarm rushed over to the knight, who was tugging at the sword wedged fast in the dragon's mouth. There was no time to waste now, and she forgot her shyness in the urgency of her need. "Oh, please, please," she implored, "won't you stop a minute? I know you are a true knight and love chivalry and succouring people in distress. I'm in distress and nothing can save me but three — kisses — from you — if you would be so kind — right away!" She

86 THE LANTEBN.

faltered a little at the last, but she got it out, and stood looking up at him with the prettiest pleading face. The prince was all gallant attention in an instant. He abandoned his struggles with the sword, and taking her hand, bent down toward her upturned face.

The clock had finished striking.

One kiss.

The flowered kerchief slipped half-way down off the girl's head, uncovering a delicious ripple of golden hair about her temples, surmounted by a real Eoyal-Highness coronet which sparkled like the star on a Christ- mas-tree. The prince paused a moment in astonishment, and vague memories seemed to perplex him as he looked at her; then he stooped again.

Two kisses.

This time the cotton dress glided clown from one shoulder, disclosing the whitest possible throat and a glimpse of a cloth-of-gold frock, such as princesses doubtless wear every day.

But just then the cat leaped to Eosemarie's shoulder, its back high and its tortoise-shell tail waving angrily, and began spitting with rage at the prince. As he leaned forward for the third and last kiss, five steely claws darted forth and gashed him in the face till the blood flowed. Involuntarily he started back, and Bosemarie screamed. But the cat, its paw still uplifted and the menacing claws unsheathed, began with snarling impatience :

"Miaow, Miaow ! I want my supper now I The comb of the weathercock From the gable over the clock ; The tongue of the twirtling bird — If you dare to break your word, I'll scratch the golden web in two And the spider-witch will settle you ! Mew-w, mew-w !"

"Oh, dear," pleaded Bosemarie, "wouldn't anything else do just as well ? I'm under such obligations to the bird and the weathercock. They've just been very kind to me, you see; I can't be so ungrateful! Besides, however much I tried, I know they'd never let me put salt on their tails,

IN MARCHENLAND. 87

and how else am I — ?" She was interrupted by a tremendous splashing and spluttering from the golden catfish in the fo\mtain:

"Swish, swish ! Have you forgot the fish? Look sharp ! for knights of flesh and bone Are easily conjured back to stone. My golden crumbs are overdue, You shan't fool me with an I. O. TJ. The fish's terms are cash ! Splash, splash !"

Eosemarie wrung her hands. Oh, why had she let the prince throw away all her precious golden eggs! There they were, shivered to frag- ments up in the tower room, far out of reach. She turned in desperation to the goose. Perhaps it would have pity on her — for the fish was evidently not to be trifled with, and there was no time to lose. "Kind Madam Goose," she begged, "couldn't you spare me a few more golden eggs?" The goose only retorted with reproachful significance:

"Quock, quock ! Tea time is six o'clock !"

And waddled resolutely over toward the golden spider-web.

"Oh, I remember," moaned Eosemarie, "I did say I'd try to catch the spider- witch for you. But I am so horribly afraid of her — she's very dangerous to have anything to do with. And I'm sure she wouldn't agree with you at all ! Couldn't I find you a few nice worms instead, or a beetle or two?"

For reply the goose simply hissed with scorn and continued her stately progress toward the spider-web. But the cat was ahead of her. It had sprung from Eosemarie's shoulder and, bristling witli rage, bounded across to unchain Nemesis, in the person of the spider-witch. There was a flash of claws and a swift golden glitter and the web lay a tangled ruin on the ground. The cat itself was safe in an instant at the top of the garden wall, and the spider-witch, forced to seek satisfaction elsewhere, darted over to where the knight was again at work endeavoring to wrench his sword from the dragon's mouth.

88 THE LANTERN.

It was against the lifeless dragon that the spider this time directed her attack, and to such effect that, as her venomous little fangs penetrated the scaly hide, a swift convulsion shook its huge inertness, the locked jaws parted, releasing the sword so suddenly that the knight stumbled back- ward, still clutching it firmly in his hand, and plunged headlong into the fountain. The shock of his fall dislodged the jewel from his breastplate. It shot through the air like a meteor and then lay glowing among the grass and flowers. The fish, meanwhile, poised quivering on its tail half out of the water, seemed somehow to have brought about and to be await- ing this very denouement. Deprived of its diet of golden crumbs, its sliining scales and all the water of the fountain had gradually dulled and faded, until, as the splashing died away after the knight's fall, it was with a very tarnished remnant of its late magnificence that the fish swam to the prostrate warrior's side.

As he attempted to rise, the fish with a deft flirt of its tail splashed water into his eyes, blinding him and causing liim to flounder helplessly. And just here the dragon, now thoroughly revived, advanced bellowing and spouting fire in pursuit of its old adversary. As it plunged into the fountain-basin after the knight, the fish redoubled the activities of its nimble fins and tail and enveloped both antagonists in a shower of tossed- up spray. The effect on the dragon was instant. With hissings and splutterings the flames that issued from his jaws were extinguished and in their stead liquid streams of a pale argent dore began to pour forth and deluge the knight as he once more brandished his sword and advanced to the attack. Three times around the fountain-basin they fought their way, the fish always beside them and always aggravating matters by its well directed splashings, which blinded the knight so that he hewed about him wildly and continually missed his aim. The dragon pressed him closer and closer, until in self-defence he sprang up to the empty pedestal out of reach of his adversary.

Out of reach for an instant only, for the dragon, gathering its great coils for a spring, paused, and then, with a mighty roar, leaped to his side. Just then the last pale golden glimmer faded from the water in the foun- tain, and from the torrents that poured out of the dragon's mouth; the dragon itself stiffened through all its coiled length to the old stony rigidity, and the knight's raised arm with its brandished sword poised, petrified, never to fall again.

IN MARCHENLAND. 89

It was a very ugly black catfish indeed that stood for an instant balanced on the tip of its tail quite out of the water, regarding in triumph this climax of its exertions, before, with a last vindictive splash, it plunged beneath the surface of the fountain.

Poor Kosernarie was standing meanwhile near the basin-edge, the very incarnation of despair, from her starry crown to her wooden shoes — her arms outstretched in helpless appeal toward the motionless figure on the pedestal. Then a swift leap of light caught her eye, and, stooping, she lifted the magic jewel which tbrobbed and flamed between her ringers like a living thing. For an instant her gaze wandered back to where the knight stood — a frozen indifference with averted face. Then, passionately, she caught the quivering jewel to her breast, hid it among the cotton rags and the cloth of gold, and as the clock struck seven, turned and fled through the wicket gate out of the garden. As the gate closed behind her I noticed that the streams issuing from the dragon's mouth were gradually decreasing in volume to a fine thread-like jet, and at last, with a slow drip, drip, and a hidden gurgle of receding waters, the fountain was still.

The sun had got so low behind the garden wall that the basin lay in shadow. That was the reason, I told myself, why I could not clearly see the water, which, a little while before, had glittered like molten gold. It no longer reflected the light — that explained it, of course. But involun- tarily I rubbed my eyes to make sure — the basin did look most oddly black and empty ! I noticed, too, that the garden seemed all at once very silent and deserted. I peered through the lengthening shadows, but there was no sign of even the white goose or the brown bird. Only the cat remained, meowing and scratching for admittance at the door of the porter's lodge. The silhouette of the weathercock, motionless against the sky, seemed a mute repudiation of the notion that it should ever have so far unbent as to flap those stiff little wings. Was it possible that I had dreamed it all?

When I rose from my bench in the arbor, a sudden flash from the tower window arrested my eye. The silver mirror ! Then it had not been a dream after all! But as I descended the mossy steps, cautiously, full of awe for the spider-witch (whose whereabouts I could not discover in the gathered gloom among the trees), I caught a second flash from the tower window. No, not the silver mirror, only the reflection of the evening light on a tiny leaded pane of glass.

90 THE LANTEBN.

So it was growing late, and I must be off into the hum-drum world again, abandoning, with their destinies still at such loose ends, poor pretty Eosemarie and the unfortunate knight, the wicked princess, the enchanted goose.

Out upon it ! What had dragons and enchantresses and talking birds and beasts to do with Life? Off there beyond these ruined walls and towers the real business of existence awaited me — band concerts and Wiener Schnitzels on the Kurhaus Terrace; Sprudel baths and strong waters, and all the serious, strenuous routine of a German watering place. Here I had been squandering my intensest sympathies through a long- afternoon on the fantastic affairs and distresses of these mere creatures of Bomance — I, for whom the real ills of life were all so neatly tabulated on my "Kurkarte" in terms of too desultory heart-beats !

I rubbed my eyes once more, and so, stifling a sigh of regret, I passed across the drawbridge from the twilight fairyland of dreams, and through the dusk}' gloom of the castle-wood out into the now gaily electric- lighted world of Eeality.

Caroline Reeves Foullce, 1896.

GEORGE SAND AND FREDERIC CHOPIN.

91

COLLEGE THEMES.

" Besides, as it is fit for grown and able writers to stand of themselves, so it is fit for the beginner and learner to study others and the best; .... not to imitate servilely .... but to draw forth out of the best and choicest flowers with the bee, and turn all into honey, work it into one relish and savour; make our imitation sweet." — Ben Jonson: Discoveries.

GEORGE SAND AND FREDERIC CHOPIN.

George Sand. — Leave the piano, my friend ; come over here by the fire, and talk to me. You know I am the best of listeners ; so good, in fact, that I cannot talk to you while you are play- ing. Besides, I must tell you what de Musset once said to me. You know he thinks you have found the perfect expression — in the lower art — for all he is striving to make clear in poetry. Well, dear boy, he said you were the musician of the future. I didn't agree with him, — I never do, — but do you yourself reassure me that the boy I took under my wing is not going to turn out the world's master musician.

Chopin. — Do not laugh at me, Aurore; to-night I cannot bear it. As for talking to you, I can only do that when I am playing to you. What have I to tell you that you have not heard a thousand times already? You know all ; my ideas and aspirations I have repeated until you sighed with weariness. But when I play them they are not trite; even the blues sound divine.

George Hand. — That is just what I

told de Musset. Your etudes and pre- ludes, your nocturnes and waltzes, are your moods — deified. But do not play now ; what my dull mind craves is not a heavenly monologue of mood, but articulate opinions. On what grounds do you and de Musset base your belief that you are the supreme genius?

Chopin. — It was not I ; I never claimed anything. All I desire, all I can hope for, is to find, in part, ex- pression for the edged rapture and most sweet melancholy that come from love, — from your love.

George Sand. — That is what you do "express" in your music, — only so much better there. But do not think your music is I, or even that it is love ; it is you, Frederic Chopin. Yours is the most individual music man ever wrote. Universal joy, or even human- ity's joy, has no place in it. It is composed of your emotions only, and is drenched with your personality. Beware the pitfall of the individual- ists; take care that in gaining your own soul, you lose not the whole world. You need not tell me again, Frederic, that the soul is our highest posses- sion ; that in freeing that wo have wrought out our noblest capability. The universal soul is infinitely more

92

THE LANTEBN.

than that nervous, half-wild thing in your breast, and the universal soul is what the master musician will ex- press,— nay, has expressed : Bach in part, Beethoven fully.

Chopin. — These are not my masters. Their glory I neither envy nor seek. Say that I have interpreted the tem- perament of your sex, — your exquisite inconsistency, your fine unintelligence. Nay, my friend, not thine ; thou hast the mind of my sex, as I have the soul of thine. ... Do you remem- ber a night last autumn when you and Jules were almost lost in that terrible storm? How you came home and found me weeping and playing? Aurore, I thought you were dead.

George Sand. — Remember? My God, what music ! What you must have suffered !

Chopin. — Dear friend, that storm to me was a raging ocean, and the wind, the shrieks of the drowning. And I was locked away from you in eternity, and the rain fell drop by drop upon my brain. Would another of my sex have felt it so? Blind interpretation of blind anguish. . . . Some one told me since that, in that prelude, I seemed to be "imitating nature."

George Sand. — Ah, fool, fool !

Chopin. — No, I do not mind now. But this is my defence: I am not imi- tating nature, but I do interpret, not create. All expression, all sound, pass through my soul into music and be- come, as you know, flagrantly per- sonal. I cannot know the bland uni- versal, but I can realise the passionate individual, and if I cannot sympathise with the world-soul, I can interpret my own. My genius, as you intimate,

is deformed and sad and sensitive. May I play for you now, Aurore?

Grace Branham, 1910.

A SURF-RIDER.

Half-covered by the water, his naked shoulders wet and gleaming in the sun, his strong, slim body thrown back against the waves, stood Williauma, the native surf-rider. Dark face, alight with eagerness, eyes afire, heavy lips parted over white teeth, head darting from time to time quickly back over his shoulder, — so he waited, his surf-board held tightly in his hands.

Suddenly, the boy's body straight- ened and grew rigid, his breath came harder and faster. With a crash and a flaring of foam, a great wave bad broken over the low-lying reef behind him. He flung his dripping board high before the oncoming torrent and slipped his slim length over its sur- face. Then, with a single movement, so light that it scarcely bent the board beneath him, he slid to his feet and stood upon the crest of the wave, balancing his weight with outspread dripping arms. So, like a winged creature, the wind blowing back the thick hair from his face and beating the water-drops from his brown body, he swept on with the wave toward the shore.

There, where the beach line showed white against the blue water, the boy let his surf-board slide forward from under him. Lifting his hands like a flash above his head, he dove care- lessly off into the water.

Ethelinda Schaefer, 1908.

93

EARLY MORNING.

As some stars are so faint that they are invisible except when we look at them indirectly, so some aspects of nature are too elusive for us to realise their beauties except when we watch them with our eyes half-turned away. Just so early morning, with its witch- ery greater than that of evening twi- light, its mystery deeper than that o£ night, baffles our efforts at under- standing, remaining aloof, as it were, and only by slow imperceptible stages opening itself to our gaze. Its first light is like a dim ghost of darkness, eluding our touch. Its breezes seem not of earth, but are rather breaths from some unseen land of night. It gives forth faint odours, soft dews, and half-heard sounds, and, at the moment when it first gains colour and motion and life, is like some dreamer awaking gently from sleep.

Helen B. Parklmrst, 1011.

IRONY.

In the centre of the city called Life, is a statue of Truth, on a pedestal that the ceaseless struggle of multi- tudes has broken and disfigured. Hid- den in a crevice of the lofty monu- ment, fazing over the wide city, dwells Irony, the ever-smiling. High above her hiding-place stands the great statue, large limbs making a clear line against the clouded sky, and face of solemn ecstasy lifted toward heaven. Below her feet, on the unsure stones of the city streets, press and agonise

all mankind. The races of the world are here ; worn and wistful, they surge toward the monument of Truth, strik- ing and trampling one another in their efforts to reach the lifeless marble. It is a surging sea that Irony looks down upon — a sea of tossing arms, eager fingers, and faces of woe and yearning. The sound of if is like the vast murmur of the ocean itself : "Truth ! Truth !" it moans, in a long cadence broken only by an occasional wind-sharp cry.

Through the sound of humanity's complaining, one who knows how to listen can distinguish the laughter of Irony — light laughter, vibrant with bitter mirth. She herself sits medita- tive on the cold stones of her crevice, visible to none but the few who press too near the statue. The outline of her limbs is blurred by the misty folds of her cloud-grey robe; her pale hair is a mere haze against the shadow of her background ; but her face stands out clear and definite, and once seen, ia never forgotten. The brow of Irony is broad and noble, and her eyes are dark with sorrow. The rest of her face, however, like one of the old masks of comedy, is grotesque in its mirth — chin pointed, mouth aslant with merriment, cheeks creased in lines of scorn. Around her, the air pulsates with wailings ; below her, set faces are uplifted in vain seeking; but Irony never stirs. Scornful and sad, she sits laughing through the cen- turies, as she has laughed since the beginning of the world.

Helen Townsend Scott, 1909.

94

THE LANTEBN.

WHEN INDECISION DECIDES.

The arrangement had been that Sarah, In order to exploit her fitness for the position which Mr. Wylie Waringhorn had at his disposal, should present herself to that gentleman at ten o'clock on Monday morning. It was now twenty minutes of eleven, and as Mr. Waringhorn had not yet learned how many times poor Sarah was always obliged to flutter back and forth before deciding where to hide her key and whether to carry an umbrella, he had quite given her up. When she finally did arrive, it appeared that she had made an unhappy selection of alternatives, so far as the umbrella was concerned. She stood dripping apologetically in the doorway, murmur- ing explanations of her tardiness, and protesting feebly against dragging her wet skirts across the immaculate white and blue squares of the entry.

It seemed that the great-aunt of the gentleman with whom Sarah lived had very inconsiderately seen fit to give way to some sort of mental weakness to which she was subject, at the iden- tical moment when poor Sarah had made herself so far sure of her own plans as to be stepping out of the front gate.

"Seems as if she was afraid of every- body else when she gets them spells," Sarah explained to Mr. Waringhorn in a confidential tone, as she seated her- self gingerly on the edge of a horse- hair sofa, after taking at least one step in the direction of every other chair in the room.

"And she isn't afraid of you, isn't she?" asked Mr. Waringhorn, his sharp eyes snapping suddenly at the thought.

"Oh, no," said the girl, "she kind o' hangs ou to me. I don't see why it is. I reckon she's used to me, don't you think so?"

"I dare say," conceded Mr. Waring- horn. "But she must be a great charge, isn't she?"

"Oh, I don't know," the girl wavered ; "Lizzie she says I'm a fool to stay, but I don't know. Sometimes I thought I would leave, and then the old lady she cried, and Mister he felt something aw- ful. I did tell Mr. Stratton once that I wished I had my wages." Her face brightened. "I put it to him straight," she said, giggling with choked delight over her reminiscence. Apparently the contemplation of herself in the un- usual role of the inexorable unjust steward tickled her fancy, for she re- peated half a dozen times through her chuckles, "And I just put it to him straight."

"So then he paid you, did he?" asked Mr. Waringhorn.

"No," she said, controlling her chuckles and falling into a little of her former perplexity ; "no, he didn't pay ; but he was worried, and felt something dreadful. Lizzie she said I'd ought to have left, but I don't know. Some- body's got to button the old lady's shoes, you see, and anyway, I don't know -"

"Can't they get her into a home?" asked the man of affairs.

"Yes, that's what Mr. Stratton says ; but the old lady she cried, and then they decided to raise my wages in- stead."

"So then they paid you?"

"Why no, not yet ; but I don't know. Of course it will be more when I get

WHEN INDECISION DECIDES.

95

it, you see, and besides you ain't so apt to spend it when you ain't got it, do you think?"

"There's something iu that," agreed Mr. Wylie Waringhorn, rubbing the backs of his hands together and star- ing at a crack in the floor.

"Besides," she hesitated, smiling with wet eyes — her eyes were always wet when she smiled — "besides, we might get older ourselves sometime, don't you think?" She looked mod- estly pleased with her philosophy, as if the idea were quite new, and liable consequently to be opposed. Yet she

demanded no answer. For a few mo- ments the man at the desk watched her as she made and unmade a rabbit out of her handkerchief. Then he got up and crossed the room to the door of an inner office.

"Parker," he said, closing the door behind him, "she's best as she is. Her heart's much too big, but if it were small, she'd go straight to the dogs. Besides," he added half to himself as he turned away, "somebody's got to button the old lady's shoes, that's plain."

Ruth George, 1910.

96 THE LANTERN.

COLLEGIANA.

THE GRADUATE CLUB.

President — Rose Jeffries Peebles. Vice-President — Florence Donnell White. Secretary — Helen Hawley Nichols. Treasurer — Anna Ward Aven. Executive Committee — Rose Jeffries Peebles.

Florence Donnell White. Lillian P. Moser. Louise B. Morgan. Edith F. Rice. During the year of 1907-08 five formal meetings of the Graduate Club have been held. The speakers and their subjects have been as follows : President M. Carey Thomas, "Present Tendencies in the University Education of Women ;" Prof. Paul Haupt, of Johns Hopkins University, "The Song of Solomon in its relation to Goethe and Herder ;" Prof. Paul Clemen, of the University of Bonn, German Exchange Professor at Harvard University, "Bocklin ;" Dr. Carleton F. Brown of Bryn Mawr, "Paganismus Redivivus ;" and Prof. Laura J. Wylie, of Vassal- College, "The Place of the Peasant in Wordsworth's Social Theories." The Graduate Fellowship dinner was held on the evening of . March twen- tieth. Former Bryn Mawr European Fellows were guests of the Club and gave interesting accounts of their experiences in foreign universities.

On April the twenty-fourth a reception wTas given to the faculty of the college. Throughout the year tea has been served in the club-room on the first four afternoons of the week. The athletic director of the club has organised hockey and basket-ball teams and a gymnasium class.

F. D. W.

* *

THE PHILOSOPHICAL CLUB.

President — Louise Foley, 1908. Vice-President — Cynthia Wesson, 1909. Secretary — Barbara Spofford, 1909. The Philosophical Club has thus far had one formal meeting ; on February sixth Miss Ethel D. Puffer, of Radcliffe College, spoke on "The ^Esthetic Experience" to a most appreciative audience, who were especially glad to have the opportunity of meeting Miss Puffer afterwards. It is hoped that Professor Munsterberg, of Harvard, will address the club on April twenty-fourth.

B. 8., 1909.

COLLEGIANA. 97

CHRISTIAN UNION.

President — Louise Milligan, 1908. Vice-President — Cornelia Meigs, 1908. Treasurer — Mart Putnam, 1909 (resigned).

Alta Stevens, 1909. Secretary — Hilda Smith, 1910.

The regular work of the Christian Union consists in holding religious meet- ings on alternate Wednesdays, in conducting Bible study classes and one mission study class, and in organising philanthropic work among the college maids, the laboratory boys, and the factory girls in Kensington. Special work has been done at different times, as helping in registration of new students in the fall, making up a box of clothing and toys for a mission school just before Christmas, and collecting money for relief work in February.

In June, 1907, the Christian Union held an eight-day conference at Bryn Mawr in connection with the Friends' Summer School of Religious History. In all about sixty Bryn Mawr people registered at the conference, but a number of these were present only a small part of the time. Though in extent the conference was disappointing, those who attended felt that it had a great value both in educating and in inspiring, and that such conferences would always be beneficial to the Christian Union in broadening and at the same time intensify- ing the religious ideals of the members.

It was to try to produce somewhat similar results that a week-end confer- ence was held at the college, February fourteenth to sixteenth, 1908. Dr. Beever, of the Union Theological Seminary, gave four classes on the second Isaiah ; Miss Carolina Wood, of Mt. Kisco, spoke of practical work ; Dr. Coe, of Northwestern University, on "The Possibility of a Non-Mystical Religious Experience;" Dr. McGiffert on "The Trend of Modern Thought," and Professor Rufus Jones on "The Call to Service." Attendance at the meetings indicated that a large part of the college was interested.

L. M., 1908

THE BRYN MAWR LEAGUE FOR THE SERVICE 0E CHRIST.

President — Anna Wlli.es, 1908. Vice-President — Doeothy Merle-Smith, 1908. Secretary — Carlie Minor, l!Ki!>. Treasurer — Elsie Deems, 1910.

The League now has a total active and associate membership of 102 and an auxiliary membership of 51. It lias continued Its regular activities during

98 THE LANTERN.

this year with an increased attendance at meetings and an increased enrollment in classes.

Five Bible classes have been held, all led by undergraduates, except one on the Teachings of Jesus, which has been conducted by Rev. C. A. R. Janvier, of Philadelphia. The total enrollment in these classes for the first semester was 107, and the average attendance 71.

The League has continued to support Mr. Tonomura's mission among the poor of Tokyo by a contribution of at least $25 a month ; it has carried on classes in college in the study of comparative religion, and of home and foreign missions ; it has also conducted a weekly Bible class for working women and sent helpers to other meetings at the Lighthouse Settlement in Kensington, Philadelphia. These have been the principal missionary activities of the League during the year.

The Sunday afternoon meetings at 5.15 have been continued ; and from May third to fifth last spring a Missionary Conference was held under the leadership of alumnae student volunteers.

A delegation of twenty-five, organized by the League, represented Bryn Mawr at the Student Conference held in June at Silver Bay, Lake George.

The activities of the organization are now carried on by seven different committees directed by a board of eight members.

A. W., 1908.

SUNDAY EVENING MEETING.

Committee. Chairman — Maegaeet Fbanklin, 1908.

Maetha Plaisted, 1908.

Maejoeie Young, 1908.

Cablle Minob, 1909.

Maby Neabing, 1909.

Kathaeine Liddell, 1910.

Charlotte Simonds, 1910.

Sunday Evening Meeting has been continued this year according to the plan followed during the second semester of last year. The leader, usually an undergraduate, but sometimes an alumna, has chosen her topic and submitted it to the committee. The subjects have almost always had a direct bearing upon college life, and after the reading of the paper there has often been informal discussion.

M. F., 1908.

COLLEGIANA. 99

THE LAW CLUB.

President — Barbara Spofford, 1909. Vice-President — Louise Hyman, 190S. Secretary — Shirley Putnam, 1909. The object of the Law Club this year has been to promote an interest in general informal debating, in meetings of the club at which one of the officers presides and organises the discussion. The Law Club has debated in this way with the Equal Suffrage League, and expects to have several more meetings of a similar kind. It is customary for the presiding officer at the close of the debate to ask for a reorganisation of the meeting, and the result has been in the direction of settling the contestants' opinions rather than radically changing their views.

Two formal debates will have been held during the year ; the interclass

debate on the Income Tax, which was won by the Seniors against the Juniors,

and a formal debate between two Law Club teams, the subject of which is:

"Resolved, That Chinese labour should be excluded from the United States."

The speakers this year have been Dean Ashley, who opened the club, and

Mr. Franklin S. Edmunds, who spoke admirably on Civil Service Reform.

B. 8., 1909. # * *

THE ENGLISH CLUB.

President — Louise Foley, 1908,

Theresa Helburn, 1908.

Martha Plaisted, 1908.

Margaret Franklin, 1908.

Marjorie Young, 1908.

Edith Chambers, 1908.

Shirley Putnam, 1909.

pueasaunce baker, 1909. The English Club during the year 1907-08 has held its usual fortnightly meetings. The club this year contained eight members. Miss Donnelly was present at the first informal meeting and assisted the club in drawing up a new constitution. The basis of membership now rests entirely upon the grades in composition work. At the informal meetings papers written especially for the club have been read. At the first formal meeting, in October, Mr. William Morton Fullerton spoke on "The Lesson of Henry James ;" at the second one, in December, Mr. Roger Fry, Curator of Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, spoke on "Expression and Representation in Art." A third formal meeting will be held in May, when Mr. Paul Elinor More, of the Nation, will lecture on "Sir Thomas Browne."

L. F., 1908.

100 THE LANTERN.

THE SCIENCE CLUB.

President — Ina May Richtee, 1908.

Vice-President and Treasurer — Adelaide Teague Case, 1908.

Secretary — Frances Lord, 1910.

Now entering its third year, the Science Club seems as well an established factor in college life as the older academic associations. It has proved its right to rank beside them by the really living interest of its members and by the privilege it has given to the college of hearing lectures by men of note in the scientific world. The desire of the club is "quality, not quantity," in its lectures as well as in its membership ; this year two speakers only' have been invited : Dr. David Horn, former Professor of Chemistry at Bryn Mawr, who gave an account of his own research work in chemical affinity ; and Mr. Willis L. Moore, Chief of the United States Weather Bureau, who gave a reminiscent lecture on "Storms," illustrated by lantern slides.

The work of the Science Club is quite in line with the present-day move- ment of awakening a universal interest in things scientific, and of stimulating specialized research in the various scientific branches.

D. M., 1908.

* * *

ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION.

President — Marjorie Young, 1908.

Vice-President and Treasurer — Els a Denison, 1910.

Secretary— Anna Platt, 1909.

Indoor Manager — Lydia Sharpless, 1908.

Outdoor Manager — Cynthia Wesson, 1909.

In the past year increasing interest has been shown in the various athletic sports. During the hockey season, it was not unusual for each class to send out three teams a day, and the other athletic events have been equally well supported.

In hockey the championship was won by the Class of 1908, after many tie games which continued the contest until after Thanksgiving. The Varsity played with five outside teams, winning all the matches except that against the Merion Cricket Club, which resulted in a tie.

The scheme of interclass singles and doubles in the tennis tournament proved so satisfactory last year that it was repeated in the fall. Anne Whitney, 1909, won the championship in the singles through the default of Gertrude Hill, 1907, who held the cup for last year. The doubles are to be played off this spring.

The number of authorised swimmers has been largely increased by the college requirement that every Freshman shall learn to swim. There were

COLLEGIANA. 101

many entries in the annual contest, which was won by 1909. The record in the swim under water was broken by Biddle, 1909, and a new record in the plunge was established by Wood, 1911. Match games in water polo are to be played off before the Easter holidays, under new rules, which permit ducking and provide wider goals.

In the track meet two college records were broken : the hop, step and jump, by Wesson, 1909 ; and the rope-climb, by Piatt, 1909. Two new events, the fence vault, tied by Piatt and Wesson, and the ring high, done without the running board, and won by Piatt, 1909, were instituted. The meet was won by 1909, and the cup for the greatest number of individual points was awarded to Piatt, 1909.

On the last day of gymnasium there was a contest in light and heavy gymnastics between the two younger classes, judged by four outside gymnasium directors. The honours fell to the Sophomores. In the course of the after- noon there was an exhibition of sesthetic dancing by those who had practised two days a week during the winter, and also a fencing tournament, in which the Fencers' Club took part. Biddle, 1909, won the foil presented for this latter event by Miss Applebee.

As soon as weather permitted the basket-ball season commenced. Two courts have been marked out on the lower field, and it is hoped that so many will come out for the game that the upper field will be needed as well.

The all-absorbing interest of the Athletic Association at present is the new gymnasium. The Athletic Board and Miss Applebee have undertaken to raise the $30,000 required for the improvements which seem absolutely neces- sary if the gymnastic work is to be carried on at its present scale. The pro- posed changes provide convenient dressing rooms for gymnastic drills, physical appointments, and plays ; a larger stage ; and a broader floor space, at both the swimming pool and the gymnasium levels. The number of exits is to be increased and better ventilation arranged for. The committee has been greatly encouraged by the ready response to its appeals on the part of alumnre and undergraduates, but there is a large sum still to be collected before June. Tt is to be hoped that the efforts to supply this crying need of the college will not be fruitless.

M. Y., 1908.

THE COXSUMERS' LEAGUE.

President — Louise Congijon, 1908.

Vice-President and Treasurer — Lacy Van Waqenen, 1909.

Secretary — Emily Stoher, 1910.

The Consumers' League, numbering about two hundred and five members, has maintalnfd this year its regular work of distributing white lists and

102 THE LANTERN.

calendars for Christinas shopping, and of giving financial aid for investigation and legislation.

It sent two delegates to the New York Congestion Exhibit, and for this sanie purpose twenty-five others went to New York, which shows that the members of the Consumers' League are awake to their responsibilities in the economic and social problems of the present day.

L. 0., 1908.

SfE l£ SJS

COLLEGE SETTLEMENT CHAPTER.

Elector — Katharine G. Bcob, 1909.

Georqina Biddle, 1909. Secretary — Katherine Rotan, 1910. Treasurer — Edith Adair, 1909.

An increase in the membership of the College Settlement Chapter this year has greatly encouraged those who are interested in the chapter. The member- ship dues have not all been collected, so that it is not yet known what the subscription from the college will be, but we think it will amount to about $150.

Early in the year Miss Gertrude Day, Assistant Headworker of the New York College Settlement, spoke to the members and guests of the chapter on social settlements and their relation to social work.

The Bryn Mawr Chapter and the main College Settlement Association are offering a joint fellowship of $500 for the year 1908-09. The purpose of the fellowship is to encourage the investigation of social conditions, and to give an opportunity for special training in philanthropic work. Any graduate of the college is eligible to the fellowship.

Students have gone, as usual, to the Philadelphia settlements to help take care of the children on Saturday mornings. Later in the spring, the chapter is planning to invite a large party of the settlement children to spend the day at Bryn Mawr.

O. B., 1909.

THE EQUAL SUFFRAGE LEAGUE.

President — Margaret C. Lewis, 1908. Vice-President and, Treasurer — Katharine Ecob, 1909. Secretary — Mart W. Worthington, 1910. Executive Board — Theresa Helbtjrn, 1908. Katherine Rotan, 1910. The Bryn Mawr College Chapter of the Woman's Equal Suffrage League, which was organized last spring during Mrs. Parks' visit to the college, has prospered during the past year. Its list of members now includes about one-

COLLEGIANA. 103

fourth of the students and several of the faculty, and increases daily. There have been two general meetings, to which the college and outside guests have been invited, besides the private meetings of the league. The first of these was addressed by Mrs. Cobden-Sanderson, who spoke on "Why I Went to Prison." and who awakened much interest in the English suffragette movement, even if her arguments did not convince her American audience. The second meeting, on March sixteenth, was addressed by Miss Jane Addams, of Hull House, whose subject was "Social Legislation and the Need of the Ballot for Women." She considered the question from the purely practical side, and her words, with the force of her personality and wide experience behind them, not only aroused great enthusiasm, but seem to have carried conviction with them to many who were present.

M. G. L., 1908.

THE TEOPHY CLUB.

President — Maegabet Copeland, 1908. Secretory — Mart Herr, 1909. Treasurer — Shirley Putnam, 1909.

The Trophy Club has been working this year to carry out the plan of putting in each room small brass plates printed with the name, class and date of each occupant of the room. A good many rooms have almost complete lists of their occupants, and plates have been ordered which will be put up this spring.

M. B. 0., 1908. * * *

THE GEEMAN CLUB.

President — Caroline F. Lexow, 190S.

Vice-President and Treasurer — Bertha Ehlers, 1909.

Secretary — Elsie H. Bryant, 1909.

Informal meetings of the club are held ou alternate Saturday evenings. The one formal meeting of the year will take place on April tenth, when Dr. Jessen will speak on Nietzsrlir.

THE OKIEXTAL CLUB.

Presidefii — .Mar-iorh: N. Wallace, 1908.

Vice- President and Treasurer — Lydia Siiarpless. 1908.

Secretary — Helen Brown, 1909.

The Oriental Club has bad two formal meetings this year: the first in December, when Mrs. Nltobe, of Japan, spoke on "The Status of Women in

104 THE LANTERN.

Japan;" the second in February, when Dr. John Peters, of St. Michael's Church, New York, gave a lecture with stereopticon slides on "Some Personal Discov- eries and Experiences in Palestine."

M. M. W., 1908. * * *

THE CHESS CLUB.

President — Grace Branham, 1910.

Vice-President and Treasurer — Anita Boggs, 1910.

Secretary— Frances Porter, 1911.

Thirteen members of the club have entered the spring tournament to compete for the cup, now held by Grace Branham, 1910.

A. T. 0., 1908.

GLEE CLUB.

Conductor — Martha C. Barry.

Leader — Dorothy Merle-Smith, 1908.

Business Manager — Evelyn Holt, 1909.

Assistant Business Manager — Rosalind Romeyn, 1910.

The Glee Club this year has numbered forty-eight members. The work has been much the same as in previous years, except that more time than usual was given to the preparation for the Christmas service. Three carols were sung with violin and 'cello accompaniments, the Glee Club afterwards going over to Cartref, where, after a short serenade, they were received most cordially by President Thomas and Miss Garrett. The annual concert is to be held on the second of May, the proceeds going to the new gymnasium fund.

D. M. S., 1908.

* # *

MANDOLIN CLUB.

Leader — Grace La Pierre Wooldridge, 1909. Business Manager — Gertrude Congdon, 1909. Assistant Business Manager — Florence Wyman, 1911.

This year the Mandolin Club has consisted of seventeen members, and, besides the usual number of violins, mandolins, guitars and banjos, the club has been fortunate in having the addition of a 'cello. Departing from its usual custom of not playing in public before the annual concert, the Mandolin Club has played for dancing several times in the gymnasium on Saturday evenings.

G. La P. W., 1909.

COLLEGIANA. 105

UNDERGRADUATE ASSOCIATION.

President — Martha Plaisted, 1908. Vice-President and Treasurer — Helen Crane, 1909. Secretary — Mary Nearing, 1909. Assistant Treasurer — Elsie Deems, 1910.

SELF-GOVERNMENT ASSOCIATION.

President — Jacqueline Pascal Morris, 1908. Vice-President — Louise Milligan, 1908. Graduate Member — Margaret Morris. Secretary — Celeste Webb, 1909. Treasurer — Leone Robinson, 1909. Executive Board — Jacqueline Morris, 1908.

Louise Milligan, 1908.

Frances Browne, 1909.

Mat Putnam, 1909 (resigned).

Catherine Goodale, 1909.

Margaret Morris.

EUROPEAN FELLOWSHIPS FOR THE YEAR 1908-09.

Bryn Maicr European Fellow — Mayone Lewis. President's European Fellow — Cornelia Catlin Coulter.

A.B., Washington University, St. Louis ; Scholar in Latin at Bryn Mawr College. Mary E. Garrett European Fellow — Helen Hawley Nichols.

A.B., Marietta College. Graduate Student and Graduate Scholar In Semitic Languages at Bryn Mawr College, 1906-7— 1907-08. Anna Ottendorfer Memorial Fellowship in Teutonic Philology — Awarded for the year 1908-09 to Anna Sophie Wenstoff. A. B., Woman's College of Baltimore. Research Fellowship in Chemistry. Founded in 1907 — Awarded to Mary Cloyd Burnley.

Swarthmore, Pa. A.B., Woman's College of Baltimore, 1897, and A. M., 1899; Assistant in Chemistry, Vassal- College, 1898-1900, and Instructor in Chemistry, 1900-07.

06

THE LANTEHN.

"LEVIORE PLECTRO."

GANYMEDE.

Up, up, beyond the clouds, on wings of might !

What hope have I to pray or beg release? Below me, in the fresh thin April light, All green and blossomed, lie the fields of Greece. The maidens there Now bleach with care The linen fair, And on the hill, My little snowy flock may graze at will.

I would not bear Jove's golden cups, if only I might tend them still

Louise Foley, 1908. Reprinted from Tipyn o' Boo.

THE DANCE. The Pleiads dance upon the floor Of ardent azure, silvered o'er

With moonbeams' misty light ; To hidden music's crystal beat, Twinkle and glance their shining feet

Throughout the silent night.

Below, the lightly tossing sea Reflects the paces full and free

Of gold and pearled shoon, Flashing many a glint and gleam Upon the dusky purple stream,

Beneath the quiet moon.

All night they dance, but with the

dawn The sparkling Pleiades are gone,

Departed far away ; Beyond the sky and sea they roam, Far, far across the trackless foam, And through the gates of day.

Louise Foley, 1908.

(From the French of Joachin du

Bellay.) The wise Ulysses was a happy man, And he that bore the Fleece through

famous seas, When Argo caught the freshening homeward breeze : Discreet, renowned, they filled a lengthened span.

They lived amongst their kin, within the piles Their fathers built — Ah ! me, and I

could spare Rome's hard, high palace marble, boldly fair, To see our dim red roofs and chimney tiles.

When shall I please my sight with country skies, My plain worn house and garden- close between?

LEVIORE PLECTRO.

107

Provinces pall ; there have my fathers been, And watched the thin smoke of the village rise.

The Gallic Loire, Lire, my little hill, Than Tiber more, than Latin Pala- tine, Match with my mood, — native to me and mine ! Soothing, not harsh, were Anion's breezes still ! Maud Elizabeth Temple, 1904.

A BALLADE OF LOST DREAMS.

Where are those tender dreams we spun, When we were Freshmen young and gay, Of academic honors won,

Of learned foreheads crowned with

bay? Our young ambitions — where are they? To woo the learned muse severe Was then our dream. It went the way All such dreams go, in Freshman year.

Frail bubbles gleaming in the sun

Bear our young hopes of yesterday ; We never dream of lessons done,

We only long for strenuous play.

But time must pass and youth decay, Despite ourselves we grow austere,

Our joy-dreams cannot last for aye, They're left behind with Sophomore year.

Forgotten is our childish fun, To graver things our fancies stray,

We know bow all tilings should be run, No human foibles we betray.

A strong ambition we display To regulate this earthly sphere.

Were we successful? Who can say? We thought we were in Junior year.

Envoy.

And when our burdens down we lay, Our faces turn away from here,

Which dream then shall we bear away To guide us after Senior year?

Cornelia Meigs, 1907.

DAPHNE.

Who called me by the rushy bank

Where old Peneus flows?

Whose was that voice that sweeter

rang Than ever words my mother sang At evening's purple close? Daphne ! Daphne !

What god or man is this whose eyes Light up thy soul with fire? Ah, Daphne! as a sweet dove flies Haste thee, nor pause in dumb sur- prise, Thralled by his soft-stringed lyre. Daphne ! Daphne !

Where is the fair white nymph that

trod Where old Peneus flows? Rooted in earth her lovely feet, Bound with rough bark her eyelids

sweet ; If this be thou — who knows?' Daphne! Daphne!

Reprinted from Tipyn o' Hob.

108

THE LANTERN.

What though thy lustrous leaves be

twined To crown Apollo's brow, The bright maids miss thee at their

play, And many a youth for many a day Shall keep an empty vow. Daphne! Daphne!

Mary Nearing, 1909.

A DARKEY WOOING.

Mah honey, doan Ah lub yo' true? Aw honey, mah heart 'longs ter you Jes' lak de clouds 'long ter de blue, Mah honey !

Mah honey, doan de good Book teach us,

Ter lub each yudder, heah de Preach- ers!

Honey, if yo ain' sweet as peaches, Mah honey !

Mah honey, yo're a gyarden flower, Jes' growin' sweeter ev'y hour. Look out! doan let dat sweet git sour, Mah honey!

Mah honey, sweetes' li'l gyurl,

Yo're jes' as shy 's a bright-eyed

squir'l. Yo' cheeks show dere red flag unfurl, Mah honey !

Aw honey, lis'en to yo' man ; Jes' whisper in mah year 'f you can — Yo' say yo' lub me? Thang God, Nan, Mah honey !

Mayone Leicis, 1908.

QUESTIONS OP OPINION.

When Miss Priscilla Lanier, of the Class of 1900, invited Miss Rosalind Rives, of the Class of 1904, to come to tea, Rosalind Rives knew that Miss Lanier and Miss Lanier's friends had decided to give her what might be called a trial. Even to be tried by Miss Lanier's coterie was a compli- ment. Rosalind Rives had not been in college four months without learning that. When she thanked Miss Lanier, she showed prettily, but without self- abasement, that she appreciated the compliment — a point which Miss Lanier registered promptly in her favour. Her face burned with pleas- ure as she buried it in her muff and ran across the campus, wondering if any one had seen her talking to Miss Lanier, and whether the trial was to be given her because she had just broken the college record under water, or because she was looking unusually well in her new fur coat.

"What ever was Priscilla Lanier saying to you, Rosalind?" screamed Rosalind's room-mate, running to meet her at the head of the stairs.

"Oh, nothing," replied Miss Rosalind nonchalantly ; "just to go to tea."

"Oh," said Hortensia, "is that all ! I thought maybe she wanted you to go over and spend the week."

Suddenly Rosalind relented. "O Hortie," she cried, "aren't you glad! She's perfectly charming. I think I shall go rather late so I can wear my new pink muslin. I'm a perfect pic- ture in it, wouldn't you?"

"You do very well in it," agreed Hortensia, "but I shouldn't take much thought about my clothes. You'll

LEVIOHE PLECTKO.

109

carry a book, of course, and if you could stop smiling so foolishly, it's none too early to begin to practise looking bored."

"Oh, it's easy enough to look bored when you're around, Hortie, but you're perfectly silly if you think they're such sticks as all that. Priscilla Lanier has the most exquisitely manicured nails I ever saw."

"I don't see what that has to do with it."

"Yes you do. You think just be- cause a girl writes poetry and reads the newspapers she has to be a frump."

"She's running a great risk — or else the poetry's bad."

"Oh, pshaw, Hortense ! I doubt if you'd know a poem if you saw one."

"Well, you do me a great wrong, Rosalind. You ought to hear me say Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Church-yard."

"Well, never mind ; I've heard that poem myself. But, Hortensia, why do you suppose she asked me?"

"The very question that has been baffling me, Rosalind ; but they do say she is terribly eccentric. Perhaps she heard you say something clever."

"Yes, I thought of that, hut I couldn't seem to recall anything, can you?"

"No, I can't, but you might have, you know, when I wasn't around."

"Oh, you're always around, though maybe you wouldn't know it was clever. She looked at my fur coat all the time she asked me."

"Well, you didn't think It was a scheme to get your coat, did you?"

Rosalind laughed. "You never can

tell," she said, "what lengths these original people may go to. Anyway, I think it pays to look as pretty as pos- sible when you go to see them."

Certainly, if it paid to look pretty, Rosalind should have been very hand- somely remunerated that evening when she called good-bye to Hortensia and ran through the hall at the hour which seemed to her to justify the pink mus- lin. She rejoiced that she had not yielded to Hortensia's advocacy of an unpretentious-looking shirtwaist when Miss Lanier, breathing pale lavender from head to foot, gave her a hand that was cool and smooth like a flower. Certainly, Priscilla Lanier was no "frump." Rosalind found something akin to space on a couch with a group of Miss Lanier's friends. There were no other Freshmen in the room, and the sense that she was a representative, instead of filling her with dismay, gave her the inflated complacence character- istic of convention delegates. She said she would take two lumps, lemon, and rather weak. Having contributed so much to the general conversation, she sat quietly taking note of the un- studied art of the room. Priscilla Lanier, even if she was such a shark, had tastes, Rosalind thought, very like her own. She wished Hortensia could see how much at home she was. It was perfectly ridiculous anyway — the fuss the other girls made. For her part —

A group of upper classmen began to make their farewells. Their leaving made a place for Rosalind in the con- versation. Some one mentioned the lecture on Italian Art that had been delivered an hour earlier, and Rosa-

110

THE LANTERN.

lind said that she bad been tbere. Miss Lanier turned to ber.

"Did you like it?" sbe demanded in a tone wbicb suggested tbat tbere were both a right answer and a wrong to this question.

Among her friends at home, Rosa- lind's opinions upon art subjects had always been delivered with consider- able unction.

"Why yes," she said, "that is — it was very interesting — I mean — I en- joyed the slides.'

"Did you? I was bored to death," remarked Miss Lanier with the sub- mission of one who is compelled, by ber pupil's stupidity, to tell the right answer.

"Slides make me nervous," said Miss Lanier's particular friend, "especially when all those poor people keep coming in, standing on their beads, and then get shouted at by the lecturer for coming in at all when it isn't their turn."

Rosalind hated slides, too, now she thought of it. "Yes, that's true," she admitted. "Of course, I'd far rather go to the art galleries and see the pic- tures for myself. I love art galleries."

"Do you?" said Miss Lanier with the tone of one who had lived and suffered, "don't they make you dreadfully tired? They do me."

"Yes, aren't they barbarous !" agreed another of Miss Lanier's friends. "I get so cross every time I go to an exhibition that I promise myself I shall never go again. Don't you re- member, Mr. Howells says that women in art galleries always look as if they wanted lunch. I always feel as if I looked that way, though I never do want it."

On second thought, Rosalind hated art galleries, too.

"Why yes," she conceded again, rather glad to be telling the truth, even though Miss Lanier had worn the freshness off the idea, "I remember last year at Naples my brother and I felt just that way, and we got so we wouldn't go a step, but just stayed on the hotel verandah and read Don Quixote aloud to each other. Mother and Aunt Lydia were so distressed with us, especially Aunt Lydia."

"Oh, don't you love Naples!" some one broke in. "I was there two win- ters ago and I'm perfectly mad about it."

"Yes," said Rosalind, "I liked it well enough, but we were there in summer and it happened to be an unusually warm season. It was very trying. I was never so glad for fall as I was that year."

"Is fall your favourite season?" asked Miss Lanier.

"Oh, no !" said Rosalind, backing hastily from any further expression of preferences. Of course she was very fond of fall, she added. Indeed she hardly knew which season she did like best. Summer was lovely, she thought, and then spring — she thought there was no season nicer than spring. Even though you were fond of winter, she thought you always were glad to have spring come. Yes, on the whole, she believed spring was her favourite.

Miss Lanier preferred fall. Almost every one in the room preferred fall. Fall, some one said, was symbolical of life as it really is — spring, of life as you think it is going to be. Rosalind began to feel uncomfortably young. She picked up a book from the table

LEVIORE PLECTRO.

Ill

beside her, to make room for her empty tea-cup.

"I love these dear little flexible leathers, don't you?" she said.

"No, I don't," said Priscilla Lanier. "That one doesn't belong to ine."

Rosalind began to think that if she was ever going to be on the same side with Miss Lanier she would have to let Miss Lanier speak first. Her eyes travelled over the well-filled shelves and suddenly took in their dignity. "Of course," she conceded hastily, "they do seem rather new and slippy com- pared with those nice old shaggy ones in calf." Miss Lanier was propitiated In a measure, for the "old shaggy ones in calf" were the apple of her eye. Unwilling to let "good enough" alone, Rosalind added that a good book, in her opinion, was just like a good friend — which not very revolutionary opinion Miss Lanier graciously allowed to go unchallenged.

The time suddenly seemed ripe for leaving, and Rosalind rose quickly, re- marking that Miss Lanier had a lovely view of the campus from her western windows. Rosalind loved the campus, she said — "all but Taylor tower, of course." She was scarcely surprised to learn that Miss Lanier liked the tower. It seemed that there was such a tower in a certain little village of which Miss Lanier was very fond. Bosalind said that, after all, the greater part of our preferences and affections were the sum, she thought, of many pleasant associations. The Hf-nteiife was dillc'il from one of her

daily themes, and she thought it rather good, though her tongue staggered a little under its unaccustomed burden of rhetoric.

Miss Lanier's hand still felt satiny, like a flower, as Rosalind took it again to say good-bye, and Miss Lanier's eyes, which were golden just like her hair, became sweet and sympathetic once more, now that she turned them upon Rosalind and told her that she wanted her to come again. After all, golden eyes and flower-satin hands are the most convincing of arguments.

"Hortensia," called Rosalind late that night, as she stood before the mirror in her bed-room trying the effect of her hair in a Psyche knot like Miss Lan- ier's, "Hortensia, which season do you like the best?"

(Very sleepily.) "Which season?"

"Yes, of the year."

"Why — oh— I don't know. What's the difference? I like them all."

"Oh, but Hortensia, you surely don't likje them all exactly even."

"Oh, well — spring, I suppose," said Hortensia, "though of course summer's nice, and wint— — "

"Well, I like fall the best," said Rosalind. "Fall is symbolical, I think, of life as it really is — spring, of life as you think It is going to be."

But as Rosalind's eyes were not gol- den, and as she did not stop to shake hands, her room-mate was probably unconvinced.

Ruth George, 1910.

SAN23,

THE LANTERN

BRYN MAWR COLLEGE 1909

PRES8 OF

THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO.

PHILADELPHIA

EDITORIAL BOARD

RUTH GEORGE, 1910,

Editor-in-Chief.

MARY H. SWINDLER, 1905,

Graduate Editor.

SHIRLEY PUTNAM, 1909.

KATHARINE LIDDELL, 1910.

GRACE BRANHAM, 1910.

BUSINESS BOARD

IZETTE TABER, 1910,

Business Manager.

CATHERINE DELANO, 1911,

Assistant Business Manager.

GRACE WOOLDRIDGE, 1909,

Treasurer.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

Frontispiece : The Western Slope* Mary E. Kerr

Editorial 7

On An Old Trading Ship Louise Foley, 1908 12

M. Anatole France and the Legend of Joan of Arc,

Maude Elizabeth Temple, 1904 15

To A Screen-Maker Marianne Moore, 1909 28

In a Garden Caroline Reeves Foullee, 1896 29

Fortune's Fool Grace Bagnall Branham, 1910 30

Serenade Mary Nearing, 1909 43

Pleasaunce Baker, 1909

Epitaphs Georgiana Goddard King, 1896 44

In the Morning of Mysticism Ruth George, 1910 46

To the Yacht "Whim" Mabel Parker Huddleston, 1889 52

The Cathedral Builder Shirley Putnam, 1909 53

Count Leo Tolstoy Anne Garrett Walton, 1908 54

Ultra Visa Helen Parkhurst, 1911 65

Mignonette. A Fable Edith Franklin Wyatt, 1896 66

The Descent Marion Crane, 1911 70

The Dreamer Katharine Liddell, 1910 71

Book Pieview. The Way of Perfect Love 88

College Themes 93

Collegiana 99

"Leviore Plectro" 100

•The photograph of the new gymnasium, made hy Miss Emily Crawford, \h inserted to take place of Miss Herr'8 drawing which was lost in the mail.

