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3est and Cheapest Service in the Wor
Here are some comparisons of telephone conditions in Europe and the United States just before the war.
Here we have:
Continuous service in practically all exchanges, so that the telephone is available day and night.
A telephone to one person in ten.
3,000,000 miles of interurban or long-distance wires.
Prompt connections, the speed of answer in principal cities averaging about 3% seconds.
Lines provided to give immediate toll and long-distance service.
In Europe:
Nine-tenths of the exchanges are cloa night, and in many cases, at mealtime.
Not one person in a hundred has a telep
Not one-eighth as many miles in proporti population and territory.
In the principal cities, it takes more than as long for the operator to answer.
No such provision made. Telephone use expected to await their turn.
As to cost,, long-distance service such as we have here was not to be had in Eui even before the-w^r, at any ptice. « And exchange service in Europe, despite its inf quality, cost rr\ore in actual money than here.
Bell Service' \s the 'criterion; for all the world, and the Bell organization is the economical as well as the mbst'efficient servant of the people.
American Telephone and Telegraph Compai
And Associated Companies
One Policy One System Universal Set
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HIS MASTER'S VOICE'
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Vol. LXVIII
(Pwrlanb
iMotttflUj
AN ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE OF THE WEST
■>»j»CCCCCO
CONTENTS FOR JANUARY 1917
FRONTISPIECES:
"Up From the South. Verse Illustrated
Scenes from Tahiti
Photograph of D. O. Mills
GUNS OF GALT. Continued story ....
An Epic of the Family.
PICTURE OF JACK LONDON
TO THE MAN ON THE TRAIL
A Klondike Christmas Story.
THE TERRIBLE TURK
TO JACK. Verse
A CALIFORNIA DUVAL
MY COMMERCE. Verse
THE STORY OF THE MIRACLE ....
Continued story.
SOLITAIRE. Verse
THE MUSE OF THE LOCKED DOOR. Story TO THE OLD STAGE DRIVER. Verse
THE FOREIGN LEGION
PASTOR RUSSELL. Verse
SANG. Story
Illustrated from photographs. MAYBECK'S MASTERPIECE. Verse TRAGEDY OF THE DONNER PARTY
Illustrated from sketches. PIONEER EXPERIENCES IN CALIFORNIA .
Illustrated from photographs and Old Prints. PASTOR RUSSELL'S WRITINGS TO BE CONTINUED
LOST HORSES. Story
DARIUS OGDEN MILLS
A "BACK TO NATURE MAID" ....
Illustrated. IN THE REALM OF BOOKLAND ....
WH1TTIER WELLMAN
DENISON CLIFT
JACK LONDON
H. AKMED NOUREDDIN ADDIS
JUAN L. KENNON
EUGENE T. SAWYER
EVA NAVONE
OTTO VON GELDERN
WILLIAM DeRYEE ELSIE McCORMICK LUCIEN M. LEWIS ANSLEY HASTINGS RUTH E. HENDERSON LUCY FORM AN LINDSAY
IDA F. PATTIANI ALICE STEVENS
LELL HAWLEY WOOLLEY
R. T. CORYNDON
EDITH KINNEY STELLMANN
1 2-7
24 25
30 36 37 41 42
49 50 52 53 56 57
61 62
66
79 80 87 89
90
)»»>CC««'
NOTICE. — Contributions to the Overland Monthly should be typewritten, accompanied by full return postage and with the author's name and address plain written in upper corner of first pagr>.
Manuscripts should never be rolled.
The publisher of the Overland Monthly will not be responsible for the preservation of unso- licited contributions and photographs.
Issued Monthly. $1.20 per year in advance. Ten cents per copy. Copyrighted, 1917, by the Overland Monthly Company. Entered at the San Francisco, Cal., Postofnce as second-class matter. Published by the OVERLAND MONTHLY COMPANY, San Francisco, California.
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AMERICAN PLAN $3.50 UPWARD
Notel Plaza
EUROPEAN
PLAN
$1.50 UPWARD
POST AND STOCKTON STREETS, SAN FRANCISCO,CAL.
THE CENTER OF THE CITY OPPOSITE UNION SQUARE
An Hotel Designed to Appeal to the Conservative
M. •■ ■*
DINING ROOM
FAMOUS FOR ITS CUISINE
BREAKFAST 50c.
LUNCH 50c.
DINNER $1.00
HOTEL PLAZA COMPANY, Management
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Meet Me at the TULI-F-R
For Value, Service Home Comforts
NEW
HOTEL TULLER
DETROIT, MICHIGAN
Center of business on Grand Circus Park. Take Woodward car, get off at Adams Ave.
ABSOLUTELY FIREPROOF
200 Rooms, Private Bath, $1.50 Single, $2.50 Up Double
200 " " " 2.00 " 3.00 "
100 " " " 2.50 " 4.00 "
100 " " " $3 to $5 " 4.50 "
Total, 600 Outside Rooms All Absolutely Quiet
Two Floors— Agent's Sample Rooms
New Unique Cafes and Cabaret Excellente
Herald Square Hotel
114-120 West 34th Street
Just West of Broadway
NEW YORK
Across the street, next door and around the cor- ner to the largest department stores in the world.
Cars passing our doors transfer to all parts of New York.
One block to the Pennsylvania Station.
All the leading theatres within five minutes' walk.
Club Breakfast — Business Men's Lunch.
Dancing afternoons and evenings.
Rooms $1.50 up. All first class hotel service.
JAMES DONNELLY
(16 Years at Waldorf-Astoria)
Manager Director
THE HOTEL SHATTUCK
BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA
S
u
N N Y
S I
D E
.-^isSiB
/*.
<■■ -f-^'"2: jW- ■ ^ -■ -:!v— - ':«?* --;■"■'
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F
T H E
B A Y
A Metropolitan Hotel with a Homelike Personality
FIRE-PROOF American and European Plan CENTRAL
SPACIOUS Write for Rates and Literature ACCESSIBLE
COMFORTABLE F. T. ROBSON, Manager REASONABLE
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HOTEL CUMBERLAND
NEW YORK Broadway at 54th Street
Broadway cars trom
Grand
Central Depot
7th Ave. Cars from Penna. Station
New and Fireproof
Strictly First-Class Rates Reasonable
$2.50 with Bath and up
Send (or Booklet
10 Minutes Walk to 40 Theatres
H. P. STIMSON
Formerly with Hotel Imperial
Only N. Y. Hotel Window-Screened Throughout
HOTEL LENOX
NORTH STREET AT DELAWARE AVENUE BUFFALO, NEW YORK
MODERN FIREPROOF
A unique Hotel, with a desirable location, insuring qui«t and cleanliness.
Convenient to all points of interest— popular with visitors to Niagara Falls and Resorts in the vicinity —cuisine and service unexcelled by the leading hotels of the larger cities.
EUROPEAN PLAN $1.50 per day up
Take Elmwood Ave, Car to North St., or Write for Special Taxicab Arrangement.
Mav we send with our compliments a "Guide of 'Buffalo and Niagara Falls" also our complete rates? C. A. MINER, Managing Director
HOTEL ST. FRANCIS
SAN FRANCISCO
1 ,000 Rooms — Largest Hotel in Western America
M AN AGEMENT — J AMES WOODS
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vii
Miss Hamlin's School
For Girls
Home Building on Pacific Avenue of Miss Hamlin's School for Girls
Boarding and day pupils. Pupils received at any time. Accredited by all accredit- ing institutions, both in California and in Eastern States. French school for little children. Please call, phone or address
MISS HAMLIN
2230 PACIFIC AVENUE
TELEPHONE WEST 546
2117
2123 SAN FRANCISCO, CAL.
BROADWAY
viii
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Hitchcock Military Academy
San Rafael, Cal.
"Preparedness First' cadets of Hitchcock Military Academy drilling on the sports' field.
A HOME school for boys, separate rooms, large campus, progressive, efficient, thorough, Govern- ment detail and full corps of experienced instructors, accredited to the Universities.
Ideally located in the picturesque foothills of Marin County, fifteen miles from San Francisco.
Founded 1878.
Catalogue on application.
REX W. SHERER President
Up from the South
By Whittier Wellman
Up from the south comes the sound of weird, wild music Music of the hidden forests and unseen places, Of tropic coasts where the sands are hot and dry, Where vine-covered trees press to the edge of the blue. Softly at first, on the breath of the sea it is borne, Carrying faint fragrance of mysterious flowers, And alluring sweetness of forgotten days ;
Music of silent nights when the sea is dead,
And the forest still.
When God's great sky is a vast expanse of dark,
With here and there a furtive light,
Flickering . . . blown out, and back,
By a breath.
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A corner of Paradise, Tahiti.
The lower plunge of the famous waterfall of Tautaua, Tahiti.
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Along the beach at Hatchen, one of the most beautiful spots in the Paradise of the Pacific.
Darius Ogden Mills
See Page 87
OVERLAND
Founded 1868
MONTHLY
BRET HARTE
VOL. LXIX
San Francisco, January, 1917
No. 1
GUNS OF GALT
An Epic of the Family
Serv 3
By DENISON CLIFT
THE MAN sat in his doorway smoking his long pipe, his day's work over in the shipyard. He lives across the river from the gun factory, in the Street of the Lar- ches. In Gait there are fifteen thou- sand shipbuilders, and Jan Rantzau is one of the mul- titude. He is big and pow- erful, and his twenty-eight years of youth fit him ad- mirably to be one of the toilers. At night under the stars you might mistake him for a young giant in the narrow streets of Gait. He is as handsome as a youthful emperor. His hair is thick and blonde; his back is straight and supple ; his arms are fibres of steel from the driving of white- hot rivets into the Gait-built
Mr. Clift
ships.
Something of the grace and swing of the great vessels has gotten into his stride.
In the twilight of that July night, golden fireflies whisked under the lar- ches. From the river came the steady throbbing of the engines of the mail packets, and the cries of rivermen
barges with their
grappling hooks. Over and above the river and the ancient town the moon glimmered upon the quaint white houses.
Through the street rang the laughter of a young girl, mirthful and pleasant. Jan opened his gate and went into the street.
In the pavilion at the end of the road fantastic forms were dancing. Gay Carlmanian soldiers in white linen were whirling through the mazurka with young girls. The Commis- saire and the Captain of the Fusiliers, arm in arm, like old cronies, passed Jan and strolled to join the dancing groups.
Strange figures entered
the misty street. Girls
bright colored stuffs, with
hide their pretty faces,
manoeuvring the
g;arbed in masks to
skipped in and out among the trees on their way to the dance. The three lit- tle sisters of Marya Ballandyna ran af- ter her with impish glee, mimicking her. "Go home, Lela and Elsa, and Ula!" Marya sent them scampering homeward among the larches. A girl in a blue domino joined Marya. She
35!777
10
OVERLAND MONTHLY
laughed at Jgn, and, playfully seizing his arm, pulled him onward toward the pavilion.
"O Jan, come along and dance!" she cried, her voice low and inviting.
Jan laughed.
"No, I cannot dance well," he re- turned.
"Foolish Jan ! Every one in Gait is dancing to-night!"
Her slim hand reached through her domino and entwined itself about his arm. He was swept along with the merry group.
Twilight passed. The night became illuminated with myriad points of flame. Tallow candles were lighted in the little windows of the whitewashed mud houses that dotted the hills. Wo- men squatted in open doorways. Shop windows flamed with yellow brilliancy. A locksmith and a tinker passed through the cobbled streets with their flickering lanterns. They, too, were laughing: the magpie laughter of old men at the frivolity of youth. Now the lights of the Barracks glowed red. The odor of parched meadows came down the night winds from the heights, per- fuming the dusk.
"Hark!" suddenly exclaimed the girl.
The music from the pavilion burst upon them. Love-lorn notes of a flute and deep gusts of a bassoon vied with the click! click! of sabots.
"Who are you ?" said Jan to the girl. "Where are you taking me ?"
"Oh," answered the figure in the domino, "I am not taking you to join the army!"
An acacia branch swept her face, dislodging her mask. Quickly she re- placed it, but not before Jan had seen.
It was the face of a young girl — pale, piquant, with a flood of golden hair, and eyes clear as April skies.
Jan's captor could not be more than eighteen. She was as slim and pretty as a peacock. Her headkerchief was blue and vermilion. The wind fluttered her domino, unfolding a tunic of em- broidered gold. Upon her shapely feet anklets tinkled as she danced along. Brass circlets shivered in her ears.
"Here we are, Jan!"
They emerged from under the trees upon a broad turf. A white facade, riddled by ancient bombardment, dis- closed a great arch through which the white moonlight streamed, sufficing for light; and in the dim glow couples swung in the rhythm of the mazurka. The white-linen figures of fusiliers were slow-moving and ghostly.
"Come, Jan, you must dance with me to-night. Soon you may be called to the wars!"
Laughing, the girl tied her blue ker- chief across Jan's eyes. Her soft arm touched his face. Not in all his life had he seen a face so exquisitely love- ly as the face the acacia branch had revealed to him. Something was awakening in his great frame, some- thing that set him atremble. He was seized with a mad desire to tear the mask from the girl — to take her in his arms, to vent the sudden yearning with- in him.
With a crash the music struck up in the pavilion.
A score of couples swarmed to the center of the floor.
It was a strange and weird dance, there in the moonlight. The floor of the pavilion was as the floor of some old castle. The windows were deep- set, arched. High above swung heavy old Cracow lamps, rusted and unlit. A hundred years before the place had been an arsenal. It had been shat- tered by gun fire in the rebellion of 1813. Later the Mayor had had it re- fashioned into a pleasure pavilion for the toilers of Gait.
Jan placed his arm around the dom- ino and joined the revelers. The breath of the young girl was fragrant upon his face. Together they whirled and reversed, Jan's heart beating wiidly, the girl all grace and abandon.
Flute notes floated through the pa- vilion; the bassoon crooned and thun- dered; when the music ceased there was a sharp patter of applause. A shout went up as the gypsy musicians returned to their instruments, and once more throbbed through the melody, their bodies swaying atune.
GUNS OF GALT
11
Jan led the girl to an open window which overlooked the esplanade and the river. Here they were apart from the dancers. With cool breezes fan- ning their flushed cheeks they sat si- lent and listened.
The musical ring of anklets, the mel- ody of sprightly laughter, the fairy lilt of the flute — rang in their ears. When the music stopped again they heard above the chatter the far-off rush of the river, and the whistles of the mail packets putting down to Bazias.
A man and a woman, masked and clad in flowing red and black, sat down near them. The man's voice was heard in low, earnest appeal. "Listen! .... they are going to mount guns in Gun- yo, and in Guor, and in Nisegrad. We live in peace, but the day of the great war is at hand. When the guns come to Gait, then we may expect war! . . . It will rock the world !" . . .
"Nonsense, Felix!" answered the woman, adding in a warning tone : "Not so loud! There are soldiers all about us. Our lives are forfeit if they dis- cover us!"
There was a silence, then the man replied: "It is only by mingling with the toilers that we can discover what men will be won to our creed. We must have a million men ready to rise against militarism before the great hour comes."
"A million," echoed the woman, her voice despairing, yet hopeful. "A mil- lion men ... a million men ! . . . "
Suddenly she sprang to her feet with a low cry of alarm.
"Felix! Look! The fusiliers!" she cried, clutching her companion's arm.
She had been sitting facing the win- dow. Now she stood pointing out to- ward the turf. Her mask slipped from her face, revealing features of suffer- ing, chaste and pale as death.
In the gay confusion among the dancers the woman's cry had passed unnoticed. But Jan heard, and rising instantly behind her, he followed the direction of her gaze.
Across the esplanade a band of fusi- liers were running. Their lanterns bobbed and whirled about. Now the
jangle of sabres was distinctly heard.
Through the lofty stone arch and up to the pavilion they charged, then sep- arated into four groups and vanished in the shadow of the building.
"We are surrounded!" exclaimed the woman. "Felix, for God's sake, flee for your life ! They do not know me as they do you. You were a fool to come here to-night!" She quickly replaced the mask across her startled eyes.
The revolutionist, realizing that he had fallen into a trap, turned swiftly and faced the door at the east end of the hall.
There was a rush of feet outside; a group of fusiliers burst into the room. They came to a sudden halt, sabres drawn. Instantly the hall was hushed. The revelers gasped in dumb amaze- ment.
The Captain of the Fusiliers lifted his lantern, in its light to scan the faces before him.
"Every one in this hall is under ar- rest!" he cried. "We are looking for Felix Skarga. Skarga, if you are here, come forth!"
There was no response.
"Unmask!" commanded the Captain.
The girl in the blue domino turned fearfully to Jan. She drew aside her mask. "Look!" she said.
Jan looked, entranced.
"Do you know me, Jan?"
Jan peered into the clear depths of her terrified eyes. The direct beauty of her gaze bewildered him.
"I am Jagiello Nur, and I live at the upper end of your street, in the house of Ujedski, the Jewess. She threat- ened to kill me if I came to the dance to-night. The Captain knows who I am! He will tell Ujedski! Oh, Jan, save me! do save me!"
Jan glanced around the dim-lit room, seeking a way of escape. Behind him his hands encountered an iron grille. He tried to open it outward, but it re- sisted him. But what was an iron grille to the giant of the shipyard ? He seized the bars; they twisted outward. A flood of moonlight illumined the long hall. Shouts rose from the fusil- iers. Masquers and soldiers alike
12
OVERLAND MONTHLY
started for Jan, believing that he was Felix Skarga who had suddenly found a way of escape.
With a great sweep of his arms, Jan struck the crowd back. He lept through the open doorway, lifting Jagiello out onto a balcony.
In that instant Felix Skarga darted quickly for the opening. With a sav- age cry a fusilier sprang, tiger-like, up- on the revolutionist. He would have dragged Skarga back had not Jan struck the soldier heavily, thrusting him away, and hurling the iron gate shut behind him.
The pounding upon the grille and the maddened cries in the hall aroused the waiting fusiliers below. They scat- tered, fan-like, across the turf in an- ticipation of a running fight. There was not a moment to lose. Lifting lit- tle Jagiello like a doll in his arms, Jan lept over a balcony twenty feet to the greensward below. He ran low and swiftly across the perilous open space. Skarga separated from him and was lost in a hedge to his left. Forty paces away a stone wall suddenly confronted Jan. Beyond was the river.
The pack was now close upon him. He could hear the soldiers panting as they ran. "Halt!" cried a raucous voice. "Halt! Halt!" There was a crack of a rifle. A bullet flattened against the wall with a whistling tang.
Suddenly Jan stopped in his race and lifted Jagiello to his shoulders. High above, an acacia bloomed. The girl wrapped her arms around a stout branch, drew herself up, swung over the wall, and dropped to the grassy bank that skirted the river.
"Tang! Tang!" sang the bullets close over Jan.
He dug his fingers into the crevices of the masonry. Before he could se- cure a foothold two fusiliers leaped out of the shadow toward him.
The butt of a rifle descended with terrific force upon his shoulder. With a cry, the big man clutched the rifle and wrung it from the fusilier's grip. Then, swinging it once around, he swept both the soldiers from their feet.
From the distance came shouts that
rapidly grew louder. But when the pursuers came up, Jan had already leapt the wall. The soldiers found two of their number writhing on the ground and pointing over the wall.
An hour later Jan and Jagiello emerged from the deserted cabin of a river packet that lay undulating upon the glinting river. Creeping cautiously along the bank down stream, they made their way into the Street of the Larches.
"Now Ujedski will never know," said Jagiello. A pause, then: "Poor Skarga ! He believes we should have no soldiers, but he talks of war. 'When the guns come to Gait, then we may expect war.' "
"There will be no war," said Jan.
Suddenly a low rumble awoke in the street. From out of the night rolled a gun carriage.
Men, calling low and earnestly, were guiding the lines of a score of horses that were dragging the cais- son and mount of a black 28-centime- ter gun. Upon the gun-trunnions squatted a figure with a long military cape, delivering sharp commands.
"Quick, now, Edda, here's the bridge!" The gun carriage rattled over the cobbles. "Look out for that gate ahead!" Jan and Jagiello with- drew into the deep shadows of the larches. "The moon's shining! Thank God! We'll need the moon this night!"
The gun carriage swerved into the white, even road that led up to the heights.
Jagiello held tightly to Jan's arm.
"Jan, they are taking guns up to the fort. Can it be they are getting ready for *'
Jan silenced her with a quick move- ment.
More ghostly figures appeared in the street. A second gun carriage rolled across the bridge with low, rumbling thunder.
The caisson cast a pale bluish shadow from the moon.
It was the shadow of War.
Presently the hoof beats died away,
GUNS OF GALT
13
and Jan and Jagiello passed in silence toward Ujedski's house.
Chapter II.
The July night was drowsy and moonlit, and the streets were ghostly and winding, and above on the bal- conies were singing and the playing of guitars. The big man's calloused hand was upon the rounded arm of the girl. Her eyes glowed with the thrill o± his presence; her heart beat like the heart of a frightened bird. Pres- ently they mounted a flight of high stone steps. At the top they paused and looked back along the street to see if the soldiers were following.
Gait lay asleep.
The streets were deserted. It was now close to midnight. Only upon the balconies did some of the toilers yet linger, lured by the warmth and beauty of the night. They sang and laughed, and at times the click! click! of sabots was heard as young girls danced to the crooning guitar-strumming.
Gait lies at the most northern point of Carlmania, where it drops like a mailed fist into the Baltic. Along the seacoast rise pleasant green hills. The river Ule here empties into the sea af- ter meandering like an iridescent rib- bon across level plains flush with rich harvests. Sun drenched fields are di- vided by the yellow river. South of the valleys, in the lovely province of Guor, the Emperor of Carlmania broods in his palace at Nagi-Aaros. The peasants know of their Emperor only as they know of the by-gone Ca- liphs of Bagdad. He is more a myth than a personality, yet the peasants pay him excessive military tributes; and while the toilers sweat and starve, Carlmania rocks under the tread of a million troops. The rumble of artil- lery carriages, the thunder of cavalry, and the tramp of infantry shake the nation. Since the rebellion of 1813 the Emperors have reposed national existence in the sword. In that year Carlmania rose from the bloody, war- torn fields of Europe, a vital new Power, crushing forever the shackles
that bound her, uniting the savage au- tocracy of the Russians with the indus- try of the Austrians, and the loyalty and love of liberty of the Poles. In- heriting the dominant war-like quali- ties of these peoples, Carlmania pro- mulgated militarism as a challenge to the surrounding Powers. Yet rich, yel- lowing fields of corn, and wheat and rye are Providence's defiance to the Emperor. Through these fields wan- ders the Ule; and where it pays trib- ute to the Baltic are the mammoth cradles of the shipyards.
Huge colliers, ocean liners and giant men-of-war are built here. The ship- builders live near the yards, beyond the stone buildings of the gun factory, with their black iron towers and lofty stacks. Where the toilers dwell, the streets are narrow and crooked, with old stone gates and crumbling white stairways. No kind hand nor sympa- thetic heart designed those ancient ways. While the more fortunate cit- ies of Carlmania enjoy wide boule- vards and a system of avenues radi- ating from white municipal buildings, the streets of Gait have remained where the feet of the workers centur- ies ago first outlined paths across the emerald fields leading from their mud houses to the altars of labor.
Today the same houses stand, per- ishing with the years, their red roots baking under the summer sun. Once a year they glisten with new white- wash after the winter rains have passed.
While the product of Gait is the most modern in the world — super- dreadnaughts and the terrific Truska guns — the ancient town has not kept pace with civilization. Where the great Marconi station crackles with life upon the heights, there are no telephones; where electric derricks pause in mid-air with delicate preci- sion, there are no tram lines; where electric blast-furnaces mould gigantic plates of steel, the toilers eat rye bread by candle light.
For the most part the wives of the toilers are stolid, knowing only that labor is implacably required of their
14
OVERLAND MONTHLY
men — labor from which death alone will give them rest. Jan Rantzau is one of these men. His father had been a builder before him, in the days of the first armored ships — of the "La Gloire" in France and the "Warrior" in England. His hands had helped in the making of the "Gogstad" — terrific enough in that dim past. When Jan was a little lad, his father used to carry him down into the shipyard of a Sunday and show him the great mis- tresses of the seas. Like far-off, happy days, whose remembrance becomes sweeter as the years go by, Jan re- members them — and his father. Of bis mother he knows little, except that his father always carried a string of red beads near his heart, and on Sun- days used to show them to Jan, and bid him kiss them in memory of she who had borne him. When the sol- diers burned their house after his father died with smallpox, the beads were consumed with the few other trinkets that this world's toil had yielded.
When the years passed and Jan took his father's place in the shipyard, iron ships had given way to steel. The vil- lage priest, who had cared for Jan until he was able to earn his daily bread, had talked to him one day of the change in ships.
"Little Jan," he had said, as the two looked down upon the docks from the priest's balcony, "iron ships have taken the place of wood, just as your father took the place of your grand- father in the works. Now steel ships have taken the place of iron, and you must take your father's place in the shipyard. It is your life, Jan."
And so it became Jan's life — the only life he knew. Sometimes there was a hungering in his heart to be something more than the toiler that his giant strength had fitted him to be, but his destiny seemed beyond him to alter.
This adventurous night, with Jagi- ello beside him, he remembered the love that his father had borne for his mother, and his deep respect for all women. This instinct Jan had inher-
ited, the protective instinct of men which caused him to look back through the street time and again for signs of pursuers. He well knew the unremit- ting vigilance of the military police.
As he and Jagiello crossed the court leading to Ujedski's house, sounds of jangling steel came to them, and pres- ently voices.
Two fusiliers with lighted lanterns pressed into the court. Their sabres clashed; their voices arose in tense ejaculations. In the flickering glow of the lanterns their red tunics, white bieeches and black hussar boots were defined sharply.
Swiftly Jan helped Jagiello through a gate where they could conceal them- selves in the shadows of the masonry.
The fusiliers drew nearer, their lan- terns bobbing. They were searching the street and the dark places.
"Captain Pasek saw him come this way with the girl," said one.
"He's not at his house," returned the other.
"Nor at the girl's house."
"The fellow must be one of the Reds, to let Skarga out the way he did ..."
"Like as not . . one of the Reds . "
Suddenly a captain joined them. "Have you looked in at Ujedski's house?" he asked.
"They are not there," replied the first fusilier.
"Search along those walls," com- manded the captain. "I'll have another look in at the girl's house. I know her: Jagiello, who lives with the old Jewess."
They crossed the court; the ring of their sabres became fainter and fainter.
Jagiello touched Jan's arm. "That was Captain Pasek," she whispered.
"You know Captain Pasek?"
"Yes."
"He said he would have another look in at your house. He said he knew you." Jan was puzzled.
"I have seen the captain go through the street v/ith the military police," an- swered Jagiello. "One day he smiled at me. That is why he says he knows
GUNS OF GALT
15
me." She spoke quickly, with an effort to end the discussion of her acquaint- ance with the Captain of the Fusiliers, a man supreme in the law of the town. "I must hurry to Ujedski," she con- cluded.
"You will never let Pasek know ?"
"Never, Jan!"
They crept out of the shadow and furtively crossed the cobbled court- yard.
Ujedski's house was of mud, thatched and occupied an obscure knoll in the lowliest part of Gait. In the rear some geese, disturbed by the voices, quacked restlessly in their yard.
Jagiello tiptoed around to the side of the hut and opened the small win- dow. She listened. She heard voices within, low-pitched in tone. In a twinkling she stripped the blue domino from her slim body, wrapped within it her anklets and cheap finery, and roll- ing it into a tight ball, dropped it through the window into her room.
"Good-night, Jan!" she whispered quickly, facing the big man, his fine head outlined against the whitewashed wall.
Jan caught her by the arm.
She was beautiful there in the moon- light— her hair a cascade of gold, her eyes like pools at dusk.
For the first time in his life a blind- ing impulse to possess took hold of Jan; he gathered little Jagiello passion- ately into his great arms, and kissed her once, full upon the lips.
Then, abashed at what he had done, he stood trembling. Jagiello started back, thrilled.
The next moment, like a leaf in an April wind, she vanished around the side of the house.
Jan, furious at his folly, strode off under the larches.
Jagiello opened the door of Ujed- ski's hut and entered.
The room was low and dark, except for the yellow flicker of a candle set in a sconce. In its glow she saw Ujed- ski, sitting humped up and ghastly, at the table. At the other side of the table she saw the man that she now
hated of all men in the world — the man who had the strongest claim upon her : Pasek, Captain of the Fusiliers. He smiled as she came in.
Chapter III.
"Jagiello, good-for-nothing!" cried Ujedski, "it is midnight, and I have waited since sundown for my lentils and honey! Where have you been?"
Her voice rose in a rasping, impa- tient cry.
Pasek closely watched Jagiello's face.
When the girl did not answer, the Jev/ess got up and went over to her. She took down the guttering candle from the sconce and held it up so that its flicker lit up Jagiello's face.
"Did you stop at the pavilion to dance with those worthless night hawks?"
Still Jagiello was silent.
Pasek shifted on his stool. His sa- bre rattled. The look on his face was one of eager curiosity, tinged with de- sire.
"You did dance with those night hawks!" cried Ujedska. "And I wait- ing for my lentils and honey, and the Captain in a dozen times to ask you to marry him!"
"To marry him?"
The words came in a faint whisper of surprise from Jagiello's lips. Her brain quickly sought to understand his motive.
"Tell her, Captain Pasek!"
Pasek rose from the stool. He stood with feet apart, adjusting the heavy leather gloves in his hands, tightening his sabre belt.
In the dim glare of the candle he seemed a tremendous fellow. His bristling red mustachios and pointed beard gave to his face a resemblance akin to the Evil One.
"Yes, Jagiello," he repeated after Ujedski, "I have come to marry you."
"But I am not going to marry you!" snapped Jagiello. The blood mounted to her face, her cheeks burned crimson,
Pasek burst into a cynical laugh.
"Always the little spitfire!" he ex-
16
OVERLAND MONTHLY
claimed, feigning amusement. "Still denying your heart!"
"Captain Pasek, if you have waited to say that you want to marry me, I am sorry! I will only marry the man I love. I bid you good-night!"
Jagiello spoke with a new-found courage born of the memory of a kiss fresh upon her lips. She crossed the rcom to a door on the right, which opened into a smaller room, her own. She attempted to open the door; Pa- sek caught her by the wrist; spinning her around, he brought her face to face with him in the middle of the floor.
She stood silent, the fire in her eyes matching his. Ujedski stirred un- easily. She was frightened at the glint in Jagiello's eyes.
"Captain," said Jagiello, "long ago you won my contempt! If you would not win my hate forever, you will let me go into my room — alone!"
A stunning silence held the close room.
Ujedski set the candle on the table. Its fantastic light danced in yellow waves on the severe whitewashed walls. The squalor of the hovel was hidden in the shadows. In the left hand corner farthest from the door was a flat stone stove with dying embers, and on the stove was Ujedski's pot of kaszia.
The room that opened off was Jagi- ello's. In her pathetic little way she had attempted to beautify this temple of her tragedy. The white walls were ornamented with pictures clipped from a Nagi-Aaros newspaper: a vision of the Battle of Grunwald, a shepherd leading his sheep through a pass at sunset, and the face of a woman, a saint. In the corner reposed a box fashioned into a washstand, with its clean towel and white pitcher. Over the bed was a festoon of flimsy red paper balls, strung on a bit of ribbon. They had occupied many an evening in the making, and now with their gar- ish color they contrasted vividly with the walls. The bed itself was sweet and clean — a pallet of straw with a white cover on which Jagiello had em-
broidered a yellow rose. In the win- dow were pots of trailing green plants. Outside the window Jagiello had made a little garden to ornament the house. Honeysuckle vines climbed above the window, and each spring bees and humming birds stole the tribute of the flowers. Here, too, were giant mulle- ins, and white daturas, and bright blue chicory which grew near the gun fac- tory, and which Jagiello had trans- planted.
Captain Pasek had thrice been a visitor to the little room. As he gripped Jagiello's wrist, the savagery in his caitiff heart sprang to the sur- face.
"Jagiello, it is a pleasant evening, and I think I shall spend it in this house!"
Blind with sudden anger, the girl sprang back, jerked her arm free, and put the table between herself and Pa- sek. Her movement left him dazed.
"Well, little Jagiello has the fire of a panther to-night!" His voice bel- lowed through the narrow room. "Per- haps she is in love with another!"
"Oh, no, no, no!"
"No? Ha, ha! I am not so sure. Who brought you home to-night?"
Jagiello stared in terror. Her face became bloodless. She laughed to veil her nervousness.
"I was just telling Madame Ujedski of your adventures to-night, little lady."
Ujedski, who had been silent and amazed at the swift change in Jagiello, now spoke.
"Yes, Jagiello, sit down and listen to the Captain. He was telling me a marvelous story when you interrupted. Now, Captain!"
Pasek sat astride a chair, and, strok- ing his fine mustachios, with unctuous grace he continued his tale, covertly watching Jagiello the while:
"The lamps in the pavilion were not lit. When we burst in with our lanterns cnly the moonlight shone on the dan- cers. We placed all under arrest until we could find this Skarga, this revo- lutionist, whom the Government would like to get its hands on.
GUNS OF GALT
17
"Suddenly the grille at the back of the hall was burst open, and three fig- ures dashed out upon the balcony. One was Skarga (though we never found him), one was my little spitfire in a blue domino, and the other was "
"Stop!" Jagiello's face was white with passion. "If you have come here to waste good sleeping hours with such nonsense, you had better go!"
"Who was the other?" rasped Ujed- ski, her mouth agape.
"Perhaps you had better ask Jagi- ello that."
"So you were dancing with the night hawks!" taunted Ujedski. She rose from her stool, came over to Jagiello, and looked her full in the eyes. In the pale gold flicker of light the beldam's face was weird with its yellow skin and deep-set, penetrating eyes. "And who was this night hawk that broke through the grille?"
"Oh, Ujedski, leave me alone!"
The Captain smiled.
"We have full information about the night hawk that broke the grille," said he, significantly. "I fired my rifle at him as he climbed the wall along the river's edge. After to-night we will watch his every move. He probably is a friend of Skarga — a Red. Sooner or later he will betray himself. Ah, then, little lady, you will be sorry you joined him in his wild adventure to-night. The Government will send him away." He concluded with a ges- ture that indicated a mysterious, dead- ly beyond.
He went up to her as she stood near the door of her room, fear and horror written on her face. He gazed at her a moment; she remained breathless; he reached for her hand, blazing pas- sion.
Jagiello shrank against the door, wide-eyed, breathing rapidly. She sprang away, darting around the table until it was again between her and Pa- sek, and stood there, her firm young bi easts heaving, her hand clutching her bodice above her heart.
On the table were a knife, a fork, a few plates, and a dish of cold kaszia from Ujedski's supper. The swift
movement of Jagiello sent the dishes flying to the floor where they crashed into bits under the table.
"Do not come nearer!" cried Jagi- ello.
Pasek leered at her. "Is that re- served for Jan Rantzau?"
"Jan Rantzau!" exclaimed Ujedski.
"The night hawk," smiled Pasek.
"So you know!" gasped Jagiello. Her voice was hard, her face set and tragic. "Then from to-night on I have seen the last of you."
With an oath, Pasek sprang around the table toward her. Jagiello's hand dropped swiftly to the table and closed upon the knife. Pasek saw her uplift it, saw its gleam; but blind with fury and confident of his strength, he crushed the girl to him.
The knife drove into his shoulder in an eye-twinkling. With a groan he re- laxed his hold and staggered slowly back to the floor, where he lay huddled up and quivering.
With a terrified cry Jagiello dropped the knife and stood staring down at the figure on the floor. She was struck with frenzied terror. It had all hap- pened so swiftly, and she had not meant to kill him !
Ujedski, with a grunt, reached down and turned Pasek's face to the dim light. His lips were moving. He was struggling to rise, Ujedski helped him to a stool.
"Quick, Jagiello, water!" she cried, sinking to the floor to support him.
Jagiello ran from the hut, out into the yard to the well. When she re- turned a moment later with a crock of water the Captain had fallen again and lay quite still.
Chapter IV.
Jagiello stood immovable in the doorway; her lips parted; the anguish of her heart was mirrored upon her ashen face.
Ujedski was the first to move.
"Shut the door!" she cried, her voice husky with fear.
Jagiello closed the door behind her.
Ujedski tottered to her feet, crossed
18
OVERLAND MONTHLY
to the table and sank into a chair.
"Is he dead?" asked Jagiello in a broken whisper, afraid of the sound of her own voice.
Outside, the sound of footsteps echoed across the cobbles of the court.
With her hand Ujedski snuffed out the candle. The room was plunged into darkness, except for the eerie moon glow that slanted across the earthen floor and fell full upon the face of Pasek like a death mask.
The sounds of men approaching grew louder. Jagiello went furtively to the window and looked out. As she drew aside the curtain her hand trem- bled violently. Outside, the night watch was changing shifts. The red- coated fusiliers exchanged greetings and passed from view below the stone steps that led into the street. Not un- til the watch had vanished did she bieathe freely again.
She heard a noise upon the floor, and turning, she saw the hand of Pa- sek move toward his face.
"Ah!" cried Jagiello, "he lives! Oh, Captain! Oh, Captain Pasek, forgive me!"
With a glad cry she reached his side. His shoulder was bleeding pro- fusely, and a stream of blood trickled across the floor.
"Quick, Ujedski, help me lift him to the pallet!"
The Jewess got up from her stool and came over, taking hold of Pasek's boots. Jagiello lifted his shoulders, and with a tremendous effort the two women carried Pasek to the straw pal- let. Propping his head up in her lap, Jagiello helped him to a drink.
The cold, clear water had its effect. Consciousness returned. Jagiello bound his wounded shoulder with soft linen rags. In twenty minutes he had so far recovered that he rose to his knees; then with a great effort he staggered to the stool and sat down, clutching his shoulder.
Jagiello kneeled on the floor be- side him.
"Oh, Captain Pasek," she said joy- fully, "you are alive! Speak to me! Don't sit there looking at me that way
with your eyes ! I didn't mean to hurt you! Believe me, O Captain, I didn't!"
"You were a bit careless with the knife," returned Pasek, smiling bit- terly. Then he added quietly, with dire meaning: "You will pay for your carelessness, little lady!"
"O Captain!" Jagiello's throat be- came dry; her tongue clung to the parched roof of her mouth.
The Jewess stepped between Pasek and the girl.
"You are not hurt badly, Captain? Oh, I hope you are not injured in my house! I should never get over it — never!" She wheeled upon Jagiello with swift, malignant fury. "Get out, you Nobody!" she hissed "Your fool hands have got me into trouble enough this night!"
She viciously thrust Jagiello aside.
Pasek staggered to his feet. Strength was slowly returning. "Speak not a word of what has happened here to- night!" he said, commandingly.
"Not a word from my lips!" swore Ujedski.
The Captain turned to the door, opened it, and went slowly out into the night. For a few steps he walked unsteadily, then, gathering strength in the sharp air, he went with a bold swagger across the courtyard and through the gate that led down into the street.
Ujedski closed the door with a bang. All the pent-up fury of her soul es- caped in one shrill outburst.
"Jagiello! Fool! Fool! Fool! You'll kill the Captain of the Fusiliers, eh? God curse you, littl idiot! Oh, you will pay for this to the Captain! He will take a terrible revenge on you!" She came close to Jagiello, her breath hissing in the girl's face, her parched, yellow skin like some dried death's head, her eyes gleaming like points of flame.
"He lives! He lives!" cried Jagi- ello.
"It is not your fault that he lives!" The beldam seized her by the shoul- ders and forced her back upon the stool. "Good-for-nothing! Little liar!
GUNS OF GALT
19
You danced with Jan Rantzau, eh?" She gave vent to a long outburst of shrill derision as she relit the tallow candle.
Jagiello, greatly relieved at the re- covery of Pasek, at first was oblivious to Ujedski's abuse. Now her words stunk, each like a barbed shaft.
"What if I did dance with Jan?"
The laughter of the Jewess filled the room, crackling and uncanny. Her thin, bony fingers replaced the candle in its sconce.
"You are not good enough to dance with Jan Rantzau!"
"I am better than you," retorted the girl, resentfully. "You are a Nobody, Ujedski; you have no people. My father was a soldier. He wore a red- and-white plume in his helmet, and he was a grand seigneur!"
"Grand seigneur! Oh, ha! ha!" shrieked Ujedski; the hut resounded with her merriment. "Your father a grand seigneur!"
"You know he was," snapped Jagi- ello; "you told me so yourself, when I was a little girl." She drew herself up proudly, pretty hands on hips, bursting with audacity. "My father was a grand seigneur," she repeated imperi- ously, "a grenadier of the rebellion, and the plume in his helmet was red and white, and his sword had a sheath of silver!"
Ujedski regarded with laughing con- tempt the girl who thus defied her. The beldam's cheeks were bloodless in the yellow glow. Her bony hand clutched Jagiello by the hair.
"Jagiello, that was a lie !" she cried.
"No, no!" gasped Jagiello; "you told me that years ago, Ujedski!"
"I lied to you!" declared the old wo- man. Something in her tone fright- ened Jagiello.
"Ujedski — you didn't tell me the truth — about my father ?"
"I lied to you, Jagiello," answered the Jewess between her teeth, with studied cruelty.
For an instant all the spirit went out of the girl. "Then I am a Nobody — like you!" she faltered.
"Yes, a Nobody! A Nobody! The
grand seigneur with the plume died a year before you were born, Jagiello. Your mother loved him — but he went to the wars and was killed. Your father "
"My father ?" breathlessly. She
was on her knees now, great tears well- ing in her eyes, her voice tremulous.
"My dear father ?" she repeated,
and her voice was full of the love she reserved for his memory.
"He was left! He escaped the re- cruiting sergeant ... He was an hostler!"
"Ujedski! . . Now you are lying!"
"Madame Ballandyna in the next street knows that, too. Go and ask her."
"Oh, Ujedski!"
Jagiello covered her face with her hands, and tears rained down her burn- ing cheeks. Her cry trailed to sad- dened whisper. The sweetest memory of her girlhood had been shattered by half a dozen words. Her frail body shook with convulsive sobs. Her father! How she had loved his mem- ory, and how for years she had borne herself proudly as the daughter of a hero, a soldier of the wars !
After a pause, the Jewess concluded : "So you are no good ! That is why you are a good friend with the Captain, and take his money and buy yourself silks, and gewgaws, and anklets, and things. The war cheated you of a no- ble father! Now you can take your things and get out of my house!"
Jagiello stared straight ahead. "Ujedski," she breathed, "you — you won't — send me away?"
"I have said so!"
"But I have no place to go!"
"You have the Captain — and the sol- diers!"
An instant Jagiello stared, speech- less; then, flinging open the door of her room, she burst in. With nimble fingers she began packing her bag of gewgaws.
Frail, pretty little thing, sitting there on the edge of her pallet, fondling her earrings and cheap brooches, little knowing that the weaknesses within her were born of a war before her
20
OVERLAND MONTHLY
birth, and that her father was the cra- ven who had evaded the recruiting ser- geant and remained behind!
She gathered her blue domino and her bag of precious possessions under her arm. Across her shoulders she drew an azure shawl. When she stepped out into the other room, Ujed- ski was waiting for her.
"Good-by, Ujedski, and may the saints curse you for sending me
away
She threw open the outer door.
"Where are you going ?" laughed the Jewess, her oiled gray locks trembling.
"To Jan!"
Jagiello swept out, closing the door with a crash that snuffed out the can- dle.
Going to Jan!
The beldam stumbled and swore in the darkness, sweating huge beads of moisture at the vision of little Jagiello surrendering herself to Jan. Where should she get her rubles now? She threw open the door and called fran- tically :
"Jagiello! . . . Come back!"
But Jagiello had already passed into the deep shadow of the larches.
Chapter V.
It was long after midnight. From the distance the musical chimes of St. Catherine's drifted in with the night breezes from down the river. Jan had not gone to bed.
He sat at the upper window of his house staring out at the night. Some- thing within him was powerfully astir, something that had long lain dormant. The yearning of his heart for the wo- man whom he had met that night welled up within him unsatisfied.
His eyes roved to the river, that slipped, ghost-like, through the moon- lit silences. The trees along its bank — the larches, the acacias, the airy lin- dens— were silvered by the setting moon. Death is not more silent than ancient Gait, with its thousands of houses glimmering like white tombs in the hours before the dawn.
As Jan looked out through the
crooked street, he saw, far off, the fig- ure of a girl slipping along in the shad- ows. Presently she came nearer, sway- ing gracefully, under her arm a blue bag, and upon her head a kerchief of gay vermilion..
Nearer — nearer — now she stopped and looked up at him in the window. He saw that it was Jagiello !
She halted at his gate, and he leaned out and called eagerly to her. "Jagiello! Jagiello!" "Oh, Jan! Open!" He strode down the darkened stair- case to his door and flung it open. He faced her, bewildered.
"Jagiello? Is it really you?" Mis- givings assailed him. "Ujedski — what has she done?"
"Sent me away, Jan. I have had a terrible adventure since I left you. I almost killed — Captain Pasek!"
Jan stared in speechless amazement. Finally he echoed : "You almost killed Captain Pasek?" It seemed incred- ible. He drew her into the darkened doorway, and she sat upon a stool that he brought her.
"When I got home there was the Captain asking Ujedski where I was." "They thought you had been to the dance?"
"I told them I went — and danced with you."
"They suspect me of liberating Skarga ?"
To Jan's amazement, Jagiello told the whole story — of Pasek's advances, of her stroke with the knife, of his threat against Jan, of her leaving Ujedski.
When she had finished, Jan took her slim hand in his. "It was I who brought all this upon you," he said, re- gretfully.
"No, Jan; it was you who helped me from the pavilion." She was grave, and her voice quavered. "I am never going back to Ujedski. I am sick of living with her."
"Where are you going to live?" "Where I won't get shouted at like a dog."
"Jagiello, why don't you get mar- ried?"
GUNS OF GALT
21
The girl laughed at Jan.
"Oh, Jan, I can't. Nobody will ask me.
His strong fingers closed tighter up- on her hand. "Nobody?" Jan laughed. Her artfulness he mistook for her jest. He choked, pressing her hand the tighter. "Will you marry me, Jagiello? I love you."
"You, Jan?"
She stared up at him with tears in her eyes. At length she said, simply, like a little child:
"You really want me to be your wife, Jan?"
"Yes, my darling."
The girl's hand still nestled in Jan's big one. Her breath came in little gasps. Suddenly he bent over her and kissed her flushed face. She made no resistance, but surrendered herself to him, for now a love that she had never before known had awakened within her. A great happiness had dawned, so wonderful that she scarcely dared whisper to herself her hopes and vis- ions for the future.
Then suddenly, as she lay in his arms, a sense of her past dishonor swept poignantly over her. What must she say to Jan of that? The moment had come when she should tell him all that lay oppressive in her heart, and trust to his love. Would he forgive her? She listened to the words of love he showered upon her. His voice sounded strangely far-off. A mist ap- peared before her, and through it she saw all the vivid events of that night. In fancy she again wandered through the tree-arched street, swinging along with Marya Ballandyna, gay in their masquerade costumes. Once again she playfully linked her arm in Jan's and led him to the pavilion, where they danced in the moonlight. Graphically she recalled the discovery of Felix Skarga and his companion, the rush of the fusiliers, the escape through the grille, the return to Ujedski, the ad- venture with Pasek. What a night! And it had given Jan to her !
In that moment she decided to tell him. Her gaze met his fearlessly; her face was flushed with the excitement
of her momentous resolve. "Jan," she whispered, tremblingly, "Jan "
He bent his ear to listen to the mu- sic of her voice.
"Yes, dear?"
"Jan " Her voice choked. The
night grew black. Her heart beat wildly with a nameless fear.
"Jagiella, come with me up the hill. We will find the priest to-night."
Jan's arm tightly enfolded her; she was his prisoner, to do with as he liked. He chose to kiss her again. Then he arose, swung her up to his shoulder, and strode forth through his gate.
The moment of her intended revela- tion had passed. A new fear stole into her heart.
"No, no, Jan!" she cried. "Not to- night!"
"Yes, to-night, my love!"
He went with her up the street in the shadow of the overhanging larches, the branches brushing her cheeks like silken curtains. Her arms tightened about his neck. The distant croon of the winding, willow-banked river sang its song in her ears. Her voice, sweet as wind blown laughter, rose above the river-song.
"Oh, Jan, I love you ... I love you ... I love you so! . . You will never let anything happen to me? . . . You will always, always love me ?"
"Always . . . always, beloved!" he said, enchanted.
He held her close and firm as he mounted the hill that led to the heights. The perfume of her breath brushed her cheek.
"I will always love you as I do to- night, Jan . . . Do you hear me, my love? . . . Always as I love you to- night ..." Her low voice ceased; she pressed a kiss upon his mouth.
They passed through a little wood, under the checkered shadows of a grove. Already the white houses were far below in the hollows. When they emerged, an upland meadow, jeweled with the dew, stretched itself white and ghostly upon the hills. With tumul- tuous heart Jagiella closed her eyes and was lost in the unreality that en-
22
OVERLAND MONTHLY
veloped her. "Oh, Jan," she cried, silently in her heart, "understand me,
0 beloved, understand and forgive me! I have sinned, my love; but in the years to come my life shall be yours — my soul and my body yours — to do with as you like ! . . . Only for- give me! . . . forgive me! . . . for- give me!"
But Jan, now within view of the stucco house of the priest, strode on with her through the clover fields, and heard only the torrent of his own beat- ing heart, and the soft, sweet sounds of St. Catherine's down the river.
Chapter VI.
The chimes of the cathedral clock down the river at Morias struck three as Jan strode up to the gate of the priest's house. It was two-storied, with a red roof and quaint dormer win- downs; and in front, overlooking the town, was a balcony that hung above a garden of roses. The house was dark; the iron gate closed. Jan opened the grille and went in to the door. He knocked vigorously; he knew that if Father Marmarja was sleeping the sleep of the just only something akin to thunder would awaken him.
Jagiello leaned forward and called:
"Oh, Jan!"
"Yes!"
"Don't knock so loud!"
"Loud ? The good priest will never hear unless I make a sound like a ham- mer in the works."
Jan lifted her to the ground.
"Jan, I — I am afraid."
"Afraid, dear Jagiello?"
"I don't want the priest to come," she faltered.
"But we came for the priest."
"Please, Jan, dear, I am afraid . . .
1 don't want to be married .... to- night ..."
Jan rapped on the door again, fear- lessly, loudly.
Even as he did so, Jagiello darted out into the meadow — out of sight in the night, her fleeing figure lost in the mist that was sweeping in from the sea.
Bewildered, Jan stared an instant after her. Then, half-angrily, he rushed in pursuit.
The girl eluded him, slipping into the midst of a clump of silver birches.
"Jagiello!" he called, eagerly, "Ja- giello! Jagiello!"
Only the sea-wind answered, flow- ing through the trees. On he went, stumbling into a hedge of phlox. Sud- denly he paused, listening. He could hear the distant thunder of the sea up- on the rocks below the fort. He breathed heavily; his eyes dilated with the thrill of the chase; his fingers opened and closed spasmodically.
In the birches a twig broke. He heard it and started forward. When he reached the trees he heard a sob. He stopped short. Jagiello sprang up and was away like a lark in the dawn-sky.
Jan sped swiftly after her, reached her side, and, catching her about her slender waist, swung her high upon his shoulder. She trembled.
"Oh, Jan! Jan!"
"You'll not get away from me again, little lark!"
"Dear big man, I'm so afraid — so afraid ..."
"Of me, Jagiello, love?"
"Of you, love!"
Jan retraced his steps to the priest's door. Again he knocked. While he waited, he took the girl's small hand reassuringly in his.
They heard footsteps inside, and some one rattled the bolts.
An old man's voice called out:
"Who is there?"
"It is I, Jan Rantzau. I want to see the Father."
"Father Mamarja is not at home."
Jan's face mirrored his disappoint- ment.
"When will he return?"
The lay brother's voice was tremu- lous and old ; he thrust his white head through the doorway to have a better look at his strange visitors.
"The Father is in the village. Some workman is dying; he is saying mass for his soul. He will return when the man dies."
"Can we wait on the balcony?"
GUNS OF GALT
23
The old man opened the door wider and invited Jan and Jagiello into a small, musty, darkened room, full of the odor of ancient leather-covered books. He lit the candelabra, then made his way up the staircase.
When the man's echoing footsteps died away, Jan blew out the candles and went out upon the balcony. Jag- iello sat upon the railing, staring at her captor.
"Perhaps we had better go down and find the priest," she said, raising her clear eyes to his.
"No," said Jan; "we will wait here until he returns."
So they waited together upon the balcony, until the gray fingers of the dawn reached above the far horizon, pointing the way for the red sun. Gait lay below like a dream city. The last gold-gleaming petroleum lamp flick- ered and went out. Suddenly Jan caught Jagiello to his breast; her warm young lips clung to his; and there on the balcony, in the fresh, fra- grant stillness of the dawn, there was no sound save the dawn-twitter of wak- ing birds. The girl sang softly to her lover of their bridal night:
"Thy heart with my heart Is locked fast together, Lost is the key That locked them forever! No locksmith in the world Can make another; My heart from thy heart No one can sever!"
"Dearest," he breathed, passionate- ly, "sing to me again; say to me that you will never leave me!"
She sang again, like an amused lit- tle child, his eyes filled with tears as he listened:
"Thy heart with my heart Is locked fast together, Lost is the key "
Suddenly she stopped.
Far below along the white road that wound around the base |of the hill, voices were rising — voices and the thud! thud! of horses' hoofs.
Jan and Jagiello leaned over the bal- cony railing. They saw, like tiny specks, a score of horses round the hill, straining and struggling through the darkness, hauling up to the heights a gun-carriage supporting a great canon.
"The guns!" exclaimed Jagiello.
"They are hauling them to the fort in the dead of night so nobody will know," whispered Jan.
"Why do the guns have to break in upon us this way?" sighed Jagiello.
"Skarga says it means war."
Jagiello trembled in Jan's arms. "Oh, I hope not!"
The morning broke through the clouds of pearl. Footsteps sounded on the balcony. Father Mamarja, return- ing after his night's vigil, found the levers eagerly awaiting him. Jagiello smiled, her fear now vanishing. In the flood of the sunrise her earrings shimmered; her sea-blue eyes were wide with happiness. The priest asked them to step into the musty little li- brary.
"Marry me in the sun," Jagiello pleaded.
So, yielding to her whim, the priest chanted the marriage service in the white sun glare on the rose balcony. In a few minutes she was Jan's wife.
Then he watched them go down the bill together.
Much was to come of that night.
(To be continued.)
For the New Series of Pastor Russell's Contributions in the Overland Monthly see the announcement on page 79 of this Issue.
Jack London
To the Man on the Trail — A Klondike Christmas
By Jack London
(As all the literary world now knows, Jack London made his first appearance in print in the pages of Overland Monthly. Like all young and untried authors, he had spent laborious days and nights in preparing stories for the regular story publications throughout the coun- try. All of them were rejected. The following story reached the then editor of Overland Monthly in the latter part of 1898, and was published in the issue of January, 1899. This ac- ceptance greatly stimulated the hopes of the young author, and naturally he clung to its pages. He followed up this acceptance by furnishing eight other stories during that year, all dealing, as in the present one, with his experiences in Alaska. These tales illustrate the rapid development of the author's mastery of the story telling art. With this encouragement, a little later, he felt that he was strong enough to enter the Eastern magazine field. There- after his advance was rapid.)
DUMP it in!" "But I say, Kid, isn't that go-* ing it a little too strong? Whis- key and alcohol's bad enough; but when it comes to brandy and pep- per sauce and "
"Dump it in. Who's making this punch, anyway?" And Malemute Kid smiled benignantly through the clouds of steam. "By the time you've been in this country as long as I have, my son, and lived on rabbit-tracks and salmon- belly, you'll learn that Christmas comes only once per annum. And a Christmas without punch is sinking a hole to bedrock with nary a pay- streak."
"Stack up on that fer a high cyard," approved big Jim Belden, who had come down from his claim on Mazy May' to spend Christmas, and who, as every one knew, had been living the two months past on straight moose- meat. "Hain't fergot the hooch we uns made on the Tanana, hev yeh ?"
"Well, I guess yes. Boys, it would have done your hearts good to see that whole tribe fighting drunk — and all be- cause of a glorious ferment of sugar and sour dough. That was before your time," Malamute Kid said, as he turned to Stanley Prince, a young mining ex- pert who had been in two years. "No white women in the country then, and Mason wanted to get married. Ruth's father was chief of the Tananas, and objected, like the rest of the tribe. Stiff? Why, I used my last pound of sugar; finest work in that line I ever did in my life. You should have seen the chase, down the river and across the portage."
"But the squaw?" asked Louis Sa- voy, the tall French-Canadian, becom-
ing interested; for he had heard of this wild deed, when at Forty Mile the pre- ceding witner.
Then Malemute Kid, who was a born raconteur, told the unvarnished tale of the Northland Lochinvar. More than one rough adventurer of the North felt his heart-strings draw closer, and ex- perienced vague yearnings for the sun- nier pastures of the Southland, where life promised something more than a barren struggle with cold and death.
"We struck the Yukon just behind the first ice-run," he concluded, "and the tribe only a quarter of an hour be- hind. But that saved us; for the sec- ond run broke the jam above and shut them out. When they finally got into Nuklukyeto, the whole post was ready tor them. And as to the foregathering, ask Father Roubeau here : he perform- ed the ceremony."
The Jesuit took his pipe from his lips, but could only express his gratifi- cation with patriarchal smiles, while Protest and Catholic vigorously ap- plauded.
"By Gar!" ejaculated Louis Savoy, who seemed overcome by the romance of it. "La petite squaw; mon Mason brav. By Gar!"
Then, as the first tin cups of punch went round, Bettles the Unquenchable sprang to his feet and struck up his favorite drinking song:
"There's Henry Ward Beecher And Sunday-school teachers,
All drink of the sassafras root; But you bet all the same, If it had its right name,
It's the juice of the forbidden fruit."
"O the juice of the forbidden fruit," 3
26
OVERLAND MONTHLY
reared out the Bacchanalian chorus —
"O the juice of the forbidden fruit;
But you bet all the same,
If it had its right name, It's the juice of the forbidden fruit."
Malemute Kid's frightful concoction did its work; the men of the camps and trails unbent in its genial glow, and jest and song and tales of past adventure went round the board. Aliens from a dczen lands, they toasted each other and all. It was the Englishman, Prince, who pledged "Uncle Sam, the preco- cious infant of the New World;" the Yankee, Bettles, who drank to "The Queen, God bless her;" and together Savoy and Meyers, the German trader, clanged their cups to Alsace and Lor- raine.
Then Malemute Kid arose, cup in hand, and glanced at the greased-paper window, where the frost stood full three inches thick. "A health to the man on trail this night; may his grub hold out ; may his dogs keep their legs ; may his matches never miss fire."
Crack! Crack! — they heard the fa- miliar music of the dog-whip, the whin- ing howl of the Malemutes, and the crunch of a sled as it drew up to the cabin. Conversation languished, while they waited the issue expectantly.
"An old-timer; cares for his dogs and then himself," whispered Male- mute Kid to Prince, as they listened to the snapping jaws and the wolfish snarls and yelps of pain which pro- claimed that the stranger was beating back their dogs while he fed his own.
Then came the expected knock, sharp and confident, and the stranger entered. Dazzled by the light, he hesi- tated a moment at the door, giving to all a chance for scrutiny. He was a striking personage, and a most pictur- esque one, in his Arctic dress of wool and fur. Standing six foot two or three, with proportionate breadth of shoulders and depth of chest, his smooth shaven face nipped by the cold to a gleaming pink, his long lashes and eyebrows white with ice, and the ear
and neck flaps of his great wolfskin cap loosely raised, he seemed, of a verity, the Frost King, just stepped in out of the night. Clasped outside his Mackinaw jacket, a beaded belt held two large Colt's revolvers and a hunt- ing knife, while he carried, in addition to the inevitable dog-whip, a smoke- less rifle of the largest bore and latest pattern. As he came forward, for all his step was firm and elastic, they could see that fatigue bore heavily up- on him.
An awkward silence had fallen, but his hearty "What cheer, my lads?" put them quickly at ease, and the next in- stant Malemute Kid and he had gripped hands. Though they had never met, each had heard of the other and the recognition was mutual. A sweeping introduction and a mug of punch were forced upon him before he could explain his errand.
"How long since that basket-sled, with three men and eight dogs, passed?" he asked.
"An even two days ahead. Are you after them?"
"Yes. My team. Run them off un- der my very nose, the cusses. I've gained two days on them already — pick them up on the next run."
"Reckon they'll show spunk?" asked Belden, in order to keep up the conversation, for Malemute Kid al- ready had the coffee-pot on and was busily frying bacon and moose-meat.
The stranger significantly tapped his revolvers.
"When'd yeh leave Dawson?"
"Twelve o'clock."
"Last night?" — as a matter of course.
"To-day."
A murmur of surprise passed round the circle. And well it might; for it was just midnight, and seventy-five miles of rough river trail was not to be sneered at for a twelve hours' run.
The talk soon became impersonal, however, harking back to the trials of childhood. As the young stranger ate of the rude fare Malemute Kid atten- tively studied his face. Nor was he long in deciding that it was fair, hon-
TO THE MAN ON THE TRAIL
27
est and open, and that he liked it. Still youthful, the lines had been firmly traced by toil and hardship. Though genial in conversation, and mild when at rest, the blue eyes gave promise of the hard steel-glitter which comes when called into action, especially against odds. The heavy jaw and square-cut chin demonstrated rugged pertinacity and indomitability of pur- pose. Nor, though the attributes of the lion were there, was there wanting the certain softness, the hint of woman- liness, which bespoke an emotional na- ture— one which could feel, and feel deeply.
"So thet's how me an' the ol' woman got spliced," said Belden, concluding the exciting tale of his courtship. " 'Here we be, dad,' sez she. 'An' may yeh be damned,' sez he to her, an' then to me, 'Jim, yeh — yeh git cuten them good duds o' yourn ; I want a right pert slice o' thet forty acre ploughed 'fore dinner.' An' then he turns to her and sez, 'Anv yeh, Sal; yeh sail inter them dishes.' An' then he sort o' sniffeed an' kissed her. An' I was thet happy — but he seen me an' rears out, 'Yeh, Jim!' An' yeh bet I dusted fer the barn."
"Any kids waiting for you back in the States?" asked the stranger.
"Nope; Sal died 'fore any come. Thet's why I'm here." Belden ab- stractedly began to light his pipe, which had failed to go out, and then brightened up with, "How 'bout yer- self, stranger — married man."
For reply, he opened his watch, slipped it from the thong which served for a chain, and passed it over. Belden pricked up the slush-lamp, surveyed the inside of the case critically, and swearing admiringly to himself, hand- ed it over to Louis Savoy. With numer- ous 'Bv Gars!" he finally surrendered it to Prince, and they noticed that his hands trembled and his eyes took on a peculiar softness. And so it passed from horny hand to horny hand — the pasted photograph of a woman, the clinging kind that such men fancy, with a babe at the breast. Those who had not yet seen the wonder were keen
with curiosity; those who had, became silent and retrospective. They could face the pinch of famine, the grip of scurvy, or the quick death by field or flood; but the pictured semblance of a stranger woman and child made wo- men and children of them all.
"Never have seen the youngster yet — he's a boy, she says, and two years old," said the stranger, as he received the treasure back. A lingering mo- ment he gazed upon it, then snapped the case, and turned away, but not quick enough to hide the restrained rush of tears.
Malemute Kid led him to a bunk and bade him turn in.
"Call me at four sharp. Don't fail me," were his last words, and a mo- ment later he was breathing in the heaviness of exhausted sleep.
"By Jove, he's a plucky chap," com- mented Prince. "Three hours' sleep after seventy-five miles with the dogs, and then the trail again. Who is he, Kid?"
"Jack Westondale. Been in going on three years, with nothing but the name of working like a horse, and any amount of bad luck to his credit. I never knew him, but Sitka Charley told me about him."
"It seems hard that a man with a sweet young wife like that should be putting in his years in this God-for- saken hole, where every year counts two on the outside."
"The trouble with him is clean grit and stubbornness. He's cleaned up twice with a stake, but lost it both times."
Here the conversation was broken off by an uproar from Bettles, for the effect had begun to wear away. And soon the bleak years of monotonous grub and deadening toil were being forgotten in rough merriment. Male- mute Kid alone seemed unable to lose himself, and cast many an anxious look at his watch. Once he put on his mit- tens and beaver skin cap, and leaving the cabin, fell to rummaging about in the cache.
Nor could he wait the hour desig- nated* for he was fifteen minutes ahead
28
OVERLAND MONTHLY
of time in rousing his guest. The young giant had stiffened badly, and brisk rubbing was necessary to bring him to his feet. He tottered painfully out of the cabin, to find his dogs har- nessed and everything ready for the start. The company wished him good luck and a short chase, while Father Roubeau, hurriedly blessing him, led the stampede for the cabin; and small wonder, for it is not good to face sev- enty-four degrees below zero with naked ears and hands.
Malemute Kid saw him to the main trail, and there, gripping his hand heartily, gave him advice.
"You'll find a hundred pounds of salmon-eggs on the sled," he said. "The dogs will go as far on that as with one hundred and fifty of fish, and you can't get dog-food at Pelly, as you probably expected." The stranger started and his eyes flashed, but he did not interrupt. "You can t get an ounce of food for dog or man till you reach Five Fingers, and that's a stiff two hundred miles. Watch out for open water on the Thirty Mile River, and be sure you take the big cut-off above Le Barge."
"How did you know it? Surely the news can't be ahead of me already?"
"I don't know it; and what's more, I don't want to know it. But you never owned that team you're chasing. Sitka Charley sold it to them last spring. But he sized you up to me as square once, and I believe him. I've seen your face; I like it. And Tve seen — why, damn you, hit the high places for salt water and that wife of yours,
and " Here the Kid unmittened
and jerked out his sack.
"No; I don't need it," and the tears froze on his cheeks as he convulsively gripped Malemute Kid's hand.
"Then don't spare the dogs; cut them out of the traces as fast as they drop; buy them, and think they're cheap at ten dollars a pound. You can get them at Five Fingers, Little Sal- mon and the Hootalinqua."
"And watch out for wet feet," was his parting advice. "Keep a-traveling up to twenty-five, but if it gets below
that, build a fire and change your socks."
Fifteen minutes had barely elapsed, when the jingle of bells announced new arrivals. The door opened, and a mounted policeman of the Northwest Territory entered, followed by two half-breed dog-drivers. Like Weston- daie, they were heavily armed and showed signs of fatigue. The half- breeds had been born to the trail, and bore it easily; but the young po- licemen was badly exhausted. Still, the dogged obstinacy of his race held him to the pace he had set, and would hold him till he dropped in his tracks.
"When did Westondale pull out?" he asked. "He stopped here, didn't he?" This was supererogatory, for the tracks told their own tale too well.
Malemute Kid had caught Belden's eye, and he, scenting the wind, replied evasively, "A right peart while back."
"Come, my man, speak up," he ad- monished.
"Yeh seem to want him right smart. Hez he ben gittin' cantankerous down Dawson way?"
"Held up Harry McFarland's for forty thousand ; exchanged it at the A. C. store for a check on Seattle; and who's to stop the cashing of it if we don't overtake him? When did he pull out?"
Every eye suppressed its excitement — for Malemute Kid had given the cue and the young officer encountered wooden faces on every hand.
Striding over to Prince, he put the qnestion to him. Though it hurt him, gazing into the frank, earnest face of his fellow-countryman, he replied in- consequentially on the state of the trail.
Then he espied Father Roubeau, who could not lie. "A quarter of an hour ago," he answered; "but he had four hours' rest for himself and dogs."
"Fifteen minutes' start, and he's fresh! My God!" The poor fellow staggered back, half-fainting from ex- haustion and disappointment, murmur- ing something about the run from
TO THE MAN ON THE TRAIL
29
Dawson in ten hours and the dogs be- ing played out.
Malemute Kid forced a mug of punch upon him; then he turned for the door, ordering the dog-drivers to follow. But the warmth and promise of rest was too tempting, and they ob- jected strenuously. The Kid was con- versant with their French patois, and followed it anxiously.
They swore that the dogs were gone up; that Siwash and Babette would have to be shot before the first mile was covered ; that the rest were almost as bad ; and that it would be better for all hands to rest up.
"Lend me five dogs," he asked, turn- ing to Malmute Kid.
But the Kid shook his head.
"I'll sign a check on Captain Con- stantine for five thousand — here's my papers — I'm authorized to draw at my own discretion."
Again the silent refusal.
"Then I'll requisition them in the name of the Queen."
Smiling incredulously, the Kid glanced at his well stocked arsenal, and the Englishman, realizing his im- potency, turned for the door. But the dog-drivers still objecting, he whirled upon them fiercely, calling them wo- men and curs. The swart face of the older half-breed flushed angrily, as he drew himself up and promised in good, round terms that he would travel his leader of his legs, and would then be delighted to plant him in the snow.
The young officer, and it required bis whole will, walked steadily to the door, exhibiting a freshness he did not possess. But they all knew and ap- preciated his proud effort; nor could he veil the twinges of agony that shot across his face. Covered with frost, the dogs were curled up in the snow, and it was almost impossible to get them to their feet. The poor brutes whined under the stinging lash, for the dog-drivers were angry and cruel; nor till Babette, the leader, was cut from
the traces, could they break out the sied and get under way.
"A dirty scoundrel and a liar!" "By gar! him no good!" "A thief!" 'Worse than an Indian!" It was evi- dent that they were angry — first, at the way they had been deceived; and sec- ond, at the outraged ethics of the Northland, where honesty, above all, was man's prime jewel. "An' we gave the cuss a hand, after knowin' what he'd did." All eyes were turned ac- cusingly upon Malemute Kid, who rose from the corner where he had been making Babette comfortable, and silently emptied the bowl for a final round of punch.
"It's a cold night, boys — a bitter, cold night," was the irrelevant com- mencement of his defense. "You've all traveled trail, and know what that stands for. Don't jump a dog when he's down. You've only heard one side. A whiter man than Jack Weston- dale never ate from the same pot nor stretched blanket with you or me. Last fall he gave his whole clean-up, forty thousand, to Joe Castrell, to buy in on Dominion. To-day he'd be a million- aire. But while he stayed behind at Circle City, taking care of his partner with the scurvy, what does Castrell do? Goes into McFarland's, jumps the limit and drops the whole sack. Found him dead in the snow the next day. And poor Jack laying his plans to go out this winter to his wife and the boy he's never seen. Well, he's gone out; and what are you going to do about it?"
The Kid glanced around the circle of his judges, noted the softening of their faces, then raised his mug aloft. "So a health to the man on the trail this night; may his grub hold out; may his dogs keep their legs; may his matches never miss fire. God prosper him; good luck go with him; and — "
"Confusion to the Mounted Police!" interpolated Bettles, to the crash of the empty cups.
O* n
UNIV.h R
I
The Terrible Turk
By H. Ahmed Noureddin Addis
IN THEIR discussion of the great European war, writers of current periodical literature are prodigally devoting time and space to Tur- key, and the ultimate effect of the war on Turkey's position in Europe, and, indeed, as a nation. This interest, however, is but natural, in view of the unprecedented conditions which exist, and would ocasion no more than usual comment, were it not for the fact that practically all the writers discuss the near-Eastern question from identically the same viewpoint. And the original premise, or bias, with which they set out, is that this earth is no p»lace for Turks, and the sooner they cease to exist, both nationally and individually, the better for the other inhabitants of the globe.
Any one who doubts the truth of this statement may easily test its ve- racity for himself. Let him turn through a current newspaper, selected at random, and in all probability he will see somewhere in its pages, if not couched in the identical language, at any rate some expression of senti- ment similar to the following : "Which flag shall float over the mouldering ramparts of ancient Byzantium? Shall it be that of Russia, of which country Constantinople is the natural inheri- tance, or shall the Queen City of the Bosporus be governed by a concert of the powers — an international city?" "Who shall own Constantinople?" "Which cross shall supplant the cres- cent which now surmounts the dome of St. Sophia?"
"The Turk must go." "Possibly a good enough fellow in his own way, this Turk, but he never belonged in Europe." "At last, after five centur- ies of European occupation, the final
remnants of the Islamic hordes are to be driven back across the Bosporus into Asia, and European soil shall once more be rid of the Turk." "The ter- rible Turk" — "the unspeakable Turk" — and so forth, ad nauseam.
Our search is in vain if we expect tc find a word of sympathy for this noble race, whose prospective eviction from its ancestral possessions is ap- parently a foregone conclusion. Not so much as a line expressing the hope that the nation whose privilege it was to demonstrate to the world on July 22, 1908, that a violent revolution, de- pending for its success on actual pos- session accomplished by physical force could be consummated without the shedding of blood, may be able to re- tain its beautiful capital and uphold its ancient glorious traditions.
Thus is presented to the student of current history (and who at the pres- ent time is not included in that cate- gory?) a curious psychological prob- lem. The careful student will ask himself why the Turk's anticipated exodus from his European possessions is heralded far and wide with such great exultation; while with a sensa- tion of no less genuine wonder will he ask why Russia's possible occupa- tion of Turkey's capital should elicit column after column of sentimental twaddle.
Again and again writers and lec- turers tell us of the chaingangs, the tortures, as well as tales of death from almost incredible horrors in the mines of Siberia, with which Russia rewards many of the more advanced of her sons and daughters, who, having opin- ions of their own, dare express them. And this information comes, by no means from Russia's enemies exclu-
THE TERRIBLE TURK
31
sively, but from the very Russians of the Russians — patriots whose sole crime is that they love their country too well. Are these then the condi- tions we would impose upon Turkey's subjects? Should we prefer such con- ditions to the mild rule of the Turk? And do we love Russian methods of dealing with the followers of other religions, better than we do that mag- nanimous religious freedom supported by actual protection of the followers of other religious systems in the wor- ship of God in their chosen manner, which is granted by that most tolerant of nations, Turkey?
This attitude is not a thing of yes- terday. All down through the centur- ies, from the time when the first band of marauding barbarians from the West set out for Palestine on the ear- liest of those periodic raids of pillage, rapine and murder, called Crusades, until the present day, this feeling has persisted in varying degrees of inten- sity. Anti-Turk agitation had its ori- gin in the utterances of Peter the Her- mit, during the last decade of the eleventh century. Thus, with burning eloquence added to the natural rever- ence of the age for a man bearing a reputation of holiness, Peter the Her- mit by inflaming their ignorant fanati- cism aroused a mob which fared forth, having Palestine for its destination, and the wresting of Christian holy places from Moslem hands as its ob- ject.
True, certain of the Crusades were carried out in pursuance of the origi- nal plan to a degree. Others, how- ever, were characterized by the Cru- saders' fighting amongst themselves. This was carried to the extent that at times there is offered for our delecta- tion the curious anomaly of the pro- tection by Moslem arms of Christian holy places from desecration, pillage and even destruction at the hands of the warring Christians. Still other Crusades degenerated into expeditions of robbery and brigandage, in which the Crusaders, apparently forgetful of their high mission, robbed and plun- dered, not Moslims alone, but Oriental
Christians as well.
At first thought it would seem that religion, and religion alone, is at the root of this Turcophobia. Yet upon more mature reflection we perceive that other Muslims do not share in this fear and hatred. On the contrary the Muslims of India bear the repu- tation of being the highest class and best educated of their race, ranking even higher than the native Christians. This reputation is accorded them by authorities of the same category as those who heap the direst calumnies upon the head of the Turk. Moreover, the non-Turkish Moslems of Northern Africa bear a good reputation in gen- eral (though actually far less deserv- ing it than the Turk), and it is univer- sally granted that where Islam reaches the natives of the African interior it is doing a great work.
Next we look at the Turk himself. Here, surely, we should expect to find some innate viciousness — some terri- ble idiosyncrasies of character, since to no other cause can we impute this universal inhumanity exhibited toward him. But we find that the Turk is hon- est— scrupulously honest — and living as he does surrounded by races to whom honesty is but an empty name, he is rendered conspicuous by contrast. He is truthful, and therefore by his neighbors among whom artistic pre- varication is reckoned one of the great- est of virtues, the Turk is considered a fool too stupid to practice deception. To this quality, and the incapability of the Turk's nearest neighbors to com- prehend the ethics of honesty, may in a large measure be ascribed the repu- tation for stupidity which clings to the Ottoman race. Very often unsuccess- ful in business, which is by no means surprising in view of the class of com- petition which he finds pitted against him, the Turk is therefore reproached with lack of intelligence. A well- known modern writer on the subject of Turkey and the Turks, being forced to admit the Turk's honesty, which he cannot conscientiously ascribe to worthy motives, says that this hon- esty is not a matter of principle or
32 OVERLAND MONTHLY
morals, but may be attributed to the expedient of quelling these rebel- pride. According to him, then, the lions with other than Turkish soldiers. Turk is too proud to stoop to deceit Undeniably a peculiar situation ex- or treachery. From the Turk's point ists in Turkey. Sometimes it is called of view it would seem a pity that this "Turkish stupidity," sometimes the author was not afflicted with pride of "curse of fatalism," and again the the same kind. Nature has so fash- "blight of Islam." But then, this iden- ioned the Ottoman temperament that tical "Turkish stupidity" was a char- in dealing with his fellowmen the Turk acteristic of the people who in the fif- is kind and gentle, and his humane teenth century was reckoned the most treatment of animals is conceded even progressive people on earth; who, by his worst enemies. with the most wonderful military or- In his relations with his compatriots ganization and armaments that the of other religious beliefs the Turk world has ever seen, laid seige to and shows surprising consideration. One captured the well nigh impregnable who has never lived in Turkey cannot city which is now its capital, and sent realize to what extent the endurance its victorious armies thundering of the Muslim Turk is tried, the petty at the gates of Vienna. This is the irritations to which he is subjected stupid race whose royal house pro- bcth in the way of mockery of his faith duced philosophers and poets at a per- and ridicule of his laws and customs iod when many of the besotted mon- by those of other religions. A great archs of Europe were unable to write many of them, especially where there even their own names. It is well to is a large foreign population, will re- bear in mind that the "curse of fatal- fuse to obey Ottoman laws until it is ism" was also upon those people who, attempted to force them to do so, when the history of Europe is black as when they invariably raise a cry to night — when Christendom was wallow- heaven, calling upon the world to wit- ing in vice, ignorance, fanaticism and ness Turkish tyranny. While under corruption in the Dark Ages — founded the old regime their position was in the Caliphates of Bagdad and Cor- some respects more to be envied than dova, and from these seats of light and tnat of the Turks — and while under the learning began the yet unfinished task Constitution, Turkish subjects who of civilizing the world. As to the profess faiths other than Islam are "blight of Islam" the following quota- given equal rights with the Turks, tion from the late Col. Robert G. In- practically all such are at heart trai- gersoll, who, whatever may be said tors to the government to which they of him, certainly cannot be called a owe allegiance, and to which they look partisan or Islam or any other relig- for protection and redress of their ious system, will probably prove en- wrongs in time of trouble. These non- lightening:
Muslim Ottomans are continually "In the tenth century after Christ, hatching plots against the empire; and the Saracens, governors of a vast em- by far the greater part of them would pire, established colleges in Mongolia, prefer at any time to unite themselves Tartary, Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, with an army of invasion against the Egypt, North Africa, Morocco Fez Turks, rather than uphold their own and in Spain. The religion owned by government. Occasionally it has been the Saracens was greater than the Ro- found necessary to resort to armed man Empire. They had not only col- force to put down these seditious up- leges, but observatories. The sciences risings, and the Turk is always kind, were taught. They introduced the ten gentle and considerate, almost invari- numerals, taught algebra and trigo- ably has hesitated to lift his hand nometry, understood cubic equations, against his compatriots even under knew the art of surveying; they made great provocation, to the end* that the catalogues and maps of the stars, gave government has often had to resort to the great stars the names they still
THE TERRIBLE TURK
33
bear; they ascertained the size of the earth, determined the obliquity of the ecliptic, and fixed the length of the year. They calculated the eclipses, equinoxes, solstices, conjunctions of planets, and occultations of stars. They constructed astronomical instruments. They made clocks of various kinds, and were the inventors of the pendu- lum. They originated chemistry, dis- covered sulphuric acid, nitric acid and alcohol.
"They were the first to publish phar- macopoeias and dispensatories.
"In mechanics they determined the law of falling bodies. They under- stood the mechanical powers, and the attraction of gravitation.
"They taught hydrostatics, and de- termined the specific gravities of bodies.
"In optics they discovered that a ray of light did not proceed from the eye, but from the object to the eye.
"They were manufacturers of cot- ton, leather, paper and steel. They gave us the game of chess. They pro- duced romances and novels, and essays on many subjects.
"In their schools they taught the modern doctrines of evolution and de- velopment. They anticipated Darwin and Spencer.
"These people were not Christians. They were the followers, for the most part, of an impostor, or a pretended prophet, of a false god. And yet, while the true Christians — the men se- lected by the true God, and filled with the Holy Ghost — were tearing out the tongues of heretics, these wretches *vere irreverently tracing the orbits of trie stars. While the true believers were flaying philosophers and extin- guishing the eyes of thinkers, these godless followers of Muhammad were founding colleges, collecting manu- scripts, investigating the facts of na- ture and giving their attention to sci- ence. But it is well to know that we are indebted to the Moors, to the fol- lowers of Muhammad, for having laid the foundations of modern science. It is well to know that we are not indebt- ed to the Church, to Christianity, for
any useful fact. ... It is as well to know that when Muhammadans were the friends of science, Christians were its enemies."
Perhaps the following examples will offer to the intelligent mind a more ac- ceptable explanation of the position in which the Ottoman state now finds it- self. One of the dreams of construc- tive Turkish statesmanship has been the building of a railroad through the heart of what is usually called Turkish Armenia. Such a line would cut di- rectly through one of the most fertile regions on earth, as well as tap that world's storehouse of wealth, Central Asia. Thus would be opened up a great artery of commerce, bring the wealth of the Indies to the very gates of Constantinople. But in this project Russia has not failed to see the two- fold menace to herself; one, the very material reduction of her commerce with all this rich territory; another, the military advantages which would thus accrue to an Ottoman province up- on which she had long cast covetous glances. Russia was dissatisfied, and by adding to her objections those of her present allies, she has prevented the realization of Turkey's wish. At another time the Ottoman government asked England for Englishmen to act in various official capacities, assisting the Turks to bring about order in Ar- menia. This also was refused, and again at Russia's instigation. The rea- son for England's refusal is that for generations past it has been a part of Russia's policy to foster disorder in that much troubled section. As long as rape, pillage and murder ran riot in Armenia, so long will there be an ex- cuse for Russian intervention. Thus has ever suggestion, every movement for economic or political advancement by Turkey dashed itself to bits against the stone-wall of European oppression — or rather repression.
Then when the Young Turk revolu- tion came — and with it the knowledge that a Constitutional Turkey meant a strong centralized government, as well as a single, united nationality, instead of the desired decentralization accom-
34 OVERLAND MONTHLY
panied by autonomy for the various which is making such rapid strides to races inhabiting the Empire — the ob- the front as are the Turks. Neither is lcquy heaped upon the Committee of there another which presents such a Union and Progress by Christian Eu- multitude of features calculated to at- rope was greater than had ever been tract and hold our interest and admira- the portion of the old regime. Pre- tion. Unquestionably a great impetus vious to the adoption of the Constitu- was given to the intellectual unfold- tion the Committee of Union and Pro- ment of the Turkish race by its having gress had gone on feeling secure in the simply grafted itself upon the Arabic assurance that the Young Turkey civilization which, at the time of the Party had the sympathy and moral Turkish conquest, was the greatest support of practically all Europe. But and highest form of civilization the at this time it became clear to far-see- world has ever produced. Yet the story ing Turks that the only reason the of the development of the Turkish Powers had for wishing a revolution race is one of the marvels of history, in Turkey was that they awaited the First we see them riding down from weakening of the political fabric of the North — rude, uncultured horse- that country which it was believed men, but little better than barbarians, would attend such a change. When Next we find the Caliphate of Bagdad Europe saw that a new Turkey means with all its splendor under their sway, a strong Turkey — when she saw the and see them teaching the arts of war Sick Man of Europe in the process of and peace to Europe. Again, and we convalescence, then she decided that find a prince of the house of Osman something must be done. First of all, gracing the throne of the Caesars All finding Turkey absolutely unprepared, within the space of two centuries, came the war with Italy like a thun- Another example which suggests it- derbolt from a clear sky. Then, when self at this historical point must not — after every conceivable obstacle had pass unnoticed, since it gives the lie been thrown in her path — it became to the well-established fallacy that the clear that in spite of everything Tur- religion of Islam has been spread by key was going to win, the Balkan the sword, and the sword alone. After States were brought in. There again the Turkish conquest, when the Cali- the same tactics were employed, and phate of Bagdad lay prostrate at the when at last Turkey had gathered her feet of its conquerors, the victorious scattered resources and the tide of vie- Turks adopted the religion of the van- tory was slowly but surely turning in quished Arabs. An historical fact her favor, she was forced into a peace known to every school boy, yet the old with small honor. Many other exam- misconception of "Islam and the pies of European ill-will directed Sword" still persists, against Turkey might be shown, for Just one more mistaken idea which the list is well-nigh inexhaustible. If deserves to take its place in the back- in the face of such terrible odds she ground with that unctuous mouthful, succeeds in attaining true independ- "the blight of Islam." That is the ence while maintaining her integrity, general conception of education in the Ottoman nation will merit the Turkey. It is usually taken for grant- praise of every real lover of liberty the ed that Turks are uneducated. We world over. Thus by concrete example frequently read tales in which the ig- we observe that this retarding influ- norance of officially placed Turks is ence — this sinister pall which for gen- regretted, condoned or impartially dis- erations has threatened to stifle Tur- cussed — but, above all, advertised. Al- key — this so-called "blight of Islam" most one-half of an article which was — is in reality the blight of Christen- given wide publicity a few months dom. since was devoted to a dissertation up- There is perhaps no other race now on the density of the ignorance of a occupying a position in the lime-light certain Turkish official. The specific
THE TERRIBLE TURK
35
complaint in this case was that he could not read English. The ignor- ance of this miscreant, who really should have been in an institution for the feeble-minded, occasioned discom- fort and delay to the writer of the ar- ticle. Why then — the irresistible query rises spontaneously to one's mind — knowing the dense ignorance which prevails in that benighted country, did not the writer simply make use of the Turkish language and avoid the dis- agreeable consequences of the Turk's ignorance. Seriously it may be said that whatever her shortcomings in the matter of higher instruction, elemen- tary education existed in Turkey as well as other Muslim countries long before Europe ever thought of such a thing. And in regard to scientific ad- vancement Ingersoll says: "It can be truthfully said that science was thrust into the brain of Europe upon the point of a Moorish lance."
There is also the question of Pan- Islamism, always a bugbear to those of the European nations who hold large Muslim populations in subjection. The thought that the power of the Cali- phate might become anything more than a shadowy spiritual force outside the actual borders of the Ottoman Em- pire, is to them exceedingly distaste- ful. As long as the Caliphate is main- tained in an enfeebled condition the great mass of Muslim subjects of other countries can be hoodwinked by tales of Ottoman weakness and venality, as well as by learned theological disqui- sitions upon the usurpation of the Cali- phate by the Turkish Sultans (from the pens of Christians, or heretical Muslims.) But with a Caliphate backed by a strong, centralized gov- ernment and a dependable, well- equipped army, the down-trodden Muslim would dare to hold up his head once more, strong in the knowledge that in case of need he had a protector. This is the Pan-Islamism that they fear ; a Pan-Islamism that would mean a lightening of the yoke upon the necks of enslaved millions. European poli- ticians well know the absurdity of the idea that the whole Muslim world will
one day rise under the leadership of Turkey to lay waste to Christendom with fire and sword, massacre and pil- lage. Yet such statements are con- stantly being made; and for what rea- son? To arouse afresh and keep burning that age-old hatred and fear of Turkey. For the spectacle of a re- juvenated and victorious Turkey — a progressive Turkey will arouse mil- lions of enthralled Muslims to a reali- zation of their political and economic rights — their human rights — and they will demand equality with their over- lords.
This empty horror of the doctrine of Pan-Islamism is one reason why the Turk is hated and feared, and made the object of calumny and scorn, but there is yet another. It is not his re- ligion alone; neither his racial charac- teristics. It is an old, old hatred — a fear that dates back to a distinctly alien period in the intellectual status of Western Europe. It was engender- ed of the preaching of ignorant, bigot- ed fanatics to a people no less bigoted and ignorant than themselves — a so- ciety thoroughly permeated with the grossest of superstitions. It has come to be an instinct — a natural inheritance indelibly impressed upon our brain- cells, and is akin to the fear of the dark, and the nightmare in which we fall from incredible heights to awake shivering with fright, bolt upright in our beds. It is a shameful thing, inhu- man, unfraternal, unworthy a people endowed with a reasoning intelligence and enjoying a modern civilization.
"Shall Islam be driven back to Asia?" Another interrogation put be- fore us with increasing frequency. It is a question which our contemporaries are asking in language which varies from the blantant hilarity of the blind, ignorant bigot, who noisily advertises the wish uppermost in his mind in this connection, to the mild and unctuous exultation of the more erudite, but no less fanatical individual, who is pa- tently ashamed of his attitude, but nevertheless glad to set forth his feeble reasons why the answer should be in the affirmative.
36
OVERLAND MONTHLY
To Islamic civilization we owe near- ly all our sciences. In mathematics we are indebted to the Muslim Arabs for the system of numerals itself, which has made possible many new operations and simplified the entire science. Most of our luxuries, both of dress and of the table, came originally from Islamic countries, as did many of the cultivated grains and fruits. The rhymed verse is of Arabic origin, and has in a great measure supplanted the blank verse which was the only form employed by European poets previous to their contact with Islam.
The idea of religious toleration itself is of Islamic origin. Previous to Is- lam, as soon as a religion became suf- ficiently powerful, its devotees perse- cuted rigorously the followers of other
religious systems. But embodied in the tenets of Islam are the Qu'ranic in- junctions commanding the Muslims to grant to others immunity and protec- tion in the observance of their religi- ous practices. Thus was given to the world the conception of a brotherhood broad enough to overlap the boundaries of sects and creeds.
Suppose Islam to be driven out of Europe. Let us imagine the possibil- ity of separating en masse from the Western civilization all that Western civilization owes to Islam and the Mus- lim peoples. And in banishing that faith from European soil suppose that Europe should also cast off all that she has absorbed of Islam and Islamic civilization, what would remain of her boasted "Christian civilization?"
TO JACK
Sometimes when satin-footed shadows creep — A ghostly legion on the misty lawn —
Which come to put your flower-friends to sleep, And hold them safe against another dawn.
Between the day and night, across the grass,
Sometimes, dear Jack, I think I see you pass.
Sometimes when fire sinks to embers red, I sit alone where once we sat of old;
My heart refuses to be comforted,
Because your going left it bare and cold.
As gloom and firelight subtly intertwine,
Sometimes, I think, I feel your hand on mine.
And then, where moonlight calms the strife of earth, And midnight finds me out beneath the stars ;
Within my soul a strange celestial birth Breathes, and high heaven's door unbars,
And in the sweetness of that moment's grace,
Sometimes, dear Jack, I know I see your face.
Juan L. Kennon.
A Californian Duval
By Eugene T. Sawyer
GALLANT, reckless Claude Du- val was the English prototype of soft-spoken, graceful and graceless Tiburcio Vasquez, the Californian. While the one had for fields of exploit and adventure the wooded stretches of Hounslow Heath and the Great North Road, and for re- treat some ruined abbey, the other of the latter day had the plains and hills of the Golden Gate for ride and raid, and the canyon fastnesses for refuge.
Like the suave and courtly Duval, Vasquez confessed to an absorbing partiality for the softer sex. Many times did he take his life in his hands in order that some dark-eyed senorita should not wait overtime at the trysting place. Many were the occasions on which either life or property became safe through the prayerful interposi- tion of woman.
He was born in Monterey in 1835, was a wild, harum-scarum youngster, but he did not give the officers any trouble until just before he reached his sixteenth year. Before the oc- currence which launched him into a career of crime, his associates were Mexican law-breakers, cattle thieves, mainly, whose operations became ex- tensive soon after the occupation of California by the Americans. One night, in company with a Mexican des- perado, he attended a fandango. A quarrel over a woman, the fatal shoot- ing of the constable while trying to maintain order, the lynching of Vas- quez' companion, and the formation of a vigilance committee sent Vasquez into hiding, from which he emerged to ally himself with a band of horse- thieves.
In 1857 he came to grief, but five years' sequestration in the state prison
failed to produce any change in his morals. One month after his dis- charge he was operating as a highway robber on the San Joaquin plains. Chased by officers into Contra Costa County, he sought and obtained ref- uge at the ranch of a Mexican who was the father of a pretty and impres- sionable daughter. She easily fell a victim to the seductive wiles of the handsome, dashing young knight of the road. One morning Anita and Vas- quez were missing. With stern face the father loaded his pistols, mounted his fleetest mustang and started in pursuit. He overtook the lovers in the Livermore Valley. They were resting under an oak tree by the road- side.
When the father appeared Vasquez sprang to his feet, but made no hostile motion. His code of honor forbade an attack on the man he had wronged. A quick understanding of the situa- tion sent Anita to her lover's side. "If you kill him you must also kill me," she screamed. The father frowned. Vasquez with hands folded stood wait- ing. After some consideration the ranch owner said if Anita would re- turn home her lover might go free. The girl consented and Vasquez shrug- ged his shoulders as father and daugh- ter rode away.
Transferring his field of operations to Sonoma County Vasquez prospered for awhile, but one day in attempting to drive off a band of stolen cattle he v/as arrested, and for the offense spent four years in San Quentin prison. Im- mediately uoon his discharge, in June, 1870, he laid plans for robbery on a much larger scale than he had ever be- fore attempted. Selecting as his base the Cantua Canyon, a wild and almost
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
inaccessible retreat in the Mt. Diablo range, formerly the camp and shelter of Joaquin Murieta, he gathered about him a band of choice spirits, and for four years carried on a warfare against organized society the like of which California had never before experi- enced. Stages and stores, teams and individuals were held up in the coun- ties of Central and Southern Califor- nia, and though posse after posse took the field against him he succeeded in eluding capture. In the hills he was safe. White settlers were scarce, and the Mexican population aided and be- friended him, principally through fear. Besides, his sweethearts, as he called them, were scattered throughout the hills of the Coast Range, from San Jose to Los Angeles. They kept him posted regarding the movements of the of- ficers and more than once he escaped capture through their vigilance and activity.
In the fall of 1871, after a daring stage robbery in San Benito County, Vasquez got word that one of his sweethearts would be at a dance in Hollister that night. The bandit re- solved to be in attendance. The dancing was at its height when he ap- peared. Becoming flushed with wine, his caution deserted him, and he re- mained until near the break of day. He was not molested, and emboldened by a sense of security, he went into the barroom and engaged in a game of ca- sino with one of the women. Here he was seen and recognized by a law and order Mexican. The constable was notified, a posse was organized and a plan laid to surround the dance house and pot Vasquez, at the moment of his appearance at either of the doors. A woman gave Vasquez warning of his danger, and disguised with her skirt and mantilla, the bandit went out of the dance hall, crossed in front of the approaching posse, found his horse, mounted it and was beyond the danger limit before the deception was dis- covered.
A few days later, at the head of his band, he stepped the stage from the New Idria mines. A woman's head
showed at the door as Vasquez covered the driver with a rifle. She was the wife of one of the mine bosses, a man who had once befriended the outlaw. "Don't do it, Tiburcio," she entreated. Vasquez looked at the grim faces of his followers, hesitated a moment, and then lowered his rifle. "Drive on," was his curt command. The stage lumbered away, and the bandit leader faced a situation that demanded all his skill and nerve. That he succeeded in placating the desperadoes who ac- knowledged his leadership may be taken for granted for that same day the band robbed a store and then rode toward a hiding place in the Santa Cruz range.
While the robbers rested the sheriffs of three counties were searching for them. A few miles above Santa Cruz the officers and the outlaws met. In the fight that ensued, two of Vasquez' men were killed outright and Vasquez was shot in the breast. Though des- perately wounded he stood his ground, put the officers to route, and then rode sixty miles before he halted for friend- ly ministration. When able to stand on his feet he rode to the Cantua Can- yon, where he found the remnant of his band.
There he planned a sensational fall campaign, but as his band was not large enough to suit his purposes, he determined to seek recruits at a ranch on the San Joaquin. He crossed the mountains, and was riding along the valley highways when he espied ap- proaching an emigrant wagon drawn by four mules. Here, he thought, was a chance to make a little money on the side, for he knew, as a rule, that the emigrants of those days were fairly well supplied with money.
An oldish man was driving, and by his side was a gaunt, sad faced wo- man, evidently his wife. Inside, under cover with the household impedi- menta, were three half grown children. The bandit's command to halt was promptly obeyed, but when the emi- grant was harshly ordered to throw down his money and other valuables, if he had any, the woman's mouth
A CALIFORNIAN DUVAL
39
opened to a stream of mingled re- proach and vituperation. Vasquez lis- tened with unmoved countenance, but when the woman's tone changed and the tears began to flow, the bandit's face twitched slightly, and a softer expression showed on his face. The woman's story, told with many sobs, was one to command sympathy. They were poor, they had only ten dollars in the world, and they had come to California not only to seek for govern- ment land, but for a place in the mountains where health might come back to the oldest girl, who was in the first stages of consumption.
In telling this story months after- wards, Vasquez said: "The old wo- man floored me. Instead of wanting to rob her, I wanted to help her. I knew of a little valley not more than thirty miles away that I believed would just suit them. I told them where it was and how to get there. It was govern- ment land and there were only two other settlers there. The man thanked me, the woman wanted to kiss me, and I left them feeling much better than if I had robbed them."
Vasquez found at the ranch, his ob- jective point, a number of Mexican vaqueros: one was Abdon Leiva, a stalwart Chilian, who was married and lived in a wooden shack near the ranch house. Vasquez made friends with both husband and wife. The wife at once took his fancy. She was not over twenty, small, plump, with red lips and languishing eyes.
The bandit stayed at the ranch as the guest of the Leiva's for several days. While the husband rode the range, Vasquez remained at the shack and entertained the charming and sus- ceptible Rosario. To her he outlined his plans. Rosario became enthusiastic in support of them. Leave the matter of her husband to her. She could twist him round her little finger. Vasquez agreed to this, and through her per- suasion Leiva was induced to join the band.
The campaign opened by a raid on Firebaugh's Ferry, on the San Joa- quain plains. The story of what oc-
curred in the store was afterwards told by Vasquez, who said : "I took a watch from a man they called the Captain. His wife saw the act, and running up to me, threw her arms around my neck and begged me to return the watch to her husband, as he had given it to her during their courtship. I gave it back and then she went into another room, and from behind a chimney took out another watch. 'Take it,' she said, but I wouldn't. I just kissed her and told her to keep the watch as a memento of our meeting."
Then came the robbery of the Twenty-one Mile House in Santa Clara County, which was followed by the descent on Tres Pinos, a little village twelve miles south of Hollister, in San Benito County. This raid, because it resulted in a triple murder, aroused the entire State. County and State re- wards for the capture of Vasquez, dead or alive, brought hundreds of man hunters into the field, but for nearly a year the cunning outlaw successfully defied his pursuers.
The Tres Pinos affair was the bold- est Vasquez had yet attempted. With four men— Abdon Leiva, Clodoveo Chavez, Romulo Gonzalez and Teo- doro Moreno — he rode into the village, robbed the store, the hotel and private houses and individuals, securing booty that required eight pack horses (stolen from the hotel stable) to carry away. The raid lasted three hours, and the men killed were Bernard Bihury, a sheephefder; George Redford, a team- ster; and Leander Davidson, the pro- prietor of the hotel. Bihury came to the store while the robbery was going on and was ordered to lie down. Not understanding either English or Span- ish, he started to run and was shot and killed. While the robbers were at work Redford drove up to the hotel with a load of pickets. He was at- tending to his horses when Vasquez aoproachel and ordered him to lie down. Redford was afflicted with deafness, anr! not understanding the order, but believing that his life was threatened, started on a run for the stables. He had just reached the door
40
OVERLAND MONTHLY
when a bullet from Vasquez' rifle passed through his heart, killing him instantly.
All this time the front door of the hotel was open, and Davidson was in the doorway. Leiva saw him and shouted: "Shut the door and keep in- side, and you won't be hurt." David- son stepped back and was closing the door when a shot was fired, the bullet passing through the door and pierced Davidson's heart. He fell back into the arms of his wife and died in a short time.
The Chronicle was the only news- paper in San Francisco that had a correspondent on the ground, and for a week it had a daily scoop on its con- temporaries.
A short distance from Tres Pinos the bandits divided the booty, each man being counseled by Vasquez to look out for himself. Leiva had left his wife at a friend's ranch near Elizabeth Lake, Los Angeles County. Thither he rode to find that Vasquez had pre- ceded him. As the days passed Leiva began to suspect his chief had more than a platonic interest in the attrac- tive Rosario. He called Vasquez to account, suggesting a duel. But Vas- refused to draw a weapon against the man he had wronged.
After some hot words a reconcilia- tion was patched up, but Vasquez did not suspect the reason for Leiva's wil- lingness to let bygones be bygones. Matters went smoothly for a few days. Then Vasquez asked Leiva to go to Elizabeth Lake for provisions. Leiva consented, but instead of carrying out orders, he hunted up Sheriff Adams, of Santa Clara County and surren- dered, at the same time offering to ap- pear as State's witness in the event of Vasquez' capture and trial.
Adams started at once for the ban- dit's retreat, but Vasquez was not there. He had been gone many hours and Mrs. Leiva had gone with him.
A month later Vasquez deserted the woman and fled northward. This step was induced by the number and activ- ity of the officers. The Legislature had met, and authorized the expendi-
ture of fifteen thousand dollars for a campaign against the redoubtable ban- dit. One sheriti, (Morse o£ Ala- meda) organized a picked company of fifteen men, and with provisions tor two months, started to explore thor- oughly the mountain fastnesses of Central and Southern Caliiornia. But so efficient was Vasquez' system 01 information that every move made by the officers became known to him. At last Morse gave up the hunt. Then the irrepressible Tiburcio made up tor lost time. Robbery after robbery fol- lowed in quick succession. Alter holding up a number ol stages, Vas- quez' band entered the town of King- ston, Fresno County, and there made a rich haul. Stores were plundered, safes broken into, houses looted and provisions, clothing, money and valu- ables taken away.
The news of this raid spurred the officers to renewed action. Soon there was a rush of determined men into Fresno County. But Vasquez could not be found. He had retreated south- ward. Of his band of followers only Chavez was left. Gonzales had fled to Mexico, and Moreno had been cap- tured, tried and sent to prison for life.
A month after the Kingston raid Vasquez and Chavez made a descent upon Coyote's Holes' station on the Los Angeles and Owens River stage road. The few residents were tied to trees, the station was robbed, and the two bandits were about to depart, when the stage appeared. After the passengers had been robbed and goodly treasure taken from Wells- Fargo & Co.'s strong box, the horses were unharnessed, four more were taken from the stables and with bul- lion, money, jewelry and horses the lawless pair departed for the hills.
On the following day the two ban- dits stopped the Los Angeles stage near Soledad, and then dissolved partnership, Chavez to ride for the Mexican border, his California career forever closed, Vasquez to seek a fa- vorite hiding place in the Sierra Madre Hills.
Here, secure from molestation, he
MY COMMERCE
41
remained two months, when word was brought to him that one of his sweet- hearts was staying at the house of one George, the Greek, not many miles from Los Angeles. The place was in the zone of danger, but Vasquez re- solved to go there. In some way his intention became known to another woman who had once enjoyed the handsome outlaw's affectionate atten- tions. She managed to have word sent to Sheriff Rowland, at Los Angeles. The sheriff quickly organized a posse and went to the rendezvous. Vasquez was there, and in attempting to escape received eight bullets in his body. It was thought at first that he could not survive, but a strong constitution en- abled him to pull through.
As soon as his condition would per- mit he was removed to the county jail at Salinas City, Monterey County. There he was kept for several weeks, and then was transferred to the jail at San Jose, on account of its greater se- curity. Abdon Leiva, who was to be State's witness at the coming trial, was already a prisoner in the jail. While there he was visited by his wife, who desired reconciliation. But Leiva re- fused to take her back. She had made her bed and must lie on it.
On Thursday, January 25, 1875, Vasquez was placed on trial in the
District Court, Judge David Belden, Presiding, for the murder of Leander Davidson, the Tres Pinos hotel keeper. John Lord Love, Attorney-General of the State, conducted the prosecution. Leiva was the first witness. The op- portunity to square accounts with the man who had wronged him had come at last. He swore that Vasquez not only fired the shot that killed David- son, but also ordered the other murders committed during the raid. His was the only positive testimony, but other and thoroughly reliable witnesses gave sufficient circumstantial corroboration to enable the jury to reach a verdict. Vasquez was committed of murder in the first degree and sentenced to be hanged on Friday, the 19th of March.
Pending the execution of the sen- tence, Vasquez laughed, chatted and read as if his mind was free from care. He consented to accept a spiritual ad- viser, but said he had no opinion re- garding a future state. "The sages and the preachers say there is another world," he once remarked, "and if they are right then I shall soon see many of my old sweethearts."
The fatal day came, and Califor- nia's star bandit walked calmly to the scaffold and died with a smile upon his lips. And with his death peace de- scended upon highway and mountain.
/AY CO/A/AEKCE
Shrouded masts and winged spars Float my commerce forth to sea ;
Ride the waves by tropic stars, Charm the eye with pageantry,
Brave romance in sailyards hung —
When the world and I are young.
Iron throat, capacious maw,
Float my commerce forth to sea,
Meshed and safe with cunning law ; But their fat utility
Throttle siren songs untold —
When the world and I are old.
Eva Navone.
The Story of the Airacle
Told in California
By Otto von Geldern
(All rights reserved.)
IT WAS after the Civil War, at the end of the sixties, when the good old country towns of California passed through a hibernating stage, as it were. There had been tumultuous times; exciting days and months and years, when history was in the making. The fever heat of our golden era had been subdued; the pulse beat of the country had become normal; and dur- ing that particular period to which we now refer it was even less than nor- mal. The State enjoyed a twilight sleep, during which it gave birth to the vigorous youth who is now growing very rapidly and crowing as lustily as a belligerent chicken cock.
How we did enjoy the dolce far ni- ente of those days. That musical tongue of the country so delightful to the ear, which is heard so seldom now, was then spoken more or less by everyone, and the habits and the cus- toms, too, were in some modified form, those of the hidalgo and the black- eyed senorita. How charming it all was; at least, it seems so to us now. We look back upon that classic period pathetically, realizing that it has been obliterated from the pages of our his- tory forever.
We were very proud of our Golden State, and we all possessed the war- like spirit of defense, in case the time should ever come when it would be necessary to defend it.
Our community was an agricultural one, and our fathers, who were peace- fully inclined citizens, were very pro- nounced in their principles of loyalty, which are readily put into words like these :
"Don't fight, boys, until you have to; but if it ever become necessary to pro- tect this inheritance of yours, then fight with your coats off."
This spirit was well expressed when they chose the bear as an appropriate symbol of the State of California. The bear is a very peaceful and docile ani- mal if left undisturbed, but if its sav- ageness is ever aroused to the fighting point, it becomes the better part of valor to adhere to the maxim of the old mountaineer: "I haven't lost any."
Our slogan of preparedness for pur- poses of defense was fully as forcible as the aphorism inscribed upon the •Delphic Oracle, and it had just as classic a twang to it. It contained the three words: "Man heel thyself!" and if they were uttered with the proper accentuation, with a befitting expres- sion of countenance and with gestures peculiarly Californian, they were very effective.
But, we were satisfied if left undis- turbed to follow the daily routine of life to which we had become habitu- ated, and we asked for nothing more.
No one ever had any too much to do in those days. There were certain duties and plenty of time to do them in. Outdoor amusements during the day were frequent, and the caballo was a very close companion.
The evenings were spent either at the village hotel, usually in that part of the caravansary which contained in- viting looking bottles filled with the famous wines that were then making a name for themselves in the world; or in some general merchandise store, where one would be sure to meet a
THE STORY OF THE MIRACLE
43
friend or two to discuss the opportu- nities of the versatile George C. Gor- ham or the astute Henry H. Haight, who were considered at that time as candidates for Governor. This was called swapping lies.
The history of the defeat of seces- sion was still an absorbing topic of conversation, and a certain story of how California was saved to the North through the patriotic stand taken by some loyal ship-carpenters at the Mare Island Navy Yard became of unusual local interest.
Stories of the martyred Abraham were told, to which the young men lis- tened reverently. And in this wise these heterogeneous meeting places of the people became educational centers from which some of our best and most successful men have sprung.
The dignitaries of the village, too, had their gathering places and en- joyed a common meeting ground as modest in its surroundings as any of the others. It may have been in the rear of the hardware store, or in the post-office, or at the hotel; men were not fastidious in post-pioneer days. They lived a life of spartan simplicity and unexciting regularity.
The only event of the day was the arrival of the stage with the mail from the city and a straggling passenger or two, who in the summer time were so begrimed with dust and dirt that they could not be identified until they had been thoroughly soaked.
And the dignitaries, the foremost citizens, who were they? They were some ten or fifteen of them, profes- sional men and storekeepers. The judge, the lawyer, the doctor, the schoolmaster, the druggist, the post- master, the innkeeper, the watch- maker, two or three vineyardists, sev- eral so-called merchants, and last, but not least, the good old parish priest.
There was Judge Severence, an eru- dite gentleman, past middle age; spare and gaunt of figure, with a prodigious head, covered with thin gray hair; beardless it was, too, but ornamented with huge hirsute appendages in the shape of eyebrows. He had been edu-
cated for the bar (perhaps this may have been true in more than one sense) ; had studied in several of the renowned Eastern universities, and had visited Europe. We knew all this from hearsay only, but we respected him highly because of his reputed erudi- tion.
Howbeit, he was a just judge, wor- thy of every respect, with a warm heart, full of kindly humor; and, what endeared him to the community par- ticularly— he was a good story-teller. His stories were of the Lincoln-type, full of harmless wit and wisdom.
Since all men were known by a lo- cal appellation rather than by family name, he was called "Jux." One may imagine this to have been a perversion of his judicial title, but this was not so. At one time, in trying a divorce case, and these cases were rare in those days and therefore all the more inter- esting, he used the word "juxtaposi- tion" in reference to some detail of the evidence, which so aroused the risibil- ity of the unsophisticated folk that this monosyllable was invented by the town wit during an inspired moment, and it clung to the judge to the day of his death.
There was Doctor Plasterman, an austere looking but well-disposed man, who knew every one intimately, that is, interiorly as well as exteriorly. Physicians had to be very versatile in the early days, for they were called upon for anything and everything, whether pulling a tooth or inciting an efflux. He was a sort of godfather to all the young folk pf both sexes, be- cause he had been a personal witness to their physical entrance into this vale of tears. And to the older people who had passed away, he had rendered sympathetic aid in that last trying hour when a friend with a soothing hand is needed more than ever.
He, too, had been given a specific name, like every one else. The doc- tor was a connoisseur of what are known as dry wines ; white wines of a certain flavor and tartness that leave an impress of dryness on the palate. He could discourse on their bouquet —
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
blume, he called it — and go enthusias- tically into a lot of epicurean detail that astonished the natives who had no conception of such things. There was one thing, however, which they were not able to construe logically into a concrete meaning, and that was this : how anything that is wet, deliciously so and very much so, could by any possibility be dry, or, as Webster's dictionary has it : "Free from moisture of any kind;" and because the doctor appeared to possess the unusual ac- complishment of perverting this home- ly adjective into something so far re- moved from is specific meaning as to appear absurd, the sobriquet of "Dry- dock" was coined for him.
The word behind the hyphen has no reference to that nautical receptacle then unknown in California, but it ob- tained its meaning from the undig- nified abbreviation of titles; in the same way in which a lieutenant was called a lute, a captain a cap, a pro- fessor a prof, or a gentleman a gent.
Then there was the watchmaker, Mr. Tinker. The name of his calling did ill befit him, for he could not have made a watch if he had tried ever so long. He cleaned them ; whatever that might imply. An invalid watch or clock brought to him he would examine physically with the gravity of a gyne- cologist. He would listen to its heart murmurs and inspect its vitals with a huge magnifying glass with the in- variable result of his diagnosis: "Has to be cleaned."
He was known by the name of "our angel," and unless .your historian were to relate the circumstances connected with the origin of this name, you would never guess it. This little man with pionounced fiery features and uncom- monly large hands and feet, frequently acted in the capacity of a docent, by imparting chronological knowledge to his friends at their diurnal gatherings. His hearers were usually overawed by such terms as "apparent time," "mean- time," "siderial time," "equation of time," which our friend used with great volubility. One scientific ex- pression, however, on which he prided
himself more than on any other was "hour angle," and this astronomical term he got into his discourse wherever he detected a good opportunity. And, finally, that became his name — hour angle. It was always spoken, how- ever, as though the first word took the form of a personal pronoun: our an- gle ; and since this did not convey a meaning to the very practically minded men of the village, usage finally de- cided upon "our Angel." His wife, whose anatomy was more or less out of proportion, was known as "the Equa- tion of time."
The druggist's name was Bull. He had lost an eye during one of his so- called laboratory experiments in the back yard, and in lieu of this optic he wore a glass dummy. The extraction of this false member which, by the way, had to be imported from the East, and its re-insertion into the va- cant cavity, was not only very instruc- tive to the young people of the town, but it likewise afforded them an inno- cent amusement of which they never tired. A crying child became pacified at once if Mr. Bull would withdraw this vitreous member from its socket and permit the baby to play with it, with the admonition not to swallow it, my dear.
He was called the "bully boy with a glass eye," a slang expression fre- quently heard in California in those days, which may have had its origin in our community.
Time will not permit us to continue the personal description of these char- acters. There are too many of them, and each one was an original in his own way and different from all the rest. But there is still one more to whom particular reference must be made.
The village priest, Father Diman- che, known by all as Father Sunday, was liked by every one. He was a Belgian by birth, who appeared to be able to converse in any tongue. While we had comparatively few inhabitants in our part of the country, they had come from almost every quarter of the civilized globe, and in order to get into
THE STORY OF THE MIRACLE
45
closer contact with these people, and all the more so as a spiritual adviser, it was necessary to be more or less polyglot.
The Father had the best heart in the world, a heart which was always open to those who needed consolation and friendly succor during an hour of trial or anguish. He was pious, but not os- tentatiously so; he possessed an in- tensely human nature ; he not only for- gave but he also forgot, and he found an excuse for every shortcoming of his fellow being. This endeared him to the community, and Jew and Gentile and the faithful respected him alike.
He rarely ever missed an evening's gathering of his friends, and he en- tered into their jokes and frivolities as long as the humor was harmless and free from any personal application.
A better man never lived, and to this day the older people who knew him speak of him in terms of great reverence and endearment.
Now, after all these preliminaries, we have finally reached the beginning of the story, which is simply a nar- rative of one of the gatherings of our simple country friends.
One may readily imagine that their conversations turned upon almost any interesting subject, and that that which happened to be under discussion was treated from "every angle," as the say- ing is to-day. In those days, however, subjects were not treated from angles, any more than we would treat a sub- ject at the present time from its cosine, its tangent, or its secant; — but that may come.
Religious discussions were not in- frequent. Andrew Jackson Davis and his doctrine of a tangible spirit world, peopled with living and breathing en- tities, who possessed the uncanny power of communicating with their friends on earth by means of a con- cussive language of raps and knocks, in rooms that had to be specially darkened for the purpose, had upset some of the minds not sufficiently oc- cupied or properly fortified, and talks of table-tipping, and of the materiali- zation of the late Mrs. Tucker, or the
astral body of Dan Scully's mother- in-law, and of other occult matters were exceedingly interesting, even if they did have the effect on some of the lis- teners of making them afraid to go to bed alone and in the dark subse- quently.
These were our modern miracles. Jux, always skeptical, treated them with a sardonic smile. But — if they occurred during the advent of the Re- deemer, then why not now?
This brought out an argument on miracles in general, Father Sunday maintaining, in his unobtrusive way, that all things were possible to the good and omnipotent God.
But then, there were the laws of Nature: how about them? In return, the assertion was made that if the Deity is the author of these laws, and no one had the temerity to deny this fact, then it would not be inconsistent to believe that He could violate them if He saw fit to do so.
This argument waxed warm with pros and cons; our Angel, as the scien- tist of the village, stoutly denying the possibility, as he termed it, of mutilat- ing the immutability of Nature's laws. There probably would not have been any end to the argument if the Judge had not obtained the floor, after a con- siderable effort, and had forced his friends to heed the following state- ment:
"Father Sunday, I am going to tell you a story. I am going to relate to you a dream, one that I dreamed re- cently, in which a miracle is wrought; and if you will admit the possibility of this miracle, I will return the compli- ment by believing in any and all that are related in biblical history, and this I promise to do from now on."
A treat was evidently in store for our good friends, because the Judge's reputation as a story-teller had been firmly established in the community, a matter which has been recorded al- ready in these pages.
There was a general demand at once and loud exclamations were made for the Judge to proceed. "Go on, Jux, let's have the story." "Don't keep us
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
in suspense. We know that you are a dreamer from way-back, and that your dreams are as extraordinary as your thoughts when you are awake. Go ahead, most noble and illustrious Som- nambulo, we shall be all ear."
Even Father Dimanche acquiesced and nodded his head with an encour- aging smile.
CHAPTER II.
The Judge's Dream.
"Now, my good Father and all my friends, listen to me. Dreams are strange phenomena! Inexplicable are their remarkable influences over us. With all our science, Dry-dock, we fail to account for the not infrequent material significance of certain noc- turnal apparitions."
The doctor gave his assent to these foreboding and redundant preliminar- ies with a nod of extreme gravity.
"Just think, friends, I dreamed that I had died. My soul had left its car- nal receptacle, in which I flattered my- self that it had been fairly well housed. Now, strange to say, it, or I, if you will, knew not of its, or my, new exist- ence. In other words, no change ap- peared to have occurred to me per- sonally. I, or it, seemed to be the same old Jux, but the surroundings and all things about me were remark- ably unusual.
"I do not know by what means, but I seemed to be moving without physi- cal effort, and I was apparently chang- ing my position relatively to visible objects about me. Unmistakably I was propelled in a certain direction, and this continued until I had reached an indescribable enclosure or wall. It appeared to me as though this were built of innumerable clouds and of thousands upon thousands of small stars; it scintillated and glistened with a subdued luster, and its vision filled me with a delight that I had never known before.
"In traversing the space along this cloud wall in a direction that im- pressed me as being normal to the one
in which I had come, I reached an im- mense opening; that is, a portal which led into a mighty court, encircled like- wise by cloud barriers of the most beautiful hues.
"There were many others who en- tered this court with me. They ap- peared to come from all directions and from no particular direction. I said there were others; I use the word "others" ambiguously, for I am in a quandary what to call them. They were spectral entities, and they were there everywhere. To attempt to de- scribe them would be futile. I had not seen them approach, but I was at every moment cognizant of their coming. They appeared and disappeared again in the most inexplicable manner. It was all so awfully strange, so mysteri- ous and so weird, that words fail to give a description of what I saw and what I felt.
"Within the enclosure there were edifices inhabited, if I may use that expression, by strange beings. That is not the proper word for them, but it suits me to call them so. They had all the attributes of humanity, and yet they were not human, for they were not mortal. If they had ever been mortal or human, they had forgotten all about it, or they cared not. They cannot be identified by our common conception of angels; they flew, but they had no wings; they appeared to be able to be in two places at once. To them, time and space had no longer any meaning or significance.
"They must have had the advantage of some transcendental or fourth di- mension, to which my three-dimen- sional soul had not as yet been ad- justed. It is the only explanation I am able to offer to account for their remarkable appearance and disap- ance.
"By some strange method, inexpli- cable to me now, but so absolutely a matter of course to me then, I reached a very large aggregation of beautiful cloud edifices. It seemed to have been constructed of rainbows, this palace- like structure, which I entered with many others, impelled by a motive that
THE STORY OF THE MIRACLE
47
I did not then nor do I now under- stand.
"Immeasurable halls were filled with devout souls. I saw them and I heard them. They were about me every- where.
"There was a sort of rhythmic har- mony in everything that I saw, and in all that I heard and felt. A great hymn of adoration seemed to swell forth in one majestic volume of concord from a thousand mighty, but to us invisible organs that sang the music of the spheres to the glory of the Creator.
"Space was filled with sights and sounds soul-stirring and overpowering in their grandeur and beauty. Space is a word that I use again as a human being, for then I had lost all spatial conception and perceived through my soul, not by five senses, but by one sense only, so that seeing and hearing and feeling and taste and smell ap- peared to have been merged into one perceptive faculty. I seemed to real- ize then that intelligence is an entity, and not the product of an entity, and that it possessed as tangible an ex- istence here as anything that we call real on earth.
"Here I was in this great hall, with the mighty dome of a sky above me far more beautiful than any that I had ever seen before, overawed by what I perceived, unable to move or to stir, with a desire only to wait and to abide that which was to come.
"Now, where do you think I was? Let me say it reverently and with abated breath : I was in the halls of the palace of God ! Those about me spoke in hushed whispers and referred to Him in the greatest reverence as the Celestial Majesty. But, stranger than anything I have yet related: No one had ever seen Him. This, I learned, was as impossible as to see oneself.
"I may have been there a long time or a short time, I cannot tell, for, as I have said, time-conception had been obliterated within me, but at last I was permitted to obtain a conception of the Great and All-pervading Power. I shall not attempt to describe to you this moment, for there is nothing that
I could say that would give you the impression that I received.
"No individuality appeared any- where; but the great halls, heretofore illumined by a dim or subdued light befitting the sacredness of our sur- roundings, were suddenly filled with the most brilliant and overpowering radiance. A beacon-fire of infinite in- tensity yielded a newer light, a brighter light, a greater light, and more light and light again, until this sacred tem- ple in which we were assembled was revealed to our gaze into its remotest recesses, where the holiest of shrines had been unobserved before. And the appearance of this great light was ac- companied by one mighty impulse of the spheres to sing their eternal Ho- sannas to the Spirit of the Universe.
"Shafts or rays of this pure and brilliant luminosity, endless in variety and as to number, were hurled to the sky above us, and into the immeasur- able regions beyond us, and their re- flection from sun to sun penetrated every part of the universe. These quivering, soul-stirring halos reached into the vastness of space to the very last one of the eternal stars for a dou- ble purpose, to imbue it with the quickening impulse of life and to dissi- pate the darkness of ignorance.
"I grasped it all in a moment, and I learned then that "God is the Light"
"The impression may have been but one of an instant, but the effect upon me will be everlasting.
"This lesson having been imparted to me, and to the many souls who were there with me, the halls assumed again that condition of subdued illu- mination in which I found them when I first entered them.
"Other perceptions now became manifest to me. I seemed to take cog- nizance again of what was going on about me in my immediate surround- ings. I appeared to recover from a trance, and suddenly realized that I was spoken to, that I was addressed by some one and by my proper name, too, which I had not heard spoken for many years. It appeared to me as though those who held sway there,
48 OVERLAND MONTHLY
say, the archangels or the angels, were and it was finally decided and made
about to make a disposition of me in clear to me that I would have to be
some manner, for I was given to un- taken to the abode of one referred to
derstand that it depended upon certain as Satan, in order to consult with him
records which they were looking into, on the subject of my futurity,
whether I would be permitted to enter "Here was a fine 'how-do-you-do.'
a coveted celestial sphere or state, or With all my mundane faults I thought
whether I should be sent in a contrary that after all it was a 'little rough on
direction to be dealt with according to me' to have been so utterly neglected
the dictates of another very formidable as not to possess one single good deed
authority, whom I had not met as yet, to my credit. However, I comforted
but who, I had reason to believe, pos- myself with the thought that since no
sessed an immense influence in super- one had charged me with anything on
mundane affairs. the other side of the ledger, I ought
"My soul became cognizant of the not to borrow any trouble until I had existence and presence of innumerable to face the music for good, scrolls, that is, rolls of parchment or "At this juncture, several angels of paper that were handled by angelic a subordinate capacity were delegated apparitions, who appeared to be heav- to convey me to a locality to which we enly scribes or secretaries, and in my so frequently refer in California in behalf evidently many of these scrolls metaphors, similitudes or hyperboles had been consulted, but apparently un- of speech superlatively sulphuric, for successfully. Then came another mo- no other reason than to be specific or ment when I was informed — I don't to accentuate our conversation, know how, but I realized it all plainly "Judging from our constant refer- enough then — that the searchers of ence to the environment of Satan, one records, these archangels or angels, would be led to think that we were had failed to find any record of my very familiar with it, but I shall prob- mundane existence. ably astonish you by telling you em-
"I imagine now, after having gone phatically that we know nothing at all through all this, that an account is kept about it, and that all our conceptions of all of us; that our good deeds are of it are false. But, let us wait pa- credited to us on the right side of the tient1y until I get to that part of my ledger, and that our misdeeds are story.
placed against them as a debit, and "The angels who were with me to
that the final balance makes up our fit- steer me four-dimensionally to the gar-
ness to enter either into one of the fu- den of Proserpine had been instructed
ture conditions of bliss and happiness, to go directly to the Prince of Discord
or into the other where these condi- and to say to him, that since no record
tions are doubtful. This may not be could be found in the annals of the
so, but my human reasoning seems to celestrial registration office of the soul
assume this as a logical sequence of of one Tobias Severence, homo sap-
my experiences. It is necessary, ap- iens, called Jux, arrival from planet
parently, to read your title clear to number 3, termed Mundus, of Solar
mansions in the sky. System XXIII, Class C, reference num-
"Not finding my name in the rec- ber plus 1-8-6-7, it became necessary
ords seemed to cause grave anxiety to institute further search in the ar-
among those who were busying them- chives of the power of evil and to ob-
selves with them, and there were ex- tain a record from this source, if there
pressions of opinion to the effect that be one, in order that this soul of mine
my spiritual advisers on earth must be properly classified and officially
have been very lax in their duties, or stored away into its place of eternal
this omission could not by any possi- abode.
bility have happened. These celestial "The sensation in departing hence
agents appeared to be in a quandary, was very much like that of my coming,
SOLITAIRE
49
which I have attempted to describe to you already. The transference im- pressed me again as a most mysterious changing of place without the neces- sity of individual exertion; but it seemed to me that the farther removed we became from that central region or locality, where space and time rela- tions are incongruities — and where my soul, unprepared for these strange con- ditions and unadjusted to them, had been so weirdly perturbed and con- fused— the more did the objects about us assume again that natural order of things to which I had been accustomed on earth.
"The transformation from a subjec- tive to an objective condition, using my human judgment now, was evidently a gradual one. At first we were souls or thoughts in translation; we then seemed to traverse space again objec- tively, but spectre-like and in a man- ner difficult, if not impossible, to de- scribe in words, until we were really in flight by actual effort. At another and later stage of this transformation the indefinite objects on all sides of us grew together to assume concrete forms, and I began to conceive dis- tances again, and to use my five senses normally, as I had been in the habit of doing before I was overwhelmed by impressions that I could not cor- relate properly."
"Normally is good," interjected the bully boy with a glass eye.
Jux, unperturbed, continued: "And finally we found ourselves actually
walking along a beautiful pathway, in an open field full of the most exqui- site flowers, such as I had never seen before. The way led directly to a sombre looking forest or wood, which was distinctly visible in the distance. I strolled leisurely along this broad path, illumined by an agreeable solar light, in the most happy and content frame of mind, the angels leading the way like the harbingers of an exalted messenger.
"They spoke of the beautiful flowers as being the souls of human infants, planted temporarily in these fields of undisturbed tranquility until they were ready to be transplanted into the Gar- den of Eden to bloom perpetually.
"In the metamorphosis (if I may be permitted to use this word) from one extreme psychical state to the other, there appeared to be an intermediary condition, a sphere of transition, as it were, to which a soul, liberated from its mundane enthrallment, should be subjected first, in the correct order of things psychical, before taking its final abode in that greater Beyond, where there is neither Past nor Future, and where space is meaningless.
"By some strange and to me inex- plicable error, oversight or misunder- standing, my poor soul had been plunged from one extreme directly in- to the other, without giving it an op- portunity to enter primarily into that transitory stage, which is a matter that appears so essential to me now. (To be Continued)
SOLITAIRE
When Love is banished from the human heart
There is no desert-waste so lone and bare As the bleak soul of him who lives apart —
A recluse in a game of solitaire !
William DeRyee.
The Ause of the Locked Door
By Elsie McCormick
COLTRANE still maintains that suffering, not by digging it up in a he acted rightly in the matter, cloister. She might be a hopeless in- I have long since ceased argu- valid, tied down to one room, or may- ing with him, partly because it be she's a rancher's wife, living thirty is useless and partly because, after miles from the nearest railroad. Any- reading her latest poems, I am begin- way, she's out of the world so far that ning to agree that Laura Lent's happi- she's gotten an entirely new angle on ness is worth less to the world than it." her work. "Ever heard the name before ?" I in-
I was with Coltrane the first time he quired, received a manuscript from her. He "Never," he answered, "and I don't opened it in his usual bored way, pol- think any other editor did. She vio- ished his glasses and read it through, lates every possible rule about sub- But instead of reaching toward the mitting a manuscript. I came near pigeon-hole marked "Regret Slips," he putting it in the waste-basket without went over again slowly and thought- going any farther than the heading." fully, with the expression of a man Coltrane ran the poems in the next who has unexpectedly picked up ten number of the magazine. The issue dollars. had not been on the newsstands a day
"Read it, Moulton," he ordered, before he began to receive comments
thrusting it at me. It consisted of four on them. Then the reviews took them
short poems written on both sides of up, and after they had been reprinted
the paper in a queer feminine hand, four or five times, the new writer was
But after I had read them I was as sur- on the way to become famous,
prised as Coltrane. There was some- But of all the people who had
thing unearthly about them — some- watched her success, Laura E. Lent
thing, as a sentimental reader later re- was apparently the least interested,
marked, "that savored of the star- She ignored Coltrane's letter of appre-
dust." Down at the bottom of the page ciation, and her only answer to the
was the name "Laura E. Lent," and a check was another manuscript, more
post-office box in a small Western beautiful and more poorly written than
town. the first one.
"Where, this side of the Styx, does "She's a mystery, that woman," re-
that woman get her aloof viewpoint?" marked Coltrane, a couple of months
demanded Coltrane when I put down later. "I've never yet succeeded in
the manuscript. "She writes like some getting a personal word out of her.
kind of angel that has put in a few This month I purposely withheld the
thousand years ministering to human- check, just to see what she'd do about
ity." Coltrane wrote verse himself it. That usually brings them to earth,
once. A person may write like an angel, but
"Maybe it's a nun writing under an if he doesn't get his pay on time, the
assumed name," I suggested. letter he sends to the editor sounds
"No," answered the editor, tapping like the correspondence of a ward-boss
the ' manuscript thoughtfully with his who was cheated out of his graft. But
glasses. "She's reached peace through not Laura E. Lent. She merely sent
THE MUSE OF THE LOCKED DOOR
51
in a finger-marked manuscript that was enough to make Keats shut up shop. That woman has reached a stage of evolution where money means nothing to her."
Coitrane sat down at his desk and absent-mindedly sorted his papers. "I will send for her to come East," he re- marked. "The magazine can afford to put up the fare if it can get a woman like that on its staff. At least we'll find out whether Laura is a self-ap- pointed hermit or the long-suffering wife of an invalid husband."
When I dropped in at the office a few days later, I found Coitrane mus- ing over a letter. "I heard from Laura E. Lent," he remarked, with a peculiar twinkle in his eye. Without further comment he handed me a letter written in indelible pencil on cheap tablet paper. It was undated and without a heading.
"I received your invitation to come East," it read, "and no one knows how much I would like to accept it. To see the open fields again, to meet clever men and women, to be part of the whirl of city life, would mean more to me than anything else on earth. Since re- ceiving your letter I have lived through the trip a hundred times. But I cannot come now — or ever. I am do- ing life in the State penitentiary."
"That accounts for the sad remote- ness we've been trying to analyze," Coitrane remarked. "When I go West next week I'm going to call on the Gov- ernor of her State and see what can be done for her. The judge who sent that woman to prison committed a crime against American literature."
Coitrane left to spend his bi-annual vacation with Jack Avery, his star contributor. A week or two later I re- ceived one of his abrupt letters. "I've seen her," he wrote. "She's tall and white, with eyes that don't belong to this planet. She reminds me of a wo- man who has died and left only her ghost. I talked to her in the presence of an iron-faced matron who inter- rupted the conversation and said 'You was' and 'He ain't.' She's been sent up for murder, it seems — killed a man
who had won her under promise of marriage and failed to make good, as tnat type usually fail. Think of a wo- man writing poetry in an atmosphere reeking of chloride de lime!"
"The Governor is a nice chap,' he wrote a short time afterward. "It's fear of his political skin which pre- vents him from granting a pardon. The judge who sentenced her rides in the political band wagon, and controls enough ballots to paper the capitol. So many of his opponents criticised his judgment in this case that he would consider a pardon a personal affront. The most the Governor can do is to use his influence with the parole board. Her petition will be read at the next meeting."
Coitrane stayed in the West until the prison doors closed behind Laura E. Lent. The poet was silent for a few months, probably while she was be- coming adjusted to the world she had been forced to renounce. Then she be- gan to write. The first manuscript caused Coitrane to lose his appetite for lunch. The second ruined his disposi- tion for the rest of the week. The third made him decide on a hurried trip to the West.
"Read it!" he roared, handing me the neat type-written copy. "Did you ever see such drivel ? It's the kind of stuff you'd expect from a fat, middle- aged woman who belongs to the Mon- day Morning Literary Club!" It was. Laura E. Lent, of the beautiful con- ceits and strange intuitions, was gone. The poem included a rhapsody over an impassioned kiss, a lot of second-rate moralizing over love and several ref- erences to summer moonlight. It was cheat), banal and as uninspired as a turnip.
Coltrane's first letter after his de- parture confirmed my worst suspicions. "She's getting fat and red-faced," he wrote. "She has all the poses of a third carbon authoress. I believe she sells her autograph. She's almost as spiritual as a Swedish cook. Why in Heaven's name does a woman lose her soul as soon as she ceases to suffer?"
As I didn't hear from Coitrane again
52
OVERLAND MONTHLY
I came to the conclusion that his dis- appointment was too deep for mere pen and paper. But when he returned, I was surprised to find him as happy as when he had received Laura E. Lent's first manuscript.
"Any news about Laura E. Lent?" I inquired, when I met him at the sta- tion.
"Oh, she's in good hands," he re- marked pleasantly. "She was seized by some requisition officers for cross- ing the State line. I had the Averys invite her to visit them for a few weeks. They lived over the boundary."
"But didn't she understand that a person on parole can't leave the
State?" I demanded.
"Maybe she didn't understand that she was leaving the State," answered Coltrane. "Boundaries aren't material black lines, you know."
"But it means that she'll go back to prison for life," I exclaimed, aghast at his stupidity. "There'll be no pos- sible chance of getting pardon or an- other parole now. And you let her break her parole v/ithout warning her. Good Heavens, man! What have you done?"
"Done?" queried Coltrane, lighting a cigar. "Merely given America the best poet she'll have between Edgar Allen Poe and Kingdom Come I"
TO THE OLD STAGE DRIVER
Here's to you, old stage-driver,
Your race is almost run, You've passed the relay station,
Your final trip is done ; The "choo-choo" cars have got you,
With honk-honk-honk and din; Throw down your lines, old timer,
And watch the stage come in ! In the old days, In the bold days, In the gold days long ago, When the miners sluiced the hillsides
For the placer's golden glow, You played your part full well, sir,
When with bullion piled on high, You drove your stage pell-mell, sir,
To land your charge or die.
Here's to you, old stage-driver,
We'll hear your shout no more, Your stage with rust is eaten, Beside the old Inn's door; The auto-bus and steam car
Have cut your time in two ; Throw up your hands, old "stage-hoss," They've got the drop on you ! In the old days, In the bold days, In the gold days long ago, When the golden streams unending Gushed from hillsides bursting so, How well you wrought we'll tell, Sir,
When with shotgun and a crew, You drove your stage to — well, sir, So here's a health to you.
Lucien M. Lewis.
The Foreign Legion
By Ansley Hastings
FEW ROMANCES of the war have engaged popular sympathies to a greater degree than the story of Colonel Elkington, who, hav- ing been dismissed from the British Army, enlisted in the French Foreign Legion as a private soldier, and having served with such distinction as to win the Military Medal and War Cross with Palms, was reinstated the other day in his former rank and honors by King George. Romance has always clung about the very name of the Foreign Legion. Soldiers of fortune are ro- mantic enough in all conscience: sol- diers of misfortune are romantic be- yond the dreams of novelists. Did not Ouida once enrapture our imaginations in "Under Two Flags" with the story of a beautiful young officer in the Guards — a combination of Alcibiades and George Washington — who per- mitted himself to be ruined in order to save a woman's reputation, and who disappeared from fame and fortune as a common legionaire. One thinks of the Legion as the last resort of de- feated and fugitive Byrons — a host of desperate men who hate the world more than they fear death. Like Mr. Kipling's gentleman-rankers, they are poor little sheep who've gone astray :
"Gentleman-rankers out on the spree, Damned from here to eternity."
They are brothers of Milton's Satan — defiant and disastrous figures. We are told that even in the Legion itself, besides the hardships of the life, the romance of destiny is cultivated to some extent. The soldiers tell each ether tales of mysterious personages who have abandoned the suburbs of thrones in order to enlist in their
ranks. One of these stories concerns a Prussian Prince who only revealed his identity after he was mortally wounded in a heroic charge in which he won the Cross of the Legion of Honor. And the black sheep of many other distinguished families have found a refuge from dishonor, and a new way of life, in the Legion. Mr. Erwin Rosen, a German-American journalist who wrote a book on the Foreign Legion, relates how the editor of the Temps, during a visit to the regiment, learned what his profession had been, and said to him in astonish- ment: "I was speaking just now to a professor of Greek, and now you're a journalist. Is the Legion then a col- lection of ruined talents?" Another ex-legionary, writing in an evening paper the other day, gave a still odder example of the mixed professions rep- resented in the ranks of the Foreign Legion. During the Mexican cam- paign of Napoleon III, he declares, the French desired to impress the inhabi- tants of a city that they had captured with the spectacle of a semi-military High Mass in the Cathedral. None of the local clergy, however, would take part in the celebration, which was about to be countermanded in conse- quence, when a corporal of the Legion stepped forward and said: "I was a bishop before I became a corporal, mon general, and I will celebrate the Mass." The story is quite incredible, but then so are most of the stories that are told about the Foreign Legion.
Foreign legions of one kind or an- other are, as everybody knows, an an- cient institution. Carthage especially depended on them to win her battles. Her senators used to travel from trade center to trade center to purchase the
54
OVERLAND MONTHLY
services of strangers for her army. By a rather stupid confusion of thought, many German writers draw an analogy between the mercenary armies of an- cient Carthage and armies recruited in modern times on the principle of vol- untary service. They used at the be- ginning of the war to describe English soldiers contemptuously as "mercenar- ies." The "mercenary," however, is a man who receives money to fight for a country which is not his own. The man who fights for his own country, even if he receives a wage for it, is no more a mercenary than a German civil servant is. Even mercenaries, how- ever, are not to be despised as fighters. Henry VIII hired Italian arquebusiers and German landsknechts to serve in his army, and the "King's German Le- gion" in the British army, which was raised for the last time during the Cri- mean War, had a remarkable record of fighting since it was first formed in 1805. In its origin, it should be said, it was mercenary only up to a point. It was mainly the fruit of the association of the Georges with Hanover; but at the same time it was open to recruits not only from Hanover but from all parts of Germany. Its numbers amounted to something like 25,000, and various regiments in the Legion gained great glory in the Peninsular War. It is said that there are regiments in the German army to-day which claim de- scent from these old Hanoverian regi- ments, and actually display Peninsular battle honors on their standards. One of the most famous collections of mer- cenaries in the history of modern Eu- rope was the Potsdam Guard — that amazing regiment of giants who were bribed, and in some cases even kid- napped, into the service of Frederick the Great's royal father. But this was a freak, not a Foreign Legion in the ordinary sense. It was Napoleon among modern rulers, who most assid- uously attempted to incorporate For- eign Legions into his army. Napoleon even attempted to enlist enemy prison- ers by force into his ranks. When, on one occasion, it was suggested to him that international law might oppose
certain difficulties to the enlistment of Prussian prisoners, he replied with characteristic cynicism, "Eh bien, :1s marcheront!" And they did. Flags captured from two of Napoleon's Prus- sian battalions are still preserved in Chelsea Hospital. The origin of the Polish Legion, which dates from 1806, was similarly a conscription of prison- ers ; but it must always have attracted an immense host of Polish volunteers. It ultimately included twelve regiments of infantry. Among the other races, members of which were pressed into Napoleon's service, were Russians, Swedes, Austrians, Albanians and Greeks. Then there was his famous Irish Legion (composed largely of men who had fought in the insurrections of the United Irishmen) which carried a green flag bearing the legend, "L'ln- dependance de lTrlande." When no more volunteers could be brought over from Ireland, attempts were made to compel British prisoners to serve in the Irish regiments, but Napoleon put an end to this after a time. This was, of course, not the first occasion on which Irishmen had fought in the French army. Louis XIV had his Irish regi- ments as well as his Germans and his Swiss Guards.
None of these Foreign Legions, how- ever, is quite like the Foreign Legion as we know it in France to-day, though the regiments etrangers in the French army are undoubtedly the modern suc- cessors of the adventurous mercenaries who have, as soldiers of fortune, play- ed so brave a part in European war- fare. The present Foreign Legion came into existence in 1831, during the reign of Louis Philippe. It was known at first as "The African Auxiliaries," and its real author was a Belgian pseudo-Baron, named Boegard, who collected a company of bad characters belonging to various nations, and of- fered them for service in Algeria, where the French troops were accus- tomed to having a quite murderous time of it. There were in that first col- lection of scallywags three battalions of Swiss and Germans, one of Span- iards, one of Italians, one of Belgians
THE FOREIGN LEGION
55
and Dutchmen and one of Poles. Not long after its formation the King sold the Legion, lock, stock and barrel, to Maria Christina of Spain for a little over 800,000 francs, and it disappeared from the French army list. The Car- lists against whom it was used, re- fused to recognize the legionaries as soldiers, and when any prisoners were taken they were shot out of hand. The Legion was revived in the French Army in 1836, and ever since then it has been one of the great fighting units, as well as one of the great col- onizing units, of the world. Though the money wages of a legionary are only a halfpenny a day, and though the hardships of the life are appalling the flow of recruits has never dried up, the greater portion of them coming from Germany (including the con- quered provinces.) Even in the first year of the present war, 1,027 Germans enlisted in the Legion, in addition to 9,500 men from Alsace-Lorraine. Al- though the Legion played an import- ant, and even critical, part in the Franco-Prussian War, however, France did not at that time use German to fight Germans, but kept all her Ger- man soldiers in Algeria. None the less the fact that deserters from the Ger- man army are accepted in the Foreign Legion has long been a cause of bitter complaint in Germany, and there was an acrimonious dispute on the subject ir. the press of both countries as re- cently as 1911. The strength of the Legion in an ordinary year is some- where about 10,000 men, with an an- nual inflow of about 2,000 new recruits.
If the legionary serves for fifteen years he gets a pension of $100. The con- ditions of service, however, do not promote long life. No soldiers in the world are trained so ruthlessly in quick marching. To fall out on the march is the unpardonable sin in the legionary, and is, or used to be, pun- ished at times by the dragging of the delinquent at the tail of a cart or a mule.
There is no niggling discipline, how- ever. "The marches," Mr. Rosen de- clares, "are regulated by one princi- ple. March as you like, with crooked back or the toes turned in, if you think that nice or better, but — march!" And when the soldiers are not marching, they are engaged on road making or other public works. The roads and public buildings of Madegascar and Algeria are largely the work of the Foreign Legion. A life of drudgery rather than romance it will seem to most people. And yet romance is there, drawing men from all the world to die for the old flag, with its motto, "Valeur et discipline." The legion- aries may not know how to observe the Ten Commandments, but at least they know how to die. "Eleven times in its history has the Legion refused to obey when the signal for retreat was blown." The Legion stands above all things for a magnificent challenge to destiny. The very peril of the life attracts men like a trumpet-call. Duty, love, patriotism have scarcely more sway over the lives of men — at least of men of a certain type — than this iesperate summons to aaventure.
Pastor Russell
(Died October 31, 1916.
By Ruth E. Henderson
A man so humble, a saint so great! Despising the shame, he has left behind The careless scorn and the cruel hate Of a fettered world, and gone to find That, there in the presence of Christ, await The hosts of heaven in happy bands To welcome with joyously outstretched hands God's conquering servant, come in state.
When he entered the presence of Christ our Lord
He knelt in worship before Him awhile,
And the Savior's majesty he adored,
Then he lifted his face with a fearless smile :
"So slight a gift, my Lord, has it been, —
A life's short breath and the race was won;
And now love's service I render in
To Thee, by whose merciful grace it was done.
Though hatred's threatening fury stormed,
I did not flinch till the latest breath;
The task Thou gavest have I performed
And trusted my work to Thee, in death."
Silence there was, for a little space,
Then Jesus lifted him gently up
And throned him there in a worthy place
And said: "Ye faithfully drained the cup
That was like the bitter cup I drained;
Preaching the Truth, ye have calmly dared
To shrink from naught that was hard, or pained.
My gospel of love have ye declared.
Now shall ye rest from the racking toil,
But the works there were done with a heart so pure
Shall follow, for enemies never foil
Truth Jehovah decrees shall endure."
The anthem of all of the angels rang
In triumph, beyond the parting veil,
And our hearts joined with them as they sang,
"Faithful to death! All hail! All hail!"
Sang
By Lucy Forman Lindsay
THE two men faced each other. The one a steel made, gray- eyed son of the race supreme; the other a shuffling, slant-eyed derelict of the Orient. The American extended his hand. The bony fingers of the Chinaman touched it. "My wife is my life, Sang." The imperturbable gaze of the Chinaman wavered the flicker of an eyelash.
"Your life alle samee my life, Mlis- terBHgby."
Bigby took his Mauser and cartridge belt from the wall and pushed them across the table towards his cook.
Sank shook his head. "Me no know how to shoot." From somewhere about his loose garments he drew a sinister blade. "This best gun for Chinaman," he grinned.
Bigby turned to his wife. "I have no doubt, dear, that you will be per- fectly safe with these people, any- way."
"Oh, I'm sure I will be," she inter- nipted him. "Don't worry about me, Alex."
"They certainly must have some ap- preciation in their savage hearts of what we have done and are trying to do for them," Bigby finished. He
A common rum shop.
to them as means to a livelihood."
the few so shiftless that even brigandage did not appeal
58
OVERLAND MONTHLY
beckoned the Chinaman. "Sang, come down and help me get that hand-car en the track."
Sang nodded. "Allight." Bigby and his wife led the way. Above them on the mountain side, be- yond a group of weather-grayed build- ings, yawned the mine entrance. Be- low them, one street wide, winding through a gulch, lay the town. Over all prevailed an air of desolation.
Centuries before, on this same emi- nence, stood the stone city built when the Spaniards scraped gold from the mountain side. Beside the crumbling relics of this ancient grandeur now squatted adobe huts, and Americans tunneled the mountain's depths. Then, as now, revolution laid low a prosper- ous people.
Two miles through mountain fast- nesses had tramped a band of marau- ders intent on financing their lawless- ness from the mining company's safe, and incidentally securing several weeks' supplies for their commissariat. Bigby had found resistance impossible. Even the belting of the machinery was taken for sandals. With the exception of the few so shiftless that even brig- andage did not appeal to them as means to a livelihood, the male inhabi- tants, to be reasonably certain of food and clothing, joined the marauders. Women and children were left in help- less destitution.
Friends of Bigby in El Paso, through efforts of the railroad companies, had succeeded in getting a hand-car to him that he and his wife might leave the country. Neither Alex Bigby or his wife had the callousness in their hearts to leave these women and children to face winter and starvation in the moun- tains. If Bigby did not look to their welfare, there was no one who would. The weakest had already succumbed. Alice Bigsby nursed the sick and prayed with the dying; Bigby and Sang carried the fuel and buried the dead, all the while hoping against an evil presentment that the representations Bigby was making would bring assist- ance from the de facto government for these unfortunate of its subjects.
''Unless I have to go on to El Paso to get food lor these people, I should be back in twenty-four hours," said Bigby as he and Alice, in the chill of the morning mist, walked down the trail toward the tracks.
The trail Alex Bigby, with pick and spade, had fashioned himself in pre- paration for the first mule train which, with mining machinery, brought his bride from the north. Alice Bigby, de- termined to make her husband's life a success, had come to abide in the bar- ren, mountain home he could provide, love and girlish strength bravely strug- gling to meet the ever-growing de- mands made upon them.
Sang followed his employer with a pail of drinking water, putting it on the hand-car, which the two men placed on the rails. Bigby leaned toward his wife. She kissed him. Neither spoke. Then the mist and Bigby became one. By sunrise, the hapless, starving Mexicans had gathered before Alice Bigby's door. The last of their mea- gre rations having been given them the day before, there was nothing for her to do but remind them of the fact. She explained that her husband that day- break had gone for food.
That these people would resent, af- ter her labors among them, her in- ability to provide them with food for a day or so was the last thing Alice Bigby expected. But the time had never been before that she needs must wrestle with the quicksands of Mexi- can temperament. Her benevolent and sweet, unselfish spirit had brought these dependent, half-savages to the point where they regarded her as a human embodiment of divine omnipo- tence. Her inability to cope with the present situation and still their inward cravings was resented even as the more enlightened are wont to wonder at the indifference of an Almighty when befall the evils which they them- selves have wrought. Besides the marauders had told them that the Gringo armies were stealing their country.
A lean, brown fist, stained with che- roots, was shaken in her face and a
'On the mountain side beyond a group of weather-grayed buildings yawned the mine entrance."
curse pronounced upon Gringoes and women in general and upon herself in particular as she backed into the house and closed the door against the outcry which assailed her.
Wearied from a night beside a tiny one whose last, faint wails had been stilled in her arms, she sought a cot that she might rest. Thinking of the man who had left in the dawn, she slept.
"Mlissy, Mlissy, house a-flire!"
Bony fingers clutched her shoulder. Already half-suffocated with the smoke which filled the room, she swayed in their grasp as she was lifted to her feet. She heard the crackle of flames.
Tucking his queue safely inside his flannel shirt, Sang snatched the cover- ing from the couch, and throwing it over Alice Bibgy's head, half-dragged, half-carried her from the burning house.
They were greeted by yells and mis- siles from the Mexicans.
Everywhere there were flames; the house, the buildings about the mine,
the railroad sheds, spreading down into the town itself.
Disappointed of their breakfast, the Mexicans had foraged for themselves. They had unearthed, in the tool shed, a keg of whisky which Bigby had bur- ied against an emergency.
Crazed by the liquor, their funda- mental, fiendish savagery was not ap- peased with flames. They craved life. They drove the Chinaman and the Gringo woman back into the burning house.
Alice Bigby was by now again in full possession of all her faculties. "Come, Sang," she said, giving him a corner of the couch cover to protect his own face and head.
Together they groped to a window at the back of the house. The sash was burning. Sang kicked out the glass and they sprang through to the ground below. For a second they stood irresolute, then of one accord started on a dead run for the mine entrance.
The Mexicans saw them and fol- lowed. A stone struck the Chinaman
60
OVERLAND MONTHLY
in the neck, cutting an ugly gash. Alice Bigby stumbled and fell. Sang ran on. Then, teeth chattering and trembling in every limb with the fear which now possessed him, he returned and helped his mistress to her feet. Hand in hand they finished the run to- gether and barred the heavily timbered gates.
The Mexicans were at their heels. The gates swayed and groaned as they pushed against them. Alice Bigby fled on into the heart of the mountain, she knew not whither, stumbling in the darkness. The Chinaman remained on guard.
Safely beyond the torture of flames, Sang's paroxysm of fear passed. He faced mere death with the stoicism of his race. Like an animal at bay he crouched, ready to spring, waiting for the swaying gates to give before the infuriated Mexicans. The sinister blade was clasped in both hands and raised above his head. He would not die alone. He would meet his Josh on the other side with a long train of victims to serve him in the nether world.
"Mlissy Bligby!" he called. There was no answer.
"Mlissy Bligby!"
The gates crashed. Sang sprang.
Two days later Bligby returned.
Toward sundown of the first day he had come upon the body of a former fellow workman, an American, dang- ling from the tottering supports of a charred water tank. It was stripped of clothing and riddled with bullets. Sus- pended from the neck was a crudely scrawled placard which, translated, read:
"See what we do to Carranza's Grin- goes."
Thus Bigby had been warned that his planned destination was not a healthy place for Americans. There was then no use going on. That was plain. And there was no use returning. Neither he nor his wife could reach safety without sustenance. Some-
where, somehow, he must obtain food.
After resting but to realize that he was growing faint for the lack of a meal, Bigby, his shirt clinging fast to the flesh of his blistered back, head swimming, ears ringing, had retraced the last weary mile or so, and had taken the main line to El Paso. Coast- ing down a steepening grade, he had come suddenly upon eight trainloads of Carranzistas making their toil- some way towards Chihuhaua. They were gathering wood from the hillsides and carrying water in buckets from the river for their engines.
Without difficulty Bigby had found the Major in command. He had been received courteously, and a plate of beans and a can of steaming coffee set before him. He had then been offered a horse and an escort of four* men to return for his wife. As for the women and children left at the mine they must make their own way as best they could to the Carranzista camps, where some sort of provision would be made for them. A six pound sack of beans was given Bigby as temporary provisions for these charges.
Long before dawn Bigby was well along on his return journey. Even- tide found the five weary, dusty men on the last half mile up the mountain side.
As the charred ruins of the com- pany's property came to his sight, Alex Bigby, aghast, reined his pony. Then, lashing the animal, he urged it forward, full speed up the trail. Mid- way a woman squatted, swaying her- self from side to side in rhythm to her moaning lament.
Bigby shouted to her. She paid no heed. Swinging from his saddle, he grasped her by the shoulder.
"Senora, my wife, my wife ? Where is Mrs. Bigby?" he urged.
The woman raised her eyes piteous- ly. "Give me to eat, senor. For the love of Mary, give me to eat," she whimpered.
Bigby shook her. "Where is my wife?" he demanded, shortly.
The woman jerked her thumb, indi- cating the mine entrance. "There," she mumbled, "with the China devil."
SANG
61
His heart in his throat, Bigby sprang up the trail. He came upon Sang's body lying face downward at the mouth of the tunnel, blood-rusted knife clutched in outstretched hand. Bigby ran into the darkness beyond.
"Alice, Alice," he called. Then he stood still and shouted with all his might.
His wife stumbled into his arms. Sobbing hysterically, she conveyed to him the tragedy of the day before. He carried her out under the stars.
Still unnerved and sobbing, Alice Bigby knelt beside the body of the crumplied form of the Chinese cook.
Bigby raised his sombrero.
Then he remembered that some- where, sometime, he had been told, or had read, that a Chinaman's word was never broken, and he instinctively felt again that handclasp of the bony fin- gers, and heard Sang's words :
"Your life alle samee my life, Mlis- ter Bligby."
They buried Sang there in the hills.
AAYBECK'S AASTERPIECE
In beauteous grounds, near the waters edge, As if a part of nature — tree and sedge, A palace stands. A marvel of the age (A pastel painting on our history's page). The artist's soul here permeates the air, And moves the heart of man to silent prayer; In this we see the grace of ancient Greece — A matchless architectural masterpiece, A bas relief amidst a dream of art, A cameo carved on San Francisco's heart.
A distant wanderer from a foreign land,
Is gazing spell bound, with his brush in hand —
The colored clouds are fading in the West —
Purple and crimson on a golden crest
A star stands out beside the crescent moon,
He sees them mirrored in the still lagoon,
Among the swans and drowsy mallards wild —
Inspiration is born, z spirit child.
Ida F. Pattiani.
For the new series of Pastor Russell's contributions in the Overland Monthly, see announcement on page 79 of this issue.
Tragedy] of the Donner Party
By Alice Stevens
THE reports and maps filed by General Fremont with the gov- ernment at Washington, in 1845, describing the wide stretch of fertile lands lying west of the Rockies, called national attention to the great uninhabited West, more especially to California and Washington, as ideal localities in which to locate. These re- ports actively circulated by the gov- ernment were eagerly read at sewing and club circles in the villages and towns east of the Mississippi River, and a gathering wave of enthusiasm to immigrate West swept over the East- ern settlements.
The Donner party and their friends
then living in Springfield, 111., readily caught the prevailing fever, a feeling receiving constant fanning through the glowing accounts published in the newspapers. Stories were told of the many parties throughout the nearby States that were preparing to join the "Great Overland" caravan then in the excitement of organizing. The high cost of equipment for the journey and a financial depression at that period, however, deterred many of those en- thusiasts, and they declined the ven- ture. James F. Reed joined with George Donner, a commanding man of eld Revolutionary stock and an early pioneer in North Carolina, Indiana and
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NOVEMBER 1..TH, fourteen men and women tried to escape on snowshoes. During their craze for food they cast lots on Christmas Day to determine which should die in order that the others might live. The wretched survivors finally reached Sutter's Fort. Several relief paities brought out those that survived. On the last trip Mrs. Donner re- fused to leave her dying husband. The last relief party found them both dead. One man alone survived. It was claimed he kept alive by eating human flesh.
TRAGEDY OF THE DONNER PARTY 63
Illinois, then 60 years of age, with a overtook Hastings and the other train;
wife, five children and his aged par- they were in difficulties. The best
ents. Their party was the first to leave Hastings could do for the Donner party
the State of Illinois for California. The was to ride to a peak and indicate to
Donner family was in excellent circum- the three men a course which he
stances, and their outfit was well above thought would prove practical for
the standard, carrying many luxuries them. But increasing difficulties con-
for that time and adventure. tinued to confront them. They dis-
The party started in ox-teams April covered their provisions would not
15, 1846. They reached the Missouri last, and messengers were sent ahead
River on May 11th, and there joined to Sutter's Fort in California to bring
the great caravan of immigrants head- back supplies.
ing West. East of Laramie they met Then came the days when they were a party of men returning from the forced to cross the desert places, and Oregon territory. These riders re- there in the insufferable heat their cat- ported that there were 478 wagons tie died like flies. The Indians of that ahead of the Donner train. These add- locality sensed their condition and ed to the 40 wagons on the Donner stole their horses and impedimenta party totaled 518 wagons on the Over- whenever a chance offered. By Octo- land trail on that strip so far as the ber 12th the party had reached the travelers had traversed it. sink of the Ogden river. The Indians
Soon after the train left Independ- were still harrying them by thefts of
ence, it contained between two hun- cattle and supplies. At Wadsworth,
dred and three hundred wagons, and supplies reached them from Sutter's
stretched two miles in length. At that Fort. About this time the leaders were
time there were ninety members in the confident they would be able to cross
party. the Sierra Mountains and reach Cali-
The Donner party came to the cross- fcrnia in two weeks,
ing of Fate when it reached the Little On October 22d the train crossed
Sandy River in July and found four the Truckee River for the forty-ninth
distinct parties gathered there. An and last time in 80 miles. They
"Open Letter" had been posted there camped that night on the top of a high
by an author and explorer, Lansford hill. The same night an Indian killed
Hastings, calling attention to a new 18 oxen, and was shot by one of the
route that had been recently explored guards who caught him in the act. At
from Fort Bridger by way of the south that time there were five wagons be-
end of Salt Lake. He declared the longing to the Donner family in the
route was 200 miles shorter than the train.
old one. He ended his "notice" by On the 28th of October, the larger stating that he would be stationed at part of the train had reached Truckee Fort Bridger, personally to direct im- Lake, in Fremont's Pass, now known migrants over the new route. George as Donner Lake. One of the Donner Donner was elected leader of the wagons broke its front axle on a de- members of the several parties that ciine at Older Creek, some eight miles decided to risk the new route de- behind, and was held up till the wagon scribed. Mrs. George Donner was the cculd be repaired. The snow came only individual, in the party, that was down before the repairs were com- filled with forebodings regarding the rleted, and the Donners remained there sudden change of routes. to the end. Next day the men leading Five days later the party reached the main party at Donner Lake scout- Fort Bridger to learn that Hastings ed ahead to within three miles of the had gone ahead to direct another party crest of the mountain pass, and found on the route, and had left word for five feet of snow blocking their way. other trains to follow his trail. Three The trail was obliterated and no of the Donner party rode ahead and place for making camp was possible.
THE DONNER PARTY of ninety-six immigrants organized the first party to leave Illinois for California, 1846. They reached Salt Lake, September 1st, with exhausted cattle to face the desert They reached Truckee Lake, now Donner Lake, in the closing days of October, and were caught in the snows of winter. They constructed makeshift shelters, and in a few weeks were buried under 20 feet of snow. The weakest quickly succumbed.
They reported back to camp and great consternation prevailed.
Some of the immigrants proposed to abandon the wagons and make the oxen carry out the children and pro- visions; some wanted to take the children and rations and start out on foot; others sat brooding, dazed with the awful outlook. A strong party was organized to beat a way through the snow in a desperate effort to pass the summit, but the wagons quickly be- came lost in the deep drifts, and after a desperate night in the snow, they were forced back to the Donner Lake Camp, after saving what wagons and cattle they could. Heavy snow storms developed, and the men were com- pelled to build what make-shifts they could to protect their families and cat- tle from the driving blasts and heavily falling snow.
The larger port of the immigrants were located at Lake Donner, and were able to construct rude cabins; others with the Donner family were several miles down the mountain. They took advantage of every makeshift to pro- tect themselves against the raging win- ter blast. December came in with more snow, and the food ran perilously short. The cattle were killed and bur-
ied in the snow, with marks set over the carcases. Ten days later four of the party on Donner Lake died, and others were in low condition. The children of the party were kept in bed during most of the time, all huddled together in endeavors to escape the in- tense cold. Christmas passed and New Year's Day, and the pitiless storms still swept over the two camps.
In January the snow was fourteen feet deep. Icicles hung from the trees and running water was hard to get. Wood was plentiful, but it was so diffi- cult to get that the chilled immigrants could not get sufficient fire to soften the strips of rawhide to which they were reduced for food.
About the time the "Forlorn Hope" party of fifteen started out from the camp, starvation was beginning its se- vere inroads. Bayliss Williams was the first to succumb at Donner Lake; Jacob Donner the first at Prosser Creek. The hides of the cattle which had been used to cover the roofs of the cabins were taken down to provide fcod. The hair was burned off, the hides thoroughly cleaned, and then boiled and eaten. The water which jellied with this boiling was preserved for the delicate children. All the old
TRAGEDY OF THE DONNER PARTY
65
bones about the camp were carefully gathered, and industriously boiled till the last vestige of nutriment was ex- tracted.
December 16th, thirteen men and women, husbands leaving their wives and mothers their children, formed "The Forlorn Hope," and set out on snowshoes to bring relief — each carry- ing a pack. The markers over the cattle buried had become obliterated, and wild efforts were made by the stronger survivors to locate them.
It was during this period of black despair that the first whispers were heard, "The carcases of the dead cat- tle are lost; but the dead, if they could be reached, their bodies might keep us alive." The Donners protested against any such act.
February 19th, seven strangers ap- peared in the two camps, one of the several relief parties, organized by General Sutter and Alcalde Sinclair in California.
Meantime the "Forlorn Hope" had gene through desperate adventures, tortures and privations before they finally reached Sutter Fort. Their scant food, chiefly rawhide, gave out early, and several were reduced to eat- ing their own shoes, to trudge later over the rough ground till every step left traces of blood. Stanton died, and the rest trudged, stumbled and dragged themselves along as best they could. Then came the day when they actually drew slips to see which one should be sacrificed for the common good. The lot fell on a man who had done memorable heroic work for their benefit, and they unanimously can- celled their vote.
The journey was then resumed with the understanding that the first to die should furnish the victim. That Christmas day they made three miles, through the heavy snow. In front of the fire one of them froze to death, and a father called his two grown daugh- ters to his side, whispering he was ready to die. A hurricane swept away their scanty fire, and they all huddled together as best they could.
January 3d the survivors of the little
group reached the end of - the snow field. That day Eddy, the leader, shot a deer, drank its blood and carried part of the carcass back to the party. With this meat the seven survivors of the "Forlorn Hope" gained renewed strength to stumble along their way. On January 10th the twenty-fiftn day after leaving Donner Lake, they reached an Indian village, and were carefully passed along from village to village down the mountain sides to Sutter Fort at Sacramento.
Appeals were quickly made to the alcalde of Alta California, and the first relief party was formed to carry relief to the survivors at Donner Lake and the camp a few miles below. March 1st the second relief party of ten men reached the sufferers in the mountain camps. Thirty-one were found alive in the two camps, nearly all of them children. The grown folks were all too weak to travel. George Donner, who was badly injured through an acciden- tal wound infecting an arm, was too weak to move. He begged his wife to take the children and go with the rescuers, but she stoutly refused. Later a third relief expedition reached the survivors, to find that Geo. Donner and his wife were among the dead.
Edwin Bryant, who was with Gen- eral Kearney when the latter visited the Donner Lake cabins in June, 1847, wrote: "A halt was ordered for the purpose of collecting and interring the remains of the dead. Near the prin- cipal cabins I saw two bodies entire, portions of which had been extracted. Strewn about the cabins were human bones in every variety of mutilation. A most revolting and appalling spec- tacle I never witnessed. Those re- mains were carefully gathered and in- terred. Major Swords ordered the cabins fired and everything connected with the horrid and melancholy trag- edy was consumed. The body of George Donner was found in his camp at Alder Creek, some eight miles away, wrapped in a sheet and buried.
The last of the survivors of this tragedy, a woman, passed away in California several months ago.
Pioneer Experiences in California
By Lell Hawley Woolley
On September 23d, 1916, Lell Hawley Woolley, member of the Society of California Pioneers and a Vigilante of 1856, celebrated his ninety-first birthday in East Oakland. Since the death of Colonel Andrews, Mr. Woolley ranks as the oldest Mason on the Pacific Coast, having rounded out sixty-nine years in the Masonic order. He is a member of Mount Moriah Lodge, San Francisco — No. 44 F. and A. M.— and several years ago the late Major Sherman made him a member, also, of the Masonic Vet- erans' Association of the Pacific Coast.
1WAS living in the State of Ver- mont when I made up my mind to cross the plains to California, the Land of Gold and Opportunity. By birth I belong to New York State, hav- ing been born at Martinsburg in 1825. I started on my long journey via Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Cin- cinnati, St. Louis and Independence, Missouri. Reaching the last mentioned place, I joined the first mule train of Turner, Allen & Company's line. It consisted of forty wagons, one hundred and fifty mules — many of them half- wild — and about one hundred and fifty passengers.
We left the frontier May 14th, and many were our tribulations, for few of us knew anything about camping out, and cooking was an unknown art to us. Besides, those mules gave us a lively time. One day, while we were walk- ing ahead, a terrific hailstorm arose and they became frightened and broke away from the wagons, leaving them so exposed to the fury of the elements that they were badly damaged. The tops were literally torn to rags. A far worse disaster was a scourge of cholera, which swept fifty of our num- ber into the grave befort Fort Laramie was reached.
THE FIRST THEATRE built in California, located at Monterey, then the capital, and military and social center of California.
Lell Hawley Woolley
We had a little sport along the banks of the Platte River, several an- telope, and occasionally a buffalo, be- ing captured by us. An interesting geological feature of that region was a two-hundred-high sandstone forma- tion called Chimnev Rock, which re- minded us of the Bunker Hill monu- ment. Quicksands in a river bed, how- ever, were less pleasing, and almost led to a tragedy, one of our number be- ing caught in them when attempting to ford the river on foot. Fortunately he was rescued after a hard tussle against the voracious sand.
The first time we used pontoons was
in crossing Green River in the Rock- ies, but the roughest piece of road be- tween Missouri and California was the Six Mile Canyon this side of Carson Valley, where there were boulders from the size of a barrel to that of a stage coach, and where it took two days to haul a wagon six miles.
We arrived at Weaverville, three miles below Hangtown (Placerville) on September 10, 1849, the journey having occupied five months. Hang- town was then a forlorn place, consist- ing of one log cabin and a few tents. Here I did my first mining, but not for long, as I was suffering from "land
THE "TELEGRAPH" STATION at Point Lobos, 1848, which held com- munication with a like station on Telegraph Hill, overlooking the little town of San Francisco. When the lookout at Point Lobos sighted an in- coming vessel through his field glass he hoisted a flag on the pole above. The lookout at the Telegraph Hill station, eight miles away over the sand hills, promptly hoisted a flag on his cabin in answer, and the citizens in the streets at the foot of the hill were thus notified that a steamer was approaching. Practically all of them rushed to the PostofHce to get in line to receive their mail. September 22, 1853, the first electric telegraph was established between the two points.
scurvy," owing to lack of vegetable diet. After working around a while, I made a little money and went to Grass Valley, where I started and ran a hotel for a few weeks, but where, at the end of that time, I found myself "busted."
In 1850 I became a member of a company that had for its object the turning of the South Fork of the Am- erican River through a canal into the North Fork, thereby draining about a thousand yards of the river bed; but, alas! just as the work was completed, the river rose, carrying away the dam and our labor with it.
I went mining again, this time at Mokelumne Hill, Calaveras County, and after varying fortune, sold my claim for thirteen hundred dollars which paid all my debts and made things easy at home. I have, as a souvenir of those days, a watch-chain made from the gold of that mine.
In the spring of 1852, I turned my face Eastward, leaving San Francisco via the Nicaragua route. You see, there was "the girl I left behind me." A year later I married her. The "happy event" took place in Cincin-
nati, where she was visiting her sister, but she belonged to Vermont, where my folks lived, too, so we settled there until 1854.
Then — well, you know how it is when you've once lived in California, you just have to go back, that's all there is to it. So, wife consenting, we packed up and journeyed to San Fran- cisco by the Nicaragua route. In ref- erence to Nicaragua, I must say that from casual observation of topographi- cal conditions at the time, I thought it favorable for the canal, promising less expense and being much shorter than the route via Panama. However, I proudly wore a participant's badge on February 20th, 1915, for although unable to be present at the opening ceremonies of our great exposition, none rejoiced more than I over the splendid achievement that it cele- brated.
How different San Francisco was in the old pioneer days! In 1855, when we were living on Third street, near Mission street, we got water from a man who conveyed it about the city in a cart, much of it secured from a well near the corner of West and First
PIONEER EXPERIENCES IN CALIFORNIA
69
streets. For three years we paid a dollar-fifty per week for our water sup- ply. All that part of the city was then wild, just sand dunes and low ground. Why, I used to hunt rabbits in the Mis- sion then!
The Post Office was built in 1855 at the northwest corner of Washington and Battery streets. The previous Post Offices had been destroyed by fire. On "steamer days" long lines of people waited for letters at the Post Office; indeed, sometimes waiting all day for their turn, the delivery win- dows being arranged alphabetically. Places in the line, even, were sold for as much as ten and twenty dollars at times.
Portsmouth Square, "The Plaza" of early days, was the scene of all public meetings and demonstrations. Its "christening" occurred on July 9, 1846, when Captain Montgomery, com- mander of the old sloop-of-war "Ports- mouth," landed with his sailors and marines and raised the Stars and Stripes there, thus making San Fran- cisco an American city, and giving the Square the name of his vessel at the same time. A salute of twenty-one guns was fired in honor of this blood- less victory, which followed closely the raising of the American flag at Mon- terey by Commodore Sloat, proclaim-
ing the occupancy of California by the United States.
But let me tell you about real estate values of early days. They will make your mouth water. I stood with gold dust in my pocket that burdened me while lots in the neighborhood of San- some, Battery and Front street were auctioned off for twenty-five dollars, and corner lots for thirty. I would be a millionaire to-day if only I had known enough to grasp my opportu- nities.
And with what careless generosity business was handled at times! I went one day to deposit a sack of gold dust at the office of the Adams Ex- press Company. Fifty dollar slugs were then in circulation, and in the ex- change I found, after leaving, that I had been given twelve instead of eight of them. I went back and asked if they rectified mistakes. "Not after a man leaves the office," was the re- ply. What do you think of that?
Furniture was brought around Cape Horn, of course, and much of it was auctioned off in a room on Washington street, near the Plaza. There I bought a handsome bedroom suite of mahog- any, worth two hundred dollars, for haif that amount, and I am using it to- day. San Francisco's first clock that my friend, Mr. Wharff, gave to the
THE "TELEGRAPH" STATION on Telegraph Hill. See preceding page.
$SB
MONTEREY, 1849, at the time the forty-eight delegates gathered in Coton Hall to frame the first State Constitution. There were 10 dis- tricts, San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Mon- terey, San Jose, Sonoma, San Francisco, San Joaquin and Sacramento, at the first meeting of the delegates. After a month's discussion the instrument was drafted, and finally adopted and signed, October 13, 1849. Thirty-one shots were fired from the fort's cannon. The Constitution ex- pressly rejected slavery.
Park Museum, was brought via the Panama route from New York in 1852. It was by order of Alexander Austin, the most prominent retail dry-goods merchant of those days, who placed it on the upper floor of his four story building, 425 Montgomery street. The clock was afterwards moved when he transferred his place of business to Sutter and Montgomery streets. Mr. Austin was subsequently elected City and County Tax Collector, but the clock remained with the new owner un- til 1886, when he had it removed for the remodeling of the interior of the building. Mr. Wharff, who was the architect in charge, then purchased it, and it remained in his possession un- til November, 1911, when he gener- ously turned it over to the public. You will find it in the Pioneer Room of the Museum, Golden Gate Park.
The ninth of September always brings to me memory of the first Ad- mission Day celebration of the Califor- nia's "Betsy Ross." Mr. Haskell, man- ager of the Adams Express and Bank- ing Company, wanted an American flag for the division of the parade of which his firm was a part. He could find none, however, of the proper size. Nothing daunted, he searched until he
found a dressmaker with enough pieces of silk and satin in her piece bag (even if they weren't all alike) to make a flag 3x2 feet. He paid her a fifty dol- lar slug for her work. Afterwards the flag was presented to the company's chief messenger, Mr. Thomas Connell, and it has been a prized possession in his family ever since, as a souvenir of October 29, 1850, the day that San Francisco celebrated California's ad- mission as a State into the Union.
People don't understand nowadays why we celebrated in October when the State was admitted on September 9th ; but the reason was that, those being pre-telegraph days, we had to wait for the next steamer from the Atlantic Coast for our news. It had been ar- ranged that, if the bill passed, we would be notified by signal before the vessel docked. Imagine our joy when, on October 18th, the "Oregon" came into the bay with her bunting flying, and fired thirty-one rounds, every one knowing that the thirty-first meant California. Our celebration, elaborate as befitted the occasion, could not be carried out, therefore, until October 29th.
At the Admission Day celebration twenty-five years later, James Lick re-
11
PIONEERS CROSSING THE ISTHMUS OF PANAMA IN 1853.
Prom an old print.
viewed the pioneers as they passed in parade, and James W. Marshall, the discoverer of gold, who was still hale and hearty at the age of sixty-seven years, was with the Marysville delega- tion, as was also a survivor of the Donner party, Murphy by name.
