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THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY

A MAGAZINE OF

Literature, Science, Slrt, ana

VOLUME LXXXI

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
ftitocr^itic

1898

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.

CONTENTS.

America, Belated Feudalism in. II., Henry
G. Chapman 41

Architect, The True Education of an, Rus-
sell Sturgis 246

Arthurian Epos, A New Translation of the 278

Australian Democracy, The, E. L. God-
kin .322

Bacchylides and his Native Isle, J. Irving

' Manatt 413

Battle of the Strong, The, Gilbert Parker 29,
168, 350, 546, 654, 786

Belated Feudalism in America. II., Henry
G. Chapman .' 41

Bjornson and Ibsen, Personal Impressions
of, William Henry Scho field . . . . 567

Boston, The Municipal Service of, Francis
C. Lowell 311

Brief Survey of Recent Historical Work,
A 274

Caleb West, F. Hopkinson Smith 51, 200, 386

Capture of Government by Commercialism,
The, John Jay Chapman 145

Company Manners, Florence Converse . . 130

Cromwell, A New Estimate of, James Ford
Rhodes . . . 842

Danger from Experimental Psychology,
The, Hugo Munsterberg 159

Decade of Federal Railway Regulation, A,
Henry C. Adams 433

Democracy, The Australian, E. L. God-
kin 322

Dramatists, Three Contemporary German,
J. Firman Coar 71

Dreyfus and Zola Trials, The, John T.
Morse, Jr 589

Education, A New Programme in, C. Han-
ford Henderson 760

Education of an Architect, The True, Rus-
sell Sturgis 246

End of All Living, The, Alice Brown . . 829

England's Economic and Political Crisis,
J.N.Larned. . .298

English, On the Teaching of, Mark H, Lid-
dell 465

English as against French Literature,
Henry D. Sedgwick, Jr 289

English Literature and the Vernacular,
Mark H. Liddell 614

Evolution of Satellites, The, G. H. Dar-
win 444

Evolution of the Gentleman, The, S. M.
Crothers 709

Experimental Psychology, The Danger
from, Hugo Munsterberg 159

Federal Railway Regulation, A Decade of,
Henry C. Adams 433

Feudalism in America, Belated. II., Henry
G. Chapman 41

First Performance in Shakespeare's Time,
A, Herbert Wescott Fisher 379

Florida Farm, A, F. Whitmore .... 498

Forest Reservations of the West, The Wild
Parks and, John Muir 15

French, A Study of the 845

French Literature, English as against,
Henry D. Sedgwick, Jr 289

Gentleman, The Evolution of the, S. M.
Crothers 709

George's.Henry, Political Economy . . 852

German Dramatists, Three Contemporary,
J. Firman Coar 71

Ghetto Wedding, A, Abraham Cahan . . 265

Government, The Present Scope of, Eugene
Wambaugh 120

Government by Commercialism, The Cap-
ture of, John Jay Chapman 145

Greater New York, Political Inauguration
of the, Edward M. Shepard .... 104

Great Explorers of the Southern Heavens,
T.J.J.See 679

Great God Ram, The, Willimina L. Arm-
strong 430

Greek Tragedy? Shall we still Read,
Thomas Dwight Goodell 474

Growth and Expression of Public Opinion,
The, E. L. Godkin 1

Her Last Appearance, Ellen Olney Kirk . 623

High School Extension, D. S. Sanford . 780

Historical Work, A Brief Survey of Re-
cent .... 274

Holiday Evening, The, Harriet Lewis
Bradley 488

Ibsen, Personal Impressions of Bjornson
and, William Henry Schofield .... 567

International Isolation of the United
States, Richard Olney 577'

Japan, The Social and Domestic Life of,
K. Mitsukuri 336

Laboratory, The Teacher and the : A Re-
ply, Hugo Munsterberg 824

Labor Unions and the Negro, The, John
Stephens Durham 222

Library, The Romance of a Famous, Her-
bert Putnam 538

Literary Paris Twenty Years Ago, Thomas
Wentworth Higginson 81

Literature, English as against French,
Henry D. Sedgwick, Jr 289

Masquerade, The, Penrhyn Lee .... 255

Montanians. The, Rollin Lynde Hartt . . 737

" Moral " Melodrama to Order .... 139

Municipal Service of Boston, The, Francis
C.Lowell .311

Naval Conflicts, The Uncertain Factors in,
Ira Nelson Hollis 728

Ned Stirling his Story, William R. Lighton 812

Negro, The Labor Unions and the, John
Stephens Durham 222

New Estimate of Cromwell, A, James Ford
Rhodes 842

New Programme in Education, A, C. Han-
_ford Henderson 760

New Translation of the Arthurian Epos, A 278

New York, Political Inauguration of the
Greater, Edward M. Shepard .... 104

Nook in the Alleghanies, A, Bradford
Torrey 456, 644

No Quarter, Francis Willing Wharton . 702

Contents.

Normal Schools and the Training of Teach-
ers, Frederic Burk 769

On the Outskirts of Public Life, Thomas
Wentworth Higginson 188

On the Teaching of English, Mark H. Lid-
deli 465

Our Two Most Honored Poets .... 136

Paris Twenty Years Ago, Literary, Thomas
Wentworth Higginson 81

Park, The Yellowstone National, John
Muir 509

Parks and Forest Reservations of the West,
The Wild, John Muir 15

Penelope's Progress, Kate Douglas Wig-
gin .... 90, 232, 366

Personal Impressions of Bjornson and Ib-
sen, William Henry Schojield .... 567

Poets, Our Two Most Honored .... 136

Political Inauguration of the Greater New
York, Edward M. Shepard 104

Present Scope of Government, The, Eugene
Wambaugh 120

Psychology, The Danger from Experimen-
tal, Hugo Miinsterberg 159

Psychology and the Real Life, Hugo Miin- fc
sterberg 602

Public Life, On the Outskirts of, Thomas
Wentworth Higginson 188

Public Opinion, The Growth and Expres-
sion of ,-E. L. Godkin 1

Railway Regulation, A Decade of Federal,
Henry C. Adams 433

Recent Historical Work, A Brief Survey
of 274

Romance of a Famous Library, The, Her-
bert Putnam 538

Satellites, The Evolution of, G. H. Dar-
win 444

Schools and the Training of Teachers, Nor-
mal, Frederic Burk 769

Shakespeare's Time, A First Performance
in, Herbert Wescott Fisher 379

Shall we still Read Greek Tragedy?
Thomas Dwight Goodell 474

Social and Domestic Life of Japan, The,
K. Mitsukuri 336

Study of the French, A 845

Successful Bachelor, A, Leon H. Vincent . 805

Teacher and the Laboratory, The : A Re-
ply, Hugo Mdnsterberg 824

Teachers, Normal Schools and the Train-
ing of, Frederic Burk 769

Teaching of English, On the, MarkH. Lid-
dell 465

Thirst in the Desert, W. J. McGee ... 483

Three Contemporary German Dramatists,
J. Firman Coar 71

To the Delight of the Mandarin, Madelene
Yale Wynne 423

Translation of the Arthurian Epos, A New 278

True Education of an Architect, The, Bus-
sell Sturgis . 246

Uncertain Factors in Naval Conflicts, The,
Ira Nelson Hollis ........ 728

United States, International Isolation of
the, Richard Olney 577 .

War with Spain, and After, The . . . . 721 '

Washington Reminiscences, Ainsworth B.
Spofford 668, 749

Western Real Estate Booms, and After,
Henry J. Fletcher 689

Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the
West, The, John Muir 15

William Marsdal's Awakening, Harry
Stillwell Edwards 523

Yellowstone National Park, The, John
Muir 509

Zola Trials, The Dreyfus and, John T.
Morse, Jr 589

After a Sunset of Great Splendor, William
A. Dunn

After Rain, Stephen Phillips

Beds of Fleur-de-Lys, The, Charlotte Per-
kins Stetson

Captive, The, William Prescott Foster . .

Cleopatra's Mummy, To, Martha Gilbert
Dickinson

Dove Cottage Garden, In, P. H. Savage .

Echo, John B. Tabb

Gillespie, Henry Newbolt

Good Friday Night, William Vaughn
Moody

POETRY.

Greatness, Florence Earle Coates . . . 231

28 In Dove Cottage Garden, P. H. Savage 186

699 In the North, .Francis Sherman . . 473
Love in the Winds, Richard Hovey . 464

167 Peace of God, The, Stuart Sterne . . 839

837 Pity, Josephine Preston Peabody . . 412

Round the Far Rocks, Annie Fields 70
365 Song of the Wandering Dust, Anna Hemp-

186 stead Branch 697

432 To Cleopatra's Mummy, Martha Gilbert

696 Dickinson 365

Venetian in Bergamo, 1588, The, William

700 Boscoe Thayer ' .... 840

CONTRIBUTOKS' CLUB.

Can a Clergyman be " a Good Fellow " ? . 575

Carlyle, A Reminiscence of 284

Changed Fashion of the Proposal in Fic-
tion, The 719

Club of Old Stories, The 854

Detective Stories 573

Experiment in Time, An 717

§ unlit irs of American Conversation, The . 286

eminiscence of Carlyle, A 284

R.Kipling: Comparative Psychologist . 858

Story on the Color-Line, A 859

Why Virgil did not write the ^Eneicl . . 574

BOOKS REVIEWED.

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey: Works, River-
side Edition 136

Bodley, John Edward Courtenay : France 845

Caine, Hall : The Christian 140

George, Henry : The Science of Political

Economy 852

Newell, William Wells : King Arthur and
the Table Round 278

Stedman, Edmund Clarence: Poems now
First Collected 138

THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY:
at #iaga$me of literature, Science, art, ana politic*.

VOL. LXXXL — JANUARY, 1898. — No. CGCCLXXXIIL

THE GROWTH AND EXPRESSION OF PUBLIC OPINION.

PUBLIC opinion, like democracy itself,
is a new power which has come into the
world since the Middle Ages. In fact,
it is safe to say that before the French Re-
volution nothing of the kind was known
or dreamt of in Europe. There was a
certain truth in Louis XIV.'s statement,
which now sounds so droll, that he was
himself the state. Public opinion was
his opinion. In England, it may be said
with equal safety, there was nothing that
could be called public opinion, in the mod-
ern sense, before the passage of the Re-
form Bill. It began to form itself slowly
after 1816. Sir Robert Peel was forced
to remark in a letter to Croker in March,
1820 : —

" Do you not think that the tone of
England, of that great compound of fol-
ly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling,
right feeling, obstinacy, or newspaper
paragraphs, which is called public opin-
ion, is more liberal — to use an odious
but intelligible phrase — than the policy
of the government ? Do not you think
that there is a feeling becoming daily
more general and more confirmed —
that is independent of the pressure of
taxation, or any immediate cause — in
favor of some undefined change in the
mode of governing the country ? It
seems to me a curious crisis, when pub-
lic opinion never had such influence in
public measures, and yet never was so
dissatisfied with the share which it pos-
sessed. It is growing too large for the
channels that it has been accustomed to
run through. God knows it is very dif-

ficult to widen them equally in propor-
tion to the size and force of the current
which they have to convey, but the en-
gineers that made them never dreamed
of various streams that are now strug-
gling for vent."

In short, Peel perceived the growth
of the force, and he recognized it as a
new force. In America public opinion
can hardly be said to have existed before
the Revolution. The opinions of leading
men, of clergymen and large landholders,
were very powerful, and settled most of
the affairs of state, but the opinion of the
majority did not count for much, and the
majority, in truth, did not think that it
should. In other words, public opinion
had not been created. It was the excite-
ment of the Revolutionary War which
brought it into existence, and made it
seem omnipotent. It is obvious, how-
ever, that there are two kinds of public
opinion. One kind is the popular belief
in the fitness or Tightness of something,
which Mr. Balfour calls " climate," a be-
lief that certain lines of conduct should
be followed, or a certain opinion held, by
good citizens, or right thinking persons.
Such a belief does not impose any duty
on anybody beyond outward conformity
to the received standards. The kind I
am now talking of is the public opinion,
or consensus of opinion, among large
bodies of persons, which acts as a politi-
cal force, imposing on those in authority
certain enactments, or certain lines of pol-
icy. The first of these does not change,
and is not seriously modified in much

The Growth and Expression of Public Opinion.

less than fifty years. The second is be-
ing incessantly modified by the events of
the day.

All the writers on politics are agreed
as to the influence which this latter pub-
lic opinion ought to have on government.
They all acknowledge that in modern con-
stitutional states it ought to be omnipo-
tent. It is in deciding from what source
it should come that the democrats and
the aristocrats part company. Accord-
ing to the aristocratic school, it should
emanate only from persons possessing a
moderate amount of property, on the as-
sumption that the possession of property
argues some degree of intelligence and
interest in public affairs. According to
the democratic school, it should emanate
from the majority of the adult males, on
the assumption that it is only in this way
that legislators can be made to consult
the greatest good of the greatest num-
ber, and that, in the long run, the major-
ity of adult males are pretty sure to be
right about public questions. President
Lincoln came near defining this theory
when he said, " You can fool part of the
people all the time, and all the people
part of the time, but you cannot fool
all the people all the time." This prob-
ably meant that under the democratic
system public opinion forms slowly, and
has to be clarified by prolonged discus-
sion, but it is sure to prove correct even-
tually.

What appears most to concern us in the
tendencies of democratic government is
not so much the quality of public opin-
ion, as the way in which it exercises its
power over the conduct of affairs. I was
struck recently by a remark in a private
letter, that " public opinion is as sound
as ever, but that the politicians " — that
is, the men in control of affairs — " pay
just as little attention to it as ever."
There is an assumption here that we can
get at public opinion in some other way
than through elections ; that is, that we
may know what the public thinks on any
particular question, without paying atten-

tion to what men in power, who seek to
obey the popular will, do or say as a con-
dition of their political existence. Is this
true of any democratic country ? Is it
true, in particular, of the United States
of America ?

There are only two ways in which pub-
lic opinion upon political questions finds
expression, or is thought to find it. One
is the vote at elections, the other is jour-
nalism. But public opinion declares it-
self through elections only at intervals
of greater or less length : in England,
once in five or six years ; in America,
once in two years, or at most in four ; in
France, once in four years. It is only at
these periods that public opinion must be
sought ; at others, it is consulted at the
will of the minister or sovereign, and he
rarely consults it when he can help it if
he thinks that its decision will be against
him, and that the result will be a loss of
power. The imperfection of elections,
however, as a means of making public
opinion known, is very obvious. It is
seldom, indeed, that a definite issue is
submitted to the public, like the Swiss
referendum, and that the voters are asked
to say yes or no, in answer to a particu-
lar question. As a rule, it is the general
policy of the party in power, on all sorts
of subjects, which appears to determine
the action of the voters. The bulk of
them, on both sides, vote for their own
party in any event, no matter what course
it has pursued, on the principle that if
what it has done in a particular case is
not right, it is as nearly right as circum-
stances will permit. The remnant, or
"independents," who turn the scale to
one side or the other, have half a dozen
reasons for their course, or, in other
words, express by their vote their opin-
ions on half a dozen subjects, besides
the one on which the verdict of the ma-
jority is sought. During the last thirty
years, for instance, in the United States,
it would have been almost useless to con-
sult the voters on any subject except the
tariff. No matter what question might

The Growth and Expression of Public Opinion.

have been put to them, it would almost
surely have been answered with refer-
ence mainly to the effect of the answer
on the tariff. All other matters would
have been passed over. In like manner,
it has probably been impossible in Eng-
land, for ten or twelve years, to get a real
expression of opinion on any subject ex-
cept Irish home rule. To the inquiry
what people thought about the Armenian
massacres, or education, or liquor regu-
lation, the voters were pretty sure to an-
swer, " We are opposed to Irish home
rule." Accordingly, after every election
there are disputes as to what it means.
The defeated party seldom acknowledges
that its defeat has been due to the mat-
ters on which the other side claims a vic-
tory. The great triumph of the Conser-
vatives in 1894 was ascribed by them to
home rule, but by the Liberals to local
option and clerical hostility to the com-
mon schools. Similarly, the Republican
defeat in America in 1890 was due, ac-
cording to one party, to the excesses of
the McKinley tariff, and, according to
the other, to gross deceptions practiced
on the voters as to its probable effect on
prices.

What are called " electioneering de-
vices " or " tricks " are largely based on
this uncertainty. That is, they are meant
to influence the voters by some sort of
matter irrelevant to the main issue. This
is called " drawing a red herring across
the scent." A good example of it is to
be found in the practice, which has pre-
vailed during nearly the whole tariff agi-
tation, of citing the rage, or disgust, or
misery of foreigners due to our legisla-
tion, as a reason for persisting in it, —
as if any legislation which produced this
effect on foreigners must be good. But,
obviously, there might be much legisla-
tion which would excite the hostility of
foreigners, and be at the same time inju-
rious to this country. In voting on the
tariff, a large number of voters — the
Irish for instance — might be, and doubt-
less were, influenced in favor of high du-

ties by the fact that, to a large extent,
they would exclude British goods, and
thus they appeared to be approving a
protective policy in general. Nobody be-
lieves that in Germany the increasing
Socialist vote represents Socialist ideas
— properly so called. It expresses dis-
content generally with the existing re*-
gime. In Ireland, too, the vote at a gen-
eral election does not express simply an
opinion on the question which has dis-
solved Parliament. Rather, it expresses
general hostility to English rule. In It-
aly elections mostly turn on the question
of the temporal power of the Pope. In
fact, wherever we look at the modes of
obtaining expressions of public opinion,
we find that elections are not often re-
liable as to particular measures, except
through the referendum. In all demo-
cratic countries, it is the practice of the
bulk of the voters to indicate by their
votes rather their confidence in, or dis-
trust of, the party in power, than their
opinions on any particular measure. It
is the few who turn the scale who are
really influenced by the main question
before the voters. The rest follow their
party prepossessions, or rely on the party
managers to turn the majority, if they
secure it, to proper account

In England some reliance is placed on
what are called "bye elections," — or
elections caused by vacancies occurring
between two general elections, — as in-
dications of the trend of public opinion
touching the acts or policy of the min-
istry. But these elections very seldom
show more than slight diminution or
slight increase of preceding majorities,
and the result, as an instruction, is very
often made uncertain by local causes,
such as the greater or less popularity of
one of the candidates. They may, and
generally do, reveal the growing or de-
clining popularity of the party in power
in the constituency in which they occur,
but rarely can be held to express the
opinion of the majority on any particu-
lar matter. There are several ways of

The Growth and Expression of Public Opinion.

accounting for any changes which have
occurred in the total vote, all equally
plausible. In America town or county
elections serve somewhat the same pur-
pose. They are watched, not so much
with reference to their influence on local
affairs, as with reference to the light they
throw on the feelings of the voters to-
ward the administration for the time be-
ing. It is taken for granted that no local
wants or incidents will prevent the bulk
of the voters from casting their ballots
as members of federal parties.

It is, probably, this disposition to vote
on the general course of the administra-
tion, rather than on any particular pr<j-
posal, which causes what it is now the
fashion to call the " swinging of the pen-
dulum," — that is, the tendency both in
England and in America to vote in a dif-
ferent way at alternate elections, or never
to give any party more than one term
in power. If public attention were apt
to be concentrated on one measure, this
could hardly occur so frequently. It
doubtless indicates, not positive condem-
nation of any particular thing, so much
as disapproval or weariness of certain
marked features of the government poli-
cy. The voters get tired both of praise
and of blame of particular men, and so
resolve to try others ; or they get tired
of a pai'ticular policy, and long for some-
thing new. It is a little difficult to fix
on the exact cause of such changes, but it
seems pretty certain that they cannot be
considered definite expressions of opin-
ion on specific subjects. And then, owing
to the electoral divisions through which
every country chooses legislators, a far
greater change may often be made in the
legislature than the vote in the separate
constituencies warrants. For instance, a
President may readily be chosen in the
United States by a minority of the popu-
lar vote ; and in England, an enormous
majority in the House of Commons may
rest on a very small aggregate majority
of the electors. There never was a more
striking illustration of the difficulty of

getting at popular opinion than the de-
feat of the Disraeli ministry in 1880. It
was the confident belief of all the more
instructed portion of the community —
the gentry, the clergy, and the profession-
al class — that, rightly or wrongly, public
opinion was on the side of the ministry,
and approved what was called its " im-
perial policy," — the provocation given
to Afghanistan, and the interference in
the Russo-Turkish War on the side of
Turkey. One heard, it was said, nothing
else in the clubs, the trains, the hotels,
and the colleges. But the result showed
that these indications were of little value,
that the judgment of the classes most oc-
cupied in observing political tendencies
was at fault, and that the bulk of the con-
stituencies had apparently taken quite a
different view of the whole matter.

A striking example of the same thing
was afforded in the State of New York
in 1892. The leaders of the Democratic
party at that time were men of more than
usual astuteness and political experience.
It was of the last importance to them to
learn the popular judgment on the more
recent acts of the party, particularly on
the mode in which it had secured control
of the state Senate. Up to the day of
election they seem to have had the utmost
confidence in an overwhelming popular
verdict in their favor. The result, how-
ever, was their overwhelming defeat.
They apparently had but a very slight
knowledge of the trend of public opinion.
In truth, it may be said that the great
political revolutions wrought by elections,
both in England and in America, have
been unexpected by the bulk of observers,
either wholly or as to their extent. No
change at all was looked for, or it was
not expected to be so great a change.

Why this should be so, why in a demo-
cratic society people should find so much
difficulty in discovering beforehand what
the sovereign power is thinking, and what
it is going to do, is not so difficult to ex-
plain as it seems. We must first bear
in mind that the democratic societies

T'he Growth and Expression of Public Opinion.

prodigiously increased in size almost at
the moment at which they acquired con-
trol of the State. There was no previous
opportunity for examining their tastes,
prejudices, weaknesses, or tendencies.
Most of the descriptions of democracies
within the present century, as I have
already pointed out, have been only
guesses, or deductions from the history
of those of antiquity. Nearly every mod-
ern writer on this subject has fallen into
mistakes about democratic tendencies,
merely through a priori reasoning. Cer-
tain things had happened in the ancient
democracies, and were sure to happen
again in the modern democracies, much
as the conditions had changed. Singu-
larly enough, the one absolutely new
difficulty, the difficulty of consulting a
modern democracy, has hardly been no-
ticed. This difficulty has produced the
boss, who is a sufficiently simple phenom-
enon. But how, without the boss, to
get at what the people are thinking, has
not been found out, though it is of great
importance. We have not yet hit on the
best plan of getting at " public opinion."
Elections, as we have seen, are the medi-
um through which this force manifests
itself in action, but they do not furnish
the reason of this action, the considera-
tions which led to it, or all the conse-
quences it is expected to produce. More-
over, at best they tell us only what half
the people are thinking ; for no party
nowadays wins an electoral victory by
much over half the voters. So that we
are driven back, for purposes of obser-
vation, on the newspaper press.

Our confidence in this is based on the
theory, not so much that the newspapers
make public opinion, as that the opinions
they utter are those of which their read-
ers approve. But this ground is being
made less tenable every year by the fact
that more and more newspapers rely on
advertising, rather than on subscriptions,
for their support and profits, and agree-
ment with their readers is thus less and
less important to them. The old threat

of " stopping my paper," if a subscriber
came across unpalatable views in the edi-
torial columns, is therefore not so formi-
dable as it used to be, and is less resorted
to. The advertiser, rather than the sub-
scriber, is now the newspaper bogie. He
is the person before whom the publisher
cowers and whom he tries to please, and
the advertiser is very indifferent about
the opinions of a newspaper. What in-
terests him is the amount or quality of
its circulation. What he wants to know
is, how many persons see it, not how many
persons agree with it. The consequence
is that the newspapers of largest circu-
lation, published in the great centres of
population where most votes are cast, are
less and less organs of opinion, especially
in America. In fact, in some cases the
advertisers use their influence — which
is great, and which the increasing com-
petition between newspapers makes all
the greater — to prevent the expression
in newspapers of what is probably the
prevailing local view of men or events.
There are not many newspapers which
can afford to defy a large advertiser.

Nothing is more striking in the read-
ing public to-day, in our democracy, than
the increasing incapacity for continuous
attention. The power of attention is one
that, just like muscular power, needs cul-
tivation or training. The ability to listen
to a long argument or exposition, or to
read it, involves not only strength but
habit in the muscles of the eye and the
nerves of the ear. In familiar language,
one has to be used to it, to do it easily.

There seems to be a" great deal of
reason for believing that this habit is
becoming much rarer. Publishers com-
plain more and more of the refusal of
nearly every modern community to read
books, except novels, which keep the at-
tention alive by amusing incidents and
rapid changes of situation. Argument-
ative works can rarely count on a large
circulation. This may doubtless be as-
cribed in part to the multiplicity of the ob-
jects of attention in modern times, to the

The Growth and Expression of Public Opinion.

opportunities of simple amusement, to the
large area of the world which is brought
under each man's observation by the tel-
egraph, and to the general rapidity of
communication. But this large area is
brought under observation through the
newspaper ; and that the newspaper's
mode of presenting facts does seriously
affect the way in which people perform
the process called " making up their
minds," especially about public questions,
can hardly be denied. The nearest ap-
proach we can make to what people are
thinking about any matter of public in-
terest is undoubtedly by " reading the
papers." It may not be a sure way, but
there is no other. It is true, often lam-
entably true, that the only idea most
foreigners and observers get of a nation's
modes of thought and standards of duty
and excellence, and in short of its man-
ners and morals, comes through reading
its periodicals. To the outsider the news-
paper press is the nation talking about
itself. Nations are known to other na-
tions mainly through their press. They
used to be known more by their public
men ; but the class of public men who re-
present a country is becoming every day
smaller, and public men speak less than
formerly ; with us they can scarcely be
said to speak at all. Our present system
of nomination and the loss of the habit
of debating in the legislature have almost
put an end to oratory, except during
exciting canvasses. Elsewhere than in
England, the names of the leading men
are hardly known to foreigners ; their
utterances, not at all. If I want to learn
the drift of opinion in any country, on
any topic, the best thing I can do, there-
fore, is to read the papers ; and I must
read a large number.

In America more than in any other
country, the collection of " news " has be-
come a business within half a century,
and it has been greatly promoted by the
improvements in the printing-press. Be-
fore this period, " news " was generally
news of great events, -— that is, of events

of more than local importance ; so that if
a man were asked, " What news ? " he
would try, in his answer, to mention
something of world - wide significance.
But as soon as the collection of it became
a business, submitted to the ordinary laws
of competition, the number of things that
were called " news " naturally increased.
Each newspaper endeavored to outdo its
rivals by the greater number of facts it
brought to the public notice, and it was
not very long before " news " became
everything whatever, no matter how un-
important, which the reader had not pre-
viously heard of. The sense of propor-
tion about news was rapidly destroyed.
Everything, however trifling, was consid-
ered worth printing, and the newspaper
finally became, what it is now, a collec-
tion of the gossip not only of the whole
world, but of its own locality. Now,
gossip, when analyzed, consists simply
of a collection of actual facts, mostly of
little moment, and also of surmises about
things, of equally little moment. But
business requires that as much impor-
tance as possible shall be given to them
by the manner of producing each item,
or what is called " typographical dis-
play." Consequently they are presented
wuh separate and conspicuous headings,
and there is no necessary connection be-
tween them. They follow one another,
column after column, without any order,
either of subject or of chronology.

The diligent newspaper reader, there-
fore, gets accustomed to passing rapidly
from one to another of a series of inci-
dents, small and great, requiring simply
the transfer, from one trifle to another,
of a sort of lazy, uninterested attention,
which often becomes sub-conscious ; that
is, a man reads with hardly any know-
ledge or recollection of what he is read-
ing. Not only does the attention be-
come habituated to frequent breaches in
its continuity, but it grows accustomed
to short paragraphs, as one does to pass-
ers-by in the street. A man sees and
observes them, but does not remember

The Growth and Expression of Public Opinion.

what he sees and observes for more than
a minute or two. That this should have
its effect on the editorial writing is what
naturally might be expected. If the
editorial article is long, the reader, used
to the short paragraphs, is apt to shrink
from the labor of perusing it ; if it is
brief, he pays little more attention to it
than he pays to the paragraphs. When,
therefore, any newspaper turns to seri-
ous discussion in its columns, it is diffi-
cult, and one may say increasingly diffi-
cult, to get a hearing. It has to contend
both against the intellectual habit of its
readers, which makes prolonged atten-
tion hard, and against a priori doubts
of its honesty and competency. People
question whether it is talking in good
faith, or has some sinister object in view,
knowing that in one city of the Union,
at least, it is impossible to get published
any criticism on the larger advertisers,
however nefarious their doings ; know-
ing also that in another city there have
been rapid changes of journalistic views,
made for party purposes or through sim-
ple changes of ownership.

The result is that the effect of newspa-
per editorial writing on opinion is small,
so far as one can judge. Still, it would
be undeniably large enough to possess
immense power if the press acted unani-
mously as a body. If all the papers, or
a great majority of them, said the same
thing on any question of the day, or told
the same story about any matter in dis-
pute, they would undoubtedly possess
great influence. But they are much di-
vided, partly by political affiliations, and
partly, perhaps mainly, by business rival-
ry. For business purposes, each is apt
to think it necessary to differ in some
degree from its nearest rivals, whether
of the same party or not, in its view of
any question, or at all events not to sup-
port a rival's view, or totally to ignore
something to which it is attaching great
importance. The result is that the press
rarely acts with united force or expresses
a united opinion. Nor do many readers

subscribe to more than one paper ; and
consequently few readers have any know-
ledge of the other side of any question
on which their own paper is, possibly,
preaching with vehemence. The great
importance which many persons attach to
having a newspaper of large circulation
on their side is due in some degree to its
power in the presentation of facts to the
public, and also to its power of annoy-
ance by persistent abuse or ridicule.

Another agency which has interfered
with the press as an organ of opinion
is the greatly increased expense of start-
ing or carrying on a modern newspaper.
The days when Horace Greeley or Wil-
liam Lloyd Garrison could start an influ-
ential paper in a small printing-office,
with the assistance of a boy, are gone
forever. Few undertakings require more
capital, or are more hazardous. The most
serious item of expense is the collection
of news from all parts of the world, and
this cannot be evaded in our day. News
is the life-blood of the modern newspa-
per. No talent or energy will make up
for its absence. The consequence is that
a very large sum is needed to establish a
newspaper. After it is started, a large
sum must be spent without visible return,
but the fortune that may be accumulat-
ed by it, if successful, is also very large.
One of the most curious things about it
is that the public does not expect from
a newspaper proprietor the same sort of
morality that it expects from persons in
other callings. It would disown a book-
seller and cease all intercourse with him
for a tithe of the falsehoods and petty
frauds which it passes unnoticed in a
newspaper proprietor. It may disbe-
lieve every word he says, and yet profess
to respect him, and may occasionally
reward him ; so that it is quite possible
to find a newspaper which nearly every-
body condemns, and whose influence
most men would repudiate, circulating
very freely among religious and moral
people, and making handsome profits.
A newspaper proprietor, therefore, who

The Growth and Expression of Public Opinion.

finds that his profits remain high, no
matter what views he promulgates and
what kind of morality he practices, can
hardly, with fairness to the community,
be treated as an exponent of its opinions.
He will not consider what it thinks, when
he finds he has only to consider what
it will buy, and that it will buy his paper
without agreeing with it.

But it is as an exponent of the na-
tion's feeling about other nations that
the press is most defective. The old
diplomacy, in which, as Disraeli said,
" sovereigns and statesmen " regulated
international affairs in secret conclave in
gorgeous salons, has all but passed away.
The " sovereigns and statesmen " and*
the secret conclave and the gorgeous sa-
lons remain, but of the old indifference
to what the world outside thought of
their work not very much remains. Now
and then a king or an emperor gratifies
his personal spites, in his instructions to
his diplomatic representatives, like the
Emperor of Germany in the case of the
unfortunate Greeks ; but most govern-
ments, in their negotiations with foreign
powers, now listen closely to the voice of
their own people. The democracy sits
at every council board, and the most con-
servative of ministers, consciously or un-
consciously, consults it as well as he can.
He tries to find out what it wishes in
any particular matter, or, if this be im-
possible, he tries to find out what will
most impress its imagination. Whether
he brings peace or war, he tries to make
it appear that the national honor has been
carefully looked after, and that the na-
tional desires, and even the national weak-
nesses, have been considered and provid-
ed for. But it is from the press that
he must learn all this ; and it is from
the press, too, that each diplomatist must
learn whether his opponent's country is
really behind him. The press is never
silent, and it has the field to itself ; any
one who wishes to know what the people
are feeling and thinking has to rely on
it, for the want of anything better.

In international questions, however,
the press is often a poor reliance. In
the first place, business prudence prompts
an editor, whether he fully understands
the matter under discussion or not, to
take what seems the patriotic view ; and
tradition generally makes the selfish,
quarrelsome view the patriotic view.
The late editor of the Sun expressed
this tersely by advising young journal-
ists " always to stand by the Stars and
Stripes." It was long ago expressed
still more tersely by the cry, " Our
country, right or wrong ! " All first-class
powers still live more or less openly,
in their relations with one another,
under the old dueling code, which the
enormous armaments in modern times
render almost a necessity. Under this
code the one unbearable imputation is
fear of somebody. Any other imputa-
tion a nation supports with comparative
meekness ; the charge of timidity is in-
tolerable. It has been made more so by
the conversion of most modern nations
into great standing armies, and no great
standing army can for a moment allow
the world to doubt its readiness, and even
eagerness, to fight. It is not every dip-
lomatic difference that is at first clearly
understood by the public. Very often,
the pros and cons of the matter are im-
perfectly known until the correspondence
is published, but the agitation of the
popular mind continues ; the press must
talk about the matter, and its talk is
rarely pacific. It is bound by tradition
to take the ground that its own govern-
ment is right ; and that even if it is not,
it does not make any difference, — the
press has to maintain that it is right.

The action of Congress on the recent
Venezuelan complication well illustrated
the position of the press in such matters.
When Mr. Cleveland sent his message
asking Congress to vote the expense of
tracing the frontier of a foreign power,
Congress knew nothing of the merits of
the case. It did not even know that
any such controversy was pending. As

The, Growth and Expression of Public Opinion.

the message was distinctly one that
might lead to war, and as Congress was
the war-making power, the Constitution
presumptively imposed on it the duty of
examining the causes of the dispute thor-
oughly, before complying with the Presi-
dent's request. In most other affairs,
too, it would have been the more dis-
posed to discharge this duty because the
majority was hostile to Mr. Cleveland.
But any delay or hesitation, it feared,
would be construed by the public as a
symptom of fear or of want of patriot-
ism, so it instantly voted the money with-
out any examination whatever. The
press was in an almost similar condition.
It knew no more of the merits of the case
than Congress, and it ha?d the same fear
of being thought wanting in patriotism,
so that the whole country in twenty-four
hours resounded with rhetorical prepa-
ration for and justification of war with
England.

As long as this support is confined to
argumentation no great harm is done.
The diplomatists generally care but little
about the dialectical backing up that they
get from the newspapers. Either they
do not need it, or it is too ill informed
to do them much good. But the news-
papers have another concern than mere
victory in argument. They have to main-
tain their place in the estimation of their
readers, and, if possible, to increase the
number of these readers. Unhappily, in
times of international trouble, the easiest
way to do this always seems to be to in-
fluence the public mind against the for-
eigner. This is done partly by impugn-
ing his motives in the matter in hand,
and partly by painting his general char-
acter in an odious light. Undoubtedly
this produces some effect on the public
mind by begetting a readiness to pun-
ish in arms, at any cost, so unworthy an
adversary. The worst effect, however,
is that which is produced on the ministers
conducting the negotiations. It fright-
ens or encourages them into taking ex-
treme positions, in putting forward im-

possible claims, or in perverting history
and law to help their case. The applause
and support of the newspapers seem to
be public opinion. They must bring hon-
or at home, no matter how the controver-
sy ends. In short, it may be said, as a
matter of history, that in few diplomatic
controversies in this century has the press
failed to make moderate ground difficult
for a diplomatist, and retreats from un-
tenable positions almost impossible. The
press makes his case seem so good that
abandonment of it looks like treason to
his country.

Then there is another aspect of the case
which cannot be passed without notice,
though it puts the press in a less honor-
able light. Newspapers are made to sell ;
and for this purpose there is nothing bet-
ter than war. War means daily sensation
and excitement. On this almost any kind
of newspaper may live and make money.
Whether the war brings victory or defeat
makes little difference. The important
thing is that in war every moment may
bring important and exciting news, —
news which does not need to be accurate
or to bear sifting. What makes it most
marketable is that it is probable and
agreeable, although disagreeable news
sells nearly as well. In the tumult of a
great war, when the rules of evidence
are suspended by passion or anxiety, in-
vention, too, is easy, and has its value,
and is pretty sure never to be punished.
Some newspapers, which found it difficult
to make a livelihood in times of peace,
made fortunes in our last war ; and it may
be said that, as a rule, troublous times
are the best for a newspaper proprietor.

It follows from this, it cannot but fol-
low, that it is only human for a newspa-
per proprietor to desire war, especially
when he feels sure that his own country
is right, and* that its opponents are ene-
mies of civilization, — a state of mind
into which a man may easily work him-
self by writing and talking much during
an international controversy. So that I
do not think it an exaggeration or a

The Growth and Expression of Public Opinion.

calumny to say that the press, taken as a
whole, — of course with many honorable
exceptions, — has a bias in favor of war.
It would not stir up a war with any coun-
try, but if it sees preparations made to
fight, it does not fail to encourage the
combatants. This is particularly true of
a naval war, which is much more striking
as a spectacle than a land war, while it
does not disturb industry or distribute
personal risk to nearly the same extent.

Of much more importance, however,
than the manner in which public opinion
finds expression in a democracy is the
manner in which it is formed, and this
is very much harder to get at. I do not;
mean what may be called people's stand-
ing opinion about things in general, which
is born of hereditary prejudice and works
itself into the manners of the country as
part of each individual's moral and in-
tellectual outfit. There is a whole batch
of notions about things public and pri-
vate, which men of every nation hold be-
cause they are national, — called " Ro-
man " by a Roman, " English " by an
Englishman, and " American " by an
American, — and which are defended or
propagated simply by calling the oppo-
site " un-English " or " un-American."
These views come to people by descent.
They are inherited rather than formed.
What I have in mind is the opinions
formed by the community about new sub-
jects, questions of legislation and of war
and peace, and about social needs or sins
or excesses, — in short, about anything
novel which calls imperatively for an im-
mediate judgment of some kind. What
is it that moves large bodies or parties
in a democracy like ours, for instance, to
say that its government should do this,
or should not do that, in any matter that
may happen to be before them ?

Nothing can be more difficult than
an answer to this question. Eveiy wri-
ter about democracy, from Montesquieu
down, has tried to answer it by a priori
predictions as to what democracy will
say or do or think under certain given

circumstances. The uniform failure nat-
urally suggests the conclusion that the
question is not answerable at all, owing
largely to the enormously increased num-
ber of influences under which all men
act in the modern world. It is now very
rare to meet with one of the distinctly
defined characters which education, con-
ducted under the regime of authority,
used to form, down to the close of the last
century. There are really no more " di-
vines," or " gentlemen," or " Puritans,"
or "John Bulls," or " Brother Jona-
thans." In other words, there are no
more moral or intellectual moulds. It
used to be easy to say how a given in-
dividual or community would look at a
thing ; at present it is well-nigh impos-
sible. We can hardly tell what agency
is exercising the strongest influence on
popular thought on any given occasion.
Most localities and classes are subject to
some peculiar dominating force, and if
you discover what it is, you discover it
almost by accident. One of the latest
attempts to define a moral force that
would be sure to act on opinion was the
introduction into the political arena in
England of the " Nonconformist con-
science," or the moral training of the dis-
senting denominations, — Congregation-
alists, Methodists, and Baptists. In the
discussions of Irish home rule and vari-
ous cognate matters, much use has been
made of the term, but it is difficult to
point to any particular occasion in which
the thing has distinctly made itself felt.
One would have said, twenty years ago,
that the English class of country squires
would be the last body in the world,
owing to temperament and training, to
approve of any change in the English
currency. We believe they are to-day
largely bimetallists. The reason is that
their present liabilities, contracted in good
times, have been made increasingly heavy
by the fall in agricultural produce.

The same phenomena are visible here
in America. It would be difficult to-day
to say what is the American opinion, pro-

The Growth and Expression of Public Opinion.

perly so called, about the marriage bond.
One would think that in the older States,
in which social life is more settled, it
would strongly favor indissolubility, or,
at all events, great difficulty of dissolu-
tion. But this is not the case. In Con-
necticut and Rhode Island divorce is as
easy, and almost as little disreputable, as
in any of the newer Western States. In
the discussion on the currency, most ob-
servers would have predicted that the
power of the government over its value
would be most eagerly preached by the
States in which the number of foreign
voters was greatest. As a matter of fact,
these States proved at the election to be
the firmest friends of the gold standard.
Within our own lifetime the Southern or
cotton States, from being very conserva-
tive, have become very radical, in the
sense of being ready to give ear to new
ideas. What we might have said of them
in 1860 would be singularly untrue in
1900. One might go over the civilized
world in this way, and find that the pub-
lic opinion of each country, on any given
topic, had escaped from the philosophers,
so to speak, — that all generalizing about
it had become difficult, and that it was no
longer possible to divide influences into
categories.

The conclusion most readily reached
about the whole matter is that authority,
whether in religion or in morals, which
down to the last century was so power-
ful, has ceased to exert much influence
on the affairs of the modern world, and
that any attempt to mould opinion on re-
ligious or moral or political questions, by
its instrumentality, is almost certain to
prove futile. The reliance of the older
political writers, from Grotius to Locke,
on the sayings of other previous writers
or on the Bible, is now among the curi-
osities of literature. Utilitarianism, how-
ever we may feel about it, has fully taken
possession of political discussion. That
is to say, any writer or speaker on po-
litical subjects has to show that his pro-
position will make people more comfort-

able or richer. This is tantamount to
saying that historic experience has not
nearly the influence on political affairs it
once had. The reason is obvious. The
number of persons who have something
to say about political affairs has increased
a thousandfold, but the practice of read-
ing books has not increased, and it is in
books that experience is recorded. In
the past, the governing class, in part at
least, was a reading class. One of the
reasons which are generally said to have
given the Southern members special in-
fluence in Congress before the war is that
they read books, had libraries, and had
wide knowledge of the experiments tried
by earlier generations of mankind. Their
successors rarely read anything but the
newspapers. This is increasingly true,
also, of other democratic countries. The
old literary type of statesmen, of which
Jefferson and Madison and Hamilton,
Guizot and Thiers, were examples, is rap-
idly disappearing, if it has not already
disappeared.

The importance of this in certain
branches of public affairs is great, — the
management of currency, for example.
All we know about currency we learn
from the experience of the human race.
What man will do about any kind of
money, — gold, silver, or paper, — under
any given set of conditions, we can pre-
dict only by reading of what man has
done. What will happen if, of two kinds
of currency, we lower or raise the value
of one, what will happen if we issue
too much irredeemable paper, why we
must make our paper redeemable, what
are the dangers of violent and sudden
changes in the standard of value, are all
things which we can ascertain only from
the history of money. What any man
now thinks or desires about the matter
is of little consequence compared with
what men in times past have tried to do.
The loss of influence or weight by the
reading class is therefore of great im-
portance, for to this loss we undoubtedly
owe most of the prevalent wild theories

The Growth and Expression of Public Opinion.

about currency. They are the theories
of men who do not know that their ex-
periments have been tried already and
have failed. In fact, I may almost ven-
ture the assertion that the influence of
history on politics was never smaller
than it is to-day, although history was
never before cultivated with so much
acumen and industry. So that authority
and experience may fairly be ruled out
of the list of forces which seriously
influence the government of democratic
societies. In the formation of public
opinion they do not greatly count.

The effect of all this is not simply to
lead to hasty legislation. It also has an*
injurious effect on legislative decision, in
making every question seem an " open "
or " large " question. As nothing, or
next to nothing, is settled, all problems
of politics have a tendency to seem new
to every voter, — matters of which each
man is as good a judge as another, and
as much entitled to his own opinion ; he
is likely to consider himself under no
special obligation to agree with anybody
else. The only obligation he feels is that
of party, and this is imposed to secure
victories at the polls rather than to in-
sure any particular kind of legislation.
For instance, a man may be a civil ser-
vice reformer when the party takes no
action about it, or a gold man when
the party rather favors silver, or a free-
trader when the party advocates high
tariff, and yet be a good party man as
long as he votes the ticket. He may
question all the opinions in its platform,
but if he thinks it is the best party to
administer the government or distribute
the offices, he may and does remain in
it with perfect comfort. In short, party
discipline does not insure uniformity of
opinion, but simply uniformity of action
at election. The platform is not held to
impose any line of action on the voters.
Neither party in America to-day has any
fixed creed. Every voter believes what
is good in his own eyes, and may do
so with impunity, without loss of party

standing, as long as he votes for the par-
ty nominee at every important election.

The pursuit of any policy in legisla-
tion is thus, undoubtedly, more difficult
than of old. The phrase, well known to
lawyers, that a thing is " against public
policy " has by no means the same mean-
ing now that it once had, for it is very
difficult to say what " public policy " is.
National policy is something which has
to be committed to the custody of a few
men who respect tradition and are fa-
miliar with records. A large assembly
which is not dominated by a leader, and
in which each member thinks he knows
as much as any other member, and does
not study or respect records, can hardly
follow a policy without a good deal of dif-
ficulty. The disappearance from the gov-
ernments of the United States, France,
and Italy of commanding figures, whose
authority or character imposed on minor
men, accordingly makes it hard to say
what is the policy of these three coun-
tries on most questions. Ministers who
do not carry personal weight always seek
to fortify themselves by the conciliation
of voters, and what will conciliate voters
is, under every democratic regime, a mat-
ter of increasing uncertainty, so free is
the play of individual opinion.

Of this, again, the condition of our cur-
rency question at this moment is a good
illustration. Twenty-five years ago, the
custody and regulation of the standard
of value, like the custody and regulation
of the standard of length or of weight,
were confided to experts, without objec-
tion in any quarter. There was no more
thought of disputing with these experts
about it than of disputing with mathe-
maticians or astronomers about problems
in their respective sciences. It was not
thought that there could be a " public
opinion " about the comparative merits of
the metals as mediums of exchange, any
more than about the qualities of triangles
or the position of stars. The experts met
now and then, in private conclave, and
decided, without criticism from any one

The Growth and Expression of Public Opinion.

else, whether silver or gold should be the
legal tender. All the public asked was
that the standard, whatever it was, should
be the steadiest possible, the least liable
to fluctuations or variations.

With the growing strength of the de-
mocratic regime all this has been changed.
The standard of value, like nearly every-
thing else about which men are con-
cerned, has descended into the political
arena. Every man claims the right to
have an opinion about it, as good as that
of any other man. More than this,
nearly every man is eager to get this
opinion embodied in legislation if he
can. Nobody is listened to by all as an
authority on the subject. The most emi-
nent financiers find their views exposed
to nearly as much question as those of
any tyro. The idea that money should
be a standard of value, as good as the
nature of value will permit, has almost
disappeared. Money has become a means
in the hands of governments of alleviat-
ing human misery, of lightening the
burdens of unfortunate debtors, and of
stimulating industry. On the best mode
of doing these things, every man thinks
he is entitled to his say. The result is
that we find ourselves, in the presence
of one of the most serious financial pro-
blems which has ever confronted any na-
tion, without a financial leader. The
finances of the Revolution had Alexan-
der Hamilton, and subsequently Albert
Gallatin. The finances of the civil war
had first Secretary Chase, and subse-
quently Senator Sherman, both of whom
brought us to some sort of conclusion, if
not always to the right conclusion, by
sheer weight of authority. To Senator
Sherman we were mainly indebted for
the return to specie payment in 1879.
At present we have no one who fills the
places of these men in the public eye.
No one assumes to lead in this crisis,
though many give good as well as bad
advice, but all, or nearly all, who advise,
advise as politicians, not as financiers.
Very few who speak on the subject say

publicly the things they say in private.
Their public deliverances are modified
or toned down to suit some part of the
country, or some set or division of vot-
ers. They are what is called " politically
wise." During the twenty years follow-
ing the change in the currency in 1873
no leading man in either party disputed
the assertions of the advocates of silver
as to the superiority of silver to gold as
a standard of value. Nearly all politi-
cians, even of the Republican party, ad-
mitted the force of some of the conten-
tious of those advocates, and were willing
to meet them halfway by some such mea-
sure as the pui-chase of silver under the
Sherman Act. The result was that when
Mr. Bryan was nominated on a silver
platform, his followers attacked the gold
standard with weapons drawn from the
armory of the gold men, and nearly every
public man of prominence was estopped
from vigorous opposition to them by his
own utterances on the same subject.

It is easy to see that under circum-
stances like these a policy about finance
— the most important matter in which a
nation can have a policy — is hardly pos-
sible. There are too many opinions in
the field for the formation of anything
that can be called public opinion. And
yet, I cannot recall any case in history,
or, in other words, in human experience,
in which a great scheme of financial re-
form was carried through without having
some man of force or weight behind it,
some man who had framed it, who un-
derstood it, who could answer objections
to it, and who was not obliged to alter
or curtail it against his better judgment.
The great financiers stand out in bold
relief in the financial chronicles of every
nation. They may have been wrong,
they may have made mistakes, but they
spoke imperiously and carried their point,
whatever it was.

Whether the disposition to do without
them, and to control money through popu-
lar opinion, which seems now to have
taken possession of the democratic world,

The Growth and Expression of Public Opinion.

will last, or whether it will be abandoned
after trial, remains to be seen. But one
is not a rash prophet who predicts that it
will fail. Finance is too full of details,
of unforeseen effects, of technical condi-
tions, to make the mastery of it possible,
without much study and experience.
There is no problem of government
which comes so near being strictly " sci-
entific," that is, so dependent on prin-
ciples of human nature and so little
dependent on legislative power. No gov-
ernment can completely control the me-
dium of exchange. It is a subject for
psychology rather than for politics. De-
mocracy has apparently been taken pos-K
session of by the idea, either that a
perfect standard of value may be con-
trived, or that the standard of value
may be made a philanthropic instrument.
But in view of the incessant and rapid
change of cost of production which every-
thing undergoes in this age of invention
and discovery, gold and silver included,
the idea of a perfect standard of value
must be set down as a chimera. Every
one acknowledges this. What some men
maintain is that the effects of invention
and discovery may be counteracted by
law and even by treaty, which is simply
an assertion that parliaments and con-
gresses and diplomatists can determine
what each man shall give for everything
he buys. This proposition hardly needs
more than a statement of it for its refuta-
tion. It is probably the most unexpected
of all the manifestations of democratic
feeling yet produced. For behind all
proposals to give currency a legal value
differing from the value of the market-
place lies a belief in the strength of law
such as the world has never yet seen.
All previous regimes have believed in the
power of law to enforce physical obedi-
ence, and to say what shall constitute the
legal payment of a debt, but never until
now has it been maintained that govern-
ment can create in each head the amount
of desire which fixes the price of a com-
modity.

In short, the one thing which can be
said with most certainty about demo-
cratic public opinion in the modern
world, is that it is moulded as never be-
fore by economic rather than by reli-
gious or moral or political considera-
tions. The influences which governed
the world down to the close of the seven-
teenth century were respect for a reign-
ing family, or belief in a certain form
of religious worship and horror of oth-
ers, or national pride and correspond-
ing dislike or distrust of foreigners, or
commercial rivalry. It is only the last
which has now much influence on public
opinion or in legislation. There is not
much respect, that can be called a politi-
cal force, left for any reigning family.
There is a general indifference to all
forms of religious worship, or at least
sufficient indifference to prevent strong
or combative attachment to them. Re-
ligious wars are no longer possible ; the
desire to spread any form of faith by
force of arms, which so powerfully in-
fluenced the politics of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, has completely
disappeared. It is only in Spain and in
Turkey that this feeling can now be said
to exist as a power in the state.

The growth of indifference to what
used to be called political liberty, too,
has been curiously rapid. Political lib-
erty, as the term was understood at the
beginning of this century, was the power
of having something to say in the election
of all officers of the state, and through
them of influencing legislation and ad-
ministration ; or, in other words, of en-
forcing strict responsibility for its acts
on the part of the governing body to-
wards the people. There is apparently
much less importance attached to this
now than formerly, as is shown by the
surrender of the power of nomination to
" the bosses " in so many States ; and
in New York by the growing readiness
to pass legislation without debate under
direction from the outside. Similarly,
socialism, which seems to be the political

The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West. 15

creed which has strongest hold on the
working classes to-day, is essentially a
form of domination over the whole in-
dividual by the constituted authorities,
without consulting him. The only choice
left him is one of an occupation, and of
the kind of food he will eat and the
kind of clothes he will wear. As there
is to he no war, no money, no idleness,
and no taxation, there will be no poli-
tics, and consequently no discussion.
In truth, the number of men who would
hail such a form of society with delight,
as relieving them from all anxiety about
sustenance, and from all need of skill or
character, is probably large and increas-
ing. For similar reasons, the legisla-
tion which excites most attention is apt
to be legislation which in some way
promises an increase of physical com-
fort. It is rarely, for instance, that a
trades union or workingman'a associa-
tion shows much interest in any law
except one which promises to increase
wages, or shorten hours of labor, or
lower fares or the price of something.
Protection, to which a very large num-
ber of workingmen are attached, is only
in their eyes a mode of keeping wages up.
" Municipal ownership " is another name
for low fares ; restrictions on immigra-
tion are a mode of keeping competitors
out of the labor market.

All these things, and things of a sim-

ilar nature, attract a great deal of in-
terest ; the encroachments of the bosses
on constitutional government, compara-
tively little. The first attempt to legis-
late for the economical benefit of the
masses was the abolition of the English
corn laws. It may seem at first sight
that the enactment of the corn laws was
an economical measure. But such was
not the character in which the corn laws
were originally advocated. They were
called for, first, in order to make Eng-
land self-supporting in case of a war with
foreign powers, a contingency which was
constantly present to men's minds in the
last century ; secondly, to keep up the
country gentry, or " landed interest," as
it was called, which then had great po-
litical value and importance. The aboli-
tion of these laws was avowedly carried
out simply for the purpose of cheapen-
ing and enlarging the loaf. It was the
beginning of a series of measures in va-
rious countries which aim merely at in-
creasing human physical comfort, what-
ever their effect on the structure of the
government or on the play of politi-
cal institutions. This foreshadowed the
greatest change which has come over the
modern world. It is now governed
mainly by ideas about the distribution
of commodities. This distribution is not
only what most occupies public opinion,
but what has most to do with forming it.
E. L. Godkin.

THE WILD PARKS AND FOREST RESERVATIONS OF THE WEST.

" Keep not standing fix'd and rooted,

Briskly venture, briskly roam ;
Head and hand, where'er thou foot it,

And stout heart are still at home.
In each land the sun does visit

We are gay, whate'er betide :
To give room for wandering is it

That the world was made so wide."

THE tendency nowadays to wander in
wildernesses is delightful to see. Thou-

sands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civi-
lized people are beginning to find out that
going to the mountains is going home ;
that wildness is a necessity ; and that
mountain parks and reservations are
useful not only as fountains of timber
and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of
life. Awakening from the stupefying
effects of the vice of over-industry and

16 The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West.

the deadly apathy of luxury, they are
trying as best they can to mix and en-
rich their own little ongoings with those
of Nature, and to get rid of rust and dis-
ease. Briskly venturing and roaming,
some are washing off sins and cobweb
cares of the devil's spinning in all-day
storms on mountains ; sauntering in ros-
iny pinewoods or in gentian meadows,
brushing through chaparral, bending
down and parting sweet, flowery sprays ;
tracing rivers to their sources, getting in
touch with the nerves of Mother Earth ;
jumping from rock to rock, feeling the
life of them, learning the songs of them,
panting in whole-souled exercise and re-
joicing in deep, long-drawn breaths of
pure wildness. This is fine and natural
and full of promise. And so also is the
growing interest in the care and preser-
vation of forests and wild places in gen-
eral, and in the half-wild parks and gar-
dens of towns. Even the scenery habit
in its most artificial forms, mixed with
spectacles, sUliness, and kodaks ; its de-
votees arrayed more gorgeously than
scarlet tanagers, frightening the wild
game with red umbrellas, — even this
is encouraging, and may well be regard-
ed as a hopeful sign of the times.

All the Western mountains are still
rich in wildness, and by means of good
roads are being brought nearer civiliza-
tion every year. To the sane and free
it will hardly seem necessary to cross the
continent in search of wild beauty, how-
ever easy the way, for they find it in
abundance wherever they chance to be.
Like Thoreau they see forests in orchards
and patches of huckleberry brush, and
oceans in ponds and drops of dew. Few
in these hot, dim, frictiony times are
quite sane or free ; choked with care
like clocks full of dust, laboriously do-
ing so much good and making so much
money, — or so little, — they are no
longer good themselves.

When, like a merchant taking a list of
his goods, we take stock of our wildness,
we are glad to see how much of even

the most destructible kind is still un-
spoiled. Looking at our continent as
scenery when it was all wild, lying be-
tween beautiful seas, the starry sky
above it, the starry rocks beneath it, to
compare its sides, the East and the West,
would be like comparing the sides of a
rainbow. But it is no longer equally
beautiful. The rainbows of to-day are,
I suppose, as bright as those that first
spanned the sky ; and some of our. land-
scapes are growing more beautiful from
year to year, notwithstanding the clear-
ing, trampling work of civilization. New
plants and animals are enriching woods
and gardens, and many landscapes wholly
new, with divine sculpture and architec-
ture, are just now coming to the light of
day as the mantling folds of creative gla-
ciers are being withdrawn, and life in
a thousand cheerful, beautiful forms is
pushing into them, and new-born rivers
are beginning to sing and shine in them.
The old rivers, too, are growing longer
like healthy trees, gaining new branches
and lakes as the residual glaciers at their
highest sources on the mountains recede,
while their rootlike branches in their
flat deltas are at the same time spread-
ing farther and wider into the seas and
making new lands.

Under the control of the vast mys-
terious forces of the interior of the
earth all the continents and islands are
slowly rising or sinking. Most of the
mountains are diminishing in size under
the wearing action of the weather, though
a few are increasing in height and girth,
especially the volcanic ones, as fresh
floods of molten rocks are piled on their
summits and spread in successive layers,
like the wood-rings of trees, on their
sides. And new mountains are being
created from time to time as islands in
lakes and seas, or as subordinate cones
on the slopes of old ones, thus in some
measure balancing the waste of old beau-
ty with new. Man, too, is making many
far-reaching changes. This most influ-
ential half animal, half angel is rapidly

The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West. 17

multiplying and spreading, covering the
seas and lakes with ships, the land with
huts, hotels, cathedrals, and clustered city
shops and homes, so that soon, it would
seem, we may have to go farther than
Nausen to find a good sound solitude.
None of Nature's landscapes are ugly so
long as they are wild ; and much, we can
say comfortingly, must always be in great
part wild, particularly the sea and the
sky, the floods of light from the stars, and
the warm, unspoilable heart of the earth,
infinitely beautiful, though only dimly
visible to the eye of imagination. The
geysers, too, spouting from the hot under-
world ; the steady, long-lasting glaciers
on the mountains, obedient only to the
sun ; Yosemite domes and the tremen-
dous grandeur of rocky canons and moun-
tains in general, — these must always be
wild, for man can change them and mar
them hardly more than can the butterflies
that hover above them. But the conti-
nent's outer beauty is fast passing away,
especially the plant part of it, the most
destructible and most universally charm-
ing of all.

Only thirty years ago, the great Cen-
tral Valley of California, five hundred
miles long and fifty miles wide, was one
bed of golden and purple flowers. Now it
is ploughed and pastured out of existence,
gone forever, — scarce a memory of it
left in fence corners and along the bluffs
of the streams. The gardens of the Si-
erra also, and the noble forests in both
the reserved and the unreserved portions,
are sadly hacked and trampled, notwith-
standing the ruggedness of the topogra-
phy, — all excepting those of the parks
guarded by a few soldiers. In the no-
blest forests of the world, the ground,
once divinely beautiful, is desolate and
repulsive, like a face ravaged by disease.
This is true also of many other Pacific
Coast and Rocky Mountain valleys and
forests. The same fate, sooner or later,
is awaiting them all, unless awakening
public opinion comes forward to stop it.
Even the great deserts in Arizona, Ne-

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 483. 2

vada, Utah, and New Mexico, which
offer so little to attract settlers, and
which a few years ago pioneers were
afraid of, as places of desolation and
death, are now taken as pastures at the
rate of one or two square miles per cow,
and of course their plant treasures are
passing away, — the delicate abronias,
phloxes, gilias, etc. Only a few of the
bitter, thorny, unbitable shrubs are left,
and the sturdy cactuses that defend
themselves with bayonets and spears.

Most of the wild plant wealth of the
East also has vanished, — gone into dus-
ty history. Only vestiges of its glorious
prairie and woodland wealth remain to
bless humanity in boggy, rocky, un-
ploughable places. Fortunately, some
of these are purely wiW, and go far to
keep Nature's love visible. White wa-
ter-lilies, with rootstocks deep and safe
in mud, still send up every summer a
Milky Way of starry, fragrant flowers
around a thousand lakes, and many a
tuft of wild grass waves its panicles on
mossy rocks, beyond reach of trampling
feet, in company with saxifrages, blue-
bells, and ferns. Even in the midst of
farmers' fields, precious sphagnum bogs,
too soft for the feet of cattle, are pre-
served with their charming plants un-
changed, — chiogenes, Andromeda, Kal-
mia, Linuaea, Arethusa, etc. Calypso bo-
realis still hides in the arbor vitae swamps
of Canada, and away to the southward
there are a few unspoiled swamps, big
ones, where miasma, snakes, and alliga-
tors, like guardian angels, defend their
treasures and keep them pure as para-
dise. And beside a' that and a' that,
the East is blessed with good winters
and blossoming clouds that shed white
flowers over all the land, covering every
scar and making the saddest landscape
divine at least once a year.

The most extensive, least spoiled, and
most unspoilable of the gardens of the
continent are the vast tundras of Alaska.
In summer they extend smooth, even,
undulating, continuous beds of flowers

18 The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West.

and leaves from about lat. 62° to the
shores of the Arctic Ocean ; and in win-
ter sheets of snowflowers make all the
country shine, one mass of white radi-
ance like a star. Nor are these Arctic
plant people the pitiful frost - pinched
unfortunates they are guessed to be by
those who have never seen them. Though
lowly in stature, keeping near the frozen
ground as if loving it, they are bright
and cheery, and speak Nature's love as
plainly as their big relatives of the south.
Tenderly happed and tucked in beneath
downy snow to sleep through the long
white winter, they make haste to bloom
in the spring without trying to grow tall,
though some rise high enough to ripple
and wave in the wind, and display masses
of color — yellow, purple, and blue — so
rich that they look like beds of rainbows,
and are visible miles and miles away.

As early as June one may find the
showy Geum glaciale in flower, and the
dwarf willows putting forth myriads of
fuzzy catkins, to be followed quickly,
especially on the drier ground, by mer-
tensia. eritrichium, polemonium, oxytro-
pis, astragalus, lathyrus, lupinus, myoso-
tis, dodecatheon, arnica, chrysanthemum,
nardosmia, saussurea, senecio, erigeron,
matrecaria, caltha, valeriana, stellaria,
Tofieldia, polygonum, papaver, phlox,
lychnis, cheiranthus, Linnsea, and a host
of drabas, saxifrages, and heathworts,
with bright stars and bells in glorious
profusion, particularly Cassiope, Andro-
meda, ledum, pyrola, and vaccinium, —
Cassiope the most abundant and beauti-
ful of them all. Many grasses also grow
here, and wave fine purple spikes and
panicles over the other flowers, — poa,
aira, calamagrostis, alopecurus, trisetum,
elymus, festuca, glyceria, etc. Even
ferns are found thus far north, careful-
ly and comfortably unrolling their pre-
cious fronds, — aspidium, cystopteris,
and woodsia, all growing on a sumptuous
bed of mosses and lichens ; not the scaly
kind seen on rails and trees and fallen
logs to the southward, but massive, round-

headed, finely colored plants like corals,
wonderfully beautiful, worth going round
the world to see. I should like to men-
tion all the plant friends I found in a
summer's wanderings in this cool reserve,
but I fear few would care to read their
names, although everybody, I am sure,
would love them could they see them
blooming and rejoicing at home.

On my last visit to the region about
Kotzebue Sound, near the middle of Sep-
tember, 1881, the weather was so fine
and mellow that it suggested the Indian
summer of the Eastern States. The
winds were hushed, the tundra glowed
in creamy golden sunshine, and the col-
ors of the ripe foliage of the heathworts,
willows, and birch — red, purple, and
yellow, in pure bright tones — were en-
riched with those of berries \vhich were
scattered everywhere, as if they had
been showered from the clouds like hail.
When I was back a mile or two from
the shore, reveling in this color-glory,
and thinking how fine it would be could
I cut a square of the tundra sod of
conventional picture size, frame it, and
hang it among the paintings on my study
walls at home, saying to myself, " Such
a Nature painting taken at random from
any part of the thousand-mile bog would
make the other pictures look dim and
coarse," I heard merry shouting, and,
looking round, saw a band of Eskimos
— men, women, and children, loose and
hairy like wild animals — running to-
wards me. I could not guess at first
what they were seeking, for they seldom
leave the shore ; but soon they told me,
as they threw themselves down, sprawl-
ing and laughing, on the mellow bog,
and began to feast on the berries. A
lively picture they made, and a pleasant
one, as they frightened the whirring ptar-
migans, and surprised their oily stom-
achs with the beautiful acid berries of
many kinds, and filled sealskin bags with
them to carry away for festive days in
winter.

Nowhere else on my travels have I

The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West. 19

seen so much warm-blooded, rejoicing
life as in this grand Arctic reservation,
by so many regarded as desolate. Not
only are there whales in abundance along
the shores, and innumerable seals, wal-
ruses, and white bears, but on the tun-
dras great herds of fat reindeer and wild
sheep, foxes, hares, mice, piping mar-
mots, and birds. Perhaps more birds
are born here than in any other region
of equal extent on the continent. Not
only do strong-winged hawks, eagles,
and water-fowl, to whom the length of
the continent is merely a pleasant excur-
sion, come up here every summer in
great numbers, but also many short-
winged warblers, thrushes, and finches,
repairing hither to rear their young in
safety, reinforce the plant bloom with
their plumage, and sweeten the wilder-
ness with song ; flying all the way, some
of them, from Florida, Mexico, and Cen-
tral America. In coming north they are
coming home, for they were born here,
and they go south only to spend the
winter months, as New Englanders go to
Florida. Sweet-voiced troubadours, they
sing in orange groves and vine -clad
magnolia woods in winter, in thickets of
dwarf birch and alder in summer, and
sing and chatter more or less all the
way back and forth, keeping the whole
country glad. Oftentimes, in New Eng-
land, just as the last snow-patches are
melting and the sap in the maples be-
gins to flow, the blessed wanderers may
be heard about orchards and the edges
of fields where they have stopped to
glean a scanty meal, not tarrying long,
knowing they have far to go. Tracing
the footsteps of spring, they arrive in
their tundra homes in June or July, and
set out on the return journey in Septem-
ber, or as soon as their families are able
to fly well.

This is Nature's own reservation, and
every lover of wildness will rejoice with
me that by kindly frost it is so well de-
fended. The discovery lately made that
it is sprinkled with gold may cause some

alarm ; for the strangely exciting stuff
makes the timid bold enough for any-
thing, and the lazy destructively indus-
trious. Thousands at least half insane
are now pushing their way into it, some
by the southern passes over the moun-
tains, perchance the first mountains they
have ever seen, — sprawling, struggling,
gasping for breath, as, laden with awk-
ward, merciless burdens of provisions
and tools, they climb over rough-angled
boulders and cross thin miry bogs.
Some are going by the mountains and
rivers to the eastward through Canada,
tracing the old romantic ways of the
Hudson Bay traders ; others by Bering
Sea and the Yukon, sailing all the way,
getting glimpses perhaps of the famous
fur-seals, the ice-floes, and the innu-
merable islands and bars of the great
Alaska river. In spite of frowning hard-
ships and the frozen ground, the Klon-
dike gold will increase the crusading
crowds for years to come, but compara-
tively little harm will be done. Holes
will be burned and dug into the hard
ground here and there, and into the
quartz-ribbed mountains and hills ; rag-
ged towns like beaver and muskrat vil-
lages will be built, and mills and loco-
motives will make rumbling, screeching,
disenchanting noises ; but the miner's
pick will not be followed far by the
plough, at least not until Nature is ready
to unlock the frozen soil-beds with her
slow-turning climate key. On the other
hand, the roads of the pioneer miners
will lead many a lover of wildness into
the heart of the reserve, who without
them would never see it.

In the meantime, the wildest health
and pleasure grounds accessible and avail-
able to tourists seeking escape from care
and dust and early death are the parks
and reservations of the West. There
are four national parks, — the Yellow-
stone, Yosemite, General Grant, and
Sequoia, — all within easy reach, and
thirty forest reservations, a magnificent
realm of woods, most of which, by rail-

The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West.

roads and trails and open ridges, is also
fairly accessible, not only to the deter-
mined traveler rejoicing in difficulties,
but to those (may their tribe increase)
who, not tired, not sick, just naturally
take wing every summer in search of
wildness. The forty million acres of
these reserves are in the main unspoiled
as yet, though sadly wasted and threat-
ened on their more open margins by the
axe and fire of the lumberman and pro-
spector, and by hoofed locusts, which,
like the winged ones, devour every leaf
within reach, while the shepherds and
owners set fires with the intention of
making a blade of grass grow in the
place of every tree, but with the result
of killing both the grass and the trees.

In the million acre Black Hills Reserve
of South Dakota, the easternmost of the
great forest reserves, made for the sake
of the farmers and miners, there are
delightful, reviving sauntering-grounds
in open parks of yellow pine, planted
well apart, allowing plenty of sunshine
to warm the ground. This tree is one of
the most variable and most widely dis-
tributed of American pines. It grows
sturdily on all kinds of soil and rocks, and,
protected by a mail of thick bark, defies
frost and fire and disease alike, daring
every danger in firm, calm beauty and
strength. It occurs here mostly on the
outer hills and slopes where no other tree
can grow. The ground beneath it is
yellow most of the summer with showy
Wythia, arnica, applopappus, solidago,
and other sun-loving plants, which, though
they form no heavy entangling growth,
yet give abundance of color and make
all the woods a garden. Beyond the
yellow pine woods there lies a world
of rocks of wildest architecture, broken,
splintery, and spiky, not very high, but
the strangest in form and style of
grouping imaginable. Their countless
towers and spires, pinnacles and slender-
domed columns, are crowded together,
and feathered with sharp-pointed Engel-
mann spruces, making curiously mixed

forests, — half trees, half rocks. Level
gardens here and there in the midst of
them offer charming surprises, and so
do the many small lakes with lilies
on their meadowy borders, and bluebells,
anemones, daisies, castilleias, comman-
dras, etc., together forming landscapes
delightfully novel, and made still wilder
by many interesting animals, — elk, deer,
beavers, wolves, squirrels, and birds.
Not very long ago this was the richest of
all the red man's hunting-grounds here-
about. After the season's buffalo hunts
were over, — as described by Parkman,
who, with a picturesque cavalcade of
Sioux savages, passed through these fa-
mous hills in 1846, — every winter defi-
ciency was here made good, and hunger
was unknown until, in spite of most de-
termined, fighting, killing opposition, the
white gold-hunters got into the fat game
reserve and spoiled it. The Indians
are dead now, and so are most of the
hardly less striking free trappers of the
early romantic Rocky Mountain times.
Arrows, bullets, scalping-knives, need no
longer be feared ; and all the wilderness
is peacefully open.

The Rocky Mountain reserves are the
Teton, Yellowstone, Lewis and Clark,
Bitter Root, Priest River, and Flathead,
comprehending more than twelve million
acres of mostly unclaimed, rough, for-
est-covered mountains in which the great
rivers of the country take their rise.
The commonest tree in most of them is
the brave, indomitable, and altogether
admirable Pinus contorta, widely distrib-
uted in all kinds of climate and soil,
growing cheerily in frosty Alaska, breath-
ing the damp salt air of the sea as well
as the dry biting blasts of the Arctic
interior, and making itself at home on
the most dangerous flame -swept slopes
and ridges of the Rocky Mountains in
immeasurable abundance and variety of
forms. Thousands of acres of this spe-
cies are destroyed by running fires near-
ly every summer, but a new growth
springs quickly from the ashes. It is

The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West. 21

generally small, and yields few sawlogs
of commercial value, but is of incalcula-
ble importance to the farmer and miner ;
supplying fencing, mine timbers, and
firewood, holding the porous soil on
steep slopes, preventing landslips and
avalanches, and giving kindly nourish-
ing shelter to animals and the widely
outspread sources of the life-giving riv-
ers. The other trees are mostly spruce,
mountain pine, cedar, juniper, larch, and
balsam fir ; some of them, especially on
the western slopes of the mountains, at-
taining grand size and furnishing abun-
dance of fine timber.

Perhaps the least known of all this
grand group of reserves is the Bitter
Root, of more than four million acres.
It is the wildest, shaggiest block of for-
est wildness in the Rocky Mountains, full
of happy, healthy, storm-loving trees, full
of streams that dance and sing in glorious
array, and full of Nature's animals, —
elk, deer, wild sheep, beai-s, cats, and
innumerable smaller people.

In calm Indian summer, when the
heavy winds are hushed, the vast forests
covering hill and dale, rising and falling
over the rough topography and vanish-
ing in the distance, seem lifeless. No
moving thing is seen as we climb the
peaks, and only the low, mellow mur-
mur of falling water is heard, which
seems to thicken the silence. Neverthe-
less, how many hearts with warm red
blood in them are beating under cover
of the woods, and how many teeth and
eyes are shining ! A multitude of ani-
mal people, intimately related to us, but
of whose lives we know almost nothing,
are as busy about their own affairs as
we are about ours : beavers are building
and mending dams and huts for winter,
and storing them with food ; bears are
studying winter quarters as they stand
thoughtful in open spaces, while the gen-
tle breeze ruffles the long hair on their
backs ; elk and deer, assembling on the
heights, are considering cold pastures
where they will be farthest away from

the wolves ; squirrels and marmots are
busily laying up provisions and lining
their nests against coming frost and
snow foreseen ; and countless thousands
of birds are forming parties and gather-
ing their young about them for flight
to the southlands ; while butterflies and
bees, apparently with no thought of hard
times to come, are hovering above the
late - blooming goldenrods, and, with
countless other insect folk, are dancing
and humming right merrily in the sun-
beams and shaking all the air into music.
Wander here a whole summer, if you
can. Thousands of God's wild blessings
will search you and soak you as if you
were a sponge, and the big days will go
by uncounted. But if you are business-
tangled, and so burdened with duty that
only weeks can be got out of the heavy-
laden year, then go to the Flathead Re-
serve ; for it is easily and quickly reached
by the Great Northern Railroad. Get
off the track at Belton Station, and in a
few minutes you will find yourself in the
midst of what you are sure to say is the
best care -killing scenery on the conti-
nent, — beautiful lakes derived straight
from glaciers, lofty mountains steeped
in lovely nemophila-blue skies and clad
with forests and glaciers, mossy, ferny
waterfalls in their hollows, nameless
and numberless, and meadowy gardens
abounding in the best of everything.
When you are calm enough for discrim-
inating observation, you will find the king
of the larches, one of the best of the
Western giants, beautiful, picturesque,
and regal in port, easily the grandest of
all the larches in the world. It grows
to a height of one hundred and fifty to
two hundred feet, with a diameter at the
ground of five to eight feet, throwing out
its branches into the light as no other tree
does. To those who before have seen
only the European larch or the Lyell spe-
cies of the eastern Rocky Mountains, or
the little tamarack or hackmatack larch
of the Eastern States and Canada, this
Western king must be a revelation.

22 The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West.

Associated with this grand tree in the
making of the Flathead forests is the
large and beautiful mountain pine, or
Western white pine (Pinus monticola),
the invincible contorta or lodge-pole pine,
and spruce and cedar. The forest floor
is covered with the richest beds of Lin-
naea borealis I ever saw, thick fragrant
carpets, enriched with shining mosses
here and there, and with Clintonia, py-
rola, moneses, and vaccinium, weaving
hundred-mile beds of bloom that would
have made blessed old Linnaeus weep for

j°y- «

Lake McDonald, full of brisk trout,
is in the heart of this forest, and Ava-
lanche Lake is ten miles above McDon-
ald, at the feet of a group of glacier-
laden mountains. Give a month at
least to this precious reserve. The time
will not be taken from the sum of your
life. Instead of shortening, it will in-
definitely lengthen it and make you truly
immortal. Nevermore will time seem
short or long, and cares will never again
fall heavily on you, but gently and kind-
ly as gifts from heaven.

The vast Pacific Coast reserves in
Washington and Oregon — the Cascade,
Washington, Mount Rainier, Olympic,
Bull Run, and Ashland, named in order
of size — include more than 12,500,000
acres of magnificent forests of beautiful
and gigantic trees. They extend over
the wild, unexplored Olympic Moun-
tains and both flanks of the Cascade
Range, the wet and the dry. On the
east side of the Cascades the woods are
sunny and open, and contain principally
yellow pine, of moderate size, but of
great value as a cover for the irrigating
streams that flow into the dry interior,
where agriculture on a grand scale is be-
ing carried on. Along the moist, balmy,
foggy, west flank of the mountains, fa-
cing the sea, the woods reach their high-
est development, and, excepting the Cali-
fornia redwoods, are the heaviest on the
continent. They are made up mostly
of the Douglas spruce (Pseudotsuga

taxifolia), with the giant arbor vitae, or
cedar, and several species of fir and
hemlock in varying abundance, forming
a forest kingdom unlike any other, in
which limb meets limb, touching and
overlapping in bright, lively, triumphant
exuberance, 250, 300, and even 400 feet
above the shady, mossy ground. Over
all the other species the Douglas spruce
reigns supreme. It is not only a large
tree, the tallest in America next to the
redwood, but a very beautiful one, with
bright green drooping foliage, handsome
pendent cones, and a shaft exquisitely
straight and round and regular. Form-
ing extensive forests by itself in many
places, it lifts its spiry tops into the
sky close together with as even a growth
as a well-tilled field of grain. And no
ground has been better tilled for wheat
than these Cascade Mountains for trees :
they were ploughed by mighty glaciers,
and harrowed and mellowed and out-
spread by the broad streams that flowed
from the ice-ploughs as they were with-
drawn at the close of the glacial period.
In proportion to its weight when dry,
Douglas spruce timber is perhaps strong-
er than that of any other large conifer
in the country, and being tough, dura-
ble, and elastic, it is admirably suited
for ship-building, piles, and heavy tim-
bers in general ; but its hardness and lia-
bility to warp when it is cut into boards
render it unfit for fine work. In the
lumber markets of California it is called
" Oregon pine." When lumbering is go-
ing on in the best Douglas woods, espe-
cially about Puget Sound, many of the
long slender boles are saved for spars ;
and so superior is their quality that they
are called for in almost every shipyard in
the world, and it is interesting to follow
their fortunes. Felled and peeled and
dragged to tide-water, they are raised
again as yards and masts for ships, given
iron roots and canvas foliage, decorated
with flags, and sent to sea, where in glad
motion they go cheerily over the ocean
prairie in every latitude and longitude,

The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West. 23

singing and bowing responsive to the
same winds that waved them when they
were in the woods. After standing in one
place for centuries they thus go round
the world like tourists, meeting many a
friend from the old home forest; some
traveling like themselves, some standing
head downward in muddy harbors, hold-
ing up the platforms of wharves, and
others doing all kinds of hard timber
work, showy or hidden.

This wonderful tree also grows far
northward in British Columbia, and south-
ward along the coast and middle regions
of Oregon and California ; flourishing
with the redwood wherever it can find
an opening, and with the sugar pine,
yellow pine, and libocedrus in the Sierra.
It extends into the San Gabriel, San
Bernardino, and San Jacinto Mountains
of southern California. It also grows
well on the Wasatch Mountains, where
it is called " red pine," and on many
parts of the Rocky Mountains and short
interior ranges of the Great Basin. But
though thus widely distributed, only in
Oregon, Washington, and some parts of
British Columbia does it reach perfect
development.

To one who looks from some high
standpoint over its vast breadth, the for-
est on the west side of the Cascades
seems all one dim, dark, monotonous
field, broken only by the white volcanic
cones along the summit of the range.
Back in the untrodden wilderness a deep
furred carpet of brown and yellow mosses
covers the ground like a garment, press-
ing about the feet of the trees, and ris-
ing in rich bosses softly and kindly over
every rock and mouldering trunk, leav-
ing no spot uncared for ; and dotting
small prairies, and fringing the meadows
and the banks of streams not seen in
general views, we find, besides the great
conifers, a considerable number of hard-
wood trees, — oak, ash, maple, alder,
wild apple, cherry, arbutus, Nuttall's
flowering dogwood, and in some places
chestnut. In a few favored spots the

broad-leaved maple grows to a height
of a hundred feet in forests by itself,
sending out large limbs in magnificent
interlacing arches covered with mosses
and ferns, thus forming lofty sky-gar-
dens, and rendering the underwoods de-
lightfully cool. No finer forest ceiling
is to be found than these maple arches,
while the floor, ornamented with tall
ferns and rubus vines, and cast into hill-
ocks by the bulging, moss-covered roots
of the trees, matches it well.

Passing from beneatk the heavy shad*
ows of the woods, almost anywhere one
steps into lovely gardens of lilies, or-
chids, heathworts, and wild roses. Along
the lower slopes, especially in Oregon,
where the woods are less dense, there
are miles of rhododendron, making glo-
rious masses of purple in the spring,
while all about the streams and the
lakes and the beaver meadows there is
a rich tangle of hazel, plum, cherry,
crab-apple, cornel, gaultheria, and rubus,
with myriads of flowers and abundance
of other more delicate bloomers, such
as erythronium, brodiaea, fritillaria, calo-
chortus, Clintonia, and the lovely hider
of the north, Calypso. Beside all these
bloomers there are wonderful ferneries
about the many misty waterfalls, some
of the fronds ten feet high, others the
most delicate of their tribe, the maiden-
hair fringing the rocks within reach of
the lightest dust of the spray, while the
shading trees on the cliffs above them,
leaning over, look like eager listeners
anxious to catch every tone of the rest-
less waters. In the autumn berries of
every color and flavor abound, enough
for birds, bears, and everybody, particu-
larly about the stream-sides and mead-
ows where sunshine reaches the ground :
huckleberries, red, blue, and black, some
growing close to the ground, others on
bushes ten feet high ; gaultheria berries,
called " sal-al " by the Indians ; salmon
berries, an inch in diameter, growing in
dense prickly tangles, the flowers, like
wild roses, still more beautiful than the

The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West.

fruit ; raspberries, gooseberries, currants,
blackberries, and strawberries. The un-
derbrush and meadow fringes are in
great part made up of these berry bushes
and vines ; but in the depths of the
woods there is not much underbrush of
any kind, — only a thin growth of rubus,
huckleberry, and vine-maple.

Notwithstanding the outcry against
the reservations last winter in Washing-
ton, that uncounted farms, towns, and
villages were included in them, and that
all business was threatened or blocked,
nearly all the mountains in which the re-
serves lie are still covered with virgin
forests. Though lumbering has long
been carried on with tremendous energy
along their boundaries, and home-seek-
ers have explored the woods for open-
ings available for farms, however small,
one may wander in the heart of the re-
serves for weeks without meeting a hu-
man being, Indian or white man, or any
conspicuous trace of one. Indians used
to ascend the main streams on their way
to the mountains for wild goats, whose
wool furnished them clothing. But with
food in abundance on the coast there
was little to draw them into the woods,
and the monuments they have left there
are scarcely more conspicuous than
those of birds and squirrels ; far less so
than those of the beavers, which have
dammed streams and made clearings
that will endure for centuries. Nor is
there much in these woods to attract
cattle-keepers. Some of the first settlers
made farms on the small bits of prairie
and in the comparatively open Cowlitz
and Chehalis valleys of Washington ; but
before the gold period most of the im-
migrants from the Eastern States settled
in the fertile and open Willamette Valley
of Oregon. Even now, when the search
for tillable land is so keen, excepting the
bottom-lands of the rivers around Puget
Sound, there are few cleared spots in all
western Washington. On every meadow
or opening of any sort some one will
be found keeping cattle, raising hops, or

cultivating patches of grain, but these
spots are few and far between. All the
larger spaces were taken long ago ; there-
fore most of the newcomers build their
cabins where the beavers built theirs.
They keep a few cows, laboriously widen
their little meadow openings by hack-
ing, girdling, and burning the rim of the
close - pressing forest, and scratch and
plant among the huge blackened logs
and stumps, girdling and killing them-
selves in killing the trees.

Most of the farm lands of Washington
and Oregon, excepting the valleys of the
Willamette and Rogue rivers, lie on the
east side of the mountains. The forests
on the eastern slopes of the Cascades fail
altogether ere the foot of the range is
reached, stayed by drought as suddenly
as on the west side they are stopped by
the sea ; showing strikingly how depend-
ent are these forest giants on the gener-
ous rains and fogs so often complained
of in the coast climate. The lower por-
tions of the reserves are solemnly soaked
and poulticed in rain and fog during the
winter months, and there is a sad dearth
of sunshine, but with a little knowledge
of woodcraft any one may enjoy an ex-
cursion into these woods even in the
rainy season. The big, gray days are
exhilarating, and the colors of leaf and
branch and mossy bole are then at their
best. The mighty trees getting their food
are seen to be wide-awake, every needle
thrilling in the welcome nourishing
storms, chanting and bowing low in glori-
ous harmony, while every raindrop and
snowflake is seen as a beneficent mes-
senger from the sky. The snow that falls
on the lower woods is mostly soft, coming
through the trees in downy tufts, load-
ing their branches, and bending them
down against the trunks until they look
like arrows, while a strange muffled si-
lence prevails, making everything im-
pressively solemn. But these lowland
snowstorms and their effects quickly
vanish. The snow melts in a day or
two, sometimes in a few hours, the bent

The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West. 25

branches spring up again, and all the
forest work is left to the fog and the
rain. At the same time, dry snow is
falling on the upper forests and moun-
tain tops. Day after day, often for
weeks, the big clouds give their flowers
without ceasing, as if knowing how im-
portant is the work they have to do.
The glinting, swirling swarms thicken
the blast, and the trees and rocks are
covered to a depth of ten to twenty feet.
Then the mountaineer, snug in a grove
with bread and fire, has nothing to do
but gaze and listen and enjoy. Ever
and anon the deep, low roar of the storm
is broken by the booming of avalanches,
as the snow slips from the overladen
heights and rushes down the long white
slopes to fill the fountain hollows. All
the smaller streams are hushed and
buried, and the young groves of spruce
and fir near the edge of the timber-line
are gently bowed to the ground and put
. to sleep, not again to see the light of day
or stir branch or leaf until the spring.

These grand reservations should draw
thousands of admiring visitors at least
in summer, yet they are neglected as if
of no account, and spoilers are allowed
to ruin them as fast as they like. A
few peeled spars cut here were set up
in London, Philadelphia, and Chicago,
where they excited wondering attention ;
but the countless hosts of living trees
rejoicing at home on the mountains are
scarce considered at all. Most travelers
here are content with what they can see
from car windows or the verandas of ho-
tels, and in going from place to place
cling to their precious trains and stages
like wrecked sailors to rafts. When an
excursion into the woods is proposed,
all sorts of dangers are imagined, —
snakes, bears, Indians. Yet it is far
safer to wander in God's woods than to
travel on black highways or to stay at
home. The snake danger is so slight it
is hardly worth mentioning. Bears are
a peaceable people, and mind their own
business, instead of going about like the

devil seeking whom they may devour.
Poor fellows, they have been poisoned,
trapped, and shot at until they have lost
confidence in brother man, and it is not
now easy to make their acquaintance.
As to Indians, most of them are dead
or civilized into useless innocence. No
American wilderness that I know of is
so dangerous as a city home " with all
the modern improvements." One should
go to the woods for safety, if for nothing
else. Lewis and Clark, in their famous
trip across the continent in 1804-1805,
did not lose a single man by Indians or
animals, though all the West was then
wild. Captain Clark was bitten on the
hand as he lay asleep. That was one
bite among more than a hundred men
while traveling nine thousand miles. Log-
gers are far more likely to be met than
Indians or bears in the reserves or about
their boundaries, brown weather-tanned
men with faces furrowed like bark, tired-
looking, moving slowly, swaying like the
trees they chop. A little of everything
in the woods is fastened to their cloth-
ing, rosiny and smeared with balsam,
and rubbed into it, so that their scanty
outer garments grow thicker with use and
never wear out. Many a forest giant
have these old woodmen felled, but,
round-shouldered and stooping, they too
are leaning over and tottering to their
fall. Others, however, stand ready to
take their places, stout young fellows,
erect as saplings ; and always the foes of
trees outnumber their friends. Far up
the white peaks one can hardly fail to
meet the wild goat, or American chamois,

— an admirable mountaineer, familiar
with woods and glaciers as well as rocks,

— and in leafy thickets deer will be
found ; while gliding about unseen there
are many sleek furred animals enjoying
their beautiful lives, and birds also, not-
withstanding few are noticed in hasty
walks. The ousel sweetens the glens and
gorges where the streams flow fastest,
and every grove has its singers, however
silent it seems, — thrushes, linnets, war-

26 The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West.

biers ; humming-birds glint about the
fringing bloom of the meadows and
peaks, and the lakes are stirred into
lively pictures by water-fowl.

The Mount Rainier forest reserve
should be made a national park and
guarded while yet its bloom is on ; for
if in the making of the West Nature
had what we call parks in mind, — places
for rest, inspiration, and prayers, — this
Rainier region must surely be one of
them. In the centre of it there is a
lonely mountain capped with ice ; f rom»
the ice-cap glaciers radiate in every di-
rection, and young rivers from the gla-
ciers ; while its flanks, sweeping down in
beautiful curves, are clad with forests and
gardens, and filled with birds and ani-
mals. Specimens of the best of Nature's
treasures have been lovingly gathered
here and arranged in simple symmetrical
beauty within regular bounds.

Of all the fire-mountains which like
beacons once blazed along the Pacific
Coast, Mount Rainier is the noblest in
form, has the most interesting forest cov-
er, and, with perhaps the exception of
Shasta, is the highest and most flowery.
Its massive white dome rises out of its
forests, like a world by itself, to a height
of fourteen thousand to fifteen thousand
feet. The forests reach to a height of a
little over six thousand feet, and above
the forests there is a zone of the loveliest
flowers, fifty miles in circuit and nearly
two miles wide, so closely planted and
luxuriant that it seems as if Nature,
glad to make an open space between
woods so dense and ice so deep, were
economizing the precious ground, and try-
ing to see how many of her darlings she
can get together in one mountain wreath,
— daisies, anemones, geraniums, colum-
bines, erythroniums, larkspurs, etc.,
among which we wade knee-deep and
waist-deep, the bright corollas in myri-
ads touching petal to petal. Picturesque
detached groups of the spiry Abies sub-
alpina stand like islands along the low-
er margin of the garden zone, while on

the upper margin there are extensive
beds of bryanthus, Cassiope, Kalmia,
and other heathworts, and higher still
saxifrages and drabas, more and more
lowly, reach up to the edge of the ice.
Altogether this is the richest subalpine
garden I ever found, a perfect floral ely-
sium. The icy dome needs none of man's
care, but unless the reserve is guarded
the flower bloom will soon be killed, and
nothing of the forests will be left but
black stump monuments.

The Sierra of California is the most
openly beautiful and useful of all the for-
est reserves, and the largest, excepting
the Cascade Reserve of Oregon and the
Bitter Root of Montana and Idaho. It
embraces over four million acres of the
grandest scenery and grandest trees on
the continent, and its forests are planted
just where they do the most good, not
only for beauty, but for farming in the
great San Joaquin Valley beneath them.
It extends southward from the Yosemite
National Park to the end of the range,
a distance of nearly two hundred miles.
No other coniferous forest in the world
contains so many species or so many
large and beautiful trees, — Sequoia gi-
gantea, king of conifers, " the noblest
of a noble race," as Sir Joseph Hooker
well says ; the sugar pine, king of all
the world's pines, living or extinct ; the
yellow pine, next in rank, which here
reaches most perfect development, form-
ing noble towers of verdure two hundred
feet high ; the mountain pine, which
braves the coldest blasts far up the
mountains on grim, rocky slopes ; and
five others, flourishing each in its place,
making eight species of pine in one for-
est, which is still further enriched by
the great Douglas spruce, libocedrus, two
species of silver fir, large trees and exqui-
sitely beautiful, the Paton hemlock, the
most graceful of evergreens, the curious
tumion, oaks of many species, maples,
alders, poplars, and flowering dogwood,
all fringed with flowery underbrush,
manzanita, ceanothus, wild rose, cherry,

The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West. 27

chestnut, and rhododendron. Wander-
ing at random through these friendly,
approachable woods, one comes here and
there to the loveliest lily gardens, some
of the lilies ten feet high, and the smooth-
est gentian meadows, and Yosemite val-
leys known only to mountaineers. Once
I spent a night by a camp-fire on Mount
Shasta with Asa Gray and Sir Joseph
Hooker, and, knowing that they were
acquainted with all the great forests of
the world, I asked whether they knew
any coniferous forest that rivaled that
of the Sierra. They unhesitatingly said :
" No. In the beauty and grandeur of
individual trees, and in number and va-
riety of species, the Sierra forests surpass
all others."

This Sierra Reserve, proclaimed by the
President of the United States in Sep-
tember, 1893, is worth the most thought-
ful care of the government for its own
sake, without considering its value as the
fountain of the rivers on which the fer-
tility of the great San Joaquin Valley
depends. Yet it gets no care at all.
In the fog of tariff, silver, and annexa-
tion politics it is left wholly unguarded,
though the management of the adjacent
national parks by a few soldiers shows
how well and how easily it can be pre-
served. In the meantime, lumbermen
are allowed to spoil it at their will, and
sheep in uncountable ravenous hordes to
trample it and devour every green leaf
within reach ; while the shepherds, like
destroying angels, set innumerable fires,
which burn not only the undergrowth of
seedlings on which the permanence of
the forest depends, but countless thou-
sands of the venerable giants. If every
citizen could take one walk through this
reserve, there would be no more trouble
about its care ; for only in darkness does
vandalism flourish.

The reserves of southern California, —
the San Gabriel, San Bernardino, San Ja-
cinto, and Trabuco, — though not large,
only about two million acres altogether,
are perhaps the best appreciated. Their

slopes are covered with a close, almost
impenetrable growth of flowery bushes,
beginning on the sides of the fertile
coast valleys and the dry interior plains.
Their higher ridges, however, and moun-
tains are open, and fairly well forested
with sugar pine, yellow pine, Douglas
spruce, libocedrus, and white fir. As
timber fountains they amount to little,
but as bird and bee pastures, cover for
the precious streams that irrigate the
lowlands, and quickly available retreats
from dust and heat and care, their value
is incalculable. Good roads have been
graded into them, by which in a few hours
lowlanders can get well up into the sky
and find refuge in hospitable camps and
club-houses, where, while breathing re-
viving ozone, they may absorb the beauty
about them, and look comfortably down
on the busy towns and the most beauti-
ful orange groves ever planted since gar-
dening began.

The Grand Canon Reserve of Arizo-
na, of nearly two million acres, or the
most interesting part of it, as well as the
Rainier region, should be made into a
national park, on account of their su-
preme grandeur and beauty. Setting out
from Flagstaff, a station on the Atchison,
Topeka, and Santa FC" Railroad, on the
way to the cation you pass through beau-
tiful forests of yellow pine, — like those
of the Black Hills, but more extensive,
— and curious dwarf forests of nut pine
and juniper, the spaces between the mini-
ature trees planted with many interesting
species of eriogonum, yucca, and cactus.
After riding or walking seventy-five miles
through these pleasure-grounds, the San
Francisco and other mountains, abound-
ing in flowery parklike openings and
smooth shallow valleys with long vistas
which in fineness of finish and arrange-
ment suggest the work of a consummate
landscape artist, watching you all the
way, you come to the most tremendous
cafion in the world. It is abruptly coun-
tersunk in the forest plateau, so that
you see nothing of it until you are sud-

After a Sunset of Great Splendor.

denly stopped on its brink, with its im-
measurable wealth of divinely colored
and sculptured buildings before you and
beneath you. No matter how far you
have wandered hitherto, or how many
famous gorges and valleys you have
seen, this one, the Grand Canon of the
Colorado, will seem as novel to you, as
unearthly in the color and grandeur and
quantity of its architecture, as if you had
found it after death, on some other star ;
so incomparably lovely and grand anti.
supreme is it above all the other cafions
in our fire-moulded, earthquake-shaken,
rain-washed, wave-washed, river and gla-
cier sculptured world. It is about six
thousand feet deep where you first see
it, and from rim to rim ten to fifteen
miles wide. Instead of being dependent
for interest upon waterfalls, depth, wall

sculpture, and beauty of parklike floor,
like most other great canons, it has no
waterfalls in sight, and no appreciable
floor spaces. The big river has just room
enough to flow and roar obscurely, here
and there groping its way as best it
can, like a weary, murmuring, overladen
traveler trying to escape from the tre-
mendous, bewildering labyrinthic abyss,
while its roar serves only to deepen the
silence. Instead of being fillpd with air,
the vast space between the walls is crowd-
ed with Nature's grandest buildings, —
a sublime city of them, painted in every
color, and adorned with richly fretted
cornice and battlement spire and tower
in endless variety of style and architec-
ture. Every architectural invention of
man has been anticipated, and far more,
in this grandest of God's terrestrial cities.
John Muir.

AFTER A SUNSET OF GREAT SPLENDOR.

WHEN I remember that the starry sky

Was once but dusty darkness; that the air
Can take such glory and such majesty

From smoky fragments and the sun's fierce glare,
And vapors cold, drawn from the far salt seas ;

If out of shapeless matter, void and bare,
And rude, oblivious atoms, Time can raise

This splendid planet ; if the formless air,
Earth's barren clods, decay, and wracks of death

Can wear the bloom of summer, or put on
Man's strength and beauty, surely this strange world hath

Some certainty ; some meaning will be won
Out of the stubborn silence, and our blind
And baffled thoughts some sure repose will find.

William A. Dunn.

The Battle of the Strong.

THE BATTLE OF THE STRONG.

PROEM.

THERE is no man living to-day who
could tell you how the morning broke
and the sun rose on the first day of Jan-
uary, 1801, who walked in the Mall, who
sauntered in the Park with the Prince ;
none lives who heard and remembers the
gossip of the hour, or can give you the
exact flavor of the speech and accent of
the time. We may catch the air but not
the tone, the trick of form but not the
inflection. The lilt of the sensations, the
idiosyncrasy of voice, emotion, and mind
of the first day of our century, must now
pass from the printed page to us, imper-
fectly realized, and not through the con-
vincing medium of actual presence and re-
trospection. The more distant the scene,
the more uncertain the reflection ; and so
it must needs be with this tale, which will
take you back to twenty years before the
century began.

Then, as now, England was a great
power outside the British Isles. She
had her foot firmly planted in Austra-
lia, in Asia, and in America, — though,
in bitterness, the thirteen colonies had
broken free, and only Canada was left
to her in North America. She has had
to strike hard blows even for Scotland,
Ireland, and Wales. But among her pos-
sessions there is one which, from the day
its charter was granted it by King John,
has been loyal, unwavering, and unpur-
chasable. Until the beginning of this
century the language of this province was
not our language, nor is English its offi-
cial language to-day ; and with a pretty
pride oblivious of contrasts, and a sim-
plicity unconscious of mirth, its people
say, " We are the conquering race : we
conquered England ; England did not
conquer us."

A little island lying in the wash of St.
Michael's basin off the coast of France,

speaking Norman-French still, Norman
in its foundations and in its racial growth,
it has been as the keeper of the gate to
England, though so near to France is it
that from its shores, on a fine day, may
be seen the spires of Coutances, whence
its spiritual welfare was ruled long after
England lost Normandy. A province
of British people, speaking the Norman-
French that the Conqueror spoke, such is
the island of Jersey, which with Guern-
sey, Alderney, Sark, Herm, and Jethou
forms what we call the Channel Islands
and the French call the lies de la Manche.

In all the world there is no coast like
that of Jersey ; so treacherous, so snarl-
ing, serrated with rocks seen and un-
seen, tortured by currents maliciously
whimsical, washed and circled by tides
that sweep up from the Antarctic world
with the devouring force of some mon-
strous serpent projecting itself towards
its prey. The captain of these tides,
traveling up through the Atlantic at the
rate of a thousand miles an hour, enters
the English Channel, and drives on to
the Thames. Presently retreating, it
meets another pursuing Antarctic wave,
which, thus opposed in its straightforward
course, recoils into St. Michael's Bay,
then plunges, as it were, upon a terrible
foe. They twine and strive in the mys-
tic conflict, and in their rage of equal
power, neither vanquished nor conquer-
ing, circle, furious and desperate, round
the Channel Isles. Ungovernable, will-
ful, violent, they sweep between the isl-
ands ; impeded, cooped up, they turn vio-
lently and smite the cliffs and rocks and
walls and towers of their prison-house.
With the mad winds helping them, the
island coasts and the shores of Normandy

The Battle of the Strong.

are battered by their hopeless onset. And
in that channel between Alderney and
Cap de la Hague man or ship must well
beware, for the Race of Alderney is one
of the death-flumes of the tides ! Be-
fore they find their way into the Atlan-
tic, these harridans of nature bring forth
a brood of currents which ceaselessly fret
the boundaries of the isles.

Always, always, the white foarn beats
the rocks, and always must man go warijy
along these coasts. A swimmer plunges
into a quiet pool, the snowy froth that
masks the reefs seeming only the pretty
fringe of sentient life to a sleeping sea ;
but presently an invisible hand reaches
up and clasps him, an unseen power drags
him exultingly out to the main, and he
returns no more. Many a Jersey boat-
man and fisherman, who has lived his
whole life in sight of the Paternosters
on the north, the Ecrelios on the east, the
Dog's Nest on the south, or the Corbiere
on the west, has in some helpless moment
been caught by the sleepless currents that
harry his peaceful borders, or by the rocks
that have eluded the hunters of the sea,
and has yielded up his life within sight
of his own doorway, an involuntary sac-
rifice to the navigator's knowledge and
to the calm perfection of an Admiralty
chart.

Yet within the circle of danger bound-
ing this green isle the love of home and
country is stubbornly, almost pathetical-
ly strong. Isolation, pride of lineage,
independence of government, antiquity
of law and custom, and jealousy of im-
perial influence or action have played
their important part in making a race
self-reliant even to perverseness, proud
and maybe vain, sincere almost to com-
monplaceness, unimaginative and re-
served, with the melancholy born of mo-
notony ; for the life of the little country
has coiled in upon itself, and the people
have drooped to see but just their own
selves reflected in all the dwellers of the
land, whichever way they turn. A hun-
dred years ago, however, there was a

greater and more general lightness of
heart and vivacity of spirit than now.
Then the song of the harvester and the
fisherman, the boat - builder and the
stocking-knitter, was heard on a summer
afternoon, or from the veille of a winter
night, when the dim cresset hung from
the roof and the seaweed burned in the
chimney ; when the gathering of the vraic
was a fete, and the lads and lasses footed
it on the green or on the hard sand to the
chance flageolet of some sportive seaman
home from the war. This simple gayety
was heartiest at Christmastide, when the
yearly reunion of families took place ; and
because nearly everybody in Jersey was
" couzain " to his neighbor these gather-
ings were as patriarchal as they were
festive.

The New Year of 1781 had been ush-
ered in by the last impulse of such fes-
tivities. The English cruisers which had
been in port had vanished up the Chan-
nel ; and at Elizabeth Castle, Mont Or-
gueil, the Blue Barracks and the Hos-
pital, three British regiments had taken
up the dull round of duty again, so that
by the fourth day of the year a general
lethargy, akin to happiness or content,
had settled on the whole island.

On the morning of the fifth day of
the year a little snow was lying upon
the ground, but the sun rose strong and
unclouded, the whiteness vanished, and
there remained only a pleasant dampness
which made the sod and sand firm, yet
springy and easy to the foot. As the day
wore on, the air became more amiable
still, and a delicate haze settled over the
water and the land, making softer to the
sight house and hill and rock and sea.

There was little life in the town of St.
Helier's, and few persons upon the beach,
though now and then some one who had
been praying beside a grave in the par-
ish churchyard came to the railings and
looked out on the calm sea almost wash-
ing its foundations, and on the dark range
of rocks which, when the tide was out,
showed like a vast gridiron blackened

The Battle of the Strong.

by large fires ; or some loitering sailor
eyed the yawl-rigged fishing-craft from
Holland, and the codfish-smelling cul-de-
poule schooners of the great fishing-com-
pany which exploited the far-off fields of
Gaspe" in Canada.

St. Helier's lay in St. Aubin's Bay,
which, shaped like a horseshoe, had
Noirmont Point for one end of the seg-
ment, and the lofty Town Hill for the
other. At the foot of this hill, hugging
it close, straggled the town. From the
bare green promontory above one might
see two thirds of the south coast of the
island : to the right, St. Aubin's Bay ;
to the left, Greve d'Azette, with its fields
of volcanic - looking rocks ; and St. Cle-
ment's Bay beyond. Than this no bet-
ter place for a watch - tower could be
found ; a perfect spot for the reflective
idler, and for the sailorman who on land
still must be within smell and sound and
sight of the sea, and loves that spot best
which gives him the widest prospect.

This day a solitary figure was pacing
back and forth upon the cliff edge, stop-
ping at intervals to turn a telescope now
upon the water and now upon the town.
It was a lad of not more than sixteen
years, erect, well-poised, and with an air
of self-reliance, even of command. Yet
it was a boyish figure, too, and the face
was very young, save for the eyes : these
were frank, but still sophisticated.

The first time he looked towards the
town he laughed outright, freely, sponta-
neously ; threw his head back with mer-
riment, and then glued his eye to the glass
again. What he had seen was a girl,
about six years of age, and a man, in the
Rue d'Egypte, near the old prison, even
then called the Vier Prison. The man
had stooped and kissed the child, and
she, indignant, snatching the cap from
his head, had thrown it into the stream
running through the street. The lad on
the hill grinned, for the man was none
other than the lieutenant - bailly of the
island, next in importance to the lieuteu-
ant-governor.

The boy could almost see the face of
the child, its humorous anger and indig-
nant and willful triumph ; and also the
enraged face of the lieutenant-bailly, as
he raked the stream with his long stick
tied with a sort of tassel of office. Pre-
sently he saw the child turn at the call
of a woman in the Place du Vier Prison,
who appeared to apologize to the lieuten-
ant-bailly, busy now with drying his re-
covered hat by whipping it through the
air. The lad recognized the woman as
the child's mother.

This little episode over, he turned once
more toward the sea, watching the light
of late afternoon fall upon the towers
of Elizabeth Castle and the great rock
out of which St. Helier the hermit had
chiseled his lofty home. He breathed
deep and strong, and the carriage of his
body was light, for he had a healthy en-
joyment of all physical sensations and
of all the obvious drolleries of life. A
certain sort of humor was written in
every feature, — in the full, quizzical eye,
in the width across the cheek-bone, in
the broad mouth, in the depth of the
laugh, which, however, often ended in a
sort of chuckle not quite pleasant to hear.
It suggested a selfish enjoyment of the
odd or the melodramatic side of other
people's difficulties.

At last the youth encased the tele-
scope, and turned to descend the hill to
the town. As he did so a bell began to
ring. From where he stood he could
look down into the Vier Marchi, or mar-
ket-place, where was the Cohue Royale
and place of legislature. In the belfry
of this court-house the bell was ringing
to call the jurats together for a meet-
ing of the states. A monstrous tin pan
would have yielded as much assonance.
Walking down towards the Vier Marchi,
the lad gleefully recalled the remark of
a wag who, some days before, had imi-
tated the sound of the bell with the
words : —

" Chicane — chicane ! Chicane —
chicane ! "

The Battle of the Strong.

The native had, as he thought, suffered
somewhat at the hands of the twelve ju-
rats of the royal court, whom his vote
had helped to elect, and this was his re-
venge ; so successful that, for genera-
tions, when the bell called the states or
the royal court together, it said in the
ears of the Jersey people, thus insistent
is the apt metaphor : —

" Chicane — chicane ! Chicane —
chicane ! " »

As the lad came down to the town,
tradespeople whom he met touched their
hats to him, and sailors and soldiers sa-
luted respectfully. In this regard the
lieutenant-bailly could not have fared
better. It Avas not due to the fact that
the youth came of an old Jersey family,
nor by reason of his being genial and
handsome, but because he was a mid-
shipman of the King's navy, home on
leave ; and these were the days when
sailors were more popular than soldiers.

He came out of the Vier Marchi into
the Grande Rue, along the stream called
the Fauxbie, which flowed through it, till
he passed under the archway of the Vier
Prison, making towards the place where
the child had snatched the hat from the
head of the lieutenant-bailly. Presently
the door of a cottage opened, and the
child came out, followed by her mother.
The young gentleman touched his cap
politely, for though the woman was not
fashionably dressed, she was neat and
evea distinguished in her appearance,
with an air of remoteness that gave her
a sort of agreeable mystery.

" Madame Landresse," said he, with
deference.

" Monsieur d'Avranche," responded
the lady quietly, pausing.

" Did the lieutenant - bailly make a
stir ? " asked d'Avranche, smiling. " I
saw the little affair from the hill, through
my telescope."

" My little daughter must have better
manners," said Madame Landresse, look-
ing down at her child reprovingly, yet
lovingly.

" Or the lieutenant - bailly must, eh,
madame ? " replied d'Avranche, and,
stooping, he offered his hand to the lit-
tle girl. Glancing up at her mother,
she took it. She was so demure, one
could scarcely think her capable of toss-
ing the lieutenant-bailly's hat into the
stream ; yet, looking closely, one might
see in her eyes a slumbrous sort of fire,
a touch of mystery. They were neither
blue nor gray, but a mingling of both,
rendering them the most tender, gray-
ish sort of violet. Down through gen-
erations of Huguenot refugees had passed
sorrow and fighting and piety and love
and occasional joy, until in the eyes of
this child they all met, delicately vague,
and with the wistfulness of the early
morning of life.

" What is your name ? " inquired the
lad.

" Guida, sir," the child answered sim-

pty-

" Mine is Philip. Won't you call me
Philip ? "

She looked up at him, turned to her
mother, regarded him again, and then
answered, " Yes, Philip — sir."

D'Avranche wanted to laugh, but the
girl's face was sensitive and serious, and
he only smiled.

" Say, ' Yes, Philip,' won't you ? " he
asked.

" Yes, Philip," came the reply obedi-
ently.

After a moment of speech with Ma-
dame Landresse, Philip »'.i>oped to say
good-by to the child.

" Good-by, Guida."

A queer, mischievous little smile flit-
ted over her face ; a second, and it was
gone.

" Good-by, sir — Philip," she said,
and they parted.

Her last words kept ringing in his ears
as he made his way homeward : " Good-
by, sir — Philip." The arrangement of
the words was odd and amusing, and
at the same time suggested something
more. " Good-by, Sir Philip," had a dif-

The Battle of the Strong.

ferent meaning, though the words were
the same.

" Sir Philip, eh ? " he said to himself,
with a jerk of the head. " I '11 be more
than that some day ! "

II.

The night came down with leisurely
gloom. A dim starlight pervaded rather
than shone in the sky. Nature appeared
somnolent and gravely meditative ; it
brooded as broods a man who is find-
ing his way through a labyrinth of ideas
to a conclusion which still evades him.
This sense of cogitation enveloped land
and sea, and was as tangible and sensi-
ble to feeling as human presence.

At last the night seemed to rouse it-
self from reverie. A movement, a thrill,
ran through the spangled vault of dusk
and sleep, and seemed to pass over the
world, rousing the sea and the earth.
There was no wind, apparently no breath
of air, yet the leaves of the trees trem-
bled, the weather-vanes moved slightly,
the animals in the byres roused them-
selves, and slumbering folk opened their
eyes, turned over in their beds, and
dropped into a troubled sleep again.

Presently there came a long moaning
sound from the sea ; not loud, but rather
mysterious and distant, — a plaint, a
threatening, a warning, a prelude ?

A dull laborer, returning from late
toil, felt it, a I raised his head in a per-
turbed way, as though some one had
brought him news of a far-off disaster.
A midwife, hurrying to a lowly birth-
chamber, shivered and gathered her man-
tle more closely about her. She looked
up at the sky, she looked out over the sea ;
then she bent her head and said to her-
self that this would not be a good night,
that ill luck was in the air. " Either the
mother or the child will die," she mut-
tered. A longshoreman, reeling home
from deep potations, was conscious of it,
and, turning round to the sea, snarled at

VOL. LXXXT. — NO. 483. 3

it and said " Yah ! " in swaggering de-
fiance. A young lad, wandering along
the deserted street, heard it, began to
tremble, and sat down on a block of stone
in the doorway of a baker's shop. He
dropped his head on his arms and his
chin on his knees, shutting out the sound,
and sobbing quietly. It was more the
influence of the night and the deserted
street and the awe of loneliness than his
sufferings which overpowered him.

Yesterday his mother had been buried ;
to-night his father's door had been closed
in his face. He scarcely knew whether
his being locked out was an accident or
whether it was intended. He remem-
bered the time when his father had ill
treated his mother and him. That, how-
ever, had stopped at last, for the woman
had threatened her husband with the roy-
al court, and, having no wish to face its
summary convictions, he thereafter con-
ducted himself towards them both with
a morose indifference, until this year of
her death, when forbearance and suffer-
ing ended for the unhappy wife.

During this year the father had even
pursued his profession as an e"crivain
with something like industry, though he
had lived long on his wife's rapidly di-
minishing income. The house belonged
to him, but the mother had left all her
little property to her son. The boy was
called Ranulph, — a name which had
passed to him through several gen ra-
tions of Jersey forbears, — Ranulph De-
lagarde. He was being taught the trade
of ship-building in St. Aubin's Bay. He
was not beyond fourteen years of age,
though he looked more, so tall and straight
and self-possessed was he.

He sat for a long time in the door-
way. His tears having soon ceased, he
began to think of what he was to do in
the future. He would never go back to
his father's house or be dependent on
him for anything. He began to make
plans. He would learn his trade of ship-
building ; he would become a master
builder ; then he would become a ship-

The Battle of the Strong.

owner ; then he would have fishing-ves-
sels like the great company which sent
fleets to Gaspe'.

At the moment when these plans had
readied the highest point of imagination
and satisfaction, the upper half of the
door beside which lie sat opened sud-
denly, and he heard men's voices. He
was about to rise and disappear, but the
words arrested him, and he cowered
down beside the stone. One of the men
was leaning on the half-door, speaking
in French.

" I tell you it can't go wrong. The
pilot knows every crack in the coast. I
left Granville at three; Rullecour left
Chaussey at nine. If he lands safe, and
the English troops are not alarmed, he '11
take the town and hold the island easy
enough."

" But the pilot, — is he safe and sure ? "
asked another voice. Ranulph recognized •
it as that of the baker, Carcaud, who
owned the shop. " Olivier Delagarde
is n't so sure of him."

Olivier Delagarde ! The lad started :
that was his father's name ! He shrank
as from a blow, — his father betraying
Jersey to the French !

" Of course, the pilot, — he 's all right,"
the Frenchman answered. " He was to
have been hung here for murd er. He got
away, and now he 's having his turn by
fetching Rullecour's wolves to eat up
these green - bellies ! By to - morrow at
seven Jersey '11 belong to King Louis."
" I 've done my promise," rejoined
Carcaud : " I 've been to three of the
guard-houses on St. Clement's and Grou-
ville. In two the men are drunk as don-
keys ; in another they sleep like squids.
Rullecour, he can march straight to the
town and seize it — if he land safe. But
will he stand by his word to we ? ' Cadet
Roussel has two sons : one 's a thief,
t'other 's a rogue ! ' There 's two Rulle-
cours : Rullecour before the catch, and
Rullecour after ! "

" He '11 be honest to us, man, or he '11
be dead inside a week, — that 's all."

" I 'm to be conne'table of St. Helier's,
and you 're to be harbor-master ? "

" Nothing else. You don't catch flies
with vinegar. Give us your hand. Why,
man, it 's doggish cold ! "

"Cold hand, healthy heart. How many
men will Rullecour bring ? "

"Two thousand; mostly conscripts and
devils' beauties from Granville and St.
Halo jails."

" Any signals yet ? "

" Two from Chaussey at five o'clock.
Rullecour '11 try to land at Gorey. Come,
let 's be off. Delagarde 's at Grouville
now."

The boy stiffened with horror : his fa-
ther was a traitor ! The thought pierced
his brain like a hot iron. He must pre-
vent this crime and warn the governor.
He prepared to steal away.

Carcaud laughed a low, malicious laugh
as he replied to the Frenchman : " Trust
the quiet Delagarde ! There 's nothing
worse than still waters ! He '11 do his
trick, and he '11 have his share if the rest
suck their thumbs. He does n't wait for
larks to drop into his mouth. What 's
that ? "

It was Ranulph stealing away.

In an instant the two men were on
him, and a hand was clapped to his
mouth. In another minute he was bound
and thrown on the stone floor of the
hake-room, his head striking, and he lost
consciousness.

When he came to himself, there was
absolute silence round him, — deathly,
oppressive silence. At first he was dazed,
but gradually all that had happened came
back to him.

Where was he now? His feet were
free ; he began to move them about. He
remembered that he had been flung on
the stone floor of the bake-room. This
place was hollow underneath ; it certain-
ly was not the bake-room ! He rolled
over and over. Presently he touched a
wall : it was stone. He drew himself up
to a sitting posture, but his head struck
a curved stone ceiling. Then he swung

The Battle of the Strong.

round and moved his foot along the wall :
it touched iron. He felt further with
his foot : something clicked. Then he
understood : he was hi the baker's oven,
with his hands bound.

The iron door had no inside latch.
There was a small damper covering a
barred hole, through which perhaps he
might be able to get a hand, if it were
only free. He turned so that his fingers
could feel the grated opening. The edges
of the little bars were sharp. He placed
the straps which bound his wrists against
these sharp edges, and drew his arms up
and down, a hard and painful business.
He cut his hands and wrists at first, so
awkward was the movement ; but, steel-
ing himself, he kept on steadily.

At last the straps fell apart, and his
hands were free. With difficulty he
thrust one of them between the bars : his
fingers could just lift the latch. The
door creaked on its hinges, and in a mo-
ment he was out on the stone flags of the
bake-room. Hurrying through an un-
locked passage into the shop, he felt his
way to the street door ; but it was se-
curely fastened. The windows ? He
tried them both, one on either side ; but
while he could free the stout wooden
shutters on the inside, a heavy iron bar
secured them without, and it was impos-
sible to open them.

Feverish with anxiety, he sat down
on the low counter, with his hands be-
tween his knees, and tried to think what
to do. There was only the window in
the bake-room, and it also was fastened
with a heavy iron bar. In the numb
hopelessness of the moment he became
very quiet. His mind was confused, but
his senses were alert ; he was in a kind
of dream, yet he was acutely conscious
of the smell of new-made bread. It
pervaded the air of the place ; it some-
how crept into his brain and his being,
so that, as long as he might live, the
smell of new-made bread would fetch
back upon him the nervous shiver and
numbness of this hour of danger.

As he waited he heard a noise out-
side, a clac-clac! clac-clac! which seemed
to be echoed back from the wood and
stone of the houses in the street, and
then to be lifted up and carried away
over the roofs and out to sea, — clac-
clac ! clac-clac ! It was not the tap of
a blind man's staff, — at first he thought
it might be ; it was not a donkey's foot
on the cobbles ; it was not the broom-
sticks of the witches of St. Clement's Bay,
for the rattle was below in the street,
and the broomstick rattle is heard only
on the roofs as the witches fly across
country from Rocbert to Cat's Corner at
Bonne Nuit Bay.

This sound came from the sabots of
some nightfarer. Should he make a
noise and attract the attention of the
passer-by ? No, that would not do. It
might be some one who would wish to
know whys and wherefores. He must,
of course, do his duty to his country,
but he must save his father, too. Bad
as he was, he must save him, though the
alarm must be given, no matter what
happened to his father. His reflections
tortured him. Why had he not stopped
the nightfarer ?

Even as these thoughts passed through
the lad's mind, the clac-clac had faded
away into the murmur of the stream
flowing through the Rue d'Egypte to the
sea, and almost beneath his feet. There
flashed on him at that instant what lit-
tle Guida Landresse had said to him a
few days before, as she lay down beside
this very stream and watched the wa-
ter wimpling by. Trailing her fingers
through it dreamily, the little child had
asked, " Ro, won't it never come back ? "
She always had called him " Ro," be-
cause when beginning to talk she could
not say " Ranulph."

" Ro, won't it never come back ? "
As he repeated the child's question an-
other sound mingled with the stream, —
clac-clac! clac-clac ! Suddenly it came
to him who was the wearer of the sabots
which made this peculiar clatter in the

The Battle of the Strong.

night. It was Dormy Jamais, the man
who never slept. For two years the clac-
clac of Dormy Jamais' sabots had not
been heard in the streets of St. Heller's;
he had been wandering in France, a daft
pilgrim. Ranulph remembered how they
used to pass and repass the doorway of
his own home. It was said that while
Dormy Jamais paced the streets the^-e
was no need of guard or watchman.
Many a time Ranulph had shared his
supper with the poor be"ganne, whose ori-
gin no one knew, and whose real name
had long since dropped into oblivion.

The rattle of the sabots came nearer ;
the footsteps were now in front of the
window. Even as Ranulph was about
to knock and call the poor vagrant's
name the clac - clac stopped, and then
there came a sniffing at the shutters as
a dog sniffs at the door of a larder.
Following the sniffing came a guttural
noise of emptiness and desire. Now
there was no mistake : it was the half-
witted fellow beyond all doubt, and he
would help him, — Dormy Jamais should
help him. He should go and warn the
governor and the soldiers at the hospital,
while he himself would speed to Grou-
ville Bay in search of his father ; and he
would alarm the regiment there at the
same time.

He knocked and shouted. Dormy Ja-
mais, frightened, jumped back into the
street. Ranulph called again, and yet
again, and now at last Dormy recognized
the voice. With a growl of mingled re-
assurance and hunger, he lifted down
the iron bar from the shutters. In a
moment Ranulph was outside with two
loaves of bread, which he put into Dor-
my Jamais' arms. The daft one whin-
nied with delight.

" What 's o'clock, bread - man ? " he
asked, with a chuckle.

Ranulph gripped his shoulders. " See,
Dormy Jamais," said he, " I want you to
go to the governor's house at La Motte
and tell him that the French are com-
ing ; that they 're landing at Gorey now.

Then go to the hospital and tell the sentry
there. Go, Dormy, — allez ke*dainne ! "

Dormy Jamais tore at a loaf with his
teeth, and crammed a huge piece of crust
into his mouth.

" Come, tell me, tell me, will you go,
Dormy ? " the lad asked impatiently.

Dormy Jamais nodded his head and
grunted, and, turning on his heel with
Ranulph, clattered slowly up the street.
The boy sprang ahead of him, and ran
swiftly up the Rue d'Egypte into the Vier
Marchi, and on over the Town Hill along
the road leading to Grouville.

III.

Since the days of Henry III. of Eng-
land the hawk of war that broods in
France has hovered along that narrow
strip of sea which divides the island of
Jersey from the duchy of Normandy.
Eight times has it descended, and eight
times has it hurried back with broken
pinion. Among these episodes of inva-
sion two stand out boldly : the spirited
and gallant attack by Bertrand du Gues-
clin, Constable of France, and the free-
booting adventure of Rullecour and his
motley following of gentlemen and crim-
inals. Rullecour it was — soldier of for-
tune, gambler, ruffian and adventurer,
embezzler and refugee — to whom the
King of France had secretly given the
mission to conquer the unconquerable lit-
tle island.

From the Chaussey Isles the filibuster
saw the signal - light which the traitor
Olivier Delagarde had set upon the
heights of Le Couperon, where, ages ago,
Caesar built fires to summon from Gaul
his devouring legions.

All was propitious for the adventure.
There was no moon, only a meagre star-
light, when the French set forth from
Chaussey. The journey was made in
little more than an hour, and Rullecour
himself was among the first to see the
shores of Jersey loom darkly in front.

The Battle of the Strong.

Beside him stood the murderous pilot
(secured by Delagarde) who was leading
in the expedition.

Presently the pilot gave an exclama-
tion of surprise and anxiety : the tides
and currents had borne them away from
the intended landing-place ! It was
now low water, and, instead of an imme-
diate shore, there lay before them a vast
field of spurred rocks, dimly seen. He
gave the signal to lay to, and himself took
the bearings. The tide was going out
rapidly, disclosing reefs on either hand.
He drew in caref ully to the right of the
rock known as L'Echiquelez, up through
a passage scarce wide enough for canoes,
and to La Roque Platte, the southeastern
projection of the island.

You may range the seas from the Yu-
gon Strait to the Erebus volcano, and
you will find no such landing-place for
imps or men as that field of rocks on the
southeast corner of Jersey, called, with a
malicious irony, the Bane des Violettes.
The great rocks La Coniere, La Longy,
Le Gros Etac, Le Teton, and Le Petit
Sambiere rise up like volcanic monu-
ments from a floor of lava and trailing
vraic, which at half-tide makes the sea a
tender mauve and violet. The passages
of safety between these ranges of reef
are but narrow at high tide, and at half-
tide, when the currents are changing
most, the violet field becomes the floor
of a vast mortuary chapel for unknow-
ing mariners.

A battery of four guns defended the
post on the landward side of this bank
of the heavenly name. Its guards were
asleep or in their cups. They yielded
without resistance to the foremost of
the invaders. Here Rullecour and his
pilot, looking back upon the way they
had come, found the currents driving
the transport boats hither and thither
in confusion. Jersey was not to be con-
quered without opposition ; no army of
defense was abroad, but the elements
roused themselves and furiously attacked
the fleet. Battalions unable to land

drifted back with the tides to Granville,
whence they had come. Boats containing,
the heavy ammunition and a regiment of
conscripts were battered upon the rocks,
and hundreds of the invadei-s found an
unquiet grave upon the Bane des Vio-
lettes.

Night wore on, and at last the remain-
ing legions were landed. Presently the
traitor Delagarde arrived, and was wel-
comed warmly by Rullecour. A force
was left behind to guard La Roque
Platte, and then the journey across coun-
try to the sleeping town began.

With silent, drowsing batteries in front
and on either side of them, the French
troops advanced, the marshes of Samares
and the sea on their left, churches and
manor-houses on their right, — all silent.
Not yet had a blow been struck for the
honor of the land and of the kingdom.

But a blind injustice was, in its own
way, doing the work of justice too.
On the march, Delagarde, suspecting
treachery to himself, not without reason,
required of Rullecour guarantee for the
fulfillment of his promise to make him
vicomte of the island when victory
should be theirs. Rullecour had also
promised it to a reckless young officer,
the Comte de Tournay, of the house of
Vaufontaine, who, under the assumed
name of Yves Savary dit Ddtricand,
marched with him. Rullecour answered
Delagarde churlishly, and would say no-
thing till the town was taken ; the dcri-
vain must wait. Delagarde had been
drinking ; he was in a mood to be reck-
less ; he would not wait ; he demanded
an immediate pledge.

" By and by, my doubting Thomas,"
said Rullecour.

" No, now, by the blood of Peter ! "
answered Delagarde, laying a hand
upon his sword.

The French leader called a sergeant
to arrest him. Delagarde instantly drew
his sword and attacked Rullecour, but
was cut down from behind by the scim-
iter of a swaggering Turk, who had

The Battle of the Strong.

joined the expedition as aide-de-camp
.to the filibustering general, tempted
thereto by promises of a harem of the
choicest Jersey ladies, well worthy of
this cousin of the Emperor of Morocco.

The invaders left Delagarde lying
where he fell. What followed this oblique
retribution could satisfy no ordinary
logic, nor did it meet the demands of
poetic justice ; for as a company of sol-
diers from Grouville, alarmed out of
sleep by a distracted youth, hurried to-
wards St. Helier's, they found Delagarde
lying by the roadside, and they misun-
derstood what had happened. Stooping
over him, an officer said compassionate-
ly, u See, he got this wound fighting the
French ! "

With the soldiers was the youth who
had warned them. He ran forward
with a cry, and knelt beside the wound-
ed man. He had no tears, he had no
sorrow. He was only sick and dumb,
and he trembled with misery as he lifted
up his father's head. The eyes of Oli-
vier Delagarde opened.

" Ranulph — they 've killed — me,"
gasped the stricken man feebly, and his
head fell back.

An officer touched the youth's arm.
" He is gone," said he. " Don't fret,
lad ; he died fighting for his country."

The lad made no reply, and the sol-
diers hurried on towards the town.

" He died fighting for his country."
So that was to be it, Ranulph thought :
his father was to have a glorious memo-
ry, while he himself knew how vile the
man was. One thing was sure, — he
was glad that Olivier Delagarde was
dead. How strangely had things hap-
pened ! He had come to stay a traitor
in his crime, and he found a martyr.
But was not he likewise a traitor?
Ought not he to have alarmed the town
before he tried to find his father ? Had
Dormy Jamais warned the governor ?
Clearly not, or the town bells would be
ringing, and the islanders giving battle.
What would the world think of him !

Well, what was the use of fretting
here ? He would go on to the town,
fight the French, and die, — that would
be the best thing ! He knelt, and un-
clasped his father's fingers from the
handle of his sword. The steel was
cold ; it made him shiver. He had no
farewell to make. He looked out to sea.
The tide would come and carry his fa-
ther's body out. perhaps fa% out, and
sink it in the deepest sea. If not, then
the people would bury Olivier Delagarde
as a patriot. He determined that he
would not live to see such mockery.

As he sped along towards the town
he asked himself why nobody suspected
the traitor. One reason for it occurred
to him : his father, as the whole island
knew, had a fishing-hut at Grouville
Bay. They would think he was on the
way to it when he met the French, for
he often spent the night there : that
would be the explanation. The boy had
told his tale to the soldiers : that he
had heard the baker and the Frenchman
talking at the shop in the Rue d'Egypte.
Yes, but suppose the French were driven
out, and the baker was taken prisoner
and revealed his father's complicity ?
And suppose people asked why he did
not go at once to the hospital barracks
in the town and to the governor, and
afterwards to Grouville Bay ?

These were direful imaginings. He
felt that it was no use ; that the lie could
not go on concerning his father. The
world would know ; the one thing left
for him was to die. He was only a boy,
but he could fight. Had not young
Philip d'Avranche, the midshipman, been
in deadly action many times ? He was
nearly as old as Philip d'Avranche. Yes,
he would fight, and, fighting, he would
die. To live as the son of such a father
was too pitiless a shame.

He ran forward, but a weakness was
on him ; he was very hungry and thirsty
— and the sword was heavy ! Presently,
as he passed, he saw a stone well in front
of a cottage by the roadside. On a ledge

The Battle of the Strong.

of the well stood a bucket of water. He
tilted the bucket and drank. He would
have liked to ask for bread at the cottage
door, but why should he eat, he said to
himself, for was he not going to die ? Yet
why should he not eat, even if he were
going to die ? He turned his head wist-
fully, he was so faint with hunger. The
force driving him on, however, was
greater than hunger ; he ran harder —
but undoubtedly the sword was heavy !

IV.

In the Vier Marchi the French flag
was flying ; French troops occupied it,
and French sentries guarded the five
streets entering into it. Rullecour, the
French adventurer, held the lieutenant-
governor of the isle captive in the Cohue
Royale, and by threats of fire and pil-
lage thought to force a capitulation.
Taking the governor to the doorway, he
showed him two hundred soldiers with
lighted torches f^ady to fire the town.