— —

CO

<

55

w z

w

a

■2

a

2 o

a

The Lantern

No. 17 BRYN MAWR Spring, 1909

Editorial.

OUR century has done so much to establish the universal aptitude of a woman's mind that women are easily suspicious of attempts to limit their aspirations to any goal on the near side of omniscience. If the bewilderment which we perhaps feel oftener than we confess comes as the result of some such unfledged ambition, we might, without compromising our standard, light our way out by conforming our definition of omniscience to a suggestion of Sidney Smith's. It is no more necessary, he says, for a man to remember the different books which have made him wise than the different dinners and suppers which have made him healthy. So altered, our goal becomes no longer "all consciousness," the attaining of which state of mind makes hypocrites or invalids of us all — but rather the comfortable, though none the less active, condition of being "all-nourished" — if we may have the word for a moment.

Thus it is with no mind to limit the field of our speculation or to question or qualify the conservative principle, generalisation before special- isation that we come to make our plea for individuality in education, or in the educated. To set boundaries to the province of common knowledge is the work of men and women of experience, and Experience is the tiniest sprout in the undergraduate garden. Moreover, our undergraduate theories on this subject, as on all others, are apt to be very like those of the people who have taught us. The fact that we are in college at all is proof suffi- cient that we mean to indulge, to some degree, all trades in order to be master, to the fullest degree, of one; that for our four college years we

COPYRICHTID, '*(■• AIL fllCHTI nttlHVID

THE LANTERN.

propose to look all trades in the face a brief moment as they pass, hoping in the press to recognise, at last, the one predestined to us.

But just as in social life we are frequently tempted to exploit our most worshipful connections, so in our educational life we meet the tempta- tion to represent this bowing acquaintance with all trades as the most intimate of relations.

It is an excellent thing to know something about everything. Many people do. It would be a more excellent tiling to know everything about everything. Many people convey the impression of doing that also. At the risk, however, of mortifying self-exposure we make bold to urge that the temptation to convey that impression is exactly the most pernicious influence in undergraduate life, or in any life where it exists; pernicious, if we regard culture as a condition or quality of mind rather than a total sum of tricks and exploits calculated to dazzle spectators; pernicious, in other words, because the practice of relating every bit of knowledge we take up to a sort of general figure of ourselves, instead of appropriating it to our inner consciousness and enjoyment, is in itself the defeat of the aims of education.

That "play to the gallery" does exist in all education we are doubtless agreed, as witness our word pedant, not yet marked archaic, and by the way never applied, in spite of its acquired meaning, to uneducated people. Wherever learning is esteemed, the show of learning is sure to be coveted for personal adornment by those who love self-display. Unquestionably pedantry exists. Unquestionably pedantry is hostile to culture. But that learning for ambition's sake, however laudable the ambition, is in the same manner hostile to culture is less obvious; that our apparently praiseworthy desire to step out into the world as well equipped Bryn Mawr graduates, with our education in form either to attract or to sell — that this spirit is hostile to culture is a point easily overlooked. Exactly this form of pedantry we have always with us. In fact there is reason in favour of the conclusion that, quite unconsciously, an altogether formidable number of us run through our courses, learning to like our work for what it will make us appear rather than for what it is, and scarcely even suspecting that the two motives are finally as widely divergent as the roads that Formalist and Christian took over the Hill Difficulty. For example, we may live, let us suppose, very happily with ourselves for twenty years and more knowing

EDITORIAL. »

our Bibles, as one might say, only by sight. Is the confusion accompanying a public revelation of our inability to locate the Book of Hosea due to a sudden sense of happy hours missed through our lack of intimacy with that Prophet, or does it bear some relation to the fact that we had rather our friends supposed we knew our Bibles better?

Needless to say, we aim, just now, in no wise to discourage familiarity with the Bible, but only to urge that if we do not care enough about the Bible to learn our way about in it for its or our own sake, then there is absolutely no reason in the world why we should familiarise ourselves with it for appearance' sake, and that just so far as we allow ourselves to learn for appearance' sake we make within us the distinction between education and culture.

It is quite true, to be sure, that a vast deal of our study and reading is to be pursued as a means to higher appreciation; that taste must be cultivated through the medium of the concrete; and that a highly trust- worthy method of creating within ourselves the conviction that an ode, or a statue, or a sonata is beautiful is the rather humiliating blind acceptation of the estimate of its best critic. The value, however, of taking one's instruction as a little child depends upon whether one finally does enter the Kingdom. Merely to repeat with our instructor "the picture is good" is obviously of no worth unless the repetition succeeds in creating a sense of its goodness. And the creation of this sense is exactly what cannot be accomplished if the eye be not on the object, but on ourselves; if our aim, in other words, be anything less than single-hearted love for what we are working upon, stripped of all ambition. College is our seed-time, and if we insist upon anticipating the harvest by plucking up our roots every few moments to congratulate their progress, our flowers, if we acquire any, will obviously not have sprung from our own roots — will in fact be borrowed.

This then is our quarrel with ambition: that it necessitates artificial flowers ; that through Its opposition to culture it becomes opposed to indi- viduality, since as we have taken it, culture is based upon individuality, or, in other words, upon continuous habit of personal reaction. The hue and cry apainst over-generalisation echoes back after all to each man's way of appropriating what is his. The only person capable of judging whether our curriculum is overcrowded is the person who demands of him- pelf reaction — individualises, let us say, as he goes along — the person who

10 THE LANTEBN.

6ees his own and appropriates it. Our failure to do so is responsible for those humiliating occasions when we have been betrayed by guilefully worded rhetoric quizzes into choleric denunciation of a paragraph by Sir Thomas Browne and profusion of compliment for a faulty collegiate theme.

The difficulty is that because we do not easily find time to individualise everything, we individualise nothing. As a result those who arrange our eurricida, while observing that we have appropriated nothing, cannot well determine whether the fault is with the ponderousness of the course, or the complete absence of individualising power in us. Even we ourselves cannot know where the fault lies until we make the test; but as many of us as believe ourselves capable of personal reaction would do well to demonstrate our originality.

Such a demonstration would involve for the present a rather painful sacrifice of the blossom season to the root season; would involve the admis- sion that our bowing acquaintance with all trades is, as yet, very partial indeed; would involve, in short, complete intellectual honesty. So long as we have a desire to appear well-informed we are under the burden of hurrying ourselves to shallow conclusions. For which reason the educated classes furnish vastly fewer convincing characters than the simple, unpre- tentious, uneducated. Not only are painters' valets and keepers of Eoman galleries none the better of their opportunities but they are, alas! in the very path to make themselves insufferable shams. Only when our minds are free from false motives or weak motives can we apply them whole- souled to their best attainment. Such a revolution for the purification of motives might make the college graduate appear a much less erudite person than she appears at present. But after all there is erudition enough in the world, and the real cry now is for people who are impelled by genuine intellectual interests.

We would not be misconstrued as defenders of that fanatic intellectual honesty which, because it has as yet produced no blossoms, is afraid to admit the possibility that blossoms may be grown. Such a pitiful extreme of agnosticism is the refuge of many who have become disgusted with artificiality. These make public confession on every street corner of their inability to distinguish a chromo from an etching, or the Symphony Pathetique from "Marching through Georgia." They look discreet and downcast and say, "1 am afraid I am not educated up to poetry," meaning

EDITOBIAL. 11

to imply, "Pardon the little idiosyncrasies of the unerringly logical mind." They take their cue from some person of standing who has been thus candid, and they forget that when Charles Lamb said he did not like music, the statement had a value entirely relative to the interest we may attach to Charles Lamb, and is in no sense of any merit as a criticism of music, the place of that art having been established since Jubal first "stumbled upon the gamut."

Such confessions may be of every day occurrence in the millenium of unfeigned intellectuality towards which we look; they will not, however, be assertive confessions, but on the contrary humbly made, and withal only when enquired of; and everyone shall consider himself in a state of growth, bound to enlarge in due season to an apprehension of all that is worthy of being apprehended; and no one will ask if we have read the latest book, for all books will be of the same age; and there will be no fads, neither current topic clubs, and the people who want to read Scott complete, once every year, will do so, and those who feel that such practice savours of the economy of saying one's prayers for the week on Monday night will read him only once — or perchance not at all! — but ah, that will be after we have grown very, very reckless indeed, for of course everyone must read Scott and in fact everyone must read everything, and everyone must have moreover a decided preference concerning everything, and a glib reason for that preference, if it be but, .

"At Kilve there was no weather-cock."

12 THE LANTEBN.

On An Old Trading Ship.

Deserted is this ancient trading ship,

A silent harbour of old dreams and griefs; Rugged and bitter is its withered lip

With spray dashed up from buried coral reefs ; Stripped of its sails, like sea-birds, huge and white,

When dewy fans of sunrise caught the breeze, Filling with wid'ning floods of earliest light

The halcyon-haunted waves of fabled seas.

At such rare hours, upon the dipping prow,

Where sea and sky in one soft circle swim, The grave adventurer, with hand at brow,

Might see in tossing mist a vision dim Of Triton standing in his watery car

And Amphitrite girt with gleaming pearl, Till full-flushed day pursuing them afar,

They sink at last in em'rald waves that whirl.

The swift bright keel that now is motionless

Flung up before a ceaseless foamy arch, Whereon with ever vanishing impress

The sunlight marked the airy slanting march Of opal sandals bound to unseen feet,

And Iris whispered in the sailor's ear Wild promises and prophecies more sweet

Of unknown golden shores awaiting near.

ON AN OLD TRADING SHIP.

13

Those shores attained, what boundless treasure then

Was stored within this empty rotted hold: Sandal and aloe from the Indian glen

And from the sacred rivers, sifted gold; From far Cathay the woven silk and lawn

And red relief of poppies past all price, The rare dark-blooded rubies from Ceylon,

And from the Islands, cargo of rich spice;

The sharp cool camphor dripping in the dusk

Of Eastern gardens ; and from the rugged verge Of high Thibet the cloying yellow musk ;

Pearls from the Persian Gulf's warm swaying surge; And from the sunken islands far remote

The lucent amber, washed upon the shore And gathered up with ugly weeds that float

By hands that clasp the dust forevermofe.

From jungles of Dekkan smooth, fragrant wood,

Prom Araby the aromatic herbs, Attar of rose and myrrh, all odours good;

Prom tropic groves where sunlight ne'er disturbs The secret drugs with blessed power to heal :

All these with other store of rugs and dyes, Caucasian laurel and tempered Damask steel,

Are stored away by eager hands that prize.

But you, old ship, rocking through many days

Upon the ocean's heaved or melting breast, Felt winds steal down the blue mysterious ways,

Blown far from out the bright familiar West, And while they strained your listless, flapping sails

You yearned to taste the salt of distant foam, To wage a happy war with waves and gales,

And long adventure o'er, make port at home.

14 THE LANTEBN.

Perchance one night that straying western wind

Laid on the sailor's cheek its fresh cool hand And in a rush new longing put behind

The old desire to reach an unknown land ; Searching the starry map of ev'ning skies,

In trembling hope that he this hour might sight A path unto the Earthly Paradise,

He saw instead a band of braided light

That to the West in one great shining line

Led silently. Forgetfulnes that steals With softest tread and weariness divine

Sank in remembrance and those old appeals, The hunger strong and keen, the sharp wild cry

That from the ends of earth draw back again To their own land and folk before they die

The weary, wand'ring passionate hearts of men.

For him, alone within a world of blue,

The Eastern fables had a charm the less Than those dim tales that as a boy he knew

Of vanished Ys and sunken Lyonesse; And fairer was a shallow, still lagoon

Than seas that wash the Earthly Paradise. Ah! that rare spot shall he discover soon,

Lost and regained, in loving azure eyes.

And you, good ship, in safety did you bear

The advent'rous crew across the perilous surge, And in the raging storm did have a care

No wind should shriek a mournful funeral dirge. Now at the last, upon the placid bay

You drift at anchor, idling with the breeze, Dreaming, perchance, through endless night and day,

Of voyages long in wide eternal seas.

Louise Foley, 1908.

M. ANATOLE FBANCE AND THE LEGEND OF JOAN OF ABC. 15

M. Anatole France and the Legend of Joan of Arc.

WE are variously indebted to Stevenson, but for few gifts to cur- rent speech more indebted than for his phrase, "mere litera- ture." For example, it clears the ground promptly for M. France's new "Life of Joan of Arc." We are saved depreca- tion, apology, and the cheerless task of trying, by dint of many words and strenuous methodising, to explain why and how we have been beguiled. Is it politics, critical polemics, a scientific history, an elaborate psycho- logical portrait ? Well ! what are certain histories and tales of Voltaire ?

It is proclaimed that M. France has been busy with the work for a score of years. This is the impressive term Taine gave, one may chance to remember, to the Origines de la France contemporaine. It is more than, directly at least, Eenan gave to the Vie de Jesus, or Sabatier to his "Life of St. Francis," the two books to which comparison is obvious in point of method and form. More justly, in what concerns the spirit of the book, it will be natural to bear in mind the Port-Royal of Sainte- Beuve; for M. Anatole France, like Sainte-Beuve, is very lay in his tem- per, undermining, underpinning, no ecclesiastical system, or only inci- dentally in a wider charge which embraces willingly the • whole of society. He is not a priest in revolt, much less a professional protestant moralist. He has not even the rounded dogmatic utterance men learn to use in professional chairs. A certain grand mandarin bearing, an unwill- ingness, all the more because he writes in the papers, "to preach to the first passer-by," has grown upon him with years and honours. He is very tranquil, a little smiling, discreet; he will be blamed, as he says, "for his audacity until he is blamed for his timidity." The critics, even in the historical Sanhedrins, will not take him, this veteran critic, in the least by surprise and unprepared. He has reckoned up the dangers of his humanistic course — and persisted. The two sturdy volumes are mere literature.

But, some genial maker of phrases is sure to explain with facile com- placency, the Vic do Jeanne d'Arr is quite simply the long deferred work of

16 THE LANTERN.

M. Sylvestre Bonnard, Membre de l'lnstitut. One may as well acquiesce politely; no doubt this angelic Dr. Dryasdust had his share in collecting the materials; and, for like the bonus Homerus his years are advancing, we have thus a due explanation for nodding here and there in the notes. Certainly there are, moreover, a variety of citations too much in the vein of the famous Chronological Table of the Lovers of Helen of Troy for anyone to rest with assurance in the hope that the solvent finesse, the merciless, supersensitive, critical acumen of M. Bergeret presided over all the chapters and pages alike. M. Bergeret, the subtile Voltairien, however, may well have dictated the Preface, in which, without other eloquence than that of a pious silence, atonement for Voltaire's Pucelle is constantly the arriere-pensee.

I have already named — as who writing of French letters can long refrain from naming? — Sainte-Beuve. As a matter of fact his essay, writ- ten in 1850, when QuicheraPs edition of the double Proces of Jeanne — that of condemnation and rehabilitation — was first published and exhaustively examined, would seem to be M. France's real thesis and programme. This little portrait of Jeanne deserves actually the larger measure of any praise or blame that may be unconsciously meted out to-day to M. Anatole France in so far as substance is concerned. He would probably be the first to glory in his docile discipleship, and its detection. We are used to conjuring with the name of Sainte-Beuve. The "argument from author- ity" is not to be, then, evaded in whatever one says of M. France in connection with Jeanne. I rely on it without false shame.

It is really the broadest buckler one has to oppose to the arrows of Mr. Andrew Lang to which at first English readers, more or less con- sciously seduced by M. France and the singular spell of an utterance in which Xenophon is fused, as it were, with Joinville, must have felt very generally sensitive. Our clinging faith in Mr. Lang, with whom we had rather be wrong than right with the whole remaining tribe of living English critics, cried out when we read his animadversions, to agree against our light acquiescence in M. France's version of Jeanne, and our bland excitation in observing, "That man agrees with me." But Mr. Lang against Sainte-Beuve! Better a living dog than a dead lion, almost anywhere in matters of historical fact, pure and simple, but not in dealing with a mediaeval saint, a woman, a French heroine — the Maid of France ! There, as Mr. Lang might say, we would back Sainte-Beuve any day.

M. ANATOLE FBANCE AND THE LEGEND OF JOAN OF ABC. 17

It is, of course, distinctly improbable that Mr. Lang, sworn enemy of psychological portraits and second-hand history, greatly values Sainte- Beuve. The psychological portrait, as Taine observed, "the supreme need and talent" of Frenchmen, was not Homer's way, nor Scott's. But this is not all. There is M. France's .quizzical rationalism which obvi- ously irritates the authority-of-seripture mood with which Mr. Lang has read of the Maid. Our prejudices are apt to survive our convictions : it is not strange to find the Frenchman faithful to authority, tradition, where the Scot relies on verse and chapter and finds there the unanswerable, believe-or-be-damned criterion. Mr. Lang's former magnanimity of appre- ciation for M. France, his ardent proclamation that "ripping genius" is just the difference between his own and M. France's organisation, when people plague him with foolish questions why he has not an equal prestige, and that he could — barring the difference — just as well have written the Life of Jeanne himself, as indeed he has lately proved, sharpens now, no doubt, the edge of his strictures. There is, however, a different, final and wholly Scottish acrimony in the quarrel which I hope I may be pardoned for pointing out. It is not because M. France is an Academician, idol and master of the young, a political oracle, and because Mr. Lang is not, that he waxes indignant. All this his innate generosity could forgive, for a Scof s sympathy for a clever or even a successful Frenchman is rooted in the romance of centuries, in the great days gone for both alike — before English unintelligence had triumphed over both Gael and Gaul. Well! the root of offending is this: M. France has written, and recently, of the very modern wife of a very modern professor, whose sins and whose stockings were scarlet. Scottish morality yielded to Gallic seduction, and Mr. Lang permitted himself to be diverted by her history. Is the man, her creator, historian, to whittle free on the Maid of Orleans? No wonder he makes mistakes! Are they not indeed the Devil's own reprisals? It belongs to the Scot's good conscience to single them out; it is the Scot's way of doing penance for himself and the sinner, especially the sinner. If Mr. Lang finds it in his heart to be severe with the author of Le crime de Sylveslre Bonncwd and La messe des morts, it is much more in sorrow, righteous sorrow, than anger. And then, ah ! then

"There are no maidens anywhere,

There have not heen, there shall not be, Ho brave and gentle, frank and fair

Afl she.

18 THE LANTERN.

"The honour of a loyal boy,

The prowess of a paladin, And maiden-mirth, the soul of joy, Abode her happy heart within. From doubt, from fear, from shame, from sin, As God's own angels was she free; Old worlds shall end and new begin To be

"Ere any come like her who fought

For France, for freedom, for the king, Who counsel of redemption brought

Whence even the warrior angel's wing,

Might weary sore in voyaging ; Who heard the Voices cry, 'Be free!'

Such flower no later human spring Shall see!"

That is what in Parnassian English verse Mr. Lang has long thought about Jeanne. To encounter the same thing said in contemporary French prose is disconcerting, as it is to turn from Plato's Apology to Xenophon's, from the Phaedo to the Memorabilia. No doubt Mr. Lang feels sincerely that not only does M. Prance not know what to think about Jeanne, but also that on the whole, in thinking complexly, he does not think well

And after all, to return as it is high time to Sainte-Beuve and what M. Anatole France actually says on the lines that Sainte-Beuve laid down, there are, even in the Proces, according to the older psychologist, some- thing like two Jeannes to be perceived. The one is the figure of romantic poetry — delicate, ethereal, suffering, whom of late M. Dubois, the sculptor, has set on 'Tier great devil of a horse, with a sword too big for her in her slight girl's hand"; the other, portrayed by Fremiet, is the hardy peasant, having her laugh, her fine, woman's revenge in the midst of the most bitter persecution, a noble child of the people, strong in body and soul. M. de Vogue has pronounced for the one as is fitting; M. Jules Lemaitre for the other. M. France has unluckily made a clear choice between them ; romantics and realists could both have wished he might either have chosen or at least have marked his purpose of reconciliation in the Preface. For he has and exposes his own antimonies in her character in order to reconcile them ; and it would have been a gain in clearness to have had no haunting

it. A2r±r>i?-2 :z_iz:z -O"; rnz zsessz :: ::.Ljr :i _lzz :;-

sezzsz- :; zizs :1c ziszzzri:sl Iz-:izzzz; :: zzizs "ajs. Izzz: zs :.: sij. iz; is rzvn- ;:r a :::; iz laz :: IfZfzzis zlzz izzzzzzr- Iz-zizzzs. ziscszzrc. zzzizzzzzzzzzzzs. lazsei :r ^i:^:::- cri-'sl z:la :'; ^-; zizc- zzsz. -1 :z_ zizz- zzzz It if:!; — z_z ~j~, — ; zzrsezlr. Izlzr a z.:-rlir: ~ izzlz "zzis zz-zzzzf-. his :~z a zs-zlzzs zzc-azzzz. zzzl zzrsarzzf. 3-ssz-ias zzzzzzszzz. :i z-zzzzzse zzerf; if

'■"' -. — iz """- zzzz ~~ -:~^- zz 2 - ;.;-;- r- -'--.-. — ~.~ — ■- :: -.-■. :- "--—,-— 7 —

11 zzlz: 1 ::r ;--.— zl; — zzi zr-esz z^:;^z:i:z. I :'-'. r.-: :".: ~:l-i^:; ~z~z :i; zzLzifz-sz.az.zs — z~ :: llz Lizzz IT. Jr-azz:* s-eezzs a: zzzzzs "zzzzzf-lfl " Zf iff zz: ::zfzz::z . lz£f l.uc^cllff If Irr=l;rs. Iz-f zzficizzz :; his :^zz

as

1 _zf: zzzz . --. 1: zzzzaz ziilizy :: zz— zz. — is Xzzztzzzz fl:~ s zs

Sxzazss H-Zr rizrz- ::zz:.z:zz7 :: zz; : :zsf zzzz zzz: zzzz- f zze's izzzczes: ":-iZ£ z~ z'—i _zf t z-zzzzzzzzz :: ./rz:; zczziszz izzzz ■ fz~zf zzzffz: :•: V. France. Espedalhr after rereading the same things simply said in

!":: :if — zzlf :zz::zzl ~::z:zz 1 zzlzszs :: II. Jzzzzz. zzzz Izzzzzz-.

- • — -'-. fzzzfrf-i iz:zz zzzzzz-z zz lzzzzzz:zf :: fizz: zzi szzfll. iz: zziezzT :: zfirzzz. zzallzzzzzzz -1:1 iz_:>z-o z: -■f:_f:fz:z :: If: zizz zzzzzral

- :_f:f :: —ill zzi zzzzfllzzfz::. is 1 ::::_z-i zzzi ieTslzzez zz zz-: zezzzs zz;zz

- zz-: v :~t 11 7:zz:z zzzzz— f zlif — ::lzzzz z—zzzz-sis. _lz:z Saizzze-

izrlzzsl- Izlzzzzl" : szzzzf :: zz zzzzz a sizzlf -z:: fazzzz: :lzz Sainte-Beore. These Parisian savants have a way of avoiding the f -

:z~ :'-::•::" : "if fz~-f:zzzzz:zl '" - .-zlf- — ;" 1 l:zz-z; Az : il. France Jriwwplfj fnHj as he exploits this notion, has a hundred resc - dons of expression, nuances, parallels, philosophical deductions, implicit _- :'■[■- rZ'zzf-. '. z 1. - ::zz-lzz r -11 lz~f 1:^ :~z zzzzzzlzi - to render faithfnlh-. "Sous mmbvs &iemiisle$ sont tarns pitii" — he some- -'_--■ \ -.---' - :: : 1 \. — ' zzzrz z "i;fz: zz: zf i: - eerf, happily, is not so scientific as all that. He has even implied a hope :lz: •':-•-• z .: :-- zz 1 iz:--: ' llrz -' "1 : '"-: . ■,■■'■;■-■ ■ - : ■'::.-.

1 word, then, 31. France's ovn, original methodising, motivatir e

20 THE LANTEBN.

Jeanne is something like this. From start to finish, being a great-hearted girl, she was exploited, "put into operation," by clever, undeceived, self- seeking, or patriotic persons. She was not an intellectual or a military prodigy; and she was very far indeed from an hysterical imbecile. She had the usual feminine capacities in a rare combination : she had sympathy, docility, imagination, courage, plain physical endurance, good-humour, and charm.

First of all this combination of qualities exposed her to a great deal of clerical tutelage. How early this began and what form precisely it took it is quite impossible to say. Perhaps one of her uncles was cure a few miles from Domremy. Her mother, Isabelle, no doubt received her sur- name, Eomee, from an early pilgrimage to Eome. Certainly she went to church a great deal, to very frequent mass and confession. Hence her apprehension of, her easy use of clerical words and ideas she never under- stood or comprehended in an instructed, logical manner, and many of which she gradually forgot.

Illustrative of this class of clerical notions is that of the cammende, lieutenancy or stewardship, under Heaven, "for the Lord Jesus," in which at first she bade the gentil Dauphin to hold his kingdom, an idea involving the consecration at Eheims as the first, eminently mystical symbol. To fancy that a girl of eighteen, of her own intellectual initiative, arrived at this philosophical, ultramontane conception would be, no doubt, to leave common sense as far behind as the eclectic philosphers. By the time of her Trial, at any rate, the commende was a vague term to her. Mystical images and religious sentiments gradually gave way in her ordinary moods and thoughts to chivalrous and military ardours; the priest's tutelage yielded to the soldier's example, and perhaps to the influence of the ignorant fanatics, her companions in the last campaign. Ideas became less with her and actions more. And in proportion her authority in certain high quarters declined.

It appears that her native pity and delicacy of sentiment suffered a certain obscuring between the siege of Orleans and the assault upon Paris; between her first shrinking from the notion that even the English might suffer through her, and her later fiery desire to lead a fierce crusade against the Hussites. The breath of the world had touched her, the rigour of the living age.

I take it this tragic process is the frame of M. France's two volumes :

M. ANATOLE FEANCE AND THE LEGEND OF JOAN OF AEC. 21

the "little saint," as the military martyr; the tension between the ideal and the real in her character, hence in her life, is the unity in complexity of his portrait. The fatal receptivity — fatal for good and evil — in feminine character, receptivity first to its own imaginings but scarcely less to the will of men about it, perhaps I should sajr, to the minds and physical habits of the men to whom it is necessarily subjected, is thus symbolised for M. France by Jeanne. The indirect moral is clear.

It seems certain to him that from an early time in her adventures a facile power of idealisation on her part enabled priests, soldiers, courtiers, and statesmen to influence her quite to their ends. Charles was always the gentil Dauphin for her — poor creature though he certainly was. D'Alengon was her best friend, her "beau Due;" his vacillating egotism she never for an instant perceived. Nor apparently suspected for an instant the cunning scribes who infused political significance into her artless, ringing, touching appeals she must needs dictate because she could not write for herself. Certainly she was kept in ignorance of the pious forgeries by which prophecies of Merlin, to win her credit, were tortured, garbled, or wholly invented, to point and apply to her. At the same time Jeanne had common sense, at least, where the great, her feudal lords, were not involved. Learned fraud, where she perceived it, she had no patience for; it called forth her frank irony always; she revered the priest but hated the pedant gaily, almost jauntily. One cannot but quote again her famous answer to the Limousin lawyer who on her trial asked what was the language of the Voices, in his own ungainly patois. "A better than yours," said Jeanne.

She had herself the gift of eloquence, la douce parole. And in the natural admiration of the well-speaking woman for the well-speaking man, may have rested her special docility to the brave Dunois, co-hero with her of Orleans.

It is above all in dealing with the Siege that M. France's rational- istic thesis stands him in convincing stead. He shows us first the Ar- magnacs and Godons — the swaggering, swearing English soldiery — in a similar state of listless inaction within and before the City, dejected, weary, yet vaguely uneasy, and worked on before their coming by two agencies — the news of a Saint from Heaven coming to deliver the French and smite the English, and by the fame of Dunois as an orator, politician, and captain. Both were announced in the walled town of Orleans and

22 IHE LANTEEN.

in the English camp before they came. The ground of operation was cleverly prepared in advance from the Court of Charles. Jeanne came, under many glaring misapprehensions to accomplish she did not know what — to preach and persuade the English to go in peace without blood- shed, "in pity" for them and for France. But here the wonderful Bas- tard comes into the story and dominates the scene, beginning with Jeanne. She becomes, as she was unquestionably, a docile child in his able hands. The picture drawn in delicate perspective of the Bastard is for all that perhaps the most striking in the whole two volumes, introduced piecemeal as M. Bergeret is introduced in L'orme du mail — the correspond- ing contemporary scene de province, but meant and sure to fix the reader's curiosity. It is perfectly sure on reflection to be challenged — this bril- liant etched portrait — in the name of what we are fond of calling the "historical sense." To be challenged, but not necessarily rejected. For among a certain sort of historical students, not quite ignorant of their classics and, in general, the humanities, the consciousness has apparently been growing that this same "historical sense" is a two-edged implement, capable of cutting both ways. It is useful to detect and preserve the un- likeness, no doubt, between men of old time and ourselves. But in the right hands, swift, subtle, and sure, it is now and then quite invaluable for discriminating likenesses also — the eternity of moods and types, of configurations of soul. Among the countrymen of Jeanne and Dunois we have come to see, for example, wherein at no distant date from them- selves Christine de Pisan, the anonymous author of "Aucassin and Nico- lette," if not moderns precisely, are yet wrapped in no gloomy mediaeval rigidity from our spontaneous comprehension and regard. The brave Dunois, who spoke and acted so well, may he not, too, have had his proper intelligence, and understood Jeanne from the first somewhat as we think we understand her now? True there is this objection which M. France himself raises in all candour. We have the Bastard's depo- sition at the Trial of Eevision (twenty years after Jeanne's death) only in the clumsy inflexible Latin of the clerk, in which the pure precision and fine intelligence his contemporaries so much admired in Dunois is nec- essarily blurred. Just what he thought of Jeanne we must therefore deduce rather from his actions in her connexion than textually. A sweet and pious excuse for patriotic exertion on his own account? a val- uable living device to set before his credulous, but inert forces? a

M. ANATOLE FBANCE AND THE LEGEND OF JOAN OF ABC. 23

real breath of Heaven's free inspiration in a sordid and exhausting con- flict? As such he certainly used, exploited Jeanne; and he kept her in hand. Tearfully at first, regretfully, she stayed where he bade her; appeared when he bade her. She admired him, later, heartily.

Certainly we understand the role of Dunois in the story; he stands, like M. Bergeret, for the aristocracy of intelligence and moral energy, and we are not uncontent. Without this there can be no salvation; we grant it readily.

For all that, M. France is writing the life, not of Dunois, but of a simple girl, a humble virgin, who believed in the Mother of Heaven, the Virgin Queen. M. France is a Latin of the Latins, a philosopher, a literary heir of Montaigne, Moliere, Voltaire. But also a pupil of Benan, and, earlier, he too knew the Faith, as understood of Catholics, a thing believed rather on the evidence of things familiarly seen in earthly symbol than as indeed the substance of things hoped for. And somehow the Catholic cultus of the saint, the Virgin — Celtic, Germanic, as some would plaus- ibly insist — anyhow the Northern, and Western and non-Pagan instinct, breaks through the classic rationalism. He really loves his petite sainte; the very complex charm of his discretion and rational method resides after all in his own reticent affection for the Maid. He has drawn his sweet young girls before. One remembers the adorable Jeanne Alexandre, and Pauline, the little daughter of M. Bergeret, who does not know how happy she is.

And that is how he shows us Jeanne at Orleans — capricious, ignorant, wilful, but also gentle and clever, proud in her innocent success.

But beyond Dunois and the Maid he has no credit to spare, no plaudits for either burgess or soldier. Provincial townsmen and military he finds equally cowardly, greedy, selfish, supine. War in the fifteenth century more than ever was a sordid trade, prudently, lazily and un- generously carried on; defence of a walled and wealthy city a very un- heroic and humdrum affair. Loot, living from hand to mouth by plunder, was its only aim. It is possible the peculiar gloom and ennui of mediae- val "sources" even, or chiefly, to the ardent humanist, certainly to anyone bred up on Greek and Latin, may have begun to wear on M. France's nerves, and have dictated some of his strictures and disgust. The charg- ing plumes of Gallic chivalry were not, surely, swept flatter at Agincourt than in his pages. And he, the least bellicose of Frenchmen, takes per-

24 THE LANTEEN.

haps a little more credit than necessary for resisting one notable temp- tation of the historian. "There is," he says, "scarcely a modern account of these ancient sieges in which the author, whether churchman or pro- fessor, is not to be seen casting himself pen by ear under the English arrows, side by side with the Maid. I believe that even at the risk of not showing all the beauty of one's soul it is better not to appear in the things one relates." M. France has the usual human wish — perhaps as strong in him as in another — to show "all the beauty of his soul". He prefers to show it, however, in his horror of war; and to wave aloft as much as discretion will allow of — or even more — the banner of the Evo- lutionary Socialists. He might be charged with being a deliberate denigreur of the Hundred Years' War, of Armagnacs and Godons alike. This disposition adds immensely to the chiaroscura of his pages ; it sets Jeanne — and Dunois — in exquisite relief, especially in the earlier volume. It is very good art ; is it as good history ?

In the second volume, however, as it seems to me, M. France really rises with his subject; he becomes certainly more persuasive, more moving, may I venture to say, more objective, faithful, and real. He takes the evidence of the trial at Eouen and reads it by the light of a trial not explicable as mediaeval — by the experience of a great wrong and error righted, in which he bore an honourable and a successful share— I mean the trial of Dreyfus at Eennes. And this being now, not polemics or politics, but history, he uses his experience cautiously, fairly; it has a sobering rather than an exciting effect on his narrative except in a happy heightening and stiffening of the style. He indulges in fewer asides, betrays fewer arriere-pensees.

I do not mean to say that the "Middle Age is gorgeous upon earth again" precisely, even in this second volume. But the author of L'orme du mail and L'anneau d'amethyste was certain to write with a very finely pointed pen his portraits of bishops and doctors of the University of Paris. Maitre Thomas de Courcelles, in especial, calls forth his finest eloquence and irony. And at the same time he is exceedingly careful to make it clear that there were men of intelligence, of rectitude, and natural feeling among Jeanne's judges, men who saw in her only sim- plicity and goodness; that, as Dr. Dumas says, what we call disease, mental or moral, the Fifteenth Century called possession, diablerie, sorc- ery; and that heresy was its grand terror, what national characteristics

M. ANATOLE FRANCE AND THE LEGEND OF JOAN OF ARC. 25

have been to the Nineteenth Century — the universal fixed idea, the grand critical and political commonplace. With us, as we are only just begin- ning to appreciate clearly, this general hysteria, which began with the fever of romanticism, was a direct result of the Eighteenth Century's, and more particularly of Napoleon's, wars. The Fifteenth Century had passed through the Crusades, the great Schism, and the Babylonish captivity in its immediate predecessors. The Hundred Years' War added a fearful excitement, a grinding daily misery, to the already overwrought condition. Jeanne herself was a product of these abnormal conditions. The same patriotic hysteria that animated her against the English nat- urally animated them against her. The victorious French by 1440 would have been as hard on an English saint; Jeanne herself wished to lead a crusade against the Hussites.

M. France accordingly keeps his bitterest raillery for the stupid men of sciences, the solemn asses, or the flinty and grasping pedants who, incredulous even to .atheism in some cases, proceeded calmly, regu- larly, against Jeanne.

These legalists, not the common English temporary victors in a stubborn struggle, were to blame ; her blood is upon their heads.

In a sort however, materially not ethically speaking, Jeanne of course destroyed herself. The inability with her, as with all genuine social enthusiasts, to return to a private station and be content in safe obscurity — antecedent really to the whole of her mission, was, in view of the world's eternal way, her undoing. She sighed pathetically, child of imagination as she was, for the country, her people, for innocence and peace. But she made no effort to find it, and she also predicted for herself, knowing her secret and devouring ardour, an early and heroic end. Thus she survived her hour; she became a victim to the partly nor- mal conditions she herself helped to restore; she perished because her hysteria survived that of the people around her. It was Pascal, himself of the type, but fallen on a happier time, who called our attention to the common experience of the rarer spirits, the ames d'elite, namely that most of their misfortunes spring from an incapacity a se tenir tranquil dans une chambre. Luckily, perhaps, for the world they cannot be still. The highest, disinterested energy is like ordinary self-seeking, an instinct, a passion, "a reason that the reason knows nothing of."

26 THE LANTEBN.

The sexual rhapsodisings of Michelet, however, over Jeanne's final lapse, her resumption of the masculine dress for which specifically, as contrary to Scripture and good morals, she stood condemned by the eccle- siastical arm of the law, are not at all in M. France's vein. He rejects in the first place, entirely, the evidence of the two monks at the Trial of Revision after her death that Jeanne reverted to the costume as a matter of self-defence from English brutality. His explanation of Jeanne's fatal lapse in the matter of dress belongs to a larger psychology. As he sees her, she reverted to her armour as to the habit of her brief term of power and success. Whatever her original notion in assuming it, — sheer mania, or a subtle, simple sense of its convenience and adaptation to her mission, as George Sand, probably her closest parallel in recent years, as Rosa Bonheur in our own day, took refuge in trousers, — it must nat- urally have become a symbol to her. She resumed it because the Voices bade her — "the voices which spoke, of necessity, only the language of her own mind and hope." The costume had its part in her drama ; she waited for a final act — a grand deliverance — that must not find her unprepared, out of character. Nothing could be more feminine, more French, more human, indeed. Have we not each one of us clung to the outward seem- ing of some hope, more or less forlorn, waiting for the interposition of cir- cumstance, endeavouring to work in ourselves the fulfilment of our own prophecies ?

The tragedy of the noble army of martyrs has always been here. The saints alone are the consistent in an inconsistent, adaptable, vacillating world. The world uses consecration for a season, till its ends are served. Then it spurns and forgets, passes on, and the saint, standing steadfast, flings himself from a tower like Jeanne at Compiegne, or dashes himself against convention, is bruised, or is burnt alive. Jeanne suffered because she was a saint; she was abandoned because men are men. For the same reasons there were fraudulent Jeannes, who were feted, and married, and who were not buried; there was a Proces of Rehabilitation, and now there are statues of her in Orleans and Paris, and M. France has written this big and beautiful book, as a sort of monument to his own humanistic career — precisely to show all the beauty of his soxil and sow some seeds of beauty in ours.

It is not a desolating book to read; it does not minister to the luxury

M. ANATOLE FBANCE AND THE LEGEND OF JOAN OF ABC. 27

of tears, however little couleur de rose blended with the ink of ita writ- - ing. It falls opportunely enough amongst us :

"When house and lauds have all been spent, Then learning is most excellent."

And also because our somewhat feverish interest in strange novelties, "psychotherapy" and such-like tamperings with the complex nature of thing's in their totality, may well profit by this sober study of what "really happened" a little less than five hundred years ago. Nothing could more effectually remind us of the pit whence we are digged, nor more effect- ually humble our spirits in the face of the inscrutable borderland of sanity and illusion, where reside, but beyond mechanical analysis and stern isolation, at once holiness and genius, of which the world has never yet been worthy, and had the wit to deal with — in posterity's judgment — aright. Try to get understanding — the beginning of even practical wis- dom in these delicate but supremely important matters; cultivate com- passion, magnanimity, or, if only for your own fair fame in the future, let the saints alone. In simple humanity, do not exploit them; for you have probably not yet learned to stand by them; and, whatever your orgies of mysticism at the moment, you have very likely something still to learn from old experience and ancient example — for instance what it is to be pure in heart.

This, of course, is a counsel of perfection — the more reason for heeding it somewhat, if perhaps not too solemnly nor specifically. Especially since M. France remembers still in the midst of a great deal of false doc- trine on the subject, that letters were given — even historical letters — to be a truce of cares among the children of men.

Maude Elizabeth Temple, 1904.

28 THE LANTERN.

To A Screen-Maker. I.

Not of silver nor of coral But of weather-beaten laurel Carve it out.

II.

Carve out here and there a face And a dragon circling space Coiled about. .

III.

Kepresent a branching tree Uniform like tapestry And no sky.

IV.

And devise a rustic bower And a pointed passion flower Hanging high.

Marianne Moore, 1909. Reprinted from Tipyn o' Bob.

IN A GABDEN. 29

In a Garden.

'Twas here she walked a little hour ago. Here is the path my lady's feet have pressed, This same soft air, scent-laden from the West Hath kissed her cheek and set it all aglow; This fountain o'er whose margin she bent low Caught her sweet image trembling to his breast : 0 glorious garden ! Stir not ! Breathe not ! Eest A changeless memory, and immortal grow ! But, lo ! the sward that 'neath her steps did lie Has kept no print of feet ; the fickle breeze Has fled to lavish kisses on the trees ! The inconstant pool yearns up to woo the sky For cloud-caresses! Ah! strange, soulless place, That of my lady's passing keeps no trace !

II.

But I, — who went scarce heeded at her side While she, on all those garden sweets intent (The thrill of bird-notes or a flower's scent) Could give me of her bounty naught beside Largesse of careless kindness, absent-eyed, — Lo ! I am but a name to which she lent Her voice's music; eyes her swift eyes bent Their smile on ; hands her touch has sanctified ! And she of my poor earthliness hath wrought A wondrous shrine, hallowed and set apart, Wherein, like golden goddesses of yore, High-throned within this temple of my heart, Willi prayers and incense of adoring thought She reigns, and shall be worshipped evermore.

Caroline Reeves FoulJce, 1896.

30 THE LANTEEN.

Fortune's Fool.

THE South had produced Selden Cary, but she never wholly under- stood or approved of her handiwork — at least not until much later. His temperament was neither peculiar nor erratic — he was one of the gentlest of boys and men — but he had not a vestige of that flippant irresponsibility, of that lightness and fire which in Northern eyes make most Southern young men so engaging and so contemptible. Little typical as he seemed, no other country — we may call Virginia a country — and no other time than the period immediately after the Civil War could have achieved his personal complexity of thwarted tendencies, a nature born for power — though not for acquisition, — for leisure, for society — but without a slave, without an acre, with hardly a friend, and obliged to toil for his daily bread.

Just after the war, Selden's grandfather had moved what was left of his family to Philadelphia. He was one of that pitifully numerous army of Southerners, deprived through loyalty to an irretrievably lost cause, of fortune, friends, and mode of life, who made a peaceful invasion of Northern territory in hopes of making their university education and their undoubted gentility — lucrative. But Philadelphia could find no place for all those gentlemen who wanted to teaph school, and Judge Cary being very old was persuaded by his two sisters that there was plenty to live on if he would only save them the expense of "little Selden's" education.

With the little ready money that Freeport had brought after the mortgage was paid off, a small house in an unfashionable district was pur- chased and it was there that little Selden was brought up — socially by his grandfather's sisters and educationally by his grandfather himself. In his childhood he knew only these three people, since there were no visitors. Judge Cary was too old to make new friends and Miss Lettice and Miss Kate failed to return the visits of their Philadelphia acquaintance. Each lady who came — in a carriage which rumbled on the cobblestones of the narrow street — for all her gentleness and determination to see no difference, brought contrasts too stinging for those ladies to bear. So the Marias

fortune's fool. 31

and Fannies themselves ceased to come and finally even to send; for the two ladies "to spend the morning." The child had no natural friends of school or dancing-school and showed no inclination to make them in the neighbourhood. Most of his time he spent in the house reading and talking sagely to his family. He was a small, pale, little boy with a wide, low forehead and noticeable eyes which seemed rather to contain wisdom than seek it. Perhaps he had got the look from continual living in the past with his older relations, for he was better acquainted with Gloucester County "before the war" and with ancient Athens than with his resident city of Philadelphia.

Every morning before he went to the library for Greek with his grand- father, he would sit in the dining-room watching intently his two great- aunts as they tenderly washed their beautiful china and talked reminis- cently of "old days" which were stored in their memories like dried and scented rose-leaves in a pot-pourri jar. When he heard his grandfather lay down the morning paper he slipped obediently into the library with a sort of nervous languor which even then characterised his movements, for his incom- prehensible arithmetic and but half-comprehended Greek. After dinner, while the ladies sewed, the boy and his grandfather played chess — the Judge thought that was Selden's principal use as the only other gentleman in the house. In the long periods between moves, Selden read Scott under the table.

Of dates he had no idea — no more had his grandfather — and Selden got it lodged in his mind that Euripides and General Lee were contempor- aries who dwelt in different, but equally delectable places preferred respec- tively by his grandfather and his two aunts. In a sense he was brought up backwards, toward old Virginia in the dining-room and ancient Greece in the library, until he was thrust into becoming his own contemporary by being sent to his grandfather's university.

At the university he was neither athletic nor very brilliant and so was left much to himself. He had a certain popularity which he was quite unaware of. People spoke well of his intelligence and sweet-temper and regretted that they did not know him. Only a few ever did — not that he rebuffed advances or was hard to "draw out" — but his cordiality made no distinctions and left most of them baffled, though not in the least compre- hending by what.

When he was graduated from the law school there was hardly a ripple

32 THE LANTEBN.

in university life to show that he had been there, but it had had its effect on him. With the assistance of a communistically-minded Economics pro- fessor he had come to realise the great difference between the world he had been brought up in — his ancestor's world — and the world in which he was living. The only member of his family to whom he might have talked freely of these things, his grandfather, had died while Selden was still an undergraduate. When he came back to Philadelphia he set up his office in the old library where he had played chess and learned Greek. The differ- ence he was aware of once or twice he ventured to explain to his two aunts, but they had so immediately taken alarm at his ideas that, partly from affection, but rather from a fear of handling carelessly frail things, he kept his "ideas" out of the range of their conversations and continued to go to church and to avoid Socialism in their society.

Soon after he came back, his great-aunts' anxiety about his solitariness began to make itself effective. In their eyes there was as little question of his aristocracy as there was of Agamemnon's, but Philadelphia society could not be expected to recognise this. Except for a cousin of his — a girl named Gary Selden whose father had never really thrown in his fortunes with the Confederacy and who consequently had never slipped out of society like so many other Southerners — Selden knew none of the people who called themselves exclusive. He did not even care to know them, so occupied was he, not with his law practice, which was still embryonic, but in putting his "ideas" into practice and thus giving them the expression they demanded. It was through his cousin that the two ladies hoped to "bring him out." During the last three of the seven years he had been away they had become very intimate with her, probably because they missed him greatly, though the girl herself was very charming. In spite of this intimacy he had been back almost six months before the two cousins met. This was nobody's fault. At first she had been away for the summer and then she put off coming because there was a strange young man in the house— who was a cousin, of course, but still a stranger.

In the meantime, in those few short months since his graduation, which looking back seemed as long as the whole seven years of prepara- tion, Selden had come to know a good many people, though this was not exactly what his great-aunts had wanted for him. It was not difficult to become almost intimate with these fellow-labourers of his. Their work not only prevented barriers between them, but constituted an actual bond.

fortune's fool. 33

In the hot summer months he met nurses and doctors, clergymen, "friendly visitors," Jew and Gentile, all with frank co-operation ministering to the sick, hot, suffering poor. Any new worker they welcomed, without demon- stration indeed, but with an unspoken feeling of relief that another hand had come to help them lift. He admired these people and envied them their earnestness but of them all he had only come to like — apart from the work done — a certain Miss Harrison, for whose capable saintliness he felt a rather disquieting reverence. Their work, at first without design of theirs, bad thrown them much together. On children's playgrounds and excursions and such superintended festivities as the poor have during the summer months they had had those small experiences and adventures and talks which even in a short time make people intimate. When he came home evenings Selden would relate all these happenings to amuse his aunts. Her name was so constantly, naturally, on his tongue — what she said to the children when, etc., what Mrs. Murphy had said to her, etc., etc., that they ques- tioned him about her with a strained eagerness which they tried to conceal. These questions were answered more satisfactorily by their seeing her herself, when one morning she came to consult Selden about some legal business.

As he opened the door between the library and dining-room, the two ladies, who were expecting the girl, rose to their feet. Miss Lettice came forward a little, holding up her sewing in her apron. She was shaking hands before they were introduced. "Aunt Lettice, Aunt Kate, — " : Selden said, affectionately touching the back of Miss Lettice's waist. "This is Miss Harrison, — a great friend of mine."

"Selden has spoken often of you," said Miss Lettice with great cordiality.

Miss Harrison eyed them both, delightedly, they were such charming old gentlewomen! "And a great deal to me of you." This was not a fortunate speech, but Selden, from his anxiety that they should like each other, spoke quickly before it had had time to take effect. They all sat down and Miss Kate, partly to make conversation and partly from genuine genealogical interest asked, "Are you related to the Brandon Harrisons?"

"Who are the Brandon-Harrisons?" asked Anna Harrison in return; then seeing the surprise on Miss Kate's face, went crimson.

"Then you can't be a Virginian," said Miss Lettice soothingly.

"No, we are Pennsylvania people."

"Oh yes," Miss Lettice said as though that was much better.

34 THE LANTEBN.

"My father's name is Archibald Harrison."

Both ladies recognised the name of a ward politician, but Miss Let- tice said simply, "Of course," as if she had been stupid not to have known at once the daughter of such an eminent gentleman. Then she asked her about her work. It was a subject on which Miss Harrison obliged herself always to be enthusiastic so she talked warmly, even interestingly, but did not for a moment forget herself in what she was saying. The others felt this self-consciousness, felt that she wanted to appear "at ease," and were themselves consequently slightly abrupt. Selden wanted his aunts to like her. They tried honestly but felt she was making it difficult. There was a feeling of relief all round which everyone tried not to feel when she got up to go. She looked at her watch, said she had an engagement, shook hands again cordially with the Misses Cary and took her departure.

Selden closed the street-door, came back to the dining-room, and sat down by Miss Kate.

"I liked your friend so much," fibbed Miss Lettice.

"Young ladies did not say they had 'engagements' in my day," almost sniffed Miss Kate.

Great things were expected from Cary Selden's visit. Since that afternoon of Miss Harrison's not wholly successful call, her name was even more frequently on Selden's lips and her ideas visibly influenced his. With the worldliness of which the saintliest of women are capable, his aunts wanted him to see more of his own people. They felt it was their fault that hitherto he had not seen more of them. Selden saw that they were scheming and was half-annoyed, half-amused by it. When his cousin and he were children they had lived, as Virginia relations do, on next-door plantations, but Selden did not in the least remember her. She belonged to a class which both he and Miss Harrison knew had no right to its exist- ence, and it nettled him to know she was his cousin.

He was standing in the library window looking down the street for her coming and reporting to Miss Kate, who was rearranging the silver on the table in the next room, when a carriage stopped at the door. He watched her get out, say something to the coachman, walk up the steps and ring the bell. Somehow the whole block was changed in his eyes. It looked smaller, meaner, commoner for her presence. A woman across the street opened a window and stared at the girl, and two children stopped playing to look

fortune's fool. 35

at her. She seemed not to notice, but Selden almost wept with shamed pride. As soon as she was in the house with the two ladies, he forgot her elegance. With his almost abnormal sense for personality he was aware of hers as soon as it had some freedom in its own element. While she was greeting his great-aunts in her happy charming way, Selden noticed almost with chagrin, their air of confraternity, of at-homeness, as though now at last they were on a common ground of views and prejudices and need not be afraid of treading on peoples' toes. One has to be so careful with outsiders, "like Miss Harrison," thought Selden.

Miss Kate, who remembered the proprieties sooner, held out a small old hand to him. He went over and stood by her. "This is Selden, Cary," she said simply, watching to see how they would take each other.

Miss Selden smiled at Miss Lettice's great-nephew. With her there were only two classes of people, the people she liked and the others. In a moment she decided where to place him.

"It does seem funny to introduce cousins."

"'Specially when they have the same name." He smiled back as though he had said something witty.

At supper she talked mostly with the old ladies, turning her charming head to this and that end of the table and Selden noticed how free they were with the old expressions and proverbs, how accentuated was their accent, how the girl, for all her animation, was never flurried, how smooth and cool her voice was.

Miss Lettice kept including Selden in the conversation. "Do you remember, Kate, how we found these children on a raft in the middle of the creek?" With Miss Lettice's and Miss Kate's aid they compared their childhood adventures, saying, "Oh, do you remember?" and "I know" until it seemed to Selden that his whole life was connected somehow with this girl's.

"Do you remember the drawer in grandma's work table where we always used to find four chocolates?"

"I have that work-table now" said Cary. That took them back to more reminiscences of Freeport and Cary said she would someday like to buy the place back.

"Our people have lived there so long, Mr. — cousin — Selden" — she flu-l-<"l slightly and looked at. Miss Kate to see whether she approved, "that I'm sure the property belongs to us whether we ever pay a penny

36 THE LANTERN.

for it. What does your Socialism say to that?" she asked making fun of him.