I would have liked to see the "Path of Gold" celebration recently held here, for I have witnessed the evolu- tion of light in San Francisco. Well I remember our illuminations in honor of the Field cable! My display was considered quite brilliant. It consisted of a candle, stuck in a piece of tin, placed in every small pane — 7x9 — of my windows. Later I saw petroleum demonstrated in lamps for the first time. It came in as a substitute for a burning fluid that was being used, and the proper refining process not having then been arrived at, people were afraid of its inflammable character. Gas followed in its turn, and then the king of lights — electricity — which found, perhaps, its noblest and most inspiring expression at our great Ex- position.
But of course the most momentous period of my life came in 1856, when, in spite of the work of the first Vigi- lance Committee, which had crowded the boats to Stockton and Sacramento with flying scoundrels, San Francisco was again wide open to crime. In No- vember, 1855, Charles Cora had killed General Richardson, an excellent man and United States Marshal. The fol- lowing spring, the courts failing to con- vict Cora, James King, the fearless editor of the "Daily Evening Bulletin," urged the people to take the matter into their own hands. He also took a strong stand against the corruption of city officials, especially against James P. Casey, a lawless supervisor and ballot box manipulator, with the result that Casey shot him on May 14, 1856.
Within thirty-six hours a second Vig- ilance Committee was organized, the first one being in 1851, and 2,600 names enrolled, of which number, I am proud to say, I was the ninety-sixth. Before our committee disbanded, we num- bered between eight and nine thou-
1 V
A GATHERING OF 5,000 CITIZENS in San Francisco, February 22, 1851, to witness the trial of James Stuart, Alias Burdue, for shooting a mer- chant and robbing his store. This led to the organization of the first Vigi- lance Committee, that of 1851.
sand. Two of my unused cartridges are in the Oakland Museum.
A Kentuckian, William T. Coleman, was the head of our committee, a man of the highest integrity; indeed, I may say, one of the foremost men in the country, both in character and in busi- ness. You must understand that the so-called Law and Order party did not stand for what its name implied ; there- fore the Vigilance Committee was an absolute necessity. Its principle was to do nothing but that which the law ought to do, but did not do, at that time. Our members were the highest type of citizens.
You cannot imagine the state of af- fairs when we organized. During the first few months of '55 — ten, in fact — four hundred and eighty-nine persons were killed by violence, and people were afraid of their lives on the streets. Whereas, for about twenty-five years after we disbanded there was com- parative peace and harmony. Our committee was most assuredly the me- dium of justice for those stirring times, and our organization imperative as a means of self-defense. Inability to
cope with the situation was not the fault of th--: State Administration ; law- lessness reigned because San Fran- cisco was so terrorized into inaction by fear that even the judges were afraid to convict criminals.
The turning over of Casey and Cora to the Vigilance Committee was an ex- citing scene. I was sitting in church en Sunday, May 18th, when a man came in and quietly touched a number of us on the shoulder. I told my wife to make her wa^home alone, as I was wanted at headquarters, Sacramento street, between Front and Davis. Ar- riving there, we were ordered to go to the jail at Broadway, between Kearny and Dupont streets, to get Casey and Cora. Casey had gone there for pro- tection after the shooting. My com- pany was lined up across the street, and opposite the county jail, when we reached the jail. In front of us was a small, loaded brass cannon about three feet long, originally used at Fort Sutter. Alongside was a lighted match on the punk variety that burns slowly but surely. Everything was ready, ap- plication was made for the desper-
73
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SACRAMENTO, 1850.
adoes, but both jailer and sheriff re- fused to deliver them up. Then ap- peared Governor J. Neely Johnson, who happened to be in the city and v/ho acted as an intermediary, telling them the committee was determined to have the men alive or dead. Finally, Casey was turned over, and an hour later Cora also.
At the Vigilance headquarters the two men were kept in separate cells until their trial, May 20th. They were treated fairly, allowed lawyers and witnesses; both were pronounced guilty and hanged, May 23d, from a platform erected outside a second- story window at Fort Gunnybags, as cur committee rooms were called. Casey was buried in the Mission Do- lores Cemetery by an engine company of which he was foreman, and Cora — it is supposed, was buried there also by the wife whom he married just be- fore his execution.
Our committee hanged only four men during its official life, the execu- tion of the other two following closely after, and happening as follows: On July 24th, a desperate character, James Ketherington by name, shot with fatal results Doctor Randal, because of the latter's inability to repay money bor- rowed on a mortgage. Hetherington was tried and sentenced to die, July 29th. At the same hour Philander
Brace, a hardened criminal of low type who had killed Captain J. B. West out in the Mission and then murdered his accomplice, was also executed. A gal- lows was erected on Davis street, be- tween Sacramento and Commercial streets, where both men paid the pen- alty of their crimes.
By order and by ship we sent about sixty men of "bad" reputation, out of the State. One, "Yankee Sullivan," an active participant in ballot box frauds, committed suicide. Some of those expelled returned again. Not- able among the number was Billy Mul- ligan, who had been shipped away on the "Golden Age" and ordered never to return under penalty of death. Sev- eral years later, however, he turned up again in San Francisco. I saw him myself on the streets. One day some youngsters annoying him, he shot into their midst, injuring a boy in the foot. Billy ran into the old St. Francis Ho- tel, then vacant, and situated on the coiner of Clay and Dupont streets, where he resisted arrest. The police, being told to take him, alive or dead, stationed themselves in a building on the opposite side of the street, and when Billy appeared at a window, shot and killed him.
Our executive committee of the Vigilance Committee numbered thirty- three. As a precautionary measure, our
OAKLAND IN 1854, located across the bay from San Francisco. In that period it was an attractive excursion point enjoyed by San Franciscans. On April 10, 1854, the first election under the city charter occurred, and Horace W. Carpentier was elected mayor.
7
secretary's name was never known. He signed all executive orders "No. 33." Fort Gunnybags derived its name from the gunnysacks filled with sand which were piled up in a wall some six feet wide by ten feet high. On the roof of our building, originally a wholesale business house, we had a huge bell, the sound of which called us to arms. Our cells, executive chambers and other de- partments were on the second floor. On March 21, 1903, the California His- toric Landmarks' League placed a bronze tablet, suitably inscribed, on the face of the building, and on that occasion the old bell pealed out its last "call to arms." Three years later the gieat fire of 1906 swept the historical old building away.
But I must not forget to tell you about the Terry-Hopkins affair. On the second day of June, 1856, Judge Terry stabbel Sterling Hopkins, a member of our committee, when he, with a posse, was arresting a rough character called Rube Maloney. While Doctor Beverly Cole was attending to Hopkins, who was hadly hurt, Terry and Maloney fled to the Law and Order headquarters on Jackson and
Dupont street. The Vigilance bell called us to arms, and very quickly we controlled the situation. About thirty- two Law and Order men, so called, were taken to Fort Gunnybags, to- gether with a large quantity of cap- tured arms and ammunition.
I have already referred to two out of our three methods of punishment, viz. : sending the culprits out of the country, and hanging. Our third method was acquittal, and in this case we held Terry until August, and then, Hopkins having recovered, we acquitted him, compelling him, however, to resign his position as Judge of the Supreme Court. During his term of imprison- ment I kept guard over him for one watch.
In 1859 came Judge Terry's duel v/ith Broderick, the last duel on Am- erican soil, and well known in history. I would like to add for my part that I don't think Broderick said anything that needed retraction, but considering Terry's violent and unscrupulous char- acter, Broderick should have declined to fight. By the way, that duel did not take place at the spot indicated by the Landmarks' Committee, but on the
THE OLD CITY HALL of pioneer days, destroyed by the big fire of 1906. On the left is the El Dorado, a famous gathering place in its day. In the fenced foreground is the old Plaza of Spanish days, now known as Portsmouth Square.
south side of Lone Mountain Cemetery not far from the line — at that time an open country, with no buildings adja- cent.
As a forty-niner, I am emphatically opposed to the plan of the Native Sons in the matter of placing a tablet to me- morialize the spot. I cannot make this too strong, for although that event marked the end of dueling in Califor- nia, a deed so black, and in which it has generally been conceded that con- temptible trickery had a share, should be forgotten. It seems to me it would be holding up a wrong ideal, both to the present and future generations, to give the site of such a tragedy a place among the shrines of our glorious State. Why perpetuate the name of Terry, a man who lived a life of vio- lence and who died by violence thirty years later — thus reaping what he sowed — when so many of noble deeds go unrecorded and unsung ? I hope the Native Sons will reconsider the matter and not soil their good name by carry- ing out the plan contemplated.
Now let me tell you something about the '60's. You will be interested to know that on April 3, 1860, I saw
Harry Hoff , the first pony express mes- senger, start on his journey at Kearny street, between Clay and Washington streets, opposite the Plaza. The steamer left for Sacramento at four o'clock p. m., and that place reached, the ride proper began at midnight. Stations were erected about twenty-five miles apart, and each rider was ex- pected to span three stations. Hoff, therefore, was relieved at Placerville by "Boston," the second rider, who, in his turn, was relieved at the summit of the Sierras, Friday Station, by the third rider, Sam Hamilton, who car- ried the express to Fort Churchill. The distance from Sacramento to that point, 185 miles, was made in fifteen hours and twenty minutes, though the trail, heavily covered with snow, across the summit, had to be kept open by trains of pack animals in order to break down the snow drifts. Pony express was a semi-weekly service, each rider carrying fifteen pounds of letters, the rate five dollars per half ounce. The best horses and bravest men were nec- essary for this important work. The first messenger to reach San Francisco from the East arrived April 14, 1860.
A SECTION of the big file of April San Francisco.
We allowed thirteen days for letters from New York, but the actual time was from ten and a half to twelve days. It meant something to get letters, then, didn't it?
A vivid memory, too, is that of the great floods which occurred in 1861- 1862, when the merchants of Sacra- mento had to place their goods on benches and counters to keep them above water, and when those who had upper stories to their houses moved into them for safety. The water rose until it reached a point where boats, running between Sacramento and San Francisco, took people out of the sec- ond story windows. There was much suffering and loss of property along the river.
It was in 1861, also, that Doctor Scott, of Calvary Presbyterian Church, prayed, on a certain Sunday, for the Presidents of the Union and of the Confederate States, with the result that he had to be smuggled out by the back way into Mrs. Thomas Selby's carriage, for fear of bodily harm. The
1906, advancing on the ferry system depots of
next morning he was hanged in effigy from the top of a building in course of construction.
In 1865 I saw the raid on the old time "Examiner" office when that paper surely met its Waterloo. It had headquarters at that time on Washing- ton street, near Sansome, and its sym- pathy with the Confederacy led to such a frenzy of riot that all movable things v/ere taken into the street to be burned. Before the projected conflagration could take place, however, or the police arrive, the mob carried off everything it could lay hands on. I must confess myself to having in my possession two pieces of type that I picked up on that occasion. "Uncle Phil Roach," as the editor and founder was called, a gen- ial old man whom everybody liked, tried, when a member of the State Legislature later, to get an appropria- tion to cover his loss, but without suc- cess.
It is pleasant to recall the noted peo- ple I have seen. When William H. Seward, Secretary of State, came from
78
OVERLAND MONTHLY.
Washington in 1867, to purchase Alaska, he was entertained while in San Francisco by Judge Hastings, whose home was on the corner of Washington street near Taylor. My home being on the same block, I fre- quently saw Mr. Seward on the piazza enjoying the fine view. He was quite advanced in age even then. At an af- fair given in his honor at Pioneer Hall he was so shaky that he had to use both hands to hold his glass of cham- pagne when toasted.
When General Grant came to San Francisco, he fell an easy victim to a young, but persistent, autograph hunter. The General was writing in Pioneer Hall at the time,^ and a ten- year-old boy approached the table, at which he was sitting. Bit by bit he edged nearer, and finally, with one bold stroke, placed his book beneath the great man's nose. There was only one thing to do, and the General did it, inscribing his name as meekly as could be, but with a broad smile on his usually grave face. Thus did he make one small boy happy for life.
Other famous soldiers I have seen include Fremont, the "Pathfinder," for whom I once did some iron work; General Vallejo, provincial governor of California from 1840 to 1843; and General Sutter. The last mentioned I once stood with on the banks of the Sacramento River in the fall of '49, on which occasion he said: "I have moored my boats in the tops of those cottonwood trees, where the driftwood showed not less than twenty-five feet from the ground."
But I must tell you a good story of General Vallejo and President Lincoln. The former, while in Washington, whither he had been called by the President during the early part of the Civil War, suggested that the United States build a railroad into Mexico, believing it would be a benefit to both nations. "But," said Mr. Lincoln, "what good would it do for our people to go there, even if railroads were built? They would all die of fever, and, according to your belief, go down
yonder," pointing below to indicate the lower regions.
"I wouldn't be very sorry about that," answered the General. "How so?" said Mr. Lincoln. "I thought you liked the Yankees." "So I do," v/as the answer. "The Yankees are a wonderful people. Wherever they go they make improvements. If they were to emigrate in large numbers to hell itself, they would somehow man- age to change the climate." And I be- lieve the General was right, for see what has been done with the deadly climate of the Canal Zone!
Other men I have known were Henry Highton, the lawyer; Colonel Andrews, of the Diamond Palace, and Judge Holliday, who was always my friend and at one time my attorney. You will remember that he died last year. Ina Donna Coolbrith, Califor- nia's poet laureate, was also known to me years ago, a dignified and beauti- ful young woman of rare gifts, and I am glad indeed of the honors that have come to her later in life, though, as a matter of fact, they should have been hers long ago.
You want to know what my avoca- tions have been? Well, I have done all sorts of things. For ten years I was in the retail grocery business, but in 1884 went into the employ of the Southern Pacific, where I remained for twenty years, retiring on a pension in 1904. Two years later I lost my wife, but still have my son and daughter, the former living at Vallejo and the latter, Mrs. Nelson Page, living near me in Oakland. She, by the way, is the au- thor of an article in the Overland Monthly some years ago on the subject of Pitcairn Island that attracted wide attention. She has the pen of a ready writer, and my friends tell me the most remarkable thing I have ever done was the publication of my book, "California, 1849-1913," which I wrote when I was eighty-seven years old. My purpose was not self-aggrandize- ment, but that my experience might be deposited in the archives of my de- scendants."
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Pastor Russell's Writings to be ^ Continued in Overland Monthly
ARRANGEMENTS have been completed with Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society whereby the manage- ment of Overland Monthly will, in the February is- sue, if ready, begin in serial form Pastor Russell's famous book, "The Divine Plan of the Ages." Other works of this beloved pastor are being prepared to follow.
The following excerpt, from a letter recently received by Overland Monthly from the manager of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, explains itself to our many constant readers regarding the publication of this new series of Pastor Russell's writings :
"Since your magazine is of a higher class than any of the newspapers, we thought perhaps the best thing we could think of for your readers would be to supply you the subject matter of Pastor Russell's famous book, "The Divine Plan of the Ages" in serial form, to appear in 12, 16 or 24 installments. "The Divine Plan of the Ages," next to the Bible, is the most widely circulated book in the wcrld. When prepared in installments, we feel sure it will prove very satisfactory."
Our good friends specially interested in this series will help us greatly if they will pass the word along among their ac- quaintances that the Pastor Russell series has been resumed in Overland Monthly.
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Lost Morses
By R. T. Coryndon
A MONTH or so after the traitor Maritz had made his flambuoy- ant proclamation in German Southwest Africa, a small body of mounted Union troops was operat- ing in a district which may be de- scribed as "somewhere near Uping- ton." Probably such secrecy of places and names is not at all necessary, but it lends an appropriate military flavor to the small events I describe. I may gc so far as to say that the setting I have provided is fictitious, though sim- ilar events did, no doubt, occur in the operations against Maritz and Kemp and their heroes. The characters of the roan horse and of the boy Frik- kie are true to life, and the small ad- ventures did occur much as described, but in another country in South Africa and upon a different occasion. Ac- cept the story as fiction, not as history; it will at any rate serve to throw a light upon one of the aspects of the fighting in that dry land, and it illustrates the close relationship between horse and man in that country of long distances and sparse population and infrequent water holes. The conditions are the absolute antithesis of those in Flan- ders and the trenches.
The risk of losing his riding or pack animals is constantly present to the veld traveler. Fortunately it is sel- dom the cause of anything more trou- blesome than a temporary inconven- ience, but there are occasions when serious hardships result, the loss of valuable time or of your animals, or risk to your own life. In most cases the loss of your beasts is due merely to the fact that they have strayed. They have, as a rule, either followed the lead of some restless animal who is making back for his stable, or else
they have wandered away in search of grass or water.
A horse is less hardy than his hy- brid half-brother, and more the slave of his belly. Thirst and hunger pinch him at once, and he is quick in search of comfort; he is therefore more likely to stop and suffer capture at the first patch of good grass he comes to. His superficial character, moreover, gener- ally affords some indication both of the reason he has strayed and the di- rection he has taken. There are, how- ever, a few horses who are inveterate and troublesome wanderers; they are generally old animals whose accumu- lated experience has developed a cun- ning foreign to their normal character. Such animals often possess an irritat- ing facility for choosing the most in- convenient time to stray and the most unlikely direction to go.
If horses are the most frequent of- fenders, their sins in this respect are seldom serious. In my own experi- ence, mules are more liable to travel back along the road they have come than horses; they are more creatures of habit, their memory is more reten- tive, and they have greater natural in- telligence. When a mule has acquired the habit of absenting himself from duty he is a perpetual trouble. The most malignant form of this disease occurs when the beast has developed an insatiable longing for one particu- lar place, a definite goal from which nothing will turn him. This haven of his constant desire is generally the place where he was born, or where he passed the pleasant days of his ab- surd youth.
There are traits in most horses which in conjunction with this foundation of congenital simplicity, go to make
LOST HORSES.
81
''character." Men who have dealt with horses in the less frequented parts of the earth know this well. They will remember one animal who had in a highly developed degree that instinct- ive correctness of demeanor which can best be described as good manners; a second had a heart like a lion and checked at nothing; another was a prey to an incurable nervousness; while yet another was simply mean. These mean horses are a perpetual menace; you never know when they will let you down. Sometimes they are clearly ac- tuated by malice; sometimes, however, there is a subtle quality and timeliness in their apparent stupidity which gives you a horrid suspicion that you've been had, and that your horse is more of a rogue than a fool. Such an ani- mal is always an old horse, never a young one.
I am not quite clear as to what a scout should look like. The typical scout of the North American Indian days, as exemplified in the person of Natty Bumpo, wore fringed buckskin and moccasins and coon-skin cap, while Texas Bill and his vivid compan- ions had a more picturesque costume still, in which great silver-studded sad- dles and jingling spurs and monstrous revolvers bore a conspicuous part. I must confess that my own nine sports- men were scrubby-looking fellows compared to their picturesque prede- cessors at the game. (The khaki trou- sers issued by an administration which was always more practical than pic- turesque do not lend themselves, in this generation at any rate, to romance.) But they were a hard and useful lot, much sunburned, and with gnarled, scarred hands. Deerslayer himself probably could not have taught them much about their own veld craft. Every one was South African born; three of them were younger sons of loyal Boer farmers. One was a col- ored boy, a quiet, capable fellow. He was with us nominally as a sort of groom, but his civil manners and extra- ordinary capacity soon won him an ac- cepted place in the scouts; though he rode and ate with us, he always sat a
little apart in camp. He had spent three or four years up country, where I had first come across him in fact, and had shot some amount of big game; he was excellent on spoor and had a wonderful eye for country, and I really think he was the quickest man on and off a horse, and the quickest and most brilliant shot I ever saw. He stood on the roster as Frederick Col- lins, but was never known by any other name than Frikkie.
The commandant of the rather non- descript commando, which was offi- cially described, I believe, as a com- posite regiment, had a sound idea of the value of a few competent and well mounted scouts, and had done us very well in the matter of horse. We had been "on commando" now for nearly five weeks, and had got to know our animals pretty well. During the con- fusion and changes of the first fort- night I had got rid of a dozen horses I saw would be of no use for our work — thought suitable, no doubt, for slower troop duty, and by a cunning process of selection had got together a very serviceable lot, with four spare animals to carry kit and water on the longer trips away from the main body. Your spirited young things, though well enough to go courting on, are apt to get leg-weary and drop condition too soon on steady work, and all my mob were aged and as hard as nails. I will describe one or two of them pres- ently.
Things were getting a little exciting about that time. Three rebel comman- dos, or rather bands, were known to be in the neighborhood, and it was essen- tial to find out what their strength was and who their leaders were. There was not much reason to fear attack, for they were not well found in either guns or ammunition, and their raga- muffin cavalry were concerned to avoid and not invite a stand up engagement. Rapidity of action was essential to the loyal troops, for the longer the re- bellion dragged on the more risk there was of its spreading. It was necessary to find out at once the actual move- ments of these bands, and the best
82 OVERLAND MONTHLY.
way of doing so was to keep tally of before sunset, after a windless, baking
the water holes. Man can, if neces- day. The horses were in excellent fet-
sary, carry water for themselves, but tie. The roan had given some trouble
horses, especially those from the moist with the pack, but before he could
high veld of the Transvaal, must have throw himself down or buck through
water regularly or they go to pieces the lines he was hustled out of camp to
very quickly in that dry, hot land. And an accompaniment of oaths and cheers
so the remote and forgotten pit at Ra- in two languages. Once away and
mib had suddenly become of import- alone he went quietly, but doubtless
ance, and I had been told to send two v/ith hate in his heart, for his beastly
men to examine it at once. eye was full of gall;
It lay within the rocky belt which Dawn found us hidden on the top of came down south of the Orange River a low stony kopje, the horses tied to- somewhat to our right; it was supposed gether among the brown boulders be- to be twenty miles away, but it might low. It was bitter cold as the light prove five miles less or ten miles more, grew, and the sun came up into an It was known to have held water fif- empty world. I waited there for half teen months before, and our business an hour, partly to find any signs of was to find out if it still held water, white men, and partly to work out the how long that water would be likely to lay of the land and the probable direc- last, and if any of the rebels had been tion of the pit. Nothing was moving in to it recently. No one in the column the whole world. It was clear where was aware of its exact location, but I the water must be. On the right was myself knew enough of those parts to the usual barren desert country we had guess roughly where it must lie. I de- come through during the night, low cided to take one man and a pack horse ridges of stone and shale, and a thin and to take the patrol myself. No na- low scrub of milk bush and cactus. On tive guide was available, and the Col- the left the land grew much rougher onel did not, for obvious reasons, care towards the river; the rocky valleys to make use of any of the few local stretched for miles in that direction. Boers who carried on a wretched ex- Presently we led the horses down off istence as farmers in that barren the kopje, and an hour later saw us country. looking down at the chain of small
My own horse was a big bay, an holes, still full of good water. I stayed
uncomfortable beast, but capable of v/ith the hidden horses while Frikkie
covering much ground; like many big cut a circle round the pools. There
men, he had little mental elasticity and was no sign of life, he reported, only
no vices. Frikkie had an unassuming the old sandal spoor of some natives;
bay of ordinary manners and capacity, no horse had been down to the water
and with a natural aptitude for routine for weeks, probably for months. We
and a military life. The third horse off-saddled in a hidden corner some
was a king of his class. He did not be- way from the water, and got a small
long to the scouts, but I had borrowed fire going of thin dry sticks. The
him to carry the pack on that patrol horses were given a drink and turned
He was mean all through; in color a loose. It was criminal foolishness not
sort of skewbald roan, and in character to have hobbled or knee-haltered the
an irreclaimable criminal. He had a roan, for ten minutes after they were
narrow chest, weedy white legs, and let go Frikkie called out that the
a pale shifty eye; he was very free horses had completely disappeared, v/ith his heels, and an inveterate ma- One realized at once that there was
lingerer. He had never carried a pack no time to be lost. It was probable
before, and we were prepared for that the roan^had led them away, and
trouble, for his malevolent spirit had that he meant business. The saddles
already acquired a wide reputation. and pack were hurriedly hidden among
The patrol left the column a little some rocks with the billy of half-
LOST HORSES.
83
cooked rice, the fire was put out, and we took up the spoor.
It was soon evident that the animals were traveling, and were not straying aimlessly in search of feed. The spoor of the discolored strawberry beast was alv/ays in front — his footprints were like his character, narrow and close. Above his tracks came those of Ruby, the police horse, round ordinary hoof- marks, and well shod ; my own horse's immense prints were always last, solid and unmistakable. Mile after mile the tracks led into a rockier and more bar- ten country. What little stunted and thorny scrub there was had not yet come into leaf, and there was no shade and no sign of green anywhere. Ridges of sharp, gravel and small kepjes of brown stone alternated with narrow valleys without sign of green or water. In the softer ground of these valleys the spoor was plain and could be fol- lowed without any trouble, but on the rocky ridges the tracks became diffi- cult to hold where the horses had sep- arated and wandered about. The trail led eastwards, into a rocky, waterless, and uninhabited country. There was no reason for the roan's choice, but just native malice, for he had come from the west the previous day. Doubt- less the main camp would be his ulti- mate destination, but it seemed ap- parent that he intended to inflict as deep an, injury as he possibly could be- fore he set his sour face again toward the west.
It was within half an hour of sun- down before I came up with the horses, and then only the two bays ; the roan's spoor showed that he had gone on about an hour before. They were standing under a bunch of thorn trees, the only shade they had passed since they were let go that morning. For the last mile or two the tracks, which had become more aimless as the hot after- noon wore on, had turned a little to the north. Probably, as the allegiance of his small following had weakened, the leader's thoughts had turned to the companionship of the camp, and when they had finally refused to follow him any farther he had abandoned the rest
of his revenge and had turned frankly lor home.
We rounded up the two horses and thought of our camp, probably eight miles away in a direct line. Though they were tired and empty they would not be caught, and it was soon evident that they would not be driven either. I will not ask you to follow the dread- ful hour which ensued. This crowning flicker of rebellion at the end of a dis- astrous day nearly broke our hearts. It was well after dark when we finally abandoned the horses in an area of steep rocky ridges and narrow valleys covered with cactus; it was quite im- possible to cope with them in the dark in such a country. We reached camp about ten, but were too tired and dis- appointed to make a fire. A tin of bully-beef, and the mass of opaque jelly which had once been good Patna rice, were the first pleasant incidents of a baking, hungry day.
The second day began before dawn with as large a breakfast as we could compass : black coffee, the little bread that was left, and a large quantity of rice. I have seldom eaten a more cheerless meal. Three or four pounds of rice, some coffee, a tin or two of bully, and a little sugar were all that remained to us, and there was no chance of getting more. I must con- fess that at this stage a tactical error was committed, which cost us the long day's work for nothing. A golden rule where lost animals are concerned is to stick to the spoor, but as I thought it very probable that the horses would turn north and west again during the night and make for their last place of sojourn, I tried to save half a dozen hours by cutting the spoor ahead. It was nearly noon, and a mile or two be- yond where the roan had left the others before it became a certainty that the horses had done the unlikely thing, and had gone either south or farther east into the broken country. At that moment they were probably ten miles away. I then did what one should have done at first, and went to the point where we had last seen them. That afternoon was hotter and emptier
84
OVERLAND MONTHLY.
than the last, and sunset found us on a cold spoor going north. We had wisely brought rice and coffee and water-bags with us that morning, and Frikkie had shot a klipspringer — ba- boons and klipspringer were the only animals we had seen the last two days. If you suppose that we had used any of the water for washing you are mak- ing a mistake, though Heaven knows that we both would have been the bet- ter for a bath. We slept on the spoor, and bitter cold it was without blankets.
Matters were getting serious. We were more than twelve miles from the saddlery and, so far as we knew, the nearest water, and twenty more from the camp. If the horses were not found and caught that day they would have to be abandoned, and we would have to pad the hoof home.
But fortune does not frown forever; it is a long lane that has no turning. Within an hour of sunrise we came into the quite fresh tracks of the horses crossing their own spoor. Frikkie ex- claimed that there were three horses, and an examination showed the nar- row tracks of the red horse with the other two; they had not found water and were evidently on their way back to Ramib. We came on to the animals a few minutes afterwards. Except that they were hollow from want of water they were none the worse2 and appar- ently they were not sorry to see us. By the time the sun was in the north they had had a good drink and were finish- ing the little grain in the pack. Mid- night saw us riding into the main camp — only to find it deserted, for the col- umn had marched. The camp was ap- parently completely empty, and it felt very desolate under a small moon. I expected I would discover a message of some sort for me at sunrise; in the meantime the obvious thing was to keep out of the way.
Nothing moved in or around the camp till near sunrise, when three men rode out of some shale ridges about a mile away on the opposite side, and came down to the water. By the white bands round the left arm — the sign of loyal troops — I knew them for our own
men; indeed, we had recognized the horse one of them was riding. They gave me the message they had stayed behind to deliver. We were to stay and watch the camp site for three or four days, and to patrol daily some distance to the southeast. The water was important, for it was quite prob- able that one or other of the rebel com- mandos would come to it. The men had hidden provisions for us and some grain for the horses; they themselves were to hurry on to the column with our report of the Ramib pits. We rode a few miles along the column spoor with them, and then turned off on some gravelly ground and fetched a compass round back to the place in the shale ridges where the men had .slept and where the provisions were. We took nc more chances with the strawberry horse; he was closely hobbled.
The loss of the animals had been a serious thing, and we were extremely fortunate to have got out of it so eas- ily. It did not lessen the annoyance to realize that it was my own fault for not hobbling the roan, but only a rogue by constitution and habit would have carried his hostility to so dangerous a length. But within a week he was to provide another taste of his quality. This time nothing more serious was involved than the risk of his own loss, for we were never led far from water in so menacing and barren a country.
Most of that day was spent in the stony krantz, from which a view could be obtained over the whole dry, gray landscape, and the pools a mile away. In normal times the laagte was fre- quently used for sheep grazing, but in these days of mobile and ever-hungry commandos the few farmers in the vicinity were grazing their meagre flocks nearer their homesteads. Ex- cept for a few wandering Griquas, and possibly a band of ragged rebels on tired horses, it was not likely that our watch would be interrupted. A rough shelter made of the stunted spiny scrub served as a sentry box; the saddles were hidden in a narrow cleft on the lee side of the ridge, and the horses v/ere kept down in the valleys.
LOST HORSES.
85
In the afternoon we saddled up and rode south and east, keeping for the most part to the rough ridges, and overlooking the level country along which our column had come, and which was the natural approach from that side for any body of men having wheeled transport with them. We did not ride for more than an hour, but my glasses showed an empty, treeless world for miles beyond. If the com- mandos did come our way they would probably trek by night; we should hear them arrive and laager about dawn, and sunrise would have seen us well on our way to our own men.
Just at dusk that evening we rode along the lee of the ridge upon which our poor home was. Frikkie was rid-, ing the roan. He was leading his own animal, for a single horse could not be left grazing alone, to be picked up, perhaps, by any wandering rebel, or to stray off in search of companionship. When we passed under the highest point of the ridge I stopped and sent Frikkie to the top, for he could spy in both directions from there. I took * the led horse from him, and he threw the roan's reins over the neck to the trail on the ground — the accepted in- struction to every trained veld horse to stand still. I watched the boy's slim figure against the sunset sky in the west as he turned about, searching the veid through his binoculars, though it was really getting too dark for prism glasses. He called out that nothing was moving, and presently came lightly down the steep slope in the gathering dusk. As he reached his horse the beast turned his quarters to him and walked away ; and when I put my horse across to check him he lifted his head and trotted off.
This was a new, but not unexpected, trait in an already depraved charac- ter. Some horses, though they are in- veterate strayers, are easy to catch when you do come up with them; others are very difficult to catch, al- though they seldom go more than a mile from the camp; this hectic de- generate apparently combined both these bad habits.
An hour after dark the horse had not turned up, though our own reliable animals were knee-haltered and turned loose for a time with their nose-bags on as decoys. At dawn he was not visible in any of the shallow valleys we could see to the east of the ridge; and to our surprise and concern he was not in the valley where the water was and where the camp had been.
Our own horses were knee-haltered short and let go, and we spent a. care- ful hour examining the margin of the pool, but there was no narrow spoor to show that the roan had been down to drink during the night. I spent the morning with our horses and on the look-out, while the boy cut a wide semi-circle round to the south and west of the water. He came in at mid-day, certain that the truant had not gone out in those directions. Then Frikkie took over the sentry work, and I set out to cover the remainder of the circle. I worked methodically along the soft ground of the valleys outside the range of an area already fouled by the spoor of our own animals, and where I would find the roan's tracks at once. From time to time I climbed one of the low ridges, for the boy was to spread a light-colored saddle blanket over a prominent rock on the side away from the water as a signal if he saw either the lost horse or any one approaching.
That evening, when I got back to camp, I found two Griquas sitting over the coals with Frikkie. They said they were shepherds, and they may have done a little of that congenial work recently, but they looked to me more like sheep-stealers. They were wild people from the Orange River, and I was sure they had never been any sort of farm laborers. However, they were friendly enough and prom- ised to help in the morning. The horse had then been without water since the morning of the previous day. He had not strayed away, for at sunset he must have been still within four or five miles of the camp; if he had intended busi- ness we would have cut his outgoing spoor during the day. Horses were too valuable in that country, and at that
86
OVERLAND MONTHLY.
time, for the loss of even such a three- cornered abomination as the pink horse to be taken lightly.
Morning showed that the horse had net been to the water during the night. He had then been forty-eight hours withou water. The only thing was to take up the spoor where the animal had last been seen, and so stick to it till he was found. The Kalahari bush- men have the reputation of being the finest trackers in South Africa, but these two cross-bred Griqua bushmen gave us an incomparable exhibition of skill. I have had some experience of that game, and Frikkie was a master, but these savages astonished us.
Inch by inch the spoor was picked out from that of the other animals. No proved mark was abandoned until the next was certified, often only an inch or two away. The only slight help they had was the rare and very faint mark where the trailing reins had touched the ground. The first hun- dred yards took probably an hour to cover, but when the spoor reached comparatively clean ground the work was easier. At this point Frikkie got the water bags and some food and joined the bushmen, for it was possible that the horse, driven by thirst, had taken it into his head to travel far dur- ing the previous night.
Late that evening the trackers re- turned with the horse. He was ema- ciated and weak, but otherwise quite well, though for some days his back was tender from the continual "sweat- ing" of the saddle blanket. His spoor showed that he had spent the first night and day wandering about the low ridges and hollows not far from our camp, and that the night before he had commenced to journey away into the empty country to the east. Some- where about dawn of that third day his trailing reins had hooked up on one of the few bushes in that country strong enough to hold him, and there he was found by the bushmen, the picture of a natural misery, and too dejected to take much notice of his rescuers. Noth- ing but his own gloomy thoughts had prevented him from going down to the
water at any time, or to the companion- ship of our camp.
Thirty-six hours after this we were back with the main column. It is not necessary to add that we were glad to get a bath and a generous meal, and that I took the first opportunity of handing over the parti-colored straw- berry to troop duty.
In the first of these two offenses' it is clear that the white-legged roan was animated by spite. Such malevolence is rare enough, but his second perform- ance is much more remarkable. I offer three alternative explanations. The first is that it was just stupidity. I have the poorest opinion of the intelligence of the horse, as distinct from instinct. It is professor Lloyd Morgan, I think, who defines instinct as "the sum of in- herited habits," and this may be ac- cepted as a sound definition. Elemen- tary necessity, to say nothing of in- stinct or intelligence, should have driven him to the water soon after he had obtained his freedom. He could not have forgotten where the water was. If his normal mental process was so dislocated by the fact of the saddle on his back without the pres- ence of the masterful human in it, then he was a fool of the first class.
The second solution I offer is that his action was prompted by roguery; for even a very limited intelligence would have warned him that he would be captured if he ventured near either the water or the camp. It may be that when his reins hooked up he was on his way to the free water at Ramib. The third explanation is that he was a little daft. In a long and varied ex- perience of horses I cannot really re- member one so afflicted, though I had a pack-mule once that I am certain was a harmless lunatic. You may take your choice of these alternatives; for my part I incline to the second.
John Ridd's wisdom led him to ex- press the opinion, upon the memorable occasion when John Fry was bringing him home from Blundell's School at Tiverton, that "a horse (like a woman) lacks, and is better without, self-re- liance."
Darius Osden mils
THE career of Darius Ogden Mills, both as a pioneer and banker in California and later as financier in New York City, is most interesting and stands as a model for young men of this generation who would succeed through hard work and genuine integrity. He took a prominent part in the upbuilding of the State of California from 1849 until the day of his death in 1910, always show- ing a keen interest in the welfare of the West, even when absorbed in his many Eastern business affairs during the latter part of his life. In his early activities in Sacramento and San Francisco he was an important man. In San Francisco, after the earthquake and fire of 1906, he was one of the first to rebuild, on a large scale.
Darius Ogden Mills was born in Westchester County, N. Y., Sept. 5, 1825. He had a good common school education, supplemented by courses in the academies at North Salem and Os- sining. At fifteen he began to earn his living as a clerk in a small general store in New York City, where he re- mained for six years. At twenty-one he entered the Merchants' Bank of Erie County, Buffalo, where he became cashier, and later part owner in the institution.
At this time glowing reports were constantly being circulated throughout the East about the wonderful opportu- nities in California. Two of Mr. Mills' brothers had already gone West; and it was only natural that he should feel drawn in that direction. He decided to make an experimental trip and took passage to California by way of the Isthmus of Panama. Here he was forced to remain, with thousands of others, waiting for a ship bound for San Francisco. Finally he went down the South American coast, and shipped from Callao to San Francisco, taking with him a considerable amount of stores which he disposed of advan- tageously. From San Francisco he went directly back to New York, hav- ing laid his plans for a future career.
In 1850, he disposed of his interests in the Buffalo bank, and started again for California, where he established himself in the general merchandising and banking business in Sacramento. This enterprise prospered from the start, his first year's operations netting him a clear gain of $40,000. The Gold Bank of D. O. Mills was founded in Sacramento as a natural outgrowth of the "Eastern Exchange" department of his business. The bank was a great success, and is now one of the strong- est financial institutions in the West. Through its medium, he was enabled to enter many new business ventures in mining, railroading, timber lands and supply expeditions. The gold ex- citement in the Comstock mines was the next thing that attracted Mr. Mills' attention, and he took up the develop- ment of the Comstock Lode in Ne- vada, and soon acquired valuable and extensive timber holdings in that neighborhood. The California quick- silver mines also interested him, and he obtained large interests in other mines.
On September 5, 1854, he was mar- ried to Miss Jane T. Cunningham, the daughter of James Cunningham of New York, also a pioneer and a ship- owner. It was Mr. Cunningham who sent the famous ship, "Senator," around the Horn. In 1864, Mr. Mills assisted in the foundation of the Bank of California. He was a large owner and was elected the first president of the bank, retaining his office for nine years. In June, 1873, he retired from the active management of the bank to look after his own affairs. The bank then fell on bad times, and Mr. Mills was again elected president by the stockholders, and within three years he succeeded in placing the finances of the bank again upon a firm founda- tion.
In 1880, two years after resigning from his second term as president of the Bank of California, Mr. Mills went to the East to live, and established his business in New York. Mr. Mills be-
88
OVERLAND MONTHLY.
lieved in the great future of California, and left as a legacy to the State such financial institutions as the Bank of California in San Francisco and the bank in Sacramento which bears his name — the National Bank of D. O. Mills & Co. The Mills Building on Montgomery street, San Francisco, was erected by him. The Millbrae Dairy in San Mateo County was also founded by him, as it was his desire to provide a model dairy where pure milk and cream could be furnished and where prize dairy stock could be bred. When Mr. Mills transferred his activi- ties to the East, he still retained his in- terest in his investments, and the in- stitutions he had founded in the West, and retained also a residence here. In addition to his material benefactions to the West, he left something even more valuable, and that was the mighty work he helped to accomplish in build- ing up the social and economic struc- ture of the State.
While living here, he was a regent of the University of California, which he endowed with a chair of philosophy. He was also trustee of the Lick Obser- vatory, and from time to time furnished this institution with funds, as well as giving the Observatory its great photo- graphic spectroscope. He also fur- nished funds for a temporary observa- tory in Chili, where field work was be- ing done under the direction of the Lick Observatory.
Shortly after Mr. Mills was estab- lished in New York, he erected a model office building on Broad street, oppo- site the Stock Exchange. This edifice took the name of the "Mills Building," and was the forerunner of the many large office structures which have con- tinued to be erected in that city. He was one of the first to be interested in the Niagara Falls Power Company, which was probably the first great power company that was organized in this country.
Aside from his financial projects, Mr. Mills has, no doubt, secured as great recognition throughout the United States from his activities in the realm of art, science and philanthropy
— and it is for these reasons that his name will be remembered, when per- haps his large banking achievements have been forgotten. In New York, Mr. Mills was trustee of the Metropoli- tan Museum of Art, and of the Ameri- can Museum of Natural History and was also chosen president of the Bo- tanical Gardens.
In philanthropy his greatest achieve- ment was the Mills' Hotels. These v/ere founded somewhat after the sys- tem of the Rowton houses in London, but differed in many details. In these hotels a poor man may get a whole- some meal and a night's lodging in pleasant surroundings for a nominal sum. Mr. Mills was also interested in the City and Suburban Homes Com- pany, which provided model dwelling nouses for families.
With the advancing years Mr. Mills continued his active participation in the business affairs begun during his earlier years. Even at seventy-six he was vigorous and clear minded, and his financial interests at this time in- cluded such important responsibilities as the directorship in the Erie and New York Central and other railroads, the Bank of New York, the Morgan Trust Company and other such insti- tutions. At this stage of his life he headed a syndicate to purchase an im- portant railroad that ran from the min- ing districts of Eastern Washington to the Pacific Coast.
Mr. Mills died suddenly of heart tiouble at his Millbrae home on Jan- uary 3, 1910, at the age of eighty-five. The Millbrae property was purchased by him in the early '50's, where the home and dairy now stand, and he al- ways continued to take a great interest in this beautiful spot, which still be- longs to the Mills' family. It was here that Mrs. Whitelaw Reid, his daugh- ter, and his son, Ogden Mills, make their California home.
In every phase of his character and in the deeds he accomplished, Mr. Mills stands as a worthy example to the younger generation of business men. His composure was never ruffled by petty annoyances or by financial
A "BACK TO NATURE" MAIDEN
89
shakeups. Nothing could cause him to take hasty action. He had all the born characteristics of the captain of industry, being gifted with the ability to dispose quickly of the details of business brought before him to trans- act. His was the gift of seeing op- portunities and turning them, with Midas-like touch, into pure gold. His was the strength to seize and the abil- ity to co-ordinate. His was a judg- ment that was ripe; and with it went
a knowledge of men that enabled him to secure from them the very most in loyalty and service. He accomplished a great creative work in American in- dustrial life that continues to live af- ter him, because he created wealth — did not destroy it in his own search for the precious metal. In fact, he was one of the few men of great wealth of whom there has never been any intima- tion that his fortune was obtained by grinding and oppressing the poor.
A "Back to Nature' Aaiden
By Edith Kinney Stellmann
WHILE in this progressive age there are many young women engaged in agricultural pur- suits, Miss Grace Elliott, rancher, owner and sole operator of the Hillcrest Ranch, has some very distin- guishing traits.
In the first place, Miss Elliott left a wealthy and fashionable home to earn her own living, because of her spirit of independence. She first be- came a nurse, but her love of out- door life caused her to relinquish this, after some years, to take up ranching.
Miss Elliott is the daughter of Henry Elliott, known the country over as the champion of the fur-bearing seals. To prevent the extermination of the bachelor seals, Mr. Elliott devoted a life time of effort and sacrificed a for- tune. Though opposed by many prom- inent men, including David Starr Jor- dan, he finally secured the passage of laws preventing the capture and de- struction of these seals for a term of five years.
Miss Elliott lives entirely alone, save for her bull dog, on her high hill above Sunol, Alameda County, culti- vating olives, grapes and apricots. She does all her own work, even to the
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Miss Grace Elliott
chopping of firewood. Her house is in two sections ; the living room, screened perch and kitchen form one building, while her sleeping apartment is in the
7
90
OVERLAND MONTHLY
top of a tank house, the lower floor of this is guarded by her bull dog, whose fame as a "scrapper" reaches all over the valley below.
Miss Elliott finds no time to be lonely, though she often stops in the midst of work to enjoy the surpassing- ly lovely view, which she finds from every point on her ranch. The fruit orchards stretch below her to the town, several miles distant, intersected, here and there, by picturesque canyons, with their immense oak and buckeye trees.
Miss Elliott does not leave her ranch during the long, rainy season, except for occasional week-ends, de- voted partly to business, though she is
constantly being importuned by her town friends to participate in their so- cial activities. She is taking the Uni- versity Extension courses in vine and olive culture, and devotes practically all of her time when confined within doors to study.
A direct descendant of the famous John Elliott, known as The Apostle to the Indians, Miss Elliott inherits the sturdy dauntlessness of her father's family, but in appearance and manner bears a closer resemblance to her vivacious Russian mother. Mrs. El- liott is the daughter of a former Rus- sian governor of Alaska, where she and Henry Elliott met and were mar- ried.
In the Realm of Bookland
"Hawaiian Legends of Volcanoes, Col- lected and Translated from the Ha- waiian," by W. D. Westerfelt, au- thor of "Legends of Old Honolulu," etc.
The Hawaiian Islands are the thea- tre of the most stupendous exhibition on the earth of volcanic eruption, so it is quite natural that the aboriginal na- tives early personified the tremendous forces they visualized in the immense and tremendous outbursts of the pent forces beneath the crater. Eventually the weird and uncanny mysteries sur- rounding these forces were formulated into simple tale forms, the themes cov- ering remarkable adventures, miracu- lous escapes, conflicts with the de- mons that lived deep down in the won- derful lava. Out of these original tales came a series of deeds of heroic sac- rifice, loyal devotion, all thrilling sac- an intense passion. It is these tales that the author has put into shape. Great care has been exercised to pre- serve the spirit, ideals and form of these ancient tales narrated by the abo- rigines, and handed down through the generations. A large number of phe- nomenal geological facts regarding the Hawaiian Islands are set forth in a
lucid introduction to the book, so that the reader may picture the extraordi- nary volcanic background of these le- gends.
Freely illustrated with photographs.
Price, 12mo, $1.50 net. Small, $1 net. George H. Ellis Co., Boston, Mass.
"Towards an Enduring Peace, a Sym- posium of Peace Proposals and Pro- grams, 1914-1916." Compiled by Randolph S. Bourne.
Franklin H. Giddings in a succinct introdution sets forth a number "of agreeable presumptions which un- doubtedly influenced individual and collective conduct" when the great war burst on the world ; these presump- tions lay between the practical and the aspirational, with the rule of reason between. The world has recovered from great disasters before now, and will recover in this instance. Rational control of affairs is still on the map despite what has occurred, so Mr. Gid- dings asks the question: By what power shall conscience and reason be reinforced and the surviving forces of barbarism driven back? All but one answer seems to be shot to pieces.
IN THE REALM OF EOOKLAND.
91
That answer is conscience and reason are effective when they organize ma- terial energies, not when they dissi- pate them in dreams. Conscience and reason must assemble, co-ordinate, and bring to bear the economic resources and the physical energies of the civi- lized world to narrow the area, and to diminish the frequency of war. There must be a specific plan, concrete, prac- tical, a specific preparedness, a spe- cific method, a plan drawn forth from the situation as the war makes and leaves it, not imposed upon it. There must be a composition of forces now in operation."
Published by the American Associa- tion for International Concilliation.
"The Men Who Wrought," by Ridg- well Cullum, author of "The Night Raiders," "The Way of the Strong," etc.
Tales by this well known author are always full of stirring action with men of red corpuscles in their blood, and women who have daring spirits and wills of their own. The background of this volume is the war zone in Eu- rope, a background which readily fur- nishes a round of thrilling adventures and complications. It opens with the meeting of a strange and beautiful wo- man with the hero, and the introduc- tion of a mysterious inventor who en- deavors to sell the plans of a new idea in submarines to the hero's father, one of the biggest ship owners in Eng- land. With such a captivating start the plot worms its exciting way through startling adventures to facing the prob- lem, Where shall the government of Great Britain be placed?
Price, $1.35. George W. Jacobs & Co., Philadelphia.
The detailed description of the life- work of these subjects is a character- istic feature of the National Cyclope- dia, and carrying out this idea through the entire realm of American history and biography has produced a com- prehensive record of American pro- gress and achievement.
This volume contains all the mem- bers of the Naval Consulting Board of the United States not published in the preceding volume.
In the field of aviation a full ac- count is given of Samuel P. Langley's experiments in aerodynamics, his un- successful attempts to fly a heavier- than-air machine, and Glenn Curtiss's achievement with Langley's apparatus only two years ago. A notable con- temporary of the Wright brothers was John J. Montgomery, whose biography is here published for the first time. A description of the gyroscope stabilizer for aeroplanes is given in the biogra- phy of Elmer A. Sperry, it being the first authoritative and complete ac- count of this Wizard of the Gyroscope. The leaders in all bankers, financiers and all professions, industries, etc., are all set forth in the same pithy, com- prehensive fashion.
James T. White & Co., New York.
"The National Cyclopaedia of Ameri- can Biography." Edited by Distin- guished Biographers. Vol. XV.
This new volume covers the import- ant biography of the present time and embraces all the leading men of promi- nent endeavor from U. S. Senators to learned scientific societies and religi- ous organizations.
"A Hidden Well, Lyrics and Sonnets,"
by Louis How.
There are numbers of edifying verses in this little volume, and they touch attractive themes that hold the imagination, both here and abroad. In- deed, several numbers of the selection are translations of several notable for- eign poems. Lyric and the sonnet are the two forms used with nice discrimi- nation by the author.
$1 net. Sherman, French & Co., Boston.
"Nichiren, the Buddhist Prophet," by Masaharu Anesaki, M. A., Litt. D., Professor of the Science of Re- ligion at the Imperial University of Tokio.
In the preface the author states : "To the intrinsic interest of the life of Ni- chiren as a Buddhist reformer of the
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
thirteenth century, may be added the fact that there has been a noteworthy ievival of his teachings and spirit in modern Japan," through the conver- sion and writings of Chogyu Takay- ama, once called "the Nietzche of Japan." The author edited Taka- yama's writings, and was thus brought in closer touch with the Nichiren's faith and thoughts. This little volume was the result. Deep gratitude to Pro- lessor Isaiah Royce and Professor George F. Moore of Harvard, where the author was professor of Japanese literature and life, 1913-15, for the suggestions regarding the interpreta- tion and cast of the manuscript.
Harvard University Press, Cam- bridge.
possessed by a yearning after that blight, unattainable Faeryland which lies "at every rainbow's ending," not suspecting what in the end Alarin learns, that not even in Faeryland can the soul be content.
$1.25 net. Sherman, French & Co., Boston.
"Republican Principles and Policies: A Brief History of the Republican National Party," by Newton Wyeth.
The object of this volume is to out- line the origin, progress and achieve- ments of the Republican National party. Sixty-two years have passed since Republicans met "under the oaks" at Jackson and organized the party. Within a decade it was strong- ly on its feet, and for half a century, less two terms, it was in the saddle. The author sets forth the leading as- pirations and constructive legislative and executive work which he deems most worthy in the rise and success of the party. He believes that the stal- wart and sterling characters of the founders of the party endowed it with the spirit which carried it through the five decades.
Illustrated by Joseph Pierre Nuyt- tens. The Republic Press, Chicago.
"Something Singing," by Margaret Perry.
There is a gaiety which is sadden- ing, and a sadness that cheers. Here is a sweet sadness whose undercurrent is peace and hope. The poet is con- scious of the essential loneliness of the soul, and the sacrifice which it must pay for companionship. But there is "something singing" — bravely, and, in spite of a faltering note now and again, triumphantly — every step of the way. The author has chosen for the most part the simpler verse forms — lyrics, quatrains, sonnets — in the more usual meters. A few excellent trans- lations preserve some exquisite old world melodies.
$1.00. Sherman, French & Co., Bos- ton.
"Geraint of Devon," by Marion Lee Reynolds.
Although romance, the foundation of this narrative poem in blank verse, is eld, the interpretation is new. The Geraint here pictured is very differ- ent from the hero of the medieval and the Tennysonian versions. He is younger, more eager, more sensitive; he has a finer comprehension of beauty and a greater reverence for it. He is
"The Castle Builder," by Etta Merrick Graves," author of "Mosaics of Truth in Nature," etc.
Romance, the natural atmosphere of castles, is present in the little village at the foot of the White Mountains, where love finds and loses its own. The warm glow of mother love glori- fies the castle, and mystery, the attrac- tion of castles, furnishes a lure until the happy "ever after" is reached. There are contrasting conditions of heights and depths in the process of castle-character-building, with its trag- edy, uncertainty, mystery, pain and fear. Yet in spite of all that tends to tear down the walls, the upbuilding process continues, and so real is the drama of life it seems as if beyond the covers of the book the building were still going on among characters in our midst.
$1.25 net. Sherman, French & Co., Boston.
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ix
The German Savings and Loan Society
(The German Bank)
Savings Incorporated 1868 Commercial
526 California Street, San Francisco, Cal.
Member of the Associated Savings Banks of
San Francisco The following Branches for Receipt and Payment of Deposits only
MISSION BRANCH
S. E. CORNER MISSION AND 21ST STREETS
RICHMOND DISTRICT BRANCH
S. W. CORNER CLEMENT AND 7TH AVENUE
HAIGHT STREET BRANCH
S. W. CORNER HAIGHT AND BELVEDERE
June 30th, 1916:
Assets $63,811,228.81
- Deposits 60,727,194.92
[Capital actually paid up in Cash 1,000,000.00
| Reserve and Contingent Funds 2,084,033.89
i Employees' Pension Funds 222,725.43
Number of Depositors 68,062
Office Hours: 10 o'clock A. M. to 3 o'clock P. M., except Saturdays to 12 o'clock M. and Saturday i evenings from 6 o'clock P. M. to 8 o'clock P. M. for receipt of deposits only.
For the 6 months ending June 30th, 1916, a divi- dend to depositors of 4 per cent per annum was declared.
THE
Paul Gerson
DRAMATIC SCHOOL
Incorporated Under the Laws of the State of California
The Largest Training School of Acting in America
The Only Dramatic School on the Pacific Coast
TENTH YEAR
Elocution, Oratory, Dramatic Art
Advantages:
Professional Experience While Study- ing. Positions Secured for Graduates. Six Months Graduating Course. Stu- dents Can Enter Any Time.
Arrangements can be made with Mr. Gerson for Amateur and Professional Coaching
Paul Gerson Dramatic School Bldg.
McAllister and hyde street
San Francisco, Cal. Write for Catalogue.
The ', Outdoor Girl
*
who loves her favorite sports and takes interest in har social duties must protect her complexion. Con- stant exposure means a ruined skin.
Gouraud's
Oriental Cream
affords the complexion perfect pro- tection under the most trying con- ditions and renders a clear, soft, pearly-white appearance to the skin. In use for nearly three quarters of a century.
Send lOe. for trial size 17
FERD. T. HOPKINS & SON
37 Great Jones Street New York City
The Real Estate Educator
By F. M. PAYNE
A book for hustling Real Estate "Boosters,' Promoters, Town builders, and everyone who owns, sells, rents or leases real estate of any kind.
Containing inside information not generally known, "Don'ts" in Real Estate "Pointers," Specific Legal Forms, etc.
Apart from the agent, operator or contractor, there is much to be found in its contents that will prove of great value to all who wish to be posted on Valuation, Contracts, Mortgages, Leases, Evictions, etc. The cost might be saved many hundred times over in one transaction. **~"
The new 191f> edition contains the Torren's system of registra- tion. Available U. S. Lands for Homesteads. The A. B. C.'» of Realty.
Workmen's Compensation Act, Income Tax Law, Employer's Li- ability Act, Statute of Frauds, How to Sell Real Estate, How to Become a Notary Public, or Com.
of Deeds, and other Useful Information.
Cloth. 256 Pages. Price S1.00 Postpaid.
OVERLAND MONTHLY
SAN FRANCISCO. CAL.
THt «
ESTATE •
tOUCATOR', ■
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Mount Diablo Cement
AWARDED GOLD MEDAL P. P. I. E.
Cowell Santa Cruz Lime
ALWAYS USED WHERE QUALITY COUNTS
ALL BUILDING MATERIAL Henry Cowell Lime and Cement Company
2 Market Street San Francisco, Cal.
i
r
OAKLAND, CAL. SAN JOSE, CAL. SAN CRUZ, CAL.
BRANCHES
SACRAMENTO, CAL. PORLAND, ORE. TACOMA.WASH.
Scientific Dry Farming
Are you a dry farmer? Are you interested in the develop- ment of a dry farm? Are you thinking of securing a home- stead or of buying land in the semi-arid West ? In any case you should look before you leap. You should learn the principles that are necessary to success in the new agriculture of the west. You should
Learn the Campbell System
Learn the Campbell System of Soil Culture and you will not fail. Subscribe for Campbell's Scientific Farmer, the only au- thority published on the subject of scientific soil tillage, then take a course in the Campbell Correspondence School of Soil Culture, and you need not worry about crop failure. Send four cents for a catalog and a sample copy of the Scientific Farmer.
Address,
Scientific Soil Culture Co.
BILLINGS, MONTANA
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xi
Stop! Beware! Don't Invest
a penny until you have read
"The Reason Why"
"Why is it that promoters and brokers having propositions that offer such tre- mendous opportunities for profit offer them to the general public instead of taking them to banks and big capitalists?"
"Why don't they put their own money into them and get all the profits?"
"The Reason Why" answers these ques- tions. It is now in its fifth edition, a book you ought to read before making any kind of an investment. It is simply written, not in the financial way of writing which only a banker can understand, but just like you
and I would talk things over. I wrote it for every- body, realizing that the thrifty American peo- ple were beginning to take an interest in solid, substantial, reliable invest- ments and that such a book would be like a manual
of investment. I will gladly send you this book, Free, prepaid to your address with- out any obligation on your part. If later I can be of service to you, you'll find me ready to advise and help you.
Send for this Book— It Is HIKE to You
W. M. Sheridan
-|111 Security Bldg. , CHICAGO, ILL
^
«w
it**
^
EAGLE
BRAND , CONDENSED
MILK
Borden's as an institution is T " c sixty years old. The primi- tive little device at the top of this advertisement made possible the first "Eagle Brand" Milk. The giant apparatus shown below is one of over 100 now in operation. They constitute a monument to Gail Borden's work, as well as gratifying evidence of the public confidence won and held.
The original "Eagle Brand" is probably the most widely known food product in the world today. Its reputation as an infant food and as a table delicacy, based on quality, has maintained an unbroken record of public favor that we are justly proud of.
BORDEN'S Condensed Milk
10 Years Copies Wanted of the OVERLAND MONTHLY— We de- sire copies of the Overland Monthly from December 1875 to January 1886,
to complete our files. Liberal premium will be paid. Manager
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For the New Series of Pastor Russell's Contributions in the Over- land Monthly See the Announcement on Page 79 of this Issue.
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3C
]□□□[
]E
][
Four
Routes
East!
1
□
L
SUNSET ROUTE: Along the Mission Trail, and through
the Dixieland of song and story. To New Orleans via Los Angeles, El Paso, Houston, and San Antonio. Southern Pacific Atlantic Steamship Line, sail- ings Wednesdays and Saturdays, New Orleans to New York.
OGDEN ROUTE : Across the Sierras and over the Great
Salt Lake Cut-off. To Chicago via Ogden and Omaha; also to St. Louis via Ogden, Denver and Kansas City.
SHASTA ROUTE : Skirting majestic Mount Shasta and
crossing the Siskiyous. To Portland, Tacoma and Seattle.
EL PASO ROUTE : The "Golden State Route" through the
Southwest. To Chicago and St. Louis via Los Angeles, Tucson, El Paso, and Kansas City.
Oil Burning Locomotives —
No Cinders, No Smudge, No Annoying Smoke
Unexcelled Dining Car Service —
FOR FARES AND TRAIN SERVICE ASK ANY AGENT
Southern Pacific
Write for folder on the Apache Trail of Arizona
'i
□
]□□□[
•ic
J
IE
J I
SCHOOL FOR YOUNG CHILDREN
A unique boarding school for young children only, of the kindergarten age. Gives careful home care and scientific training to little tots under seven years. Delightful location. Resident doctor and trained nurse. Most healthfully situated in the Sierra Nevadas, 3500 feet altitude, surrounded by pine forests. Every modern convenience. Parents having very young children to place in a home boarding school where they will be brought up un- der the most refining and strengthening influences will welcome this opportunity and communicate with
MOTHER M. AUGUSTINE,
MOUNT SAINT AGNES, STIRLING CITY, CALIFORNIA.
'Let us laugh for Health Sake."
—Alan Dale.
KELLY'S GEMS OF IRISH WIT AND HUMOR containing Shanna- han's Old Shabeen, Kelly's Dream, The Pox Hunt and the Tailors Thimble from the "Shau- graun;" the late "Sheriff" Dunn's original stories and many more specimens, not found elsewhere.
This collection will give satis- faction and much pleasure. 160 pages, cloth (stamps taken), 60c. postpaid.
T. X. CAREY & CO., 143 W. 96th Street, N. Y.
For the new series of Pastor Russell's con- tributions in the Overland Monthly, see announcement on page 79 of this issue.
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xiii
J* Face Powder V^
DANGEROUS COUNTERFEITS
Are on the Market
LADIES BEWARE!
Buy LABLACHE FACE POWDER of reliable dealers. Be sure and get the genuine. Women who know frankly say — "I have tried other face powders, but 1 use Lablache.
The Standard for over forty years. Flesh, White, Pink, Cream. 50c a box, of Drug- gists or by mail. Over two million boxes sold annually. Send 10c for sample box.
BEN. LEVY CO., French Perfumer*
Dept. 52, 125 Kingston St., Boston. Mass.
The Vose Player Piano
is so constructed that even a little child can play it. It combines our superior player action with the renowned Vose Pianos which have been manufactured during 63 years by three gene- rations of the Vose family. In purchasing this in- strument you secure quality, tone, and artistic merit at a moderate price, on time payments, if desired. Catalogue and literature sent on request to those interested. Send today.
You should become a satisfied owner of a .*,
PLAYER *
vose
PIANO
VOSE & SONS PIANO CO., 189 B»tI«Ub St., Boiton, M»u.
Leghorn Breeders! \
Send in your subscription to The Leghorn Journal and keep posted on the progress of the Leghorn industry; as it is devoted exclusively to the dif- ferent Leghorn fowls. Subscription price 50c. per year. Special offer- Send us 10c. and the names of five of your neighbors interested in Leg- horns and we will send you The Leghorn Journal for three months.
1
THE LEGHORN JOURNAL j
X APPOMATTOX, VA.
bUMlihcJ Joly Mi UK
PRICE 10 CENTS EVERY SATURDAY
AND
Califarttia A&nrrtuirr M00 PER YEAR
Profusely Illustrated
Timely Editorials. Latest News of Society
Events. Theatrical Items of Interest.
Authority on Automobile, Financial
and Automobile Happenings.
The Favorite Home Lamp
250 C. P.— I Cent a Day
Portable, safe, convenient. No connecting wires or tubes. Oper- ates 60 hours on one gallon of gasoline, i»ves money and eyes. Automatically cleaned, adjustable turned high or low at will. Posit- ively cannot clog. Operates in any position. Guaranteed. Dec- orated china shade free with each lamp. Just the thing for homes, hotels, doctors' and lawyers' offices. Ask your local hardware dealer for a demonstration, if he doesn't carry it he can obtain it from any Wholesale Hardware House or write direct to us.
National Stamping & Electric Works 431 So. Clintin St., Chicago, Illinois
TRUTH ABOUT THE BIBLE "
You should read this book. "Will empty our in- sane asylums, jails and hospitals." J. H. Powell, M. D. For ideas, the world's greatest book." J. Silas Harris, A. M. Price $2.00. Address the author, Sidney C. Tapp, Ph. B., Department O.L. Kansas City, Mo.
FP7FMA Psoriasis, cancer, goitre, tetter, I_i K* £-> I-. It! r\ 0|d sores, catarrah, dandruff, sore eyes, rheumatism, neuralgia, stiff joints, piles; cured or no charge. Write for particulars and free samples. ECZEMA REMEDY CO. Hot Springs, Ark.
5Q0TYPEWRITERSAT
$io
$15
10 Cts. the Copy.
$4.00 the Year
. TypewriterpricesemashedlUnderwoods, I
Remingtons, Royals. L. C. Smiths, Fox, J
I etc.— your choice of any standard factory I
tY *!y\ rebuilt machine ata bargain. Everyone!
I VX-V* ^XV-^X perf«ct and guaranteed for three years I
VtXvTL*. wv^lj including all repairs. My free cir-l
^^ cular tells how to save 40 per cent to|
60 percent on each machine.
Write for it. C. E. GAERTE, President DEARBORN TYPEWRITER EXCHANGE, HEPT. B-9 CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
Gourauds Oriental Beauty Leaves
A dainty little booklet of exquisitely perfumed powdered leaves to carry in the purse. A handy article for all occasions to quickly improve the complexion. Sent for 10 cents in stamps or coin. F. T. Hopkins, 37 Great Jones St., New York.
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FOR SALE! $2,100
EASY TERMS
20 Acres on "Las Uvas" Creek
Santa Clara County, Cal.
"Las Uvas" is the finest mountain stream in Santa Clara County.
Situated 9 miles from Morgan Hill, between New Almaden and Gilroy:
Perfect climate.
Land is a gentle slope, almost level, border- ing on "Las Uvas."
Several beautiful sites on the property for country home.
Numerous trees and magnificent oaks.
Splendid trout fishing.
Good automobile roads to Morgan Hill 9 miles, to Madrone 8 miles, to Gilroy 12 miles, to Almaden 11 miles, and to San Jose 21 miles.
For Further Particulars Address,
Owner, 259 Minna Street San Francisco - - California
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xv
$10.00
VACUUM SWEEPER
to OVERLAND MONTHLY
- SUBSCRIBERS -
$4.95
THE SUPERIOR— Combination Cleaner with Brush Attachment
has three highly efficient bellows, so arranged asto produce a continuous even suction, so powerful, that we have en- tirely eliminated the necessity of sliding or dragging the nozzle and front end of the machine over the carpet.
This makes the machine run fifty per cent easier; saves the nap on the carpet and makes it possible to run off and onto rugs without lifting the machine from the floor. WE ACHIEVE these results by supporting the front end of the machine on two small side wheels just back of the nozzle.
In addition, our new Combination Sweeper is fitted with a large revolving brush that will do its work as well as any carpet sweeper.
This brush is full sweeper size and is very thick and substantial, having 4 rows of genuine bristles with spiral twist setting.
The brush may be instantly adjusted to brush deeply into the nap of the carpet, to skim lightly and swiftly over the surface or it may be raised up entirely out of use, all by the touch of a finger.
Both dust pans are emptied instantly without over- turning the machine by merely depressing one small lever at the rear.
These attachments make the Superior combination sweeper the premier sanitary cleaning device of the age.
THE COMBINATION SWEEPER RETAILS FOR $10 CASH.
Subscribers to the OVERLAND MONTHLY old and new will be sup- plied with the Superior Vacuum Sweeper for $4. 95 when ordered with OVERLAND MONTHLY for One Year, Price $1.20.
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LIVING AGE
IF YOU WANT every aspect of the great European War pre- sented every week, in articles by the ablest English writers.
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IF YOU WANT to find out for yourself the secret of the hold which THE LIVING AGE has kept upon a highly intelligent constituency for more than seventy years.
Subscription — $6 a Year,
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The Living Age Co.
6 BEACON STREET, BOSTON
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Three generations
of the Vose family have made the art of man- ufacturing the Vose Piano their lite-work. For 63 years they have developed their instruments with such honesty of construction and materials, and with such skill, that the Vose Piano of to- day ic th™ ideal Home Piano.
Delivered in your home free of charge. Old instrument! taken as partial payment in exchange. Time Payment* accepted. If interested, send for catalogues today.
■r^MMi
OLD BOOKS ABOUT AMERICA
New catalog listing over 500 rare and interesting BOOKS and ENGRAVINGS, mailed free on request.
NEWMAN F. McGIRR
STATE HOUSE BOOK SHOP
221 S. Fifth Street PHILADELPHIA
Driver Agents Wanted
Five-Pass., 30 H.P.
32 x 3 1-2 Tires
Electric Starting 114-inch Wheelbase
Ride In a Bush Car. Pay for it out' of your commissions on sales, my agents are making money. Shipments are prompt. Buah Cars guaran- teed or money back. Write at once for my 48-page catalog and all particulars.
AddreasJ. H. Bush. Pres. Dept. t-FK
3USH MOTOR COMPANY, Bush Temple, Chicago. 111.
BULBS
25c
50 High Grade Flowering Bulbs, Oxalis, Begonia, Gloxinia, Gladiolus, other kinds, Asparagus Fern. All Postpaid. Send your order early. Old Homestead Nursery. Round Pond, Me.
lips™
•J Pacific C
Freight Forwarding Co. J^6*
household goods to and from all points on the Pacific Coast 443 Marquette Building, Chicago
640 Old South B.dg.. Boston 1501 Wright Bldg., St. Louis
324 Whitehall Bldg , N. Y. 855 Monadnock Bldg., San
435 Oliver Bldg.. Pittsburgh Francisco
518 Central Building, Los Angeles Write nearest office
MAWPF Eczema, ear canker, goitre, cured 1V1/\I^I UL or no charge. Write for particulars describing the trouble. ECZEMA REMEDY CO. Hot Springs, Ark.
Make Moving a Comfort
The Nezv Way— The Easy Way
By auto trucks and employing the well known reliable expert San Francisco firm
Dixon Transfer Storage Company
ECONOMY AND TIME SAVERS
Manager Leo Dixon has had many years of varied experience in this special and intricate business from moving the goods and outfit- tings of a hugh store to the intricate and varied furnishings of a home. The firm has the best up-to-date equipment to meet the most difficult problems, and guarantees satis- faction at moderate rates.
Packing Pianos and Furniture for
Shipment a Specialty
Fire-proof Storage Furnished
TRY THEM!
Headquarters : 86-88 Turk St.
San Francisco, Cal.
"MONTEREY"
Crddle of California's Romance By GRACE MacFARLAND
Accurate information, based on Munici- pal, State and Church records, hitherto unpublished.
Systematic presentation in «pochsof the history of California's first capitol, founded in 1770.
Vivid views of actual life under Spanish, Mexican and American rule.
Profusely illustrated with photographs, one* common, now found only in a few collections.
Being a history of California's capitol, this book gives a concise history of the State itself, hence is of more than local Interest.
On sale at bookstores in all the larger cities of California, or, direct from the Publishers.
PRICE 50 cts., POSTPAID W. T. LEE, Monterey, California
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'J
H ALFTON E ENGRAVINGS
6 Cents Per Square Inch
For Advertising 'Purposes For Illustrating {Booklets For Newspapers For Magazines
14*
The halftone engravings that have appeared in the various issues of the Overland Monthly re- present subjects suitable for almost any purpose. Having been carefully used in printing, they are
;>>
/i ■
As Good As New
Prints of these illustrations can be seen at the office. Over 10,000 cuts to select from.
Overland Monthly
259 MINNA STREET SAN FRANCISCO
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{
Rocky Mountain Views
NATURE COLORS
17 De Luxe 5x6 Pictures in Art Folders
PPPCT ON RECEIPT OF 25 CENTS POQTPAIP)
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(All Different)
Send the Magazine To Your Friends Three Yearly Subscriptions will be Same as One for 3 Years
We Rocky Mountain Magazine
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1314 QUINCY BLDG.
MMmanHMMMMMH
DENVER, COLORADO p— wmm wmm — — an ■■■«■■
£
A'WHEN THINKING OF GOING EAST\
I
THINK
2 TRAINS DAILY THE SCENIC
LIMITED AND THE PACIFIC
OF
THE
Through Standard ard
Tourist Sleeping Ca ?
DAILY TO
CHICAGO ST LOU! 3
KANSAS CITY OMAhA
And All Other Points East
Via
SALT LAKE CITY
and DENVER
1
EXPRESS
"THE FEATHER RIVER ROUTE
THROUGH THE GRAND CANYON OF THE FEATHER RIVER
I
*>
1
DINING CARS Service and Scenery Unsurpassed OBSERVATION ( ARf ' «
For Full Information and Literature Apply to
I WESTERN PACIFIC TICKET OFFICE $J
|^ 665 MARKET ST. and UNION FERRY STATION, SAN FRANCISCO TEL. SUTTER $fei. £ 1326 Broadway and 3rd and Washington Sts ,Oakland,CaI., Tel.Caklat d 132 and Oakland 574,.
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>v
iy,
NABISCO
Sugar Wafers
WHEN friends drop in for a little chat, their visii can be made the more enjoyable by- tempting refreshment. Try a few Uneeda Biscuit with peanut butter or marmalade, followed by those exc site dessert confections, Nabisco Sugar Wafers, ? i a cup of tea or cocoa. Your guest will appr' iate your good taste and thoughtfulness. Nabisco > :>ugar Wafers are sold in ten-cent and twenty-fr ci-cent tins.
ANC kLA — Chocolate-flavored sugar wafers with mofrdelightful, sweetened, creamy fillings. Serve wim any dessert or beverage, or as a confection. t J*
NATIONAL BISCUIT COMPANY
ALICE NIELSEN
America's Favorite
Lj tic Scprano
{Singing exclusively for the Columbia)
FLORENCE MA
Americai
Coloratura So
Ancient Zinke and Nakeres, Forerunners of the Military Band
(Singing exclu: the Columt
COLUMBIA Records are more than reproductions, more than mere echoes of the artist's voice — far more than records, they are revelations of the artist's personality
All the charms, freshness and earnestness oi singer like Alice Nielsen; the gay, swett allure a Florence Macbeth ; the power of Rothier, t strength of Sembach, the magnetism of Gardt Fremstad, Graveure radiate with tne force life from their Columbia Doubfe-.nisc Recor*
To know the great artists of the operatic stage as operagoers know then after hearing them for years, you need only ha their Colum- bia Records: for Columbia Recor are Reality.
New Columbia Records on sale the 20tt of every mori>
Columbia
j. .
w-^ Double-Disc <. \* l-
Re cords
Sunset Route
to the EAST
V
I ?
Most Romantic Railway Journey in Jimerica —
"Sunset Limited"
(No Extra Fare)
From San Francisco (Ferry Station) 4:20 P. M. Daily
Quickest Time to New Orleans
Via
Los Angeles, Tucson, El Paso, San Antonio and Houston
Compartment Drawing-Room Observation Car and Pullman Standard Sleepers to New Orleans
Through Pullman Tourist Sleeper to Washington, D. C.
The "Apache Trail"
Rail and Auto side trip, Maricopa to Bowie
via Phoenix, Roosevelt Dam and Globe through "Oldest America"
THROUGH SLEEPER:
Globe to El Paso Sunday, Tuesday and Friday
Connects at New Orleans with trains to East- ern cities, also with Southern Pacific's splendid steamers to New York, sailing Wednesdays and Saturdays; and to Havana, Cuba, Saturdays.
Unexcelled Dining Car Service. Automatic Block Safety Signals
For Fares and Berths, Ask Agents
Southern Pacific
Write for Folder on the Jlpache Trail of Jlrizona
IBSETHA
in pastor Uttaarirs
rttntgs Ap^al to fnu?
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lPai§toir IRniiss©BB9s s@n®s ©ft semnn^nns jpoafeBiisteal nim -: ©VEIRJLAMP M©WTIKILY9 tennbg BS>11<&9 aire m@w Drossy Sun jpsMMjjMeft *T®irm to0 s&B® fey msM9 pre- . pxsmdls, prk®9 iSfffty esmteo A ifii5i@<sl©[r<s]ft@ Mnstai8 ®un,. BnsiffiKal ®lf feaidk dsseh®§ to ©©inmate® @©BB©cftii@ims9 mmy \ lb© teal @ft ftftn® sauna© p°k©<,
Adkiress ABB C®nBaMnmn5iBai{tn®iffi§
250 Htmta 9lmt g>au jfranrtero, fflal.
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This intensely human picture stands for all that is best in music
It is a picture with a message — a living- message of absolute fidelity.
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Vol. LXVIII
ffiwriani -
No. 2
ifcmtfjlg
AN ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE OF THE WEST
CONTENTS FOR FEBRUARY 1917
FRONTISPIECES— Pictures of Golden Gate Park . 93-100
GOLDEN GATE PARK RALPH SPRINGER 101
Illustrated from photographs.
"THE FALL OF BABYLON." Story . . . CHARLES OLIVER 109
THE GUNS OF GALT. Continued Story . . DENISON CLIPT 117
LIFE OF PASTOR RUSSELL E. D. STEWART 126
DIES IRAE. Verse ROBERT D. WORK 132
THE STORY OF THE MIRACLE. Continued Story OTTO VON GELDERN 133
THE STORM KING. Verse EUGENIA LYON DOW 140
A KINDERGARTEN OF ROMANCE. Story . WILL McCRACKEN 141
NO QUESTIONS ASKED. Story .... WILLIAM DE RYEE 146
FOOTHILL FALL . ELSINCRE R. CROWELL 149
THE SONG. Verse MARY CAROLYN DA VIES 150
MANUEL LISA CARDINAL GOODWIN . 151
PATIENCE, Verse JO. HARTMAN 155
ENEMIES. Story FARNSWORTH WRIGHT 156
JACK LONDON. Verse VERA HEATHMAN COLE 160
THE THRESHOLD OF FATE. Story . EDITH HECHT 161
A CONFIRMED BACHELOR. Story . . JOSEPHINE S. SCHUPP 164
REVERBERATION. Verse R. R. GREENWOOD 169
L'AMOUR. Verse STANTON ELLIOTT 170
Illustrated.
PATHFINDERS OF '49. Story .... MRS. ALFRED IRBY 171
THE SUPREME TRAGEDY. Verse . . ARTHUR POWELL 174
VIA THE STRAITS OF MAGELLAN . . JAMES W. MILNE 175
IN THE REALM OF BOOKLAND 181
»>WK<m«
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"The Fall of Babylon."
By Charles Oliver
IT IS difficult to connect Babylon with this pleasant corner of Bur- gundy where the war has immobil- ized me. But Sylvanus Conifer cries "Babylon! Babylon! All is Babylon!" And Sylvanus Conifer is an honorable man.
The first sound I hear in the day is often the horn of a descending barge, the message of the master to our lock- folk below. It is a warm, mellow, in- sistent note, but though it has in it something of a grave summons to sleepers, I linger on my pillow, awak- ening with agreeable deliberation to the harmonious appeal. Then the Ange- lus swings down from behind the house and the thronging vibrations of the sweet clangor on the silent air lead my drowsy fancy achase of them into the immensity for which they are bound. A pest, a mild one, of your immensities ! I should lie abed all the morning did I not want to see the young sun flood the gossamermeshed, dewy meadows, kindle to a pinky glow the russet fells beyond, and bring out into relief against them a distant ham- let which, with its white walls, brown roofs, Noah's Ark trees, and neat church tower holding out a great clock at arm's length, has the absurd and amiable suggestions about it of the naive landscape that adorns a Swiss timepiece.
"You are quite right to take things easily," says Madame, when I descend. "At your age, Monsieur, one has no more ambitions." That depends on the barometer, and in any case Madame's is a frankly anti-Babylonian sentiment. For Ambition is the magic flute that pipes up luxurious cities, huge arma- ments, railways, telegraphs, steam ploughs and all the other abominations
that Sylvanus Conifer has inscribed on his list of grievances against modern society.
If our canal, for instance, was not a canal — a diabolical invention for com- plicating life — it would please my phi- losopher as much perhaps as it pleases me. In a solitary stretch, shaded green and gold, I came to-day on a tied-up barge, slumbering over its lustrous brown image, in the still water. The barge dog yapped perfunctorily at me from a gaudy kennel that had the air of a greatly enlarged dolls' house or a greatly diminished villa residence; and the master, putting up his head from a mysterious hole in the deck, seemed to have risen, a disheveled river-god, from his weedy kingdom to have a look about him. There is no more agreeable semblance of occupa- tion for a leisurely man than to watch a low flat boat of Flemish build — there are many refugee boats on the canal now — gunwale down under its load of stone or wood, making one of the reaches. Sighted long before anything else are the mules' earcaps of bright red twinkling above the tow path. Be- low them, nine pairs of spindle legs materialize themselves in staggering, jerky progress. Then you glimpse on the water the long black line of the barge trailing through intricately laced shadows and sun-shafts, and this line disintegrates itself with magnificent slowness into a fine medley of colors, tangles of ropes, a shock-headed ur- chin at a pump, another fishing, an old granny in a white bonnet frying the af- ternoon's take amidships, and the mas- ter at the helm, grim, imperturbable. The neighborhood is suddenly redolent of fry, of tarpaulin, of hay, of stable. The nine pairs of legs on the bank
110
OVERLAND MONTHLY.
sort themselves out between four mea- gre mules and a boy ; and two dots that have rolled along beside them develop into an infant and a puppy, who, put ashore to stretch their legs, have dis- covered a new continent and find it very good. The reverse of the process begins, and in a long half-hour the red earcaps, last vestige of it all, die out like sparks from burning tinder on shades so thick that you confound them with the trees that produce them.
I will grant Sylvanus Conifer that there is a touch, Babylonian, of the lat- ter day craze for speed about your barges of the Accelerated Service, the monarchs of the canal which, worked by eight strong horses in relays of four, travel night and day and make their journey hot-keel at the rate of something like two kilometres an hour. I thought to get away from the "strange disease of modern life, with its sick hurry," on this placid waterway of the careless Hours. But I can for- give the Accelerated Service its whis- per, so faint, of Babylon, when it is kind enough to combine poetry with high pace. Such was one of these me- teors that passed me the other day. It was a towering affair in ballast, that took the corners athwart the whole canal with shriek and creak of mon- strous rudder and swish of reeds and burbling of mighty green swirls, and it barred the heaven above the westering sun with its broad bands of red and white and warm brown. At the prow, a youth in green tarpaulins signaled their approach to the next lock with volleying cracks of a long whip, and struck against the sky the bold free at- titudes of a Phaethon lashing his horses of fire. High over the deck the master leaned back on his tiller, a man of such hoary age and such grand contempt of the towpath that I con- ceived of him as having seen the di- viding off of the dry land from his particular primeval waters and having thoroughly disapproved of it.
The shoots of the pollard elms are brilliant purple now; the young buds baze with golden shimmer the crests of the poplars. Catching golden and pur-
ple gleams, the ripples of the canal play monstrously disrespectful tricks with the reflection of the disdainful moon's full silvery disc, elongating or compressing it; then on a sudden ca- price brushing it out altogether and be- ginning their games afresh. Morning, noon and evening our canal is beauti- ful. But my philosopher cannot for- get that it is a canal, a mechanical con- trivance, a Babylonian device.
"All is Babylon!" cries Sylvanus Conifer. And Sylvanus Conifer is an honorable, if mistaken, man.
Whatever he might do with the Ac- celerated Service and all its works, I do not see how he could put on his black books many or indeed any of my amiable Burgundy neighbors, who seem to have had no hand at all in propelling modern civilization on its less course. Te judice — to your judg- ment I will leave it.
jjj sp -i>
There is Grandpere Venoy, a splen- did specimen of the Bourgignon small- holder, tall, hard, sun-scorched, with a ringing voice and a sympathetically ugly crimson face, around which his iron gray beard sprays out untidily. His principal occupation nowadays is the melting of green wax in a crucible, for the sealing of his bottles of bran- died cherries. He is the most genial of souls, but he wears at this season a most ferocious air, for naughty are the ways of green wax in a crucible.
As Grandpere Venoy is cheerfully ignorant of all history but that of his ov/n time, in so far as it has touched him personally, he has contrived a sort of pigeon-hole, labeled "ances- tors," into which all the world of ante- Second Republic goes; as Methuselah, Julius Caesar, Louis Philippe. "Des ancetres, quoi!" And indeed I do not know if this division of mankind into A — ancestors, B — the rest, is not as satisfactory as any other.
5j» S(S *!• *l"
Giselle and Madeleine, Monsieur Venoy's orphan grandchildren, are charming little girls, always clean as new pennies, with most pretty man- ners. They are very shy, and I can
"THE FALL OF BABYLON."
Ill
only get them to kiss me by fining them a sou every time they omit the ceremony. As they have no sous, I pay the fines myself — to them — and we are excellent friends.
Of course they always give me the 'bonjour," and they have the idea that they put a touch of splendor into the greeting by addressing me as "lady and gentleman." I argued the case not long ago with Giselle when I met her in the street.
" 'jour M'sier, 'Dame," says she.
"Bonjour, Giselle. Ah, I want to ask you something. When you see Monsieur le Cure, what do you say?"
" 'jour, M'sieur le Cure."
"Parfaitement. 'Monsieur le Cure. You do not say 'Bonjour, Monsieur et Madame. And why not?"
"Because — because — M'sieur le Cure is not married. The gendarmes do not let him."
"Parfaitement — that is — of course — well, if there is a lady with him?"
"Then I say, ' 'jour, M'sieur, 'Dame.' "
"Exactly. Well, you see that I am alone — like Monsieur le Cure. There is no lady with me. So 'Bonjour, Mon- sieur,' is enough. Do you understand, my little Giselle?"
She pursed up her lips and nodded importantly.
"Bien, tres bien. Well, I suppose we must all be running along. Bonjour, Giselle."
" 'jour, M'sieur, 'Dame."
What was there for it but to fine her a sou and Madeleine another — by de- fault?
Of course, Giselle and Madeleine compute my age at a round hundred, and T have no doubt that when they discussed this incomprehensible busi- ness, it came to a final :
"Des ancetres, quoi!"
.,. 3|S 3fZ 3p
Monsieur Courteau is a friendly old gentleman, deaf and persistent, with a long white beard. He talks in a kind of soft, resonant bleat, ma-a-a foi! He combines in his more leisure moments the employments of cobbler and watch maker, and I have my reasons for sup-
posing that he uses the same tools in both characters. He is given to petty poaching, is a high authority on local salad oils, and has vague, picturesque ideas on immanent justice. There is a dearth of walnut oil in the country, because most of the trees were killed — la justice immanente, ma-a-a foi! — by the great frost of 1881. But we are not too badly off.
"Turnip, colza, hazel," bleats Mon- sieur Courteau, "they all produce an excellent oil that goes to the making of what they call a good salad."
I frequently walk over the fells to an edge of the forest where I know I shall find Monsieur Courteau's little donkey- cart laden with sticks and the infre- quent walnut, not to mention the trifle ot. game that probably underlies the whole. And Monsieur Courteau un- folds his ideas on immanent justice — ciiiefly in regard to the scarcity of what they call walnut oil and what I,
too, call walnut oil, ma-a-a foi! * * • * *
Monsieur Poulet is the founder and president of our Democratic Club. The club is housed in a single room, ap- proached by a carefully zigzagged path through a shrubbery, to which it lends a suggestion of an easy maze, and fur- nished with a huge bust of Liberty in a cravat of the Belgian colors. It boasts a one-shelf library.
"We read or write or talk," says Monsieur le President. "And some- times," he adds gloomily, "we play."
It is rumored that Monsieur Poulet, a red-hot Radical, started the Demo- cratic Club in opposition to the Cha- teau, which has all the air of not minding. And, indeed, there is noth- ing terrible about Monsieur Poulet. He is a tiny, apple-faced, timid old presi- dent, with a constant expression of the most dreadful alarm, and when he de- claims against bloated aristocracies and so forth, it is as if a mouse were to put his paw down and declare squeak- ily that he would have no more of this, sapristi ! From the fact that Monsieur Poulet always has the key of the Dem- ocratic Club in his pocket, I am led to believe that he constitutes in himself
112
OVERLAND MONTHLY.
the entire membership, and that "alone
he cuts and binds the grain" of the
democratic harvest and plays alone.
But he is most kind and courteous, has
given me the freedom of the club, with
the full liberty to use the library "for
purposes of reference," and has most
correct views on Englishmen.
"I always recognize an Englishman
when I see him," says Monsieur le
President, looking horribly scared. "I
know him by his grand reserve, his
fine presence, his majesty."
I often call on Monsieur Poulet. * 41 * *
If Mademoiselle Gontrain were not afraid of what the village would say should it come to be known that she received visits from a single gentle- man— majestical — I might go to see her more frequently, for she puts a pleasant Early Victorian touch into my existence. Long ago — so long ago that the commune might surely back- bite away now and be hanged to it! — Mademoiselle Gontrain spent two years in London at St. James's Palace with her uncle, who was messman to the Regiment of Guards quartered there. So she speaks what she considers to be English and was once possibly something more like it. She has an idea that the exact translation of "Mon Dieu!" is "By God!" and the exple- tive bursts upon our quiet conversa- tion like the clash of cymbals into a subdued orchestral movement.
It was "when she used to be seven- teen"— 'tis a habit I lost many years ago, and she even more — that Made- moiselle Gontrain was at St. James's. She remembers Queen Victoria, "a nice lady," and the Dowager Duchess of Cambridge, "another nice one," on whom the Queen would come to call. She always had a greeting from the Prince of Wales, as Edward the Sev- enth was then, when he came to dine at the Mess: and he, too, was nice. From the eagerness with which Made- moiselle Gontrain inquires after cer- tain vivid places of entertainment in the proximity of Leicester Square, I expect that the messman showed his niece some rather murky sides of Lon-
don life — when she used to be seven- teen— by God !
* * * *
Of an evening the neighbors drop in for coffee. Grandmere Venoy, some- what bent, somewhat weary of life, somewhat sloppy, arranges Giselle and Madeleine on low stools at her side, and the little orphan girls snuggle in to her and sleep with their golden heads propped up against her ancient flannel jacket. Monsieur Courteau is there, ma-a-a foi and Monsieur Poulet, Radical dormouse. Mademoiselle Gontrain nurses a rheumatic hand, by God! And Grandpere Venoy dis- courses of the Dominicans — des ance- tres, quoi ! — who had a monastery here and now walk their vaults, carrying their heads under their arms, for rea- sons best known to themselves.
I cannot see the Babylon in all this. But "Babylon! Babylon!" cries Syl- vanus Conifer. And with his gentle, wistful smile he adds pleasantly —
"I am waiting, Monsieur, I am hop- ing even — for the Fall of Babylon."
ip Sj» 5(J .,.
It is over the pseudonym of "Syl- vanus Conifer" that my philosopher contributes to the Latin paper edited by Arcadius Avellanus. Only his very short stature and his rather too broad and high-mounting shoulders! reveal the fact, which you speedily forget, that Sylvanus Conifer is slightly de- formed. He has lively, kind black eyes and a wide, very mobile mouth. A thin shock of iron grey hair tosses about his head in a carefully ordered disorder, and his fringe of iron-grey beard curies up at the edges as if the fire of his brain had scorched it. His hands fascinate you; large, white, finely shaped and very flexible. They are his strong point: he knows it, and he brings them into constant play with harmless coquetry. He sits very low, and at table you see little of him but his beautiful hands and his interesting head deeply sunk between his shoul- ders.
That perhaps is the reason why Syl- vanus Conifer generally stands, for if he is to be conceived of as a head
"THE FALL OF BABYLON." 113
and two hands, a man is but a ghost Sylvanus Conifer is a cheerful pessi- before his time. He takes up his po- mist, and at amiable warfare with sition by preference behind a chair, things in general and in particular, one elbow resting on the back, one When he attends vespers, he takes — foot slightly advanced. He is the and keeps — his cues in such an em- most erudite of men, and has a won- phatic and deliberate fashion that he derfully good and neat memory, from overlaps Monsieur l'Archipretre at which he gets down his facts as he each end of his sentences, and the of- gets down his books from his large and fice seems to consist wholly of re- scrupulously arranged library. When- sponses. This is by way of protest ever he opens his mouth, Sylvanus against the fact that, while all the peo- Conifer delivers you, in his warm and pie should say "Amen," they are not eager voice, a clear, logical, conclu- allowed the time or breath to do so. sive dissertation; he speaks in lee- He writes to the Bishop — in Latin — on tures, and his elbow-prop of the mo- this matter. Monseigneur refers Syl- ment loses its humdrum character and vanus Conifer to the diocesan Profes- demands capital honors as a Profes- sor of Dogma. The diocesan Profes- sorial Chair of Widely Extensive sor of Dogma hints — in elegant French Knowledge. that Sylvanus Conifer might, as it Though France and her history have were, mind his own business. Where- no secrets for him, and he juggles with upon Sylvanus Conifer begins again, the French dates and talks of Clovis For it shall never be that, for lack of and Phillipp the Bald with almost terri- good wholesome nagging, the people fying familiarity, it is in the Latin shall not have time to say "Amen." classics and neo-classics that Sylvanus He makes the reproach against mod- Conifer is most at home. He has mas- em life that by its intensity it wears tered the liturgy of the Roman Church down vigorous races to weaklings, de- with such thoroughness that he claims generates, like himself. He comes to be able to find his way about in the of a fine old Burgundy stock which Antiennes, though I must confess that, was robust enough in its origins. His when I accompany him to Vespers, he great-grandfather served in the Na- seems to lose himself as extravagantly poleonic armies, and for sixteen years in his missal as I in mine. I seldom did not set foot in France. When he leave him without a Latin volume in came home after the First Abdication, each pocket; the histories of Tacitus, he set to cultivating the family vine- for instance, to keep me in the paths yards, but the Hundred Days disar- of classicism, and the "Conversations ranged all his plans. At the approach of Erasmus" to seduce me from those of the Allied Armies he hid himself paths and instruct me how to pass among his vine-stocks, from which, the neo-classical time of day with however, he sallied out to cudgel a trio gravity or in your rollicking vein. For 'of Cossacks who were making free he holds that Latin is to be the uni- with his cellars. After this there was versal language, the cord that will nothing for it but flight to Paris. His bind the regenerated world together, way with children did not much differ and he begs me to join with him in do- from his way with Cossacks, and his ing our trifle of binding. I am afraid descendants — an Engraver at the Mint the work is not very solid, not very especially, Commander of the Legion even. When we talk in the universal of Honor — rise up and call him language I have the impression of sub- blessed.
mitting selections from the Public Sylvanus Conifer shows you with School Latin Primer, scraps of Eras- pride the service sheet of another an- nuls, and purloinings from Calepin, the cestor of his, a Napoleonic conscript, lexicographer, to the benevolent but who, in an action of the Peninsular perplexed consideration of Marcus Tul- Campaign, shouting "En avant!" and lius Cicero. heading a bayonet charge, recaptured
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OVERLAND MONTHLY.
an abandoned gun. "If there is a cross for our regiment," said his comrades, "it will be for thee." The gallant boy was laid up of his wounds at Barce- lona for two months, and when he came out of hospital, he found that the cross had gone to an older man, for where all were heroes you had to fall back on seniority. The Conscript's regiment was one of those that went over to Napoleon on the return from Elba. It v/as a touch-and-go business : they knew, writes the Conscript, that if the venture failed they would all be put to the edge of the sword. The Em- peror had the regiment formed into square, and harangued the officers in the center. "I will defend you," cries the ghostly voice, "or I will die with you." Then the narrative leaps to Brazil, France having become too hot to hold the Conscript, and back again two years later to Burgundy, where we find the Conscript clamoring vainly for his cross and founding an enormous family to back his clamors. His de- scendant of to-day has twelve arrows in his quiver. Little wonder that Syl- vanus Conifer calls every man on the lellside his cousin!
It was a brother of the Conscript's, the Notary of the village who, when the Cossacks came up our valley, locked all the women and children in- to the church tower, put the keys in his pocket, and defied the Muscovite invader to his beard. The Cossacks, impressed by the bold demeanor of Maitre Tebellion, made him a present of a bag of coffee and rode away. The Notary's little daughter first tasted cof- fee that evening, and the first time was not the last, for she died prematurely of coffee, thirty-six thousand cups of it. in her ninety-eighth year. She was Sylvanus Conifer's grandmother, a fierce, merry, decided little lady, who swore like her uncle, the Conscript, when she did not get her coffee, though the Faculty declared it would kill her, as indeed it did. She was very inde- pendent of character, and, when well on to fourscore and ten, would start off on solitary rambles, from which she was often brought home, gay and
impenitent, with her face all blistered by the nettles of the ditch from which she had been rescued. At the end of her life her children rigged up a bar- row for her, the only wheeled thing that could negotiate the steep paths of the country. But she never quite took to the barrow, regarding it as a soft, luxurious, Capuan vehicle.
If my philosopher's ancestors have not bequeathed him their physical en- ergy, they have passed on to him un- impaired intellectual powers and a most pleasant house, that the artistic taste of Sylvanus Conifer has most charmingly adorned. Into the stone lintel of the front door Sylvanus Coni- fer has caused to be carved — by a cousin — the legend "Thebas novi, rus veni," and you feel that he has done well to desert Thebes — read "Paris" — for this sweet rural retreat. His own study is a great dim, low room, whose subdued tones and quiet, sparse fur- nishing are an admirable setting for the fine little marble replica of Mi- chael Angelo's Slave on the mantel- piece. Here among his books the gen- tle pessimist meditates systematically on the Fall of Babylon. He has placed his sanctum at my disposal for the same purpose. But the plague of it is that I cannot meditate to order, and Babylon never seems so far away from me as when I am seated on the eld oak faldstool that is Sylvanus Con- ifer's oracular tripod.
Sylvana Conifera, delicate and pla- cid, inhabits the upper story, which, by the suppression of partition walls, has been converted into one long gal- lery, many-windowed, floored with lus- trous tiles of dull brown. The position that the slave occupies in the philoso- pher's study is accorded here to an adorable Virgin and Child in richly- colored Flemished glazed ware: her lips puckered for an eternal kiss, the Holy Mother has bent three hundred years over the upturned face, rosy and smiling, of her Babe. Sylvana Conifera sits at her organ, a matronly St. Ce- cilia, haloed by the snow of her hair, or retouches her water-colors. The care of her philosopher is her chief
"THE FALL OF BABYLON."
115
thought and that of Rhoda, her hand- maid. Rhoda is an energetic and cap- able Burgundian girl, who has her own formula for calling her world to table. It runs: "Madame est servie. . Voila!" and may be interpreted, "Madame is my mistress and Monsieur is my cou- sin. Voila!"
There seem to be no absolutely con- clusive arguments in support of Sylva- nus Conifer's pessimism, but one can be very happily pessimistic without conclusive arguments. The war has strongly developed this side of the lit- tle philosopher's character. He lies long abed — Sylvana Conifera and Rnoda encourage his late rising for obscure domestic reasons of their own — and arranges the lines on which Babylon is to fall: the modern civili- zation whose mad rush has rudely pushed him aside. The war will last out comfortably for seven years. The nations are all to be plunged in the blackest ruin, for they will be incap- able of paying the interest on their enormous national debts. There will be an incalculable dearth of labor, es- pecially of the skilled labor which is not trained in a day. The mentality of those who live to return home from the battlefields will be so greatly changed that a new race of tired sleepy men will people Europe. Machinery will have been deteriorated beyond re- demption by the wear and tear of war, or annihilated by German pillage. We shall be reduced perforce to the Sim- ple Life in its simplest expression. Ruined cities will not be rebuilt: their inhabitants will make shift with the roughest wooden shelters. Railways and canals will fall into disuse : mails, if there are any, will be conveyed by horse : steam navigation will become a thing of the past, and the height of luxury in traveling will be a fifteen months' journey to Constantinople, by sampan as far as Marseilles and on by felucca. The philosopher hardly leaves a watch for Monsieur Couteau to cobble, and the little Giselles and Madeleines of the future are appar- ently to revert more or less to a state of nature, and say " 'jour, M'sieurs,
'Dames" to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. As for the Church, in view of that "Amen" business, Syl- vanus Conifer prophesies the most un- smooth thing for her. It is a murky picture — by God ! — but Sylvanus Coni- fer in his more cheerful moods light- ens it up a little by arranging the Fall of Babylon as a Thousand Years' Sleep, of which the world, feverishly active since the unfortunate discovery of America, has great need. And when the world has slumbered its thousand years, and in conscious intervals thor- oughly mastered the conversational riceties of the Latin language, it will awaken refreshed and go on more rea- sonably.
These are some of the ideas which Sylvanus Conifer hatches on his pil- lows and expounds later in the day, standing behind a chair, making play with his beautiful white hands, his face aglow. He works each proposition up into a neat lecture, which has the one defect of being monstrously discur- sive. But Sylvana Conifera and I lis- ten meekly: it is such a pleasure, his only one, to the little gentleman to be pessimistic — and discursive. Thus that suggestion of a sampan-felucca voyage to Constantinople is introduced by a disquisition on biremes and tri- remes, with Sylvanus Conifer's schol- arly opinions as to how the ranks of rowers were or were not arranged. The necessary abandonment of the ravaged cities to their ruin is illustrated by the slow growth of Paris, statistics taken on that subject under Julius Caesar, St. Louis, the Grand Monarque, the Third Empire, and the Second Republic, and the observations made by the Engra- ver of the Mint, Commander of the Le- gion of Honor. Sylvanus Conifer rains knowledge. He is such an eager, piti- ful, "sympathique" little Jupiter that I cannot find it in my heart to put up the umbrella of contradiction. And he does what he likes with Babylon.
Sylvana Conifera and I are not alone to suffer from our philosopher's dis- cursiveness. Sent out one evening to see why he did not come to dinner, I found him in the street expounding to
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a white-bloused workman, who ap- peared to be stunned by his eloquence, the origins and aims of the Society of Jesus.
"He is my cousin," explained Sylva- nus Conifer as I led him in. "He has written a poem accusing the cures of having brought about the War. Which, of course, is absurd."
It was a majestic, sombre western sky, with jags and horizontal splits of fiery orange. Against such a back- ground St. John should have seen "a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him."
On a ridge over the valley, Sylvanus Conifer was silhouetted, his cape whipped out in black flutters by a wild, rain-laden evening wind. He stood immobile, looking out over the great Burgundy plain at his feet. I knew that his constant vision was be- fore his eyes, that he saw Babylon falling, falling.
That menacing rout of black mists
went sweeping eastward. On my mind there flashed the tremendous words of a greater prophet than Sylvanus Coni- fer:
"Thou shalt take up this parable against the King of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the exactress of gold ceased! . . .
"The whole earth is at rest, and is quiet: they break forth into sing- ing .. .
"They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, say- ing, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake king- doms? . . .
"All the kings of the nations, even all of them, lie in glory, every one -in his own house. . . .
"But thou ..."
And the storm swept over eastward, where Babylon lies.
But the western sky was calm and clear now, suffused with a pink sunset glow. Sylvanus Conifer had disap- peared. And the sickle of the young moon was hung up silver in the peace- ful heavens.
JF ,§r,.,V Ctl.t. '.
~" -"■" ' 'J. ■
GUNS OF GALT
An Epic of the Family
By DENISON CLIFT
(SYNOPSIS — Jan Rantzau, a handsome young giant among the ship- builders of Gait, joins pretty little Jagiello Nur at the dance in the Pavilion. There the military police seek Felix Skarga, a revolutionist. Jagiello fears Captain Pasek, the captain of the Fusiliers, who will betray her presence at the dance to old Ujedski, the Jewess, with whom Jagiello lives in terror. Jan rescues Jagiello. When Pasek betrays Jagiello to Ujedski, and seeks to remain at the hut with her, Jagiello wounds him in an encounter. Ujed- ski turns her out, and she marries Jan.)
Chapter VII boiling through his veins. Life was
far more wonderful than he had ever
THE TRAIL of their honeymoon dreamed. And this was living, this
led down through dewy mead- loving Jagiello with all his great heart
ows and along solitary cattle and soul. As she went down through
lanes as Jan and Jagiello climb- the grass on that splendid midsum-
ed from the heights into the awaken- mer morning, with her eyes dancing
ing town. and her full young throat open to the
"Oh, Jan," exclaimed Jagiello, "if winds that whispered from the sea,
every morning of our lives could be as Jan thought her the loveliest creature
beautiful as this morning!" he had ever beheld. How he would
"Every morning with you will be work for her! How he would bend
as beautiful," answered Jan. his great body under the lash of toil
To their ears came the whistling of that he might win a fitting tribute to
the river packets. From a thousand lay upon the altar of his love ! She of
chimneys smoke began to ascend in the soft white skin, with the voice of
yellow, brown and white spirals. To wind-bells, she of the wild freedom of
the north the shipyards lay, awaiting the hills, v/ith the breezes lifting the
the coming of the toilers to infuse them gay ribbons at her throat — with what
with mighty, creative life. What a passionate zeal he would strive to
tremendous, pulsating thing this build- bring her infinite happiness!
ing of the world's greatest ships! And And she loved Jan no less than he
Jan was part of the life, with its in- cared for her.
cessant toil, its few joys and many sor- When they reached the Street of
rows. the Larches and turned in at Jan's
Henceforth Jan's life was to be gate, there swept over him a blinding
transformed. No longer was he to live aesire wholly to possess,
alone. The woman that he loved, and He opened his door and Jagiello
that had been given to him by the went in.
strange adventures of a night, was to Then he closed the door tightly be-
share his humble home, and make of it hind her.
a beautiful thing, sacred to their love. She was now his.
The hope of the morning sent the blood She saw that the house was of wood,
Copyright, 1917, by Denison Gift. All Rights Reserved
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
whitewashed, with a thatched roof. She suddenly found herself in Jan's arms. She returned his kiss, a little timidly, her cheeks burning, her heart fluttering. She broke from his grasp and ran into the next room. She took up her bundle of things that she had packed the night before, and began spreading them on the table.
"Now, Jan," she observed, "we'll have to divide the clothes recess. I've got to have some place to hang my domino and dresses."
"That's so," answered Jan, but he was not thinking of the dresses.
Jagiello crossed to the recess and pulled aside the old serge curtain.
"This half is mine," she said, laugh- ing, indicating the left half. "And don't you dare use any of my hooks, big man!"
"Indeed I won't," he replied, amused.
She took from her bundle a velvet bodice with gold braid over the shoul- ders, and hung it in the closet beside the few things that she owned. Her sins had paid her meanly after all, and these few clothes, beautiful in Jan's eyes, were already shabby and old. As she worked she began singing the love song that she had sung to Jan in the night :
"Thy heart with my heart Is locked fast together, Lost is the key That locked them forever!"
Presently she went into the kitchen and began making the fire.
She gathered a handful of fagots from a box in the corner, thrust them into the flat porcelain stove, and soon the fire was crackling merrily. She poured lentils from a bag into a pot, filled the pot with water from a great earthern jar, and placed the pot on the stove. Jan watched her, standing awkwardly about, filled with wonder- ment and strange emotions.
She now spread the table with a honey-yellow cloth from the table drawer, and placing upon the table a crock of honey and a loaf of rye bread,
sat down in the chair Jan drew up for her.
He laughed. It relieved his pent- up emotions.
"Ah, you fine little housewife!" he cried. "I'm going to have a good wife ! I can see that!"
While the lentils simmered in the pot, Jagiello sat opposite Jan, her hands clasped, staring in awe of him.
"Dear Jan," she said, "I'm going to try to be a good wife to you. I want to make you happy. You're all I've got in the world to live for now ... all I've got. You'll be good to me, won't you?" Her voice broke, and great tears sprang into her troubled eyes.
He leaned forward and took her face between his hands. "Jagiello, sweetheart!" he breathed. He rose to his feet and stood towering above her, worshiping her lovely, slim throat, her silken lashes, her eyes, blue as sum- mer dusk. And then, suddenly, a great passion shook him. He thrust aside the table and it crashed to the floor — honey and dishes and all. He seized her in his great arms and rained kisses upon her — kisses of adoration upon her lips, her eyes, her delicate, smooth throat . . .
Without warning there was a loud knock on the door.
Chapter VIII
Jan started violently. Who could it be ? Never before had any one called upon him in the early morning.
"Jan, who is it?" whispered Jagiello.
"I don't know."
On tiptoe he went to the window and glanced through the coarse curtains. Turning to Jagiello he called softly :
"It is Captain Pasek!"
Jagiello's face went swiftly white. "Captain Pasek? What — has he — come for?"
The knock of the Captain of the Fu- siliers was repeated with savage in- sistence.
"We'd better let him in and see," said Jan. "The fool will knock for- ever if we don't!"
Indeed, Pasek raoned louder and
GUNS OF GALT
119
hammered the door with his sabre until Jan suddenly threw the bolt and greeted him lace to lace in the door- way.
The Captain stood smiling blandly, silhouetted against the splendor of the morning sky. About his shoulder was a white bandage, supporting his lett arm.
"Good morning, Captain," greeted Jan deierentially.
Pasek shifted his sabre. "Are you alone?" he asked.
"No," answered Jan, "my wife is in- side."
"Your wife!"
Pasek uttered the words as though stunned. He had not thought it pos- sible that Jagiello would carry out her threat or. the night.
"We were having breakfast. Your knock interrupted us."
Pasek entered. He laid his sabre and cap on the sitting-room table.
Jagiello had quickly restored the table to its legs, respread the cloth, and set upon it bread and honey, steaming black coffee, and three dishes of len- tils. When Pasek entered she looked up with pale face and curious eyes.
"My dear Madame Rantzau!" ex- claimed Pasek, bowing with extrava- gant courtesy.
"You are the first person in the world to call me by that name," replied Ja- giello, pleased but secretly frightened. She indicated a chair for Pasek, and scon the bridal breakfast was under way. Pasek laughed with forced non- chalance as Jagiello described her new regime. She told of the night on the priest's balcony, of the flooding up of dawn, of her marriage to Jan at sun- rise, and the honeymoon trail through the misty morning fields.
And then quite unexpectedly, Pa- sek's whole manner changed. He scowled and sprang to his feet, a sav- age glint in his eye. "Then you are married!" he ejaculated, as the reali- zation smote him.
"Married? Indeed we're married!" and Jagiello threw her arms around Jan's neck, stirring Pasek to further fury.
"Then here's to the years to come!" exclaimed Pasek, 'and to the happi- ness to issue from a knife thrust!"
So saying he chuckled ominously, and striding toward the door, picked up his cap and sabre and hurried out.
"Captain!" cried Jan after him. "Captain! Come back! Let us be friends!"
Bewildered, overcome with amaze- ment, Jan stared at Jagiello, a strange unexplainable fear suddenly born in his heart. "What — what does he mean?" he asked, puzzled.
"That he will be avenged on us be- cause— because I struck him with that knife!"
"But what can he do?"
"Terrible things! Oh, Jan, I have brought all this unhappiness upon you!"
"Let's forget that he ever came, Ja- giello; let's make out that we never saw him."
"Yes, Jan!"
Then swiftly resentment boiled up in Jan's heart. "What does he mean by coming unbid to our house and jumping up from our table and threat- ening us?" He clenched his hard fists until the knuckles showed white.
"Don't, Jan! Be quiet! He meant nothing. Everything will be all right. We love each other. There is nothing he can do about that, Jan, dear."
"No, of course not!" Jan smiled at his own credulity. The girl's lips were parted, her face flushed. Jan saw only the wild roses in her cheeks. He gathered her again in his arms.
Suddenly the great six o'clock whis- tle in the shipyard screamed out its morning greeting. Instantly men poured into the streets from all the lit- tle houses, choking the tortuous thor- oughfares: men strange and gaunt; powerful, grizzled giants — whipped, beaten— men who dwelt forever under the keels of gigantic ships — hundreds and thousands of them, some laughing, some morose, some with all the hope of life wiped from their grim coun- tenances— the toilers of Gait, the army of the shipyard, the multitude of the world's Forgotten.
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In a moment Jan was one of them, flinging open his door, kissing Jagiello her first "good-by," joining the surg- ing torrent of the Toilers that poured down into the black, roaring pits.
Jagiello watched him until she could distinguish him no longer in the mighty stream; then slowly she went inside and re-seated herself at the table of their bridal breakfast. The dishes were untouched; the coffee was cold; the lentils black and coagulated. Then it burst upon her that Jan had gone to work without his breakfast. First Pa- sek had interrupted! Then the whis- tle had blown! . . . She covered her face with her hands and sobbed un- controllably, torn with a great happi- ness and a sinister foreboding.
Chapter IX
The Naval College at Nagi-Aaros had announced that a superdread- naught, greater than any warship of the world's dominions, was to be built in the shipyards, and was to be fitted with the most powerful guns of Gait. She was to be an All-Big-Gun ship. Her name was to be the Huascar. Ru- mors of her strength and power spread among the toilers. When Jan heard the news it made him uneasy. It pre- saged war.
That day the keel of the Huascar was laid.
Eight hundred feet long she was to be, with an incredible height to the fire-control in her tripod mast. Her engines were to be 90,000 h. p., cap- able of 30 knots. Seven long years it would require to build her, and the services of seven thousand ship build- ers. And what would happen at the end of the seven years ?
Jan was no philosopher, no vision- ary. He only knew that he must con- tinue to work hard and steadily for lit- tle Jagiello.
In a month the Huascar was well under way. The rattle of trip-ham- mers, the thunder of sledges, the blind- ing glare of light from white-hot forges, the .rolling of huge steel plates from Westphalia — and the thousands upon thousands of ribs of steel took
their orderly places in the great hull.
The Huascar was not to be a ship. She was to be a monster — a floating citadel. The eye could not behold her all at once. The immensity and the terror of her were beyond human com- prehension. She was designed to be the most terrific engine of modern warfare, at once indestructible and ir- resistible.
The mind that had designed the Hu- ascar had been mad with over-reach- ing. One man in her -fire-control could, by the touch of a single lever, control all her giant mass. If she suc- ceeded, all war would automatically cease. She would be able to ride among the war dogs of the sea and pour a rain of shell and fire into them, sweeping them from the vision of mankind.
As the Huascar advanced the sum- mer came and went, the lovely sum- mer of Carlmania. The mowers worked in the fields above the village. The corn grew golden. Myriads of blue and yellow wild flowers starred the hills. One evening after the day's toil, Jan and Jagiello climbed up to the heights and watched the day van- ish into purple dusk.
There v/as a road that led from Jan's house to the gray stone Jena Bridge, opposite the west wing of the gun fac- tory. Across this bridge the lovers went, under the interlacing trees. The road wound up toward the priest's house. As they climbed the sunset paled; the twilight became studded with golden stars. The shipyard stretched half a mile below, with mammoth hulls and cranes in the yawning cradles.
"There is the Huascar!" exclaimed Jan.
She lay with the twilight blue be- tween her ribs, already domineering, already a thing inspiring terror.
She was imposing, with beautiful lines, a graceful hull, and sweeping, far-flowing undulations.
She was supported roundabout by immense steel girders, but in her strength she seemed to laugh and mock at the girders.
GUNS OF GALT
121
She was black and red, marked with •a million hieroglyphics, and all her marvelous fretwork was knit together by countless bolts that had been tossed white-hot from toiler to toiler and locked by an electric hammer in her ribs.
She was already majestic — already she bore herself with a sense of su- preme power.
She lay beside the Baku, a collier of the Baltic fleet, and the Baku was dwarfed until she appeared no more than a fishing smack.
In the twilight bright red lights be- gan to flash around her great steel body. She was to be the Alpha and Omega of the last terrible war.
Jagiello looked at the Huascar for the first time, and her eyes grew big with wonder. "Oh, isn't she beauti- ful !" she gasped.
"Think, Jagiello ! Four months ago the Huascar was only an idea in the brain of a man. Now she is born, and you say she is beautiful. Day by day she grows, but it will be many years before she is ready for the seas." "She is like a child," said Jagiello. They were sitting on the hillside. As the sea-wind freshened it wafted to them the ringing laughter of little children in the streets below. Jagiello could faintly distinguish the Ballan- dyna house, and before it Marya's three little sisters, Elsa, Lela and Ula, playing in the starlight. The laugh- ter at last died away. From down the river came the musical chimes of St. Catherine's, sounding seven. Jagiello drew closer to Jan. The strange new radiance of her face thrilled him. Im- pulsively he exclaimed: "Jagiello!"
He faced her, a question burning deep in his eyes. An intuitive flash enlightened him. Her voice, in a whisper, told him of a new thing un- der the sun, news that astonished him and sent his heart racing.
"The ship will grow like your child, Jan dear," said Jagiello. "Jagiello— love!"
His voice was husky with awe. "Really, Jagiello?"
"Yes, Jan, it is true!"
He kissed her, and the little pale gold child he had wedded became in that instant a woman, blessed in his eyes. Great joy clamored in his heart.
Hard upon the cathedral chimes all the bells of Gait began ringing the hour — some sweet and low, some clamorous and rebellious, some wild and chiming, as though in token of the news.
"I hope it is a boy!" said Jan, elated.
"Oh, I hope so!" said Jagiello.
"Why do you want it to be a boy?"
"Because you do."
"And you will love him?"
"As I love you."
He crushed her in his arms. "When am I to know my son?" he asked.
"In the spring of the new year," Jagiello told him.
"Oh, I do hope it is a boy!" mused Jan, himself a boy at heart.
Night closed down swiftly. Jan lifted Jagiello in his arms, and car- ried her down from the heights. Fire- flies illumined their path, and in the fairy glow the big man bore the com- ing mother to his house under the larches.
When the door was closed upon them: "Oh, Jagiello!" he cried, "my boy will be like the Huascar, a man among men as she is a ship among ships!"
"Are you happy, Jan?" she asked, just to hear him say that he was.
"Happy?" laughed Jan. "Happy? Oh, am I happy!"
"You don't love me!" protested Ja- giello.
"Don't love you? Oh, no, I don't love you!"
They laughed like children together.
Chapter X.
Inspiration came to Jan.
"You wait here," he said to Jagiello. "I'm going down the street."
He put on his hat and went out to the shop of a silk mercer, and for three rubles bought her a red silk bod- ice. On the way back he got some round almond cakes and some Negotin
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wine. What a feast they would have together !
Jagiello had combed out her long golden hair and adorned her tiny ears with the brass circlets, and clasped her anklets upon her slender feet. When Jan burst in upon her she stood radi- ant in the candle light, a vivid, beau- tiful creature.
He placed the cakes and wine on the table. The silk bodice he con- cealed behind his back.
"Close your eyes a moment," he called playfully.
She obeyed, happy and curious, and heard the rustle of paper as Jan opened the bundle. He smoothed out the silken garment and held it near the light. "Now look!" he called.
Jagiello looked.
The red bodice met her delighted gaze. "Oh, Jan!" she cried, seizing it and holding it close, while her dancing eyes feasted upon it.
"That's to celebrate the coming of the little man," explained Jan, jubi- lantly. His voice quavered with feel- ing, and tears glistened in his eyes.
"I've wanted a red bodice for so long!" sighed Jagiello. "How did you know?"
Jan opened the bottle of wine and placed the almond cakes in a dish on the table.
Jagiello quickly put on the new gar- ment and sat across the table from Jan.
"Where did you get such a pretty bodice?" she asked. "Marya Ballan- dyna's got one, but not like this . . . Look at these gold buttons. Oh, Jan, and such good cakes! But you don't love me!"
She smiled, anticipating his answer with every fibre of her being, closing her eyes, abandoning her lips to his.
"Jagiello, all I love in the world is
you— just you — and " His voice
trailed into ecstatic contemplation. "Oh, I hope it is a boy!" he breathed.
Chapter XI.
It was a boy.
He was born in the time of the year when the mantle of new life is being
draped across the hills, when the sun is warm upon the breast of the sea. He came with the singing of the larks and the flaming tapestry of the sunrise sky, when all the fields and valleys were singing with life newborn.
His coming was an epic.
For months before that momentous day Jan had dreamed dreams of him, and had lived in fancy through his boy's life from obscure birth to a glo- rious pinnacle of honor.
One day under the keel of the Hu- ascar he had glanced up at the mam- moth ribs of steel, towering into the infinite blue, and been thrilled with the mighty strength of the ship. In that moment he had conceived that his son was to be as splendid as the great vessel. What the Baku was beside the Huascar, so the sons of other men would be beside his son. He wanted his boy to grow up — not as he and his father had, to be a builder — but to have the brains to devise a ship such as the Huascar. In the Con- struction House were walls of blue prints with infinitesimal calculations. These blue prints represented the epitome of knowledge to Jan denied; and to create them was the ambition he held for his child to come.
As the Huascar developed, the shadows in the great pit under her keel grew blacker. From six o'clock in the morning until six o'clock in the even- ing the roar and ring of the hammers never ceased. It was as if the universe were being rocked in the grip of Ti- tans. Floors trembled and quivered, great cranes lifted their thousand-ton burdens through the smoke-laden air, heavy chains clanked and rang against steel pillars, and giant steam hammers rose and fell with the clattering din of tremendous strokes. And through it all the Huascar reared herself in majesty upon the bones and blood of seven thousand toilers. She was an inexor- able monarch exacting tribute from the army that was putting the breath of life into her steel. And into the re- lentless maw of her were swept the lives of that toiling army. At times a tiny figure upon a platform would jerk
y
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123
forward and be dashed through the smoke and steam to be lost, a limp, huddled mass, somewhere under her keel. But little did she care, this Le- viathan of the deep, and the crash of lapping-hammers went on unremit- tingly at her awful command.
On that eventful April afternoon Jan was swinging high on a huge crane when he saw far below in the shipyard a boy beckon and shout up to him. The boy was Barro, Marya Ballandyna's brother. Jan knew why Barro had come for him. Jagiello had agreed to send him when the hour should arrive.
When the crane descended again, Jan reported off duty at the Construc- tion House and started home.
Barro talked incessantly, asking questions about the Huascar, but Jan heard not. His mind was in a turmoil. Only once did he stop to look back, and then he saw the great battleship in the flaming sunset, with the army clinging to her sides — imperial in her strength and grandeur.
"That's how I want him to be — like that!" Jan told himself.
Madame Ballandyna met him in his doorway. She was a midwife, and Jagiello had arranged for her to deliver her child. She was a large, coarse wo- man, of brutal texture, somewhat swarthy, with brass earrings and a bland, man-like smile. "Jagiello is do- ing nicely," she said by way of greet- ing.
Jan found little Jagiello sitting up in bed, laughing. The ripple of her voice shocked him. Certainly, he told himself, this was no time for laughter. He sat down on the edge of the white bed, and took the small white hand of the woman he loved in his great grimy one.
"Jagiello!" was all he said.
"What did you come home for?" she laughed, impishly. She was abnor- mally happy; her voice was vibrant and gay. Jan marveled at her. "Will you hold my hand when the time comes, Jan?"
"Yes, my love." But he did not know what he was promising.
He went into the front room and
found Madame Ballandyna laying out rows of clean white rags on his pallet. "What makes Jagiello so happy?" he asked.
"Be thankful she is happy," returned the midwife. "Soon she will not be
so gay. This troubled Jan.
He asked noth-
ing more.
For upward of an hour he sat beside his wife, and they talked of the won- derful things they would do for the little stranger.
"We'll have to get him a new house," said Jan.
"Oh, yes, a nice new house!"
"And a red wagon, and a box of sol- diers."
"Oh, yes, a wagon and soldiers!"
"And what shall we call him?"
Jagiello said: "I should love to calT him 'Jan' after you."
"No," argued Jan, "that won't dot "My father was named 'Jan,' and my grandfather, and we all have worked1 like slaves in the works. If we call our boy 'Jan,' he, too, may have to work in the shipyard. Let us call him 'Stefan'."
"Little 'Stefan', then," agreed Ja- giello, smiling wanly. She fell back on her pillow and closed her eyes in pain. Jan ran for Madame Ballan- dyna. The midwife came and sent Jan away.
The glow of the sunset faded. Jan sat upon his steps and smoked his pipe.
Upon her snowy bed Jagiello moaned softly. When her moans grew more intense, and her frail body quivered and writhed in paroxysms of pain, she called Madame Ballandyna to her and whispered what had for months lain hidden in her heart.
"Jan does not know what you and Marya and Ujedski know." Her voice was faint and quavering, lest its sound should reach her husband's ears.
"What!" cried Madame Ballandyna^ "you married him and never told him!"
o.
•Then never ,e^hn| ^nonip
the midwife.
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^■TFORTi^
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not know will never hurt him."
"But I must tell him — I must — I must!" Jagiello moaned. Her mental anguish merged into the physical, and she lay white and shaken.
"Then you're a fool!"
"No! No! No! I love him — I must tell him — and he must forgive me — if I am to live!"
"You're not going to do anything of the kind!" expostulated the midwife, feeling Jagiello's pulse.
"Yes, yes, I am — I am! When his son is born — and he holds him in his arms — then I will whisper to him — and he will forgive me — O Mother of God, then he will forgive me!"
"Don't, child!" begged the other wo- man. She put out the candle and sat beside the bed in the darkness, holding Jagiello's hand.
And, moaning and tossing and cry- ing, Jagiello spent the next few hours in torment. "He will forgive me then!" she cried over and over. "Oh, Mother of God, he will forgive me then!"
Once Jan put his head into the room but Madame Ballandyna quickly mo- tioned him away.
He returned to his seat on the step, and in anguish listened to the cries of the woman he loved. His pipe went out, and, unheeding, he let it drop to the ground. As her cries became more agonizing he rose from the step and paced to and fro, to and fro, every moan and every sob a barb twisted in his heart. The bells from the cathedral down the river rang out merrily — eight, nine, ten, eleven — but he did not hear them, for his wife's anguished cries possessed his brain . . . Mad- ame Ballandyna would not let him go in to her. Once when he heard her voice call his name, tremulous with suffering, he went to the door and up- lifted his great hard hands, seized with a fierce impulse to batter down the door and rush in and take her in his arms and tell her how he loved her . . . How he loved her! What good would that do her now ? . . . Wasn't it because he loved her, and she loved him, that she was now going through a
living hell that he might be happy, that he might have a son to bear his name ! ... As he turned from the door the picture of her, dressed that memorable night in the silk bodice he had bought her, vivid and beautiful in the candle glow, rushed into his mind. He re- called her childish rapture, and how he had sat down at the table with her, and how they had talked of their boy . . . And always she had been so un- selfish, so ready to please him, whe- ther it was about the boy's playthings or about his name . . . But now — now he must stand helpless and listen to her moan, and know that her frail body was being racked and broken. God ! was there nothing he could do — nothing? He was so big and power- ful. Why would the just God not let him bear his portion of her hour of travail ? Why must the woman suffer all? If only he could offer his own body to be torn asunder, that she whom he loved might escape the penalty of her love! Each piercing cry tore his heart and sent the blood from his face. . . . After a long while he saw men and women passing up the street — laughing, laughing! while his wife lay in torment! Now came lovers return- ing from a dance. They, too, were laughing. The horrible monstrosity of the thing enraged him, until he wanted to dash into the street and strike them down with his great fists. . . Then suddenly his wife's cries softened. In that brief moment Jan's heart softened too. Tears flooded his eyes, and thank- fulness welled in his heart. Now he wanted to call out to the lovers, to warn them of the terrible thing ahead, the thing that now held him in its grip. By and by the cathedral clock chimed again : midnight! Five long hours had passed. Would the end never come?
After an eternity Madame Ballan- dyna opened the door and called to him: "She wants you!"
Jan went quickly. In the doorway he whispered to the midwife: "Has the child come?"
"No."
"How much longer will this last?"
"God knows! It's just begun."
GUNS OF GALT
125
Just begun ! Good God, and he had hoped it was all over. Just begun ! He shuddered.
Madame Ballandyna lit the candle. Jagiello's face was deathly white. Her hair streamed about her naked shoul- ders. Dark circles shadowed her tired eyes. She reached out her hand and gripped Jan's fingers. He held her slim little hand tightly. She smiled in response. "Love me?" she asked.
Love her ! He gazed at her in ador- ation. Even now she was playful, with piquant abandon. But suddenly the smile faded from her face, her fingers tightened convulsively on his, and she pulled with incredible strength. Mad- ame Ballandyna, nodding to herself, placed a piece of string in a dish of al- cohol on the bureau, laid the bundle of white rags she had sorted over the foot of the bed, and blew out the candle.
Chapter XII.
It was now almost two o'clock. From the pavilion came far-away snatches of dance music borne upon the wind like the faint, "unreal music of a dream. It was a strange accompaniment for the moaning from the bed. To Jan every- thing seemed a dream. And as the moments dragged, the dream became more terrible. His ears were filled with a roar like the mad galloping of wild horses. What a world of unreal- ity this night was : the moon, the scent of the first roses in the garden, the phantom music, the lovers' laughter, the wind flowing through the trees, the screams of Jagiello — and Madame Bal- landyna sv/earing and trying to light the candle!
Jan sprang to his feet.
The great moment had come.
"Where are the matches?" The midwife's voice rose in alarm.
"Here!" cried Jan, but when he ran his hand over the bureau top the box was missing! He knocked over bot-
tles and things in his frenzied hunt. Inky dark, and the great moment had come! Where were the matches? Great beads of perspiration rolled down his forehead. At last his hands closed upon the box. He quickly struck one and lit the candle . . .
What he saw staggered him.
The birth of his boy was at once the most beautiful and the most ter- rible thing he had ever beheld. It was heaven and hell rolled into one — hell
and heaven — heaven and hell . . . * * * *
"It's a boy!" cried Madame Ballan- dyna.
She handed him to Jan, and Jan saw that he was in the image of himself. His own son ! His first clear little cry rang through the room as the splendor of the rising sun gleamed through the lattice.
Jagiello looked up at Jan and smiled a wan, tired little smile. "Jan, come closer to me," she whispered.
Jan, holding his son in his arms, bent near to the mother.
"Jan," she whispered again, her voice sweet and far-away, "Jan, could you forgive me now?"
The big man heard in wonder.
"There is nothing to forgive, brave little heart!" he said.
"Yes, Jan! Listen! Once, before I knew you — long ago — Oh, Jan, come nearer — you love me — forgive me — Pasek "
"Pasek!"
She rose to a sitting posture, and threw her arms around Jan's neck. Her eves were afire with the message of her soul. But in that moment when she would have told him, her physical strength failed her. Closing her eyes she sank back upon the pillow, her face buried in the golden cascade of her hair.
"Pasek!" Jan gazed bewildered.
"She's off her head," put in Mad- ame Ballandyna.
Jan kissed her rapturously.
(To be continued.)
Life of Pastor Russell
By E. D. Stewart
PASTOR Charles Taze Russell was born February 16, 1852, and died Oct. 31, 1916, aged 64 years 8 months and 15 days. Thus in years, months and days, we measure the duration of his life ; but measuring the duration of a life is not measuring the life.
"We live in deeds not years; In thoughts, not breaths."
We can count the number of his years, but many a man has lived longer to whom mankind owes no debt of gratitude. We can count the number of his days, but the value of a day de- pends upon what is put into it. One day may be worth a thousand other days, and how much he accomplished in those 64 years we can only begin to know when we learn the intensity with which he lived them.
In testimony meetings, thousands all over our land and in every land under the sun, bear witness to their gratitude to God that he has raised up a man who has been the instrument in his land of snatching them from the very brink of doubt and infidelity, placing their feet on the solid rock of Christ's "ransom for all." Some of these men simply could not believe the Bible as interpreted by their religious teachers. They would not say they believed when they did not. They did not wish to be infidels, and they bewailed their lack, of faith and hope. You need not tell me that normally constituted men are infidels from choice. You need not tell me that normally constituted men deliberately choose to believe and are glad to believe that they die as the brutes, with no hope of a future life. Many of these men are infidels not so
much from their own fault as from the fault of their religious teachers who gave them an interpretation of the Bible contrary to reason and impossi- ble for them to believe. Many a man iii this attitude has gone to hear Pastor Russell. They have gone to the ser- vice infidels and came back rejoicing Christians. Their religious teachers kept saying: "Don't go to hear that man Russell; he preaches dangerous doctrine." But, by the grace of God, they went and received the spiritual food they had been starving for, the spiritual food their religious teachers did not know how to give. It is no wonder that men would sometimes stand in a crowded aisle and listen to his inspiring words for two hours at a time without moving from their places — no wonder, when those words were bringing hope instead of despair, faith in the place of doubt, peace in the place of agitation and unrest, joy in the place of sadness.
When men with heart full of grati- tude would tell him of the blessings they had received, he would simply say something like this: "Brother, I am glad you received blessing from God's word; his truth is very precious." He simply ignored his part in the matter. In proof that this was his attitude, hear his own words, as found on page 10 of his celebrated book, "The Divine Plan of the Ages."
"Though in this work we shall en- deavor, and we trust with success, to set before the interested and unbiased reader the plan of God as it relates to and explains the past, the present and the future of his dealings, in a way more harmonious, beautiful and rea- sonable than is generally understood, yet that this is the result of extraordi-
LIFE OF PASTOR RUSSELL
127
nary wisdom or ability on the part of the writer, is positively disclaimed. It is the light from the Sun of Righteous- ness in this dawning of the Millennial Day that reveals these things as pres- eni truth, etc."
He believed that the time was due lor these truths to be made known, and if he had not written them, God would have found some one else to do so.
One of the great objects of his life was to show that the Bible, when cor- rectly translated and rightly under- stood is harmonious throughout, and gives the most exalted and uplifting conception of our Creator and our du- ties to him that is possible for a human being to attain. To show this com- plete harmony of the Bible, of all its parts, was no easy task. It meant labor. At that time there was great indifference on the part of the people. Most of them did not seem to care whether the various texts of the Bible were in harmony with one another or not. Each seemed more interested in seeking such texts as prove or seemed to prove his particular creed, and ig- nored such texts as oppose it. Even ninisters, when texts were brought to their attention that contradicted their creed, would make such remarks as: "Oh, don't trouble yourself about such matters as that. There is enough in the fifth chapter of Matthew to save anybody." They were merely seeking such knowledge as they thought would save them and their friends, and seemed utterly indifferent as to what truth honors God most. In 1st Sam. 2.30 the Lord says, "Them that honor me. I will honor." This promise is not to those who carry on some great work of charity or make some great attempt to convert the world, for these things are often done in such a way as to dis- honor God. Many are engaged in these things; few make it the chief ob- ject of their lives to do those things and to preach thos/e doctrines that bring most honor to God's name. Most men seem utterly indifferent on this matter.
At a time when such indifference was widely prevalent, Pastor Russell
began his work of showing the har- mony of the Bible with itself and with the character of its Divine Author. He saw that there is no way to bring per- manent blessing to the human race ex- cept through faith in God and faith in the Bible. He, therefore, sought to show how worthy the Bible is of all our faith and love. That was the great motive of his life. We know that this was his motive, not because he has told us so, but because the motive rings through every article that he wrote and every sermon that he preached. A mo- tive like that could not live in a nar- row life. It could not find room in a little heart.
Therefore it is natural for us, as thoughtful men and women, to inquire, "What were the events of his life and the various circumstances leading up to such a motive? What must his childhood, his boyhood and his early manhood have been?"
Charles T. Russell was the second son of Joseph L. and Ann Eliza Rus- sell, and was born in Pittsburgh, Pa. His father was a well-to-do merchant, and the son, when not engaged in study, spent much of his time helping his father in the store. By so doing, he rendered himself liable to the awful charge that certain ministers in various parts of the country have brought against him, that in his early life he was "a seller of shirts." In this work, however, he developed the qualities of industry, perseverance and earnestness of purpose, qualities that have been such prominent characteristics of his mature years. As the father was a very successful business man, it was only natural for the son also to begin business as a merchant. In this work the young man manifested such busi- ness acumen that, in a few years, he was the owner of five clothing stores. In all this work he was so thoroughly honest and his goods so thoroughly re- liable that his success was marvelous, s<"> marvelous that some who then knew him believe that if he had continued in the mercantile business he might have rivaled in the accumulation of wealth some of the richest money kings
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of his day. But his great desire was not to be rich, but to be useful. We need not tell you this, you may know it for yourself when you consider the following facts:
At one time in his life, while he was yet a young man, the valuation of his real and personal property is said to have reached over $200,000. Of this $40,000 were spent in the publication and circulation of his first book, "Food for Thinking Christians." At various times he contributed large amounts to the Society of which he was president. In fact at the time of his death he had but $200 left of his own private for- tune. Notwithstanding this fact, there have been men so ignorant of the facts in the case, or had so little regard for truth and veracity as to say: "Russell has just started this religious move- ment as a money-making scheme." The utter foolishness of such a state- ment could not be fully manifest to persons unacquainted with the manner in which the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society is operated. The very idea of a company of men getting rich preaching the gospel without money and without price, while their friends at the various appointments advertised the meetings "Seats free; no collec- tion." The truth of the matter is that those ministers who have done this talking about "money making scheme" concerning Pastor Russell have simply been "measuring his corn in their own half-bushel." A man whose own life is actuated by low motives cannot ap- preciate a higher motive in another man.
In all of Pastor Russell's work, and in all the work of the Society includ- ing missionary work, translation of the books into all the important modern languages, exhibition of the Photo Drama of Creation, etc., not one penny was ever solicited and no collection was ever taken. That, of course, does not mean that money has not been lib- erally contributed, but every contribu- tion is and must be absolutely volun- tary and unsolicited. Two years ago last summer in the northern part of Pennsylvania, a little girl eight years
old came to me after the services and said: "Here is five cents to help other little boys and girls to see the Photo Drama." The five cents were for- warded to the Watch Tower office, along with larger contributions, and in the course of a few days the proper officer of the Society sent her a receipt with just the same care that a $50 con- tribution in a neighboring town was receipted for.
Pastor Russell was a man of great faith, and he always had perfect con- fidence that money would be forthcom- ing for every work that the Lord wanted done. On one occasion, after he had spoken to a large audience, he was shaking hands with the people as they passed out, when a man handed him an envelope. He put it into his pocket and went on shaking hands. After a few minutes some of the brethren were consulting with him con- cerning some work that all agreed would be good to have done; "but where was the money to come from?" Brother Russell said: "If it is a work the Lord wants done, he will see that the money is provided." He opened the envelope. It contained a check for one thousand dollars, and the work went on.
Men have sometimes come to him and said: "Brother Russell, I have been greatly blessed by your explana- tion of the Scriptures. I feel that this is a great work. How can I get some money into it?" This may sound strange to men who all their lives have been dunned for money "to pay the preacher," but "Truth is stranger than fiction." "The Lord loveth a cheerful giver. The cattle on a thousand hills are his," and he does not need money that must be begged for or raffled for at box socials or church fairs.
His "Divine Plan of the Ages" has a circulation several times that of any other book ever published in the Eng- lish language except the Bible. He is the author of five other principal books and of numerous booklets and tracts. He is also the author of the Photo Drama of Creation," which has been seen and heard by over nine millions
LIFE OF PASTOR RUSSELL
129
of people. His sermons of recent years have appeared regularly every week in over a thousand newspapers, and are read by millions of people.
While Pastor Russell had his iriends and admirers he also had his enemies and persecutors. "All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer per- secution." So if any one is not suf- fering persecution he is not living godly in Christ Jesus. When you read that a certain man did not have an enemy in the world, you have found a man that never steadfastly and ear- nestly opposed the wrong. On the other hand, every man that has done anything earnestly to free the race from wrong and error and superstition has had his opposers and persecutors. Christ and all his apostles save one suffered martyrdom for the truth they preached, and from that day to this, every man who stood for unpopular truth and against popular error has had his persecutors. So Pastor Rus- sell has likewise had his persecutors who tried to minimize his work, burned his books and attempted to destroy his good name. Yes, they sometimes burned his books, and they did so for the very same reason that they used to burn the Bibles; they were afraid of the truth there was in them. But the more they burned the books, the more the truth spread. I had the plea- sure a few months ago of speaking in a town where, not long before, some of the religionists had got together and agreed to advise the people to burn Pastor Russell's books. In a few weeks colporteurs came into the town and sold far more books than had been burned. The bigots who had burned the books had merely aroused the curi- osity of the people. In the Dark Ages they sometimes sought to terrify the people by burning the Bibles in the streets, and thus compel them to sub- mit to the prescribed forms of religion, the "Orthodox" forms. There is too much of the spirit of liberty and toler- ance in free America for such an in- dignity to be perpetrated to-day with- out arousing a sense of justice in the minds of those who hate tyranny.
It is interesting to note how the books have found their way through the hands of those who did not ap- preciate them into the hands of those who did. It often happens that one man buys and does not appreciate them, then loans them to another man who enjoys them with all his heart. At one of the conventions, a lady tells us that a friend sent her "The Divine Plan of the Ages" and she burned it. Another friend sent her a second book of the same kind, and she burned it. A third friend sent her a third book, and she stopped and thought. It is sometimes a good thing to stop and think. "Finally," says she, "I read this book and it burned me." By this, I suppose, she means that it burned away all her prejudice and left her ready for the heart-glow of joy that comes to those who see what beautiful truth God has in store for those who are ready to enjoy it.
The parents of Charles T. Russell were of the "orthodox" faith, and up to the age of fifteen he believed all and only such doctrines as his sec- tarian ministers took the trouble to teach him. To fully understand doc- trines at that time was very difficult. The clergy as a rule discouraged ques- tions. So he simply believed the doc- trines of the church he attended, es- pecially the doctrine of the eternal tor- ment of all except the saints. His fav- orite teacher was Spurgeon, because, as he said, "he peppered it hot," his claim being that if one believed a thing he should tell it with all his might. So at the age of fifteen he used to go about the city of Pittsburg on Saturday evenings with a piece of chalk writing on the fence boards and telling the people not to fail to attend church on Sunday, so that they might escape that terrible hell in which he so firmly believed. At about this time it seems that Providence had decreed that he should attempt to reclaim an in- fidel friend to Christianity. By skill- ful questions that neither layman or minister could answer and hold to the accepted creed, the infidel completely routed young Russell, and he became
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a skeptic. He saw, for instance, that with the doctrine of eternal torment in ic he could not believe the Bible; though he still held to a belief in God and the hope of a future life.
As he desired to learn the truth in regard to the hereafter, the next few years were devoted to the investiga- tion of the claims of the leading Ori- ental religions, all of which he found unworthy of credence. At the age of twenty he was possessed of much knowledge and voluminous data in re- gard to "religion" as believed and practiced in all parts of the world, but his mind was unsatisfied and unsettled.
At length he decided to search the Scriptures for their own answer on hell-fire and brimstone. Here was the turning point in his life. Picture to yourself a young man in the early twenties with large business responsi- bilities upon him, and with little time for research, and yet longing to know the truth in regard to the great here- after. He believed that the Creator of all things must be a loving God, and in harmony with this he read in the Bible, "God is love." He also read, "The Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works." That too was in harmony with what he believed the character of the Creator must be. But how could he harmonize this with what his creed taught? How could God's tender mercies be over all his works when some of his works, some of his crea- tures, were to be roasted eternally in an abyss of fire and terrors? How could there be any "tender mercies" in a course like that? How could our loving Creator be a God like that? Then the question came, Does the Bi- ble really teach the eternal torture of the unsaved?
As he searched the Scriptures for the answer, the answer came. Not one text, merely, but texts by the hun- dreds showing the foolishness and un- reasonableness of the doctrine of eter- nal torment. We do not know the or- der in which these texts came to his mind, but we know that they came. He read, "The Lord preserveth all them
that love him" (Yes, he preserveth them, to all eternity, "but all the wicked will be destroyed." It does not say "All the wicked will he roast eter- nally." Again he reads, "He that converteth the sinner from the error of his ways shall save a soul from death," not from eternal torment. Again he reads "The soul that sinneth it shall die," not live in torment eter- nally. In fact, he saw that all the comparisons and contrasts in the Bible are never between life in happiness and life in misery, but always between life and death, eternal life or eternal death, all the wicked utterly destroyed in what the Scriptures call "the second death," so completely destroyed that "they shall be as though they had not been," and even "the remembrance of the wicked shall rot," utterly pass from the memory of all forever. Then this young man saw God finally tri- umphant over all evil, when "at his name every knee shall bow," when "at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, in heaven on the earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father." So he saw the whole giad universe uniting in one grand hymn of praise to the Creator, no room in that happy universe for men or de- mons who choose to remain in rebel- lion against the Creator, but all ready to join in a hymn of praise. Then this young man saw a loving God looking down upon a sin-cursed earth with an eye of pity and love, and in order to make it possible for us to have eternal life, he must give what was dearest to him in the whole universe. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever be- lieveth in Him should not die eternally but live eternally." When, as a young man, Charles T. Russell saw all this and far more, his great heart was thrilled to its very depths. He was ready to do anything for the God he had found to be so wise, so loving, so wonderful. It was then that he gave his heart to the Lord in full consecra- tion, ready to do or say or be what- ever the Lord might show him. Little
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did he care for wealth, or fame, or worldly pleasure. He had found a better God than he before had known, and he must tell it, and he did tell it cut with a shout, hallelujah! Praise God's holy name, that he has found a man strong enough, true enough, brave enough to vindicate His character from the unscriptural and unreasonable doctrine of eternal torment. To the very ends of the earth he has told the Bible truth that "the wages of sin is death," and not eternal torment. Yes, and his words have been heard, heard by many who will not admit that they have heard, believed by many who will not admit that they believe. A few years ago a minister who was then preaching in this country was asked by cne of his parishioners if he believed the doctrine of eternal torment. He admitted that he did not. "Then why do you preach it?" asked the parish- ioner. "Oh, there has to be some kind of a whip to bring them in," was the reply. A minister who used to preach in Waynesburg made the same admis- sion to one of his parishioners. "Then why don't you tell your congregation sc?" said the parishioner. "If I did that, I could not hold this pastorate," was the reply. A minister of Wash- ington, Pa., made the same admission. The young man said to the minister: "Then, why don't you tell your congre- gation? He replied: "Young man, my bread isn't buttered on that side." Thatjis the very class of men that are circulating false reports about Pastor Russell and other men who are op- posing their false doctrines.
"Yes, but in regard to Pastor Rus- sell's character, the people say "
Yes, "the people say" and "the people said" are the cudgels with which Satan has destroyed the reputation of many an innocent man. A few years ago, W. W. Giles, a leading financier of Brown Summit, N. C, made the fol- lowing offer and published it broad- cast wherever the English language is spoken :
"I have deposited $1,000 in the American Exchange National Bank of Greensboro, N. C., and $500 in the
First National Bank of Miami, Flor- ida, to be paid to the first person who proves through any court of justice in the United States that Pastor Russell is guilty of immorality such as is the gossip of those ministers who preach 'for pay.' " No one ever responded.
The editor of the Evening Journal of Wilmington, Del., about two years ago, published a statement that his columns were open to the publication of anything that might be published against Pastor Russell's character, pro- vided the whole truth was stated with all the related circumstances and ac- companied by the writer's name. Why did none of Pastor Russell's defamers respond to this fair offer?
The people say! The people said! Satan's weapon now; Satan's weapon always. The people said that Jesus was a blasphemer. His friends on one occasion "went out to lay hold on him, for they said, He is beside himself." The people said that the apostles were unfit to live, and put them to death. The people said that the noble John Huss was unfit to live, and when they burned him at the stake, they confined a ball of brass in his mouth, in order, as the historian states, "that the peo- ple might not understand his just de- fense against their unjust condemna- tion." The people said that the brave Savonarola was a heretic and they hanged him and afterwards burned his body in reproach.
The people said that the noble Alex- andre Campbell was a "heretic." "He is not orthodox." "He is little better than an infidel." The people said that the brave and true John Wesley was a "falsifier," "a fomenter of strife," "a breeder of contention." They talked about the jealousy of his wife against Sarah Ryan, the jealousy against him of the husband of Sophia Christiana Williamson and how his wife finally deserted him. Does what the people say, weaken our confidence in the pur- ity of John Wesley's life? By no means. The only difficulty was that he was so pure-minded himself that he forgot to guard himself well against impure minds who were watching to
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find a charge against him. John Wes- ley, Alexander Campbell, Charles T. Russell, three of the bravest, purest men of modern times and the three most severely persecuted and slan- dered. Do we believe those slanders? Not if we are charitable, thoughtful and wise. Their names will go down in history together as the three great- est and truest reformers of the last two hundred years. We have only space to conclude with a quotation from Judge Rutherford :
From a personal and painstaking examination of every charge that has been made against Pastor Russell, I am thoroughly convinced and confi- dently state that he is the most un-
justly persecuted man on earth. Not- withstanding this, his good work con- tinues, and thousands testify to the blessings received therefrom. For many years he has stood forth to bat- tle for the right. He is prematurely aged from his arduous and unselfish labors in behalf of mankind. He is loved most by those who know him best, and while he has some relentless enemies, his staunch and substantial friends are numbered by the thou- sands.
When the memory of his traducers has perished from the earth, the good name and good deeds of Pastor Russell will live immortal in the hearts of the people.
DIES IR/E
Joel 3:9-14
"Beat each Pruning Hook to Spear." Raise on high your martial song. As the Day of God draws near, "Let the weak say I am strong." As the wine grapes disappear, When within the wine press trod, So the nations melt with fear In thy wrath, Jehovah God!
"Beat your ploughshares into swords, "Let the weak say I am strong." Summon Kaisers, Czars and Lords, All the champions of Wrong. Like to vessels made of clay Smitten by an iron rod; So the kingdoms fall away In thy wrath, Jehovah God!
Robert D. Work.
The Story of the Airacle
Told in California
By Otto von Geldern
(All rights reserved.) (Continued from last month)
(SYNOPSIS — A number of prominent characters in the old pioneer town of Sonoma, Northern California, drop into the hotel's cheerful gathering room, during the evening hours, and swap tales, experiences and all that goes to make entertaining conversation. The subject of miracles starts a discussion, joined in by the old Spanish padre, lovingly christened Father Sunday. The judge, or Jux, as he was nicknamed by his cronies, begins a story based on a recent dream, in which a supposed miracle was wrought. He dreamed that he had died, and that his soul wandered in space, visiting celestial palaces, hearing rhythmic harmonies and scenes of soul-stirring splendor, grandeur and beauty. He visited the Palace of God, where all spoke in whispers, but none there had seen Him. He failed to find his name in the record of the dead. Later he was conducted to the Realm of Satan.)
BUT, you must keep in mind, my friends, that I am giving you im- pressions only, and that it is difficult for me to be very defin- ite in drawing any conclusions from this extraordinary experience of mine.
"And now I was walking, actually walking along as naturally as any v/anderer on earth, accompanied by these angels who spoke little, but who were always ready to answer an in- quisitive question. Before fully real- izing that we were on a delightful tramp, we reached, without apparent difficulty, the destination for which we were aiming, and I was surprised to find the suburbs of the home of Satan rather agreeable than otherwise.
"A somewhat severe looking man- sion nestled in an extensive park of stately trees, of melancholy poplars and weeping willows, fringing an
Acheron that did not look at all woe- ful, and amidst the most shapely and graceful shrubbery. This aristocratic domain gave one a feeling of solid comfort, rather than one of gayety and hilarity. It was certainly a dignified abode, this satanic residence, and there was nothing foreboding or in- timidating about it.
"The objects around me were more than ever three-dimensional, if I ex- press my conception correctly; in fact, they were as natural as they could by any possibility be, so that I became more and more at ease and reconciled to my surroundings. If there were fiery furnaces and Dantenian places of horror here, then they were so artfully concealed that no one could by any possibility suspect their existence.
"While my soul was not entirely re- lieved from the fear of future torture
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and unhappiness, I had lost, at least, all apprehension of immediate dan- ger.
"We walked through the park and gardens, where smart looking fellows, who greeted us courteously — imps, the angels called them, as they exchanged pleasantries with them— were industri- ously at work, and before many mo- ments we entered the portals of the stately mansion and were received by a swarthy looking usher, who took us at once to what he called the library.
"This library, unlike so many others that I have had occasion to visit, con- tained books. It was noted particu- larly for its artistic arrangement of beautiful cases holding a bewildering number of them. What struck me at once as remarkable was an array of all the noted philosophers from the earliest Sages of the Ancients, down to Descartes, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Locke, Berke- ley, Hume, Mill and Herbert Spen- cer. Similar literature was scattered about on tables and chairs, and the whole environment indicated the re- treat of the serious student, of the man who finds pleasure in communing with the wisdom of the past and the know- ledge of the present.
"Portraits of noted philosophers adorned the walls; steel engravings they were ; while two oil paintings, one representing an ignivomous and catas- trophal outburst of Vesuvius and the other the great conflagration of an- cient Rome, added a certain vivid col- oring to the austere surroundings.
"The room was elegantly furnished with all its severity. The most beau- tiful rug I ever saw, in which the plainer colors were harmoniously blended into a subdued but cheerful hue, covered almost the entire floor; to step upon it was a real pleasure, it was so soft and yielding, and so warm- ing to the feet.
"A sideboard ran along the wall, richly hewn in solid oak, which car- ried the usual odds and ends required by a convivial gentleman in his occu- pations of leisure. Glasses, mugs, jars, card-cases, dice boxes, beautifully
carved and lined with embossed lea- ther, chess boards with the most ex- quisite little ivory men; all these de- tails my eyes were running over hast- ily, when — Satan himself entered.
"Now, friends, you cannot imagine a more congenial fellow than the one who greeted me open-heartedly, with all the grace of a cavallero.
"He had been informed in the in- terim of the object of our mission, and dismissed the angels, who had been my guides, in the most affable and condescending manner.
" 'How do you do, Tobias Sever- ence? I am, indeed, delighted to see you. I hope you will like it here. Let me offer you some refreshments. No ? I am sorry. Your business with me is attending to now. I have instructed Pipifax, my private secretary, to look up all the records in our registration vault, and he will let us know the re- sult as soon as he is finished. It will not be long, because he has a large staff of clerks at his command who are expert searchers of records. Do not let all this worry you in the least, and in the meantime make yourself freely at home here.'
"This Mephistopheles — I prefer to call him by that name, for he strongly reminded me of Goethe's immortal creation — possessed a personality so entirely different from that which I had always conceived it to be. My early Quaker education had given me a false impression of him. You have gathered by this time, my friends, that he had the appearance of a man of the world, with refined manners and the most polished address, and such was, indeed, the case. There was neither hoof nor horn, nor did I find any evi- dence of the proverbial spiked tail; in fact, he had no tail at all.
"He was of middle age, tall and slender in figure, with broad shoulders upon which rested a well shaped head, covered with hair as glossy and black as a raven's plumage. He had a pair of penetrating eyes, fiery as two coals, that were constantly piercing through one.
"He was becomingly, I may say
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135
fashionably dressed, and he carried himself with a genial decorum, rfis gestures were those of an educated gentleman and his speech was fault- less. He conversed with animation, and interestingly.
"After having welcomed me as one clubman would another, he did not hesitate to give me bits of information in a chatty way about the immediate environments of his realm, explaining this or that detail of the objects about him without being obtrusive. And, through all his explanations, there ran a certain strain of philosophical argu- ment which was very entertaining, to say the least.
"It is difficult for me to give you his exact words and phrasing, but I shall attempt to repeat to you what he did say.
" 'It is all very well,' he said pleas- antly, 'to build scintillating cloud cas- tles and lofty star-dust edifices, but, I assure you, they are cold and dismal to abide in. They lack every comfort of a club. Ideals are noble and edify- ing, no doubt, but they do not get us anywhere. We must take the things and the conditions as we find them ; to attempt to change them is the most thankless undertaking I know of. To try it is to be sacrificed. But that is another story, and I don't feel inclined to go too deeply into that.
" 'We require animation and en- ergy. To acquire them needs warmth ; the mere cold light with all its bright- ness is not enough; we must have a fire, and it takes considerable effort now-a-days to keep one going, not to mention' — and he said this more to himself than he did to me — 'the sup- ply of sulphur which is becoming scarce and more and more expensive. I know this subject well, you may be- lieve me, for I am the most expert pyrotechnologist in existence to-day.'
" 'And, after all, my dear Jux,' he was getting pleasantly familiar by this time, 'a good fire has its decided ad- vantages if one doesn't get too close tc it. Those who do will necessarily suffer, but that is their own fault. Who told them to stick their hands into it?'
" 'Before I had my so-called fall, I, too, had lofty ideals, but they were ideals only, without that something which I found necessary to warm me up to them. I prefer this genial warmth; it makes me cheerful, and I may tell you frankly that there are olhers who have the same craving for it.
" 'It seems that no one is ever sat- isfied with existing conditions, be these conditions ever so perfect. Just imagine yourself, if you will, within the most ideal and beatific environ- ment; nothing is more certain than this, that in time you will tire of its monotony and of the constant recur- rence of beatification. You will long for a change, and so would any one. Do you understand now why the in- dwellers of heaven call here at inter- vals to enjoy a brief relaxation ? Noth- ing tires me so much as a so-called saint in active service; he is very try- ing.'
"Having chatted along in this man- ner for nearly an hour, the swarthy usher, who was called Charon, entered, and with deep obeisance announced that Pipifax desired to report that he had searched every available record, and that the name of Tobias Sever- ence could not be found.
"This gave me a violent shock. What great misfortune awaited me now? Neither in heaven nor hell had it been deemed of sufficient import- ance to place my name on record. Was there ever any one subjected to such absolute neglect and ignominy? I could not constrain my tears.
"Mephistopheles laughed heartily. 'We are now, indeed, in a double di- lemma, if you will admit the absur- dity of such a thing with four horns to it. The difficulties are heaping them- selves upon us; but never mind, Jux, there is a solution to every problem, and I shall certainly find one to this.'
"He thereupon ordered Charon to call Pipifax, an imp of the most sa- gacious appearance, who entered re- spectfully and awaited his master's pleasure.
" 'Thou wilt go at once to celestial
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headquarters, Pipifax, and thou wilt report there the results of thy search. Thou wilt thereupon request, upon my authority, that a celestial emissary with full plenipotentiary powers be sent to me to take counsel with me, in order that we may be prepared to make a final disposition of this soul.'
"Pipifax, without uttering a word, withdrew in the same respectful man- ner in which he had entered the li- brary. Implicit obedience, without question, appeared to be the order of the day here."
" 'Do not become alarmed, my friend,' continued Mephistopheles. 'You are my guest for the present, and while under my roof you shall not only enjoy its hospitality, but also its pro- tection.
" 'It is difficult at times to trace a record, but if you will leave it to me there will be a way out of the diffi- culty. I have never failed to find an expedient. Pipifax has suggestions and new thoughts that are worth their weight in gold. He is" a jewel, indeed, and absolutely loyal and true-blue.'
"I was perfectly willing to admit Pipifax' high carat value, but I thought very strongly that there were in real- ity two jewels, and that the casket which contained the one would be in- complete without the other.
"I don't know why, but I was slowly beginning to lose that degree of trust in my host which I seemed to have for him in the beginning; that is, before he deluged me with his pithy philo- sophical statements and catchy aphor- isms. I appeared to be so small and insignificant as compared to this re- sourceful intellect, that I felt like crawling into the most remote corner before him ; that is, I was beginning to fear him, although he gave me no tan- gible reason for doing so.
"He evidently noticed the change in my demeanor, for the penetrating search of his coal-black eyes seemed to be able to fathom me long before I had time to digest the thought that had come to me.
" 'Come now, Severance, and do not lose your confidence in me,' Mephis-
topheles began again in the most con- soling manner. 'There is no reason to do so. You have been taught in your early youth to abhor me, to loathe me and to shrink from me, but that is no reason why you should be un- just. Are you not willing to admit now that I have been very much ma- ligned?'
" 'It is said of me that I am the arch-fiend, the father of lies, the prince of darkness, the beelzebub, the foul fiend, the tempter, the traducer, the dia-bolos who delights in throwing about or in displacing the order of things.
" 'Now let me tell you that I am nothing of the kind. I am simply one who disagrees, and disagreeing, ne- gates. / am the spirit of negation.
" 'That means that I am not positive- ly bad, but negatively good. Badness is nothing but negative goodness ; that is, goodness with a minus sign before it. The reverse, too, holds for those who claim to be good, for a so-called saint is negatively bad, and if you will take the trouble to square him he be- comes positively bad.'
" 'There is a decided advantage in lcoking at the order of things from the negative standpoint, as you will now have recognized.'
"This sophistry made me still more doubtful. I had never heard, in all my earthly career, any reasoning like this. Any one able to premise an argument on such fundamentals as these, is so superior to a Philadelphia lawyer that he could yield to him cards and spades in a game of casino and then beat him with his eyes shut. Where is there an American lawyer in our glorious Republic, in our home of the free, who could equal this?
"Again, Mephistopheles appeared to anticipate me; he seemed to be able to read my thoughts, and, always ready to take up a new subject, he said :
" T take you to be an American and a disciple of the law, whereof you were a 'well-deserving pillar,' no doubt. As an American you cherish the Republican form of government, as you should. But, my dear fellow,
THE STORY OF THE MIRACLE 137
let me tell you that this form of gov- an opportunity to do some politics, and ernment, although the most ideal that politics is a game in which I am art- has ever been conceived, does not master. You see that as a politician I work out well in practice. Now here, am out of business here, but that does where everything runs like clockwork, not prevent me from taking a hand in we have the most ideal monarchy that the politics of your little earth, when- it is possible for your imagination to ever I require a little diversion and a picture. And you must not forget mental stimulus. I have known your that the idealists control this entire citizens to halloo themselves hoarse, machinery. and they didn't know that they were " 'The celestial majesty is the ab- shouting for me. O, how Pipifax and solute power here, whose will is law, I have chuckled over this ; it is a little and we don't propose to look around comedy we play sometimes to amuse the angelic hosts to find a suitable can- ourselves when things are dull. We didate for this office and to elect him have watched the torch-light pfoces- by enfranchised angels and imps. Not sions from here of the puppets and if we know ourselves, for the imps marionettes whose strings we held in would soon have the best of it, and I our hands, and we laughed over their know that that would not work well, antics, and we shrieked with laughter, Cur well-organized plan of governing until it was impossible to laugh any the universe would be very seriously more. Your country, my dear fellow, handicapped if we did, and unless we is, indeed, the greatest country that has hold onto the principle of the One ever been established on the face of Power eternally, we will find ourselves the insignificant planet earth, and it in a serious dilemma very soon. Your will increase in greatness with the ad- solar system alone, if not handled vance of time, but mark me, Jux, not properly, would find itself in a cha- because of your political institutions, otic condition in a very short time, for but in spite of them.' that old earth of yours, because of "I need not tell you, my friends, that your Philadelphia lawyers, is very ob- these reflections upon the intelligence streperous at times, which is enough of our people and upon the dignity of to upset the best regulated conditions my country did not please me. While over night' I perceived in all he said a very astute "He saw that I was getting wroth and convincing method of diagnosis, under these implications, and I was one that I could not help admiring, I about to answer him hotly, when he felt intuitively that he must be in the continued rapidly : v/rong ; but I had lost the ability to de- " 'Don't interrupt me, Jux, I know fend myself. Think of this, my well what you are going to say; you are friends, I, the talkative Jux, one of going to resent any aspersion on your the best after-dinner speakers whom form of government. I do not blame my college had ever sent out into the you; on the contrary, I honor you for gastronomical world to ease the ali- this loyalty; but you must admit that I mentation of his fellow man. am better acquainted here than you "Mephistopheles seemed to have are, and that I am making a justified hypnotized me, so that I was unable statement when I tell you that the only to gather my thoughts sufficiently to practical form of government suited to meet him. I felt now that I was abso- supermundane affairs is by a king of lutely in his power, and that unless heaven and not by a president of other events occurred to release me, I heaven. That shows you how much of was hopelessly enmeshed. I realized a dia-bolos I am. for the first time that there was some- " T am speaking to you very disin- thing sinister behind all this — yes, I terestediy, for as far as I am personally was becoming fully convinced of it. concerned, I would prefer a celestial "Mephistopheles' reference to the republic, because that would give me scarcity and cost of sulphur some little
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time ago occurred to me again, and I — always so practical in mundane mat- ters— could not imagine the necessity for sulphur in starting or maintaining a fire. Did he not tell me boastingly that he was the greatest of all pyro- technologists ? Why did he acquire the intricate scientific knowledge of pyrotechnics? For the purpose of steeping a cup of tea, or for roasting a quail on toast? Hardly. Of what na- ture, then, were his ignigenous ob- jects?
"I was deeply concerned about all this, when a knock at the door an- nounced the swarthy Cha'ron, who in- formed his master that Pipifax had re- turned and that he wished to present the arch-angel Gabriel, who had been commissioned from celestial headquar- ters.
" T know — I know,' said Mephisto- pheles nervously and irascibly, 'but tor the purpose of presentation I need not Pipifax. He hath performed his duty and his services end there for the present. Admit, however, and at once, the Commissioner Gabriel, with whom I have important business of a perso- nal nature concerning neither Pipifax nor thyself. But remain within call should I need thee. Also, see to it that the mansion is carefully guarded, for I would not have transpire that which may occur here.'
"Charon withdrew with a low bow of 'submissiveness, and a moment there- after he ushered into the library the an- gelic messenger referred to as Gabriel.
"I don't believe that I ever saw a more beautiful personage. He was a youth rather than a man, tall and well built, with the face of an Apollo. His features were classic into the minutest detail. He carried himself like a sol- dier, erect and manly, but with the aristocratic reserve of a noble knight. Auburn hair fell in wavelets upon his shoulders, framing a face expressive of seriousness and intent of purpose.
"He was dressed in the loose flow- ing garments of the classic period, which were girdled at the loins; on the left side he carried a sword, which was not straight in its alignment, but
forged in waves like the body of a crawling serpent. I had heard of Ga- briel before, but I always associated him with the blowing of a horn, as if calling to arms, rather than with the more serious attributes of martial ac- tivity.
"When he entered, nothing was said for some moments; both principals bowed slightly to one another and looked at me.
"Finally, Mephistopheles took the initiative and said very earnestly:
" 'Gabriel, thou hast been sent on a mission of great importance. It con- cerneth the futurity of a human soul upon which I have as great a claim as thou hast. Had there been a record of it, this unusual, nay extraordinary di- lemma would not have arisen, but as thou knowest, neither within thy realms nor in mine have our most ex- pert searchers of records been able to trace this most unfortunate, this more than lost, I may say this orphaned hu- man soul.'
"Then spoke Gabriel with a strong, manly and intonated voice, like an ex- horting clergyman from his pulpit:
"'Why unfortunate and why lost? The repentant are never lost, because we who feel for them are willing to shelter them, and we hold out to them the glory of salvation. With this holy weapon, symbolized by my flaming sword, the heavenly hosts are enabled to overcome all its enemies.
" 'We recognize but the one funda- mental and divine doctrine which glor- ifies all creation by a process of sa- cred purification, so that the souls of all mortal creatures may be made fit tc abide in perpetual harmony and in eternal bliss. On the contrary,
" 'Thou, the spirit of negation, Doest proclaim that all creation Is but worthy of damnation.'
' 'Oh, how fair!' answered Mephis- topheles with a sneer.
"And he asked: 'What doeth thy plan of salvation lead to? The per- sonal liberty to go about among wet clouds and sneeze and shiver forever
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139
with the cold. And thou wouldst do thy so-called saving even against the wishes of those who care not for it, while I have never made a claim for a soul that was not conscribed to me from the beginning.'
" 'All thy arguments, Satan,' re- turned Gabriel, 'are needless and all thy sophistry is spent in vain. I am here with plenipotentiary power to re- turn to heaven with this soul, and with it I shall return.'
"Said Mephistopheles : 'Maybe thou wilt and mayhap thou wilt not. Why didst thou keep it not when thou hadst it there ? Why didst thou send it here ? Didst do this to observe the form of the law only to evade it and to repu- diate its ruling later on?'
"You have noticed that during their conversation both were referring to me. the masculine Jux, as it. This low- ered me greatly in my own estimation, and I cannot tell you how deeply this apparent affront humiliated me. A rule in Latin grammar relegates all nouns that cannot be declined to the neuter gender, and I seemed to have become, O irony of fate, an indeclin- able something not even worthy of gender, let alone sex.
"Gabriel took up the discussion again at this point and said very deter- minedly:
" 'All arguments and discussions are neither here nor there; but whatever thou hast to say, say it now and do so speedily, so that we may draw this
unpleasant incident to a close.'
"Mephistopheles retorted calmly and deliberately :
" 'Thou art in a great hurry for which I see no reason. We have met here to adjust a difficulty, not to claim a victory before it is won. This situa- tion may not arise again in aeons. We ere confronting it now, however, and it necessitates a well digested plan of action to settle the dispute, for the de- cision will create a precedent for all time.'
" 'This soul,' referring to me again, 'must be disposed of, and its disposi- tion is not a matter of an arbitrary wish, but a subject entitled to a due- process of the law. Under the immut- able laws by which we both abide, it hath become necessary to decide, in some just and equitable manner, who shall lay claim to it, either thou or I.. That much thou wilt grant me.'
" 'But doest thou know of any para- graph in our code or corpus juris cov- ering this unusual and extraordinary case? I know the musty pandects all by rote, and yet am I in great perplex- ity, for not a single clause or section have I found possible of application. _ " 'Now, I shall leave it to thee, Gab- riel, to suggest a method by which this may be done. I see thou, too, art in a quandary. Thy sense of justice doeth not deny that we both possess an equal right under that law which hath been recognized by us from all eternity.' (To be continued.)
The Storm King
By Eugenia Lyon Dow
With frightful din and furious might The King of Storms stalks forth to-night. Relentlessly with wind and rain He beats against my window pane, As he were loth to pass me by While I am sheltered, warm and dry.
The inky blackness of the night
Is rent by lightning, dazzling white,
And echoing thunder, crash on crash,
Gives back the challenge of each flash.
A myriad voices rise and fall
As disembodied spirits call;
And as each fitful blast goes- by,
It bears a long-drawn, wailing cry
As if some soul from love's estate
Were vainly calling for his mate.
My neighbor just across the way
Whose light gleams dimly through the gray,
A vigil keeps as well as I —
She, too, is sheltered, warm and dry.
But out upon the boisterous sea
Her lover's ship rides gallantly.
Upon her knees the whole night through
She prays for him and all his crew.
And such the power of prayer and love
To guard the depths, or heights above,
Her love a pathway through the foam
Will show to guide her lover home.
I see her light grow dim, and blur. How gladly I'd change place with her. The tearless anguish, doubts and fears, The agony — for years on years I'd bravely bear if chance might be 'T would bring my lost love back to me.
Blow deathless winds, and rage and roar, Your force can reach that far off shore Where mignonette and heartsease grow Whose sweetness I may never know! Blow on! The world is yours to-night, I glory in your awful might; Had I your power I would not be The helpless toy of destiny!
A Kindergarten of Romance
By Will AcCracken
DUNCAN LANGE'S eyes wav- ered and turned aside from his accuser's scrutiny, as he sat be- side her on the porch settee. After nearly a year's engagement to Bertha (on probation), he felt that they were drifting apart, and all on ac- count of what seemed to him as a mere trifle.
Glancing furtively toward her again as she continued to speak, he experi- enced a thrill at her sparkling beauty, a flush upon her cheeks, her brown eyes flashing, and the morning sun re- vealing a shade of red in her auburn hair. Why, he thought, should she take him to task for his one innocent delight in life, that of exploring the intricate passages and lofty chambers of nature's underground wonder of the West — the Marble Caves of Oregon.
"I suppose, Duncan, you received that cut on your temple while crawling through some crevice in your marble halls?"
"Yes," he answered humbly. "You are a good guesser, Bert."
"And the sprained wrist?"
"Got that in a little fall by the River Styx."
Bertha, with an impatient shrug, turned her face toward the south, her companion's gaze settling in the same direction. The foothills of the Siski- yous loomed large through the clear spring air, and Duncan could locate the exact position of old Grayback mountain. And there seemed to come to him again that call to the place in the hills yonder where nature had for unknown centuries been carving out her vaulted chambers. A slight breeze tossed a spray of the girl's tresses across his line of vision, and
a meadow lark in pursuit of his mate fluttered for a moment beneath the porch.
"I would not care so much," she continued, turning toward him, "if you only had a little spark of romance in your heart."
"Romance?" he cried in astonish- ment. "Why, I'm full of it, Bert— as full as a queen bee is of pluck, only I haven't had a chance to show you the real stuff."
"Yes, there's your slang again; you do not make a single effort to im- prove."
Duncan arose and on tiptoe luxuri- ously stretched his five feet six inches of stature, and as his heels came to the floor with a clatter, the impact of his 190 pounds caused the windows to rattle. "I guess I'm not much account at anything except selling automo- biles, and I could improve there, too," be admitted.
Bertha arose and stood before him. "You are right. I hear your company is mourning the loss of business in this territory."
At last the other's eyes steadied and met hers. "So? — and them writing me a fine letter of commendation for working up a seventeen per cent In- crease over last year? Whoever sere- naded you with that line of music peddled out the wrong dope on "
"Duncan Lange — such talk!" she cried. "Why don't you try and stop it? I do wish you would take Dick Fea- therstone as a pattern; he is so pol- ished. And he is imbued with such a fine spirit of romance that I am sure you will benefit by associating with him."
Then as Duncan looked up at her
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from the bottom of the steps, as he was leaving, she smiled, and he felt that after ail he was fortunate in hav- ing such a prize to strive after.
"I have determined to visit your wonderful caverns next Saturday," she announced. "Brother Jim and Katie are going, and last night I consented to be one of the party. And also they may invite Dick Featherstone. Jim said you must be sure and go."
"Let's see — to-day is Tuesday," he mused aloud. "I don't know that I can get away, Bertha, though I might make it later in the afternoon."
Then as he hurried down the street, his thoughts turned to the ideals of the girl he had just left, and he could not help feeling that she was a trifle too exacting. She did not like to hear him express himself in slang, yet he knew he was gradually breaking himself of the habit. She had voiced in favor of a spirit of romance, and had cited Featherstone as an example. Think- ing thus, the slight travail of his soul gave birth to an idea. "I'll show her about 'being imbued with a spirit of romance.' " He turned into Main street and went straight to the office of Dick Featherstone.
"Want to consult you, Feather- stone."
"Right in my line, Mr. Lange."
"Nothing in it for you this time," laughed Duncan, and he proceeded to • outline his plan.
"She thinks I'm short on this roman- tic stuff, and this will be the great demonstration," he explained, as he finished.
"She'll either hate you or eat out of your hand," said the attorney, laugh- ing.
"That's my idea. I can't stand the way things are going now. She has changed during the past six months, and not only criticises me, but holds you up as an example."
Dick's attempt to show displeasure at this announcement was a partial failure. He thought of Bertha War- ren's generous income from her two office buildings, and of his own meagre practice, and a ray of hope loomed up
within him. As his visitor departed, he watched him walk with rapid strides across the street, and snapping his fmgers with each step.
"Pretty much all ivory," the attor- ney remarked aloud.
It was nearly noon, four days later, that Bertha Warren, Jim Warren and his wife, with Featherstone in the rear leading a pack horse, tramped down the trail a half mile from the Oregon caves. They had walked the nine tedious miles from the ranch where they had left the automobile, and ' then hired a horse, in three and a half hours. The climb over the two divides on the western slopes of Grayback mountain had tired them, and they were commencing to discuss the good things the pack contained for dinner.
"There's another gray squirrel," cried Bertha. Isn't it a beauty?"
As the nimble rodent sped up into the branches of the great fir, she chir- ruped shrillly. A moment later Mrs. Warren called in a low voice to the others.
"Look, look!" she whispered loudly, pointing ahead on the trail.
Not more than a hundred yards from them stood a strange appearing man. Tall and slimly built, he was clothed only in a breech-clout and jacket of fawn-skin, and with moccasins pro- tecting the feet. In his left hand he held a fluttering grouse, while in the right he grasped a polished stick from the crooked manzanita bush. With his hair hanging to his ears, and staring eyes above the bushy beard, his ap- pearance held the party spell bound and mute. Standing thus for a half minute, he gave the grouse a wave above his head, and with a loud "Hi- o-oo," he sprang into the bushes on the lower side of the trail.
"A wild man!" gasped Mrs. War- ren.
"I doubt it," saith Featherstone. "A v/ild man would be too crafty to allow us to see him at such close range."
"I believe he has gone toward the caves," remarked Bertha..
"Now, don't you women folk work
A KINDERGARTEN OF ROMANCE
143
yourself into a frenzy," cautioned Jim Warren. "We're out for a good time, and we're not going to mar it by con- sidering an eccentric trapper."