Upon the roof of the Cohue Royale
sat Dormy Jamais. When he saw Rul-
lecour and the governor appear, he
chuckled, and said in Jersey patois, " I
vaut mux alouonyi 1'bras que 1'co," which
is to say, It is better to stretch the arm
than the neck. The governor would have
done better, he thought, to believe the
poor be'ganne, and to rise earlier. Dor-
my Jamais had a poor opinion of a gov-
ernor who slept. He himself was not
a governor, yet was he not always
awake ? He had gone before dawn to
the governor's house, had knocked, had
given Ranulph Delagarde's message, had
been called a dirty buzzard, and had
been driven off by the crusty, incredulous
servant. Then he had gone to the hos-
pital barracks, had there been iniqui-
tously called a lousy toad, and had been
driven away with his quartern loaf, mut-
tering the island proverb, " While the
mariner dawdles and drinks the tide
rises."

When the French soldiers first en-
tered the Vier Marchi there was Dorray
Jamais on the roof of the Cohue Royale,
calmly munching his bread ; and there
he stayed, grinning and mumbling, when
the flagstones of the square ran red with
French and British blood, the one phi-
losopher and stoic in the land.

Had the governor remained as cool
as the poor vagrant, he would not have
yielded to threats and signed the capitu-
lation of the island. When that capitu-
lation was signed, and notice of it was
sent to the British troops, with orders to
surrender and bring their arms to the
Cohue Royale, it was not cordially re-
ceived by the officers in command.

" Je ne comprends pas le frangais,"
said Captain Mulcaster, at Elizabeth Cas-
tle, and put the letter in his pocket un-
read.

" The English governor will be hanged,
and the French will burn the town," re-
sponded the envoy.

" Let them begin to hang and burn
and be damned, for I '11 not surrender the
castle or the British flag so long as I 've
a man to defend it, to please anybody,"
answered Mulcaster.

" We shall return in numbers," said
the Frenchman threateningly.

" I shall be delighted ; we shall have
the more to kill," Mulcaster replied.

Then the captive lieutenant-governor
was sent to Major Pierson at the Mont
es Pendus, with counsel to surrender.

" Sir," said he, " this has been a very
sudden surprise, for I was made prisoner
before I was out of my bed this morn-
ing."

" Sir," replied Pierson, the young
hero f>i twenty-four, who achieved death
and glory between a sunrise and a noon-
tide, " give me leave to tell you that the
78th Regiment has not yet been the least
surprised."

From Elizabeth Castle came defiance
and cannonade, driving back Rullecour
and his filibusters to the Cohue Royale:
from Mont Orgueil, from the hospital,

The Battle of the Strong.

from St. Peter's, came the English regi-
ments ; from the other parishes came
the militia, all eager to recover their be-
loved Vier Marchi. Two companies of
light infantry, leaving the Mont es Pen-
dus, stole round the town and placed
themselves behind the invaders on the
Town Hill ; the rest marched direct upon
the enemy. Part went by the Grande
Rue, and part by the Rue d'Driere, con-
verging to the points of attack ; and as
the light infantry came down from the
hill by the Rue des Tres Pigeons, Pierson
entered the Vier Marchi by the Route es
Couochons. On one side of the square
— that is, where the Cohue Royale made
a wall to fight before — were the French.
Radiating from this were five streets and
passages, like the spokes of a wheel, and
from these now emptied the defenders of
the isle.

A volley came from the Cohue Royale,
then another, and another. The place
was small'; friend and foe were crowded
upon one another. The fighting was at
once a hand-to-hand encounter. Cannon
became useless, 'gun-carriages were over-
turned. Here a drummer fell wounded,
but continued beating his drum to the
last ; there a Glasgow soldier struggled
with a French officer for the flag of the
invaders ; a handful of Malouins dogged-
ly held the foot of La Pyramide, until
every one was cut down by overpowering
numbers of British and Jersiais. The
British leader was conspicuous upon his
horse. Shot after shot was fired at him.
Suddenly he gave a cry, reeled in his
saddle, and sank, mortally wounded,
into the arms of a brother officer. For
a moment his men fell back.

In the midst of the deadly turnv>il a
youth ran forward from a group of com-
batants, caught the bridle of the horse
from which Pierson had fallen, mounted,
and, brandishing a short sword, called
upon the dismayed and wavering fol-
lowers to advance ; which they instantly
did with fury and courage. It was Mid-
shipman Philip d'Avranche. Twenty

muskets were discharged at him. One
bullet cut his coat at the shoulder, an-
other grazed the back of his hand, an-
other scarred the pommel of the saddle,
and still another wounded his horse.
Again and again the English called upon
him to dismount, for he was made a
target, but he refused, until at last the
horse was shot under him. Then he
joined once more in the hand-to-hand
encounter.

Windows near the ground, if they were
not shattered, were broken by bullets.
Cannon - balls imbedded themselves in
the masonry and the heavy doorways.
The upper windows were safe ; the shots
did not range so high. At one of these,
which was over a watchmaker's shop, a
little girl was to be seen, looking down
with eager interest. Presently an old
man came to the window and led her
away. A few minutes of fierce struggle
passed, and then at another window on
the floor below the child appeared again.
She saw a youth with a sword hurrying
towards the Cohue Royale from a tan-
gled mass of combatants at the Route es
Vacques. As he ran, a British soldier
fell near him. He dropped the sword,
and grasped the dead man's musket.

The child clapped her hands on the
window.

" It 's Ro ! it 's Ro ! " she cried, and
disappeared again.

"Ro," with white face, hatless, coatless,
pushed on through the melde. Rulle-
cour, now thoroughly disheartened, stood
on the steps of the Cohue Royale. With
a vulgar cruelty and cowardice he was
holding the governor by the arm, hoping
thereby to protect his own person from
the British fire.

Here was what the lad had been try-
ing for, — the sight of this man. There
was one small clear space between the
English and the French, where stood a
gun-carriage. He ran to it, leaned the
musket on the gun, and, regardless of
the shots fired at him, took aim steadily
at Rullecour. A French bullet struck

Belated Feudalism in America.

the wooden wheel of the carriage, and a
splinter gashed his cheek. He did not
move, but took sight again and fired.
Rullecour fell, shot through the jaw. A
cry of fury and dismay went up from the
French at the loss of their leader, a shout
of delight from the British. The end of
the battle was at hand.

The Frenchmen had had enough ; they
broke and ran. Some rushed for door-
ways and threw themselves within, many
scurried into the Rue des Tres Pigeons,
others madly fought their way into Mo-
rier Lane.

At this moment the door of the watch-
maker's shop opened, and the little girl
who had been seen at the window ran
into the square, calling out, " Ro ! Ro ! "
It was Guida Landresse.

Among the French who made for
refuge was the garish Turk, Rullecour's
ally. Suddenly the now frightened, cry-
ing child got into his path and tripped
him up. Wild with rage he made a
stroke at her, but at that instant his
scimiter was struck aside by a youth
covered with the smoke and grime of
battle. It was Philip d'Avranche, who
caught up the child in his arms, and hur-
ried with her through the mele'e to the
watchmaker's doorway, where stood a
terror-stricken woman, Madame Lan-
dresse, who had just made her way into

the square. He placed the child in her
arms, and then staggered inside the
house, faint and bleeding from a wound
in the shoulder.

The battle of Jersey was over.

" Ah, bah ! " said Dormy Jamais from
the roof of the Cohue Royale ; " now I '11
toll the bell for that achocre of a French-
man. Then I '11 finish my supper."

Poising a half-loaf of bread on the ledge
of the roof, he began to toll the cracked
bell for Rullecour the filibuster.

The bell tolled out : " Chicane — chi-
cane ! Chicane — chicane ! "

Another bell answered from the church
in the square, a deep, mournful note. It
was tolling for Pierson and his dead com-
rades.

Against the statue in the Vier March!
leaned Ranulph Delagarde. An officer
came up and held out a hand to him.
" Your shot ended the business," said he.
" You 're a brave fellow. What is your
name ? "

" Ranulph Delagarde, sir."

" Delagarde, eh ? Then, well done,
Delagardes ! They say your father was
the first man killed out on the Grouville
road. We won't forget that, my lad."

Sinking down upon the base of the
statue, Ranulph did not stir or reply,
and the officer, thinking he was grieving
for his father, left him alone.

Gilbert Parker.

(To be continued.)

BELATED FEUDALISM IN AMERICA.

II.

IT has always been the obvious duty
of the American citizen to make his way
in the world, but for a long time the
slaveholders avoided this duty success-
fully, and set a fashion in social moral-
ity which was cheerfully followed by the

gentlemen of property and standing in
the North. In negro slavery we kept
alive an old and damaging superstition,
which prevented us from becoming a na-
tion, and held us back as much as if the
slave States had kept up an hereditary
nobility. Part of the country escaped its
worst evils, but that laughable tradition,

Belated Feudalism in America.

standing effective among us, destroyed
our integrity, made our professions a
farce, and prevented us from finding our
equilibrium. Since the war, we stand
on a consistent footing, where there is
no class of men exempt from the neces-
sity of taking care of themselves. Since
the war, the man who does not work has
ceased to set the fashion in living. At
this moment the ascendency of the com-
mercial example is complete.

At the bottom of the scale lies the
need of bread and butter, next comes the
wish to gain wealth, lastly the desire to
keep together what has been won, — pos-
sibly to accumulate and enjoy a great for-
tune. All these require work. Even
the millionaire is seldom an idle man.
Rich and poor, barring our men of sci-
ence and a few other notable exceptions,
we fall into line, and feel that we are
doing the proper thing. We get as
much cultivation as we can, and do not
by any means neglect the humanities,
though we may prefer to have our edu-
cation of a kind that will help us later
to deal with the affairs of practical life.
In this way we follow first the require-
ments of necessity, and afterwards the
possibilities of wealth.

" Yes," says the Academy of Pessi-
mism, " and do not even ask whether you
might not be happier with less money
and other employment. You are content
to devote yourselves to the making of
money, and to leave the affairs of art,
letters, music, and philosophy to Europe.
You have made no great contributions
to intellectual progress, and there seems
no likelihood of your doing so."

I can only ask these critics to make
out the facts to be as bad as they can ;
for in so doing they will lay the founda-
tion for an interpretation so distasteful
to them that they could never have
thought of it, and one which, when it is
called to their attention, they will proba-
bly deny.

If we really exhibit the condition they
describe, what is the cause of it ? Which

of the ingredients of art do we lack ?
Do we still lack sufficient wealth ? Let
us compare New York, in this respect, —
for in no other are the conditions com-
parable, — with Florence, the richest of
the Italian states, and the most prodigal
of genius. " In Florence," says Macau-
lay, who had a fine eye for coincidence,
" the progress of elegant literature and
the fine arts was proportionate to that
of the public prosperity." We are there-
fore in a position, other things being
equal, to estimate the monetary value of
Dante, Giotto, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Ghi-
berti, Machiavelli, and Michael Angelo,
or, at all events, to know the scale of
opulence which was necessary to produce
them. Macaulay, in his essay on Machi-
avelli, draws from Villani a picture of
Florence in the early part of the four-
teenth century, and any distrust of either
historian may be offset by the knowledge
that in this case both were desirous of
making out the grandeur and resources
of the state to be as large and magnifi-
cent as possible : " With peculiar plea-
sure every cultivated mind must repose
on the fair, the happy, the glorious Flor-
ence, the halls of which rang with the
mirth of Pulci, the cell where twinkled
the midnight lamp of Politian, the statues
on which the young eye of Michael An-
gelo glared with the frenzy of a kindred
inspiration, the gardens where Lorenzo
meditated some sparkling song for the
May-day dance of the Etrurian virgins."
Yet the city, with its environs, counted
only one hundred and seventy thousand
inhabitants, and the town itself never
more than seventy thousand. In the
various schools, ten thousand children
were taught to read, twelve hundred
only studied arithmetic, and six hun-
dred received a learned education. Ma-
caulay estimates the revenue of the re-
public at six hundred thousand pounds
sterling of his time (1827), and the an-
nual production of cloth, one of the most
important industries, at two millions and
a half of English money. If these mag-

Belated Feudalism in America.

nitudes in material prosperity are pro-
portional to the intellectual and artistic
achievements of the Florentines whose
statues stand in the streets of their na-
tive city, what should the city of New
York have to show ?

But art, you say, needs more than
wealth : it demands fire and energy. Can
it be that these have flagged and died ?
Hardly, for we see them at work in other
shapes. It requires imagination. Can
it be that this has failed us ? No, for
we see that, too, engaged in other ways.
Science has an imagination as well as
art, and commerce cannot be without it.
It may -require as much imagination to
draw pleasure out of an unspent dollar as
it does to get it from an unsmelt flower,
or an unkissed love, or any of the unex-
isting realities that poets deal in.

Many a laborious and ascetic finan-
cier must live in a world of imagination,
a commercial dream, as little tangible as
that of the poet. " My food and lodging
are all I get for my wealth," said the
elder Rothschild. He was mistaken ; he
forgot his dream of wealth. He was
one of the poets of a financial age. Nor,
lastly, can it be that the delight of giving
one's self up to an impassioned thought,
of which one is as sure as death, and for
which one is willing to die, is not still, as
it always has been, the keenest pleasure
of a human soul.

Where, then, is our great art ? The
cheerful optimists have advanced a claim
in this matter which they, too, will find
it difficult to make good. They say to
foreigners that we are now engaged in
subduing a continent, and that when this
work is done we shall turn to other things.
This appears to be a sort of application
of the theory of the conservation of en-
ergy to affairs of sentiment and emotion.
It has a plausible sound, but there is
much more hope in it than there is rea-
son. In fact, it is an empty boast, with-
out foundation or meaning, — unless, in-
deed, we take it as a fable. No practi-
cal work ever stood in the way of art,

at a time when art was in men's souls,
nor did any man or any people ever say,
" I will first set my house in order, and
then will I sit down and paint you a
picture and write you poetry." Had
this been the history of art, we should
still be waiting for Homer and the Par-
thenon.

To give an unbiased answer to the
question why we have so little art in this
country, we must remember that the
making of money is the safest vocation
a man can follow. To be filled with
the desire to make money is one of the
surest inspirations a man can have. All
other doings are dangerous. The poet,
the artist, and the musician take their
lives in their hands when they trust to
art for a living. They stand a good
chance of starving to death. Wise busi-
ness men look upon them as foolhardy
people ; and so they are. Now, as ever,
young and foolish persons become pos-
sessed with a desire to give themselves
up to art, but fathers and mothers are
quick to dissuade. They know there is
no art that is worth the risk of poverty ;
they have worked, and they want no poor
relations. Ask any man who in this coun-
try has taken up music as a profession,
how much encouragement he had from
bis family and friends. The elders coun-
sel wisely, and the children do not have
it in them to resist the wise counsel.
Artists throw the halo of disinterested-
ness around their vocation. They call
themselves devotees. They have to do
this to hide their true nature ; for in
reality poets and painters and the like
are the most selfish and egotistical class
of men that exists. A man can always
live by writing, in these days, if he goes
about it in the proper way, and writers
do not any longer consider themselves
devotees.

" Paupertas impulit andax,
Ut versus facerem,"

said Horace. " A bad business," we re-
ply, " for a sensible man to be in."

Belated Feudalism in America.

" Operosa parvus
Carmina fingo."

" Worse still," we answer. " If you must
scribble, why not write something that
will sell well, and plenty of it? Who
would put up with a Sabine farm ? "

" A man must live in a garret alone,"

says Aldrich, if he wants the Muse to
visit him ; but not if we can avoid it will
we put up with any such mode of life.
We will not with incessant care tend the
homely shepherd's trade, which we know
to be slighted. We will not strictly
meditate a Muse whom we know to be
thankless. If, like St. Gaudens, a man
takes his time to produce a masterpiece,
he is accused of being dilatory. To Mil-
ton's rhetorical " Alas ! what boots it ? "
most artists have returned a decided and
practical " Nothing ! "

It appears, then, that if nothing more
can be said for us, we are, at all events,
eminently sensible, splendidly wise. We
see what we must do to be safe, and, un-
like many other people, we do it. But
how comes it that we find a whole na-
tion so unanimous in its wisdom ? How
does it happen that we command so much
foresight, so much caution, and that
what de Tocqueville said of us is as true
now as it was in his day ? — " Non seule-
ment on voit aux Etats-Unis, comme
dans touts les autres pays, des classes
industrielles et commercantes ; mais, ce
qui ne s'e"tait jamais rencontre", tous les
hommes s'y occupent a la fois d'industrie
et de commerce." How comes it that
this caution extends not only to the man
who has nothing, but to the man who has
a good deal, and could get on with less ;
and not to these alone, but to those who
write, and draw, and model ? In a coun-
try where there are so many men of in-
telligence and imagination, would it be
too much to expect to find, not half a
dozen, but hundreds, who, in spite of
wisdom, in spite of the unfashionable-
ness of their behavior and the immanent
risk of discomfort and starvation, would

be led astray into the doing of some fine
thing for the love of it ?

There is but one answer. All the
forces that can influence a man in the
choice of a calling — the pressure of ne-
cessity, the desire for wealth, position,
power, even the love of knowledge and
the imagination of science — are pitted
against the power of art in an unequal
contest for the possession of each new
votary, and the only thing that can turn
the tide and give art the victory over
so many antagonists is a great convic-
tion, a profound belief, and the joy of
saying it in words or sound, in form or
color. When this belief is lacking the
present has its sway, and if we are a
people who are afraid of art, and can
only be timorously coaxed into its neigh-
borhood, it is because this nation, in a
time of peace, has no idealized convic-
tions and no inspired beliefs that are
strong enough to carry us away from
the wise and respectable occupation of
making money. All the old traditions
that bewitched the past have lost the
power to court us into the dangerous
paths of art and letters. They furnish
no fire for a great inspiration, nor even
the enthusiasm for a stirring protest.

The apostle of traditional faith will
deny that what I say is true in his pro-
vince. It is true, nevertheless, for his
province cannot be divided from any
other. All go together to make a world,
and the expression of a world is art.

When this generation of ours stops
for a moment in its work, and looks out
upon that permanent nature which has
seemed so different to different eyes, it
does not know what sort of a place it
imagines this universe, in which it finds
itself, to be. This was not the case with
the men of Homer, nor with the men of
the crusades, nor even with the infidels
of the Renaissance. They all had faith,
They all took some universe for granted,
and reproduced it lightheartedly. We
accept none, and we cannot therefore ex-
press any, even with tribulation.

Belated Feudalism in America.

We look at our churches with their
congregations, growing in numbers and
dwindling in faith, and we ask ourselves :
In all these buildings, cheap or costly,
what real prayers rise ; and of those
that rise, do any get above the roof ?
What God hears them, and has there
ever been an answered prayer ? We
look at the face of the dead and repeat
a burial service : " If after the manner
of men I have fought with beasts at
Ephesus, what advantageth it me, if the
dead rise not ? " And as we say the
words we ask ourselves, " Do the dead
rise ? " If any one is found who be-
lieves these things, he knows that there
is another at his elbow who believes them
not a whit or an atom, and these two can
hit on no universe that shall satisfy both,
nor can either be poet to the other.

We drink in the new learning thirstily
and apply it to our needs, but the Bible
still stands as the formal code, and as
a history of the dealings between man
and a Creator. We see that we can no
longer accept its morality, and that we
must abandon many of its facts, yet we
do not discard the book, nor define its
position. We let it stand. We ignore
all discrepancies and form no convic-
tions. Some make an arbitrary halt at
one point, some at another, but there is
no thinking man whose childhood's faith
has not been shaken. Finally, there are
those who question the value of knowing
the truth at all. They hold that opin-
ions were made for man, not man for
opinions, and that if a knowledge of the
truth be what they call disastrous, it is
better that the truth should be dropped
and a lie put in its place.

These hesitations and doubts, from
which no one is free, kill art in the
womb, or if they let it come to a birth,
it comes deformed, unfinished, sent be-
fore its time into this breathing world,
with a mind scarce half made up. So
the safest course is to avoid great sub-
jects and appeal to the passing taste and
fancy of the generation.

If we turn from our beliefs to our
morality, we shall find a corresponding
chaos. We have no trouble with our be-
havior, for we act on the plain principles
of egotism, but we have the humor to
see that we should stultify ourselves in
an attempt to justify our conduct on tra-
ditional lines. As for our own system
we have accepted it only tacitly. It is
not fit as yet to carry a great unconscious
work of art.

We have two systems running side
by side : the code of practice, which is a
rational and proper egotism ; and the
code of theology, which is altruistic and
impractical. We follow the first, but,
like Peter, we deny it. The second we
try to use on paper, but in practice it is
ignored. Besides these we have a scien-
tific morality to which we appeal when
we fall out with the other two. We get,
therefore, in our discussion of affairs, a
mixture of common sense, scientific the-
ory, and theological rules of thumb, out
of which an ingenious mind can make
an ethical pure"e compared with which
the thick slab gruel of Macbeth's witches
is a watery soup. So many criteria have
we of right and wrong, so many incon-
sistent methods of determining how a
man should act and what he should do
in a critical place, that we can argue the
simplest question of ethics for a whole
day without coming to a verbal settle-
ment. We know very well all the while
what would be done in actual practice
and what would be approved, but when
any one undertakes to champion the prac-
tical code in good set terms, we protest
that it is most shocking and very wicked
indeed. We are getting over this Old
World hypocrisy in daily conversation,
and it is becoming more and more diffi-
cult to weave it into literature.

It is the same with our political and
social theories. We do not take them
for granted nor accept them as matters
of course. The most loyal of us are
willing to discuss value of pure demo-
cracy. Little as we may like the ideas

Belated Feudalism in America.

of socialists and populists, we neverthe-
less ask ourselves whether there is not a
note of truth in their complaints. Is un-
restricted competition the last word hu-
man intelligence has to say on the rela-
tions between human beings ? May we
not have to put brains and industry more
nearly on a par, as we have put strength
and soundness on a par, and do it on
the ground that the keen and astute per-
son is no better than his hardworking
but duller neighbor, except by virtue of
that very trick of intellect which enables
the one to beat the other ? This idea
strikes at the root of democracy as we
now conceive it, and yet we are not only
willing to discuss the point, but we have
actually let in the edge of it in the shape
of laws restricting the right to contract.

This art-destroying doubt seems dread-
ful to the man of cultivation who hunts
for genius, and denounces the times be-
cause he finds none to his liking, but
it is wholly admirable for mankind at
large. It means that we are gone to
school with a new master. It does not
mean that there can be found among us
a few thinkers who have shaken them-
selves loose from the ordinary prejudices
of their time, for that would be no more
than any country in any age could show.
It means that there are in this country
great numbers of people who are without
settled convictions on what have all along
been considered the most important mat-
ters of life, and that if any new ideas
exist with regard to those matters they
are going to get a hearing. It means
that the power of traditional beliefs is
overthrown, and that we are getting,
every day, new freedom in dealing with
the affairs of life on a rational basis of
natural knowledge.

Literary and artistic people may feel
sorry that the work of America has not
fallen along the line of art and letters,
particularly as these are the things that
get labels and are handed down to pos-
terity marked " important." They are
important, but there are other things

which are essential, and these from time
to time will have their day. Worshipers
of individual artistic genius, who bemoan
the condition of this country because it
has not been conspicuously productive in
that line, must understand that the only
value of a man of genius lies in the hap-
piness he adds to the lives of the multi-
tude. He is not a prince, balancing or
outweighing his retainers. Except as a
minister of the multitude he is no more
valuable than any one else. The chief
value of Greece and Rome was not em-
bodied in Euripides and Phidias and
Horace ; it lay in the thousands of Greek
and Roman citizens who lived and were
happy. The evils of the Dark Ages did
not lie in their lack of artists, but in the
fact that there were thousands of citizens
who were unjustly miserable. Therefore
if this country had done or were to do
nothing more than produce a hundred or
two millions of people, most of whom
have been well-to-do, self-reliant, self-re-
specting, and comparatively happy, it
would have done enough, even if it had
never given birth to a single genius or
added a new idea. But America will do
more than that.

There is no objection to taking art and
letters as an index of the condition of an
energetic civilized people, so long as we
remember that their absence may be sig-
nificant of good rather than of evil. Art
and literature cannot flourish when the
mind and the heart are at odds, and they
must be at odds where an old tradition
is mouldering in the bosom of a new ac-
tivity. That was the condition of Eu-
rope throughout the Middle Ages, a time
so well despised by reason of its lack of
decoration that we forget that man went
into it a barbarian or an ancient, and
came out a modern. And that is our
condition to-day. We have entered on
a second Middle Age, into which, whe-
ther it be short or long, we went as feu-
dal creatures, and out of which we shall
come with a sense of that natural aristo-
cracy which marks the unspoilt animal.

Belated Feudalism in America.

For the man of European taste and
culture, the environment is disagreeable,
but the trouble lies in him. What he
wants for the world is brilliance, variety,
genius, great individualities, great events.
What the world wants for itself is that
evil and wrong should decrease, and that
men's lives should become safer, more
comfortable and more content. This
contentment, this decline of evil, depend
upon a sure and certain handling of
the affairs of life, and this in turn de-
pends upon a thorough understanding of
the place in which we live. All know-
ledge, all reform, all advance, consist
in the revision and perfecting of this
understanding. If we insist that very
many of the troubles and sorrows through
which mankind has gone have been due
to real defects in the make-up of the
universe as a home for sensitive crea-
tures, we shall have to admit that at
least half of them have been due to our
mistaken notions concerning the true na-
ture of it.

It is a characteristic of the human
mind that it clings to its errors till they
are positively torn away. The thing that
really teaches lessons is force, and the
thing that drives the truth home is the
pressure of natural conditions. Here,
for the first time, the universe has got a
large number of intelligent human be-
ings into a predicament where, willy-nil-
ly, it is going to teach them what kind
of a place it really is, and it is going to
teach them its lessons direct, and not
out of the mouths of priests and think-
ers. We have let nature into our coun-
sels, and she is going to make us un-
derstand that we are a part of her, and
that we must fit our ideas and our actions
to her requirements. Imaginary evils,
imaginary terrors, imaginary values, and
imaginary facts of all kinds, whether of
religion or of society, will be ruthlessly
destroyed. It will not be optional with us
whether we shall retain them or let them
go. They will simply disappear. Good
and evil conduct, true and false beliefs,

have been taken out of the hands of the
priest and the moralist to determine in
advance, and that function has been as-
sumed by the multitude, which now says
to the thinker, " Let us have the facts
and we will define the duty ; give us the
facts and we will fix the faith. Watch
us and set down for your study what we
do, for we do what we must, and what a
man must do is as near as he can come
to the right. Ask us what we believe,
for we believe what we must, and what
a man must believe is as near as he can
come to the truth."

It is pleasant to be released from the
authority of great thinkers, of whom it
has been said that they always think
wrong. It is pleasant, also, to feel that
man should be released from the re-
sponsibility of teaching his fellow men
how to live, and should be able to turn
the matter over to nature. Conscience
and greed and ambition have hitherto
prevented this. If mankind has often
slain its teachers and stoned its prophets,
it has been because those teachers and
prophets usurped the office of nature, or
had it thrust upon them to play the part
of Providence. With us, I dare say
Providence itself is upon us, and will de-
termine any further action.

" Here we are, then, once more," as
says Professor Sumner, " back at the old
doctrine, Laissez faire" Let us trans-
late it into blunt English : it will read,
" Mind your own business."

That the doctrine should be so old
and so true, and yet so little recognized
by the " social architects " and " med-
dlers " of whom Professor Sumner is
speaking, goes to show that mere advice
counts for nothing. You can follow a
phrase-hunt after laissez faire back into
the seventeenth century, but the man
who first enlarged the doctrine from
commerce and made it include the sen-
timent and character of a nation was
Montesquieu ; and Mill, a hundred years
later, had not got so far. The fifth and
sixth chapters of the nineteenth book of

Belated Feudalism in America.

the Esprit des Loix are among those
which impelled their author to label his
work prolem sine matre creatam, and
emboldened him to say of himself, " Ce-
pendant je ne crois pas avoir totalement
manqu£ de ge"nie."

He says, " S'il y avait dans le monde
une nation qui eut hurneur sociable, une
ouverture de cosur, une joie dans la vie,
un gout, une facilit^ a communiquer ses
pense"es ; qui fut vive, agre'able, enjoue"e,
quelquefois imprudente, souvent indis-
crete, et qui efit avec cela du courage,
de la ge'ne'rosite', de la franchise, un cer-
tain point d'honneur, il ne faudrait point
chercher a gener par des loix ses mani-
eres, pour ne point ggner ses vertus. Si
en ge'ne'ral le caractere est bon, qu'im-
porte de quelques de"fauts qui s'y trou-
vent ? . . . Laissez-lui faire les choses
fri voles seYieusement, et gaiement les
choses seYieuse." And again, " Qu'on
nous laisse tels que nous sommes." And
again, " Qu'on nous laisse comme nous
sommes."

Whatever sort of a nation we are, we
should do well to say to any one who
could interfere with us, " Laissez-nous
faire," and " Mind your own business ; "
but if our immunity from interference
depended simply on the propriety of the
request we should probably ask in vain.
The great beauty of our situation is that
neither the request of Montesquieu nor
the command of Sumner owes its force
among us to its mere wisdom. Their
strength with us lies in the fact that we
have got ourselves into a position where
we cannot escape them if we would.
They are executing themselves upon us
whether we or our teachers will or no,
and we shall get the benefits. To tell
people in this country to mind their own
business is to tell the man who has fallen
into the water to swim ashore. If he
can swim he will do it without advice.

The same is true of our religious be-
liefs. The "dreadful consequence argu-
fier " is still among us, and asks us to
test opinions by the standard of the

Index ; that is, by their possible effect
on men's minds. This is ecclesiasticism
with a vengeance, but ecclesiasticism
shorn of all power to make or enforce
even an opinion.

Less here than in any other country
can such a suggestion find means to get
a trial, for it is the wish to legislate facts
out of existence, and we are perforce
learning the lesson that it is well to
know facts and to allow for them. We
are not trying to discover what any one
thinks will be good or bad for human
beings to believe. We find ourselves
compelled to be engaged in quite another
direction, — in discovering what views
of the universe are correct and what are
incorrect ; and the truth, whatever it is,
will come out, for there is little or no-
thing to prevent it, and we find it useful.

" See the ingenuity of Truth," says
Milton, " who, when she gets a free and
willing, hand, opens herself faster than
the pace of method and discourse can
overtake her." If a belief in the Bible
is unfounded, if dogmatic beliefs of any
sort are unfounded, our task is going to
be to get along without them, whether
they are now considered beneficial or not.
In the face of our situation it is not
going to be possible to keep them alive
if they are not true. An established
and subsidized church may teach what
it chooses, and it cannot get away from
itself ; but where religion is supported
by voluntary contributions the ministers
and clergy must keep up with the times,
and must not stultify themselves too
much in the eyes of their parishioners.
Already many of them recognize that in
their congregations the truth has met a
free and willing hand, and they have
begun to quicken the pace and method
of their discourse to overtake her. They
are telling their hearers that they need
no longer believe Hebraic legends, poems,
and fables, which those Hearers had
ceased to believe years ago. The shep-
herd is off after his flock, and shouts to
them as they gallop ahead of him that

Belated Feudalism in America.

they are in the right way. Once begun,
this stern chase of the leaders bids fair
to be a long one ; nor can anything stop
it, nor will the leaders ever win to the
fore again.

Such are some of the conditions un-
der which the people of this country are
contributing to the stock of human ex-
perience. If, because we do not commit
to paper the various steps of our pro-
ceedings, any one shall say that we are
adding nothing to the affairs of intellect
and philosophy, he will make a vast mis-
take. So far as future generations are
concerned, this country is nothing more
or less than a great mill of philosophy ;
and one, too, the wheels of which can-
not be stopped or clogged, as were the
fine minds of Descartes, Pascal, and even
Kant, by the overpowering force of su-
perstition. When some day the results
of our grinding shall be put into present-
able shape, it will be found that human
knowledge and human nature have made
a stride.

It is not possible, in these days, to
separate the countries of the world from
one another by an impassable gulf. The
bulk of one people may be in advance
of the bulk of another, and this is true as
between America and Europe ; but the
men who furnish literature and science
and art are all subject to the same in-
fluences, and one ought to find that they
are affected by them in substantially the
same way. This is, in fact, the case.
The most important influence in our day
has been the acceptance of the theory of
evolution. The Origin of Species gave
a straight answer to definite questions
which had exercised the minds of men
for sixty years. It found the intellect
of Europe ready, but the sentiment un-
prepared, and it laid a cold hand on
every form of imagination except that
of pure science.

Poets were the first to feel the chill.
There was enough warmth in the tradi-
tional sentiment to furnish uninterrupted
inspiration to a Browning, a Tennyson,

VOL. LXXXI. — xo. 483. 4

or a Hugo, but not enough to supply
a new generation. Swinburne, Rossetti,
Gautier, turned to classical and mediae-
val passion as a makeshift, and tried to
satisfy themselves with a mystic pagan-
ism. Their work is a tour de force of no
particular human value, an attempt to
supply the place of a lost God with a
dozen resurrected divinities. They have
had imitators, but no successors.

It seems to-day that the power of the
older beliefs to inspire anybody has quite
died out. With regard to great poetry,
we are in no worse case than the rest of
the world. It looks as if to most men
of poetic genius " this goodly frame, the
earth, seems a sterile promontory " for
the purposes of their vocation.

In prose the result was different.
In England, for example, the theory of
natural selection found a hierarchy, half
human, half divine, the lower end of
which rested on the earth and struck a
blow at its very foundation. To secure
a hearing for Darwinism in the face of
an established church and of an heredita-
ry nobility, a Huxley was necessary, and
a splendid polemical literature sprang
up along new lines. Fiction followed on
both sides of the battle.

Nothing of the sort could happen
here. In the first place, we had been liv-
ing for many years in strict accordance
with the most important principles of the
struggle for existence. In our own ac-
tions we had anticipated their discovery.
None of our institutions were disturbed
by them. They were corroborated and
confirmed. We understood that the fit-
test would survive, for we saw a thousand
examples of it every day, and we tried
to fit ourselves for survival. The new
natural knowledge was welcomed more
heartily, spread more rapidly, and was
better understood in this country than in
its home. It could not meet here any
organized spiritual or temporal power
with which to engage in trial by battle.
Gray championed it from the start, and
Agassiz opposed; but what they really

Belated Feudalism in America.

did was to join in the European contest,
and that chiefly on scientific grounds.

The religious aspects of the English
fight now look to us like a mediaeval
tournament, if not, as Dr. Zahm calls it,
a battle with windmills. To the English
it was a very serious matter. The de-
vils in which Huxley refused to believe
were very real devils to him. Dr. Wace,
Mr. Gladstone, and the Duke of Argyll
seemed very formidable opponents. They
did not really represent either science or
religion, but they did represent a power
to oppose science with a weighty terres-
trial influence, and they had to be beaten.

There is another reason why we have
done less in letters since the war than
we did before it. The war of the Re-
bellion made us a united and consistent
nation, and gave us a new individuality.
It separated us definitely from Europe.
With slavery fell the last feudal institu-
tion to which we gave a legal sanction.
From that moment we began to rely
upon ourselves. Foreign traditions and
foreign praises ceased to inspire us, and
we stopped imitation. When we had
done that, our old literary occupation was
gone, but we were at least free to make a
beginning. Through the gateway of two
events — the firing on Fort Sumter and
the publication of Darwin's book, the
greatest practical and the greatest intel-
lectual facts of the century, which stand
like the piers of an arch at the begin-
ning of the seventh decade — we entered
upon the second stage of our national
life. It has already proved to be a
period of great material and scientific
activity, but if we look for art or let-
ters it is a desert.

There is little hope that this genera-
tion will raise a great shrine to Art.
Forty years in the wilderness is the only
argument that will teach us that we are
not the people who are to build that tem-
ple. All we can expect to be is hewers
of wood and drawers of water for pos-
terity. Sixty, eighty, a hundred years

hence, when we, the last generation born
into the darkness of mediaeval supersti-
tion, are dead and gone, some poet will
arise who will embody the new beliefs
and find a way to make them beautiful.
To-day we have only enough faith to
speculate, and only enough conviction to
know that we are uncertain. How po-
etry could spring out of such theories as
we have we cannot see, and no poet who
attempts to soar can satisfy an audience
of twenty men. No matter which way
his soul is inclined, there is no market
for it. We do not believe what we were
brought up to love, and we do not like
what we have lived to accept. The old
is puerile from a modern pen, and the
new is repulsive.

Let us be selfishly glad that we shall
not live to hear the rhapsody of the fu-
ture poet. Taste broadens only into the
past, never into the future ; for we domi-
nate the past, but the future is full of
terrors. No one can admire what is be-
yond him, and we should not love the
poet of the future. We should abominate
him as Homer would have abominated
Virgil ; and Virgil, Dante ; and Dante,
Milton ; and Milton, Wordsworth.

We need not fear that there will be
no more poetry. This world is a place
about which convictions can be had and
will be had again. Those who come af-
ter us will laugh at our superstitions as
we laugh at those of our grandfathers.
They will find strength in what we shun
as disaster, and hope where we can see
only blank despair. When we shrink
from a fact, the weakness is in us, and
not in it, and man's greatness lies in the
number of facts he can face. The ad-
vance from barbarism to enlightenment
is the stamping out of fear. If there is
anything for which we dare not find a
place in our philosophy, we may be sure
that we are still barbarous. There can
be a man who will be strong enough to
live with that fact, and to love it and
make it poetry.

Henry G. Chapman.

Caleb West.

CALEB WEST.

XI.

CAPTAIN JOE'S TELEGRAM.

THE morning after Betty's visit to
Sanford's apartments, Captain Joe was
seen hurrying up the shore road at
Keyport toward his cottage. His eyes
snapped with excitement, and his breath
came in short, quick puffs. He wore
his rough working-clothes, and held a
yellow envelope in his hand. When he
reached the garden gate he swung it
open with so mighty a jerk that the
sound of the dangling ball and chain
thumping against the palings brought
Aunty Bell running to the porch.

"Sakes alive, Cap'n Joe! " she ex-
claimed, following him into the kitchen,
"whatever ' s the matter? Ain't no-
body hurted, is there ? "

"There will be ef I don't git to New
York purty quick. Mr. Sanford 's got
Betty, an' them Leroy folks is a-keep-
in' on her till I git there."

Aunty Bell sank into a chair, her
hands twisted in her apron, the tears
starting in her eyes.

"Who says so?"

"Telegram — come in the night,"
he answered, almost breathless, throw-
ing the yellow envelope into her lap.
"Git me a clean shirt quick as God '11
let ye. I ain't got but ten minutes to
catch that eight-ten train."

"But ye ain't a-goin' till ye see
Caleb, be ye ? He won't like it, maybe,
if"-—

"Don't ye stop there talkin', Aunty
Bell. Do as I tell ye, " he said, strip-
ping off his suspenders and tugging at
his blue flannel shirt. "I ain't a-goin'
to stop for nobody nor nothin'. That
little gal 's fetched up hard jes' where
I knowed she would, an' I won't have
a minute's peace till I git my hands
onto her. I ain't alep' a night since

she left, an' you know it, " he added,
hurriedly dragging a suit of clothes
from a closet, as he talked, still out of
breath.

"How do ye know she '11 come with
ye ? " asked Aunty Bell, as she gave
him his shirt. Her hands were trem-
bling.

"I ain't a-worritin'," he answered,
thrusting his head and big chest into
the stiff shirt ; fumbling, as he spoke,
with his brown hands, for the buttons.
"G^imme that collar."

"Well, I 'm kind'er wonderin' if ye
had n't better let Caleb know. I don't
know what Caleb '11 say " —

"I ain't a-carin' what Caleb says.
I '11 stop that leak when I git to 't."
He held his breath for a moment and
clutched the button with his big fingers,
trying to screw it into his collar, as if
it had been a nut on a bolt. "Here,
catch hold o' this button ; it 's so plaguy
tight. No, — I don't want no tooth-
brush, nor nothin'. I would n't 'er
come home at all, but I was so gormed
up, an' she 's along with them Leroy
folks Mr. Sanford knows. My — my "
— he continued, forcing his great arms
through the tight sleeves of his Sunday
coat with a humping motion of his back,
and starting toward the door. "Jes'
to think o' Betty wanderin' 'bout them
streets at night ! "

"Why, ye ain't got no cravat on,
Cap'n Joe ! " called Aunty Bell, running
after him, tie in hand.

" Here, give it to me ! " he cried,
snatching it and cramming it into his
pocket. "I '11 fix it on the train." In
another moment he was halfway down
the plank walk, waving his hand, shout-
ing over his shoulder as he swung open
the gate, his eye on the sky, "Send
word to Cap'n Bob to load them other
big stone an' git 'em to the Ledge to-
day; the wind 's goin' to haul to the

Caleb West.

south'ard. I '11 be back 'bout eight
o'clock to-night."

Aunty Bell looked after his hurrying
figure until the trees shut it from view ;
then she reentered the kitchen and again
dropped into a chair.

Betty's flight had been a sore blow to
the bustling little wife, — the last to
believe that Betty had really deserted
Caleb for Lacey, even after Captain Joe
had told her how the mate of the Green-
port boat had seen them board the New
York train together.

As for the captain, he had gone about
his work with his mind filled with vary-
ing emotions : sympathy for Caleb, sor-
row and mortification over Betty's fall,
and bitter, intense, dangerous hatred of
Lacey. These were each in turn, as
they assailed her, consumed by a never
ending hunger to get the child home
again, that she might begin the undoing
of her fatal step. To him she was still
the little girl he used to meet on the
road, with her hair in a tangle about
her head, her books under her arm. As
he had never fully realized, even when
she married Caleb, that anything had in-
creased her responsibilities, — that she
was no longer the child she looked, —
so he could not now escape the convic-
tion that somehow or other "she 'd been
hoodooed, " as he expressed it, and that
when she came to herself her very soul
would cry out in bitter agony.

Every day since her flight he had been
early and late at the telegraph office,
and had directed Bert Simmons, the let-
ter-carrier on the shore road, to hunt
him up wherever he might be, — on the
dock or aboard his boat, — should a
letter come bearing his name. The tel-
egram, therefore, was not a surprise.
That Sanf ord should have found her was
what he could not understand.

Aunty Bell, with the big secret weigh-
ing at her heart, busied herself about
the house, so as to make the hours pass
quickly. She was more conservative
and less impulsive in many things than
the captain; that is, she was apt to

consider the opinions of her neighbors,
and shape her course accordingly, unless
stopped by one of her husband's out-
bursts and won over to his way of
thinking. The captain knew no law
but his own emotions, and his innate
sense of right and wrong sustained by
his indomitable will and courage. If
the other folks didn't like it, the other
folks had to get out of the way ; he went
straight on.

"Ain't nobody goin' to have nothin'
to do with Betty, if she does git tired
of Lacey an' wants to come home,
poor child, " Aunty Bell had said to
Captain Joe only the night before, as
they sat together at supper. "Them
Nevins gals was say in' yesterday they
would n't speak to her if they see her
starvin', and was a-goin' on awful about
it; and Mis' Taft said " —

The captain raised his head quickly.
"Jane Bell, " — when the captain called
Aunty Bell "Jane" the situation was se-
rious,— "I ain't got nothin' to do with
them Nevins gals, nor Mis' Taft, nor
nobody else, and you ain't got nothin',
neither. Ain't we hed this child run-
nin' in an' out here jes' like a kitten
ever since we been here? Don't you
know clean down in yer heart that there
ain't no better gal ever lived 'n Betty?
Ain't we all liable to go 'stray, and
ain't we all of us so dirt mean that if
we had our hatches off there ain't no-
body who see our cargo would speak to
us? Now don't let me hear no more
about folks passin' remarks nor passin'
her by. I ain't a-goin' to pass her by,
and you ain't, neither, if them Nevins
gals and old Mother Taft and the whole
kit and caboodle of 'em walks on t'other
side."

She remembered the very sound of
these words, as she rested for a moment,
rocking to and fro, in the kitchen, after
the captain had gone, her fat little feet
swinging clear of the floor. She could
even hear the tone of his voice, and
could see the flashing of his eye. The
remembrance gave her courage. She

Caleb West.

wanted some one to come in, that she
might put on the captain's armor and
fight for the child herself.

She had not long to wait. Mrs. Taft
was already coming up the walk, — for
dinner, perhaps, her husband being away
fishing. Carleton was walking beside
her. They had met at the gate.

" I heard the captain had to go to New
York, Aunty Bell, and so I thought
maybe you 'd be alone, " said Mrs. Taft,
taking off her bonnet. "No news from
the runaway, I suppose ? Ain't it dread-
ful? She 's the last girl in the world I
would 'a' thought of doing a thing like
that."

"We ain't none of us perfect, Mis'
Taft. Take a chair, Mr. Carleton,"
placing one- for him. "If we was, we
could most of us stay here ; there would
n't be no use o' heaven."

"But, Aunty Bell," exclaimed the
visitor in astonishment, "you surely
don't think — Why, it's awful for
Betty to go and do what she did " —

"I ain't judgin' nobody, Mis' Taft.
I ain't a-blamin' Betty, an' I ain't
a-blamin' Caleb. I 'm only thinkin' of
all the suffer in' that poor child 's got to
go through now, an' what a mean world
this is for us to have to live in."

"Serves the old man right for mar-
rying a girl young enough to be his
daughter, " said Carleton, with a laugh,
tilting back his chair, — his favorite at-
titude. "I made up my mind the first
day I saw her that she was a little larky.
She 's been fooling West all summer,
— anybody could see that." He had
not forgiven the look in Caleb's eye
that afternoon aboard the Screamer.
"When 's the captain coming home? "

Aunty Bell looked at the superintend-
ent, her lips curling, as the hard, dry
laugh rang in her ears. She had never
fancied him, and she liked him less now
than ever. Her first impulse was to
give him a piece of her mind, — an
indigestible morsel when served hot.
Then she remembered that her husband
was having some difficulty with him

about the acceptance of the concrete
disk, and so her temper, chilled by this
more politic second thought, cooled
down and stiffened into a frigid deter-
mination not to invite him to dinner if
she ate nothing herself all day.

"Cap'n '11 be here in the mornin',"
she answered curtly. " Got any message
for him ? "

"Yes. Tell him I was out to the
Ledge yesterday with my transit, and
the concrete is too low by six inches near
the southeast derrick. It 's got to come
up to grade before I can certify. I
thought I 'd come in and tell him, —
he wanted to know."

The door opened, and the tall form
of Captain Bob Brandt, the Screamer's
skipper, entered.

"Excuse me, Mis' Bell," he said,
removing his hat and bowing good-
humoredly to everybody. "I saw ye
pass, Mr. Carleton, an' I wanted to tell
ye that we 're ready now to h'ist sail
fur the Ledge. We got 'leven stone on.
Caleb ain't workin' this week, an' one
o' the other divers 's a-goin' to set 'em.
Guess it's all right; the worst is all
done. Will you go out with us, or trust
me to git 'em right? "

"Well, where are you going to put
'em ? " said Carleton, in his voice of
authority.

"Well, las' time Caleb was down, sir,
he said he wanted four more stone near
the boat-landin', in about twelve foot o'
water, to finish that row ; then we kin
begin another layer nex' to 'em, if ye
say so. S'pose you know Cap'n Joe
ain't here? — gone to New York. Will
you go with us ? "

"No ; you set 'em. I '11 come out in
the tug in the morning and drop a rod
on 'em, and if they 're not right you '11
have to take 'em up again. That con-
crete 's out of level, you know."

"What concrete?"

"Why, the big circular disk,"
snapped Carleton.

This was only another excuse of
Carleton' s for refusing to sign the cer-

Caleb West.

tificate. The engineer had postponed
his visit, and so this fresh obstruction
was necessary to maintain his policy of
delay.

"Not when I see it, sir, three days
ago, " said Captain Brandt in surprise.
"It was dead low water, an' the tide
jest touched the edges of the outer band
all round even."

" Well, I guess I know, " retorted the
superintendent, flaring up. " I was out
there yesterday with a level, an' walked
all over it."

" Must'er got yer feet wet, then, sir, "
said the skipper, with a laugh, as he
turned toward the door. "The tide 's
been from eight inches to a foot high-
er 'n usual for three days past ; it 's full-
moon tides now."

During the talk Aunty Bell and Mrs.
Taft had slipped into the sitting-room,
and the superintendent, finding himself
alone, with no prospect of dinner, called
to the skipper, and joined him on the
garden walk.

As the afternoon hours wore on, and
no other callers came in, — Mrs. Taft
having gone, — Aunty Bell brought a
big basket, filled with an assortment of
yarn stockings of varied stains and re-
pairs, out to a chair on the porch, and
made believe to herself that she was put-
ting them in order for the captain when
he should need a dry pair. Now and
then she would stop, her hand in the
rough stocking, her needle poised, her
mind going back to the days when she
first moved to Keyport, and this curly-
haired girl from the fishing - village a
mile or more away had won her heart.
She had had no child of her own since
the death of that baby girl of long ago,
and Betty, somehow, had taken her
place, filling day by day all the deep
corners of the sore heart, still aching
from this earliev sorrow. When the
girl's mother died, a few months after
Betty's marriage, Aunty Bell had
thrown her shawl over her head, and,
going to Caleb's cabin, had mounted
the stairs to Betty's little room and

shut the door. With infinite tender-
ness she had drawn the girl's head down
on her own bosom, and had poured out
to her all the mother's love she had in
her own heart, and had told her of that
daughter of her dreams. Betty had
not forgotten it, and among all those
she knew on the shore road she loved
Aunty Bell the best. There were few
days in the week — particularly in the
summer, when Caleb was away — that
she was not doing something for Aunty
Bell, her bright face and merry, ring-
ing laugh filling the house and the lit-
tle woman's life, — an infectious, bub-
bling, girlish laugh that made it a de-
light to be with her.

Then a fresh thought, like a draught
from an open door, rushed into Aunty
Bell's mind with a force that sent a
shiver through her tender heart, and
chilled every kind impulse. Suppose
Caleb should turn his back on this girl
wife of his. What then? Ought she
to take her to her heart and brave it out
with the neighbors? What sort of an
example was it to other young women
along the shore, Aunty Bell's world?
Could they, too, run off with any young
fellows they met, and then come home
and be forgiven ? It was all very well
for the captain, — he never stopped to
think about these things, — that was
his way ; but what was her duty in the
matter? Would it not be better in the
end for Betty if she were made to re-
alize her wrong - doing, and to suffer
for it ?

These alternating memories and per-
plexities absorbed her as she sat on the
porch, the stockings in her lap, her mind
first on one course of action and then
on another, until some tone of Betty's
voice, or the movement of her hand, or
the toss of her head came back, and
with it the one intense, overwhelming
desire to help and comfort the child she
loved.

When it began to grow dark she
lighted the lamp in the front room,
and made herself a cup of tea in the

Caleb West.

kitchen. Every few minutes she glanced
at the clock, her ears alert for the
whistle of the incoming train. Losing
confidence even in the clock, she again
took her seat on the porch, her arms
on the rail, her plump chin resting on
her hands, straining her eyes to see far
down the road.

When the signaling whistle of the
train was heard, the long-drawn sound
reverberating over the hills, she ran to
the gate, and stood there, her apron
thrown over her head, her mind in a
whirl, her throat aching with the
thumping of her heart. Soon a car-
riage passed, filled with summer visit-
ors, their trunks piled in front, and
drove on up the road. Then a man
carrying a bag hurried by with two wo-
men, their arms full of bundles. Af-
ter that the road was deserted. These
appeared to be all the passengers com-
ing her way. As the minutes dragged,
and no sound of footsteps reached her
ear, and no big burly figure with a
slender girl beside it loomed against
the dim light of the fading sky, her
courage failed and her eyes began to
grow moist. She saw it all now : Betty
dared not come home and face Caleb
and the others!

Suddenly she heard her name called
from inside the house, and again from
the kitchen door.

"Aunty Bell! Aunty Bell! where be
ye?"

It was the captain 's_ voice : he must
have left the train at the drawbridge
and crossed lots, coming in at the rear
gate.

She hurried up the plank walk, and
met him at the kitchen door. He was
leaning against the jamb. It was too
dark to see his face. A dreadful sense
of some impending calamity overcame
her.

"Where's Betty?" she faltered,
scarcely able to speak.

The captain pointed inside.

The little woman pushed past him
into the darkening room. For a mo-

ment she stood still, her eyes fixed on
Betty's slender, drooping figure and
bowed head, outlined against the panes
of the low window.

" Betty ! " she cried, running for-
ward with outstretched arms.

The girl did not move.

" Betty — my child ! " cried Aunty
Bell again, taking the weeping woman
in her arms.

Then, with smothered kisses and halt-
ing, broken speech, these two — the
forgiving and the forgiven — sank to
the floor.

Outside, on a bench by the door, sat
the captain, rocking himself, bringing
his hands down on his knees, and with
every seesaw repeating in a low tone to
himself, "She 's home. She 's home."

XII.

CAPTAIN JOE'S CREED.

When Captain Joe flung open Caleb's
cabin door, the same cry was on his
lips : "She 's home, Caleb, she 's home !
Run 'way an' lef ' him, jes' 's I knowed
she would, soon 's she got the spell off'n
her."

Caleb looked up over the rim of his
glasses into the captain's face. He
was sitting at the table in his shirt-
sleeves and rough overalls, the carpet
slippers on his feet. He was eating
his supper, — the supper that he had
cooked himself.

" How d' ye know ? " he asked. The
voice did not sound like Caleb's; it was
hoarse and weak.

"She come inter Mr. Sanford's place
night 'fore last, scared almost to death,
and he tuk her to them Leroy folks;
they was stavin' good to her an' kep*
'er till mornin', an' telegraphed me. I
got the eight- ten this mornin'. There
warn't no time, Caleb, " — in an apolo-
getic tone, — "or I 'd sent for ye, jes'
's Aunty Bell wanted me to; but I
knowed ye 'd understand. We jes' got

Caleb West.

back. I 'd brought 'er up, only she 's
dead beat out, poor little gal."

It was a long answer of the captain's
to so direct a question, and it was made
with more or less misgiving. It was
evident from his manner that he was
a little nervous over the result. He
did not take his eyes from the diver's
face as he fired these shots at random,
wondering where and how they would
strike.

" Where is she now ? " inquired Ca-
leb quietly.

" Down on my kitchen floor with her
head in Aunty Bell's lap. Git yer hat
and come 'long." The captain leaned
over the table as he spoke, and rested
one hand on the back of Caleb's chair.
Caleb did not raise his eyes nor move.
"I can't do her no good no more,
Cap'n Joe. It was jes' like ye to try
an' help her. Ye 'd do it for anybody
that was a-sufferin' ; but I don't see
my way clear. I done all I could for
her 'fore she lef ' me, — leastwise I
thought I had." There was no change
in the listless monotone of his voice.

"You allus done by her, Caleb."
The captain's hand had slipped from
the chair-back to Caleb's shoulder. "I
know it, and she knows it now. She
ain't ever goin' to forgive herself for
the way she 's treated ye, — tol' me so
to-day comin' up. She 's been hoo-
dooed, I tell ye, — that 's what 's the
matter; but she 's come to now. Come
along; I '11 git yer hat. She ought 'er
go to sleep purty soon."

"Ye need n't look for my hat, Cap'n
Joe. I ain't a-goin'," said Caleb qui-
etly, leaning back in his chair. The
lamp shone full on his face and beard.
Captain Joe could see the deep lines
about the eyes, seaming the dry,
shrunken skin. The diver had grown
to be a very old man in a week.

"You say you ain't a-goin', Caleb? "
In his heart he had not expected this.

"No, Cap'n Joe; I 'm goin' to stay
here an' git along th' best way I kin.
I ain't blamin' Betty. I 'm Umnin'

myself. I been a-thinkin' it all over.
She done 'er best to love me and do
by me, but I was too old for 'er. If
it hadn't been Billy, it would 'er been
somebody else, — somebody younger 'n
me."

"She don't want nobody else but
you, Caleb." The captain's voice rose
quickly. He was crossing the room for
a chair as he spoke. "She told me so
to-day. She purty nigh cried herself
sick comin' up. I was afeard folks
would notice her."

"She 's sorry now, cap'n, an' wants
ter come back, 'cause she 's skeered of
it all, but she don't love me no more 'n
she did when she lef me. When Billy
finds she 's gone, he '11 be arter her
agin " —

"Not if I git my hands on him,"
interrupted the captain angrily, drag-
ging the chair to Caleb's side.

"An' when she begins to hunger for
him," continued Caleb, taking no no-
tice of the outburst, "it '11 be all to do
over agin. She won't be happy with-
out him. I ain't got nothin' agin 'er,
but I won't take 'er back. It '11 only
make it wus for her in the end."

"Ye ain't a-goin' ter chuck that
gal out in the road, be ye? " cried
Captain Joe, seating himself beside the
table, his head thrust forward in Caleb's
face in his earnestness. "What 's she
but a chit of a child that don't know
no better? " he burst out. "She ain't
more 'n twenty now, and here 's some
on us more 'n twice 'er age and liable
to do wus every day. Think of yerself
when ye was her age. Do ye remem-
ber all the mean things ye done, and
the lies ye told? S'pose you 'd been
chucked out as ye want to do to Betty.
It ain't decent for ye to talk so, Caleb,
and I don't like ye fur it, neither.
She 's a good gal, and you know it, "
and the captain, in his restlessness,
shifted the chair and planted it imme-
diately in front of Caleb, where he could
look him straight in the eye. Aunty
Bell had told him just what Caleh would

Caleb West.

say, but he had not believed it possi-
ble.

"I ain't said she warn' t, Cap 'n Joe.
I ain't blamin' her, nor never will.
I 'm blamin' myself. I ought'er stayed
tendin' light - ship instead'er comin'
ashore and spilin' 'er life. I was
lonely, and the fust one was allus sick-
ly, an' I thought maybe my time had
come then; and it did while she was
with me. I 'd ruther beared her a-sing-
in', when I come in here at night,
than any music I ever knowed." His
voice broke for a moment. "I done
by her all I could, but I begin to see
lately she was lonelier here with me
than I was 'board ship with nothin'
half the time to talk to but my dog.
I did n't think it was Billy she wanted,
but I see it now."

Captain Joe rose from his chair and
began pacing the room . Caleb ' s indomi-
table will seemed to break against this
man's calm, firm talk with as little ef-
fect as did the waves about his own feet
the day he set the derricks.

His faith in Betty's coming to her-
self had never been shaken for an in-
stant. If it had, it would all have been
restored the morning she met him in
Mrs. Leroy's boudoir, and, putting her
arms about him, clung to him like a
frightened kitten. His love for the girl
was so great that he had seen but one
side of the question. Her ingratitude,
her selfishness in ignoring the dis-
grace and misery she would bring this
man who had been everything to her,
had held no place in the captain's
mind. To him the case was a plain
one. She was young and foolish, and
had committed a fault ; she was sorry
and repentant; she had run away from
her sin; she had come back to the one
she had wronged, and she wanted to
be forgiven. That was his steadfast
point of view, and this was his creed :
"Neither do I condemn you ; go and
sin no more." That Caleb did not
view the question in the same way at
first astonished, then irritated him.

He had only compassion and love for
Betty in his heart. If she had broken
the Master's command again, he would
perhaps have let her go her way, — for
what was innately bad he hated, —
but not now, when she had awakened to
a sense of her sin. He continued to
pace up and down Caleb's kitchen, his
hands behind his broad back, his horny,
stubby fingers twisting nervously to-
gether. Caleb was still in his chair,
the lamplight streaming over his face.
In all the discussion his voice had been
one low monotone. It seemed but a
phonographic echo of his once clear
voice.

The captain resumed his seat with
a half -baffled, weary air.

" Caleb, " he said, — there was a soft-
ness now in the tones of his voice that
made the diver raise his head, — "you
and me hev knowed each other off 'n' on
for nigh on to twenty years. We 've
had it thick and nasty, and we 've
had as clear weather as ever a man
sailed in. You 've tried to do square
'tween man and man, and so far 's I
know, ye have, and I don't believe ye
're goin' to turn crooked now. From
the time this child used to come down
to the dock, when I fust come to work
here, and talk to me 'tween school
hours, and Aunty Bell would take her
in to dinner, down to the time she got
hoodooed by that smooth face and lyin'
tongue, — damn him ! I '11 spile t'other
side for him, some day, wus than the
Screamer did, — from that time, I say,
this 'ere little gal ain't been nothin' but
a bird fillin' everything full of singin'
from the time she got up till she went to
bed agin. I ask ye now, man to man,
if that ain't so? "

Caleb nodded his head.

"During all that time there ain't
been a soul up and down this road,
man, woman, nor child, that she would
n't help if she could, — and there 's a
blame' sight of 'em she did help, as
you an' I know: sick child'en, sittin'
up with 'em nights ; an' makin' bonnets

Caleb West.

for folks as could n't git 'em no other
way, without payin' for 'em; and doin'
all she could to make this place happier
for 'er bein' in it. Since she 's been
yer wife, there ain't been a tidier nor
nicer place along the shore road than
yours, and there ain't been a happier
little woman nor home nowheres. Is
that so, or not ? "

Again Caleb nodded his head.

"While all this is a-goin' on, here
comes that little skunk, Bill Lacey,
with a tongue like 'n ile-can, and every
time she says she 's lonely or tired —
and she 's had plenty of it, ypu bein'
away — he up's with his can and squirts
it into 'er ear about her bein' tied to
an old man, and how if she 'd married
him he wouldn't 'a' lef her a min-
ute " —

Caleb looked up inquiringly, an ugly
gleam in his eyes.

"Oh, I ketched him at it one day in
my kitchen, and I tol' him then I 'd
break his head, and I wish to God I
had, now ! Purty soon comes the time
with the Screamer, and his face gets
stove in. What does Betty do ? Leave
them men to git 'long best way they
could, — like some o' the folks round
here that was just as well able to 'ford
the time, — or did she stand by and
ketch a line and make fast? I '11 tell
ye what she done, 'cause I was there,
and you warn't. Fust one come ashore
was Billy; he looked like he 'd fallen
off a top-gall 'nt mast and struck the
deck with his face. Lonny Bowles
come next; he warn't so bad mashed
up. What did Betty do ? Pick out the
easiest one? No, she jes' anchored
right 'longside that boy, and hung on,
and never had 'er clo'es off for nigh on
to forty-eight hours. If he 's walkin'
round now he owes it to her. Is that
so, or not ? "

"It's true, cap'n, " said Caleb, his
eyes fastened on the captain's face.
The lids were heavy now ; only his will
held back the tears.

" For three weeks this went on,

she a-settin' like a little rabbit with
her paws up starin' at him, her eyes
gettin' bigger all the time, an' he lyin',
coiled up like a snake, lookin' up into
her face until he 'd hoodooed her and
got her clean off her centre. Now
there 's one thing I 'm a-goin' to ask
ye, an' before I ask ye, an' before ye
answer it, I 'm a-goin' to ask ye an-
other: when the Three Sisters come
ashore las' winter in that sou'easter on
Deadman Shoal, 'cause the light warn't
lit, an' all o' them men was drownded,
whose fault was it ? "

"Why, you know, Cap'n Joe, " Caleb
interposed quickly, eager to defend a
brother keeper, a pained and surprised
expression overspreading his face.
"Poor Charles Edwards had been out
o' his head for a week."

"That's right, Caleb: that's what
I heard, an' that 's true, an' the dead
men and the owners had n't nobody to
blame, an' did n't. Now I '11 ask ye
another question : When Betty, after
livin' every day of her life as straight as
a marlin spike, run away an' lef ye a
week ago, an' broke up yer home, who 's
to blame, — Betty, or the hoodoo that 's
put 'er out'er her mind ever since the
Screamer blowed up ? "

Caleb settled back in his chair and
rested his chin on his hand, his big
fluffy beard hiding his wrist and shirt-
cuff. For a long time he did not an-
swer. The captain sat, with his hands
on his knees, looking searchingly into
Caleb's face, watching every eipression
that crossed it.

"Cap'n Joe," said the diver in his
calm, low voice, "I hearn ye talk, an'
I know ye well 'nough to know that ye
believe every word ye say, an' I don't
know but it 's all true. I ain't had
much 'sperience o' women folks, only
two. But I don't think ye git this
right. It ain't for myself that I 'm
thinkin'. I kin git along alone, an' do
my own cookin' an' washin' same as I
allus used to. It 's Betty I 'm think-
in' of. She 's tried me more 'n a year,

Caleb West.

an' done her best, an' give it up. She
wouldn't 'a' been 'hoodooed,' as ye
call it, by Bill Lacey if her own heart
warn't ready for it 'fore he began.
It '& agin natur' for a gal as young 's
Betty to be happy with a man 's old
's me. She can't do it, no matter how
hard she tries. I did n't know it when
I asked her, but I see it now."

"But she knows better now, Caleb;
she ain't a-goin' to cut up no more ca-
pers." There was a yearning, an al-
most pitiful tone in the captain's voice.
His face was close to Caleb's.

"Ye think so, an' maybe she won't;
but, there 's one thing yer don't seem to
see, Cap'n Joe : she can't git out'er love
with me an' inter love with Billy an'
back agin to me in a week."

These last words came slowly, as if
they had been dragged up out of the
very depths of his heart.

"She never was out'er love with ye,
Caleb, nor in with Lacey. Don't I
tell ye ? " he cried* impatiently, too ab-
sorbed in Betty's welfare to note the
seriousness of Caleb's tone.

"Yes," said Caleb. His voice had
fallen almost to a whisper. " I know, ye
think so, but th' bes' thing now for the
little gal is to give 'er 'er freedom, an'
let 'er go 'er way. She shan't suffer
as long 's I 've got a dollar, but I won't
have 'er come home. It '11 only break
her heart then as well 's mine. Now
— now — it 's only me — that is " —
Caleb's head sank to the table until his
face lay on his folded arms.

Captain Joe rose from his chair, bent
down and laid his hand softly on the
diver's shoulder. When he spoke his
voice had the pleading tones of a girl.

"Caleb, don't keep nothin' back in
yer heart ; take Betty back. You need
n't go down for her. I '11 go myself
an' bring her here. It won't be ten
minutes 'fore her arms '11 be round yer
neck. Lemme go for her ? "

The diver raised his head erect,
looked Captain Joe calmly in the eye,
and, without a trace of bitterness in his

voice, said : "She '11 never set foot here
as my wife agin, Cap'n Joe, as long 's
she lives. I ain't got the courage to
set still an' see her pine away day arter
day, if she comes back, an' I won't.
I love 'er too much for that. If she
was my own child instead o' my wife,
I 'd say the same thing. It 's Betty
I 'm a-thinkin' of, not myself. It 'd
be twict 's hard for 'er the next time
she got tired an' wanted to go. It 's
all over now, an' she 's free. Let it
all stay so."

"Don't say that, Caleb." The
shock of the refusal seemed to have
stunned him. "Don't say that. Think
o' that child, Caleb: she come back to
ye, an' you shut your door agin 'er."

Caleb shook his head, with a mean-
ing movement that showed the iron will
of the man and the hopelessness of fur-
ther discussion.

"Then she ain't good 'nough for ye,
's that it ? "

The captain was fast losing his self-
control. He knew in his heart that in
these last words he was doing Caleb an
injustice, but his anger got the better
of him.

Caleb did not answer.

"That 's it. Say it out. You don't
believe in her." His voice now rang
through the kitchen. One hand was
straight up over his head ; his lips qui-
vered. " Ye think she 's some low-
down critter instead of a poor child that
ain't done nobody no wrong intentional.
I ask ye for th' las' time, Caleb. Be
a father to 'er, if ye can't be no more;
an' if ye can't be that, — damn ye! —
be decent to yerself, an' stan' up an'
forgive her like a man."

Caleb made no sign. The cruel thrust
had not reached his heart. He knew
his friend, and he knew all sides of his
big nature. The clear blue eyes still
rested on the captain's face.

"You won't?" There was a tone
almost of defiance in the words.

The diver again shook his head.

"Then I '11 tell ye one thing, Caleb,

Caleb West.

right here " (he was now bent forward,
his forefinger in Caleb's face straight
out like a spike) : "ye 'redoin' the mean-
est thing I ever knowed a man to do in
my whole life. I don't like ye fur it,
an' I never will 's long 's I live. I
would n't serve a dog so, let alone Bet-
ty. An' now I'll tell ye another: if
she ain't good 'nough to live with you,
she 's good 'nough to live with Aunty
Bell an' me, an' there 's where she '11
stay jes' 's long 's she wants to."

Without a word of good - night he
picked up his hat and strode from the
room, slamming the door behind him
with a force that rattled every plate
on the table.

Caleb half started from his chair as
if to call him back. Then, with a deep
indrawn sigh, he rose wearily from the
chair, covered the smouldering fire with
ashes, locked the doors, fastened the two
shutters, and, taking up the lamp, went
slowly upstairs to his empty bed.

The following Sunday Captain Joe
shaved himself with the greatest care,
— that is, he slashed his face as full of
cuts as a Heidelberg student's after a
duel ; squeezed his big broad shoulders
into his black coat, — the one inches
too tight across the back, the cloth all
in corrugated wrinkles ; tugged at his
stiff starched collar until his face was
purple ; hauled taut a sleazy cravat ; and,
in a determined quarter-deck voice rare-
ly heard from him, ordered Aunty Bell
to get on her best clothes, call Betty,
and come with him.

"What in natur' 's got into ye, Cap'n
Joe? "

"Church 's got inter me, and you an'
Betty 's goin' along."

"Ye ain't never goin' to church, be
ye ? " No wonder Aunty Bell was
thunderstruck. Neither of them had
been inside of a church since they
moved to Key port. Sunday was the
captain's day for getting rested, and
Aunty Bell always helped him.

"I ain't, ain't I? That's all ye

know, Jane Bell. You git Betty an'
come along, jes' 's I tell ye. I 'm a-run-
nin' this ship." There was that pecu-
liar look in the captain's eye and tone
in his voice that his wife knew too well.
It was never safe to resist him in one
of these moods.

Betty burst into tears when the little
woman told her, and said she dared not
go, and couldn't, until a second quick,
not-to-be-questioned order resounded up
the staircase : —

"Here, now, that church bell 's pur-
ty nigh done ringin'. We got ter git
aboard 'fore the gangplank 's drawed
in."

"Come along, child," said Aunty
Bell. "'T ain't no use; he 's got one
o' his spells on. Which church be ye
goin' to, anyway ? " she called to him,
as they came downstairs. "Methodist
or Dutch?"

"Don't make no difference, — fust
one we come to ; an' Betty 's goin' to
set plumb in the middle 'tween you an'
me, jes' so 's folks kin see. I ain't
goin' to have no funny business, nor
hand- whispers, nor head-shakin's about
the little gal from nobody along this
shore, from the preacher down, or some-
body'11 git hurted."

All through the service — he had
marched down the middle aisle and
taken the front seat nearest the pulpit
— he sat bolt upright, like a corporal on
guard, his eyes on the minister, his ears
alert. Now and then he would sweep
his glance around, meeting the wonder-
ing looks of the congregation, who had
lost interest in everything about them
but the three figures in the front pew.
Then, with a satisfied air, now that
neither the speaker nor his hearers
showed anything but respectful curios-,
ity, and no spoken word from the pul-
pit bore the remotest connection with
the subject uppermost in his mind, —
no Magdalens nor Prodigal Sons, nor
anything of like significance (there is
no telling what would have happened
had there been), — he settled himself

Caleb West.

again and looked straight at the min-
ister.

When the benediction had been pro-
nounced he waited until the crowd got
thickest around the door, — he knew
why the congregation lagged behind;
then he made his way into its midst,
holding Betty by the arm as if she had
been under arrest. Singling out old
Captain Potts, a retired sea-captain, a
great church-goer and something of a
censor over the morals of the commu-
jiity, he tapped him on the shoulder, and
said in a voice loud enough to be heard
by everybody : —

"This is our little gal, Betty West,
Cap'n Potts. Caleb 's gin her up, and
she 's come to live with us. When
ye 're passin' our way with yer folks, it
won't do ye no harm to stop in to see
"her."

XIII.

A SHANTY DOOR.

Sanford had expected, when he led
Betty from his door, that Mrs. Leroy
would give her kindly shelter, but he
had not been prepared for all that he
heard the next day. Kate had not
only received the girl into her house,
but had placed her for the night in a
bedroom adjoining her own ; arranging
the next morning a small table in her
dressing-room where Betty could break-
fast alone, free from the pryings of in-
quisitive servants. Mrs. Leroy told
all these things to Sanford: the heart-
broken weariness of the girl when she
arrived; the little joyful cry she gave
when big, burly Captain Joe, his eyes
blinded by the hot midday glare outside,
. came groping his way into the darkened
boudoir; and Betty's glad spring into
his arms, where she lay while the cap-
tain held her with one hand, trying to
talk to both Betty and herself at once,
the tears rolling down his cheeks, his
other great hand with the thole-pin fin-
gers patting the girl's tired face. Mrs.

Leroy told Sanford all these things and
more, but she did not say how she her-
self had sat beside Betty on the divan
that same morning, before Captain Joe
arrived, winning little by little the girl's
confidence, until the whole story came
out. Neither did she tell him with what
tact and gentleness she, the woman of
the world, whose hours of loneliness had
been more bitter and intense than any
that Betty ever knew, had shown this
inexperienced girl how much more noble
it would have been to suffer and stand
firm, doing and being the right, than to
succumb as she had done. Nor yet did
she tell Sanford how Betty's mind had
cleared, as she talked on, and of the
way in which the girl's brown hand had
crept toward her own till it nestled
among her jeweled fingers, while with
tender words of worldly wisdom she
had prepared her foster sister for what
she still must face in penance for her
sin ; instructing her in the use of those
weapons of self-control, purity of pur-
pose, and patience with which she must
arm herself if she would win the strug-
gle. Before the morning hours were
gone she had received the girl's promise
to go back to her home, and, if her hus-
band would not receive her, to fight on
until she again won for herself the re-
spect she had lost, and among those,
too, who had once loved her. But least
of all did she tell Sanford that when the
talk was over and Betty was gone, she
had thrown herself on her own bed in
an agony of tears, wondering after all
which one of the two had done best for
herself in the battle of life, she or the
girl.

Sanford knew nothing of this. As
he sat in the train, on his way back to
Keyport, he was sorry and anxious for
Mrs. Leroy, wrought up by what she
had told him and by the pictures she
had given. Yet he found himself be-
wildered by the fact that, even more
than the story, he remembered the tones
of Kate's voice and the very color of her
eyes. He was constantly seeing before

Caleb West.

him a vision of Kate herself as she stood
in the hall and bade him good-by, — her
full white throat above the ruffles of her
morning-gown. He found it difficult to
turn his mind to other things, to quiet
his inner enthusiasm for her gentleness
and charity.

And yet there were important affairs
to which he owed immediate attention.
Carleton's continued refusal to sign a
certificate for the concrete disk, with-
out which no payment would be made
by the government, would, if persisted
in, cause him serious embarrassment.
He discovered, in fact, as he stepped
over the Screamer's rail at Key port,
that the difficulty with Carleton had
already reached an acute stage. Cap-
tain Joe had altogether failed in his
efforts to make the superintendent sign
the certificate, and Carleton had threat-
ened to wire the Department and de-
mand a board of survey if his orders
were not complied with at once. Cap-
tain Joe generally retired from the field
and left the campaign to Sanford when-
ever, in the course of their work, it
became necessary to fight the United
States government. The sea was his
enemy.

In this discussion, however, he had
taken the pains to explain to Carleton
patiently, and he thought intelligently,
the falsity of the stand he took, show-
ing him that his idea about the concrete
base being too low was the result of a
mere optical illusion, due to the action of
the tide which backed the water up high-
er within the breakwater on the south-
east side ; that when the first course
of masonry was laid, bringing the mass
of concrete out of water, his — Carle-
ton's — mistake would be instantly de-
tected.

Captain Joe was as much out of pa-
tience as he ever permitted himself to
be with Carleton, when he shook San-
ford's hand on his arrival.

"Ain't no man on earth smart 'nough
to make eleven inches a foot, let alone
a critter like him ! " he said, as he ex-

plained the latest development to San-
ford.

Once over the sloop's side, Sanford
laid his bag on the deck and turned to
the men.

"Who saw the concrete at dead low
water during that low tide we had after
the last northwest blow? " he inquired.

"I did, sir," answered Captain Bob.
"I told Mr. Carleton he was wrong.
The water jes' tetched the outer iron
band all round when I see it. It was
dead calm an' dead low water."

"What do you say to that, Mr. Carle-
ton? " asked Sanford, laughing.

"I 'm not here to take no back talk
from nobody," replied Carleton in a
surly tone.

"Lonny, " said Sanford, — he saw
that further discussion with the super-
intendent was useless, — "go ashore and
get my transit and target rod ; you '11
find them in my bedroom at the cap-
tain's; and please put them here in the
skipper's bunk, so they won't get bro-
ken. I '11 run a level on the concrete
myself, Mr. Carleton, when we get to
the Ledge."

"There ain't no use of your transit, "
said Carleton, with a sneer. "It 's six
inches too low, I tell you. You '11 fix
it as I want it, or I '11 stop the work."

Sanford looked at him, but held his
peace. It had not been his first experi-
ence with men of Carleton's class. He
proposed, all the same, to know for him-
self who was right. He had seen Carle-
ton use a transit, and had had a dim
suspicion at the time that the superin-
tendent was looking through the eye-
piece while it was closed.

"Get ready for the Ledge, Captain
Brandt, as soon as Lonny returns, " said
Sanford. "Where's Caleb, Captain
Joe? We may want him."

The captain touched Sanford on the
shoulder and moved down the deck with
him, where he stood behind one of the
big stones, out of hearing of the other
men.

"He 's all broke up, sir. He ain't

Caleb West.

been to work since the little gal left.
I want to thank ye, Mr. Sanford, for
what ye did for 'er; and that friend o'
yourn could n't 'a' been no better to
her if she 'd been her sister."

"That 's all right, captain," said
Sanford, laying a hand on his shoulder.
"Betty is at your house, I hear. How
does she bear it ? "

"Gritty as she kin be, but she ain't
braced up much; Aunty Bell 's got 'er
arms round 'er most of the time. I
wish you 'd send for Caleb ; no thin' else
'11 bring him out. He won't come for
me. I '11 go myself, if ye say so."

"Go get him. I may want him to
hold a rod in four or five feet of water.
He won't need his helmet, but he '11
need his dress. Do you hear anything
about Lacey ? "

"He ain't been round where any of
us could see him — and git hold of
him," answered Captain Joe, knitting
his brows. "I jes' wish he 'd come once.
I beared he was over to Stonin'ton,
workin' on the railroad."

The captain jumped into the yawl and
sculled away toward the diver's cabin.
He had not felt satisfied with himself
since the night when Caleb had refused
to take Betty back. He had said then,
in the heat of the moment, some things
which had hurt him as much as they
had hurt Caleb. He would have told
him so before, but he had been con-
stantly at the Ledge receiving the big
cut stones for the masonry, nine of which
were then piled up on the Screamer's
deck. After that there had arisen the
difficulty with Carleton. This now was
his opportunity.

The men on the sloop, somehow, knew
Caleb was coming, and there was more
or less curiosity to see him. Nickles,
standing inside the galley and within
earshot, had probably overheard San-
ford's request.

All the men liked the old diver. His
courage, skill, and many heroic acts
above and under water had earned their
respect, while his universal kindness and

cheeriness had won their confidence.
The calamity that had overtaken him
had been discussed and re-discussed, and
while many profane hopes were indulged
in regarding the future condition of
Lacey 's soul and eyes, of a kind that
would have interfered seriously with the
eternal happiness of the first and the see-
ing qualities of the second, and while nu-
merous criticisms were as freely passed
upon Betty, nothing but kindness and
sympathy was felt for Caleb.

When Caleb came up over the sloop's
rail, followed by Captain Joe, it was
easy to see that all was right between
him and the captain. One hearty hand-
shake inside the cabin's kitchen, and a
frank outspoken "I 'm sorry, Caleb;
don't lay it up agin me, " had done that.
When Caleb spoke to the men, in his
usual gentle manner, each one of them
said or did some little thing, as chance
offered an unobtrusive opportunity, that
conveyed to the diver a heartfelt sorrow
for his troubles, — every one but Carle-
ton, who purposely, perhaps, had gone
down into the cabin, his temper still
ruffled over his encounter with Captain
Joe and Sanford.

And so Caleb once more took his place
on the working force.

As the Screamer rounded to and made
fast in the eddy, the Ledge gang were
using the system of derricks, which since
the final anchoring had never needed
an hour's additional work. They were
moving back from the landing-wharf the
big cut stones. While waiting for de-
liveries of the enrockment blocks from
the quarries, the Screamer had carried
the stones of the superstructure from
Keyport to the Ledge. These were re-
quired to lay the first course of mason-
ry, the work to begin as soon as the
controversy over the proper level of the
concrete was settled.

With the making fast of the Screamer
to the floating buoys in the eddy, the
life-boat from the Ledge pulled along-
side, and landed Sanford, Carleton,
Captain Joe, Caleb, and the skipper, —

Caleb West.

Lonny Bowles carrying the transit and
rod as carefully as if they had been two
long icicles. The wind was blowing
fresh from the east, and the concrete
was found to be awash with three feet of
water ; nothing of the mass itself could
be seen by the naked eye. It was there-
fore apparent that if the dispute was to
be settled it could be done only by a
series of exact measurements. Carle-
ton's glance took in the situation with
every evidence of satisfaction. He had
begun to suspect that perhaps after all
he might be wrong, but his obstinacy
sustained him. Now that the disk was
covered with water there was still rea-
son for dispute.

As soon as the party landed at the
shanty, Caleb squeezed himself into his
diving-dress, Captain Joe fastening the
water-tight cuffs over his wrists, leaving
his hands free. Caleb picked up the rod
with its adjustable target and plunged
across the shallow basin, the water com-
ing up to his hips. Sanford arranged
the tripod on the platform, leveled his
instrument, directed Caleb where to
hold the rod, and began his survey;
Captain Joe recording his findings with
a big blue lead pencil on a short strip
of plank.

The first entries showed that the two
segments of the circle — the opposite
segments, southeast and northwest —
varied barely three tenths of an inch in
height. This, of course, was immate-
rial over so large a surface. The re-
sult proved conclusively that Carleton's
claim that one section of the concrete
was six inches too low was absurd.

"I 'm afraid I shall have to decide
against you this time, Mr. Carleton.
Run your eye through this transit ; you
can see yourself what it shows."

"Right or wrong," broke out Carle-
ton, now thoroughly angry, both over
his defeat and at the half -concealed,
jeering remarks of the men, "it 's got
to go up six inches, or not a cut stone
will be laid. That 's what I 'm here
for, and what I say goes. "

" But please take the transit and see
for yourself, Mr. Carleton, " urged San-
ford.

"I don't know nothin' about your
transit, nor who fixed it to suit you, "
snarled Carleton.

Sanford bit his lip, and made no
answer. There were more important
things to be done in the building of a
light than the resenting of such insults
or quarreling with a superintendent.
The skipper, however, to whom the su-
perintendent was a first experience, and
who took his answer as in some way a
reflection on his own veracity, walked
quickly toward him with his fist tightly
clinched. His big frame towered over
Carleton's.

"Thank you, Captain Bob," said
Sanford, noticing the skipper's expres-
sion and intent, "but Mr. Carleton is
n't in earnest. His transit is not here,
and we cannot tell who fixed that."

The men laughed, and the skipper
stopped and stood aside, awaiting any
further developments that might require
his aid.

"In view of these measurements,"
asked Sanford, as he held before Carle-
ton's eyes the piece of plank bearing
Captain Joe's record, "do you still or-
der the six inches of concrete put in ? "

"Certainly I do," said Carleton.
His ugly temper was gradually being
hidden under an air of authority. San-
ford's tact had regained him a debating
position.

"And you take the responsibility of
the change ? "

"I do," replied Carleton in a blus-
tering voice.

"Then please put that order in writ-
ing, " said Sanford quietly, " and I will
see it done as soon as the tide lowers."

Carleton's manner changed; he saw
the pit that lay before him. If he were
wrong, the written order would fix his
responsibility ; without that telltale re-
cord he could deny afterward having
given the order, if good policy so de-
manded.

Caleb West.

"Well, that ain't necessary; you go
ahead," said Caiieton, with less vehe-
mence.

"I think it is, Mr. Carleton. You
ask me to alter a bench-mark level
which I know to be right, and which
every man about us know* to be right.
You refuse a written certificate if I do
not carry out your orders, and yet you
expect me to commit this engineering
crime because of your personal opinion,
— an opinion which you now refuse to
back up by your signature."

"I ain't given you a single written
order this season : why should I now ? "
in an evasive tone.

"Because up to this time you have
asked for nothing unreasonable. Then
you refuse ? "

"I do, and I 'm not to be bulldozed,
neither. "

"Caleb," said Sanford, with the air
of a man who had made up his mind,
raising his voice to the diver, still stand-
ing in the water, "put that rod on the
edge of the iron band."

Caleb felt around under the water
with his foot, found the band and placed
on it the end of the rod. Sanford care-
fully adjusted the instrument.

"What does it measure? "

"Thirteen feet six inches, sir! '\
shouted Caleb.

"Lonny Bowles," continued San-
ford, "take three or four of the men
and go along the breakwater and see if
Caleb is right."

The men scrambled over the rocks,
Lonny plunging into the water beside
Caleb, so as to get closer to the rod.

"Thirteen feet six inches!" came
back the voices of Lonny and the oth-
ers, speaking successively.

"Now, Captain Joe, look through
this eyepiece and see if you find the red
quartered target in the centre of the
spider-web lines. You, too, skipper."

The men put their eyes to the glass,
each announcing that he saw the red of
the disk.

"Now, Caleb, make your way across

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 483. 5

to the northwest derrick, and hold the
rod on the band there."

The old diver waded across the con-
crete, and held the rod and target over
his head. The men followed him
around the breakwater, — all except
Bowles, who, being as wet as he could
be, plunged in waist-deep.

Sanford turned the transit without
disturbing the tripod, and adjusted it
until the lens covered the target.

"Raise it a little, Caleb! " shouted
Sanford, — "so! What is she now? "

"Thirteen feet six inches and — a
— half ! " answered Caleb.

" Right ! How is it, men ? "

"Thirteen six and a half! " came
back the replies, after each man had as-
sured himself.

"Now bring me a clean, dry plank,
Captain Joe," said Sanford. "That 's
too small," as the captain held out
the short piece containing the record.
Clean planks were scarce on the cement-
stained work; dry ones were never
found.

Everybody went in search of a suit-
able plank. Carleton looked on at this
pantomime with a curl on his lips, and
now and then a little shiver of uncer-
tain fear creeping over him. Sanford 's
quiet, determined manner puzzled him.

"What 's all this circus about? " he
broke out impatiently.

"One minute, Mr. Carleton. I want
to make a record which will be big
enough for the men to sign; one that
won't get astray, lost, or stolen."

"What's the matter with this?"
asked Captain Joe, opening the wooden
door of the new part of the shanty.
"Ye can't lose this 'less ye take away
the house."

"That 's the very thing! " exclaimed
Sanford. "Swing her wide open, Cap-
tain Joe. Please give me that big blue
pencil. "

When the door flew back it was as
fresh and clean as a freshly scrubbed
pine table.

Sanford wrote as follows : —

Caleb West.

August 29, SHARK LEDGE LIGHT.
We, the undersigned, certify that the
concrete disk is perfectly level except
opposite the northwest derrick, where
it is three tenths of an inch too high.
We further certify that Superintendent
Carleton orders the concrete raised »six
inches on the southeast segment, and
refuses to permit any cut stone to be set
until this is done.

HENRY SANFORD, Contractor.

"Come, Captain Joe, " said Sanford,
"put your signature under mine."

The captain held the pencil in his
bent fingers as if it had been a chisel,
and inscribed his full name, "Joseph
Bell," under that of Sanford. Then
Caleb and the others followed, the old
man fumbling inside his dress for his
glasses, the search proving fruitless un-
til Captain Joe ran his arm down be-
tween the rubber collar of the diving-
dress and Caleb's red shirt and drew
them up from inside his undershirt.

"Now, Captain Joe," said Sanford,
"you can send a gang in the morning
at low water and raise that concrete.
It will throw the upper masonry out
of level, but it won't make much dif-
ference in a circle of this size."

The men gave a cheer, the humor of
the situation taking possession of every
one. Even Caleb forgot his sorrow for
a moment. Carleton laughed a little
halting laugh himself, but there was
nothing of spontaneity in it. Nickles,
the cook, who divided his time between
the Screamer and the shanty on the
Ledge, and who, now that the cut stone
was about to be laid, was permanently
transferred to the shanty, and under
whose especial care this door was placed
by reason of its position, — it opened
into the kitchen, — planted his fat, oily
body before the curious record, read it
slowly word for word, and delivered
himself of this opinion : " That 'ere
door 's th' biggest receipt for stores I
ever see come into a kitchen."

"Big or little," said Captain Joe,

who could not see the drift of most of
Nickles 's jokes, "you spatter it with
yer grease or spile it any, and ye go
ashore. "

XIV.

TWO ENVELOPES.

Betty's flight had been of such short
duration, and her return home accom-
plished under such peculiar circum-
stances, that the stories in regard to
her elopement had multiplied with the
hours. One feature of her escapade ex-
cited universal comment, — her spend-
ing the night at Mrs. Leroy's. The
only explanation that could be given
of this extraordinary experience was
that so high a personage as Mrs. Leroy
must have necessarily been greatly im-
posed upon by Betty, or she could never
have disgraced herself and her home by
giving shelter to such a woman.

Mrs. Leroy's hospitality to Betty
inspired another theory, — one that, not
being contradicted at the moment of
its origin by Aunty Bell, had seemed
plausible. Miss Peebles, the school-
mistress, who never believed ill of any-
body, lent all her aid to its circulation.
•'The conversation out of which the theo-
ry grew took place in Aunty Bell's
kitchen. Betty was upstairs in her
room, and the talk went on in whispers,
lest she should overhear.

"I never shall believe that a woman
holding Mrs. Leroy's position would
take Betty West into her house if she
knew what kind of a woman she was,"
remarked the elder Miss Nevins.

"And that makes me think there 's
some mistake about this whole thing, "
said Miss Peebles. " Who saw her with
Lacey, anyhow ? Nobody but the butch-
er, and he don't know half the time
what he 's talking about, he rattles on
so. Maybe she never went with Lacey
at all."

"What did she go 'way for, then? "
asked the younger Nevins. girl, who was

Caleb West.

on her way to the store, and had stopped
in, hoping she might, by chance, get a
look at Betty. "I guess Lacey's money
was all gone, — that 's why she imposed
on Mrs. Leroy."

"I don't believe it," said Miss Pee-
bles. "Betty may have been foolish,
but she never told a lie in her life."

"Well, it may be," admitted the
younger sister in a softened tone. "I
hope so, anyhow."

Aunty Bell kept still. Betty was
having trouble enough ; if the neighbors
thought so, and would give her the bene-
fit of the doubt, better leave it so. She
made no effort to contradict it. There
were one or two threads of worldly wis-
dom and canny policy twisted about the
little woman's heart that now and then
showed their ends.

Captain Joe was in the sitting-room,
reading. He had come in from the
Ledge, wet, as usual, had put on some
dry clothes, and while waiting for sup-
per had picked up the Noank Times.
Aunty Bell and the others saw him come
in, but thought he changed his clothes
and went to the dock.

He had overheard every word of the
discussion. There were no raveled
threads in the captain's make-up. He
threw down his paper, pushed his way
into the group, and said : —

"There 's one thing I don't want no
mistake over, and I won't have it.
Betty didn't tell no lies to Mrs. Leroy
nor to nobody else, an' I ain't a-goin'
to have nobody lie for 'er. Mrs. Leroy
knows all about it. She took care of
her 'cause she 's got a heart inside of
her. Betty went off with Bill Lacey
'cause he 'd hoodooed 'er, an' when she
come to herself she come home agin:
that 's all ther' is to that. She 's sorry
for what she 's done, an' ther' ain't no-
body outside o' heaven can do more.
She 's goin' to stay here 'cause me and
Aunty Bell love her now more 'n we
ever did before. But she 's goin' to
start life agin fair an' square, with no
lies of her own an' no lies told about

'er by nobody else." The captain
looked at Aunty Bell. "Them that
don't like it can lump it. Them as
don't like Betty after this can stay
away from me, " and he turned about
on his heel and went down to the dock.

Two currents had thus been start-
ed in Betty's favor: one the outspoken
indorsement of Captain Joe ; and the
other the protection of Mrs. Leroy,
"the rich lady who lived at Medford,
in that big country-seat where the rail-
road crossed, and who had the yacht
and horses, and who must be a good
woman, or she would n't have come to
nurse the men, and who sent them deli-
cacies, and came herself and put up the
mosquito-nets over their cots."

As the August days slipped by
and the early autumn came, the gossip
gradually died. Caleb continued to
live alone, picking up once more the
manner of life he had practiced for
years aboard the light-ship; having a
day every two weeks for his washing,
— always Sunday, when the neighbors
would see him while on their way to
church, — hanging out his red and white
collection on the line stretched in the
garden. He cooked his meals and
cleaned the house himself. Nobody
but Captain Joe and Aunty Bell crossed
his threshold, except the butcher who
brought him his weekly supplies. He
had been but seldom to the village, —
somehow he did not like to pass Captain
Joe's, — and had confined his outings
to going from the cabin to the Ledge
and back again as his duties required,
locking the rear door and hanging the
key on a nail beside it until his return.

He had seen Betty only once, and
that was when he had passed her on
the road. He came upon her sudden-
ly, and he thought she started back as
if to avoid him, but he kept his eyes
turned away and passed on. When he
came to the hill and looked back he
could see her sitting by the side of the
road, a few rods from where they met,
her head resting on her hand.

Caleb West.

Only one man had dared to speak
to him in an unsympathetic way about
Betty's desertion, and that was his old
friend Tony Marvin, the keeper of Key-
port Light. They had been together a
year on Bannock Rip during the time
the Department had doubled up ,the
keepers. He had not heard of Caleb's
trouble until several weeks after Betty's
flight ; lighthouse-keepers staying pret-
ty close indoors.

"I hearn, Caleb, that the new wife
left ye for that young rigger what got
his face smashed. 'Most too young,
warn't she, to be stiddy? "

"No, I ain't never thought so," said
Caleb quietly. " Were n't no better gal
'n Betty; she done all she knowed how.
You 'd 'a' said so if ye knowed her like
I did. But 't was agin natur' , I bein'
so much older. But I 'd rather had her
go than suffer on."

" Served ye durn mean, anyhow, "
said the keeper. "Did she take any-
thing with 'er? "

"Nothin' but the clo'es she stood in.
But she didn't serve me mean, Tony.
I don't want ye to think so, an' I don't
want ye to say so, nor let nobody say
,so, neither; an' ye won't if you're a
friend o* mine, which you allers was."

"I hearn there was some talk o' yer
takin' her back," the keeper went on
in a gentler tone, surprised at Caleb's
blindness, and anxious to restore his good
feeling. "Is that so?"

"No, that ain't so, " said Caleb firm-
ly, ending the conversation on that topic
and leading it into other channels.

This interview of the light-keeper's
was soon public property. Some of
those who heard of it set Caleb down
as half-witted over his loss, and others
wondered how long it would be before
he would send for Betty and patch it
all up again, and still others questioned
why he did n't go over to Stonington
and smash the other side of Lacey's
face; they heard that Billy had been
seen around there.

As for Betty, she had found work

with a milliner on the edge of the vil-
lage, within a mile of Captain Joe's
cottage, where her taste in trimming
bonnets secured her ready employment,
and where her past was not discussed.
That she was then living with Captain
Joe and his wife was enough to gain her
admission. She would have given way
under the strain long before, had it not
been for her remembered promise to
Mrs. Leroy, — the only woman, except
Aunty Bell, who had befriended her, —
and for the strong supporting arm of
Captain Joe, who never lost an oppor-
tunity to show his confidence in her.

There had been days, however, after
her return, when in spite of her promises
she could have plunged into the water
at the end of the dock; and then had
followed days of an intense longing to
see Caleb, or even to hear his voice.
She sat for hours in her little room next
Aunty Bell's, on Saturday afternoons,
when she came earlier from work, and
watched for the Screamer or one of the
tugs to round in, bringing Caleb and the
men. She could not see her own cottage
from the window where she sat, but she
could see her husband come down the
sloop's side and board the little boat
that brought him to his landing. She
thought now and then that she could
catch his good-night as he pushed off.
On Monday mornings, too, when she
knew he was going out, she was up at
daylight, watching for a meagre glimpse
of him when the skiff shot out from be-
hind the dock and took him aboard to
go to his work on the Ledge.

Little by little the captain's devotion
to Betty's interests, and the outspoken
way in which he praised her efforts to
maintain herself, began to have their
effect. People who had passed her by
without a word, as they met her on the
road, volunteered a timid good-morning,
which was answered by a slight nod of
the head by Betty. Even one of the
Nevins girls — the younger one — had
joined her and walked as far as the mil-
liner's, with a last word on the door-

Caleb West.

step, which had detained them both for
at least two minutes in full sight of the
other girls who were passing the shop.

Betty met all advances kindly, but
with a certain reserve of manner. She
appreciated the good motive, but in her
own eyes it did not palliate her fault, —
that horrible; crime of ingratitude, self-
ishness, and waywardness, the memory
of which hung over her night and day
like a pall.

Most of her former acquaintances re-
spected her reserve, — all except Carle-
ton. Whenever he met her under Cap-
tain Joe's roof he greeted her with a
nod, but on the road he had more than
once tried to stop and talk to her. At
first the attempt had been made with a
lifting of the hat and a word about the
weather, but the last time he had stopped
in front of her and tried to take her
hand.

"What 's the matter with you? " he
said in a coaxing tone. "I ain't going
to hurt you. "

Betty darted by him, and reached the
shop all out of breath. She said no-
thing to any one about her encounter,
not being afraid of him in the daytime,
and not wanting any more talk of her
affairs.

If Caleb knew how Betty lived, he
never mentioned it to Captain Joe or
Aunty Bell. He would sometimes ask
after her health and whether she was
working too hard, but never more than
that.

One Saturday night — it was the
week Betty had hurt her foot and
could not go to the shop — Caleb came
down to Captain Joe's and called him
outside the kitchen door. It was pay-
day with the men, and Caleb had in
his hand the little envelope, still un-
opened, containing his month's pay.
The lonely life he led had begun to tell
upon the diver. The deathly pallor that
had marked his face the first few days
after his wife's departure was gone, and
the skin was no longer shrunken, but
the sunken cheeks remained, and the

restless, eager look in the eyes that told
of his mental strain.

The diver was in his tarpaulins ; it
was raining at the time.

"Come in, Caleb, come in! " cried
Captain Joe in a cheery voice, laying
his hand on the diver's shoulder. "Take
off yer ileskins." The captain never
despaired of bringing husband and wife
together, somehow.

Betty was sitting inside the kitchen,
reading by the kerosene lamp, out of
sound of the voices.

"No, I ain't washed up nor had sup-
per yit, thank ye. I heared from Aunty
Bell that Betty was laid up this week,
an' so I come down." Here the diver
stopped, and began slitting the pay-en-
velope with a great thumb-nail shaped
like a half -worn shoe-horn. "I come
down, thinkin' maybe you 'd kind'er
put this where she could git it, " slowly
unrolling two of the four bills and hand-
ing them to the captain. "I don't like
her to be beholden to ye for board nor
nothin'."

"Ye can't give me a cent, Caleb.
I knowed her 'fore you did," said the
captain, protesting with his hand up-
raised, a slightly indignant tone in his
voice. Then a thought crept into his
mind. "Come in and give it to her
yerself , Caleb, " putting his arm through
the diver's.

"No," said Caleb slowly, "I ain't
come here for that, and I don't want
ye to make no mistake, cap'n. I come
here 'cause I been a- thinkin' it over,
and somehow it seems to me that half
o' this is hern. I don't want ye to tell
'er that I give it to her, 'cause it ain't
so. I jes' want ye to lay it som'eres
she '11 find it ; and when she asks about
it, say it 's hern."

Captain Joe crumpled the bills in his
hand.

"Caleb," he said, "I ain't goin' to
say nothin' more to ye. I 've said all
I could, and las' time I said too much;
but what seems to me to be the cussed-
est foolishness out is for ye to go back

Round the, Far Rocks.

an' git yer supper by yerself, when the
best little gal you or I know is a-settin'
within ten feet o' ye with her heart
breakin' to git to ye."

"I 'm sorry she 's sufferin', Cap'n
Joe. I don't like to see nobody suffer,
leastways Betty, but ye don't know it
all. Jes' leave them bills as I asked
ye. Tell Aunty Bell I got the pie she
sent me when I come home, — I '11 eat
it to-morrow. I s'pose ye ain't got no
new orders 'bout that last row of en-
rockment? I set the bottom stone to-
day, an' I ought'er get the last of 'em
finished nex' week. The tide cut ter-
rible to-day, an' my air comin' so slow
through the pump threw me 'mong the
rocks an' seaweed, an' I got a scrape
on my hand, " showing a deep cut on its
back; "but it 's done hurtin' now.
Good-night."

That night, just before Caleb reached
his cabin, he came upon Bert Simmons,
the shore road letter-carrier, standing in
the road, under one of the village street
lamps, overhauling his package of let-
ters.

"About these letters that 's comin'
for yer wife, Caleb ? Shall I leave 'em
with you or take 'em down to Cap'n
Joe Bell's? I give the others to her.
Here 's one now."

Caleb took the letter mechanically,
looked it over slowly, noted its Stoning-
ton postmark, and, handing it back, an-
swered calmly, "Better leave 'em down
to Cap'n Joe's, Bert."

When Betty fell asleep, that night,
an envelope marked " For Caleb " was
tucked under her pillow. In it were
the two bank-notes.

The letter from Bill Lacey lay on
her table, unopened.

After this, whenever Caleb's pay
came, half of it went to Captain Joe for
Betty. This she placed in the envelope,
which she slipped under her pillow,
where she could put her hand on it in
the night when she awoke, — touching
something that he had touched, some-
thing that he himself had sent her. But
not a penny of the money did she
spend.

F. Hopkinson Smith.

(To be continued.)

ROUND THE FAR ROCKS.

WATERS of ocean ever calling me
Round the far rocks and over summer fields,
How soon must summer sleep or cease to be !
How soon we gather what the autumn yields !
But your great voices never shall be stilled ;
They come to bid the spirit hurry hence,
And leave the thought of duties half fulfilled,
And all the cries of time and busy sense.
'What music is like yours when day is done !
When death has carried my beloved away
So far I cannot hear them in the night !
What music yours when darkness walks alone !
Your mighty trumpetings foretell a day
Crowned with pale dawn where lately was no light.

Annie fields.

Three Contemporary German Dramatists.

THREE CONTEMPORARY GERMAN DRAMATISTS.

THE movement in contemporary Ger-
man literature is in many ways similar
to the Storm and Stress period of the
seventh and eighth decades of the last
century. Out of that movement was
evolved the great classic period of Ger-
man literature; with Goethe and Schiller
as its leaders. Out of the present move-
ment there bids fair to come a second
period of rare literary productiveness,
in which, according to all present indi-
cations, Wildenbruch, Sudermann, and
Hauptmann will take first rank. What-
ever position posterity may assign to these
three writers in the literature of their
country, their position in contemporary
literature, at least, is assured ; for in the
drama, wherein they have achieved their
greatest successes, they stand head and
shoulders above all competitors. Sated
as we have been with the cheap ''dramas"
of the day, we have almost accustomed
ourselves to look askance at the drama,
and to consider it a form of literary
expression singularly ill adapted to the
spirit of the age. For a time Ibsen roused
to new hope and a certain qualified en-
thusiasm those who see in the drama
one of the highest forms of literary art.
But his provincial narrowness, his lack of
ideals, his pessimism, nay, his cynicism,
finally destroyed the hope wherewith he
was hailed. It is therefore with in-
creased pleasure that the lover of good
literature sees the younger generation in
Germany fulfilling the hopes to which
Ibsen gave rise.

In a general way, it may be said that
Ernst von Wildenbruch, Hermann Suder-
mann, and Gerhart Hauptmann repre-
sent in their works three phases of indi-
vidualism : Wildenbruch sees and depicts
the individual primarily in his struggle
against the physical forces of life ; Su-
dermann sounds in the first instance the
individual's protest against formal and

arbitrary moral ideals ; Hauptmann has
achieved his greatest success in express-
ing the longing of the individual for
freedom from the fetters that hinder his
spiritual development. All three start as
" realists," Sudermann and Hauptmann
even as " naturalists," but in tempera-
ment all three are " idealists ; " and I
suspect we shall find in a certain realistic
idealism the clue for the interest that the
dramas of these writers have aroused and
continue to arouse. What Ibsen offered
us was — so far as the non-Scandinavian
world was concerned — the struggle be-
tween the modern spirit and the spirit
of the past ; what Wildenbruch, Suder-
mann, and Hauptmann depict — often,
of course, unconsciously — is the strug-
gle between the modern spirit and the
spirit of the future. In this sense their
works are prophetic, and therefore indi-
vidualistic.

Wildenbruch's latest drama, Henry
and Henry's Race, at once his most ex-
tensive and most artistic work, bears
emphatically the stamp of the individu-
alistic temperament. A tragedy " in two
evenings," it attempts to crowd into the
limits of a drama the eventful life of
Henry IV. of Germany. Without dis-
cussing the merits of the enthusiastic and
likewise fierce criticism that this piece
has evoked, let us glance over the plot.

In the prologue, Child Henry, the poet
has expended his art in creating the
character of the youthful king. Wholly
affectionate, yearning to love and to be
loved in turn, noble-hearted and gener-
ous, with a natural hatred of injustice
and oppression, courageous and even de-
fiant to a degree, the royal boy is seen
in all his youthful impetuosity amid the
magic charm of childhood. With such
consummate art has the poet brought
out and impressed upon us these various
traits that we never once forget this

Three Contemporary German Dramatists.

early scene, and in the later scenes, even
where the king and emperor appears at
his worst, we look back to these boyhood
days, and we pity and almost forgive
him. At his father's death, the young
prince, much against his will, is placed
in care of Archbishop Anno of Cologne,
who endeavors to break the boy's inde-
pendent spirit. Hardly twenty years old,
Henry escapes from his guardian, and
has himself crowned king of Germany.
His heart is filled with bitterness against
the princes who have destroyed or sup-
pressed (through Anno) the generous en-
thusiasm of his youth, and his first step,
as king, is to crush the Saxon nobility.
A further result of Anno's methods has
been to destroy Henry's faith in the
Church. He inveighs against the Pope
and his emissaries, and sends to the
former his royal message of defiance.
Gregory is sitting in judgment when the
king's messenger arrives. The Pope has
attained to the sublime act of self-efface-
ment ; his own personality is merged in
the lofty conception of his office as spirit-
ual guardian of the world. The ban is
pronounced over Henry IV. as the result
of his message.

Forsaken now by all except his once
despised wife and the lowly burghers
of Worms, Henry lives in solitude near
the faithful city. Christmas Eve has
come, and with it a new light bursts in
upon the heart of the king, — a light
that has been kindled partly by the de-
votion of his wife, partly by the simple
presents of the burghers. Peace for his
country becomes his first aim, and, filled
with a great love for his subjects, he
sets out afoot to cross the Alps in mid-
winter and humble himself before the
Pope, in order that he may secure this
peace. But worldly victory over the king
has in turn proved too great a tempta-
tion for Gregory. Three days and nights
Henry waits before the gates of Canossa,
and is finally admitted only at the plead-
ing of his mother — the pious zealot —
and of the abbot Hugo. The Pope, how-

ever, demands the temporal power over
Germany's king as well as the spiritual,
and Henry, finding all his hopes disap-
pointed and his faith betrayed, makes
common cause with the rebellious cities of
northern Italy, defeats the papal forces,
and besieges the Pope in Rome. In the
last act of the first part the two opponents
meet. Henry, in disguise, has penetrat-
ed to the apartments of Gregory in the
citadel of Rome, resolved to make one
last effort at reconciliation before taking
the final step of deposing the Pope.
But Gregory insists upon a recognition of
the principle of temporal power in the
Holy See. Henry cannot grant this, and
the final scene wrings from him words
of despairing defiance as he rushes from
the chamber to lead his soldiery to the
final charge, and then to proclaim a new
Pope. Forsaken now in turn, the dy-
ing Gregory bequeaths his legacy to the
young zealot remaining at his side, and
we hear his last ominous words, " And
the future yet is mine."

At the close of the first night Henry
IV. is victorious. But only apparently.
His victory over circumstances, physical
conditions, — which are represented by
the Pope and the Saxon nobility, — has
been purchased dearly. Belief in God
and the lofty ideal of kingship, " what
kings owe to their people — peace," both
have been sacrificed.

The second night of the drama opens
at a later period of the king's life.
Wars have disrupted the empire, the
Pope has pronounced the ban, and every-
where the king's personal followers be-
gin to forsake him. Even his best be-
loved son Konrad joins the crusaders;
and his second wife, the choice of his
heart, goes over to the enemy. In the
king's soul the old ideal of that Christ-
mas Eve at Worms begins to stir anew.
Beautifully pathetic are his words to the
departing Konrad. His heavy trials open
Henry's heart to the humble people.
" God's Peace " is declared throughout
the land ; the peasant is protected, and

Three Contemporary German Dramatists.

the burgher is raised to independence and
self-determinism. Henry is hailed and
worshiped by all, except princes and no-
bles, as the father of his country ; and
for a brief space he enjoys the blessings
of unselfish labor. Then the clouds
gather. Prince Henry, his remaining
son, is won over to the nobility ; and at
the very hour when the peace jubilee
is celebrated by the burghers he rebels
and overpowers them. Broken-hearted
the old king flees, hotly pursued by son
and nobles. In a cloister he meets his
repentant wife, Praxe'dis, and the trage-
dy of this life finds its final expression
in the words : " See here all my youth,
all my hope of happiness and joy of life !
Farewell, youth, that didst bring me no
fruition ! Farewell, hope, that wast fol-
lowed by no reality ; life, that didst lift
me to mountain heights only to dash
me, broken and crushed, into the depths!
Thus I kiss myself loose from thee ! "
He bends down, and, kissing Praxe'dis on
the brow, expires just as Prince Henry
rushes into the chamber.

The drama might well have closed here.
But the poet has attempted to make the
truth he wished to exemplify still more
impressive by showing us the cynic Hen-
ry V. as a king who overcomes his ad-
versaries because he suppresses all claims
of the heart. In the final act, where the
victorious son has his nobler yet unsuc-
cessful father buried with pomp and cere-
mony in hallowed ground, the full light
of the poet's moral conception illumines
the darkness. Weeping and wailing the
people crowd around the coffin, calling
aloud for their emperor, and cursing his
destroyer. Pale as death the successful
king grasps his throne.

" Who has lied to me, that I was emperor ?
This dead one here, he is the Germans' king."

Thus the key-note of Henry and Henry's
Race is the tragedy of the individual,
— the tragedy that is founded upon the
fact " that the Great and the Good flees
always for refuge to the heart of the in-

dividual, whilst over it and away tramps
the multitude with careless feet."

Three times we have Henry IV. at
his best : as a noble-hearted, affectionate
boy, when the sweetness in his nature is
turned to bitterness through the enforced
discipline of Archbishop Anno; as a
repentant, self-sacrificing man, when the
new hope and light bursting into life
within him are rudely darkened by the
treachery and selfishness of the Pope ;
as the ideal ruler, when his one great
and final purpose is ruthlessly frustrated.
Henry is nobler than his day, and be-
cause he is nobler one of two things
must happen : he must adapt his indi-
vidual longings to the character of his
surroundings, or he must perish. In
either case the individual as such is de-
feated. Whenever Henry IV. sacrifices
his own individuality, he is materially
successful ; whenever he seeks to main-
tain it, misfortune trails in his path.
As if to make the tragedy all the more
impressive, Henry V. succeeds where
his greater father failed ; for he knows
how to utilize the forces that encom-
pass him, not by opposing to them his
own individuality, but rather by absorb-
ing them into his being, and thus sacrifi-
cing the best and truest of his own per-
sonality.

It is the great tragedy of life that
speaks to us in this historic drama ; "high
tragedy," to be sure, but it comes home
to us with the conviction of a general
truth. So skillfully and forcibly has
Wildenbruch pictured the opposing
forces, so true are the lines of conflict
he has drawn, that we almost tremble
at its realism ; yet so wholly has he won
our sympathy, so carefully has he min-
gled his lights and shadows, that when,
amid passion and strife, cunning and
deceit, blind submission and plotting in-
trigue, one bright ray pierces the dark
and glorifies the dead features of the
one who has been true to himself, we
feel and acknowledge at once the exist-
ence of something yet to be achieved,

Three Contemporary German Dramatists.

a reality beyond this reality, an ideal
that was holy to the poet, and has now
become holy to us. Thus, beyond the
real he has lifted us into the ideal, and
from a mere exponent of a dead past
or a living present the dramatist has
become the prophet of a nobler future.

Wildenbruch's dramas approach life
from its dark side. Stern and absolute
indifference, consistent disregard of all
consequences, alone can assure individ-
ual success. Life, as Wildenbruch sees
it, justifies this view, but does not justify
a pessimistic philosophy based on it. In
his best novel, The Master of Tanagra,
— a novel, by the way, touching closely
upon the idealistic philosophy of Haupt-
mann's The Submerged Bell, — the rea-
son for the success of Praxiteles and the
failure of Myrtolaos must be sought in
the possession and lack of this utter un-
scrupulousness. " Speechless and almost
terrified, Myrtolaos gazed upon this man
who sat there at his work like a tiger
crouching over his prey. Thus unspar-
ing, then, of himself and others must he
be who would create works like those of
Praxiteles. A presentiment came over
him of the terrible nature of Art, so kind-
ly in her aims, yet so cruel in her pursuit
of them ; he felt that his own tender
heart did not possess this temper of steel."
To be sure, Wildenbruch offers a so-
lution of the plot that does not accord
with this view. But though Praxiteles
himself may exclaim, " And should
this city vanish from the face of the
earth, then over its ruins will hover like
a sweet dream of the past the spirit of
him who created these works, the spirit
of the Master of Tanagra," yet we can-
not agree with him ; for the art of Myr-
tolaos is not of the grandeur of that of
Praxiteles. These little figures are but
playthings, — not a Hermes or an Aphro-
dite. Wildenbruch is untrue to himself,
not in giving us the idyllic conclusion,
but in attempting to pass off upon us the
works of his hero as the highest expres-
sion of the sculptor's art. The compro-

mise is both inartistic and impossible
upon the premises given.

It is a fact worthy of notice, in the
study of the individualistic movement in
literature, that all three writers — Wil-
denbruch, Sudermann, and Hauptmann
— pass through a period of compromise
between personal inclinations and liter-
ary consistency : Wildenbruch in The
Master of Tanagra (1880), Sudermann
in Honor (1889), and Hauptmann in
Professor Crampton (1892). In his dra-
mas, however, Wildenbruch has the cour-
age of his convictions. In these there
is no trifling. But if they are therefore
tragic, yet the tragic truth — if truth it
be — becomes, not a truth that depresses,
but a truth that inspires, urging on the
individual to remain true to himself
though material success may not attend
his efforts.

Wildenbruch's literary fame came to
him comparatively late in life. Born
February 3, 1845, in Beirut, Syria, the
son of the Prussian consul at that place,
he spent his childhood abroad, a fact
which in a large measure accounts for
his enthusiastic patriotism. His parents
had chosen the military career for the
young man ; but he soon resigned his
commission, and turned to the study of
the law. After the Franco-Prussian war,
in which he participated, he again de-
voted himself to the legal profession,
but in 1887 he became connected with
the foreign service. Enthusiastic as he
was, Wildenbruch chafed under the in-
ability of German literature to free it-
self from French influence, and in his
heart there was roused something of
a fierce resentment that the glorious
achievements of the war should go un-
sung. To this feeling we owe his two
"heroic songs," Vionville (1874) and
Sedan (1875), and probably the increas-
ing interest he took in poetry. These
two songs were quickly followed by his
dramas, The Carolingians, The Mennon-
ite, Fathers and Sons ; but so powerful
was the French influence upon the Ger-

Three Contemporary German Dramatists.

man stage that not until 1881 was the
first of these produced. The 6th of
March, 1881, when the celebrated Mei-
ninger company played The Carolingians
at the court theatre in Weimar, marked
a new epoch in the history of modern
German literature. Not only does Wil-
denbruch's fame, together with a grow-
ing productiveness, date from that day,
but a new impetus was given to literary
activity throughout Germany, especially
in the drama. Conventional restrictions,
narrow views, were gradually cast aside,
and the young generation entered with
enthusiasm into the new strife that he
had heralded.

Amid the revolutionary, often hasty
and inconsiderate clamor of the youth-
ful " naturalists," Wildenbruch for a
long time held fast to his own ideal, the
historic drama as interpreting the great
truths of human progress : thus in Har-
old (1882), Christopher Marlowe (1884),
The New Commandment (1885), The
Prince of Verona (1886), The Quitzows
(1888), The Lieutenant-General (1889),
The New Lord (1891). In the last three
of these dramas the influence of the nat-
uralistic movement is clearly traceable,
and we are hardly astonished to find
Wildenbruch still more under its sway
in The Crested Lark (1892). But in
Henry and Henry's Race (1895) the
poet returns to his old ideal. We have
already considered this drama. In many
respects it has well been called a " mon-
umental work."

Hermann Sudermann's dramas go a
step farther than those of Wildenbruch.
His fight is not against physical author-
ity or the suppression of the individual
by his physical surroundings, but against
authority in the domain of morals. Mo-
rality is not an absolute, but a relative
term. Since moral ideas shift with the
age that conceived them, the individual
is not immoral if his ideas are ahead of
his time ; and he is therefore under no
obligation to remain within its restricted
limits. But moral standards are just as

tyrannical as physical authority, and the
individual who is bold enough to rise
above them will soon find himself involved
in a struggle that will threaten his whole
moral life. This tyranny of convention-
al ideas, and the duty of the individual
to free himself from them, is the theme
of such dramas as Honor, Home (known
in English translation as Magda), Hap-
piness in Retreat, and The War of But-
terflies. Honor established Sudermann's
fame, and rightly so ; for whatever may
be said against the play in some of its
detail, — for example, the introduction
of Count Trast, a species of deus ex ma-
china or of the good fairy in the popular
tale, — the drama as a whole is full of
force. The hero, by his education and
his intercourse with different social stra-
ta, becomes a stranger to the sphere from
which he sprang, and from which he has
long been absent. Upon his return home,
the ideals of his family and relatives
seem low and soi-did, and his own ideals
are just as far removed from any sym-
pathetic understanding on their part.
Here we have the first clash of ideals.
The second clash comes in the soul of
Robert. His individuality struggles in
vain against his conventional ideal of
honor. He feels that he has been dis-
honored by the acts of his family, and
at the same time he feels that only he
can dishonor himself. That the hero is
saved from the tragic end of this conflict
through the intervention of Trast, who
removes him from his surroundings, is
the weakest point in the drama. The
poet has not the courage of his convic-
tions, for he fears to present to us the
only logical conclusion of the situation
he has pictured. To allow this noble
character to perish because of its very
nobility would require a heart of steel,
and as yet Sudermann has not acquired
this disregard of feeling.

In Home Sudermann rises above the
weakness that manifests itself in Honor.
Here we have the full tragedy of the
situation. It is the " gospel of self-

Three Contemporary German Dramatists.

respect," touched upon in Honor, that
Sudermann preaches here, — a gospel
that colors so many of his works, for in-
stance the novels It Was and The Cat's
Trail.

Home expresses a twofold struggle of
the individual : one against the acce.pt-
ed rules of conduct, the other between
individual self-respect and the conven-
tional ideal of absolute contrition and
self-abasement for sins committed. When
Leo von Halewitz, in It Was, strength-
ens his faltering courage with " Non-
sense ! Regret nothing ! " we hear the
tragic note that vibrates through Home.

Magda Schwartz frets under the con-
stant restraint and discipline of a home
where conventional ideals permit no de-
velopment of her personality. At last
her suppressed individuality bursts its
fetters : she leaves her home, and seeks
independence in the capital. In the
first flush of liberty, freedom degener-
ates into license ; but soon she finds her
truer self, and when, after years of ear-
nest, patient effort, she again enters the
home of her girlhood days, it is as the
great artist who has risen above preju-
dice and stands secure in the knowledge
of her own worth and independence.
The two types of modern life struggle
for reconciliation. Her father, the em-
bodiment of conventional prejudices and
conventional moral standards, cannot
make concessions. Magda, the embodi-
ment of personal freedom and individual
moral assertion, cannot be untrue to her-
self and bow beneath the old yoke of re-
straint. For a brief moment there is
an apparent reconciliation, based upon
a delusion that is fostered by the mu-
tual love of father and daughter. The
father seems to take it for granted
that his daughter has decided to give
up her free life as an artist. In his
philosophy, womanly purity is not com-
patible with independence of living.
He insists all the more upon this view
because his moral philosophy demands
an absolute contrition and self-abasement

as the only pathway from sin to virtue,
and the clash soon becomes inevitable.
Magda sees the insuperable obstacles that
separate her from her father. Had she
returned penitent, loathing herself for
her sins, humbly seeking forgiveness, then
indeed there might be some hope. But
her self-respect will not permit this. "I
don't wish to play the part of the lost
son. Were I to return as a daughter,
a lost daughter, then I could not stand
here thus, with head erect ; then indeed
I should be forced to grovel in the dust
at your feet in the consciousness of my
sins " (with growing excitement), " and
that — no, that I will not — that I can-
not " (with nobility) ; " for I am I, and
must not, should not lose myself " (pain-
fully) ; " and therefore I have no longer
a home, therefore I must away, there-
fore " —

All the efforts of the family are in
vain. Keller, the time-server and as-
pirant for political honors, unwitting-
ly betrays himself, in the presence of
Schwartz, as the father of Magda's
child. Marriage with his daughter is
the only thing that will remove the stig-
ma from the family name and satisfy
the father's injured honor. This mar-
riage or death is the only alternative for
the man whose prejudices are so deep-
rooted that he could not live without
his " honor." Magda recognizes the
intensity of her father's feelings. For
his sake she will make the concession,
and unite herself to the man she de-
spises. But when the prejudices of Kel-
ler demand the sacrifice not only of her
career as a singer, but also of her mother-
love, then she rises in her strength.
Rather than this, let the tragedy come,
let the heavens burst asunder and the
lightning descend. And Sudermann does
not hesitate to present the only logical
outcome. Frenzied by the refusal of
his daughter, Schwartz is about to take
his life, when a paralytic stroke lays
him low. In vain Magda implores for-
giveness of the dying father; in vain

Three Contemporary German Dramatists.

she pleads for one sign of reconciliation ;
in vain she makes a last frantic effort
to assure him that she is pure now, no-
ble and true, and that because she is all
this she cannot act otherwise. Stolidly
he turns his weary head away, and ex-
pires. Alone, misunderstood, without a
word of comfort, she stands there, con-
demned by all.

To the average German mind, Magda
is lost ; but to those who view the strug-
gle from a point of vantage that rises
above the conventionalities of German
life, Magda should — and in the greater
freedom of American life would — con-
quer. Yet the overwhelming tragedy of
the heart that longed to be loved and
understood, but failed of attaining its
desires because the mind could not de-
base itself and permit the individual to
sacrifice freedom and self-respect, this
tragedy is felt in all its power even by us.

To Sudermann we might apply what
in The Cat's Trail he says of Boleslav :
" And as he pondered, lost in thought,
it seemed to him as if the mists that
separate the reality of human existence
from human consciousness were lifted,
and as if his gaze penetrated a little
deeper than that of the ordinary mor-
tal into the depths of the unconscious.
That which is called the ' good ' and the
' bad ' surged aimlessly among the mists
of the surface ; beneath, its energies, rapt
in silent reverie, rested, — the natural."

All of Sudermann's dramas are full of
this individualistic striving, this revolt
of the individual against conventional
ideals. Happiness in Retreat, The War
of Butterflies, Sodom's End, are under
its influence: in the first nothing but
the sadness of resignation, in the second
the untruth of a compromise, in the
third utter ruin, both moral and physical.

Of course it must not for a moment
be supposed that each of the three poets
confines himself to an expression of only
one of the three phases of the individ-
ualistic movement that I have pointed
out as typical of the modern German

drama and novel. For instance, in Wil-
denbruch's Harold it is the superstitious
awe of the Saxons that destroys Harold
after arousing in his soul the tragic con-
flict. He has violated his oath to save
his country. But an oath is holy, and
though he knew not its hidden meaning,
yet a sense of guilt crushes him to his
knees.

" Here now I lie before Thee, Mighty God,
Creator, Thou, of man and human frailty ;
Freely I strip from me, and consciously,
What my proud manhood once adorned ;
But ere from my sin-burdened nakedness
Thou turn'st with loathing, hear, oh hear me,
God ! "

Are we not face to face with one of
the most tragic problems in life, — the
individual struggling against the moral
ideas of his time ?

In Hauptmann's fearfully realistic
drama Before Sunrise, Helene, the inno-
cent peasant girl of Silesia, momentari-
ly saved by the foresight of a dying
mother, but now surrounded by all the
vicious influences of a depraved home,
is deprived of her last hope of salvation
by -the scientific spirit of the day. Self-
destruction is all that remains to her.
This tragic element, which is always
present when the individual revolts
against his surroundings, may also be
found in other dramas of Hauptmann,
as in Professor Crampton, The Peace
Jubilee, Lonely People, above all in The
Weavers. The old man Hilse, in the
last drama, will not join the striking and
revolting weavers.

" I ? Not if all of you go daft ! Here the
Heavenly Father has placed me. Ay, mother ?
Here we '11 sit and do our duty though all the
snow takes fire. (Begins to weave.) "

But a volley of musketry, a stray ball,
and the old man falls dead over his loom,
a tragedy within a tragedy. There is no
leading character in the drama, except
as the community of oppressed and down-
trodden Silesian weavers, half -starved
and goaded to frenzy, supersede the in-
dividual. In so far, therefore, as they
stand for an individual effort opposing

Three Contemporary German Dramatists.

itself to established order, their doom is
sealed. The victory over the soldiery is
but temporary, and must quickly culmi-
nate in disastrous defeat. Nevertheless,
our sympathies are with them, because the
poet's are with them, and because they
represent the eternal longing for larger
individual freedom.

These are not merely problems of the
day, but problems that are eternally
pressing, and that touch upon the most
hidden chords of the human life. The
writers are not content with the ideals
of the past that have become realities
in the present, but they impress us — or
rather oppress us — with a sense of some-
thing truer and nobler that is to be. For-
cibly at times, at times but dimly, new
ideals seem to rise before us, and vistas
are opened into a future that shall satisfy
the longing for greater moral freedom.

Of the three writers, Gerhart Haupt-
mann is the most complex. An exponent
of extreme realism in his first drama,
Before Sunrise (1889), he remains such
in his succeeding dramas: The Peace Ju-
bilee (1890), Lonely People (1891), Pro-
fessor Crampton (1892), The Weavers
(1892), Marianne (1893), The Beaver
Coat (1893), Florian Gey er (1895). Sud-
denly he appears before the public with
a drama, The Submerged Bell (1896),
that not only disregards, but openly vio-
lates the cherished theories of the re-
alistic school. If Goethe's Faust — phi-
losophically speaking — is humanity's
travail at the birth of the new spirit of
science, Hauptmann's Submerged Bell
might perhaps be called humanity's tra-
vail at the birth of the new spirit of
intuition. There is something romantic,
something mystical, in the drama, yet
something withal so weirdly beautiful
that we are strangely fascinated, and
gently but surely withdrawn from the
external realities of life. Wildenbruch
and Sudermann, to be sure, have util-
ized psychological problems in building
up their dramas, and in doing so have
again and again penetrated to the mys-

terious realms of a common human long-
ing. But Hauptmann attempts far more
than this. He reconstructs a world whose
phenomena lie wholly beyond the inves-
tigations of pure science, or what I should
like to call conscious experience. The
milieu of his drama is not the outer life,
but the inner, and, moreover, that of the
whole race, and not merely of an indi-
vidual. To him this life is just as real
as any external, sensuous existence ; and
peopling it, as he does, with the plastic
creations of his imagination, he makes it
very real to us. Consequently, when the
necessities of his plot call for a contact
with the actualities of every-day life, his
descriptions and characterizations seem
to be of a purpose vague and lacking in
all distinguishing traits of individuality.
The drama is therefore purely idealis-
tic ; tragic in a sense, because, by com-
parison with actual realities, we are
forced to admit that its ideal is beyond
our reach — yet no tragedy. There is
an atmosphere of quiet hope which rests
upon a delusion. We forget that above
us is a mighty mass of restless waters,
and deep down in this underworld we see
its reality alone. Hence, judged accord-
ing to conventional standards, The Sub-
merged Bell lacks the dramatic element.
Henry's death is no tragedy.

The action of the piece is quickly
traced. Henry, a bell-caster, strives for
an expression of his artistic ideal. Fi-
nally he seems to succeed. The new
bell is to be hung in a chapel high up in
the mountains. But its sound is out of
harmony with nature, and her forces
conspire to cast it over the mountain
side as it is being dragged to its desti-
nation. Henry endeavors to save his
work, and in doing so is carried down
in its fall. The bell sinks to the bot-
tom of the mountain lake, whilst Henry,
sorely wounded and in despair at his
loss, creeps to a hut near by. Here he is
found by Rautendelein, a child of nature,
and the natural affinity of their souls
asserts itself. In Henry's soul a new

Three Contemporary German Dramatists.

light reveals the full nature of his ar-
tistic longings, whilst in Rautendelein
the longing for a new life is awakened.
The village pastor comes with help ;
Henry is carried home, to the wife who
has heretofore encouraged and assisted
him. He believes that he is dying, and
curses life that has prevented him from
recognizing his true self. Rautendelein
seeks out Henry's home, drawn by some
irresistible force to this human being.
In the absence of the wife, she cures
him more by her mere presence than by
the draught she administers. In the
following act we find that Henry has
deserted his home and family, and is
living in solitary mountain regions with
Rautendelein, who has won for him and
his new work all the forces of nature :
elves and fairies, sprites and dwarfs, la-
bor in his behalf, and the striving of his
soul for expression seems about to be
realized. But the pastor finds him out,
and pleads with him to return to the val-
ley and to human life. Henry refuses.

" I 'm guarded amply well against your arrow,
And just as likely is 't to scratch my skin
As yonder bell — hark you, that old one

there,
Which, hung'ring for the chasm, downward

crashed,
And now rests in the sea — shall ring again ! "

The pastor's parting answer is prophetic :
" Again 't will ring for you ! Remember me ! "

A disturbing element has entered into
Henry's life, and his work will not pro-
sper. The complete harmony with na-
ture has been destroyed. One even-
ing the villagers endeavor to storm the
height where the artist is rearing his
temple. But in his fierce strength he
drives them backward and down the
hillside to the valley. Then as, heated
by the glow of victory, he is refreshed by
Rautendelein, a far distant note reaches
his ear, a restlessness takes possession
of him, and his two little children ap-
pear, clambering slowly and sorrowfully
up the mountain side, carrying a cruet.
They are not visible to Rautendelein.

There follows a scene full of simple yet
infinite pathos : —

First Child. Papa !

Henry. Yes, child.

First Child. Dear mother sends her greeting

to you.
Henry. I thank you, little one. And is she

well?
First Child (slowly and sadly). Yes, well.

(A low bell note from the depths.)
Henry. What have you there, my children ?
Second Child. A cruet.
Henry. And for me ?

Second Child. Yes, father dear.

Henry. What have you in the cruet, little

ones ?

Second Child. Something salty.
First Child. Something bitter.