It was the first reference she had made to his "Socialism", and it jarred him out of a dawning hope that she knew nothing about it. Against his will and reason her "our people" had filled him with pleasure. An emotion of loyalty to those long-dead ancestors filled his brain. To them he owed his personality, to those young sailors and soldiers and burgesses, to those old scholarly gentlemen and saintly women, and he was grateful to thiB girl for having made him feel it so. Then her "your Socialism" showed up his exile, his exclusion and he made an effort to explain it away.

"Socialism !" Miss Kate held up her hands in horror at the word. It was reminiscent of the economic revolution in England, which to her seemed almost as terrible as the French. "My dear, such a word !"

"Don't let's talk about such things," said Selden, and Cary was at a loss whether to attribute this to amiability or weakness. A puzzled expres- sion shadowed her face. It was one of those half-expressions which were peculiar to her, expressed rather in light and shadow than in definite lines.

"You ought to know all the family stories," this time she spoke directly to him, "aren't you proud of some of those adorable people ?"

He racked his brains to remember a name. "It is sad to think of all those people with their distinct and haunting individualities leaving nothing but a name in a family Bible." That she divined his evasion, he perceived in her almost smiling eyes.

"Miss Kate," she said, "Miss Lettice, tell me do you know anything personal about a young gentleman born 1802, died 1829, shot by the Seminole Indians? When I was a child I found his name in the family Bible and ever since I am always remembering him."

"He was my mother's younger brother, my dear child; there are some letters — " But Cary with a swift perception which infinitely pleased her cousin, said "Then you knew him" and watched Miss Lettice's face for any sign of grief.

"He was a relation of your mother's too," said Miss Kate, "through the Daniels," and the conversation went off in that intricate discussion dear to every Virginian heart, of who is related to who, and how.

After the girl had gone, the two ladies sat with their embroidery in their laps, following up old streams of talk. Selden sat near with a book, his head whirling with ideas, in imagination talking intimately to his

foetuite's fool. 37

cousin of why he was a socialist, or to Miss Harrison of why he could never be a socialist. He interrupted himself to say,

"You say Cary^ like grandma?" He glanced at a faded, rather poorly done portrait behind Miss Kate's chair. "Not exactly," but neither lady could place the dissimilarity.

"A sort of modern difference," said Selden, who was more analytical, "You see girls have now themselves to accentuate their exclusiveness. With grandma as with you all it was too much a matter of course to be of any consequence."

Miss Kate immediately understood but was annoyed at Selden for expressing that thought.

"There are modern differences in you too, Selden. Your grandfather would not have seen that distinction."

"You mean he would not have said it." Saying which, Selden relapsed into his own thoughts.

He wondered what Cary Selden would think of Anna Harrison and with all her gentleness he knew she would think nothing of her, would not regard her personality, would not see her goodness and worth.

He felt ashamed for Miss Harrison, then grew angry because he felt he was ashamed. He took her part, hotly defended her to Cary, then saw how Cary would look at him, saw how puzzled she would be that he seemed to care so much for that good-hearted young woman. "I love her, Gary Selden, he heard himself saying, I know I am not a tenth as good. Class distinction is nothing before distinction of heart and brain," and he knew she was wondering how a gentleman could get so excited and talk so loud.

In disgust at her imaginary scorn he turned his thoughts to Miss Harrison, listened to her telling him of his "duty," tried to respond and renounce his lately aroused traditions, but felt himself listless and un- convinced

It was due to his cousin that Selden began to see something of that other life to which, since it was the best the times afforded, his aunts felt that he belonged. At his cousin's house and the other houses he was invited to, he met some people with his own, or similar, traditions, but 6ome with a blatant imitation of them and a high and visible sense of their own aristocracy. But neither among the first nor the second did he find any recognition of the new ideas he had gathered at the university. In superficial talk, flippant when there wore women around and heavy-

38 THE LANTERN.

handed when there were not, he heard some second-hand versions of them and, since he had taken them rather seriously, he made no defense. Not even to Miss Selden did he speak out his views. Gradually they lost their intensity and their significance for him and in their stead the old ideas absorbed in his childhood crowded themselves forward in his consciousness. The new ideas were principles, though neglected ones, and he still stood by them though not with the same ardour and satisfaction. The people he knew who never lagged in their loyalty, his fellow-workers, became notably dis- agreeable to him; their unpolished seriousness, their virtuous and idealistic commonplaces irritated him into frivolity and mental revolt. Even Miss Harrison showed not quite so fine. Her humourous and sincere friendliness to "those people," all her natural goodness and frankness, he knew were possible only to a girl of a class not his own. He could not help compar- ing, though he hated himself for it, her sturdy worth to his cousin's fine worthlessness, her frankness to Miss Selden's reserve, her frank min- gling with people to Miss Selden's inevitable exclusiveness ; and to himself he made the terrible distinction of gentle blood.

That his enthusiasm was cooling must have been suspected by his fellow-workers, at least Miss Harrison felt it at once. As was not unnatural with her, she came one day to his office to consult him on some lawyer's busi- ness about a special "poor family" of hers. When the interview was over she lingered a moment. With the courage of her mission lighting her eyes, she stood by the door, an undistinguished figure, one arm full of books, and a hand on the knob.

"Mr. Cary," she said without trepidation, "do you mind if I say some- thing to you that has nothing to do with this present business, or indeed with any business except your own?" Selden divined what was coming, made another mental comparison, and asked her to sit down.

"This was your grandfather's library?" she asked looking round the room at the Greek books and the portraits ; Mr. Cary said it was, almost with annoyance.

At this she smiled at him as though he were very young and then went on gravely. "That's too roundabout for you, let's take a short cut. Are you still a socialist ?" .

"If you mean do I still think there is too much poverty in the world and that economic measures should be taken to relieve it—"

"I mean nothing of the sort. Mr. Pierpont Morgan believes that. I

fortune's fool. 39

mean do you — I know it sounds trite but you used to fire these common- places— do you still believe — no not lelieve, do you still feel your common, unclassified humanity?"

Selden jerked a paper-knife out of its scabbard. "No I don't, I'm sorry, but I don't".

"Wait a minute," as the girl rose again. "If you will let me go up with you, I'll try to explain."

"The champions of the poor have a way of deserting," she took up the conversation when they had gone a little way. "The temptations are too strong." Selden Cary, a gentleman with a keen sense of his honourable obligations, winced.

"You put it harshly, Miss Harrison. Because my views and opinions change is no reason for saying I am a traitor." Something made him look at the strong, gentle face beside him. "Miss Harrison, don't you believe that a man's inheritance may be too strong for him? That if he does, by a supreme act of will, overcome it for once, some day it will rise up to make him miserable? Don't you think we ought to follow our inclina- tions, not the fancied but the real ones — the bent of our temperament? I could never be happy with only "these people," and without content, with- out loving his work, what can a man accomplish?" He paused eloquently. From her answer he knew she could not understand.

"We must, oh, you know we have to, lead our inclinations, yes the real ones. And if they won't follow, shoot them down."

"Which way do yours lead?" he asked, interested in her.

"This way; but I wish they hadn't. It would be such fun to fight them."

Her vigour was too much for him. "Will you help me fight mine?" He raised his eyes to her face and, as he did so, saw his cousin coming toward them. She bowed directly at him and passed on — a slim, lovely figure, leaving behind her a trace of the odour of her violets and an undefinable atmosphere of gentility. He was immediately sorry for his question and hoped Miss Harrison had forgotten it. But as she mounted her front steps she said, looking hard and grave. "No Cary Selden, you must fight them for yourself."

He watched her go through the door her mother had' opened for her, bowed to Mrs. Harrison and set off, leaving the girl very resolved and very miserable.

40 THE IANTEBN.

Perhaps it was with some idea of explaining his friend that he went to his cousin's house. The Selden house in Philadelphia, was broad fronted and respectable, furnished in the hideous fashion of the "70's. But besides the comfortable ugly "suit", there were some old pieces, his grandmother's work table, some faded portraits in chipped gold frames, and there was a fire in the grate. Selden was thankful that the William Morris ideas of "good taste" had not penetrated here. He knew that, when Cary came in, all these things would be right and fit. It was a quality she had in common with his own great-aunts of making her home appear as a proper setting for herself.

When she came in and sat down before the fire and began to talk simply of whatever presented itself, Selden had that feeling of untroubled peace which he experienced only with women of his own prejudices and past. The feeling was the deeper from his having just come from Miss Harrison who talked with difficulty and only upon large subjects. Cary asked him whether he thought the shawl she was knitting would be more becoming to Miss Lettice or Miss Kate.

"You'd better give it to Aunt Kate," he said; "she thinks she's slighted." Selden prayed inwardly that Cary would be moved to talk about Anna, but she seemed to have forgotten that she had just passed them on the street. He himself made an effort.

"Do you know a Miss Harrison in town ?"

"One of the Brandon Harrisons?" Selden smiled.

"No, I think her father's name is Archibald."

"I am afraid I never heard of her," Cary said without emphasis.

She was sitting in one of the deeply upholstered arm-chairs languidly at rest. The long folds of her dress on the floor, her feet crossed on a low foot-stool, the line of her arm along the side of her chair, the wool and large needles in her lap, all presented the impression of a portrait in its quiescent distinction. She was lovely, personal, yet at the same time with the remote loveliness and impersonality of a painting. He talked and took her in as he talked, watching her face for its faint signs of interest or amuse- ment. He took peculiar pleasure in noting its passing, vivid but incom- plete expression. He thought it rather like a flower which budded but never bloomed.

When he was with her, in her presence like this, he felt himself removed as he thought of her. They were, he fancied, like princess and

foetdne's fool. 41

prince in a wide magic circle. Outside there was a world, of course, but he could not think of it as a dirty, noisy, serious world for his part of which he was responsible. He knew it was there, however, and sometimes had tried to tell her of its dust and noise and seriousness, but it was a tale she would not understand.

When he remembered why he had specially come, he made another effort.

"Miss Harrison is a friend of mine."

"Oh," she said, "a socialist?" Then suddenly, "Don't you get eiek to death of these poor people? How can you bear to spend so much time in loathesome places ! Nothing but drunkenness, vulgarity, little crying babies, and women wrangling amid dirt and noise! I have been through streets like that, and for days I could not get it out of my mind."

He thought it was hopeless to try to win sympathy for Miss Harrison through her work. Not that he was sure he wanted to win sympathy for Miss Harrison. Indeed any conversation about her with his cousin was not wholly agreeable to him, but he was very anxious for Cary to understand the situation. Being inspired- to put it hypothetically, he asked her whether she had yet read Evan Harrington. She had not and he told her some of the story. Did she think it was possible for a girl to care for the son of a tailor, even if he had been brought up rather like a gentleman?

The answer he was sure of was not forthcoming, not immediately anyway.

"Was the girl really nice?"

"0, yes, very—"

"What sort of a person does Meredith make his tailor's son?" He told her.

"How silly," she said before he got through, "to make him really a gentleman. A tailor's son could not be."

"How about women," he asked, "are they so dependent on their ancestors ?"

"Ever so much more so. You must see that." She evidently did not like the turn he had given their conversation.

"Then you think that a — gentleman could not bring himself to care in that war for a girl who was not like his own people?"

"Oh, well," she half-smiled at his tone of intentness, "you know they do. Did not one of our honoured ancestors, after his wife's death, marry her French maid?"

42 THE LANTEBN.

"That was because lie didn't appreciate his wife — ."

"Maybe she was too proper." Cary interposed justifying her ances- tor's actions.

She became serious. "Your situation is not wholly hypothetical ?"

"No, do you understand ?" He saw she did.

" I have for ages. Aunt Lettice told me some things and you the rest."

"Do you want me to tell you what I think ?"

"More than that, I want you to decide."

"Why?"

"I am so weary trying to work it out. It's weak, I suppose, but, Cary, you are more likely than I to come to a right solution."

"This is serious, then? I can't say what I was going to. You won't like my decision."

"No matter," he said. "Kismet."

He closed his eyes and relaxed physically, preparatory to a mental relaxation he was sure was coming.

Cary felt she had a man's fate in her hands and was proportionally circumspect.

"I think Miss Harrison is right."

"What?"

"I mean I think that's a better way of living."

"But Cary."

"You promised, Selden."

It took some time for him to re-adjust his ideas. Both were a long time silent. Finally he got up smiling rather sardonically at a retrospective view of himself.

She looked at him inquiringly — "well?"

"Oh, I thought it was settled."

"You will go to Anna now?"

"Yes, but later. Thank you Cary."

Grace Bagnall Branham, 1910.

SEBENADE. 43

Serenade.

The full moon is turning the grass into silver, The owlets are gurgling low in the trees;

Softer than dove-notes murmurs the river, Softer than love-sighs whispers the breeze.

Shall I awake thee, tenderly dreaming?

Never in dreams was night so fair; Never, as now, came the moonshine, streaming,

Melting through mellow and mist-laden air.

Never in sleep did the spell of the hours Blend every sound in a calm more complete;

Never in dreams came the fragrance of flowers, Roses and jessamine, mingled so sweet.

Wake then, my love, for the dew-drops adorning

Their petals, must must fall at the quiver of dawn, And soon, on the windy wings of the morning, The magic of night will be vanished and gone.

M. Nearing, P. Baker, 1909. Reprinted from Tipyn o' Bob.

44 THE LANTEBN.

Epitaphs.

Steadfast-hearted always, and seldom-speaking,

Alethea sleeps here quiet, nor dreams — Here, where to the sun this dark pine, creaking

Lifts high its sombre top, in the skyey streams Tugs and sways — not heeding nor seeking

Under brown needles, the noon-tide scents and gleams.

II.

Silver birchen-stems, and fret Of quivering poplars light, And fragile maiden-hair, These the leafy grove beset For Annis' sake, the white, Tremulous, shy, and fair. Stranger, passing, feel the stir In the grass, and sigh for her.

III.

The night falls always still,

Sun-steeped the day dreams on,

Muffled the windy hill,

Blanched as a pearl the dawn.

Motionless, earth in earth, Drowse we dead, till above

Burgeons the cloister-garth; Then Lover calls to Love !

EPITAPHS. 45

IV.

Dust this dusty stone doth cover Was, long years ago, a lover.

Pray, passers who

Are lovers, for hirn too.

V.

I loved the stars, truth, and one faithful heart.

And these I sought and that I found; at last, When I had done of toil my human part,

Quietly to oblivion I passed.

VI.

I asked for life, not joy,

Feeling, not happiness. I bore of love's employ

The intolerable stress, And all the wealth of pain

That no delight can buy: I view my life again,

Again thank God, and die.

VII.

I slept in palaces Sickening with loneliness ; I laid my head upon a stone, Angels visitant came down; I crept beneath the sod, Now, 6ee, I walk with God.

Georgiana Goddard King, 1S96.

46 THE LANTERN.

In the Morning of Mysticism.

I WAS ever a slave to the concrete. Once my fancy could be set in motion by fact it wavered along smoothly enough, but, as long ago as I can remember, my worldly little heart knew no response to spiritual aspiration without the jolt of a visible counterpart. Thus it was, for example, that I was lured at an early age into a most abnormal protraction of my devotions when once my carnal eye had been appealed to by a small scarlet and gold volume of Meditations. So, too, a gold thimble plunged me into dressmaking and all manner of house-wifely accomplishments at the age of six. I wept for skates, not for joy in the sport — for my infancy was one long-protracted ear-ache — but because my cousin Lydia pleased my fancy in her sealskin cap and her windy hair out on the Mill Pond. In the same way, the mere prettiness of a very moderately gifted village music- teacher did infinitely more to instil in my soul a love for music than did all the depths of insight and power of the gorgon-eyed genius who succeeded her in my education.

I have come, indeed, to think that young children are totally lacking in the power to relate their experiences one with another; the relations of cause and effect are quite unknown, or, rather, totally misconceived by them. They fancy, when they have put on grandfather's spectacles, that the illusion is complete, since in their simple judgment the spectacles are a cause, and grandfather the inevitable result.

Now that is very interesting about children because it brings out how, having once established in their minds such a relationship as the above, children supply in fancy all details and actually are bothered by no possible discrepancies; so that education really begins away back there where we first begin to put two and two together on the way to seeing things as they are. Probably it was the observation in children of this very openness to illusion which gave rise to our proverb "fine feathers do not make fine birds." Though, of course, when we were very, very small babies the adage would have appealed to us rather in some such form as, "All bearded faces are not fathers." While in our mature years it might better be "Air-ships

IN THE MORNING OF MYSTICISM. 47

cannot fly to heaven" — or something on that fashion, but far more epigram- matic and clever.

However that may be, I feel convinced to this day that my childish passion to look like the picture of little Anna Alexander was due to a less blameable impulse than mere worldly vanity. If I had not made the egregious blunder of assigning to the wrong source that charm and good- ness which I so readily felt as I gazed at her lovely likeness, I should never have set all the desire of my soul upon possessing seven long loose ringlets. To gaze in the mirror for minutes at a time merely in the effort to conjure up some relief for the pitiless exposure of my round shaved head, and this for mere external beauty's sake — ah, surely I was not so wicked a creature as that! I only thought that long, wavy hair would make me the lovely and amiable little girl that she very evidently was and that I quite vaguely meant to be, just as I thought that fluttering white fingers down the keys would make me like Miss Halliday, or a pair of skates over my shoulder make me like my cousin Lydia.

And so I learned to love the photograph in grandmother's family album, of the child, little Anna Alexander ; an unusual photograph, it was, dim now and yellow, for Anna Alexander had died — I know not when — before she ever lived so far as my fancy of her was concerned. There she had stood on the page with her father and mother for years and years, her slipper tipped to a stair, her slim fingers touching the balustrade — an old-world child, with her oval locket, and her fillet, and her long loose ringlets.

"Mr. Alexander, Mrs. Alexander, Anna Alexander, she's dead."

The rhythm of it floats back to me after twenty years as if it were an hour ago that I rocked in the high chintz chair and made myself agree- able to Auntie's guests by retailing the gossip of the family album.

"My Uncle Fin, my Aunt Mary, they live in Wyoming" — pause for effect, though I scarcely expected my audience to be more credulous than if my Uncle Fin and my Aunt Mary had lived in the moon, or at the North Pole, or any other out of the way place.

"This is Miss Letitia Berry. She had her hair done at a hair dresser's. This is my Cousin Eebekah, and her birthday is on the twenty-third of September and mine is on the twenty-eighth of September" — another camel for the incredulous. "And this is my Uncle Sidney. He died in Central

48 THE LANTEKN.

America and he brought me some blue beads, but Bobby pounded them up" (Sweet Bobby!).

There were many more. I forget them now. On the whole that was a wonderful book, and I could not help noticing how it never failed to please; but for my own part, though I tried to make it all entertaining, there was no denying that, as I saw more of the world, the bloom began to wear off some of the attendants comments which had at first appeared most startling. For example, when my Aunt Mary and my Uncle Fin came East for a summer without paint or nose rings, and even communicating in very creditable English, I could not but feel that I had been imposed upon. But with all my shattered illusions, I still continued to turn with the same thrill of joy and pain to the yellow picture of the little girl who had gone to the country from which no one returns to correct our crude ideas — little "Anna-Alexander-she's-dead." In my mind it was hyphenated.

I cannot be sure whether the mysteries of photography created, in part, the influence of Anna Alexander, or Anna Alexander created my sense of respect and awe for photography. It is certain, however, that having one's picture taken was, to my mind, a performance not out of class with the administration of baptism, or similar rites, which there was ample evidence that I had gone through with in my babyhood, and which no amount of coaxing could prevail upon my parents to have repeated, now that I had attained an age to appreciate them. Day after day coming from school we children used to stop to watch the revolving cylinder of photographs at the foot of the stairs that led to the "picture gallery" and to choose turn about for all the pictures we thought worth having, almost plunging our fingers through the glass case as our favourites rolled into view. Then one fresh spring day, when as usual we had tarried long over the choosing and finally were loitering homeward, we saw ahead of us my sister Christiana waiting at the gate. Probably some one was dead, or perhaps there were some new puppies, or Aunt Anna had come, or — I began to run. Christiana opened the gate and took my hand. I must hurry, she said, to get washed and dressed, for we were to have our picture taken, all the children of our family, because mother wished to send it to my Aunt Julia Trevor. Oh, what a day and what a sky !

IN THE MOBNING OF MYSTICISM. 49

"I'm going to have my picture taken," I screamed, hanging out the upstairs window, to the old gentleman who lived next door.

"Eh, are you ?" he quavered back, rather encouragingly.

"Yes I am," I repeated, "and so's Bobby, and so's William, and so's Sidney, and so's Brother, and so's Boy, and so's Christiana — all at once, all at one time on the same picture, and it's a surprise for my Auntie Julia !" He was a little hard of hearing, the old gentleman, but he seemed to have no trouble with me in spite of my distance. Christiana, however, drew me in hastily, to wash the other arm, from which she had been called away.

"0, Sarah," she expostulated, "you mustn't shout like that. Mr. Andrews will think you're crazy."

"Why, no he won't, Christiana," I argued, "he was awful glad." It was very hard to keep from scolding when Christiana washed the inner side of my hands — a performance which always set me a-quiver in defense of my ticklish palms. Christiana was called again. I could not resist the open window. Mr. Andrews was still over there.

"If s going to cost a dollar," I shouted.

"Oh, my, my !" ejaculated the old man.

"Yes," I pursued, "and we're going to pay for it, too, and Auntie Julia doesn't have to pay a cent. We're just going to give it away."

I could not catch all Mr. Andrews' replies, but I took it he was not insensible to our munificence. I heard Christiana coming, however, and drew in quickly, bumping my head on the window frame and stifling a wail. With no time for my usual side interests, I danced into the clothes she held for me. When I was ready I ran to the window once more.

"It doesn't hurt to have it taken," I called.

"Eh, don't it?" came Mr. Andrews' thin voice from his window.

"No," I answered reassuringly, "not if you hold still; I'm going to hold still ; like this I'm going to be," and I touched my finger-tips lightly to the sill, and set my gaze on the distant horizon, after the manner of little Anna-Alexander-she's-dead. I thought I saw him laugh a little, but I didn't mind. However, as he had given up shouting replies, I returned to Christiana. She stood before her mirror brushing her beautiful yellow hair.

"I wish Mr. Andrews could be in the picture, Christiana," I said. "He's never had his picture."

50 THE LANTERN.

"0, Sarah," Christiana laughed, "what would Aunt Julie want of Mr. Andrews' picture. She never saw him."

"Well, I'm sure he's a very good man, and he has a silk hat like Anna Alexander's papa. Then suddenly, "Do let it hang, Christiana," I begged. It was one of my grievances that I could never persuade her to wear her pretty hair about her shoulders. "Please," I urged, "you used to let it hang — just for your picture."

"0, Sarah dear, I am sixteen. No one ever wears her hair so when she is sixteen."

"Well, the angels do in my book," I argued, "and I am sure angels are hundreds of years old."

"Oh, angels are out of style," said Christiana.

"Well, I think they are very much prettier than if they wore hairpins."

"Don't you think mine looks pretty now?" urged Christiana, looking at it through her hand mirror. I thought it a great trick to be able to find one's self in a hand mirror.

"No, no, it's spoiled," I almost wept. "Before, it was all puffy like the cloud we saw with sunset on it, and now its all tied up in a ball. Which do you think is prettier, Christiana, — Gabriel or Anna Alexander ?"

"I never saw Gabriel."

"But you saw his picture in my Angel book."

"Which do }'ou?" asked Christiana.

"I think Anna Alexander's curls are prettier than Gabriel's curls. Gabriel's curls look more like shavings, but Anna Alexander's are all wavy like water. That's the kind I want, Christiana," and I went to her mirror once more to contemplate the image which I could so easily see there now of my own face framed in Anna Alexander's hair.

"I like short hair," said Christiana rather kindly, pulling mine, "it looks so cool and comfortable." Then she wrapped my cloak about me and we were off.

From the moment I entered the gallery my spirits began to be on the decline. It did not smell like the dentist's office, and yet the atmosphere was freighted with the same uneasiness. For one thing, it was a disap- pointment not to find a whole room-full of gorgeous chairs and pedestals and columns like those that figured in the photographs on the revolving cylinder downstairs. Indeed, there was only one such chair in a very bare

JN THE MOSSING OF MYSTICISM. 51

room which a flood of sun made dusty and warm. The palms, too, were onl}" painted on great gray screens. Pictures, it seemed, were not all that they purported to be. There was a long time of waiting. Then our turn came. The boys, who had been very sulky at home, were more cheerful now, and allowed themselves to be placed and handled with much giggling and good humour. There was a stool in front for me. I took it a little sadly, thinking of the staircase, and immediately became congealed into an impassive figure, unwilling to look so much as sidewise lest the instru- ment before me should suddenly go off and catch me unprepared. After a long time the photographer began to retreat behind his camera, darting forth to give us occasional touches and shoves, and back again. With teeth set I awaited the final stroke.

"Now, just the way you are. Steady — that's right — right at me, one, two. That was all right," suddenly reappearing. "Now one more."

So ih is was having a picture taken ! And now it was over. Oh, surely it was not too late! The photographer was promising to send something on Monday. I clutched Christiana's hands, "Oh, one alone, Christiana," I begged, almost in tears.

"Oh, you can't, Baby dear. You see it costs more money, and this is all mother meant we should do."

Anna — Anna A-Alex — " I began, and ended by burying my face in my hands.

It was then that father came for us. In a moment I was drying my eyes (such is the magic of fathers), and the photographer was wheeling the big fancy chair into position, and arranging the shades on his sky- lights.

"She has a way she wants it taken," said Christiana, perhaps seeing anxiety return to my face. I could see no stairway but the dark passage to the street. Oh, yes, they could fix that, the photographer said, and was that all? Was that all? That was mere nothing in comparison with the real thing, but I hesitated. The boys might laugh.

"How is it you want it, Sarah ?" repeated Christiana.

Then I put my mouth very close to her ear.

"With long hair," I whispered.

Ah well, we have to learn the truth sometime or other. After all, then, there was no connection between curls, and gentle goodness, and

52 THE LANTERN.

beauty, and photographs; somehow or other I had mixed the tools of two worlds. Perhaps it was mere babyish disappointment, but I can't help feeling rather sorry, at this distance, for the disillusioned child who, with- out knowing why, wept that afternoon in shame and bitterness of soul. I had lost the little girl of the picture, not because she had become less real, but because the ties that had made her attainable were suddenly torn away, and as yet I discerned no new ones. And so I see her now, and shall always see her, with her oval locket, and her fillet and the loose ringlets on her shoulder. Always I shall see her, her slipper tipped to a stair, and her slim fingers touching the balustrade — but I shall never be like her, never, for I have short hair. Dear Anna-Alexander-she's-dead !

Ruth George, 1910.

To the Yacht "Whim."

O white broad-pinioned bird, with brooding breast, That cherished us so many a day and night; From haven to haven urging lonely flight, Then dropping with some harboured flock to rest !

0 lovely form of undismayed desire! 0 vagabond, whom no dull thrift delays ! Flying as wishes fly, on magic ways; Knowing no limit save the sunset's fire.

Our hearts take wing as thou dost, and explore Thy full demesne of freedom. We will find New continents of joy, nor call to mind The low, familiar hamlets of the shore.

Mabel Parker Huddleston,, '89.

THE CATHEDRAL BUILDER. 53

The Cathedral Builder.

I am the builder of churches,

Though I hew but a single stone, No order compels me, no master rule tells me

The hour when my work must be done.

It is I who build the cathedral,

Although I must labour alone With strokes of the hammer, that ring without clamour

To fashion one block of stone.

At noon when the market is ringing

With the barter of women and men, I am rounding and chipping, while daylight is slipping

Till highways are desert again.

At night when the moon through the cloud rifts

Weaves cobwebs on pinnacled spire, And sly shadow chases through far remote spaces,

My blows echo high in the choir.

It matters not what I am carving,

Let the image be what it may : A gargoyle half reeling, a narrow saint kneeling

Will outlive the forms of clay.

Perhaps it will mount to the tower,

Perhaps in the crypt it will lie, It may crown the altar or lean without shelter

Against the full wind of the sky.

And where they may place it I care not,

My goal is no visible goal, But slowly perfecting a task, and reflecting

Each impulse that comes from my soul.

My work is a work of the ages,

My time is eternity; In years still unnumbered, when long I have slumbered,

The others will labour for roe.

Shirley Putnam, 1S09.

54 THE LANTERN.

Count Leo Tolstoy.

DTJELNG- the last few years modern Eussia and the forces that are entering into the present movement for political and religious freedom have been the subject of much, and often highly sensa- tional, discussion. To sift this material, to understand as clearly as possible the real significance of the Eussian social organism, becomes, in this day when we lay so much stress on environment, the first necessity to any just appreciation of recent Eussian literature. Similar as are the aims and drift of civilisation throughout the world, the conditions under which progress is achieved are peculiar to each individual nation. It is these conditions that we must study if we would judge fairly a man as sincerely devoted to the ennobling of the human spirit as Count Leo Tolstoy. The evolution of this great genius has been mainly determined by his surroundings: and these surroundings are some three or four hundred years behind the rest of Europe in development. As regards government and racial character, Eussia is still young and crude. From a very low level of barbarism she went through centuries of growth before she reached even the mere possibility of civilised existence. Only in 1861 did she emerge legally from feudal conditions by the abolishment of serfdom. At present the chief obstacles in her path of progress are the fettering tradi- tions of a universal empire supported by a universal church. From these she is now trying to free herself, to correct the worst evils in the wake of these two great systems, and to escape from a policy of spies and censors, of ignorance and suppression. Under existing conditions there is no freedom of intercourse in Eussia; and as a result it is a significant characteristic of great Eussian thinkers that their ideas have been evolved without any modification by rational interchange with other men. Our late ambas- sador, Mr. Andrew D. White, has in his Autobiography a paragraph that seems to me to express the present situation of the country with singular vividness. "During two centuries," he says, "Eussia has been coming slowly out of perhaps the most cruel phases of mediaeval life. Her history is, in its details, discouraging; her daily life disheartening. Even the

COUNT LEO TOLSTOY. 55

aspects of nature are to the last degree depressing : no mountains ; . . . a soil during a large part of the year frozen or parched; a people whose upper classes are mainly given up to pleasure and whose lower classes are sunk in f etichism ; all their poetry and music in the minor key ; old oppres- sions of every sort still lingering; no help in sight; and. to use their own cry, 'God so high and the Czar so distant.' When, then, a great man arises in Eussia, if he gives himself wholly to some well-defined purpose, . . . rigidly excluding sight or thought of the ocean of sorrow about him, he may do great things. . . . But when a strong genius in Eussia throws him- eelf into philanthropic speculations of an abstract sort, with no chance of discussing his theories until they are full-grown and have taken fast hold upon him ... he may rush to the extremes of nihilism or rear a fabric heaven-high in which truths, errors, and paradoxes are piled up together until we have a new Tower of Babel."

Of such a Tower of Babel, of such interwoven truth and error, of such a giant struggling against the adverse currents in the vast ocean of Eussian sorrow, we become spectators in the life and work of Count Lyof or Leo Tolstoy. He was born of a noble family at their country place, Yasnaia Polyana, in August, 1828. As a young man he studied in the University. Then he went to the Caucasus, where he entered the army and began his career as a writer. After the great siege of Sebastopol, he returned to Moscow and re-entered private life becoming rapidly distinguished as one of the greatest Eussian novelists. Until he was nearly fifty years old, he lived the life of his kind, the corrupt and fashionable life of the Eussian upper class. This period is described in My Confession: — "I put men to death in war, I fought duels to slay others, I lost at cards, wasted my substance wrung from the sweat of the peasants, punished the latter cruelly, rioted with loose women, and deceived men. Lying, robbery, adultery of all kinds, drunkenness, violence, murder — there was not one crime I did not commit, and yet I was considered by my equals a comparatively moral man."

In 1861 the emancipation of the serfs aroused his interest in agrarian conditions and he became convinced that it was his duty to live on the estate in winter as well as in summer. From this point begins the change which gradually turned the current of his thought. He gave up novels and for a number of years wrote nothing but educational reviews and school

56 THE LANTEBN.

books. In 1862 he married, and became absorbed in his family. Then there came periods, "stoppages of life" as he calls them, when the questions Why? and What after? forced themselves on him. The great problem of life's meaning confronted him and he could find no answer. It is the same problem that comes to every thinker. "Here we are, you and I, and the millions of men and animals about us; here we stand with our senses, our keen intellects, our infinite desires, our nerves quivering to the touch of joy or pain, beacons of brief fire, it would seem between two eternities; what are we to make of the wonder while it is still ours?" Once Tolstoy had been absorbed in the study of life; now he was interested only in discovering what life is. Nothing seemed to bring him any comfort in this search until he began to know and love the peasantry. Among all the shams of philosophy, art, and religion, these people alone seemed sincere. Through them Count Tolstoy came out of nihilism to believe in a God; through them he came to see that work and simplicity are the necessary conditions of happiness; and in helping them be developed that constructive theory of life, which is really so destructive — that curious jumble of truth and paradox.

Gradually association with the rich and educated became repulsive to him. He began to live as much as possible among the peasants, adopted the peasant dress, gave up all his property and made sympathy with peasant cares and sorrows the ground work of his life. His days were now divided between hard physical labour and writings on religious and social ques- tions. In 1895 his fearless criticism of the Eussian church brought about his excommunication by the synod; and he would long since have been banished but for the intercession of influential relatives at court.

Prince, nihilist, novelist — the curtain falls; the curtain rises — peasant, Christian, reformer. It is like scene-shifting at a theatre — the char- acters are the same, and the second scene, though in brilliant contrast to the first, continues the thread of the drama. And this dramatic thread in Count Tolstoy's life — this central unity that relates and explains the contrast between the scenes, is his passionate sympathy with life through all its human loves and fears, a sympathy developing later into an intense desire to be of service in the struggle of the human soul toward freedom and enlightenment.

In his earlier work, in the period when most of his novels were

COUNT LEO TOLSTOY. 57

written, Count Tolstoy's artistic inspiration is this passionate interest in life. He does not care for nature except as a setting for humanity. That great description of Levin's day among the mowers, which no one who has ever enjoyed can forget, leaves us with a sense, not of the beauties of nature, but of the animation of physical exercise. Men and women with their infinite possibilities of evil and good — these are Count Tolstoy's subjects. As an artist his greatness springs from truth seen with an eye of unparalleled aeuteness, and told so simply that it carries with it inevitable conviction. Every page is a bit of life; and the whole is a vast realistic mirror, over which flits a play of shifting lights, — now comic, now tragic, now pathetic, now beautiful, and now terrible. Nothing that affects our daily existence escapes his clairvoyant understanding.

He takes into account all the tiny movements, all the physical side of life that makes us continually conscious of this material world. Stiva — in Count Tolstoy's most representative novel, Anna Karenina — feels a degree of satisfaction, even under the trying quarrel with his wife, in the consciousness of a starched shirt and a perfumed handkerchief; while the chief thing that augments Anna's dislike of Karenin is the fact that his knuckles crack, and even when she has succeeded in persuading her- self that he is "an upright, excellent and remarkable man," she cannot help adding, "But why do his ears stick out so and why does he cut his hair too short?"

With these outward peculiarities Count Tolstoy takes equally into account those hazy feelings of which we are all momentarily conscious, but which are gone so immediately that they escape the grasp of all but this surpassing realist. Our egotistic fancies, our vain dreams, our freaks of jealousy, our harmless vanity, our faint impulses for good and bad are reflected with a large life-like humour in his pages.

With what a touch, delicate yet firm, he handles a great living pano- rama. In Anna Karenina we are brought into complete sympathetic un- derstanding with a large number of people, their fitful emotions and the resulting situations. We follow the sensitive, awkward Levin in his love for the tactful and charming Kitty; we sympathise with good, overworked Dolly in her troubles with the brilliant and susceptible Stiva; we suffer deeply with both Karenin and Vronsky ; and throughout we are carried away by the freshness and strength of the woman with whose tragic life the

58 THE LANTEBN.

lives of all these others are inextricably entangled. In his portrayal of Anna, Count Tolstoy rises from the uneventful affairs of daily life to a fearless revelation of the deepest emotions of the human heart.

Anna is ill in Petersburg. A telegram comes to Karenin at Moscow, "I am dying. I beg you to come: I shall die easier if I have your for- giveness." At first he hesitates. Then, in accordance with his character, he goes because it is his duty — goes with a stifled hope that her words may be true, and that the solution of the problem into which the life force has whirled him may be solved without his own action. All the quietness and controlled emotion of extreme illness meet his entrance. The doctor is there: the once brilliant Vronsky, Anna's lover, is weeping with his head in his hands. Anna is tossing about in a half delirious state calling for her husband. An involuntary tenderness, which the sufferings of others always caused in him, makes him turn away his head as he passes Vronsky. Anna's voice, lively, gay, and articulating clearly, is heard from the sleeping room. Karenin enters; but Anna is feverish and excited and does not recognise him. Suddenly she is silent; she looks frightened; she raises her arms above her head as if to ward off a blow; she has seen her husband.

" 'No, no,' she says quickly, 'I am not afraid of him ; I am afraid of dying. Aleksei, come here. I have only a few minutes to live: the fever will be upon me again, and I shall know nothing more. Now I am conscious : I understand everything and I see everything.' "

Aleksei Karenin's face expresses acute suffering; he wants to speak, but his lower lip trembles so that he cannot utter a word. He takes Anna's hand and holds it between his own.

" 'Yes,' " she begins again, " 'this is what I want to say. Do not be astonished. I am always the same, but there is another being within me whom I fear; it is she who loved him and hated you. . . . Now I am myself, entirely, really myself, and not another. I am dying, I know that I am dying. . . . One thing only is indispensable to me; forgive me, forgive me wholly ! . . . No, you cannot forgive me ; I know very well that it is impossible. Go away, go away ! You are too perfect !' "

Karenin's emotion becomes so great that he can no longer control himself. Suddenly he feels this emotion change to a moral reconcilia- tion which seems like a new and unknown happiness. Kneeling beside the bed, he lays his forehead on her arm, and sobs like a child.

COUNT LEO TOLSTOY. 59

" 'Why doesn't he come/ " says Anna suddenly, looking towards the door. At her call Vronsky enters, his face hidden in his hands. Anna bids -Karenin uncover Vronsky's face and forgive her lover as he has forgiven her. A moment more, and she is tossing in delirium. " 'Bozhe mo'i ! Bozhe mo'i ! when will this be over ? Give me some morphine, doctor ; some morphine.' "

Like Shakespeare's Othello we cry out in fear — "Oh, the pity of it, Iago ! Oh, the pity of it !" There is so nrueh of human nature in this man who comes to the great action of his life, because he cannot bear to see another man in tears !

A high truth and seriousness arising in an intense sympathy with life seen from the moral side as something to which the artist is respon- sible— these are the qualities that mark Count Tolstoy as indubitably great. He is a clear, indestructible mirror of truth, reflecting all the lights and shadows of our daily life through the medium of that lofty quality of imagination which stops not with the outward semblance but lays bare the life principle of things.

In this passionate sympathy, in this brilliant understanding of the forces that play upon humanity, Count Tolstoy, during the first scene of his life's drama, was completely absorbed. When, however, he began to feel the necessity of unravelling the master knot of human fate, when existence became meaningless and terrible to him, art as the mirror of existence became equally meaningless and terrible. He could no longer teach when he was bitterly conscious that he did not know what to teach. Then as he gradually came, through his study of the peasantry, to a new and vital consciousness of life, his old interest in the jo}rs and sorrows of men developed into a sincere and yearning desire to help mankind in its "progress toward the True and the Good." "I believe," he says, "that my reason, the light I bear with me, was given me only that it might shine before men, not in words only, but in good deeds, that men might thereby glorify God. I believe that my life and consciousness of truth is a talent confided to me for a good purpose, and that this talent is a fire which is a fire only when it burns." In accordance with this belief, Count Tolstoy has devoted the second scene in the drama of his life to spreading his great doctrine of work and self-sacrifice — the expression of his philanthropic efforts towards those who are struggling through poverty and

60 THE LANTEBN.

want after a better development. It is his misfortune that Eussia — poor despondent, ignorant Eussia — should have been the country of his nativity. Had he been born in any other nation of Europe, he would undoubtedly have been a mighty and beneficent power on the side of progress; as it is, his thought must pass as the struggling cry of a giant battling against the heavy cross ciirrents in the ocean of Eussian misery. With his yearning to help, and his almost preternatural superiority to illusion, he is peculiarly sensi- tive to the falsities, the hypocrisies, the mistaken points of modern society. These, in his powerful, compelling way, he forces the reader to recognise and remember ; and here he is of the greatest value. We cannot follow him, however, when, with a heart wrung by the sorrows of Eussia, he tells us that the disadvantages of government outweigh the advantages, and that the whole foundation of our life is pure paganism. On the contrary, his constructive philosophy is such a combination of clear insight into the dis- eases of civilisation and impossible paradoxical theories, that he must stand to us more as a great man who made an equally great mistake, and who, as a result, can teach us only by the way, remaining, in the ultimate, a monumental instance of another "brave but mistaken Soldier in the Liberation war of Humanity."

His later novels and essays deal with almost every topic of interest in art, literature, science, the church, government, and society ; and in each subject this strange interweaving of valuable and worthless is a character- istic of theories which, despite their contradictions, contain the most profound and far-reaching conclusions.

On art, as expressed in books, pictures, and music, Count Tolstoy says much that reveals a strong, comprehensive, critical faculty. In the first place he obliges us to see that the true nature, of art is still an open question; and to be at least aware of the lives that are necessarily swal- lowed up in the erection of any gTeat building or the production of any great drama. His quiet sarcasms on art which is good but incompre- hensible, like food which is nourishing but indigestible, are excellent. For the various follies and obscenities of the last quarter of the nineteenth centurj', "the 'great poets' wallowing in the mud of Paris, the 'great musicians' making night hideous in German concert-halls, the 'great painters' mixing their colours with as much filth as the police will allow" he has a sound contempt that braces and strengthens his reader. His

COUNT LEO TOLSTOY. 61

thrusts at "impressionism" and "sensationalism," at art which is insincere, and lacking in the true quality of imagination, are decidedly keen and effective. He condemns, and justly I think, the aesthetic point of view toward life which has made the modern artist so much of an Ishmael in society. To him the true art has a "sense not only of power but of obligation — puts itself at the service of great ideas and appeals to men as men." So far we can accept and admire.

But what shall we say when he calls Shakespeare a "scribbler," and declares that nothing was ever written in verse that could not have been as well done in prose? What shall we say to this astonishing estimate of the influence of Greek art ?

. . . "The strange theory — Goodness, Beauty, Truth, a trinity — by which it appears that the very best that can be done by the art of nations after nineteen hundred years of Christian teaching is to choose as the ideal of their life the ideal that was held by a small, semi-savage, slave-holding people who lived two thousand years ago, who imitated the human nude body extremely well and erected buildings pleasant to look at." It is here that we come upon his unfortunate limitations. In tiwing to adopt a standard of art that will be useful to the peasants of a country where the working day is often sixteen hours long and where every orna- ment of existence is lost in the desperate struggle for life itself, Count Tolstoy is driven to a conception purely ethical and utilitarian. He divorces art from pleasure and defines it as a means of communicating feeling; he bases it on religion, and makes it the chief factor in human progress. Art for art's sake is a perfectly meaningless phrase to him. Thus he fails to see that art which treats a slight subject in perfect form may be good art, even if it is not great art. Arnold is willing to spare two fifths of life to aesthetics. Tolstoy declares that ethics and aesthetics are one, and that that one is ethics.

What, then, we ask, does this paradoxical thinker have to say about religion? In My Confession, My Religion and The Gospel in Brief, we are met by the same confusion of truth and half truth as was revealed in his theories of art. Count Tolstoy condemns and makes his reader condemn the superficial Christianity of those who use the name of Christ as a cloak to cover the lusts of the flesh. His clear insight and his whole- some scorn for the things we believe but do not practise are in a high

62 THE LANTERN.

degree invigorating. With this unfailingly dominant moral piirpose he points out the false emphasis of the Christian Churches on the dogmatic rather than the practical side of religion.

"This conception of life," he says, "has had a deplorable influence on all human activity. Ethics — moral instruction — has disappeared from our pseudo-Christian society. Men do not concern themselves with how we ought to live and make use of our reason. Thanks to this false doctrine which has penetrated to the very blood and marrow of our generation, there has arisen the surprising phenomenon that man has, as it were, spit out the apple of the knowledge of good and evil . . . and forgotten that the whole history of man is only a solution of the contradictions between the animal instincts and the reason."

The theory that Christ's teaching is visionary and impracticable, that life on this earth with all its struggles and splendours is not the true life, arouses in him an equal opposition. Like James of old he asserts constantly that faith without works is dead.

In Count Tolsto}''s eyes the doctrines of self-sacrifice and of non- resistance to evil are the foundations of the true moral law. Nor are we to imagine that the life of each is his own property. "Men owe an unpaid debt to those that lived before, live now, and shall live, as well as to God." The personal life is not the true life; it is the cowardly and selfish life. Moreover, it is not the easy life. Count Tolstoy bids us "Mingle with a great crowd where are the sick, and the cripple, the criminal and the prostitute; think of the great number of suicides every year; think of the most unhappy moments of our own lives, and see if nine-tenths of human suffering is not a useless martyrdom to the doctrine of the world." "One life after another," he sa}rs, " is cast under the chariot of this God. The juggernaut advances, crushing out their lives, and new and ever new victims with groans and sobs and curses wallow underneath it."

This interpretation of religion is not new in theory, but seldom has it been carried out with so much sincerity and with a conviction, so ir- resistible as in the pages of Count Tolstoy. We are borne out of ourselves as we read, swept along in the wake of a vast comprehensive reason ex- pressing in clear and profound style the most earnest truths.

When, however, Count Tolstoy proposes, on the basis of "Eesist not evil," to sweep away the whole of our present social organism, as dependent

COUNT LEO TOLSTOY. 63

on the law of "a tooth for a tooth," we are compelled to pause and wonder. "We have arranged our entire social fabric," he tells us, "on the very principles that Christ repudiated," and we must therefore abolish the great machinery of government and establish the Kingdom of Heaven — the kingdom of peace. Our armies must be dissolved, because "Thou shalt not kill;" our courts must be closed, because "with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged." In this return to nature what is there but a Biblical Eousseau? we are tempted to exclaim. And yet how bril- liant and conclusive are the judgments of social evil which lead to this strange philosophy of life. No one who has read Resurrection can forget the terrible injustices of the prison system, nor doubt the falsity of life that inevitably prevails in any great official organisation. In What is to be Done, Count Tolstoy forces us to see that every moment of peace we enjoy is bought at the misery of tens of thousands of others held down by violence. He will not let us continue to barricade ourselves in luxury, till we no longer see the sufferings of the poor. "I feel," he says, "that I am partaker in a crime continually being committed while I have two coats and there exists a man without any." He will not have us forget that the terrible wheels of our social economy go on crushing and maiming in their pitiless revolutions as they carry along the load of a careless and parasitic society. Perhaps the greatest lesson Coitnt Tolstoy has for us is this doctrine of the healing value of work and the binding duty we owe to enter, one and all, into the great struggle for existence. In this day when the upper classes have made money and leisure their ambition, and the lower classes are aping their betters to the best of their ability; in this day when, as Charles Dudley Warner said, the labourer is on the verge of sending his card, can there be, I question, a more excellent doctrine than this call of Count Tolstoy to work? Yet, when he advises us to renounce all connection with money and to live on the soil in patriarchal simplicit}', we object to his impracticalness. The great defect in this great man is that he has conceived of civilisation which admits of so many evils as in itself an evil. He has failed to follow in the trend of healthful evolution ; he has failed to read the true lesson of historical development. Instead of the true progress, which is one of "toil co-operant to an end," he would substitute a progress that ignores the toil so far accomplished, and endeavours to start afresh. Instead of helping the development of the world, he would, in his mistaken zeal, abandon it.

64 THE LANTERN.

There is, indeed, something strange and paradoxical in this man, who, "repudiating marriage, is himself happily married and the father of sixteen children" ; in this artist who has written perhaps the greatest fiction of our time and yet denies Dante and Aeschylus a place in literature; in this reformer who would sweep away civilisation and yet circulate his writings throughout the earth; in this Christian who would close the courts because they pronounce sentence and yet himself sits in judgment on the civilised world. Truly, the long slow work of developing a better future for Eussia, despite the burning passion of his sympathy, will rest with others than Count Tolstoy; but we must all bow to the magnificent sincerity and courage of this man who never abates one jot of what he conceives to be the truth and yet who wonders each morning when he awakes that he is not on his way to Siberia.

Anne Garrett Walton, 1908.

TTLTBA. VISA. 65

Ultra Visa.

Of silent things upon the earth Are these — the chamber sanctified, Where a lost Presence doth abide

Alive in memory; Or a great multitude of men, Startled from jest to dumbness, when

They view heroic deeds ; Or a large place of worship, where The lapse from anthems into prayer

Makes quiet utterly; But charged with silence of drawn breath Is that remote room still as death

Where the soul sits alone.

Of the dark things upon the earth Are these — the houses of Despair, And tombs of Hope, and grave-yards where

Cold Hate has buried Love ; And that dim limit of the land The barren stretch of unlit sand

Beside a winter sea. But darker than all these the room, Where in impenetrable gloom

The soul sits all alone.

Of lonely things upon the earth

Are these — the never-ceasing bell

That sobs and moans its mournful knell

Upon a buoy's crest; And the lamp shining through the night, Set to guide footsteps back aright,

Which never shall return; And the sad wind that flutters by, Like a ghost wand'ring aimlessly

Sporting among dead leaves; But lonelier than these things, the room Where, like a mourner at a tomb,

The soul sits all alone. Helen Parlchurst, 1911,

t><3 THE LANTECH".

Mignonette.

A Fable.

IN the city garden of a Soldier's Home there once bloomed a clump of mignonette. A high wall surrounded the block on which the large building stood : around the wall were garden-beds and vines : and within these a green square with crossing gravel walks and white iron benches where the old soldiers sat talking together of past campaigns and dangers while they waited cheerfully to face the greatest danger that can ever come to anyone.

Although the mignonette bloomed with more bounty and fragrance than any other flower in the place, she was among the least regarded : and in her youth this sometimes affected her spirits, as she was not without common vanity.

In one of the moods of depression she sometimes experienced on this account she was once cheered and braced for life by the remark of an old soldier of Irish extraction who had observed in a flow of noble sentiment after a glass of toddy, that those who gave most, got most out of life. For if nearly all her companions were more admired and attended than herself, none were more admiring and devoted.

She admired the sound of the bugles of routine, the crack of the target-shooting, the gay, floating flags, the great square of shade the building cast on the smooth sward on summer afternoons, and the stories of hardship, fire and devotion. In the very breath of the place, she had been sown and grown: and from the crest of each spike of her green, flow- ering branches to the point of each tendril of her white, firm roots, she lived for the Soldier's Home.

So that it was with enthusiasm that she could give to it the last fragrance of her existence, when, too late in the summer for another sprig to grow, a nurse, in a starchy blue and white uniform and broad-hemmed apron, came out one afternoon into the garden and cut every stem of the mignonette to set off the other flowers of a bouquet for the hospital.

MIGNONETTE. 67

The bouquet was carried into a little white-washed room, where an old soldier lay dead on a stretcher with a woodcut of Grant hanging over it, and the flag standing at his head.

The nurse put the flowers into water in a large Wedgewood vase and left them to their new companions. These were a pair of cameo lovers living on the side of the blue urn, the dead soldier, his daughter, and the man who had said that those who gave most, got most out of life.

"Tell us about the soldier for whom we are here." The rose of the bouquet spoke without a sound to the figures on the vase.

The lover, who was standing with his classic profile and his beautiful straight nape turned slightly away from the room as he looked down at the bridle of his winged horse, replied quietly: "His uncouth companions called him Old George. His uncouth name is Sergeant George Kearney. Nothing about him is on good lines. Long ago he was a common soldier in a rough war where he never spared himself. Then, it seems, he worked for his large, uncouth family, in an ugly barbaric place called Nebraska, where again he never spared himself. See to what a pass this course has brought him. You would suppose him, from the deep lines in his face and from his hardened, heavy frame, to be an old, old man, far older than I. Yet he is only about eighty. While my wife, CMoe, and I are rather over a hundred."

The cameo lover was not lying about his age. In the fabulous zone where the potter had east his lot, there were no extremes of weather. Forever his little flock could wander unsheltered over the side of the urn. Forever ripe fruit hung upon his tree: and a light, sweet wind, without a breath tossed Chloe's filletted bair and blew her girdled gown, in chaste grace about her slender ankles.

Six sheep, an exquisite, spraying pomegranate tree, the winged horse, and a cornucopia of grapes were all Chloe and Daphnis had in the world : but it was enough : and they were content. Both were beautiful : both were intelligent : and both did quietly and with perfect ease the tasks allotted to them by their designer. Chloe's duty was to hold the wreathing cornucopia of grapes; Daphnis' duty was to place his hand on the bridle of the winged borse drinking from a pillared trough at his side ; and the life-work of both was to be as decorative as possible.