Little was said during the rest of the journey down the trail, and in ten minutes they had reached the camping ground close to the lower en- trance of the great caves of the west. As the party emerged from the tim- ber into this open space, the figure of a man crouching on the floor of the passageway, a few feet back from the portal, hastily arose and retreated back into the darkness. Scrambling up the first story ladder, the man lighted a candle sticking in an empty tin can, and pressed rapidly on through Wat- son's Grotto, over Satan's Backbone, past the American Falls, and toward Neptune's Grotto.
The party outside had in the mean- time prepared their early dinner, and were demonstrating how a long walk through a forest reserve could build up an appetite.
"No sign of Duncan yet," Warren took time to remark as he slipped two more fried eggs and a slice of ham from the skillet to his tin plate.
"If he comes at all it will not be until later in the afternoon," an- nounced Bertha.
Twenty minutes later, equipped with flashlights and wearing suitable cloth- ing, they entered the first cavern. As they progressed, all thought of the wild man had left them, the wonder- ful formations to be seen on every hand having taken their whole atten- tion. Through the chapels and grot- toes and lofty passages they climbed and crawled, tiptoeing over narrow ledges and squeezing past the crevices. As they entered the Queen's Dining Room, a thousand feet from the en- trance, a man lying upon an elevated ledge raised his head and peered cut at them. Then, as the four explorers passed on, he dropped nimbly to the cavern's floor. Following noislessly and at a safe distance, he kept the others in sight, sometimes darting swiftly in- to a narrow alcove as a flashlight from some one of the party ahead chanced
tc be turned momentarily in his di- rection.
It was when a long ladder, or rather a series of ladders had been reached, that the man drew closer. Feather- stone was mounting to test the sound- ness of the structure, and as he reached the top he called out that everything was safe. After Jim Warren and his wife had ascended a considerable dis- tance, Bertha dropped her flashlight into her pocket and placed her foot on the bottom rung of the ladder. But a hand now pressed firmly over her mouth, a stronger arm brought her arms to her side, and in a moment she realized that she was being carried away from her friends, back into the velvet blackness. After a few long minutes her captor halted, freed her ■ arms and proceeded to press a gag be- tween her teeth. Accomplishing this, he deliberately kissed her upon the cheek. Wild in her wrath at this pre- sumptuous cave-man, with the odor of fur upon him, she clawed at his face and bit into his wrist. But soon he had her arms bound tightly to her side, and lighting his candle he proceeded a short distance farther, now compell- ing her to walk in front of him up a steep incline. At the top of this was what appeared to be two fissures in the rock, and close together. The column, however, separating the openings, was a huge stalactite, and this her captor removed with a lifting and twisting motion. The aperture now being wide enough for one to enter, the man freed her arms, and firmly pushed her through. While she tugged and pulled at the gag she could see the faint out- line of her kidnaper replace the lime- stone pillar, pick the shaded candle from the floor and swiftly withdraw. As she freed her mouth of its incum- brance her first instinct was to cry for help, but she quickly realized the fu- tility of such a procedure. Remember- ing the flashlight in her pocket, she drew it forth and pressed the button, revealing to her view a wondrous pri- son cell. Back in a nook of the oblong cavern was a recess near the floor, and on the ledge were spread the furs of
144 OVERLAND MONTHLY
deer and bear and cougar. The walls leading to this chamber, were almost white in the glare of the "When we missed you, I ran back light, and were covered with myriad ahead of the others, and remembering figures in bas relief, while from the this offshoot from the main chain of dome shaped ceiling hung countless caves, I crawled in. Finding a piece stalactites, fashioned like stilettos of of buckskin that had been freshly cut pearl. As she looked upon all this I was sure I was on the right track." she ceased to think of her very recent "To say I thank you sounds too corn- experience. Her soul threw off its monplace, Dick. You are a real hero, shroud of earthly rancour, while awe But even now we may be in danger and reverence took the throne; this from that monster." was romance of a brand she had never After five minutes of rapid going dreamed of, and she felt that she was they reached the main artery, where indeed a prehistoric being — a captive the rescued girl was received by her in a cave-man's lair. She was sur- brother and Katie as one returned prised to find that she was unafraid, from the dead. All were anxious to in the sense of any bodily harm being get out into the open world again, and in store for her. Then, as she sur- decided to forego the pleasure of doing veyed again the formations on the the rest of the caves until some time walls, carved as by a wonderful in- when the government guide was on telligence, she sank upon her knees in duty later in the season. In half an hour humility of spirit at the thought of the they emerged into the daylight, and greater beauties of the world of sun- Bertha gave expression to her delight shine, and which she had not appre- in a fervent "Thank Heaven." ciated. The sun was well down in the west- Arising to her feet she stepped to- em sky, the lengthening shadows of ward the cot with its covering of furs, the great fir and pine trees pointed to A feeling of nervousness began to steal the fleeting day, and from the deeper over her, and as she reached the al- shades of a branching gulch came the cove a distinct cry seemed to come hi- evening call of a coyote. Then a whis- distinctly from some remote point, tie was heard in the timber on the op- The thought that the cave man might posite slope, and a moment later a man be returning brought her to the verge on horseback came into the clearing, of hysteria. Listening in an _ agony "Why, it's Duncan," cried Katie, and of fear, she heard the call again, and she trilled a high note of welcome, closer. Surely that was her name she Man and horse were covered with heard. A moment later the voice dust, and the animal's flanks wet and could be heard quite distinctly in a fa- steaming. "Rode all the way from the miliar cadence. Pass since the 9 :30 train this morning," "Bertha-o-ho-ho-Bertha!" he remarked as he dismounted and * * * * commenced loosening the saddle girth. In a few rapid steps she reached her In piece meal from the others he C3ll entrance, from which point a flash- learned about the great adventure, but light could be seen near by. With a the thought uppermost in his mind was glad cry she called back : "Here I am. that Featherstone had been the res- Who is it coming?" cuer, and not he.
"This is Dick. Are you all right?" "I imagined it some joke when I first
In a moment Featherstone was in front felt his hand press over my mouth,"
of her prison house, tugging at the Bertha was saying. "And then, after
bulky pillar of limestone. Finally re- he had put that ill-smelling piece of
moving it, he helped Bertha through buckskin in my mouth, he deliberately
the opening. When she had briefly re- kissed me on the cheek."
lated her thrilling experience, he ex- As she ceased speaking, she looked
plained how, the previous year, he had enquiringly at Katie, and then at her
by accident discovered the passageway brother.
A KINDERGARTEN OF ROMANCE
145
"What is it, Bert?" asked Jim.
"I was just saying the man kissed me on the cheek — but it was an odd little kiss, sort of a two in one or a one in two contrivance!" Her brows contracted, and she looked thought- fully down the canyon. Turning with a quick movement toward Duncan, who was carefully wiping down the horse v/ith a whisp of grass, she cried out:
"Duncan Lange, look at me!"
He glanced over his shoulder into a pair of searching eyes, and at once his face and neck took on the shade of the reddening clouds. In a few rapid steps she was by his side, and grasping his left wrist she deftly pushed back his coat sleeve. She said not a word, merely pointing, as Jim and Katie came forward, to two little rows of blue and red indentations, unquestionably the marks of teeth.
"Duncan!" Her voice rang clear. "Just what is the idea?"
He looked toward where Feather- stone had stood a minute before, but that gentleman had disappeared. "I guess, Bert, I'm caught with the goods, all right."
She looked at him in amazement as the confession was made. "But why, Duncan? Why did you give me such a terrible fright?"
"I never though about that part of it, Bert— really I didn't." As the other remained silent, he continued: "You see, I wanted to do the rescuing myself, but I guess Dick double- crossed me. It's all right, though. Dick's a good fellow."
Bertha's eyes widened. "Do you mean that Dick Feather stone knew that this was to occur?"
"Yes, I believe I sort of confided in him, and he agreed that it would be a pretty good scheme to " He hesi- tated.
"To what?"
"Why. to make you think I had some romance in my nature," he said weakly.
"But the sweating horse and you covered with dust, and the wild man. I don't understand."
"After placing you in the 'Den,' as I call it, I went to a crevice where my clothes were hidden and changed gar- ments. Then coming out I went to a spring up the gulch where my horse was tied. Wetting down his flanks and his saddle back, I threw dust into the air until we were covered with it, and have kept him on the run ever since. And about that wild man you met on the way here, he is Tom Bowles, a uni- versity student. He is demonstrating for the satisfaction of the faculty that a man can go into the mountains of Southern Oregon without a weapon and with no clothing but a breech-clout, and can there clothe and feed himself. He probably thought you knew he was in this district, and desired to show you the live bird he had captured."
Bertha took hold of his coat lapels and held him off at arm's length. "And so you thought I was worth all that trouble and scheming, did you?"
The new look in her eyes set his heart to pounding at a terrific pace. The figure of a man leaving the upper end of the camping ground with a pack en his back drew his attention for a moment. "I guess Dick has decided not to camp out with us to-night," he thought.
"Duncan!" Bertha's voice was now soft and low. "I think I have had all the romance I want. The kiss you gave me in there proved that your heart is all right, and that's what I'm banking ing on when I hitch up with a mate for life."
The other showed his astonishment, yet in his exultation at the meaning her words implied, he could not refrain from a laughing rebuke.
"What, Bert! Slang?"
"You bet you — just this once," she mumbled, as he forgot the presence of Jim and Katie, and placed another two- in-one upon her — lips.
No Questions Asked
By William De Ryee
(Author of "Stabbed," "Coyote o' the Rio Grande," etc.)
BANG! The express messenger whirled, beat the air an instant with his hands, then plunged to the floor, where he lay motionless.
"Sorry, Kid, but you torced me to do it" Tom Nestor, known from Tucson to El Paso as "Golden Spurs," low- ered his smoking Colt's and strode forward to examine the man he had shot. "Nothing serious, I reckon, son, If you just hadn't dived for that little nickel-plated squirt-gun, everything would'd gone tip-top, and nobody hurt. Gee, but this is a cinch."
"Hands up!" The order, given in a stentorian voice, came from the op- posite end of the car.
But instead of obeying the com- mand, Nestor's gun leaped and again spat fire.
A moment later, a package of green- backs stuffed into the bosom of his shirt, Tom Nestor leaped from the speeding train and scrambled down the embankment. A five-minutes' run brought him back to where he had tethered his horse. Untying the reins, he swung into the saddle and rode ruriously off toward the northward.
"Durn bad business — that," he mut- tered, as he lashed his mount unmerci- fully. "Guess I'd better hit the ball for some place where no questions'll be asked, and that'll be Lost Cabin, on Lookout, where I reckon no human be- ing ever set foot, 'ceptin' myself."
About five miles from the Sunset tracts, the bandit drew his horse down to a fox trot. This he kept up all af- ternoon and far into the night, only slacking his pace in order to roll and
light an occasional cigarette.
At Bigg's Tank he dismounted, re- moved his saddle and buried it; then striking his faithful horse a smart blow with his quirt, he set off on foot toward Lookout Mountain.
"I ought to have buried you, too, Bess," he soliloquized, as he listened to the dying hoof-beats of his only friend, "but I couldn't, I just couldn't. I reckon I'm not all devil — not yet."
It was on the evening of the fourth day following the robbery of the Sun- set Limited that Nestor was returning to Lost Cabin from a lucky quail- hunt, and feeling rather well pleased with himself and the world in general. After all, it only took a certain amount of gray matter to "beat the game." Here he was, ten thousand feet above sea-level, far from the abodes of man, worth some fifty thousand dollars — money that he had gained through the use of a little common-sense reason- ing. He would stay here a year, then go East, and, under an assumed name, "take things easy" for the balance of his life. The secret of the whole busi- ness was to have a well-provisioned retreat where one could go and "bury" one's-self for a year, or more — some piace where no questions would be asked. That was the spirit of this wild country — "no questions asked."
"Who are you ? — and where did you come from?"
It was a human voice — a girl's voice.
Instinctively, the bandit's right hand flew to the butt of his Colt's. He halted in his tracks, nonplussed, fairly petrified. How could any one have gotten up here — here on Lookout? He
NO QUESTIONS ASKED
147
kept his steel-gray eyes fixed upon the scrub-oak, from behind which the voice had come. At length he spoke :
"Come out here where I can see what you look like. Pronto! — or I'll shoot."
The intruder obeyed instantly — and Nestor caught his breath. Never be- fore had he seen such beauty; never before had he beheld a creature so enchanting — so symbolical of the spirit cf Wildness. And yet — he had never trusted women.
The girl looked at him a moment, half-defiantly ; then —
"What are you doing here?"
"What are you doing here?"
With evident admiration, the girl's gaze lingered for an instant upon the handsome face of the man; then, as though by accident, her eyes dropped to the large gold spurs on his boot- heels, and she started involuntarily.
"Up to a week ago," she said hur- riedly, "I've been living here for three months. I went back to see how they were getting along without me."
"They?"
"My father and brother."
"Why did you leave them?"
"They drank — and — abused me."
"The devil they did!"
Silence reigned for a space. Then, half-playfully, the girl spoke again :
"Now will you tell me what you are doing here — here on my property?"
Nestor hesitated a moment.
"I " he began; then stopped. It
wouldn't do to tell her that he had built this cabin. "I found this place by accident," he substituted, "and I liked it so well that I thought I would try living here for awhile for — for my health."
"Are you very sick?"
"No, not very; but "
"Where did you come from?"
"See here, little friend, I don't like people who ask too many questions. I'm here, and you're here — that settles it. Come on, let's get something to eat."
Three days later they were seated just outside the door of Lost Cabin. The girl had been watching and com-
menting upon the sunset — the gorge- ous tints of the sky above the purple, western ridges. The man had been surreptitiously studying the girl. Nes- tor couldn't understand exactly what had come over him. A feeling alto- gether new to him seemed to be af- fecting every fibre of his being. He cursed himself for a fool — and yet, he caught himself longing to caress her golden hair, to even as much as touch one of her tiny white hands. She was different from the women he had been used to. She appealed to his "better self" — a self long buried — and almost forgotten. To be sure, what a silly ass he was ! And yet — and yet
Since their first meeting, the girl had refrained from asking any more questions. But now she suddenly turned and said:
"Why do you always carry that gun? Are you expecting some one?"
"I reckon it's just a .habit I've got- ten into."
The girl smiled mischievously.
"What was it you put under the floor of the cabin last night, after I had gone to bed?"
Nestor started.
"I know!" And she laughed— a little silvery laugh. "Don't you think I know who you are? You're 'Golden Spurs.' I'd heard of you, and I knew you the moment I first saw you — from your spurs. Now, aren't you ashamed of yourself? The Good God says: 'Thou shalt not steal.' Oh, it's terri- ble— a big, fine, handsome man like you, too. When I say 'big,' I mean bigness of heart, as well as bigness of physique. You see, it isn't as if you were all bad. You aren't, because if you were, you wouldn't have treated me so — so royally since I have been here. You're not an ordinary rough- neck, Mr. Nestor; you're a gentleman. And oh, I'd be the happiest girl in all the world if I could get you to give it all up! to send back that — that blood- money; to turn over a new leaf, and live square with the world."
At sight of the tears in her eyes, Tom Nestor hung his head. Against his will, he was silent. Again he cursed
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
himself for a fool; but something, seme inexplicable power beyond his control, seemed to be dominating him. One moment he was on the verge of an angry outburst; the next, he was sub- missive, ashamed, actually embar- rassed.
"When I say that you are a gentle- man," the girl went on, in a soft, pleading voice — "that, if only you would let your 'better self come up- permost, you would be good, honor- able, refined, noble — I only say what I feel — here." And she placed one small hand over her heart. "You must have had a good mother "
His mother! Oh, God!
Nestor rose abruptly and stood with his back to the girl. Something welled up in his throat; his vision blurred. Thoughts of his childhood days crowded into his mind — his little sis- ter, May; the last words his mother had spoken: "Trust in God, my boy, and you will never have anything to fear." Sobs, the first he had known for long, long years, shook his frame. He tried to repress them; but they would not be repressed. He was no longer "a strong man." Unable to control his feelings, he wept like a
child.
"You will give it up?" pleaded the girl at his elbow.
With an abrupt movement, he put her aside and walked away.
"You — you are not going to leave " she cried after him.
"I'll be back," he flung over his shoulder.
An hour later he came back to her, a smile on his lips.
"As a rule," he said, "I don't like people who ask questions. But now I'm going to ask a question myself — the biggest question I ever asked in my life. If I promise to bury 'Golden Spurs;' to send that — that money back; to give up this sort of life forever; to start all over again, and live cleanly and square — if I pro- mise that — will you marry me?"
An expression of pure joy suddenly flooded the girl's lovely face.
"There isn't a soul to care what I do," she said. "So I'm going to put my trust in you — and accept your proposition." *
A new light in his eyes, Nestor ex- tended his hand.
"Shake, little partner," he said.
And they shook.
Foothill Fall
By Elsinore Robinson Crowell
1HAVE an old brown coat. Within its warp and woof are threads of scarlet, blue and dusty gold. But closer than in woolen web are woven elements more precious far than brilliant threads, which make my shabby coat a garment rare. It is a tramping coat — not worn on measured streets nor for a festive show. But just for wandering, over a stout wool shirt, a battered skirt and hob nailed boots. So out we go, my coat and I.
The hills are good to see. Upon them the October light lies warm and wide. The slow winds rise and fall, fruity with blowing over ripened grass and seed. As pulsing fire, the yellow tar weed spreads abroad in glowing sheets of bloom, with fragrance like some old and mellowed spite. The grasses now are golden and the crisp stubble gleams against the resting earth. No longer are the scrub oaks dully green. Throughout their leaves they, too, are undershot with bronze. It is as if the amber light had entered as a winey life into the trees and fields until they pulse in one rich har- mony.
I throw my old coat open wide as I go down the road. Deep in its folds the sunshine works its way. And through my veins as through insentient earth the light and color throb. Till I, who thought myself a thing apart from hill and wood — knowing so little of their strength and peace — become again a member of the freer world. I, too, share in the warmth and cheer, the joy of full maturity, the mystic prom- ise of the pregnant soil. One with the heavy grain and fruitful trees, I lift my face up to the sun and sense the joy
of natural toil well done.
* * * *
I reach the hill top. Below me lie the checkered fields — the ruddy fur-
rows of the new ploughed lands — the tawniness of pasture lots. Along the creeks the willows hold their green, but upward, swift and sure as singing flames, the poplars flash in orange laced with light. And in and out, be- neath the fallen leaves and moldering hay, along the road, beside the wall, the new grass pricks its way — a fili- gree of living emerald.
Behind me lift the mountains, wine and amethyst; their shadows flushed as in warm blooded sleep ; with smoky mists that drift like yearning dreams across their violet folds.
Our life just now seems such a sim- ple thing, enwrapt within this beauty, and content as I am warm and safe within my old brown coat.
Long Bill has piled his pumpkins. I can see their glow against his dingy shack beside the bed of "oregano" and chives. Around them tiny specks of red and tan whirl in a tumbling dance, not autumn leaves, but Long Bill's seven babies, fat and brown, and full as cheery as his pumpkin pile.
Pasquala cooks the egg plant for her man — egg plant and onions in to- mato juice, with flavoring of "persa" and "basalico." Her chimney's near the road, half hidden in the Pride of India trees. The tang of oak-wood smoke and homely onion odors rise and creep into the folds of my rough clothes, until I'm sanctified with com- monness.
I smell fresh mushrooms on a sudden gust of wind. They're coming fast af- ter the first fall rain. Their scent is pungent — earthy — rich with the fat- ness of the teeming soil.
How good life is ! I'm glad for sim- ple joys — the daily beauty of this out- flung robe of God — the heartening ties of sweaty work, warm evening food and dancing babies. For all the little
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voices that are set to sing against the weary wailing of a blundering world.
* * * *
A great cloud flings its arm across the sun and all the wine and warmth have left the wind. It's cold. The cottonwoods are moaning by the creek; their tortured branches twist against a livid sky. The dust is lashed before the rising gale, acrid and blinding. Confusion, darkness, wailing — silence — and the rain falls in sudden bitter gusts. Sharp earthy odors rise. The colors crumble, drenched in scudding gray. The rushing waters spurt about the stones. I wait beneath a hanging rock until the rain is gone. The empty clouds pass on, trailing their tattered mist. The brown earth crouches, spent and still, under the fading light.
Lonely and silent the sky — silent and lonely the world. Nor in all space a voice to answer when my soul cries questioning.
Only a Presence, brooding — infinite. Shabby my coat, dear God — and shabby my heart. After the hill top the weariness — ashes where once were flames.
But as I wait, hunger and doubting pass. Constant behind the mysteries I find Him and partake of potency. Not mine to know the secret of the brood- ing hills, nor why across them sway the mists of pain and sin. But in the homely tokens He has left on wall and path — the tiny burrowing owl who is
my friend — the thistle-down that catches on my sleeve — the spray of scarlet leaves — the childish things that I do understand — I know He keeps the trails,, and I am comforted.
Now as the sun slips down, once more there is a golden burst of light. I lie close to the freshened earth. The ripe seeds weave into my coats' warm wool. Above my face the grass stalks bend, frail fairy silhouettes against the sunset sky. From the vast cup of hills the light brims up ; slowly at first, then with a rushing flame — topaz and opal, coral and jade — molten and spilling — flashing and glowing — mounting in .splendor. Yearning and ecstacy, pas- sion and prayer. Then poignant, sweet as waters bubbling, the fluting of the meadow lark's last song. And, in the graying glory, the first great star burns low.
Rising, I go home — my hands deep in the pockets of my coat, counting the treasures I have found along the way. Two acorn cups — a smooth blue stone — a ruddy oak gall on a twisted twig to put within my Chinese jar. And for to-morrow's pot-roast, leaves of bay. So I go back to set the bread, to mend a little shirt, to bring the slippers when the lamps are lit. And in the corner hang my old brown coat — redolent with tar weed, stained with grass and mold, but holding deep within its folds the garnered riches of my golden day.
THE SONG
Dead boy, whose name I never knew,
Your wistful song, upon the page
Of this thin book turned brown with age,
Leaps out at me, and as you sing,
Sudden my lips are quivering;
The quiet pulses in my wrist
Shout out ; my eyes are dulled with mist ;
I am a-swoon with love of you —
With love of you — or Youth — or Spring.
Mary Carolyn Davies.
Aanuel Lisa
By Cardinal Goodwin
AMONG the numerous Spaniards tombstone in Bellefontaine Cemetery who traded with the Indians at St. Louis it is stated that he was within the borders of what is born in New Orleans on the eighth of now the United States, perhaps September, 1772. His parents were no one of them became more widely Christoval de Lisa, a native of the city known during his own day than Man- of Murcia, Spain, and Maria Ignacia uel Lisa. Possessing the restless en- Rodriguez, who was born in St. Augus- ergy and the intrepid physical bold- tine, Florida. Christoval came to ness of the most adventurous of his Louisiana, probably with O'Reilly, countrymen during the golden days of when the Spanish took possession, and Spain, and born and reared in an en- remained in the Spanish service in the vironment where these qualities could territory until the time of his death, be developed to their full capacity, he Manuel was scarcely more than has left a name for himself which will twenty years old when we find him at be remembered as long as the fascin- New Madrid in charge of a trading ating study of the fur trade of the beat and describing himself as a mer- west commands the interest of the stu- chant of New Orleans. Two years dent. His character seems to have later he was again at the same place, been a perfect enigma to his associ- returning from a trading expedition on ates. Unscrupulous he may have the Wabash. He went to St. Louis been; selfish he probably was; ambi- from there, and in 1799 petitioned the tious and energetic he has been justly Governor for a grant of land "upon considered by his contemporaries and one of the banks of the River Mis- by late writers. But while men may souri, in a place where may be found have doubted his integrity there was some small creek emptying into the probably no one of them who doubted said river in order to facilitate the rais- his ability. If there was an important ing of cattle, and, with time, to be able business transaction to be put through, to make shipments of salted, as well Lisa was invariably the man chosen by as dried meat, to the capitol." his associates to accomplish it; if a But the quiet occupation of farming commander was needed for a danger- and cattle raising was probably never cus expedition, he was likely to be the seriously considered by Lisa. He had first one considered to lead it; if dip- hardly established himself in St. Louis lomatic negotiations with hostile In- (he bought a home on the west side dian tribes were under way, his pres- of Second street) before he became ence among the savages gave double interested in the fur trade. In fact, it assurance of a peaceful settlement, has been assumed that he came to Mis- Whatever the emergency, his courage souri to enter the business of the fur- and tact were such that he was thought trade. Certainly, he received permis- by his companions to be perhaps more sion to trade with the Osage Indians nearly equal to the occasion than any before he had been in St. Louis very one of them. long, and continued to exercise that Very little is known of the early privilege until Upper Louisiana was youth of this remarkable man. On his transferred to the United States. This
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took place at St. Louis on March 10, 1804. Indeed, he did not immediately give up his business, but with his greatest rival, Pierre Chouteau, hold- ing the position of United States In- dian agent among the Osage, and the new governor, General James Wilkin- son, assuming a hostile attitude toward him, Lisa could hardly expect to gain anything by attempting to carry on trade longer in that section. If Wil- kinson may be believed, Manuel tried to open up trade with Santa Fe, but the official opposition of the Governor prevented it.
Lisa then turned his attention to- ward the Missouri, with that same un- tiring energy which marked all his actions. On the 19th of April, 1807, he started his first expedition from St. Louis, while he himself did not leave until the 28th. The company con- sisted of forty-two men, and repre- sented an outlay of $16,000. Up the river they went, passing successively the Sioux, the Arickaras, the Man- dans, and the wandering Assineboin Indians, until they reached the mouth of the Yellowstone River. They as- cended this stream for about one hun- dred and seventy miles to the Big Horn, where a trading post was erect- ed. This was on the 21st of November, too late for the fall hunt. Colter, a member of the party, was sent to the Blackfoot Indians, a journey in which he discovered the wonders of a coun- try long remembered in St. Louis as "Colter's Hell," but better known to- day by the more attractive name of Yellowstone Park.
The men remained in camp at the mouth of the Big Horn throughout the winter. Leaving a small garrison at the fort, Lisa left for St. Louis during July of the following year. The ex- pedition had proven so successful that the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company v/as organized as a result of it. Into the details of this cumbersome organi- zation it is not necessary to go. In 1809, Lisa and other members of the Company led an expedition into the blackfoot country on the upper Mis- souri, and spent the next three years
trapping and trading with the Indians. Thefts by the latter together with some loss in transporting their furs down the river practically exhausted the profits which might have been realized from the expedition. The ex- periment was sufficiently remunerative, however, to induce Lisa and his as- sociates to re-organize upon their re- turn to St. Louis in 1812, the year in which the former agreement expired. The War of 1812 interrupted the trade on the upper Missouri, but the com- pany operated along that stream in what later became the States of Ne- braska and the Dakotas. Fort Lisa was built during this period at a point about eleven miles by land above the present city of Omaha. After the war was over the company returned (to their posts along the upper Missouri. A law passed by the United States in 1816, prohibiting British from operat- ing within the boundaries of the United States, resulted in checking the trade of the Northwest Company in that section, and thus relieved the Missouri firm of a strong competitor. The St. Louis Company was re-or- ganized several times after the war, Lisa becoming more dominant in its councils upon each reorganization and continuing the life and soul of the com- pany until the time of his death.
While Manuel Lisa will always be remembered first as a fur trader, he was also an active and efficient Indian agent during and just after the War of 1812. Upon many occasions it has been said the settlers in Wisconsin and Michigan were indebted to him for the preservation of their lives and property. In his report to the govern- ment at Washington for 1815, Gov- ernor Clark gave a list of the Indian agents and spoke as follows of Lisa:
"Manuel Lisa, salary $548. Agent for the tribes on the Missouri above the Kansas; greater part of his time with the tribes; resides at St. Louis; has been of great service in preventing British influence the last year by send- ing large parties to war."
Another statement which reflects even more favorably upon the services
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of Lisa as an Indian agent comes from Joseph Renville, the British guide and interpreter among the Sioux during the War of 1812. The report was given by him to his son, the Rev. John B. Renville, and has been preserved in the Missouri Historical Society Col- lections for 1903-1911. During the War of 1812, he says, the Americans stirred up so much trouble between the Tetons and the Santees that it seemed impossible to prevent civil war in the Dakota Confederacy. The Santees were British sympathizers, and on numerous occasions attempted to send their warriors to assist the British, but "every time they started out to go to the lakes and Canada, runners would come and tell them that the Tetons were coming to destroy their families, and they were com- pelled to return to their homes to pro- tect their women and children." The wily Spaniard was responsible for the work of the Tetons. "Lisa was a very smart man," Renville concludes, "and he managed things so that all the money and work of Dickson (the Brit- ish agent) to get the Santees to fight the Americans was lost. He got one of our men (Tamaha, the one-eyed Sioux) to spy on his own people and let him (Lisa) know all that was be- ing done."
But Lisa did more than to pit the Tetons against the Santees, nor was his influence among the Indians bound by the limits of the Dakota Confed- eracy. His name was respected among the numerous tribes throughout the great northwest, and his presence among them continued to be a potent factor towards maintaining friendly re- lations between them and his adopted country, even after he resigned his position as Indian agent. During the summer of 1815, after the war between England and the United States was over, Lisa brought to St. Louis forty- three chiefs and head men from the various tribes residing between the Missouri and the Mississippi for the purpose of further "cementing the friendships which he had formed and intensifying the animosities which he
had aroused." He kept them in St. Louis as his guests for about three weeks, during which time meetings were held in the council house at the corner of Maine and Vine streets, and apparently numerous expressions of good-will were exchanged. Lisa then conducted his party to Portage des Sioux, where he met William Clark, Edwards, and Auguste Chouteau, Commissioners from the United States — and treaties of friendship were con- cluded. About two years later an- other group of twenty-four chiefs and representatives from the Pawnees, Missouris and Sioux was conducted to St. Louis, where similar treaties were signed.
For an expert fur trader to become an efficient Indian agent seems per- fectly natural, nor would the official duties of the latter position detract necessarily from the success of the former. Rather the one might be used in a legitimate way to supplement the other, and may have been so used by Lisa. His enemies, however, accused him of using his position as govern- ment agent to further his own private ends. In his letter of resignation, dated July 1, 1817, he answers the various charges in a straightforward, manly way which posterity will doubt- less accept as true. He also gives an account of his stewardship, which in itself is a testimony of the ability of the man. "Whether I deserve well or ill of the government," he says, "de- pends upon the answer to these ques- tions : 1st. Are the Indians of the Mis- souri (i. e., those along the Missouri River) more or less friendly to the United States than at the time of my appointment? 2d. Are they altered, better or worse, in their own condition during this time?" In answer to the first question, he pointed out that the various tribes along the upper Mis- souri and the Mississippi were about to join the British and make war on the United States at the time he was appointed Indian agent. This was prevented, and the reader is already informed of Lisa's influence in secur- ing favorable treaty relations with
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those Indians. In answer to the sec- ond, he says that before he went among them the Indians were in the habit of killing, robbing and plunder- ing, but at the time of his resignation traders were safe among these tribes. "Not to mention others, my own es- tablishments furnish the example of destruction then, of safety now. I have one among the Omahas, more than six hundred miles up the Mis- souri, another at the Sioux, more than six hundred miles further still.
I have from one to two hundred men in my employ, quantities of horses, of horned cattle, of hogs, of domestic fowls. Not one is touched by an In- dian; for I count as nothing some soli- tary thefts at the instigation of white men, my enemies; ..."
And, continuing, he asserts, modest- ly: "I have had some success as a trader; and this success gives rise to many reports. Manuel Lisa must cheat the Indians; otherwise he could not bring down every summer many boats loaded with rich furs. Good! My account with the government will show whether I receive anything out of which to cheat it. A poor five hun- dred dollars as sub-agent salary does not buy the tobacco which I annually give to those who call me father. 'Cheat the Indians!' The respect and friendship which they have for me, the security of my possessions in the heart of their country, respond to this charge, and declare, with voices louder than the tongues of men, that it can- not be true. But Manuel Lisa gets so much nice fur! Well, I will explain how I get it. I put into my operations great activity. I go a great distance while some are considering whether they will start to-day or to-morrow. I impose upon myself great privations. Ten months of the year I am buried in the depths of the forest, at a vast dis- tance from my own house. I appear as the benefactor, not as the pillager, of the Indian. I carried among them the seed of the large pumpkin from which I have seen in their possession fruit weighing one hundred and sixty pounds; also the large bean, the po-
tato, the turnip; and these vegetables will make a comfortable part of their subsistance; and this year I have promised to carry the plow. Besides, my blacksmiths work incessantly for them, charging nothing. I lend them traps, only demanding a preference in their trade. My establishments are the refuge of the weak, and of the old men no longer able to follow their lodges ; and by these means I have ac- quired the confidence and friendship of the natives and the consequent choice of their trade."
When Manuel returned from the up- per Missouri in 1812, he found St. Louis a center of military prepara- tions. Upon offering his services he was appointed captain of a volunteer company of infantry, but apparently never saw active service in the field. During the following year the general assembly of the territory of Missouri passed an act incorporating the bank of St. Louis. Among the prominent citizens who purchased stock in the new corporation were Manuel Lisa and Moses Austin, and both were heavy losers when the bank failed. In 1817 or 1818 he became a partner in a "Steam Mill Company." A tract of land was purchased by the company on the Mississippi, north of the village, which was laid out as the Smith, Bates and Lisa's addition to St. Louis. It was situated between the river and the main street, and extended from Ashley northward to Florida street. In the subdivision was a street named after the hero of this narrative, which may still be seen on the old maps of the period.
A dim idea of the prodigious labors which were crowded into the life of this swarthy Spaniard may be gleaned from the fact that during the last thir- teen years of his career he made at least twelve trips up and down the Missouri River. These journeys were never less than six hundred and sev- enty miles — the distance to Fort Lisa from St. Louis — while several were made to the Mandan tribes, a distance of fifteen hundred miles, and two to the mouth of the Big Horn, which was
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five hundred miles farther. In all, says Chittenden, he could not have journeyed less than twenty-six thou- sand miles by river, or a total distance greater than the circumference of the earth. He "must have spent not less than the equivalent of three solid years battling against the intractable Mis- souri, or gliding swiftly with its down- ward current." Seven and possibly eight of the twelve winters included in the above period were spent in the wilderness.
That so vigorous and aggressive a nature should have made enemies is but natural, but it is not easy to see why they should have been so numer- ous and so vindictive. Lisa was con- stantly in trouble. In this regard it has been doubted whether or not even La Salle surpassed him. He was al- ways at odds with some one jealous of his success as a trader. In fact, the primary cause of his incessant dis- putes appears to have been jealousy on the part of his detractors. His code was the code of the wilderness, and he practiced it with unflinching sever- ity. There is no record, to quote again from Chittenden, of his ever having come out second best in a con- test with his competitors. It is not surprising, therefore, that "his life was rot only one of physical activity but of mental unrest and turmoil as well — a life not at all exemplified in his
death, if we may accept the simple record in the diary of his father-in- law, Stephen Hempstead, who was present at his death bed, that 'he died without distressing struggles.' "
Of Lisa's first wife, little or nothing is known. Tradition says that she had been taken prisoner by the Indians and was ransomed by General Harrison when Lisa, pitying her condition, mar- ried her. She died on the tenth of February, 1818. Six months later he married Mrs. Mary Hempstead Keeney. Lisa could speak neither English nor French distinctly, and his wife was equally deficient in French and Spanish, so the difficulty each had in making the other understand af- forded much mirth to the family. De- spite this, his second marriage was a very happy one indeed. In fact, Lisa himself declared that he had never before known what domestic happiness was. He enjoyed this hap- piness for only a short time, however. He died in 1820, and his wife not until nearly fifty years later — 1869. Lisa also had an Indian wife among the Omaha people, but apparently dis- carded her upon his second marriage. Of his five children, three by his first wife and two by the Indian woman, only one, a girl, lived to transmit his blood to posterity. Rosalie Lisa Ely, who died in 1904, has many descend- ants living in this country to-day.
PATIENCE
Patience, chastened Queen
Of all the Virtues,
Thou wert born of suffering
Who wearest now the purple
Of self-sovereignty!
To earth's fierce storms that blow
Thou payest no heed,
For thou hast known the throes
Of greater conflicts:
Forgiveness against hate,
Spirit against flesh —
Renunciation's whole!
Jo Hartman.
Enemies
By Famsworth Wright
ARMAND'S baggy red trousers, dirty though they were after weeks of fighting, shone re- splendent in the rays of the rising Belgian sun. The French uni- forms worn during the first months of the Great War, undoubtedly made a gorgeous show on parade, but they were excellent rifle targets — a fact which the French government had not yet learned.
Armand's rifle was slung carelessly over his shoulder. He walked slowly towards a well in a deserted farm- yard. All the farms in that region were abandoned. The panic-stricken Belgian peasants, taking with them what household goods they could carry, were in wild flight westward to- wards Antwerp or northward into Holland.
Armand was tired and thirsty. He had a slight wound on the back of his hand, hardly more than a scratch, it is true, but very dirty, and needing to be washed and bound. He was alone, for he had become separated from his regiment a few hours before, during a night encounter with the Germans.
When the Great War broke out with the suddenness of an earthquake, Ar- mand had nearly completed the mili- tary training which the French repub- lic requires from each of its able-bod- ied citizens. But now he must con- tinue to serve until peace should be declared, unless he should be killed or crippled before that time.
He had been hurried into Belgium with the first French troops sent to that unhappy country. Pressed north- ward by the onsweep of the German tidal wave, his company found itself attached to a Belgian regiment near
the frontier of Holland, with the whole of Belgium lying between it and the armies of France. Now he was sepa- rated even from the Belgian troops.
Inexpressible hate for the invaders filled his breast. They were trying to murder his country. They had brought this unwelcome change into his life. Had it not been for this inexcusable war (Armand swelled with rage at the thought) he would now be back in his native village in southern France, there to take charge of his father's shop and live out the rest of his life in obscurity and peace.
One thing more. There was a not bad looking girl of his acquaintance in the village. She would make him an excellent wife. It was high time he was getting married, for would he not be master of his father's shop and thus be in business for himself? He was well able to support a wife, in- deed, and this girl would not be bad! But now it could not be. The Ger- mans— they were to blame for it all!
As Armand drew near the well a bullet hummed by him. He unslung his rifle at once, and looked around to locate his assailant. His first thought was that the farmhouse concealed a sniper, but the crack of the rifle did not come from that direction. Another bullet made him hastily seek what shelter he could find behind a large bush.
Cursing the French government for making living targets of its soldiers, he attentively examined the landscape to find his enemy. At length he caught sight of a spiked helmet peering from behind the trunk of a lone poplar, not more than four hundred yards away. He fired at once, but the helmet dis-
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appeared behind the tree trunk. Every time it appeared again, Armand fired, and each time the helmet was quickly withdrawn.
The German soldier who had made Armand the target for his fire at length hit on an expedient to outwit him. He carefully notched the tree with his knife. Then he placed his spiked helmet on his bayonet, and wedged the bayonet into the gash in the tree trunk. The helmet projected to one side, as if some one were trying to peer around the trunk.
Armand fired twice, and missed. Then the German leaped to the oppo- site side of the tree and fired three times before he retired behind the trunk again.
All morning the duel continued. Every few minutes the German sprang out to one side or the other from be- hind the tree and fired at Armand.
Armand returned the fire. But the tension irritated him almost beyond measure, and at times he could hardly see the sights on his rifle, so full of rage was he.
Who was this German? Why did he keep up this senseless fray? Why did he not decently come out and sur- render, or at least go away? He must see that his shooting was accomplish- ing nothing! He had no business in this country anyway! He was a Boche, an invader, a tool of that ac- cursed military despotism which so long had threatened France, and now had little Belgium back against the wall, fighting for life!
A bitter smile curled Armand's lips at the thought that the Boche was hav- ing equally as bad a time of it as he himself.
"The coward!" he thought. "He brought it on himself ! To shoot at an unwarned man! No brave man would do such a thing. And he gave me no chance to defend myself!"
Then the thought intruded : "I would have done the same thing! If I had seen him first I would have shot, for this is war! But then he is a Boche! It is these red trousers that gave him his chance!"'
Spitefully he blazed away at the German's helmet until he knocked it down. Then he felt quite satisfied with himself, as if he had shot the German instead of only his helmet. But when his enemy sprang out and fired again, Armand was beside him- self with rage.
He was hungry and thirsty, and very angry. The wound in his hand was beginning to pain him. Already the sun was past its zenith.
He decided to stop this foolish fray, in which neither side was winning. He took from his pocket a large handker- chief, but at once put it back again. He wanted something white, but one would never suspect that his hand- kerchief had once been of that color. He opened his uniform and tore a large piece from his shirt. This he tied to his bayonet, to be a flag of parley. Fixing the bayonet to his rifle, he slowly waved the gun from side to side, and waited for the Ger- man to show himself.
When the enemy again leaped from behind the poplar he caught sight of Armand's improvised flag of truce and did not fire. Armand slowly advanced, waving the white flag.
As he approached the German, he groped in his memory for suitable Ger- man words in which to ask for an arm- istice. He had studied his enemy's language and even had written to cor- respondents in Germany before the war broke out.
The German held his rifle ready for use in case Armand should make any threatening move. But Armand, al- though burning with suppressed anger and indignation, had not come to kill. He wanted to eat and drink and wash his wounded hand.
"Qu'est ce que c'est?" the German called out as Armand drew near.
"Sie sprechen Fransoesisch !" Armand exclaimed in astonishment.
"Yes, I speak French a little bit," the German answered slowly, in gut- tural French. "And you speak also my language, is it not so?"
"I have studied German a little," Armand replied in German. "But I
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never have talked it."
"This German may not be such a bad fellow, after all," he thought. "He speaks French, too! Still, he tried to kill me when my back was turned! I had best be on my guard."
Anger filled his heart.
He explained, in broken German, that he was tired of this shooting, and thought it might be well to declare an armistice until they had eaten and drunk and rested. The German will- ingly fell in with the scheme.
"Je ne veux pas vous — vous — toe- ten," he said.
So the two enemies suspended their strife and went together to the well. They shared each other's food and drank to each other's health, yet each hated the other in his heart.
"Prosit!" said Armand, lifting his cup of water.
"A votre sante!" replied the Ger- man.
Armand washed his wounded hand, and was about to bind it with his dirty handkerchief, but the German pre- vented him. He took from his knap- sack a bandage. He sterilized Ar- mand's wound, and bound the bandage tightly around the injured hand of his enemy.
Armand thanked him and asked him his name.
"Friedrich Krogoll," replied his enemy; "but my acquaintances all call me Fritz."
"Then I, too, will call you Fritz, Boche," said Armand. "I am called Armand Roullier."
"Freue mich," said Fritz, relapsing into his own tongue. He extended his hand, and Armand grasped it.
"I was afraid you might try to kiss me," laughed Fritz.
"Oh, I know where you get your idea of our customs," said Armand. "You have been visiting the cinema! A Frenchman doesn't exchange kisses with a stranger, especially if the stranger is a German."
And he thought: "This Boche is a good sport, even though he does mur- der our beautiful language. But he will bear watching."
"You come from Paris?" asked Fritz.
Each spoke in the language of the other, filling in the gaps in his vocabu- lary from his mother-tongue.
"No, I come from the south," said Armand. "And you?"
"From Munich. I am a Bavarian. But for two years now I am an instruc- tor in the University at Goettingen. I teach entomology."
"So?" said Armand. "I never could go to the university. I had to work in my father's shop. My father is old, and I will manage the shop when I get back, if I escape being killed."
"Ah, this terrible slaughter!" said Fritz. "War is so terrible! The young men, they are the victims. No nation can spare its young men."
"That is1 fine talk for a German !" thought Armand. "Why did they be- gin this war if that is the way they feel ?" But he did not say this aloud.
"Why are you not with your regi- ment?" asked Fritz, seating himself on the ground.
Armand explained how he had be- come separated from his comrades in arms.
"I got lost from my regiment be- cause I was too deeply interested in my profession," said Fritz. "In short, I was chasing a large night beetle. It flew several times, and each time I ran after it. It was not yet light, and I was behind our lines.
"Suddenly I heard the Belgians com- ing. They charged, yelling like all the devils of hell. They came between me and my command. I was afraid to fire, for fear I might hit my comrades. So I drew away, and thought only of how I could get back to my company. I went far back of the lines, out of the fighting, but it was darker than an Ethiopean Hades, and I did not go the right way. The firing stopped, and I walked a long distance trying to get back to my comrades. But when it was light, I found myself here. And the German soldiers — where are they? I don't know."
"I was one of the attacking party," said Armand. "How the fight turned
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out I don't know any more than you do. But — did you find that beetle ?"
"Oh, no !" laughed Fritz. "I entirely forgot about the beetle when the Bel- gians charged. 'You and the Belgians,' I suppose I ought to say."
"What were you going to do with it?"
"The beetle? Oh, I was only curi- ous. I could not be certain, in the dark, whether I had seen one like it before. I have a big collection of beetles at Goettingen, beetles from all over the world. Do insects interest you ? Your fellow countryman, Fabre, has made a marvelous study of insect life."
"They don't interest me very much," said Armand. "I never collected them, not even butterflies. But I collect post- age stamps and coins. It was to help my collecting that I studied German. I write to several collectors in your coun- try, and I correspond regularly with a philatelist in Munich. That is, we cor- responded before the war. His name is Franz Link. Did you know him?"
"No. . Munich is a large city, and, besides, I have not lived there for sev- eral years. My father sent me to Goettingen, where his brother is a pro- fessor of languages. There I did so well that I am now helping to teach in the entomology courses. It is a great study, entomology. But you should learn English, if you are a philatelist. In that language you can correspond all over the world — in Canada, India, the United States, Egypt, Africa and the islands of the Pacific Ocean. It must be very interesting, if one has the time to give to it. Tell me about your village. What is it like in that place?"
Armand told him all the interesting things he could think of about the village. "Professor" Fritz, as he cubbed the youthful looking assistant, then told long tales of the student life in his beloved Goettingen.
Each laughed at the other's ridicu- lous errors of speech, for each was speaking a foreign tongue. In the ab- sorbing interest of their conversation they took no note of the lapse of time.
"Hey, Professor Fritz," Armand at
last exclaimed, "I do believe the sun is about to set. It is time to eat again. Please give me some more of that de- licious marmalade. And here is a big slice of that cheese you like so much. My father sent it to me out of his shop."
"The marmalade was made by my mother in Munich," said Fritz. "How she will laugh when I write her how I shared it with a Frenchman! Won't she, though!"
He threw back his head and laughed heartily.
"How my father would rage if he knew his cheese was being eaten by a Boche! He had to send it by way of England to get it to me."
Both laughed long and loudly. The German suddenly became very serious.
"Look!" he cried out. "The sun is setting! We must part."
"Yes," cried Armand. "We must part. Your way lies yonder. I must go west, but I don't know whether there are Germans between me and the Belgian troops. If there are, then I must go north."
"North!" cried Pritz. "That way lies Holland, and you can't get back until the war is over, if you cross the Dutch frontier."
"I must go west then," Armand re- plied. "The Dutch frontier is only four or five miles distant, for we have both come north since we left our regi- ments. And now, my friend" — his face became very grave — "I pray God we may never meet again while the v/ar lasts. You are a good fellow, but we are enemies."
"Enemies?" exclaimed Fritz. "We were enemies. But now? Tell me, my friend, do you really want to shoot me?"
"I have already said," Armand an- swered with emotion, "that I pray God we may never meet again in this war. It would be murder. It would be like killing one's brother. It is a terrible thought."
Fritz stood in silence and listened to the distant roar of cannon. He thought of the lives that were being blotted out at the minute.
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"Holland?" he said at last. "You say it is not far?"
"Not far," said Armand. "Six miles — perhaps — but maybe only three."
He saw his own thought reflected in the German's face.
"Allons, mon ami," said Fritz, after a minute of silence.
"Come!" said Armand.
They had been walking perhaps an hour, in silence, when they heard the pounding of hoofs. Through the deep- ening darkness they made out a troop of Belgian lancers, galloping west.
"Ha," said Armand to himself. "I am the master now. I will capture this fine fellow who was going to shoot me down without warning !"
But one look into his companion's smiling face shamed him from the un- worthy attempt. He did not hail the cavalrymen, and they passed by in the dusk without seeing him.
The two continued north until they were stopped by a Dutch sentry. He could not converse with them, for he knew neither French nor German. An officer was called.
Armand explained that they had crossed the border into Holland to avoid having to shoot each other. The officer listened contemptuously, and sent them away under guard.
They were deserters, and their friends would call them traitors. Yet their minds were at peace, for a ray of light from that nobler age of which poets dream had fallen into their souls. Sc they smiled as they were led away.
The Dutch officer stood looking af- ter them. Perhaps he was touched, perhaps he was only puzzled. At any rate, a mist came over his eyes, but it suddenly vanished, and he turned abruptly on his heel.
"Fools!" he muttered. "What would happen if all the soldiers should do that?"
JACK LONDON
Jack London dead! The world stood still and thought!
Aye, thought of all the creatures of his pen,
His power to know and paint the hearts of men,
And with what pain his knowledge had been bought;
Stood still to ponder on his life so fraught
With risk yet unafraid. In city den,
At sea, or deep within the mountain glen,
Men take courage — his message has been caught!
Mortals can place no price on things he wrought,
Lives he shaped, dreams he made to live again,
Or souls he raised from deep despair who then
Went forth to teach the things that he had taught.
His words speak truth to laborer and sage,
With red life blood he marked each printed page !
Vera Heathman Cole.
^W'
The Threshold of Fate
By Edith Hecht
IT HAPPENED, Senor, years ago, before the Gringos owned Califor- nia. Often have I heard my father's mother tell of it when I was a little boy. Her father kept a vinateria, a wine shop, in the old days. And it happened outside her window, for she was young and beautiful.
"My family lived in that peaceful old adobe with the pepper tree on the side, and my grandmother's window was directly in the front, facing the street, and right over the vinateria.
"Those were lively days in Mon- terey, they tell us, Senor, with the great senors and their families coming from their haciendas, and the gay offi- cers at the Presidio. Now we are old and poor, and the grand caballeros are dust and the padres are vanished. It is progress, they say.
"My grandmother was very beauti- ful, with big, dark eyes, and the won- derful dark hair our Spanish women have. And she sang, and danced, and played the guitar, and embroidered, as the sisters had taught her. My grand- mother's father grumbled much and said that the sisters had educated her above her station. He was well-to-do, but we were not fina gente, but of the people, and my grandmother's father was afraid, with her high-stepping walk and her dainty ways that she would end badly.
"Now I am poor and am your guide and boatman for the salmon fishing; and I tell you tales, Senor, of the de- parted glories of Monterey.
"There were two Englishmen in the town at that time. One was a lord's son, they said, who would some day drink himself to death. St. Vincent, Gregory St. Vincent, was his name. He was good looking, too, for the drink
had not yet bloated or coarsened his features. He had big blue eyes and blonde hair, and a tall, slender, supple figure, like those English have. And afraid — he was afraid of nothing! At the rodeos he could outride the proud- est Spaniard of them all; and with a boat — what could not that Englishman do with a boat! And courage — cour- age he had of the devil. And he loved my grandmother. And she might have loved him, but she was afraid of him. He begged her to marry him ; and then he would say in the next breath that he was not good enough — he was nothing but a remittance man. And then, when he had too much taken, he would ask how would she like to be Lady Vincent of St. Vincent Hall, for he would some day be Sir Gregory if his brother Eustace would die first, confound him ! And he knew his father would forgive him if psalm-singing Eustace would only let the old man. But only when he was drunk would he talk thus; never did he boast when sober, and never did he then talk of going back to England. My grand- mother well knew that she, a daughter of the people, would never be received by those fine gentry; she did not let that turn her head.
"The other Englishman was shorter and dark, with a stubby, dark mous- tache and a red nose. Marshall his name was, Henry Marshall. I do not think St. Vincent liked him, for all they were together, nor do I think he was a gentleman born. At times St. Vincent would treat him like the dirt under his feet; then it would be 'dear Henry' and 'Henry, old chap, it's just my way.' I think St. Vincent was afraid of him.
"Marshall drank very heavily, and
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he would beat and abuse little Concha, the peon girl of his, most terribly. She had been a pretty little thing, like many peon girls, but they grow old so quickly.
"The Englishmen were great fisher- men. Day after day they would go out 'salmon fishing,' so they said. But very little fish they brought home. Of- ten late at night they were around Point Lobos and Carmel, in the rocky bays and breakers where no other beats would venture. There were whispers of smugglers and laughs of 'big fish indeed;' and the government sent out boats from the Custom House to patrol. These Englishmen would snap their fingers at them, but one could prove nothing, nothing.
"One day St. Vincent came into the vinateria, and he had been drinking. He called for more, and then he kissed my grandmother and asked her how she would like diamonds for her ears and throat when she went to the church to marry him. 'Lady St. Vin- cent should have gems befitting her rank,' he said with a hiccough.
"She shrank away, my grandmother, for she was a good girl, and she did not think she loved St. Vincent because she was afraid of him when he was drunk. That was why she had not married him long ago — for she was afraid; his mood would change so quick, Senor. Then he laughed, and said he and Marshall were going after big fish ; and she would be a fine lady yet at the court of the young English Queen.
"That day the patrol boats had started on the bay. It was so blue in the sunshine and the shore so silver, one could think of nothing but peace. And yet the next morning a company from the Presidio were put in the for- est around Carmel. That night nor the next morning St. Vincent did not appear, and my grandmother was nearly mad with the worry.
"Next night, Concha, Marshall's girl, ran in to my grandmother, all fright- ened. She had tried to keep Henry back from the fishing — she had feared there was more than fishing — and he
had struck her — so. She showed the blackened eye and the bruised shoul- der. He had not come back last night and she was frightened, dreadfully frightened.
My grandmother stole down and let Tier in and comforted her. Of course we were not gentry, but a half-heathen peon girl was no companion for my grandmother, nor her equal. How- ever, misery makes women sisters; and my grandmother stole again up- stairs with her and had her share her bed. They cried together quietly that night; for then my grandmother knew, with the fear of death for him, that in spite of all, she loved Gregory St. Vin- cent. She knew she was no great lady whom his people would welcome — no matter how he spoke when he was mad with wine. But she knew he never could go home, and she would make a man of him here, if the Mother of God would spare him. They told their beads together, and cried, these two women. Then they would lie quiet, clasped in each others' arms, and they could hear the thumping of each others' hearts.
"About three that morning, when it was coldest and darkest before the dawn, they heard a sound. Two horsemen were moving qu.ietly, but the horses looked exhausted. And then they halted under the very window, and soft, soft, commenced to dig. The doorstep was low like in all Spanish houses, but this had a step or two; it was not quite level with the street as most of them.
" 'Here, here, under my pretty lady's window, Marshall,' whispered Gregory. Senor, thirty thousand pesos in gold and jewels, and pearls from Baja Cali- fornia, they hid under those steps, quiet, stealthy picking; and the two girls listening above.
"They laughed as they dug, low- voiced, Senor, those two men in their boat had eluded the cutters. They had hidden some of their treasure, they had been doing it for months, under the Ostrich Tree at Cypress Point. Five paces to the south, twelve to the east: my grandmother remem-
THE THRESHOLD OF FATE
163
bered to the day of her death. Some may be there yet.
"It was dark, and those weird, bent cypress, black and curved, seemed like so many demons; but they knew the soldiers were scattered about, so they had buried only a part there ; and then in a little boat, they had gotten into that small, smooth cove just north of Cypress Point, up beyond the jagged points, in and out of the breakers, the shallows, the rocks; and under the very noses of the Governor's patrol, without being seen. They were talk- ing in whispers and the women listen- ing above, breathless. It was the courage of devils, but what will you? They stopped to put the horses in the barn next door — and then went on, the women at the window bars unseen in the dark.
"At Monterey, just north of Mon- terey beyond the town, they had land- ed ; they knew where to find the horses, and with a company of soldiers look- ing for them, here they were with the rest of the treasure. They had wanted two places for their cache anyway, and no one would think to look under the oftwalked steps of my great-grand- father's vinateria.
"They had just finished and put back their picks, looking always over their shoulders, when the Lieutenant and his men came up. 'Hold up your hands,' he said. The women flew downstairs, how they did it my grand- mother said she never knew, and Con- cha sat on the step on the threshold. 'Damn you!' said Marshall to her. He could not hit her because his hands were up. But St. Vincent would not put up his hands. He made a reach for his gun. But he had no time. My grandmother flung herself on his
bleeding body, weeping. 'Gregory, I love you, I love you,' she sobbed. T — always — knew — you did,' he smiled his old daredevil smile. 'It's alright, my sweetheart. Lieutenant, I sur — ' and he died.
"And Concha still sat on the step.
" 'My girl,' said the Lieutenant, 'there are thirty thousand pesos of government property under that step. Please get up.' But she would not obey him.
"Senor, she fought like a wild cat. She was cut and bleeding before she gave up, and the Lieutenant's face was all scratched, too. He was no pretty sight for a Presidio dance.
"And the end ? Oh, my great-grand- father married off my grandmother to his partner. He was squat and mid- dle aged, and drank, too; but my great- grandfather said no girl in her walk of lite could expect to have a nice young man court her after that night. She herself cared naught now whom she married; her life was lived, she said. She made no fuss. Only I was a thoughtful little boy, and when she was old she would tell me this story, over and over again, often.
"Marshall disappeared. Nothing came, somehow, of his arrest. 'Es- caped,' they said. He turned up sud- denly in San Diego with loads of money. He deserted Concha and mar- ried the daughter of a rich Don down there who knew naught of this story. They say it was all arranged with him and the officers to find St. Vincent and himself thus; and to divide the spoils; also the government saw naught of the treasure ; and that he betrayed St. Vin- cent. Who knows? It is many years ago — and now the Gringos are here — and all is different."
A Confirmed Bachelor
By Josephine Schaffer Schupp
MY PLEASANT week-end so- journ with friends in Burlin- game had come to an end. I stood on a corner of the main street some moments in silent argu- ment with myself as to what mode of conveyance should best take me back to San Francisco, when my answer loomed temptingly into sight in the shape of a motorbus. In view of the fact that I was to lunch with a friend in Berkeley, I felt a trifle dubious as to sparing much time to the homeward trip, but the call of the warm, sunny day, and above all the thought of skim- ming smoothly along the Royal High- way, passing lovely green fields and enchanting rose-gardens, proved too much for me, and as the bus drew nearer, I swung aboard.
My intention was to take a seat near the driver and lose myself in thought and a quiet smoke — but no such luck — the coveted places were all taken, so I stepped inside.
I might as well state here and now that I am a bachelor and to all intents and purposes would have remained so — that is, if things had not been as they were.
When on duty, I am tutor to small, restless, lovable ignoramuses, and it is my pleasure to usher them with proper feeling into the sacred presence of Homer, Euclid or such intimates as these. My playtime I wander pleas- antly, if aimlessly, — from house to house of many agreeable friends, where I partake of tea sometimes, and sometimes dinner, and occasionally spend a day or two. My host is charm- ing always, my hostess perhaps more so. The fire burns high in the hearth, conversation runs along interesting
lines, and I retire late to bed in a spa- cious, cheery room. In the morning, eager voices of small children, who rap-tap early on my door, beseech me to come down stairs and tell them sto- ries. They think I have an endless supply.
At times I have heartily envied these good old friends of mine, when I think of my city home by contrast. A narrow bedroom in the tower of a boarding house of the old fashioned gingerbread type, with generous bay windows giving out on Pacific avenue. There I am under the provident care of Mrs. Riggs, an eminently respect- able lady of past prosperity, who seeks to mend her dwindling fortune through the small coterie of steady boarders who, year after year, pay out from their tiny horde, grateful for the roof over their heads, the air of re- finement about the place — and little else. And yet, I have known myself to hang my hat on the elkhorn in the hall, thoroughly content to be at home once more.
I might state, too, in regard to my- self, that I am an Englishman, though acclimated. Which means I left Eng- land in my youth and have wandered since all over the globe, drifting finally to California, where, enthralled by cli- mate and landscape, I am held a will- ing captive.
Having traveled so much and so constantly, I am a keen observer, and take the greatest interest in all that goes on about me, and am totally un- able to go anywhere or do anything without finding a story to suit.
So, after this lengthy preamble, you will find this worthy person, myself, sitting within the 'bus, taking toll of
A CONFIRMED BACHELOR
165
my fellow passengers. There are not many — a German workman with horny hands, large frame and blonde mus- tache, lolling sleepily on the back seat. A little girl in grey fur cap with a robin's-hood feather, fur coat and glo- rious curls, with her back to us all, looking out of the windows. Quite certain she is very pretty, all my at- tention is concentrated upon her, until she turns about, and I am bitterly dis- appointed. She is not at all pretty, nor attractive. She is the spoiled, pam- pered darling of the family.
The family consists of her father, a gentle, aesthetic type of man, sitting next to her. A man with the sort of face you imagine for a peculiarly pious monk of the middle ages, and who is singularly unadjusted to the position of husband and father. Her mother is a stout body, weeping heavily under a thick black veil, and dressed in the deepest of mourning. She weeps in- cessantly, and dries each tear sepa- rately, returning her handkerchief each time to her huge portmanteau and snapping the latter with that click- ing sound you hope is final. She en- genders my sympathy, but also she makes me nervous.
Beside the monklike man sits his brother; a sharp, pinched-featured man, with straw-colored hair and eye- brows, a red, bristling mustache and very small blue eyes. From all ap- pearances he does not think at all — but just sits so forlorn, so lost, so be- fuddled I conclude that the death in the family is perhaps that of his wife.
The other occupants were, in my judgment, two stable boys and a neat- lcoking servant girl with powdered face and high-heeled new white shoes.
Lastly, my gaze fell upon the most delightful, although the most diminu- tive person in the 'bus. There sat, squeezed in beside her father, the sharp-featured man, the quaintest child I had ever seen. A tiny scrap of a child, her black kilted skirt reached barely to her knees. Thin, almost shrunken legs, neatly clad in white stockings and black tasseled shoes; her coat of some heavy white
cloth, heavily braided. Overtopping all else was a coalscuttle bonnet or white satin, homemade, but redeemed by the subtle touch of heaven knows whose gentle hand — for over the hat was draped a coarse face veil, which made a knot on the crown and fell far down the back. It was a note of gran- deur which made the old, sad little costume seem almost queenly. And beneath the bonnet my eyes sought hers.
They peeped shyly at me from their retreat, grey-green eyes, so earnestly and straightly into mine. Perhaps she liked what she saw, although it was only a middle-aged man, with hair greying, grey eyes under glasses and shaggy black eyebrows, weather- beaten, cynic and philosopher com- bined. At all lengths she decided fav- orably, for the rosebud mouth in the pale, freckled face curled slowly into the most adorable, most winning and most radiant smile I have ever seen — but one.
Have you ever had a strange feel- ing, a presentiment, as they say, that something most important will come of something entirely unimportant? Well, that was the feeling that came over me when I met the sweet eyes of that dear little girl. I might say, I have never been in love — but once — and that was years and years ago. I am not given much to sentimentalities, but the face of that child set my heart beating. I looked far down the years and saw in a pretty English rose gar- den a beautiful, blue-eyed, rosy- cheeked English girl, with a handsome fellow by her side, and I, merely an eavesdropper, went away in bitterness, and from that day forward I have kept my distance from garden party hats and trailing gowns of fair, unmarried women. But, as I looked down the years to that one face, I felt it to be a fading picture, replaced by the vivid face of this tiny six year old. I was astonished.
Occasionally new persons entered the 'bus. The little girl, tactfully and without ostentation, tucked in her lit- tle, thin legs and politely waited until
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the passenger seated himself, then I guess they have gone without me. thrust them straight before her once Oh, dear! I don't know what to do!" more, while again shy eyes watched For a moment I was filled with hot intently the little world around her — indignation towards the stupid "folks" not wistful, not idly curious eyes — but who had gone without her, when I real- glowing, enthusiastic eyes, earnestly, ized how easily that could happen to intensely gathering all the immediate the country bred in the bewilderment good to their owner. I watched her, of the hurrying, pushing city throng, fascinated, hoping the world would At the same time I was rather pleased never change tor her present guileless to be in the role of a hero towards this outlook upon it, and I took to myself particular child.
as cleverly as I could all the smiles "What is your name?" I said, quite
that strayed from that rose-bud mouth, irrelevantly for one in the face of so
The racing of automobiles, unceas- overwhelming a predicament,
ing traffic, clanging cars, and we were "May-Belle. May-Bell Johanns-
on Market street. A few moments sen."
later, and I was delighted to find the "And where were you going, May- family and myself once more assem- Belle?"
bled, all of us bound for the Ferry "To Alameda. My gran-ma died and
Building, and welcomed the opportu- they was going to bury her, and I was
nity of a further study of this charm- going to the funeral. My mother is
ing child, her eyes grown wide with dead, too. She died when I was born,
the city's splendor. On arriving, I lost I live with my Aunt Lura, and my
them in the crowds around the ticket father lives there, too. That was her
office, and being a person of leisurely in the 'bus, and the little girl was my
habits, it was some time before I had cousin Lillian."
purchased my ticket and passed on "Do you know what time the fun- through to the waiting room. As I did eral was to be, May-Belle?" so, I observed that the gates had just "Yes, sir, 11 :45 a. m. I know, 'cause shut on a departing ferry, so I strolled we was late, and father was worried over to the news-stand, selected a and kept looking at his watch all the magazine and prepared to read, when time. I guess that's how they came my glance was involuntarily drawn to leave me behind; they was in such towards the same quaint little child a hurry. I wish't I was like Lillian; who had interested me so in the 'bus, she never gits in trouble — she always standing alone in an attitude of great goes along with the crowd. But me, despair before the fast closed gates. I'm just always in a peck o' trouble."
I went to her assistance at once, "How old are you, May-Belle?"
tipping my hat gallantly, and asking "Me, I'm eight. I guess you are
her if I might be of any service. goin' to say it — everybody does — I'm
"Pardon me, little maid," I said, small for my age. Lillian's big for
"but have your friends left on this hers. My hair's straight and she has
boat?" such pretty curls. I just love 'em. But
A startled look of fear, surprise and I'm pretty fair in school anyways ; I'm
pleased recognition kaleidoscopically ahead of Lillian, only she don't like
played on her face. learnin', and I do. The teacher says
"Oh, sir ! Yes, sir — yes, sir — and I I must keep it up ; she is a fine teacher
should be there, too — what will I do? and she is real interested in me. I'm
You see, we was listening to that glad, because I just think a heap o'
music over there (indicating the musi- her, and no one else bothers about me
cal horror, which with the latest rag- much. My aunt can only see Lillian,
time cheers the waiting crowd) and and says all the time I'd ought to be
then them gates opened and there plad to be here on this earth at all.
were so many people and I got pushed They never did think thev'd raise me
about and couldn't find my folks, and up, she says; seems like I was such a
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167
delicate baby. My father is always quiet and thinkin'. I guess he thinks about my mother; I do too. I wish't she hadn't died; my aunt's alright — but you know it ain't like a mother."
I listened gravely, inwardly moved by the commonplace little history, yet drinking in the quaint, trustful little face upturned to mine, rather more than the actual words. I was also making mental calculations as to what best to do in a case like this. I could, of course, call up the police and re- linquish the child to their care. In any case I knew very well it was the proper thing to do ; but since Fate had driven the child into my hands, I felt no inclination to give her up so swiftly. I wanted first to see the light of truly childlike enjoyment dawn in that little face from a full measure of delight of my own planning, as I felt quite cer- tain the child was on my hands for some hours to come.
"Where did you hail from to-day? Where is your home?"
"We live at the lodge at the Crock- etts down to Homestead, the other side of San Mateo. They're awful rich folks. My father and my uncle works for them, and my aunt does some washing and helps up at the great house when they have extra com- pany. The young lady, she's grand, though. She dresses lovely; I like to look at her. Sometimes I wish I was like that, but when I get thinkin' 'bout that there story of Cinderella in my readin' book, it seems to me I might be like that some day."
"And so you might," I said heartily. "And anyways we will have an ad- venture now; I never go any place, May-Belle, without an adventure, so we will have to share this. You see, my child, you can't reach your people now, nor they you — not for several hours at least. At all events," I added to myself, "at all events a funeral is not a very cheerful place to take a child like you. Come along with me, if you are not afraid, and we will have a fine lunch together, and afterwards go out to the park. Will you like that?"
"Oh, yes, sir — I will, sir. I ain't never been to them places, but I'd like to go. I liked you back there in the 'bus ; you had a nice gentlemanly look like some of them visitors at the great nouse. But, oh dear! What will my folks say — what will they do when they find I ain't along! Oh, dear! Oh, dear! My father will be more worried than ever and my Aunt Lura will say : 'What can you expect of May-Belle,' and it just makes me sick to think I didn't stick by them. If I get awful punished it will serve me right. What if I hadn't found you ! I never thought of that. I wasn't so scared and all be- fore, but when I think o' that, if I hadn't found you I'd be here all alone" — and the awfulness of that situation overcame her. She put her hands up to her eyes and the coalscuttle bonnet shook with the stress of her sobs.
"Come, come now, child. You are in good hands; I'll see after you al- right. We'll fix it up with your folks. Come, dry your eyes and we'll have a nice holiday. I am a school-teacher, but I am not busy to-day, so I'll take you all around with me."
By slow progress we had reached a telephone booth, and by slow pro- giess, mentally, I had arrived at two conclusions. One, that the dreary po- lice station was out of the question in my mind for this child of tender years. Two, that I would tell my friend in Berkeley that I couldn't make it for lunch. As I finished telephoning this message a bright idea occurred to me. I seized my morning paper, turned eagerly to the death notices and scanned its columns. There it was: Johanna Elspeth Johannssen, nee Christenssen — etc. from the family home, etc. — Alameda, California. Very well. I turned to the telephone booth and searched Alameda. Oh, blessed cay of efficiency, they had a 'phone! The family had just arrived, but, thrice blessed credulity of country folk, they took me in good faith, seemed agreed May-Belle was in trustworthy hands and made an ap- pointment with me to meet them at half-past five at Fifth and Market
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street, where they would take the 'bus. I hung up the receiver with a sigh of relief, and for the rest abandoned my- self to Fate and the enjoyment of a happy day.
May-Belle and I wandered forth and went to Townsend's for lunch. I scarcely ate, myself, but sat back and enjoyed her enjoyment, and wondered at myself — wanderer, bachelor, half- cynic, half-philosopher — having a regular parental time with my one lit- tle chick, and quite fancying myself in the role of father, although blush- ing to my ears at the thought. For a second time the strange feeling came over me, that something important would grow out of all this, and I won- dered what Fate had in store for me.
I chose Townsend's deliberately, partly because I felt I would scarcely find any one I knew there, at that hour, but chiefly because I felt it would live up to May-Belle's idea of the grand, with its many graceful lights, the bro- caded walls and mahogany woodwork with its piano polish, the glass topped tables and delectable dainties — its bevy of boarding school misses in pretty frocks, its throng of well- dressed shoppers, and I guess I hit it right, judging from one small person's capacity and the dance in her eyes.
Then I bundled my small chick out to Golden Gate Park — and what a day! I was indefatigable, and each new turn of the day met with the same delightful enthusiasm on the part, of May-Belle. I felt like a boy- bought peanuts and popcorn, cornu- copias and molasses candy — held a sticky, tiny hand, blissfully disre- garding the fact that mine would be- come sticky, too; I took off my hat and carried it in my hand, even asked people how old their children were — went to such lengths as to ride on the merry-go-round; rowed her on Stow Lake, fed the animals, took her don- key back. In fact, for one brief day at least I out rivaled the wonders of Cinderella for May-Belle.
But all good things come to an end, alas! and we headed finally for down- town. Every now and again the eager
little face turned to mine, smiling gratefully, and I returned the look with one of perfect understanding. By and by the eager eyes grew dreamy, and saw the city, that had earlier been so enthralling, through a mist. When the stalwart conductor bawled out "Fifth and Market" it was a sleeping child that I gathered tenderly into my arms, and many thoughts came and went as I strode that short quarter of a block through the home going throngs. The family was easily found gathered at the corner, peering anx- iously up and down the street, and they soon caught sight of me. There v/as an onslaught and a babel of voices — but the tired child slept on.
"Come now," I said, "let me ex- plain. Don't scold her, the poor child has had a lovely day. She is a dear little thing, and she is very tired. It was merely a question of getting lost; she is sorry, so don't reproach her. We were children once ourselves, you know. We've had a wonderful day to- gether and it has done me no end of good. I envy you, sir; should like to have a daughter myself — but come, now — your 'bus is starting, and re- member, you are not to scold her. No, no, don't wake her, she has thanked me sufficiently as it is, more than enough. Good-bye — and tell May- Belle I shall be down to see her soon. Good-bye, sir. Oh, no, that is alright, sir — ch, no, sir, I thank you for your trust in me — no that is alright, sir — good-bye!"
I hied me forlornly back to my boarding house. For the first time in my life I was thoroughly sorry I was a bachelor; sorry no sweet-faced, sweet-voiced wife met me at the door, that no child of mine ran to greet me, to throw its little arms about my neck. I slung my hat up on the elks-horn in the hall and went disconsolately into the dining room. Same old China boy waiting on the table, same old white- haired ladies sitting at the table gab- bling over some stupidity — same little music teacher directly across the way with her crown of chestnut braids, her erect figure and merry face. The
REVERBERATION.
169
same ? But no — over my plate of soup I gazed into the eyes of the music teacher, and good heavens! they were grey-green and like May-Belle's, only larger and sweeter and graver and more worldly and more beautiful. I felt very oddly. I had known the lit- tle music teacher a long time, a very long time; we were sort of pals; I had never looked for her, never missed her — just kind of taken her for granted. But, good Lord ! I knew now — I loved her!
Once more I looked back across the years, to the face that had been mir- rored in my heart so long, and in com- parison to the face before me, it was little better than a soap advertise- ment or an expensive valentine, nor held it the vivid face of the little May- Belle. It was outrivaled entirely, completely by the little music teacher across the table!
When she left the dining room with great dignity after the constrained silence that must have followed my revelation of feeling, I went in hot pursuit and found her at the piano playing softly in the dusk in the big best parlor.
"Violet— Violet Richards— I love you," catching both of her hands in mine.
"And you — George Cedric — I love you, too."
"Since when," I gasped.
"Oh, forever and ever," she said, whimsically, and you "
"I think I have loved you always, but to-day I found a little child ; there was something about her, it just got me! And when I looked at you this evening, you held me with her eyes — only lovelier, Violet — far lovelier," and I sighed in utter content.
"Fancy you — a confirmed old bache- lor— making love!" and Violet broke down and laughed. Then she reached up her arms, pulled me down to her, kissed me and whispered something in my ear.
"I saw you — at Townsend's — and I trailed you — to Golden Gate Park. I was almost jealous, but I'm not — any more."
"At Townsend's — you! At Golden
Gate Park— you! Well, I'll be !
Never mind! I'll never go on an ad- venture again without you — my Vio- let!"
REVERBERATION
At nightfall when a-down the west the sun is gone, And gold-tipped clouds alone diffuse the mellow light, My thoughts like night moths wafted on the evening winds Flit through the shadows deep, and love, to you take flight.
Then in the enchantment of the silent night and hour, When through the leaves above, the glistening moonbeams fall, I seem for one brief moment to behold your face And in the mystery of the silence hear you call.
Your voice renews again the full song of the thrush, The vanished glories of the day, the sunset skies, And all the sweetness of the long-sped hours that were, I sense again deep in the heaven of your eyes.
R. R. Greenwood.
(Marble statue by Evelyn Beatrice Longman in the colon- nade in front of the Fine Arts Building at the P. P. I. E. Won silver medal.)
L'Amour
By Stanton Elliott
The love in my heart is the spirit of truth, The voice of the song you inspire, Eternity's sigh for eternity's youth, The symbol of life in desire.
The love in my heart is the breath of the morn, The joy of the springtide of love, The kiss of the dew and the spell in the dawn With the depth in the heavens above.
Pathfinders of '49
By Mrs. Alfred Irby
IN 1849, at the beginning of the gold fever, a party of three hundred persons organized at San Antonio, Texas, for the purpose of making the first overland trip from Texas to California.
When about one hundred miles on their way, cholera broke out in camp, general dissatisfaction and dissension arose, and the company disbanded.
Out of this number twelve young men determined to make the trip alone — and Benjamin F. Irby, who, when only twenty years of age, had served as captain in a regiment of volunteers in the Mexican War of 1846-8, was chosen leader of the expedition. Cap- tain Irby, his two brothers, William and Charles, and nine other compan- ions, with three four-mule teams, be- gan this long journey of thirteen months' duration.
It was a most venturesome and per- ilous undertaking. How hazardous they themselves did not realize until after it was finished. Few in numbers, the country over which they traveled was practically unknown and uninhab- ited, except by Indians, most of whom were unfriendly. Their equipment was limited, and provisions for them- selves and feed for their teams, diffi- cult to obtain; great scarcity of water, owing to many desert places, and they not knowing, like the natives, to dig cnly a few inches below the surface would procure them all that was needed. Many mountainous regions, too, swerved them from a direct course — and having no guide, save a com- pass, they often lost their way or were forced to rest their teams for days. They were able to travel only a few miles each day, and the hardships and privations were so many and complex
that they must have turned back, ex- cept for their own undaunted courage and intrepid spirit.
The route taken by Captain Irby led them via the old San Saba mission, the head of Devil's river, across the Pecos at Horsehead crossing (so named by them because of a horse's head found there) , through Fort Stock- ton to El Paso. Passing over one cor- ner of New Mexico, they entered Ari- zona. Then traveling northwest, they crossed the Gila river, through Ari- zona over the Colorado river, into California. There they headed for Stockton, their destination.
The route they took through Califor- nia is almost identically the one fol- lowed by the Santa Fe railroad to-day, except that they crossed the Stanislaus river at the old Dent- Valentine ferry.
A little dog made the entire trip with them. Disappearing through the day, she always came into camp some- time in the night, for she was there every morning when they arose. She must have traveled after sunset, and rested during the heat of the day.
The first incident of particular inter- est occurred when the party reached the Pecos river. Finding high water, they were delayed by corking their wagon beds for carrying their equip- ment and running gear. While thus busily engaged, Yuma Indians in great numbers came down the river, floating with blocks of wood under their chins. After floating the wagons over and swimming their teams, the white men found themselves surrounded by some thousand or fifteen hundred of these Indians, who seemed disposed to re- fuse them further advance in their ter- ritory.
Captain Irby, knowing from experi-
172
OVERLAND MONTHLY
ence the disposition of the Indians and the latter's inherent love for liquor and its pernicious effect upon the abori- gine, had ordered at the beginning of the expedition that there should be absolutely no traffic in liquor while en route.
It happened that a Scotchman, by the name of Burns, admiring a little black pony belonging to one of the Indians, offered him a pint of whiskey for the animal. The trade was made quickly. The Indian strapped the whis- key on himself and handed over the pony to Burns. But the Scotchman happening to turn his head, the Indian quick as a flash mounted the pony and off he went — pony, whiskey and all — amid the shoutings and laughter of the Indians.
The indignation of Captain Irby, at such disobedience of orders, and his alarm, because of troubles that might ensue, were so extreme, that Burns barely escaped being shot.
After holding the party as tentative prisoners for three or four days, and annoying them in various ways, the Indians finally constructed a wall of chaparral brush around the camp. This wall remained intact for twenty-four hours. Then William Irby ordered camp broken, and the teams harnessed. The white men deliberately shoved aside sufficient brush for the wagons to pass. Whether this action aroused the fear of the Indians, or their admi- ration for the white man's courage, Irby never knew, but surprising as it was, the party was allowed to depart.
A pleasant break in the hot, tire- some journey was their stay at Fort Stockton, Tex., where they rested and refreshed themselves and their teams for several days. Many times before reaching Fort Stockton, and after leaving, they almost perished from thirst. When the heat was excessive and the water supply low, Captain Irby, with two or three volunteers, would travel in advance of the wagons to locate water and also suitable places for camping. One day they discov- ered a small seepe spring, and having hollowed out a cavity in the sand large
enough to form quite a pool, Captain Irby sent the others back as guides. While sitting there alone, a famished wolf came to the spring and drank feverishly. If the animal ever no- ticed his presence it gave no sign, but after resting a few moments, loped away.
On one occasion, when no water could be found and the tongues of some of the party were swollen out of their mouths, this same search party, though almost hopeless, set out again.
After searching for hours they at last came to a small but most beauti- ful stream, with willow trees, grass and rushes growing on the banks. Gratefully drinking all they dared, some of them hastened back to carry the good news. Before they had gone half way, they met the teams running toward them. The horses and mules had become unmanageable from scent- ing the water, and the drivers were obliged to unharness and let run to the water. Upon reaching the stream, the mules seemed beside themselves with excitement; plunging into the water they drank and rolled over and over. Soon they were driven back to the wagons and those who had been so prostrated, but were now revived from the full canteens of the rescue party. The party camped in this oasis in the desert until their strength and spirits were fully recovered.
That evening, when their first meal was almost ready, an old Indian and two young bucks suddenly appeared in the camp. This caused some little excitement, and the discussion was lively as to whether they were friendly or advance spies of some marauding band. Captain Irby advised that a friendly reception be given them. Ac- cordingly the Indians were invited to supper. At bed time they were given two pairs of the best Mexican blankets for beds. No guard was placed for the night, but all retired and slept un- til daylight. On arising, the white men found their guests still soundly sleeping.
After an hour or more, when break- fast was ready, the Indians were
PATHFINDERS OF '49. 173
aroused and invited to eat. Breakfast the attention of the others, over, they sat around smoking their After supper the party began an ex- pipes, the Indians seemingly partaking amination of the old mission. They of it all with quiet enjoyment. Soon found the door still intact, as though they arose, grunted and disappeared, it had not been disturbed for centuries. They did not "fold their tents, like the At last the fastenings gave way and Arabs," but they as silently stole the rays of the Western sun flooded away. Evidently they were lost, tired through the open door, and they be- and hungry and came to receive aid. held, seated at table, Christ and His
Just before reaching the Gila river twelve apostles, partaking of The Last in Arizona, the party was unquestion- Supper. It was a most awe-inspiring ably spied upon by Indian scouts, sight. Reverently raising their hats Later they were met by three or four they bowed their" heads. These fig- hundred mounted Indians. The chief ures were only statuary, left by the dismounting, gave each man a hand- Jesuit missionaries, but the impression shake of welcome, placed an escort on they made upon these young men was either side of the wagons, formed in never eradicated, double file, himself and sub-chief rid- One day, when the party was spent ing at the head. In this manner they and discouraged from having been conducted the white men in great state forced out of their way by the trend to their village in the valley of the of the country for miles, a number of Gila river, where they were given good Indians galloped up and made them- camping grounds and every courtesy selves very obnoxious. The man, driv- paid them. ing the lead team, became so infuri-
These Indians were semi-civilized, ated at one of the Indians bent on having a pleasant village, large flocks frightening the mules in order to over- of sheep and goats, and irrigated farms turn the wagon, that he shot him. The on which they raised fine barley and party expected to be massacred in- other products. Thanks to the teach- stantly, but the Indians apparently ing of the Jesuits, speaking Spanish feared a fight, and disappeared, fairly well. Several days later the members
The young Indians were continually reached that wonder land, the Grand
at the camp, talking, laughing and beg- Canyon of the Colorado. No one in
ging the men to play "Monte" — a fav- the company had ever heard of this
orite gambling game among the In- marvel of nature, and they traveled
dians, learned from the Mexicans. down its long stretch for miles and
The party remained in the village miles without knowing what it was or
two weeks, recuperating and laying in where they were. Going around a
a supply of mutton and kid for them- bend in the Canyon, late one afternoon,
selves and barley for their teams. an Indian suddenly sprang from be-
In this locality they first saw the hind a rock, shooting and mortally
Gila monster, which seems to be in- wounding the man, who more than a
digenous to this valley. Never having week before had killed the Indian. No
heard of it, they called it the dry-land one else was harmed,
alligator. At last the leaders discovered a
In this desert portion of Arizona crossing on the Colorado river, and
they were again threatened with water passed over into California. A tedi-
scarcity, and again sent advance scouts ous journey was yet before them, but
tc locate water ahead. Captain Irby one not fraught with quite so many un-
was one of three. After wandering forseen dangers.
in a westerly direction, they came to The first white women they saw af- ar old mission, where water was plen- ter leaving El Paso, Texas, were at a tiful. Hastily constructing a make- hacienda some fifty or sixty miles shift ladder, the scouts climbed to the • south of Stockton, California. Captain belfry and rang the old bell to attract Irby had gone to this hacienda to con-
174
OVERLAND MONTHLY
suit the old Don regarding the route to take, and while discussing the mat- ter he heard hearty laughter. Turning suddenly, he saw two Spanish girls looking at him through the barred win- dows, seemingly very much amused. He must have presented a somewhat ludicrous appearance, being hot, tired and dusty, with hair unkempt and beard reaching almost to his waist. Not one of the young men had shaved since leaving San Antonio.
When the party reached Stockton, they were practically worn out. Being young and enthusiastic, however, they quickly recuperated, and plunged with zest into their new surroundings in en- deavors to make their fortunes in the new Eldorado.
The Irby brothers remained in Cali- fornia four years ; then the longing for home overcame them, and they re- turned. Taking boat at San Francisco they landed at the city of Panama on the Pacific Coast of the Isthmus.
The morning after reaching Panama, hundreds of mules were drawn up be- fore the hotel, to furnish the miners the only means of transportation across the Isthmus.
The price which they demanded was so exorbitant that many made the jour- ney on foot over the trail through the
tropical forest to Colon on the Atlantic Ocean, some fifty miles.
Captain Irby and his brothers de- ciding that they had endured enough hardships, accepted the prices charged for the mules, and set off. On the way they overtook, at intervals, the weary and footsore travelers sitting by the wayside, regretting they had not paid the price for the services of the extra mules the muleteers had been clever enough to bring along.
After reaching Aspinwall, now called Colon, on the Atlantic Coast, they took boat via Havana to New Orleans, where all the gold they brought back with them was coined. Then on to Texas !
Captain Ben and Charles Irby mar- ried soon after, both raising families; but William, on his return, finding that during his absence his sweetheart had married, remained a bachelor.
The old rifle, pistol and compass that Captain Irby carried on this expedition are still carefully preserved as precious relics by the family.
The three Irby brothers were part- ners as long as they lived, and it was the delight of many to listen to their tales of Western adventures and other interesting experiences recounted by these early pioneers of the West.
THE SUPREME TRAGEDY
No maiming, no dark crime, no misery
Is final, irrecoverable Loss;
Not even Death, crowned by black plumes a-toss,
May claim the fatal name of Tragedy.
What frightens flesh, and bends th' defiant knee,
May be a Savior's shadow — not the Cross —
His arms outstretched, that when the failing dross
Fails utterly, the Spirit, caught, is free.
But one thing, absolute and isolate,
Impersonal as law, more merciless
Than barbarous hordes, mad and insatiate —
This thing's the Vacuum of the storm-and-stress,
When, matter-ridden, blind, beyond all plea,
The Soul denies its own reality.
Arthur Powell.
Via the Straits of /Magellan
By James W. Milne (Being an Account of a Voyage Taken by the Writer on a Tramp Steamer)
NOW that the Panama Canal is an accomplished fact, and trade routes are rapidly changing to readjust themselves to the new lanes which will be established when the Great Waterway has been fully put into operation, many picturesque and romantic byways of travel will be abandoned, to the regret of only a few perhaps of the hosts of people who go down to the sea in ships. One of these byways to sink into oblivion will be the route from the West Coast of the American Continent through the Straits of Magellan — across the Atlantic to Europe.
And although I am heartily glad that the Canal is finished, having had the extreme honor to have participated in its fulfillment, even though in a small way, I am also saddened at the thought that this spot on the world's surface will be practically devoid of ship- ping in a short time.
The substance and object of this ar- ticle is to recall as near as possible the adventures which befell me on a trip through these bleak, desolate, but wholly alluring and fascinating re- gions.
En avant — I was only a young fellow at the time, but I had circumnavigated the globe once already, and had in a great measure satisfied the wanderlust which had started me out on a long, long voyage — to ports unknown a year before.
I had left an English windjammer in Portland, Ore., and after several months of work ashore, none of which had been to my fancy, I again began to feel the gnawings of desire to see again the haunts of my childhood — to
wit, the fisherfolk and schooners of Long Wharf, in Boston.
So when the chance came to ship be- fore the mast in an American tramp steamer bound round to New York, you, my gentle reader, can readily judge that I was not long in getting my dunnage, which in sailor's parlance means clothing, on board.
This ship was one of the few fly- ing the Stars and Stripes engaged in foreign trade on the Pacific Coast. She had been under charter to a Seattle firm, and upon the expiration of the said charter, her owners had fixed a cargo of wheat and barley for New York for her, hence the voyage I shall endeavor to narrate.
I am not much of a story writer, but will crave the reader's indulgence, and will endeavor to tell my tale in as clear language as is at my command. We left Portland late in November, when the weather had begun to get nasty and wet, and loaded to the hatches and deep in the water we started down the Columbia and to sea.
Arriving at Astoria, we found that a gale had been blowing for the best part of a week from the southwest, so we had perforce to wait until the bar had somewhat abated before starting to sea. As it was, we bumped her rather heavily in the passage over, and had trouble later — but I am getting ahead of my tale.
Astoria lies some five or six miles from the bar on the northern bank of the river: built on piling for the first two or three blocks, the town runs along the bottom of a steep hill, and as development can be made in one direc- tion only, lengthwise, Astoria is conse-
176 OVERLAND MONTHLY
quently rather stretched, if I may be sea, with good food and regular hours
permitted to use such a term. and lots ot hard work will do wonders
A strong tide runs in and out of the — so we had quite a creditable looking
mouth ot the river, making the bar at lot of fellows on board when we tied
low water no nice piece to negotiate. her up in New York.
On the south side the government We got to sea after a period of wait- has erected at enormous cost a jetty ing, and started on the long grind extending seven miles out to sea, and down through the two Pacifies, seeing as strongly as it is built, it is constant- no ships and sighting no land, we ly being washed away by the fury of seemed truly to be the only living the winter gales. Ships have to wait things upon that wide waste of waters, three and four days at a time, and Things settle themselves down notwithstanding the precautions taken quickly to routine duty on a ship of many a brave ship is bleaching her this kind; the men do their alloted bones on the lonely coast to the south- tasks and seek the poor comfort of ward of Cape Disappointment. their bunks as soon as they can get
Right here while we are waiting for away from the vigilant eye of the bo- weather conditions to change so that sun; and so not having anything in we can get to sea, perhaps it would not common with any of them, I spent be out of place to make some mention most of my spare time up on deck. I of my shipmates, these men who would reveled in the ever changing scene ; I have to stand for another's whims and loved the low, dark clouds, the sharp, fancies in the close confinement of cold wind and the dumb, grey seas of shipboard for close on three months, the northern latitudes, leaving them November is always a hard time to get with a regret which quickly turned into real sailors in Portland and Puget joy as she moved along into the high, Sound ports. The weather is too se- blue heavens, fleecy white clouds, and vere to permit the beachcomber to lin- strong, warm trade winds of the trop- ger long; the fishermen had all out- ics.
fitted and left for the north, so we had There was always something of in-
a very nondescript gathering on board, terest to me, a lonely sea-gull, perhaps,
made up principally of recruits from would keep company with us for a lit-
the farms and hop fields, with a tie while, seeming to make no effort to
sprinkling of the city tough and wharf keep up with the ship, and keeping al-
rat. Truthfully, besides myself and ways a watchful eye on the galley door
the bosun there were only two men on for such scraps as might happen along
our side who knew how to steer, while his way.
on the engineroom side, or the black Or at night, perhaps, when I would
squad, as it is sometimes picturesquely relieve the wheel at two o'clock for
called, there was a still greater de- two hours, a sense of my own small-
ficiency of capable men. A stunted ness would come to me as I turned the
Irishman who had grown up in a tramp wheel and watched that the ship kept
steamer engineroom, and a big Swede on the alloted course on the shaded
with socialistic tendencies, which he compass.
was not a bit careful to conceal, One is practically alone with the
formed the piece de resistance of the world, the officer of the watch is away
material supplied by the shipping mas- up in the corner of the bridge, coming
ter of Portland to take this valuable occasionally to peer into the compass
piece of property to New York. to see whether she is being kept on her
Dirty and ragged for the most part, course, and then relapsing into semi-
their bodies undermined by long spells obscurity again. After a while, when
of wrong living, poor food and bad one gets used to the way the ship is
whisky, we had a great time getting steering and constant watching is not
these dregs of humanity's cup into pre- necessary, one looks out ahead over
sentable shape. But a few weeks at the top of the binnacle and the horizon
VIA THE STRAITS OF MAGELLAN
177
seems many, many miles away; all around is the same sense of untold dis- tances, the ship is only a wierd, jum- bled mass, and perhaps you can make out the dim figure of your partner in this graveyard watch pacing back and forward on the forecastle head, keep- ing a look out; the roar of the water at the forefoot comes to you strangely quieted through the night, and the noises from the engine room skylight behind you only accentuate the other, greater stillness around you. Oh, yes, I have experienced the wonders of a tropical night, and such magic exists nowhere else in the world.
The long run down was not without its exciting moments, the mate and second mate got into an argument when the ship had gotten well into the tropics. Sleeping in the rooms alloted to the second and third officers was not very comfortable on account of their size and location so near the en- gine room, so the second mate had procured enough canvas and small stuff from the bosun to make a ham- mock. The mate did not know any- thing about this until the second had completed his task and was reposing peacefully in his hammock one morn- ing when the mate happened along on his inspection. Then the fireworks went off in good shape. The mate woke the sleeping officer up, and start- ed to read the second a long lesson up- on the subject of willful waste making woful want, to which the second lis- tened with due attention until the mate got a little too acid in his remarks, or said something about Mac's forefathers or something; anyhow, he threw six feet of outraged Scot at the mate's head, and in a little less than a minute the mate had a beautiful black eye and had called all bets off and retired to the seclusion of his own room to rumi- nate upon the uncertainties of a sea- man's life.
Such little differences, and a grow- ing discontent started forward by the big Swede fireman about the food we were getting, helped to pass the time for us until one morning at eight bells (eight o'clock), the man coming from
the wheel reported that the course had been changed several degrees to the eastward. That could mean only one thing, of course, that we were getting close to our first coaling station at Cor- onel in Southern Chile.
And sure enough, during the middle watch the lookout saw a light ahead. The captain was called and he ordered slow speed until daylight. When day came it found us off the open road- stead of the most southerly town on the west coast of South America.
We were very soon anchored, and after breakfast we moved to another part of the bay and made fast to a buoy.
Coronel is like every other Latin- American city, long, low, red roofed houses, with cracked white plaster walls, form the main plan of the city, relieved here and there by a more pre- tentious brick or concrete building. Narrow streets with foolish little side- walks where two people can scarcely pass each other, and the inevitable plaza and cathedral.
There are many consulates here, — practically every nation in the world that has any foreign trade at all main- tains a consulate, and the effect of the different flags flying always tends to make the general appearance of this obscure town one of perpetual fes- tivity.
The inhabitants for the most part work at the wharf or in the mines, get- ting the coal out for the ships, while a few work in the nitre pits a few miles to the south of the town.
The men are small in stature and wear cheap cotton garments, and the women the inevitable mantilla of black material.
There were a number of ships in the anchorage, all busily engaged in tak- ing on coal to pursue their way on the last leg of their long journeys from Europe to Australia, Japan and some to California and the nitre ports of Chile.
One little adventure befell me while ashore at Coronel which may be of in- terest to the reader, and that was my stay over-night in the city quartel, or
178 OVERLAND MONTHLY
jail. I had gone ashore right after dollars to the Chief of Police if we did
dinner, and alter rambling about for a not want to spend the rest of our days
few hours I had exhausted my inter- far away from our native heath,
est in the place, and was just contem- We slipped the buoy that same
plating a return to the ship, when on evening just as a blood red sun was
turning a corner of a side street I ran dipping into the western sea, and
into a few of my shipmates just com- started out to make a short passage to
ing out of a cantina, or saloon. the Straits, but we soon found that
They naturally insisted that I go Dame Nature was going to take a hand
with them, and any one who under- in the game, and early, too, for that
stands the freemasonry of the sea same night we suddenly found our-
knows that it is the biggest insult that selves in a smother of foam with the
one could offer a sailor — to refuse to wind undecided as to what quarter to
drink with him. So I went along to come from, and settling down into a
the next cantina, where there were a real blow from the Southwest,
few more of our fellows engaged in a To one who has never experienced a
lively altercation with some men from real gale of wind at sea, the experience
a British tramp called the "Fitzpat- is terrible; the great seas that seem to
rick." come up from nowhere threaten to en-
They were arguing over the question gulf the ship entirely, and as the new
that is so near to the hearts of all peo- recruit watches her bury her whole
pie who have red blood in their veins, head and forepart into a green sea, he
and that was the disappearance of our is absolutely sure that she will never
flag from the seas of commerce. The emerge from it again, but continue
argument grew stronger as the wine headlong to the bottom of the sea.
took possession of their minds, and For three days she bucked this wind
soon all hands were mixed up in as and sea, taking great combers over the
bad a rough and tumble as it has ever bows and hurling them against the
been my lot to witness. We didn't deckhouse with incredible force,
fight very long, however. The canti- The evening of the fourth day, when
nero ran out into the street blowing a the wind had abated somewhat and
whistle, and very soon it seemed that the sea was not breaking so heavily,
the whole police force of Coronel was we carried the steering gear away, and
advancing upon that cantina on a dead as the ship fell into the trough of the
run. They stopped the racket and sea, she shipped one of those long
marched us off to the quartel. We green quiet seas over the whole length
were booked on a sweeping charge of ol her.
disturbing the peace and then thrown After she emerged from under the
into a small cell in the rear of the tons of water which fell on deck, we
building. saw that she did not look the same;
There were seven of us and about two boats had gone from the lee side,
ten on the other side, and we were all and a lot of the railing and every mov-
herded into the one cell, which was able thing on deck had been swept
about ten or twelve feet square. One overboard. We had the steering gear
does not have to have a very vivid im- rigged in a hurry, and proceeded under
agination to realize what the state of half speed for the rest of that day and
that cell was the next morning when night. Just as day was breaking, we
we saw the kindly face of our skipper saw the coastline ahead making in
at the grating in the door. He gave us places where the murk was not too
a lecture upon the evident result of thick, and soon right ahead we sighted
over-indulgence in the wine (and es- the lonely pile of black rock which is
pecially the brand Coronel) when it called Cape Pillow on the charts, and
was running too redly, ending up with v/hich marks the western entrance to
the consoling news that we would have the straits themselves,
to sign over ten of our hard earned We changed course a little to pass
VIA THE STRAITS OF MAGELLAN
179
close, for there is plenty of water, to get a good slant at the entrance, some two miles distant. As soon as we passed the rock, we began to look for the opening, but even my practiced eye could not discern anything which looked like a break in the high, rugged coastline ahead, big enough to admit us, and many questioning glances were cast toward the bridge, where the cap- tain was standing close to the man at the wheel, but as he had been through the straits before, we had confidence. Our patience was at last rewarded, for when it seemed that the ship was doomed to almost certain destruction, and we were beginning to draw away from the bows in anticipation of the shock, we heard the order passed to the helmsman, loud and clear, "Hard- a-port." We turned to look forward again, and saw that we were swinging to the right and into a gorge which we couldn't see before. As we passed into the opening, still rolling heavily, the roar of water at our bows was echoed back from the high walls till it became almost deafening.
Soon the order came to steady helm, and the ship stopped her wild swing and with one final roll deep down one side, and then the other, which seemed to be almost like a sigh of relief, she settled down to the business of getting through the straits.
We found ourselves in a narrow channel perhaps one hundred yards wide, with high black rocks on either side rising almost perpendicularly to a height considerably higher than the mastheads, blue-black water under- neath, no vegetation whatever, and the silence of centuries of death hanging over all like a pall ; only a great white albatross, sailing close to the water on his slender pinions and seeming to fit in with the general scheme of utter aloofness and solitude.
The channel does not stay straight foi long, and soon we were steering round all sorts of little points, open- ing up new gorges, going right up to the solid rock wall until only a few feet seemed to separate us, when the same old command to the helmsman,
the same old answer and the same old sv/ing would take us out into another little stretch of clear water.
There is a part of the straits called the Narrows, which, if not passed be- fore dark, is not attempted that day; ships anchor a few miles to the west- ward of it and wait. The channel is too crooked, the current is too strong and tricky for any one to try to nego- tiate without plenty of light. There was quite a lot of conjecture onboard as to whether we would have to wait or not, but we had the longest day in the whole year, and the current with us, so we got the best of old Father Time by a small margin and did not have to stop.
After leaving the Narrows, the to- pography of the country gradually as- sumes a less severe appearance. The high, cold looking, rock-bound cliffs give place to low-lying sandspits and small islands.
I did not stay on deck during the whole thirty hours of the run through the Straits, but sought the cold com- fort of my bunk, after the two main objects of interest were past, namely, the Narrows and Smith's Glacier.
This magnificent green wall of ice, which we saw stretching for miles away into the interior on our port hand started from the water's edge in a sort of ravine, which it completely filled, was about two miles long where it started, getting thinner as it extended back into the hills like a gigantic snake, is the most impressive bit of scenery along the waterway, and one which lasts longest in the memory.
Another thing that attracted my at- tention was the great echoing qualities of the more narrow passes. The roar of the water at the forefoot was at times almost deafening, and when we saluted a passing German steamer bound to the Pacific, our whistle sounded like a thousand cannons turned loose in a church.
When I got my call at a quarter to six I lost no time turning out. I had to relieve the wheel promptly at six, and I wanted to have a look around first. To my surprise, I found an en-
180
OVERLAND MONTHLY
thely different world to the one I had left on going below at one o'clock. High, dark, forbidding rocks had dis- appeared, and we were proceeding along in smooth blue waters with an occasional island and knoll ahead.
About seven bells (seven-thirty) we saw the red roofs and white walls of Punta Arenas, the most southerly town on the face of the globe. We did not linger long, only to take on a pilot and to display our name and number so that a cable advice could be sent to our owners of our safe arrival. In those days the wireless had not be- come the living thing it now is, and ship captains took advantage of every chance to acquaint their owners with their whereabouts.
The pilot's name was Macintosh, and he talked with a burr; he also had a splendidly developed taste for whis- key, so he informed the skipper. He took us the rest of the way to the blue Atlantic and open water, leaving us a little way past the Virgin Islands.
I said farewell to that land of soli- tude and death with mixed feelings of regret and gladness; perhaps I would have been more sorry had I known that in all probability I would never see it again, for at the time of this writing the completion of the Canal was a matter of very hazy calculation, and known to only a few.
The rest of the voyage was without incident worth recording. We passed the fleet on its long way around the world, and dipped our ensign to the flagship, the last American ship that they encountered perhaps in all the miles they traveled till they got into home waters again.
We called at Monte Video on the River Plate, as it is called in this country, for coal, but we did not lin- ger long enough to permit of a repeti- tion of the Coronel affair, however, And also at St. Lucia, an island in the windward groupe of the West Indies. Only a few hours sufficed to give us enough coal to get to New York; the husky native women, carrying baskets weighing a hundred pounds, can fill a ship's bunkers in short order.
Only eleven days more and the long voyage would be over. We began to get out our shore clothesi which had lain in the bottom of our sea bags, for Jack forgets, when he gets to sea, that he will some day have to wear them again. And sadly in need of an airing were the majority of the outfits. Gradually the weather got colder; those who had been on the East Coast before began to look for the change of water when the ship should be in the Gulf Stream, and then bets as to the probable day of arrival, the hour even, were made. Then came the night when we saw the loom of the lights of Brooklyn, and early we were awak- ened by the roar of the anchor down the hawsepipe, and we found ourselves safely anchored inside Sandy Hook lightship, but with a thick fog com- pletely shutting out all the shore.
Along toward noon the fog lifted a little, a pilot came aboard, and we started to heave up the anchor; we were busy doing this when of a sud- den we heard the boom of a heavy whistle directly ahead, and immedi ately afterwards we saw the ship it- self, the Lusitania, bearing down on us. Quickly the third officer jumped to the whistle; at the sound of our whistle the big ship seemed to hesi- tate and then slowly change her course and disappear into the fog in the direction of the Ambrose Channel.
We followed her up a little later, stopping at the Statue to get orders from a noisy little towboat to proceed to Erie Basin and tie up at Long Wharf. With much maneuvering we at last got her alongside and tied up, and the voyage was over at last.
I have wandered on some more and have been in some other queer places in the out of the way parts of the world, but will never forget the fasci- nation of those leagues of death and desolation; and I will always be very grateful to a kind Providence which has once in my allotted space allowed me to experience and see the grim solitude and, too, the greatness of the forces of nature as they are set forth in the Straits of Magellan.
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"THE TRUTH ABOUT THE BIBLE"
"The Truth About the Bible," introductory price, $2. "Sexology of the Bible," $1.25. "Why Jesus was a Man and not a Woman," $1.50. "Will Empty Our Insane Asylums, Jails and Hospitals," John M. Powell, M. D., Ex- President Hospital Medical College, Atlanta, Georgia. "They Mean a Better Race," W. A. Swan, M. D., Professor of Anatomy, Kansas City. Missouri. "The Sex Idea of these Books, Make them the World's Greatest Books," E. B. Ramsey, M. D. These books deal with the cause of insanity, crime and diseases of the race from the viewpoint of the sex of the Bible, and give the remedy. They are serious and clean. Address the Author, Sidney C. Tapp. Ph. B. Box 710, Kansas City, Missouri, Department H.
In the Realm of Bookland
"Years of My Youth," by William D. Howells.
Out of the fullness of nearly four- score years Mr. Howells essays the autobiographical vein, but not for the first time. He has already permitted us interesting glimpses into portions of his life, as readers of "My Literary Passions" and "Literary Friends and Acquaintance" will pleasurably re- call. Mr. Howells visions his youth through a vista of many years. Born in 1837 at Martin's Ferry, on the shores cf the Ohio River, his youth spanned the critical period antedating the Civil War. These antebellum years were at times often less tense and exciting in the slow gathering of the storm, and echoes of many memorable and now historic events find their place in Mr. Howells's pages. The narrative is given over chiefly to sketching the humble life of the Ohio lad, passing from one town to another, as the family fortunes ebbed or flowed, and as the father's successive newspaper work and newspaper enterprises necessi- tated.
As the years of boyhood are rounded out and manhood begins, we are brought to the verge of the Civil War, and notable names appear in the pages of Mr. Howell's record. One of the literary tasks attempted at this time was a campaign life of Lincoln, and one shares with the author the regret that it was not his to make the journey to Springfield, Illinois, to obtain the data for the volume from the young Presidential candidate himself. We have a brief glimpse of Lincoln, how- ever, as Mr. Howells himself briefly glimpsed him — a tall, shadowy figure in the flare of torch-lights haranguing the multitudes during the political campaign. The narrative closes with Mr. Howell's consular appointment to Italy and his leave-taking of America for a season. It is needless to com-
ment upon the author's gracious and finished art. "Years of My Youth" is a delightful volume, a story of life's beginnings told with surpassing skill, and an important contribution to our biographical literature. Harper & Brothers, New York.
Madeleine Z. Doty, author of "So- ciety's Misfits," who has just returned from Germany, gives an even more de- pressing view of living conditions in the Kaiser's empire than does Mr. Swope's "Inside the German Empire." Everywhere she saw signs of acute dis- tress from underfeeding, and reports having witnessed a woman in Ham- burg attempting to sell her baby be- cause she had nothing to eat. Miss Doty says that the sore spot that really festers is that, now the pinch has come, the rich protect themselves at the expense of the poor. There is a shortage only of necessaries; luxur- ies can be had in abundance if one can pay for them ; and so it is that the well-to-do scarcely suffer at all. For example, while meat is extremely scarce, chickens, ducks and birds are not counted as meat at all. The only difficulty is to be able to pay for them. Those who can pay are scarcely touched by the food shortage, which, according to Miss Doty, is pressing the rest of the population down to the star- vation point.
"The Shining Adventure," by Dana Burnet.
The over-active imagination of a boy of eight, left too much to his own de- vices, is the motive power behind Dana Burnet's new novel. The King, as the hero is called throughout, is the son of a socialist who has been shot hi a strike riot. Miss Philomena Van Zandt, a patrician lady, has adopted him and placed him in a window to be a king — but she forgets to provide him
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with a kingdom. Miss Van Zandt is interested in the uplitt of the poor and is president of the United Charities. The conflict between the King's inborn sccialistic instincts and the restrictions placed upon him by his well-meaning foster-mother in her efforts to make him a "little gentleman" result in his running away. Nearly every normal boy of eight imagines himself a king of some sort. This particular King's ambition is to buy Gramercy Park and to make that exclusive, green little oasis a free breathing-spot to be en- joyed by the children of the slums. And so, in order to accomplish this purpose, he girds his tin sword at his side, gathers the hoarded pennies of years in a bag, and sets forth on the shining adventure.
Published by Harper & Brothers, New York.
"Xingu and Other Stories," by Edith Wharton.
This volume is a brilliant successor to "Men and Ghosts," Mrs. Wharton's last group of stories. It includes "Xingu," "The Long Run," "The Tri- umph of Night," "Kerfol," "Coming Home," "Other Times, Other Man- ners," "The Lamp of Psyche," "Be- hind the Government," and "The Re- fugee." The title story is a humorous one, satirizing a community of literary and artistic souls. Many of the others are of great timely interest: "Coming Home," "The Refugee" and "Behind the Government" are stories of the war, and "The Lamp of Psyche," though a Civil War story, has striking applica- tion to many present-day situations.
$1.35 net. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.
In "John Barleycorn," the book that has been called his "alcoholic autobio- graphy," Jack London tells how quick- ly he achieved his reputation as a writer. "Critics have complained about the swift education one of my characters, Martin Eden, achieved," says London. "In three years, from a sailor with a common school education, I made a successful writer of him. The
critics say this is impossible. Yet I was Martin Eden. At the end of three working years, two of which were spent in high school and the univer- sity and one spent at writing, and all three in studying immensely and in- tensely, I was publishing stories in magazines such as the Atlantic Month- ly, was correcting proofs of my first book, was selling sociological articles to Cosmopolitan and McClure's, had declined an associate editorship prof- fered me by telegraph from New York City, and was getting ready to marry."
"Blithe McBride," by Beulah Marie Dix.
Though most of this story of the Massachusetts colony in the year 1657 is intended primarily for young peo- ple, those of their elders who are in- terested in American history will find it entertaining. The heroine and prin- cipal character, Blithe-in-Tribulation McBride is a little girl just entering her teens. Brought up in Crocker's Lane, White Friars, one of the worst parts of London, among thieves and wastrels, she nevertheless has visions, thanks to an honest grandmother, of a better and a cleaner life. Very early in the story she goes, partly by compul- sion, but mainly through her own choice, to Massachusetts, there to serve as a bond-woman until she reaches the age of 21. What befalls her on the ship, how she makes new friends and meets an old one, proves herself stanch and valiant, and at last finds herself at home in very truth, the story tells.
The Macmillan Company, New York.
"New Cartoons," by Charles Dana Gibson.
This beautiful book of quarto size is unquestionably the best volume of Gib- son cartoons yet published. Its size, make-up, cover design in red and black and contents make it a most attractive and fitting gift of permanent value. It contains the cleverest of Mr. Gibson's most recent drawings. There is much satire in them of contemporary fads and follies — of modern dancing, of
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skating, etc. — and more than ever of the old Gibson insight into human ways and weaknesses that are humor- ous, or sometimes a little pathetic, and intense with character and life.
$2.50 net. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.
"The Boy Settler," by Edwin L. Sabin.
Author of "Bar B Boys," etc.
When Terry Richards drove his ox team out of Kansas City headed for the great plains beyond, his heart beat high for adventure. And he was not disappointed, for this was the New West of before the war, when there were lots of Indians good and bad, when buffaloes thundered across the prairies in countless thousands, and when the whole world seemed new and in the making. But Terry had the same spirit which fired the breast of many a pioneer trudging along beside the laboring prairie schooners. He was only a boy, but his father and mother and sister were with him, to say nothing of the good dog Shep. Then they met up with another family of settlers, which included a boy about Terry's age, and there were adventures a-plenty from the very first encounter. It is a spirited story for boys that Sa- bin here writes — as every former reader of his excellent Western tales will know beforehand. It is also valu- able as presenting a clear and detailed picture of conditions in that great sec- tion during the days of the first forts and settlements, before there were rail- roads or stores of any sort, and when evey home had to depend on itself, and the word "neighbor" meant some- thing.
$1 net. Thomas Y. Crowell Com- pany, New York.
little is known of the function of ade- noids, much interesting information is set forth regarding them. Unhealthy tonsils develop repeated attacks of ton- silitis, and this little book tells why and how a person's tonsils are a men- ace to health.
Harvard University Press, Cam- bridge.
"The Heart of the Hills and Other Poems," by Grover C. McGimsey.
In the preface, May S. Greenwood announces her pleasant task of intro- ducing an old friend in new guise, "a minstrel, who sings of the width of desert places and bring the faint haze of the farthest star close to you." The author strikes a note of deep sympathy with Nature in her various moods. There is a certain charm in his de- scriptions, and he transforms his im- pressions in fluent form.
Paper cover , $1. The Northern Crown Publishing Company, Ukiah, California.
"Adenoids and Tonsils," by Algernon Coolidge, M. D., Professor of Laryn- gology, Harvard University.
This is one of the series of Harvard Health Talks in which is presented the substance of some of the public lectures delivered at the Medical School of that University. Although
"A Voyage to South America and Buenos Ayres, the City Beautiful," by Ida M. Cappeau.
The beauties and physical peculiari- ties of South America are pictured, but above all a more intimate knowledge of the Argentine people is given. That does not mean an exhaustive treatise on savage aborigines, but a comfort- able, gossipy account of the sort of people who pass along Fifth avenue any sunny day — well born, well read and well bred, educated in the best schools and colleges all over the world and preserving their national character- istics only as people of the world do everywhere. That the children share the common traits of youngsters the world round is amusingly demonstrated by the enfant terrible who, seizing the author's red scarf, proceeded to make her an involuntary party to an im- promptu bull fight on the ball room floor, rather to the delight of the on- lookers than of the victim.
$1.20 net. Sherman, French & Co., Boston.
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Mount Diablo Cement
AWARDED GOLD MEDAL P. P. I. E.
Cowell Santa Cruz Lime
ALWAYS USED WHERE QUALITY COUNTS
ALL BUILDING MATERIAL Henry Cowell Lime and Cement Company
2 Market Street San Francisco, Cal.
OAKLAND, CAL. SAN JOSE, CAL. SAN CRUZ, CAL.
BRANCHES
SACRAMENTO, CAL. PORLAND, ORE. TACOMA.WASH.
Scientific Dry Farming
Are you a dry farmer? Are you interested in the develop- ment of a dry farm? Are you thinking of securing a home- stead or of buying land in the semi-arid West? In any case you should look before you leap. You should learn the principles that are necessary to success in the new agriculture of the west. You should
Learn the Campbell System
Learn the Campbell System of Soil Culture and you will not fail. Subscribe for Campbell's Scientific Farmer, the only au- thority published on the subject of scientific soil tillage, then take a course in the Campbell Correspondence School of Soil Culture, and you need not worry about crop failure. Send four cents for a catalog and a sample copy of the Scientific Farmer.
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BILLINGS, MONTANA
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Hitchcock Military Academy
San Rafael, Cal.
"Preparedness First" cadets of Hitchcock Military Academy drilling on the sports' field.
A HOME school for boys, separate rooms, large campus, progressive, efficient, thorough, Govern- ment detail and full corps of experienced instructors, accredited to the Universities.
Ideally located in the picturesque foothills of Marin County, fifteen miles from San Francisco.
Founded 1878. Catalogue on application.
REX W. SHERER President
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xvii
Miss Hamlin's School
For Girls
Home Building on Pacific Avenue of Miss Hamlin's School for Girls
Boarding and day pupils. Pupils received at any time. Accredited by all accredit- ing institutions, both in California and in Eastern States. French school for little children. Please call, phone or address
MISS HAMLIN
2230 PACIFIC AVENUE
TELEPHONE WEST 546
2117
2123 SAN FRANCISCO, CAL.
BROADWAY
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HALFTON E ENGRAVINGS
9 Cents Per Square Inch
For Advertising 'Purposes For Illustrating {Booklets For Newspapers For ^KCagazines
The halftone engravings that have appeared in the various issues of the Overland Monthly re- present subjects suitable for almost any purpose. Having been carefully used in printing, they are
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FOR SALE! $2,100
EASY TERMS
20 Acres on "Las Uvas" Creek
Santa Clara County, Cal.
"Las Uvas" is the finest mountain stream in Santa Clara County.
Situated 9 miles from Morgan Hill, between New Almaden and Gilroy.
Perfect climate.
Land is a gentle slope, almost level, border- ing on "Las Uvas."
Several beautiful sites on the property for country home. •
Numerous trees and magnificent oaks.
Splendid trout fishing.
Good automobile roads to Morgan Hill 9 miles, to Mad rone 8 miles, to Gilroy 12 miles, to Almaden 11 miles, and to San Jose 21 miles.
For Further Particulars Address,
Owner, 259 Minna Street San Francisco - - California
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r — ii ii
"Four Routes East!
DQDHC
3[
hi
IL
SUNSET ROUTE: Along the Mission Trail, and through
the Dixieland of song and story. To New Orleans via Los Angeles, El Paso, Houston, and San Antonio. Southern Pacific Atlantic Steamship Line, sail- ings Wednesdays and Saturdays, New Orleans to New York.
OGDEN ROUTE : Across the Sierras and over the Great
Salt Lake Cut-off. To Chicago via Ogden and Omaha; also to St. Louis via Ogden, Denver and Kansas City.
SHASTA ROUTE: Skirting majestic Mount Shasta and
crossing the Siskiyous. To Portland, Tacoma and Seattle.
EL PASO ROUTE : The "Golden State Route" through the
Southwest. To Chicago and St. Louis via Los Angeles, Tucson, El Paso, and Kansas City.
Oil Burning Locomotives —
No Cinders, No Smudge, No Annoying Smoke
Unexcelled Dining Car Service —
FOR FARES AND TRAIN SERVICE ASK ANY AGENT
Southern Pacific
Write for folder on the Apache Trail of Arizona
][
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J
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ElUfctl*h*4 July *>. 1M4
T\TT
\l SAN FRANCISCO
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AND
California Abnrrtterr PRICE JO CENTS EVERY SATURDAY $4.00 PER YEAR
Profusely Illustrated
Timely Editorials. Latest News of Society
Events. Theatrical Items of Interest.
Authority on Automobile, Financial
and Automobile Happenings.
10 Years Copies Wanted of the OVERLAND MONTHLY— We de- sire copies of the Overland Monthly from December 1875 to January 1886,
to complete our files. Liberal premium will be paid. Manager
OVERLAND MONTHLY
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AND
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OVERLAND MONTHLY for one year and a Mandel-ette Camera, $5. Get 6 NEW SUBSCRIBERS for OVERLAND MONTHLY, and forward the subscriptions and $9.00, and you will receive a Mandel-ette Camera FREE.
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Make Moving a Comfort
The Nezv Way— The Easy Way
By auto trucks and employing the well known reliable expert San Francisco firm
Dixon Transfer Storage Company
ECONOMY AND TIME SAVERS
Manager Leo Dixon has had many years of varied experience in this special and intricate business from moving the goods and outfit- tings of a hugh store to the intricate and varied furnishings of a home. The firm has the best up-to-date equipment to meet the most difficult problems, and guarantees satis- faction at moderate rates.
Packing Pianos and Furniture for
Shipment a Specialty
Fire-proof Storage Furnished
TRY THEM!
Headquarters: 86-88 Turk St.
San Francisco, Cal.
1
Three generations
of the Vose family have made the art of man- ufacturing the Vose Piano their life-work. For 63 years they have developed their instruments with such honesty of construction and materials, and with such skill, that the Vose Piano of to- day ic the ideal Home Piano.
Delirered in your home free of charge. Old instrument! taken as partial payment in exchange. Time Payments accepted. If interested, send fcr catalogues today.
VOSE & SONS PIANO CO.
*-5 189 Boylston Street Boston, Mass.
■vi
TEN CENT MUSIC: Popular and Classic
Why pay from 25c to 75c
a copy for your music when you can get the same and better. in the " CEN- TURY EDITION" for only 10c a copy postpaid. Positively the only difference is the price.
Send 10c for one of the following and if not more than satisfied we will refund the money:
|
Regular Prlc* |
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HUGUENOTS |
Smith |
$1 00 |
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IL TROVATORE |
Smith |
1 25 |
|
LAST HOPE |
Gottschalk |
1 00 |
|
MOCKING BIRD |
Hoffman |
1 00 |
|
NORMA |
Leybach |
1 00 |
|
RIGOLETTO |
Liszt |
1 00 |
|
SILVER SPRING |
Mason |
1 00 |
|
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM |
Smith |
1 25 |
|
MOONLIGHT SONATA |
Beethoven |
1 25 |
|
LAST SMILE |
Wollenhaupt |
1 25 |
COMPLETE CATALOG OF 1600 TITLES SENT FREE ON REQUEST
Music Department, OVERLAND MONTHLY
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ne Language Unrestricted intercommunication/
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Europe's many tongues an< consequent misunderstanding*!
The Fruits of Understanding
Throughout the vast area of this country prevails a common tongue. The whole of Europe hardly exceeds our territory, yet Europe has more than a score of nationalities and many dif- ferent languages.
In the United States the telephone, as exemplified by Bell System, renders a matchless service in its mastery of distance and in encouraging the use of a universal language. This accom- plishment is in spite of the great influx of population from every country in the world.
In Europe the independent coun- tries, separated by barriers of language,
and lacking efficient telephone service suffer from inadequate facilities fo inter-communication.
We now talk from the Atlanti Coast to the Pacific, and eliminat more than three thousand miles. Ii Europe, contending with a babel c voices and unrelated telephone sys terns, a bare quarter of that distano has been bridged with difficulty.
The ideal of the Bell System ha been day by day to extend its servio in the interest of all telephone users Its efforts have resulted in providing the facilities to unite cities and rura districts in true American democracy
American Telephone and Telegraph Company And Associated Companies
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"HIS MASTERS VOICE
DEC. U.S. PAT. OFF.
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Masterpieces of opera
by the worlds greatest artists
The mere mention of opera suggests Caruso, Alda, Braslau, Calve, Destinn, Farrar, Gadski, Galli-Curci, Garrison, Gluck, Hempel, Homer, Journet, Mar- tinelli, McCormack, Melba, Ruffo, Schumann-Heink, Scotti, Sembrich, Tetrazzini, Whitehill — the commanding personalities who dominate the operatic stage.
These renowned artists in full reali- zation and acknowledgment that the Victor alone reproduces their art with absolute fidelity, make records for the Victor exclusively.
Any Victor dealer will gladly play any music you wish to hear, and give you a copy of the Victor Record catalog— the most complete catalog of music in all the world.
Victor Talking Machine Co. Camden, N. J., U. S. A.
Berliner Gramophone Co., Montreal, Canadian Distributors Important Notice. AH Victor Talking Ma- chines are patented and are only licensed, and with right of use with Victor Records only. All Victor Records are patented and are only licensed, and with right of use on Victor Talking Machines only. Victor Records and Victor Machines are scientifically co- ordinated and synchronized by our special processes of manufacture; and their use, except with each other, is not only unauthorized, but damaging and unsatisfactory.
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LXVIII
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No.
ifatttljhj
AN -ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE OF THE£WEST
CONTENTS FOR MARCH 1917
n a
FRONTISPIECES
When Darkness Creeps Over the Gallery. Verse Illustrated.
Six Views of California Scenery
Reindeer Used in Hauling the Game Killed EDUCATING THE ALASKA NATIVES .
Illustrated from Photographs. A CONVERT TO CONSCRIPTION A SOLDIER OF FRANCE. Story IN THE SUN. Verse . THE WIT OF DON JOSE. Story THE GOAD. Verse DEVIL'S POINT. Story GRACE VERSUS LAIRD. Story ARIZONA ANN. Verse THE STORY OF THE MIRACLE
Continued Story. EL PASO DE ROBLES. Verse GUNS OF GALT ....
Continued Story. ACHIEVEMENT. Verse ....
MAXIMILIAN I OF MEXICO
Illustrated from Photographs. THE REMARKABLE ELEPHANT SEAL
Illustrated from a Photograph. TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Verse EXPERIENCES OF AN OREGON PIONEER
Illustrated from a Photograph. THE GORGAS OF THE PHILIPPINES
MISUSE. Verse
THE TREND OF EVENTS
THE HIDDEN SONG. Verse
THE DRIVING OF THE GOLDEN SPIKE
THE GOOD WORD. Story
THE PASSING OF A ZEPPELIN
THE SPIRIT OF '49. Verse
EUGENE AMMON
Winter Hunt
DAVID GOVE
181
182-187 188 189
albert larson 198
elsie Mccormick 205
frances hathaway 207
randal charlton 208
lannie haynes martin 212
alfred ernest keet 213
ephraim a. anderson 216 gunther milton kennedy 222
otto von geldern 223
burton jackson wyman 230
denison clift 231
joe whitnah 239
evelyn hall 240
lillian e. zeh 242
jo hartman 244
fred lockley 245
marian taylor 247
mabel rice bigler 249
cornett stark 250
mary carolyn da vies 253
bernetta a. atkinson 255
B. C. CABLE 257
LEWIS R. FREEMAN 262
MABEL RICE BIGLER 268
■»»>X<g«c-
NOTICE. — Contributions to the Overland Monthly should be typewritten, accompanied by full return postage and with the author's name and address plain written in upper corner of first page. Manuscripts should never be rolled.
The publisher of the Overland Monthly will not be responsible for the preservation or mail miscarriage of unsolicited contributions and photographs.
Issued Monthly. $1.20 per year in advance. Ten cents per copy. Back numbers over three months old, 25 cents per copy. Over six months old, 50 cents each. Postage: To Canada, 2 cts. ; Foreign, 4 cts. Copyrighted, 1917, by the Overland Monthly Company.
Entered at the San Francisco, Cal., Postofflce as second-class matter.
shed by the OVERLAND MONTHLY COMPANY, San Francisco, California.
259 MINNA STREET.
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ARE YOUR CIRCULARS AND BUSINESS LETTERS GETTING RESULTS?
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We are writers of EXPERT adver- tising.
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No advertising is worth a straw that does not COMPEL RESULTS.
We write business-getting letters, full of force and fire, power and "punch." They pull in the ORDERS.
The same qualities mark the circu- lars, booklets, prospectuses and ad- vertisements that we prepare for our customers. We have a passion FOR RESULTS!
We resurrect dead business, cure sick business, stimulate good business. Our one aim is to arouse attention, create desire, compel conviction and MAKE people buy.
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Tell us exactly what your proposi- tion is, what you have already done, what you plan to do. We will examine your project from every angle, and ad- vise you as to the best and quickest way to get the RESULTS you want. We make no charge for this consulta- tion.
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The Two Most Famous Hotels in the World
The Sun Court of the Palace Hotel, San Francisco
The only hotels anywhere in which every room has attached bath. All the conveniences of good hotels with many original features. Accommodations for over lOOO.
The Fairmont Hotel, San Francisco
European Plan. $2.50 per day, upward— Suites $10.00, upward
Under Management of Palace Hotel Company
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HOTEL CUMBERLAND
NEW YORK Broadway at 54th Street
Broadway cars trom
Grand
Central Depot
7th Ave. Cars from Penna. Station
New and Fireproof
Strictly First-Class Rates Reasonable
$2.50 with Bath and up
Send for Booklet
10 Minutes Walk to 40 Theatres
H. P. STIMSON
Formerly with Hotel Imperial
Only N. Y. Hotel Window-Screened Throughout
HOTEL LENOX
NORTH STREET AT DELAWARE AVENUE
BUFFALO, NEW YORK
MODERN FIREPROOF
A unique Hotel, with a desirable location, insuring quiet and cleanliness.
Convenient to all points of interest— popular with visitors to Niagara Falls and Resorts in the vicinity —cuisine and service unexcelled by the leading hotels of the larger cities.
EUROPEAN PLAN $1.50 per day up Take Elmwood Ave, Car to North St., or Write for Special Taxicab Arrangement.
May we send with our compliments a "Guide of 'Buffalo and Niagara Falls" also our complete rates? C. A. MINER, Managing Director
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HOTEL ST. FRANCIS
SAN FRANCISCO
/ ,000 Rooms — Largest Hotel in Western America
MAN AGEMENT — JAMES WOODS
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Meet Me at the TULLER
For Value, Service Home Comforts
NEW
HOTEL TULLER
DETROIT, MICHIGAN
Center of business on Grand Circus Park. Take Woodward car, get off at Adams Ave.
ABSOLUTELY FIREPROOF
200 Rooms, Private Bath, $1.50 Single, $2.50 Up Double
200 " " " 2.00 " 3.00 "
100 " " " 2.50 " 4.00 "
100 " " " $3 to $5 " 4.50 "
Total, 600 Outside Rooms All Absolutely Quiet
Two Floors — Agent's New Unique Cafes and
Sample Rooms Cabaret Excellente
Herald Square Hotel
114-120 West 34th Street
Just West of Broadway
NEW YORK
Across the street, next door and around the cor- ner to the largest department stores in the world.
Cars passing our doors transfer to all parts of New York.
One block to the Pennsylvania Station.
All the leading theatres within five minutes' walk.
Club Breakfast — Business Men's Lunch.
Dancing afternoons and evenings.
Rooms $1.50 up. All first class hotel service.
J. FRED SAYERS
Manager Director
A well-known Denver publishing house has appropriated $ 1 0,000, to be used solely in a whirl-wind circulation cam- paign. Their offer is so liberal and their magazine so inter- esting that everybody is eager to send in his name.
The magazine referred to is thirteen years old, and each month publishes stories of adventure, numerous engrav- ings and sketches of Western life, cowboy capers, descrip- tions of famous ranches, irrigation projects, rich gold mines, etc. It is the oldest, largest and finest magazine in the West. Readers say it is worth $3, but in this surprising circulation campaign the publishers are spending their money like water, and our readers may subscribe one year for only 25 cents; three full years for 50 cents. We have a set of 17 colored Rocky Mountain Views which we send with each years' subscription. Send to-day. Money back if not satisfied.
ROCKY MOUNTAIN MAGAZINE
SUITE 504 .... QUINCY BLDG.
Denver, Colorado
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vii
Miss Hamlin's School
For Girls
Home Building on Pacific Avenue of Miss Hamlin's School for Girls
Boarding and day pupils. Pupils received at any time. Accredited by all accredit- ing institutions, both in California and in Eastern States. French school for little children. Please call, phone or address
MISS HAMLIN
2230 PACIFIC AVENUE
TELEPHONE WEST 546
2117
2123 SAN FRANCISCO, CAL.
BROADWAY
viii
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Hitchcock Military Academy
San Rafael, Cal.
"Preparedness First" cadets of Hitchcock Military Academy drilling on the sports' field.
A HOME school for boys, separate rooms, large campus, progressive, efficient, thorough, Govern- ment detail and full corps of experienced instructors, accredited to the Universities.
Ideally located in the picturesque foothills of Marin County, fifteen miles from San Francisco.
Founded 1878. Catalogue on application.
REX W. SHERER President
Looking down on Tiburon Point from Sausalito. a cove in north San Francisco Bay.
A lonely cabin in the Muir redwoods, some twenty miles north of San Francisco.
Auto entrance to the President's house, University of California.
End of a trail through a stately eucalyptus grove.
Kn trance to the Chemistry Building, University of California.
Along an Alameda County road bordering the hills.
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OVERLAND
Founded 1868
MONTHLY
BRET HARTE
"««afi£w—
VOL LXIX
San Francisco, March, 1917
No. 3
?roup of raw material at the Nome school. Tho teacher, Miss Edna Cameron is standing
in the center.
Educating the Alaska Natives
By David Gove
THE RAPID spread of industrial education throughout the United States during the past decade has been of immense benefit to the rising generation. Perhaps not many people are aware that the na- tional government is giving the native tribes in Alaska a system of industrial schooling that is equal if not ahead of many educational institutions in the States.
The first attempt to educate the
Alaska natives was by a few isolated mission schools subsidized by the fed- eral government. The missionary plan of teaching the northern natives was not altogether successful, and in 1890 the federal government formed a plan whereby the native schools in Alaska came under the Bureau of Education at Washington, D. C.
There are eighty native schools in Alaska managed by the Bureau of Education. These schools cover a far
Young Eskimos at work in the Kivalina school, Northern Alaska. These boys have had a good, ordinary education, and each owns from 30 to 70 reindeer. They live in comfortable circumstances, a fair comparison being the scale of the average farmer's son in the United States. (Photo by N. C. Shields.)
flung territory. Were a map of Alaska superimposed upon a map of the United States, the native schools in Alaska would be found upon twenty- one different States. The school far- thest south is located upon tne island of Atka in the Alution Islands, 52 de- grees and 10 minutes N. lat., and lies closer to Japan than the United States. The school furthest north is at Point Barrow, 71 degrees 25 minutes N. lat. This is the northernmost school in the world, being over 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
The Bureau of Education has some very practical ideas as to what con- stitutes real education for the natives in the North. To give them an ordi- nary school education and turn them loose would be to hasten their down- fall. So a system was inaugurated whereby the native schools in Alaska became more closely correlated with the needs of the communities in which they are situated.
When the government schools were started, the most that was expected
from the natives was that they might be able to read and write a little and do some simple arithmetic. This was considered essential to help them in their intercourse with the traders who came to buy their furs. To-day the above summary is almost treated as a by-product. Industrial teaching, whereby the rules of hygiene are taught; the principles of co-operation; the economic handling of community problems; cooking schools for girls; district fairs; and the fundamental principles of civic government are now taught, and are regarded as indispen- sable to the education and welfare of the Alaska natives.
After running wild since the earliest oi times and living in the most unsani- tary habitations it is possible to con- ceive of, it is not to be wondered at that the northern natives never prac- ticed any rules of hygiene. Therefore, one of the first things the teachers im- press upon them when they come to school is personal cleanliness. Nor are the grown up men and women
An Eskimo school teacher with her pupils on a picnic.
overlooked. They are taught to eat the right food, to be moral and truth- ful in all dealings, and to keep their homes and surroundings in a clean and sanitary condition. In most of the na- tive schools the government installed a bathroom to be used in connection with the regular school work.
Next in importance to the three R's, the natives are taught the methods of civic government. The Bureau of Education believes it is important that the children should become familiar with the system of election and the duties of officials. Once a week the school is declared a community and an election is held by the regular bal- lot system. A mayor is elected and a board of councilmen is chosen. The mayor's staff usually includes a peace officer and a health inspector. ' Instruction in the conduct of munici- pal affairs begins when the pupils have passed the second reader. The mayor, who may be only twelve years of age, presides over the council meetings. Bills are introduced, discussed and voted upon. Woman suffrage is al- lowed and girls as well as boys vote and run for office. A bill to become a law must have the mayor's signa- ture to it. It is then posted in a con-
spicuous place in the school-room. The aim of these council meetings is to teach the pupils to perform a duty. The duty of fireman, for instance, is to keep the schoolroom comfortable and to bank the fire in the stove for the night. The lamp-lighter sees that the lamps are filled and trimmed. Two girls are detained to sweep the floor of the school, to wipe the blackboard and to get water in the kitchen for cooking and washing purposes. An- other citizen keeps a record of the weather and raises or takes down the flag. The idea of the school republic, as this system is called, is to bring home to the plastic mind of the youth- ful hyperboreans the fundamental principles of civic government.
So much has the method of civic government been taught to the natives in the schools of late years that the last territorial legislature at Juneau passed a bill authorizing the native tribes in Alaska to organize their vil- lages into civic municipalities for the purpose of governing their local af- fairs. The bill gives them power to elect a mayor, a village council, a treasurer and a magistrate. For vio- lations of the village ordinances, the magistrate is empowered to impose
The Mayor and Town Council at Kivalina. The native sitting at the left is the Mayor. The man in the center is the owner of 800 reindeer, valued at $20,000. Before these schools were instituted the natives were regarded as savages, with no wealth or industries.
(Photo by N. C. Shields.)
fines to the extent of twenty dollars, or imprisonment in the village jail not to exceed five days.
In the native schools in Alaska a furnished kitchen is provided where girls are instructed in the culinary arts. For many years the Alaska natives lived upon poorly cooked food, and much sickness was the result. When the gold rush came and scattered thou- sands of argonauts over the territory, the natives naturally took to eating the white man's food. Having only crude facilities for cooking, and lack of knowledge in preparing the white man's product, they broke the habit of centuries and were soon flying signals of distress.
Realizing that it was as essential to care for the vitality of the natives as educating them, the Bureau of Educa- tion established kitchens in the schools where lessons in domestic economy are given. This in a most desirable man- ner offsets what once threatened to seriously undermine the robust vitality
the natives had before civilization took possession of their country.
Once a week the girls over eight years old are white capped and aproned, and taught how to bake good, wholesome bread, cookies, rolls, cereal foods, meats, etc. All recipes are made .from as simple and economical ingredients as possible; for instance, in the far north, where lard is not to be had, fresh seal oil is used and sour- dough is used for leavening the bread.
These cooking lessons are regular school routine. The girls are not only taught how to cook and keep the kit- chen tidy, but each one is given her turn in actual management under the tutelage of the school teacher. They are made to realize such details as the value of certain food products, and weighing and keeping check of the different commondities that are used.
The teachers encourage dressmak- ing. The natives bring their own cloth to school to be cut and fitted, and with the use of a sewir.g machire, supplied
Hydaburg. Alaska, 1913. On this site a few hundred Indians, backed by the Bureau of Edu- cation, instituted a model co-operative colony in a wilderness. This picture covers only about one-third of the settlement.
by the government, the girls learn to make their own garments. Not only the making of the dress is made a study of, but the cost and quality of the fabric as well, whether it be mus- lin, gingham or calico.
UDutside the school as well as inside, the aim of the Bureau of Education is to bring some form of responsibility upon the natives. In this manner the obligations of citizenship, both politi- cal and industrial, can be more readily understood.)
The reindeer industry is an integral part of the school work. The United States Bureau of Education estimates that there is pasture land in Alaska to feed ten million reindeer, and they have chosen this as the principal and most suitable industry to put the na- tives of northern and western Alaska upon a self-supporting basis.
In 1915 there were 70,000 reindeer ir Alaska, valued at $1,750,000. Many of the natives have taken advantage of this industry; according to the latest data, eleven hundred natives own 45,- 000 reindeer, or 65 per cent of the to-
tal, the rest being owned by the United States government, the Lapps and the Missions.
Figuring the 45,000 reindeer owned by the natives at the average price of $25 for each animal, would make a to- tal value of $1,125,000. The same year the natives had an income from the reindeer business of about $100,000, from the local market for beef, skins, etc. This would give the eleven hun- dred natives who own reindeer a per capita wealth from that industry of about $1,200 — not such a bad showing when it is considered that before the schools were established the highest ambition of these people was to sit in their unsanitary domiciles and nibble at a piece of frozen fish or meat.
Under the direction of the Bureau of Education, annual reindeer fairs are held. This brings the natives from the different communities together in friendly rivalry where they compete for prizes with the commodities they produce. These fairs are under the direction of the school superintendent in the district the fair is held. Prizes
Native starting on a trip in a umiak
are given for the most scientific method of butchering reindeer. The idea is to turn out a perfectly dressed carcass, and thus create a demand for reindeer beef for both local and export trade.
Specimens of needlework, fur gar- ments and mats are also exhibited. Prizes are awarded for the best and fastest sled lashing contest. This is something they must all be proficient at, and some very fast work is done. For instance, one Eskimo at the Mary's Igloo Fair in 1915 loaded his sled with a general traveling outfit and lashed it to be absolutely intact in the worst storms and the roughest trails, in 2 min. 31 sec, with the thermometer at 30 deg. below zero.
There are vast areas in central, southwestern and southeastern Alaska that are suitable for agriculture, and the Bureau of Education regards it as essential to give the natives in those districts some instructions about the wealth that lies in the soil.
Agricultural education is not exten- sively taught in the Alaska schools, but it is broad enough in scope to give the natives a general idea of what its possibilities are. Farming from books would be of little benefit to the Alaska natives; therefore, the Bureau of Education aims to have a piece of land as near the school as possible, so that the methods of agriculture can be practically taught. The idea of the school farm is not merely to show what remarkable crops can be grown, but rather to interest the natives in a prac- tical manner, that a permanent asset is in the soil for them.
Berries grow luxuriantly in many parts of Alaska, and a teacher gives lessons in the school kitchen on how to preserve native fruit. Of late years this branch of teaching has been great- ly appreciated by the natives; it gives them their native fruit throughout the winter months at very little cost. In the spring of 1915 they sent many ex-
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Mushing with a dog team.
hibits of preserved fruit from several native schools in Alaska to the San Francisco fair.
The fur business is a great natural resource of Alaska. The natives an- nually secure many thousands of dol- lars' worth of the finest furs in the world. The Bureau of Education has arranged, through its schools in Alaska, with many natives to handle and sell their furs for them. Taking advantage ct the parcel post, the Alaska natives forward packages of fox, lynx, martin and mink skins to the office of the Bu- reau of Education at Seattle.
The furs are sold at the fur sales agencies at public auction under the supervision of Mr. W. T. Lopp, who is Chief of the Alaska Division of the Bureau of Education, and is under a bond to the Department of the Interior for this branch of the work. Every ef- fort is made to give the producer the full product of his labor less the freight cr mail charges, and five per cent to the fur agency to cover the selling cost.
The Bureau of Education fosters the establishment of co-operative enter- prises owned and operated by the na-
tives themselves. There are now four of these co-operative colonies working successfully in Alaska. There is per- haps no country in the world that can offer such opportunities for co-opera- tive enterprises as there are in south- western and southeastern Alaska. The rivers and waters teem with fish, the mountains abound with game, and through its vast area are great stretches of fine timber lands.
According to ancient customs, the natives of Alaska used to preserve fish and meat either by drying it in the sun, crudely smoking it, or burying it in the earth until it went into a state of fermentation. In order to replace these primitive methods, the Bureau of Education has succeeded in establish- ing ice cellars, where fresh meat and other foods can be kept both winter and summer. The school system is now experimenting with steam pres- sure home canning outfits for the use of the natives of southeastern Alaska. At Latitlek, the natives, under the supervision of the school teacher, started a fish-saltery and are now get- ting a source of revenue by shipping
EDUCATING THE ALASKA NATIVES.
197
salmon bellies to the States.
The most striking demonstration of co-operation in Alaska is at Hydaburg, situated on the west coast of Prince of Wales Island in southeastern Alaska. In 1912 the Department of the Interior reserved a tract of twelve square miles for the use of the Indians in that re- gion. A school house and library were built by the Bureau of Education. Un- der the supervision of the school teacher, the Hydaburg Trading Com- pany was organized to transact the mecantile business of the settlement. The Hydaburg Lumber Company was formed, and a sawmill was built to furnish lumber. Both companies had native directors, the government school teacher being one of them. The Bu- reau of Education arranged the mer- cantile company's credit with whole- sale houses in Seattle and attended to the buying and shipping of the supplies. As soon as the company started to do business, the natives rushed to the secretary and bought up every remaining share of the capi- tal stock.
At the end of the first year, when the directors looked over the figures of the year's business, they voted to declare a dividend of 50 per cent on the investment. When the people of Hydaburg gathered in the school-
house to listen to the statement of the year's business and to see for them- selves what their money had earned, will long be remembered in the com- munity. It was the first time the In- dians in southeastern Alaska had en- gaged in co-operative business, and the only regret expressed was that they had been so long in getting the people to pull together.
The second year the two companies amalgamated. The stock was in- creased and a dividend of 20 per cent was declared, plus 20 per cent rebate to purchasers. In 1913-14, the stock was again increased and a dividend of 15 per cent was declared, plus 15 per cent to purchasers. The last two years the company set aside a fund to start other enterprises for the bene- fit of the community. It has been gratifying to the Bureau of Educa- tion, for the result has been that every native in Hydaburg, from the pupils in the primary grades to the oldest inhabitant, is an enthusiast on munici- pal co-operation.
The entire scheme of educating the Alaska natives, aside from the peda- gogic principle is to make them into self-supporting citfizens, that when they leave school they may build up their social status and do their part in developing the territory of Alaska.
A Convert to Conscription
By Albert Larson
"... have maintained and con- solidated our position in the captured trench." — Extract from Official Des- patch.
NUMBER nine two ought three six, Sapper Duffy, J. A., Sec- tion, Southland Company, Royal Engineers, had been be- fore the war plain Jim Duffy, laborer, and as such had been an ardent anti- militarist, anti-conscriptionist, and everything else his labor leaders and agitators told him. His anti-militar- ist beliefs were sunk soon after the beginning of the war, and there is al- most a complete story itself in the tale of their sinking, weighted first by a girl who looked ahead no further than the pleasure of walking out with a khaki uniform, and finally plunged into the deeps of the army by the gibe of a staunched anti-militarist during a heated argument that "if he believed now in fighting, why didn't he go and fight himself ?" But even after his en- listment he remained true to his be- liefs in voluntary service, and the ac- count of his conversation to the princi- ples of Conscription — no half-and- half measures of "military training" or rifle clubs or hybrid arrangements of that sort, but out and out Conscrip- tion— may be more interesting, as it certainly is more typical of the con- version of more thousands of members of the Serving Forces than will ever be known — until those same thousands return to their civilian lives and the
holding of their civilian votes. * * * *
By nightfall the captured trench — well, it was only a courtesy title to call it a trench. Previous to the as- sault the British guns had knocked
it about a good deal, bombs and gre- nades had helped further to disrupt it in the attacks and counter attacks during the day, and finally, after it was captured and held, the enemy had shelled and high explosived it out of any likeness to a real trench. But the infantry had clung throughout the day to the ruins, had beaten off several strong counter-attacks, and in the in- tervals had done what they could to dig themselves more securely in and re-pile some heaps of sandbags from the shattered parapet on the trench's new front. The casualties had been heavy, and since there was was no pas- sage from the front British trench to the captured portion of the German except across the open of the "neu- tral" ground, most of the wounded and all the killed had had to remain under such cover as could be found in the wrecked trench. The position of the unwounded was bad enough and un- pleasant enough, but it was a great deal worse for the wounded. A bad wound damages mentally as well as physically. The casualty is out of the fight, has had a first field dress- ing placed on his wound, has been set on one side to be removed at the first opportunity to the dressing station and the rear. He can do nothing more tc protect himself or take such cover as offers. He is in the hands of the stretcher bearers and must submit to be moved when and where they think fit. And in this case the casualties did not even have the satisfaction of knowing that every minute that passed meant a minute further from the dan- ger zone, a minute nearer to safety and to the doctors, and the hospitals' hope of healing. Here they had to lie throughout the long day, hearing
A CONVERT TO CONSCRIPTION 199
the shriek of each approaching shell, a nasty fire, and that therefore the waiting for the crash of its fall, won- sooner they dug themselves down un- dering each time if this one, the rush der cover the better it would be for of its approach rising louder and the job and for all concerned. "A" louder to an appalling screech, was go- Section removed its equipment and ing to be the finish — a "direct hit." tunics and moved out on to the neu- Many of the wounded were wounded tral ground in its shirt sleeves, shiv- again or killed as they lay, and from ering at first in the raw cold and at others the strength and the life had the touch of the drizzling rain, but drained slowly out before nightfall, knowing that the work would very But now that darkness had come the soon warm them beyond the need of casualties moved out and the supports hampering clothes. In the ordinary moved in. From what had been the course digging a trench under fire is German second trench, and on this done more or less under cover by sap- portion of front was now their forward ping — digging the first part in a cov- one, lights were continually going up ered spot, standing in the deep hole, and bursts of rifle and machine-gun cutting down the "face" and gradually fire were coming; and an occasional burrowing a way across the danger shell still whopped up and burst over zone. The advantage of this method or behind the captured trench. This is that the workers keep digging their meant that the men — supports, and way forward while all the time they food and water carriers, and stretcher are below ground and in the safety bearers — were under a dangerous fire of the sap they dig. The disadvan- even at night in crossing the old "neu- tage is that the narrow trench only al- tral ground," and it meant that one of lows one or two men to get at its end the first jobs absolutely necessary to or "face" to dig, and the work con- the holding of the captured trench sequently takes time. Here it was was the making of a connecting path urgent that the work be completed that more or less safe for moving men, night, because it was very certain that ammunition and food by night or day. as soon as its whereabouts was dis- This, then, was the position of af- closed by daylight it would be sub- fairs when a section of the South- jected to a fire too severe to allow any land Company of Engineers came up party to work, even if the necessary to take a hand, and this communica- passage of men to and fro would leave tion trench was the task that Sapper any room for a working party. The Duffy, J., found himself set to work digging, therefore, had to be done on. Personally, Sapper Duffy knew down from the surface, and the dig- nothing of and cared less for the tac- gers, until they had sunk themselves tical situation. All he knew or cared into safety had to stand and work about was that he had done a longish fully exposed to the bullets that march up from the rear the night be- whined and hissed across from the fore, that he had put in a hard day's enemy trenches.
work carrying up bags of sandbags A zigzagg line had been laid down
and rolls of barbed wire from the to mark the track of the trench, and
carts to the trenches, and that here Sapper Duffy was placed by his Ser-
before him was another night's hard geant on this line and told briefly to
labor, to say nothing of the prospect of "get on with it." Sapper Duffy spat
being drilled by a rifle bullet or man- en his hands, placed his spade on the
gled by a shell. All the information exact indicated spot, drove it down,
given him and his Section by their and began to dig at a rate that was
Section officer was that they were to apparently leisurely but actually was
dig a communication trench, that it methodical and nicely calculated to a
must be completed before morning, speed that could be long and unbrok-
that as long as they were above enly sustained. During the first min-
ground they would probably be under ute many bullets whistled and sang
2C0
OVERLAND MONTHLY
past, and Sapper Duffy took no notice. A couple went "whutt" past his ear, and he swore and slightly increased his working speed. When a bullet whistles or sings past it is a comfort- able distance clear; when it goes "hiss" or "swish" it is too close for safety, and when it says "whutt" very sharply and viciously it is merely a matter of being a few inches out either way. Sapper Duffy had learned all this by full experience, and now the number of "whutts" he heard gave him a very clear understanding of the dangers of this particular job. He was the furthest out man of the line. On his left he could just distinguish the dim figure of another digger, stooping and straightening, stooping and straightening with the rhythm and regularity of a machine. On his right hand was empty darkness, lit up every now and then by the glow of a flare- light showing indistinctly through the drizzling rain. Out of the darkness, or looming big against the misty light, figures came and went stumbling and slipping in the mud — stretcher-bearers carrying or supporting the wounded, a ration party staggering under boxes balanced on shoulders, a strung-out line of supports stooped and trying to move quietly, men in double files linked together by swinging ammuni- tion boxes. All these things Private Duffy saw out of the tail of his eye, and without stopping or slacking the pace of his digging. He fell uncon- sciously to timing his movements to those of the other man, and for a time the machine became a twin-engine working beat for beat — thrust, stoop, straighten, heave. Then a bullet said the indescribable word that means "hit," and Duffy found that the other half of the machine had stopped sud- denly and collapsed in a little heap. Somewhere along the line a voice called softly "Stretcher-bearers," and almost on the word two men and a stretcher materialized out of the dark- ness, and a third was stooping over the broken machine. "He's gone," said the third man after a pause. "Lift him clear." The two men dropped the
stretcher, stooped and fumbled, lifted the limp figure, laid it down a few yards away from the line, and van- ished in the direction of another call. Sapper Duffy was alone with his spade and a foot deep square hole — and the hissing bullets. The thoughts of the dead man so close beside him dis- turbed him vaguely, although he had never given a thought to the scores of dead he had seen behind the trench and that he knew were scattered thick over the "neutral ground" where they had fallen in the first charge. But this man had been one of his own Company and his own Section — it was different about him somehow. But of course Sapper Duffy knew that the dead must at times lie where they fall, because the living always come before the dear, especially while there are many more wounded than there are stretchers or stretcher-bearers. But all the same he didn't like poor old "Jigger" Adams being left there — didn't see how he could go home and face old "Jigger's missus" and tell her he'd come away and left "Jigger" lying in the mud of a mangel-wurzel field. Blest if he wouldn't have a try when they were going to give Jigger a lift back. A line of men, shirt-sleeved like himself and carrying spades in their hands, moved out past him. An officer led them, and another with Sapper Duffy's Section officer brought up the rear and passed along the word to halt when he reached Duffy. "Here's the outside man of my lot," he said, "so you'll join on beyond him. You've just come in, I hear, so I sup- pose your men are fresh."
"Fresh !" said the other disgustedly. "Not much. They've been digging trenches all day about four miles back. It's too sickening. Pity we don't do like the Bosches — conscript all the able bodied civilians and make 'em do all this trench digging in rear. Then we might be fresh for the firing line."
"Tut, tut — mustn't talk about con- scripting 'em," said Duffy's officer re- provingly. "One volunteer, y'know — worth three pressed men."
"Yes," said the other, "but when
A CONVERT TO CONSCRIPTION
201
there isn't enough of the 'one volun- teer' it's about time to collar the three pressed."
Two or three flares went up almost simultaneously from the enemy's line, the cracklet'of fire rose to a brisk fusillade, and through it ran the sharp "rat-at-at-at" of a machine gun. The rising sound of the reports told plainly of the swinging muzzle, and officers and men dropped flat in the mud and waited till the sweeping bullets had passed over their heads. Men may work on and "chance it" against rifle fire alone, but the sweep of a machine gun is beyond chance, and very near to the certainty of. sudden death to all in the circle of its swing.
The officers passed on and the new men began to dig. Sapper Duffy also resumed work, and as he did so he no- ticed that there was something fa- miliar about the bulky shape of the new digger next to him. "What lot are you?" asked the new man, heav- ing out the first spadeful rapidly and dexterously.
"We're A Section, Southland Com- pany," said Duffy, "an' I say — ain't you Beefy Wilson?"
"That's me,' said the other without checking his spade. "And blow me! you must be Duffy — Jem Duffy."
"That's right," said Duff. "But I didn't know you'd joined, Beefy."
"Just a week or two after you," said Beefy.
"Didjer know boss's two sons had got commissions ? Joined the Sappers an' tried to raise a company out o' the works to join. Couldn't though. I was the only one."
"Look out — here's that blanky maxim again," said Duffy, and they dropped flat very hurriedly.
There was no more conversation at the moment. There were too many bullets about to encourage any linger- ing there, and both men wanted all their breath for their work. It was bard work, too. Duffy's back and shoulder and arm muscles began to ache dully, but he stuck doggedly to it. He even made an attempt to speed up to Beefy's rate of shoveling, al-
though he knew by old experience alongside Beefy that he could never keep up with him, the unchallenged champion of the old gang.
Whether it was that the lifting rain had made them more visible or that the sound of their digging had been heard they never knew, but the rifle fire for some reason became faster and closer, and again and again the call passed for stretcher-bearers, and a constant stream of wounded began to trickle back from the trench-diggers. Duffy's section was not so badly off now because they had sunk themselves hip deep, and the earth they threw out in a parapet gave extra protection. But it was harder work for them now be- cause they stood an soft mud and water well above the ankles. The new company, being the more exposed, suf- fered more from the fire, but each man of them had a smaller portion of trench to dig, so they were catching up on the first workers. But all spaded furiously and in haste to be done with the job, while the officers and sergeants moved up and down the line and watched the progress made.
More cold-bloodedly unpleasant work would be hard to imagine. They had none of the thrill and heat of com- bat to help them; they had not the hope that a man has in a charge across the open — that a minute or two gets the worst of it over ; they had not even the chance the fighting man has where at least his hand may save his head. Their business was to stand in one spot, open and unprotected, and without hope of cover or protection for a good hour or more on end. They must pay no heed to the singing bul- lets, to the crash of a bursting shell, to the rising and falling glow of the flares. Simply they must give body and mind to the job in hand, and dig and dig and keep on digging. There had been many brave deeds done by the fighting men on that day; there had been bold leading and bold follow- ing at the first rush across the open against a tornado of fire; there had been forlorn hope dashes for ammu- nition or to pick up wounded; there
202 OVERLAND MONTHLY
had been dogged and desperate cour- had taken some pains himself in the age in clinging all day to the battered old days to get the word itself and trench under the earth shaking tem- some of its meaning right, pest of high explosive shells, bombs "Anti-military-ist, then," said Beefy, and bullets. But it is doubtful if the "Anyhow he stuck out agin all sorts day or the night had seen more nerve of soldiering. This stoppin' the So- trying, courage testing work, more de- ciety benefits was a trump card, too. liberate and long drawn bravery than It blocked a whole crowd from listin' was shown, as a matter of course and that I know myself would have joined, as a part of the job, in the digging of Queered the boss's sons raising that that communication trench. Company, too. They had Frickers an'
It was done at last, and although it the B. S. L. Co. and the works to draw
might not be a Class One Exhibition from. Could have raised a couple
bit of work, it was, as Beefy Wilson hundred easy if Ben Shrillett hadn't
remarked, "a deal better'n none." 'And got at 'em. You know how he talks the
although the trench was already a foot fellers round."
deep in water, Beefy stated no more "I know," agreed Jem, sucking hard
than bald truth in saying, "Come to- at his pipe.
morrow there's plenty will put up glad The Sergeant broke in on their
wi' their knees being below high water talk. "Now, then," he said briskly,
mark for the sake of having their "Sooner we start, sooner we're done
heads below bullet mark." and off home to our downy couch.
But if the trench was finished the Here, Duffy " and he pointed out
night's work for the Engineers was the work Duffy was to start,
not. They were moved up into the For a good two hours the engineers
captured trench, and told that they labored like slaves again. The trench
had to repair it and wire out in front was so badly wrecked that it practi-
of it before they were done. cally had to be reconstructed. It was
They had half an hour's rest before dangerous work because it meant mov-
recommencing work, and Beefy Wil- ing freely up and down, both where
son and Jem Duffy hugged the shelter cover was and was not. It was phy-
of some tumbled sandbags, lit their sically heavy work because spade
pipes and turned the bowls down and work in wet ground must always be
exchanged reminiscences. that; and when the spade constantly
"Let's see," said Beefy. "Isn't Jig- encounters a debris of broken beams,
ger Adams in your lot?" sandbags, rifles and other impediments
"Was," corrected Jem, "til an hour and the work has to be performed in
ago. 'E's out yon with a bullet in him eye-confusing alternations of black
— stiff by now." darkness and dazzling flares, it makes
Beefy breathed blasphemous re- the whole thing doubly hard. When grets. "Rough on the missus and the you add in the constant whisk of pass- kids. Six of 'em, weren't it?" ing bullets and the smack of their
"Aw," assented Jem. "But she'll striking, the shriek and shattering
get suthin' from the Society funds." burst of high-explosive shells, and the
"Not a ha'porth," said Beefy. "You drone and whir of flying splinters, you
will remem — no, it was just arter you get labor conditions removed to the
left. The trades unions decided no utmost limit from ideal, and to any
benefits would be paid out for them as but the men of the Sappers, well over
'listed. It was Ben Shrillett engi- the edge of the impossible. The work
neered that. He was Secretary and at any other time would have been
Treasurer an' things o' other societies gruesome and unnerving, because the
as well as ours. He fought the war gasping and groaning of the wounded
right along, and he's still fighting it. hardly ceased from end to end of the
He's a anti-militant, he ses." captured trench, and in digging out
"Anti-militarist," Jem corrected. He the collapsed sections many dead Ger-
A CONVERT TO CONSCRIPTION
203
mans and some British were found blocking the vigorous thrust of the spades.
Duffy was getting "fair fed up," al- though he still worked on mechani- cally. He wondered vaguely what Ben Shrillett would have said to any member of the trade union that had worked a night, a day, and a night on end. He wondered, too, how Ben Shrillett would have shaped in the Royal Engineers, and, for all his cracking muscles and the back break- ing weight and unwieldiness of the wet sandbags, he had to grin at the thought of Ben, with his podgy fat fingers and his visible rotundity of waistcoat, sweating and straining there in the wetness and darkness with Death whistling past his ear and crash- ing in shrapnel bursts about him. The joke was too good to keep to himself, and he passed it to Beefy next time he came near. Beefy saw the jest clearly and guffawed aloud, to the amazement of a clay-daubed infantry- man who had had nothing in his mind b,ut thoughts of death and loading and firing his rifle for hours past.
"Don't wonder Ben's agin conscrip- tion," said Beefy; "they might con- scription him," and passed on grin- ning.
Duffy had never looked at it in that light. He'd been anti-conscription himself, though now — mebbe — he did not know — he wasn't so sure.
And after the trench was more or less repaired came the last and the most desperate business of all — the "wiring" out there in the open under the eye of the soaring lights. In ones and twos during the intervals of dark- ness the men tumbled over the para- pet, dragging stakes and coils of wire behind them. They managed to drive short stakes and run trip-wires be- tween them without the enemy sus- pecting them. When a light flamed, every man dropped flat in the mud and lay still as the dead beside them till the light died. In the brief intervals of darkness they drove the stakes with muffled hammers, and ran the lengths of barbed wire between them. Heart
in mouth they worked, one eye on the dimly seen hammer and stake-head, the other on the German trench, watch- ing for the first upward trailing sparks of the flare. Plenty of men were hit, of course, because, light or dark, the bullets were kept flying, but there was no pause in the work, not even to help the wounded in. If they were able to crawl they crawled, dropping flat and still while the lights burned, hitching themselves painfully toward the para- pet under cover of the darkness. If they could not crawl they lay still, dragging themselves perhaps behind the cover of a dead body or lying quiet in the open till the time would come when helpers would seek them. Their turn came when the low wires were complete. The wounded were brought cautiously in to the trench then, and hoisted over the parapet; the working party was carefully detailed and each man's duty marked out before they crawled again into the open with long stakes and strands of barbed wire. The party lay there minute after min- ute, through periods of light and dark- ness, until the officer in charge thought a favorable chance had come and gave the arranged signal. Every man leaped to his feet, the stakes were planted, and quick blow after blow drove them home. Another light soared up and flared out, and every man dropped and held his breath, waiting for the crash of fire that would tell they were discovered. But the flare died out without a sign, and the working party hurriedly renewed their task. This time the darkness held for an unusual length of time, and the stakes were planted, the wires fastened and cross pieces of wood with inter- lacings of barbed wire all ready were rolled out and pegged down without another light showing. The word passed down and the men scrambled back into safety.
"Better shoot a light up quick," said the Engineer officer to the Infantry commander. "They have a working party out now. I heard them hammer- ing. That's why they went so long without a light."
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A pistol light was fired and the two stared out into the open ground it lit. "Thought so," said the Engineer, pointing. "New stakes — see? And those fellows lying beside 'em."
"Get your tools together, Sergeant," he said as several more lights flamed and a burst of rapid fire rose from the British rifles, "and collect your party. Our job's done, and I'm not sorry for it."
It was just breaking daylight when the remains of the Engineers' party emerged from the communication trench, and already the guns on both sides were beginning to talk. Beefy Wilson and Jem Duffy between them found Jigger's body and brought it as far as the Dressing Station. Behind the trenches Beefy's company and Jem's section took different roads, and the two old friends parted with a cas- ual "S'long" and "See you again, sometime."
Duffy had two hours' sleep in a sop- ping wet roofless house, about three miles behind the firing line. Then the section was roused and marched back to their billets in a shell-wrecked vil- lage, a good ten miles further back. They found what was left of the other three sections of the Southland Com- pany there, heard the tale of how the company had been cut up in advanc- ing with the charging infantry, ate a meal, scraped some of the mud off themselves, and sought their blankets and wet straw beds.
Jim Duff could not get the thought of Ben Shrillett, labor leader and agi- tator, out of his mind, and mixed with his thoughts as he went to sleep were that officer's remarks about pressed men. That perhaps accounts for his waking thoughts running in the same groove when his Sergeant roused him at black midnight and informed him that the section was being turned out — to dig trenches.
"Trenches ?" spluttered Sapper Duffy; "... us? How is it our turn again?"
"Becos, my son," said the Sergeant,
"there's nobody else about here to take a turn. Come on! Roll out! Show a leg!"
It was then that Sapper Duffy was finally converted and renounced for ever and ever his anti-conscription principles.
"Nobody else," he said slowly, "an' England fair stiff with men. . . The sooner we get Conscription the better I'll like it. Conscription solid for every bloomin' able-bodied man and boy. And I 'ope Ben Shrillett and his likes is the first to be took. Conscrip- tion," he said with the emphasis of finality as he fumbled in wet straw for a wetter boot, "out and out, lock, stock and barrel Conscription."
That same night Ben Shrillett was presiding at a meeting of the Strike Committee. He had read on the way to the meeting the communique that told briefly of Sapper Duffy and his fellow Engineers' work on the. night before, and the descriptive phrase struck him as sounding neat and effec- tive. He worked it now into his speech" to the Committee, explaining how and where they and he benefited by this strike, unpopular as it had proved.
"We've vindicated the rights of the workers," he said. "We've shown that, war or no war, Labor means to be more than mere wage slaves. War can't last forever, and we here, this Committee, proved ourselves by this strike the true leaders and the Cham- pions of Labor, the Guardians of the Rights of Trades Unionism. We, gen- tlemen, have always been that, and by the strike — " and he concluded with the phrase from the despatch — "we have maintained and consolidated our position."
The Committee said, "Hear, hear." It is a pity they could not have heard v/hat Sapper Duffy was saying as he sat up in his dirty wet straw, listening to the rustle and patter of rain on the barn's leaky roof and tugging on an icy cold board stiff boot.
A Soldier of France
By Elsie McCormick
IT WAS always a martyrdom for Madame to enter the dingy little stage-entrance, for it meant that she would have to look at the pos- ter that was pasted near the door:
Mme. Rosalie Chaubert, World Fam- ous Prima Donna, formerly of the
Metropolitan Opera House. Prof. Boudino's Trained Monkeys. Slug and Pug, the Slap-Stick Come- dians. And Other Great Attractions.
Madame shuddered as she read it. Vaudeville, like politics, makes strange bed-fellows, and Madame had never become accustomed to sharing the bill with trained monkeys or other popular "attractions."
"I am bringing music to the masses," Madame sometimes told those report- ers who still thought it worth while to interview her. But in her heart she knew it was not so. Madame realized more and more how little the masses cared. The reporters, whom Madame always received in a darkened room so that they would not see how much she had faded, merely smiled politely. They, too, understood, and they wrote kind things about Madame, calling her "the former prima donna," and almost breaking her heart.
It was several years ago that she had retired, just at the pinnacle of a great triumph. The papers had praised her wisdom; the people had showered her with gifts. Now, un- honored and almost forgotten, she had come back for a sordid, heart-breaking anti-climax. What was hardest of all for her was to have people hint that she was greedy for money. Though Madame's former salary had been enormous, her generosity had been
greater, so that when the war broke out she was unable to serve France as she wished. It was then that she thought of making another farewell tour. "I am a soldier of France," Madame would say when she was weary and the audience did not appre- ciate her. The little envelop that crossed the seas each month was the reason that Madame wore the same faded evening gown every afternoon and evening of her tour.
The vaudeville people treated her with clumsy respect, swearing less loudly when she was present and al- ways calling her "Madame," that is, all except those who thought "Mme." was an abbreviation of "Mame."
Madame entered a dingy little hall- way that led back of the scenes. An "aerial king" in a dirty white spangled suit, was swearing at the stage-hands for their clumsy arrangement of his apparatus. Louise, of the "Girl and Dude" act, was telling her tipsy part- ner just what she thought of him.
Madame shrugged her shoulders in distaste; then turned to the tiny dress- ing-room which was distinguished from the others by a crooked star on the door. Perched on a trunk farther down the hall was a girl who belonged to the European Aerial Troupe. She was hunched over miserably, and a rhythmic sniffing indicated that some- thing had gone seriously wrong.
"What is the matter?" asked Mad- ame, in her precise accent.
"It's Joe," answered the girl, lifting a face on which grease-paint and tears were ludicrously mixed.
"Joe?" queried Madame. "The young gentleman in your troupe ? You must mean, then, that you have had a quarrel."
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OVERLAND MONTHLY.
The girl gulped and fumbled for a handkerchief. "It ain't that," she an- swered. "I like Joe well enough, good- ness knows. It's pa. He took Joe in the troupe last month, just to fill out. Now he says if I marry a guy like that with nothing but keys in his pockets, he'll chuck us both. We can't make an act by ourselves, and we won't have a thing to live on," she finished, dabbing at her painted eye-lashes with a rag of a handkerchief.
"Ah, then you are afraid," accused Madame. "And you will give up love for money! Why, if a woman loves a man, she should be glad to go with him, even if they have no roof but the sky and no lamp but the stars. Noth- ing in the world is worth as much as the clasp of a loved one's hand. I was afraid once, afraid for my position — for my chance of success. And
now " Madame turned away; then
looked back with a queer little smile on her face.
"It is the only thing worth while. Do you not feel flattered that the great- est of the gods should bring his gifts to you?"
"Yes," answered the girl, not under- standing.
"And yet you think only of things to eat."
The girl dumbly twisted her hand- kerchief.
"Overture, overture," bawled the call-boy from the wings. "It is the greatest thing in the world," repeated Madame solemnly, as she entered her dressing-room. The girl glanced at the cheap topaz ring on her left hand without answering.
The first glimpse of her dressing- room always brought Madame the same unhappiness as the posters. It was small, untidy and ill-lighted. Me- diocrity, cheap art and failure were in its very atmosphere. A half-faded geranium in a glass set Madame to thinking of the days when her dressing room at the Metropolitan was heaped high with tributes from the socially elect. Suddenly her soul revolted. She hated it all, hated the Sunday night crowds, with their noise and gig-
gling and peanuts. It was so hard to raise her voice above their voices, to make Carmen and Marguerite heard above the rattle of programs and the scraping of noisy feet on the dusty floor.
Then she thought of the lovers. "They must not spoil their happiness," she thought. "I shall not let them, if I can help it."
When Madame stepped out into the wings she saw Joe leaning against part of the apparatus, his spangled suit bagging dejectedly at the knees. He did not raise his eyes, and Madame passed on, preparatory to her entrance. "If I had my old voice just for to- night, I could make them understand," she thought.
A ripple of applause greeted Mad- ame's entrance. Then followed the usual wave of comment, which hap- pily she could not make out. "Gosh, ain't she fat!" "So, that's the great Chaubert, eh? Why, I remember hearing about her when I was a little bit of a tyke." "These high-brow acts give me a pain." "Some women never know when to retire. This must be her thirtieth farewell tour."
Then Madame began to sing. The smoky old theatre faded away; the peanut-munching audience vanished into space. The years had rolled back, and Madame was in a moonlit garden with her lover. Then her vision broadened, and she sang for all the lovers in the world; for the little girl in the wings, for all who had known and felt and suffered.
The audience quieted down; the programs stopped rustling. The man who hated high-brow shows suddenly brushed his eyes with the back of his hand. A woman with a wedding ring on her finger pressed the arm of the man beside her. The hands of a cou- ple in the first row met under the shel- ter of the girls' hat.
When the last notes died away, the audience paid Madame that greatest of compliments — a marked pause be- fore the hand-clapping. When the ap- plause began, Madame came out and bowed. She would give no encores.
IN THE SUN.
207
All at once she felt tired and old and sad.
As she came out of her dressing- room, she heard the comedian who fol- lowed her on the bill. He was imitat- ing her, and the shrieks of laughter from the crowd showed that they had already forgotten. Madame sighed; ihen smiled when she saw the two sweethearts standing together in the dusty wings.
"Gee, that was great," breathed the girl, her eyes still bright with tears. "Joe and I have fixed everything up. I know now what you meant when you called it the greatest thing in the world. It's something bigger than Joe or me — something lots bigger than a job."
"You sure sang swell," contributed Joe, awkwardly shifting from one foot to the other.
"So my children have learned the
great lesson," said the prima donna gaily, with a slight catch in her voice. "See that you never forget it. And now, Monsieur Joe, you may kiss my hand."
Joe bent over the plump hand clum- sily, but Madame tilted her head to one side and smiled — just as she had smiled in those days when noblemen and kings had paid her homage.
"Bless you, mes enfants," she said. Then, at the door, she turned back for a last word. But the lovers, looking into each other's eyes, had already for- gotten her. Inside, the crowd was laughing over the antics of the slap- stick comedian. Madame was blinded by a rush of tears. "I am a soldier oi France," she murmured, as she opened the door. Then, with a shrug of her shoulders, she went out into the street alone.
IN THE SUN
Oh, dreaming days of quiet happiness
With you to fill the hours : I strive no more
To reach a distant goal, a farther shore.
And shall I count these golden moments less
Because they bring no vital need to press
Onward and up? All effort given o'er
I rest awhile nor seek to look before,
Freed from the pain of inward rack and stress.
For like a plant in darkness to the light
Scarce knowing what it needs or is denied,
I reached and climbed and strained with all my might
Until you came and flung the window wide.
Then did I know my groping toil was done
And I had found my place beneath the sun.
Frances Hathaway.
The Wit of Don Jose
By Randal Charlton
DON JOSE read the missive, medium of the baker was not alto-
which had come to him in the g ether unexpected. He had been in
badly-baked loaf, three times Dantzic now nearly nine months, dur-
with the utmost deliberation, ing which time he had been instru-
He sighed heavily, picked up his mental in the deaths of so many poli-
pruning knife, and walked out into the ticians that it was not strange the dead
gardens of the old Chateau. This men's friends and relatives should try
evening he tended the flowers with reprisals. For nine months he had
even more diligence than usual. As carried his life in his hands with true
he would be dead before the twilight Spanish dignity, and he was sufficient
of another evening gathered in the of an artist not to spoil the pose at the
gardens, he rendered these services last moment.
with the good will of one who, depart- Expecting a visitor, he slept but ing on a long journey, seeks kindly re- lightly, and awoke to hear the sound membrance. of footsteps stirring amongst the long When Don Jose had concluded these grass below the window. The sound labors, he retired once more to the Cha- sent the blood thrilling through his teau, where, seated by an open win- veins. He sprang from his couch and dew, he sipped his wine with great retreated into the shadows of the dark- gravity and re-read the letter. ened room, with a large horse-pistol The letter ran as follows : grasped in either hand. He felt that
,.„,. , .. . ,, . it would be a useless fight against T, ™euy have discovered everything overwhelming odds> but family tradi. The Chateau has been surrounded t- as wdl as onal bravery, de- signee daybreak, and there is no possi- manded that he should die with his bility of : escape. Do not ook for he p. face fo ^ foe> Sq he crouched in They will probably not strike until to- the shadows and waitecL Suddenly night or the late evening. (Signed) SQme one sprang into the open window Adrian. ancj £or an £nstant a man's profile was
Don Jose folded the letter, sighed silhouetted against the summer sky. A
again heavily, and sipped his wine. good angel restrained Don Jose with
"The fellow Adrian has been more his horse-pistols. In another moment faithful than I expected," he mused, the dark figure framed in the window as he tore the letter leisurely into little scrambled into the room and fell sob- fragments. "It is strange, because he bing for breath on Don Jose's favorite cannot expect money from a dead man couch. — but perhaps he has a conscience!" "One movement, and I blow your
Don Jose closed his eyes and dis- brains out," said the Don, quietly, posed himself for sleep. He accepted The intruder gave a cry of anguish
the inevitable in a manner that was and burrowed deeper into the cushions
almost magnificent. The thought of on the couch.
death did not greatly disturb him, al- "Mercy, senor; mercy, for love of
though he had found life an exciting heaven, mercy," he implored, and profitable pastime. The announce- "What ! a countryman," exclaimed
ment that he had received through the Don Jose, "and why have you traveled
THE WIT OF DON JOSE.