Second Child. Mother's tears.

Henry. Good God in heaven ! . . .

And where is mother ? Speak !
Second Child. With the water-lilies.

And then Henry hears the bell sounding
from the depths of the sea, where it is
tolled by his dead wife's hands. Fierce-
ly he thrusts Rautendelein aside, as she
seeks to quiet him, and rushes wildly
down the hillside, down again into hu-
man life.

In the final act, Rautendelein — who
has at last agreed to a union with the
water - sprite, Nickelman — is about to
descend into his old well. It is night.
Broken and crushed, the semblance of a
man totters to the hut by the well. It
is Henry. The world has brought him
only disappointment, and now he returns
again to nature. His pleading voice
reaches Rautendelein, and she hands him
the last of the three cups poured out for
him by Wittichen, the old crone, two of
which he has already drained. The night
closes in around him ; but Rautendelein
flees to his aid as he sinks back dying ;
and then the night is turned to dawn.

" Aloft : the sun-bells' ringing song !
The sun ... the sun is here ! — The night
is long ! "

Thus the piece closes with an exult-
ant paean of hope. For a moment only
Henry has returned to the realities of
life, which to him are no longer realities,

Three Contemporary German Dramatists.

and now he departs to that fairyland of
the unconscious where the individual is
free to fulfill the promise of his being.

If not a drama in the conventional
sense, yet The Submerged Bell is poetry,

— poetry that inspires and uplifts; that
not only touches upon, but dares to reveal
the wondrous beauties hidden deep in
the spiritual life of man. Comparisons
are odious, and yet a Goethe would re-
cognize the spiritual brotherhood of
Hauptmann in such lines as these : —

" Should blind I deem myself
Now when with hymnic purity of soul,
Upon a cloud of morning's dawn reclining,
I drink in heaven depths with freedom's eye,
Then I 'd deserve that God's fierce wrath

should strike

Me with eternal darkness."
In so far as The Submerged Bell ap-
pears to be a conscious effort to reveal
a far distant ideal, we hail it as a source
of inspiration in itself. It is perhaps well
that the poet does not attempt to bridge
the chasm in the dual nature of man.
The inner possibilities — for our own hu-
manity makes them possibilities to us

— inspire the hope and the longing for
the expanding of the spirit life, and the
greater and truer freedom it will bring.

Critics are astonished at the success
of Hauptmann's latest production, and
wonder why it is that The Submerged
Bell has stirred the German people unlike
any other drama of the day. According
to literary canons, it lacks the dramatic
element and should fall flat. Yet its
success has been enduring, and cannot
be explained as we would explain that
of a sensational play. I suspect that
the solution of this apparent riddle will
be found in the following fact : the poet
makes the spectator or reader an ele-
ment in the play. The dramatic force is
therefore more intense because we our-
selves furnish a part thereof. Haupt-
mann touches a sympathetic chord in
every human breast, and elicits a " har-
mony " that has slumbered there. Then,
with the genius of a master, he develops

this harmony into a symphony, in which
we feel ourselves participating, yet out-
side of which we know that we stand.
It is real to us, yet unreal ; possible of
comprehension in part, yet impossible to
be comprehended as a whole, within the
restrictions at present placed upon our
nature. And thus the tragedy lies in
us, because an ideal is awakened toward
which the best of us goes out in longing,
but which we cannot attain.

The struggle for a new ethical ideal
— which would seem to be the central
idea of The Submerged Bell — naturally
leads into paths and byways upon which
we cannot unreservedly follow the poet ;
but the deep truth that underlies the
production strives everywhere to gain a
concrete form in the lines of the poem.
The drama, if so we may call it, fasci-
nates us by this very quality, often more
felt than seen.

It would be unjust to the poet to close
tliis all too brief review without at least
calling attention to the superb beauty of
the character he has created in the na-
ture child Rautendelein. She is beyond
any doubt a new creation in German liter-
ature, one which, by reason of the dainty
charm of its being, the sweet innocence
of childish womanhood, the concentrated
earnestness of simple longing, seeks its
equal in any literature. An almost im-
possible figure, Rautendelein is, under
Hauptmann's treatment, a living, breath-
ing reality, pulsing with life in every
fibre, touching our hearts with the irre-
sistible force of romantic realism. Ideal-
istic in temper, strongly realistic in ex-
ecution, The Submerged Bell expresses
a protest against the materialism of the
day and its conventional fetters. We
gladly welcome in it the bright promise
it holds out for the drama of Germany,
and we are encouraged to hope that the
present period of genuine dramatic re-
vival in that country will exert in the
end a wholesome influence upon the stage
of England and America.

J. Firman Coar.

Literary Paris Twenty Years Ago.

LITERARY PARIS TWENTY YEARS AGO.

I REACHED Paris, from London, on
the morning of May 30, 1878, arriving
just in time for admission to the Theatre
des Folies Dramatiques, where the Vol-
taire centenary celebration was to be
held that day, with Victor Hugo for the
orator. As I drove up, the surrounding
streets were full of people going toward
the theatre ; while the other streets were
so empty as to recall that fine passage in
Lander's Imaginary Conversations where
Demosthenes describes the depopulation
of all other spots in Athens except that
where he is speaking to the people. The
neighborhood of the theatre was placard-
ed with announcements stating that every
seat was sold ; and it was not until I had
explained to a policeman that I was an
American who had crossed from London
expressly for this celebration, that he
left his post and hunted up a speculator
from whom I could buy seats. They
were twin seats, which I shared with a
young Frenchman, who led me in through
a crowd so great that the old women
who, in Parisian theatres, guide you to
your place and take your umbrella found
their occupation almost gone.

It was my first experience of French
public oratory ; and while I was aware
of the resources of the language and the
sympathetic power of the race, I was
not prepared to see these so superbly
conspicuous in public meetings. The or-
dinary appreciation of eloquence among
the French seemed pitched in the key of
our greatest enthusiasm, with the differ-
ence that their applause was given to the
form as well as to the substance, and was
given with the hands only, never with the
feet. Even in its aspect the audience
was the most noticeable I ever saw : the
platform and the five galleries were filled
almost wholly with men, and these of
singularly thoughtful and distinguished
bearing, — an assembly certainly supe-

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 483. 6

rior to Parliament and Congress in its
look of intellect. A very few were in
the blouse of the oitvrier, and there was
all over the house an amount of talking
that sounded like vehement quarreling,
though it was merely good-natured chat-
ter. There were only French people and
French words around me, and though my
immediate companion was from the pro-
vinces and knew nobody, yet there was
on the other side a very handsome man,
full of zeal and replete with information.
When I asked him whether Victor Hugo
was yet upon the platform, he smiled,
and said that I would not ask such a
question if I knew the shout that would
go up from the crowd when he came in.
Applaud they certainly did when a
white head was seen advancing through
the throng upon the stage ; and the five
galleries and the parquet seemed to rock
with excitement as he took his seat. I
should have known Victor Hugo any-
where from the resemblance to his pic-
tures, except that his hair and beard,
cropped short, were not quite so rough
and hirsute as they are often depicted.
He bowed his strong leonine head to the
audience, and then seated himself, the
two other speakers sitting on either side
of him ; while the bust of the smiling
Voltaire with a wreath of laurel and
flowers rose behind and above their
heads. The bust was imposing, and the
smile was kindly and genial, — a smile
such as one seldom sees attributed to
Voltaire. The first speaker, M. Spuller,
was a fine-looking man, large, fair, and
of rather English bearing ; he rested one
hand on the table, and made the other
hand do duty for two, and I might al-
most say for a dozen, after the manner
of his race. Speaking without notes, he
explained the plan of the celebration,
and did it so well that sentence after
sentence was received with " Bravo ! "

Literary Paris Twenty Years Ago.

or " Admirable ! " or " Oh-h-h ! " in a
sort of profound literary enjoyment.

These plaudits were greater still in
case of the next speaker, M. Emile Des-
chanel, the author of a book on Aristoph-
anes, and well known as a politician.
He also was a large man of distinguished
bearing. In his speech he drew a parallel
between the careers of Victor Hugo and
Voltaire, but dwelt especially upon that
of the latter. One of the most skillful
portions of the address touched on that
dangerous ground, Voltaire's outrageous
poem of La Pucelle, founded on the ca-
reer of Jeanne d'Arc. M. Deschanel
claimed that Voltaire had at least set her
before the world as the saviour of France.
He admitted that the book bore the marks
of the period, that it was licenci&ux et
coupable ; yet he retorted fiercely on
the clerical party for their efforts to pro-
test against Voltaire on this account.
When he said, at last, with a sudden flash
of parting contempt, " And who was it
that burned her ? " (Qui est-ce qui 1'a
brule*e ?) he dismissed the clergy and the
subject with a wave of the hand that was
like the flashing of the scimiter of Sala-
din. Then followed a perfect tempest of
applause, and Victor Hugo took the stage.

His oration on Voltaire — since trans-
lated by Mr. James Parton — was de-
livered from notes, written in an im-
mense hand on sheets twice as large as
any foolscap paper I had ever seen ; and
he read from these without glasses. He
was at this time seventy-six, but looked
ten years younger. He stood behind
two great sconces, each holding six can-
dles ; above these appeared his strong
white-bearded face, and above him rose
Voltaire and his laurel wreath. He used
much gesture, and in impassioned mo-
ments waved his arm above his head, the
fingers apart and trembling with emotion.
Sometimes he clapped one hand to his
head as if to tear out some of his white
hairs, though this hardly seemed, at the
moment, melodramatic. His voice was
vigorous, and yet, from some defect of

utterance, I lost more of what he said
than in case of the other speakers. Oth-
ers around me made the same complaint.
His delivery, however, was as character-
istic as his literary style, and quite in
keeping with it, being a series of brilliant
detached points. It must be a stimulat-
ing thing, indeed, to speak to a French
audience, — to men who give sighs of de-
light over a fine phrase, and shouts of
enthusiasm over a great thought. The
most striking part of Hugo's address, in
my opinion, was his defense of the smile
of Voltaire, and his turning of the en-
thusiasm for the pending Exposition into
an appeal for international peace. Never
was there a more powerful picture than
his sketch of " that terrific International
Exposition called a field of battle."

After the address the meeting end-
ed, — there was no music, which sur-
prised me, — and every one on the plat-
form rushed headlong at Victor Hugo.
Never before had I quite comprehended
the French effervescence as seen in the
Chambre des Deputes ; but here it did
not seem childish, — only natural ; as
where Deschanel, during his own speech,
had once turned and taken Victor Hu-
go's hand and clapped him caressingly
on the shoulder. The crowd dispersed
more easily than I expected ; for I had
said to my French neighbor that there
would be little chance for us in case of a
fire, and he had shrugged his shoulders,
looked up to heaven, and said, " Adieu ! "
I went out through a side entrance, where
Hugo was just before me : it was hardly
possible to get him into his carriage ; the
surrounding windows were crammed with
people, and he drove away amid shouts.
There was a larger and more popular de-
monstration that day at the Cirque Aine*-
ricain ; but the eloquence was with us.
To add to the general picturesqueness
it was Ascension Day, and occasionally
one met groups of little white-robed
girls, who were still being trained, per-
haps, to shudder at the very name of
Voltaire, or even of Victor Hugo.

Literary Paris Twenty Years Ago.

I dined one day with M. Talandier, a
member of the " Extreme Left " in the
Chambre des De'pute's, — a gentleman to
whom my friend Conway had introduced
me, they having become acquainted dur-
ing our host's long exile in England.
Louis Blanc, the historian, was present,
with Mr. and Mrs. Conway and a few
Frenchmen who spoke no English ; and
as there was also a pretty young girl
who was born in England of French par-
ents, there was some confusion of tongues,
though the Talandier family and Louis
Blanc were at home in both languages.
I was delighted to meet this last-named
man, whose career had been familiar to
me since the revolution of 1848. He
was very short, yet square in person, and
not insignificant ; his French was clear
and unusually deliberate, and I never
missed a word, even when he was not
addressing me. His small size and end-
less vivacity made him look like a French
Tom Moore. He told many stories about
the revolution, — one of an occasion
where flags were to be presented by the
provincial government to the regiments,
and he was assigned to the very tallest
colonel, a giant in size, who at once lift-
ed Louis Blanc in his arms and hugged
him to his breast. The narrator acted
this all out inimitably, and told other
stories, at one of which Carlyle had once
laughed so that he threw himself down
and rolled on the floor, and Louis Blanc
very nearly acted this out, also.

He seemed wonderfully gentle and
sweet for one who had lived through so
much; and confirmed, without bitterness,
the report I had heard that he had never
fully believed in the National Workshops
which failed under his charge in 1848,
but that they were put into his hands by
a rival who wished them and him to fail.
Everything at the meal was simple, as
our hosts lived in honorable poverty after
their exile. We sat at table for a while
after dinner, and then both sexes with-
drew together. Through the open win-
dows we heard the music from a stu-

dents' dance -garden below, and could
catch a glimpse of young girls, dressed
modestly enough, and of their partners,
dancing with that wonderful grace and
agility which is possible only to young
Frenchmen. All spheres of French life
intermingle so closely that there seemed
nothing really incongruous in all this
exuberant gayety beneath the windows,
while the two veteran radicals — who
had very likely taken their share in such
amusements while young — were fight-
ing over again their battles of reform.
Both now have passed away. Louis
Blanc's Ten Years still finds readers,
and some may remember the political
papers written a few years later by Ta-
landier for the International Review.

By invitation of M. Talandier I spent
a day (June 3) at Versailles, where the
Chambre des De'pute's was then sitting,
and discovered in the anteroom, or salle
d'attente, that, by a curious rule, for-
eigners were excluded until four p. M. ;
yet the name of my host brought me in
after a little delay. The hall was full of
people waiting, each having to send his
card to some member, naming on it the
precise hour of arrival. The member
usually appeared promptly, when an im-
mense usher called in a stentorian voice
for " la personne qui a fait demander
M. Constant " — or whosoever it might
be. Then the constituent — for such it
commonly was — advanced toward the
smiling member, who never looked bored ;
the mask of hospitality being probably
the same, in this respect, throughout the
legislative halls of the world. At last
M. Talandier appeared, and found me a
place among the Corps Diplomatique.
The Chamber itself was more like the
House of Representatives at Washing-
ton than like the House of Commons ;
the members had little locked -desks, and
some were writing letters, like our Re-
presentatives, though I saw no newspa-
pers. The ordinary amount of noise
was like that in our Congress, though
there was, happily, no clapping of hands

Literary Paris Twenty Years Ago.

for pages ; but when the members be-
came especially excited, which indeed
happened very often, it was like a cage
of lions. For instance, I entered just
as somebody had questioned the minister
of war, General Borel, about an alleged
interference with elections; and his de-
fiant reply had enraged the " Lefts," or
radicals, who constituted the majority
of the assembly. They shouted and ges-
ticulated, throwing up their hands and
then slapping them on their knees very
angrily, until the president rang his
great bell, and .they quieted down, lest
he might put on his hat and adjourn the
meeting. In each case the member
speaking took his stand in the desk, or
tribune, below the president ; and the
speeches were sometimes read, some-
times given without notes. The war
minister, a stout, red-faced man, — al-
ways, the radicals said, half intoxicated,
— stood with folded arms, and looked
ready for a coup d'etat ; yet I heard it
said about me that he would be com-
pelled either to retreat or to resign.
One saw at a glance how much pro-
founder political differences must be in
France than with us, since in that coun-
try they avowedly concern the very ex-
istence of the republic.

I saw no women at the Chambre des
De'pute's, even as spectators, though they
may have been concealed somewhere, as
in the Ladies' Gallery of the House of
Commons. An American was surprised,
twenty years ago, with all the associa-
tions of the French revolutions in his
mind, to see in Paris so much less ex-
hibition of interest in public affairs, or
indeed of general knowledge, on the part
of women than among men. For in-
stance, on my going one day into a cre-
merie in a distant part of Paris, and par-
taking of a bowl of bouillon bourgeois
at twenty-five centimes (five cents), the
woman in charge was interested to hear
that I was from America, and asked
if they spoke German there. Her hus-
band laughed at her ignorance, and said

that America was discovered by Chris-
tophe Colon ; going on to give a graphic
and correct account of the early strug-
gles of Columbus, of his voyage and his
discouragement, of the mutiny of his
man, of his seeing the light on the shore,
and so on. Then he talked about Spain,
the Italian republic, and other matters,
saying that he had read it all in the
school-books of the children and in other
books. It was delightful to find a plain
Frenchman in a blouse who, although
coarse and rough-looking, could talk so
intelligently ; and his manners also had
perfect courtesy. I could not but con-
trast him with the refined Italian youth
who once asked a friend of mine in Flor-
ence what became of that young Geno-
ese who sailed westward in 1492 to dis-
cover a new continent, and whether he
had ever been heard of again.

On another day I dined with Louis
Blanc in bachelor quarters, with the Ta-
landiers, Conways, and one or two others.
He was less gay than before, yet talked
much of the condition and prospect of
affairs. France, he said, was not a real
republic, but a nominal one ; having
monarchical institutions and traditions,
with a constitution well framed to make
them perpetual. All the guests at his
house seemed alike anxious for the fu-
ture. The minister of war, whom I had
heard virtually defying the people a few
days before, was so well entrenched in
power, they said, as to be practically be-
yond reach ; and though the republicans
controlled the Chambre des De'pute's,
that was all, for. the three other parties
hated the republic more than one an-
other. I asked Louis Blanc about La-
martine, whom he thought not a great
man, and even injurious to the republic
through his deference for the bourgeoisie.
He described the famous speech in which
Lamartine insisted on the tricolored flag
instead of the red flag, and said it was
quite wrong and ridiculous. The red
flag did not mean blood at all, but order
and unity ; it was the old oriflamme, the

Literary Paris Twenty Years Ago.

flag of Jeanne d'Arc. The tricolor had
represented the three orders of the state,
which were united into one by the revo-
lution of 1848 ; and the demand for the
red flag was resisted only by the bour-
geoisie. The red flag, moreover, had
always been the summons to order, —
when it was raised a mob had notice to
disperse (as on the reading of the riot
act) ; and it was absurd in Lamartine to
represent it to the contrary, — he knew
better. The other gentlemen all agreed
with this, and with the estimate of La-
martine. After dinner M. Talandier
played for us on the piano the Marseil-
laise, which is always thrilling, and then
the Carmagnole, which is as formidable
and dolorous as the guillotine itself. It
was strange, in view of this beautiful
city, constantly made more beautiful by
opening new great avenues, some not
yet finished, to recall these memories of
all it had been through, and to see those
who had been actors in its past scenes.

On leaving home I had been appointed
a delegate to the Prison Discipline Con-
gress, to be held that year at Stockholm ;
and though I never got so far, I attend-
ed several preliminary meetings of dele-
gates in London and Paris, and was es-
pecially pleased, in the latter place, to
see the high deference yielded by French
experts to our American leader, the late
Dr. E. C. Wines, and also the familiar
knowledge shown by these gentlemen in
regard to American methods and exper-
iments. Less satisfactory was our na-
tional showing at another assemblage,
where we should have been represented
by a far larger and abler body of dele-
gates. This was the Association Lit-
te"raire Internationale, which was ap-
pointed to assemble under the presidency
of Victor Hugo, on June 11. I had
gone to a few of the committee meetings
at the rooms of the Socie'te' des Gens de
Lettres, and, after my wonted fashion,
had made an effort to have women ad-
mitted to the Association Litte*raire ; this
attempt having especial reference to Mrs.

Julia Ward Howe, who was then in
Paris, and whose unusual command of
the French language would have made
her a much better delegate than most of
the actual American representatives. In
this effort I failed, although my judg-
ment was afterwards vindicated when
she gave great delight by a speech in
French at a woman's convention, where
I heard her introduced by the courteous
and delicately articulating chairman as
" Meesses Ouardow."

As to the more literary convention,
the early meetings were as indetermi-
nate and unsatisfying as such things are
wont to be, so that I was quite unpre-
pared for the number and character of
those who finally assembled. The main
meeting was in some masonic hall, whose
walls were covered with emblems and
Hebrew inscriptions ; and although the
men were nearly all strangers to me, it
was something to know that they repre-
sented the most cultivated literary tradi-
tions of the world. When the roll was
called, there proved to be eighty-five
Frenchmen present, and only thirty-five
from all other nations put together ; five
of this minority being Americans. I was
the only one of these who had ever pub-
lished a book, I think. Mr. W. H. Bish-
op was another delegate, but his first
volume, Detmold, had not yet reached
completion in The Atlantic ; while the
three remaining delegates were an Irish-
man, an Englishman, and an American,
all correspondents of American newspa-
pers, the last of them being the late Ed-
ward King, since well known in litera-
ture. It is proper to add that several
dentists, whose names had been duly en-
tered as delegates, had not yet arrived ;
and that at later sessions there appeared,
as more substantial literary factors, Pre-
sident A. D. White and Mr. George W.
Smalley. On that first day, however,
the English delegation was only a lit-
tle more weighty than ours, including
Blanchard Jerrold and Tom Taylor, with
our own well-known fellow countryman

Literary Paris Twenty Years Ago.

" Hans Breitraann " (Charles G. Le-
land), who did not know that there was
to be an American delegation, and was
naturally claimed by the citizens of both
his homes. Edmond About presided, a
cheery, middle-aged Frenchman, short
and square, with broad head and grayish
beard ; and I have often regretted that
I took no list of the others of his na-
tionality, since it would have doubtless
included many who have since become
known to fame. It is my impression
that Adolphe Belot, Jules Claretie, and
Hector Malot were there, and I am in-
clined to think that Max Nordau also
was present.

The discussions were in French, and
therefore of course animated ; but they
turned at first on unimportant subjects,
and the whole thing would have been
rather a disappointment to me — since
Victor Hugo's opening address was to
be postponed — had it not been rumored
about that Tourgue"neff was a delegate
to the convention. Wishing more to see
him than to behold all living French-
men, I begged the ever kind secretary,
M. Zaccone, to introduce me to him after
the adjournment. He led me to a man
of magnificent bearing, who towered
above all the Frenchmen, and was, on
the whole, the noblest and most attrac-
tive literary man whom I have ever en-
countered. I can think of no better way
to describe him than by saying that he
united the fine benignant head of Long-
fellow with the figure of Thackeray ;
not that Tourgue*neff was as tall as the
English novelist, but he had as distinct-
ly the effect of height, and afterwards,
when he, Leland, and I stood together,
we were undoubtedly the tallest men in
the room. But the especial characteris-
tic of Tourgue*neff was a winning sweet-
ness of manner, which surpassed even
Longfellow's, and impressed one as be-
ing " kind nature's," to adopt Tennyson's
distinction, and not merely those " next
to best " manners which the poet attrib-
utes to the great.

Tourgue'neff greeted us heartily as
Americans, — Mr. Bishop also forming
one of the group, — and spoke warmly of
those of our compatriots whom he had
known, as Emma Lazarus and Profes-
sor Boyesen. He seemed much grati-
fied when I told him that the types
of reformers in his latest book, Virgin
Soil, — which may be read to more ad-
vantage in its French form as Terres
Vierges, — appeared to me universal, not
local, and that I was constantly remind-
ed by them of men and women whom I
had known in America. This pleased
him, he explained, because the book had
been very ill received in Russia, in spite
of its having told the truth, as later
events showed. All this he said in Eng-
lish, which he continued to use with us,
although he did not speak it with entire
ease and correctness, and although we
begged him to speak in French. After-
wards, when he was named as one of
the vice-presidents of the new associa-
tion, the announcement was received
with applause, which was renewed when
he went upon the platform ; and it was
noticeable that no other man was so hon-
ored. This showed his standing with
French authors ; but later I sought in
vain for his photograph in the shops,
and his name proved wholly unfamiliar.
He was about to leave Paris, and I lost
the opportunity of further acquaintance.
Since then his fame has been temporari-
ly obscured by the commanding figure
of Tolstoi, but I fancy that it is now be-
ginning to resume its prestige ; and cer-
tainly there is in his books a more wholly
sympathetic quality than in Tolstoi's,
with almost equal power. In his Poems
in Prose — little known among us, I
fear, in spite of the admirable transla-
tion made by Mrs. Perry — there is
something nearer to the peculiar Haw-
thornesque quality of imagination than
in any other book I know.

As to the Association LitteYaire In-
ternationale, it had the usual provoking
habit of French conventions, and met

Literary Paris Twenty Years Ago.

only at intervals of several days, — as if
to give its delegates plenty of leisure to
see Paris, — and I could attend no later
meeting, although I was placed on the
Executive Committee for America ; but
it has since held regular annual conven-
tions in different capitals, and has doubt-
less helped the general agitation for bet-
ter copyright laws.

I went again to the apartments of
Louis Blanc on July 14, with a young
American friend, to get tickets for the
Rousseau centenary, which was also to
be, after the convenient French habit of
combination, a celebration of the cap-
ture of the Bastille. Rousseau died July
2, 1778, and the Bastille was taken on
July 14, 1789, so that neither date
was strictly centennial, but nobody ever
minds that in Paris ; and if it had been
proposed that our Declaration of Inde-
pendence or the Landing of the Pilgrims
should also be included in the festival,
there would have been no trouble in any
mind on account of Ihe dates. Commit-
tee men were busy in Louis Blanc's little
parlor, and this as noisily and eagerly
as if the Bastille were again to be taken:
they talked and gesticulated as only Latin
races can ; in fact, the smallest commit-
tee meeting in France is as full of ex-
citement as a monster convention. It is
a wonder that these people do not wear
themselves out in youth ; and yet old
Frenchmen have usually such an unabat-
ed fire in their eyes, set off by gray
hair and often black eyebrows, that they
make Anglo-Saxons of the same age look
heavy and dull in comparison. French
emotion does not exhaust itself, but ac-
cumulates strength indefinitely, needing
only a touch of flame, at any age, to go
off like a rocket.

Little Louis Blanc came in and went
out, in a flowered dressing-gown ; and
he really seemed, after his long English
residence, to be an element of calmness
in the eager crowd. We obtained tick-
ets for the evening banquet (Bastille
celebration) at three and a half francs

each, and also received cards for the af-
ternoon (Rousseau celebration) free and
with reserved seats. To prepare the mind
for both occasions, I attended a very
exclusive and aristocratic mass at the
Chapelle Expiatoire, and, later, went by
omnibus to the Cirque Ame'ricain, then
existing in the Place du Chateau d'Eau.
This was the place where the popular
demonstration had been held on the Vol-
taire day ; but I had not seen that, and
it was, in case of Rousseau, the scene of
the only daylight celebration. Crowds
of people were passing in, all seemingly
French ; we did not hear a syllable of
any other language. We were piloted to
good seats, and found ourselves in the
middle of enthusiastic groups, jumping
up, sitting down, calling, beckoning, ges-
ticulating, and talking aloud. There were
soon more than six thousand persons in
a hall which seated but four thousand,
and the noise of this multitude was
something to make one deaf. Every
one seemed either looking for a friend or
making signals to one. Most of those
present were neatly dressed, even those
who wore blue blouses and white caps ;
and all was good nature, except that now
and then some man would make him-
self obnoxious and be put out, usually
under the charge of being a Bonapart-
ist sent there purposely to make trouble.
At such times there would be a sudden
roar, a waving of arms and sticks, amid
which one could discern a human figure
being passed along rapidly from hand
to hand, and at last dropped, gently but
firmly, over the stairway ; his hat being
considerately jammed down upon his
head during the process. Yet all was
done as good-naturedly as such a sum-
mary process permits ; there was no-
thing that looked like rioting. Oppo-
site the high tribune, or speaker's stand,
was placed a bust of Rousseau, looking
very white against a crimson velvet
background ; five French flags were
above it, and wreaths of violets and im-
mortelles below, with this inscription,

Literary Paris Twenty Fears Ago.

" Consacra sa vie a la ve*riteV' Beside
this were panels inscribed with the chief
events of Rousseau's life.

When at last Louis Blanc came in
with others — all towering above him —
there was a great clapping of hands,
and shouts of " Vive 1'amnistie ! VivQ la
Re*publique ! Vive Louis Blanc ! " The
demand for amnesty referred to the par-
don of political prisoners, and was then
one of the chief war-cries of the radi-
cal party of France. After the group of
speakers there appeared a larger group
of singers, — there had been a band
present even earlier, — and then all said
" Sh ! sh ! sh ! " and there was absolute
silence for the Marseillaise. Nothing
of the kind in this world can be more
impressive than the way in which an
audience of six thousand French radicals
receives that wonderful air. I observed
that the group of young men who led
the singing never once looked at the
notes, and few even had any, so familiar
was it to all. There was a perfect hush
in that vast audience while the softer
parts were sung; and no one joined even
in the chorus at first, for everybody was
listening. The instant, however, that the
strain closed, the applause broke like a
tropical storm, and the clapping of hands
was like the taking flight of a thousand
doves all over the vast arena. Behind
those twinkling hands the light dresses
of ladies and the blue blouses of work-
ingmen seemed themselves to shimmer
in the air ; there was no coarse noise of
pounding on the floor or drumming on
the seats, but there was a vast cry of
"Bis! Bis!" sent up from the whole mul-
titude, demanding a repetition. When
this was given, several thousand voices
joined in the chorus ; then the applause
was redoubled, as if the hearers had ga-
thered new sympathy from one another;
after which there was still one more great
applauding gust, and then an absolute
quiet as Louis Blanc arose.

It all brought home to me that brief
and thrilling passage in Erckmann-

Chatrian's story of Madame The'rese,
where a regiment of French soldiers,
having formed square, is being crushed
in by assaults on all sides, when the
colonel, sitting on his horse in the mid-
dle, takes off his chapeau and elevates
it on the point of his sword, and then
begins in a steady voice to chant a song.
Instantly a new life appears to run
through those bleeding and despairing
ranks ; one voice after another swells
the chant, and the crushed sides of the
square gradually straighten out under
the strong inspiration, until it is all in
shape again, and the. regiment is saved.
I could perfectly picture to myself that
scene, while listening to this perform-
ance of the Marseillaise. Afterwards
another air of the French Revolution
was played by the band, the Chant du
Depart, and this was received with al-
most equal ecstasy, and was indeed fine
and stirring. There was also music of
Rousseau's own composition, the first I
had ever heard, and unexpectedly good.
This was finely sung by two vocalists
from the Theatre Lyrique, and I was
told that they were risking their appoint-
ments at that theatre by singing in an
assembly so radical.

The speaking was eloquent and im-
pressive, being by Louis Blanc, M. Mar-
cou, and M. Hamel. All read their
speeches, yet each so gesticulated with
the hand and accompanied the action
with the whole movement of the body
that it seemed less like reading than like
conversation. The orators were not so
distinguished as -at the Voltaire celebra-
tion, yet it was impossible to see and hear
Louis Blanc without liking and trusting
him, while he escaped wholly from that
air of posing which was almost insepara-
ble from Victor Hugo, and was, perhaps,
made inevitable by the pedestal on which
France had placed him so long. The
audience on this occasion was three times
as large as at Hugo's address, but the at-
tention was as close and the appreciation
almost as delicate. It seems impossible

Literary Paris Twenty Years Ayo.

to bring together a French audience that
has not an artistic sense. The applause,
like the speaking, had always a certain
intellectual quality about it ; the things
said might be extravagant or even tru-
culent, yet they must be passed through
the fine medium of the French tongue,
and they were heard by French ears.
Whenever there was the long swell of a
sonorous sentence, the audience listened
with hushed breath ; and if any one in-
terrupted the cadence by premature ap-
plause, there came an almost angry "Sh!
sh ! " to postpone it. Once when this in-
terruption was persistently made, my next
neighbor exclaimed with fury, " C'est
tr-r-rop de precipitation ! " throwing him-
self forward and glaring at the unhappy
marplot with an expression suggestive
of guillotines ; but when the interrup-
tion subsided and the sentence stood ful-
filled, the reserved applause broke with
accumulated power, like a breaking wave.
The enthusiasm of a French radical au-
dience is as wonderful .as the self-control
of its stillness, or as the sudden burst of
vivacity let loose during all the intervals
between the speeches. The whole affair
lasted from two o'clock until nearly six,
and during the last hour or two of the
time I found myself steadily losing that
disentangling power which one must use
in comprehending the sentences of a for-
eign language ; the faculty became, as it
were, benumbed in me, and the torrent
of speech simply flowed by without reach-
ing the brain ; it was much the same, I
found, with my two young companions.
Yet Louis Blanc was of all Frenchmen
I had ever met the easiest to follow, —
a thing the more remarkable as his bro-
ther, Charles Blanc, the well-known art
critic, was one of the most difficult.

The evening banquet in memory of
the destruction of the Bastille was to take
place at half past seven in a cafe* in the
Rue de Belleville, near the city barriers.
As we went toward the place, we found
ourselves in an absolutely French region.
There was no more " English spoken "

in the shop windows ; the people around
us were natives or residents, not lookers-
on ; there was an air of holiday ; and
there were children not a few, includ-
ing even babies tightly swathed. As we
toiled up the long hill, we found our-
selves approaching the very outskirts of
Paris ; and when we entered the hall,
there must have been five hundred per-
sons already seated, among whom we
were, perhaps, the only Anglo-Saxons.
The men and women around us were
about equal in number, and were all neat-
ly, sometimes fashionably dressed. Two
men opposite us had an especially culti-
vated look, and soon encouraged some
conversation. At first they took us for
English, but were obviously pleased to
hear that we were Americans, and then
as visibly disappointed at learning, on
inquiry, that neither of us belonged to
the masonic order, with which European
radicals claim a certain affinity. They
drank their claret to the Republique
Ame'ricaine, but when I proposed the
R^publique Franchise they shook their
heads quite sadly, and pronounced that
to be a widely different thing. This, it
must be remembered, was nearly twenty
years ago, when the sense of uncertainty
was far greater than it is now, and when
the policy of the administration was
thought very reactionary.

There was a surprisingly good ban-
quet for the money, — when it comes to
cooking, Frenchmen of all parties make
much the same demands, — but there
were too few waiters and the courses
came very slowly, so that when we left
the hall, at ten o'clock, the guests had
got no farther than chicken. Perhaps
it was one result of this that the speak-
ing took place as the dinner went on, in-
stead of waiting for the cigars, as with
us. I cannot recall the names of the ora-
tors, except General Wimpffen, a man of
veteran and soldierly appearance, who
was received with great enthusiasm, the
French army, since the Commune, being
regarded as on the conservative 8id.e,» A

Penelope's Progress.

peculiarly cordial greeting was given to
a lady who read extracts from letters ;
such a spectacle being then rare, I was
told, at French public meetings. The
speakers captured and destroyed the Bas-
tille with great repetition and unani-
mously, and some of the talk was entire-
ly without notes and quite eloquent. At
intervals the band would strike in with
tremendous force, especially in the direc-
tion of the Marseillaise, the guests all
joining in the chorus, with their mouths
full and with a great thumping of knife-
handles on the table. One of my young
companions pointed out that the gleam
of the blades during this last perform-
ance was the only thing which made a
red republic seem a possibility.

The nearest approach to a disturbance
was provoked by a man who utterly re-
fused to keep still during the speeches,
and gave forth awful vociferations. At
first all thought him a Bonapartist who
had come in to make trouble, and they
were going to put him out by main
force. He succeeded, however, in ex-
plaining that he did not aim at a revolu-
tion, but at his dinner ; the waiters hav-
ing repeatedly passed him by, he said, so
that he had had nothing to eat. Then
all sympathy turned at once eagerly in
his favor, for he had touched a national
chord, and one appealing to radical and
conservative alike the world over ; so he
was fed profusely at last, and all was
peace.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

PENELOPE'S PROGRESS.

HER EXPERIENCES IN SCOTLAND.

PAKT FIKST. IN TOWN.

XII.

IT is our last day in " Scotia's darling
seat," our last day in Breadalbane Ter-
race, our last day with Mrs. M'Collop ;
and though every one says that we shall
love the life in the country, we are loath
to leave Auld Reekie.

Salemina and I have spent two days
in search of an abiding-place, and have
visited eight well-recommended villages
with that end in view ; but she disliked
four of them, and I could n't endure the
other four, though I considered some of
those that fell under her disapproval as
quite delightful in every respect.

We never take Francesca on these
pilgrimages of disagreement, as three
conflicting opinions on the same subject
would make insupportable what is other-
wise rather exhilarating. She starts

from Edinburgh to-morrow for a brief
visit to the Highlands with the Deeyells,
and will join us when we have settled
ourselves.

, Willie Beresford leaves Paris as soon
after our decision as he is permitted,
so Salemina and I have agreed to agree
upon one ideal spot within thirty-six
hours of our quitting Edinburgh, know-
ing privately that after a last battle royal
we shall enthusiastically support the joint
decision for the rest of our lives.

We have been bidding good-by to
people and places and things, and wish-
ing the sun would not shine and thus
make our task the harder. We have
looked our last on the old gray town
from Calton Hill, of all places the best,
perhaps, for a view ; since, says Steven-
son, from Calton Hill you can see the
Castle, which you lose from the Castle,

Penelope's Progress.

and Arthur's Seat, which you cannot see
from Arthur's Seat. We have taken a
farewell walk to the Dean Bridge, to look
wistfully eastward and marvel for the
hundredth time to find so beautiful a
spot in the heart of a city. The soft
flowing water of Leith winding over peb-
bles between grassy banks and groups
of splendid trees, the roof of the little
temple to Hygeia rising picturesquely
among green branches, the slopes of
emerald velvet leading up to the gray
stone of the houses, — where, in all the
world of cities, can one find a view to
equal it in peaceful loveliness ? Fran-
cesca's " bridge-man," who, by the way,
proved to be a distinguished young pro-
fessor of medicine in the university, says
that the beautiful cities of the world
should be ranked thus, — Constantinople,
Prague, Genoa, Edinburgh ; but having
seen only one of these, and that the last,
I refuse to credit any sliding scale of
comparison which leaves Edina at the
foot.

It was nearing tea-time, an hour when
we never fail to have visitors, and we
were all in the drawing-room together.
I was at the piano, singing Jacobite mel-
odies for Salemina's delectation. When
I came to the last verse of Lady Nairne's
Hundred Pipers, the spirited words had
taken my fancy captive, and I am sure
I could not have sung with more vigor
and passion had my people been " out
wi' the Chevalier."

" The Esk was swollen sae red an' sae deep,
But shouther to shouther the brave lads keep ;
Twa thousand swam oure to fell English

ground,
An' danced themselves dry to the pibroch's

sound.

Dumfounder'd tile English saw, they saw,
Dumfounder'd they heard the blaw, the blaw,
Dumfounder'd they a' ran awa', awa',
Frae the hundred pipers an' a' an' a' ! "

By the time I came to " Dumfounder'd
the English saw " Francesca left her
book and joined in the next four lines,
and when we broke into the chorus
Salemina rushed to the piano, and al-

though she cannot sing, she lifted her
voice both high and loud in the refrain,
beating time the while with a braid-
sword paper-knife.

CHORUS.

Wi' a huu - dred pi - pers an'

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up an' gie them a blaw, a blaw, Wi' a'

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t-j — —

-^H

hundred pi-pers an' a' an' a' !

Susanna ushered in Mr. Macdonald
and Dr. Moncrieffe as the last " blaw "
faded into silence, and Jean Deeyell
came upstairs to say that they could
seldom get a quiet moment for family
prayers, because we were always at the
piano, hurling incendiary statements into
the air, — statements set to such stir-
ring melodies that no one could resist
them.

" We are very sorry, Miss Deeyell,"
I said penitently. "We reserve an hour
in the morning and another at bedtime
for your uncle's prayers, but we had no
idea you had them at afternoon tea, even
in Scotland. I believe that you are chaf-
fing, and came up only to swell the cho-
rus. Come, let us all sing together from
' Dumfounder'd the English saw.' "

Mr. Macdonald and Dr. Moncrieffe
gave such splendid body to the music,
and Jean such warlike energy, that Sale-
mina waved her paper-knife in a manner
more than ever sanguinary, and Susanna
hesitated outside the door for sheer de-

Penelope's Progress.

light, and had to be coaxed in with the
tea-things. On the heels of the tea-
things came the Dominie, another dear
old friend of six weeks' standing ; and
while the doctor sang Jock o' Hazledean
with such irresistible charm that every-
body present longed to elope with some-
body on the instant, Salemina dispensed
buttered scones, marmalade sandwiches,
and the fragrant cup. By this time we
were thoroughly cosy, and Mr. Macdon-
ald .made himself and us very much at
home by stirring the fire ; whereupon
Francesca embarrassed him by begging
him not to touch it unless he could do
it properly, which, she added, was quite
unlikely from the way in which he han-
dled the poker.

" What will Edinburgh do without
you ? " he asked, turning towards us with
flattering sadness in his tone. " Who
will hear our Scotch stories, never sus-
pecting their hoary old age ? Who will
ask us questions to which we somehow
always know the answers ? Who will
make us study and reverence anew our
own landmarks ? Who will keep warm
our national and local pride by judicious
enthusiasm ? If you continue loyal, I
think you will do as much for Scotland
in America as the kail-yard school of
literature has done."

" I wish we might also do as well for
ourselves as the kail-yard school has
done for itself," I said laughingly.

" I think the national and local pride
may be counted on to exist without
any artificial stimulants," dryly observed
Francesca, whose spirit is not in the least
quenched by approaching departure.

" Perhaps," answered the Reverend
Ronald ; " but at any rate, you, Miss
Monroe, will always be able to reflect
that you have never been responsible
even for its momentary inflation ! "

" Is n't it strange that she cannot get
on better with that charming fellow ? "
murmured Salemina, as she passed me
the sugar for my second cup.

" If your present symptoms of blind-

ness continue, Salemina," I said, search-
ing for a small lump so as to gain time,
" I shall write you a plaintive ballad,
buy you a dog, and stand you on a
street corner ! If you had ever per-
mitted yourself to ' get on ' with any
man as Francesca is getting on with Mr.
Macdonald, you would now be Mrs. —
Somebody."

" Do you know, doctor," asked the
Dominie, " that Miss Hamilton shed real
tears at Holyrood, the other night, when
the band played ' Bonnie Charlie 's now
awa' ' ? "

" They were real," I confessed, " in
the sense that they certainly were not
crocodile tears ; but I am somewhat at
a loss to explain them from a sensible,
American standpoint. Of course my
Jacobitism is purely impersonal, though
scarcely more so than yours, at this late
day ; at least it is merely a poetic sen-
timent, for which Caroline, Baroness
Nairne is mainly responsible. My ro-
mantic tears came from a vision of the
Bonnie Prince as he entered Holyrood,
dressed in his short tartan coat, his scar-
let breeches and military boots, the star
of St. Andrew on his breast, a blue rib-
bon over his shoulder, and the famous
blue velvet bonnet and white cockade.
He must have looked so brave and hand-
some and hopeful at that moment, and
the moment was so sadly brief, that when
the band played the plaintive air I kept
hearing the words, —

' Mony a heart will break in twa
Should he no come back again.'

He did come back again to me that even-
ing, and held a phantom levee behind
the Marchioness of Heatherdale's shoul-
der. His ' ghaist ' looked bonnie and
rosy and confident, yet all the time the
band was playing the requiem for his
lost cause and buried hopes."

I looked towards the fire to hide the
moisture that crept again into my eyes,
and my glance fell upon Francesca sit-
ting dreamily on a hassock in front of
the cheerful blaze, her chin in the hollow

Penelope's Progress.

of her palm, and the Reverend Ronald
standing on the hearth-rug gazing at her,
the poker in his hand, and his heart, I
regret to say, in such an exposed posi-
tion on his sleeve that even Salemina
could have seen it had she turned her
eyes that way.

Jean Deeyell broke the momentary
silence : " I am sure I never hear the
last two lines, —

' Better lo'ed ye canna be,
Will ye no come back again ? '

without a lump in my throat," and she
hummed the lovely melody. " It is all
as you say purely impersonal and po-
etic. My mother is an Englishwoman,
but she sings ' Dumfounder'd the Eng-
lish saw, they saw,' with the greatest fire
and fury."

XIII.

" I don't think I was ever so com-
pletely under the spell of a country as I
am of Scotland." I made this acknow-
ledgment freely, but I knew that it would
provoke comment from my compatriots.

" Oh yes, my dear, you have been just
as spellbound before, only you don't re-
member it," replied Salemina prompt-
ly. " I have never seen a person more
perilously appreciative or receptive than
you."

" ' Perilously ' is just the word,"
chimed in Francesca delightedly ; " when
you care for a place you grow porous,
as it were, until after a time you are
precisely like blotting-paper. Now, there
was Italy, for example. After eight
weeks in Venice you were completely
Venetian, from your fan to the ridicu-
lous little crepe shawl you wore because
an Italian prince told you once that cen-
turies were usually needed to teach a
woman how to wear a shawl, but you
had been born with the art, and the
shoulders ! Anything but a watery street
was repulsive to you. Cobblestones ?
' Ordinario, sudicio, dxiro, brtitto ! A
gondola ? Ah, bellissima ! Let me float

forever thus, piano, adagio, solo ! ' You
bathed your spirit in sunshine and color ;
I can hear you murmur now, ' O Vene-
zia benedetta ! non ti voglio lasciar ! ' '

" It was just the same when she spent
a month in France with the Baroness
de Hautenoblesse," continued Salemina.
" When she returned to America it is no
flattery to say that in dress, attitude, in-
flection, manner, she was a thorough Pa-
risienne. There was an elegant super-
ficiality and a superficial elegance about
her that I can never forget, nor yet the
extraordinary volubility she had some-
how acquired, — the fluency with which
she expressed her inmost soul on all
topics without the aid of a single irregu-
lar verb, for these she was never able to
acquire ; oh, it was wonderful, but there
was no affectation about it ; she had sim-
ply been blotting-paper, as Miss Monroe
says, and France had written itself all
over her."

" I don't wish to interfere with any-
body's diagnosis," I interposed at the first
possible moment, " but perhaps after
everybody has quite finished his psycho-
logic investigation the subject may be
allowed to explain herself a trifle from
the inside, so to speak. I won't deny
the spell of Italy, but I say the spell that
Scotland casts over one is quite a differ-
ent thing, more spiritual, more difficult
to break. Italy's charm has something
physical in it ; it is born of blue sky,
sunlit waves, soft atmosphere, orange
sails and yellow moons, and appeals more
to the senses. In Scotland the climate
certainly has naught to do with it, but
the imagination is somehow made cap-
tive. I am not enthralled by the past
of Italy or France, for instance."

" Of course you are not at the pre-
sent moment," said Francesca, " because
you are enthralled by the past of Scot-
land, and even you cannot be the slave
of two pasts at the same time."

" I never was particularly enthralled
by Italy's past," I argued with exem-
plary patience, " but the romance of

Penelope's Progress.

Scotland has a flavor all its own. I do
not quite know the secret of it."

" It 's the kilties and the pipes," said
Francesca.

" No, the history." (This from Sale-
mina.)

" Or Sir Walter and the literature,"
suggested Mr. Macdonald.

" Or the songs and ballads," ventured
Jean Deeyell.

" There ! " I exclaimed triumphantly,
" you see for yourselves you have named
avenue after avenue along which one's
mind is led in charmed subjection. Where
can you find battles that kindle your
fancy like Falkirk and Flodden and
Culloden and Bannockburn ? Where a
sovereign that attracts, baffles, repels, al-
lures, like Mary Queen of Scots, — and
where, tell me where, is there a Pretender
like Bonnie Prince Charlie ? "

" We must have had baffling mys-
teries among our American Presidents,"
asserted Francesca. " Who was the one
that was impeached ? Would n't he
do ? I am sure Aaron Burr allures and
repels by turns; and, if he had been
dead a hundred and fifty years, and you
would only fix your wandering fancy
on him, Mr. William Jennings Bryan is
just as good a Pretender as the Bonnie
Prince."

" Compare the campaign songs of the
one with the ballads inspired by the
other," said Salemina sarcastically.

" The difference is not so much in the
themes ; I am sure that if Lady Nairne
had been an American she could have
written songs about our national issues."

" I believe she could have made songs
about almost anything," I agreed ; " but
fancy her bursting into verse over our
last campaign, — let us see how she might
have done it on the basis of the Hundred
Pipers," and I went to the piano and
improvised, —

0 wha is f oremaist of a', of a' ?
O wha is makin' the blaw, the blaw ?
Bonnie Willy the king o' the pipers, hurra !
Wi' his siller sae free an' his siller for a' !

Durnfounder'd, good Democrats saw, they saw,
Dumfounderd, Republicans heard the blaw,
Dumfounder'd they a' marched awa', awa',
Frae Willy's free siller an' Willy an' a' !

They all laughed as good-humored peo-
ple will always laugh at good-humored
nonsense, and Francesca admitted re-
luctantly that our national issues were
practical rather than romantic at the
moment.

" Think of the spirit in those old
Scottish matrons who could sing, —

' I '11 sell my rock, I '11 sell my reel,
My rippling-kame and spinning-wheel,
To buy my lad a tartan plaid,
A braid sword, durk, and white cockade.' "

" Yes," chimed in Salemina when I
had finished quoting, " or that other
verse that goes, —

' I ance had sons, I now hae nane,

I bare them toiling sairlie ;
But I would bear them a' again
To lose them a' for Charlie ! '

Is n't the enthusiasm almost beyond
belief at this distance of time ? " she
went on ; " and is n't it a curious fact, as
Mr. Macdonald told me a moment ago,
that though the whole country was vocal
with songs for the lost cause and the
fallen race, not one in favor of the vic-
tors ever became popular ? "

" Sympathy for the under dog, as Miss
Monroe's countrywomen would say pic-
turesquely," remarked Mr. Macdonald.

" I don't see why all the vulgarisms
in the dictionary should be foisted on
the American girl," retorted Francesca
loftily, " unless, indeed, it is a deter-
mined attempt to find spots upon the sun
for fear we shall worship it ! "

"Quite so, quite so!" returned the
Reverend Ronald, who has had reason
to know that this phrase reduces Miss
Monroe to voiceless rage.

" The Stuart charm and personal
magnetism must have been a powerful
factor in all that movement," said Sale-
mina, plunging hastily back into the
topic to avert any further recrimination.
" I suppose we feel it even now, and if

Penelope's Progress.

I had been alive in 1745 I should
probably have made myself ridiculous.
' Old maiden ladies,' I read this morn-
ing, ' were the last leal Jacobites in Ed-
inburgh ; spinsterhood in its loneliness
remained ever true to Prince Charlie and
the vanished dreams of youth.' "

" Yes," continued the Dominie, "the
story is told of the last of those Jaco-
bite ladies who never failed to close her
Prayer-Book and stand erect in silent pro-
test when the prayer for ' King George
III. and the reigning family ' was read
by the congregation."

" Do you remember the prayer of
the Reverend Neil McVicar in St. Cuth-
bert's ? " asked Mr. Macdonald. " It was
in 1745, after the victory at Prestonpans,
when a message was sent to the Edin-
burgh ministers, in the name of ' Charles,
Prince Regent,' desiring them to open
their churches next day as usual. Mc-
Vicar preached to a large congregation,
many of whom were armed Highlanders,
and prayed for George II., and also for
Charles Edward, in the following fash-
ion : ' Bless the king ! Thou knowest
what king I mean. May the crown sit
long upon his head ! As for that young
man who has come among us to seek an
earthly crown, we beseech Thee to take
him to Thyself and give him a crown of
glory ! ' "

" Ah, what a pity the Bonnie Prince
had not died after his meteor victory at
Falkirk ! " exclaimed Jean Deey ell, when
we had finished laughing at Mr. Mac-
donald's story.

" Or at Culloden, ' where, quenched
in blood on the Muir of Drummossie,
the star of the Stuarts sank forever,' "
quoted the Dominie. " There is where
his better self died ; would that the young
Chevalier had died with it! By the
way, doctor, we must not sit here eating
sconea and sipping tea until the din-
ner-hour, for these ladies have doubtless
much to do for their flitting " (a pretty
Scotch word for "moving").

" We are quite ready for our flitting

so far as packing is concerned," Sale-
mina assured him. " Would that we
were as ready in spirit! Miss Hamil-
ton has even written her farewell poem,
which I am sure she will read for the
asking."

" She will read it without," murmured
Francesca. " She has lived only for
this moment, and the poem is in her
pocket."

" Delightful ! " said the doctor flatter-
ingly. " Has she favored you already ?
Have you heard it, Miss Monroe ? "
. " Have we heard it ! " ejaculated that
young person. " We have heard no-
thing else all the morning ! What you
will take for local color is nothing but
our mental life-blood, which she has mer-
cilessly drawn to stain her verses. We
each tried to write a Scotch poem, and
as Miss Hamilton's was better, or per-
haps I might say less bad, than ours,
we encouraged her to develop and finish
it. I wanted to do an imitation of Lind-
say's

' Adieu, Edinburgh ! thou heich triumphant

town,

Within whose bounds richt blithef ull have I
been ! '

but it proved too difficult. Miss Ham-
ilton's general idea was that we should
write some verses in good plain English.
Then we were to take out all the final
<7's, and indeed the final letters from all
the words wherever it was possible, so
tha,tfull,awful,call,ball, hall, and away
should be fu', awfu', ca\ ba', ha', an'
awa\ This alone gives great charm
and character to a poem ; but we were
also to change all words ending in ow
into aw. This does n't injure the verse,
you see, as blaw and snaw rhyme just
as well as blow and snow, beside bring-
ing tears to the common eye with their
poetic associations. Similarly, if we had
daughter and slaughter, we were to write
them dochter and slauchter, substitut-
ing in all cases doon,froon, goon, and
toon, for down, frown, gown, and town.
Then we made a list of Scottish idols, —

Penelope's Progress.

pet words, national institutions, stock
phrases, beloved objects, — convinced if
we could weave them in we should
attain ' atmosphere.' Here is the first
list ; it lengthened speedily : thistle, tar-
tan, haar, haggis, kirk, claymore, par-
ritch, broom, whin, sporran, whaup, plaid,
scone, collops, whiskey, mutch, cairn-
gorm, oatmeal, brae, kilt, brose, heather.
Salemina and I were too devoted to
common sense to succeed in this weav-
ing process, so Penelope triumphed and
won the first prize, both for that and
also because she brought in a saying
given us by Miss Deeyell, about the
social classification of all Scotland into
' the gentlemen of the North, men of the
South, people of the West, fowk o' Fife,
and the " Paisley bodies." ' We think
that her success came chiefly from her
writing the verses with a Scotch plaid
lead-pencil. What effect the absorption
of so much red, blue, and green paint will
have I cannot fancy, but she ate off T— and
up — all the tartan glaze before finishing
the poem ; it had a wonderfully stimu-
lating effect, but the end is not yet ! "

Of course there was a chorus of laugh-
ter when the young wretch exhibited
my battered pencil, bought in Princes
Street yesterday, its gay Gordon tints
sadly disfigured by the destroying tooth,
not of Time, but of a bard in the throes
of composition.

" We bestowed a consolation prize on
Salemina," continued Francesca, "be-
cause she succeeded in getting hoots, losh,
havers, and blathers into one line, but
naturally she could not maintain such
an ideal standard. Read your verses,
Pen, though there is little hope that our
friends will enjoy them as much as you
do. Whenever Miss Hamilton writes
anything of this kind, she emulates her
distinguished ancestor Sir William Ham-
ilton, who always fell off his own chair
in fits of laughter when he was compos-
ing verses."

With this inspiring introduction I
read my lines as follows : —

AN AMERICAN LADY'S FAREWELL
TO EDINBURGH.

THE MUSE BEING SOMEWHAT UNDER THE IN-
FLUENCE OF THE SCOTTISH BALLAD.

I canna thole my ain toun,
Sin' I hae dwelt i' this ;
To bide in Edinboro' reek
Wad be the tap o' bliss.
Yon bonnie plaid aboot me hap,
The skirlin' pipes gae bring,
With thistles fair tie up my hair,
While I of Scotia sing.

The collops an' the cairngorms,

The haggis an' the whin,

The 'Stablished, Free, an' U. P. kirks,

The hairt convinced o' sin, —

The parritch an' the heather-bell,

The snawdrap on the shaw,

The bit lams bleatin' on the braes, —

How can I leave them a' !

How can I leave the marmalade
An' bonnets o' Dundee ?
The haar, an' cockileekie brose,
The East win' blawin' free !
How can I lay my sporran by,
An' sit me down at hame,
Wi'oot a Hieland philabeg
Or hyphenated name ?

I lo'e the gentry o' the North,

The Southern men I lo'e,

The canty people o' the West,

The Paisley bodies too.

The pawky fowk o' Fife are dear, —

Sae dear are ane an' a',

That e'en to think that we maun part

Maist braks my hairt in twa.

So fetch me tartans, whaups, an' scones,

An' dye my tresses red ;

I 'd deck me like th' unconquer'd Scots

Wha hae wi' .Wallace bled.

Then bind my claymore to my side,

My kilt an' mutch gae bring ;

While Scottish songs soun' i' my lugs

McKinley 's no my king, —

For Charlie, bonnie Stuart Prince,

Has turned me Jacobite ;

I 'd wear displayed the white cockade,

An' (whiles) for him I 'd fight !

An' (whiles) I 'd fight for a' that 's Scotch,

Save whuskey an' oatmeal,

For wi' their ballads i' my bluid,

Nae Scot could be mair leal !

Penelope's Progress.

Somebody sent Francesca a great
bunch of yellow broom, late that after-
noon. There was no name in the box,
she said, but at night she wore the odor-
ous tips in the bosom of her black din-
ner-gown, and standing erect in her dark
hair like golden aigrettes.

When she came into my room to say
good-night, she laid the pretty frock in
one of my trunks, which was to be filled
with the garments of fashionable socie-
ty and left behind in Edinburgh. The
next moment I chanced to look on the
floor, and discovered a little card, a bent
card, with two lines written on it : —

" Better Itfed ye canna be,
Will ye no come back again ? "

We have received many invitations in
that handwriting. I know it well, and
so does Francesca, though it is blurred ;
and the reason for this, according to my
way of thinking, is that it has been lying
next the moist stems of flowers, and, un-
less I do her wrong, very near to some-
body's warm heart as well.

I will not betray her to Salemina,
even to gain a victory over that blind and
deaf but very dear woman. How could
I, with my heart beating high at the
thought of seeing my ain dear laddie
before many days !

" Oh, love, love, lassie,
Love is like a dizziness :
It winna let a pnir body
Gang aboot his business."

PART SECOND. IN THE COUNTRY.
XIV.

" Now she 's cast atf her bonny shoon

Made o' gilded leather,
And she 's put on her Hieland brogues

To skip amang the heather.
And she 's cast aff her bonny goon

Made o' the silk and satin,

And she 's put on a tartan plaid

To row amang the braken. "

Lizzie Baillie.

We are in the East Neuk o' Fife ; we
are in Pettybaw ; we are neither board-
VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 483. 7

ers nor lodgers ; we are residents, inhab-
itants, householders, and we live (live,
mind you) in a wee theekit hoosie in
the old loaning. Words fail to tell you
how absolutely Scotch we are and how
blissfully happy. It is a happiness, I as-
sure you, achieved through great tribu-
lation. Salemina and I traveled many
miles in railway trains, and many in vari-
ous other sorts of wheeled vehicles, while
the ideal ever beckoned us onward. I
was determined to find a romantic lodg-
ing, Salemina a comfortable one ; and
this special combination of virtues is next
to impossible, as every one knows. Ling-
hurst was too much of a town ; Bonnie
Craig had no respectable inn ; Whinny-
brae was struggling to be a watering-
place ; Broomlea had no golf course
within ten miles, and we intended to go
back to our native land and win silver
goblets in mixed foursomes ; the " new
toun o' Fairloch " (which looked centu-
ries old) was delightful, but we could
not find apartments there ; Pinkie Leith
was nice, but they were tearing up the
" fore street " and laying drain-pipes in it.
Strathdee had been highly recommended,
but it rained when we were in Strathdee,
and nobody can deliberately settle in a
place where it rains during the process
of deliberation. No train left this moist
and dripping hamlet for three hours,
so we took a covered trap and drove
onward in melancholy mood. Suddenly
the clouds lifted and the rain ceased;
the driver thought we should be having
settled weather now, and put back the
top of the carriage, saying meanwhile
that it was a very dry section just here,
and that the crops sairly needed shoo'rs.

" Of course, if there is any district in
Scotland where for any reason droughts
are possible, that is where we wish to set-
tle," I whispered to Salemina; "though,
so far as I can see, the Strathdee crops
are up to their knees in mud. Here is
another wee village. What is this place,
driver ? "

" Pettybaw, ma'm ; a fine toun ! "

Penelope's Progress.

"Will there be apartments to let
there ? "

" I couldna say, ma'm."

" Susanna Crum's father ! How curi-
ous that he should live here ! " I mur-
mured ; and at this moment the sun came
out, and shone full, or at least almost
full, on our future home.

" Petit bois, I suppose," said Salemi-
na ; " and there, to be sure, it is, — the
4 little wood ' yonder."

We drove to the Pettybaw Inn and
Posting Establishment, and alighting dis-
missed the driver. We had still three
good hours of daylight, although it was
five o'clock, and we refreshed ourselves
with a delicious cup of tea before look-
ing for lodgings. We consulted the
greengrocer, the baker, and the flesher
about furnished apartments, and started
on our quest, not regarding the little
posting establishment as a possibility.
Apartments we found to be very scarce,
and in one or two places that were quite
suitable the landlady refused to do any
cooking. We wandered from house to
house, the sun shining brighter and
brighter, and Pettybaw looking lovelier
and lovelier ; and as we were refused shel-
ter again and again, we grew more and
more enamored. The blue sea sparkled,
and Pettybaw Sands gleamed white a
mile or two in the distance, the pretty
stone Gothic church raised its carved
spire from the green trees, the manse
next door was hidden in vines, the sheep
lay close to the gray stone walls and the
young lambs nestled close beside them,
while the song of the burn, tinkling mer-
rily down the glade on the edge of which
we stood, and the cawing of the rooks
in the little wood, were the only sounds
to be heard.

Salemina, under the influence of this
sylvan solitude, nobly declared that she
could and would do without a set bath-
tub, and proposed building a cabin and
living near to nature's heart.

" I think, on the whole, we should be
more comfortable living near to the inn-

keeper's heart," I answered. " Let us
go back there and pass the night, trying
thus the bed and breakfast with a view
to seeing what they are like, — though
they did say in Edinburgh that nobody
thinks of living in these wayside hotels."

Back we went, accordingly, and after
ordering dinner we came out and strolled
idly up the main street. A small sign
in the draper's window, heretofore over-
looked, caught our eye. " House and
Garden To Let. Inquire Within." In-
quiring within with all possible speed,
we found the draper selling winseys, the
draper's assistant tidying the ribbon-box,
the draper's wife sewing in one corner,
and the draper's baby playing on the
clean floor. We were impressed favor-
ably, and entered into negotiations with-
out delay.

" The house will be in the loaning ;
do you mind, ma'm ? " asked the draper.
(We have long since discovered that this
use of the verb is a bequest from the
Gaelic, in which there is no present tense.
Man never is. but always to be blessed, in
that language, which in this particular
is not unlike old-fashioned Calvinism.)

We went out of the back door and down
the green loaning, until we came to the
wee stone cottage in which the draper
himself lives most of the year, retiring
for the warmer months to the back of
his shop, and eking out a comfortable in-
come by renting his hearthstone to the
summer visitor.

The thatched roof on the wing that
formed the kitchen attracted my artist's
eye, and we went in to examine the in-
terior, which we found surprisingly at-
tractive. There was a tiny sitting-room,
with a fireplace and a microscopic piano ;
a dining-room adorned with portraits of
relatives, who looked nervous when they
met my eye, for they knew that they
would be turned face to the wall on the
morrow ; three bedrooms, a kitchen,
and a back. garden so filled with vegeta-
bles and flowers that we exclaimed with
astonishment and admiration.

Penelope s Progress.

" But we cannot keep house in Scot-
land," objected Salemina. "Think of the
care ! And what about the servants ? "

" Why not eat at the inn ? " I sug-
gested. " Think of living in a real
loaning, Salemina!

' In ilka green loanin'
The Flowers of the Forest
Are a' wede away.'

Look at the stone floor in the kitchen,
and the adorable stuffy box-bed in the
wall ! Look at the bust of Sir Walter
in the hall, and the chromo of Melrose
Abbey by moonlight ! Look at the lin-
tel over the front door, with a ship, moon,
stars, and 1602 carved in the stone !
What is food to all this ? "
9 Salemina agreed that it was hardly
worth considering; and in truth so many
landladies had refused to receive her as
a tenant, that day, that her spirit was
rather broken, and she was uncommonly
flexible.

" It is the lintel and the back garden
that rents the hoose," remarked the
draper complacently in broad Scotch
that I cannot reproduce. He is a house-
agent as well as a draper, and went on
to tell us that when he had a cottage he
could rent in no other way he planted
plenty of vines in front of it. "The
baker's hoose is verra puir," he said,
" and the linen and cutlery verra scanty,
but there is a yellow laburnum grow-
in' by the door : the leddies see that,
and forget to ask aboot the linen. It
depends a good bit on the weather, too ;
it is easy to let a hoose when the sun
shines upon it."

" We are from America, and hardly
dare undertake regular housekeeping,"
I said ; " do your tenants ever take
meals at the inn ? "

" I couldna say, ma'm." (Dear, dear,
the Crums are a large family !)

" If we did that, we should still need
a servant to keep the house tidy," said
Salemina, as we walked away. " Perhaps
housemaids are to be had, though not
nearer than Edinburgh, I fancy."

This gave me an idea, and I slipped
over to the post-office while Salemina
was preparing for dinner, and dispatched
a telegram to Mrs. M'Collop at Bread-
albane Terrace, asking her if she could
send a reliable general servant to us,
capable of cooking simple breakfasts and
caring for a house.

We had scarcely finished our Scotch
broth, fried haddies, mutton-chops, and
rhubarb tart when I received an answer
from Mrs. M'Collop to the effect that
her sister's husband's niece, Jane Grieve,
could join us on the morrow if desired.
The relationship was an interesting fact,
though we scarcely thought the informa-
tion worth the additional threepence we
paid for it in the telegram ; however,
Mrs. M'Collop's comfortable assurance,
together with the quality of the rhubarb
tart and mutton-chops, brought us to a
decision. Before going to sleep we rented
the draper's house, named it Bide-a-Wee
Cottage, engaged daily luncheons and
dinners for three persons at the Petty-
baw Inn and Posting Establishment, and
telegraphed to Edinburgh for Jane
Grieve, to Callender for Francesca, and
to Paris for Mr. Beresford.

" Perhaps it would have been wiser
not to send for them until we were set-
tled," I said reflectively. " Jane Grieve
may not prove a suitable person."

" The name somehow sounds too young
and inexperienced," observed Salemina,
"and what association have I with the
phrase ' sister's husband's niece ' ? "

" You have heard me quote Lewis
Carroll's verse, perhaps : —

4 He thought he saw a buffalo

Upon the chimney-piece ;

He looked again and found it was

His sister's husband's niece :
" Unless you leave the house," he said,
" I '11 send for the police !'"

The only thing that troubles me," I went
on, " is the question of Willie Beresf ord's
place of residence. He expects to be
somewhere within easy walking or cycling
distance, — four or five miles at most."

100

Penelope s Progress.

" He won't be desolate if he does n't
have a thatched roof, a pansy garden,
and a blossoming vine," said Salemina
sleepily, for our business arrangements
and discussions had lasted well into the
evening. '' What he will want is a lodg-
ing where he can have frequent sight
and speech of you. How I dread him !
How I resent his sharing of you with
us ! I don't know why I use the word
' sharing,' forsooth ! There is nothing
half so fair and just in his majesty's
greedy mind. Well, it 's the way of
the world ; only it is odd, with the uni-
verse of women to choose from, he must
needs take you. Strathdee seems the
most desirable place for him, if he has
a mackintosh and rubber boots. Inch-
caldy is another town near here that we
did n't see at all, — that might do ; the
draper's wife says that we can send fine
linen to the laundry there."

" Inchcaldy ? Oh yes, I think we
heard of it in Edinburgh ; it has a fine
golf course, I believe, and veiy likely we
ought to have looked at it, though for
my part I regret nothing. Nothing can
equal Pettybaw ; and I am so pleased
to be a Scottish householder ! Are n't
we just like Bessie Bell and Mary Gray ?

' They were twa bonnie lassies ;
They biggit a bower on yon burnside,
An' theekit it ower wi' rashes.'

Think of our stone - floored kitchen,
Salemina ! Think of the real box-bed
in the wall for little Jane Grieve ! She
will have red-gold hair, blue eyes, and
a pink cotton gown. Think of our own
cat ! Think how Francesca will admire
the 1602 lintel! Think of our back
garden, with our own neeps and vegeta-
ble marrows growing in it ! Think how
they will envy us at home when they
learn that we have settled down into
Scottish yeowomen !

' It 's oh, for a patch of land !
It 's oh, for a patch of land !
Of all the blessings tongue can name,
There 's nane like a patch of land ! '

Think of Willie coming to step on the

floor and look at the bed and stroke the
cat and covet the lintel and walk in the
garden and weed the neeps and pluck
the marrows that grow by our ain wee
theekit hoosie ! "

" Penelope, you appear slightly intox-
icated ! Do close the window and come
to bed."

" I am intoxicated with the caller air
of Pettybaw," I rejoined, leaning on the
window-sill and looking at the stars as
I thought : " Edinburgh was beautiful ;
it is the most beautiful gray city in the
world ; it lacked one thing only to make
it perfect, and Pettybaw will have that
before many moons.

' Oh, Willie 's rare an' Willie 's fair
An' Willie 's woundrous bonny ;
An' Willie 's hecht to marry me
Gin e'er he marries ony.

' O gentle wind that bloweth north,
From where my love repaireth,
Convey a word from his dear mouth,
An' tell me how he fareth.' "

" Gae tak' awa' the china plates,
Gae tak' them far frae me ;
And bring to me a wooden dish,
It 's that I 'm best used wi1.
And tak' awa' thae siller spoons
The like I ne'er did see,
And bring to me the horn cutties,
They 're good enough for me."

Earl Richard's Wedding.

The next day was one of the most
cheerful and one of the most fatiguing
that I ever spent. Salemina and 1
moved every article of furniture in our
wee theekit hoosie from the place where
it originally stood to another and a bet-
ter place : arguing, of course, over the
precise spot it should occupy, which was
generally upstairs if the thing»were al-
ready down, or downstairs if it were
already up. We hid all the more hide-
ous ornaments of the draper's wife, and
folded away her most objectionable tidies
and table-covers, replacing them with our

Penelope's Progress.

101

own pretty draperies. There were only
two pictures in the room, and as an ar-
tist I would not have parted with them
for worlds. The first was The Life of
a Fireman, which could only remind one
of the explosion of a mammoth tomato,
and the other was The Spirit of Poetry
Calling Burns from the Plough. Burns
wore white knee-breeches, military boots,
a splendid waistcoat with lace rufiies, and
carried a cocked hat. To have been so
dressed he must have known the Spirit
was intending to call. The plough-horse
was a magnificent Arabian, whose tail
swept the freshly furrowed earth. The
Spirit of Poetry was issuing from a prac-
ticable wigwam on the left, and was a
lady of such ample dimensions that no
poet would have dared say " no " when
she called him.

The dining-room was blighted by
framed photographs of the draper's re-
lations and the draper's wife's relations;
all uniformly ugly. (It seems strange
that married couples having the least
beauty to bequeath to their offspring
should persist in having the largest
families.) These ladies and gentlemen
were too numerous to remove, so we
obscured them with vines and branches ;
reflecting that we only breakfasted in the
room, and the morning meal is easily
digested when one lives in the open air.
We arranged flowers everywhere, and
bought potted plants at a little nursery
hard by. We apportioned the bedrooms,
giving Francesca the hardest bed, — as
she is the youngest, and was n't here to
choose, — me the next hardest, and Sa-
lemina the best ; Francesca the largest
looking-glass and closet, me the best
view, and Salemina the biggest bath.
We bought housekeeping stores, distrib-
uting our patronage equally between the
two grocers ; we purchased aprons and
dusters from the rival drapers, engaged
bread and rolls from the baker, milk
and cream from the plumber, who keeps
three cows, interviewed the flesher about
chops ; in fact, no young couple facing

love in a cottage ever had a busier or
happier time than we had ; and at sun-
down, when Francesca arrived, we were
in the pink of order, standing in our
own vine-covered doorway, ready to wel-
come her to Pettybaw. As to being
strangers in a strange land, we had a
bowing acquaintance with everybody on
the main street of the tiny village, and
were on terms of considerable intimacy
with half a dozen families, including
dogs and babies.

Francesca was delighted with every-
thing, from the station (Pettybaw Sands,
two miles away) to Jane Grieve's name,
which she thought as perfect, in its way,
as Susanna drum's. She had purchased
a " tirling-pin," that old-time precursor
of knockers and bells, at an antique shop
in Oban, and we fixed it on the front
door at once, taking turns at risping it,
until our own nerves were shattered, and
the draper's wife ran down the loaning
to see if we were in need of anything.
The twisted bar of iron stands out from
the door and the ring is drawn up and
down over a series of nicks, making a
rasping noise. The lovers and ghaists
in the old ballads always " tirled at the
pin," you remember ; that is, touched it
gently.

Francesca brought us letters from
Edinburgh, and what was my joy, in
opening Willie's, to learn that he begged
us to find a place in Fifeshire, and as
near St. Rules or Strathdee as conven-
ient ; for in that case he could accept
an invitation to visit his friend Robin
Anstruther, at Rowardennan Castle.

" It is not the visit at the castle I
wish so much, 'you may be sure," he
wrote, " as the fact that Lady Ardmore
will make everything pleasant for you.
You will like my friend Robin An-
struther, who is Lady Ardmore's young-
est brother, and who is going to her
to be nursed and coddled after rather
a baddish accident in the hunting-field.
He is very sweet-tempered, and will get
on well with Francesca " —

102

Penelope's Progress.

" I don't see the connection," rudely
interrupted that amiable young person.

" I suppose she has more room on her
list in the country than she had in Edin-
burgh ; but if my remembrance serves
me, she always enrolls a goodly number
of victims, whether she has any use for
them or not."

" Mr. Beresford's manners have not
been improved by his residence in Paris,"
observed Francesca, with resentment in
her tone and delight in her eye.

" Mr. Beresford's manners are always
perfect," said Salemina loyally, " and I
have no doubt that this visit to Lady
Ardmore will be extremely pleasant for
him, though very embarrassing to us. If
we are thrown into forced intimacy with
a castle " (Salemina spoke of it as if
it had fangs and a lashing tail), " what
shall we do in this draper's hut ? "

" Salemina ! " I expostulated, " the
bears will devour you as they did the
ungrateful child in the fairy-tale. I
wonder at your daring to use the word
' hut ' in connection with our wee theekit
hoosie ! "

" They will never understand that we
are doing all this for the novelty of
it," she objected. " The Scottish nobility
and gentry probably never think of rent-
ing a house for a joke. Imagine Lord
and Lady Ardmore, the young Ardmores,
Robin Anstruther, and Willie Beresford
calling upon us in this sitting-room !
We ourselves would have to sit in the
hall and talk in through the doorway."

" All will be well," Francesca assured
her soothingly. " We shall be pardoned
much because we are Americans, and
will not be expected to know any better.
Besides, the gifted Miss Hamilton is an
artist, and that covers a multitude of
sins against conventionality. When the
castle people ' tirl at the pin,' I will ap-
pear as the maid, if you like, following
your example at Mrs. Bobby's cottage in
Belvern, Pen."

" And it is n't as if there were many
houses to choose from, Salemina, nor as

if Bide-a-Wee Cottage were cheap," I
continued. " Think of the rent we pay,
and keep your head high. Remember
that the draper's wife says there is no-
thing half so comfortable in Inchcaldy,
although that is twice as large a town."

" Inchcaldy ! " ejaculated Francesca,
sitting down heavily upon the sofa and
staring at me.

" Inchcaldy, my dear, — spelled caldy,
but pronounced cawdy ; the town where
you are to take your nonsensical little
fripperies to be laundered."

" Where is Inchcaldy ? How far
away ? "

" About five miles, I believe, but a
lovely road."

" Well," she exclaimed bitterly, " of
course Scotland is a small, insignificant
country ; but, tiny as it is, it presents
some liberty of choice, and why you
need have pitched upon Pettybaw, and
brought me here, when it is only five
miles from Inchcaldy, and a lovely road
besides, is more than I can under-
stand ! "

" In what way has Inchcaldy been so
unhappy as to offend you ? •' I asked.

" It has not offended me, save that it
chances to be Ronald Macdonald's parish,
— that is all."

" Ronald Macdonald's parish ! " we
repeated automatically.

" Certainly, — you must have heard
him mention Inchcaldy ; and how queer
he will think it that I have come to Pet-
tybaw, under all the circumstances ! "

" We do not know ' all the circum-
stances,' " quoted Salemina somewhat
haughtily ; " and you must remember, my
dear, that our opportunities for speech
with Mr. Macdonald have been very
rare when you were present. For my
part, I was always in such a tremor of
anxiety during his visits lest one or both
of you should descend to blows that I
remember no details of his conversation.
Besides, we did not choose Pettybaw ;
we discovered it by chance as we were
driving from Strathdee to St. Rules.

Penelope s Progress.

103

How were we to know that it was near
this fatal Inchcaldy ? If you think it
best, we will hold no communication
with the place, and Mr. Macdonald need
never know you are here."

I thought Francesca looked rather
startled at this proposition. At all events
she said hastily, " Oh well, let it go ; we
could not avoid each other long, anyway,
though it is very awkward, of course ;
you see, we did not part friends."

" I thought I had never seen you on
more cordial terms," remarked Salemina.

" But you were n't there," answered
Francesca unguardedly.

" Were n't where ? "

" Were n't there."

" Where ? "

" At the station."

" What station ? "

" The station in Edinburgh from which
I started for the Highlands."

" You never said that he came to see
you off."

" The matter was too unimportant for
notice ; and the more I think of his being
here, the less I mind it, after all ; and so,
dull care, begone ! When I first meet
him on the sands or in the loaning, I
shall say, ' Dear me, is it Mr. Macdon-
ald ! What brought you to our quiet
hamlet ? ' (I shall put the responsibility
on him, you know.) ' That is the worst
of these small countries, — people are
continually in one another's way ! When
we part forever in America, we are able
to stay parted, if we wish.' Then he will
say, ' Quite so, quite so ; but I suppose
even you, Miss Monroe, will allow that
a minister may not move his church to
please a lady.' ' Certainly not,' I shall
reply, ' eespecially when it is Estaib-
lished ! ' Then he will laugh, and we
shall be better friends for a few mo-
ments ; and then I shall tell him my latest
story about the Scotchman who prayed,
' Lord, I do not ask that Thou shouldst
give me wealth ; only show me where it
is, and I will attend to the rest.' "

Salemina moaned at the delightful pro-

spect opening before us, while I went to
the piano and caroled impersonally: —

" Oh, wherefore did I cross the Forth,

And leave my love behind me ?
Why did I venture to the north

With one that did not mind me ?
I 'm sure I 've seen a better limb

And twenty better faces ;
But still my mind it runs on him

When 1 am at the races ! "

Francesca left the room at this, and
closed the door behind her with such
energy that the bust of Sir Walter rocked
on the hall shelf. Running upstairs she
locked herself in her bedroom, and came
down again only to help us receive Jane
Grieve, who arrived at eight o'clock.

In times of joy, Salemina, Francesca,
and I occasionally have our trifling dif-
ferences of opinion, but in hours of afflic-
tion we are as one flesh. An all-wise
Providence sent us Jane Grieve for fear
that we should be too happy in Pettybaw.
Plans made in heaven for the discipline
of sinful human flesh are always success-
ful, and this was no exception.

We had sent a " machine " from the
inn to meet her, and when it drew up at
the door we went forward to greet the
rosy little Jane of our fancy. An aged
person, wearing a rusty black bonnet and
shawl, and carrying what appeared to be
a tin cake-box and a baby's bath-tub, de-
scended rheumatically from the vehicle
and announced herself as Miss Grieve.
She was too old to call by her Christian
name, too sensitive to call by her sur-
name, so Miss Grieve she remained, as
announced, to the end of the chapter, and
our rosy little Jane died before she was
actually born. The man took her curi-
ous luggage into the kitchen, and Sale-
mina escorted her thither, while Fran-
cesca and I fell into each other's arms
and laughed hysterically.

" Nobody need tell me that she is Mrs.
M'Collop's sister's husband's niece,"
she whispered, " though she may possi-
bly be somebody's grandaunt. Does n't
she remind you of Mrs. Gummidge ? "

104

Political Inauguration of the Greater New York.

Saleraina returned in a quarter of an
hour, and sank dejectedly on the sofa.

" Run over to the inn, Francesca," she
said, " and order us bacon and eggs at
eight-thirty to-morrow morning. Miss
Grieve thinks we had better not break-
fast at home until she becomes accus-
tomed to the surroundings."

" Had we better allow her to become
accustomed to them ? " I suggested.

" She came up from Glasgow to Ed-
inburgh for the day, and went to see
Mrs. M'Collop just as our telegram ar-
rived. She was living with an ' ex-
tremely nice family ' in Glasgow, and
only broke her engagement in order to
try Fif eshire air for the summer ; so she
will remain with us as long as she is
benefited by the climate."

" Can't we pay her for a month and
send her away ? "

" How can we ? She is Mrs. M'Col-
lop's sister's husband's niece, and we in-
tend returning to Mrs. M'Collop. She

has a nice ladylike appearance, but
when she takes her bonnet off she looks
seventy years old."

" She ought to keep it off, then," re-
turned Francesca, " for she looked eighty
with it on. We shall have to soothe her
last moments, of course, and pay her
funeral expenses. Did you offer her a
cup of tea and show her the box-bed ? "

" Yes ; but she said the coals were so
poor and hard she couldna batter them
oop to start a fire the nicht, and she would
try the box-bed to see if she could sleep
in it. I am glad to remember that it
was you who telegraphed for her, Penel-
ope."

" Let there be no recriminations," I
responded ; " let us stand shoulder to
shoulder in this calamity, — is n't there
a story called Calamity Jane ? We
might live at the inn, and give her the
cottage for a summer residence, but I
utterly refuse to be parted from our cat
and the 1602 lintel."

Kate Douglas Wiggin.

(To be continued.)

POLITICAL INAUGURATION OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.

THE day after the candidate of Tam-
many Hall was chosen mayor of the
greater New York, last November, the
city turned to another event significant
of much in American civilization. Even
the first election of the reorganized and
consolidated metropolis was to many of
its citizens hardly less interesting than
the opening of the largest hotel in the
world, the most sumptuous, perhaps, of
all large hotels. An English visitor,
though he wrote with the Philistine
glories of Thames Embankment hotels
before his eyes, has ventured to give this
latest aspect of New York life the grue-
some name of Sardanapalus. No doubt
Americans have not very much to learn

from the rest of the world in the matter
of lavish display within the dwellings of
their rich men and the hotels and other
places of resort of the well-to-do. One
may now find there all that moderns know
of inlaid marbles, rugs, mural paintings,
French and German canvases, and syba-
ritic indulgences of the table. Semi-
barbarous, perhaps, it all is, and surely
far enough from the modest amenities
of hostelries like the Revere House and
residences of Washington Square a half
century ago. The vast hotel palace tow-
ering to the skies in New York does
represent, however, something more than
the mere accumulation of wealth in the
greater cities of America and its doubt-

Political Inauguration of the Greater New York.

105

ful ostentations. It exhibits superb en-
ergy and skill in mechanical arts, and an
able and now thoroughly disciplined de-
termination to triumph in the devices for
physical well-being as well as the appoint-
ments of magnificence.

Still, one's reflections on this triumph
are not altogether cheerful. So signal
an illustration of what New York can
do in hotel-keeping, coming when it did,
threw into a painful depression many
sensible citizens of New York, who loved
their city, or would love it if they could.
Its success in achievements of sheer luxu-
ry cast into deeper shade for them that
seeming failure of American democracy
to produce order, disciplined ability, and
honor in the government of cities which
the Tammany victory had just demon-
strated. That their country succeeds as
it does in grosser things brings them no
comfort, when they see, as they think,
its complete and final failure in munici-
pal administration, — a failure the more
lamentable that it comes at the time
when municipal administration has be-
come the greatest function of the modern
state.

Perhaps they ought not to care for
" abroad," but they do care for it, and
all the more when the most patriotic
pride cannot save them from humiliating
admissions. They find it irksome to hear
the British premier ask the citizens of
London, as he did a few days after the
New York election, " Do you want to be
governed like New York ? " Or to hear
another and equally important member
of the British cabinet, Mr. Chamberlain,
in his very able speech at Glasgow on the
8th of November last, explain " the whole
secret of the failure of American local
institutions," and admonish the British
workingmen that if they should aban-
don the businesslike and honorable sys-
tem upon which — so he declared, and
seemingly without danger of contradic-
tion — British public work is conduct-
ed, they might " fall at last as low " as

1 London Spectator of October 30, 1897.

their-" cousins unfortunately have done."
Since they had agreed with English jour-
nals, before the result, that a Tammany
victory would " make of New York a rot-
ten, hopeless sink, . . . whose existence
would prove the standing insoluble pro-
blem of American life," 1 they cannot,
with any satisfaction to themselves, take
refuge in belligerent anglophobia when
they read, after the result, that it casts
" a lurid glow on the conditions of Amer-
ican institutions, and the failure of the
world's most democratic people to solve
a problem vital to the well-being of so-
ciety." Americans whose buoyancy has
survived Lecky's powerful summing up
against democracy read with a pang the
foreign assertions that now " democratic
ideals . . . must be relegated to the lim-
bo of exploded fancies and buried hopes,
whither so many fond illusions of the
enthusiast have been consigned." 2

There is about it all a wearing kind
of grief, such as men feel when their
religious convictions are undermined.
Every one knows that democracy is to
prevail in the United States ; every one
knows that there will be no turning back.
This much is inexorable. So when those
who have doubted the beneficence of de-
mocracy now have their doubts turned
into disbelief, and when those who have
disbelieved now find a complete demon-
stration of the evils of democratic gov-
ernment, the air becomes heavy with po-
litical melancholy. The century is in-
deed ending in sorrow.

Is it not worth while to ask whether
all this be justified ? Did not the future
of their free institutions seem, to patri-
otic and intelligent Americans, to be quite
as gloomy, to say the least, during the
half dozen years after the revolutionary
war, and just before the splendid success
of the federal Constitution ? Were not
Americans more humiliated at the bar of
foreign opinion and of their own con-
science by the triumph of the slave pow-
er and the seeming meanness of our na-

2 London Economist of October 30, 1897.

106

Political Inauguration of the Greater New York.

tional career in the few years before the
noble awakening of 1861 ? Is there any-
thing to-day quite as sodden and hopeless
as the triumph of public crime in New
York, and the acquiescent submission
of its reputable classes, when, in 1870,
Tweed carried the city by a great ma-
jority, — and this but a few months prior
to the uprising of its citizens in 1871 ?
If wise Americans ought not to shut
their eyes to the public evils from which
their great cities suffer, and which have
made urban growth seem to be in many
respects a calamity, ought they, on the
other hand, to help increase the self-in-
dulgent temper of inefficient pessimism,
of which we have quite too much ? Is
not the large and true test of the re-
sult of the election in the greater New
York the character of the general pro-
gress which it indicates, rather than the
mere inferiority of the municipal admin-
istration of New York for the next four
years to what it might have been had
the election gone differently ? I ven-
ture to say that when the election is
treated in this way, when it is rationally
compared with the past, there appears
in it a real progress in American poli-
tics towards better, that is to say towards
more vigorous and honest and enlight-
ened administration. No doubt another
opportunity to reach an immediate and
practical good has been lost, and lam-
entably ; and we are all growing older.
But, on the other hand, far more plain-
ly than ever before do our municipal
politics show a powerful and wholesome
tendency.

Let us first look at the present loss.
Many of the pictures drawn of Ameri-
can " machines " of every political name
fail of their effect because some of the
colors used are impossible. The pictures
are therefore believed to be altogether
false by many who know from a per-
sonal knowledge that they are false in
part. It was difficult to indict a whole
people ; it is no less difficult and unrea-
sonable to indict a majority of the vot-

ers of New York. Every sensible man
practically familiar with the situation
knows that the plurality which has re-
turned Tammany Hall to power includes
thousands of honest, good citizens, and
even citizens both intelligent and high-
minded ; that under its restored admin-
istration some things — probably many
things — will be well and fairly done ;
that the masses of its voters have not
deliberately intended- to surrender their
city to corruption or incompetency ; that
even among its politicians are men whose
instincts are sound and honorable. The
picture might as well be made true ; it
is surely dark enough without exaggera-
tion. For, after making just allowance,
it cannot be denied that nine tenths of
the organized jobbery of the city sought
Tammany success either directly, or
through the indirect but no less practical
alliance of the Republican organization,
— a machine more Anglo-Saxon, per-
haps, in its equipment, but not a whit
better in morals, than its rival. Tam-
many Hall will in the future appoint to
office some men having energy, skill, and
character fit for their places as it has done
in the past ; but so, no doubt, will it put
into the hands of brutal, reckless, igno-
rant, and grossly dishonest men an enor-
mous and varied power over their fellow
citizens. The scandals and crimes of the
past will not return in full measure, for
the rising standard of public morality af-
fects even political machines. We are
bound, however, to assume that they
will return in a most corrupting and in-
jurious measure.

For the argument of the reformers, it
is unnecessary to deny that the Tamma-
ny candidates for the two great offices
of mayor and comptroller are personal-
ly well disposed ; for it is notorious —
there was not the slightest concealment
of the fact during the Tammany cam-
paign — that they were not chosen for
their own equipment in ability, in expe-
rience for the duties of really great and
critical offices requiring statesmanship

Political Inauguration of the Greater New York.

107

of the highest order, or in public confi-
dence earned by any past public service.
As sometimes, though very rarely, has
happened with successful candidates of
the machine, it is possible that after all
they may have the necessary ability, and
may have the sense of right and force
of character to use it in the public in-
terest. If that turn out to be the case,
those who selected them will be as much
shocked as the community will be re-
joiced. They were chosen from among
the large body of men counted upon to
do absolutely, and without troublesome
protest, the will of the powerful politi-
cians, with no official responsibility, who
nominated them, and who are tolerably
skillful in judgment of this kind of hu-
man nature. But subject to that condi-
tion Tammany Hall preferred for candi-
dates men having as much personal and
popular respect, or at least as little pop-
ular dislike or disrespect, as public men
could have who should seem fully to
meet so unworthy a test.

Nor is it helpful to sketch with in-
credible lines the politcians who made
these nominations. It would be unjust
and untrue to say of all of them, as is
sometimes said truly of powerful politi-
cians, that conscious concern for the
honor or welfare of their community,
distinct from sheerly selfish personal in-
tent, enters their heads as rarely as a
pang for a dead private soldier struck
the heart of Napoleon. It is both just
and true, however, to say of many of
those politicians that they never know
that conscious concern. The first and
supremely dominant motive of most of
them — as the most generous observer
is compelled to concede — is personal
gain and advantage, with no more re-
gard for the trust obligations of public
life than is coerced by the fear of public
opinion, or rather by the fear that such
public opinion may become dangerous to
their private or public safety. They are
quite as bad in this respect as the mem-
bers of the cabal of Charles II., or the

Loughboroughs and Newcastles of a cen-
tury later, or even as the objects of the
Crimean investigation of 1855. Careers
like theirs have made the personal cor-
ruption and incompetence of aristocratic
government, and its disloyalty to public
welfare, primary object lessons in the
politics of generations far from ancient,
and every land lying between the Atlan-
tic and the Caucasus.

It would not be just to say that the
Tammany campaign was one of pretense,
even skillful pretense. The absence of
necessity for pretense in that campaign
ought of itself to arouse a deep anxiety.
Except now and then in a perfunctory
mention of tax rates or inadequate school
accommodation and the like, and except,
of course, in the traditional forms of
speech about the rights of the people,
Tammany Hall was tolerably frank. It
deliberately refused to virtue the tribute
of the cant that it too desired those bet-
ter things which the " reformers " af-
fected to seek. Not only was it daunt-
less under the flaming exhibition of its
police and police courts made in 1894,
but it stood with explicit and bad cour-
age upon that very record which had
received a damning popular judgment
not only in the decent homes of New
York, but at the polls of the city. Its ora-
tors admitted, or rather they insisted,
that the powers of the new municipality
would be and ought to be used for the
benefit of its organization ; nor was it
seriously denied, or thought necessary to
deny seriously, that they would also and
largely be used for the personal gain of
a very few men. As to that, it seemed
a sufficient answer to make it clear that
if the Tammany victory meant great
personal gain to a few men, it likewise
meant lesser gain to large numbers of
men throughout the city, who would find
their advantage in violations of law and
in sacrifices of public interest.

Since, then, the successful candidates
were chosen as they were ; since the
worst forces of the metropolis earnestly

108

Political Inauguration of the Greater New York.

promoted their success ; since such are
the ideals, the character, and the prin-
ciples of the powerful but irresponsible
politicians who have chosen them, and
who, ten chances to one, will absolutely
control them ; and since they have been
chosen with no embai-rassing public cpm-
mittal to any specific measure of econo-
my or efficiency, it is no doubt difficult
to hope that their administration will be
either enlightened or useful. New York
seems doomed to a low standard of civic
administration till the end of 1901.

Nor was this all the grief of the " re-
formers." Most of them suffered keen
disappointment. And indeed there was
good reason to hope at least for a better
result. The greater New York had be-
fore it an exalting opportunity. This
was to be the first election since the con-
stitutional separation of municipal from
national elections, and from state elec-
tions except in the choice of judges and
of members of the lower house of the
legislature. Public attention was almost
exclusively directed, so far as law could
direct it, to the welfare of the city.
Then there was the consolidation which
interested the world ; the election was to
be on a grander scale than any city had
yet known, — it surely must touch the
imagination as never before. Whatever
the faults of the charter, it did create the
second municipality of the world in pop-
ulation and in wealth, — a city unsur-
passed the world over in natural advan-
tages, and in the energy, intelligence,
and morality of its citizens. It was not
unnatural for reformers to think that the
inspiration of all this must reach and
control most citizens.

The elections from 1893 to 1896 had
shown widespread independence among
the Democrats, who constituted the great
majority of the voters of New York.
All Republicans, or nearly all, it was
assumed, would be enemies of Tammany
Hall. Besides, it seemed too plain to be
forgotten by the builders and mechanics
of New York, its manufacturers and the

great classes engaged in transportation
on its harbor and bounding rivers, that
their interests required a higher standard
of administration than either political
machine could or would give. The news-
paper press, the pulpit, and the chief re-
presentatives of the business and social
life of the city stood overwhelmingly for
the new departure. Then there was
great hope — and, as it turned out, not
without reason — that Tammany would
not completely hold the poorer quarters
of the city, as it had held them for years.
Since its defeat in 1894, less fortunate
citizens, under Mayor Strong, had se-
cured a far larger share of the benefits
of good administration than ever before ;
and the benefits were such as could not
be overlooked even by a casual passer-by.
Under Colonel Waring's vigorous and
popular control of the street-cleaning and
the wise distribution of the still meagre
provision for good paving, many densely
crowded districts had lost their aspect
of public squalor.

Moreover, much had been done at the
very foundation of public sentiment by
the University Settlement and other noble
and thriving societies. James B. Rey-
nolds and his associates had been admi-
rably successful in the popularization of
sound politics. For a full year the dis-
cussions of the plan of a greater New
York had been so incessant and so elo-
quent that it seemed incredible that po-
litical light should not have permeated
the entire city. In short, it was per-
fectly reasonable to believe that, what-
ever might be the difficulties of the new
charter, the popular intelligence was at
last alert, the popular conscience at last
deeply stirred and responsive to popular
feeling. The reformers were fond of
saying that the revolution in municipal
politics was at last upon us. The seem-
ing reasonableness of all this hope added
material bitterness to the result.

Even this does not sum up the disap-
pointment. It grew more poignant when
the reformers recalled the immediate

Political Inauguration of the Greater New York.

109

thing which the city rejected. It could
have had its executive administration in
the hands of Seth Low, and its financial
administration in the hands of Charles
S. Fairchild. Those men represented,
in their training, their careers, and their
ideals, the very best of American public
life ; and no public life in the world has
anything better. Mr. Fairchild had held
with distinguished honor the high office
of Secretary of the Treasury of the
United States, and had been attorney-
general of the state. He had exhib-
ited courage and energy of the first
order as a political leader. The candi-
dates represented a rational measure of
enthusiasm. They believed that public
life could be made better. They believed
that enormous improvement could be
made, and made now, in the administra-
tion of American cities. Without this
belief nothing very good was likely to
be accomplished. But further, they had
demonstrated by practical experience in
great affairs that they were not visiona-
ries ; that they could, as well as would,
improve the standard of administration.
The problems of that administration,
ready for immediate solution, and capa-
ble of solution by Mr. Low and Mr.
Fairchild, were admirably presented in
the brief declaration of the Citizens'
Union. Its members proposed to make
of municipal administration a business,
to be carried on with the zeal and loy-
alty and skill which a highly competent
man brings to the transaction of his own
business. They were ready to continue
the substitution of the best of modern
pavements for those which had so long
disgraced the city. They were ready to
enforce sanitary regulations that are of
real consequence to all, but of vital con-
sequence to the least fortunate in a large
city. They proposed the establishment
of public lavatories, the almost complete
absence of which in New York seems
to any one familiar with great foreign
cities an incredible and stupid disgrace.
They proposed a rational treatment of

the problem of parks and of transit fa-
cilities. They gave a pledge, which
everybody knew to be honest, that pub-
lic franchises would not be surrendered
into the hands of private persons ; that
the city would not, as it had done in
the past, give up the common property
and profit of all in the streets to the
enrichment of a few. Above all, they
promised — and everybody knew they
would keep the promise — that if the
great powers of the mayoralty and comp-
trollership should come to them, those
powers would be used solely in the pub-
lic interest, without that personal prosti-
tution of the offices of the city to which
we have become so lamentably used, or
that political prostitution of them to the
real or fancied exigencies of national
politics.

We have never known a more cred-
itable campaign than theirs. If it did
not command a majority of the votes, it
did command a substantial and univer-
sal respect. It rendered a lasting ser-
vice to American politics. Ordinarily
the defeated head of a ticket has lost his
" availability ; " but to-day Seth Low,
it is agreeable to see, occupies a more
enviable position than he has ever held,
or than is held by any other American
now active in politics. He has the de-
served good fortune to stand before the
country for a cause which, to the aver-
age American, is largely embodied in
his person. What was believed before
his nomination was confirmed at the elec-
tion : he was plainly the strongest can-
didate who could have been chosen to
represent his cause. He polled 40,000
votes more than his ticket ; that is to
say. there were that number of citizens
to whom the cause meant Seth Low,, and
no one else, or who were willing to leave
the tickets of their respective machines
only on the mayoralty, that they might
cast their votes for him. He has come
out of the campaign far stronger than he
entered it.

So much for the disappointments of

110

Political Inauguration of the Greater New York.

the election. There were, on the other
hand, some conditions recognized in ad-
vance as distinctly unfavorable to suc-
cess. For several reasons, it was seen,
— and upon this Tammany Hall openly
counted, — the test at the polls would
not represent the full strength of the re-
form cause. The trend of independent
sentiment in New York was distinctly
away from the Republican party ; and
the independent Democrats had become
so hostile to what they considered to be
Republican misdoing that they were ani-
mated by a really intense desire to cast
the most effective vote against the Re-
publican ticket. For months before the
election of 1897, the temper of even
the most liberal of the Gold Democrats
was raw. They were inclined — doubt-
less too much inclined — to forget mis-
behavior of their own party. But this
was natural. In 1896 they had made
serious political sacrifices by repudiation
of the Chicago candidates and platform.
To most of them opposition to a protec-
tive tariff was the first political cause
save one, the preservation of the finan-
cial honor of the country by a firm
adherence to the gold standard. They
were glad to be known as Gold Demo-
crats. The Republican administration,
though it came to Washington by their
votes, promptly treated them, as they
thought, with a sort of contumely. They
saw no effort made to establish the
national finances upon the sound basis
of intrinsic and universally recognized
value ; instead they were affronted by the
Wolcott mission to Europe in the inter-
est of the free coinage of silver. The
administration, they felt, had left them
little party excuse for supporting it.
The Dingley bill seemed to them the
sum of tariff iniquities. And then, de-
scending from greater things to less, the
Democratic federal office-holders who
were not protected by the civil service
law, and who in 1896 had stood for
sound money, were treated in the old
prescriptive fashion.

If the Republican national adminis-
tration had become obnoxious to Demo-
crats of this temper, the Republican ad-
ministration at Albany since January 1,
1897, seemed nothing less than detest-
able. In the opinion of the independent
body of voters in the state, nothing
worse, nothing more barbarous or ig-
norant, had been known before in the
executive control of the state. The gov-
ernor's appointment of men of scanda-
lous record to great places, and his deter-
mined and measurably successful attempt
to defeat the civil service reform article
of the new constitution, had gone a long
way toward making it seem the first
political duty of good citizens to punish
him and the party organization which
stood behind him. How could this be
done, according to American political
usage, except by voting " the Demo-
cratic ticket " ? And this, under the in-
fluence of such real or fancied wrongs
and affronts, independent Democrats felt
an eager desire to do.

The Republican machine in New York
contributed all in its power to augment
this feeling. No defeat of Tammany
Hall was possible, as it well knew, un-
less with the support of 70,000 or 80,000
Democrats. Yet it industriously made
it difficult for the most liberal of Demo-
crats to vote against the nominee of their
party convention, if that vote would add
to the probability of Republican success.
It is, or ought to be, a political axiom
that a political party should carefully
avoid the hostility of strong feeling upon
any subject irrelevant to the matter in
hand. Such a course is foolish in the
extreme ; and there has been no better
illustration of the folly than in the be-
havior of the Republican machine. The
Republican convention declared that the
" one great issue before the people at
this time " — that is to say, in the mayor-
alty campaign of New York — was " the
issue created by the Chicago platform."
It presented candidates who, if they
were chosen, could have in their official

Political Inauguration of the Greater New York.

Ill

relations no national function whatever,
whose measures and official acts could
be in no way related to the tariff or cur-
rency or foreign affairs. Could anything,
therefore, be more grotesque than the
following sentences in the platform upon
which General Tracy was nominated?
" We indorse the St. Louis platform.
. . . We indorse the patriotic and suc-
cessful administration of William Mc-
Kinley. He was truly the ' advance
agent of prosperity.' We congratulate
the people upon the passage of a Repub-
lican protective tariff bill. . . . No duty
can be so obvious as that of the people
of this commercial city to sustain the
party which has so completely and so
surely rescued the country from the finan-
cial depression into which it had been
plunged by Democratic follies."

To the intense desire of every Demo-
crat to strike the most effective blow
possible at the Republican party was due,
no doubt, a material part of the Tam-
many plurality. This, however, is only
palliation. To vote for the Tammany
candidate on this account, rather than
for Seth Low, may have been natural ;
but it was the height of unreason to vote
for one wrong because of irritation at
another wrong. An impeachment of de-
mocracy for folly and incompetence is
hardly less formidable than for moral
wrong.

Before proceeding to judgment, how-
ever, we have to consider temporary con-
ditions which have prevailed in New
York, which had nothing to do with de-
mocracy, but which enormously helped on
the result. The first of these was its cos-
mopolitan character. Of its present pop-
ulation, one third are foreign-born, and
another third are children of foreign-born
parents. Of the third who are Ameri-
cans, a very large proportion came to
New York after reaching manhood. Still,
it is not the large existing Irish or Ger-
man or Scandinavian population which
is the serious factor, or even the continu-
ous addition of the distressed and de-

moralized from foreign lands. It is prob-
able that either the Americans, or the
Irish, or the Germans, or the Scandina-
vians, by themselves and separate from
the others, would make a far better
city government. The European or
American cities which are held up as
models to New York have homogeneous
populations ; the foreigners are only vis-
itors or small colonies having no share
in political power. New York, in reality,
consists of several great communities,
essentially foreign to one another, which
share the government between them with
many struggles and rivalries. Every
municipal ticket must have at least its
American and Irish and German candi-
dates. For a complete union of these
various strains of population we need
not years, but generations. Mere birth
and residence within the limits of New
York do not give that root in the soil
which makes the citizen a firm and use-
ful member of the community. He does
not belong to the whole city if he be one
of a body of citizens foreign to all other
citizens.

Venerable in years as New York is
coming to be, it still retains many fea-
tures of a shifting camp. Its population
comes and goes. There is within its lim-
its not a single square mile, or probably
half that territory, a majority of whose
inhabitants or of their parents were there
twenty-five years ago. Political rela-
tions, social relations, neighborhood re-
lations, have been changing with a ra-
pidity unknown in the great urban
communities of western Europe. This
condition is highly inconsistent with good
politics or sound and steady public sen-
timent, whatever the form of govern-
ment. If it be said that in Philadelphia
and in other cities where the American
population is preponderant there is great
corruption, it must be answered that in
them precisely the same condition ex-
ists, although to a smaller degree. In
Philadelphia the overpowering and con-
spicuously present interests of the pro-

112

Political Inauguration of the Greater New York.

tective system have stifled the local con-
science. There patriotism becomes " the
last refuge of a scoundrel." Sound local
politics depend upon the kind of con-
tinuous local life illustrated in quarters
of London which, a century ago, were
eligible for superior residences, and are
still eligible, or in the quarters of what
are called lower middle class residences,
where one still sees the house-fronts and
methods of living described in Dickens's
earlier novels, and the children and
grandchildren of his characters.

A further demoralizing influence which
has prevented any municipal election in
New York from fairly and directly re-
presenting its public sentiment has been
its enervating dependence upon the le-
gislature at Albany. The great majori-
ty of that body are ignorant of the city.
Their habits and prejudices are foreign
to it ; and they look with more or less
animosity upon its large accumulations
of wealth. The city has been ruled by
special legislation, — and this, it is lam-
entable to say, with the moral support
of much of its intelligence. Its inhabit-
ants have been trained to suppose the
true cure of a political evil to be an ap-
peal, not to political bodies or forces at
home, but to legislation in a city one
hundred and fifty miles distant. The
charter of greater New York is bad
enough in this respect, but the charter
under which New York has lived for
generations has been even worse. Nearly
all its provisions have been in perpetual
legislative flux ; its amendment has usu-
ally been unrelated to the public senti-
ment of the city, and has frequently vio-
lated it. No system can be imagined
better fitted to destroy intelligent, popu-
lar self-reliance, — and this whether the
distant power be democratic, or aristo-
cratic, or autocratic.

To all of these conditions which have
made popular elections in New York city
unrepresentative of the ideal of govern-
ment held by its electors — to all of these
conditions seriously inconsistent with any

good politics — have for generations
been added the intensely and almost ex-
clusively commercial and business tem-
per of its population. It has been to the
last degree difficult to secure from its
business men systematic, continuous, and
unselfish attention to public affairs ; such
attention, for instance, as is given by the
same classes to the government of Ham-
burg, or as has been given, even in New
York, within the past generation by two
very remarkable men, Samuel J. Tilden
and Abram S. Hewitt. The situation
has been little helped by the sporadic
participation in machine politics of a
few rich men, — generally young men,
— whose notion of public life is the mere
possession and prestige of official title,
rather than any moral or real political
power, or any constructive or useful ex-
ercise of public influence. By their re-
fusal to stand for any good cause except
as permitted by the " boss," they have
made contemptible the politics of the
jeunesse doree and the " business man in
politics." On the other hand, the ad-
mirable body of younger men who have
come into activity in New York and
Brooklyn within ten or fifteen years have
not constituted a political force contin-
uous or disciplined, until very recently,
although more than once they have done
signal service, like the establishment by
Theodore Roosevelt, when a member of
the lower house at Albany, of the mayor's
sole responsibility for appointments of
departmental heads. These, however,
are exceptions. The complete separation
of political life from business and com-
mercial life has been the rule, and in a
modern democracy nothing is more in-
consistent with good administration.

We are looking a long way back, but
the efficient causes of what is discredit-
able in the New York election are a
long way back. The result was deter-
mined principally by deep and slowly
changing conditions, not by skill or man-
agement or bribery on one side, or by
lack of organization on the other. De-

Political Inauguration of the Greater New York.

113

mocratic government in a city means
free elections by its citizens, but it does
not imply or necessitate incompetence
or dishonor. The result was due not
to the democracy of the city, but to its
shifting and camplike character, the
heterogeneity of its population, and the
lack of political continuity in its life, —
all necessarily incident to its enormous
and rapid growth, while it has been the
entrance gate of America for all the
races of men, and to a signal indiffer-
ence to the government of the city on
the part of its business and representa-
tive men. The not unfriendly com-
ments of friends in England and the
patriotic fears of those of our own house-
hold have no deep or permanent foun-
dation in fact. Democracy certainly is
not responsible for the urban phenomena
of Constantinople or the corruptions and
oppressions of great Russian cities. On
the other hand, municipal corruption and
incompetence subsist and have subsisted
with an abiding and homogeneous popu-
lation governed autocratically or by an
" upper class." Democracy was not re-
sponsible for local administration in Eng-
land one or two centuries ago. In Eng-
lish cities of to-day, however, where the
population is abiding and homogeneous,
and where governmental power is almost
sheerly democratic, we see municipal
administration at a very high point of
honor and efficiency. So in many of
the New England cities and some of the
smaller cities of the South we see far
less disparity between the standards of
public and private life than in New York.
Not that the democracy of their govern-
ment is less, but that the steadiness and
homogeneity of their populations are
greater.

The one and perhaps the only feature
characteristic of American democracy
which tends to inefficient and corrupt
municipal administration is the dispar-
agement of public life which has gone
so far since the civil war. This has
been a national misfortune. But its in-

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 483. 8

fluence is seen no more in cities than
in other political communities. It has
been, to say the least, quite as conspicu-
ous a feature of administration at Wash-
ington as at New York. This of itself
is a large subject, which can be dealt
with now but casually. While the popu-
lar ideal of a man qualified to hold an
important public office, requiring the
most powerful and disciplined facul-
ties, is the •• plain man, like all the rest
of us," one out of ten thousand or a
million ; while it is left to private cor-
porations and great business interests
to observe the rule that exceptional gifts
and training in chief administrative of-
ficers are necessary to the safety and
profit of the business, we must expect
public administration to be on a stan-
dard lower than the administration of
private affairs.

A labor representative in the British
Parliament was quoted by Joseph Cham-
berlain, in his recent speech at Glasgow,
as saying that nobody is worth more
than £500 a year. On this text Mr.
Chamberlain, not without reason, at-
tributed what he called " the failure of
American local institutions," first to the
jealousy of superior qualifications and
reward in the great and critical places
of government, and, next, to a tendency
to give compensation far beyond value
in lower and more numerous places.
The result of this tendency, he as-
serted, is to create a privileged class of
workmen, to whom public place is in
itself a distinct advantage, instead of
letting them share the conditions of other
men doing, in private life, the same
amount and character of work. The
jealousy of personal superiority in places
of superior power and responsibility in-
evitably leads, on the other hand, to the
exclusion from those places of the very
talents which are necessary to the trans-
action of the business. Mr. Chamber-
lain acutely pointed out that the chief
sufferers from this system are the masses
of wage-earners not in public employ, —

114

Political Inauguration of the Greater New York.

they standing in the position of the share-
holders, and not employees, of a pri-
vate corporation, the principal officers
of which are incompetent, and the ma-
jority of whose employees are overpaid.
No doubt the inadequacy of compensa-
tion in more important governmental
offices as compared with private empioy-
ment is really injurious to the standard
of public service. Private employment
withdraws ability from public life. It is
common nowadays in the United States
for public place to be valued by really
able men as a useful and legitimate
means of advertisement of their fitness
for great private trusts. But so strong is
the attractiveness of public service where
it really brings both honor and power
that, in our country at least, the inade-
quacy of compensation is not very disas-
trous. The really serious thing is the
sort of disparaging contempt with which
the exercise of great powers of govern-
ment is treated. The disparagement of
public life ought to be the topic of many
essays and sermons. But the evil is not
peculiar to cities.

So much for the darker side of the
New York election. So much by way
of explanation of the result in past causes
whose effects we may believe are only
temporary. Are we not bound to turn
to the other side, and ask, What is the
promise for the future ?

In the first place, the conditions for
good politics have at last begun to mend.
The population of New York grows more
homogeneous. The addition from for-
eign immigration has long been relatively
declining. The proportion of native-
born citizens has already increased, and
will henceforth go on increasing. The
second generation begins to be American
in type ; the third generation is quite
American. The foreign strains of popu-
lation mingle more and more. If the
children of German parents learn Ger-
man, it is not their vernacular. The
American politics of children of parents1
born in Ireland become less dependent

upon the wrongs of that afflicted land.
There are districts of the greater New
York which begin to have a settled neigh-
borhood feeling ; that condition will rap-
idly increase. The dependence of New
York upon Albany legislation is not, alas,
at an end ; but the discussions over the
new charter, and the great increase in the
numerical weight of the city, in the legis-
lature, will make that interference more
difficult. New York is certain in the
future to be more jealous of its own
autonomy. Public sentiment, irregular,
imperfect, sometimes unreasonable, as it
is and always will be, grows steadier and
more intelligent. Neither Tammany
Hall nor any other political machine can
escape its influence. The pavements of
New York have begun to be better ; the
streets have begun to be cleaner ; the im-
provement will not stop, but will go on ;
and every well-paved and well-cleaned
street is the best kind of political mis-
sionary. We are a vast distance from
the filthy New York described by Mrs.
Trollope and Charles Dickens. Sanitary
administration has been improved. The
beneficent work of organizations like the
tenement-house commission has grown
remarkably fruitful ; and it gives noble
promise for the future. The discredit-
able poverty of New York and Brook-
lyn in their provision of parks, and es-
pecially of small parks near populations
which cannot resort to distant pleasure-
grounds, has at last yielded to better
ideals. There is nothing more cheering
in New York to-day than Mulberry Bend
Park and the streets around it, which
have taken the place of the unutterable
squalor and degradation of the Five
Points of one or two generations ago.
The city is better, far better lighted.
The supply of water is better. If there
be more gross immorality in evidence
than there was in the village days of
New York, the increase is not due to the
general deterioration of the body politic
or of private morals, but to the inevitable
conditions of crowded populations and

Political Inauguration of the Greater New York.

115

resorts of strangers, — conditions which
produce precisely the same result, and
sometimes a more aggravated result, in
London. It may be that property and
life are not safer in New York than they
were sixty years ago, although about that
much might be said. But without any
doubt property and life are far safer, and
the administration of justice is more trust-
worthy, than they were in New York thir-
ty years ago, at the time when its suffer-
ing from the shifting and varied character
of its population had reached its height.
Indeed, if the well-groomed citizen of
New York who indulges in the luxury
of the laudator temporis acti will ask
himself whether, on the whole, the aver-
age private life of the average honest in-
dustrious citizen of New York in almost
any calling be not better to-day, in all
respects of well-being which its govern-
ment can affect, than it was a generation
ago, he will, I am sure, answer in the
affirmative. If he do not, he is a very
ignorant man. And pray what higher
test is there of the merit of political in-
stitutions than the well-being of average
private life, than the proof that, if gov-
ernment have not produced such well-
being, it has at least protected and per-
mitted it ? Is not this the real, even the
sole end, which justifies political insti-
tutions ? By what other fruit shall we
know them ? There is, perhaps, greater
moral depression in our time, but that
belongs to every advance in the ideals of
life. It is not that things are worse, but
that people require better things.

We now come more specifically to
the question, What is the tendency to
greater good or greater evil exhibited by
the New York election ? It can be an-
swered easily and surely. Beyond rea-
sonable doubt it showed a remarkable
and cheering improvement in the politi-
cal temper of the metropolis. The mu-
nicipal election of 1897 was the most
signal demonstration ever known in its
history of the growth of rational voting.
The antiphony between rival political

bodies, neither of them observing any
very high standard, which has been the
type of its politics, has at last begun to
yield to a new and dominant note. The
interest of the commercial and business
classes in local politics has enormously
increased. From among the masses of
hard-worked labor there has come a new
and wholesome influence represented ef-
fectively, even if without much theoretic
logic, by the candidacy of Henry George.
The feature of the result first noticed,
and the only feature thought of by many,
is the plurality of 80,000 votes by which
Tammany Hall, representing the " regu-
lar democracy," elected its ticket. Yet
this is really far less significant than
the fact that in November, 1897, with
all the political trend in favor of the
ticket of the Democratic party, the Tam-
many vote was a minority. Of the
510,000 votes for mayor, its candidate
received but 234,000 as against 276,000.
Not, indeed, that one must count all the
other votes as votes for good administra-
tion. Of the 100,000 votes cast for the
Republican candidate, it is the plain
truth to say that a large number were as
really cast for bad administration as
were any votes of Tammany Hall.
Whether the Republican or Tammany
proportion of voting for a low standard
were the greater is of little moment. If
we content ourselves with the 151,000
votes for Mr. Low and the 22,000 votes
for the younger George, being together
173,000, as representing an enlightened
determination to vote for methods of
municipal administration intrinsically
good, there is reason for encouragement.
Never before in our generation has a
movement without the organized support
of one of the two national parties had
so great or nearly so great a vote as that
given to Mr. Low. That his ticket should
not only be second in the field, but should
have a support much stronger than the
Republican machine ticket, of itself de-
monstrates the improvement in political
ideals held by the citizens of New York.

116

Political Inauguration of the Greater New York.

Other figures are significant. The
vote in the greater New York for Judge
Parker, the Democratic candidate for
chief judge of the state, was about 280,-
000, but the vote for the Tammany
candidate for mayor was only 234,000.
About 46,000 Democrats, who otherwise
adhered to their party, repudiated Tam-
many control upon the municipal ques-
tion. Perhaps a third as many more
voted the city ticket alone, ignoring their
state party ticket, so that in all probably
60,000 Democrats voted for Mr. Low.
His Republican vote was about 90,000.
Nearly one half of the total Republican
vote of the greater New York, and more
than one fifth of the Democratic vote, was
cast for sound municipal administration.

New York has not known in our day
another such vote for that cause. There
had not been any serious candidacy since
the civil war, except in alliance with one
or the other of the political machines.
Jn 1892, within the limits of former New
York, the Tammany candidate received
173,500 votes as against 98,000 cast for
the Republican candidate. With a large
increase in the total vote, the Tammany
candidate in the same boroughs received
in 1897 only about 144,000 votes. The
progress of voting in the borough of
Brooklyn is no less encouraging. The
Tammany candidate for mayor received
there about 76,000 votes as against 98,000
votes cast for the Democratic ticket in
1892. The 1897 vote was smaller rela-
tively to the total vote than the vote of
the Brooklyn machine in 1893, when it
suffered an overwhelming defeat inci-
dent to its complete discredit, nearly one
third of the Democrats voting against
it. In 1897 the Tammany vote in Brook-
lyn was a minority vote, the vote for Mr.
Low and the Republican candidate to-
gether outnumbering the Tammany vote
by upwards of 25,000.

When examined in greater detail, the
Seth Low vote gives more specific pro-
mise to those who intend to persist in
political well-doing. He received more

votes than either of the other candidates
in several uptown districts including a
marked preponderance of middle class
citizens. Far more significant, however,
and a very rainbow of promise, is the
vote of nearly 15,000 which he received
in the densely populated districts south
of Fourteenth Street. In the fifth as-
sembly district, stretching back from the
East River between Stanton and Grand
streets, a region of tenement houses hav-
ing a large foreign population, he re-
ceived about 2700 as against 3000 for
the Tammany candidate and 1800 for the
Republican candidate. In the Brooklyn
borough his vote in wards along the wa-
ter-front, where the tenement population
is large, was very considerable ; while in
the districts of modest two-story houses,
his vote was far larger than that of either
of the other candidates, or even of both
together.

These facts bring their real encourage-
ment, however, only when they are com-
pared with the past. In the former city
of New York, the borough of Manhattan,1
we can only make an inference ; for as the
vote for good local administration has al-
ways been merged with the machine vote
on one side or the other, we have no pre-
cise measure, though the inference is a
reasonably sure one. Such was the case
when the Tammany Hall of Tweed was
overthrown in 1871, and the Tammany
Hall of Croker in 1894. But in the
Brooklyn borough there had been at least
two such tests. In 1885, at the expira-
tion of Mr. Low's four years of mayor-
alty, each of the two machines presented
a situation which ought to have been un-
endurable to good citizens. A third nomi-
nation was made by citizens, which re-
ceived 13,600 votes as against 49,000
for the candidate of the Democratic ma-
chine and 37,000 for the candidate of the
Republican machine. The 13,600 votes
were probably made up of about 4600

1 The territory now called the borough of
Bronx became a part of New York by several
recent annexations.

Political Inauguration of the Greater New York.

117

Democrats and 9000 Republicans. In-
stead of being encouraged by so substan-
tial a beginning, the movement of the citi-
zens fell to pieces, partly perhaps because
of the real temporary improvement which
it compelled in machine management on
both sides. Ten years later, in 1895, a
strictly Democratic revolt was organized,
and a municipal ticket was then run, not
with the idea of securing the obvious im-
possibility of an election as against the
two machine candidates, but to recom-
mence the definite assertion that Ameri-
can cities must have local government
which is good in itself, and must not be
shut up to a mere choice between two
evils. The candidate of the revolting
Brooklyn Democrats received, and with-
out material Republican support, up-
wards of 9500 votes. There were, per-
haps, as many more citizens who would
have preferred his success, but who felt
that they could not " throw away their
votes." This modern and better view
did not then have the sympathy of more
than 20,000 voters in Brooklyn. In
1897 precisely the same sentiment was
supported by upwards of 65,000 votes, al-
most twice as many as were given the Re-
publican machine, and less than 12,000
below the number cast for the Tammany
candidate.

In view of the whole situation, the vote
in the greater New York for the Low
ticket in 1897 must be accounted the
most encouraging vote ever cast in a
great American city on the exclusive
proposition that the city ought to be
well and honestly governed. Machine
politics in the United States has not re-
ceived a more serious blow than the
treatment accorded the Republican can-
didate for mayor, although he was him-
self a man of the highest character, of
distinguished ability, and of long and
valuable public service. But for his
alliance he would have been worthy of
the mayoralty of the city. The 60,000
Democrats and the 90,000 Republicans
who voted for Seth Low are a reasonably

solid and sure foundation of the best hope
for the future.

If it be a time for anxiety, as no
doubt it is, it is likewise a time for hope.
When Tammany Hall reached its grand
climacteric with its overwhelming ma-
jority of 1892, there again revived the
belief really held by some intelligent
men that its power must last forever.
Citizens of wealth and cultivation had
twenty-five years before espoused the
cause of Tweed as a sort of buffer of
corruption and cunning against the more
brutal dangers of the proletariat. In
1892 not only they, but even scholars, be-
gan to defend the Tammany method as
a form of municipal administration both
inevitable and beneficent. They pointed
out that Tammany Hall was not impos-
sibly bad ; that every great and long con-
tinuous political body must have some
elements of soundness ; that from time to
time it put into places of power, as it has
of late put upon the judges' bench, men
who were able and honorable, although
still remaining in warm and active sym-
pathy with Tammany Hall. Their de-
fense was not far removed from the po-
litical philosophy of one of the greatest of
Americans. Alexander Hamilton, shar-
ing the eighteenth-century English view,
deliberately insisted that corruption was
a necessary cement of well-ordered free
political institutions. Too many Amer-
icans of our day, who are really high-
minded, look upon some sort of conces-
sion to the deviltries of a large city and
some sort of alliance with its political
corruptions as inevitable, and no more
discreditable than the bribery of a con-
ductor of an English railway train.

The administration of Mayor Strong,
who was elected in November, 1894, has
been a good administration, in spite of its
defects, some of which have been serious.
If, notwithstanding its merits, it be fol-
lowed by Tammany Hall, it ought to be
remembered that New York has had other
experiences of the kind. It was in 1859
that Fernando Wood, of unspeakable po-

118

Political Inauguration of the Greater Neio York.

litical memory, was reflected mayor of
New York after an intervening term of
a most respectable " reformer." It was
to Wood the reply was made, when, in
solemn demagogy, he declared that he had
a " single eye to the public good," thatgood
citizens were chiefly concerned about >his
other and more important eye. For sev-
eral years before 1871 the chief ruler of
New York was William M. Tweed, who,
after the completest exhibition made of
his crimes, and when he was under civil
and criminal prosecution, was elected
state senator by an overwhelming major-
ity. No one ought to belittle the later
iniquities of Tammany ; but it is irra-
tional to forget that they were mild com-
pared with those of the Tweed-Sweeney-
Connolly administration, or that, with the
support of much wealth and respectabil-
ity, that administration was approved in
1870 by a large majority.

If one look back over the history for
the last forty years of the two great
American cities now united in one, he is
bound, no doubt, to admit that the gen-
eral aspect has too often been one of
cynical and indolent acquiescence in stu-
pid, barbarous, and brutal maladminis-
tration ; that the natural advantages of
the city, and especially and irretrievably
those of Brooklyn, have been ruthlessly
sacrificed by such administration ; and
that the masses of less fortunate people
in these cities have suffered and now
suffer the chief results of it all. But, to
recur to the principal note of this arti-
cle, he is bound likewise to admit that
the evils have been growing less and
less ; that Tammany Hall will be less
evil in 1898 than it was in 1890, and vast-
ly less evil than the Tammany Hall of
1870 ; and that the fundamental condi-
tions of municipal life will grow better.
The new and decent paving and clean-
ing of the streets cannot cease ; they
will go on, the best missionaries, as I
have said, of good politics. The public
sentiment which has endured the obstruc-
tion of crowded streets and the diminu-

tion of their light and air by elevated rail-
roads will no longer endure them. It will
cease to assume ugliness as a necessary
element of our highways. The schools
must increase ; their methods will grow
better. The preaching — some more
reasonable, some less reasonable, but all
helpful — of the thousand agitators for
better things will go on. Their instruc-
tion, reaching from one end of tha city to
the other, is of deeper consequence than
organized political leadership, vitally
necessary in practice as that is. The
population grows more homogeneous,
more stable. The fatigue and chagrin
incident to the present defeat will dis-
appear. There will be another and an-
other and another political campaign in
assertion of the needs and duty of good
municipal administration ; and each will
be held under more promising conditions
of general city life than its predecessor.

Must good citizens, then, in optimistic
fatalism, abandon political activity, and
rest content with the general upward
trend of human society ? Are we to give
up the noble art of statesmanship that
leads and orders political progress ? Are
we to accept as final the dull and op-
pressive mediocrity which even friendly
critics say belongs to the public life of
democracy ? Not at all. No better thing
has been accomplished by the stirring and
elevating mayoralty campaign of New
York than the creation, among masses
of men hitherto indifferent, of an enthu-
siastic interest in political affairs. But
this will not suffice without the disci-
pline and continuity of organized politi-
cal work. That work now needs, in New
York and in every great American city,
to be directed towards three different
and practical preliminary results. When
they are attained, as they can be, and at
no distant day, we shall no longer fear
Tammany victories.

The support of the merit system of
appointment to office is first and fore-
most. Of the specific political diseases
which we have known in the United

Political Inauguration of the Greater New York.

119

States, the spoils system has been the
most profoundly dangerous and far-reach-
ing. Its destruction is an essential con-
dition of sound public life in New York
and in the United States. Civil service
reform has been a slow growth, but a
fairly sure one. When office-holding
and office-seeking are no longer the main-
spring of political action and the chief
and always corrupting support of politi-
cal organization, it will be easier to use
with creditable results the democratic
method of successive popular judgments
upon the fitness of rival candidates and
parties for the exigencies of municipal
administration. The methods of the
Tammany or Republican machines can-
not survive the destruction of this their
principal support.

A corollary of the reform of the civil
service ought to be and will be the re-
fusal to continue disparaging public life.
When public life shall no longer involve
patronage-mongering, either wholesale
or retail, eminent fitness for the real du-
ties of rational public life will neither
avoid it nor be excluded from it. If
only great ability and the highest char-
acter are tolerated in private employ-
ment of the highest grade, nothing less
ought to be tolerated in public life.
The worn-out absurdity of the " plain,
sensible man," without equipment in ex-
perience or in native or acquired gifts
for difficult and critical work, will dis-
appear. Good citizens must refuse a
mere choice 'between the rival evils to
which political machines would constrain
them. They must vote for positively
good administration, even at the risk
that the less of two evils shall be de-
feated by the greater for the lack of their
support. If they be steadfast in this, the
American democracy will return to its
earlier and better view of fitness for
important places in the public service.

Last, but not least, is the duty active-
ly maintaining sound political organi-
zations between political campaigns. It
is easy to arouse interest, to form clubs,

to gather meetings during the few weeks
before election day. But when such or-
ganized activity begins in the September
preceding the election, the cause is prob-
ably either won or lost already. The
decision of the jury is reached nine times
out of ten before the learned counsel
sums up ; he can do little more than give
the jurymen in sympathy with him, if
any, arguments to use with dissenting
associates. If the evidence have not
been produced so as to make the case
clear, but little hope of success remains.
So with the political campaign. It is
impossible to create or gather the public
sentiment or the organization necessary
for a political campaign during a few
weeks. It is amazing to observe the re-
luctance of liberal and intelligent citi-
zens during the rest of the year to yield
support, whether in work or in money,
to the wholesome political organizations
upon which alone they can rely to pro-
mote the causes that are dear to them.
In Brooklyn, for instance, such an organ-
ization doing work over the entire city,
reaching or seeking to reach in some
measure upwards of a million of people,
requires, as I happen to know, perhaps
$10,000 a year for effective work. But
even that sum of money, less than the
cost of many single entertainments given
in New York every winter, and an insig-
nificant percentage of public waste every
year, which sound politics would check,
can be got only by compelling the very
small number found to bear the burden
of the work to bear the expense as well.
Tammany Hall does not sleep from
November until September. Its most
fruitful work is done then. The cam-
paign of the New York Citizens' Union
in 1897 was effective chiefly because it
began early. The thoroughness and in-
terest in English parliamentary elec-
tions follow in part from the habit
of having for years before each election
more or less systematic discussion look-
ing to the coming dissolution, although
it be far off. Without such activity

120

The Present 8cope of Government.

enlightened political methods will not
prevail in the greater New York or in
other populous cities.

In conclusion, I avow, even at this
time, untoward as it seems to many, a
profound confidence that the democratic
experiment here on trial will work out
well even in great cities. The disorder-
ly, undisciplined, slatternly features of
our politics and public work represent
shifting and temporary conditions. They
will disappear as those conditions cease.
In the very dear school of experience,
the mass of people will learn to insist upon
exceptional ability and character in pub-
lic administration, and to vote for no-
thing else, realizing that without them
that administration must be contempti-
ble. They will find, even if they find it
slowly, and even if, for many, life must
be too short for the fruition, that the
heavy and often cruel burdens of politi-
cal incompetence and dishonor fall chief-

ly upon those very masses of which and
for which democratic government is con-
stituted. When preference for good ad'
ministration shall have been developed
into a powerful popular instinct, as it is
being rapidly developed in the collisions
and misfortunes of our politics, the in-
stitutions of sound government will find
in the United States even a broader
foundation than the marvelous advance
of democracy has given them in Eng-
land. When the scaffolding is taken
down from the structure, when the work-
men are gone and the grounds are
cleared, we shall find, I believe, that all
the turmoil and humiliation of our polit-
ical experience, all the disorders and
disgraces of our political career, have
worked out, in a sort of survival of the
fittest, that firm, practical political com-
petence among the masses of men which
is the best and broadest safety, and
which will be the glory of democracy.
Edward M. Shepard.

THE PRESENT SCOPE OF GOVERNMENT.

To get an every-day basis for discuss-
ing the present scope of government in
America, let us view rapidly the experi-
ences of an imaginary Bostonian during
a day differing in no respect from or-
dinary days ; in short, an average daily
record of an average man.