"You are indeed wonderfully well preserved," breathed the niignon-

68 THE LANTERN.

ette, as she regarded them. But in every fibre of her nature she was thrilled with pride that the last fragrance of her existence would be for a man so unafraid in spending his strength as the dead soldier.

The truth was that all the flowers, although on entering the room they had been delighted with the beauty, distinction and fine form of the cameo lovers, now experienced a slight chill of disaffection. You may have noticed yourself that, with all reason but fact to the contrary, the purely decorative are seldom long and warmly popular.

"May I ask?" said a rather tart lemon verbena, "whether your horse has been drinking steadily from the trough where he is now for a hundred years ?"

"He has," answered Chloe. "And I understand how to a chance ob- server he may seem to be going too far for his own peace and symmetry. All I can say is, he has never lost either."

"We explain it," said Daphnis, who seemed to like explanations, "by the truth that those who devote themselves to appearing well, usually under any circumstances appear better than those who do not make this their specialty. Now we never could have done so much in our line, if we had been diverted by that rough war, or that up-setting feeling in it about freedom."

"That passion for freedom is the most beautiful one in the world," said the rose quietly.

"Not to me," replied Daphnis. "Passion, I think I may say, is a thing I understand well. It is a feeling you have in the spring for someone arranged in every way on thoroughly good lines, and that you should express in verses with a slightly wistful refrain. While you have it you lie about on the banks of streams as much as possible and play on pipes."

"It is not always quite like that," said the rose.

The afternoon was now waning fast, and the Irish gentleman who had been sitting talking with the daughter about his friend, arose to go. "A brrave soldier," he said, "Sergeant Georruge Kearney, — wan who wurruked harrd for his family and fot well for furreedom. We do not need to mourn for him."

"No," said the daughter; and she looked at the old soldier's face with a peace proud and tranquil.

"A strange kind of joy she shows," said Daphnis silently. "To express

MIGNONETTE. 69

exaltation like that you throw out your arms with a fine sweep, or at least strike a lyre. But this middle-aged woman in what they call a shirt- waist, sitting here with tears on her face like that, has nothing decorative or beautiful in her emotion."

"I do not feel as you do about it," said the rose. "Anything is deco- rative if it is placed beautifully; and joy is of a thousand kinds, and expressed in a thousand ways."

As she turned to go from the house for the night the daughter opened a window. The cool air of the falling evening blew in; outside sounded the boom of the sunset gun; and the odours of all the flowers rose in a still song she could not hear :

"The clover's grassy breath,

To him who listeneth

Upon the pastured lea,

Is like the monotone

Of some far sheep-bell, blown

From tranquil Arcady.

"The airs of that last rose That late and crimson blows And frosted, dies, Smell, as in green and dew, The first, first rose that blew In waking Paradise.

"What fragrance, ages hence, Shall tell the listening sense Of men who guess — Men whose far lives shall range On paths remote and strange — Our happiness?"

The day had been warm; and in the breeze and the aroma of its song the bouquet was fast withering and falling.

The daughter took out the mignonette, which was the freshest of the flowers, put it into the button-hole of her father's uniform and kissed him good-night before he was taken away to the prairie graveyard where he was buried.

All this was sometime ago. But Daphnis and Chloe still live in loveli-

70 THE LANTEBN.

ness and grace on their blue urn. More than a hundred years have not lifted the head of Bucephalus, intemperate as he must seem, from his long draught, nor blown from the lovers one of the beauties of their youth. The mignonette and the old soldier have known a finer fate. Long ago they were dust of the prairie; and they have faced the greatest danger that can ever come to any one.

Edith Franklin Wyatt, 1896.

The Descent.

I stand on the wind-swept summit, where the sun

Shines strong and unresisted.

About me are the dark and silent hills,

And, far below, the country-side,

The smoke and spires of towns ; the golden-green

Of summer meadows.

Out on the dim horizon lies the sea,

Its restless waves, its questing sails obscured

In silver distance.

And here, above the shadows of changing clouds,

I am serene, as one who meditates,

And does not heed the little cares of men.

Yet do I take

The downward path, between the folding hills,

Into the southern valley.

The quiet farms, in vistas reappearing,

Change into kindly-featured homes, and greet me,

Like friends returned. Cattle from upland pastures

Crowd down before their heavy-footed driver.

Shadows grow long. Out of the stillness rings

A child's laugh.

Wistfully and with gladness I return

To the dear limits of familiar things,

As one who loves.

Marion D. Crane, 1911.

THE DBEAMEB. 71

The Dreamer.

ONE golden August day — over four hundred years have gone by since then — the long-awaited tidings reached Breckenridge Castle that Henry of Lancaster had landed at Milford Haven, and com- manded his adherents to muster their forces and march toward Shrewsbury to meet him. All the summer had dawdled itself away in expectation of just such a summons. Throughout England it had been a season of turbulent emotion, though scarcely of strenuous activity, for men took advantage of the lull in the long tempestuous war to kindle the fires again on their own neglected hearths, and to let their tired horses rest quietly in the stalls. Even at Breckenridge, for many generations home of ardent Lancastrians, the inhabitants of the castle had had ample leisure for their own affairs. These were absorbing enough to at least three of the actors in the little drama which had just taken place, and the summer skies had seemed so very deep and blue, and the shadows that crept in the afternoons from the nearby forest over the stretch of level meadow-land to the moat, so very peaceful, that no one but the Earl him- self had been able to look forward with sustained vivacity to the coming climax in the life of the nation.

But now the sombre old castle — relic of Norman days, with its square squat towers and crenellated walls — rang from battlements to keep with the sudden bustle of preparation. Pages bearing trappings and pieces of armour scurried up and down the winding stone stairs, or dodged between the horses' legs in the court; shock-headed grooms rubbed clown fine chargers; the armourer's forge blazed away like a furnace, and a constant stream of people — the Breckenridge tenants, knights and gentry from the surrounding country-side, grizzled old warriors who bore the scars of former service, and lank youths more used to the wielding of scythes than spears — made their way over the lowered drawbridge. In one corner of the ample courtyard, moreover, something like a drill for the rawest of the country lads was going forward. The sun, sinking lower in the sky, flung

72 THE LAIWEBN.

the shadow of the western tower over the busy scene, and the man who had been conducting the drill — a tali man, noticeable for the Italian cut of his cloak and doublet — turned sharply and signalled to a companion.

"Lead these fine fellows to the guard room, Woodbury," he com- manded, "and take care that they have plenty of straw and blankets for the night. Heaven knows when they may couch so sumptuously again. Announce, also, to the new-comers that the men of rank are to dine in the castle hall."

"But, Master Gregory," the older man protested, "the lads are sorely in need of practice, and there is yet a long stretch of daylight — "

"Which they had best spend in rest. Go now and see that you hasten." A peremptory flash of the eye and sharpness of the voice sent Woodbury packing upon his errand, grumbling beneath his breath, nevertheless, that, in spite of his priest's learning and his queer foreign ways, the young master was a true-born Eavenscroft and as deaf to good soldierly advice as the Earl himself.

Gregory Austin, meanwhile, was making his way over the uneven cobblestones of the court and down a narrow corridor to the room used as the castle library. The heavy door was swung half open and the yellow western light fell through the high slits of windows, gilding the shelves with their precious burden — a few dust^covered leather tomes and some half dozen unbound manuscripts. The tapestry with its familiar pictures from Vergil was dark, save for an occasional vivid flash where the sun- light seemed to have collected itself on lulus' purple mantle, or the cushions of Dido's couch. At the carved oak table a girl in a green riding dress was bending over a massive volume; but she flung back her head quickly as Austin's step resounded in the corridor, and rose to meet him, her straight young form outlined against the bright window, and the intensity of her expression apparent even in its shadow.

"To-morrow at break of day," said the man quietly, answering the question implied in every line of her face and figure. "It has been quick work; how say you, Vivian?"

"Marvellous and ten times marvellous! I watched you for awhile from the tower and felt as if I were seeing you for the first time. How the men run to obey your commands, and all falls into order before you ! Oh, that I, too, were a man and might ride and fight with you!" She flung out her hands, their fingers clenched — an odd, impetuous gesture habitual

THE DBEAMEB. 73

with her — then let them fall at her sides again. She was a tall girl and for all her slimness there was something angular, almost unfeminine, in the poise of her shoulders, the tilt of her head, the line of her jaw. Austin, leaning against the wall, faced her squarely.

"With the pitiful coward who has forfeited the natural dignity of manhood, and the right to call himself an Englishman?"

"Ali, Gregory," and the note of pain in her voice smote him with remorse, "is it not ungenerous so to fling my words back at me ?"

"Pardon," he begged, "I am a beast as well as a coward, and have lost not only my English honour, but my Italian courtesy. If you did not believe in me, Vivian — you and Eleanor and my brave old uncle — I would not budge an inch from Breckenridge to-morrow, for Heaven knows I do not believe in myself, nor very deeply in the cause for which I fight."

"For shame," the girl blazed forth. "You do not believe in a cause which seeks to dethrone a usurping murderer king who is sucking away the life of the country drop by drop ? You do not believe — "

"Pardon again. I do believe with heart and soul in the cause of justice and good government. It is hard, however, to have faith that Eichmond, whose title to the throne is less, will in the end be a more tolerable ruler than Richard. He is young now, to be sure, and his fame, so far, is spotless; but Henry VI was young and Edward of York when first they wore the crown, and England has suffered from the weakness of the one and the violence of the other as methinks no other land has ever suffered before. It may be that we drive out one monster only to open the door for a worse."

"Will you never recover from your blindness?" cried Vivian with energy, "Fight not for the King, but to rid the country of its present plague, and trust the future to God; Fight for the right to live as free and un- molested in your own land as you have lived in Italy — the ancient right for which Britons have fought — nay, and conquered, too — since they refused tribute money to the Roman Caesar."

"Have you seen a vision, Vivian?" and the man leaned forward, his handsome, irregular features reflecting something of the glow from hers. "You are right as only the angels are right, I think. Could you lead Duke Henry's army and speak thus to the people, there would be no need of swords and cannon, for all England would gather beneath your standard.

74 THE LANTEBN.

But I go to fight in your stead, and we shall win such a health-bringing victory as was never won before."

Austin's enthusiasm, always as easily kindled as light tinder, seemed this time to have caught some deeper fire and to transform him with joyous energy. For at most times his expression was not one of either joy or power. A certain settled sadness and hardness lay behind all the superficial cynicism and superficial passion which swept him by turns, the forehead was deeply lined for a man apparently so young, and the gray eyes beneath their level brows were the coldest eyes in the world. Just now, however, alert and radiant, he seemed more like a young crusader than a disillusioned Englishman of the late fifteenth century.

"What say you to this, mon amie?" he continued smiling.

"Only that I should like always to see you thus. So I knew you would look when the soul of you woke up."

He took her hands in his and held them close. "It is you who have waked me, if indeed I am fully awake. It is you who made me realise my worthlessness. If it were not for you I should be dawdling in Florence or Padua, instead of leading brave Englishmen to fight for freedom. You saw in half an hour what I had not seen in over thirty years — the utter futility of my existence."

"Yes, but more than that I saw; I mean the wondrous possibilities of your existence. You will do great things, Gregory."

Outside the window the sun's disk had sunk below the horizon, leaving a trail of glory behind it. The forest rose dark against the emblazoned sky and its shadows crept over the meadow-land to the castle. A door banged in a distant corridor and stealing across through the quiet air came the creak of the drawbridge as the porter hauled it up for the night. But the two in the library heeded nothing. They were alone at some centre of peace and power. The colour and sounds of the world seemed very far away. Then suddenly the girl was gone, leaving Gregory to the darkened room and his whirling thoughts.

They were clangorous thoughts, many coloured, kaleidoscopic. He sank upon the bench where Vivian had lately sat, and let his arms rest half affectionately on the surface of the table, and the leaves of the book that lay open upon it, feeling that somehow the wood and parchment and stones of this familiar old room had power to move him as nothing else

THE DREAMER. 75

that he had ever seen or touched. For all his youth lay here. It had little to do with that brief year of turbulence and horror after he had gone away to fight by the side of his uncle, the Earl, at Barnet and Tewkes- bury; still less with his subsequent desultory life beyond the sea. It was here in this stronghold of dreams. It was here that, oblivious to the storms that were sweeping England, he had first read Seneca and Ovid, leaning over Father Anthony's shoulder and surprising the kindly priest by the facility with which he learned; it was here that he had used to bring his little yellow-haired cousin Eleanor, who kept him company as he read, and begged for the legends of iEneas, the hero of the tapestries, over and over again ; it was here that the Earl, in his brief respites from fighting the Yorkists, would find him and fire his youthfur ardour by tales of King Henry's saintliness and sufferings, of Queen Margaret's splendid valour, of the brave deeds of the Lancastrian generals — Oxford, Neville, Fortescue, and Somerset — and the utter perfidy of all who wore white roses on their shields. Beneath his rough exterior, hardened by a long career in the crudest and most bloody war that England has ever fought, the Earl of Breckenridge cherished a romantic devotion to the Lancastrian cause. To him its brutalities were always justifiable, its battles holy, its leaders saints and heroes. So the boy Gregory grew up to love the Bed Rose too, but to love it as the embodiment of his chivalrous boyish ideals, not, in his uncle's way, as the cause to which he had devoted his life.

It happened, therefore, that when young Austin rode away in his shining armour that morning so many years before, after promising Eleanor with passion and solemnity to marry her on the very day of his return, he rode into a world far stranger and more incomprehensible to him than it would have been to King Arthur or Sir Galahad. The strug- gle seemed to him utterly horrible, utterly hopeless, with no right, no light on either side, and all his universe had crumbled with the revelation. His sensitive spirit, forced too soon to encounter the hard facts of a particu- larly ugly phase of life, was wounded to the core; and when Prince Edward, beautiful and ardent and young as himself, met his terrible fate, the boy could stand it no longer, but flung himself off to the continent in a frenzy of despair and grief.

And on the continent he had found another world — Paris and its university, Italy and the brilliant Court of Lorenzo de Medici, Leonardo

70 THE LAUTEBN.

the master painter, Giovanni Pico of fascinating beauty and splendid intellect, and Ficino who translated Plato. In the brightness of this new life England seemed very barbaric and remote. Austin threw himself into the glittering stream of existence, and found it at first eminently agreeable. His comeliness and his real abilities as a scholar gained imme- diate favour for him with Lorenzo, while his singularly winning personal- ity, with its quick enthusiasms, its spontaneity and vividness, made him welcome everywhere. He became a courtier, scholar, painter, poet, but underneath it all none knew better than he that his life was mere brilliant trifling. The old boyish faith in himself and the world was gone. Humanity moved for him beneath a shadow, and all great effort, all great emotion, seemed irrelevant. He made no deep friendships, followed no line of work long enough to achieve anything of value, never vitally believed the philosophies he professed. He would drop his paint brush in the middle of a half-finished sketch and never go back to it again; he would leave the gravest discourse on ancient learning to make love to a pretty lady-in-waiting, and tiring soon of this would leave love-making to betake himself perhaps to some other country, there to rove from town to town, weary and discontented.

It was in such a fit of restlessness, and influenced by some casual occurrences, which in another mood would have passed unnoticed, that he had come back to England — back to the old Norman castle with its courts and towers and the vaulted library so full of boyhod memories for him, and now so full of associations of another sort. For it was here in the library, on the very day of his return some three months before, that he had come upon the girl of the green riding dress for the first time. Austin's heart beat faster as he thought of the strangeness of that meeting. His head full of memories of the past, he had entered the room without realising that the slender, dark-haired figure at the table was not some vision of his own boyhood. At the sound of his footsteps she had flung back her head in her impetuous way, and Gregory had found himself confronting an unknown girl — a grave-faced girl, not beautiful save for her eyes with their luminous depths, and the straightforward questioning gaze, which oddly disconcerted him. Then they had talked, — constrainedly at first, but soon with ease enough, for Austin's poise and the girl's frank- ness quickly beat down the barriers, — and he had learned something of

THE DBEAMEB. 77

her past history and the reason for her presence here in his uncle's house- hold.

She was a distant connection of the Breckenridge family; the rela- tionship was slight, to be sure, but by some fortunate chance she bore the beloved family name of Vivian Eavenscroft. In the Earl's opinion this fact alone, in spite of her lowly birth, entitled her to shelter beneath his roof. Her father, moreover, though a simple esquire, was a brave man who had fought well for Lancaster, and who had been beheaded with Somerset after the battle of Tewkesbury. Since then the orphan daughter had lived at Breckenridge Castle in the capacity of an attendant to the Lady Eleanor, yet treated with kindness by all, and here, after her restless, independent fashion she had learned to ride like a forester, to read Latin like a priest, and to discuss the affairs of the nation like a statesman. Austin drew her on to talk, half amazed that he should care what she was like, yet touched and drawn in a measure he could not understand by her earnestness and enthusiasm. Earnestness and enthusiasm — something of his own lost youth seemed to shine in her eyes, and he found himself telling her things he had never spoken of before — things of his boyhood, with its ardours and its agonies, and of the alternating heats and listlessness of his later life. Vivian listened eagerly, resting both elbows on the heavy oak table, and looking up at her companion from beneath dark lashes. Her eyes were gray with baffling shadows and strange elusive purple lights. The man thought he had never seen anything so beautiful as their colour.

"Why did you come back?" she asked suddenly.

Austin returned to the discussion with a start. "I promised my cousin, the Lady Eleanor," he said smiling, "that some day I would return and marry her. Perchance I decided that it was time to keep my promise."

The girl's hands dropped, clenched, to the table and her brows drew together. "Tell me the truth;" her earnestness was a command.

"I might ask you, wisest lady, what the truth is after all. It is a question that the philosophers have never settled. There is more truth in what I tell you than you give credence to. The chance meeting with an English friar on the streets of Florence, the rumour, which somehow came to my ears, of my uncle's unfortunate wound, and the sight of a painting by my friend Leonardo — a blue-robed saint with shining hair, which somehow reminded me of the child who was the bright angel of my boy-

78 THE LANTEBN.

hood — these things, slight as they seem, sufficed to draw me across the seas again."

"And now that you are here ?" She was relentless in her questioning. The man shrugged his shoulders. "Why not here as well as Italy? I am a wanderer on the earth. There is nothing to hold me anywhere."

"Nothing to hold you here!" challenged Vivian passionately. "Noth- ing in Lord Hugh's helplessness, in the Lady Eleanor's helplessness, and in England's need of all her sons to free her from the curse of this reign? A man cannot cut himself loose from all humanity as you have tried to do. The claims of kindred and of country will call out to him from the ends of the world, and he is no better than a traitor and a renegade if he fail to answer them."

Astounded at this unexpected attack, and helpless before its justice, Austin could defend himself but weakly. The idea of obligation had never occurred to him before, and once admitted it put all his arguments to flight.

"The fact that a man and his ancestors before him were born on English soil," he said at last, "should certainly not bind him to meddle in all the dirty broils that the heads of the nation may choose to stir up. That forsooth would be serving his country but poorly, and speeding her to her own destruction. If a man cannot fight with clear conscience for a cause that he knows to be right, every blow that he strikes is a wicked blow."

"Ah, Gregory Austin," and she flung out her hands in her intensity, "what a pitiful coward you are!"

There is something primeval and instinctive in a man, that flinches at the word coward. White with anger, Austin faced his accuser. "What do you mean?" he cried.

"Simply that you are afraid to face reality, afraid to look the world squarely in the face, and pay your just debts to it. You have spent your whole life running away from life, and now you take refuge behind some flimsy theory of truth or justice or whatnot — something that I, for one, cannot understand. I have not read so many books as you, or seen so many countries, but I have ever kept my eyes open, and I am a brave man's daughter, and a brave man's cousin — men who have fought honestly for the best cause they have known, not run away, because their duty was not

THB DKEAMEB. 79

always pleasant to perform, to read philosophies and dream of the im- possible."

The terrible young voice seemed to sink word by word into his soul. Slowly Gregory turned and went away without speaking. He felt as dazed as if he had been roughly awakened from sleep, or had been bruised and shaken by some sudden fall. He thought of the girl he had just left, and beside the impression of vital, vivid life that she created his own existence seemed very shadowy and unreal indeed. His visionary boyhood and Ms restless manhood,— Breckenridge, Tewkesbury, Florence, Eome, — it all passed before his mind like the insubstantial pageantry of a dream. Now for the first time he was awake — or, at all events, partially so— awake to the consciousness that he had been a fool and a coward from the beginning.

The weeks that followed were weeks of changed life for the castle. Lord Breckenridge, confined to his couch with his wound — a sore trial for the active old man — seemed to receive new health and happiness in the presence of his nephew. Gregory, indeed, entered with amazing zest into all the Earl's hopes and plans, ascertained patiently and minutely the position and resources of the Lancastrian party', and filled the old warrior with ecstacy by his fine perception and masterly suggestions. They had entered into communication with the other Lancastrian partisans in the South of England, and kept in touch with Bichmond's plans and prepara- tions, reports of which, ever and anon, came flying across the channel from France. The Earl waxed more and more jubilant as Austin dis- played promise of a genius for command.

"The seventh Henry, like the sixth," he rejoiced, "shall find Brecken- ridge a supporter who is not to be despised. Our banner will still wave in the front ranks, my lad, though I myself can no longer fight beneath it."

Other words would sometimes creep into these sober discussions — words of Eleanor and of the future, for the old man's wound seemed to grow no better and vague apprehensions for his daughter had haunted his mind like a nightmare. But now that Gregory had come back, his outlook was more serene, and Gregory accepted the situation without demur. All his life he had vaguely felt that he might marry his cousin some day; the memory of her childish charm had awakened in him a sincerer emotion than the most radiant beauty and wit of the women he had known in

80 THE LANTEBN.

Italy; and now the eminent propriety of such a union, the inevitableness of it, was to Gregory only part of the new allegiance he had assumed.

It seemed good to him after those long years of expatriation to find himself once more a member of a household and a community; no longer a lonely wanderer, but a man with definite human relationships to sustain. Now and then a wave of his old skepticism, a desire to laugh at himself for taking it all so seriously, would sweep over him, but for the most part he was too much absorbed in his new life to philosophise about it. And the best part of this life was the girl that he had met in the library. That strangely-begun friendship grew deeper day by day. Many were their rides together through the long green aisles of the forest, their walks on the battlements of the castle, their afternoons poring over the books in the library, a love for which had first brought them together. It was a meagre enough collection to be sure — those few Latin masterpieces which had formed Gregory's boyhood reading, some chronicles and priestly legends, and a lonely volume of the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas which Father Anthony had acquired on a recent visit to France. In spite of her ex- pressed contempt for philosophy, the girl's vivid curiosity had driven her on a complete perusal of the last named work, and she was eager to hear the other side of the famous quarrel. From Scholasticism they had drifted on to Plato. Austin had absorbed a good deal of the Platonic enthusiasm with which the atmosphere of Italy veritably glowed and tingled, and Vivian found herself constantly delighted by the beauty of his teaching. The poetry and the wondrous paintings of Italy she loved even more to hear about, and Gregory had ridden the hundred miles to London and back again to procure her a copy of Master Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, which was henceforth their engrossing interest to the neglect of St. Thomas Aquinas.

The Lady Eleanor, who was a generous-hearted girl, never troubled this friendship by jealous interference. She was too accustomed to look down on Vivian as a mere attendant to admit the thought of rivalry between them, especially since Vivian had not even the grace and the comeliness of a court page. Her Cousin Gregory made love to her, more- over, and, was the most satisfactory and entertaining of companions when it pleased her to demand his society. He never made love to Vivian; Eleanor would have laughed with scorn at the very idea, and her certainty

THE DBEAMEK. 81

was not misplaced, for it would have seemed to Gregory himself the height of incongruity. Love-making to him was essentially trifling, and his rela- tionship with Vivian was serious and sincere — almost too deep and vital for any expression of feeling whatever, lite the relationship between two friends of the same sex, who have no need of protestation to depend on each other's sympathy and affection. The rest of the household accepted the friendship without undue remark. Master Gregory was a scholar, and Vivian the only person besides Father Anthony who could properly con- verse with him.

Meanwhile the summer wore on, and to-day at last, but little after sunrise, a messenger had spurred at break-neck pace over the forest road with the news of Bichmond's landing on English soil. It had been a busy day. Austin felt both physically and mentaily weary as he let his head drop forward into his hands, and wondered if he really had the power to sustain a creditable role in the coming war, and if it were really worth the struggle he would have to make against his own recurring listlessness. But at these thoughts a girl's accusing face swam before his mental vision; with a muttered "God bless you, Vivian," he rose brusquely to his feet, and made his way down the echoing corridor, resolved to snatch a little rest before the rising sun should call him once more to action.

The last morning dawned, and its gray stillness was broken by the tramp and clatter of horses in the court. Lord Breckenridge, supported by half a dozen pages and esquires, had had himself hauled to the door of the castle hall from which he shouted his farewells and parting instruc- tions to his kinsman. All was in readiness to start when Eleanor ran out to cling to Gregory's hands and pour out loving, tearful, incoherent words. In some strange way it seemed to the man as if he had experienced all this before. The memory of another gray morning rushed into his mind— the crowded courtyard, the mailed soldiers, a youth on a white horse, a weeping child. With an impulse of tenderness deeper than he had ever felt for her before, Gregory bent from his saddle to kiss the girl on her forehead, and found himself repeating the same words that he had used that other morning back there in the past. "Remember my promise, Eleanor. The very day I return."

Lord Hugh in the doorway choked with emotion. "God bless you, my son, and send you safely back to us. I promise you that Eleanor shall be waiting when you come."

82 THE LANTERN.

Then gently freeing himself from the girl's clasp, Gregory turned for a last farewell to his loyallest of comrades. But Vivian was nowhere to be seen. Only a moment before she had been at Lord Hugh's side, but now the Earl, and his bodyguard of pages stood alone, and Austin, strangely vexed, searched the faces in the court, and the windows of the castle in vain. The line was moving now; over the lowered drawbridge which resounded with the horse's hoofs it passed; the early sunlight flashed on shirts of mail and crimson surcoats, and the heavy silken banner flaunted in the wind.

II.

Let us suppose, gentle reader, that a twelvemonth or so has passed since Gregory Austin rode away from Breckenridge Castle, — a twelvemonth crowded with stirring events even for that stirring time. A great battle has taken place, in which an English king fell fighting gallantly to the last, and an English king won his crown — a king destined by an opportune marriage to "unite divided York and Lancaster," and to

"Enrich the time to come with smooth-faced peace, With smiling plenty, and fair prosperous days."

But our concern is with a certain battered old Norman castle that stood near the coast of Dorsetshire, several hundred miles away from the envy of York, where King Henry and his retinue were being entertained with feasts and pageants on their progress through the northern counties. There was little appearance of festivity about that gloomy pile, lifting its towers against a murky sky, but within doors a certain thrill of expectancy and excitement pervaded the air, almost as if some royal visitor were awaited here also. Bursts of hilarity in the castle kitchen as preparations more elaborate than usual went forward there; Father Anthony's serene ab- stracted smile, which had never vanished for a moment during the day; the presence of several score of the Breckenridge tenantry beneath the shelter of the vaulted entrance arch, and an air of surly consequence on the part of Griggs, the porter, as he peered through the bars of the port- cullis— all this prophesied some event of more than ordinary importance.

Within the great bare castle hall a fire had been kindled to dispel the chill and -dampness which somehow seemed to drip from these mouldering

THE DBEAMEB. 83

walls even in the fairest weather, and at one of the narrow windows a girl was standing, her arms crossed before her on the high stone sill. She alone of the household seemed not to share in the general expectancy, for she stood listlessly watching the rain as it gathered in little puddles on the uneven pavement, or trickled down from the cold gray walls of the tower on the opposite side of the court. Curled up in the big carved chair near the hearth was another young person, and she was frankly, deliciously excited. She was a dainty creature in a blue robe, its heavy brocaded folds encircling her slight figure like the petals of a flower. For the tenth time at least in the course of the hour she turned to the girl at the window to demand eagerly: "What prospect, Vivian?" The light, crisp tones seemed of kinship with the crackling flames.

"Bain and a bleak sky and a rising wind. No hope of respite."

The girl by the hearth heaved a quick sigh.

"The roads will be very rough and the rivers swollen. Think you he will be long delayed?"

"Nay surely. He will have crossed the last ford ere the rain began to fall ; by now he will have struck into the Breckenridge road — "

"And soon, oh very soon," finished Eleanor jubilantly, "we will hear his voice — Gregory's voice — shouting to Griggs and Woodbury and the people who have come up from the village to welcome him. Ah, there should be an army with banners and trumpets to welcome him. 'Tis little that we can do to honour my Lord of Montgomery, King Henry's favourite general, and peer of the English realm. I shall not know how to address him," she went on in her gay tones. "He must be a vastly different person from the Gregory Austin we used to know — the obscure, expatriated Eng- lishman. Vivian !" the light voice became querulous. "Wilt never answer me ? I am weary of conversing with the andirons."

Slowly the girl at the window turned and joined her companion by the hearth.

"The only shadow on my happiness to-day," continued Eleanor, be- coming grave, "is that my father is not here with me to welcome my lord. You remember his words when he said farewell to Gregory?"

"Ay — I remember." Vivian's voice broke slightly. It was the first sign of emotion she had betrayed.

"My poor father! He could not live even to see the triumph of the

84 THE LANTEBN.

cause he had fought for. And now he cannot know that his daughter is on the eve of becoming a great lady at King Henry's Court. Would he not have been as joyous and as proud as I? 0 Vivian, my heart beats so that I can scarcely breathe !" and she caught her cousin's hands impetu- ously to press her hot cheeks against them.

But Vivian tore herself away from the astonished girl, and stumbled blindly back to her post by the window. Her hands clenched themselves very tightly on the stone ledge where the little twisted tendrils of a dead branch of ivy clung, and her eyes were very hard, as she looked out, un- seeing, over the dreary prospect of rain and deserted court,striving to face her own dreary future as resolutely. If she could but summon strength enough to go through the trying day ahead of her, all the rest, she felt, might be endurable. The meeting with Austin would be bitterly hard, and Vivian, curling the dead ivy tendrils around her fingers, prayed for the power to bear it with composure. For a moment the longing to see him again, — a longing which had grown deeper with every day of the year just past — drowned all other thoughts; then came the remembrance and the quick pain and the vast loneliness.

"Hark!" With a sudden cry Eleanor had sprung to her feet, eyes and cheeks ablaze. Across the rainswept court came the noise of a joyful hubbub, and a second later the creak of the lowered drawbridge.

Some minutes afterward Gregory Austin, having divested him- self of cloak and riding boots, strode into the great hall where the Lady Eleanor was waiting for him beside the hearth. There was a flame of eagerness on his mobile face which quickly became clouded when he saw that his cousin was alone. "Vivian?" he questioned sharply, "where is she?"

"Nay, I know not," was the careless answer. "She is about the house, I daresay. But come, my lord — how like you that title, Gregory ? — sit here beside me and tell me of all that has come to pass since last we sat here together. Our people have brought back marvellous tales of your valour in battle, and your friendship with King Henry, and your brilliant argu- ments in the parliament — good fortune for your friends at home, for your letters have been of an admirable conciseness."

"There is scant time for a scribe's work in camp and court," explained Austin gently, "and blue-robed saints care not for the chronicles of a man'g

THE DREAMEK. 85

earthly doings. They care only for his spiritual part, his soul's adoration. Here are some sonnets that I wrote for you, my lady. Are not these better than work-a-day missives in prose?" He flung the little roll of parchment into her lap, and sank down on the bench at her side, to respond in kindly, but absent, tones to her eager volley of questions.

Where was Vivian, and why was she not here to greet him on his return ? On all the long rough ride just past, the thought of her had been uppermost in his mind, the desire to see her the keen spur that drove him on from York to Breckenridge with scarcely a dozen hours of rest by the way. Could the good-natured King Henry have surmised his new peer's real emotions as he went posting into Dorsetshire, he would have opened his mouth in astonishment. For knowing how matters stood between Montgomery and his cousin, and anxious to make provision for the orphan daughter of a staunch Lancastrian, he had commanded the Earl to marry the fair Eleanor out of hand, and fetch her back with him to join the royal progress at Worcester, and he little guessed that Montgomery's radiant alacrity as he accepted this command was anything more than joy at the prospect of a long-awaited union with his lady. But my lord's one thought as the towers of York faded behind him had been, "To-morrow I shall be with Vivian." The horses' hoofs had beat it out like music as he rode. He wanted to look into her clear eyes, and tell her earnestly, gratefully how much of his success was really hers, how much of his power, so long dormant, had waked only at her touch; he wanted to pour out to her the history of the eventful twelvemonth and see her grave face, as she listened, light up with the familiar vivid intensity that he loved; most of all he wanted to know how it had fared with her — the little comrade with whom he had formed the great thrilling friendship which even now, as he looked back over the past, seemed the most real event in a life of turbid visions.

Strange thoughts for a man on his way to be married to another woman! Yet let us remember that the marriage to Eleanor had been so long an accepted, inevitable fact of his life that he had ceased to question it, almost to think about it. Let us remember also that facts had a mysterious way of eluding Gregory Austin. Only during the year just past had he ever attempted to cope with them, or to take account of them in his scheme of existence. And when a man wakes from sleep for the first time it is hard for him to know how much of the world that he sees about him is solid rock

86 THE LANTERN.

and earth and wood, which must be dealt with accordingly, how much merely the "baseless fabric" of his dreams.

So Austin sat and talked with the Lady Eleanor, who was to be his wife, scarcely realising that she was in the universe at all. The great room seemed empty without Vivian, and his long journey futile. Half anxious, half disconcerted, wholly annoyed at her absence, his thoughts wandered far away from the girl at his side till she recalled him with a start by suddenly falling silent; slipping her hand into his, she drew him gently to his feet.

The heavy door swung on its hinges, and two figures entered, — the black-robed priest to step into the ruddy circle of firelight and greet the younger man in kindly, mellow tones, and the girl to remain quietly in the shadow behind. But Gregory had seen her, and not heeding Father Anthony's words, he sprang to her side with outstretched hands.

"Vivian !" he cried, and all the joy of life was in his voice.

But she shrank back into the corner by the chimney with a half- suppressed cry, and the man, startled, wondering, angry at his rebuff, halted as if he had been struck.

The Lady Eleanor meanwhile had been talking in low tones with Father Anthony.

"Is all in readiness?" the priest asked at length, and as Gregory, still dazed as if by a blow, once again joined Eleanor near the hearth, the Father opened his big book of Latin prayers and began searching for the seldom-used place.

But Gregory kept his eyes fixed on the girl in the shadow, clumsily trying to fathom the secret of her strange behaviour, hungrily searching the cold, expressionless young face for some sign of former friendliness. And as he gazed, as if by a flare of lightning, the truth was suddenly revealed to him and he knew at last — knew that the woman before him was more to him than anything else in the world, the one human being who could completely satisfy his soul. The year and a half just past rose before him, and it was all Vivian — the days he had spent with her, the long nights when he had dreamed of her till daybreak, the months in striving to fulfill her wishes, to work out her young ideals, the endless thoughts of her, and the last mad ride of over two hundred miles, spurred on by the sole desire to be near her for a few short hours. It was Vivian that he loved — not

ELAINE. 87

Eleanor — and he felt all the depths of his nature shaken hy the sudden revelation. The last shadows dissolved themselves from his mind, and Gregory knew that he was completely awake now, — awake once and for- ever,— face to face with reality at last.

As if compelled by the intensity of his gaze, Vivian slowly lifted her eyes to his, and in their blue depths, afire as he had never seen them before, he read the answer to his former questioning, the answer to all he cared to know. One moment was theirs — one moment from all eternity — then the enormity of the payment that fate was exacting of him smote Austin with fresh agony. But already the measured cadences of melodious Latin had begun to fall from the lips of the priest.

Katharine Liddell, 1910.

88 THE LANTERN.

Book Review.

THE WAY OF PERFECT LOVE.

September of the year just past saw the publication of The Way of Perfect Love, by Georgiana Goddard King, — an event not only of the greatest interest for our college world, but also of very real interest for the world of literature. Miss King is a member of the Class of 1896. She was Editor of The Lantern and George W. Childs Prize Essayist in her Senior year, and since 1906 she has been connected with the College as a Reader in English. Naturally the College takes keen pleasure in the success of her book, which has been favourably reviewed in the Outlook, the North American Review, Harpers' Weekly, and other magazines of standing, and feels that this success redounds in no small degree "to the glory of Bryn Mawr."

The Way of Perfect Love is a poetic allegory, and, as the author says in the interpretation, "the Way is Life, which each soul, so it seeks not ignobly, shall ultimately, in its own kind, find the way of perfection." In form it is half dramatic, half lyrical, and its Sixteenth Century Italian setting glows with vivid light and colour, and breathes forth the fragrance of flowers and sunshine, and the infinite suggestiveness of that romantic period. Old cities shine "dark- walled, slim-towered against the sun" ; there are fountains flinging their shafts of crystal water "upward in brilliant waverings" ; there are "wrought-stone terraces," and "marble-paven and arras'd rooms," and olive trees and "vermeil pomegranates" and ladies with melodious names, — all the pageantry, indeed, of our dream Italy, dear to our hearts since we first read Borneo and Juliet.

The spirit which animates the poem, however, is a far cry from the spirit of the Capulets and Montagues. Its dominant note is very modern.

"Man can serve not till he is free, And hard won is soul's liberty."

This is the doctrine of half Ibsen's plays, and the insistence on the power and sovereignty of the will, and the necessity of a sincere, fearless attitude toward life is eminently characteristic of our present-day philosophy.

The three principal characters in The Way of Perfect Love, the Duchess, the Wayfarer, and the Shepherd, symbolise, each in a different way, the progress of the human soul toward complete and perfect self-expression. Lionella, in her

BOOK EEVIEW. 89

secluded pleasure-palace, with its courts and gardens and cypress-alleys, is tormented by a longing for the life that has not yet come to her : —

"Ah, might I toil and grieve and know, Facing the noon sun and the snow, And search out God's imaginings, And live the life of humble things, Ah, might I follow the wind's will !"

In her subsequent wanderings, her various attempts to satisfy this craving of the soul, she learns the significance of endurance, courage and independence, and finally the power and significance of her own individuality, which is cribbed and cabined by any life not properly her own. The dream-world of the Wanderer seems hollow to her, and the homely world of the Shepherd, earth-bound and narrow.

"In enchantment deep Long laid, my spirit shakes off her sleep, And plumes her mighty wings, and light Poises herself for sunward flight."

At last, having proved the virtue of loneliness and the "discipline of the heart self-known," she comes into the vision of Beauty Absolute, the vision of her soul, and returns to the life that is hers by nature to find her peace, as the Interpretation tells us, "in being equally and rightfully mated, in a world of duties and responsibilities, of friendships and mutual loyalties."

The way in which the Shepherd works out his salvation is quite different. He is perfectly content with his lot, — his sheep and silky goats and green pastures and the vine-trellised hut beneath the chestnut trees, and most of all with the woman who has come to be the very breath of his being. Not until the woman goes away, after having tried to point him onward to a higher love, does he feel the insufficiency of things that "go by, and change, and are no more," and begin to seek some solid foundation for his universe. This he finds ultimately in the love of God.

"One walks dry-shod On the shifting waves to take us : He is God. And all the crash and thunder of the sea Turns to the silence of his constancy, When we find, lying close upon her breast, That the wheel's centre, absolute, is at rest."

But neither In the ecstasy of religion nor in the mazes of complex and

90

THE LANTEBK.

brilliant worldly life is Peregrino, the Wanderer, destined to find his happiness. Type of the poet, the dreamer, the idealist,

"His soul was free before time's birth, And dimly that lost freedom yet Seeks, for it cannot quite forget."

His road is the dusty highroad, he has tasted "the brimming cup of life" and shared in the existence of "all the wide various world," yet his restless spirit drives him ever on and on in search of the abstract and the eternal and his own lost freedom. Human love comes into his life, but it cannot hold the Wan- derer long; human loss and sorrow become his lot, and for a time nature has no voice for him, but in the end he rises above it all.

"Free, strong, and bearing, not in vain, A not intolerable pain, Out of the scent and smoke and smother Alone I go to the great mother.

So shall forever-young desire Quickened and warmed by his own fire, Following the still-advancing goal, Guard silence in the enfranchised soul."

The whole is a rather remarkable piece of philosophical reasoning. It is distinctly intellectual rather than vital or emotional, and for poetry of this type is very delicately, very exquisitely done. The allegory is carefully and subtly worked out, and the characters are something more than mere vehicles for the expression of the author's philosophy. Peregrino especially is a romantic figure who holds our interest and sympathy throughout.

But after all it is not the intellectual appeal of The Way of Perfect Love which finds in us the readiest response. Just as we like the Daffodils better than the Excursion, and Shelley's Skylark better than Queen Mob, even than Pro- metheus, so it is the lyrics and the vivid descriptions and the occasional magic phrases in The Way of Perfect Love that linger with us longest, flash into our memories at unexpected moments, and send us back to turn the leaves again with ever-growing pleasure. Its elements of beauty and of imagination, in a word, are of a very high order, and it is this aesthetic and artistic appeal of the poem that we feel, when all is said, to be the significant appeal.

I have already mentioned the brilliant setting, and this charm and bright- ness is present to our minds from beginning to end. The visual, pictorial quality of the poem is, perhaps, its most striking characteristic. Almost every line calls

BOOK REVIEW. 91

up an image, and the words veritably "change and shiver like stormy sunshine on a river." The coming night is indicated in phrases like "the wide hushed park lies glimmering," any casual, passing remark in the course of the dialogue —

"The sun is low, Between the orchard trees a-row The warm gold washes," —

may serve to call up the most exquisite picture ; while in words such as these,

"Innumerous, tossing vast and blue, A tumbled sea of hills,"

a whole panorama is flung out like a banner before us.

Some of the longer passages, also, are remarkable for their clear, sustained imagery. Peregrino's speech telling of his search for Lionella —

"Up through the mountains toward the sky I climbed, where dark-leaved ilexes Straggle and dwindle and lastly cease" —

and the page or so of description which follows — not only visualises the scene for us, but suggests in a very forcible way the speaker's emotions at the time : —

"I woke — blue twilight's filmy eyes Were empty, and the darkening skies, Paper pricked over with a pin By a foolish hand."

And in the lyrics, perhaps even more than in detached lines and passages, the author's poetic gift delights and satisfies us. In their delicacy, their imagi- native reach, their haunting music, the lyrics have an originality and an indi- viduality all their own. But they can speak better for themselves.

"Past the quivering poplars that tell of water near, The long road is sleeping, the white road is clear. V«t scent and touch can summon, afar from brook and tree, The deep boom of surges, the grey waste of sea.

"Sweet to dream and linger, in windless orchard close, i mi bright brows of ladies to garland the rose, But all the time are glowing, beyond this little world, The slii! light of planets and the star-swarms whirled."

92 THE LANTERN.

And "hear more praise of wandering."

"A man called Dante, I have heard, Once ranged the country-side, He knew to dawn's mysterious word What drowsy birds replied;

"He knew the deep sea's voice, its gleams And tremulous lights afar. When he lay down at night, in dreams He tramped from star to star."

Unquestionably The Way of Perfect Love is one of the most noteworthy of our recent publications. On the side of pure expression it shows a great deal of poetic facility and a great deal more of poetic promise, while the intellectual nature of the subject matter which, brilliant and interesting though it be, might not meet with sympathy from all readers of poetry, is more than balanced by a rich and sensuous beauty of colouring, pictorial vividness, romantic atmosphere, and occasional flashes of lucid, heightened magic utterance. At such moments all which might be objected to as over-complex or over-coloured dissolves to a limpid clarity, and the author writes lines like "the remembered light of flowers," and "tramped from star to star," and sends our thoughts racing into the future, when we are confident that she will produce verse, whole volumes of verse, indeed, of a uniform height and excellence with these happy phrases.

Katharine Liddell, 1910.

COLLEGE THEMES.

93

College Themes.

"Besides, as it is fit for grown and able writers to stand of themselves, so it is fit for the beginner and learner to study others and the best ; . . . . not to imitate servilely .... but to draw forth out of the best and choicest flowers with the bee, and turn all into honey, work it into one relish and savour ; make our imitation sweet." — Ben Jonson : Discoveries.

JOHN FORD.

No one who cares for highly wrought psychological tragedy can without loss neglect the plays of John Ford. Alone among the dramatists of his time, he looks forward to the period when analysis of motives shall predominate in the writer's art over external ac- tion and event. His concern is not with the effect of things seen from the outside, but with the inward drama of the individual life. Though he writes in the dialect of the Elizabethans, his affinities are with the modern analyti- cal novelist.

The Broken Heart is, indeed, a psychological novel done into some- what perfunctory dramatic form. Even for a novel, it is uneventful ; its main Interest lies in the slow and searching elaboration of character. In true mod- ern style, it begins in the middle of a story. The incidents which determine its course are relegated to antecedent ob- scurity, and their consequences for the lives involved are traced, step by step, to a tragic consummation. So gradual and so simple is this development that four acts pass before its results reach expression. Abrupt, however, as the

final catastrophe seems, it is but the logical outcome of the initial wrong.

This beautiful poem is chiefly re- markable as a gallery of portraits, each drawn with the same delicate art. The study of Penthea especially shows Ford's insight. Her death completes a process of soul-wasting, induced, not by unsatisfied love, nor by her hus- band's coarse and cruel jealousy, but by the sense of degradation inherent in her forced marriage. Constrained to break faith with the man she loves and is loved by, she feels herself forever dishonoured and forever divorced. In one of her pathetic speeches of self- disclosure she thus summarises her own case:

"There is no peace left for a ravished

wife, Widowed by lawless marriage."

Temerity is required to dissent from Swinburne in preferring The Broken Heart to its great predecessor. It is the gainer by a less repulsive subject ; and in harmony, finish, poise, and distinction it seems to me to hold the advantage over the rival master- piece. In that powerful play the figure

94

THE LA.NTEEN.

of Giovanni is depicted with Ford's finest skill. As Swinburne has ob- served, he is no ruffian, but a dreamy, scholarly recluse, a precocious student whose application to his books gives rise to fears for his health. His mor- bid passion thus appears at once more terrible and more natural, as the malady of a sedentary life and an overtaxed brain. Against it he struggles long and hard; but once conquered he hardens, ages, till in his desperation he outdoes the very assassins, and dies the death of a wild beast at bay.

Love's Sacrifice moves the admirer of Ford to bitterness. That what might have made a third in the number of his great tragedies should have been wasted in that piece of false workmanship is reason enough. From the general wreck a few scenes and pictures have escaped sufficiently to show the chance thrown away. Fernando, in his weak, shallow sentiment the plaything of circum- stance, is admirably conceived; but Bianca, the incomparable Bianca, is to me Ford's most interesting creation. More than his other women, she has a vivid human charm ; yet, "this heart- wounding beauty" is Calantha's equal in self-command, to Ford the most fascinating of all qualities. Secure in her perfect demeanour, she has no enemy to fear but herself; she is like a fortress than can only be taken by treachery from within. So long as any exterior pressure is brought to bear on her, she is proof ; when that pres- sure is at an end, when she knows that she has silenced what had been "music to her ear," — then, in the silence and solitude of the night, she

gives way. Only after her collapse can we dimly guess what she has gone through, and measure her sufferings by her strength. Hers is no vulgar ruin, but the breaking of a great spirit, sensitive to all the sanctities. And how grand she is, even in her fall ! Her mighty surrender overawes the miser- able causer of it. In her first words, as she holds the candle above his pillow, she gives the clue to the situation, never destined fully to work itself out, but none the less real :

"What ! are those eyes,

Which lately were so overdrowned in tears,

So easy to take rest? O happy man \

How sweetly sleep hath sealed up sor- rows here!"

It is plain that her eyes have long been as sleepless as tearless. Hers is, in essence, the tragedy of love too great to be repaid where it is given.

Ford's moral sense has been ques- tioned, I think, unfairly. He is the most self-contained of artists, and the most dispassionate. His sympathy is equalled only by his detachment. He is gentle, but his gentleness is cold. He takes no sides, he passes no judg- ments ; he mildly commends or commis- erates, but, first of all, he compre- hends. Patiently, deftly, he probes the souls of men and women, exposes them to his impassive scrutiny. Among his contemporaries, inspired children as they sometimes seem, he stands like a grown man. Of all his fellowship he is the most modern, and the most mature.

Charlotte Claflin, 1911.

COLLEGE THEMES.

95

Dear Alice:

I must add my word to Phoebe's and Eleanor's but I am afraid if you are not already almost persuaded I might as well say nothing. A cottage in northern Italy, near the sea and near the mount- ains, for a whole summer! Alice, you are not one of those people who mistrust a thing because it's ideal? It is perfect but it is also practical, that is if you have a taste for romantic adventure and are not a fatalist. My fate would have to be very seductive if it expects to get itself submitted to. Either it includes Italy, in which case I am humble, or it does not, in which case I am a free-wiliest.

The "practical" objections, which El- eanor has been raking up, even she can't make much of. If, in two win- ters, four healthy A.B.'s can't acquire the wherewithal for one summer in Italy, of course, we don't deserve to go. We shall have to travel second- class, which worries me a little, since it leaves no chance of sharing a state- room with — who is your "special" au- thoress?— or of playing shuffleboard with William Dean Howells.

And now to the delicate part of my mission, which I may neither plainly state, nor altogether leave out Would you consider the plan seriously if Phoebe and Eleanor only were going? In a way — though I have greatly re- gretted it — I am glad you did not know me better at college. Then you might have hesitated permanently. Our ad- ventures, after all, leaving out boat accidents and learning Italian, will be mainly psychological. In the case of the two others you will only be explor-

ing more deeply into regions you have already visited and found pleasant ; in the third case you must go avoyaging to unknown lands which for savagery and natural anarchy are like the isles of the sea — only there are no pearls or native music; — adventure, not for sake of profit or pleasure, but purely for the sake of adventure.

In the early mornings we will sail, in the mornings we will work, after- noons we will crochet and talk, eve- nings— but this is futile — they will be Italian evenings.

Grace Branliam, 1910.

THE INDIVIDUALIST.

It began long ago (as I have been told), when at the age of three years I refused, finally, to comfort and suc- cour a beautiful, yellow-haired doll, with clothes that came on and off, choosing rather to clutch with renewed fervour a bisque lion of broken nose and savage eye. In spite of grown-up astonishment and persuasion against this divergence from type, my inhuman preference grew into one of two firmly rooted prejudices : I never would play with dolls and, for the other, I did not enjoy the company of my kind, excepting my immediate family. It was not that I was without motherly instinct. But I think my motley men- agerie seemed to my mind, because of my ignorance of animal life in the original, more like reality, whereas I knew some very definite points of dis- similarity between dolls and girls. And it was not so much that I was a lover of solitude for its own soke, as that

96

THE LANTERN.

I hated to be kissed and handled. We were not a demonstrative family. I kissed my mother and grandmother goodnight as a matter of course and of duty, just as I ate my supper of cool bread-and-milk and apple sauce, and had my bath. But I had been early taught the canons of politeness: It was necessary to submit to the caresses of strangers, who had a persistent and undifferentiated regard for small girls with yellow hair. And so, seeing no point in courting discomforts, I resisted maternal efforts to bring me out in society, and ran away from visitors to my passive menagerie in the garden.

It was a very nice garden, shut away from the demonstrative world by a picket fence. A walk of red brick led up from the gate. On tiptoes I could go the whole length of it without step- ping on a crack. And on the garden side of the walk were pink hollyhocks — ■ so tall that one had to pull them down by the tips of their rough leaves to look at the dark spots which nestled like bees in their dry, shiny cups. There were currant bushes over against the nest house, which belonged to an old lady who lived there. She sat all day long by a downstairs window, waving a palm-leaf fan. I could see it flicker between the shutters when the blinds were closed. I liked the old lady because she never looked as if she wanted to kiss me. One day I asked her to come out into the garden. "It is very cool out here," I called. But she only looked at me from her window without smile or answer, — a strange, nice, old lady !

One day, — a very pleasant garden day, with a breeze blowing in the apple

trees, and the sun making the petunia- beds very warm and dry — I had just started down the walk with Fred, care- fully avoiding the cracks. Fred was a brown horse with real hair, and leather harness. He had lost both back hoofs, and one front leg above the knee. But he was a very valu- able animal. There was something eminently reassuring about his steady eye and capacious chest. He usually took care of the others. "We will go walking," I said, "and the others — " Just here mother called : "Mary, I want you to go with me to make some calls."

"Now, mother — " I began. But mother had learned to be calmly im- movable even at the sight of a rising flood of tears, and she proceeded to hale me into my big, airy nursery ; to bathe my protesting face ; to clothe my unresponsive form in "best clothes" —with a steady rise and fall of sooth- ing words.