209
all the way to Dantzic to take my life, friend?"
"Take your life, senor! Mother of Heaven, I am innocent of any such in- tention. I cannot see your Excellency, but, by my soul, I am your most faith- ful slave."
"You speak pleasantly, friend, nevertheless I feel it would be safer to lodge this bullet in your skull before we are further acquainted."
The intruder relapsed into inarticu- late verbosity. He likened the un- known senor to all the saints he could remember, and opined that if the most glorious of men would deign to grant the dog beneath his feet a further lease oi his miserable life, the gratitude of heaven to the most glorious of men would pass all earthly comprehension.
"I am to understand, my friend, that you did not come here to murder me ?" said Don Jose.
"O heaven! Is your Excellency mad? Merciful Providence!"
"Then what, then, do I owe the honor of this visit?"
Don Jose had lighted a candle and surveyed his visitor narrowly. He found him of middle age and height, and from his dress evidently of the peasant class. His large earnest eyes had a curious frightened expression. His limbs trembled, and even now he drew breath with difficulty.
"A fool, who is in fear of his life," thought Don Jose, and aloud repeated his former question.
"To what happy circumstance do I owe the honor of this visit?"
The visitor buried his face in his great brown hands and sobbed.
"I will be frank with you, senor," he groaned.
"You are wise, my friend; proceed."
"I will resign my destiny into your Excellency's keeping; I place my soul in your hands."
"They are in safe keeping, but you have not answered my question."
"I fled here because I am pursued by enemies. I have been pursued all day."
Don Jose was surprised that so in- significant a person should possess
enemies, but he held his tongue and smiled encouragement.
"What is your offence, friend?" he asked dryly.
"I am accused of theft, your Excel- lency, but before high heaven "
"You are innocent, of course. I un- derstand that."
"You do not believe me guilty, senor?"
"I know you to be innocent."
"You know, senor?"
"Yes, my heart tells me."
The stranger dissolved into torrents of gratitude. He praised the senor's perspicacity and called down the bless- ings of heaven upon the head of his discerning host.
"What is your name, friend?" said Don Jose, interrupting because he was afraid he would be dead before the conversation had concluded. There was no telling at what moment the hidden Dantzicers would put their scheme into operation.
"What is your name, friend ?" he re- peated.
"Giorgio, with your Excellency's permission."
"Are you accused of theft?"
"Yes."
"And pursued?"
"I have been pursued all day. I was nearly dead, senor, when Provi- dence guided me to the gardens below. I saw the open window and determined to enter at all costs. Something told me that I should meet kindness here. The saints befriended me, and "
"But stop a moment, you are not safe yet. What of your pursuers, my friend?"
"You will not deliver me into their hands, senor. You know me to be in- nocent."
Giorgio stretched out his hands with an imploring gesture. His eyes scanned every line of Don Jose's face with desperate eagerness. His every glance pleaded dumbly for succor and deliverance from his pursuers.
Don Jose offered him some wine. From the moment that his gaze had lighted on the stranger's countenance an idea had been formulating in his
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brain. He had been startled from the first by the fact that the man, save for his clothing and coarseness, was not at all unlike himself. In height and stat- ure there was little to chose between the two. Don Jose coupled this with the fact that his visitor was a fool, and his heart became rejuvenated with hope. His brain was, in a manner, subtle and quick to conceive a ruse and stratagem, and in Giorgio he saw a heaven-sent chance of escape from the Danticers.
He reviewed the situation briefly, and determined to take the strange visitor into his confidence.
"My friend," he said, charging his v/ine-glass, "I not only undertake to shield you from your enemies, but if you will be guided by my advice I promise you deliverance. I am even in a more hazardous position than yourself."
Giorgio began to open his eyes in surprise.
"You are in danger, senor! It is possible?" •
"Peace; I will explain. I am in such danger that my life is not worth an hour's purchase."
"Oh, horrible!"
"Nevertheless, I speak the truth. I may be murdered at any moment."
"Mother of mercy! Your Excel- lency is then rich?"
"Fool, I am so poor that I am a ser- vant of the Emperor."
"But, senor, you are a Spaniard!"
"And not the only one in the Em- peror's service. Now listen; I was sent here nearly a year ago because Dantzic is seething with sedition and plots against the Emperor's person. The place was honeycombed with so- cret societies. A great many of these, I flatter myself, no. longer exist, but there are several still alive. Some- how they have discovered me to be the Emperor's servant. For the last month I have had the utmost difficulty to keep my feet out of the grave, and to- day I learn from a man in my pay that my hiding place has been discovered. Further, I am in full knowledge that certain seditious gentleman are deter-
mined upon my death before the morn- ing.';
Giorgio's arms were working like a windmill.
"J3ut, senor, why do you remain here?" he exclaimed, turiously excited — "why do you not escape?"
A smile of pity illumined Don Jose's passive countenance.
"I see, friend, that you are ignorant of the ways of Dantzic," he said, quietly. "Every mode of egress from this Chateau is guarded."
"I do not understand."
"Very likely. The Chateau is sur- rounded by unseen foes. You have seen nobody, and if I were to walk abroad this moment it is unlikely that I should meet a single soul upon the highways. But I should be found dead tc-morrow morning with a bullet in the brain."
Giorgio gave a gesture of despair.
"Then all is Tost, senor," he cried; "we are both dead men."
"Nonsense, we shall yet both es- cape."
"Senor, you bewilder me ! First you tell me that the Chateau is surrounded, and then . . . Ah, heaven, what is that?"
The sound of horsemen approaching at the gallop broke the silence of the night.
"They are either your pursuers or my murderers," said Don Jose very calmly. "Quick, go to the window and tell me what you see."
"They are soldiers, senor; I can see their uniforms in the moonlight."
"They are your pursuers. Quick, and undress yourself."
Giorgio stared at Don Jose as though he were in the presence of a lunatic. The Don had already thrown aside his coat and vest, and Giorgio, still bewildered and dazed by the sud- den turn of events had enough wit left to follow his example. Don Jose snuffed out the candle.
"Quick, give me those clothes," he whispered, almost tearing Giorgio's rags from his back.
"But, senor, what does this mean?"
"It is. simple enough, my friend.
THE WIT OF DON JOSE.
211
When the soldiers come I shall take your place."
"They will arrest you, senor!"
"Exactly. As their prisoner I shall be carried safely through the area of death. You will remain here; when I have gone make your peace with the Dantzicers when they come for me. Do not say you have seen me. Tell them you have been pursued by the Emper- ot 's soldiers. They will help you to safety when they hear that."
Before the last words had escaped Don Jose's lips the soldiers had reached the Chateau. One of the horses could be heard whinnying be- low the window, and the next moment thunderous knocks shook the outer doors.
"Farewell," said Don Jose, as he slipped from the darkened room.
He crept silently down the stairs and flung open the door with such sud- denness that a couple of troopers near- ly fell into his arms. He was seized in a moment by a dozen hands and dragged before the officer in charge of the cavalcade. He cursed his cap- tors roundly, but offered no other re- sistance.
"Who are you, fellow?" cried the officer; "from your clothes I should know you well."
"It is possible, captain," said Don Jose, in a hoarse voice; "my name is Giorgio, and I see no reason to dis- guise it."
"So we meet at last, my brave fel- low," said the officer, with a mock bow. "Well, on my side the meeting is a very happy one."
Without another word two of the troopers at a nod from their leader swung Don Jose on to the nearest horse. His arms were tightly bound and he rode from the Chateau in the center of the party.
At about five miles from the Cha- teau they were met by a further relay oi troopers with a large rumbling coach of the most antique pattern. Don Jose now wished to enter into explanations v/ith the officer, but before he had the opportunity, he was dragged from his horse and bundled on to the floor of
the coach, with a brigadier and two troopers.
Don Jose was astounded at so much attention being paid to a common thief. It was certainly most unusual, and for the moment his heart misgave him.
"Where do we halt, friend?" he asked the brigadier.
"Paris."
Don Jose almost leapt out of his bonds.
"Paris! Do you know where we are now?"
"Perfectly."
"We are in Dantzic."
"Exactly."
"And you say we are going to Paris?"
"With all possible speed."
Don Jose bowed his head and groaned. Of all experiences this was the most extraordinary that he had ever suffered. Had the world turned mad that a common thief was escorted in a coach and four to Paris? He asked many questions, but the briga- dier, who was disposed for sleep, bade him hold his tongue, and relapsed into
silence.
* * * *
Don Jose did not reach Paris. The cavalcade was held up by Marshal De Main and some staff officers nearly ten miles from Napoleon's capital. The Marshal held some conversation with the officer in charge of the party, and then, alighting from his horse, peered eagerly into the carriage at the pris- oner.
"Marshal De Main, you know me, you know me; explain to these fel- lows who I am," cried Don Jose franti- cally; "they will not listen to me."
The Marshal seemed to be in the throes of convulsions. He staggered back from the coach window and clutched at the air with outstretched hands. When he had sufficiently re- covered he laughed, and when he ceased laughing he became very angry.
"What foolery have we here?" he cried hoarsely to the bewildered of- ficers in charge of Don Jose. "The Emperor will not thank you for taking
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his man from Dantzic. Release Don Jose at once."
"General, this man has confessed himself to be Giorgio."
The Marshal for reply turned his back upon the captain.
Don Jose stepped out of the coach and related the full history of the ad- venture.
"Since when has it been the custom to convey common thieves from Dant- zic to Paris?" he asked in conclusion, with an ironical smile.
Marshal De Main smiled also.
"Your friend Giorgio is so common a thief that the Emperor has few more dangerous enemies in Europe. Have you ever heard of Don Pepe Avolan- nas?"
Don Jose was silent and bit his lip.
"Giorgio and Avolannas are the same man, my friend," continued the Marshal. "About a month ago it was known that he was in Dantzic in the former name."
"I was not notified."
"You had sufficient in your hands."
Don Jose and the Marshal looked at each other, shrugged shoulders and sighed.
"I thought only of escape," said Don Jose, apologetically.
"You succeeded, but at a heavy cost. We could have spared two of you for one Giorgio."
They parted on this, but it was fully six months later that Don Jose learnt
the entire truth of his adventure. A letter was brought to him from Eng- land and left silently at his door by an unseen messenger.
It ran as follows:
"Most Wise and Excellent of Men — Permit the dog beneath your feet to thank you for a great service rendered in the past. I am eternally your debtor — for had it not been for the passports and papers in your coat which you so kindly lent me on a memorable occa- sion, I should never have escaped from Dantzic alive. On one point I wish to enlighten you. There was no conspiracy against your life. Your hiding place at the Chateau, of which I shall always have such pleasant memories, was known only to myself and one Adrian, who was in your il- lustrious service. I had been hiding in your neighborhood three days when the idea of obtaining your papers and passports occurred to me as the best means of quitting Dantzic. I felt as- sured that under the circumstances your wisdom would dictate the course of action you so timely adopted. Had you not done so, I should have sug- gested it myself, if necessary with force. But your wisdom forestalled me in this."
Here Don Jose broke off abruptly in his reading.
"My wisdom!" he repeated to him- self, and then without proceeding fur- ther, cast the letter into the fire.
THE GOAD
Ah, let me have no "milk-and-water" friend To prate: "Perhaps you did the best you could!" And let me have no friend with honeyed tongue To over-praise the little good I do — As fatal to the soul are these as he Who scorns and scoiches with his "You will fail!" But let me know some iron-tempered soul Implacable in friendship's stern demand That I now live the thing he seeks to be — By such great goads men grow to very gods!
Lannie Haynes Martin.
Devil's Point
By Alfred Ernest Keet
LINDER ate in moody silence, oc- casionally glancing at his wife, as she busied herself with the cooking. Her well-rounded arm, large, languorous black eyes, voluptu- ous figure, with its opulent charms, and habitual placidity palled upon him. Her blind faith in him, implicit obe- dience, uncomplaining acquiescence in the hard lot her life with him had doomed her to — all these things, usu- ally reckoned by the world good quali- ties— eminent virtues, even — seemed only to irritate him, inspire his pity and perhaps contempt. She, in the Western lingo he was familiar with, "Made him tired!"
If only she'd show a little spirit, a little spunk, would oppose or deny him occasionally, or even respond in kind to his attempts at banter — but no! Slavishly submissive, she al- ways did exactly as she was told with cheerful alacrity and absolute indif- ference to her own comfort and con- venience. Her descent was Aztec- Spanish, and perhaps that accounted for it. Anyway, she was the last of her family — a willing slave, a docile, harmless animal.
His meal ended, he pushed back his chair and lighted a cigar, still deep in disturbing thoughts. Then he strode tn the door of his humble casa and gazed up the gorge in the direction of the mine, a mere black blur on the far- distant mountain side.
The white sunshine struck fiercely down. A cactus a few yards off gleamed wax-like, and here and there, like ghastly leprous patches upon a human skin, were alkali blotches. Whiter than chalk, whiter even than the leprous patches, almost like streaks of luminous paint on the ashen- gray face of the desert, shone the bleached skeleton of an animal.
But for the burning, dazzling, all-
pervading sunlight, the scene would have been one of deepest gloom — of desolation profound and terrifying.
As he gazed somewhat intently, there was a puff of steam, and the mine's whistle blew — three times and then twice three times again. An S. 0. S. call!
Linder's face paled, as he flicked the ash from his cigar and turned inward. Had she heard, he wondered? He picked up his hat
"Juanita," he said lightly, with a pretence of unconcern, "I'm going up to the mine. I may not be back for i day or two."
"All right ! Adios !" was her equally unconcerned reply, and, placing her arms about his neck, she drew his head down and kissed him.
"Adios !" he muttered somewhat hus- kily, as he stepped across the thresh- old and went after his horse.
As he rode through the camp, he noticed the men standing in groups ear- nestly talking. Some of them shot an- gry glances at him. It was evident that something was imminent — some- thing was in the air. Trouble was brewing.
Pretty soon he left the camp behind him and hit the steep trail. Here his horse soon subsided into a walk, and only as he reached level spots — pla- teaus— could he do any speeding.
When at length he reached the mine, his horse in a lather, he found his ap- prehensions correct, for an armed man was doing sentry-go at the office door, and there were others here and there around the group of buildings.
Leaving his horse to find the way to the stable as was his custom, he en- tered the office.
His three associates, the only Am- ericans with himself on the property, were awaiting him, and heavily armed.
"Say, Linder," began Rodik, the
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general manager, "it looks as if we were in for trouble — I think we're go- ing to have a strike — and you know what that means ! What do you think?"
"I think you're right — the men are murmuring; but there are only a few of them — this isn't a big property — I don't think they'll do anything rash."
"I don't know about that," went on Kodik, apprehensively. "Hello!" he suddenly exclaimed, as he saw Lin- der's hat, "where did you get that bul- let-hole?"
Linder removed his sombrero and looked amazedly at the clean-cut hole bored by a bullet through its crown.
"Well, I'm d d!" he muttered.
"You got that at the Devil's Point, I'll bet," said Fletcher, the engineer. "I got one there once, myself."
"Never heard any shot!" exclaimed Linder, blankly.
"Neither did I — I guess there's a mine tunnel or cave somewhere near — it's d d mysterious, anyhow!"
"Well, I'll tell you, Linder, what I especially wanted to see you about," continued Rodik. "To-morrow's Sat- urday, and our new boss, our late president's widow, is due in the camp at noon "
"Mrs. Millery?" interrupted Linder in surprise.
"The same," rejoined Rodik, "and she's handsomer than all out-doors, I hear, and pretty shrewd, too. Now you're our chemist and assayer, and, as a professional man, you've had, I take it, some experience in the social swim and, anyway, you're a darn good talker. Now, I want you to meet Mrs. Kate, do the agreeable, and impress upon her the necessity of meeting the men's demands for a 25 cent raise We can't afford to have the riot and blood- shed here they had down at Cananea."
"About how old is this paragon of widows?" queried Linder.
"Blest if I know," replied Rodik. "Millery was 66 when he died a year ago. She's never been out here. Mil- lery used to come here at rare inter- vals, eat and sleep in his private car and skiddoo within 48 hours. She was his secretary, I believe."
"Ah!" exclaimed Linder, "I see." "It'll be dark in another hour," went on Rodik, "and we've got a lot of bul- lion on hand — we'd better do some 'watchful waiting' to-night, and you can slide down to camp at daylight."
II.
When Linder reached town Saturday morning it did not take him long to make himself presentable for polite society. A good bath in agua caliente, a visit to the barber and general store — and he emerged a handsome, well- knit figure, his lean, bronzed face, close cut hair and tawny mustache lending him almost an air of distinction.
Mrs. Millery, whom he met in the hotel parlor, was in black, and dressed for the street. After they had talked a few moments, she raised her veil and Linder was astonished at her youth- iulness. She was, as Rodik had said, a beauty, and about 30 years old. Her skin was of that extraordinarily clear kind, usually possessed by women with bronze hair, and she had a fine figure.
Linder's heart bounded — he loved her at sight; and, as they talked to- gether, he took in every detail of her dress and person. The quiet elegance of her attire her city-bred manners and obvious refinement, the almost impal- pable perfume exhaled from her clothes — everything about her bespoke the luxurious life. To Linder she seemed almost like a ghost from the gay world he once lived in; and as he gazed and listened a mad longing swept over him — the call of the flesh- pots of Egypt, and he experienced an almost overwhelming nostalgia.
Then he sighed heavily as he re- membered where he was, his condition, dull daily round of humdrum duties and the seeming irrevocability of it all.
Mrs. Millery in turn was impressed. Linder's strong face, general air of good breeding and savoir faire, all stamped him as a gentleman — though one, perhaps, temporarily "out of suits with fortune."
"I have full confidence in you, Mr. Linder," she remarked finally, rising
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and looking him in the eye, "and, after what you have told me, I have no ob- jection to the men's wages being raised as suggested. I could not bear to have you — I mean any bloodshed in our mine."
Mrs. Millery colored slightly as she realized how personal she had almost made her solicitude; and Linder was correspondingly elated. She extended her small gloved hand. Linder re- tained it a moment, and, noticing his face, suddenly become gloomy again, rather archly added:
"Oh, I'm only saying 'good-morning' not 'good-bye.' I intend to stay here a few days."
The soft pressure of her warm hand thrilled Linder through and through; and he felt an almost irresistible im- pulse to print a kiss upon it.
"You'll want to see the mine, of course, Mrs. Millery?" queried Lin- der as he took up his hat.
"Oh, yes!" she replied animatedly. "T shall reply upon you for my guide — and I want to see something of the country round about. This is my first visit to Mexico. I love the moun- tains."
V *p sp H*
The next forty-eight hours were hal- cyon days for Linden; and he was not seen at his casa. In fact, his whole time was taken up by the lovely young widow.
If Juanita were cognizant of his in- fatuation, she betrayed no sign of it, going about her household tasks with her usual serenity. Once and a while one or two of her own race had whis- pered colloquys with her; but her sto- icism seemed unmoved. There was no hint of jealousy in her accustomed pla- cidity, but
III.
They were returning from the mine. It was the last day of Mrs. Millery's visit, and late in the afternoon when the trail was in cool shadow. She and Linder were slowly walking their horses. At Devil's Point, Mrs. Mill- ery suggested a halt, for there was a good view of the still far-distant camp to be had from this point. So, tether-
ing their horses, they sat upon a rock.
It was a lonely, sequestered spot, with little or no sign of animal or vege- table life near. The mountain rose behind them, frowning, precipitous, jagged, studded with innumerable boulders, and cleft by a dark and nar- row chasm.
"What a sombre landscape!" smiled Mrs. Millery, giving a mock shudder. "It makes me think of 'Manfred,' you know. It seems, too, reflected in your face, Mr. Linder — you look so sol- emn!"
"I shall miss our fair president," re- sponded Linder with a faint attempt at gayety.
"Really!" laughing. "Well"— and Mrs. Millery gave him a shy glance — "I'm sorry, too — sorry I'm going back home to-morrow — I almost feel as if I'd like to camp here permanently. I am "
He suddenly caught her hand.
"Then why not — I love you — you, the only woman I've ever loved — I've loved you from the first moment — the
day I first saw you " he broke out
with a voice that was compulsive in its earnestness and intensity.
Mrs. Millery, almost overcome, tot- tered to her feet, a surge of color dye- ing her cheeks. She swayed — as if faint. Linden caught her to him in a strong, passionate embrace, and, as she feebly struggled, placed his lips to hers and kissed her hot mouth. He kissed her again and again, murmuring his lcve. All his long pent-up passion found vent in that delirious moment. She clung to him and drank his kisses greedily — she had never loved until now.
* * * *
At the Coroner's inquest, it was found that Mrs. Millery and Linden — whose bodies had been found at Devil Point — had been killed by one bullet, which, fired downward, had penetrated the man's neck and found its vital rest- ing place in the woman, from which it appeared certain that at the time the double murder was committed they must have been close together, face to face.
Grace Versus Laird
By Ephraim A. Anderson
DAN SHANKS was running swiftly towards the mill yard. His leathern apron dangled from his hand, and his open, flying jacket refused to be buttoned. He was five minutes late, and the Sei- glemeyer Lumber Company tolerated no tardy employees. At seven o'clock the sawmill whistle had sent forth its nerve-racking shriek just as it had for ten years or more, but Dan had stopped to read some gaudy-colored posters which had magically appeared on the company's stable that morning.
The last logging wagon had just started for the woods. The rattle of wheels and chains and the shouting voices of men told that the day's work was already begun. The noise of the sawmill, with its sharp, uneven ex- haust could be heard on the still morn- ing air. But the pictures of leaping lions and crouching tigers, dancing ele- phants and chattering monkeys, diving girls and tight-rope walkers had fas- cinated Dan. Huge letters spelled out the attractions of the greatest show on earth. So Dan had, for a moment, for- gotten the work of the day.
Dan was young and broad-shoul- dered. Some said he was homely. But it makes a difference whether the speaker is a man or a woman. Besides having an eye for the almighty dollar, Dan had a warm place in his heart for pretty Grace Whipple, the engineer's daughter. Grace was not yet twenty, and therefore liked the men and the noise and bustle of a sawmill camp. Although her smile and graceful figure won the admiration of all the young men, she "turned them down," and stuck to Dan.
No "attractions" ever came to Tim- ber Lake, and those which visited
Jackson, fifteen miles away, were so few and far between that all people within fifty miles regarded a circus as an event.
As Dan was running he was plan- ning on how to get to Jackson. Alone, he might walk; but Grace would, of course, go with him. If he could get a car from Jackson he knew Grace would be pleased. He was saving his money against the day when he should have sufficient to ask the girl to marry him. Yet he felt he had to treat her to a good time now and then. It would cost at least ten dollars to get a car. But Dan promised himself a few extra sacrifices.
When Dan arrived at the yards, he found Jake Grew waiting. Jake was his "partner," and a strong and willing worker. The two men hardly began to work when High Wentmore, the yard foreman, came along.
"You're seven minutes late, Dan; it's the first time, or I'd report you," he said in a severe voice.
Dan was struggling with a heavy board and did not reply. But Jake spat on the ground and swore : "Seems to me as long as we heap up this 'ere lumber ye ain't got no kick comin', Hfch."
The foreman shrugged and walked on.
So the two pilers worked steadily till noon. When the whistle blew both quit work at once and hastened to the boarding house.
During the noon hour the men read and re-read the posters on the barn. By one o'clock, when the whistle sounded again, they had nearly to a man decided to go to the circus.
"Did you see Laird readin' the bills?" said Dan, as he hurried with
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his partner to the yard.
"Yes, and judgin' from his face, he ain't stuck on shows," observed Jake.
No man thought of working on cir- cus day. There were those who wel- comed the day off with their families, as it supplied time to furnish their stoves with winter wood. The younger men, however, having no such burdens, either planned on a big spree, or de- lighted in the thought of being with toeir sweethearts. There were less than a score of girls in Timber Lake, but these would undoubtedly have a chance to go to the circus.
The mill had been sawing steadily for four months, ever since the ice broke in the little lake, and the men, although appreciating the steady work, were not disposed to ask for a holi- day. They meant to take it anyway.
The day of the Rand and Swelling Circus drew near. Dan had planned for a car and was happy with the day's prospects. Grace bubbled over with enthusiasm.
"Gee, that must be a great show! Will they make those tigers and lions fight ? And will there be a lot of them ? Hope it's a fine day. We'll have to start early, won't we?" Grace was fairly unintelligible.
"Gosh, you kin ask a lot of questions all in a bunch," said Dan, laughing. "You're havin' a good time just think- ing about it. It ought to be a good show, seeing the last one was drove out because they had none o' their ad- vertised elephants."
"I'll bet I won't sleep a wink the night before. Let's see, when is it — day after to-morrow? Yes."
Fifteen miles was no short distance for the many who intended walking. Others had arranged for livery teams from Jackson. A few besides Dan felt that the occasion required an automo- bile. So an early start meant a longer and a greater day for all.
When Dan came from work the evening before the circus he hurried to the company store. He had time, as the supper gong had not yet sounded. He wanted some cigars, and candy for Grace.
Laird was tacking a large card on the door. So Dan waited until the manager stepped back to survey his work. Then in open-mouthed aston- ishment he read:
"Any employee who goes to Jackson to-morrow forfeits his job. (Signed), J. Laird, Manager."
Laird disappeared into the store be- fore Dan could say a word.
Angry and chagrined, Dan stood staring at the card. He had long known the manager's ideas on holi- days. But this was unusual. A circus came so seldom that Dan thought Laird might have granted them this one day.
The fact that Dan and others had worked at the mill several years made no difference to Laird. His working motto for men was : "Ten hours a day six days in the week the year round." He knew, too, their wages did not per- mit spending money on shows.
They might soon ask for a raise. And above all, Laird was opposed to a demand for higher wages. He con- sidered such a request an insult, and always put off the offender with an oath, adding: "I couldn't think of it be- fore I wrote to Headquarters." But he never wrote — at least in the way he said he would.
Dan's tragic attitude attracted the attention of a burly teamster, who came up, and. seeing the cause of Dan's crestfallen face, began to curse :
"Hell! So we're to lose our jobs if we go! Not if I know this bunch! The sawed-off, thin-legged Geek! For two cents I'd bat him with my peevy."
Jake Grew came running up when he heard the teamster's oaths. "What is this?" He stared at the card, then began dancing about, stopped a min- ute and looked at Dan. "Say, old pard, what you worryin' about? Look as if somebody had stolen yer clothes. Why,
d it, we'll go, and don't yer forget
it!"
Dan shook his head. "It's a dirty trick, but I can't afford to go if I lose my job."
By this time a score of men were gathered in front of the store.
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Dan suggested that they ask Laird outside and all of them demand to go. "He can't turn us all down," he said.
"Nix on the baby act," some one protested.
"Nothing doing in that line." It was the burly teamster who spoke.
Although there was much talk, the majority did not dare defy their em- ployer. A few, however, vowed their intentions of going in spite of threats. Dan and several less excited men knew they would obey orders.
Everybody hurried off to supper. Dan washed and went in; but his ap- petite had left him. He scarcely tasted his food. Directly he had fin- ished, he hurried over to see Grace.
She was sitting on the door-step of her father's modest cabin, shelling peas. Dan, with a discouraged face, sat down beside her.
"What ails you, Dan?" she asked, a catch in her voice.
"Say, if I was down-right sure of another job I'd quit this place to- night," he cried with unusual spirit.
"Why, what do you mean?" She drew nearer, and her black eyes searched his face.
"We've got orders to stay at home to-morrow."
She looked at him in blank aston- ishment. "Orders!"
Dan gritted his teeth. "That's just it. It's up there at the store, and it's mighW unjust, too!"
"Of course it is. It's mean — cow- ardly ! But — and that's just why we'll go. Does he think," her voice rose with scorn, "we are slaves? Why, even Dad is going, and you know he never cares for excitement "
"You said we're going — how — you are trying to make fun of me," said Dan in an injured tone.
"No, I mean it. I said we're going because we are." She looked at him as if to read his very soul. "Are you afraid to go ?" she demanded, finally.
"No— yes," said Dan truthfully, ■•vondering what she had in mind.
"Oh, Dan! Where's your nerve? Afraid to lose your job! Well, you won't lose it, for they're all going — I'll
ask them to. He can't fire the whole bunch."
Dan remained unconvinced. He feared for his position, and he dared not agree with the girl.
Then she recalled to his mind the two nights of the previous summer: "You worked two nights after the day's work because the watchman was sick. You was too good to refuse when they asked you. And you was so dog-tired — I remember. What did you get for those two nights?" she asked. f'I know! A miserable three dollars — scarcely half pay."
"It was three-quarters pay," cor- rected Dan.
"And then you've told me yourself you aren't getting more than when you came ; and you know they promised to raise your wages if you stayed. I heard Laird himself telling the book- keeper you was the best man in the yard," she argued.
Dan could not listen to her plea, and not feel the force of it. "Why should I not go ?" he asked himself. But ever he remembered the words: "Whoever goes forfeits his job." He knew that men were plentiful. He might look for a job a month or more, and even when he got it it might not be to his liking, and, too, to leave Timber Lake meant to leave Grace.
"Don't you see, Grace, I can't take the chance? They'll send me down the road as sure as — as sure as I go."
But the girl would not yield. Think- ing she might cajole him into promis- ing to go, Grace invited Dan to stay for supper. "You're hungry and un- reasonable ; after supper you'll look at it differently," said Grace with a sweet smile.
Dan stayed.
After supper they went outside. Presently they had strolled to the lake. On its northern banks, away from the houses, they sat down on the soft turf.
Dan wanted to tell Grace he loved her. But such a declaration meant a proposal of marriage, and he thought it unwise to declare himself before he felt able to support her. She would wait, he told himself, "for she cares."
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"What're you thinkin' about?" Grace asked the question after a long glance at Dan.
He smiled a little ruefully: "It's hard to be a worker, 'specially when wages is low."
Grace laid a soft, white hand on Dan's calloused one. "There's strength there; you oughtn't be afraid to buck up against the world, Dan." Faith in the man showed in her eyes and trans- mitted itself to him through her fin- gers.
Dan gave the hand a little squeeze, but looked away down the shadowy mill.
Abruptly Grace asked: "If I ask it as a real personal favor, will you go?"
"Please, Grace, don't tempt me. It means my job, I'm sure," he answered gloomily.
"Well, I won't ask you then. But I've been thinkin'. We'll go; you'll see, for something will happen. The men will strike or something. They aren't fools enough to obey those or- ders!" Her voice took on a positive- ness that Dan wondered at. Had he been able to see her shining eyes he might have read a greater determina- tion there.
It was nearly midnight when they left the lake. To his surprise she begged to go home alone. "I'm not a bit afraid," she said.
"But why alone?" Dan wanted to know.
"Now please do as I say — good- night," she added.
He left her sitting on the bank. Her hands were clenched and her chin was firm. When five minutes had passed — minutes during which Grace sat thinking intently — she rose to her feet and started slowly toward the house.
On his way to his sleeping quarters, a little one-roomed shack, Dan had to p2ss by the mill. He walked slowly because the ground was uneven, and in the dark he stumbled several times. Passing at one end of the mill he tripped with a harsh, metallic sound on some scrap iron. He arose quickly. But as he gained his feet he saw a figure that he knew to be the watch-
man coming toward him. Not wishing to be seen at that time of night, he dodged behind a pile of logs.
The watchman stood listening for several minutes. Then he passed down the other side of the mill.
Dan made his way out carefully, and walked more swiftly as he came to the road which led to the build- ings. He went to bed as quietly as possible, for he did not want to arouse Jake.
But Dan could not sleep. He swore under his breath at Jake, snoring loud- ly by his side, at the mill, and at the circus. The circus was to blame for his present state of mind. He hoped that this might be the last show that ever came to Jackson. Shows wasn't made for lumber-jacks, anyway. It was all right for rich people to go to circuses, but a poor working man had no business going. They cost a lot of money and trouble.
At last, just before daylight, he fell asleep, a dreamy, restless sleep. He felt Grace's soft hand on his. He cap- tured it in his own, only to awake and find he held the roughened hand of Jake. He turned over disgustedly and tried to forget it all. Then he awoke as Jake shouted in his ear:
"Hey, old man, time to roll out!"
"Go on," grunted Dan, "I ain't heard the first whistle yet."
"Don't I know it! You're too darn sleepy to hear a cannon." Jake looked at his watch: "Suffering Jehosephat, we've overslept!" He jumped quickly cut of bed, and in his haste uncovered Dan, who aroused sufficiently to real- ize what Jake had said.
"Ten minutes to seven! Cut the jckes." Then Dan jerked his own watch off the shelf. "Thunderation! Why didn't you bat me on the head when the whistle blew?"
"Darn if I've heard any whistle," confessed Jake.
They pulled on their sweat-stiffened shirts and overalls. Their untied shoe laces dangled about their heels as they tan for the boarding house.
Men were washing at the bench out- side. The bell gonged violently, as
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if incensed at the lateness of the hour. Then they rushed in, only to stop just inside the door.
A card hung on the opposite wall. New black letters were upon it. There were but five words there; but they meant a lot to these sleepy, tired men, for these were the words:
"You may go to Circus. (Signed) J. Laird, Manager."
"Whoopeh!" shouted Dan.
"It's a bracer for me!" cried Jake.
Exclamations in all manner of wood- men's phrases broke from the lips of the men.
"It's a hallelujah day all around," said a stumpy swamper.
While they wondered why the old orders had been changed, they were too happy a lot of men to speculate long on this.
And so all Timber Lake went to the circus. Carts, wagons, buggies and au- tomobiles could be seen going along the dusty road. The more unfortunate, those who walked, swung into the tim- ber as a vehicle, followed by a cloud of dust, rumbled past.
Any ill-feeling toward Laird had all but vanished. Some believed the whole thing a joke. He had shown the right spirit after all. Dan, however, did not think so. He was so preoccu- pied with his thoughts he wholly neg- lected Grace.
The tall, stately pines, the occasional glimpse of some dark ravine ; the rush- ing, swaying car was an enjoyment to Grace. But that enjoyment lost half its zest while Dan sat with a frown spread over his face.
"For goodness sake, forget your troubles, Dan. I told you all the time we'd go. Now be yourself and enjoy it!" Grace finally admonished.
Dan did have a good time. Grace and the circus cast a spell over him as it did over every pleasure seeker.
Jackson had a population of a thou- sand souls, and with the country round about contributing to the stream of people which entered the Rand and Swelling's Shows, the ticket men, prac- ticing their lightning-like exchange,
must have lined their pockets with silver.
The day passed all too quickly. The sober men of Timber Lake went home before dark. Those who had visited the Jackson bar-rooms went home, too, but it was late in the night. Their drunken voices, in loud singing, echoed and re-echoed through the woods until two o'clock in the morning. They had no thought of to-morrow's hard work. To-morrow would take care of itself.
At six the following morning Dan and Jake awoke with little ambition to v/ork. Fifteen minutes later the part- ners went to breakfast. Only a hand- ful of men were up and able to eat, for the circus and Jackson had found its victims in many of the Timber Lake workmen. Splitting headaches and empty purses found no inspiration in the thought of the day's work.
When Dan had finished breakfast he went to the store to get a much needed cigar. There were half a dozen men waiting for the store to open.
Presently the door opened and the small, thin figure of Laird stepped out. The men started for the door. Laird motioned them back.
"Just a minute, boys," he said crisp- ly; then as the men filed out of the boarding house he called to them to come.
Soon twenty or more men stood wait- ing, as they supposed, for orders.
Laird stood silent, his mouth drawn in a straight line, a dark scowl on his face.
Dan had the unpleasant feeling that something was going to be said or done relating, somehow, to yesterday's spree. A peculiar fear gripped him. What it was he could not have told.
"Men," began Laird at last. "You were allowed to go to Jackson yester- day because the mill was out of re- pair."
He looked at the men with a grim smile. "I don't believe in men spend- ing their money on shows. You're a fit bunch to work this morning, aren't you? The circus would be none of my business if you did your work well. Some man, night before last, fixed the
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221
engine so we had a day's work to fix it up. I don't know whether you were all in this or not. But I know who that man is." He pointed a finger straight at Dan. "You were seen that night by the mill. You needn't take my word," he offered as he saw many doubting faces. "Here, Smith," he called to the watchman, "tell these men what you saw that night."
Dan's hot face looked to the ground. He could not meet that accusing finger nor the eyes of the crowd.
The watchman stepped up beside Laird. He hesitated, nervously lock- ing and unlocking his hands, as if afraid to accuse one of these men.
"Go ahead!" ordered Laird.
"Well," began Smith, "I saw Dan stumbling over some iron right near the engine room. But I guess he seen me first, for when I looked all around I couldn't find him. When the engi- neer came he found somebody had monkeyed with the injectors and the eccentric. That's all I know," he fin- ished.
No one ventured a word of protest or denial. It appeared to be a clear case.
"You're fired, discharged! Here's your check — take it and go!"
Laird's angry voice could have been heard to the mill. "Let this be a warn- ing!" He swung his arm, indicating the men in front of him.
Dan had been too surprised to say a word in self-defense. A fearful thought raced through his excited brain. Now he stepped forward with clenched hands. When about to speak he hesitated, for Laird, who was on the point of entering the store had stopped. He looked in the direction Laird was gazing.
Grace Whipple was running toward them.
As she came up she appeared fright- ened and very much out of breath.
Dan looked at her, but he seemed frozen to the ground. He could not move.
Grace raised an arm as for atten- tion, the while she struggled to re- gain her breath. "I saw you all out
here, and I — I knew what was happen- ing. I ran all the way. You fired Dan?" Her angry eyes stared at Laird.
He nodded, too surprised to answer.
"Well, he's not guilty! I— fixed the engine. Dan wouldn't promise to go — and I wanted him to go!" She raised her voice to a scream. "All these men wanted to go; but you wouldn't let them! They had a right to go, too! And I fixed the engine so they could go! Now, do your worst, Mr. Laird."
Dan's emotions could not be re- strained longer. He sprang to her. "Why did you do it, Grace?" he asked with a quiver in his voice.
Tears came to her eyes as she looked shame-facedly up at him, realizing how she had hurt Dan's pride.
The men at that moment formed in a close group. The burly teamster seemed to be giving orders. Then at a quick command they formed a cir- cle. Somebody grabbed Grace from before Dan's eyes. Two men raised her to their shoulders as the circle en- closed them.
"Three cheers for Grace !" cried the teamster. And three thundering "hur- rahs" rent the still morning air.
Laird, taken completely aback at this sanction, this loyalty to the girl, started for the door the second time that morning.
Grace, however, had not finished her play. Leaping down, she pushed her way through the men, and, seeing the watchman, she pointed her finger at him:
"You lying coward!" she cried in a scathing voice. "It was me you saw that night, and you know it, for I saw you ! I always knew you hated Dan.
"B— but— I— I- explain.
His words and laughter.
Smith tried to
were drowned in jeers He slunk into the store, pale-faced and cowed.
Then the girl turned on Laird. "Dan isn't to blame — you've got to give him back his job!" she commanded.
The manager mumbled something like an acquiescence.
The men dispersed slowly, laughing,
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singing and declaring Grace was some girl to give them such a good time, and then come out and tell the whole thing.
"Grace, how could you?" asked Dan when they were alone.
"I done it because I — I wanted to — no, I wanted you to go. I "
"Good God, Grace, you've got nerve!" interrupted Dan. He looked down admiringly on her. "I felt like a convict standing there with the boss
accusing me.
After a moment, during which he captured her hand, he said: "Say, Grace, I'll have something to say to you to-night. But I'll tell you now — I object to your Dad keeping you any longer. You're too big for him."
She smiled at him. "To-night," she said, then fled as her cheeks colored.
Then Dan hurried off with more zest for work that morning than any other workman in Timber Lake.
ARIZONA ANN
'Twuz in the city uv Bisbee
What leans agin a hill, That I fust encountered Annie
An' her feller, Bisbee Bill.
Bill wuz happy-go-lucky,
A cow-boy wild an' free, Born back in ole Kaintucky —
The home uv chivalree.
Six foot tall in his stockin's ;
Fist like a batterin' ram; An' spite uv all his failin's,
Ez harmless ez a lamb.
A care-free, flirtin' devil,
Espesh'ly on a spree; But, he sure wuz on the level
In lovin' Ann McGee.
Ann wuz a jealous beauty Plum' daft 'bout Bisbee Bill :
Mo' 'n once in hot dispute, he Mocked ez she vow' to kill.
A lyin', malicious gossip Spun the pizen yarn to Ann ;
'Twus that low-down Yaller Possup What hail' frum Texarkan.
Ann spurred in rage through the desert To look up ole Squaw Luce ;
An' by the great horn lizart,
Foun' Bill ! Wa'n't that the deuce ?
With nary a thought uv sinnin';
Jes' fixin' a leetly pup What his hoss had kicked; a-grinnin',
Bill step' frum the wikiup.
Ann close' her eyes an' drilled 'im Six times with gun drawed quick:
A laugh on his lips, she killed 'im — The thought nigh turns me sick.
The old squaw croon' the death-song.
A wild scream echo' faint, Ez Ann pitch' forward headlong
Off Buck, her Indian paint.
The sun sunk down in glory Purplin' the golden West —
Peculiar sort uv a story, The way their souls foun' rest.
Ann alius said: "I reckon
If Bill is fust to die, His soul'll surely beckon."
She seem' to prophesy.
The moon riz up a-droppin'
A blood-red halo down, Ez the Indian squaw kep' hoppin'
An' trampin' roun' and roun'.
Ann prayed an' talk' to her lover, But Bill wuz dead fur keeps : —
His body, she gently cover'; Then, sudden up she leaps.
With arms stretched out to meet 'im
Ez if Bill's face she see; A-walkin' on to greet 'im
And babblin' foolishly.
Fur miles an' miles she wander',
Her eyes a-starin' wide; A-seein' Bill out yonder,
Till jes' tired out, she died.
Gunther Milton Kennedy.
The Story of the /Airacle
Told in California
By Otto von Geldern
(All rights reserved.) (Continued from last month)
(SYNOPSIS — A number of prominent characters in the old pioneer town of Sonoma, Northern California, drop into the hotel's cheerful gathering room, during the evening hours, and swap tales, experiences and all that goes to make entertaining conversation. The subject of miracles starts a discussion, joined in by the old Spanish padre, lovingly christened Father Sunday. The judge, or Jux, as he was nicknamed by his cronies, begins a story based on a recent dream, in which a supposed miracle was wrought. He dreamed that he had died, and that his soul wandered in space, visiting celestial palaces, hearing rhythmic harmonies and scenes of soul-stirring splendor, grandeur and beauty. He visited the Palace of God, where all spoke in whispers, but none there had seen Him. He failed to find his name in the record of the dead. Later he was conducted to the Realm of Satan. His satanic majesty entertains Jux in his library, where he shows himself to be an astute philosopher of negation. No trace of Jux' record on earth is found in hell. Thereupon the archangel Gabriel is sent from celestial headquarters to adjust the difficulty with Satan. A discussion arises between the two as to the just disposal of this soul.)
THEREUPON Gabriel replied with some warmth: 'My mission is to save a soul which hath nearly slipped from divine grace because of some trivial and tech- nical neglect. And I shall save this soul without violating any law, I will promise thee that. If thou wouldst wish to propose a way of adjustment, do so ; but I fear me that I may not ap- prove of a method which will appeal to thee, foul prince, as just and equi- table.'
" 'Is there the slightest reason for speaking disrespectfully to me ?' asked Mephistopheles. 'Quarreling will not
help us, and we shall never reach any conclusion if we continue.'
" 'Since thou wilt make no effort to solve the problem, let me suggest that chance decide for us.'
" 'Why that stare, Gabriel ? Let not this suggestion jar thee harshly.'
" 'Doeth not Dame Chance stand at the cradle of every one of woman born on the little mother earth below? She whirls the horoscope and draws the lot, and destiny is shaped not by her decision but by her wantonness. The men of the earth are creatures of chance. The wind will blow the seed into any direction that may suit its
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whim or caprice, either to let it blos- som or by some blight, decay. And thus the human life is sown and scat- tered to the winds, and when the reaper comes at harvest time, when every life is as an open book, we call that fate which was haphazardly be- gun and from beginning to its end sub- missive to the vagaries of chance.'
" 'If then it be that chance accom- pany the children of the earth at their entrance into mortal life, is it illogical to utilize this means at their renas- cence ? No ; and therefore I say again, let chance decide.'
" 'The little word chance hath a most interesting origin, which I will ex- plain, because thy knowledge of He- brew is better than thy knowledge of Latin, Gabriel, even though thou art a great linguist. The derivative is the verb cado, cadere, to fall; that is, to fall as do the gaming little dice with- out design or previous intent. That's chance.'
" 'There is a dice box,' pointing to the sideboard, 'containing three ivory cubes marked in the usual way. Let both of us, let thee and me, cast these dice upon the table and let one single throw decide. The highest number of points shall claim this soul forever. Is not this proposal as fair to thee as it is to me?'
"After some hesitation Gabriel re- plied :
" 'Speak not to me of thy fairness and of thy justness and of decisions of chance. I need not contradict thee, Satan, but I wish to confront thee with this statement, the truth of which thou knowest full well:
" 'Whatever is — is, because it was so ordained by divine decree from the beginning of time. An infinite wis- dom guides not only the falling seed, but also the vagrant wind that blows it to its place of development. If it fall upon a rock on earth to struggle with an existence of want and misery there, it may bloom forever in the bosom of the Infinite here.
" 'Reluctantly I acquiesce to thy proposal. I do this not to abet thee in thy greed to possess, but to curb
thy cruel and malicious will. Accept- ing thy foul challenge of adjustment by dice, I do so because I would de- prive thee of the possibility of having recourse later on to thy venal weapon of distorted law, which thou doest carry within thy mouth as the foul reptile doeth its venom.
" 'Necessity calls for an action, and one of thy own maxims, which thou doest use whenever the law as written doeth not serve thy purpose, hath it that: 'Necessitas non habet legem.'
" 'Nevertheless, and while I like not thy proposal, I accept it, for the rea- son that justice must prevail even be- tween heaven and hell.
" 'Satan thou art a great jurist. Thy cunning justifies alarm and apprehen- sion. But I have placed my trust in the powers of the good and the pure, and this faith gives me the assurance that these beneficent powers will gain a glorious victory over those of evil and darkness. Let us proceed.'
"Mephistopheles smiled and said ironically :
" 'Thou hast spoken well, Gabriel, and I bear thee no grudge. 'Fiat jus- titia, ruat coelum.'
"You may imagine how I felt. Crest- fallen is no name for it. Chagrined, mortified, humiliated, dejected, out- raged— I have used six adjectives al- ready and all of them combined do not describe my feeling. Here I was re- cuced to an object to be raffled for, like a pin-cushion at a church fair, or a cigar in the Elkhorn Saloon. To what base uses had I come at last?
"After the two principals had dis- cussed their preliminaries, Mephisto- pheles stepped over to the sideboard and said pleasantly:
" 'Gabriel, wilt have a little cauda- galli before we begin?'
" 'O, fie! out upon thy mephitic con- coctions which I like not!" exclaimed Gabriel indignantly.
"''Well thou knowest, Satan, that thou canst not tempt me with them, and t'nat I drink but of the pure waters of heaven that flow not in their course through thy polluted rivers of hell.'
" 'Saying: 'Sociability is not one of
THE STORY OF THE MIRACLE
225
thy strong virtues, Gabriel; but thou art the chooser and art ever welcome to thy insipid celestial fluid,' Mephisto- pheles took from the sideboard a small leathern receptacle so familiar to you all, my friends. In its make-up it did not differ from that in the Elkhorn saloon, which you have so frequently handled. Don't stare at me in that way, Father Sunday. I may be will- ing to make an exception in your case.
"The three dice it contained were carefully examined and accepted as satisfactory. Both thereupon walked to the library table, and upon mutual agreement it was decided that Mephis- topheles should have the first throw. And that was his undoing, as you shall presently see.
"He took the box deliberately, smil- ing pleasantly, he rattled the dice with- it1 it, and with a graceful sweep of his hand he rolled them out upon the table. When they came to rest, Me- phistopheles chuckled audibly and, imagine my consternation, when I be- came aware that he had shaken eigh- teen ; that is, there were the three little ivory cubes lying before me, each with its six uppermost. Fair play or foul, I know not which.
"When I had fully realized this re- sult, I felt as though I had received a stunning blow. I knew that I stood at the brink of the eternal abyss, and Dante's immortal words: 'All hope abandon ye who enter here,' were mak- ing their fiery impress upon my soul then. What hope is there left for me ? Am I not irretrievably in the clutches or. Satan, to be marked and labeled for perpetual pyrotechnical experi- ment?
"Let chance decide ! Well said : let chance decide; but tell me, what is the proportionate chance of throwing three sixes with three dice? I shall let our Angel figure that out for me by the law of probability. To be sure, there is a possibility of tying the throw — but I realized, as you all will, that the probability of doing so could only be an extremely remote one, and I had woefully resigned myself to my future fate, when Gabriel took up the box
and prepared it for his throw.
"There was nothing about him to in- dicate that he felt in the slightest de- gree his highly probable defeat; on the contrary, he had in his face the same look of assurance and determination that he displayed when he first entered the library. I reasoned that he had absolute faith in that he would tie Mephistopheles and then beat him at the second throw.
"Gabriel did not say a word ; he nei- ther smiled nor did he look particular- ly serious. Nothing daunted, he took the leathern cylinder, replaced the dice, shook them and rolled them out upon the table.
"Now, here happened the great miracle.
"The dice settled to rest and when we got the sum of the three, what do you think was the result? You will not credit my statement, my friends, but Gabriel had actually thrown NINETEEN with three dice!
"Thereupon the archangel pro- claimed in a thundering voice, as though giving praise to the powers in whom he had pinned his unshakable faith :
" 'A miracle hath been wrought! A great miracle! A precious soul hath been saved from the clutches of Satan by a glorious miracle! The snares of the Prince of Evil were laid in vain. The great and everlasting Right hath vanquished the traducer without a vio- lation of the written law by which we both abide. The challenge of Satan was accepted at his own terms and his defeat is unassailable.
" 'Happiness and peace abide with this soul from now on — forever and ever. So mought it be.'
"Satan had very little to say after that, but his face changed to white and green in turn with suppressed anger. He controlled his passion masterly, however, and all he said was this, and it was the only time that I heard his lips utter profanity, when he snarled:
"'That beats hell!'
"At this moment I awoke with a great start and bathed in a cold per- spiration, with my mind almost dazed
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from the events that had been pictured before it. I can assure you, my friends, that it took me some time before I fully recovered my usual composure, and as long as I live, I shall not forget this uncanny nocturnal experience.
"But I shall now return to the point from which I started at the be- ginning of my story, and that is this: if you will admit the possibility of throwing nineteen with three dice, I will promise to believe in any miracle that may be proposed for my credence.
"But now I am dry with thirst, and if the landlord will refill this mug with his foaming beverage,' I shall appre- ciate it greatly."
There was great hilarity as well as merry laughter among our friends when Jux had concluded. Nearly every one applauded him by the clapping of hands or by slapping him on the back.
"Did it take you only one night to dream all this?" asked Mr. Bull, wip- ing the perspiration from his vitreous optic. "Why, that was dream enough to last any ordinary sleeper a week."
"Yes, Jux, it took you a long time to get to the climax," said Dry-dock. "Heavens! I thought they never would get to the shaking point. I was be- ginning to feel an attack of ague await- ing it. It was altogether too long be- tween drinks to suit my thirsty soul."
"Are these the thanks that I get for relating my experiences in detail?" exclaimed Jux. "You should appre- ciate details; but you are more un- grateful than Mephisto himself."
A small man among the auditors, a Jewish merchant, Naphtali by name, a dealer in petroleum, said with the accent of his nativity:
"The story vas good, Shudge, and I doo appreciate it vit you. All the time I vonted to tell you : leave dot to Gab- riel, Shux, leave dot to Gabriel. He is von of our people. He'll doo it; it's 'eezee.' "
With this exception, however, all agreed and emphatically said so, par- ticularly Mr. Tinker, the chronologist known as our angel, that here was an impossible condition that not even a miracle could cover: three times six
are eighteen and never nineteen.
During all this time Father Sunday sat there without saying a word. A smile on his good face, however, indi- cated plainly enough, that while the story of Jux may not have met with his entire approbation, he had the good sense to see in it only the wholly harm- less humor; and then suddenly — to a man — there arose an unanimous de- mand that he, Father Sunday, should augment the evening's entertainment by his version of a topic which had proved so interesting to them all.
Chapter III.
THE FATHER'S REPLY.
"My good friends, I have listened to Jux' story with very great interest, and I am willing to admit that it amused me. I don't believe that he ever dreamed all this nonsense ; I am rather inclined to think that it is the result of an unduly inflamed imagination, and it is very probable that Jux dreamed that he dreamed all he told us, which makes the authority for his tale even less reliable than that of an honest dream, and when we reach such a con- clusion we are somewhat justified in seeking the origin of this dream in the annals of the Ananias Club.
"However, do not think for one mo- ment that I am unable to appreciate or to enjoy a good story irrespective of its origin, for I know as well as you do, and perhaps even better than you do, that frequently the laughing imagery of baroque and grotesque fables teaches the lesson far better than the stern and commonplace reality.
"In a world so full of woe and sor- row as this, good humor is an ever- welcome friend. A burden difficult to bear, a cross so weighty as to call for the very limit of our strength, becomes much lighter if instead of bathing it with tears and grieving over it, we laugh the grief away. But this, too, my friends, has its limits and the wise man will not overstep them.
"There are certain hallowed subjects in this world of ours that should be deemed too sacred to draw them into
THE STORY OF THE MIRACLE
227
jest, and the most sacred subject for human contemplation is death and that which is to follow. Every dying hu- man being is about to take the first step into the holiest of the holy, and it behooves us to stand before this mystery with uncovered head, in de- vout reverence, and never to make it the subject of humorous drollery.
"Do not think, my dear Jux, that I hold you capable of doing so. I know your tender heart and your ever open hand to those who are in affliction or in distress. I only desire to point out how easy it is to lose that which every man should cherish as one of his best characteristics, and that is his dig- nity.
"God wills it that the future shall be a sealed book to us. Give it but one thought and you will find that we are creatures of the past only. The pres- ent, although constantly with us, does net remain long enough for us to know that it has been here, for it arrives and leaves at the same moment. To us the present second of time is the past of the coming second of time, of which nothing is known before it arrives. You will agree that the human mind is tied to space and time, and that it cannot escape from either.
"To Him, however, the past, the piesent and the future are as one, for time and space, these incomprehen- sible human conceptions, have ceased to be where the great Soul of the Uni- verse controls everlastingly.
"O, we appear to be very wise, but with all our boasted wisdom we know in reality very little. Although sur- rounded by an ocean of knowledge, we are moving and groping about in the dark, and we are very much like a fish on the bottom of the sea that has never beheld its surface.
"We need more light. Open the shut- ters and raise the blinds and let it pour its blessings upon you, for darkness is
ignorance.
"You have been impressed deeply with that one great truth, Jux, and that is, that God is the Light. He is, indeed, the beacon in which all the intelligence of the world is concentrated. All
knowledge in our possession, accumu- lated through the centuries, emanates from that great source alone, of which the mental attributes of humanity, great though they may appear in gifted individuals and in our intellectual giants, are but very minute sparks. God's light shines eternally. Through the ages yet to come many things will be revealed to our intelligence, be- cause we will learn to see more clearly, and many problems, unsolved as yet, v/ill be unraveled and become a part of our intellectual stock and store.
"But we shall never be able to fathom the great unknowable Truth, even though we were forever exposed to the flood of its glorious light. You have frequently referred to a subdued light, Jux, and I am convinced that this light has been dimmed purposely, and it is well that this is so.
"It appears as though a curtain had been drawn to conceal from us a sa- cred stage. This curtain is embroi- dered with the most beautiful images of animals and plants and flowers, with landscapes of lofty mountains and pic- turesque valleys, and with a view of the endless sea, giving evidences of God, the Creator.
"The devout kneel before the folds of this marvelous tapestry, through which the rays of a subdued light fall to throw a divine halo upon these wor- shipers, who have prostrated them- selves in recognition of their own in- significance and dependence.
"It behooves us to bow in deep hu- mility and to kiss the hem of this holy canvas. The most audacious would not entertain the thought for a moment to attempt to lift this curtain in order to reveal that which was from the be- ginning intended to remain a sacred mystery forever.
"To continue: I am also convinced that it is not the light alone we mor- tals need, but that there is something of greater necessity to us, something tor which the human heart will crave through all eternity, and that is Love. Without it the world may be ever so resplendent in its sparkling glory and brilliancy, but your scintillating light
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alone, my dear Jux, would leave our hearts cold and dismal and barren, were it not for the warmth and the cheer of love and affection.
"You will understand this, my friends, for you are human and de- pendent upon it all through the span of your mortal lives, and, therefore, I say unto you: God is Love! Love is the spring of life and its origin must lie deep in the breast of the Creator.
"Again, I hold that God loves not only as a stern parent, as a father who would reprimand his son because he loves him and wishes to admonish him and to correct him, but that He has combined therewith, in His infinite mercy, that great and sacrificing love which a mother has for her offspring.
"A mother believes in her child, for is not this child a part of her very flesh and blood, which she is ready to shield and to defend at any moment at the risk of her own life? It has been written somewhere by a philo- sophic author whom I cannot recall at this moment, that a mother's son may stray into paths that lead from virtue, and that those to whom he is indiffer- ent may lose confidence in him and conclude that for him there is no re- demption. The mother, on the con- trary, adheres to the faith in her son — she knows that he will turn out well in the end. She has no reason for this, no psychological proof for her faith, for she believes with her heart and not with her mind. Her life is attached to her faith in him, and in this she can- not be shaken.
"I want to add to these cold state- ments of fact and I want to make them more impressive by saying: You may tear out a mother's heart, you may carve it from her living bosom, and, bleeding in agony, it will forget its own pain and its own sorrows, and its last flickering throb will be given lov- ingly for the child who has rent that heart in twain.
"This great emotion, this unselfish love, is based upon Faith. I do not wish that you misunderstand me. I am speaking to you simply and from the heart, not as a theologian — for I
fear you would not understand me as readily — but as a friend who knows you all so well and who loves you. What a cold and cheerless world this would be if it were not for the warm- ing hearth-fire of love to cheer us, and to make the world worthy as an abode of life.
"I am now ready to take up the sub- ject of miracles. It seems to me that since we are everywhere surrounded by enigmas, we should not be seeking for more mysteries. Modern miracles have their origin in weak and erratic minds.
"Take, as an instance, the table-tip- ping of those who claim to be in com- munication with the world behind the curtain. Is it not a far greater miracle that with the constant whirling and flying of our mother earth, the house- hold table should, stand still and not tip? This mystery appeals to me, the other does not.
"The earth we live on spins like a top, with ?. velocity, immediately under our feet, of fourteen miles in one min- ute; at the same time it is hurled through space, in its flight around the sun, at the rate of eighteen and one- half miles in one second — I beg that 'our Angel' will correct me if my fig- ures are faulty — not to speak of other motions said to be inherent in our sys- tem of worlds; and if our minds will but dwell on this terrific speed, com- pared with which the cannon ball is like the cork in a pop gun, the modest little kitchen mensa begins to cut a sorry figure, indeed.
"Remember also, that the table of a family is a holy altar. The board on which we break our bread and ask upon it the divine blessing, the board around which the members of a family are gathered for counsel and advice in joy and in sorrow; this table stained with bitter tears becomes too sacred an object to be turned into an undigni- fied jumping-jack, or into a ballet dancer for banal edification or amuse- ment.
"It is enough to arouse our risibility to be told that our good old table has been raised to the importance of be- coming a means of communication be-
THE STORY OF THE MIRACLE
229
tween this world and the next. Is it not ridiculous when you come to think of it? Why, my friends, the subject is not worthy of your thought.
"Undignified creeds have arisen in the past and will arise again and again in the future. They originate in the minds of the unlettered and the neu- rotic.
"In speaking of miracles in their usually accepted sense; that is, as something contrary to the physical laws of nature, I may point out to you this: that, reasoning philosophically, it is perfectly logical to assume the oc- currence of an event which is neither preceded nor followed by others to which it is related in sequence of cause and effect. An isolated occurrence of this kind is a miracle, which from a subjective viewpoint is perfectly think- able.
"The fact is, however, that we are usually asked to believe in unaccount- able things upon the testimony of other human beings, which testimony, even if it be honest, is based upon distorted mental conceptions that lead to false impressions and to wrong conclusions. It is always the wiser plan to assume a mental attitude of skepticism towards an alleged phenomenon which is not conformable to our human experience and which cannot be brought into har- mony with the normal conditions of our environment as we know it. That is, reasoning within the range of our empirical knowledge is the best stand- ard we have.
"On the other hand, we should not forget that the laws of God governing the Universe are infinite, and that with our very limited understanding of them we are not in any position to make definite statements concerning them. You speak to me of violations of the laws of nature. Do we know all these laws and are we thoroughly acquainted with them ? It seems to me that every- thing will depend on our understand- ing of them.
"Let me remind you, Jux, of the quaint philosophy contained in Car- lyle's Sartor Resartus, and as recorded by the erudite and reflective Teufels-
droeckh, the stercus diaboli, who, to my mind, was ill-named by his spinose and irascible creator:
" 'Deep has been, and is, the signi- ficance of miracles; far deeper than perhaps we may imagine. Meanwhile the question of questions were: what specially is a miracle ? To that Dutch King of Siam an icicle had been a miracle; who so had carried with him an air pump and vial of vitriolic ether might have worked a miracle. To my horse, again, who unhappily is still more unscientific, do I not work a mir- acle and magical Open Sesame! every time I please to pay two pence and open for him an impassable turnpike ?'
"A miracle inexplicable by any known law might readily be accounted for by another not known to us, which would remove the miraculous nature of the occurrence by its application, if we but understood it.
"If the Creator required a miracle to be wrought in order to reach an end, it is not logically necessary that He should do so in violation of the laws of the Universe of which He Himself is the author. If you will tell me that water cannot be changed into wine- physically and that such a transforma- tion is impossible, I might answer you, that if those who are drinking the water were impressed with the idea that it is wine they are drinking, then the trans- formation has been wrought, subject- ively if you will, and the same result has been reached.
"But you may take it for granted, my friends, that the so-called modern miracles are not wondrous at all. They only appear marvelous to us because we have failed as yet to differentiate them properly. Man's miracles belong to jugglery. God's miracles surround us everywhere.
"Now, I agree with you, Jux, that in the matter of numbers and their rela- tion to each other, we have certain mental concepts that are not based up- on efflternal physical conditions but upon abstract thought, and these con- cepts have become to us fixed necessi- ties. A philosopher may imagine a subjective world without a real exist-
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ence behind it; again, he may picture tc himself an objective one, which may agree or disagree with his subjective conception of it; all these mental gym- nastics are possible, but it will be ut- terly impossible for him to conceive that three times six are nineteen, be- cause the result eighteen is a fixed ne- cessity, not only for this world but for any other that man's imagination may create.
"But, be not too hasty in your ap- proval of this statement of mine, be- cause I am fully convinced that there is a possibility of working this mir- acle with three dice. That may sound paradoxical to you after what I have just told you, but if you will grant me the opportunity, I will attempt an explanation. In order to make myself clear to you, I, too, am going to tell you a story, and when I have completed my narrative, you will agree with me that such a miracle as it
contains is not only likely to happen at any time, but that it does happen on every day of our lives. We pay no at- tention to these occurrences because there is nothing startling or supernatu- ral in them, and our fancy for the mys- terious and occult is not sufficiently tickled to bring them into prominence.
"My story shall be a brief one. The evening is drawing to a close, and I fear me that our good Mrs. Tinker in her solicitude will call for her astro- nomical husband very soon, with an ac- centuated admonition that it is time for him to go to bed."
Our Angel muttered something about leaving these domestic adjustments to him, but the assertion lacked the usual vigor with which he ordinarily ex- pressed his ideas on subjects foreign to his domesticity.
Be that as it may, Father Sunday began his story, and no one interrupted him during its recital.
(To be continued.)
EL PASO de ROBLES*
Although the city's mill I tread And strive for rest in vain,
In dreams thy peaceful paths I thread Beneath thine oaks again.
Among thy moss-hung, ancient trees, So strong of root and limb ;
In fancy still I hear the bees Repeat their harvest hymn.
No greed is there, no galling grind,
To make of life a hell ; Sweet memories recall to mind
The magic of thy spell.
Beloved town; amid the vale, Near Santa Lucia's base,
Thy soothing calm can never fail, Nor Time thy charm efface.
Burton Jackson Wyman.
♦Spanish for "The Pass of Oaks"
GUNS OF GALT
An Epic of the Family
By DENISON CLIFT
(SYNOPSIS — Jan Rantzau, a handsome young giant among the ship- builders of Gait, joins pretty little Jagiello Nur at a dance in the Pavilion. There the military police seek Felix Skarga, a revolutionist. Jagiello fears that Captain Pasek, the Captain of the Fusiliers, will betray her presence at the dance to old Ujedski, the Jewess, with whom Jagiello lives in terror. Jan rescues Jagiello. Later when Pasek betrays Jagiello to Ujedski, and seeks to remain at the hovel with her, she wounds him in a desperate en- counter. Ujedski turns her out, and she marries Jan. Later Pasek indi- cates that he will take a terrible revenge upon the bridal pair. A son is born to Jan, and he idealizes his future even as he idealizes the growth of the world's greatest superdreadnaught, the Huascar, on the ways at Gait. After the birth of Stefan, Jagiello tries to tell Jan of her sin with Pasek, but her strength fails her at the last moment.)
Chapter XIII.
STEFAN was placed in a big wil- low basket, enveloped with blan- kets, and left alone under the window in Jan's room, while Mad- ame Ballandyna swathed the exhaust- ed mother.
It was a beautiful window, all green with honeysuckle trailing in. Above, the brown thatch of the roof dipped close to the honeysuckle. A thrush alighted in the greenery and began singing, and as it sang the world seemed brighter : the dawn-dew spark- led; the morning sky was blue; and saffron jets of smoke rose cheerily from the chimneys of all the little houses of Gait.
When Jan came in to his son, he found Stefan on his back, with his chubby thumb in his mouth, cooing contentedly.
Jan picked him up, swelling with pride. "Ha!" he exclaimed. "Ha, little man! You strong little rascal!
Copyright, 1917, by Denison
Cooing already? What do you think of this world?"
Stefan didn't think much of the world, for his face screwed up and he burst into a lusty yell.
Jan's face fell. "Aw, aw, aw, aw, aw!" he cried, and began pacing up and down to quiet him.
Madame Ballandyna bustled into the room.
"Jan Rantzau, what are you doing to that baby?" She took the child from Jan's hands. "Well, well, well, my dearie, what are they doing to my baby? Now, now, now! There, there, there! 'Busing my baby, are they? There, there, there!"
Jan chuckled to see the buxom mid- wife soothe his son. Presently the chubby thumb was back in the tiny mouth. Madame Ballandyna carried him into the room of his birth, and, opening the blankets across her knees, bathed the child's body with sweet oil, gently washing it clean. Jan stood by with shining eyes as she wrapped Ste-
Clift. All Rights Reserved
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
fan in swaddling clothes. Then Jan took him in his arms again, rocking him lightly to and fro. But as if scenting danger in those great awkward arms, the tiny red face drew up comi- cally again, and he began to cry. His cry alarmed Jan, so he quickly laid the precious burden in the bed beside the mother.
Into Jagiello's eyes had come a won- derful love light that Jan had never seen before. "Oh, Jagiello, I love you!" he whispered. He looked down at the tiny head that snuggled close to Jagiello's warm bosom. "The little prince !" he murmured. "You, Jagiello, gave me the little prince!"
The mother was weary; sleep closed her eyes. Jan went out softly. The room was flooded with April sunlight, and there was in the air the first warm impulse of spring.
Chapter XIV.
Spring !
The hills were verescent under the gentle peltings of the April rains; the thrushes were already calling for mates; the blue flowers were lifting their heads through the grasses, drink- ing in the sun-glow. Upon the willows along the river green buds were ap- pearing. The larches were glorying in new leaves. In Jagiello's garden yellow toadflax and bright blue chic- ory and golden sunflowers told of the renascence of the new year.
On his way to the shipyard that morning, Jan went along the bank of the Ule. The river ran like molten gold under the sun, its waters swollen from the melting snows upon the Lora Mountains. Upon its yellow crest the river packets belched smoke and whis- tled incessantly as they glided down to Morias. Long flat barges from Lor- rila and Morena, loaded with wheat and rye, drifted down stream with the lazy movement of the current.
With the birth of his son a great love for all men and all things came to Jan, a deep sympathy with human- ity in its lifelong struggle. For the Huascar, to be terrific in her death- dealing prowess, he had a certain ad-
miration. He thrilled with the sense of her power. After the long day he returned with all speed to Jagiello and Stefan. That night, with the starlight melting through their window, he sat long beside Jagiello, and they talked of the little man, and planned wonder- ful things for him.
When summer came they were still planning. The sum of their immedi- ate plans was that Stefan must have a new house to grow up in. With the joy of self-sacrifice they decided to save and buy a house for five hundred rubles, paying twenty rubles each month.
It was midsummer before they found the house that they wanted. They came upon it after many wander- ings through the narrow streets of Gait. It was lost in the heart of the town, upon a knoll surrounded by lindens and acacias. They found it by going through a white cobbled courtyard. They had never seen the house before. It was not large, but had four rooms, all of wood and mud with whitewashed walls. The roof was of mud, of the hue of cinnebar. Around the front door, and above it, hung honeysuckles in full bloom. Great bees with tawny wings boomed in the stifling heat. The house had been vacant many months, and an army of brown willow-wrens with sharp, fife-like songs, had become accustomed to swarm in the lindens. When Jan and Jagiello appeared sud- denly from across the courtyard, the wrens flew up in clouds, shrilling in alarm, angered at the intruders.
There was one room larger than the others and flooded with the August sunshine. As Jagiello .threw open its door she exclaimed: "Stefan's room!" Stefan, in her arms, awoke at that and began crying. His voice seemed to say: "It's mine! It's mine!" Jan chuckled. "He says it's his room!" he exclaimed.
While Jan held his son, Jagiello opened the windows and let in the sweet, fresh air. Stefan continued to cry, so Jagiello took him again, and she and Jan went out upon the low veranda and sat down.
GUNS OF GALT
It was Sunday, and the din of the shipyard was stilled. The quaint, crooked streets crossed and zig-zagged below. Above, on their left, vineyards grooved the hillsides. To the east lay the river, and through the noon-day haze the tall spire of St. Catherine's rose like a faint tracery upon a can- vas. By and by the winds came up, and white sails drifted down the river to the sea.
"If Madame Tenta will sell us the house for five hundred rubles, we will buy it," said Jan.
Thus decided, they crossed the court- yard and came to Madame Tenta's home. She bade them enter. Jan ex-
UNIVERSITY 9„ c OF A66
"Well, if you want th&-.-house very much, and will sell your house and pay me two hundred rubles down, and the rest at twenty rubles a month, I will let you have the house for six hundred rubles," offered Madame Tenta, sur- reptitiously holding the gate shut until Jan could reply.
"Six hundred rubles is still too much," declared Jan. "I cannot pay so much."
"Oh, yes, you can," suavely urged Madame Tenta. "Here, I will give you the key. Think how your boy would love such a beautiful place when he grows up."
Jan's boy! Shrewd Madame Tenta
plained how he and Jagiello had hap- had pronounced the magic word. How
pened upon the house, and inquired the price.
"A thousand rubles," answered Madame Tenta, very promptly.
A thousand rubles! Jan's dreams went glimmering in an instant. "Oh, that's too much for me ever to pay," he replied. "We went through the house and thought we might buy it from you. But a thousand rubles — no, no!"
He rose to go, but Madame Tenta delayed him with another proposal. To Jagiello she said: "You were Jagiello Nur before you married Jan Rantzau, weren't you ?"
"Yes," assented Jagiello.
"I remember you now. Madame Ujedski has often told me about you."
Jagiello started. Ujedski! She had not heard of Ujedski for a year.
"And, of course, if you are a friend of Madame Ujedski, I might make your man a better price on the house. How would eight hundred rubles do ?"
"You are very kind to reduce the price, but I cannot pay so much," re- plied Jan. "I thought I might buy the house by paying twenty rubles a
Stefan would love the house ! "Well," finally agreed Jan, "I will buy it for six hundred rubles." He took the key and went away with Jagiello, after promising to sell his house and pay down two hundred rubles.
Jan and Jagiello went back to look through the house again. They could see its red roof through the trees, and when they reached the door the army or. willow-wrens was still flashing through the lindens. The house seemed more wonderful than ever.
Jan had bought some apples and lit- tle cakes, and as the sunset faded he and Jagiello sat upon the threshold of their new home and watched the clouds of fireflies gleaming over the river. By and by they left the doorstep and went out under the trees, where they sat down on a rustic seat. How happy they were! The great thing they had longed to do for Stefen was about to be done. It filled Jan with pride and joy to think of laboring that his son might have so splendid a home to in- herit from him.
The new moon hung golden in the
month; but I have a house of my own, night as the twilight passed, and just
so I guess I had better stay in it."
He rose again, and with Jagiello v/ent to the door. It was very evident that Madame Tenta, having found some one interested in the house, did not intend to let them escape without purchasing. She followed Jan out to the gate.
above the red roof, in the east, the evening star was brilliant. It filled their hearts with hope, for now their own star was rising, as brilliant, as wonderful.
At length they went down across the courtyard together, looking back time and again at the star in the east, shin-
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ing above their new home.
A whitewashed hut appeared sud- denly before them, strangely familiar. It had been hidden by interlacing larches. In its window a candle burned brightly, and a bent old woman sat at a table alone — a grotesque, repulsive figure.
Jan and Jagiello stood stark still.
The old woman moved, and her wrinkled skin, like yellow parchment, could be clearly seen in the candle- light.
It was Ujedski.
Jan and Jagiello passed quickly into the street — Jagiello holding her child with suffocating strength, as though fearful that it would be torn from her irms.
Chapter XV.
It was a year before Ujedski sum- moned the courage to match her curi- osity, and crossed the courtyard to Jagiello.
After that Sunday night, when Jan and Jagiello had discovered that the hut of Ujedski was just across the court, Jagiello had been haunted by visions of the Jewess skulking over the cobblestones and slinking away under her windows.
Many a time in the heat of the sum- mer the little mother had beheld the beldame's old wrinkled face flat against her window pane, peering up at Jagiello's little red-roofed house be- tween the trees. When there was no wind the larches above Ujedski's hovel and the lindens above Jagiello's home, were motionless, forming a dense screen that shut out all view of each house. But when the wind blew in from the sea in mid-afternoon the trees hummed and rocked, and at intervals opened into clear spaces. It was then that Jagiello, ever apprehensive, saw the face of the Jewess pressed against her window — watching! watching!
The old woman's presence was more terrible at a distance than near at hand. In the old days when Jagiello had lived with her and known Pasek, she had never feared the bent form nor the
broken voice, for although hard and driving, Ujedski had been quite harm- less. Now, however, it was the secret about Captain Pasek, locked in her breast, that made Ujedski the mys- terious, horrifying creature that robbed Jagiello of complete happiness. She felt that if ever Jan learned her terri- ble secret it would be through Ujedski.
The girl had become strong again after the birth of her child, and when Jan was at work under the shadows of the Huascar, she spent her noondays in the little garden that she had fash- ioned, to Stefen's constant amusement. Stefan was now nearly two years eld. He had early learned to walk, and his daily excursions into the little garden filled him with crowing joy. The flowers and the birds interested him most. Already he could say "Papa" and "Mamma" and "F'ower and "Bir', bir'." One day a thrilling adventure overtook him. He had awakened in his basket in the house, and seeing the door open, had climbed out and worked his way into the gar- den that lay in the white sunshine. On the way a little frog hopped in his path, a particularly gay, exuberant little frog that danced with all sorts of funny capers, and threatened to attack him. But Stefan was ready for him, and seizing a stick he poked him good in the middle of his fat, brownish body. Instantly the frog gave a strange "croa- k-k-k! croa-k-k-k!" flung itself into the air and leapt away in the cool of some lichen-covered rocks.
Stefan gave a chortle of glee, and his mother came running. The little fellow laughed and pointed his sharp stick after the frog, exclaiming over and over again, "Funny bir'! Funny bir'!"
"Oh, a funny bird," laughed Jagiello, and together they set out to find him, but he had vanished into cool seclu- sion.
There was an endless festival of fas- cination in that little garden.
Jan had caught some wood pigeons for Stefan. They lived in the acacias, in a tiny green house that Jan and Ste- fan together had made for them. The
GUNS OF GALT
235
low music of their wings was heard from dawn to dusk. At noonday they drank from a fountain that Jan had made from a hose and some boulders. Stefan loved to watch them drinking, the sun glistening on their blue wings, full of soft melody.
All the wild winging things of the fields sought Stefan's garden. The red flowers attracted the butterflies. There were beautiful silver-washed ones, and great tawny-orange ones, and whole clouds of marbled white ones striped with amber. They came dipping through the garden, graceful, fluttering skippers; and Stefan chased them in vain. The white swaying bells of the meadow lilies, and the fuzzy foam flowers, won the Gamma moths that sported in eddying spirals. If the sum- mer's day was hot the sky was ceru- lean, and the river glowing cobalt. The river boats, with white sails, came and went with lazy tooting and puf- fing. In the afternoons a snowy white barge would go down the river, drawn by great black horses with tiny silver bells on their harness, and driven by a boy with a wide straw hat. The barge was loaded with cotton for the gun factory. The little bells would jin- gle musically and die away as the boy vanished along the tow-path.
One noonday Jagiello was sitting in the garden sewing a suit for Stefan, when she heard a footfall upon the cobbles. Looking up she saw the fig- ure of old Ujedski skulking among the trees, peering uncannily at her. She dropped her needle and started vio- lently. The Jewess had a black shawl over her head, and when she saw Ja- giello she stopped and stared at her with strange wild eyes.
Jagiello caught Stefan by the hand. "Hello, Ujedski!" she called, half in- voluntarily, hardly knowing what to say.
"Oh, you do know me!" laughed the Jewess, her curling lip revealing her yellow teeth, her voice more cracked than ever Jagiello had heard it be- fore.
Reassured, she started forward and came close to Stefan. She would have
touched him upon his shock of yellow hair had not Jagiello seized him and pulled him quickly behind her.
"Oh, you don't want me to touch him!" sneered Ujedski, with malicious mirth. "A Nobody is not good enough, I suppose? Fie upon you and your little night hawk!"
"He's not a night hawk!" protested Jagiello, resentfully, inwardly fright- ened at Ujedski's unnatural mirth.
"The son of a gay little night bird," grinned the Jewess; and again she ex- tended her long, lean hand, and would have touched the boy had not Jagiello quickly leapt aside with him.
At that Stefan began to cry, as if knowing that something was wrong. More than once in her dreams Jagiello had seen Ujedski shaking that long, lean finger in her face, and chasing her away up the hill toward the priest's house.
Smiling again her weird smile, Ujedski asked:
"Does Jan know?"
Jagiello started, but tried to appear unconcerned. "Know what?"
"About Captain Pasek?"
A sudden impulse made Jagiello an- swer "Yes."
"What does he think?"
Jagiello's face turned white.
"Ujedski," she cried, "you go!"
Instead, the Jewess smiled evilly and remained leering at her. "I'll warrant Jan does not know all. I'll tell him myself some day."
Jagiello's face showed terror. "No, no, Ujedski!" she gasped in a panic. "Mother of God of Czenstochowa, do not tell Jan!"
The overshadowing fear that had lain close to Jagiello's heart for many months had in this crisis disarmed her cunning, revealed her inmost soul.
The Jewess chuckled. "I came across the court to see if you would lend me twenty rubles."
Twenty rubles! To keep her secret now was worth a thousand rubles! Ja- giello picked up Stefan and went into the house as if to search for the rubles which she knew in her heart were not there.
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Ujedski followed her, and when Ja- giello had gone through the house in vain she showed the Jewess the empty pewter mug where Jan kept his money.
"Then I'll see Jan!" said Ujedski, hatefully.
"No, no! You must not tell Jan about Pasek! ... or about me . . . I will pay you, Ujedski ... but prom- ise you won't tell Jan! Promise, Ujed- ski!"
She dropped to her knees and clutched at Ujedski's bodice in tragic appeal.
"I'll have the rubles for you .... You won't tell! . . . You won't tell!"
Ujedski swept her aside, and sham- bled rapidly away.
For a moment Jagiello was too dazed to act.
Then she ran into the garden, cry- ing after her. But already the bel- dame had crossed the cobblestones and vanished among the larches. Ja- giello, desperate, pale, ran among the trees, her voice rising in quavering accents : "Oh, Ujedski ! Oh, Ujedski !" She searched and called everywhere, and ran through the street. But no- where was the Jewess visible. Then suddenly she heard the distant crying of her child, and she quickly retraced her steps to the house, looking back incessantly among the trees.
Too late ! She might have sold her earrings and gew-gaws and red silk bodice — anything to have bought Ujed- ski's silence. Too late! . . . Jan would surely know all now !
Chapter XVI.
She soothed Stefan and carried him into the house. She sank into a quiv- ering heap on the floor, and buried her face in her hands. Her body rocked and swayed in paroyxsms of silent grief. Oh, why hadn't she told Jan long ago? Why hadn't she told him that night on the priest's balcony? Why hadn't she told him in that won- derful moment when she had whis- pered to him of their coming child, when he would have been so ready to forgive? Why hadn't God given her
strength on her bed of travail to tell him of her sin? ... It would have been so easy to have told him then. If only she could live through those mo- ments again! ... It would not have been so bad if she herself had made the revelation, but now the evil whis- perings of Ujedski — the revulsion she v/as sure would come to the man she loved! She sobbed and swayed in the grip of her tragedy. At length Stefan, not understanding, began to laugh. He tottered over and, bending his little face close to his mother's, kissed her tear-stained cheek. Jagiello started up, clutched Stefan in her arms, and crushed him to her breast. "Oh, my Stefan!" she cried, and again, "Oh, Stefan! My little Stefan!"
In the afternoon Stefan fell asleep near the open window, through which for so many pleasant months had come the merry sound of the bells along the river. Jagiello could hear the bells now, and see the white barge. The boy with the big straw hat was driving the team along the tow-path. He would return long after sunset, when the night was shot with stars. What memories of happy days!
As sunset came the army of willow- wrens flared off into the rice flats. Af- ter a long while Jagiello went to the door from which she could look past the gun factory to the shipyard and the outlines of the Huascar. She could see the roaring pipes of white steam mounting into the air side by side with great trumpet-shaped chimneys, out of which belched red flame and saffron smoke. In half an hour Jan would re- turn to her. Ujedski would meet him and tell him. And then . . . !
Suddenly she grew quite calm. What she should do came to her in one re- vealing flash. All confusion died out in her mind. She crossed the room to Stefan, and bending low over his sleep- ing face — the face of Jan — kissed his dewy lips. Then she took down her azure shawl and in it wrapped her few poor trinkets. She got paper from the table drawer and wrote this brief note :
"Forgive me, dear Jan. I love you more than I can ever tell you, but be-
GUNS OF GALT
237
cause of the past I must go away. Per- haps you already know. I am not fit to be your wife or Stefan's mother. Oh, forgive me, Jan ! Do not try to follow, for I will be a long, long way off . ."
She signed her name ; then taking up a second sheet of paper, she wrote a note to Ujedski:
"I have gone away to die, for I could never stand to have Jan know what you know."
In the hush of the sunset she went out across the courtyard and down into Ujedski's hovel, where once she had sinned. The did Jewess had not yet returned. She pushed open the door, stole to the table, left the note under the iron candlestick, and noiselessly passed out again. No one noticed her as she slipped away between the trees along the river bank, back toward her home in the fair southern fields of Guor, whence she had come — no one save the army of willow-wrens calling high in the flaming sky, flying back to the lindens in the little garden . . . flying back gayly . . .
Chapter XVII.
Jan returned at dusk.
He crossed the little garden where the improvised fountain was still spraying the water lilies. He looked, as was his custom, up into the door- way as he approached. Jagiello was not there. It was the first time since they were married that she had not been waiting to greet him.
Usually she waved to him before he came within hailing distance ; then she would call to him, holding Stefan aloft in her arms, waving his tiny hand. That moment was worth the whole day of grinding toil to Jan : it had become the thing he lived for.
But to-night Jagiello was not there. Perhaps she was too busy in the house. Perhaps the clock had stopped. Or she had not heard the whistle. Or even she might have run over the knoll to Marya Ballandyna's, as she sometimes did during the day, taking Stefan with her.
Jan entered the house.
The rooms seemed strangely, unac-
countably silent. Stefan's basket was under the window. Jan looked in it. There lay his boy, peacefully sleeping. Ah! it was all right now. Jagiello must be near.
He went from room to room, think- ing she might not have heard him come in. "Jagiello!" he called softly, to avoid waking Stefan. There was no answer, save the echo of his voice. He went out into the garden and looked tnrough the trees, and called her name over and over. "Jagiello, oh, Jagiello!" But there was no answering call. Fear began to steal into his heart. Surely she would not go far and leave Stefan here alone. And yet, why did she not answer ?
He went back into the house again and lit a candle, and once more bent over Stefan.
Then he saw, pinned to the side of the baby's basket, the note that she had left for him.
He set the candle down on the table, and with trembling, eager fingers op- ened the note and read it.
His face grew ashen. His great fists, like sledges, crumpled the paper. He stood stark still, stunned, incredu- lous, gazing around the room in child- like wonder. . . . Jagiello gone? . . . Where? . . . Why? . . . Turbulent questions surged through his bewil- dered brain. The look in his eyes re- flected the pain that stabbed his heart.
In the dancing, fantastic shadows from the candle on the table his huge frame loomed black against the white wall, the shadow of a Titan. He felt as though some unseen enemy had struck at him. He went to the table, and in the candle's glow opened the crushed ball of paper in his hand. Over and over he read the message that pierced him like a knife thrust. The very words sounded unreal. The whole situation seemed impossible, uncanny.
His mind reconstructed the events of that morning before he had left her. He went over every detail.
They had risen at five o'clock. While he was dressing Jagiello had cooked his breakfast. He had eaten kaszia, rye bread and honey, and had drunk
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black coffee without milk or sugar. He remembered her standing above him, pouring the coffee into his mug. Then she had placed the coffee pot back on the porcelain stove and come to him and kissed him. "Go right on eating," she had said; "don't let my silly little kisses bother you." And she had laughed — that little bell-like tinkle of a laugh that he had always loved ; and he felt the pressure of her soft arms around his shoulders. Then after a while she had talked of Stefan. He re- membered that she had said: "Next week we will have Father Mamarja christen our little son." He repeated those words over and over to himself until he lost their meaning. "Next week ! — next week ! — next week !" That showed that she was not thinking of going away. No! This terrible thing had come out of the skies — had sud- denly struck him when he was away.
He got up and went to the door. The stars blazed in the summer sky like candles at Yuletide. From the river came the fresh breath of the wind, and he could see tiny points of flame from the lanterns of barges. He remem- bered, dully, that about this time every night the boy with the straw hat drove the horses past that pulled the barge of cotton from the fields of Lorilla. The night was so peaceful. He had been so happy. This sudden catastrophe seemed impossible.
"It can't be true!" he cried to him- self. "It can't be true!" Then a sud- den thought came to him. It was her little joke! Ah, yes! he might have known. She only wanted to fool him, to see what he would do. She wanted to see his face turn white, and his mus- cles grow taut, and his breath come hard as he read her letter. Then she wanted to see what he would say, and presently she would run out of her hid- ing place into his arms — laughing, sat- isfied! . . Why hadn't he thought of that in the first place ? It was so sim- ple. Of course nothing had happened. What a fool he was ! Well, he had read the note, and hij face had paled, and his muscles had grown taut with the shock. Now why didn't she come forth,
confessing her artfulness, and let him catch her in his great arms and swing her high in air, and kiss her as she came down ?
He looked around the room again — at the table so neatly arranged for his supper; at Stefan's basket under the window, with the honeysuckle vines trailing in ; at the white Swiss curtains ; at the brown screen in the corner; at the fireplace with the copper crucifix in the black velvet frame above it; at the green serge hangings of the clothes recess. She might be hiding behind the screen — or she might be in the closet. She was surely in the one place or the other.
He laughed at himself for having been so stupid. Hadn't she often said to him, with a pert toss of her golden head: "You don't love me!" And as often as he repeated his protest of love, hadn't she confronted him again with the accusation in the charming little way she had that made his pulses ham- mer and his breath come fast? .... Now she was testing her accusation of fading love. She had grown tired of his mere words. She had loved him so that the woman in her demanded more than verbal announcement of love: she wanted visual evidence of his affection. Ah, yes, that was it . !
So Jan sat down and began to eat his supper. After a few moments he said, as though addressing her opposite him : "Well, you little monkey, why don't you come out?" His voice broke hol- lowly in the silence. He waited for Jagiello's answer, but as the moments raced by no answer came. When he could bear the horrible suspense no longer he got up and pushed forward toward the screen. He was ablaze with anger. It was all right to play at going away, but there was a time to stop. His eyes dilated, his breath whistled from his body, his voice boomed in the little room : "Come out, Jagiello! Come out!"
With a single blow he knocked the screen to the floor. There was no one behind it.
He turned to the clothes recess. He caught the green serge curtains that
ACHIEVEMENT.
239
Jagiello had spent days embroidering with red butterflies, and tore them from their rods. He groped among the clothes, but only the clothes met his eager hands . . . Jagiello was not there.
His anger went suddenly from him, as quickly as it had blazed up.
He strode to the doorway. He went down into the little garden, calling "Jagiello ! Oh, Jagiello I" But only the wind in the larches answered him.
He stood helpless in the garden, not knowing where to seek her, not know- ing what to do.
Then his son began to cry. He hur- ried quickly back into the house. He
picked the little fellow up tenderly and folded him passionately to his breast. But still he cried: "Mamma! Mamma!" Jan walked him across the floor, trying to soothe him. But the little man only sobbed for his mother.
Jan put him back in his basket.
He stood looking down at him. His great heart broke, and tears dimmed his eyes. Of what use could he be to a child that cried for its mother, he, the gnarled Titan, the man who knew only how to toil?
With swift impulse he strode into the doorway and bellowed across the court :
"Ujedski!"
(To be continued.)
ACHIEVEMENT
Great things await the turn of each man's hand.
Tremendous issues hang upon the fate
Of our arrival elsewhere soon or late.
For one must build a house upon the sand,
One must write a book that none can understand,
Another has a legacy of hate,
And rushes off to spend his vast estate,
While some seek love with prayer and vain command.
Colossal projects grow each busy day
And towering plans mature through brain and brawn ;
The hands fly fast, the dreams leap fierce and far,
Till men turn proud and boast along the way!
And meanwhile, through the day, the dark, the dawn,
There spins this lost and wandering star.
Joe Whitnah.
The Mexican Deputation Sent to Austria to Invite Archduke Maximilian to Accept the Mexican Crown
Aaximilian I of /Mexico
By Evelyn Hall
THE DEATH of the late Em- peror Francis Joseph of Aus- tria (November 21, 1916), "Emperor of Sorrow," as he has been termed, recalls to mind one if not the Emperor's first great sor- rows: that of the untimely and brutal death of his brother Maximilian.
Maximilian, known in his early life as Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph, Archduke of Austria, was the second son of Archduke Francis Charles and Archduchess Frederica Sophia. He married Princess Maria Charlotte Amelia, daughter of King Leopold I of Belgium. This marriage was not, as is often the case amongst the roy- alty of Europe, for diplomatic reasons, but purely a love match. The young Archduke wooed and won the beauti- ful Princess Charlotte. She possessed
the rare traits of character that made her loved by all whom she met, but mingled with her gentleness and mild- ness of disposition was an underlying pride and ambition; it was this ambi- tion that was instrumental in making Maximilian forsake his home, the Palace of Miramar in Trieste, to be- come Emperor of Mexico.
Maximilian did not hanker for power, and it took some persuasion on the part of Napoleon III, who repre- sented Mexico, to be "a great Latin State, organised and disciplined in European fashion in an ancient Span- ish colony." The entreaties of Nap- oleon III, coupled with his wife's de- sire for power, finally overcame his better judgment. He was led to be- lieve the people would unanimously welcome his arrival. Instead he found
MAXIMILIAN I OF MEXICO
241
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it a discordered land, seething with corruption. The country divided its support between Maximilian and Benito Juarez, President prior to his arrival.
The French people, feeling the ex- pedition a costly one, along with the attitude of resentment on the part of the United States in European inter- ference in attempting to establish a monarchy on the continent of North America, Emperor Napoleon withdrew all the French troops, thus leaving Maximilian to face the situation alone.
Meanwhile the Empress returned to Europe to enlist support for Maxi- milian, shortly after her arrival her reason left her. Ambition was paid for at a terrible price by the Empress, for after all these fifty years she is
still insane. Her home is in a chateau in the village of Bouchout, Belgium. At present she is cut off from all her own people and lives surrounded by Germans.
While defending Queretaro against a Liberal force led by General Esco- bedo.. Maximillian was betrayed by General Lopez, whom he had made a confidant of, on the night of May 14, 1867. He was imprisoned with two of his generals, Mejia and Miramon. The three prisoners were tried, found guilty, and condemned to be shot June 19, 1867.
"^W
Old Male Elephant Seal Ready for Battle
The Remarkable Elephant Seal
By Lillian E. Zen
NATURALISTS all over the world, especially the U. S. Gov- ernment, have been greatly in- terested of late in a beach some 400 yards long by 30 in width on the isolated Island of Guadalupe. Here, on this remote and uninhabited Island, lying in the Pacific Ocean, one hun- dred and forty miles off the northern part of the Peninsula of Lower Cali- fornia, has been discovered the only rookery left, and the last standhold on the Western Continent of the northern elephant seal. This is the largest of all seals, long since thought to have disappeared, and likewise one of the most remarkable marine mammals ex- isting to-day. Aside from its great
size, 16 feet and more, the chief fea- ture of interest of these animals is centered in the strange appearance of the head caused by an elephant like trunk or snout, measuring in the adult males nearly a foot or more in length. The re-discovery of this, the only herd of northern elephant seals living to- day, was made by Dr. Charles H. Townsend, director of the New York Aquarium, who commanded an expe- dition on the U. S. Fisheries steam- ship "Albatross" to Lower California, to study the fishery resources and to obtain specimens of this region. By a special arrangement with the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries, the New York Zoological Society and the Museum of
THE REMARKABLE ELEPHANT SEAL
243
Natural History were enabled to co- operate in this voyage. This magazine is able to present one of the interest- ing field photographs taken by Dr. Townsend, showing the curious ap- pearance and various attitudes as- sumed by the elephant seals, along with a general description of their life, habits, etc., hitherto not fully known. The elephant seal formerly had a range of nearly one thousand miles from Magdalena Bay northward to near San Francisco, and they were abundant on all the islands off the west coast of Lower California. Be- ing valuable for its oil, it was killed in large numbers for commercial pur- poses until it was thought to be prac- tically extinct. The oil is worth about fifty cents a gallon. A sixteen foot elephant seal is said to yield from 200 to 250 gallons of oil. The animals are killed by shooting; the skins have no commercial value. A small herd of eight were found some twenty years ago by Dr. Townsend on the same island while hunting for a spe- cies of the fur seal; however, as no report had been received from this region in the interval it was thought that this remnant of a herd had been exterminated and therefore there was little hope of its continued existence. The recent rediscovery of a herd of a considerable size has been a matter of great surprise and of important zoological interest. • The new herd of elephant seals were discovered by Dr. Townsend on the northwest side of Guadalupe Island after a half day's search. Here, on a sandy beach some 400 yards in length by 30 in width, under high and impassable rocks, and flanked by cliffs that extend into the sea, was located the rookery and breeding place of the herd of 150 ele- phant seals. Their habitat, known as Elephant Beach, is accessible from the sea only, and is usually further protected by a heavy surf. The col- ony of seals was found scattered in family groups along the beach, and watched the landing party in their boats with apparent indifference. The herd consisted chiefly of large males,
females, yearlings and new born pups. A number of adult males were sur- rounded by newly born young, and the indications were that the breeding sea- son was just commencing at this time of. the year, which was March, and therefore it was thought that other adult females would arrive later. The seals had little fear of man, which af- forded unusual opportunities for se- curing close range photographs show- ing them in their various attitudes. Unless actually teased by members of the party, the old animals did not at- tempt to leave the beach, and many of them did not raise their heads from the sand until closely approached, al- though wide awake. When driven from a comfortable resting place they would soon settle down, and after throwing sand on their backs with their front flippers, become quiet again. Both young and old have the habit of covering themselves with sand when settling down to rest. The females, although but little molested appeared to be even more passive than the males. Some of the large males, after being driven into the sea, soon returned. While in the water they re- mained near the surf, disregarding the boats which passed near them, the head being usually held well above water, with the proboscis partially re- tracted. When making a landing the large male does so very slowly, with frequent pauses, from time to time raising and spreading the hind flip- pers to get the benefit of each low wave that helps him through the shal- lows. When finally clear of the water and dependent upon his own efforts in getting his ponderous bulk to a dry place well up the sloping beach, pro- gress becomes very slow, but the ele- phant seal is able to crawl long dis- tances. The males measured sixteen feet in length with average girth of eleven feet. The adult female meas- ured eleven feet. The color of the adults is yellowish brown, the younger animals grayish brown, and newly born pups dusky black. The skin of the adult male is exceedingly heavy, being an inch thick about the fore
244
OVERLAND MONTHLY.
part of the neck. The carcasses of the sixteen foot seal were so heavy that it required the strength of a half dozen men to turn them over with the aid of a rope and hand-holds cut in the skin. The blubber was found to be about four inches thick in some places. The most striking and re- markable feature of this animal, and from which it takes its name, is a curious elongated trunk or snout which attains a length equal to the remain- der of the head. This thick and heavy appendage has a length of ten inches or more forward from the canine teeth, and is fibrous and fleshy throughout; when fully expand- ed it exhibits three bulging transverse folds on top separated by deep grooves. The trunk is not capable of inflation, but is retracted into heavy folds on top of the head by muscular action. This snout is somewhat pro- trusible, but when not elongated hangs in a pendulous fashion over the mouth — when sleeping it rests upon the sands, a shapeless mass. In fighting, the large males crawl slowly and la- boriously within striking distance, and then rearing on the front flippers and drawing the heavy pendant proboscis into wrinkled folds well up on top of the snout, strike at each other's necks with their large canine teeth. This
is accompanied with more or less noise and snorting. In fighting, the proboscis is closely retracted, and the seal is apparently successful in keep- ing it out of harm's way, as many of the animals with badly damaged necks were found to have trunks show- ing no injury at all. The fighting is not of a fatal or desperate sort, and the contestants soon separate. There seems to be no actual seizing and hold- ing of the skin, and after each sharp blow the head is quickly withdrawn and held aloft. The fore flippers are large and thick, and have very heavy claws.
One of the curious features devel- oped for protection in their beach bat- tles is a "shield" covering the part of the animal mostly exposed to attack when fighting. This extends from the throat just below the base of the jaws, down to the level of the flippers and rather more than half way back on each side of the neck and breast. The skin is greatly thickened, practically hairless, and years of fighting has given it an exceedingly rough and calloused surface, producing an ar- mored breast plate. Though freely ex- posed to the enemy and ugly wounds are inflicted by the large canines, the heavy skin in no case seemed to be broken through.
TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Immortal hero, who from common clay Emerged a masterpiece! Titanic soul, Rough-hewn of tragedy, ye paid the toll Of Freedom; thy clear vision lit the way For Liberty . . . We hail thy natal day God's gift! Thy charity, writ on the scroll Of troublous years, helped unify this whole Fair land. The halo of self-victory lay Upon thy brow, and always poet's pen Must falter ere it but the half express. So humble, yet thou wert a Man of Men, Where such are measured by their tenderness And valor. What though criticised has been Thy grace of form — none think to love thee less !
Jo Hartman.
Experiences of an Oregon Pioneer
By Fred Lochley
Judge Wm. H. Packwood of Oregon
WILLIAM H. Packwood, of Baker County, Oregon, is the last surviving member of the Oregon State Constitutional Convention held in Salem, Oregon, in the fall of 1857. Among the sixty delegates who met on the seventeenth of August in the Marion County Courthouse to frame a constitution to be submitted to the voters of the State were many who later achieved State- wide or Nation-wide distinction. Geo. H. Williams, Oregon's "Grand < Old Man," became a member of President Grant's cabinet; Delazon Smith rep- resented Oregon in the United States Senate; L. F. Grover became Gov- ernor of Oregon, as also did Stephen F. Chadwick; Reuben P. Boise and P. P. Prim both sat on the Supreme Bench in Oregon; Matthew P. Deady, the President of the Constitutional
Ccnvention, became one of Oregons most distinguished jurists; Chester N. Terry, the secretary of the Conven- tion, achieved fame in California in later years. Some of the delegates had already achieved State wide fame. Jesse Applegate, the leader of the "Cow Column," A. L. Lovejoy, the founder of Portland; Captain Levi Scott, the founder of Scottsburg, and many of the older delegates had come by ox team across the plains to Ore- gon in the middle forties, when Ore- gon was under the Provisional govern- ment and had served in the Provis- ional as well as the Territorial gov- ernment. Fifty-nine of the sixty dele- gates have taken the long trail that leads over the Divide — the one-way trail. William H. Packwood, the only living delegate, at the age of 84 is hale and hearty and as much interested in the welfare of Oregon as he was fifty- eight years ago, when he helped frame Oregon's constitution.
Judge Packwood was born on Oc- tober 23d, 1832, near Mt. Vernon, Illi- nois. "My mother's) death when I was twelve years old threw me on my own resources," said Judge Packwood. "I peddled bread in Pap's town, as East St. Louis was then called. This proving pretty slim picking, I took up any work that offered, working on farms or grocery stores, or any other job I could secure. In 1848, while in Springfield, Illinois, I wrote eighteen on two slips of paper, put a slip in each shoe and truthfully swore that I was 'over 18' and was enlisted in the Mounted Rifles. While I was but six- teen I was large for my age, and had been doing a man' swork on the farm for some time. I was assigned to Jef- ferson Barracks in Missouri. In Feb- ruary, 1849, we were ordered to East Leavenworth, where our company was recruited to its full strength, and horses, rifles, revolvers and sabres were issued to us. On May 10th camp was broken, and our regiment under
246 OVERLAND MONTHLY.
the command of Colonel Loring start- Auburn diggings in Baker County,
ed on their long overland march for Oregon. I have recently found a good
Oregon. I was selected as one of the prospect in the Burnt River country,
military escort of 25 men to accom- and I am planning to open it up."
pany General Wilson, who had been At the last session of the Oregon
appointed Commissioner of Indian Legislature a well deserved and uni-
Affairs tor the Pacific Coast. We left que honor was paid Judge Packwood.
for California on June 5th, and The House and Senate met in joint
reached Sacramento on November 5th. session, and in the presence of both
Of the 200 head of mules and horses houses the supreme judge and other
with which we started, all but 19 had State officials, the Governor presented
died on the way across the plains. Mr. Packwood with the following
When we reached Sacramento our es- resolutions:
cort of 25 men was reduced to four rr _ , _ , . „
men by desertions. We were being House Concurrent Resolution No. 8
paid about $8 a month, and as from Whereas, Judge William H. Pack- $12 to $15 a day was being paid in wood, of Baker, Oregon, was a dele- the mines, it proved too strong a gate from Curry County to the Con- temptation for most of our men. With stitutional convention that framed the some other troops we were quartered constitution of the State of Oregon and in an adobe building at Sonoma in a is the sole surviving member of that part of which General Vallejo, the delegation of distinguished pioneers, former Spanish governor of Califor- and has been prominentiy identified nia, was living. Persifer F. Smith, with many leading events in the his- who had won his spurs under General tory of Oregon since 1850, as Captain Scott in Mexico a year or so before, of the Coquille Guards in the Indian was in command of the Division of the wars, as drafter of portions of the Pacific. Colonel Joe Hooker was Ad- equitable rules and laws governing the jutant-General and Lieutenant Alfred early mining districts, and as scout, Pleasanton was aide-de-camp. trail blazer, capitalist and historian,
"In the spring of 1850 I was sent to Whereas, it is proper that the State Vancouver Barracks to rejoin my of Oregon, through their Legislature, company. A few weeks after my ar- should extend to Judge Wm. H. Pack- rival at our post on the Columbia River ard in this his 84th year a token of our company was ordered to Benicia, their gratitude for his public services, in California. We were there from now therefore
May, 1850, till August of the same Be it Resolved, the House, the Sen- year, when we were sent to Northern ate concurring, that the 28th Legisla- California. Returning to Benicia tive Assembly of the State of Oregon some time later we were ordered to hereby recognizes and expresses its go to Port Orford on the Oregon Coast appreciation of the high standard of to protect the settlers from the In- life of Judge Wm. H. Packwood, and dians. We started late in December, of his public services as one of that 1851, in a leaky and overloaded old band of intrepid pioneers that blazed tub of a boat. We were shipwrecked the way for the march of civilization at the mouth of Coos River, and we in the Oregon country, and stayed on Coos Bay from January 1st Be it further Resolved, That a copy to the following May, when we of this resolution be engrossed, signed marched overland to Port Orford. At by the governor the president of the the expiration of my enlistment, I set- Senate and the Speaker of the House, tied in Curry County and became and be presented by this assembly in Curry County's delegate to the Con- Joint Convention to Judge Wm. H. stitutional convention. For years I Packwood, as a testimonial of his followed mining. I was one of the character and achievements and as a party that discovered and named the token of public gratitude and esteem.
The Gorgas of the Philippines
By /Aarian Taylor
WOODS HUTCHINSON, the well-known medical expert, tells us that, from a health point of view, we are about coming to the conclusion that the pro- per study of mankind is insects, be- cause of their destructive power. Even the bomb-dropping Zeppelins and ae- roplanes, he says, are not to be men- tioned in the same breath with the mosquito and the fly as destroyers of life and limb. A million lives a year by malaria and yellow fever, he con- siders a conservative estimate.
Nor is malaria confined to the trop- ics. He reminds us that Michigan, In- diana, Illinois and Iowa could never have been settled by the white race without the aid of quinine, giving the name of a famous old pioneer physi- cian of the Middle West as his author- ity for the statement. He also tells us that the malaria-carrying mosquito ranges clear up to our northern boun- dary, and many a new settlement in our Middle West and Northwest has been broken up and driven out by ma- laria, just as were the earliest Virginia settlers at Jamestown. Further, that up to a few years ago malaria was quite common along the coast and rivers of New York, New Jersey, Con- necticut and Southern Massachusetts, and that even yet the mosquito is an enemy there.
We know, also by experience that California is not exempt from the same pestiferous insect, but it is com- forting to know that many mosquitoes are simply annoying and not harmful. Dr. Wiley it is who informs us that we may tell at a glance whether one that alights, for instance, on the back of the hand, and begins to insert her bill, is likely to inoculate with malaria or
not. The following is his test:
"If the back of the insect is prac- tically parallel with the back of your hand, and her head and her proboscic make an obtuse angle with the axis of her body, she is a harmless mosquito (culex.) On the other hand, if the axis of her body is practically continu- ous with that of the head and bill, she belongs to the anopheles type, and means business from the start.
"She stands on her head to give greater power to her punch. If she has had any opportunity to become im- pregnated with malarial organisms, she is likely to carry enough of them on her bill to start an abundant crop of malaria-producers in your blood."
Cuba's redemption from yellow fever is a thrilling story. For one hundred and fifty years Havana had suffered from that scourge, and the more the people cleaned up their city the worse conditions became, until, at last, a man from Alabama, Dr. W. C. Gorgas, took up the work of sanitation on the basis that the fever was caused by an infected house mosquito — the stegomyia. This fact had been pre- viously discovered by Doctor Donald Ross, an officer in the Indian Civil Service, but it was Major Jesse W. La- zear of the United States Army who bravely put it to the test. He bared his arm to the mosquito, and died in agony as the result, thus by the sac- rifice of his life paving the way for the salvation of thousands when Doc- tor Gorgas applied the discovery.
In spite of this, however, the con- servative British Medical Journal would only go as far as admitting that the experiments in Cuba were sug- gestive, the yellow fever theory not yet being universally accepted. Then
248
OVERLAND MONTHLY.
came the supreme test in the Isthmus of Panama, with its fifty miles of jun- gle and two fever-infected cities; that awful region where, during the French regime, there was a death for every tie on the track, and where there was a higher mortality among the workmen of that time than the old Guard of France showed during the Napoleonic v/ars, owing to lack of knowledge of the cause of the tropical disease.
In 1904 the remarkable man who had stamped out fever in Cuba faced the stupendous problem of the disease-rid- den Isthmus of Panama, and his suc- cess in handling both yellow fever and malaria is a matter of history. Major- General Gorgas will go down to pos- terity as a benefactor of the human race. But for him the great achieve- ment of the Panama Canal would have been rendered impossible.
Now another Southerner, Doctor George W. Daywalt, who settled as a physician in San Francisco thirty years ago, and who went to the Philippines as an army surgeon during the Span- ish-American war, has made himself famous by the magnificent work he has done on the Island of Mindoea. Since the war he has been helping to develop a sugar plantation there, but four years ago health conditions became so bad and the involved area so appallingly large — approximately one hundred square miles, that the problem became as serious as that which faced General Gorgas at Panama.
Finally, a health committee, ap- pointed by the Secretary of the Inter- ior, discovered that the deadly sickness destroying the people was caused by the carrier mosquito, anopheles, one of the twenty species of mosquitos in- festing that region, an insect that made its breeding places in the streams of the plantation. It was found out, moreover, that this particular mos- quito, after biting a person, remained about the house for eight days before it was possible for it to carry malaria. Hence it became a case, not of "swat- ting the fly," but of catching the mos- quito, and the natives were taught by Doctor Daywalt to take a thin piece of
bamboo, bend it into a circle about four inches in diameter, wrap it in spider webs, and then use it against the enemy.
But it is questionable whether the easy-going Filipinos would have ex- erted themselves but for the persua- sive power of the Doctor who, in addi- tion to his brilliant intellect, has a most compelling charm. In this re- spect, he is like General Gorgas; both men are born diplomats, leading rather than driving those under them.
"You know the Filipinos are credu- lous, so I turned their superstitions to good account," said the Doctor during a recent visit to the United States. "I showed the salivary glands of the ano- pheles to a young native and told him that in them lived Asuang, the evil spirit that kills little children, and that all the mosquitoes in and around the house must be destroyed every week, or they would become death-carriers," an admonition that worked like a charm.
But the most remarkable part of the story is as follows, and it is like a fairy tale where one goblin ensnares another and then a bigger one comes along and swallows both. It appears that one day a native assistant was work- ing in a stream, and made the discov- ery that water bugs were eating the larvae of the mosquitoes — "wigglers," he called the latter. In great excite- ment he told the Doctor, who immedi- ately began an investigation, which re- vealed two species of fish, in their turn, swallowing the bugs.
"At first people wouldn't believe me," said the Doctor, with a twinkle in his eye, "nor would they take any stock in my plan, which was to corral the fish in a stream about a mile long and allow the water bugs to multiply till they were sufficient in number to consume all the larvae." The result was little short of a miracle, for an area of twenty square miles was cleared of the disease-laden insects in a period of ten months, and there has not been a single case of infection since."
The Doctor has an able corps of
MISUSE.
249
trained Filipino assistants, and the death rate in the villages and towns of Mangarin has been reduced from eighty-six a thousand to four a thou- sand. The death rate in Mindoea four years ago was two hundred and fifty a thousand, and now it is less than that of the city of Washington; while the cost of protecting three thousand peo- ple— sleeping within the twenty square mile area — against the mosquito, was, for 1915, only one thousand dollars. And so, Doctor George W. Daywalt
is content to live far from the lure of modern city life, cut off from many of the comforts and most of the luxuries ut civilization that he may devote him- self to the interests of science and the fine work of a broad humanity. Back to the San Jose sugar plantation of Mindora has he gone, where the na- tives love him because he keeps their old-time enemy, Asuang, away from their babies, and where he is regarded as something between an all-powerful friend and a fairy god-father.
MISUSE
A thousand labor that she may be free To bear that fine head haughtily and high, Each lock of hair arranged to please the eye With what a careful, cunning artistry! Dominion over age and care has she, Keeping her potent youth, which would pass by, Dormant and atrophied, thus to defy Travail of soul and body, and its fee.
Unheard, a cry beats at her jeweled ear — The crying of her sisters in the dark; The world's a playground, in her blinded eyes, A garnished, perfumed garden-spot, and here The brain which might have lit a lasting spark Ponders the problem of a bridge-club prize.
Mabel Rice Bigler.
The Trend of Events
By Cornett T. Stark
THOSE whose memories go back to twenty, thirty or forty years ago, have doubtless noticed how much the world's thought has changed since then, especially in regard to social fundamentals. It is remarkable that such developments should be coincidental with an epoch marking place reached by the Sun in the precession of the equinoxes, and yet, every two thousand years or so these radical changes in the attitude of humanity as a whole have occurred, as far back as history records and im- mensely farther, according to occult records.
Just as two thousand years ago, ap- proximately, a period began from which we now even measure time it- self, so is there now being rapidly in- augurated another era, that of human rights. It is the Aquarian age of man which was predicted in 1485 to begin in 1881. That prophecy by the person who chose to be known as "Mother Shipton," ended by saying that "The world to an end shall come, in eighteen hundred and eighty-one." It did not mean that the planet would be de- stroyed, though such cataclysms as put Atlantis under the water in 9564 B. C. may occur before the age is fully ush- ered in. The present terrible condition in Europe is part of the birth agony in a literal sense, but the growth of gen- eral enlightenment accomplished prior to this war, that had been proceeding in geometrical progression for fifty years, was due to many unseen agen- cies that carry on the process of evo- lution, chiefly the solar change from Pisces to Aquarius; and it was to this that Mother Shipton referred.
At the beginning of the last quarter of the nineteenth century the impetus
given to the aspirations of humanity by the Christ, or to that much of the world as he came especially to inspire, had about spent itself. Christians were either spiritless and perfunctory, or zealous but bigoted. A typical il- lustration of the dogmatic and incon- sistent attitude of people who mistak- enly believed themselves to be Christ- like, is seen in the following letter :
Boston, Sept. ye 15th, 1682. To ye aged and beloved John Higgin- son:
There be at sea a shippe called "Ye Welcome," which has aboard an hun- dred or more of ye heretics and malig- nants called Quakers, with W. Penne, who is ye chief scampe, at the head of them. Ye General Court has ac- cordingly given secret orders to Mas- ter Malache Huxett of ye brig "Pro- passe" to waylay sed "Welcome" as near ye coast of Codde as may be, and make captive ye sed Penne and his ungodly crewe so that ye Lord may be glorified and not mocked on y*e soil of this new countre with ye heathen worship of these people.
Much spoyle may be made by sell- ing ye whole lot to Barbadoes, where slaves fetch good prices in rumme and sugar, and shall not only do ye Lord' good service in punishing the wicked, but we shall make great good for his ministers and people. Master Huxett feels hopeful, and I will set down ye news when his shippe comes back. Yours in ye bowels of Christ, Cotton Mather.
The violent intolerance of that epoch is now almost unbelievable. But ex- clusiveness remains to some extent, and shows roughly the lines of divi-
THE TREND OF EVENTS. 251
sion meant for that time when im- which other ideals are being culti- pianted in the mind and nature of the vated. If there were not places on Aryan race. "Get thee out of thy earth where initiative and the creative country into a land that I will show faculty of human kind could be espe- thee." We have preserved for us there cially trained, those powers would re- a record of the foundation of a new main latent and the chief glories of life race, one which was intended to nour- could not properly manifest in us. ish ideals then unknown to the world. When from childhood an Oriental is It was to be that which is known in taught the basic laws of his being, he Occultism as the Fifth Race, growing comes to feel that God's plan provides tip as in part, a contemporary of the for every contingency, with the result Atlantean or Fourth Race, whose later to him that there is no need to con- subraces still exist, notably the sev- stantly improve, and he achieves the enth or Mongolian. To guard against extreme of simplicity. But when intermarriage with the older peoples, through suitable environment by birth Abraham was directed to live apart he is given the idea that there is but from them, and to serve the purpose the one life in which to accomplish all for which the new people was chosen, things, there is incentive to great ef- caste was established in its first sub- fort, and while we who are so born suf- race. But as with every race, there fer the extreme of complexity and tur- were to be seven sub-races, and it is moil, the otherwise dormant ability to the material for the sixth of these that create, to become skilled artisans and is being gathered into that melting pot co-workers with God, is in this man- of the nations — the United States. To- ner exercised. Every otherwise day we see the warrior caste of old, worthless toy that men strive for has surviving in form in India, but the peo- that value. The work of the Cauca- ple who made up that caste in its sian or fifth sub-race, which has yet to prime has after intermediate appear- reach its greatest height, is being car- ances in various places now largely re- ried on under those conditions of ig- incarnated in Prussia. In Germany norance in regard to karma and rein- there is also much of the merchant carnation, which for it have been caste, but the western world contains proper.
few of the truly religious class: that In this day and land of intellectual retains its ancestral home in the pride, race prejudice runs rather high. Orient. The color line is drawn by most of our Why is the knowledge of those people, but curiously enough it seems basic laws of life that are known as to be more clearly felt by those indi- "karma" and "reincarnation," not viduals most recently members of the world wide instead of being confined more primitive races. It is a God im- to some six or eight hundred millions planted instinct to keep race magnet- of people, most of whom live in Asia? ism pure, but it should not follow that We white people regard ourselves as because a given people is younger and the best educated and most scientific therefore • less highly evolved, we of all earth's inhabitants, present or should be arrogant and patronizing to- past. How do we know that? Dili- ward them. If we are indeed superior, gent research shows that the ancients let us show it in our patience and help- knew more, not less, than we. Atlan- fulness to those races. The dark tean culture reaching a flowering sea- skinned members of humanity are son not only in Atlantis, but in its quick to acknowledge the supremacy colonies of Egypt and Peru, that has of the whites, and also they are quick not been equaled since. But as all to notice when we fail in the respon- things move in cycles, the law of per- sibilities that that fact devolves upon iodicy obscured that degree of culture us. They are human just as we, only in decline at least, only to be raised younger. Their stage of growth has its again at the flow of the tide during own peculiar needs. The habits of
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thought, the customs, and the ideals cf those classes, are for them until such a time as they outgrow them. Their great religious Teachers present in due order the ideals that must be achieved in the course of the journey just ahead of them, and along which we, perhaps, have already gone. Fre- quently it is the same great Teacher who at another time and under another name, gave some other phase of Truth to a restricted portion of the world, and yet the separated followers revile their own Prophet under that other name, not knowing what to do.
Immense periods of time are in- volved in the maturing of a horde of bodies that will express within certain limits any one quality of the Divine Life as the chief characteristic of that horde. 100,000 years ago the Great Being in whose care the destiny of na- tions had been placed isolated a tribe from the white or fifth subrace of the Atlanteans. known as the Semitic, in order to found the Aryan or Caucasian race. The Ruler and also the Priest were men far in advance of the people under them, and this Bodhisattva, the future Buddha, founded a new religion for their use. About 40,000 B. C. a portion of them went into training for the second sub-race, known technically as the Arabian. Ten thousand years later the Iranian or third, went forth into Asia Minor, and their descendants of to-day include Persians, Afghans and Baluchis. At about 20,000 B. C. the most refined of them were used to found the fourth or Keltic division, and in them the same Ruler and the same Priest strove to awaken artistic sensibility and imagination By 10,-
000 B. C. a portion of them had be- come the ancient Greeks, sometimes called Pelasgians. Others became the Milesians who entered Ireland from the South only to meet their own peo- ple coming down from the North as Scandinavians. About 8,500 B. C. the fifth sub-race of the Aryan or Fifth Root Race, left Dhagestan and settled about Cracow, Poland, where it re- mained for some hundreds of years. Then the Slavs divided off, secondly the Letts, and thirdly the Germanic, one branch of which became the Teu- tons, and they gave their name to the present dominant faction from which the coming race will be derived. The table given below shows the names of the two Teachers of the Fifth Race, and their messages as suited to cer- tain sub-races.
It was about 8,000 B. C. that the Manu ordained the Caste system, now so fanatically adhered to, but so little understood. It applied to the Aryans proper, or present day East Indians, and was to preserve their purity as a new people while living among the Toltecs whose effete civilization they had supplanted. It is from the Brah- mana or very high class of these Ar- yans that the body of a disciple of the coming Teacher will be chosen for His use, and when He begins His great work of reconstruction for the rise of a new race, it will be with an ideal to attain that is the highest yet given any people — that of Co-operation or Brotherhood. Not Equality, but Unselfishness.
The circumstance that, although of the Caucasian Race, He will show a pigmentation, will provide a test for
Lord Gautama
Lord Maitreya
Fifth Root Race
(Sub-races)
Aryan 1 Vyasa .... India Arabian 2 Thoth (Hermes) Arabia Iranian 3 Zarathustra Persia I Keltic 4 Orpheus . . Greece Aryan 1 Buddha . . . India
Duty
Knowledge
Purity
Beauty
Law (of Evolution)
Aryan 1 Krishna Teutonic 5 Christus
India Devotion
Europe Self-sacrifice America Brotherhood
THE HIDDEN SONG.
253
those who only theoretically believe in Brotherhood. Not that He is likely to proclaim Himself for what He is, a Supreme Teacher, the Lord Maitreya who as Christ used the body of His disciple Jesus for the three years of His ministry among men while incul- cating Self-sacrifice. But as a de- spised Oriental He will give an im- petus to the present movement for fair dealing among men, that will cause it to grow into a mighty religion, an ethi- cal code by which men will strive to
abide, until it in its turn has become a travesty in the lives of succeeding na- tions, so far removed from the inspira- tion of His presence as to fail of real- izing what His life of Brotherhood had been.
"Then of Thee-in-me who works be- hind The veil, I lifted up my hands to find A lamp amid the darkness; and I heard As from without : 'The Me-within-thee blind.' "
THE MIDDEN SONG
There's a song somewhere in the heart of the world, that is waiting a
searcher's eye, A song with a melody sweet and true, Of hope unfailing and courage new, I can find it if I try.
Some day when with love of throbbing life, my heart beats high and strong 'Twill become entuned to the melody, And echo in cadence glad and free, The words of the waiting song.
Men will say : "He has built us a new sweet song, with the poet's wonderful
art," Knowing not that I only found the song, The silent melody held so long In the world's eternal heart.
Mary Carolyn Davies.
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The Driving of the Golden Spike
When East Met West on the Great Overland Some Personal Reminiscences of the Event
By Bernetta Alphin Atkinson
THE memorable day of May 10th, 1869, when East met West over the shining track which spanned the continent from ocean to ocean, marked an important epoch in the history of California. The meeting of the Central Pacific Rail- road and the Union Pacific at the little town of Promontory in Utah, made an end of the isolation of the Western coast from the field of activities in the Eastern States, and opened an era of prosperity and advancement for both East and West.
I was a child at the time, living with my parents in Promontory, where the two roads met. My father was a '49er and a constitutional pioneer, and he, with his family, had followed the building of the trans-continental road for several years, living sometimes in tents until more substantial homes could be built. I well remember a red letter day in Fort Sanders, Wyoming, during the year 1868, when President U. S. Grant, General Sherman, Gen- eral Phil Sheridan and other famous men of the period came in a body to inspect the road. One of the features of the occasion was the marching of all the children of the little town to meet the celebrities at the depot. I was one of the smallest of the group, but I swelled with pride to have the privilege of shaking hands with the president and the great generals.
The Central Pacific, building east- ward, under California promoters, em- ployed Chinese labor, while the Union forging west over mountains and des- ert, employed Irishmen. As the roads
approached each other, and the labor- ers of the two enterprises got in sight of each other, a bitter hostility sprang up between them. The Irishmen, re- senting the employment of Chinese labor, were domineering and abusive to the stolid and long suffering Orien- tals. Occasionally they would put in a blast and set it off without warning the Chinamen, causing serious injury in several cases. The contractors on each side did their best to promote peace, but with poor results. One day the Chinamen scored even with the Irish by putting what they called a grave in their work of excavating, and waiting until the Irishmen were busy at work, set off the blast, burying a number of the Irish, who were working just under them. The result was that the gallant Hibernians took off their hats to the "Yellow Peril," and from that time on, hostilities ceased and harmony prevailed. My father, in telling the story, used to say the best way to keep peace with an Irishman was to fight him.
All was excitement at the little town of Promontory, on the morning of May 10th, 1869, for the last rail, that joined the two roads, was to be laid, and the golden spike was to be driven. The citizens had been making fitting preparations for days. The National flag floated from many staffs, and gaily colored bunting festooned the business houses on the one rude street. Platforms had been built for the speakers, and a band engaged for the occasion.
My father called us at daybreak,
THE DRIVING OF THE GOLDEN SPIKE
255
and mother hurried up the breakfast in order to be early at the scene of the great event. It was well that we did so, for a big crowd gathered from all parts of the country. Looking around from our choice position we saw vehicles of all descriptions pour- ing in from the surrounding country, loaded with wondering and curious hu- manity. There were covered wagons, filled with men, women and children, buggies, ox-teams, spring wagons from the ranches, and men and women on horseback, all eager to witness the ceremonies which were to signalize the great event. Many of them had never seen a railroad train, and had traveled all night in order to behold the wonderful sight.
And it was certainly a spectacular event. It had been arranged that the trains from New York and from Cali- fornia should reach Promontory at the same time. To my childish imagina- tion it seemed an age that we waited, with our eyes fixed on the vanishing point of first one road and then the other. When we heard the distant whistles, answering to each other, there was a craning of necks and a deafening cheer. The first to pull in was the Central Pacific, with a train- load from California. Very soon the Union Pacific arrived. The first to alight was a detachment of troops from Fort Douglas, Salt Lake City, ac- companied by a military band. Then came Mr. Thomas C. Durant, Mr. Sid- ney Dillon, Mr. John R. Duff and a car load of friends and prominent men representing the Union Pacific.
The Central Pacific brought Leland Stanford, Mr. Colton, Collis P. Hunt- ington, Charles Crocker, all magnates of the road, and many more identified with its fortunes. The two trains stood facing each other, and a hush fell on the multitude, as they realized that this was the making of history, that it marked an epoch in the progress of civilization on the Western continent.
Representatives from different Western States had brought spikes made from minerals of their States. The two rails were laid, and the cour-
tesy was accorded these representa- tives to drive their spikes.
But the grand, breathless climax was reached when Leland Stanford stepped forward with a full size golden spike and drove it in place, uniting the rails of the two roads, and completing the span of the great trans- continental railroad, bringing the East to the West. The engineers ad- vanced their locomotives until they touched each other, and each broke a bottle of champagne on the opposite engine, thus wedding the two roads in- to one. The telegraph instruments were so arranged that every blow struck on the spike sounded in New York, Washington and San Francisco. The president, Generals Sherman and Sheridan and many others received the signals and heard the blows. Then the word "Done!" was wired, and the crowd set up a tremendous and pro- longed shouting. The bands played patriotic tunes, guns were fired and pandemonium reigned for a time.
When Mr. Stanford stepped to the platform he was greeted with great applause. His speech was followed by others from representatives of both roads, and the enthusiasm waxed tu- multuous. At the close of the exer- cises, the golden spike was removed and was subsequently cut into minia- ture spikes an inch and a half long, engraved with the date, the occasion and the name of the individual receiv- ing them, and distributed among the magnates and big contractors of the roads. I have one of these souvenirs before me as I write. It brings back the charm and glory of that long-gone day in little Promontory, and a wave of the old enthusiasm warms my heart.
The meeting of the roads across the continent was perhaps the most signi- cant event of the century. California and the Pacific Coast, isolated from the Eastern part of the United States, separated by mountains and deserts from the heart of commerce and in- dustry, had evolved its own civiliza- tion and culture. It was a world to it- self. The mines of Nevada had poured in their wealth and built cities
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and developed great areas. Art and science, schools and colleges were es- tablished. The drama flourished, and had already introduced to the world such stars as Booth, John McCullough, Mrs. Williams, Lotta and a host of lesser lights. Joaquin Miller was giv- ing the Iliad of the West in ringing verse, Bret Harte was wielding his fascinating pen, portraying the life of the mining camps, Frank Pixley was hurling his brilliant satires at every- thing he could hit, the daily papers were distributed in metropolitan style, Tom Hill was painting his mountain scenes. The little world of the West seemed sufficient unto itself, and the result was a slightly provincial senti- ment of content and local pride. The opening of the trans-continental high- way brought, in a great surging stream, the interests and customs of the East, to mingle with those of the West, and in turn carried the impetus of the spirit of the West, glowing with ambition, rich in enterprise, in mineral, in cli- mate, in all potential possibilities, to
the staid, methodical East. Each needed the other, and the meeting of the roads was a signal of the merging of interests into one grand and power- ful nation. The little crowd at Pro- montory who witnessed the driving of the golden spike on that memorable spring day scarcely dreamed they were assisting in a wonderful and bloodless revolution.
A torch light procession, a ball and banquet rounded up the great celebra- tion. For myself, I was a trifle disap- pointed in the personnel of the mag- nates. I had heard my father speak of the "big men" of affairs, and I was somewhat awed that they all wore silk hats; but their stature did not impress me as "big." The week before I had been punished for following in the wake of the Tom Thumb cortege, when the little "General," his wife, Minnie Warren, and Commodore Nutt, paraded the street in their miniature carriages. They were "Little People," and I expected to see the "Big Men" gigantic in proportion.
The Good Word
By B. C. Cable
IT IS quite inadequate to say that miles and tens of miles to be covered, the troops were worn out, and in- Cruelly hard as the conditions were deed it is hard to find words to for the whole retreating army, the rear- convey to any one who has not ex- guard suffered the worst by a good perienced some days of a mixture of deal. They were under the constant fighting and forced marching how ut- threat of attack, were halted every terly exhausted, how dead beat, how now and then under that threat or to stupefied and numbed in mind and allow the main body to keep a suffi- body the men were. For four days cient distance, had to make some at- and nights they had fought and dug tempt to dig in again, had to endure trenches and marched and fought spasmodic shelling either in their again, and halted to dig again, and shallow trenches or as they marched fought again, and extricated them- along the road.
selves under hailing bullets and pour- By the fourth day the men were re- ing shells from positions they never duced to the condition of automatons, expected to leave alive, only to scram- They marched — no, it could hardly be ble together into some sort of ragged- said any longer that they "marched;" shaped units and march again. And they stumbled and staggered along like all this was under a fierce August sun, drunken men; their chins were sunk with irregular meals and sometimes no on their chests, their jaws hung slack, meals, at odd times with a scarcity or their eyes were set in a fixed and complete want of water, at all times glassy stare, or blinked, and shut and with a burning lack and want of sleep, opened heavily, slowly, and drowsily, This want of sleep was the worst their feet trailed draggingly, their of it all. Any sort of fighting is heavy knees sagged under them. When the sleep inducing; when it is prolonged word passed to halt, the front ranks for days and nights without one good, behind bumped into them and raised full, satisfying sleep the desire for heads and vacant staring eyes for a rest becomes a craving, an all-absorb- moment and then let them drop again ing, aching passion. At first a man in a stupor of apathy. The change, the wants a bed or space to lie down and cessation of automatic motion, was too stretch his limbs and pillow his head much for many men ; once halted they and sink into dreamless oblivion; at could no longer keep their feet, and last he would give his last possession dropped and sat or rolled helplessly to merely to be allowed to lean against lie in the dust of the road. These men a wall, to stand upright on his feet and who fell were almost impossible to close his eyes. To keep awake is tor- rouse. They sank into sleep "that was ture, to lift and move each foot is a almost a swoon, and no shaking or desperate effort, to keep the burning calling or cursing could rouse them or eyes open and seeing an agony. It get them up again. The officers, know- takes the most tremendous effort of ing this, tried to keep them from sit- will to contemplate another five min- ting or lying down, moved, staggering utes of wakefulness, another hundred themselves as they walked, to and fro yards to be covered; and here were along the line, exhorting, begging, be- hcurs, endless hours, of wakefulness, seeching, or scolding and swearing,
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and ordering the men to keep up, to stand, to be ready to move on. And when the order was given again, the pathetically ridiculous order to "Quick march," the front ranks slowly roused and shuffled off, and the rear stirred slowly and with an effort heaved their rifles over their shoulders again and reeled after the leaders.
Scores of the men had abandoned packs and haversacks, all of them had cast away their overcoats. Many had taken their boots off and marched with rags or puttees wound round their blistered and swollen feet. But no matter what one or other or all had thrown away, there was no man with- out his rifle, his full ammunition pouches and his bayonet. These things weighed murderously, cut deep and agonizingly into the shoulders, cramped arms and fingers to an aching numbness; but every man clung to them, had never a thought of throwing them into the ditch, although many of them had many thoughts of throwing themselves there.
Many fell out — fell out in the literal as well as the drill sense of the word; swerved to the side of the road and missed foot in the ditch and fell there, or stumbled in the ranks, tripped, lack- ing the brain or body quickness to re- cover themselves, collapsed and rolled and lay helpless. Others, again, gasped a word or two to a comrade or an N. C. O., stumbled out of the ranks to the roadside, sank down with hang- ing head and rounded shoulders to a sitting position. Few or none of these men deliberately lay down. They sat till the regiment had plodded his trail- ing length past, tried to stagger to knees and feet, succeeded, and stood swaying a moment, and then lurched off after the rear ranks; or failed, stared stupidly after them, collapsed again slowly and completely. All these were left to lie where they fell. It was useless to urge them to move because every officer and N. C. 0. knew that no man gave up while he had an ounce of strength or energy left to carry on, that orders or entreaties had less power to keep a man moving than his own
dogged pluck and will, that when these failed to keep a man going nothing else could succeed.
All were not of course so hopelessly done as this. There were still a num- ber of the tougher muscled, the firmer willed, who kept their limbs moving with conscious volition, who still re- tained some thinking power, who even at times exchanged a few words or a mouthful of curses. These, and the officers, kept the whole together, kept them moving by force of example, set the pace for them and gave them the direction. Most of them were in the leading ranks of their own companies, merely because their greater energy had carried them there past and through the ranks of those whose minds were nearly or quite a blank, whose bodies were more completely exhausted, whose will-power was re- duced to a blind and sheep-like instinct to follow a leader, move when and where the dimly seen khaki form or tramping boots in front of them moved, stop when and where they stopped.
The roads by which the army was retreating were cumbered and in places choked and blocked with fugitive pea- santry fleeing from the advancing Ger- mans, spurred into and upon their flight by the tales that reached them of ravished Belgium, by first-hand ac- counts of the murder of old men and women and children, of rape and vio- lation and pillage and burning. Their slow, crawling procession checked and hindered the army transport, added to the trials of the weary troops by mak- ing necessary frequent halts and de- viations off the road and back to it to clear some block in the traffic, where a cart had broken down, or where worn-out women with hollow cheeks and staring eyes, and children with dusty, tear streaked faces crowded and filled the road.
The rear-guard passed numbers of these lying utterly exhausted by the roadside, and the road for miles was strewn with the wreckage of the re- treat, with men who had fallen out un- able longer to march on blistered or
THE GOOD WORD
259
bleeding feet, or collapsed in the heed- less sleep of complete exhaustion; with broken-down carts dragging clear into the roadside and spilled with their jumbled contents into the ditch; with crippled horses and footsore cattle; with quivering-lipped, gray-haired old men, and dry eyed, cowering women and frightened, clinging children. Some of these peasantry roused them- selves as the last of the rear-guard regiments came up with them, strug- gled again to follow on the road, or dragged themselves clear of it and sought refuge and hiding in abandon- ed cottages or barns or the deep dry ditches.
At one point where the road crept up the long slope of a hill the rear- guard came under the long range fire of the German guns. The shells came roaring down, to burst in clouds of belching black smoke in the fields to either side of the road, or to explode with a sharp tearing cr-r-ash in the air, their splinters and bullets raining down out of the thick white woolly smoke cloud that coiled and writhed and unfolded in slow heavy oily ed- dies.
One battalion the rear guard was halted at the foot of the hill and spread out off the road and across the line of it. Again they were told not to lie down, and for the most part the men obeyed, leaning heavily with their arms folded on the muzzles of their rifles or watching the regiments crawl- ing slowly up the road with the coal- black shell bursts in the fields about them or the white air bursts of the shrapnel above them.
"Pretty bloomin' sight— I don't think," growled a gaunt and weary eyed private. The man next him laughed shortly. "Pretty one for the Germs, anyway," he said; "and one they're seein' a sight too often for my fancy. They'll be forgettin' wot our faces look like if we keep on at this everlasting running away."
"Blast 'em," said the first speaker, savagely, "but our turn will come pres- ently. Do you think this yarn is right, Jacko, that we're retiring this way just
to draw 'em away from their base ?"
"Gawd knows," said Jacko; "but they didn't bring us over here to do nothing but run away, and you can bet on that, Peter."
An order passed down the line, and the men began to move slowly into the road 'again and to shake into some sort of formation on it, and then to plod off up the hill in the wake of the rest. The shells were still plas- tering the hillside and crashing over the road, and several men were hit as the battalion tramped wearily up the hill. Even the shells failed to rouse most of the men from their apathy and weariness, but those it did stir it roused mainly to angry resentment or sullen oath mumblings and curses.
"Well, Jacko," said Peter, bitterly, "I've knowed I haid a fair chance o' being shot, but burn me if ever I thought I was going to be shot in the back."
"It's a long way to Tipperary," said Jacko. "and there's bound to be a turning in it somewheres."
"And it's a longer way to Berlin if we keeps on marching like this with our backs to it," grumbled Peter.
The sound of another approaching shell rose from a faint moan to a bud shriek, to a roar, to a wild tor- rent of yelling, whooping, rush of an express train, whirlwind noise; and then, just when it seemed to each man that the shell was about to fall directly on his own individual head, it burst with a harsh crash over them, and a storm of bullets and fragments whis- tled and hummed down, hitting the field's soft ground with deep "whutts," clashing sharply on the harder road. A young officer jerked out a cry, stum- bled blindly forward a few paces with outstretched arms, pitched and fell heavily on his face. He was close to where Peter and Jacko marched, and the two shambled together to where he lay, lifted and turned him over. Nei- ther needed a second look. "Done in," said Peter, briefly, and "Never knew wot hit him," agreed Jacko.
An officer ran back to them, fol- lowed slowly and heavily by another.
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
There was no question as to what should be done with the lad's body. He had to be left there, and the utmost they could do for him was to lift and carry him— four dog-tired men, hardly able to lift their feet and carry their own bodies — to a cottage by the road- side, and bring him into an empty room with a litter of clothes and papers spilled about the floor from the tum- bled drawers, and lay him on a dis- heveled bed and spread a crumpled sheet over him.
"Let's hope they'll bury him de- cently," said one of the officers. The other was pocketing the watch and few pitiful trinkets he had taken from the lad's pockets. "Hope so," he said, dully. "Not that it matters much to poor old Dicky. Come on, we must move, or I'll never be able to catch up with the others."
They left the empty house quietly, pulling the door gently shut behind them.
"Pore little Blinker," said Jacko, as they trudged up the road after the bat- tallion; "the best blooming officer the platoon ever 'ad."
"The best I ever 'ad in all my seven," said Peter. "I ain't forgettin' the way 'e stood up for me afore the C. O. at Aldershot when I was car- peted for drunk. And 'im trying to stand with the right side of 'is face turned away from the light, so the C. O. wouldn't spot the black eye I gave 'im in that same drunk!"
"Ah, and that was just like 'im," said Jacko. "And to think he's washed out with a hole in the back of his 'ead — the back of it, mind you."
Peter cursed sourly.
The battalion trailed wearily on un- til noon, halted then, and for the greater part flung themselves down and slept on the roadside for the two hours they waited there; were roused — as many of them, that is, as would rouse, for many, having stopped the machine-like motion of marching, could not recommence it, and had to be left there — and plodded on again through the baking afternoon heat. They had marched over thirty miles
that day when at last they trailed into a small town where they were told they were to be billeted for the night. Other troops, almost as worn as them- selves, were to take over the duties of rear guard next day, but although that was good enough news it was nothing to the fact that to-night, now, the battalion was to halt and lie down and take their fill — if the Huns let them — of sleep.
They were halted in the main square and waited there for what seemed to the tired men an intermin- able time.
"Findin' billets," said Jacko. "Wish they'd hurry up about it."
"Seems to me there's something more than billets in the wind," said Peter suspiciously. "Wot's all the of- ficers confabbin' about, an' wot's that tamasha over there with them staff officers an' the C. O.?"
The tamasha broke up, and the C. 0. tramped back to the group of his officers, and after a short parley they saluted him and walked over to the battalion.
"Fall in," came the order sharply. "Fall in there, fall in."
Most of the men were sitting along the curb of the pavement or in the dusty road, or standing leaning on their rifles. They rose and moved heavily and stiffly, and shuffled into line.
"Wot is it, sergeant?" asked Jacko suspiciously. "Wot's the move?"
"We're going back," said the ser- geant. "Hurry up there, you. Fall in. Were going back, and there's some word of a fight."
The word flew round the ranks.
"Going back — a fight — back "
Across the square another regiment tramped stolidly and turned down a side street. A man in their rear ranks turned and waved a hand to the wait- ing battalion. "So long, chums," he called. "See you in Berlin."
"Ga' strewth," said Jacko, and drew a deep breath. "Goin' back; and a fight; and the old Bluffs on the move too. In Berlin, eh ; wonder wot they've heard. Back — blimey, Peter, I believe
THE GOOD WORD
261
we're going for the blinkin' 'Uns again. I believe we're goin' to ad- vance."
That word went round even faster than the other, and where it passed it left behind it a stir of excitement, a straightening of rounded shoulders, a lifting of lolling heads. "Going back — going to attack this time — going to advance "
Actually this was untrue, or partly so at least. They were going back, but still merely acting as rear guard to take up a position clear of the town and hold it against the threat of too close pressing pursuit. But the men knew nothing of that at the time. They were going back; there was word of a fight; what else did that spell but a finish to this cursed running away, an advance instead of a retreat? The rumor acted like strong wine to the men. They moved to the parade or- ders with something of their old Grilled and disciplined appearance; they swung off in their fours with a de- cent attempt to keep the step, with their heads more or less erect and their shoulders back. And when the head of the column turned off the square back into the same street they had come up into the town, a buzz of talk and calling ran through the ranks, a voice piped up shakily, "It's a Long Way to Tipperary," and a dozen, a score, a hundred voices took up the chorus sturdily and defiantly. The battalion moved out with the narrow streets ringing to their steady tramp, tramp, over the pave cobbles and the sound of their singing. Once clear of the town, it is true, the singing died away and the regular tramping march tailed off into the murmuring shuffle of feet moving out of step. But the deadly apathy had lifted from the men, there was an air of new life about them; one would never have known this battalion for the one that had marched in over the same road half an hour before: Then they were no more than a broken, dispirited crowd, their minds dazed, their bodies numbed with fatigue, moving me- chanically, dully, apathetically, still
plodding and shuffling their feet for- ward merely because their conscious minds had set their limbs the task, and then the tired brain, run down, had left the machinery of their bodies still working — working jerkily and slackly perhaps, but nevertheless working as it would continue to work until the overstrained muscles refused their mechanical duty.
Now they were a battalion, a knitted and coherent body of fighting men, still worn out and fatigued almost to the point of collapse, but with working minds, with a conscious thought in their brains, with discipline locking their ranks again, with the prospect of a fight ahead, with the hope strong in them that the tide was turning, that they were done with the running away and retreating and abandoning hard- fought fields they were positive they had won; that now their turn was come, that here they were commenc- ing the longed-for advance.
And as they marched they heard behind them a deep boo-boom, boo- bcom, boo-moom, and the whistling rush of the shells over their heads. That and the low muttering rumble of guns far out on the flank brought to them a final touch of satisfaction. They were advancing, and the guns were supporting them already then — good, oh, good!
And as they marched back down the road they had come they met some of their stragglers hobbling painfully on bandaged feet, or picked them up from where they still lay in a stupor of sleep on the roadside. And to all of them the one word "advance" was enough. "We're going back — it's an advance," turned them staggering round to limp back in the tail of the battalion, or lifted them to their feet to follow on as best they might. They picked up more than their own men, tco, men of other regiments who had straggled and fallen out, but now drew fresh store of strength from the cheer- ful word "advance," and would not be denied their chance to be in the van of it, but tailed on in rear of the bat- talion and struggled to keep up with
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
them. "We're all right, sir," said one when an officer would have turned him and sent him back to find his own bat- talion. "We're pretty near done in on marching; but there's a plenty fight left in us — specially when it's an ad- vance."
"Jacko," said Peter, "I'm damn near dead ; but thank the Lord I won't have to die running away."
"All I asks," said Jacko, "is as fair a target on 'em as we've had before,
and a chance to put a hole in the back of some of their heads."
"Ah" said Peter. ! "Pore little Blinker. They've got to pay for him and a few more like him."
"They 'ave, blarst them," said Jacko savagely, and dropped his hand to his bayonet haft, slid the steel half out and home again. "Don't fret, chum, they'll pay — soon or late, this time or next, one day or another — they'll pay."
The Passing of a Zeppelin
By Lewis R. Freeman
IN THE YEAR that had gone by since the great air raid on London we knew that much had been done in the way of strengthening the de- fenses. Just what had been done we did not, of course, and do not know. We knew that there were more and better guns and searchlights, and probably greatly improved means of anticipating the coming of the raiders and of following and reporting their movements after they did come. At the same time we also knew that the latest Zeppelin had been greatly im- proved ; that it was larger, faster, cap- able of ascending to a greater altitude, and probably able to stand more and heavier gun-fire than its prototype of a year ago. It seemed to be a ques- tion, therefore, of whether or not the guns could range the raiders, and, if so, do them any vital damage when they did hit them. The aeroplane was an unknown quantity, and, in the popu-
lar mind at least, not seriously reck- oned with. London knew that the cru- cial test would not come until an air- ship tried again to penetrate to the heart of the metropolitan area, and awaited the result calmly, if not quite indifferently.
The Zeppelin raids of the spring and early summer, numerous as they had been, had done a negligible amount of military damage, and scarcely more to civil property. The death list, too, had mercifully been very low. It seemed significant, however, that the main London defenses had been avoided during all of this time, indicating, ap- parently that the raiders were reluctant to lift the lid of the Pandora's box that was laid out so temptingly before them for fear of the possible consequences. Twice or thrice, watching with my glasses after I had been awakened by distant bomb explosions or gun fire, I had seen a shell-pocketed airship
THE PASSING OF A ZEPPELIN
263
draw back, as a yellow dog refuses the challenge that his intrusion has pro- voked, and glide off into the darkness of some safer area. "Would they try it again?" was the question Londoners asked themselves as the dark of the moon came round each month, and, ex- cept for the comparatively few who had had personal experience of the terror and death that follow the swath of an air-raider, most of them seemed rather anxious to have the matter put to the test.
Last night — just twelve "darks-of- the-moon" after the first great raid of 1915 — the test came. It was hardly a conclusive one, perhaps (though that may well have come before these lines find their way into print), but it was certainly highly illuminative. I write this on my return to London from viewing — twenty miles away — a tan- gled mass of wreckage and a heap of charred trunks that are all that remain of a Zeppelin and its crew which — whether by accident, intent or the force of circumstances will probably never be known — rushed in where two others of its aerial sisters feared to fly, and paid the cost.
There was nothing of the surprise (to London, at least; as regards the ill-starred Zeppelin crew none can say) in last night's raid. The night grew more heavily overcast as the darkness deepened, and towards midnight steal- thy little beams of hooded searchlights pirouetting on the eastern clouds told the home-wending Saturday night theatre crowd that, with the imminent approach of the raiders, London was lifting a corner of its mask of black- ness and throwing out an open chal- lenge to the enemy. This was the first time I had known the lights to precede the actual explosion of bombs, and the cool confidence of the thing suggested (as I heard one policeman tell an- other) that the defense had something "up their sleeves."
It was towards one in the morning when I finished my supper at a West End restaurant and started walking through the almost deserted streets to my hotel. London is anything but a
bedlam after midnight, but the silence in the early hours of this morning was positively uncanny. Now, with the last of the 'buses gone and all trains stopped, only the muffled buzz of an occasional belated taxi — pushing on cautiously with hooded lights — broke the stillness.
Reaching my room, I pulled on a sweater, ran up the curtain, laid my glass ready and seated myself at the window, the same window from which, a year ago, I had watched those two insolently contemptuous raiders sail across overhead and leave a blazing wake of death and destruction behind them. On that night, I reflected, I had felt the rush of air from the bombs and — later — had watched the firemen ex- tinguishing the flames and the ambu- lances carrying the wounded to the hospitals. Would it be like that to- night? I wondered (there was now no doubt that the raiders were near, for the searchlights had multiplied, and, far to the southeast, though no deto- nations were audible, quick flashes told of scattering gun-fire), or would the defense have more of a word to say for itself this time? I looked to the eastern heavens, where the shifting clouds were now "polka-dotted" with the fluttering golden motes of a score of searchlights, and thought I had found my answer.
There was no wheeling and reeling of the lights in wide circles, as a year ago, but rather a steady, persistent stabbing at the clouds, each one ap- pearing to keep to an allotted area of its own. "Stabbing" expresses the ac- tion exactly, and it recalled to me an occasion, a month ago, when a "Tom- my" who was showing me through some captured dug-outs on the Somme illustrated with bayonet thrusts, the manner in which they had originally searched for Germans hiding under the straw mattresses. There was nothing "panicky" in the work of the lights this time, but only the suggestion of methodical, ordered, relentless vigi- lance.
"Encouraging as a preliminary," I said to myself; "now" (for the night
264 OVERLAND MONTHLY
was electric with import) "for the not possibly have resolved the earth- main event." ward prospect into anything less than
There was not long to wait. To the the heart of a fiery furnace. Indeed, southeast the gun flashes had increased it is very doubtful if the bewildered in frequency, followed by mist dulled fugitive knew, in more than the most blurs of brightness in the clouds that general way, where it was. Cut off by told of bursting shells. Suddenly, the guns to the southeast from retreat through a rift in the clouds, I saw a in that direction, but knowing that the new kind of glare — the earthward- North Sea and safety could be reached launched beam of an airship's search by driving to the northeast, it is more light groping for its target — but the than probable that the harried raider shifting mist-curtain intervened again found itself over the "Lion's Den" even as one of the defending lights rather than because it could not help it took up the challenge and flashed its than by deliberate intent, own rapier ray in quick reply. Pres- What a contrast was this blinded, ently the muffled boom of bombs fleet- reeling thing to those arrogantly pur- ed to my ears, and then the sharper poseful raiders of a year ago! Su- rattle of a sudden gust of gun-fire. This premely disdainful of gun and search- was quickly followed by a confused light, these had prowled over London roar of sound, evidently from many till the last of their bombs had been bombs dropped simultaneously or in planted, and one of them had even cir- quick succession, and I knew that one cled back the better to see the ruin its of two things had happened — either passing had wrought. But this raider the raider had found its mark and was — far larger than- its predecessors and delivering rapid fire, or the guns were flying at over twice as great a height making it so hot for the visitor that though it was — dashed on its erratic it had been compelled to dump its ex- course as though pursued by the venge- plosives and seek safety in flight, ful spirits of those its harpy sisters When a minute or more had gone by had bombed to death in their beds. If I felt sure that the latter had been scut- it still had bombs to drop its com- tled, and that it was now only a ques- mander either had no time or no heart tion of which direction the flight was for the job. Never had I seen an in- going to take. animate thing typify terror — the terror
Again the eastward searchlights that must have gripped the hearts of its gave me the answer. By two and three palpably flustered (to judge by the air- — I could not follow the order of the ship's movements) crew — like that thing — the lights that had been "pa- staggering helpless maverick of a Zep- trolling" the eastern sky moved over pelin, when it finally found itself and took their station around a certain clutched in the tentacles of the search- low-hanging cloud to the south. The lights of the aerial defenses of Lon- murky sheet of cumulo-nimbus seemed don.
to pale and dissolve in the concentrat- All this time the weird, uncanny
ed rays, and then, right into the focus silence that brooded over the streets
of golden glow formed by the dancing before I had come indoors held the city
light motes, running wild and blind in its spell. The watching thousands
as a bull charges the red mantle mask- — nay, millions — kept their excitement
ing the matador, darted a huge Zep- in leash, and the propeller of the
pelin. raider — muffled by the mists interven-
Perhaps never before in all time has ing between the earth and the 12,000 a single object been the center of so feet at which it whirred — dulled to a blinding a glare. It seemed that the drowsy drone. Into this tense silence optic nerve must wither in so fierce a the sudden fire of a hundred anti-air- light, and certainly no unprotected eye craft guns — opening in unison as could have opened to it. Dark glasses though at the pull of a single lanyard might have made it bearable, but could — cut in a blended roar like the Crack
THE PASSING OF A ZEPPELIN
265
o' Doom; indeed, though few among those hushed watching millions real- ized it it was literally the Crack o' Doom that was sounding. For perhaps a minute or a minute and a half the air was vibrant with the roar of hard- pumped guns and the shriek of speed- ing shell, the great sound from below drowning the sharper cracks from the steel-cold flashes in the upper air.
It was guns that were built for the job — not the hastily gathered and wholly inadequate artillery of a year ago — that were speaking now, and the voice was one of ordered, imperious authority. Range-finders had the ma- rauder's altitude, and the information was being put at the disposal of guns that had the power to "deliver the goods" at that level. What a contrast the sequel was to that pitiful firing of the other raid ! Only the opening shots were "shorts" or "wides" now, and ten seconds after the first gun a diamond clear burst blinking out through a rift in the upper clouds told that the rai- der— to use a naval term — was "strad- dled," had shells exploding both above and below it. From that instant till the guns ceased to roar, seventy or eighty seconds later, the shells burst, lacing the air with golden glimmers, and meshed the raider in a fiery net.
For a few seconds it seemed to me that, close-woven as was the net of shell-bursts, the flashes came hardly as fast as the roar of the guns would seem to warrant, and I swept the heav- ens with my glasses in a search for other possible targets. But no other raider was in sight; there was no other "nodal center" of gun fire and search- lights. Suddenly the reason for the apparent discrepancy was clear to me. The flashes I saw (except for a few of the shrapnel bullets they were releas- ing) were only the misses; the hits I could not see. The long-awaited test was at its crucial stage. Empty of bombs and with half of its fuel con- sumed, the raider was at the zenith of its flight, and yet the guns were rang- ing it with ease. It was now a ques- tion of how much shell-fire the Zeppe- lin could stand.
In spite of the fact that the airship — so far as I could see through my glasses — did not appear to slow down or to be perceptibly racked by the gun fire, I have no doubt what the end would have been if the test could have been pressed to its conclusion in an open country. But bringing a burning Zeppelin down across three or four blocks of thickly settled London was hardly a thing the Air Defense de- sired to do if it could possibly be avoided. The plan was carried to its conclusion with the almost mathemati- cal precision that marked the prelimi- nary searchlight work and gunnery.
From the moment that it had burst into sight the raider had been emitting clouds of white gas to hide itself from the searchlights and guns, while the plainly visible movements of its lat- eral planes seemed to indicate that it was making desperate efforts to climb still higher into the thinning upper air. Neither experiment was of much use. The swirling gas clouds might well have obscured a hovering airship, but never one that was rushing through the air at seventy miles an hour, while far from increasing its altitude, there seemed to be a slight but steady loss from the moment the guns ceased until, two or three miles further along, it was hidden from sight for a minute by a low-hanging cloud. Undoubtedly the aim of the gunners had been to "hole," not to fire the marauder, and it must have been losing gas very rapidly even — as the climacteric moment of the at- tack approached — at the time increas- ed buoyancy was most desirable.
The "massed" searchlights of Lon- don "let go" shortly after the gunfire ceased, and now, as the raider came within their field, the more scattered lights of the northern suburbs wheeled up and "fastened on." The fugitive changed its course from north to north- easterly about this time, and the swell- ing clouds of vapor left behind pres- ently cut off its foreshortened length entirely from my view. A heavy ground mist appeared to prevail be- yond the heights to the north, and in the diffused glow of the searchlights
266
OVERLAND MONTHLY
that strove to pierce this mask my glasses showed the ghostly shadows of flitting aeroplanes — maneuvering for the death-thrust.
The ground mist (which did not, however, cover London proper) kept the full strength of the searchlights from the upper air, and it was in a sky of almost Stygian blackness that the final blow was sent home. The farmers of Hertfordshire tell weird stories of the detonations of bursting bombs striking their fields, but all these sounds were absorbed in the twenty-mile air-cushion that was now interposed between my vantage point and the final scene of action.
Not a sound, not a shadow heralded the flare of yellow light which sudden- ly flashed out in the northeastern heav- ens and spread latitudinally until the whole body of a Zeppelin — no small object even at twenty miles — stood out in glowing incandescence. Then a great sheet of pink white flame shot up, and in the ripples of rosy light which suffused the earth for scores of miles I could read the gilded lettering on my binoculars. This was undoubt- edly the explosion of the ignited hy- drogen of the main gas-bags, and im- mediately following it the great frame collapsed in the middle and began falling slowly toward the earth, burn- ing now with a bright yellow flame, above which the curl of black smoke was distinctly visible. A lurid burst of light — doubtless from the exploding petrol tanks — flared up as the flaming mass struck the earth, and half a min- ute later the night, save for the ques- tioning searchlights to east and south, was as black as ever again.
Then perhaps the strangest thing of all occurred. London began to cheer. I should have been prepared for it in Faris, or Rome, or Berlin, or even New York, but that the Briton — who of all men in the world most fears the sound of his own voice lifted in unrestrained jubilation — was really cheering, and in millions, was almost too much. I pinched my arm to be sure that I had not dozed away, and, lost in wonder, forgot for a minute or two the great
drama just enacted.
Under my window half a dozen Aus- tralian "Tommies" were rending the air with "coo-ees" and dancing around a lamp-post, while all along the street, from doorways and windows, exultant shouting could be heard. For several blocks in all directions the cheers rang out loud and clear, distinctly recog- nizable as such; the sound of the mil- lions of throats farther afield came only as a heavy rumbling hum. Per- haps since the dawn of creation the air has not trembled with so strange a sound — a sound which, though entirely human in its origin, was still unhuman, unearthly, fantastic. Certainly never before in history — not even during the great volcanic eruptions — has so huge a number of people (the fall of the Zeppelin had been visible through a fifty to seventy-five mile radius in all directions, a region with probably from 10,000,000 to 15,000,000 inhabitants) been suddenly and intensely stirred by a single event.
It was undoubtedly the spectacular- ity of the unexpected coup that had made these normally repressed mil- lions so suddenly and so violently vo- cal. Many — perhaps most — stopped cheering when they had had time to realize that a score of human beings were being burned to cinders in the heart of that flaming comet in the northeastern heavens; others — I knew the only recently restored tenements where some of them were — must have shouted in all the grimmer exultation for that very realization. I can hardly say yet which stirred me more deeply, the fall of the Zeppelin itself or that stupendous burst of feeling aroused by its fall.
ifi 'fi !|i *K
By taxi, milk-cart, tram, and any other conveyance that offered, but mostly on foot, I threaded highway and byway for the next four hours, and shortly after daybreak scrambled through the last of a dozen thorny hedgerows and found myself beside the still smouldering wreckage of the fallen raider. An orderly cordon of soldiers surrounded an acre of black-
THE PASSING OF A ZEPPELIN
267
ened and twisted metal, miles and miles of tangled wire, and a score or sc of Flying Corps men already bus- ily engaged loading the wreckage into waiting motor-lorries — that was about all there was to see. A ten foot square green tarpaulin covered all that could be gathered together of the airship's crew. Some of the fragments were readily recognizable as having once been the arms and legs and trunks of men; others were not. A man at my elbow stood gazing at the pitiful heap for a space, his brow puckered in thought. Presently he turned to me, a grim light in his eye, and spoke.
"Do you know," he said, "that these" (indicating the charred stumps under the square of canvas) "have just recalled to me the words Count Zeppelin is reported to have used at a great mass meeting called in Berlin to press for a more rigorous prosecution of the war against England by air, for a further incease of f rightfulness ? Leading two airship pilots to the front
of the platform, he shouted to the crowd : 'Here are two men who were ever London last night!' And the as- sembled thousands, so the despatch said, roared their applause and clam- ored that the Zeppelins be sent again and again until the arrogant Engend- ers were brought to their knees. Well" —he paused and drew a deep breath a? his eyes returned to the heap of blackened fragments — it appears that they did send the Zeppelins again — more than ever were sent before — and now it is our turn to be presented to 'the men who were over London last night.' I wonder if the flare that con- sumed these poor devils was bright enough to pierce the black night that has settled over Germany?"
4> ♦ ♦ •
The tenseness passed out of the night — and the raid was over. Who knows but what, so far as the threat to England is concerned, the passing of a Zeppelin marked also the passing of the Zeppelin!
The Spirit of "49
By /Aabel Rice Bigler
My grandmother, sweet Betsy Dwyer, and young John Allen, fortune's
squire, According to their hearts' desire were pledged and wed at last; That very day he sailed away, the land of gold in quest, To find if she could safely stay out in the desperate West. The young bride, torn with shipwreck fears, said farewell, holding back
her tears — He'd soon return — but three long years of lonely waiting passed.
My grandfather came back again to claim his winsome Betsy Jane Awaiting him in Montville, Maine, the town where she was born;
With steadfast eye she said good-bye and left the pleasant farm;
Without a backward glance or sigh, she took her husband's arm. With steadfast eye and trembling lip she started on the four months' trip In Captain Dawson's clipper ship which fared around Cape Horn.
The ship was stale, and how it stunk! The captain and the crew were drunk,
And she lay seasick in her bunk — the great seas swashed the floor. The ship beat back far off her track with torn and whipping sail, And sky and sea were deadly black — it was a wicked gale.
But, "Don't you fret for me," she said, "I'll not give up until I'm dead!
You mind the wheel, I'll mind my head and take the watch at four."
The word had traveled far and wide: "John Allen's bringing back his
bride!" The miners came a weary ride from up the mountain flume.
They hushed themselves and brushed themselves and passed around the
comb, And never knew they blushed, themselves, to see a girl from home ; She surely must have looked a queen in twenty yards of bombazine, And nodding on her bonnet green a tiny ostrich plume!
From out the stage-coach she stepped down in dainty slippers russet brown ;
The men cheered loud enough to drown the beating of her heart; The while my grandsire took her hand and proudly led her through The crowd, into the tent-house, planned to be a nest for two.
So came the little Eastern maid, in Eastern finery arrayed,
By frontier hardship undismayed, a Western home to start.
THE SPIRIT OF '49 269
From San Francisco, Lizzie Kerr, a cousin, came to visit her, A kindly meant inquisitor — she saw the earthen floor;
She wept away a half a day and said it was a sin
To have to use a bottle — clay — for a rolling pin ! Then gayly spake contented gran., "Now, dry your tears, Liz, if you can — I'll have you know I'm happier than I ever was before!"
What humble converts she could make with one hot batch of Johnny-cake !
Red Smith came Sundays for her sake, and even Faro Jim.
She'd sing and play and they would stay — but when the preacher rose, Out through the door they'd file away — their church was at its close.
"Praise God, from whom all blessings flow" — You never heard Old Hun- dred go
With such a brave fortissimo as when she led the hymn!
She saw blue sky behind each cloud. For no low task was she too proud ;
One time she sewed a murderer's shroud — he was to hang next morn. And when the quaint church she would paint without a volunteer, She told the men, with no complaint, they'd help, or pay to see her !
What will was hers ! What spirit's might upheld her in her desperate fight
Throughout that black and endless night when her first child was born !
Full three-score years since then have flown. With comfort we are dainty
grown; Without our lights and telephone, how helpless we should be !
With frantic cries and streaming eyes our troubles beat us down;
We struggle for an earthly prize, nor seek a starry crown. Lord God ! Renew in us the grace with valiant hearts our world to face And gladly take our lotted place as long ago did she !
In the Realm of Bookland
"The Mysterious Stranger," by Mark Twain.
Mark Twain is revealed in his rip- est philosophic mood in his posthu- mous romance, "The Mysterious Stran- ger." In considering the great humor- ist as a philosopher, we must always bear in mind the comment of his bio- grapher, "He could damn the human race competently, but in the final reck- oning it was the interest of that race that lay closest to his heart."
The scenes of the romance are laid in the little town of Eseldorf in Aus- tria, in the year 1590. To this town there comes one day a strange youth — in reality, an angel in human guise. He at once proceeds to take active part in the affairs of the village, but his best efforts to benefit the people always seem to result calamitously. Finally, he takes his departure after giving the boy, Theodor (the narra- tor of the story), a farewell summing up of his views. He is somewhat of an iconoclast, this angel hero, em- bodiment of Mark Twain's philosophy applied to the life of the people of Eseldorf. The miracles wrought by the Mysterious Stranger belong prop- erly to the times when astrologers flourished ; when simple, peasant faith was ready to construe every unusual manifestation of power as super-natu- ral; when witch-burning and heretic burning were considered holy and meritorious acts.
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intervals and daily trips to the city at fixed hours must readjust himself to the fact that life need not necessarily be a dull, orderly progression. Such, indeed, it was for Edward Basingstoke until the day when he chucked his job, bought a dog, and set forth with only Chance and Destiny for guides.
At the tavern of "The Five Bells" he sets about amusing the innkeeper's son by constructing a toy aeroplane. It flies — but lands in a tree beyond a high garden wall, and Edward, mount- ing the wall, climbs right into Ro- mance. The girl on the other side of the wall is as surprised as he. And Edward, bent on nothing more than rescuing the imprisoned aeroplane from the clutches of the tree, finds this task speedily transcended by the ar- dent and arduous knight errantry of rescuing the maiden from the clutches of her tyrannical aunts. All this comes crisply about. Edward and the fugitive maiden fare forth on their ad- venture— upon the beautiful stretches of the Medway, to Warwick, Stratford- on-Avon, Kenilwofth — a delightful es- capade through the most storied and picturesque parts of England.
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"An Incredible Honeymoon," by E. Nesbit.
The story has a picaresque quality, and takes its way through the lanes and highways of the English country- side, ingratiating itself upon the reader through its very improbabilities of situation, which come to seem not so improbable after all. One whose life is punctuated by meals at stated
As a Newspaper Man Views the War. Herbert Bayard Swope, author of "Inside the German Empire," (The Century Company) , says there is to be seen and felt a subtle change in the fabric of the German spirit. "From a certainty of victory," he observes, "it has been inexorably pressed down to a fear of defeat. From the ambi- tion of world dominance, it has changed to a struggle for existence. Exaltation has given way to despera- tion, and the fear that Germany once sought to impose upon others is now being imposed by others upon Ger- many. When I was in Germany at the outbreak of the war the word in every-
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one's mouth was "siegen" (conquer, ci win.) When I revisited the coun- try, after two years, another word was being used — "durchhalten" (stick it out.) I think the second motto is spoken with more heart than the first, for there were many in the empire who opposed a war of conquest; but now that conquest has been aban- doned for existence, and the life of the nation is at stake, all feel the need of endurance heavy upon them."
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"Labor and Liberty," by Dr. Samuel
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This book, according to the author, deals with the "true and very efficient remedy, "The entrance of the State in- to the field of industry, a movement which is bound to loom large on the horizon of the civilized world. The author is uncertain when this move- ment will take place, but of its coming he feels confident. Since the incep- tion of the idea, the chief objection to an extension of the functions of the State has been the alleged curtailment of individual liberty which it was erro- neously supposed to carry with it. It is therefore the chief end of this work to dispel such apprehensions by prov- ing to all who are free from bias that it is possible for national industry and individual liberty to dwell peaceably together. This work is also a com- pendium of social reform in all its branches.
$1 net. Samuel Rabinowitz, Brook- lyn, New York.
"Francis Villon, His Life and Times,"
by H. de Vere Stacpoole'.
Few men have had so interesting a life as Francois Villon. He was poet and vagabond, roisterer and dreamer of dreams, the associate of thieves and cut-throats, on occasion himself a fugi- tive from the law and under less for- tunate circumstances its victim, a mem- ber of that strange company of desper- ate, pleasure mad characters known as the Coquillards or companions of the cockle-shell. Having lived a brief span of only thirty-two years, Villon
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is, nevertheless, one of the enduring figures of literature, romance and life. He belonged to an age of great hap- penings. A few months before his birth Jeanne D'Arc had been burned at Rouen. During his lifetime wolves boldly invaded the streets of Paris and were feared only less than the Bur- gundians clamoring at its gates. The country was overrun with robbers, tricksters, gypsies, mountebanks and a turbulent soldiery. In this volume the author has given a picture, infused in its every detail with life, of the poet vagabond and the Paris and France in which he lived.
G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York.
one hand in the air, and run at full speed around the table at a hopping gallop. We all flew after him, hop- ping and waving our hands as he did. We would run around the room several times, and sit down again panting in our chairs in quite a different frame of mind, gay and lively. The Numid- ian Cavalry had an excellent effect many and many a time. After that exercise all sorts of quarrels and wrongs were forgotten and tears dried with marvelous rapidity."
The Centuy Company, New York.
Finds Plots in Central Park.
Fannie Hurst, whose second book, "Every Soul Hath Its Song," was pub- lished last autumn, says that it is in Central Park that she thinks out all the plots of her stories, strolling for hours at a time along its byways. She doesn't mind saying, now that her popularity has been won, that her first thirty short stories, written while she was still at the Washington University, St. Louis, and submitted to a well- known periodical, were rejected with unfailing regularity. They then ap- peared in the college weekly, and Miss Hurst says, "I might add that I was one of the editors."
Harper Books to be Reprinted.
Harper & Brothers announce that they will put to press immediately for reprinting Zane Grey's new novel, "Wildfire," which was published on the 12th. They are reprinting also "A Pair of Blue Eyes" and "The Mayor of Casterbridge," by Thomas Hardy; "Jane Eyre," by Charlotte Bronte; "The Young Pitcher," by Zane Grey; "The Long Trail," by Hamlin Garland ; "Oakleigh," by Ellen Defend; "Cap- tured by the Navajos," by Captain Charles A. Curtis; "Wonder Tales from Wagner," by Anna A. Chapin, and "How to Cook and Why," by Con- dit and Long.
"Reminiscences of Tolstoi," by Count Ilya Toystoy.
The present tour of Count Ilya Tol- stoy through the United States, during which he is delivering lectures on the intimate life and ideals of his father, recalls the fact that in his "Reminis- cences of Tolstoy" Count Ilya pictures the great novelist as a very delightful paterfamilias. Countless were the games and rhymes and humorous in- ventions with which he amused his children. For example, the game of "Numidian Cavalry," which Count Ilya describes in this way : "We would all be sitting, perhaps in the zala, rather flat and quiet after the depart- ure of some dull visitors. Up would jump my father from his chair, lifting
"God the Invisible King," by H. G.
Wells. Author of "Mr. Britling Sees
It Through," etc.
Readers of "Mr. Britling Sees It Through" were particularly impressed with the religious note which it sounded, especially in its closing pages. The ideas of God and of the spiritual life of man therein set forth were responsible to no inconsiderable degree for the tremendous appeal of that story. These facts lend interest to this volume, in which Mr. Wells sets out as forcibly and exactly as possible his religious beliefs. Mr. Wells de- cribes the book himself as one written by a man "sympathetic with all sin- cere religious feeling and yet a man who feels that he must protest against those dogmas which have obscured, perverted and prevented the religious life of mankind." The spirit of this
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book, he says, is like that of a mission- ary, who would only too gladly over- throw and smash some Polynesian di- vinity of shark's teeth and painted wood and mother-of-pearl. "The pur- pose of the volume like the purpose of that missionary is not primarily to shock and insult, but to liberate." The author is impatient with the reverence that stands between man and God.
To be issued in May. $1.50 net. The Macmillan Company, New York.
teachers and officials go blindly for- ward, neglecting the opportunities for good directly before them. $1.35 net. Longman's & Co.
"Driftwood Spars," by Captain Perci-
val Christopher Wren.
A strikingly realistic picture of un- der-the-surface conditions in India, but it presents an intimate analysis of the character of the native Hindu only pos- sible to a man of penetrating intuition, a student of human nature, and one who has dwelt in close association with the Oriental. The narrative, which hardly presents the development of a formal plot, it concerns three principals — a half-caste army officer, Captain John Ross-Elliston ; an Englishwoman, Mrs. Dearman, and a Somali boy who is Ross-Elliston's voluntary slave. These three drift together from far dis- tant points, and there take their re- spective roles in the tragedy that forms the climax.
Two-thirds of the narrative is con- cerned with Ross-Elliston's career in British officialdom. Outwardly he be- trays no evidence of his mixed blood. He is a man to win the admiration of those who love lion-like bravery, light- ning resourcefulness and chivalry. But it is the momentary ascendancy of the Oriental blood that leads to the crime responsible for his tragic end.
In the course of the absorbing nar- rative, Captain Wren is bitterly satiri- cal at the expense of English societies which meddle in Indian affairs in an effort to "uplift" the native and the stupid officials who misuse their oppor- tunities to mold into loyal citizens the plastic Hindu youth coming under their influence. He shows how these youths are won over and poisoned in mind by adroit preachers of sedition while
"Political and Litetrary Essays," by Lord Cromer.
The only literary essays in the en- tire collection are reviews of Sir Sid- ney Lee's "Life of Shakespeare" and "Lord Curzon's War Poems." The re- maining essays deal almost exclusively with books pertaining to the war that have come into print since August, 1914, and therefore the Earl of Cro- mer's comments have to do largely with war and politics.
In reviewing these war books, the Earl of Cromer, distinguished states- man though he is, suffers from the handicap natural to a representative of one of the warring powers, the feeling of intense partisanship. Yet from the beginning to the end of his collection of essays, it is evident that he has made an attempt to overcome his in- clination to see solely the English side of the question and to give the German foeman the benefit of the doubt. He is, at least, reasonably temperate in his praise of England. He is also reason- ably sympathetic - about the plight of Austria, caught as she is between the devil of Slav aggression on the one hand and the deep sea of German en- croachments on the other. In his com- ment upon Signor Virginio Gayda's book, in discussing the complications which modern Austria faces, he says: "Finally, it would be both unjust and ungenerous not to recognize that the political beds of thorns on which fate has destined that modern Austria should lie, is not wholly of her own making. It has in its essential features been created by the onward march of democracy whjch has given an im- mense impulse to the nationalist move- ment throughout the world. The po- litical problems which have arisen out or that are of surpassing difficulty."
$3.25 net. Macmillan Company, New York.
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Hotel Powhatan
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E. C. OWEN, Manager.
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For Advertising 'Purposes For Illustrating {Booklets For Newspapers For ZKCagazines
The halftone engravings that have appeared in the various issues of the Overland Monthly re- present subjects suitable for almost any purpose. Having been carefully used in printing, they are
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259 MINNA STREET SAN FRANCISCO
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FOR SALE! $2,100
EASY TERMS
20 Acres on "Las Uvas" Creek
Santa Clara County, Cal.
"Las Uvas" is the finest mountain stream in Santa Clara County.
Situated 9 miles from Morgan Hill, between New Almaden and Gilroy.
Perfect climate.
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Several beautiful sites on the property for country home.
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Good automobile roads to Morgan Hill 9 miles, to Madrone8 miles, to Gilroy 12 miles, to Almaden 11 miles, and to San Jose 21 miles.
For Further Particulars Address,
Owner, 259 Minna Street San Francisco - - California
xviii
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GET 6 NEW SUBSCRIBERS TO OVERLAND MONTHLY
AND
Receive a MANDEL-ETTE CAMERA, the new one minute photographic creation, the latest thing in cameras.