He begins the day by bathing in wa-
ter supplied by the public through an
elaborate system of public pumps and
reservoirs and pipes. After it has been
used, the water escapes through the citi-
zen's own plumbing system ; but this pri-
vate plumbing system has been construct-
ed in accordance with public regulations,
is liable to inspection by public officials,
and empties into sewers constructed and
managed by the public. When he has
dressed himself in clothing of which every
article is probably the subject of a na-

tional tariff intended to affect production
or price, our Bostonian goes to his break-
fast-table, and finds there not only ta-
ble linen, china, glass, knives, forks, and
spoons, each of them coming under the
same national protection, but also food,
almost all of which has been actually or
potentially inspected, or otherwise regu-
lated, by the national or state or muni-
cipal government. The meat has been
liable to inspection. The bread has been
made by the baker in loaves of a certain
statutory weight. The butter, if it hap-
pens to be oleomargarine, has been packed
and stamped as statutes require. The
milk has been furnished by a milkman
whose dairy is officially inspected, and
whose milk must reach a certain statu-
tory standard. The chocolate has been
bought in cakes stamped in the statutory

The Present Scope of Government.

121

manner. The remnants of the breakfast
will be carried away by public garbage
carts ; and the public will also care for
the ashes of the coal that cooked the meal.
Nor do this average Bostonian and his
family escape from public control upon
rising from the table. The children are
compelled by law to go to school ; and
though there is an option to attend a pri-
vate school, the city gratuitously furnishes
a school and school-books. As for the
father himself, when he reaches his door,
he finds that public servants are girdling
his trees with burlap, and searching his
premises for traces of the gypsy moth.
Without stopping to reflect that he has
not been asked to permit these public ser-
vants to go upon his property, he steps out
upon a sidewalk constructed in accord-
ance with public requirements, crosses a
street paved and watered and swept by
the public, and enters a street car whose
route, speed, and fare are regulated by
the public. Reaching the centre of the
city, he ascends to his office by an ele-
vator subject to public inspection, and
reads the mail that has been brought to
him from all parts of the United States
by public servants. If the dimness of
his office causes him to regret that sun-
light appears to be outside public pro-
tection, he may be answered that there
are regulations controlling the height of
buildings and prohibiting the malicious
construction of high fences. If now he
leaves his office and goes to some store
or factory in which he owns an interest,
he finds that for female employees chairs
must be provided, that children must not
be employed in certain kinds of work,
that dangerous machinery must be fenced,
that fire-escapes must be furnished, and
probably that the goods produced or sold
must be marked or packed in a prescribed
way, or must reach a statutory standard.
Indeed, whatever this man's business may
be, the probability is that in one way or
another the public's hand comes between
him and his employee, or between him
and his customer.

Leaving his store or his factory, this
average man deposits money in a bank,
which is carefully inspected by public
officials, and which is compelled by the
public to refrain from specified modes of
investment and also to publish periodi-
cal statements of its condition. He next
makes a payment to an insurance com-
pany, which is subject to even stricter
statutory regulations. He then goes to
East Boston and back upon a ferry-boat
owned and managed by the public.

When finally all the business of the
day is finished, this imaginary Bostonian
walks through the Common and the Pub-
lic Garden, and soon enters the Public
Library, a building that is the latest and
most striking expression of the public's
interest in the individual. Leaving the
Public Library, he strolls past a free bath-
house sustained by the public, and then
past a free public outdoor gymnasium ;
and at last he hastens home through
streets that public servants are now be-
ginning to light.

When this Bostonian reaches home,
he can reflect that he has passed no very
extraordinary day. If events had been
a little different, the public would have
furnished steam fire-engines to protect
his house, or a policeman to find a lost
child for him, or an ambulance to take
his cook to the city hospital, or a health
officer to inspect his neighbor's premises.
No one of these emergencies has arisen,
and yet this average Bostonian, if he has
happened to think of the various ways in
which he has this day been affected by
public control, must wonder whether his
morning's conception of the functions of
government was adequate.

The functions of government may be
conveniently divided into three classes :
the primary, the incidental, and the en-
larged. These classes shade into one
another, for this classification is merely
an attempt to draw a bright line near
the place where a blurred line actually
exists.

122

The Present Scope of Government.

According to the classification here
made, the primary functions of govern-
ment are simply those which attain the
chief purposes of organized society, and
are almost absolutely essential to one's
conception of a civilized country. These
functions are protection from foreign
interference, preservation of domestic
peace, and — closely connected with the
preservation of domestic peace — main-
tenance of courts of justice.

Incidental functions are those which
exist for the aiding of the primary func-
tions. Thus, incident to protection from
foreign interference is maintenance of
forts, of navy yards, of military schools.
Incident to the preservation of domestic
peace are armories and the criminal
law. Incident to the administration of
justice, and in general to the prevention
of private disputes, are a recording sys-
tem, and also statutes as to forms of in-
struments, as to inheritance and admin-
istration of estates, and as to weights
and measures. Incident to all the pri-
mary functions is taxation, in so far as
taxation simply aims to collect funds for
paying public expenses ; but in so far as
taxation aims to encourage or discourage
certain kinds of business, or to prevent
the accumulation of large fortunes, taxa-
tion belongs with the enlarged functions
of government.

Obviously, the primary and the inci-
dental functions are numerous and com-
prehensive ; but they are not the special
subjects of this discussion. The present
purpose is to deal with those functions
to which — not wishing just now to in-
dicate either approval or disapproval,
nor even by epithet to depart from mere
enumeration — I have given the color-
less designation of " enlarged functions ; "
meaning thereby that they seem not to
belong with the universal and absolute-
ly essential primary functions, nor yet
with the incidental functions, but to repre-
sent a widened conception of the sphere
of government, — a conception that,
whether it be right or wrong, certainly

is full of interest and importance. The
enlarged scope of government, then, has
to do with matters that conceivably may
be, and in many countries actually are,
left unrestrictedly in the hands of in-
dividuals ; for example, the quality of
goods offered for sale, the skill of plumb-
ers, and the care of roads.

The vast number of interests to which
modern cities turn their attention, and
also the distinction as to primary, in-
cidental, and enlarged functions, may
be seen in a simple list of the adminis-
trative departments of Boston. Two de-
partments are devoted chiefly to the pri-
mary functions, the board of police and
the board of commissioners of public in-
stitutions ; though, in so far as the powers
of the latter board extend beyond penal
institutions, and include institutions car-
ing for paupers and lunatics, this board
is employed upon the enlarged functions
of government. Eleven departments are
devoted chiefly to the incidental functions :
the board of assessors, the city collector,
the city treasurer, the city auditor, the
board of commissioners of sinking funds,
the superintendent of public buildings,
the superintendent of public grounds, the
city registrar, the registrar of voters, the
superintendent of printing, and the law
department managed by the corporation
counsel and the city solicitor. Twenty-
two departments are devoted chiefly to
the enlarged functions : the overseers
of the poor, the water board, the water
registrar, the board of health, the in-
spector of milk and vinegar, the inspec-
tor-of provisions, the city hospital, the
board of street commissioners (a depart-
ment whose jurisdiction includes, in ad-
dition to activities obviously suggested
by the mere title, sanitary police, street-
cleaning, street - watering, garbage re-
moval, and sewers), the superintendent
of streets, the commissioner of wires,
the superintendent of lamps, the super-
intendent of ferries, the board of fire
commissioners, the inspector of buildings,
the school committee, the board of trus-

The Present Scope of Government.

123

tees of the public library, the board of
park commissioners, the superintendent
of markets, the sealer of weights and
measures, the city surveyor, the city en-
gineer, and the trustees of Mount Hope
Cemetery ; and in addition there are
numerous weighers of coal, measurers of
grain, and inspectors, who are not at-
tached to specific departments, and whose
duties are part of the enlarged scope of
government. Two important administra-
tive departments — namely, the mayor
and the city clerk — cannot be said to
be devoted chiefly to any one of the
three classes of functions. Doubtless
there may be question as to the propri-
ety of the classification of some of the
departments, and doubtless there are
differences between the functions of mu-
nicipal government in Boston and those
in other cities ; but after all possible
amendments are made, it must remain
obvious that in municipal administration
the enlarged functions predominate.

The functions of municipalities do
not have their chief source in municipal
legislative bodies. It is a fact that the
ordinances adopted by these bodies are
numerous and minute ; but these ordi-
nances deal almost exclusively with sub-
jects that, expressly or by clear implica-
tion, are placed within municipal control
by the statutes of the state. This is one
of the reasons why, for the present pur-
pose, it is impracticable to treat sepa-
rately the municipal functions, the state
functions, and the national functions.

Indeed, the real distinction that di-
vides some of the enlarged functions
from others is a distinction that has no-
thing to do with the boundary between
city and state, nor with the boundary
tween state and nation. The important
distinction is that in some instances gov-
ernment undertakes the actual doing of
work, but that in other instances it sim-
ply regulates — by encouragement, par-
tial restraint, prohibition, or otherwise
— the actions of individuals. Exam-
ples are, on the one hand, the inspection

of milk and the maintenance of public
schools ; and on the other, the require-
ments that milk offered for sale shall
reach a specified standard, and that chil-
dren of a certain age shall go to school.

For the sake of brevity, the chief in-
stances of enlarged functions of govern-
ment, whether municipal, state, or nation-
al, will now be given in one place. It is
to be understood that, unless the federal
government is specially named, the func-
tions are exercised under the direct or in-
direct authority of states.

The following, then, is a list of the sev-
enteen chief groups of instances in which
government merely regulates private ac-
tion : —

To promote morality, there is regula-
tion — sometimes by taxation only — of
gambling and of the sale of intoxicat-
ing liquors. To the same end, the fed-
eral government does not permit lotter-
ies to use the mails. The promotion of
morality, it should be noticed, is the
place where the enlarged scope of gov-
ernment is most nearly connected with
the criminal law.

To prevent disease, whether contagious
or not, there are regulations as to danger-
ous medicines, poisons, vaccination, the
quality of food offered for sale, plumb-
ing, and the lighting of tenement-houses.
For the same purpose, the federal gov-
ernment regulates interstate transporta-
tion of diseased cattle.

To prevent accidents that might cause
bodily injury, there are regulations as to
steam-engines, elevators, belting, hatch-
ways in factories, the fencing of some
kinds of machinery, the management of
mines, and the construction and manage-
ment of railways (including provisions
as to fencing, brakes, couplers, signals,
and color-blindness). For the same gen-
eral purpose, the federal statutes contain
minute provisions as to steamers and sail-
ing vessels (dealing with life-boats, life-
preservers, water-tight bulkheads, stair-
ways, transportation of mtro-glycerine,

124

The Present Scope of Government.

number of passengers, signals, and rules
of the road).

To prevent loss of life or of property
by fire, there are regulations as to fire-
escapes, and as to the height and mate-
rial and construction and management
of buildings (including sometimes re-
quirements that in churches and halls
doors shall open outward and there shall
be no movable seats in the aisles). To
prevent loss by fire in ships, the federal
statutes contain provisions as to wire
tiller-ropes, fire-extinguishers, fire-buck-
ets, and the transportation of inflamma-
ble materials.

To facilitate communication, there is
encouragement of turnpikes, bridges, fer-
ries, railways, and telegraphs, by con-
cession of the right of eminent domain ;
and there are regulations as to charges
of hacks and of railways, both street
and steam, frequency of railway trains,
and consolidation of railways owning
parallel lines. The federal government,
for the same general purpose, has adopt-
ed minute regulations as to railway rates
for interstate service, and has made as
to maritime travel many regulations,
some of which are named elsewhere in
this enumeration.

To prevent loss to stockholders and
others through mismanagement of cer-
tain large enterprises, there are minute
regulations as to the finances of banks,
building associations, insurance compa-
nies, and railway companies. The fed-
eral government, in turn, regulates the
national banks. As to banks, the pro-
visions are so minute as almost to con-
stitute a textbook in themselves.

To prevent owners of land from dam-
aging other owners or the public, there
are regulations (in a general way re-
sembling the common law of nuisances)
as to stables, slaughter-houses, cemeter-
ies, dilapidated or dangerous buildings,
high buildings, high fences, barbed-wire
fences, and noxious weeds.

To prevent estates from becoming too
large, there are inheritance taxes and

income taxes, in addition to the long-
standing abolition of primogeniture and
of entail.

To encourage many kinds of business,
the federal government provides a pro-
tective tariff.

To protect children, there are regu-
lations requiring education, restricting
employment in certain occupations, and
forbidding the sale of cigarettes and of
intoxicating liquors.

To protect workingmen in various
trades, there are regulations as to the
hours of labor, seats for women, and the
payment of wages in cash and at certain
intervals. With the same view, the fed-
eral government prohibits the importa-
tion of contract labor ; and as to seamen,
the federal government makes minute
requirements covering mode of paying
wages, medicines, provisions, clothing,
and form of contract.

To protect steerage passengers, there
are federal statutes as to ventilation, food,
and the use of a range.

To prevent necessitous persons from
suffering burdensome losses, there are
usury laws, exemptions from execution,
and provisions as to foreclosure of mort-
gages. Here belong also state insolven-
cy laws and the national bankruptcy law,
when enacted.

To secure uniformity in articles im-
portant to the public, there are provisions
as to the quality of gas, the packing of
fish, etc. ; and here, apparently, is to be
classed regulation of adulteration of food,
in so far as the intent is not simply to
protect health.

To prevent combinations that might
result in enhancing the price of articles
important to the public, the federal gov-
ernment legislates against trusts.

To secure the continuance of certain
natural products useful to the public,
there are close seasons for fish and game.
To the same class belongs the federal
government's attempt to protect seals.

To prevent abuses in employments of
public importance, there are regulations

The Present Scope of Government.

125

requiring licenses for hack-drivers, auc-
tioneers, peddlers, keepers of intelligence
offices, innkeepers, keepers of billiard-
tables, keepers of public halls, plumbers,
sellers of explosives, druggists, physi-
cians.

So much for the instances of mere
regulation, including restriction and en-
couragement. The following is a list of
the fifteen chief groups of instances in
which government undertakes the actual
doing of work : —

To educate the young, there are pub-
lic schools, colleges, and institutions for
technical and professional instruction.
To promote all these kinds of education,
the federal government has made gifts
of land to the Various states.

To educate adults, there are public
libraries, museums, and art galleries.
For the same purpose, the nation pro-
vides the Library of Congress and the
National Museum.

To disseminate useful information, es-
pecially information supposed to be use-
ful to farmers and to mechanics, there
are provisions for collecting and publish-
ing facts as to geology, soils, plants,
abandoned farms, and the statistics of la-
bor. This class of work has largely
passed into the hands of the national gov-
ernment. The Departments of State, of
Agriculture, and of the Interior make
most elaborate investigations, and pub-
lish the results in documents so numerous
and valuable that a mere examination of
a catalogue of governmental publications
must fill any intelligent man with won-
der. These investigations and publica-
tions are made, of course, under the au-
thority of acts of Congress ; but the acts
are couched in general terms, and no-
thing less than actual inspection of the
departments and of the publications can
give an adequate conception of the vast
amount of scientific work now done un-
der the federal government. One item
is that the federal government supports
at least one agricultural experiment sta-
tion in each state. Another item is that

the Agricultural Department contains a
bureau to which one may send for exam-
ination any plant' suspected of being in-
fected with disease. Another instance
of enlarged activity is the weather bu-
reau. Indeed, in almost every branch
of science the federal government em-
ploys experts, who are engaged in inves-
tigation or exploration.

To promote pleasure, there are public
parks, flower-gardens, menageries, gym-
nasiums, swimming-baths, band concerts,
and displays of fireworks. It is for the
same purpose, chisfly, that the federal
government cares for the Yellowstone
National Park and other reservations,
and occasionally aids a national exposi-
tion.

To help the poor, partly for the sake
of the poor themselves and partly for
the sake of public peace and health, there
are almshouses, outdoor relief, public
hospitals, dispensaries, and other public
charities. To the same end, the nation
provides hospitals for merchant seamen.

To prevent disease, there are provi-
sions for the inspection of plumbing and
of food, for the cleansing or destruction
of buildings dangerous to health, for the
removal of garbage, and for the build-
ing and maintenance of sewers. To the
same end, the federal government makes
elaborate provisions as to inspection of
cattle shipped from state to state and as
to quarantine, and gives to the national
board of health wide powers as to chol-
era, smallpox, and yellow fever.

To secure the performance of a ser-
vice closely connected with health, and
also with the extinguishment of fires,
the state permits municipalities to con-
struct and manage water-works.

To prevent accidents, the state inspects
steam-engines, elevators, and mines. To
the same end, the federal government
inspects the hulls and boilers of vessels
carrying passengers or freight.

To prevent loss of life and property
by fire, the state authorizes the mainte-
nance of local fire departments.

126

The Present Scope of Government.

To prevent loss of life by shipwreck,
the federal government provides life-sav-
ing stations.

To facilitate communication, the state
authorizes the building and mainte-
nance of public roads, streets, sidewalks,
bridges, and ferries, the cleaning and
watering and lighting of streets, sqme-
times even the ownership of railways.
To the same end, the federal govern-
ment maintains the post-office system,
improves rivers and harbors, builds and
maintains lighthouses, and conducts the
coast survey.

To promote domestic trade in products
of farmers, graziers, and fishermen, there
are public market-houses. To promote
a foreign demand for similar products,
the federal government inspects cattle
for export.

To secure a permanent supply of cer-
tain natural or semi-natural products,
some states have drainage and irrigation
systems, and some states exterminate
noxious weeds and insects, — the latter
function somewhat resembling the obso-
lescent payment of bounties for killing
bears and wolves. For the same gener-
al purpose, the federal government dis-
tributes seeds, propagates fish, and main-
tains fishways.

To secure efficiency in certain mat-
ters peculiarly important to the public,
there are examiners of physicians and of
engineers. To the same end, the feder-
al government examines ship captains,
mates, ship engineers, and pilots.

To secure decent and permanent care
of the dead, municipalities own and man-
age cemeteries.

Any one inspecting these lists will
perceive that the classification is largely
a matter of opinion, and, no doubt, that
the lists omit items worthy of being in-
cluded. Some omissions, however, are
intentional, — for example, the encour-
agement that exemption from taxation
gives to churches, incorporated schools,
incorporated hospitals, and the like, be-
cause the reason for the exemption is

probably not a conscious desire to pro-
mote such purposes, but rather a percep-
tion that property devoted to these pur-
poses is necessarily unproductive. Again,
there has been an intentional omission
of the liquor dispensaries of South Caro-
lina, because this instance of governmen-
tal action is exceptional. The purpose,
in short, has been to select and classify
the instances that indicate the average
condition of government throughout the
United States, and the theories upon
which legislators frame the laws.

Upon the very surface of the facts
thus presented float in full view numer-
ous inferences. One is that wide func-
tions are not phenomena of the munici-
pality as distinguished from the state
and the nation. Another is that it is
impossible to draw a definite line sepa-
rating matters with which government
interferes from matters with which gov-
ernment does not interfere. The general
theory, obviously, is that government re-
stricts or encourages private acts when,
and only when, such acts concern the
public ; and that government undertakes
the performance of acts when, and only
when, the acts are important to the
public, and are practically incapable of
satisfactory performance by individuals.
But this theory does not make a clear
distinction, although probably it makes
as clear a distinction as is practicable in
a field like this, — a field where law and
statesmanship seem to meet and discuss
questions of expediency.

It is necessary now to pass from these
obvious inferences, and to discuss the
apparent change that has taken place in
the theory and practice of American le-
gislation within a hundred years.

Doubtless, in America, as in all other
civilized countries, the scope of govern-
ment has always exceeded the preven-
tion of foreign aggression, the promotion
of domestic tranquillity, the administra-
tion of justice, and natural incidents of

The Present Scope of Government.

127

these primary functions. There have
always been town clocks, town pumps,
town cemeteries, and public roads. Yet
surely, from the enumeration of the func-
tions now exercised, it is clear that —
with a fe\v exceptions, such as the direct
and indirect support of religion and the
control of the rate of interest — the grasp
of government is closer now than it was
a hundred years ago.

To some extent, the increase of regu-
lation and of activity has simply widened
functions long recognized. One example
is the improvement in the care of the
poor ; and another is the progress as to
roads. In many instances, however,
there has been a development of func-
tions that a hundred years ago were
wholly, or almost wholly, non-existent.
Examples of new or almost new func-
tions are education of adults, dissemina-
tion of useful information, and preven-
tion of accidents.

Whether manifested in enlarging old
functions or in creating new ones, the
development has been due largely to
those advances in science and skill which
both create new desires and enable, old
desires to be gratified more abundant-
ly. The enlargement of the postal ser-
vice has been rendered possible by the
use of steam, and the rise of hospitals
has followed discoveries in medical sci-
ence. Further, the extension of gov-
ernmental functions has been promoted
by another cause, — indirectly connected
with advances in science and skill, — a
new perception of the public value of in-
telligence and of aesthetic culture. Only
thus can one account for the great de-
velopment in the education of the young,
the dissemination of information, and
the maintenance of libraries, museums,
and parks. Again, a more or less un-
conscious demand for extension has
come from the growing custom — prin-
cipally resultant from modern inventions
— of doing all things in a large way;
and so it has happened that there seems
to be a need of regulating great pri-

vate enterprises, whose powers, if abused,
might injure the public, and that there
even seems to be an occasion now and
then for the government itself to un-
dertake important functions peculiarly
suited to large treatment, and not deemed
likely to be satisfactorily managed by
individuals. Examples are the regula-
tion of railways and of banks, and the
construction and maintenance of water-
works.

Such are some of the causes aiding
the development of the enlarged func-
tions of government. This development
has involved to some extent a departure
from the political theories and instincts
that chiefly guided American statesmen
a hundred years ago. The views then
popular had their main encouragement
in the works of certain French philoso-
phers, who represented a violent revolt
against governmental control. The phi-
losophical basis for the revolt was found
in the theory that, by reason of the be-
nevolent construction of the universe,
each man's pursuit of his own personal
welfare must result eventually in the
welfare of the whole world. From that
principle political philosophers inferred
that the system of natural liberty is both
theoretically and practically the best,
and that there should be but slight in-
terference by government. From that
school of thought, so influential in Amer-
ica at the time of our Revolution, the
present scope of government indicates at
least an apparent departure.

Indeed, a departure seemed inevita-
ble. The true basis of the theory adopt-
ed in the eighteenth century appears to
be found in the fact that in the early
years of that century it was natural
enough to protest against the wide pow-
ers exercised by sovereigns. Govern-
mental control had gone very far ; and
even if it had not gone far, it must have
excited hostility by reason of seeming to
exist for the benefit, not of the many,
but of the few. A protest was inevita-
ble, and the philosophical theory as to

128

The Present Scope of Government.

the benefits of natural liberty was the
easy formula for the protest. As soon,
however, as government became the pro-
perty of the people themselves, admin-
istered by the agents of the people, and
guided almost invariably — as every one
believes, notwithstanding jests to the con-
trary — by an intention to promote "the
common welfare, there ceased to be a
visible reason for emphasizing the old
formula. From a merely practical point
of view, it is reasonable enough for one
to be willing that government should do
to-day what in the last century might
have been deemed tyrannical. If gov-
ernment be considered as an enemy, it
may easily be called despotic ; but if it
be conceived as a fairly intelligent and
well-meaning agency, controlled by the
people themselves, " despotic " ceases to
be an easy epithet. Hence it was natural
that there should be a reaction from the
theory of our early statesmen.

Yet does it not seem probable that
the reaction would excite opposition ?
The fact is that it has come without elabo-
rate discussion and almost without no-
tice. It does not mark the success of a
political party, nor even the triumph of
a political thinker, whether statesman or
theorist. Still less does it mark a con-
cession to the threats of agitators. Gov-
ernmental functions have grown silently,
naturally, like the rings of a tree.

Why is this ? Why has not the ap-
parent departure from the old theory ex-
cited attention and opposition ? One rea-
son, as already indicated, is that the
practical cause for emphasizing the im-
portance of individual liberty has dis-
appeared. Another reason is that the
civil war seems to have diminished the
willingness of our people to enter into
discussion as to the proper power of gov-
ernment, whether state or national. An-
other and more important reason is that
the apparent change of theory is really
a mere change in the relative emphasis
placed upon fundamental principles of
our legal and political system.

In one aspect the common law em-
phasizes the sanctity of private right.
That '• an Englishman's house is his
castle," that one accused of crime is
entitled to a trial by jury, that private
property cannot be taken save by due
process of law, that private contracts
shall be inviolate, — these and other
formulas, ancient and modern, illustrate
this phase of the law. Yet it has been
possible for these formulas to exist for
centuries in fairly friendly association
with principles of quite opposite import.
That private property must not be used
in such manner as to cause a nuisance ;
that private property may be appropri-
ated, fair compensation being given, un-
der the theory of eminent domain ; that
private property may be destroyed in
order to stop a conflagration ; that con-
tracts contrary to public policy will not
be enforced, — these and numerous other
doctrines have long illustrated another
phase of the law, a phase indicating that
private rights are sometimes to be sub-
ordinated to the interests of the public.
In the Germania of Tacitus, the liberty
of the individual is no more conspicu-
ous than is the wide scope of the power
of the community ; and thus, from our
very earliest glimpse of the primitive
system from which our common law is
believed to descend, there have been in
our law two phases, private right and
public interest.

This, then, is the reason why, when
government after the American Revo-
lution became more truly an agency of
the people, and when the advance in our
knowledge of natural forces made it more
possible to do things in a large way, and
when the rise of powerful combinations
of capital gave occasion for turning to
government to curb the increase of pri-
vate power, and to assume new functions
and enlarge old ones, it was possible to
enlarge the scope of government with-
out friction, and even without discussion.
Legislation grew just as the common law
grows, not in a spectacular way, but

The Present Scope of Government.

129

along old lines, almost automatically ad-
justing preexisting theories to new emer-
gencies.

Is the result beneficial ? Undoubted-
ly there are defects, including occasion-
ally an unnecessary and therefore unwise
assumption of work, and occasionally an
unnecessary and therefore unjust en-
croachment upon individual liberty, —
defects giving clear notice that there is
necessity for the exercise of perpetual
vigilance ; but, looking at the question
in a large way, it seems clear that the
growth o^ governmental functions thus
far has been wise and necessary. How
else could the great mass of the people
have secured schools, libraries, parks,
water, sewers, protection against fire ?
How else could they have been protected
against unwholesome food and against
overcharges for transportation ? How
else could many of the advances in know-
ledge have been prevented from benefit-
ing almost exclusively a narrow circle ?

Nor have these desirable results been
obtained at an unreasonable cost. The
expenditures of the city of Boston are
larger per capita than those of most
cities. Yet for the current year, what
is the total amount of taxes, for all
city, county, and state purposes, paid by
a Bostonian whose taxable property is
reasonably worth $15,000, and whose
income from a profession or a trade is
$4000? The sum is $221. This is about
nine times the average payment made
by the inhabitants of Boston on account
of property and income. The city has
other sources of revenue, such as license
fees and the corporation tax ; but, after
all statistics are taken into account, it
appears that the sum named, $221, am-
ply covers the cost of furnishing to a
family of five or six persons, at the
hands of the city, county, and state, the
many services (primary, incidental, and
enlarged) already indicated, including
police, fire department, streets, parks,
sewers, charitable institutions, library,

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 483. 9

schools, and school-books. In private
hands, how far would $221 go toward
securing these numerous services ? Not-
withstanding the extravagance of some
public officials, — an extravagance that
probably characterizes the same persons
in private life, — so expensive is small
administration as compared with large
administration that the sum thus paid
for those numerous public services would
hardly procure from a private school
the mere tuition of two children ; and
besides, in thoroughness of instruction
and in completeness of outfit few pri-
vate schools would seek comparison with
the schools furnished by the public.
Still further, while laziness and ineffi-
ciency are no doubt the rule in most oc-
cupations, both public and private, it is
quite as invariably the rule that public
service is not less skillful and satisfac-
tory than private service. Is your cook
more efficient, on the average, than the
policeman or the fireman ? Does the gas
company give better service than the
water department ? Does a telegraph
company give greater satisfaction than
the post-office ?

As to the future, what can one say ?
Simply that what has happened hereto-
fore is likely to continue to happen.
There is no sufficient reason to dread
that by and by government will begin
to interfere dangerously with individual
liberty, or to undertake more than it can
perform successfully ; nor, on the other
hand, is there sufficient reason to dread
that government will fail to enlarge its
scope as soon as there is seen to be a
necessity for enlargement. For centu-
ries two intents have guided the law,
whether statutory or judge-made : the
intent to guard individual liberty and
the intent to secure the public welfare.
There is no reason to believe that one
of these deep-seated intents will be up-
rooted. The actual scope of govern-
ment must continue to be the resultant
of the interplay of a natural desire for

130

Company Manners.

enlargement of governmental functions
and an equally natural repugnance to
unnecessary enlargement. Precisely
what the resultant will be at any one
time no one can predict ; but from an

enumeration of the functions constitut-
ing the actual scope of government to-
day, no one can reasonably fail to gain
new respect for popular institutions and
new hope for the next century.

Eugene Wambaugh.

COMPANY MANNERS.

IT was the anniversary of little Har-
ry's birthday, and he was dead. He had
died seven years before, when he was
three years old ; and to-day, as every
day, his silver mug and porridge-bowl
stood ready upon the table at his place,
and his high chair, with the plump little
blue silk pillow in it and the bib dan-
gling from one of the knobs, stood ready
too, pushed back a little from the table
as if Harry were coming next minute.

Mrs. Addington's eyes were heavy.
She tossed a letter across the table to-
wards her daughter, without other com-
ment than a fretful downward curve of
the lips, and listlessly selected another
envelope from among her morning's
mail. The mother and daughter were
alone, sitting opposite each other at the
table. The house was very quiet, and
the child's empty place seemed to make
the stillness more perceptible.

" I don't see anything remarkable, or
new, or interesting about this ' case,' "
said the girl, looking up from the letter
questioningly.

" No," her mother replied in a plain-
tive tone, "no ; it is only immediate."

" Do you mean you would like me to
take it ? I thought you enjoyed the
work ! "

" The ' case ' seems to be so incon-
veniently urgent," said Mrs. Addington,
" I suppose it ought to be attended to
to-day ; the woman is in distress. But
I can't to-day, — no, I can't ! Nobody
could expect me to." Tears had welled
up into the heavy eyes, and her voice

grew painfully thin as she continued :
" Not on Harry's birthday ! "

" Oh, mother ! is it ? " cried the girl
remorsefully. " Of course you can't.
I '11 go and see the woman. I 'm sorry !
I ought to have known. Dear little
brother ! "

She got up as she spoke, and stopped
an instant to press her cheek against her
mother's hair, then left the room.

" Nobody with any heart would ex-
pect me to attend to such things to-day,"
murmured the bereaved mother. " My
baby, my little darling boy ! " and she
held the blue pillow hungrily against her
face.

The other woman's baby had been
dead three days, the Charities' letter
said, and she had nothing to eat.

Grace Addington's day was full, and
she was obliged to send an excuse to her
literary club in order to make the time
in which to visit her mother's charity
subject. She felt a little bored, as she
already had three cases of her own on
hand, and this was not her day for at-
tending to such matters ; but it would
relieve her mother.

Miss Addington was pretty, and would
have looked quite like some society girls
in Life if it had not been for her se-
rious Boston finish. She was distinctly
conventional along all lines, and, living
in an age when conventionality seems to
be growing rare among young women,
she experienced a proper pride in her
own exclusiveness. When she prayed
she did not say, " O Lord, I am glad I

Company Manners,

131

am not as other girls are ! " This par-
ticular form of prayer is no longer con-
sidered the correct thing among the best
people.

Never having been to college, she had
neither acquired a definite idea of the
intellectual limitations of her family cir-
cle, nor developed a cult for Swinburne ;
and she always looked a little disgusted
when the New Woman was mentioned.
Bohemianism she tolerated good-natured-
ly since it had been conventionalized by
journalists and painters, but personally
she approved of chaperons. She never
offered wine to young men, of course,
but she did not care to join the Wo-
men's Christian Temperance Union be-
cause — " Oh, I don't know ! Don't you
think that some of the people who be-
long to it are just a little queer ? " And
yet, she was not really a snob ; she only
behaved remarkably like one.

The young men made friends with
her. They said she was "a bit stiff at
first, when you did n't know her, and
about dinner calls and such she rather
made a fellow ' walk a chalk,' but she
was downright dependable underneath."
After all, for steady companionship, the
young men do prefer an uneccentric
girl, a girl who knows the proper thing
and does it, and makes a man feel re-
spectable because he happens to be talk-
ing with her. There are two other kinds
of women, a better kind, perhaps, and a
worse, who have not always the knack
of making a man feel respectable.

She belonged to a great many clubs
and classes, and as she believed, quite
logically, that if every individual would
be as good as he knew how to be, the
millennium must approaoh more rapidly,
she spent a large part of her time upon
self-culture, in order to be able to add her
increment of perfection to the coming
kingdom. But, despite her exclusive-
ness and her individualism, she could
not quite escape that feeling of responsi-
bility towards one's neighbor which is in
the air to-day. It is a difficult feeling

to translate into terms of complacency,
but hers was a complacent spirit as yet,
so she sharpened the feeling's vague out-
lines by calling it a duty, and she laid
it on her conscience along with whist
classes and R. S. V. P.'s, and she joined
the Charities' Organization Association.

The purpose and methods of the As-
sociation were definite and such as she
could understand. Her mother had
been for years a valuable stereotyped
member, and the work was along the
line of the family tradition, which was
benevolent. The girl slipped into the
system without friction and performed
her duties perfunctorily, questioning her
" subjects " with an impersonal inquisi-
tiveness which, according to the Board,
left nothing to be desired.

It was late afternoon, an unusual time
for charity visiting, when Grace set out
on her errand. She studied the address
of the new " case " indifferently, noting
the name of the well-known tenement
street, but suddenly recalled a forgotten
appointment, pulled the carriage - bell,
and instructed the coachman to drive
first to her dressmaker's.

Mrs. Gannon, the charity case, moved
slothfully about her cellar room that af-
ternoon, doing a great deal of nothing,
and her pale little daughter sat by the
grimy basement window peering up into
the street.

"There ain't been no new charity
lady here for a long time since the last
one," said the child, as she moistened
her forefinger and freshened the win-
dow-pane a little.

"They git tired, Lizzie," her mother
answered. " I don't blame 'em ; I 'd git
tired, too. They like a change, — some-
thin' new. It 's human ; I 'm not ob-
jectin' to somethin' new myself."

A pampered society woman could not
have conveyed a more complete idea of
boredom than did Mrs. Gannon.

" The baby's buryin' was new," ob-
served the child meditatively.

132

Company Manners.

Her mother gave a kind of croak, and
moved clumsily into the back part of the
cellar.

" You ain't got nothin' new to eat, is
you, mother ? " the little girl asked pre-
sently in a repressed voice, as if she
half hoped she might not be heard*

" No, Lizzie, nor nothin' old, neither.
I guess there ought to be a charity lady
come to-day, maybe, or to-morrow, if she
gits round to it. Mis' Doyle took a
message for me to the 'sociation, —
' baby dead, great distitushin, immedi-
ate.' That '11 bring somebody."

" I wonder will it be a cross one, or
an old one, or what ? There was one
had pep'mints in her pocket, — do you
'member ? — but she got tired quicker 'n
the rest. Thinkin' pep'mints makes me
sick to my stummick to-day. My, w'at
a cold f eelin' ! "

" Fur the Lord's sake, Lizzie, don't
go to havin' one of your heart spells on
the top of all this," said Mrs. Gannon in
a tone of weary protest.

" 'T ain't my heart. I know my heart.
It 's only my stummick," Lizzie ex-
plained reassuringly. " Must be four
o'clock. Wonder will the next one ast
you the same w'at the last one did ? I
knows most of them questions by heart ;
only their voices is different w'en they
says 'em, and sometimes they folds they
hands so — and sometimes they holds
'em so — and " —

" Shut up ! You 're worse 'n a fly-
w'eel in a fact'ry to live with, Lizzie,
your tongue 's that everlastin' ! "

Lizzie obediently stopped speaking
aloud, but carried on a pantomime in-
stead, moving her lips, nodding her
head, folding and unfolding her hands,
evidently in imitation of bygone charity
ladies. Once, the mother, happening to
glance at her, broke into a noisy laugh,
whereupon the child laughed too, shame-
facedly, but continued her mimicry.

" Here 's a carriage, mother ! " she
cried a moment later, " and it 's a young
one, — the youngest yet. My ! but I

hope she ain't got nothin' sweet, 'cause
I could n't eat it."

Pretty Grace Addington came into
the cellar bedroom, and Mrs. Gannon
drearily placed a chair for her, eying
her watchfully beneath a slovenly air of
indifference. Grace was accustomed to
that furtive watchfulness ; it was one
of the things which had enabled her to
grow impersonal towards her charity
cases. " You really can't sentimentalize,
you know, over people who are manifest-
ly ready and waiting to overreach you."

She stated the reason for her visit,
and there was the usual non-committal
" yes " from her " subject," the usual
distrustful pause, and then, " This is not
the first time you have applied for help,
I believe?"

The pale little girl by the window
nodded her head at this remark, as a
stage manager might nod when an actor
gives his speech in good form. After a
moment she came and leaned against
Grace's knee, and looked up into her
face with impressive childish gravity, as
if weighing the pretty lady's words and
comparing them with something else in
her own mind.

Grace patted the child's hand absent-
ly, and made mental notes of the results
of her inquiries : " Husband arrested
last week for drunkenness. Has peri-
odic sprees. Out of work."

" How old was the baby ? "

" He was n't but two ; and he always
had something the matter with him."

The self - possessed young visitor
searched her mind for some suitable
phrase of consolation. She had never
before dealt with the subject of a recent-
ly dead baby, and she felt that a married
woman might have handled the conver-
sation more skillfully, but she was not
embarrassed ; she did not care enough
about Mrs. Gannon's opinion to feel em-
barrassed.

" We always have to realize that every-
thing happens for the best," she ventured
to say.

Company Manners.

133

" Yes," assented Mrs. Gannon, " it was
a gi'eat thing for him that he died."

Her quiet tone gave Grace a shock,
and she had a vision of her mother's
tear-stained, rebellious face ; but then,
of course, that was different.

" Did n't you love him ? " she asked,
a tone of reproof in her inquiry.

The woman passed that question over
in curious silence, and sat with her head
bent sullenly, watching her right hand,
which was down at her side on the bed,
punching a pin back and forth in the
quilt. Finally she replied, " I could n't
of raised him, ever."

" Your little girl looks rather pale,"
continued Grace.

" I 'in hungry," explained the child,
nestling closer. " Mother said there 'd
be more to eat when Robbie was dead,
but it 's a lie."

" She 's always one to speak out,"
observed Mrs. Gannon apologetically.
" She 's sickly, but she 's smart. If she
did n't look so skinny we could get her
a place to the theatre, children's parts.
She can take off anybody she sees."

Lizzie continued to look at Grace
steadily, and when her mother had fin-
ished speaking she put up her two lit-
tle thin hands against the charity lady's
fur-trimmed jacket and said, "You're
awful pretty ! I did n't know they ever
had 'em as young as you for charity.
Ain't it 'most time for you to say now,
' I will make out an order for a few gro-
ceries, which will last until you find out
about the place I have in mind ' ? "

Grace laughed. "You funny little
child ! " she said. " I 'm sorry you are
hungry," and, looking down into the sol-
emn, sunken eyes, it suddenly occurred
to her to do a most unconventional thing.
Why not ? On little Harry's birthday,
too ! After all, it would not be so very
queer to feed a little hungry child on her
brother's birthday, in memory of him.
And it might divert her mother ; the child
was so odd. " Would you like to come
home with me to dinner ? " she asked.

Lizzie's mouth dropped open, and she
stared in astonishment a moment before
she said, " That 's a bran new one ! None
of the others ever ast that one before,
sure ! "

Grace Addington found herself un-
pleasantly warm.

" But would you like to ? " she repeat-
ed, moved by an absurd desire to propi-
tiate this elfish child.

" She ain't fit," said Mrs. Gannon re-
gretfully ; " she don't know about ways
of livin', — I keep her so close here.
You 'd think sometimes she ain't good
sense, she talks so queer. I guess she
better not. Do you — do you want to
go, Lizzie ? "

Lizzie nodded.

" This is a sad day for my mother : it
is my little brother's birthday, and he is
dead. I think Lizzie could divert her,"
said Miss Addington. " I have some
shopping to do ; I shall come back in half
an hour."

She was a little frightened, for how
could she ever feel sure of herself if she
should begin to behave in this erratic
manner ? She also dreaded what her
mother might say about it.

Mrs. Gannon's hands trembled as she
polished Lizzie off, and buttoned a faded
gingham apron over the grubby little
woolen frock.

" Ask them to cut your meat for you,
and watch w'at the others do w'en they
eat. And try and behave like a lady."

" ' Like a lady,' " repeated Lizzie
gravely. " I kin ; I done it ever so
many times before. They 're easy to
take off. Shall you have somethin' to
eat, too, mother ? "

" Oh, I guess so."

" The pocket ain't all tore out of my
dress ; I '11 bring you somethin' dry."

Mrs. Gannon laughed, and drew her
arm across her eyes. Then the carriage
drove up, and she took Lizzie out to the
door. Grace noticed that the furtive,
hangdog look had quite gone from her
face ; she seemed to have forgotten to

134

Company Manners.

be on the watch, and as she lifted her
little daughter into the carriage she said,
" God bless you, miss ! "

During the drive Lizzie gave Grace a
graphic description of her " fi'ts," and
how they all came from her heart, and
she could n't play out in the stree^ with
the other children because it made her
" jumpy," and the doctor said he did
not think she would live to grow up.
Grace's uneasiness increased so that she
was strongly tempted to take the child
back to her home, but Lizzie assured her
that she did not feel like having a fit,
and that she thought it was safe to go
on. She told about " the pep'mint lady,"
and another " lady " who told " mother "
Lizzie's face was dirty, and " mother "
said yes, she knew it.

" I hope you won't git tired very
quick," murmured the child at last.

A questioning spirit was beating his
wings against Miss Addington's heart,
and before the end of the drive she had
opened the door and let him in.

" Oh, mother ! " she cried, coming into
Mrs. Addington's room fifteen minutes
before dinner, " I have done such a crazy
thing ; I don't know what you will say
to me ! I have brought the woman's lit-
tle girl home to dinner. I thought you
might like to have her here on Harry's
birthday, for Harry's sake ; and she was
hungry ; and she is so odd and interest-
ing ; and oh dear, she has fits ! But I
thought it was a happy thing to do, this
special day, and I knew no one else was
to dine with us ; and she 's such a funny,
pathetic little creature."

"My dear Grace," said her mother,
" must I begin to feel now, after all these
years, that I cannot depend upon you ?
And Will Potter has come to dinner. It
was thoughtless of him, — he ought to
have remembered the day ; but he is here
now, and he is your father's cousin, so
we can't excuse ourselves."

" He won't matter," said Grace ; " he
has queer ideas about democracy, and he
takes charge of a boys' club in some set-

tlement or thing of that kind. He '11 —
I 'm afraid he '11 think it very praisewor-
thy of us. Anyway, he won't be half as
shocked as — as I am, for instance."

She laughed uneasily, and hurried to
her OAvn room, where she had left Lizzie
looking at a picture-book.

" What a nice clean mother you
have ! " the child exclaimed, a few min-
utes later, when she was being presented
to Mrs. Addington in the library. Will
Potter studied his cousin's bookshelves.

"And now, dear," said Grace'c mo-
ther, after a feeble attempt to seem
amused, " if you will ring for Jane, the
little girl can go down to cook and have
a nice hot dinner. I know she must be
hungry."

Why, of course, that was the proper
thing to do ! Strange that it had not
occurred to her before, Grace thought,
with a sense of relief. But at the same
time she felt inhospitable and ashamed,
and she blushed.

" Why not give us the pleasure of
this little girl's society at dinner, cousin
Alice ? " remarked young Potter casually.
" You say that cousin James has a down-
town appointment, and I know you like
to balance your table. I shall consider
it a privilege to sit opposite little Miss
Lizzie."

" Yes, mother," said Grace in a low
tone, blushing more painfully.

" Very well, my dear. I merely
thought " —

Dinner being announced at this mo-
ment, Will offered Mrs. Addington his
arm, and her thoughts remained un-
spoken.

While the first course was being served
Lizzie studied the dining-room and its
occupants. Presently she pointed to
the maid's white muslin cap and asked,
" Why does she wear that ? "

" Because it is pretty," replied Grace
promptly.

The child looked from her young host'
ess to the maid, and back again. " Then
why don't you wear one ? " she asked.

Company Manners.

135

" Jane, I wish you would see if
Thomas has returned. I am expecting
a note," said Mrs. Addington.

" But why don't you ? " Lizzie reiter-
ated.

"I '11 "tell you why," answered Will
Potter, leaning across the table and mak-
ing an elaborate and mischievous pre-
tense at a whisper : " it 's because she
thinks she 's pretty enough without."

" I think so, too," said Lizzie gravely.

That dinner was an unusual one for
all concerned. For a while the child
was entirely occupied in imitating the
table manners of her friends as closely
as was possible on the spur of the mo-
ment ; but when the dessert had arrived,
and Mr. Potter was cracking and ar-
ranging her nuts for her, she remem-
bered her mother's injunction to " try
and behave like a lady," and, putting
her own interpretation on that injunc-
tion, she proceeded to carry it out in a
startling manner. She folded her tiny
hands in her lap, and, addressing Mrs.
Addington in a gentle but authoritative
tone, said, " How many members of your
family are earning money at present ? "

Mrs. Addington stared, and Grace
looked alarmed. Perhaps the child was
out of her head and going to have a
"fit."

Will Potter, perceiving that the little
girl was laboring under some mistaken
notion, asked genially, " Might I reply
by another question, and ask how many
of your family are earning money at pre-
sent ? "

" Nobody," replied Lizzie, dropping
into an imitation of her mother's forlorn
manner.

" I think, cousin Alice," said Will
mischievously, " that, considering the
fact that cousin James has retired from
business, you are safe in making a simi-
lar reply."

" Has your husband any bad habits ? "
inquii'ed Lizzie solemnly.

This proved almost too much for
young Potter. He would undoubtedly

have disgraced himself and laughed
aloud, had he not caught a glimpse of
Grace's face, and seen the look of pain,
almost of terror, in her eyes. Seeing
that look, he became suddenly grave.

" This child is impertinent ! " said
Mrs. Addington in a hard, angry voice.
" There is something behind that I do
not understand. But I will not be in-
sulted in my own house by those who
depend upon my charity ! "

They all rose hurriedly, and Lizzie
began to cry.

" It was mother ! She told me, ' Be-
have like a lady,' and they always say
them things w'en they come to our
house."

Mrs. Addington had left the room, and
a sudden silence fell upon Grace and Will.

Little Lizzie got very white, and for a
few minutes Grace had visions of a possi-
ble " fit ; " but the attack was light, and
the faintness soon began to pass away.

Of course Mrs. Addington could not
understand when her daughter tried to
explain, but she consented to believe that
the child had not meant to be insulting,
because the fainting-spell was so evident-
ly genuine.

Will Potter carried Lizzie upstairs,
and, opening the door of Harry's room
by mistake, he laid her on Harry's bed.

" Not in here," objected Grace, fol-
lowing him.

" What 's the odds ? " said Will.
" Shut the door. She 's played out, poor
little tot, and the bed 's just right for
her ; it will do somebody some good for
once. Harry would have let her, bless
his cherub heart ! "

He leaned against the mantelpiece and
watched Grace as she sat by the bed.
Her eyes looked startled, and she was
thinking rapidly.

Lizzie moved her head weakly, and
let her eyes drift about the room. As
often happens after fainting-spells, she
was coining back to the world dominat-
ed by the last idea which had been in
her mind before she lost consciousness :

136

Our Two Most Honored Poets.

she was still intent upon trying to " be-
have like a lady."

" How many people sleep in this
room ? " she asked. " I hope not all of

you!"

Harry's room was large and luxuri-
ously furnished. Only his mother ever
touched the pretty toys and books, the
chairs, and the dainty nursery appoint-
ments.

"No one sleeps here now," faltered
Grace. "My little brother lived in this
room three years, and then he died."

Lizzie stared about once more, and
then, in quaint imitation of her mother's
stolid tone, she said primly, " It was a
great thing for him that he died."

Will Potter could not see his cousin's
face, but he crossed the room hurriedly

to stand beside her, and he thought he
heard her say, "Yes, Lizzie, — I — I
wonder if it was."

They were all three very still for
some time after this, but at last Will
said, " If this young lady is rested, and
you will ring for the carriage, I '11 take
her home. I 'm going down that way,
anyhow, and I can explain the case bet-
ter than the coachman would."

" Thank you," Grace answered ; " and
you might say that — I '11 come to-mor-
row and see how she is. Shall I ? "

"Well, yes," said Will, pulling his
mustache and pretending to reflect over
the matter, " I guess I would. It will
seem friendly, don't you know. Good-
night. Come, Miss Lizzie. Oh, what
a weighty young person ! "

Florence Converse.

OUR TWO MOST HONORED POETS.

IT is pleasant to note the simultaneous
Mr. Al- publication of Mr. Stedman's
Complete Poems now First Collected,
WorlM- and the writings of Mr. Al-
drich in a complete edition of eight hand-
some volumes, forming a kind of apt
commentary upon the author's own fin-
ished and reserved workmanship. As
the two most conspicuous and honorable
verse men who stand between the New
England school of thirty years ago and
the vaguely gathering forces of the pre-
sent, Mr. Stedman and Mr. Aldrich are
too justly appreciated to make criticism
very pertinent, but the provocation is
sufficient to tempt one to look again and
make clear to one's self a remembered
impression.

In spite of the much greater bulk of
Mr. Aldrich's prose, it is as a poet that
he remains in the mind. Rivermouth is
in truth a very attractive old town, where
he lived for a time in contented and hu-
morous exile ; but his home is Helicon.

That goddess whose preference for gar-
ret trysts he celebrates in one of his
charming early lyrics knows more of his
secrets than Prudence Palfrey or the
Queen of Sheba will ever coax from him.
He belongs, too, to that order of singers
who most often choose their material
from a mood antipodal to prose. The
tendency of his mind is not inward, to
penetrate and interpret the world that
is, but outward, to discover or build a
world responsive to the more delicate
cravings of the senses and the imagina-
tion. But it is the privilege of his tem-
perament, as it was of Keats's, to give
to this evasion a kind of moral and tonic
meaning not inherent in the mood, which
makes it something different from the
idle singing of an empty day. We re-
member some years ago coming across
a sonnet of Mr. Aldrich's called Out-
ward Bound, which has remained as a
metaphor of the evading spirit touched
by force of wistfulness to adventurous,

Our Two Most Honored Poets.

137

almost strenuous ends. The poet has
left behind him the elm-shadowed square
of some New England seaport town, and
has wandered through seaward-leading
alleys to where, at the lane's ending, lie
the

" Gaunt hulks of Norway ; ships of red Cey-
lon ;
Slim-masted lovers of the blue Azores ; "

and at sight of the ships the boyish Wan-
derlust seizes him, the boyish fancy
spreads wings with the brave fleet for
the fairy shores which are his by right
of longing. This is the poetic mood of
youth, its most dynamic mood, out of
which springs all its touching ideality.
Mr. Aldrich has felt the mood so deeply
as to make it the principle of his artistic
life. He has really gone out toward
those delicate coasts, and dwelt there in
that softer light. Concretely, he has
found there Nourmadee, dancing in her
gauze of Tiflis green before the grave
guests of Yussuf ; Friar Jerome, bend-
ing above the intricate growing glories
of his book ; Judith, moving gorgeous
and great-hearted in the dusk of the
king's tent : but perhaps these are after
all the least of the matter, since the
spirit of the quest is more than the trea-
sure.

To go in quest of pure beauty has
been harder in the last decades of our
century than it was at the beginning.
When Keats set forth, the forces which
were to make the century intellectually
the most tragic in the history of the
race announced themselves chiefly as a
leaven, a diffused buoyancy. It was
an easy thing for even so alert and mas-
culine a spirit as his to sink itself in a
dream of visionary beauty, hearing the
tremendous preparations round about, if
at all, only as a fruitful springtime bus-
tle of the fields. Since Keats's day, the
wildness, the incoherence, the intellectu-
al turmoil of the age have steadily deep-
ened. The wind has made short work
of most of the fragile harps set up to
tame it to melody ; and even where

these have been stout enough to stand the
stress, too often the unwilling blast has
drawn forth strains but dubiously musi-
cal. In Mr. Aldrich's pages one comes,
to be sure, upon the note of trouble ;
here and there a poignant perception of
the human flight admonishes us that the
weaving of this verse of the cloth of
gold has not been accomplished without
sacrifice of " modern " impulses ; but in
the main what makes the work refresh-
ing is the instinctiveness with which the
author turns to the specific enthusiasm
of the artist, as set off from the enthusi-
asm of the thinker or the preacher. He
has done what Herrick did in an age
which was in many respects singularly
like our own. In a troubled era, the
work of such men offers a gracious feb-
rifuge. One turns to it out of the hurly-
burly of query and doctrine as one turns
out of the glare of an Italian street into
a cool chapel, rich with the abiding
shadow of an old, old dream.

And along with this integrity of in-
stinct there has gone, in Mr. Aldrich's
case, an integrity of workmanship wholly
fine. We are at liberty to quarrel with
the ideal of workmanship which he sets
up, of course. For our own part, we
feel in it a too great insistence upon the
visual, especially the chromatic aspect
of things, and a consequent disregard of
other appeal, both sensuous and imagi-
native. One of his dramatis personce,
a painter, wants to crush a star in order
to obtain a pigment wherewith to paint
the eyes of his beloved. That is what
Mr. Aldrich is repeatedly wanting to do,
forgetful for a moment that the meaning
in the dullest eye outsyllables how far
the whole chorushood of stars ! Possess-
ing a vocabulary rich as an Oriental
jewel-box, he yields to the temptation to
make of his Muse a wearer of gems,
when she should be a spirit and a wan-
dering voice. Perhaps as a consequence
of this, the verse sometimes lacks the
high nervous organization which the oc-
casion demands. This is the case, to our

138

Our Two Most Honored Poets.

ear, with much of the blank verse of
Wyndham Towers and of Judith and
Holof ernes, — more noticeably the latter,
because of the greater weight and pas-
sion of the theme. The old Northum-
brian poet who has left us a fragment
of Judith's story found a metre apter
to keep pace with the throbbing of that
magnificent barbaric heart. But such
shortcomings in the author's poetic crafts-
manship, if they exist, serve only to throw
into relief the general distinction of his
touch.

It is a commonplace of contemporary
criticism that the work of most of pur
bards, even down to the tiniest, is highly
finished ; strictures upon the value of
their poetic accomplishment are usually
tempered by an acknowledgment of their
conscientious mastery of form. Such an
acknowledgment implies a thin and me-
chanical conception of the technique of
verse. There is, as a matter of fact, ex-
ceedingly little minor verse which is real-
ly of high finish ; and in the rare cases
where this exquisite adaptation exists, it
is almost sufficient of itself to lift the
work out of reach of the opprobrious epi-
thet. Nobody knows this better, or has
worked more earnestly in the light of
the knowledge, than Mr. Aldrich. We
do not have to read the tender opening
lines of his Soliloquy at the Funeral of
a Minor Poet to know that he loves to
lavish endless patience upon a verse, un-
til it is rich " from end to end in blossom
like a bough the May breathes on." Work
done in this spirit of nature is always
touched with a kind of unworldly aura,
no matter how small or frivolous the
form upon which the spirit wreaks itself.
Everywhere, and especially in America,
the spirit is rare enough. Those per-
sons to whom the words " American lit-
erature " mean at once a small accom-
plished fact and a large rational hope
will be grateful to Mr. Aldrich for hold-
ing up an ideal of workmanship so sound,
in a generation where the temptations
to flashy device are many, and the re-

wards of artistic piety must be looked for

— where indeed they have always abided

— in the kingdom of heaven, which is
within.

Mr. Stedman's volume, too, contains

Mr. Sted- much workmanship of an ex-
man's Poems • 'j 1 TT- 1 il '

now First quisite order. His rhythmic
Collected. sense is subtle, and he often
attains an aerial waywardness of mel-
ody which is of the very essence of the
lyric gift. By far the most noteworthy
poem in the volume, from the standpoint
of expression, is the last one, entitled
Ariel, addressed to Shelley. " Vagliami
il lungo studio e il grande amore ! " the
author might have exclaimed as he be-
gan this poem, for in every stanza his
lifelong devotion to the master whom
he celebrates makes itself felt, — not as
imitation at all, but as susceptibility to
those tremulous overtones of melody and
meaning which make Shelley's voice
haunting to ghostliness. The hovering
and aerial quality of voice in this poem *
is the more remarkable when taken in
connection with the hearty swing of such
a ballad as The Dutch Patrol, with the
scandalous tankard measure of Falstaff 's
Song, and with the large masculine dig-
nity of line in The Hand of Lincoln.

In this respect of matured verse-craft
the interest of Mr. Stedman's work runs
parallel with that of Mr. Aldrich, but in
mood they are far asunder. Instead of
a quiet putting by of the intellectual tur-
moil, this volume exhibits a deep spirit-
ual restlessness darkened by a sense of
doubt and bafflement, but refusing still
to be hopeless or uncourageous. It ex-
ists for the most part in solution, but
where it precipitates itself, as in Corda
Concordia and Fin de Siecle, the lines
are freighted with such earnestness as to
make the remainder of the work seem,
by comparison, almost occasional.

Mr. Stedman is of those who have
suffered the stress of the day. He has
watched the wings of speculation fall crip-
pled from the mysterious walls against
which they had flung themselves. He

"Moral" Melodrama to Order.

139

has marched with the armies of belief
when they beheld, beyond bristling de-
files of thought manfully stormed and
taken, mountainous paradox rising stol-
idly inexpugnable. He sees the century
going down on a world which science has
sufficed to make only more inexplicable,
and the sight is solemn. Just now we

felt grateful to Mr. Aldrich for putting
all this away in order that the clarity and
sweetness of his art might not suffer ;
now we feel something like reverence for
the man who, in conditions which make
for contentment and acquiescence, has
not been able to escape these large afflic-
tions.

"MORAL" MELODRAMA TO ORDER.

THE well-to-do man of the city has few
ideas and scant experience : he break-
fasts, puts on his overcoat, goes down-
town, tarries in his office so long as the
sun shines, and then returns up-town, un-
locks his front door, hangs up his over-
coat, and dines. These processes, with
sleep and a little human companionship,
make up the routine of his existence.
His mind is a fair counterpart of his life.
It has its little avenues where the traffic
of his ideas trundles to and fro ; its side
streets, distinguished by Roman numer-
als ; and occasional patches of green, on
which his thoughts rarely trespass, so
well are they patrolled by habit and cus-
tom in brass buttons. The ill-to-do citi-
zen is in most matters, except pecuniary,
like his well-to-do brother.

This urban nature is well understood
by those persons who make a livelihood
by supplying its holidays with occupa-
tions and diversions. They know its
commonness, its curiosity, its cursoriness,
and its fickleness ; they perceive the need
of startling contrast, and therefore they
put melodrama on the stage, vice into
novels, and crime into daily newspapers.
These purveyors are of stunted under-
standing and confused vision ; they think
that a well-combined mixture of vice
and crime constitutes melodrama. In
reality, false melodrama is an entirely
different thing from true melodrama.
The latter is the region where children's

dreams assume bodily shape. The in-
tense, the exaggerated, the improbable,
the superhuman, are its principal inhabi-
tants. Everybody who has ever read the
Arabian Nights, Amadis of Gaul, Orlan-
do Furioso, any tales about the Round
Table, or almost any story told before
printers were so powerful in the world,
knows that the love of the humanly im-
possible is very deeply rooted. Every
new child adds another to its band of
supporters.

The true melodrama is delightful : it
ignores sophistication, ennui, worldliness,
the commonness of daily life ; it brushes
aside the superincumbent years, and puts
us back into the great days of old when
giants were on earth ; it sends the blood
tingling in our veins ; it sounds the re-
veille to innocence ; it administers most
excellent medicine to the city-bred. But
managers of theatres, manufacturers of
novels, publishers of daily papers, have
the greatest difficulty in keeping real and
false melodrama separate and apart. The
false appeals to curiosity, to ignorance,
to envy, to meanness, to all those feel-
ings which underlie ostentation, affecta-
tion, and vulgarity ; it does not appeal
to the child, but to the dwarf, to the
stunted oaf in each of us. The harm
of it is that children are deceived, and
grown people also. Hence one need for
a widely diffused literary education to
teach the difference between the heroic,

140

"Moral" Melodrama to Order.

the creation of the child's imagination,
and the abnormal, the handiwork of
those who find comfort and refreshment
in vice and crime.

There is no doubt that novelists expe-
rience especial difficulty in distinguish-
ing clearly between the two, because, in
addition to a certain resemblance be-
tween false and true melodrama, there
is, in writing novels, the confusion caused
by tragedy. In old times, plays used
always to be divided into two classes,
comedies and tragedies, — there was no
middle ground ; and a playwright wrote
either the one or the other. The drama,
when withdrawing in favor of the young-
er sister, the novel, handed on to her
sundry precepts, among them this one
of conventional classification ; and to this
day, novelists, although they have no ex-
cuse of limitations imposed by the stage,
make up their minds to write a trage-
dy or a comedy instead of proposing to
write a story. The novel, thus hindered
and thwarted, has committed the further
error of acknowledging the prestige of
tragedy. In hurly-burly times, when
men's minds were upset by great causes,
when a nation's existence was at stake,
when strange gods threatened to invade,
when a different race with monstrous
customs tramped in with scimiters, — in
such times fears and exultations spoke
through the voices of the people. Then
men of genius flung themselves into the
heady current of life, and floated to-
wards the swiftest eddy and the biggest
waves. But those times have gone ; new
conditions of life give new matter for
words. Persians, Turks, Spaniards, no
longer burst in upon us ; our back doors
are safe ; if we lie awake at night, it is
over the obstacles to our pursuit of pri-
vate happiness. Nevertheless, the bur-
den of tragedy weighs upon novelists
as heavily as it did upon playwrights.
They accept their lofty vocation with
funereal brows ; hardly a man of them
refuses the summons of duty to write
three volumes of distress.

There can be no quarrel between us
and men who are sensitive to the griefs
of life. Death and pain stay as close to
us as they did to our fathers. A man
cannot write a story of many persons,
or of a single person throughout his
whole life, without telling of sorrow ;
but the sadder the story, the more dif-
• ficult it is to tell. No man knows trage-
dy unless he knows how noble human-
ity can be ; no man may say sin is terrible
unless he appreciates the possibilities
in human nature. There is no tragedy
among animals. No poet has ever made
tragedy out of physical pain. Even we,
common men and women, are " so made,
thanks be to God, that such misery does
not offend us." The suffering soul alone
makes tragedy. Its pains are measured
by its capability ; great tragedy is when
a noble soul, like Othello's, descends into
hell. Men who would write tragedy
must brood over life. They need not
master any branch of science, they may
neglect history and pathology, they need
not travel.

Mr. Hall Caine has come to grief be-
cause of his disregard of these obvious
facts. Ignorant of real melodrama, he
has grasped at tragedy like a baby reach-
ing for the moon, and has tumbled head
over heels into the slough of false melo-
drama. He goes up to London, studies
the woman of the street, the man of the
club, the hospital, the doings of lord
and prelate, of lady and ballet girl, of
monk and costermonger, and then sits
down to write a book * that shall show
forth the woes, wickedness, and hypocri-
sy of London. He will redress wrong
and pluck the beam from the world's
eye. Excellent purpose, and yet how
has Mr. Caine the boldness publicly to
express his wish to win the great prize
of life, this righting of wrong ? How
has he deserved it ? When has he re-
fined himself by the profound compari-
son necessary to understand a single hu-

1 The Christian. A Story. By HALL CAINE.
New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1897.

11 Moral" Melodrama to Order.

141

man soul ? To know that there are sin
and sorrow in London is hardly enough
to justify a man in the belief that he
can pick up his pen and cross them out.
Many men feel the tragedy of life ;
many well know " the expense of spirit
in a waste of shame," avarice, and vul-
garity ; they are eager for sympathy ;
they go to plays, they read books, stuffed
full of misery, seeking in vain for the
kindly medicine which real tragedy ad-
ministers. They are conscious of the
larger life introduced by it. The com-
mon belief that before each person
stretches immortal life is closely allied to
tragedy. It may be that only the hero

" Mounts, and that hardly to eternal life,"

but the importance of this belief in im-
mortality, for the novelist, is that most
men and women feel that they are en-
titled, by virtue of their souls, to experi-
ence for themselves that life which is
the home of tragedy, the life of the spir-
it. A dim perception of this alliance be-
tween aspiration and tragedy has thrown
a fresh fog of obscurity around Mr.
Caine ; in the confusion he flings out a
life-line, and, as if he were a life-boat's
crew, hallooes to painted men drowning
in a painted ocean.

The Christian is the story of John
Storm and Glory Quayle. Storm is the
son of an English lord, and has been
educated by his father for the purpose
of dissolving the British Empire, and
of combining the fragments into "the
United States of Great Britain." " So
the boy was taken through Europe and
Asia, and learned something of many
languages. . . . Conventional morality
was considered mawkish. The chief
aim of home training was to bring chil-
dren up in total ignorance, if possible,
of the most important facts and func-
tions of life. But it was not possible,
and hence suppression, dissimulation,
lying, and, under the ban of secret sin,
one half the world's woes. So the boy
was taken to the temples of Greece and

India, and even to Western casinos and
dancing-gai'dens." Father and son went
back to the Isle of Man : there the son
met Glory, the granddaughter of an old
clergyman, and there he learned serious
views, and determined to forsake the
" United States of Great Britain " and
betake himself to a religious life. Glory,
half boy, bored with the island and her
aunts, is eager to see the world and to
develop her own powers. " One of her
eyes had a brown spot, which gave at the
first glance the effect of a squint, at the
next glance a coquettish expression, and
ever after a sense of tremendous power
and passion." The " depth " of her voice
was " capable of every shade of color."
She resolves to be a nurse in a London
hospital in which John Storm is to be
chaplain ; and the two travel to London
together. Storm finds himself curate to
a fashionable preacher, whose worldli-
ness, frivolity, and hypocrisy he is unable
to endure. At the hospital Glory makes
friends with Polly Love, who takes her
to the theatre, to a dance, and to the
chambers of some fashionable young
gentlemen, where Glory dresses herself
up in man's clothes. The mingling of
ignorance and audacity in Glory is very
remarkable ; for though she knew Byron
and Sir Charles Grandison, and some
other matters, nevertheless at the play
(and she herself desired to be an ac-
tress) she was entirely deceived into
thinking she beheld reality. Polly is
the mistress of Lord Robert, one of the
fashionable young gentlemen ; and when
it is apparent that she is with child, she
is summoned before the trustees of the
hospital and is denounced by the fash-
ionable preacher. Glory steps to Polly's
side and takes her part. John Storm
demands that after her expulsion the
name of her seducer shall be made pub-
lic and stricken from the roll of gover-
nors. The demand is refused, and Polly
is forbidden to mention the man's name.
The consequences of this incident are
that Storm enters a brotherhood, and

142

"Moral" Melodrama to Order.

that Glory, discharged from the hospital,
goes on the stage.

In the second book Mr. Caine de-
scribes life in the monastery. There
Storm meets Paul, brother to Polly
Love, and tells him of Polly's seduc-
tion. Paul, through the connivance of
Storm, who is on duty as guardian of
the gate, goes out from the monastery
by night in search of his sister. Once
before Paul had gone out from the mon-
astery, on the occasion of the seduction
of his other sister, and had murdered
the seducer. This night he cannot find
Polly or Lord Robert, and comes back
to die of exhaustion. Storm, fearful of
the fate that may await Glory, deter-
mines to leave the monastery. He is
unfrocked with ceremony, and goes out
into the world in time to see large pla-
cards on sandwich-men announcing
" Gloria, the great singer." Glory, in
the meantime, has lived with a certain
Mrs. Jupe, who combines the two call-
ings of tobacconist and concealer of
illegitimate babies. For a time Glory
served behind the corfnter, and there
made the acquaintance of some ballet
girls, and from a de"but in a music hall
suddenly jumped into fame as a favor-
ite of London society. John Storm, on
quitting the monastery, betakes himself
to the slums, and preaches repentance
and the end of the world, which shall
come to pass on Derby day. He has
been unable to break the bond that binds
him to Glory, and twice she has pro-
mised to forsake the world, marry him,
and live in the slums or go to tend lep-
ers in Samoa, and twice she has drawn
back. Glory frequents the society of the
world, but not of the world's wife, and
on the eventful day of prediction drives
out on the coach of Sir Francis Horatio
Nelson Drake to see his horse win the
Derby. The day ends in a carouse.
Storm, under the strain of his emotional
life and maddened by jealousy, goes to
Glory's apartments for the purpose of
killing her body that he may save her

soul. She returns, from the carouse, and,
in terror for her life, induces Storm to
break the chief of his triple vows. The
next day he is arrested as legally respon-
sible for the death of a brawler killed in
a fray with his fanatical followers. He
is released on bail, and straightway is as-
saulted in the street by some ruffians who
have become angry at being cheated into
the belief that the end of the world had
come. Glory puts off her theatrical dress,
gets into her gown of hospital nurse, and
hurries to Storm's death-bed, where the
two are married, and the book ends with
the words of the marriage service.

Persons in whose lives books play a
large part incline to judge a book by
a literary standard : such people push
aside a novel like The Christian with a
shrug and a few words of jest or con-
tempt. In Cosmopolis Mr. Lang treats
it with great levity. But there are others
who read novels for instruction, from
ignorance and curiosity to learn the facts
of life outside of their own experience,
and they, readily accepting Mr. Caine
as an authority, believe that this com-
pound of intemperance, irreverence, and
acquaintance with vice is to be taken
seriously by virtuous men and women.
Books are too closely connected with
our daily life to permit us to measure
them by other standards than those
which we use with regard to the conduct
of life. We have heard many persons
talk about the world of art as if it
were a big soap-bubble, utterly unre-
lated to our world of flesh and blood, —
one with which the ten commandments
have no concern, wrapped round by an
atmosphere where dull conscience cannot
live. Human life, however, retains its
supremacy ; art depends upon it for all
vitality, and willy - nilly must acknow-
ledge, in deed if not in word, that mo-
rality is the chief factor in shaping beau-
ty and taste.

If a novelist chooses to write about
vice as a fashion of contemporary man-
ners, we feel that Grylle is Grylle, and

'•'•Moral'" Melodrama to Order.

143

may write as he pleases ; but when
Mr. Hall Caine takes advantage of the
sacred name " Christian " in order to
attract decent people, and in the same
pages describes vice in frequent repe-
tition of similar scenes, we think he
must be held to be liming his twig to
catch at the same time a different class
of readers, and we feel that any ques-
tion as to jurisdiction of morality with
regard to this book cannot fairly be
raised. We believe that Mr. Caine would
not urge such a question. Apparently
he has meant to write a new allegory of
Christian journeying through life. First
Christian bends his steps to the Church,
and finds Canon Worldly and Reverend
Hypocrisy ; then he betakes hknself to
the monastery, and finds in it the chill
of the obsolete ; all the time he is strug-
gling against Mistress Flesh, and seek-
ing succor among the poor and the
wrong-doers, until he comes to the val-
ley of the shadow of death, where he
fights with a hydra-headed Apollyon in
the form of fashionable society. He is
seemingly conquered by Mistress Flesh,
who comes to the rescue of Apollyon ;
but he dies at last a martyr, and as vic-
torious as (in the opinion of the author)
is possible for the Christian who fights
against the powers of Satan.

There is no reader but must be aston-
ished by the great lack of refinement
throughout, by the want of education in
life, by the absence of even rudimentary
art, by the pitiful intemperance of the
book. An artist takes a fact very much
as a juggler does, holds it in his hands,
makes a few quick movements, stretches
it out to the beholder, and lo ! the fact
is entirely changed from what it had first
seemed to be. This faculty has the power
of throwing light on a subject, so that the
humanly interesting element disentangles
itself, and stands out like the spirit of the
fact quite extricated from its trappings.
It is the lack of this faculty, in both
writers and readers, that brought philo-
realism into passing fashion. " Let us

get at facts," said the crowd ; but they
could not, for the facts of life are spirit,
which appears to the crowd only in mul-
titudinous disguises. To take an illus-
tration : the crowd, through its mouth-
piece, history, says that Queen Elizabeth
was half in love with Leicester, and that
she tickled the back of his neck when he
knelt to receive his earldom. Shake-
speare says

"the imperial votaress passed on,
In maiden meditation, fancy-free.'.'

This disagreement shows us the differ-
ence between the pseudo-Elizabeth of
history, who slept and ate, who walked
about in state, accompanied by wise men
and by fools, and the Elizabeth of Eng-
land, who has been created by poet, sailor,
and Protestant, and who will live an im-
mortal queen. Is that real which passes
away like the down of the dandelion, or
that which is an ideal compact of many
excellencies,

" Helen's cheek, but not her heart,

Cleopatra's majesty,
Atalanta's better part,
Sad Lucretia's modesty,"

and such other qualities as lovers give?

It is our inability to believe that other
men are greater than we, that they have
" larger other eyes than ours," that has
bestowed so much rash flattery upon this
realism which has so bewildered Mr.
Caine. We common men see a poor dumb
fact come limping in, and our dreamy,
unconsidered neighbor's face lights up ;
he greets it, and, to our bewilderment,
at the touch of his hand the fact stands
up and speaks. It is this power gained
from life that guides the master's pen.

We are often surprised at the neglect
of pure comedy. The prestige of trage-
dy, the disquieting desire for theatrical
effect, the wish to benefit our brothers
whom we have not seen, the stupidity of
the English language in having no adjec-
tive for " comedy " but " comic," do not
seem to us sufficient causes to account for
this neglect. It is clear that if we look
to the classics we find great comedy as

144

'•'•Moral " Melodrama to Order.

rare as great tragedy. Shakespeare and
Cervantes stand alone ; after a long in-
terval come Moliere, Fielding, Dickens.
If we consider the books which have
been proved by their popularity Jo be ac-
ceptable to men, we find that Robinson
Crusoe, Pickwick Papers, Huckleberry
Finn, have called forth more gratitude
than most sad stories have. Miss Aus-
ten's fame is as secure as that of any
English novelist except Sir Walter Scott,
and she has written only comedies. But
Mr. Hall Caine eschews the ways of
.peace, and proceeds in King Cambyses'
vein. To find any such blood-curdling
events as there are in The Christian we
must go to Marlowe or to the Bowery.
Mr. Caine has put in —

Item, one suicide.

Item, three murders.

Item, one bloodhound.

Item, four seductions.

Item, ballet girls, gamblers, monks.

Item, two deaths in bed.

Item, music halls, thieves' dens.

Item, one impossible heroine.

Item, one impossible hero.

Item, one ha'penny worth of purpose
to this intolerable deal of bombast.

It may be that greater genius is re-
quired to write tragedy than to write
comedy. The critics say so. Neverthe-
less, courage, devotion, loyalty, love, are
not less difficult to delineate when happy
than when unhappy. The virtues of life
are as hard to portray as they are to ac-
quire. No man need fear that his pen
is doing an unworthily easy task because
he describes virtue and happiness. We
know of no explanation of the neglect of
comedy, unless it be that Satan has taken
some of our novelists to the top of a
high mountain and shown them the vices
and miseries of the world in order to
tempt them. Satan, we know, has no
power to show them the joys and happi-

ness of life. Like one-eyed calendars
the melancholy novelists go, blind to one
half of life,

The Christian is said to have many
readers in the United States. This in-
tei-est shows the gloomy side of our great
national virtue, good nature. For the
sake of Mr. Caine' s proclaimed purpose,
the public endures such a book. It does
not stop to think that if Mr. Caine in
truth had had a noble purpose at heart,
he would not have frustrated that pur-
pose by a slovenly book ; rather would he
have waited, and by long preparation,
by temperance, by refraining from the
stretch of life beyond his powers, would
have put his two talents to usury, and
have broyght back the increase to his
conscience.

We ourselves have an inclination for
sentiment (a word avoided by most peo-
ple). By sentiment we mean that power
of abstraction which distills finer ele-
ments from companionship of baser ma-
terials, to which the chances of mortal
hours had bound them ; we mean the
friendliness of the cultivated mind which
makes wholesome poor maimed matter.
Sentiment is a great comforter. It is
noiseless music.

" Leise zieht durch mein Gemiith
Liebliches Gelaiite."

Goethe is the great master of sentiment.
Mr. Caine is utterly devoid of it ; and so
innocent is he of any suspicion of his lack
that in the middle of his melodrama —
as upon tinsel falls a jet of sunshine —
he quotes,

" Du liebes Kind, komm' geh' rnitmir !
Gar scheme Spiele spiel' icb. mit dir,' '

in utter unconsciousness of the effect
which these two lines of poetry produce
upon his readers. They show his self-de-
ceit, and they drive us back to men of
imagination, who learn from life, and
tell us what they know.

THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY:

ittaga?ine of literature, Science, art, anD ^oliticg.

**.

. LXXXI. — FEBR UARY, 1898. — No.

THE CAPTURE OF GOVERNMENT BY COMMERCIALISM.

MISGOVEBNMENT in the United States
is an incident in the history of commerce.
It is part of the triumph of industrial
progress. Its details are easier to un-
derstand if studied as a part of the
commercial development of the country
than if studied as a part of government,
because many of the wheels and cranks
in the complex machinery of govern-
ment are now performing functions so
perverted as to be unmeaning from the
point of view of political theory, but
which become perfectly plain if looked
at from the point of view of trade.

The growth and concentration of cap-
ital which the railroad and the telegraph
made possible is the salient fact in the
history of the last quarter-century. That
fact is at the bottom of our political trou-
bles. It was inevitable that the enor-
mous masses of wealth, springing out of
new conditions and requiring new laws,
should strive to control the legislation
and the administration which touched
them at every point. At the present
time, we cannot say just what changes
were or were not required by enlightened
theory. It is enough to see that such
changes as came were inevitable ; and
nothing can blind us to the fact that the
methods by which they were obtained
were subversive of free government.

Whatever form of government had
been in force in America during this
era would have run the risk of being
controlled by capital, of being bought
and run for revenue. It happened that
the beginning of the period found the

machinery of our government in a par-
ticularly purchasable state. The war
had left the people divided into two par-
ties which were fanatically hostile to
each other. The people were party mad.
Party name and party symbols were of
an almost religious importance.

At the very moment when the enthu-
siasm of the nation had been exhausted
in a heroic war which left the Republi-
can party managers in possession of the
ark of the covenant, the best intellect of
the country was withdrawn from public
affairs and devoted to trade. During
the period of expansion which followed,
the industrial forces called in the ablest
men of the nation to aid them in getting
control of the machinery of government.
The name of king was never freighted
with more power than the name of party
in the United States ; whatever was done
in that name was right. It is the old
story : there has never been a despotism
which did not rest upon superstition. The
same spirit that made the Republican
name all powerful in the nation at large
made the Democratic name valuable in
Democratic districts.

The situation as it existed was made
to the hand of trade. Political power
had been condensed and packed for de-
livery by the war; and in the natural
course of things the political trade-
marks began to find their way into the
coffers of the capitalist. The change of
motive power behind the party organiza-
tions — from principles to money — was
silently effected during the thirty years

146

The Capture of Government by Commercialism.

which followed the war. Like all or-
ganic change, it was unconscious. It
was understood by no one. It is record-
ed only in a few names and phrases ; as,
for instance, that part of the organiza-
tion which was purchased was called the
"machine," and the general manager of
it became known as the " boss." The
external political history of the country
continued as before. It is true that a
steady degradation was to be seen in
public life, a steady failure of character,
a steady decline of decency. But ques-
tions continued to be discussed, and in
form decided, on their merits, because
it was in the interest of commerce that
they should in form be so decided. Only
quite recently has the control of money
become complete ; and there are reasons
for believing that the climax is past.

Let us take a look at the change on
a small scale. A railroad is to be run
through a country town or small city, in
Massachusetts, New York, or Pennsyl-
vania. The railroad employs a local at-
torney, naturally the ablest attorney in
the place. As time goes on, various per-
mits for street uses are needed ; and
instead of relying solely upon popular
demand, the attorney finds it easier to
bribe the proper officials. All goes well :
the railroad thrives, the town grows.
But in the course of a year new permits
of various kinds are needed. The town
ordinances interfere with the road and
require amendment. There is to be a
town election ; and it occurs to the rail-
road's attorney that he might be in al-
liance with the town officers before they
are elected. He goes to the managers
of the party which is likely to win ; for
instance, the Republican party. Every-
thing that the railroad wants is really
called for by the economic needs of the
town. The railroad wants only fair play
and no factious obstruction. The at-
torney talks to the Republican leader,
and has a chance to look over the list of
candidates, and perhaps even to select

some of them. The railroad makes the
largest campaign subscription ever made
in that part of the country. The Re-
publican leader can now employ more
workers to man the polls, and, if neces-
sary, he can buy votes. He must also
retain some fraction of the contribution
for his own support, and distribute the
rest in such manner as will best keep
his " organization " together.

The party wins, and the rights of the
railroad are secured for a year. It is
true that the brother of the Republican
leader is employed on the road as a
brakeman ; but he is a competent man.

During the year, a very nice point of
law arises as to the rights of the railroad
to certain valuable land claimed by the
town. The city attorney is an able man,
and reasonable. In spite of his ability,
he manages somehow to state the city's
case on an untenable ground. A deci-
sion follows in favor of the railroad. At
the following election, the city attorney
has become the Republican candidate
for judge, and the railroad's campaign
subscription is trebled. In the conduct
of railroads, even under the best man-
agement, accidents are common ; and
while it is true that important decisions
are appealable, a trial judge has enor-
mous powers which are practically dis-
cretionary. Mean while, there have arisen
questions of local taxation of the rail-
road's property, questions as to grade
crossings, as to the lighting of cars, as
to time schedules, and the like. The
court calendars are becoming crowded
with railroad business ; and that busi-
ness is now more than one attorney can
attend to. In fact, the half dozen local
lawyers of prominence are railroad men ;
the rest of the lawyers would like to be.
Every one of the railroad lawyers re-
ceives deferential treatment, and, when
possible, legal advantage in all of the
public offices. The community is now
in the control of a ring, held together
by just one thing, the railroad company's
subscription to the campaign fund.

The Capture of Government by Commercialism.

147

By this time a serious scandal has oc-
curred in the town, — nothing less than
the rumor of a deficit in the town trea-
surer's accounts, and the citizens are con-
cerned ahout it. One of the railroad's
lawyers, a strong party man, happens to
be occupying the post of district attor-
ney ; for the yearly campaign subscrip-
tions continue. This district attorney is,
in fact, one of the committee on nomina-
tions who put the town treasurer into
office ; and the Republican party is re-
sponsible for both. No prosecution fol-
lows. The district attorney stands for
reelection.

An outsider comes to live in the town.
He wants to reform things, and proceeds
to talk politics. He is not so inexperi-
enced as to seek aid from the rich and
respectable classes. He knows that the
men who subscribed to the railroad's
stock are the same men who own the
local bank, and that the manufacturers
and other business men of the place rely
on the bank for carrying on their busi-
ness. He knows that all trades which
are specially touched by the law, such
as the liquor - dealers' and hotel -keep-
ers', must " stand in " with the admin-
istration ; so also must the small shop-
keepers, and those who have to do with
sidewalk privileges and town ordinances
generally. The newcomer talks to the
leading hardware merchant, a man of
stainless reputation, who admits that the
district attorney has been remiss ; but
the merchant is a Republican, and says
that so long as he lives he will vote for
the party that saved the country. To
vote for a Democrat is a crime. The
reformer next approaches the druggist
(whose fathev-in-law is in the employ of
the railroad), and receives the same re-
ply. He goes to the florist. But the
floi-ist owns a piece of real estate, and
has a theory that it is assessed too high.
The time for revising the assessment
rolls is coming near, and he has to see
the authorities about that. The florist
agrees that the town is a den of thieves ;

but he must live ; he has no time to go
into theoretical politics. The stranger
next interviews a retired grocer. But
the grocer has lent money to his nephew,
who is in the coal business, and is getting
special rates from the railroad, and is
paying off the debt rapidly. The grocer
would be willing to help, but his name
must not be used.

It is needless to multiply instances of
what every one knows. After canvassing
the whole community, the stranger finds
five persons who are willing to work to
defeat the district attorney : a young
doctor of good education and small prac-
tice, a young lawyer who thinks he can
make use of the movement by betray-
ing it, a retired anti-slavery preacher, a
maiden lady, and a piano-tuner. The
district attorney is reflected by an over-
whelming vote.

All this time the railroad desires only
a quiet life. It takes no interest in poli-
tics. It is making money, and does not
want values disturbed. It is conserva-
tive.

In the following year worse things
happen. The town treasurer steals more
money, and the district attorney is open-
ly accused of sharing the profits. The
Democrats are shouting for reform, and
declare that they will run the strongest
man in town for district attorney. He
is a Democrat, but one who fought for
the Union. He is no longer in active
practice, and is, on the whole, the most
distinguished citizen of the place. This
suggestion is popular. The hardware
merchant declares that he will vote the
Democratic ticket, and there is a sensa-
tion. It appears that during all these
years there has been a Democratic organ-
ization in the town, and that the notorious
corruption of the Republicans makes a
Democratic victory possible. The railroad
company therefore goes to the manager
of the Democratic party, and explains
that it wants only to be let alone. It
explains that it takes no interest in poli-
tics, but that, if a change is to come, it

148

The Capture of Government by Commercialism.

desires only that So-and-So shall be re-
tained, and it leaves a subscription with
the Democratic manager. In short, it
makes the best terms it can. The De-
mocratic leader, if he thinks that he
can make a clean sweep, may nominate
the distinguished citizen, together with a
group of his own organization comrades.
It obviously would be of no use to him
to name a full citizens' ticket. That
would be treason to his party. If he
takes this course and wins, we shall have
ring rule of a slightly milder type. The
course begins anew, under a Democratic
name ; and it may be several years be-
fore another malfeasance occurs.

But the Republican leader and the
railroad company do not want war ; they
want peace. They may agree to make
it worth while for the Democrats not to
run the distinguished citizen. A few
Democrats are let into the Republican
ring. They are promised certain minor
appointive offices, and some contracts and
emoluments. Accordingly, the Demo-
crats do not nominate the distinguished
citizen. The hardware man sees little
choice between the two nominees for dis-
trict attorney ; at any rate, he will not
vote for a machine Democrat, and he
again votes for his party nominee. All
the reform talk simmers down to silence.
The Republicans are returned to power.

The town is now ruled by a Happy
Family. Stable equilibrium has been
reached at last. Commercialism is in
control. Henceforth, the railroad com-
pany pays the bills for keeping up both
party organizations, and it receives care
and protection from whichever side is
nominally in power.

The party leaders have by this time
become the general utility men of the
railroad ; they are its agents and facto-
tums. The boss is the handy man of
the capitalist. So long as the people of
the town are content to vote on party lines
they cannot get away from the railroad.
In fact, there are no national parties in
the town. A man may talk about them,

but he cannot vote for one of them, be-
cause they do not exist. He can vote
only for or against the railroad ; and to
do the latter, an independent ticket must
be nominated.

It must not be imagined that any part
of the general public clearly understands
this situation. The state of mind of the
Better Element of the Republican side
has been seen. The good Democrats are
equally distressed. The distinguished
citizen ardently desires to oust the Re-
publican ring. He subscribes year after
year to the campaign fund of his own
party, and declares that the defalcation
of the town treasurer has given it the
opportunity of a generation. The De-
mocratic organization takes his money
and accepts his moral support, and uses
it to build up one end of the machine.
It cries, " Reform ! Reform ! Give us
back the principles of Jefferson and of
Tilden ! "

The Boss-out-of-Power must welcome
all popular movements. He must some-
times accept a candidate from a citizens'
committee, sometimes refuse to do it.
He must spread his mainsail to the na-
tional party wind of the moment. His
immense advantage is an intellectual one.
He alone knows the principles of the
game. He alone sees that the power
of the bosses comes from party loyalty.
Croker recently stated his case frankly
thus : " A man who would desert his
party would desert his country."

It may be remarked, in passing, that
New York city reached the Happy Fam-
ily stage many years ago. Tammany
Hall is in power, being maintained there
by the great mercantile interests. The
Republican party is out of power, and its
organization is kept going by the same
interests. It has always been the ear-
mark of an enterprise of the first finan-
cial magnitude in New York that it sub-
scribed to both campaign funds. The
Republican function has been to prevent
any one from disturbing Tammany Hall.
This has not been difficult ; the Repub-

The Capture of Government by Commercialism.

149

licans have always been in a hopeless
minority, and the machine managers un-
derstood this perfectly. Now if, by the
simple plan of denouncing Tammany
Hall, and appealing to the war record of
the Republican party, they could hold
their constituency, Tammany would be
safe. The matter is actually more com-
plex than this, but the principle is obvious.

To return to our country town. It is
easy to see that the railroad is pouring
out its money in the systematic corrup-
tion of the entire community. Even the
offices with which it has no contact will
be affected by this corruption. Men put
in office because they are tools will work
as tools only. Voters once bribed will
thereafter vote for money only. The
subscribing and the voting classes, whose
state of mind is outlined above, are not
purely mercenary. The retired grocer,
the florist, the druggist, are all influ-
enced by mixed motives, in which per-
sonal interest bears a greater or a smaller
share. Each of these men belongs to a
party, as a Brahmin is born into a caste.
His spirit must suffer an agony of con-
version before he can get free, even if he
is poor. If he has property, he must pay
for that conversion by the loss of money,
also.

Since 1865 the towns throughout the
United States have been passing through
this stage. A ring was likely to spring
up wherever there was available capital.
We hear a great talk about the failure
of our institutions as applied to cities,
as if it were our incapacity to deal with
masses of people and with the problems
of city expansion that wrecked us. It
is nothing of the sort. There is intel-
lect and business capacity enough in the
country to run the Chinese Empire like
clockwork. Philosophers state broadly
that our people " prefer to live in towns,"
and cite the rush to the cities during the
last thirty years. The truth is that the
exploitation of the continent could be
done most conveniently by the assem-
bling of business men in towns ; and

hence it is that the worst rings are found
in the larger cities. But there are rings
everywhere ; and wherever you see one
you will find a factory behind it. If
the population had remained scattered,
commerce would have pursued substan-
tially the same course. We should have
had the rings just the same. It is per-
fectly true that the wonderful and sci-
entific concentration of business that we
have seen in the past thirty years gave
the chance for the wonderful and scien-
tific concentration of its control over
politics. The state machine could be
constructed easily by consolidating local
rings of the same party name.

The boss par excellence is a state
boss. He is a comparatively recent de-
velopment. He could exist only in a
society which had long been preparing
for him. He could operate only in a
society where almost every class and al-
most every individual was in a certain
sense corrupted. The exact moment of
his omnipotence in the state of New
York, for instance, is recorded in the
actions of the state legislature. Less
than ten years ago, the bribing of the
legislature was done piecemeal and at
Albany ; and the great corporations of
the state were accustomed to keep sepa-
rate attorneys in the capitol, ready for
any emergency. But the economy of
having the legislature corrupted before
election soon became apparent. If the
party organizations could furnish a man
with whom the corporation managers
could contract directly, they and their
directors could sleep at night. The boss
sprang into existence to meet this need.
He is a commercial agent, like his little
local prototype ; but the scope of his ac-
tivities is so great and their directions are
so various, the forces that he deals with
are so complex and his mastery over
them is so complete, that a kind of mys-
tery envelops him. He appears in the
newspapers like a demon of unaccount-
able power. He is the man who gives

150

The Capture of Government by Commercialism.

his attention to aiding in the election of
the candidates for state office, and to re-
taining his hold upon them after election.
His knowledge of local politics all over
a state, and the handling of the very large
sums of money subscribed by sundry pro-
moters and corporations, explain the mir-
acle of his control.

The government of a state is no more
than a town government for a wide area.
The methods of bribery which work cer-
tain general results in a town will work
similar results in a state. But the scale
of operations is vastly greater. The state-
controlled businesses, such as banking,
insurance, and the state public works,
and the liquor traffic, involve the expen-
diture of enormous sums of money.

The effect of commercialism on politics
is best seen in the state system. The
manner of nominating candidates shows
how easily the major force in a commu-
nity makes use of its old customs.

The American plan of party govern-
ment provides for primaries, caucuses,
and town, county, and state conventions.
It was devised on political principles,
and was intended to be a means of work-
ing out the will of the majority, by a
gradual delegation of power from bot-
tom to top. The exigencies of com-
merce required that this machinery
should be made to work backwards, —
namely, from top to bottom. It was ab-
solutely necessary for commerce to have
a political dictator ; and this was found
to be perfectly easy. Every form and
process of nomination is gravely gone
through with, the dictator merely stand-
ing by and designating the officers and
committee men at every step. There is
something positively Egyptian in the
formalism that has been kept up in prac-
tice, and in the state of mind of men
who are satisfied with the procedure.

The men who, in the course of a par-
ty convention, are doing this marching
and countermarching, this forming and
dissolving into committees and delega-
tions, and who appear like acolytes go-

ing through mystical rites and ceremo-
nies, are only self - seeking men, with-
out a real political idea in their heads.
Their evolutions are done to be seen by
the masses of the people, who will give
them party support if these forms are
complied with.

We all know well another interesting
perversion of function. A legislator is
by political theory a wise, enlightened
man, pledged to intellectual duties. He
gives no bonds. He is responsible only
under the constitution and to his own con-
science. Therefore, if the place is to be
filled by a dummy, almost anybody will
do. A town clerk must be a competent
man, even under boss rule ; but a legis-
lator will serve the need so long as he
is able to say " ay " and " no." The
boss, then, governs the largest and the
most complex business enterprise in the
state ; and he is always a man of great
capacity. He is obliged to conduct it in
a cumbersome and antiquated manner,
and to proceed at every step according
to precedent and by a series of fictions.
When we consider that the legislators
and governors are, after all, not absolute
dummies ; that among them are ambi-
tious and rapacious men, with here and
there an enemy or a traitor to the boss
and to his dynasty, we cannot help ad-
miring in the boss his high degree of Na-
poleonic intellect. And remember this :
he must keep both himself and his patrons
out of jail, and so far as possible keep
them clear of public reprobation.

We have not as yet had any national
boss, because the necessity for owning
Congress has not as yet become continu-
ous ; and the interests which have bought
the national legislature at one time or
another have done it by bribing individ-
uals, in the old-fashioned way.

Turning now to New York city, we
find the political situation very similar
to that of the country town already de-
scribed. The interests which actually
control the businesses of the city are

The Capture of Government by Commercialism.

151

managed by very few individuals. It is
only that the sums involved are differ-
ent. One of these men is president of
an insurance company whose assets are
$130,000,000 ; another is president of a
system of street railways with a capital
stock of $30,000,000 ; another is presi-
dent of an elevated road system with
a capital of the same amount ; a fourth
is vice-president of a paving company
worth $10,000,000 ; a fifth owns $50,-
000,000 worth of real estate ; a sixth con-
trols a great railroad system ; a seventh
is president of a savings-bank in which
$5,000,000 are deposited ; and so on.
The commercial ties which bind the com-
munity together are as close in the city
as in the country town. The great mag-
nates live in palaces, and the lesser ones
in palaces, also. The hardware - dealer
of the small town is in New York the
owner of iron-works, a man of stainless
reputation. The florist is the owner of a
large tract of land within the city limits,
through which a boulevard is about to
be cut. The retired merchant has be-
come a partner of his nephew, and is de-
veloping one of the suburbs by means of
an extension of an electric road system.
But the commercial hierarchy does not
stop here ; it continues radiating, spread-
ing downward. All businesses are united
by the instruments and usages which the
genius of trade has devised. All these
interests together represent the railroad
of the country town. They take no real
interest in politics, and they desire only
to be let alone.

For the twenty years before the Strong
administration the government of the city
was almost continuously under the con-
trol of a ring, or, accurately speaking, of
a Happy Family. Special circumstances
made this ring well-nigh indestructible.
.The Boss -out -of -Power of the Happy
Family happens to be also the boss of the
state legislature. He pel-forms a double
function. This is what has given Platt
his extraordinary power. It will have
been noticed that some of the masses of

wealth above mentioned are peculiarly
subject to state legislation : they sub-
scribe directly to the state boss's fund.
Some are subject to interference from
the city administration : they subscribe
to the city boss's fund.

We see that by the receipt of his
fund the state boss is rendered inde-
pendent of the people of the city. He
can use the state legislature to strength-
en his hands in his dealings with the
city boss. After all, he does not need
many votes: He can buy enough votes
to hold his minority together and keep
Tammany safely in power, and by now
and then taking a candidate from the
citizens he advertises himself as a friend
of reform.

As to the Tammany branch of the
concern, the big money interests need
specific and often illegal advantages, and
pay heavily over the Tammany counter.
But as we saw before, public officers,
if once corrupted, will work only for
money. Every business that has to do
with one or another of the city offices
must therefore now contribute for " pro-
tection." A foreign business that is
started in this city subscribes to Tam-
many Hall just as a visitor writes his
name in a book at a watering-place. It
gives him the run of the town. In the
same way, the state - fearing business
man subscribes to Platt for " protec-
tion." No secret is made of these con-
ditions. The business man regards the
reformer as a monomaniac who is not
reasonable enough to see the necessity
for his tribute. In the conduct of any
large business, this form of bribery is as
regular an item as rent. The machin-
ery for such bribery is perfected. It
is only when some blundering attempt
is made by a corporation to do the brib-
ing itself, when some unbusinesslike at-
tempt is made to get rid of the mid-
dleman, that the matter is discovered.
A few boodle aldermen go to jail, and
every one is scandalized. The city and
county officers of the new city of New

152

The Capture of Government by Commercialism.

York will have to do with the disbursing
of $70,000,000 annually, — fully one
half of it in the conduct of administra-
tion. The power of these officers to
affect or even control values, by manipu-
lation of one sort or another, is familiar
to us all from experience in the past.

So much for business. Let us look at
the law. The most lucrative practice is
that of an attorney who protects great
corporate interests among these breakers.
He needs but one client ; he gets hun-
dreds. The mind of the average lawyer
makes the same unconscious allowance
for bribery as that of the business man.
Moreover, we cannot overlook the cases
of simple old-fashioned bribery to which
the masses of capital give rise. In a po-
litical emergency any amount of money is
forthcoming immediately, and it is given
from aggregations of capital so large that
the items are easily concealed in the ac-
counts. Bribery, in one form or another,
is part of the unwritten law. It is at-
mospheric ; it is felt by no one. The
most able men in the community be-
lieve that society would drop to pieces
without bribery. They do not express
it in this way, but they act upon the
principle in an emergency. A leader of
the bar, at the behest of his Wall Street
clients, begs the reform police board
not to remove Inspector Byrnes, who is
the Jonathan Wild of the period. The
bench is able, and for the most part
upright. But many of the judges on
the bench have paid large campaign
assessments in return for their nomina-
tions ; others have given notes to the
bosses. This reveals the exact condi-
tion of things. In a corrupt era the
judges paid cash. Now they help their
friends. The son or the son-in-law of a
judge is sure of a good practice, and
referees are appointed from lists which
are largely dictated by the professional
politicians of both parties.

It would require an encyclopaedia to
state the various simple devices by which

the same principle runs through every
department in the life of the community.
Such an encyclopedia for New York city
would be the best picture of municipal
misgovernment in the United States dur-
ing the commercial era. But one main
fact must again be noted : this great com-
plex ring is held together by the two
campaign funds, the Tammany Hall fund
and the Republican fund. They are the
two power-houses which run all this ma-
chinery.

So far as human suffering goes, the
positive evils of the system fall largely
on the poor. The rich buy immunity,
but the poor are persecuted, and have
no escape or redress. This has always
been the case under a tyranny. What
else could we expect in New York ?
The Lexow investigation showed us the
condition of the police force. The lower
courts, both criminal and civil, and the
police department were used for vote-
getting and for money-getting purposes.
They were serving as instruments of
extortion and of favoritism. But in
the old police courts the foreigner and
the honest poor were actually attacked.
Process was issued against them, their
business was destroyed, and they were
jailed unless they could buy off. This
system still exists to some extent in the
lower civil courts.

It is obvious that all these things
come to pass through the fault of no one
in particular. We have to-day reached
the point where the public is beginning
to understand that the iniquity is ac-
complished by means of the political
boss. Every one is therefore abusing the
boss. But Platt and Croker are not
worse than the men who continue to
employ them after understanding their
function. These men stand for the con-
servative morality of New York, and
for standards but little lower than the
present standards.

Let us now see how those standards
came to exist. Imagine a community in
which, for more than a generation, the

The Capture of Government by Commercialism.

153

government has been completely under
boss rule, so that the system has become
part of the habits and of the thought of
the people, and consider what views we
might expect to find in the hearts of
the citizens of such a community. The
masses will have been controlled by what
is really bribery and terrorism, but what
appears in the form of a very plausible
appeal to the individual on the ground
of self-interest. For forty years money
and place have been corrupting them.
Their whole conception of politics is that
it is a matter of money and of place.
The well-to-do will have been apt to pro-
sper in proportion as they have made
themselves serviceable to the dominant
powers, and become part and parcel of
the machinery of the system. It is not
to be pretended that every man in such a
community is a rascal, but it is true that
in so far as his business brings him into
contact with the administrative officers
every man will be put to the choice be-
tween lucrative malpractice and thank-
less honesty. A conviction will spread
throughout the community that nothing
can be done without a friend at court ;
that honesty does not pay, and proba-
bly never has paid in the history of the
world ; that a boss is part of the mechan-
ism by which God governs mankind ; that
property would not be safe without him ;
and, finally, that the recognized bosses
are not so bad as they are painted. The
great masses of corporate property have
owners who really believe that the sys-
tem of government which enabled them
to make money is the only safe govern-
ment. These people cling to abuses as
to a life-preserver. They fear that an
honest police board will not be able to
bribe the thieves not to steal from them,
that an honest state insurance department
will not be able to prevent the legislature
from pillaging them. It is absolutely cer-
tain that in the first struggles for reform
the weight of the mercantile classes will
be thrown very largely on the side of con-
servatism.

Now, in a great city like New York
the mercantile bourgeoisie will include
almost every one who has an income of
five thousand dollars a year, or more.
These men can be touched by the bosses,
and theref 6*re, after forty years of tyran-
ny, it is not to be expected that many
of those who wear black coats will have
much enthusiasm for reform. It is " im-
practicable ; " it is " discredited ; " it is
" expensive ; " it is " advocated by un-
known men ; " it speaks ill of the " re-
spectable;" it "does harm" by exciting
the poor against the rich ; it is " unbusi-
nesslike " and " visionary ; " it is " self-
righteous." We have accordingly had,
in New York city, a low and perverted
moral tone, an incapacity to think clear-
ly or to tell the truth when we know
it. This is both the cause and the con-
sequence of bondage. A generation of
men really believed that honesty is bad
policy, and will continue to be governed
by Tammany Hall.

The world has wondered that New
York could not get rid of its infamous
incubus. The gross evils as they existed
at the time of Tweed are remembered.
The great improvements are not gener-
ally known. Reform has been slow, be-
cause its leaders have not seen that their
work was purely educational. They did
not understand the political combination,
and they'kept striking at Tammany Hall.
Like a child with a toy, they did not see
that the same mechanism which caused
Punch to strike caused Judy's face to dis-
appear from the window.

It is not selfishness and treason that
are mainly responsible for the discredit
which dogs "reform." It is the inef-
ficiency of upright and patriotic men.
The practical difficulty with reform move-
ments in New York has been that the
leaders of such movements have clung to
old political methods. These men have
thought that if they could hire or imitate
the regular party machinery, they could
make it work for good. They would fight

154

The Capture of Government by Commercialism.

the banditti with bvavi. They would ex-
pel Tammany Hall, and lo, Tammany is
within them.

Is it a failure of intellect or of moral-
ity which prevents the reformers from
seeing that idealism is the slfortest road
to their goal ? It is the failure of both.
It is a legacy of the old tyranny. In
one sense it is corruption ; in another it
is stupidity ; in every sense it is incom-
petence. Political incompetence is only
another name for moral degradation, and
both exist in New York for the same rea-
son that they exist in Turkey. They are
the offspring of blackmail.

Well-meaning and public-spirited men,
who have been engrossed in business for
the best part of their lives, are perhaps
excusable for not understanding the prin-
ciples on which reform moves. Any one
can see that if what was wanted was mere-
ly a good school board, the easiest way
to get it would be to go to Croker, give
him a hundred thousand dollars, and offer
to let him alone if he gave the good board.
But until very recently nobody could see
that putting good school commissioners
on Platt's ticket and giving Platt the
hundred thousand dollars are precisely
the same thing.

In an enterprise whose sole aim is to
raise the moral standard idealism al-
ways pays. A reverse following a fight
for principle, like the defeat of Low, is
pure gain. It records the exact state of
the cause. It educates the masses on a
gigantic scale. The results of that edu-
cation are immediately visible. They are
visible in New York to-day in the revolt
against the Republican machine and the
determined fight for the reorganization
of that party.

On the other hand, all compromise
means delay. By compromise, the awak-
ened faith of the people is sold to the
politicians for a mess of reform. The
failures and mistakes of Mayor Strong's
administration were among the causes
for Mr. Low's defeat. People said, " If
this be reform, give us Tammany Hall."

Our reformers have always been in hot
haste to get results. They want a bal-
ance - sheet at the end of every year.
They think this will encourage the peo-
ple. But the people recall only their
mistakes. The long line of reform lead-
ers in New York city are remembered
with contempt. " The evil that men do
lives after them ; the good is oft interred
with their bones."

That weakness of intellect which makes
reformers love quick returns is twin
brother to a certain defect of character.
Personal vanity is very natural in men
who figure as tribunes of the people.
They say, " Look at Abraham Lincoln,
and how he led the people out of the
wilderness ; let us go no faster than the
people in pushing these reforms ; let us
accept half-measures ; let us be Abraham
Lincoln." The example of Lincoln has
wrecked many a promising young man ;
for really Lincoln has no more to do
with the case than Julius Caesar. As
soon as the reformers give up trying to
be statesmen, and perceive that their own
function is purely educational, and that
they are mere anti-slavery agitators and
persons of no account whatever, they will
succeed better.

As to the methods of work in reform,
— whether it shall be by clubs or by pam-
phlets, by caucus or by constitution, —
they will be developed. Executive ca-
pacity is simply that capacity which is
always found in people who really want
something done.

In New York, the problem is not to
oust Tammany Hall ; another would arise
in a year. It is to make the great pub-
lic understand the boss system, of which
Tammany is only a part. As fast as the
reformers see that clearly themselves,
they will find the right machinery to do
the work in hand. It may be that, like
the Jews, we shall have to spend forty
years more in the wilderness, until the
entire generation that lived under Pha-
raoh has perished. But education now-

The Capture of Government by Commercialism.

155

adays marches quickly. The progress
that has been made during the last seven
years in the city of New York gives
hope that within a decade a majority of
the voters will understand clearly that
all the bosses are in league.

In 1890, this fact was so little un-
derstood by the managers of an anti-
Tammany movement which sprang up
in that year that, after raising a certain
stir and outcry, they put in the field a
ticket made up exclusively of political
hacks, whose election would have left
matters exactly where they stood. The
people at large, led by the soundest po-
litical instinct, reflected Tammany Hall,
and gave to sham reform the rebuff that
it deserved. In 1894, after the Lexow
investigation had kept the town at fever-
heat of indignation all summer, Mayor
Strong was nominated by the Commit-
tee of Seventy, under an arrangement
with Platt. The excitement was so great
that the people at large did not exam-
ine Mr. Strong's credentials. He was
a Republican merchant, and in no way '
identified with the boss system. Mayor
Strong's administration has been a dis-
tinct advance, in many ways encoura-
ging. Its errors and weaknesses have
been so clearly traceable to the system
which helped elect him that it has been
in the highest degree valuable as an
object-lesson. In 1895, only one year
after Mayor Strong's election, the fruits
of his administration could not yet be
seen. In that year a few judges and
minor local officers were to be chosen.
By this time the " citizens' movement "
had become a regular part of a munici-
pal election. A group of radicals, the
legatees of the Strong campaign, had for
a year been enrolled in clubs called Good
Government Clubs. These men took
the novel course of nominating a com-
plete ticket of their own. This was con-
sidered a dangerous move by the moder-
ate reformers, who were headed by the
Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber
of Commerce and its well-meaning sup-

porters then took a step which, from
an educational standpoint, turned out to
be most important. In their terror lest
Tammany Hall should gain the prestige
of a by-election, they made an arrange-
ment with Platt, and were allowed to
name some candidates on his ticket
This was the famous " fusion," which
the Good Government men attacked with
as much energy as they might have ex-
pended on Tammany Hall. A furious
campaign of crimination between the two
reform factions followed, and of course
Tammany was elected.

The difference between the Good Gov-
ernment men (the Goo-Goos, as they were
called) and the Fusionists was entirely
one of political education. The Goo-
Goo mind had advanced to the point of
seeing that Platt was a confederate of
Tammany and represented one wing of
the great machine. To give him money
was useless ; to lend him respectability
was infamous. These ideas were dis-
seminated by the press ; and it was im-
material that they were disseminated in
the form of denunciations of the Good
Government Clubs. The people at large
began to comprehend clearly what they
had always instinctively believed. There
was now a nucleus of men in the town
who preferred Tammany Hall to any
victory that would discredit reform.

It may be noted that the Good Gov-
ernment Clubs polled less than one per
cent of the vote cast in that election ;
and that in the recent mayoralty cam-
paign the Citizens' Union ran Mr. Low
on the Good Government platform, and
polled 150,000 votes. In this same elec-
tion, the straight Republican ticket,
headed by Tracy, polled 100,000 votes,
and Tammany polled about as many as
both its opponents together. A total of
about 40,000 votes were cast for George
and other candidates.

Much surprise has been expressed that
there should be 100,000 Republicans in
New York whose loyalty to the party
made them vote a straight ticket with

156

The Capture of Government by Commercialism.

the certainty of electing Tammany Hall ;
but in truth, when we consider the his-
tory of the city, we ought rather to be
surprised at the great size of the vote
for Mr. Low. He was the man who
arranged the fusion of 1895. It was
entirely due to a lack of clear thinking
and of political courage that such an ar-
rangement was then made. Two years
ago the Chamber of Commerce did not
clearly understand the evils that it was
fighting. Is it a wonder that 100,000
individual voters are still backward in
their education ? If we discount the ap-
peal of self-interest, which determined
many of them, there are probably some
75,000 Republicans whose misguided
party loyalty obscured their view and
deadened their feelings. They cannot
be said to hate bad government very
much. They do not think Tammany
Hall so very bad, after all. As the Lon-
don papers said, the dog has returned
to his vomit. It is unintelligent to abuse
them. They are the children of the age.
A few years ago we were all such as
they. Of Mr. Low's 150,000 supporters,
on the other hand, there are probably
at least 40,000 who would vote through
thick and thin for the principles which
his campaign stood for.

Any one who is a little removed by
time or by distance from New York
knows that the city cannot have perma-
nent good government until a clear ma-
jority of our 500,000 voters shall develop
what the economists call an " effective de-
sire " for it. It is not enough merely to
want reform. The majority must know
how to get it. For educational purposes,
the intelligent discussion throughout the
recent campaign is worth all the effort
that it cost. The Low campaign was no-
table in another particular. The bank-
ing and the mercantile classes subscribed
liberally to the citizens' campaign fund.
They are the men who have had the most
accurate knowledge of the boss system, be-
cause they support it. At last they have
dared to expose it. Indeed, there was a

rent in Wall Street. The great capitalists
and the promoters backed Tammany and
Platt, as a matter of course ; but many
individuals of power and impoi'tance in
the street came out strongly for Low.
They acted at personal risk, with cour-
age, out of conscience. The great pen-
dulum of wealth has swung toward de-
cency, and henceforward the cause of
political education will have money at
its disposal. But the money is not the
main point ; the personal influence of the
men who give it operates more power-
fully than the money. Hereafter re-
form will be respectable. The profes-
sional classes are pouring into it. The
young men are reentering politics. Its
victory is absolutely certain, and will not
be far distant.

The effect of public-spirited activity
on the character is very rapid. Here
again we cannot separate the cause from
the consequence ; but it is certain that
the moral tone of the community is
changing very rapidly for the better,
and that the thousands of men who are
at this moment preparing to take part
in the next citizens' campaign, and who
count public activity as one of the regu-
lar occupations of their lives, are affect-
ing the social and commercial life of
New York. The young men who are
working to reform politics find in it not
only the satisfaction of a quasi-religious
instinct, but an excitement which busi-
ness cannot provide.

One effect of the commercial supre-
macy has been to make social life in-
tolerably dull, by dividing people into
cliques and trade unions. The million-
aire dines with the millionaire, the ar-
tist with the artist, the hat-maker with
the hat -maker, gentlefolk with gentle-
folk. All of these sets are equally unin-
spiring, equally frightened at a strange
face. The hierarchy of commerce is
dull. The intelligent people in America
are dull, because they have no con-
tact, no social experience. Their intel-

The Capture of Government by Commercialism.

157

ligence is a clique and wears a badge.
They think they are not affected by the
commercialism of the times ; but their at-
titude of mind is precisely that of a let-
tered class living under a tyranny. They
flock by themselves. It is certain that
the cure for class feeling is public activ-
ity. The young jeweler, the young print-
er, and the golf -player, each, after a
campaign in which they have been fight-
ing for a principle, finds that social en-
joyment lies in working with people un-
like himself, for a common object. Re-
form movements bring men into touch,
into struggle with the powers that are
really shaping our destinies, and show
them the sinews and bones of the so-
cial organism. The absurd social pre-
judices which unman the rich and the
poor alike vanish in a six weeks' cam-
paign. Indeed, the exhilaration of real
life is too much for many of the reform-
ers. Even bankers neglect their busi-
ness, and dare not meet their partners,
and a dim thought crosses their minds
that perhaps the most enlightened way
to spend money is, not to make it, but to

invest it unearned in life.
/

The reasons for believing that the boss
system has reached its climax are mani-
fold. Some of them have been stated,
others may be noted. In the first place,
the railroads are built. Business is grow-
ing more settled. The sacking of the
country's natural resources goes on at a
slower pace. Concede, for the sake of
argument, that it was an economic ne-
cessity for the New York Central Rail-
road to own the state legislature during
the period of the building and consolida-
tion of the many small roads which made
up the present great system. The ne-
cessity no longer exists. Bribery, like
any other crime, may be explained by an
emergency ; but every one believes that
bribery is not a permanent necessity in
the running of a railroad, and this gen-
eral belief will determine the practices of
the future. Public opinion will not stand

the abuses ; and without the abuse where
is the profit ? In many places, the old
system of bribery is still being continued
out of habit, and at a loss. The cor-
porations can get what they want more
cheaply by legal methods, and they are
discovering this. In the second place,
the boss system is now very generally
understood. The people are no longer
deceived. The ratio between party feel-
ing and self-interest is changing rapidly,
in the mind of the average man. It was
the mania of party feeling that supported
the boss system and rendered political
progress impossible, and party feeling is
dying out. We have seen, for instance,
that those men who, by the accident of
the war, were shaken in their party loy-
alty have been the most politically intel-
ligent class in the nation. The Northern
Democrats, who sided with their oppo-
nents to save the Union, were the first
men to be weaned of party prejudice, and
from their ranks, accordingly, came civil
service reformers, tariff reformers, etc.

It is noteworthy, also, that the Jewish
mind is active in all reform movements.
The isolation of the race has saved it
from party blindness, and has given
scope to its extraordinary intelligence.
The Hebrew prophet first put his finger
on blackmail as the cui*se of the world,
and boldly laid the charge at the door of
those who profited by the abuse. It was
the Jew who perceived that, in the na-
ture of things, the rich and the powerful
in a community will be trammeled up
and identified with the evils of the times.
The wrath of the Hebrew prophets and
the arraignments of the New Testament
owe part of their eternal power to their
recognition of that fact. They record an
economic law.

Moreover, time fights for reform. The
old voters die off, and the young men
care little about party shibboleths. Hence
these non-partisan movements. Every
election, local or national, which causes a
body of men to desert their party is a
blow at the boss system. These move-

158

The Capture of Government by Commercialism.

ments multiply annually. They are eman-
cipating the small towns throughout the
Union, even as commerce was once dis-
franchising them. As party feeling dies
out in a man's mind, it leaves him with
a clearer vision. His conscience begins
to affect his conduct very seriously, when
he sees that a certain course is indefen-
sible. It is from this source that the re-
form will come.

The voter will see that it is wrong to
support the subsidized boss, just as the
capitalist has already begun to recoil from
the monster which he created. He sees
that it is wrong at the very moment when
he is beginning to find it unprofitable.
The old trademark has lost its value.

The citizens' movement is, then, a
purge to take the money out of politics.
The stronger the doses, the quicker the
cure. If the citizens maintain absolute
standards, the old parties can regain their
popular support only by adopting those
standards. All citizens' movements are
destined to be temporary ; they will van-
ish, to leave our politics purified. But the
work they do is as broad as the nation.

The question of boss rule is of national
importance. The future of the country
is at stake. Until this question is settled,
all others are in abeyance. The fight
against money is a fight for permission
to decide questions on their merits. The
last presidential election furnished an il-
lustration of this. At a private meeting
of capitalists held in New York city, to
raise money for the McKinley campaign,
a very important man fervidly declared
that he had already subscribed $5000 to
" buy Indiana," and that if called on to
do so he would subscribe $5000 more !
He was greeted with cheers for his patri-
otism. Many of our best citizens believe
not only that money bought that election,
but that the money was well spent, be-
cause it averted a panic. These men do
not believe in republican institutions ;
they have found something better.

This is precisely the situation in New
York city. The men who subscribed to
the McKinley campaign fund are the
same men who support Tammany Hall.
In 1896 they cried, " We cannot afford
Bryan and his panic ! " In 1897 the same
men in New York cried, " We cannot
afford Low and reform ! " That is what
was decided in each case. Yet it is
quite possible that the quickest, wisest,
and cheapest way of dealing with Bryan
would have been to allow him and his
panic to come on, — fighting them only
with arguments, which immediate conse-
quences would have driven home very
forcibly. That is the way to educate the
masses and fit them for self-government ;
and it is the only way.

In this last election the people of New
York have crippled Platt. It is a ser-
vice done to the nation. Its consequences
are as yet not understood ; for the public
sees only the gross fact that Tammany
is again in power.

But the election is memorable. It is
a sign of the times. The grip of com-
merce is growing weaker, the voice of
conscience louder. A phase in our his-
tory is passing away. That phase was
predestined from the beginning.

The war did no more than intensi-
fy existing conditions, both commercial
and political. It gave sharp outlines to
certain economic phenomena, and made
them dramatic. It is due to the war
that we are now able to disentangle the
threads and do justice to the nation.

The corruption that we used to de-
nounce so fiercely and understand so lit-
tle was a phase of the morality of an era
which is already vanishing. It was as
natural as the virtue which is replacing
it ; it will be a curiosity almost before we
have done studying it. We see that our
institutions were particularly susceptible
to this disease of commercialism, and that
the sickness was acute, but that it was not
mortal. Our institutions survived.

John Jay Chapman.

The Danger from Experimental Psychology.

159

THE DANGER FROM EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY.

A SHORT time ago there appeared a
new book which will find its way every-
where into the hands of teachers, and
which will be welcomed heartily. I think
that its attitude is dangerous, and that
the ready acceptance of it arises from
illusions and confusions ; nevertheless, I
am glad, too, that such a book has ap-
peared, as I have always believed that,
after the very best books, the worst books
are those which can be most useful. They
show the logical mistakes in a form so
exaggerated and unmasked that nobody
can help profiting from such a climax of
blunders. If we cannot learn from a
book, we may be warned by it, and in
the present case it is high time to give
the danger signal. A warning ought to
be sounded to the teachers against their
rush toward experimental psychology, —
a rush stirred up by the hope that psychi-
cal facts will be measured by the new
method, and that such an exact mathe-
matical knowledge of mental life will be-
come the long-desired vehicle for a real
modern pedagogical scheme. This move-
ment began as a scientific fashion. It
grew into an educational sport, and it is
now near the point of becoming a public
danger. At such a point the discussion
should no longer be confined to narrow
educational quarters, as the whole coun-
try has to suffer for every educational sin.

The book I have in mind is called
The New Psychology. Its birthplace is
Yale. The name of the author has no-
thing to do with our arguments. The
consistent idea he presents is this : The
old psychology, of which the chief meth-
od was self -observation, gave only de-
scriptions of mental facts and processes ;
the new psychology, of which the chief
method is experimentation, gives at last
measurements of such facts. The old
psychology was qualitative ; the new is
quantitative. All other recent books on

psychology are mere compromises be-
tween the old and the new psychology.
Here, the author thinks, is finally a book
which is up to date, — a book which gets
rid of all the old - fashioned scholastic
headings, like Memory, Attention, Feel-
ing, Emotion, Perception, Volition. All
the new books have given qualitative de-
scriptions, and have added to them the
modern quantitative details, but from
cover to cover this book consists of mea-
surements, nnd its sections are therefore
brought under the headings of those con-
ceptions upon which every measurement
in the universe depends, Space, Time, and
Energy. Consequently, the teacher has
here the safe ground of a real, exact psy-
chology on which he can build up his sys-
tem of pedagogics.

I am not a man whose heart belongs
to an old-fashioned forgotten past, and
who dislikes, as many do, the modern
ways of experimental work. I speak,
on the contrary, as the director of the
Harvard Psychological Laboratory, — as
a man who devotes his life to the most
modern methods of psychology ; never-
theless, I must say I have never mea-
sured a psychical fact, I have never
heard that anybody has measured a psy-
chical fact, I do not believe that in cen-
turies to come a psychical fact will ever
be measured. Let us consider what kind
of measurements the book in question
offers us.

As I have said, the author divides his
psychology into three large parts, Space,
Time, and Energy, after the analogy
with physics. If we knew all about the
space, the time, and the energy of phy-
sical things, natural science would have
reached its ideal. How is it with the
space, the time, and the energy of mental
facts ? Our book gives a nicely illustrat-
ed section on space. Has it found out
the dimensions in feet and inches of our

160

The Danger from Experimental Psychology.

feelings and emotions? 'Has it found
whether our will is a square or a circle in
space ? No. The author does not speak
about the space extension of mental facts
at all, but partly about the dependence
of mental facts on the space of the phy-
sical world, — that is, of the optical and
tactual stimuli, — and partly about the
constitution of our idea of space. We
learn, for instance, how we come to see
the flat pictures in the stereoscope as solid
objects ; that is, we have a qualitative
analysis of our thought about the quanti-
tative measurable physical space, but we
have nowhere a spatial measurement of
a psychical fact. We are promised the
space of thought, and we get the thought
of space. That is a juggling with words,
and not a new science.

Exactly the same is true for that part
of the book which deals with energy.
Not the energy of the psychical facts is
there in question, but those psychical
facts are analyzed by which we are con-
scious of physical action and energy.
The energy of our feelings is not mea-
sured, but our feelings of energy and
leffort are described, — certainly an im-
portant thing, but not the thing which is
promised to us. To speak of a mea-
surable energy of our psychical elements
is absurd, as every energy can be mea-
sured only by its effect, and as the psy-
chical products of mental action are inner
states which cannot be added and mul-
tiplied, and which have no constant uni-
ties like the unities of weight and space
and time, so that here again the effect
can be determined only qualitatively, not
quantitatively. But this absurdity, of
course, disappears at once, if the analy-
sis of the feeling of. energy is substituted
for the measurement of the energy of
feelings : just this the author does, and
he gives us, therefore, something which
is possible, but which has no bearing on
the promised treatment. Considered as
a qualitative mental state, this feeling of
effort is no more nearly related to the
problem of measurable energy than is the

feeling of joy and grief, or the sensation
of heat and cold.

To bring its principle fully ad ab-
surdum, our book gives finally, under
the heading Energy, two chapters more
on sound and color, introducing them
with a short but significant sentence :
" One of the forms of energy which we
perceive is that of color." Does it still
need a word to show that the writer is
speaking, not of the psychical energy of
the perception, but of the perception of
physical energy? Nobody ever doubted
that space and energy of the physical
world are measurable. The author of-
fers, not measurement of psychical facts,
but qualitative analysis of mental states
which are related to measurable physical
facts. With the same right with which
he brings his report of experimental psy-
chology under the titles Space, Time, and
Energy, he might have brought it under
the titles Iron, Wood, and Hard Rubber,
after the different physical instruments
we need for the study of psychical facts,
and pretending that therefore the men-
tal facts themselves are of hard rubber,
wood, or iron.

Thus far we have not spoken about
the time. The case is here a little more
complicated. Of course, in dealing with
this question the book rushes into the
same mistake. It discusses chiefly the
mental states by which we think about
time periods. The time of the objects
of our thought is not the time of our
thought ; we can think about a century
in one second. Just as illogically in-
cluded here is another problem, the time
relations of our physical stimuli. How
long must the physical process last to
give us a sensation ? It is clear tha-t
this is not time measurement of psy-
chical facts. But can we deny that a
real time measurement of mental life
is possible ? Some one may agree with
me that mental elements have no space
and energy, but he will say they fill
time, they last through seconds and days
and years ; and modern psychology can

The Danger from Experimental Psychology.

161

measure this time by thousandths of a
second ; can I deny even this measure-
ment ? Well, I confess it is true that
our psychological laboratories are filled
and overfilled with time-measuring ma-
chines,— with electric chronoscopes and
chronographs and kymographs and sphyg-
mographs and pneumographs and myo-
graphs and ergographs ; and neverthe-
less I think that the time we measure is
not the time of the primary mental ex-
perience, but the time of physical pro-
cesses into which we project our mental
states. Our real inner experience has
time value in a double way. We have
past, present, and future, as forms of
subjective attitude : past is the reality
on which we cannot act any more ; pre-
sent is the object of our real action ;
future is the reality for which we have
still the possibility of planning our ac-
tions. These are three attitudes which
as acts of our attention are in themselves
not divisible.

But we find in our consciousness time
in still another way. We feel the time
qualities of our ideas. The rhythm, the
duration, the interval, the succession of
the psychical elements, are characteristics
of our inner experience, but characteristics
which are fully coordinated to the quali-
ties of color and pitch and smell. They
are a unique, indescribable, qualitative
experience, which cannot be divided, and
which is never identical with the sum of
its elements. The tone lasting through
a second, and the click filling a hun-
dredth of a second, each gives an im-
pression of time shape, but the one time
feeling does not contain a hundred times
the other. They are two different quali-
ties, not quantities. The tune shape of
the inner experience is an absolutely in-
divisible quality, which therefore never
can be measured, — not from lack of
means, but from lack of meaning. To
say that the time quality of one psychical
fact contains five times the time quality
of another is not less absurd than to pre-
tend that one emotion or one virtue is

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 484. 11

five times heavier or has five times more
angles than another.

This changes at once, if we leave the
standpoint of inner experience, and look
on our mental life from the outside ; that
is, if we consider it as an accompani-
ment of our physical processes, as an ex-
perience of our physical organism. My
organism belongs, of course, like every
other physical body in the universe, to
the physical objective time which can be
divided into years and days and sec-
onds ; and as soon as I project my inner
states into this empirical personality, my
thoughts and feelings must take part in
this objective scheme of time. Now, my
thoughts and feelings, as they coincide
with this or that physical experience of
the organism, have duration in hours and
minutes, are to-day or were yesterday,
and may grow through years ; if they
last a minute they contain sixty times a
second, and they can be measured in
thousandths of a second.

If I make such a substitution of the
psydho - physical organism for the ori-
ginal psychical experience, my mental
states get space just as they get time.
I can say, then, with the same right,
that my ideas are now in this coun-
try, while three months ago they were
in Germany ; that they are in this room,
that they are in this brain ; and just as
I measure them in fractions of a sec-
ond, an ideal science which knows all
about the functions of the ganglion cells
in the brain could measure the distance
of my thoughts in the brain by millionths
of an inch. The time we really measure
is the time of physical processes of our
physiological body, but the psychological
facts as such have as little measurable
time as energy or space. In all three
cases we measure physical facts which
are in special relations to the psychical
life, but we cannot measure the psychical
facts themselves, and it remains an illu-
sion to believe that a kind of mathemat-
ical psychology is the outcome of our
laboratories.

162

The Danger from Experimental Psychology.

To be sure, these most 'modern illu-
sions of which the book under consider-
ation is such a striking illustration are
not without predecessors. Two of the
greatest and most influential psycholo-
gical systems of this century have tried
already to introduce numerical measure-
ments and mathematical methods, — the
systems of Herbart and Fechner. Both
attempts were of the highest importance
for the progress of psychology. Herbart
gave an impulse toward a careful analysis
of the mental states, and Fechner started
experimental work; both have even to-
day plenty of followers, but the mathe-
matical part of both systems is recog-
nized everywhere as mistaken. Their
psychical measurement was an illusion.

The logical error of Herbart and Fech-
ner was not exactly the same as that of
the tendencies of to-day. They did not
substitute physical objects for psychi-
cal facts, but they gave to the psychi-
cal facts some features which belong in
reality to physical objects only. Her-
bart treated the ideas like solid billiard-
balls which are pushed into consciousness
and out of consciousness. Certainly
Herbart's mathematical presuppositions
about the moving forces of ideas are the
simplest possible ; but the simplest are
just as misleading as any others, if the
objects are not measurable at all. Only
by a thoroughgoing comparison of the
mutual effects of ideas with bodily move-
ments did his conjectures become possi-
ble. But a metaphor which is useful
for the explanation cannot transform
changes of mind into real mechanical
statics and dynamics of psychical ele-
ments. The movements of ideas, if you
call them movements, are not measur-
able. Of course, if you make any numer-
ical presuppositions about the amount of
these movements, you can build up a full
mathematical system.

Still more natural appears the presup-
position with which stands and falls the
famous psycho-physical system of Fech-
ner. Every part of it depends upon his

belief that a strong sensation is a multi-
ple of a weak one ; a weak sensation, a
fraction of a stronger one. But have
we a right to accept this assumption ?
Does a strong sound sensation contain
so and so many weak sound sensations,
just as a strong physical sound contains
the weak sounds ? Does our more in-
tense light sensation contain two or ten
or a million faint light sensations, in the
way in which a physical light of ten-
candle power contains five times the
light of two -candle power? In other
words, is white a multiple of light gray,
light gray a multiple of dark gray, dark
gray a multiple of black ? Is hot sensa-
tion a multiple of lukewarm sensations ?
Is lukewarm sensation equal to so and
so many cold sensations ? Does a strong
sensation of pressure contain x times the
weak sensation of touch ? By no means.
All our inner experience revolts.

It is the old confusion between the
sensation and the knowledge about the
causes of the sensation. The white sun-
light contains the red and green and
violet sun - rays, but it is absurd if the
psychologist pretends that therefore the
white sensation contains the sensation
red and the sensation green. Nothing
of that kind is in our consciousness.
White and red are psychologically two
different qualities, and just so are white
and gray, hot and cold, pressure and
touch, strong sound and faint sound,
psychologically only different qualities
of which one never contains the other,
notwithstanding that the physical stimuli
contain one another. A sensation never
consists of smaller sensations, as a foot
consists of inches, or a minute of seconds,
or a pound of ounces ; and Fechner's fun-
damental mistake was to give to sensa-
tions this characteristic which belongs to
the world of physics only. If we think
a strong sensation made up of weak sen-
sations, as a foot is made up of inches,
the way is open to a brilliant mathemat-
ical construction.

We can say, then, that wherever psy-

The Danger from Experimental Psychology.