I can still remember my physical sensation of choked imprisonment as we waited in the first parlour for our hostesses. The curtains were pulled so that I could not see the sunny street. I slipped unhappily on the smooth hair-cloth sofa, my feet sticking straight out in front of me. When the "ladies" appeared, it was as I knew it would be. They called me "dear" ; they fondled my curls and asked me the usual questions, — whether I would give them a curl, — if Santa Claus brought me a dolly for Christ- mas, and so on and on, without ap- parent end. I explained politely that I never played with dolls, that Santa Claus had brought me a white lamb

COLLEGE THEMES.

97

with blue eyes, and a rubber cow that squeaked. They smiled and looked at each other, and the largest lady said, "Come and see me, Mary." I went slowly, with an appealing backward glance at mother, who nodded firmly. The largest lady took me in her lap. She held me with her hands clasped tight around my waist and talked to mother over my head. I was breath- less and hot ; I thought with regard and with sympathy of the silent old lady in the "next house," who fanned herself all day. When at last I was released, I had a minute's relief, stand- ing alone in cool space. Then the largest lady descended upon me again. She took my head between her warm hands and said, "Now, dear, kiss me goodbye." And at supper-time, I looked up from my bread and milk to my mother, as she opened a western window to let in the sundown breeze. "Don't you ever call me 'dear' again, will you, mother? Everybody but the old lady next door calls me 'dear.' " And now, looking back, I wonder at the depth of her understanding.

Marion D. Crane, 1911.

THE SLEEPING VILLAGE.

The Juniata, flowing along through narrow mountain valleys, past town and country, sometimes dashes over Its rocky bed, roaring like an angry little demon ; sometimes, as peaceful as a holy nun, lingers in deep pools, and in its calm, unruffled waters, reflects the image of the sky above. There is one spol In the green hills where the little river seems to have fallen fast asleep, ami once In a while

a ripple, like the smile of a person dreaming, ruffles the quiet waters. On the right bank a row of poplars with hands held high in indignation, try to protect its sleep ; for back of them a busy railroad roars and thun- ders, day and night, shaking the earth in passing, and showering its soot and black coal-dust over the countryside.

A little village that once lived there, long since gathered up its dainty skirts and fled across the river. It must have scrambled rather hastily up the steep hillside, for several houses, settled in precarious positions on the slope, seem to mark the course of a hurried flight. As if overcome by its exertions, it seems to have fallen in a heap at the top, and then, carefully spreading out its rumpled skirts, to have ended its difficulties by going to sleep ; for there it is sleeping to this day. Beneath the warm, white blanket of winter, and the soft, green coverlet of spring, it peace- fully sleeps on. The blazing sun of summer tempers its rays as it passes, and a kindly mountain behind shuts off the cold north winds. A winding path leads up to the town, but it is seldom used except by stray dogs and sleepy- looking boys, who come down to the river once in a while to fish.

There is nothing in the village, how- ever, to entice a busy river to fall asleep along its banks ; nothing to cause a smile to ruffle its glassy surface. But above the village, on the edge of a beautiful ravine, is a large, old dwell- ing-house, within whose gray and mossy walls dwell radiant dream-maidens. When the sky is clear and the sun shines bright, they pour forth from the open doors, as happy aud as careless

OS

THE LANTERN.

as a summer zephyr; tJiey flit about among the trees, wander on the hillside or in the deep ravine, and laughing and chattering come down and play with the river itself. They gaze into the mirrors of its deep pools, watch the foam danc- ing over the shallows, and with ecstatic cries, feel the chill of its crystal waters on bare, white feet and ankles. Mingling their young voices with the murmur of the running water, they sing of hap- piness and of love. When the sun sets, the maidens go back to the house on the hilltop, but by moonlight and starlight, the sound of their voices, laughing and singing, floats down to the listening river. You, who will listen by its banks, if you be a poet or a little child, can hear in the sound of the running water, the song of the beauti- ful dream-maidens who dwell by the sleeping village.

Virginia Custer Canan, 1911.

THE SCHERZO. When, as sometimes happens, my spirits carry me quite away in a sudden burst of glee, my usual way of ex- pressing the ebullition is by playing

Schubert's "Aria, Scherzo e Intermezzo," from his Sonata. If ever a musical composition had a colour, and that the colour of joy, the Scherzo passage possesses it. It is yellow, or golden brown, with an impish flicker in it. The theme tumbles from note to note, jocularly, with the purest orange tone, pierced by darting shrieks, like mis- chievous laughter, of pale primrose gold. All children, they say, like yel- low ; — I know at least that such great prodigality of yellow makes me a child. I hear brownies in the music, laugh- ing at me; I hear them rolling up, up, great orange cheeses, for mis- chief, that they loose at the brow of the hill, to bound down into the bass, falling beneath the wild treble of their shivering laughter. I laugh, too, to hear them galloping down again, setting the stones to rolling, — and then really hold my breath in the rest of a measure before they climb again. The Scherzo always wins me to gaiety, even when I approach it cautiously, with a stern self-control ; I cannot resist the welling, extravagant brilliancy of it ; it is a golden burlesque of colour and sound. Edith MearJcle, 1912.

COLLEGIANA. 99

Collegiana.

THE GKADUATE CLUB.

President — Rose Jeffbies Peebles.

Vice-President — Maby Cloyd Bubnley.

Secretary — Louise Baggott Moegan.

Treasurer — Elizabeth Mabie Van Wageneb. At the usual five formal meetings this year the Club and its honorary members had the pleasure of hearing President M. Carey Thomas on "Professional Women and Marriage ;" Commissioner of Education Elmer Ellsworth Brown on "The World Standard in Education;" Professor Kirby Flower Smith, of Johns Hop- kins University, on "The Legend of Sappho and Phaon;" Professor Charlotte Angus Scott on "The Use of Mathematics by Non-Mathematicians;" and Pro- fessor James W. Bright, of Johns Hopkins, on "The JEsthetic Factors in the Problem of English Spelling."

The usual receptions were given by the faculty in the fall and by the Presi- dent In the spring. The Seniors entertained the graduate students at a fancy dress ball in the gymnasium. At one of the regular teas given four times a week by members of the Club in the club-room in Denbigh, Miss Marion Reilly and Miss Kirkbride explained the purpose of the endowment fund and gave an enthusiastic account of its work.

L. B. M.

THE PHILOSOPHICAL CLUB.

President — Babbaba Spoffobd, 1909.

Vice-President and Treasurer — Maby Wobthington, 1910.

Secretary — Cathebine Delano, 1911. The Philosophical Club opened this year with a tea in October, at which the members of the departments of Philosophy and Psychology were invited to meet the members of the Club. On November twenty-first Professor Hugo Miinsterberg, of Cambridge, addressed a large meeting of the Club on "The Practical Applica- tion of Psychology." On March twelfth Professor Frederick J. E. Woodbridge, of Columbia, addressed the Club on "Consciousness and Evolution," in a paper so admirably written and constructed that an effort is being made to persuade Professor Woodbridge to print It. It is expected that Professor James R. Angell, of Chicago, will address the Club on April twentieth on "The Influence of Darwin on Modern Psychology."

B. S., 1909.

100 THE LANTERN.

CHRISTIAN UNION".

President — Leone Robinson, 1909. Vice-President — May Putnam, 1909. Treasurer — Hilda Smith, 1910. Secretary— Mary Williams, 1911.

The regular religious work of the Christian Union consists in holding religious meetings on alternate Wednesdays, and in conducting Bible and Mission Classes on Tuesday nights. In both of these departments there has been a definite increase of interest and seriousness on the part of the association.

In addition to this, there is the more general philanthropic work, which consists in organising classes among the college maids, the laboratory boys, and the factory girls in Kensington. Moreover, money and clothes are collected for relief work in various parts of the United States.

The two missions supported by the association, Miss Tsuda's school in Japan and the Medical School for Christian Women in North India, have both received their annual dues for this year.

The Membership Committee has done its usual work of assisting the College Office in the fall in the registration of new students.

The new departure has been the establishment of a Daily Vacation Bible School in Philadelphia. This school aims to care for the children who have to play on the hot unsanitary streets in the summer months.

This whole year our association has felt the influence of last year's con- ference. Of such great benefit was it that we hope to have another conference like it next year. The inspiration gained through such a conference so deepens and strengthens the religious life of the association that it is almost indispensable to it.

L. B., 1909.

THE BEYN MAWE LEAGUE FOE THE SEEVICE 0E CHEIST.

President — Maeie E. Belleville, 1909. Y ice-President — Helen B. Oeane, 1909. Treasurer — Elsie Deems, 1910. Secretary — Maeion Ceane, 1911.

The various activities of the League have been carried on during the year 1908-9, in much the same manner as in former years, with an extension of the work, especially along philanthropic lines.

The League has now a membership in college of 107, and an auxiliary mem- bership of 70. An average attendance of 74 at the regular Sabbath afternoon meetings shows a decided increase over previous years.

COLLEGIANA. 101

Under the supervision of the Bible and Missionary Committees, four Bible and four Mission study classes have been held weekly throughout the year. The high average attendance shows that the interest in these classes has been sus- tained.

The League has continued to provide the music for the Women's Thursday afternoon Bible Class at Kensington, which now numbers 50, and a large num- ber have helped on special occasions at Kensington. At Christmas time, each mother received a gift either for herself or for her children.

The Finance Committee has sent $35 each month toward the support of Mr. Tonomura, a native worker in Tokio. His letters show how much can be done in an Eastern country with the small amount of money we are able to send.

A Week End Conference is being planned for March 26, 27 and 28 of this second semester, at which various phases of Christian service open to students leaving college are to be presented. It is hoped that this Conference may very materially broaden our views of the field of Christian work, and may better prepare us to enter at once upon some of the lines of service for which college has prepared us.

M. E. B., 1909. * » *

SUNDAY EVENING MEETING. Committee — Baebaba Spoffoed, 1909, Chairman.

Mart Neaeinq, 1909.

Charlotte Simonds, 1910.

Maky Worthington, 1910.

Helen Paekhubst, 1911.

Maegaeet Pbussing, 1911.

Ktjth Tanner, 1911. An attempt has been made by the committee this year to make Sunday Evening Meeting occupy the relative place in the college which it used to hold. The leaders were urged to select subjects with two sides, and to present them in such a way that the point at issue should be distinct. It was hoped in this way to lead the discussion into less rambling and personal channels; but un- fortunately the result did not justify the expectations. An innovation this year was the introduction of set pieces of music by the students, which was favourably received. But the committee felt, in spite of their efforts, that Sunday Evening Meeting had so degenerated, owing to the changed conditions since its institu- tion, and was so little suited to our present needs, that its continuance was practically a farce. At a meeting of the Undergraduate Association, therefore, It was proposed to abolish Sunday Evening Meeting in its present form, and to substitute hymn-singing at the same hour, to be directed by various students from one week to another. A motion to this effect was made and carried.

B. 8., 1909.

102 THE LANTERN.

THE LAW CLUB

President — Dorothy Neaeing, 1910. Vice-President — Jeanne Keee, 1910. Secretary — Molly Kilnee, 1911.

The Law Club has continued in its attempts to interest its members in current events and to help them to keep up, in an intelligent fashion, with the questions of the day. As the election was the great event of the year in the political world, the Law Club took an active part in arranging the torch-light procession and the stump speeches on the evening of November the second. There have been several informal discussions, one, in which the Law Club joined forces with the Equal Suffrage League to decide the mooted question of Woman's Suffrage, and one, upon Vivisection. There is to be a more formal debate upon the Negro question, about the middle of April, in which the Juniors, Sophomores and Freshmen are to take part.

On January 9, Mr. Owen Roberts, of Philadelphia, spoke before the Club upon the question "What Shall We do with Our Criminals?" Dean Ashley is to speak at another meeting on March 18, and an informal meeting is to be held on the second of April, at which Mr. Henry Drinker, of Philadelphia, will dis- cuss the Commodities Clause of the Interstate Commerce Act.

D. N., 1910.

THE ENGLISH CLUB.

President — Shtrt.ey Putnam, 1909.

Pleasaunce Baker, 1909. Maegaeet Dilltn, 1909. Ruth George, 1910. Katharine Liddell, 1910. Helen Scott, 1909. Agnes Goldman, 1909. Geace Branham, 1910. Ray Costelloe.

The English Club has met every fortnight during the winter, when papers ■written by the members of the club have been read and discussed. At a formal meeting on March twenty-seventh, Mr. Richard Watson Gilder of the Century spoke on "Poetry as a Means of Grace." We are hoping to have Dr. Paul Shorey in May.

S. P., 1909.

COLLEGIANA. 103

THE SCIENCE CLUB.

President — Mabgabet Bontecotj, 1909. Vice-President — May Putnam, 1909. Secretary— Masy W. Wobthington, 1910.

The fact that only those who are taking or have taken a Major Course in the sciences of Biology, Physics, Chemistry and Geology, or the Minor Course in Psychology, are eligible to membership in the Science Club will always tend to make its numbers limited. In view of this fact, therefore, it has been very encouraging this year to see an increase in membership over last year as indi- cating a growing interest in scientific matters. It has always been the aim of the Science Club to promote not only a technical but also a popular interest in modern scientific problems. With this end in view there have been arranged meetings — two a year — to which the college is invited. During the first semester Dr. Barnes spoke to the Club and its guests on "Some Solar Problems," giving in this connection an account of some of his own experimental work. The speaker for the second semester will be Professor R. W. Wood of Johns Hopkins Uni- versity, who will give a talk on "Air-ships."

U. B., 1909. * * *

ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION".

President — Cynthia Wesson, 1909.

Vice-President and Treasurer — Helen Emebson, 1911.

Secretary— Janet Howell, 1910.

Indoor Manager — Anna Platt, 1909.

Outdoor Manager — Elsa Denison, 1910.

The interest in hockey and athletics in general has been keen this year, as usual. Most afternoons In the autumn three teams from each class were to be seen practicing, while match games were played by the second as well as the first teams. The hockey championship was won by the Class of 1910. The Varsity played seven matches, of which five were victories for Bryn Mawr, one a tie, and one a defeat. Two new opponents appeared against the Varsity this year. An All-Philadelphia team, made up of the best players from all the league teams, brought a stronger line against Bryn Mawr than has ever come before. The other new team was one organised among the alumnre by the Athletic Com- mittee of the Alumnse Association. This committee tried also to arrange a game in water polo, and in general is arousing interest in athletics among the alumnoe ; so that in future we hope we may be able to compete with them more than is possible at present.

In tennis the class championship Is hold by ]909. Elizabeth Faries, 1912, la the college challenger who in the spring will play Anne Whitney, 1909, last year's bolder of the cup. The doubles will also be played off in the spring.

104 THE LANTERN.

Owing to the delay in the completion of the new gymnasium, the gymnastic contest between 1911 and 1912, the swimming meets and water polo games have not yet been held. The track championship was won by the Class of 1909, and the individual cup by Helen Emerson, 1911. Three college records were broken : The rope climb by A. Piatt, 1909; the running vault by A. Piatt, 1909, and H. Emerson, 1911 ; and the hop, step and jump by C. Wesson, 1909.

Really the greatest interest of the Athletic Association this year has been the building and opening of the new gymnasium. The undergraduate subscrip- tion of $21,000 was completed this autumn, while an additional subscription of $800 for the leaded glass windows was pledged by 1912. On October sixteenth took place the laying of the corner-stone. President Thomas, on account of a cold, was unable to preside. Miss Applebee took her place, introducing the speakers and speaking herself on athletic and gymnastic work. There were also speeches by Mr. Alba B. Johnson on behalf of the friends of the College who completed the Fund, and by two members of the Athletic Association Com- mittee. The corner-stone was sealed by Miss Toxmg and laid by Miss Wesson, the presidents of the Athletic Association for 1907-08 and 1908-09. The highest point of pleasure in connection with the new gymnasium was reached on February twenty-second, when it was formally opened. A mammoth gymnastic class, in which most of the undergraduates took part, was held by Miss Apple- bee. President Thomas and Miss Garrett were present, and also several mem- bers of the Class of 1889, the first class to drill in the old gymnasium. Since the opening the gymnasium has been in constant use, and every day we realise more fully how great a need has been filled by the new gymnasium.

C. W., 1909...

THE CONSUMERS' LEAGUE.

President — Ruth Cabot, 1910.

Vice-President and Treasurer — Miriam Hedges, 1910.

iSecretary — Esther Cornell, 1911.

The resignation of Miss Helen Crane from the office of president at the beginning of this college year was a great loss to the League.

In spite of a decrease in membership to about 150 this has been a fairly successful year for the League. It has again made a statistical map which the Philadelphia Consumers' League exhibited in its booth at the Tuberculosis Ex- hibition. The map, illustrating the amount of sweated work in part of the Italian district of Philadelphia was made from statistics gathered by the Philadelphia League.

There has been one formal meeting. Mr. Benjamin Marsh, Secretary of the Committee on Congestion of Population in New York City, spoke on "City-

COLLEGIANA. 105

planning," illustrating the lecture by stereopticon views. The League, as always, feels that its most important object is the awakening of interest in its subject among the students, and that so far as this is accomplished it is successful.

R. 0., 1910.

COLLEGE SETTLEMENT CHAPTER,

Elector — Florence Wood, 1911. Secretary — Irma Bixleb, 1910. Treasurer — Georgina Biddle, 1909.

Although the membership of the College Settlement Chapter is slightly smaller this year than the year before, there still remains a considerable increase over all previous years. The membership dues have not all been collected, so that it is not yet known what the exact figures will be, but we think they will amount to about $135.

Miss Davies, the head worker at the Philadelphia Settlements, has promised to speak to the members and guests of the chapter on "Settlement Work." We hope that this will arouse an interest in the subject among the students who until now have not belonged to the Chapter.

The Bryn Mawr Chapter and the main College Settlement Association are offering a joint fellowship of .$500 for the year 1908-09. The purpose of the fellowship is to encourage the investigation of social conditions, and to give an opportunity for special training in philanthropic work. Any graduate of the college is eligible to the fellowship.

Students have gone, as usual, to the Philadelphia Settlements to help take care of the children on Saturday mornings. Gymnastic classes once a week for the smaller girls have been started for the first time this year, and have proved most successful. Later in the spring, the Chapter is planning to invite a large party of settlement children to spend the day at Bryn Mawr, as they did last year.

G. B., 1909.

THE BRYN MAWR CHAPTER OF THE COLLEGE EQUAL SUFFRAGE LEAGUE.

President — Mart Whitall Worth incton, 1910. Vice-President and Treasurer — Katharine Gilbert Ecob, 1909. Secretary — Margaret Prussing, 1911. Executive Board — Kuth George, 1910. Amy Walker, 1911.

On Saturday, October seventeenth, at a meeting of college women held during the Buffalo Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association,

106 THE LANTEBN.

the College Equal Suffrage League was organised for the first time. The Bryn Mawr Chapter sent a delegate to the Convention, who reported on the work done by the Suffrage Society at Bryn Mawr. The first formal meeting of the Chapter was held in the Chapel on November the seventh, when Mrs. Philip Snowden of England spoke on "The English Working Woman and Her Need of the Ballot" The second formal meeting was on February the thirteenth, when the Reverend Anna Howard Shaw, President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, spoke on the "Modern Democratic Ideal." The Suffrage Chapter took part in the Political Parade in November, and asked each speaker, at the end of her speech, if her party approved of giving women the franchise. There has been one debate on the subject of Woman's Suffrage, under the auspices of the Law Club and the Equal Suffrage Chapter, in which the voting on the motion "That women shall be given the franchise on the same terms as it is or may be granted to men" was as follows :

Ayes 68

Noes 49

The affirmative was very much assisted by Miss Elinor Rendel and Misa Ray Costelloe, two Newnham graduates.

The chapter now numbers one hundred and forty.

M. W. W., 1910.

THE TEOPHY CLUE.

President — Mart E. Hebb, 1909. Secretary — Stjsanne Allinson, 1910. Treasurer — Estheb Walkeb, 1910.

The first brass plates, with name, class and dates of each occupant, have been put up in about fifty rooms; and the lists for Rockefeller Hall have been completed. The Trophy Club has gone as far as it can, and it now rests with the alnmnse to help in filling out the records of the early years.

M. E. H., 1909.

THE OEIENTAL CLUB.

President— Celeste Webb, 1909.

Vice-President and Treasurer — Hannah Dodd, 1911.

Secretary — Helen Bbown, 1909.

The Oriental Club had one formal meeting this year. Prof. James L. Barton spoke on "The Awakening in China."

O. W., 1909-

COLLEGIANA. 107

THE CHESS CLUB.

President — Grace Branham, 1910. Vice-President — Anita Boggs, 1910. Secretary — Frances Portee, 1911.

Interest in chess has revived this year to a large extent. Owing to the increased membership of the Club the tournament will probably be more suc- cessful than last year. At a formal meeting, held on the fourth of March, Mr. C. Edmund Wright addressed the Club and its guests on "Beginners' Mistakes in Chess."

O. B., 1910.

* * *

THE GLEE CLUB.

Conductor — Mr. Selden Miller.

Leader — Mart C. Rand, 1909.

Business Manager — Elizabeth Tenney, 1910.

Assistant Business Manager — Phyllis Rice, 1911.

An unusually large number of students have joined the Glee Club this year, thus increasing the membership from 48 to 70. This change is due not so much to a lowered standard of admission as to the gratifying fact that the Freshman Class contains many good voices, and that upper classmen who have heretofore limited themselves to individual training have taken up chorus work as well. The Club has been especially fortunate this year in having Mr. Selden Miller of Philadelphia as its conductor. It is largely through his efforts that the singing at the Christmas service was so exceptionally successful. In the order of the service a slight departure from tradition was made, since the club, besides serenading the Deanery, sang in the drawing room, where they were most graciously entertained by President Thomas and Miss Garrett. The final concert will take place on May first in the gymnasium.

M. O. R., 1909.

* * *

THE MANDOLIN CLUB. Director — Mr. Paul Eno. Leader — Gertrude Congdon, 1909. Business Manager — Margery Hoffman, 1911. Assistant Business Manager — Carlotta Welles, 1912.

The Mandolin Club Is fairly small this year, but is bettor balanced than usual owing to the number of banjos and guitars. The dues have been somewhat reduced, for we hope that the Increased seating capacity of the new gymnasium will enlarge the receipts from the concert.

O. 0., 1909.

108 THE LANTERN.

UNDEEGEADTJATE ASSOCIATION. President — Mart Neartng, 1909. Vice-President and Treasurer — Elsie Deems, 1910. Secretary — Frances Hearne, 1910. Assistant Treasurer — Marion Crane, 1911.

* * *

SELF-GOVEKjSTMENT association.

President — Frances Browne, 1909. Vice-President — Alta C. Stevens, 1909. Graduate Member — Mary H. Swindler. Secretary — Frances Stewart, 1910 (resigned).

Zip Falk, 1910. Treasurer — Margaret Shearer, 1910. Executive Board — Frances Browne, 1909.

Mart H. Swindler.

Alta Stevens, 1909.

Hilda W. Smith, 1910.

Elsie Deems, 1910.

* * *

EUEOPEAN" FELLOWSHIPS FOE THE YEAE 1909-10. Bryn Maior European Fellow — Margaret Bontecou.

Group, History and Political Science. President's European Fellow— Gr&ce Potter Reynolds. Subjects : Organic and Inorganic Chemistry.

A.B., Smith College, 1904. A.M., Columbia University, 1905. Resident Fellow in Chemistry, Bryn Mawr College, 1908-09. Mary E. Garrett European Fellow — Mary Hamilton Swindler. Subjects : Greek, Archaeology and Latin.

A.B., University of Indiana, 1905, and A.M., 1906. Graduate Scholar In Greek, Bryn Mawr College, 1906-07, and Resident Fellow in Greek, 1907-09. Anna Ottendorfer Memorial Research Fellowship in Teutonic Philology — Esther Harmon.

A. B., University of Michigan, 1906. Holder of the President's European Fellowship, 1907-08. Resident Fellow in German, Bryn Mawr Col- lege, 1908-09. Two special European Fellowships for the year 1909-10 have been awarded to Margaret Sidner Dillin, 1909.

Group, Latin and German. Helen Estabrooke Sandison.

Group, Latin and English. A.B., 1906, and A.M., 1907. Graduate Scholar, Bryn Mawr College, 1906-07.

LEVIOBE PLECTBO.

109

"Leviore Plectro."

LINES UPON A PICTURE PAINTED ON AN OLD THEATRE CURTAIN.

He dances in a garden old, Where suns are dim and fountains cold, The blithe-lipped fool, in motley drest, With merry or unseemly jest, Mad caper and fantastic tread, He mingles with the stately dead Where many a wiser were less bold. With bell and tinsel and changing fold, Gaily glimmers his green and red. The bauble borne above his head Of faces holds a carven pair, Wrought from the wood with cunning

care, One only of them may he see : It is the mask of comedie. Gazing on it, the fool doth smile, Nor wots he any of the while (That we should lose a jest so rare!) The tragic mask is weeping there — And in bright ruin at his feet, An o'er blown rose, decaying sweet, Is shattered in the silent air.

Louise Foley, 1908.

ENDYMION.

I sleep in the light of the fair moon white, I dream of glories old, When Titans strove with thundering Jove, And killed the age of gold. Over my slumber, stars without num- ber Watch with unwinking eyes ; Strains of sweet scent, in melody spent,

Waft music to the skies. With kisses of love from Diana above

My enthralled slumbers cease, And ardours of bliss fill my heart by that kiss In the silver light of peace. On sun-parched rock I tend my flock

And musing tune my song, For soft still Eve my lays I breathe

For starlight's queen I long ; And I yearn to hear that low voice clear, Her silver thrilling call, To take me far, where lost hopes are, Her blest eternal thrall.

Barbara Spofford, 1909.

110

THE LANTERN.

A JELLY-FISH.

Visible, invisible,

A fluctuating charm,

An amber-coloured amethyst

Inhabits it ; your arm

Approaches, and

It opens and

It closes ;

You have meant

To catch it,

And it shrivels ;

You abandon

Your intent —

It opens, and it

Closes and you

Reach for it —

The blue

Surrounding it

Grows cloudy, and It floats away From you. Marianne Craig Moore, 1909.

ENNUI. He often expressed A curious wish, To be interchangeably Man and fish ; To nibble the bait Off the hook, Said he,

And then slip away Like a ghost In the sea.

Marianne Craig Moore, 1909. Reprinted from Tipyn o' Bob.

A VALENTINE.

The love of youth for age, sweetheart, Is a trim gray bush in a garden close, The sunset light on its silvered leaves, A chill sweet breeze in the tall hedge-rows, And a white night-moth on fluttering wing, A-hover over the spicy thing ; This lavender love is not for me. 'Tls not the love I bear to thee.

II.

The love of a man for a maid, sweetheart,

Is a red bud deep in a sacred wood,

Where the Love god's statue shines through the dusk,

And fragrance falls from the flow'r like blood.

The petals sway at a fountain's brink,

Where the dim stars shine and the moonbeams wink ;

But this rose-red love is not for me,

'Tis not the love I bear to thee.

LEVIORE PLECTRO. Ill

III.

The love of a friend for a friend, sweetheart,

Is a daisy touched with young dawn's blush,

In meadows pearled with webs and dew.

In the crystal morning's solemn hush.

Like a mantle dropped by a tender hand

The sunlight falls on the radiant land.

This gracious love, sweetheart, give me,

For this is what I give to thee. Carlie Minor, 1909.

IF THE FIKELIGHT.

On winter nights They light the fire, And when in golden sheets it flares, Then on our bearskin rug I lie, While They sit round on lofty chairs.

And then I read the Fairy Book Of mermaids in the crystal lake. They talk of unimportant things, — ("How many yards then would it take?")

The prince puts on the magic cloak, And takes the tiny silver key, A queer, cracked voice behind him says, — ("I didn't order that green tea.")

He hurries through the gloomy halls, But in the woods the princess waits ; A voice within the castles cries, — ("There's great increase in water rates.")

The wizard leaves the witch's cave, But, turning, casts a three-fold spell, Then whispers to his ivory wand, — ("I only hope it washes well.")

The brave third sou's lost in the wood, He hears a faint, far distant "moo!" Which really means — ("She grows so fast, We must let down a tuck or two.")

Elves, ghmis. goblins, gnomes, and dwarfs,

And Iota of other folks I've read,

I see live in the dying Are:

("It's time tbat child was sent to bed.")

Hilda W. Smith, 1910.

112 THE LANTEBN.

AN IMAGINAEY CONVEBSATION BETWEEN CAELYLE AND

WALT WHITMAN.

(A Parody.)

Scene. — A crowded part of Twenty-third Street, New York. (Carlyle, walk- ing alone, is suddenly accosted by Whitman.)

Whitman. — Stranger, our vests are of the same pattern, so I desire to speak to you — why should I not speak to you? Perhaps we made mud pies together a million years ago.

Carlyle. — Brother, thou art welcome. Mankind flows by like an inter- minable river, where-from-ward I do not know, nor where-to-ward the same, and the pineal gland of him we shall never know, that is the awful inarticulated secret. Walk with me and tell me what dost thou think of him?

Whitman. — Oh, this human race, especially the people of this Western Hemi- sphere, especially the people of North America, especially the American na- tion, and this unexampled people of this city, these babies and barbers, these women and grocers, these young men and ash men and circus riders, they are the paragon of the nations, the gods of the religions of the solar system.

Carlyle. — But, my friend, consider the unfathomable depth of unusefulness of the race, how it is all one twentieth-century-devil-compounded Lie, which is the opposite of the Worth-while, yea, the very horriblest Lie of all, where is its truth?

Whitman. — How can you call any man unsound? He is the essence of that holy thing, the race of monkeys. Truly, though I myself am sacred, I am proud to be related to that cur yelping under the whip, or the starved cat whining in the sun. Everything is holy : the mud of gutters, the grease of soup, the stench of the city, the soot and starvation. The black smoke that stifles is divine, and the glare of sun on pavements that kills children, and the joyful dust, but especially the two-legged inhabitants of these states.

Carlyle. — Nay, Philosopher, to them the unutterablest thing is lacking. Heavenliest Work, that infinitude of blessedness, walks the earth in the garment of neglect. She is scorned of organ-grinders and musical-directors and cast into the nether darkness of a cellar. The Washingtons and Carrie Nations and Suffrage Unions and Democrats might accomplish something, mute, and in reflec- tive silence; but they forget their mission of building Realities on a great Perhaps, and do all that is unveracious and unbrave and unearnest ; that is, ply the tasks of a survival-of-the-fittest Mammon.

Whitman. — But consider the actual works of man, and of woman more glorious than he. He makes the bridges, the lamp-posts, the boxes, the railroads, the brooms and the pins, but she knows how to sweep, and braid her hair, and brew tea. Look about you, and see the curious works of man, — the saloons and Flatiron buildings and shoe strings and fried oysters.

LBVIOBE PLBCTEO. 113

Carlyle. — Nay, you tell of a very Hell on Twenty-third Street : How altogether vana et inanis, vain and unprofitable, are all these things. Verily, beauteous rare work is known only to the Adams of society, and they are no more. All the rest is the phantasmagoria of an eternal-endless nightmare, a Horror of an Inactivity such as the Devil loves, and he is a fallen angel..

Whitman, — No, fellow traveler on the journey of life, you are deaf to the joyful music of the race. Hear the glad concert, proof of heavenly souls, of street cleaners, trolley-cars, fire-engines, strawberry-men, ferry-boats, and church-bells.

Carlyle. — Nay, brother, we must part ; thou hast no understanding of the mighty infinite-deep greatness of silence. This tumult of sounds which is born in Hades, and nurtured by civilisation, must meet its death in a Third-avenue- elevated accident, or the evolution of a new planet.

Whitman. — Friend, it is lucky to meet a man who disagrees, as it is lucky to be born, and have straight hair, and wear a straw hat. I am glad I met you.

Carlyle. — We stopped briefly to discuss solemn unnameable things, two sparks of lighted protoplasm in a flaming universe of matter swimming in ether. The essence of each other we cannot know.

Whitman. — No, if you tell me your name, I still do not know how your hair grows, or what your teeth are made of, or why your skin is not green. Do not tell me your name. I shall never know you.

Carlyle. — Alas! alas! We can only look into each other's eyes and worship the arterial system coursing within us. We shall never meet again. Farewell !

Helen Parkhurst, 1911.

gff^y^v^t^Mjjffig^TOffgassi^^

THE LIBRARY WALK

THE LANTERN

BRYN MAWR COLLEGE

PRESS OP

THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO.

PHILADELPHIA

EDITORIAL BOARD

KATHARINE FORBES LIDDELL, 1910,

Editor-in-Chief.

ELEANOR BARTHOLOMEW, 1909,

Graduate Editor.

RUTH GEORGE, 1910.

GRACE BAGNALL BRANHAM, 1910.

MARION CRANE, 1911.

CHARLOTTE ISABEL CLAFLIN, 1911.

BUSINESS BOARD

[ZBTTE TABER, 1910.

Business Manager.

CATHERINE DELANO, L911,

Assistant Business Manager.

JULIA HAINES, Hill,

Treasurer.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

nul

Frontispiece : The Library Walk.

Editorial 7

A Contemporary Poem to Joan of Arc. .Maud Elizabeth Temple, 1904 11

Border-line Hostilities Grace Bagnall Branhaui, 1910 16

Mortalia Helen Parkhurst, 1911 23

G. B. S. and G. K. C Charlotte Isabel ClaUm, 1911 24

My Lantern Marianne Moore, 1909 28

The End of the Day Marion Crane, 1911 29

A Starless Xight Shirley Putnam, 1909 34

The Swineherd of Stow Ethel Bennett Hitchens, 1905 35

The Fairy Tale Mabel Parker Huddleston, 1889 37

A Thief of Reputations Ruth George, 1910 38

Sea Fantasy Louise Foley, 1908 43

The Poems of Ethna Carbery Ruth Collins, 1910 44

The Spring of the Year Georgians Goddard King, 1896 48

Silken Dalliance Katharine Forbes Liddell, 1910 49

Estrangement Helen Parkhurst, 1911 56

Of Heavenly Hymns Marion Crane, 1911 57

Song Caroline Reeves Foulhe, 1896 60

A Contrast Lee Fanshawe Clapp, 1899 61

To the South Wind Helen Dudley, 1908 67

Paciencia Mag Egan, 1911 68

On the Way to Sherwood Hilda Worthington Smith, 1910 72

Botticelli: -An Interpretation Helen. Townsend Scott, 1910 74

Mortality Mabel Parker Huddleston, 1889 82

The Amateur JSsthete Grace Bagnall Branham, 1910 83

College '1 i . i .i - 86

Collegiana 93

"Leviore Plectro" 102

The Lantern

No. 18 BRYN MAWR Spring, 1910

Editorial.

Til E academic ideal, however dimly apprehended by mankind at large, has nevertheless been a definite force in the life of the human race from the days when Plato expounded philosophy to the youth of Athens in the groves of the academy down to the present time, when not only scholars but merchants, farmers, and petty clerks send their children to college as the best method of providing for their future effi- ciency. The modern world, indeed, may be said to have gone mad on the subject of education. The college-bred man, both in business and in social relationships, is accorded a precedence over his fellows, which, if we were to examine carefully into the quality of his culture, would in many cases prove unwarranted ; and except in a few old-fashioned localities, prejudice against the college woman is rapidly passing away. This disposition to look with favour on the academic nursling, this constantly increasing influx • if the youth of the country into our colleges and universities, this exaltation (it education into a popular divinity, as it were, would appear, on the face "I things, to be the finest possible tribute to the spirit of learning.

Hut deification brings its dangers. We know, for example, that king- ship no sooner claimed divine prerogative than it became precarious. Pop- ularity, as Burke lolls as, 1ms always been distrusted by men who have serious business to accomplish: and since the spiked wheel fell into desue- tude, the saintly halo has faded into the shadows of the past. It behooves us, therefore, to look closely lest our much-vaunted academic ideal become a mere name — a combination of high-sounding words with no more power to illuminate and beautify the IWes of men and women than the name of

8 THE LANTERN.

King Richard had power to beat back the army of Bolingbroke. It behooves us to watch carefully lest, in the popularisation of learning, some tawdry Idol of the Market Place usurp the shrine of Pallas Athene.

And it is none too soon, when college presidents and college professors become dissatisfied and anxious, for college students to turn their attention to a matter which so vitally concerns themselves. It has seemed to some of the most eminent educators of the day that the colleges have ceased to be highly-charged centres of intellectual activity. "We are not critics," says the president of one of our great itni versifies, voicing his deep dis- content with the life and work of the undergraduate body, "we are not critics, but anxious and thoughtful friends. We are neither cynics nor pessimists, but honest lovers of a good thing of whose slightest deteriora- tion we are jealous. We would fain keep one of the finest instrumentalities of our national life from falling short of its best."

Such serious and kindly words demand consideration, and when we face the question squarely and sincerely, putting aside so far as possible the natural prejudice for a manner of living so pleasant as our own, we are forced to acknowledge that we have indeed fallen short of our ideal. Not that as a college we have ever compromised our standard of scholarship, or that as individuals we have ever consistently shirked our tasks. If inves- tigations— such as have recently been made — into the use we make of our time mean anything; if our official records and our academic grades mean anything, then we may fairly say that we work a great deal, and with results that are fairly commensurate with the demands made of us. But if — and who can deny it? — our conversation, our amusements, our avoca- tions, all the casual and spontaneous expressions of our real interests and preferences are even more significant, then one might be tempted to infer that we work with little enthusiasm for learning, little appreciation of its power to touch the passing years with light, little relish for the sweet savour of Pierian waters. One might even be justified in fearing that the love of learning, for its own sake, the vivid interest in ideas which leads one to delight in strenuous thought, to come to passionate convictions, and to make great decisions, has ceased to permeate the life of the college; that its intellectual life, indeed, stops short with the lecture rooms and laboratories, while the main stream of our enthusiasm flows into other channels — into our clubs, our committees, our friendships, our athletics and dramatics. Have we not brought behind our college walls much of the "sick hurry

EDITORIAL. 9

and divided aims"- which they were erected to exclude, and have we not deliberately allowed the gayest and most spectacular members of our com- munity— persons not necessarily representative of its finest or most genuine aspect — to set the standard for the life of the whole college? Year after year the incoming freshmen take their cue from the classes above them, and so the type perpetuates itself. For gayety and cleverness and self- satisfaction are powerfvd magnets, and it is only natural for the timid, for the lazy, and for such as have no strong convictions of their own to follow contentedly in this pleasant line of least resistance.

Does it not seem, indeed, as if the grave-eyed goddess of learning had deserted her shrine? Other things have taken her place, so that we are no longer even aware of her absence. It is possible to come to college and to go away again after four years without once detecting the trick that- has been played upon lis.

There are those who tell us that the ideal of scholarshi]^ has changed since the Middle Ages, that the article we now have is up-to-date, suited to modern needs, and vastly better. But some things are too fine ever to go out of fashion, or perhaps too fine, too genuine, too deeply sane, ever to come into fashion. All fashions, Mr. Chesterton tells us, are mild insanities, and it is the popularisation of learning which has brought it into danger. The tilings we have are desirable things, excellent things in their way, but they are not the things for which generations of earnest, ambitious women before us have worked and hoped and fought.

If, on the other hand, without reverting to the methods of the Middle Ages we could infuse into our academic lives some of the enthusiasm, the devotion, the consecration of the mediaeval scholar, who shall say that we would not gain in return the best that a college has to give — the subtle quickening of the faculties, the enrichment of life, the flowering of the mind into beauty which we call culture?

["nder no other circumstances will exactly the same thing be offered to u.-. Never again shall we have the same youth and leisure and oppor- tunity and impressionability of intellect. We are forming now the habits of mind which in all probability will last throughout our lives, and if we accustom ourselves to think only along lines entirely separate from the business of everyday existence, how can we hope to go forth from our col- legiate walls a- veritable lantern-bearers, able to shed light along devious ways, and to touch sordid places with the sweetness of burning incense.

10 THE LANTERN.

The practice of four years cannot be laid aside like a garment, and we cannot hope that at some vague future time through some mysterious alchemy, our stolid uninspired labour will be transmuted into shining gold. It is true that Bryn Mawr has produced cultured women — veritable illuminati — but we have no assurance that their undergraduate days were like our own. Learning is past dispute a means of grace, but it must be partaken of in a spirit of grace. He who would save his soul must not only watch and fast and pray; he must love the ritual of his salvation.

In the present case, moreover, we have not merely our own souls to save ; our deej)est concern is for the soul of our college. A few careless years could do little to impair the heritage of inspiration which Oxford offers her children, but Bryn Mawr is young yet — a young embodiment of a gracious, venerable tradition — and her glory lies not in the past but in the future. Her grey towers and level lawns and wrought symbolical lanterns connect her life to-day with the mellow past of scholarship beyond the seas; but her honour is in our keeping. It is ours to decide whether she shall fall short of her high destiny as "one of the finest instrumen- talities of our national life.'" or whether, through our devotion to the ideal she represents, she shall adequately fulfill it. Our motto is Veritatem dilexi, — watchword of philosophers and poets since the world began, — but the gowns we wear have fallen on unworthy shoulders if we make no effort to uphold the truth we have chosen.

A CONTEMPORARY POEM TO JOAN OF ARC. 11

A Contemporary Poem to Joan of Arc.

(Stanzas translated from the Old French ode of 61 ballade strophes by

Christine de Pisan.)

"And eke to me it is a great penance,

Sith ryme in English hath such scarcity, To follow word by word the curiosite Of Sransoun, flower of hem that make in France."

Chaucer: Coin plaint of Venus.

1.

I, Christine, that still have wept

Eleven years long in cloisters grey, While that my dumb, still watch I kept,

Till Charles (is it strange, this thing, or nay?) The King's son, durst I plainly say,

Should flee from Paris, treason's hive. Forth is he fared, its course to stay :

My heart leaps up, now first alive.

My heart leaps up and I rejoice,

And laughter moves me nowadays; More than my wont T lift my voice,

Caged by the cloister's lowly ways. Hut now my plaints will change to praise:

A brighter day dawns swift and sure, Albeit the heavy memory stays

Of that 1 taught me to endure.

12 THE LANTERN.

Of fourteen hundred twenty-nine,

The good new time begins to be; The vernal sun will straightway shine

That unobscured we might not see. Many there are that like to me

Grew old and mourned in anxious pain: From every grief it sets me free :

The thing I wished is mine again.

And as by vernal sunshine sheen,

Thus is my verse new minted quite To fresh delight from ancient teen.

For lo ! even here, thank God, the bright And fair young year that Springtime hight,

So much desired, I now behold From Winter's seerness touch with light

And living green the slumbering mold.

5.

For now the long despised son

Of France's King, by right divine, That ills has suffered many an one,

And wasting cares and foes malign, Lifts up anew his form supine,

And comes a King, in kingly crown, Lofty in puissance, great and fine,

With golden spurs he lights him down.

7.

My mind is set, if so I may,

To show God's grace that wrought in all; His hand, preventing me, I pray

His arm to stay me, lest I fall.

A CONTEMPORARY POEM TO JOAN OF ARC. 13

In order due may I recall

This feat, most meet for memory Of whoso writes in volumes tall

Of chronicle and history.

8.

Twice marvellous— this feat of ours !

Hear ye, ye folk in every land, And mark if God's almighty powers

Do not unrighteous foes withstand. Justice and truth are in his hand:

Thus may the outraged look for aid, Though Fortune flout that late was bland :

We, too, have been of old dismayed.

9.

No heavy heart should now despair

Outworn by Fortune's ceaseless round, Despiteful usage though they bear,

Or in their ear if slanders sound. Fortune to none is faithful found;

Fortune to most some ill has wrought: Where Hope lives on God heals the wound,

As unto sin is judgment brought.

12.

What honour here for France's crown,

What proof divine of royal line! That God who of his grace looked down

Should send our need a living sign. Greater, I deem, this faith of thine

Than royal rank is used to see, Albeit I read in books of mine,

Faith alwav led the fleurs de lys.

14 THE LANTEBN.

13.

And thou that art the seventh born

Of that high name of Charles, the lord Of Frenchmen liege, — though long forlorn

Thy mighty war, thy gallant sword, Till God, with stedfast faith implored,

Beneath thy Banner set the Maid, — Now great thy fame who dost afford

Such war as may not he gainsaid.

21.

And thou, 0 lowly Maiden blest,

Never forgotten shouldst thou be, Thou on whose head God's favours rest,

Even so thy prowess might set free France, lying bound from sea to sea.

Though thou wert praised without surcease, How might we hope to guerdon thee?

Where War brought low, thou bringest peace.

22.

Thou, Joan, born in happy hour,

Blessed be He whose child thou art; God's handmaid, fashioned by his power,

His spirit breathing in thy heart. Who only could that grace impart

That all thy prayers His answer win : Not as men pay in earthly mart;

God pays the heart that knows not sin.

23.

In records of the elder days

Wrought any higher deeds than thine? Moses, elect in works and ways, God raised in Egypt for a sign.

A CONTEMPORARY POEM TO JOAN OF ARC. 15

He marshalled Israel's faltering line,

Tireless, upborne by Heaven's aid : Thou, in our bondage, strength divine

No less hast found, 0 chosen Maid.

24,

And I bethink me what thou art,

Young and a girl, no warrior strong. To whom God gives the valiant heart

That saves the weak, that rights the wrong. And even as babes to breast belong,

So France to thee that drinks increase Like mother's milk to cradle song,

— Past Nature's gift, — the milk of peace.

What honour here to womankind !

God, where he loves, though poor and weak The vessel, still a way could find

This craven folk to save and seek. Where men could naught, a maiden meek

He chose, and through the wasted land, In war's alarrus and slaughter's reek,

He stayed to traitor's doom her hand.

61.

I, ('hristine, finish now my lay;

The year is fourteen twenty-nine, July has reached its latest day.

I know that towards these words of mine Ill-pleased will many minds incline;

For one whose course is all but run, Whose heavy eyes to rest decline,

Waj ill support the rising sun.

Maud Elizabeth Temple, 1904.

16 THE LANTERN.

Border-Line Hostilities.

IN the bed facing the western window my mother lay dying. The great square chamber was filled with late summer afternoon sun- shine, and the old unhappiness such sunshine brought me lay more wearily on my mood than the thought of approaching death. The angel was long in coming and I was weary waiting. I had nothing to say to that poor dying woman, no precious messages to gather from dying lips. After all, there was blunt irony in it — my being left alone with her, the broken-hearted son, and the tender, blessing mother. That is what was in their minds when they had so decently withdrawn and left us — thus. I searched my heart for the greenness of natural affection, but the plant was withered to the roots. Was it my fault? Was it hers? In behalf of the dying I accused the unnatural son. He only said that she was a rigorous woman and a strange mother for such as he. The single bond of their phys- ical relation was not strong enough to hold together tempers so opposite, spirits mutually so repellent. To put it plainly, she belonged to that human type which of all others he most vehemently disliked. I looked at the straight and narrow figure beneath the smooth covers and took the orderli- ness of it all for a symbol of her life. She might have relaxed a little toward her own child. But then had my own love been sufficient ? No, it was not her fault, but then neither was it mine.

All the long afternoon I sat there watching the shadow of the Lombardy poplar lengthen across the floor — from the window-sill to the chair, from the chair to the bedside table. When it reached the head of the bed, I fancied, the measure of her life would be completed. I sought to keep my thoughts from wandering off into regions that contrasted too much with what this should have been; but I caught myself smiling at a vision of Katrina, at the thought of going back to her. The rest of our lives — I was checked by the thought of the rest of my mother's life: she would spend it dying. It should not be this way with me! I would do it suddenly, I would crash into eternity with the sense of heroic utterance on my lips. But was there nothing I could say of repentance or love for her to bear with her into the next world? I need not make

BORDER-LINE HOSTILITIES. 17

of this a solemn farce. I need not now at her ultimate moment startle her with a lie, though it spoke of love.

The hand of the long-silent figure stirred a little upon the counterpane. I went over to the bed-side. She was calm, more calm than is possible with life, quite detached, without strength, indeed, but effortless. I knelt down to catch her murmured words. My position, the circumstances, must have led me to expect more solemn phrases, for I was shocked at the lightness of her tone, though the words came slow enough. "Tell me about this other, this girl. You love her?"

"Ah, mother," 1 murmured intensely, "better than all the world, better than you think me capable of loving."

I stopped, thinking I might distress her. But there was no pain in her face. Presently it was crossed by the flitting shadow of speculation.

"So much better — than me?"

"Don't torture me, mother !" There was silence again, — so long a silence that I moved to leave the bedside.

By some faint indication of a gesture she bade me stay.

"Is there anything I can do?" My futilities did not reach her. At times she seemed about to speak but refrained, finding it not worth the effort. Again I moved to rise. She understood the motion.

"I will not — keep you — waiting much longer, Feodor. It is hard, don't you think, to die like this," she went on in a clear whisper, sustained by her last strength — "without whatever it is that makes going easier — my only son. Think, that's what you are, Feodor."

Even then I could not weep. "Yes, yes, mother. Don't."

"You have the hardest heart. To break my heart, and, then, for you notiiing but happiness. That would not be fair to me — 0 ungrateful!"

"0," I cried, "it was not my fault."

"Whose then?"

Those were the last words I thought my mother would speak. Would to God they had been !

The shadow nf the poplar touched the head-board, then became indis- tinguishable among the other shadows. In the dim dusk I knelt still — waiting. The first chill night- wind blew through the open window lifting her hair. As 1 drew up the coverlid across her knees she roused again.

"Still," she continued in that slow portentous voice, "you will never

marry her." i

18 THE LANTERN.

"Why do you say that?'' I called out to her to overtake that withdraw- ing spirit.

The eyes of the dying were turned upon me. In their depth I read all knowledge.

"I know."

"What in heaven or earth could keep her from me?"

I waited long for the answer. She breathed it and her spirit out together.

That night I learned to know the tyranny of the dark. I fell, as it were, headlong into the abyss of sleep, and there was seized upon in dreams by the powers of malignity. I was gazed upon by innumerable eyes, dying eyes, eyes filled with knowledge or gleaming with hate. I dreamed that my mother came and stood motionless, watching me suffer, her eyes bright with reproach. Bending my strength I wrenched away and dragged myself awake. "0 blessed awakening," thought I, "blessed escape," and turned again to sleep. But neither that night nor any night since have I dreamed free of her. In strange places I saw her, and in familiar, but ever her eyes were turned upon me, menacing, entreating. I have faced her, saying, "Wan configuration of the imagination, by whose authority do you rise to torture me ? 1 will not mock you with mother's love, but have you no natural pity ? Leave me, I beseech you, for these few poor hours I might have rested in. Rest and oblivion, oh, for a little space return them to me ! Is it not enough that the da}rs are yours? That in every company and place your pale face obliterates all colour, jout silence quells every human voice? Insidious ghost, is not this enough? Enough without in the quiet retreats of sleep your lifting upon me those orbs of watchful cruelty and maternal hate?" Or turning to God I would ask, "Why didst thou send me down into the abyss, there to languish in a blank obscurity of pain? Kind God of the living, do thou restrain the dead !"

In the morning, every morning, she waited by my bedside ; she sat down to meals with me ; went with me upon the round of business and visited with me among my friends.

Yet, for all that, for days I remained rational. Happiness and peace and thought fled before the eternal presence of my mother, but I still knew her for an illusion and still, at nights, my dread was not worse than the

BORDER-LINE HOSTILITIES. 19

dread of night-mare. It was not until after this that the barrier between waking and sleeping grew less solid, the barrier erected by a kind power for man's safety, "the name of which is reason. In my memory, dulled as it is by time and pain, still hovers the hour in which that barrier was broken, and day passed into night, and sleep into waking, and sanity into madness.

In the bitterness of night I had waked from under a heavy dream. I would have risen to look at the stars, but, inexplicably, I was held fast as though locked in sleep. A prisoner in narrow walls, I lay impo- tent to move or cry, all motion repressed, each impulse strapped. But the walls were glass, and I could see. My chamber was present before my eyes, the blots of furniture, the door and the window square. And the air was suffused with Presence, invisible, horrible, brooding.

As I lay in that transparent sleep, sick with terror, the window draperies divided and the Presence passed from behind them, incarnate in the dim form of my mother. The eyes were large with meaning, and I could not avoid their gaze. It came nearer, stooped and laid a hand upon my forehead. Then all form vanished into structureless spirit. Hover- ing, oppressive, brooding it weighed upon me till the little light that was mine went out into the great dark.