The Mandel-ette takes and finishes original post-card photographs in one minute without plates or films. No printing; no dark rooms; no experience required. Press the button, and the Mandel-ette turns out three completed pictures in one minute. It embodies a camera, developing chamber, and dark room all in one — a miniature photograph gallery, reducing the cost of the ordinary photograph from 10 cents to 1*4 cents. The magazine holds from 16 to 50 2^x3^2 post cards, and can be loaded in broad day-light; no dark room necessary. Simple instructions accompany each camera.
A child can take perfect pictures with it.
Price on the market, $5.
OVERLAND MONTHLY for one year and a Mandel-ette Camera, $5. Get 6 NEW SUBSCRIBERS for OVERLAND MONTHLY, and forward the subscriptions and $9.00, and you will receive a Mandel-ette Camera FREE.
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The Victor Company announces
a complete course in vocal training
by Oscar Saenger
in twenty lessons
on ten Victor Records o ®25
y^SCCLY Soprano; Mezzo-Soprano : Tenor : Baritone; or Bass
Every student of vocal music, every aspiring young singer, every one who has a voice, even though it be untrained, can now develop his or her talents under the direction of Oscar Saenger — America's greatest and most successful vocal teacher.
No matter where they may live, all those who wish to sing may now learn to do so under the direction of a master who is credited with having entered more pupils upon successful operatic, oratorio or concert careers than has any other teacher in the United States.
The Oscar Saenger Course in Vocal Training consists of ten double-faced Victor Records, which provide twenty lessons in vocalization.
There is a separate set of records for each of the following five voices: Soprano, Mezzo-Soprano, Tenor, Baritone, and Bass.
For each set of lessons, perfect examples of tone production have been secured through Oscar Saenger's personal choice of the artists best qualified to serve as exemplars.
The Oscar Saenger Course in Vocal Training for any of the voices mentioned above, may be procured from any Victor dealer at $25 — the cost of a one-hour lesson at the Saenger Studio in New York.
Write for an illustrated booklet
giving full information about the series of Victor Records of the Oscar Saenger Coarse in vocalization. We will gladly send a copy upon receipt of your request.
Important Notice: All Victor Talking Machines are pat- ented and are only licensed, and with right of use with Victor Records only. All Victor Records are patented and are only licensed, and with right of use on Victor Talking Machines only. Victor Records and Victor Machines are scientifically coordi- nated and synchronized by our special processes of manufac- ture; and their use, except with each other, is not only unauthor- ized, but damaging and unsatisfactory.
Victor Talking Machine Co., Camden, N. J.
Berliner Gramophone Co., Montreal, Canadian Distributors
Victrola
VlCtroIa is the Registered Trade-mark of the Victor Talking Machine Company designating the products of this Company only. Warning: The use of the word Victrola upon or in the pro- motion or sale of any other Talking Machine or Phonograph products is misleading and illegal.
LXVI 1 1
(Pwrlatt h ■
<^SMWC
Mnntl|ig
AN ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE OF THE^WEST
CONTENTS FOR APRIL 1917
FRONTISPIECES:
Six Touring Scenes in California 270-275
Illustration to accompany "Ah-Pura-Way" 276
AH-PURA-WAY EDNA HILDEBRAND PUTNAM 277
Illustrated from photographs.
AT CARMEL-BY-THE-SEA. Verse . . . HENRIETTA C. PENNY 283
THE AMERICANIZED CHINESE STUDENT . FRANK B. LENZ 284
Illustrated from photographs.
THE BROOK. Verse ELIZABETH REYNOLDS 291
THE MISSION OF SANTA CRUZ .... ROBERT COSMO HARDING 292
Illustrated from photographs.
"IN CITY PENT." Verse VERNE BRIGHT 295
THE LATE PASTOR RUSSELL . . . . J. F. RUTHERFORD 296
Illustrated from a photograph.
TROUBLES OF AN AERIAL SCOUT . . . WILLIAM PALMER 303 PROBLEMS OF MENTAL AND SPIRITUAL
HEALING 306
THE DRUM MAJOR. Verse LLEWELLYN B. PECK 314
GUNS OF GALT. Continued Story .... DENISON CLIFT 315
INDIAN VS. WHITE MAN. Story . . N. K. BUCK ' 325
A PEACEFUL PIRATE DELLA PHILLIPS 327
SYMBOLISM. Verse A. E. 331
THE PROPHECY. Story LORA D. PATTERSON 332
FROM MANHATTAN. Verse JAMES NORMAN HALL 335
LOVE AND THE RAID. Story .... OLIVE COWLES KERNS 336
COMPENSATION. Verse LANNIE HAYNES MARTIN 343
THE STORY OF THE MIRACLE. Concluded CTTO VON GELDERN 344
SUNK. Story RALPH N. VARDEN 352
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NOTICE. — Contributions to the Overland Monthly should be typewritten, accompanied by full return postage and with the author's name and address plain written in upper corner of first page. Manuscripts should never be rolled.
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Issued Monthly. $1.20 per year in advance. Ten cents per copy. Back numbers not over three months old, 25 cents per copy. Over three months old, 50 cts. each. Postage: To Canada, 2 cts.; Foreign, 4 cts. Copyrighted, 1917, by the Overland Monthly Company.
Entered at the San Francisco, Cal., Postofflce as second-class matter.
Published by the OVERLAND MONTHLY COMPANY, San Francisco, California.
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Miss Hamlin's School
For Girls
Home Building on Pacific Avenue of Miss Hamlin's School for Girls
Boarding and day pupils. Pupils received at any time. Accredited by all accredit- ing institutions, both in California and in Eastern States. French school for little children. Please call, phone or address
MISS HAMLIN
2230 PACIFIC AVENUE
TELEPHONE WEST 546
2117
2123 SAN FRANCISCO, CAL.
BROADWAY
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Hitchcock Military Academy
San Rafael, Cal.
"Preparedness First" cadets of Hitchcock Military Academy drilling on the sports' field.
A HOME school for boys, separate rooms, large campus, progressive, efficient, thorough, Govern- ment detail and full corps of experienced instructors, accredited to the Universities.
Ideally located in the picturesque foothills of Marin County, fifteen miles from San Francisco.
Founded 1878.
Catalogue on application.
REX W. SHERER President
vi
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A household word even in childhood.
BAKER'S COCOA
has for several generations been widely known for its good qualities of purity, wholesomeness and delicious flavor. It has real food value. Ask your grocer for the genuine Baker's Cocoa.
Made only by
Walter Baker & Co. Ltd.
Established 1780 Choice Recipe Book Sent Free Dorchester, Mass.
Along a stretch of big oak on the State Highway
A cabin in Muir Woods, a beautiful redwood forest some twenty miles north of San Francisco
Through an avenue of palms, Southern California
Down the Strawberry Grade on the old Placerville Road, over the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Cave Rock, near Lake Tahoe, one of the largest watersheds in California.
On the Pacific Highway, in a stretch of pine forest.
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OVERLAND
Founded 1868
MONTHLY
BRET HARTE
VOL. LXIX
San Francisco, April, 1917
No. 4
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Ah-Fura-Way The Dance |
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Indian Worship Dances |
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ROBERT SPOTT is a perfect type of young Indian manhood, straight as an arrow, and with muscles toughened and quick- ened like those of a leopard. Who he is and what he is, is best told in his own signature : "Robert Spott, Captain Spott, Indian Chief — his son, Klamath Indian, Requa, California."
The chieftain's son, quick of intel- lect and action, trained alike in the lore of his people and the teachings of
the white man, is a well known char- acter along the lower Klamath Basin, where his forefathers have dwelt for unnumbered ages. The country to him is an open book. Hunting parties the season through seek him out to guide them to the best hunting grounds and trout streams. A more affable, courte- ous companion would be difficult tp find either on the trail or around the campfire at night.
But — like all of his race — this young
2
278
OVERLAND MONTHLY
No. 1. — Another unique costume worn in he dance.
Indian prince is sensitive to the slight- est hint of ridicule. Under the benign influence of friendship his nature ex- pands like a beautiful flower to the sun; let there be a derisive glance or scornful remark among his campfire auditors, and his tale of early Indian life will cease, never to be resumed.
He is but typical of his people as a race. Because of a lack of sympathy and a persistent disregard of the In- dian point of view on the part of their successors, the North American In- dians have allowed very little of their tribal customs and beliefs to become
known to the whites. It is rather sur- prising to discover at this late date, when as a race the Indians are facing extinction, that, despite their primitive and ofttimes barbaric customs, they have clung desperately through all the years of their adversity to a religious faith that in its essentials is not un- like that of the Christian. It is only through the friendship of such broad- minded Indians as Robert Spott that the modern world will ever learn of that life that is past — to whom what- ever of merit there is in the following
No. 2. — Robert Spott in costume of Ah-pura- way dance.
AH-PURA-WAY.
279
description of the Klamath worship dances is due.
"Ah Pura Way," familiarly known to the white people as the "White Deer Skin Dance," while not the most sol- emn of the worship dances of the Northern California Indians, is per- haps the best known. It is more than a religious festival — it is a season of joy and good will among men — a sort of Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Consecration Meeting rolled into one. It usually occurs during the early fall, and is celebrated every two or three years.
In the words of Prince Robert: "It
No. 3. — Bush dance.
No. 4. — Costume of the jumping dance.
is whenever there being so many kinds of sickness upon earth. The earth is dried — no green grass and the wild flowers and all the birds are flying away; and so all the animals going away too. No berries, no acorns, no fish upon the river.
"Then a medicine man go up in the high mountains and prayed to the heaven and to the stars and to the sun with his power that sickness will be going away and have a better world: the earth will be covered with green grass and wild flowers and plenty of
280
OVERLAND MONTHLY
fish in the river — also berries and all animals and birds will come back to earth again."
Does it sound so very different from some of the Biblical stories of the Old Testament? Who does not remember the oft-repeated statement, "And Moses went up in the mountain to pray?" Just as the Hebrew people trusted implicitly in the power of prayer, so did the untutored people who offered their petitions to their Great Spirit — the omnipotent God.
While the Indian priest is fasting and praying on some lonely mountain top, the men of his tribe are busy pre- paring for the big festival. Word is sent to all the tribes in the country that "Ah Pura Way" will be danced on such and such an occasion. Those who receive the invitation immediately be- gin preparations to participate in the festival. Out from secret hiding places is brought a wealth of Indian finery — sacred deer skins, marvelous flints and robes of richly ornamented skins — that have lain hidden from sight since the last time the worship dance was celebrated. The Indian women hurry to collect provisions enough to furnish a twelve-day feast for their men and any chance guests who will participate in the dance.
Upon the return of the high-priest the tribes assemble together and the dance begins. In outward semblance it has little suggestion of piety and consecration to the onlooker. It is nothing more than a barbaric trial of physical strength and endurance — harmful to both mind and body. But to the old tribesmen it was all that was beautiful and sacred. Caught in the fanatic fervor of the dance, young men and old men gloried in the oppor- tunity to shout and dance themselves into unconsciousness — to prostrate themselves through utter weariness be- fore the feet of their God.
In the center of some clearing along the river, the leader, who must be a man consecrated by pure blood and religious training for the office, takes his place, holding in his hand a long pole on which is arranged the skin of
The Sacred White Deer, emblem of the
dance. -Photo copyrighted 1916 by Emma B. Free- man, Eureka, Cal.
the sacred white deer. A row of his townsmen, fourteen or sixteen in num- ber, take their places at either side, leaving the leader in the middle of the row. The upper part of the body of the dancers is nude, except for the strands of Indian beads depending to the waist. An Indian blanket of deer- skin ornamented with beads and bits of abalone shell is fastened at the waist and extends to the knees. A
AH-PURA-WAY.
281
gaudy head-dress fastened at the back by a single upstanding feather com- pletes the costume.
A man with a cowl-like head-dress held in place by a savage looking band of walrus tusks and holding an im- mense flint strapped to his arms, is stationed at either end of the row slightly in advance of the others.
When all is ready, the leader lifts his voice and his foot simultaneously, and the dance is on — not to cease until the village has danced itself to exhaus- tion. The men in the row raise and lower their deerskins on the poles in time with their bending bodies and jerking feet. The effect is weird and uncanny. The deer skins assume the semblance of life, first raising their noses towards the heavens in exhorta- tion and then bowing in humility and supplication towards the earth. They are the sacred emblems through which the red men hope to have their peti- tions heard and answered. Each skin is richly ornamented with bits of shells and bright feathers, which are fast- ened to the nostrils and feet by means of buckskin thongs several inches in length.
The two flint dancers bend their bodies almost at right angles and dance back and forth along the row. As a dancer falls from his place from exhaustion, he is pulled aside and an- other of the same village takes his place.
To make the trial more exciting, the spirit of competition enters into the celebration, each village striving to out- shine its neighbors in finery and en- durance. A respite is granted the dancers at night, during which they feast and visit among the various camps. But with morning the dance goes on until the twelve days have been completed. The Hoopa Indians require but six days for a similar cele- bration.
The Indians' unquestioning faith in the efficacy of their barbaric ceremony was doubtless due in a large measure to the fact that their hopes were nearly always realized. That this was due to natural laws never occurred to
these pious minded children. Coming as it did in the fall, the dance was sure to be followed by the autumn rains that never failed to clear the atmos- phere of disease germs and cover the earth with a spring time growth of grass and flowers. The fish dams ready placed in the rivers for the an- nual run of salmon was a self-guar- antee of plenty of fish. But the In- dians considered these things an an- swer to their petitions.
While Christian education has taught the young Indians dependance upon self rather than in the blind faith in prayer they do not entirely disbe- lieve the stories of the ancient tradi- tions of their tribespeople. Just as the Christians of to-day do not say that the miracles of early Biblical times are not true, so Robert Spott does not disbelieve the tales of In- dian tradition that his father and his father's father have handed down to him.
While Ah-Pura-Way is the largest festival at which all the tribes congre- gate, there are many other religious dances among the Klamath Indians all designed to protect the people from hunger and sickness.
In illustration 3, our young Indian friend is seen in the dress worn in the bush dance. It is a dance to cure bod- ily ills, demonstrating in a forceful way the Indians' faith in the power of the will to overcome sickness. Robert gives the following synopsis of the ceremony :
"Bush-dance doctor, when a child is unhealth, he go far upon the moun- tains in the evening and pray to the heaven with his power so this child's sickness will go. And he pray again so the child will have a long and so good lucky life. Then he break the limb of the pine forest and comes home. And have the sick child lay beside the fire and danced all night around the sick child."
If the child died it was attributed to the will of God.
The costumes worn by the Indians in the Jumping-dance is shown in il- lustration 4. It is celebrated when
Ah-pura-way, or Klamath Indian worship dance, as practiced in Northern California.
— Photo copyrighted 1916 by Emma B. Freeman, Eureka, Cal.
there is fear of an epidemic. In the words of our authority: "This dance always have whenever the people hear a sickness coming on a far away."
It is held in the Indian house and lasts twelve days. To quote further from the story of the chieftain's son.
"A medicine man sit beside the fire and has a long pipe and smoke Indian tobacco and not drink water and eat once day. Then he pray to heaven, and before he sit down he took Indian tobacco and put a little on his hand. Then he blow to north and south with his power that sickness will not reach here, and again he blow to the east and the west. Then he sit down.
"Then the dance beginning do dance
around him and people looking on are
all feeling verv sadness."
* * * *
But the old ceremonies have van- ished— the dance is done. And the reason — Death.
Long ago the Indians of the valley and coast regions of the Golden State disappeared, leaving scarcely a token of their existence except the long line of Mission buildings stretching from San Diego to San Francisco, and of which California is so justly proud.
Because of the mountain barriers and their remoteness from the centers of civilized life, the tribes of the north- ern coast counties have continued to cherish up to the present many of their old tribal customs even though the government schools have used every effort to discourage the barbaric prac- tices, and to win the Indians to saner modes of life and thought. It is Death more than education that has made impossible the old life and customs.
All the religious dances of the Klamaths, to be of any avail, must be conducted by one of pure blood and high standing in the tribe anointed to that sacred office, just as were the
AT CARMEL-BY-THE-SEA.
283
priests of the ancient Hebrews — or for that matter just as priests and minis- ters are authorized to perform certain ceremonies to-day. These holy men of the Indians have nearly all passed over into the Land of Forgetfulness, and the custom of intermarriage has left few pure enough of blood to take their places.
When Captain Spott answers the call, the sacred emblems of which he is the custodian will pass as a precious heirloom to his son Robert, to be trea- sured as were the sacred goblets in the ancient Jewish tabernacle, but they will never be used again to invoke the blessing of the Heavenly Father upon his trusting Children of the Wilds.
AT CAR/AEL-BY-TIiE-SEA
The Mission walls stand thick and strong, In the quaint tower the bell still swings;
The swallows nest beneath the eaves, And dart about with quivering wings.
The grass grows lush upon the hills The surf still beats upon the shore;
Where are the dark-skinned worshipers Who knelt in crowds upon this floor?
Gone from the hills — gone from the shore, Their homes, nor even their graves we see,
Under the white man's chilling touch
These simple Christians ceased to be.
Oh! Father Serra, could you rest In peace within your silent grave,
And see this people fade away,
This people that you died to save?
Their only monument this house,
Reared with such toil at your command ;
They worshiped here — then like a cloud They vanished from this pleasant land.
Will not some hand beside your name
Write thus upon these walls of clay, "In memory of a gentle race
Who built this house — then passed away."
Henrietta C. Penny.
The Americanized Chinese Student
What Will lie Play in the Future Development of China?
By Frank B. Lenz,
Young Men's Christian Association. At Present in North China Union Language School, Peking, China.
THE HOPE of any nation lies with its educated class. The stu- dents of to-day are the leaders of to-morrow in the political, in- dustrial, commercial, social and relig- ious life of any country. The trained man — the expert is in demand. Leader- ship must be progressive if it is to be successful. Our higher institutions of learning are to-day producing more than eighty per cent of the leaders of the nation. It has been recently ascer- tained that, there are at present about twelve hundred Chinese students
Dr. Y. T. Tsur, President of Tsing Hua College, Peking.
studying in America's higher educa- tional institutions. Why have these most intellectual sons of the Celestial Republic selected the United States as the country in which to continue their studies ?
In the first place the American peo- ple have won the hearts of the Chinese by their policy of fair and just treat- ment. The United States has devel- oped a consistent foreign policy, and for half a century has continued a pol- icy in the Pacific quite as definite as that represented in the Monroe Doc- trine. In 1868, Anson Burlingame made a treaty between the United States and China .which admitted her to the family of nations — a treaty so just and expressed in such friendly lan- guage that it has served as a model for all subsequent treaties of Western na- tions with China. This treaty began the policy of recognizing China as an equal among all the nations of the world. It was due to the influence of this treaty that enabled Secretary Hay in 1900 to secure another treaty pledg- ing Japan, United States and other Western Powers to respect the integ- rity and independence of the Chinese Empire, and to claim no rights of trade which were not freely granted to others. This is the open door policy for China. The Americans by a cen- tury of positive missionary effort have broken down race prejudice and estab- lished the greatest confidence between themselves and the Chinese. The American Government -ereely gave its services in aiding the Chinese govern-
The Yamen at Tsing Hua.
ment to destroy foreign traffic in Chi- nese coolies. The American govern- ment likewise gave its services in sup- pressing foreign trade in opium. Am- erican officials are to-day constantly at watch along the entire American bor- der and coast against opium smug- gling.
The friendship has been greatly in- creased between the two countries by the services of Americans in famine relief, especially in the Great Famine in Shensi and the recent famines in the Yangste Valley.
The United States was one of the first countries to recognize the Chinese Republic.
China is in dire need of instruction along scientific lines. She must have accurate information in regard to sani- tation, disease prevention and medical research. The China Medical Com- mission, which is now authorized to spend about a million and a quarter dollars per year, is destined to play a very large part in cementing the future friendship of the two nations.
America has been wise in the selec-
tion of her ministers to China. Bur- lingame, Parker, Angell, Denby, Con- ger, Rockhill, Calhoun and Dr. Reinsch have had large influence on the friendly relations between the United States and China. Presidents Grant, Roosevelt and Wilson have been true friends of China. Most visi- tors like ex-President Eliot have re- ported favorably on their trips and have contributed to the good-will of the two countries.
The only obstacle in the way of the most friendly relations between the two nations is the Exclusion Law. This law not only excludes all Chinese lab- orers or coolies, but it inflicts great hardships on the exempted class; that is, merchants, travelers, students, teachers and officials. As one Chinese official once said in San Francisco: "It seems much easier for them to en- ter Heaven than to set foot on the American continent even when they enter with the Consul's certificate or other documents issued and signed by American diplomatic agents in China."
We sincerely trust that this discrim-
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inatory law will be changed for some such policy as that advocated by Dr. Sidney Gulick; namely, the admission to our country annually of say five per cent of the number of people of any other country now living in the United States who have become naturalized American citizens. Such a policy would operate fairly among all na- tions, and at the same time would in- sure the assimilation of all immigrants who come to America.
The most direct and potent reason why so many Chinese students pur- sue their studies in America is due to the return to China in 1908 by the United States of about one-half the in- demnity bond paid by China at the close of the Boxer Rebellion. This amount was $10,785,286.12. When the announcement was made by Minis- ter W. W. Rockhill of the return of the indemnity money, Prince Ching re- plied : "Mindful of the desire express- ed by the President of the United
States to promote the coming of Chi- nese students .to the Unied States to take courses in schools and colleges of the country, and convinced by the happy results of past experience of the great value to China of education in American schools, the Imperial gov- ernment has the honor to state that it is its intention to send henceforth yearly to the United States a consider- able number of students, there to re- ceive their education." The Chinese government decided that one hundred students should be sent to America every year for four years, and that from the fifth year a minimum of fifty students should be sent each year. It was provided that eighty per cent of the students sent should specialize in industrial arts, agriculture, mechanical and mining engineering, physics, chem- istry, railway engineering, architec- ture and banking and twenty per cent should specialize in law and political science. But how were these students
Returned students visiting their alma mater, Tsing Hua College, taking tea at the President's
yamen.
to be prepared for entrance to Ameri- can universities? The Chinese educa- tional system was not based on West- ern methods. In the agreement be- tween the two countries the date set for the first group to the United States was in 1909. Since there was no school in which the students could be trained before going, it was decided by the Bureau of Educational Mission to the United States to select the first group by a rigid examination. In August, 1909, six hundred and thirty took the examinations in Peking. Only forty- eight passed. These were sent to the United States in October.
The necessity of a training center was apparent, and so Tsing Hua Park was secured from the government as a suitable site for such an institution. It was decided to name the school Tsing Hua College. The necessary build- ings were completed in 1911, and work began at once. Eighteen teachers, nine of whom were women, were engaged to come to America to make up the fac- ulty. But it was now time for another group of students to go to the United
States. In order to meet the situation an examination was again held, from which seventy-three students were se- lected to be sent to America.
After a brief summer vacation, col- lege opened in 1911, but scarcely two months had passed before the revolu- tion in Wuchang broke out. A month later Tsing Hua was closed and teach- ers and students left for their homes. Matters were not sufficiently adjusted in China until the spring of 1912 to permit the college to re-open its doors. Since May 1, 1912 the work at Tsing Hua College has been going on har- moniously and without interruption. During the last three years the school has grown in many directions. Two events deserve special mention. First, the number of students has grown to nearly five hundred, this growth being accounted for by the admission of one hundred and twenty-three boys to the Middle School in 1915. A further ad- dition of students to the High School has been contemplated, and steps have already been taken toward holding an entrance examination next summer.
Dining room of the college.
The second event of great importance was the decision made in 1914 by the government of the United States to re- turn to China a further sum of the Boxer Indemnity Fund. The original sum of the Indemnity was $24,440,- 778. Two million dollars of this amount had been set aside to settle sundry claims put forward at various times. These claims were finally set- tled and a balance of $1,170,000 has been returned to China since 1914.
The president of the college, Dr. Ye-Tsung Tsur, is himself an Ameri- can trained scholar of splendid ability. He holds degrees both from the Uni- versity of Wisconsin and Yale. He was promoted to the presidency Au- gust 22, 1913, at the death of Mr. Tong Kai-son, the first president.
Entering America for the first time, the Chinese student is confused. His primary need is personal guidance. He will need help in securing temporary hotel accommodations, transferring his
baggage, getting railway tickets, and starting on the right train for the uni- versity of his choice. He may wish to make some purchases, exchange money or post letters. The organization that has anticipated his wants and minis- tered to him in terms of his needs has been the Young Men's Christian Asso- ciation. The San Francisco Y. M. C. A. has met and assisted every group of In- demnity Students that has been sent to the United States. Scores of pri- vate students have also been helped. The student traveling alone has often suffered great apprehension when tem- porarily detained by the immigration authorities at Angel Island. In every case the Association has been the messenger to relieve the distressed mind.
Upon reaching the university city the student again needs assistance. The University Y. M. C. A. helps him to find board and lodging, to select his courses, to register, and to become ac-
President Tsur's residence.
Middle School building.
The main entrance to Tsing Hua College.
quainted with college customs and tra- ditions. He is given advice regarding the social, moral, athletic and religious activities of the university. He is for- tified against the evil influences of stu- dent life. The Y. M. C. A. enables him to see and appropriate the best features of his new environment. It puts him in touch with a few friends who understand him and with whom he can talk frankly.
The International Committee of the Young Men's Christian Association has recently organized a Committee on Friendly Relations Among Foreign Students, with Mr. Charles D. Hurrey as General Secretary. This Com- mittee is endeavoring to establish In- formation Bureaus in foreign nations with reliable persons in charge, who can distribute literature and give in- formation to prospective students re- garding university life in North Amer- ica. A handbook of useful informa- tion is presented to the new student upon his arrival. Receptions, socials, and banquets are frequently arranged by the Committee, thus promoting good-fellowship. During vacations
and other leisure periods the Commit- tee accompanies foreign students on visits of inspection to social settle- ments, hospitals, playgrounds, penal and reform institutions and Christian Association buildings. Books and lit- erature bearing on character building are distributed.
That the hundreds of students now being educated in Tsing Hua College and in American universities will be a mighty factor in the upbuilding of a new China no one can doubt. Already a number of students who have been educated through the Indemnity Fund have returned to their native country to assume positions of responsibility and leadership.
While this may be true that they have the reactionary and backward looking element to combat in every phase of life, yet their potent influ- ence is already felt. The one danger constantly threatening them is the sub- tle non-progressive spirit of Old China. These Western world students are shocked and disappointed at the back- wardness of their country when they return from America. Their first im-
THE BROOK.
291
pulse is to change the old system im- mediately. They suddenly realize that it takes time to change century- old customs and institutions. Many of them are not willing to endure and sac- rifice and so grow pessimistic. Others slip back into the old ways and become mere job holders.
Among the American educated stu- dents who have seen the light and are remaining true to their vision are Mr. C. T. Wang, vice-speaker of the Na- tional Senate; Dr. Y. T. Tsur, presi- dent of Tsing Hua College; Dr. Wel- lington Koo, Minister at Washington, and Mr. David Z. T. Yui, chairman of the National Committee of the Y. M. C. A. of China.
The returned student needs the com- panionship of the choicest of his coun- trymen who have studied abroad, and are now established in useful service
to their community. The counsel and leadership will demonstrate how he can apply his knowledge and experi- ence to the solution of the most press- ing problems of his people. The West- ern educated Chinese are the men who will lead China to success. "But these young men do not know China and her peculiar ways," is the cry of the men of the age that is past. These leaders of yesterday are chaining their match- less country to a dead past. And un- less the chain is broken, the future is hopeless, and China is doomed. But if the survival of their country as an independent nation is to be won by ful- filling the first law of organic life — the adaptation of the organism to its environment — only the Chinese whose mind has been trained in Western world schools can lead China to safety and greatness.
THE BROOK
The frost gleams white where once was sunny nook, And all the world seems clasp'd in Winter's hold ;
I cannot see the little, ice-bound brook
That 'neath its crust of snow sleeps still and cold.
It seems a dream that once the skies were blue — Now black with fury of the northern wind;
Forgotten are the bird-notes, and the hue
Of petal'd cornflow'r with the rose entwined.
O little brook, you heard the sea's low cry
That called you through the meadows green and still ! O heart, I heard your voice in love's faint sigh,
And all my soul awoke in passion's thrill !
The sea long since rock'd on its bosom's swell The tiny ripples of each sparkling wave,
And I — the tinkling of the ice-drops tell
How cold the stones that mem'ry's waters lave !
Elizabeth Reynolds.
Santa Cruz Mission, as restored, Santa Cruz, California.
-Photo by Aydelotte.
The Aission of Santa Cruz
Reported Destruction by Tidal Wave a Myth. Restoration Will
Begin in Near Future -
By Robert Cosmo Harding
M
ONSIGNORE Fisher, of Santa Cruz has about completed ar- rangements whereby the old Mission of Santa Cruz will be restored, and this relic of the Spanish regime in California will once more become the Mecca for Eastern tourists and touring Westerners ; and the mem- ories of by-gone days will again be as vivid as they were when the actual civilization of this great commonwealth was in its inceptive period.
The Mission of Santa Cruz, like all other California missions, has its in- teresting history, each woven about one object, which is the original mo- tive for the establishment of missions
throughout the territory now known as the State of California, to wit: the conversion of the native population to the Roman Catholic faith and the ex- tention of the land as a dominion of the Spanish Crown.
It was in the year 1790, while the Yule-logs burned so, briskly in Eng- land, and while the wassail bowl was passing round the gayly decorated fes- tive board from hand to hand* and each pair of lips quaffed therefrom, that in the Mission at San Francisco, in the Mission Dolores, civilization, having spread its wings over the American Atlantic coast line, there was grave de- bate upon the advisability of extend-
THE MISSION OF SANTA CRUZ
293
ing an earnest and active invitation to civilization to cast favoring eyes, with the same effects, throughout the south- ern portion of the American continent which bordered the Pacific Ocean and which lay to the north of the Tropics.
Already the Mission of San Diego had been established July 26, 1769, and in 1770 the Mission of San Carlos, while July 14, 1771, there had sprung into existence the Mission of Antonio, and the San Gabriel Mission on the eighth of September of the same year. And these, having met with such suc- cess, were followed by the establish- ment of the Mission at San Luis on September 1st of the following year. And after a lull of almost four years there had come the San Francisco Mis- sion on October 9, 1776, the same year that the Declaration of Independence had been signed — this, just a few months prior to the building of the Mission at San Juan Capistrano, which at the present writing is also being re- stored. January 18, 1777, the Mission at Santa Clara had been erected; an- other lull; and on May 3, 1782, the Mission at San Buena Ventura. The Mission of Santa Barbara, still occu- pied in the closing days of the year 1916, was established September 3, 1786. All had realized their aims, but there was still much territory to be brought into the realm of the church and the King of Spain.
The discussion waxed warm. Nu- merous locations were mentioned, but that which seemed most in need of the influences of religion was not far away, was in the region contiguous to the Bay of Monterey.
Exactly fifty years after Columbus discovered America, one, Juan Rodo- riguez Cabrillo, quite by accident, dis- covered the Bay of Monterey, although because? of its thirty-mile width en- trance, he did not recognize it as a sea indentation. Nevertheless, his chart shows the irregularity of the coast line at this spot. Cabrillo never returned to those waters, and not un- til the establishment of the Mission at San Diego was any attempt made to discover whether or not the indenta-
tion recorded by Cabrillo was a har- bor. Thus two hundred and twenty- eight years elapsed before it was thought that perhaps it was really worth while to do some scouting. One party set out and returned because it had passed the bay without recogniz- ing it. However, not satisfied, in the same year two more parties set out, one by sea and one on land. It re- quired more than three months of jour- neying to arrive — but both did finally reach the same spot at practically the same time.
This territory then was under dis- cussion at the San Francisco Mission, and it would have kept on indefinitely had not two Franciscan Brothers, Father Salazar and Father Lopez, vol- unteered to undertake the strenuous task. Therefore, shortly thereafter, these two brave souls, accompanied by only two soldiers, set forth to es- tablish what was to be known as the Mission of Santa Cruz, and about which now nestles the city of Santa Cruz, given the ennobling sobriquet of The City of the Holy Cross.
It was known that the territory was inhabited by Indians who had estab- lished villages around the shores of the bay, but it was not known whether these Indians were friendly or were to prove murderously treacherous. Yet this did not daunt the two reverend pioneers.
The little party progressed slowly — they covered the eighty miles in two weeks, and after spending much time in viewing different locations, selected a site on the north shore of the bay, about a mile inland, and nearly two miles from the ocean, on an eminence of some seven hundred feet. From this spot could be seen the waters of the bay sparkling in the sunlight, and to the East, towering Loma Prieta Peak, while to the north stretched the Santa Cruz Mountains, with its big trees, its gulches, its little valleys, the San Lorenzo River and Branciforte Creek, all visible. Truly nature had smiled upon the two Franciscans! Could anything have been more idyl- lic! They thought not, for pitching
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
their tents, they at once in a primitive way commenced work.
Pow-wows were held with the In- dians, and it was soon seen that they were to be the source of little trouble. But this was not all that Father Sala- zar and Father Lopez desired: they had come to this wilderness for the purpose and sole aim to spread the Gospel of Christianity among these heathens — and that they met with suc- cess is attested to by the fact that in the year before the Mission was erected they had converted seventy In- dians of the Achistace type; and had united in marriage six Indians. This was certainly a record of which to be proud! Yet Father Salazar and Father Lopez accomplished much more, for they attempted the arduous feat of plowing and tilling a few acres of land and of cutting and hewing tim- ber for the construction of the Mission house. Of course, the converted In- dians lent much assistance, and cause for thanksgiving to the little devout coterie.
Father Salazar and Father Lopez had arrived upon the site of the Santa Cruz Mission September 25, 1791, but the first corner-stone of the building was not laid until February 23, 1793. In 1794 the Mission was ready for dedication, and on the tenth of March of that year, a gala day, Father Pena of the Mission at Santa Clara and Her- menegilgo Sal, Commanding Officer of the Presidio of San Francisco, accom- panied by five priests and eighty-nine Indians, all converted, witnessed the consecration of the Mission of Santa Cruz. It was of wood and adobe.
Up to this time the supplies of Father Salazar and Father Lopez had been contributed from other Missions — by Santa Clara thirty cows, five yoke of oxen, two pair of which were use- less, fourteen bulls, twenty steers and nine horses: one pair of oxen and seven mules by Carmel; five yoke of oxen, one of which was useless, by San Francisco. And one of the mules contributed by Carmel was so gentle that it died three days aftei its arrival. Later these contributions were aug-
mented by sixty sheep, ten lambs and two bushels of barley. Quite a larder for those days in the wilderness, but it sufficed to keep flesh and bones to- gether until in 1795 the fruits of labor of the Santa Cruz colonization were ready for consumption, and from the land that had been "worked" there was acquired one thousand bushels of wheat, six hundred bushels of corn, sixty bushels of beans and a little more than a half bushel of lentels.
The Mission of Santa Cruz grew apace, and in ten years there had been erected, all told, fifty houses for those Indians who had embraced Christian- ity and more particularly Roman Cath- olicism, and who had been taught the civilized arts of carpentry, shoemak- ing, blacksmithing and a dozen other useful occupations. And in those ten years other Indians, not Achistaces, joined the colony, with peace ever pre- vailing.
The daily life at the Mission of Santa Cruz, while simple, was ex- tremely interesting. The flush of Au- rora in the east was heralded by the melodious Mission bells and sum- moned all to prayers, after which a hearty breakfast was the rule. This fortified all for the day's work. At eleven o'clock there was a pause for rest and luncheon, after which work was resumed until the Angelus sound- ed an hour before sunset. Prayers and beads were now said, and then came a very hearty and appetizing supper. The evenings were devoted to various amusements.
The principal foods were fresh beef and fresh mutton, with cakes of wheat and maize (the latter the Indian name for corn), and peas, beans and other vegetables. Of course, there was va- riety, for the climate of Santa Cruz was and still is propitious for fresh green vegetables almost the entire cy- cle of the year. Nor was there any necessity for lack of cleanliness, be- cause the waters of the Bay of Mon- terey invited them both summer and winter.
The dress of the men consisted of shirts, trousers and blankets, although
"IN CITY PENT."
295
upon special occasions the complete Spanish dress was affected by those who could afford it.
So, until the year 1834, the Mission of Santa Cruz flourished and it would have continued to do so had not it been secularized. This was responsible for its retardation, and that it spelled ruin for the Indians is exemplified in the historical fact that they returned to primitive conditions and to becoming enemies to the White Brothers.
There are some erroneous historians responsible for the statement that the Mission of Santa Cruz, about the year 1838, was destroyed by an earthquake and a resultant monster tidal wave, but this, geology disproves because any tidal wave that would have been so elephantine in proportions would have
swept the land for hundreds of miles. This was not the case, as the markings of the surrounding country show. So it will be seen that this statement is merely a myth, and that an early earth- quake alone was responsible for the partial destruction of the Mission of Santa Cruz, and that the almost total dismantling was afterward done by human hands.
And now, when in the future, the traveler approaches Santa Cruz from the East, he will read on the Camino Real, situated on the highway at the foot of de Laveaga Park, the inscrip- tion: Mission of Santa Cruz, 1% mi.; Mission San Juan Bautista, 34 mi.; and he will know that he will soon arrive at one of the most interesting places in the United States.
"IN CITY PENT."
Life led me by the hand to a high-walled town,
From street to street he led me up and down, up and down ;
Aweary, weary, am I of the flinty pavement stone —
0 I would fain away again and walk the world alone !
1 want the pleasant shadows of tall oak trees,
The birds among the branches, the lilting of the breeze, The dusty white road wandering, the broken wall of stone — 0 I would fain away again and walk the world alone !
O here the world is mad for gain, the people herd and crowd; Their hearts are full of tears unspent, their laughter is too loud ; Here is no friendly greeting, no hand to grip my own — O I would fain away again and walk the world alone !
Verne Bright.
The Late Pastor Russell
Biographical Sketch by His Successor
J. F. Rutherford
"Pastor Russell's writings are said to have greater newspaper circulation every week than those of any other living man ; a greater, doubtless, than the combined circulation of the writings of all the priests and preachers in North America; greater even than the work of Arthur Brisbane, Norman Hapgood, George Horace Lorimer, Dr. Frank Crane, Frederick Haskins, and a dozen other of the best known editors and syndicate writers put to- gether."— The Continent.
CHARLES Taze Russell, known the world over as Pastor Russell, author, lecturer and minister of the Gospel, was born at Pitts- burg, Pa., February 16, 1852; died Oc- tober 31, 1916. He was a son of Joseph L. and Eliza Birnie Russell, both of Scotch-Irish descent. He was educated in the common schools and under pri- vate tutors. He was married in 1879 to Maria Frances Ackley. No children blessed this union. Eighteen years later a disagreement arose about the management of his journal, and a sep- aration followed. Pastor Russell was the author of the following publica- tions :
Object and Manner of Our Lord's Return ; Food for Thinking Christians ; Tabernacle Shadows ; The Divine Plan of the Ages ; The Time is at Hand ; Thy Kingdom Come; The Battle of Arma- geddon; The Atonement Between God and Man; The New Creation; What Say the Scriptures About Hell; What Say the Scriptures About Spiritualism; Old Theology Tracts; The Photo- Drama of Creation; Etc., Etc.
Reared under the influence of Christ- ian parents, at an early age young Rus- sell became interested in theology, uniting himself with the Congrega-
tional Church, and became active in local mission work. His instructors be- lieved and taught the old style "Hell- fire" doctrine. At the age of fifteen his boyish zeal, in an endeavor to restore a young infidel friend, cost him his faith in the Bible. At the age of 17 he had become a skeptic. This was due to the inability. of his religious teachers to substantiate the doctrine of a literal lake of fire and brimstone. This doc- trine of eternal torment of all mankind except the few elect became very ab- horrent to him, and he said: "A God who would use His power to create human beings whom He foreknew and predestined should be eternally tor- mented, could be neither wise, just nor loving; His standard would be lower than that of men." He continued to believe, however, in the existence of God, but was unwilling to accept the commonly understood teachings as God's revelation of Himself to man.
During the next few years, while growing up into commercial life, he devoted much time to the investigation of Buddhism, Confucianism, and other Oriental religions, only to find all these unworthy of credence. "Which is the true Gospel?" became a living ques- tion in his inquiring mind, and al-
THE LATE PASTOR RUSSELL
297
though he was now well on the way, commercially, to fame and fortune, he decided that he would investigate the Scriptures and let the Bible speak for itself on the question of future punish- ment. This was the beginning of a new ambition.
Pastor Russell's Teachings
Naturally of a reverent mind, de- siring to worship and serve the true God, Mr. Russell reasoned, "All the creeds of Christendom claim to be founded on the Bible, and these are conflicting. Is it possible that the Bible has been misrepresented? It may not teach the terrible doctrine of eternal torment." Turning then to the Bible, he determined to make a care- ful, systematic study of it without ref- erence to creeds of men. The result was the full establishment of his faith in the Bible as God's Word. The re- mainder of his life was wholly devoted to teaching the Bible, writing and pub- lishing religious books and papers, lec- turing and proclaiming the Message of Messiah's Kingdom. He was the great- est religious teacher since St. Paul, and did more than any other man of modern times to establish the faith of the people in the Scriptures. His aim was to reach, if possible, every Truth- seeker — Catholic, Protestant, Jew and Free-thinker. He stood entirely free from all sectarian bonds. His work was wholly independent.
Pastor Russell was not the founder of a new religion, and never made such claim. He revived the great truths taught by Jesus and the Apostles, and turned the light of the twentieth cen- tury upon these. He made no claim of a special revelation from God, but held that in the light of the prophecies it was doubtless God's due time for the Bible to be understood ; and that all fully consecrated to the Lord and His service would therefore be permitted to understand it. Because he devoted himself to the development of the fruits and graces of the Holy Spirit, the promise of the Lord was fulfilled in him : "For if these things be in you
and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruit- ful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ."— 2 Peter 1 :5-8.
He clearly taught, and proves his teachings by the citation of Scriptural authority,
That man is a soul and is mortal;
That he does not possess an immor- tal soul;
That the wages of sin is death — not eternal torment;
That death comes upon man as the just penalty for the violation of God's Law;
That death means the destruction of man, unless a release can be obtained;
That God, in His goodness, has pro- vided the great Ransom-price whereby man may be delivered from the bond- age of sin and death;
That God's beloved Son, Jesus, be- came flesh and grew to manhood's es- tate, was put to death as a man and raised from the dead a spirit being, possessing the Divine nature;
That by His death and resurrection Christ Jesus secured and provided the Ransom-price for man's deliverance and restoration; that Jesus Christ, by the grace of God, tasted death for every man ;
That every man in God's due time must, therefore, have a fair trial for life, and that to this end there shall be an awakening of all the dead ;
That Jesus Christ returned into Heaven and must come the second time;
That the period of time elapsing be- tween the First and the Second Com- ing of the Lord is devoted to the elec- tion of the members of the Body of Christ, taken from among men;
That the requirements for election to that exalted position are, full faith in the shed blood of Jesus as the Ransom- price, a full consecration to do the Father's will, and a faithful continu- ance in obedience to the Father's will even unto death;
That all who are thus consecrated and begotten of the Holy Spirit and are overcomers shall have part in the First, or Chief Resurrection, and be
The late Charles Taze Russell, known the world over as Pastor Russell, minister of the Gospel, and organizer and President of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society up to the time of his death.
exalted to positions in the Heavenly Kingdom of God and participate with Christ Jesus in the Divine nature and His Millennial Reign for the blessing of all the families of the earth;
That during the thousand year Reign of Christ, all of the dead shall be awakened, and given a fair and impar-
tial trial for life or death as human be- ings;
That under said Reign, and at its close, the wilfully disobedient shall be everlastingly destroyed, while those rendering heart-obedience to the right- eous rule of Christ shall be fully re- stored to human perfection of body,
THE LATE PASTOR RUSSELL
299
mind and character;
That during this Millennial Reign the earth shall be brought to a state of Edenic Paradise, and made fit as a habitation for perfect man;
That man, fully restored to perfec- tion, will inhabit the beautiful earth during all the ages to come.
Pastor Russell's Work
incorporated the "Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society," of which he was President until the time of his death. By the spring of 1909 the business of the Society had expanded to such pro- portions in America and abroad that a closer location to Europe was found necessary, and headquarters were transferred to Brooklyn, N. Y.
Purchases Henry Ward Beechefs Home.
Seeing that God has so wonderful a Plan for the blessing of mankind, Pas-
tor Russell gave all of his power and It was b the merest accident that
!n!ugy.t0.umakin^knSVn th6Se *gr,eat the Henry Ward Beecher mansion, at
truths to the world. He never took a 124 Columbia Heights, Brooklyn, came
vacation; he worked constantly until into the possession of the Society> and
the day of his death. Pastor RusseU continued to use the
Like other Christians he was looking home of Brooklyn»s world famed pul.
for the Second Coming of .hrist. Be- it orator as his study and residence
tween 1872 and 1876 he discovered that the Scriptures clearly teach that the Lord would return as a spirit be- ing, invisible to human eyes, not in a body of flesh, and that His Second Presence was due in the autumn of
until his death.
It was to this very study that Lin- coln, while President of the United States, and during the trying days of the rebellion, paid a secret midnight
visit to the Pastor of Plymouth Church 1874 This ied to the publication of a about his ; abroad on a lecture tour
booklet entitled The Object and Man- to change the sentiment of the British
ner of Our Lord's Return," which had a phenomenal sale.
Many students of the Bible through- out the United States and Canada re- sponded to the information derived from that book, and Pastor Russell's correspondence became voluminous.
and enlist it in behalf of the Union.
Pastor Russell's Wide Propaganda
Pastor Russell was not only Presi- dent of the "Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society," the parent organiza- tion, but was also President of the
Realizing the necessity of keeping the "People's Pulpit Association," organ-
Truth before the minds of those who had begun to investigate, in 1879, he began the publication of "The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Pres- ence," and was its sole editor to the time of his death. This journal is is-
ized as a New York State Corporation in 1909, and of the "International Bible Students' Association," incorporated in Great Britain, London, in 1913. These latter corporations were branches of the parent society, and were incorpor-
sued semi-monthly; it never publishes ated to comply with certain legal re- advertisements, but is devoted exclu- quirements of the different localities, sively to religious topics. Among the Through these religious corporations,
English speaking people in the United States, Canada and Great Britain, its semi-monthly circulation is 45,000 copies. It is also published in Ger- man, French, Swedish, Dano-Norwe- gian and Polish, reaching a large num- ber of subscribers in America and Eu- rope.
Pittsburgh Headquarters Too Small. In 1884, in Allegheny, Pa., now a
as well as by word of mouth from the platform and pulpit, Pastor Russell promulgated the Gospel of Messiah's Kingdom. The following publications, written by him between the years 1881 and 1914, each had a phenomenal cir- culation, as given below:
"Food for Thinking Christ- ians" 1,450,000
"Tabernacle Shadows" 1,000,000
part of Pittsburgh, he organized and "Divine Plan of the Ages". .4,817,000
DIAGRAM
Exhibiting the Actual and Relative Numbers of Mankind Classified According to Religion.
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s
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111
in ■IIL
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Mohamme-
Heathen, dans, Jews,
856 170 _ 8
millions. millions. millions.
Roman Greek Protest- Catholics, Catholics, ants, 190 84 116 millions. millions. millions.
"The Time is at Hand" 1,657,000
"Thy Kingdom Come" 1,578,000
"Battle of Armageddon" 472,000
"The Atonement" 445,000
"The New Creation" 423,000
"What Say the Scriptures About Hell ?" 3,000,000
Pastor Russell was also the author of the "Photo-Drama of Creation," which, prior to his death, had been ex-
hibited to about twelve millions of people. He wrote and published the scenario of this photo-drama, which has had a very wide circulation. His publications are translated into thirty- five different languages. At the same time he was pastor of more than 1,200 congregations of Bible students in dif- ferent parts of the world. Some of these he visited whenever possible, and served the others by means of "The
THE LATE PASTOR RUSSELL
301
Watch Tower" and private correspond- ence.
He organized and conducted a Lec- ture Bureau which constantly employed many lecturers, who traveled and de- livered lectures on the Scriptures, as well as giving instruction to Bible students. He organized and managed an auxiliary lecture bureau of several hundred men who gave a portion of their time to lecturing on Bible teach- ings. He wrote practically all the copy for the "Bible Students' Monthly," the annual circulation of which amounted to many million copies.
His weekly sermons were handled by a newspaper syndicate. More than 2,000 newspapers, with a combined circulation of fifteen million readers, at one time published his discourses. All told, more than 4,000 newspapers published these sermons.
"The Continent," a publication whose editor often opposed Pastor Russell, once published the following significant statement concerning him:
"His writings are said to have greater newspaper circulation every week than those of any other living man ; a greater, doubt- less, than the combined circula- tion of the writings of all the priests and preachers in North America; greater even than the work of Arthur Brisbane, Norman Hapgood, George Horace Lorimer, Dr. Frank Crane, Frederick Has- kins, and a dozen other of the best known editors and syndicate writ- ers put together."
Harvest Work.
Pastor Russell adhered strictly to the teachings of the Scriptures. He believed and taught, as before men- tioned, that we are living in the time of the Second Presence of our Lord Jesus, and that His Presence dates from 1874 (see his book, "The Time of the End") ; that since that time we have been living in the "end of the Age," during which the Lord has been conducting His great Harvest work;
that, in harmony with the Master's own statement, this Harvest work is separating true Christians, designated as "wheat," from merely professing Christians, designated as "tares," and gathering the true saints into the King- dom of the Lord.
It is interesting here to note that Jesus said, "Who then (at the time re- ferred to) is that faithful and wise steward whom his Lord shall make ruler over His household, to give them their portion of meat in due season? Blessed is that servant whom his Lord when He cometh shall find so doing. Of a truth I say unto you, that He will make him ruler over all that He hath." (Luke 12:42-44; Matt. 24:45-47.) Thousands of the readers of Pastor Russell's writings believe that he filled the office of "that faithful and wise servant," and that his great work was the giving to the Household of Faith the "meat in due season." His mod- esty and humility precluded him from claiming this title. For a more de- tailed account of his work, reference is made to "The Watch Tower" of June 1st, 1916.
Pastor Russell made frequent trips abroad. In 1892 he made a trip to Europe and the Holy Land, taking in various countries and lecturing in the interests of the great work. In 1910 he again visited Palestine, Russia and European countries, delivering lectures to thousands of orthodox Jews on the re-gathering of the Jews to Palestine. Upon his return to America, in Octo- ber of that year, he was given a great ovation at the New York City Hippo- drome by many thousands of Jews. His discourse on that occasion was pub- lished by Hebrew papers throughout America and Europe. He was greatly beloved by many Jewish people. In the fall of 1911 he was the chairman of a committee of seven who made a journey around the world and specially examined into the conditions of the missionary work in Japan, Korea, China, Syria and India. At a public mass meeting held at the New York Hippodrome in the spring of 1912, to hear the report of this committee, Pas-
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tor Russell delivered the report and gave a discourse which stirred the missionary world from center to cir- cumference.
Still later he made annual or semi- annual tours to Great Britain, visiting the London congregation and many others of which he was Pastor, and de- livering various public addresses at Royal Albert Hall, London's largest auditorium ; St. Andrew's Hall in Glas- gow, and in many other cities, includ- ing Edinburgh and Liverpool. His ad- dresses elicited many favorable com- ments from the British press. Wherever he spoke it was usually in the largest auditoriums and to record audiences. These tours in Great Britain ended only when the present great war ren- dered further visits impracticable. He made many preaching tours from the Atlantic to the Pacific and throughout Canada. It was while on a lecture tour from coast to coast that Pastor Rus- sell's wonderful life came suddenly to a close, while traveling on an express train near Canadian, Texas, on the 31st day of last October. He literally died in the harness, continuing to the end through increasing pain and weariness to prosecute the great work to which he had been called by the Lord. He died as heroically as he had lived, his faith in God holding firmly unto the end.
During the 42 years of Pastor Rus- sell's Christian work he never directly or indirectly solicited money. No col- lection was ever taken up at any meet- ing addressed by him or any of his as- sociates for himself or for his work. He had faith that the Lord would sup- ply sufficient money to carry on the work; that the work was the Lord's and not man's. The fact that volun- tary contributions were liberally made
by many persons throughout the world proved that his conclusions were cor- rect.
He devoted his private means en- tirely to the cause to which he gave his life. He received the nominal sum of $11.00 per month for his personal expenses. He died leaving no estate whatsoever. Like all great leaders of thought, especially pertaining to the Scriptures, he was, as was his Master, misunderstood by some, and therefore misrepresented.
At his death his remains were shipped to New York, where they lay in state in the Temple in New York City, the property of the Society and the place where his lectures were given when at home. There thousands looked upon him for the last time, as his body lay embowered in magnificent floral of- ferings sent in by loving hearts from all over the country. The entire Tem- ple was decorated with a rich profu- sion of the most beautiful flowers. His funeral was attended by a great audi- ence gathered to pay their last tribute of love and esteem to the great and good man whom they so loved and re- vered. It was a most notable occasion. The speakers gave glowing tribute to his life and work.
The body was then taken to North Pittsburgh, the scene of his earlier life and labors, where a second notable funeral service was held in Carnegie Hall, where interment took place in the Bethel plot in tht United Cemeter- ies, the casket being encased in a sun- ken vault. The path to the grave was lined with flowers.
Thus closed the career of a most re- markable man, who was beloved by perhaps more people than any other man during the Age. He was loved most by those who knew him best.
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SWK^Sv |
Troubles of an Aerial Scout
By William Palmer
THE granting of "wings" is the often contain sympathetic allusions to
beginning, not the end, of the some "fellow aloft" who is just div-
troubles of an aerial scout. The ing through a rain cloud,
drudgery of routine in work- So far as a local air disturbance is
shops, the hard gruelling of work in concerned, the pilot can usually pass
aerodromes are nothing to the troubles right or left or outclimb it. The con-
of active service. Despite the closest tiasts in different layers of the air
standardization the aeroplane remains are a revelation to the new intruder,
a petted and whimsical invention, and and here he learns how to nurse his
elects to go wrong just when its great engines and planes. At high levels
effort is needed. The engine may miss petrol has less propelling power, oil
fire badly, the steering, elevating, de- is apt to become gummy, and the
pressing planes may fail to act — it lighter air makes curious steering and
may be a bad day in every way for plane tactics. Side-slip has to be pre-
the military aviator. Or the gust of vented by turning the wing planes to
temper may pass and the machine ex- an angle which five thousand feet
eel itself in speed and ease of evolu- lower would ensure their breaking and
tion. hampering the aeroplane until the
The first trouble of the aerial scout flight was over,
is his route to the Continent. Despite No man knows the troubles of an
good compasses it is possible to drift aero-engine. There are occasions
far from the line desired, and the when the best-balanced Gnome will
pilot may arrive over the enemy's lines balk or jerk. But different engine
while endeavoring to locate his own practice their villainies under different
headquarters. On a day of low visi- conditions, and so far their secret
bility, when the earth is not visible rules have not been discovered. A
except one is within a thousand feet, skillful pilot on a modern machine
it is possible to make a landing in a can sail a good many miles without
well marked aerodrome belonging to aid from his engine ; he carefully util-
the Germans. This happened also to izes the lift of every passing breeze,
a Fokker which, flying westward, over swings deftly round corners where his
shot its mark in the gloom and became experienced eye foresees a depressing
an easy captive. A perfect instrument current, and finally skims the earth to
for measuring aerial travel would a place safe for landing. Only a few
make a vast difference here. years ago the badly balanced, over-
On such a journey the pilot may fly engined aeroplane could only reach
into a local "disturbance" or storm, ground in safety while its engine was
and he never forgets this first experi- on good behavior,
ence of the air in fighting mood. Hith- The pilot is expected to do minor
erto he has contended with fairly de- adjustments to his engine while still
cent weather, and a storm on the way in mid-air, but nothing extensive can
across is but a breaking in to war be attempted without danger of the
conditions. Provided his machine can whole thing capsizing and coming
start off uninjured, he is expected to down a wreck,
get to work. Letters from the Front Most pilots look upon steering on a
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
normal day as a minor trouble indeed, but the swift and certain passage over broken country on a wild day marks the man of the front rank. Such a one has an instinctive knack of meeting the crossest of cross currents, of hu- moring the straining planes during gusts, of easing the engine as it passes into the quiet zones between the stresses.
All these things will be common to the civilian pilot of the future, except that they are performed under battle conditions, where the pilot rises from awkward fields, is compelled to dive across the storm by an unsuitable route because some action of military im- portance is expected on that line, and must drop to some place decided by the tactical need of the headquarters to which he is attached.
Battle troubles are legion — the pilot has accepted service for the purpose of tackling and conquering them. There are troubles with the machine- gun which usually performs its jerk- ing solo while the steering planes and engines are struggling with the cap- sizing waft from the retreating en- emy's propeller. The propeller can- not "bite" truly in such broken air, and sometimes "races" — to the no lit- tle damage of the delicately finished engine.
The new pilot is at first put on to reconnoitering work in a squadron es- corted by battle-planes, which are, ap- parently, all propeller and guns. Then he proceeds to bombing, still under escort, to be promoted at last to an in- dependent command of a machine fitted for both fighting and swift flights. In this latter he comes at close quarters with an aerial enemy. His is the Tiger of the skies, the bat- tle cruiser of the air. His great speed and fighting powers are employed in the most daring reconnaissances over the enemy's lines and the aerodromes from which the Fokkers climb steeply in order to win the gage of battle. Compared with the most recent Allied machines, the German champion is outclassed, and a long list of losses is being chalked up in the secret archives
of Berlin, where the casualties to these, to U-submarines, Zeppelins and other much vaunted pests are counted.
A bomb raid is full of trouble for the aerial scout, whether his machine be of the escort or carrying a heavy load of explosives. Wherever the enemy's trenches are crossed high- angle fire is expected, although its suc- cess against a small mark whirling two miles up is decidedly problematical. Still, a tiny splinter lodging in a vul- nerable part of the engine will cause its stoppage, and unless the British lines are at hand, its capture. The pilot usually aims at dropping away from the enemy's towns and patrols in the hope that a repair may be possible, or alternatively that he may set fire to his petrol tank and make a beacon of engine and planes.
Dark, misty nights are selected for bombing raids, and the pilot's troubles in keeping clear of disturbed air and yet holding his place in the ranks are great. The squadron advances on a wide front, heralded and guided by the swift battle planes. When the ob- jective, whether it be fortification, armed camp, or munitions depot, is reached, each pilot drops down to his proper place in the plan, and the sys- tematic dropping of bombs is begun. With anything like steady work the havoc caused by twenty aeroplanes is immense. Individual bombs are by no means so large as those dropped from Zeppelins, but the damage is all the greater. A 250-lb. bomb dropped in a square or field dissipates its en- ergy mainly on the empty air: ten aeroplane bombs to the same weight cause enormous wreckage because the smaller machine can travel so near the earth that wild firing of bombs is prac- tically impossible.
So near do some pilots venture that the ubiquitous machine gun gets in a ringing volley against the aluminum- steel armor which shields the engine from below. Luckily, a few punc- tures in the planes do not matter, al- though the crumpling of a stay by a shrapnel ball may be fatal to machine and pilot.
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Daring pilots believe that shrapnel can be dodged even in so unstable a medium as air, but that is when the position and fighting characteristics of the battery are known. Even the scarlet blaze of cordite is nearly in- visible against the dun or sunlit ex- panse visible at an altitude of from five to seven thousand feet.
In reconnoitering for enemy move- ments the pilot finds most trouble. Any tuft of bushes may conceal a howitzer in its deep emplacement; any avenue or wood hide a regiment on the move. The enemy is an adept at loosing big soft smoke clouds for calm days when important changes are afoot. The vibration and speed of the aeroplane make it far from an ideal mount for work of this descrip- tion, but it has to serve. Frequently the upcast of air caused by the dis- charge of a heavy gun is the first sign that such is within reach, and then, de- spite casual rifle and machine-gun fire, it is the pilot's duty to circle round and about until his observer can determine the exact location, and note it for prompt attention from our long- distance guns.
In the early months of war crossing the trenches was always funny. The pilot could plainly see the marksmen below sighting their rifles at him, and the hum of passing bullets might re- semble a cluster of bees in honey sea- son. The dropping of a few bombs
and later the mounting of the machine gun, was a reprisal which added cas- ualties besides marking the lively sec- tion of trench for immediate bombard- ment by quick-firers. Now only the anti-aircraft guns grumble for the trenches: the Boche scatters to cover the moment a crossing aeroplane is signaled.
Not content with trouble in the air, the pilot finds a good deal when trying to come to earth. The aerodromes are not always selected for [their good qualities: they are merely the best choice among a number of evil ones. If near the firing line they are sure to be badly marked by day or by night, and even miles to the rear there re- mains reason for concealment against the prying eyes of enemy pilots and observers who have reached ten thou- sand feet or more above sea-level, and whose range of vision nearly includes Paris and the North Sea.
Yet, despite all these troubles — and the additional discomforts of a me- chanical camp — the British pilot re- mains content with his lot. There are many things to put up with, but to him is given the most adequate strik- ing weapon against the enemy. He risks more and sees more than any one , else in the army; he has his successes and his failures, but on the whole dominates the air, so that the enemy's knowledge of happenings behind our lines is, to say the least, inadequate.
Problems of Mental and Spiritual Healing
THE Earl of Sandwich, in the lit- tle book written shortly before his recent death, describes a number of cases "cured" by his personal ministrations. He does not always give details that make plain, even to a physician, from what the patients were suffering; but manifestly all of them were in discomfort, and a few had definite physical conditions as the basis of their ills. The one thing emphasized is that all of these patients were cured, or at least greatly relieved of their ills, through the personal pres- ence of the Earl, or by some manipula- tion or suggestion originating with him. We are told that some cases failed to be benefited, but that these were few in number. There is even some doubt whether certain patients were not cured without recognizing the source of their healing. Many, indeed, had the habit of referring the improvement to some other agency.
For the Earl does not hesitate to suggest that he has been especially en- dowed with a "gift" for the healing of disease; and for this he expresses the most profound gratitude to Almighty God. The failure of recognition of his beneficent power, and the opposition which it has aroused, he sets down as a manifestation of the inherent con- tradiction in nature between good and evil, and rather as a confirmation of his mission and gift than as in any way a proper criticism of it. "Old friends so dislike the idea that they began by shunning all allusion to the subject and now avoid my society." Such sceptics are, however, to be classed among those who fail to believe properly in the Scriptures, and, above all, who do not recognize the Mission of Healing that is in Christianity. He thinks that there may be many who possess the "gift of healing" without knowing it, and, therefore, by inference at least, would suggest that those who feel any
stirrings of it, in spite of the scorn and contumely which are to be accepted as part of the cross borne by those who do God's work, should persevere in the exercise of their heavenly power. And this is what he himself did, till his death last June, in spite of the scep- ticism of a materialistic generation. The testimony for the "cures" thus ef- fected, as provided by those who ac- tually experienced them, is rather mea- gre; but doubtless appeals to many as demonstrating that there must have been some wonderful therapeutic agency at work to bring about such benefits to sufferers. In order to be able to discuss such cures with any real understanding of their significance one needs to know something about the history of cures in general. A writer on the history of medicine has de- clared that the most important chapter ii! the history of medicine is that which concerns "the cures that have failed;" that is, the many remedies, chemical and physical, and the many modes of treatment, which have apparently worked wonders for a time in the cur- ing of disease of one kind or another, and sometimes of many different kinds, and then, after an interval, longer or shorter, have been given up entirely because they were proved to have no such curative efficacy as was at first confidently claimed for them. The cures that come and go in medi- cine are indeed legion. This is true, not only so far as popular medicine is concerned, but also in what is indeed considered to be scientific medicine. In twenty-five years of practice a phy- sician has always had many disap- pointments in this regard, and he comes to appreciate very thoroughly what Hippocrates meant when he said that "art is long, and time is short, and judgment difficult." To which he might well have added that evidence is often either lacking or misleading.
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At all times there have been all sorts of offered and reported remedies and modes of treatment which have cured diseases, though we still eagerly look for real remedies for most of them.
Any one who thinks that the credu- lousness which accepted such cures on insufficient grounds in old times has disappeared with the progress of edu- cation or the diffusion of information cannot be aware of conditions as they actually are. The United States gov- ernment recently announced that while the population has not quite doubled in the past thirty years, it now takes more than nine times as much patent medicine to satisfy the cravings for drugs and the desire to be cured of something or other men either have the matter with them, or think they have.
All that we can discuss here is the career of men who have effected cures by their personal influence or contact in conjunction with some supposed remedial measure afterwards proved to have no physical effect. Often the testimony not only of the cured person but also of relatives and friends, brought people from far and near to these healers, and many were actually rewarded by having the burden of their ills lifted from them. In not a few instances, the patients came to the healer after having consulted physi- cians by whom they remained uncured. I venture to say that it is perfectly possible to find half a dozen such healers in every century for the past three or four centuries; and two or three of them in each century occupy a considerable niche in history. We need not go back to the Middle Ages in or- der to find them. One of the most in- teresting was, of course, the famous Greatrakes — his name has many vari- ants— who lived in the latter part of the Seventeenth Century. He was an Irish soldier who found himself, at the conclusion of a war, without an occu- pation. Something or other — he him- self declared it was a Divine call — led him to set up as healer. After the death of King Charles I, when there
was a lapse of the Royal Touch for the King's Evil, Greatrakes announced that he had been divinely commis- sioned in a dream, thrice repeated on successive nights, to go and touch the people and cure them. Because this touching was usually accomplished by gently stroking the affected portion of the patient, he came to be known as Greatrakes the Stroker. Many were the cures effected by him, including chronic long standing cases which had vainly made the rounds of physicians. Greatrakes made a large amount of money out of his practice ; and where- as, in the days of the King's Touch, the King's patients were presented with a gold piece, in Greatrakes' prac- tice the gold passed in the opposite direction. For it must not be thought that Greatrakes cured only the igno- rant and the supposedly more supersti- tious classes. Many of the nobility and even educated persons came under his influence, and reported themselves either greatly benefited or completely relieved.
A little more than a century later we find a similar healer in America, though his ambition led him to go to Europe in order that the European countries might benefit by his powers. This was Elisha Perkins of Norwich, Connecticut, who invented what he called tractors — two pieces of metal about the length and thickness of lead pencils, but tapering gradually to a blunt point, with which he used to stroke people. He called his system tractoration. His tractors were sup- posed in some way to make the thera- peutic virtues of electricity available for the cures of human ills. About a generation earlier, Galvani had dis- covered that if two pieces of metal in contact touched the exposed nerve and muscle of a frog's leg, twitchings re- sulted. There had been much discus- sion of the significance of this phenom- enon; and one theory was that elec- tricity in seme way was an equivalent of, or very closely related to, nerve force, or perhaps even to vital force itself. Perkins claimed to make Gal- vani's discovery available for the cure
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of human diseases by supplying through electrical energy for the vital force lacking in the diseased part. It was not long before he made a series of cures of chronic ills that had long resisted other efforts. An investiga- tion was made by physicians, who de- clared that there was no energy, elec- trical or other, in Perkins' tractors ; and he took advantage of this declaration to announce that physicians were jeal- ous of his success, and feared he would take all their patients away. Having made a great success in his little Amer- ican town, Perkins sighed for more worlds to conquer, and so he set out for Europe. The country selected as the next scene of his labors was Den- mark. It has always been a mystery why Dr. Cook (of Arctic exploration fame) and Dr. Perkins both went to Copenhagen to obtain the first con- firmation of their discoveries. They both did, however, and the event proved their perspicacity.
After success in Copenhagen, Per- kins proceeded to London, where he was equally lucky. His first feat there was the cure of a Duke and a Duchess. So many patients followed that it be- came impossible for Perkins to ac- commodate them all. He sold his tractors for others to use at $100 a pair, a considerable sum of money in those days, the tractors costing at most but a few pence to make. Moreover he established in London a sort of rival o* the Royal Institution and a com- petitor of the orthodox medical and surgical societies. Then came the re- turn to America in order to exploit the European reputation. When he landed in New York an epidemic of small- pox was raging in Philadelphia, at that time the largest city in the United States ; and Perkins, confident that his tractors would prevent disease as well as cure it, went over to that city. I feel quite sure that he thoroughly be- lieved in his own tractors, and was convinced he had lighted on a won- derful natural force which did actu- ally supply lacking energy to human beings. And it is when healers be- lieve in themselves that they produce
the most wonderful results. Poor Per- kins, however, after making a sensa- tion in Philadelphia, caught smallpox himself and died of it. That was the end; and now the tractors are seen among curiosities in few museums.
Greatrakes and Perkins both pro- duced their effects by influencing their patients' minds. Perkins himself, and those whom he healed, doubtless thought that electricity or magnetism was an intermediary, and the direct therapeutic agent ; whereas subsequent investigation showed there was abso- lutely no electrical energy of any kind exhibited by the tractors. Greatrakes effected his cures simply because peo- ple came to believe his declaration that he had a Divine commission to heal them; and perhaps he believed that himself. If he did, then no won- der there were so many cures. All that is necessary in the history of mankind to have cures is that certain patients shall be made to believe that here at last is some force that will make them better. Then at once a great many of them get better of diseases often baf- fling the physicians.
Between these two, Greatrakes and Perkins, a century or so apart, there had come a number of other healers, who had cured a great many people of a great many ills by methods subse- quently proved not to have any physi- cal effect. The two best known are Pfarrer Gassner and Mesmer. The ca- reer of Pfarrer Gassner, of Elwangen, began after he observed certain cures that were being effected by the well known Jesuit astronomer and mathe- matician, Father Maximilian Holl, in Vienna. Father Holl, whose memory has been ably vindicated by Simon Newcomb from certain aspersions cast on his scientific accuracy and sincer- ity, found in the course of some ex- periments, that apparently the appli- cation of magnets relieved people of ills. After a time he made the mag- nets in the shape of the organs that were affected, and worked some won- derful cures. It was supposed that these magnets affected the magnetic condition, and hence the vitality, of the
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body. Above all, in this as in all other experiences of the kind, suffer- ers were cured of chronic pains and aches and of long-standing muscular disabilities. After seeing Father Holl's results, Father Gassner tried the same means with similar success, but soon discovered that he could ef- fect the same cures more simply. He asked patients to make a good confes- sion and to put all the evil of life far away from them, and, in return, he promised them a cure. A great many cures of what seemed physical ills fol- lowed. Father Gassner then evolved the theory, strangely like the basic principle of present-day Christian Science, that all evil, physical as well as moral, was not from God, but from the Powers of Evil. When, therefore, persons put off once and for all the moral evil in them, and were purged from sin completely, their physical evil dropped from them because the Power of Evil had no part in them. Only good came from Goo. Sickness and suffering, if not directly from the devil, were at least connected in some way both with original sin and the ac- tual sins of the individuals. Purgation from sin then meant the cure of all sickness. The Christian Scientists deny that there is any such thing as evil. That, they say, is only an error of Mortal Mind, with at least hints that there are extraneous powers of evil in some way associated with it. As pointed out by Professor Munster- berg, Christian Science is scarcely more than a revival of the theories of this old German mystic.
Needless to say, the attention of ec- clesiastical authority was soon attract- ed to his teaching, and it was not coun- tenanced. Father Gassner was for- bidden to continue his work on any such false basis. He seems to have submitted to the Church authorities, though a great many people regarded the cures as representing the blessing of Heaven on his activities. Both the sets of manifestations, those of Father Holl in Vienna and Pfarrer Gassner in Erlangen, remain as examples of the influence of the mind on the body in
the curing of even chronic ills.
The next famous healer, Mesmer, was a very different sort of man, al- though he too received his inspiration from the therapeutic work of Father Holl in Vienna. Mesmer graduated at the University of Vienna in the Medi- cal Department shortly after the mid- dle of the Eighteenth Century. He saw Father Holl's cures; and, resolv- ing to emulate them, settled down in Paris as a suitable place for the ex- ercise of his art. Owing to the fact that the word Mesmerism came after- wards to be used for what we call hypnotism, there has been some con- fusion as to what Mesmer did for his patients and how he effected his cures. Apparently Mesmer never put his pa- tients into the hypnotic sleep. That practice came in a little later with one of his disciples, De Puysegur. What Mesmer tried to use was just such an electrical or magnetic power as Father Holl was applying in Vienna, or Elisha Perkins in Norwich, Copenhagen and London.
Mesmer's patients were seated around a tub containing, immersed in fluid, a series of bottles, filled with metallic fragments, out of which pro- ceeded wires, distributed to the pa- tients who sat around the room. This tub, with its bottles, was called a baquet or battery. Mesmer, after the patient had sat for some time, sub- jected to the influence of this battery — which electrically was nil — came into the room dressed in the garb of an Eastern seer; and, while soft mu- sic was played, and Eastern perfumes diffused, touched with his wand the members of the circle intent on their cure. Thereupon, the various hysteri- cal manifestations took place, cries, tremors, convulsions and the like, in the midst of which their pains and aches dropped from the sufferers like magic, and muscular disabilities dis- appeared as if by miracle. As Mes- mer claimed to be exercising electri- cal effects, and his work was produc- ing a great sensation in Paris, an in- vestigation of his apparatus and meth- ods was made by a committee appoint-
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ed by the French Academy of Sci- ences. At the moment, Benjamin Franklin was in Paris as the Ambas- sador from the American Colonies, and he served on this committee of inves- tigation. They pronounced Mesmer's apparatus to be totally devoid of elec- trical effects; and, as a consequence, he was forbidden to practice with it further. There is no doubt now that whatever effect was produced by Mes- mer was mental, not physical. His place in the history of science is due to the fact that he attracted attention to what came to be called animal mag- netism, because there was supposed to be some mysterious force which flowed into patients, supplied the vitality in which they were lacking, and thus brought about their healing. Animal magnetism had its beginning probably with Father Holl's experiments in Vienna; but, after Mesmer's time, the use of apparatus was eliminated, and it was supposed that one person could influence another, and that certain peo- ple had a larger store than others of personal magnetism or magnetic vital- ity to dispense. They could transfer it when they willed to do so to others in a properly receptive condition.
Of healers, we have had in our own time some very typical examples. Probably the best known was Alexan- der Dowie, an uneducated but strong- minded man of exaggerated egoism, who claimed to be Elijah returned to earth. Dowie himself boasted that by the touch of his hand he had cured 200,000 people. Remember that this was not in the Eighteenth or the Sev- enteenth Century, and not at all in the Middle Ages, but at the end of the Nineteenth and the beginning of the Twentieth Century; and the people cured were readers of newspapers — several editions every day — users of telephone and telegraph, of trolley cars and express trains. Many thou- sands of them were evidently not fools from a practical standpoint; for they were possessed of considerable sums of money which they were quite will- ing to transfer to their benefactor. In- deed, many of them went to live with
him in a city which he founded not far from Chicago — Chicago above all places — called Zion. People came from all over the country to be touched by him, and as the phrase "to touch a man" has come to mean, in American slang, to get money from him — Dowie touched them very effectively. Even Eddyism (for it is neither Christian nor scientific, so why talk of Christian Science?) has no place for poverty among the ills of mankind. That, too, is an error of mortal mind, so cures are rather for those who are able to pay the healers' fees.
What is amazing about these cures for a great many people is the fact that almost without exception they relieve pain. Now pain is ordinarily consid- ered to be such a strictly physical manifestation, such a state of actual disturbance of tissues, that only some- thing physical and having a strong bodily influence is supposed to be able to cure it. As a matter of fact nothing is so illusory in medical practice as pain. It is perfectly possible to hear a thoroughly well meaning patient complain of suffering torture who is really laboring only under some slight discomfort that other people bear with- out a murmur, or at least with only a very slight disturbance of their peace of mind. If a patient is so situated as to have nothing to do but think of a discomfort that is present, as, for in- stance, when one is bedridden from some chronic disability or ailment, from cancer or the like, then he or she, and above all she, has but little diver- sion from constantly disturbing thoughts, so that even a slight pain may become unbearable. Two things happen when even . a very moderate discomfort is dwelt on. First, the men- tal attention to the affected part sends more blood to it and make it more sen- sitive. This is a protective provision of nature, so that whenever special attention is called to a part of the bodv, that region, by dilation of the capillaries through the vasomotor nerves, becomes ready to react without delay to any irritation. The phenom- ena of blushing show how readily these
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nerves are affected. Secondly, with the concentration of attention, more and more of the cells of the sensory portions of the brain become occupied with this uncomfortable sensation. Un- der ordinary circumstances a bodily sensation over a small area would dis- turb a few thousands of cells. When concentration of attention occurs, mil- lions of cells may become occupied with this unpleasant feeling; and then it is easy to understand that it may rise to the plane of a veritable tor- ment. Anything that causes diversion of mind will bring relief. This is the secret of our cancer cures. A new one is introduced every year or less, with the declaration that at least if it does not cure the cancer, it relieves the pa- tient's pain. This is a great, if tem- porary blessing; and wide recourse is had to the new remedy, practically al- ways with success at first. Cancer is supposed to be a very painful condi- tion, and it actually has much pain associated with it, and yet in the past twenty years, to my own knowledge, the pains of it have been relieved by literally dozens of remedies which sub- sequently have been found ineffectual, and often prove to have almost no phy- sical effect. Cancer patients readily become self-centered ; and, if they once come to realize the hopelessness of their condition, sink into an acutely sensitive state. Any remedy employed for them which arouses new hope at once, therefore, relieves their pain by affording them something to think about besides the fatal termination to which they are tending, and over which they are constantly brooding.
Occupation of attention will neu- tralize even very severe pains. The extent to which it may go is indeed surprising. I once saw a woman who had been in a theatre fire panic in which over a hundred people lost their lives; and when she got out she re- joiced over the fact that she was un- injured, though one of her ears had actually been pulled off in the scuffle for exit. In the excitement of the pres- ent war, as in every other war, men receive even very severe wounds with-
out knowing it. Mr. Roosevelt, one remembers, was shot by a crank at a railroad station some years ago, and the bullet penetrated four inches of muscle and flattened itself on a rib, having been fired at point-blank range; and yet he know nothing of being hit until the blood came oozing through his coat, more than five minutes later. Thus the severity of pain depends mainly on the mental state. The cure of even severe pain through mental in- fluence is not only possible, but even easy, and rather frequent. Words mean a great deal in the matter. Tho- mas, in the trenches, is a true philoso- pher when he calls the enemy's hot- test fire merely "unhealthy." The boy who is going through football training does not complain of pains and aches ; all he calls them is soreness and stiff- ness, and that makes all the difference in the world. Soreness and stiffness must be worked off, pains and aches must be cured. Simple as is the psy- chology and the medical significance of this explanation, it constitutes the most important basis of thought for the understanding of many supposed mysteries of the influence of the mind on the body.
With this understanding of healers, it is easy to follow Lord Sandwich's book of cures. Many of the cases of his healing powers are just exactly the sort that were cured by Greatrakes in the Seventeenth Century ; by Father Holl, with his magnets in Vienna, in the Eighteenth Century; by Father Gassner, with his theory of sin and physical evil being concomitants, a little later; by Mesmer with his bat- tery, and Perkins with his tractors, at the beginning of the Nineteenth Cen- tury; and by Dowie, through faith in his declaration that he was Elijah re- turned to earth, or by confidence in poor insane Schlatter, who proclaimed himself a new Christ, in the Twentieth Century. It was not that these men had any special power to heal; but it is certain that people will not release the energies able to bring about in themselves the cure of states of dis- comfort, dis-ease, and even crippling,
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until some strong outer impression is made on their minds. They actually inhibit their own curative powers by dreads and fears, and the consequent disuse of muscles, and the lack of air and of exercise, and as a consequence hamper circulation and lessen vital re- action, so that they stay ill in spite of nature's recuperative power. Just as soon as the brake that they have placed on their tendency to get better is removed by a strong mental impres- sion, they resume more or less normal habits, and it is not long before they are completely restored.
If we are to have evidence for spir- itual healing, in contradistinction to mental healing, which is to carry weight, then we must be referred to a different class of cases from those we have discussed. The cures must af- fect definitely physical conditions. It is true that in many of these cases we have been discussing there is an un- derlying physical element, but it is one of no great importance. But cures that are to have a validity as representing spiritual interposition must take place with regard to ills that have not been cured by the curious healers and by the many new-fangled remedies, which have subsequently failed. Evidence must be adduced of the enduring cure of pathological conditions of very de- finite organic basis, whose betterment can be demonstrated, not merely by the effect upon the patient's feelings, but by actual physical results that can be seen in the patient's tissues. Are there any such cures? Personally, I am convinced that there are, and not a few of them. Most people, and un- der that term I include even most physicians, brush aside such cures as those at Lourdes, and declare that they are merely of "nervous cases" or im- aginary affections, or of patients with slight ailments but exaggerated symp- toms, exactly corresponding to those that have been cured by the healers of secular history. Such doubters have no real knowledge of the cases that are the subject of the cures at Lourdes. The records show (see Jor- genson and Belloc) on the average one
hundred and fifty cures a year at Lourdes, and more than half of these are of tuberculous processes. Lupus, which is an external form of tubercu- losis, with chronic, often rather deep, ulcerative processes, is, after lasting for many years, cured in twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Leg ulcers, of years' standing — and physicians know well how obstinately intractable these are almost as a rule — are cured in a single day. Lupus, to recur to the most frequent of the striking cures at Lourdes, usually affects the face, and its serious destruction of tissue can be plainly seen. There is no room for illusion or delusion when cures take place rapidly and at times without scarring.
While I was at Lourdes, some fif- teen years ago, I saw one of these cases of lupus that had lasted for years healed in the course of twenty- four hours. I felt that this should be reported; and then found that similar cases had been, and were being re- ported each year. I have often re- ferred to it in writing on psychother- apy for the medical profession. Al- most needless to say, I know nothing physical, and nothing that could be called merely psychic, that would pro- duce such an effect. We physicians have sought cures for lupus most zeal- ously. Koch's tuberculin, Finsen's ul- tra-violet light, the X-rays, radium, all the new things in advancing science, have been each lauded in usccession as a cure for lupus ; and, while in some cases they have done good, in most cases they have failed. Even these marvelous discoveries of physical sci- ence, which represent wonderful ad- vances in our knowledge of the exhi- bition of physical energy, have not worked cures except after long and repeated applications. Yet, as I have said, rapid lupus cures are frequent at Lourdes.
No one knows better than I that tuberculosis is eminently amenable to suggestion. For tuberculosis of the lungs we have a new cure at least once in six months, because anything, liter- ally anything that is given to con-
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sumptive patients and produces in them the reeling that now they ought to get better, will bring about at least temporary improvement. The most significant expression of modern medi- cine with regard to tubercular disease is, "tuberculosis takes only the quit- ters," that is, it takes those who give up and have not the courage to face their condition and to eat and live out in the air. Mental influence has much to do with it then; and owing to the toxic influences to which patients are subjected by the absorption of certain materials from their lesions which give rise to their characteristic spes phthi- sica, noted long ago by Hippocrates, they are in a state highly susceptible to suggestion.
Mr. Rhodes, in Mind Cures, cites the description of some instances of the quick cure of lupus at Lourdes from the British Medical Journal : "The sud- den healing of a face destroyed by lupus — in one case with, in another without, scarring; facts vouchsafed for by Boissarie and Huysmans, who saw the patients — is altogether outside ordinary experience." Mr. Rhodes has a further paragraph in which he quotes Sir Henry Butlin, a President of the Royal College of Surgeons, and a man who has devoted special atten- tion to this whole subject of the influ- ence of the mind on the body. One, at least, of his papers on spiritual heal- ing was published by the British Med- ical Journal. Mr. Rhodes' quotations from him show that he dismissed the idea that such cures might be due merely to strong suggestion. In an- swer to the objection, "It may be said that the cures at Lourdes, are the re- sult of 'suggestion' more potent than that aroused by medical treatment"; he said that, "even if it was possible to explain all the steps through which the emotion had produced the cure, the recoveries were sometimes so mar- velous that how can we be surprised if the people fall on their knees before God and bless His Holy Name for the miracle which He has wrought?"
Strange as it may seem, crippling and inability to use certain muscles
are very frequently due to subjective conditions and not to objective changes in the muscular apparatus. For some reason muscles have been put at rest, have atrophied somewhat — they always do when not normally used — and now the patient must push through a period of uncomfortable use of muscles in order to get back for them their function. Some people will not do this except under the influence of a strong mental impression. They will never be cured, then, by any but mental means ; and so we have a num- ber of sciaticas, lumbagos and the like that are waiting for a particular kind of healer. On the other hand, there are certain cases with objective symp- toms readily recognizable, real patho- logical conditions in tissues, which are cured by spiritual influence. We do not know, so far as medical knowledge goes, what the mechanism of the cure is ; we simply know that it takes place contrary, both in manner and form, to all our experience, and that the fair- minded observer has to confess that there is some power at work he cannot understand. Any one who knows, and does not merely theorize, about the cures at Lourdes will find them of that type. They are not like the cures of Christian Science, nor those of other fads, nor those of healers. They rep- resent real miracles in our day.
The work of Father Raymond on The Spiritual Director and Physician, with its secondary title of The Spirit- ual Treatment of Sufferers from Nerves and Scruples, emphasizes the distinction between mental and spirit- ual healing, and brings out what can be accomplished by mental persuasion and suggestion for the cure of various ills and, on the other hand, for what ills recourse must be had to prayer and the Divine Assistance. It might pos- sibly be expected that the Chaplain to the famous Kneipp Institute at Woe- rishofen, in Bavaria, would appeal very largely to such physical means as exercise, diet, bathing and the other natural modes of cure, in the organi- zation of which the late Father Kneipp obtained his world-wide reputation.
314 OVERLAND MONTHLY
Father Raymond, however, makes it God, and spiritual means generally, in very clear how much can be accom- the treatment of the pure neuroses, the plished by correcting false notions, psychoneuroses, the psychasthenias, neutralizing unfortunate suggestions, and other functional pathological con- implanting proper persuasions, though ditions which have proved so difficult at the same time he dwells on the value a subject for the physician in recent of prayer, submission to the will of years.
THE DRU/A /AAJOR
O Warlord of a crazy world,
Thou art the King, the Czar! Nor Prince nor Kaiser ever hurled
The peoples into war. Thou art the King, 'though abject slave,
Who blinds the seeing eyes, — Who drowns the small, unyielding voice
That calls from Paradise.
Crash! go the cymbals, the trombones shining bright
again. See the baton twirling, hear the deep-mouthed brasses
call "Out, for King and Country! Oh, show your father's
might again. Glory, honor 'waits you, then rally, rally all!" The recruiting march is starting; make way, you crowds,
give room! The hollow drum is sounding its "Doom! Doom Doom!"
The pain and grime of No Man's Land,
(Ah, hard picked men die hard!) The lonely groans of No Man's Land,
They are your war's reward. Lest shooting, helpless men should think
Beyond the rifle fire, There, by the death pond's awful brink,
Revive the old desire !
Aloft the leaping bugle calls the age-old mem'ries wake, The flashing glory of the sword, the honor of the charge! The rhythmed wonder of your sway, 'though earth and
heaven shake, Will weld the thinning legions for the rattling Maxim's
targe. Forgotten are the broken men, the silent thinker's gloom ; The war drums roll in thunder tones their "Doom!
Doom ! Doom !"
Llewellyn B. Peck.
GUNS OF GALT
An Epic of the Family
By DENISON CLIFT
(SYNOPSIS — Jan Rantzau, a handsome young giant among the ship- builders of Gait, joins pretty little Jagiello Nur at a dance in the Pavilion. There the military police seek Felix Skarga, a revolutionist. Jagiello fears that a lover, Captain Pasek, of the Fusiliers, will betray her presence at the dance to old Ujedski, the Jewess, with whom Jagiello lives in terror. Jan rescues Jagiello. Later when Pasek betrays Jagiello to Ujedski, and seeks to remain at the hovel with her, she wounds him in a desperate en- counter. Ujedski turns her out, and she marries Jan. Later Pasek indi- cates that he will take a terrible revenge upon the bridal pair. A son is born to Jan, and he idealizes his future even as he idealizes the growth of the world's greatest superdreadnaught, the Huascar, on the ways at Gait. After the birth of Stefan, Jagiello tries to tell Jan of her sin with Pasek, but her strength fails her at the supreme moment. Jan buys a new house for Stefan's sake. Ujedski visits Jagiello and threatens to reveal her sin to Jan. Jagiello goes away, and Jan, helpless, calls in Ujedski to care for Stefan.)
Chapter XVIII.
THE OLD wan-cheeked Jewess came readily enough. She knew that with Jagiello out of the way Jan could be made to pay her well for her care of Stefan.
And Jan did pay her well.
In the days that followed Ujedski busied herself with seeing that Stefan did not wander from the little garden to the near-by river.
Day after day came and vanished, and still there was no word of Jagiello.
Each evening Jan returned from the shipyard, hope burning in^ his eyes, and each evening hope died within him. Through sunrises and sunsets he searched for Jagiello; but no one had seen her, no one could tell him any- thing of her. Once at dusk when he crossed the Ule it slipped uncannily by, grey with rotting ice. His huge frame shivered.
Copyright, 1917, by Denison
After that the months passed quick- ly, and soon the years. But Jan never gave up hope. He felt that one day he would again see Jagiello.
Stefan was now four years old. He was running everywhere, and making things. He made ships of bits of wood, and in the evenings Jan put sails of white paper on sticks to serve as masts. After supper, Jan used to take the little fellow's hand and lead him down to the river — the wonderful river that Stefan had so often seen flowing by, some days all blue, other days sea-green, or gold, or crimson when the sun was setting. Stefan would place his little boats in the stream and they would bravely gather speed and go sailing off gallantly into the far twilight. When they disap- peared, he would ask: "What's down that big river, papa?"
"Fairyland, where mamma went to," Jan would answer. "A place all golden,
Clift. All Rights Reserved.
316 OVERLAND MONTHLY
where bells ring all day, and the river bars of black and scarlet drifted out
is always blue, and nobody ever wants of the birches ; and when Stefan ran
to come back that once goes there." shouting after them, they drifted as
"Won't mamma ever come back?" lazily back again. Iridescent flies
"Some day." hummed in the grasses; yellow jackets
"I want her to come back now." threatened from the red flowers of the
"She will — some day." Queen Ann's lace; and, like rifts of
And they would go home to make flame, scarlet tanagers flashed through
more sail boats together. the purple beeches.
It became a familiar sight in Gait All that wonderful Sunday Jan and of a Sunday to see the giant of the Stefan romped through blue campa- village swinging up the trails to the nulas and Michaelmas daisies. Mow- heights with a little blue-eyed lad ers were at work on the side of the astride his immense shoulders. Ste- hill, and the swish! swish! of their fan loved the "ride," and the fine free scythes clinked merrily, air, and the glorious blue sky, and the Once a gaily-colored tiger moth far sea. skipped out of the birches, and Jan One Sunday when the fields were and Stefan gave chase. The aerial white with clover, Jan swung Stefan skipper vanished in the beeches, and up on his shoulders and they went Jan and his lad rolled down the hill across the Jena Bridge and up along into the priest's yard, laughing hilar- the trails in the cool of the morning. iously.
That Sunday was memorable be- So the afternoon passed. When
cause it was to be their last on the again St. Catherine's began calling,
heights together. Jan took Stefan up on his back and
On this morning there was no smoke they went down through the dusk,
curling up from the chimneys. On The trail led past the fort, which
Sundays the toilers slept late, and it had been garrisoned with 28-centime-
was near noon before the brownish ter guns — guns that had been hauled
spirals began to ascend. up that night four years before when
Sunday always seemed like anqther Jan and Jagiello lingered upon the
world to Jan. Everything was so priest's balcony. The big black Trus-
quiet, so unreal. It did not seem nat- kas crouched like grim watch-dogs,
ural for the Huascar to lie so se- Stefan ran up to one and climbed into
renely in the shipyard far below. There its mouth to hide from Jan.
should have been thousands of hands A sentry in a white tunic ran out of
putting the breath of life into her, a quoin in the wall with fixed bayonet,
thousands of voices singing against He made a great ugly face at Stefan
her fiery sides, thousands of eyes and playfully proclaimed him a Rus-
blinded by the wonder of her. sian spy.
Above and beyond lay the forest of Stefan burst into laughter, and Jan
Laszlovar, a wilderness of browns and discovered his hiding place,
greens, trees straight and tall, motion- "Big papa, tell the sojer to shoot
less in the noonday heat. Out of the the cannon," begged Stefan,
forest came birds and butterflies, seek- "Some day," said the sentry, pat-
ing the dazzling sunlight. ting the little man's head, "I will fire
"Listen, papa !" the cannon for you."
Jan set Stefan down among the Years afterward he kept his word,
sweet-williams. From the distance Stefan was tired now; so he climbed
came the sound of bells. St. Cather- back upon his father's shoulder, and
ine's chimes were calling. The big child Jan went down into the shipyard. The
and the small child heard them to- floor was covered with bits of steel
gether, ringing musically from the gray and old rusty nails. Stefan made a
stone campanile. There was a solemn wild scramble for the nails. His fat
hush in the air. Great gypsy moths with little hands bulged with a score of
GUNS OF GALT.
317
them; and as Jan carried him home- ward sleep closed his eyes and a dozen slipped one by one from his chubby fingers.
Jan went into his house at the close of that Sunday, lit the candle, and af- ter giving the little fellow his kaszia, undressed him for bed. Stefan in- sisted upon safely putting away the rusty nails under his basket together with a piece of old hose, a broken clock, and a dried bird's nest. Then snuggling into Jan's arms he whis- pered: "Good-night, big papa." His tiny arms closed about Jan's neck. "God bress my dear pitty mamma," he breathed.
"Good-night, little son."
And crooning and whistling softly, Jan held Stefan tightly while he drifted away into slumber in his arms.
Chapter XIX.
The building of the Huascar, the mounting of guns in the forts at Gait, the earth trembling beneath the tread of a million troops — these playthings of an emperor must be paid for. The rich war vaults of Carlmania pay for the guns, but whose flesh and blood fill the war chest with gold?
The standing army had been in- creased to three million men. The taxes of that year had been raised to the cruel extreme of fifty per cent.
Fifty per cent!
Three days out of the week's six were spent in labor for the govern- ment! Three days of toil when every ruble earned must return to the war vaults! And no excuses — the govern- ment was inexorable.
The first Jan knew of the military tax was one evening, a month later, when he answered a pounding on his door. When he opened it he found himself face to face with Captain Pa- sek.
"Good evening, Jan Rantzau," greeted Pasek, affably.
"Good evening, Captain Pasek," returned Jan, puzzled.
"I came to see you about the mili- tary tax. I am the government collec- tor for the third district."
He took a paper from his pocket and scrutinized it carelessly. "Your tax for the year is three hundred and sixty rubles," he said.
Three hundred and sixty rubles! Jan looked stupefied. "There must be some mistake, Captain. I make but sixty rubles a month — seven hun- dred and twenty rubles a year. Three hundred and sixty rubles are one-half of all I earn. You see, there is some very great mistake."
Captain Pasek smiled.
"There is no mistake," he replied, and Jan noticed a hardness in his tone, an exultation, as if he gloried in thus setting forth Jan's duty to his coun- try. "The new tax takes fifty per cent of your income, and that, as you say, is three hundred and sixty rubles." He paused while he showed Jan the le- gal papers he had taken from his pocket. "Here are your tax papers. They will explain why the government has levied this tax. Your patriotism should urge you to co-operate with the government. All good citizens must make sacrifices for the good of the Motherland. Of course you will have to pay this tax monthly. I will call on the tenth of October — one month from to-day. Then you will have the rubles ready for the govern- ment. Good evening, Rantzau."
He placed the tax papers in Jan's hands and turned away. Jan called after him.
"Captain Pasek! Here! Here! What if I shouldn't have the thirty rubles ready when you come back?"
Pasek turned and smiled noncha- lantly.
"But you will have the thirty rubles ready. You are too patriotic to dis- appoint the government." His voice was ironical; in his grey eyes was a glint that savored of revenge. He re- membered Jagiello. His moment had come. "Of course, if you should disappoint the government — the gov- ernment has ways of punishing unpa- triotic citizens." He shrugged his shoulders, smiled again, mechanically and coldly, and moved away across the white court.
318 OVERLAND MONTHLY
Jan sat down on his doorstep and back the house!" This, then, made
'looked through the tax papers auto- the payment of fifty rubles impera-
matically. In blank spaces his name tive.
had been written in, his age, his wife's The last possibility was Ujedski.
name, the fact that he had one male The old crone had been hinting of late
child, that he worked in the govern- at a higher payment. She complained
ment shipyard, and that they paid him that Stefan was growing older, and
sixty rubles a month. The papers that he required more of her attention,
were filled with Latin expressions and If this was her mood, of what use
legal terms that Jan did not under- would it be to try to induce the Jewess
stand. There were long explanations to make any sacrifice? And Ujed-
in small type, which looked as though ski was indispensable. Stefan was
they were not meant to be read. In but four years old and required the
some vague way Jan felt that this im- constant, watchful care of a woman,
personal thing called the Government Surely his boy's interests lay nearest
was his enemy. The papers contained Jan's heart.
much information regarding him. An In an agony of despair he got up
agency that had gathered so many and paced up and down the garden,
curate facts about him surely must be What should he do? There seemed
powerful — powerful enough to crush no way that he could save himself and
him if he resisted. Stefan.
Thirty rubles a month ! He was al- Then a great idea came to him.
ready paying twenty rubles a month He could work with the night shift
to Madame Tenta toward his house, at the works.
Thirty and twenty — fifty rubles a After the toll of the day he could go
month for the house and the taxes back in the evening and work until
alone! And Ujedski demanded ten midnight.
rubles — his entire sixty rubles gone This would yield him twenty rubles
before he had purchased bread or more. Ah, he had solved the diffi-
bought a single article of clothing for culty!
Stefan or himself! As Jan cast these The next day Jan applied at the thoughts over in his mind a mysterious, Construction House for night work, horrifying fear crept over him — the and was taken on with the night shift, haunting fear of wild beasts be- He did this to save the house for fore a calamity. Clearly such a Stefan, condition was impossible. Some- body must be sacrificed. But not Ste- Chapter XX. fan! Jan put the papers away and began figuring who it should be. The night shift went on at seven
First of all there was the govern- o'clock, ment — inexorable. That meant thirty By the time it was dark the ship- rubles, and surely Pasek had made it yard was a seething maelstrom, a vault clear to him that the government of living flame.
would tolerate no delinquencies: that, Four thousand men toiled through
at least, was settled and beyond ar- the shift. Two thousand men labored
gument. up to midnight; two thousand contin-
Secondly, there was Madame Tenta. ued until dawn. The government ex-
When he and Jagiello had arranged for torted from them three days' wages
payments on the house, she had been each week; the night shift was their
at first pliant and agreeable ; later, way of cheating Death,
harsh and unyielding. Without asking Jan was one of the two thousand
her, he knew that she would turn a that went to work when the whistle
deaf ear to his plea for a reduction of summoned the army at seven o'clock.
his monthly payment. He could hear The men sweated in the blinding glare
her answer: "Twenty rubles, or I take of the furnaces. A thousand riveters
GUNS OF GALT.
319
drove white-hot bolts into place, lock- ing the sheets of armour. Ever after- wards their eyes saw green from the terrible whiteness. They were putting their life blood into the Huascar. The government demanded that of them — if they were to live. Young men and old, boys and youths — there was a place for all. When the greybeards passed away, the young men would take their places. When the young men in turn became greybeards, the youths would fill the niches they had left empty. It was their life — a cycle in which Youth supplanted Age, until at length what had been Youth gave way to what would in time become Age. In the cycle Jan's father had taken the place of his father; and with the march of years Jan had now taken the niche of the man who had given him life.
The Huascar was becoming a beau- tiful thing of steel.
At night, high up on a platform, Jan stood, adjusting with great angle irons blazing plates of armour that dropped like flaming comets into the derrick's grip — hissing thunderously. The whis- tles of countless engines shrieked in his ears; the sweat poured in streams from his face; his eyes burned as though pierced by jets of fire. Occa- sionally Jan saw the black figure of a builder shot from a towering bridge into the abyss beneath. No one no- ticed. It was part of the routine. Not an engine would slow down, not a man would stop work. The task of creating the Huascar went on — inexorable, un- relenting. At dawn the watchman on his round of inspection would come upon the still figure that had shot into the casting pit the night before. He would have him carried to the Con- struction House, read his name on the card that he, like every builder, car- ried sewed in his shirt, strike his name off the pay roll, and send his body up to that little house of Gait where he had lived. And that would be all.
The Toilers were paying tribute to the ambitions of the Emperor.
The sheets of armour plate were
rolled under the keel of the battle- ship. Great furnaces bellowed, stuffed to the mouth with huge bosses of red-hot metal. From where Jan stood on his platform he could see, every now and then, what resembled a man open the furnace doors with a long iron hook. There was a blinding flash as of the sun on snow, and the great mass of metal seethed and sput- tered in a blaze of sparks. If the mass were ready for rolling, the man raised his hand, and instantly a crane trav- eled along a track parallel with the smoke-stained walls. The next mo- ment a giant pair of pincers fastened to a chain reached into the furnace, gripped the quivering mass and dragged it forth like a great fish wrig- gling on a hook, hissing, crashing, blis- tering the skin with its tremendous heat. Without a second's loss a small battalion of men in steel caps and wire vizors, their legs encased in rough steel leggings, like jackboots of iron, began a weird dance about the blazing metal, thrusting it into the gigantic molds like so much wax. The blows of the steam hammer, swift and terri- ble, made the earth tremble, and the floor leap and shiver under the mighty strokes. In return for every blow, the living mass sent forth a shower of white metal. The mass started with " thickness of twenty inches, the sec- ond rolling crushed it to sixteen, the third to twelve, and the final strokes of the great hammers flattened it to ten. Now a second battalion of weird figures came up, each bearing a long- handled broom, each scrambling round the hissing mass, brushing off scales of oxide. By this time the huge plate was perfectly molded. Tubs of cold water were poured over it, and, still fighting and spitting violet flame, the crane carried it away, to be trimmed and lifted high to Jan, who would place it in position. All was seeming chaos to the eye; yet every movement of every man was made with the pre- cision of machinery.
At midnight when Jan left the works for home, he could look back and see the huge trumpet-shaped chimneys
320
OVERLAND MONTHLY
flaring to the sky, belching red flame, like gigantic flambeaux.
The few extra rubles that Jan earned in this way paid part of his living expenses — but not all. The de- mand upon him for rubles increased. He and Stefan must have proper food; he must feed his immense body if he was to exact this tremendous response from it. And Stefan must have clothes, warm, comfortable clothes, for winter had come and already chilling blasts were blowing down from the Lora Mountains.
In fear now lest he lose the house he had bought for Stefan, Jan sold all that he owned: his poor furniture, his blankets, and at last his bed. He slept en the floor, covered only with a rag- ged quilt borrowed from Ujedski. Lit- tle Stefan had outgrown his basket. He slept beside Jan, wrapped in the big man's coat.
Ujedski would wait at Jan's house caring for Stefan until he staggered home from the shipyard at midnight. Then she would bid Jan a hasty "good-night" and slink off through the trees to her hovel. For her late vigil she demanded more rubles — for could any one expect her, an old woman in dire want, to sacrifice herself for noth- ing ? ... It was only in this way that Ujedski was able to bleed Jan for enough rubles to save her hut from the ravages of the tax collectors.
With the coming of winter the brown fields became splashed with tan and crimson leaves, the river swirled mud- hued, the skies became overcast, the rain, cold and drenching, flooded the streets. And all the little white houses 01 Gait became drab and dirty.
The rain streamed into Jan's house, pouring through the chinks and open- ings in the thatch ; and the wind, whip- ping down from the snow-covered Loras, pierced him to the marrow. Jan had deliberately withheld five rubles from the tax money with which to buy Stefan a winter coat. To make up this loss he was now obliged to give up his Sundays and remain at the shipyard.
There were to be no more trips to
the river with Stefan, no more raptur- ous Sundays on the flowered heights.
It stabbed Jan to the heart when Stefan, in his innocence, begged: "Please, big papa, take me up the hill."
Jan appealed to Ujedski.
"Will you please take Stefan up the hill when the rain stops?" he asked her.
"Up the hill!" retorted the beldam. "I'm too busy sewing on his buttons to bother taking him up the hill!"
Jan was silent.
There were to be no more wonder- ful days for his boy. Instead, Ujed- ski began exacting a daily routine of menial tasks from him. She acquired some sheep, and she made Stefan drive them through the streets to crop the fresh tufts of grass. He cared for the geese in the narrow back yard. When he was old enough she sent him down the street after bags of lentils and jars of honey, as she had sent his mother before him. She threatened to claw him if he told Jan.
At night when the weary giant dragged himself home from the ship- yard he lay down beside Stefan, ig- norant of these hardships, and slept till sun-up.
Those were long winter nights of weariness and pleasure — weariness in forcing his great body beyond the point of endurance, and pleasure when he returned to the boy he loved, to feel his tiny body snuggle warm against his own, to hear the sweet, childish breathing, to feel the beating of the baby heart near to his own.
In those moments Jan knew the greatest pleasure that life held for him. Stefan was his own son, flesh of his flesh, heart of his heart. At midnight Jan would lift the little sleeping form upon his great chest and enfold it with his arms until he could hear the little heart beating close to his. He clung to his boy passionately, tremulously, and tears sprang to his eyes. He would take the tiny hand in his and hold it tightly through those early morning hours.
Outside, the rain would lash the
GUNS OF GALT.
321
house and icy winds steal through the chinks. In those hours before the dawn, when life is at its lowest ebb, Jan, sorely needing sleep, would lie awake, thinking of the little man's mother, and how passionately he loved her, and how she went away. He thought of the terrible struggle that faced him. Fear for the future of Ste- fan would clutch him by the heart. "They're making it tough for us, little man," he would breathe, "but we're going to keep right on having our fun." Then after awhile he would drift into slumber from sheer exhaus- tion. But at sun-up he was dressed and off to the shipyard for another day. With the morning would come new hope after the misery of the night.
To meet the growing exactions of Ujedski, and to buy Stefan more warm winter clothes, Jan held out more of the tax money. This was at an inop- portune time, for when he was short fifteen rubles, Captain Pasek present- ed himself one evening at Jan's door and demanded the full month's taxes.
Thirty rubles was the amount of the tax. It was the twelfth of January, and the payment was two days over- due. Jan had but fifteen rubles on hand. The remaining fifteen rubles he had drawn from the pewter cup two weeks before to purchase Stefan's clothes. It sometimes happened that Pasek called a week or so after the tenth of each month. Counting on this, Jan had spent the money, hoping to replace the amount from his wages Saturday night. He could but offer Pasek the fifteen, which he did with obvious nervousness.
Captain Pasek shook his head.
"I cannot accept partial payment," he explained. Then it came over Jan that the Captain's delay each month had not been carelessness, but a trap, subtly planned and cunningly sprung.
A sensation of terror came over him, but he conquered it. "I will have the full amount Saturday night," he offered.
"This is the second time you have been short,." returned the Captain. "Last month you were able to make
up the full amount the same day I called. I will give you until morning to make up the other fifteen rubles. Otherwise the government must take action."
When the Captain had gone away, Jan went at once to Ujedski and told her the whole story. The Jewess shook her head. "I am sorry, Jan," she said, "but with me needing all the rubles I can get, I can't be lending to anybody."
Jan left her and went to the Con- struction House. The shipyard offi- cials listened to him, but told him that they heard such stories every day, and that to make an exception in his case would be to start a troublesome pre- cedent. They were sorry, but could do nothing for him. Jan strode from the room with its wall of blue prints. What he feared most had at last come upon him.
He went from the works to Madame Ballandyna. Ballandyna, who was a cobbler and had six mouths to fill, had no money, he knew, but Madame Bal- landyna might have some rubles from her own work that she would loan him in his extremity. In the street little Elsa and Lela and Ula were playing. He passed them, went through the gate, and knocked at the door. Mad- ame Ballandyna greeted him. She lis- tened while he told of his misfortunes in simple, tragic words. She was scrry she had nothing to lend. The few rubles she earned were to buy clothes for her children.
Jan went to see Madame Tenta. She, too, was obdurate. Of course, she had the rubles, but wasn't she a woman, unable to earn anything herself? And how did she know Jan would be able to pay her back? No, indeed, she couldn't be taking such chances — she a widow with several children depend- ent upon the few poor pieces of prop- erty her husband had left her. Be- sides, hadn't she made a great sacri- fice when Jan bought the house, and wasn't it asking a great deal now for her to advance money to him on the house? She would like to know that!
In the morning Captain Pasek, in
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
his gay uniform, was waiting to see Jan. He had come early, to be sure, but that meant nothing ; he would wait until seven o'clock if Jan wanted more time. But Jan was ready to see him. He said he had been unable to raise the needed fifteen rubles. If the Cap- tain would only wait until Saturday —
Ah, no, Jan did not understand the machinery of the government. If the government gave him until Wednes- day morning to pay his delinquent taxes that was not Saturday evening, and such irregularity could not be per- mitted by a government that did every- thing with precision.
So Captain Pasek smiled quite af- fably, made some notes in his tax rec- ord, handed Jan another odd-looking legal paper with fine print, and went blithely on his way.
Jan remained staring after him a long while, dumbly, after the manner of wild beasts. Stefan was playing on the floor, and he came over to his father and pulled at his coat.
"Come into the house, big papa," he called, "and get all cosy." It was beginning to rain, so Jan closed the door and picked up Stefan in his arms.
He had lost the house.
So he became a kormorniki — a homeless toiler — and went down to Ujedski.
Chapter XXI.
In the bare little whitewashed room that had once been Jagiello's, Jan now spent the hours from midnight until sun-up sleeping beside his boy. When Ujedski had first shown him the room and told him that it had been Jagiello's he had secretly kissed the portals. Though he did not know it then, this was the very room in which she had sinned. By what a curious decree of fate her child, as sweet and innocent as the white daturas in her withered garden, now slept upon her pallet with its white cover and the embroidered yellow rose! . . . The rose, with its large, fluted petals, was a never-end- ing delight to Stefan. When he awoke
in the morning it greeted him with all its intricate golden stitches; and at night it was the last thing he gazed upon before Ujedski blew out the candle. The walls were still orna- mented with pictures from the Nagi- Aaros newspaper: the shepherd lead- ing his sheep through the pass at sun- set, the face of a woman, a saint, and the blood-red Battle of Grunwald. In the early morning hours when Jan could not sleep, his eyes were inevi- tably attracted to the horrors of this battle picture: the dying peasant sol- diers, the streams of blood, the new day revealing the tragedy of a night. It fascinated him. His eyes returned to it again and again. It seemed to cry out to him: "Comrade, you're needed!" The last thing at night be- fore he blew out his candle his tired eyes sought the picture, and in his ex- haustion its horrors flared poignantly.
Over the bed still hung, in graceful festoon, the flimsy red paper balls, strung on a bit of blue ribbon, festive, garish. There was no garden now save the hardy daturas, for since Jag- iello had left, the giant mulleins and bright blue chicory had died. A few honeysuckle vines remained, and as in days gone past, bees and humming birds infested them in spring. But the picture of the Battle of Grunwald dom- inated the room, as a general governs his army, and its horrors at length dominated the soul of Jan. The pic- ture expressed the rebellion that now began to stir within him. What right had the government to confiscate his house because he had been a few days late in paying his tax? Why should the world crush him when all he asked was opportunity for his boy?
The picture of the still, empty house the night that Jagiello had gone away was yet vivid in his memory. The horror, the loneliness, the incredible unreality of it all drove in upon him like a sickening blow . . . And why had Jagiello gone away? He had con- jured up a thousand reasons, and each reason gave rise to untold speculations, until at length his brain, weary from countless conjectures, throbbed and
GUNS OF GALT. 323
palpitated in sheer exhaustion. farthest from his ambition: to give
Then one day Jan discovered the Stefan the opportunity to be a Some- truth, body. But as he went down, so too
He had ventured to show Ujedski must Stefan go with him. Who in all
Jagiello's farewell note, and the Jewess the world would care for the lad if
had laughed. "Why did she go away?" anything happened to him? Would
Jan asked. he not become as a cork upon the
Ujedski shook her head, but Jan, waters, at the mercy of every wave,
sensing that the beldam knew more tossed about haphazardly, to live or
than her nod indicated, seized her by to die, friendless, a victim of circum-
the arm. "Tell me!" he demanded, stances, a human soul adrift? . . . .
"why did she go away?" Ujedski There was that fearful throbbing in
protested ignorance; Jan's grip tight- his head again, beginning far off, like
ened. "You know!" he cried, "you the beat of the sea, growing louder and
know!" The beldam confessed. Her more violent, attaining the volume of
words were carefully chosen : thunder, rumbling, echoing, dinning in
"A few days before Jagiello went his ears like the firing of guns, crash- she came to me and said that people ing, mounting louder and louder, a were talking about her, and she was great discordant wave, a gigantic rev- afraid you would find out some things, erberating mass, bursting upon him, She said she would run away before overwhelming him . . . ! she would have you know." Pressed to After an attack Jan would drop back tell more, Ujedski dilated upon the upon the pallet, exhausted, streams "things." Jan uttered a cry of pain, of perspiration flowing down his face, his hands tightened into knots, and his his breath coming in heavy chokings, voice became husky : "Mother of God, his hair matted over his forehead, a why didn't she tell me ? I would have wild light flaming in his eyes . . . forgiven her! I loved her!" One February morning about two
After the first shock of the amazing o'clock he awoke from a fitful slum- truth had dimmed, Jan's thoughts re- ber in the throes of horror-laden turned to his boy. He loved Stefan thoughts. He had been dreaming of with every instinct of his nature, and Jagiello, and he had seen her face, he feared for what might happen to pinched and pale and frightened, call- him in the years to come. Often at ing to him. His dream had changed, night the Jewess in the next room and he was at work under the Huascar. heard him kissing the tender cheek of Stefan had been gathering rusty nails his son. The lad lay peacefully sleep- beside him. Suddenly the mighty hull ing, with his sweet, even breathing, had become a living thing, had reared his soft, smooth skin with its fragrant itself into the skies above him and aroma . . . And then at length some- come crashing down in all its terrific thing in Jan's head would snap, a power, with a roar as of worlds rent sharp, excruciating pain would rack asunder! His boy! He awoke with his brain, and a million bright stars a start. His face was twitching with would swim into his vision. His body the terror of the dream. What a was protesting its burden. He would ghastly reality! God, his boy! He spring upright upon his pallet of straw, clutched the bed clothes. His hand clutching his head in agony. This ter- felt the soft, tender little face, peace- rific throbbing in his head — would it fully asleep. Ah, it was only a night- never cease ? Would it continue to in- mare ! Thank God ! He took the In- crease until it became the tramping of tie fellow's body in his arms, and wild horses, thrashing, never-ending? pressed him against his chest with . , . His brain was obsessed with his passionate, frenzied ardor, failure. Struggle as he might he could He could no longer sleep. And how not get ahead. Each day he sank he needed sleep! By and by he got deeper into the mire ; each day he was up and went to the window. The night
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v/as black and silver; the cold Febru- ary sky was spangled with stars. A biting wind blew in from the Baltic, cooling his hot face. He sat down near the window and continued look- ing out a long time, thinking about Jagiello, about Pasek, about Ujedski, about his boy. After a while, suffer- ing from exhaustion, he threw himself upon his pallet.
But he could not rest. He was too fatigued. The terrific strain of the night toil was telling upon him. He was a giant, yet his muscles could en- dure just so much overpowering labor. Already his fine straight shoulders were bent, his gait was attaining a shuffle, the lustre was going from his eyes . . .
Where would it all end ?
Presently he drifted into sleep, and another dream came to him. He was striding through a black: forest with Stefan upon his shoulder. On every hand was blackness intolerable. The trees loomed like cathedral spires, op- pressive, awe-inspiring. Suddenly out of the forest leaped a wild beast, straight at Stefan! Jan tried to run: his feet were riveted to the spot. And the beast was driving straight for the boy's throat! . . . His great body writhed and quivered, his huge fists opened and closed convulsively . . . Ah, now he had his hands upon the throat of the beast; now he was tear- ing it piecemeal; now he had wrung the life from its body and thrown it aside . . .
He awoke with a guttural shout, his arms heaving. Perspiration dripped from his forehead. His veins were swollen and purple. He panted like a wolf . . . There lay his boy safely beside him. Then it was only a dream! Ah, what a relief . . . !
It was almost dawn. At sun-up he would have to return to the shipyard with its gruelling task. If he could only steal an hour's sleep! ... A third time he threw himself upon the pallet, and a third time he dreamed a dream. Now it was a bloody field that he saw, a wide scarlet meadow, and the wild flowers that reared among the grasses glistened with blood. Suddenly the field was filled with warring soldiers with sad, white faces, and eyes flowing with tears; and their legs or arms were missing, but they were fighting still, fighting valiantly . . . !
Suddenly Jan awoke.
It was bright morning.
The sun poured through the little window. Outside, the heavens were opalescent. How peaceful everything was! How tranquil the sunrise after the horrors of the dawn ! Red, red the sun, flashing upon the picture of the Battle of Grunwald, dyeing scarlet the streams of blood from the expiring soldiers . . . !
The legions were calling:
"Comrade, you're needed!"
Little did Jan dream that morning what his tribute to the maw of war would be.
(To be continued.)
Indian vs. White Aan
By N. K. Buck
THE GAME of cards was over just as we saw a horseman ap- proaching around the hill. "Here comes Harry," spoke up one of the party. "I hope he knows whether the reserve is open or not. Unless it's already fixed it's all off un- til next year, and we might as well go home and work for a living."
"That's right," responded another; "this business of playing sooner while those fellows in Congress begin to get ready to start in to do something had its drawbacks. There's plenty of good placer gold over there on the bar if those Indians would just let us alone with our claims."
By this time the horseman had ar- rived in camp and delivered his mes- sage.
"Got a wire from the Senator saying the bill got through the committee and would probably pass. I thought as long as this was the last day I might just as well come out and do what I could to hold down the claims. If she passes, all right; and if not we'll know to-morrow. How are the Indian po- lice by this time?"
"They're getting pretty fresh," was the reply. "They fire us off every time they catch us and pull up our stakes."
"Well," interrupted Bill Hanly, the recognized leader of the camp, "I'm going over and hold down my claim, and any Indian policeman that tries to run me off stands a good chance of getting hurt." Bill had a reputation that justified us in believing what he said, and so we all felt pretty safe in following his lead and all crossed the river to the reservation side.
Soon after we got over, the Indians came in sight, headed for the upper
bar a mile away. We could see them talking to the boys, who one by one struck out across the river.
Finally the captain of the squad came up to Bill, who began telling the Indian what he thought of him, using a combination of Chinook, Nez Perce and Colville languages, but the only words that really meant anything were as near plain English as Bill could use.
The captain sat on his horse while this was going on, without moving. He watched Bill every instant, but there was never a movement of his face to tell what he thought about it. When the harangue was ended, the captain got slowly off his horse. Bill pulled the gun hanging at his hip and said: "Don't you come near me, you red- skinned siwash, or I'll blow you to kingdom come."
"There are some things you don't know," began the captain in a low voice. "One of the things I was taught at Carlisle was not to bite off more than I could conveniently masticate. That's what you've done now."
I think the thing that got next to our nerves was the fellow's English when we had expected to hear jargon. He had Bill backed off the map for use of the mother tongue.
"You are 'way off about this open- ing business. The agent told me when I left that Congress had thrown out that part of the bill. We have orders to keep the white men on the other bank of the river and we propose to do it. It's foolish of you to resist. If you shoot me, it wouldn't get you any- where. There are at least fifty wit- nesses here besides the Indians in my squad. You couldn't possibly escape. As sure as you carry out your present intention you will be tried, convicted
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and executed by hanging until you are dead, dead, dead."
All the time the Indian was speak- ing he was looking at Bill with an eye that seemed to go through. When part way through his speech he began to walk slowly toward Bill, who in the meantime tried to smile, but somehow it didn't work. He gave a quick look to one side — to see what encourage- ment he could get from the boys, but he got mighty little. We all looked pretty blank — some frankly scared — some just foolish.
At any rate, Bill didn't waste much time looking around, but brought his eyes back to the Indian's as if they had been jerked back. The captain kept right on talking and walking nearer.
"As I said before, it's foolish to raise a row. It wouldn't pay. Juries can't be bought like they used to be, and the money you get from your mine won't help much after the sheriff gets through."
Still he kept slowly coming nearer. Once or twice Bill's pistol hand twitched, and I inwardly dodged, al- though not in range of either of them. Bill didn't shoot, though, and as for the Indian, if he had any gun I didn't see it.
"Now," went on the captain, "it would be a whole lot better to quietly surrender and come with me to the agency without any more grand-stand play. At any rate that's what you are going to do. I am coming over there and you are going to give me your gun; then you are going to come with me.
Bill's eyes seemed to stick out an inch. His hand raised half way up with his finger on the trigger as the Indian came closer with that same slow step. The Indian neither stopped nor interrupted his talk.
"Now don't do that, after I've taken pains to explain just what would hap- pen. You would only mess things up
horribly. Think how it will feel when the rope tightens ; it won't last long, to be sure, but it will be mighty uncom- fortable for a short time."
Bill's hand dropped, then raised, then dropped. Meanwhile they were within arm's length of each other. I expected to see them grapple, but they didn't. The Indian didn't speed up his motions a bit. He slowly reached out his hand.
"You will kindly place your revol- ver in my hand," he finished. They were looking into each other's eyes only three feet apart. There was no snap in the Indian's eyes now, but a steady, cold, hard look that seemed as though it might be weighed with a scale or cut with a knife. I couldn't see Bill's eyes.
The Indian had stopped talking. No one else spoke. The tension was some- thing like I never experienced before nor since. I remember beginning to count slowly in my mind, as though expecting something to happen at a certain count.
One, two, three — those fellows were still standing there as though they were petrified stumps; four, five, six — it seemed as though something must happen when I got that far; seven, eight; Bill's pistol hand came slowly up again. I caught my breath. The pistol was thrust out toward the Indian with finger on trigger. The Indian's hand closed on the pistol and Bill's hand dropped to his side.
It was over; the Indian had won; Bill had lost — lost his nerve along with some other things.
"Come," said the Indian, "get on my horse!" Bill did so, with the help of a couple of the Indians; he couldn't have mounted alone. The captain turned to the rest of us.
"Gentlemen, I have been asked to inform you that the reservation is not open to white settlers and to request you to withdraw."
We withdrew.
A Peaceful Pirate
By Delia Phillips
ENTERING the bay of San Diego, California, during the first year of the Panama-California Ex- position, the first object to catch the eye was the queer old hulk of a vessel at anchor there. Every sight- seer inquired about it, and gazed with renewed interest when informed that it was the historic old Chinese junk, "Ning Po," famous smuggler from the Yellow Sea, and the oldest ship in the world still able to do service.
In 1912 a party of tourists traveling in China saw the old ship, then in the hands of rebels against the Chinese government, and were so struck by her unique appearance and interesting his- tory that, upon returning to America, they succeeded in raising the sum of fifty thousand dollars for her purchase. In 1913 she appeared in American waters, and has been on exhibition con- tinually, having spent the year 1915 in San Diego Bay. Her next journey will be through the Panama Canal, en route to Boston, stopping at the principal cities on the way for exhibition pur- poses.
This old reprobate of a ship has a history of a kind that can hardly be surpassed by any other vessel in the v/orld. Over a century and a half of smuggling, piracy, slave-traffic, fight- ing, mutiny, murder and riot make up her record. Her uneven decks and huge camphor wood ribs have been crimsoned with the blood of some of the most desperate outlaws of the Ori- ent as well as with that of their help- less victims. During her long and varied career, almost enough blood to float her has been shed upon her decks.
She was built in 1753 in Fu Chau, and modeled after the Chinese idea of
a sea monster. The open bow repre- sents the mouth, bulging portholes the eyes, masts and sails the fins, and the high, fantastically carved stern the tail. A dragon contorts his scaly length on each side of the stern.
It is easy to be deceived concerning the age of old furniture and Oriental rugs, but this old ship speaks for her- self. Odor of camphor wood and the spicy fragrance of beams which, when scraped a very little, yield a spicy aroma of nutmeg, are mute testimony of a bygone era of shipbuilding. One has only to step aboard this ancient vessel to realize that she has all the an- tiquity she claims. Her one hundred sixty-two years of service bespeak themselves in her rude staunchness of construction, and in the indestructi- bility of the material of which she was made. There is an air of integrity about the old ship in spite of her vil- lainous record; for she was worthily built, not for smuggling and piracy, but for peaceful commerce.
If one can keep this fact in mind, the Chinese characters over the cabin door signifying "Peace and Content- ment," do not seem quite so ironical.
As a Chinese merchant ship she was called Kin Tai Foong; but, being the fastest and best equipped vessel afloat in Chinese waters at that time, she soon developed into a smuggler and slaver. It was then only a step to piracy, and she became a terror to shipping along the coast, attacking even defenseless villages. When one of the frequent rebellions or our- breaks occurred, the big pirate would take a hand in the game. Her lurid history is briefly as follows:
1796. Engaged in rebellion against the emperor.
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1806. Seized for smuggling and piracy.
1814. Captured and set on fire at Nanking.
1823. Seized for smuggling silk and opium.
1834. Confiscated by British under Napier for smuggling and for carry- ing slave -girls to Canton.
1841 (cir.). Captured by Chinese government and used seven years as a prison ship for pirates and smugglers.
1861. Seized by rebels in Taiping and converted into a transport because of her size and speed. Retaken by "Chinese" Gordon, in command of the imperial forces against the Taiping rebels. Gordon changed her name to Ning-Po, after the city of that name. •
1861. Wrecked in a typhoon.
1911. Captured by rebels in the battle of Hankow.
1912. Sailed from Shankhai, June 6th.
1912. Wrecked in typhoon, June 12th, and again September 26th of the same year, off Kyushi.
1913. Arrived at San Pedro, Feb- ruary 19th.
Such a history naturally raises the question : How could the old junk hold together so long, and during so many vicissitudes? When one is once aboard her such wonderment ceases.
Built almost entirely of camphor and ironwood, she is yet more durable than many modern ships. Ironwood is proof against the toredo, a little boring v/orm of the ocean so destructive to most woods. Indeed, it would be a hardy worm that would endeavor to penetrate ironwood.
The seams and cracks of the vessel are plastered with a cement of a sort that English speaking races have sought for in vain. Intermixed with cocoa-fibre, this cement does not crack with the motion of the vessel, and is as good to-day as when first applied. The secret of its making remains with the Chinese who discovered it, and its iron consistency and durability have had ample testing in the struggles of the old craft.
The huge mainmast is of ironwood,
and its weight is estimated at twenty tons. Some of us were inclined to doubt this statement until we were al- lowed to contrast a stick of our heav- iest wood with one of ironwood of similar size. The difference was start- ling. The weight of the ironwood made us realize the fitness of the name.
The men of a party of sightseers were invited to whittle a souvenir from the mast. Surprised at such a liberty, they tried to take advantage of it. Their pocket knives would not even dent the hard surface.
Ninety feet in length and nine feet in circumference is this big stick of timber. A great strip of mahogany braces the vessel amidships, to keep her from straining herself apart there. From this mast one huge sail, criss- crossed by bamboo spreaders, extends to the stern. The boom for this sail weighs five tons, so it can be readily seen how strong a mast must be to sus- tain such a weight.
The thick ribs are placed only two and one-half feet apart, and the heavy beams and timbers are so pon- derous that the caretaker estimates that there is sufficient wood in this old hulk to build six ships of modern construction.
The camphor wood ribs and the outer sheathing of logs are all paired. That is to say, a tree of the right curve was selected, whip-sawed in halves, and a half used on either side of the ship, thus preventing the slightest dis- crepancy in shape and symmetry.
No bolts were used in the ship's con- struction. Instead, sharp-pointed iron spikes, about one foot in length, were driven slantingly into the wood. Just why they were driven in this manner is not known, but probably for greater security. With the rude tools in use when the ship was built, it is difficult to see how this could be done at all. The rough decks are full of these spikes.
With the exception of the ribs and sheathing, the old boat resembles a crazy-quilt in construction, odds and ends of wood being pieced together as cleverly as a woman fits irregular
A PEACEFUL PIRATE
329
scraps of material into her patchwork. All is neatly and carefully spiked and cemented together, but the joining is plainly visible.
Another striking feature of this an- cient craft is that she has nine water- tight compartments — a fact that may surprise even some seaman who con- siders this phase of shipbuilding as a comparatively new invention.
True to the Oriental way of doing things, in direct opposition to the Oc- cidental, this craft was navigated from the stern ; and the captain stood on the sea-monster's elevated tail to direct the vessel's movements.
The rudder, a cumbersome affair, weighing two tons, was not fastened to the vessel, but was attached to a spe- cial windlass by cables — two that held it upright, and two more that passed from the rudder stem down underneath the vessel from stern to bow. Here they were fastened, thus holding the rudder to the vessel. On coming to anchor, the crew slacked up on the bow-lines, and by means of the wind- lass lifted the rudder clear of the water. The steering was done by means of two tillers, six men at each tiller.
A great coil of split bamboo rope lies near the mainmast. This rope is stronger than a steel cable of like thickness because of its great tenacity. .
The old wooden anchor and great mahogany windlass for hoisting it are very interesting objects. Very rough and ungainly does this anchor appear, contrasted to the steel affairs of to- day; but it was no doubt durable and served its purpose well.
The walls of the officers' quarters are decorated with panels from the Chinese classics; and over the door of the mandarin's, or commander's cabin, are characters denoting tonnage and date of the vessel's construction.
Within are compact little bamboo stools, a bamboo cupboard, and the much-used sedan chairs, in. which the officers were conveyed about the decks.
Tiny, raggedly fringed curtains of cocoa fibre are looped back from the cabin entrance, and a queer old rain-
coat of the same material hangs near the door. The dragon flag, Oolong, designed over three thousand years ago, is draped across a side wall.
Back of the officers' quarters and mandarin's cabin is the old smuggler's chamber of horrors. In this dungeon dark compartment there was origin- ally only one very small entrance, and the compartment itself a deep well of darkness extending clean to the hold.
Finding it impractical to show visi- tors such a ventless, rayless place, the exhibitors of the ship sawed a large section out of the thick wall, and put floorings across the deep chasm. Even then the way amidst the thick black- ness of the gruesome chamber cannot be found without the aid of a lantern. By means of its feeble rays one may perceive on its outer wall the marks of the shelves that once had been there — shelves where the prisoners were placed until they either divulged the secret of their wealth or treasure to the outlaws who had captured them or died of starvation and lack of air in that horrible place. They were literally laid on the shelf, with the prospect of dropping to the depths below if they became restless in their narrow beds.
After looking at this place, behead- ing knives did not appear so forbidding to me. In fact, it was something of a relief to think that the blades were keen and the headsman sure in his stroke. It was his profession, handed down from father to son; and the fact that he lost his own head if he failed to sever his victim's at the first stroke, made him marvelously accurate.
The boys to whom this honored (in China) business is to descend, practice on turnips to acquire skill. A face is marked on the turnip. It is grasped by the tail; and the knife descends in an endeavor to cleave it through in just the right place.
One of the villainous looking cut- lasses in this exhibit has a history of its own, bearing the name of Kang- how, a noted pirate who carved his Way to fame with this blade. A shield made of rattan, and iron cane.
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
whose great resilience was calculated to turn the thrust of even these mur- derous weapons, and a long iron speer lor picking up severed heads, also graced this collection.
Somewhere amidships, below decks, and on two sides of a large square opening into the hold, are the sailors' sleeping quarters. No loftier than the upper berths in a sleeper, they appear to be, and not more than twice as wide, yet these two lofts were the only sleep- ing accommodations for the entire crew. The sailors must have been wedged in like sardines, and if one fell out of bed he would, of necessity, have plunged into the bilge water be- low. However, the distance was not as great as that for the shelved pris- oners. The only ventilation in this place was such air as might struggle down from a small opening in the deck above.
From the misty, dim interior of the old ship, redolent of the smell of camphorwood, we at last emerged on the upper deck that was warm and bright in the California sunshine; on the day we visited her; and here too are many things of interest. Just for- ward of the mainmast, a weazened, rusty little gun draws the attention. This kind of gun was being made thirty-six hundred years ago — so old is civilization in China; and this par- ticular speciman was actually disin- tegrating with age. The little thing is barely three feet long, offering an al- most comical contrast to the big guns on one of the warships anchored a short distance away. Yet, in all proba- bility, this gun, estimated to be four hundred years old, did much execution in its day.
It was on this deck that the one hun- dred fifty-eight prisoners whom the Chinese government found too expen- sive to feed, were beheaded some time during the seven years the Ning-Po was used as a government prison ship for smugglers and pirates.
Here also are shov/n some of the modes of torture that were practiced in China. Kee Long is the wooden cage in which persons accused of piracy or
crimes against the government were suspended without food or water until death came.
Over against these mute records of Chinese cruelty and barbarism, ever stand the ingenuity, antiquity and dur- ability of Chinese inventions. They were using the compass in 1432 B. C, another invention belonging supposed- ly to the Caucasian race ; and were also the inventors of the capstan, whose rusting iron bands litter the decks of the old Ning-Po.
Of the seven years that the old junk served as a government prison ship, but little is known except the wholesale execution of the prisoners, for the Chinese are ever secretive about government affairs, but she was again taken by rebels, and alternately used as a smuggler and a pirate from 1864 to 1910. The last time her an- cient guns were unlimbered in military service was four years ago in the re- bellion against the Manchus.
Seemingly the very elements con- spired to prevent the old junk from entering a peaceful career. She was wrecked in a typhoon when she first sailed from Shanghai bound for an American port, and had to put back to Shanghai for repairs.
It would appear that reformation is a difficult matter for ships as well as men, for when she again sailed forth in September of the same year on her way to a career of respectability, an- other typhoon pounced on her off Kyu- shi.
The Chinese crew, in league with the elements, one might suppose, muti- nied during the storm, being desirous of taking the old ship back to her ca- reer of infamy. She was now a floating hulk, without sails or rudder, but good forces were at work, as well as evil, and the mate and three loyal Chinese rowed three hundred and twenty miles — a story in itself — to Shmidzu, from which a cruiser was sent to tow her in. The mutinous crew was sent back to China in arms, and a white crew signed on. On December twenty-second, 1912, she again sailed and arrived at San Pedro, February nineteenth, 1913, hav-
SYMBOLISM
331
ing made seven thousand miles in fifty- eight days.
Somehow, one cannot help feeling glad that the old ship, so staunchly and worthily built, has at last found a peaceful port, and the career of re- spectability for which she was origin- ally designed. Boarded now only by
hordes of tourists and curio-hunters, she is still able to stand up bravely un- der the strain, for there has been enough wood sawed out of her parti- tions to furnish souvenirs for all. The most intrepid of the curio hunters can never carry off the iron- wood masts nor dismantle a vessel so ironly built.
SYABOLIS/A
Now when the spirit in us wakes and broods, Filled with home yearnings, drowsily it flings From its deep heart high dreams and mystic moods, Mixed with the memory of the loved earth things: Clothing the vast with a familiar face; Reaching its right hand forth to greet the starry race.
Wondrously near and clear the great warm fires
Stare from the blue; so shows the cottage light
To the field laborer whose heart desires
The old folk by the nook, the welcome bright
From the housewife long parted from at dawn —
So the star villages in God's great depths withdrawn
Nearer to Thee, not by delusion led,
Though there no house fires burn nor bright eyes gaze :
We rise, but by the symbol charioted,
Through loved things rising up to Love's own ways :
By these the soul unto the vast has wings
And sets the seal celestial on all mortal things.
A. E.
JBpf£A^Hi^-
The Prophecy
Lora D. Patterson
SHE SURE is a wonder, alright. She told me that I had been mar- ried once and was going to be married again, and it's all straight!" said Mamie Taylor, as she arranged the piles of embroideries which were to be placed on sale that morning. "Why don't you go and see her, Ethel," she said to her assistant.
"I did, on my way home from work last night. I heard all you girls talk so much about her and you know I had never been to a fortune teller before."
"Well, did she tell you anything worth while?"
"She told me that I would marry within a year. She didn't say he was exactly rich, but she said I would wear diamonds and have my own automo- bile, and within three years we would travel abroad. But don't think for a minute that I believe it, because they have to tell people something to make them think they are getting their money's worth and in your case she just happened to strike it."
"But think of the fun you will have watching to see if there isn't some truth in it." '
"What's going to happen in a year isn't bothering me now, and I am out my fifty cents. I wish I had it in a pound of French mixed."
After finishing her twelve cent lunch in the cafeteria and having thirty-five minutes left of her noon hour, Ethel Freeman walked up Stockton street and feasted her eyes on the beauties of the shop windows. Hesitating a moment on the corner she decided to walk through Union Square. The question came to her, which she had often thought of before: "How do all those men live who sit for hours on those benches?" She had often been
tempted to ask one of them, but had never had the courage.
She walked slowly along, observing the many idlers, when suddenly her ankle gave way, and just as she was sinking to the ground she felt two strong arms around her and heard a manly voice say: "Are you hurt? You had better sit here for a minute."
Regardless of the twinge of pain and the embarrassment of the situation, she grasped the opportunity of learn- ing the reason of his presence there.
"Why are you sitting here?" she asked.
"I was just listening to the city and looking at the people."
"Listening to the city," she said in- quiringly.
"It is quite evident that you were raised here. You see, I live on the desert, and when I am there I listen to the silence as I listen to the noise here."
"You live on a desert," she said with much surprise.
"It was a desert when I first went there to live, but now it is turned into hundreds of thriving farms. Did you ever live in the country?"
"Oh, goodness, no. I have had lots of bad luck, but that is one thing I have escaped."
"If you have never lived in the country you have missed a lot in life." '
"My mother lived on a ranch when she was a girl, and she said that they were either starving to death because it was a dry year or if the next one was good they had to pinch every penny to pay back what was bor- rowed the year before."
"A good deal of truth in that, but it is not that way where I farm. We
THE PROPHECY 333
never depend on the rain. We have life as swiftly as she had come into it.
irrigating ditches and turn the water He did not know her name, where she
in whenever we want it." lived or where she worked. Other
"But how do you get water in a loungers in the park had seen her fall,
desert?" and then had observed them during
"Far up on the Colorado a damn the chat which had followed. If he fol-
was made, and it is brought down from lowed her, what would they think
there." But every second he sat deliberating
"Oh, you live in Arizona?" she was further from him. He sprang
"No. I live in California, on this to his feet and started in the direction
side of the river." she had gone. He caught sight of her
"I think I read a book about that about to cross the street. A woman
country once. Isn't that the Imper- with two small children blocked his
ial?" ' way. He fairly pushed them from
"No, I am across the mountain from him and made for the crossing. The
the Imperial, and it is called the Palo street car started, and there followed
Verde Valley. This place was gov- the long line of automobiles whiich
ernment land once, just like the Im- made it impossible for him to pass.
perial Valley was, but we think it is His eyes fairly searched the street for
far greater." her. Did she go straight down Stock-
"Do tell me about it, and how you ton street or had she turned to her left
came to go there." on Geary. He thought possibly the
"Well, I guess I was sort of born latter. He hurried along, looking
for a farmer. When I was a young- ahead of him or searching every en-
ster I finished the little country school trance of the big buildings with his
and Dad sent me into town for a busi- quick glance. When he reached
ness course, but being shut up in an Grant avenue he realized that she was
office didn't suit me just right, so I took lost to his sight.
a job as foreman on a ranch. But all How he was to find her was his the time I was set on having a ranch next thought. During the week that of my own. I saved my money, yes, followed, he fairly patrolled the shop- nearly every cent I earned, but I might ping district. At nine o'clock in the have gone on doing that until I was morning he watched the entrances of fifty and then not had enough to buy office buildings and the shops, and one. You know, good California land again from five to six in the evening is worth an awful lot of money these he scanned the scores of faces that days. Just about that time the gov- came out, but his search for the one emment threw open the Palo Verde he was looking for was fruitless. Then Valley, nearly a million acres of land he resorted to the supposition that she as level as that sidewalk. So I started had gone down Stockton street, but out with a good horse and a couple of his efforts to find her there were just pack mules, and was one of the first as unsuccessful. Every day at noon- settlers there. I homesteaded on one time he had taken his place in Union quarter-section and took up another Square, hoping that she might retrace under the Desert Act, and I stuck it out the steps of that day he had first seen until I had my Patent on both. Lots her. After seven days he had given of hard work and those hot summers her up as lost, were terrific, but it's mine now." * * * *
Looking at her watch, Ethel said Five minutes from Union Square to
she had only five minutes in which to Market street was an easy walk, but
get back to work, and limped hurriedly with an aching ankle Ethel doubted ii
away. she could make it, so as she was about
Left so suddenly, George Thomas to cross the street she turned to see
sat motionless for a minute. This the Stockton street car at her side,
charming young woman had left his She quickly mounted, and was at
334
OVERLAND MONTHLY
Market street in less than two min- utes.
The busy hours of the afternoon did not prove good treatment for a sprained ankle, so for a week Ethel rested in the lounging room at noon- time, instead of taking her usual stroll. One day, after her recovery, her wo- man's curiosity together with" the spirit of flirtation, led her back to Union Square that she might see — why, she didn't even know his name — so she decided to call him her farmer friend.
"But why even think* of him," she thought. "Madame Wanda told me
Vthat I would marry a man who could afford to give me luxuries, so why even waste a thought on this poor young tiller of the soil."
It was seldom that Ethel indulged in a flight of fancy. Maybe Mamie Taylor was right. The fortune-teller might give you something to look for- ward to, even if it never did material- ize. In other words it was fifty cents worth of hope.
Ethel had no sooner stepped inside of Union Square, when much to her astonishment she beheld her chance acquaintance of a week ago hurrying towards her.
"Where on earth have you been. I was about to give you up as lost." Then seeing her look of surprise, he continued : "Don't look at me like that. I am not really crazy. You left me so quickly that I was a minute getting my senses back, and when I started to follow you the crowd simply swal- lowed you up. And I have spent nearly every minute since looking for you, and now that I have found you — "
"But," said Ethel, with a look of amusement, "I don't think you found me. I walked right in here and found you."
"Were you really looking for me," he said as he bent towards her with a very tender look.
"Why, you conceited young man. I've never as much as given you a thought since I left you."
"Then please do me the favor to give me one now that you have found
me. Don't think me bold and forward, but I would really like to know you. My name is George Thomas, and I live in Blythe, Riverside County. I have kinfolk in Oakland who are so stylish that I don't bother them much. They think I am only their poor coun- try cousin, but I'll show them some day. Won't you dine with me to- night and go to a show afterwards."
"I really can't to-night." All that Ethel could think of was the plain lit- tle suit and hat she was wearing. She could not think of going to a cafe or theatre dressed as she was, even if she were bold enough to accept the invitation from a stranger.
"Another engagement, I take it." Jealousy was evidently raging within him, but perseverance was his motto. "Then perhaps to-morrow night you will do me the honor, or will you allow me to call."
"Yes, I think that would be nicer, don't you?"
This really was an event in Ethel's life. She had had many responsibili- ties, and always denied herself many things. She knew the other girls in the department pitied her because she did not have a beau. Of course, George Thomas was not a city bred man, that was plain to be seen. She thought of Carrie Hopkins' young man who wait- ed for her so often; so well dressed and clean cut. But nevertheless, think- ing of the comparison, Ethel had never known such ecstasy. To imagine that she could bustle into the dressing room, powder her nose and fluff up her hair and say she had an engage- ment.
Scarcely had a month passed before this chance friendship had ripened in- to love. The girls teased her about this suitor and asked her if he was the rich man Madame Wanda had pre- dicted would come into her life.
"No, only a poor farmer, but I wouldn't trade him for all the rich men ir. the world."
Ethel often thought of the rich man, the diamonds, the automobile and the trip to Europe. But what were these when she could boast of the love of
FROM MANHATTAN
335
her big farmer boy. She had come to look upon country life in a more kindly manner than when she had first met him. She would often picture to herself the acres and acres of al- falfa and the waving grain fields George had told her of, and she could see cotton growing and also the beau- tiful orange groves.
One night as he met her for dinner he suggested that for memory sake they walk to Union Square and sit on the bench where they had first met. He took from a little box a diamond ring, which he slipped on her fourth finger.
"George, why did you get me such a big one. A little one would have cone just as well," but he made light of the remark and said nothing was too good for her.
Her last Saturday at the store,
George was waiting anxiously at the door for her at six o'clock. As she came out, he led her to the edge of the sidewalk and waving his hand to- wards a very neat little runabout, said : "How do you like it, Ethel. I bought it for you."
"But, George, where did you get the money?"
"Say, dearie what do you suppose I do with seven cuttings of alfalfa a year off from three hundred and twenty acres of land."
Her right hand closed over the dia- mond on her left fourth finger; then she looked at the automobile. She stood deep in thought for a minute, then her eyes sparkling with delight, she said :
"George, do you think we will ever go to Europe?"
"You just better believe we will."
FRO/A MANHATTAN
Oh, that the world, steel-bound, stone-clad, might be
Eased of its groaning heaviness with one
Swift-moving thought; the centuries undone
Of man's devising; that it mignt shake free
Its weary burden of humanity,
And rise, no longer subject to the sun
Among the spheres which even courses run,
Flaming, superb, through the uncharted sea
Of infinite space; its gaping wounds made whole;
Its barren hills new garmented with green.
Thus should it pass, and growing less and less.
Fade into darkness like an unleashed soul,
Forever free, forever lost, unseen: A drifting star of untold loveliness.
James Norman Hall.
MMMMPPPf
I
Love and the Raid
By Olive Cowles Kerns
IT IS STRANGE what changes can occur in just one short year. Here I am now in San Jose, Texas, when a year ago to-day I was in Milford, New Hampshire, mourning for the dearest father that ever a girl had. Then my cousin Howard's letter came urging me to come here to teach the little village school and live with him and his wife in their cozy brown bun- galow, and 1 accepted gladly. Howard is a lieutenant in the United States army, and I thought it would be inter- esting to live right on the Mexican bor- der near a real encampment of cav- alry. Besides, I could not bear my old home after father's death.
I had very few possessions when at last I was ready to start. The most valuable of them, the miniature of my mother painted on ivory and sur- rounded with pearls, I strung on a vel- vet ribbon and tied securely around my neck, where it was hidden under my blouse. Not for worlds would I part with that.
Texas was exceedingly interesting to me; the bunch grass, the mesquite, the vastness of outlook were all so different from my little tucked up New England town. San Jose was a good deal like many other little towns we had passed through — little boxlike houses, stores of one story in height, a white school house, a little red brick depot. It was all so strange and new to me.
The first person I saw when I got off the train was Howard, slim and straight as ever, his dark skin in sharp contrast to his light hair and promi- nent blue eyes.
"Welcome home, Marcia," he ex- claimed. "Come on, I have a friend who will take you and your luggage
up to the house. You see, public con- veyances are scarce here."
I followed him around the corner of the depot and saw a little runabout with a big brown man at the wheel. He sprang out when he saw us, and came forward, cap in hand.
"This is Mark Hamilton, a particu- lar friend of ours. My cousin, Miss Marcia Glynn, Mark," Howard said, introducing us, and Mr. Hamilton pulled off his glove and shook hands heartily with me in true Western fashion. He looked directly at me, and I noticed that his eyes were brown with little golden specks in them like sunlight on running water.
"It's good of you to trust yourself with me and my little machine here," he said pleasantly, "but I think we shan't break down in that short dis- tance."
I laughed. "I hope not," I said.
Howard stowed away my suitcase and Mr. Hamilton, after helping me in, cranked up the little car and got in beside me. Soon we were whizzing by the little box-like houses and turn- ing a corner went down a street paral- lel to the river. At the end of it was Howard's brown bungalow facing the river and near by a collection of tents.
"Oh, the camp!" I exclaimed.
"Yes, our doughty protectors," he said. "There are about two hundred of them all anxious for Villa's scalp.
"Is he supposed to be anywhere near here?" I asked with a thrill of pleasurable excitement.
"He's like a mosquito. You never can tell where he is, but you can hear rumors of his buzzing," he laughed. "The soldiers aren't worried much about him. The officers all sleep at home except one. They take turns
LOVE AND THE RAID
337
commanding the camp."
We drew up in front of the bunga- low, and a lady, the prettiest person I ever saw, came down the steps to meet me.
"Howard's wife," I thought even before Mr. Hamilton named us to each other. "What a raving beauty! No wonder he is wild over her."
She was tall and blonde, and the sunshine made her hair glitter as though it had been sprinkled with dia- mond dust.
"Here's your traveler, Mrs. Snow, safe and sound," said Mr. Hamilton. "I brought her along, as I happened to be at the station."
She gave him a quick, rather pecul- iar look ; I couldn't classify it, and held out a white hand to me.
"I am so glad to meet you, Miss Glynn — I suppose I should say Mar- cia." Her smile was dazzling and she put her hand through my arm, draw- ing me toward the open door. At the threshold she turned and looked over her shoulder at Mr. Hamilton, who was busy cranking up his car. He had put my luggage on the porch.
"Coming in Mark?" Her voice held a certain soft note that made me look at her quickly.
"Can't stop this time, Angelica. Got to see a lot of cattle to be shipped to- morrow morning. So it's good-bye to you and Miss Glynn for to-day. I may come to-morrow, though, may I not, to see how the traveler stood her journey?" He flashed a smile at me, and Mrs. Snow, murmuring an assent, drew me into the house.
She was hospitality itself, and fussed over me very prettily. As for me, I could not keep my eyes from her beautiful coloring. She was like a tall, fair lily. She showed me to a sweet little room, all delicious shades of pinks and creams, and left me to my own devices after informing me that dinner would be ready in an hour, at seven.
"We dine at night like civilized peo- ple," she said, "but the aborigines here have theirs at noon. They're so funny. I know you'll almost die when
you become acquainted with them. They think I'm awfully queer because I have a Mexican girl to cook and don't do my own work."
She went gaily out, leaving me alone to wonder what kind of person she really was. I was half dazzled by her beauty, but somehow I had a slight feeling that she was not abso- lutely sincere in all her words and acts — that queer sidelong glance she gave >ou after she had made a statement. Well, I didn't dislike her, and that was something.
The next day Howard took me to see my future domain, the school house, where I was soon to begin my work. It was a bare little place, ab- solutely devoid of pictures or any other beautifying thing, but I began immediately to plan how it could be made more comfortable.
"I think I shall be safe here in spite of. the bandits," I said, as we started home. "Mr. Hamilton told me about the soldiers."
"Yes, you'll have ample protection," he smiled. "By the way, Marcia, isn't Angelica just the loveliest woman you ever set eyes on?"
"She certainly is beautiful." I said sincerely.
"I'm glad you like her," he said. "She doesn't fit in here very well — she's so much above every one here — and I was afraid she'd be lonely. That is one reason I wanted you to come."
When we reached the house, Mark Hamilton was sitting in the porch sv/ing, and Angelica, looking perfectly lovely in her white dress, reclined in an easy chair. We heard the murmur of their voices as we came up the walk, but neither was speaking as we mounted the steps. Mr. Hamilton rose and gave me the swing, seating him- self on the porch railing near me. I looked at him more closely than I had before, and instinctively I liked him. He was so big and brown, and his eyes were frank and kindly.
"Do you ride, Miss Glynn?" he asked.
"Oh, yes," I replied eagerly, before I thought.
338
OVERLAND MONTHLY
"It's too warm to ride here in Au- gust," Angelica put in coldly. "You know that, Mark." She flashed a look at him half resentful, half haughty. He flushed, but threw back his head and looking at her from under half- closed lids, answered lightly:
"Oh, I didn't mean in the heat of the day, I assure you." He turned to me. "Will you ride with me to-morrow evening, Miss Marcia ? I have a horse that would just suit you, I know. Just spirited enough, but not too lively."
1 looked at him a moment before answering and met his eyes with their dancing lights. Suddenly I decided that I would, although I had a feeling that Angelica was not pleased about it.
"I wonder why?" I thought. T told Mr. Hamilton that I would go with him right after dinner the next evening, and he arose to go seeming much pleased.
"I suppose new girls are something of a treat to him," I said to Angelica, watching Mr. Hamilton crank his little runabout. . She shrugged.
"He's a great man for the ladies — always chasing after every new face. He tires of them just as quickly as he becomes interested in them."
"Perhaps some of them tire of him," I retorted.
"Perhaps," she assented languidly, "but you wouldn't think so if you could see how they chase him. Any one Mark goes with becomes a laughing- stock in time." She gave me one of her peculiar side glances and went in- to the house, leaving Howard, who all this time had been quietly smoking, to talk to me. He threw his cigar away, saying in a low tone :
"It's queer, Marcia, but she doesn't like Mark at all. I can't understand it, he's such a likable fellow, but she simply can't see it."
I had my doubts. Did she or did she not like Mr. Hamilton? I puzzled over this until I fell asleep at last in my creamy-pink room.
I rode with Mr. Hamilton the next evening and had a glorious time. The
horse he brought for me was a bright bay named Prince Charlie, and he was surely a prince among horses. How I enjoyed it! I almost forgot my sor- row. Indeed, one couldn't help it with Mark Hamilton, he was so full of in- formation about the country and had such a humorous way of talking about the people he knew that I caught my- self laughing like a silly school-girl. When he lifted me from my horse at Howard's gate, he held my hand a stcond longer than was strictly neces- sary, and asked me when I would go again.
"Oh, not for a long time," I de- cided, suddenly remembering what Angelica had said about the love-lorn girls. I did not want to become a laughing stock just yet. Besides, my school began the first of September, and I must prepare for that. So I put him off. He continued to come to Howard's, though, and sat talking on the veranda two or three times a week. Then one evening he appeared on horseback, leading that beautiful Prince Charlie.
He slid from the saddle and tied both horses to the hitching post, then came up the walk and stopped in front of me, as I sat on the steps, making a low bow with his wide sombrero in his hand. He was dressed in a suit of khaki, and had a bright red hand- kerchief around his neck, from which his throat rose, brown and muscular. He had not an ounce of superfluous flesh; he was just big and strong, and involuntarily I admired him. Then I remembered the girls and shut out the admiration.
"Well," I inquired, "did you wish to see Howard? I'm sorry, but he and Angelica went over to Captain Brewster's to dinner."
"So much the better," he answered, "but why didn't you go? Hadn't Brewster enough food to go around?"
"It wasn't that," I laughed. "I had a headache. School was tiresome to- day." t
"Prince Charlie will cure you. Come — I dressed up in cowboy rig on pur- pose for your benefit." He held out
LOVE AND THE RAID
339
his hand and helped me from the step. I ran in and changed my skirt and soon we were galloping over the smooth, sandy road.
"I'm going to take you past my own little domain," he said, turning into the road that led south down the banks of the Rio Grande. "It's cov- ered with nice, fat- cattle that I want you to see."
"Were you a cattle man before you came here? Howard said you had only been here three years."
He looked away. "No," he said evasively. "I was engaged in other work in California, but cattle always appealed to me so I came here where the fat ones grow."
He seemed unwilling to say more about his life before he came to Texas. I wondered if he had any relatives. He never spoke of any.
"It must be lonesome down here, away from your people. They live in California, do they not?" I inquired at the risk of seeming inquisitive. But I did so want to know more about him. Here I was roaming over the country with a man I had only known a few weeks. It was true Howard thought the world of him, but even he knew nothing definite of Mark Hamilton's past or of his family.
"My brother lives in California," he answered, looking straight into my eyes, rather proudly. "He's the only relative I have." Then his expression softened. "I was lonely, Marcia, be- fore you came."
My heart missed a beat, and I felt my face flushing, so I turned away and pointed with my whip to a low white house ahead of us. Two tall cotton- wood trees stood beside it, and bushes fringed a little creek that ran across the road.
"Is that your house?" I asked with interest.
"Yes, that's it. It's not very beauti- ful, but it is comfortable. I have a great big porch, as you can see, and a real fireplace. I built it myself with the help of my foreman. But I wanted you to see the cattle. Look over there."
He pointed to the acres of pasture land behind the house and the barns, and I saw hundreds of red cattle in the distance and two moving black specks that I took for cow-boys.
"It's wonderful!" I cried.
"Do you like it?" he asked eagerly.
"I certainly do.'
I was entirely sincere. The little white house, nestled between its tall cottonwoods, the gently sloping, cattle covered land appealed to me. It seemed to me as if I were coming home after a long absence, and I caught my breath in a sigh almost of longing. Mark leaned over and laid his strong brown hand on my saddle- bow.
"Marcia," he said, "you were meant for this country. Here's where you ought to stay all your life. You be- long in that little white house, its owner and mine. Will you take us, Marcia?" His hand closed over mine and 1 felt it trembling. I looked at him startled. He was sincerely ask- ing me to marry him, not flirting with me, but I could not believe it yet. I must have more time to be sure of
him, and then I withdrew my
hand.
"I can't answer yet. I haven't known you long enough. Besides, you may be mistaken when you think you want me," I said.
"I'm not mistaken. I love you, Mar- cia." His voice made me tremble all over. I longed to lay my head against tne shoulder so near me and tell him that I loved him. For I did, I knew it all at once. But I would not do it. Prudence told me to wait. I shook my head and turned my horse around.
"All right, little girl. I won't bother you about it, but I'm glad you know," Mark said, following me. "Now for the gallop back to town."
I was glad Angelica and Howard were not in when, after bidding Mark good-night, I slipped into the house. 1 went to my room and lay most of the night thinking of Mark and what I should ultimately say to him. My cheeks burned even there in the dark- ness as I pictured the moment when
340
OVERLAND MONTHLY
I should tell him and he would take me in his arms, strong and protecting and tender.
At breakfast, Angelica from her place behind the coffee percolator, looked at me sharply.
"You're rather pale, Marcia. What is the matter ?" She broke open a roll and I noticed that her hand trembled. "Howard, doesn't she look pale?"
Howard, thus appealed to, leaned forward and looked at me with his kind, near-sighted looking eyes.
"It's her school," he said. "Stay in to-day, Marcia. It's Saturday, any- how. You and Angel can chat to- gether and take it easy. As for me, I've got to go to cavalry drill this morning. The bandits are getting a little bit near, they say, but there's no danger. They wouldn't dare to cross." He rose from the table, kissed Angel- ica, who turned a cool, pink cheek for the caress, and strode out, leaving us together.
Angelica, linking her arm through mine, led the way into the living room and drew me down beside her on the comfortable couch. She crossed one pretty slippered foot over the other and leaned back against a blue cush- ion that set off her wonderful coloring to perfection.
"I received a letter yesterday from a friend of mine in California," she said, taking a letter from her belt, where it had been folded. "It's in an- swer to one I wrote asking about Mark Hamilton. She knew something about him, too, something I never dreamed cf ." There was almost triumph in her tone. She had effectually aroused my interest, and I sat up.
"Why should you try to find out things about Mr. Hamilton?" I asked coolly. "Surely, what he wants us to know he will tell us himself."
Angelica laughed scornfully, with a sidelong look at me from her strange eyes.
"Not this, dear Marcia," she cried. "It's the last thing he would tell us. Did you ever hear of a man's having two wives? Well, that's what your Mr. Hamilton has been trying to do.
You don't care to be number two, do you?"
"What are you saying?" I cried an- grily.
"Don't ruffle your feathers, Marcia, but just listen and thank your lucky stars you found out in time."
I sank back stupefied while she opened the letter and read it. Mark Hamilton had a wife in California whom, he had deserted. The writer had an intimate friend who had at- tended the wedding. That much I realized.
"But is she telling the truth?" I urged, desperately, my lovely castle falling about my head in ruins.
"She has no reason to lie, for she doesn't know why I enquired. She was awfully surprised to find out that he was here because they had not known where he was for over three years. Now, Marcia, brace up. Don't let any one see that you care, but if I were you, I'd cut him dead. I'd never speak to him again." She looked eag- erly at me.
"I can't believe it," I muttered, standing up and vaguely putting my hand to my head, which ached dully.
"It's true, girl," cried Angelica an- grily. "You were a little fool to fall in love with him, but then, all women do it," she added bitterly.
Then suddenly I knew her secret.
"You love him yourself!" I cried; "you, Howard's wife. How do I know that you are telling me the truth?"
She did not deny my accusation, but threw the letter at me.
"Read it yourself, if you think I did not read it correctly,'" she cried, and swept from the room, leaving me with the letter in my hand.
It was as she had said, and I was forced to believe it at last. Throwing the letter down, I went to my room and buried my face in the pillows of my bed. I burned from head to foot with shame. I would show Mark Ham- ilton that he could not make a fool of me. Presently pride came to my aid, and I rose, bathed my face and went in search of Angelica, whom I found in the porch swing.
LOVE AND THE RAID
341
"Angelica, I am sorry I spoke to ycu as I did," I said. "Please forgive me and think no more of it. As for Mr. Hamilton, he is nothing to me, and I am grateful to you for finding out about him before — before it was too late."
Angelica made room for me to sit beside her in the swing, scarcely glan- cing up from the elaborate centerpiece she was embroidering.
"We are all apt to say things we re- gret when we are angry," she said, calmly. "As for Mark Hamilton, ig- nore him. He'll soon take the hint and stay away."
Mark came the very next day, and I heard Angelica coolly tell him that I had a headache and could not see him. The day after that he went with a carload of cattle to San Antonio and was gone a week. When he returned he came to see me again, but I had seen him down the trail and scribbled a hasty note which I gave to Angelica to give to him. I merely told him that I did not care to see him any more, and that he probably would not have to search long to find my reason. The murmur of their voices reached me where I stood with clenched hands in the middle of my room, but presently he was gone. My heart seemed dead and cold within me like a lump of ice; but a deep resentment took the place of all other feeling when I thought of Mark Hamilton.
The winter slowly passed and spring came. Still I taught in the little white school-house and had only seen Mark once. I passed him on the street with- out recognition, my head held high. He had paused as if to speak to me, but seeing my manner, he passed me with a head held as high as my own. How my truant heart beat ! I resolved to conquer the feeling if I died for it.
I was very lonely now. Every night I listened to the bugle blowing taps and wondered if we were as safe from the Mexicans as Howard seemed to think. One night — shall I ever forget it? — I was sitting as usual by my window, occupied with the sad thoughts that were becoming habitual
to me. I longed for my mother — for her ready sympathy, but she was gone from me now. I got up and took her little ivory miniature from its velvet case, gazing at it long and earnestly. Then I hung it on a nail by my dresser where I could always see it, and sat down again by my window.
Leaning my head on my arms, I gazed pensively out into the moon- light, across the river toward Mexico, then toward Mark's ranch farther down and almost on its bank. I wondered if he were as unhappy as I was. Some- how, I did not wish him ill.
A clock in the next room struck three, slowly and musically.
Suddenly I sat up. A horseman was crossing the river, and I strained my eyes to see what kind of person he was. Was he Mexican or American? I sprang to my feet.. There were others behind him, a whole string of them, riding apparently with caution. They reached the bank and made a dash for the camp. I heard shots and shouts, but waited to see no more, and rushing to Howard's room, pound- ed on the door with all my might.
"The Mexicans, Howard, the Mexi- cans!" I cried breathlessly. "Quick, they are surprising the camp!"
Howard sprang from bed, and in another moment he was beside me, rather sketchily dressed, cramming the loads into two revolvers. He gave one to me and the other to An- gelica, who by this time had come running from the bedroom, her face white with terror.
"They are burning the town!" she gasped. "The bank and the hotel are in flames."
Howard ran back to see. I heard him exclaim : "By Jove," and he came dashing back.
"Quick, help me barricade the door," he shouted. "Ten or twelve are headed right for this house, and we haven't a moment to lose."
He sprang to the big couch and bar- ricated the front door with it, putting the heavy library on top, and Angelica and I piled on chairs, books, anything we could find.
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"That will hold them a minute while we make a dash out the back door. Got your revolvers ? Don't hesitate to use them if you get a chance," he said. "I'll see you safe and come back." He seized Angelica's hand and we all dashed out of the back door and made for the barn a few yards away, bent almost double and keeping in the shadow to avoid detection.
We could hear the trampling of their horses' hoofs in the road in front of the house — they were on the porch. Now they began pounding on the door. We crept along like shadows or In- dians until we reached the dry creek- bed behind the barn, its banks high enough to conceal a man walking up- right.
All of a sudden I stopped. My mother's miniature! I had left it be- hind and the bandits would take it. They should not have it — I would die first. What sacrilege for their blood- stained hands even to touch it!
Howard turned around.
"Come along, Marcia, you're almost safe. See that clump of cotton-woods — you and Angelica can hide there while I go back and get a shot at the devils."
But I was running back toward the house as fast as I could. I could hear the Mexicans talking excitedly on the front porch, but it evidently had not occurred to them to try the back door, or else they were having some kind of an altercation. I had no time' to wonder at them, but ran across to the door, and leaving it open behind me, sped to my room and snatched my treasure from its nail.
The blows on the door recom- menced, and just as I, with my heart in my mouth, was flying toward the dining room door, a panel splintered. I was seen! My heart stopped beat- ing, but I made a dash for the back door and ran into a tall man in a som- brero with a bandana handkerchief knotted around his neck. Without a word he caught me in his arms and ran out of the door and toward the barn.
I struggled desperately, but stopped
abruptly when Mark's voice said:
"Be quiet, Marcia, if you want to save your life. My car is back here." Then I insisted on using my feet, and we had almost reached the friendly shelter of the barn when the bandits came swarming around the house and saw us ! Mark turned and faced them, revolver in hand.
"Hurry, Marcia, start the car, and I'll hold them at bay," he cried.
In an instant I was in the little car and had run it across the bridge which spanned the dry gully just behind the barn. I stopped and Mark backed to- ward me, firing all the time. Once I turned and fired my revolver at a hor- rid dark man who was creeping upon Mark from the side. Suddenly Mark made a dash and was beside me. The bullets spattered around us like hail, falling with little vicious spurts to right and left. One of them hit the back of the car, but luckily none of them hit our tires or us.
"I got one that time," I heard Mark cry triumphantly, but I hadn't time to look. Then something hit my left arm, and a great pain made me cry out. One of the shots had found a mark, at least. I set my teeth and increased the speed, and soon we were out of range and whizzing over the road toward the north at a pace that exceeded all the speed limits I had ever heard of.
Then in the gray dawn when the ter- rible tension was relaxed and we were out of danger, everything turned black before me, my hand fell from the wheel and I fainted.
I struggled back to consciousness at last, through a black fog, and lay for a moment with my eyes closed. Then I realized that the car had stopped and that I was in Mark's arms. I felt his breath on my cheek, and then — he kissed me.
That brought back my recollection effectively, and I struggled away from him and sat up.
"Don't touch me. How dare you?" I cried, angry at myself and him. I realized that my arm throbbed and beat with pain and vaguely felt- it
COMPENSATION
343
with my hand. It was neatly ban- daged with Mark's handkerchief. I glanced up and met his eyes looking miserably at me from his white face, thinner and more gaunt than I had ever seen it before.
"What has changed you, Marcia?" he asked. "I felt once that you were almost won, but now, apparently with no reason, you seem to hate me. What have I done, dear? Tell me, and I will do all I can to atone."
"You know very well. What I can't understand is how you dare to speak to me, knowing that you have a wife in California."
My voice trembled, and I could hardly restrain the tears that threaten- ed to fall and cover me with disgrace.
"A wife in California!" His voice held stupefied amazement.
"Yes," I cried. "Angelica received a letter from a woman in Midvale who knew all about it. No doubt you thought no one would ever know it here."
Mark took off his hat, the big Mexi- can sombrero, and ran his fingers in a puzzled manner through his thick brown hair, the hair that I had often longed to touch. I caught my breath in a sob. With a sudden movement he drew my head to his breast. His face was against my hair.
"Don't hate me just yet, little girl," he whispered; "I'm not married, never have been and never shall be except to you, sweetheart, if you will have me.
I raised my head and looking into his eyes I knew he spoke the truth.
"But that letter?" I faltered.
"It was not about me. Don't you remember that I told you that I have a brother in California!? Well, he married a girl and six months later deserted her. That's the reason I have never spoken of him. He's liv- ing with another woman in Sacra- mento, and his wife'has a divorce. Do you believe me, sweetheart?"
He bent and kissed me, and this time I did not protest.
"Did you ever love any one before, Mark," I asked, thinking of Angelica.
He smiled. "I never loved any one but you, Marcia. You are the first, last and only one, dear."
Then we turned the car around and started back.
Mark and I were married soon af- ter that, so I am writing this on the big porch of his little white ranch house. I am wonderfully happy, but I often puzzle over one question to which I can never find an answer. Had Angelica loved Mark or not? Mark apparently neither knows nor cares.
COMPENSATION
This wild, bitter pain than the thing that men call
The best, the truest, the highest of all
That life can give ? Is this what they prize,
Permission to suffer, to agonize ?
To yearn for a voice, to look for a face,
To stretch aching arms and clasp empty space?
To count life the same have you friends or have none,
But miss with a madness of longing just one,
Only one ! Is it worth it, I say,
This torture called Love? Yes! We made up to-day!
Lannie Haynes Martin.
The Story of the /Miracle
Told in California
By Otto von Geldern
(All rights reserved.) (Continued from last month)
(SYNOPSIS — A number of prominent characters in the old pioneer town of Sonoma, Northern California, drop into the hotel's cheerful gathering room, during the evening hours, and swap tales, experiences and all that goes to make entertaining conversation. The subject of miracles starts a discussion, joined in by the old Spanish padre, lovingly christened Father Sunday. The judge, or Jux, as he was nicknamed by his cronies, begins a story based on a recent dream, in which a supposed miracle was wrought. He dreamed that he had died, and that his soul wandered in space, visiting celestial palaces, hearing rhythmic harmonies and scenes of soul-stirring splendor, grandeur and beauty. He visited the Palace of God, where all spoke in whispers, but none there had seen Him. He failed to find his name in the record of the dead. Later he was conducted to the Realm of Satan. His satanic majesty entertains Jux in his library, where he shows himself to be an astute philosopher of negation. No trace of Jux' record on earth is found in hell. Thereupon the archangel Gabriel is sent from celestial headquarters to adjust the difficulty with Satan. A discussion arises between the two as to the just disposal of this soul. Not finding any clause in the corpus juris of the other world appli- cable to this case, Satan suggests to Gabriel that they shake the dice for the possession of this unfortunate soul. Reluctantly, Gabriel agrees to one throw of three dice, the highest number of points to decide. Satan has the first throw and shakes eighteen; Gabriel follows him and throws nineteen. That is the Miracle, and the soul is saved. Father Sunday is asked to give his version of a Miracle, and he agrees to do so. He tells his friends that God is not only the Light, but that God is Love — the great sacrificing Love of the Universe. His miracles surround us everywhere, and they are wrought for the benefit of His creatures on every day of their lives. To prove to his friends that it is possible to throw nineteen with three dice, Father Sunday tells them the Tale of Ancient Rome.
Chapjer IV.
A Tale of Ancient Rome.
I AM going to take you back to the time of Nero, eighteen hundred years ago, when this tyrant held sway as the fourth emperor of the great Roman empire.
"History depicts him as the most cruel, revengeful, remorseless and lecherous of men; one who knew nei- ther scruple nor hesitation in consider-
ing any crime, no matter how revolt- ing, to gain an ambitious end or to satisfy a foul desire. It is difficult to believe that such blood-thirsty demons in human shape ever existed, but there is no reason to doubt that this man combined within his nature all the vices that accompany cruelty, treach- ery and lust.
"The great lesson taught by the life of such a character is this, that when- ever power and authority are placed
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345
into weak hands, and wherever weak minds govern, the catastrophe is in- evitable; and the greater the authority the more calamitous will be the re- sulting upheaval.
"But even in a case like that of Nero, we should not be too hasty in our condemnation. He was a mere boy when the purple of imperial power was cast upon him by elements ready to make him what he readily be- came, because he was unripe to form opinions of his own. He was the result of a cruel system which fostered the aggrandization of a large faction or clique of idlers and iniquitous seekers after wealth and carnal pleasures to the exclusion of everything else.
"Rome had seen the beginning of its end, although it continued its ex- istence for three more centuries. Pow- erful as it had been, this mighty mis- tress of the world was slowly begin- ning to crumble before that greater power of which I have spoken to you. Remember, my friends, that this power of love is certain to rule the world in the end in spite of all the ty- rants that were ever born of woman.
"A lowly Nazarene had brought these glad tidings, which were her- alded by the star of Bethlehem on the holy night, and this humble and mighty messenger was ignominiously put to death by the Romans thirty-two years before the events took place that I am now narrating.
"A holy structure built of ethics, morality and faith had been founded or a solid rock, an edifice which stands to-day as firmly as ever. The vicissi- tudes of centuries and the calumnies heaped upon it by its innumerable enemies have not been able to shake a single stone from its foundation.
"The golden seed having been put into the earth, the plant grew. It was nourished with floods of tears and with the most precious blood — and it had to grow. Those in sorrow and in perplexity turned to it and plucked from it the blossom of hope. And so there were many followers. But there was at that time only a handful, com- paratively speaking, who had the te-
merity to acknowledge the authority of the church and to seek its teachings in the open. You have been taught in your history how those who dared to do so were persecuted, tortured and killed.
"Horrible methods of death were in- vented by the tyrant and his syco- phants for these early martyrs who were willing and ready to lay "down their lives for their faith.
"Lions devoured them; racks and pinions distorted their writhing bod- ies. Men and women were turned into living torches to shed light on still other excruciating cruelties too hor- rible to relate.
"But the demons were reckoning without the host. Christianity is not a weed to be stamped out, but a vigor- ous tree, spreading new limbs and branches with tender blossoms, in spite of all the cruel efforts to extermi- nate it. It appealed to many and many who were sorrow-laden and full of trouble, and those who joined the humble band of the lowly were not only from the common people, or the uncultured who had suffered most, but not infrequently from the very ranks of the noblest of Roman aristocracy.
"Many of these young noblemen were put to death, for no mercy was shown to those who abetted these ac- cursed fishmongers, as they were called, because they recognized each other by the ridiculous symbol of a fish.
"There was one, however, for whom the cruel monster Nero had a fond af- fection, one whom he had sought out time and time again in order to shower his royal favors upon him.
"Do not think this strange, for in- consistent fancies are not rare in this world so full of inexplicable motives. Even in a tyrant an extreme of violent hate may alternate at times with an extreme of equally strong affection.
"The name of this young aristocrat was Auriga, and he was known as the most noble chariot racer of the Circus Maximus.
"Physically perfect, it was a pleas- ure to behold him. He was brave, he
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was daring, he was intelligent. His called guilt established beyond denial,
manners were courteous, amiable and gave a great delight to many who knew
elegant, for he had been drilled in a him and who had been dependent up-
school where politeness and faultless on his generosity for years, and for
behavior were considered the prime the following reason :
necessities of a young noble. "Those in high favor of the mighty
"A change of heart had come over have many enemies. Let the tide of
him. Perhaps the sensual court life fortune turn, and the men and women
and the voluptuous idleness of the who were at one time oversmooth and
daily routine had satiated this youth profuse in their flattery, will face
to the fill. He probably realized, as about very readily and malign and
all stronger characters will, that a life slander with the same avidity with
without a content is not worth living, which they fawned before,
and that there must be an end to the "Perhaps I ought not to say this to
round of profligacy, if one spark of you, for the reason that we should be
manhood is to remain in the human ever ready to look for some condona-
breast. tion even in those who do us evil; but
"I am not going to repeat to you the it is human nature to take the part of
story of the last days of Pompeii, for the one who is suffering; in this case
you are all familiar with it and have the one who, reaching the brink of a
wept over its pages, but I want to precipice, is pushed over into the
say to you, that in this case, too, abyss by an old friend of his days of
the love of a pure woman, the plenty.
noblest of passions, conquered within "This is symbolized by the Judas him all desire for wealth, power and kiss of betrayal, and it would show, a worldly achievement, and when the weakness of character to attempt to crisis came, this young man, Auriga, condone such treachery, the favorite of Nero, became a fol- "This great evil is the product of a lower of the lowly, for the sake of the frivolous world falsely devoted to car- Christian maiden Senoiande, for whom nality and pleasure; those who seek its he cherished a pure and unselfish af- preferment are scaling a ladder. The fection. lucky ones on the upper rounds will
"Clandestinely his visits were made step deliberately on the fingers of to the hidden places of worship, to the others clinging to a lower rung, re- secret alleys and by-ways, and even gardless of the pain they may inflict; to the fornices, the abodes of the and the greedy ones below, if they pos- fallen. The golden truth had to be sess a grip of sufficient strength, will sought by the devout within the char- snatch away a predecessor and hurl nel vaults of the city and in the very him to the bottom. If he break his midst of its defilement and contami- neck, what of it? It is all in the race, nation. in the race for worldly ambition.