163

chical facts have been measured, either
physical facts were substituted, as in our
most modern tendencies, or psychical
facts themselves were falsely thought
after the analogy with physical objects.
Well, some one may say, granted that
all the endeavors to measure psychical
facts have been so far unsuccessful : is
that a sufficient reason for giving up all
attempts to measure them ? Must we not
be grateful for every new effort to reach
mathematical exactitude in psychology ?
The north pole of our earth has not as
yet been reached : is that a reason for
saying that it cannot be reached ? Cer-
tainly not. Send new ships and bal-
loons to the north pole, but do not send
ships to the fairyland of Utopia, as we
know beforehand that it does not exist,
and that it is therefore impossible to
reach it. The land of measurable psy-
chical facts is a Utopia which will never
be reached because it cannot exist at all,
and it cannot exist because it contradicts
the antecedents with which psychology
starts.

What should we think of an astrono-
mer who had found with his telescope a
place in the physical universe where no
space exists, or of a geologist who had
found a pre-glacial period in which no
time existed, or of a physicist who had
found a physical metal which does not
underlie causality ? We should say,
with full right, that the assertion is ab-
surd : space, time, and causality are the
presuppositions for the existence of the
physical world, and the naturalist has
to take them for granted. He has not
to investigate whether they exist or not.
He has to think the world within these
forms, and if he gives up these presup-
positions he does not speak any more
about the physical world. To examine
the right and wrong of these conceptions,
and therefore the right and wrong of the
fundamentals of natural science, is not
the business of the naturalist, but the task
of the philosopher. Every special sci-
ence has to start with assumptions which

it accepts. Philosophy has to examine
them, and so to determine the field in
which the special sciences can have free
movement, but which they never are al-
lowed to transcend.

The unmeasurable character of psy-
chical facts belongs to those fundamen-
tal presuppositions with which the spe-
cial science of psychology starts, and
which therefore cannot be destroyed by
any psychological discoveries. The psy-
chologist who discovers a measurable
sensation or feeling stands on the same
level with the physicist who discovers
that metal which is not in space and time
and causality. This is not the place to
give even in the most superficial outlines
the arguments for this philosophical de-
cision. I indicate briefly only the di-
rection in which these arguments move
forward.

The world in which we really live is
primarily neither physical nor psychical.
We do not know those atomistic objects
of which mechanics tells us ; those ob-
jects which have no colors and sounds
and smells and temperatures, but are
only moving ether atoms and molecules.
And just so we do not know primarily
the external objects as our perceptions
in our own consciousness, those ideas
about which psychology tells us. The
book I am reading is to me in real life
neither physical molecules only nor my
own optical idea. It represents a kind
of object which has objective and sub-
jective characteristics at the same time.
Jt is an object which is not differentiated
into a physical thing and a psychical
idea. In this world of undifferentiated
objects we find ourselves as willing sub-
jects, and the chain of our subjective at-
titudes and actions means our life. In
this world we are free subjects, whose
single acts are related to ends, and not
determined by causes. In this world
we are ourselves not physical and not
psychical ; we are subjects of will. And
that is not a constructed metaphysical
reality, but the only reality to which our

164

The Danger from Experimental Psychology.

daily life and all history belong, and to
which logic and ethics refer. It is a
world of will, of action, of appreciation,
of values.

But we willing subjects create by our
will still another world, — a world of
less reality, a world which is a logical
construction only. We have an interest
in thinking the objects of our will as in-
dependent of our will, and the real ob-
jects cut loose from the subjects cease
to be in the world of values. They
become existing objects. Out of the
world of values we create the world of
existence, — a world which is real only in
our abstraction, and which is true only
as it has a value for us to think the ob-
jects so, and not otherwise. But in cre-
ating such existing objects the subjects
can think them in a double way. We
separate on the one side the objects in
so far as they are possible objects for
every subject ; on the other side, the same
objects in so far as they are objects for
one subjective act only. The first group
contains the physical, the second group
the psychical objects. Both represent,
as we have seen, not realities, but com-
plicated transformations of reality pro-
duced by abstractions made for a special
purpose of the willing subjects. And if
there were not a multitude of such sub-
jects, the separation of physical facts
and psychical facts would have no mean-
ing. The physical world is a world for
many ; the psychical world is a world
for one only, — not for one subject, but
for one subjective attitude, one act only.

If that is so, we understand, first,
that in psychology we must forever do
without that necessary basis of every
measuring science, the constant unity.
We can measure the physical world and
describe it in mathematical terms be-
cause we can agree there about units.
My minute and hour, my inch and foot,
my ounce and pound, are also yours.-
The physical world is made up of the
objects in so far as they are given to all
subjects. My mental objects are not ac-

cessible to any other subject. No psy-
chical fact can be shared by one subject
with another. That is the presupposi-
tion with which psychology starts.

But there is not only an impossibility
of an objective measurement through
lack of units. It is, secondly, just as
impossible that a single subject should
think one of his mental states as a mul-
tiple of another state. We have seen
that we call a fact psychical if it is the
object for one subjective act only. The
consequence must be that physical mat-
ter lasts, and never disappears, — it is a
possible object for every subject ; while
psychical facts cannot last, — they dis-
appear with the single act, and can never
be renewed. The one mental object can
therefore never be repeated in another
object. New objects must appear in con-
sciousness which may be more or less
similar, but the one can never be in the
other ; each must stand for itself ; and
the criterion of physical measurement,
that every part having the dimensions
of the given unit could be replaced by it,
is a priori excluded.

The act by which we as willing sub-
jects transform the real objects into
physical and psychical objects, — that
very act forbids for all time the mea-
surement of psychical facts, and we must
. ignore our deepest presuppositions if we
believe that we can measure them. Ma-
licious persons have pretended that wo-
men often do not know the difference be-
tween a good conscience and a bad mem-
ory. The assertion is certainly more true
as to some sciences. The experimental
psychology which believes that it can
have a good conscience in measuring men-
tal states has really only a bad memory.
It has forgotten all that it has promised
in its presuppositions. Measure mental
life, and it flows back to the logical pri-
mary state which did not know the dif-
ferentiation of objects into physical and
psychical facts. The real psychical facts
cannot be anything else than a world of
qualities.

The Danger from Experimental Psychology.

165

All that may be granted, but never-
theless the energy may be censured with
which I fight against these most modern
tendencies. It will be said, perhaps :
" Look on Herbart and Fechner. Their
mathematical systems are blunders, and
yet they were immensely productive, and
gave everlasting impulses to modern
thinking. Error is the most important
source of knowledge. What is astronomy
without foregoing astrology ? What is
chemistry without alchemy ? Why fight
against this new scheme ? It may be
erroneous, but it may also suggest new
ways and new insights, and above all
one great result is perceivable already :
it has turned the attention of teachers
toward experimental psychology. Is not
that in itself something which excuses
many defects ? " Well, I do not deny
in the least that the effects of a system
may transcend the intentions of an au-
thor, that error may be productive, that
Herbart and Fechner have helped us
immensely, and that this new scheme at-
tracts teachers toward experimental psy-
chology ; but I come to quite other con-
clusions. I acknowledge the pedagogical
effect of the new scheme fully, but I do
not excuse the theoretical wrong on ac-
count of the practical service. No ; on
the contrary, I fight against these pseudo-
measurements in first line just on account
of this practical outcome, as the effect
upon teachers seems to me a confusion
and a pedagogical blunder which is even
worse than the psychological mistake.
This brings me finally to the point to-
ward which I started.

The teachers of this country instinc-
tively feel that the educational system is
still far from having reached its ideal
shape. Much needs to be improved, and
as the teachers are serious and conscien-
tious, they stand on the lookout for new
schemes and new ideas. There came a
new science into the field, — experimen-
tal psychology. This experimental psy-
chology said, in Sunday newspapers and
elsewhere, with loud voice : Teachers,

the thing you lack is a scientific know-
ledge of the child's mind. How can you
hope for a solid pedagogical system if it
is not built up on the basis of a solid psy-
chology ? The old psychology was of no
help to you. The old psychology was a
dreamy thing for philosophers and min-
isters, filled with lazy self - observation.
There was no exact measuring in it The
end of the century, our time of technics
and inventions, needs an exact measure-
ment. We have captured it by our new
laboratory methods. Come and measure
the psychical facts, and the new era of
exact treatment of the child's mind, on
the basis of an exact knowledge of mind
by accurate measurements, will begin.

Is it surprising that there set in a great
rush for the benefactions of experimental
psychology, that the laboratories have be-
come for teachers the ideal goals, that
experimenting with children has become
the teacher's sport, and that contempt
for the poor old psychology which did
not measure has become the symbol of
the rising generation ? No, it is not sur-
prising, but it is deplorable. And if this
movement deserves to be stopped, some
little advantage may be gained, perhaps,
if teachers come to understand that those
hopes are on a wrong track, that no lab-
oratory and no experiment can ever mea-
sure a psychical fact, and that all hope
for pedagogics on the basis of a mathe-
matically exact psychology is and will be
a perfect illusion.

I do not wish to discuss here the great
question of child study, where the dan-
gers are not less threatening. It has al-
ways been my conviction that love and
tact and patience and sympathy and in-
terest are more important for the teacher
than any psychological observations he
can make on children, and that these ob-
servations are natural enemies of his in-
stinctive emotional attitudes because they
dissolve the personality into elements,
while love and tact have nothing to do
with a bundle of elements. They turn to
the personality as one unit. They mean

166

The Danger from Experimental Psychology.

the child, and not its ganglion cells and
its psychical atoms of sensation.

But I now leave child study aside. I
look on psychology as a whole, and say
with the fullest assurance to all teach-
ers : This rush toward experimental psy-
chology is an absurdity. Our laboratory
work cannot teach you anything which
is of direct use to you in your work as
teachers ; and if you are not good teach-
ers it may even do you harm, as it may
confuse you and inhibit your normal
teacher's instincts. If you are inter-
ested in the subtle studies of modern
laboratory psychology, devote your free
time to it. Certainly, there are few sci-
ences so attractive. Study it as you would
study geology or astronomy or Greek his-
tory or German literature, but do not ex-
pect that it will help you in your work
as teachers more than astronomy or geo-
logy would help you. You may collect
thousands of experimental results with
the chronoscope and the kymograph, but
you will not find anything in our labora-
tories which you could translate direct-
ly into a pedagogical prescription. The
figures deceive you. There is no mea-
surement of psychical facts, and there-
fore no psychology which is antagonistic
or in any contrast with the psychology of
introspection. The methods are more de-
veloped, but the general aim is the same,
— a purely qualitative analysis of the
inner life ; no quantitative calculation.

If teachers connected no hopes with
the old self-observing psychology, there
would be no reason to change the atti-
tude. But that old distrust of psycho-
logy was unfair. Teachers ought always
to have had confidence in a sound qual-
itative psychology. A serious under-
standing of the mental functions certain-
ly will help them in their educational
work. Only that kind of study which is
added by the new experimental methods
has no direct value for them. In the
hands of the professional psychologists,
experimental results are important sug-
gestions for a more subtle and more re-

fined qualitative analysis than the pure
observation allowed. In the hands of the
outsider, in the hands of the teacher, those
results are odd bits and ends which never
form a whole and which have no meaning
for real life. Far from being an exact
science of measurable psychical facts,
they would be to him a mass of discon-
nected, queer details, of which no one
could be generalized for a practical pur-
pose.

I know that if the flood of intellectual
fashion is rising, one man's voice cannot
do much. We must wait until the ebb
tide comes. I am confident that this new
educational sport must have and will have
its reaction. The time must come when
teachers will feel that it was a misled cu-
riosity which made them expect peda-
gogical help from their own psychologi-
cal experiments, and that it was a logical
mistake to think that a quantitative psy-
chology would be a better basis for edu-
cation than a qualitative one. I believe
this time will come soon as a result of the
necessary disappointments which are al-
ready expressed in all educational quar-
ters ; but even if this reaction is near, it
remains the duty of the psychologist to
repeat and repeat his warning ; he can
at least aid in rendering the reaction less
painful and less overwhelming. Above
all, his warning may prevent the reaction
from bringing us to the other extreme,
which is wrong too, — the extreme view
that because experimental psychology is
not quantitative, therefore psychology in
general is useless for the modern teacher.
This view is mistaken. Let us keep in
mind from the start that if the rush to
the illusory measuring psychology is over,
the teacher ought to go back to the solid,
sober, qualitative analysis of the human
mind ; he will find there plenty of help
for his sacred educational work.

To be sure, the future will transform
the situation, and will connect the inter-
ests of both sides. As the anatomist,
with his microscopical study of the stom-
ach, may finally suggest the ways for

The Beds of Fleur-de-Lys. 167

cooking more digestible food, so the future. To-day there is almost no sign
experimental psychologist will combine of it, and I for one believe that that
and connect the detailed results more future will be a rather distant one, as
and more, till he is able to transform experimental psychology is yet quite iu
his knowledge into practical educational the beginning, like physics in the six-
suggestions. But such suggestions are teenth century.

possible only for those who are able to I do hope for a high and great and

consider the full totality of the facts, brilliant progress of experimental psy-

Single disconnected details are of no chology, and I do hope still more for

value for such a practical transforma- a wonderful growth of the educational

tion ; and even after all is done, this systems in this country ; but I feel sure

more highly developed knowledge will that the development of both will be

be but a more refined understanding of the stronger and sounder and greater,

qualitative relations, — never the quan- the longer both education and experi-

titative measurement which so many mental psychology go sharply separated

teachers now hopefully expect. Above ways, with sympathy, but without blind

all, that connection is a matter of the adoration for each other.

Hugo Milnsterberg.

THE BEDS OF FLEUR-DE-LYS.

PRESIDIO, SAN FRANCISCO.

HIGH-LYING sea-blown stretches of green turf,
Wind-bitten close, salt-colored by the sea,
Low curve on curve spread far to the cool sky,
And, curving over them as long they lie,

Beds of wild fleur-de-lys.

Wide-flowing, self-sown, stealing near and far,

Breaking the green like islands in the sea,
Great stretches at your feet, and spots that bend
Dwindling over the horizon's end, —

Wilds beds of fleur-de-lys.

The light, keen wind streams on across the lifts,

Thin wind of western springtime by the sea ;
The warm Earth smiles unmoved, but over her
Is the far-flying rustle and sweet stir

In beds of fleur-de-lys.

And here and there across the smooth low grass

Tall maidens wander, thinking of the sea ; «

And bend and bend, with light robes blown aside,
For the blue lily-flowers that bloom so wide, —
The beds of fleur-de-lys.

Charlotte Perkins Stetson.

168

The Battle of the Strong.

THE BATTLE OF THE STRONG.

ELEVEN years passed.

The King of France was no longer
sending adventurers to capture the out-
posts of England, but rather was begin-
ning hopelessly to wind in again the coil
of disaster which had spun out through
the helpless fingers of Necker, Calonne,
Brienne, and the rest, and in the end was
to bind his own hands for the guillotine.

The island of Jersey, like a scout upon
the borders of a f oeman's country, looked
out over St. Michael's Basin to those
provinces where the war of the Vendde
was soon to strike France from within,
while England, and presently all Europe,
should strike her from without.

War, or the apprehension of war, was
in the air. The people of the little isle,
always living within the influence of nat-
ural wonder and the power of the ele-
ments, were superstitious ; and as news
of dark deeds done in Paris crept across
from Carteret or St. Malo, as men-of-
war anchored in the tideway, and Eng-
lish troops, against the hour of trouble,
came, transport after transport, into the
harbor of St. Helier's, they began to
see visions and dream dreams. One pea-
sant heard the witches singing a chorus
of carnage at Rocbert ; another saw, to-
ward the Minquiers, a great army, like
a mirage, upon the sea ; others declared
that certain French refugees in the is-
land had the evil eye and bewitched the
cattle ; and one peasant woman, wild with
grief because her child had died of a
sudden sickness, meeting a little French-
man, the Chevalier Orvilliers du Champ-
savoys de Beaumanoir, in the Rue des
Tres«Pigeons, made a stroke at his face
with a knitting-needle, and then, Protes-
tant though she was, crossed herself sev-
eral times, after the custom of her fore-
fathers.

This superstition and fanaticism, so
strong in the populace, now and then
burst forth in untamable fury and riot ;
so that when, on the 16th of September,
1792, the gay morning was suddenly
overcast and a black curtain was drawn
over the bright sun, the people of Jersey,
working in the fields, vraicking among
the rocks, or knitting in their doorways,
stood aghast, and knew not what was
upon them.

Some began to say the Lord's Prayer.
Some, in superstitious terror, ran to the
secret hole in the wall, to the chimney,
or to the bedstead, or dug up the earthen
floor, to find the stocking full of notes
and gold, which might perchance come
with them safe through any cataclysm,
or start them again in business in an-
other world. Some began tremblingly
to sing hymns, and a few to swear freely.
The latter were mostly carters, whose
salutations to one another were mainly
oaths because of the extreme narrowness
of the island roads, and sailors, to whom
profanity was as daily bread.

In St. Helier's, after the first stupe-
faction, people poured into the streets.
They gathered most where met the Rue
d'Driere and the Rue d'Egypte. Here
stood the old prison, and the spot was
called the Place du Vier Prison.

Men and women, with their breakfasts
still in their mouths, mumbled in ter-
ror to one another. A woman shrieked
that the Day of Judgment was come,
and instinctively straightened her cap,
smoothed out her dress of molleton, and
put on her sabots. A carpenter, hear-
ing her terrified exclamations, put on his
sabots also, stooped, whimpering, to the
stream running from the Rue d'Egypte,
and began to wash his face. Presently
a dozen of his neighbors did the same.
Some of the women, however, went on
knitting hard as they gabbled prayers and

The Battle of the Strong.

169

looked at the fast-blackening sun. Knit-
ting was to Jersey women, like breath-
ing or talebearing, life itself. With their
eyes closing on earth, they would have
gone on knitting and dropped no stitches.

A dusk came down like that over Pom-
peii and Herculaneum. The tragedy of
fear went hand in hand with burlesque
commonplace. The gray stone walls of
the houses grew darker and darker, and
seemed to close in on the dismayed, ter-
rified, hysterical crowd. Here some one
was shouting the word of command to an
imaginary company of militia ; there an
aged crone was offering, without price,
simnels and black butter, as a sort of pro-
pitiation for an imperfect past ; and from
a window a notorious evil liver was call-
ing out in frenzied voice that she had
heard the devil and the witches from
Rocbert reveling in the dungeons of the
prison the night before. Thereupon, a
disheveled, long-haired fanatic, once a
barber, with a gift for mad preaching
and a well-known hatred of the French,
sprang upon the Pompe des Brigands,
and, declaring that the Last Day had
come, cried : —

" The spirit of the Lord is upon me !
He hath sent me to proclaim liberty to
the captives, and the opening of the
prison to them that are bound ! "

Some one thrust into his hand a torch.
He waved it to and fro in his wild ha-
rangue ; he threw up his arms toward
the darkened sun and the ominous gloom,
and with blatant fury commanded that
the prison doors be opened. Other
torches and candles appeared, and the
mob trembled to and fro in their help-
less delirium of excitement

" The prison ! Open the Vier Prison !
Break down the doors ! Gatd'en'ale,
drive out the devils ! Free the prison-
ers, the poor vauriens ! " the crowd shout-
ed, and they rushed forward with sticks
and weapons.

The prison arched the street as Tem-
ple Bar once spanned the Strand. They
pressed through the archway, overpow-

ered the terror-stricken jailer, and, bat-
tering open the door in frenzy, called the
prisoners forth.

They looktd to see issue some sailor
arrested for singing too loud of a Sab-
bath, some profane peasant who had pre-
sumed to wear patins in church, some
prof aner peasant who had not doffed his
hat to the conne'table, or some slipshod
militiaman who had worn sabots on pa-
rade, thereby offending the red - robed
dignity of the royal court.

Instead, there appeared a little French-
man of the most refined and unusual
appearance. The blue cloth of his coat
set off the extreme paleness of his small
but serene face and the high, round fore-
head. The hair, a beautiful silver gray,
which time only had powdered, was tied
in a queue behind. The little gentle-
man's hand was as thin and fine as a
lady's ; his shoulders were narrow and
slightly stooped ; his eyes were large,
eloquent, and benign. His clothes were
amazingly neat ; they showed constant
brushing, and here and there signs of
the friendly repairing needle.

The whole impression was that of a
man whom a whiff of wind would blow
away, with the body of an ascetic and
the simplicity of a child, while the face
had some particular sort of wisdom, dif-
ficult to define and impossible to imitate.
He held in his hand a small cane of the
sort carried at the court of Louis XV.
Louis Capet himself had given it to him ;
and you might have had the life of the
little gentleman, but not this cane with
the tiny golden bust of his unhappy mon-
arch.

He stood on the steps of the prison
and looked serenely on the muttering,
excited crowd.

" I fear there is a mistake," said he,
coughing slightly into his fingers. " You
do not seek me. I — I have no claim
upon your kindness. I am only the
Chevalier Orvilliers du Champsavoys de
Beaumanoir."

For a moment the mob had been

'170

The Battle, of the Strong.

stayed in amazement by this small, rare
creature stepping from the doorway, like
a porcelain colored figure from a noi-
some wood in a painting *by Boucher.
In the instant's pause, the Chevalier Or-
villiers du Champsavoys de Beaumanoir
took from his pocket a timepiece and
glanced at it ; then looked over the heads
of the crowd tovvai'd the hooded sun,
which was beginning to show its face
again.

" It was due at eight less seven min-
utes," said he ; " clear sun again was set
for ten minutes past. It is now upon
the stroke of the hour ! "

He seemed in no way concerned with
the swaying crowd before him. Undoubt-
edly they wanted nothing of him, and
therefore he did not take their presence
seriously ; but, of an inquiring mind, he
was deeply interested in the eclipse. His
obliviousness of them and their inten-
tions was of short duration.

" He 's a French sorcerer ! He has
the evil eye ! Away with him to the
sea ! " shouted the fanatical preacher
from the Pompe des Brigands.

" It 's a witch turned into a man ! "
cried a drunken woman from her win-
dow. " Give him the wheel of fire at
the blacksmith's forge."

" That 's it ! Gad'rabotin — the wheel
of fire '11 turn him back again to a hag ! "

The little gentleman protested, but
they seized him and dragged him from
the steps. Tossed like a ball, so light was
he, he grasped his gold-headed cane as
one might cling to life, and declared that
he was no witch, but a poor French exile,
arrested the night before for being abroad
after nine o'clock, against the orders of
the royal court.

Many of the crowd knew him well
enough by sight, but that natural bar-
barity which is in humanity, not far from
the surface, was at work, and, like their
far ancestors who, when in fear, sacri-
ficed human victims, these children of
Adam maltreated the refugee now. The
mob was too delirious to act with intelli-

gence. The dark cloud was lifting from
the sun, and the dread of the Judgment
Day was declining ; but as the pendulum
swung back from that fear toward nor-
mal life again, it carried with it the one
virulent and common prejudice of the
country : radical hatred of the French,
which often slumbered, but never died ;
which sometimes broke forth relentlessly
and unreasoningly, as now it did against
du Champsavoys de Beaumanoir.

The wife of an oyster-fisher from Ro-
zel Bay, who lived in hourly enmity with
the oyster-fishers of Carteret, gashed his
cheek with the shell of an ormer. A po-
tato-digger from Grouville parish struck
at his head with a hoe, for the Granvil-
lais had crossed the strait to the island
the year before, to work in the harvest-
fields for a smaller wage than the Jer-
siais, and this little French gentleman
should be held responsible for that. The
weapon missed the chevalier, but laid low
a centenier, who, though a municipal of-
ficer, had lost his head, like his neighbors,
in the excitement and terror. This only
increased the rage of the mob against the
foreigner, and was another crime to lay
to his charge. A smuggler thereupon
kicked him in the side.

At that moment there came a cry of
indignation from a girl at an upper win-
dow of the Place. The chevalier evi-
dently knew her, for even in his hard
case he smiled ; and then he heard an-
other voice ring out over the heads of the
crowd, strong, angry, determined.

From the Rue d'Driere a tall, athletic
man was hurrying. He had on his shoul-
ders a workman's basket, from which
peeped a ship-builder's tools. Seeing the
chevalier's danger, he dropped the bas-
ket through the open window of a house,
and forced his way through the crowd,
roughly knocking from under them the
feet of two or three ruffians who opposed
him. He reproached the crowd, he be-
rated them, he handled them fiercely ;
with dexterous strength he caught the
little gentleman up in his arms, and, driv-

The Battle of the Strong.

171

ing straight on to the open door of the
smithy, placed him inside, and blocked
the passage with his own body.

Like all mobs, this throng had no rea-
son, no sense. They were balked in their
malign intentions, and this man, Maitre
Ranulph Delagarde, was the cause of it,
— that was all they knew. It was a
strange picture : the preacher in an ec-
stasy of emotion haranguing the foolish
rabble, who now realized, with an un-
becoming joy, that the Last Day was
yet to face ; the gaping, empty prison ;
the open windows crowded with excited
faces ; the church bell from the Vier
Marchi ringing an alarm ; Norman leth-
argy roused to froth and fury ; one strong
man holding two hundred back !

Above them all, at a hus in the gable
of a thatched cottage, stood the girl whom
the chevalier had recognized. She was
leaning across the lower closed half of
the door, her hands in apprehensive ex-
citement clasping her cheeks, the fingers
making deep indentations in the soft flesh.
The eyes were bewildered, and, though
quivering with pain, watched the scene
below with an unwavering intensity.

A stone was thrown at Delagarde as he
stood in the doorway, but it missed him.

" Oh — oh — oh ! " the girl exclaimed,
shrinking as if the stone had struck her.
" Oh, shame ! Oh, you cowards ! " she
added, her hands now indignantly beat-
ing the hus.

Three or four men rushed forward on
Ranulph. He hurled them back. Oth-
ers came on with weapons. The girl
fled for an instant, then reappeared with
a musket, as the people were crowding
in on Delagarde with threats and exe-
crations.

" Stop ! stop ! " she cried from above,
and. Ranulph seized a blacksmith's ham-
mer to meet the onset.

" Stop, or I '11 fire ! " she called again,
and she aimed her musket at the fore-
most assailants.

Every face turned in her direction, for
her voice had rung out clear as music :

it had a note of power and resonance like
an organ. There was a moment of si-
lence ; the leveled musket had a deadly
look, and the girl seemed determined.
Her fingers, her whole body, trembled ;
but there was no mistaking the strong
will and the indignant purpose.

In the pause another sound was heard :
it was a quick tramp ! tramp! tramp !
and suddenly through the prison arch-
way came an officer of the King's navy
with a company of sailors. The officer,
withdrawn sword, his men following with
drawn cutlasses, drove a way through the
mob, who scattered like sheep; for, at
this time, far more dreaded and admired
than the military were the sailors whom
Howe and Nelson were soon to make still
more famous throughout the world.

Delagarde threw aside his hammer,
and saluted the officer. The little che-
valier lifted his hat, made a formal bow,
and begged to say that he was not at all
hurt. With a droll composure he of-
fered snuff to the officer, who nodded
and accepted, and then looked up to the
window where the girl stood, and saluted
with confident gallantry.

" Why, it 's little Guida Landresse ! "
he murmured under his breath. " I 'd
know her anywhere. Death and Beauty,
what a face ! " Then he turned to Ra-
nulph in recognition. " Ranulph Dela-
garde, eh ? " said he good - humoredly.
" You 've forgotten me, I see. I 'm
Philip d'Avranche, of the Narcissus."

Ranulph had forgotten. The slight
lad, Philip, had grown bronzed and rosy-
cheeked, and stouter of frame. In the
eleven years since they had met at the
battle of Jersey, events, travel, and re-
sponsibility had altered him vastly. Ra-
nulph had changed only in growing very
tall and athletic and strong ; the look of
him was still that of the Norman lad of
the island of Jersey, though the power
and intelligence of his face were most un-
usual.

The girl had not forgotten at all. The
words that d'Avranche had said to her

172

The Battle of the Strong.

years before, when she was a child, came
to her inind: "My name is Philip.
Won't you call me Philip ? "

The recollection of that day when she
snatched off the bailly's hat brought a
smile to her lips, so quickly were her feel-
ings moved one way or another. Then
she grew suddenly serious, for the mem-
ory of the hour when Philip saved her
from the scimiter of the Turk came to
her, and her heart throbbed hotly ; but
she smiled again, though more gently and
a little wistfully now.

Philip d'Avranche looked up toward
her once more, and returned her smile.
Then he addressed the awed crowd. He
did not spare his language ; he uncon-
sciously used an oath or two. He or-
dered them off to their homes. When
they hesitated (for they were slow to ac-
knowledge any authority save their own
sacred royal court) the sailors advanced
on them with fixed bayonets, and a mo-
ment later the Place du Vier Prison was
clear. Leaving a half dozen sailors on
guard till the town corps should arrive,
d'Avranche prepared to march.

" You have done me a good turn, Mon-
sieur d'Avranche," said Ranulph.

D'Avranche smiled. "There was a
time you called me Philip. We were
lads together."

" It 's different now," answered Dela-
garde.

" Nothing is different at all, of course,"
replied d'Avranche carelessly, yet with
the slightest touch of condescension and
vanity, as he held out his hand. Then
he said to the chevalier, " Monsieur, I
congratulate you on having such a cham-
pion," with a motion toward Ranulph.
" And you, monsieur, on your brave pro-
tector." He again saluted the girl at the
window above.

"I am the obliged and humble ser-
vant of monsieur — and monsieur," re-
sponded the little gentleman, turning
from one to the other with a courtly bow,
the three - cornered hat under his arm,
the right foot forward, the thin fingers

making a graceful salutation. " But I
— I think — I really think I must go
back to prison. I was not formally set
free. I was out last night beyond the
hour set by the court. I lost my way,
and" —

" Not a bit of it," d'Avranche inter-
rupted. " The centeniers are too free
with their jailing here. I '11 be guaran-
tee for you, monsieur."

The little man shook his head dubious-
ly. " But, as a point of honor, I really
think " —

D'Avranche laughed. " As a point of
honor, I think you ought to breakfast.
A la bonne heure, Monsieur le Cheva-
lier ! "

He looked up once more to the cottage
window. Guida was still there. The
darkness over the sun was withdrawn,
and now the clear light began to spread
itself abroad. It was like a second dawn
after a painful night. It touched the
face of the girl ; it burnished the won-
derful red-brown hair which fell loose-
ly and lightly over her forehead ; it
gave her beauty a touch of luxuriance.
D'Avranche thrilled at the sight of her.

" It 's a beautiful face ! " he said to
himself, as their eyes met

Ranulph had seen the glances that had
passed between the two, and he winced.
He remembered how, eleven years be-
fore, Philip d'Avranche had saved Guida
from death. It galled him that then and
now this young gallant should step in and
take the game out of his hands. He was
sure that he himself, and alone, could
have mastered this crowd. It would
seem that always he was destined to stand
fighting in the breach, while another
should hoist the flag of victory and win
the glory.

" Monsieur ! Monsieur le Chevalier ! "
the girl called down from the window.
" Grandpethe says you must breakfast
with us. Oh, but you must come, or we
shall be offended ! " she added, as Champ-
savoys shook his head in hesitation and
glanced toward the prison.

The Battle of the Strong.

173

" As a point of honor " — the little
man still persisted, lightly touching his
breast with the Louis-Quinze cane and
taking a step toward the sombre prison
archway.

But Ranulph interfered, hurried him
inside the cottage, and, standing in the
doorway, said to some one within, " May
I come in also, Sieur de Mauprat ? "

Above the pleasant answer of a qua-
vering voice came another, soft and clear,
in pure French : " Thou art always wel-
come, without asking, as thou knowest,
Ro."

" Then I '11 go and fetch my tool-basket
first," Ranulph said cheerily, his heart
beating more quickly, and, turning, he
walked across the Place.

VI.

The cottage in which Guida lived at
the Place du Vier Prison was in jocund
contrast to the dungeon from which the
Chevalier Orvilliers du Champsavoys de
Beaumanoir had complacently issued.
Even in the hot summer the prison walls
dripped moisture ; for the mortar had
been made of wet sea-sand which never
dried, and beneath the gloomy tenement
of crime a dark stream flowed to the
sea. But the walls of the cottage were
dry, for, many years before, Guida's mo-
ther had herself seen it built stone by
stone, and every corner of it was as free
from damp as the mielles which stretched
in sandy desolation behind it to the Mont
es Pendus, where the law had its way
with the necks of criminals. In early
childhood Madame Landresse had come
with her father into exile from the sun-
niest valley in the hills of ChambeYy,
where flowers and trees and sunshine had
been her life ; and here, in the midst
of irregular grimness of architecture,
her heart traveled back to the valley
where she was born, and the chateau
where she had lived before the storm of
oppression and tyranny drove her forth.

She spent her heart and her days in
making this cottage, upon the western
border of St. Helier's, a delight to the
quiet eye.

Yet it was a Jersey cottage, not French.
There were scores like it throughout the
island ; but hers had a touch of unusual
lightness and of taste, while it followed
to the smallest detail every fashion of the
life of the community. The people of
the island had been good to her and her
husband during the two short years of
their married life, had caused her to love
the land which necessity had made her
home. Her child was brought up after
the manner of the better class of Jersey
children, — wore what they wore, ate
what they ate, lived as they lived. She
spoke the country patois in the daily life,
teaching it to Guida at the same time
that she taught her pure French and good
English, which the mother had learned
as a child, and cultivated later here. She
did all in her power to make Guida a
Jersiaise in instinct and habit, and to be-
get in her a contented disposition. There
could be no future for her daughter out-
side this little green oasis of exile, she
thought. Not that she lacked ambition,
but she felt that in their circumstances
ambition could yield only one harvest to
her child, and that was marriage. She
herself had married a poor man, a mas-
ter builder of ships, like Maitre Ranulph
Delagarde, and she had been very happy
while he lived. Her husband had come
of an ancient Jersey family, who were
in Normandy before the Conqueror was
born ; scarcely a gentleman according to
the standard of her father, the distin-
guished exile and retired watchmaker,
but almost a man of genius in his craft.
If Guida should chance to be as fortu-
nate as herself, she could ask no more.

She had watched the child anxiously,
for the impulses of Guida's temperament
now and then broke forth in indignation
as wild as her tears, and tears as mad as
her laughter. As the girl grew in health
and stature, she tried, tenderly, care-

174

The Battle of the Strong.

fully, and strenuously, to discipline the
sensitive nature, her heart bursting with
grief at times because she knew that these
high feelings and delicate powers came
through a long line of refined ancestral
tendencies, as indestructible as perilous
and joyous.

Four things were always apparent in
the girl's character : sympathy with suf-
fering, kindness without partiality, a love
of nature, and an intense candor.

Not a stray cat wandering into the
Place du Vier Prison but found an asy-
lum in the garden behind the cottage.
Not a dog hunting for a bone, stopping at
Guida's door, but was sure of one from
a hiding-place in the hawthorn hedge of
the garden. In the morning the little
patch of gravel at the kitchen door was
always white with crumbs for the birds,
and they would be seen in fluttering,
chirping groups upon the may-tree or the
lilac - bushes, waiting for the tiny snow-
storm of bread to fall. Was he good or
bad, ragged or neat, honest or a thief,
not a deserting sailor or a homeless lad,
halting at the cottage, but was fed from
the girl's private larder behind the straw
beehives in the back garden, among the
sweet lavender and the gooseberry-
bushes. No matter how rough the va-
grant, the sincerity and pure impulse of
the child seemed to throw round him a
sunshine of decency and respect.

The garden behind the house was the
girl's Eden. She had planted upon the
hawthorn hedge the crimson monthly
rose, the fuchsia, and the jonquil, until
at last the cottage was hemmed in by a
wall of flowers. They streamed in pro-
fusion down the hedge, and the hedge
expanded into clumps of peonies, white
lilies, snowdrops, daffodils, dog-violets,
and wild strawberries. The walls of
the cottage were covered with vines, like
a loggia in Sardinia, hung with innumer-
able clusters of white grapes. In this
garden the child was ever as busy as the
bees which hung humming on the sweet
scabious and the wild thyme, until all the

villagers who were friendly, and even
those who were envious, said of Guida's
garden that it was " fleuri comrae un
mai."

In this corner was a little hut for rab-
bits and white mice ; in that there was
a hole dug in the bank for a porcupine ;
in the middle, a flower-grown inclosure
for cats in various stages of health or
convalescence, and a pond for frogs :
amongst all of which wandered her faith-
ful dog, Biribi by name, as master of the
ceremonies.

Besides the mother, there had been
one other proud but garrulous spectator
of the growth of the child to girlhood
and maidenhood. M. Larchant de Mau-
prat, the grandfather, was not less inter-
ested in Guida than her mother, but in
a different way. He saw no fault, ad-
mitted no imperfection. He was rhetor-
ical over her good qualities, indeed very
demonstrative for a Huguenot, and confi-
dent that Guida would restore the hum-
bled fortunes of his house.

Madame Landresse's one ambition
was to live long enough to see her child's
character well formed. She knew that
her own years were numbered. Month
by month she felt her strength going,
but a beautiful tenacity kept her where
she would be until Guida was fifteen
years of age. Her great desire had been
to live till the girl was eighteen. Then
— well, then might she not perhaps leave
her to the care of a husband ? At best,
M. de Mauprat could not live long. He
had been forced to give up the little
watchmaker's shop in the Vier Marchi,
where for so many years, in simpleness
and independence, he had wrought, al-
ways putting by secretly, from work done
after hours, Jersey bank-notes and gold,
to give Guida a dot, if not worthy of her,
at least a guarantee against reproach
when the great man came who should
seek her in marriage. But at last his
hands trembled among the tiny wheels,
and his eyes failed. He had his dark
hour by himself ; then he sold the shop

The Battle of the Strong.

175

and his tools and his stock to a pative,
who thenceforward sat in the ancient
exile's place ; the two brown eyes of the
stooped, brown old man looked out no
more from the window in the Vier Mar-
chi; and then they all made their new
home in the Place du Vier Prison.

Until she was fifteen Guida's life was
unclouded. Once or twice her mother
tried to tell her of a place that must soon
be empty ; that erelong the linked initials
carved in stone above the cottage door
(after the Jersey custom) would be but
a monogram of death, an announcement
to all who entered in that here had once
lived Joseph and Josephine Landresse.
But her heart failed her, and so at last
the end came like a sudden wind out of
the north.

One midnight the life of the woman
chilled. She called aloud, " Guida !
Guida ! my child ! " And when the sun
crept again over the western heights the
little fire of life had died down to ashes.
Henceforth Guida Landresse de Lan-
dresse must fight the fight and finish the
journey of womanhood alone.

When her trouble came, white and
dazed in the fresh terror of loss, she
went for comfort to her grandfather, but
she ended by comforting him. He sat
in his armchair looking straight before
him, with close-pressed lips and hands
clasped rigidly upon the ivory handle of
his walking-stick, all the color gone from
his dark eyes, the blood from his cheek,
the sound from his voice, — he spoke
only in whispers. He had been so long
used to being cared for that the selfish-
ness of the aged was developed in him
more than he knew.

Though that which had bereaved them
had taken the blood from his cheek, it
had squeezed the blood from out the
girl's .heart. That octopus which we
call nature, in the operation of its laws,
had drawn from her the glow and pulse
of life. Sometimes the house seemed
weighing down on her, crushing her.
Going to the door of the room where her

mother lay, and leaning against it with
her head upon her arm, she would say
in the homely and tender Jersey patois,
" Ma methe ! ma p'tite methe ! mais
que je t'aime, ma methe ! " Then she
would go into the little garden. There
she was able to breathe ; there the ani-
mals she had made her friends came
about her softly, as if they knew ; the
birds peeped at her plaintively ; the bees
hummed around her, settling on her, sing-
ing in her ears. Did the bees under-
stand, she wondered. She remembered
the words which the old Huguenot preach-
er had once uttered in the little church
in the Rue d'Driere : " The souls of men
are as singing bees which God shall ga-
ther home in a goodly swarm." Who
could tell ? Perhaps these very bees
were the busy souls of other people who
had lived and had not fulfilled themselves,
but here in her sweet - smelling garden
were working out an industrious liveli-
hood until their time might come again.
Presently the thought linked itself to the
ancient Jersey legend of telling the bees.

Remembering it, she went quietly into
the house, and brought out several pieces
of crape. Upon every beehive she tied
crape, according to the legend. Then
she told the bees of the cavalcade which
had come in the last shadows of the
night, and had ridden to and fro through
the house with soft but furious impa-
tience, until a beloved spirit, worn with
the foot-travel of life, mounted the wait-
ing chariot and was gone. And she said,
according to the legend : —

" Gather you home, gather you home !
Methe, ma methe, she is dead and gone !
Honey is for the living ; flowers are for
the dead ! Methe, ma methe, she is dead
and gone ! Gather you home ! "

This time was the turning-point in
Guida's life. What her mother had
been to the Sieur de Mauprat she soon
became. They had enough to live on
simply. Every week her grandfather
gave her a fixed sum for the household.
Upon this she managed, so that the tiny

176

The Battle of the Strong.

income left by her mother might not
be touched. She shrank from using it
yet ; and besides, dark times might come
when it would be needed. Death had
surprised her once, but it should bring
no more amazement. She knew that
M. de Mauprat's days were numbered,
and when he was gone she would be left
without one near relative in the world.
She realized how unprotected her posi-
tion would be when death came knock-
ing at the door again* What she would
do she knew not. She thought long and
hard. Fifty things occurred to her, and
fifty were set aside. The immediate
relatives of her mother in France were
scattered or dead. There was no longer
any interest at Chambe'ry in the watch-
making exile, who had dropped like a
cherry-stone from the beak of the black
bird of persecution on one of the lies de
la Manche.

There remained the alternative which
was whispered into the ears of Guida
by the Sieur de Mauprat as the months
grew into years after the mother died,
— marriage, a husband, a notable and
wealthy husband. That was the magic
destiny M. de Mauprat figured for her.
It did not elate her, it did not disturb
her ; she scarcely realized it. She loved
animals, and she saw no reason to de-
spise a stalwart youth. It had been her
fortune to know two or three in the cas-
ual, unconventional manner of villages,
and there were few in the land, great or
humble, who did not turn twice to look
at her as she passed through the 'Vier
Marchi, so noble was her carriage, so
graceful and buoyant her walk, so lack-
ing in self - consciousness her beauty.
More than one young gentleman of fam-
ily had been known to ride down through
the Place du Vier Prison, hoping to catch
sight of her, and to afford her the view
of a suggestively empty pillion behind
him.

She understood it all in her own way.
Her mind saw clearly, but it saw inno-
cently. She would have been less than

human, if she had not had in her a touch
of coquetry, though she loathed deceit.
She was forceful enough to like power,
even in this small way of attracting ad-
miration, yet she would not have gone
far out of her path to receive incense or
attention. She was at once proud and
humble, and as yet she had not loved.
She had never listened to flatterers, and
she had never permitted young men to
visit her — save one. Ranulph Dela-
garde had gone in and out at his will ;
but that was casually and not too often,
and he was discreet and spoke no word
of love. Sometimes she talked to him
of things concerning the daily life with
which she did not care to trouble M. de
Mauprat.

The matter of the small income from
her mother, — it was Ranulph who ad-
vised her to place it with the great fish-
ing company whose ships he built in the
little dockyard at St. Aubin's. In fifty
other ways, quite unknown to Guida, he
had made life easier for her. She knew
that her mother had thought of Ranulph
for her husband, although she blushed
hotly whenever — and it was not often —
the idea came to her. She remembered
how her mother had said that Ranulph
would be a great man in the island some
day ; that he had a mind above all the
youths in St. Helier's ; that she would
rather see Ranulph a master ship-builder
than a babbling e*crivain in the Rue des
Tres Pigeons, a smirking leech, or a
penniless seigneur with neither trade nor
talent. Her own husband had been the
laborious son of a poor, idle, and proud
seigneur. Guida was attracted to Ra-
nulph through his occupation ; for she
loved strength, she loved all clean and
wholesome trades, — the mason's, the
carpenter's, the blacksmith's, and most
of all the ship - builder's. Her father,
whom of course she did not remember,
had been a ship-builder, and she knew
that he had been a notable man, — every
one had told her that.

But as to marriage, there was one in-

The Battle of the Strong.

177

fluence — unconscious of it though she
might be — which, balanced against all
others, would weigh them down, right-
ly or wrongly : the love between man
and woman, which so few profess to be-
lieve in, and so many waste lives and
lands to attain.

" She has met her destiny," say the
village gossips, when some man in the
dusty procession of life sees a woman's
face in the pleasant shadow of a home,
and drops out of the ranks to enter at
the doorway and cry, " Mio destino ! "

Was Ranulph to be Guida'a destiny ?
Fine and handsome though he looked, as
he entered the cottage in the Place du
Vier Prison, on that September morning
after the rescue of the chevalier, his tool-
basket on his shoulder, his brown face en-
livened by one simple sentiment, she was
far from sure that he was, — far from
sure.

VII.

The little hallway into which Ranulph
stepped from the street led through to
the kitchen. Guida stood holding back
the door for him to enter this real living-
room of the house, which opened directly
on the garden behind. It was so cheer-
ful and secluded, looking out from the
garden to the wide space beyond and the
changeful sea, that since Madame Lan-
dresse's death the Sieur de Mauprat had
made it reception-room, dining-room, and
kitchen all in one. He would willingly
have slept there, too, but noblesse oblige :
the last glimmer of family pride, and the
thought of what the Chevalier Orvilliers
du Champsavoys de Beaumanoir might
think, prevented him. There was some-
thing patriarchal, moreover, in a kitchen
as a reception-room ; and both he and
the chevalier loved to watch Guida busy
with her household duties : at one mo-
ment her arms in the dough of the
kneading - trough ; at another, rubbing
the pewter plates or scouring the wood-
en trenchers ; picking the cherries from

VOL. T.XXXT. — NO. 484. 12

the garden for a jelly, or perchance cast-
ing up her weekly accounts with a little
smiling and a little sighing too.

If by chance it had been proposed by
M. de Mauprat to adjourn to the small
sitting-room looking out upon the Place
du Vier Prison, a gloom would instantly
have settled upon them both.

On one memorable occasion the sieur
had made a last attempt to revive the
glory of bygone days. In the little front
room there was an ancient armchair, over
which hung the sword that the Comte
Guilbert Mauprat de Chambe'ry had used
at Fontenoy against the English. Here,
then, one day, he received the chevalier,
who on his part flourished the cane the
gracious Louis had given him.

After an interchange of aristocratic
passwords, as it were, they both became
gloomy and irritable, they stiffened into
bas-reliefs. Their excellent tempers de-
veloped a subacidity which might have
spoiled at least one day of their lives,
had it not been for the chevalier's inge-
nuity. He was suddenly stricken with
a pain in his right leg, where, as he had
often told the sieur in confidence, he
had been wounded in a duel in youthful
days. For so innocent a man, his unre-
hearsed dissimulation was good. He
caught his knee with a hand, straight-
ened up in his seat, compressed his lips,
frowned, looked apprehensive, and the
apprehension developed into a spasm.

That was enough : de Mauprat knew
those signs of anguish. He begged his
visitor to lean on him, and, with a flicker-
ing smile on the side of his face turned
from the chevalier, he led his distin-
guished friend to the kitchen. There
the well-known remedy was administered
by Guida : three thimblef uls of cherry
brandy, dashed with a little elderberry
cordial, had never been known to fail.
This day the cure was almost instanta-
neous. De Mauprat watched with grave
solicitude the pouring of each thimbleful,
and its absorption ; and he sat back at
last with a sense of almost jocund relief,

178

The Battle of the Strong.

meeting the satisfied smile of du Champ-
savoys ; and the three smiled at one an-
other in the simplicity of an elementary
happiness.

So it was that this cheerful, house-
wifely room became like one of those an-
cient corners of camaraderie in some ex-
clusive inn where gentlemen of quality
were wont to meet. The floor was paved
with square flagstones and sanded. It
was a spacious room, the full length of
the cottage and more than half its depth.
The fireplace was huge, and inside it were
oak benches where one might sit on a
cold winter night. At the left of the
chimney was the great settle, or veille,
padded with baize, flourished with sati-
nettes, and spread with ferns and rushes.
The spinning-wheel was in one corner
of the room, to the right of the fireplace,
with the bread - trodgh near it ; and at
the end was the dreschiaux, covered with
pewter pots, hanaps, wooden trenchers,
wooden spoons, and a little old china
worth the ransom of a prince at least.
Not far from it was the table, from which,
looking out at the door, the hills and sea
were in pleasant prospect. At the side
of the table, opposite the doorway, were
the two great armchairs where in summer-
time sat the chevalier and the sieur.

These, with a few constant visitors,
formed a coterie or compact: the big,
grizzly-bearded boatman, Jean Touzel,
who wore spectacles, befriended smug-
glers, was approved of all men, and
secretly worshiped by his wife ; Amice
Ingouville, the fat avocat, with a stomach
of gigantic proportions, with the biggest
heart and the tiniest brain in the world ;
Maitre Ranulph Delagarde ; and lastly,
M. Yves Savary dit D&ricand (in truth
the Comte de Tournay, of the house of
Vaufontaine), that officer of Rullecour's
who, being released from the prison hos-
pital, when the hour came for him to
leave the country was too drunk to find
the shore. By some whim of negligence
the royal court was afterward too lethar-
gic to remove him, and he stayed on, be-

tween successive carousals vainly making
efforts to leave. In sober hours, which
were none too frequent, he was rather
sorrowfully welcomed by the sieur and
the chevalier.

All these, if they came, — and when
they came, — sat on the veille, loitered in
the doorway, or used the three-legged
stools scattered here and there. If it
was winter, they all sat on the veille
save the chevalier and the sieur ; and
Guida had her little straight-backed oak
chair beside her grandfather. If they
came while she was at work, it made no
difference to her, for it was a rule with
her that no one should suggest that he
was in the way, nor offer help of any
kind. At first, if by chance she wished
to roll the churn from its corner near the
dresser toward the oaken doorway, they
would all move ; the sieur putting his
snuff-box carefully on the chair-arm, the
chevalier laying his cane upon the table,
Jean Touzel dropping his huge pipe on
the sanded floor, and the fat avocat mak-
ing apoplectic efforts to rise, — all pro-
ducing a commotion of politeness quite
disconcerting, till she insisted that no one
should stir or lift a hand for her unless
she requested it.

If she left the room, conversation
flagged, although maybe she had had no
part in it. If perchance she hummed
a little to herself, conversation strayed
after her, requiring all the elaborate and
affected precision of the fat avocat's mind
to get it to its natural amble again.

In winter, the fire of vraic and the lit-
tle lozenge-paned windows of bottle-glass
gave light enough in the daytime ; and
at night the cresset filled with colza, sus-
pended by osier rings from the ceiling,
lightened the darkness. Sometimes of a
particular night, such as Christmas Eve
or the birthday of M. de Mauprat, the
two horn lanterns hanging from the ra-
clyii were lit also.

If Maitre Ranulph chanced to be pre-
sent on these fete nights, he became
master of the ceremonies by virtue of

The Battle of the Strong.

179

the favor of M. de Mauprat, who could
not have endured him as the prospective
husband of Guida, but admired him for
his skill as a ship-builder and his ability
to speak three languages, — French,
English, and the Jersey patois.

When Ranulph entered the kitchen
this morning, his greeting to the sieur
and the chevalier was in French, but to
Guida he said, rather stupidly, for late
events had embarrassed him, " Ah bah !
es-tu gentiment ? "

" Gentiment," she repeated, with a
queer little smile. " You '11 have break-
fast ? " she said in English, for she spoke
it better than he.

" Et ben ! " Ranulph answered, still
embarrassed ; " a bouchi, that 's all."

He laid aside his tool - basket, shook
hands with the sieur, and seated himself
at the table. Looking at du Champsa-
voys, he said, " I 've just met the con-
ne"table, and he regrets the riot, cheva-
lier, and says the royal court extends its
mercy to you."

" I should prefer to accept no favors,"
answered the chevalier. " As a point of
honor, I had thought that, after break-
fast, I should return to prison, and " —
He paused reflectively.

" Gentlemen of the Isle of Paris stand
upon points of honor. If they break the
law, they ask no favors. Punishment has
its dignity as well as its indignity," inter-
posed the sieur, helping out his friend's
hesitation, for the chevalier seemed al-
ways searching in his mind for the exact
meaning of his thoughts, often without
immediate success.

" The conne*table said it was cheap-
er to let the chevalier go free than to
feed him in the Vier Prison," somewhat
drolly explained Ranulph, helping him-
self meanwhile to roasted conger-eel, and
eying hungrily the freshly made black
butter which Guida was taking from a
wooden trencher. " The royal court is
stingy," he added, " ' nearer than Jean
Noe*, who got married in his red que-
minzolle,' as we say on Jersey."

" There 's cause for it now, Maitre Ra-
nulph," answered the little brown watch-
maker. " Two shiploads of our poor
French refugees arrived from St. Malo
yesterday, and corn is getting scarcer
and scarcer."

"They must work, they must work,"
said the chevalier, drawing himself up.
" You, de Mauprat, you and I have set
the example to our race ; we, we have
established the right of men of our class
to labor with their hands." He spread
out his thin, almost transparent hands be-
fore him, clasped them, and shook them
with a gentle energy suitable to the filmy
quality of the conception of labor in his
mind. " We are all workers here, —
you, de Mauprat, Maitre Ranulph there,
and this friend of each of us, the dear
Guida, who has taught us so much, so
much ! "

He fixed his eyes on Guida with an
expression at once benevolent and reflec-
tive. Guida would have smiled if she
had dared. Often before had the che-
valier spoken of this brotherhood of la-
bor : it was a pleasant fiction with him.
He talked with a warm, magnanimous
simplicity of the joys of his own handi-
work ; but not even the sieur knew what
was this labor of which he spoke so elo-
quently. His suite of rooms was on the
top floor of the house of one Elie Mat-
tingley, — a fisherman by trade and a
piratical smuggler by practice, with a
daughter Carterette, whom he loved pass-
ing well.

" They must work, — our countrymen
must work," repeated the chevalier.
"Then the people of this amiable isle
will have no reason to disturb us."

" Amiable isle — nannin-gia ! " inter-
jected Ranulph bitterly. " Yesterday
two priests of your country were set upon
in La Colomberie by a drunken quarry-
man. A lady — Madame la Marquise
Vincennes de Miraman — was insult-
ed in the Rue Trousse Cotillon the day
before by drunken fishwomen from St.
Clement's, and was only saved from vio-

180

The Battle of the Strong.

lence by the brave Carterette Matting-
ley."

" Ah yes, the dear Carterette, — my
brave young friend Carterette Matting-
ley," said the chevalier, with a reflective
enthusiasm.

" As you were saying, chevalier " —
began M. de Mauprat.

But he got no further at the moment,
for shots rang out suddenly before the
house. They all started to their feet,
and Ranulph, running to the front door,
threw it open. As he did so, a young
man, with blood flowing from a cut on
the temple, stepped inside.

VIII.

It was M. Savary dit De'tricand.

" Whew ! what a lot of fools there are
in the world ! Pish ! you silly apes ! "
the young man said, glancing through
the open doorway to where the conne^
table's men were dragging two vile-look-
ing ruffians into the Vier Prison.

" What 's happened, Monsieur De'tri-
cand ? " said Ranulph, closing the door
and bolting it.

De'tricand did not reply at once. The
kitchen door was open, and as he came
toward it the anxious faces of the three
occupants of the room drew back. The
morning sun, streaming through the open
doorway beyond, cast a brilliant light
upon the young man, showing his pale
face and the gash in his temple. He was
smiling, however, and as he came toward
them he nodded nonchalantly and good-
naturedly.

" What was it ? What was it, mon-
sieur ? " asked Guida tremulously, for
painful events had crowded upon her too
fast that morning.

De'tricand was stanching the blood
from his temple with the scarf he had
snatched from his neck.

" Get him some cordial, Guida ! " said
de Mauprat. " He 's wounded ! "

De'tricand waved a hand almost im-

patiently, and dropped lightly upon the
veille.

" It 's nothing, I protest, — nothing
whatever ; and I '11 have no cordial, —
no, not a drop. A drink of water, — a
little of that, if I must drink."

Guida caught up a hanap from the
dresser, filled it with water, and passed
it to him. Her fingers trembled a little.
His were steady enough as he took the
hanap and drank the water off at a gulp.
Again she filled it, and again he drank.
The blood was running in a tiny stream
down his cheek. She caught her hand-
kerchief from her girdle impulsively, and
gently wiped away the blood.

"Let me wash and bandage the
wound," she said. Her eyes were alight
with compassion, not because it was the
dissipated, reckless French invader, M.
Savary dit De'tricand, — no one knew
that he was the young Comte de Tournay,
— who had come over with Rullecour
eleven years before, but because he was
a wounded fellow creature. She would
have done the same for the poor be'ganne
Dormy Jamais, who still prowled the
purlieus of St. Helier's, or for Elie Mat-
tingley, or for any criminal, for that mat-
ter, who needed medicament and care.

It was quite clear, however, that De'tri-
cand felt differently. The moment she
touched him he became suddenly still.
He permitted her to wash the blood from
his temple and cheek, to stanch it first
with jeru leaves preserved in brandy, then
with cobwebs, and afterward to bind it
with her own kerchief.

Ranulph had offered to help her, but
his hands were big and clumsy, and in
any case she needed no help. So the
others looked on with an admiring sim-
plicity which suggested almost a cult of
worship, while De'tricand thrilled at the
touch of the warm, still slightly trem-
bling fingers. He had never been quite
so near her before. His face was not
far from hers. Now her breath touched
him. As he bent his head for her to
bind his temple, he could see the soft

The Battle of the Strong.

181

pulsing of her bosom and hear the beat-
ing of her heart. Her neck was so full
and round and soft, and her voice —
surely he had never heard a voice so
sweet and strong, a tone so well poised
and so resonantly pleasant to the ear.

When she had finished, he had an im-
pulse to catch the hand as it dropped
away from his forehead and kiss it, —
not as he had kissed many a hand, hotly
one hour and coldly the next, but with an
unpurchasable kind of gratitude which
is the characteristic of this especial sort
of sinner. He was young enough and
there was still enough natural health in
him to know the healing touch of a per-
fect decency and a pure truth of spirit.
Yet he had been drunk the night before,
drunk with three non-commissioned offi-
cers, — and he a gentleman in spite of
everything, as could be plainly seen.

He turned his head away from the
girl quickly, and looked straight into the
eyes of her grandfather.

" I '11 tell you how it was, Sieur de
Mauprat," said he. " I was crossing
the Place du Vier Prison when a brute
threw a cleaver at me from a window.
If it had struck me on the head — well,
the royal court would have buried me,
and without a slab like Rullecour's. I
burst open the door of the house, ran up
the stairs, gripped the ruffian, and threw
him from the window into the street.
As I did so a door opened behind, and
another cut - throat came at me with a
pistol. He fired, — fired wide. I ran
in on him, and before he had time to
think he was through the window, also.
Then the other brute below fired up at
me. The bullet gashed my temple, as
you see. After that it was an affair
of the conne'table and his men. I had
had enough fighting before breakfast. I
saw an open door — and here I am —
monsieur, monsieur, monsieur, mademoi-
selle ! " He bowed to each of them, and
glanced toward the table hungrily.

Ranulph placed a seat for him. He
viewed the conger-eel and limpets with

an avid eye, but waited for the chevalier
and de Mauprat to sit. He had hardly
taken a mouthful, however, and thrown
a piece of bread to Biribi, the dog, when,
starting again to his feet, he said : —

" Your pardon, Monsieur le Cheva-
lier, — that brute in the Place seems to
have knocked all sense from my head !
I 've a letter for you, brought from Rou-
en by one of our countrymen who came
yesterday." He drew forth a packet
and handed it over. " I went out to
their ship in the harbor last night, and
this was given to me for you."

The chevalier looked with surprise and
satisfaction at the seal on the letter, and,
breaking it, spread open the paper, fum-
bled for the eyeglass which he always
carried in his vest, and began reading
diligently. Presently, under his breath
he made exclamations, now of surprise,
again of pain. It was clear that the let-
ter contained unpleasant things.

Meanwhile Ranulph turned to Guida.
" To-morrow Jean Touzel, his wife, and I
go to the Ecr^hos rocks in Jean's boat,"
said he. " A vessel was driven ashore
there three days ago, and my carpenters
are at work on her. If you can go and
the wind holds fair, you shall be brought
back safe by sundown."

Guida looked up quickly at her grand-
father. She loved the sea ; she could
sail a boat, and knew the tides and cur-
rents of the south coast as well as most
fishermen. Jean Touzel had taken her
out numberless times even while her mo-
ther was alive ; for Madame Landresse,
if solicitous for her daughter's safety, had
been concerned that she should be fear-
less, though not reckless. Of all boatmen
and fishermen on the coast, Jean Touzel
was most to be trusted. No man had
saved so many shipwrecked folk, none
risked his life so often, and he had never
had a serious accident at sea. To go to
sea with Jean Touzel, people said, was
safer than living on land.

M. de Mauprat met the inquiring
glance of Guida and nodded assent, and

182

The Battle of the Strong.

she then said gayly to Ranulph, " I shall
sail her, shall I not ? >f

" Every foot of the way," he answered.

She laughed and clapped her hands.
Suddenly the little chevalier broke in.
" By the head of John the Baptist ! " ex-
claimed he.

So unusual was strong language with
him that Ddtricand put down his knife
and fork in amazement, and Guida al-
most blushed, the words sounded so im-
proper upon the chevalier's lips.

Du Champsavoys held up his eyeglass,
and, turning from one to the other,
looked at each of them imperatively, yet
abstractedly too. Then pursing up his
lower lip, and with an air of growing
amazement which carried him to a dis-
tant height of reckless language, he said
again, " By the head of John the Bap-
tist on a charger ! "

He looked at De*tricand with a fierce-
ness which was merely the tension of
his thought. If he had looked at a wall,
it would have been the same. But De*-
tricand, who had an almost whimsical
sense of humor, — when sober and in
his right mind, — felt his neck in an af-
fected concern as though to be quite sure
of it.

" Chevalier," said he, " you shock us,
— you shock us, Monsieur le Chevalier! "

"The most painful things, and the
most wonderful too," said the chevalier,
tapping the letter with his eyeglass, " the
most terrible and yet the most romantic
things are here. A drop of cider, if you
please, mademoiselle, before I begin to
read it to you, if I may — if I may —
eh?"

They all nodded eagerly. Guida
brought a hanap of cider, and the little
gray thrush of a man sipped it, and in a
voice no bigger than a bird's began : —

From Lucillien du Champsavoys,Comte
de Chanier, by the hand of a most
faithful friend, who goeth hence from
among divers dangers, unto my cou-
sin, the Chevalier du Champsavoys

de Beaumanoir, late Gentleman of
the Bedchamber to the best of mon~
archs, Louis XV., this writing:

MY DEAR AND HONORED COUSIN [the

chevalier paused, frowned a trifle, and
tapped his lips with his finger in a little
lyrical emotion], — My dear and hon-
ored cousin, all is lost. The France we
loved is no more ! The 20th of June
saw the last vestige of Louis' power pass
forever. That day ten thousand of the
sans-culottes forced their way into the
palace to kill him. A faithful few sur-
rounded him. In the mad turmoil, we
were fearful, he was serene. " Feel,"
said Louis, placing his hand on his bosom,
"feel whether this is the beating of a
heart shaken by fear." Ah, my friend,
your heart would have clamped in misery
to hear the Queen cry, " What have I to
fear ? Death ? It is as well to-day as
to-morrow. They can do no more ! "
Their lives were saved, the day passed,
but worse came after.

The 10th of August came. With it,
too, the end — the dark and bloody end
— of the Swiss Guards. The Jacobins
had their way at last. The Swiss Guards
died in the court of the Carrousel as
they marched to the Assembly to save
the King. Thus the last circle of de-
fense round the throne was broken. The
palace was given over to flame and the
sword. Of twenty nobles of the pal-
ace I alone escaped. France became a
slaughter-house. The people cried out
for more liberty, and their liberators
gave them the freedom of death. A
fortnight ago, Danton, the incomparable
fiend, let loose his assassins upon the
priests of God, and Paris is made a the-
atre where the people whom Louis and
his nobles would have died to save have
turned every street into a stable of car-
nage, every prison and hospital into a
vast charnel-house. One last revolting
thing remains to be done, — the murder
of the King ; then this France that we
have loved will have no name and no
place in our generation. She will rise

The Battle of the Strong.

183

again, but we shall not see her, for our
eyes have been blinded with blood, for-
ever darkened by disaster. Like a mis-
tress upon whom we have lavished the
days of our youth and the strength of
our days, she has deceived us ; she has
stricken us while we slept. Behold a
Caliban now for her paramour.

Weep with me, for France has robbed
me and has tricked me. One by one my
friends have fallen beneath the axe. Of
my four sons but one remains. Henri
was stabbed by Danton's ruffians at the
Hotel de Ville ; Gaston fought and died
with the Swiss Guards, whose hacked and
severed limbs were broiled and eaten in
the streets by the monsters who mutilate
the land ; Isidore, the youngest, defied a
hundred of Robespierre's cowards on the
steps of the Assembly, and was torn to
pieces by the mob. Etienne alone is left.
But for him and for the honor of my
house I too would find a place beside
the King and die with him. Etienne is
with de la Rochejaquelein in Brittany.
I am here at Rouen.

Brittany and Normandy still stand
for the King. In these two provinces
begins the regeneration of France: we
call it the war of the Vende'e. On that
Isle of Jersey there you should almost
hear the voice of de la Rochejaquelein
and the marching cries of our loyal le-
gions. If there be justice in God, we
shall conquer. But there will be joy no
more for such as you or me, nor hope,
nor any peace. We live only for those
who come after. Our duty remains ; all
else is dead. You did well to go, and I
do well to stay.

By all these piteous relations you shall
know the importance of the request I
now set forth.

My cousin by marriage of the house of
Vaufontaine has lost all his sons. With
the death of the Prince of Vaufontaine
there is in France no heir to the house,
nor can it by the law revert to my house
or my heirs. Now of late the prince
hath urged me to write to you, — for he

is here in seclusion with me, — and to
unfold to you what has hitherto been se-
cret. Eleven years ago, the only nephew
of the prince, after some compromising
escapades, disappeared from the court
with Rullecour, the adventurer, who in-
vaded the Isle of Jersey. From that
hour he has been lost to France. Some
of his companions in arms returned af-
ter a number of years. All, with one
exception, declared that he was killed in
the battle at St. Helier's. One, how-
ever, strongly maintains that he was still
living and in the prison hospital when
his comrades were released from con-
finement.

It is of him I write to you. His name
— as you will know — is the Comte de
Tournay. He was then not more than
seventeen years of age, slight of build,
with brownish hair, dark gray eyes, and
had over the right shoulder a scar from
a sword-thrust. It seemeth little possi-
ble that, if living, he should still remain
in the Isle of Jersey, but would rather
have returned to obscurity in France, or
have gone to England to be lost to name
and remembrance, — or indeed to Amer-
ica.

That you may perchance give me word
of him is the object of my letter, written
in no more hope than I live, and you can
guess well how faint that is. One young
nobleman preserved to France may be
the great unit that will save her.

Greet my poor countrymen yonder in
the name of one who still waits at a de-
secrated altar ; and for myself, you must
take me as I am, with the remembrance
of what I was, even

Your faithful friend and loving kins-
man, DK CHANIER.

All this, though in the chances of war
you read it not till wintertide come, was
told you at Rouen this first day of Sep-
tember, 1792.

During the reading of this letter, which
was broken by many feeling and reflec-
tive pauses on the chevalier's part, the

184

The Battle of the Strong.

listeners showed emotion after the na-
ture of each. The Sieur de Mauprat's
fingers clasped and unclasped on the top
of his cane, little explosions of breath
came from his compressed lips, his eye-
brows beetled over till the eyes them-
selves seemed like two small glints of
flame. Delagarde dropped a fist hea-
vily upon the table, and held it there
clinched, while his heel beat a tattoo
of excitement upon the floor. Guida's
breath came quick and fast ; as Ranulph
said afterward, she was " blanc comme
un linge." She shuddered painfully when
she heard of the slaughter and burning
of the Swiss Guards. Her brain was
so confused with the horrors of anarchy
that the latter part of the letter, dealing
with the vanished Comte de Tournay,
was almost unheeded.

But this matter interested Delagarde
and de Mauprat greatly. They both
leaned forward eagerly, seizing every
word, and both instinctively turned to-
ward De'tricand when the description of
the Comte de Tournay was read.

As for De'tricand himself, he listened
to the first part of the letter like a man
suddenly roused out of a dream. For
the first time since the Revolution had be-
gun, the horror of it and the meaning of
it were brought home to him. He had
been so long expatriated and so busy in
dalliance and dissipation, had loitered so
long in the primrose path of daily sleep
and nightly revel, had fallen so far, that
he had not realized how the fiery wheels
of Death were spinning in France, and
how black was the smoke of the torment
of the people. His face turned scarlet
as the thing came home to him. Once
during the reading his features seemed to
knot with a spasm of pain. Conscience,
ghostlike, rising from the ghastly pictures
drawn by the aged fugitive at Rouen,
struck him in the face, and he winced
from the blow. He dropped his head in
his hand as if to listen more attentively,
but it was, in truth, to hide his emotion.
When the names of the Prince of Vau-

fontaine and of the Comte de Tournay
were mentioned, he gave a little start,
then suddenly ruled himself to a strange
stillness and listened with intentness.
His face seemed all at once to clear ; he
even smiled a little. But at last, con-
scious that de Mauprat and Delagarde
were watching him, he appeared to listen
with an inquisitive but impersonal inter-
est, not without its effect upon his scru-
tinizers. He nodded his head as though
he understood the situation. He acted
very well ; he bewildered the onlookers.
They might think he tallied with the
description of the Comte de Tournay, yet
he gave the impression that the matter
was not vital to himself. But when the
little chevalier stopped and turned his
eyeglass upon him with a sudden star-
tled inquiry, he found it harder to pre-
serve his composure.

" Singular ! singular ! " said the old
man, and returned to the reading of the
letter.

When it was finished there was ab-
solute silence for a moment. Then the
chevalier lifted his eyeglass again and
looked at De'tricand intently.

" Pardon me, monsieur," he said, " but
you were with Rullecour — as I was
saying."

De'tricand nodded with a droll sort of
helplessness, and answered, "In Jersey
I never have chance to forget it, Mon-
sieur le Chevalier."

Du Champsavoys, with a naive and
obvious attempt at playing counsel, fixed
him again with the glass, pursed his
lips, and, with the importance of the
greffier at the ancient Cour d'He*ritage,
came one step nearer to his goal.

" Have you knowledge of the Comte
de Tournay, Monsieur De'tricand ? "

" I knew him — as you were saying,
chevalier," answered De'tricand lightly.

Then the chevalier struck home. He
dropped his fingers upon the table, stood
up, and, looking straight into De*tricand's
eyes, exclaimed, " Monsieur, you are the
Comte de Tournay ! "

The Battle of the Strong.

185

The chevalier involuntarily held the
situation for an instant. Nobody stirred.
De Mauprat dropped his chin upon his
hands, and his eyebrows contracted in
excitement. Guida gave a little cry of
astonishment. But Di'tricand answered
the chevalier with a look of blank sur-
prise and a shrug of the shoulders, which
had the effect desired.

" Thank you, chevalier," said he, with
a quizzical humor. " Now I know who
I am, and if it is n't too soon to presume
upon the relationship, I shall dine with
you to-day, chevalier. I spent my last
sou yesterday. One can't throw one's self
upon charity ; but since we are distant
cousins I may claim grist at the family
mill, eh ? "

The chevalier dropped into his chair
again. " Then you are not the Comte
de Tournay, monsieur ! " he said hope-
lessly.

" Then I shall not dine with you to-
day," said De'tricand gayly.

" You answer the description," re-
marked de Mauprat dubiously.

" Let me see," rejoined De'tricand.
" I 've been a donkey - farmer, a ship-
master's assistant, a tobacco-peddler, a
quarryman, a miner, a wood-merchant,
an interpreter, a fisherman : that 's very
like the Comte de Tournay ! On Mon-
day night I supped with a smuggler ;
on Tuesday I breakfasted on soupe a la
graisse and limpets with Manon Moi-
gnard, the witch ; on • Wednesday I dined
with Dormy Jamais and an avocat dis-
barred for writing lewd songs for a
chocolate-house ; on Thursday I went
oyster-fishing with a native who has
three wives, and a butcher who has been
banished four times for not keeping holy
the Sabbath Day ; and I , drank from
eleven o'clock till sunrise this morning
with three Scotch sergeants of the line :
which is very like the Comte de Tour-
nay — as you were saying, chevalier ! I
am five feet eleven, and the Comte de
Tournay was five feet ten — which is no
lie," he said under his breath. " I have

a scar, but it 's over my left shoulder,
and not over my right — which is also
no lie," he said under his breath. " De
Tournay's hair was brown, and mine,
you see, is almost a dead black — fever
did that," he said under his breath. " De
Tournay escaped the day after the bat-
tle of Jersey from the prison hospital ;
I was left, and here I 've been ever since,

— Yves Savary dit Detricand, at your
service, Monsieur le Chevalier ! "

A pained expression crossed the che-
valier's face. " I am most sorry, — I am
most sorry," he said hesitatingly. " I
had no wish to wound your feelings."

" Ah, it is the Comte de Tournay to
whom you must apologize," returned D£-
tricand, with a droll look.

" It is a pity," continued the cheva-
lier, " for somehow all at once I recalled
a resemblance. I saw de Tournay
when he was fourteen, — yes, I think it
was fourteen, — and when I looked at
you, monsieur, his face came back to
me. It would have made my cousin so
happy if you had been the Comte de
Tournay, and I had found you here."
The old man's voice trembled a little.
" We are growing fewer every day, we
Frenchmen of the noble families. And
it would have made my cousin so happy

— as I was saying, monsieur."
De'tricand's manner changed ; he be-
came serious. The devil-may-care, ir-
responsible shamelessness of his face
dropped away like a mask. Something
had touched him. His voice changed,
too.

" De Tournay was a much better fel-
low than I am, chevalier — and that 's
no lie," he said under his breath. " De
Tournay was a brave, fiery, ambitious
youngster, with bad companions. De
Tournay told me that he repented of
coming with Rullecour, and he felt he
had spoilt his life, — that he could never
return to France again and to his peo-
ple."

The old chevalier shook his head sad-
ly. " Is he dead ? " he asked.

186 In Dove Cottage Garden.

There was a slight pause, and then De Mauprat tremblingly asked the

De'tricand answered, " No, he is living." question • which he knew the chevalier

" Where is lie ? " dreaded to ask : " Do you think that Mon-

" I promised de Tournay that I would sieur le Comte will return to France ? "

never reveal that." " I think he will," answered De'tricand

" Might I not write to him ? " slowly.

" Assuredly, Monsieur le Chevalier." "It will make my cousin so happy,

" Could you — will you — deliver a so happy ! " sighed the little chevalier,

letter to him from me, monsieur ? " and his voice quavered. " Will you take

" Upon my honor, yes ! " snuff with me, monsieur ? " He took

" I thank you, I thank you, monsieur ; out his silver snuff - box and offered it

I will write it to-day." to his vagrant countryman. This was a

" As you will, chevalier. I will ask mark of favor which the chevalier had

you for it to-night," rejoined De'tricand. seldom shown to any one save M. de

" It may take some time to reach the Mauprat since he came to Jersey.

Comte de Tournay ; but he shall receive De'tricand bowed, accepted, and took

it into his own hands." .a pinch. " I must be going," he said.

Gilbert Parker.
(To be continued.)

IN DOVE COTTAGE GARDEN.

ON the terrace lies the sunlight,

Fretted by the shade
Of the wilding apple-orchard

Wordsworth made.

Sunlight falls upon the aspen,

And the cedar glows
Like the laurel or the climbing

Christmas rose.

Downward through green-golden windows

Let your glances fall;
You'd not guess there was a cottage

There at all.

Bines of bryony and bramble

Overhang the green
Of the crowding scarlet-runner,

And the bean.

But I mark one quiet casement,

Ivy-covered still.
There he sat, I think, and loved this

Little hill;

In Dove Cottage Garden. 187

Loved the rocky stair that led him

Upward to the seat
Coleridge fashioned ; loved the fragrant,

High retreat

In the wood above the garden.

There he walked, and there
In his heart the beauty gathered

To a prayer.

Looking down into the garden,

I can seem to see,
In among her Christmas roses,

Dorothy.

Deeper joy and truer service,

Fuller draught of life,
Came, I doubt not, to the sister

And the wife.

Laurel, it may be, too early

On his brow he set;
And the thorn of life too lightly

Could forget.

Dorothy, wild heart and woman,

Chose the better way,
Met the world with love and service

Every day.

Life for love, and love for living;

And the poet's part
Is to give what cometh after

To his art.

But the shadow from the fellside

Falls, and all the scene
Melts to indistinguishable

Golden-green.

Showers of golden light on Grasmere

Tremble into shade ; <«

While the garden grasses gather

Blade with blade ;

And one patient robin-redbreast,

Waiting, waiting long,
Seals the twilight in the garden

With a song.

P. H. Savage.

188

On the Outskirts of Public Life.

ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF PUBLIC LIFE.

LIVING in a university city, I am oc-
casionally asked by students how they
can best train themselves for public
speaking ; and I always begin with one
bit of counsel, based on half a century's
experience : " Enlist in a reform." En-
gage in something which you feel for the
moment so unspeakably more important
than yourself as wholly to dwarf you,
and the rest will come. No matter
what it is, — tariff or free trade, gold
standard or silver, even communism or
imperialism, — the result is the same as
to oratory, if you are only sincere. Even
the actor on the dramatic stage must fill
himself with his part, or he is nothing,
and the public speaker on the platform
must be more than a dramatic actor to
produce the highest effects. When the
leading debater in an intercollegiate
competition told me, the other day, that
he did not believe in the cause which
he was assigned to advocate, my heart
sank for him, and I dimly foresaw the
defeat which came. There is an essen-
tial thing wanting to the eloquence of the
men who act a part ; but given a pro-
found sincerity, and there is something
wonderful in the way it overcomes the
obstacles of a hoarse voice, a stammer-
ing tongue, or a feeble presence.

On the anti-slavery platform, where
I was reared, I cannot remember a
really poor speaker ; as Emerson said,
" eloquence was dog-cheap " there. The
cause was too real, too vital, too imme-
diately pressing upon heart and con-
science, for the speaking to be otherwise
than alive. It carried men away as with
a flood. Fame is never wide or reten-
tive enough to preserve the names of
more than two or three leaders : Bright
and Cobden in the anti-corn-law move-
ment ; Clarkson and Wilberforce in the
West India Emancipation ; Garrison,
Phillips, and John Brown in the great

American agitation. But there were
constantly to be heard in anti-slavery
meetings such minor speakers as Par-
ker, Douglass, William Henry Channing,
Burleigh, Foster, May, Remond, Pills-
bury, Lucretia Mott, Abby Kelley, —
each one holding the audience, each one
making converts. How could eloquence
not be present there, when we had no
time to think of eloquence ? — as Clark-
son under similar circumstances said that
he had not time to think of the welfare
of his soul. I know that my own teach-
ers were the slave women who came shyly
before the audience, women perhaps as
white as my own sisters, — Ellen Craft
was quite as white, — women who had
been stripped and whipped and handled
with insolent hands and sold to the high-
est bidder as unhesitatingly as the little
girl whom I had seen in the St. Louis
slave-market ; or women who, having
once escaped, had, like Harriet Tubman,
gone back again and again into the land
of bondage to bring away their kindred
and friends. My teachers were men
whom I saw first walking clumsily across
the platform, just arrived from the South,
as if they still bore a hundred pounds
weight of plantation soil on each ankle,
and whom I saw develop in the course of
years into the dignity of freedom. What
were the tricks of oratory in the face of
men and women like these ? We learned
to speak because their presence made si-
lence impossible.

All this, however, I did not recognize
at the time so clearly as I do now ; nor
was I sure that I, at least, was accomplish-
ing much for the cause I loved. In one
respect the influence of Wendell Phillips
did me harm for a time, as to speaking
in public, because it was his firm belief
that the two departments of literature
and oratory were essentially distinct, and
could not well be combined in the same

On the Outskirts of Public Life.

189

person. He had made his choice, he said,
and had abandoned literature. It was
hard to persuade him to write even a
pamphlet or a circular, although when he
did it was done with such terseness and
vigor as to refute his theory. Of this I
was gradually convinced, but there was
a long period during which I accepted
the alternative offered by him, and there-
fore reasoned that because literature was
my apparent vocation, oratory was not.
Of course it was often necessary for me
to appear on the platform, but I did it
at first only as a duty, and did not feel
sure of myself in that sphere. Little
by little the impression passed away, and
I rejected Phillips's doctrine. Since the
civil war, especially, I have felt much
more self-confidence in public speaking ;
and it is one sign of this that I have
scarcely ever used notes before an au-
dience, and have long since reached the
point where they would be a hindrance,
not a help. Indeed, I believe that most
young speakers can reach this point much
earlier than they suppose ; and in my lit-
tle book, Hints on Writing and Speech-
making, I have indicated how this can be
done. A speaker's magnetic hold upon
his audience is unquestionably impaired
by the sight of the smallest bit of paper
in his hand.

During a long intervening period,
however, I lectured a great deal in what
were then called " lyceum " courses,
which. stretched over the northern half
of the United States, forty years ago,
to an extent now hardly conceivable.
There were two or three large organiza-
tions, or bureaus, which undertook sys-
tematically the task of bringing speaker
and audience together, with the least
possible inconvenience to both. One of
these, whose centre was Dubuque, Iowa,
negotiated in 1867 for thirty-five lec-
turers and one hundred and ten lecture
courses ; undertaking to distribute the
one with perfect precision, and to supply
the other. As a result, the lecturer left
home with a printed circular in his

pocket assigning his dozen or his hun-
dred engagements, as the case might be.
Many of these might be in towns of
which he had never heard the names.
No matter ; he was sure that they would
be there, posted a day's journey apart,
and all ready to receive him. As a rule,
he would meet in each new place what
looked like the same audience, would
make the same points in his lecture as
before, would sleep at what seemed the
same hotel, and breakfast on the same
tough beefsteak. He would receive the
usual compliments, if any, and make the
same courteous reply to the accustomed
questions as to the acoustics of the hall
and the intelligence of the audience. In
the far West he would perhaps reach vil-
lages where, as the people came twenty
miles for their entertainments, a dance
might be combined with the lecture, —
" tickets to Emerson and ball, one dol-
lar." I have still a handbill, printed
in some village in Indiana in 1867,
wherein Mr. J. Jackson offers to read
Hamlet for twenty-five cents admission,
ladies free. He adds that after the read-
ing he will himself plan for the forma-
tior. of a company, with a small capital,
for the manufacture of silk handker-
chiefs of a quality superior to anything
in the market, and will relate some inci-
dents of his early life in connection with
this particular article. Thus having ad-
ministered Hamlet once, he would pre-
pare his audience to shed the necessary
tears on a second hearing.

To the literary man, ordinarily kept
at home by task work or by domestic
cares, — and both of these existed in my
own case, — there was a refreshing va-
riety in a week or two, possibly a month
or more, of these lecturing experiences.
Considered as a regular vocation, such
lecturing was benumbing to the mind as
well as exhausting to the body, but it
was at any rate an antidote for provin-
cialism. It was a good thing to be en-
tertained, beyond the Mississippi, at a
house which was little more than a log

190

On the Outskirts of Public Life.

cabin, and to find, as I have found,
Longfellow's Dante on the table and
Millais' Huguenot Lovers on the wall ;
or to visit, as I once visited, a village of
forty houses, in the same region, in nine-
teen of which The Atlantic Monthly was
regularly taken. After such experiences
a man could go back to his writing or
his editing with enlarged faith. He would
get new impressions, too, of the dignity
and value of the lecture system itself.
In one of my trips, while on a small
branch railway in New England, I found
everybody talking about the prospective
entertainment of that evening, — conduc-
tor, brakemen, and passengers all kept
recurring to the subject ; everybody was
going. As we drew near the end, the
conductor singled me out as the only
stranger and the probable lecturer, and
burst into eager explanation. " The
pi'esident of the lyceum," he said, " is
absent from the village, and the vice-
president, who will present you to the
audience, is the engineer of this very
train." So it turned out : the engineer
introduced me with dignity and proprie-
ty. He proved to be a reader of Emer-
son and Carlyle, and he gave me a ride
on his locomotive the next morning.

There was something pleasant, also, in
the knowledge that the lecturer himself
met the people as man to man ; that he
stood upon the platform to be judged
and weighed. From the talk of his fel-
low travelers in the train, beforehand,
he could know what they expected of
him ; and from the talk next morning,
how he had stood the test. Wendell
Phillips especially dreaded this ordeal,
and always went home after lecturing,
if his home could by any possibility be
reached, in order to avoid it. The lec-
turer, often unrecognized in his travel-
ing garb, might look through the eyes of
others on his own face and figure ; might
hear his attitudes discussed, or his voice,
or his opinions. Once, after giving a
lecture on physical education, I heard it
talked over between two respectable la-

dies, with especial reference to some dis-
respectful remarks of mine on the Ameri-
can pie. I had said, in a sentence which,
though I had not really reduced it to
writing, yet secured a greater circulation
through the newspapers than any other
sentence I shall ever write, that the
average pie of the American railway sta-
tion was " something very white and in-
digestible at the top, very moist and in-
digestible at the bottom, and with untold
horrors in the middle." I had given this
lecture at Fall River, and was returning
by way of the steamboat to Providence,
when I heard one of my neighbors ask
the other if she heard the lecture.

" No," she answered, " I did n't. But
Mis' Jones, she come home that night,
and she flung her hood right down on
the table, and says she, 'There,' says
she, 'Mr. Jones, I 'm never goin' to
have another o' them mince pies in the
house just as long as I live,' says she.
' There was Sammy,' says she, ' he was
sick all last night, and I do believe it
was nothin' in all the world but just them
mince pies,' says she."

" Well," said the other lady, a slow,
deliberate personage, " I do suppose that
them kind of concomitants ain't good
things."

Here the conversation closed, but Mr.
Weller did not feel more gratified when
he heard the Bath footmen call a boiled
leg of mutton a " swarry," and wondered
what they would call a roast one,. than I
when my poor stock of phrases was re-
inforced by this unexpected polysyllable.
Instead of wasting so many words to
describe an American railway pie, I
.should have described it, more tersely,
as a " concomitant."

The lecture system was long since
shaken to pieces in America by the mul-
tiplying of newspapers and the growth
of musical and dramatic opportunities.
The " bureaus " now exist mainly for
the ^benefit of foreign celebrities ; and
the American lecturer has come to con-
cern himself more and more with ques-

On the Outskirts of Public Life.

191

tions of public policy and morals, while
literature and science have receded more
into the background. The transition
was easy from the lyceum course to the
political platform, and this, at least, has
held its own. No delusion is harder to
drive out of the public mind than the
impression that college-bred American
men habitually avoid public duties. It
may hold in a few large cities, but is
rarely the case in country towns, and in
New England generally is quite untrue.
In looking back fifty years, I cannot put
my linger on five years when I myself
was not performing some official service
for the city or state, or both simultane-
ously. In each of the four places where
I have resided I have been a member
of some public school committee ; and in
three of these places a trustee of the
public library, there being then no such
institution in the fourth town, although
I was on a committee to prepare for one.
As to service to the commonwealth,
since my return to my native state —
twenty years ago — I have spent thirteen
years in some public function, one year
as chief of the governor's personal staff,
two years as member of the state House
of Representatives, three years on the
State Board of Education, and seven
years as state military and naval his-
torian. How well I did my duty is not
the question ; we are dealing with quan-
tity of service, not quality. Besides all
this, I have almost invariably voted when
there was any voting to be done, have
repeatedly been a delegate to political
conventions, and have commonly attend-
ed what are called primary meetings,
often presiding at them. There is no-
thing exceptional in all this ; it is a com-
mon thing for American citizens to have
rendered as much service as is here
stated, and in the university city where
I dwell it is the rule, and not the excep-
tion, for professors and instructors to
take their share in public duties. Some
of those most faithful in this respect
have been among the most typical and

fastidious scholars, such as Professor
Charles Eliot Norton and the late Pro-
fessor Francis James Child. I confess
that it makes me somewhat indignant
to hear such men stigmatized as mere
idealists and dilettantes by politicians
who have never in all their lives done
so much to purify and elevate politics
as these men have been doing daily for
many years.

Side by side with this delusion there
is an impression, equally mistaken, that
college- bred men are disliked in politics,
and have to encounter prejudice and dis-
trust, simply by reason of education.
They do indeed encounter this prejudice,
but it comes almost wholly from other
educated men who think that they can
make a point against rivals by appeal-
ing to some such feeling. Nobody used
this weapon more freely, for instance,
than the late Benjamin F. Butler, who
was himself a college graduate. He was
always ready to deride Governor John
D. Long for having translated Virgil ;
while his audiences, if let alone, would
have thought it a creditable performance.
As a rule, it may be assumed that any jeer
at a " scholar in politics " proceeds from
some other scholar in politics. It was
almost pathetic to me to see, while in
the Massachusetts legislature, the undue
respect and expectation with which the
more studious men in that body were
habitually treated by other members,
who perhaps knew far more than they
about the matters of practical business
with which legislatures are mainly occu-
pied. It was, if analyzed, a tribute to
a supposed breadth of mind which did
not always exist, or to a command of
language which proved quite inadequate.
Many a college graduate stammers and
repeats himself, while a man from the
anvil or the country store says what he
has to say and sits down. Again and
again, during my service in the legis-
lature, when some man had been sent
there by his town, mainly to get one thing
done, — a boundary changed or a local

192

On the Outskirts of Public Life.

railway chartered, — he has come to
me with an urgent request to make his
speech for him ; and I have tried to con-
vince him of the universal truth that a
single-speech man who has never before
opened his lips, but who understands his
question through and through, will be to
other members a welcome relief from a
voice they hear too often. Wordsworth
says : —

" I 've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds
With coldness still returning ;
Alas ! the gratitude of men
Hath oftener left me mourning."

I have much oftener been saddened by
the too great deference of men who were
my superiors in everything but a diploma
than I have been amazed by their jeal-
ousy or distrust.

It is my firm conviction that there
never was an honester body of men, on
the whole, than the two Massachusetts
legislatures with which I served in 1880
and 1881. If there has been a serious
change since, which I do not believe,
it has been a very rapid decline. Doubt-
less the legislature was extremely liable
to prejudice and impatience ; it required
tact to take it at the right moment, and
also not to bore it. I had next me,
for a whole winter, a politician of foreign
birth, so restless that he never could re-
main half an hour in his seat, and who
took such an aversion to one of the ablest
lawyers in the house, because of his long
and frequent speeches, that he made it a
rule to go out whenever this orator be-
gan, and to vote against every motion he
made. This was an individual case ; yet
personal popularity certainly counted for
a great deal, up to the moment when
any man trespassed upon it and showed
that his head was beginning to be turned ;
from that moment his advantage was
gone. Men attempting to bully the
House usually failed ; so did those who
were too visibly wheedling and coaxing,
or who struck an unfair blow at an op-
ponent, or who aspersed the general in-
tegrity of the body they addressed, or

who even talked down to it too much.
On the other hand, there existed among
the members certain vast and inscrutable
undercurrents of prejudice ; as, for in-
stance, those relating to the rights of
towns, or the public school system, or
the law of settlement, or perhaps only
questions of roads and navigable streams,
or of the breadth of wheels or the close
time of fishing, — points which could
never be comprehended by academic
minds or even city-bred minds, and which
yet might at any moment create a cur-
rent formidable to encounter, and usually
impossible to resist. Every good debater
in the House and every one of its recog-
nized legal authorities might be on one
side, and yet the smallest contest with
one of these latent prejudices would land
them in a minority.

There were men in the House who
scarcely ever spoke, but who compre-
hended these prejudices through and
through ; and when I had a pet measure
to support, I felt more alarmed at seeing
one of these men passing quietly about
among the seats, or even conversing with
a group in the cloak-room, than if I had
found all the leaders in the legislature
opposed to me. Votes were often car-
ried against the leaders, but almost never
against this deadly undertow of awak-
ened prejudice. No money could pos-
sibly have affected it ; and indeed the
attempt to use money to control the
legislature must then have been a very
rare thing. There was not then, and
perhaps is not to this day, any organized
corporation which had such a controlling
influence in Massachusetts as have cer-
tain railways, according to rumor, in
Connecticut and Pennsylvania. Some-
thing of this power has been attributed,
since my time, perhaps without reason,
to the great West End Railway ; but
there was certainly only one man in the
legislature, at the time I describe, who
was generally believed to be the agent
of a powerful corporation ; and although
he was one of the most formidable de-

On the Outskirts of Public Life.

193

haters in the house, by reason of wit
and brilliancy, he yet failed to carry
votes through this general distrust. Men
in such bodies often listen eagerly, for
entertainment, to an orator who com-
mands after all but few votes, while they
are perhaps finally convinced, neverthe-
less, by some dull or stammering speaker
who thoroughly comprehends what he is
discussing and whose sincerity is recog-
nized by all.

Perhaps the most tedious but often
the most amusing part of legislative life
consists in the hearings before commit-
tees. I was at different times House
chairman of committees on constitution-
al amendments, on education, on woman
suffrage, and on " expediting the business
of the House." All these were liable to
be the prey of what are called cranks,
but especially the first of these, which
gathered what Emerson once called " the
soul of the soldiery of dissent." There
were men and women who haunted the
State House simply to address the ses-
sions of the Committee on Constitutional
Amendments, and who would have been
perfectly ready to take all that part of
the business off our hands. I find in
my notebook that one of these, an Irish-
man, once said to us, with the headlong
enthusiasm of his race, " Before I say
anything on this subject, let me say a
word or two ! In a question of integral
calculus, you must depend on some one
who can solve it. Now I have solved
this question of Biennial Sessions," —
this being the subject under considera-
tion, — " and you must depend on me.
Working men, as a rule, have what may
be called a moral sense. Moral sense
is that which enables us to tell heat from
cold, to tell white from yellow : that is
moral sense. Moral sense tells us right
from wrong." Then followed an ad-
dress with more of fact and reasoning
than one could possibly associate with
such an introduction, but ending with
the general conclusion, " It [the biennial
method] would give more power to the

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 484. 13

legislature, for they would centralize
more money into their pockets. I hope
every member of the legislature, when
this matter comes up, will be voted
down." All these flowers of speech are
taken from my own notebook as kept
in the committee.

I always rather enjoyed being contra-
dicted in the legislature or being cross-
examined on the witness-stand : first, be-
cause the position gives one opportunity
to bring in, by way of rejoinder, points
which would not have fitted legitimately
into one's main statement, thus approach-
ing the matter by a flank movement, as
it were ; and again because the sympathy
of the audience is always with the party
attacked, and nothing pleases the specta-
tors better, especially in the court-room,
than to have a witness turn the tables
on the lawyer. It is much the same in
legislative bodies, and nothing aided the
late General Butler more than the ready
wit with which he would baffle the whole
weight of argument by a retort. The
same quality belonged to the best rough-
and-ready fighter in the Massachusetts
legislature of 1.881, — a man to whom I
have already referred as lacking the con-
fidence of the House. He was a man
who often hurt the cause he advocated
by the brutality of his own argument,
and was never so formidable as when he
was driven into a corner, and suddenly,
so to speak, threw a somerset over his as-
sailant's head and came up smiling. I
remember to have been once the victim
of this method when I felt safest. I was
arguing against one of those bills which
were constantly reappearing for the pro-
hibition of oleomargarine, and which
usually passed in the end, from a sheer
desire to content the farmers. I was
arguing — what I have always thought
to this day — that good oleomargarine
was far better than bad butter, and
should not bs prohibited; and I forti-
fied this by a story I had just heard of
a gentleman in New York city, who
had introduced the substitute without

194

On the Outskirts of Public Life.

explanation at a lunch he had lately
given, and who, on asking his guests to
compare it with the best butter, also on
the table, found them all selecting the
oleomargarine. The House had seemed
about equally divided, and I thought my
little anecdote had carried the day, when

Mr. arose and with the prof oundest

seriousness asked, " Will the gentleman
kindly inform us at what precise stage
of the lunch party this test was ap-
plied ? " The retort brought down the
house instantly, and the rout which fol-
lowed was overwhelming. It readily
occurred to the experienced, or even to
the inexperienced, that at a convivial
party in New York there might arrive
a period when the judgment of the guests
would lose some of its value.

I had, in the legislature, my fair share
of successes and failures, having the
pleasure, for instance, of reporting and
carrying through the present law which
guarantees children in public schools from
being compelled to read from the Bible
against the wish of their parents, and
also the bill giving to the Normal Art
School a dwelling-place of its own. I
contributed largely, the reporters thought,
to the defeat of a measure which my
constituents generally approved, the sub-
stitution of biennial sessions for annual ;
and have lived to see it finally carried
through the legislature, and overwhelm-
ingly defeated by the popular vote. I
supported many propositions which re-
quired time to mature them and have
since become laws ; as the abolition of
the poll tax qualification for voting, and
the final abolition of the school district
system. Other such measures which I
supported still require farther time for
agitation, as woman suffrage and the
removal of the stigma on atheist wit-
nesses. The latter, as well as the for-
mer, was very near my heart, since I
think it an outrage first to admit the
evidence of atheists, and then admit evi-
dence to show that they are such, — a
contradiction which Professor Longfel-

low described as " allowing men to testi-
fy, and then telling the jury that their
testimony was not worth having." This
measure was defeated, not by the Ro-
man Catholics in the House, but by the
Protestants, the representatives of the
former being equally divided ; a result
attributed mainly to my having a certain
personal popularity among that class.
A more curious result of the same thing
was when the woman suffrage bill was
defeated, and when four Irish-American
members went out and sat in the lobby,
— beside Mr. Plunkett, the armless ser-
geant-at-arms, who told me the fact after-
wards, — not wishing either to vote for
the bill or to vote against what I desired.
I rejoice to say that I had the same ex-
perience described by Theodore Roose-
velt, in finding my general liking for the
Irish temperament confirmed by seeing
men of that race in public bodies. Often
unreasonable, impetuous, one-sided, or
scheming, they produce certainly some
men of a high type of character. There
was no one in the legislature for whose
motives and habits of mind I had more
entire respect than for those of a young
Irish- American lawyer, since dead, who
sat in the next seat to mine during a
whole session. I believe that the in-
stinct of this whole class for politics is
on the whole a sign of promise, although
producing some temporary evils ; and
that it is much more hopeful, for in-
stance, than the comparative indifference
to public affairs among our large French-
Canadian population.

The desire for office, once partially
gratified, soon becomes very strong, and
the pride of being known as a " vote-get-
ter " is a very potent stimulus to Amer-
icans, and is very demoralizing. Few
men are willing to let the offices come
to them, and although they respect this
quality of abstinence in another, if com-
bined with success, they do not have the
same feeling for it per se. They early
glide into the habit of regarding office
as a perquisite, and as something to be

On the Outskirts of Public Life.

195

given to the man who works hardest for
it, not to the man who is fitted for it.
Money too necessarily enters into the ac-
count, as is shown by the habit of assess-
ing candidates in proportion to their sala-
ries, a thing to which I have always
refused to submit. Again, I am sorry
to say, there is a certain amount of
hypocrisy on the subject, and men of-
ten carry on a still hunt, as it is tech-
nically called, and do not frankly own
their methods. I remember when, some
thirty years ago, a man eminent in our
public life was boasting to me of the
nomination of his younger brother for
Congress, and this especially on the
ground that whereas his competitor for
the nomination had gone about promis-
ing offices and other rewards to his
henchmen, the successful candidate had
entirely refused to do anything of the
kind, and had won on his merits alone.
Afterward, on my asking the manager of
the latter' s campaign whether there was
really so much difference in the methods
of the two, he said with a chuckle,
" Well, I guess there was n't much left
undone on either side." The whole
tendency of public life is undoubtedly
to make a man an incipient boss, and to
tempt him to scheme and bargain ; and it
is only the most favorable circumstances
which can enable a man to succeed with-
out this ; it is mainly a question whether
he shall do it in person or through an
agent or " wicked partner." The know-
ledge of this drives from public life
some men well fitted to adorn it, and
brings in many who are unfit. The
only question is whether there is much
variation in this respect between different
countries, and whether the process by
which a man takes a step of rank in
England, for instance, differs always
essentially from the method by which
position is gained in American public
life. It is my own impression that this
is also a case where there is not much
left undone on either side.

Here is one plain advantage in the

hands of the literary man : that he is in
a world where these various devices are
far less needful. The artist, said Goethe,
is the only man who lives with uncon-
cealed aims. Successes are often won
by inferior productions, no doubt, but it
is because these are in some way better
fitted to the current taste, and it is very
rarely intrigue or pushing which secures
fame. It is rare to see a book which has
a merely business success ; and if such
a case occurs, it is very apt to be only a
temporary affair, followed by reaction.
This, therefore, is an advantage on the
side of literature ; but, on the other hand,
the direct contact with men and the
sense of being uncloistered is always a
source of enjoyment in public life, and I
should be sorry to go altogether without
it. Presiding at public meetings, for in-
stance, is a position which affords posi-
tive enjoyment to any one to whom it
comes easily ; it demands chiefly a clear
head, prompt decision, absolute impar-
tiality, and tolerable tact. An audience
which recognizes these qualities will al-
most invariably sustain the chairman ;
those present have come there for a cer-
tain purpose, to carry the meeting fairly
through, and they will stand by a man
who helps to this, though if he is tricky
they will rebel, and if he is irresolute they
will ride over him. The rules of order
are really very simple, and are almost
always based on good common sense;
and there is the same sort of pleasure
in managing a somewhat turbulent meet-
ing that is found in driving a four-in-
hand. At smaller meetings of commit-
tees and the like, an enormous amount
can be done by conciliation ; nine times
out of ten the differences are essentially
verbal, and the suggestion of a word, the
substitution of a syllable, will perhaps
quell the rising storm. People are some-
times much less divided in purpose than
they suppose themselves to be, and an
extremely small concession will furnish
a sufficient relief for pride. There is
much, also, in watching the temper of

196

On the Outskirts of Public Life.

those with whom you deal, and in choosing
the fortunate moment, — a thing which
the late President Gavfield, while lead-
er of the House of Representatives at
Washington, pointed out to me as the
first essential of success. There were
days, he said, when one could carry
through almost without opposition mea-
sures that at other times would have to
be fought inch by inch ; and I afterward
noticed the same thing in the Massachu-
setts legislature. It is so, also, I have
heard the attendants say, even with the
wild beasts in a menagerie : there are oc-
casions when the storm signals are raised,
and no risks must be taken, even with
the tamest.

Probably no other presidential elec-
tion which ever took place in this country
showed so small a share of what is base
or selfish in politics as the first election
of President Cleveland ; and in this I
happened to take a pretty active part.
I spoke in his behalf in five different
states, Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
Vermont, New York, and New Jersey,
and was brought closely in contact with
the current of popular feeling, which I
found a sound and wholesome one. The
fact that he was a new man kept him
singularly free from personal entangle-
ments until actually in office ; and his
rather deliberate and stubborn tempera-
ment, with the tone of his leading sup-
porters, gave an added safeguard. On
the other hand, the same slowness of
temperament made it impossible for him
to supervise all departments at once, and
he had to leave some of them in the
hands of old-fashioned spoilsmen. There
was among those who originally brought
him forward — the so-called Mugwumps
— an almost exaggerated unselfishness,
at least for a time ; in Massachusetts,
especially, it was practically understood
among them that they were to ask for no-
thing personally ; and they generally got
what they asked for. Mr. Cleveland's
administration, with all its strength and
weakness, has gone into history ; he had,

if ever a man had, les dSfauts de ses
qualites, but I cannot remember any
President whose support implied so lit-
tle that was personally unsatisfactory.
This I say although I was led by my in-
terest in him to accept, rather against my
will, a nomination for Congress on the
Democratic ticket at the time when Mr.
Cleveland failed of reelection (1888).
I made many speeches in my own dis-
trict, mainly in his behalf ; and although
I was defeated, I had what is regarded
in politics as the creditable outcome of
having more votes in the district than the
head of the ticket.

There are always many curious expe-
riences in campaign-speaking. It will
sometimes happen that the orators who
are to meet on the platform have ap-
proached the matter from wholly differ-
ent points of view, so that each makes
concessions which logically destroy the
other's arguments, were the audience
only quick enough to find it out ; or it
may happen — which is worse — that the
first speaker anticipates the second so
completely as to leave him little to say.
It is universally the case, I believe, that
toward the end of the campaign every
good point made by any speaker, every
telling anecdote, every neat repartee, is
so quoted from one to another that the
speeches grow more and more identical.
One gets acquainted, too, with a variety
of prejudices, and gets insight into many
local peculiarities and even accents. I
remember that once, when I was speak-
ing on the same platform with an able
young Irish lawyer, he was making an
attack on the present Senator Lodge, and
said contemptuously, " Mr. Henry Cabot
Lodge of Nahant " — and he paused for
a response which did not adequately fol-
low. Then he repeated more emphati-
cally, " Of Nahant ! He calls it in that
way, but common people say NShSnt ! "
Then the audience took the point, and,
being largely Irish, responded enthusi-
astically. Now, Mr. Lodge had only
pronounced the name of his place of re-

On the Outskirts of Public Life.

197

sidence as he had done from the cradle,
as his parents had said it before him,
and as all good Bostonians had habitually
pronounced it, with the broad sound uni-
versal among Englishmen, except — as
Mr. Thomas Hardy has lately assured
me — in the Wessex region ; while this
sarcastic young political critic, on the
other hand, representing the Western
and Southern and Irish mode of speech,
treated this tradition of boyhood as a
mere affectation.

One forms unexpected judgments of
characters, also, on the platform. I can
remember one well-known lawyer, — not
now living, — whose manner to an au-
dience, as to a jury, was so intoler-
ably coaxing, flattering, and wheedling
that it always left me with a strong
wish that I could conscientiously vote
against him. I remember also one emi-
nent clergyman and popular orator who
spoke with me before a very rough au-
dience at Jersey City, and who so low-
ered himself by his tone on the plat-
form, making allusions and repartees so
coarse, that I hoped I might never have
to speak beside him again. Of all the
speakers with whom I have ever occu-
pied the platform, the one with whom
I found it pleasantest to be associated
was the late Governor William Eustis
Russell of Massachusetts. Carrying his
election three successive times in a state
where his party was distinctly in the
minority, he yet had, among all political
speakers whom I ever heard, the great-
est simplicity and directness of state-
ment, the most entire absence of trick,
of claptrap, or of anything which would
have lowered him. Striking directly at
the main line of his argument, always
well fortified, making his points uni-
formly clear, dealing sparingly in joke
or anecdote, yet never failing to hold
his audience, he was very near the ideal
of a political speaker ; nor has the death
of any man in public life appeared so pe-
culiar and irremediable a loss.

On the election of John Davis Long,

now Secretary of the Navy, as gover-
nor of Massachusetts in 1880, he asked
me to act on his military staff ; and al-
though I had not known him person-
ally, I felt bound to accept the post.
The position is commonly regarded in
time of peace as merely ornamental, but
I had learned during the civil war how
important it might become at any mo-
ment ; and as nearly all his staff had seen
some military service, I regarded the ap-
pointment as an honor. So peaceful was
his administration that my chief duty
was in representing him at public din-
ners and making speeches in his place.
Sometimes, however, I went with him,
and could admire in him that wondrous
gift, which is called in other countries
"the royal faculty," of always remember-
ing the name of every one. With the ut-
most good will toward the human race,
I never could attain to this gift of vivid
personal recollection, and could only ad-
mire in my chief the unerring precision
with which he knew in each case whether
it was his constituent's wife or grandaunt
who had been suffering under chronic
rheumatism last year, and must now be
asked for with accuracy. He had, too,
the greatest tact in dealing with his au-
diences, not merely through humor and
genial good sense, but even to the point
of risking all upon some little stroke of
audacity. This happened, for instance,
when he delighted the Ancient and Hon-
orable Artillery, a body made up from
various military and non-military ingre-
dients, by complimenting them on their
style of marching, — which was rarely
complimented by others, — and this on
the ground that he did " not remember
ever to have seen just such marching."
The shot told, and was received with
cheer upon cheer. Almost the only mis-
take I ever knew this deservedly pop-
ular official to make in dealing with an
audience was when he repeated the same
stroke soon after upon a rural semi-mili-
tary company of somewhat similar de-
scription, which received it in stern and

198

On the Outskirts of Public Life.

unsympathetic silence ; for it was their
marching upon which these excellent cit-
izens had prided themselves the most.

The Nemesis of public speaking — the
thing which makes it seem almost worth-
less in the long run — is the impossibil-
ity of making it tell for anything after
its moment is past. A book remains al-
ways in existence, — litera scripta ma-
net, — and long after it seems forgotten
it may be disinterred from the dust of
libraries, and be judged as freshly as if
written yesterday. The popular orator
soon disappears from memory, and there
is perhaps substituted in his place some
solid thinker like Burke, who made
speeches, indeed, but was called " the
Dinner Bell," because the members of
Parliament scattered themselves instead
of listening when he rose. Possibly this
briefer tenure of fame is nature's com-
pensation for the more thrilling excite-
ment of the orator's life as compared
with the author's. The poet's eye may
be in never so fine a frenzy rolling, but
he enjoys himself alone ; he can never
wholly trust his own judgment, nor even
that of his admiring family. A percep-
tible interval must pass before he hears
from his public. The orator's apprecia-
tion, on the other hand, comes back as
promptly as an answering echo : his
hearers sometimes hardly wait for his
sentence to be ended. In this respect
he is like the actor, and enjoys, like him,
a life too exciting to be quite wholesome.
There are moments when every orator
speaks, as we may say, above himself.
Either he waked that morning fresher
and more vigorous than usual, or he has
had good news, or the audience is par-
ticularly sympathetic ; at any rate, he
surprises himself by going beyond his
accustomed range. Or it may be, on
the other hand, that he has heard bad
news, or the audience is particularly an-
tagonistic, so that he gets the warmth
by reaction, as from a cold bath. When
Wendell Phillips was speaking more
tamely than usual, the younger Aboli-

tionists would sometimes go round be-
hind the -audience and start a hiss,
which roused him without fail. The
most experienced public speaker can
never fully allow for these variations, or
foretell with precision what his success
is to be. No doubt there may be for
all grades of intellect something akin to
inspiration, when it is the ardor of the
blood which speaks, and the orator him-
self seems merely to listen. Probably
a scolding fishwoman has her days of
glory when she is in remarkably good
form, and looks back afterward in as-
tonishment at her own flow of language.
Whatever surprises the speaker is al-
most equally sure to arrest the audience ;
his prepared material may miss its effect,
but his impulse rarely does. " Indeed,"
as I wrote elsewhere long ago, " the best
hope that any orator can have is to rise
at favored moments to some height of
enthusiasm that shall make all his previ-
ous structure of preparation superfluous ;
as the ship in launching glides from the
ways, and scatters cradle-timbers and
wedges upon the waters that are hence-
forth to be her home."

The moral of my whole tale is that
while no man who is appointed by nature
to literary service should forsake it for
public life, yet the experience of the plat-
form, and even of direct political service,
will be most valuable to him up to a cer-
tain point. That neither of these avenues
leads surely to fame or wealth is a wholly
secondary matter. Gibbon says of him-
self that " in circumstances more indigent
or more wealthy" he "should never have
accomplished the task or acquired the
fame of an historian." For myself, I
have always been very grateful, first for
not being rich, since wealth is a condi-
tion giving not merely new temptations,
but new cares and responsibilities, such
as a student should not be called upon
to undertake ; and secondly, for having
always had the health and habits which
enabled me to earn an honest living by
literature, and this without actual drudg-

On the Outskirts of Public Life.

199

ery. Drudgery in literature is not simply
to work hard, which is a pleasure, but to
work on unattractive material. If one
escapes drudgery, it seems to me that he
has in literature the most delightful of
all pursuits, especially if he can get the
added variety which comes from having
the immediate contact with life which
occasional public speaking gives. The
writer obtains from such intercourse that
which Selden, in his Table Talk, attrib-
utes to the habit of dining in public as
practiced by old English sovereigns :
" The King himself used to eat in the
hall, and his lords with him, and then
he understood men." It is, after all,
the orator, not the writer, who meets
men literally face to face ; beyond this
their functions are much alike. Of
course neither of them can expect to
win the vast prizes of wealth or power
which commerce sometimes gives ; and
one's best preparation is to have looked
poverty and obscurity in the face in youth,
to have taken its measure and accepted
it as a possible alternative, — a thing in-
significant to a man who has, or even
thinks he has, a higher aim.

No single sentence, except a few of
Emerson's, ever moved me so much in
youth as did a passage translated in
Mrs. Austen's German Prose Writers
from Heinzelmann, an author of whom
I never read another word : " Be and
continue poor,- young man, while others
around you grow rich by fraud and dis-
loyalty ; be without place or power, while
others beg their way upward ; bear the
pain of disappointed hopes, while others
gain the accomplishment of theirs by flat-
tery ; forego the gracious pressure of the
hand, for which others cringe and crawl ;
wrap yourself in your own virtue, and
seek a friend, and your daily bread. If
you have, in such a course, grown gray
with unblenched honor, bless God, and
die." This should be learned by heart
by every young man ; but he should also
temper it with the fine saying of Thoreau,

that he " did not wish to practice self-
denial unless it was quite necessary."
In other words, a man should not be an
ascetic for the sake of asceticism, but
he should cheerfully accept that attitude
if it proves to be for him the necessary
path to true manhood. It is not worth
while that he should live, like Spinoza,
on five cents a day. It is worth while
that he should be ready to do this, if
needful, rather than to forego his ap-
pointed work, as Spinoza certainly did
not. If I am glad of anything, it is that
I learned in time, though not without
some early stumblings, to adjust life to
its actual conditions and to find it richly
worth living.

After all, no modern writer can state
the relative position of author and ora-
tor, or the ultimate aims of each, better
than it was done eighteen centuries ago
in that fine dialogue which has been va-
riously attributed to Quintilian and Ta-
citus, in which the representatives of the
two vocations compare their experience.
Both agree that the satisfaction of exer-
cising the gift and of knowing its use-
fulness to others provides better rewards
than all office, all wealth. Aper, the
representative orator, says that when he
is called on to plead for the oppressed
or for any good cause, he rises above all
places of high preferment, and can af-
ford to look down on them all. (" Turn
mihi supra tribunatus et praeturas et con-
sulatus ascendere videor.") Maternus,
who has retired from the public forum to
write tragedies, justifies his course on the
ground that the influence of the poet is
far more lasting than that of the orator ;
and he is so far from asking wealth as
a reward that he hopes to leave behind
him, when he shall come to die, only so
much of worldly possessions as may pro-
vide parting gifts for a few friends.
(" Nee plus habeam quam quod possim
cui velim relinquere.") If ancient Rome
furnished this lofty standard, cannot mod-
ern Christendom hope at least to match it ?
Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

200

Caleb West.

CALEB WEST.

XV.

A NARROW PATH.

WHEN Sanford rang her bell, Mrs.
Leroy was seated on the veranda that
overlooked the garden, — a wide and
inviting veranda, always carpeted in
summer with mats and rugs, and made
comfortable with cane chairs and straw
divans that were softened into luxurious
delights by silk cushions. During the
day the sunshine filtered its way be-
tween the thickly matted vines, lying in
patterns on the floor, or was held in
check by thin Venetian blinds. At night
the light of a huge eight - sided lan-
tern festooned with tassels shed its glow
through screens of colored gauze.

Mrs. Leroy was dressed in a simple
gown of white crepe, which clung and
wrinkled about her slight figure, leav-
ing her neck and arms bare. On a low
table beside .her rested a silver tray with
a slender-shaped coffee-pot and tiny egg-
shell cups and saucers.

She looked up at him, smiling, as he
pushed aside the curtains. " Two lumps,
Henry ? " she called, holding the sugar-
tongs in her hand. Then, as the light
of the lantern fell upon his face, she
exclaimed, "Why, what 's the matter?
You are worried : is there fresh trouble
at the Ledge ? " and she rose from her
chair to lead him to a seat beside her.

"No ; only Carleton. He holds on to
that certificate, and I can get no money
until he gives it up; yet I have raised
the concrete six inches to please him. I
wired Captain Joe yesterday to see him
at once and to get his answer, — yes or
no. What do you suppose he replied?
'Tell him he don't own the earth. I '11
sign it when I get to it.' Not another
word, nor would he give any reason for
not signing it."

"Why don't you appeal to the Board ?

General Barton would not see you suf-
fer an unjust delay. I '11 write him
myself. "

Sanford smiled. Her rising anger
soothed him as flattery might have done
at another time. He felt in it a proof
of how close to her heart she really held
his interests and his happiness.

"That would only prolong the agony,
and might lose us the season's work.
The Board is always fair and honest,
only it takes so long for it to move."
As he spoke he piled the cushions of
the divan high behind Kate's head, and
drew a low chair opposite to her. "It's
torture to a contractor who is behind
time, " he continued, flecking the ashes
of his cigar into his saucer. " It means
getting all tangled up in the red tape
of a government bureau. I must give
up my holiday and find Carleton ; there
is nothing else to be done now. I leave
on the early train to - morrow. But
what a rest this is ! " he exclaimed,
breaking into the strained impetuosi-
ty of his own tone with a long-drawn
sigh of relief, as he looked about the
dimly lighted veranda. "Nothing like
it anywhere. Another new gown, I
see?"

His eyes wandered over her dainty
figure, half reclining beside him, — the
delicately modeled waist, the shapely
wrists, and the tiny slippers peeping be-
neath the edge of her dress that fell in
folds to the floor.

"Never mind about my gown," she
said, her face alight with the pleasure
of his tribute. "I want to hear more
about this man Carleton, " — she spoke
as though she had hardly heard him.
"What have you done to him to make
him hate you ? "

"Nothing but try to keep him from
ruining the work."

"And you told him he was ruining
it?"

Caleb West.

201

"Certainly; there was nothing else
to do. He 's got the concrete now six
inches out of level ; you can see it plainly
at low water."

"No wonder he takes his revenge,"
she said, cutting straight into the heart
of the matter with that marvelous power
peculiar to some women. "What else
has gone wrong ? " She meant him
to tell her everything, knowing that to
let him completely unburden his mind
would give him the only real rest that
he needed. She liked, too, to feel her
influence over him. That he always
consulted her in such matters was to
Kate one of the keenest pleasures that
his friendship brought.

"Everything, I sometimes think.
We are very much behind. That con-
crete base should have been finished two
weeks ago. The equinoctial gale is
nearly due. If we can't get the first
two courses of masonry laid by the mid-
dle of November, I may have to wait
until spring for another payment, and
that about means bankruptcy."

"What does Captain Joe think? "

" He says we shall pull through if we
have no more setbacks. Dear old Cap-
tain Joe! nothing upsets him. We
certainly have had our share of them
this season : first it was the explosion,
and now it is Carleton's spite."

"Suppose you do lose time, Henry,
and do have to wait until spring to go
§on with the work. It will not be for
the first time." There was a sympa-
thetic ye't hopeful tone in her voice.
"When you sunk the coffer-dam at
Kingston, three years ago, and it lay all
winter in the ice, did n't you worry
yourself half sick ? And yet it all came
out right. Oh, you need n't raise your
eyebrows ; I saw it myself. You know
you are better equipped now, both in
experience and in means, than you were
then. Make some allowance for your
own temperament, and please don't for-
get the nights you have lain awake wor-
rying over nothing. It will all come
out right." She laid her hand on his,

as an elder sister might have done, and
in a gayer tone added, "I 'm going to
Medford soon, myself, and I '11 invite
this dreadful Mr. Carleton to come over
to luncheon, and you '11 get your certi-
ficate next day. What does he look
like ? "

Sanford broke into a laugh. "You
would n't touch him with a pair of
tongs, and I wouldn't let you, — even
with them."

"Then I '11 do it, anyway, just to
show you how clever I am," she re-
torted, with a pretty, bridling toss of
her head. She had taken her hand
away, while Sanford, smiling still, held
his own extended.

Kate's tact was having its effect.
Under the magic of her sympathy his
cares had folded their tents. Carleton
was fast becoming a dim speck on the
horizon, and his successive troubles were
but a string of camels edging the blue
distance of his thoughts.

It was always like this. She never
failed to comfort and inspire him.
Whenever his anxieties became unbear-
able it was to Kate that he turned, as he
had done to-night. The very touch of
her soft hand, so white and delicate,
laid upon his arm, and the exquisite
play of melody in her voice, soothed
and strengthened him. Things were
never half so bad as they seemed, when
he could see her look at him mischiev-
ously from under her lowered eyelids
as she said, "Mercy, Henry! is that
all? I thought the whole lighthouse
had been washed away. " And he never
missed the inspiration of the change that
followed, — the sudden quiet of her
face, the very tensity of her figure, as
she added in earnest tones, instinct with
courage and sympathy, some word of
hopeful interest that she of all women
best knew how to give.

With the anxieties dispelled which
had brought him hurrying to-night to
Gramercy Park, they both relapsed into
silence, — a silence such as was common
to their friendship, one which was born

202

Caleb West.

neither of ennui nor of discontent, the
boredom of friends nor the poverty of
meagre minds, but that restful silence
which comes only to two minds and
hearts in entire accord, without a single
spoken word to lead their thoughts; a
close, noiseless fitting together of two
temperaments, with all the rough sur-
faces of their natures worn smooth by
long association each with the other.
In such accord is found the strongest
proof of true and perfect friendship. It
is only when this estate no longer satis-
fies, and one or both crave the human
touch, that the danger-line is crossed.
When stealthy fingers set the currents of
both hearts free, and the touch becomes
electric, discredited friendship escapes
by the window, and triumphant love en-
ters by the door.

The lantern shed its rays over Kate's
white draperies, warming them with a
pink glow. The smoke of Sanford's ci-
gar curled upward in the still air and
drifted out into the garden, or was lost
in the vines of the jessamine trailing
about the porch. Now and then the
stillness was broken by some irrelevant
remark suggested by the perfume of the
flowers, the quiet of the night, the mem-
ory of Jack's and Helen's happiness;
but silence always fell again, except for
an occasional light tattoo of Kate's
dainty slipper on the floor. A restful
lassitude, the reaction from the constant
hourly strain of his work, came over
Sanford ; the world of perplexity seemed
shut away, and he was happier than he
had been in weeks. Suddenly and with-
out preliminary question, Mrs. Leroy
asked sharply, with a strange, quiver-
ing break in her voice, "What about
that poor girl Betty ? Has she patched
it up yet with Caleb ? She told me, the
night she stayed with me, that she loved
him dearly. Poor girl ! she has nothing
but misery ahead of her if she does n't."
She spoke with a certain tone in her
voice that showed but too plainly the
new mood that had taken possession of
her,

"Pity she didn't find it out before
she left him! " exclaimed Sanford.

"Pity he did n't do something to show
his appreciation of her, you mean ! "
she interrupted, with a quick toss of
her head.

"You are all wrong, Kate. Caleb is
the gentlest and kindest of men. You
don't know that old diver, or you would
n't judge him harshly."

"Oh, he didn't beat her, I suppose.
He only left her to get along by herself.
I wish such men would take it out in
beating. Some women could stand that
better. It 's the cold indifference that
kills." She had risen from her seat,
and was pacing the floor of the veranda.

"Well, that was not his fault, Kate.
While the working season lasts he must
be on the Ledge. He couldn't come
in every night."

"That's what they all say!" she
cried restlessly. "If it 's not one ex-
cuse, it 's another. I 'm tired to death
of hearing about men who would rather
make money than make homes. Now
that he has driven her out of her wits by
his brutality, he closes his door against
her, even when she crawls back on her
knees. But don't you despise her."
She stood before him, looking down
into his face for a moment. "Be just
as sweet and gentle to her as you can, "
she said earnestly. "If she ever goes
wrong again, it will be the world's fault
or her husband's, — not her own. Tell
her from me that I trust her and believe
in her, and that I send her my love."

Sanford listened to her with ill-con-
cealed admiration. It was when she
was defending or helping some one that
she appealed to him most. At those
times he recognized that her own wrongs
had not imbittered her, but had only
made her the more considerate.

"There 's never a day you don't teach
me something, " he answered quietly, his
eyes fixed on her moving figure. " Per-
haps I have been a little hard on Betty,
but it 's because I 've seen how Caleb
suffers. "

Caleb West.

203

She stopped again in her walk and
leaned over the rail of the veranda, her
chin on her hand. Sanford watched
her, following the bend of her exqui-
site head and the marvelous slope of
her shoulders. He saw that something
unusual had stirred her, but he could not
decide whether it was caused by the
thought of Betty's misery or by some
fresh sorrow of her own. He threw
away his cigar, rose from his chair, and
joined her at the railing. He could be
unhappy himself and stand up under it,
but he could not bear to see a shade of
sorrow cross her face.

"You are not happy to-night," he
said.

She did not answer.

Sanford waited, looking down over
the garden. He could see the shadowy
outlines of the narrow walks and the
white faces of the roses drooping over
the gravel. When he spoke again there
were hesitating, halting tones in his
voice, as if he were half afraid to follow
the course he had dared to venture on.

"Is Morgan coming home, Kate? "

"I don't know," she replied dream-
ily, after a pause.

"Did n't he say in his last letter? "

"Oh yes ; answered as he always
does, — when he gets through. "

"Where is he now? "

"Paris, I believe."

She had not moved nor lifted her
chin from her hand. The click of the
old clock in the hall could be distinctly
heard. Her curt, almost unwilling re-
plies checked for an instant the words
of sympathy that were on his tongue.
He had asked the question hoping to
probe the secret of her mood. If it were
some new phase of the old sorrow, his
sympathies, he knew, could not reach
her; with that it must always be as
though she had gone into a room with
her grief and locked the door between
them. He could hear her sobs inside,
but could not get within to help her.
If it were anything else, he stood ready
to give her all his strength.

To-night, however, there was an add-
ed pathos, a hopeless weariness, in her
tones, that vibrated through him. He
looked at her intently; she had never
seemed to him so beautiful, so pathetic.
A great rush of feeling surged over
him. He stepped closer to her, lifting
his hand to lay on her head. Then, with
an abrupt gesture, he turned and began
pacing the veranda, his head bowed,
his hands clasped behind his back.
Strange, unutterable thoughts whirled
through his brain; unbidden, unspeak-
able words crowded in his throat. All
the restraint of years seemed slipping
from him. With an effort he stopped
once more, and this time laid his hand
upon her shoulder. He felt in his
heart that it was the same old sorrow
which now racked her, but an uncon-
trollable impulse swept him on.

"Kate, what is it? You break my
heart. Is there something else to wor-
ry you, — something you have n't told
me?"

She shivered slightly as she felt the
hand tighten on her shoulder. Then a
sudden, tingling thrill ran through her.

"I have never any right to be un-
happy when I have you, Henry. You
are all the world to me, — all I have."

It was not the answer he had expect-
ed. For an instant the blood left his
face, his heart stood still.

Kate raised her head, and their eyes
met.

There are narrow paths in life where
one fatal step sends a man headlong.
There are eyes in women's heads as
deep as the abyss below. Hers were
wide open, with the fearless confidence
of an affection she was big enough to
give. He saw down into their depths,
and read there — as they flashed toward
him in intermittent waves over the bar-
rier of the reserve she sometimes held
— love, truth, and courage. To dis-
turb these, even by the sympathy she
longed for and that he loved to give,
might, he knew, endanger the ideal of
loyalty in her that he venerated most.

204

Caleb West.

To go behind it and break down the
wall of that self-control of hers which
held in check the unknown, untouched
springs of her heart might loosen a flood
that would wreck the only bark which
could keep them both afloat on the
troubled waters of life, — their friend-
ship.

Sanford bent his head, raised her
hand to his lips, kissed it reverently,
and without a word walked slowly to-
ward his chair.

As he regained his seat the butler
pushed aside the light curtains of the
veranda, and in his regulation monotone
announced, "Miss Shirley, Major Slo-
conib, and Mr. Hardy."

"My dear madam," broke out the
major in his breeziest manner, before
Mrs. Leroy could turn to greet him,
"what would life be in this bake-oven
of a city but for the joy of yo'r pre-
sence ? And Henry ! You here, too ?
Do you know that that rascal Jack has
kept me waiting for two hours while he
took Helen for a five minutes' walk
round the square, or I would have been
here long ago. Where are you, you
young dog? " he called to Jack, who
had lingered in the darkened hall with
Helen.

"What 's the matter now, major? "
inquired Jack. He shook hands with
Mrs. Leroy, and turned again toward
the major. "I asked your permission.
What would you have me do? Let
Helen see nothing of New York, be-
cause you " —

"Do hush up, cousin Tom," said
Helen, pursing her lips at the major.
" We stayed out because we wanted to,
didn't we, Jack? Don't you think he
is a perfect ogre, Mrs. Leroy ? "

"He forgets his own younger days,
my dear Miss Shirley," she answered.
"He shan't scold you. Henry, make
him join you in a cigar, while I give
Miss Helen a cup of coffee."

"They are both forgiven, my dear
madam, when so lovely an advocate

pleads , their cause, " said the major
grandiloquently, bowing low, his hand
on his chest. "Thank you; I will join
you." He leaned over Sanford as he
spoke, and lighted a cigar in the blue
flame of the tiny silver lamp.

It was delightful to note how the
coming alliance of the Hardy and Slo-
comb families had developed the pater-
nal, not to say patriarchal attitude of
the major toward his once boon com-
panion. He already regarded Jack as
his own son, — somebody to lean upon
in his declining years, a prop and a staff
for his old age. He had even sketched
out in his mind a certain stately man-
sion on the avenue, to say nothing of a
series of country-seats, — one on Crab
Island in the Chesapeake, — all with
porticoes and an especial suite of rooms
on the ground floor; and he could hear
Jack say, as he pointed them out to his
visitors, "These are for my dear old
friend Major Slocomb of Pocomoke, —
member of my wife's family." He
could see his old enemy, Jefferson,
Jack's servant, cowed into respectful
obedience by the new turn in his mas-
ter's affairs, in which the Pocomokian
had lent so helpful a hand.

"She is the child of my old age, so
to speak, suh, and I, of co'se, gave
my consent after great hesitation," he
would frequently say, fully persuading
himself that Helen had really sought
his approbation, and never for one mo-
ment dreaming that, grateful as she
was to him for his chaperonage of her
while in New York, he was the last
person in the world she would have con-
sulted in any matter so vital to her hap-
piness.

Jack accepted the change in the ma-
jor's manner with the same good humor
that seasoned everything that came to
him in life. He had known the Poco-
mokian too many years to misunderstand
him now, and this new departure, with
its patronizing airs and fatherly over-
sight, only amused him.

Mrs. Leroy had drawn the young girl

Caleb West.

• 205

toward the divan, and was already dis-
cussing her plans for the summer.

"Of course you are both to come to
me this fall, when the beautiful Indian
summer weather sets in. The Pines is
never so lovely as then. You shall sail
to your heart's content, for the yacht
is in order ; and we will then see what
this great engineer has been doing all
summer," she added, glancing timidly
from under her dark eyelashes at San-
ford. "Mr. Leroy's last instructions
were to keep the yacht in commission
until he came home. I am determined
you shall have one more good time,
Miss Helen, before this young man ties
you hand and foot. You will come,
major ? "

"I cannot promise, madam. It will
depend entirely on my arrangin' some
very important matters of business. I
hope to be able to come for perhaps a
day or so."

Jack looked at Sanford and smiled.
Evidently Mrs. Leroy did not know the
length of the major's "day or so." It
generally depended upon the date of the
next invitation. He was still staying
with Jack, and had been there since the
spring.