How 1 recovered I do not know, for I have not even the final recollec- tion of the period passed beyond the border-line, in those regions whence so few return. There is a blank stretching in time over many months but a blank not to be measured in time. It is like a great chasm, long and black, riven between the cliffs of consciousness. Into that chasm I fell and tlience I emerged, but of the central darkness I know nothing. Certain it is that a thin ray of light at last did penetrate and that thin ray was the thought of Katrina. It broke through the thick-piled clouds and lighted forth the troubled reason. If there had been no other sign to me of what had befallen, this would have been enough — that Katrina had been long ab-ent from my mind. Certainly, terrible as that period had been, her absence had been the worst of it. Katrina forgotten! When for the last five years, my last thought at night had been hers, my earliest in the morn- ing. Sense, reason, memory must all have died when Katrina was banished, Katrina who had dwelt with me in dreams and inhabited my memory as the god his own temple.

What wonder, then, that I cherished her return or lay long, ignorant

20 THE LANTERN.

of what had happened, basking in my newly returned happiness. I had forgotten my mother. But, irrationally, I feared to open my eyes. I had no definite dread, no shaped expectation. My reason had its solid seat again, but yet for all of a blessed hour I lay there with my eyes unopened. "0 what a fool am I," I sighed, and slowly lifted my lids. Then I knew the cause of my reluctance. For before me on the foot of my bed sat my mother — waiting for me to wake up. I was no longer mad; this vision was no creature of the over-excited imagination. She sat there as in life I had often seen her — in ordinary morning clothes, her grey hair neatly done, a handkerchief in her lap. To be quite real she should have said, "Good morning, Feodor, it's almost eight." Instead she said nothing. The clock on the table behind her read ten minutes to the hour.

1 fell back upon the pillow, covering my face with my hands. If I could keep from looking long enough I hoped she might disappear. "It's so unjust," I murmured. "I never liked her."

After a sufficient interval I peeped between my fingers. She was no longer on the foot of the bed. She had strayed over to the window and stood — waiting.

"Well, mother," I asked with unaccountable frivolity, "have you come to stay?" That was a most unnecessary question.

I delayed until that afternoon, hoping to rid myself of that persistent spirit. But even in the morning I knew that hope was futile. About four I drove over to her house, my mother at my side, but Katrina in my heart. For on her I rested my hopes of salvation from the powers of darkness, and in her love, while yet afar off, I saw peace.

The servant let me into the drawing-room, where Katrina and her mother sat sewing. They jumped up as I opened the door, looking at me with faces vividly expressive of surprised terror. The look in Katrina's eyes was what I felt mine to be that morning when I waked to find my mother. She ran over to me and threw herself in my arms while I kept repeating "It's all right now, I am quite well. Indeed I am, Mrs. Dalton. What a brute I was not to warn you." Gradually a substitute for a normal atmosphere was provided, and I, still holding Katrina's hand, and in her mother's presence, begged her not to put off the wedding but to come with me then.

"There is no time to lose. And, Katrina, if you knew what it has been to be without you so long, so utterly "

BOEDER-LINE HOSTILITIES. 21

Behind the two ladies and a little out of our group, my mother had taken her place. Thank God, they had not noticed her. I prayed she would keep behind theni. But almost anything would be better than facing her myself. I kept my eyes on Katrina's face, hoping, willing, beseeching acquiescence. The impulse rose and sank back.

"Let's not be rash, Feodor."

Ghosts do not laugh aloud. But a low peal of grim mirth vibrated in my brain. It was the look of those eyes, made audible. Solemnly I got up and stood before Katrina. "Do you fully realize what you are saying, Katrina?"

Here Sirs. Dalton gathered up resolution enough to flutter, "Remember you are not as well as you might be. Pray let's be sensible."

"I'm well now, I tell you. Don't I seem rational enough? Is my manner wild?"

"To tell the truth, Feodor" — but her humour failed her. "Katrina can't be carried off like a brigand's wife."

"No, mother," Katrina soothed her, "that isn't what Feodor means. He cares for my happiness as much as you can."

"He seems principally to be thinking of his own, however!"

The damnable triviality of this repartee in the presence of that Presence worked on my nerves like acid.

"Are you both on her side? Are you all leagued against me to de- stroy me?"

"Whose, side? Feodor, Feodor!"

"Look," I cried, "turn and look. Katrina, come to me and' we'll fight them together !"

They turned and gazed where I pointed. Then slowly they brought their eyes back to me — they had seen nothing.

"What is it? Oh, Feodor, don't! Don't talk so wildly. Don't gaze that way into vacancy. There is nothing there."

"You don't see her? She is quite plain. You know my mother, how she used to sit and smile."

"Feodor," said Katrina in a coaxing tone you might use to a restless child, "<ome, let's talk of something else. I have lots of things to tell you."

"I t<-ll you, 1 swear to you, I am not crazy. I have been, I know, but that'.- all over now. All over, thank God I"

"If you are in your senses then," broke out Mrs. Dalton, stung by the sense of her daughter's danger, "how have you the besotted selfishness to ask my daughter to rnarry a man who has been, who is, insane?"

22 THE LANTERN.

"0 mother !" wailed Katrina, "how can you ?"

The Figure rose and placed its hands on the back of Katrina's chair, so I faced them both. "Lift your face from your hands, dear love, and listen to me. I solemnly affirm I am in health and sanity. But this morn- ing I am escaped from worse than death, and what saved me was the thought of you. Does that explain how much I love you ? Come, Katrina." She made no motion.

"My mother," I went on, "is determined you shall not marry me. She is determined to ruin my happiness. Are you in league with her? Or are you only her victim, too? Free yourself from her influence. Have you forgotten our love?"

"Why does your mother do this?"

"1 do not know. I hate her."

The girl shivered. "Oh, oh," she moaned.

"Go," pleaded Mrs. Dalton, "please go."

"Why don't you answer me, Katrina ? Is it because you think me mad ?"

"Your mother," she sobbed, "you keep talking as though she were alive, as though you saw her."

"I do see her. I always see her. But because she haunts and tortures me will you also torture me? Is it my fault? Have you no justice?"

"Ah, but Feodor, if you were — sane — you would not urge me."

"Then you don't believe me?"

No answer.

"Go, please go," besought Mrs. Dalton.

4T am going, Mrs. Dalton ; wait. It's all over, is it, Katrina ?"

"Yes," she breathed, "there's no other way."

"Well," said I, "mother, you have won out." I raised my eyes to watch her triumph, but behind Katrina's chair the air was clear. Mrs. Dalton was the only other person in the room.

Grace BagnaU Branham, 1910.

MOKTALIA. 23

Mortality.

One thought that length of days The thirst for life allays; While he would vigil keep He fell asleep.

One thought to know again The life of sense, and then He entered soundlessly The spirit sea.

One thought eternal fame To win, but human blame And praise to oblivion gave His nameless grave.

One lived rejoicingly. Nor ever dreamed that he Had known through mortal strife Immortal life.

Helen Parkhurit. 1911. Reprinted from Tipyn o'Bcb.

34 THE LANTERN.

G. B. S. and G. K. C.

"George Bernard Shaw, by Gilbert K. Chesterton."

THE new book in the familiar scarlet binding which entered the world under this title found waiting for it two classes of readers, the Shavians and the Chestertonians. Both have foreseen in it for a long time the confluence of two desires : that a book might be writ- ten about the most challenging and arresting of present writers, and that it might be written by the most penetrating and just of present critics. Shaw has long been on Chesterton's mind ; and indeed all his work bears some- what the character of an "Anti-Shaw." We knew, however, that the book would be more than an Anti-Shaw; for Chesterton is, what Shaw is not, an admirable critic. He has the great gift of recognising in a man his really characteristic qualities, — obvious, perhaps, but by their very saliency elusive. As critic he has known how to relegate personal predilections to their place; he has entered with sympathy into creeds and personalities divergent from his own and from one another; he has appreciated with rare equity such complementary spirits as Tennyson and Browning. By those who count themselves his followers it should not be forgotten that it is by scrupulous fairness that he has earned the right to preach dogmatism. Because he is charitable he can afford to praise conviction; because he is reasonable he can afford to proclaim the limitations of reason.

Shaw has reviewed his own biography, and too modestly hinted that it owes its attraction more to the writer than to the subject. He is right, however, in his commendation of the portrait; it does exhibit "all the handsomest and friendliest qualities of the painter." Bonhomie, generous enthusiasm, searching sympathetic insight, keen felicities of phrase are among those qualities ; and they were never more conspicuous. The biographer's chief qualification for his task, however, is candidly stated by himself in the preface to the first edition. "I am the only person who understands him." He has the knowledge of Shaw that only an adversary can attain, through long practice in meeting him on his own

G. B. S. AND G. K. C. 25

ground. It is the same knowledge that the huntsman has of the fox; and it carries with it the same curious sense of good-fellowship.

The Shavian, then, will here find said most of the things he wishes to say, with many others of which he will gladly recognise at once the unexpectedness and the validity.; and the Chestertonian will feel the accustomed pleasure at the elastic exactitude with which they are ex- pressed. Again and again the ascetic note is struck, in phrases like "Irish purity," "awful elegance," "fierce fastidiousness"; and the heroic note as well. "This clean appetite for order and equity ... is the real and ancient emotion of the salus populi . . . ; nor will I for one . . . neglect to salute a passion so implacable and so pure." The "dazzling silver of Shavian wit" is accorded its full due; the charm of Lady Cicely, the grandeur of Caesar are acclaimed; and meet honour is rendered to the noblest of Shaw's plays, Mrs. Warren's Profession. "The play is a pure tragedy about a permanent and quite plain human problem; the prob- lem is as plain and permanent, the tragedy is as proud and pure, as in GZdipus or Macbeth." The book is full of little triumphs of interpreta- tion, like the explanation of Shaw's love of music "as the imaginative safety-valve of the rationalistic Irishman"; like the analysis of Puritanism; or like this discerning estimate of the influence on Shaw of his early anarchistic environment : "When people blame Bernard Shaw for his pitiless and prosaic coldness, his cutting refusal to reverence or admire, I think they should remember this riff-raff of lawless sentimentalism against which his common sense had to strive. ... If Bernard Shaw became a little too fond of throwing cold water on prophecies or ideals, remember that he must have passed much of his youth among cosmo- politan idealists who wanted a little cold water in every sense of the word." And side by side with larger appreciations are set glimpses of more intimate intelligence, having the vividness of personal detail — the Brixton villa, the bicycle, the brown Jaeger suit; the "frank gestures, kind eyes, and exquisite Irish voice." Touches like these carry the pleasant sense of familiarity across the Atlantic.

'When all is said, however, the main interest of the book lies outside the book; it lies in the immediate confrontation of two strong and sig- nificant personalities, which stand like massive pillars at the gate of our twentieth century. G. B. S. and G. K. C. — one pairs them instinctively, and connects with each triad of initials a whole train of mental experiences.

26 THE LANTERN.

They are opposites in almost everything, and, like most opposites, cognates; for no opposition could be so perfect but for a profound symmetry. One may recognise this, and even realise that their agreement is a finer and more enduring thing than their differences, and yet find it necessary, in the hour and for the hour, to take sides, to measure one against the other, and choose between the two. It is as one whose choice is made that I try to indicate some of the grounds on which it rests.

"This is the greatest thing in Shaw," says his biographer, "a serious optimism — even a tragic optimism . . . Xothing that he ever wrote is so noble as his simple reference to the sturdy man who stepped up to the Keeper of the Book of Life and said, 'Put down my name, Sir.' " In other words, what is greatest in Shaw is precisely what he shares with Chesterton — an affirmative philosophy. But on this ground he has more than met his match. It is G. K. C. who has done most to shatter actual Shavian systematising ; this, indeed, is his greatest service to the Shavian, that he has riddled with fiery dialectic the dreary philosophy of The Quintessence of Ibsenism — torn rents in that grey vacancy, and let through the sunlight. If, however grateful for the disenchantment, they continue Shavians, the reason must lie in something wherein Shaw differs from or surpasses Chesterton, not in that wherein he resembles and is surpassed by him.

Chesterton has dealt with Bernard Shaw as an Irishman, a Puritan, and a Progressive. He has not dealt with him under a separate heading as a Realist, although his Bealism is one of the most intensely individual things about him. Bealism is with him a doctrine, elaborated at length in The Quintessence of Ibsenism; it is also a technique, consisting in a sort of negation of atmosphere; but it is first of all a habit of the mind, a craving deeper than conscious conviction. It imparts a peculiar character to his style, which is, so to speak, no style, but in appearance a purely, transparent and colourless medium for the transmission of thought, alto- gether careless of rhetorical device. It gives to his novels their peculiar aridity and harshness, making them, so to speak, skinned novels. It allies itself with the Puritan impatience of forms, — idols, vain images, — and with the aristocratic scorn and severity of temper, — for the passion for truth always makes lonely the heart. Still deeper, it stirs the roots of that "righteous indignation" which Chesterton truly calls "in many ways his highest quality'"; and this because it interlocks with that other and

G. B. S. AND G. K. C. 27

greater passion, — moral passion, the thirst after righteousness, — the effect of which Shaw himself describes in Man and Superman. A better example of both can hardly be had than in one of the last of his Dramatic Opinions. "When I protest against our marriage laws, and Mr. Buchanan seizes the occasion to observe that 'the idea of marriage, spiritually speaking, is abso- lutely beautiful and ennobling,' I feel very much as if a Chinese mandarin had met my- humantarian objections to starving criminals to death, or cutting them into a thousand pieces, by blandly remarking that 'the idea of evil-doing leading to suffering is, spiritually speaking, absolutely beauti- ful and ennobling'' . . . These abominations may not belong to 'the idea of marriage, spiritually speaking-'; but they belong to the fact of marriage, practically speaking; and it is with this fact that I, as a Eealist, am concerned."

There you have Shaw's "great refusal" — the refusal to let the fancy, the formula, the sentiment, or what not, come between him and the fact. This realist renunciation Chesterton has noted, and even praised in its humanitarian aspect as applied to economics. "When the orthodox econo- mist begins with his correct and primary formula, 'Suppose there is a Man on an Island,' Shaw is apt to interrupt hiin sharply, saying, 'There is a Man in the Street.' " But he has hardly appreciated its artistic force. The perpetual remembrance of the inadequacy of theory, plus the moral ardour, sends through all Shaw's work a vibrating sense of fact, which is its most living quality. The facts may be ill chosen, or imperfectly ap- prehended: but they are there: they may, nay they must correct the theory at every point; and their arbitration is final. From Chesterton's higher flight this anxiety to keep near the ground is absent. The gain for him is in poise, breadth, and unity; the loss is in close and vivid per- ception. On the contrasted qualities everyone will set his own valuation; but to those who, pierced with the premonition of coming social change, have ever, in Gilbert Murray's phrase, "glowed with the religion of realism." it will not be hard to understand why some should still turn back from the volumes in scarlet to the volumes in green.

If I were to try to put the difference between the two into a word, I should say that nine times out of ten Shaw is wrong and Chesterton right. The tenth time the cases are reversed ; and the tenth time is more important than all the others. Chesterton sides by rule with the majority, and witli the vast majority of the dead against the living; Shaw holds

28 THE LANTERN.

with Ibsen that "the majority are always in the wrong." But the very Christianity for which Chesterton pleads was once the novel spe- cialty of a few. The strength of the Shavian aristocratic position is that some truths are today in that tentative and dubious stage ; and the strength of the Shavian realistic position is that realism can discover them in the face of all likelihood and all analogy, all sentiment and all convention. The charm of Shaw's work lies not in any definite thesis, but in the tem- peramental freshness of vision that runs through a multitude of varied im- pressions, and brings with it the vague sense of a high eagerness, a pressing forward to some hidden goal. The endeavour to organise into a coherent system these casual inspirations and detached gleams of nobleness may fail; but the enthusiasm they wake remains — enthusiasm kindled not by a philosophy but by a person.

Charlotte Isabel Claflin, 1911

My Lantern.

The banners unfurled by the warden

Float

Up high in the air and sink down; the

Moat

Is black as a plume on a casque; my

Light,

Like a patch of high light on a flask, makes

Night

A gibbering goblin that bars the way —

So noisy, familiar, and safe by day.

Marianne Moore, 1909.

THE END OF THE DAY. 29

The End of the Day.

MES. O'BRIEN paused after a vigorous shake of the next nig on the pile. She was speaking across to her next-door neighbour, who was in the midst of hanging out her Monday's wash.

"Yes, they get worse and worse every day. Minister Allen, he tells me not to leave 'em alone together much of any."

The next-door neighbour raised her hands. "You don't mean he's afraid "

""Yes, indeed, he is." Mrs. O'Brien shook another rug and paused again. "And, of course, I have my own work besides their bit of house- work. I sometimes think I'm a fool to keep them. But there ! What's to be done ! I can't put them out — two old ladies. Not another woman in town would have them."

"They don't do anything to each other, do they?" The neighbour looked up apprehensively at the upper front windows of the old square house in the next yard.

"Well, they don't yet." Mrs. O'Brien spoke significantly. "But they want to. It's as much as your life's worth to go into their rooms. Miss Norton gets you to one side right away, an' tells you how Mis' Peck won't let her talk to callers, an' just as soon as Mis' Peck hears, she comes hobblin' out and pulls you away to hear her story. And then when you have both of 'em together, you can't look at both at once, and one of 'em is mad whenever you look at the other. And both of 'em pullin' at you."

The neighbour shook her head. "None of us dare to go to see them any more. It's too terrible — sisters hating each other like that."

"And no reason for it at all," said Mrs. O'Brien, gathering up her rugs. "It's just that they're too old to change their ways. Poor Mis' Peck ought to be livin' with her son. Pity he doesn't see it that way."

Mrs. O'Brien toiled up the narrow back stairs with the rugs, and knocked on the door at the landing. Miss Norton came to open it. She was the older of the two sisters — well past eighty — but she was much less infirm than Mrs. Peck, who was deaf and rheumatic and went about with

30 THE LANTERN.

a cane. Now, Mrs. Peck was sitting by the window of the room beyond, and did not hear. Miss Norton followed Mrs. O'Brien into the bedroom, where the two sisters slept, each on her own bed.

"It's warm for Christmas time, isn't it?" She talked as Mrs. O'Brien spread the rugs. "My sister feels the cold, and .we can't have any windows open. You see I have to keep my gifts in here," she went on. "My sister has the table in the sitting room."

Mrs. O'Brien glanced at the orderly array of small gifts and cards on the bureau top. "Yes, you showed 'em to me, Miss Norton," she said, sooth- ingly. "I think you done very well."

Miss Norton's face softened for a minute. She was a tiny, erect little person, with grey hair neatly crimped around her pointed face. Her brown eyes were a little dim, but her mouth was still firm. She smiled now, in her queer one-sided fashion, and looked up proudly at Mrs. O'Brien. "Friends of our youth never forget us, Mrs. O'Brien," she said. She had a quaint, stately phraseology, as if she had learned to converse in some polite seminary of another age.

Mrs. O'Brien looked again at the gifts. "Ain't those pretty handker- chiefs !" she said admiringly.

Miss Norton looked out into the front room, where her sister sat knit- ting by the window, and then back again, hurriedly. Her expression had changed, and her old eyes were both hard and furtive as she spoke. "They arc from my nephew, 3'ou know- — Mrs. Peck's son. We chose the ones we liked best from two dozen. She thought she ought to have all the prettiest ones. She grows more and more childish every day. But I wouldn't allow it." There was a choke of anger in her voice, and her sister looked up at the sound.

Mrs. O'Brien turned quickly toward the other room and raised her voice. "Good morning, Mis' Peck. We were just spreadin' down the rugs Ain't this queer weather for Christmas?"

Mrs. Peck was a large-featured old woman, slow of movement, with the harsh, painstaking enunciation of the very deaf. "Christmas, did you say, Mrs. O'Brien? This is a hard Christmas for me. Martha, will you bring me my shawl ?"

The older woman was by virtue of her agility necessarily the errand- doer for the two. She went now, with a significant look of protest and long suffering at Mrs. O'Brien. "Miss Norton doesn't like to wait on me," Mrs.

THE END OF THE DAT. 31

Peck went on more quickly than usual. '"And Heaven knows I don't want _her to. But I can't get around as I once did. She doesn't want me here at all, Mrs. O'Brien. I have to fight for everything. I— — "

Miss Norton, with her light step, was in the room again. She laid the shawl in her sister's lap. Her face was flushed a little. Mrs. O'Brien turned to go, speaking under her breath. "Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" Then aloud, "well, a happy Xew Year to you both. To-morrow's New Year's Day, you know. I'll be coming back to bring your dinner pretty soon."

When she had gone Miss Norton went back into the bedroom without a word. She put away her white cap and laid herself down on her bed. There were hard lines about her mouth, and she watched the door leading into the sitting room. The morning light was bright, and she shut her eyes at last, but her small hands were still tightly clenched. There was a slight movement in the other room. Mrs. Peck appeared at the door, leaning on her cane, and looking with her sharp blue eyes at her sister's face. For a few minutes she stood there, watching, but Miss Norton did not open her eyes. Then Mrs. Peck stole silently into the room, up to the bureau, and with her back toward the bed, began to pull over the handkerchiefs which were folded together in a box there. Miss Norton opened her eyes slowly and very wide, with the effort of the near-sighted to see at a distance, and lay perfectly motionless — a passion of anger in her face. Mrs. Peck's back hid her movements. At last she turned, looked again at the closed eyes of her sister, and went out again into the sitting room.

For a long time Miss Norton lay without moving, except for once opening her eyes to see that her sister was no longer there. Once she sobbed, the dry terrible sob of old age, and afterward, a long while after- ward, 3he whispered to herself, "I hate her — I hate her." When the village clock struck the noon hour she rose. She had missed her usual morning luncheon, and she walked a bit unsteadily, supporting herself by the foot of the bed, the chairs, and at last reached the bureau. She peered at the array of gifts, and then took out the handkerchiefs, one by one, talking to her- self the while. "It would have been just like her to have taken one away," she whispered. "She might have put one hack, not such a pretty one." As she touched her gifts with tender fingers she came upon something that had not been there before — a fresh spiced cake, of the sort that her sister's daughter was in the habit of sending down for the two old ladies. Mrs. Peck always guarded them jealously. It was only the day before that she

32 THE LANTERN.

had complained when Miss Norton had eaten one for lunch. "Why, she

must have left that for me " Miss Norton spoke aloud, and then

glanced out apprehensively at the back of her sister's chair. She went back to her bed, and sat down on the edge of it, holding the cake and staring at it abstractedly. A tear rolled down her cheek. At last she ate it, eagerly enough, for she had been long without food, gathered the crumbs together, and threw them away carefully. Then she went again to the bureau, chose out one of the handkerchiefs from the box, and went into the next room. Her sister was still sitting by the window knitting. Miss Norton stepped quickly to her side, touched her on the shoulder, and spoke quite softly and yet very distinctly, close to her ear. "Sarah, I have decided that Harvey would want you to have this. It is much the prettiest. A son gives his best to his mother."

Mrs. Peck did not touch the handkerchief. It lay in her lap, while she stared with her bright blue eyes after the figure of her sister. Miss Norton was spreading the cloth for dinner.

On the next afternoon Mr. Allen, the Congregational minister, made a round of New Year's calls, beginning with Miss Norton and Mrs. Peck. He had been heard to say that he would rather face a mob than call on them. He had confided to his wife that he was afraid of them and ashamed of himself, and that they were the darkest blot on his whole ministerial career. If only they had enough income to live separately !

Miss Norton opened the door to him, greeted him with her engaging, crooked little smile.

"A happy New Year to you" — he bent over her hand. "And how is Mrs. Peck?" He was so brave.

"This warm weather is a comfort to her rheumatism." Miss Norton did not, as was her custom, keep him at the door with a long whispered complaint, but led him over to her sister's chair. "Sarah," she called, "here is Mr. Allen."

"Have you come to see my Christmas gifts?" asked Mrs. Peck, and then added, "but please sit down before you have 6een them — and Martha's."

The conversation was a notable one. Mr. Allen retold it all to Deacon Howland's wife later in the afternoon — how they had as usual clamoured for his attention, how Miss Norton had flared up at Mrs. Peck's implication that her sister didn't keep up with the doings of the day. "But there was a difference," he insisted. "Mrs. Peck would have it that Martha should

THE END OF THE DAY. 33

show me her Christmas things first, and she suggested that I should have a glass of milk and some crackers. Now 3'ou know there has never been any time for eating there before. You were too busy keeping them away from each other's throats. Something has happened."

About this there could be no question. Mrs. O'Brien was sure of it when she came up a day or two later and found them, in spite of Mrs. Peck's deafness, discussing old times, when Miss Norton was superintendent of a hospital in Philadelphia, and Mrs. Peck's children were at school. They appealed to Mrs. O'Brien together, which in itself was matter for much subsequent gossip and real rejoicing on that good woman's part.

"Don't you think we might have a cat, Mrs. O'Brien?" Miss Norton was spokesman. "Sarah has always been so fond of cats. We were remem- bering how Mr. Peck brought lis each a beautiful Angora thirty years ago this Christmas."

Mrs. Peck added her word. "I tell Martha that I could take care of it. It wouldn't mean extra work for either of you."

"Bless your hearts." Mrs. O'Brien had her apron to her eyes for a moment. "Why, the butcher has a fine half-grown kitten, a tortoise-shell — just what you want. I'll see him to-day."

Late that afternoon the two old women were sitting close together in the pleasant low-studded room. The square-paned windows looked to- ward the west and the sun was sinking in scarlet and gold behind Deacon Howland's orchard across the way. It may be that the hour had its magic for the sisters. Mrs. Peck was the first to break the pleasant silence that had fallen between them.

"Martha," she said, "I have a great deal to be forgiven for. I am a disagreeable old woman. You must try to bear with me. You have been trying for these last days, I know."

Miss Norton touched her sister's arm with shy, caressing fingers. "Why, Sarah, I am the one to ask forgiveness. It was thee who started it all. Thee didn't think a silly cake could make such a difference." She had used quite naturally the way of speech that she and her sister had learned from their mother, who had been a Friend.

"What does thee mean, Martha ? I — I think I did not hear."

"Why, on the day before New Year's, when I was lying down," Miss

Norton went on quickly with her explanation, at sight of her sister's puzzled

face, "and I had thought thee had come to disturb my gifts — and then —

thee knew I had no lunch — and left the little cake." 1

34 THE LANTERN.

Mrs. Peck did not answer for a moment. When she spoke she used again in her turn the Quaker pronoun, but there was a catch in her voice. "I — I must tell thee, Martha. It would not be right. It was a mistake. I — 1 had the cake in my hand. I didn't mean to leave it. I wanted to see again which handkerchiefs thee had picked. Oh, Martha, forgive me !"

Miss Norton had been gazing intently out into the gathering dusk. Now she turned to her sister — her little old face very soft and beautiful.

"Sarah," she said, "this is a new year. It is no matter. Nothing matters, except that thee and I are not too old to change."

Marion Crane. 1911.

A Starless Night.

Stars veil their light, around the cradled moon

The pine trees dip, But yet the daylight cannot come too soon

And darkness slip, While weary-eyed I search the sunken sea Of hours, for the moment which to me

Shall bring his ship.

Shirley Putnam, 1909.

THE SWINEHERD 01- STOW.

The Swineherd of Stow.

THEY are restoring the west front of Lincoln, patching the reverend facade with fresh cubes of yellow stone, and filling the worn niches with new images of the Saxon kings. The towers are strengthened with mighty bars of iron passing from wall to wall, the panes of the great window are releaded and every statue and gargoyle, blessing, beckon- ing, grinning, is newly affixed to its supporting buttress or turret. Only the Swineherd of Stow they have taken down, lowering him ignominiously from his pinnacle with ropes and derrick, and leaving him propped care- lessly against the wall, like a thing discarded, among the monastic relics of the south cloister. There is something unseemly, almost indecorous in the exposure of this archaic shapeless object to the scrutiny of the casual passers-by. Eight centuries of heat and frost, of wind and rain and sun have thus defeatured him, and have made the garment that clad him imdis- tinguishable from his body, and corroded his limbs to mere stumps.

A tourist, tapping him smartly with a cane, chips a bit and crumbles it between his fingers, talking loftily meanwhile of the poor stone used by ancient builders. The Swineherd is impassive, though the rim of his de- faced horn — the precious sign of his identity — shows another nick. Or it may be that a dozen school girls, following in clinging pairs in the wake of their mistress, giggle hysterically at the uncouth monument. An artist, with elaborate paraphernalia of pencils and easel and drawing board, sketches him, or perhaps two archaeologists discuss to his face the question of Ids existence. \e\er dues lie vouchsafe a sign; always he remains the grotesque half-carverj block of mere stone.

Yet when night has excluded school girls and tourists, artists and scholars, when not even the footstep of a verger disturbs the cloister seclu- sion; when, too, the east wind, wandering in beneath the arches, touches grey aspeci of the Swineherd with black lines of dampness — then it is that he rouses to thought and remembrance.

He recalls the rush of air about that high point where formerly he stood, the cawing of the circling rooks over his head, the arrowy flight of

36 THE LANTERN.

swallows that nested from year to year in the orifice of his horn. He sees the sloping town beneath his feet with the tiled roofs rising, in irregular tiers, like crowding pilgrims, to the close gate. Beyond where the thread- like Witham runs, flat hedged fields extend, and here and there in the fertile expanse a church with its huddle of cottages rises through a grove of trees. The hamlet on the right is Stow, where the Swineherd's obscure progenitor once kept the herds of his feudal lord, and in the pit where his swine wallowed found that treasure which, piously, he chose to use toward the glory of God and the building of the new minster rather than in the purchase of freedom. Thus, though later his bones mouldered unmarked beneath the wall of Stow churchyard, his image high on a pinnacle of the west front commemorated his godly act, and to men's eyes, after a certain fashion, perpetuated his earthly existence. To the stone Swineherd on the turret, Stow, sequestered among its verdant fields, stood for the place not merely of his ancestors, but of his own nativity.

Not always did the shire seem from the hill summit like a tilled and watered garden. The Swineherd remembers when the land was half-covered with forest, marked in places by the deeper green of fens, when wolves and bandits were more frequent upon the Eoman roads than travelers, and the isolated villages entrenched themselves behind earthen walls.

Later, in the cathedral age of miracle, the roads were populous with pilgrims that thronged up Steep Hill and through Exchequer Gate with hymns and chanting. Even from his airy height he caught the smell of incense and saw the burning tapers they carried gleam faintly in the sun- light.

Long ago these things passed away from Lincoln, together with the traffickers in beads, the hawkers of images and holy water, and the venders of dispensations. And with their passing came the pillage of the minster, not once, but many times. All her treasure, brass, silver, gold, jewels, was taken, little by little, from her till she was wholly despoiled. Then came the iconoclasts who broke down the shrines of the saint, and shattered the painted windows, and hurled the images from their niches to be broken on the stones below. Only the Swineherd they did not molest, perhaps because he, unlike the others, was neither a king nor a saint, perhaps only because he was more difficult to reach. When they, too, were gone and he was still untouched, it may be that looking down on the fallen statues in the yard beneath, he was filled with pride at his own security, that instead of

THE FAIRY TALE. 37

mourning at the desolation of the cathedral his ancestors had helped to raise, he rejoiced inwardly that he at least was inviolate. Why else should those who later came to rebuild and restore, who mended and replaced the broken images or, if that were not possible made new like them — why else should they utterly discard him? Eight hundred years did he stand firm on his pinnacle. What less than deadly sin could cast him down so low? These are the thoughts of the Swineherd of Stow on windy nights in the south cloister. But it is only in darkness that he remembers. Dawn, lighting the green garth and casting a pale reflection on his face, will show it vacant and featureless as before.

Ethel Bennett Hitchens, 1905.

The Fairy Tale.

{"Help to spin the fairy-tale, will you?"— The Servant in the House.)

With delicate fibres plucked from stems in bud; With riven heart-strings knotted in a skein; With spinnings of men's toil ; with threads of rain ; With strands of light from afternoons that wane ; — Come let us help to weave the Fairy-tale.

Sweeter than all the feasts man's hand hath laid; Fairer than silken robes of lucent fold ; Richer than palace towers, or buried gold; Truer than all that chroniclers have told ; —

More closely dear — Ah, weave the Fairy-tale.

Out of the piercing of uncounted hearts; Out of the straining of uncounted eyes; Out of the breaking of a thousand ties ; Even from the errors of our old 6urmise; — At last — at last— begins the Fairy-tale.

Mabel Parker Huddleslon, 1889.

38 THE LANTERN.

A Thief of Reputations.

IF Cousin Emily had got the lilac handkerchief and I the light blue, things would perhaps have turned out differently. I was thoroughly used to blue. My handkerchief box was blue. So were my bed-room slippers, and my pincushion and needle-book. In short, as plainly appears from the furnishings just mentioned, blue was the prevailing tone in the small hall bed-room that could hold very little more than the above articles, a low, white bed and myself — I being white too by night, and almost any service- able colour by day. So that, had I chanced upon the blue handkerchief when Emily held it and the lilac one behind her back for me to choose, I should simply have accepted it, a trifle disappointed perhaps, but quite naturally, as one more link in the cable which was fast binding me to the mild, undisturbable psychology, characteristic of people whose favourite colour is blue or pink. "My mother — told me — to take — this one," I counted rapidly, while Peggotty jumped about and barked madly at the fluttering bits behind Emily's back. "Down, Peg ! I'll take — Peggotty ! — this one," pointing to the one "my mother" had told me to take.

. "There I" said Emily, producing the lilac square, while Peg panted eagerly in my face and flung herself excitedly upon my ankles as if to pi'otest that she could have told me all along it was in that hand.

I held it, half-fascinated. It was a colour quite out of my experience, but for the tall bushes on either side the kitchen porch. Mother had brought it all the way from Los Angeles, and, in its delicate light, it held for me the romance of another world. I pressed my face into its thin folds, and ran to the kitchen to show it to Molly. She was not there. But in the open door the spring sun fell upon a heavy cluster of the lilac bushes. For the first time in my five lilac seasons they occurred to me worthy the cutting. Carrying a chair to the door-sill I climbed upon it and broke a heavy spray. Its colour, even more than the breath of spring upon it, sank into my very soul.

"Look at me, Becky !" some one called as I jumped from the chair ; it was my sister, Christiana.

A THIEF OF REPUTATIONS. 39

"0 Christiana !" I stopped, my hands clasped in rapture.

"Mother brought it," laughed Christiana. "How do I look, Becky?" and she danced across the porch as if she were as little a girl as I, instead of being'almost seventeen.

"0 Christiana!" I repeated.

"It's to wear to Cousin Lydia's wedding," explained Christiana.

I felt the new dress gently between my fingers. It was soft and cool— and it was lavender !

"And it's to have this sewed about the throat," Christiana went on, holding up a soft bit of lavender lace. "The lace was Auntie Julia's, and she gave it to mother for me when she saw how it would match my dress."

I was highly impressed. What with the wedding, and the new colour, the Auntie Julia lace, and the handkerchief, my head fairly whirled with the thrill of experience enlarged.

"And you can carry my handkerchief, Christiana," I said, jumping up and down in my enthusiasm.

"O Becky, dear!" exclaimed Christiana gratefully, "and it's such a sweet little handkerchief!"

I loved Christiana's approval, so I took her hand and skipped along with her toward mother's room. Peg came too, and insisted upon constru- ing our happy run as a challenge to her speed, until I was obliged to drag her from the ribbons of Christiana's slippers, and finally to gather her front legs up in my arms (she was too big for me to carry entirely) and walk her into mother's room on her unwilling hind feet.

"Take it off, Christiana," mother said, "until I ruffle in Aunt Julie's lace, and then we'll try it once more. I only hope there's enough of it," deliberating.

After Christiana had slipped out of the dress, and had gone, I sat in my chair beside mother, watching her needle, and at intervals scolding Peg, whose spirits were excessive. The spring sunlight, falling in across the lavender and flashing back from mother's scissors, cast me into a pleasant flow of satisfaction, and, when some one called mother to the garden, I sat still in my little chair, my hands on its arms, with Peg, who had sub- sided, at my feet — both of us warm and happy. Thereupon the serpent entered — as he does on the bright day. The lavender lace, half ruffled, lay on mother's basket; the scissors, casting a bright yellow circle of light on the ceiling, la} on the t.ilil<\

40 THE LANTERN.

There was no wrestling with the tempter; that was to come later. With scarcely a tremor I laid hold of the scissors, sending the circle dancing over the ceiling, and haggled off one — two — three little fragments, each scarcely an inch long, from the unruffled end of the lilac edging. Then I dropped the scissors upon the floor and sat back in my chair, contemplat- ing the bits in my hand. I had no use to put them to. They were too short for any purpose, and, in such small pieces, even the glow of colour was lost. When mother came back into the room I was arranging them nonchalantly into a triangle on my knee.

"I found these, mother ; can I have them ?"

"Why, Eebekah!" and mother stood quite still.

"I found them — over in the corner," I added rather lamely, introducing the local colour to make it convincing. Still mother said nothing at all, but walked to the window and stood looking out. For a little I sat silent, trying not to think of the turn of mother's shoulders. Then, hoping that perhaps the clouds had blown over — or wishing to assume that there had been none — I burst into a little tune :

"Jesus loves me. this I know, For the Bible tells me so."

Mother turned quickly from the window and came over to me.

"Eebekah," she said quite sadly, "I can't believe you would tell mother what isn't true."

"I found them, mother."

"The scissors were on the table."

"They're just little weenty scraps, anyway," and I looked at them with a contempt that did not have to be feigned.

Mother lifted her sewing and sat down to work once more. A long silence followed, which I felt it incumbent upon me to break. Finally,

"When little children tell a lie it hurts their throat," I offered. Im- mediately I felt, from mother's look, that personal testimony was ill-timed.

"Mine doesn't hurt," I hastened to add; "it feels good," rubbing my hand over my throat with what enthusiasm I could.

"Now I shall have to try to piece Christiana's lace," mother said, "but her lovely dress will never be so pretty."

"Perhaps Christiana cut them." No response.

A THIEF OF REPUTATIONS. 41

"Perhaps they fell off." Still no answer. The suggestions were good, but mother was not lis- tening.

"Perhaps — perhaps Peggy bit them." Hearing her name Peg opened an eye ; then, seeing that I was looking at her, scurried up hastily, planted her paws on my knees, yawned, and dived her nose into my face by way of salute — a familiarity which I rather liked but which father and mother firmly discountenanced.

"Well, then," mother said, "if Peggy did it, I think we shall have to punish her."

Now Peggy's punishments were the tragedies of my life. Only two days before I had rejected the consolations of dinner and tea while Peg had whined out retribution on the end of her chain for having chased the new white chickens; and it had already become a live family problem to mete out to her, in the face of my too stormy intercessions, the discipline necessary to her period of character formation.

"She'll never do it again, mother," I interposed quickly.

"Ah, there's no telling, Rebekah. Suppose we put her in the dark cellar-room."

"Oh, she's so afraid there, mother !"

"Well, then, perhaps it will make her sorry."

"1 think she looks sorry now, mother," I begged; and Peg gave out a short bark which may have been sorrow or only sauciness.

But mother stood firm, though I cried so heartily that the new lilac handkerchief was a mere sop before I observed that it was not one of my ordinary ones. And I myself was obliged to lead Peggy into the shadowy stone cellar in which she cowered and shook so pitifully as soon as she was taken beyond the door; and when I had torn myself from her frantic em- braces and the warm touch of her tongue on my hands, I could only sit on the porch and listen to her frightened little yelps. In my agony of re- morse I buried my wet face against the hard boards of the porch floor; but only those who have told one straight deliberate lie, and only one, can know how impossible it is to go back upon it. And so at last I fell asleep.

When T awoke I had been carried in to the big lounge in the sitting room. Evidently I had far outdone my usual afternoon nap, for the big clock was striking four. Mother came to me as I stirred, and stroked hack

42 THE LANTERN.

my hair very tenderly from my warm, moist face. As I became fully awake all my misery swept over me again — but it needs a flood to break down a pride of integrity that is five years old.

"Did she have her dinner?"

"Yes, dear."

"Who gave it to her?"

"I did." Silence. Then mother said :

"Do you want to carry her some milk?"

"Yes," climbing off the lounge.

Mother brought the white porcelain bowl quite full, and put it in my hands. With no words I turned away, feeling my neck very stiff in the back, but with warm tears against my eyelids.

"Shall 1 let her out?"

" Not yet, Rebekah."

The tears ran over, but I trudged on. A word, I knew, was all that mother wanted, but how could I speak it, when it meant complete denial of the only self I had ever known ? Carefully I weighed the bowl in both hands as I felt my way down the steps to the door, and contrived; to lift the latch, steadying myself for Peggy's passionate greeting. But she did not jump up to meet me. She made no sound at all. As I became accustomed to the shadow I saw her lying in the corner.

"Peggy, dear!" I called, thinking she was asleep.

On my knees beside her I raised her head, but her bright eyes did not flash open as they always used to.

"Dear Peggy !" I pleaded half frightened, and tried to turn her cold little nose into the bowl of milk.

As I sat down on the floor beside her I laid my hand by chance on the sharp edge of a broken dish. Vaguely I recognised it as a fragment of the blue bowl that Holly had warned me from when she prepared a mixture for the red ants. Still more vaguely I half recognised that Peggy must have knocked it from its shelf — sweet, sweet Peg, who always tasted everything-.

I gathered her stiff little legs and unyielding body into my arms. One white tooth showed from her quietly closed mouth, and her long soft ears fell back gently.

"Oh Peggy!" T sobbed, "it was me — it was me, all the time!"

Ruth George, 1910.

SEA FANTASY. 43

Sea Fantasy.

Deep, deep, beneath the southern sea she lies

Upon an amber couch in coral halls; Great fishes, metal-scaled, with sightless eyes,

Glide by the falling, falling em'rald walls. Pale-tressed sea nymphs tend the girl; Sandals of gleaming pearl

Upon her feet they bind, And opal fillets wind About her raven locks that curl,

The while they sing: "Come, leave these misty caves,

And sport with us upon the foam of tumbling waves."

Silent she lies in her immortal sleep,

Nor hears the sweet sea voices in her ears, Nor sees dim earthly forms that kneel and weep

And by strange sands pour out their stricken tears. Glad commemorative dreams Are hers, wherein she seems,

Ardent and young and sweet,

To run on swift white feet Past inland fields and streams

To keep a timeless vow beneath the tree

Where one sad shepherd pipes his antique elegy.

Louise Foley, 1908.

44 THE LANTERN.

The Poems of Ethna Carbery.

"A light has been quenched in Eirinn; another hope has gone under the green sod."

These lines stand in the introduction to a thin volume of poems, The Four Winds of Eirinn, published under the name of Ethna Carbery. To most readers outside of Ireland this little book came, a few years ago, as the first suggestion of the work of Anna Johnston MacManus, who, "in the flower of her youth and the blossoming of her genius, closed her eyes on the Ireland of her heart's love." Yet, incomplete as the collection of poems is, no other Celtic writer has compressed into so small a space more ardent love for the motherland, more passionate regret for her lost glory, a more joyous vision of her future. "From childhood till her closing hour, every fibre of her frame vibrated with love for Ireland. Before the tabernacle of poor Ireland's hopes she burned in her bosom a perpetual flame of faith." Through the intensity of her devotion she becomes the spirit of Ireland embodied. She speaks not with the voice of the few who see Ireland's salvation in intellectual revival, but with the voice of the whole people. She expresses not only the highly refined, mystical element of the Celtic nature, but the primitive sim- plicity of the Irish peasant.

Nowhere in the poetry of the Celt does one find more exquisitely expressed the longing for beauty, the passionate pursuit of the ideal. In The Well of the World's End we run the whole gamut of human life, and we see each one seeking the cool well-water where "whoso drinks the nine drops shall win his heart's desire." The Quest shows the helpless- ness of the human soul in the grasp of this divine unrest. The seeker seems about to attain the beauty he desires, when it vanishes, vague as a dream, and he cries :

"Are you, too, a dream. Heart-breaker? Shalt I meet you some day or some

night To know you for sorrow eternal, or the star of unending delight?"

THE POEMS OF ETHNA CAEBERY. 45

This elusive quality, strongly suggestive of Shelley, is found again in Niamh and in Angus the Lover. Niamh is the mysterious beauty which lures us on and ever eludes our grasp. We see afar off only "the drifted gold of wind-blown, flying hair."

"Oh, who is she, and what is she? A beauty born eternally Of shimmering moonshine, sunset flame, And rose-red heart of dawn ; None knows the secret ways she came, — Whither she journeys on."

Angus the Lover embodies an even more impassioned seeking for the elusive spirit of beauty, combined with exultation in the belief in the final consummation of desire :

"Thus she ever escapes me — a wisp of cloud in the air, A streak of delicate moonshine, a glory from otherwhere; Yet out in the vibrant space I shall kiss the rose in her face, I shall bind her fast to my side with a strand of her flying hair."

The poems are filled throughout with the fairy folk-lore of the Celt. The fairy world is all about, and no one knows when he may be drawn across the mystic boundary that divides the everyday world from the world of enchantment. As she goes to her milking "with a heart fair and free," the peasant girl meets the "Love Talker" in the guise of a mortal lover, and she is henceforth doomed. For "who meets the Love Talker must weave her shroud soon." The Sidhe are ever waiting to lure mortals within the fairy ring. A maiden is left to mourn her lover who woos a fairy love in Tir-n'an-Og, the land of eternal youth. Or again, a bereft lover steps upon a "ring of green beneath a twisted thorn," where he is able to hear the "clash of fairy swords and the fairies' battle shout," and to see the Gentle Folk warring for the sake of his fair girl. This en- chanted world is bright with sunshine and gay with fairy flowers. There —

"The blackbird lilts, the robin chirps, the linnet wearies never, They pipe to dancing feet of Sidhe, and thus shall pipe forever."

But he who enters there forgets country, home, the faces of those be loves. He lives on forever under "the spell that lays forgetful ness of earth on earth lv things."

46 THE LANTEBN.

One of the most significant aspects of the poems is, as has been said, the presentation of the spirit of the Irish peasantry. The poet loves to picture the beauty of the youth of Ireland, "the shy-eyed colleens, and lads so straight and tall." She dwells upon the simple homely life spent among the wind-swept heather and gray glens of the North of Ireland, or on the golden gorse-covered plains of the South. We hear the soft lowing of cattle and see the swift flashing of the scythes through the corn. The Irish girl sits by the spinning wheel, or trips with her milking pail through the dewy grass. But into this peaceful life comes want and hunger, driving the youth of Ireland into exile. The lament of the Irish emigrant is not a protest against poverty and famine; it is longing for the "purple peaks of Kerry" and the "crags of wild Imaal." He is not satisfied with material things, "for there's a hunger of the heart that plenty never cures." You penetrate here to the inner secret of the Celtic spirit — the beatify and purity of inspiration in the soul of the humblest of the race. And to this is added the charm that lies in the simplicity of Irish speech :

"Vein o' my heart, can you hear me crying, Over the salt dividing sea? Maybe you'll think it's the wind that's sighing — But it comes from the heart o' me, The heart o' me !"

But the love for Ireland finds its fullest expression in the poems addressed directly to the motherland. The patriotic fervour of the poet is sometimes expressed in a despairing lament for Ireland's lost hopes. The wind is bidden to blow softly over the King of Ireland's cairn lest he awake from dreams of "victor chants re-echoed in Tara of the Kings," to find

That all is changed in Ireland,

And Tara lieth low."

Sometimes with faith born of desire she sees the glorious Ireland of the future. The fairy sleep need not break to release the heroes of the past; the spirit of the present is ready to answer the call of the mother- land:

"But Shiela in Gara, why rouse the stony dead, Since at your call a living host will circle you instead? Long is our hunger for your voice, the hour is drawing near — Oh Dark Rose of our Passion, call and our hearts shall hearf"

THE POEMS OF ETHNA CAKBERY. 47

In A Gaelic Song she gives her final prophecy. She sees the passing of Ireland's greatness:

"One saw the Glory of Life go by, And one saw Death alone — "

— but she sees also the soul of Eire awaking again:

'•She hath stirred at last In her sleeping —

She is folding her dreams away ; The hour of her destiny neareth — And it may be to-day — to-day !"

Ethna Carbery speaks with the voice of the Irish people, expressing their dreams for the Ireland of the future. The motherland may well mourn the loss of a daughter "as courageous of heart, as passionately faith- ful as she.*' To those of another race, she is a poet of unusual beauty, one upon whom has been bestowed the rare gift of song. And listening to her sad music, we too may lament that "the Toice of the singer is silenced," that, like the King of Ireland's son, she has passed over the "Hill of the World's End."

Ruth Collins, 1910.

48 THE LANTEKN.

The Spring of the Year.

(Freesias in February.)

The pale sweet sun to-day An instant dreamed of May: These ivory flowers behold, Splashed with late August's gold; Strong scent and colour strong To the spring o' the year belong.

Blood, like the sap, runs warm; Daytime and night, dreams swarm; All creatures seek their kind; Voices ring in my mind ; Dead griefs, desires vain, Turn in their graves again.

Highway and hedgerow wait, Dark streams are loud in spate, Cuckoo will soon be back; Ah, but if comrades lack? Love holds his seat i' the breast, He urges, I cannot rest, So it's good-bye, city lore, We're on the tramp once more !

Georgiana Goddard King, 1896.

SILKEN DALLIANCE. 49

Silken Dalliance.

Miss Molly Clayton and her niece Amelia, newly arrived from "the North," were sitting at breakfast together over the pink-flowered china and polished mahogany. It was a leisurely meal, partly because Miss Moll}' was temperamentally averse to hurry, and had never in all her life felt the necessity for it, and partly because "Aunt Petronia's" journeys down the back steps and the sunny grass-grown walk to the kitchen con- sumed considerable time.

The morning, moreover, was warm, and promised a warmer day. As the old darkey passed slowly back and forth with the plates of fresh waffles she hummed, half under breath, a melancholy rhythmic little chant, its tone somehow reminiscent of the cotton fields and the white heat beating down upon them. Through the open dining-room door one caught glimpses of sky as soft and hot as azure velvet ; the sunlight slanting through leafy grape-vine screens lay across the porch floor in pools of molten metal; and Amelia, like one of the roses in the neglected flower garden, drooped a heavy head. She had read her letters twice over and flung them aside in her impatience for her aunt to have done. But Miss Molly poured the rest of the cream over her strawberries, and tasted them with the deliberation and relish of one for whom life holds nothing more vital — as? indeed, it can hold few things more pleasant— than a pleasant morning meal.

"Your Uncle Clarence used to say," she remarked to her niece with a smile which wrinkled her delicate little face into fine creases, "that breakfast, coming, as it does, before the cares and distractions of the day, should be kept as an intimate rite by those who share it. I hope Rob San- ford is not going to spoil this for you and me, Amelia."

The girl flushed and laughed, wondering meanwhile what cares or dis- tractions Aunt Molly had ever known, and swept the two fat letters into her lap.

"I'm sorry, Aunty, I didn't realise I was breaking a family tradition. Bob is banished."

"Poor Rob!" murmured Miss Molly sentimentally. (Not that she ap-

50 THE LANTERN.

proved of the obscure young man in question. Perish the thought! The best of Sanfords was no match for a Clayton, and a Sanford who had sunk so low as to work in a big northern "electricity shop" — Miss Molly knew no other name for it — was completely beyond the pale. But the hopeless lore affairs are ever the most interesting. Did not she of all people know this?)

"Don't pity him, Aunt Molly. He is a shameless intruder. He knows I came home chiefly to get away from him."

"Poor Amelia !" murmured Miss Molly again, with the air of one who understood. "It's even harder on you, I know, to inflict involuntarily so much suffering. There is nothing so terrible as a great influence over the life of another human being. But it's a penalty you have to pay for being a woman — and a^ Clayton." Miss Molly smiled the complaisant smile of the philosopher who has explained the universe, and taking the basin of warm water from Petronia, she began to wash the breakfast cups — ■ her grandmother's cups which she never allowed the servants to touch. But insensibly Amelia let her gaze wander over the line of familiar faces which looked down upon her from their dark glazed backgrounds and heavy frames. There were women with dreaming eyes and the mouths of children ; bland smiling little girls and boys; Uncle Clarence in his gray Confederate uniform but with a sensitive, oval countenance more suggestive of the poet than the warrior; and Amelia's grandfather, smooth-faced and fresh- coloured, too, in spite of his white hairs and scholar's gown. Then her eyes returned to Miss Molly, and noted anew the bloom of her cheeks but just beginning to fade, the sheen of her heavy hair but just beginning to turn gray.

"And did they all have unfortunate love affairs, too ?" the girl wondered. "Perhaps so; perhaps that is the secret of their freshness — romance without pain, romance which never blunts its fine edge against reality. They never lived in dingy New York boarding houses, or tried to paint pictures when they couldn't, or broke their hearts because they didn't know what they most wanted to do."

"You are looking pale, Amelia dear," said Miss Molly with concern. "I hope the change of climate won't be too much for you. Perhaps you had better not come with me to the Fraser's this morning."