"But the spies of the emperor dis- "Slay him! that is the cry. Destroy
covered them in the end, and many a him — that means, take from him thy
community of these harmless and ear- favors and bestow them upon us who
nest worshipers was brought before are so much more worthy of them. This
the blood-stained tribunal to be con- ingrate failed you. We knew that he
demned to the torments of the most would, and did we not tell you so ?
agonizing death. And in one of these "And such was the natural outcome
secret places of hiding, where an al- in this case. The climbers were fully
tar had been raised to the glory of the prepared to pull Auriga out of their
Unseen, amidst environments unclean, way and they were successful. When
they found Auriga, the young noble, Nero heard through his vile mouth-
the best-beloved of Nero. pieces that his friend had been found
"To find him there in this forbidden a worshiper among those whom he
company, with the proof of his so- detested more than his blackest slaves
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347
his wrath was unbounded.
" 'Auriga, the noble of Rome ! Im- possible!' he cried, his face distorted with rage and his body in a horror- foreboding attitude.
" 'What base ingratitude has been returned for all my imperial favors so willingly granted to one whom I loved better than a brother. My court seemed empty and joyless to me when he was absent, and when he came his smiles and genial bearing filled me with unreserved delight'
" 'And while I grieved his absence in melancholy verse expressive of my longing for him, he preferred the fav- ors of a Christian wench to those of Rome, the mistress of the world !'
"Dire vengeance occupied his fero- cious mind. He swore that he would exterminate the whole accursed Christ- ian race; that he would search for the last one of these whimpering, moan- ing, sniveling vipers, and if it should take the light of burning Rome to find him. The vermin were to be crushed forever by his imperial heel. His fe- rocity had been goaded to the highest degree of intensity and it knew no bounds.
"I will leave a scene of this kind to your own imagination, to picture it to yourselves as vividly as you may wish, because it is difficult for me to give you an adequate description of a tyrant mad in his fury. My early edu- cation has not been conducive toward perfecting me in drawing mental pic- tures of horror and depravity.
"I will pass over all these details very quickly and take up at once the outcome of Nero's rage.
" 'Auriga is to die. He is to be slowly tortured to death before the eyes of Senoiande, who is to be a wit- ness to the pangs and the pains of her lover from the beginning of his agony to his last breath. To her, however, a punishment worse than death has been dictated by imperial decree. She is to become a slave of the lowest order of slaves, an inmate of the fornix, of the vault that contains living death in its most repulsive form.
"When Auriga was informed of the
decision of the tribunal he was over- come with grief. Not that he feared death with all its tortures, for will- ingly would he lay down his life to save that of Senoiande, but the cruel decree made death to her more prefer- able than life.
"In all perplexities we begin to think intensely; that is, we search with the light of hope, be it ever so stunted and flickering, for some method by which we may avoid or overcome the threatening avalanche.
"Auriga in his confinement gave himself to such thought, and the end of all his deliberation was one conclu- sion. An audience with Nero, that was it. He would plead to him, not for his life but for her death. He would humiliate himself before the ty- rant to seek a favor. He had never sought one before ; favors were always granted to him before he asked them. But now he would ask the only one; he would beg of Nero to let Auriga and Senoiande die together.
"He still possessed gold. This is a very peculiar metal. It not only shapes itself readily into trinkets and ornaments, but it also lends itself to making useful articles. For instance, it makes the best kind of a key. A little thin key of gold will fit any lock, and doors will open to this instrument even though they be rodded with steel bars as thick as an arm. It is a very precious metal this yellow gold. It required thirty pieces of silver to be- tray the Redeemer; one small piece of gold would have done the same thing.
"Understand me, my friends; I do not wish to imply that in the hands of the righteous gold may not be a pre- cious metal, indeed; it may become a medium of great good and carry bless- ings to those who give it and to those who accept it. It depends entirely on the spirit in which it is offered and on the mental attitude of those who are willing to take it.
"Auriga's gold paved the way to Nero's court. He accomplished that v/hich he desired, to be permitted to speak once more to his august master, his one-time imperial companion, and
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to bid him farewell forever.
"Nero would not deny him this last request. He had just lost Burrhus, one who had been very close to him also, and this death somewhat relaxed the temper of his hardened soul.
"Let him humble himself before me ; it will give me the gratification of seeing him crouch and lick the dust, and of hearing him beg miserably for a life that I would have been willing to shelter with my own body, had the occasion arisen. Thus Nero.
"And so it came to pass that Auriga was permitted to enter, for the last time, the court of the mighty ruler of the Roman empire.
"It visibly affected Nero, the cruel fiend, to see before him and at his feet the former companion of his pleasures. The love he had borne him for so long had not been entirely obliterated even by this act which Nero, from his view- point, considered the blackest of trea- cheries.
"Then came Auriga's passionate plea for her. He made no attempt to shield himself. In a fervent state- ment he declared openly his faith in the suffering Nazarene, whose teach- ings of love had softened the atrophy of his heart; and he told the Emperor and his court that he had found at last the great spiritual stimulus for which his soul had thirsted during many years of frivolity, until this change came upon him as a divine revelation. He admitted his affection for Senoi- ande, whom he loved more than all else on earth; more than his people, more than his life and more than his Cae- sar.
" 'Her God is my God, and whither she goeth I shall go, if thou, O, Nero, wilt not hold her from me.'
"He called back to mind, with tears choking his voice, their friendship of the olden days, when Nero, himself a boy, cherished a tender and pure af- fection, and he built upon this the hope that the emperor would grant him the only favor ever asked, the one last wish — to let them die together.
"The court was silent and in deep thought. The culprit had pleaded —
not for his life, but for the death of a person as insignificant as a house fly, a female, who under any other circum- stance or condition would have met this fate, anyway.
"Generosity was never more easily purchasable than by granting the de- mand of this pleading idiot, who asked as a favor what both deserved as a punishment. Let him have her and let them cross the Stygean river to- gether. Lamenting misery loves com- pany ; away with them to the Tartarus. Grant them their wish in thy great humanity, noble Nero!
"Nero, unlike himself, sat upon his seat of state resembling a statue. If emotions filled his stone heart at that moment, his features gave no indica- tion of them. His ugly, cruel face re- mained immobile and his glassy stare was riveted to a distant point; his flabby cheeks were deathly pale and his lips compressed.
"At last he spoke, but the tone of his voice did not betoken a spark of sym- pathy. It was as icy as his exterior. His words were as cruel javelins hurled to inflict pain.
"What he said was that this con- spirator had betrayed his state. His crime had been weighed in a balance by a duly constituted tribunal ; he had been found guilty of sedition and the death sentence had been imposed upon him. All had been regular and the incident ended.
"The case of this traitor did not concern the girl; her life was not in jeopardy; may she live — within her proper environment — for all eternity.
"Now came this fallen noble and asked that she die with him, and — under the laws of Rome — that cannot be.
"After being silent for some time, Nero spoke again and said — and he said it slowly and deliberately, as if in deep thought:
" 'But it is my imperial prerogative to recognize this case from another point of view and that is — that both may live.'
" 'Thus have I cogitated : it lies within my power to let him die or to
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349
let him live, and neither mental incli- nation hath as yet obtained the mastery over the other. I shall therefore abide by the deed of chance to make a de- cision that I, myself, feel unprepared to render.'
"Those of the court who witnessed this strange behavior of their emperor felt intuitively that it would be dan- gerous to dwell on this subject any longer, or to suggest discussion, and so they silently acquiesced.
"And thus it all came to pass. Au- riga is to consider his person a stake to be gambled for; he is to raffle for his life, with whom? with the man who executes the sentences of death, as an antagonist.
"If he v/in back his life — this gift of God which is held so cheaply — he may share it with the Christian girl under one condition, that both leave Rome for foreign lands forever. If he lose, his life is forfeited to the State, and the tribunal's sentence is to be exe- cuted in all its diabolical cruelty." . .
"It has taken some time, my dear friends, to get to the point of my story, and I crave pardon for wearying you, but it seemed necessary to me, in or- der to make the lesson an attractive one, to dwell briefly on the characters involved, and also on their environ- ment, which may have been incorrect- ly drawn because of my lack of knowl- edge in historical detail.
"I shall rely somewhat on my own imagination in describing to you a method of casting dice in Rome as a state function to which the public had access. The cubes then in use were much larger than those in the custody of the keeper of the inn dedicated to the antlers of the elk, but in all other respects they were the same."
Jux smiled significantly.
"They were put into an urn, which was agitated for a few moments, and were then spilled from above into a masonry pit, some ten feet deep and six feet in diameter, on the stone floor of which they rolled about until they came to rest. The result was read from the upper edge of the pit, which was encircled by a highly ornamented
stone railing.
"The same plan of procedure was followed in this case that you have so interestingly described, Jux, in the story of your Satanic friend. The pre- rogative of the first throw was held by the state official, and it was agreed that the highest number of points shaken at one single cast of three dice should decide the question of the life or the death of a human being.
"The events preceding the ominous day of this trial by chance are unneces- sary to this narrative.
"Auriga's heart was filled with joy- ous hope, and his prayers, combined with those of the pure maiden Senoi- ande, were fervent and frequent.
" 'God help Thy humble servants so that they may be permitted to continue to labor in Thy field; to bring Thy heavenly balsam to bleeding wounds and Thy manna to those who are hun- gry of soul. But let Thy will be done. If death is to be the sequel, then give us strength and fortitude to meet it for Thine own sake, and take us to Thy heavenly garden and plant these wilted flowers in Thy field of eternal peace.'
"The sombre day arrived and the solemn hour brought the participants to the pit that yawned upon them like an open sepulchre.
"Many of the morbid had gathered there to witness this struggle between a fair youth on one side and horrible, grinning death on the other. It prom- ised an interesting excitement.
"There were few preliminaries. The chief executioner of the tribunal's de- cisions prepared the dice for the first throw. They were placed within the urn, and after rattling them about, he cast them to the floor below. They rolled about for a few moments and finally came to rest, each with its six uppermost — just as in your case, Jux — eighteen.
"The suspense depicted on the coun- tenance of the prisoner gave way to an expression of hopeless woe and despondency. The hope that had buoyed up his spirit left him for the moment, and he felt like one stunned
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and stricken to the earth. Defeat, tor- ture and the grave for him; and for her . . .
"The probability of casting the same number was so far removed from him that it seemed needless to make the effort. But while grief, prosternation and bitter disappointment were filling his heart, his soul was suddenly quick- ened by that implicit faith in an al- mighty power ; and the thought flashed upon him, kindled by a new spark of hope: — the same throw and we will try again — to win.
"The dice, having been recovered, were replaced within the urn which was handed to Auriga. He held it to his heart for one brief moment, and with a fervent prayer he threw the dice violently into the pit below.
"And here happened the great mir- acle.
"Two of the dice rolled about the stone floor and came to rest with their sixes uppermost; the third one, by rea- son of the violence with which they had been thrown, was cleft in twain, in such wise as to leave a six and a one, and these two numbers now set- tled themselves into position along- side of the two sixes already lying there. So that there were in reality nineteen, three sixes and a one.
"When this remarkable coincidence, as it was called, was brought to Nero's ears, it must have softened his stone heart for the moment. He said stern- ly : 'Auriga hath won. Nero is beaten.'
"Now, my good friends, you will probably adhere strictly to your view of such things, and you will call an occurrence of this kind a coincidence, but I shall cling to my belief in a di- vine intercession, and I want to im- press upon your minds this great les- son: that if it be God's wish to have recourse to a miracle, it lies within His power to do so without violating a single law of nature about which you are always concerning yourselves so seriously and know so little. These laws are His laws and He will not break them; on the contrary, He will substantiate them by the numerous miracles wrought in His infinite wis-
dom on every day of our lives for the benefit of His children whom He loves.
"And as for you, my dear friends, keep a clean and sane mind in a clean and healthy body, and — leave the rest to Him."
•S* *i» *l» 5p
After Father Dimanche had com- pleted his narrative there was neither applause nor visible sign of approba- tion, but a long silence indicated that the story, which he had drawn extem- poraneously from his imagination, had not failed in impressing his hearers.
No one laughed; the frame of mind at the moment appeared not to be pro- pitious to boisterous humor.
The Father laughingly broke the stillness himself by saying :
"Now, landlord, after this long story of mine with which I have afflicted our friends, I, too, would like something to refresh my parched palate. A glass of your renowned Burgundy will find within me a most thankful apprecia- tion.
"Come, Dry-dock, let us enjoy a glass of wet wine ; your dry wines sug- gest to me the barrenness of a desert without an oasis.
"And why so silent, my friends? What is the matter with you, friend Naphtali; have you taken cold? Your eyes appear to be running."
The astute Naphtali replied, with a pronounced disappointment in his tone, and accompanying his remarks by cer- tain inimitable gesticulations peculiar to his own :
"I taught I vould learn about mir- acles someting; but I vont to tell you, Fadder Sunday, dot I am shust as wise before as I vas now."
That broke the lull, and all seemed to desire to talk at once; finally, they separated into groups of three or four, seating themselves around small tables to indulge in an individual dis- cussion of the evening's entertainment which had given them so much food for thought.
Later on, Jux complimented Father Sunday, and in the name of the assem- bled citizens of the free State of Cali-
THE STORY OF THE MIRACLE
351
fornia, he thanked him for his kind- ness and for his interest in their daily affairs. He admitted gracefully that in this particular argument he had been worsted.
"But, there is one thing I want you to tell me, Father Sunday, and that is this : where did you ever learn so much about dice as to know that the six and the one are immediately opposite to one another? Even my rather intri- cate technical knowledge of the vari- ous apparatus of this kind, as depos- ited in the archives of the Elkhorn Sa- loon, never led me as deeply into de- tails as that."
"It shows you," answered the Father, "that I am not a dreamer."
The end of the evening's gathering had arrived, and the adjournment was general. A post-pioneer town was fast asleep at ten post meridiem. The "better halves" were at home and alone, and it was dangerous for the "lesser halves" to extend the absence from the respective nuclei of their do- mestic felicities beyond a certain hour. On several occasions when this had happened, the more determined ones cf the post-pioneer wives appeared in person, under the leadership of the "equation of time," and like the wo- men of Weinsberg in 1140, took away their tardy treasures by some rather energetic muscularity.
And now the guests of the inn dis- persed, and it did not take them long to find the modest little homes that sheltered and protected their families. They walked through the lonesome streets, in groups at first and then alone, until one after another had dis- appeared.
But Jux, the dreamer, he remained out in the stillness of the night, alone with it in meditation, until sleep should take him to his abode later on.
It was then somewhat after ten Vclock on a cool, clear night in the early January, Anno Domini, 1867. There was no moon, but the sky was brilliant. The air was so clear that the heavens appeared to be ablaze with countless stars.
Look, gentle dreamer Jux, this dome
of sparkling resplendence covered an- cient Rome, with all these precious jewels in position as you see them now.
Let us gaze at it in wonderment, and let it inspire us all with its overpower- ing grandeur.
While Pegasus droops its wings be- hind the western mountain range, the roaring Lyon is slowly appearing in the east. The northern heavens are somewhat obscured by a range of low hills on which the forefathers of the hamlet sleep in hallowed earth. Look- ing in that direction and to the left, immediately over God's acre, there stands the symbol of California, the great Bear, emblazoned in lines of burning gold on the eternal sky.
And immediately opposite, how beautiful the southern canopy. On such a January night a diadem of the most brilliant jewels embraces like a mighty aureola a part of that glorious galaxy which is stunning to the senses in its expansive display of magnifi- cence.
Starting with Capella (the gem of Auriga), the eye seeks involuntarily the circular sweep downwards to Cas- tor and Pollux, to Procyon and to the great burning jewel Sirius; following the river Eridanus to Cetus the whale, the curve ascends through Aries to Perseus in the Milky Way. And with- in this embrasure shine out its deni- zens, the daughters of Atlas :
"The bashful, twinkling Pleiades Leading the weeping Hyades,"
while below, in all his majestic splen- dor blazons forth the great Orion, the gigantic huntsman, the son of Neptune. One look into the depth of such a sky, and the over-awed human mind will realize the insignificance of mortal man, and with deep emotion it will awaken to a solemn recognition of this fact: that, as in the smallest flowret that our feet may crush on earth below, so there above us in all its vastness, it lies, spread out for all eternity — the Miracle.
(The End.)
Sunk
By Ralph N. Varden
SHE WAS an old battleship whose day of power was long past. At the great naval review held to celebrate the sixtieth year of Queen Victoria's reign, you might have seen her in one of the proudest sta- tions of the Fleet ; but when the Great War broke out hers was the least of the Battle Squadrons, and she herself a neglected unit at the very tail of British Sea Power, almost ready for the ship-breaker's yard. War brought her to life again and to a glorious end. Being one of the ships concerned in the much discussed Test Mobilization of the Third Fleet which took the place of Naval Maneuvres in 1914, she was unusually ready when war broke out: full complement on board, guns' crews less rusty than usual, and showing a remarkable turn of speed for a lady of her years, though slow as a dray compared with her younger sisters. In company with others of her age and kind she made part of that strange squadron, a motley of ancient and modern, headed by the greatest ship in the world, which won renown at the Dardanelles. Written off by the cal- lous Lords Commissioners of the Ad- miralty as "of no military signifi- cance," she yet told her tale of shell- ing sound and fury to the Turkish en- emy in such a fashion as to make it signify some considerable damage to him, and to show that even the tail of our Sea Power had a good deal of nasty sting left in it.
One morning in May, 1915, she en- tered the Straits, the last of five bat- tleships in line ahead told off to sup- port an advance of the troops on shore. With their guns trained on the Euro- pean side they turned their backs, as it were, upon the Turkish batteries on the Asiatic shore, and when the latter began to bother them our ship was or- dered to take station somewhere off
Kum Kale and enfilade the Turkish po- sition with her 12-inch guns. Steadily ail day the booming of the guns sounded across the water and went echoing up the Hellespont: and, as if to prove that this was something more than Battle Practice at last, a spout of water would rise now and then not a cable's length ahead and others of the same round about. Rarely, and even then without great effect, did en- emy shells fall aboard; but they came near enough to keep the ship's com- pany awake and lively all day. In the soft evening light the guns of this enfilading ship looked like long gray pencils, but where the lead should have been there came ever and anon a red tongue that flashed and van- ished : and after the red tongue a great cloud: and after the cloud a voice of thunder: and far up the Asiatic shore the shell found its mark. Then sunset came and put an end to the noisy day's work; and the ship took her night sta- tion under the lea of the European shore, put out her torpedo netting anew like a great steel skirt, and lay awaiting the return of day. Darkness gathered about her with that sudden descent which surprises men from the north used to the long twilight of sum- mer, and long before midnight land and sea were lost to view under the heavy cloak of a black starless sky.
The officer of the watch, a Royal Naval Reserve lieutenant from the Orkneys, peered into the night and lis- tened to the low gurgle and murmur of the tide running strongly through the torpedo netting and making the ship swing slowly to her anchor. And as he listened an old Orcadian rhyme came into his head:
"Eynhallow frank, Eynhallow free, Eynhallow stands in the middle of the sea;
SUNK
353
With a roarin' roost on every side, Eynhallow stands in the middle of the tide."
So he stood : in the middle of an- other tide with a roarin' roost on every side, and a ship under his feet which seemed as firm as the Eynhallow rock itself. Little did he think that before dawn she would prove but a frail ref- uge. As little did he realize that the campaign on which he was engaged was but the latest link in a long chain of stirring events that had made the Hellespont famous from the most dis- tant times. Had he been of a reflec- tive turn of mind he might have con- jured up before him the whole match- less pageant of history that lies folded in those narrow waters : the Trojan scene : the oft-repeated passage of that great sea-river by conquerors from East and West: the glory of Byzan- tium and its decay: the prowess and cruelty of the Ottoman Turks : and all the lore of those waters on ancient memory. But he was a simple sea- man from the merchant service, drawn into the service of the King at war, and no such high historic thoughts came to distract him from the duties of his watch.
Presently he was joined by another officer who come up from below for a breath of night air. They talked to- gether for a while, recalling the inci- dents of the day's work, speculating upon the old theme of Ships vs. Forts, pitying the "poor devils ashore" who were never out of fire, and wondering when Achi Baba would fall. They talked "shop" because there was noth- ing else to talk about; and though the subjects never varied they never seemed to lose their zest. In every ward-room of the motley fleet assem- bled round the snout of the Gallipoli Peninsula, the same kind of talk might be heard, varied a little in each ship, and alwavs flavored with the expres- sive service slang so beloved and so little understood by the Gentlemen of the Press who accompanied them. The officer of the watch and his companion continued their conversation in low
tones for a while, and then stood for a moment silent. With a "Good night: I'm going to turn in," the latter had set his foot on the topmost rail of the steel ladder and was about to descend when 2 sudden exclamation arrested him. He turned.
"What's that?" said the officer of the watch in a sharp whisper.
"Where?"
"Over there," he pointed to the shore on the port side.
"I can't see a thing."
They strained their eyes, peering out into the night. They listened in- tently, but heard nothing except the murmuring tide now sounding its eerie accompaniment to the inaudible move- ment out of sight. They strained their ears; but neither sight nor hear- ing but some other uncanny sense was awake in them hinting of something about to happen.
The officer of the watch spoke again :
"I can't see a thing and I can't hear anything; but I swear there's some- thing moving out there." He pointed again to the European shore.
"Troops, perhaps?"
"Can't be; we'd have been warned."
They waited again in silence. How long they stood tense, neither could afterwards say: each second was a long agony of suspense. The eddying tide whispered and bubbled beneath them. A faint stirring of the night air caressed their faces. But to their anxious questions no answer came. In the deep shadow under the land there was a secret, holding life or death per- haps, a moving threat hidden in the night? But what it was? or whence? or why? they could not tell.
Suddenly the officer of the watch clutched his companion's arm.
"A destroyer. Look!"
Just where a gully dipped to the sea there was a patch where land and water met that was faintly luminous. It was not light: merely less black than the rest: but the contrast was enough to give the eye an impression of light. With bursting pulses the watch-keeper saw a long, low, black
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shape pass stealthily across the patch.
"Shall I challenge? It may be one of our 'Beagles' coming back from the Narrows. They went up towards Cha- nak, two of them, after dinner. I saw them."
"No; it can't be. They'd never come like that. You've had no signal from the Flagship?"
"No."
"Then it's der Tag for us, old man ! Keep your eye on him, and I'll tell the skipper. You'd better pass the word foi 'Action Stations' to the port bat- tery. We must be quick about it, and quiet; otherwise our number's up."
He went to rouse the captain. The officer of the watch made his prepara- tions, watched his orders being swiftly and almost noiselessly carried out, and turned again to peer through the dark- ness. Two minutes passed. He in- flated his "Gieve," and as he tucked away the tube, a faint splash was heard in the darkness away on the port-beam.
"God! A torpedo," he exclaimed.
He waited for the torpedo to strike — another long suspense: but within thirty seconds the splash was an- swered by a roar from the 4-inch port battery of his own ship. Tongues of flame leapt from the muzzles, lighting up the night, and the shells whistled to their all but invisible mark. But before they could fire another round, the torpedo struck. The ship quiv- ered, a tremor running through every plate and rivet: her stern shivered like the hind-quarters of a dog coming out of water. Then she was heaved upwards by some monstrous power beneath. A great spout of water rose, and a great flame leapt out of the ship's belly with a deafening roar, sending its licking tongues high in the midnight sky. And all this was sim- ultaneous: the quiver, the heave, the spout, and the flame were all blended in one vast, hot, terrifying chaos. A second explosion; followed, rending the ship to her very vitals. Guns, boats, men, all were flung into the air like leaves in a whirlwind: one of the steamboats was seen spinning like a
blazing top a hundred feet up in the air. The great ship herself reeled over to port, hung awhile with her decks steep aslant, and then plunged with a terrible hiss and roar to the bottom. The spot where she had been was thick with men and debris, the awful flotsam of a torpedoed battleship now lit up by a searchlight's occasional gleam. The risk to other ships was too great at first to permit anything more than a momentary and fitful use of their welcome beams by the de- stroyers and auxiliary craft hastening to the rescue. Death might still lurk in the dark corners of the land on either side. And so, until the screen- ing patrols had swept the strait, a wholesome caution shrouded the life- saving operations in gloom. Even without the pall of darkness the night was eerie enough. The cries of the injured men suffering agonies in the ice cold water rang hideously through the still air; and though the work of rescue was well and quickly done as the picket boats and trawlers nosed their way about, death was too often too quick for them; and of those that lived, even with all the dispatch and skill of the rescuers, many a survivor suffered the tortures of the damned in a desperate struggle with the freezing cold and the still more freezing fear that in the confusion and darkness he would not be picked up.
Two hours later the last search-light had swept the eddying surface, the last picket boat had returned. The sudden danger had passed, leaving a wreck in its track; and the
"Waters of Asia, westward beating
waves Of estuaries, and mountain-warded
straits, Whose solitary beaches long had lost The ashen glimmer of the dying day, Listened in darkness to their own lone
sound Moving about the shores of sleep . ."
II
The following evening four officers sat at a bridge table in the deck smoking room of an auxiliary lying
SUNK 355
in Mudros harbor. A burly merchant wore the tweeds of a war correspond-
captain, wearing the woven stripes of ent, who had doubtless exacted "copy"
a lieutenant commander in the R. N. R. as interest on the loan of his clothes;
— the "tea-cosy" decoration, as a face- and the rest of them, in various ways,
tious merchant skipper once called it; completed the picture of incongruity,
his chief engineer, a good Scot, in But for all that they had passed
great demand all over the harbor for through one of the greatest ordeals of
his inexhaustible stock of yarns; a war, they showed but little sign of
lieutenant commander, R. N., rescued strain or fatigue, and only asked whe-
ten days before from a torpedoed bat- ther they might have something to
tleship, and now awaiting "disposal"; smoke and whether they could write
and a King's messenger in the uniform home. Their needs were supplied ;
of the Volunteer Reserve — as well- and the skipper repeated his question :
mixed a foursome as ever played a "Come on and tell us what it's like
hand. The call of war had brought being torpedoed."
them together from their vocations of "It's always the same," broke in the
peace and had dumped them tempor- lieutenant-commander at the card-
arily in the good ship Fauvette, which table. "A frightful din : and a bit of
was wont in happier times to ply a a shake an' a heave, and then you're
busy trade between London and Bor- in the water. Your 'Gieve' does the
deaux. They had hardly dealt the rest. That's all there is to it."
cards for a second game when a "/ wish to God it was," said a new
movement on deck disturbed them, hollow voice at the door. "I was on
and before they could rise to ascertain watch when the damned thing struck
the cause a troupe of strangely clad us, and I was in the water among the
youngsters appeared at the door. bodies for a hell of a time ; and if that's
"May we come in, sir?" said one of all you know when your packet sank, them, who was, in sober truth, a "thing you're lucky. Damned lucky!" he re- ef shreds and patches." peated slowly in a dull voice.
"Make yourselves at home, boys," The figure in the doorway was at
said the skipper, waving a chubby once familiar and strange, like that of a
hand round the room. strong man grown suddenly wizened.
A signal man entered with his pad, He was visibly shrunken; and as he
and handed it to the skipper. walked unsteadily across the room and
"Gad! Of course," he cried, "you sat down on a swivel seat, he talked are the stowaways we've been expect- continuously but almost incoherently, ing all day. Well, what's it like be- half to himself and half to the watch- ing torpedoed?" ing group. The contrast between him
There was silence. None of these and the unscathed midshipmen was
midshipmen was adept at public very strong and unexpected. He and
speech in the presence of unknown they had come from the same ship,
superiors. So for the moment the passed through the same night of alarm
skipper's question remained unan- and been hauled out of the same cold
swered. As they settled in a group in waters by the same rescuing hands,
the corner of the smoking room they The experience had set no mark upon
presented a fine study in motley. Every the boys : yet in the grown man it had
stitch on their backs had been bor- wrought such a sea-change as made one
rowed from willing lenders. One wad- almost fear to look at him. His tanned
died in the blue overalls of a benevo- cheeks were still brown, but it was a
lent but too burly friend; another bloodless tint; and the lines that
looked like an example of record pro- seamed his face gave him a sepulchral
motion, for there were three gold look. His eyes alone were bright — too
stripes half concealed under the fold- bright. The softer quality that makes
ed cuff of a sleeve that was a hand's- the human eye so expressive was gone,
length too long for the wearer; a third and there remained a vivid stare as
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
of eyes straining to see the invisible. There he was, in our company, but cer- tainly not of it; for his brain was work- ing and wandering whither we could not follow, and the words that came from his lips were the half-automatic expression of an absent mind. "Gimme a cig'ret," he said with the husky, slurred articulation of a drunken man: and he sat puffing and biting the end of it into pulp. Then he would grip the short arms of his seat, start up and look downwards between his knees, and then sit down again with a look of shamed annoyance. He was clearly struggling hard to get away from some- thing, and we were powerless to help him.
We tried to distract him. The stew- ard brought a tray loaded with sand- wiches and drinks, which he refused. We were getting a little uneasy about our strange guest; the doctor whom the skipper had sent for was long in coming, and each renewal of our ef- forts to divert the patient failed. We gave him the "Bystander" and "Punch" but he was beyond the reach of Bairns- father and George Morrow; we tried to draw him into a game at the table — poker, bridge, patience, anything — but he remained immovable.
At last the doctor, a thick set beard- ed Fleet Surgeon, came and took charge, and reversed our procedure. Where we had been gentle, almost timid, he was rough. Where we had coaxed, he ordered. Where we had fumbled and faltered with the unknown he acted with the confidence of experi- ence. After a rapid examination and cross-examination, in the course of which he drew more from his victim in five minutes than we had extracted in an hour and more, he hustled him be- low and packed him into a bunk with various aids to sleep which he did not specify. Then the Fleet Surgeon re- turned to the smoking room.
"You're a bright lot," he said : "why didn't you put him to bed at once ? He's absolutely done : but if he can sleep he will be all right soon. Never seen a man quite so worn out."
"Do you mean to say that he's only
tired? He looked like going off his chump."
"So would you if your nerves had been living on shocks without any solid support. What he went through has got such a hold on him that until he's had a good twenty-four hours' sleep as a preliminary and a course of feeding up and regular sleep without any work to do after that, he won't quite know where he is. But I bet he's sitting up and taking nourishment this time to- morrow. He was on the verge of be- ing a bad case, but we've caught him just in time."
The doctor was right. Our patient slept till midday next day, took a light meal and slept again till sunset. Then he awoke and dined; but in an hour he was asleep again. Clearly he had been put to bed at the psychological moment. By the following afternoon he was taking the air in a deck chair, and ready — perhaps a little too ready for his health — to talk about the sink- ing of his ship.
When the explosion occurred he was thrown clear of the ship on the star- board side. He was half-stunned, but his swimming waistcoat kept him afloat. The rest must be told in his own words :
"I don't know how long it was be- fore I realized where I was : but it was long enough to let me get pretty cold. You know what the water's like. I picked up two men close by me, still swimming, but pretty nearly done. Neither of them had belts on. One, I knew by his voice, was a ward room steward. They hung on to me for a while, the "Gieve" keeping us all afloat so long as we made a bit of an effort ourselves. We could hear the picket- boats going about, and sometimes a searchlight picked us up; but nothing came near enough to rescue us. And before long one of the fellows hanging on to me began to groan and his teeth chattered, I told him to keep moving : but it was no good. He slipped off, and I never saw him again. That was bad enough; but when the other fel- low's teeth began the same game, I got the creeps; but I couldn't save
IN THE REALM OF BOOKLAND
357
him, and after a few moments he went too.
It was a ghastly feeling. The sudden silence, and the cold creeping right into me made me want to give up too, when suddenly I thought I had touched bottom. I tried to walk, but the thing I touched slipped away, and I realized with a shudder what it was. And after that I swear I must have touched a dozen of them before I was picked up. That's what knocked me
out. But, I say, let's chuck it. I must get away from it."
He passed his hand over his face. The old troubled look came back: and for the moment I could see that, like Orestes pursued by the Furies, his spirit was haunted by the ghosts of the men whose bodies his feet had touched in the dark waters of the Hellespont. He had indeed suffered a sea change, and the war was over for him.
In the Realm of Bookland
"The Duality of the Bible," by Sidney C. Tapp, Ph. B.
In his latest book, "Duality of the Bible," Sidney Tapp, the Kansas City philosopher, has followed the lines of thought which individualized his pre- vious writings. During the years which he spent as a practicing attor- ney, the author became convinced that practically all crime, insanity, degener- acy and disease resulted directly or in- directly, from sex abuse, and origi- nated in the sex brain.
These observations, reinforced by further research, resulted in his series of books, of which "Duality of the Bible" is the fourth. The basis of the theory is that sex being the fundamen- tal principle of organic existence, the sex impulse is the parent of other im- pulses.
Man is considered as a dual nature or existence. Spirituality is non-sex- ual as opposed to carnality which is sexual. Love and charity are recog- nized as the products of spirituality, while the base passions, greed, envy and hate, are considered as being the offsprings of carnality or sexuality. Thus as spirituality increases the no- ble impulses increase in a like ratio, while carnality with its attendant evils decrease conversely.
"Duality of the Bible" is a book of many angles. In the manner of its presentation it is unique, radical, revo- lutionary. The author cannot hope for
its universal acceptance, neither need he fear its universal condemnation. To some it may appear as the asceticism of the early centuries of Christianity, to some as a work on sociology, to some as a treatise on metaphysics, to some merely as a morbid idea. The magnitude of the subject, its many ramifications, its endless possibilities, tend to controversy in an age in which scientific research and discussion are uncensored.
In submitting his book to the public the author says :
"The purpose of this book, and of my other books on the Bible, is to pro- duce a pure and clean race; to empty the insane asylums, hospitals and jails, to produce a stronger race physically and mentally, and a pure race spirit- ually. Christianity in its purity, as Christ taught it, will do this, and the purpose of my books is to educate the race in its purity."
While the thought is old, the man- ner in which the author has presented it is so unusual as to create interest. _ Sidney C. Tapp, International Bib- lical Society, Kansas City, Mo.
"The Pan-German Unmasked," by Andre Cheradame, with an Introduc- tion by the Earl of Cromer, O. M.
M. Cheradame is a diplomat of prac- tical experience, but he is chiefly known as one of the few far-sighted in- dividuals who have for many years
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OVERLAND MONTHLY.
foreseen and prophesied the German aggression and its consequences in the present stupendous war. His prophe- cies, reiterated at frequent periods in the past, have been fulfilled with un- canny precision in the events of the last two and a half years, and his "Pan- German Plot Unmasked," completed before the recent important occur- rences in the Balkans, forecasts with equal fidelity the German "peace trap," or the menace of "the drawn war," foreseen by him long before the recent proposals had emanated from Berlin, and which he regards as the most dangerous and sinister card in the hands of the Central Powers.
The book goes to the root of the whole matter, and exposes the basic causes and purposes of the German war of conquest — a catastrophe which has been slowly developing in accord- ance with certain very definite and in- exorable principles. The entire up- heaval is revealed as the logical fruit- age of the long and carefully prepared Pan-German plot for world dominion, and the author, who has made an al- most lifelong study of this phenome- non, shows us just what significance it has for the rest of the civilized world — including neutrals.
The central and almost indisputable contention granted, it is marvelous to note how all other problems fall into proper place. The book gives the key to the world-war — and at its touch all doors to a clear understanding of many perplexing issues are flung open as if by magic, and the distinct and common object of all the Allies, in its political, territorial and spiritual as- pects, is at once revealed.
$1.25 net. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.
and she wins the affections of both man and horse. She is the daughter of a man whose pride in his horses is almost greater than his love for her. She rides Wildfire in her father's race and beats his favorite. The stallion becomes the center and cause of hu- man loves, jealousies and crimes. The girl is kidnapped and a terrible fate is upon her when Wildfire, ridden by his captor, runs the greatest race of his life. Those dramatic scenes take place against the dramatic background of Colorado canyons.
Harper & Brothers, New York.
"An Adequate Diet," by Percy G. Stiles, Ph. D., Assistant Professor of Physiology, Harvard University.
A brisk survey of the eternal diet problem is furnished in succinct form. The author covers the field ranging from the instincts of animals in eat- ing to the gourmet dining in lavish freedom of taste. Somewhere across this field lies the diet that affords the best results to the average man, and the author endeavors to approximate this point through scientific study and practical experiment.
Harvard University Press, Cam- bridge.
Another of John Masefield's earlier works has just been republished. This is "Lost Endeavour," a stirring story of adventure, dealing with pirates and buccaneers and life on the seas in a day when an ocean trip was beset with all kinds of dangers and excitements. Those who have enjoyed "Captain Margaret" and "Multitude and Soli- tude" will find this tale equally exhil- arating.
"Wildfire," by Zane Grey.
Wildfire is a wild stallion which is finally captured by a man who has put his whole soul into the pursuit of this magnificent creature. A girl chances upon the spot where the captor lies wounded after his successful pursuit,
Parker in California.
Sir Gilbert Parker, whose novel, "The World for Sale," was published last autumn, has gone to California, where he expects to spend the rest of the winter, working on his next novel, which will appear serially in Harper's Magazine.
Please Mention Overland Monthly When Writing Advertisers
vil
If it hasn't thisRed Woven Label
MADE FOR THE
B.YD.
BEST RETAIL TRADE
(Trade Mark Reg. U.S. Pat. Off and Foreign Coxu
It isn't B.VD. Underwear
m
i \ Copun^itlXU9I7h/
**--,.„ J ThofiVXlCompuny
Form the habit of looking for the B. V. D. Label.
A summer of comfort is
worth a few seconds of time.
In our own modernly equipped Cotton Mills at Lexington, N. C. , the fabric from which these Loose Fitting B. V. D. Undergarments are made, is woven from specially selected cotton. This assures durability in wear and wash.
In our own B. V. D. Factories the garments are skilfully cut, evenly stitched and accurately finished — to fit and to be cool and comfortable all day.
B. V. D. Coat Cut Undershirts and knee length Drawers, 50 cents the garment. B. V. D. Closed Crotch Union Suits (Pat. U. S. A. )$1.0Q the Suit.
The B. V. D. Company, New York
i
CopurfofitUSAfiX-hj Tlie ilYDConipany
vlll Please Mention Overland Monthly When Writing Advertisers
UNSET OUTE
to the EAST
Most Romantic Railway Journey in jlmerica —
" Sunset Limited "
(No Extra Fare)
From San Francisco (Third St. Station) 5:00 P. M. Daily
Quickest Time to New Orleans
Via
Los Angeles, Tucson, El Paso, San Antonio and Houston
Compartment Drawing-Room Observation Car and Pullman Standard Sleepers to New Orleans
Through Pullman Tourist Sleeper to Washington, D. C.
The "Apache Trail"
Rail and Auto side trip, Maricopa to Bowie
via Phoenix, Roosevelt Dam and Globe
through "Oldest America"
THROUGH SLEEPER:
Globe to El Paso Sunday, Tuesday and Friday
Connects at New Orleans with trains to East- ern cities, also with Southern Pacific's splendid steamers to New York, sailing Wednesdays and Saturdays; and to Havana, Cuba, Saturdays.
Unexcelled Dining Car Service. Automatic Block Safety Signals
For Fares and Berths, Ask Agents
Southern Pacific
Write for Folder on the Jlpache Trail of Jlrizona
Please Mention Overland Monthly When Writing Advertisers
ix
Construction News Press Clippings
Contractors, Material Men, Builders, Manu- facturers, in fact, anybody interested in con- struction news of all kinds, obtain from our daily reports quick, reliable Information. Gur special correspondents all over the country enable us to give our patrons the news in advance of their competitors, and before it has become common property.
Let us know what you want, and we will send you samples and quote you prices.
Press clippings on any subject from all the leading current newspapers, magazines, trade and technical Journals of the United States and Canada. Public speakers, writ- ers, students, club women, can secure re- liable data for speeches, essays, debates, etc. Special facilities for serving trade and class Journals, railroads and large industrial cor- porations.
We read, through our staff of skilled readers, a more comprehensive and better selected list of publications than any other bureau.
We aim to give prompt and intelligent ser- vice at the lowest price consistent with good work.
Write us about it. Send stamp for book- let.
United States Press Clipping Bureau
Rand McNally Bldg.
CHICAGO, ILL-
THE
Paul Gerson
DRAMATIC SCHOOL
Incorporated Under the Laws of the State of California
The Largest Training School of Acting in America
The Only Dramatic School on the Pacific Coast
TENTH YEAR
Elocution, Oratory, Dramatic Art
Advantages: Professional Experience While Study- ing. Positions Secured for Graduates. Six Months Graduating Course. Stu- dents Can Enter Any Time.
Arrangements can be made with Mr. Gerson for Amateur and Professional Coaching
Paul Gerson Dramatic School Bldg.
McAllister and hyde street
San Francisco, Cal. Write for Catalogue.
A Perfect Complexion
Your social duties demand that you look your best at all times and that your appearance be in good taste. Ladies of Society for nearly three' quarters of a century have used
Gouraud's
15
Oriental Cream
to obtain the perfect complexion. It
purifies, protects and beautifies. The
ideal liquid face cream. Non-greasy.
Its use cannot
b e detected.
Use it on the,
hands. R«
moves all
discolorations.
Send 10c. for trial size
FERD. T. HOPKINS &S0N
S7 Great Jones St. New York City
The Real Estate Educator
By F. M. PAYNE
A book for hustling Real Estate "Boosters/ Promoters, Town builders, and everyone who owns, sells, rents or leases real estate of any kind.
Containing inside information not generally known. "Don'ts" in Real Estate "Pointers," Specific Legal Forms, etc.
Apart from the agent, operator or contractor, there is much to be found in its contents that will prove of great value to all who wish to be posted on Valuation, Contracts, Mortgages, Leases, Evictions, etc. The cost might be saved many hundred times over in one transaction.
The new I91f> edition contains the Torren's system of registra- tion. Available U. 8. Lands for Homesteads. The A. B. C.'i of Realty.
Workmen's Compensation Act, Income Tax Law, Employer's Li- ability Act, Statute of Frauds. How to Sell Real Estate, How to Become a Notary Public, or Com.
of Deeds, and other Useful Information.
Cloth. 256 Pages. Price Sl.OO Postpaid.
OVERLAND MONTHLY
SAN FRANCISCO, CAL.
Please Mention Overland Monthly When Writing Advertisers
Four
Routes
East!
SUNSET ROUTE: Along the Mission Trail, and through the Dixieland of song and story. To New Orleans via Los An- geles, El Paso, Houston, and San Antonio. Southern Paci- fic Atlantic Steamship Line, sailings Wednesdays and Sat- urdays, New Orleans to New York.
OGDEN ROUTE: Across the Sierras and over the Great Salt Lake Cut-off. To Chicago via Ogden and Omaha; also to St. Louis via Ogden, Denver and Kansas City.
SHASTA ROUTE: Skirting ma- jestic Mount Shasta and cross- ing the Siskiyous. To Port- land, Tacoma and Seattle.
EL PASO ROUTE: The "Golden State Route" through the Southwest. To Chicago and St. Louis via Los Angeles, Tucson, El Paso and Kansas City.
Oil Burning Locomotives
No Cinders, No Smudge, No Annoying Smoke
Unexcelled Dining Car Service
For Fares and Berth Reservations Ask Any Agent
SOUTHERN PACIFIC
"Write for folder on the Apache Trail of Arizona
Bush Car Delivered Free
Ride in a Bush Car. Pay for it out %
of your commissions on sales, my "^agents are making money. Shipments are prompt. Bush Cars guaran- teed or money back. Write at once for my 48-page catalog and all particulars.
...j Wheelbase ^^^ &A^LeBa ^ »£». Delco Ignition-Elect. Stg. & Ltg. "eB- Dept 4-FK
BUSH MOTOR COMPANY, Bush Temple, Chicago, III. I
MISS HARKER'S SCHOOL
PALO ALTO - - CALIFORNIA
• • •
Boarding and Day School for Girls College Preparatory
Grammar and Primary Departments
• • •
SPECIAL CARE GIVEN TO YOUNGER CHILDREr-
FP7FMA Psoriasis, cancer, goitre, tetter \~. \^ £.. L. 1V1 ^V 0|d Sores, catarrah, dandruff sore eyes, rheumatism, neuralgia, stiff joints piles; cured or no charge. Write for particular! and free samples. ECZEMA REMEDY CO. Hot Springs, Ark
Reduce!
rates 6\
household goods to and from all points on th
Pacific Coast 446 Marquette Building, Chicago
JIPS£
V Pacific
N Freight Forwarding Co.
640 Old South Bidg.. Boston 324 Whitehall Bldg.. N. Y. 435 Oliver Bldg.. Pittsburgh 272 Drexel Bldg., Phil. Pa.
1537 Boatmen's Bank Bldg. St. Louis
855 Monadnock Bldg., San Francisco
518 Central Bldg., Los Angeles Write nearest office
E«UkU.h»* July * 1*4
PRICE 10 CENTS
EVERY SATURDAY
MOO PER YEAR
Timely Editorials. Latest News of Society
Events. Theatrical Items of Interest.
Authority on Automobile, Financial
and Automobile Happenings.
10 Cts. the Copy. $5.00 the Yeai
Do Business by Mail
It's profitable, with accurate lists of prospects. Our catalogue contains vital information on Mail Advertising. Also prices and quantity on 6.000 national mailing lists, 99% guaranteed. Such as:
War Material Mfrs. Cheese Box Mfrs. Tin Can Mfrs. Druggists Auto Owners
Wealthy Men
Farmers
Axle Grease Mfrs.
Railroad Employees
Contractors, Etc., Etc.
Write for this valuable reference book; also prices and samples of fac-simile letters.
Have us write or revise your Sales Letters.
Ross-Gould
St. Louis
Please Mention Overland Monthly When Writing Advertisers
xl
The Vose Player Piano
Is so constructed that even a little child can play it. It combines our superior player action with the renowned Vose Pianos which have been manufactured during 63 years by three gene- rations of the Vose family. In purchasing this in- strument you secure quality, tone, and artistic merit at a moderate price, on time payments, if desired. Catalogue and literature sent on request to those interested. Send today.
You should become a satisfied owner of a . fi
vose ftssts
VOSE & SONS PIANO CO., 189 B.ylrton St., Boston, Mats.
g Leghorn Breeders! j)
£ Send in your subscription to The p»
Leghorn Journal and keep posted on the progress of the Leghorn industry; as it is devoted exclusively to the dif- ferent Leghorn fowls. Subscription price 50c. per year. Special offer- Send us 10c. and the names of five of your neighbors interested in Leg- horns and we will send you The Leghorn Journal for three months.
THE LEGHORN JOURNAL
APPOMATTOX, VA.
iUwKB
I
MANfF Eczema, ear canker, goitre, cured 1t1/*1~v»Ei or no charge. Write for particulars describing the trouble. ECZEMA REMEDY CO. Hot Springs, Ark.
Gouraud's Oriental beauty Leaves
A. dainty little booklet of exquisitely perfumed powdered leaves to carry in the purse. A handy article for all occasions to quickly improve the complexion. Sent for 10 cents in stamps or coin. F. T. Hopkins 37 Or*»at Jones St. New York.
P
60 years ago, Gail Borden worked out a method whereby milk could be car- ried anywhere, used any time, and a- ways be found clean, fresh, wholesome and pure. The result of his discovery is
EAGLE
BRAND
CONDENSED
MILK
™« ORIGINAL
the most widely known food product in the world. E= Wherever civilized man has gone, "Eagle Brand" 2 has followed — to the frozen North, the trackless West, = the Tropics. And what is more important, thous- E ands of mothers here and abroad, who could not 2 nurse their babies, have found in " Eagle Brand " a = safe, wholesome substitute for Mothers' Milk.
Write today for our booklets
\ Borden's Condensed Milk Co
NEW YORK
= "Leaders of Quality" Founded 1 857
fl
DANGEROUS COUNTERFEITS
ARE ON THE MARKET
LADIES BEWARE!
Buy LABLACHE FACE POW.DER of reli- able dealers. Be sure and get the genuine. Women who knowfrankly say— "I haveTR/jsjD other face powders, but I use Lablache."
The Standard for over forty years. Flesh, White, Pink, Cream. 50c a box, of Drug- gists or by mail. Over two million boxes sold annually. Send lOc for sample box.
BEN. LEVY CO., French Perfumer.
Dept. 52, 125 Kingston St., Boston, Mass.
E6e
Tooth Brush tft^°^l
xil
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II
o
SAN FRANCISCO
HOTEL PLAZ;
O
Bad
HOTEU PUAiA
san francisco
(union square)
European Plan $1.50 up
American Plan $3.50 up
Our Main Cafe Being Operated on the a la Carte and Table d'Hote Plans.
Special Rooms for Banquets and Private Parties.
II
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xill
m
'EWEST HOTEL
\CING BEAUTIFUL UNION SQUARE
)RNER OF POST AND STOCKTON STREETS
^ Hotel Plaza offers the tour- ist Traveler more for his money than is usually antici- pated.
-IOTEL PLAZA
San Francisco's Most Centrally Located High-Class Hotel and the House of Harmony
Management of C. A. Gonder
SI
xiv
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Hotel Powhatan
WASHINGTON, D. C.
Pennsylvania Avenue, H and Eighteenth St«., N. W.
Showing the Hotel Powhatan upon the completion of its new addition.
Overlooking the White House, offers every comfort
and luxury, also a superior service. European Plan.
Rooms, detached bath, $1.50 and up
Rooms, private bath, $2.50 and up
Write for Souocnir Booklet and Map
E. C. OWEN, Manager.
HOTEL LENOX
NORTH STREET AT DELAWARE AVENUE BUFFALO, NEW YORK
MODERN
FIREPROOF
A unique Hotel, with a desirable location, insuring quiet and cleanliness.
Convenient to all points of interest— popular with visitors to Niagara Falls and Resorts in the vicinity —cuisine and service unexcelled by the leading hotels of the larger cities.
EUROPEAN PLAN $1.50 per day up
Take Elmwood Ave, Car to North St., or Write for Special Taxicab Arrangement.
May we send with our compliments a "Guide of "Buffalo and Niagara Falls" also our complete rates?
C. A. MINER, Managing Director
HOTEL ST. FRANCIS
SAN FRANCISCO
1 ,000 Rooms — Largest Hotel in Western America
M AN AGEMENT - J AM ES WOODS
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xv
Meet Me at the TULLRR
For Value, Service Home Comforts
NEW
HOTEL TULLER
DETROIT, MICHIGAN
Center of business on Grand Circus Park. Take Woodward car, get off at Adams Ave.
ABSOLUTELY FIREPROOF
200 Rooms, Private Bath, $1.50 Single, $2.50 Up Double
2U0 " " " 2.00 " 3.00 "
100 " " " 2.50 " 4.00 "
100 " " " $:Uo$5 " 4.50 "
Total. 600 Outside Rooms All Absolutely Quiet
Two Floors— Agent's New Unique Cafes and
Sample Rooms Cabaret Excellente
Herald Square Hotel
114-120 West 34th Street
Just West of Broadway
NEW YORK
Across the street, next door and around the cor- ner to the largest department stores In the world.
Cars passing our doors transfer to all parts of New York.
One block to the Pennsylvania Station.
Ail the leading theatres within five minutes' walk.
Club Breakfast — Business Men's Lunch.
Dancing afternoons and evenings.
Rooms $1.50 up. All first class hotel service.
J. FRED SAYERS
Manager Director
OIL and MINING
If you are interested our special articles covering the new develop- ments will delight you.
SAMPLE COPY FREE
A limited number of last month's issue now on hand will be sent out as sample copies for asking
WESTERN STORIES of adventure. Pictures of THE GREAT GLORIES OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS
OC f*+c o VaaK 17 Colored Views of Rocky Mountains O Voarc RO Otc £.13 ^Li>. d Tticir Sent Free With Your Subscription ° TCeU£> OWV^LS.
THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN MAGAZINE
704 QUINCY BUILDING
DENVER, COLORADO
xvi
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The Two Most Famous Hotels in the World
The Sun Court of the Palace Hotel, San Francisco
The only hotels anywhere in which every room has attached bath. All the conveniences of good hotels with many original features. Accommodations for over lOOO.
The Fairmont Hotel, San Francisco
European Plan. $2.50 per day, upward— Suites $10.00, upward
Under Management of Palace Hotel Company
Please Mention Overland Monthly When Writing Advertisers xvii
FOR SALE! $2,100
EASY TERMS
20 Acres on "Las Uvas" Creek
Santa Clara County, Cal.
"Las Uvas" is the finest mountain stream in Santa Clara County.
Situated 9 miles from Morgan Hill, between New Almaden and Gilroy.
Perfect climate.
Land is a gentle slope, almost level, border- ing on "Las Uvas."
Several beautiful sites on the property for country home.
Numerous trees and magnificent oaks.
Splendid trout fishing.
Good automobile roads to Morgan Hill 9 miles, to Madrone 8 miles, to Gilroy 12 miles, to Almaden 11 miles, and to San Jose 21 miles.
For Further Particulars Address,
Owner, 259 Minna Street San Francisco - - California
J
xvill Please Mention Overland Monthly When Writing Advertisers
Scientific Dry Farming
Are you a dry farmer? Are you interested in the develop- ment of a dry farm? Are you thinking of securing a home- stead or of buying land in the semi-arid West ? In any case you should look before you leap. You should learn the principles that are necessary to success in the new agriculture of the west. You should
Learn the Campbell System
Learn the Campbell System of Soil Culture and you will not fail. Subscribe for Campbell's Scientific Farmer, the only au- thority published on the subject of scientific soil tillage, then take a course in the Campbell Correspondence School of Soil Culture, and you need not worry about crop failure. Send four cents for a catalog and a sample copy of the Scientific Farmer.
Address,
Scientific Soil Culture Co.
BILLINGS, MONTANA
WHEN THINKING OF GOING EAST
\
§
% THINKOFTHE 5
2 TRAINS DAILY ^^^^^^^^ Through Standard and J
the *WP?fH"?R Tourist Sleeping Cars
g
SCENIC 111 Efl| M I I kl CHICAGO ST. LOUIS
DAILY TO
limited HBBHIHHB Kansas city omaha %
AND THE 3 )F1 J I d I j| And All Other Points East 2
PACIFIC y-T^^^J SALT LAKE city J
EXPRESS ^^^^^^™ and DENVER
| "THE FEATHER RIVER ROUTE"
Through the grand canyon of the feather river 4
s
s
DINING CARS Service and Scenery Unsurpassed OBSERVATIONJCARS ^
5
For Full Information and Literature Apply to ^
^ WFQTTTOM T>&rTT?ir TTriZWT OFFTrF^l \
1
WESTERN PACIFIC TICKET OFFICES f
665 MARKET ST. and UNION FERRY STATION, SAN FRANCISCO— TEL. SUTTER 1651 £ £ 1326 Broadway and 3rd and Washington Sts.,OakIand,Cal., Tel.Oakland 132 and Oakland 574 «^
Please Mention Overland Monthly When Writing Advertisers
xix
Make Moving a Comfort
The Nezv Way— The Easy Way
By auto trucks and employing the well known reliable expert San Francisco firm
Dixon Transfer Storage Company
ECONOMY AND TIME SAVERS
Manager Leo Dixon has had many years of varied experience in this special and intricate business from moving the goods and outfit- tings of a hugh store to the intricate and varied furnishings of a home. The firm has the best up-to-date equipment to meet the most difficult problems, and guarantees satis- faction at moderate rates.
Packing Pianos and Furniture for
Shipment a Specialty
Fire-proof Storage Furnished
TRY THEM!
Headquarters : 86-88 Turk St.
San Francisco, Cal.
Three generations
of the Vose family have made the art of man- ufacturing the Vose Piano their lile-work. For 63 years they have developed their instruments with such honesty of construction and materials, and with such skill, that the Vose Piano of to- day is the ideal Home Piano.
Oolitered in four horn* free of charge. Old instruments taken as partial payment in exchange. Time Payment! accepted. If interested, send fcr catalogues today.
VOSE & SONS PIANO CO.
189 Boylston Street Boston, Mass.
TEN CENT MUSIC: Popular and Classic
Why pay from 25c to 75c
a copy for your music when you can get the same and better in the " CEN- TURY EDITION" for only 10c a copy postpaid. Positively the only difference is the price.
Send 10c for one of the following and if not more than satisfied we will refund the money:
|
Rtgular Prlca |
||
|
HUGUENOTS |
Smith |
$1 00 |
|
IL TROVATORE |
Smith |
1 25 |
|
LAST HOPE |
Gottschalk |
1 00 |
|
MOCKING BIRD |
Hoffman |
1 00 |
|
NORMA |
Leybach |
1 00 |
|
RIGOLETTO |
Liszt |
1 00 |
|
SILVER SPRING |
Mason |
1 00 |
|
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM |
Smith |
1 25 |
|
MOONLIGHT SONATA |
Beethoven |
1 25 |
|
LAST SMILE |
Wollenhaupt |
1 25 |
COMPLETE CATALOG OF 1600 TITLES SENT FREE ON REQUEST
Music Department, OVERLAND MONTHLY
259 MINNA STREET SAN FRANCISCO. CAL.
J
By Courtesy of " The New York, Times "
MR. HARRIS* BEST KNOWN BOOKS
OSCAR WILDE: His Life $1A 00 and Confessions. 2 vols. 1"»~
THE MAN SHAKES- $/-> en PEARE Z.=
THE BOMB. A Novel . $1#30
CONTEMPORARY POR- $/-> en TRAITS A.~
UNPATH'D WATERS
ORDERS FILLED BY PEARSON'S
<$®®®®GXiXsX2^^
Author &,tfd Editor
XJt JpxGfi the war |broke out ft \\ Harris was in Paris hard work >n a new book. He says, "T horror of the war made it impossit for me to work. I decided to coi back to America, the country whi adopted me in my youth."
In July, 1916, Mr. Arthur W. Liti invited Mr. Harris to become Edit of PEARSON'S MAGAZINE.
Mr. Harris entered upon his wo with that vigor and enthusias which has marked his wide ai varied career.
The good fruits of that choi are already demonstrable inam PEARSON'S and a growing circle eager readers.
In greater New York PEARSON sales have multiplied fivefold sin Mr. Harris became editor.
A New Harris Story
ON THE TRAI]
"On the Trail" will run serially in PEARSON'S MA AZINE beginning with the May number.
"On the Trail" is a story of the southwest frontier as was in the early 70's when Wichita, Kansas, was an o post of civilization, when Indians still lifted the wl man's scalp, and when cowboys were real cowboys.
In these stirring days of frontier life Editor Harris t himself a cowboy. He knew intimately Bill Hitchc( (Wild Bill) and W. F. Cody (Buffalo Bill). Harris p real battles with Indians and pictures of the rough cowl life of the time into his story. There is a thrilling k story also interwoven with the tale, n Spanish beai whose charms lure the hero across the Mexican border to a cattle stealing foray.
A picture of the Great Chicago Fire, as seen by J Harris, forms a thrilling chapter.
This story will come as a pleasing surprise to readers PEARSON'S, exhibiting as it does a first-hand knowlec of America unsuspected of our Editor.
"ON THE TRAIL" is a story with a thrill in ev« chapter.
INITIAL CHAPTERS WILL APPEAR IN PEA SON'S FOR MAY, 1917
1.35
PEARSON'S is on sale at the newsstands on the tenth of each montl If you have trouble in procuring it at the stands send $1.50 direct to tli publishers for a year's subscription.
4^ THE PEARSON PUBLISHING COMPANY
425-435 EAST 24TH STREET, :: :: NEW YORK, N. 1
ZUI}lt\l*nWij-* l*\ L. „*tl.l * '-J'-Ult .»
** «*•<■ !■« *
JACK LONDON EDITION
H*G£OORN
Mii^uv^M^A^:»tiumTi^mMAtfA&ittl*;jg
Meeting the Universal Need
In the high passes of the moun- tains, accessible only to the daring pioneer and the sure-footed burro, there are telephone linemen string- ing wires.
Across bays or rivers a flat-bot- tomed boat is used to unreel the message-bearing cables and lay them beneath the water.
Over the sand-blown, treeless desert a truck train plows its way with tele- phone material and supplies.
Through dense forests linemen are felling trees and cutting a swath for lines of wire-laden poles.
Vast telephone extensions are pr gressing simultaneously in the was places as well as in the thickly popi lated communities.
These betterments are ceaseless an they are voluntary, requiring the e: penditure of almost superhuma imagination, energy and large capita
In the Bell organization, besides tri army of manual toilers, there is a army of experts, including almost tt entire gamut of human labors. The* men, scientific and practical, are coi stantly inventing means for supplyin the numberless new demands of th telephone using public.
American Telephone and Telegraph Company
And Associated Companies
One Policy One System Universal Serjfc
Please Mention Overland Monthly When Writing Advertisers
To insure Victor quality, always look for the famous trademark, "His Mas- ter's Voice." It is on every Victrola and every Victor Record. It is the identifying label on all genuine Victrolas and Victor Records.
i°^^
'J HIS MASTER'S VOICE'
Every kind of music for everybody
Your kind of music for you! The kind of music you like best!
Do you prefer to hear magnificent operatic arias, portrayed by Caruso or Farrar or Melba? Or are your favorites the charming old songs of yesteryear — the ballads so sweetly sung by Gluck and McCormack?
Or it may be that your tastes run to instrumental solos — the exquisite renditions of Elman or Kreisler or Paderewski. Then again, perhaps, you would rather hear Sousa's Band play some of his own stirring marches, or enjoy Harry Lauder's inimitable witticisms.
No matter — you can hear them
all on the Victrola. It is supreme in
all fields of musical endeavor. It is
the instrument for every home.
Hear your favorite music today at any Victor dealer's. He will gladly play any music you wish to hear, and demonstrate the various styles of the Victor and Victrola —$10 to $400.
Victor Talking Machine Co. Camden, N. J., U. S. A.
Berliner Gramophone Co., Montreal, Canadian Distributors
I
Victrola XVII, $250 Victrola XVII, electric, $300
Mahogany or oak
Important Notice. All Victor Talking Machines are patented and are only licensed, and with right of use with Victor Records only. All Victor Records are pat- ented and are only licensed, and with right of use on Victor Talking Machines only. Victor Records and Victor Machines are scientifically coordinated and synchronized by our special processes of manufac- ture; and their use, except with each other, is not only unauthorized, but damaging and unsatisfactory.
"Victrola" is the Registered Trade-mark of the Victor Talking Machine Company designating the products of this Company only. Warning: The use of the word Victrola upon or in the promotion or sale of any other Talking Machine or Phonograph products is misleading and illegal.
Vi c t ro 1 a
New Victor Records demonstrated at all dealers on the 28th of each month
LXVIII
©ittrlatti •
iMotttljIt}
AN ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE OF THE WEST
-»»»CCC«c-
CONTENTS FOR MAY 1917
FRONTISPIECES:
"To Jack London." Verse. Illustrated . . GEORGE STERLING
Illustrations to accompany Valley of the Moon Ranch
Illustration to accompany a Study of Jack London in His Prime ....
A STUDY OF JACK LONDON IN HIS PRIME . GEORGE WHARTON JAMES
Illustrated from photographs. MRS. JACK LONDON'S NEW VIEWPOINT . . L. RUDIO MARSHALL
JACK LONDON'S PLEA FOR THE SQUARE DEAL
THE REAL JACK LONDON IN HAWAII 0 e MAE LACY BAGGS
Illustrated from photographs. THE VALLEY OF THE MOON RANCH Q Q Q BAILEY MILLARD
Illustrated from photographs. JACK LONDON. An Appreciation. Verse o BERTON BRALEY
THE SON OF THE WOLF. Story .... JACK LONDON THE DIVINE PLAN OF THE AGES . . (The Late) PASTOR RUSSELL
PERSONAL QUALITIES OF JACK LONDON JOHN D. BARRY
ARE THERE ANY THRILLS LEFT IN LIFE? . JACK LONDON RECOLLECTIONS OF THE LATE JACK LONDON EDGAR LUCIEN LARKIN
JACK LONDON ON THE GREAT WAR
GUNS OF GALT. Serial ....... DENISON CLIFT
JACK LONDON'S RESIGNATION FROM THE
SOCIALIST PARTY
MRS. JACK LONDON'S "LOG OF THE SNARK" . BEATRICE LANGDON
357
358-359
360
361
400 404 405
ti1
415 416 425 431 432 433 434 435
446 447
■»>»XC«CO
NOTICE. — Contributions to the Overland Monthly should be typewritten, accompanied by full return postage and with the author's name and address plain written in upper corner of first page. Manuscripts should never be rolled.
The publisher of the Overland Monthly will not be responsible for the preservation or mail miscarriage of unsolicited contributions and photographs.
Issued Monthly. $1.20 per year in advance. Ten cents per copy. Back numbers not over three months old, 25 cents per copy. Over three months old, 50 cts. each. Postage: To Canada, 2 cts.; Foreign, 4 cts. Copyrighted, 1917, by the Overland Monthly Company.
Entered at the San Francisco, Cal., Postoffice as second-class matter.
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To Jack London
By George Sterling
Oh, was there ever face, of all the dead,
In which, too late, the living could not read
A mute appeal for all the love unsaid —
A mute reproach for careless word and deed?
And now, dear friend of friends, we look on thine, To whom we could not give a last farewell, — On whom, without a whisper or a sign, The deep, unfathomable Darkness fell.
Oh! Gone beyond us, who shall say how far? Gone swiftly to the dim Eternity, Leaving us silence, or the words that are To sorrow as the foam is to the sea.
Unf earing heart, whose patience was so long ! Unresting mind, so hungry for the truth ! Now hast thou rest, O gentle one and strong, Dead like a lordly lion in its youth!
Farewell ! although thou know not, there alone. Farewell ! although thou hear not in our cry The love we would have given had we known. Ah ! And a soul like thine — how shall it die ?
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Cruising up the wide reaches of the San Joaquin River, California. (1914.)
I
OVERLAND
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AT THE beginning of the year (1912), Jack London was thirty-six years old. In those thirty-six years he has man- aged to crowd the experiences of a country lad on a farm, a street news- boy, a schoolboy, a member of a street-gang, a boy Socialist street ora- tor, a voracious reader of books from the public library, an oyster bed pa- trol to catch oyster pirates, a long- shoreman, a salmon fisher, able to sail any kind of a rude vessel on the none too smooth waters of San Francisco Bay, a sailor before the mast, seal
hunting in the Behring Sea, a member of the Henry Clay debating club, a strenuous advocate of the Socialist Labor party, a student in the Oakland high school, a freshman in the Univer- sity of California, a gold seeker in the Klondike, a driver of wolf-dogs over the snows of the frozen North, stricken with scurvy, one of three who em- barked in an open boat and rode nine- teen hundred miles in nineteen days down the Yukon to the Behring Sea, an orphan compelled to support his wid- owed mother and a nephew, a short story writer, a war correspondent, a
On the Snark's lifeboat, Solomon Islands, South Seas, 1908. Mrs. London is laughing at the amateur photographer's efforts to get a "good" picture.
novelist, an essayist, the owner and worker of a magnificent estate of over a thousand acres, the builder of the "Snark," which he navigated through the Pacific and the South Seas to Aus- tralia, and taught himself navigation while in actual charge of the "Snark" on the high seas; the planter of two hundred thousand eucalyptus trees on his estate; the engineer and construc- tor of miles of horse trails or bridle- paths through the trees, on the hill- sides and in the canyons of his estate ; and now the builder of one of the most
striking, individualistic, comfortable and endurable home mansions ever erected on the American continent. He has a list of thirty-one books to his credit, seven of them novels, one of them being one of the most popular books of its time and still selling by the thousand, another a book of social studies of the underworld of London that ranks with General Booth's "Sub- merged Tenth," Jacob Riis' "How the Other Half Lives," William T. Stead's "If Christ Came to Chicago," and sur- passes them all in the vivid intensity
Aboard the "Roamer," in the confluences of the Sacramento and San Joaquin River, California (1915).
of its descriptions and the fierce pas- sion for the downtrodden that it dis- plays. His "War of the Classes," "The Iron Heel," and "Revolution," are bold and fearless presentations of his views on present-day social condi- tions, and what they are inevitably leading to, unless the leaders of the capitalistic class become more human and humane in dealing with the work- ing classes. His "Before Adam," one of the best and most comprehensive of books on authropology, whether written by English, French, German
or American, sets before the reader a clear and scientifically deduced con- ception of the upgrowth of the human race prior to the historic era when Adam and Eve appear.
His books have been translated into German, French, Swedish, Norwegian, Italian, Spanish and Russian, and wherever men think and talk and read, Jack London and his stories, his nov- els, his social theories are talked about, praised, abused, lauded and dis- cussed. In Sweden he is the most popular foreign author. There Cali-
Jack London and Mrs. London aboard the U. S. S. Kilpatrick at Galveston,
Texas, at the time that vessel sailed to Vera Cruz, Mexico, with General
Funston and troops to handle the Mexican disturbances. Spring of 1914.
London was acting as a war correspondent should trouble ensue.
fornia is known as Jack-London-Land.
Who, then, shall say that he has not lived? For good or evil he has made a profound impression upon his gen- eration. Hundreds of thousands of words have been written, pro and con, about him and his work by critics of every school, country and type. Thou- sands buy and read his books and swear by him and his ideas; other thousands borrow and read and fiercely assail him.
Hence it seems to me it cannot fail to be more than usually interesting to take a close look at the man, seen through the eyes of one who is proud to call him friend, and who thinks he knows and understands him as well as any other living man.
One day while being favored by Lu- ther Burbank to watch him at work in
his "proving gardens," he explained that often one particular seed out of a batch grown under exactly the same conditions would develop into some- thing so much ahead of the others as to be startling in its advancement. To watch for and capture these naturally developed and superior types was one of the most interesting and important phases of his great work.
Remembering this, and recalling London's vast and varied achieve- ments with his rude early environment, I asked him one day : "Where did you come from? What are you the pro- duct of?" and here is his answer:
"Have you ever thought that in ten generations of my ancestors 1,022 peo- ple happened to concentrate in some fashion on the small piece of proto- plasm that was to eventuate in me. All
Mrs. Jack London on a morning ride over the Valley of the Moon ranch.
the potentialities of these 1,022 people were favorable in my direction. I was born normal, healthy in body and mind. Many a life has been ruined by inheriting a tendency to a weak sto- mach, or liver, or lungs. In my case all were perfectly strong and vigorous. Then, too, you know that in a row of beans, all grown from the same seed, you will find one pod that surpasses all the others, and in that pod one bean that you may call 'the king bean.' It is so in humanity. All the acci- dents of environment favor the par- ticular bean; they all favored me. Most people look upon the conditions of my early life as anything but fa- vorable, but as I look back I am sim- ply amazed at my chances, at the way opportunity has favored me. As a child I was very much alone. Had I been as other children, 'blessed' with brothers and sisters and plenty of playmates, I should have been men- tally occupied, grown up as the rest of my class grew, become a laborer and been content. But I was alone. Very much so. This fostered contem- plation. I well remember how I used
to look upon my mother. To me she was a wonderful woman with all power over my destiny. She had wisdom and knowledge, as well as power in her hands. Her word was my law. But one day she punished me for something of which I was not guilty. The poor woman had a hard life, and all her energies were spent in chasing the dollar that she might feed and clothe us, and she was worn out, ner- vous, irritable and therefore disin- clined to take the time and energy nec- essary to investigate. So I was pun- ished unjustly. Of course I cried and felt the injustice. Now, had I had companions, it would not have been long before I should have found them, or they me, and we should have en- gaged in some fun or frolic, and my attention would have been diverted. I should soon have 'laughed and forgot.' But it was not so. I thought, and thought, and thought, and my brooded thought soon incubated. I began to see differently. I began to measure. I saw that my mother was not as large as I had thought. Her infallibility was destroyed. She had seen all there
0>
Jack London enjoying himself among his guests after doing his regular morning stunt of one thousand words in one of his popular stories.
was to see. Her knowledge was lim- ited, and therefore she was unjust. I can well remember that I absolved her from any deliberate intention to hurt me, but henceforth I decided for my- self as to the right and wrong of things.
"This contemplative spirit was fed by the accidents of the environment of childhood. I was born in San Francisco January 12, 1876, and for the first three and a half years lived in Oakland. Then my father took a truck farm (which is now a pottery) in Alameda, and I was there until I was seven years old. It was on my birthday that we moved. I can re- member the picture as if it were but yesterday. We had horses and a farm wagon, and onto that we piled all our household belongings, all hands
climbing up on the top of the load, and with the cow tied behind, we moved 'bag and baggage' to the coast in San Mateo County, six miles beyond Co- lina. It was a treeless bleak, bar- ren and foggy region, yet as far as I was concerned, fate favored me. The only other people of the neighborhood were Italians and Irish. Ours was the only 'American' family. I had no companions. I went to the regular, old-fashioned country school, where three or four of us sat on the same bench, and were 'licked' as regularly as could be, 'good or bad.' My spirit of contemplation was fostered here, for I had no companions. I was a solitary and lonely child. Yet I was a social youngster, and always got along well with other children. I was healthy, hearty, normal and therefore
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One of the last photographs taken of Jack London, 1916. He is seated in his study, reading part of the manuscript of one of the stories which was later contributed to this issue of Overland Monthly.
— Photo by Louis J. Stellmann.
happy, but I can now see that I lived a dual life. My outward life was that of the everyday poor man's son in the public school: rough and tumble, happy go lucky, jostled by a score, a hundred, rough elements. Within myself I was reflective, contemplative, apart from the kinetic forces around me.
"From here we moved, in less than a year, to Livermore, where I lived un- til I was nine years old. We had a rude kind of a truck farm, and I was the chore boy. How I hated my life there. The soil had no attractions for me. I had to get out early in the frosty mornings and I suffered from chilblains. Everything was squalid and sordid, and I hungered for meat, which I seldom got. I took a violent prejudice — nay, it was almost a hatred — to country life at this time, that later I had to overcome. All this tended to drive me into myself and added to my inward powers of contemplation.
"Then we moved to Oakland, where
my real, active life began. I had to fish for myself."
Certainly he had if the following story, related by Ninetta Payne, the aunt and foster-mother of Charmian, his wife, be true :
"After school hours he sold news- papers on the streets, and not infre- quently did battle to establish his right to route. An instance of the kind, told by an old neighbor of the Lon- dons, is illustrative not only of Jack's grit and courage at thirteen, but of a certain phlegm and philosophic jus- tice in his father. Jack had borne in- numerable affronts from a sixteen year old boy until patience was exhausted and he resolved to fight it out. Ac- cordingly at their next encounter the two fell to blows, Jack, cool and de- termined, as one predestined to con- quer, and his antagonist swelling with the surface pride and arrogance of the bully. For more than two hours they stuck to it manfully, neither winning a serious advantage over the other.
368
OVERLAND MONTHLY
The neighbor watcher thought it time to put a stop to the pummeling and ran to the London cottage, where she found the old man sunning himself on the doorstep.
" 'O Mr. London,' she cried, 'Jack's been fighting for hours ! Do come and stop it!'
"He composedly returned: 'Is my boy fighting fair?'
" 'Yes, sir, he is.'
"He nodded, his pleased eyes twink- ling. 'An' t'other one — is he fighting fair?'
" 'Yes — leastwise it looks so.'
" 'Well, let 'em alone. There don't seem no call to interfere.'
"That this placidity did not argue indifference was seen by the father's appearing a few minutes later on the field of action. He did nothing, how- ever; only pulled steadily at his pipe and looked on, one of a motley ring of spectators. Jack's opponent was get- ting winded and bethought him of a subterfuge. He gave a blow and then threw himself on the ground, knowing that Jack would not hit him when he was down. The latter saw his little game, and when it was thrice repeated, struck low, with a telling punch on the chin of his falling adversary. - "There was a yell of 'Foul blow!' from the two younger brothers of the vanquished pugilist, and the older, an overgrown boy of fifteen, sprang red- hot into the circle and demanded satis- faction. Jack, panting and holding to his swollen wrist (that last blow of his had strained the tendons) , pranced into position, and fired back the answer: 'Come on! I'll lick you, too!'
"It was observed that his father for- got to smoke during the spirited tussle that ensued, though he said never a word, even when Jack, dripping gore and sweat, drew off victorious from his prostrate foe, only to face the third brother, a lad of his own age. Him he downed with a single thrust of his fist, for his blood was up and he felt cordial to himself and invincibly con- fident in his strength to overcome a host of irate brothers.
"Then it was that John London,
bright of eye and smiling, took a gen- tle grip of his son's arm and marched him in triumph from the field.
"Between school hours and work, Jack found time to pore over books of history, poetry and fiction, and to nurse the secret wish to become a writer. He was graduated from the Oakland grammar school at fourteen, and a few months later drifted into an adventurous life 'long shore. Here he shared the industries and pastimes of the marine population huddled along the water-front, taking his chances at salmon fishing, oyster pirating, schooner sailing, and other bay-faring ventures, never holding himself aloof when comrades were awake, but when they slept turning to his book with the avidity of a mind athirst for knowl- edge."
Yet in spite of his general camara- derie he was a solitary youth. Speak- ing again of his mental and spiritual isolation from his fellows at this time, London said:
"I belonged to a 'street gang' in West Oakland, as rough and tough a crowd as you'll find in any city in the country. Yet while I always got along well with the crowd — I was sociable and held up my end when it came to doing anything — I was never in the center of things ; I was always alone, in a corner, as it were.
"Then it was that I learned to hate the city. I suppose my father and mother looked upon it as childish pre- judice, but I clearly saw the futility of life in such a herd. I was oppressed with a deadly oppression as I saw that all the people, rich and poor alike, were merely mad creatures, chasing phantoms. Now and again my inner thoughts were so intense that I could not keep them to myself. My sympa- thies and emotions were so aroused that I would talk out to a few of the gang that which surged, boiled and seethed within me. There was noth- ing of the preacher about me, but a spirit of rebellion against the hypnot- ism that had fallen upon the poor. They had it in their own hands to rem- edy the evils that beset them, yet they
Mrs. Jack London. (Jack London's favorite picture of his wife.)
were obsessed by the idea that their lot was God-ordained, fixed, immov- able. How that cursed idea used to ir- ritate me. How it fired my tongue. The boys would listen open mouthed and wide eyed, but few of them catch- ing even a glimmer of the thoughts that were surging through me. Then men would be attracted to the little crowd of boys, hearing the tense, fierce voice assailing them. Thus, little by little, I was led on — urged at the same time by the voice within — to harangue the crowds on Oakland streets, and be-
came known as the Boy Socialist.
"Doubtless it was all crude and rude, illogical and inconsequential, but it was the most serious matter to me, and has had much to do with shaping my later thought and life. At the same time the hopelessness of arousing my own class so smote me, and the heart- lessness of the moneyed class so wounded me that I begged and urged my father and mother to let me go to _sea.
"Accordingly, when I was seventeen, in the fall of 1893, I was allowed to
370 OVERLAND MONTHLY
ship before the mast on a sailing ling consequences if he were not schooner which cruised to Japan and obeyed, but Jack kept silent, his sup- up the North Coast to the Russian side pie hands nimbly intent on the rope of the Behring Sea. We touched at strands, though the tail of his eye took Yokohama, and I got my first seduc- note of his enemy, tive taste of the Orient. We stayed "Another threat, met by exasperat- in Japan three weeks. While we were ing indifference, and the incensed on the high seas the captain tried to Swede dropped the coffee pot to give pay the crew in foreign coin. We re- a back handed slap on the boy's curled fused to take it, as there was a dis- mouth. The instant after iron hard count on it which meant considerable knuckles struck squarely between the loss to us. He insisted. We rebelled, sailor's eyes, followed by the crash of and for a time had a real mutiny on crockery. The Swede, choking with board, and if the captain hadn't finally rage, made a lunge at Jack with a given in, there's no knowing what sledge-hammer fist, but the latter might have happened to me, as I was dodged, and like a flash vaulted to the just as forward in protesting as any ruffian's back, his fingers knitting in of the others, though I was the young- the fellow's throat-pipes. He bellowed est sailor aboard." and charged like a mad bull, and with
That Jack not only resented injus- every frenzied jump, Jack's head was
tice from the captain, but from his a battering ram against the deck
messmates, the following incident, re- beams. Down crashed the slush lamp
lated by Mrs. Eames, clearly shows : and the lookers-on drew up their feet
"Our sailor man one day sat on his in the bunks to make room for the bunk weaving a mat of rope yarn when show ; they saw what the Swede did he was gruffly accosted by a burly not — that Jack was getting the worst Swede taking his turn at 'peggy-day' of it. His eyes bulged horribly and (a fo'castle term, signifying a sailor's his face streamed blood, but he only day for cleaning off the meals, washing dug his fingers deeper into that flesh- up the dishes, and filling the slush- padded larynx and yelled through his lamps), a part of which disagreeable shut teeth: 'Will you promise to let me tasks the man evidently hoped to bull- alone ? Eh — will you promise ?' doze the green hand into doing for "The Swede, tortured and purple in him. the face, gurgled an assent, and when
" 'Here, you landlubber,' he bawled that viselike grip on his throat loos-
with an oath, 'fill up the molasses. You ened, reeled and stumbled to his knees
eat the most of it!' like a felled bullock. The sailors, jam-
"Jack, usually the most amiable of ming their way through a wild clutter
the hands, bristled at his roughness; of food and broken dishes, crowded
besides, he had vivid memories of his around the jubilant hero of the hour
first and only attempt to eat the black, with friendly offers of assistance and
viscous stuff booked 'molasses' on the a noticeable increase of respect in their
fo'castle bill of fare, and so indignant- tone and manner. Thence on Jack had
ly denied the charge. his 'peggy-day' like the rest, his mates
" 'I never taste it. 'Tain't fit for a risking no further attempt to take ad- hog. It's your day to grub, so do it vantage of his youth or inexperience." yourself.' On his return to California he ielt,
"Not a messmate within hearing of more than ever before, his need for
the altercation but pictured disaster to study. He joined the "Henry Clay De-
this beardless, undersized boy. bating Society," and entered into its
"Jack's defiant glance again dropped work with a fierce zest that his com-
to his mat, and he quietly went on pan ions were unable to understand,
twisting the yarn. At this the sailor, Reflection while doing solitary duties
both arms heaped with dishes, swore on the high seas had led him to see
the harder, and threatened blood curd- also that he had better seek to know
The author on horseback rounds over his extensive land holdings, Sonoma County, California.
the ideas of the leading men of thought. Surely somewhere he would find the explanation of the inconsist- encies and inhumanities of life. As he himself says in his "What Life Means to Me.":
"I had been born in the working class, and I was now, at the age of eighteen, beneath the point at which I had started. I was down in the cellar of society, down in the subterranean depths of misery about which it is nei- ther nice nor proper to speak. I was in the pit, the abyss, the human cesspool, the shambles and the charnel house of our civilization. This is the part of the edifice of society that society chooses to ignore. Lack of space com- pels me here to ignore it, and I shall say only that the things I there saw gave me a terrible scare.
"I was scared into thinking. I saw the naked simplicities of the compli-
cated civilization in which I lived. Life was a matter of food and shelter. In order to get food and shelter men sold things. The merchant sold shoes, the politician sold his manhood, and the representative of the people, with ex- ceptions, of course, sold his trust; while nearly all sold their honor. All things were commodities, all people bought and sold. The one commodity that labor had to sell was muscle. The honor of labor had no price in the mar- ket place. Labor had muscle and mus- cle alone, to sell.
"But there was a difference, a vital difference. Shoes and trust and honor had a way of renewing themselves. They were imperishable stocks. Mus- cle, on the other hand, did not renew. As the shoe merchant sold shoes, he continued to replenish his stock. But there was no way of replenishing the laborer's stock of muscle. The more
372
OVERLAND MONTHLY
he sold of his muscle the less of it re- mained to him. It was his one com- modity, and each day his stock of it diminished. In the end, if he did not die before, he sold out and put up his shutters. He was a muscle bankrupt, and nothing remained to him but to go down into the cellar of society and per- ish miserably.
"I learned further that brain was likewise a commodity. It, too, was different from muscle. A brain seller was only at his prime when he was fifty or sixty years old, and his wares were fetching higher prices than ever. But a laborer was worked out or broken down at forty-five or fifty. I had been in the cellar of society, and I did not like the place as a habitation. The pipes and drains were unsanitary, and the air was bad to breathe. If I could not live on the parlor floor of society, I could, at any rate, have a try at the attic. It was true the diet there was slim, but the air at least was pure. So I resolved to sell no more muscle and to become a vender of brains.
"Then began a frantic pursuit of knowledge. While thus equipping myself to become a brain merchant, it was inevitable that I should delve into sociology. There I found, in a certain class of books, scientifically formu- lated, the simple sociological concepts I had already worked out for myself. Other and greater minds, before I was born, had worked out all that I had thought, and a vast deal more. I dis- covered that I was a Socialist."
He had long been a Socialist with- out knowing it, but now he was con- scious of his real affiliations. This led him into a singular experience. The "Henry Clay" had planned for an open debate in which London was to take an important part. When the time arrived Jack was nowhere to be found. Coxey had left Oakland a few days before with his army of the un- employed. The sudden impulse had thereupon seized Jack to follow. The result of this experience has been told with graphic power by London in his "The Road." I suppose no book of his has been so severely criticised as
this. It has been stated again and again that he took this trip for the purpose of making sociological studies. The fact is, he was a mere lad, worked to death, because he was forced to do the work of men to earn enough to keep the family going. He had no idea at the time of making an investi- gation or writing so far as "The Road" was concerned. Curiosity, adventure, freedom — all these, but study, as Pro- fessor Wyckoff did, never entered his imagination.
When he discovered his gift of writ- ing, here, however, was a wonderful mine of personal material ready made to his hand. It had never before been handled as he could handle it. For the first time he exposes the inner- most life of the tramp.
In effect he says : "This I was, and what I was the . . . hundreds of thou- sands of tramps and hoboes that daily walk this country are." His is no fancy picture. It is a stern setting forth of facts, and whether I approve of London's method of getting the facts or not, I have sense enough to perceive the importance of them to me and to every other decent and law abiding citizen. Here is this vast army of ly- ing, thieving, prowling, festering man- stuff. What are we doing, intelligently and wisely, to break it up and change its individual elements into useful citi- zenship? Personally I am grateful to London for giving me the inner facts, and I will not quarrel with his con- science if he is able to reconcile it with doing what he did on my behalf.
There is more, however, to the book than I have indicated. As a reviewer in the Los Angeles Times wrote :
"The book is valuable also in other ways. London is a powerful and virile writer, and he has both material and manner in the present case. The chap- ter telling how a tramp steals a ride on a railway train is as thrilling and breath-bating as a fragment from Du- mas— it is a veritable novel of adven- ture put in a score of pages. London's record of his experiences in the peni- tentiary is another chapter, where the material of a report on prison condi-
Jack London inspecting one of the vineyards on his ranch, Valley of the Moon.
tions, a melodrama and a novel are condensed into a sharp, incisive short story, all done with fine literary skill."
That penitentiary experience is one that every American ought to read and ponder. We pride ourselves on our Constitution and our deference to law. London shows that the tramp has no rights according to the Constitution, and that the law is ruthlessly trampled upon by men who are sworn to uphold it. He was arrested, thrust into prison, brought before a magistrate, refused his inherent right to plead guilty or not guilty, compelled by threats of severer punishment to keep silent while he was being sentenced contrary to law, and then illegally, by brute force, exactly as if he were in Russia and being sent to the mines of Siberia, was marched to the State penitentiary and compelled to serve out his sentence.
Personally I have no hesitation in saying that the Court which so sen- tenced him and the officers who know- ingly carried out the sentence are more dangerous to this country and subver-
sive of its high ideals than all the tramps and hoboes that can be found in a day's journey.
To London, however, this was but one more experience, adding to his store of knowledge and giving more grist for the literary mill that he felt sure at some time soon would be set in motion. He returned to California mainly on the brake-beam route of the Canadian Pacific. Arrived here, he plunged into securing an education with his characteristic energy and de- termination. But his tramp experi- ences had not lessened his zeal on be- half of "his class." More than ever he resolved to help ameliorate their hard condition. Like William Morris, and fired with the same passion for hu- manity, he placed himself at the dis- posal of the Socialist Labor Party, and they sent him here and there to speak on their behalf. Fearless and bold to the last degree, he refused to obey the policeman set to enforce a newly passed ordinance prohibiting public speaking on the streets. He was ar-
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rested. But when the case came to trial he defended himself with such dignity and logic that he was imme- diately acquitted.
This, however, was only a part of his life. His deepest need and cry now was for an education. And how ear- nest he was to secure it. For awhile he attended the high school in Oak- land ; then, to hurry up matters, took a three months' course at Anderson's Academy. But the private school was both too tedious and too expensive, so he determined to prepare himself for the university by private study. In "Martin Eden" he thus tells of his re- ply when urged to go to a night school.
"It seems so babyish for me to be going to night school. But I wouldn't mind that if I thought it would pay. But I don't think it will pay. I can do the work quicker than they can teach me. It would be a loss of time, etc. ... I have a feeling that I am a natural student. I can study by my- self. I take to it kindly, like a duck to water. You see yourself what I did with grammar. And I've learned much of other things — you would never dream how much."
With all his preparation for the University, the pressure of life and its needs was so great that he was able only to attend during his freshman year. It was during this time that he began to attend socialistic meetings in San Francisco and came in personal contact with some of the leaders. In "What Life Means to Me" he tells of his experiences: "Here I found keen- flashing intellects and brilliant wits; for here I met strong and alert-brained, withal horny-handed members of the working class ; unfrocked preachers too wide in their Christianity for any con- gregation of Mammon worshipers; professors broken in the wheel of uni- versity subservience to the ruling class and flung out because they were quick with knowledge which they strove to apply to the affairs of mankind. //"Here I found also warm faith in the human, glowing idealism, sweet- ness of unselfishness, renunciation and martyrdom — all the splendid, stinging
things of the spirit. Here life was clean, noble and alive. Here, life re- habilitated itself, became wonderful and glorious; and I was glad to be alive. I was in touch with great souls who exalted flesh and spirit over dol- lars and cents; and to whom the thin wail of the starved slum child meant more than all the pomp and circum- stance of commercial expansion and world-empire. All about me were nobleness of purpose and heroism of effort, and all my days and nights were sunshine and star shine, all fire and dew, with before my eyes, ever burning and blazing, the Holy Grail, Christ's own Grail, the warm human, long-suffering and maltreated, but to be rescued and saved at the last." J^~
•F n* "I* n»
In "Martin Eden" he tells us some- what more in detail one of his first meetings with the Socialist leaders. The "Brissenden" of "Martin Eden" is based upon George Sterling, the poet, who in those days was warmly stirred with earnest desire to help improve the condition of his fellow-men. With him he visited some of the leaders in San Francisco. Here is part of Lon- don't description of that meeting:
"At first, the conversation was desul- tory. Nevertheless, Martin could not fail to appreciate the keen play of their minds. They were men with opinions, though the opinions often clashed, and, though they were witty and clever, they were not superficial. He swiftly saw, no matter upon what they talked, that each man applied the correlation of knowledge and had also a deep-seated and unified conception of society and the Cosmos. Nobody manufactured their opinions for them; they were all rebels of one variety or another, and their lips were strangers to platitudes. Never had Martin, at the Morses', heard so amazing a range of topics discussed. There seemed no limit save time to the things they were alive to. The talk wandered from Mrs. Humphrey Ward's new book to Shaw's latest play, through the future of the drama to reminiscences of Mansfield. They appreciated or sneered at the
The half finished patio of "Wolf House" before the ruinous fire.
morning editorials, jumped from labor conditions in New Zealand, to Henry James and Brander Matthews, passed on to the German designs in the Far East and the economic aspects of the Yellow Peril, wrangled over the Ger- man elections and Bebel's last speech, and settled down to local politics, the latest plans and scandals in the union labor party administration, and the wires that were pulled to bring about the Coast Seamen's strike. Martin was struck by the inside knowledge they possessed. They knew what was never printed in the newspapers — the wires and strings and the hidden hands that made the puppets dance. To Mar- tin's surprise, the girl, Mary, joined in the conversation, displaying an in- telligence he had never encountered in the few women he had met. They talked together on Swinburn and Ro- setti, after which she led him beyond his depths into the by-paths of French literature. His revenge came when she defended Maeterlinck, and he brought into action the carefully thought out thesis of 'The Shame of the Sun.'
"Several other men had dropped in,
and the air was thick with tobacco smoke, when Brissenden waved the red flag.
" 'Here's fresh meat for your axe, Kreis,' he said, 'a rose white youth with the ardor of a lover for Herbert Spencer. Make a Haeckelite of him — if you can.'
"Kreis seemed to wake up and flash like some metallic, magnetic thing, while Norton looked at Martin sympa- thetically, with a sweet, girlish smile, as much as to say that he would be amply protected.
"Kreis began directly on Martin, but step by step Norton interfered, un- til he and Kreis were off and away in a personal battle. Martin listened and fain would have rubbed his eyes. It was impossible that this should be, much less in the labor ghetto south of Market. The books were alive in these men. They talked with fire and enthusiasm, the intellectual stimulant stirring them as he had seen drink and anger stir other men. What he heard was no longer the philosophy of the dry, printed word, written by half- mythical demigods like Kant and Spen- cer. It was living philosophy, with
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warm, red blood, incarnated in these two men till its very features worked with excitement. Now and again other men joined in, and all followed the discussion with cigarettes going out in their hands, and with alert, intent faces.
"Idealism had never attracted Mar- tin, but the exposition it now received at the hands of Norton was a revela- tion. The logical plausibility of it, that made an appeal to his intellect, seemed missed by Kreis and Hamilton, who sneered at Norton as a metaphysician, and who, in turn, sneered back at them at metaphysicians. Phenomenon and noumenon were bandied back and forth. They charged him with attempt- ing to explain consciousness by itself. He charged them with word-jugglery, with reasoning from words to theory instead of from facts to theory. At this they were aghast. It was the car- dinal tenet of their mode of reasoning to start with the facts and to give names to the facts.
"When Norton wandered into the in- tricacies of Kant, Kreis reminded him that all good little German philoso- phies when they died went to Oxford. A little later Norton reminded them of Hamilton's Law of Parsimony, the application of which they immediately claimed for every reasoning process of theirs. And Martin hugged his knees and exulted in it all. But Nor- ton was no Spencerian, and he, too, strove for Martin's philosophic soul, talking as much at him as to his two opponents.
" 'You know Berkeley has never been answered,' he said, looking di- rectly at Martin. 'Herbert Spencer came the nearest, which was not very near. Even the staunchest of Spen- cer's followers will not go farther. I was reading an essay of Saleeby's the other day, and the best Saleeby could say was that Herbert Spencer nearly succeeded in answering Berkeley.'
"'You know what Hume said?' Hamilton asked. Norton nodded, but Hamilton gave it for the benefit of the rest. 'He said that Berkeley's argu- ments admit of no answer and produce
no conviction.'
" 'In his, Hume's mind,' was the re- ply. 'And Hume's mind was the same as yours, with this difference: he was wise enough to admit there was no answering Berkeley.'
"Norton was sensitive and excitable though he never lost his head, while Kreis and Hamilton were like a pair of cold-blooded savages, seeking out tender places to prod and poke. As the evening grew late, Norton, smart- ing under the repeated charges of be- ing a metaphysician, clutching his chair to keep from jumping to his feet, his gray eyes snapping and his girlish face grown harsh and sure, made a grand attack upon their position.
" 'All right, you Haeckelites, I may reason like a medicine man, but, pray, how do you reason? You have noth- ing to stand on, you unscientific dog- matists, with your positive science which you are always lugging about into places it has no right to be. Long before the school of materialistic mon- ism arose, the ground was removed so there could be no foundation. Locke was the man, John Locke. Two hun- dred years ago — more than that, even — in his "Essay concerning the Hu- man Understanding/ he proved the non-existence of innate ideas. The best of it is that that is precisely what you claim. To-night, again and again, you have asserted the non-existence of innate ideas.'
" 'And what does that mean ? It means that you can never know ulti- mate reality. Your brains are empty when you are born. Appearances, or phenomena, are all the content your minds can receive from your five senses. Then noumena, which are not in your minds when you are born, have no way of getting in '
" T deny ' Kreis started to inter- rupt.
" 'You wait till I'm done,' Norton shouted. 'You can know only that much of the play and interplay of force and matter as impinges in one way or another on your senses. You see, I am willing to admit, for the sake of the argument, that matter exists;
"Wolf House" before the destructive fire.
and what I am about to do is to efface you by your own argument. I can't do it any other way, for you are both congenitally unable to understand a philosophic abstraction.
" 'And now, what do you know of matter, according to your own positive science? You know it is only by its phenomena, its appearances. You are aware only of its changes, or of such changes in it as cause changes in your consciousness. Positive science deals only with phenomena, yet you are foolish enough to strive to be ontolo- gists and to deal with noumena. Yet, by the very definition of positive sci- ence, science is concerned only with appearances. As somebody has said, phenomenal knowledge cannot tran- scend phenomena.
" 'You cannot answer Berkeley, even if you have annihilated Kant, and yet, perforce, you assume that Berkeley is wrong when you affirm that science proves the non-existence of God, or, as much to the point, the existence of matter. You know I granted the real- ity of matter only in order to make myself intelligible to your understand- ing. Be positive scientists, if you
please, but ontology has no place in positive science, so leave it alone. Spencer is right in his agnosticism, but if Spencer '
"But it was time to catch the last ferry boat to Oakland, and Brissenden and Martin slipped out, leaving Nor- ton still talking and Kreis and Hamil- ton waiting to pounce on him like a pair of hounds as soon as he finished.
" 'You have given me a glimpse of fairyland,' Martin said on the ferry boat. 'It makes life worth while to meet people like that. My mind is all worked up. I never appreciated ideal- ism before. Yet I can't accept it. I know that I shall always be a realist. I am made so, I guess. But I'd like to have made a reply to Kreis and Ham- ilton, and I think I'd have had a word or two for Norton. I didn't see that Spencer was damaged any. I'm as excited as a child on its first visit to the circus. I see I must read up some more. I'm going to get hold of Saleeby. I still think Spencer is unassailable, and next time I'm going to take a hand myself.'
"But Brissenden, breathing pair- fully, had dropped off to sleep, hr
The ruins of the "House that Jack Built." Three years were spent in the keen enjoyment of its planning and construction. Fire destroyed it, 1913.
chin buried in a scarf and resting on his sunken chest, his body wrapped in the long overcoat and shaking to the vibration of the propellers."
While still at the University the Klondike gold excitement struck San Francisco. London was one of the first to yield to the lure. As Mrs. Payne writes: "He was among the few doughty argonauts who at this season made it over the Chilcoot Pass, the great majority waiting for spring. As charges were forty-three cents per pound for carrying supplies a distance of thirty miles, from salt water to fresh, he packed his thousand pound outfit, holding his own with the strong- est and most experienced in the party.
"And here in this still white world of the North, where nature makes the most of every vital throb that resists her cold, and man learns the awful significance and emphasis of Arctic life and action, young London came consciously into his heritage. He would write of these — the terrorizing of an Alaskan landscape, its great peaks bulging with century-piled snows, its woods rigid, tense and
voiced by the frost like strained cat- gut; the fierce howls of starving wolf- dogs; the tracks of the dog-teams marking the lonely trail ; but more than all else, the human at the North Pole.
"Thus it would seem that his actual development as a writer began on the trail, though at the time he set no word to paper, not even jottings by the way in a note-book. A tireless brood- ing on the wish to write shaped his impulse to definite purpose, but out- wardly he continued to share the in- terests and labors of his companion prospectors.
"After a year spent in that weirdly picturesque but hazardous life, he suc- cumbed to scurvy, and, impatient of the delay of homebound steamers, he and two camp-mates decided to em- bark in an open boat for the Behring Sea. The three accordingly made the start midway in June, and the voyage turned out to be a memorably novel and perilous one — nineteen hundred
miles of river in nineteen days!" * * * *
It was on his return from the Klon- dike that he found himself as a liter-
A STUDY OF JACK LONDON IN HIS PRIME
379
ary artist. He wrote an Alaskan story entitled "The Man on Trail," and sent it to the Overland Monthly. Its vivid and picturesque realism won it imme- diate acceptance, and soon thereafter the author, "a young man, plainly dressed, of modest and even boyish appearance," entered the editor's sanc- tum with a second story, "The White Silence."
In less than six months his fame was made. As he says in "What Life Means to Me": "As a brain-merchant I was a success. Society opened its portals to me. I entered right in on the parlor floor. I sat down to dinner with the masters of society and with the wives and daughters of the mas- ters of society. The women were gowned beautifully, I admit; but to my naive surprise I discovered that they were of the same clay as all the rest of the women I had known down below in the cellar. 'The colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady were sisters under their skins' — and gowns."
From that day to this, his power and popularity have never waned. Granted that some books and stories are less powerful than others — that is merely to acknowledge that he is hu- man and is not always at the supreme height of invention and creation. But certainly his last volume of South Sea stories, published under the title "A Son of the Sun," shows no diminution of power either in observation, reflec- tion or word picturing.
In appearance, London is a broad- shouldered fellow, with small hands and feet, standing five feet eight inches high, weighing one hundred and eighty pounds stripped, with a flexible mouth over a strong, resolute chin. He has the look of an athlete, and his shoulders and aggressive movements clearly suggest that he is prepared physically to force his way through the crowd, taking his share of the jostle and giving as good as, or better, than he takes. While not de- fiant of his fellows, he quietly enjoys the comments sometimes made on his appearance. On one occasion I stood by him and we distinctly heard a
passerby exclaim: "That's Jack Lon- don. He looks like a prize-fighter, doesn't he?" Jack looked at me and winked a clear wink of appreciation of the honor thus conferred upon him. In the copy of "The Game," which he described and sent to me, he wrote: "I'd rather be champion of the world than President of the United States." One of his proud moments was when, in Quito, Ecuador, he was mistaken by a group o| small Spaniards for a bull-fighter. J
He believes fully in keeping his physical frame in order. He is essen- tially a physical culturist. He swims, rows, canoes, fences, boxes, swings a sledge, throws a hammer, runs and rides horseback fifty miles a day if necessary. A year ago I called on him when he had just returned from a three months' driving trip, where he tooled a coach, with four-in-hand, over the steep and rough mountainous roads of California and Oregon. Baring his arm he bade me feel his muscles — biceps and lower arm — as he relaxed and then tightened them. They were like living steel.
He sleeps in an open-air porch with lights, books and writing material al- wavs at hand. Directly he awakens he begins either to read or make notes, always using a pencil for his writing. When breakfast time comes, if he has any intimate friends as guests whom he cares to meet, he rises and eats and chats with them for half an hour or so. His breakfasts are very sim- ple. After breakfast he retires to his library, and nothing is allowed to dis- turb him until he has completed his daily "stint." This is never less than one thousand words, and he generally keeps at it until noon, making his work as perfect as possible and out- lining what he will undertake on the following day. Hej^y^r_r^wntes. In all my many visits to him I have never known him to deviate from his regular routine but once, and that was on the occasion of the visit of my Bos- ton friend.
Many people, like myself, have wondered where he obtains all his in-
Another view of "Wolf House" ruins.
finite variety of plots for his short stor- ies and novels. Month after month, year after year, he pours forth his stream of short stories, all of them good, though some are better than others. Not one, however, fails in hu- man interest; it may not please you, but it grips you, fascinates you, com- pels you. For it is human, powerful and full of a robust life.
Where does he get the germ of these stories? Where do they come from? Are they pure pieces of fic- tion, or cleverly disguised stories of fact? If the former, one wonders at the fecundity of his brain; it becomes one of the marvels of genius; if the latter, one wonders equally at the mar- velous genius of his observation.
That his imagination is a fertile and brilliant one there can be no question, and undoubtedly such a virile and creative mind as his finds far less dif- ficulty in the construction of plots than most writers do. But here is an illus- tration which he himself gave to me, of his methods of taking a dramatic episode that had come to his attention and weaving an apparently entirely different story from it. We were talk- ing upon this subject, and he took down from his book shelf "Wigwam and War Path," by A. B. Meacham. Mr. Meacham was suoerinterdent of
Indian affairs and chairman of the Mo- doc Peace Commission of which Gen- eral Canby and Dr. Thomas were also members. It will be remembered that the Modoc Indians of the Klamath re- gion in Southern Oregon and Northern California had long been insolent and on the war path. Meacham shows that their insolence and hostility were gen- dered by the wicked, cruel and mur- derous conduct of unprincipled white men. There had been several con- flicts between the whites and the In- dians, and finally it was decided to ap- point a Peace Commission. One of Meacham's good friends was Frank Riddle, who, having married a Modoc wife, who was known as Tobey, was allowed to sit in council with the In- dians. Tobey, though an Indian, was a woman of natural refinement, high integrity and deep devotion. She was loyalty itself. Having bestowed her friendship upon Mr. Meacham nothing could prevail upon her to betray him. Consequently when she learned that the leaders of the Modocs contem- plated the treacherous murder of the members of the Peace Commission, she stealthily went by night and gave warning to Mr. Meacham, though she was well aware that by this act she signed her own death warrant. For she knew the Indians would reason
US PRIME ^81
the matter out, and, if their plans were foiled, would know that some one had betrayed them, and that she was the only one who would be guilty of treachery to her own race. "Now," said Mr. London, "look at that woman. She was loyal to Mr. Meacham in spite of the fact that he was hated by her people. He was a representative of the whites who in every way had in- jured her own tribe. Yet she gave him a devotion that she knew would certainly bring a vindictive death up- on herself.
"I intend to use that woman as the main character of a strong story. I do not know where I will place her, but in the South Seas, in the frozen North, in the sunny South, in Austra- lia, somewhere, somehow, I am going to use that woman."
In "Martin Eden" he sets this idea before his reader in his own way, as follows :
"Martin began, that morning, a story which he had sketched out a number of weeks before and which ever since had been worrying him with its in- sistent clamor to be created.
"Apparently it was to be a rattling sea story, a tale of twentieth century adventure and romance, handling real characters, in a real world, under real conditions. But beneath the swing and go of the story was to be some- thing else — something that the super- ficial reader would never discern, and which, on the other hand, would not diminish in any way the interest and enjoyment for such a reader. It was this, and not the mere story, that im- pelled Martin to write it. For that matter, it was always the great, univer- sal motif that suggested plots to him. After having found such a motif, he cast about for the particular persons and particular location in time and space wherewith and wherein to utter
the universal thing."
* * * *
While London is essentially and primarily an artist in his literary work, he is also a profound philosopher and humanitarian. Hence everything he writes has a distinct purpose. That
purpose may not always be apparent to the careless and casual observer, but it is there, all the same. I doubt if he ever wrote a single thing in which some philosophy is not clearly taught or some humanizing influence deliberately interwoven. "The Call of the Wild" is a clear lesson in "re- version to type," for London is a firm believer in the doctrine of evolution. At least he accepts it as the best work- able theory at present advanced by the scientists to account for the upward and onreaching tendencies of mankind. On the other hand "White Fang" is a marvelous story of the controlling and modifying influences — the civilizing and uplifting power — of love and ten- derness, of the real spirit of humanity. "Burning Daylight" contains a dozen lessons. It shows how any great minded man can become a "master of finances" if he wishes to so limit him- self, and then, with graphic power, it shows how such a one gradually be- comes absorbed in his business until he is a mere money-getting machine. The fact that the hero, in spite of his millions, could not win his typewriter to marry him, is London's defense of the "workers" against a too-sweeping charge of money-hunger or unworthy cupidity, while his hero's return to sanity (as he regards it) comes when he deliberately throws away his wealth — that which has demoralized him and keeps him from winning the woman of his affections — and retires, a poor man, to the simple life of a rancher in the beautiful Sonoma Val- lev.
"Before Adam" is a scientific trea- tise in popular form on ore-Adamic evolution, and "Martin Eden" is a studied incitement to the highest achievement.
His various "Social Studies" are important philosophical and sociologi- cal oresentments. set forth with a soul asurge and a brain afire with the rights of the common man. However much we mav differ from London we cannot deny the fierv power, the tremendous forcefulness of what he says, and the graphic intensity of his convictions.
382 OVERLAND MONTHLY
"The Iron Heel" is a lesson and a stress upon the marvelous power and warning, based upon historic studies, influence of environment." and he is a short-sighted reader of the In spite, therefore, of the superfi- analyses of the causes of the decline cial criticisms London's work has en- of other nations who pooh-poohs the countered, I venture the prediction that solemn and portentous prophecies of this feature will more and more re- this book. The imaginary horrors de- ceive recognition, until he will be re- picted are to be averted only by garded not only as a master writer of changing our mental attitude toward fiction, but as a keen philosopher, rug- certain of the social and economic gedly, but none the less earnestly, bent problems of the day. on helping upward and forward his „, # „, * fellow-men.
I suppose after "The Call of the
All his short stories have also a fine Wild," "Martin Eden" is one of the purpose. Take his story of "The Na- most popular of London's books. This ture Man." How full it is of the was originally published in the Paci- healthful and curative powers of pure fie Monthly, a western magazine for- air, pure, fresh vegetable and fruit merly published at Portland, but now food, the sunlight and a natural life, absorbed by the Sunset at San Fran- All the Naturopaths combined never cisco.
wrote as strong a plea for their theo- The manuscript of this novel had
ries as this story presents. father an interesting history. London
In speaking with London one day had had some dispute with the former
about this phase of his work he ex- editor of the Pacific Monthly, and he
claimed: "Certainly! I no more be- had vowed that they should never have
lieve in the 'art for art's sake' theory anything more from his pen. Soon af-
than I believe that a human and hu- ter his departure on the "Snark" voy-
mane motive justifies an inartistic tell- age, his business agent happening to
ing of a story. I believe there are meet a representative of the Pacific
saints in slime as well as saints in Monthly in San Francisco, told him
heaven, and it depends how the slime what a great story "Martin Eden" was
saints are treated — upon their environ- and suggested that it would make a
ment — as to whether they will ever first class serial which he could use
leave the slime or not. People find for pushing up the circulation of his
fault with me for my 'disgusting real- magazine. He asked the price and
ism.' Life is full of disgusting real- rather gasped when told that the ser-
ism. I know men and women as they ial rights would cost $9,000. He
are — millions of them yet in the slime then asked how much a week's option
stage. But I am an evolutionist, there- would cost. "Five hundred dollars,"
fore a broad optimist, hence my love was the reply. He signed a check for
for the human (in the slime though he this amount and took the manuscript,
be) comes from my knowing him as Before the end of the week he met the
he is and seeing the divine possibili- agent in San Francisco and paid the
ties ahead of him. That's the whole $9,000 for the story. It certainly made
motive of my 'White Fang.' Every a great impression and was doubtless
atom of organic life is plastic. The well worth the amount,
finest specimens now in existence were The unconventionality, the simpli-
once all pulpy infants capable of be- city, the daring and the absolute au-
ing moulded this way or that. Let the dacity of Jack London, which in an
pressure be one way and we have Academically trained man might be
atavism — the reversion to the wild; considered unpardonable and appall-
the other the domestication, civiliza- ing egotism, is best illustrated in this
tion. I have always been impressed wonderful book of veiled biography,
with the awful plasticity of life, and Where else before has a man so dared
I feel that I can never lay enough to reveal himself before the world?
This photograph was taken the day Mrs. London first met Jack London (1900.) It was taken to illustrate a story he was at that time writing for Overland Monthly, the first magazine to recognize his genius and to pub- lish his stories. The six stories of the first series were colored with his then recent experiences in Alaska.
Even Rousseau in his "Confessions," Jean Paul Richter in his varied books upon himself, Goethe in "Wilhelm," never so freely, so fully, so explicitly analyzed themselves, their ambitions, motives and inner characters as has Jack London in "Martin Eden." And it is more in the concluding chapters, where, with an artistry that is perfect
in its illusion of simplicity and nai- vete he analyzes his successes and the effect they have upon the world at large, upon editors and publishers, up- on his loving but ignorant sister and her irretrievably vulgar and commer- cial husband, upon the father and mother of the girl he loved, and finally upon her (all fictitious characters, of
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
course) that he reveals the independ- ence of his genius, the solitariness of his methods and the influence of this shut-off Western World upon his soul.
JfC if! Sfi Jjl
Let me here interject a few words to those literary aspirants who are find- ing difficulty in getting their efforts accepted by editors, and who imagine that Jack London leaped instantly in- to fame at his first endeavors. There never was a greater mistake made than this supposition. For years prior to the success of his Alaska stor- ies he had been bombarding the mag- azines, just as he relates the story in "Martin Eden." First he tried poetry, but it all came back. He varied the forms, tried everything from couplets and limericks to sonnets and blank verse, but all were equally ineffective. Then he wrote plays, two-act, three- act, and four-act, but they had no bet- ter success. Then he tried the "soci- ety stunt," both in prose and verse, but he failed to catch the proper swing. Next he wrote Emersonian essays, and thundering philippics after Carlyle, occasionally varying his efforts with historic sketches and descriptions. But all alike failed, and a less resolute being would have been utterly and completely discouraged. This made his triumph all the more wonderful when it did come, especially as he seemed to leap into fame at a single bound.
London is most systematic in his method of work. "He devotes him- self to his labors with care and pre- cision, coining his time with miserly stint and observng a method of col- lecting and classification as amusing as it is effective. Across an angle of his study he stretches what he calls his 'clothes line,' a wire on which are strung batches of excerpts and notes fastened on. by clothes' pins, the kind with a wire spring. A hastily scrib- bled thought and an extract bearing upon the same theme are duly clamped in their proper place, and the 'clothe? line' usually dangles a dozen or more of these bunched tatters of literature.
"His plan of reading has also a like
simplicity, with a hazard at economy of vital force. He does not read books consecutively, but collectively. A dozen volumes are selected on divers subjects — science, philosophy, fiction, et cetera, and arranged with regard to their relative profundity. Then he be- gins with the weightiest matter, reads it until his brain is a trifle wearied, when he lays the work aside for one requiring less effort, and so on all down the graded list, until at one sit- ting he has delved into each, always bringing up finally with the novel or poetry as the wine and walnuts of his literary feast."
London has been fiercely criticized and assailed for his intense and vivid pictures of the primitive, the rude, the savage, the uncontrolled in man. Some have said he has wildly exaggerated, others that nothing is gained by mak- ing such record, even if true. I take issue with both kinds of critics. It is impossible to exaggerate what man has done and the how of its doing. No man's imagination can go beyond what man has actually done. As London himself says in his "Burning Day- light," after describing a Klondike carouse on his hero's birthday: "Men have so behaved since the world be- gan, feasting, fighting and carousing, whether in the dark cave mouth or by the fire of the squatting place, in the palaces of imperial Rome and the rock strongholds of robber barons, or in the sky-aspiring hotels of modern times and in the boozing dens of sailor- town."
It was not until I read London's stor- ies on the Alaska Indians that my en- tire heart warmed thoroughly toward him. For thirty years I have studied the Indians of the Southwest, and by intimate association I have come to know them and love them. I have al- ways resented what to me was a wick- ed and cruel attitude of certain Ameri- cans who declare "the only good In- dian is a dead Indian." I have learned to appreciate their true worth, and to know the beauty and grandeur of their character when rightly understood.
As I read London's stories under
A STUDY OF JACK LONDON IN HIS PRIME
385
the general title of "Children of the Frost," I saw that he had gained the same opinion of the Indians that I had. He had penetrated below the rude exterior to the manhood within, and I have no hesitancy whatever in stating my belief that as a true in- terpreter of the Indian, Jack London deserves fo rank with Fenimore Cooper, Major J. W. Powell, Lieuten- ant F. H. Cushing, Dr. J. W. Fewks, and Frederick W. Starr, whom I re- gard as the greatest ethnologists Am- erica has yet produced.
In one of our conversations the question arose as to which of his stor- ies I liked best. I immediately turned the question upon him and asked: "Which do you like best?" He laugh- ingly replied: "Guess." I replied: "I venture to assert that I can not only guess accurately, but that my judg- ment will be different from that of any critic who has yet ventured such an opinion upon your work." Then picking up this book, I opened to the last story in it, entitled: "The League of the Old Men," and exclaimed: "There is your best story. In it you have expressed the cry of an expiring people, and I know you could not have written it had you not felt it to the very depths."
Tears sprang into his eyes, and reaching out his hand, he gave me a warm handclasp and said: "You are right. Yet fewer people have seemed to appreciate that story than any story I have written, and my publishers re- port that a less number of that volume have been sold than any other of my
books."
* * * *
London, like Joaquin Miller, was the victim of much and persistent misrep- resentation. He is an avowed Social- ist. Many newspapers do not like So- cialists, and they seize every possible opportunity to spread unpleasant news about those who are known to profess that faith. Sometimes they are not very particular as to whether their as- sertions are true or not. In speaking of this several times, and then giving my personal impressions of London,
people have said to me : "Why do you not make these things known?"
In order to help make them known, let me tell an experience I had a few months ago with a distinguished and well known Eastern writer and play- wright. He had been an editorial writer on one of the foremost Boston dailies of high standing, was a univer- sity man of high ideals and academic standards, who a year or so before had become transplanted to the Pacific Coast and was then doing special edi- torial writing on one of the San Fran- cisco papers. We dined together sev- eral times, and on one occasion the name of London came up. Naturally, I spoke of the things in London that pleased and interested me. To my amazement, my Boston friend opened up with a tirade, denouncing London from every possible standpoint. There was nothing good about him in any way.
Seeing that he was rabid, I decided to let him have his talk out and then quietly informed him that his tirade was nothing but a mass of prejudice, for, said I, "I refuse to accept this un- just and untruthful tirade as your judgment. Judgments imply knowl- edge. You have no knowledge, but simply a mass of erroneous beliefs gained from mendacious newspapers and other unreliable sources."
I happened to be planning to go up to Sacramento to see the Governor and thence to London's home at Glen Ellen the following day, and asked my editorial friend if he would not like to meet me and accompany me to see London and his wife. In his finest Bostonese he exclaimed: "But, my dear fellow, I have received no invita- tion."
Heartily laughing, I replied : "I have given you an invitation!"
"But," said he, "what about Mr. and Mrs. London?"
Again I laughed and said: "Let your New England conscience be per- fectly at rest. I have invited you, and that is enough. You ought to know enough of me already to be sure that I should not invite you to any place
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' where you would not be welcome."
"That being the case," said he, "nothing will give me greater pleas- ure. I shall love to study him at first hand, and after your severe criticism upon my 'prejudice,' I am more anx- ious than ever to see Mr. London and find out what I think of him after close personal contact."
According to arrangement we met the next evening. On our arrival at Glen Ellen we found the cart waiting for us, and after a delightful drive through the cool twilight we entered the spacious yard, where gigantic live- oaks of a thousand years' growth, bid one enter and rest. When we entered the large, long room of the old ranch house, now used by the Londons until their new home is finished, we found Mrs. London seated at the Steinway grand piano immediately on our left, and Jack with outstretched hands and cheery voice bidding us welcome. This was the first surprise my friend ex- perienced. Our simple and hearty meal — served specially, as we had come upon a late evening train — shook him up a little more. It hap- pened to be Hallowe'en — a fact I had forgotten, but Jack and his wife and other guests were most wide awake to it, for they had announced that fun was to be free and fast that night. The other guests were a friend of Mrs. London's — the sister of one of Cali- fornia's proudest artists — a young ar- chitect of San Francisco, and a So- cialist comrade of Jack's, who had just happened in as he was tramping across the country. These, with Jack and his wife, my editorial friend and myself, made the party total up to seven, with the Japanese helper, Nakata, now and again assisting in making eight. I was in the mood for fun, so we plunged in. First, we hung up apples from a point above and sought to make bites in them without touching the "bobbing and dodging things" with our hands. Then a large plate of white flour was brought, the flour mounded up about five inches high, and in the center on the top of it was placed a dime. The seven of us now commenced a march
around the table, each taking up a table knife as we approached the plate and cutting off a greater or less mass of the flour as we willed. At first this was easy, but as we cut nearer to the center it became a more delicate and risky task. For the game consisted in continuing to cut until the dime rested on the merest pedestal of flour, ready to crumble at a touch, and who- ever gave that final touch was then re- quired to place his hands behind his back and fish out the dime from the flour with his teeth. It was also freely stipulated beforehand that there should be no "dodging" and wiping off of the flour from the face until the victor stood alone with unfloured face. The hope and expectation, of course, was that I, with moustache and full beard of black should fall an early victim, but somehow the Fates fav- ored me. First the "Comrade" guest failed, then Mr. London, then the wo- man guest, then my editorial friend — and it must be confessed that his cheeks and closely trimmed sandy moustache and wisp of beard, even his eyelashes, did look excruciatingly funny all whitened up with flour in dabs and patches — then the architect and finally Mrs. London, leaving me the proud and unfloured victor.
This only paved the way for an- other game and greater fun. We all laughed until our sides ached, and when finally we retired it was way into the "wee, sma' hours."
Now, as I have elsewhere explained, as it is London's custom to stick rigid- ly to his work in the morning, my edi- torial friend and I would have been left to our own devices until after lunch, but, just before we went to bed I said to Jack: "Why not take a holi- day to-morrow, and instead of waiting till afternoon for our horseback ride, let's all go out together in the morn- ing." Somewhat to my surprise he consented, and the horses were duly ordered. No sooner was breakfast over than we were off — the whole party of us. And what a ride it was! Let me give you here a part of Lon- don't own description of his ranch on
A STUDY OF JACK LONDON IN HIS PRIME
387
which this wonderful ride took place.
"We let down the bars and crossed an upland meadow. Next we went over a low, oak covered ridge and de- scended into a smaller meadow Again we climbed a ridge, this time riding under red-limbed madronos and man- zanitas of deeper red. The first rays of the sun streamed upon our backs as we climbed. A flight of quail thrum- med off through the thickets. A big jack-rabbit crossed our path, leaping swiftly and silently like a deer. And then a deer, a many pronged buck, the sun flashing red-gold from neck and shoulders, cleared the crest of the ridge before us and was gone.
"We followed in his wake a space, then dropped down a zigzag trail that he disdained into a group of noble redwoods that stood about a pool of water murky with mineral from the mountain side. I knew every inch of the way. Once a writer friend of mine had owned the ranch ; but he, too, had become a revolutionist, though more disastrously than I, for he was already dead and gone, and none knew where nor how. He alone, in the days he had lived, knew the secret of the hid- ing place for which I was bound. He had bought the ranch for beauty and paid a round price for it, much to the disgust of the local farmers. He used to tell with great glee how they were wont to shake their heads mournfully at the price, to accomplish ponderously a bit of mental arithmetic, and then to say: 'But you can't make six per cent on it.'
"Out of it he had made a magnifi- cent deer park, where, over thousands of acres of sweet slopes and glades and canyons, the deer ran almost in primitive wilderness."
There are many springs, and these unite to make a stream which ever flows.
"A glade of tangled vines and bushes ran between two wooded knolls. The glade ended abruptly at the steep bank of a stream. It was a little stream, rising from springs, and the hottest summer never dried it up. On every hand were tall wooded
knolls, a group of them, with all the seeming of having been flung there from some careless Titan's hand. There was no bed-rock in them. They rose from their bases hundreds of feet, and they were composed of red vol- canic earth, the famous wine-soil of Sonoma. Through these the tiny stream had cut its deep and precipi- tous channel."
The arrangement for the purchase of part of the estate was made while London was away on the "Snark" trip. A crafty and cunning seller practically deceived Jack's agent by allowing to be inserted in the lease a clause en- titling the owners of a brickyard near- by to excavate certain clays from a part of the ranch, which they needed for their business. But as they had to pay for it at a good price and soon found it the only profitable part of their business, Jack made a good thing out of it, so did not complain.
"This brickyard was close at hand," so he writes in "Burning Daylight, "on the flat beside the Sonoma Creek. The kilns were visible among the trees, when he glanced to the left and caught sight of wooded knolls half a mile away, perched on the rolling slopes of Sonoma Mountain. The mountain, it- self wooded, towered behind. The trees on the knoll seemed to beckon to him. The dry, early summer air, shot through with sunshine, was wine to him. Unconsciously he drank it in in deep breaths. The prospect of the brickyard was uninviting. He was jaded with all things business, and the wooded knolls were calling to him. A horse between his legs — a good horse, he decided; one that sent him back to the cayuses he had ridden during his eastern Oregon boyhood. He had been somewhat of a rider in those early days, and the champ of bit and creak of saddle-leather sounded good to him now.
"Resolving to have his fun first and to look over the brickyard afterward, he rode up the hill, prospecting for a way across country to get to the knolls. He left the country road at the first gate he came to and cantered through
388 OVERLAND MONTHLY
a hayfield. The grain was waist-high It was a wonderful flower, growing
on either side the wagon road, and he there in the cathedral nave of lofty
sniffed the warm aroma of it with de- trees. At least eight feet in height, its
lighted nostrils. Larks flew up be- stem rose straight and slender, green
fore him, and from everywhere came and bare, for two-thirds its length, and
mellow notes. From the appearance then burst into a shower of snow-white
of the road it was patent that it had waxen bells. There were hundreds of
been used for hauling clay to the now these blossoms, all from the one stem,
idle brickyard. Salving his con- delicately poised and ethereally frail,
science with the idea that this was Daylight had never seen anything like
part of the inspection, he rode on to it. Slowly his gaze wandered from it
the clay pit — a huge scar in a hillside, to all that was about him. He took
But he did not linger long, swinging off his hat, with almost a vague reli-
off again to the left and leaving the gious feeling. This was different. No
road. Not a farmhouse was in sight, room for contempt and evil here. This
and the change from the city crowding was clean and fresh and beautiful —
was essentially satisfying. He rode something he could respect. It was
now through open woods, across little like a church. The atmosphere was
flower-scattered glades, till he came one of holy calm. Here man felt the
upon a spring. Flat on the ground, he promptings of nobler things. Much of
drank deeply of the clear water, and, this and more was in Daylight's heart
looking about him, felt with a shock as he looked about him. But it was
the beauty of the world. It came to not a concept of his mind. He merely
"him like a discovery; he had never felt it without thinking about it at all.
realized it before, he concluded, and "On the steep incline above the
also, he had forgotten much. One spring grew tiny maiden-hair ferns,
could not sit in at high finance and while higher up were larger ferns and
keep track of such things. As he brakes. Great, moss-covered trunks
drank in the air, the scene, and the of fallen trees lay here and there,
distant song of larks, he felt like a slowly sinking back and merging into
poker player rising from a night long the level of the forest mould. Beyond,
table and coming forth from the pent in a slightly clearer space, wild grape
atmosphere to taste the freshness of and honeysuckle swung in green riot
the morn. from gnarled old oak trees. A gray
"At the base of the knolls he en- Douglas squirrel crept out on a branch countered a tumbledown stake-and- and watched him. From somewhere rider fence. From the look of it he came the distant knocking of a wood- judged it must be forty years old at pecker. This sound did not disturb least — the work of some first pioneer the hush and awe of the place. Quiet who had taken up the land when the woods' noises belonged there and days of gold had ended. The woods made the solitude complete. The tiny were very thick here, yet fairly clear bubbling ripple of the spring and the of underbrush, so that, while the blue gray flash of tree-squirrel were as sky was screened by the arched yardsticks with which to measure the branches, he was able to ride beneath, silence and motionless repose. He now found himself in a nook of " 'Might be a million miles from several acres, where the oak and man- anywhere,' Daylight whispered to him- zanita and madrono gave way to clus- self.
ters of stately redwoods. Against the "But ever his gaze returned to the
foot of a steep-sloped knoll he came wonderful lily beside the bubbling
upon a magnificent group of redwoods spring.
that seemed to have gathered about a "He tethered the horse and wan- tiny gurgling spring. dered on foot among the knolls. Their
"He halted his horse, for beside the tops were crowned with century-old
spring uprose a wild California lily, spruce trees, and their sides clothed
A STUDY OF JACK LONDON IN HIS PRIME
389
with oaks and madronos and native holly. But to the perfect redwoods belonged the small but deep canyon that threaded its way among the knolls. Here he found no passage out for his horse, and he returned to the lily beside the spring. On foot, trip- ping, stumbling, leading the animal, he forced his way up the hillside. And ever the ferns carpeted the way of his feet, ever the forest climbed with him and arched overhead, and ever the clean joy and sweetness stole in upon his senses.
"On the crest he came through an amazing thicket of velvet-trunked
which his horse dropped slowly, with circumspect feet and reluctant gait."
I have quoted thus liberally from London's own descriptions that my readers might know something of the delight and charm of the place he has bought, and also of what my Boston friend was to enjoy.
Purposely I placed him next to London as we rode, and one can well understand what a delightful saddle companion he was. With that unusu- ally keen power of observation of his, with an appreciation of beauty equal to his powers of observation; alive to the finger tips to every impression of
The sleeping mountain lake on the London Ranch, Valley of the Moon.
young madronos, and emerged on an open hillside that led down into a tiny valley. The sunshine was at first daz- zling in its brightness, and he paused and rested, for he was panting from the exertion. Not of old had he known shortness of breath such as this and muscles that so easily tired at a stiff climb. A tiny stream ran down the tiny valley through a tiny meadow that was carpeted knee-high with grass and blue and white nemophila. The hillside was covered with Mariposa lilies and wild hyacinth, down through
joy or beauty; thoroughly informed on trees, plants, flowers, animals, birds, fishes and instincts, and gifted with unusual imagination, he fairly deluged my friend with his vivid and intense descriptions. It was needless for him to tell me how much he enjoyed it. I could tell by the rapid fire of question and answer, expression and reply, how eagerly he was taking it in. And it certainly was a morning ride fit for the gods, one of incomparable charm and exquisite delight.
Returned to the house, we had mu-
390 OVERLAND MONTHLY
sic from voice, piano and Victrola, and And there, dear reader, you have it.
Jack related a number of interesting Contact with London reveals him what
stories in connection with his trip on my Boston friend discovered him to
the "Snark." But more than all, I be. Whatever one's opinions of his
wanted my friend to see the intellec- sociological ideas, or of his literary
tual workings of London's mind, so I work may be, his home life to-day is
started arguments with him on socio- a very beautiful one, and his devotion
logical questions. I aroused him to his wife, as also to his art, sincere
enough by antagonism to stimulate and true. , .
his natural eloquence. Naturally, my Now let me attempt a description of
friend prodded him also, for he prided the house that struck my Boston friend
himself upon his wide reading of all as so marvelously adapted to its re-
the schools of sociology. When I had quirements as a home and equally well
got the two head over heels into red- fitted to its environment, hot debate, I let them "go it," ham- ^i If in the building of a home the mer and tongs, for I knew what the ^builders should express themselves,
result would be. London's memory then Jack and Charmian London are
seldom fails him, and his reading was building one of the most individualis-
as four to one compared with that of tic homes in the world. It is located
the Eastern scholar. The result was on the London ranch in the Sonoma
the latter found himself utterly unable Valley — the valley of the moon, as the
to hold his own, and yet in his defeat poetic Indian name suggests. Since
felt that peculiar consciousness of his first land purchase he has bought
pride that only a well educated man two or three other adjoining ranches,
can feel, viz., that it has taken a man until now the estate comprises about
wonderfully well equipped with natu- twelve hundred acres. Of this, nearly
ral endowment and extraordinary read- eight hundred acres are wild hillside
ing to be able to cope with him. and four hundred are under cultiva-
The day was gone all too soon. Af- tion. With a glorious outlook on all
ter a tasty dinner the cart was brought four sides over fertile fields, with
and as we rode out to the train I turned woods and mountain slopes, the house
and asked: "Well, how is it?" And is being built on a knoll, with a most
then, for an hour, I listened to the picturesque clump of redwoods at the
Boston man's superlative expressions back. Being out-of-door people, fond
of the situation, the gist of which was of water, the home is built around a
as follows : "Why, sir, that man's life patio, in the center of which is a water
is the most ideal life of any literary pool or tank of solid concrete forty by
man I know. His home is as near to fifteen feet and six feet deep, fed by
perfection as I have ever seen a home water from a cold mountain spring,
and his companionship with his wife and in which black bass will be kept,
is something wonderful. It does not and where one may occasionally take
require any intelligence to discover the a plunge — if he is brave and hardy
secret of his immense capacity for enough.
work. He is living in an artistic at- Weeks have been spent upon the
mosphere, every element of which is concrete bed which is practically the
perfectly congenial. And think of that foundation of the house. Mr. London
ride! What a joy and privilege to has here carried out an idea of his
have been able to take it with him! own, viz., that in an earthquake coun-
I never heard any one who so thor- try as California, a house designed to
oughly entered into the spirit of Na- be permanent should be especially
ture and the beauty of things as did guarded in its foundation. He reasons
this man who has always been de- that a house built on a gigantic slab of
scribed to me as so rude and primitive concrete will move as a unit, and not
as to be absolutely brutal." And a one wall incline in one direction and
great deal more along the same line, another in the opposite direction when
A STUDY OF JACK LONDON IN HIS PRIME
391
the quake occurs. Anyhow the archi- tect has supervised the putting in of a bed of concrete sufficiently deep, thick and strong to sustain a forty-story skyscraper on a sandy foundation.
The architect is Mr. Albert Farr of San Francisco, a man of knowledge, experience and imagination, and as soon as Mr. and Mrs. London laid be- fore him their ideas, he went to work to materialize them. The house is built chiefly of five materials, all of which are local products — redwood trees, a deep chocolate-maroon vol- canic rock, blue slate, boulders and concrete. The London ranch furnishes the redwoods which are to be used with their jackets on, the rough deep- red colored bark harmonizing perfect- ly with the rough rock of the founda- tion. The rock is used exactly as blasted. It is not quarried in the sense of being worked regularly. It is sim- ply blasted out and some chunks weigh several hundred pounds, some merely a few pounds and some as much as a ton or more. Just as they come they are hauled and placed in appropriate places. The result is im- mensely effective and attractive. The first floor is already built so that the effect is definitely known, and can be properly estimated. This house is 1 — I shaped, the main portion being eighty-six feet wide, with two eighty- two feet wings. The concrete water tank occupies the center of the patio, or open court. Around the tank will be a five-foot strip of garden, and this is the only piece of formal or conven- tional flower garden on the estate. Balconies built Qf redwood trunks are to surround the court.
The steps leading to the second story and the second story itself are to be built of the great boulders or cobble stones found on the estate, also the outside chimneys, and a builder has been found whose artistic work in the handling of these boulders is a joy and a delight.
The rough- tree trunks will form the architectural lines of the porte-cochere, pergolas and porches, while the rafters are to be hewn out of rough redwood
logs and kept in the natural finish. A charming effect is to be obtained by interlacing the tree trunks in the gables and balconies with fruit tree twigs. The roof will be of Spanish tile, colored to harmonize with the maroon of the rock and the redwood.
The interior is to be finished after the same rustic and individualistic fashion. It is to be essentially a home for the two people who are building it — a workshop for Mr. London, a home for Mrs. London, and a place where they can gather and entertain their friends. Hence these three ideas have been kept distinctly in the foreground. Mr. London's workroom is on the sec- ond floor, and is to be a magnificent room, nineteen by forty feet, with the library, exactly the same size, directly underneath, and the two connected with a spiral staircase. These two rooms are entirely apart from the rest of the house, thus affording perfect seclusion to the author while engaged at his work. His regular habit is to get to writing directly after breakfast, and he never writes less than one thousand words, his regular daily stunt. If this requires five hours, six, nine or merely two, it is always accomplished, and then the rest of the day is given over to hospitality, recreation or farming.
The chief feature of the house is the great living room, eighteen by fifty- eight feet, and extending over two stories high, with rough redwood bal- conies extending around the second floor. Open rafers for ceiling and ga- bles, and an immense stone fireplace, which will be fed daily with gigantic logs from the woods on the estate, will give it a cheerful, homelike, though vast and medieval appearance.
The entrance way begins between two gigantic redwoods — and then leads to the porte-cochere, a roomy place big enough for the handling of the largest touring cars.
Immediately from the porte-co- chere one enters the large hall, which, except for massive, handsomely wrought iron gates, will be perpetually open, reaching completely from the front to the rear of the building. From
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
this hall three large guest rooms, the patio and the author's workshop are reached on the left hand side, and on the right a reception room, with coat rooms, toilets and all conveniences, a gun-room, the stairs and the large liv- ing room. One of the two large al- coves of the living room is to be es- pecially arranged for Mrs. London's Steinway grand piano, a kingly instru- ment, which gives her intense pleas- ure, and which will assuredly afford great joy and entertainment to her guests.
Long ago Mr. and Mrs. London fully decided the question that city life had not enough compensations to offer for home life. So they are building with this thought in view — to make a home for themselves where they can wel- come and entertain all the friends they desire. They both laugh heartily at the comment of a city lady who, visit- ing the growing house and not know- ing that any one could hear her, ex- claimed : "What fools they are ! build- ing such a glorious house where none can see it!" as if the chief end of building a home was for "some one to see it." The Londons have a right ap- preciation of values, and they know how to place things. The first re- quirement of a house is that it shall be a home for those who are to live in it — the appreciation of others is a sec- ondary consideration. From this view- point the London house will be ideal.
It is to contain its own hot water, heating, electric lighting, refrigerat- ing, vacuum cleaning and laundry plants — the latter with steam dryer rotary wringer — a milk and store room, root and wine cellar.
Its name is "Wolf House," a re- minder of London's book plate which is the big face of a wolf dog, and of his first great literary success, "The Call of the Wild."
At present the Londons are living in a group of the old houses they found on the estate. It has been renovated, fixed over, added to, repainted and re- furnished, and it makes a most com- fortable home until the new one is
completed. How long that will be Jack laughingly declares no one knows — as he stops building as soon as his money gives out. So he and his mate are enjoying the building more than most people enjoy such work, one rea- son, doubtless, being because of this element of uncertainty.
In my personal touches with London he reveals more and more of the phil- osophy that controls him. One day we were talking about what life is, and what its conflicts mean, and he said in effect:
"I judge my life largely by the vic- tories I have been able to gain! The things I remember best are my great victories. Two of these were won when I was a very small child, and one was won in a dream. When I was about three years old we were moving from one part of Oakland to another. Up to that time I had not known fear, but this particular after- noon when I went into the house and saw the vacant rooms, the boxes and furniture moved here and there, and everything different, and suddenly realized that I was alone in the house, a deadly fear came upon me. I was in a room one window of which looked out into a yard where some of the folks were beating carpets, and with this horrible dread upon me, unable to call out, afraid, I suppose, to do so, I could only find relief in going to the window and looking out. I thought of running to those outside, but one look into the room, and realizing that I had to go through two rooms before I reached the outside door, effectually deterred me. For awhile I succeeded in beat- ing down the fear. Then, suddenly, I realized that the carpet beating was stopped and the folks had gone some- where, that I was entirely alone, and that it was twilight and night was speedily coming down with its dark pall. For awhile I was terror-stricken and I suffered more torture than even now I care to recall. But by and by I braced up and resolutely I deter- mined to face the terror. Gathering myself together, bracing up my will, I sturdily walked through the rooms
A STUDY OF JACK LONDON IN HIS PRIME 393
to the outside, feeling the thrill of vie- from the hospital in Australia, when
tory as I did so. we decided to give up the Snark trip,
"My other childish victory was over I had a five weeks' growth of heavy a peculiar nightmare. I had. lived in moustache and beard. I went to a the country and was one day brought barber's, where there were eight to town and stood on a railway plat- chairs, took my seat and the barber form as a railway engine came in. Its began. After he had lathered me and ponderous size, its easy and resistless taken off a part of my beard, I sud- onward movement, its panting, its fire denly noticed that the hand that rested and smoke, its great noises, all im- on me was shaking frightfully. I pressed me so powerfully that that looked and saw the razor hand ap- night I dreamed of it, and when the proaching me, but jerking, as if the dream turned to a nightmare was filled man was in a fit. It barely touched with dread and horror at what seemed my skin when he drew it back. At to be the fact that this locomotive was first I was speechless with fright. A pursuing me and that I could not get panic seized me, and I wanted to jump out of its way. For weeks thereafter up and rush out. Then I pulled my- I was haunted by this dreadful fear, self together and asked what it all and night after night I was run down, meant. I recalled to my mind the But, strange to say, I always rose up mental conflicts I had recently had again after suffering the pangs of a while face to face with myself on the horrible death, to go over it all again, hospital cot. What did all my argu- The torture those nightmares gave me ments and assertions as to the suprem- none can understand except those who acy of mind over body really mean, have gone through a similar experi- Here was an opportunity to test them, ence. Then one night came release. I could dodge the issue by slipping in- In the distance, as the mighty modern to another seat. But I determined to Juggernaut came towards me, I saw test myself. Quietly looking up, I a man with a stepladder. I was un- asked the barber: 'What's up?' He able to cry out, but I waved my hand answered in effect that he had been to him. He hailed me and bade me out with the boys on Saturday night — come. That broke the spell. I ran to this was Monday — and for the first him, climbed to the top of the step- time in his life his dissipation had pro- ladder, and thereafter lost all terror duced the 'shakes.' In a hoarse whis- at the sight of a locomotive. But the per he begged me not to give him victory gained in climbing the ladder away, as that would mean losing his was as real as any I ever had in my job, and places were scarce just then, waking life. "'Take your time,' I said; 'I'll give
"Another victory was gained when you a chance, but be careful.'
I learned that fame didn't count, and "Then for fully three-quarters of an
another when I learned that I could hour I waited and watched that fellow
do without money. To-day I could — his hand shaking uncontrollably —
look upon the loss of all my income bring that razor to my cheek, lip or
with equanimity, for I know I have chin, knowing that a moment's shake
strength enough to go out and earn at the wrong time might mean the tak-
enough for Charmian and me to live on ing off of a piece of me.
healthfully and simply. Another was "That I call a great victory."
when I ceased to fear death, and one As throwing small sidelights upon
of my latest triumphs was the victory London's inner thoughts, the following
gained over my dread of death by a may assist. They are the inscriptions
knife. I have always had a terror of written by his own hand in the various
being killed by cutting with a knife, books he has sent me :
Often have I faced death, in a variety In the "People of the Abyss";
of ways, but an open knife always "Walk with me here, among the crea-
gave me the horrors. After I got up tures damned by man, and then won-
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der not that I sign myself, Yours for the Revolution."
In "Children of the Frost" : "Find herein my Indians; I imagine they do not differ very much from yours."
In his "War of the Classes" he wrote : "Read here some of the reasons of my socialism, and some of my so- cialism."
In another copy of "The War of the Classes," knowing that I was a con- tinuous student of Browning, he wrote : "God's still in his heaven, but all's not well with the world."
How suggestive this from "The Kempton-Wace Letters": "I'd rather be ashes than dust."
In "Tales of the Fish Patrol": "Find within these pages my youthful stamping ground, when I first went 'on my own' into the world."
In "The Sea Wolf": "Find here, in the mouth of the Sea Wolf, much of the philosophy that was mine in my 'long sickness.' It is still mine, though now that I am happy, I keep it cov- ered over with veils of illusion."
The chief character in this book is Wolf Larsen. He is a wonderful con- ception, wonderfully drawn, a strong and impelling character, a human be- ing devoid of all morality, all senti- ment, save that of living solely for his own pleasure and interest. He is pic- tured as being neither moral nor im- moral, simply unmoral, knowing no standard of right and wrong, recogniz- ing no impelling duty save that of personal interest. He is the incarna- tion of materialism and selfish indi- vidualism, which, as London says above, was for a time his "great sick- ness."
Yet he is made the instrument for good. It would be immeasurably bet- ter for the individual, and therefore for the race, if all the "Sissies" and "Miss Nancys," the bloodless, super- refined, super-sensitive, super-civil- ized creatures of the Van Weyden type were compelled to undergo some such treatment as Wolf Larsen gave to him. In the Wolf's words they would learn to "stand upon their own legs" instead of walking upon those of
their fathers. "The Sea Wolf" clearly teaches Jack London's philosophies upon this subject. Van Weyden, the scholar and dilettante, says of himself : "I had never done any hard manual labor or scullion labor in my life. I had lived a placid, uneventful, seden- tary existence all my days — the life of a scholar and a recluse on an assured and comfortable income. Violent life and athletic sports had never appealed to me. I had always been a book- worm; so my sisters and my father had called me during my childhood. I had gone camping but once in my life, and then I left the party almost at the start and returned to the com- forts and conveniences of a roof. And here I was, with dreary and endless vistas before me of table setting, po- tato peeling and dish washing, and I was not strong. The doctors had al- ways said that I had a remarkable con- stitution, but I had never developed it or my body through exercise. My muscles were small and soft like a woman's, or so the doctors had. said time and again in the course of their attempts to persuade me to go in for physical culture fads. But I had pre- ferred to use my head rather than my body; and here I was, in no fit condi- tion for the rough life in prospect."
There you have it : a dreamy, sensu- ous, half life he had lived, his body rusting and rotting for want of use. How could health of thought come from such a body? Half the thought that controls the world is diseased thought, rotten thought, born of dis- eased and rotten bodies. For thought to be strong and virile and pure it must come through strong, virile and pure bodies. The man who lives a lazy, sel- fish, self-indulgent life cannot think other than lazy, selfish, self-indulgent thoughts. And it was the mission of Wolf Larsen, cruel, horrible, terrible though it seemed at first to Hum- phrey Van Weyden, to show him the uselessness and inutility of his own life, the helplessness of it and to de- velop within him powers of usefulness, or self-reliance, of mental grasp. As you read of Van Weyden's treatment
A STUDY OF JACK LONDON IN HIS PRIME
395
your blood boils at times with anger and indignation, yet the ultimate out- come was good, in the highest degree good. It taught the hitherto useless and selfish man a sympathy with the hard and cruel work of others; it de- veloped his body, his mind, his inven- tion, his soul. See him there, as Lon- don pictures him, when cast ashore on Endeavor Island, with the woman he loved, struggling with the masts of the dismasted "Ghost" in order that he may get back to civilization. Day af- ter day he grapples with problems of weight, levers, fulcrums, blocks and tackles, and little by little knows the joy of overcoming them. He learns what it is to really live — to live in ac- tive battling with the real problems that meet men and women in real life. So, in the end, one is forced to the conclusion that his experiences were good for him in every way. They had made a man of him — a real man, not a semblance of a man. A self-reliant, self-competent, self-dependent man, full of sympathy for his fellows, know- ing the hardships and difficulties of their lives and realizing the joys of their triumphs. And to be a man is much. Welcome the teacher, hard though he be, that teaches us man- hood.
So Jack London's book comes to me with the highest sanction. It teaches human puppets to be men through the strenuous endeavor of compelling life.
In his later books his humor asserts itself more than formerly. He is far more jolly, human and humorous than most of his readers conceive. For in- stance, when he was living at Wake Robin Lodge, where I first met him, he had a notice on the front door of his library or studio : "No Admittance Ex- cept on Business!" Then underneath, "Positively no Business Transacted Here." On the back door were these legends: "No one admitted without knocking." "Please do not knock."
Yet it cannot be denied that humor is a secondary or tertiary thing to him. He has been compelled by the hard knocks of life to be so deadly in ear- nest, and he has so thoroughly taken
upon himself the burden of the down- trodden classes that, while he fully ap- preciates humor, can tell a good story and laughs as heartily as any man, the serious side of life is ever uppermost to him.
This is clearly seen in the conclud- ing words of his compelling paper, "What Life Means to Me." He there says:
"I discovered that I did not like to live on the parlor floor of society. In- tellectually I was bored. Morally and spiritually I was sickened. I remem- bered my intellectuals and idealists, my unfrocked preachers, broken pro- fessors, and clean-minded, class con- scious workingmen. I remembered my days and nights of sunshine and star- shine, where life was all a wild, sweet wonder, a spiritual paradise of unsel- fish adventure and ethical romance. And I saw before me, ever blazing and burning, the Holy Grail.
"So I went back to the working class in which I had been born and where I belonged. I care no longer to climb. The imposing edifice of society above my head holds no delights for me. It is the foundation of the edifice that interests me. There I am content to labor, crowbar in hand, shoulder to shoulder with intellectuals, idealists and class-conscious workingmen, get- ting a solid pry now and again and set- ting the whole edifice rocking. Some day, when we get a few more hands and crowbars to work, we'll topple it over, along with all its rotten life and unburied dead, its monstrous selfish- ness and sodden materialism. Then we'll cleanse the cellar and build a new habitation for mankind, in which there will be no parlor floor, in which all the rooms will be bright and airy, and where the air that is breathed will be clean, noble and alive.
"Such is my outlook. I look forward to a time when man shall progress up- on something worthier and higher than his stomach, when there will be a finer incentive to impel men to action than the incentive of to-day, which is the incentive of the stomach. I retain my belief in the nobility and excellence of
396
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the human. I believe that spiritual sweetness and unselfishness will con- quer the gross gluttony of to-day. And, last of all, my faith is in the working class. As some Frenchman has said: 'The stairway of time is ever echoing with the wooden shoe going up, the polished boot descending.' "
Let me here say a few words as to London's socialism.
It is useless to say that his theories and ideas are impracticable. It is im- possible to ignore them. He and his compeers argue with relentless logic that will not be gainsaid. The capital- istic class, they say, has had up to now the management of the affairs of the world. The laboring class, perforce, has had to accept this management, live by the laws the capitalists have formulated, accept the wages paid, pay the prices demanded for rents, com- modities, clothing and food, and live in rigid conformity to the will of the capitalists — as expressed in the laws and in social requirements — with little more than a pretended voice of sug- gestion in the making of these laws. They openly claim that this manage- ment has been a failure as far as the higher development of mankind is con- cerned. They point with bitterness to the evidences of material and finan- cial prosperity side by side with in- creasing misery and wretchedness and the growing fierceness of the struggle for existence. In his essay entitled "Revolution," London compares the existence of the cave-man with the conditions of life among the poor to- day, and calls upon the poor to assert their rights, show their power at the ballot-box and claim their own. The red banner, by the way, symbolizes the brotherhood of man and does not symbolize the incendiarism that in- stantly connects itself with the red banner in the affrighted bourgeois mind. The comradeship of the revolu- tionists is alive and warm. It passes over geographical lines, transcends race prejudice, and has even proven itself mightier than the Fourth of July, spread-eagle Americanism of our fore- fathers. The French socialist working-
men and the German socialist working- men forget Alsace and Lorraine, and, when war threatens, pass resolutions declaring that as workingmen and comrades, they have no quarrel with each other. When Japan and Russia sprang at each other's throats, the rev- olutionists of Japan addressed the fol- lowing message to the revolutionists of Russia:
"Dear Comrades: Your government and ours have recently plunged into war to carry out their imperialistic ten- dencies, but for us socialists there are no boundaries, race, country, national- ity. We are comrades, brothers and sisters, and have no reason to fight. Your enemies are not the Japanese people, but our militarism and so- called patriotism. Patriotism and militarism are our mutual enemies."
Here is another utterance that should be calmly weighed and duly consid- ered :
"One thing must be clearly under- stood. This is no spontaneous and vague uprising of a large mass of dis- contented and miserable people — a blind and instinctive recoil from trust. On the contrary, the propaganda is in- tellectual ; the movement is based upon economic necessity and is in line with social evolution; while the miserable people have not yet revolted. The revolutionist is no starved and diseased slave in the shambles at the bottom of the social pit, but is, in the main, a hearty, well fed workingman who sees the shambles waiting for him and his children and declines to descend. The very miserable people are too helpless to help themselves. But they are be- ing helped, and the day is not far dis- tant when their numbers will go to swell the ranks of the revolutionists."
There are those who ask, Why ex- ploit the socialistic ideas of London? Is there not something of the ostrich hiding its head in the sand in this mental attitude? If socialism is dan- gerous, the sooner we who profess to be less radical know it the better. Let us fully understand the ideas, the pro- paganda, the methods these men and women have in their minds; then, if
A STUDY OF JACK LONDON IN HIS PRIME
397
they are to be combatted, we can the more intelligently go to work to com- bat them. But to shut our eyes and ears, to remain wilfully blind and deaf until the storm is upon us is both fool- ish, absurd and suicidal. ~~~~~
About five years ago on one of my visits to Glen Ellen, Jack and his wife were full of their contemplated trip on "The Snark." They had decided to make it, and Jack and "Roscoe" spent hours going over their plans. I used to watch and listen and enjoy it all in anticipation with them. They planned to be gone for seven years, to circumnavigate the globe and visit every place that appealed to them.
A few days after I left them I wrote the following, gendered by the unfold- ing of London's philosophy as it ap- peared to me at the time :
"Seven years on a small vessel, jour- neying through storms and calms, in all kinds of seas in all kinds of wea- thers. Seven years of risk, of uncer- tainty, of danger — so it appears to a landsman. But how does it seem to him? Read his stories of the Fish Pa- trol in San Francisco harbor; get it well into your understanding that as a lad of sixteen he was the hero of ad- venture, of daring and bravery that were taken as the everyday work of capturing desperate and armed men who violated the laws of the Fish Commissioners; men who defiantly pirated the oyster beds ; men to whom the sailing of their vessels in all wea- thers and in the fogs and darkness of night was part of their everyday life; men whose whole lives had been spent on the sea — I say he entered into the task of foiling these men in their il- legal work when but a mere lad of six- teen. With his superior, or alone, he sailed the vessel of the fish patrol and sought to outsail and outwit defiant and mocking men. Here, then, was his school. Here was his training ground. As you read his fish and sea stories you see that the uncertain deck of the tossing vessel, the uprearing and downfalling of the ship as it is lifted by the wild and boisterous waves is a place of sure footing to him. Masts
and sails and oars and tackles and keels and center-boards and the like are all as familiar to him as fashions are to the dude, and not in a dilettante way, but in the stern, real, positive way that comes in the discharge of ar- duous, wearisome, dangerous and ex- citing daily labor.
"His, therefore, will be no amateur trip. He knows what he is about. He is an expert sailor. He as thoroughly understands the handling and working of a vessel as an expert mechanic trained as a chauffeur understands the manipulation of an automobile.
"And yet more than this is neces- sary for the master of a vessel. He must understand the art of navigation. That is, he must understand not only all about the actual working of the ves- sel, but how to determine his course in the night, in a fog, how to find his lo- cation when wind, adverse current and storm have forced him out of his ex- pected path. This knowledge he does not possess. But this is no real ob- stacle. Here is where his superb men- tal training and self-discipline come in. He knows that a few days' reading up will give him the scientific knowledge necessary to learn these things. What a school man must spend months to learn, he knows that his well-disci- plined intellect, with its powers of con- centration, absorption and retention can master in a few weeks. So with supreme self-reliance he looks upon the necessary knowledge as almost at- tained, and goes on with his prepara- tion without a flutter of fear at his heart."
London himself, in his book, "The Cruise of the Snark," enlarges upon this crude presentation of his ideas in the following vigorous fashion:
"The thing I like most of all is per- sonal achievement — not achievement for the world's applause, but achieve- ment for my own delight. It is the old 'I did it! I did it! With my own hands I did it!' But personal achieve- ment, with me, must be concrete. I'd rather win a water-fight in the swim- ming pool, or remain astride a horse that is trying to get out from under
398 OVERLAND MONTHLY
me, than write the great American "My delight was in that I had done
novel. Each man to his liking. Some it — not in the fact that twenty-two men
other fellow would prefer writing the knew I had done it. Within the year
great Ameircan novel to winning the over half of them were dead and gone,
water-fight or mastering the horse. yet my pride in the thing performed
"Possibly the proudest achievement was not diminished by half, of my life, my moment of highest liv- "Life that lives is life successful, ing, occurred when I was seventeen. I and success is the breath of its nos- was in a three-masted schooner off the trils. The achievement of a difficult coast of Japan. We were in a typhoon, feat is successful adjustment to a All hands had been on deck most of sternly exacting environment. The the night. I was called from my bunk more difficult the feat, the greater the at seven in the morning to take the satisfaction at its accomplishment, wheel. Not a stitch of canvas was set. Thus it is with the man who leaps for- We were running before it with bare ward from the springboard, out over poles, yet the schooner fairly tore the swimming pool, and with a back- along. The seas were all of an eighth ward half-revolution of the body, en- of a mile apart, and the wind snatched ters the water head first. Once he left the whitecaps from their summits, fill- the springboard his environment was ing the air so thick with driving spray immediately savage, and savage the that it was impossible to see more than penalty it would have exacted had he two waves at a time. The schooner failed and struck the water flat. Of was almost unmanageable, rolling her course, the man did not have to run rail under to starboard and to port, the risk of the penalty. He could have veering and yawing anywhere be- remained on the bank in a sweet and tween southeast and southwest, and placid environment of summer air, threatening when the huge seas lifted sunshine and stability. Only he was under her quarter, to broach to. Had not made that way. In the swift mid- she broached to, she would ultimately air moment he lived as he could never have been reported with all hands and have lived on the bank, no tidings. "The trip around the world means
"I took the wheel. The sailing mas- big moments of living. Bear with me ter watched me for a space. He was a moment, and look at it. Here am I, afraid of my youth, feared that I a little animal called a man — a bit of lacked the strength and the nerve. But vitalized matter, one hundred and when he saw me successfully wrestle sixty-five pounds of meat and blood, the schooner through several bouts, he nerve, sinew, bones and brain — all of went below to breakfast. Fore and aft it soft and tender, susceptible to hurt, all hands were belcw at breakfast. Had fallible and frail. I strike a light she broached to, not one of them would back-handed blow on the nose of an ever have reached the deck. For forty obstreperous horse, and a bone in my minutes I stood there alone at the hand is broken. I put my head under wheel, in my grasp the wildly career- the water for five minutes and I am ing schooner and the lives of twenty- drowned. I fall twenty feet through two men. Once we were pooped. I the air and I am smashed. I am a saw it coming, and, half-drowned, with creature of temperature. A few de- tons of water crushing me, I checked grees one way and my fingers and toes the schooner's rush to broach to. At blacken and drop off. A few degrees the end of the hour, sweating and the other way, and my skin blisters played out, I was relieved. But I had and shrivels away from the raw, quiv- done it! With my own hands I had ering flesh. A few additional degrees done the trick at the wheel and guided either way, and the life and the light a hundred tons of wood and iron in me go out. A drop of poison in- through a few million tons of wind jeered into my body from a snake, and and waves. I cease to move — forever I cease to
A STUDY OF JACK LONDON IN HIS PRIME
399
move. A splinter of lead from a rifle enters my head, and I am wrapped around in the eternal blackness.
"Fallible and frail, a bit of pulsat- ing, jelly-like life — it is all I am. About me are the great natural forces — colos- sal menaces, Titans of destruction, un- sentimental monsters that have less concern for me than I have for the grain of sand I crush under my foot. They have no concern at all for me. They do not know me. They are un- conscious, unmerciful and unmoral. They are the cyclones and tornadoes, lightning flashes and cloud-bursts, tide-rips and tidal waves, under-tows and waterspouts, great whirls and sucks and eddies, earthquakes and volcanoes, surfs that thunder on rock- ribbed coasts and seas that leap aboard the largest crafts that float, crushing humans to pulp or licking them off into the sea and to death — and these insensate monsters do not know that tiny sensitive creature, all nerves and weaknesses, whom men call Jack London, and who himself thinks he is all right and quite a superior be- ing.
"In the maze and chaos of the con- flict of these vast and draughty Titans, it is for me to thread my precarious way. The bit of life that is I will ex- ult over them. The bit of life that is I, in so far as it succeeds in baffling them or in bidding to its service, will imagine that it is godlike. It is good to ride the tempest and feel godlike. I dare to assert that for a finite speck of pulsating jelly to feel godlike is a far more glorious feeling than for a god to feel godlike.
"Here is the sea, the wind and the
wave. Here are the seas, the winds and the waves of all the world. Here is ferocious environment. And here is difficult adjustment, the achievement of which is delight to the small quiv- ering vanity that is I. I like. I am so made. It is my own particular form of vanity, that is all."
They made *a "WoUderful start and did some remarkable voyaging, all of which is told in graphic fashion in London's "Cruise of the Snark." But circumstances over which they had no control compelled the giving up of the trip when they reached Australia, and they returned to their home in Glen Ellen, there to furbish up the old ranch house, begin the building of the new and wonderful home, construct the trails and be happy, as I have de- scribed in the earlier pages of this al- ready prolonged sketch. That they are not compulsorily anchored is evi- denced by the fact that a few months ago they decided to take a trip to New York. While there, one or the other or both decided that a sailing vessel trip to California around Cape Horn would suit them, and in twenty-four hours arrangements were made and they were off.
Whatever else may be said of Lon- don, no one can truthfully say of him that he has not lived. In his less than forty years of life he has played on a gamut of several octaves, and from present indication life is just as in- tense, as vivid, and as full with him as when he fought his battle with the bully newsboy on the streets of Oak- land, or the bully sailor on the deck of the Behring Sea whaler.
He is very much alive.
Ars. Jack London's New Viewpoint
By L. Rudio Marshall
AS I STEPPED from the car- riage that brought me from Glen Ellen to the vine-covered home on the London ranch in the Valley of the Moon, a 'bright sun- beam seemed to slip out of the door and greet me with the informal kind- liness of a young girl. In the delight- ful feeling of this cordial spirit of pure friendliness I realized the full meaning of the old-time saying of Jack's friends: "Jack's home is the real home." The trail to that home is well worn with footprints, and is an ever- ready remembrance to his hosts of staunch friends in all quarters of the globe. Perhaps there is no place of its kind in the West that has attracted so many and such a variety of visitors as the Home That Jack Built with the latch string always hanging out — and beckoning.
"It is so good of you to come," Mrs. London exclaimed warmly, making me completely at home with her radiant kindliness. "There is so much to tell and I know that you will enjoy your- self. Come in and let me make you comfortable."
After we had chatted awhile in a lovely arcade overlooking a glorious panoramic view of the valley, backed by the rising hills, she began in low tones : "I will carry out Jack's work as he planned it. He left behind enough material to write books for at least one hundred years."
She reached to a shelf nearby, which was covered with scattered photo- graphs. "Here are Jack and I at Hon- olulu. Here we are in the Sierras." She shuffled many photographs, all de- picting Jack and herself in many places in the Western world. Occa- sionally she paused meditatively over
a picture that recalled some striking incident in their far-ranging journeys into happiness. She held a bunch of photographs close to her and said, brightly: "I believe that Jack is al- ways with me. I live and hope under that impression. He would wish it, I know, and I love the idea."
We talked of his early work and how, after persistent and desperate endeavors, he at last "found himself" and attained the first recognition through publication in Overland Monthly, oddly enough the magazine founded by Bret Harte, in 1868, to furnish a vehicle whereby California writers might be developed.
London's first contribution to Over- land was the five "Malemute Kid" series, "The Son of the Wolf," etc., beginning January, 1899, all dealing with his then recent Alaskan experi- ences.
Mrs. London selected several pho- tographs and handed them to me. "Take them to Overland Monthly," she said, "as a compliment to the management for what it did to start Jack on his literary career."
After the publication of these Alas- kan stories, London's further contribu- tions were readily accepted by East- ern publishers, and his success wid- ened with each story printed.
Later I was invited by Mrs. Shepard — Jack London's sister and manager of the ranch — to take a stroll and be- come better acquainted with the se- questered trails and the roads thread- ing the woodland slopes and the glori- ous prospect they offered. Mrs. She- pard showed all the supple and exhil- arating signs of outdoor life. Being in ideal physical condition, she promptly developed into one of the
MRS. JACK LONDON'S NEW VIEWPOINT. 401
most enthusiastic and persistent walk- mirror reflecting the heavens and the
ers I ever hope to keep pace with. An serenity of the picturesque scene,
invitation to join her for a little ram- came suddenly into view. Later, Mrs.
ble, "just to view some of the more London told me of the profound affec-
captivating prospects," is doing a tion she and Jack entertained for that
marathon for which one should be sacred little spot, the site where they
crowned as in the Olympian games. and their most intimate friends spent
It was Jack London's spurring ambi- many happy evening hours with the
tion to make his extensive land-hold- canopy of stars overhead and the gen-
ing of hill and dale provide everything tly nodding sentinel trees looking ap-
needful for its consumption and use. proval.
Independence was his motto. Along There is where Jack took his cronies
this line he had developed his plans when they came up from San Fran-
to a point where he was preparing to cisco, Oakland and other places for a
inaugurate his own school house for "time." Hampers of food were car-
the benefit of the many children on ried along, and drinkables. Fish were
the ranch, as well as his own store, caught from the lake and popped into
furnished with all kinds of merchan- a hot pan and crackling potatoes
dise for the numerous families em- seared with the coals were raked out
ployed, and a post-office. With his ar- as they reached the point of bursting
dent enthusiasm he was always plan- like a boll of cotton. And as the good
ning new benefits for the workers fellows and their mates stretched out
around him, heartfelt endeavors to before the glowing embers of the big
ameliorate their condition and educate log fire, the stars gradually faded
them to advantages superior to any while the talk ranged its devious way
they might attain under their own in- round the circle, weird experiences,
itiative. wonderful adventures, the pet theories
Jack never skimped on any cost that of philosophers, prophets and radicals,
might make his holding more attrac- the uncanny rim of life, freedom of
tive. So when he decided to have a the will, revelations of their wildest
colorful background of Western bronco and most fantastic dreams — a mental
busters on his range, he brought out a giant swing to loop the loop between
number of real thoroughbred cowboys a Walpurgis night and the Miltonian
from Cheyenne, headed by a genius in heavens. Jack's wolves and elemental
that line, named Hayes. London humans, the while fantastically
loved horses, and the pride and gem of threading the themes of discussion, the display on his ranch was the prize From an eminence near the lake,
stallion, Neuadd Hillside. Singularly Mrs. Shepard pointed out a hillside
enough Jack died on the 22d of the with terrace after terrace dropping
month; so did the stallion on the same stairwise down the slope, date of the preceding mouth, and the "There you see one of Jack's many
ambitious House That Jack Built, his striking hobbies," she explained —
famous castle, burned down on the "terrace farming. When Jack bought
22d, some three years prior. these 1,500 acres they had been aban-
On my hike with Mrs. Shepard, we doned by six different ranchers, and
gradually threaded the main depart- each had done his level best to ex-
ments of the ranch, the storehouse, haust the soil and squeeze it of the
blacksmith shop, the cool rooms of last profit possible, till the ground was
the dairy and the specklessly clean as sterile as a piece of cement. Jack
slaughter house, where the animals attacked the problem with his usual
are killed and dressed to supply the zeal, and by degrees stimulated the
families working on the place. Then impoverished soil with proper nutri-
by easy ascent we climbed the wooded tives. There you see the result of his
trails, and as we turned a corner of efforts, an abundant profitable crop,
trees, a gem-like lake, an exquisite Along this line, Jack's ambition was to
402 OVERLAND MONTHLY
develop a model farm; one of the best bilities. By dealers she is accounted all-round ranches in the State, com- as a keenly competent woman. Mrs. bining a stock ranch, fruit, grain, Shepard was evidently born for the vegetables, vineyard and the like. He position, as she took to it like a duck would have accomplished his plan had to water. Five years ago she visited he lived, for his enthusiasm was un- her brother's ranch for a month's va- quenchable. His intense energy sim- cation to recuperate her health. She ply rioted in work. Success seemed has remained there ever since, an ideal only to stimulate him to greater and overseer, enjoying to the full her wider efforts." healthy and happy capacity of "doing ' By this time, being somewhat things well worth while." plump, I was becoming a bit nervous We walked back to the London regarding the many surrounding hills house, and there in a room I found about me which Mrs. Shepard seemed Mrs. London combing over numberless determined to climb in order to show relics which she and Jack had col- me the many other interesting points, lected on the thousand and one jour- I suggested that for a change it might neys taken to divers places scattered prove a relief to go down the hills in- about the world. Hundreds of pic- stead of everlastingly climbing them, tures of Jack, it seemed to me, taken Apparently she did not catch my gasp- in various foreign garbs. Many of ing hope, for suddenly she shot a them were entitled "The Wolf," as sharp glance at me. Jack was familiarly called by those
"You're a tenderfoot," she said, who knew him best. His laughing
There was a twinkle in her eye and eyes peeped from all quarters of the
about the corners of her mouth a lurk- room. Every glance by Mrs. London
ing expression of teasing. at "The Wolf" was an adoration.
"Yes," I replied, frankly. "My feet Mrs. London picked up one of the are tender, more tender than I ever photographs, kissed it fondly, and ex- suspected on such high hills." claimed: "Dear old Jack; no one
She laughed. And later, when we knows how I miss him. What is the reached the house, Mrs. London use of weeping and moping? He laughed too, when I caricatured my wouldn't want it. I shall always live experiences in hillside climbing. She in the way he would want me to." explained to me the extraordinary And so she fills out her life in sin- self service Jack's sister was doing cere effort to carry out the work left for the ranch. Mrs. Shepard alone by him according to his ideas, handles all the important business, Presently she brought out one of crop problems and other responsibili- her special treasures; her private copy ties. The bungalow in which she lives of the "Log of the Snark," which she is the business headquarters of the wrote on the notable voyage of that ranch. Mrs. Shepard is out and over vessel to describe the happy trip she the hills and the valley at all hours, and her husband made in the South looking sharply after the manifold de- Seas ; a book that throws more inti- tails in the proper development of the mate light on their happy, buoyant life ranch. She thinks nothing of a day's of camaraderie than can be found in all hike up hill and down dale, checking the other "London" books published, up the hands and the various special The volume is dedicated to Jack Lon- jobs scattered over the broad acreage, don, and was recently issued by the Aside from this she has the responsi- Macmillan Publishing Company, New bility of watching market prices in or- York. It is Mrs. London's first at- der to dispose the crops at advantage- tempt at authorship, and has proved ous figures, the purchase of new ma- a wonderful success because of its chinery, agricultural implements, and sincere naturalness and the delightful the thousand and one things required spirit which pervades it. In that book on a ranch of such extent and possi- the reader sees and realizes the true
MRS. JACK LONDON'S NEW VIEWPOINT.
403
Jack London ; his daily life is pictured familiarly, his writing hours, his day dreaming, his exuberant spirits and cosmic plans, his sincere thoughtful- ness of his host of friends, his canny hunches, his aspirations, his plans for a tangible eternity, and the deep de- votion between man and wife. He had a score of pet names for her, love names that he had selected: "Mate," "Mate Woman," "Cracker jack."
Every mail to Glen Ellen these days brings bundles of letters to Mrs. Lon- don congratulating her upon the im- mediate success of the "Log of the Snark." With beaming pride she read to me a letter written by a prominent publisher in Paris thanking her for an article she had recently written for him, and enclosing a check of cheer- ful figures, the first she had ever re- ceived. Laying down the letter she exclaimed radiantly: "My! Wouldn't Jack be proud of me?"
The remarkable success of Mrs. London's first book is an augury that many popular books from her pen will follow.
Jack died on a couch screened in on a wide porch overlooking a beautiful panoramic view of the Valley of the Moon, so appropriately named by him. All over his couch and about him were coverings of the wonderful col- lection of furs of wild animals he had gathered from the Western world.
Mrs. London walked over to a couch and pointed to a dial on the wooden frame above. "Dear Jack," she said; "for years he had set this alarm clock to strike at 6 a. m. See, the hour hand is now pointing at 8 o'clock. On the last night his strength failed, and for the first time in many years of his writing the dial was not set at 6 o'clock, his regular hour of rising.
"In one of the very last talks we had he expressed his deep sympathy for those in low circumstances who were striving with all kinds of shifts arid economies to acquire a home. He had been considering plans to locate them on country land tracts. The problem had not been worked out in detail, but his persistent enthusiasm
regarding it, during even his sickness, indicated how determined he was in efforts to materialize it. Jack was the incarnation of loyalty to a friend, and no matter what the friend's position was in the world, whether he lacked money, influence or position, or was a radical driven at bay, Jack had ever a ready hand to help him."
During the ebb and flow of his sink- ing spells, Jack became impressed with the idea that perhaps after all his rugged and robust constitution might not pull him through. At once he rig- idly insisted that nobody should attend his funeral except his wife, his sister, Mrs. Shepard, and George Sterling, his fidue Achates, through years of hard- ship, toil and success, each recogniz- ing the stable qualities of the other, and the genius.
Jack was buried on the spot which he had carefully selected a long time before; a spot commanding a sweep- ing view of the Valley of the Moon, and embracing the ruins of his beloved former home, so endearingly planned by his wife and himself, the House That Jack Built. A huge red stone boulder marks his resting place.
Later Mrs. London and I rambled along a smooth road with stately trees lining each side, and on a bend of the hillside we came out on a point over- looking the beautiful sweep of the ranch. In the middle distance were the ruins of the House That Jack Built, resembling the remains of an old castle that had already accumu- lated its legends. Mrs. London stead- fastly regarded the beloved spot, lost in silence. Suddenly she shook her head: "I never would care to rebuild it," she said.
The site is on a noble eminence. I suggested that she should donate the place for a prominent State building as a memorial to Jack London. She had never thought of such a solution.
In considering the matter, I told her of a number of precedents where land had been donated by private parties to State institutions, notably to the University of California, where Jack London had been a student, and I re-
404
JACK LONDON'S PLEA FOR A SQUARE DEAL.
counted to her the great success the University was making on its farm at Davis, where students were trained in the practical details of various ag- ricultural pursuits. And as I looked over the beautiful prospect, I felt that Jack London, with all his generosity and humanity, his deep concern to benefit his fellow men, would heartily approve the idea.
All Mrs. London's ideas are cradled in the thought of what Jack would want her to do. Jack keenly and appreci- atively sensed how implicitly she
would follow his pet views, and it fol- lowed naturally that practically the whole estate was bequeathed to his wife. Surely Jack London had every reason to call her his "Mate."
Aside from such plans, Mrs. Jack London is now bent on assisting as best she can in the education of her two step-daughtejs. It is known only to a very few of the most* intimate friends that the Londons had a little baby girl, born in 1910. She lived only a few days. That was the only real sorrow that came into their lives.
JACK LONDON'S PLEA FOR THE SQUARE DEAL
Editor "The Overland Monthly." Dear Sir:
At the present time I am undergoing a pirate raid on the part of men who have not given one bit of their brain to create what I have written, one cent of their money to help me write what I have written, nor one mo- ment of their time to aid me to write what I have written. This is a straight, brazen, shameless pirate raid that is being made upon me. My back is up against the wall, and I am fighting hard, and I am calling upon you to help me out.
In the past you have bought work of mine and published it in your mag- azine. You will know the method of copyrighting you pursued at that time without my going into the details of this here.
I am asking you now, to assign to me, and to send to me the document in which you assign, any and all rights, with the exception of first-serial rights in the United States and Canada, in all stories, articles, essays, nov- els and plays written by me and purchased and published and copyrighted by you between the years and months of years beginning January 1, 1898, and ending October 12, 1913, inclusive.
The portion of the period above inclosed in dates practically covers the days previous to the appearance in the publishing game of second-serial rights, during which time you were publishing my work.
The basis of this request which I am making you in this letter is that when you copyrighted the various numbers of your publication, you did copyright all rights in the contents thereof, and that you did hold in trust for me all other rights except those first-serial rights already described in the foregoing part of this letter.