Buckles, the butler, had been bend-
ing over the major as that gentleman
delivered himself of this announcement
of his hopes. When he had filled to
the brim the tiny liqueur glass, the
major — perhaps in a moment of for-
getfulness — said, "Thank you, suh, "
at which Buckles's face hardened. Such
slips were not infrequent. The major
was, in fact, always a little uncomfort-
able in Buckles's presence. Jack, who
had often noticed his attitude, thought
that these conciliatory remarks were
intended as palliatives to the noiseless
English flunky with the immovable
face and impenetrable manner. He
never extended such deference to Sam,
Sanford' s own servant, or even to Jeffer-
son. " Here, Sam, you black scoundrel,
bring me my hat, " he would say when-
ever he was leaving Sanford 's apart-

ments, at which Sam's face would relax
quite as much as Buckles's had hard-
ened. But then the major knew Sam's
kind, and Sam knew the major, and,
strange to say, believed in him.

When Buckles had retired, Sanford
started the Pocomokian on a discussion
in which all the talking would fall to
the latter 's share. Mrs. Leroy turned
to Helen and Jack again. There was
no trace, in voice or face, of the emo-
tion that had so stirred her. All that
side of her nature had been shut away
the moment her guests entered.

"Don't mind a word Jack says to
you, my dear, about hurrying up the
wedding-day," she laughed, in a half-
earnest and altogether charming way,
— not cynical, but with a certain un-
dercurrent of genuine anxiety in her
voice, all the more keenly felt by San-
ford, who waited on every word that
fell from her lips. "Put it off as long
as possible. So many troubles and dis-
appointments come afterwards, and it
is so hard to keep everything as it
should be. There is no happier time
in life than that just before marriage.
Oh, you need n't scowl at me, you young
Bluebeard ; I know all about it, and you
don't know one little bit."

Helen looked at Jack in some won-
der. She was at a loss to know how
much of the talk was pure badinage, and
how much, perhaps, the result of some
bitter worldly experience. She shud-
dered, yet without knowing what in-
spired the remark or what was behind
it. She laughed, though, quite heart-
ily, as she said, "It is all true, no
doubt ; only I intend to begin by being
something of a tyrant myself, don't I,
Jack?"

Before Jack could reply, Smearly,
who had hurried by Buckles, entered
unannounced, and with a general smile
of recognition, and two fingers to the
major, settled himself noiselessly in an
easy-chair, and reached over the silver
tray for a cup. It was a house where
such freedom was not commented on,

206

Caleb West.

and Smearly was one of those big New-
foundland - dog kind of visitors who
avail themselves of all privileges.

"What is the subject under discus-
sion ? " the painter asked, as he dropped
a lump of sugar into his cup and turned
to his hostess.

"I have just been telling Miss Shir-
ley how happy she will make us when
she comes to The Pines this autumn."

"And you have consented, of course ? "
he inquired carelessly, lifting his bushy
eyebrows.

" Oh yes, " answered Helen, a faint
shadow settling for a moment on her
face. "It 's so kind of Mrs. Leroy to
want me. You are coming, too, are
you not, Mr. Sanf ord ? " and she moved
toward Henry's end of the divan, where
Jack followed her. She had never liked
Smearly. She did not know why, but
he always affected her strangely. "He
looks like a bear, " she once told Jack,
"with his thick neck and his restless
movements. "

"Certainly, Miss Helen, I am going,
too," replied Sanf ord. "I tolerate my
work all summer in expectation of these
few weeks in the autumn."

The young girl raised her eyes quick-
ly. Somehow it did not sound to her
like Sanf ord 's voice. There was an
unaccustomed sense of strain in it. She
moved a little nearer to him, however,
impelled by some subtle sympathy for
the man who was not only Jack's friend,
but one she trusted as well.

"Lovely to be so young and hopeful,
is n't it ? " said Mrs. Leroy to Smearly,
with a movement of her head toward
Helen. "Look at those two. Nothing
but rainbows for her and Jack."

" Rainbows come after the storm, my
dear lady, not before, " rejoined Smear-
ly. "If they have any prismatics in
theirs, they will appear in a year or two
from now. " He had lowered his voice
so that Helen should not hear.

"You never believe in anything.
You hate women," said Mrs. Leroy in
an undertone and half angrily.

"True, but with some exceptions;
you, for instance. But why fool our-
selves ? The first year is one of sugar-
plums, flowers, and canary-birds. They
can't keep their hands off us ; they love
us so they want to eat us up."

" Some of them wish they had, " inter-
rupted Mrs. Leroy, with a half-laugh,
her head bent coquettishly on one side.

" The second year both are pulling in
opposite directions. Then comes a snap
of the matrimonial cord, and over they
go. Of course, neither of these two
turtle-doves has the slightest idea of
anything of the kind. They expect to
go on and on and on, like the dear lit-
tle babes in the wood ; but they won't,
all the same. Some day an old crow
of an attorney will come and cover them
over with dried briefs, and that will be
the last of it."

Sanford took no part in the general
talk. He was listless, absorbed. He
felt an irresistible desire to be alone,
and stayed on only because Helen's
many little confidences, told to him in
her girlish way, as she sat beside him
on the divan, required but an acqui-
escing nod now and then, or a random
reply, which he could give without be-
traying himself.

He was first of all the guests to rise.
In response to Mrs. Leroy's anxious
glance, as he bade her good-night be-
tween the veranda curtains, he explained,
in tones loud enough to be heard by
everybody, that it was necessary to make
an early start in the morning for the
Ledge, and that he had some important
letters to write that night.

"Don't forget to telegraph me if you
get the certificate," was all she said.

Helen and Jack followed Sanford.
They too wanted to be alone ; that is,
together, — in their case the same
thing.

Once outside and under the trees of
the park, Helen stopped in a secluded
spot, the shadows of the electric light
flecking the pavement, took the lapels
of Jack's coat in her hands, and said,

Caleb West.

207

"Jack, dear, I was n't happy there to-
night. She never could have loved any-
body."

"Who, darling?"

"Why, Mrs. Leroy. Did you hear
what she said ? "

"Yes, but it was only Kate. That 's
her way, Helen. She never means half
she says."

"Yes, but the way she said it, Jack.
She does n't know what love means.
Loving is not being angry all the time.
Loving is helping, — helping every-
where and in everything. Whatever
either needs the other gives. I can't say
it just as I want to, but you know what
I mean. And that Mr. Smearly; he
did n't think I heard, but I did. Why,
it 's awful for men to talk so."

" Dear heart, " said Jack, smoothing
her cheek with his hand, "don't believe
everything you hear. You are not ac-
customed to the ways of these people.
Down in your own home in Maryland
people mean what they say; here they
don't. Smearly is all right. He was
'talking through his hat,' as the boys
say at the club, — that 's all. You 'd
think, to hear him go on, that he was
a sour, crabbed old curmudgeon, now,
would n't you ? Well, you never were
more mistaken in your life. Every
penny he can save he gives to an old sis-
ter of his, who has n't seen a well day
for years. That 's only his talk."

"But why does he speak that way,
then ? When people love as they ought
to love, every time a disappointment in
the other comes, it is just one more
opportunity to help, — not a cause for
ridicule. I love you that way, Jack;
don't you love me so ? " and she looked
up into his eyes.

"I love you a million ways, you
sweet girl," and, with a rapid glance
about him to see that no one was near,
he slipped his arm about her and held
her close to his breast.

He felt himself lifted out of the at-
mosphere of romance in which he had
lived for months. This gentle, shrink-

ing Southern child whom he loved and
petted and smothered with roses, this
tender, clinging girl who trusted him
so implicitly, was no longer his sweet-
heart, but his helpmate. She had sud-
denly become a woman, — strong, cour-
ageous, clear-minded, helpful.

A new feeling rose in his heart and
spread itself through every fibre of his
being, — a feeling without which love
is a plaything. It was reverence.

When Sanf ord reached his apartments
Sam was waiting for him, as usual.
The candles were lighted instead of the
lamp. The windows of the balcony
were wide open.

"You need not wait, Sam; I '11 close
the blinds," he said, as he stepped out
and sank into a chair.

Long after Sam had gone he sat there
without moving, his head bent, his fore-
head resting on his hand. He was try-
ing to pick up the threads of his life
again, to find the old pattern which had
once guided him in his course, and to
clear it from the tangle of lines that had
suddenly twisted and confused him.

For a long time he saw nothing but
Kate's eyes as they had met his own,
with the possibilities which he had
read in their depths. He tried to
drive the picture from him; then baf-
fled by its persistence he resolutely
faced it; held it as it were in his
hands, and, looking long and unflinch-
ingly at it, summoned all his courage.

He had read Kate's heart in her face.
He knew that he had revealed his own.
But he meant that the future should
be unaffected by the revelations made.
The world must never share her confi-
dence nor his, as it would surely do at
their first false step. It should not
have the right to turn and look, and
to wonder at the woman whom he was
proud to love. That open fearlessness
which all who knew her gloried in
should still be hers. He knew the
value of it to her, and what its loss
would entail should a spoken word of

208

Caleb West.

his rob her of it, or any momentary
weakness of theirs deprive her of the
strength and comfort which his open
companionship could give. No! God
helping him, he would stand firm, and
so should she.

An hour later he was still there, his
unlighted cigar between his lips, his
head on his hands.

XVI.

UNDEB THE WILLOWS.

The mile or more of shore skirting
the curve of Keyport harbor from Key-
port village to Captain Joe's cottage
was lighted by only four street lamps.
Three of these were hung on widely
scattered telegraph - poles ; the fourth
was nailed fast to one end of old Cap-
tain Potts 's fish-house.

When the nights were moonless,
these faithful sentinels, with eyes alert,
scanned the winding road, or so much of
it as their lances could protect, watch-
ing over deep culverts, and in one place
guarding a treacherous bridge without
a rail.

When the nights were cloudy and
the lantern-panes were dimmed by the
driving sleet, these beacons confined
their efforts to pointing out for the
stumbling wayfarer the deep puddles
or the higher rows of soggy seaweed
washed up by the last high tide into the
highway itself. Only on thick nights,
when the fog - drift stole in from the
still sea and even Keyport Light burned
dim, did their scouting rays retreat dis-
comfited, illumining nothing but the
poles on which the lanterns hung.

Yet in spite of this vigilance there
were still long stretches of road be-
tween, which even on clear nights were
dark as graveyards and as lonesome.
Except for the ruddy gleam slanted
across the path from some cabin win-
dow, or the glare of a belated villager's
swinging lantern flecking the pale, star-

ing fences with seesawing lights and
shadows, not a light was visible.

Betty knew every foot of this road.
She had trundled her hoop on it, her
hair flying in the wind, when she first
came to Keyport to school. She had
trodden it many a time with Caleb.
She had idled along its curves with La-
cey before the day when her life came to
an end, and had plodded over it many
a weary hour since, as she went to her
work in the village or returned to Cap-
tain Joe's. She knew every stone and
tree and turn. She could have found
her way in the pitch-dark to the cap-
tain's or to Caleb's, just as she had
done again and again in the days before
the street lights were set, and when
Caleb would be standing on the porch,
if she was late, shading his eyes and
peering down the road, the kitchen lamp
in his hand. "I was gittin' worrited,
little woman ; what kep' ye ? " he would
say. She had never been afraid in those
days, no matter what the hour. Every-
body knew her. "Oh, that 's you, Mis'
West, is it? I kind o' mistrusted it
was," would come from some shadowy
figure across the road.

All this was changed now. There
were places along the highway that
made her draw her shawl closer, often
half hiding her face. She would shud-
der as she turned the corner of the
church, the one where the captain and
Aunty Bell had taken her the first Sun-
day after her coming back. The big,
gloomy oil warehouse where she had
nursed Lacey seemed to her haunted
and uncanny, and at night more gloomy
than ever without a ray of light in any
one of its broken, staring windows.
Even the fishing-smacks, anchored out
of harm's way for the night, looked
gruesome and mysterious, with single
lights aloft, and black hulls and masts
reflected in the water. It was never
until she reached the willows that her
agitation disappeared. These grew just
opposite Captain Potts's fish - house.
There were three of them, and their

Caleb West.

209

branches interlocked and spread across
the road, the spaces between the trunks
being black at night despite the one
street lamp nailed to the fish - house
across the way. When Betty gained
these trees her breath always came
freer. She could see along the whole
road, away past Captain Joe's, and up
the hill as far as Caleb's gate. She
could see, too, Caleb's cabin from this
spot, and the lamp burning in the kitch-
en window. She knew who was sitting
beside it. From these willows, also,
she could run for Captain Joe's swing-
ing gate with its big ball and chain, get-
ting safely inside before Caleb could pass
and see her, if by any chance he should
be on the road and coming to the village.
Once she had met him this side of their
dark shadows. It was on a Saturday,
and he was walking into the village, his
basket on his arm. He was going for
his Sunday supplies, no doubt. The
Ledge gang must have come in sooner
than usual, for it was early twilight.
She had seen him coming a long way
off, and had looked about for some
means of escape. There was no mis-
taking his figure ; no change of hat or
tarpaulin could conceal his identity.
She would know him as far as she could
see him, — that strong, broad figure,
with the awkward, stiff walk peculiar
to so many seafaring men, particularly
lightship-keepers like Caleb, who have
walked but little. She knew, too, the
outline of the big, fluffy beard that the
wind caught and blew over his ruddy
face. No one could be like her Caleb
but himself.

These chance meetings she dreaded
with a fear she could not overcome. On
this last occasion, finding no concealing
shelter, she had kept on, her eyes on
the ground. When Caleb had passed,
his blue eyes staring straight ahead, his
face drawn and white, the lips- pressed
close, she turned and looked after him,
and he turned, too, and looked after
her, — these two, man and wife, within
reach of each other's arms and lips, yet

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 484. 14

with only the longing hunger of a dead
happiness in their eyes. She could have
run toward him, and knelt down in the
road, and begged him to forgive her
and take her home again, had not Cap-
tain Joe's words restrained her : "Caleb
say s he ain't got nothin' agin ye, child,
but he won't take ye back s' long 's he
lives."

Because, then, of the dread of these
chance meetings, and because of the shy
looks of many of the villagers, who, de-
spite Captain Joe's daily fight, still
passed her with but a slight nod of re-
cognition, she was less unhappy when
she walked out and in at night than in
the daylight. The chance of being re-
cognized was less. Caleb might pass
her in the dark and not see her, and
then, too, there were fewer people along
the road after dark.

On the Saturday night succeeding that
on which she had met him, she deter-
mined to wait until it was quite dark.
He would have come in then, and she
could slip out from the shop where she
worked and gain the shore road before
he had finished making his purchases in
the village.

Her heart had been very heavy all
day. The night before she had left her
own bed and tapped at Aunty Bell's
door, and had crept under the cover-
lid beside the little woman, the captain
being at the Ledge, and had had one of
her hearty cries, sobbing on the elder
woman's neck, her arms about her, her
cheek to hers. She had gone over with
her for the hundredth time all the misery
of her loneliness, wondering what would
become of her ; and how hard it was for
Caleb to do all his work alone, — wash-
ing his clothes and cooking his meals
just as he had done on board the light-
ship ; pouring out her heart until she fell
asleep from sheer exhaustion. All of
her thoughts were centred in him and
his troubles. She longed to go back to
Caleb to take care of him. It was no
longer to be taken care of, but to care
for him.

210

Caleb West.

As she hurried through the streets,
after leaving the shop, and gained the
corner leading to the shore road, she
glanced up and down, fearing lest her
eyes should fall upon the sturdy figure
with the basket. But there was no
one in sight whom she knew. At this
discovery she slackened her steps and
looked around more quickly. When she
reached the bend in the road, a flash of
light from an open door in a cabin near
by gave her a momentary glimpse of a
housewife bending over a stove and a
man putting a dinner-pail on the kitchen
table. Then all was dark again. It
was but a momentary glimpse of a hap-
piness the possibility of which in her
own life she had wrecked. She stopped,
steadying herself by the stone wall. She
would soon be at the willows, within a
hundred yards of Captain Joe's gate,
and all danger would be over. So far
Caleb was nowhere in sight.

With these thoughts in her mind she
passed into the black shadows of the
overhanging willows. As she came to
them a man stepped from behind a tree-
trunk.

"Are n't you rather late this even-
ing ? " he asked.

Betty stood still, the light of the
street lamp full on her face. The
abruptness of the sound, breaking into
the quiet of her thoughts, startled her.

"Oh, you needn't be afraid; I'm
not going to hurt you."

The girl peered into the gloom. She
thought the voice was familiar, though
she was not sure. She could distin-
guish only a white shirt and collar, and
a shadowy face with a mustache.

"What makes you so skittish, any-
how ? " the man asked again, — in a
lower tone this time. " You did n't
use to be so. I thought maybe you
might like to drive over to Medford
and see the show to-night."

Betty made no answer, but she took
a step nearer to him. trying to identify
him. She was not afraid; only curi-
ous. All at once it occurred to her that

it could, be for no good purpose he had
stopped her. None of the men had
spoken to her in the street, even in the
daytime, since her return home.

"Please let me pass," she said qui-
etly and firmly.

"Oh, you needn't be in a hurry.
We 've got all night. Come along, now,
won't you? You used to like me onqe,
before you shook the old man."

Betty knew him now !

The terror of her position overcame
her; a deathly faintness seized her.

She saw it all ; she knew why this
man dared. She realized the loneliness
and desolation of her position. Every
cabin near her filled with warmth and
cheer and comfort, and she friendless
and alone. Not a woman she knew
without some strong arm of husband or
brother to help and defend. The very
boats in the harbor, with their beacon-
lights aloft, protected and safe. Only
she in danger; only she unguarded, way-
laid, open to insult, even by a man like
this.

She stood shivering, looking into his
cowardly face. Then rousing herself
to her peril, she sprang toward the
road. In an instant the man had seized
her wrist. She felt his hot breath on
her face.

" Oh, come now, none of that ! Say,
why ain't I as good as Bill Lacey ? Give
me a kiss."

"Let me go! Let me go! How
dare you! " she cried, struggling in his
grasp. When she found his strength
gaining on her, she screamed.

Hardly had she made her outcry,
when from behind the fish-house a tall
man with a flowing beard darted into
the shadows, flung himself on Betty's
assailant, and dragged him out under
the glare of the street lamp. The girl
fled up the road without looking be-
hind.

"That 's what ye 're up to, is it, Mr.
Carleton ? " said the tall man, hold-
ing the other with the grip of a steel
vise. "I 'spected as much when I see

Caleb West.

211

ye passin' my place. Damn ye ! If it
wa'n't that it would be worse for her,
I'd kill ye!"

Every muscle in the speaker's body
was tense with anger. Carleton's head
was bent back, his face livid from the
pressure of the fingers twisted about his
throat.

The diver slowly relaxed his hold.
"Ain't she got trouble 'nough without
havin' a skunk like you a-runnin' foul
o' her?"

Carleton made a quick gesture as if
to spring aside and run. The other
saw the movement and edged closer.

"Ain't ye ashamed o' yerself ? Ain't
it mean o' ye to make up to a gal like
Betty ? " His voice was low and mea-
sured, — a thin, bitter, cutting voice.

"What 'B it your business, anyhow ? "
Carleton gasped between his breaths,
shaking himself like a tousled dog.
"What are you putting on frills about
her for, anyhow? She 's nothing to
you, if she is your wife. I guess I
know what I 'm doing."

Caleb's fingers grew hard and rigid as
claws.

"So do I know what ye 're a-doin'.
Ye 'd drag that child down an' stomp
on her, if ye could. Ye 'd make a
thing of her, " — the words came with
a hiss, — "you — you — callin' yerself
a man ! "

"Why don't you take care of her,
then ? " snarled Carleton, with an as-
sumed air of composure, as he adjusted
his collar and cuffs.

"That 's what I 'm here for; that 's
why I follered ye; there ain't a night
since it begun to git dark I ain't watched
her home. She's not yourn; she's
mine. Look at me, " — Caleb stepped
closer and raised his clinched fist. "If
ever ye speak to her agin, so help me
God, I will kill ye ! "

With one swing of his arm he threw
the superintendent out of his way, and
strode up the street.

Carleton staggered from the blow,
and would have fallen but for the wall

of the fish-house. For a moment he
stood in the road looking after Caleb's
retreating figure. Then, with a forced
bravado in his voice, he called out in the
darkness, "If you think so damn much
of her, why don't you take her home ? "
and slunk away toward the village.

The old man did not turn. If he
heard, he made no sign. He walked
on, with his head down, his eyes on the
road. As he passed Captain Joe's he
loitered at the gate until he saw the
light flash up in Betty's bedroom; then
he kept on to his own cabin.

XVII.

THE SONG OF THE FIRE.

The fire was nearly out when Caleb
entered his kitchen door and sank into
a chair. Carleton's taunting words,
"Why don't you take her home ? " rang
in his ears. Their sting hurt him.
Everything else seemed to fall away
from his mind. He knew why he did
not take her home, he said to himself;
every one else knew why, — every one
up and down Keyport knew what Betty
had done to ruin him. If she was
friendless, tramping the road, within
sight of her own house, whose fault was
it ? Not his. He had never done any-
thing but love her and take care of her.

He reached for a pair of tongs,
stirred the coals, and threw on a single
piece of driftwood. The fire blazed up
brightly at once, its light flickering on
the diver's ruddy face, and as quickly
died out.

"Why don't I take care of 'er, eh?
Why did n't she take care of herself? "
he said aloud, gazing into the smoul-
dering embers. "She sees what it is
now trampin' the road nights, runnin'
up agin such curs as him. He 's a nice
un, he is. I wish I 'd choked the life
out'er him; such fellers ain't no right
to live," looking about him as if he
expected to find Carleton behind the

212

Caleb West.

door, and as quickly recovering himself.
"I wonder if he hurt 'er, " — his voice
had softened. "She screamed turri-
ble. I ought, maybe, to 'a' ketched up
to her. Poor little gal, she ain't used
to this." He was silent awhile, his
head bent, his shoulders updrawn, his
big frame stretched out in the chair.

"She ain't nothin' but a child, any-
how, " he broke out again, — "Cap'n Joe
says so. He says I don't think o' this ;
maybe he 's right. He says I 'm big-
ger an' twice as old 's she be, an'
ought 'er know more; that it ain't me
she's hurted, — it's herself; that I
married her to take care of 'er; and
that the fust time she got in a hole I
go back on 'er, 'cause she 's dragged
me in arter 'er. Well, ain't I a-takin'
care of 'er? Ain't I split squar' in
two every cent I 've earned since she
run away with that " —

Caleb paused abruptly. Even to
himself he never mentioned Lacey's
name. Bending forward he poked the
fire vigorously, raking the coals around
the single stick of driftwood. "It 's
all very well for th' cap'n to talk ; he
ain't gone through what I have."

Pushing back his chair he paced the
small room, talking to himself as he
walked, pausing to address his sentences
to the several articles of furniture, —
the chairs, the big table, the kitchen
sink, whatever came in his way. It
was an old trick of his when alone.
He had learned it aboard the light-
ship. "I ain't a-goin' to have 'er
come home so late no more, " he contin-
ued. His voice had sunk to a gentle
whisper. "I 'm goin' to tell them folks
she works for that they 've got to let
'er out afore dark, or she shan't stay."
He was looking now at an old rocker
as if it were the shopkeeper himself.
"She'll be so scared arter this she
won't have a minute's peace. She
needn't worrit herself, though, 'bout
that skunk. She 's shut o' him. But
there '11 be more of 'em. They all
think that now I 've throwed 'er off

they kin do as they 've a mind to."
He stopped again and gazed down at
the floor, seemingly absorbed in a hole
in one of the planks. "Cap'n Joe sez
I ain't got no business to throw 'er off.
He wouldn't treat a dog so, — that 's
what ye said, cap'n; I ain't never goin'
to forgit it." He spoke with as much
earnestness as though the captain stood
before him. "/ ain't throwed her off.
She throwed me off, — lef ' me here
without a word ; an' ye know it, cap'n.
Ye want me to take 'er back, do ye?
S'pose I do, an' she finds out arter all
that her comin' home was 'cause she
was skeared of it all, and that she still
loved " —

He stopped and seated himself in his
chair. He picked up another stick and
threw it on the fire, snuggling the two
together. The sticks, cheered by each
other's warmth, burst into a crackling
flame.

"Poor little Betty! " he began again
aloud. "I 'm sorry for ye. Every-
body 's agin ye, child, 'cept Cap'n Joe's
folks. I know it hurts ye tumble to
have folks look away from ye. Ye al-
ways loved to have folks love ye. I
ain't got nothin' agin ye, child, indeed
I ain't. It was my fault, not yourn.
I told Cap'n Joe so; ask him, — he '11
tell ye. " He turned toward the empty
chair beside him, as if he saw her sad
face there. "I know it 's hard, child, "
shaking his head. "Ain't nobody feels
it more 'n me, — ain't nobody feels it
more 'n me. I guess I must take care
o' ye; I guess there ain't nobody else
but me kin do it."

The logs blazed cheerily; the whole
room was alight. "I wish ye loved
me like ye did onct, little woman, — I
would n't want no better happiness ; jest
me an' you, like it useter was. I won-
der if ye do? No, I know ye don't."
The last words came with a positive
tone.

For a long time he remained still.
Now he gazed at the blazing logs locked
together, the flames dancing about them.

Caleb West.

Then he got up and roamed mechani-
cally around the room, his thoughts
away with Betty and her helpless con-
dition, and her rightful dependence on
him. In the same dreary way he opened
the cupboard, took out a piece of cold
meat and some slices of stale bread, lay-
ing them on the table, poured some tea
into a cup and put it on the stove; it
was easier making the tea that way
than in a pot. He drew the table to-
ward the fire, so that his supper would
be within reach, stirring the brewing
tea meanwhile with a fork he had in
his hand, and began his frugal meal.
Since Betty left he had never set the
table. It seemed less lonely to eat
this way.

Just as he had finished there came a
knock at the front door. Caleb started,
and put down his cup. Who could
come at this hour? Craning his head
toward the small open hall, he saw
through the glass in the door the out-
lines of a woman's figure approaching
him through the hall. His face flushed,
and his heart seemed to jump in his
throat.

"It's me, Caleb," said the woman.
"It 's Aunty Bell. The door was open,
so I didn't wait. Cap'n sent me up
all in a hurry. He 's jes' come in
from the Ledge, and hollered to me
from the tug to send up and get ye.
The pump 's broke on the big h'ister.
A new one 's got to be cast to-night
and bored out to-morrer, if it is Sun-
day. Cap'n says everything 's stopped
at the Ledge, and they can't do an-
other stroke till this pump 's fixed.
Weren't nobody home but Betty, and
so I come myself. Come right along;
he wants ye at the machine shop jes'
's quick as ye kin git there. "

Caleb kept his seat and made no
reply. Something about the shock of
finding who the woman was had stunned
him. He did not try to explain it to
himself, and was conscious only of a
vague yet stinging sense of disappoint-
ment. Automatically, like a trained

soldier obeying a command, he bent
forward in his chair, drew his thick
boots from under the stove, slipped his
feet into them, and silently followed
Aunty Bell out of the house and down
the road. When they reached Captain
Joe's gate he looked up at Betty's win-
dow. There was no light.

"Has Betty gone to bed? " he said
quietly.

"Yes, more 'n an hour ago. She
come home late, all tuckered out. I
see 'er jes' before I come out. She
said she warn't sick, but she wouldn't
eat no thin'."

Caleb paused, looked at her as if he
were about to speak again, hesitated,
then, without a word, walked away.

"Stubborn as a mule," said Aunty
Bell, looking after him. "I ain't got
no patience with such men."

XVIII.

THE EQUINOCTIAL GALE.

When Sanford arrived at Keyport, a
raw, southeast gale whirled through the
deserted streets. About the wharves
of the village itself idle stevedores
lounged under dripping roofs, watching
the cloud-rack and speculating on the
chances of going to work. Out in the
harbor the fishing- boats rocked uneasi-
ly, their long, red pennants flattened
against the sky. Now and then a fright-
ened sloop came hurrying in with close-
reefed jib, sousing her bow under at
every plunge.

Away off in the open a dull gray mist,
churned up by the tumbling waves,
dimmed the horizon, blurring here and
there a belated coaster laboring heavi-
ly under bare poles, while from Crotch
Island way came the roar of the pound-
ing surf thrown headlong on the beach.
The long - expected equinoctial storm
was at its height.

So fierce and so searching were the
wind and rain that Sauford was thor-

214

Caleb West.

oughly drenched when he reached Cap-
tain Joe's cottage.

"For the land's sake, Mr. Sanford,
come right in! Why, ye 're jest 's
soakin' as though ye 'd fell otf the
dock. Cap'n said ye was a-comin',
but I hoped ye would n't. I ain't never
see it blow so terrible, I don't know
when. Gimme that overcoat, " slip-
ping it from his shoulders and arms.
"Be yer feet wet?"

"Pretty wet, Mrs. Bell. I '11 go
up to my room and get some dry
socks " —

"Ye ain't a-goin' to move one step.
Set right down an' get them shoes off.
I '11 go for the socks myself. I over-
hauled 'em last week with the cap'n's,
and sot a new toe in one o' them. I
won't be a minute! " she cried, hurry-
ing out of the room, and returning with
heavy woolen socks and a white worsted
sweater.

"Guess ye '11 want these, too, sir,"
she said, picking up a pair of slippers.

" Where is Captain Joe ? " asked
Sanford, as he pulled off his wet shoes
and stockings and moved closer to the
fire. It was an every - day scene in
Aunty Bell's kitchen, where one half
of her visitors were wet half the time,
and the other half wet all the time.

"I don't jes' know. He ain't been
home sence Saturday night but jes' long
'nough to change his clothes an' git a
bite to eat. Come in from the Ledge
Saturday night on the tug two hours
after the Screamer brought in the men,
an' hollered to me to go git Caleb an'
come down to the machine shop. You
beared they broke the pump on the
h'istin' -engine, did n't ye? They both
been a-workin' on it pretty much ever
sence."

"Not the big hoister? " Sanford ex-
claimed, with a start, turning pale.

"Well, that 's what the cap'n said,
sir. He an' Caleb worked all Satur-
day night an' got a new castin' made,
an' bored it out yesterday. I told him
he would n't have no luck, workin' on

Sunday, but he didn't pay no more
'tention to me than th' wind a-blowin'.
It was to be done this mornin'. He
was up at five, an' I ain't seen him
sence. Said he was goin' to git to the
Ledge in Cap'n Potts' cat-boat, if it
mod 'rated."

"He won't go," said Sanford, with
a sigh of relief now that he knew the
break had been repaired without delay.
"No cat-boat can live outside to-day."

"Well, all I know is, I beared him
tell Lonny Bowles to ask Cap'n Potts
for it 'fore they went out, " she replied,
as she hung Sanford 's socks on a string
especially reserved for such emergencies.
"Said they had two big cut stone to
set, an' they could n't get a pound o'
steam on the Ledge till he brought the
pump back."

Sanford instinctively looked out of
the window. The rain still beat against
the panes. The boom of the surf
sounded like distant cannon.

"Ye can't do nothin' with him when
he gits one o' his spells on, noways,"
continued Aunty Bell, as she raked out
the coals. "Jes' wait till I grind some
fresh coffee, — -won't take a minute.
Then I '11 git breakfast for ye."

Sanford stepped into the sitting-
room, closed the door, took off his coat
and vest, loosened his collar, pulled on
the sweater, and came back into the
kitchen, looking like a substitute in a
game of football. He always kept a
stock of such dry luxuries in his little
room upstairs, Aunty Bell looking after
them as she did after the captain's, and
these rapid changes of dress were not
unusual.

"How does Betty get on?" asked
Sanford, drawing up a chair to the ta-
ble. The bustling little woman was
bringing relays of bread, butter, and
other comforts, flitting between the
pantry and the stove.

"Pretty peaked, sir; ye wouldn't
know her, poor little girl; it 'd break
yer heart to see her, " she answered, as
she placed a freshly baked pie on the

Caleb West.

215

table. "She's upstairs now. Cap'n
would n't let her git up an' go to work
this moruin', it blowed so. That 's
her now a-comin' downstairs."

Sanford rose and held out his hand.
He had not seen Betty since the mem-
orable night when she had stood in his
hallway, and he had taken her to Mrs.
Leroy's. He had been but seldom at
the captain's of late, going straight to
the Ledge from the train, and had al-
ways missed her.

Betty started back, and her color
came and went when she saw who it
was. She didn't know anybody was
downstairs, she said half apologetically,
addressing her words to Aunty Bell,
her eyes averted from Sanford 's face.

"Why, Betty, I 'm glad to see you ! "
exclaimed Sanford in a cheery tone, his
mind going back to Mrs. Leroy's ad-
monition.

Betty raised her eyes with a timid,
furtive glance, her face flushed scarlet,
but, reading Sanford 's entire sincerity
in his face, she laid her hand in his,
saying it was a bad day, and that she
hoped he was not wet. Then she turned
to help Mrs. Bell with the table.

Sanford watched her slight figure and
careworn face as she moved about the
room. When Aunty Bell had gone
down into the cellar, he called Betty to
him and said in a low voice, "I have
a message for you."

She turned quickly, as if anticipat-
ing some unwelcome revelation.

"Mrs. Leroy told me to give you
her love."

Betty's eyes filled. "Is that what
she said, Mr. Sanford ? "

"Every word, Betty, and she means
it all."

The girl stood fingering the handles
of the knives she had just laid upon the
cloth. After a pause, Sanford' s eyes
still upon her face, she answered slow-
ly, with a pathos that went straight
home to his heart : —

"Tell her, please, sir, that I thank
her so much, and that I never forget

her. I am trying so hard — so hard
— I promised her I would. You don't
know, Mr. Sanford, — nobody won't
never know how good she was to me.
If I 'd been her sister she couldn't 'a'
done no more."

It was but a slight glimpse of the
girl's better nature, but it settled for
Sanford all the misgivings he had had.
He was about to tell her of Mrs. Le-
roy's expected arrival at Medford, and
urge her to go over some Sunday, when
Aunty Bell bustled in with a covered
dish.

"Come, child," she said, "sit right
down alongside o' Mr. Sanford an' git
your breakfas'. You ain't eat a mor-
sel yet."

There were no seats of honor and no
second table in this house, except per?
haps for those who came late.

Here a sharp, quick knock sounded
on the outer door, and in stalked Cap-
tain Bob Brandt, six feet or more of
wet oilskins, the rain dripping from
his sou'wester, his rosy, good-natured
face peering out from under the puck-
ered brim.

"Cap'n Joe sent me down to the sta-
tion for ye, sir, in case ye come, but
I missed ye, somehow. Mr. Carleton
was on the platform, an' said he see ye
git off. Guess ye must 'a' come cross-
lots."

"Did Mr. Carleton mention any-
thing about receiving a telegram from
me, saying I wanted to see him ? " in-
quired Sanford, as he shook the skip-
per's hand.

"Yes, sir; said he knew ye was
comin', but that he was goin' over to
Medford till the storm was over."

Sanford 's brow knit. Carleton had
evidently avoided him.

"Did he leave any message or let-
ter with Captain Joe ? " Sanford asked,
after a pause. He still hoped that
the coveted certificate had finally been
signed.

"Guess not, sir. Don't think he
see 'im. I suppose ye know Cap'n

216

Caleb West.

Joe 's gone to the Ledge with the new
pump? "

"Not in this storm? " cried Sanford,
a look of alarm overspreading his face.

"Yes, sir, half an hour ago, in Cap'n
Potts' Dolly. I watched 'em till they
run under the P'int, then I come for
you; guess that's what got me late.
She was under double reefs then, an'
a-smashin' things for all she was worth.
I tell ye, 't ain't no good place out
there for nobody, not even Cap'n Joe."
As he spoke he took off his hat and
thrashed the water from it against the
jamb of the door. "No, thank ye,
ma'am," with a wave of his hand in
answer to Mrs. Bell's gesture to sit
down opposite Betty. "I had breakfast
'board the Screamer."

"Who 's with him? " said Sanford,
now really uneasy. Captain Joe's
personal safety was worth more to him
than the completion of a dozen light-
houses.

"Caleb and Lonny Bowles. They 'd
go anywheres cap'n told 'em. He was
holdin' tiller when I see him last; Ca-
leb layin' back on the sheet and Lonny
bailin'. Cap'n said he wouldn't 'a'
risked it, only we was behind an' he
did n't want ye worried. I 'm kind'er
sorry they started; it ain't no picnic,
I tell ye."

Betty gave an anxious look at Aunty
Bell.

"Is it a very bad storm, Cap'n
Brandt ? " she asked, almost in a whis-
per.

"Wust I ever see, Mis' West, since
I worked round here," nodding kindly
to Betty as he spoke, his face lighting
up. He had always believed in her
because the captain had taken her home.
"Everything comin' in under double
reefs, — them that is a-comin' in.
They say two o' them Lackawanna coal-
barges went adrift at daylight an' come
ashore at Crotch Island. Had two men
drownded, I hear."

"Who told you that? " said Sanford.
The news only increased his anxiety.

"The cap'n of the tow line, sir.
He 's just telegraphed to New Haven for
a big wreckin'-tug."

Sanford told Captain Brandt to wait,
ran upstairs two steps at a time, and
reappeared in long rubber boots and
mackintosh.

"I '11 walk up toward the lighthouse
and find out how they are getting on,
Mrs. Bell," he said. "We can see
them from the lantern deck. Come,
Captain Brandt, I want you with me."
A skilled seaman like the skipper might
be needed before the day was over.

Betty and Aunty Bell looked after
them until they had swung back the
garden gate with its clanking ball and
chain, and had turned to breast the gale
in their walk of a mile or more up the
shore road.

"Oh, aunty," said Betty, with a
tremor in her voice, all the blood gone
from her face, "do you think anything
will happen ? "

"Not 's long 's Cap'n Joe 's aboard,
child. He ain't a-takin' no risks he
don't know all about. Ye need n't
worry a mite. Set down an' finish yer
breakfas'. I believe Mr. Sanford ain't
done more 'n swallow his coffee," she
said, with a pitying look, as she in-
spected his plate.

The fact that her husband was ex-
posed in an open boat to the fury of
a southeaster made no more impression
upon her mind than if he had been re-
ported asleep upstairs. She knew there
was no storm the captain could not face.

XIX.

FROM THE LANTERN DECK.

Tony Marvin, the keeper of Keyport
Light, was in his little room next the
fog-horn when Sanford and the skipper,
wet and glistening as two seals, knocked
at the outer door of his quarters.

" Well, I want to know ! " broke out
Tony in his bluff, hearty way, as he

Caleb West.

217

opened the door. " Come in, — come in !
Nice weather for ducks, ain't it? Sun-
thin' 's up, or you fellers would n't be
out to-day," leading the way to his
room. "Anybody drownded? " with a
half -laugh.

" Not yet, Tony, " said Sanf ord in a
serious tone. He had known the keeper
for years, — had, in fact, helped him
get his appointment at the Light. "But
I 'm worried about Captain Joe and
Caleb. " He opened his coat, and walked
across the room to a bench set against
the whitewashed wall, little puddles of
water forming behind him as he moved.
"Did you see them go by? They 're
in Captain Potts's Dolly Varden."

"Gosh hang, no! Ye ain't never
tellin' me, be ye, that the cap'n 's gone
to the Ledge in all this smother ? And
that fool Caleb with him, too ? "

"Yes, and Lonny Bowles," inter-
rupted the skipper. As he spoke he
pulled off one of his water-logged boots
and poured the contents into a fire-
bucket standing against the wall.

"How long since they started ? " said
the keeper anxiously, taking down his
spyglass from a rack above the buckets.

"Half an hour ago."

"Then they 're this side of Crotch
Island yit, if they 're anywheres. Let 's
go up to the lantern. Mebbe we can
see 'em," he said, unlatching the door
of the tower. "Better leave them boots
behind, Mr. Sanford, and shed yer coat.
A feller's knees git purty tired climbin'
these steps, when he ain't used to 't;
there 's a hundred and ten of 'em.
Here, try these slippin's of mine," and
he kicked a pair of slippers from under
a chair. "Guess they '11 fit ye. Seems
to me Caleb 's been doin' his best to git
drownded since that high-flier of a gal
left him. He come by here daylight,
one mornin' awhile ago, in a sharpie
that you would n't cross a creek in, and
it bio win' half a gale. I ain't surprised
o' nothin' in Caleb, but Cap'n Joe
ought 'er have more sense. What 's he
goin' for, anyhow, to-day ? " he added,

as he placed his foot on the first iron
step of the spiral staircase.

"He 's taken the new pump with
him," said Sanford, as he followed the
keeper up the spiral stairway, the skip-
per close behind. "They broke the old
pump on Saturday, and everything is
stopped on the Ledge. Captain knows
we 're behind, and he doesn't want to
lose an hour. But it was a foolish ven-
ture. He had no business to risk his
life in a blow like this, Tony." There
was a serious tone in Sanf ord 's voice,
which quickened the keeper's step.

"What good is the pump to him, if
he does get it there? Men can't work
to-day, " Tony answered. He was now
a dozen steps ahead, his voice sounding
hollow in the reverberations of the round
tower.

"Oh, that ain't a-goin' to stop us! "
shouted the skipper from below, resting
a moment to get his breath as he spoke.
"We 've got the masonry clean out o'
water; we 're all right if Cap'n Joe can
git steam on the h'ister."

The keeper, whose legs had become
as supple as a squirrel's in the five years
he had climbed up and down these stairs,
reached the lantern deck some minutes
ahead of the others. He was wiping
the sweat from the lantern glass with
a clean white cloth, and drawing back
the day curtains so that they could see
better, when Sanf ord 's head appeared
above the lens deck.

Once upon the iron floor of the deck,
the roar of the wind and the dash of
the rain, which had been deadened by
the thick walls of the structure sur-
rounding the staircase below, burst upon
them seemingly with increased fury. A
tremulous, swaying motion was plainly
felt. A novice would have momentarily
expected the structure to measure its
length on the rocks below. Above the
roar of the storm could be heard, at in-
tervals, the thunder of the surf breaking
on Crotch Island beach.

"Gosh A'mighty! " exclaimed the
keeper, adjusting the glass, which he

218

Caleb West.

had carried up in his hand. "It 's
a-humpiii' things, and no mistake. See
them rollers break on Crotch Island, "
and he swept his glass around. "I see
'em. There they are, — three o' them.
There 's Cap'n Joe, — ain't no mistak-
in' him. He 's got his cap on, same 's
he allers wears. And there's Caleb;
his beard 's a-flyin' straight out. Who 's
that in the red flannen shirt ? "

"Lonny Bowles," said the skipper.

"Yes, that 's Bowles. He 's a-bail-
in' for all he 's worth. Cap'n Joe 's
got the tiller and Caleb 's a-hangin' on
the sheet. Here, Mr. Sanf ord, " and
he held out the glass, "ye kin see 'em
plain 's day."

Sanford waved the glass away. The
keeper's eyes, he said, were better ac-
customed to scanning a scene like this.
He would rather take Marvin's reports
than rely on his own eyesight. He him-
self could see the Dolly, a mile or more
this side of Crotch Island Point, and
nearly two miles away from where the
three watchers stood. She was hug-
ging the inside shore-line, her sail close-
reefed. He could even make out the
three figures, which were but so many
black" dots beaded along her gunwale.
All about the staggering boat seethed
the gray sea, mottled in wavy lines of
foam. Over this circled white gulls,
shrieking as they flew.

"He's gittin' ready to go about,"
continued the keeper, his eye still to
the glass. "I see Caleb shiftin' his
seat. They know they can't make the
P'int on that leg. Jiminy-whiz, but
it 's soapy out there ! See 'er take that
roller! Gosh!"

As he spoke the boat careened, the
dots crowded together, and the Dolly
bore away from the shore. It was evi-
dently Captain Joe's intention to give
Crotch Island Point a wide berth and
then lay a straight course for the Ledge,
now barely visible through the haze, the
derricks and masonry alone showing
clear above the fringe of breaking surf
tossed white against the dull gray sky.

All eyes were now fixed on the Dol-
ly. Three times she laid a course to-
ward the Ledge, and three times she
was forced back behind the island.

"They've got to give it up," said
the keeper, laying down his glass.
"That tide cuts round that 'ere'p'int
like a mill-tail, to say nothin' o' them
smashers that 's rollin' in. How she
keeps afloat out there is what beats me. "

"She wouldn't if Cap'n Joe wasn't
at the tiller, " said the skipper, with a
laugh. "Ye can't drown him no more
'n a water-rat." He had an abiding
faith in Captain Joe.

Sanf ord 's face brightened. An over-
whelming anxiety for the safety of the
endangered men had almost unnerved
him. It was some comfort to feel
Captain Brandt's confidence in Captain
Joe's ability to meet the situation; for
that little cockle-shell battling before
him as if for its very life — one mo-
ment on top of a mountain of water, and
the next buried out of sight — held be-
tween its frail sides not only two of the
best men whom he knew, but really two
of the master spirits of their class. One
of them, Captain Joe, Sanford admired
more than any other man, loving him,
too, as he had loved but few.

With a smile to the skipper, he looked
off again toward the sea. He saw the
struggling boat make a fourth attempt
to clear the Point, and in the movement
lurch wildly : he saw, too, that her long
boom was swaying from side to side.
Through the driving spray he made out
that two of the dots were trying to steady
it. The third dot was standing in the
stern.

Here some new movement caught his
eye, and the color left his face. He
strained his neck forward ; then taking
the glass from the skipper watched the
little craft intently.

"There 's something the matter," he
said nervously, after a moment's pause.
"That 's Captain Joe waving to one of
those two smacks out there scudding in
under close reefs. Look yourself; am

Caleb West.

219

I right, Tony ? " and he passed the
glass to the keeper again.

"Looks like it, sir," replied Tony
in a Ijw tone, the end of the glass fixed
on the tossing boat. "The smack sees
'em now, sir. She 's goin' about."

The fishing- smack careened, fluttered
in the wind like a baffled pigeon, and
bore across to the plunging boat.

"The spray 's a-flyin' so ye can't see
clear, sir, " said the keeper, his eye still
at the glass. "She ain't actin' right,
somehow ; that boom seems to bother
'em. Cap'n Joe 's runnin' for'ard.
Gosh! that one went clean over 'er.
Look out ! Look out ! " in quick cre-
scendo, as if the endangered crew could
have heard him. "See 'er take 'em!
There 's another went clean across. My
God, Mr. Sanford! she 's over, — cap-
sized! "

Sanford made a rush for the staircase,
a rash, unreasonable impulse to help
taking possession of him. The keeper
caught him firmly by the arm.

"Come back, sir ! You 're only wast-
in' yer breath. That smack '11 get 'em. "

Captain Brandt picked up the glass
that the keeper had dropped. His
hands shook so he could hardly adjust
the lens.

"The boom's broke," he said in a
trembling voice ; "that 's what ails 'em.
She 's bottom side up. Lord, if she
ain't a-wallowin' ! I never 'spected to
see Cap'n Joe in a hole like that. They
're all three in th' water; ain't a man
livin' can swim ashore in that sea!
Why don't that blamed smack go about ?
They '11 sink 'fore she can get to 'em."

Sanford leaned against the brass rail
of the great lens, his eyes on the fishing-
smack swooping down to the rescue.
The helplessness of his position, his
absolute inability to help the drowning
men, overwhelmed him: Captain Joe
and Caleb perishing before his eyes,
and he powerless to lift a hand.

" Do you see the captain anywhere ? "
he said, with an effort at self-control.
The words seemed to clog his throat.

"Not yet, sir, but there 's Lonny, an*
there 's Caleb. You look, Mr. Mar-
vin," he said, turning to the keeper.
He could not trust himself any longer.
For the first time his faith in Captain
Joe had failed him.

Marvin held the glass to his eye and
covered the boat. He hardly dared
breathe.

"Can't see but two, sir." His voice
was broken and husky. "Can't make
out the cap'n nowheres. Something
must 'a' struck him an' stunned him.
My — my — ain't it a shame for him
to cut up a caper like this ! I allers
told Cap'n Joe he 'd get hurted in some
foolish kick-up. Why in hell don't
them fellers do something ? If they
don't look out, the Dolly '11 drift so far
they '11 lose him, — standin' there like
two dummies an' lettin' a man drown!
Lord ! Lord ! ain't it too bad ! " The
keeper's eyes filled. Everything was
dim before him.

The skipper sank on the oil-chest and
bowed his head. Sanford 's hands were
over his face. If the end had come, he
did not want to see it.

The small, close lantern became as
silent as a death-chamber. The keeper,
his back against the lens rail, folded his
arms across his chest and stared out to
sea. His face bore the look of one
watching a dying man. Sanford did not
move. His thoughts were on Aunty
Bell. What should he say to her?
Was there not something he could have
done? Should he not, after all, have
hailed the first tug in the harbor and
gone in search of them before it was too
late?

The seconds dragged. The silence in
its intensity became unbearable. With
a deep indrawn sigh, Captain Brandt
turned toward Sanford and touched him.
"Come away," he said, with the ten-
derness of one strong man who suffers
and is stirred with greater sorrow by
another's grief. "This ain't no place
for you, Mr. Sanford. Come away."

Sanford raised his eyes and was about

220

Caleb West.

• to speak, when the keeper threw up his
arms with a joyous shout and seized the
glass. "There he is! I see his cap!
That's Cap'n Joe! He's holdin' up
his hands. Caleb 's crawlin' along the
bottom ; he 's reachin' down an' haulin'
Cap'n Joe up. Now he 's on 'er keel."

Sanford and Captain Brandt sprang
to their feet, crowding close to the lan-
tern glass, their eyes fastened on the
Dolly. Sanford 's hands were trem-
bling. Hot, quick tears rolled down his
cheek and dropped from his chin. The
joyful news had unnerved him more than
the horror of the previous moments.
There was no doubt of its truth; he
could see, even with the naked eye, the
captain lying flat on the boat's keel.
He thought he could follow every line
of his body, never so precious to him as
now.

"He 's all right," he said in a dazed
way — " all right — all right, " repeat-
ing it over and over to himself, as a
child would do. Then, with a half-
stagger, he turned and laid his hand on
the keeper's shoulder.

"Thank God, Tony! Thank God!"

The keeper's hand closed tight in
Sanford 's. For a moment he did not
speak.

" Almighty close shave, sir, " he said
slowly in a broken whisper, looking into
Sanford 's eyes.

Captain Brandt's face was radiant.
"Might 'a' knowed he 'd come up some-
'ers, sir. Did n't I tell ye ye could n't
drown him ? But where in thunder has
he been under water all this time ?" with
a forced, half-natural laugh. The laugh
not only expressed his joy at the great
relief, but carried with it a reminder
that he had never seriously doubted the
captain's ability to save himself.

All eyes were now fastened on the
smack. As she swept past the cap-
sized boat her crew leaned far over
the side, reached down and caught two
of the shipwrecked men, leaving one
man still clinging to the keel, the sea
breaking over him every moment. San-

ford took the glass, and saw that this
man was Lonny Bowles, and that Cap-
tain Joe, now safe aboard the smack,
was waving his cap to the second smack,
which hove to in answer. Presently
the hailed smack rounded in, lowered
her mainsail, and hauled Lonny aboard.
She then took the overturned Dolly in
tow, and made at once for the harbor.
When this was done, the first smack,
with Captain Joe and Caleb on board,
shook a reef from its mainsail, turned
about,* and despite the storm laid a
straight course back to the Ledge.

This daring and apparently hopeless
attempt of Captain Joe to carry out his
plan of going to the Ledge awoke a
new anxiety in Sanford. There was no
longer the question of personal danger
to the captain or the men; the fishing-
smack was a better sea boat than the
Dolly, of course, but why make the trip
at all when the pump had been lost
from the overturned boat, and no one
could land at the Ledge ? Even from
where they all stood in the lantern they
could see the big rollers flash white as
they broke over the enrockment blocks,
the spray drenching the tops of the der-
ricks. No small boat could live in such
a sea, — not even the life-boat at the
Ledge.

As the incoming smack drew near,
Sanford, followed by the keeper and
Captain Brandt, hurried down the spi-
ral staircase and into the keeper's room
below, where they drew on their oil-
skins and heavy boots, and made their
way to the lighthouse dock.

When she came within hailing dis-
tance, Captain Brandt mounted a spile
and shouted above the roar of the
gale, "Bowles, ahoy! Anybody hurt,
Lonny? "

A man in a red shirt detached him-
self from among the group of men hud-
dled in the smack's bow, stepped on
the rail, and, putting his hands to his
mouth, trumpeted back, "No! "

"What 's the cap'n gone to the
Ledge for ? "

Caleb West.

221

" Gone to set the pump ! "

"Thought the pump was lost over-
board ! " cried Sanford.

"No, sir; Cap'n Joe dived under
the Dolly an' found it catched fast to
the seat, jes' 's he 'spected, an' Caleb
hauled it aboard. Cap'n tol' me to
tell ye, sir, if ye came up, that he 'd
hev it set all right to-day, blow or no
blow."

"Ain't that jes' like the cap'n?"
said the keeper, with a loud laugh, slap-
ping his thigh with his hand. "That 's
where he was when we thought he was
drownded, — he was a-divin' fer that
pump. Land o' Moses, ain't he a good
un!"

Captain Brandt said nothing, but a
smile of happy pride overspread his
face. Captain Joe was still his hero.

Sanford spent the afternoon between
Aunty Bell's kitchen and the parapher-
nalia dock, straining his eyes seaward
in search of an incoming smack which
would bring the captain. The wind
had shifted to the northwest, sweeping
out the fog and piling the low clouds
in heaps. The rain had ceased, and a
dash of pale lemon light shone above
the blue-gray sea.

About sundown his quick eye detected
a tiny sail creeping in behind Crotch
Island. As it neared the harbor and
he made out the lines of the fishing-
smack of the morning, a warm glow
tingled through him ; it would not be
long now before he had his hands on
Captain Joe.

When the smack came bowling into
the harbor under double»reefs, her wind-
blown jib a cup, her sail a saucer, and
rounded in as graceful as a skater on
.the outer edge, Sanford 's hand was the
first that touched the captain's as he
sprang from the smack's deck to the
dock.

"Captain Joe," he said. His voice
broke as he spoke ; all his love was in
his eyes. "Don't ever do that again.
I saw it all from the lighthouse lantern.

You have no right to risk your life this
way."

"'T ain't nothin', Mr. Sanford."
His great hand closed tight over that
of the young engineer. "It 's all right
now, and the pump 's screwed fast.
Caleb had steam up on the h'ister when
I left him on the Ledge. Boom had n't
'a' broke short off, we 'd 'a' been there
sooner."

" We thought you were gone, once, "
continued Sanford, his voice full of
anxiety, still holding to the captain's
hand as they walked toward the house.

"Not in the Dolly, sir, " in an apolo-
getic tone, as if he wanted to atone for
the suffering he had caused his friend.
"She 's got wood enough in 'er to float
anywheres. That 's what I took 'er out
for."

Aunty Bell met them at the kitchen
door.

"I hearn ye was overboard," she
said quietly, no more stirred over the
day's experience than if some cliild had
stepped into a puddle and had come in
for a change of shoes. "Ye 're wet
yet, be n't ye? " patting his big chest
to make sure.

"Yes, guess so," he answered care-
lessly, feeling his own arms as if to
confirm his wife's inquiry. "Got a
dry shirt?"

"Yes; got everything hangin' there
on a chair 'fore the kitchen fire, " and
she closed the door upon him and San-
ford.

"Beats all, Mr. Sanford, don't it? "
the captain continued in short sentences,
broken by breathless pauses, as he
stripped off his wet clothes before the
blazing fire, one jerk for the suspenders,
another for the trousers, Sanford hand-
ing him the dry garments one after
another. He was so jubilant over the
captain's safety that he was eager to
do him any service.

"Beats all, I say; don't it, now?
There 's that Cap'n Potts: been a sea-
man, man an' boy, all his life," — here
the grizzled wet head was hidden for a

222

The fjdbor Unions and the Negro.

moment as a clean white shirt was
drawn over it, — "yet he ain't got sense
'nough to keep a boom from rottin'
'board a cat-boat, " — the head was up
now, and Sanford, fumbling under the
chin whisker, helped the captain with
the top button, — "an' snappin' square
off in a little gale o' wind like that.
There, thank ye, guess that '11 do."

When he had seated himself in his
chair, his sturdy legs — stout and tough
as two dock-logs — stretched out before
the fire, his rough hands spread to the
blaze, warming the big, strong body
that had been soaking wet for ten con-
secutive hours, Sanford took a seat be-
side him, and, laying his hand on the
captain's knee, said in a gentle voice,

"Why did you risk your life for that
pump ? "

" 'Cause she acted so durned ornery, "
he blurted out in an angry tone. " Jes*
see what she did : gin out night 'fore
last jes' 's we was gittin' ready toh'ist
that big stretcher; kep' me an' Ca-
leb up two nights a-castin' an' borin'
on 'er out ; then all of a sudden she
thought she 'd upset an' fool us. I tell
ye, ye 've got to take hold of a thing
like that good an' early, or it '11 git
away from ye." He swung one hand
high over his head as if it had been
a sledge-hammer. "Now she '11 stay
put till I git through with her. I
ain't a-goin' to let no damned pump
beat me ! "

F. Hopkinson Smith.

(To be continued.)

THE LABOR UNIONS AND THE NEGRO.

PERHAPS he used it from choice. It
may have been the rule of the company
that he should use it. However that
may be, I could not do otherwise than
remark the fact that the porter deferen-
tially held out a silver tray to receive the
chair - checks from passengers. It was
the nicest act of discrimination I had ever
observed in the workday world. I was
on a train between New York and Bos-
ton. The porter was only an agent in a
business transaction of a corporation ; but
the agent at the station who had thrown
out the check with businesslike deftness,
and the conductor who had briskly ex-
changed that check for another, were also
only agents in the transaction. In their
daily intercourse with the public they
must make friends ; and, with the faith-
ful performance of their duties, they very
properly look forward to advancement in
their chosen career. The silver salver,
however, marks the porter ; it is the badge
of all his tribe. He may be an educated

man, as ambitious and as intelligent as
the baggage agent or as the conductor ;
but he must keep his place, and that
place is at the bottom, and his color fixes
it. He is an American citizen, and the-
oretically he enjoys inalienable rights,
among which are liberty and the pursuit
of happiness ; but in his case liberty and
the pursuit of happiness have their limits,
fixed rigidly by a sentiment, — the sen-
timent of organized labor in the United
States.

If the corporation insists on the sil-
ver salver, it only frankly indicates to
the porter his place, and warns him not
to aspire to a higher one. A corpora-
tion is organized to make money along
the lines of least resistance, and not to
promote democratic principles. When
one remembers the controversies with
Walking Delegates, Master Workmen,
Grand Organizers, and Chiefs of Bro-
therhoods which the officers of the com-
pany must constantly endure, one can-

The Labor Unions and the Negro.

223

not blame them if they refuse to provoke
any trouble that can be avoided. If the
porter uses his tray from choice, and not
in obedience to a formal order from his
employer, he frankly indicates that he
knows his place, and that he defers to
a feeling too powerful to oppose. His
wages are very small, for he is expected
to live on the generosity of the traveling
public. The tray is the badge of defer-
ence : he philosophically keeps himself
in his place and makes the best of it.

The sentiment which denies him pro-
motion and his own deference to it are
the result of two separate social develop-
ments which it is the purpose of this pa-
per to point out. They present a grave,
neglected problem. The subject does
not suggest to my mind merely an ap-
peal for sympathy or justice. It suggests
this less dignified but more important in-
quiry : How long can the community af-
ford to deny equality of opportunity to
more than one tenth of its population,
while it makes the most active efforts to
educate them ?

If this hostility to the negro could be
traced to an innate social antipathy, one
might consider it hopeless to try to erad-
icate it. But it cannot be so traced. His
industrial advancement is now checked
by the interference of the labor organ-
izations. In the labor movement, the
old guild idea of exclusiveness is yet
opposed to the more recent idea of in-
clusiveness ; and the negro's fate is in-
volved in this struggle. In order to
make the subject clear, it is necessary
briefly to review the labor movement in
the United States with reference to the
career of the negro as a handicraftsman.

In a very clear analysis of the condi-
tions of laboring men in Philadelphia a
century ago, Mr. Talcott Williams has
shown that " side by side with the slave of
color labored the ' white redemptioner,'
not the less a slave. The little city of
30,000 inhabitants, with 7000 or 8000
wage-earners, yearly saw from 2000 to
3000 white men and women land whose

labor for six and eight years to come was
sold on the auction-block to the highest
bidder to pay the cost of passage. This
white slavery . . . was the rule for all the
immigration of a century ago." With
irregular work and with a depreciated,
varying currency, a laborer received
forty-three cents a day. A carpenter or
a blacksmith worked a month for a suit
of clothes, and two weeks for a pair of
boots. In other words, at the beginning
of the American Revolution common la-
bor was degraded to the slave standard.
The workmen were slaves, a few free
negroes, " redemptioners," and " poor
whites." They worked side by side.
No social antipathies seem to have dis-
turbed the miserable monotony of their
service, though there are many evidences
that the white workmen instinctively felt
that the cause of their wretchedness was
the existence of slavery.

Already in the slave population there
had appeared three distinct classes, and
the field-hands, the mansion-house ser-
vants, and the handicraftsmen were clear-
ly separated groups. The agricultural
laborers were herded in the quarters,
subject to a system of repression which
varied with the ratio of white to black
population in the several colonies. In
New Hampshire, for instance, where the
ratio was one black to one hundred whites,
the blacks enjoyed comparative freedom.
They learned to read and they organized
their own societies. In South Carolina,
where there were two blacks to one white,
such freedom would have been danger-
ous ; and the sense of self-protection nat-
urally impelled the master class to enact
a " black " code, and to punish severe-
ly any one who should try to teach the
slaves or to effect an organization among
them. This code was directed particu-
larly against the field-hands, because of
the great number of them.

The servants at the " great house "
were taken from the quarters. Tidy and
bright men and women were selected,
and this service soon developed a distinct

224

Labor Unions and the Negro.

class. The men came in touch with their
masters only where the masters' luxuries
and indulgences began. The women were
exposed to the masters' will. These ser-
vants became a highly favored class, but
they were the bearers of the silver salver.
They had no opportunity to learn by ex-
ample or by precept those habits of ap-
plication, frugality, and morality which
are so important in the formative period
of a dependent race. Indulgence and
extravagance were the marks of the fine
gentleman as the mansion-house servants
saw him, and their contact with him did
not extend to the work whereby he made
his contribution to the real progress of
the community.

Now, while the farm-hand has been
working out slowly his own elevation,
and is not far removed from his African
progenitors, and while the great-house
servant has developed into the luxury-
loving menial type of to-day, the develop-
ment of the laborer and skilled workman
has been checked. There were skilled
workmen even among the slaves. Apt
men were selected from the farm-hands
to raise barns, to mend harness, to put
on tires. At the seaports sailing vessels
required skilled work. General mending
soon became specialized, and the learning
of trades followed. At the beginning of
the Revolution, almost every communi-
ty had its slave blacksmiths, carpenters,
and laborers, while at the seaports slave
calkers and stevedores worked with re-
demptioners and poor whites. The skilled
workman, besides, enjoyed privileges
which developed his character. While
other slaves were not permitted to pass
the limits of the plantation except under
strict surveillance, he enjoyed compara-
tive freedom in going and coming. He
sometimes worked miles away from his
master. Often he was permitted to " hire
his time." By this arrangement, he paid
his master a fixed sum weekly, and re-
tained as his own whatever surplus he
could earn. He was daily testing his
skill against that of other men. The con-

fidence of his master inspired self-confi-
dence. More important than all else, he
was permitted, as a rule, to have his own
little hut, where he lived with the mo-
ther of his children, removed alike from
the degradation of the field-hands' quar-
ters and the corruption of the great house.
This little hut, the negro's first home,
was a centre of moral impulse for the
growth of the best type of the colored
American of to-day.

At first this hard school of industrial
education was under the direction of
white mechanics, and whites and blacks
worked together. The result was low
wages for the whites and free blacks ;
for public sentiment rated labor by the
slave standard of value. When, early
in this century, white workmen began to
organize, they instinctively struck at
slavery as the cause of their low wages.
Black workmen, though free, were not
permitted to organize against the em-
ploying class, and the distinction between
black workmen and white workmen real-
ly began when the organization of white
laborers began. Nevertheless, this dis-
tinction was not felt by the one nor made
oppressive by the other. The blacks con-
tinued to work at trades. But in the
idea of exclusion which animated the
early labor organizations lay the germ
of the present discrimination against the
black workman, though the first leaders
seem not to have understood it.

Indeed, the early labor movement was
naturally closely allied to the anti-slav-
ery movement. The Voice of Industry,
one of the first labor journals, referring
to the existence of slavery, declared in
its salutatory that " under the present
state of society labor becomes disrepu-
table." Young America, another early
labor journal, printed the " demands " of
the workmen at the head of its editorial
page. Among them was " the abolition
of chattel slavery and wages slavery."
The close sympathy of the t^ Move-
ments was shown by the active participa-
tion of William Lloyd Garrison, Charles_

The Labor Unions and the Negro.

225

A. Dana, Wendell Phillips, and Henry
Wilson, at a meeting of the Working-
men's Party held in Boston. Among the
resolutions passed was one denouncing
the system which held " three millions
of our brethren and sisters in bondage."
Although negroes were not active in the
labor associations, the early organizers
had no idea of denying equal opportunity
to them in the workday world. They
continued to work with white men, and
there seems to have existed a human
sympathy between the two classes. The
organizations were agitating for higher
wages and a ten-hour day. They struck
at negro slavery ; and it was near the
middle of the century before they struck
the negro man.

As organization went on, the idea of
exclusion, of obstruction, became more
and more prominent. Union workmen
were not satisfied merely to refrain from
working when they had declared a strike.
They determined to prevent other men
from taking the places made vacant.
Throughout the South and the North
protests began to appear against slave
workmen doing the work for which free-
men should be well paid. Immigration,
not of the redemptioners of a half-cen-
tury before, but of the " assisted " class
from Europe, set in ; and the opening of
the Mexican war found the unions pro-
testing against free blacks and foreign-
ers. They had reached the point where
the exclusive idea was directing the pow-
er of organization against any man who
could be distinctively marked.

Some of the friends of equality of op-
portunity for colored workmen have felt
impelled to denounce the trade unions ;
unfortunately, I think, because they pro-
voke resentment by the labor leaders
against the colored man, and by inference,
at least, accuse the unions of discrimina-
tion as if it were a conscious act delib-
erately aimed at the colored man. The
unions have simply followed the develop-
ment of the idea of exclusion. They have
discriminated also against women of the

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 484. 15

white race, and, by the limitation of ap-
prenticeships, against their own children.

Although exclusion is the method of
the labor unions, the Knights of Labor,
established about a quarter of a century
ago, promulgated the idea that all peo-
ple who work should be organized, all
fields of human activity opened to com-
petition, and a universal system of edu-
cation established with a view to the gen-
eral improvement of the masses. The
ultimate object was to secure the bet-
terment of the wage-earners' condition.
Colored workmen were welcomed into
this organization ; and when its Gener-
al Assembly met at Richmond, in 1887,
there were in that city alone more than
ten thousand members. A controversy
arose as to what rights and privileges
should be given to colored delegates at
this meeting in a Southern city. Mr.
Powderly stood against discrimination,
and maintained that the standard by
which labor is measured is the standard
of the lowest workman. He carried the
Assembly, but he never recovered his
former prestige in the order. Recently,
when he received a nomination for an
important government office, labor lead-
ers throughout the country opposed his
appointment; and as the leading expo-
nent of the " inclusive " idea in labor or-
ganization he has been driven from his
chosen field of work. During the past
ten years there has been no radical ut-
terance from any leader of authority ad-
vocating equality of opportunity for the
negro.

The labor movement, therefore, dis-
tinctly denies equality to the colored
workman, and the three classes of ne-
groes are to-day moving along the old
lines of life. The field -hands, left to
themselves, without civilizing contact
with other classes, are the least removed
from the standard of life of their African
progenitors. Unfortunately, they are now
moving in large numbers into the great
centres of population, North and South,
and passing under the great-house influ-

226

Labor Unions and the Negro.

ence. Because they are unprepared for
competition and lack the moral develop-
ment to face the temptations of city life,
their increase presents a serious problem.
The mansion - house servant class has
grown larger, for it has been replenished
from the other two classes. This ten-
dency has seriously affected the character
of the great majority of the colored peo-
ple throughout the country ; and Amer-
ican sentiment has come habitually to re-
gard the negro chiefly as the domestic
servant type.

The handicraftsmen and laborers con-
tinued to increase so long as labor or-
ganizations gave them opportunity ; but
the exclusive idea led to discouragement
that checked a natural growth and sti-
fled the colored citizen's best aspirations.
In the city of Washington, for example,
at one period, some of the best buildings
were constructed by colored workmen.
Their employment in large numbers con-
tinued some time after the war. The
British Legation, the Centre Market, the
Freedmen's Bank, and at least four well-
built schoolhouses are monuments to the
acceptability of their work under fore-
men of their own color. To-day, apart
from the hod-carriers, not a colored work-
man is to be seen on new buildings, and
a handful of jobbers and patchers, with
possibly two carpenters who can under-
take a large job, are all who remain of
the body of colored carpenters and build-
ers and stone-cutters who were generally
employed a quarter of a century ago. I
talked recently with a mother who had
done her best to secure an apprenticeship
for her boy to learn the confectionery
trade. She told me that the uniform re-
ply was that employers had no objection,
but that they feared the resentment of
their white workmen. Yet the man who
gave his name to Wormley's Hotel start-
ed as a pastry baker, and was one of the
best confectioners in Washington before
the war. If a colored man learns the
trade of printer or bookbinder and works
at the Government Printing Office, the

union will admit him to membership, and
allow him to remain so long as he con-
tinues in the government's employment.
But once out of the public service, he
finds it impossible to secure work on a
union newspaper or in a union office. A
colored man may make an excellent re-
cord in the departments as a bookkeep-
er, an accountant, a pension or patent ex-
aminer. Such experts, if they be white,
are sought by large business and profes-
sional firms. The negro, whatever his
record, finds all doors closed against him.
Thus, in our national capital may be ob-
served the effects of the discrimination
of labor organizations against the negro.
It has entered into the very soul of the
workday world, and infected even those
workmen who are not organized.

Throughout the South the same change
of sentiment is to be observed. Formerly
negro stevedores worked on the wharves
at New Orleans, and white laborers ex-
perienced no inconvenience in working
with them. The effective organization
of white laborers was closely followed by
the driving of negroes from the levees at
the muzzles of loaded rifles. The iron
industry is passing through the same ex-
perience ; and though white and black
builders are still to be seen working to-
gether in some places, wherever the union
develops effective strength the black
workmen must put down the trowel and
take up the tray. I think that the Cigar
Makers' Union is the only national la-
bor organization which has consistently
and firmly repelled all attempts looking
toward the exclusion of colored skilled
workmen. Indeed, ability to work, the
negro's sole heritage from slavery and
his only hope as a freedman, does not se-
cure him opportunity. The results have
been a lack of incentive to the young
generation to learn trades, 8 general en-
try into domestic service by many of the
men who would have been the race's best
representatives, and the entry of a dis-
proportionate number into the learned
professions. Many men who would have

The Labor Unions and the Negro.

227

been successful mechanics and honor-
able citizens are now mediocre lawyers,
preachers, and teachers, exposed to the
temptation to live by their wits. Every
day Northern philanthropists learn from
experience the advisability of looking
into the antecedents of the promoters of
schemes for the improvement of the ne-
gro race.

It was to offset these effects that the
work of Hampton, Tuskegee, and other
trade schools of the South was organized
on special lines. General Armstrong in-
sisted that his boys should not be discour-
aged by the outlook, and that they must
learn trades while following the regular
curriculum. Mr. Frissell, his successor,
and Mr. Washington of Tuskegee, his
disciple, are carrying out the idea. This
system of education has been the great
counterforce to the tendencies that I have
been describing ; not infrequently atten-
tion is called in the South to the advan-
tages which negro youth are enjoying,
by reason of it, over the white youth of
some of the states where there are few
trade schools. Yet an incident once oc-
curred at Tuskegee itself which is a sharp
reminder of the labor unions' discrimi-
nation against colored workmen. The
school had a contract in tinsmithing which
required that the work should be done in
a shorter time than it was possible for
the students to do it alone. The mana-
ger of the tin-shop sent to Montgomery
for tinsmiths. They came, but when
they found that they would have to work
with the colored students, who had al-
ready begun the job, they declined, ex-
plaining that the rule of their union for-
bade their working with colored men.
The manager firmly declared that they
must work with the students or not at
all. They had spent their money to come
to Tuskeges, and they were indignant
that they were bound by such a rule ;
but fearing the subsequent resentment
of their fellow craftsmen at Montgom-
ery, they passed the day in idleness, and
at night went home. The union offered

no obstacles to their working for a col-
ored man's money. The men personally,
in this instance, had no feeling against
the students. There was no race anti-
pathy shown by the incident : it was
simply the ancient idea of exclusion, of
obstruction, asserting itself through the
union with perf ect, and in this case dis-
astrous consistency.

There are now in Kentucky, Tennes-
see, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, the
Carolinas, and Virginia between four
hundred and five hundred cotton-mills,
besides about seventy-five knitting-mills.
Yet if organized labor succeed in its pre-
sent agitation, the colored men and wo-
men, the cheapest and the most natural
working class in these states, who, more-
over, Jt is admitted, are as deft and trust-
worthy as the average factory operative,
will be excluded from their share in this
department of activity. Southern sen-
timent as expressed by the newspapers is
almost unanimously opposed to this injus-
tice, and the real struggle of the unions
is in opposition to the general desire of
the employing class of the South to give
the negro whatever work he is capable
of doing.

As we extend our inquiry into the
Northern states, the effects of the ex-
clusive policy of the unions become more
manifest. When a philanthropic move-
ment was started in Philadelphia, recent-
ly, to investigate the condition of the
colored people, it was suggested that the
work should be begun, not in the locali-
ties inhabited by large numbers of ne-
groes, but in the workshops and factories,
stores and counting-houses, in which col-
ored people are uniformly denied equal-
ity of opportunity. The suggestion was
not adopted. To the people of the North,
whose attitude is so different from the
attitude of the people of the South, whom
they sometimes criticise, this phase of the
color question is particularly unattrac-
tive ; and even our sociological students,
whose work is endowed by men who prac-
tice this discrimination, seem to shrink

228

The \Ldbor Unions and the Negro.

from the sweeping criticism which this
line of investigation must inevitably di-
rect against their patrons.

The Society of Friends, more than
sixty years ago, saw the importance of
this phase of the question, and with
characteristic directness and sagacity it
compiled some records which are very
important as the basis for comparisons.
In the year 1838, the state of Pennsyl-
vania adopted a constitution which de-
prived the negroes of the right of suf-
frage which they had enjoyed forty-seven
years. In that year, members of the
Society employed Benjamin C. Bacon to
compile a directory showing the occupa-
tions in which colored men and women
were employed. There are men who
remember Mr. Bacon and the gre^t care
with which he secured his data. Among
the occupations which he enumerates are
baker, basket-maker, blacksmith, black
and white smith, bleacher and hair-dress-
er, bleeder, boat-maker, brass-founder,
brewer, bricklayer and plasterer, brush-
maker, cabinet-maker, calker, chair-
bottomer, confectioner, cooper, currier,
dyer and scourer, fuller, hair - worker,
iron-forger, mason, milliner, nail-maker,
painter, painter and glazier, paper-
maker, plasterer, plumber, potter, print-
er, rope-maker, sail-maker, scythe and
sickle maker, ship carpenter, stone-cut-
ter, sugar - refiner, tanner, tobacconist,
turner, weaver, wheelwright. Passing
over the reports of intervening years to
that of 1859, by the same authority we
find that the colored people had dropped
out of six trades, and that in twenty-one
years the immigration from the South
and apprenticeships had brought forward
representatives of forty -one trades not
mentioned in the report of 1838. In
that year nine hundred and ninety-seven
men and women had skilled trades. In
1859 the number had grown to sixteen
hundred and thirty-seven. The obser-
vant Quaker statistician makes this very
important note : " Less than two thirds
of those who have trades follow them.

A few of the remainder pursue other
avocations from choice, but the greater
number are compelled to abandon their
trades on account of the unrelenting pre-
judice against their color."

Thus, in the city of Philadelphia, while
ability to work increased, opportunity
was more and more curtailed, and to-day
one may safely declare that practically
all the trades enumerated by Mr. Bacon
are closed against colored workmen. The
large majority of the colored workmen
of a half-century ago and their descend-
ants have come under the mansion-house
influence, and the agricultural laborers
have kept crowding into the city and en-
tei'ing upon the same menial career.

Two brothers, who were printers, came
to Philadelphia several years ago to work
at their trade. There was nothing in
their appearance to indicate their Afri-
can descent. One secured work in a
large office where white men were em-
ployed, and the other obtained a place in
the composing-room of a paper published
by colored men. At the end of two or
three years' faithful service the first of
the brothers had become the foreman of
the office where he worked. Then one
of his subordinates learned that he was a
colored man, and promptly communicat-
ed the startling news to his fellows at
the cases. They immediately appointed
a committee to warn the employer that
he must at once discharge the colored
printer, or get another force of men. The
foreman admitted that he was a colored
man, and protested that no discrimina-
tion should be made against him because
of his race.

The employer said : " I agree with you,
and your work is entirely satisfactory.
Besides, I do resent this dictation by
men who have worked with you all this
time in perfect harmony. You know
more of my business than any of the
others, — the contracts which I have on
hand, and the loss which I would suffer
if these men should suddenly leave. If
you can find me a force of colored men

The Labor Unions and the Negro.

229

as efficient as yourself, I '11 let the others
go, and take your force, retaining you
in your present position." The foreman
replied : " I cannot get such a force, but
I can suggest a plan which will insure
my obtaining work. I have a red-haired
brother who is a first-class printer. Dis-
charge me, and take him. I can then
secure his place."

The plan was adopted : the brothers
changed places, and harmony reigned
in the printing-office until the fair-haired
brother's identity was discovered. But
the first brother finally gave up the strug-
gle in despair. He left his friends and
family one day, and entered a wider
world. He became a white man among
strangers, and is now successful.

About three years ago I advised a
colored printer to apply for admission to
one of the unions. As the place of his
residence he named a street on which
many colored people live. A week or
two later three men called at his house,
and were received by his mother, who
offered to take any message they might
have for him. They gave her a sealed
envelope, and departed without a word.
The envelope contained the same sum
of money that the colored printer had
sent with his application for admission
to the union. He cannot say that the
money came from the union. He can-
not say that he was denied admission.

At the time of the last strike of street-
car conductors and motormen in Phil-
adelphia, the question of employing col-
ored men was presented both to the
company's managers and to the labor
unions. The managers declared that
they feared the resentment of the men,
and the labor leaders declared that they
would make no discrimination in their
organizations. Yet, although applica-
tions have been filed for more than a
year, no colored men are employed in
this work in a community one twentieth
of whose residents are colored people.
In Pittsburg negroes have been able to
break through the outer line of the

union's intrenchments, and it will not be
amiss to recite their experience in one of
the largest workshops in that city. The
Black Diamond Steel Works, owned by
Parke, Brother & Company, has firmly
insisted that no color-line shall exist in
the establishment. More than twenty
years ago, when Irish puddlers drew their
heats, and refused to return to work ex-
cept upon terms which were not accept-
able to Mr. Parke, the father of the
members of the present firm, colored
laborers were brought in and taught the
work. Since that time colored men have
been employed in the several depart-
ments, including one die - grinder, one
plumber, one engineer, and one man in
the crucible melting department. It is
the testimony of the resident member of
the firm that these men, including col-
ored puddlers at twenty-six furnaces,
have done satisfactory work. Mr. Parke
says that they have the same aptitude
and other characteristics as other work-
men, with the advantage that they show
more personal loyalty to employers than
foreign workmen show. In the iron and
steel works at Braddock, Homestead,
Duquesne, Sharpsburg, Etna, and Tem-
peranceville, colored men are employed.
While this is the most successful attempt
that colored men have made toward re-
gaining their former place in the indus-
tries of the state of Pennsylvania, and
while in some branches of the iron and
steel workers' organization they have
been able to break down the color-line,
one incident will serve to illustrate the
difficulties which have arisen. After Mr.
Parke had succeeded with his experi-
ment and colored workmen were doing
satisfactory work, organizers represent-
ing the unions insisted on their joining
the organizations. Carried away by the
eloquence of the agitators, several of the
men became members, and they soon
gave more of their time and attention to
agitation than to the work for which they
were paid. They were discharged by
Mr. Parke, and they proudly presented

230

The "Labor Unions and the Negro.

themselves at other shops where union
workmen were employed, and applied
for places, as victims to the cause of labor
organization. The union workmen re-
fused to work with them, and in a short
time they returned to Mr. Parke, asking
for their old places, with the lesson of
the exclusive idea impressed upon their
memories by bitter experience.

In other Northern states the colored
workmen have passed through the same
experience as in Pennsylvania, but there
are instances which indicate a degree of
uncertainty in the attitude of the local
organizations. In New York the ill feel-
ing of the foreign workmen seems to have
reached its climax during the war, when
colored laborers were mobbed in the
streets. The printers in New York ad-
mit colored men to the unions, and there
are instances of colored engineers and
masons working at their trades without
molestation. Colonel Waring as street
commissioner made the experiment of
employing a colored foreman. Here and
there colored clerks are employed in
stores. Though colored stevedores have
almost disappeared from the wharves, in
January, 1897, a new organization was
formed whose constitution declares that
there shall be no discrimination because
of " race, creed, color, or nativity." It
is in this uncertainty of the labor unions'
attitude, this apparent local hesitancy
here and there, that the colored man
finds whatever hope he may have for the
future. The situation, otherwise, is one
of gloom for him ; and information that
any colored man has entered upon a line
of work from which people of his race
are usually excluded is passed from city
to city as a word of encouragement.

An impartial review of the way by
which the unions and the colored work-
men have reached their present relations
— or lack of relations — indicates that
one cannot apply the threadbare explana-
tion of an innate racial antipathy. Ne-
groes and white men formerly worked
side by side under conditions more likely

to cause friction than those that now
exist. Employers who have insisted on
giving colored men a fair chance agree
in their testimony that after a short pro-
bation ill feeling subsides, and the negro
takes the place among other workmen
which he merits, — whether the place be
high because of his efficiency and com-
mon sense, or low for lack of them.

The labor organizations themselves are
hesitating in their course in the struggle
between the two contending ideas, the
idea of exclusion or obstruction and the
broader idea of inclusion. Men of influ-
ence among the workmen are beginning
to appreciate the fact that strikes do not
pay, and that there is something radical-
ly ineffective in the idea of obstruction.
Still, there is no evidence of an active
movement to abandon what has been the
animating principle in the undoing of the
colored workman. The field-hand class
is coming to the cities. Those who would
naturally have developed into the great
artisan class of the country are forced
into work along menial lines. Public
sentiment has been so generally affected
that the colored man has come to be as-
sociated with this kind of work, and his
effort to secure the opportunity to do bet-
ter is regarded with indifference or with a
sense of helplessness. The great crowds
of immigrants constantly coming into the
country, seeking precisely the same equal-
ity of opportunity which the negro needs,
soon imbibe the prejudice against him.
They aggravate and complicate the sit-
uation. The effect on the character of
the growing generation of colored people
is that endeavor is restrained by a sense
of the hopelessness of the struggle. Edu-
cational facilities are improving every
year, and an already large class is rapid-
ly becoming more numerous, half edu-
cated, without financial resources, denied
the work which it is capable of doing
and detesting the work it is forced to do.
It is remarkable that this class has not
shown a greater disposition to vice and
crime than is the case.

Greatness.

231

There is another effect which may be
noticed. The number of men and wo-
men who " go over to the white race "
is increasing. Men and women of spirit
struggle against the conditions of ne-
gro life ; and in desperation, when their
complexions and their hair permit, they
simply enter general competition and re-
main silent. Colored people whom they
have known in youth, as a rule, remain
silent as to their identity ; and in a
short time marriage and associations
give them a permanent standing as white
citizens. This is known among colored
persons as " passing for white." If it
were not for the social injury which
might possibly accrue to families of ex-
cellent people, — people who are thor-
oughly respected for their cultivation
and public spirit, — one might easily give
instances. Under normal industrial con-
ditions, such as exist everywhere in Eu-
rope, and in America beyond the limits
of the United States, these men and wo-
men, as a rule, would be perfectly con-
tented with their families and friends
within the lines of their own race, work-
ing at their chosen callings and without
molestation, taking the places in the com-
munity which their aptitude and appli-
cation earn for them. Forced from the
natural course of development, they are
living illustrations of the fact that this
hostile American sentiment hastens the
very process of amalgamation which it is
generally believed to prevent. In a coun-

try having so large a population as this,
the number of those who are at present
" passing for white " is not considerable
from the economic and sociological points
of view ; but with the number constantly
increasing by recruits, and with the nat-
ural increase in their families, one cannot
predict how soon their case may be re-
garded as worthy of attention.

If this be a fair statement of the facts,
a problem worthy of serious thought is
presented : about one tenth of the pop-
ulation are denied the opportunity to
grow, as the other nine tenths are invited,
encouraged, forced by open competition,
to grow. This abridgment of opportu-
nity affects the character of the whole
class. The public conscience in regard-
ing the matter becomes benumbed.

At bottom American sentiment is a
just and practical sentiment. It must
sooner or later consider the results of
such a state of things. Nowhere else in
the world is to be found such a large
class arbitrarily restrained in its efforts
to work. This restraint is unnatural.
It cannot be removed by legislation un-
less legislation be supported by a strong,
favorable public sentiment. From what-
ever point of view we choose to regard
the problem, it is clear that it is to be
solved in the minds of individuals, em-
ployers and employed, after due deliber-
ation as to its importance as an act of
justice and as a matter of high social
importance to the community.

John Stephens Durham.

GREATNESS.

MIDST noble monuments, alone at eve

I wandered, reading records of the dead, —

In spite of praise forgotten past recall ;

And near, so sheltered one might scarce perceive,

I found a lowly headstone, and I read

The word upon it : Hawthorne — that was all.

Florence Earle Coates.

232

Penelope's Progress.

PENELOPE'S PROGRESS.

HER EXPERIENCES IN SCOTLAND.

PART SECOND. IN THE COUNTRY.

XVI.

" Gae farer up the burn to Babble's Howe,
Where a' the sweets o' spring an' simmer

grow:

Between twa birks, out o'er a little lin,
The water fa's an' maks a singan din ;
A pool breast-deep, beneath as clear as glass,
Kisses, wi' easy whirls, the bord'ring grass."
The Gentle Shepherd.

THAT is what Peggy says to Jenny in
Allan Ramsay's poem, and if you sub-
stitute " Crummylowe " for " Habbie's
Howe " in the first line you will have a
lovely picture of the Farm-Steadiu'.

You come to it by turning the corner
from the inn, first passing the cottage
where the lady wishes to rent two rooms
for fifteen shillings a week, but will not
give much attendance, as she is slightly
asthmatic, and the house is always as
clean as it is this minute, and the view
from the window looking out ( on Pet-
tybaw Bay canna be surpassed at ony
money. Then comes the little house
where Will'am Seattle's sister Mary died
in May, and there wasna a bonnier wo-
man in Fife. Next is the cottage with
the pansy garden, where the lady in the
widow's cap takes five o'clock tea in the
bay window, and a snug little supper at
eight. She has for the first scones and
marmalade, and her tea is in a small
black teapot under a red cosy with a
white muslin cover drawn over it. At
eight she has more tea, and generally a
kippered herring, or a bit of cold mutton
left from the noon dinner. We note the
changes in her bill of fare as we pass
hastily by, and feel admitted quite into
the family secrets. Beyond this bay
window, which is so redolent of simple
peace and comfort that we long to go

in and sit down, is the cottage with the
double white tulips, the cottage with the
collie on the front steps, the doctor's
house with the yellow laburnum tree, and
then the house where the Disagreeable
Woman lives. She has a lovely baby,
which, to begin with, is somewhat re-
markable, as disagreeable women rarely
have babies ; or else, having had them,
rapidly lose their disagreeableness, — so
rapidly that one has not time to notice it.
The Disagreeable Woman's house is at
the end of the row, and across the road
is a wicket gate leading — Where did it
lead ? — that was the very point. Along
the left, as you lean wistfully over the
gate, there runs a stone wall topped by a
green hedge ; and on the right, first fur-
rows of pale fawn, then below furrows
of deeper brown, and mulberry and red
ploughed earth stretching down to wav-
ing fields of green, and thence to the sea,
gray, misty, opalescent, melting into the
pearly white clouds, so that one cannot
tell where sea ends and sky begins.

There is a path between the green
hedge and the ploughed field, and it leads
seductively to the farm-steadin' ; or we
felt that it migM thus lead, if we dared
unlatch the wicket gate. Seeing no sign
" Private Way," " Trespassers Not Al-
lowed," or other printed defiance to the
stranger, we were considering the open-
ing of the gate, when we observed two
female figures coming toward us along
the path, and paused until they should
come through. It was the Disagreeable
Woman (though we knew it not) and an
elderly friend. We accosted the friend,
feeling instinctively that she was framed
of softer stuff, and asked her if the path
were a private one. It was a question

Penelope's Progress.

233

that had never met her ear before, and
she was too dull or discreet to deal with
it on the instant. To our amazement,
she did not even manage to falter, " I
couldna say."

" Is the path private ? " I repeated.

" It is certainly the idea to keep it
a little private," said the Disagreeable
Woman, coming into the conversation
without being addressed. " Where do
you wish to go ? "

" Nowhere in particular. The walk
looks so inviting we should like to see
the end."

" It goes only to the Farm, and you
can reach that by the highroad; it is
only a half-mile farther. Do you wish
to call at the Farm ? "

" No, oh no ; the path is so very
pretty that " —

" Yes, I see ; well, I should call it ra-
ther private." And with this she de-
parted ; leaving us to stand on the out-
skirts of paradise, while she went into
her house and stared at us from the win-
dow as she played with the lovely unde-
served baby. But that was not the end
of the matter.

We found ourselves there next day,
Francesca and I, — Salemina was ,too
proud, — drawn by an insatiable longing
to view the beloved and forbidden scene.
We did not dare to glance at the Dis-
agreeable Woman's windows, lest our
courage should ooze away, so we opened
the gate and stole through into the path.

It was a most lovely path ; even if it
had not been in a sense prohibited, it
would still have been lovely, simply on
its own merits. There were little gaps
in the hedge and the wall through which
we peered into a daisy-starred pasture,
where a white bossy and a herd of flaxen-
haired cows fed on the sweet green grass.
The mellow ploughed earth on the right
hand stretched down to the shore-line,
and the plough-boy walked up and down
the long, straight furrows whistling " My
Nannie 's awa'." Pettybaw is so far re-
moved from the music-halls that their

cheap songs and strident echoes never
reach its sylvan shades, and the herd-lad-
dies and plough-boys still sweeten their
labors with the old classic melodies.

We walked on and on, determined to
come every day ; and we settled that if
we were accosted by any one, or if our
innocent business were demanded, Fran-
cesca should ask, " Does Mrs. Macstro-
nachlacher live here, and has she any
new-laid eggs ? "

Soon the gates of the Farm appeared
in sight. There was a cluster of build-
ings, with doves huddling and cooing on
the red-tiled roofs, — dairy-houses, work-
men's cottages, splendid rows of substan-
tial haystacks (towering yellow things
with peaked tops) ; a little pond with
ducks and geese chattering together as
they paddled about, and for additional
music the trickling of two tiny burns
making " a singan din " as they wimpled
through the bushes. A speckle-breasted
thrush perched on a corner of the gray
wall and poured his heart out. Over-
head there was a chorus of rooks in the
tall trees, but there was no sound of hu-
man voice save that of the plough-lad-
die whistling " My Nannie 's awa'."

We turned our backs on this darling
solitude, and retraced our steps lingering-
ly. As we neared the wicket gate again
we stood upon a bit of jutting rock and
peered over the wall, sniffing the haw-
thorn buds ecstatically. The white bossy
drew closer, treading softly on his daisy
carpet ; the cows looked up at us won-
deringly as they leisurely chewed their
cuds ; a man in corduroy breeches came
from a corner of the pasture, and with a
sharp, narrow hoe rooted out a thistle or
two that had found their way into this
sweet feeding - ground. Suddenly we
heard the swish of a dress behind us,
and turned, conscience-stricken, though
we had in nothing sinned.

" Does Mrs. Macstronachlacher live
here ? " stammered Francesca like a par-
rot.

It was an idiotic time and place for

234

Penelope's Progress.

the question. We had certainly arranged
that she should ask it, but something
must be left to the judgment in such
cases. Francesca was hanging over a
stone wall regarding a herd of cows in
a pasture, and there was no possible shel-
ter for a Mrs. Macstronachlacher within
a quarter of a mile. What made the
remark more unfortunate was the fact
that, though she had on a different dress
and bonnet, the person interrogated was
the Disagreeable Woman ; but Fran-
cesca is particularly slow in discerning
resemblances. She would have gone on
mechanically asking for new-laid eggs,
had I not caught her eye and held it
sternly. The foe looked at us suspicious-
ly for a moment (Francesca's hats are
not easily forgotten), and then vanished
up the path, to tell the people at Crum-
mylowe, I suppose, that their grounds
were infested by marauding strangers
whose curiosity was manifestly the out-
growth of a republican government.

As she disappeared in one direction,
we walked slowly in the other ; and just
as we reached the corner of the pasture
where two stone walls meet, and where
a group of oaks gives grateful shade, we
heard children's voices.

" No, no ! " cried somebody : " it must
be still higher at this end, for the tower,
— this is where the king will sit. Help
me with this heavy one, Rafe. Dandie,
mind your foot. Why don't you be mak-
ing the flag for the ship ? — and do keep
the Wrig away from us till we finish
building ! "

XVII.

" 0 lang, lang may the ladyes sit

Wi' their face into their hand,
Before they see Sir Patrick Spens
Come sailing to the strand."

Sir Patrick Spens.

We put our toes into the crevices of the
wall and peeped stealthily over the top.
Two boys of eight or ten years, with two
younger children, were busily engaged
in building a castle. A great pile of

stones had been hauled to the spot, evi-
dently for the purpose of mending the
wall, and these were serving as rich ma-
terial for sport. The oldest of the com-
pany, a bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked boy in
an Eton jacket and broad white collar,
was obviously commander-in-chief ; and
the next in size, whom he called Rafe,
was a laddie of eight, in kilts. These
two looked as if they might be scions of
the aristocracy, while Dandie and the
Wrig were fat little yokels of another
sort. The miniature castle must have
been the work of several mornings, and
was worthy of the respectful but silent
admiration with which we gazed upon
it ; but as the last stone was placed in
the tower, the master builder looked up
and spied our interested eyes peering at
him over the wall. We were properly
abashed and ducked our heads discreetly
at once, but were reassured by hearing
him run rapidly toward us, calling, " Stop,
if you please ! Have you anything on
just now, — are you busy ? "

We answered that we were quite at
leisure.

" Then would you mind coming in to
help us play Sir Patrick Speno ? There
are n't enough of us to do it nicely."

This confidence was touching, and
luckily it was not in the least misplaced.
Playing Sir Patrick Spens was exactly
in our line, litt'e as he suspected it.

" Come and help ? " I said. " Simply
delighted ! Do come, Frances. How
can we get over the wall ? "

" I '11 show you the good broken
place ! " cried Sir Apple - Cheek ; and
following his directions we scrambled
through, while Rafe took off his High-
land bonnet ceremoniously and handed
us down to earth.

" Hurrah ! now it will be something like
fun ! Do you know Sir Patrick Spens ? "

" Every word of it. Don't you want
us to pass an examination before you al-
low us in the game ? "

" No," he answered gravely ; " it 's a
great help, of course, to know it, but it

Penelope's Progress.

235

is n't necessary. I keep the words in
my pocket to prompt Dandie, and the
Wrig can only say two lines, she 's so lit-
tle." (Here he produced some tattered
leaves torn from a book of ballads.)
" We 've done it many a time, but this
is a new Dunfermline Castle, and we are
trying the play in a different way. Rafe
is the king, and Dandie is the ' eldern
knight,' — you remember him ? "

" Certainly ; he sat at the king's right
knee."

" Yes, yes, that 's the one ! Then Rafe
is Sir Patrick part of the time, and I the
other part, because everybody likes to
be him ; but there 's nobody left for the
' lords o' Noroway ' or the sailors, and
the Wrig is the only maiden to sit on the
shore, and she always forgets to comb
her hair and weep at the right time."

The forgetful and placid Wrig (I af-
terwards learned that this is a Scots
word for the youngest bird in the nest)
was seated on the grass, with her fat
hands full of pink thyme and white wild
woodruff. The sun shone on her curly
flaxen head. She wore a dark blue cot-
ton frock with white dots, and a short-
sleeved pinafore ; and though she was
utterly useless from a dramatic point of
view, she was the sweetest little Scotch
dumpling I ever looked upon. She had
been tried and found wanting in most
of the principal parts of the ballad, but
when left out of the performance alto-
gether she was wont to scream so lustily
that all Crummylowe rushed to her as-
sistance.

" Now let us practice a bit to see if we
know what we are going to do," said Sir
Apple-Cheek. " Rafe, you can be Sir
Patrick this time. The reason why we
all like to be Sir Patrick," he explained,
turning to me, " is that the lords o' Noro-
way say to him, —

' Ye Scottishmen spend a' our Bong's gowd,
And a' our Queenia fee ; '

and then he answers, —

' Ye lee ! ye lee ! ye leers loud,
Fu' loudly do ye lee ! '

and a lot of splendid things like that.
Well, I '11 be the king," and accordingly
he began : —

" The King sits in Dunfermline tower,

Drinking the bluid-red wine.
' O whaur will I get a skeely skipper
To sail this new ship o' mine ? ' "

A dead silence ensued, whereupon the
king said testily, "Now, Dandie, you
never remember you 're the eldern
knight ; go on ! "

Thus reminded, Dandie recited : —

" O up and spake an eldern knight

Sat at the King's right knee,
' Sir Patrick Spens is the best sailor
That ever sailed the sea.' "

" Now I '11 write my letter," said the
king, who was endeavoring to make him-
self comfortable in his somewhat con-
tracted tower.

" The King has written a braid letter

And sealed it with his hand ;

And sent it to Sir Patrick Spens,

Was walking on the strand.

Read the letter out loud, Rafe, and then
you '11 remember what to do."

" ' To Noroway ! to Noroway !
To Noroway on the f aem !
The King's daughter of Noroway
'T is thou maun bring her hame,' "

read Rafe.

" Now do the next part ! "

" I can't ; I 'm going to chuck up that
next part. I wish you 'd do Sir Pat un-
til it comes to ' Ye lee ! ye lee ! ' '

" No, that won't do, Rafe. We have
to mix up everybody else, but it 's too
bad to spoil Sir Patrick."

" Well, I '11 give him to you, then, and
be the king. I don't mind so much now
that we 've got such a good tower ; and
why can't I stay up there even after the
ship sets sail, and look out over the sea
with a telescope ? That 's the way Eliza-
beth did the time she was king."

" You can stay up till you have to come
down and be a dead Scots lord. I 'm
not going to lie there as I did last time,
with nobody but the Wrig for a Scots
lord, and her forgetting to be dead ! "

236

Penelopes Progress.

Sir Apple -Cheek then essayed the
hard part " chucked up " by Rafe. It
was rather difficult, I confess, as the first
four lines were in pantomime and re-
quired great versatility : —

" The first word that Sir Patrick read,

Fu' loud, loud laughe'd he ;
The neist word that Sir Patrick read,
The tear blinded his e'e."

These conflicting emotions successfully
simulated, Sir Patrick resumed : —

" ' O wha is he has dune this deed,
And tauld the King o' me, —
To send us out, at this time o' the year,
To sail upon the sea ? ' "

Then the king stood up in the unstable
tower and shouted his own orders : —

" ' Be it wind, be it weet, be it hail, be it sleet,

Our ship maun sail the faem ;
The King's daughter o' Noroway
'T is we maun fetch her hame.' "

" Can't we rig the ship a little bet-
ter ? " demanded our stage manager at
this juncture. " It is n't half as good as
the tower."

Ten minutes' hard work, in which we
assisted, produced something a trifle more
nautical and seaworthy than the first
ship. The ground with a few boards
spread upon it was the deck. Tarpaulin
sheets were arranged on sticks to repre-
sent sails, and we located the vessel so
cleverly that two slender trees shot out
of the middle of it and served as the tall
topmasts.

" Now let us make believe that we 've
hoisted our sails on ' Mononday morn '
and been in Noroway ' weeks but only
twae,' " said our leading man ; " and your
time has come now," turning to us.

We felt indeed that it had ; but pluck-
ing up sufficient courage for the lords o'
Noroway, we cried accusingly : —

' ' Ye Scottishmen spend a' our King's gowd,
And a' our Queenis fee ! ' "

Oh, but Sir Apple-Cheek was glorious
as he roared virtuously : —

" ' Ye lee ! ye lee ! ye leers loud,
Fu' loudly do ye lee !

' For I brocht as much white monie

As gane my men and me,
An' I brocht a half-fou o' gude red gowd

Out ower the sea wi' me.

' But betide me well, betide me wae,

This day I 'se leave the shore ;
And never spend my King's monie

'Mong Noroway dogs no more.

' Make ready, make ready, my merry men a',

Our gude ship sails the morn.'
Now you be the sailors, please ! "

Glad to be anything but Noroway dogs,
we recited obediently : —
" ' Now, ever alake, my master dear,
I fear a deadly storm !

And if ye gang to sea, master,
I fear we '11 come to harm.' "

We added much to the effect of this
stanza by flinging ourselves on the turf
and embracing Sir Patrick's knees, at
which touch of melodrama he was en-
chanted.

Then came a storm so terrible that I
can hardly trust myself to* describe its
fury. The entire corps dramatique per-
sonated the elements, and tore the gal-
lant ship in twain, while Sir Patrick
shouted* in the teeth of the gale, —

" ' O whaur will I get a gude sailor

To tak' my helm in hand,
Till I get up to the tall topmast
To see if I can spy land ? " '

I knew the words a trifle better than
Francesca, and thus succeeded in getting
in ahead as the fortunate hero : —

" ' O here am I, a sailor gude,
To tak' the helm in hand,
Till you go up to the tall topmast ;
But I fear ye '11 ne'er spy land.' "

And the heroic sailor was right, for

" He hadna gone a step, a step,

A step but only ane,
When a bout flew out o' our goodly ship,
And the sant sea it came in."

Then we fetched a web o' the silken
claith, and anither o' the twine, as our
captain bade us ; we wapped them into
our ship's side and letna the sea come in ;
but in vain, in vain. Laith were the gude

Penelope's Progress.

237

Scots lords to weet their cork -heeled
shune, but they did, and wat their hats
abune ; for the ship sank in spite of their
despairing efforts,

" And mony was the glide lord's son
That never mair cam' harae."

Francesca and I were now obliged to
creep from under the tarpaulins and per-
sonate the disheveled ladies on the strand.

" Will your hair come down ? " asked
the manager gravely.

" It will and shall," we rejoined ; and
it did.

" The ladies wrang their fingers white,
The maidens tore their hair."

" Do tear your hair, Jessie ! It 's the
only thing you have to do, and you never
do it on time ! "

The Wrig made ready to howl with
offended pride, but we soothed her, and
she tore her yellow curls with her chub-
by hands.

" And lang, lang may the maidens sit
Wi' their gowd kaims i' their hair,
A waitin' for their ain dear luves,
For them they '11 see nae mair."

I did a bit of sobbing here that would
have been a credit to Sarah Siddons.

" Splendid ! Grand ! " cried Sir Pat-
rick, as he stretched himself fifty fa-
thoms below the imaginary surface, and
gave explicit ante-mortem directions to
the other Scots lords to spread them-
selves out in like manner.

" Half ower, half ower to Aberdour,

'T is fifty fathoms deep,
And there lies gude Sir Patrick Spens,
Wi'- the Scots lords at his feet."

" Oh, it is grand ! " he repeated ju-
bilantly. " If I could only be the king
and see it all from Dunfermline tower !
Could you be Sir Patrick once, do you
think, now that I have shown you how ? "
he asked Francesca.

" Indeed I can ! " she replied, glowing
with excitement (and small wonder) at
being chosen for the principal r6le.

" The only trouble is that you do look
awfully like a girl in that white frock."

Francesca appeared rather ashamed

at her disqualifications for the part of
Sir Patrick. " If I had only worn my
long black cloak ! " she sighed.

" Oh, I have an idea ! " cried the boy.
" Hand her the minister's gown from
the hedge, Rafe. You see, Mistress
Ogilvie of Crummylowe lent us this old
gown for a sail ; she 's doing something
to a new one, and this was her pattern."

Francesca slipped it on over her white
serge, and the Pettybaw parson should
have seen her with the long veil of her
dark hair floating over his ministerial
garment.

" It seems a pity to put up your hair,"
said the stage manager critically, "be-
cause you look so jolly and wild with it
down, but I suppose you must ; and will
you have Rafe's bonnet ? "

Yes, she would have Rafe's bonnet;
and when she perched it on the side of
her head and paced the deck restlessly,
while the black gown floated behind in
the breeze, we all cheered with enthusi-
asm, and, having rebuilt the ship, began
the play again from the moment of the
gale. The wreck was more horribly real-
istic than ever, this time, because of our
rehearsal ; and when I crawled from un-
der the masts and sails to seat myself on
the beach with the Wrig, I had scarcely
strength enough to remove the cooky
from her hand and set her a-combing
her curly locks.

When our new Sir Patrick stretched
herself on the ocean bed, she fell with a
despairing wail ; her gown spread like a
pall over the earth, the Highland bonnet
came off, and her hair floated over a hap-
hazard pillow of Jessie's wild flowers.

" Oh, it is fine, that part ; but from
here is where it always goes wrong ! "
cried the king from the castle tower.
" It 's too bad to take the maidens away
from the strand where they look so
beautiful, and Rafe is splendid as the
gude sailor, but Dandie looks so silly as
one little dead Scots lord ; if we only
had one more person, young or old, if
he was ever so stupid ! "

238

Penelope's Progress.

« Would I do?"

This unexpected offer came from be-
hind one of the trees that served as top-
masts, and at the same moment there
issued from that delightfully secluded
retreat Ronald Macdonald, in knicker-
bockers and a golf cap.

Suddenly as this apparition came, there
was no lack of welcome on the children's
part. They shouted his name in glee,
embraced his legs, and pulled him about
like affectionate young bears. Confusion
reigned for a moment, while Sir Patrick
rose from her sea grave all in a mist
of floating hair, from which hung im-
promptu garlands of pink thyme and
green grasses.

" Allow me to do the honors, please,
Jamie," said Mr. Macdonald, when he
could escape from the children's clutches.
" Have you been presented ? Ladies,
the young master of Rowardennan.
Jamie, Miss Hamilton and Miss Monroe
from the United States of America."
Sir Apple - Cheek bowed respectfully.
" Let me present the Honorable Ralph
Ardmore, also from the castle, together
with Dandie Dinmont and the Wrig from
Crummylowe. Sir Patrick, it is indeed
a pleasure to see you again. Must you
take off my gown ? It never looked so
well before."

" Tour gown ? "

The counterfeit presentment of Sir
Patrick vanished as the long drapery
flew to the hedge whence it came, and
there remained only an offended young
goddess, who swung her dark mane
tempestuously to one side, plaited it in
a thick braid, tossed it back again over
her white serge shoulder, and crowded
on her sailor hat with unnecessary ve-
hemence.

" Yes, my gown ; whose else should
you borrow, pray ? Mistress Ogilvie of
Crummylowe presses, sponges, and darns
my bachelor wardrobe, but I never sus-
pected that she rented it out for theatri-
cal purposes. I have been calling upon
you in Pettybaw ; Lady Ardmore was

there 'at the same time. Finding but
one of the three American Graces at
home, I stayed a few moments only, and
am now returning to Inchcaldy by way
of Crummylowe." Here he plucked the
gown off the hedge and folded it care-
fully.

" Can't we keep it for a sail, Mr. Mac-
donald ? " pleaded Jamie. " Mistress
Ogilvie said it was n't anymore good."

" When Mistress Ogilvie made that
remark," replied the Reverend Ronald,
" she had no idea that it would ever touch
the shoulders of the martyred Sir Patrick
Spens. Now I happen to love " —

Francesca hung out a scarlet flag in
each cheek, and I was about to say,
" Don't mind me ! " when he continued :

"As I was saying, I happen to love
Sir Patrick Spens, — it is my favorite
ballad ; so, with your permission, I will
take the gown, and you can find some-
thing less valuable for a sail."

I could never understand just why
Francesca was so annoyed at being dis-
covered in our innocent game. Of course
she was prone on Mother Earth and her
tresses were much disheveled, but she
looked lovely, after all, in comparison
with me, the humble " supe " and light-
ning-change artist ; yet I kept my tem-
per, — at least I kept it until the Rever-
end Ronald observed, after escorting us
through the gap in the wall, " By the
way, Miss Hamilton, there was a gentle-
man from Paris at your cottage, and he
is walking down the road to meet you."

Walking down the road to" meet me,
forsooth ! Have ministers no brains ?
The Reverend Macdonald had wasted
five good minutes with his observations,
introductions, explanations, felicitations,
and adorations, and meantime, regardez-
mqi, messieurs et mesdames, s'il vous
plait ! I have been a Noroway dog, a
ship-builder, and a gallant sailorman ;
I have been a gurly sea and a tower-
ing gale ; I have crawled from beneath
broken anchors, topsails, and mizzen-
masts to a strand where I have been

Penelope's Progress.

239

a suffering lady plying a gowd kaim.
My skirt of blue drill has been twisted
about my person until it trails in front ;
my collar is wilted, my cravat untied ; I
have lost a stud and a sleeve-link ; my
hair is in a tangled mass, my face is
scarlet and dusty — and a gentleman
from Paris is walking down the road to
meet me !

xvin.

" Oh, tell sweet Willie to come down,

To hear the mavis singing ;
To see the birds on ilka bush

And leaves around them hinging."
Rare Willie drowned in Yarrow.

My Willie is not " drowned in Yar-
row," thank Heaven ! He is drowned in
happiness, according to his own account.

We are exploring the neighborhood
together, and whichever path we take
we think it lovelier than the one before.
This morning we drove to Petty baw
Sands, Francesca and Salemina follow-
ing by the footpath and meeting us on
the shore. It is all so enchantingly
fresh and green on one of these rare
bright days : the trig lass bleaching her
claes on the grass by the burn, near the
little stone bridge ; the wild partridges
whirring about in pairs ; the farm-boy
seated on the clean straw in the bottom
of his cart, and cracking his whip in
mere wanton joy at the sunshine ; the
pretty cottages, and the gardens with
rows of currant and gooseberry bushes
hanging thick with fruit that suggests
jam and tart in every delicious globule.
It is a love-colored landscape, we know
it full well ; and nothing in the fair
world about us is half as beautiful as
what we see in each other's eyes.

We tied the pony by the wayside and
alighted : Willie to gather some sprays of
the pink veronica and blue speedwell, I
to sit on an old bench and watch him in
happy idleness. The " white-blossomed
slaes " sweetened the air, and the distant
hills were gay with golden whin and

broom, or flushed with the purply-red
of the bell heather.

An old man, leaning on his staff, came
totteringly along, and sank down on the
bench beside me. He was dirty, ragged,
unkempt, and feeble, but quite sober,
and pathetically anxious for human sym-
pathy.

" I 'm achty-seex year auld," he maun-
dered, apropos of nothing, " achty-seex
year auld. I 've seen five lairds o' Pet-
tybaw, sax placed meenisters, an' seeven
doctors. I was a mason an' a stoot
moii i' them days, but it 's a meeserable
life now. Wife deid, bairns deid. I
sit by my lane an' smoke my pipe, wi'
naebody to gi'e me a sup o' water.
Achty-seex is ower auld for a mon, —
ower auld."

These are the sharp contrasts of life
one cannot bear to face when one is
young and happy. Willie gave him a
half-sovereign and some tobacco for his
pipe, and when the pony trotted off
briskly, and we left the shrunken figure
alone on his bench as he was lonely in
his life, we kissed each other and pledged
ourselves to look after him as long as we
remain in Pettybaw ; for what is love
worth if it does not kindle the flames of
spirit, open the gates of feeling, and
widen the heart to shelter all the little
loves and great loves that' crave admit-
tance ?

As we neared the tiny fishing-village
on the sands we met a fishwife brave in
her short skirt and eight petticoats, the
basket with its two hundred pound weight
on her head, and the auld wife herself
knitting placidly as she walked along.
They look superbly strong, these women ;
but, to be sure, the " weak anes dee,"
as one of them told me.

There was an air of bustle about the
little quay, —

" That joyfu' din when the boats come in,
When the boats come in sae early ;
When the lift is blue an' the herring-nets

fu',
And the sun glints in a' things rarely."

240

Penelope's Progress.

The silvery shoals of fish no longer come
so near the shore as they used in the
olden time, for then the kirk bell of St.
Monan's had its tongue tied when the
" draive " was off the coast, lest its knell
should frighten away the shining myriads
of the deep.

We walked among the tiny white-
washed low-roofed cots, each with its
little fishes tacked invitingly against the
door-frame to dry, until we came to my
favorite, the corner cottage in the row.
It has beautiful narrow garden strips in
front, — solid patches of color in sweet
gillyflower bushes from which the kindly
housewife plucked a nosegay for us. Her
white columbines she calls " granny's
mutches ; " and indeed they are not unlike
those fresh white caps. Robbie Burns,
ten inches high in plaster, stands in the
cottage window in a tiny box of blossom-
ing plants surrounded by a miniature
green picket fence. Outside, looming
white among the gillyflowers, is Sir Wal-
ter, and near him is still another and a
larger bust on a cracked pedestal a foot
high, perhaps. We did not recognize
the head at once, and asked the little
woman who it was.

" Homer, the gret Greek poet," she
answered cheerily ; " an' I 'm to have
anither o' Burns, as tall as Homer, when
my daughter comes name frae E'nbro'."

If the shade of Homer keeps account
of his earthly triumphs, I think he is
proud of his place in that humble Scotch-
woman's gillyflower garden, with his
head under the drooping petals of gran-
ny's white mutches.

(When we passed the cottage, on our
way to the sands next day, Robbie
Burns's head had been broken off acci-
dentally by the children, and we felt as
though we had lost a friend ; but Scotch
thrift and loyalty to the dear plough-
man-poet came to the rescue, and when
we returned, Robbie's plaster head had
been glued to his body. He smiled at
us again from between the two scarlet
geraniums, and a tendril of ivy had been

gently curled about his neck to hide the
cruel wound.)

After such long, lovely mornings as
this, there is a late luncheon under the
shadow of a rock with Salemina and
Francesca, an idle chat or the chapter of
a book, and presently Lady Ardmore
and her daughter Elizabeth drive down
to the sands. They are followed by
Robin Anstruther, Jamie, and Ralph on
bicycles, and before long the stalwart
figure of Ronald Macdonald appears in
the distance, just in time for a cup of
tea, which we brew in Lady Ardmore's
bath-house on the beach.

XIX.

" 0 biggit hae they a bigly bow'r

And strawn it o'er wi' san',
And there was mair mirth that bow'r within,
Than in a' their father's Ian'."

Rose the Red and White Lily.

Tea at Rowardennan Castle is an im-
pressive and a delightful function. It is
served by a ministerial-looking butler
and a just-^ady-to-be-ordained footman.
They both look as if they had been nour-
ished on the Thirty-Nine Articles, but
they know their business as well as if
they had been trained in heathen lands,
— which is saying a good deal, for every-
body knows that heathen servants wait
upon one with idolatrous solicitude.
However, from the quality of the cheer-
ing beverage itself down to the thick-
ness of the cream, the thinness of the
china, the crispness of the toast, and the
plum my ness of the cake, tea at Row-
ardennan Castle is perfect in every de-
tail.

The scones are of unusual lightness,
also. I should think, if they were sold
at a bakery, they would scarcely weigh
more than four to a pound ; but I am
aware that the casual traveler, who eats
only at hotels, and never has the pri-
vilege of entering feudal castles, will be
slow to believe this estimate. Salemina
always describes a Scotch scone as an

Penelope's Progress.

241

aspiring but unsuccessful soda biscuit of
the New England sort.

Stevenson, in writing of that dense
black substance, inimical to life, called
Scotch bun, says that the patriotism that
leads a Scotsman to eat it will hardly
desert him in any emergency. Sale-
mina thinks that the scone should be
bracketed with the bun (in description,
merely, never in the human stomach),
and says that, as a matter of fact, " th'
unconquer'd Scot " of old was not only
clad in a shirt of mail, but well fortified
within when he went forth to warfare
after a breakfast of oatmeal and scones.
She insists that the spear which would
pierce the shirt of mail would be turned
aside and blunted by the ordinary scone
of commerce ; but what signifies the
opinion of a woman who eats sugar on
her porridge ?

Considering the air of liberal hospi-
tality that hangs about the castle tea-
table, I wonder that our friends do not
oftener avail themselves of its privileges
and allow us to do so ; but on all dark, ,
foggy, or inclement days, or whenever
they tire of the sands, everybody persists
in taking tea at Bide-a-Wee Cottage.

We buy our tea of the Pettybaw gro-
cer, some of our cups are cracked, the
teapot is of earthenware, Miss Grieve
disapproves of all social tea-fuddles and
shows it plainly when she brings in the
tray, and the room is so small that some
of us overflow into the hall or the gar-
den : it matters not ; there is some fatal
charm in our humble hospitality. At
four o'clock one of us is obliged to be,
like Sister Anne, on the housetop ; and
if company approaches, she must de-
scend and speed to the plumber's for six-
penny worth extra of cream. In most
well - ordered British households Miss
Grieve would be requested to do this
speeding, but both her mind and her
body move too slowly for such domestic
crises ; and then, too, her temper has to
be kept as unruffled as possible, so that
she will cut the bread and butter thin.

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 484. 16

This she generally does if the day's work
has not been too arduous ; but the wash-
ing of her own spinster cup and plate,
together with the incident sighs and
groans, occupies her till so late an hour
that she is not always dressed for callers.

Willie and I were reading The Lady
of the Lake, the other day, in the back
garden, surrounded by the verdant leaf-
age of our own neeps and vegetable mar-
rows. It is a pretty spot when the sun
shines : Miss Grieve's dish - towels and
aprons drying on the currant bushes, the
cat playing with a mutton-bone or a fish-
tail on the grass, and the little birds
perching on the rims of our wash-boiler
and water-buckets. It can be reached
only by way of the kitchen, which some-
what lessens its value as a pleasure-
ground or a rustic retreat, but Willie
and I retire there now and then for a
quiet chat.

On this particular occasion Willie was
reading the exciting verses where Fitz-
James and Murdoch are crossing the
stream

" That joins Loch Katrine to Achray,"
where the crazed Blanche of Devan first
appears : —

" All in the Trosachs' glen was still,
Noontide was sleeping on the hill :
Sudden his guide whoop'd loud and high —
' Murdoch ! was that a signal cry ? ' "

" It was indeed," said Francesca, ap-
pearing suddenly at an upper window
overhanging the garden. " Pardon this
intrusion, but the castle people are here,"
she continued in what is known as a
stage whisper, — that is, one that can
be easily heard by a thousand persons, —
" the castle people and the ladies from
Pettybaw House; and Mr. Macdonald
is coming down the loaning ; but Calam-
ity Jane is making her toilette in the
kitchen, and you cannot take Mr. Ber-
esford through into the sitting-room at
present. She says this hoose has so few
conveniences that it 's ' fair sickeninV "

" How long will she be ? " queried
Mr. Beresford anxiously, putting The

242

Penelope's Progress.

Lady of the Lake in his pocket, and
pacing up and down between the rows
of neeps.

" She has just begun. Whatever you
do, don't unsettle her temper, for she
will have to prepare for eight to-day.
I will send Mr. Macdonald to the bak-
ery for gingerbread, to gain time, and
possibly I can think of a way to res-
cue you. If I can't, are you tolera-
bly comfortable ? Perhaps Miss Grieve
won't mind Penelope, and she can come
through the kitchen any time and join
us ; but naturally you don't want to be
separated. Of course I can lower your
tea in a tin bucket, and if it should rain
I can throw out umbrellas. The situa-
tion is not so bad as it might be," she
added consolingly, " because in case Miss
Grieve's toilette should last longer than
usual, your wedding need not be inde-
finitely postponed, for Mr. Macdonald
can marry you from this window."

Here she disappeared, and we had
scarcely time to take in the full humor
of the affair before Robin Anstruther's
laughing eyes appeared over the top of
the high brick wall that protects our gar-
den on three sides.

" Do not shoot," said he. " I am not
come to steal the fruit, but to succor hu-
manity in distress. Miss Monroe insist-
ed that I should borrow the inn ladder.
She thought a rescue would be much
more romantic than waiting for Miss
Grieve. Everybody is coming out to
witness it, at least all your guests, —
there are no strangers present, — and
Miss Monroe is already collecting six-
pence a head for the entertainment, to
be given, she says, to Mr. Macdonald's
sustentation fund."

He was now astride of the wall, and
speedily lifted the ladder to our side,
where it leaned comfortably against the
stout branches of the draper's peach
vine. Willie ran nimbly up the ladder
and bestrode the wall. I followed, first
standing, and then decorously sitting
down on the top of it. Mr. Anstruther

pulled up the ladder, and replaced it on
the side of liberty ; then he descended,
then Willie, and I last of all, amidst the
acclamations of the on-lookers, a select
company of six or eight persons.

When Miss Grieve formally entered
the sitting-room bearing the tea-tray, she
was buskit braw in black stuff gown,
clean apron, and fresh cap trimmed with
purple ribbons, under which her white
locks were neatly dressed.

She deplored the coolness of the tea,
T>ut accounted for it to me in an aside
by the sickening quality of Mrs. Sink-
ler's coals and Mr. Macbrose's kindling-
wood, to say nothing of the insulting
draft in the draper's range. When she
left the room, I suppose she was unable
to explain the peals of laughter that
rang through our circumscribed halls.

Lady Ardmore insists that the rescue
was the most unique episode she ever
witnessed, and says that she never un-
derstood America until she made our
acquaintance. I persuaded her that this
was fallacious reasoning ; that while she
might understand us by knowing Amer-
ica, she could not possibly reverse this
mental operation and be sure of the re-
sult. The ladies of Pettybaw House said
that the occurrence was as Fifish as any-
thing that ever happened in Fife. The
kingdom of Fife is noted, it seems, for
its " doocots [dovecotes] and daft lairds,"
and to be eccentric and Fifish are one and
the same thing. Thereupon Francesca
told Mr. Macdonald a stoiy she heard in
Edinburgh, to the effect that when a cer-
tain committee or council was quarreling
as to which of certain Fifeshire towns
should be the seat of a projected lunatic
asylum, a new resident arose and sug-
gested that the building of a wall round
the kingdom of Fife would solve the
difficulty, settle all disputes, and give
sufficient room for the lunatics to exer-
cise properly.

This is the sort of tale that a native
can tell with a genial chuckle, but it
comes with poor grace from an Ameri-

Penelope's Progress.

243

can lady sojourning in Fife. Francesca
does not mind this, however, as she is
at present avenging fresh insults to her
own beloved country. •

XX.

" With mimic din of stroke and ward
The broadsword upon target jarr'd."

The Lady of the Lake.

Robin Anstruther was telling stories
at the tea-table.

" I got acquainted with an American
girl in rather a queer sort of way," he
said, between cups. " It was in London,
on the Duke of York's wedding - day.
I 'm rather a tall chap, you see, and in
the crowd somebody touched me on the
shoulder and a plaintive voice behind
me said, ' You 're such a big man, and I
am so little, will you please help me to
save my life ? My mother was sepa-
rated from me in the crowd somewhere
as we were trying to reach the Berkeley,
and I don't know what to do.' I was
a trifle nonplused, but I did the best I
could. She was a tiny thing, in a mar-
velous frock and a flowery hat and a
silver girdle and chatelaine. In another
minute she spied a second man, an of-
ficer, a full head taller than I am, broad
shoulders, splendidly put up altogether.
Bless me ! if she did n't turn to him and
say, ' Oh, you 're so nice and big, you 're
even bigger than this other gentleman,
and I need you both in this dreadful
crush. If you '11 be good enough to
stand on either side of me, I shall be
awfully obliged.' We exchanged amused
glances of embarrassment over her
blonde head, but there was no resisting
the irresistible. She was a small per-
son, but she had the soul of a general,
and we obeyed orders. We stood guard
over her little ladyship for nearly an
hour, and I must say she entertained
us thoroughly, for she was as clever as
she was pretty. Then I got her a seat in
one of the windows of my club, while

the other man, armed with a full descrip-
tion, went out to hunt up the mother ; and
by Jove ! he found her, too. She would
have her mother, and her mother she
had. They were awfully jolly people ;
they came to luncheon in my chambers
at the Albany afterwards, and we grew
to be great friends."

" I dare say she was an English girl
masquerading," I remarked facetiously.
" What made you think her an Ameri-
can ? "

" Oh, her general appearance and ac-
cent, I suppose."

" Probably she did n't say Barkley,"
observed Francesca cuttingly ; " she
would have been sure to commit that sort
of solecism."

" Why, don't you say Barkley in the
States ? "

" Certainly not ; with us c-1-e-r-k spells
clerk, and B-e-r-k Berk."

" How very odd ! " remarked Mr. An-
struther.

" No odder than your saying Bark,
and not half as odd as your calling it
Albany," I interpolated, to help Fran-
cesca.

" Quite so," said Mr. Anstruther ;
" but how do you say Albany in Amer-
ica?"

" Penelope and I allways call it All-
bany," responded Francesca, " but Sale-
mina, who has been much in England,
always calls it Albany."

This anecdote was the signal for Miss
Ardmore to remark (apropos of her own
discrimination and the American accent)
that hearing a lady ask for a certain med-
'cine in a chemist's shop, she noted the
intonation, and inquired of the chemist,
when the fair stranger had retired, if
she were not an American. " And she
was ! " exclaimed the Honorable Eliza-
beth triumphantly. " And what makes it
the more curious, she had been over here
twenty years, and of course spoke Eng-
lish quite properly."

In avenging fancied insults, it is cer-
tainly more just to heap punishment on

244

Penelope's Progress.

the head of the real offender than upon
his neighbor, and it is a trifle difficult to
decide why Francesca should chastise
Mr. Macdonald for the good-humored
sins of Mr. Anstruther and Miss Ard-
more ; yet she does so, nevertheless.

The history of these chastisements
she recounts in the nightly half-hour
which she spends with me when I am
endeavoring to compose myself for sleep.
Francesca is fluent at all times, but once
seated on the foot of my bed she be-
comes eloquent !

" It all began with his saying " —

This is her perennial introduction, and
I respond as invariably, " What began ? "

" Oh, to - day's argument with Mr.
Macdonald. It was a literary quarrel
this afternoon."

" ' Fools rush in ' " — I began.

" There is a good deal of nonsense in
that old saw," she interrupted ; " at all
events, the most foolish fools I have ever
known stayed still and did n't do any-
thing. Rushing shows a certain move-
ment of the mind, even if it is in the
wrong direction. However, Mr. Mac-
donald is both opinionated and dog-
matic, but his worst enemy could never
call him a fool."

" I did n't allude to Mr. Macdonald."

" Don't you suppose I know to whom
you alluded, dear ? Is not your style so
simple, frank, and direct that a wayfar-
ing girl can read it and not err therein ?
No, I am not sitting on your feet, and it
is not time to go to sleep. As a mat-
ter of fact, we began this literary discus-
sion yesterday morning, but were inter-
rupted ; and knowing that it was sure to
come up again, I prepared for it with
Salemina. She furnished the ammuni-
tion, so to speak, and I fired the guns."

" You always make so much noise
with blank cartridges I wonder you ever
bother about real shot," I remarked.

" Penelope, how can you abuse me
when I am in trouble ? Well, Mr. Mac-
donald was prating, as usual, about the
antiquity of Scotland and its aeons of

stirring history. I am so weary of the
venerableness of this country. How old
will it have to be, I wonder, before it
get* used to it ? If it 's the province of
art to conceal art, it ought to be the pro-
vince of age to conceal age. ' Every-
thing does n't improve with years,' I ob-
served sententiously.

" ' For instance ? ' he inquired.

" Of course you know how that ques-
tion affected me ! How I do dislike
an appetite for specific details ! It is
simply paralyzing to a good conversa-
tion. Do you remember that silly game
in which some one points to you and says,
' Beast, bird, or fish, — least ! ' and you
have to name one while he counts ten ?
If a beast has been requested, you can
think of one fish and two birds, but no
beasts. If he says ' Fish,' all the beasts
in the universe stalk through your mem-
ory, but not one finny, scaly, swimming
thing ! Well, that is the effect of « For
instance ? ' on my faculties. So I stum-
bled a bit, and succeeded in recalling, as
objects which do not improve with age,
mushrooms, women, and chickens, and
he was obliged to agree with me, which
nearly killed him. Then I said that al-
though America is so fresh and blooming
that people persist in calling it young,
it is much older than it appears to the
superficial eye. There is no real propri-
ety in dating us as a nation from the
Declaration of Independence in 1776,
I said, nor even from the landing of the
Pilgrims in 1620 ; nor, for that matter,
from Columbus's discovery in 1492. It 's
my opinion, I asserted, that some of us
had been there thousands of years before,
but nobody had had the sense to discover
us. We could n't discover ourselves, —
though if we could have foreseen how
the sere and yellow nations of the earth
would taunt us with youth and inexperi-
ence, we should have had to do some-
thing desperate ! "

" That theory must have been very con-
vincing to the philosophic Scots mind,"
I interjected.

Penelope's Progress.

245

" It was ; even Mr. Macdonald thought
it ingenious. ' And so,' I went on, ' we
were alive and awake and beginning to
make history when you Scots were only
barelegged savages roaming over the hills
and stealing cattle. It was a very bad
habit of yours, that cattle-stealing, and
one which you kept up too long.'

" ' No worse a sin than stealing land
from the Indians,' he said.

" ' Oh yes,' I answered, ' because it
was a smaller one ! Yours was a vice,
and ours a sin ; or I mean it would have
been a sin had we done it ; but in reality
we didn't steal land; we just took it,
reserving plenty for the Indians to play
about on ; and for every hunting-ground
we took away we gave them in exchange
a serviceable plough, or a school, or a
nice Indian agent, or something. That
was land-grabbing, if you like, but that
is a habit you have still, while we gave
it up when we reached years of discre-
tion.' "

" This is very illuminating," I inter-
rupted, now thoroughly wide awake, " but
it is n't my idea of a literary discus-
sion."

" I am coming to that," she responded.
" It was just at this point that, goaded
into secret fury by my innocent speech
about cattle-stealing, he began to belittle
American literature, the poetry especial-
ly. Of course he waxed eloquent about
the royal line of poet-kings that had
made his country famous, and said the
people who could claim Shakespeare had
reason to be the proudest nation on earth.
' Doubtless,' I said. ' But do you mean
to say that Scotland has any nearer claim
upon Shakespeare than we have ? I do
not now allude to the fact that in the
large sense he is the common property
of the English-speaking world ' (Salemina
told me to say that), 'but Shakespeare
died in 1616, and the union of Scotland
with England did n't come about till
1707, nearly a century afterwards. You
really have n't anything to do with him !
But as for us, we did n't leave England

until 1620, when Shakespeare had been
perfectly dead four years. We took very
good care not to come away too soon.
Chaucer and Spenser were dead, too, and
we had nothing to stay for ! ' '

I was obliged to relax here and give
vent to a burst of merriment at Fran-
cesca's absurdities.

"I could see that he had never re-
garded the matter in that light before,"
she went on gayly, encouraged by my
laughter, " but he braced himself for the
conflict, and said, ' I wonder that you
did n't stay a little longer, while you
were about it. Milton and Ben Jonson
were still alive ; Bacon's Novum Orga-
num was just coming out ; and in thirty
or forty years you could have had L' Al-
legro, Penseroso, and Paradise Lost ;
Newton's Principia, too, in 1687. Per-
haps these were all too serious and heavy
for your national taste ; still, one some-
times likes to claim things one cannot
fully appreciate. And then, too, if you
had once begun to stay, waiting for the
great things to happen and the great
books to be written, you would never
have gone, for there would still have
been Swinburne, Browning, and Tenny-
son to delay you.'