"I'll go with you late this afternoon," suggested the girl, "after it gets a little cooler. There's no hurry about returning those books, is there?"

SILKEN DALLIANCE. 51

'Oh, do ! but the surrey is ready now, and — and besides-

"What, Aunt Molly?" The little lady blushed sweetly as she set down the last tea cup and dried the delicate hands which seemed never to have touched less dainty things than fragile painted china. "It's Satur- day, you know," she continued, and the Fraser's place is on the Sugar Creek Road, and "

"And Mr. Jordon drives out to his plantation to stay over Sunday," finished Amelia ; "and might stop at Fraser's for lunch. Oh, go now by all means. Perhaps I'll come along with you, after all. You need looking after."

"You're a great tease, honey," fluttered Miss Molly with just the proper degree of pleased embarrassment — "almost as bad as your Uncle Clarence. But I reckon I'm old enough to take care of myself, and you must rest to-day. You've plenty of time to see the Frasers, and Mr. Jordon too. Petronia shall unpack your trunk for you, and you may have her clear the closet in Elizabeth's room if you need more space for your dresses."

•'Elizabeth's room," reflected Amelia, when her aunt had gone. "I had forgotten they still called it so. And my Cousin Elizabeth died when I was in sunbonnets and pinafores. 'Time travels in divers paces with divers persons.' It has certainly stood still here. The same things for breakfast that there were when I first emerged from the nursery ; same china on the table; same furniture in exactly the same places against the wall. I almost believe those are the same humming birds over the scarlet sage out there beneath the window. And Aunt Molly says the same things and does the same things and thinks the same things that she has said and done and thought for thirty years. I wonder why she never married him, anyhow. I don't believe that she herself could answer that. Petronia," she called, hearing the old darkey's step in the pantry, "when I was a little girl they used to tell me that T was like Aunt Molly."

Petronia paused in the doorway, arms akimbo, and studied her young mistress with critical attention. "Ef you didn't fix yo' hair in dat new- fangled way. Miss Emmy, and ef yo' face wah'n't quite so pale and peaked you'd be de livin' pictor of Miss Molly dis very minute."

"But 1 won't be like her," muttered Amelia, "even if I can't paint pictures, I won't be like her. I'm going to do something before I die. Uood heavens '." ami sin- clenched her hands — thin, polished, Clayton hands — "I'll write U> Hob this very day."

52 THE LANTERN.

But she did not write that day nor yet the next, and as the old langourous leisurely manner of living, in which one golden day melted im- perceptibly into another, took possession of her spirit once again, the question of Rob became gradually less vital and immediate. When she did write it was in the usual indecisive tone — half affection, half sheer coquetry, wholly calculated to tantalise and exasperate the dead-in-earnest young man who wanted her to set up housekeeping with him in a small New Jersey town. At first she hated herself for the letter — but after all what else could she do? There were many reasons why she should not marry Eob Sanford. All other objections removed, there would still remain her unconquerable distaste for the life such a marriage would entail. In the dingy New York boarding house the idea had been at times alluring, but now . Still she had left things drift far, and it was hard delib- erately to forego such whole-souled devotion as Rob's. Story-book girls sometimes did things like that; Amelia wondered if a real girl had ever turned away a faithful lover. It might happen that she would want to marry him some day; she was far from sure that she would not. She was fond of Eob, — it had become a habit to be fond of him, — and no one else could ever love her as he did; sometimes his affection had seemed to be her only excuse for existing. And now Aunt Molly's mixture of sympathy and disapproval lent a flavour of romance to an affair that had of late grown painfully prosaic.

Yes, she would postpone her decision until she saw him again. After all, what harm could there be in enjoying his letters for a few sunshiny weeks longer, — the days would have lost their finest flavour had it not been for the joy of awaiting the postman on the shady oleander-scented ve- randa,— and what harm to compose pretty, cryptic answers, and to enliven the long summer mornings, when she and Miss Molly sat and sewed together in the open hallway, by dropping mysterious hints to her inquisitive aunt?

They were pleasant days — delirious, inconsequent, care-free days, full of the light and laughter of the South. Amelia was surprised to rediscover her own temperamental affinity with the young people of the neighbour- hood. How truly young and gay they were after the pseudo youth and gayety of the studio-world! She had forgotten, too, the luxury of doing nothing — of reading in the big striped hammock until she fell asleep; of lingering over the luncheon table until Aunt Petronia ordered her out of the room; of driving for hours in the late afternoons down country roads

SILKEN DALLIANCE. 53

shaded by "high, green hedges of osage-orange. Moonlight gatherings on the lawn, suppers at the Country Club with Mr. Jordon and Aunt Molly, kind people who were glad to talk to her because she was "Archie Clayton's girl," good-natured darkies to wait upon her from morning until night — life seemed all at once very crude and bare without these pleasant amenities.

But most of all Amelia loved the old house about which still clung the mellow sweetness of the past, and the big grass-grown, oak-shaded yard where the spirit of the Southern mid-summer seemed to linger. She loved the crumbling gate posts overgrown with honey-suckle; the driveway wind- ing through vistas of shimmering green to the house ; the fragrant wilderness of pinks and larkspurs and roses which had once been the flower-garden; and the spring-house, long since fallen into ruin, with its riot of clambering morning-glories. These things became for her symbols, as it were, of the sweet-scented, slow-moving existence which had had its being here; of Aunt Molly's existence, if one wished, whom she had so recently despised for having missed the wine of life. Well, she had missed the dregs, too; there was something in that.

Amelia thought of these things sometimes as she lingered alone in the library among her grandfather's books, and fingered their rich old bindings — Eussia and Morocco and calf and gilded vellum — or turned the yellowed leaves of some ancient folio, "fragrant as those sciental apples which grew amid the happy orchard." And she thought of them now and then in a dreamy, hazy way, after Parker had closed the library blinds to protect the carpet from the afternoon sunlight, and the mid-afternoon silence had crept over the house, and the leaf shadows on the lowered shade had be- come motionless as the pattern on a screen, and she had slipped upstairs to her own room and her big four-poster bed. For the most part, however, Amelia did not think much of anything ; she looked neither forward nor backward — simply "floated with the golden hour." And so the summer days slipped past until August and the full glory of the August moon were at hand.

The big yard lay shimmering beneath a flood of liquid silver. Amelia, left alone on the veranda steps — for Mr. Jordon was calling on Aunt Molly to-night — tilted her head against the column behind her and felt unspeak- ably solitary. Delicate lace patterns quivered across the curving driveway; the moon-blanched lawn, splashed with 'ebony shadow, stretched away, so it seemed, almost to the rim of the world, and the wind from the flower gardsn,

54 THE LANTERN.

heavy with the fragrance of roses, lifted the girl's hair caressingly from her forehead. There was only one thing necessary to make it all perfect; Amelia wanted her lover. In her present mood Charlie Fraser did not appeal to her, — she had told him not to come when he had telephoned , — now, nevertheless, with her face buried in her hands to shut out the intoxi- cating beaut}r of the night, she half wished he would not take her at her word.

"Charlie?" she called suddenly, hearing a step on the driveway.

A man stepped out of the shadows into the moonlit space before the steps. His upturned face was young and grim.

"No, it's not Charlie — whoever the scoundrel may be. It's me, Amelia."

The girl's voice broke beneath its burden of joy. "Rob !" she cried, "dear, dear Eob, you heard my thoughts, I think."

Then he sat close beside her, and held her hands in his and made love to her as she had wanted him to. And they were both very happy.

"I suppose you know what I've come for, Emmy?" he said at length, with some hesitation.

"To see me," the girl answered happily.

"More than that. To take you back with me. Don't look so scared, Emm}7; I'm not crazy, but I will be if things go on much longer as they are. It's killing me. this uncertainty. I never know whether you are going to treat me as a beggar or a prince, or when you are going to fling me over for some other fellow. It isn't fair, Emmy. God knows, it isn't fair."

"Don't use such language, Rob. You said that you could get only two days' leave of absence. Surely you don't expect me to go back with you to-morrow."

"Yes, I do. You've got to go."

"My dear Rob, there's no doubt about your being crazy. What would Aunt Molly say?"

"I don't want to marry Aunt Molly; I want to marry you, and I'm going to do it now or never. I gave up my music for you, Emmy, and went into this cursed shop to make a living for you. Don't look like that! You know I don't begrudge the fiddle if I can have you. But I'm not going to lose you both, that's flat!"

"Yon are too absurd! Why do you talk about losing me? You know there are reasons "

SILKEN DALLIANCE. 55

"Xo good ones'' — the boy was thoroughly aroused — "you've put me off on one paltry pretext after another till I am fairly sick."

"But I'm not ready," wailed Amelia. "I've no time to think, I've no suitable clothes — oh, Rob," and she choked with tears, "why will you torture me so ':"

The boy winced. "I torture you, Amelia?"

"By demanding things that I'm not ready to give, by swooping down on me as if I were a — a Sabine woman, by trying to make me disgrace my family, and break Aunt Molly's heart and — and "

"Good heavens, Emmy, don't cry like that ! I didn't mean to be so violent. I don't want to make you unhappy. Heaven knows I don't, Emmy •"

"If you cared for me," she sobbed against his shoulder, "you would listen to reason : you would wait till I thought best."

"If I cared ! Do you care, Emmy ? If I were only sure of that it wouldn't be so hard to wait for you."

She smiled at him through a mist of tears and for some strange reason he seemed to find it a satisfactory answer. "Now are you going to be good and not spoil the rest of your visit by making vulgar scenes?"

"Yes," he promised like an obedient child, and once again they were very happy. The wind from the flower-garden touched their faces, and the perfumed silver night was close about them.

"The world is all gloom and glow," said Amelia with half-shut eyes. "I wish you had your violin, Rob."

Then around the curve of the driveway came two figures, startling the young people from their preoccupation. They looked up and Amelia laughed sympathetically, but at the boy's heart settled a weight heavy and cold as stone. The fates might at least have spared him this! He saw Amelia and himself grown old.

"What a night and what a sky!" breathed Miss Molly sweetly as they passed.

Katharine Forbes Liddell, 1910.

56 THE LANTERN.

Estrangement.

Of what avail that thou and I Draw close, oh, close, and smile and say,

"Though others pass unheeded by

We know each other's hearts to-day"? Thy thoughts from mine are distant far As angels' are.

For both, one magic on the air,

One ecstasy of wind and sun, — One thrill of fragrance jasmines bear,

Yet what new understanding won?

From them I muse on pleasure sped ; Thou on thy dead.

A slow bell with its solemn sound

Tolls back things vanished, known before.

To thee it brings enjoyment found Upon some unimagined shore; To me, a sad gray day I know Of long ago.

And when in quiet mood we dream

Of evening that in sombreness Shall quench all fever in its stream, One waits new vigils, passionless, And one oblivion, buried deep In timeless sleep.

Helen Parkhurst, 1911.

OF HEAVENLY HYMNS. 57

Of Heavenly Hymns.

"In dulci Jubilo,

Nun singhet und seid froh!"

In the days of our youth, when reason is our mistress, and the "first fine careless rapture" of her exercise is yet upon us, we are exceedingly apt in the making of generalisations. We of the younger generation live in a world of primary qualities — of mass, solidity and figure. Countries, even whole continents, are moulded for us into broad outlines of simplicity. We can deliver ourselves at length and yet with clearness upon the Sprachge- fiihl of any people beneath the sun. Cities and towns range themselves in order under our categories; men and women fall precisely into our classifications. We can distinguish at sight a Puritan from a Koyalist, a Celt from an Anglo-Saxon.

Our very prejudices are founded upon these rationalistic devices. We are accustomed to say with Carlyle — and who does not feel the fire of youth ablaze in the Sartor Rosartus — that the man who cannot laugh "is not only fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils, but his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem." We look with cold suspicion upon the man or woman who cannot give us a good grip of the hand, and we set our faces like flints against the unfortunate fellow mortal who has cultivated a manner.

But let it not be thought that in thus generalising upon the ways of the young I am setting myself to criticise the stern mandate of reason. I can still say with the Psalmist, "I am wiser than the aged," for I can add one more to the general tests for an honest man. Whoso takes no joy in a rousing song, whoso mouths and mumbles and gazes, when he might be adding his share to a volume of sound, stands forever on the wrong side of my deepest regard.

1 won hi not be understood as pleading for the "concord of sweet sounds" which is — as the poet maintains— bound to melt any loyal heart. I am inclined, indeed, to take issue with the poet upon this point, and to contend that many a faithful fellow might remain insensible to the charms of a music demanding an attentive ear. But give him opportunity to join

58 THE LANTERN.

in with a lusty roar, and even though he be "organically incapable of a tune," I will engage that his dull heart will stir within him. In short, my praise is for singing, not as a hearer, but as a singer.

Nothing arouses my wonder, my admiration, to a greater degree than the sound of many voices lifted in singing. Would not creation have been complete without this last most gracious gift to man? Why this fantastic power to change our throats at will into music boxes, into sweet piping instruments of song? That there should be variety in degree of sweetness does but add to the marvel of it.

It is indeed this variation in pleasantness of tone that first leads us to seek beyond the ]:>leasure of the delicate ear for the high function of the singing voice — a function that cannot be doubted in this well wrought world of means to ends. Moreover, who is he even among the most ardent lovers of music whose throat does not swell with desire of singing at sound of a single voice? Assuredly, whatever may be its purpose — and that may yet appear, though but dimly seen and understood— the song comes into its own when it is sung in unison.

At this particular point I fall willingly into reminiscence, remember- ing when, at a tender age, I first felt the spiritual significance of united song. I was taken by an adventurous old aunt to a Salvation Army meet- ing. I can still see the bare, dingy hall, full of dingy people, and, from the platform, the glint of scarlet and gold uniforms. But chiefly I remem- ber how we sang — my aunt and the dingy people and myself — sang with all our hearts I know not what from a tattered card to the tune of After the Ball. When we had finished, I dropped all my worldly wealth, ten cents, into the proffered tambourine, without an instant's hesitation. I have never regretted it.

I have often wondered whether that band of children, which went forth for the saving of the Holy Sepulchre, never to return, marched to the sound of their own voices raised in song. Before and since that time the chorus has been a device for reviving faint hearts, for speeding pil- grim feet upon their way. So Xenophon's soldiers raised the psean as they rushed into battle; so the children of Israel chanted "The Song of Degrees" as they journeyed to Jerusalem; so mediaevial monks and holy men went singing up to Eome:

"How mighty was that fervour which could win Its way to infant souls !"

OF HEAVENLY HYMNS. 59

And yet the miracle of self-forgetfulness could have been wrought in those young crusaders by no surer means than a solemn Latin hymn — its long measures suited to the weary miles — and in the halting times, the gayer songs of childhood, to keep off the loneliness and hunger.

Even after we have left behind us the pleasant, spirited customs of our youth, we have always, for a common ground of contemplation as to the significance of singing, the matter of hymns. Now the air may be full of nameless scents, of sweet, fleeting sounds, the buds may swell, the sky be adorned with silver and pale vernal colour, and yet I have not known the spring until I have joined mine with many a voice:

" 'Tis the Spring of souls to-day,

Christ has burst his prison. And from three days' sleep in death

As a sun hath risen. All the winter of our sins.

Long and dark, is flying From His light, to whom we give

Laud and praise undying.''

Every throat full-opened, every voice loud and clear as in it lies, and then I know, not only that the sun is my brother, but more especially that there is a common desire, a common hope for us all in the Spring of the yeai-.

There may be, after all, less of derision and more of truth in the old fancy that the heavenly citizens are singers of hymns:

"One and unending is that triumph song Which to the angels and us shall belong."

"What blithe self-forgetfulness is here, and, at the same time, what gracious companionship in praising! For He is a good God, "Who givefh songs in the night."

Marion Crane, 19ll.

60 THE LANTERN.

Song.

When you smile, a million dewdrops

Dance and tremble in the grass, And the flowers lift their faces

Up toward you as you pass ; All the earth glows fair and golden

For a magic little while, And my heart's aflood with sunlight

When you smile.

When you sigh, the wind goes sobbing

Through the branches overhead, And the clouds hang grey and leaden,

Heavy as with tears unshed ; All the sweet birds hush their singing

To a low and broken cry, And my heart is dull with aching

When you sigh.

When you call, the blessed echoes

Thrill your voice across the world, And the mounting skylark bears it

In a song to heaven hurled; All the breezes ring in cadence

To your sweet tones' mellow fall, And my soul leaps forth in answer

When you call.

Caroline Reeves Foulke, 1896.

A CONTRAST. 61

A Contrast.

The civilities of a cordial welcome over, Mrs. English sat down, leaned comfortably forward, and let her plump hands hang in mature complacency from the ends of her chair arms, while she smiled up at her yisitor. He was a dark, slim and tall young man — too tall for the chair in which at her invitation he now sat down — possessing that fine and sensitive good looks that adds so much grace to youth. But his charm — for he had much charm — lay in less tangible characteristics; in the lines of his face, thoughtful and reserved, even suggesting taciturnity; and in his eyes, keen and observant, yet kind ; — an evident contemplativeness, supplemented by interested eyes, that seemed to express a generous understanding of others, and a sweet forgetfulness of self. Beyond this, most women saw at once — as now did Mrs. English — and pitied with that kinship to love, the touch of sadness across his brow, and in the somewhat too tense line of the lips.

To this man, until this moment a stranger, Mrs. English spoke in the manner her nature and position in her small community had bred in her, with pleasing volubility and kindly familiarity, as to a friend.

"So you are Emily's fiance," she said, "and will soon be her hus- band ! Edith, my daughter, will not be married till spring." She was thoughtful for an instant, then said, "Emily always did do the real things first, and, yet, Edith was such an active, healthy child, one expected her to lead. Well, Edith never cared about things beyond the moment, and Emily always planned — that was the secret. Edith was such a tomboy, too, and she, such a quiet, sweet child. She is young to be married — two years younger than Edith, and we think Edith young. Oh! I know twenty-two is not too young, but to us Editli still seems a child. Not that she is: she knows very well what she wants, and asks help from no one. But there! I want to hear about Emily. Tt has been ten years since I saw her. She was a beautiful child."

"She is still beautiful," said her lover, for in its spirit Mrs. English's remark was a question.

62 THE LANTERN.

''Of course, I might have known," Mrs. English acknowledged. "Hers was a beauty that lasts. Xow, Edith was never what one might call beau- tiful, yet she has always held her own among good-looking girls, and — yes, 1 think I may say especially in looks. I am not giving my own opinion — I would be partial — I say what I find others think. You see, ehe is so full of life ! Even when she is quiet her face speaks."

The conversation began to awake the young man's mind to a sense of romance, and his quick glance took in : on the top of the grand piano a sheet of music thrown aside in evident haste, — to make room, perhaps, for a new thought — ; the book now open on the rack; and beyond the piano, among the cushions on the seat of the bay window, a soft heap of white beside a work-basket whose confused contents spoke of a hurried hand rifling among them for thimble, or scissors, or thread, as the case might be. He thought of Emily's neat possessions; of the white, slow fingers that always found every thing in its place, and so restored it. Often, lately, he had sat beside her as she sewed, and he caught again, as he thought of her, the fond look in her blue eyes, as, her hand scarcely pausing in its graceful, even, measured plying of the thread, she glanced up occa- sionally to smile at some remark of his; for, though he wras ordinarily a silent man, with Emily who herself lived always in placid silence, he became humorous and talkative, while there stole over his too thoughtful mind an ever desired feeling of rest.

"Ten years," Mrs. English was saying, "I do not know why we have never visited. In the old days we were always great friends, Cousin Agnes and I, and the girls, too, as children go. I always intended to visit her, and she me, but I hear from her only occasionally now, and she almost never mentions Emily; and Edith and Emily stopped corresponding years ago. Indeed, Edith has no time for letter writing; she is going from morning till night. I have not been able to impress upon her yet that if she is going to be ready even by May she must be getting things together. I can't do it all. She should be thankful that getting ready to be married is less of a task than it used to be. There are fewer dresses, fewer under- clothes, fewer everything, except linen; no housekeeper can have too much of that." Here Mrs. English hesitated and looked at her guest. As his eyes expressed his continued interest she went on : "There's a great deal less bother, too, at home about the making of clothes. It's as well, for Edith simply wouldn't be bothered. Indeed, had we at all the same taste,

A CONTRAST. 63

when I go in town for the linens, I feel sure she would let me get the whole trousseau ; but we differ even in the matter of embroideries, and as for dress materials she never accepts what I choose. But you men are not interested in this part of getting married. You are troubled only by having measurements taken. If you go to a good tailor the less trouble you take about selecting your goods the better. Then you are so uniform; a certain thing for a certain time : if you use a little sound sense you can't make a mistake. But we women ! We are always on the brink of committing some error in taste, and the best of us fall. It isn't our fault. It's an awful problem, this choosing of clothes; yet, by Edith, when she chooses to put her mind to it, it seems to be easily solved."

Mrs. English had a rapid manner of talking, and punctuated her remarks with little laughs. Xow, when again she paused and looked at her guest, it was evident from his courteous attention — he was really enter- tained— that he had still no desire to speak.

"And Emily."' she questioned, "as daintily and well dressed as ever, I suppose ?"

The young man smiled a little as he looked at the face of the woman before him. He saw, in fancy, the trim and beautiful little figure of Emily, draped in the soft colours of her correctly fitted and graceful cos- tumes. "To me," he replied, "she always looks bewitching."

"Emily was so fond and thoughtful, too, so gentle and so kind," Mrs. English deliberated; "just the sort of girl one knows will grow to make a lovable and desirable wife — while Edith ! — we all wondered at Edith. I myself never dreamed she would marry Mr. Blake. I did not dream she would marry anyone yet — but him I never considered. Some day, when she grew older, I thought she might grow to like one of the boys she had always known. I hoped it would be Tom Grey. I always quite loved Tom. But Mr. Blake! Well, I did not know Mr. Blake. She met him while she was visiting in Florida, and has known him herself only a year. This sounds as if she has chosen quickly, but, really, she did not. She knew him six months there, and he has been North already four times to see her. He liked her from the first, and always told her so. I tell her at least she has the satisfaction of knowing she was sought, and in no way did the seeking, but she says she does not know what she would have done if she, too, had liked him. It's his persistency that has won her, and his newness. These other boys she has known always, too well, perhaps, for sentiment. She is

64 THE LANTERN.

continually with them. Just now it is golf and tennis all day long, or end- less walks, and even occasional days of hunting."

Mrs. English checked herself and laughed, this time a little con- strainedly. She wondered if she might not seem too communicative to this silent man.

He had noticed the emotion come into her voice, and had felt a little embarrassed by her confidences, but her last words had restored his abstract interest, and now, when she looked at him, he was looking past her, out through the sheer curtains of the open windows into the bright sunshine. He wondered if Edith was out there.

It was early fall, and as he listened he thought he heard, coming through the cool, still air the sound of a laugh and a clear call. Tennis, he conjectured, or, as an afterthought, boating, for, as he had passed the hedge before entering the grounds, he had seen, at the foot of the lawn behind the house, water glimmering through the trees.

"Emily is going to live near her family after she is married?" Mrs. English asked.

"Not very far from them," he answered. "Her father has given us a small house about three blocks from his, and on a smaller street. We are not rich enough to live really near them. Mr. Anderson, as perhaps you know, is one of the wealthy men of Chicago, and lives on one of the hand- somest streets of the city."

"I suppose so," Mrs. English's cordial face grew wistful; she sighed slightly. "Emily is a very fortunate girl," she said. "She has everything. She was born with beauty and a lovable nature, and ever since she has had her blessings continually increased, until now she has wealth, every desire gratified, all sorts of accomplishments, a wonderful trousseau, I do not doubt, and I think not the least of her good fortune, Mr. Lebar, is to have won you."

The young man's glance at her was painfully startled. He but bowed his acknowledgement. Then, on the instant, his eyes, as he looked at her again, grew almost fond and very sympathetic. Indeed, her compliment was so genuine as to convey to him a sense of feeling on her part much deeper than her words themselves expressed. He felt that this romantic mother was comparing him, and to his advantage, with her own future son- in-law. He pictured Mr. Blake a somewhat short, prosaically good-looking "business man," perhaps ten years older than Edith, a good alliance, but

A CONTRAST. 65

a very plain lover. He had a guilty feeling, as he looked at Mrs. English, that, could she know his courtship, she would find him, too, a "plain lover," and lie felt almost disloyal to Emily, when, after too long a pause, he could find nothing less commonplace to say than that the good fortune was his.

"Of course," Mrs. English responded. Then she closed her lips, looked down and was silent. "It is a little hard on me," she said, with a quick vehemence, when she spoke again, "Oh, I approve thoroughly of Mr. Blake. He is in every way a fine man — I suppose a most desirable man. But Edith will have to go so far away ! She says she does not mind, but I know she will be homesick, if only for the cold weather. She can never have any really cold weather there. No skating ! no sleighing, or snow-shoeing, that she so much loves ! Poor child ! But I need not pity her. Edith seems able to enjoy herself under any conditions; and in time, too, Mr. Blake's business may permit him to live farther north. Dear me!" she added, abruptly, "I really meant to talk entirely about Emily, and I have scarcely mentioned her."

"I have been much interested," said her visitor, and quite truthfully.

"You must forgive me," Mrs. English apologised, "I talk too much about Edith. I do not mean to, but, you see, it is of her I think — she is mine."

The young man said nothing; he saw now too plainly the pain and dissatisfaction the mother thought she was not acknowledging.

A moment later he rose to go. "So soon!" said Mrs. English, casting off her depression, "and I have offered you no refreshment. I hoped you would stay all night with us. This is out of your way to make so short a call."

"I must make the four o'clock train from here," he answered. "I leave Philadelphia at five thirty !"

"I am sorry." Mrs. English rose as she spoke, and looked toward the windows. "I should so much have liked you to meet Edith. She cannot be far away. Had I known I would have sent for her." Then she held out her hand. "Thank Emily," she said, "for sending you to see us. I shall always feel glad to have met you ; and give our love to them all. Oh !" she burst forth, "I do wish Edith would come !"

As if in answer to her wish, he heard the brisk, loud click of an outer door opened and shut; and immediately a clear, full and sweet, yet per-

66 THE LANTERN.

emptory girl's voice called "'Mother !" and again "Mother !" And then, to another person, and in a low tone, "Oh, Rachel, do you know where I put the racket I brought in yesterday ? It's Mr. Grey's. He wants it."

Mrs. English laughed eagerly. "It is Edith," she said, then she called, "Edith, come here, dear."

And the next instant Edith was walking quickly toward them.

He had thought that Mrs. English's conversation, the little tell-tale suggestions about the room, and, more than these, the clear voice coming from the hall, appealing as strongly as they all had to his imagination, had prepared him for the vision of the girl herself, but he was not prepared. Clad in short-skirted, simple white, her movement full of grace and vigour, and free and light as the breezy out-of-doors from where she came, she effaced the figment of his romancing by the convincing force of her reality.

Even through the gloom of the far end of the room where she entered her eyes sparkled and her teeth shone; a cordial, kindly gladness seemed to emanate from her. And when she reached him and he saw ber face, an oval of clear white, healthful skin, beneath dark hair, and in it the gen- erous, large, sweet mouth, the full nostrils, dilating with eager breath, and the eyes, keen with intelligence, kind with good fellowship, and suggesting to him a deep capacity of feeling, he did not hesitate to call her beautiful. Indeed, the need to call her so came from too deep within him to be denied; he thought her completely lovely.

As for her, after the first glance, she looked at him unsmiling and with a gaze whose intensity was scarcely casual. Her mother's voice re- called her.

"Edith," she said, "this is Mr. Lebar, your cousin Emily's fiance."

She bowed but made no proffer of her hand, nor did she look at him, or speak.

He acknowledged the bow only with his eyes.

"I am so glad you happened to come in," Mrs. English ventured, feel- ing, and desirous of breaking what seemed to her an uncomfortable pause. "I wanted you to see Mr. Lebar, and he takes this train."

"Yes," said he, now in his turn recovering himself, "I must go, and, unfortunately, at once. I am very glad to have met you, Mrs. English — and your daughter." He shook hands with the mother and bowed slightly to the daughter. As he did so their eyes met. Immediately he turned and walked slowly from the room and from the house.

TO THE SOUTH WIND. 67

As soon as Mrs. English heard the door close on their visitor she walked to the front window, and, hidden by the curtain, watched him, as, with bent head, he walked down the steps, along the drive, and past the hedge ; then she turned to her daughter.

"Edith," she said, severely, '"I could wish sometimes you would control better the outward expression of your fancies. I think you cannot quite know how rude you are at times. And, as usual," she added, "we differ. I think I never met so lovely a man."

Edith did not answer. She stood where she had been standing, motion- less, abstract. Presently she roused herself, and, still silent, left the room.

Mrs. English, watching her, sighed, then she turned, walked to the bay window and looked out across the lawn. A tear swelled in her eye, and dropped glistening on her plump cheek. She was thinking, as she had thought so often lately, of the many things she wished were different.

Lee Fanshawe Clapp, 1899.

To the South Wind.

To-night the wanton south wind blew

Through miles of northern pine; I longed to hear it subtly woo

Slim reeds and trailing vine.

I heard it touch the hills afar,

Then vainly seek to rise Where a virgin moon and vestal star

Weave music in the skies.

Helen Dudley, 1908.

68 THE LANTERN.

Paciencia.

Stevens turned from the purser's window and walked out upon the deck. He peered over the rail at the wharf beneath, fascinated by the great steamer's height, then fell to watching the scene before him, struck anew by a mingled impression of lassitude and energy. There lay Santos, low, narrow, breathless, unspeakably hot, crowded in between the mountains and the sluggish river. Before and behind him the concrete piers of the famous Santos Docks Company stretched in endless succession, and along- side these, in some places two deep, ships of every size and country were lying, awaiting their turn to be filled with the common treasure all had come to seek — Brazilian coffee. Here along the water's edge, in contrast with the lifeless town, all was bustle and action; foolish little French en- gines puffed back and forth, pulling the loaded and emptied cars, and up the gangways toiled a procession of sweating negroes, each balancing a huge brown sack of coffee on his head. It seemed a pitiless place for such exer- tion ; to Stevens, looking down at them, it was incredible that a human being could continue it. He was himself overwhelmed by a feeling of lassitude — the reaction after a few hours of intense activity. Only the day before had he decided that he must return to England on this steamer ; he had packed his possessions, settled his affairs, even written letters of farewell, and had taken the early morning train from Sao Paulo down to the coast, hoping to secure his passage on the ship itself. How nervous he had been on the train ! The brilliant winter season at Buenos Ayres was at its close ; the Eoyal Mail steamer was said to be crowded ; would there be room for him ? He had resolved to go second-class — steerage even. He would not be left behind. He had rushed from the train to the ship to seek the purser. As luck would have it,, a reservation held for Eio had just been cancelled, that dapper officer had informed him ; certainly they could take him along. Now nothing remained to be done but to seek his baggage at the station and have it brought aboard; in two hours they would be under way. But his trembling eagerness of an hour ago had passed; he could not now muster enthusiasm sufficient to take him back to the station through the blistering heat. He was revolted at the idea of further effort; he did not care enough.

PACIENCIA. 69

How different, he reflected, had been his frame of mind upon his arrival in Brazil six years ago, when he had stood contemplating this same scene. How feverish his impatience during the interminable process of quarantine inspection and installation of gold-braided custom house offi- cials— a delay which had caused him to miss the afternoon train to Sao Paulo, where his work was to be. With withering scorn he had denounced a railroad that could be one of the richest in the world and yet run only two trains a day, and his wrath had made him speechless when he had learned that because the next day was a fiesta (an occasion for weekly holi- days that he learned later to appreciate) he could not make the two hour's journey from Santos until the following afternoon. Once aboard the train, he had fretted at the many halts during the marvelous journey up the mountain-side; and his contempt had known no bounds when twice the train was delayed while the passengers had sought coffee in the station eating houses. He had come to Brazil to seek a wider outlet for his ener- gies, and surely there was little he could not accomplish among so leisurely a people.

Stevens had left England because he could find no chance there for advancement. He had worked faithfully in a commercial house for six years without a single promotion, and without the prospect of one. The sole support of his mother and younger brother, he had not dared to strike out for himself without certainty of success. His clerk's salary, though slender, had been at least secure. A quiet comfort they had been able to maintain : travel, entertainment, luxury of any sort had been things not to be thought of. He had loved a girl whom he could not possibly ask to marry him; how, indeed, could he look forward to marriage at all?

Sickened by this, he had sought and obtained employment in the Brazilian branch of a trading company, and had left his home. The part- ing with his family, the wrenching himself free from associations that were all the more deeply rooted because of the narrowness of his life, had been difficult. Above all it had been cruel to take leave of the girl he Iced without his daring to utter a single request or exact even the slightest promise. But fired with the enthusiasm of his purpose he had sailed away to the new world where he hoped to find riches lying open to his hand.

At first, newly installed in Sao Paulo, a clear, fresh, mountain city, the constant sensation of conquest and acquirement had given him the

70 THE LANTEKX.

assurance that lie was striding toward his goal. Life was painted in rosy colours. The English-speaking colony, always glad to welcome a new coiner, and delighted, though not insistent that he should be a gentleman, had greeted him warmly. He had seen that the very fact of expatriation created a strong sense of fellowship among these countrymen of his, and he had seen, also, that they were singularly disposed to be happy. Since we are being deprived of so much, their attitude seemed to be, let us at least enjoy to the full extent what is still granted to us. Homeless young men like himself there were in great number: in a few months he had found himself sharing a chacara with two of them. The people who had homes, too, had shown themselves eager to receive him, to amuse and divert him.

In his work he had at first found a great source of diversion, and he had been fascinated by the mastery of the Portuguese tongue — no light task. From the Brazilians he had received treatment in which courtesy and keenness were combined in their perfection; he had felt on his mettle with them, and had worked to such advantage that after a year a slight promotion had been awarded him. But when the novelty had worn off he had settled down contentedly into an easy existence, taking work and play alike — tolerant, somewhat amused.

The lack of haste, so deplored at first, he had come to regard as a direct and necessary outcome of climatic and racial conditions; he had grown to delight in it himself. His hours in the office had been brief; his holidays many. He had developed a keen interest in outdoor sports, and there was always an approaching tennis or cricket match to stimulate his interest. At home he had never had the leisure in which to discover,, much less to develop, this liking. Gradually, subconsciously, he had grown to regard "home" (as England was invariably called) as a place where he had no time for anything but drudgery, no time to be at peace.

This change of attitude had of course been very slow, but there had been time for it in the six years that had slipped away without Stevens's having once faced the situation. It was remarkably easy for the years to slip away unnoticed in that far land, where there was no decided change of season, no sharp break in the year's round of work and recreation. Stevens had never realised that by degrees his interest in home affairs and people had vanished, that his detailed accounts of daily incidents had been replaced by perfunctory letters written only the day before the mail steamer sailed, and not always then. He had never faced the significance of the fact

PACIENCIA. 71

that the home periodicals lay unopened until current report had rendered them valueless, or that in his mother's letters he skipped accounts of after- noons at bridge and descriptions of Arthur's school companions. As for the girl, he had long ceased to write to her at all. What could he write? Sug- gest that she bury herself in this remote region, carefree though the process might be? This he could not do, and surely she had had her fill of word pictures of the South American at work and at play.

Suddenly the awakening came. He had looked upon himself one night and had seen there a voluntary exile, a man without duties, but with- out rights and privileges as well. Everything vital lay beyond his grasp ; his sensibility to pain and pleasure was being dulled; life was slipping by while he stood aside and ofttimes did not even watch it pass. He had lost sight of the object of his coming — the speedy acquisition of money as a foundation of a development, of a broadening for him and his family. He had not been able to discover here any more than at home, a means of enriching himself financially, except hj the investment of capital of which he had none; his idea of America had been mistaken and he had not troubled to admit his mistake. Instead of broadening his field, he had narrowed it; he was selfish, futile, buried in slothful ease. He could go home at once to redeem himself. He would at least live his life unshrinkingly, even though drudgery were to be his portion.

Feverishly, then as 1 have told, Stevens had rushed down to Santos to sail by the next day's boat. The thought of a dela}r of two weeks was intolerable to him; he was already years too late.

Xow, the effort made, he stood at the rail of the great white Royal Mail steamer, unstable of purpose. Childish fears possessed his mind; he pictured himself arriving at Southampton lonely, unwelcomed, a stranger among his own people. He saw himself bereft of ease in his suit of Brazil- ian cut, with his tricks of speech six years old. For all that he knew Marian might be married or dead : his mother no longer mentioned her, and should he find her, what more had he to say than when he left her six long years ago? It was only now that he realised their length.

He must pull himself together; he was merely overtired. The con- fusion and the heat had unstrung him ; the gilded saloon, crowded with overdressed Argcntinans, and their pasty children, all in the bustle of approaching departure, had sickened him. lie lunged lor the cool of the chacara verandah \\ i 1 1 ■ it- view of valley and shadowy mountains: he longed

72 THE LANTERN.

for white suited Jose at his elbow, eager, attentive, sympathetic. Afraid of himself he ran down the gang-plank and came face to face at the bottom with a fellow Englishman, a friend of his in Sao Paulo.

"Hello, Steve, what are you doing down here? Waving goodbye to Miss Mason?"

"I'm sailing for England," Stevens replied.

"You are, are you? You've been pretty quiet about it. I am bound for home myself, thank heaven! But have you heard our luck? There's a case of fever in the hold, just cropped out,— some beastly dago brought it from the South with him. The boat's quarantined, and there's no sailing for us to-day, my boy. We shall be lucky to leave before to-morrow night, they are so bound up in red tape down here."

Stevens stood silent, as if meditating.

"What are you going to do?" his friend ran on. "Let's go up to the city on the noon train and sleep in peace. No decent hotel in this town, and no sleeping aboard a ship tied up to a dock for me, thank you ! A dance at the club to-night, too, by Jove. What do you say?"

Stevens still stood silent, his gaze intent on the line of toiling negroes; he seemed to have thought only for them. Then he turned to his friend.

"You are right," he said. "Let us go back."

He walked away, knowing that he would not return on the morrow.

May Egan, 1911.

On the Way to Sherwood.

"Where are you going, Alan-a-dale, Through the fields by the gay snap-dragon trail, With your minstrel's harp on its bright cord hung And a scarlet cape on your shoulder slung?"

"I'm off to the green of Sherwood's glade, Too long, too long, in the town I've stayed, And to-night in the heart of the silent wood I sup and sing with Eobin Hood."

ON THE WAY TO SHERWOOD. 73

"What of the song, oh Alan-a-dale? What of the time and what of the tale ?" He sat him down 'neath a white thorn tree, Smote thrice his harp, and thus sang he :

"I'll sing of a beach where the waves pound free, Of silver foam on a sapphire sea, Of a shore where the gentlest breezes blow, Of a fairy barque that saileth slow, Bearing a knight, both bold and true, Over the shimmering water blue.

"I'll tell of the valiant knight of old, With shining armour and spurs of gold; Of a princess, high in a lonely tower On the castled isle, in a blossomy bower ; Of the nightingales in the wild rose grove That sing- her their musical message of love ; Of the knight who cometh, and not too late, To wind his horn at the crystal gate, To enter the rose-enchanted world And plant on the tower his white banner unfurled, To break the spell, and the princess free. And take her away to his home by the sea."

"Alan-a-dale, Alan-a-dale, Sweet is your harping and pleasant your tale." He took up his harp, and his scarlet hood, And went on his way into green Sherwood.

Hilda Worthington Smith, 1910.

74 TEE LANTBBN.

Botticelli : An Interpretation.

No painter is more individual, perhaps, than Botticelli. His work shows a marked unlikeness to that of his predecessors and contemporaries, who treated similar subjects, but in a manner that is often constrained and sad. Botticelli depicts subjects made trite bj' unnumbered other artists, and his work shows unusual adherence to the matter in hand. It is in the very absence, in his pictures, however, of those side-issues, things by the way, which lend character to the work of the other painters, that one may find, in part, the clue to the individuality of his work. Sacred themes are not with him a mere excuse for the depiction of common life, or of sensuous beauty.

Not that Botticelli's work is entirely without secular elements. His pictures of sacred subjects occasionally contain representations of common life that are full of vitality and truth — for instance, the young pages, in the costume of his own time, that form so natural and animated a group in the Uffizi '•'Adoration of the Magi." He had also the medieval fondness for decorative detail — witness the intricacy of the stone tracery, and the pre- cision of the foliage, in the "Madonna with the Two Johns." In his pic- tures the feeling of reverence is, however, the predominating motive, and other elements have been introduced for the sake of enhancing this — they are a heaping of flowers on the altar. It is the subject of the painting which, in each case, gives the final impression. Even those side figures, attendant saints, or personages drawn from contemporary life, so promi- nent in mediaeval works of art, are not mere unaffected spectators of the main issue, disconnected elements, but are consistent parts of a whole. Botticelli's treatment of the by-standers reveals very clearly their signifi- cance in early art. Their peculiar function was probably analogous to that of the choruses of Greek drama — to reflect, and at the same time to influ- ence, the emotions of the actual spectator. Observe how, in a certain "Ado- ration of the Magi," found in the Uffizi, the reverence and entlrasiasm per- vading a vast crowd of onlookers, imperceptibly modifies one's own frame of mind, producing in oneself emotions proper to the occasion. In many in-

BOTTICELLI: AN INTERPRETATION. 75

stances the by-standers are a valuable aid in enhancing the main idea of the picture, as, notably, in the "Madonna of the Magnificat," where the sweet pensiveness of the angels seems in some subtle way to prepare the mind for the tender and meditative expression of the Virgin herself. In their unity of effect, Botticelli's works are like the compositions of music, in which note combines with note to produce the final harmony.

With their appealing sincerity of feeling, the paintings combine a certain ethereality and strangeness. Some one has said that Botticelli is the most poetical of all artists, and, indeed, the world he gives is not that of common forms, but a world refined, spiritualised. His presentation of the human form shows the effort toward a more abstract type of beauty; his landscapes seem to reflect some far-off brightness. It is not so much, however, the world of dreams and fantasy that he gives us, as our own world, seen in its deeper meaning, seen as an idea. The work of Botticelli is an effort to express, through the medium of form and colour, abstract ideas, and to this effort it owes its intangibility and elusiveness. This striv- ing to express the inexpressible is the essential quality of Botticelli's genius ; this it is which distinguishes him from the realists of all ages. The dis- tinguishing characteristic of his attitude toward the material world is an inattentiveness, a disregard of the object for its own sake; Botticelli does not work with his "eye on the object," but on the deep and eternal meaning lying beyond it. Material objects are for him merely the threshold to be crossed, the imperfect and transitory medium behind which lies the ever- lasting radiance.

It is in his treatment of the Greek myths that Botticelli's tendency to depict a theme in its finer and deeper phases is most striking; for whereas a sacred subject, however conventionally treated, necessarily retains the outward expression at least of its high significance, the myths, pliable like a sculptor's clay, lend themselves to any handling, and owe their expres- sion to the artist's intention alone. An examination of the works of the best period of Greek art, of what may be called the classic period as opposed to the time of decadence that came so soon after it, brings inevitably the conviction that behind the myths is a spiritual meaning, however obscured it may have been in the hands of later artists. The tragedies of ^Eschylus and .Sophocles, portraying always some mighty conflict between invisible force?, the lofty impassivity of the statues of Athene, the divine calm of the Venus de Milo — all forcibly remind us that the myths are something

T6 THE LANTERN.

more than fantastic tales, devised by a primitive people. The great majority of the artists both of the Middle Ages and of the Renaissance seem to turn, however, in their treatment of the myths, to the period following that of the highest culture in Greece, to reproduce the spirit of that later age which depicted the mystic and terrible Bacchus as a smiling reveler, and adorned its walls with clusters of infant Loves. In their new intoxication with the life of nature and of the senses, the painters of the Renaissance seem, for the most part, to have overlooked the deeper phase of pagan belief ; they have reproduced with admirable fidelity that joyous sensuousness which many regard as the true spirit of Greek life, and have wholly missed the under- lying significance. Botticelli alone has caught the feeling of that nobler classic period — the feeling rather than the form, for there is little sugges- tion in his work of the Greek absorption in physical perfection. Treated by Botticelli, the myths, familiarised and almost cheapened by their in- cessant occurrence both in art and in literature, acquire for us a new meaning which we instinctively feel is old — old as Olympus itself. One of the best instances of this new-old method of viewing the ancient stories is a painting in the Pitti gallery entitled "Pallas Subduing a Centaur." The goddess, clad not in her traditional armour but in airy robes, blown back by the rush of her pursuit, grasps by the hair the strange creature, half man, half beast, who cowers against a pillar; behind is the quiet sea. The picture has an impressive tranquility. There is no hint of agitation in the portrayal of the goddess. She stands lightly poised on slender feet, head bent in a gesture entirely gracious and kindly, eyes fixed on the shrinking centaur with half-wondering compassion, every line of her body instinct with ease — ease and a wonderful swiftness; she is like wind, made visible. He, on his part, gazes up at her, only half-resisting, in his mis- formed face a strange mingling of fear with wistfulness. It is the old story of the triumph of the higher over the lower, a triumph made easy by the presence of an element of the one within the other, of the spiritual and immortal within the mortal and material.

Botticelli's treatment of the myths is so modified by his general tend- ency to seek for the deeper aspects of things that in certain instances one is impressed by his unlikeness rather than his affinity with the genuine Greek spirit. To define that spirit in precise terms is practically impos- sible, since in every age one finds exceptions to the general rule — minds of a type which anticipate some future time, or hark back to a remote past.

BOTTICELLI: AN INTERPRETATION". 77

Such evidence of itself as we possess, however, indicates a kind of duality in its idea of beauty. The Greeks seem always to have been conscious of two elements in beauty, the finer and subtler, which, for convenience's sake, we term inward, and the visible and tangible out-ward. For Botticelli these diverse elements are fused in one ; for him there is but the higher loveli- ness, and though obliged of necessity to make use of form as a means of expression, he is never lured into an exclusive preoccupation with it, as were the Greeks of the period of decadence. It is impossible in any work of Botticelli to treat form and spiritual content as separate entities, so inex- tricably are the two interwoven. One may admire the "Primavera" as form alone,— a rhythm of the lines, and a certain delicate precision in the general composition, — yet all the while is borne in upon one's thought the sense of sweetness and of reflectiveness, so inevitably are such qualities implied in every technical detail. Botticelli's works are like pieces of music in this respect also — iu a perfect fusion of form and content which gives them a rounded harmony, a satisfying completeness. In his case that is true which Matthew Arnold declares of St. Francis: his gaze, turning from the vision, brings to the material world some of its splendour, so that he seems to see all things illumined with reflected glory. Had the sense for that deeper beauty been taken from him, one feels that Botticelli would have cared little for what remained ; that the common aspects of things, which, to the Greek genius, were so instinct with worth and life, would have seemed to him dull and tedious. In all the paintings there is a sug- gestion of evanescence, the result, perhaps, of this preoccupation with the underlying idea rather than with its outward expression. A hint of flight is in them all : in a moment these radiant forms will fade like mist-wreaths, these vernal landscapes dissolve into the sunshine of which they seem com- posed. It is as if the paintings were efforts to transmute into visible shape the brightness of some high moment; and it is the unsatisfactoriness of all such effort which gives Botticelli's work its indefinable wistfulness, its air of seeking afar.

The sacred personages whom Botticelli painted are characterised by aloofness from the day-by-day striving and ambitions of men. These pen- sive madonnas and rapt saints have nothing in common with the human and personal world ; they seem the creations of a mind given up to high in- tuitions, unaffected by common interests and desires. How little sugges- tion there is in the pictures of the Virgin and Child, of the human relation-

78 THE LANTERN.

ship so emphasised by other painters. A possible exception to this is a Madonna of the Louvre lately declared not Botticelli's own, but which ex- presses much of his spirit. Here the infant Jesus looks up at his mother with eyes half wistful, half compassionate, and his small hand is laid against her neck in a gesture of tender intimacy. Even here, however, the repose of the Virgin's face, and the revery on that of the small Saint John, who stands with his thin boyish arms clasped against his breast, lift the picture out of the realm of common affections into a sphere of mystic re- lationships, in which personal feeling has no part. The agitation of the conflict between the personal and the impersonal, the human and the divine, has no place in Botticelli's work, which seems to depict some loftier realm whose blissful folk move in the tranquility of full illumination, uncon- cerned with earthly joy or grief. Thus in a certain curious "Lamenta- tion for the Dead Christ," the apostles stand with closed eyes, smiling in spiritual ecstacy. Another striking example of this absence of natural emotion is the Saint. Sebastian of the Berlin museum. On a pillar, above a landscape of quaint formality, with the wide bright sky as background, stands the meditative figure, the head, encircled with a thin ray of sun- shine, bent as if in contemplation. There is no hint of strain or suffering in the easy pose of the body, and the face wears a look of tranquil revery. The painting has the quiet of a peaceful noon ; it is like a symbol of spirit- ual communion. It is to this freedom from personal motives that Botti- celli's works owe their high serenity. They are the expression of a nature that has "crossed over all the sorrows of the heart."

There is a certain indefinable sameness in the faces of the various angels and madonnas. The consciousness of high realities moulds all these faces to one expression, and it is only the difference in the degree that gives them variety. Thus the youthful angels that cluster protecting around the "Madonna of the Magnificat" seem grosser reflections of the divine Child, while the Virgin herself mirrors, in softened form, his look of ecstasy. There is a strain of thoughtfulness apparent in all Botticelli's representa- tions of the Madonna. Encircled by pensive angels or grave saints, of whom she seems quite unconscious, the divine Mother sits lost in musing. There is, in her rapt look, something suggestive of the dawn, the rising splendour that is found in complete glory in the face of the infant Christ. Botticelli's portrayals of sacred themes are, in fact, mere symbols of spirit- ual illumination ; they picture not sense, but the soul, in its gradual ascent.

BOTTICELLI : AN INTERPRETATION. 79

And so also the portraits of the Popes Evarist, Sixtus, Stephen, Soter, so full of vigorous individuality, as regards mere outward feature, might in essence represent one nature ; a nature in which personality is lost in the contemplation of deep things.

It is quite natural and fitting that Botticelli should have illustrated Dante, whose genius was of the same type as his own, though expressed through a different medium. First of all one is impressed by the exquisite taste of these quaint drawings, the fine perception which has recognised so well the limitations of an art essentially concrete. Botticelli has followed the pilgrimage of Dante through all the tremendous scenes of the Inferno and Purgatorio, but without effort to represent them in full. The draw- ings, which share with these portions of the Divine Comedy itself a gro- tesqueness which recalls the strange ornamentations of the mediaeval cathe- drals, are mere hints of the occurrences related by the poet, suggestions which enable one to supply the details for oneself. There is a touch of the Japanese manner in the restraint of the drawings, which trace in a few lines a multitude of figures, against a background devoid of effects in light and shade. These few lines are marvellously expressive, however : every variety of human anguish is shown in these faces, and the figures, strained into every conceivable posture, are like symbols of motion and effort. The blankness of the background is more significant than the subtlest chiar- oscuro— it reminds us that we are looking into the domain of thought. As Dante approaches the Paradiso, the drawings become more abstract, till the artist, in a final renunciation of the effort to portray things beyond human conception, traces only the figures of Dante and Beatrice, enclosed by the infinite circle, against a background empty as space.

In these illustrations as in his pictures of the classic myths, Botticelli has seized and wrought into form inward idea, rather than outward ex- pression; and here, as in his paintings on sacred themes, human beings are seen as manifestations of the one soul toward which they aspire. One might indeed consider all Botticelli's representations of Christian story as standing for the last stage in the upward progress of the soul which is por- trayed in these drawings for the Divine Comedy — that stage where per- sonality has faded, and only a great wonder and wistfulness remains. At times tin' fines of Dante and Beatrice bear startling resemblance to those of the Madonna and Child. The wondering gaze of the Virgin recalls Dante's look of awe, while the expression of radiant understanding i8

80 THE LANTERN.

found alike in the countenances of Beatrice and of the divine Child. In the Madonna of the Magnificat, and again, in the Madonna of the Poldi- Pezzoli Museum, there is a suggestion of Beatrice's protecting manner in the gesture of the infant Christ; like Beatrice, he points the way to the higher realm.