If you will kindly have a clerk run through your index for the data, and in the assignment you send to me, specify by title and date of publication, it will be of immense assistance to me in this my hour of rush, in which I am writing some eighty-odd periodicals which have published my work serially since I entered the writing game. Also, I beg of you, because of this necessity for haste on my part, that you will forgive the manner and method of this request I am preferring to you.
If you can see your way to it, please help me out by sending me this as- signment at your very earliest convenience.
Sincerely yours,
JACK LONDON.
The Real Jack London in Hawaii
By Mae Lacy Baggs
1HAD known Jack London in San Francisco, I had visited the Lon- don ranch house at Santa Rosa, but never had I known the real Jack London until I saw him in Hawaii.
Before I had scented in him some- thing of the Wolf Larsen of "The Sea Wolf," cruel, relentless, tyrannical; something of the breeder in his "Little Lady of the Big House," cold, scien- tific, materialist; but in Hawaii — a land loving and lovely — he was dif- ferent. I like to think that I know it to be true that this was the real Lon- don, that this land had shown him his real self.
It was our first morning in Honolulu, early in the new year of 1915. We had come out from the Moana Hotel at Waikiki for an early morning plunge. I knew that the Londons had one of the adjacent Seaside Hotel cottages, but my delight was great to find Mrs. London already on the beach. Greet- ings were scarcely over when Mr. Lon- don walked out of the water with his surf -board under his arm.
"Aloha !" was his first word, intoned with the true Hawaiian quaver. And then, "You had to come too?"
He referred, of course, to the well known and strong impelling force that sooner or later reaches all lovers of the rare and beautiful, and draws them to Hawaii, maybe for a month's stay, maybe forever. Time and circum- stance, not place, decides the length of stay. If it were just place Hawaii would have to spread its shores and take in the whole world.
It was destined that I see much of the Londons, both in Honolulu and on the other islands. Their cottage at Waikiki Beach was not a stone's throw from the lanai (Hawaiian for veranda)
of our beach hotel. Hour after hour, while rainbows played their elusive game, now back up through the Mo- ana Valley, now through sifting spray, liquid sunshine, as the Hawaiian has it, of the dreamlike coral sea, a group of congenial spirits sat around a table on the lanai and talked of strange lands, strange seas and stranger peo- ples.
The Jack London of popular concep- tion had no relation to the man him- self. In a measure he was responsible for this misunderstanding. He never tried to cover up the facts of his lowly birth, his lowly struggles for existence, to say nothing of his struggle for rec- ognition as a writer. Instead, his life was one long attempt to convince the world through his pen that the condi- tions which produced his pitiful be- ginnings were all wrong.
His method was chiefly to show up every man as a primitive, with primi- tive passions — brutes. Now a brute, an animal, in other words, he would ar- gue, never strikes except in self-de- fence; the corporation, organized capi- tal, itself beyond the reach of a blow, strikes deep and crushes the soul of this primitive, which left to itself would not harm a flea.
But Mr. London did not always talk on such deep, headaching topics. His remarks, his observations, his stories, were as light and as frothy as the spray that dashed over the coral reef and broke on the shore at our feet.
He was at his best when telling South Sea tales, sometimes of the petty, mimick kingdoms set up by con- quering Polynesians on an atoll, some- times of a hog of a trader, as he dubbed the usual white man found at out of the way ports of call. But we
The London party at Honolulu, 1915. Mrs. London is standing on the left.
were always subjected to his wife's re- vision of the stories he set out to tell, yet always between them was perfect trust and understanding.
"Let me see, Jack," she would inter- pose, a merry twinkle dancing in her eyes, "just — what — story — is — that ?"
Without any show of resentment ever, he would come back with a word that would at once act as a cue. As often as not, looking the assembly
over, Mrs. London would say:
"No, mate. Tell this one " start- ing him off with a keynote.
One night he was particularly eager to go beyond his wife's ruling, and, looking us over, his eyes rested on me, when he said :
"I do wish I knew all of you better — for this is a good story."
It was plain Mr. London's contact with a life that had few frills had made
THE REAL JACK LONDON IN HAWAII.
407
him indifferent to social amenities, to the small conventions that brand a thing too risque, taboo.
You must know that Mr. London had no parlor upbringing and few par- lor manners did he acquire. He never got over feeling self-conscious in the presence of some one born into a walk of life commonly considered above his. Never by a word did he recognize class, but his manner betrayed instinc- tive reverence for that elusive yet un- mistakable something known as "breeding."
His greeting always bore that "Pleased to meet you" smile. Some- how his diffidence matched his ap- pearance, matched his shambling gait, his shock or unruly hair, his soft col- lared shirts, his loose belted, unpress- ed trousers. For, as to looks, Mr. Lon- don was not a lady's man, if we ac- cept the model men writers place to our credit. But Mr. London was a man's man, therefore, a woman's man. More than that, he was a child's man.
Illustrative of the latter trait is the following incident:
On a ranch on Maui, the high island three islands away, as distance is mea- sured in the Hawaiian archipelago, where the Londons had gone when the weather had become too hot for crea- tive work in Honolulu, Mr. London had taken a marked interest at once in the little daughters of his host, Louis von Temsky. The first night after din- ner we were sitting on the large lanai overlooking a valley that reached down to the sea. One of the children, a lit- tle girl of 9, encouraged by a. friendly smile in Mr. London's eyes, sidled up to the writer and said shyly:
"Mr. London, we," indicating her sister of twelve who took herself seri- ously as an artist and liked to be read to in her garret studio while so em- ployed, "we have been reading one of your books."
In a manner not quite sure of him- self and shy as the child's he replied:
"Have you? Which one?"
"The Valley of the Moon,'" re- plied the little girl.
"How far have you read ?" Mr. Lon-
don was as hesitant as the little bread and butter girl herself.
With a choke in her throat from holding a conversation with the book's author, the big man himself, she looked helplessly at her sister.
"Oh, sister — where were we reading yesterday — when we got so sleepy?"
For a moment the air was tense; then Mrs. London, who is graciousness itself, broke the spell with a ringing laugh.
"There, mate," she crowed, "I hope that will hold you for a while."
The little maiden blanched, not sure just what she had done, but Mr. Lon- don was the first to her assistance. His big heart dominated the moment and presently they were deep in child stuff.
Of Jack London's relation with his wife, Charmian, he always called her, it hurts me to talk, now that he is gone. Always she was his "mate." They were constantly together — more so in Hawaii than eleswhere, for his interests on the ranch or his big hold- ings down in the Imperial Valley of Southern California called him far afield. In Hawaii it was different. Even while her husband was writing his thousand words a day, his "bit," he called it, she was always hovering near, ready at a word to do his bidding.
Mr. London's Japanese secretary, who typed his "stuff" — Mr. London al- ways wrote in long hand — on a small aluminum typewriter, married a pretty little Japanese maiden while in Hono- lulu. The Londons' treatment of the pair was beautiful to see. They ac- corded them all the forms and cere- monies of the Nipponese in addition to American ways.
Mr. London first visited the Ha- waiian Islands when on his projected world tour with the Snark. Unfortu- nately, for a while at least, the people of Hawaii felt rather unkind toward the writer because of the writeup he gave the leper colony on Molokai. Later, however, they recognized that his criticism had been most friendly and provocative of good results, and no man has ever set foot on those most
Jack London in swimming rig to ride the huge beach combers with the
natives at Honolulu.
hospitable shores who has received, in the years since, such a warm, wet wel- come as that accorded Jack London. Last year, when the committee ap- pointed by Congress to investigate the sugar conditions in the islands was be- ing entertained, it was to Jack London
that the Hawaiian Promotion Club looked for first aid in showing visitors the real charms and wonders of the islands. He had a free hand, and was told to stop at no length in the way of entertainment. And he didn't.
But like another master mind he
THE REAL JACK LONDON IN HAWAII.
TmfC&siJ
409
could save others from being denied their wants, himself he could not save. It was up at the Volcano House, the hotel that sits at the edge of Kilauea's crater. Well, it was a hot day. And the Congressmen, surely to a man, had been thirsty. Julian Monsarrat, man- ager of the Kapapala ranch, felt him- self suddenly pulled by the coat tails.
"I say, Julian, the Scotch is all gone. Er — is there — any down at your ranch?"
"Sure!" And Mr. Monsarrat called to his Jap driver, who was gazing at the spewing sulphur beds. "Just look up Wang, he has the keys to the cel- larette!" he sang out after the disap- pearing car.
A few weeks later we were guests at the ranch. Mr. Monsarrat told us the story.
It seems Wang, the Chinese butler, was not in sight when the ranch house was reached, and of course Mr. London could not lose any time looking for keys. The handsome koa wood door was splintered. I think he must have used ai meat axe. But Mr. Monsarrat only fondled the door to his cellarette lovingly and laughed at "Jack's play- fulness."
And Jack was playful. The act of wilfully, willingly destroying a hand- some piece of property seems incon- gruous to us, but to him it was simply a good joke on his friend. We have to take into account his untamed na- ture. He probably didn't stop to re- flect upon his act, but it was at once his interpretation of life — a rebellion against standards and established or- der.
Along the Oakland waterfront the old salts will now be recounting rip- ping tales of the "young daredevil London" who could drink any man down at the bar, and knock any two of then down at once who had the temer- ity to refuse his invitation to "line up." Yet it is difficult to think of such co- lossal strength as ascribed to him.
For Mr. London was barely of av- erage height. True, his shoulders were a bit more than medium broad, but his chest was far from a full one. And
then there was a looseness about his frame that kept down the suggestion of strength or physical prowess.
He was probably underfed as a lad, and his early dissipation, which he tells of without hesitation in his "John Barleycorn," which is largely autobio- graphical— he bought beer instead of peanuts — accounts for his failure to fill out later. Then, too, no man or boy who ships before the mast on a wind-jammer or its equivalent in the guise of a deckhand is going to have half enough sleep, much less enough hard-tack. If they did, they'd get lazy, the rascals, an old salt would tell you, and unfit for work.
Now, Mr. London may have lived — but his face and his figure told in their lines of deprivation and struggle that the after years of plenty could not erase what the effort of making each phase of life give its secret had cost him.
No doubt the reason Hawaii ap- pealed to him so intensely was be- cause here life was virtually without effort. Back on the ranch were the tremendous breeding problems his an- thropological mind had set as his task; down on his vast holdings in the Im- perial valley was being tried out plant breeding and cross breeding, but here in Hawaii, which he was beginning to call his real home, he warmed to the suggestion of ease that each zephyr whispered.
To him the lull of the swishing sea was a new language, and the whole of the islands spoke of a life he had failed to grasp, the joys really to be found in a dolce far niente existence. "All that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave" was here within reach. And there was more still.
There was the Hawaiian aloha. Ha- waiian love. Not only is this beauti- ful spirit of love found in the natives, but each man, woman and child, haole, malihini or kamaaina, even though he has it not upon arrival, finds it soon sinking into his soul
And Jack London early breathed it out.
And they'll miss him in Hawaii.
410
OVERLAND MONTHLY
And they'll pay his memory respect with a memorial service in the native church, and wave high huge black feather kahilis on a staff back and forth to the recurrent beat of tne an- cient song of the native wailers. And then there will follow stories of Lon- don, stories of his kindness and at- tention to scores of their number, for his face and ambling gait had become as familiar to them as one of their kind.
Fishers by the sea, with spear poised, stopped their spear in mid- air to sing out "alohas" to his call from a neighbor crag; ofttimes in the same spirit was he welcomed by the waders on the beach at night who flashed a torch to attract the finny tribe. Like them too he wore sandals with wooden heels and toe pieces to save the bare feet from the coral peb- bles in the shallow waters. From the native, too, he had learned to manage a surfboat as skillfully as any Ka- naka, a thing possible to only a strangely privileged few who have not grown up in the "strange South Seas."
It is difficult to tell just when Mr. London did the quantity of writing that came from his pen. He was so much in evidence in Honolulu and else- where in the islands that it seemed hardly possible to associate him with the prolific writer he was known to be. A novel of his, "Jerry," a dog story, announced to begin as a serial in one of the magazines next month, was fin- ished in Honolulu early in 1915, while another dog novel to be called "Mi- chael" (each of about 80,000 words) was about completed when he and Mrs. London sailed for San Francisco in July of that year.
They returned to the islands in January following, and in a high pow- ered Jap sampan made a trip to the outlying islands and as far as Mid- way. Only recently — in early August, in fact — the press reported that Mr. and Mrs. London had again returned from their new love, Hawaii, that Mr. London might be present at the Bo- hemian Club's annual outing, its High Jinks.
For years Mr. London has been its guiding spirit, and although celebrities belong to this unique organization and come from all over the world to at- tend its annual outing, there was none whose laugh was listened for as was London's. From the night of the Low Jinks, when the ceremony of "cre- mating care" takes place, until a week later, when the Grove play ushers in the High Jinks, this man who had the spirit of boy eternal in him, played pranks and practical jokes on the un- suspecting. The same press report, said the Londons would again return to Honolulu after the first of the new year.
How little one knows of what fate holds in store is shown in some advice Mr. London gave to young writers a few years ago. He spoke of his first acceptance.
He had built up his case cleverly as to his willingness to accept the mini- mum rate, which by some form of rea- soning his unseasoned experience had told was $40. And the check was for $5. To quote: "That I did not die then and there convinces me that I am possessed of a singular ruggedness of soul which will permit me to qualify for the oldest inhabitant."
And had it been possible to pur- chase a lease on mortal lift by "rug- gedness of soul," succeeding genera- tions would have known — and also loved — Mr. London in his Hawaiian home. But it was not to be.
Yet to Hawaii there has fallen a lot drawn by four places, to be chosen from all the world — for Mr. London had traveled far — as the preferred home of a man of such unusual char- acter and ability. What Stevenson was to Samoa, London was to Ha- waii, and more. Hawaii is come more and more to the public eye ; it is more in the beaten path. It will have those who come after who would sing its paeans of praise. But the "aloha" of the Hawaiian is a faithful one. Just as Mr. London's last few stories were headed "My Hawaiian Aloha," so will Mr. London be the Hawaiian's aloha, last and best.
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Jack London and his prize stallion Neuadd Hillside. The horse died some two weeks before
his master.
Valley of the /Aoon Ranch
A Recent Visit There
By Bailey /Aillard
EVEN the pig-pens on Jack Lon- don's ranch are models of so- lidity, service and sanitation, his two enormous silos are tow- ers of concrete strength, his stables are good examples of stability, his corrals are high and strong, and his livestock is the finest, the sleekest and the most high-bred and altogether de- sirable to be found in all Sonoma County. Indeed, some of his horses are famed throughout the nation and
have taken Exposition and State Fair honors.
Jack London's ranch is near Glen Ellen, in Sonoma County, Cal., and most of it is on gently sloping hill- sides that were formerly covered with vines and fruit trees. Mr. London has grubbed up most of the vines, not for Prohibitionist, but for utilitarian rea- sons. The old winehouses, most of them built many years ago by Kohler & Frohling, are now occupied as sta-
412 OVERLAND MONTHLY
bles, shops and sheds, and one of wanted beauty. So I extended the
them, near the London residence, is boundary up to the top of that ridge
used as a dining room. and all along it. In order to do that I
There are over 1,300 acres in the had to buy a big piece of this lower
ranch, which includes five or six land, for the watershed went with the
smaller holding, among them being one valley estates, and was hardly separ-
of the very first commercial vineyards able from them. That is the reason
in California. why I now have over two sections of
Literature and livestock seem a land, but it all plays into my game, happy combination when viewed from which is beauty first and livestock see- the front veranda of the London home. ond. There's plenty of fine grazing Inside, one may see the author of land up there on that ridge, and along "The Valley of the Moon" writing a the sides of the canyon, and if the sea- story, and outside may be seen the son hadn't been such a dry one you pleasant terraces where he or rather would see a pretty little stream run- his men have written even more large- ning down that way." He pointed up ly and legibly with plow and cultiva- through a green rift of the hills. There tor. For the farmer, after all, whe- were tall, straight redwoods there, and ther he sells stories to publishers or firs, live oaks, madrones, manzanitas keeps them in his own head, has writ- and laurels.
ten bigger things than the magazinist, "I bought beauty," he went on, "and
bigger indeed than Dante or Milton, with beauty I was content for awhile.
The work of the mere literat may not It pleases me more than anything else
be in the least nutritious to body or now, but I am putting this ranch into
soul, but there is not the slightest first-class shape and am laying a
doubt as to the food value of the foundation for a good paying industry
farmer's product. here.
"I call this place 'The Ranch of "Everything I build is for the years Good Intentions," said Mr. London to to come. Those walls you see along me, as we went over the smooth roads this road ought to last a long time, in an automobile that probably repre- don't you think?" sented the price of a single short story, The walls were certainly solid look- written in three or four days. No, Mr. ing and strong enough, being con- London was not at the wheel. The structed of good hard rock, quarried on best of cars is not of as much attrac- the ranch. Men were at work in the tion to him as a good riding horse, and fields removing the nigger-heads and the highland trail is more pleasing piling them along the fences. Much than the smoothest of State highways, of this field rock is used in building "At first my ranching was more or less foundations for water troughs and of a joke, but it has turned to earnest tanks, the basins of which are of solid at last. When I first came here, tired concrete which put to shame the old of cities and city people, I settled wooden affairs used by most of the down on a little farm over there in Sonoma Valley farmers, what is now a corner of my holding. "I designed those hog houses and The land was all worn out from years pens myself," said the author proudly, and years of unintelligent farming, as There was a round central structure of is this whole ranch for that matter, rock and cement with a peaked con- and I didn't attempt to raise much of crete roof, surrounded by sheds of the anything. All I wanted was a quiet same material. When the Childe Ro- place in the country to write and loaf land pig comes to that round tower he in, and to get out of Nature that some- gets a good square meal of ground al- thing which we all need, only the most falfa and grain, for it is the feed of us don't know it. house, down from the upper story of
"I liked those hills up there. They which the feed pours automatically
were beautiful, as you see, and I through square galvanized iron leaders
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into a cement basin, where it is mixed with water from a big pipe and is then conveyed out to the surrounding troughs, where the Duroc Jerseys munch and grunt contentedly. The hog pens all have concrete floors, but the hogs lie upon movable wooden planks at night. The pens are ranged all around the central tower, which stands in the inclosure made by them. There are corrals surounding the whole place, which is well shaded by oaks and madrones.
Everything in the hog department is spick and span, as the hose is played upon the floors, cleansing them at reg- ular intervals and making them cleaner than the floors of many a squalid ranch house I have seen elsewhere.
Ah, and do you think to enter this hog swine sanctuary without becom- ing genuflections and prostrations! Well, at least, before you pass the gate you must step aside into a little pagoda and rub your feet upon the prayer rug. On that rug is a sticky carbolized mixture to disinfect your feet, so that your profane, microbe- laden shoes shall not carry to that pre- cious, cleanly band any germs of chol- era. Never but once has the dread disease been borne within the inclo- sure, and that was when somebody walked upon a butcher's floor and then into the pens. But now cholera is unknown among the London swine.
"I am not raising livestock for the butcher," said Mr. London, "but for the breeder or anybody who wants the best of thoroughbreds. Of course, the culls will be killed, but my idea is not to raise anything here that can't be driven out on hoof."
Mrs. Elizabeth Shepard, who is the manager of the ranch, showed me the horses and cattle. Among them are many prize winners. Neuadd Hill- side, a $25,000 English shire stallion, is among the most imposing of the bunch. He won the grand championship at the State fair in 1912, and with other London horses and mares picked up most of the horse prizes at the recent Santa Rosa fair. Another beautiful stallion is Mountain Lad, named for
the horse hero in "The Little Lady of the Big House." Beside there are five brood mares and four wonderful colts coming on. The grade horses include seven work teams, which are kept busy most of the time. Mrs. London takes great interest in the horses, and is a fine rider.
The cattle include some beautiful Jersey cows and one magnificent bull.
Mrs. Shepard is sure of further hon- ors for her equine and bovine charges at the coming Sacramento Fair.
Fifty-five Angora goats and 600 White Leghorn fowls, with a flock of beautiful pheasants, go to make up the rest of the stock and poultry.
Mr. London employs some of the best horsemen to be found anywhere, among them being Hazen Cowan, who won the world's championship for handling bucking horses at the San Jose round-up, and Thomas Harrison, who not only knows horses, but is an expert cattleman.
A feature of the ranch is the big eu- calyptus grove, now three years old. Mr. London is raising 65,000 of these trees for hardwood lumber.
Although he knows far more about literature than he does about farming, Mr. London has learned many things from his agricultural experience. On the hillsides his contours are fine ex- amples of how to retain moisture upon sloping land. He believes in fertili- zing by tillage and has gotten excel- lent results by plowing in rye and vetch. He has studied soil innocula- tion by legumes and other means, and next year he expects to reap some famous crops of barley, hay, alfalfa and corn.
"It is all very interesting," he told me, "and has a literary value to me. Wherever I travel, when I see any growing crop, it means something to me now, though it never did before. Yes, I am a believer in the spineless cactus as animal food, and have set out quite a patch of it. Those who contend that cactus, being 90 per cent water, is of no food value to stock, should go down to Hawaii, where some of the finest, fattest cattle in the world
JACK LONDON 415
live on cactus that is covered with so that, of course, it is not on a paying spines in the unproductive months, basis at present, but the intelligent and getting both food and water from it." really scientific methods now em- The Ranch of Good Intentions has ployed there are bound to make it been cultivated by its present proprie- profitable in time. Among his pro- tor only three years, and in a really ducts this season are ten tons of effective way, for only a year or two, prunes.
Jack London
An Appreciation
Here' to you, Jack, whose virile pen Concerns itself with Man's Size Men; Here's to you, Jack, whose stories thrill
With savor of the Western breeze, With magic of the south — and chill,
Shrill winds from icy floes and seas, YOU have not wallowed in the mire And muck of tales of foul desire, For, though you've sung of fight and fraud,
Of love and hate — ashore, afloat —
You have not- struck a ribald note, Nor made your Art a common bawd.
Here's to you, Jack, I've loved your best,
Your finest stories from the first, Your sagas of the North and West —
But what is more — I've loved your Worst! For, in the poorest work you do, There's something clean and strong and true, A tang of big and primal things,
A sweep of forces vast and free, A touch of wizardry which brings
The glamour of the Wild to me.
So when I read a London tale,
Forthwith I'm set upon a trail Of great enchantment, and track Adventure round the world and back, With you for guide — here's to you, Jack.
Berton Braley.
The Son of the Wolf
By Jack London
(Like all young and untried authors, Jack London spent laborious years in preparing stories for the regular monthlies and weeklies throughout the country, without attracting any attention. In the latter part of 1898, the then editor of Overland Monthly accepted the first of five stories, The Malemute Kid series, all dealing with Jack London's recent experiences in Alaska. The tales readily illustrate the vivid art of story telling which the author was rapidly acquiring. He had found himself. The Malemute Kid stories attracted wide attention and a little later London found no difficulty in placing his stories with eastern publications. Before the close of that year London was well on his successful career. The follow- ing story, "The Son of the Wolf" is the third of "The Malemute Kid" series.)
M
AN rarely places a proper valu- ation upon his womankind, at least not until deprived of them. He has no conception of the subtle atmosphere exhaled by the sex feminine, so long as he bathes in i$; but let it be withdrawn, and an evergrowing void begins to manifest itself in his existence, and he becomes hungry, in a vague sort of way, for a something so indefinite that he cannot characterize it. If his comrades have no more experience than himself, they will shake their heads dubiously and dose him with strong physic. But the hunger will continue and become stronger; he will lose interest in the things of his every-day life and wax morbid; and one day, when the empti- ness has become unbearable, a revela- tion will dawn upon him.
In the Yukon country, when this comes to pass, the man usually provi- sions a poling-boat, if it is summer, and if winter, harnesses his dogs, and heads for the Southland. A few months later, supposing him to be pos- sessed of a faith in the country, he re- turns with a wife to share with him in that faith, and incidentally in his hard- ships. This but serves to show the innate selfishness of man. It also brings us to the trouble of "Scruff" Mackenzie, which occurred in the old days, before the country was stam- peded and staked by a tidal-wave of che-cha-quas, and when the Klondike's only claim to notice was its salmon fisheries.
"Scruff" Mackenzie bore the ear- marks of a frontier birth and a fron- tier life. His face was stamped with
twenty-five years of incessant struggle with Nature in her wildest moods — the last two the wildest and hardest of all, having been spent in groping for the gold which lies in the shadow of the Arctic Circle. When the yearning sickness came upon him, he was not surprised, for he was a practical man and had seen other men thus stricken. But he showed no sign of his malady, save that he worked harder. All sum- mer he fought mosquitoes and washed for the sure-thing bars of the Stuart River for a double grub-stake. Then he floated a raft of house logs down the Yukon to Forty Mile, and put to- gether as comfortable a cabin as any the camp could boast of. In fact, it showed such cozy promise that many men elected to be his partner and to come and live with him. But he crushed their aspirations with rough speech, peculiar for its strength and brevity, and bought a double supply of grub from the trading post.
As has been noted, "Scruff "Macken- zie was a practical man. If he wanted a thing he usually got it, but in doing so, went no farther out of his way than was necessary. Though a son of toil and hardship, he was averse to a jour- ney of six hundred miles on the ice, a second of two thousand miles on the ocean, and still a third thousand miles or so to his last stamping-grounds — all in the mere quest of a wife. Life was too short. So he rounded up his dogs, lashed a curious freight to his sled, and faced across the divide whose westward slopes were drained by the head-reaches of the Tanana.
He was a sturdy traveler, and his
THE SON OF THE WOLF
417
wolf-dogs could work harder and travel farther on less grub than any other team in the Yukon. Three weeks later he strode into a hunting-camp of the Upper Tanana Sticks. They mar- veled at his temerity; for they had a bad name and had been known to kill white men for as trifling a thing as a sharp ax or a broken rifle. But he went among them single-handed, his bearing being a delicious composite of humility, familiarity, sang-froid, and insolence. It required a deft hand and deep knowledge of the barbaric mind effectually to handle such diverse weapons ; but he was a past-master in the art, knowing when to conciliate and when to threaten with Jove-like wrath.
He first made obeisance to the Chief Thling-Tinneh, presenting him with a couple of pounds of black tea and to- bacco, and thereby winning his most cordial regard. Then he mingled with the men and maidens, and that night gave a pot-lach. The snow was beaten down in the form of an oblong, per- haps a hundred feet in length, and quarter as many across. Down the center a long fire was built, while either side was carpeted with spruce boughs. The lodges were forsaken, and the fivescore or so members of the tribe gave tongue to their folk-chants in honor of their guest.
"Scruff" Mackenzie's two years had taught him the not many hundred words of their vocabulary, and he had likewise conquered their deep guttu- rals, their Japanese idioms, construc- tions and honorific and agglutinative particles. So he made oration after their manner, satisfying their instinc- tive poetry-love with crude flights of eloquence and metaphorical contor- tions. After Thling-Tinneh and the Shaman had responded in kind, he made trifling presents to the menfolk, joined in their singing, and proved an expert in their fifty-two-stick gambling game.
And they smoked his tobacco and were pleased. But among the younger men there was a defiant attitude, a spirit of braggadocio, easily under-
stood by the raw insinuations of the toothless squaws and the giggling of the maidens. They had known few white men, "Sons of the Wolf," but from those few they had learned strange lessons.
Nor had "Scruff" Mackenzie, for all his seeming carelessness, failed to note these phenomena. In truth, rolled in his sleeping-furs, he thought it all over, thought seriously, and emptied many pipes in mapping out a cam- paign. One maiden only had caught his fancy — none other than Zarinska, daughter to the chief. In features, form and poise, answering more near- ly to the white man's type of beauty, she was almost an anomaly among her tribal sisters. He would possess her, make her his wife, and name her — ah, he would name her Gertrude ! Having thus decided, he rolled over on his side and dropped off to sleep, a true son of his all-conquering race, a Sam- son among the Philistines.
It was slow work and a stiff game; but "Scruff" Mackenzie maneuvered cunningly, with an unconcern which served to puzzle the Sticks. He took great care to impress the man that he was a sure shot and a mighty hunter, and the camp rang with his plaudits when he brought down a moose at six hundred yards. Of a night he visited in Chief Thling-Tinneh's lodge of moose and caribou skins, talking big and dispensing tobacco with a lavish hand. Nor did he fail to likewise honor the Shaman; for he realized the medicine-man's influence, with his people, and was anxious to make of him an ally. But that worthy was high and mighty, refused to be propitiated, and was unerringly marked down as a prospective enemy.
Though no opening presented for an interview with Zarinska, Mackenzie stole many a glance at her, giving fair warning of his intent. And well she knew, yet coquettishly surrounded her- self with a ring of women whenever the men were away, and he had a chance. But he was in no hurry; be- sides, he knew she could not help but think of him, and a few days of such
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thought would only better his suit.
At last, one night, when he deemed the time to be ripe, he abruptly left the chief's smoky dwelling and hastened to a neighboring lodge. As usual, she sat with squaws and maidens about her, all engaged in sewing moccasins and beadwork. They laughed at his entrance, and badinage, which linked Zarinska to him, ran high. But one af- ter the other they were unceremonious- ly bundled into the outer snow, whence they hurried to spread the tale through all the camp.
His cause was well pleaded, in her tongue, for she did not know his, and at the end of two hours he rose to go.
"So Zarinska will come to the White Man's lodge? Good! I go now to have talk with thy father, for he may not be so minded. And I will give him many tokens; but he must not ask too much. If he say no ? Good ! Zarinska shall yet come to the White Man's lodge."
He had already lifted the skin flap to depart, when a low exclamation brought him back to the girl's side. She brought herself to her knees on the bearskin mat, her face aglow with true Eve-light, and shyly unbuckled his heavy belt. He looked down, per- plexed, suspicious, his ears alert for the slightest sound without. But her next move disarmed his doubt, and he smiled with pleasure. She took from her sewing bag a moosehide sheath, brave with bright beadwork, fantasti- cally designed. She drew his great hunting-knife gazed reverently along the keen edge, half tempted to try it with her thumb, and shot it into place in its new home. Then she slipped the sheath along the belt to its customary resting-place, just above the hip.
For all the world, it was like a scene of olden time — a lady and her knight. Mackenzie drew her up full height and swept her red lips with his moustache — the, to her, foreign caress of the Wolf. It was a meeting of the stone age and the steel; but she was none the less a woman, as her crimson cheek and the luminous softness of her eyes attested.
There was a thrill of excitement in the air as "Scruff" Mackenzie, a bulky bundle under his arm, threw open the flap of Thling-Tinneh's tent. Children were running about in the open, drag- ging dry wood to the scene of the pot- lach, a babble of women's voices was growing in intensity, the young men were consulting in sullen groups, while from the Shaman's lodge rose the eerie sounds of an incantation.
The chief was alone with his blear- eyed wife, but a glance sufficed to tell Mackenzie that the news was already old. So he plunged at once into the business, shifting the beaded sheath prominently to the fore as advertise- ment of the betrothal.
"O Thling-Tinneh, mighty chief of the Sticks and the land of the Tanana, ruler of the salmon and the bear, the moose and the caribou! The White Man is before thee with a great pur- pose. Many moons has his lodge been empty, and he is lonely. And his heart has eaten itself in silence, and grown hungry for a woman to sit beside him in his Jodge, to meet him from the hunt with warm fire, and good food. He has heard strange things, the pat- ter of baby moccasins and the sound of children's voices. And one night a vision came upon him, and he beheld the Raven, who is thy father, the great Raven, who is the father of all the Sticks. And the Raven spake to the lonely White Man, saying: 'Bind thou thy moccasins upon thee, and gird thy snow-shoes on, and lash thy sled with food for many sleeps and fine tokens for the Chief Thling-Tinneh. For thou shalt turn thy face to where the mid- spring sun is wont to sink below the land and journey to this great chief's hunting-grounds. There thou shalt make big presents, and Thling-Tinneh, who is my son, shall become to thee as a father. In his lodge there is a maiden into whom I breathed the breath of life for thee. This maiden shalt thou take to wife.'
"0 Chief, thus spake the great Raven; thus do I lay many presents at thy feet; thus am I come to take thy daughter!"
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419
The old man drew his furs about him with crude consciousness of roy- alty, but delayed reply while a young- ster crept in, delivered a quick mes- sage to appear before the council, and was gone.
"O White Man, whom we have named Moose-killer, also known as the Wolf, and the Son of the Wolf! We know thou comest of a mighty race; we are proud to have thee our potlach guest; but the king-salmon does not mate with the dog-salmon, nor the Raven with the Wolf."
"Not so!" cried Mackenzie. "The daughters of the Raven have I met in the camps of the Wolf — the squaw of Mortimer, the squaw of Tregidgo, the squaw of Barnaby, who came two ice- runs back, and I have heard of other squaws, though my eyes beheld them not."
"Son, your words are true; but it were evil mating, like the water with the sand, like the snow-flake with the sun. But met you one Mason and his squaw? No? He came ten ice-runs ago — the first of all the Wolves. And with him there was a mighty man, straight as a willow-shoot, and tall; strong as the bald-faced grizzly, with a heart like the full-summer moon; his "
"Oh!" interrupted Mackenzie, rec- ognizing the well known Northland fig- ure—"Malemute Kid!"
"The same — a mighty man. But saw you aught of the squaw? She was full sister to Zarinska!"
"Nay, Chief ; but I have heard. Ma- son— far, far to the north, a spruce- tree, heavy with years, crushed out his life beneath. But his love was great, and he had much gold. With this, and her boy, she journeyed countless sleeps toward the winter's noonday sun, and there she yet lives — no biting frost, no snow, no summer's midnight sun, no winter's noonday night."
A second messenger interrupted with imperative summons from the council. As Mackenzie threw him into the snow, he caught a glimpse of the swaying forms before the council-fire, heard the deep basses of the man in
rhythmic chant, and knew the Shaman was fanning the anger of his people. Time pressed. He turned upon the chief.
"Come ! I wish thy child. And now, see ! Here are tobacco, tea, many cups of sugar, warm blankets, handker- chiefs, both good and large; and here, a true rifle, with many bullets and much powder."
"Nay," replied the old man, strug- gling against the great wealth spread before him. "Even now are my peo- ple come together. They will not have this marriage."
"But thou art chief!"
"Yet do my young men rage because the Wolves have taken their maidens so that they may not marry." < "Listen, O Thling-Tinneh! Ere the night has passed into the day, the Wolf shall face his dogs to the Moun- tains of the East and fare forth to the Country of the Yukon. And Zarinska shall break trail for his dogs."
"And ere the night has gained its middle, my young men may fling to the dogs the flesh of the Wolf, and his bones be scattered in the snow till the springtime lays them bare."
It was threat and counter-threat. Mackenzie's bronzed face flushed darkly. He raised his voice. The old squaw, who till now had sat an impas- sive spectator, made to creep by him for the door. The song of the men broke suddenly and there was a hub- bub of many voices as he whirled the old woman roughly to her couch of skins.
"Again I cry — listen, O Thling-Ten- neh! The Wolf dies with teeth fast- locked, and with him there shall sleep ten of thy strongest men — men who are needed, for the hunting is but be- gun, and the fishing is not many moons away. And again, of what profit should I die? I know the custom of thy people; thy share of my wealth shall be very small. Grant me thy child, and it shall be all thine. And yet again, my brothers will come, and they are many, and their maws are never filled ; and the daughters of the Raven shall bear children in the lodges
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of the Wolf. My people are greater than thy people. It is destiny. Grant, and all this wealth is thine!"
Moccasins were crunching the snow without. Mackenzie threw his rifle to cock, and loosened the twin Colts in his belt.
"Grant, 0 Chief!"
"And yet will my people say no."
"Grant, and the wealth is thine. Then shall I deal with thy people af- ter."
"The Wolf will have it so. I will take his tokens — but I would warn him."
Mackenzie passed over the goods, taking care to clog the rifle's ejector, and capping the bargain with a kaleid- oscopic silk kerchief. The Shaman and half a dozen young braves en- tered, but he shouldered boldly among them and passed out.
"Pack!" was his laconic greeting to Zarinska as he passed her lodge and hurried to harness his dogs. A few minutes later he swept into the council at the head of the team, the woman by his side. He took his place at the up- per end of the oblong, by the side of the chief. To his left, a step to the rear, he stationed Zarinska — her pro- per place. Besides, the time was ripe for mischief, and there was need to guard his back.
On either side, the men crouched to the fire, their voices lifted in a folk- chant out of the forgotten past. Full of strange, halting cadences and haunt- ing recurrences, it was not beautiful. "Fearful" may inadequately express it. At the lower end, under the eye of the Shaman, danced half a score of women. Stern were his reproofs to those who did not wholly abandon themselves to the ecstasy of the rite. Half hidden in their heavy masses of raven hair, all dishevelled and falling to their waists, they slowly swayed to and fro, their forms rippling to an ever-changing rhythm.
It was a weird scene; an anachron- ism. To the south, the nineteenth cen- tury was reeling off the few years of its last decade; here flourished man primeval, a shade removed from the
prehistoric cave-dweller, a forgotten fragment of the Elder World. The tawny wolf-dogs sat between their skin clad masters or fought for room, the firelight cast backward from their red eyes and dripping fangs. The woods, in ghostly shroud, slept on unheeding. The White Silence, for the moment driven to the rimming forest, seemed ever crushing inward ; the stars danced with great leaps, as is their wont in the time of the Great Cold ; while the Spir- its of the Pole trailed their robes of glory athwart the heavens.
"Scruff" Mackenzie dimly realized the wild grandeur of the setting as his eyes ranged down the fur-fringed sides in quest of missing faces. They rested for a moment on a new-born babe, suckling at its mother's naked breast. It was forty below — seventy and odd degrees of frost. He thought of the tender women of his own race and smiled grimly. Yet from the loins of some such tender woman had he sprung with a kingly inheritance — an inheritance which gave to him and his dominance over the land and sea, over the animals and the peoples of all the zones. Single-handed against five- score, girt by the Arctic winter, far from his own, he felt the promptings of his heritage, the desire to possess, the wild danger-love, the thrill of bat- tle, the power to conquer or to die.
The singing and the dancing ceased, and the Shaman flared up in rude elo- quence. Through the sinuosities of their vast mythology, he worked cun- ningly upon the credulity of his peo- ple. The case was strong. Opposing the creative principles as embodied in the Crow and the Raven, he stigma- tized Mackenzie as the Wolf, the fight- ing and destructive principle. Not only was the combat of these forces spiritual, but men fought, each to his totem. They were the children of Jelchs, the Raven, the Promethean fire bringer; Mackenzie was the child of the Wolf, or in other words, the Devil. For them to bring a truce to this perpetual warfare, to marry their daughters to the arch enemy, were treason and blasphemy of the highest
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421
order. No phrase was harsh nor fig- ure vile enough in branding Macken- zie as a sneaking interloper and emis- sary of Satan. There was a subdued, savage roar in the deep chests of his listeners as he took the swing of his peroration.
"Aye, my brothers, Jelchs is all- powerful! Did he not bring heaven- born fire that we might be warm? Did he not draw the sun, moon and stars from their holes that we might see? Did he not teach us that we might fight the Spirits of Famine and of Frost? But now Jelchs is angry with his child- ren, and they are grown to a handful, and he will not help. For they have forgotten him, and done evil things, and trod bad trails, and taken his ene- mies into their lodges to sit by their fires. And the Raven is sorrowful at the wickedness of his children; but when they shall rise up and show they have come back, he will come out of the darkness to aid them. 0 brothers ! the Fire-Bringer has whispered mes- sages to thy Shaman; the same shall ye hear. Let the young men take the young women to their lodges ; let them fly at the throat of the Wolf ; let them be undying in their enmity ! Then shall their women become fruitful and they shall multiply into a mighty people! And the Raven shall lead great tribes of their fathers and their fathers' fathers from out of the North; and they shall beat back the Wolves till they are as last year's camp fires; and they shall again come to rule over all the land! 'Tis the message of Jelchs, the Raven."
This foreshadowing of the Messiah's coming brought a hoarse howl from the Sticks as they leaped to their feet.
Mackenzie slipped the thumbs of his mittens and waited. There was a clamor for the "Fox," not to be stilled till one of the young men stepped for- ward to speak.
"Brothers! The Shaman has spoken wisely. The Wolves have taken our women and our men are childless. We are grown to a handful. The Wolves have taken our warm furs and given
for them evil spirits which dwell in bottles, and clothes which come not from the beaver or the lynx, but are made from the grass. And they are not warm, and our men die of strange sicknesses. I, the Fox, have taken no woman to wife ; and why ? Twice have the maidens which pleased me gone to .the camps of the Wolf. Even now have I laid by skins of the beaver, of the moose, of the caribou that I might win favor in the eyes of Thling-Tinneh that I might wed Zarinska, his daugh- ter. Even now are her snow shoes bound to her feet, ready to break trail for the dogs of the Wolf. Nor do I speak for myself alone. As I have done, so has the Bear. He, too, had fain been the father of her children, and many skins has he cured thereto. I speak for all the young men who know not wives. The Wolves are ever hungry. Always do they take the choice meat at the killing. To the Ravens are left the leavings.
"There is Gugkla," he cried, bru- tally pointing out one of the women, who was a cripple. "Her legs are bent like the ribs of a birch canoe. She cannot gather wood nor carry the meat of the hunters. Did the Wolves choose her?"
"Ai! ai!" vociferated his tribesmen.
"There is Moyri, whose eyes are crossed by the Evil Spirit. Even the babes are affrighted when they gaze upon her, and it is said the bald- face gives her the trail. Was she chosen?"
Again the cruel applause rang out.
"And there sits Pischet. She does not hearken to my words. Never has she heard the cry of the chit-chat, the voice of her husband, the babble of her child. She lives in the White Si- lence. Cared the Wolves aught for her ? No ! Theirs is the choice of the kill; ours is the leavings.
"Brothers, it shall not be! No more shall the Wolves slink among our camp-fires. The time is come."
A great streamer of fire, the aurora borealis, purple, green and yellow, shot across the zenith, bridging horizon to horizon. With head thrown back and
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arms extended, he swayed to his cli- max.
"Behold! The spirits of our fathers have arisen, and great deeds are afoot this night."
He stepped back, and another young man somewhat diffidently came for- ward, pushed on by his comrades. He towered a full head above them, his broad chest defiantly bared to the frost. He swung tentatively from one foot to the other. Words halted upon his tongue, and he was ill at ease. His face was horrible to look upon, for it had at one time been half torn away by some terrific blow. At last he struck his breast with his clenched fist, drawing sound as from a drum, and his voice rumbled forth as does the surf from an ocean cavern.
"I am the Bear — the Silver-Tip and the Son of the Silver-Tip! When my voice was yet as a girl's, I slew the lynx, the moose and the caribou; when it whistled like the wolverines from under a cache, I crossed the Mountains of the South and slew three of the White Rivers; when it became as the roar of the Chinook, I met the bald-faced grizzly, but gave no trail."
At this he paused, his hand signi- ficantly sweeping across his hideous scars.
"I am not as the Fox. My tongue is frozen like the river. I cannot make great talk. My words are few. The Fox says great deeds are afoot this night. Good! Talk flows from his tongue like the freshets of the spring, but he is chary of deeds. This night shall I do battle with the Wolf. I shall slay him, and Zarinska shall sit by my fire. The Bear has spoken."
Though pandemonium raged about him, "Scruff" Mackenzie held his ground. Aware how useless was the rifle at close quarters, he slipped both holsters to the fore, ready for action, and drew his mittens till his hands were barely shielded by the elbow gauntlets. He knew there was no hope in attack en masse, but true to his boast, was prepared to die with teeth fast-locked. But the Bear re- strained his comrades, beating back
the more impetuous with his terrible fist. As the tumult began to die away Mackenzie shot a glance in the direc- tion of Zarinska. It was a superb pic- ture. She was leaning forward on her snow-shoes, lips apart and nostrils quivered, like a tigress about to spring. Her great black eyes were fixed upon her tribesmen, in fear and in defiance. So extreme the tension, she had forgot- ten to breathe. With one hand pressed spasmodically against her breast and the other as tightly gripped about the dog-whip, she was as turned to stone. Even as he looked, relief came to her. Her muscles loosened; with a heavy sigh she settled back, giving him a look of more than love — of worship.
Thling-Tinneh was trying to speak, but his people drowned his voice. Then Mackenzie strode forward. The Fox opened his mouth to a piercing yell but so savagely did Mackenzie whirl upon him that he shrank back, his larynx all a-gurgle with suppressed sound. His discomfiture was greeted with roars of laughter, and served to soothe his fellows to a listening mood.
"Brothers! The White Man, whom ye have chosen to call the Wolf, came among you with fair words. He was not like the Innuit; he spoke not lies. He came as a friend, as one who would be a brother. But your men have had their say, and the time for soft words is past. First, I will tell you that the Shaman has an evil tongue and is a false prophet, that the messages he spake are not those of the Fire-Bringer. His ears are locked to the voice of the Raven, and out of his own head he weaves cunning fan- cies, and he has made fools of you. He has no power. When . the dogs were killed and eaten and your stom- achs were heavy with untanned hide and strips of moccasins; when the old men died, and the old women died, and the babes at the dry dugs of the mothers died; when the land was dark, and ye perished as do the sal- mon in the fall; aye, when the famine was upon you, did the Shaman bring reward to your hunters ? did the Sha-
THE SON OF THE WOLF
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man put meat in your bellies? Again I say, the Shaman is without power. Thus I spit upon his face!"
Though taken aback by the sacri- lege, there was no uproar. Some of the women were even frightened, but among the men there was an uplifting, as though in preparation or anticipa- tion of the miracle. All eyes were turned upon the two central figures. The priest realized the crucial mo- ment, felt his power tottering, opened his mouth in denunciation, but fled backward before the truculent ad- vance, upraised fist and flashing eyes of Mackenzie. He sneered and re- sumed :
"Was I stricken dead? Did the lightning burn me ? Did the stars fall from the sky and crush me? Pish! I have done with the dog. Now will I tell you of my people, who are the mightiest of all the peoples, who rule in all the lands. At first we hunt as I hunt, alone. After that we hunt in packs; and at last, like the caribou- run, we sweep across all the land. Those whom we take into our lodges live ; those who will not come die. Za- rinska is a comely maiden, full and strong, fit to become the mother of Wolves. Though I die, such shall she become; for my brothers are many, and they will follow the scent of my dogs. Listen to the Law of the Wolf : "Whoso taketh the life of one Wolf, the forfeit shall ten of his people pay." In many lands has the price been paid, in many lands shall it yet be paid.
"Now will I deal with the Fox and the Bear. It seems they have cast eyes upon the maiden. So? Behold, I have bought her! Thling-Tinneh leans upon the rifle ; the goods of pur- chase are by his fire. Yet will I be fair to the young men. To the Fox, whose tongue is dry with many words, will I give of tobacco five long plugs. Thus will his mouth be wetted that he may make much noise in the coun- cil. But to the Bear, of whom I am well proud, will I give of blankets two; of flour, twenty cups; of tobacco, double that of the Fox; and if he fare with me over the mountains of
the East, then will I give him a rifle, mate to Thling-Tinneh's. If not? Good ! The Wolf is weary of speech. Yet once again will he say the Law: "Whoso taketh the life of one Wolf, the forfeit shall ten of his people
pay."
Mackenzie smiled as he stepped back to his old position, but at heart he was full of trouble. The night was yet dark. The girl came to his side, and he listened closely as she told of the Bear's battle-tricks with the knife.
The decision was for war. In a trice, scores of moccasins were wid- ening the space of beaten snow by the fire. There was much chatter about the seeming defeat of the Shaman; some averred he had but withheld his power, while others conned past events and agreed with the Wolf. The Bear came to the center of the battle- ground, a long naked hunting knife of Russian make in his hand. The Fox called attention to Mackenzie's revolvers; so he stripped his belt, buckling it about Zarinska, into whose hands he also intrusted his rifle. She shook her head that she could not shoot — small chance had a woman to handle such precious things.
"Then, if danger come by my back, cry aloud, 'My husband!' No, thus: 'My husband!'"
He laughed as she repeated it, pinched her cheek, and re-entered the circle. Not only in reach and stature had the Bear the advantage of him, but his blade was longer by a good two inches. "Scruff" Mackenzie had look- ed into the eyes of men before, and he knew it was a man who stood against him; yet he quickened to the glint of light on the steel, to the domi- nant pulse of his race.
Time and again he was forced to the edge of the fire or the deep snow, and time and again, with the foot tactics of the pugilist, he worked back to the center. Not a voice was lifted in encouragement, while his antagonist was heartened with applause, sugges- tions and warnings. But his teeth only shut the tighter as the knives clashed
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together, and he thrust or eluded with a coolness born of conscious strength. At first he felt compassion for his enemy; but this fled before the primal instinct of life, which in turn gave way to the lust of slaughter. The ten thou- sand years of culture fell from him, and he was a cave-dweller, doing bat- tle for his female.
Twice he pricked the Bear, getting away unscathed; but the third time caught, and to save himself, free hands closed on fighting hands, and they came together. Then did he real- ize the tremendous strength of his opponent. His muscles were knotted in painful lumps, and cords and ten- dons threatened to snap with the strain; yet nearer and nearer came the Russian steel. He tried to break away, but only weakened himself. The fur clad circle closed in, certain of and anxious to see the final stroke. But with wrestler's trick, swinging partly to the side, he struck at his adversary with his head. Involuntarily the Bear leaned back, disturbing his cen- ter of gravity. Simultaneously with this, Mackenzie tripped properly and threw his whole weight forward, hurl- ing him clear through the circle into the deep snow. The Bear floundered out and came back full tilt.
"O my husband!" Zarinska's voice rang out, vibrant with danger.
To the twang of a bow-string, Mackenzie swept low to the ground, and a bone-barbed arrow passed over him into the breast of the Bear, whose momentum carried him over his crouching foe. The next instant Mac- kenzie was up and about. The Bear lay motionless, but across the fire was the Shaman, drawing a second arrow.
Mackenzie's knife leaped short in the air. He caught the heavy blade by the point. There was a flash of light as it spanned the fire. Then the Shaman, the hilt alone appearing without his throat, swayed a moment and pitched forward into the glowing embers.
Click! click! — the Fox had pos- sessed himself of Thling-Tinneh's rifle and was vainly trying to throw a shell
into place. But he dropped it at the sound of Mackenzie's laughter.
"So the Fox has not learned the way of the plaything? He is yet a woman. Come! Bring it, that I may show thee!"
The Fox hesitated.
"Come, I say!"
He slouched forward like a beaten cur.
"Thus, and thus; so the thing is done."
A shell flew into place, and the trig- ger was at cock as Mackenzie brought it to shoulder.
"The Fox has said great deeds were afoot this night, and he spoke true. There have been great deeds, yet least among them were those of the Fox. Is he still intent to take Zarinska to his lodge? Is he minded to tread the trail already broken by the Shaman and the Bear? No? Good!"
Mackenzie turned and drew his knife from the priest's throat.
"Are any of the young men so minded? If so, the Wolf will take them by two and three till none are left. No? Good! Thling-Tinneh, I now give thee this rifle a second time. If, in the days to come, thou shouldst journey to the Country of the Yukon, know thou that there shall always be a place and much food by the fire of the Wolf. The night is now passing into the day. I go, but I may come again. And for the last time remem- ber the Law of the Wolf!"
He was supernatural in their sight as he rejoined Zarinska. She took her place at the head of the team, and the dogs swung into motion. A few mo- ments later they were swallowed up by the ghostly forest. Till now Mac- kenzie had waited; he slipped into his snow-shoes to follow.
"Has the Wolf forgotten the five long plugs?"
Mackenzie turned upon the Fox an- grily; then the humor of it struck him.
"I will give thee one short plug."
"As the Wolf sees fit," meekly re- sponded the Fox, stretching out his hand.
The Divine Flan of the Ages
Earth's Dark Night of Weeping to Terminate in a Morning of Joy
The first installment of a Series of Articles from the pen of the late Pastor Russell, Prepared Specially for the Overland Monthly
THE TITLE, "The Divine Plan of the Ages," suggests progres- sion in the outworking of the Divine arrangement of things, foreknown to our God and orderly. We believe that the teachings of Divine Revelation can be seen to be both beautiful and harmonious from this standpoint and from no other.
The period in which sin has been permitted has been a dark night to hu- manity, never to be forgotten; but the glorious Day of Righteousness and Divine favor, to be ushered in by Messiah, who as the Sun of Righteous- ness shall arise with healing in His wings and shine fully and clearly into and upon all, bringing life, health and blessing, will more than counterbal- ance the dreadful night of weeping, sighing, pain, sickness and death, in which the groaning creation has been so long. Thus man's experience under the reign of sin and death, and his ul- timate deliverance in a New Dispen- sation, is definitely referred to by the prophet, "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the Morning." — Psa. 30:5.
The fact that the greater portion of the civilized world to-day is plunged into the most cruel and horrible war of history, causing unspeakable suffering and the loss of millions of lives, does not prove that the night-time will last forever, or that the Morning will never come. To the contrary, it is observed by the careful student of prophecy that the great European war, which at this writing threatens to involve also the American Continent, and the destruc- tion of the world's civilization, is but the harbinger of a new System, a New Dispensation, or Order of things; and portends the Morning-time of deliver- ance from sin and death about to dawn upon humanity.
The great Apostle Paul describes very vividly the state of the human family under the curse — "The whole
creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now" — and then de- clares the hope: "For the earnest ex- pectation of the creation waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God." As though by instinct the entire crea- tion, while it groans and travails in pain, waits for, longs for, the day, call- ing it the Golden Age; yet men grope blindly, because not aware of the great Jehovah's gracious purposes. But the student of revelation learns that his highest conceptions of such an Age fall far short of what the reality will be. He learns that the great Creator is preparing a "feast of fat things," which will astound His creatures, and be exceedingly, abundantly, beyond what they could reasonably ask or ex- pect. And to His wondering creatures, looking at the length and breadth, the height and depth of the love of God, surpassing all expectation, He ex- plains, "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord; for as the heav- ens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts." — Isaiah 55:8, 9.
Though in this series of articles we shall endeavor, and we trust with suc- cess, to set before the interested and unbiased reader the Plan of God as it relates to and explains the past, the present and the future of His dealings in a way more harmonious, beautiful and reasonable than is generally un- derstood, yet that this is the result of extraordinary wisdom or ability is positively disclaimed. It is the light of the Sun of Righteousness in this dawning of the New Era that reveals these things as "Present Truth," now due to be appreciated by the sincere — the pure in heart. The promise of the great Teacher was, "They that hunger and thirst after righteousness shall be filled."
Since skepticism is 'rife, the very
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foundation of true religion, and the foundation of Truth, is questioned of- ten, even by the sincere. We are en- deavoring therefore to uncover enough of the foundation upon which all faith should be built — the Word of God — to give confidence and assurance in its testimony, even to the unbeliever. And we trust to do this in a manner that will appeal to and can be accepted by reason as a foundation. Then we shall endeavor to build upon that foun- dation the teachings of Scripture, in such a manner that, so far as possible, purely human judgment may try the squares and angles of these teachings by the most exacting rules of justice which it can command.
How to Obtain the Harmony of the Scriptures.
Believing that the Scriptures reveal a consistent and harmonious Plan, which, when seen, must commend it- self to every sanctified conscience, these articles are written in the hope of assisting all honest, Truth-hungry people, by suggesting lines of thought which harmonize with each other and with the inspired Word. Those who recognize the Bible as the Revelation of God's Plan will doubtless agree that, if inspired of God, its teachings must, when taken as a whole, when fully and carefully examined, reveal a Plan harmonious and consistent with itself and with the character of its Divine Author. Our object as Truth-seekers should be to obtain the complete, har- monious whole of God's revealed Plan; and this as God's children we have a right to expect, since it is promised that the Spirit of Truth shall guide us into all Truth. — John 16:13.
In the past we have been so intent on following our own sectarian schemes and theories that we have neg- lected the proper study of the Bible. Indeed, not until our day has such study been possible for the masses. Only now do they have in convenient form the Word of God in every fam- ily; and only now is education so gen- eral as to permit all to read, all to study, all to know the good things of the Divine promises.
As inquirers, we have two methods open to us. One is to seek among all the views suggested by the various Church-sects, and to take from each that element which we might consider Truth — an endless task. And a diffi- culty which we should meet by this method would be, that if our judgment were warped and twisted or our preju- dices bent in any direction — and whose are not? — these difficulties would pre- vent our correct selection, and we might choose the error and reject the Truth.
Again, if we should adopt this as our method we should lose much, be- cause Truth is progressive, "shining more and more unto the perfect day," to those who search for it and walk in its light; while the various creeds of the various sects are fixed and sta- tionary, and were made so centuries ago. And each of them must contain a large proportion of error, since each in some important respects contradicts the others. This method would lead into a labyrinth of bewilderment and confusion.
The other method is to divest our minds of all prejudice, and to remem- ber that none can know more about the plans of God than He has revealed in His Word, and that this Word was given for the meek and lowly of heart ; and as such, earnestly and sincerely seeking its guidance and instruction only, we shall by its great Author be guided to an understanding of it, as it becomes due to be understood, by mak- ing use of the various helps divinely provided. See Eph. 4:11-16.
As an aid to this class of students, our suggestions are especially de- signed. It will be noticed that our references are to Scripture only, ex- cept where secular history may be called in to prove the fulfillment of Scripture statements. Since modern theology denies the inspiration of the Bible — the miracles and prophecies of both the Old and New Testaments — as well as discredits the historical fea- tures, we can give no weight to the tes- timony of modern theologians, and that of the so-called Early Fathers is
THE DIVINE PLAN OF THE AGES
427
omitted. Many of them have testified in harmony with thoughts herein ex- pressed; but we believe it to be a com- mon failing of the present and all times for men to believe certain doc- trines because others did so in whom they had confidence. This is mani- festly a fruitful source of error, for many good people have believed and taught error in all good conscience. (Acts 26:9.) Truth-seekers should empty their vessels of the muddy wat- ers of tradition and fill them at the Fountain of Truth — God's Word. And no religious teaching should have weight except as it guides the Truth- seeker to that Fountain. The Angels Desire to Look into the Revealed Purposes of God.
We have no apology to offer for treating many subjects usually neg- lected by Christians — among others, the Second Coming of our Lord, and the prophecies and symbolisms of the Old and the New Testaments. No sys- tem of theology should be presented or accepted which overlooks or omits the most prominent features of Scrip- ture teaching. We trust, however, that a wide distinction will be recognized between the earnest, sober and rever- ent study of prophecy and other Scrip- tures, in the light of accomplished his- toric facts, to obtain conclusions which sanctified common sense can approve, and a too common practice of general speculation, which, when applied to Divine prophecy, is too apt to give loose rein to wild theory and vague fancy. Those who fall into this dan- gerous habit generally develop into prophets ( ?) instead of prophetic stu- dents.
It was the inspired St. Peter who urged us to take heed to the more sure word of prophecy. (2 Pet. 1:19.) No work is more noble and ennobling than the reverent study of the revealed pur- poses of God — "which things the an- gels desire to look into." (1 Pet. 1 :12.) The fact that God's wisdom provided prophecies of the future as well as statements regarding the present and the past, is of itself a reproof by Jeho- vah of the foolishness of some of His
children, who have excused their ig- norance and neglect of the study of His Word by saying, "There is enough in the fifth chapter of Matthew to save any man."
Nor should we suppose that proph- ecy was given merely to satisfy curi- osity concerning the future. Its ob- ject evidently is to make the conse- crated child of God acquainted with his Father's plans, thus to enlist his interest and sympathy in the same plans and to enable him to regard both the present and the future from God's standpoint. When thus interested in the Lord's work, he may serve both with the spirit and with the under- standing; not as a servant merely, but as a child and heir. Revealing to such what shall counteract the influence of what now is. The effect of careful study cannot be otherwise than strengthening to faith and stimulating to holiness.
The World in Ignorance of God's Plan For Its Recovery.
In ignorance of the Plan of God for the recovery of the world from sin and its consequences, and under the false idea that the Nominal Church in its present condition is the sole agency for its accomplishment, the condition of the world to-day, after the Gospel has been preached for nearly nineteen cen- turies, is such as to awaken serious doubt in every thoughtful mind so mis- informed. And such doubts are not easily surmounted with anything short of the truth. In fact, to every thought- ful observer, one of two things must be apparent: either the Church has made a great mistake in supposing that in the present Age, and in her present condition, her office has been to convert the world, or else God's Plan has been a failure. Which horn of the dilemma shall we accept ? Many have accepted, and many more doubt- less will accept, the latter, and swell the ranks of infidelity, either covertly or openly. To assist such as are fall- ing thus is one of the objects of these presentations.
We are submitting herewith a dia- gram, published by the "London Mis-
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sionary Society" a number of years fresh missionary efforts in many di-
ago, and afterwards in the United rections, of one country after another
States, by the "Woman's Presbyterian opening to the Gospel, and of large
Board of Missions." It is termed "A sums being devoted to its spread; and
Mute Appeal on Behalf of Foreign we get the idea that adequate efforts
Missions." It tells a sad tale of dark- are being made for the evangelization
ness and ignorance of the only Name of the nations of the earth. It is esti-
given under heaven or among men whereby we must be saved. A Y. M. C. A. journal published this same dia- gram, and commenting on it, said:
"The ideas of some are misty and in- definite in regard to the world's spirit- ual condition. We hear of glorious re- vival work at home and abroad, of
DIAGRAM
Exhibiting the Actual and Relative Numbers of Mankind Classified According to Religion.
Heathen,
856 millions.
Mohamme- dans, 170 millions.
Jews,
8
millions.
Roman Catholics,
IQO
millions.
Greek Catholics,
84 millions.
mated to-day that the world's popu- lation is 1,000,000,000; and by study- ing the diagram we will see that con- siderably more than one-half — nearly two-thirds — are still totally heathen, and that the remainder are mostly either followers of Mohammed or members of those great apostate churches whose reli- gion is practically a Christianized idoKa- try, and who can scarcely be said to hold or teach the Gospel of Christ.
"Even as to the 116 millions of nominal Protestants, we re- member how large a proportion in Ger- many, England and this country have lapsed into infidelity — a darkness which is deeper, if possible, than even that of heathenism.
And how many are blinded by supersti- tion or buried in ex- treme ignorance ; so that while 8 millions of Jews still reject Jesus of Nazareth, and while more than 300 millions who bear His name have apostatized from His faith 170 millions more bow before Mo- hammed, and the vast remainder of man- kind are to this day worshipers of stocks and stones, of their own ancestors, of dead heroes or of the Devil himself; all in
Protest- ants, 116 millions.
THE DIVINE PLAN OF THE AGES
429
one way or another worshiping and serving the creature instead of the Creator, who is God over all, blessed forever. Is there not enough here to sadden the heart of thoughtful Christ- ians?"
Truly this is a sad picture! And though the diagram represents shades of difference between heathens, Mo- hammedans and Jews, all are alike in total ignorance of Christ. Some might at first suppose that this view with reference to the proportion of Christ- ians is too dark and rather overdrawn, but we think the reverse of this. It shows nominal Christianity in the brightest colors possible. For be it re- membered that a large proportion of church members always numbered in the reckoning are young children and infants.
Especially is this the case in the countries of Europe. In many of these children are reckoned church members from earliest infancy. In fact, in such countries as Germany and Great Brit- ain, ninety-six per cent of the entire population is classified as Christian; and in Italy the whole population is considered Christian. It is claimed that when that portion of our globe termed, "The Heathen World," is brought to the condition of Christian- ity represented by these European na- tions, it will mean that the whole world will have been converted — and that our Lord's Prayer, "Thy Kingdom come," will have been answered.
Nay, verily! What sane person dis- ciplined in the spirit of Jesus Christ, and who remembers that Jesus said, "Love one another," will claim that the hordes of Europe who are viciously flying at each other's throats daily with deadly weapons, and slaughter- ing each other by the millions, are really followers of the Savior! Then from this standpoint is it not seen that the 116,000,000 put down as Protestant Christians is far in excess of the true number! Sixteen millions would, we believe, more nearly express the num- ber of professing church members of adult years; and one million would, we fear, be far too liberal an estimate
of the "little flock," the sanctified in Christ Jesus, "who walk, not after the flesh, but after the Spirit."
Creeds Teach That These Billions are on Straight Road to Eternal Torment.
But dark as this picture appears, it is not the darkest picture that fallen humanity presents. The cut foregoing represents only the living generations. When we consider the fact that cen- tury after century of the six thousand years has swept away other vast mul- titudes, nearly all of whom were en- veloped in the same ignorance and sin, how dark is the scene! Viewed from the popular standpoint, it is truly an awful picture!
The various creeds of to-day teach that all of these billions of humanity, ignorant of the Only Name under heaven by which we must be saved, are on the straight road to everlasting torment; and not only so, but that all of those 116,000,000 Protestants, ex- cept the very few saints, are sure of the same fate. No wonder, then, that those who believe such awful things of Jehovah's plans and purposes should be zealous in forwarding mis- sionary enterprises! The wonder is, that they are not frenzied by it. Real- ly to believe thus, and to appreciate such conclusions, would rob life of every pleasure and shroud in gloom every bright prospect of nature.
To show that we have not misstated "Orthodoxy" on the subject of the fate of the heathen, we quote from the pamphlet in which the diagram was published — "A Mute Appeal on Behalf of Foreign Missions." Its concluding sentence is, "Evangelize the mighty generations abroad — the one thousand million souls who are dying in Christ- less despair at the rate of 100,000 a day."
The Gross Darkness Lighted by the Bow of Promise. But though this is the gloomy out- look from the standpoint of human creeds, the Scriptures present a brighter view, which it is the purpose of these pages to point out. Instructed by the Word, we cannot believe that
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God's Great Plan of Salvation was ever designed to be, or ever will be, such a failure. It will be a relief to the perplexed child of God to notice that the Prophet Isaiah foretells this very condition of things, and its rem- edy, saying: "Behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross dark- ness the people; but the Lord shall arise upon thee; and His glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles (heathen) shall come to thy light."
Not only have the continued misery and darkness of the world and the slow progress of Truth been a mystery to the Church, but the world itself has known and felt its condition. Like that which enveloped Egypt, it has been a darkness that could be felt. In evi- dence of his, note the spirit of the fol- lowing lines, clipped from a Philadel- phia journal. The doubts and gloom intensified by the clashing creeds of the various schools had not yet been dispelled from the writer's mind by the rays of Divine Truth, direct from the Word of God:
"Life! great mystery! Who shall say What need hath God for this poor
clay? Formed by His hand with potent skill : Mind, matter, soul, and stubborn will; Born but to die: sure destiny — death. Then where, oh! where this fleeting
breath ? Not one of all the countless throng, Who lived and died and suffered long, Returns to tell the great design — The future which is yours and mine. We plead, O God! for some new ray Of light for guidance on our way, Based not on faith, but clearer sight, Dispelling these dark clouds of night, This doubt, this dread, this trembling
fear, This thought that mars our blessings
here. This restless mind, with bolder sway, Rejects the dogmas of the day Taught by jarring sects and schools, To fetter reason with their rules. We seek to know Thee as Thou art — Our place with Thee — and then the
part
We play in this stupendous plan, Creator infinite, and man. Lift up this veil-obscuring sight; Command again, "Let there be Light!" Reveal this secret of Thy throne; We search in darkness the unknown."
To this we reply:
"Life's unsealed mystery soon shall
say What joy hath God in this poor clay, Formed by His hand with potent skill, Stamped with His image — mind and
will; Born not to die — no, a second birth Succeeds the sentence — "earth to
earth;" For One of all the mighty host, Who lived and died and suffered most, Arose and proved God's great design — That future, therefore, yours and mine. His Word discloses this new ray Of light for guidance on our way, Based now on faith, but sure as sight, Dispelling these dark clouds of night: The doubt, the dread, the trembling
fear, The thoughts that marred our blessings
here. Now, Lord, these minds whose bolder
sway Reject the dogmas of to-day, Taught by jarring sects and schools, Who fetter reason with their rules, May seek and know Thee as Thou art, Our place with Thee, and then the
part We play in this stupendous Plan — Creator infinite, and man; — The veil uplifts, revealing quite, To those who walk in Heaven's light, The glorious Mystery of His Throne, Hidden from ages, now made known."
In view of the clearer light now shining from the pages of Divine Rev- elation, may we not surely believe that such a blessing is now coming to the world through the opening of the Di- vine Word? It is our trust that this and succeeding articles may prove to be a part of such blessing and re- vealing.
(To be continued.)
Personal Qualities of Jack London
By John D. Barry
IT WAS terrible about Jack London, wasn't it?" said the barber, as I leaned back in his chair.
"Did you know him?" I asked.
"I've known him for years. When- ever he was staying near here for a few days he'd drop in, generally every day. He was always in a rush, and he never let me shave him more than once over. It was funny when I was cutting his hair to see how particular he was. He wanted it done just so; not fancy, you know, but rough. He didn't want to look fussed up. I guess he had a way of his own. Gee, but how he did enjoy himself. He had a good time every minute. When he was here he was always telling stories and talking about that ranch of his. He wanted me to go up some day and see it."
Those words were characteristic of much of the talk going on about Jack London since his death. After his success, when he might have become conventional and confine himself to the paths of the conventional, he re- mained independent and free. He en- joyed the wide variety of his con- tacts. The man in the street he met with as much pleasure as the great ones of the earth that he was privi- leged to know in his years of pros- perity, often with much more plea- sure. For he had his moments of em- barrassment. There were people that could afflict him with their over-refine- ment and their importance. He liked best to be among those he could be on equal terms with, bursting into loud talk and laughter.
And yet he enjoyed being quiet, too. His love of retirement and peace were among the forces that led him away from the life of cities, where he might have been a great figure, into the com- parative solitude of the country. But he could not escape being a great fig- ure everywhere. "He will be missed
in the Valley of the Moon," said one of his friends, who had long had him for a neighbor. "He was a big influ- ence there. His enterprise and en- ergy were an inspiration to the whole valley."
Socialist as he was, lover of democ- racy, democrat not only in his theories but in his feeling as well, Jack London enjoyed being the possessor of a great domain. He took pleasure in sitting on his high cart and driving a string of horses through gateway after gate- way, his round, boyish face glowing under his gray felt sombrero. Some day he expected to reap a great har- vest from the thousands of eucalyptus trees that he had planted there. He took delight in watching their growth.
Like many literary men, he had a fondness for reading aloud. His own stories he read in a way that was at- tractive on account of its spontaneity and freedom from self-consciousness. Better than his own stories he liked to read the verses of George Sterling. When I last saw him he spoke with enthusiasm of the lyrics that Sterling had been writing, remarkable for their simplicity and grace of diction and for their delicacy of thought and feeling.
If Jack London had been given his way in the writing of fiction, he would not have devoted himself so much to adventure. He was greatly drawn to those psychological themes that had a special interest for a few readers and no interest whatsoever for the multi- tude. Now and then he would venture on this forbidden ground, only to find that some of his warmer admirers among magazine editors, would become obdurate. Even at the height of his fame he wrote short stories that could not get into the magazines and that he could get to the public only between the covers of a book.
So far as the drama was concerned, he used to say that he had never had
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any luck. Other writers would often ask for permission to dramatize his stories, and several of them succeeded in getting dramatic versions on the stage. But none of them greatly pros- pered. When moving pictures be- came popular it looked as if, among contemporary American writers, Jack London would reap the richest har- vest. And he might have been won- derfully successful if the moving pic- ture rights of his stories had been more adroitly marketed. Many fine pictures were made from his work, and they were seen by hundreds of thousands; but what the author de- rived from them consisted largely of vexatious law suits.
There probably never was a more photographed author than Jack Lon- don. He took boyish delight in see- ing himself reproduced in a vast num- ber of poses. Visitors at his ranch on leaving, if they expressed an interest in photographs, were likely to go away with a half dozen or more in their pockets. His closest friends have photographs of him in scant costume,
or no costume at all, taken for the pur- pose of displaying his extraordinary muscular development. The lifetime of roughing it had given him a phy- sique that seemed capable of resisting any kind of attack, and yet he sub- jected himself to ways of living that were too much, even for his vitality. Of those ways he spoke himself with greatest frankness in his autobio- graphical books.
In spite of his claim that he did not like the kind of writing he had to do to make money, Jack London never- theless enjoyed the literary career in itself, and all that it brought in the way of interest and friends. But when his day's work was done he did not wish to bother over it again. He was very different from those writers who were continually revising. The reading of proof he regarded as a great bore, and he was glad to have friends whose judgment he trusted takethe burden off his mind. Some of his books he would allow to go be- fore the public without looking over them in type.
Are There Any Thrills Left in Life?
By Jack London
When I lie on the placid beach at Waikiki, in the Hawaiian Islands, as I did last year, and a stranger introduces himself as the person who settled the estate of Captain Keeler; and when that stranger explains that Captain Keeler came to his death by having his head chopped off and smoke- cured by the cannibal head-hunters of the Solomon Islands in the West South Pacific ; and when I remember back through the several brief years, to when Captain Keller, a youth of 22 and master of the schooner Eugenie, was sailed deep with me on many a night, and played poker to the dawn, and took hasheesh with me for the entertainment of the wild crew of Pen- duffryn; and who, when I was wrecked on the outer reef of Malu, on the island of Malaita, with 1,500 naked Bushmen and head-hunters on the beach armed with horse-pistols, Snider rifles, tomahawks, spears, war- clubs and bows and arrows, and with scores of war-canoes, filled with salt- water head-hunters and man-eaters holding their place on the fringe of the breaking surf alongside of us, only four whites of us, including my wife, on board — when Captain Keller burst through the rain-squalls to windward, in a whale-boat, with a crew of negroes, himself rushing to our rescue, bare-footed and bare-legged, clad in loin-cloth and six-penny un- dershirt, a brace of guns strapped about his middle — I say, when I remem- ber all this, that adventure and romance are not dead as I lie on the placid beach of Waikiki.
Recollections of the Late Jack London
By Edgar Lucien Larkin
ON SEPTEMBER 13, 1906, I spent a night at Jack London's home in Sonoma. The house was crowded with guests. Jack took me to the place he had chosen for me . . .
Jack opened the door of his den, bade me enter, and pointed to a huge arm chair. He lighted up, said a few pleasant words, opened a door looking into the other half of the building, showed me his bed, bade me good- night. And when all alone I tore up things in an exploration exercise. I was in one of the greatest literary cen- ters of the world. The working table was wide and long. It was heaped up with an incredible stock of writing paper of varying sizes, pens by the gross, pencils, not one well sharpened, quart bottles of ink, sheets of postage stamps and the like.
But see these things, stories almost finished, others half, a third or fourth written; tense, exceedingly dramatic humanity plots and plans of other writings; sketches for illustrations of books, highly ideal, letters in heaps from all parts of the world and from many publishers.
I was glad there was no room for me in the house.
* * *
There! I heard a sweetly sad and solemn bell, tuneful bell, then another, and soon another, no two sounding the same note. But they had been at- tuned by a master of harmonics. They were three sacred Korean temple ser- vice bells secured when Mr. London was Russian- Japanese war correspond- ent. They had been fastened to twigs. The well known "Valley of the Moon" breeze, just in from the ocean, swayed
the branches and rang them with deli- cate, excessively harmonic notes. But I didn't know they were there.
Finally a gust caused one to strike the window pane. I explored and solved this apparently esoteric mys- tery. Esoteric, indeed, for the bells had been in use, maybe, for centuries, in archaic Asiatic mysteries greater than those of Eleusis in Greece.
* * *
On a shelf across a corner above the chairback I counted thirteen books. I arose and took them down, one by one, looked at their dates. They had all been written by Mr. London within five years. He was born in San Fran- cisco on January 12, 1876. I was look- ing them over at 1 a. m., September 14, 1906. Go do this work, and you will begin to sense the true meaning of the word work.
There were Mr. London's Arctic and Klondike outfits, curios from Asia and many things belonging to his dogs for their comfort in cold.
No matter where the reader of these lines may be, it is an honor for him to love our brothers, the animals, as did their well known friend Jack. Do you suppose for an instant that Jack Lon- don would rise, brace himself and then jerk and twist steel bits against quivering flesh, the mouths of his be- loved horses?
Here I was in a world of pure litera- ture— story, drama — these that rock the soul like the rocking of a baby's cradle. I could not wait longer. I seized Jack's pen and a lot of paper at 1 :40 and "wrote a piece" for the Ex- aminer, which was published a few days later. Then to Jack's bed at 3 :15 a. m.
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Breakfast early, a few words for the ranch employees, and they were glad to be laborers on land owned by Jack London, an employer kind to the ex- treme to man and beast.
Then the guests to the porch, and Mr. London entertained us with the most fascinating conversation. And we talked some.
Then out came Charmian. She broke up the party in one minute, and without saying one word. Silently she looked into the eyes of her husband, then she looked at each of her guests. We knew, and we went. It was time, 8 :30 a. m., for Mr. London to go to the den and write. Not a person in So- noma County would ask Charmian's permission to interrupt Mr. London. None could see the little 16 feet square, 9 feet high, California red- wood building, even if passing within twenty feet, so completely was it hid- den by the luxuriant California un- dergrowth, chapparal, vines and trees.
We all held the forenoon to be sa- cred to Mr. London. That one look of Charmian was enough. He "skipped," went to the edge of the wildwood, lifted a great hanging vine, bent be- neath and vanished. I saw a pile of proof, just as sent from a publisher. At once I took it, plunged into the wildwood, sat on a log, motionless, from 8:40 to 11 a. m. I read every
word. It was the wondrous book, "Be- fore Adam."
* * *
So remarkable was the personality of Mr. London that I am now under high pressure, hour by hour, all the day long and part of the night, writing a book, his biography, a true life his- tory. It will soon appear, possibly in January, 1917. I have the materials, the accurate data, much personal, and the book as it grows under the flying pen is fascinating to one at least — its writer. I wish to analyze the psychol- ogy of these mystic sayings of Mr. London, and as I am now writing this hurried note, I express the hope that analytical words will come when I am exploring the literary labors of Cali- fornia's great native son, Jack London.
And now the telegraphs of the world and the great newspapers, as well as small, are telling of the sudden passing of the soul and of its flight. And of the burial of his ashes in the wondrous Sonoma County, his beloved "Valley of the Moon."
His funeral services were of the highest religious type of burial. The rites were performed by his widow, Charmian, who placed flowers all around the urn containing the mortal remains of her illustrious husband. This is religious.
Jack London on the Great War
I believe intensely in the pro-Ally side of the war. I believe that the foundation of civilization rests on the pledge, the agreement, and the contract. I believe that the present war is being fought out to determine whether or not men in the future may continue in a civilized way to de- pend upon the word, the pledge, the agreement, and the contract.
As regards a few million terrible deaths, there is not so much of the terrible about such a quantity of deaths as there is about the quantity of deaths that occur in peace times in all countries in the world, and that has occurred in war times in the past..
Civilization at the present time is going through a Pentecostal cleansing that can only result in good for humankind.
JACK LONDON.
GUNS OF GALT
An Epic of the Family
By DENISON CLIFT
(SYNOPSIS — Jan Rantzau, a handsome young giant among the ship- builders of Gait, joins pretty little Jagiello Nur at a dance in the Pavilion. There the military police seek Felix Skarga, a revolutionist. Jagiello fears that a lover, Captain Pasek, of the Fusiliers, will betray her presence at the dance to old Ujedski, the Jewess, with whom Jagiello lives in terror. Jan rescues Jagiello. Later when Pasek betrays Jagiello to Ujedski, and seeks to remain at the hovel with her, she wounds him in a desperate en- counter. Ujedski turns her out, and she marries Jan. Later Pasek indi- cates that he will take a terrible revenge upon the bridal pair. A son is born to Jan, and he idealizes his future even as he idealizes the growth of the world's greatest superdreadnaught, the Huascar, on the ways at Gait. After the birth of Stefan, Jagiello tries to tell Jan of her sin with Pasek, but her strength fails her at the supreme moment. Jan buys a new house for Stefan's sake. Ujedski visits Jagiello and threatens to reveal her sin to Jan. Jagiello goes away, and Jan, helpless, calls in Ujedski to care for Stefan. Meanwhile, Pasek presses the military tax revenge- fully against Jan. Desperate, Jan works day and night to meet the tax, but at last loses his house and moves into Ujedski's hovel.)
Chapter XXII.
THE Destroyer of Bureaucracies was convinced that the govern- ment's policy of militarism was wrong. The government, real- izing that the Destroyer was a thinker, was endeavoring to render him harm- less for all time.
The Destroyer was Felix Skarga.
Jan had saved him from the military police five years before, on the night that Jagiello had come into his life. Ever after, Skarga had sought Jan.
Skarga's history was thrilling and eventful.
Before him his father had been an inventor. He had discovered a new explosive, smokeless, noiseless, the combination of properties in effect ter- rible beyond words. For years he had been employed in the gun factory. Be-
ing ambitious for his son Felix, he had sent him to be educated in the St. Amiens University at Nagi-Aaros. There Felix had specialized in politi- cal economy. The government sought to defend the extension of the Carlma- nian frontiers by militarism, urging the future of national existence. Felix, the thinker, did not agree with the govern- ment.
While at the university he had re- ceived letters from his father telling of the combination of lyddite with two compounds that formed the new explo- sive. The discovery had been made by accident. In one letter the father had detailed the formula. Felix had carefully preserved this letter. In the weeks that followed, his father wrote of progress in using certain proportions of three chemicals to secure maximum force. Once he wrote : "A cylinder of
Copyright, 1 9 1 7, by Denison Clift. All Rights Reserved.
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
lyddite would lift the Imperial Palace a thousand feet into the sky, dispers- ing its parts so that not a square inch of the original stone blocks would be found intact."
Obviously, such an explosive was in high demand by the government. It was not long before news of the great discovery leaked out. A youth who assisted Skarga in the gun factory first bruited the story. It quickly reached the ears of government officials. With- in a week a deputation waited upon Skarga. He acknowledged his discov- ery, but prudently avoided all refer- ence to the formula. The government representatives asked for a demonstra- tion. The inventor agreed to a test.
Ten miles south of Gait, beyond the rice paddies, an ancient fort was se- lected for annihilation. It was a gar- rison that had once sheltered Napo- leon. Its walls were four feet thick. The central building was two hundred feet long by over a hundred feet wide. The walls sloped upward and back- ward, so that the pile resembled a pyr- amid severed through the center. The doors opening into the fort were of iron, six inches thick. Embrasures for guns dotted the gray walls. The fort had been constructed to withstand siege for one year. It had accom- plished this for a period longer than a year. Huge fissures told of artillery attack. Sections of the walls had been carried away. It was this impregnable pile that Skarga proposed to reduce to atoms.
The deputation consisted of the Min- ister of War and three generals, gaily dressed in service uniforms.
Skarga entered the fort by the east wall. He placed a crystalline cylinder of the explosive beneath a bastion, at- tached a long, slow-burning fuse. He retreated hastily, closing the iron door behind him. Then mounting horses, the inventor and the deputation rode swiftly away, warning all peasants from the fields. In twenty minutes they were a mile from the ancient fort, in the seclusion of a ravine. Through field glasses the five men watched the fort. An instant it was a low-lying, grim
monolith — then lo! in the twinkling of an eye it had been lifted from the earth, it had folded outward and up- ward, and disappeared ! Where it had crouched like a sphinx in the sunshine a few moments before, it had now van- ished, and only a huge cavern in the earth marked its resting place for near a century. The air was filled with a muffled detonation as the great blocks of stone ground asunder.
And then the aftermath.
It rained dust — dust only. There were no boulders, no fragments of stone — only the constant sifting of a fine, powdery mist, not unlike a sand- storm in a desert — a golden rain through which the sun burned like an orb of brass.
And after this sifting of atoms for half an hour, the atmosphere cleared again, and the distant mountains be- came as sharply defined as in the still- ness of dawn.
Immediately Skarga was elevated in the employ of the government. He was offered a million rubles outright for his formula. The government real- ized that with such an explosive with which to create bombs, the aeroplane corps would be the determining factor in modern warfare. Whole cities could be wiped from the map in the twinkling of an eye.
But Skarga refused the government's offer until he could further perfect the terrible qualities of lyddite. He an- nounced that he would then sell the formula for five million rubles. The government assented to the price. In another year the explosive was per- fected. Skarga announced his willing- ness to meet again the government's deputation.
And then the unexpected happened.
A stroke of paralysis reduced the old man to the point of death. On his death bed an agent of the government sought to learn his formula. But the aged inventor was unable to express himself, and the secret of the century died with him.
Instantly an assault was made upon his private papers. His letters were read through, his clothes and desk
GUNS OF GALT 437
were searched; not a move was over- where it clinked musically and glis-
looked to find some writing bearing on tened in the golden glow of the sun.
the formula. But not a scratch of the Felix Skarga spoke in the low ac-
pen revealed the precious secret. cents of one fraught with emotion. He
After a month of futile probing, the took from his pocket a faded bit of government agent remembered the white paper — his father's letter which son. A courier was despatched at once contained the formula, to find Felix Skarga. After the death "It gives me peculiar pleasure to of his father, he had gone south into hear your appreciation of my dear Risegard. Within a week the courier father, who, I need scarcely say, meant found him sojourning at the Stanislaus more than life to me," he began, bold- Inn near Jarolsau. There he admitted ly facing the deputation, to the courier that he possessed the "That he was noble I believe in truth ; formula that his father had once sent that he was fired with patriotism as he him. interpreted patriotism I also believe.
The courier was overjoyed at the When he invented this explosive he lit—
success of his mission. Would Skarga tie dreamed of the havoc he might cre-
not, for the good of his beloved Carl- ate in the centuries to come, of the ter-
mania, part with the formula for a rible sufferings he would cause hu-
million rubles ? . . . Ah, the courier manity. Fortunately I am the only liv-
knew that patriotism burned loyally in ing soul who possesses the secret of
the breast of the young man whose this awful force. This letter contains
father had discovered the secret that the few words that would make possi-
would render Carlmania the dominant ble the destruction of whole nations
nation of the earth! overnight. You offer me a million ru-
Felix Skarga agreed to meet the bles for it. You are very generous,
deputation that had once waited upon But I am not selling a few words on a
his father. On the twelfth of August scrap of paper; I am selling the souls
he met the Minister of War and the and hearts of my fellow men; I am
three generals in the big dining-room selling the flesh and blood of my bro-
of the Inn. He was a slender, dark thers of all nations; I am selling the
young man, and in his eyes glowed a pitiful lives of the toilers of the world;
fire that had been diversely explained. I am selling that which will bring an-
The courier held it to be the fire of guish to mothers and destitution to lit-
patriotism; the generals maintained it tie children — and that, my friends, is
t»
was the fire of greed. not mine to sell!'
Stanislaus Inn was surrounded by a Quick as a flash, before the aston-
great courtyard backed by a sunlit cas- ished generals could realize what was
tie wall. In the ancient dining-room taking place, Felix Skarga tore the
the five men gathered around an oak faded paper containing the precious
table before a cheerful wood fire, and formula into bits and cast them into
the Minister of War addressed the the blazing fire. An instant of bright
young man. flame, and the secret of lyddite was
"Skarga," he said, "it is with plea- lost to the world forever.
sure that we greet you in the name of Angered, like a pack of wolves, the
our glorious country, and offer you in three soldiers threw themselves upon
behalf of the Emperor these million Skarga. Their sabres gleamed, steel
rubles in exchange for the formula of ringing against steel, in their mad rush
the new lyddite, the discovery of your to cut him down,
noble father." But prepared for such an attack, the
The young man smiled. The door youth dashed quickly from the room
opened, and two fusiliers bore in a through high windows leading out upon
chest of gold. The Minister opened a narrow iron balcony. He hurled the
the chest, took out a bag of money and door shut in the faces of the infuriated
spread the yellow pile across the table, generals. They burst through, shat-
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
tering the glass panes with their sa- bres. But too late! Skarga braved death, leaped to the ground and was off like a hare under the castle walls. No trace was found of him af- terward.
Yet he was known to be in Carl- mania, and from time to time the mili- tary police had found his trail. He had become a Red — a revolutionary social- ist; he devoted his life to fanning into flame the smoldering revolt in the hearts of his countrymen against mili- tarism.
So he became known to the govern- ment agents as the "Firebrand."
This was the Felix Skarga whom Jan had unwittingly saved from the fusil- iers that night of the dance in the pa- vilion.
This was the Felix Skarga who was now seeking Jan.
Chapter XXIII.
The candles in all the houses had long ago been put out. There were no sounds, save the spasmodic wind- ing of the watchman's horn. The sky was blue, the wonderful blue night sky of Carlmania, with the stars luminous like jewels in the frosted sky. On this night, as on all nights, Jan Rant- zau left the shipyard at twelve o'clock and started home. He was exhausted. Every fibre of his body dragged under a dead weight; his brain throbbed; his eyes saw green : the result of the blind- ing glare from the blast furnaces un- der the Huascar. The terrific strain of eighteen hours of labor out of each twenty-four was telling upon his strength. Utter weariness dominated his body. This could not continue much longer. Racking pains crisped his nerves each night; his brain was becoming a chaotic, benumbed mass. What would the end be? Eighteen hours out of twenty-four ! He repeated this over and over to himself. Eighteen hours out of twenty-four — and no rest on Sunday! But he must do this for Stefan, for his little blue-eyed, curly- haired Stefan, the little man in the im- age of himself. It was worth all this
driving of his flesh to help the lad of his flesh!
When Jan reached Ujedski's hovel he saw a light in the window. On en- tering the house he came face to face with a man in a student's long black overcoat. The stranger rose to greet him. He was tall, slender, with a white, ethereal face and closely- cropped mustache. "Jan Rantzau — you at last?" He spoke guardedly. "Madame Ujedski permitted me to wait here for you."
"Who are you ?" asked Jan.
"You do not know me ?"
"No."
"My voice?"
"No."
"Nor my face?"
"No."
"It was dark that night in the pavil- ion. I am the man whose life you saved. If it had not been for you, to- night I should be a political prisoner without hope of freedom, facing slow death, perhaps torture, at the hands of men who hate me."
"Tell me your name."
"My name is hated in Carlmania: Felix Skarga."
"Felix Skarga!"
"I am your friend."
Jan peered closer, and distinguished the features of the man he had helped to escape from the pavilion five years before. He motioned Skarga to a seat and himself sat upon a stool near the table.
"Since that night," continued Skarga, "it has always been my desire to find you and express my gratitude. I remembered your face, for I had one glimpse of it as you burst the grille. You endangered your life for mine. We both escaped death by a miracle. You proved yourself a worthy comrade. I hope the day will come when I can do as much for you. Here in Carlmania I must not let myself be known. There are five thousand rubles on my head — and I judge the Emperor does not care whether I am taken dead or alive. Be- cause I love my fellow man I am con- sidered an enemy of the Empire. I have set up an opposition to militar-
GUNS OF GALT
439
ism: it is growing like the waves of the sea, like the wheat of the field. It is born in Truth. 'Thou shalt not kill!' Because I want to save my brothers from the horrors of war I am looked upon as an Enemy — a Red. The Em- peror proclaims himself a herald of peace — falsely, for we are preparing for war. Throughout Carlmania ear- nest bands of men are secretly organ- izing to fight militarism. We meet af- ter midnight — when the wide world is asleep. In an hour a group of Reds will meet on the Navarin Road. Com- rade, will you join us?"
Jan lit his pipe, thinking hard. He could plainly see Skarga's face : white, tragically earnest, his eyes glowing like red coals.
Something in Jan responded. The man, crushed, blindly attacked by an insidious military system, bereft of all that he could call his own in the world, reached out for the sympathy, the pro- mise of help, that Skarga offered, the last hope in his soul seeking its chance.
"Will you join us?" repeated the young socialist.
"Yes."
Stefan and Ujedski were sound asleep, so Jan slipped out into the night with Skarga. Under the shadow of the trees they silently made their way along the street, arm in arm, mys- terious figures in the gloom.
"There is an old barn on the Nava- rin Road," said Skarga. "It is there that we meet, secretly, about thirty comrades, sowing the seed that will one day overthrow the Emperor and give the people a democracy. If we are found out! — hark! — what is that?"
The men stood stark still.
Two soldiers went swinging down the street, bibulous, singing. Their ribald laughter died away in the dis- tance.
Jan and Skarga went on across a bridge with waters rippling away be- low, reflecting the yellow points of stars. Jan was aching in every bone and nerve, yet his body responded with new hope. Here was an opportu- nity to strike at the system that had rendered him a pauper — that now
threatened his boy.
A black lane, smothered in darkness, led across a field into an open country with houses far apart. The humid breath of the river hung close to the earth. There was no sound except the faint whistle of the night mail going down to Bazias. Surely they had walked far enough ! Jan's eyes burned for want of sleep : his body was shot with spasms of pain.
Skarga came to a halt at last. He pointed across the downs to a low, black building snuggled in a hollow. "There is the barn," he declared.
Now alert and eager, Jan followed him across the downs, knee-deep in fescue, and in a moment they came to the barn. Skarga knocked three times on the door.
"Who knocks?" asked a voice with- in.
"Liberty!"
There was a sound of bolts thrown back, the door opened cautiously, and Jan followed Skarga into a vestibule. A second door opened inward. Beyond was a room with a petroleum lamp flaring on a table. About the room were young men and old, with tense, serious faces, silent and waiting. Jan sat down in an obscure corner.
Chapter XXIV.
One of the old men had been speak- ing. He rose again, a venerable patri- arch, sublime with his whitened hair. Jan saw that his face was sad, his eyes dim and tired, and his bent shoulders eloquent of a life of toil and sorrow. A deep silence settled over the room, and the old man's voice, mellow and low and tremulous with music, was heard again.
"Youthful brothers, O sons of mine, heed the voice of one who has lived. You are eager for the new day in Carl- mania, when a monarch shall be chosen by the people, and the tread of marching men shall die from the face of the earth. It has come to my ears that death is awaiting the Imper- ial Chancellor. O my brothers, that would be a terrible mistake! Never
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
through violence can we win our free- dom. Only by sowing the seeds of resistance to militarism among our comrades can we blot out sorrow and save our country."
There was a rumble of dissent. Sev- eral students leaped to their feet. One, a dark, slender youth, passionately ad- dressed the old man. "You abhor vio- lence," he cried, "but do you know what happened to my brother in Sa- milo ? Stanislaus Andronivo was trav- eling from Sant to Javo. On the train he was reading my letter to him, tell- ing of the death of our mother. Two military police seized him. They read the letter — signed by me! That was enough. They took him from the train at Samilo and threw him into prison. He lay in a filthy cell without food for seventy hours, charged with dis- loyalty to the Emperor. Now I cannot find him. No one knows what has be- come of him. When I ask the police they shake their heads and shrug their shoulders. My brother! What is your answer to that, comrade?"
The words snapped from the. youth's mouth like bullets. He sat down, shaking with excitement. A dozen men started to speak. Plainly, the young man's distress was a common experience. Suddenly a woman — who had entered softly and heard the youth — lifted her voice in earnest appeal.
"0 comrades" — and her voice was tremulous with sorrow — "I had two sons, one Jurgis Rantoverno, the other Frederick Rantoverno, both captains in the 18th Army Corps. Last sum- mer they traveled home to me at Caye, and we rambled a fortnight through the forest of Novogavve. I besought them to leave the army and forever cease to kill their brothers. At first they would not listen. They violently opposed me. But after days of tear- ful beseeching a mother's love won. They returned to the Army Corps — and resigned. A week later they were at home with me. We were so happy. One day three military police called at the house. They arrested my sons, and took them to the Czemo Barracks. The next morning I went to the Bar-
racks to see them. An Artillery Cap- tain met me, and told me that they had been tried for treason, stood up against a stone wall, and shot!"
The woman stood panting, her eyes wild with rebellion, her breasts heav- ing like subdued volcanoes. The yel- low glare of the lamp fell across her face. Jan saw that she was the woman who had been Skarga's companion in the pavilion five years before. The old man who had first spoken rose, and with kindly words tried to comfort her. "My sister " he began.
The woman turned like a tigress at bay. "Good God!" she cried, "you talk of peace, and they shot my sons against a stone wall! You talk of brotherly love, and they riddled the children of my womb with steel- coated bullets!"
Her voice rang out like the clangor of trumpets. It was given to her to move the hearts of men — to sway em- pires. They had shot her sons !
The blood mounted to Jan's face. His nerves tingled. His great heart bled for the woman. Her sad face was gray and bloodless; she stood erect, hands clenched, surging with the revolution flaming in her heart.
Skarga rose. A hush greeted him. Every eye was turned upon his serious face. "My friends," he said, simply, "whose heart to-night does not bleed with the heart of Marja Rantoverno? Who would not avenge the death of her sons, even at the cost of his life? Marja Rantoverno, to-night in a thou- sand towns our comrades are meeting as we are here. The die is cast. Mili- tarism shall pass from the earth."
Again the woman :
"But that will not give me back my sons!" Her voice was heavy with sorrow, heartrending, bitter. Sudden- ly she sank to the floor, her face bur- ied in her hands. Her voice was the voice of the forest mother whose young had been killed. "That will not give me back my sons!" she sobbed, over and over. The men shuffled restlessly. Eyes were dimmed with tears.
At that moment, at first afar off,
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there was a rumble as of low thunder. It grew quickly into an uproar — the clatter of horses' hoofs !
Instantly the meeting was in confu- sion.
There were no outcries, but every- one was aquiver. In all likelihood there was to be an attack by the mili- tary police.
Chapter XXV.
Skarga leaped to the table and ex- tinguished the lamp. The room was plunged in darkness. Through the chinks in the low roof the starlight could presently be seen, powdery and radiant. Some one threw up a win- dow. Half a dozen men looked out.
The thud! thud! of hoofs was now close to the barn. The riders were coming down the hard Navarin mili- tary road. Were they cavalry return- ing to the Barracks or mounted police closing in for a raid?
In the gloom a man opened a trap in the floor. By the light of a match it could be seen that a ladder led down twelve feet to the ground on the north side. Here the earth fell away toward the river, less than a quarter mile dis- tant. At the foot of the ladder a path turned off to the left from under the building and led away beneath the trees to another road, the Donas Rio, past the cemeteries, and into the heart of Gait.
The Revolutionists were not unpre- pared. The way of escape had long ago been planned in case of attack. A dozen men whipped out revolvers and held them ready for extreme emer- gency. They knew the character of the military police, and were ready to fire only if fired upon.
The thudding of the horses ceased; with startling swiftness the door of the barn opened inward, and a man, a guard, plunged into the room, closing the door behind him and throwing the bolts. His voice rang with alarm.
"We are surrounded by armed fusi- liers!" he cried.
The men gripped their revolvers tighter; their faces became set. Some- one called out :
"Let the women go first!"
In a flash the two women descended the ladder protected by the armed men. Then followed the other men, one by one, quickly, but in perfect or- der, until there were only two men left in the room.
These two men were Jan and Skarga.
At the instant that Jan was about to place his foot on the top rung of the ladder, there was a cry below, a flash of white fire, the report of a revolver shot, and the ladder was seized and torn from its position.
Springing back into the room, Jan seized the heavy trap-door and slammed it shut.
"Too late!" he cried to Skarga. "We are trapped!"
Hardly had he spoken the words than the rifles of the fusiliers rang out, and the trap-door was splintered. From below came a whir of voices.
"They are up there!"
"See, here is their ladder!"
"We have caught the whole crowd!"
"The Reds— damn them— at last!"
"Light a light . . . Ah, there is their path. They planned to make off under those trees, if caught. Ha, ha, ha ! Clever, eh ? Look, there are their footprints !"
"Those are their steps coming!"
"Some are steps going!"
"No doubt from last night."
Now a voice, gruff, and with the temper of cold steel, commanded the inmates to surrender.
"In the name of the Emperor, sur- render! Or we will fire the barn and shoot as you come out!"
There was a long silence.
It was broken only by the click of a trigger inside the barn.
Chapter XXVI.
The click of Skarga's revolver was eloquent. It spoke of death to the fusi- liers surrounding the barn. It left to their imagination the possible number of the enemy within ; and the imagina- tion of men whose lives are in peril is remarkably keen.
Through a chink in the wall of the
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barn Jan and Skarga could look into the circle of the fusiliers, note their force, position and the gleam of their rifle barrels.
The barn stood seventy paces from two roads. The road on the south was the hard military road, built by the government. It was intended for the transport of troops in the event of war. It was along this road that the attack- ing party had ridden. Their horses were now standing under a clump of poplars exactly twenty paces from the barn. Midway between the poplars and the barn was an old well. Its ma- sonry had recently been whitewashed, and it was clearly distinguishable in the star-lit gloom.
Northward from the barn was a ver- itable forest of trees: larches, poplars and thickly matted cypresses. These grew in wild profusion close up to the old building, and the heavy branches hung down, almost covering the roof. They formed a canopy under which a heavy trellis extended forty paces into what had once been the luxurious gar- den of a manor. The house had stood upon the grounds thirty years before, when it had been seized for an arsenal during an uprising in Northern Carl- mania, and subsequently had been burned. The trees and ivy, once pruned so carefully, now grew in prod- igal abandon. So dense had the wall of leaves and branches become that a perfect ai boreal tunnel was formed, leading to the Donas Rio, which was corduroy-marked from the wheels of hay carts sinking through the winter mud. It was through this tunnel of trees that the Revolutionists had es- caped before the soldiers had been able to dismount and reach the building.
As Jan and Skarga, with eyes glued to the chinks in the wall, looked out, they beheld seven fusiliers conferring together in the shadow of the poplars, studying the building. From their manner it was easy to see that they were confident they had trapped a large gathering of Reds. Within three minutes after dismounting, several of- ficers had lighted lanterns to deter- mine the positions of the doors and
windows; the red lights danced about as the men reconnoitered; in their faint glow Jan could distinguish the red and white uniforms, and the glint of Mauser tubes. A captain was directing the police; he wore a high hat with a tufted pompon, and at his side a sabre swung freely. Realizing quickly that there were men in the barn, and seeing the trap-door swing shut, they withdrew into the shadow of the trees. As a precautionary mea- sure they now put out their lanterns. This made it difficult for them to be singled out as targets for the Reds. Meanwhile their leader advanced to the door of the barn to begin negotia- tions with the entrapped men. This man was Pasek. Jan recognized his voice at once. "In the name of the Emperor, I com- mand you to surrender!"
"In the name of God, we surrender to no man!" replied Felix Skarga, de- fiantly.
"Who are you, conspiring in secret at this hour of the morning ?"
"That concerns only those gathered here."
"Will you come out, or shall we fire the barn?"
"We will not come out! If you fire the barn you take the consequences!" "How many of you are there ?" "Hearts enough to match your seven!" "Will you surrender — alive?" "No!"
"Very well, Revolutionist!" Pasek withdrew into the shadow of the poplars.
In the barn Jan clutched Skarga's arm.
"He is Captain Pasek!" declared Jan.
"Ha, don't I know that voice?" laughed Skarga. "An old friend, and I know how he longs to meet me again!"
Bent on escape at any cost, the two men began a search of the barn, its walls and floor, and the position of the stalls.
The south end of the barn rested on a hard mud floor. The ground fell
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443
away suddenly, so that the north end was twelve feet above the outer earth, supported by heavy underpinning, and reached by the ladder rising to the trap in the floor. Rotten boards rough- ly covered that portion of the floor that was of mud; here wooden walls rose between the stalls where oxen had once been sheltered. Jan entered a stall, his hands groping about the wooden sides. Presently his foot struck the sharp edge of a floor cover- ing under the boards; it was of metal. Quickly reaching down, he dug the earth from under the edge, inserted his two hands, and with a tremendous heave lifted a great iron plate that had once been imbedded in the mud to pre- vent the burrowing of weasels intent on devouring the grain.
The plate was over three feet square and a quarter of an inch thick. As he carried it to the center of the room an idea for escape came to him.
He revealed his discovery to Skarga.
"This plate will serve as a shield if we can once gain the tunnel under the trees. It is seventy paces to the Donas Rio," he explained. "Once there we must trust our legs to get us to the river bank before we are struck by their bullets, or ridden down. The river is our only salvation."
Hardly had he finished than a bright flare appeared outside the window. A shower of light streamed through the cracks and chinks onto the floor. The fusiliers were firing the building.
Skarga gripped his revolver.
"Quick!" Jan whispered intensely. "Ready to leap down ! I will open the trap. Fire your revolver out of the window overlooking the well. That will direct their attention to the other side of the building while we make a break under the trees."
"But if they ride us down before we reach the river?"
"God forbid!" answered Jan. "Their bullets would be more merciful than that!"
A lurid tongue of flame licked up- ward through the window. Smoke poured into the room. Through every
cranny curling wreathes circled, the forerunners of a terrible death.
Leaping to the window, carefully keeping out of range of the fusiliers' rifles, Skarga fired his revolver. Six bullets spat against the masonry of the well.
In answer, the roar of seven rifles split the stillness of the night. The bullets whizzed through the window, now brightly outlined amid the crack- ling flames. Spat! spat! spat! and they ripped through the boards, chipped off splinters, and sank with a dull ping! into the old wood.
Skarga leaped back to the center of the room, bowed his head to escape the deadly rifle fire, and, spinning the cylinder of his revolver, swiftly re- loaded the chambers. Once more he crept to the window, and once more his revolver challenged the enemy. The rifles barked out savagely. Skarga had been careful not to aim at the men whose outlines he could distinguish moving cautiously through the trees. He saw a figure run up and cower be- hind the rim of the well. In the glow of the burning building Skarga could have shot him as he ran. This he did not choose to do, because he knew the consequences would be doubly terrible in the event of his capture.
Returning now to Jan, he reloaded his revolver and got ready for the leap to the ground. It was life or death now. There could be no com- promise. The ruse had been success- ful in drawing the attention of the po- lice to the south side of the building. The rain of bullets made it clear that at least five of the enemy were hidden on that side.
Jan slowly lifted the the heavy trap- door.
"Quick, jump!" he commanded.
He laid back the door until the iron hinges were flush with the floor. Then seizing the iron shield he leaped into the opening and dropped with a soft thud twelve feet to the ground. Skarga followed, and once in the protection of the shield, the two comrades began their race with death.
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Chapter XXVII.
The avenue of trees stretched away into the black shadows toward the cor- duroy road. Here and there through openings, long yellow shafts of light streaked the ground as the barn col- lapsed into a whirlpool of flame. Jan and Skarga looked straight ahead with eager eyes and began racing with all their strength for the Donas Rio . . . One, two, three — ten paces, and a great shout rose behind them. They had been detected.
Then suddenly spat! spat! spat! The rifles spoke behind them. Bullets whizzed dangerously close to their heads.
Turning an instant, Jan brought the iron shield face about, and, crouching behind it, Skarga emptied his revolver in the direction of the approaching fusiliers.
He could see the flash of their red uniforms through the trees, for all the world like fantastic figures at a mas- querade. Their shadows fell like huge goblins. Their rifles were at their shoulders as they ran, and they cracked out in a vain effort to pierce the iron plate. With a ringing sound the bul- lets flattened against the shield.
There were just three fusiliers fol- lowing, for the other four remained be- hind to cover the burning barn. Skarga refilled the chambers of his revolver with his last five cartridges. No sooner had he clicked the cylinder into posi- tion and dropped the pistol into a handy pocket than he heard the clat- ter of horses' hoofs above the sucking roar of the fire. The hoof-beats struck terror to his soul. If the soldiers reached the head of the avenue first, all escape would be cut off, and they would be caught in the passage like rats.
Jan held the shield behind them, and they raced ahead toward the mouth of the tunnel. Their feet seemed to move sluggishly, as in a horrible dream; but at length they staggered into the Donas Rio.
Behind them shouts arose — men calling to each other: bellowing com-
mands, advice, information, maledic- tions.
The mounted fusiliers were closing in in a circle from the barn toward the river. Ahead lay the Ule, its waters silver-grey in the starlight. Black patches indicated the positions of barges.
Jan now threw away the iron plate, and, close beside Skarga, sped for the water's edge. Their breaths wheezed from their throats; their staring eyes were riveted on the river ; their nostrils dilated from supreme exertion.
Even if they succeeded in reaching the river ahead of their pursuers, they knew that the man-hunt would be prosecuted with relentless fury, that the river would be lined with police, and at first sight of them bullets would end their lives in the name of the Em- peror, or-
They dared not think of what might follow.
To Jan, the river seemed miles away, further and further receding as he ran toward it. Flaming catherine-wheels circled before his eyes. Then all at once, as though playing a trick upon his tortured senses, the river rose to meet him, black, ghost-like. He could have cried aloud in his joy. The next moment he plunged into the icy depth. Skarga followed.
The strength of the two men had been drained by their race. The shock of the cold water gave them renewed energy. To have gained the river ahead of the enemy filled their hearts with hope. They might yet escape, if only the dawn would not betray them.
Already the banners of the new day were unfolding across the eastern sky. Presently the sun would encarmine the river, and every foot of ground up and down the stream would be combed for evidence of the escaped Reds.
In a wide circle Jan struck out for the center of the river with long, even strokes. He was slightly in advance of Skarga. He was cautious to avoid all splashing of the water, turning his face toward the opposite shore.
The current bore him rapidly down stream. Once he turned to glance
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445
back and saw along the bank they had just left, bobbing lanterns. The next moment, in their faint radiance, he dis- cerned the necks of charging horses abruptly reined in.
Then he heard voices calling on the shore, and the lights were put out, and only the blackness of the night re- mained, yielding slowly to the ap- proach of morning.
Down the stream Jan swam, swiftly and noiselessly, until fatigue made his arms leaden, and the chill waters froze him to the marrow. Once he heard an enfeebled cry, and, looking back, saw Skarga twenty strokes behind, strug- gling to keep afloat, waving his arms frantically. A sense of horror over- spread Jan. Turning quickly , he struck back and reached his comrade. He was exhausted and sinking when Jan caught him in his arms. Straight toward the bank Jan swam, pulling Skarga after him, with only a remnant of his great strength left. How he managed to climb the bank with Skarga in his arms he never knew, but climb it he did ; and ten minutes later, when Skarga had sufficiently recov- ered to continue, the two men pushed ahead through the sedge and young willows along the red-ochreous river bank toward the town.
Chapter XXVIII.
Neither man spoke, fearing to arouse any lurking fusiliers, and by and by they came to a turn in the stream, crossed a bridge, and come out into a shell road. They passed a number of little white houses, and shortly the great stone Gate of Kings lifted before them. The iron grille was shut. Jan began fumbling with the lock.
Suddenly there were footsteps be- hind him. Turning, he beheld three fusiliers almost upon him. By the sil- houettes of their crested hats he made them out to be the three soldiers that had followed him and Skarga down the avenue after the escape from the barn. It was clear to Jan that they had rid- den down stream, crossed a bridge, and made their way to the Gate to await their prey.
Jan cursed himself for being a fool in taking an open road. He had not anticipated this move of the fusiliers. But it was too late now for misgivings.
The soldiers closed in with fixed bayonets.
"Halt!"
The leader's command rang through the quiet street.
Jan and Skarga halted. The fusi- lier who had uttered the command stepped forward. The soldier behind him lighted a lantern.
Jan moved swiftly. Risking imme- diate death, he lunged forward, threw his whole tremendous weight upon the leader and reached for the tube of his rifle.
Skarga, as quickly, threw himself at the Mauser of the second fusilier. The third soldier was still working with his lantern.
There was a burst of flame and a sharp report, and Jan swerved to the right, bearing the fusilier to the ground. He seized the discharged rifle, and, swinging it about his head, brought it down upon the head of the man with the lantern. That worthy, caught unaware, sank to the ground, his rifle flying one way, his lantern shattering against the grille.
Jan picked up the loaded rifle and brought it to his shoulder with the tube aimed at the heart of Skarga's man.
"Halt, or I fire!" Jan cried.
The second fusilier ceased his strug- gling, and Skarga wrested the gun from his clutching fingers.
Jan knew that the single shot would soon bring more fusiliers to the Gate, so he took the soldier's sabre and broke the lock of the grille. He and Skarga ran through. Even as they did so the second fusilier was on his feet, sabre drawn, rushing at Jan in a frenzy.
Jan turned, and, not daring to excite the night watch by a second shot, pressed his bayonet to the onrushing body of the avenging soldier. He forced him back against the grille. But in that instant the uplifted sabre de- scended with terrific force. Jan thrust out his hand to save his face ; the steel
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slashed through his palm, and, bearing down, laid open his wrist. Blood gushed from the wound, and the big man dropped the rifle and seized his left forearm with his right hand, stanching the flow with a vice-like grip.
Skarga had already dealt the fusi-
lier a blow that quieted him. He dropped without a groan.
Both men rushed on through the great Gate of Kings, for morning had come, and the gray fabric of dawn was gorgeous with the sunrise.
Stefan was still asleep when Jan and Skarga stole into Ujedski's hovel.
(To be continued.)
Jack London's Resignation from the Socialist Party
Honolulu, March 7, 1916. Glen Ellen,
Sonoma County, California.
Dear Comrades :
I am resigning from the Socialist Party, because of its lack of fire and fight, and its loss of emphasis on the class struggle.
I was originally a member of the old revolutionary, up-on-its-hind-legs, fighting, Socialist Labor Party. Since then, and to the present time, I have been a fighting member of the Socialist Party. My fighting record in the Cause is not, even at this late date, already entirely forgotten. Trained in the class struggle, as taught and practiced by the Socialist Labor Party, my own highest judgment concurring, I believed that the working class, by fighting, by never fusing, by never making terms with the enemy, could emancipate itself. Since the whole trend of Socialism in the United States during recent years has been one of peaceableness and compromise, I find that my mind refuses further sanction of my remaining a party member. Hence my resignation.
Please include my comrade wife, Charmian K. London's, resignation with mine.
My final word is that liberty, freedom and independence are royal things that cannot be presented to, nor thrust upon, races or classes. If races and classes cannot rise up and by their strength of brain and brawn, wrest from the world liberty, freedom and independence, they never in time can come to these royal possessions . . . and if such royal things are kindly presented to them by superior individuals, on silver platters, they will know not what to do with them, will fail to make use of them, and will be what they have always been in the past . . . inferior races and inferior classes.
Yours for the Revolution,
JACK LONDON.
Ars. Jack London's "Loe of the Snark'
By Beatrice Langdon
IN THE absence of other lengthy biography of Jack London, Mrs. London's "Log of the Snark" serves well, for she has given us an intimate study of her husband in the day-to-day life of their remarkable adventure. One learns of Jack's dis- position, his habits of work and play, in a way that would be impossible for any one but his hourly companion to handle. The book is full of intimate touches that picture the exuberant Jack in all his variety.
Their union was ideal, each con- stantly striving to find some more en- dearing term to confer on the other. Jack had a shower of names to which he was everlastingly adding — "The "Skipper's Sweetheart," "Jack's Wife," "Mate Woman," "Mate," "Crackerjack," "Pal." She showered him with as many. Their exuberant enthusiasm, vitality and spontaneity kept pace with the dancing hours. Everything was a delight, especially adventure, a word they both spelled in huge capital letters. All this is set forth in Charmion London's "Log of the Snark," her first book. The way it came to be written "was mostly due to Jack. Be it known that he detests letter writing, although a more enthu- siastic recipient of correspondence never slit an envelope. When I de- cided to keep a typewritten diary of the voyage to be circulated in lieu of individual letters, my husband hailed the scheme with delight."
The Snark measured fifty-seven feet over all, with a fifteen foot beam, drawing six feet and fifty tons of metal on her beam. Friends of the Londons suggested such names as "Petrel," "Sea Bird," "White Wings" and "Sea Wolves," but Jack and Char-
mian, with a higher flight of imagina- tion, settled on "The Snark," so hap- pily invented by Lewis Carroll. The vessel was planned in 1905. But the great fire in San Francisco in the fol- lowing year upset the work, and the vessel was finally completed, April 25, 1907. So gallant a little craft de- served some consideration, but the contractors had their own opinion on this score. London had naturally specified for the best materials to be had. Later it was discovered that in- ferior supplies had been used, with the result that several times the lives of the voyagers were imperiled during heavy storm stress, and were saved only by Jack's splendid seamanship and ingenuity.
The happy adventurers passed through the Golden Gate, outward bound, on April 25, 1907 sighting Maui May 17. At Pearl Harbor they spent a month of delight at Hilo (Hawaiian Islands), a month of vexatious delay for engine repairs, weaknesses that had developed during the trip from San Francisco. Crossing the line, No- vember 30th, they sighted land in the Marquesas, December 6th, to the pro- fit of Jack. He had wagered with a fellow voyager who declared they would not reach Nuva-Hiva by Dec. 12. They made Tahiti April 5, and en- tered Pago Pago harbor, May 3. That same month they touched at Apia, Sa- moa and Savaii. From the Fijis they sailed to the New Hebrides, reaching Fort Resolution, June 11th. In July they became the guests of the owner of the Pennduffryn Plantation, Island of Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands. There they spent several weeks before resuming the progress from island to island. It was during this period of
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the voyage that Jack began to show signs of serious illness. The malady manifested itself by intense burning in the skin, due, it was thought, to the nervousness experienced in whipping the Snark into sailing shade.
He and Mate discussed the situa- tion. Jack declared that if he could slip back to his home in the Val- ley of the Moon, California, he would be able to pull himself together with a rush. And he did. The party went to Sydney, Australia, and took passage to California. They had planned to be gone seven years, and, because of Jack's sudden illness, re- turned in eighteen months.
Up to almost the last minute, the skipper and the skipper's wife, exub- erant with life and adventure, never met a dull day. There were games of cribbage and poker, much writing and reading, and family boxing matches. (Mrs. Jack is an experienced boxer, tutored early by her husband.) They fished for dolphin, bonita and shark, and used baited hooks, harpoon and rifle shot at the larger fish. They slept on the deck in the beautiful tropic moonlight, took their trick at the watches at the wheel, and stood by in gales and in patching recalcitrant ma- chinery. The crew of half a dozen found only exhilaration in everything about them.
Charmian London in her diary sets out all this in intimate form, even to the sea she learned to know so well:
"The sea is not a lovable monster. And monster it is. It is beautiful, the sea, always beautiful in one way or another; but it is cruel and unmindful of life that is in it and upon it. It was cruel last evening, in the lurid, low sunset that made it glow, dully to the cold, mocking ragged moonrise that made it look like death. The waves positively beckoned when they arose and pitched toward our boat laboring in the trough. And all the long night it seemed to me that I heard voices through the planking, talking, talking aimlessly, monotonously, querulously; and I couldn't make out whether it was the ocean calling from the out-
side of the ship, herself muttering gropingly, finding herself. If the voices are of the ship, they will soon cease, for she must find herself. But if they are the voices of the sea, they must be sad sirens that cry, restlessly, questioning, unsatisfied, quaint, home- less little sirens.
* * *
"Jack enticed me out to the tip end of the bowsprit, with a heavy sea roll- ing. I must frankly admit that I felt shaky climbing out, with my feet on a stell-stay only a few inches above the crackling foam, and my hands clinging to the lunging spar. But it was wonderful to watch the yacht swing magnificently over the undulat- ing blue hills, now one side hulled in the rushing, dazzling smother, now the other, the sunshot turquoise water roll- ing back from the shining, cleaving bows, and mixing with the milky froth pressed under. Now the man at the wheel would be far, far below us, slid- ing down that same mountain. But he never overtook us, for about that time we were raising our feet from the wet into which we had been plunged, and were holding on for dear life as the Snark's doughty forefoot pawed an- other steep rise."
* * *
At Tahae in the Marquesas the trav- elers, on renting the only available cottage, were happy to find that it was the old clubhouse where Stevenson frequently dropped in on his visits to that place. The Marquesas women's looks were disappointing to the white .women, but the race has not been im- proving since the far off days when Norman Melville called them the fair- est and handsomest women of the South Sea islanders. There was feast- ing in honor of the Snark's advent: calabashes of poi-poi, made from bread fruit, where the Hawaiians use taro; and purke (pig) — fourteen huge cocoanut-fed hogs roasted whole in ovens of hot stones. The barbaric music was up to all expectations, and there was dancing not to be found fault with by seekers of the outland- ish. The procession to the feast sup-
MRS. JACK LONDON'S "LOG OF THE SNARK." 449
plied a "vivid, savage picture." One Snark a basket filled with clear white
man wore a silk hat and a "tattered rag honey, two ripe mangoes, cocoanut
of a calico shirt;" there were several cream and alligator pears, battered derbys, and the king's son wore ducks and a straw hat. The
hula-hula was danced to the music of And Mrs- Jack London goes on with
an accordion. And when Mrs. London "er narrative :
visited the vai, she mourned; Melville "I am writing at a little green- saw it blooming and happy, now it is topped table on which lie my five- unwholesome, the remnant of the peo- shooter and a Winchester automatic pie ragged in civilized calico, and T1^Q containing eleven cartridges. Out- wretched. But in Ho-o-umi Valley the side is an intermittent gale of wind, explorers found "a little vale that thrashing the banyans and palms, looks as Typpe must have looked in whipping the breakers into hoarse, her hey-day," a bit of aboriginal fairy- coarse roaring, varied by blasts of land. Here was a "prospect of plenty." thunder and lightning of all descrip- Rich lands border the stream that tions; and through the clamor I can threads the valley, breadfruit, bananas just catch the pulling-calls of desper- and cocoanut palms thrive. Copper- ately hauling men on yacht and reef, skinned natives fish in the river. Grass as they work to clear the vessel at huts, "the quintessence of savage pic- high water ... I hear no shots, and turesqueness," dot the landscape. In am fairly certain our crowd is not be- the little village at the mouth of the mg annoyed by the scoundrelly man- valley the explorers met "a Marque- eaters ashore. I am not exactly happy san Adonis," a lithe, strong specimen with my man out there, tired and anx- of manhood, whose memory they cher- ious and supperless ; and the yacht, in ish as of the approximation to the Ty- spite of almost unbelievable staunch- pean of older chronicles. ness, may break up in the night. Going into Papeete, after being sa- They could get away in the whaleboats luted by the U. S. Cruiser Annapolis, — but what would they meet if they the Snarkers were hailed from a na- tried to land on the beach — the sav- tive craft flying a red flag. Standing, ages knowing the ship had been de- in the canoe, was "a startling Biblical serted!"
* * *
figure," a tall, tawny blonde man, clad
only in a sleeveless shirt of large mesh «T 1 u • r- • i 1 i -, i fishnet and a scarlet loin cloth. "Hul- Q Jackc has ,]Ust fini^ed a beautiful loa, Jack;hulloa, Charmian!" It was South Sea story entitled The Hea- astonishing. Suddenly they recog- the*' an,d * n™ df P m f noye1' Ag- nized him as a friend last met in Call- 7e nture' ™thjh£ stage °f act.lon nght fornia, some years before, and whom h.e.re 0n ^duffryn Mountains. Be- they called the "Nature Man." slde.s oursteady work these past three "What's the red flag for?" asked weeksu and over, we have boxed, ridden London horseback and swum at sunset, some- " "Socialism, of course." times jn trop!cal fhowers when the
"Oh, I know that; but what are you palms lay against the, storpy ^ llkf
doing with it?" green enamel on a slate background,
"Delivering 'the message," and the wi*f evf an eye *°r ?\ligato"\'
flag-bearer made a sweeping gesture , Mrs. Jack called Jack s work Two
towards Papeete hours of creation a day. Jack vilified
"To Tahiti?" "asked London, in- *e stunt by dubbing it "bread and
credulously. butter-
"Sure." * * *
The Nature Man brought better All very fascinating is this record
things to his white friends than to his of voyaging in the South Seas. It
dusky proteges, for he left aboard the was in these same Solomon Islands
450
OVERLAND MONTHLY
that the greatest adventure befell the party. Some of the inhabitants in the interior still reflect the avatism of their forebears, and are charged with being head-hunters and cannibals. Danger signs, in landing in such places, by no means passed with the day of Captain Cook; there is an add- ed nuisance : some of these islanders now carry rifles with soft-nosed bul- lets. A fact which explains that Mrs. Jack London, while in that locality, slept with a rifle by her side and carried a revolver in her holster by day. Jack found occasion to give a little exhibition of quick firing with an automatic pistol, just to impress the natives.
It was in this situation that the party one day heard the news of the mur- der of friends near by, Claud Bernays of the Penduffryn Mountain Planta- tion, and Captain Keller of the ship Eugenie. Jack made a note of this cannibalism in order to meet in this country the attacks of certain critics who derided his "realistic" stories of the South Seas regarding cannibalism and other forms of murder. Since then other authentic cases have come to
light to fortify Jack London's posi- tion.
And what of the good ship, "The Snark?" She was sold "for a fraction of her cost," estimated at $25,000, to an English syndicate, and handily was used by them for trading purposes in the New Hebrides. Later the Londons heard of her in the Bering Sea, off Alaska, and later still they met friends who had been aboard her at Kodiak, Alaska, in 1911. In 1912, she was reported to have donned a coat of new green paint and was har- boring around Seattle. The Londons had reached that city a short time before, from a five months' wind-jam- ming voyage from Baltimore around Cape Horn, and had left just before the Snark reached Seattle.
In whatever part of the Seven Seas "The Snark" may poke her adventur- ous nose she is certain to make his- tory, for it was written all over her during her planning, building and the extraordinary experiences she gave the Londons and their friends in the adventurous South Seas, as is most en- tertainingly set forth by Mrs. Jack London in her "Log" of that vessel.
^^?£-
«&
•j»-
Spiritual Healing Divested of Mystery
By Peter V. Ross, Christian Science Committee on Publication
ONE of the writers in "The Over- that it has become almost a matter of
land" for April brings out some common knowledge that all forms of
rather interesting phenomena disease yield to this Science, and any-
of what he calls "mental and body who, through study and practice,
spiritual healing" as practiced during is competent to speak on the subject,
the past three centuries. He distin- would hesitate to say that one form of
guishes between cures effected by men- disease offers more resistance than an-
tal processes and those wrought by other. For anyone to argue that
spiritual influence. He affirms that Christian Science cures some kinds of
pain may be allayed, and even some disease but cannot cure others, amounts
physical disorders "due to subjective to nothing more than to argue a lack
conditions," be relieved, through men- of information on his part. The ques-
tal means. Cures which, unaided by tion, then, is not, Does Christian Sci-
material means, produce actual physi- ence heal? but, rather, How does
cal results or changes that can be seen Christian Science heal, even to the ex-
in the patient's tissues are, he admits, tent of working changes in what is
accomplished through spiritual inter- called the physical structure of the
position as distinguished from mental body?
operations. These latter healings are When Mrs. Eddy wrote on page 86 to him inexplicable ; they represent, he of Science and Health that "Mortal says, "miracles in our day. They are mind sees what it believes as certainly not, he declares, like the cures of as it believes what it sees," she threw Christian Science, which is, he claims, in sharp relief a truth which previously "neither Christian nor scientific." had been hinted in the popular pro- So much has been said and written verbs, "As a man thinketh in his heart, as to whether Christian Science is a so is he," and "There is nothing either misnomer that any direct discussion of good or bad but thinking makes it so," the question at this time would per- and she thereby reminded us, more de- haps not only be profitless but actually finitely, perhaps, than had ever before tiresome. However, a presentation of been done, of the illusory character of the fact that Christian Science effects the testimony of the corporeal senses, cures plainly observable in structural A man believes in ghosts, and changes as well as cures of nervous straightway, especially if stimulated and functional ailments, and some ex- by a guilty conscience, he may see one. planation of the modus operandi of What he sees corresponds with what such healings, can hardly fail to inter- he believes. His companion who does est the inquirer and at the same time not believe in ghosts, and whose con- afford him the most convincing evi- science is clear, sees none. Normalize dence, next to actual demonstration, the first man's thought by substituting that Christian Science is precisely what for his superstitious belief the under- its name indicates — both Christian and standing that ghosts do not exist, and scientific. by destroying the sin and fear which Christian Science has been so fre- disturb his mentality, and he can no quently and successfully employed in longer see a spectre, recent years as a system of healing The individual is educated to be-
452
OVERLAND MONTHLY
lieve in disease and to fear it. With his thought thus fixed on disease and perturbed by apprehension for his own safety, he presently seems to experi- ence sickness and suffering. Correct the mistaken belief in disease and re- move the fear of it by instilling in thought the truth that disease has no actual existence and that there is noth- ing to fear when God is all presence and all power, and disease with its at- tendant symptoms vanishes.
The human mind sees in the human body not what is actually there, but rather its own thoughts objectified. Ob- sessed by false beliefs, and perhaps tormented as a consequence of sinful indulgences, this mind may see, or suppose that it sees, a member of the body diseased or wasted or even broken. Enlightened by spiritual un- derstanding, the hitherto darkened hu- man mind gains a more accurate con- cept of things, and in place of a dis- eased organ or a wasted sinew, or a fractured bone, will see and experience health, harmony, wholeness, symmetry.
We have supposed that what we call physical forms and objects are fixed and substantial, but are they so? Are they not rather thoughts projected or embodied ? If so, a change in thought necessarily produces a change in the outward form in which the thought has clothed itself. The human body is it- self simply the product of the human
mind. It is that mind's concept of a man. As the mind and the concept change, the man's so-called form and physical structure change. Dominated by error, the human mind forms a very imperfect concept of man — a man sick and sensual; controlled by truth, this mind forms a more nearly perfect con- cept— a man free from blemishes either moral or physical.
The corrective power which disillu- sionizes the human mind and estab- lishes a consciousness of 'health and harmony in place of supposed discord and disease is thus seen to be spiritual truth; and the practical application of Jesus' precept, "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free," is at once discerned. What is the truth which will liberate us from disease? Is it not that truth, incul- cated by the Bible, that God is Life,, the life of every animate being, and therefore that Life is eternal and inde- structible? When the truth dawns on human consciousness that -_Life and_ Deity are one and the same, then Life is seen to be omnipotent and1 nmnipres- ent, and disease, which is opposed to aricT destructive of Life, is recognized as having no power, presence or actu- ality. Viewed in this light the healing of disease by metaphysical processes or spiritual means, though it produces so-called physical changes, is neither mysterious nor miraculous.
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A Question of Beauty
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overcome deficiencies
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renders to the skin a clear, refined, pearly-white appearance — the per- fect beauty. Healing and refreshing. Non-greasy. In use 68 years.
Send 10c. for trial size
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The Real Estate Educator
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fMONAMOBILE OIlA
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• • • SPECIAL CARE GIVEN TO YOUNGER CHILDREN
The Vose Player Piano
is so constructed that even a little child can play it. It combines our superior player action with the renowned Vose Pianos which have been manufactured during 63 years by three gene- rations of the Vose family. In purchasing this in- strument you secure quality, tone, and artistic merit at a moderate price, on time payments, if desired. Catalogue and literature sent on request to those interested. Send today.
You should become a satisfied owner of a
FP7FMA Psoriasis, cancer, goitre, tetter, J-. V^ t-. J- 1V1 .rt. 0|d soreS| catarrah, dandruff,
sore eyes, rheumatism, neuralgia, stiff joints piles; cured or no charge. Write for particular's and free samples.
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vose
PLAYER PIANO
VOSE & SONS PIANO CO., 189 Boylston St., Boston. Man.
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Miss Hamlin's School
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Home Building on Pacific Avenue of Miss Hamlin's School for Girls
Boarding and day pupils. Pupils received at any time. Accredited by all accredit- ing institutions, both in California and in Eastern States. French school for little children. Please call, phone or address
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XII
Make Moving a Gomfor
The Nezv Way— The Easy Way
By auto trucks and employing the well known reliable expert San Francisco firm
Dixon Transfer Storage Company
ECONOMY AND TIME SAVERS
Manager Leo Dixon has had many years of varied experience in this special and intricate business from moving the goods and outfit- tings of a huge store to the intricate and varied furnishings of a home. The firm has the best up-to-date equipment to meet the most difficult problems, and guarantees satis- faction at moderate rates.
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Three generations
of the Vose family have made the art of man- ufacturing the Vose Piano their life-work. For 63 years they have developed their instruments with such honesty of construction and materials, and with such skill, that the Vose Piano of to- day is the ideal Home Piano.
Delirered in your home free of charge. Old instruments taken as partial payment in exchange. Time Payments accepted. If interested, send fcr catalogues today.
VOSE & SONS PIANO CO.
189 Boylston Street Boston, Mass
m
J^ri^Shi^WJS^
W/W/W/WA&>
TEN CENT MUSIC: Popular and Classic
Why pay from 25c to 75c
a copy for your music when you can get the same and Detter in the " CEN- TURY EDITION" for only 10c a copy postpaid. Positively the only difference is the price.
Send 10c for one of the following and if not more than satisfied we will refund the money:
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HUGUENOTS |
Smith |
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IL TROVATORE |
Smith |
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LAST HOPE |
Gottschalk |
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MOCKING BIRD |
Hoffman |
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NORMA |
Leybach |
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RIGOLETTO |
Liszt |
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SILVER SPRING |
Mason |
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MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM |
Smith |
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MOONLIGHT SONATA |
Beethoven |
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LAST SMILE |
Wollenhaupt |
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Regular Price |
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$1 00 |
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1 25 |
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1 00 |
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1 00 |
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1 00 |
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1 00 |
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1 00 |
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1 25 |
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1 25 |
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1 25 |
COMPLETE CATALOG OF 1600 TITLES SENT FREE ON REQUEST
Music Department, OVERLAND MONTHLY
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FOR SALE! $2,100
EASY TERMS
20 Acres on "Las Uvas" Creek
Santa Clara County, Cal.
"Las Uvas" is the finest mountain stream in Santa Clara County.
Situated 9 miles from Morgan Hill, between New Almaden and Gilroy.
Perfect climate.
Land is a gentle slope, almost level, border- ing on "Las Uvas."
Several beautiful sites on the property for country home.
Numerous trees and magnificent oaks.
Splendid trout fishing.
Good automobile roads to Morgan Hill 9 miles, to Mad rone 8 miles, to Gilroy 12 miles, to Almaden 11 miles, and to San Jose 21 miles.
For Further Particulars Address,
Owner, 259 Minna Street San Francisco - - California
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LXVIII
(iDwrUmin -
M0tttl|lg
AN ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE OF THE WEST
CONTENTS FOR JUNE 1917
FRONTISPIECES:
Early Summer in California 449-459
Nearing the Summit 460
Illustration to accompany "The Ruler of the Range."
THE RULER OF THE RANGE CLARENCE CULLIMORE 461
Illustrated from photographs.
THREE YEARS A CAPTIVE AMONG INDIANS . J. A. LEEMAN, M. D. 466
Illustrated from photographs.
OREGON WOMEN IN POLITICS .... FRED LOCKLEY 475
A VISIT WITH JOSE TORIBIO MEDINA . CHAS. E. CHAPMAN, Ph. D. 477
Illustrated from a photograph.
THE SOLDIER. Verse DOROTHY DE JAGERS 483
GUNS OF GALT. Serial DENISON CLIFT 284
THE OFFERING. Verse ARTHUR "WALLACE PEACH 493
A LETTER FROM THE BOY L. W. HUNTINGTON 494
PROGRESS. Verse M. C. 500
COTTON GROWING UNDER IRRIGATION IN
THE SOUTHWEST . . . PERCY L. EDWARDS 501
A SIERRA DELL. Verse STANTON ELLIOTT 504
PATERNITY. Story MARY BLISS WHITED 505
YOUTH NEVER GOES UNTIL WE THRUST
HIM OUT. Verse . . . EDWARD H. S. TERRY 509
THE MIRAGE. Story CHARLES W. PETTIT 510
THE OLD REDWOOD SPEAKETH. Verse . . C. E. BARNES 513
SOLDIER POETS LORING SEAVERS* 514
PATTY REED KATHERINE W. COOPER 517
BOYHOOD DAYS ON THE BANKS OF THE
SACRAMENTO IN THE SEVENTIES . . ROCKWELL D. HUNT 521
WAS IT A DREAM? Verse BURTON JACKSON WYMAN 526
CHINESE FOOD AND RESTAURANTS . . . ALICE A. HARRISON 527
Illustrated from photographs. PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS ON FOODS RICH
IN IRON .... EVALINE M. KERR 533
WM. ROWLANDS, CALIFORNIA PIONEER . . BERTHA M. PAYNE 535
Illustrated from a photograph.
A TRIP TO DRAKE'S BAY 536
THE DIVINE PLAN OF THE AGES . . . (The Late) PASTOR RUSSELL 538
o>>»xc<rccc-
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Nearing the summit.
OVERLAND
Founded 1868
MONTHLY
BRET HARTE
<^»^^- -M
^SKasei^:
VOL. LXIX
San Francisco, June, 1917
No. 6
Mt. Whitney from the West.
The Ruler of the Range
By Clarence Cullimore
IF YOU have followed the rocky zig- zags that lead to the mountain tops, if you have been lured, by the siren of the open trail, up to the heights of exhilaration that set every nerve a-jumping, then, each successive sea- son you will search for some plausible excuse to cast aside the shackles that bind to civilization, and leave the sti- fling valley for more abundant living
in the rugged wilderness among the mighty peaks. Here you will, on a frosty July night, sit by the crackling juniper logs, and know that in all these old woods of ours there is naught of consequence in the list of human at- tributes, save it be a man's character and a man's manhood.
If you are not of this great fra- ternity of mountaineers, you still pos-
Mt. Whitney, from the plateau at its base.
sess a latent gem of primitive man- hood that may blossom forth and lead you to the wilderness. Come with me, and we will travel to the ruler of the range. It is not a lonely crest, dominating its surroundings in soli- tary independence, but, rather, a Ti- tian brow whose dignity and awesome grandeur are enhanced by the lofty group of wild and savage pinnacles
that stand attendant on the sharp, ter- rible crest.
Mt. Whitney, clothed in ramparts of bronzed pines and sunken snow banks, glacier-burnished and ice-chis- eled, from the huge, broad buttresses up through wild ravines and spacious galleries ornamented by deep-fluted, slender minarets and a profusion of broad domes, rears its crown above all
On the edge of the timber line, Mt. Whitney, California.
other mountains in the United States, exclusive of Alaska.
Its altitude is 14,502 feet above the level of the sea. It is situated, in an air-line, about twelve miles directly west of the village of Lone Pine in Inyo County, California. This ap- proach is very precipitous, but, by its western side, travelers from the San Joaquin Valley may reach its base
through a series of easy climbs, con- suming not more than ten days' time. At Crabtree Meadow by the moun- tain's foot, you will lie awake at night on a fragrant bed of pine needles to look far above at patches of snow that linger late into the summer. Over- head, the cold, white stars sparkle with a new and more compelling bril- liancy. Your very being tingles with
The lone Smithsonian cabin on the crest of Mt. Whitney.
desire for daylight to dawn on the morning of your ascent of the loftiest peak in the land.
From Crabtree the climb is difficult but not hazardous. There are no pre- cipitous heights to scale, but, withal, it requires a stout heart and toughened muscles to labor through the rock- rooted foxtail pines up to the knarled junipers that fringe the timber-line.
This sparse and tragic growth is sprin- kled, here and there, with bleached and barkless sentinels that have lost their struggle for existence against the fierceness of the winter's blasts.
The winding, zizzag trail leads over slippery, polished rocks, through a bog or two, and then over patches of last winter's snow, where, underneath a snow bridge hung with crystal icy-
Shivering on the sheltered side of the cabin on the summit.
THE RULER OF THE RANGE
465
cles, rushes a sparkling rivulet. Now, the common trail leads you through an abrupt chimney, carved out of solid rock. There are other chimneys that lead almost to the summit. Which- ever way you go, hands and arms will be of service in the climb.
From the mountain's side you look back at a wild, forbidding wall of rock, scarred and ice-hewn, at whose feet there blinks two eye-like sapphire lakes from out their sockets of snow and ice. Pushing upward, the rock, on which you have for a moment bal- anced, slips to leap with tremendous bounds into the chasm below. Each time you pause for breath, you behold a more expansive, wilder-growing panorama, until at last you struggle over the jagged blocks of rock to the highest jutting ledge of all. Here stands the stone cabin, built in 1909 for observations by the Smithsonian Institute.
Shivering on its sheltered side, you look below. Almost two miles beneath, to the east, there stretches a dreamlike picture of the Owen's Valley. Its river winds through desert olive, sagy waste to touch the vivid green spots where lie the villages of Independence and Lone Pine, then on to a broad ex- panse of shimmering sunlit blue of Owen's Lake.
Beyond this valley is another range that shuts from view the lowest land in the United States — Death Valley.
Turning to the west, you find a more tremendous awe-inspiring sight. Down thousands of feet and far away lies the valley of the Kern, nourished by a hundred snow-fed branches. To the south of this appears the vague blue where lurk the thousand wonders of the canyon of the King's; and all
A lone sentinel on the mountainside.
about, as far as the eye can reach from the snowy ranks of Kaweah and far beyond Mt. Brewer, myriads of snow- crowned peaks, passes and amphi- theatres stretch in wild, surpassing magnificence.
It is here that for one brief moment you can forget the petty quibblings far below, and lose your own identity in the exhilarated freedom and rever- ent exultation that cries aloud your kinship to the maker of the hills.
A camp in Indian territory.
Three Years a Captive Among Indians
By J. A. Leeman, M. D.
AMONG those who came to Texas in the early days was Joseph Sowell, from Tennes- see. He came with his young family and two negro women, and settled on Red River at a place still known as "Sowell's Bluff." Later he moved back from the river and settled within the present limits of Funnin County. The county was very sparse- ly settled, and often raided by bands of hostile Indians, and Joseph Sowell was authorized to raise a company of minute men for the protection of the settlers.
These minute men were to always be in readiness at a moment's warning to mount their horses and go in pur- suit of a band of hostiles. ' They had no regular camp, but remained at their homes, always having a horse ready and their guns in order. When In- dians were discovered in the country
the man who first saw them was the runner to notify the minute men. On one occasion, Captain Sowell and his men followed a band of raiding In- dians and overtook them near Red River, and a severe fight ensued in which eight Indians were killed and three minute men wounded.
The home of Captain Sowell was in the edge of a prairie, the timber circling around his place from the east to the northwest, the distance north to the timber line being about half a mile.
Late one evening in the summer of 1842, John Sowell, a boy 13 years of age, was sent by his father across the prairie, north, to drive up the milk cows, which had a habit of stopping in the edge of the prairie to graze, in- stead of coming on to the cow pen. On this occasion the boy had crossed the prairie and was near the edge of the
THREE YEARS A CAPTIVE AMONG INDIANS
467
timber when two Indians rose up out of the tall grass within a few yards of him. He turned and ran, but one of the Indians soon caught him and dragged him into the woods, at the same time choking him, so that he could give no alarm.
The Indians had their horses tied in the timber, and when they arrived at the place where the horses were they stripped all of the clothing from the boy, even to his hat, and threw them on the ground. They then placed him, naked, behind one of the Indians on the bare back of the horse.
They then set out towards the north- west, rapidly, keeping in the timber. All night they rode fast, and all the following day in the hot sun, and the boy's b*rCk was badly blistered. He had a thick head of hair, which came down over his neck, and was a pro- tection to those parts. The Indians expected pursuit, and often looked back the way they came.
Just before sundown they came to a creek, and the Indians dismounted
and staked out their horses, and while one started a fire the other went to hunt a deer. When John was lifted from the horse and his feet placed upon the ground he was unable to stand, and fell. His back was very sore from the sunburn, and he turned over on his chest and lay with his face on his arms during the night. He knew after the long night ride that his father had no chance to rescue him. Trailing could only be done by day- light. The hunter soon returned with a small deer, and the two Indians sat and broiled and ate of the meat, and talked in a low guttural tone until far into the night.
In the meantime there was great ex- citement at the Sowell home, and in fact all over the settlement. The cows discovered the presence of the Indians when they arose from the grass to catch the boy, and at once ran across the prairie towards the house, holding their heads high, and some of them occasionally stopping to look back. Captain Sowell noticed
A corner of a group of Indians.
Visitors in the Indian camp.
the commotion among the cattle, and at first thought his son was running them in, but soon abandoned that idea when he saw that the cows were frightened as they dashed up. They were used to the boy, and would not run from him in that manner. Sowell now thought of Indians, and became uneasy about the boy, and walked out a short distance to see if he was com- ing, but seeing nothing of him hurried to the house and told his wife that he believed Indians were around and he was going to see about John. He took down his rifle and pistols (muzzle- loaders) and hurriedly left the house. The mother and the two negro wo- men now greatly excited, went out and looked across the prairie as long as they could distinguish objects. The captain hurried around the prairie, concealed from view in the timber. It was now getting dark, and he could see nothing of the boy or hear any- thing that would give a clue as to what was transpiring. He knew that it would not do to call, as that would disclose his presence to the Indians, if
it were Indians, and they would slip up on him in the darkness and kill him, and no assistance rendered the boy. So he went cautiously, alert to every sound, determined, however, if he heard an outcry from the lad to go to him regardless of consequences. But all was still, and he retraced his steps to the house, hoping that the boy might have arrived, but such was not the case. His wife and the negro wo- men were almost frenzied, and it was all the captain could do to keep them from crying aloud.
Those old-time plantation slave wo- men were almost as devoted to the children of their masters as their mothers, and would risk their lives or even die for them. The captain now told his wife and the negro wo- men that they must keep quiet and watch and listen, and if they detected the presence of Indians to quit the house and take to the woods and hide themselves in the darkness. He had to leave them alone and go to notify the minute men that he was not satis- fied the Indians had killed John or
Holding a pow-wow.
470
OVERLAND MONTHLY
taken him captive. Saddling his horse he hurried away to the nearest minute man, four miles away, told him of the situation, and instructed him to make haste and notify the others, and aH to meet at his house. He then hurried back home, and found the situation as he had left it.
Before midnight all of the minute men had arrived, fifteen in number, and a bold search commenced with lights, hunting for the body if the boy had been killed. Nothing was revealed, however, until daylight, and then the clothes were found. The lack of blood stains or marks of violence on the garments, gave some assurance that the boy had not been killed, and was a captive. It gave the wretched mother some relief when the clothing was carried to the house, and she eag- erly examined them. Only a torn place in the collar of the shirt where the Indian gripped him hard while dragging him to the horses.
It was soon discovered that only two Indians had been present, and the captain picked five of the men who had the best horses to go with him on the trail, and sent two young fellows to stay as guards at his house. The others he sent back home, fearing that other Indians were in the country, these two only branching off from the main band. What anxious hours were these while the mother waited to hear tidings of her boy, her only child.
All day the pursuers rode as fast as they could under the circumstances, following a trail, but only twenty miles were made by dark, when the trail could no longer be followed until day- light again. That night the captain correctly reasoned thus: The Indians had covered forty miles the night be- fore and at least fifty on this day, and were now sixty miles ahead. He saw that it was hopeless to continue the pursuit, and the party returned, the minute men to their various homes, and the captain to his and also to an almost broken-hearted wife and mother.
T> *p *F •!»
Next morning the Indians ate some
more of their meat, and then one of them approached John, who was still lying on his chest, and seeing the large puffed up blisters on his back, struck them hard blows with his hand and burst them. He then jerked the boy to a sitting position and offered him some meat, but he was sick and mad, and refused to take it. His back felt like it had been salted and pep- pered.
The Indian now thought of a plan to make his captive eat. He sharpened a stick, and then cutting off a morsel of meat, stuck the stick through it, and then held it to the boy's mouth. John kept his mouth closed. The Indian then commenced jabbing the stick to his mouth, and he was compelled to open it and take the meat to keep his lips and gums from being lacerated by the sharp stick. Both Indians laughed and then another bite was held to his mouth, and he took that also. A large piece was then handed to him, which he took, and commenced to eat.
The Indians packed up and set out again, still making John ride naked be- hind one of them. Before noon they met a large band of Indians of their own tribe, Comanches, and led by their head chief, "Buffalo Hump.*'
He talked to the two Indians, and then rode around and closely examined the captive. He seemed to be angry at the way they had treated him, and sent John on to the main camp in charge of only one Indian taken from his band, and to punish the other two made them join his band and go on the raid which he was now starting out on. He also furnished a buffalo skin for the captive to ride on.
When the main camp was reached, it proved to be a large village, situ- ated on the Wichita River, near where the town of Wichita Falls is now on the Fort Worth and Denver Railroad. The rows of tepees or wigwams extended a mile or more along the river, but far enough back to be out of danger of high water.
John was taken to the center of the village, where there was a large tepee, and turned over to an old Indian squaw
Squaws on the way to the gathering.
— the chief's wife. The first thing the Indian woman did for John was to wrap a dressed deer skin around his naked and blistered body, and tie it on with a leather string around the waist. In the next few days she made him some Indian clothes out of dressed skins, leggins, moccasins, cap, etc. She also painted a red spot on each cheek and one on the end of his
nose. She treated him well, except she made him work nearly all the time bring water and wood, dressing skins, attending to horses and other things. There were many horses being herded in the valley, and a good per cent of them belonged to the head chief. These horses had been stolen at vari- ous times from the settlers. The great chief had now gone to get more horses,
472 OVERLAND MONTHLY
scalps and captives. up near "Buffalo Hump's" tepee,
There were other prisoners in camp, where the fight was to take place,
boys and girls, and John often saw When the young Indian was brought
them, but they were not allowed to up whom John had to fight, he took a
converse with one another. good look at him and was satisfied that
In the center of the village and near this boy was not in the scrap which he
the chief's tepee was a pole set up in had with the other Indian boys, and
the ground, and it was hung full of also that he was well made and taller
scalps of all sizes and colors, red than he was. He dreaded the encoun-
scalps, black scalps, long hair of wo- ter with this Indian lad. The great
men, and baby scalps. At night the chief of the Comanches was betting a
Indians would gather around this pole horse on him, and he must fight to win.
and dance and sing. The scene, lit If he lost, what could a poor captive
up by numerous fires. War parties pale face boy expect from a mad-
were coming and going most of the dened savage who held human life so
time, bringing in horses and hanging lightly.
fresh scalps on the pole. One party The fight was long and desperate,
brought in the scalp of a woman with and soon both were covered with
long, thick hair, and John imagined blood. John could clinch and throw
that it was the scalp of his mother. It the Indian, but could not keep him
looked like her hair when she would down and beat him until the victory
take it down at home to comb it. was won, as he tried time and again
The Indians were not always sue- to do. The Comanche boy could whirl
cessful in their raids. Many brave as quick as a cat and throw John off,
pioneers were in the settlements, and and he had to regain his feet quickly
the Indians were often beaten with to keep himself from being pinned
the loss of warriors. Occasionally, down. At last the Indian boy began to
also, in their raids among ttie whites weaken. John's hard knuckles had
they encountered the Texas Rangers beaten the skin from his head and face
and generally got the worst of it. and his lungs almost knocked loose by
When meeting up with one of these hard blows and kicks in the side. Af-
disasters they would hurry back to the ter a few more rounds the young brave
village and have a big pow-wow for turned his back, staggered to his
several days of mourning. The Indian father and stood with bowed head,
boys annoyed John very much. They mutely admitting his defeat,
gathered around him, pulled his hair, "Buffalo Hump" claimed the horse
slapped him in the face and did many and took hold of the rope which the
other things to annoy and hurt him. other chief was holding, but this chief
For fear of the other Indians, he made was not satisfied and would not turn
no resistance, but finally the old loose. He went to the white boy and
squaw became tired of these attacks, examined his knuckles, as if he sus-
and made signs to John to hit them, pected some trick, and still would not
John was a stout frontier boy, and he give up the horse. Loud, angry words
went at the young Indians like a wild- ensued, and both chiefs drew their
cat. He caught hold of their long hair, tomahawks and stood facing each
jerked them to the ground, stamped other in a menacing attitude. At this
upon them and soon had a dozen or crisis, the squaw of "Buffalo Hump"
more running away. After that drub- rushed between them and held up her
bing they left him alone. hands. Strange to say, both chiefs at
When the chief came back, his once belted their tomahawks, and the
squaw evidently told him what a horse was duly delivered to "Buffalo
fighter their captive was, for soon he Hump."
made a bet with another chief that the For several days after the fight John
white boy could whip his boy. They could hardly walk or move about, and
bet a horse each, and led the two boys his right hand was swollen to twice its
\
THREE YEARS A CAPTIVE AMONG INDIANS
473
natural size, and he could not sleep for pain. Finally the old squaw beat up some herbs and made a poultice, which she bound to the hand, which soon had a good effect and the swelling de- creased.
As time went on, the chief allowed John to have a bow and some arrows, but without spikes in the arrows, and let him go out with the Indian boys to shoot rabbits and prairie dogs. The Indian boys were not allowed to have spikes on their arrows, either, but the arrows were sharpened, not flat, but round, to a small, tapering point, and then burnt black in hot ashes to harden them. Small game was killed by them. From then on John and the In- dian boys got along. He and the boy whom he fought often hunted together and became great friends. They had many friendly bouts of wrestling, run- ning foot races, etc., to see who was the better in these things. John learned the Comanche dialect, and could understand the Indians. He found out that when he and the Indian youth, whose name was Nacona, were out alone that Nacona was responsible for him, and must bring him back or kill him if he attempted to escape.
When John was about 15 years of age he was allowed to have spikes in his arrows, and go out with the war- riors to kill deer and antelopes. The buffalo range was some distance off, and he was not allowed to go that far. They would not let him go on raids, even to fight other tribes of Indians, which they often did. On one occa- sion a band started out to make a raid in the white settlements, but soon re- turned minus six warriors. They stated that long before they reached the set- tlements they were attacked by a party of white men who rode splendid horses, and who fought so fiercely and so close up that they were bound to give way with the loss of six warriors. This encounter created a good deal of excitement in the village. The men whom these defeated warriors encoun- tered were Texas Rangers.
During the years of captivity when John had become an Indian to all out-
A wickiup on the plains.
side appearances, he still longed to see the folks at home, and laid plans to escape. He had become satisfied that his mother had not been killed by the Indians, as he feared. From the conversation of warriors, he learned that most of their raids were near Red River. When he laid a plan to escape and thought of the long stretch of wilderness country, 200 miles, which lay between him and his home, a ter- ritory constantly being crossed by rov- ing bands of Indians, Comanches, Kio- was, Lipans, Caddoes, Wacoes and other tribes, he felt almost certain he would be recaptured.
More than three years passed, and in the meantime General Houston had made a treaty with the Comanches at the "Wichita Village," as it was now called by the whites, for the Texas
A group of rangers
Rangers had been making expeditions into that country, and had fought and defeated a band of warriors and lo- cated their stronghold. Part of the stipulation of the treaty was that the Comanches should bring all of their captives to the State capital, Austin, and there turn them over to their friends and relatives.
The three long years had been a sorrowful period to the inmates of the Sowell home. They had no idea of the fate of John, whether killed or yet alive. His father went about attend- ing to affairs at home, or following and fighting hostile bands of raiding Indians. He seldom mentioned the name of his son where the mother could hear.
The time came for the treaty propo- sion to be put into execution, and the people were notified far and near for all those who had lost children by In- dian capture to come to Austin on a certain date to identify the captives that would be brought there.
Here was a gleam of hope for the bereaved home of the Sowells. The mother wept for joy, and the negro women shouted. Captain Sowell, how-
ever, left home for Austin with a heavy heart, hoping against hope and fearing and dreading to come back without John. When the captain ar- rived at Austin the Indians had not yet come in, but General Houston was there, and told Captain Sowell, whom he knew, that they were being escorted in by a company of rangers and a run- ner who had arrived that morning re- ported that they would be in on the following day. It was known that the Indians had quite a lot of captives.
When the Indians arrived at Austin great excitement prevailed. Friends and relatives rushed here and there calling names and occasionally shouts of joy announcing that some lost one had been found. Captain Sowell was under the impression that he would pick his son out of any crowd. With these thoughts he walked slowly through the noisy crowd, looking here and there. John recognized his father, but sat erect and still on his pony, waiting to see if his father would rec- ognize him. Three times the old man walked around his horse, but merely glanced at the tall, straight young war- rior, as he supposed, who sat still and
OREGON WOMEN IN POLITICS
475
looked way off towards the Colorado River. The captain finally gave up his search.
General Houston was watching the father, and was very much interested, for he held the frontier captain in great esteem.
Sowell sat down, bowed his head, and covered his face with his hands.
John, who had been watching him out of the corner of one eye, sprang lightly to the ground. He was directly behind his father, and taking a few steps tapped him on the shoulder and said:
"Hello, Pap ! Don't you know me ?"
The captain sprang up as if shot, and whirled around. He knew the voice, but not the wild looking painted In- dian, but something in the eyes and merry smile convinced him that this was his son, and with open arms clasped him in a strong embrace and with great emotion exclaimed:
"Johnny! My son, my son!"
General Houston witnessed the scene, and tears rolled down his cheek, and he came (forward to greet the lost boy. Then came a long exchange of explanations between father and son. After they had satisfied each other with an account of the three lost years, John't hair was cut, the paint washed off, and he was clad in the clothes of his own race.
It was a long ride to the Sowell home, but the two finally arrived there. While riding over the prairies and some distance from the house, they were discovered by John's mother and the negro women. The captain beck- oned with his hand. This removed all doubts, and the mother and her ser- vants came running. The negro women shouted and madly clapped their hands.
"Bless de Lawd, here's Johnny! Bless de Lawd, here's Johnny!"
And John was folded in his over- joyed mother's arms.
Oregon Women in Politics
By Fred Lockley
LET the women of the Nation look to Oregon. Oregon women are pointing the way to political equality. If you don't believe it see what happened at Umatilla in Eastern Oregon at the recent city elec- tion. Umatilla is on the main line of the Union Pacific Railroad and is on the south bank of the Columbia River near the mouth of the Umatilla River. It is the junction point of the Waluula- Spokane branch of the C. W. R. & N.
Railroad. In the early days it was the head of river navigation to the mines of Eastern Oregon and Idaho, and it has never recovered from the old-time atmosphere of the days when it was a wide open town. For years the wo- men of the town have asked the men to "clean it up," but the men have put the women off with vague promises or the statement that women don't under- stand politics.
This year the women were particu-
/
476
OVERLAND MONTHLY
larly insistent that the candidates who were running for office make some de- finite pledge of making the town of Umatilla a cleaner and better town to raise their children in, but the men, as usual, told them to attend to their house work and their sewing societies. The polls were open on election day, December 5th, from 8 a. m. to 7 p. m. Up to 2 o'clock the election was strict- ly a stag affair, no women having come to the polls. The clerks and judges of election decided the women folks had decided to boycott the election be- cause the men candidates would make no promises.
At two o'clock the women began coming to the polls, until it was evi- dent that every woman in town had cast her ballot. Their appearance was greeted at first with amusement and afterwards with consternation. It was evident that there was a slate, and it looked as if the regular slate was to be cracked and possibly would be badly broken.
Regular candidates laughed at the efforts of the women to mix in politics — that is, they laughed till the vote was counted, since which time not one of them has even smiled.
E. E. Starcher, who is the chief dis- patcher, was up for re-election as Mayor. He knew he was safe because he had the solid railroad vote, and that means election at Umatilla. When the final count of votes was officially reported it showed that Mayor Star- cher had received 73 votes while his wife had received 101, and he, poor man, didn't even know his wife was running. R. F. Paulu, the candidate
for City Treasurer, is still wondering what struck him, for the vote showed a landslide to Mrs. Robert Merrick. Robert Merrick was running for coun- cilman, but he didn't run very far or very fast, for Mrs. R. F. Paulu made a race that made it seem that Mr. Mer- rick was standing still. Mrs. G. C. Brownell defeated A. W. Duncan, one of the best known merchants in East- ern Oregon, for Councilman. R. B. Murton was easily defeated for Coun- cilman by Mrs. B. Spinning. Mrs. H. C. Means defeated H. Barkley for the Council, and Mrs. J. H. Cherry demon- strated to H. B. Hull, the regular can- didate for City Recorder, that a wo- man has forgotten more about politics than a man ever knew.
When the shouting and the tumult was over, and there was no sound but the low moaning of the defeated can- didates, the women said: "We de- cided to clean up the town. We were tired of the old style of politics in which indifference, inefficiency and in- eptitude prevailed. There has been an utter lack of business ability shown in the administration of our civic affairs. We are going to make Umatilla a city in which its citizens may take pride. We are tired of apologizing for condi- tions here that long ago should have been remedied."
The women made a clean sweep. There is not a man left in office. They took office January 1st, at which time the Mayor appoints a city marshall. The men are bringing all the pressure possible to bear on the new officials to appoint a man for city marshall, but the women are making no promises.
Jose Toribio Medina and His Wife
A Visit With Jose Toribio Aedina
•
By Charles E. Chapman, Ph. D.
Assistant Professor of History, University of California
IN CHILE one hears a great deal of the heroes of the war of independ- ence against Spain, O'Higgins, Cochrane and San Martin, of the beloved hero of the war of 1879 with Peru, Arturo Prat, of the poet Bello, and of the historians Vicuna Mac- kenna and Claudio Gay. These are but dimly known names in the north- ern world, except to men who have specialized in the Latin-American field, but where will one go in the scholarly world and find a man who has not heard of the colossus of bib- liographical lore, Jose Toribio Me- dina of Santiago de Chile? It was with something of the feelings of a pilgrim entering Jerusalem or Mecca that I approached the Calle Doce de Febrero, in which street, at number
49, is the house of Senor Medina. A sumptuous and elegant street? Far from it ! There were only two houses in the block that were two stories high, and neither bore the number 49. The servant girl who took my card when I had reached the house informed me that Senor Medina was not at home, but if I would come the next morning at eight, I would certainly find him. I half wondered if he had given orders to return that answer to all who called — so as not to be disturbed in his in- valuable work, or so as to test their sincerity — but I resolved to make a su- preme effort and be there next morn- ing at eight!
Later on, this day, I paid a visit to the Biblioteca Nacional. As I was tak- ing my leave of Senor Laval, one of
*I have borrowed freely, especially for exact biographical data, from a pamphlet of Armando Donoso entitled: Uida y Viajes de un eruJito—Jose Toiibw Medina. (Santiago, 1915.) I Lave used nothing, however, that did not come up in my conversation with Senor Medina.
478 OVERLAND MONTHLY
the librarians, he asked me to meet other man related, in some indefinable
Senor Blanchard-Chessi, head of one manner, to himself,
of the most important sections of the And yet, what a life this man has
library. We went into the latter's of- had, and^ what a work he has done!
fice, and I was presented in due form. His life in large measure explains his
"Perhaps you would like to meet this work, and is perhaps a very worthy
gentleman who is working here," said lesson in the science of bibliography.
Senor Laval, in an absolutely casual His father, though a man of literary
tone, indicating a little old gentleman talent himself, frowned on the similar
who had three or four volumes open aspirations of his son, planning for
before him. "Senor Medina, permit him instead a career of practical util-
me !" Senor Medina, indeed! ity in the field of law and politics. Me-
Perhaps I did want to meet him ! There dina, in fact, became a lawyer, and a
was nothing in Santiago I wanted national deputy and secretary of his
more! I nearly "jumped out of my Party, but even in these active years
boots" with enthusiasm. So I sat ne was preparing himself for his later
down and chatted awhile with Medina career. He read with avidity the old
and Blanchard-Chessi, and pretty soon chroniclers of the colonial era, and by
I prepared to leave, for it seemed al- way of variety displayed an interest
most criminal to take the time of Jose \n literature in general, in folklore and
Toribio Medina. But no — he would in ethnology, writing several articles
not have it! On the contrary, he said on these^ subjects, among which may be
that he had done enough work for one noted his^ translation of Longfellow's
day, and suggested that we stroll "Evangeline." In succeeding years,
down to his house, where he could to°' he studied not a little in the field
show me his library and his printing °* natural science and astronomy, all
establishment. So we walked down — °f which subjects he considers to have
went all through the house — were Dee.n of great help to him in his his-
joined by Senora Medina and had tea. torical deductions. In 1874 he was
Nor was this all, for I was invited to appointed secretary of the Chilean le-
come to luncheon next day, an oppor- gation in Lima, a fortunate appoint-
tunity of which I most certainly ment which marked the turning point
availed myself. of his career. Despite the hard work
I had visualized Medina as a man °f the legation, Medina found time to of tremendous, almost forbidding eru- vlsli the libraries and archives of Lima dition, cold and precise in speech, and and to publish several historical stud- bent in figure with the weight of his ies-. In 1876 he decided to visit the learning. I was right, certainly, as to United States, in order to attend the the vastness of his knowledge, but in Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia, everything else I was wide of the a.nd although this necessitated his re- mark. At the time I visited him (in signation from the service, he carried August, 1916), he was not quite 64 his resolution into effect. For three (born October 21, 1852), a small man, months he was in the United States, certainly not over five feet four inches By this time he had made up his mind tall, and with a youthful vigor and a to foH°w the career toward which he pair of eyes of such exceptional keen- had all along been inclined ; so he now ness that one might place him in the set out for a journey of study in Eu- forties, despite the partial appearance r°Pe- For several months he was of gray hair. His conversation, too, m London, working by the side of has a lively sparkle, full of anecdote Pascual de Gayangos in the British and jovial reminiscence. Withal, he is ."Museum. He then went to Paris, a simple and modest man. He has where he frequented the Bibliotheque been told of his world-wide fame, but Nationale, going later to Spain, where hardly seems to realize it; he views he stayed, on this occasion, but a short his reputation as if it belonged to an- time- In June, 1877, he was back
A VISIT WITH JOSE TORIBIO MEDINA
419
again in Chile, and in the following year he published his three volume "Historia de la Literatura Colonial," the fruits of his journey to Europe.
Possibly the keenest and most per- sistent desire of Medina's literary career, cherished since boyhood, ana only now about to be realized with the publication of the third and fourth volumes of his work, has been the study of the life of Ercilla, author of the famous poem, "La Araucana." It was this which led him soon to under- take a dangerous journey to Arauca- nia in southern Chile, a journey ren- dered difficult, not only by the lack of means of communication in that day, but also by the hostility of the Arau- canian Indians, whom he came to study at close range. Upon his return, Me- dina plunged into his work, which was to appear later as "Los Aborigines de Chile," but, before he could finish it, war broke out, in 1879, against Peru and Bolivia. At first, Medina was con- nected with the manufacture of car- tridges for the army, but, having in- vented a method which facilitated that manufacture, he was promoted and sent north to Iquique. His principal service in that region was as judge of the district, a post which he held for a year and a half.
A fortunate acquaintance in Iquique with Patricio Lynch procured for Me- dina an appointment as secretary of le- gation in Madrid when the former was sent as minister to Spain. For several years Medina made the most of the op- portunity which had been given to him, being encouraged in his researches by the Chilean government, which granted a small sum of money for the making of copies. No less than 365 volumes of copies, of 500 pages each, were the result of his labors. Furthermore, he formed valuable friendships at this time with men like the Duke of T' Ser- claes and the Marquis of Jerez de los Caballeros, with Monsignor Delia Chi- esa (now Pope Benedict XV), and es- pecially with men of letters like Men- endez y Pelayo, Campoamor, Nunez de Arce, Tamayo y Baus, Fernandez Guerra, Zaragoza, Fernandez Duro,
and a host of others. Laden with rich materials, Medina returned to Chile in 1886, in which year he married Mer- cedes Ibanez y Rondizzoni. From that year until 1892 he was engaged in a mad fever of publication, no less than 24 volumes appearing over his name, among them his "Historia del Tribu- nae del Santo Oficio de la Inquisicion en Lima" (2 v.), "Historia del Tribu- nal del Santo oficio de la Inquisicion en Chile" (2 v.), "Coleccion de Docu- mentos para la Historia de Chile" (4 v.), "Coleccion de Historiadores de Chile y Documentos Relativos a la Historia Nacional (4 v.), and various of his "Imprenta" series and other bibliographical works.
In the midst of his work there came the Chilean revolution of 1891. As a partisan of the Liberal president, Bal- maceda, he was regarded with suspi- cion, by the other side, and his house was searched three times in the belief that it was his printing press which was publishing the Balmacedan litera- ture being circulated in Santiago. At length, Medina was obliged to take refuge in Argentina. Eight months he remained in Argentina an exile, but in this period he became the friend of General Bartolome Mitre and other outstanding figures in the scholarly ranks of that country, besides prepar- ing his "Historia y Bibliografia de la Imprenta en el Antiguo Virreinato del Rio de la Plata. In October, 1892, he went again to Spain, where he re- mained four years. If his previous journey had been remarkable in its results, this was even more so. Not to mention several works of his that ap- peared while he was still in Spain, he published, in the seven years follow- ing his return to Chile in 1896, no less than 78 volumes. Some of these were of documents, with notes by Medina; others, works of bibliography; and still others, volumes of history proper.
Late in 1902 he left Chile on a new voyage of discovery, going successive- ly to Lima, Guatemala and to various cities of Mexico, always in search of bibliographical data and always add- ing new friends, such, for example, as
480
OVERLAND MONTHLY
Presidents Estrada Cabrera and Por- firio Diaz of Guatemala and Mexico, and the Mexican scholars Vicente An- drade, Nicolas Leon, Genaro Garcia, and others. Then he went to France, and later on to Italy, working, among other places, in the library of the Vati- can. In 1904 he was in Chile again, with the materials for a fresh cam- paign of publication. In the next eight years he published more than 60 vol- umes, bringing to a close his monu- mental works on the bibliography of the Americas.
In 1912 Medina made a fourth visit to Spain, this time resolved to realize his ambition of procuring materials about the poet Ercilla. After over- coming innumerable difficulties, he was successful in his task, and the years since 1913 have seen the pre- paration of his four volume work on Ercilla, two of which have already ap- peared, while the other two were in page proof at the time of my visit with Medina. Naturally, this phe- nomenon who exudes publications has put forth several other volumes in the past three years. By a narrow margin Senor Medina missed yet another long trip, in 1915. In that year, President H. Morse Stephens of the American Historical Association invited him to attend the meeting of the association in San Francisco, offering to pay the cost of the journey. When the letter came, the Medinas were in the country at a point where mails arrived very in- frequently. Thus it was that the in- vitation was received too late. Other- wise, according to Medina himself, he would have accepted.
And now the house. Although it is but one story high on the street front, it gets to be quite big, farther back. The greater part of it is devoted to Medina's library and his printing es- tablishment. Naturally, Medina could not afford a first class printing press, for he is not a wealthy man. His is nothing more than a hand-press, the third which he has had since 1877, and from these three have issued the greater number of his works. Ordi- narily, he employs three or four men
in his printing establishment, and sometimes many more, when there is a pressure of work, but on this day, a Monday, there was only one man at work, for Monday in Chile "is a day lost," said Medina, the national curse of a drunken week-end requiring an extra day to get over the effects. The great Medina himself often sets type and turns the wheel of the hand-press. What a sensation every lover of learn- ing must feel to be in this house which has meant so much to the world, where miracles have been wrought in the face of tremendous difficulties! As Me- dina stood by his hand-press talking with me, it seemed as if I were in the house of a Gutenberg, with Gutenberg himself accompanying me. In another room we found a quantity of paper to be used in future volumes. The pres- ent scarcity of paper, due to the Euro- pean war, has not affected Senor Me- dina. "I foresaw what was going to happen," he said, "and procured an extra supply."
Medina's library, or rather his series of libraries, is one of extraordinary in- terest and value. Of books of a gen- eral nature there are few. One room is devoted to his own publications, and others to his bibliographical treasures and manuscripts. Each room has little more than a passage way, for the books have overflowed from the stacks into huge piles on the floor. He has accumulated about 12,000 volumes of other men's works, virtually all of them being of a date prior to the end of Spanish rule on the American con- tinents, a hundred years ago. On Mexico alone he has no less than 8,000 volumes, all published before 1821. His particular hobby has been the col- lection of editions of Ercilla's "La Araucana," although he has not been able to get all of them. Many other rare works are in his possession, such, for example, as the "Thesoro Spirit- ual de pobres en lenguas Michuacal," published in Mexico in 1575, of which only four copies are known to be in existence, and even more the "Manu- ale Sacramentorum" and the "Cere- monial y Rubricas Generales," pub-
A VISIT WITH JOSE TORIBIO MEDINA
481
lished in Mexico, respectively in« 1568 and 1579, and each, so far as can be ascertained, the only known copy in the world. "What a task you must have had," I said, "not only to collect this wonderful library, but also to get the bibliographical data about the other volumes referred to in your works!" "Yes," he said, "but the hard- est work is not collecting; rather, it is in verifying references to books or editions of doubtful authenticity. One item may require the work of a histori- cal monograph — and then you reject it."
An account of the life of Medina, or even of such a visit as I had, would be incomplete if it should fail to give generous space to Dona Mercedes Iba- nez de Medina, wife of the great bibli- ographer. The Ibanez family claim de- scent from the Marquises of Monde- jar, a noble Spanish house, but they are famous on their own account, be- cause of their participation in the po- litical life of Chile. Senora Medina had traveled widely before her mar- riage, for her father was in the diplo- matic service. For a year she was in Washington, during Grant's adminis- tration, where she learned to speak English. President Grant once talked with her for half an hour at a recep- tion, which was the longest he had ever spoken with any one person at such an affair, according to the next day's papers. "I was only a little girl then," she said, and indeed she looks as if she were still in the forties. She is both immensely proud of her hus- band, and unaffectedly devoted to him. "The two principal duties of a wife," she said, "are to help her husband when she can, and not to disturb him at other times." She herself reads proof, makes out bibliographical cards, and in fine does every little bit of intel- lectual drudgery within her power, to help the work along. One day an American professor and his wife came to the house when Medina was out, whereupon the senora showed them
about. She did it with such enthusi- asm and understanding that the gentle- man said: "I now understand why Senor Medina has been able to do so much work. He is two."
It is at the table that one sees Jose Toribio Medina at his best.* There he is full of joviality and anecdote. "Did you know that I came near be- ing an American?" he said. And then he told how he and a friend took rooms with a private family in Philadelphia, the year he went to the Exposition. For the fifteen nights that they were there, neither went out of the house at night, so attractive were the two daughters of the family. Medina's friend, a well known diplomat to-day, married one of the young ladies. Me- dina likes to talk of the American scho- lars he has known, such as Bingham, Coolidge, Lichtenstein, Moses, Rowe, and Shepherd. "Most travelers who come to Santiago go to the hill of Santa Lucia," said Senora Medina, "but the Americans come here.". Re- ferring to his copy of the "Laudationes quinque" of Bernabe Echenique, pub- lished at Cordoba in 1766, the first work in the history of printing in Ar- gentina, he told the following curious tale of how he came to acquire it. Dur- ing his stay in Argentina he became intimately acquainted with a biblio- maniac whose instinct for collection was so great that he did not refrain from stealing rare volumes, when other means of acquiring them failed. One day, this man visited the rich library of the Franciscans of Cordoba. He was shown about the library, but as his habits were not unknown to the friars, the attendant who went with him was told not to leave him for an instant. At length, in an out of the way corner he saw no less than five copies of the "Laudationes quinque," which he felt that he must obtain. How to get rid of the attendant was the question. An idea occurred to him ; he pretended to faint, and fell like one dead to the floor. The startled attend-
*— As we were finishing our luncheon Senor Don Domingo Amunategui Solar, President of the University of Chile, came in. He has heen in the habit of dropping in for & moment at this hour, every day for the past twenty years, for a word or two with his friends the Medinas. Senor Amunategui is not only a university president, but also a distinguished historian.