" ' If we could n't stay to see out your
great bards, we certainly could n't af-
ford to remain and welcome your minor
ones,' I answered frigidly ; ' but we want-
ed to be well out of the way before Eng-
land united with Scotland, and we had
to come home, anyway, and start our
own poets. Emerson, Whittier, Long-
fellow, Holmes, and Lowell had to be
born.'

" ' I suppose they had to be if you had
set your mind on it,' he said, ' though
personally I could have spared one or
two on that roll of honor.'

" ' Very probably,' I remarked, as
thoroughly angry now as he intended I
should be. 'We cannot expect you to
appreciate all the American poets ; in-
deed, yon cannot appreciate all of your
own, for the same nation doesn't al-

246

The True Education of an Architect.

ways furnish the writers and the read-
ers. Take your precious Browning, for
example ! There are hundreds of Brown-
ing Clubs in America, and I never heard
of a single one in Scotland.'

" ' No,' he retorted, ' I dare say ; but
there is a good deal in belonging to a
people who can understand him without
clubs ! ' "

" Oh, Francesca ! " sitting bolt upright
among my pillows. " How could you
give him that chance ! How could you !
What did you say ? "

" I said nothing," she replied myste-
riously. " I did something much more
to the point, — I cried ! "

"Cried?"

" Yes, cried ; not rivers and freshets
of woe, but small brooks and streamlets
of helpless mortification."

" What did he do then ? "

" Why do you say ' do ' ? "

" Oh, I mean ' say,' of course. Don't
trifle ; go on. What did he say then ? "

" There are some things too dreadful
to describe," she answered, and wrapping
her Italian blanket majestically about her
she retired to her own room, shooting

one enigmatical glance at me as she
closed the door. '

That glance puzzled me for some time
after she left the room. It was as ex-
pressive and interesting a beam as ever
darted from a woman's eye. The com-
bination of elements involved in it, if
an abstract thing may be conceived as
existing in component parts, was some-
thing like this : —

One half, mystery.

One eighth, triumph.

One eighth, amusement.

One sixteenth, pride.

One sixteenth, shame.

One sixteenth, desire to confess.

One sixteenth, determination to con-
ceal.

And all these delicate, complex emo-
tions played together in a circle of arch-
ing eyebrow, curving lip, and tremulous
chin, — played together, mingling and
melting into one another like fire and
snow ; bewildering, mystifying, enchant-
ing the beholder !

If Ronald Macdonald did — I am a
woman, but, for one, I can hardly blame
him !

Kate Douglas Wiggin.
(To be continued.)

THE TRUE EDUCATION OF AN ARCHITECT.

IT is a commonplace that hard work
is the best remedy for despondency, and
that constant occupation tends to create
optimistic views of the present and the
future. In like manner, occupation and
partly successful labor tend to blind the
laborer to what is feeble or bad in his
work. The mere fact of doing is so de-
lightful that the doer is not always the
best judge of the work done. In this
way we account for the cheerful acqui-
escence of the practicing architects in
that lifeless and thoughtless designing

with the results of which they are filling
the country. Practitioners of other fine
arts find the architect's work hopelessly
uninteresting, and say so to one another,
and, hesitatingly, to the man they think
better informed than themselves ; that is,
to the architect. Hopeless dullness, —
that is the characteristic of so vast a pro-
portion of our architectural work that it
is hard to keep from saying that it is the
characteristic of all ; nor is there any
considerable body of that architectural
work to be excepted but the better class

The True Education of an Architect,

247

of wood-built country houses. These,
being of American origin, and developed
naturally out of our materials, our ap-
pliances, and our requirements, are full
of interest and are worthy of study.

The architects themselves, both the
younger and the older ones, have a sus-
picion, indeed, that things are not right ;
at least, there are many among them
who show at intervals that such a suspi-
cion has crossed their minds. It is not
uncommon to hear it said that one would
like to design his own work, but that
really he cannot afford it ; that no doubt
he takes all his ornament ready-made
from the photographs he has purchased,
but that this is the universal custom, he
supposes. The fact of hard work and
the consciousness of doing well what
they are paid to do keep most architects
from worrying too much about qualities
which their clients do not ask for, — no-
bility, or beauty, or even sincerity of de-
sign, — and keep some architects from
thinking of these matters at all ; still,
the consciousness of there being some-
thing amiss is very general in the pro-
fession. To those persons, not archi-
tects, who know something about ancient
architecture, its glory, its charm, its
beauty, and who have thought somewhat
of modern possibilities, the miserable re-
sult attained by the outlay and the labor
of the last twenty years is more obvious
than it can be to the practicing archi-
tects ; and these observers have a right
to say, each man according to his tem-
perament, " The outlook is hopeless," or,
"Vigorous remedies are required." The
methods by which architectural students
have been educated are clearly inade-
quate ; the traditions held before them
are clearly false ; the influences under
which they have grown up are clearly
pernicious. It remains to be seen whe-
ther a new departure and a more radical
one may not be of use. The time may
have come for abstract theorizing about
the preparation of the young architect
for his task.

What, then, should the young archi-
tect be taught ?

First of all, he should be taught how
to build. It is hardly supposable that
this proposition will be seriously dis-
puted, although in practice its truth is
disregarded so generally that it becomes
necessary to assert it once in a while.
There is a growing tendency to treat the
art of architecture as the art of making
drawings, " rendered " in accordance
with certain hard-and-fast rules ; and it
is as well to repeat that the business of
the architect is to build. What is meant
when it is asserted that the young archi-
tect must be taught how to build ?

When any man calling himself " ar-
chitect " or " builder," or merely acting
as the amateur creator of his own home,
prepares to put up a building of any sort,
the primary necessity for him is to have
a thorough understanding of the means
at his disposal and the object which he
proposes to attain. The material which
he can control he should understand ex-
ceedingly well, and its possibilities. The
building which he intends to erect he
should see clearly in his mind's eye, and
its construction. This requires that he
shall know how stones and bricks are laid
or set ; how mortar is mixed and applied ;
how walls are bonded together ; when
anchors are needed which shall tie those
walls to the floors, and whether it be
ever possible to avoid the use of anchors ;
under what circumstances lintels may be
safely used ; how far corbels may be used
to advantage ; the conditions of an arch,
its line of thrust (in a general way, for
it is not always feasible to calculate the
exact line of its sideway pressure) ; how
gutters may best be carried at the head
of the wall ; what are the approved meth-
ods of attaching to the main structure
such lighter and smaller pieces as bay
window, carriage porch, or kitchen wing.
He must know in a familiar way what a
brick wall is, and what are the condi-
tions of its being, — solid or hollow, or
built with hollow bricks. In some of our

248

The True Education of an Architect,

states the masons have a theory that
brickwork ought not to be laid up too
solidly, nor so filled with mortar as to be
one homogeneous mass, because such a
mass transmits the moisture from the
outer to the interior face. These masons
prefer slightly and loosely built walls,
with plenty of cavities within to act as
air-spaces. Our builder should know
whether that astonishing theory is war-
ranted or not, and also whether a more
deliberately planned air-space is better
or not so good as furring, and whether
either device be necessary in a given
case. He should even have some no-
tions of double air-spaces, for he may
be called on to build in Minnesota or in
Manitoba. Again, he should be aware
how commonly the skilled French build-
ers disregard such devices altogether,
and trust to the repellent power of good
stone walls. The building of chimneys
should be a special fad of his ; for al-
though it may be admitted that no man
can guarantee his flue and his fireplace
as affording together a chimney which
will not smoke, yet there are conditions
precedent, and one of those is that the
flue in an outer wall should be protected
on its weather side from stress of wea-
ther. Many are the chimneys that will
not draw because the outer air keeps
them too cold, and because the wind
drives through the porous bricks of the
outer wall. Such chimneys there are,
even in solidly built houses, which seem
to transmit rain and cold from without
more readily than smoke and hot air up-
ward from within.

The professional architect, then, must
know, in the intimate sense indicated in
the above paragraphs, the whole art of
building. He must also love building ;
he must love heavy stones, and good
bricks, and stout, solid walls, and hand-
some timbers handsomely cut and framed.
He must even love the new material,
wrought and rolled iron and steel, for
its great and as yet only partly known
capabilities. When one is asked by a

would-be student of architecture about
the chances of succeeding as an archi-
tect, it is expedient to find out what his
proclivities are, and whether he is mere-
ly interested in fine art, and seized with
the idea that architecture is an easy fine
art to study and to practice. Advice to
the effect that really he ought not to be-
come an architect unless he truly loves
building and the materials of building is
apt to be in place, and instances could
be given where such advice has been
well applied and well taken. One of the
very best and worthiest of our mural
painters had that advice given him twen-
ty-five years ago, when he proposed him-
self as a student of architecture. He
was told plainly that it seemed to his ad-
viser that he was rather a lover of draw-
ing and a dreamer of fine-art dreams
than a possible builder. The young man
took the advice that was given him, and
the noble results of his career prove the
soundness of the counsel.

The architect should love the quarries,
and should visit them with eager curi-
osity. The cleavage of stone and its
appearance in its natural bed should be
not only a delight to him, but an object
of close study. He should love the lum-
ber-yard, not to say the forest. To him,
the timber in itself should be a thing
delightful to study, and its possible uses
delightful to contemplate. He should
love the brick-yard, and experiments in
cements and in mortars should be his
holiday amusement. Finally, the archi-
tect must have such an eye and such a
soundness of judgment that bad work
cannot escape him. A familiarity with
details not unlike that of a good master
builder he must combine with a know-
ledge of principles and of possibilities far
beyond that of the master builder, so
that good work will come to his build-
ings as of inevitable sequence, and bad
or even slighted work will be impossible
in them.

The matter of modern scientific con-
struction in iron and in steel can only

The True Education of an Architect.

249

be touched upon here, and there is really
but one thing that need be said about
it. Such construction is the affair of the
engineer. Let it be admitted that the
architect should understand its general
principles. These are not so remote or
so mysterious as they may seem to the
beginner. When it comes to the actual
building, to be run up in ten months,
the metal uprights and ties composing
the structure and the exterior of mason-
ry being a mere concealing and protect-
ing shell, that metal structure is the work
of the engineer, and must be. It is, in-
deed, probable that in this case the en-
gineer should be the first man employed,
and that the architect should act as his
subordinate ; for the plans of the stories
are rarely complex or difficult, and all
the uses of the building are simple and
obvious, while what need special ability
are the calculations of the engineer. It
is useless for the scheme of education
laid out for any pupil in architecture to
include steel construction in its higher
development. It is inevitable, in our
modern complex physical civilization,
that the trades and the professions should
be separated more and more, and that
a man should be satisfied with expert
knowledge in a single line of daily voca-
tion.

What, then, becomes of our student
of architecture ? Is he to be expert in
one thing only ? He is to be expert in
all the branches of ordinary building,
ready, dexterous, handy, and full of re-
sources ; and he is to know so much of
the general principles of building, and
also of the putting together of metal and
the conditions of stability of the metal
structure, that he can foresee the need of
engineering skill in a given case, and can
forestall the probable decisions of the en-
gineer. What should be taught to the
young man meaning to be an architect
is, primarily, the how and why of sim-
ple, every-day building, such as has been
practiced for centuries, is adapted to all
those materials which his own country

furnishes, and is acccording to all those
processes which his countrymen recog-
nize. Thus, if he should wish to study
Byzantine vaulting without centres, or
Gothic vaulting with ribs, or vaulting in
cut granite, such as is used in our sea-
coast fortifications, it would be, in a
sense, an additional and most interesting
study for him ; but his instructors should
see to it that first of all he thoroughly
learns the building of common life. Af-
ter ten years of practice he may well en-
joy the attempt to introduce into his work
some of those beautiful, simple, inexpen-
sive methods of building which the past
offers for his consideration, while the
present ignores them ; but he will not be-
gin with this. Building of an every-day
sort, — that is what he needs to know ;
but he needs to know it thoroughly well,
to know it as a child feels the condi-
tions of stability of his house built with
wooden blocks. And he must grow to
be ambitious to excel in the perfectness
of his work. The writer remembers the
shock which he felt when, as a student
of architecture, he heard one architect
in large practice say of the newly fallen
wall of the unfinished church of a bro-
ther architect that no one could find any
fault, because the accident was due to
frosty weather. Was that the standard
which one architect set up for another ?
Was it really held by prominent archi-
tects that a wall might fall down, and
the blame of it be laid on cold weather ?
His wonder has not diminished since
that time, nor does it seem easy to un-
derstand how anything can excuse the
falling of a wall, unless it be an earth-
quake or a bombshell. A mason of re-
pute would never have forgiven him-
self, or have been forgiven, for such a
collapse. The builders in our cities are
not too conscientious, nor are the build-
ers in our small towns too skillful or
troubled with too high a standard of
excellence ; but the architect, as we find
him, may generally lean upon the build-
er, as we find him, with great advan-

250

The True Education of an Architect.

tage, and get sound and good example
from the practice of the builder when
left to himself.

Second, the architect must learn to
draw. He must learn to draw as a
painter learns ; that is to say, he must
be ready, prompt, and dexterous in draw-
ing everything that can be drawn, from
the human figure down to a chimney-top
or a square house with square windows.
It may not be required of him that
he shall draw altogether as well as a
painter. It may well be that whereas
the painter goes on year by year grow-
ing still more familiar with the human
figure, nude and in every attitude which
comes natural to man, woman, or child,
and with drapery as cast upon the figure
in every such changing attitude, the ar-
chitect will stop at a general knowledge,
difficult to define or to express in words,
but still very real and tangible. Take the
well-known drawings of Viollet-le-Duc,
for instance ; that is to say, his drawings
of the figure, as in the article Sculp-
ture in the great Dictionary of Architec-
ture, or in the article Armure or Cotte
in the Dictionnaire du Mobilier. These
drawings are not better than every ar-
chitect should be able to make. Viollet-
le-Duc was a man of exceptional genius
as a draughtsman in that he could make
drawings by the thousand of architectu-
ral details and of architectural composi-
tions, all of them extraordinarily clear
in the way of explanation, — the ines-
sential parts omitted or hinted at, the es-
sential parts insisted on, — all with an
almost infallible judgment, and a judg-
ment so rapid that time was not lost in
hesitation. He was exceptional, perhaps
unique, in this ; but in the mere excel-
lence of any one drawing of the human
figure or of sculptured detail he was no
more happy than the architect should be ;
nor should the aspirant be satisfied with
much less than Viollet - le - Due's excel-
lence in this respect.

Apart from excellence of final achieve-
ment, a certain dexterous readiness is also

eminently desirable. Thus, the architect
should have drawn, before he begins to
design for himself, hundreds of buildings
at home and abroad. One of the best liv-
ing architectural draughtsmen has said,
as we may translate it, It makes little
difference what one draws. To draw a
great deal, to be always drawing, — that
is the secret. " Dessiner e'norme'ment,
avoir toujours le crayon a la main," —
that was Alexandre Sandier's word to
his American friends. The architect
should have drawn from the best exam-
ples within his reach, but at all events
he should have drawn, in great num-
bers, gables and dormers, towers and
steeples, timber roofs seen from within
and moulded arches seen at various an-
gles, groups of columns, coupled columns,
entablatures and archivolts, and masses
of building as seen from an adequate
distance. These things he should have
drawn freehand, either with the camera
lucida, which is unobjectionable in diffi-
cult cases, or without help of any kind,
under all sorts of conditions and in all
sorts of light ; and from such drawing
he should have gained such a knowledge
of the appearance of the existing build-
ing, solid and enduring, with firm joints
and upright angles, that the look of the
structure should have become a part of
his familiar knowledge. Then, when a
new design is in progress, and he has to
put into shape the exterior of a building
which he has partly planned, he can do
it by a drawing made from the vision
before his mind's eye. His conception
of the gable or spire, of a whole mass
of building or of a group of buildings,
can be embodied in lines which are very
nearly accurate. It is remarkable how
close to the actual truth even a very im-
perfect draughtsman may come in this
respecL Many a man whose knowledge
of the human figure is far less than we
have assumed has become so dexterous
in drawing architectural forms that his
perspective sketches of a building or of
its parts would prove on trial to be

The True Education of an Architect.

251

scarcely inaccurate even in small de-
tails.

New, this matter of designing in the
solid, and skill in setting down the main
lines of that design in approximate per-
spective, is the very life and essence of
ready and easy design. It is the thing
which our school-taught architects lack
most sadly, and the thing which every
student should put before him as most of
all to be desired. Men who are taught
mechanical drawing, and little else ; who
know artistic drawing only as a means
of indicating the presence of a scroll or-
nament, or of putting in the curves of
an arch in a mechanical perspective, are
always making the mistake of design-
ing in elevation. To do that is to in-
vite failure. Nothing can be designed
in elevation except a street front, as of
a narrow city house ; and even for this,
no designer should be satisfied with an
elevation drawing alone. Every sepa-
rate arched window, even every sepa-
rate square-headed window, — or at least
every separate pattern of window, — re-
quires to be drawn in perspective, that
the relation beween the reveal or visible
thickness of wall and the width of the
opening, the relation between the length
of the lintel and its bearing on the wall,
the relation between the mouldings at
the angles, if there are any, and the
whole window, the relation between the
ornament put upon the face of the lintel
or the archivolt and the open space and
the piers on both sides, may all be seen
aright. An elevation drawing falsifies
all these things, and its one function —
namely, that of transmitting to the build-
er the architect's purpose — should not
be confused with the idea of its embody-
ing the design ; for it cannot do that.
Elevations must be made as sections
must be, and ground-plans ; but eleva-
tions, and also sections which have to
show any part of the architectural com-
position, should be drawn with the con-
stant sense of their being what they are,
— namely, the abstract embodiment, in

a technical form and for a technical pur-
pose, of the design previously completed
in the solid.

The need of skill in artistic or free-
hand drawing for all design in the way
of decorative sculpture, and the applica-
tion to a building of such sculpture, and
for all design in the way of decorative
painting, mural painting, and polychro-
matic adornment, is too obvious and well
known to need restatement here. To be
sure, if you are content, as many of our
practicing architects to-day seem con-
tent, to design buildings without decora-
tive sculpture or decorative painting, you
need not worry about learning to draw
ornament. Buildings are being erected,
even at high cost, and by architects and
firms who are leading men and leading
firms, in the business sense of the word,
which buildings affect no decorative or
artistic success beyond that of a gener-
ally pleasant harmony of proportion in
facades and in interiors of rigid plain-
ness. If you agree with yourself to have
no carving about the building except a
few Corinthian capitals, and to take
those capitals directly from the plates of
a book, or to let the marble-cutters work
them according to their own notions,
then, indeed, you are to get off cheaply,
and to produce your architecture at but
little cost of thought. In this, as in
other ways, to quote a much-talked-of ar-
ticle in The Architectural Record, " clas-
sic is such a soft snap " that the de-
signer of that kind of classic does not
come within the scope of the present in-
quiry. Architecture, however, has al-
ways adorned itself with sculpture and
with painting, and it always will. The
rejection of such adornment is a surer
sign of deadly decay than exaggeration
or misapplication of such adornment.
Nor is the architect who deliberately re-
jects the knowledge and the practice of
sculpture and painting other than an
inartistic modern of the most hopeless
species.

We are brought inevitably to the

252

The True Education of an Architect.

third requirement of the architect, which
is a knowledge of modeling. Drawing
can do much, and in the hands of a fa-
cile draughtsman the pencil or brush is
capable of a language readily compre-
hensible to him and to others ; but there
is another language which makes it pos-
sible to say clearly some things which
even drawing cannot express. Some
benefactor of his kind should gather a
collection of models made by great men
of the past and used for their own study.
There are not many such in existence,
but there are a few, and any one of these
which is finally fixed in a museum might
be photographed, at all events, and per-
haps cast, for our supposed collection in
America. One clay model of a piece
of furniture, as of a bahut of the six-
teenth century, would teach our young
workmen a great deal which they ought
to know. They have, no doubt, a gen-
eral idea that the modern sculptor works
in clay, takes a cast in plaster of the fin-
ished clay model, turns that cast over
to marble-cutters or bronze-founders, and
then supervises the final finishing of the
piece ; but are they aware that every
silver powder-horn or carved gun-stock
of a good time of art was modeled
in clay or wax ? Any one can see the
designers for a firm of silversmiths or
dealers in furniture making delicate and
refined drawings, but the precious mate-
rial, modeling wax, hardly has a place
in the modern designer's rooms ; and
yet there is no greater encouragement
to the spirit which would reach out to-
ward novel modifications of the ancient
types — toward the re-designing of the
old design, as Mr. La Farge has put it in
his latest book — than freedom in the
use of modeling clay and wax. Let us
assume that no one is so rash as to try
to create a new design, or to design with-
out reference to art which he knows of
old. Even then his porch or his bay
window, when modeled in the solid, has
a chance to put on a very different air,
and to be original in a truer sense, if

he is using the solid instead of merely
the flat for its shaping as a feature of a
new structure.

Modeling for architecture is of two
sorts, one and the same in tendency and
character, but still capable of separation
the one from the other. An admirable
paper by Mr. Henry Rutgers Marshall,
in a recent number of The Architectural
Review, has pointed out the value to ar-
chitects of the model used for the whole
of the proposed building. Mr. Mar-
shall uses a model instead of prelimi-
nary studies, except of the floor-plans ;
instead of perspective drawings or eleva-
tions, he submits to his employer photo-
graphs of the model, and the model itself
is accessible at his own office. Pho-
tographs may be taken in indefinite
numbers and from any point of view
which the model itself shows to be a
good one ; nor is it hard to take bird's-
eye views, as from a neighboring hill,
or views from below, as from a neigh-
boring valley, with the house relieved
against the sky. Moreover, the paper
in question calls attention in a most
masterly way to the value to the design-
er of seeing his design taking shape in
solid form. That paper, although ad-
dressed to the professional reader, should
be read by every one interested in the
possibilities of modern architecture, and
it may be accepted by those who read it
as containing the soundest of sound doc-
trine. Such models as it describes, how-
ever, are too small in scale to allow of
proper proportionate treatment of sculp-
tured detail ; and a farther step must be
taken, as will be suggested below.

This matter of sculptured detail is the
other half of the subject of modeling in
connection with architecture. It will be
readily admitted that when a capital is
required which shall not be a mere and
even a slavish copy of an old one, it
should be modeled to full size. It may
even be admitted that a bas-relief runs
a better chance of being effective as de-
coration if it has been modeled instead

The True Education of an Architect.

253

of being cut directly from a drawing.
The carver will probably model it from
the drawing ; but why should that strange
influence interpose itself ? Suppose, now,
the case of a porch, in which three or
four columns are to be clustered together
in one group or arranged in couples. It
will not require a very strong effort of
the imagination to see the great advan-
tage of modeling the whole corner on
a rather large but still a reduced scale.
Possibly two of the capitals may need
to be cut out of one and the same block ;
but even if each capital is to be shaped
from a separate stone, the close juxta-
position of two, and still more of four
capitals requires in each a treatment
which will be found to differ from the
treatment of a capital which is four feet
away from its nearest neighbor. If, as
in many noble styles of architecture, the
capitals are to differ in design, it becomes
highly necessary to see their models side
by side ; and this, perhaps, in full size.
So with cornices, lintel courses, entab-
latures ; their relations to the walls, the
pilasters, or the columns which support
them are really not easy to determine,
except by the careful modeling of a
large piece of the wall and its crowning
member. This applies equally to clas-
sic and to mediaeval fashions of work,
not to mention the outlying styles, in
which experiment is always the order of
the day. Even the most severe piece
of classic work should be modeled, in
order that the designer may be sure
that he is getting his own design into
shape. Re-designing the old design is
the right thing, of course, but it needs
to be re-designed ! An architect has
no right to say to us that so and so is
good because it is exactly copied from
the Theatre of Marcellus ; what we ask
of him is that it should be good because
it is carefully re-studied. The building
which our architect has in hand is not
at all like the Theatre of Marcellus ; it
is not a great semicircle of open arches
divided by piers which are adorned with

engaged columns. What the modern
man is designing is pretty sure to have
the arches filled with sashes and with
doors ; nor is there one chance in a hun-
dred that he is building so massively.
For him, then, to copy the ancient the-
atre accurately in all its details is to
do a preposterous thing. It is for him,
if he recognizes the value of the Graeco-
Roman design, to re -design it for his
own purposes, and to consider very care-
fully the question whether he has not
followed the original too closely, — whe-
ther his thinner wall, his smaller dimen-
sions, his flat facade, and his glass-filled
archways do not require a still wider di-
vergence from the actual proportions of
the original.

There can be no doubt that the young
architect should be taught these three
things, — to build, to draw, to model.
His knowledge of building may be theo-
retical, though he will know more about
it if he has had a little experience
in laying bricks himself, but his know-
ledge of drawing and of modeling must
be of the most practical nature. The
models of buildings which Mr. Marshall
deals with may, indeed, be made for the
architect by those whose business it is,
but he will find it for his interest to put
his hand to the wax, now and then ; nor
is it presumable that he will get very
good modeling done unless he knows
how to do it himself. There are excep-
tions to the truth of every statement,
and it is true that one of our most ori-
ginal designers of sculptured ornament
declares his inability to model, and avows
that every part of his elaborate work is
done for him by a sculptor who is in
sympathy with him and whom he can
fully trust. Exactly in the same way,
one of the small number of our architects
who really make their own designs, in-
stead of taking them ready-made from
books and photographs, hardly ever
touches pencil to paper. These may be
considered exceptions. It may be said
that they are instances of the general

254

The True Education of an Architect.

truth that architectural work is the work
of many associated minds, and that no-
thing is misdone which is done rightly,
whether by several minds working to-
gether in harmony, or by a single spirit.
No one is to imagine that a great and com-
plex work of decorative art is designed
in one piece by one man, and put under
contract with one firm. It is a heresy
of our day to suppose that to be possi-
ble. The loggetta at the foot of the
Tower of St. Mark, with its elaborate
sculptures, is assigned to Sansovino, and
yet one might safely wager something
handsome, if Sansovino could come back
to decide the bet, that other minds than
his own strove with the problem even of
that very small and very simple struc-
ture, and that other fingers than his own
worked in the clay. The familiar in-
stance of the Gothic portal, with its
statues and reliefs, may be cited again,
because it is so familiar, and it has so
long been a recognized truth that much
harmonious co-working was necessary
when that conception was put into solid
form. In such a case as that many de-
signers may work together, always pro-
vided that there is some one to decide
peremptorily when there is division or
disagreement It would be quite safe to
assume that all those co-workers were
practiced artists in the arts of their day.
Is there anything else needed by the
young architect ? Other things may be
needed by the architectural draughts-
man who looks for a good salary ; but
that is quite another matter. This is
not the only occupation in which the
training of the subordinate is not exact-
ly that best fitted for a principal. If a
man sees that he must earn his living
for some years by making mechanical
drawings in an architect's office, he must,
indeed, learn some things which are not
set down above. The very simple prin-
ciples of mechanical drawing, as used by
architects, may be learned by practice
in a few weeks ; but the draughtsman
who expects high pay must be skilled in

various tricks of mechanical drawing,
wholly unnecessary for the actual work
of building. Rules for the " casting of
shadows " and the mathematical system
of perspective drawing are to be learned,
and the shading up of drawings and the
prettifying of them in monochrome and
in color to please the client must also
become familiar, — though these, of
course, are of no practical use whatever.
The mechanical drawing which the ar-
chitect needs for ground-plans, and even
for elevations and sections, if he is fond
of making his own drawings, as some
first-rate men have been, or if he finds
it necessary to do his own work, may be
speedily acquired. Accuracy of setting
out and of figuring (a most vital and most
peremptory necessity, under our present
system) is a matter of temperament and
of thorough knowledge rather than of
technical skill as a draughtsman.

Sound and ready knowledge of build-
ing, dexterous readiness and some ap-
proach to excellence as a freehand
draughtsman, and some skill as a model-
er, — these are the three things which
the student should be taught. All else
is a part of his higher education, of his
training as a man rather than as an ar-
chitect. Time was when there existed
no such distinction ; when there were liv-
ing traditions which the young architect
had to learn, which he would learn nat-
urally as an apprentice, — exactly as the
apprentice painter picked up his art of
painting naturally, and ground his mas-
ter's colors and swept out his master's
workshop the while. Those days are
gone. There is no tradition now which
ought to be learned, because there is
none which is not that of some school
or coterie, none which binds the world
of building men. There is no tradition
now which should not be avoided, be-
cause there is none which is not telling
against a healthy growth of the fine art
of building. Present traditions are of
the most mischievous character, and no-
thing can come of a familiarity with

The Masquerade.

255

them but a prolongation of the sterile
years, the years of the lean kine, through
which the European world goes starving
in spirit for food of the solid and whole-
some sort known to men of old. De-
signing cannot be taught ; good taste
cannot be taught ; and yet it is well for
the artist in any department to learn
what other artists have done, and to
learn how they designed and to see what
they accounted good taste. The essen-
tial distinction is this : that while the
young painter and the youtig sculptor
of our time can afford to watch their im-
mediate predecessors — the men twenty
years older than they — and learn some-
thing of their ways of work, while they
learn also the greatness of the bygone
ages of art, the young architect would
do well not to learn what his contem-
poraries and those a little older than he
have been doing. That which has been
done since 1815 in the way of archi-
tectural fine art has not been worth the
doing, and it would be better, on the

whole, if it were all wiped out. Some
interesting buildings would be lost, but
it would be better for the immediate fu-
ture of art if the buildings erected since
that time had been brick factories in
appearance with square holes for win-
dows. There are evil influences working
on all the modern world of fine art ;
and yet painting and sculpture are liv-
ing arts, and some even of the subsidi-
ary arts maintain a feverish existence ;
but the great fine art of architecture is
not alive ; its nominal practitioners have
become administering, adjusting, dex-
1 terous fiduciary agents, with only here
and there one among them who cher-
ishes even the spirit of the artist. The
student of architecture has nothing to
learn from the epoch in which he finds
himself. How he is to study the art of
other epochs, and what opportunity there
is for him to learn, by precept or by ex-
ample, something of the fine art of ar-
chitecture, is a subject which we cannot
here consider.

Russell Sturgis.

THE MASQUERADE.

THE doctor had been summoned quick-
ly, accidentally as it were, with his hand
on the reins ready to drive elsewhere.
And now he followed the maid into a
bedroom darkened and still. He lifted
the white hand lying on the coverlet, he
felt for the beat of the heart, and finally
he leaned over to examine the face. The
patient was not dying ; she was dead.
Yet might it not be sleep, he asked,
" with his poppy coronet " ? Urged by
the doubt, with abrupt decision he drew
back the curtains, admitting a ghastly
grayish shaft of light' which clearly re-
vealed the woman in all her cold placid-
ity. He stood bewildered, seeing alter-
nately the soft face his memory recalled,
and the face before him transformed by

the magic touch of death into regal
beauty.

All at once the silence was broken.
A woman's voice, false and disagreeable,
fell upon his ear.

" So you 're the doctor ! " she ex-
claimed. " As you perceive, it was use-
less to come ; but the maid would go in
search of some one." Then the nurse
straightway proceeded to give the infor-
mation that she knew would be required
of her, her hurried statement of symp-
toms somehow suggesting an uneasy an-
ticipation of discovery. " The patient,"
she continued, " was better yesterday,
and this morning I heard her say to her
husband, ' Don't hurry back on my ac-
count. I 'in feeling quite myself again.'

256

The Masquerade.

But when I brought her breakfast she
was languid and refused to eat."

Although the doctor spoke falteringly,
almost as if he had some impediment of
speech, with forced persistency he asked
many questions, some of them seeming to
the nurse uncalled for, especially since
he had had nothing to do with the case.
Nor, in truth, had any other physician
visited the patient for many a day.

At last relaxing his hold upon the
back of the chair against which he had
steadied himself, he sank wearily into
the seat. His eyes fixed upon the life-
less form, in a dim, groping way he said
to himself, —

" When my life broke off from thine,
How fresh the splinters keep and fine."

As he was preparing to leave, a ser-
vant beckoned to the nurse. She went
to the door, partly closed it behind her,
then shut it, and soon the murmur of
voices ceased. Left alone, the doctor
knelt beside the bed. A stifled groan es-
caped him. He kissed the eyelids of the
dead woman, and her cold white lips.

When the nurse returned, reaching
for his hat, Dr. Marston said, " I '11 go
now ; it 's hardly worth while to stay
longer."

" So it has come to this," he reflected,
as he drove along through the crowded
streets, scarcely knowing whither, seeing
only the beautiful marble face, every
flitting look of which he knew by heart,

— not by cold memory. It had been
long since he had looked upon it in life,

— then radiant with the bloom of youth,
but no more lovely than now. As he
thought of the kiss that he had laid de-
voutly upon the lips of the reposeful wo-
man, there was the faintest reminiscence
of an acrid odor which some minutes
later he could still perceive ; and finally,
when his horse with loose rein brought
him back to his office, seeing a vender of
flowers near by, Marston bought a bunch
of carnations, — there had been some in
the death-chamber. While inhaling the
fragrance of the blossoms that he held

in his hand, a strange analytical look
stole over his countenance.

Entering his office, the doctor tossed
the flowers on his desk. Presently he
sat down beside it. With his elbows
resting on the desk and his head on his
hands he pondered, now and then reach-
ing out for the carnations, inhaling their
perfume, and throwing them aside again.
No, he could not get rid of that other
venomous odor. After a while he rose
and walked the floor, saying aloud as he
paced to arid fro, "They won her from me.
Dear gentle soul, it was not for her to re-
sist. Besides, he was rich, I was poor,
and the mother was a cruel worldling."

The clock struck the hour. " Hea-
vens ! " he exclaimed, " how long I 've
beev idle here ! "

The November day that had had no
sunshine in it was already waning. It
was cold and very dreary. Neverthe-
less, having still many sick to visit, the
doctor hurriedly left his office.

All that insalubrious winter Marston
worked hard. Indeed, he had no dis-
tractions, no ties either of kindred or of
love, to curb his professional zeal. His
enthusiasm found its solace in the labo-
ratory, its outlet in the sick-room. The
whole world had become to him a patho-
logical study. Everything else might
be transitory, but sickness of the body
and of the soul was abiding. Could in-
dividuals, he asked, be held responsible
for their physical maladies ? As for the
disorders of the soul, where did personal
responsibility begin or end ? Ponder-
ing such problems, he often walked the
streets at night, in the merciless glare of
the electric light, scanning the faces of
those he met, measuring with practiced
eye the abnormalities he saw, — which
eyebrow was the higher, which cheek the
fuller, the differences in the height of
men's shoulders, ^he leg that was shorter,
— seeing beneath the superficial asym-
metry the more profound organic mal-
formation.

One evening, just at dusk, while he

The, Masquerade.

257

was walking briskly toward his office,
Dr. Marston's attention was suddenly
arrested by the movements of a man in
front of him. As it happened, he car-
ried his head inclined to one side ; he
also had a slight hitch in his gait, and
other characteristics that were very un-
pleasant to Marston, with his trained sen-
sitiveness to the least departure from the
normal type. To the ordinary observer,
however, the man was not without his
attractions.

" Yes, we do look alike," said the doc-
tor, reiterating the common impression,
" with these exceptions," — running over
in his mind an inventory of the other's de-
fects. Then almost unconsciously, with
the facility of a mobile nature, he fell
into the same tricks of carriage. Indeed,
in his imitative zeal he came so near
to his model that he could easily have
touched his shoulder ; or, in the manner
of the garroter, he could have encircled
his neck with his arm, in a way that
would have stopped the swinging of Grin-
del's damned head, stopped the move-
ments of his body altogether. Then a
sardonic smile stiffened the doctor's lips,
and, pricked by conscience, he turned
precipitately into another street ; noti-
cing at the moment, as distinctly as when
he first perceived it, the drowsy medicinal
odor which haunted him still. But in-
stead of seeing in his mind's eye the
woman lifeless, he beheld her as she had
looked when he and Grindel first were
rivals.

At the end of another winter the doc-
tor felt the weariness of incessant work,
and, abating somewhat his strenuous la-
bors, he amused himself as best he could,
spending an evening sometimes at the
theatre. On one of these occasions, sit-
ting beside his friend Ingolsby, in the
intervals of the play he fell to talking
with him.

" Why don't you come to the club any
more ? " Ingolsby asked.

" I have n't time."

" Have n't time ! You 're working too

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 484. 17

hard. Heaven knows a lawyer sees
enough of the tragedies of life, but a
doctor " —

" Yes," said Marston, " no doubt ; the
profession is a grind." Then alluding
to the scene upon which the curtain had
just dropped, " Actors," he remarked,
suppressing a yawn, " make a great mis-
take in yielding too soon to the effects of
poison. What we have just witnessed
is n't true to fact ; " and they began talk-
ing about the various toxicants, — the
poisoned glove of the Borgias, the " un-
bated and envenomed sword," and the
latest " quietus " discovered in the labo-
ratory.

"It 's all grist," said Ingolsby, "that
comes to the lawyer's mill. Strangely
enough, Grindel showed unusual skill, the
other day, in getting an acquittal for a
young man accused of poisoning a rich
old uncle. Indeed, he must have gone
pretty deeply into the subject. At any
rate, he maintained, with convincing
logic, that a clever, well-educated gentle-
man like his client would never have
made use of a drug so easily detected as
arsenic. He would have employed, most
likely, he said, some slow, insidious vege-
table poison."

"Most likely," repeated the doctor,
with a cynical smile, as he bent his eyes
in the same direction in which his com-
panion was looking.

" There 's Grindel now," said Ingols-
by, putting down his glasses and speak-
ing low in Marston's ear. " He 's al-
ways here when Blandford plays. They
say that at one time he wanted to marry
her, you know, and all that sort of thing.
She threw him over ; but still he comes."

" When did the acquaintance begin ? "
asked Marston carelessly, glancing up at
the great chandelier above him ; then,
with narrowed intensity, fixing his eyes
upon the back of Grindel's head.

" More than two years ago, when
Blandford first came over."

Marston said nothing, and the subject
was dropped.

258

The Masquerade.

On his way out Marston joined some
friends, and after he had assisted the
mother and daughter into their carriage,
as a sort of afterthought the young wo-
man held out her hand. '' Do come to
see us, doctor," she said ; adding with
sweet, regretful accent, " you don't know
how much we 've missed you."

While walking homeward Marston
mused. " Why not go ? Charming peo-
ple ! Emily Leland is one of the love-
liest girls I know." And then, notwith-
standing his desire to think of her, his
thoughts flew back into the old accus-
tomed channel. " What 's the use ! " he
exclaimed. " There 's no positive proof ;
besides, she 'd be the last to seek re-
venge. No, it 's bast to leave it alone.
It 's not the first unpunished crime, nor
the last one either, I take it," and as he
strode along his cane struck the pave-
ment with sharp reechoing sound.

As the months slipped by Marston
saw nothing more of Grindel. Indeed,
he was beginning to wonder what had
become of him, and at the same hour for
several successive days Grindel was up-
permost in his thoughts. At last, al-
though he feared he was becoming the
victim of an 'idee fixe, he yielded to the
impulse to go into Grindel's neighbor-
hood for the mere chance of seeing him.
There was something about the upward
slant of his left eyebrow which at the
moment had a strange fascination for
him. He wanted, he said to himself, to
observe how it was that so slight a pe-
culiarity could leave so strong an impres-
sion. Not long after, led by some blind
impulse, he stopped in front of a vast
building appropriated to offices, and al-
most before he was aware of the fact he
was a passenger in the elevator. But
when he asked the way to Grindel's office,
he learned that the lawyer had moved,
and, strange to say, he could find abso-
lutely no clue to his whereabouts.

Marston experienced a keen chagrin.
The desire to see the man had grown to
be a passion, and now, without the chance

of meeting him, it seemed as if he were
suddenly deprived of a stimulant. In-
deed, there was a positive void in life.
He became aware of a sort of incapacity
for his work, for more than once he found
himself writing the wrong prescription,
even specifying in one instance a deadly
drug he had no intention whatsoever of
administering. Fortunately, he still had
force enough to regard himself with the
clinical eye, and in consequence was com-
pelled to admit that it was time for a
change.

The professional judgment having been
speedily resolved into a purpose, Mar-
ston set out on his travels. A languid
interest seized him at the idea of shooting
in the Rockies. At any rate, he would
vis:t outlying places, and eventually, per-
haps, see something of life in the heart
of his country.

Meanwhile, happily for the doctor, in
the midst of grand and solitary scenery,
the perturbing importance of man and his
ways became swallowed up in the great
universe of predestined course. This
in itself was a regenerating solace ; and
although there remained the sense that
something in him was extinct, some part
of his being lay buried with his lost love,
the soul-sick wanderer gradually regained
his old temperate view of life.

At last, weary of living, as it were,
upon the outskirts of human interests,
Marston concluded to travel eastward ;
having in mind to tarry awhile with some
friends in a region of far-famed plenty
and perfection.

Arriving at Minstrelburg with the
sightseer's humor still upon him, he ac-
ceded to the innkeeper's suggestion that
he should visit the most remarkable of
the local curiosities. Accordingly, early
one afternoon he set out for the Trap-
pist monastery near by, — its inmates, in
that land of outspoken volubility, easily
ranking among the greatest of the world's
wonders.

He made fair speed along the winding
road, only loitering now and then by the

The Masquerade.

259

river's bank or on some rustic bridge, to
look down into the black waters of the
slender, cliff-pent stream ; but as he ap-
proached the massive red brick building,
its gilded cross catching the glint of slant-
ing sunbeams, he was struck by its mel-
ancholy aspect, and while he reflected
upon the austere habits of the men with-
in, upon their " pale contented sort of
discontent," a feeling of despondency
crept over him.

Within the great arched doorway, ac-
cording to the custom of the place, two
Brothers, clad in white, drew near, and
prostrating themselves at Marston's feet,
remained thus for some seconds, with
their foreheads touching the ground, —
a sign of welcome, he was afterward told,
given for the sake of him who said, " The
foxes have holes and the birds of the air
have nests, but the Son of man hath not
where to lay his head." Rising and mak-
ing sign to him to follow, they entered
the chapel, where the sub-prior appeared,
graciously offering to show the stranger
whatever he might wish most to see.

Following his guide, — who in truth
was far removed from the typical pro-
duct of the " hermit's fast," — Marston
entered a long, low hall, where a great
clock caused him to pause in silent won-
der. The rim of its disk was a serpent ;
its minute-hand a scythe grasped by a
grinning skeleton, whose fingers pointed
toward the fleeting moments, and whose
eyes seemed bent upon the frail mortal
who might stop to count the passing fate-
ful hours. This sinister design made
Marston shudder involuntarily, and then
he thought, in pleasing contrast, of the
pagan symbol of death, — the beautiful
Greek youth holding in his hand an ex-
tinguished torch.

As they walked along, the doctor found
himself vastly interested in his broad-
shouldered, erect companion. His astute
and swart face — showing the heat of
an Italian sun — suggested curious ques-
tionings, such as have been asked ever
since the brilliant Bouthillier de Ranee",

leading the way in the reforms as well
as in the strange romances of the order,
plunged into mad dealings with the flesh
and spirit, fiercely seeking the kingdom
of heaven, because, it was said, Madame
la Duchesse, dying suddenly, left him a
pauper in the kingdom of love.

Marston asked himself why this man,
the genial prior, fitted to grace drawing-
(rooms, should have joined the silent Bro-
thers in their downward race (at least, so
it seemed to the doctor), and forthwith he
caught himself at his old trick of watch-
ing for abnormalities, wondering about
the crime it had been possible for the
white -gowned cleric to commit before
seeking penance, perhaps repentance, in
this gloomy abode, over whose portal was
written, " Sedibit, solitarius, tacibit."

On his part, the prior, whose pleasur-
able duty it was to do the talking for the
paters and fraters of the community, re-
cognizing in his visitor an accomplished
man of the world, quickly reverted to
social incidents of his past experience ;
not infrequently breaking off in the mid-
dle of a story un pen risquS to perform
one of his numerous offices, and, the hur-
ried performance over, resuming his nar-
rative at the point where conventual zeal
had interrupted it. When, apparently,
he had quite talked himself out, for the
moment at least, Marston seized the op-
portunity to inquire concerning the pious
observances of the place, and was not a
little surprised that, after answering his
questions, the prior should ask, with the
eagerness of inspiration, "Would n't you
like to make a retreat here yourself ? "

" I 'm afraid," he responded, laugh-
ing, " it would hardly do. I 'm a Pro-
testant, you know."

" Oh, that does n't signify," answered
the lonely prior, with large catholicity as
well as an eye to his own entertainment ;
and he glanced at his new acquaintance
with avaricious eyes, showing a spider-
like greed to entice him within the web,
not so much for the purposes of piety as
to serve the ends of good-fellowship.

260

The Masquerade.

In the refectory, the bare tables and
hard benches — though tit to be scorned
by the saintly Barbabec, who would sit
only upon a chair with a porcupine cush-
ion of nails pointing upward — were suf-
ficiently suggestive of penance to have
caused one even less addicted to Sarda-
napalian luxury than Marston to wince.
Nor in the long, low -roofed dormitory
was the impression of austerity effaced.
Although this chill, dank place was with-
out provision for fire, yet if one of the
lowly Brothers wished to warm himself
there was the means ; for, hanging at the
head of his bed, a whip of knotted cords
was ready to his hand.

Here, thought Marston, finding it dif-
ficult to divest himself of the idea that
he was in a prison instead of a sanctu-
ary, in the " dead vast and middle of the
night," these stung and remorseful souls
suffer the torment of their deeds. Con-
tinuing to follow his guide through the
outer door, at that moment he observed
a monk issuing from one of the many
dimly lighted labyrinths of the old build-
ing, and — seemingly unconscious of any
other presence — this soul-burdened man,
one of those who proclaim, '• We are hap-
py, perfectly happy," threw out his arms
in wild gesture, while his face, though
half concealed within his ample capouche,
showed the grim agony of one battling
with some demon of regret or despair.

The two men exchanged glances and
went on out into the garden, where, walk-
ing between rows of ancient trees and
along paths that hushed the sandaled foot-
fall, they met the silent, sad-robed Bro-
thers, spectre-like, flitting to and fro on
their endless rounds of labor.

In this age of alert and curious pry-
ing into the faces and affairs of others,
Marston experienced a singular personal
satisfaction in encountering these men
with vague, regardless eyes, practically
blind to the life about them. It was,
indeed, strange that he, the frankest of
men, should find a secret joy, an un-
dreamed-of peace, among hermits so iso-

lated from the world and from one an-
other that one of them — so ran the story
— actually buried his own brother with-
out knowing who he was.

Yet, despite this imputed self-concen-
tration, the doctor fancied that some of
the faces he saw were still capable of re-
flecting the mundane interest, especially
that of the monk digging in .the vegeta-
ble garden, filled with the drowsy drone
of bees, through which they passed ; his
countenance was so communicative that
Marston imagined he might now be suf-
fering the penance of enforced silence
for past indiscreet babbling.

As they approached the little wicket
gate that shut off this part of the grounds,
a gentle breeze wafted the odor of grow-
ing things, — of something spicy and
aromatic. Marston paused and glanced
about him.

Observing the look of inquiry, " Here,"
said the prior, " is the corner where we
cultivate our medicinal herbs. This is
hydroscyamus," pointing to one of the
plants ; and plucking the leaf of another,
" this is the monk's-hood."

Had he turned his eyes upon his vis-
itor at that moment, he would have seen
how pale the latter had suddenly grown.
Indeed, it was the first time for months
that Marston had perceived the old ethe-
real, malefic odor which held for him
the memory of a swift and deadly hor-
ror. With this unlooked-for revival of
the slumbering misery, he mentally ex-
claimed, " Can I never escape my call-
ing ? Must it always be disease in one
form or another? " and absorbed by his
own thoughts he was deaf to the voice
of his guide. Then, roused by the prior's
question, " Do you see that man yonder,
in front of us ? " he quickly looked up.

" You mean the one in the open field ?
Yes. What is he doing ? "

" In the midst of life we are in death,"
answered his companion, making the sign
of the cross. " When one grave is filled
we dig another, just to remind us, you
know, that we are mortal."

The Masquerade.

261

" A gruesome task indeed," remarked
Marston. " Between compulsory silence
and the digging of graves, I should think
it would not take long to put every man
here beneath the sod."

" It does not," was the laconic reply.
And after a slight pause the prior con-
tinued : " As for talking, much energy
is wasted, I assure you, in superfluous
speech. The restraint leads to a pre-
cious winnowing of words. Yet " —

The remark was cut short, for one
of the Brothers, who, unobserved, had
drawn near, conveyed with swift gesture
and a few trenchant words some intelli-
gence to his superior, evidently of im-
portance ; immediately the prior's face
took on the aspect of haughty authority,
and turning toward Marston he said,
" Will you excuse me ? If I do not re-
turn, perhaps you can find your way back
to the house. Meanwhile, though there
is not much else to see, you are at liberty
to go where you will."

" It is already late," the doctor re-
plied. " I must bid you good-by. I see
an open gate over yonder, — I '11 go that
way ; " and thanking his host for his cour-
teous entertainment, he turned away.

" I hope you '11 come back to us some
time," said the prior ; and as he made
this remark a strange acrid smile flitted
across his lips, while his black eyes rest-
ed upon his visitor with cold, straight
glance. " Indeed, I think you will," he
added blandly.

Though persuaded that this bit of me-
disevalism was well worth the seeing,
Marston experienced a certain lightness
of heart at having discharged his duty
by it, and, walking along with equable
stride, he would soon have reached the
outer road, had he not, impelled by an
irresistible impulse, swerved from the
straight path toward the spot where the
stooping Trappist was still at work in
the desolate graveyard. His back was
turned to the visitor, and at the moment
he seemed to be bestowing that linger-
ing care, tending to excellence, so sugges-

tive of the true artist. In the interest
of science, the doctor thought he would
like to look into the face of this delving
ascetic, that he might note the psycho-
logical state as reflected in the counte-
nance of one so curiously occupied, and
in surroundings so remote from the eager
stir of worldly life. Therefore, just as
the monk straightened himself up for the
last time before leaving his task, Mar-
ston's searching glance fell full upon him.

The men stood still, transfixed ; one
through force of habit remaining silent.
The other, giving a low cry, distilling
into the one word " murderer " the pent-
up rage so long slumbering within his
soul, leaped at Grindel's throat. The
action, though sudden to the hand, was
doubtless in itself a resurgent impulse of
the time when, walking behind the man
in the crowded thoroughfare, Marston
had thought how easy a thing it would
be to strangle the life out of him.

A struggle ensued, and then the Bro-
ther, losing his footing, fell in a contort-
ed heap into the yawning earth. There
was a convulsive movement, a groan ; the
silence of the monk, the silence of the
grave. With the instinct of the physi-
cian, Marston sprang to the rescue, lifting
Grindel to his feet ; but the head hung
over to one side ; the neck was broken ;
the pulse was gone ; life was extinct.

Dumfounded at the all too swift real-
ization of his baleful thought, for an in-
stant Marston remained inactive. Then,
accustomed to think quickly in the face
of disaster, he seized the spade which had
fallen from the dead man's grasp, and
began to dig yet deeper into the compact
earth. With the energy of despair he
quickly gained the desired depth, and
first stripping the inert form of its garb,,
he dragged it back once more into the
pit. But before covering forever from
sight the dead monk's face, Marston was
again struck with the resemblance be-
tween himself and his victim, and at once
a look of satisfaction, of keen decision,
swept across his pallid visage. Then he

262

The Masquerade.

hastily heaped in the earth, trod it firmly
down, erased his footprints, and made
the surrounding parts to appear as they
had formerly done. At the height of his
perf ervid labors he heard the silvery tin-
kle of the monastery bell, and felt thank-
ful that with the call to compline he was
likely to be left undisturbed.

Exhausted, but not vanquished, Mar-
ston gathered up the rifled robes, and,
divesting himself of his own garments,
assumed those of the dead Trappist;
congratulating himself while so doing
that of late he had worn a shaven face
and close-cut hair. Habited in the guise
of the silent recluse, for the first time
during these moments of chilled excite-
ment he thought of the other alternative.
Why not, he asked himself, have left the
man as he was ? That the monk had ac-
cidentally fallen into the grave, and so
ended his days, could easily be believed.
But now that he himself was a criminal
in a world where most things were awry,
in a place where there were " many with
deeds as well undone," why not, flashed
the thought, expiate his offense as the
other had done ? Yet, after all, was it
murder, or something less ? questioned
the doctor, though all the while, in obe-
dience to an instinct more subtle than
casuistry, he was intent upon tying the
cord — " that cord which is wont to make
those girt with it more lean " — about his
waist, and continued his silent mental
preparation to fill the place of the monk
now dead ; only to anticipate by a very
little, he thought, the mocking silence of
eternity.

As Marston foresaw, in a brief mo-
ment of recoil, the weary tale of years
before him, the difficulties that awaited
him in the unaccustomed and fraudulent
role, though he was grateful for the scant
knowledge he had gleaned from the
prior, his courage almost forsook him.
But having once put on the vesture of
penance he could not escape its thrall.
So, concealing the clothes he had put
aside, he went over by the well and sat

down upon a seat, — the stone of sor-
row, it might have been called. The new
moon, just then climbing the heavens,
threw its wan light upon the encircling
stones of the cool deep pool, whitening
them into marble, and casting here and
there the imagery of dark leaves upon
their mossy surface. The whole scene,
indeed, was one of such weird beauty
that gradually a sense of rest and of
spiritual repletion stole over the guilty
man ; this sense of repose being height-
ened yet further by the last twitter of
a sparrow from a neighboring cypress-
tree, as it seemed to settle itself content-
edly in its nest for a night of peaceful
slumber. And strange to say, in spite
of his alien dress and the unwonted sur-
rou-idings, there was a curious feeling of
familiarity about it all, as if a forlorn
wretch had found covert ; a wanderer in
uncongenial places, one desolate and dis-
appointed, a lost soul, had come home.
Then there followed a certain exhilara-
tion, — a brief reaction, Marston well
knew, from the lugubrious strain of the
past hour. While it lasted, however, he
was disposed to profit by the verve it
gave ; for, accustomed to range the wide
fields of thought, yet knowing full well,
without the personal tie, — his love sev-
ered from hope having taught him the
lesson, — the deceitfulness of the world's
interests, already there was with him the
conscious foreshadowing of the priestly
contraction, a sense of the foreordained,
a dangerous contempt of consequences.

So, doubting not his ability to meet
the novel situation as it might arise, he
turned his steps toward the house ; his
craving for shelter, now that his strength
was low, dulling for the time all feeling
of apprehension.

Reaching the shadow of the chapel,
the stranger heard first the dying notes
of " Deus in meum adjutorum intende,"
and afterward the response, " Deus ad
adjuvendum me festina." Then fall-
ing in line with the procession of out-
coming monks, and imitating their or-

The Masquerade.

263

dered movements, he managed to evade
attention until the hour of rest, when,
going with the others to the dormitory,
his anticipated perplexity as to where he
should lay his head speedily vanished ;
for, in passing a particular cell, one of
the monks stepped aside as if to make
room for him. Sensitive by training to
the slightest suggestion, Marston seized
the clue, and, with weariness in his limbs
and dull anguish in his heart, entered,
and threw himself upon the mattress of
straw dimly seen in the light of the
moon, now forsaking the narrow window
of his cell ; its transient beauty having
power even then to lift for a brief space
the dark pall that hung about his soul.

That first night, the coarse robe, which
no Trappist lays aside, pricked Marston's
flesh and yielded an added torment.
But Heaven was merciful, and finally he
slept. Even in his dreams there was a
faint though short-lived echo of sweet
song. And again, in the dead of night,
he heard an invisible penitent lashing his
fleshless bones with hissing, "writhing
whip-end.

At the morning meal, the rigorous
rules of St. Benedict, " abstinence, per-
petual silence, manual labor," seemed to
have penetrated the very atmosphere it-
self. " If any one will not work, neither
let him eat," was the pervasive warning
addressed to the unprotesting monks, the
victims of a discipline which hammered
down the strong and broke the weak. At
intervals Marston stole a glance at the
hooded faces of his comrades, wondering
at looks so dolorous ; and, imitative by
nature, before the meal was over he felt
that he too wore a similar half-defiant,
half -abject expression, to which, with sin-
ister insight, he doubted not his spirit
would soon conform. While he was mak-
ing this reflection one of the Brothers
lifted his eyes, and it seemed to Marston
that they dwelt upon him for a moment
with lingering surprise. It was, how-
ever, only in later days, when he met the
sub-prior, by habit a " discerner of sins,"

that, whether rightly or wrongly, a sus-
picion of the utter futility of his disguise
and expiatory sacrifice swept over him.
Yet, despite this suspicion, he would in-
stantly emphasize the most obvious facial
peculiarities of the man he was personat-
i,ng, lifting still higher the left eyebrow
and drawing down one corner of his
mouth. So, by watchfulness and care,
Marston, or rather Brother Hilarius, —
this being the name which, he afterward
learned, had by some diabolical mockery
fallen to Grindel, — made shift to sustain
the character of his masquerade, to ful-
fill the arduous duties of the monk. •

These duties were so relentless that it
was only near the hour of vespers, on
the second day of his service, that he
found himself alone and without pre-
scribed task. Therefore, seizing the mo-
ment, he approached the spot where he
had lingered before with results so tragic.
To his instant relief, he perceived that
the grave holding his secret — if secret
it were, the doubt creating a sickening
dread, a fear of some mysterious inquisi-
torial torture — was filled, rounded over,
and a new cross of cypress wood had
been placed at the head. Immediately
there appeared plainly enough the truth
of what he had mistaken the night before
for a vision or a fantastic dream : for at
the hour of midnight he had seen a dim
light, and not far from his cell the floor
of the dormitory strewed by shadowy
hands with ashes in the form of a cross ;
then a pale monk, borne by silent Bro-
thers, had been laid upon this symbol of
crucifixion, and after a while the ster-
torous breathing had ceased and all be-
came quiet again.

Realizing for the first time what the
solemn act had signified, Marston was
far from despising the sacerdotal magic.
Indeed, he was quite content with the
poetry of religious observances ; for al-
ready the many pious though alien rites
in which he was taking part were begin-
ning " to tease " him " out of thought."

Another monk was fiercely digging a

264

The Masquerade.

new grave. Marston questioned, with
inward shrinking, which one among the
tortured souls he now in a fashion called
his familiars was destined first to find its
dark and easeful rest.

In the silent, grim monotony of mo-
nastic striving the days sped on. The
ingenious interpretation of face and ges-
ture, the fateful stories he wove about
the lowly Brothers, gave scope at first
to the activities of Marston 's mind ; but
in time these outward speculations yield-
ed to the bane of introspection. As for
the guilt of his deed, it did not seem so
heinous within the sombre monastic pile
where a stainless soul would have been
counted an anomaly indeed. Still, there
were times when the fate of his victim
weighed upon the conscience of the un-
converted monk. Although he was used
to death in its multifarious forms, there
had been a touch of ghoulish horror
about this one which, amid these narrow
limits for the play of natural feeling,
curbed any effective spring toward hope-
ful repentance, and, beggared though he
was, he could not bring himself to shout
into the ear of Providence his personal
calculations of future rewards or punish-
ments.

Nevertheless, although he refused to
seek mercy for himself, the new Brother
could not altogether suppress the gen-
erous motives of his nature, and not in-
frequently surprised his mates, by some
kind act, out of their self-centred apathy
into a dumb show of gratitude. He would
indicate, perhaps, to a feverish Brother,
not yet compelled to self-murder, the
particular herb that might yield for his
benefit a wholesome distillation ; or the
inmates of the infirmary would profit by
his skillful adaptation to their needs of
the primitive means found there. All
these friendly offices tended to accumu-
late a sentiment in his favor quite at va-
riance with the former dislike in which
Brother Hilarius had been held. It also
came about that a kindly service, within

the stunted possibilities of the place, was
sometimes rendered this weary, gaunt,
and rueful-looking monk.

At last came summer, nowhere so gold-
en as in that land of far-famed beauty in
which the isolated home of ecclesiastical
rule found place ; yet, after all, not so
isolated as to prevent rumors of the dire
disease then abroad from reaching the
ears of the self - absorbed community.
Eager for the task he had never hitherto
declined, Marston asked, with prodigal
use of his hoarded words, if it were per-
mitted a man, for the good of his soul, to
go forth to nurse the sick.

" It cannot be," the sub-prior an-
swered. "You, my Brother," fixing his
eyes with keen glance on Hilarius, " are
boi nd fast by the rules of the order."

At these words the monk's valiant soul
sprang into his face, but he said nothing.
Indeed, he was not expected to say any-
thing. Nevertheless, his thoughts were
with the stricken over beyond the low
purple hills, and one morning at matins
Brother Hilarius was missing.

Meanwhile the disease drew nearer
and nearer, until the line of desolation,
the completed serpent-coil resembling the
Egyptian emblem of immortality, strange
as it may seem, held the ever uselessly
toiling Brothers in mortal bond. Ti-
dings of the heroic battle fought to stay
the enemy leaped the monastery walls,
and the white-cowled monks heard also
— for Fame herself sounded the trumpet
from the hilltops of the plentiful land
yielding even unto death an unstinted
harvest — of the deeds of one as lowly,
as self-forgetful as Father Damien him-
self. According to its wont, the order
appropriated the glory, and sent to urge
the monk, when his task was done, to
come back to the fold. But the messen-
ger, loitering, came too late ; for already
one swifter than he, Death himself, had
" stepped tacitly " and taken Brother Hi-
larius where he never more would see the

sun.

Penrhyn Lee.

A Ghetto Wedding.

265

A GHETTO WEDDING.

HAD you chanced to be in Grand Street
on that starry February night, it would
scarcely have occurred to you that the
Ghetto was groaning under the culmina-
tion of a long season of enforced idle-
ness and distress. The air was exhil-
aratingly crisp, and the glare of the
cafe's and millinery shops flooded it with
contentment and kindly good will. The
sidewalks were alive with shoppers and
promenaders, and lined with peddlers.

Yet the dazzling, deafening chaos had
many a tale of woe to tell. The greater
part of the surging crowd was out on an
errand of self-torture. Straying forlorn-
ly by inexorable window displays, men
and women would pause here and there
to indulge in a hypothetical selection, to
feast a hungry eye upon the object of an
imaginary purchase, only forthwith to
pay for the momentary joy with all the
pangs of awakening to an empty purse.

Many of the peddlers, too, bore pite-
ous testimony to the calamity which was
then preying upon the quarter. Some
of them performed their task of yelling
and gesticulating with the desperation
of imminent ruin ; others implored the
passers-by for custom with the abject ef-
fect of begging alms ; while in still others
this feverish urgency was disguised by an
air of martyrdom or of shamefaced un-
wonted ness, as if peddling were beneath
the dignity of their habitual occupations,
and they had been driven to it by sheer
famine, — by the hopeless dearth of em-
ployment at their own trades.

One of these was a thick-set fellow of
twenty-five or twenty-six, with honest,
clever blue eyes. It might be due to the
genial, inviting quality of his face that
the Passover dishes whose praises he was
sounding had greater attraction for some
of the women with an " effectual de-
mand " than those of his competitors.
Still, his comparative success had not as

yet reconciled him to his new calling.
He was constantly gazing about for a
possible passer-by of his acquaintance,
and when one came in sight he would
seek refuge from identification in closer
communion with the crockery on his push-
cart.

" Buy nice dishes for the holidays !
Cheap and strong ! Buy dishes for
Passover ! " When business was brisk,
he sang with a bashful relish ; when the
interval between a customer and her suc-
cessor was growing too long, his sing-song
would acquire a mournful ring that was
suggestive of the psalm-chanting at an
orthodox Jewish funeral.

He was a cap-blocker, and in the busy
season his earnings ranged from ten to
fifteen dollars a week. But he had not
worked full time for over two years, and
during the last three months he had not
been able to procure a single day's em-
ployment.

Goldy, his sweetheart, too, had scarce-
ly work enough at her kneebreech.es to
pay her humble board and rent. Na-
than, after much hesitation, was ultimate-
ly compelled to take to peddling ; and
the longed-for day of their wedding was
put off from month to month.

They had become engaged nearly two
years before ; the wedding ceremony hav-
ing been originally fixed for a date some
three months later. Their joint savings
then amounted to one hundred and twen-
ty dollars, — a sum quite adequate, in
Nathan's judgment, for a modest, quiet
celebration and the humble beginnings
of a household establishment. Goldy,
however, summarily and indignantly
overruled him.

" One does not marry every day," she
argued, " and when I have at last lived
to stand under the bridal canopy with
my predestined one, I will not do so like
a beggar-maid. Give me a respectable

266

A Ghetto Wedding.

wedding, or none at all, Nathan, do you
hear ? "

It is to be noted that a " respectable
wedding " was not merely a casual ex-
pression with Goldy. Like its antithe-
sis, a " slipshod wedding," it played in
her vocabulary the part of something
like a well-established scientific term,
with a meaning as clearly defined as
that of " centrifugal force " or " geo-
metrical progression." Now, a slipshod
wedding was anything short of a gown
of white satin and slippers to match ;
two carriages to bring the bride and the
bridegroom to the ceremony, and one to
take them to their bridal apartments ; a
wedding bard and a band of at least five
musicians ; a spacious ballroom crowded
with dancers, and a feast of a hundred
and fifty covers. As to furniture, she
refused to consider any which did not in-
clude a pier-glass and a Brussels carpet.

Nathan contended that the items upon
which she insisted would cost a sum far
beyond their joint accumulations. This
she met by the declaration that he had
all along been bent upon making her the
target of universal ridicule, and that she
would rather descend into an untimely
grave than be married in a slipshod
manner. Here she burst out crying ; and
whether her tears referred to the untimely
grave or to the slipshod wedding, they
certainly seemed to strengthen the co-
gency of her argument ; for Nathan at
once proceeded to signify his surrender
by a kiss, and when ignominiously re-
pulsed he protested his determination to
earn the necessary money to bring things
to the standard which she held up so un-
compromisingly.

Hard times set in. Nathan and Goldy
pinched and scrimped ; but all their he-
roic economies were powerless to keep
their capital from dribbling down to less
than one hundred dollars. The wedding
was postponed again and again. Final-
ly the curse of utter idleness fell upon
Nathan's careworn head. Their savings
dwindled apace. In dismay they beheld

the foundation of their happiness melt
gradually away. Both were tired of
boarding. Both longed for the bliss and
economy of married life. They grew
more impatient and restless every day,
and Goldy made concession after con-
cession. First the wedding supper was
sacrificed ; then the pier-mirror and the
bard were stricken from the programme ;
and these were eventually succeeded by
the hired hall and the Brussels carpet.

After Nathan went into peddling, a
few days before we first find him hawk-
ing chinaware on Grand Street, matters
began to look brighter, and the spirits
of our betrothed couple rose. Their capi-
tal, which had sunk to forty dollars, was
increasing again, and Goldy advised wait-
ing long enough for it to reach the sum
necessary for a slipshod wedding and
establishment.

It was nearly ten o'clock. Nathan
was absently drawling his " Buy nice
dishes for the holidays ! " His mind
was engrossed with the question of mak-
ing peddling his permanent occupation.

Presently he was startled by a mer-
ry soprano mocking him : " Buy nice
di-i-shes ! Mind that you don't fall asleep
murmuring like this. A big lot you can
make ! "

Nathan turned a smile of affectionate
surprise upon a compact little figure,
small to drollness, but sweet in the amus-
ing grace of its diminutive outlines, — an
epitome of exquisite femininity. Her
tiny face was as comically lovely as her
form : her apple-like cheeks were firm as
marble, and her inadequate nose protrud-
ed between them like the result of a hasty
tweak ; a pair of large, round black eyes
and a thick-lipped little mouth inundat-
ing it all with passion and restless, good-
natured shrewdness.

" Goldy ! What brings you here ? "
Nathan demanded, with a fond look
which instantly gave way to an air of
discomfort. " You know I hate you to
see me peddling."

A Ghetto Wedding.

267

" Are you really angry ? Bite the
feather-bed, then. Where is the disgrace ?
As if you were the only peddler in Amer-
ica ! I wish you were. Would n't you
make heaps of money then ! But you
had better hear what does bring me here.
Nathan, darling, dearest little heart, dear-
est little crown that you are, guess what
a plan I have hit upon ! " she exploded
all at once. " Well, if you hear me out,
and you don't say that Goldy has the
head of a cabinet minister, then — well,
then you will be a big hog, and nothing
else."

And without giving him time to put
in as much as an interjection she rattled
on, puffing for breath and smacking her
lips for ecstasy. Was it not stupid of
them to be racking their brains about
the wedding while there was such a plain
way of having both a " respectable " cel-
ebration and fine furniture — Brussels
carpet, pier-glass, and all — with the
money they now had on hand?

" Come, out with it, then," he said
morosely.

But his disguised curiosity only whet-
ted her appetite for tormenting him, and
she declared her determination not to
disclose her great scheme before they
had reached her lodgings.

" You have been yelling long enough
to-day, anyhow," she said, with abrupt
sympathy. " Do you- suppose it does not
go to my very heart to think of the way
you stand out in the cold screaming your-
self hoarse ? "

Half an hour later, when they were
alone in Mrs. Volpiansky's parlor, which
was also Goldy's bedroom, she set about
emptying his pockets of the gross results
of the day's business, and counting the
money. This she did with a preoccupied,
matter-of-fact air, Nathan submitting to
the operation with fond and amused wil-
lingness ; and the sum being satisfactory,
she went on to unfold her plan.

" You see," she began, almost in a
whisper, and with the mien of a care-
worn, experience-laden old matron, " in

a week or two we shall have about seven-
ty-five dollars, shan't we ? Well, what is
seventy-five dollars ? Nothing ! We could
just have the plainest furniture, and no
wedding worth speaking of. Now, if we
have no wedding, we shall get no pre-
sents, shall we ? "

Nathan shook his head thoughtfully.

" Well, why should n't we be up to
snuff and do this way ? Let us spend all
our money on a grand, respectable wed-
ding, and send out a big lot of invita-
tions, and then — well, won't uncle Lei-
ser send us a carpet or a parlor set?
And aunt Beile, and cousin Shapiro, and
Charley, and Meyerke", and Wolfke", and
Bennie, and Sore^Gitke", — won't each
present something or other, as is the
custom among respectable people ? May
God give us a lump of good luck as big
as the wedding present each of them is
sure to send us ! Why, did not Belike"
get a fine carpet from uncle when she
got married ? And am I not a nearer
relative than she ? "

She paused to search his face for a
sign of approval, and, fondly smoothing
a tuft of his dark hair into place, she
went on to enumerate the friends to be
invited and the gifts to be expected from
them.

" So you see," she pursued, " we will
have both a respectable wedding that
we shan't have to be ashamed of in af-
ter years and the nicest things we could
get if we spent two hundred dollars.
What do you say ? "

" What shall I say ? " he returned
dubiously.

The project appeared reasonable
enough, but the investment struck him
as rather hazardous. He pleaded for
caution, for delay ; but as he had no
tangible argument to produce, while she
stood her ground with the firmness of
conviction, her victory was an easy one.

" It will all come right, depend upon
it," she said coaxingly. " You just leave
everything to me. Don't be uneasy,
Nathan," she added. " You and I are

268

A Ghetto Wedding.

orphans, and you know the Uppermost
does not forsake a bride and bridegroom
who have nobody to take care of them.
If my father were alive, it would be dif-
ferent," she concluded, with a disconso-
late gesture.

There was a pathetic pause. Tears
glistened in Goldy's eyes.

" May your father rest in a bright
paradise," Nathan said feelingly. " But
what is the use of crying ? Can you
bring him back to life ? I will be a fa-
ther to you."

" If God be pleased," she assented.
" Would that mamma, at least, — may
she be healthy a hundred and twenty
years, — would that she, at least, were
here to attend our wedding ! Poor mo-
ther ! it will break her heart to think
that she has not been foreordained by
the Uppermost to lead me under the
canopy."

There was another desolate pause, but
it was presently broken by Goldy, who
exclaimed with unexpected buoyancy,
" By the way, Nathan, guess what I
did ! I am afraid you will call me brag-
gart and make fun of me, but I don't
care," she pursued, with a playful pout,
as she produced a strip of carpet from
her pocketbook. " I went into a furni-
ture store, and they gave me a sample
three times as big as this. I explained
in my letter to mother that this is the
kind of stuff that will cover my floor
when I am married. Then I inclosed
the sample in the letter, and sent it all
to Russia."

Nathan clapped his hands and burst
out laughing. " But how do you know
that is just the kind of carpet you will
get for your wedding present ? " he de-
manded, amazed as much as amused.

" How do I know ? As if it mattered
what sort of carpet ! I can just see
mamma going the rounds of the neigh-
bors, and showing off the ' costly table-
cloth ' her daughter will trample upon.
Won't she be happy ! "

Over a hundred invitations, printed in
as luxurious a black- and -gold as ever
came out of an Essex Street hand-press,
were sent out for an early date in April.
Goldy and Nathan paid a month's rent
in advance for three rooms on the sec-
ond floor of a Cherry Street tenement-
house. Goldy regarded the rent as un-
usually low, and the apartments as the
finest on the East Side.

" Oh, have n't I got lovely rooms ! "
she would ejaculate, beaming with the
consciousness of the pronoun. Or, " You
ought to see my rooms ! How much do
you pay for yours ? " Or again, " I have
made up my mind to have my parlor in
the rear room. It is as light as the front
or. /, anyhow, and I want that for a
kitchen, you know. What do you say ? "
For hours together she would go on talk-
ing nothing but rooms, rent, and furni-
ture ; every married couple who had re-
cently moved into new quarters, or were
about to do so, seemed bound to her by the
ties of a common cause ; in her imagi-
nation, humanity was divided into those
who were interested in the question of
rooms, rent, and furniture and those who
were not, — the former, of whom she was
one, constituting the superior category ;
and whenever her eye fell upon a bill
announcing rooms to let, she would ex-
perience something akin to the feeling
with which an artist, in passing, views
some accessory of his art.

It is customary to send the bulkier
wedding presents to a young couple's
apartments a few days before they be-
come man and wife, the closer relatives
and friends of the betrothed usually set-
tling among themselves what piece of
furniture each is to contribute. Accord-
ingly, Goldy gave up her work a week
in advance of the day set for the great
event, in order that she might be on
hand to receive the things when they
arrived.

She went to the empty little rooms,
with her lunch, early in the morning,
and kept anxious watch till after night-

A Ghetto Wedding.

269

fall, when Nathan came to take her
home.

A day passed, another, and a third,
but no expressman called out her name.
She sat waiting and listening for the
rough voice, but in vain.

" Oh, it is too early, anyhow. I am
a fool to be expecting anything so soon
at all," she tried to console herself. And
she waited another hour, and still an-
other ; but no wedding gift made its ap-
pearance.

" Well, there is plenty of time, after
all ; wedding presents do come a day or
two before the ceremony," she argued ;
and again she waited, and again strained
her ears, and again her heart rose in her
throat.

The vacuity of the rooms, freshly
cleaned, scrubbed, and smelling of white-
wash, began to frighten her. Her over-
wrought mind was filled with sounds
which her overstrained ears did not hear.
Yet there she sat on the window-sill,
listening and listening for an express-
man's voice.

" Hush, hush-sh, hush-sh-sh ! " whis-
pered the walls ; the corners muttered
awful threats ; her heart was ever and
anon contracted with fear; she often
thought herself on the brink of insan-
ity ; yet she stayed on, waiting, waiting,
waiting.

At the slightest noise in the hall she
would spring to her feet, her heart beat-
ing wildly, only presently to sink in her
bosom at finding it to be some neigh-
bor or a peddler ; and so frequent were
these violent throbbings that Goldy grew
to imagine herself a prey to heart dis-
ease. Nevertheless the fifth day came,
and she was again at her post, waiting,
waiting, waiting for her wedding gifts.
And what is more, when Nathan came
from business, and his countenance fell
as he surveyed the undisturbed empti-
ness of the rooms, she set a merry face
against his rueful inquiries, and took to
bantering him as a woman quick to lose
heart, and to painting their prospects in

roseate hues, until she argued herself, if
not him, into a more cheerful view of the
situation.

On the sixth day an expressman did
pull up in front of the Cherry Street
tenement-house, but he had only a cheap
huge rocking-chair for Goldy and Na-
than ; and as it proved to be the gift of
a family who had been set down for
nothing less than a carpet or a parlor
set, the joy and hope which its advent
had called forth turned to dire disap-
pointment and despair. For nearly an
hour Goldy sat mournfully rocking and
striving to picture how delightful it would
have been if all her anticipations had
come true.

Presently there arrived a flimsy plush-
covered little corner table. It could not
have cost more than a dollar. Yet it
was the gift of a near friend, who had
been relied upon for a pier-glass or a
bedroom set. A little later a cheap
alarm clock and an ice-box were brought
in. That was all.

Occasionally Goldy went to the door
to take in the entire effect; but the
more she tried to view the parlor as
half furnished, the more cruelly did the
few lonely and mismated things em-
phasize the remaining emptiness of the
apartments : whereupon she would sink
into her rocker and sit motionless, with
a drooping head, and then desperately
fall to swaying to and fro, as though
bent upon swinging herself out of her
woebegone, wretched self.

Still, when Nathan came, there was a
triumphant twinkle in her eye, as she
said, pointing to the gifts, " Well, mis-
ter, who was right ? It is not very bad
for a start, is it ? You know most peo-
ple do send their wedding presents after
the ceremony, — why, of course ! " she
added in a sort of confidential way.
" Well, we have invited a big crowd,
and all people of no mean sort, thank
God ; and who ever heard of a lady or a
gentleman attending a respectable wed-
ding and having a grand wedding sup-

270

A Ghetto Wedding.

per, and then cheating the bride and the
bridegroom out of their present ? "

The evening was well advanced ; yet
there were only a score ot people in a
hall that was used to hundreds.

Everybody felt ill at ease, and ever
and anon looked about for the possible
arrival of more guests. At ten o'clock
the dancing preliminary to the ceremony
had not yet ceased, although the few
waltzers looked as if they were scared
by the ringing echoes of their own foot-
steps amid the austere solemnity of the
surrounding void and the depressing
sheen of the dim expanse of floor.

The two fiddles, the cornet, and the
clarinet were shrieking as though for
pain, and the malicious superabundance
of gaslight was fiendishly sneering at
their tortures. Weddings and entertain-
ments being scarce in the Ghetto, its
musicians caught the contagion of mis-
ery : hence the greedy, desperate gusto
with which the band plied their instru-
ments.

At last it became evident that the as-
semblage was not destined to be larger
than it was, and that it was no use de-
laying the ceremony. It was, in fact,
an open secret among those present that
by far the greater number of the invited
friends were kept away by lack of em-
ployment : some having their presentable
clothes in the pawnshop ; others avoiding
the expense of a wedding present, or sim-
ply being too cruelly borne down by their
cares to have a mind for the excitement
of a wedding ; indeed, some even thought
it wrong of Nathan to have the celebra-
tion during such a period of hard times,
when everybody was out of work.

It was a little after ten when the
bard — a tall, gaunt man, with a grizzly
beard and a melancholy face — donned
his skull-cap, and, advancing toward the
dancers, called out in a synagogue in-
tonation, " Come, ladies, let us veil the
bride ! "

An odd dozen of daughters of Israel

followed him and the musicians into a
little side-room where Goldy was seated
between her two brides wo men (the wives
of two men who were to attend upon the
groom). According to the orthodox cus-
tom she had fasted the whole day, and
as a result of this and of her gnawing
grief, added to the awe-inspiring scene
she had been awaiting, she was pale as
death ; the effect being heightened by
the wreath and white gown she wore.
As the procession came filing in, she sat
blinking her round dark eyes in dismay,
as if the bard were an executioner come
to lead her to the scaffold.

The song or address to the bride usu-
ally partakes of the qualities of prayer
and harangue, and includes a melancholy
meditation upon life and death ; lament-
ing the deceased members of the young
woman's family, bemoaningherown woes,
and exhorting her to discharge her sacred
duties as a wife, mother, and servant of
God. Composed in verse and declaimed
in a solemn, plaintive recitative, often
broken by the band's mournful refrain,
it is sure to fulfill its mission of eliciting
tears even when hearts are brimful of
glee. Imagine, then, the funereal effect
which it produced at Goldy's wedding
ceremony.

The bard, half starved himself, sang
the anguish of his own heart; .the violins
wept, the clarinet moaned, the cornet and
the double-bass groaned, each reciting the
sad tale of its poverty-stricken master.
He began : —

"Silence, good women, give heed to my

verses !
To-night, bride, thou dost stand before the

Uppermost.

Pray to him to bless thy union,
To let thee and thy mate live a hundred and

twenty peaceful years,
To give you your daily bread,
To keep hunger from your door."

Several women, including Goldy, burst
into tears, the others sadly lowering their
gaze. The band sounded a wailing
chord, and the whole audience broke into
loud, heartrending weeping.

A Ghetto Wedding.

271

The bard went on sternly : —

" Wail, bride, wail !
This is a time of tears.
Think of thy past days :
Alas ! they are gone to return nevermore."

Heedless of the convulsive sobbing
with which the room resounded, he con-
tinued to declaim, and at last, his eye
flashing tire and his voice tremulous with
emotion, he sang out in a dismal, uncan-
ny high key : —

" And thy good mother beyond the seas,
And thy father in his grave
Near where thy cradle was rocked, —
Weep, bride, weep !
Though his soul is better off
Than we are here underneath
In dearth and cares and ceaseless pangs, —
Weep, sweet bride, weep ! "

Then, in the general outburst that fol-
lowed the extemporaneous verse, there
was a cry, — " The bride is fainting !
Water! quick!"

" Murderer that you are ! " flamed out
an elderly matron, with an air of admi-
ration for the bard's talent as much as
of wrath for the far-fetched results it
achieved.

Goldy was brought to, and the rest of
the ceremony passed without accident.
She submitted to every thing as in adream.
When the bridegroom, escorted by two
attendants, each carrying a candelabrum
holding lighted candles, came to place
the veil over her face, she stared about as
though she failed to realize the situation
or to recognize Nathan. When, keeping
time to the plaintive strains of a time-
honored tune, she was led, blindfolded,
into the large hall and stationed beside
the bridegroom under the red canopy, and
then marched around him seven times,
she obeyed instructions and moved about
with the passivity of a hypnotic. After
the Seven Blessings had been recited,
when the cantor, gently lifting the end of
her veil, presented the wineglass to her
lips, she tasted its contents with the air of
an invalid taking medicine. Then she
felt the ring slip down her finger, and
heard Nathan say, " Be thou dedicated

to me by this ring, according to the laws
of Moses and Israel."

Whereupon she said to herself, " Now
I am a married woman ! " But some-
how, at this moment the words were
meaningless sounds to her. She knew
she was married, but could not realize
what it implied. As Nathan crushed
the wineglass underfoot, and the band
struck up a cheerful melody, and the
gathering shouted, " Good luck ! Good
luck ! " and clapped their hands, while the
older women broke into a wild hop, Goldy
felt the relief of having gone through a
great ordeal. But still she was not dis-
tinctly aware of any change in her posi-
tion.

Not until fifteen minutes later, when
she found herself in the basement, at
the head of one of three long tables, did
the realization of her new self strike
her consciousness full in the face, as it
were.

The dining-room was nearly as large
as the dancing-hall on the floor above.
It was as brightly illuminated, and the
three tables, which ran almost its entire
length, were set for a hundred and fifty
guests. Yet there were barely twenty to
occupy them. The effect was still more
depressing than in the dancing-room.
The vacant benches and the untouched
covers still more agonizingly exaggerated
the emptiness of the room in which the
sorry handful of a company lost them-
selves.

Goldy looked at the rows of plates,
spoons, forks, knives, and they weighed
her down with the cold dazzle of their
solemn, pompous array.

" I am not the Goldy I used to be,"
she said to herself. " I am a married
woman, like mamma, or auntie, or Mrs.
Volpiansky. And we have spent every
cent we had on this grand wedding, and
now we are left without money for fur-
niture, and there are no guests to send
us any, and the supper will be thrown
out, and everything is lost, and I am to
blame for it all ! "

272

A Ghetto Wedding.

The glittering plates seemed to hold
whispered converse and to exchange
winks and grins at her expense. She
transferred her glance to the company,
and it appeared as if they were vainly
forcing themselves to partake of the food,
— as though they, too, were looked out
of countenance by that ruthless sparkle
of the unused plates.

Nervous silence hung over the room,
and the reluctant jingle of the score of
knives and forks made it move awkward,
more enervating, every second. Even
the bard had not the heart to break the
stillness by the merry rhymes he had
composed for the occasion.

Goldy was overpowered. She thought
she was on the verge of another fainting
spell, and, shutting her eyes and setting
her teeth, she tried to imagine herself
dead. Nathan, who was by her side, no-
ticed it. He took her hand under the
table, and, pressing it gently, whispered,
" Don't take it to heart. There is a God
in heaven."

She could not make out his words, but
she felt their meaning. As she was about
to utter some phrase of endearment, her
heart swelled in her throat, and a pite-
ous, dovelike, tearful look was all the re-
sponse she could make.

By and by, however, when the foam-
ing lager was served, tongues were loos-
ened, and the bard, although distressed
by the meagre collection in store for him,
but stirred by an ardent desire to relieve
the insupportable wretchedness of the
evening, outdid himself in offhand acros-
tics and witticisms. Needless to say
that his efforts were thankfully reward-
ed with unstinted laughter ; and as the
room rang with merriment, the gleaming
rows of undisturbed plates also seemed to
join in the general hubbub of mirth, and
to be laughing a hearty, kindly laugh.

Presently, amid a fresh outbreak of
deafening hilarity, Goldy bent close to
Nathan's ear and exclaimed with sob-
bing vehemence, " My husband ! My
husband ! My husband ! "

" My wife ! " he returned in her ear.

" Do you know what you are to me
now ? " she resumed. " A husband !
And I am your wife ! Do you know
what it means, — do you, do you, Na-
than ? " she insisted, with frantic em-
phasis.

" I do, my little sparrow ; only don't
worry over the wedding presents."

It was after midnight, and even the
Ghetto was immersed in repose. Goldy
and Nathan were silently wending their
way to the three empty little rooms
where they were destined to have their
first joint home. They wore the wed-
ding attire which they had rented for
the evening : he a swallowtail coat and
high hat, and she a white satin gown
and slippers, her head uncovered, — the
wreath and veil done up in a newspaper,
in Nathan's hand.

They had gone to the wedding in car-
riages, which had attracted large crowds
both at the point of departure and in
front of the hall ; and of course they had
expected to make their way to their new
home in a similar "respectable " manner.
Toward the close of the last dance, after
supper, they found, however, that some
small change was all they possessed in the
world.

The last strains of music were dying
away. The guests, in their hats and
bonnets, were taking leave. Everybody
seemed in a hurry to get away to his
own world, and to abandon the young
couple to their fate.

Nathan would have borrowed a dollar
or two of some friend. ** Let us go home
as behooves a bride and bridegroom," he
said. " There is a God in heaven : he
will not forsake us."

But Goldy would not hear of betraying
the full measure of their poverty to their
friends. " No ! no ! " she retorted testily.
" I am not going to let you pay a dollar
and a half for a few blocks' drive, like a
Fifth Avenue nobleman. We can walk,"
she pursued, with the grim determination

A Ghetto Wedding.

273

of one bent upon self-chastisement. " A
poor woman whc iares spend every cent
on a wedding must be ready to walk af-
ter the wedding."

When they found themselves alone in
the deserted street, they were so over-
come by a sense of loneliness, of a kind
of portentous, haunting emptiness, that
they could not speak. So on they trudged
in dismal silence ; she leaning upon his
arm, and he tenderly pressing her to his
side.

Their way lay through the gloomiest
and roughest part of the Seventh Ward.
The neighborhood frightened her, and
she clung closer to her escort At one
corner they passed some men in front of
a liquor saloon.

" Look at dem ! Look at dem ! A
sheeny fellar an' his bride, I '11 betch
ye ! " shouted a husky voice. " Jes' corn-
in' from de weddin'."

" She ain't no bigger 'n a peanut, is
she ? " The simile was greeted with a
horse-laugh.

" Look a here, young fellar, what 's
de madder wid carryin' her in your vest-
pocket ? "

When Nathan and Goldy were a block
away, something like a potato or a car-
rot struck her in the back. At the same
time the gang of loafers on the corner
broke into boisterous merriment. Na-
than tried to face about, but she re-
strained him.

" Don't ! They might kill you ! " she
whispered, and relapsed into silence.

He made another attempt to disen-
gage himself, as if for a desperate attack
upon her assailants, but she nestled close
to his side and held him fast, her every

fibre tingling with the consciousness of
the shelter she had in him.

" Don't mind them, Nathan," she
said.

And as they proceeded on their
dreary way through a sombre, impover-
ished street, with here and there a rus-
tling tree, — a melancholy witness of
its better days, — they felt a stream of
happiness uniting them, as it coursed
through the veins of both, and they were
filled with a blissful sense of oneness the
like of which they had never tasted be-
fore. So happy were they that the
gang behind them, and the bare rooms
toward which they were directing their
steps, and the miserable failure of the
wedding, all suddenly appeared too in-
significant to engage their attention, —
paltry matters alien to their new life,
remote from the enchanted world in
which they now dwelt.

The 'very notion of a relentless void
abruptly turned to a beatific sense of
their own seclusion, of there being only
themselves in the universe, to live and
to delight in each other.

" Don't mind them, Nathan darling,"
she repeated mechanically, conscious of
nothing but the tremor of happiness in
her voice.

" I should give it to them ! " he re-
sponded, gathering her still closer to him.
" I should show them how to touch my
Goldy, my pearl, my birdie ! "

They dived into the denser gloom of
a side-street.

A gentle breeze ran past and ahead
of them, proclaiming the bride and the
bridegroom. An old tree whispered over-
head its tender felicitations.

Abraham Cohan.

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 484.

274

A Brief Survey of Recent Historical Work.

A BRIEF SURVEY OF RECENT HISTORICAL WORK.

AN account of recent historical work,
of the past year, for instance, could hard-
ly be made a study in literature. Many
histories have been literary achievements
of the first order, and of course it is
always open to the historical student to
make of his results a genuine book, but
such is not the tendency at present. To
employ once again the hackneyed classi-
fication of De Quincey, it is to the litera-
ture of knowledge, not to the literature
of power, that the industry of the aver-
age worker in history now chiefly con-
tributes. His watchword is " original
research ; " his main endeavor is to dis-
cover, in no sense to create.

Even the briefest survey must take into
account the activity of associations and
agencies as well as of individuals. Some
of the most important agencies are gov-
ernmental. The national government,
for example, has just completed, at a
cost of about two millions of dollars, the
series of Rebellion Records dealing with
the movements of the Federal and Con-
federate armies. These ponderous vol-
umes are not history, if history is a thing
to be read, but they contribute to the
store of historical knowledge, and they
are as close akin to literature as many
other publications that are offered to us
as books. Several of the departments at
Washington have printed historical doc-
uments during the year, and the Venezue-
lan Commission, happily relieved of its
task of determining whether or not we
shall go to war with Great Britain, has
yet accomplished, in its first report, work
of undeniable if purely historical value.
The number of state governments
more or less committed to the printing of
their own earlier records has increased.
The Carolinas have made a beginning of
this work, and Rhode Island has set a
new precedent by authorizing a commis-
sion to search for documents in the cus-

tody of towns, of parishes and churches,
and even of other states. Mr. Goodell,
in his deliberate edition of the Province
Laws of Massachusetts, seemed to be set-
ting the standard for such publications,
until the Pennsylvania Commission, by
undertaking a history of each statute,
afforded the scholarship of its members
a still wider opportunity.

Of the societies, the National Histori-
cal Association is foremost in dignity, if
not, perhaps, in actual achievement. Its
Historical Manuscripts Commission, aim-
ing especially at papers in private hands,
is a new departure, in line with the Royal
Manuscripts Commission of Great Brit-
ain. The American Historical Review,
which has been printing documents ga-
thered from private sources, should prove
a valuable ally in the enterprise. The
announced financial success of this peri-
odical is matter of congratulation to its
editor and to the gentlemen by whose
disinterested efforts it was established
three years ago. A promising recent
development is the entrance into the his-
torical field of societies — such as the
Scotch-Irish, the Huguenot, and the Jew-
ish-American — which aim to make plain
the part that particular race elements
have played in the upbuilding of the re-
public.

The dignified position some of the
state societies have attained is well at-
tested by the complaint that membership
in them has become a social distinction,
and not merely a reward of scholarship.
The Texas society, formed witttin the
year to deal with the rich material
awaiting the future historian of the
extreme Southwest, has endeavored to
guard against this tendency by constitu-
tional provision looking to the perma-
nent dominance of the historical purpose
in its councils and composition. The
Massachusetts society, the oldest of all,

A Brief Survey of Recent Historical Work.

275

and long the most active, is finding its
premiership challenged by the compara-
tively youthful Wisconsin society, whose
library is a workshop for the scholars of
the Northwest, and whose secretary, Mr.
Reuben Gold Thwaites, is winning an en-
viable reputation as a handler of histori-
cal material. Mr. Thwaites's edition of
the Jesuit Relations, of which the first
nine volumes have been published, should
doubtless be ranked as the most notable
editorial enterprise of the year. The
work of the Virginia society, under the
thoroughly sane guidance of its secreta-
ry, Mr. Philip A. Bruce, is particularly
gratifying to those who have been pa-
tiently waiting for the Old Dominion to
do justice to her heroic past. The la-
bors of such Virginians as President
Tyler of William and Mary, Mr. Wil-
liam Wirt Henry, and Mr. Bruce give
evidence that the task is to be neglected
no longer. A like hopefulness as to the
South in general is encouraged by the
formation, within the year, of the South-
ern Historical Association, and by the
appearance of several numbers of its
publications. It is a good sign, too,
that purely local societies, already com-
mon in the East, are growing numerous
throughout the South and West. As to
the private collectors, one knows not
where to begin, and having begun, one
would not know where to end ; but the
practical completion of Mr. Benjamin F.
Stevens's costly series of facsimiles of
documents in European archives pertain-
ing to America, and the announcement
by Mr. Alexander Brown, of Virginia,
of a companion volume to his Genesis of
the United States, to be called The First
Republic in America, are important
enough to justify us in singling them out
for especial mention.

But after all, the gathering and edit-
ing of material is not writing history-
One takes a step higher and finds the
monograph ; and the monograph is main-
ly an academic product. Scarcely one of
the leading universities has failed to con-

tribute during the year to the ever grow-
ing stock of careful studies in history.
T,he University of Toronto is the latest
to enter the field. The greater number
of these studies are concerned with the
institutional side of history, and their
value is not to be denied. A few of them
have a place among the books one cares
to read ; others, like Professor Gross's
Bibliography of British Municipal His-
tory, are examples of the minutest schol-
arship ; but very many will find their
place, in the ordinary library, alongside
the encyclopaedias.

Above the collection and the mono-
graph is the book ; and here one reaches
the altitude where the historian emerges
from the crowd of scholars into the view
of a larger public. Of him the larger
public demands that he interpret and
justify the multitudinous labors on which
his own are based. It has the right to
expect that he will add imagination and
literary art to mere industry and intelli-
gence ; that he will enlarge accuracy into
truth.

It is doubtless too early to say that
during the past year no new name has
been added to the brief list of those who
have successfully attempted this difficult
task. Captain Mahan's Nelson and his
The Interest of the United States in.
Sea Power have indeed strengthened his
claim to a place ; but the claim has been
a strong one ever since his first book was
hailed as marking the achievement of
a new point of view in the study of
modern history. The philosophical merit
of that earlier work belongs in almost
equal measure to the Nelson, which has
in addition the charm of the biographical
method and motive. Professor Sloane's
Napoleon is indeed a performance of suf-
ficient weight to challenge our attention.
In point of industry, if one compares it
only with other works in English on the
same subject, it even invites the epithet
" monumental ; " while its abundance of
pictorial illustration will doubtless win
for it an examination, if not a reading,

276

A Brief Survey of Recent Historical Work.

in quarters where its scholarship might
repel. It is to be feared, however, that
the heaviness of its style will tend to make
of it an authority rather than a guide.
Mr. James Breck Perkins, another Amer-
ican who has ventured into French fields,
has given us in his France under Louis
XV. a useful account of a period by no
means unimportant in itself, but apt to
be neglected by reason of the exceptional
interest that belongs alike to the period
that preceded and the period that fol-
lowed it.

Of the Americans who have dealt with
American topics, not many have made
any formidable show of attempting to
write history in the grand style. Mr.
Schouler, Mr. Lodge, and Professor
William P. Trent have published vol-
umes of brief papers. At any rate, some
of these papers are very well worth the
reading, and Professor Trent's lectures
— for such they were at first — are par-
ticularly interesting as a critical study,
by a Southerner of the newest school, of
certain Southern statesmen whom South-
ern writers of the older school have been
wont to approach with more of reverence
than of understanding. Professor Wood-
row Wilson and Mr. Paul Leicester Ford
have written each a pleasant little book
about Washington, both trying to make
the stately figure seem, not less stately,
but more human, and both succeeding
admirably. Other notable books of a
biographical or autobiographical sort are
Mrs. Rowland's Charles Carroll of Car-
rollton, the lives of Lee and Grant in the
Great Commanders series, and the remi-
niscences of Generals Miles and Scho-
field. Not an ordinary history, but a
historical work of much value, is Dr.
J. M. Buckley's account of Methodism
in America. It is doubtful if any one
was better qualified for this particular
task, for Dr. Buckley is a Methodist, a
practiced investigator of extraordinary
psychological phenomena, and a clear and
forcible writer.

There remain three especially notable

books. Professor Moses Coit Tyler's
Literary History of the Revolution is
not, indeed, a narrative, but as a picture
of past times it deserves a place with
Mr. Winsor's Westward Movement and
Mr. Fiske's Old Virginia and her Neigh-
bours as one of the three foremost books
of the year in the department of Ameri-
can history. Never before has the in-
tellectual side of the Revolutionary move-
ment been so fully exhibited as in these
two volumes.

Mr. Wiusor's book, apart from its in-
trinsic merit, has a special interest be-
cause it is the last we shall ever have
from his pen, and because he himself re-
garded it as the completion of the par-
ticular task he had undertaken. When
he had written the last word of it, he is
said to have exclaimed, " I have told my
story ; now I am willing to take a rest."
The rest was other than he thought, for
his death was almost simultaneous with
the appearance of the book. One is nat-
urally inclined to speak less of it than of
the life-work that ended with it. But to
speak of that would lead us far afield, for
our master of historical inquiry was also
a master librarian, and did more than any
other to make the care of books a learned
profession. The Westward Movement is
a companion volume to The Mississippi
Basin, distinguished by the same breadth
of view and the same minuteness of know-
ledge. It brings the story of our West-
ern expansion down to the close of the
last century, and establishes more firmly
than ever the author's right to be consid-
ered preeminently the historian of the
geography of the continent. It must be
admitted, however, that the style is not
adapted to the ordinary reader ; these
meaty paragraphs are suited only to a
vigorous digestion.

The appearance at the same time of a
book on a kindred subject by a different
hand serves to remind us of another phase
of Mr. Winsor's ceaseless activity. He
was the most tireless of helpers to other
workers in history. Mr. Peter J. Ham-

A Brief Survey of Recent Historical Work.

277

ilton, in his Colonial Mobile, has made
an important contribution to the histo-
ry of our Southwestern beginnings, and
his indebtedness to Mr. Winsor would
be evident without the full acknowledg-
ment he makes of it. The similarity of
the two books in point of style is remark-
able.

We are left with Mr. Fiske ; and if
his name should seem to be placed at the
end of our survey by way of climax, the
place is deserved. When all is said, he
seems to many the only American now
living who can give to the results of his-
torical inquiry a form so satisfying to the
reader as to justify a word like " final."
He writes of Virginia as delightfully as
he has ever written of anything ; add-
ing nothing, perhaps, to the knowledge
of the scholars, but shaping the common
mass after a fashion at once philosoph-
ical and artistic. His power of general-
ization, his conspicuous fairness, his sin-
gularly lucid style, are endowments of
the highest order. In narrative charm
there is none to rival him, unless one goes
back to Parkman.

A glance at recent historical work in
England is sufficient to discover the same
general tendencies we have observed in
America. The fondness for forming
associations is even greater there than
here, and the historical associations, as
a rule, surpass our own in age and dig-
nity. To mention only the foremost of
these, one notes that the Royal Society
has within the year absorbed the Cam-
den Society ; that the Hakluyt Society
is devoting much attention to the annals
of Arctic exploration, and the Selden
Society to select pleas in the Courts of
Admiralty, — an enterprise in which it
is trying to enlist the interest of Ameri-
cans. A peculiarly English form of co-
operation is exhibited in the sumptuous
History of Northumberland County, now
in process of publication under the man-
agement of a committee which is fitly
headed by Earl Percy. The death of

Mr. W. Noe'l Santsbury has deprived
the Calendar of State Papers, just now
particularly interesting to Americans on
account of the colonial documents, of an
editor whose exceptional equipment was
universally recognized.

Looking about for the more famous
names, we find those of Lecky, Bryce,
John Morley, and Professor Jebb asso-
ciated in Lord Acton's cooperative en-
terprise, The Cambridge Modern His-
tory. Mr. Bryce, in his Impressions of
South Africa, does not emphasize any
historical purpose, but the historical mat-
ter is as admirable as any other in a
thoroughly admirable book. Mr. Samuel
Rawson Gardiner, while still prosecuting
the work on his Commonwealth and Pro-
tectorate, has found time to publish six
lectures on Cromwell, and to engage in
controversy with Father Gerard over the
Gunpowder Plot. Mr. McCarthy has
brought his entertaining History of Our
Own Times to a conclusion, and has writ-
ten a new life of Gladstone.

If we consider only the work of the re-
cognized masters, Professor Maitland's
Domesday and Beyond is clearly the
book of the year. Such, indeed, is Pro-
fessor Maitland's place among the stu-
dents of early English institutions that
whatever he writes is to other investi-
gators second in importance only to the
sources themselves. The views he has
here set forth concerning the hide, the
village community, the manor, and simi-
lar topics are bound to lead to controver-
sy, and some of them are controverted
already ; but none of his contentions will
be dismissed without a careful investiga-
tion by every scholar whose studies ex-
tend into the period of which he treats.

From other practiced hands we have
work of no mean value. Professor Ma-
haffy has written of The Empire of the
Ptolemies, and Colonel C. R. Conder of
The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. Mr.
Traill has edited his Social England
through the sixth and concluding vol-
ume. New numbers have been added

278

A New Translation of the Arthurian Epos.

to the Oxford Manuals of European His-
tory, to the Periods of European History
series, and to Mr. Bury's Foreign States-
men series. Mr. Bury himself is pro-
gressing somewhat slowly with his edi-
tion of Gibhon, — a work to which addi-
tional interest is given by the appearance
in their original form of Gibbon's six
autobiographical sketches, and of his let-
ters, including some that were omitted
by Lord Sheffield.

Two important biographies are, the
Roebuck of Mr. R. E. Leader, and Mr.
C. E. Lyne's Sir Henry Parkes ; while
Mr. Wilfrid Ward's Cardinal Wiseman,
and the late Dr. Liddon's Life of Dr.
Pusey, completed by another hand, are
valuable contributions to the religious
history of the century.

In England, as in America, no abso-
lutely new name has come into strik-

ing prominence ; but the re-publication,
with copious additions, of the Reverend
W. H. Fitchett's Deeds that Made the
Empire has strengthened the marked im-
pression the book made on its first ap-
pearance. That a dissenting Australian
clergyman should have written on such
a subject more brilliantly than any other
of all those whom the Jubilee stirred into
eloquence grows significant as we reflect
that the empire rests mainly on the loy-
alty of the colonists. Mr. Fitchett's work
is by some even compared to Macaulay's
for the interest it arouses. It would be
pleasant to think that Englishmen every-
where may perhaps find in him a man
fit to tell the whole splendid story of the
empire's rise, as we in America are find-
ing in Mr. Fiske one fit to portray that
part of this world-impulse which spent
itself on our shores.

A NEW TRANSLATION OF THE ARTHURIAN EPOS.

IT is a well-known remark of Renan
Mr. Newell' s that the historic sense is the
SS thlSSe chief acquisition of the pre-
Round. sent century. Literature has

not been the last to reflect this new in-
fluence, and to it may be ascribed a two-
fold revolution as it affects our attitude
toward the individual and toward the
race. Thus, on the one hand, modern
fiction has gained a fresh field in por-
traying the development of character,
and in describing to us a life amid cir-
cumstances of a previous age. On the
other hand, primitive works of literature
have acquired a peculiar interest by their
appeal to this newly awakened faculty,
evoking within us thoughts and emotions
of a youthful people, — an interest dou-
bly enhanced when from the earliest days
down to the present we can follow a long
line of successors, varying in nature with
the progression of time.

Certainly, all lovers of Spenser and
Tennyson, and of the many lesser chron-
iclers of King Arthur, will welcome the
two handsome volumes of Mr. Newell's
King Arthur and the Table Round, which
offer in pleasant form translations from
the oldest poems on that subject. And
let us say at once that Mr. Newell's work
is well done. The language is simple
and not without grace ; and he has admi-
rably avoided the queer translation Eng-
lish, neither archaic nor modern, which
is so much affected by recent translators
(as if the further their style were from
any known model, the closer it might
convey foreign ideas), and which reaches
a wide public in the standard prose ver-
sions of Homer. It is rare that reader
or critic complains of a book that it is too
short ; but in this case most readers, we
fancy, would wish the chapters on the
history of the legends a little fuller, and

A New Translation of the Arthurian Epos.

279

their interest would not flag if the body
of the work were considerably longer.

By far the larger part of the transla-
tions are taken from Chretien de Troyes,
and only sufficient matter from other
sources is added to give a fairly complete
story of the Round Table. Perhaps
even more space might judiciously have
been devoted to the French poet who is
here first introduced to English readers.
His poems, apart from their own beauty,
may claim our attention as being the
oldest literary work on the subject that
has been preserved, if not the earliest
written. The real origin of the Arthuri-
an saga, as every one knows, is an ob-
scure and vexed question. Celtic, Eng-
lish, French, and German writers, all
worked together to produce the vast body
of romances that flooded Europe in the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and it
is far from easy to ascribe to each peo-
ple its share in this labor. So much,
however, may be prudently affirmed :
that Arthur as a personality belongs to
the Celtic traditions of Great Britain
and Brittany. Certain fanciful features
of chivalry, also, as portrayed in these
romances, — especially the tender re-
gard for women and the idealization of
love, — may in part be due to Celtic
imagination ; but in the twelfth century
the legends were taken up by the French
trouveres, and to them must be attrib-
uted the courtly form and the more
or less consistent development which
changed the floating traditions to liter-
ature. At that time France was the
intellectual school of Europe, and the
story of King Arthur as we read it to-
day, together with almost all the rest
of mediaeval literature, must be called
a French creation. It may be the Ger-
man minnesingers helped to introduce
the vein of religious mysticism that is
so marked in some of the later romances,
but beyond that German influence can
hardly be important. It would be plea-
sant to believe this epic cycle was the
offspring of one great genius, and no

doubt Chretien de Troyes did more than
any other single man to give popularity
to these new themes, and to turn readers
from the older, sterner epics of Charle-
magne to the gayer adventures of the
Celtic knights ; but we opine that the
present translator is carried away by en-
thusiasm for his own author in attribut-
ing " to Crestien of Troyes, more than
all other influences, . . . the character
of the extant Arthurian story."

To us this obscure labor of the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries is chiefly inter-
esting for its effect on later English lit-
erature. The first writer of English in
the strict sense to treat the subject was
the much lauded — and, we fancy, little
read — Sir Thomas Malory, who, in the
fifteenth century, put together his Morte
Darthur from French and Old English
sources. It is not easy to discover in
Malory's disjointed narrative " the vision
and the faculty divine " with which his
popular editor would endow him. Mr.
Newell's judgment of the work seems
very fair when he says that " out of
such a conglomeration it was impossible
to produce an interesting whole. The
attraction of Malory's work is chiefly ow-
ing to the language ; only in the conclu-
sion, where he borrowed from the Eng-
lish poem, has his account unquestioned
merit." But just a century later Spen-
ser published his Faerie Queene, and
with this poem the story of Arthur be-
comes an integral part of our literature.
Lovers of Milton may not allow to
Spenser the first place in narrative po-
etry, which some would claim for him,
but second, at least, he must stand. If
he never rises quite so high as the great
passages in Milton, and if his speech
lacks the magisterial authority of the
Puritan, he yet equals his follower and
admirer in infinite charm, and excels him
in sustained interest. The Faerie Queene
owes its greatness partly to the individ-
ual genius of the poet, and partly to his
skill in weaving together all the roman-
tic motives of his age. Bojardo and Ari-

280

A New Translation of the Arthurian Epos.

osto, adopting the epic tale of Charle-
magne, had altered its spirit to the gay
tone of chivalry introduced by the Ar-
thurian romances. Spenser, in imitat-
ing them, curiously reverts to the Arthu-
rian story which he professes to make
his main theme, and on this embroiders
many of the brilliant episodes of Italian
invention, so that there is in his work
an inextricable blending of the two cy-
cles. But besides the color and viva-
cious movement which he found ready to
hand in Ariosto, Spenser borrowed also
the cunning allegory made popular by
the Romance of the Rose ; and it is this
persistent yet wisely subordinated moral-
ization that renders the Faerie Queene
to many readers more satisfactory than
the Orlando. The ethical idea that runs
through the poem, while never obtrusive,
gives a kind of background to the iso-
lated scenes, and binds them together.
There is something more than mere di-
version in the reading, and we feel that
pleasurable excitation which follows the
appeal to our higher faculties. It was
for the sake of this allegory that Spenser
made Arthur his avowed hero. So far
as I know, there is nothing in the Faerie
Queene to prove that Spenser was ac-
quainted with the poems of Chretien,
yet, conversant as he was with the early
romantic literature, it is not likely he
should have overlooked the master sing-
er of his favorite King Arthur. At
least, we may read in the Perceval of the
French poet an earlier account of the
training of a knight in " gentle disci-
pline," which would teach him mercy to
the fallen, courtesy to women, restraint
in speech, and reverence toward God :
and it is pleasant to be able to compare
this simpler picture of chivalric training
with the portrayal of it as colored by
the luxury of Italian fancy and subtil-
ized by the ethics of Aristotle.

Here perhaps a word of explanation is
necessary. I have said that the develop-
ment of character as affected by circum-
stances is a new phase of literature re-

lated to the recently acquired historic
sense. Objection might be urged that
as early as Chretien de Troyes we have
the story of the making of a knight ; and
that, indeed, long before this Xenophon
had written a novel on the education of
Cyrus. But the contradiction is only ap-
parent ; for in all these works the char-
acter of the hero is completely formed in
childhood, and there is no growth, in the
true sense of the word. His education
is merely the learning of outer forms.

But to return to King Arthur. It is a
notable fact that both Virgil and Milton
in the end should have chosen for epic
treatment themes quite different from
what they first proposed to themselves.
Virgil's maturer choice was in every
way fortunate. It is perilous, consider-
ing the sublimity of Paradise Lost, to say
otherwise of Milton ; yet Taine has not
been alone in esteeming his youthful ro-
mantic work more highly than his sol-
emn epics. At least, it is curious, and,
with Comus before us, not altogether
idle, to conjecture what might have been
the beauty of that poem if Milton had
indeed called up in song " Arthur still
moving wars beneath the earth and the
mighty heroes of the invincible Table."
We may probably charge to Cromwell's
government the loss of a work combin-
ing the tragic grandeur of Paradise Lost
with the incomparable charm of Comus.

It remained for Tennyson to give cur-
rency to these legends in epic, or half-
epic, form ; and the Arthur and Lance-
lot and Gawain of the Idylls are now, as
they are likely always to be, for us, the
true heroes of the Round Table. Tenny-
son has been much censured — and Mr.
Newell echoes the cry — for wantonly de-
parting from the spirit of the mediaeval
poets ; but there seems to be little justice
in such a reproach. As for specific
changes in plot, he only followed, in al-
lowing himself such liberties, innumer-
able writers before him. And still more
idle is it in the nineteenth century to
demand of a bard the childlike spirit of

A New Translation of the Arthurian Epos.

281

the twelfth. The attempt to reproduce
it would necessarily have been abortive ;
and indeed Chretien himself had appar-
ently altered the primitive Celtic tone
of the myths as much as Tennyson al-
ters Sir Thomas Malory. In Chretien,
and to a certain degree in Malory, we
have the simple character, however ide-
alized, of chivalry as it appeared to con-
temporaries, and the picture has a fresh-
ness that needed little extraneous color-
ing. Spenser, portraying a life already
past, lends to it the factitious interest
of renaissance color and allegory. Ten-
nyson, writing in an age far removed
from chivalry and of little poetic value
in itself, still further veils the bare narra-
tion by deepening allegory into symbol-
ism. Verse in a period essentially pro-
saic must perforce depend on reflection
for any serious appeal to the reader ;
and the symbolism of Tennyson is just
this inner reflection ; seeking in depart-
ed forms a significance never dreamed
of during their existence, and brooding
over a past life of activity as if it were
but an emblem of spiritual experience.
This is not allegory, in which, action
and reflection being still sharply distin-
guished, the particular virtues and vices
move about like puppets only half hu-
manized, and which in the moral world
is as naive as simple narration in the
practical, but a something more intimate
and illusive, wherein thought and act are
blended together, and we seem to live in
a land of shadows. Such is the spirit of
the Idylls of the King ; and if, in com-
parison with the genuine epic of an older
time, they appear to lack substance and
vitality, the blame must fall on the age,
and not on the individual author.

It is a digression, and yet not foreign
to our argument, to notice here the pe-
culiar treatment of nature in these poems.
Each of them, and in fact almost every
great work, is marked by the choice of
some special natural phenomenon that
serves for a background to the picture,
and in its change follows the shifting

moods of the hero. Passing by for the
nonce the writers of antiquity, we may
recall the threefold termination " stelle "
of the Divine Comedy, — as indeed the
stars were a fit emblem of the idealism
of one who thought no man might be
called an exile while he still had the sky
to look upon. In Chretien and Spenser
we are ever traversing pathless wilder-
nesses, with here and there a fountain
like a pearl in the waste. Milton invites
us into a rich garden, where we wander
amid

" that bowery loneliness,
The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring,
And bloom profuse and cedar arches."

As for Tennyson himself, I know no
other poem where strange winds are al-
ways blowing as in the Idylls of the
King : and this is in admirable harmony
with the intangible breath of symbolism
pervading the verses. It is enough to
mention the wind that came upon Lan-
celot in his search for the Grail, —
" So loud a blast along the shore and sea,
Ye could not hear the waters for the blast ; "

and Tristram singing of " the winds that
move the mere ; " and " the ghost of
Gawain blown along a wandering wind ; "
and at the close of that last battle the
" bitter wind, clear from the North."

Sir Thomas Malory, Spenser, Milton,
Tennyson, not to mention lesser names,
are sufficient to lend unfailing interest to
the saga of the Round Table, and to
render a version of its earliest singer
more than welcome in English literature.
But besides this relative value Chretien
may invite our attention for his intrinsic
merit, and in fact his historic claim could
otherwise hardly be so high. His poems
must fairly rank among the few great
works of the Middle Ages. There is a
freshness and a simple cheer in them, a
quaintness with now and again a fineness
of sentiment, that continually lure the
reader on. The opening paragraphs of
the Perceval display so many of these
qualities in short compass that no ex-
cuse is needed for their quotation : —

282

A New Translation of the Arthurian Epos.

" When trees bloom, thickets leaf, and
fields are green, when birds sing sweetly
at morn, and all things flame with joy,
the son of the Widowed Dame of the
Vast Solitary Forest rose and saddled
his hunter, taking three of his darts, for
it pleased him to visit the sowers who
were tilling the fields of his mother, with
harrows eight or ten. As he entered
the wood, his heart bounded within him,
for the sake of the pleasant season, and
the songs of the merry birds ; because
of the sweetness of the sovereign time,
he gave his hunter the rein, and left
him free to feed on the fresh sprouting
grass, while he, who had skill to throw
the darts he bore, roved and cast them,
now behind and now before, now alow
and now aloft, until approached five
knights, armed in all their array. Their
weapons made a loud noise, as fast as
they rode, for the oaks hurtled against
their arms, their mail tinkled, and their
lances clashed upon their shields. The
varlet, who heard them, but could not
see, wondered and cried : ' By my soul !
my mother, my lady, who telleth me true,
saith that devils are wilder than aught
in the world ; she saith so, to make me
cross myself, that I may be safe from
them ; but I will not, no ; instead, I will
strike the strongest with one of these
darts, so that he will not dare come near
me, he nor any of his mates, I trow ! '

" Thus to himself said the boy ; but
when the knights issued from the wood,
with their beautiful shields and shining
helms, such as never before had he seen,
and he beheld green and vermilion, gold,
azure, and silver gleam in the sun, he
wondered and cried : ' Ha, Lord God,
mercy ! These are angels I see ! I did
wrong, to call them devils ; my mother,
who fableth not, saith that naught is so
fair as angels, save God, who is more
beautiful than all ; here is one so fair,
that the others own not a tenth of his
beauty ; my mother saith, that one ought
to believe in God, bow the knee, and
adore Him ; him will I worship, and

the rest who are with him.' So speak-
ing, he cast himself on the ground, re-
peating his credo, and the prayers his
mother had taught him. The lord said
to his knights : ' Stand back, for this
vassal hath fallen to the earth for fear ;
if we should approach, all at once, he
would go out of his mind, and not be
able to tell me aught I wish to learn.'

" The others halted, while the knight
advanced : ' Varlet, be not afraid.' ' Not
I, by the Saviour in whom I believe !
Are you not God ? ' ' By my faith, no.'
' Who are you, then ? ' 'I am a knight.'
' A knight ? I never saw one, nor heard
of one ; but you are fairer than God ;
would I were like you, as shining and
as perfect ! ' With that, the knight ap-
proached, and cried : * Hast thou seen, in
this plain, five knights and two maids ? '
The youth, who had his mind elsewhere,
grasped the lance : ' Fair dear sir, you
who call yourself a knight, what is this
you carry ? ' ' Methinks, I am finely
helped ! Fair sweet friend, I looked
for tidings, and you ask me questions ;
yet I will tell you ; 't is my lance.' "

These pages are delightful, and so
perfect in their kind that they may seem
to justify unqualified enthusiasm for the
author. But exquisite as the trouvere
may be, his place in the hierarchy of
great poets must be attended by limita-
tions which affect this whole branch of
mediaeval literature, and in large part
the romantic works of the present. We
are fully aware that the weighing and
comparing of genius is invidious, and
can appreciate the catholic sentiment of
Taine, who (as Mr. Saintsbury relates)
" once said to a literary novice who
rashly asked him whether he liked this
or that, ' Monsieur, en litteVature j'aime
tout.' " Yet there seems no better way
to purge our minds of cowardly acqui-
escence in criticism than by comparing
each new claimant to honor with those
whose reputation is already assured by
universal consent ; nor can the strength
and weakness of the class of writers to

A New Translation of the Arthurian Epos.

283

which Chretien belongs be set forth more
clearly than by contrasting them with
the great classic models. And although
their champion deprecates such a treat-
ment, yet similarity of conditions almost
demands the testing of these newly
heralded poems by the epic of Homer ;
for in much the same way both French
trouvere and Greek rhapsodist worked
over popular traditions and disjointed
lays into more or less unified structure,
and both are the earliest preserved ex-
amples of a long series of epic writers.
More than this, their divergence in spirit
invites comparison quite as much as their
similarity in origin. Entertaining as
Chretien assuredly is, he yet altogether
lacks the force of passion and the se-
riousness that mark the great epic. To
be particular, we may say that the inter-
est of mediaeval romance in general de-
pends on variety of incident, on the un-
expected, and a corresponding distrac-
tion of mind. The sequence of cause
and effect is for the most part ignored,
so that the world takes on a holiday, hap-
hazard character, and the mind is jos-
tled about by a series of surprising ad-
ventures, often without much coordina-
tion or meaning, although not without
interest. Moral responsibility, depend-
ing on the stern law of cause and effect,
can have little part in this happy world,
and its place is occupied by delicate
touches of sentiment, and occasional hints
at the deeper symbolism that later be-
comes the dominant tone in romance. We
are in a land of play. Mighty blows are
dealt, brave knights are hacked to pieces,
fair ladies swoon on every page ; but no
one thinks of taking it quite seriously,
no strong emotion is stirred within us,
and the pageantry of war passes before
us very much like that kind of elegant
sport which Raskin would see in all bat-
tle. We hear a good deal of the light-
heartedness of the Greeks ; but com-
pared with Chretien, Homer might be
called sombre. This follows naturally
from the art of the Greek. Instead of

variety there is in Homer concentra-
tion, and the attempt to intensify a sin-
gle passion by focusing all the narra-
tive upon it. Instead of reverie there
is profound reflection, and instead of
merriment an earnestness that at times
passes into tragic pathos. In a word, we
have in these two authors the contrast
between fancy and imagination : fancy
that would beguile away our heaviness
of heart, and imagination that would
throw the light of beauty on the graver
passions of life. The one relaxes the
mind, the other braces it for action. In
his own office Chretien succeeds admi-
rably ; but if literature is to be taken as
a serious concern of life and something
more than a dissipation, it seems that
some qualification should be added to
praise that would recognize in him a
" treasure equal to the Homeric epos."

It would be a most intricate problem
to discuss all the causes that gave me-
diaeval romance its peculiar character,
but two prominent influences must not
be passed over. The earliest work of
Chretien, it may be remarked, was a
translation of Ovid's Ars Amatoria.
Now, Ovid, who represents the literature
of amusement in antiquity, and Virgil,
the most religious mind of Rome, were
the Latin poets most read during the
Middle Ages ; and the contrast between
them is significant of a strange division
which had arisen in mediaeval literature.
The serious writing of the age falls to
the Latin tongue, and is the property of
the clerks, who form practically the whole
educated class ; whereas the vernacular
is thought worthy only of a lighter vein.
This feud caused confusion both ways ;
bringing scholastic dryness to the mon-
strous tomes of the clerks and denuding
them of human interest, and on the other
hand depriving the popular works of the
deeper reflection to be borrowed from
religion and philosophy.

Perhaps a still stronger influence that
affected the Arthurian romance is touched
on by Mr. Newell. " By the middle of

284

The Contributors' Club.

the twelfth century," he says, " in the
courts of France and England, had been
formed a large body of readers, in great
part women, who had ceased to be con-
tent with the savage splendor of an epos
[the chansons de geste] designed for the
amusement of warriors, and required of
fiction especially nutriment for tender
emotions." No slur is intended against
the gentle sex, who to-day also form the
mass of our readers, if the Arthurian ro-
mance be described as essentially femi-
nine. Its chief inspiration is, not man's
ambition, but his servitude to woman.
What is called the Celtic idea of love had
passed with Celtic legend into French
hands ; and love, unreasoning, anti-so-
cial, glorying the more as it overleaps all
bounds, has been the one theme of fic-
tion from that day to this. The passion
of Lancelot is something quite different
from the longing of Odysseus for wife
and home. Indeed, such a passion was
looked upon by the Greeks as a weakness
or kind of madness, and thought to be un-
suited for serious literature. Yet if any-

thing redeems these romances from the
charge of frivolity, it is this free, self-
glorying love, which so readily passed
into the higher idealism. Love is the
teacher of honor, the inspirer of bravery,
the guide of ambition. He may be a dan-
gerous master, yet how prettily he talks
in the mouth of a fair heroine : " I assure
you, if God save you from death, you
shall undergo no hardship so long as you
remember me. Accept this ring, which
hath such virtue that its wearer cannot
suffer imprisonment or wounds while he
is mindful of his love ; it shall be an ar-
mor stronger than iron, and serve you
better than hauberk or shield. • What I
never bestowed on man, out of affection
I give you." Our religion is one of love ;
our literature obeys the same passion ;
our conscience calls for mercy, and not
justice. Much that is best and much
that is worst in modern civilization flows
from this source, and to understand its
full influence one must turn to mediae-
val romance and to the Arthurian epos,
where it obtains the fairest expression.

THE CONTRIBUTORS' CLUB.

MY first parish was in Scotland, in

the town of Langholm, Dum-
A Reminis-
cence of Car- friesshire, about twelve miles

from the straggling village
of Ecclefechan, where Thomas Carlyle
first saw the light about a hundred years
ago, and where he now sleeps among his
kinsfolk. Lying between Langholm and
Ecclefechan is the hamlet of Waterbeck,
where one of Carlyle's brothers resided.
Waterbeck, which is about eight miles
from Langholm and four from Eccle-
fechan, was the southwestern boundary
of my parish. I had there a handful of
church members, who came tripping over
the hill on Sunday mornings to church,
beguiling the way with song. The boys

and girls of the little band walked bare-
foot, washing their feet at a " burn "
and putting on their shoes just before
they entered " the muckle toon of the
Langholm," as our modest border town
was called.

I have a dim recollection of seeing,
when visiting the Waterbeck portion of
my flock, a tall, stoop-shouldered, loose-
jointed, ungainly man, with strong, rug-
ged features, who walked leisurely along
the single street of the village, looking at
the ground as if lost in thought, apparent-
ly quite unconscious of the curious faces
that peeped out at the slightly opened
doors, or looked slyly at him through
the windows. Years afterward, when I

The Contributors' Club.

285

saw the portrait of Thomas Cai-lyle I re-
cognized in it the likeness of that shabby-
looking old farmer whom I had seen in
the village of Waterbeck. He was doubt-
less paying a visit to his brother, who
was the big man of the place, having de-
veloped in that obscure hamlet an enor-
mous business, which was the envy of the
merchants of the city of Carlisle. A con-
siderable group of trained workers, such
as watchmakers, tailors, and shoemakers,
were gathered together, and that country
establishment controlled the trade within
a radius of twenty miles. I have often
thought that the genius which could create
such a business in circumstances so unfa-
vorable, and surmount difficulties seem-
ingly insuperable, was in no way inferior
to that which won for the best known
member of the family renown in the field
of literature.

For over eight years I lived in the
midst of the surroundings of Carlyle's
early life, and met many persons who
had been his lifelong friends. From
one of his nephews, who had for a time
acted as his amanuensis, I got consider-
able help in the understanding of Sar-
tor Resartus ; he supplying his uncle's
explanation of some of the difficult pas-
sages. Another nephew, a prominent
doctor in Langholm, was one of my most
intimate friends.

Shortly after conning to "the United
States in 1874, 1 had charge of a church
in northern Illinois, a large number of
whose members were from Dumfries-
shire, Scotland. One of my deacons had
been a schoolmate of Carlyle, and while
in his criticisms he often unwittingly
threw not a little side-light upon Carlyle's
character, he had not the slightest appre-
ciation of 'his greatness. I remember giv-
ing him Carlyle's Reminiscences to read.
He had personal knowledge of many of
the events recorded, and the style of his
comment was, " Ah, Tarn, Tarn, that is
just like you ; ye were aye sair afflicted
with the big head, aye bragging about
yourself and a' belanging to you." " A

cantankerous loon " was the description
he, gave of him as a boy. " None of us
liked him ; he was aye saying bitting,
jibbing things." I managed one day to
worm out of my old friend a confession
that may have held in it the secret of
much of his dislike for Carlyle. The
two boys had fought, and Tain Carlyle
had given him a sound thrashing.

It was my fortune, some time after-
ward, to come into intimate relation with
the daughter of Carlyle's favorite sister
Janet. It will be news to many readers
that this sister, the youngest member of
the Carlyle family, had made her home
in Canada for fifty years. The Reverend
G. M. Franklin, rector of Ripley, Ontario,
her son-in-law, in a letter written sev-
eral months ago, conveys the following
information : " Mrs. Robert Hanning, the
' Janet Carlyle ' of Froude's Reminis-
cences, is keeping in excellent health
for a lady who has passed her eighty-
third birthday. She is the last of the
Carlyles. She passes most of her time
in her own room, re-reading her brother's
favorite works, certain religious authors,
and her Bible." Since the above was
written Mrs. Hanning has died. The
letters which her brother wrote to her
— and which cover the entire period of
his literary activity — will now be pub-
lished, and will form a valuable addi-
tion to the already large stock of Car-
lyliana. It is said that they will present
" the Sage of Chelsea " in a tender and
amiable light. His affection for his mo-
ther and for his " small Jenny " was the
one saving influence in his life.

An American pilgrim, on his way to
Craigenputtock, overtook a countryman,
of whom he inquired about the Carlyles.
" Oh, ay, I ken the Carlyles. Tarn is
a writer of books, but we do not think
much of him in these parts. Jeems is
the best of the family ; he sends the fat-
test pigs to Dumfries market."

A native of Ecclefechan once re-
marked to a visitor, " Don't go to Ec-
clefechan expecting to find worshipers

286

The Contributors Club.

of Carlyle. You will find that other
members of the family are held in far
higher esteem." There is a story which
shows that some of the other members
of the family were far from regarding
the author of Sartor Resartus as the
greatest of the sons of the house. The
story runs thus : A gentleman, on being
introduced to James Carlyle, the young-
est brother of the author, ventured to re-
mark, " You '11 be proud of your great
brother ! " But he had mistaken his
man. James rejoined in the broadest
of broad Annandale, " Mee prood o' him !
I think he should be prood o' mee."

IT is frequently noticed that educated

The Qualities Americans have smaller vo-

ol American cabularies than Englishmen

Conversation. , • , Jr. . , .

and Frenchmen. I his lack

of good words may encourage our use of
slang, and it doubtless emphasizes the
straining after terms and shades of mean-
ing which we call preciosity. Stevenson
said that an idea does not exist until the
word to convey it is discovered, and many
an American studies the gymnasts of style
in the search for illuminating words.
Usually the result is a literary strut. Flau-
bert liked the paradox that art can be
learned best from writers of the second
rank ; that from Shakespeare and Homer
we can get only inspiration. Many stu-
dents to-day cannot learn from even the
wholesome second-class authors, Sterne,
Goldsmith. Irving, who use words in their
dignity ; they seek style in literary dan-
dies, whose words have no weight, but
only novelty. "Insigne, recens, indictum
ore alio," remarks Swift bitterly. Eng-
lishmen accuse Americans of admiration
for subtlety, a fault we share with recent
French writers who juggle with their
language. American preciosity does not
grow, like the French, from decadence,
but rather from rawness and intellectual
ambition combined with scarcity of words.
Language which is full and natural is
acquired in conversation, because words
met only in books are seldom handled
easily. Nothing expands a vocabulary

like conversation, and in the United
States there is thus far no large circle
of the educated. Our offspring hear Irish
in their cradles, and slang in their child-
hood. Superior men who live alone will
be less elastic in conversation than com-
monplace persons in an expressive envi-
ronment.

Possibly the tendency in American
colleges to substitute science for the clas-
sics will do something to hinder the ex-
pansion of our current language. What-
ever we take from Greece and Rome
can be assimilated and used to make
our own speech richer, but few get any
except bad words out of physical and
economic science, metaphysics, logic, or
mathematics. A knowledge of German,
Italian, Spanish, and most other modern
languages seems to do neither harm nor
good, but contemporary French, being
itself corrupt and fashionable, is a cause
of effeminacy in American speech and
style, as surely as recent scientists are
responsible for awkward terms in Great
Britain. Psychology furnishes some of
our best and some of our flattest words.

Fragmentariness is another fault of
American social intercourse. Our sub-
jects change too often. In France, a
conversation does not stop when a new-
comer enters. In America, we pause and
explain the topic, or take a new one more
congenial to the stranger. Lack of train-
ing partly explains this stupidity, but the
habit of talking personalities is also a
cause. Naturally, if you and I are mak-
ing comments on a friend simply because
we know him, bringing out no generali-
ties, courtesy will prevent our inflicting
the talk on another. Personal comment
may be as fertile as any, but only when
it depends less on interest in the individ-
ual than on the significance of the con-
clusions. This limitation to subjects of
no universal concern is said to afflict
aristocracies and exclusive circles, which
touch life narrowly.