The "Birth of Venus," in the truest sense Botticelli's masterpiece, bears a significant relation to the illustrations of the Divine Comedy. Twice, and with striking similarity of thought, has Botticelli depicted the coming of beauty. In the drawing for Canto XXX of the Purgatorio, Beatrice is borne along in the midst of an ecstatic throng, her car drawn by a beast whose wings stretch immeasurable, out of sight, through the clouds. The flame of torches, held by angels, forms a canopy over her head, and the air is blurred by falling flowers. The multitude of surrounding figures, like so many symbols of adoration indefinitely multiplied, are im- pressive in their very repetition, and the whirlwind of motion in which they seem caught emphasizes the repose of Beatrice, who sits with averted head, in a kind of high indifference. The conception as a whole, however, is less lofty than that of the "Venus"; it has not the same irresistible force and truth. There is too little room in the picture, too much tumult and con- fusion. The "Venus," on the contrary, is characterised by an entire ab- sence of tumult. The form of the goddess, poised on a wind-blown shell, is brought into clear relief against wide spaces of sea and sky, those things which in all nature are most like the infinite. The picture offers variety in its unity through the finely-traced foliage of the trees, the elaborate robes of the attendant, the rich wings of the hovering zephyrs; and here, too, roses are drifting through the air. There is no such over-abundance of de- tail in the "Venus" as in the drawing for the Purgatorio, but a rare subordination of all minor matters. The extension into space of the beasts' wings in the drawing is paralleled by the limitless stretch of sea which flows in quaint wavelets upon a gentle and garden-like shore. The face of Venus recalls that of Beatrice in its untroubled calm, its purity, which the artist carries over into the inanimate world, symbolising it there in the light of gem-like transparency that rests upon this tranquil landscape. The spirit- ual countenance of the goddess, and a certain abstractness in the general composition of the picture, suggest that here again Botticelli is expressing some high idea, is viewing a conventional subject in the light of some inner significance. It presents the coming of beauty in a manner which connects it with the dawn of spiritual illumination. In the "Birth of

BOTTICELLI: AN INTERPRETATION. 81

Venus,"'" the goddess is blown to shore by the breath of personified winds, whose faces, blank as the serene sky behind them, suggest the unconscious might of nature. I like best to regard the gryphon, in the drawing for the "Purgatorio" as a symbol of this might of nature — nature which all un- thinking brings in the ideal, the vision, to the waiting soul of Dante. In its dignity and repose, however, the "Birth of Venus" recalls the illustra- tions for the "Paradiso," those drawings of Dante and Beatrice that seem traced on infinite space. In the drawings the ideal, received through the forces of nature, leads the aspiring soul onward to the realm of the abso- lute, where spiritual ideas, disembodied, are perceived only as light.

The "Birth of Venus" reveals the essence of Botticelli's genius; in it seem concentrated the moods of thoughtfulness and high aspiration vari- ously expressed in his other works. It records his preoccupation with the ideal, his effort, attended, as such effort must always be, by insurmountable difficulties, to present the infinite in finite form. The conception of the ideal as introduced through visible agencies, though convenient for pur- poses of art, is, after all, however, purely fanciful. Light and darkness cannot mingle; where one is the other is not. Spirit and matter, the posi- tive and the negative, by their very nature, cannot be expressed in the same terms. "The fonn accordeth not with the intention of the art, because that the material is dull to answer." This verse from the Paradiso, expressive of the sad inadequacy of all human art in portraying the unseen abso- lute might be applied as a criticism to all Botticelli's work. Beauty which, in the words of Diotima, is "everlasting, not growing and decaying, or waxing and waning; not in the likeness of a face or hands, or any part of the bodily frame, or in any form of speech or knowledge, or existing in any other being, as, for example, in an animal, or in heaven, or in earth, or in any other place; but beauty absolute, separate, simple and everlast- ing"— to behold such, thought must look beyond finite forms into the realm of Mind itself. "The true order of going," says Diotima, "is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upward for the sake of that other beauty, using these as steps only." With rare intuition Botticelli has perceived the high meaning underlying material form ; his pictures are pervaded by the aspiration toward loftier realms. Even in the work of this most spirit- ual of painters, however, one feels the vanity of all mortal effort to express the abstract — here, too, are the crude creations of human thought, mirror- ing, how faintly! the realities by which they must be supplanted.

Helen Townsend Scott, 1 910.

82 THE LANTERN.

Mortality.

'Tis not the world, — this prison where we wait, — Whether its rough and undisguised stone Bid us put faith in naught save walls alone ; Or tapestries with visions delicate For boundaries they curtain half atone;

What though the close-barred slits along the wall Look but on high gray battlements where attend Warders whose jests we may not comprehend, Nor to our questioning answer they at all, But soon or late from each man part his friend ;

Yet, of our fellows here in times long past,

Still, in the rock, we read the carven cry,

And feel a liberty that doth not die;

And hand to hand we yet may hold so fast

That hearts reiterate, "Thou art real ; and I."

And light and odours of the country-side Across the rigid ramparts hither stream; God's unseen fields that some a legend deem Girdle our narrow keep; the heart's warm tide Leaps to the sun. The prison is the dream.

Mabel Parker Huddleston, 1889.

THE AMATEUR AESTHETE. 83

The Amateur Aesthete.

Sometimes in the soft autumn or spring weather, Felicia, wearying of the dryness of her not too imaginative intellect, acquired the habit of yielding herself up to healing outdoor influences; of closing her mind, so to speak, and opening the senses, refusing impressions not directly enter- ing- through eye or ear or nostril. The inner inexplicable moments of well-being which formed the substantive portions of her almost uniform contentment she found were not in Nature's power — so directly addressed — to give, but came unsought, bestowed at unwarranted hours. But then neither could those other contrasted moments, just as inexplicable, of frus- tration and gloom find admittance, and as she grew older and this mood became less infrequent, she resorted more and more for the sake of her happiness to the use of her mere senses. She thought less and felt less, leaving herself as blank and mirror-like as possible for the reflection of all the beautiful and vivid, or, it may be, beautiful and obscure objects of the natural world.

On her walks in the countryside she dispensed with companions, more, it must be said in justice, for their sakes than her own. Roads, banks and wooded uplands, before disregarded in her eager attention to the subject under discussion, were now left behind her like a gallery of pictures, framed in memory. And this new life, for all its general low relief, passed not without its sudden and surprising elevations. An unexpected turn into a green, well-formed glade ; a glimpse of the white water levels seen for the first time through the trees delighted and comforted her. One she especially remembered : it was an autumnal vignette. Around the bend of a mad upon rising ground a red beech lifted itself against the sky, by the sheer intensity of its vermilion, essential colour, subjugating the land- scape. Yet it neither shone nor burned. Its leaves which had shed their fire lay opaque, painted upon the shimmering blue. Luminous and deep as was the ether, the beech for all its fragmentary outlines preserved its tint unblended, impressing itself upon the sight in unbroken contrast, a monotone in colour. . . .

A- a concession to the studious life she was supposed to be leading,

84 THE LANTERN.

in the morning hours she took her books and papers with her to a solitary chestnut tree at the foot of a hill. Latin plays or metaphysical inquiries were spread around her as she lay there, impervious alike to duty and prudence. Instead, she let her eyes wander up the hill-slope to its curving sky-line where grew in orderly profusion those pale last summer daisies, white and green-and-white as seen from the underside. They had sprang up among the grasses and in the rhythm of the swaying green blades their white heads leaned down before the mild breezes which were hardly more than flaws in the warm atmosphere. Like fine mosaic work were they set there, flower after enamelled flower. But at the top, through excess of light, the gleaming petals shrank and grew dark; the bending stems Vi- brated like black threads against the deep panel of the skjr with its blue- faced clouds. Butterflies, too small and swift for distinguishable colour, fluttered in among them, balanced a bare instant in the weak-stemmed grasses or cast their wavering shadows on the shining daisy petals.

By later fall her vigorous interests came crowding back. They filled out the time and her leisure was pleasantly spent witbin-doors or in the exercise of games. The great winds sweeping from heaven to earth, carry- ing the helpless crackling leaves in their folds; the aromatic odours and wreathing smoke of the burning heaps of dry leaves stimulated her only to more ardent practical occupations; she felt and thought more; she found her own mind companionable. Nature's old pageantry retreated in her perspective, until in cold weather it meant no- more than a comfortable contrast for the warmth within. Even beautiful winter days, from morning when the snow fell like sifted powder on the earth's worn face to afternoon when all sound and motion had sunk, snowed under, and the red sun set upon a silent wilderness of white, were merely pictures and remote from her reality. Bare days when the trees drooped and broke in their ice-casings and the sunlight made the commonest obstacle of incredible loveliness by prismatic play on its transparent shell, — Felicia wondered, an enthusiastic spectator of a detached show.

Toward the end of the year when she in common with the rest began to view her accomplishment, the wide discrepancy between expectation and performance, summer plannings quite omitted or come limping off, she was tempted to withdraw her ambitions and quietly detach herself from this work which dragged one so insensibly after it. Her spirits flagged and her energy ebbed. Her inner and outer life ruptured into an uncomfortable

THE AM&TEUK AESTHETE. 85

dualism; within all was turmoil, confusion, and dissatisfaction; outwardly she was passing her life in an orderly and assigned round, when days and hours were rung in and out by bells, accurately noting the passage of time.

No wonder, then, that with her impatience of all tokens and symbols she resented this artificial measurement of duty done, this persistent in- quiry into the day's work, and with the return of spring fled from lectures and irrational study appointed with reference to time merely, and from her heavy and fact-filled mind. Naturally she retreated to that known and imminent refuge in sensuous observation.

On fresh hushed mornings she went alone for spring flowers. She took a conscious pleasure in this poet-like solitude and paused to gather the oval blood-root buds, the hepaticas, gray-hooded, with the doubled keenness of true action which is also pretense. In the background of her mind hung like a curtain the tapestried weaving of sounds invisibly patterned with bird notes and the swish of swaying branches and the broken flow of water tumbling over stones.

Restless activity had betrayed her into melancholy; leisure and in- difference redeemed her; she had seldom known such pervasive happiness as came now and remained with her. It brought abundant joy to gaze up through fruit-tree branches at the blue sky; or at night when the moon was up to observe how it turned their pink to gray but curiously vivified the flower-formation. To read in the sunlight, more attentive to the light than to the pages, brooked frequent repetition. She would take her book — as beautiful a one as could be found — to the wide window-ledge and sit with the warm quiet outside and look up from the printed page at girls in groups or singly passing. But her glance returned more tenderly to the brass tracery jar holding the opening blood root, or to a small crystal one with the first few violets.

Grace Baynall Branham, 1910.

86

THE LANTERN".

College Themes.

"Besides, as it is fit for grown and able writers to stand of themselves, so it is fit for the beginner and learner to study others and the best ; . . . . not to imitate servilely .... but to draw forth out of the best and choicest flowers with the bee, and turn all into honey, work it into one relish and savour ; make our imitation sweet," — Ben Jonson : Discoveries.

"DOWN TO THE SEA IN SHIPS."

The path climbs up from the green salt marshes, up and up through the wind-blown grass to the place of graves on the hill top. Below lies a fisher- man's village, its white houses sleeping deep in fragrant old gardens, its nar- now streets leading steeply away from the dreaming harbor. There at the hill's very summit, apart from the close- set graves and in sight of the open sea, stands a single stone rising from sweet briar. This is its brief inscription : "Valentine Norton : lost at sea." Noth- ing more save two dates, with twenty years between, and yet in these inex- orable syllables sounds the terror of great waters; the endurance of those whose business is therein. How many of its sons have gone forth like thee, O Valentine, from yonder village, never to return? I see thee now, in thy shining youth, fair and lithe of limb, child of a sober island folk, worthy of the gal- lant cadence of thy name. With fare- wells gravely said, according to thy northern custom, with thy brave young spirit ready for the voyage, I can see thee set sail from thy haven to meet the rising sun. By what dire mis- chance, O fisherman, under what stress of storm or accident of calm, didst thou sacrifice thy life to the stern mis-

tress of thy people? Surely in any case, at the moment of thy deliverance from the dangers of the sea, thou didst return to the fragrant, dreaming streets of thy native village. In one glimpse, as from this hilltop, it lay before thee, its spires shining against a sunset sky, its fleet lying fast at anchor, and its day's work done. And though thy grave is empty, and thou art lost in- deed to those who loved thee, it may be that thou dost sometimes in very truth return, thou and all thy brothers whose sails have not been brought to any haven. Surely at sunset of some day in the year's falling, at the hour when men's hearts turn homeward, thou and the rest, a shadowy company, come stealing upward to the place which is given for the dead. Figures of gracious youth, old men erect and brave, gather silently and turn their faces toward the village. Steadfastly, wistfully, they gaze each one at the unseeing windows of some familiar cottage, and then out into the harbor, where lights blossom at the mast-heads. So until the violet mists of autumn fade out from the east, they stand, aliens, in the sight of the place that gave them birth, and vanish, at last, into the gray enfolding shadows of the night.

Marion Crane, 1911.

COLLEGE THEMES.

87

CLOUDS. - There are regions in the sky where no winds blow and clouds rest motion- less. The tranquility of those high re- gions surpasses language. — it resembles the intense repose that follows after storm. Foam-like flecks are entangled there in gauzy webs ; rent clouds lie scattered like sea-weed on a shore; an- other and more marvellous milky way arches across the sky. Against the blue are outlined traceries of exceed- ing delicacy — frost patterns and quaint arabesques, the semblance of pale flow- ers and stars, of crescents and white flame.

Not as others are these remote cloud shapes. They are more frail, more fftherial than any that come near to earth. The reticence that keeils them far away renders them fairer to our eyes. They are more lovely, because they belong just this side of the borderlands of sight. Purely material though they * be, they seem of the stuff of spirit. — the embodiment of our vague imagin- ings. When our visions would pass be- yond the sphere of things possessing form, these clouds give to them out- line and expression. Our fancies are full of just such gracious figures; the patterns into which our reveries fail are those we can trace there ; the coun- terparts of those very images float in the chambers of our dreams. It is pleasant to believe that some great winged being passed that way, and with lii^ plunitige brushed against the sky, for the fluted clouds lie all in fair confusion as if they had just been dis- turbed. Or perhaps we may fancy that the scattered shreds arc not clouds at all. but stray fallen feathers of some white bird of Paradise.

Helen Parkhurst, 1911.

A TANTALIZING CONVERSATION.

They had been talking for over half an hour, in a pleasant, superficial way. Now some one else claimed his atten- tion and Jean leaned back in her chair, idly watching the people around her, as she tried to analyze the man's half- baffling charm. She had enjoyed talk- ing to him, and yet constantly she had felt a certain, almost unconscious an- noyance. He seemed to promise so much, and yet, as she thought of it now, they had never really got away from the commonplace topics of ordi- nary conversation. Jean, in a sudden flash of intuition, knew that some- times when she walked in the neat, conventional, yet charming little park, she had experienced the same pleasant, but unsatisfactory emotion.

It was an odd fancy and had come to her suddenly, but it enabled her to understand him. In conversation with him, one could walk comfortably and happily down the broad asphalt of the commonplace. Occasionally the path took unexpected turns, but still the way lay open and inviting before one. It was only when one at- tempted to turn aside from this beaten track, and to overstep the low boundary dividing it from the pleasant lawn, that one noticed the signs, short and em- phatic, "Please keep off the grass." It was exasperating. Just beyond reach one could see rare flowers that one longed to come near to. Charming vis- tas, rather skilfully planned, it must be admitted, led to places one could never hope to reach. Distantly one could hear the sound of the tiny water- fall, full of the promise of shade and cool delight ; and yet, bound by the law Of his nature, one could never forsake the path, to wander in pleasant places.

88

THE LANTERN.

One was forced to close one's eyes to all that was emphatically denied to one, and continue to talk of small, pleasant, daily happenings, of plays and books and places.

Jean reflected that they must have many tastes, many theories in common, if she only knew how to reach him. She was unwilling to trespass. He had a right, if he wished, to erect signs in order to protect the pleasant places. If people were allowed to wander there at will, the greenery would become dry and dusty. Careless people might break the flowers, or in some way si- lence the voice of the water-fall. Jean, realizing all this, decided she would not run the risk of having the signs pointed out to her. That would be too humiliating. Rather, she would walk where she was welcome, until she was such a familiar figure that she would be invited to en.ioy the more intimate pleasures of the place.

She had been so absorbed in these thoughts that she had not noticed that he had turned to her once more. He repeated his question, and Jean, lean- ing forward to catch the faint fra- grance of the flowers she had seen far off. found herself, led by his pleasant, cool formality, once more at the en- trance gate. From there the voice of the water-fall was inaudible, and no patches of lovely colour could be seen. Impatiently she turned toward some

one else.

Murjorie Thompson. 1912.

SAINT MARIE. Of course Philadelphia has the ad- vantage over the barbarous West in the stock of her Christmas shops, but I

never pine so sadly for the warm, gay, lazy, muddy, oleander-scented streets of Saint Marie as when I have surren- dered my identity to a throng of stolid, disinterested, successful shoppers. Saint Marie is such a happy town, so keenly, eagerly alive — which is strange enough too, since, like all Western towns, many of its people are extremely near dead ; perhaps they romanticise life all the more because "the bird is on the wing." At all events, they present a brave front ; half foreign, half American, alto- gether motley ; Mexicans. Chinese, In- dians, and so many, many kinds of English ; girls with unpardonable pom- padours, but pleasant eyes under them ; young boys who dash about on ungainly Indian ponies — not "to get there." but to make people look up ; smiling women on uncommonly easy terms with the grocers' clerks who run eagerly, paur- ingly out from the open-front shops to save their patroness from climbing out between the clayey wheels of the fam- ily barouche. "Lettuce? Yes, indeed, lovely this morning, a cent a head," and run back into the shops at top speed to select the coolest and crispest, run out again to show it, run in to wrap it, out once more to tuck it under the carriage seat, then stand on the curb and bow farewell as if the barouche held the brave crew of the "Santa Maria" heaving forth for parts un- known. Oh, be kind to the good name of the American shop-clerk until you have been to Saint Marie!

And gaiety is never conspicuous on Saint Marie streets, though impene- trable reserve might be. Men in gray flannel shirts, or Khaki, and felt som- breros loaf in door-ways, but they are not loafers, not the sort of loafers that

COLLEGE THEMES.

89

make women shrivel up and draw close their skirts and scuttle by with set faces. Far from it. And Western girls stroll by in white slippers and blue ribbons. — and felt sombreros ! I regret to say, — and single out the men they know and ask them if they are "going tonight." And the men always are. And I always wish I were. too. But I never am. for I live in the country, and now that the sun is touching the gilded side of the court-house dome I must go for the horse, and turn my back upon life.

Ruth George, 1910.

THE CLAVICHORD.

It is a pretty toy. this clavichord, with its glossy green case all daintily penciled in scrolls and script of gold. iis lowset keyboard, its keys scarce wide enough for a maiden's finger-tips. And to our crude hearing, used to the crash of large instruments, the first sound from the clavichord is. per- chance, but a playful tinkle, or at best but a shower of silvery sounds, like the fall of summer rain. As the tones take fcirni in our listening ears, the room ex- pands, the walls give undue space, and we draw into the narrow circle of the Bound. Tbere is real music, sweet and reedy, like the song of the hermit - thrush, and yet more fine, as if the narrow-throated humming bird bad found voice. Hut the quick-dropping notes are as strange t" us as the call of a bird must always be. — for its meaning is given to Ihe ears of birds and not to men.

Only the melody is somewhat akin to our senses — a melody weaving a deli- cate pattern, fine and clear, like a

sketch in silver-point. Can it be that these filmy intervals, these chords ris- ing like miniature towers of silver, took shape first in the mind of Sebastian Bach? The sound of his heavy Ger- man name might almost shatter this fairy structure. Rather is it a court music for some dainty midsummer kingdom, where wee softly stepping figures dauce the minuet.

Marion Crane, 1911.

OUR BARN.

It was a midsummer morning and my brother and I had taken refuge in the cool brown depths of the old barn.

From where we lay now, hidden in the gloom of rustling hay, we could feel on our cheeks every breath of the fragrant wind that set the doors creak- ing lazily to and fro like a slow-moving fan ; we could see the travelling paths of sunlight that flickered crookedly down at us through its knotholes as it swung, and far above, a widening and narrowing band of blue sky.

Directly overhead, the pigeon-loft gloomed with the mystery of dark recesses, where shadowy rafters tower- ed, festooned with whispering strings of herbs, and flecked bright with ears of corn. From time to time also there filtered down puffs of shimmering dust, scattered by the busy pigeons that cooed and strutted about up there in the twilight.

Near us in the low crib of a milk- ing-stall lived a whole family of tail- less yellow kittens. Of course there was a mother-cat also, who purred sedately and opened sleepy topaz eyes now and then in the dark- ness of ihe far corner; but she did not

90

THE LANTERN.

matter. It was the kittens that en- livened this quiet place, dashing madly hither and thither in quest of a danc- ing sunbeam, a trailing straw, or their own ridiculous shadows. They would topple solemnly in single file over the edge of the rough manger and then clamber gaily up the long incline of Brother's brown "knickers" and pink- shirred back as he lay stretched out along the wall, as always, reading. Sometimes he put out a thin tanned hand and patted the ball of yellow Buff, then he would run it through his tousled hair, and his slow hazel eyes would fall to the page again.

Behind him the arm of a fluttering green beech-tree in the sunlight waved up and down through a long-broken pane, and beyond, in the back corner- stall. Bob, our old work-horse, sighed contentedly in the gloom, munching his halter from time to time or whisking off the slow-droning flies with his pa- tient brown tail.

The place was all very still and fra- grant and cool. The sunlight-splashed floor seemed to undulate gently with the swaying door. Occasionally a fat white duck craned an inquisitive neck over the threshold, and fled unsteadily at the sight of brown legs and pink sunbonnet. In the far corner the glint of a rusty scythe, hitherto unnoticed, looked like a solemnly winking eye. Against my cheek the rough timothy hay smelled very sweet ; and out of the corner of my eye I could see Brother's tousled head sunk low over his book. The big twilight rafters overhead were receding more and more, and the loft was floating off into infinite distance. In the far corner the old horse stamped and shifted his weight now and then,

raising pale clouds of chaff from the yellow straw and filling all the place with soft thunder ; and away in the manger the yellow cat purred steadily over her sleeping kittens.

Dorothy Wolff, 1912.

THE AMERICAN PORCH.

(Being an exercise in periodic structure.) However cheaply bizarre we Ameri- cans may be — and they say we are about as bad as possible — however un- original and unereative, and however vulgar about confusing the sign for the thing signified, at least we have for our very own, as a concrete expression — and a very creditable one — to the idea known as "home comfort," that most American institution, the front porch — long may it live and thrive! For though it would be presumption, I know, to imply that rush mats and Japanese shades and electric porch globes have not penetrated to the very heart of Europe, yet I make no doubt, without having once left New York harbour, that an Italian piazza, or a Spanish veranda, or a French bal- cony is not, neither indeed can be, an American porch. For, unless Euro- peans are as ostentatious as we are — perish the thought ! — and unless they are as keen about living up to their next door neighbours (I blush for the impiety of the suggestion) as they pay us the compliment of describing us, and unless they are bent upon comfort even at the tremendous price of originality — unless they are all this, which, of course, Americans are — then, for them, avenue on avenue of awning-stripped,

COLLEGE THEMES.

91

vine-draped, willow-furnished porches all just alike are, in the nature of things, impossible. The really Ameri- can quality about American front porches is that they are all alike. And say what you will, an extension reclin- ing chair is just as comfortable, and for Americans far more comfortable, for having a counterpart on every porch in the block.

Ruth George, 1910.

THROUGH A GLASS. On the veranda of an old-fashioned house, one usually sees, glistening in the sunlight, a glass tank. When one looks through its transparent sides one beholds strange water wonders, castles and nooks of moss-covered rock, curious plants whose long streamers float with every current, and slow-moving, wide- eyed fish, with sparkling copper scales. Just this impression I have always had from looking through the doorway into a certain room — the impression of light, and glittering brightness, and re- flection. The room has many windows, so that the sun's rays can enter at every time of day. The windows are hung on each side with a long, narrow strip of thin, sea-green silk. As the breeze moves these streamer-like dra- peries, I fancy Ihey resemble seaweeds affected by the slight movement of water enclosed in an aquarium. This motion and the sunlight are reflected over and over again by an amazing collection of mirrors that hang between the windows, the gilt frames blending with the yellow of the walls so that one scarcely distinguishes the place of Joining, aii ii. is glass gives an In- describable effect of shining depth and

pellucidity; yet the light is reflected in a singular manner, so that the atmos- phere of the room is translucent and hazy, as if a ripple had just disturbed the calm of water ; when I gaze into the room I almost expect to see the out- lines of the furniture waver. Yet, the tables and objects in the room when looked at intently, are quite solid and unmoving. Strangely enough, how- ever, their number seems to vary ac- cording as one perceives fewer or more of the reflections in the mirrors. One is bewildered as when one tries to count the objects in an aquarium, look- ing half through the side, half through the open top.

The little stands and chairs about the room, of carved wood or of rough reeds, form curious nooks. Prom various crystal bowls, from brass vases the light flashes as the sun gleams for an instant on some bit of mica in the sand on the bottom of the tank, and then ceases to dazzle when one loses the proper angle. The owner of the room seems, moreover, truly to belong there. Her gliding movements as she slips along through the mazes of oddly shaped chairs and queer plants, her copper-red hair shining with an almost scaly gleam, her eyes that look curi- ously yet impenetrably out upon things — this, too, is suggestive and my fancy plays half-seriously with the doctrine of metempsychosis.

Lorle Stecher, 1012.

THE SEA.

The sunset glow faded ; the evening

star was lost among the gathering hosts

of heaven. As the muffling darkness

settled I watched them gather, numer-

92

THE LANTERN.

ous as the nations on the day of judg- ment. Before me stretched away the hidden waters of the ocean — the ocean which pounded, pounded, on the peb- bles with the dread monotony of doom ; collecting all Its powers it lifted itself to strike, only to ebb back into the night. For a little way out I could see it, see where the dim breakers gnashed their white teeth and struggled toward

the land, tugging against the force which momentarily seemed about to let slip the noose. In terror I turned away from it, but I could not lose the sense of its presence. Far up the coast it stretched, farther than the last faint boom of those distant waves breaking miles away, farther than the straining imagination could follow it, to the cold waters of the northern ocean.

Grace B agnail Branfiam, 1910.

COLLEGIANA. 93

Collegiana.

THE GRADUATE CLUB.

President — Margaret Elizabeth Brusstar, Vice-President — Emily C. Crawford. Secretary — Helen Maxwell Kino. Treasurer — Helen Cox Bauerman. The Graduate Club this year has had an unusually large number of mem- bers— 75, of whom 58 are resident at the college. During the year three formal meetings have been held, at which President Thomas addressed the Club on "The Ideal College" ; Dr. Penniman, of the University of Pennsylvania, on "Culture and Civic Responsibilities" ; and Dr. Herbert Weir Smyth-Eliot, Pro- fessor of Greek at Harvard University, on "Aspects of Romanticism in Greek Literature." The Club expects to hold two more formal meetings during the year, at which one outside speaker and one home professor will speak.

The faculty of the college entertained the Graduate Club at a reception at the beginning of the year, and they have instituted a new custom of giving teas each month to the graduate students. These teas are very informal and have been greatly enjoyed.

On January 8th the Graduate Club entertained the Senior Class at a cotillion given in the gymnasium, and on February 25th the Senior Class enter- tained the graduates at a delightful tea in Rockefeller Hall.

The usual daily teas have been given in the club room throughout the year, and hockey and tennis teams and gymnasium classes have been organised for the graduates by the athletic director.

B. M. K. » * *

THE PHILOSOPHICAL CLUB. President — Mary Worthington, 1910. Vice-President and Treasurer — I.ois Lehman, 1911. Secretary — Mary Alden Morgan, 1912. The Philosophical Club began the year with an unusually large membership. On December 11th the Club gave a tea, at which the members of the departments of Philosophy and Psychology were invited to meet the members of the Club. That evening Dr. Stanton Colt, chairman of the West London Ethical Society, delivered a remarkably brilliant address on "Eugenics," which gave rise after- ward to an enthusiastic discussion. In April the Club will be addressed by Dr. Charles M. Bukewell, Professor of Philosophy In Yale University.

L. P. L., 1911.

94 THE LANTERN.

CHRISTIAN UNION.

President — Ruth Babcock, 1910. Vice-President — Hilda Smith, 1910. Treasurer — Ethel Richardson, 1911. Secretary — Mary Alden Morgan. 1912.

Work this year has been carried on vigorously through the various com- mittees. Handbooks of information were sent during the summer to the incoming Freshmen, who were helped at their registration in Taylor by the Membership Committee. A reception to the new students was given early in October. Miss Thomas, Miss Applebee and Miss Babcock spoke. An unusually large number of Freshmen joined the Christian Union this year, making the total members 194.

The Sunday evening services, which have taken the place of the Wednesday evening ones, have been well attended, and there have beeu many good speakers. The choir, enlarged this year, has led the singing, and varied it by different anthems.

Boxes of clothing have been sent to Kensington, and an annual sum of money has been sent to Miss Tsuda's School, Japan, and to the Woman's Medical Mission in India. Money is also being collected for Dr. Grenfell's work in Lab- rador.

Work among the college maids and the laboratory boys has gone on as usual. Classes for the maids include a sewing class, Sunday school, and Glee Club. A Christmas tree and a party for the maids were given just before the holidays. The maids' libraries in each hall have been kept up as before.

Bible and Mission Study classes have been held as usual during the year. Besides those led by students, there were two conducted by Mr. Morris and Dr. Ross.

The Daily Vacation Bible School, in charge of Lillie James, was very suc- cessful last summer in Philadelphia ; 343 children, mostly Hebrews, were en- rolled, and work carried on in hammock-making, raffia-weaving, sewing, etc.

A new feature this year has been the Settlement Class Committee, a joint committee of the League and the Christian Union, under the direction of Miss Applebee. Classes in cooking, gymnastics, dancing, etc., have been carried on regularly at the different settlements.

The most important outcome of the year's work resulted from the growing need felt by the Boards of the League and the Christian Union for one religious organisation in the college. To avoid duplication of committee work, to secure the best work on the committees, and to represent the religious life of the col- lege as no longer divided in form, as it is not divided in spirit, the Christian Union agreed to dissolve the organisation, on condition that the League should also dissolve, the dissolution to take place on the adoption of a constitution for one new religious organisation of the college. This was accomplished on March 11th.

H. W. £., 1910.

COLLEGIANA. 95

THE BRYN MAWE LEAGUE FOE THE SEEVICE OF CHRIST. President — Elsie Deems, 1910. Vice-President — Margaket Sheabeb, 1910. Treasurer — Kate Chambers, 1911. Secretary — Helen Barber, 1912.

During this year the League has carried ou its regular activities, which have differed little from those of former years.

In June a delegation of twelve members was sent to Silver Bay for the summer conference. The Intercollegiate Committee made all arrangements for this delegation as usual.

The Religious Meetings Committee has arranged for the regular Sunday afternoon services. On account of the Sunday evening religious services held under the auspices of the Christian Union for the whole college, no outside speakers have been asked to lead these meetings.

The Bible Study Committee prepared a course of summer vacation reading for the students. It also planned and held four Bible classes each semester.

The Missionary Committee has planned and held four Mission Study Classes each semester. In union with the Missionary Committee of the Christian Union, the money was raised and all arrangements made for sending the Bryu Mawr delegation to the Student Volunteer Convention held in Rochester during the last week of December. Out of the delegation fund, beside the expenses of the delegates, a sum of money was paid out for the latest and best books on mis- sions. Bryn Mawr was truly privileged to be allowed a representation at that very wonderful and significant convention.

The philanthropic work this year has been carried on through a joint com- mittee under the League and the Christian Union, with Miss Applebee as its chairman. Gymnasium classes and sewing classes have been led by members at the Philadelphia settlements. Work has been done also for the children at the Homoeopathic Hospital there. Summer sewing was done by very many, and distributed in the fall where it seemed most needed. .Forty-eight dolls were dressed for Christmas distribution, and a party was given for the women's class at Kensiuglou, at which presents were given to all the members.

The Finance Committee has collected and distributed the League subserip- tlous to the work of Mr. Tonomura, city missionary in Tokio, Japan, and to Miss Jean Batty. Y. W. C. A. Secretary in South America, and other regular interests that it has supported.

Two delegates were sent to a week-end conference at Wellesley on March 12th to 14th.

In all the work of the League during this past year the feeling among the members thai it is not the will of God that there should be disunity in the Christian life and effort in Bryn Mawr has been a growing one. In many ways the League and the Christian Union have been drawn together, and have come to the consciousness that they need not work as separate forces in college. After

96 THE LANTERN.

three months of prayerful thought and planning, the executive boards of the League and the Christian Union drew up a constitution for an organisation with a new basis, to be the one religious organisation in college, if acceptable to the members of the existing League and Christian Union. On Friday, March ]lth, the League dissolved its constitution and became one with the Christian Union in the Bryn Mawr Christian Association, on the basis suggested by the boards. The League has exerted a very significant influence over the religious life of the college, and all of those who have loved it and have worked in it in the past are looking forward trustfully toward the great results to come from this final step that it has taken.

E. D., 1910.

* * *

THE CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION.

President — Leila Houghteling, 1911.

Vice-President — Kate Chambers, 1911.

Treasurer— Catherine Arthurs, 1912.

Secretary — Eleanor Bontecou, 1913. Once more and under a new guise Bryn Mawr College is permitted to take that highest of earthly prerogatives — the opportunity to begin again. On March 11, 1910, the Christian Union and the Bryn Mawr League for the Service of Christ dissolved, and there was formed the Bryn Mawr Christian Association. The College, as it meets under this new name, is still blankly uncharacterised, like the face of a stranger in a strange place. We have made for ourselves a new instrument, and we are not yet familiar with its powers. But the blame is not upon those most concerned if the whole College does not know its pur- pose. It was fashioned, as the constitution has it, "to strengthen the religious life of the members of the College." For this end, so continually kept in mind, so rigorously adhered to, great sacrifices have been made.

There has been an effort to lay aside all prejudices, both common and in- dividual. Not only have we relinquished our preconceived notions as to the opposite point of view, but we have even dared (and this is the perilous ad- venture) to question our own convictions as to method, to doubt whether, after all, we have worked with the greatest possible efficiency for the glory of God in this College. And now, not without trepidation, but with giving of thanks, we find in our hands the result of our conclusions.

There is, indeed, a danger that in the sacrifice of what we have judged to be less essential to our purpose, we may lose the invaluable forces which these things have helped to engender. There is a firmness developed by persistence against pressure, an ardour born of unswerving loyalty, which make for strength of spirit. And there is nothing more enervating than an atmosphere of com- promise. We are not to feel, however, that as individuals we have yielded at all, or that any one of us has compromised her faith. Rather the sacrifices have been made by the corporate body, that each of its members may have space for her own development in behalf of all the others. For this must be the dom- inating principle of the new organisation, that the heaviest responsibility for maintaining its efficiency shall rest upon the individual. The spirit of the Chris- tian Association must be developed, not by conditions imposed upon it from without nor by the blind force of public opinion, but first in the silent heart of each one of us. No perfection of smoothly running machinery, no successful completion of corporate undertaking can accomplish our end, but only the presence of God.

M. C, 1911.

COLXEGIANA. 97

THE ENGLISH CLUB. President — Ruth George, 1910.

Grace Branham, 1910. Ruth Collins, 1910. Katharine Liddell, 1910. Helen Scott, 1910. Charlotte Claflin, 1911. Marion Crane, 1911. Mat Egan. 1911. Helen Parkhurst, 1911. During the year 1909-10 the members of the English Club have been writing, for their own benefit and interest, a translation of Michelet's Jeanne D'Arc. Parts of this translation, and other papers, have been read at the regular fort- nightly meetings of the Club.

Miss Donnelly has been lending to the Club the newest books, which serve as an "English Club Library" for the use of the members. There has been more or less informal discussion of these books in the meetings. On April 30 there will be a formal meeting of the Club, at which Mr. A. L. Smith, Junior Dean of Balliol College, Oxford, will speak.

M. C, 1911.

* * *

THE ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION.

President — Elba Denison, 1910.

Vice-President and Treasurer — Elizabeth Faries. 3912.

Secretary — Kate Chambers, 1911.

In-door Manager — France Heabne, 1910.

Outdoor Manager — Helen Emerson, 1911. There was even more interest than usual this year in hockey. The inter- class championship was won again by 1910. The Varsity, with Katherine Rotan as captain, won unfailing victory in a long series of games against the League teams, but met defeat at the hands of the All Philadelphia Team in the last game of the season. Last spring a varsity tennis team of three was chosen to play the Merion Cricket Club. Though the Varsity was beaten in the matches, a keener interest in tennis has been aroused by the possibility of winning a B. M. The class championship In tennis was won by 1913. Gordan Hamilton, 1913, challenged and defeated Anne Whitney, 1900, for the college cup. The opening of the beautiful new white-tiled pool marked an epoch in water sports. Many people have taken lessons in fancy diving. Water-polo games have not yet been played. The new swimming cup was won by 1910. The college records of 70- and 140- foot front were broken by Eleanor Elmer, 1913. College records were made in 70-foot back swim by Dorothy Ashton, 1910, and in 140-foot back by Clara Ware, 1910. The individual cup was won by Eleanor Elmer, 1913. In the track meet of this year, 1911 won first place, while the individual cup was held by Helen Emerson, 1911, who broke college records in broad Jump, and in hop, skip and jump. E. D., 1910.

98 THE LANTERN.

THE SCIENCE CLUB. President — Janet Howell. 1910.

Vice-President and Treasurer — Mary Worthington, 1910. Secretary — Helen Tredway. 1911. The Science Club this year has consisted of seventeen undergraduates and two graduate members. Two formal meetings have been held. On the eighteenth of December Prof. Samuel Wesley Stratton, of the National Bureau of Stand- ards, gave a lecture on "National Standards of Measurements." illustrated by lantern slides ; and on the eighth of April Prof. Leo Loeb, of the School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, gave an address on the subject of Cancer.

J. T. H., 1910.

* * *

CONSUMERS' LEAGUE. President — Miriam Hedges, 1910.

Vice-President and Treasurer — Esther Cornell, 1911. Secretary — Dorothy' Wolff, 1912. Advisory Officer — Miss Marion Parris. The Consumers' League has had 125 members for the year 1909-1910, and has experienced an altogether successful year. Many letters have been written in support of various definite reforms, and the students have become more alive to their responsibility in their buying and in their dealings with labouring people.

M. //., 1910.

* • *

COLLEGE SETTLEMENT CHAPTER. Elector-— Florence Wood, 1911. Secretary — Frances Porter, 1911. Treasurer — Leonora Lucas. 1912. The membership of the College Settlement Chapter shows a slight increase this year over that of last year. The dues are not entirely collected yet, but we expect the membership to include about ninety students.

Early in the year the Chapter gave a costume dance in the gymnasium, charging a small admission fee, to raise money for its current expenses.

On the fifth of February, Miss Geraldine Gordon, organising secretary of the College Settlement Association, gave a very interesting talk on settlement work. Miss Goi don's address was particularly interesting because of her active and sympathetic i 'erest at that time in the shirtwaist makers' strike in Phila- delphia.

Students have gone into the Philadelphia Settlements as usual this winter to help take care of the children on Saturday mornings. The gymnasium classes, however, have been discontinued, owing to the difficulty in having regular teachers. On the fourteenth of May we hope to have a large party of the Settle- ment children to spend the day at Bryn Mawr, as they did last spring.

F. W., 1911.

COLLEGIANA. 99

THE BRYN MAWR CHAPTER OF THE COLLEGE EQUAL

SUFFRAGE LEAGUE.

President — Mary Wobthington, 1910.

Vice-President — Margaret Prussing, 1911.

Secretary — Pauline Clarke, 1912.

Advisory Board — Elsa Denison, 1910. Amy Walker, 1911. During the first semester the League held no formal meeting, but endeavoured to interest the incoming class as well as anti-suffragists by informal discussions in all the halls. These meetings took place during the second week in December. They were led by the President, Mary Worthington, who presented the practical and theoretical aspects of the reasons why women should vote. The effect of equal suffrage in western states, women and the law, and the purposes of the League were treated by other officers and members of the board. From the dis- cussion that took place and the interest aroused by means of these meetings the officers and board were convinced that only ignorance of conditions kept college women from joining in the movement for suffrage.

In the second semester a formal meeting was held, at which Mrs. Hooker, of Baltimore. Bryn Mawr, 1901, spoke on "How Women Can Best Fulfill Their Duties." Mrs. Hooker has studied at Johns Hopkins University and is devoting her life to work among girls and women in Baltimore, and she believes that women cannot do their duties at home or help other women without the power of the ballot to enforce their demands for necessary relief measures. The speech was followed by questions and discussion. No meeting of the League has so stirred the college, and convinced its members of the duty women owe to the community.

The League membership Is this year 140.

li. P., 1911.

* * *

TROPHY CLUB.

President — Susanne C. Allinson, 1910. Secretary — Leila Houghteling, 1911. Treasurer — Helen Henderson, 1911. We have been gradually completing and correcting the brass nameplates in Pembroke East and West, and we hope by Commencement to have names in most of the rooms of Merlon. The records for Merlon are incomplete and confusing at times, but considering the hoary antiquity of the hall it is too much to expect of the alunin;e to remember their rooms or room mates, so we fear the list will never be perfectly correct. We hope, however, that by the twenty-fifth anni- versary most of the Merlon alumme will find their names correctly inscribed in their old rooms.

A card catalogue is being made of everything In the Trophy Club, and also of the things which are lacking. S. C. A., 1910.

100 THE LANTERN.

GLEE CLUB. Conductor — Mb. Selden Miller. Leader — Elizabeth Tenney, 1910. Business Manager- — Esther Cornell. 1911. Assistant Business Manager — Mary Scbibner. 1912.

The Glee Club, numbering this year about sixty-four members, gave its annual concert with the Mandolin Club on the nineteenth of March. This unusu- ally «arly date was selected on account of the May Day F6te. The time for re- hearsals being, as a result, somewhat limited, it was decided to give over tb« singing of Christmas carols to the choir. The concert on March nineteenth was considered a great success. Miss Tenney conducted with much spirit and Mies Denison's solos were very beautiful indeed.

E. C, 1911.

MANDOLIN CLUB.

Director — Mr. Paul Eno.

Leader— Agnes M. Irwin, 1910.

Business Manager — Carlotta Welles. 1912.

Assistant Business Manager — Lydia Stetson, 1913.

The membership in the Mandolin Club this year has increased from sixteen to twenty-nine, and the interest has been very well sustained. On account of May Day the annual concert of the musical clubs was given in March instead of in May. As this decreased the number of meetings, it was impossible to do more than prepare for the concert. The concert program was well rendered, and Miss Hoffman's cello solo gave variety to the program. The large number of Freshmen and Sophomores in the club this year gives it an unusually good pros- pect for next year.

A. M. I., 1910.

UNDERGRADUATE ASSOCIATION. President — Mabel Ashley, 1910.

Vice-President and Treasurer — Margaret Trussing, 1911. Secretary — Catherine Delano, 1911. Assistant Treasurer — Fanny Crenshaw, 1912.

COLLEGIANA. 101

SELF-GOVERNMENT ASSOCIATION. President — Hilda Wobthington Smith, 3910. Vice-President — Elsie Deems. 1910. Graduate Member — Maegaret Bbusstab. Secretary — Mary Minor Watson Taylor, 1911. Treasurer — Virginia Custer Canan, 1911. Executive Board — Hilda W. Smith, 1910.

Elsie Deems, 1910.

Leila Houqhteling, 1911.

Marion Crane, 1911.

Majigabet Bbusstab.

EUROPEAN FELLOWSHIPS FOR THE YEAR 1910-11. Bryn Uanr European Fellow— Helen Miiller Bley. President's Euroixan Fellow — Helen Maxwell King. Mary E. Garrett European Felloic — Eunice Morgan Schenk. Anna Ottendorfer Memorial Felloicship in Teutonic Philology — Jane Harrieoa.

102

THE LANTERN.

Leviore Plectro.

LULLABY.

Baby is drifting thro' Sunset-Land

In a rainbow-craft of dreams ; Where the cloud-banks looming on

either hand Slope to a glittering golden strand

All washed by silvery streams; Where grim cloud-battlements tower and frown And fairy palaces rise. And a white cloud-squadron comes sailing down On the azure deep of the skies.

Baby is floating thro' Shadow-Land

Where things look dim and strange, Where soundless waves beat a shape- less strand, And vague, mysterious figures stand,

Hover and shift and change ; Where drowsy fancies shape the gloom

In shadowy goblin-guise, Who weave strange spells at a ghostly loom

To curtain the heavy eyes.

TUNICA PALLIO PROPRIOR.

My coat is nearer than my cloak ; Inside

My coat is an integument of pride. Marianne Moore, 1909.

CASTLES IN THE SAND.

We built them upon the shining sand, Looking over the infinite sea,

And the light that was never on sea or land Glowed warm on our masonry.

Towers and moat and a garden long

And a wandering sea-wall there, We built to the lilt of a laughing song In the dreamlit summer air.

Baby is anchored off Slumber-Land Where the dim earth fades from sight. Where the moonbeams sleep in their

soft cloud-beds. And the little star-babies have cradled their heads On the broad mother-bosom of Night. — Little Dream-Ship, with your white sails furled. Rest in your haven deep ; A moonlit silence is flooding the world And the baby is fast asleep.

Caroline Reeves Foulke, 1896.

But the tide swept up, as tides will sweep, With steady resistless flood, And there's never a ripple on all the deep To tell where our castles stood.

Fools were we, doubtless, to build them here On the shifting, wave-beat strand, But they are happy fools who rear Their castles on the sand.

Katharine Liddell, 1910.

LEVIORE PLECTRO." 103

HER VOICE.

There is a sweetness in her voice

Too good for all the world to share; To them it is a pleasant sound,

To me beyond compare.

Sometimes a single word she says

More soft than wild-rose buds that part ; Sometimes it is a wordless sound

That echoes in my heart.

O sweet ! the wind that thrills the pines

Has no such music to my ears : There is a sweetness in her voice

Too sweet for all to hear.

Content Shepard Nichols, 1899.

MY SENSES DO NOT DECEIVE ME. QUI S'EXCUSE, S'ACCUSE.

Like the light of a candle Art is exact perception ;

Blown suddenly out, If the outcome is deception

I witness illusion. Then I think the fault must lie

And subsequent doubt. Partly with the critic's eye,

Like a drop in the bucket And no man who's done his part

And liquid as flame, Need apologize for art. Is the proof of enjoyment Marianne Moore, 1909.

Compared with the name.

Marianne Moore, 1909.

104

THE LANTERN.

THE RHODONIA CAMPESTRIS.

It was in the second winter of Uncle Dick's stay in the West Indies that he sent us the Rhodonia Campestris. When we opened the box and found nothing inside but a lot of earth, we were not surprised, for he had often sent us specimens before in his travels, remembering Mother's passion for plants, and our garden by this time was as cosmopolitan as a Swiss pension. Mother read us his enclosed letter, tell- ing about the Rhodonia Campestris,- — how it was rare except in the heart of tropical forests, and valued for its per- fume as well as appearance. We got out the big botany and hunted for it, but it was not to be found. However, the load of tropical earth was carefully removed to a large pot, and installed along with the rest of Mother's pro- teges at the window in the south room. We took turns watering, and waited impatiently for the newcomer to show itself.

When the tiny green shoot had once appeared it grew with great rapidity. By April it was almost a shrub ; the stalk was stiff and hard, and the leaves were like metal plates, dark and glossy. Mother did not dare to set it out till she was sure of summer weather; so we kept it in the house until the end of May. By that time it was full of buds, swelling till they all but burst their tight green covers. Of course it was the show-piece of the house in those days ; Mother exhibited it to every one who came in, and people used to call to see "the new plant your brother Rich- ard sent."

The first Sunday in June was Flower Sunday. Mother always took com- mand of the decorating, and this year

she counted on having Rhodonia Cam- pestris to second her. Sure enough, the first buds opened Friday ; on Sat- urday it was all out in purple pomp, the broad petals spreading bowl-fashion round deep golden centres. "I don't notice the perfume Dick speaks of," said Mother, sniffing, "but perhaps that will come when they have been out a while." She cut the stems of the handsomest blossoms with her sharpest plant knife; we all stood by and watched the process, which had somewhat the dignity of a rite. Then she went on ahead to church with her armful screened by damp tissue-paper, leaving us to get ready and follow after. When we arrived I own I caught my breath ; I had never seen the place look so lovely. There was trailing green stuff all over the walls, and along the back of every pew, and the wealth of June flowers setting all alight. But the crowning glory was Rhodonia, — ■ our own Rhodonia, — hanging her blos- soms like great jewels below the pul- pit, flaunting her color almost arro- gantly in the face of the congregation. You could feel the people as they went to their seats nudging one another to look at Mother's tropical plant ; and I for one felt as if the honour of the day were hers and Rhodonia's alone.

The minister made some allusion in the beginning of his sermon to "the isles of the sea yielding their tribute to adorn God's house," and after that he went on so smoothly that I almost dropped asleep. It was when he inter- rupted himself by a sharp sneeze that I awoke, and realized that Rhodonia's blossoms were opening wider and burn- ing more intensely as the sun fell across them. I had lost myself again in gaz-

LEVIOKE PLECTRO.

105

iag at them when Dr. Darrow sneezed a second time, and a minute later somebody else. I remember speculat- ing as to the possible prevalence of hay fever, while the sneezes followed one another like pistol practice up at the fort. Then a sudden thought struck me, and I nearly jumped out of my seat. I stole a glance at Mother. She was holding her slim figure very erect, and a charming color was creeping into her cheeks and deepening there second by second.

How we got through that service I don't know. It must have been some- thing like an evening party in the days of snuff-taking. The hymns were the worst. After it was over the routed congregation streamed out, their faces buried in their handkerchiefs, and Mother went up and stripped that pul- pit the first thing. Dr. Darrow was really very nice to her; but she got out as quickly as she could by the back way.

So we carried Rhodonia's disgraced progeny home, and Rhodonia herself we transplanted to a solitary eminence in the back garden — a sort of St. Helena. She was in view from the road as well as from the house, so her regal beauty was not wasted; and Truesdell, the man, watered her with the hose. I was bound it was a practical joke on Uncle Dick's part ; but Mother held stoutly to faith in her brother, and would have it that he was ignorant of the plant's peculiarities. When he wrote us that he would be back before fall we agreed not to mention the sub- ject to him unless he inquired. How- ever, he had not been in the house an hour when he asked after his dear Ruo- donla.

"She's in the back garden," I said; "Wouldn't you like to come out and see her?"

We formed a little procession to es- cort him into Rhodonia's presence. When he saw her, still in bloom, he stopped dead ; then he burst into a peal of laughter that lasted quite a minute.

"Did you," he asked, as soon as he could, "did you, may I ask, by any chance try to keep that plant in the house?"

"We did more than that," I said; "we adorned the church with it."

"And this — er — exile is the conse- quence?"

"It is."

He laughed again ; I thought he would never stop.

"Why, you poor people," he sobbed at last, "didn't you see the Rhodonia?"

"That's the Rhodonia."

"It's the common snuff-weed, — the plague of our lives, I can tell you, — at least in the interior ; they've nearly got it stamped out along the coast. I didn't suppose any of it got mixed In with the earth I sent you."

Then we all remembered some puny sprouts that came up a little while after the Rhodonia ; but her magnifi- cent roots choked them out so quickly as almost to save us the trouble of weeding.

"Never mind," said Uncle Dick, when we had partially quieted down, "I've brought some of the real Rhodonia along in case the first didn't do well. You wait and see."

So we waited ; and when by-and-by the real Rhodonia came out, in delicate, waxy-white blossoms, we were almost too glad to remember the imposture practiced on us by that bold-faced ad-

106 THE LANTEBN.

venturer of a plant. I was especially friend, as they gathered round her

pleased for Mother's sake; for when when service was over, "Yes, that's

Flower Sunday came round again, she the plant my brother Dick brought me

twined the white flowers underneath from the West Indies." the pulpit, and repeated to friend after Charlotte Isabel Claflin, 1911.

MIXED GEOGRAPHY. Said Mary, "I love without bound This ocean so blue and profound." Cried Tom, "Can it be I am seeing the sea? I thought I was hearing the Sound." Katharine Lid-dell, 1910.

SPRING.

Spring, sweet spring, the years pleasant king! I've flunked everything, my woe is deepening. Exam cards are the thing, much money I bring. Flunk, flunk, work, work, cheer up and dry your eyes.

Four gym drills a day or fearful fines to pay; Practice for a play to bring in the May ; Three quizzes Monday, finals not far away. Spring, sweet spring!

Rosalind Mason, 1911. Reprinted from Tipyn O'Bob.

m&mzi

•i

-

-

!

■ j . ■ ■ •

. -

mi*

■

/ ■ :

■

-

:

.'

M

ft*S£«

OREGON

RULE

CO.

1

U.S.A.

It 2

H

■ I D

I

tog

5

6

an|

[OREGON RULE CO

1 U.S.A.

w> . «■ . ar .

-

.

;

;

■

■

n

* Ik i

■c*

■

^**

D

I

-

7

<^B

■■

•f-

r

8

9

10

11

12