482 OVERLAND MONTHLY
ant ran for help — and the bibliophile dence of Chile's great man; so the
pocketed all five of the rare volumes, gentleman said no more. Presently he
One of these he gave to General Mitre, arrived at the house of Senor Medina,
who in turn gave it to Medina. but it proved to be, not that of Jose To-
While he was in Guatemala, Medina ribio, but that of a certain Medina, worked in a building which was only a known as a proprietor of race-horses, step from police headquarters. Now Gradually, due to the honors accord- and then, his bibliographical toil was ed him in foreign countries, a realiza- interrupted by the sound of shots at tion is dawning in Chile that Jose To- the latter edifice, for people were exe- ribio Medina is a man of note. This cuted there almost daily. One day he feeling has not gone very far, however, was invited to an audience with Presi- On several occasions the government dent Estrada Cabrera. A friend told has given small sums to assist in his him that various officers were posted publications, but on several others it behind curtains in the audience hall, has promised funds, and then with- with revolvers cocked, ready to shoot drawn them. The government's action any visitor who made the least motion in the case of the Ercilla documents is which seemed to them suspicious — in point. In 1903 the owner of the docu- whereupon Medina did not accept the ments offered to grant the privilege of invitation. As evidence of the unsta- copying them for 6,000 francs. A bill ble state of affairs at that time, Me- for that sum in the Chilean congress dina tells of having to get a permit failed, on the ground that it was a use- f rom the Minister of the Interior to less expense. Several years later, that leave the country, and in order to em- sum was voted by the government, but bark at San Jose, a telegram from the not paid over. After Medina had corn- President was necessary. Nobody was pleted his work and published two of excepted from these requirements, not the volumes, the government withdrew even foreign diplomats. the grant, on grounds of economy, leav-
Of another type is the story he told ing Medina to pay the bills. Verily, a about the poet Bello. Bello married an prophet is without honor in his own English girl, who never learned to country. "I sometimes wish my hus- speak Spanish well, in particular mix- band had been born in England or in ing her genders, using the masculine the United States," said Senora Me- when she should have used the f emi- dina ; "there they esteem a man for his nine and vice versa. On one occasion, work, but here, if one says nothing when she had said la caballa (for el about himself , people think he does not caballo), Bello said to her: "For amount to anything. My husband is heaven's sake, woman, either use the too modest; he will not praise himself." masculine all the time or the feminine One wonders at the short-sight- all the time, and then occasionally you edness of the Chilean millionaires who will hit it right." have lost a chance to immortalize
These anecdotes tell something of themselves by failing to finance this
the nature of this amiable gentleman, man, whose reputation will live when
but there were others which tend to even their family names have passed
prove that the man who is recognized away. "If some wealthy Americans,
abroad as possibly the greatest that like Carnegie or Huntington, could be
Chile has produced, is not fully ap- brought to realize under what difficul-
preciated in his own land. On one oc- ties you are doing your work," said
casion a distinguished foreigner came James Bryce, on the occasion of his
to Santiago, and desired to call on visit to the house of Medina, "they
Senor Medina. "Do you know where would almost certainly want to assist
Jose Toribio Medina lives?" he asked you financially." A Chilean Senator
a cab driver. "Certainly," was the re- was present at the time. "No," said
ply. It did not seem strange, even Medina, "it is not necessary; the Chi-
that a cab driver should know the resi- lean government gives me all I need."
THE SOLDIER
483
"Out of patriotism," said Senora Me- dina, who was telling the story, "he would not tell the truth, which was quite different." "Furthermore," added Medina, with a twinkle in his eye, "I was trying to produce an effect on Senator X — but it did not work."
And yet, could Jose Toribio Medina have done much more under any cir- cumstances? Up to two years ago he had published 226 volumes, since which time a number of others have
appeared, to say nothing, not only of his collection of books and manu- scripts, but also of his collections of medals, coins and what not. It is won- derful to have done so much in any event, and still more wonderful to have done it in far-away Chile, with such slight means at hand. If Chile and the Chileans have done little to help, it is to be hoped that they will make amends, some day, by recognizing the merit of this extraordinary man.
THE SOLDIER
What care he if wood's abud With the thorn's spring offertory,
Tears of fag and dust encrud
Eyes now blind to Nature's glory,
And he sees but meadows gory With his comrades' pooling blood;
What care he if moors are sweet With the thrush's lyric wonder,
On his ears, resurgent, beat
Shrapnel-skirl and cannon thunder,
And the moans of mangled under His ontrampling, bleeding feet.
What care he if lilac's blow
Gardens with her perfume drenches,
Quivering his nostrils know
Fetors from the muck of trenches,
And the warm, wet fever-stenches — Reek with wounds' ensanguin'd flow.
What care he if spring, unfurled, Thrills anew his homeland neighbor,
Dulled to seasons' sway, he's hurled On towards bayonet and sabre,
Busy with the bloody labor Of a hate-envenomed world.
Dorothy DeJagers.
GUNS OF GALT
An Epic of the Family
By DENISON CLIFT
(SYNOPSIS — Jan Rantzau, a handsome young giant among the ship- builders of Gait, joins pretty little Jagiello Nur at a dance in the Pavilion. There the military police seek Felix Skarga, a revolutionist. Jagiello fears that a lover, Captain Pasek, of the Fusiliers, will betray her presence at the dance to old Ujedski, the Jewess, with whom Jagiello lives in terror. Jan rescues Jagiello. Later when Pasek betrays Jagiello to Ujedski, and seeks to remain at the hovel with her, she wounds him in a desperate en- counter. Ujedski turns her out, and she marries Jan. Later Pasek indi- cates that he will take a terrible revenge upon the bridal pair. A son is born to Jan, and he idealizes his future even as he idealizes the growth of the world's greatest superdreadnaught, the Huascar, on the ways at Gait. After the birth of Stefan, Jagiello tries to tell Jan of her sin with Pasek, but her strength fails her at the supreme moment. Jan buys a new house for Stefan's sake. Ujedski visits Jagiello and threatens to reveal her sin to Jan. Jagiello goes away, and Jan, helpless, calls in Ujedski to care for Stefan. Meanwhile, Pasek presses the military tax revenge- fully against Jan. Desperate, Jan works day and night to meet the tax, but at last loses his house and moves into Ujedski's hovel. Skarga now induces him to join the Revolutionists. The meeting is attacked by the police, and after a thrilling fight, Jan escapes with a terrible wrist wound.)
Chapter XXIX. lay on her pallet, eyes staring at the
ceiling, ears alert to interpret the
JAN QUICKLY closed and bolted strange whisperings she heard. At
the door. length, overcome by curiosity, she cau-
Safe for the moment, he and tiously got up, climbed upon her stool,
Skarga set about changing their and peeked through a crack in the
river-drenched clothes, and removing flimsy partition. The vision of Jan's
all traces of their night adventure. arm covered with blood startled her.
The first thing Jan did was to bind She remained on tiptoe, staring fasci-
his left arm with a tourniquet to stop nated, at moments resting with her ear
the flow of blood at his wrist. The to the wall to catch every word,
wound was a nasty one. The little From a wooden chest in the corner
fusilier's sabre had laid open the flesh at the head of his pallet, Jan brought
to the bone. Skarga took a strip of forth some old clothes; coats, trousers,
linen and bound it tightly around Jan's and waistcoats with frayed edges, long
wrist. since abandoned. These he shook out.
The men moved stealthily about the Slowly, for his hand throbbed with
little room to avoid awakening the pain, he exchanged a rough suit for his
Jewess. But Ujedski had heard them soaked, mud-spattered garments,
come in, and their panting had aroused Skarga donned a second old suit, fitted
her suspicions. For many minutes she a round astrakhan cap on his head, and
Copyright, 1 9 1 7, by Denison Clift. AH Rights Reserved.
GUNS OF GALT 485
pulled the vizor well down over his the world might go its merry way.
eyes. When he spoke again, his voice Then, as Jan bent above his boy, a
was low-pitched. fearful thought dawned upon him.
"Comrade, I owe my life to you." Suppose the three fusiliers that he
Jan smiled in a quiet way, depreciat- had encountered an hour ago under the
ing his own heroism. Gate of Kings, had recognized him?
"I must now bid you farewell," con- Suppose ?
tinued Skarga. "It is five o'clock," and Sinister conjectures rushed through
soon the streets will be filled with toil- his mind. Suppose he was known to
ers. I dare not remain here longer, them? Suppose they should come to
for fear of compromising you. The arrest him ? Suppose they should find
police will search for me, and if they him guilty and send him to gaol? or
find me here they will hold you. Then out of the country, exiled ? or mur-
we should both be punished — perhaps dered him, as it was rumored they
by military murder. I shall return to had often done to men dangerous to
Guor, for after last night's adventure the government?
there will be a heavier price on my What, then, would happen to Ste-
head." fan, his boy, the most wonderful thing
He smiled thinly. He extended his in all the world to Jan? Who would
hand. Jan grasped it warmly. take care of him ? Who would buy
"Comrade," said the big man, "after him warm winter clothes? Who would listening last night to the woman who send him to school, or teach him any- had lost her sons, I am one of your thing?
Reds!" He winced with pain, and The horror of these things burst
continued: "Jagiello — my wife — came upon Jan suddenly, numbing him,
from Guor. Should you hear anything overwhelming him : the fact that he
of her, I beg you to let me know." had endangered his life, that he might
Skarga promised. Jan pressed his be discovered in the silent room, a
hand with fervent wishes of god- piteous, desperate creature, a human
speed. soul swept with terror.
So Skarga went out into the morn- And any of these things might easily
ing, a staff in his hand, a limp in his happen! He had attended a secret
walk, his face concealed under the as- meeting of the Revolutionists ; he had
trakhan cap. He was transformed in defied the soldiers of the Emperor, he
appearance from the pursued Revolu- had met in fierce combat with three
tionist who had entered the house not fusiliers, had wounded and possibly
a half hour before. He disappeared killed one or more, had had his hand
along the tortuous street, limping away almost severed from his body — a fatal,
under the trees, more a poor mendicant tell-tale sign of his night's exploits !
than an enemy of the Empire. He knew that a political prisoner
When he was out of sight, Jan shut was the most helpless, pitiable thing
the door and sat down at the table in in Carlmania. Whoever defied the
the corner. Emperor did so at the risk of his life.
He ate his breakfast of rye bread With deadly cunning the military po-
and cold lentil soup, which he poured lice traced him to earth, threw him
over his bread. into prison, and often he was never
Stefan had not yet awakened. The heard of again. There was no escape,
little lad slept peacefully, his face no relenting. Punishment was inex-
resting upon his chubby arms, 'his orable.
breath sweet and regular. Jan went What hope, then, had Jan of escape?
over to him, bent above him lingering- The more he reflected the more ter-
ly, kissed his soft, warm cheek and his rified he became. His instinct was to
stubby little nose, and his eyes, and seize his boy as he lay asleep, dress
his golden hair — his mother's hair. So him, and strike out for the frontier im-
long as Stefan was safe from harm mediately, burying himself in the fast-
486
OVERLAND MONTHLY
nesses of Russia or Austria. His face became gray with acute mental suffering, dwarfing the agony of his hand. Fear shook him like a leaf — deadly fear for his boy. His eyes be- came in a moment sunken and horror- struck — the eyes of a beast at bay.
Then suddenly Stefan stirred, rolled over, stretched his little body, and settled himself for further sleep.
In that moment Jan heard Ujedski moving about on the other side of the wall. The new day with its routine was upon the house. And somehow all seemed for the moment so safe, so free from peril, that the big man laughed at his fears, shrugged his shoulders, as though shaking off the memory of a hideous dream, pulled on his cap, and prepared to join the Toil- ers thronging the street on their way to the shipyard.
He washed the blood from his hand and removed the tourniquet, hoping thus to prevent discovery. He tucked in little Stefan tenderly, wrapping the bit of red blanket snugly around his body. Then kissing him he went out quickly, and closed the door.
Chapter XXX.
Jan clenched his fingers in a moment of pain. The deep red wound was concealed in his long coat sleeve. It burned like fire, crisping his nerves. In moments of greatest anguish he thoughj; of Stefan, and the pain sub- sided, so overshadowing was his love for his boy.
As he had done each day for years, Jan went down to the shipyard and took his place under the towering side of the Huascar. On this morning the Superintendent of Construction or- dered Jan's gang to the work of cast- ing ingots in the furnace room.
Great vats of molten metal, white- hot, were conveyed on cars dragged by little snorting locomotives along a smoky wall to the huge Siemens-Mar- tin converters, which pour the smoking streams of metal into the molds. Here a man, stripped to the waist, regulates the machinery that tips the vats and
sends the stream of living fire to be cast into ingots of soft steel weigh- ing three tons. In the converter a stream of air blown upward under the metal by powerful force pumps puri- fies the quivering, livid mass, shooting forth jets of violet-crimson flame and clouds of sparks.
Jan took his place beside the con- verter lever. Below him, Nicholas and Androkoff were regulating the cars.
"Just now I saw two fusiliers by the Pump House looking for somebody," confided Nicholas in a whisper.
Androkoff knew of this. "Some- body that's got something the matter with his hand," he said.
"How do you know that?"
"The men are showing their hands."
"What are they doing that for?"
"Don't know. Strange, eh? Nothing the matter with my hands. Perfectly good hands. See! They want some- body that's got something the matter with his hand."
"Slower! Slower!"
Jan's voice bellowed out to the en- gineer of a locomotive. When the cars sidled into the exact position for dumping, Jan bent nearer to Nicholas to catch every word.
"But what's wrong with the hand of the man they are looking for?"
"How should I know? The Super- intendent's with the fusiliers — he's helping them find their man. God pity him! I do! Probably a Red. I pity them. Easy to send them to prison and worse. Sometimes they're murdered, I've heard tell. Remember little JohanEdda?"
"He went to Belgium when he got out."
"He never got out!"
"How do you know that?"
"I've tried to find him. He lived with me near a year. God pity him! I've searched everywhere . . . He never got out! . . . And now they're after another one. Poor devil! I hope he makes away. I hate to see them sent down to Nisegrad. Salt mines! The dampness gets into their throats — takes them off quick-like.
GUNS OF GALT 487
Poor little Johan Edda! . . . Look not be! Surely there were not two
there!" soldiers near the lapping-hammers!
Nicholas faced the long tracks that Surely they were not coming nearer converged near the Construction and nearer to him, with the irresistible House. Two fusiliers had suddenly onrush of the sea ! come into view. The Superintendent Oh, God ! His senses must be play- accompanied them. They were in- ing him false!
specting the hands of each toiler as He started violently. The spectre
they approached the converters. Jan of the grim-visaged line filing past be-
gazed with fear-struck eyes. Who was came sharper as his vision cleared,
the fusilier with the tufted pompon Now he saw Captain Pasek distinctly,
in his hat? Pasek? Did that builder He was nattily attired with red tunic
extend his left hand? Did Captain and white trousers. He looked out of
Pasek glance at the man's hand ? Now place in this world of grime and soot
was he looking at the hand of yet an- and dinning sounds. Oh, surely they
other toiler ? And yet another ? And would come no closer ! They were the
another . . . ? fanciful creatures of a sickly imagina-
A thick, black dizziness appeared tion; they moved with elaborate ges-
bef ore Jan's eyes. He staggered and tures ; they were now but twenty paces
would have fallen had he not felt the away!
rear of a car at his back. He was Jan's wounded wrist no longer
weak from loss of blood. Could he pained him. The wound in his heart
be mistaken? Ah, surely he had not was greater — raw, bleeding; and be-
seen true! The green light from the fore his eyes was no longer the violet
blinding-white metal was plying hell- light of the flowing metal, but a little
ish tricks with his vision . . ! lad's face, peacefully sleeping. The
Now another car trundled along the cry that was in his heart, the impetu- track, its great vat seething with the ous, passionate revolt, the formidable liquid metal. Instantly he was alert, instinct to strike — shook him like a The fusiliers were forgotten. "Hoist!" cataclysm. In a moment Captain Pa- he commanded. A huge crane lifted sek would face him — cornered at last the vat. "Down!" The derrick chain where there was no escape. Nisegrad settled. Down came the vat with its — and a lingering death in the salt boiling metal. He bent forward into mines ! Or Floryanska — locked in the the scorching nimbus of the metal; his heart of a stone cliff! But what mat- body tingled with the fierce heat; his tered that? "Stefan! Stefan!" was eyes saw only a violet flood of fire as the cry that ruptured his heart, he pressed the lever controlling the "Nicholas! . . . Andiokoff!" force pumps. Then in a flash he re- The Superintendent shouted up to leased the little Jeva cock, threw the the two builders.
crane pin, and the metal hurtled into "Here, Nicholas, your hands . . .
the molds in quivering cascades. Androkoff, your hands . . . And you,
He leaped back, jumped to the Jan!" ground from the car, and the vat trun- Nicholas and Androkoff, with quiz- died on. zical smiles upon their faces, stepped
Blinking, he looked down along the down to the ground before the fusi-
tracks, beyond the panting little loco- Hers. They extended their hands for
motives. inspection. With a quick gesture Pa-
The fusiliers had drawn nearer. One sek dismissed them,
by one a group of toilers filed past "Jan!"
them, each holding out his hands for A car trundled down the track to-
inspection. Could this thing be pos- ward Jan, with a great vat of fresh
sible? Ah, surely the blinding light metal for the molds,
was playing havoc with him. Surely "Yes," responded Jan.
this thing that he seemed to see could "Come down here !"
488
OVERLAND MONTHLY
"Yes!"
Jan had already climbed up onto the moving car, which now came to a stop. He lunged forward, released the black little Jeva cock at the side of the vat, and threw up the crane pin, releasing the metal.
"Oh, Jan!"
"Yes."
Pasek glanced up as the flood of fiery metal danced from the vat.
"Jan! Jan! Jan Rantzau — you!"
The eyes of the Captain of the Fu- siliers met the eyes of Jan in an in- stant of grinding hate.
In that instant the vat swerved ; the chain loosened, permitted it to settle until it dropped to the level of the car-tail. The cascade of blinding- white metal rushed over the edge! Be- low, a dozen men were at work! The devouring stream would bake them alive, withering them beyond recog- nition !
Even as the metal rushed to the edge of the vat, Pasek's voice rang out like a clarion call of triumph.
"Jan Rantzau — you! Your hand, please!"
Jan no longer saw the Captain of the Fusiliers — nor did he hear his voice.
His eyes were fascinated by the tipping vat. Like lost souls in a roar- ing inferno, the toilers in the pit be- low raised their arms above their heads in pitiful gestures to shield their faces — raised their voices in croaking, fearful cries.
Jan had neglected the vat an instant — and this was the penalty! . . . The giant of the shipyard lunged ahead, reached out with his left hand and steadied the vat! The metal poured across his hand. The man, naked, primeval, shut his jaws with a click, closed his eyes, lifted the vat back with his tremendous strength, locked it into place, and directed the flowing metal back into the mold!
The deed was over in an eye-twin- kling.
Jan staggered against the car-tail, swinging his left hand behind his scorched body.
Pasek had run around the side of the car, to climb up to where he could behold Jan's hand.
When he leaped upon the car he came face to face with the giant.
"Jan, your hand!" he cried exult- antly.
Jan drew the brown thing that had once been his hand from behind his back and held it up for the Captain of the Fusiliers to see. His eyes glowed with triumphant glory.
Chapter XXXI.
After the swift and unspeakable horror, Captain Pasek passed on with his companion.
Jan stared as he disappeared from the shipyard. His eyes were dulled; his face was pale as death. In agony he bit his lip until the blood spurted. In unutterable pain he opened and closed his remaining hand spasmodi- cally.
For the moment Jan was the victor. He had destroyed the evidence that linked him with the Revolutionist meeting.
He stood like a bronze statue, trans- fixed with anguish, but triumphant over the man who had persecuted him. He breathed defiance, his powerful chest heaving tumultuously.
He climbed slowly from the car onto the ground. The car, having depos- ited its burden, rumbled away along the narrow tracks.
Nicholas, Androkoff and a dozen workmen rushed frantically to him.
"Jan, come with me!" cried Nicho- las.
"Wrap your hand in this waste!" ex- claimed Androkoff.
Jan gazed with maniacal, staring eyes at the crowd surrounding him. He heard the babel of voices, the cries of sympathy, the cheers and exhorta- tions of his friends as waves breaking on a far-off shore. Impulsively he started forward, towering above them all; he pushed the men aside like so many pygmies, and staggered away in the direction of the shipyard gates.
"He is mad!" cried Nicholas, aghast.
"God! did you see his eyes?"
GUNS OF GALT
489
Jan groped his way out of the yard, bent and misshapen, a monstrous, tor- tured wreck, silent in the awful trag- edy that had come upon him. In- stinctively he went toward Ujedski's house.
He was no longer the dominant giant of the shipyard, straight and hand- some ; all in a moment he had collapsed — broken like a reed, twisted with grief and suffering. He had become an old, old man; his breath whistled from his body; his eyes were dulled and agonized. The arms that had once been steel fibres were now gnarled trunks of trees. Days and nights of toil had marked him with fatal im- press. His hair hung low over his forehead, thickly matted, lowering like a cypress. His body heaved and rolled like the prow of a ship bucking the mountains of the sea.
On and on he went, and not a whis- per of the terrible pain that lashed him like a hurricane came from his lips; only the blood that, jetting un- der the grip of his teeth, trickled from his mouth. His face was slashed and scarred from flying strands of steel, and ashen under the grime.
Now blind and insensate, he entered the Street of the Larches. One thought burned in his chaotic brain: Pasek had determined to ruin him, to send him to prison, if indeed he es- caped the horrors of a military death for treason. For the moment Jan had beaten him, beaten him with fearful toll — but what of the days to come? That Pasek would double his efforts to obtain evidence against him was in- evitable. The Captain knew that Jan had attended the secret meeting of the Revolutionists. The sabre cut across his hand would have been eloquent evidence, and combined with the story of the three fusiliers, would have sent him to his doom. Jan had destroyed the evidence of the sabre cut. But he knew that Pasek would find fresh evi- dence, and the court, eager to believe suspicions of treason against the mili- tary policy of the government, would find him guilty. It was the fate of hundreds before him. It would be the
same with him.
What happened to him mattered lit- tle, he reflected. But what would be- come of his boy? At best Ujedski was a poor makeshift; and with Jan in prison there was no telling what hard- ships and persecutions might be vis- ited upon Stefan. It became clear to him that there was only one thing for him to do : to go away with his boy.
Thus determined, he reached Ujed- ski's hovel. The old crone was away. Stefan saw him coming and ran up and threw his arms around his father's neck.
"What did you come home so early for?" he asked, childishly.
Jan laughed, hoarsely. "Get your hat and coat, sonny; we're going on a long journey."
"Where to?"
"I don't know."
"Over those hills, papa?"
"Over those hills, sonny."
"And is mamma over those hills?"
"I hope so, sonny."
"Are we going to find mamma?"
"Perhaps."
"When are we going?"
"Now, sonny."
The nights would be cold, so Jan buttoned on Stefan's warm little coat and fastened his black astrakhan cap on his yellow head. His eyes roamed around the little room that had once been Jagiello's. Folded away in a drawer he came upon the red bodice that he had given her on that wonder- ful night years before. By it he re- membered her best, so he kissed it and laid it near his heart. Then swinging Stefan up to his shoulders he went out through the gate.
Ujedski, returning home, came face to face with him.
"Jan, it is only noon, and you are home from work?"
"I am going away."
"Going away! Going away!"
"Ujedski, I am in trouble. You must not ask me. Some day I will come back. I will send you rubles . . ."
"Not much, Jan Rantzau! If you are going away, you must pay me first!"
490
OVERLAND MONTHLY
"I will send you rubles," repeated Jan.
"You will pay me before you go!" "I have no rubles for you now." "Then you are not going!" Swift and terrible anger rose in Jan. The time to escape was short enough, and the old crone was holding him for a few miserable rubles! She had been hard enough on his boy since Ja- giello had gone away. She had been mean to his mother before him. She had given Jan only a pallet of straw and a few old rags with which to cover his body; and on winter nights he had been too cold to sleep. She had made Stefan care for her ducks and sheep, had sent him on long trips to the shops to carry home heavy bags of beans and lentils upon his tender back. She had beaten the boy when the mood came upon her. And she had made Jan pay for all this, pay her ruble af- ter ruble, far in excess of the service she had rendered, until he had been driven to toil at night and suffer un- known sacrifices. This was the bel- dam who now confronted him, threat- ening him if he did not pay to her the last ruble that he had chastised his body and soul to earn.
Blind-driven hate choked Jan. He glared at Ujedski, transfixed. The glitter in his eye frightened her out of her wits. She clutched her shawl and started back from him.
"So I am not going!" cried Jan in a voice deep and horrible to hear, hoarse like a raven's croak. "So I am not going!" He reached forward with his claw, waving it toward Ujedski.
When she beheld it a spasm of fear swept over her. Turning, she ran swiftly into the hut and slammed the door. She remained peering out of the window, her face yellow and drawn, her bony fingers trickling across her throat.
Jan laughed : deep, noiseless, mock- ing laughter, and turning quickly, strode away toward the Jena bridge. This he crossed, and went up on the heights, climbing with great strides, his back bent, his face staring at the sodden ground.
It was July, and the hills were brown under the blazing sun. Brilliant steel-blue flies darted through the grasses. Thousands of white butterflies rose from the coppice. The somno- lent hush of noon lay upon forest and stream, far mountains and great sunny fields.
As Jan mounted, the town fell away below. Ahead was the forest of Lasz- lovar, lifting straight and dense. For the last time Jan looked back at Gait a free man. The giant Huascar lay peacefully in the sunshine. Her sides were honeycombed with swarming fig- ures. Jan had been one of her build- ers— nothing more.
In another moment he was striding through the forest.
He wondered, dully, if the police had yet learned of his departure, and were on his track. Would Ujedski tell of his hasty retreat? Or would fear restrain her? And how much did she know?
Stefan leaned forward and kissed his shoulder. "Dear, big papa," he said.
"Dear sonny!"
"Can I have a drink, papa?"
He swung Stefan to the ground, and they walked through forest aisles where the sun laughed deep within the glades. A stream flashed away through a shallow ravine. He made a cup of his good hand, and Stefan drank the cool, clear water. Wild figs and grapes grew along the bank, and these they ate together.
As the afternoon waned they came out into a sun-gold meadow. There was a vigor in the air, and Jan stretched his arms, and lifted his face to meet the vagrant sea-winds. It was a beau- tiful meadow, carpeted with trem- bling wind-flowers and blue lobelias.
But he must not linger, for the sun was setting. He must reach O-Mol- dovo town before night. So, swinging Stefan once more to his shoulders, he pressed on.
An hour later he came to the edge of the forest. The setting sun was shin- ing red upon the roofs and spires of O-Moldovo.
GUNS OF GALT
491
Twenty miles he had come, and now the rutted cart-way of the ox-teams be- came visible through the white larch trunks. - A peasant, driving a cart of hay, appeared on the road. As he drew nearer, the little bells on the straps of the buff-colored bullocks jangled musically.
"Ho, there!" cried Jan, as the peas- ant came up. "Will you take us to O-Moldovo? We have come a long way, and are tired."
The peasant responded cheerfully, and drew in the lumbering bullocks.
Jan and Stefan climbed up into the cart and sank into the hay.
Jan concealed his left arm in his blouse so the peasant could not iden- tify him by. the appearance of his hand.
"Coming from Gait?" asked the ruddy-faced stranger.
"No," replied Jan, fearing that this man might be asked about him later; "from Bazias — from the monastery, where I was a gardener."
The bullocks ambled slowly down to O-Moldovo, and the sun sank, a ball of fire, behind the towers of the town.
Night was coming on, with all its shadows and its terrors, but what mat- tered it then, for suddenly all the bells of O-Moldovo set up a lively carillon, a melancholy farewell to the changing day. O bells of O-Moldovo ! Chiming soft and sweet, from temple and cha- pel, pealing out across the' sunny downs and shadowy hills, bells lan- guorous and stately, bells clangorous and rebellious, bells tolling with brave abandon, sending their echoes ringing through the countryside! Of all the bells of O-Moldovo there are none so sweet as the convent bells at dusk.
Chapter XXXII.
While O-Moldovo's bells were still ringing, and the last ruddy shafts of the sunlight were playing upon the towers and ancient battlements, Jan entered the town in the hay-cart, and, thanking the peasant for the ride, climbed down and made his way through the village streets.
The shops were closing up for the
day. The shop-keepers were busily engaged in fastening doors and win- dows. In a pork shop Jan bought food with a ruble. Then swinging Stefan once more to his shoulders, he went in the direction of the citadel and the ruins beyond the broad river that di- vided O-Moldovo.
The quaint streets were filled with children shouting at play; and upon the doorsteps squatted women gossip- ing. Jan went unnoticed through the dusk, and as night shut down, came to a road that wound through a lonely churchyard to the ruins of an old cas- tle. The building lifted out of the blue twilight, a grey-green pile, its an- cient stones covered with ivy, haunted by strange birds that flitted in and out of the balconies on silent, eerie wings. The ruins were unspeakably lonely.
"I'm getting sleepy," said Stefan at last. His little head nodded on Jan's shoulder.
"We're going asleep soon," said Jan.
"Where? Inhere?"
"Yes, sonny."
"But it's so dark, papa, in there !"
"It will be sunrise soon."
"But you won't let anything happen to me?"
"No, sonny."
"I know you won't, papa . . What's that?"
"That's an owl, telling us 'good- night,' sonny."
The owl continued to hoot, and pres- ently a crescent moon appeared in the west. In its sickly glow Jan felt his way along the facade of the ruins. He entered the portals and came to a ser- ies of heavy pillars, thickly entwined with ivy, out of which bats and night birds darted in alarm. The place was open, and above the stars burned brightly. He saw the huge monolithic structure of an arch, and entering be- neath it, came to a sheltered place that once had been a causeway.
He felt a tiny mouth close to his ear. "Papa, you won't let anything happen to me?"
"No, sonny. We're going asleep now."
492 OVERLAND MONTHLY
He set Stefan down. He gathered had wandered off toward the castle,
dry grass into a corner, and presently An hour later Captain Pasek and his
had prepared a soft pallet for his boy. guard entered the portals of the castle.
Then wrapping him snugly and ten- The new day was paling the eastern
derly in his coat, he lay down beside sky. The ancient pile was ghostly with
him and took the little hands in his solitude. In the center of the grounds
big right one, and kissed the little man there had once been a wonderful gar-
to sleep. den ; here were the remains of a white
After the gentle breathing had be- marble summer-house with walls of come regular, Jan lay awake through lace-like fretwork. The sun, coming the midnight hour, flat on his back up- up over the hill, burst with golden on the hard ground, staring up at the splendor through the tracery . . . Pa- stars, his mind recounting the horrors sek stepped silently from pillar to pil- of the day. His hand burned and lar. He held his rifle ready. But he throbbed with increasing pain, as it did not need it this morning. For sud- had for hours; but he had stifled his denly, while passing under the arch, anguish to hide it from his boy. His he came upon his quarry in a corner, hand, terribly burned, was wrapped in Jan lay stretched on the ground, his strips of rag, and he kept it concealed arms thrown wide, and upon his chest in his blouse. . . But the pain in his slumbered his lad. Even these fusi- hand was less than his mental suffer- liers, with hearts steeled against hu- ing. The horror of suspense, the Iread man appeal, paused in the hunt to fear that his pursuers might discover gaze in silence at the father and son, him — kept him awake until exhaustion cheek side by side, slumbering peace- overcame him, and he sank into a fully. Little did the slumberers dream heavy sleep. at that moment that three Mauser tubes
were pointing down at them.
Chapter XXXIII. Finally Pasek said: "He's a match
for the three of us. Better take him
At dawn, three soldiers came steal- while he sleeps." thily to the ruins of the ancient castle. At a nod from their Captain, the fu- They left a white-roofed house in the siliers advanced cautiously, and quick- Foreign Quarter, passed like shadows ly pinioning Jan's arms, locked the through the Street of the Eastern Gate, heavy police chains upon them. With and reached the great bronze doors a convulsive heave of his body, Jan studded with rusted iron bosses. awoke, vaguely realizing that he had
The three soldiers wore long mili- been trapped. Stefan opened his eyes
tary capes. Rifles with blue steel bar- and began to cry in a frightened little
rels glinted on their shoulders. Their way. Jan tried to leap to his feet, but
faces were set and determined — hard the chains held him, and he fell back
faces, made hard by the business of with a cry as of a wounded animal at
killing. bay: "Oh-e-e! Oh! Oh!" Instantly
These men had arrived overnight he was up again, his eyes wide open,
from Gait. They had questioned every his senses clearing, chest heaving, the
peasant who had traveled over the great muscles of his arms biting into
cart-ways the day before. They had the chains. He was a giant after a
found the rustic who had given Jan a century's sleep, rising, throwing off
ride, and him they questioned relent- slumber, making the earth tremble
lessly. The peasant was a simple fel- with violent convolutions. Finally he
low, afraid of the law. In excited, got to his feet, his eyes flaming. Ste-
broken sentences he told of meeting a fan wound his arms about his legs. "I
big man with a little boy upon his won't let them hurt you, papa," he
shoulder, and letting them ride in his sobbed.
cart into O-Moldovo. He had left "Take the boy away!" commanded
them near the railway station, and they Pasek.
THE OFFERING.
493
Jan's right arm enfolded his lad. "No! No!" he cried, deathly fear clutching his heart.
A fusilier advanced to carry out the order.
"Papa, don't let them take me away!" begged Stefan.
The soldier reached forward and seized the boy by the arm.
In that instant, with incredible swift- ness, Jan struck. All the strength of his body poured into his huge arms, and, lifting them above his head, locked with stout chains, he brought them down with terrific force upon the head of the fusilier. The soldier crumpled upon the ground.
Pasek raised his rifle and struck Jan over the head, felling him. Then he and the third soldier chafed the wrists of the unfortunate fusilier until he was able to rise to his feet and sit upon a stone bench. Pasek seized Stefan roughly and set him down beside the wounded fusilier. Jan's eyes opened and he stared about dully, through a black haze, looking for his boy. He tried to lift himself to his elbows, but the pains in his head increased, and he sank back wearily. He was like a wounded lion in a net, helpless before his captors, watching with sorrowful eyes his young taken from him.
When Pasek spoke his voice was low and triumphant: "Where is Jagi- ello Nur?"
Jan gazed at him, stupefied.
"If she were here now she might bind up your hand and your head," laughed Pasek. Blood was trickling from Jan's forehead. Pasek changed his tone to that of a pitiless inquisi-
tor: "Where is Skarga?"
After a moment Jan managed to re- ply: "I do not know."
"Don't lie to me! You do know. Madame Ujedski saw him with you in your room after the meeting in the barn. 'The Firebrand' was not in your room after you left yesterday morn- ing. He departed about six o'clock. Where did he go?"
Again Jan replied : "I do not know."
Pasek's voice became adament; his eyes glinted cruelly; he came nearer Jan, unsheathing his sabre.
"You do know ! You do know ! Tell me, where is The Firebrand?"
Jan remained silent. Suddenly he felt an edge of cold steel upon his arm — his left arm! And a voice roared above him: "You do know! You do know! Where is Skarga?" Then darkness shut in about him, and through the swirling maelstrom, like the boom of breakers on a far strand, he heard the insistent cry of his en- emy: "Where is Skarga? Where is Skarga?" The cadence rose and fell with the surge of the blood through his veins. He would not answer. He swooned. The loss of blood left him a shattered wreck, his great strength ebbing away. To him the world be- came a black whirlpool shot with stars.
But there was no darkness in the universe.
Rose and crimson morning lights danced through the balconies and tow- ers.
Presently a peasant drew up at the castle with his cart, and Jan and Ste- fan began a weary journey back to Gait. (To be Continued.)
THE OFFERING
Sweet with the incense of the night In golden urns of twilight brewed,
The winds of evening bear to me A peace renewed.
But sweeter than the breath of bloom
And attar that the roses brew, The gift the twilight brings to me —
My dreams of you!
Arthur Wallace Peach.
A Letter From the Boy
By L. W. Huntington
Camp "Recuperate," Shasta County, California.
July 10, 1916.
DEAR MOTHER: Am enclosing you Dr. L — 's account of his experiences in Southern California after leav- ing medical college away back in '86. The Doctor don't know that I took his words in short hand, because if he did he would not have given so much pro- fessional detail. He thought that I
was writing a letter to F , so he
talked along for an hour or two to Fritz. We were lying on our cots in the tent after a hard day's fishing in the upper Sacramento, and if I re- member rightly, the Doctor got started on the subject of prohibition. He maintains that legislation is not abso- lutely necessary to abolish the over- consumption of alcohol, as nowadays intemperance is dying a natural death wherever men assert the sense that God gave geese. They know in their hearts that it doesn't pay, and for that reason alone time will see an end to it. He said that of course there are still those backwaters of civilization where law and order is in inverse ratio to the amount of whisky consumed, but that even these places will know reform if the manufacturers of "red- eye" ever thoroughly realize that the welfare of their busines depends upon proper regulation.
To illustrate his point the Doctor compared the tendency in California to-day with the rough and ready con- ditions he found when he started to practice medicine. I wish you could have heard him, mother. Our M. D. is a fine fellow, and he talks in such a simple, straightforward manner that a fellow don't feel any doubt whatever,
the way you do when some people start to reminisce. I had an awful job to keep up with him some of the time, as I was pretty tired and the river pound- ing along outside almost lulled me to sleep, but I guess you and Dad can read it all right. When you finish, please put it away in my desk where I can get it when I come home, as I want to work some of the local color into a story for O — if possible. All well — except the Doctor, who has got too much pep. for an ordinary mortal. He may have come up here to rest and recuperate, but you wouldn't think so to see him rough-house us boys or out- walk us every time we hit the trails. He leads the simple life instead of follows it. The candy arrived O. K, It tasted like more. Thank you for sending my sweater.
Your loving son,
J.
P. St — You ought to hear Fritz's new matutinal ditty which he chants every time it is his turn to cook breakfast. Some lumberjack "sang" it to him (with profane variations) the other day up on the mountain, and he can't get it out of his head. What with said "song" and the Doctor's wet towel (he being a cold bath enthusiast, prescrib- ing COLD water as the best liquid stimulant), there are great opportuni- ties for prolonged slumber in this camp in the early morning hours! As per Fritz:
"Arise, you husky buckos, and dress
by the light of the moon, The coffee's boiling on the stove and
breakfast's ready soon. What right has a man to lie abed who
works a twelve hour day?
A LETTER FROM THE BOY
495
It's not for the likes of such as you to
sleep when you hit the hay."
Yrs,
J. * * * *
"... those wild times are especi- ally interesting to me because of my own experiences in San Diego County as a physician during the years '86 and '89. That was the period in the his- tory of Southern California when the big real estate 'boom' was on and life was very exciting throughout the southern part of the State. Many for- tunes were made and many more un- doubtedly lost in the mad frenzy of speculation. Of course, this boom- ing condition had its bad as well as its good effect upon the South, there being a decided influx of "hard" char- acters, especially of the gambling fra- ternity.
"I graduated from college on April 2, 1886, and about May 1st began look- ing about for a professional opening. Considering possibilities of future in- crease of population, I decided to go to San Diego, and it was not long be- fore I found myself on a California Southern train bound for new fields and a career. I was only twenty-four years of age, so you can imagine the great- ness of my desire to relieve the suf- ferings of humanity! I made up in enthusiasm what I lacked in practice as my practical experience was very limited. In fact, I had yet to attend my first case in private capacity, but it to happened that the Fates did not keep me waiting long. That very day, after leaving Colton, I received my initiation. The train had stopped at the small way station of Temecula (the scene of Allesandro's escape to San Jacinto in Helen Hunt Jackson's "Ra- mona") where an old box car on a sid- ing served as a ticket and telegraph office. Soon after our arrival I noticed through the car window a hilarious eow-puncher parading back and forth upon the small station platform. From all appearances he was well fortified with "100 proof," for he waved his long "45" in the air, shooting promis- cuously, and accompanying each shot
with wild cowboy yells. Evidently it was great fun for him, but as a sport it was short lived, for I noticed that one of his shots penetrated the wall of the box car office and instantly there was a great commotion about the door- way. The drunken vaquero sobered immediately, and the last I saw of him was as he started to run down the rail- road track. About that time the brake- man came through the train calling for a doctor. I responded instantly, and started a still hunt for my ever elusive medicine case.
"In the box car I found that the tele- graph operator had been shot while seated at a table taking train orders from the wire. As I entered, the man was still in an upright position at the table, though looking ghastly pale and holding one hand to his bleeding side. With the other hand he continued to operate the telegraph key.
"I immediately urged the man to lie down and allow me to learn the extent of. his injury, but the plucky fellow said, 'No, wait a minute, Doc, until I get an answer to this message. It's the last one I'll ever take.' And he ac- tually made me wait until he received the reply which, in itself, was inter- esting, for it seems that, after the first shock of his wound, he had wired the nearest railroad hospital that the Te- mecula agent had just been fatally shot. The answer read, 'Special with surgeon on way.'
"I did all that was possible to re- lieve the poor fellow before the special arrived, and my train left, but, even so, he was overwhelmingly impressed with the idea that his wound was fa- tal. He imagined that he was bleed- ing internally, and I learned a day or two later that he never really reacted from the shock, but died in complete collapse. An autopsy disclosed the fact that the wound was entirely super- ficial, with very little loss of blood, the ball being removed from the muscular tissue near the spine, thus proving to a marked degree the effect of mind over matter.
"My headquarters for the days in San Diego were in the old Horton
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House, which was then the principal hotel of the city. The boom then in progress had filled the house with a fine assortment of 'sharks,' speculators and Eastern visitors. Business was flourishing. The city was overflowing with 'boomers' of all kinds, some liv- ing in tents and others in hastily con- structed shacks, as a man might buy a lot on a business street one day, put- ting up a rough shelter along with his deposit, and the next day sell out for twice as much as his purchase price. I can remember cases where such trans- fers of property were repeated several times in a week, each sale netting from 50 per cent to 200 per cent profit over the preceding exchange. A lot worth $2,500 would in seven days enhance to the value of $20,000! Of course, such feverish inflation was bad, very bad, that is, from an economic point of view. Some one had to pay the fiddler. In my purely medical opinion, this sort of frenzied finance is psycho- logical, a form of hysterical insanity, and San Diego has suffered, as much as any city I know, from repeated at- tacks or relapses of this disease, al- though its present state of delightful permanence shows no evidence of its growing pains.
"At the end of two weeks I began to realize that my professional business was failing my youthful expectations. It seemed that people were too busy to waste time in sickness. I became rest- less, and accordingly decided that my professional skill might be better ap- preciated in the nearby country where young M. D.'s were not so plentiful. Through information given me by one Charley Chase (old-time druggist of San Diego) who evidently realized how anxious I was to get busy, I learned that there was a good opening for a doctor in the mining camp of Julian. Among other things I learned that Julian was a little town in the Cuyamaca Mountains, about 60 miles north of San Diego, and that the first stage left for there in the morning.
"Well, you can believe me, I caught that stage with a high heart. You have no idea how eager I had become
to be among people who needed a doc- tor. Why, that long trip to Julian seemed heavenly to me, and indeed it was most enjoyable. We traveled through a wild and interesting country which, to this day, remains indelible in my mind, due, I suppose, to the gla- mor of newness and the elation conse- quent upon my brighter prospects. There was but one other passenger on the stage, and I was indeed fortunate in having him for a traveling compan- ion, as I soon discovered that he was none other than Professor H. G. Hanks, California State Mineralogist. His words of wisdom and kindly ad- vice to the ambitious young M. D. that day will always be treasured.
"Fortune smiled from the first day of my stay in Julian. We arrived some time after nine o'clock at night, and I had hardly settled myself to rest after the jouncing of the old concord when I was summoned to a case. With the ice thus broken, it was but a little while until I had work in abundance. And I had to meet it all single-handed, consultation being almost impossible, with no other practitioner nearer than sixty miles. Cases which to-day seem simple enough caused me great mental agony under those circumstances. Of- ten I was at my wits end, but expe- diency and good fortune saved many a patient. Due to the lawlessness of the town and its nearness to the Mexi- can border, most of my cases were surgical rather than medical, consist- ing of gunshot and knife wounds, and the many forms of accidental injury connected with mining. There was more use for catgut than quinine. The town being 'wide open,' was infested with renegades, desperadoes and gun- fighters, whose main occupation was the pursuit of trouble, and I can vouch for the many times they found it — es- pecially on pay nights, when the min- ers were in town. At such times my hands were full caring for torn and battered humanity. These men seemed to think that they could carouse and fight as much as they pleased, now that they had a 'Doc' to 'fix 'em up,' and I, for one, saw the havoc which whisky
A LETTER FROM THE BOY
497
wrought since my duties exposed to me the seamy side of life in the wild and woolly West. It was depressing, that continual inflaming of the senses with bad whisky. Why, I patched up men repeatedly, only to have them come back to me again after some wild and vicious jamboree. And this con- dition was not confined to the whites alone. Though it is illegal to sell firewater to an Indian, drunken red- skins were a very common sight, and it is common knowledge that if you give an Indian enough to drink he will fight his weight in wildcats. Accord- ingly, I was often called upon to repair the damage following the periodical influx of natives from the nearby San Isabel Indian Rancheria. Oh, it was a jolly life!
"There was a Justice of the Peace in Julian. Also there was a Constable, and they both kept saloons. They would sell anybody whisky regardless of his age, color or degree of intoxi- cation. And, strange to relate, if a man got into trouble from drinking said whisky the Constable would ar- rest him and be paid by the county for doing so. Following this, the unfortu- nate would be haled before the J. P., who held court in the rear of his sa- loon. That officer of the law would discontinue serving drinks long enough to preside, and thus earn a fat fee him- self. Of course, all reports and testi- mony had to be sent to the county-seat and here also the Justice made money at the rate of seventy-five cents a page. Oh, it was certainly rich picking for the guardians of the peace.
"Well, sir, I had a great time estab- lishing offices in Julian. There were no vacant rooms of any description to be had, and it was not until Howard Wilson, postmaster and general mer- chant, came to my rescue that I was sure of a location. He offered to build an addition to his store. I accepted the offer gladly and within a week was proudly installed in my first office. Be- ing thus settled on Main Street, I came to feel that I was of some importance in the metropolis, and it was not long until I had met most of the 'Prominent
Citizens.' Among them I remember there was a Jewish merchant, Levy by name, who, beside his regular hard- ware and general merchandise busi- ness, acted as coroner when occasion arose. As to the frequency of occa- sion, I might add that this latter occu- pation kept Levy quite busy. You could not doubt that fact had you seen a few of our really bad men. They were the genuine article, prehensile trigger finger and all. Of course, among them were some characters typ- ical of our present movie gunmen, swaggering, loud-mouthed lead sprink- lers, cowards at heart, but the inher- ent badness of the majority was real enough. They did not require Dutch courage of a Saturday night. Whisky was only necessary to make them reck- less, and when once properly primed with 'forty rod' these fellows were in- deed a menace to life, being hypersen- sitive to insult, and as ready to put out a human light as they were to shoot the flame from a lamp behind the bar. "As usual, among all these village drunks, there was one who predomi- nated by right of might and quickness of eye and 'draw.' In this case it was old Pat O'Day, ex-prizefighter and Arizona 'malo hombre.' Pat was no beauty, as masculine beauty goes, as he had been very much disfigured by wounds received in a gunfight in a Julian saloon some sixteen years be- fore. Just to enlighten you as to Pat's character and to show you how gritty a real badman can be, I'll tell you about that fight as it was told to me by a certain 'old timer' who witnessed it. Of course, the brawl was disgusting and sordid, but it was no more so than the times in which it occurred. It seems that somebody who was 'after' Pat suc- ceeded in getting 'the drop' on him and pulled trigger first. Pat fell shot through the side, but still as game as his name implies. He returned the fire from the floor, and the fusilade be- came hot and heavy. His opponent continued his gun play from behind a card table, shooting Pat point-blank in the face several times. The old fel- low never quailed, but spat blood and
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teeth, shouting, 'Shoot,
ye, shoot.'
"When the '45s' were empty and the smoke of battle had cleared away suf- ficiently for the bartender to come from behind the safe and the patrons to emerge from the back room, they found Pat still breathing and his op- ponent dead.
"The first time I saw Pat was one Saturday afternoon. You can judge from the day of the week just what Pat's condition was. His attire con- sisted of what is known as a miner's 'full dress,' being nothing more than shoes and trousers. He was pacing up and down Main street daring anybody in the world to come out and fight him. I learned from casual passers-by, who paid little heed to his challenges, that this performance was a favorite 'stunt' of Pat's when in his cups. It did not necessarily mean trouble, but, even so, it seemed to me that he presented a rather ominous and forbidding sight. He seemed a walking epitome, a gro- tesque example of the effect of that liquid hell that comes in bottles. In his prime, Pat had evidently been a very powerful man, but as I saw him there, with the terrible scars on his left side exposed, and his right side still magnificently developed despite the ravages of innumerable drunks, I was conscious of a feeling of half repul- sion and half pity.
"Now, the queer thing about Pat's sprees was the fact that, after satisfy- ing himself that everybody in town was a coward, he would march into Howard Wilson's store in the post- office building and there buy himself a new shirt, whether he needed it or not. This habit of entering the store half naked had become very disagree- able to the proprietor, and Pat was warned that if it occurred again he could surely expect trouble. Well, Pat followed in the rut of habit, and was unfortunate enough to interrupt Mr. Wilson as he was waiting upon some women customers. I suppose this lat- ter fact incensed Mr. Wilson more than usual, for he seized a chair and felled the man on the spot, after which he dragged him out and dropped him
over the store porch.
"I was informed of the occurrence and had Pat carried to my office, where I worked over him for two hours be- fore he regained consciousness. Sev- eral times I thought he would die. He was such a battered and worn old wreck !
"Upon investigation I found that Pat had no home, not even a room that he could call his own. The emer- gency hospital facilities of Julian were limited to my small office, or, as I found by a happy thought, the hay mow of the livery stable nearby. We removed Pat to the haven of the hay, and there I attended him until he was again able to use his good right arm at his job as windlass man in a mine near town.
"Pat expressed much gratitude to me for my care of him, and told me that he would never forget the kind- ness. At the time I paid little atten- tion to his words, little knowing that within a short while I would have oc- casion to thank my lucky stars that he was my friend. Which fact is a com- mentary upon the life of a physician under most circumstances. The path of duty is often a dark and devious way wherein one encounters much thin ice. It was like this :
"I was awakened one night about one o'clock by a loud rapping on my door. A number of voices called to me to 'come quick, Doc, all hell has broke loose down at Davis's saloon, and about a dozen o' the boys has been shot up.' On hurrying out, I found my way to the scene of the 'scrape,' light- ed by a number of men with lanterns. They were all very excited, as well they might be, for the scene that met my eyes upon entering the saloon was indeed terrible. The place was a wreck. Four men had been shot in an argument as to the straightness of a poker deal, and they lay in a welter of blood and broken tables, mirrors and glassware. In the center of the circle of devastation lay the cause of the trouble, one Jack O'Brien, a noto- rious gambler. He was badly wounded in the chest, just over the heart, and
A LETTER FROM THE BOY
499
as the life blood flowed he shouted in a maudlin fashion: 'Git my boots off, boys, git my boots off. Don't let me cash in with my boots on.'
"A hasty examination of the wound- ed convinced me that O'Brien was the most seriously hurt, so, after adminis- tering first aid to the others, I confined my attention to the gambler. Fortu- nately, I was able to check the exces- sive hemorrhage, and, with the help of a number of his friends, had O'Brien placed on a window shutter and car- ried to his room. There I made a care- ful examination and discovered that one of the large arteries supplying the left arm and shoulder had been sev- ered and that the internal blood pres- sure had forced a way into the soft tissues of the neck. The man's hold upon life was decidedly precarious, and I told his friends that I did not see how he could possibly live more than a few hours. I applied dressings and gave him every attention through the night, momentarily expecting him to die, but with the coming of daylight I was greatly surprised to find that he was reacting somewhat for the better. It seemed a miracle to me then that a man could live in such a condition, and I am sure that the average man could not have rallied from it.
"As O'Brien improved from day to day, I became quite jubilant. His re- covery would be a feather in my cap, without a doubt, as the community was well aware of his condition. I watched the man closely, fearing possible com- plications in his left arm and shoulder, which were paralyzed and pulseless, but as he continued to mend I became confident that a few weeks of quiet would put him upon his feet, though he would always be crippled. Well, so much for my hopes. In about ten days, my patient became unruly and announced to me one morning that he was feeling 'bully' and intended to go down and see the boys. There was a foot of snow on the ground at the time and it was bitterly cold, but he per- sisted in spite of my warning that to move from his bed would cause his death. 'Aw, what's the dif, Doc,' he
said, and sometime during my absence he arose and made his way down to the very saloon where he had been shot. He 'sat in' at a game until two o'clock in the morning, when he be- came delirious, and when I was noti- fied I found him lying on a billiard table more dead than alive, with a raging fever. It is needless to say that O'Brien died very shortly.
"Following the gambler's death I was called upon by Levy, the coroner, to perform certain requirements of the law in regard to the location of the bullet that had been the indirect cause of O'Brien's demise. Shortly after- ward I was notified by a deputation of O'Brien's gang that there was to be 'no cuttin' of Jack,' as it was a gam- bler's superstition that an autopsy brought bad luck to camp. I paid no attention to the warning, but went ahead with the work, as is customary in any civilized community. You can imagine the shock it was to me when, later on, I was confronted by a mur- derous looking mob of desperadoes, bent on 'taking care' of me. The reali- zation of what I was 'up against' and the suddenness of it fairly made my hair stand on end, for it is a fact that a man in the hands of such a lawless crew would hardly be considered a safe hazard by a life insurance com- pany. For a few moments I did not know just what to do, as these repre- sentatives of Judge Lynch were bris- tling with '45s' and bad humor, but I backed myself against the door I had just left, and asked them as boldly as possible just what they meant by hold- ing me up in such a manner. Their answer would not bear repeating, but their actions were so extremely obvi- ous that I would have traded places gladly, under any conditions, with — well, even with the president of Mex- ico. There was no room for argument, as my friends were as one in their de- termination to decorate a nearby tree, but, and I am thankful to be able to say that little word, about that time a ruthless tornado descended upon them in the form of Pat O'Day. He used his heavy pistol as a club, knock-
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ing men right and left, until he was at my side, where he turned and loosed a volley of rough and ready eloquence that would have made a wooden Indian blush. The effect was instantaneous and complete. Pat was master of the situation in a twinkling. 'Come on, docthor,' he said, 'and I'll let daylight through the first wan who lays a hand on ye.' I followed my fighting Irish- man through the crowd of glowering individuals who, each and all, knew that Pat was as good as his word. It was beautifully done, and to this day I marvel at the prowess of the de- formed old drunkard whose sangui- nary eye instilled the fear of sudden death, and incidentally saved me from becoming a notch on some badman's pistol butt.
"Thereafter, and until the wrath of the gang subsided, Pat was my self- appointed bodyguard. It was an ef- fort for him, poor fellow, but he re- mained sober, and appeared at my side whenever I had occasion to pass through town. 'Docthor, dear,' he would say, 'the thirst is pullin' at me vitals, but I'll see yez through this, God bless ye, and th' devil take th' black buzzards that would do yez harm.'
"So on ad infinitum. Each day brought its new problems, its new cases of bodily injury, and always it seemed that in the background was the spectre of the cause, whisky, whisky, whisky. Sometimes I would be called away into the pine-clad mountains to some miner's cabin where, perhaps, two miners, partners and the best of pals, had sought solace in that which 'enters the mouth to steal away the
brain,' and had ended in mortal com- bat or had rolled into the open fire of their hearth, there to be horribly burned. Then again I might receive a call from my old friend Hicks, a half breed Indian, who would announce that I was needed at the Rancheria to sew up the bucks and squaws that had carved each other to ribbons at the prompting of John Barleycorn. Hicks himself would usually be in need of surgical attention, and as for his peo- ple, I would find them undergoing the reaction of the white man's curse and lying in their pitiful mud and willow huts nursing every manner of wound that drunken hands could inflict.
"Oh, yes, and I should mention the time that Hicks dragged himself to my office after receiving a friendly slash across the face by a 'representative' citizen simply because he was 'too good lookin' for an Injun.' You should understand that this was done in a playful mood by a white man who was only 'happy drunk.' It will serve to show the status of the Indian in those times, and may throw a little light up- on the reason why the white man in 'Ramona' could kill Allesandro with so little compunction.
"Such was life in the far, far West, when every freight team brought its barrels of liquid fight to the mountain towns of our State. In the years that have passed since then and now, I often wonder if conditions have changed very much under the pressure of our twentieth century enlighten- ment. I doubt it. Also I will continue to doubt it as long as human nature re- mains the same and our gin mills grind on undisturbed."
PROGRESS
Wave followed wave to "Westward Ho!" And touched the Pacific strand,
Reflecting to the East a glow
Through the charming OVERLAND.
m. c.
Cotton Growing Under Irrigation in the Southwest
By Percy L. Edwards
IN THE Imperial Valley of Califor- nia cotton is a paying crop on land under the influence of a semi-arid climate. The Colorado River is the great life giving artery supplying a system of irrigating ditches that carry the water into the cotton fields of this section. The combination of soil, cli- matic conditions and water have pro- duced results very satisfactory to growers and somewhat remarkable. Had the cotton growers of the South, in ante-bellum days, been confronted with the problems of expensive irri- gation projects and wages, it is not al- together improbable that less cotton would have been produced in the South. But these days in which we live are fraught with wonderful ac- complishment in scientific agriculture.
A late special government report on the cotton crop gives conditions in the Imperial Valley better than in any other section of the cotton belt. With- in six years cotton growing in this part of the country has become important enough to be mentioned in government reports. To-day the crop in the Im- perial Valley has not only arisen to the dignity of being mentioned; it is referred to as likely to help out the serious shortage that has driven prices to the highest notch in the experience of the cotton market.
Such a condition relating to one of the world's greatest staples, suggests the telling of a story of much interest, especially in these times of "war and rumors of war," when cotton is con- traband more prized than gold.
An Empire Regained from the Desert.
What is known as Imperial Valley lies along the western bank of the
Colorado River, in Imperial County, in the State of California, and extends to the southwest into Mexico. The valley on both sides of the interna- tional line is about 110 miles. On the California side the valley is forty miles wide, and, geographically speak- ing, is below sea level. A time not so very long ago, it was known as a part of the "Colorado Desert." In 1900 the population was mostly Gila mon- sters and horned toads, where now are the homes of 45,000 industrious, well- to-do people. The settlers of this section are not alone growing cotton, for this little empire, borne of desert conditions, a few years ago, now leads all sections of his big State in dairy products.
Imperial County is about twice the size of Delaware and nearly one-half the size of New Jersey. It seems to be ideal in both soil and climatic con- ditions for this staple. Nearly 110,- 000 acres of cotton were planted in this and the little Palo Verde Valley to the north, just over the county line in Riverside County. The crop of this season is estimated at 75,000 bales, of 500 pounds each. To put this crop in shape for marketing, there are sixteen gins, three cotton-seed oil mills, and two compressors now in operation in Southern California.
Some idea of the growth of cotton planting in the Southwest may be un- derstood from the following figures: Three years ago the crop harvested was 7,250 bales from 8,500 acres. Last year 43,000 bales were harvested; that amount is nearly doubled for the present year. From creditable sources it is learned that upwards of 140,000 acres will be planted next season. Over on the Mexican side there was
502
OVERLAND MONTHLY
harvested an estimated acreage of 60,- 000. This acreage is along the lower Colorado, where the lands are very fertile and the long staple variety of cotton called Durango does best. The acreage on this side of the boundary line is controlled by American plant- ers, and the product is ginned on the American side, mostly at Calexico.
Just inside the international border is located the intake from the Colorado River. To avoid the high hills directly facing the beginning of the great canal, it takes a sudden sweep to the south down into the cotton lands on the Mexican side, then turns to the northwest into the channel of the Al- amo River, and thence distributes the water through its laterals into the Im- perial Valley. There are subject to this great irrigation project 700,000 acres of land in this valley, and, at the time of writing this, nearly 380,000 acres are now within reach of the main canal and its laterals. The cost to the settler is about $3.50 per acre.
The Colorado River of Agriculture Use
The greatest stream in all the South- west, for its great benefit to agricul- ture, is the Colorado. For it gathers to itself the drainage of all the section of this country lying west of the Rock- ies and having a natural outlet at the Gulf of California. Engineers tell us that 16,000,000 acre feet of water is annually distributed through its course. That is sufficient water to irrigate 5,- 000,000 acres of land throughout the year, if it is properly distributed on the land. This river, like the Nile of Egypt, attains its greatest volume when most needed during the growing sea- son. True to the calendar, the high water mark in its course to the ocean is reached at Yuma, about the time of the summer solstice, June 21st.
The Colorado, in the past, has been credited with a reputation in keeping with the wild bronco that roamed the pasture places along its banks and kicked its heels in the face of the ven- turesome cowboy. But the unruly habit of kicking over the traces has been
conquered by astute engineers in the government service, and now the great river has become a most valuable aid to man's efforts in this semi-arid land.
This section of the United States, commonly referred to as the South- west, appears to be in a state of evo- lution, notwithstanding that great pro- gress has been made along certain lines of endeavor. It is essentially a country depending on the water sup- ply from the Colorado to render it of agricultural importance. Up to the time when the great irrigation canal brought the life giving waters of the river to the dry farms of the hardy pioneers, there were many misgivings about the future of this country.
Since then the face of things has undergone a wonderful change. And the most wonderful of the new crops is cotton. A remarkable thing about it is that this great staple, heretofore be- lieved to be in its natural home in the Gulf States and the Carolinas, here flourishes to an extent unknown in the South, and at the same time is found growing alongside great alfalfa fields, where herds of the best dairy cows to be found anywhere in the country graze about the open fields the year around.
The Palo Verde strip of cotton land lying close under the western bank of the river, in Riverside County, is about 25 miles long and contains upwards of 100,000 acres. This soil is made rich by years of feeding from the over- flow of organic matter from the river, which has decomposed in mixing with the soil. These lands are found to be suitable for cotton and some remark- able crops have been produced. From a seventeen acre field was harvested 281/2 bales, the average weight being 500 pounds per bale. This is the short staple variety, and sold on the market for $1,705. Charles Donlon, the owner of the land, gave the cost of production as $640. This would leave a net return of $1,065, which is above $62.50 per acre. When the average acre produc- tion in the cotton States of the South is only $22 per acre, the advantage to cotton growers in this section may be easily figured. It is true that the cost
COTTON GROWING UNDER IRRIGATION 503
of production of cotton in Southern methods of farm operation in the South California is much more than in the and many of the old cotton plantations Gulf States, on account of irrigation are now very productive. The advent expenses and the higher price paid for of live stock, cattle and sheep, on the the labor necessary to produce the farms, is doing wonders for depleted crop. However, the returns seem to soils. Farmers of the Southwest have Justify this. Mr. Donlon, who is rais- learned this lesson. Most farms of a ing cotton in this section is one. of the general character are plentifully sup- well known lima bean growers of Ven- plied with cattle, hogs and sheep. The tura County. He is now dividing his growing of alfalfa for pasturage and time between the two crops. This hay, the latter fed on the farms, is the coming year he is preparing the ground making of the irrigated lands of the for 200 acres of cotton. Southwest. It is now known that the
cotton plant does not take so much
Cotton Growing Under Old and New strength from the soil as either corn or
Conditions. oats. With a better knowledge of crop
rotation and soil feeding, the cotton
Of the fourteen States producing planters of the Southwest are in no cotton a year ago, Southern California danger of repeating the experiences of is credited with the highest production, the planters of the Old South. 500 pounds per acre. The average for An inexhaustible water supply for the United States was 182. Virginia, irrigating the fields and the selection with 330 pounds, came next. The av- of varieties of cotton seed peculiarly erage price paid for California pro- adapted to climatic conditions here- duced cotton, thirteen cents, was the abouts, warrant the assumption that highest paid for cotton in this country, the Southwest will be an important for that year. The value per acre cotton producing section of this coun- yield was for California $79.95, as try. Besides, there are no evidences compared with the next highest yield, of the presence of the boll weevil pest $32.50, and the average for the United up to this date. There are, from care- States, $22.36. ful estimates, upwards of 2,000,000
The lack of proper soil feeding and acres of available cotton land in Im- rotation in the South, has reduced ma- perial and Riverside Counties alone, terially productive values of the cot- An acreage about equal to that of the ton fields. Under old conditions, the State of North Carolina, cotton crop was left to ignorant super- vision, and there was almost entire Varieties and Qualities. lack of crop rotation. With such con- i ditions prevailing and the lack of stock While the short-staple cotton, the for fertilizing, the best of the cotton variety generally grown in the South, lands of the South never produced up is at the present planted in larger to their capacity, and such as did pro- acreage, the Durango variety, a long- duce a paying crop were soon sapped staple upland cotton similar to that of their vitality. Many of the overseers grown in the Yazoo River delta in were as ignorant of proper methods of Mississippi, is becoming a favorite soil treatment as the negroes who did with the later planters. This Durango the work. Under such conditions, cot- cotton has a fibre about l1/^ inches in ton planting in the Old South became length, and sells at from two to five either a sentiment to which the owners cents per pound more than the short of the old plantations clung, as they did staple. This long staple variety costs to slavery, or a desperate attempt to a trifle more — less than a cent to a make the land produce a living from pound — to grow it, and it produces the only crop the farmers of the South quite as much per acre. About 40,000 knew how to raise. bales of the Durango variety was har-
A great change has taken place in vested in Southern California this sea-
504
OVERLAND MONTHLY
son. With prices at the top notch this season, cotton is one of the best pay- ing crops in the Southwest. In the Im- perial Valley, especially, there are pre- parations going forward for a large in- crease of cotton acreage. The new ex- tension of railway facilities to the town of Blythe has given great impe- tus to cotton planting in that section, and the acreage will be doubled. The short staple variety, up to this year, generally grown in this section, will
give way to the long fibre variety, the conditions in this valley being especi- ally favorable. Egyptian cotton can be grown successfully also, but at present the wages paid help make it less profitable than either of the others. A fitting acknowledgment of the ef- forts of cotton growers of the South- west td build up this industry, is found in the projected erection of a large fac- tory at Los Angeles for the purpose of spinning the cotton.
A SIERRA DELL
Within a wood where willows droop
And summer's sun is cool, The nixies and the shade-elves troop
Across an em'rald pool;
And cascades play in rainbow-flight
Upon a spangled screen, To merge amid the shimm'ring light
Within the mirrored green;
While lilies cup the amber spray
And waft their breath through space
To draw each iridescent ray
Through boughs that interlace;
And margin-stones in opal-hue
Glint sun-waves through the air, That catch in gems of sparkling dew
On webs of filmy hair,
That cling along the water's edge
Where pearl-beads kiss the fern, And breezes woo the tangled sedge
Through days of unconcern.
Stanton Elliott.
^W
Paternity
By A\ary Bliss Whited
IT WAS Indian summer in Califor- nia, and for days the big, four- horse wagons from Bavousette's vineyard had been crawling over the mountain roads, carrying wine- grapes to the Italians. Each morning men and teams went forth; to Pi- chilli's, to Corrello's, to Cassini's.
On Thursday, Louis Bavousette himself delivered the purple freight to old Andrew Martinoni, down on In- dian Creek, and on Friday the neigh- bors, John Costello, Rafael Borlini and Frank Pastori came to help An- drew make his wine. In the evening, when the work was done, they sat on the porch of Andrew's house, smoking and talking about the family who had moved into Fahtozzi's old place. An- drew said little, but he was glad that some one had taken the old cabin. It would be pleasant to have such near neighbors. For Andrew considered the little house perched on the steep side of the mountain, a mile above, near.
He had been lonely since Victoria deserted him. Most people pitied him when she ran away with Luigi from Massini's ranch, but some of the older Italians shrugged their shoulders, and said old Andrew had been foolish to expect his young, city-bred wife to be contented in his lonely little house on the creek.
Andrew never complained of Vic- toria's defection. Secretly he thought it was punishment for his treatment of Rosa. The neighbors did not know about Rosa, for Andrew had a still tongue, and Rosa was an episode of his youth. But since Victoria's flight, Andrew had thought a good deal about Rosa.
Eighteen years before, Andrew and
Rosa had married in Italy, and a few months afterward, Andrew had left for America. Like hundreds of his countrymen, he had intended to send for his wife later, and like hundreds of others he had not done so.
When he was a prosperous, middle- aged man he had met Victoria, and she had set about to marry him for his money. It was she who took him to the smart American lawyer, who se- cured a divorce for him, she who laughed away his scruples about re- marriage and suggested a civil cere- money. And Andrew, dazzled by her youth and good looks, had half-guilt- ily consented, without consulting a priest as he wished.
A brief winter with his bride, cry- ing, sulking, complaining of the lone- liness, the snow, the monotony of life on Indian Creek, had convinced An- drew that he had made a mistake, and when he returned, one day, from a hunting trip, to find that Victoria and Luigi had decamped, it had been with feelings not unmixed with relief that he accepted the situation. Months af- terward, when word came to him that his wife was dead, he was glad. The news removed the fear that Victoria might inherit his property after his death. The thought of her squander- ing his money had disturbed Andrew not a little. As time went on, he grew to think more and more about adding to the hoard in the rusty can buried beneath the peach tree in the garden; less and less about what he wore, or ate, or had in his rough cabin. The neighborhood Italians said that each year Andrew grew more avari- cious in money matters.
The day after the wine making An- drew climbed the zig-zag trail to call
506
OVERLAND MONTHLY
on the new comers. He carried a cab- bage and a few late tomatoes as a friendly offering. As he rounded the last turn and came in sight of the house, he saw a powerfully built, black-bearded Italian sitting on a bench before the door. Inside, a wo- man sat with a pillow on her knee making lace. Andrew could see her swift fingers plying the wooden bob- bins, but he could not see her face. He presented the vegetables and in- troduced himself as "old Andrew." When the black-bearded man asked his name, Andrew with much geticu- lation and hoarse laughter repeated: "Old Andrew, just old Andrew." It was in truth the name he went by. Those who knew him best called him Martin. Only in business dealings was he referred to as Martinoni.
Presently, the host, whose name was Peter Raffo, called to the woman within to bring wine for the visitor, and when she appeared, bearing bot- tle and glasses, the flaming dogwood and brilliant poison oak on the hill- side whirled and merged into one be- fore Martinoni's vision. The woman in the doorway was Rosa. Fat, swart and sadly changed indeed, but there was no mistake — it was Rosa.
Rosa placed the glasses and bottle of wine on the table beside the door and silently returned to her lace-mak- ing. Small wonder that in the stooped and bearded miner she saw no resem- blance to the trim, natty bridegroom, fresh from service in the Italian army.
As Raffo poured the wine a shower of stones and gravel announced the arrival of impetuous feet, and a boy and girl of seventeen or thereabouts, so much alike that no one could doubt they were twins, clattered down the steep trail above the house. They carried tin buckets filled to overflow- ing with luscious wild plums, and ran into the yard, eager to display their find, but Raffo scowled at the red fruit and harshly demanded why they had not brought back mushrooms, which, it appeared, he had sent them in search of. The joy died out of the faces of the twins, and they slunk into the
house, suddenly dull and stolid.
The wine in Andrew's glass slopped over the rim and spilled in a red stain on his blue and white jumper. This ugly, black man had called the boy Andrew. Could it be possible
All the way down the crooked trail, old Andrew stumbled in a daze. He had a son. Taller, straighter, finer looking even than Arturo Bolini, who had been to the Brother's School in San Francisco, where he had learned to keep accounts and write a beautiful hand. And Rosie, the girl, was his daughter. Rosie, who in looks far out- shone Julia Borlini. What would he not do for these children! In the can under the peach tree was gold enough to send young Andrew to the great university at Berkeley, if need be; to buy Rosie silk dresses, a gold chain with a dangling cross, a watch like Julia's.
Andrew's tiny cabin was in full view before it occurred to him that there were a number of things which might prevent an avowal of his pater- nity. He did not know whether Rosa was legally married to Raffo. Andrew had always distrusted the quick de- cree of Victoria's lawyer friend. Lay- ing claim to the children might only disgrace them. Then there was Peter to be reckoned with. Peter had an evil look, and if antagonized might prove an ugly factor in the case.
During the months that followed, Andrew learned that fatherhood was not unalloyed joy if one must stand helplessly by and see another mistreat and abuse one's children. Peter proved to be vicious and lazy, and it cut the old man to the heart to see young Andrew's slim shoulders bent to the task of earning the living for the four while Peter hunted, fished, idled and drank wine. Andrew's wrinkled face grew red with rage when he heard that Raffo compelled his wife and little Rosa to chop the stove-wood and drag it up the steep trail to the cabin, and beat them both besides.
Martinoni did what he could to ame- liorate the condition of Rosa and the children. He hired the boy to work
PATERNITY
507
on the creek with him, and many a gift of late fruit and vegetables An- drew, Jr., carried up the hill to Rosie, but the father did not dare offer the silk dresses and jewelry with which he longed to deck the girl. He gnashed his teeth impotently when at a gathering of his countrymen, he saw Julia Borlini nudge her sister to look at Rosie's coarse dress and ill-fitting shoes.
Bit by bit Andrew gathered proof of his relationship to Rosa and the twins. Chance references to the old country, photographs taken in Italy, names of friends and relatives almost forgotten, established his parenthood.
On one of Martinoni's rare visits to the Raffo household he discovered something which not only enraged but frightened him. Peter was permitting Chris Anderson to force his unwel- come attentions on the helpless Rosa. Anderson was fifty and unclean of body and soul, but because he had cat- tle and horses and much money Raffo regarded his suit with favor.
Martinoni, sick with terror, kept close watch on affairs at Raffo's. The old man meant to stop the marriage at any cost, but he was not yet ready to make a move. On Easter Sunday the good Father Brady would celebrate mass at Borlini's place, and he would lay the matter before the priest. Then he would act.
Easter came late that year, and the days that preceded it were warm and alluring. Andrew noted that the boy was distrait, preoccupied; that he worked spasmodically, often leaning on his shovel and staring up the creek at the mountains beyond. The old fellow blamed himself for keeping the lad at work so steadily and planned to give him a holiday. He was wonder- ing how to introduce the subject, as the two sat resting during the noon hour, when Andrew, Jr., who had been gaz- ing out over the creek, suddenly ex- claimed :
"By golly, I like to find some bur- ied money!"
The old man was filling his pipe, and the tobacco pouch fluttered from
his fingers and fell unheeded to the floor.
"Wat you say?"
"I say I like to find ole man Nel- son's buried money."
"Who tell you dat fool story?"
"Arturo."
"Ole man Nelson one ver-a poor man. Arturo 1-e-e-tle boy, only so big, when old Nelson die; he not know what he talk about."
"Oh, but o-dders say so too! Old Angelo down on the river say he know old Nelson haf money somewhere."
"Angelo lies. I know old man Nel- son ver-a well. When he get se-ek I go often and take him eggs and wine. Sometimes I shoot quail and take over. If I not do dat I tink he starve."
"Sure, he rather starve than spend his money! He w'at you call a miser." The boy came near adding: "Angelo says you're one too," but checked him- self and wound up somewhat lamely: "Some day I go hunt for dat money."
"You go fe-e-sh in the river, boy; you get more."
The old man puffed sturdily at his pipe. Finally he asked:
"W'at you do if you find some money?"
"I go to San Franc-e-esco to school like Arturo, then I come back and wear fine clothes and be a big man like Mr. Borlini."
"Humph! If you find any money, Peter — your fadder he take it away from you, boy. You not twenty-one."
"Not much! Peter Raffo only my step-fadder. I never see my own fad- der— he dead, I guess. If I find ole Nelson's money I take it straight to Mr. Borlini to keep for me. D'en my mudder she sign paper an' Peter no can touch. Mr. Borlini fix dat."
"I guess you tink M-e-e-ster Borlini know more den anybody roun' here."
"Sure I do."
"If you go way to school and wear fine clothes, I guess you forget your 1-e-e-tle sister, Rosie. You do nothing for Rosie?"
"Sure I will. I send Rosie to the convent."
508 OVERLAND MONTHLY
There was a little pile of quartz "Why don't you go dig under dat
specimens lying by the door. Andrew tree, Andrew?" selected one of these and aimed care- "Bah ! I no believe in dreams." fully before throwing it at a chipmunk But the next day he seemed a little
which was running about on the pine less positive, needles below. "Boy, I dream dat same dream las'
"Arturo say my s-e-e-ster the pret- night." tiest girl roun' here — maybe, if she go "Oh, Andrew, go dig under dat pine
way an' learn a lot an' come back with tree ! I bet you find some money." some nice dresses, maybe Arturo an' "No, no, dreams all foolishness." her get married. Den I be relation to On the following morning the boy
the Borlinis. Maybe I go there to live asked eagerly : and help run the ranch." "Andrew, w'at you dream 'bout las'
"You sure your ma-ma sign dat night?" paper?" "T'ree nights, now, boy, I dream dat
"You bet she sign it qu-e-e-k. She same dream. Always I go dat pine
no want Chris Anderson to marry tree in front of ole Nelson's cabin an'
Rosie." I dig an' dig ; always I find money."
The old man got up, walked to the "Andrew, it sure mus' be true ! T'ree
end of the porch and stood looking nights, always the same dream. Why
down at his sidehill garden. From the don't you go ?"
spring above, he had dug a little ditch Old Andrew shook his head stub- to carry water to his young onions and bornly. "I no waste my time. I tink lettuce. Part of the stream had been too much cheese in the spaghetti make diverted by a clod, and was washing funny dreams."
away the earth about the peach tree. But the boy could see that the old
Andrew descended the steps and care- fellow was disturbed. All day he was
fully dammed up the break, then he unsettled, restless, uneasy, threw a few shovelfuls of earth about The next day he was even more so,
the roots of the tree. When he re- but there was no one to observe him,
turned, he knocked the ashes from his for it was Sunday. He tried to read
pipe, laid it on the shelf inside the "LTtalia," threw it down, went into
door and said: the garden, came back and wandered
"I know Rafael Borlini a good many restlessly through the rooms. Finally,
year. I never know him cheat any- he picked up his gun, whistled to his
body." Then he grinned slyly, and dog and left the house. After he had
added : "Maybe you come back from gone a few rods, he looked back. The
San Francisco and marry Julia." little cabin stood darkly silent and
The boy rose and stretched his desolate in the hot sunshine — inex-
arms. "I tink we better quit talking pressibly lonely. He went on, not up
foolishness and go back to work." the hill past Raffo's, but down the trail
The next day was unusually warm, that followed the creek to Borlini's
and in the forenoon old Andrew leaned place.
on his shovel handle and mopped his Andrew found a number of his coun-
face vigorously with a red bandana. trymen seated on Borlini's porch, Giu-
"Boy, I haf funny dream las' night." seppe Camozzi, Emilio, Zerga, old An-
"W'at you dream?" gelo from the river, Steve Petroni and
"I dream I go to dat pine tree in several others. They greeted him
front of ole man Nelson's cabin, an' I noisily and Arturo rose and gave the
dig an' dig an' pretty soon I find old man his chair, seating himself on
money." the steps from whence he commanded
"Oh-ho, I fought you say ole man an unobstructed view of Indian Creek,
Nelson no haf money." the bridge that spanned it, and the
"I no tink he haf. I just tell you w'at trail that wound up the mountain oppo-
I dream." site. Presently he leaned forward.
YOUTH NEVER GOES UNTIL WE THRUST HIM OUT.
509
"Here comes Andrew Raffo. He's running. He's lost his hat. He's carrying something."
The group on the porch turned, mild- ly interested.
In a few minutes Andrew's silky, black head emerged from the bushes below the house, a second later he came into full view, his face white and tense, his brown eyes staring straight ahead. Against the bosom of his flan- nel shirt he clasped a cylindrical ob- ject. Without replying to Arturo's sal- utation, without looking to left or right he mounted the steps, walked to the table by the door, and deposited there- on a rusty tin can.
"Look! Look! I've found ole Nel- son's money."
Years afterward, Andrew was dis- cussing the incident with his brother- in-law.
"There is one point on which I have always been skeptical, Arturo."
"What is that?"
"As near as I can ascertain, old man Nelson died in 1897."
"Yes, it was the winter of the deep snow. I was a little fellow then, but I remember the men going to the fun- eral on snow shoes."
"Well, some of those twenties were coined as late as 1910."
YOUTH NEVER GOES UNTIL WE THRUST HI/A OUT
Spring and the song-birds go, And many lovely things —
Yet, though they come again, Youth stays, despite the snow, And to the young heart sings,
Careless of Age, as if she had been slain!
His name is Constancy;
His light shines from the eyes Of faces rough and worn. Ah, heart, grieve not, lest he, Before our awed surprise,
Go with the night, and we face Age at morn!
Youth never goes until
Our own words make him yearn To say: "I must depart." Spring and the summer spill Their beauty, and return,
But Youth, once gone, forever leaves the heart!
Edward H. S. Terry.
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The Airage
Charles W. Fettit
HE DIDN'T know any more about the desert than a coyote or jackrabbit did about the city. In fact, it was less than forty- eight hours since he, a tenderfoot from the East, had got off the train at Yuma, Arizona. Not the Yuma of to-day, but the old Yuma of thirty years ago, with its one-story, sunburned adobe build- ings, its population mostly Indians, Mexicans, a few whites, merchants, miners, prospectors, cow-boys and United States soldiers, for old Fort Yuma stood on a high bluff just across the river. Like other Arizona towns at that time, Yuma had its faro-bank, roulette wheel, monte, poker and other gambling games running wide open. The tenderfoot had stood around and watched the games until the fever to play had caught him. Then he bought a stack of chips from the faro bank and bucked the tiger. Losing there, he tried his luck at the roulette wheel, and, when he had gone dead broke, as he had seen several cowboys and miners do, consoled himself with the thought that he was becoming a Westerner and was sure some game sport. Later on, when he began to feel hungry and searched his pockets and couldn't even find the price of a meal, he thought perhaps he had played the part of a fool rather than that of a sport. However, he went to a pawnshop, where he raised a little over three dollars on his valise and overcoat.
At noon that day the thermometer that hung in the big dining room of the railroad eating house registered 127 degrees. As the tenderfoot was pay- ing for his supper he remarked that it had been an awful hot day.
"Yes," replied the clerk, "but a trifle
cooler than the day before when the thermometer had gone up to 130."
The tenderfoot strolled out onto the bridge, and, looking down into the muddy waters of the Colorado, he thought the thing out. He had lost all desire to be either a cowboy or miner. Whew! This country was too hot for him. He wasn't a hobo ; he had never beat his way on a train in his life. He wished he had bought his ticket through to California. Why not walk at night and rest at some station dur- ing the heat of the day?
Two hours later he passed El Rio. There the river turns and runs south- west while the railroad continues due west. As he entered the Colorado desert he began to really enjoy the walk, the pure, sweet air, the smell of the sage-brush, the strangeness of it all ; for the desert has a lure and fasci- nation all its own, and yet, while under the soft light of the moon, the desert is filled with mystery and dreamy ro- mance, the same desert, under the glare of the hot summer's sun or in the furnace breath of a scorching wind or sandstorm, writes a different story.
Midway between Pilot Knob and Mammoth Tank the tenderfoot stopped for a moment to take off his coat and carry it over his arm, for the sun was coming up early, coming up hot. He glanced south, and, seemingly not more than seven or eight miles distant, was a lake of water and back of it at a lit- tle higher elevation, rising almost phantom like out of the sands of the desert, was a good-sized town or city.
He was beginning to feel thirsty, and that lake of water certainly looked enticing; so he left the railroad track and started south over the sands. Af- ter he had been walking several hours,
I
UNI V
OF
THE MIRAGE 511
he thought he must have made a mis- red, ripe, juicy meat. He sat down take in calculating the distance of the beside it, and digging into it with his lake, for it seemel almost as far away hand he scooped out a large piece of as ever. As he traveled along, the the heart. He was about to place it heat and the long walk began to tell to his lips, when a slight rustling on him. He must stop and rest for a sound caught his ear. He looked up, few moments. He spread his coat out and his eyes were held and fascin- over a low sage brush, and as he laid ated at the sight of a large rattlesnake down and pillowed his head on his el- not more than two or three feet from bow, it made just shade enough to him, its body outstretched in graceful shelter his face from the glare of the curves, its head slightly lifted. With sun. He took out his cheap Water- its dull, beady eyes, it was looking at bury watch; it was six minutes to him in a fixed stare, and for fully a eleven. Of course, he hadn't any sleep minute's time (although it seemed the night before. He felt drowsy — more like an hour to the man) save for and then — well, he had reached the the lightning-like darting of its forked mysterious city of the desert. How tongue, the snake remained as motion- strangely quiet the city was; although less as though it had been carved into it was in the middle of the day, not a the landscape.
horse or wagon could be seen on the Then it slowly drew its body into street, nor a man, woman or child on a coil, raised its rattle tipped tail the sidewalk. Perhaps they were tak- with a buzz of warning, and drew ing a siesta as he had read they do in back its head to strike. But, as the Old Mexico during the middle of the snake moved, the charm was broken, day; but here was what he was looking The man sprang to his feet and blinked for, a drug store with its beautiful mar- his eyes in the dazzling sunlight ; but ble soda fountain. He took a coin out there was no snake to be seen, only a of his pocket, and jingled it on the harmless little lizzard that darted counter, but no one made his appear- frightened away. He turned and ance to wait on him. He took up the looked around; instead of a row of largest glass he could find, and put in cottonwood trees and the cornfield, he a dash of lemon, then touched the saw a low sage bush with his coat large spigot and filled it to the brim, spread over it. He took out his watch but it was not until he had drained the and looked at it. It was one minute contents of two glasses that his thirst to eleven. He had been asleep just was quenched. He left the coin lying five minutes. But where was the city on the counter and walked out and that he had seen from the railroad down the street. He must have walked track ? Gone ! Even the lake had dis- pretty fast, for already he found him- appeared. All he could see around self out in the country. He crossed him was a desolate waste of gray sand, through a row of cottonwood trees Then a memory that had been asleep and entered a cornfield. in his mind for years awoke. He re- Again he felt the terrible thirst. He membered such a long time ago, yes, remembered that when he was working it was even when he was a little boy, on the farm back home, husking corn, he had read that men went out on often they would come to a small patch prairies and deserts, and had some- of water melons, and they they would times seen an optical illusion called a stop and rest for a few moments and mirage — sometimes of cities, but more enjoy a melon. He wondered if he often of water, and, as they traveled could find a small patch or a vine toward the water it seemed to recede in this cornfield. As he crossed over from them, and, after luring them on into the next row he almost stumbled for miles, had vanished altogether, over a large watermelon. He picked Well, he must get back to the rail- it up, and then dropped it on the road track; but, now that he was be- ground. It burst open, revealing its wildered, which was north and which
512
OVERLAND MONTHLY
was south ? Well, he could retrace his own footprints; but the hot desert wind which had just commenced to puff and blow, had shifted the loose sand and obliterated his tracks. Well, to stay there was to perish, so he start- ed out in the direction he believed to be north. Really it was more west than north. As he traveled on, his eyes grew weary of looking at the glare of the sand. He sought to rest a mo- ment by looking up at the azure, but alas ! the tide was out. The waters of the sky had gone back to join the cool waters of the Pacific Ocean and left the heavens as barren as the grounds beneath, and the sun was the king of the desert above and the desert be- low.
The air ceased to move, save that it quivered a little in heat waves, and, as the wind was hushed, the silence deepened into the awful stillness of the desert, and the man could hear the beating of his heart and the faint crunch of the sand under his feet as he walked. But he couldn't under- stand why the sun should be so fierce and cruel. Once he stopped and shook his fist at it, but the sun only glared at him, and threatened to burn his eyes out, so he turned and walked on, but then — oh, well, it didn't matter any- way, because it was cool enough now, for he was back on the old farm.
The ground was white with snow. Only a few yards in front of him stood the little house where he was born. It was early in the evening; there was a light shining in the window, the door opened and his mother stepped out and beckoned for him to hurry. He wasn't a man, he was only a little boy; so he ran quickly to her and entered the house. In a jiffy he was in his high chair, seated at the table with his supper before him. He had a piece of brown bread in his hand; his little dog stood up on his hind legs and begged for a piece. As he reached around to hand it to him his elbow struck the lamp. Crash! In an in- stant the room was in flames. His mother gave a terrified scream, and then the house, his mother, the snow,
had vanished. He wasn't a little boy any more; he was a man, alone and lost, and walking on the hot desert sands.
He hadn't been asleep this time, so he couldn't have dreamed this. Mer- ciful heavens! Was this terrific heat driving him mad? Yes, it was only in his delirium that he had seen his old home. He would have laughed out loud, only he couldn't laugh, be- cause his tongue was so swollen; but, with his parched, dry lips, he smiled grimly to himself at the very idea of only one house burning up. Why, the sun had dropped out of the sky and set the whole world on fire! Everything was gone. Even the water was all burned up. There wasn't a drop of water in all the world to drink. Not even a drop, and yet he was so thirsty. What a fool he was to carry his coat around on such a hot day. He threw it down in disgust, but something felt heavy on his head. He took off his hat and looked at it as though it had been some strange thing that he had never seen before. Then he threw it away. Well, his head felt lighter now anyway. Why hadn't he thought to do that before. Now his feet seemed to drag and feel heavy. He stooped for a minute, unlatched and drew off his shoes and threw them away. Then he started to run, not in a straight line, but around and around in rings, then zig-zag crazily on for a short distance, and then again around and around in rings, and as he ran, he tore the shirt off his back, but he wouldn't throw that away. He'd save that to flag a train with when he got back to the rail- road tracks, but just then a strange and unlooked for thing happened to him. The ground came up and struck him in the face.
He uttered a smothered cry, and then lay still — so still — that a coyote slinking by stopped and sat down on his haunches and waited. Three or four buzzards idly drifting and float- ing around on the air currents, com- menced to slowly circle. The circles grew narrower. Would it be a race between them and the coyote to see
THE OLD REDWOOD SPEAKETH.
513
which would be first at the banquet? Just then the desert wind, as it ofttimes does, suddenly blew strong and began to lift and pile the sand against the body of the fallen man. Soon there was nothing to be seen save a low mound of sand. The coy- ote slunk away. The buzzards moved their wings lazily and ceased to cir- cle, but they stayed close within sight of that low mound of sand. For they
were wise old buzzards, they knew the desert well. They knew that either that night or the next night the change- able wind would shift the sand again and uncover the feast and so they would wait. The coyote, perhaps he also knew, and had only gone a short distance away to howl and howl, and soon he would return and bring other coyotes with him, and then they, too, would wait.
THE OLD REDWOOD SPEAKETH
Upon my head they've set a price,
Upon my days the Evil Eye; With ring-rule and the loaded dice
I've thrown my fate and I must die. Break, hour-glass, ere thy sands be run! Not mine, but Mammon's will, be done.
Ere Tyre and Ninevah was I,
Proud symbol of my noble clan; When Israel crossed the Red Sea dry
I was a joy to God and man. For all these ages did I wait For human love to meet this fate ?
"No persons have respect with God,"
So man the compliment repays, Dooms back to the primeval sod
The color-guards of nobler days — Earth's only living indices Of Ptolemy and Pericles!
Tho' power be his by stress or stealth,
Dares man the golden precept face? To civilize him up in wealth,
Decivilize him down in grace? Such is the price of low intrigue : Each forward mile a backward league.
Thus I, ambassador-at-large
To courts of Solomon and Kings, Stand here non grata at your charge —
On evil days with meaner things. Three thousand years an honored name: Can ye, my headsmen, boast the same?
So be it, vandal breeds! swing wide,
Strike deep and bring your landmarks low!
Judged be your mortal suicide,
Your unborn kin must bear the blow,
And on your graves hands yet unknown
For every chip shall cast a stone.
C. E. Barns.
Soldier Poets
Music From The Trenches That Never Dies By Loring Seavers
THESE are days when our poets, One, indeed, looks in vain for any
like Keats, die very young. No vainglorious line or execration of the
sooner is their music heard Huns.
than it is hushed in the world No wonder the neutral is inclined tumult. Just when the notes of the to marvel at the altruism of such war- singers have become full-throated and riors and to be moved by a poem like magical with new songs comes the that on the burial of a nameless Ger- silence, and they sing no more. man boy — "The Grave," by Private
It is one of the most awesome and Halliday:
beautiful circumstances of the conflict )
that just as our soldiers fall in the They dug his grave by lantern light,
battle line and more come forward to A nameless German boy:
fill their places, so do others take up A remnant from that hurried flight,
the singing of the soldier-poets who Lost, wounded, left in hapless plight
are slain. Thus it seems that the For carrion to destroy,
music from the trenches never really They thought him dead at first until
dies away. They felt the heart's slow beat:
The spirit of Wordsworth and Keats So calm he lay, serene and still,
and Shelley that was reborn in Rupert It seemed a butchery to kill
Brooke, "Edward Melbourne," and An innocence so sweet. Julian Grenfell — all three now gone —
is still living in men in the trenches In the new issue of the Poetry Re- to-day. view are printed several poems by sol-
This outpouring of song which is so diers, one or two of whom have been
significant of the lofty idealism that in- killed since they wrote,
spires the British armies to-day has Fleet Street knew Leslie Coulson
already made a profound impression well as a youth of a sweet and gentle
in quarters which have not been so nature with the soul of a poet, who
responsive to other influences on be- went to fight in the second month of
half of the causes of the Allies. the war, and was killed leading a
Mr. Galloway Kyle, the editor of the charge against the Germans in Octo-
Poetry Review, recently received a ber last. Leslie Coulson was one of
letter from a distinguished American those rare spirits who make no ene-
reviewer, who declared that the circu- mies on this earth and who are never
lation of a book like "Soldier Poets — known to say a hard thing about any-
Songs of the Fighting Men" (Erskine one. Yet he became a sergeant and
Macdonald) in the United States is a fine soldier. Here are his last verses,
doing more good than many Blue- "But a short time to live." books in the presentation of the British
case. This American was impressed Our little hour — how swift it flies
by the noble aspirations of the fight- When poppies flare and lilies smile ;
ing men — the entire absence of jingo- How soon the fleeting minute dies,
ism. Leaving us but a little while
SOLDIER POETS
515
To dream our dream, to sing our song, To pick the fruit, to pluck the flower, The Gods — They do not give us long — One little hour.
Our little hour — how short it is
When Love with dew-eyed loveli- ness Raises her lips for ours to kiss
And dies within our first caress. Youth flickers out like windblown
flame,
Sweets of to-day to-morrow sour, For Time and Death, relentless, claim
One little hour.
j
Our little hour — how short a time
To wage our wars, to fan our fates, To take our fill of armored crime, To troop our banner, storm the gates. Blood on the sword, our eyes blood- red, Blind in our puny reign of power, Do we forget how soon is sped One little hour.
Our little hour — how soon it dies;
How short a time to tell our beads, To chant our feeble Litanies,
To think sweet thoughts, to do good deeds. The altar lights grow pale and dim,
The bells hang silent in the tower — So passes with the dying hymn Our little hour.
It was like Coulson to sing of "good" rather than "great" deeds.
Shortly Erskine Macdonald will be publishing a collection of about twenty-four of his poems — they will be a valuable addition to the volumes by soldier poets.
A premonition that death is very near seems to have inspired more than one of the poets in their last poems. Here is the final verse of "Before Ac- tion," by Edward Melbourne — the late Lieutenant W. N. Hodgson, M. C, as printed in "Soldier Poets":
I that on my familiar hill,
Saw, with uncomprehending eyes
A hundred of thy sunsets spill Their fresh and sanguine sacrifice,
Ere the sun swings his noonday sword Must say Good-bye to all of this : —
By all delights that I shall miss, Help me to die, O Lord.
Corporal Harold John Jarvis, in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, is at pains to show that every sacrifice is worth making for the cause he is fight- ing for:
If England calls this day — With yet one aim unwon, Of all aims just the one Far dearer than the rest To woo and win the best Thing that the world can give — The Gift of Love — To live I would not wish.
If England calls this day — Then shall I die that she May live in Liberty — That she may still be great To rise above blind Hate Of Foes — Her Flag unfurled, God's England to the world For aye to be.
An almost prayerful humility per- vades many of these poems. This is how "A Soldier's Litany," by Lieu- tenant "Richard Raleigh," closes:
And when night's shadows round us
close, God of battles succor those, Those whose hearts shall ever burn For loved ones never to return,
Lord of Hosts, we cry to Thee, Livera nos Domine!
Next to Rupert Brooke's now im- mortal lines, perhaps the best poem that expresses the soldier-poet's pas- sion for England has come from Lieu- tenant Geoffrey Howard:
Her seed is sown about the world. The seas
For Her have path'd their waters. She is known
In swamps that steam about the burn- ing zone,
And dreaded in the last white lands that freeze.
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
For Her the glory that was Nineveh's Is naught: the pomp of Tyre and
Babylon Naught: and for all the realms that
Caesar won — One tithe of hers were more than all
of these.
And she is very small and very green,
And full of little lanes all dense with flowers
That wind along and lose themselves between
Mossed farms and parks, and fields of quiet sheep.
And in the hamlets where her stal- warts sleep
Low bells chime out from old elm- hidden towers.
A new arresting voice that comes from a naval dockyard is that of Eg- bert Sandford. He talks like this in "At the Top of the Town" :
God, here I am —
Right in the heart of the Real,
And the Sham.
— Strange truths to tell:
First — Streets of Heaven By suburbs of Hell. Sainthood and Sin — Parading their best . . . their worst? . . . Covered in . . .
Full-throated swears —
Some strengthened with curses —
Some sweetened with prayers.
Hovels, fun-folked: Where Love, Lust, Longing Run riot — uncloaked;
God, here I am —
Right in the heart of the Real,
And the Sham.
There have just been published in New York the poems of Alan Seeger,
a young American, who enlisted in the French Foreign Legion and was killed in battle on July 4th — Independence Day. His muse, exalted by the life he led in the glorious ranks of our Ally, in the following lines expresses a fatalism which is perhaps character- istic of the fighting race with whom he fought and died :
I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade;
When spring comes back with rustling
shade And apple blossoms fill the air — I have a rendezvous with Death, Where spring brings back blue days
and fair. It may be he shall take my hand And lead me into his dark land, And close my eyes and quench my
breath ; It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill
When spring comes round again this
year And the first meadow flowers appear. God knows 'twere better to be deep Pillowed on silk and scented down, Where Love throbs out in blissful
sleep, Pulse right to pulse, and breath to
breath, Where hushed awakenings are dear —
But I've a rendezvous with Death, At midnight in some flaming town, When spring trips north again this
year, And I to my pledged word am true, I shall not fail that rendezvous.
Such songs as these will make up the "golden treasury" of the songs of our soldiers — one of the beautiful heri- tages of this war.
Fatty Reed
By Katherine Wakeman Cooper
(All Rights Reserved)
IT IS MY great privilege to be al- lowed to undertake a tribute to Patty Reed Lewis, a member of the famous Dormer party, known and revered by all Pioneers, Native Sons and Daughters.
It is fitting that I should contribute this article about her, feeble though it be, for she was my mother's girl- hood friend and a life-long friend to me, but I take the task up with mis7 givings, as I know my pen is too weak to set forth the virtues of this noble woman, so I bring to my assistance two great poets, their words best describe her : "A perfect woman nobly planned to warn, to comfort and command." "When pain and anguish wring the brow, a ministering angel thou." For whoever has come in contact with this little woman acknowledges the power she has for good; small in stature great in gifts.
There have been many errors com- mitted in California history, none more erroneous than the Little Donner party, for it was Mr. James Frazier Reed, Mrs. Lewis' father, who organized the expedition and fitted it out ; late though the recognition be, those who know now call it the Reed Donner party. I asked Mrs. Lewis how the mistake oc- curred, and she said it had been called the Donner party because a number of the Donners died up there; the lake also took their name.
I have listened to many tales from the lips of Patty Reed, and through them all I instinctively perceive the love of home and family, the love of country, the great love of California, the love of the Native Sons and Daughters, a kind friend to them she is, pity for the sick and helpless, and
to the stranger a hearty hand shake and good will.
The dark days of the Donner party are looked back upon not with horror or dread, but with the thought that the kind hand of Providence provided for them in their extremity. The Native Sons and Daughters here honor her every Christmas; this year the Native Daughters sent her a bouquet of car- nations on Christmas day, and the Na- tive Sons sent a committee of three to visit her on New Year's day; one car- ried a note from the Parlor, another a cut-glass vase, and a third a beautiful bouquet of orchids.
Patty Reed was but a child of eight years when the expedition started out from Springfield, 111., in April, 1846, to reach the foreign lands of Califor- nia, but her memory is startlingly per- fect as to those events, even to de- tails, and as I sat and listened to the wondrous tale from her own lips, the picture passed before me as vividly as the motion picture screen could have shown it, and I remained wrapped in interest for many hours, for it took that time in the telling of it, but for want of space I shall have to be more con- cise than it pleases me.
Mr. James Frazier Reed was im- pelled to take this trip by the condition of his wife's health, which at that time was so precarious that a change of scene and climate was imperative.
By the time the expedition was ready to start it had gathered a nucleus of eighty souls; meeting George and Ja- cob Donner one day, he was asked by them to unfold his plans, and when they were disclosed, they signified intention to join the party; he told them he would be ready to start in
518 OVERLAND MONTHLY
about nine months, and it took about ters. Finally the little spring was that time to complete his preparations, found near Marysville, and an old Mr. Reed's family consisted of Mr. man consented to plow up his fields and Mrs. James Frazier Reed, their for twenty-five dollars to try and find children, Virginia Reed, known to her the cottonwood coffin if it had resisted friends as Puss Reed; Martha Reed, the ravages of time, but he died be- affectionately called Patty Reed; fore the effort was made, and Mrs. James and Thomas K. Reed, also Lewis found so many difficulties in the Grandma Keyes, who was in very deli- way that she finally was obliged to cate health at this time, and for that abandon the plan with great regret, reason Mr. Reed thought it best for When they reached Fort Hall, they her to remain in Springfield, but she found at a place where they stopped desired to be with them as long as for water that Mr. Hastings had left possible, and it was so arranged. a note in a cleft stick advising the corn- Mr. Reed had a wagon fitted out for ing party that if they would take the her and his wife's comfort, it was cut-off instead of the much used Ore- divided in two compartments, with gon trail they would save about four comfortable beds, the one in the back hundred miles. This would bring them for Grandma Keyes and the two girls, to the California trail. This seemed and the one in front for Mrs. Reed and feasible, yet it was their undoing, for the two boys; steps were at the side they had not gone one-half hour be- and a stove inside for warmth. fore they began to cut their way Grandma Keyes seemed better at through brush and timber, and this first, but by the time they had reached caused them to be thirty days late, and a place named by Mr. Reed, Alcove therefore they could not avoid the Springs, in Kansas, she became worse snows as they expected, while other and died. parties who took the old trail got They had neither coffin nor anything through without difficulty. This road available in which to bury her, so Na- they blazed is now the only road into ture was called upon, and a cottonwood the Salt Lake Basin, tree was hewed down, split in two and They had water for forty miles, but hollowed out, her body placed therein by this new road it was eighty miles and the halves bolted together, and before they found any, and they were they buried her there in the wilder- in the desert when their water gave ness, and built a log cabin over her out.
grave with an inscription cut in sand- Mr. Reed started to look for water, stone to mark it, which was correctly but before he went, he told his men done, as they had a stonecutter with to unhitch but not unyoke the oxen, them. Patty Reed says it was the that they would find water for them- greatest grief to her to have her selves, but his orders were disobeyed; grandmother resting alone in that wil- the oxen were unyoked, and finally derness, and that night she prayed most of them disappeared ; it was sup- most earnestly: "Dear God, watch posed the Indians acquired them. Mr. over and protect dear Grandmother, Reed was now in difficulty, as the and don't let the Indians dig her up." greater part of their means of trans- She has never forgotten this sorrow, portation had vanished, and he real- and some years ago she proceeded to ized that the only thing to do was to carry out her dearest wish to bring the cache as much of their belongings as remains of her grandmother to the for- they could possibly spare, and this eign lands of California. Accordingly was done accordingly; he then made she wrote to the postmaster at Manhat- arrangements with others of the party tan, near where she supposed the grave to assist him in transporting his fam- to be, and asked him to publish her ily, and divided three years' supply letter that some one might locate the among them, most of them having only place. She received about sixty let- a month's supply of provisions.
PATTY REED
519
One day two Indians appeared be- fore them. Mr. Reed tried to concili- ate them, and asked them by signs how far it was to water, but only re- ceived a grunt in reply. He then knew them to be hostile, and saw others approaching. Turning to his wife, he asked for his spyglass, that he might see how many were coming. As he pulled it out, all disappeared as if by magic ; the spyglass was thought t>y them to be a hostile weapon.
Mr. Reed finally left the party with four or five days' provisions, to go ahead and get supplies; his objective point was Sutter's Fort, which he reached with great difficulty; Captain Sutter immediately agreed to send sup- plies, which he did; he also sent Mr. Stanton with two Indians who joined the party beyond Reno. The Indians were to guide them, but when it snowed three feet an hour on the 4th of November, the Indians lost their head and took them around the wrong side of the lake. When they found they were making no progress, they decided to return to the cabin, they had passed. It was built by the Mur- phy family, and occupied by Mose Shellan the previous year. Other cabins were then erected. Mr. Breen cut the first stump for wood for his, and this is now the site for the Don- ner monument.
The cabins were situated in this way: Reed and Graves cabin, the site of the Donner cross, together; Breen cabin one-half mile nearer the lake, Murphy cabin one-half mile northwest of Breen cabin; Donner cabin eight miles further east.
There were about eighty in the party when it started from Springfield, 111. About forty reached California.
Mr. Dolan had some meat, about one pound. Mrs. Reed bought it from him; in addition to the money, he wanted Mr. Reed's watch and Royal Arch Mason's jewel, and a steer. Mr. Reed was the first Mason to cross the mountains; it was supposed that Mr. Dolan died or was killed, as Mr. John- son later bought the watch and jewel from some Indians. It was afterwards
restored to the family, and is now in Mrs. Lewis' possession.
Mrs. Reed and her children were now in desperate condition, and would have starved except for two things: the little dog that they had with them made several meals and helped to sus- tain life; the children were told that Mr. Breen had gone out with his gun, and thus they were not aware that lit- tle Cash had given his life for them. Mrs. Reed had bought some hides with which to cover her cabin and keep out the cold. Gradually one by one they disappeared, as she was forced to use them for food. She burnt the hair off in the fire and then boiled them into a kind of glue.
In the meantime, Mr. Reed had left Sutter's Fort for San Francisco, then called Yerba Buena, to seek further assistance. He reached San Jose, when they tried to enlist him to fight the Mexicans, but he resisted, saying he was seeking relief for his starving family and could not be delayed; fin- ally he consented to take part in the battle of Santa Clara, when he acted as lieutenant, and he wrote a descrip- tion of the battle on the pommel of his saddle, and continued to Yerba Buena ; when he reached there, Commodore Hull consented to send relief to the starving immigrants, and men were paid four dollars a day to enlist in their behalf. The Commodore sent an order by Mr. Reed to Mr. Yount at Napa for meat and flour; Mr. Yount had a presentiment of starving immi- grants, and at the time the order reached him had Indians drying meat and grinding flour.
While Mr. Reed was gone some of the party got impatient and started to reach California, not realizing that they were then in that State. In the party were Mr. Graves, Mr. Rice, Mr. Foster, Mr. Fosdick, Mr. Dolan and five women. All the women got through finally, and two men ; they had not gone far at this time, however, be- fore they were in trouble, and becom- ing discouraged, returned to camp.
Patty and Tom had been left in the Breen cabin while little Jim was to re-
520
OVERLAND MONTHLY
main at the Graves cabin. One day little Jim, who was at another cabin, started towards them, when little Tom ran out to meet him a man named Keyesburg threatened to shoot him, saying he would make a good meal. Patty ran out and rescued him, and he afterwards stayed inside.
None of the Reed family ate human flesh, though most of the others did.
On the 7th of February the first re- lief party consisting of Mr. Glover and six men reached the Donner camp; they were to bring out all who could walk; Mrs. Reed and four children started out, but Tom and Patty soon gave out and were taken back to camp. Mr. Glover had given Patty a salt sack of flour and meat for herself and bro- ther; she was to make a spoonful of broth each day, but this was taken from them, and all they had to eat was the remaining portion of the hide which had not been used. They were so exhausted when Mr. Reed, with the second relief party, found them, that he was just barely able to resuscitate them.
Lieutenant Selim Woodworth com- manded the third relief party.
They were first taken to a rendez- vous, where there were two French- men, John Droe and Dufore, in charge of government supplies; and then they stayed at Squire St. Clair's one month.
Mr. Yount sent a team for them from Napa, where they stayed for some time. On the 4th of July they had a barbecue, and cake. Mrs. Reed made the cake.
Those unfortunate enough to lose their lives at Donner Lake were, first, Bayliss Williams, on the 17th of De- cember, followed by Jacob and George Donner, their wives and five children of Jacob.
Mrs. Graves died the first night out; that night Patty Reed heard her say that she had dropped it, meaning that she had buried some money at the
foot of a tree ; several years ago a son of Mrs. Graves was searching for it, but could not locate the spot. About that time some woodchoppers found a piece of money at the foot of a tree, and examination disclosed the rest of it.
Several years ago Mrs. Patty Reed Lewis and Mrs. Virginia Reed Murphy attended as special guests a conven- tion of Native Sons assembled at Truckee, and were taken by Mr. Mc- Glashan to the scene of the Donner Camp, the first time since those mem- orable days. He asked Mrs. Lewis if she thought she could recognize the spot where Starve Camp had been; she said she was sure she could, and did accordingly, the split rock assist- ing her memory. "There," she said, "is where Starve Camp was, by that split rock," and Mr. McGlashan re- plied: "And there by the root of that tree is where we found the money."
There are living to-day the follow- ing members of the Reed-Donner party : Mrs. Virginia Reed Murphy, re- siding at Capitola, Santa Cruz County; Mrs. Patty Reed Lewis, also at Capi- tola; Mr. Tom Reed, Capitola; four Donner girls, Mrs. Jean App, Knight's Landing, Mrs. Frances Wilder of By- ron; Elitha Wilder, Eliza Donner Houghton, Hynes, Los Angeles County — and one of the Breens, Mrs. McMa- han of San Francisco.
Recognition is generally delayed, sometimes fatally so. "De mortuis nil nisi bonum," but I think to speak good of the living is more to the point. The virtues of the pioneer father have been known, but those of the pioneer mother have been obscured by his greatness. At last they receive recog- nition through the Pioneer Mother's Monument, a worthy tribute to the mothers of our State. Would that Patty Reed Lewis had been its model, a woman who combines all the attri- butes of her race, courage, nobility and kindness.
Boyhood Days on the Banks of the Sacramento in the Seventies
By Rockwell D. Hunt
1 COUNT myself happy to be num- bered among those who were born in Sacramento, the Capital City of the Empire State of the Pacific.
The event occurred far too late to admit any claim on my part to being a real Argonaut: yet it has always seemed to me that I have succeeded in imbibing a goodly measure of the pio- neer spirit, since my father came to California in the gold days by way of "the Isthmus," my mother a little later following the ox-team "across the Plains," and my own rearing was in an atmosphere vibrant with the echoes of early days.
At the tender age of but a few weeks I was taken, along with older brothers, my father and mother, to the home of my boyhood, along the banks of the Sacramento, eight miles south of the city. The little country settlement — it is scarcely more even to-day — is called Freeport, and its most conspicu- ous feature, fit monument to the name, was the great 120-foot liberty pole, erected during the Grant-Colfax cam- paign, surmounted by a curious red- colored weather cock. This magnifi- cent flag-pole — now long since brought low by time and the elements — was the pride and wonder of us boys in those years following the Civil War, admir- ably serving as a landmark for miles round about.
In addition to this central attraction the humble settlement boasted its blacksmith, boot-and-shoe maker, inn- keeper, and — most consequential of all — grocer, postmaster and saloon keeper combined in one rather pompous per-
sonage. Each had his individual his- tory; each was of institutional import- ance to the neighborhood boys.
But the one commanding presence in the days of my boyhood was the sa- cred river itself. "If ever river de- served idolatry, adoration," to borrow a phrase from the Poet of the Sierras, "it was this generous Sacramento River of ours — the river that saved the nation with its gold." Moreover, it re- quires no Herodotus to tell us that a vast empire is the gift of this, the California Nile. The dear old Sacra- mento, broad and constant, was the companion of my childhood days : that it wielded a subtle influence upon my life I cannot entertain a doubt.
The backward glance now shows a goodly group of pioneer farmers, neighbors of my father, up and down the east bank of the willow lined Sac- ramento. The Hack's, Lufkin's, Hu- ber's, Johnson's, Hollister's, Runyon's, Green's, and many others, form a list of notables in the eyes of my earlier days whose solid worth has not been diminished by the maturer vision of manhood's estate. Often have I in later days marveled at the dogged per- sistence and untiring industry of those sturdy men in the long and dubious fight for mastery of their fertile acres during the years when the hydraulic mining along the tributaries of the Up- per Sacramento sent its millions of tons of "slickens" and debris down the once clear current to fill the river bed and cause flood after flood to run riot in the lower valley.
But to a healthy boy the "high water times" were full of the charm of var-
522
OVERLAND MONTHLY
ied excitement. What mattered it if the faithful cows, carefully stanch- ioned in the barn, were found some winter morning standing knee-deep in the flood waters that had risen over- night, and must needs be hurried off to the distant foothills? What if fences and bridges were ruthlessly swept away and the season's planting ruined beyond repair? What if for weeks the only vehicle capable of run- ning on the county road was the in- dispensable rowboat, and the levees were patrolled night and day by anx- ious men armed with rifle and shovel, on the look-out for a fresh "break?" It was fun for the boy.
A good rowboat was the sine qua non: ditto a shot-gun. Think of the exhilaration of rowing, with clear keel, over the submerged fields — fences and all — ever on the watch for 'coons and skunks on unsubmerged tops of fence posts, and for jack-rab- bits and squirrels imprisoned on bits of levee or knobs of land. How inter- esting to come upon huge gopher snakes or "blue racers" coiled tightly about some isolated fence post whose base was surrounded by an expanse of many acres of flood waters.
And then to think of the feathered game: the undrained swamp lands stretching along the Sacramento were in their season a veritable hunter's paradise. From zig-zagging jack- snipe to graceful swan and high-cir- cling sand-hill crane, myriads of cov- eted birds attracted the adventurous Nimrod. Who of those days will ever forget Beach's Lake, or the Willow Slough, or the far famed "Pocket?" No school room instruction in nature study was necessary to distinguish the many varieties of ducks, from the whizzing blue-winged teal to stately canvasback or swift black-jack; every boy acquired such knowledge very much as the "husky" schoolboy of to- day masters the intricacies of modern football, altogether without conscious effort. Full well did he know the call of the "honker," the gray goose, and the brant, even though perchance nightfall had shut out from view the
birds in their flight; likewise he knew which species of curlew was good to eat; he was not deceived into mistak- ing the ubiquitous mudhen for a real duck; he unerringly recognized the meadow mush-room which his city cousin could never be quite sure was not a noxious toadstool.
In these latter days, when the game laws set up, as it were, a strong pre- sumption against shooting anything not specifically permitted, it must be difficult for a red-blooded boy to un- derstand and appreciate the liberty of action in that time when the general presumption favored shooting any- thing not specifically forbidden. And the only thing that could at all com- pensate for not owning a faithful muz- zle-loading shotgun was an older bro- ther who did own one. For him the youngster would be an abject and obedient slave on hunting days, fol- lowing him like a dog, carrying the quarry, and hoping ever that he might be given at least "just one shot." My personal recollections of such happy serviture, as retriever to an older bro- ther, are vivid. Many a time have I dashed into the muddy and icy waters of the lake, with breeches tightly rolled almost to my hips, to capture and bring to land a duck wounded by the proud hunter shooting from the shore.
The bags of game that were some- times brought in were marvelous to behold. No bag limit prescribed by law in those halcyon days ! Wondrous tales were told of the slaughter of wagon loads of geese, and of the num- bers brought down by a single charge from a number four "blunderbus." But duck hunting was keener sport than shooting geese. It was in some localities necessary to herd the geese from the fields just growing green with the young and tender grain, where in truth they often proved a real pest. The tantalizing part of this was that the sagacious goose invariably learned to detect the herder who carried a gun, and to pay correspondingly little heed to the unarmed. Of this form of morning exercise the lady who
BOYHOOD DAYS 523
now prepares my meals has very dis- gripped by rope and spike, so great
tinct remembrance — for herding geese was the force of the swift current that
on horseback was a task that often fell it required all haste and heavy pulling
to the lot of the farmer's little daugh- to bring the boat with its tow safely to
ter, over in Solano County. land on our own river bank. Many a
When the river was high, pleasure great drift proved too formidable a
was often combined with profit in the freight and was allowed haughtily to
catching of drift-wood. He was an un- pursue its course, tempting other and
fortunate lad that did not possess a possibly more fortunate crews as it
good long "pike-pole," with which to sped onward.
secure the pieces of wood that floated Each winter left us a supply of good within his reach, or lodged on his wood which, supplemented by cut- "drift." Far more exciting than this, tings from our own oak and willow however, was the practice of pulling timber, made it totally unnecessary to out into the main current in the full- purchase fuel for home use. It is still manned rowboat. By full-manned I a matter of something like boyish mean that two sturdy youths plied the pride to recall how the group of bro- four oars, a third acted as lookout in thers, during a part of one season, the bow, while the fouth, seated in the caught and worked up for the market stern, managed the rudder and cap- seven cords of stove wood, the re- tured the bulk of the wood. It was ceits from the sale of which (being thus that I, on many a happy occasion, among our first independent earnings) in the dawning days of youth, made paid for certain coveted sets of pho- one in the quartet of brothers. Ex- tographs of farmer boys, perience had early taught the wisdom While the flood-time and the high of rowing up-stream a half mile or water brought excitement and moving more close in along the bank where incidents without number, I would be the current was moderate: then we loath to admit that the pleasures of launched forth into the middle of the the summer were one whit less than great, swift-running river, yellow with those of winter, along the banks of the "slickens" from the placer mines. All Sacramento. Who of those days can the strength of the oarsmen was re- ever forget the old buckeye tree that quired to hold to a given point amid- sent its branches far out over the stream. The third and fourth parties river's edge at the neighborhood's fav- of the crew began at once to reap the orite swimming place ! And was there harvest and fill the boat with the drip- ever a boy or a girl within a score of ping wood. Now it came in the form miles round-about whose initials were of isolated blocks, with good-sized not carved thereon Then, standing pebbles deeply imbedded, hinting of immediately adjacent, there was the the far-distant sluice-box, or of billets more lofty sycamore whose lower of pine, oak, willow and cottonwood; limb, parallel to the water's surface, anon a great tree, with banners flying, seemed specially grown as a spring- that had been uprooted by a mountain board for the venturesome young torrent perhaps hundreds of miles diver. Some rods further down the away; again — richest harvest of all — stream were the willows, with here floating majestically along came great and there a wild grape vine climbing masses of piling and beams wrenched upward and clinging to the very top; from some bridge or wharfage that then came the massive oaks, one of had been ruthlessly swept from its which — a fallen monarch for years — place by the angry on-rush of the formed a great drift, to circle which flood waters. In the quick struggle taxed the strength and courage of the to capture such a prize the half-mile best young swimmers, or more gained by rowing up-stream But the crowning achievement was proved indeed a boon. For by the reached when, for the first time, a boy time the great logs were securely found himself able to swim from shore
524 OVERLAND MONTHLY
to shore across the. wide Sacramento, the steamer had rounded the "bend," How well I yet remember the proud which sent us scampering up the wind- day when I ventured forth, accompan- mill tower in gleeful eagerness to ied by the reassuring rowboat, and catch the first glimpse of the river pal- succeeded in buffeting the current and ace. Happiness was supreme when, the river, finally reaching the drooping in response to the waving and cheers boughs of the overhanging willows on from the windmill and levee the fav- the opposite bank. orite steamboat would swing close in
Like all small boys of Yankeedom to our shore, and then, ah then! the
we had a fondness for earning trifling calliope began to play! amounts of money; the means most In those days also the river traffic
commonly employed during the "good in freight was of huge proportions. We
old summer time" was the frequent used to marvel at the amount of grain,
expedition along the river's edge in especially wheat, that passed by our
search of bottles and corks that had river bank; but when we grew large
been washed ashore by the waves of and strong enough to assist in the
chance. What a delight to wade along loading, and observed the golden grain
knee-deep in the yellow "slickens," brought to the levee from a hundred
when to the natural love of innocent fertile farms, our wonder ceased,
adventure was thus added the prospect There was something inspiring about
of selling our finds for a few cents or watching a stanch river boat like the
trading them for the little "prize- "San Joaquin No. 2" hauling a string
boxes" of candy, so alluring to that of three or even four great barges
generation of children. deeply laden with thousands of tons
And then those wonderful steam- of wheat destined for the markets of boats ! Not merely the light-draft the world by way of the Golden Gate, stern-wheelers, but the large, palatial But the boyish joys peculiar to the side-wheelers — some of them with happy spring-time must not be over- great walking-beams — that competed looked. Memories of glad spring for the passenger traffic between the crowd and jostle one another: only a metropolis at the bay and the Capital few may be uttered, many must re- City. It is a happy memory to recall main unexpressed, their names now — the "S. M. Whip- It was a great day when by virtue pie," the "Amador," the "Chin Du of the genial warmth of old Sol we Wan," the "Chrysopolis," the "Sacra- were permitted to throw aside for the mento," the "Yosemite," "El Capitan," season our shoes and stockings and and the rest of them. And a pity it enjoy the touch of Nature that makes was that these splendid vessels had all boys kin.
to be taken from the river, as its bed With the approach of the month of
filled, year after year with "slickens," May our eager thoughts were turned
and navigation by anything but very toward the Grangers' Picnic: were
light-draft boats became impossible there ever, anywhere else, such won-
during the summer season of low derful occasions of festivity as the an-
water. nual May Day picnic at Beach's
With us the "Whipple" was a gen- Grove? That was the day of days,
eral favorite, and for two reasons — when we were willingly waked and
because of her splendid speed, almost called early. Mother had already
uniformly out-distancing her competi- baked the great chicken pie, both wide
tor in the frequent river races ; and be- and deep; for the picnic dinner was
cause of that marvelous instrument, the feast of feasts, and her piece de
the steam caliope, on her deck, play- resistance was the chicken pie, ample
ing "The Girl I Left Behind Me," and for the group of families that thus
other popular airs. What wondrous yearly united in joyous conclave. The
music that was to our boyish ears! ice-cream, the golden oranges, the
And sometimes audible long before merry-go-round, the brass band music,
BOYHOOD DAYS 525
and best of all, the afternoon sports here and mar the present picture of and races — pleasures with which the joyous boyhood days. Pleasanter far children of to-day are surfeited — of it is, as with the unfailing exuberance such were the allurements to the unso- of youth, to cherish only the happy phisticated country boy on the banks memories, which indeed may easily be of the Sacramento back in the seven- held to have crowded out into the Uni- ties, bo of everlasting forgetfulness every-
Then came haying ^ time — not al- thing of minor key or of sombre hue.
ways filled with unmixed pleasure to * * * *
the older brothers needed in field or The other day it was my fortune to
hay mow, not wholly free from the revisit the scenes of early childhood
song of the pestiferous gnat, nor yet at dear old Freeport. How all has
without its painful memories of the changed.
grind-stone to us younger ones, yet The old homestead that in days of
withal a happy, busy, rollicking time yore faced the river and was fronted
on the farm. The search for birds' by that beautiful flower garden (fra-
nests in the meadow was rewarded grant of memory) — the handiwork of
with many an interesting find — nests a devoted mother — is but a precious
of many varieties, from gold-finch to remembrance: the shrill whistle and
valley quail, and from quail to mal- clanging bell of the locomotive offer
lard duck and squawking bittern. sufficient explanation. Gone is the
A favorite pastime was to follow apple tree that stood not far from the closely behind the mowing machine, flag pole, and faithfully furnished its ever on the look-out for nests, especi- juicy red astrachans to the boys year ally those of the wild duck, which after year, always so early in the sea- were easily located when the approach son; and the sugar pear tree, where of the machine drove the mother bird the saucy linnets vied with the boys to reluctant flight. And what could be for the first ripening fruit; the lovely more engaging than the spirited chase oak grove is no more, and the "little after a flock of young wild ducks grove," which had always seemed a headed for lake or river! The chase favorite nesting place for the birds, was all the more exciting if perchance A solitary stroll down along the there was handy by the light-draft river bank discloses no overhanging "duck-boat," which furnished its full buckeye tree, with its myriad of quota of adventure, in summer and carved initials; the lofty sycamore is winter, in lake and river. gone ; the giant oaks are as if they had
Neither time nor space will permit never been. The river bank itself me to continue. The apparently sim- seems cruelly and unnaturally muti- ple and uneventful life of the farmer lated, the sloping water-front thrown boy on the banks of the Sacramento back upon a huge levee to afford a was, after all, neither simple nor dull solid bed for the encroaching railroad. — it was filled with well-nigh endless In the river, instead of the side-wheel- variety, affording opportunity for ers- that made such powerful appeal to countless activities and a wealth of the boyish imagination, with wonder- wholesome pleasures. Every season working walking-beams and all, are of the year yielded distinctive experi- noted now the stoutly built tug, the ences — all dropped invisible riches in- great dredger, and the pepper-pop- to young lives. ping motor boat ; but also an improved
To be sure, there were hardships type of stern wheeler for passengers
and deprivations, there was the disci- as well as freight,
pline of early toil and the absence of Out in the fields the mile race-track
many blessings that to-day are count- has long since passed ; the great patch
ed mere commonplaces; but that is of willows, which had been a won-
another story — such evil portents must drous field for exploration for many
not bs suffered to obtrude themselves a boy, has years ago succumbed to the
526
OVERLAND MONTHLY
woodman's axe; and even the upper lake, fringed by many acres of tall tules — the scene of unnumbered win- ter hunts and exciting summer fires — has virtually yielded itself an unwill- ing sacrifice to the better drainage of a more "scientific" age.
And the old boys of the seventies are not there now. Their parents — that roll of worthies of forty years ago — have all crossed the great di- vide, my own father of powerful frame the last of all; and they themselves are widely scattered by their respec- tive callings. Some of them have died. Was it an indication of weak- ness that my heart secretly yearned for a momentary restoration of the things that were, for a taste of the companionships of my early child- hood?
But no — not all is changed. Twitter- tering birds from neighboring tree- tops still announce the break of day: the note of the linnet and the oriole, of the lark and the gold-finch are yet true to type. The same gorgeous sun- rise gladdens the opulent valley that has become an inland empire. Out in the meadow it is springtime again: colts and calves are gamboling as of long ago.
Best of all, yonder continues to flow
the sacred river, pouring out the bless, ing of riches to all the people. If the buck-eye and the sycamore are gone, the great dyke gives added security against overflow; if the jungle of early days, with its bounty of wild black- berries and grapes, is gone forever, in its place are the fertile fields of fine alfalfa and richly laden orchards of pears, peaches and cherries; if the side-wheelers do not ply the river's waters, neither is the debris permitted now to clog the river bed, and the presence of the giant dredger gives prophecy of even better days for nav- igation.
The rapidly growing Capital City, more serious attention to intensive and scientific farming, the movement for good roads and the conquering spirit of enterprising people have already brought about a transformation along the banks of the Sacramento, and doubtless foretoken still more of ma- terial prosperity.
Yet in spite of all this we who were there as boys four decades ago shall never cease to cherish the mem- ories of that earlier though more primitive time, but shall ever be grate- ful to the God of fields and rivers for the joys of living on the banks of the Sacramento back in the seventies.
WAS IT A DREA/A?
Was it a dream, or did the one Of long ago steal back and brush Her hand across my fevered brow? Or could it be the night-cooled wind, Had through my vine-hid window crept And waked me from my troubled sleep?
The choice is mine — I'd rather think That she, whose mother-life well knew The cares of earth were hard to bear Came back; and while her tired son slept, A silent, night-long vigil kept, Beside the one who mourns her still.
Burton Jackson Wyman.
Carriers getting supplies of food stuffs.
Chinese Food and Restaurants
By Alice A. Harrison
THERE is a Chinese proverb which reads: "The man who eats fears not his wife." This may help to explain the sleek, fat, unbeaten look of the greater num- ber of the inhabitants of San Fran- cisco's Chinatown. In the year 1915, according to the report of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, the import of rice from China alone amounted to over sixty-eight million pounds, valued at nearly a million and a half of dollars. No doubt many a "Chink" was thereby saved a flaying at the hands of his spouse.
In spite of Chinatown's Western environs the spirit of the Orient sur- vives extensively, in markets, mar- riage, medicine, Mohammedanism, mu-
sic and moneys, but in nothing more than in meats and the preparation thereof. A Chinaman is naturally en- dowed with Epicurean tendencies. Hence, he eats what he wants when he wants it. It may be sea-weed soup with lotus berries, or Bow Yee Gong, his euphonious name for abalone soup with bamboo shoots, but when the in- ner Chinaman sounds the dinner gong he finds the outer Chinaman usually prompt to respond. "Me bleakfast nine o'clock," says Wong Him, "din- ner four o'clock," but he makes no mention of the gay succession of snacks that lend joy and variety to his days.
All Chinatown seems more or less busy minding the matter of its eats.
528
OVERLAND MONTHLY
Along the leading shopping street of China- town, San Francisco.
The narrow streets teem with errand- going Chinese. Up and down the side- walks, discreet, uncommunicative, they pass and repass, earnest getters of grub in the vast grub-getting scheme of things.
Proverbially silent of foot, the pre- dominant sound is of banging doors as they push into the markets, but once within the food precincts noises and odors battle royally for suprem- acy, and many a barking bargain is driven, punctuated by nods and stac- cato grunts.
Markets there are a-many, some- times three or four in one block, us- ually liberally and suggestively inter-
spersed with drug stores. They bear a generic resemblance. Overhead hang plump-bodied rabbits, squabs and chickens ready dressed for the rites of that dietary dignitary, the cook. A series of coops rises tier on tier to the ceiling. In the lowest of these live rabbits rustle disconsolately nibbling greens. Distracted hens on the next story crane inquisitive necks through the bars and cluck in a minor key. Ducks and geese lend aroma and tune, and over all the unvanquish- ed scent of fish arises and pervades the premises. For every fish that floats or swims lies shimmering on an im- mense counter: great black-bellied sturgeon, spotted sharks, rows and rows of carp and strangely yellow cod, heaps of flounder, sole, sardines, hali- but without number, and like a great patch of silver, the inevitable "pen- and-ink'' fish" lie in a flaccid heap. Owing to a love of piscatorial produce the best that the briny affords makes
A corner of a Chinatown restaurant.
CHINESE FOOD AND RESTAURANTS
529
a Chinaman's staple of diet. Every variety of fish known to the coast waters is marshalled for Chinese con- sumption. Many northern varieties are brought from Seattle, and the wat- ers of the Sacramento River must give up their living to stock the Grant ave- nue markets. Shell-fish of every sort, crawfish, lobsters, shrimps, crabs, oys- ters, abalones and tanks full of torpid turtles flank the fish counters.
Here and there a restaurant waves an inviting yellow finger in the form of a "Chop Suey" sign to such as have the courage to venture within. The man of timorous spirit or sensitive stomach who survives the ordeal of a Chinese dinner should be awarded a chop-stick badge for courage.
It begins with Chop Suey, the Ori- ental device which makes our poor old hash blush for its simplicity. It may be water chestnut Chop Suey, as the bill of fare declares it is. Then again it may be, as the taste swears it is, a few old shoes, brass-buttons and a
In Fish Alley, Chinatown.
Where the hawkers of Chinese dishes ply their trade.
wornout pipe. At any rate it swims about in a bedragoned bowl, and you eat it if you can. Hard upon its heels comes fried rice with chicken, pork and shrimps, lots of it, soon to be fol- lowed by that devil inspired concoc- tion, Cho Go Gong, a mess of meat, eggs, grass mushrooms and bean cakes liquidated into soup consistency. Then eggs await your attention. Eggs! Ah, now you know what happens to the eggs of yesteryear. If after their con- sumption you have not become delir- ious, you may be invited to partake of the grandparent of those eggs, whose flavor has been enhanced by liberal applications of bitter melon.
The meal is quite sure to be butter- less, as butter is a food despised. "You smellee all same butter," is an indict- ment often brought against the Occi- dental by the yellow folk. The five flavorings, salt, sweet, sour, bitter and
530
OVERLAND MONTHLY
Side entrance of one of the Chinese restaurants.
acrid are ever pronouncedly present. For such as survive the menu a re- ward awaits in the form of dessert and tea. A reward in truth, for the poetic and fanciful names applied to teas and sweets are amply justified. "Water fairy" suggests a light and delicious beverage, which indeed it is. "Peace- fulness" soothes even as it cheers. "Dragon's Beard" is a stronger brew for another mood, and "Butterfly's Eyebrow" is as ethereal and choice as its name. The nectar and ambrosia of the gods were not more celestial dain- ties than star fruit, green apricots in honey, golden limes and luscious li- chee fruit.
That discreet female, the Sphinx, must have been a cousin of the first Chinaman, and between them they have kept a number of secrets. One of these is the reason for the Chinese predilection for dried foods. The most delicious and juicy of all the sea tribes of shell fish are divorced from their native element and dried beyond all recognition. The desert is a swamp compared to the aridity of this field of Chinese "eats."
"To revel and to roister with the succulent oyster" is a dear delusion at an Oriental table d'hote. The leathery and extremely disagreeable looking mass of brown substance there served would never have tempted the Carpen- ter nor the Walrus either.
The dried shrimp, so lately pink and juvenile, is almost unrecognizable, crisp, crackly and malodorous. Black and blue, and altogether beetling, the abalone takes the prize for general savor and appearance of prolonged en tombment. Even ducks, most Lucul- lan of morsels, are reduced to the ap- pearance and proportions of bats through the process of penitential drying for past watery wanderings.
Nor is the getting and selling of food limited within the confines of China- town proper. Witness the fields of vegetables, outside the city limits, wherein American vegetables, with the exception of celery, are con- spicuous by their absence. Instead of. our unromantic Po-Ta-To, here are the Chu-ko and the Hawaiian Taro, ex- ceeding in nutriment if not in flavor our own beloved tuber. The Chinese have a fondness for melons equal to a corporation, and grow them in an as- tonishing variety. The zit-kwa is the prize fruit, often weighing as much as 30 pounds.
This is eaten in a number of forms, and finally as a delicious confection calls glaced fruit to an efficiency test.
With an admirable economy, the seeds of this wonderful fruit have a ceremonial function, and are partaken of on the grounds of friendship as a cocktail preliminary to a meal. (Pro- hibitionists take notice!) No statis-
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The front of a noted Chinese restaurant, San Francisco.
tics are available as to friendships ce- mented by this indulgence.
Yet undisputed ruler, lord of all lesser greens, reigns the almighty bean. Boston has adopted the baked bean, but China had it first. Not only baked, but boiled, made into pastes, soups, oil and cheese. Thus has China whole-heartedly spilled the beans.
Bean oil is a favorite medium in which most Chinese cooking is done, and is largely responsible for the oblique flavor so unpalatable to "white devils."
In the window of almost every Chi- nese grocer is a bilious pyramid of
yellow-green cakes of bean cheese, and there is no margin for choice be- tween the flavor and appearance of this delicacy. The bean as we know it is a gregarious vegetable. Taken alone and reduced to an essence, the result is a feeling, not a flavor. De- spite these few vagaries John China- man eats wisely and well. Also he preserves a holy silence as to his daily fare. This stoic silence fre- quently seems to conceal thoughts too deep for utterance, but trust him not, fair lady. He is bamboozling thee! More often it but cloaks the "epicure serenely full."
Practical Suggestions on Foods Rich in Iron
By Evaline M. Kerr, Dietitian German Hospital, San Francisco
A QUESTION often asked is: "How shall we supply the anemic person with iron?" The person who, for some rea- son, lacks his share of good red blood needs to know the foods that furnish iron. Iron is so important to proper nutrition that most persons are famil- iar with it through the advertisements of the numerous iron tonics on the mar- ket. The use of these tonics would be greatly diminished by a knowledge of food values, for food iron is what is needed rather than the iron which is sold in a bottle of "tonic."
Among the foods of animal origin, meat, fowl and fish have much iron in them, especially if the blood is in the tissues, but eggs, principally the yolk, (each yolk containing 1.5 milligrams of iron) which furnishes blood and muscle for the prospective chick, are rich in iron. Milk furnishes little iron, but is rich in lime, which stimulates the absorption of iron.
The iron compounds of meat do not yield as readily to the digestive fer- ments as do those of vegetables and fruits, so that the iron of the latter is better absorbed and become more completely available for nutrition. Moreover, the use of too much meat (especially by persons of sedentary habits or indoors occupation) tends to- wards intestinal putrefaction, with re- sulting absorption of putrefactive pro- ducts, which are detrimental to the red blood cells and probably in other ways interfere with the economy of iron in the body.
Fruits and vegetables, on the other hand, have the opposite effect. Iron is present in milk only in very small quantities, as was heretofore men- tioned, but is in a form exceptionally
favorable for assimilation. Notwith- standing the low iron content, a diet of milk and white bread appears to be adequate for the maintenance of iron equilibrium in normal man, but not in sufficient quantities to restore iron where a deficiency exists.
Vegetable foods are strong in flavor, which means mineral matter, includ- ing iron. All mineral matter is valu- able when combined by nature in food material, and we find the minerals close under t£e skins of fruits and vegetables, especially potatoes ; therefore, cook potatoes with their jackets on) even if you wish to mash them. Wherever green color is pres- ent in vegetables, as in salads and greens, you find iron in abundance, and spinach heads the list. When the green color of fruits has matured to red or brown, we find iron, with other minerals, and these are strongest close under the skin.
Dried fruits are valuable souices of iron; figs, dates, prunes and raisins head the list.
The outer coats of grain have much mineral matter in them, and we should cultivate a taste for graham bread and select only breakfast cereals with an eye to their brown color, as whole or cracked wheat, shredded wheat, oatmeal or rolled oats.
A varied diet is necessary. For in- stance, if one kind of meat is served at dinner, have fish at the night meal ; or if eggs are not served at breakfast, have them for the lighter meal.
Perhaps few of our readers know of the Government Bulletins on Food, obtainable from the Department of Agriculture, most of them given free on application — others at a very small fee. The Farmers' Bulletin numbers
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are 256, 526, 128, 391, 487, 808, 298, 468, 293, 565, 121, 653.
Following are some of the foods containing iron: Spinach, asparagus, celery, beets, cabbage, lettuce, squash, onions, beans, peas, tomatoes, rad- ishes, potatoes, lentils, barley, whole wheat, oatmeal, rice, plums, pears, ap- ples, bananas, pineapples, strawber- ries, currants, oranges, grapes, olives, peaches, honey, cocoa, walnuts, rai- sins, figs, prunes, dates, eggs (yolks), beef, ham, codfish, salmon.
MENUS Breakfast.
1. Cereal (preferably those contain- ing the outer layers), fruit, egg, toast, coffee.
2. Fruit, bran muffins, bacon, coffee.
3. Fruit (cooked or raw), cereal, egg (omelet of yolks, 1 tablespoon water added to each *yolk), brown bread (or toast of same), coffee.
4. Fruit, eggs, graham biscuit or muffins, coffee.
5. Fruit, bacon and eggs (not fried eggs), bread or toast, coffee.
6. Fruit, cereal (or shredded wheat), cocoa, toast.
7. Whole wheat muffins, scrambled eggs, coffee.
Luncheon.
1. Cream soup (celery) or creamed chops on toast, bread, apple sauce, crisp cookies, tea or milk.
2. Salad (stuffed eggs), plenty of lettuce, olives, bread, peaches, sponge cake, cocoa.
3. Scalloped rice (with cheese or oysters), fruit salad, bread, graham wafers, tea.
4. Scrambled eggs on toast (if eggs not served for breakfast), bread or tea biscuit, fruit, tea.
5. Cream of pea soup, croutons, gra- ham bread, prune whip, tea or cocoa.
6. Cheese souffle, hearts of lettuce salad, whole wheat bread, fruit, tea.
7. Creamed fish on toast, baked ap- ple, graham cookies, cocoa or tea.
Dinner.
1. Chops, baked potatoes, celery, baked cream squash, rice pudding (plenty of raisins), brown bread.
2. Roast beef, mashed or steamed potatoes (cooked in jackets), green salad, peas, fruit (stewed or baked), bread.
3. Broiled chicken, brown rice, as- paragus (or asparagus salad), puree of turnips, steamed fig pudding, graham bread.
4. Consomme (marrow balls), Turk- ish pilof, carrots, custard (baked or boiled), bread.
5. Steak, scalloped onions, boiled potatoes (with jackets on), artichoke (cold or hot), Brown Betty (dates in- stead of apples, fruit sauce), bread.
7. Macaroni and cheese, lettuce salad, spinach, pineapple (or other fruit), cookies (crisp), graham bread.
7. Pot roast or leg of lamb, baked potato, cauliflower (flowers only if distressing to one), radishes (if toler- ated), apple pie, bread.
William Rowlands, California Pioneer
By Bertha M. Payne
THERE is still living in Califor- nia, not far from San Jose, a pioneer, William Rowlands by name, who was a resident of Omaha at the time of the discovery of gold in Colorado, and who was one of the first to make the trip overland from Omaha to what is now Denver. This is the story, as told by him, of how it came about :
In 1858 I was working in Omaha. Somehow a rumor got started that gold had been found at Cherry Creek, and there was great excitement. News- papers were gotten out on gold-col- ored papers, proclaiming the discov- ery, and everybody was wild to start for Colorado.
"In September, 1858, I was one of a party of forty-five men who started out across the plains with fourteen prairie schooners drawn by oxen. We took with us provisions enough to last a year, with what game we could shoot. The country between Omaha and what is now Denver was a track- less prairie inhabited only by Indians, and over which thousands of buffaloes roamed. The Indians were for the most part friendly — and so were the buffaloes — the latter far more so than was exactly comfortable for us. When we stopped for the night they would come close to our camp and try to lure our cattle away, and we had a hard time to keep them from going. At night we would draw up our wagons in the form of a circle, and then, after allowing the oxen to graze until bed- time, we would drive them inside of the ring, and a guard would keep watch at the entrance all night. But one night, when we were about forty miles west of Fort Kearney, a big herd of buffaloes came up so close
Wm. Rowlands, California Pioneer.
that the call of the wild took posses- sion of our cattle, and there was a regular stampede; they broke out of the enclosure, and, in a minute, every one was gone. We stayed there sev- eral days trying to get them back, but some of them we were never able to capture. We killed several buffa- loes on the way, so we had plenty of meat.
"We arrived at the Platte river, near the present site of Denver, in Octo- ber, and there built our cabins for the winter. Deer were so plentiful that I shot thirty of them myself during the winter, and we had more venison than we could eat, and plenty of 'jerked' buffalo meat.
"We learned, on arriving there, that
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the report which had started us off was false, and that no gold had been discovered on Cherry Creek. None of our party were practical miners, and we knew nothing about prospecting or mining, and so we found no trace of gold. But in the spring of 1859 a party from Georgia, under the leader- ship of a man named Gregory were going through on their way to Califor- nia. When they got to Fort Laramie they heard a rumor that gold had been discovered at Pike's Peak, so they changed their route and started for there. They were experienced prospectors, and knew how to hunt for gold, and it was not long before they found, in the mountains, about forty miles from Denver, what was called the 'Gregory Lead,' very rich in gold. Soon other leads were found, and more and more gold, and then the gold rush began in earnest. It was an easy matter to build a railroad from Omaha because much of the way the country was so level that the ties could be laid right on the ground, and many
miles built in a day, and it did not take long to finish the road. Denver was laid out, and a bonus was offered to any one who would build a house there. I was given a donation of four lots, and built one of the first houses where the city of Denver now stands.
"Then," added Mr. Rowlands, rem- iniscently, "last fall I went back East on a visit, over this same route that I had traversed by ox-team nearly sixty years ago — and what a change! Then, a trackless wilderness ; now only cultivated fields and towns — and not a buffalo to be seen. Time certainly does bring changes."
Time has been good to Mr. Row- lands, however, for, in spite of the hardships of pioneer days (or per- haps, because of them), he is still hale and hearty, enjoying life, and able to do more work every day than many a man twenty years his junior; and he is now, at the age of 84, contemplat- ing a trip to Australia to visit a bro- ther from whom he has been sepa- rated for more than sixty years.
A Trip to Drake's Bay
THE first sojourn of Englishmen on the American continent was thirty miles north of San Fran- cisco— a fact deserving to be better known. The location can be reached in two hours by rail from San Francisco. It was on June 17, 1579, that "Ye Golden Hinde," the gallant galleon of Francis Drake, rounded Point Reyes and cast anchor in the bay which now bears the famous captain's name. After a stormy voyage the ship was in need of refitting, and while the work was going forward and store of wood and water was being laid in, the crew were glad to encamp ashore, rev- eling in the glorious sunshine of Cali-
fornia. The white bluffs which at this place face the sea reminded Drake of the chalk cliffs of Dover, and he called the country New Albion, claim- ing it in the name of "Good Queen Bess."
Drake's men erected a stockade fort as a defense against the Indians, al- though the coast tribes proved more than friendly, worshiping the English- men as gods. Several quaint accounts have been left by the voyagers as to the manners of these simple people and the nature of their country. The Englishmen marveled at the mighty trees (redwoods) and at the thousands of deer and other animals. Stories
A TRIP TO DRAKE'S BAY
537
were told them by the natives about the great wealth in gold and silver abounding in the interior highlands. Drake and his men visited a number of the Indian villages and were re- ceived with great ceremony by the king of the country, Hioh by name.
Many times they must have gazed upon the lofty peaks of Tamalpais, but these seamen of Devon were better at climbing masts than climbing moun- tains, and they were content to let Tamalpais remain always above them. Had Sir Francis Drake scaled its sum- mit his eye would have delighted in the first sight of the finest landlocked harbor in the world, whose narrow en- trance had been hidden by a strip of mist as he scudded past in "Ye Golden Hinde." With his own little bay he was pleased immensely, terming it a "faire and good harborow."
It was during this time that the first religious service held in the English language on the Pacific Coast was con- ducted at Drake's Bay by the chaplain of the expedition, Francis Fletcher. This event is commemorated by the Prayer Book Cross in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.
After a stay of thirty-seven days, on July 23d the English left New Al- bion, followed by the lamentations of the natives, and shaped their course for the Farallones, where they laid in a supply of seal meat before continu- ing their memorable voyage. This stop in California has been an event in the first circumnavigation of the globe by Englishmen, and when they came safely back to old England their
commander knelt upon the deck of his ship and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth herself. For many years all the Pacific Coast country was known to English geographers as "Drake's Land, back of Canada."
It is probable that Drake's Bay had previously been entered in 1542 by Cabrillo, the discoverer of California. In 1595 a Spanish ship, the "San Au- gustin," was wrecked on Point Reyes and the captain, Cermenon, and his men made their way back to Mexico in a small boat. The harbor in the shelter of Point Reyes they called San Francisco, and as such it was known to Vizcaino, who was here in 1603. Later the name was attached to all that body of water between Point Reyes and Point San Pedro, and long after- ward was transferred to the inner bay of San Francisco, which lay undiscov- ered until Portola came upon it by land in 1769. Vizcaino anchored be- hind the bold promontory on January 7, 1603, the day of the Holy Kings (the three Wise Men of the East), and thus he bestowed the name Punta de los Reyes — Cape of the Kings.
The shores of Drake's Bay may be visited from Point Reyes station on the Northwestern Pacific. There are delightful walks in the hills round- about, to the summit of Mount Witten- berg, which rises 1,350 feet above the breakers, and to the lighthouse pictur- esquely situated on Point Reyes. If the new coast defense plans for San Francisco are carried out, Point Reyes, the Farallones and Point San Pedro will be strongly fortified.
The Divine Plan of the Ages
The Golden Age Rapidly Nearing
PART II.
WE HAVE all noted the fact that ours is the most wonder- ful day of earth's history. As we contrast the blessings which surround us with those enjoyed by our fathers, our eyes open wide. We are amazed at what we see of progress in the invention of labor-saving ma- chinery, of educational advantages, of improvements in stock-breeding, hor- ticulture, etc. It must be admitted by all that the world has made far greater progress during the last fifty years than during all the preceding six thousand years since man's creation. We re- flect further that, with the progress of invention, the necessity for arduous labor and sweat of face for the daily bread will soon be at an end, and that the necessary comforts and leisure which will enable every man to be a nobleman will soon be available to all. What do all these things mean? Why have they come suddenly upon us in one generation, and give no indication of slacking, but rather of advancing to still greater wonders ? What is the explanation of this? The Bible alone gives the reply to these queries. To our astonishment it opens the door of the future and bids us look adown the vista of years and see the better day which God has promised. With no uncertain voice it points us down to this very time and condition in which we now are, where knowledge is so wonderfully increased and as a result of which we have our present blessings and advantages. Note how clear-cut is the language of Daniel's prophecy, "And at that time shall Michael stand up . . . Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased;
. . . the wise shall understand; . . . and there shall be a Time of Trouble such as never was since there was a nation."— Daniel 12:1, 4, 10.
Additionally, the Bible calls this present time "the day of His prepara- tion" (Nahum 2:3), because it is the time when the Lord is making ready, making special preparation, to usher the world into the New Dispensation — the Golden Age — so long promised. Incidentally we observe, too, that the coming of these blessings is in one sense premature, in that they have come to us before the establishment of the New Regime. Consequently, in- stead of being happier because of these favors, the world is more un- happy, more discontented than ever, owing to their depraved condition. The Scriptures show that this discontent will culminate in a short, sharp period of terrible anarchy, such as we now see approaching, and from which the world will be rescued by the estab- lishment of Messiah's Kingdom.
But let it be borne in mind that in advance of these events, and of the ushering in of the glorious Day in which all ignorance and superstition will be cleared away, there is provided for the child of God a Lamp, whose light dispels from his pathway much of the present darkness. "Thy Word is as a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." (Psalm 119:105.) Therefore, those who will turn away from the mere speculation of men and devote time to searching the Scrip- tures, not excluding reason, which God invites us to use (Isaiah 1.18), will find that a blessed bow of promise spans the heavens. But it is a mis-
THE DIVINE PLAN OF THE AGES 539
take to suppose that those without would use them as His agency for faith should be able to apprehend blessing all the families of the earth, clearly the Truth; it is not for such. The offer that Jesus made to the The Psalmist says, "Light (Truth) is Jews of certain special favors — heir- sown for the righteous." — Psalm ship in the Kingdom of God, etc. — 97:11. and the conditions upon which that
It is only "the path of the just" that great honor could be secured, were so
is as the shining light, that shineth different from what they had expected
more and more unto the perfect Day." that the attainment of such a reward
(Proverbs 4:18.) Actually, there is was considered utterly improbable,
none just, "none righteous, no, not one" Hence all but the few were blinded to
(Romans 3:10) ; the class referred to the Message. And their blindness and
is "justified by faith." It is the privi- hostility to it were naturally increased
lege of this class only to walk in the when, in the process of God's Plan,
pathway that shines more and more — the due time came for extending the
to see not only the present unfoldings Message, and making the invitation to
of God's Plan, but also things to come, share in the promised Kingdom appli-
and even to behold what has not been cable also to individuals of other na-
seen in previous ages. The Spirit of tions, who should by the exercise of
God, given to guide the Church into faith be reckoned children of faithful
Truth, will take of the things written Abraham and heirs of the Promise
and show them unto us; but beyond made to him.
what is written we need nothing, for But when the Gospel taught by Je- the Holy Scriptures are able to make sus came to be understood after Pen- wise unto salvation, through faith tecost, it was seen by His followers which is in Christ Jesus. — 2 Timothy that the blessings for the world were 3:15. to be of an enduring character, and
Therefore, "Rejoice in the Lord, ye that for the accomplishment of this righteous," in the fulfillment of these purpose the Kingdom would be spirit- promises. Many have so little faith ual, and composed of Israelites indeed, that they do not look for more light, a "little flock," selected from among and because of their unfaithfulness both Jews and Gentiles to be exalted and unconcern they are permitted to to spirit nature and power. Hence we sit in darkness, when they might have read that Jesus brought lige and im- been walking in the increasing light. mortality to light through the Gospel.
rj,, j ,., , .. TI/ .-■ . - (2 Timothy 1:10.) And since Jesus'
The Jews Expected the World to be d t more H ht shi as he fore_
Blessed Through them at the told -t would> saying. „j haye many
tirst Advent. things to say unto you, but ye cannot
Looking into the past, we find that bear them now; howbeit when it, the
then the light shone but feebly. Dim Spirit of Truth, is come, it shall guide
and obscure were the promises of past you into all Truth . . . and will show
ages. The Promise made to Abraham you things to come." — John 16:12, 13.
and others, and typically represented Emphatic Diaglott.
in the Law and ceremonies of the Jew- TT ~ „ ,Tr „, , „ rr
ish nation, were only shadows, and HoPe deferred Has Made the Heart gave but a vague idea of God's won- oick.
derful and gracious designs. As we There came a time, however, soon
reach the days of Jesus, the light in- after the Apostles fell asleep, when
creases. The height of expectancy, the majority of the Church began to
until then, had been that God would neglect the lamp of the Word and to
bring a Deliverer to save Israel from look to human teachers for leading;
their enemies and to exalt them as the and the teachers, puffed up with pride,
chief nation of the earth, in which po- assumed titles and offices, and began
sition of power and influence God to lord it over God's heritage. Then
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by degrees there came into existence a special class called "the clergy," who regarded themselves, and were re- garded by others, as the proper guides to faith and practice, aside from the Word of God. Thus in time the great system of Papacy was developed by an undue respect for the teachings of fallible men and a neglect of the Word of the infallible God.
Serious indeed have been the evil results brought about by this neglect of the Divinely provided "lamp." As all know, both the Church and the civ- ilized world were almost wholly en- slaved by that Papal system, and were led to worship the creeds and tradi- tions of men. From this slavery a bold and blessed strike for liberty and the Bible was made, in what is known as The Reformation. God raised up bold champions for His Word, among were Luther, Zwingli, Melanchthon, Wycliffe, Knox and others. These called attention to the fact that Papacy had laid aside the Bible and substi- tuted the creeds and dogmas of the Church, and pointed out a few of its erroneous teachings and practices, showing that they were built upon tra- dition, contrary to Truth, and opposed to God's Word.
The reformers and their adherents, who were called Protestants because they protested against Papacy, claimed the Word of God as the only correct rule of faith and practice. Many faith- ful souls in the days of the Reforma- tion walked in the light, so far as it was then shining. But since their day, Protestants have made little progress, because, instead of walking in the light, they have halted around their favorite leaders, willing to see as much as they saw, but nothing more. They set boundaries to their progress in the way of Truth, hedging in, with the lit- tle Truth they had, a great deal of er- ror brought along from the "Mother" church. For the creeds thus formu- lated many years ago, the majority of Christians have a superstitious rever- ence, supposing that no more can be known of God's plans now than was known by the Reformers.
This mistake has been an expensive one; for aside from the fact that but few great principles of Truth were then recovered from the rubbish of error, there are special features of Truth constantly becoming due, and of these Christians have been deprived by their creed fences. To illustrate: It was a truth in Noah's day, and one which required the faith of all who walked in the light then, that a great Flood was coming; while Adam and others had known nothing of it. It would not be preaching truth now to preach a coming Flood; but there are other dispensational truths constantly becoming due, of which, if walking in the light of the Lamp, God's Word, we shall know; so if we have all the light which was due several hundred years ago, and that only, we are measurably in darkness.
Neglect of the Word Responsible for All the Confusion.
Under the influence of the creeds which have come down from the Dark Ages, many of God's people to-day apparently are, greatly confused, be- cause these creeds in large measure are of human manufacture and distort and misapply the Word of God and are not based upon the Bible. There- fore Bible students who are now arousing from their sleep are finding that they have long suffered from noc- turnal hallucinations; that in their dreams they have been entertaining every kind of unreasonable miscon- ception concerning the Heavenly Father and His plans. But now the true Message is spreading, and with it goes increase of faith, together with joy, peace and godliness. God's Word is a great Storehouse of food for hun- gry pilgrims on the shining pathway. There is milk for babes, and strong meat for those more developed (1 Peter 2:2; Heb. 5:14.) Not only so, but it contains food adapted to the dif- ferent seasons and conditions; and Je- sus said that the faithful servant should bring forth meat in due season for the Household of Faith — "things new and old" from the Storehouse. —
THE DIVINE PLAN OF THE AGES
541
Luke 12:42; Matthew 13:52.
It would be impossible to bring forth any new Truth from any sectar- ian creed or storehouse. We might bring some things old and good from each, but nothing new.
The Truth contained in the creeds of the various sects is so covered and mixed with error that its inherent beauty and real value are not discern- ible. The various creeds continually conflict and clash; and as each claims a Bible basis, the confusion of thought and evident discord are charged to God's Word. This has given rise to the common proverb, "The Bible is an old fiddle upon which any tune may be played." And this saying, which is so expressive of the infidelity of our times, is occasioned by misrepresen- tations of God's Word and character by human traditions, together with the growth of intelligence, which will no longer bow in blind and superstitious reverence to the opinions of fellow- men, but demands a reason for the en- tertainment of any hope. The faithful student of the Word should be able always to give a reason for his hope. The Word of God alone is able to make wise, and is profitable for doc- trine, instruction, etc., "that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly fur- nished."—! Peter 3:15; 2 Timothy 3:15-17.
Only this one Storehouse contains an exhaustless supply of things new and old — meat in due season for the Household. Surely no one who be- lieves the Scripture statement that "the path of the just shineth more and more unto the perfect Day" will claim that the perfect Day came in Luther's time; and if not, we do well to take heed unto our Lamp as "unto a light that shineth in a dark place UNTIL THE DAY DAWN.— 2 Peter 1 .19.
In natural things, men to-day would not think of going back to the crude and unimproved methods of their fathers; only a few years back, the best light that could be produced was by means of the oil lamp and the tal- low dip. Now we have wonderful light from electricity and from gas,
enabling us, in our largest cities, to turn the darkest night into broad day- light.
So in spiritual matters, we, as searchers after Truth, should not be content with that amount of spiritual light handed down to us by our fathers — the Reformers. Finding ourselves in the path of the light, we must "WALK IN THE LIGHT," continue to make progress, else the light, which does not stop, will pass on and leave us in dark- ness. The difficulty with many is that they sit down and do not follow on in the path of light.
Perfection of knowledge is not a thing of the past but of the future — the very near future, we trust; and until we recognize this fact, we are un- prepared to appreciate and expect fresh unfoldings of our Father's Plan. True, we still go back to the words of the Prophets and Apostles for all knowledge of the present and the fu- ture; not, however, because they al- ways understand God's plans and pur- poses better than we, but because God used them as His mouthpieces to com- municate to us, and to all the Church throughout the Christian Age, Truth relative to His plans, as fast as it be- comes due.
This fact is abundantly proven by the Apostles. St. Paul tells us that God has made known to the Christian Church the Mystery (secret) of his will which He has purposed in Him- self and had never before revealed, though He had it recorded in dark sayings which could not be understood until due, in order that the eyes of our understanding should be opened to ap- preciate the "HIGH CALLING," de- signed exclusively for believers of the Christian Age. — Ephesians 1 :9, 10, 17, 18; 3:4-6.
This shows us clearly that neither the prophets nor the angels understood the meaning of the prophecies uttered. St. Peter says that when they inquired anxiously to know their meaning, God told them that the truths covered up in their prophecies were not for them- selves, but for us of the Christian or Gospel Age. And he exhorts the be-
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OVERLAND MONTHLY
lievers to hope for still further grace (favor, blessing) in this direction — yet more knowledge of God's plans. — 1 Peter 1:10-13.
It is evident that though Jesus prom- ised that His followers should be guided into all Truth, it was to be a gradual unfolding. While the Church in the days of the Apostles was free from many of the errors which sprang up under and in Papacy, yet we cannot suppose that the early Church saw as deeply or as clearly into God's Plan as it is possible to see to-day. It is evi- dent, too, that the different Apostles had different degrees of insight into God's Plan, though all their writings were guided and inspired of God as truly as were the words of the Pro- phets. To illustrate, differences of knowledge, we have but to remember the wavering course, for a time, of St. Peter and the other Apostles, except St. Paul, when the Gospel was begin- ning to go to the Gentiles. (Acts 10: 28; 11:1-3; Galatians 2:11-14.) St. Peter's uncertainty was in marked contrast with St. Paul's assurance, in- spired by the words of the Prophets, God's past dealings, and the direct revelations made to himself.
God's Plans for the Ages to Come Glorious.
St. Paul evidently had more abun- dant revelations than any other Apos- tle. These revelations he was not al- lowed to make known to the Church, nor fully and plainly to the other Apostles (2 Corinthians 12:4; Gala- tians 2:2), yet we can see a value to the entire Church in these visions and revelations given to St. Paul; for though he was not permitted to tell what he saw, nor to particularize all that he knew of the mysteries of God relating to the "ages to come," yet what he saw gave a force, shading and depth of meaning to his words which, in the light of subsequent facts, pro-
phetic fulfillments and the Spirit's guidance, we are able to appreciate more fully than could the early Church.
As corroborative of the foregoing statement, we call to mind the last book of the Bible — Revelations — writ- ten about A. D. 96. The introductory words announce it as a special revela- tion of things not previously under- stood. This proves conclusively that up to that time, at least, God's Plan had not been fully revealed. Nor has that book ever been, until now, all that its name implies— an unfolding, a REVELATION. So far as the early Church was concerned, probably none understood any part of the book. Even St. John, who saw the visions, was probably ignorant of the significance of what he saw. He was both a Prophet and an Apostle ; and while as an Apos- tle he understood and taught what was then "meat in due season," as a Pro- phet he uttered things which would supply "meat" in seasons future for the Household.
During the Christian Age, some of the saints sought to understand the Church's future by examining this symbolic book, and doubtless all who read and understood even a part of its teachings were blessed as promised. (Rev. 1:3.) The book kept opening to such, and in the days of the Refor- mation was an important aid to Luther in deciding that the Papacy, of which he was a conscientious minister, was indeed the "Antichrist" mentioned by the Apostle, the history of which we now see fills so large a part of that prophecy.
Thus gradually God opens up His Truth and reveals the exceeding riches of His Grace; and consequently much more light is now due than at any pre- vious time in the Church's history.
"And still new beauties shall we see, And still increasing light."
(To be Continued.)
In the Realm of Bookland
"The Dance of Youth and Other Poems," by Julia Cooley, author of "Poems of a Child," etc. The book is interesting for its vari- ety and its individualities. It allies it- self neither with the old school of poe- try nor with the new developments, yet it is tinged with both phases. In themes, it is novel, different, and it presents Reality from many new and altered angles. It is the production of an original, independent, clairvoyant mind.
1.25 net. Sherman, French & Co., Boston, Mass.
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The Overland Monthly
Vol. LXIX — Second Series January- June 1917
OVERLAND MONTHLY CO., Publishers
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INDEX
A "BACK TO NATURE MAID" .... EDITH KINNEY STELLMANN 89
Illustrated.
A CALIFORNIA DUVAL EUGENE T. SAWYER 37
A CONFIRMED BACHELOR. Story . . . JOSEPHINE S. SCHUPP 164
A CONVERT TO CONSCRIPTION .... ALBERT LARSON 198
A KINDERGARTEN OF ROMANCE. Story . WILL McCRACKEN 141
A LETTER FROM THE BOY L. W. HUNTINGTON 494
A PEACEFUL PIRATE DELLA PHILLIPS 327
A SIERRA DELL. Verse STANTON ELLIOTT 504
A SOLDIER OF FRANCE. Story .... ELSIE McCORMICK 205
A STUDY OF JACK LONDON IN HIS PRIME GEORGE WHARTON JAMES 361
Illustrated from photographs.
A TRIP TO DRAKE'S BAY 536
A VISIT WITH JOSE TORIBIO MEDINA . . CHAS. E. CHAPMAN, Ph. D. • 477
Illustrated from a photograph.
ACHIEVEMENT. Verse .... . JOE WHITNAH 239
AH-PURA-WAY EDNA HILDEBRAND PUTNAM 277
Illustrated from photographs.
ARE THERE ANY THRILLS LEFT IN LIFE? . JACK LONDON 432
ARIZONA ANN. Verse GUNTHER MILTON KENNEDY 222
AT CARMEL-BY-THE-SEA. Verse . . . HENRIETTA C. PENNY 283 BOYHOOD DAYS ON THE BANKS OF THE
SACRAMENTO IN THE SEVENTIES . . ROCKWELL D. HUNT 521
CHINESE FOOD AND RESTAURANTS . . . ALICE A. HARRISON 527
Illustrated from photographs.
COMPENSATION. Verse LANNIE HAYNES MARTIN 343
COTTON GROWING UNDER IRRIGATION IN
THE SOUTHWEST . . . PERCY L. EDWARDS 501
DARIUS OGDEN MILLS 87
Illustrated from photographs.
DEVIL'S POINT. Story ALFRED ERNEST KEET 213
DIES IRAE. Verse ROBERT D. WORK 132
EDUCATING THE ALASKA NATIVES . . . DAVID GOVE 189
Illustrated from Photographs.
EL. PASO DE ROBLES. Verse .... BURTON JACKSON WYMAN 230
ENEMIES. Story PARNSWORTH WRIGHT 156
EXPERIENCES OF AN OREGON PIONEER . FRED LOCKLEY 245
Illustrated from a Photograph.
FOOTHILL FALL ELSINGRE R. CROWELL 149
FROM MANHATTAN. Verse JAMES NORMAN HALL 335
INDEX
WH1TTIER WELLMAN
FRONTISPIECES:
"Up From the South. Verse Illustrated
Scenes from Tahiti
Photograph of D. O. Mills
FRONTISPIECES— Pictures of Golden Gate Park
FRONTISPIECES
When Darkness Creeps Over the Gallery. Verse EUGENE AMMON Illustrated.
Six Views of California Scenery
Reindeer Used in Hauling the Game Killed in a Winter Hunt FRONTISPIECES:
Six Touring Scenes in California
Illustration to accompany "Ah-Pura-Way"
FRONTISPIECES:
"To Jack London." Verse. Illustrated . . GEORGE STERLING
Illustrations to ""accompany Valley of the Moon Ranch ....
Illustration to accompany a Study of Jack London in His Prime FRONTISPIECES:
Early Summer in California .
Nearing the Summit
Illustration to accompany "The Ruler of the Range."
GOLDEN GATE PARK
Illustrated from photographs. GRACE VERSUS LAIRD. Story ....
GUNS OF GALT. Continued story ....
An Epic of the Family. THE GUNS OF GALT. Continued Story GUNS OF GALT
Continued Story. GUNS OF GALT. Continued Story ....
GUNS OF GALT. Serial
GUNS OF GALT. Serial
"IN CITY PENT." Verse
INDIAN VS. WHITE MAN. Story .... IN THE REALM OF BOOKLAND . . _»^—
IN THE REALM OF BOOKLAND ....
IN THE SUN. Verse
JACK LONDON. Verse
JACK LONDON. An Appreciation. Verse JACK LONDON ON THE GREAT WAR JACK LONDON'S PLEA FOR THE SQUARE DEAL JACK LONDON'S RESIGNATION FROM THE SOCIALIST PARTY
L'AMOUR. Verse
LIFE OF PASTOR RUSSELL
LOST HORSES. Story
LOVE AND THE RAID. Story ....
MANUEL LISA
MAXIMILIAN I OF MEXICO
Illustrated from Photographs. MAYBECK'S MASTERPIECE. Verse .
MISUSE. Verse
MRS. JACK LONDON'S "LOG OF THE SNARK" . MRS. JACK LONDON'S NEW VIEWPOINT .
MY COMMERCE. Verse
NO QUESTIONS ASKED. Story ....
OREGON WOMEN IN POLITICS ....
PASTOR RUSSELL. Verse
PASTOR RUSSELL'S WRITINGS TO BE CONTINUED
PATERNITY. Story
PATHFINDERS OF '49. Story
PATIENCE, Verse
PATTY REED
PERSONAL QUALITIES OF JACK LONDON
PICTURE OF JACK LONDON
PIONEER EXPERIENCES IN CALIFORNIA .
Illustrated from photographs and Old Prints.
PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS ON FOODS RICH
IN IRON ....
PROBLEMS OF MENTAL AND SPIRITUAL
HEALING ....
RALPH SPRINGER
EPHRAIM A. ANDERSON DENISON CLIFT
DENISON CLIFT DENISON CLIFT
DENISON CLIPT DENISON CLIPT DENISON CLIFT VERNE BRIGHT N. K. BUCK
FRANCES HATHAWAY VERA HEATHMAN COLE BERTON BRALEY
V
STANTON ELLIOTT E. D. STEWART R. T. CORYNDON OLIVE COWLES KERNS CARDINAL GOODWIN EVELYN HALL
IDA P. PATTIANI MABEL RICE BIGLER BEATRICE LANGDON L. RUDIO MARSHALL EVA NAVONE WILLIAM DE RYEE FRED LOCKLEY RUTH E. HENDERSON
MARY BLISS WHITED MRS. ALFRED IRBY JO. HARTMAN KATHERINE W. COOPER JOHN D. BARRY
LELL HAWLEY WOOLLEY
EVALINE M. KERR
1
2-7
8
93-100
181
182-187 188
270-275 276
357
358-359
360
449-459 460
101
216 9
117 231
315
435 284 295 325 90 181 • 207 160 415 434 404
446 170 126 80 336 151 240
61
249
447
400
41
146
475
56
79
505
171
155
517
431
24
66
533
306
INDEX
LATE JACK LONDON
PROGRESS. Verse RECOLLECTIONS OF THE REVERBERATION. Verse
SANG. Story
SOLDIER POETS . . .
SOLITAIRE. Verse
SUNK. Story
SYMBOLISM. Verse
THE AMERICANIZED CHINESE STUDENT
Illustrated from photographs.
THE BROOK. Verse
THE DIVINE PLAN OF THE AGES THE DIVINE PLAN OF THE AGES THE DRIVING OF THE GOLDEN SPIKE THE DRUM MAJOR. Verse "THE FALL OF BABYLON." Story THE FOREIGN LEGION ....
THE GOAD. Verse
THE GOOD WORD. Story
THE GORGAS OF THE PHILIPPINES .
THE HIDDEN SONG. Verse
THE LATE PASTOR RUSSELL
Illustrated from a photograph. THE MIRAGE. Story ..... THE MISSION OF SANTA CRUZ
Illustrated from photographs. THE MUSE OF THE LOCKED DOOR. Story THE OFFERING. Verse THE OLD REDWOOD SPEAKETH. Verse THE PASSING OF A ZEPPELIN THE PROPHECY. Story .... THE REAL JACK LONDON IN HAWAII
Illustrated from photographs. THE REMARKABLE ELEPHANT SEAL
Illustrated from a Photograph. THE RULER OF THE RANGE .
Illustrated from photographs. THE SOLDIER. Verse .... SON OF THE WOLF. Story . SONG. Verse
THE THE THE THE
Continued Story
SPIRIT OF '49. Verse STORM KING. Verse THE STORY OF THE MIRACLE
Continued story. THE STORY OF THE MIRACLE. THE STORY OF THE MIRACLE
Continued Story. THE STORY OF THE MIRACLE. Concluded THE SUPREME TRAGEDY. Verse THE TERRIBLE TURK THE THRESHOLD OF FATE. Story THE TREND OF EVENTS THE VALLEY OF THE MOON RANCH
Illustrated from photographs. THE WIT OF DON JOSE. Story THREE YEARS A CAPTIVE AMONG INDIANS
Illustrated from photographs. TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Verse
TO JACK. Verse
TO THE MAN ON THE TRAIL .
A Klondike Christmas Story. TO THE OLD STAGE DRIVER. Verse TRAGEDY OF THE DONNER PARTY
Illustrated from sketches. TROUBLES OF AN AERIAL SCOUT VIA THE STRAITS OF MAGELLAN WAS IT A DREAM? Verse WM. ROWLANDS, CALIFORNIA PIONEER
Illustrated from a photograph. YOUTH NEVER GOES UNTIL WE THRUST HIM OUT. Verse
M. C.
EDGAR LUCIEN LARKIN R. R. GREENWOOD LUCY FORMAN LINDSAY LORING SEAVERS WILLIAM DeRYEE RALPH N. VARDEN
A. E.
FRANK B. LENZ
ELIZABETH REYNOLDS (The Late) PASTOR RUSSELL (The Late) PASTOR RUSSELL BERNETTA A. ATKINSON LLEWELLYN B. PECK CHARLES OLIVER ANSLEY HASTINGS LANNIE HAYNES MARTIN
B. C. CABLE MARIAN TAYLOR MARY CAROLYN DAVIES J. F. RUTHERFORD
charles w. pettit robert cosmo harding
elsie Mccormick arthur wallace peach c. e. barnes lewis r. freeman lora d. patterson mae lacy baggs
lillian e. zeh
clarence cullimore
dorothy de jagers jack london mary carolyn davies mabel rice bigler eugenia lyon dow otto von geldern
otto von geldern otto von geldern
ctto von geldern
arthur powell
h. ahmed noureddin addis
edith hecht
cornett stark
bailey millard
randal charlton j. a. leeman, m. d.
jo hartman juan l. kennon jack london
lucien m. lewis alice stevens
william palmer
james w. milne
burton jackson wyman
bertha m. payne
edward h. s. terry
500 433 169
57 514
49 352 331 284
291 425 538 255 314 109 53 212 257 247 253 296
510 292
50 493 513 262 332 405
242
461
483 416 150 268 140 42
133
223
344
174 30 161 250 411
208 466
244 36
25
52 62
303
175 526
535
509
BACK EAST EXCURSIONS
SALE DATES :
June 1,2,11,12,16,17,26,27,30 July 1,2, 16, 17,24,25,31 August 1, 14, 15, 28, 29 September 4, 5
SOME FARES:
(DIRECT ROUTES)
Denver, Pueblo $ 62.50
Omaha, Kansas City 67.50
Dallas, Houston, San Antonio. . . 70.00
New Orleans, Memphis, St. Louis 77.50
Chicago 80.00
Minneapolis, St. Paul 84.45
Washington, D. C, Baltimore 116.00
New York, Philadelphia 118.20
Boston 120.20
Proportionately low fares to many other points.
Going Limit — 15 days; Return Limit — 3 mos. from date of sale (but not later than Oct. 31.) STOPOVERS: Going- east of California state line ; Returning — at all points. See Agents.
Southern Pacific
Write for folder on the Apache Trail of Arizona
P;
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3 C
]E
GOOUYtAK FOUNTAIN PEN
The Ever Ready and Reliable Pen You Want
J OFFERED to NEW and OLD SUBSCRIBERS
-OF-
OVERLAND^
ONTHLY
This popular pen is made by the Goodyear Pen Company, one of the old, reliable pen factories. The pen is solid fourteen karat gold and tipped with iridium, the hardest metal known. The barrel, cap and feed are made of the highest grade of Para Rubber, hand turned, highly vulcanized, high- ly polished and chased.
It is a self-filler and has the patent non-lea kable safety cap.
Full printed instructions as to the filling and proper care of the pen, also printed guaran- tee, are furnished with each pen.
This pen is doubly guaranteed. The factory guarantees them. We know them. We guarantee
ADDRESS ALL
them. You know us.
The point and other parts of this pen are full standard size
It is fully equal to any pen made to sell at $1.50 and equal to many pens that are sold at $2.00 or $2.50.
To present subscribers of the OVERLAND MONTHLY, the management will make a pre- sent of one of these reliable Goodyear Fountain Pens on sending in the names and ad- dresses of two new subscribers with the price of subscription of $1.20 a year each; or by sending in their own renewal of subscription, $1.20, together with the name and address of one new subscriber and $1.20 for his or her annual payment.
QUERIES TO
OVERLAND M MONTHLY
THEORIGINAL MAGA
Founded by
L2
259 MINNA STREET
ZINE OF THE WEST Brete Harte
SAN FRANCISCO,CAL.
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LWMIN A n V
GtHERM-
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