Although we have humor and some
wit, we have little of the deftness that

The Contributors' Club.

287

may make any topic entertaining. " A
fly will serve me for a subject," said
Montaigne, and his nation has more
lightness and distinction of form than
Northern races have. Even in serious
subjects the French have an advantage
in their knowledge of politics, history,
and literature. We devote our lives to
Barrie, Ho wells, Zola, Pater, and are
not ashamed to know little of Jonson,
Burke, Ford, or Dryden. A French-
man would not like to admit that he had
not read Pascal, Corneille, or Bossuet,
and an Englishman knows more not only
about his country's classics, but often
about Franklin and Daniel Webster.
Both the British and the French pay
more attention to domestic politics, and
in foreign affairs we have an interest
broader than the French, and narrower
than the British.

Finally, our leisure is not spent so-
cially. Nature shuts us in and denies us
the lif e of the boulevards, but it is we our-
selves who work the wrong of being too
busy, — a fault which limits our subjects,
spoils the atmosphere, and keeps con-
versation from becoming art. While it
is now possible for many to avoid pre-
occupation with money, and it is fashion-
able to have much of the day free from
work, yet some of our most interest-
ing people, especially women, are proud
of being kept busy by numerous occupa-
tions. The boast of having no time is
true in the mouths of many, and it is
made truer by a sort of intellectual vogue
for scurrying hither and thither. Nearly
any interest is allowed to prevent long
conversation. Limitless " engagements "
fill the day, and few of us hold talk as
valuable as it was held by Emerson and
Margaret Fuller.

The domination of the family has an
influence on social intercourse which is
not enlivening, for devotion to the home
dulls the edge of that desire to please
which is the soul of conversation. In
our cities it is being mitigated, but hus-
bands and wives are still looked upon as

Siamese twins, and the unmarried girl
goes everywhere. While all this keeps
sweet the springs of life, it makes less
numerous those gatherings where the
best talk is heard. In France they have
always been composed of a few married
women and many men. Indeed, when
we come to name the conditions which
make conversation good here, and pro-
mise to make it better, we shall get far
away from France. There it is an art
which gains much of its finish from qual-
ities which we should be sorry to own.
Our growth, to be representative, must
have less artifice, less brilliancy, a charm
more in accord with the sturdy poetry
of our English ancestors. What makes
our conversation attractive is the whole-
someness of American character and of
American life. It is the reflection of a
friendly disposition and happy surround-
ings. It is a genial expression of suc-
cessful democracy. There is something
morally smaller in the national character
which creates the social art of France.
In England there are the barriers of
class distinction and snobbery, to which
only fools attend in America. The Eng-
lishman may hate them, but they cling.
Life is less cordial, less unaffected and
fraternal, than it is here, and so is its ex-
pression in current speech. The British
subject has a settled respect for the Times,
a duke, or the empire, which is unknown
to us. We examine everything. The
laborer criticises the President or the mil-
lionaire, and the conductor jests with the
banker. No man thinks his newspaper
a prophet. There is little black and lit-
tle white in the world for us. We are
kind, but skeptical. Our fatalism, which
on the one side leans toward indiffer-
ence, on the other is the basis of the hu-
mor which lightens everything. Amer-
ica is a good place for a man of large
sympathy, because, taking everybody,
from the rich to the poorest, people are
happier, freer in thought, better nour-
ished, and more alive. The conversa-
tion which represents the nation's life,

288

The Contributors' Club.

taking it up and down, from top to bot-
tom, including motormen, cab-drivers,
farmers, masons, is shrewd, humorous,
and individual, cheerful in its cynicism,
ironical in its earnestness. The remarks
of a crowd watching a street occurrence,
the talk of laborers, give much that any
man should value, — personal judgments,
fearless, and often racy and grim. To
listen to conversation in a livery stable
is not to lose time. The men who talk
there have been in the public schools, they
are prospering, their horizon is widen-
ing, the climate is bracing, nobody has
more rights, and they express themselves
with vigor. No property or caste notions
silence them, nor are any opinions fixed
for them, and every question is open.

The richer people have some of this
spirit, because social classes are so mixed ;
but as they meet formally in places where
nothing is going on and there is no
common occupation, their subjects call
for qualities which they lack, although
they also are helped by the general free-
dom. The cheerfulness is not lightness,
of character. The Puritan, or something
else, makes us serious in our humor, as
other strains make us humorous in our
sincerity. We have, however, to thank
our democracy for the absence of for-
malism in talk, of setiiess in opinion,
and of general ennui. Even some ham-
pering standards which we have are dis-
appearing. Frankness without intimacy
was frowned on by our parents, but we
are learning that concealment about prin-
ciples is out of place in conversation.
Few can be socially interesting who are
secretive by habit.

Connected with the growing frankness
of conversation is the freedom of woman.
The most delightful step we have taken
is the extension of her part in life. No-
thing is so cheering, so enlightening arid
broadening, for men and for women, as
the equality on which they meet. What

American would choose the rigidity of
Germany or England, or the artifice of
France ? The same openness and truth
in the relations between men and women
are found nowhere else. What could be
more instructive, and what more charm-
ing ? Charity is the greatest of the vir-
tues, intellectual and aesthetic as well as
social ; and kindness, fairness, and the
lack of bullying, encouraged by the equal
rights of all races and both sexes, added
to the humor which the Yankee and the
Irishman have given to the whole com-
pound, make up the greatest satisfaction
of our social life.

The deepest fault to be set against this
charm, the lack of thoroughness, will
diminish, as the reward for quick and
superficial qualities grows less with the
settlement of society. Our fatalism may
also diminish, although it is to be hoped
that the essence of our humor, from Emer-
son and Lincoln to Mark Twain, will not
go with it. When the resources of the
country are less sufficient, and care about
waste is greater, a more active concern
for political management will remove
the most striking indication of national
indifference. With the increase of in-
terest in public affairs, the virtues which
at present make the average talk so
good will make the conversation of the
educated correspondingly vivid and sig-
nificant.

Fashionable society alone deserves no
favorable judgment. It is more ignorant
than fashion in other lands. It imitates
the society of a foreign country, and it
has no function except to be conspicuous.
But even our fashion, absurd as it is, is
beginning to seek outsiders to make " sa-
lons " for it. Leaving it out of account,
we may believe that in all walks of life,
from the factory to the college, our con-
versation, whatever its faults, has at least
as much of the blood of life in it as that
of any other country.

From a Copley I'rint.
Copyright iSqS By Curtis cw Cameron

WILLIAM MORRIS HUNT

A practically complete collection of the works of William Morris Hunt
have just been added to the COPLEY PRINTS. These COPLEY
PRINTS are commended by artists as one of the really important
achievements in reproductive art. The subjects include the Notable
Paintings and Mural Decorations in America. For sale by leading art
dealers. Every reader of The Atlantic is invited to send for new 1898
ILLUSTRATED CATALOGUE — ten cents in stamps.
CURTIS & CAMERON, Publishers, 20 Pierce Building, Boston.

THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY:

•

;£Hasa$ine of literature, Science, art, ana $olitic&

VOL. LXXXL — MAR CH, 1898. — No. CCCCLXXXV.

ENGLISH AS AGAINST FRENCH LITERATURE.

THE French have had hospitable re-
ception from us of late years ; their books
have been read with diligence, their nov-
els have strewn ladies' tables, their ideas
have inspired our men of letters. " Eng-
lished," " done into English," translat-
ed, converted, transfused into English,
French literature furnishes forth our
young ladies with conversation and our
young gentlemen with cosmopolitanism,
until the crushed worm of national pre-
judice begins to squirm and turn. Flau-
bert the high aspiring, Maupassant the
cunning craftsman, Bourget the puppet-
shifter, Zola the zealot, have had their
innings ; their side is out ; the fiery bowl-
ing of Mr. Kipling has taken their last
wicket, and those of us who have been
born and bred in prejudice and provin-
cialism may return to our English- Amer-
ican ways with a fair measure of jaunti-
ness. We are no longer ashamed to lose
interest when we hear of an " inevitable "
catastrophe or of an " impeccable " style ;
we yawn openly over " bitterly modern
spiritual complexities." Let us have
done with raw admiration of foreigners ;
let us no more heed Ibsen and Zola,

" Or what the Norse intends, or -what the
French."

Let us speak out our prejudices ; let us
uncover our honest thoughts and our real
affections. Let us openly like what na-
ture has commanded us to like, and not
what we should were we colossi spanning
the chasui between nations.

Cosmopolitanism spreads out its syl-
lables as if it were the royal city of hu-
manity, but if, whenever its praises are
sung, the context be regarded, the term
is found to be only a polysyllabic equi-
valent for Paris and things Parisian ; it
means preference of French ideas and
ways to English. We are not cosmo-
politan ; we learned our French history
from Shakespeare, Marryat, and Punch,
and from a like vantage-ground of lit-
erary simplicity we survey the courses
of English and French literatures, and
with the definiteness of the unskeptical
we believe that in novel and story, in
drama and epic, in sermon and essay, in
ballad and song, the English have over-
matched the French.

The heart of all literature is poetry.
The vitality of play, story, sermon, es-
say, of whatever there is best in prose,
is the poetic essence in it. English prose
is better than French prose, because of
the poetry in it. We do not mean prose
as a vehicle for useful information, but
prose put to use in literature. English
prose gets emotional capacity from Eng-
lish poetry, not only from the spirit of
it, but also by adopting its words. Eng-
lish prose has thus a great poetical vocab-
ulary open to it, and a large and gener-
ous freedom from conventional grammar.
It draws its nourishment from English
blank verse, and thus strengthened strides
onward like a bridegroom. If you are
a physician inditing a prescription, or a
lawyer drawing a will, or a civil en-
gineer putting down logarithmic matter,

290

English as against French Literature.

write in French prose : your patient will
die, his testament be sustained, or an
Eiffel Tower be erected to his memory
in the correctest and clearest manner
possible. But when you write a prayer,
or exhort a forlorn hope, or put into
words any of those emotions that give
life its dignity, let your speech be Eng-
lish, that your reader shall feel emotional
elevation, his heart lifted up within him,
while his intellect peers at what is be-
yond his reach.

If a man admits that for him poetry is
the chief part of literature, he must con-
cede that French prose cannot awaken in
him those feelings which he has on read-
ing the English Bible, Milton, Ruskin,
Carlyle, or Emerson. It is the alliance
of our prose with our poetry that makes
it so noble. What English-speaking per-
son in his heart thinks that any French
poet is worthy to loose one shoe-latchet
in the poets' corner of English shoes ?

The man that loves another
As much as his mother tongue,

Can either have had no mother,

Or that mother no mother's tongue."

We have shown too much deference to
this inmate of clubs and weekly news-
papers, this international Frankenstein
of literary cosmopolitanism. English po-
etry is the greatest achievement in the
world ; we think so, why then do we make
broad our phylacteries and say that we
do not ? Ben Jonson says, " There is a
necessity that all men should love their
country ; he that prof esseth the contrary
may be delighted with his words, but his
heart is not there." But we here con-
cern ourselves with another matter. We
desire to praise the two chief qualities
that have combined to make English lit-
erature so great : they are common sense
and audacity, and their combined work
is commonly called, for lack of a better
name, romance.

Younger brother to English poetry is
English romance, which of all strange
things in this world is most to be won-
dered at. Brother to poetry, cousin to

greed, neighbor to idealism, friend to
curiosity, English romance in deed and
word is the riches of the English race.
Its heroes march down the rolls of his-
tory like a procession of kings : Raleigh
and Spenser, Drake and Sidney, Bunyan
and Harry Vane, Hastings and Burns,
Nelson and Sir Walter Scott, Gordon
and Kipling. Strange as English ro-
mance is, if a man would learn its two
constituent qualities in little space, he
need only take from the library shelf
The Principal Navigations, Voyages,
Traffiques, and Discoveries of the Eng-
lish Nation, made by Sea or Overland,
compiled by Richard Hakluyt, Preacher.
Here we perceive the bond between ro-
mance, greed, idealism, and curiosity ;
here we see how the British Empire
plants its feet of clay upon the love of
gain. Trade, trade, trade, with Rus-
sians, Tartars, Turks, with Hindoos,
Hottentots, and Bushmen, with Eskimo,
Indian, and South Sea Islander ; and yet
hand in hand with greed go curiosity,
love of adventure, and search for some
ideal good. A wonderful people are the
English so faithfully to serve both God
and Mammon, and so sturdily to put
their great qualities to building both an
empire and a literature.

II.

Who is not pricked by curiosity upon
seeing " certeine bookes of Cosmographie
with an universalle Mappe " ? Who is
not splendidly content, of a winter even-
ing, his oblivious boots upon the fender,
his elbows propped on the arms of his
chair, to read Mr. Preacher Hakluyt's
Voyages ? Who does not feel himself
disposed " to wade on farther and farther
in the sweet study of Cosmographie " ?
Let us leave gallicized gallants, literary
cosmopolites, their adherents and accom-
plices, and read old Hakluyt.

What quicker can attune the reader's
attention to the valiant explorations that
are to follow than to read that " when the
Emperour's sister, the spouse of Spaine,

English as against French Literature.

291

with a Fleete of 130 sailes, stoutly and
proudly passed the narrow Seas, Lord
William Howard of Effingham, accom-
panied with ten ships onely of Her Ma-
jestie's Navie Roiall, environed their
Fleete in most strange and warrelike
sorte, enforced them to stoope gallant,
and to vaile their bonets for the Queene
of England " !

On the 9th of May, 1553, the ordi-
nances of M. Sebastian Cabota, Esquier,
Governour of the Mysterie and Com-
panie of Marchants Adventurers, were
all drawn up. The merchants aboard
the ships were duly warned " in counte-
nance not to shew much to desire the
forren commodities ; nevertheless to take
them as for friendship ; " and Sir Hugh
Willoughby, Knight, Richard Chancel-
lor, their officers, mariners, and company,
set sail down the Thames in the Edward
Bonaventure, the Bona Speranza, and
the Confidencia, on their way by the
northeast passage to Cathay. Before
they had gone far, Thomas Nash, cook's
mate on the Bona Speranza, was ducked
at the yard's - arm for pickerie. The
ships sailed up the North Sea, past Scan-
dinavia, and into the Arctic Ocean,
where Sir Hugh Willoughby and his two
ships were lost, but Chancellor entered
the White Sea, and landed in Russia.
He then drove on sledges to Moscow,
where he was received most graciously
by his Majesty Ivan the Terrible. Chan-
cellor wrote a description of the Rus-
sians, in which he tells their ways and
customs. Although Chancellor could re-
member very well the days of Henry
VIII. and the seizure of Church lands,
yet he remarks that when a rich Russian
grows old " he shall be called before the
Duke, and it shall be sayd unto him,
Friend, you have too much living, and
are unserviceable to your Prince, lesse
will serve you, and the rest will serve
other men that are more able to serve,
whereupon immediately his living shall
be taken away from him saving a little
to find himself e and his wife on ; and he

may not once repine thereat, but for an-
swere he will say, that he hath nothing,
but it is God's and the Duke's graces, and
cannot say, as we the common people in
England say, if wee have anything ; that
it is God's and our owne. Men may say
that these men are in wonderful great
awe and obedience, that thus one must
give and grant his goods which he hath
bene scraping and scratching for all his
life, to be at his Prince's pleasure and
commandement."

Coming back from his second voyage,
Chancellor brought an ambassador from
Ivan Vasilivich, Emperour of all Russia,
Great Duke of Smolenski, Tuerskie,
Yowgoriskie, Permskie, Viatskie, Bol-
garskie and Sibierskie, Emperour of
Chernigoskie, Rezanskie, Polodskie, Re-
zewskie, Bielskie, Rostoskie, Yeraslave-
skie, Bealozarskie, Oudarskie, Obdor-
skie, Condenskie, and manie other coun-
tries, to the most famous and excellent
Princes Philip and Mary. (This patent
inferiority of designation was the cause
of much diplomatic correspondence.)
Chancellor sailed out of the White Sea
through the Arctic Ocean ; for the Rus-
sians had no access to the Baltic, as they
had granted exclusive privileges to the
Flemings. Storms overtook him on the
Scottish coast : Chancellor and most of
the men were drowned ; only " the noble
personage of the Ambassadour " was
saved.

In 1557 Master Anthonie Jenkinson
in the Primerose, the Admirall, with
three other tall ships, took this ambassa-
dor back to Russia by the same northern
way, seven hundred and fifty leagues.
Jenkinson sailed up the river Dwina in
a little boat, lodging in the wilderness
by the riverside at night ; and " he that
will travell those wayes, must carie with
him an hatchet, a tinderboxe, and a ket-
tle, to make fire and seethe meate, when
he hath it ; for there is small succour in
those parts, unless it be in townes." He
was graciously received in Moscow by
the Emperor about Christmas time, and

292

English as against French Literature.

witnessed the court ceremonies. At
their Twelftide, the Emperor with his
crown of Tartarian fashion upon his
head, and the Metropolitan attended by
divers bishops and nobles and a great
concourse of people, went in long pro-
cession to the river, which was complete-
ly frozen over. A hole was cut in the
ice, and the Metropolitan hallowed the
water with great solemnity, and did cast
of the water upon the Emperor's son
and upon the nobility. "That done,
the people with great thronging filled
pots of the said water to carie home to
their houses, and divers children were
throwen in, and sicke people, and plucked
out quickly again, and divers Tartars
christened. Also there were brought the
Emperour's best horses to drink of the
sayd hallowed water, and likewise many
other men brought their horses thither
to drinke, and by that means they make
their horses as holy as themselves."

The English merchants were now well
established in Muscovy, and sent home
frequent reports about the manners and
customs of Russians. They noticed the
Russian custom " every yere against
Easter to die or colour red with Brazell
a great number of egs ; the common peo-
ple use to carie in their hands one of
their red egs, not onely upon Easter day,
but also three or foure days after, and
gentlemen and gentlewomen have egs
gilded which they cary in like maner.
When two friends meete, the one of them
sayth, the Lord is risen, the other an-
swereth, it is so of a truth, and then they
kisse and exchange their egs both men
and women, continuing in kissing 4 dayes
together."

One of the agents of the company in
Moscow, Master Henrie Lane, had a
controversy with one Sheray Costromits-
key concerning the amount of a debt due
from the English merchants. Lane prof-
fered six hundred rubles, but the Rus-
sians demanded double the sum, and not
agreeing they had recourse to law. For
trial by combat Master Lane was pro-

vided with a strong, willing Englishman,
one of the company servants ; but the
Russian champion was not willing to meet
him, and the case was brought to trial
before two chief judges. The English
party were taken within the bar, and
their adversaries placed outside. " Both
parties were first perswaded with great
curtesie, to wit, I to enlarge mine offer,
and the Russes to mitigate their chal-
lenge. Notwithstanding that I protest-
ed my conscience to be cleere, and their
gaine by accompt to bee sufficient, yet
of gentlenes at the magistrate's request
I make proffer of 100 robles more ;
which was openly commended, but of
the plaintifes not accepted. Then sen-
tence passed with our names in two equall
balles of waxe made and holden up by
the Judges, their sleeves stripped up.
Then with standing up and wishing well
to the trueth attributed to him that should
be first drawen, by both consents from
among the multitude they called a tall
gentleman, saying: Thou with such a
coate or cap, come up : where roome
with speede was made. He was com-
manded to hold his cappe (wherein they
put the balles) by the crown, upright in
sight, his arme not abasing. With like
circumspection they called at adventure
another tall gentleman, commanding him
to strip up his right sleeve, and willed
him with his bare arme to reach up, and
in God's name severally to take out the
two balles ; which he did delivering to
either Judge one. Then with great ad-
miration the lotte in ball first taken out
was mine : which was by open sentence
so pronounced before all the people, and
to be the right and true parte. I was
willed forthwith to pay the plaintifes the
sum by me appointed. Out of which, for
their wrong or sinne, as it was termed,
they payd tenne in the hundred to the
Emperour. Many dayes after, as their
maner is, the people took our nation to
be true and upright dealers, and talked
of this judgement to our great credite."
Thus, with daring, good sense, and

English as against French Literature.

293

good luck, English commerce laid the
foundation - stones of the English Em-
pire. But the reader must read for him-
self how these merchants flew the Eng-
lish flag for the first time across the
Caspian Sea, and made their way to Per-
sia in the teeth of danger. Or if the
reader would learn more of English cour-
age, let him read that volume in which
Raleigh describes how Sir Richard Gren-
ville fought the Revenge.

We wish only to call attention to the
union of boldness and prudence in these
English traders at the budding time of
Elizabethan literature.

in.

Commerce is like colonizing : it de-
mands manly virtue, forethought, auda-
city, quickness to advance, slowness to
yield ; it requires diplomacy, flattery,
lies, and buffets. Misadventure may fol-
low misadventure, yet the money-bags of
England continue to propel new adven-
turers over the globe. Merchant adven-
turers do not seek Utopias, — let a man
plan a Utopia, and the English cut his
head off ; they seek a gay and gallant
market, where hlack, red, or yellow men
will barter taffeta and furs for English
homespun, English glass, and English
steel ; or, better yet, will give England a
kingdom for " a cherry or a fig." The
money - getting English are no misers.
Their gold -bags breed audacity. Nobles
of Devon, franklins of Kent, burghers of
London, make many companies of mer-
chant adventurers, and delight to risk
their possessions for the sake of great re-
turns. Half the famous ships that beat
the Spanish Armada — the Bull, the
Bear, the Dreadnaught, the Arkraleigh
— were built for the commercial enter-
prise of piracy on the Spanish Main.
Elizabeth and her nobles drew their ten
per centum per mensem from such in-
vestments.

Money searched for cheap routes to
Cathay, and opened up trade with Russia,
Tartary, and Persia. Hope of gain sent

colonists westward to Virginia, lured by
the description of land " which will not
onely serve the ordinary turnes of you
which are and shall bee, planters and
inhabitants, but such an overplus suffi-
ciently to be yielded, as by way of traf-
ficke and exchaunge will enrich your-
selves the providers, and greatly profit
our owne countrymen." The swelling
money-bags of England set Clive and
Hastings over India, took the Cape of
Good Hope, and sought twentyfold in-
crease in Australia.

English commerce is no headstrong
fool. It looks first, and leaps after-
ward. Like a wary captain, it takes its
reckoning by compass and sextant, and
then spreads all sail. It acts with the
self-confidence of common sense. Com-
merce is as prudent as Cecil and as bold
as Drake ; but prudence is the control-
ling spirit. Common sense, also, is the
characteristic of English literature which
has exalted it so far beyond its modern
rivals. Powerful as have been its fan-
tastic, monstrous, and metaphysical ele-
ments, disturbing as have been affectation
and demagogy, these influences have been
but little eddies whirling round in the
strong, steady current of common sense
that has carried English literature on its
flood. Common sense unconsciously re-
cognizes that men are human ; that im-
agination must play round the facts of
daily life ; that poetry and prose must be
wrought out of the dust of the earth, and
not out of some heavenly essence. Com-
mon sense acts upon instant needs, and
meets the dangers of the hour ; it is not
diverted from its path by fears or al-
lurements of the distant future ; it
climbs like a child, clinging to one bal-
uster and then another, till it plants its
steps securely. There is a world of dif-
ference between it and " une certaine
habitude raisonnable qui est le propre de
la race francaise en po^sie," according to
Sainte-Beuve. One is bred in the closet
by meditation ; the other comes from
living.

294

English as against French Literature.

The good sense of Chaucer, Shake-
speare, Dry den, Defoe, Pope, Fielding,
Walter Scott, Tennyson, George Eliot,
and others walls in English literature, so
that it can stand the push of unruly ge-
nius in a Marlowe or a Shelley. Against
this dominating common sense allegory
rises in vain ; passion cannot overtopple
it ; too subtle thought is sloughed off by
it ; dreams serve but to ornament ; desires
are tamed ; parlor rhymesters are tossed
aside. Common sense, with its trust in
common humanity, has made English lit-
erature. The same solid wisdom which
makes English money ballasts English
verse and prose. There is an impress as
of pounds, shillings, and pence on most
of their pages ; not vulgar and rude, as
these words suggest, but like images on
antique coins, stamped by conservatism,
by precious things accumulated, by tra-
dition and authority.

There is a certain melancholy about
prudence ; it bears witness to innumer-
able punishments suffered by ignorance
and rashness, which must have been
heaped up to a monstrous mass in order
to create prudence as an instinct. But
most of the punishments were accom-
plished before prudence appeared, and
she reaps the harvest. There is some-
thing pathetic in the lives of Marlowe,
Greene, Peele, Chatterton, Byron, Shel-
ley, and Poe, who suffered, and in that
wiser men had advantage therefrom.
But after this manner runs the world
away. English literature has been nour-
ished by such sufferings, and the Eng-
lish Empire has also received from indi-
viduals all that they had to give. There
is pathos in the reports sent by Hakluyt's
traders to the home company. The in-
vestors dangle round Hampton Court, or
sit in their counting-rooms in the city,
while the adventurers leave England for
years, brave hardships, risk disease and
death, and send their duties back with
humble hopes that their good masters
in London may be content with what
they do.

" Coastwise — cross-seas — round the world and

back again,
Whither the flaw shall fail us, or the Trades

drive down :
Plain-sail — storm-sail — lay your hoard and

tack again —

And all to bring a cargo up to London
town ! "

IV.

Nevertheless, the desire to make
money is not of itself capable of great
action. It can put its livery upon a
number of needy fellows who care not
what they do, — who will trap beavers
in Alaska, dig diamonds in Brazil, carry
Hampshire kerseys to Tartars ; but its
main function is to be the utensil for
the true adventurer: if he will sail, it
builds a ship ; if he will plant, it gives
him seed ; if he will rob, it loads him
with powder and shot; it is the pack-
mule that shall cany him and his equip-
ment over the Alps of enterprise. The
real strength of money lies in the wild
spirits that will use it. Curiosity seeking
the secrets of the world, daring looking
for giant obstacles, conquerors in search
of possessions whereto their courage shall
be their title-deeds, — these must have
money-getters. They publish abroad their
needs that are to be, and farmers, min-
ers, weavers, spinners, millers, smiths,
and all grubbers spare and save, sweat-
ing to serve romantic adventurers.

The spirit of romance has flung its
boldness into English literature. It plun-
ders what it can from Greek, Latin,
Italian, French, and Spanish. It ramps
over the world : it dashes to Venice, to
Malta, to Constantinople, to the Garden
of Eden, to the Valley of the Shadow of
Death, to Lilliput, to desert islands, to
Norman baron and Burgundian noble,
to Virginia, to Florence, to India, to the
South Sea, to Africa, and fetches home
to England foreign wealth by land and
sea. How boldly it sails east, west, south,
and north, and by its shining wake shows
that it is the same spirit of romance that
has voyaged from Arthurian legend to
Mr. Kipling!

English as against French Literature.

295

French men of letters have not had
enough of this audacious spirit. They
troop to Paris, where they have been ac-
customed to sit on their classical benches
since Paris became the centre of France.
The romance of Villon is the romance
of a Parisian thief ; the romance of Ron-
sard is the romance of the Parisian salon.
Montaigne strolls about his seigniory
while England is topsy-turvy with ex-
citement of new knowledge and new feel-
ing. Corneille has the nobleness of a
jeune fille. You can measure them
all by their ability to plant a colony.
Wreck them on a desert island, Vil-
lon will pick blackberries, Ronsard will
skip stones, Montaigne whittle, Corneille
look like a gentleman, and the empire
of France will not increase by a hand's-
breath. Take a handful of Elizabethan
poets, and Sidney chops, Shakespeare
cooks, Jonson digs, Bacon snares, Mar-
lowe catches a wild ass : in twenty-four
hours they have a log fort, a score of
savage slaves, a windmill, a pinnace, and
the cross of St. George flying from the
tallest tree.

It is the adventurous capacity in Eng-
lish men of letters that has outdone the
French. They lay hold of words and
sentences and beat them to their needs.
They busy themselves with thoughts and
sentiments as if they were boarding pi-
rates, going the nearest way. They do
not stop to put on uniforms ; whereas
in France the three famous literary pe-
riods of the Pl&ade, the Classicists, and
the Romanticists have been three strug-
gles over form, — quarrels to expel or
admit some few score words, questions
of rubric and vestments. The English
have never balked at means after this
fashion. Fe*nelon says of the French
language " qu'elle n'est ni varie'e, ni libre,
ni hardie, ni propre a donner de Pessor."

It is not fanciful to find this common
element of daring in both English trade
and poetry. English adventurers have
sailed eastward and westward, seeking
new homes for the extravagant spirits

that find the veil of familiarity hang too
thick over their native fields and cot-
tages. Turn to the French : their mer-
chants ply to Canada and India in vain.
What sails belly out before the poetry
of Ronsard or Malherbe ? Into what
silent sea is French imagination the first
to break ? The Elizabethan poets are a
crew of mariners, rough, rude, bold, tru-
culent, boyish, and reverent. How yare-
ly they unfurl the great sails of English
literature and put to open sea! The
poor French poets huddle together with
plummet in their hands, lest they get be-
yond their soundings. t * .

No man can hold cheap the brilliant
valor of the French. From Ronces-
valles to the siege of Paris French sol-
diers have shown headlong courage. No-
thing else in military history is so wonder-
ful as the French soldiers from the 10th
of August to Waterloo. Their dash and
enterprise are splendid, but they do not
take their ease in desperate fortune as
if it were their own inn, as English-
men do. They have not the shiftiness
and cunning that can dodge difficulties.
They cannot turn their bayonets into
reaping-hooks, their knapsacks into bush-
els, their cannon to keels, their flags to
canvas. They have not the prehensile
hands of the English that lay hold, and
do not let loose.

English courage owes its success to its
union with common sense. The French
could send forty Light Brigades to in-
stant death ; French guards are wont to
die as if they went a-wooing; but the
French have not the versatile absorption
in the business at hand of the English.
The same distinction shows in the two
literatures. Nothing could be more bril-
liant than Victor Hugo in 1830. His
verse flashes like the white plume of
Navarre. His was the most famous
charge in literature. Hernani and Ruy
Bias have prodigious brilliancy and cour-
age, but they lack common sense. They
conquer, win deafening applause, be-
wilder men with excitement ; but, vie-

296

English as against French Literature.

tory won, they have not the aptitude for
settling down. They are like soldiers
who know not how to go back to plough
and smithy. The great French litera-
ture of the Romantic period did not dig
foundation, slap on mortar, or lay arches
in the cellar of its house, after the Eng-
lish fashion. Next to Victor Hugo, not
counting Goethe, the greatest man of
letters in Europe, of this century, is Sir
Walter Scott. Mark the difference be-
tween him and Hugo. Scott's poetry
and novels have a vigorous vitality from
his common sense, and therefore they
are ingrained 'in the trunk of English
literature ; the fresh sap of their ro-
mance quickens every root and adds
greenery to every bough. Victor Hugo
is passionate, imaginative, majestic, pow-
erful, eloquent, demagogical, but he does
not stand the hard test of squaring with
the experience of common men.

Consider M. Zola, the greatest of liv-
ing French novelists, and we find the
same lack in him. His strong, sturdy
talents have fought a brilliant and vic-
torious fight ; but the brilliancy of his
victory serves merely as a light to rally
his enemies ; he has offended against the
abiding laws of the common knowledge
of common men, and his books have al-
ready passed the zenith of their glory.
There is hardly a famous man who does
not point the same moral. Michelet
records the introduction of tobacco.
" Des le de*but de cette drogue, on put
preVoir son effet. Elle a supprime' le
baiser. Ceci en 1610. Date fatale qui
ouvre les routes ou 1'homme et la femme
iront divergents." Read Renan's chap-
ters upon King David. Take Racine,
of whom Voltaire says " que personne
n'a jam a is porte* 1'art de la parole a un
plus haut point, ni donne" plus de charme
a la langue francaise." He is noble,
and appeals to the deepest feelings in
men, love, religion, heroism. By virtue
of his spiritual nature he deserves great
reverence, but he does not touch the un-
derstanding of common men. Ronsard,

du Bellay, Clement Marot, have the same
fault ; they are witty, epigrammatic, mu-
sical, but they have not the one essen-
tial element. The two most successful
French men of letters are the two pos-
sessing most common sense, Moliere and
Balzac.

Common sense is difficult to define,
and suffers from a vulgar notion that it
is totally separate and distinct from high
virtues. It is Sancho Panza, but San-
cho learned to appreciate Don Quixote.
Common sense knows that it must be
squire to the hero until the hero shall
recognize his own dependence upon the
squire. The wise and witty Voltaire
failed in this respect, for he did not
understand the daily need of idealism.
Common sense sees the immediate obsta-
cle which is to be overcome ; in order
to sharpen a pencil, instead of Durandal
or Excalibur, it uses a penknife. Com-
mon sense trims its sails to catch the
breeze, be it a cat's-paw, but it does not
avoid the hurricanes of passion. Com-
mon sense uses common words ; it hus-
bands ; it practices petty economies, so
that the means of the hero shall be am-
ple to his great enterprise. Of itself it
can do little, but it makes straight the
path for great achievement.

Jowett was fond of repeating Cole-
ridge's remark that " the only common
sense worth having is based on meta-
physics." This saying is in part true,
and it would not be over-curious to trace
the indirect influence of metaphysics on
the English Empire and on English lit-
erature.

There is no profit, however, in at-
tempting to lug reason into this matter
of the preference of English literature
over French. There is no justification
here except by faith. There is none to
hold the scales, while we heap English
books into one to outweigh French books
in the other. Men who have thrown off
the bias of nationality have disqualified
themselves for the task, for they have

English as against French literature.

297

cut off all those prime feelings and blind,
indistinct sentiments that must be the
judges of last resort, and have set up in
their stead reason propped on crutches
of grammar, syntax, style, and euphony.
In fundamental matters, the intellect
must take counsel of the heart. Every
man's memory has stored in some odd
corner the earliest sounds of his mother's
voice saying the Lord's Prayer ; it re-
members the simple words that first dis-
tinguished the sun and the moon, butter-
cup and dandelion, Kai the bull terrier
and Sally the cat. No cultivation, no
sojourning in foreign lands, no mastery
of many books, can erase these recollec-
tions. Some men there are whose con-
ception of human relations is so large
and generous that to them the differ-
ences between peoples are slight, when
matched with the resemblances. Such
men are noble and lovable, but they are
not qualified to pronounce upon the mer-
its of two languages. Native language
is restricting and confining so far as con-
cerns peoples in international affairs, but
it ennobles and enlarges fellow country-
men. Out of our native language are
made our home and our country. The
sweet sounds of speech heard only at
home create our fundamental affections.
The separation of nation from nation is
a cheap price to pay for the great bene-
fit which we of one people have received
from the bond of common speech.

That which is true of language is true
of literature. The great books for us are
the books which we read when we were
young ; they bewitched us with our own
language, they brought to us our Eng-
lish thoughts. The power of the English
Bible is not the reward of merit only, —
merit has never enjoyed such measure
of success ; it exists because we read it
and re-read it when we were little boys.
This early language of our mother and
of our books is part of the " trailing
clouds of glory " that came with us from
the East. Love of it is a simple animal
instinct, and the man who can proclaim

himself free from it does not compre-
hend the riches of language or the great
passions of life. We would alter a line
of Wordsworth to fit this case : —

We must be bond who speak the tongue that
Shakespeare spake.

We cannot throw off the strong shackles
that Shakespeare, the Bible, and all our
English inheritance have put upon us ;
we are barred and bolted in this Eng-
lish tongue ; only he who does not feel
the multitudinous touch of these spiritual
hands of the great English dead can
stand up and say that the English and
French languages are equal.

Mr. Matthew Arnold used to instruct
us — as a professor of Hellenism was
bound to do — that we must divest our-
selves of national prejudices. We all ad-
mired him, and meant to mend our ways.
He borrowed the word " saugrenu " from
the French to tell us more exactly what
manner of behavior was ours ; but faster
than his prose pushed us on to interna-
tional impartiality his poetry charmed us
back. Mr. Arnold's poetry is essential-
ly English ; it is the poetry of an Eng-
lish Englishman. He is a descendant in
direct line from Sidney, Herbert, Gray,
Cowper, Wordsworth. He appeals to our
native emotion ; he has English morals,
English sentiment, English beliefs and
disbeliefs ; his character is doubly em-
phasized by his occasional imitation of
Greek forms. He has about him the
atmosphere of the Anglican Church, —
love of form, fondness for those emotions
which are afraid to acknowledge instinct
as their father, and yet shudder at logic.
Mr. Arnold is an English poet, and for
that reason we love him, and disregard
his entreaties for cosmopolitan standards.

We are intolerant ; we are among those
persons from whom bigots successfully
seek recruits ; we have little respect, and
rightly enough, for the free play of our
reason ; we follow the capricious humor
of our affections. We like old trodden
paths, on whose rude bottoms we can still
discern the prints of our fathers' feet.

298

England's Economic and Political Crisis.

We are yeomen of the mind, as ready to
throw our intellectual caps in the air for
a Henry VIII. as for Hampden and liber-
ty. We have the dye of conservatism ; we
cannot hide it for more than a few sen-
tences, and then only upon forewarning.
We have just cause to fear that our. be-
havior is bad in the presence of the son-
nets of M. Jose" Maria de Heredia ; we
make faces when we read Verlaine. We
cannot take those gentlemen as poets.
They look to us like masqueraders, har-
lequins, unfairly brought from the dark-
ness of the stage into the light of the
sun. Nevertheless, at the opening of the
summer vacation, when idleness looks
eternal, under the boughs of a protect-
ing pine, the needles dry beneath, a ripe
apple odorous in our pocket, we read
with regularity an essay by M. Brune-
tiere, a poem by M. Sully Prudhomme,
and some French novel of the year. All
is in vain ; we must accept that condition
of the mind to which it has pleased God
to call us.

What a pleasure, after reading those
books, to go back to old Hakluyt, and
read aloud the lists of merchandise sent
abroad or fetched home : item, good
velvets, crimosins, purples and blacks,
with some light watchet colours ; item,
ten or twelve pieces of westerne karsies,
thicked well and close shut in the weav-
ing and died into scarlet ; item, one hun-
dred brushes for garments (none made
of swine's hair) ; item, forty pieces of
fine holland. What breaking of fences,
what smashing of locks, what air, what
comradeship, what a sense of poetry !
Surely, there is more poetry in the mak-
ing of the English Empire than was ever
printed in France.

Let us open wide the doors of our
minds and give hospitable reception to
foreign literature whence soever it may
come, but let us not forget that it only
comes as a friend to our intelligence, and
can never be own brother to our affec-
tions.

" A health to the native-born ! "

Henry D. Sedgwick, Jr.

ENGLAND'S ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL CRISIS.

HISTORIC England (inclusive of all
Britain) is easily first among the great
nations that have yet arisen. It is above
ancient Greece both in character and
in solidity of genius ; it has surpassed
Rome in dominion, and even in the im-
pression of its influence on the world.
But what of the England that now is ?
And what of its living people ? Nature
has made their island very beautiful to
the eye ; thirty generations or more of
the Englishmen who sleep in church
tombs and churchyards, or on remote
battlefields, or in the depths of many
seas, have filled it with impressive mon-
uments and memories ; Time, the great
artist, has touched the work of both
with shades and tones that move imagi-

nation profoundly. But if we resist
imagination, and scan them in a critical
mood, what stuff shall we find in the
English of our own day ? Do they up-
hold the greatness of their heritage ? Do
they keep their nation to the level of its
old renown ?

I am not satisfied to take for answer
the morning beat of British drums,
which rattle their reveille 'farther, year
by year, and more noisily, up and down
every meridian of the globe. For of na-
tions, as of men, it is true that vigor may
decline while progeny increases, and the
conquests and colonies of Great Britain
are no sure measure of the strength
that stays in the loins from which they
sprang. It must be within the island

England's Economic and Political Crisis.

299

that surrounds her throne, among the
people whom she summons to her par-
liaments and who bear the cost of her
armies and her fleets, that the power of
the empire of Queen Victoria has its
springs. Let us search those sources to
see whether they show signs of failing, or
are flowing with full potency yet !

Race and circumstance, the prime fac-
tors in human history, are to be weighed
both with and against each other, when
we try to understand a nation and its
career. Originally, no doubt, racial
qualities are mostly, if not wholly, the
product of circumstances ; the product,
that is, of conditions and of happenings
that those affected by them did not con-
trol. But the birth-history of tribes and
races is hidden from our knowledge in
the densest darkness of prehistoric time.
As they emerge into the dim light of
tradition and legend, the differing races,
the differing branches of each race, and
the differing tribes in each branch are
equipped in different modes and degrees
for a certain independence and defiance
of outward conditions. When we get our
first glimpses of them, they have passed,
almost invariably, out of old into new
environments, and are less plastic in the
new than they must have been in the
old. They have acquired some power
to react, more or less, on their surround-
ings, and to shape circumstances, in a
measure, as well as to be shaped by them.
That is the racial quality, the potential
stuff, in each people, of which we have
to make a just reckoning if we would
understand their history. The natural,
egotistic inclination of our minds is to
overvalue it in the reckoning, — ascrib-
ing too much to the human agency in
events, and too little to the circumstance
that helps or hinders it. Nevertheless,
it is possible, I think, to judge impar-
tially between the two.

Remembering how closely akin the
English are in blood to the Dutch and
the Danes, and generally to the Low
Germanic peoples of the Continent, one

cannot reasonably maintain that their
distinction in history is principally ex-
plained by a superiority inherent in
themselves. On the other hand, it
would be foolish to suppose that if Eng-
lish and Dutch had exchanged countries,
say twelve centuries ago, — the English
carrying with them such leaven of Cel-
tic blood as they took from the con-
quered Britons, and the Dutch preserv-
ing their racial purity in the island as
they have preserved it behind their
dikes, — the history of the two lands
would have followed lines unaltered by
the exchange. There cannot be a doubt
that racial qualities which Angles, Jutes,
and Saxons brought with them from
their older home were modified by Cel-
tic intermixtures as well as by changed
conditions, more especially in the west
and north of the island of Great Brit-
ain, and that there was a resultant na-
tional character and spirit distinctively
English, or British, and clearly to be
reckoned with as a potent factor in Eng-
lish history.

But when we have made all the con-
cession that is possible to inherent forces
in English mind or English temper, and
then glance at the independent circum-
stances that have favored and forward-
ed the working of them, through all the
centuries from King Alfred to Queen
Victoria, we have to recognize that the
latter are much the weightier of the two
in their influence on the great career of
the English nation. I think, indeed,
that no other notable people have owed
so much to favoring circumstances and
fortunate events, — to incidents that, in
the teleological view, are markings of the
providential hand. But even more of
Heaven's favors might easily have been
wasted on a weaker race.

The fundamental circumstance, which
seems in itself to half explain English
history, is, of course, the insularity of the
nation. No fact has been more consid-
ered, has received more comment ; let us
remind ourselves now of its significance.

300

England's Economic and Political Crisis.

We may safely believe that the insti-
tutions which have made England the
political teacher of the world could not
have been originally worked out, by the
same people or by any other people, under
conditions that have prevailed hitherto
in any continental European state. The
shelter of the island from foreign inter-
ference and surrounding perturbations
was necessary to the evolution of the
representative system of government,
with supremacy in Parliament, respon-
sibility in administration, security of just
independence in courts ; and not less
necessary to a persisting growth of the
industries, the trade, and the resulting
wealth, upon which the empire of Great
Britain depends. In their

" fortress, built by Nature for herself,
Against infection and the hand of war ;
. . . set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,"

the English have rejoiced in many and
great advantages over every neighbor,
and have used them with a capability
that has wasted none. Protection from
invasion is not more than half the blessed
service their insulating sea has done
them. It has put a happy curb on greedy
ambitions in their kings and ministers ;
kept them for nearly five hundred years
from aggressive continental wars ; mod-
erated their share in the frictions, jeal-
ousies, neighborhood rivalries, dynastic
entanglements, of European politics. By
effect of this, it has turned the ener-
gies of their ambition more profitably
to remoter fields of commerce and colo-
nization. At the same time, by shutting
out many distractions, it has held their
more careful attention to domestic af-
fairs. It has fostered self-reliance in
the national spirit, and unity of belief
among Englishmen in one another. If
it has fostered, too, some narrow self-
sufficiency and unteachable contentment
with English things and English ways,
even those may have had value to the

nation in times past, though losing their
value now. By standing a little at one
side of the movements of thought and
feeling in continental Europe, the Eng-
lish people have experienced a more in-
dependent development of character and
mind, tending sometimes toward nar-
rowness, but oftener to the broadening
of lines. In literature, there has been
a fruitage not equaled in any other
tongue ; in morals, there is an outcome
of doctrine that has pointed, and of sen-
timent that has led, almost every practi-
cal reform in the modern world.

By more, too, than the sheltering and
inwrapping of the sea, the island of the
English has been a physically favored
land. If nature had denied to it her
remarkable gift of iron and coal, how
different would have been the industrial
career of its people, how different their
economic state, how different their power
and position in the world ! Its climate,
moreover, has singularly fitted the needs
of a strong, deep-natured, and well-bal-
anced race. The perfection of temper-
ateness is in its summer and winter airs,
gently and most equably warmed by the
unfailing ocean stream from the south,
and scarcely flushed by the mild radiance
of a sun that stays low in the sky. The
very steaminess of humidity that hangs
about the land is the tenderest emollient
ever mixed for nerves and brains, and
counts among the reasons for strength
and steadiness and a certain measure of
sometimes helpful stolidity in English
character.

If physical and geographical condi-
tions have thus been potent factors in
the extraordinary career of the British
nation, events arriving accidentally, so
to speak, in their history have been not
less so. The first of such events in time,
and possibly the most important, was
the Norman Conquest. At the coming of
the Conqueror, England was being feu-
dalized according to the anarchical pat-
tern set in Germany and France. The
authority of the crown was waning, the

England's Economic and Political Crisis.

301

independence of the great nobles in-
creasing, and a process of decentraliza-
tion going on that threatened to de-
stroy the integrity of the kingdom, as
the integrity of the old Germanic king-
dom had already been destroyed. By
the Conquest that process was summa-
rily and lastingly checked. The delib-
erately reconstructed feudalism which
the Conqueror then introduced was
something very different from the natu-
ral growth of the feudal scheme. It
was feudalism perfected in its forms as
a land system, and throttled in spirit as
a political organization of the realm.
All its obligations were centred in the
king. The royal courts were broad-
ened in jurisdiction, and the royal func-
tionaries armed with effective powers.
The reins of government were master-
fully gathered into the sovereign hand.
As a consequence of this revolutionary
change, the movements of political evo-
lution in England were happily turned
to a course exactly contrary to the direc-
tion in which they worked unhappily in
France. In the latter country, king and
commons were pushed together into com-
binations against the nobles. The king
chartered communes in the towns, and
used them as allies and supports until
the royal power had won supremacy.
Then all fell together in subjection to
an absolutism with which neither barons
nor burghers could cope alone. In Eng-
land, on the contrary, the primary mas-
terfulness of royalty, after the Norman
Conquest, produced an early confedera-
tion of lords and commons against the
crown, which proved to be a more for-
tunate arrangement of the contending
forces. Absolutism was checked by a
resistance that brought all the consid-
erable interests and energies of Eng-
lish society into play and kept them in
well-balanced action. The extorting of
Magna Carta was the beginning of what
may rightly enough be called a process
of social nationalization in English pol-
itics, which has persisted to this day, and

as the consequence of which the govern-
ment of England became representative
and responsible.

Where the stuff of English character
really shows itself is in the grip with which
the people have held political rights
once acquired. Circumstances, brought
about in the main by the Norman Con-
quest, gave the burghers of certain pros-
perous towns and the lesser landholders
of the shires a voice with barons and
prelates in asserting common liberties
and rights and in parleying on great
public affairs with the king. It was
never possible afterward to silence that
voice. Helpful circumstances continued
to arise, but it was the temper of the
people which made the most of them.
The kings involved themselves in for-
eign wars, and their sovereign preten-
sions were lowered by their needs. Their
subjects who had purses held fast to the
strings, and by keeping the power to
open their purses for the public treasury
on agreement alone, and not on com-
mand, they kept a share and part in the
government. From occasional partici-
pation, this became, after a time, syste-
matic and regular. Out of the wreck
of the old English kingdom that fell at
Senlac, the English commons had pre-
served, in local matters, not a few of their
primitive Germanic institutions. Among
them was the shire moot, or county court,
which grew partly into the form of a
representative body, to which township
delegates were sent. The king having
learned that his subjects represented in
the shire court had something to say on
questions of taxation which he must lis-
ten to, it seems natural that the idea
of summoning delegates from the shire
courts to meet with barons and clergy,
when such questions were discussed,
should arise. Thus " knights of the
shire " began to appear, occasionally at
first, then always, in national councils or
parliaments, and a representative legis-
lature, that greatest political invention
of the modern world, came into being.

302

England's Economic and Political Crisis.

By the civil Wars of the Roses, the no-
bles of England were so seriously weak-
ened, and the royal power was so great-
ly enlarged in the end, that absolutism
would probably have won its will, even
then, if the footing of the commons, as
the most substantial estate of the realm,
had not been firmly secured. With all
their arrogance, the willful Tudors could
never quite shake off dependence, from
time to time, on a representative parlia-
ment of the nation, to grant supplies to
their treasury and assent to their acts.

Then came a second series of those im-
portant casual happenings by which the
evolution of parliamentary government
in England has been so singularly pro-
moted. The change of dynasty — the
arrival on the throne of a ridiculous sort
of king out of Scotland, with an offen-
sive crowd of Scottish favorites at his
back — put a strain on the sentiment of
loyalty that weakened it greatly. It
might have recovered from the half con-
tempt inspired by the first of the Stu-
arts, if the second had not put even
harder trials on it by his perfidy and in-
solence. The completeness with which
it was broken down, within one gener-
ation after Queen Elizabeth, could not
have occurred if Elizabeth's crown had
passed to a native English line of suc~
cessors. In the revolt that ensued there
were success and failure. Monarchy was
overturned, but only to demonstrate that
Englishmen were unprepared to dispense
with it. If the fatuous Stuarts, then
brought back to a restored throne, had
possessed any kind of kingly excellence,
the reaction in their favor might almost
have planted absolutism anew ; but their
folly and their falsity persisted in mak-
ing any revival of the old-time reverence
for royalty impossible. By nothing less
than the threatening of the Protestant-
ism of England could they have pro-
voked the nation so soon to a second
revolt. In that remarkable rising of
1688-89 religious and political feelings
were wonderfully joined, and acted to a

revolutionary conclusion the most unani'
mous and the most perfect that appears
in the annals of any nation.

But the favor of circumstances in the
evolution of responsible government for
England was not yet exhausted. The
liberties of subjects, the franchises of
citizens, the prerogatives of Parliament,
had been rigorously guaranteed ; the
hereditary transmission of the crown had
practically been subjected to parliament-
ary regulation and consent ; and yet it
might be possible for an able and artful
prince to trouble the kingdom. Events
were soon to erase even that possibility.
Another change of dynasty brought a
family of German dukes to the throne.
They were utterly foreign and strange ;
they were heavy and dull in intellect ;
they were helplessly ignorant of every-
thing English, including the English
tongue. Under such circumstances, with
Parliament possessing an ascendency al-
ready won, it was inevitable that a min-
istry representing the Parliament should
actually and fully take the reins of execu-
tive government into its hands ; that the
nominal sovereign should slip insensibly
to a dependent and fictitious place, re-
taining little more than the regalia of
his office, and employed for little more
than ceremony and show on the stage of
British politics. That came about first
as a practical situation, and then it was
legitimated as a constitutional fact. The
evolution of responsible government in
England was complete.

But popular government was still to
come. So far it had only been prepared
for, conditions arranged for it, — nothing
more. In no just sense of the term was
there anything democratic in the English
political system until the present cen-
tury had run a third of its course. It
had exhibited the most admirable exam-
ple of an aristocratic constitution topped
with monarchy that ever took shape in
the world. Its so-called commons were
but an untitled or a lower-titled division
of a political constituency that was thor-

England's Economic and Political Crisis.

303

oughly aristocratic throughout. Its re-
presentative Parliament, of the evolution
of which I have been speaking, was elect-
ed in the later years of George III. by
not more than 450,000 voters, out of a
population in Great Britain and Ireland
of about 22,000,000. Therefore it re-
presented about one in fifty of the British
nation, or one in ten of the grown men
of the nation. Those 450,000 formed
a political aristocracy a little more ex-
tensive than the social aristocracy of
lords and gentry, but still excluding the
vast majority of the people. Neverthe-
less, it was a broader aristocracy than
ever had growth before in any country
that gave political power to a class. Its
bases were sunk to a small depth, at
least, into the popular mass. It was in
touch with the real commonalty of the
nation at many points. Except in one
direction it was not class-bound in its
views, but was moved, for the most part,
by a spirit really national and broad.
The civil rights it had won were fairly
shared with all its fellows. The dis-
franchised multitude were made as safe
as its own members, in property and
person, under the protection of the laws
that its Parliament enacted, and of the
courts that its disposition inspired. This
feeling for civic equality, little corrupted
by social and political inequalities, has
been one of the marked distinctions of
the English people. It is part of a moral
sense in the race, which accounts for
much in its history that is often credited
to superior political genius. It explains,
too, the long quietness with which polit-
ical inequalities were submitted to. The
one direction in which the class in power
dealt unfairly with the politically pow-
erless was the direction pointed by its
landholding interests ; and not until a
great industry in manufactures grew up,
with interests of its own, did political
discontent become serious. Then a new
movement of evolution set in, which grad-
ually has been substituting democracy
for aristocracy in the political system.

The old aristocratic rule was admi-
rable in many ways, while it lasted. It
gave an efficiency and a tone to govern-
ment that democracy cannot equal with-
out long training. The blue blood and
the wealth that controlled it were very
far from giving cultivation or intelligence
or high-mindedness to all their posses-
sors ; but the average of culture and of
high-minded intelligence in a small con-
stituency selected by such advantages of
fortune was sure to be higher than a
like average in the general mass. It
yielded more readily the lead in public
affairs to men of superior talent and ex-
perience, and it supported them by an
opinion better instructed, in the main.
It maintained a higher standard of char-
acter and trained capacity in the public
service. The national policy was thus
directed and national business conduct-
ed with more wisdom, more steadiness,
and more integrity, on the whole, than
would probably have been the case un-
der a government broadly popularized.

The intelligence in the old aristocratic
constituency of Parliament produced a
party in its ranks that grew strong
enough to accomplish, in 1832, the first
great extension of suffrage, by which the
movement toward democracy in England
was begun. A second step in the same
direction was taken in 1867, and a third
in 1885. One in seven of the total pop-
ulation of the kingdom, it is now comput-
ed, is in possession of the electoral fran-
chise. Universal manhood suffrage —
already in demand — would reach about
one in five. Therefore, England is at
present very nearly as democratic as the
United States, and sure to become quite
as democratic in the near future.

Now, this stupendous political change
from an aristocratic to a democratic con-
stitution, accomplished at three great
leaps within sixty-five years, brings new
conditions, from which England has yet
to realize the most hazardous effects. So
'far, the old forms, feelings, opinions, of
the aristocratic regime have lingered in

304

England's Economic and Political Crisis.

existence and influence, with the curious
vitality that English conservatism gives
to everything old. Habits of deference,
rooted by ages of transmission in the
minds of tenants, tradesmen, and servi-
tors of every order, have thus far been
keeping a great mass of the newer voters
under an influence from the " gentry "
that is not known in America. Po-
litical parties have been generally con-
trolled and manipulated by men of the
old ruling class. Not much discredit
has fallen as yet upon the name and
character of the " politician." His work
has been usually done with more deco-
rum and dignity than in the United
States, with somewhat less soiling of
hands, and it offers a career more in-
viting to gentlemen in the proper sense
of the word. The political mass is still
quite inert. It has hardly acquired
enough mobility for the free working in
it of those perilous fermentations of de-
mocracy that are not to be escaped from,
and that may bring, we dare hope, some
great clarifying in the end. But the
processes of mobilization are steadily
going on, and the inevitable fermenta-
tions are not far away. For England
the anxious moment of them is still to
come. The slow democratic mass is al-
ready being stirred by influences from
within itself ; it will presently have
learned independent motions of its own,
and parties will be officered with fewer
Oxford and Cambridge degrees. The
" caucus," even now under experiment,
will have assumed some dominating
form; one by one all the parts of the
American political " machine " will have
been imported and set up, and the arts
that operate it will have been acquired.
For these things are not distinctive-
ly American ; they belong rather to a
stage in the development of the motive
forces and the working mechanism of
democratic government that we are pass-
ing through, and that Great Britain is
approaching.

But when England arrives at that

stagej the situation is likely to be more
serious for her than it is for us, because
she is less prepared for it, and less will-
ing to prepare. The firmest believer in
democracy does not shut his eyes to its
weaknesses, its vices, its perils. He
only believes that its weaknesses may
be strengthened, its vices diminished,
its perils lessened, by popular education,
and by time slowly ripening the fruits
of it. Here in America he finds a jus-
tification for his faith, in the cheerful
energy and substantial unanimity with
which popular education is supported
and urged. In England he is discour-
aged by a lack of earnestness and a
want of agreement in that saving work.
The spirit of the undertaking has been
half paralyzed from the beginning by
the attitude of the English Church.
Down to 1870 the Church had success-
fully disputed the right of the national
government to assume any duty or re-
sponsibility connected with the mainte-
nance or management of elementary
schools. In that year, despite its oppo-
sition, there was passed through Par-
liament an act that divided both the
duty and the responsibility between the
Church and the State ; or rather, it as-
serted, on the part of the State, a right
to pick up and assume such remainder
of duty in the matter of providing ele-
mentary schools as the Church might
neglect. Wherever a school, sufficient
for the needs of the locality and satis-
factory to inspectors appointed by the
education committee of the Privy Coun-
cil, was voluntarily maintained, by
Church organizations or otherwise, with
its pupils free to attend or not to attend
religious exercises or instruction, the gov-
ernment would contribute annually to
its support a certain sum per pupil.
Where any borough, town, parish, or
rural district lacked such sufficient and
satisfactory school or schools, the gov-
ernment would order the election of a
local school board, and the collection of
a school rate for the partial maintenance

England's Economic and Political Crisis.

305

of the needed school, and would likewise
grant aid to it from the national fund.
This produced two very distinct and
quite conflicting school systems, namely,
the system of the " voluntary schools," so
called, and that of the " board schools,"
between the partisans of which there has
been an antagonism that shows no sign
of disappearing, and that does most ob-
viously weaken the zeal and impair the
efficiency with which common teaching
for the multitude is carried on.

An American visitor to England, who
spends some little time in the country,
can hardly fail to become conscious of
three serious facts : (1) that there is a
strong class feeling against much educa-
tion for those who are looked on as un-
derlings and servants, — a feeling more
prevalent and more pronounced than the
shamefaced sentiment of like meanness
that is whispered in some snobbish Amer-
ican circles ; (2) that the " school rate "
seems to be the most begrudged of Eng-
lish taxes, the most sharply criticised,
the most grumbled at, — and this to a
degree for which there appears nothing
comparable in America ; (3) that the
opposition to secular schools, fostered by
the Church and ostensibly actuated by
a desire for religious instruction in the
schools, is largely supported in reality
by the two sentiments indicated above.
The party at the back of the voluntary
schools appears, in fact, to include, along
with many undoubted friends of popular
education, all varieties of unfriendliness
and all degrees of the friendliness that
lacks liberality. Naturally, that party
controls the present conservative govern-
ment, and the grant to its schools from
public funds has recently been enlarged.
Yet even before this had been done, the
schools in question were so li ttle " volun-
tary " that but seventeen and a half per
cent, or thereabouts, of the annual cost of
maintaining them was supplied by vol-
untary contributions, and some three per
cent from endowments. About five per
cent of their income was still collected

VOL. LXXXI. — xo. 485. 20

in 1896 in school fees from the children,
and the remainder came from the na-
tional school fund. While the local rate-
payers of England and Wales added 21s.
2d. per pupil, on the average, to the
government grants for expenditure on
the board schools, the supporters of the
voluntary schools, receiving equal grants,
added only 6s. 9£eZ. per pupil to their
expenditure. The economy of the vol-
untary schools is as attractive to a major-
ity of ratepayers as the management of
them is attractive to clergy and Church-
men. At present they count half a mil-
lion more pupils than appear in average
attendance at the board schools.

If we compare the expenditure on
elementary education in England with
that in the state of New York (which,
among American states, is not excep-
tionally advanced in this matter), there
appears to be scanty excuse for the
grudging temper in which our English
cousins scan their school bills. In round
numbers, the population of New York
state is 6,500,000, and that of England
and Wales 30,000,000, or four and a
half times greater. But the total in-
come of all elementary schools in Eng-
land and Wales — both voluntary schools
and board schools — from all sources in
1896 was reported by the Committee of
Council on Education to be £10,144,054,
or about $50,000,000. The reported
amount of moneys raised the same year
in the state of New York by local and
general taxation and from the income
of the permanent school funds for pub-
lic schools (corresponding to the English
board schools) alone was $23,286,644.
Beyond this was the expenditure of
parochial and private schools, in which
some 200,000 pupils received instruc-
tion. Of the latter there are no statis-
tics, but an estimate of $3,000,000 to be
added to the sum given above is surely
very moderate. Relatively to population,
therefore, New York gives more than
double the sum that England and Wales
are giving to common schools, and gives

306

England's Economic and Political Crisis.

it, I venture to say, with much greater
willingness.

Some, at least, of the colonial provinces
of the British Empire make nearly the
same showing in comparison with the
home country. For example, the Cana-
dian province of Ontario, with about
2,250,000 inhabitants, expended in 1896
$3,846,060 on elementaiy public schools,
and $749,970 on secondary or high
schools, while 349 Roman Catholic and
Protestant separate schools, having an
average attendance of 25,000 pupils,
were otherwise maintained. In propor-
tion, Ontario is applying money to pop-
ular education with twice the liberality
of England.

If constitutional defenses against hot-
headed action by majorities drummed
hastily together in excited times had been
provided in England, as they have been
provided in the United States, the ap-
parent lukewarmness of the country in
its undertakings for popular education
would still be sufficiently dangerous ;
but England has no such defenses. Her
Parliament is checked neither by a writ-
ten constitution, requiring time, discus-
sion, deliberation, for its amendment,
nor by a court empowered to interpret
the constitution, nor by an upper house
that can stand against the lower, nor by
an executive right of veto that the sov-
ereign dare exercise. It is the omnipo-
tent maker and construer of constitu-
tional law. It can turn and overturn
at will, if it represents but momentarily
the will of a majority in the nation.
At a single sitting it may do things that
would require, in the United States, the
separate and concurrent action of the
federal Congress and the legislatures of
thirty-five states, and that would con-
sume not less than a year of time. Far
graver, then, will the situation of Eng-
land be, when democracy there becomes
as active and as independently organized
as in the United States, and far more
serious will be all the political effects of
thoughtless ignorance among the people.

But more than changed political con-
ditions are to be studied, in considering
the present state and situation of Eng-
land as compared with her past. So
much of her weight in the world is the
weight of her vast wealth that the
economic circumstances on which that
wealth depends are scarcely second in
the reckoning of what has been and
what will be. Says Dr. Cunningham,
the historian of English Industry and
Commerce : " England's place as a leader
in the history of the world is chiefly due
to her supremacy in industry and com-
merce. The arts which the citizens of
Greece and Rome despised have become
the foundations of her pride, and the
influence which she exercises on the
world at large is most clearly seen in
the efforts which other nations make to
follow the steps by which she has at-
tained this supremacy." The same wri-
ter adds : " It is not a little curious to
remember that this supremacy is of very
recent growth ; in the great period of
English literary effort it was undreamt
of; England seemed to be far behind.
There was no question of taking a first
place in the world, but there was much
reason to fear that she could not main-
tain an independent position in Europe."
And again: "When Elizabeth ascended
the throne, England appears to have
been behind other nations of western
Europe in the very industrial arts and
commercial enterprise on which her pre-
sent reputation is chiefly based." Es-
pecially were the English behind their
kinsmen of Holland until near the mid-
dle of the seventeenth century. It was
the desperate fight with Spain, in Eliza-
beth's time, that rallied them to the sea,
as a really maritime people, and made
them energetic competitors of the Dutch ;
and it was not until Cromwell's day that
the islanders and the netherlanders had
come to be rivals in commerce or col-
onization or naval war, on fairly equal
terms. But then, when their footing in
the oceanic lists had been gained, they

England's Economic and Political Crisis.

307

won all the prizes easily ; and it is not
strange that they did so, for they had
vast advantages on their side. Against
the ores, the coal, and the unequaled
sheep-pasturage of England, there was
the native poverty of the Holland fens.
Against increasing fruits of unmolested
peace for the shepherds, the weavers,
the miners, and the smiths of the seagirt
kingdom, there were the distractions and
destruction of great wars that surged
continually about the Netherlands, broke
repeatedly through the defenses of the
Dutch, and ended in their exhaustion
before the eighteenth century was done.
How could the result be any other than
it was ?

The English should burn offerings to
the god Circumstance for their original
conquest of the dominion of the sea.
For the keeping of it they may reason-
ably give proud credit to their own
masterful powers. And it was not by
valor only nor by energy alone that they
spread their empire so wide and drove
their trade so far. They had been po-
litically trained for colonization, and for
domination too, in their own parliament-
ary school. In the economic belief of
the age that opened their career, posses-
sion and monopoly of sources and mar-
kets, in dependencies and colonies, were
necessary to profitable commerce on the
greater scale. The English were sure
winners of a race for which that doc-
trine laid the lines. No other people
were half so well prepared for distant
rule or for distant colonial settlement.
Their colonies thrived because they were
true plantings, given root in their own
soil, with enough of the life of self-gov-
ernment and self-reliance for a healthful
growth. Their dependencies were ruled
with sense and vigor, because administra-
tive powers were localized in the midst
of them to the greatest possible extent,
and not centred jealously at the far-off
London court. Whether we attribute
this wise policy to political genius in the
English people, or to political habits of

mind and action acquired in their do-
mestic experience, matters little. The
essential fact is that it gave them success
in the management of colonies and dis-
tant conquests, where Frenchmen and
Spaniards failed alike, and left them no
rival to be seriously feared after the
Dutch fell back.

But after all, as I said in beginning,
it is in their own country that the prima-
ry sources of English wealth and power,
past, present, or future, must be found.
The great commerce of the British Em-
pire is underlaid and supported by the
great industries of the British kingdom.
There we touch the corner-stones of Eng-
lish power, and the stability of them is a
proper subject of close inquiry. At the
beginning, in their more important indus-
tries, as in their bolder seamanship and
commerce, the English were learners
and borrowers from their continental
neighbors. At different periods, from
the fourteenth century to the seventeenth,
Dutch, Flemish, and Huguenot artisans,
successively, brought over to them the
mysteries of the finer manufacture of
wool, cotton, and silk. But those arts,
when borrowed, were at a primitive
stage, and it was English ingenuity and
enterprise that raised them to the aston-
ishing importance that they began to
assume little more than a century ago.
During the period in which the economic
foundation of their fortunes, nationally,
was laid, the English showed themselves
to be, first an eminently teachable people,
and then an eminently inventive people,
for the improvement of their teachings.
Between the middle and the close of the
eighteenth centuiy they produced a se-
ries of great mechanical inventions, the
most amazing in economic effects that
had ever been given to the world. The
carding, spinning, and weaving machin-
ery invented by Paul, Hargreaves, Ark-
wright, Crompton, Kay, and Cartwright,
the steam-engine of Watts, the hot blast
of Neilson in iron-smelting, the puddling
and rolling processes of Cort, gave Eng-

308

England's Economic and political Crisis.

land the sudden advantage of such a
combination of revolutionary improve-
ments in leading industrial arts as had
never occurred before ; and her people
made the most of their priority in the
use of them. They had already bor-
rowed the factory system from Italy, in
the first half of the century, and they
now applied it, with almost magical re-
sults, to the organization of their ma-
chine-armed labor. Before other na-
tions learned to handle the new industri-
al forces they had taken possession of
the markets of the world.

A little later, they clinched the pos-
session by a measure of extraordinaiy
sagacity, to which they were singularly
led. To other nations, then and since,
the question, for industry and commerce,
between freedom and legislative med-
dling, has been mischievously confused
and disguised. To the fortunate Eng-
lish it came nakedly and pointedly, with
all sophistries and false pretenses
stripped away, as a question, narrowed
and well defined, between gain for a
class and plenty for the mass. In their
experience, a " protective " industrial
policy showed one feature more conspic-
uously than any other, and that was
protection of high prices for food, to
benefit landowners and farmers at the
expense of all others in the community.
This brought straight home to their com-
prehension the fundamental issue, be-
tween few who produce, in any industry,
and many who consume, and enlightened
them to the acceptance, once for all, of
the broad general principle of freedom
for industrial interchange. Having
swept " protective " corn-laws from their
statute-books, they proceeded with little
delay to erase everything of the kind
from their economic policy. It was like
the removal of plate armor from a war-
rior, to give him the whole use of his
limbs, the whole strength of his muscles,
the whole skill of his training. It end-
ed for them the handicapping of one in-
dustry by " protections " contrived for

another : woolen manufactures by " pro-
tected " wool-growing, machine-making
by " protected " iron-making, tanning
and shoemaking by " protected " cattle-
raising. It ended fatuous bounty-paying
for the creation of new employments by
a process more costly than the pension-
ing of the unemployed. It ended the
imposition of taxes in disguise, to be col-
lected from every buyer of the smallest
thing, not by government for its revenue,
but by the maker of the thing for his
gain. It released the working millions
of England from every needless burden.
It released English capital and enter-
prise from every trammel, and guaran-
teed them against all ignorant political
meddling with their practical affairs.
As they have stood thus emancipated,
stripped of harness and foolish panoplies,
it has been as impossible for any " pro-
tected " people to break the industrial
and commercial supremacy of the Eng-
lish as for a mailed knight of the Mid-
dle Ages to do battle successfully with
a buckskin-shirted scout of the recent
West.

But the security in which they have
held their economic ascendency for
more than a hundred years has bred, it
appears, the kind of contemptuous care-
lessness that so often has fatal endings.
They have despised their competitors
too long to be alert in watching them.
They have lost the teachableness that
they showed at the beginning of their
career. They scorn to learn better ways
than their own, when better ways are
found by other people. That un teach-
ableness, moreover, would seem to have
been growing on them while their own
inventiveness declined. If we take the
period since Hargreaves patented his
spinning jenny, in 1770, as being the
great age of mechanical and scientific in-
vention, the English have a remarkable
part in the achievements of the first half
of it, but their share in the triumphs of
the later time is small. Excepting the
Bessemer process of steel-making, they

England's Economic and Political Crisis.

309

have given no revolutionary invention to
the world since George Stephenson fin-
ished the Stockton and Darlington Rail-
way, in 1825. Nor have they been more
active in the minor than in the major
fields of invention. American ingenu-
ity, German research, French dexterity,
have all been contributing to the im-
provement of methods, processes, and in-
struments, in the industrial arts, much
more than has come from the English,
in the last half - century. If they were
quick learners, this need not have been a
serious default ; but they are not. Their
slowness, apparently, is not so much in-
tellectual as willful. Nobody can accuse
the English people of a lack of brain-
power ; but by nature they are stub-
born, and by habit they have grown too
satisfied with themselves in the long en-
joyment of their supreme success. Thus,
nature and habit have combined to make
them the most unteachable among the
greater peoples in the civilized world.
They seem to have arrived at a state
of mind that almost forbids the accept-
ance, especially from a foreign source,
of any new thing, whether it be a new
convenience or a new tool, a new system
in business or a new dish for the table.
The signs of this disposition that are said
to be discoverable in the great workshops
are matters of expert knowledge, which
I am not prepared to discuss ; but the
ordinary traveler sees enough of it, in
clumsy methods and perversely awkward
arrangements that have no good right of
survival in this dexterous and contriving
age.

One or two generations ago, the Eng-
lish might thus chill their inventive fac-
ulties and seal their minds against in-
struction without serious commercial
consequences. But that is no longer
possible. The general activities of the
world have attained too quick a pace.
No advantage of position or possession
can stand against deftness, speed, eco-
nomy of labor and time. The whole
world, Orient and Occident, is getting to

its feet now in the industrial race, and
the prizes are for the lithe and swift.
That the English have begun to feel
with growing alarm that they are los-
ing ground in the race is plainly con-
fessed ; and there are those in their own
midst who plainly tell them why they
fall behind. Last September, for ex-
ample, one of the London daily news-
papers, commenting upon a report on
colonial trade, gave significant illustra-
tions like the following : " Some time
ago English manufacturers monopolized
the trade in miners' picks. But they
sent in a clumsy article, far too heavy
for the miners to wield. The Ameri-
cans sent in a short, neat, easily handled
pick, which at once drove the British
tool out of the market. We lost the
trade of Victoria in tacks by failing to
pack them in cardboard boxes instead
of paper packages. We were cut out in
the market for cartridges by declining
to pack them in packages of twenty-five
instead of one hundred. ' Both these
defects,' we are told, ' have now been
remedied, but the trade has to be re-
gained.' In very many cases the shape
of British articles is unsuitable to Vic-
toria. The hammer, for instance, is not,
in the opinion of Victorian carpenters,
nearly so well shaped as the American
hammer, but the British pattern seems
unalterable." The same journal said fur-
ther : " South Australia takes the view
that ' British merchants are too often
content to rest upon past laurels, and
to be satisfied with continuing in their
manufactures and business old styles and
methods, — in short, are too conserva-
tive.' " " Conservatism " is quite too re-
spectable a word for all that is involved
in this matter. If our British cousins
had defined it to themselves with a little
more accuracy, they might have cherished
their " conservatism " with less pride,
and prepared themselves better for the
changed conditions of a very radical age.
It is probable, however, that neither
failing inventiveness nor growing un-

310

England's Economic and Political Crisis.

teachableness will account for all that
seems wanting in the management of
English business affairs at the present
time. The contempt with which trade
and " business " generally (except, per-
haps, banking and brewing) are looked
upon by the land -owning caste, whose
social superiority is conceded, and whose
opinion is penetrating and powerful, must
have been having a constant tendency
to deflect practical talent from the home
arenas of business, and to send it abroad,
into colonies and dependencies, and to
other countries where ability of every
useful species is surer of respect. Be-
sides that influence of repulsion there
are the strong attractions that pull in
the same way, outwardly, from the nar-
row and crowded island to more open and
adventurous fields. In English affairs,
alone, spread over the world as they are,
there arises an outside demand for ex-
ecutive and administrative capacity, to
govern, to manage, to command, to di-
rect, which taxes the home supply very
heavily. All considered, the ceaseless
drain of practical talent from England
is enormous, and leaves us no reason for
surprise if we find signs of some deficien-
cy of it there, in those services that are
scorned by a pretentious caste.

Three causes, then, I conclude, have
been operating together to diminish, re-
latively at least, and in their own coun-
try, the economic capability that original-
ly secured for the English people their
supremacy in production and trade,
namely : (1) the dulling of inventive
faculties by excessive confidence and
contentment ; (2) the crusting of the
commercial mind by that same influence
with a disposition that resists teaching ;
(3) the drafting of practical talent away
from the mother country into every
quarter of the globe, by increasing at-
tractions and demands. None of these
causes can be easily overcome ; and if,
as appears certain, they have already
begun, in a serious way, the yielding of
ground to foreign competition in British

fields of trade, one cannot see where or
how the backward movement will be
stopped. For several countries, nota-
bly Germany and the United States,
have been assiduously in training for the
competition, and are entering it well pre-
pared.

As the whole fabric of British power
is sustained by the national wealth, it
looks more insecure than it has looked
before since the American colonies were
lost. Yet the architects of the empire
continue to build upon it more ambitious-
ly than ever. They suffer no year to
pass without stretching the bounds of
the sovereignty of their queen and heap-
ing new responsibilities upon it. Lord
Rosebery, speaking in 1896, reckoned
the additions of territory that had been
made to the British Empire within
twelve previous years at 2,600,000
square miles, or twenty-two times the
area of the British Isles. That averages
the acquisition every year of a province
greater than France. Last October, Mr.
Broderick, Under Secretary of State for
War, quoted the ex-premier's estimate
with assent, which makes it doubly au-
thoritative. And the taking in of bar-
baric regions, which British armies must
guard, British fleets keep in touch with,
British administrators control, British
statesmen be responsible for, goes on con-
tinually.

To what end ? If it be true that
England is losing ground in her older
markets, can she save herself commer-
cially by political possession of new ones ?
The eighteenth century might have said
yes, but no doctrine in our day will jus-
tify that line of a national policy. To
the impartial looker-on, there seems to be
a strain in it that must have its inevita-
ble breaking-point, — not indefinitely far
away. If all the jealous and envious
rivalries provoked had stayed at the re-
lative weakness which they showed even
thirty years ago, — if Germany, Russia,
France, stood no stronger than they
were when the third Napoleon fell, —

The Municipal Service of Boston.

311

Great Britain might still regard them
with small anxiety ; but the substance
of power, which is organized resource,
has been growing on the Continent, dur-
ing these thirty years, much faster than
it has been growing in England. There
are powers in Europe now that only
need combination to put England in fear-
ful peril. And there is no friendliness
to restrain them. They are all hungry
for the territorial plunder of Africa and
the Asiatic East, and resentful of the
huge share that the British have grasped.
Only one strong nation in the world can
be named that would not go eagerly into
a fight with Great Britain for the di-
viding of her possessions, if opportuni-
ty favored. That one is the United
States, which does not covet territory,
and has no ambitions to be satisfied
by aggressive war. Were it not for a
single black memory, there might be
between the kinsfolk of England and
America a closeness of friendship that
all Europe would not dare to challenge.
Americans find it hard to forget how the
ruling class of England rejoiced when
the calamity of appalling civil war over-
took their republic and it seemed likely

to fall. They forget more easily that
the plain people of England bore little
part in that rejoicing, and they do not
sufficiently understand how fast the aris-
tocratic England that so offended them
seven - and - thirty years ago is disap-
pearing, and how surely the democratic
England that has immense claims on
their fraternal good will is taking its
place. Perhaps they will remember and
perceive these things in time to be
drawn near their mighty British mother
in some hour of sore need. That no
such hour may come is the fervent wish
of every American whose blood warms
with the pride of kinship when he reads
the great story of the English race.
Yet how can we hope that it will not
come, unless the public mind of England
is roused to a clearer apprehension of
the changed conditions that have risen
in the world since the nineteenth cen-
tury was young, — unless it shall wake to
see that the imperial " forward policy "
of advancing flags and drums has had
its full day, and that the time has come
for a domestic " forward policy," in Eng-
lish workshops and common schools, to
be vigorously taken up ?

J. N. Lamed.

THE MUNICIPAL SERVICE OF BOSTON.

IT is everywhere asserted that in the
government of large cities the Ameri-
can democracy finds its severest test, and
manifests most plainly its shortcomings.
Thousands of pages have been written
about these shortcomings by the keenest
students and critics, and there has been
denunciation of municipal corruption,
discussion of particular municipal de-
partments or functions, suggestion for
municipal reform, to the verge of weari-
ness. One aspect of the matter, however,
has generally been overlooked. There
has been little attempt to set forth com-

prehensively what service is rendered by
a great city to its citizens, and what is
the quality of the service. Commonly
we take municipal government for grant-
ed ; we are irritated by its failures, per-
haps we are proud of one of its successes,
but seldom do we try to estimate the
worth of our municipal service as a
whole, in comparison either with some
abstract standard of our own or with the
municipal government of some other
country or time. What we get from the
city, and what we pay for it, is the prin-
cipal subject of this article.

312

The Municipal Service of Boston.

To have much value, a description of
municipal service must be verified by
experience. The statute-book, which tells
what a city may do or ought to do, can-
not be trusted, nor can the rose-colored
official reports of the city's magistrates.
On the other hand, it is not always safe
to infer that the citizens are ill served
because their servant's character is not
all that it should be. As the workings
of municipal government differ from
city to city, I propose to take the city of
Boston, the fourth in size in the United
States, and consider briefly, and without
regard to the public or private charac-
ter of its officials, what it does for its
citizens. The experience of one city, I
believe, will throw more light upon the
government of American cities in gen-
eral than will a discussion of municipal
service in the abstract. Within the com-
pass of a magazine article it is not possi-
ble to enter into considerable detail : the
work of the several departments must be
estimated summarily ; statements must
be made unsupported, which it would
take pages to prove ; in disputed mat-
ters the better opinion must sometimes
be expressed too absolutely ; to some
people not a few judgments will seem
colorless, to others they may appear ex-
travagant. I believe, however, that the
following review of Boston's municipal
service will be recognized as accurate in
substance. How far Boston's service is
typical of that of American cities I can-
not say ; there are differences of detail,
with strong resemblances of type. The
complaints of the misgovernment of Bos-
ton are the same in kind as those made
elsewhere in the United States, though
they may be slightly less in degree. Bos-
ton's citizens are profoundly dissatisfied
with the present condition of things.

The first duty of government, the pro-
tection of life and limb, Boston dis-
charges, on the whole, pretty well. • The
peaceable individual is here as secure
against violence as he is anywhere in
the world ; indeed, I cannot now recall

an acquaintance with anybody, except a
policeman, whose person has been in-
jured in Boston by willful crime. The
danger to the person from the reckless
use of the streets by vehicles and street
cars will be considered later.

The protection of property against
crime is not nearly so absolute as that
afforded to the person. How the protec-
tion here given compares with that given
by European cities cannot be stated pre-
cisely, but the difference is not great.
Even the citizen of Boston most dis-
posed to complain of municipal misgov-
ernment finds little fault with the police
in the discharge of their ordinary duties.

The conduct of the police in matters
not immediately connected with the pro-
tection of persons and property, especial-
ly in the enforcement of the liquor laws
and the laws against prostitution and
gambling, is less satisfactory. Bribery
is not unknown, but it is not common, and
does not increase. It should be said, also,
that in Boston the laws on these subjects
are strict, compared with those of Euro-
pean countries, and even with those which
govern other great American cities, and
the vices aimed at are probably repressed
as closely as in any other great city.

Passing from the first necessities of
government, we come to the services
which are next demanded of a city by
its citizens, — water, sewers, streets, fire
department, schools, and the care of pau-
pers.

When municipal water - works were
first established, about fifty years ago,
the source of supply was excellent in
quality and abundant in quantity. This
condition lasted a long time, but an ad-
ditional supply, afterward obtained from
an inferior source, proved decidedly un-
pleasant in color and taste. At no time,
however, were the impurities of a sort to
endanger health, and the color and taste
of the city's water are now fairly good.
Within a year or two the metropolitan
district will have its principal source of
supply in the Nashua River : the quality

T-he Municipal Service of Boston.

313

of the water will then be excellent, and
its quantity abundant for the needs of a
generation. This last great work is car-
ried on by a commission appointed by the
governor of the commonwealth, which
in time will largely direct Boston's water-
supply, though the distribution of the
water will still be under local control.
The cost of the water-works has been
paid by the water-takers, and not from
the general taxes ; that is to say, the
water-rates have paid the cost of annual
operation and interest on the money bor-
rowed, and have established a sinking-
fund which will pay off the loans at ma-
turity. In time, therefore, the city should
own a valuable water-plant fully paid
for. As a business venture, in spite of
occasional jobbery and corruption, the
Boston water-works have been fairly but
not brilliantly successful. The rates are
still high compared with those of other
American cities, but recently they have
been much reduced ; the mains have been
extended into the newly built parts of
the city with reasonable dispatch.

The sewers of Boston have been im-
proved with increasing knowledge of
sanitary matters, and are now satisfac-
tory. No use is made of the sewage ;
its profitable use by a city situated like
Boston is of doubtful possibility. The
attempt to collect from those who use
the sewers any considerable part of their
cost has not been successful ; this cost is
defrayed mostly from the general taxes.
A part of the system has been con-
structed and is operated by a metropoli-
tan sewer commission appointed by the
governor.

The streets of Boston, like those of
nearly all European cities, were original-
ly laid out haphazard, and numerous hills
made them more than ordinarily crooked
and narrow. Much has since been done
to widen and straighten them, but often
with insufficient foresight. How far the
inadequacy of the streets is due to their
unexpected occupation by street cars,
how far to lack of traffic regulations, is

hard to say. Not a little of the trouble
is due to the nature of the case rather
than to the direct fault of the municipal
government.

The sidewalks of Boston afford to
foot-passengers convenient passage ; in a
rapidly growing suburb they sometimes
lag behind other improvements, but usu-
ally accommodation is provided nearly
as soon as it can reasonably be expected.
The cost is largely borne by the ab utter.

The pavement of the streets, as it is
usually laid, is such that travel over it
is safe and convenient at first, but the
repair is by no means equal to the origi-
nal construction. Street repair should
be constant; and if trifling repairs be
made daily, costly reconstruction will be
needed but seldom. Not only is the
pavement of various sorts suffered to
wear out, but it is also torn up frequent-
ly in order to suit the convenience of
municipal departments, of private indi-
viduals, and of corporations using the
streets, such as the gas company and the
street railway. The law requires that
the pavement be replaced in its former
condition by the individual or corpora-
tion benefited ; but this is a physical im-
possibility. Again, the use of the streets
permitted by law and custom is wasteful
of space, and not infrequently dangerous
•to life and limb ; regulation of the traf-
fic is lax or wanting, and vehicles are al-
lowed to block a street in Boston which,
under the regulations enforced in Lon-
don, would afford convenient passage to
twice as many. This evil, however, is
due rather to the temper of our citizens
than to the fault of the municipal gov-
ernment itself. Proper control of traffic
is commonly deemed oppressive, at any
rate when first introduced, and we pre-
fer to widen a street rather than to regu-
late its use. The watering of macadam-
ized streets, required by the climate of
New England, is done by the city to an
increasing extent. The work is difficult
and the results are not altogether satis-
factory, but within two or three years

314

The Municipal Service of Boston.

there has been a marked improvement.
Both the mud and the dust are nui-
sances, in some degree inevitable so long
as the citizens prefer macadamized streets
to those paved with stone blocks, in some
degree caused by the imperfect repair
and the disturbance just mentioned. Of
the cleanliness of the streets it is diffi-
cult to speak definitely, as cleanliness is
largely a matter of individual opinion.
Boston's condition in this respect is not
altogether satisfactory, but, except in a
few localities, it is generally fair, and has
improved within five years. Consider-
ing the extent of Boston's territory, the
streets are pretty well lighted.

The buildings of Boston are like those
of other American cities, and hence fires
are frequent and destructive, much more
so than in Europe. The cost of Euro-
pean construction is so much greater,
however, that Americans choose to pay
higher insurance rates and larger bills
for a fire department rather than incur
this increased cost. If we bear in mind
these limitations, we shall find the fire
department of Boston reasonably and in-
creasingly efficient.

To pronounce authoritatively upon the
schools of Boston would be difficult for
an expert, and presumptuous in any one
else. A few of the oldest schoolhouses
do not meet the modern requirements of*
ventilation and arrangement. At the
opening of the school year a few schools
are overcrowded, until some of the chil-
dren have been distributed among neigh-
boring schools. In general, however,
the accommodations are at least fairly
good, and better than those of the most
expensive private day - schools. That
the teaching also is fairly good may
safely be asserted ; earnest attempts to
secure better results naturally produce
dissatisfaction with existing methods,
and this noble dissatisfaction is consid-
erably felt, but the teachers are intelli-
gent, and zealously strive to raise the
standard of instruction. We boast of
our schools less confidently than we used

to do, but we may recognize, if we will,
their great improvement.

An investigation of the pauper insti-
tutions of the city, made three or four
years ago, showed that their administra-
tion was free from serious abuse, though
its methods were somewhat antiquated,
and though it suffered from that rarest
vice of a great American city, excessive
frugality. This administration has since
greatly improved, and the paupers of
Boston are now maintained as generous-
ly as those of a great city have ever been
in the history of mankind. The admin-
istration of the penal institutions is not
altogether so satisfactory.

Passing to those municipal services
which are commonly regarded as desir-
able or ornamental rather than essential,
we find that Boston admirably maintains
the greatest public library in the world,
the efficient administration of which can
hardly be overpraised. The system of
parks, including those of the so-called
metropolitan system, is very extensive
and beautiful, in variety probably un-
equaled, and the best landscape archi-
tects in the country have been little tram-
meled in laying it out. Until recently
there have been no public baths, except
for summer use, but one or two have just
been opened. The city hospital is ex-
cellently administered, and one of its
newer buildings has received the highest
expert commendation.

The enterprises undertaken by the
city with the hope of profit or recom-
pense have had a varied fate. Men-
tion has been made of the water-works.
The ferries between the island of East
Boston and the mainland have done, at
the lowest rates, all that can be done
by ferries, but their net cost to the city
has been heavy, and does not diminish.
In order to relieve the congestion of the
streets by putting the street cars under-
ground, a subway has been built at pub-
lic expense. This has been leased for
twenty years to a street railway com-
pany, at a rent sufficient to provide for

The Municipal Service of Boston.

315

repairs and for interest on the bonds
issued to defray its cost, together with a
proportionate contribution to a sinking-
fund for the retirement of these bonds at
their maturity in forty years. A forty
years' lease could have been made which
would have provided for the complete
retirement of the bonds, and thus would
have delivered the subway free of cost
to the city at the termination of the
lease, had public opinion approved tying
up the city's property for so long a term.
This successful business venture of more
than six million dollars has stimulated
an extension of the subway system.1

What, then, is the general conclusion
from these details? Regardless of cost,
how does the service given by Boston
compare with that which might be ex-
pected, not of an administration of sera-
phim, but of a business enterprise di-
rected by the ability which successful
private corporations must command ?
Judged by this standard and irrespective
of cost, Boston's municipal service in re-
spect of its police, water, sewers, hospital,
fire department, schools, public library,
and parks is good, in respect of its public
charitable institutions pretty good, in re-
spect of its highways distinctly faulty.
In estimating the quality of municipal
service, there is danger, as was pointed
out by Mr. Godkin in the November At-
lantic, that we shall take existing condi-
tions for granted, and so set for ourselves
too low a standard. There is like danger
as regards our railroads and our dwell-
ing-houses, our manners and our mor-
als. Doubtless it is better to be unduly
dissatisfied with ourselves than to boast,
but there is danger also of indiscrimi-
nate complaint which shall discourage
improvement instead of helping it, and
shall waste upon minor shortcomings the
energy which is needed to cure the grav-
est evils. To expect that municipal ser-
vice will be better in quality than the ser-

1 Students of American municipal govern-
ment should study carefully The City Govern-
ment of Boston, a valedictory address delivered

vice which hope of gain secures from in-
dividuals or business corporations is idle,
and with the latter service municipal
service should be compared. It may be
said that there are services, other than
those mentioned, which the city ought
to furnish, but does not, such as pub-
lic transportation and the furnishing of
light to individuals. None of these, how-
ever, are generally recognized as obliga-
tory upon a municipality. The variety
of Boston's service is continually increas-
ing, and most of the severest critics are
of opinion that the city now undertakes
too much rather than too little.

About a year ago there was published a
study of the administration of Glasgow,
written in a spirit of respectable pride
by two of its officials. On comparison
of the statements of this book with the
condition of affairs in Boston, it appears
pretty clearly that in the matter of police,
water, and fire department the service of
one city is about as good as that of the
other. Glasgow excels in the laying out
and care of its streets and in its public
baths, Boston in its sewers, parks, schools,
and in the care of its poor. Glasgow has
no public library, and apparently has no
hospital supported by the municipality ; it
has a municipal art gallery and museum,
institutions provided and administered in
Boston by private generosity. Glasgow
operates a gas-plant with success, and
has purchased and improved a consid-
erable tract of land ; Boston has con-
structed and leased the subway on ad-
vantageous terms. The experiment of
Glasgow in operating a tramway has
been carried on for so short a time,
upon so small a scale, and with such
doubtful results that no valuable conclu-
sion can yet be drawn from it. Upon
the whole, the public service of Boston
is rather more extensive than that ren-
dered by Glasgow, and in quality would
seem to be quite as good.

hy Mayor Matthews in 1895, perhaps the most
authoritative statement concerning1 municipal
government ever made in this country.

316

The Municipal Service of Boston.

Thus far I have considered munici-
pal service regardless of its cost; cost,
however, is of the first importance. To
compare the burden of taxation under
one system with that under another is
difficult. The nominal tax-rate of New
York, for example, is very much higher
than that of Boston, but in the former
city the valuation of real estate is much
lower, and other property escapes taxa-
tion almost altogether. Ne w York, again,
can hardly be taken as setting a suffi-
ciently exalted standard of municipal
administration. This much may be said
for Boston : its tax - rate is lower than
that of the great majority of the rural
towns of Massachusetts governed by the
town meeting, and it is no higher than
it was ten or fifteen years ago. In com-
parison with the selling value, the assess-
ment of real estate is now little higher
than it was then, and the assessment of
personal property is distinctly lower. If
the present annual expenses of the city
were defrayed from the present annual
tax-levy, they would not impose on the
citizens what is considered, in the United
States, to be an undue burden of taxa-
tion. Unfortunately, this is not the case.
About twelve years ago a law was passed
limiting the tax-rate which Boston might
impose, and the amount of money which
it might borrow. The limitations were
fixed in order to secure economy, but
they have failed to accomplish their ob-
ject. The tax - rate, indeed, has been
kept almost within the limit fixed, but
the city has not only borrowed up to the
debt limit for various purposes, but has
obtained from the legislature permission
to borrow outside it for parks, school-
houses, court-house, public library, and
so forth. So often has this been done
that the debt outside the limit (exclusive
of the water debt, which was excepted
by the original act) is now nearly as
large as the debt inside the limit. Be-
yond all this debt, the metropolitan com-
missions, which deal with the water, sew-
ers, and parks of the metropolitan dis-

trict, have incurred a large and increasing
debt in the name of the commonwealth,
the larger part of which must be reim-
bursed by Boston. It is safe to say that
many of those concerned with the govern-
ment of the city now expect to meet ex-
traordinary expenses for permanent im-
provements with money borrowed outside
the debt limit, the money borrowed inside
the limit being used to defray expenses
which should be paid at once by annual
taxation.

Summing up, we find that Boston's
municipal service is extensive, and, on
the whole, of a pretty good quality ; that
thus far its cost has not been a very
heavy burden upon the taxpayers, but
that it has been procured by reckless
borrowing, rendered possible by the fall
in the rate of interest and by various
juggling with accounts. How far has
this great expense been required in or-
der to provide municipal service of the
present extent and quality, and how far
is it the result of inefficiency and dis-
honesty ? Granted that we are to have
the service, how much more do we pay
for it than we ought ?

This, of course, is a hard question, to
which intelligent persons would give very
different answers. In general, we may
fairly say that there is, or has been,
more or less of extravagant, unbusiness-
like, or corrupt method in nearly all the
city's departments. In some the waste
has been large, in others much less.
Had all existing public works been es-
tablished and maintained efficiently and
economically, the city's debt would now
be considerably less than it actually is,
but it would still be alarmingly large.
The very best administration known to
this country could not have provided the
citizens with their water, sewers, fire de-
partment, parks, hospitals, library, and
the rest without a much larger yearly tax
or a dangerous mortgaging of the city's
future. Though Boston's return for
money spent is no doubt less than that
of a successful business corporation, it

The Municipal Service of Boston.

317

should be noted also that there are few
great corporations — few railroads, for
example — which in half a century of
existence have not at some time and in
some way suffered materially from ex-
travagant, inefficient, and even corrupt
management.

In an article published in The Forum
for November, 1892, Mr. Joseph Cham-
berlain, a man equally familiar with lo-
cal and with national administration in
Great Britain, compared the governments
of Boston and Birmingham in respect of
their economic efficiency. According to
his figures, a dollar in Birmingham pro-
duces about five times the result that
it produces in Boston. This conclusion
is startling, and arouses our incredulity.
It is easy to pick out in Mr. Chamber-
lain's comparison not a few errors of
detail almost unavoidable by a foreigner,
and the ratio which he fixes at five to
one can be reduced to about three to
one without much difficulty. Though his
opinion is otherwise, his article makes it
clear that the municipal service of Bir-
mingham is considerably less extensive
than that of Boston : its public library,
its city hospital, and its parks, for in-
stance, are manifestly of a class quite
different from that of Boston's corre-
sponding institutions. When all allow-
ances have been made, however, the dif-
ference in the economic efficiency of the
two governments is very disquieting to
a citizen of Boston. Wherein does the
difference lie ?

In wages it is very great. The cost
of day labor to the city of Boston is
about twice as high as its cost to Bir-
mingham, partly because of the higher
general scale of wages in this country,
and partly because the wages of muni-
cipal laborers here are higher in propor-
tion to those paid by private employers
than is the case in England. The dif-
ference between wages paid in England
and in America to those employees who
rank above the day laborer is equally
great. The policemen of Birmingham re-

ceive about four hundred dollars a year,
those of Boston about a thousand dollars.
The tendency to fix the rate of wages
paid by the municipality above that which
is paid by other employers has begun to
manifest itself in England, according to
Mr. Chamberlain, but it has not advanced
there as far as it has done here. The
salaries paid to the heads of departments
are about the same in both cities.

Birmingham, again, profits by the val-
uable executive work performed without
pay by the members of its city council,
while the city council of Boston is for-
bidden to discharge executive functions.
A good deal of this excellent unpaid
work is done in Boston by commissioners
and members of boards of trustees, but
Birmingham, apparently, saves much of
the money spent in Boston on elaborate
administrative staffs. Here, as in other
respects, the service of Boston is more
extended, but this greater extension does
not account for all the difference of cost.
On the other hand, unpaid service in
some city departments has been tried
by us and found unsatisfactory ; and, as
will be shown further on, there is reason
to suppose that the English system may
not work so well in the future as it has
done in the past. It should be said that,
in spite of our less economic efficiency,
the water-works of Boston, its largest
municipal undertaking, seem to yield a
net profit to the city much larger than do
those of Birmingham. How the water-
rates compare I do not know. A closer
study of Mr. Chamberlain's figures may
further affect his conclusions, but such
figures as his are well worth detailed
examination and comparison by our mu-
nicipal reformers. Beside such exami-
nation and comparison, generalized rhap-
sodies on the excellence of European
municipal government are quite insigni-
ficant.

It is often said that, in addition to
the loss arising from extravagance and
corruption, from higher wages and elab-
orate administrative machinery, Boston

318

The Municipal Service of Boston.

has suffered great loss by neglecting a
proper source of revenue. No apprecia-
ble return is now received from the use
of the streets by gas and electric com-
panies, by street railways and the like,
and the omission is set down to corrup-
tion of the city's officers by the corpora-
tions. Doubtless this is the case to some
extent, but there are concurrent influ-
ences much more powerful. Compared
to the use of the streets made by street
railways, the use made by other corpo-
rations is almost insignificant. It would
be absurd to exact rent from a gas com-
pany while charging a street railway no-
thing. The proposal to make street rail-
ways pay for their occupation of the
streets by their tracks has been bitterly
resisted by the traveling public, which
desires the cheapest possible transporta-
tion. That the city should largely sub-
sidize a street railway to carry passen-
gers at less than actual cost seems to
many passengers a desirable use of pub-
lic money. The city should collect rent,
as I believe, from all to whom is granted
a peculiar or exclusive use of the city's
property, but the failure to obtain this
rent is due far more to public opinion
than to greedy corporations and venal
officials.

I have said that, even with economical
management, the existing municipal ser-
vice could not be established and main-
tained without larger annual taxes or an
inordinate debt. This expensive service,
we are told, is demanded chiefly by those
citizens who are not assessed for taxes,
and by the city's officials who wish to
pocket a share of the money spent. To
some extent the assertion is true ; even
honest officials magnify the importance
of their several departments, and the
poorer citizens always favor large appro-
priations, failing to recognize that they
pay, though indirectly, their full share
of the taxes. Nearly or quite every
large expenditure of the public money
has been urged, however, not only by
the classes just mentioned, but also by

large taxpayers and public-spirited citi-
zens. These have often petitioned the
legislature to permit the city to borrow
money outside the debt limit for a fa-
vorite project, — for the public library,
parks, highways, and schoolhouses ; in-
deed, the opposition to large expendi-
tures and to borrowing outside the debt
limit has ordinarily been insignificant.
If the suffrage in the city had been
confined, let us say, to the richer half
of the citizens, I doubt if a single muni-
cipal luxury would have been foregone,
though possibly the money raised might
have been made to go further. Even
subsidizing the street railways by exemp-
tion from rent for the use of the streets
is often advocated by the well - to - do,
though seldom by those who are distinct-
ly rich.

The result of our inquiry is this : We
have extensive and pretty good service,
for which we pay more than we ought,
but which, though it were procured with
the best economy yet attained in this
country, would still be so expensive that
we should insist upon charging its cost
to posterity. We have a debt, appalling
in size after all proper deductions have
been made, and increasing at a tremen-
dous rate, its size and its increase part-
ly concealed by devices of bookkeeping.
This is a condition of affairs neither
satisfactory nor hopeless, one which calls
for discriminating action rather than for
indiscriminate abuse. Our debt, it seems,
is much the greatest of our municipal
dangers, — a danger to be dreaded the
more because it has been incurred with
the approval of practically all our citi-
zens, and not chiefly through the wiles
of a corrupt government.

Thus far little has been said about
that which is usually most emphasized
in the discussion of American municipal
government, to wit, the corruption of
the city's officials. The principal object
of this article is to consider the quantity
and quality of municipal service. Occa-
sionally, at least, it is well to put out of

The Municipal Service of Boston.

319

sight personal considerations, and to de-
vote our attention exclusively to the quali-
ties of tilings. But if we pass from the
service itself to those who are the city's
agents in rendering it, we find, as we
should expect, marked varieties of char-
acter among Boston's officials. The qual-
ity of the members of the city council is
distinctly poor. Doubtless it has recently
contained some honest, well-intentioned
members, but in it have sat many men •
without ostensible means of support, and
very few of the men who are naturally
chosen to manage large and important
private business. Moreover,, it is pretty
clear that the membership of the city
council is not only poor, but deteriorat-
ing.

The executive departments, on the
other hand, have recently contained
many men not only respectable, but of
marked ability and of the highest stand-
ing in the community. On the boards
which govern the public library, the city
hospital, the insane asylum, and the chil-
dren's department, among the overseers
of the poor, on the park commissions,
both city and metropolitan, on the transit
commission (which is building the sub-
way), at the head of the fire depart-
ment, and in other places, have been men
who would naturally be chosen to fill
the highest positions of private and cor-
porate trust. Their presence accounts
for much of the good service which has
been described. It must not be sup-
posed, of course, that all the executive
officers of Boston are of the last -men-
tioned sort. No business corporation
in the country is served in all its de-
partments by men of first-rate ability.
Within the past few years, moreover,
some of the city's departments have
been directed by men far below the mini-
mum standard of honesty and efficiency
established in successful business affairs.
Under a man of this kind, a department
has sometimes become generally ineffi-
cient and corrupt ; sometimes it has con-
tinued to discharge its functions pretty

well by means of respectable subordi-
nates and clerks. In spite of these short-
comings, all too numerous and in some
cases utterly disgraceful, the executive
officers of the city are far superior in
character and ability to the members of
the city council.

The cause of this general difference
between the executive departments of
the city and its legislature is not far to
seek. Before 1885 much of the admin-
istration of Boston was in the hands
of committees of the city council, as is
still the case in most other cities of
Massachusetts. In 1885, partly because
of the unsatisfactory work of these com-
mittees, and partly because of a theoret-
ical preference for a separation of pow-
ers, the state legislature deprived the
city council of its administrative func-
tions. Hardly any one recognized then,
and but few recognize now, that nearly
all municipal functions are administra-
tive. The annual legislation of the city,
as set out in its ordinances, is unimpor-
tant. The tax rate is limited by statute,
and the money obtained by it, for the
most part, is pledged to meet the needs
of the several departments, so that the
city council has very little money left in
its disposition. Almost the only consid-
erable legislative function remaining is
the authorization of loans. This func-
tion certainly is most important, and far
too little attention is now given to its dis-
charge, but it cannot provide two legis-
lative chambers with business for some
forty sittings apiece. These sittings are
spent chiefly in idle discussion, and in
the attempt, usually vain, to hamper the
executive. Service in these bodies is
not only disagreeable, but profitless, and
the quality of their membership natu-
rally deteriorates. Without a sense of
responsibility men can do little that is
good. Considerable power is a prerequi-
site of serious responsibility. The mu-
nicipal legislature of Boston is almost
powerless, and is therefore incompetent
to discharge properly even those few

320

The Municipal /Service of Boston.

functions which still belong to it. Fre-
quent and frantic appeals are made to
the citizens to elect better men to the
city council ; but intelligent and busy
men cannot be expected to give days
and weeks of their time to membership
in an irresponsible debating club.

It will naturally be asked if the ex-
ecutive has improved while the legisla-
ture has been deteriorating. I think
that it has, on the whole. Inefficiency
and corruption are found in some exec-
utive departments, but though the city
is much larger than it was twelve years
ago, and though its functions are more nu-
merous and complicated, its administra-
tion has improved. The changes made
in 1885, and similar changes made since,
have been of very great advantage. They
have given us better service and more
honest and efficient administration than
would have been possible in our growing
city under the old system. Notable im-
provement has been made, for example,
in respect of the police, the city hospital,
the public charitable institutions, and the
city's building operations. Compared to
what we have gained, an increased rate
of deterioration in the already deterio-
rating city council is felt to be a small
thing.

It may be urged that in Great Britain
executive power is entrusted to the mu-
nicipal legislature with excellent results.
We should observe, however, that until
within a short time municipal suffrage
in Great Britain has been very limited,
and the traditions of the old order of
things have not disappeared. Even now
municipal suffrage is not universal, in
our sense of the word.

Again, Mr. Chamberlain's remark
that dishonesty and corruption do not
exist in England has received sad con-
tradiction within the past few years, —
a contradiction so strong that we must
needs doubt if the remark was ever
quite justified. The recent experience
of the London County Council indicates
that Great Britain not improbably has

before it an era of municipal misgovern-
ment like that from which we are try-
ing to emerge. Never, in the United
States, have the supposed exigencies of
partisan politics led to more cynical
excuses for shameless dishonesty. The
corruption discovered in London not long
ago is by no means so remarkable as the
indifference with which its discovery was
received.

The consideration of American polit-
ical problems is usually so much taken
up with moral exhortation, and with the
exhibition of some panacea for existing
evils, that £, mere statement of things as
they are is deemed colorless and profit-
less ; yet surely a study of existing con-
ditions is valuable preparation for re-
forming them. No nostrum exists which
will secure either perfect municipal gov-
ernment or the perfect administration of
a railroad. Good government and good
administration are the slowly produced
results of watchful study, intelligent ob-
servation, and patient experiment. The
most zealous devotion cannot attain to it
in a hurry. It was the fashion, a cen-
tury ago, to believe that good govern-
ment was secured by the sudden adop-
tion of a political system based upon
human nature in the abstract, and upon
the Eternal Fitness of Things. Now we
know better than this ; but we have
fallen into another error, less fundamen-
tal, but still considerable. Many peo-
ple think that political improvement is
synonymous with the election to office
of good men. Doubtless this is a thing
ever to be desired, and personal moral
earnestness among electors and elected
is the strongest and safest motive for re-
form. Not only, however, must we shape
the method and machinery of our choice
so as to lead naturally to the selection of
the best men, but we must also face the
practical certainty that even with the
best methods the best men will not al-
ways be chosen to office, and therefore
we must make preparation for the in-
evitable. Institutions have their impor-

The Municipal Service of Boston.

321

tance as well as men, and we have to es-
tablish conditions which will enable the
saint to do the maximum of good while
restraining the sinner to the minimum
of harm. Still greater is the importance
of giving to the average official, who is
neither saint nor sinner, his best oppor-
tunity of useful public service. This
sort of reform, involving nice con-
siderations of political judgment, and
therefore less attractive to many men
than an electoral campaign fought on
moral issues, has lately made consider-
able progress in Boston, over and above
the beneficent changes made in 1885.
The trustees of the public library and
of the city hospital, elected by the city
council, were not satisfactory. An at-
tempt to improve the choice under the
laws then existing would probably have
failed, so the power of appointment was
transferred to the mayor with great ad-
vantage. The administration of the po-
lice was unsatisfactory ; the power of
appointing the police commissioners was
transferred to the governor, and, al-
though scandal has not been altogether
avoided, the improvement in adminis-
tration has been marked. Twice within
two years the form of government of the
city's charitable institutions has been
radically changed, each time with good
results. The carrying on of several great
public works, like that involved in the
water-supply of the metropolitan district,
has been entrusted to commissions ap-
pointed by the governor, which have
shown as great economy, efficiency, and
promptness as could be hoped for from
the best private management.

It has been objected that these com-
missions are imposed upon the city or
the metropolitan district from without,
and that their responsibility to any body
politic is hard to fix. There is weight
in the objection. Local home rule is an
attractive cry, and some small evils had
better be borne until the people of a given
locality have themselves found out the
cure. The government of great modern

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 485. 21

cities, however, is distinctly in the ex-
perimental stage, and it may be that, for
a time at least, certain functions, hither-
to commonly discharged by municipali-
ties, should be undertaken by the state.
In any case, it is safe to say that, until
the critics can find a method of combin-
ing greater local responsibility with equal
efficiency, these commissions will find fa-
vor in the eyes of reasonable men. Good
municipal service is the end sought, and
the Anglo-Saxon race has always pre-
ferred to submit its political methods to t
the test of practical working rather than
to that of logical completeness.

The following observations are sug-
gested by a review of Boston's munici-
pal service. The service itself is worst
in respect of the highways. If our streets
were well laid out, well paved, and well
repaired, and if the traffic through them
were properly controlled, the citizens of
Boston would have no very severe com-
plaint to make of the quantity and qual-
ity of the municipal service. If, how-
ever, the people of Boston expect that
this service is to be maintained, extend-
ed, and improved, they must be prepared
to pay considerably higher annual taxes
than those now exacted. A more hon-
est and efficient administration will make
a dollar go further than it goes now, but
it cannot furnish even the existing ser-
vice without incurring a debt much too
large. The greatest danger to be feared
from the present course of Boston's mu-
nicipal administration is a crushing debt.
We must go without some of our luxu-
ries, or we must put our hands into our
pockets and pay for them. The elec-
tion of good men to office will not keep
the debt within proper limits. Its size
is due, not chiefly to maladministration,
but rather to the demands made upon
the city by all classes of citizens. Mu-
nicipal frugality is needed, not alone or
principally on the part of the city's offi-
cials, but on the part of the whole peo-
ple.

Finally, economical and efficient ad-

322

Tlie Australian Democracy.

ministration, and so cheaper and better
service, is to be obtained through better
executive officers and a better executive
organization. The best man for mayor,
who shall have the discretion and cour-
age to select the best subordinates, and
the executive ability to coordinate and
organize the several departments of the
city, is the thing most to be desired.
Public-spirited citizens can be most use-
ful by accepting office under him, by de-
voting much time and attention to doing
the city's work, and, both in office and
out of office, to studying how best that
work can be done. The personal equa-
tion in elections and appointments is
important, but methods of appointment
and machinery of administration should
not be neglected. As to the municipal
legislature, it is become an anomaly. It
does little good, and no great harm.

No plan for abolishing it has yet been
devised which commends itself to the
judgment of the community. Until that
plan is discovered and accepted, we must
bear with our city council as men bear
with an internal organ called the vermi-
form appendix. Physicians tell us that
this has no discoverable present use ex-
cept to become the seat of disease, though
it is supposed to have been necessary
at an earlier period of human develop-
ment.

How far the experience of Boston is
typical of that of other American cities
it is hard to say. In detail it has dif-
fered greatly ; a loving son of Boston
may be pardoned the belief that it has
been somewhat more fortunate than that
of New York or Chicago, but, on the
whole, it probably has been much the

same.

Francis C. Lowell.

THE AUSTRALIAN DEMOCRACY.

THE only really democratic experi-
ment, beside our own, going on in the
world to-day, is that of the English Aus-
tralian colonies. All others are more
or less disturbed by the political or so-
cial traditions of an anterior regime.
Nowhere else, therefore, can so much in-
struction be obtained as to the probable
effect of popular government on laws
and manners. There is no other demo-
cracy whose beginning so nearly resem-
bles ours. We began, it is true, at a
much earlier period, under the influence
of aristocratic and religious ideas which
have lost their force, and we began with
a very different class of men. Our first
settlers were a selected body, with strong
prepossessions in favor of some sort of
organization, which, whatever it was to
be, was certainly not to be democratic.
They sought to reproduce the monarchi-
cal or aristocratic world they had left, as

far as circumstances would permit. It
may fairly be said that the society they
tried to establish on this side of the At-
lantic was the society of the Old World,
with some improvements, notably another
kind of established church. By the time
the Australian colonies were founded,
however, — that is, about a century ago,
— what was most antiquated in the
American regime had fairly departed.
The colonies here had sloughed off a
good deal of the European incrustation,
and had frankly entered on the demo-
cratic regime, but with social foundations
such as the Australians could not claim.
Australia originated with New South
Wales, and was first settled as a convict
station. Most of the earliest emigrant
were men transported for crime, and
long treated as slaves. The first
taken toward social organization was the
bestowal of large tracts of land on Eng-

The Australian Democracy.

323

lish capitalists, to be used as sheep-farms,
with the convicts as herdsmen or labor-
ers. Free emigrants came slowly to open
up agriculture as a field of industry. As
they increased, hostility to the large
sheep-farmers was developed in a process
somewhat similar to the extinction of the
great manors in New York. In fact,
New South Wales passed nearly half a
century in getting rid of the defects of
its foundation, in clarifying its social
constitution, and in bringing itself into
something like harmony with the other
civilized societies of the world. In 1842
the colonies received a legislature, a large
proportion of the members of which were
nominees of the crown. , During the pre-
vious half-century they were -governed
despotically by governors, often broken-
down aristocrats, sent out from England.
Their society was composed largely of
the great sheep-farmers and of actual
or emancipated convicts. Religion and
morals were for a time at the lowest ebb.
The institution of marriage hardly ex-
isted. The multitude of female convicts
and the thinness of population in the
interior rendered concubinage easy and
general. The press had not begun to
draw respectable talent from England,
and the newspapers, such as they were,
were largely in the hands of ex-convicts.
There was nothing that could be called
public opinion. The only appeal against
any wrong-doing lay to the home govern-
ment, which was then six months away ;
and so deeply seated was the belief in
England that Australia was simply a com-
munity of convicts that any appeals re-
ceived little attention.

The first thing that could be called a
political party in the colony consisted of
Irish Catholic immigrants, who had gone
out in large numbers in 1841, under the
stimulation of government grants and
bounties. They acted rather as Catho-
lics than as citizens, and, as usual, un-
der the leadership of their clergy. A re-
sponsible legislature of two houses was
not established until 1856. The colo-

nies started with the English, or cabinet
system ; that is, with ministries selected
or approved by Parliament. This was
the first great difference between us and
them. The framers of the American
Constitution decided, for reasons which
seemed to them good, to give the execu-
tive a definite term of office, independent
of legislative approval. This they con-
ceived to be necessary to the establish-
ment of complete independence between
the different departments of the govern-
ment. The separation of the executive,
judicial, and legislative branches held a
very high place in the minds of all politi-
cal speculators in the eighteenth century,
after Montesquieu had dwelt on its ne-
cessity. Therefore, the founders of the
American republic made each branch in-
dependent in its own sphere, with its own
term of office, which the others could
neither lengthen nor abridge. This is
what is called the presidential system.
The cabinet system makes the executive
not only part and parcel of the legis-
lative branch, but dependent on it for
existence. A vote of the majority can
change the executive, while the executive
can order a renewal of the legislative
branch ; that is, dissolve it. The presi-
dential system is undoubtedly the best
defense that could be devised against de-
mocratic changeableness, or the influence
on the government of sudden bursts of
popular f eeling. But it almost goes to
the other extreme. It is very difficult to
make any change in public policy or le-
gislation in the United States in less than
five years. In Australia, under the cab-
inet system, six changes may be made
in a year. In New South Wales, there
have been forty-one ministries, doubtless
with entirely different views on impor-
tant subjects, in thirty-seven years, or
more than one change each year. The
same phenomena exhibit themselves in
all the countries which have adopted the
British system, or in which the royal
prerogative still remains a legislative
force. Unhappily, in the colonies as in

324

The Australian Democracy.

France, these frequent changes do not
always mean changes of policy. Minis-
tries are too often overthrown simply to
satisfy personal rancor, or disappoint-
ment, or jealousy.

Another point of difference between
our beginning and that of the Austra-
lians was that they had no constitution,
as we call it ; that is, no organic law,
paramount to all other laws, and which
all legislators were bound to respect in
legislating. Every government was or-
ganized under an English act of Parlia-
ment, but this simply provided a frame-
work, and placed almost no restrictions
on the subjects of legislation, because
there are no restrictions on the action of
the English Parliament itself. The will
of Parliament is the British constitution,
and the will of the Australian legisla-
tures is the constitution of the colonies,
provided they make no attack on the su-
premacy of the British crown ; that is,
they may do anything they please which
Parliament may do, provided they obey
the imperial law which sets them up.
This has some good effects, and some bad
ones. It decidedly increases the sense
of responsibility, in which our legisla-
tures are so often wanting. The Aus-
tralians know that any act they pass will
be executed, that no intervention of the
courts on constitutional grounds can be
looked for, and that if the law works
badly the action of public sentiment will
be immediate, and may lead to the over-
throw of the ministry for the time being.
In fact, a law paramount, drawn up by
picked men, assembling for the purpose
at stated intervals of twenty years or
less, and safeguarding all the primary
social rights against popular passion or
impulse or legislative corruption, and in-
terpreted by the courts, is a device pe-
culiar to certain of the United States.
It is the only really valid check on de-
mocracy ever devised, but it is doubtful
whether it could now be set up anywhere
else with effect. Its Revolutionary origin
has surrounded it with a sanctity which

it would be difficult to give any court
created in our day and gainsaying the
popular will. On the other hand, this
absence of constitution gives legislatures
a freedom in trying social experiments
greater than ours enjoy, though they en-
joy a good deal. There is hardly any
mode of dealing with private property
or private rights which an Australian
legislature may not attempt, hardly any
experiment in taxation which it may not
try. Its sole restraint lies in the quick
action of popular reprobation.

These two facts — the adoption of the
cabinet system from England, and the
absence of a constitution containing re-
straints on legislation — are the main
differences between our democracy and
that of Australia. But every Australian
colony, however strong its aspirations to
political independence, is influenced in
what may be called its manners by the
mother country. Australia began its
political life with as close an approach
to an aristocracy as a new country can
make, in the existence of the " squat-
ters," most of whom were capitalists or
scions of good English families. These
men obtained large grants of land from
the government for sheep-farming, which
in the beginning they managed with
convicts whom they hired from the state,
and whom they were permitted to flog
in case of misbehavior. Their life, in
short, was very nearly that of the old
cotton-planter in the South, with the
"patriarchal" element wanting.

The first work of the new democracy
was to overthrow them, and take their
large tracts of land away from them.
But the democracy did not succeed, and
has not succeeded, in preventing the for-
mation of an upper class of the " English
gentleman " type. This is what the suc-
cessful Australian still strives to be. He
does not become " a man of the people,"
in our sense, and does not boast of his
humble origin and early struggles as
much as our millionaire is apt to do.
The influence of this type was prolonged

The Australian Democracy.

325

and strengthened by the large emigra-
tion to Australia of university graduates
from England, during the fifties and six-
ties, after the colonies had fairly entered
on free government, when a successful
career at the bar and in public life had
become possible. These, again, were re-
inforced by a still larger emigration of
broken-down men of good family, who,
if they added but little to the wealth or
morality of the colonies, did a good deal
to preserve the predominance of English
conventional ideas. For instance, one
of the very strong English traditions is
the right of men of education and promi-
nence to public offices ; that is, men pre-
viously raised above the crowd by wealth
or rank or education, or by some outward
sign of distinction. This was perpetu-
ated in the colonies by their connection
with England in the way I have men-
tioned. It made the careers of such men
as Robert Low and Gavan Duffy and
Dr. Pensores and many others easy and
natural, and made the breaking away
from English ideas on social questions
more difficult. Perhaps as important
was the fact that it preserved the Eng-
lish way of living as the thing for the
" self-made man " to aspire to. How
strong this influence is in the Anglo-
Saxon world may be inferred from the
difficulty of keeping English influence in
these matters in due subordination in
this country. Nearly all our rich peo-
ple, and people who have enjoyed any
social success in England, are apt to re-
vert to English life, and have to be rid-
iculed and denounced in the press in
order to make them continue " good
Americans."

In democracies which still look to
England as " home," and which receive
large bodies of immigrants educated in
England, it can be easily understood how
great must be the English influence on
the colonial way of looking at both poli-
tics and society. In later days, when the
democracy has fairly broken loose from
the control of the Foreign Office, gifted

men of the earlier American kind — that
is, good speakers or writers — have in a
large degree preserved their sway. The
multiplicity of new questions, and the pos-
sibility of getting into power at any time
by overthrowing the existing ministry,
have naturally kept alive the art of dis-
cussion as the art which leads to politi-
cal power. Thus far, undoubtedly, this
has prevented the rise of any system
like our caucus, which attaches little im-
portance to eloquence or power of per-
suasion. In Australia a man can hardly
get high office without a general election.
He has to produce a change of opinion
in the legislature, or so great a change
of opinion out of doors as to intimidate
the legislature, either in order to see his
policy adopted by the men actually in
power, or to be charged himself with the
formation of a new ministry. That is,
the man most successful in exposition,
who identifies himself by speech most
prominently with some pending question,
becomes, under the cabinet system, the
man entitled to power, and no caucus
nomination could either give it to him
or deprive him of it. This more than
aught else has made easy individual pro-
minence by means of parliamentary arts.
Of course, there is behind all talk a good
deal of intrigue and chicanery, but talk
there has to be. The cabinet system —
or the possibility of changing majorities
in the legislature at any time without
waiting for a fixed term — makes it ab-
solutely necessary that a successful poli-
tician should be able to express himself.
He may be uneducated, in the technical
sense of the term, but he must be master
of his own subject, and be able to give
a good account of it. He has to propose
something energetically, in order to hold
his place. Thus, Sir Charles Cowper and
Robert Low had to connect themselves
with the educational system, Sir Henry
Parkes with the land system, and so on.
The minister, whoever he is, is in con-
stant danger of losing his place ; the
" outs " are constantly eager to displace

326

The Australian Democracy.

him, and they displace him, as in Eng-
land, by bringing up new questions, or
new aspects of old ones.

The system, as I have already said,
has the well-known defect of instability
in the executive. It means in Austra-
lia, as it means in France and Italy, in-
cessant change or frequent changes. It
is what our founders dreaded when they
put the President in office for four years,
and Congress for two years, and made
each independent of the other. But it
has the effect of preventing the forma-
tion of strict party ties, controlled by
a manager who has not to render any
public account of his management. In
other words, the caucus ruled by the
boss is hardly possible under it. The
boss is hardly possible, if he has to ex-
plain the reasons of his actions, and to
say what he thinks the party policy
ought to be. Whether this system would
survive the formation of a confederacy
like ours, and the necessity of more po-
tent machinery to get a larger multitude
to take part in elections, is something
which may reasonably be doubted. In
large democracies the future probably
belongs to the presidential system, with
its better arrangements for the forma-
tion and preservation of strong parties,
working under stricter discipline and with
less discussion.

The cabinet system, however, has had
one excellent effect : it compels every
minister who appeals to the constituen-
cies for power to state at length and
with minuteness his claims on their sup-
port. He sets forth his views and plans
with a fullness and an amount of ar-
gumentation which are never met with
nowadays in our party platforms. He
makes a real plea for confidence in him
personally, and he issues his programme
immediately before the election which
is to decide his fate. His opponent, or
rival, issues a counter one, and the two
together place before the constituencies
such an explanation of the political situa-
tion as our voters rarely get. Each not

only explains and argues in defense of his
programme, but makes promises, which,
if he succeeds, he may be almost imme-
diately called on to fulfill. These two
documents are, in fact, much more busi-
nesslike than anything which our political
men lay before us. In our presidential
system, no one in particular is responsi-
ble for legislation, and the Congress elect-
ed one year does not meet till the next.
The effect of these two circumstances has
given our party platform a vagueness
and a sonorousness, a sort of detach-
ment from actual affairs, which make it
somewhat resemble a Pope's encyclical.
It does not contain a legislative pro-
gramme. There is, in fact, no person
competent to make one, because no per-
son, or set of persons, is charged with ful-
filling it. It is " the party " which the
voter supports, and the party is a body
too indeterminate to be held to any sort
of accountability. The platform, there-
fore, confines itself to expressing views,
instead of making promises. It reveals
the hopes, the fears, the dislikes, and the
admirations of the party rather than its
intentions. It expresses sympathy with
nationalities struggling for freedom, af-
fection for workingmen and a strong
desire that people who hire them shall
pay them a " fair wage," detestation of
various forms of wrong-doing on the
part of their opponents, and denuncia-
tion of the mischiefs to the country which
these opponents have wrought. But it
gives little inkling of what the party will
really do if it gets into power. If it
does nothing at all, it cannot be called
to account except in the same vague and
indefinite way. Nobody in particular
is responsible for its shortcomings, be-
cause all its members are responsible in
the same degree.

Take as an illustration of my meaning
what has occurred in this country with
regard to the existing currency difficul-
ties. Both the Republican and Demo-
cratic platforms have declared in favor
of having a good currency, but the De-

The Australian Democracy.

327

moeratic platform simply demanded the
coinage of silver at a certain ratio to
gold, and ascribed a long list of evils to
the failure of the nation to furnish such a
coinage ; it described these evils in terms
of philanthropy rather than of finance.
It did not offer any explanation, in de-
tail, of the way free coinage of silver at
the fifteen to one ratio would work ; how
it would affect foreign exchange, or do-
mestic investments, or creditors, or sav-
ings-banks. It simply recommended the
plan passionately, as a just and humane
thing, and treated its opponents as sharks
and tyrants. No business man could learn
anything from it as to the prospects of
his ventures under a silver regime. The
Republican platform, on the other hand,
without mentioning gold, declared its
desire that the various kinds of United
States currency (ten in number) should
be of equal value. But it abstained
from saying precisely in what manner
this equality of value would be pre-
served, and what steps would be taken
for the purpose ; in spite of the fact that
it was dealing with a business ' matter,
it made no proposal which a business
man could weigh or even understand.
The result was that although Congress
met within four months of the election,
and the election had turned on the cur-
rency question, nothing whatever was
said or done about it. No one in Con-
gress felt any particular responsibility
about it, or could be called to account
for not bringing it up or trying to settle
it. Yet every one could, or would, ex-
press cordial agreement with the plat-
form.

Under the Australian system things
would have gone differently. Mr. Mc-
Kinley would have issuea an address to
the electors, saying distinctly that he
stood for the gold standard, setting forth
the precise manner in which he meant
to deal with the various forms of United
States currency in case he were elect-
ed, and promising to do it immediately
on his election. Mr. Bryan would have

issued a counter manifesto, stating not
simply his objections to the gold stan-
dard, but the exact way in which he
meant to get rid of it, and the probable
effect of this action on trade and indus-
try. Consequently, after the election,
one or other of them would have met a
Parliament which would have demanded
of him immediate legislation ; and if he
had failed to produce it promptly, he
would have been denounced as a traitor
or an incompetent, and a vote of want of
confidence would have turned him out of
office. In short, the winning man would
have had to produce at once something
like the plan which our monetary com-
mission, composed of men not in politi-
cal life at all, has laboriously formed.

There occurred in Queensland, when
Sir George Bowen was governor, in 1867,
a financial crisis which makes clear the
difference between the Australian system
and ours. The ministry had borrowed
£1,000,000 sterling through a Sydney
bank, to be spent in public works. The
works had been begun, and £50,000 of
the money had been received and a large
number of men employed, when the bank
failed. The ministers in office instantly
proposed to issue " inconvertible govern-
ment notes," like our greenbacks during
the war, and make them legal tender in
the colony. The governor informed them
that he should have to veto such a bill, as
his instructions required him to " reserve
for the Queen's pleasure " every bill
whereby any paper or other currency
might be made a legal tender, " except
the coin of the realm, or other gold or sil-
ver coin." But the ministers persisted.
The populace of Brisbane were told by a
few stump orators that " an issue of un-
limited greenbacks would create unlimit-
ed funds for their employment on public
works, while at the same time it would
ruin the bankers, squatters [great sheep-
farmers], and other capitalists." A so-
called indignation meeting was held, at
which the governor and a majority of
the legislature were denounced in vio-

328

The Australian Democracy.

lent terms ; several leading members of
Parliament were ill-treated in the streets,
and threats were even uttered of burn-
ing down Government House.1

The governor held firm, and insisted
on meeting the crisis by the issue of ex-
chequer bills ; so the ministry resigned,
and was succeeded by another, which
did issue the exchequer bills. Had the
governor not held his ground, the colony
would have been launched on a sea of
irredeemable paper, from which escape
would probably have been difficult. In
fact, there is little doubt that it is the
necessity of making their loans in Eng-
land, and thus getting the approval of
British capitalists for their financial ex-
pedients, which has saved the colonies
from even worse excesses in currency
matters. The immediate responsibility
of the minister for legislation must make
all crises short, if sharp. No abnormal
financial situation in any of the Austra-
lian colonies could last as long as ours
has done, and while they retain their con-
nection with the British crown they will
be preserved from the very tempting de-
vice of irredeemable paper.

An effort has been made in some of
the colonies to get rid of changefulness
in the executive by electing the ministers
by popular suffrage, instead of having
them elected by Parliament ; but this at-
tempt to depart from the cabinet system
has apparently been made only by the
"labor party," or workingman's party,
which exists and grows, without having
as yet been successful in getting hold
of office. Its main strength seems to
lie, as in this country, in influence ; that
is, in alarming members of Parliament
about its vote. It hangs over the heads
of the legislators in terrorem, in closely
divided constituencies, but does not often
make its way into Parliament itself,
though those of its members who have
been elected seem to acquit themselves
very creditably.

1 Thirty Years of Colonial Government.
From the Official Papers of Sir G. F. Bowen.

The first strong resemblance between
our experience and that of the Austra-
lians is to be found in the educational
system. The first attempts at popular
education, as might have been expected,
were made by the clergy of the Angli-
can Chui-ch, the only church which had
official recognition in the early days of
the colonies. All money voted by the
government for this purpose was given
to the clergy and distributed by them.
The instruction was mainly religious, and
the catechism and reading of the Scrip-
tures in the Protestant version played
a prominent part in it. From the be-
ginning, the opposition to this, on the
part of all the other denominations, was
very strong. As in America, the oppo-
sition of the Catholics was not directed
against denominational teaching. They
were willing to have the state money
equally divided among the clergy, so that
each denomination might control the in-
struction given to its own children. To
this plan all the other denominations,
except the Anglicans, were violently hos-
tile ; so that on this question the Pro-
testant Episcopalians and the Catholics
were united. Their clergy wanted the
state money for their own kind of educa-
tion, while those of other denominations
were in favor of secular education, or
common schools, paid for largely by the
state, though not wholly, as here.

It would be tedious to go over the
history of the struggle which resulted in
the establishment of state schools, with
secular teaching. It bore a close resem-
blance to our own struggle, but differed
in having for the efforts of the Protestant
Episcopalians powerful support from the
home government, which then, as now,
sympathized wfth denominational teach-
ing. It ended, finally, in the triumph
of the secular schools. Secular educa-
tion seems to be the established demo-
cratic method of teaching the young,
though the desire of the clergy to keep
control of education is giving it an
anti-religious trend in some countries, —

The Australian Democracy.

329

France, for instance. The agitation of
this subject in Australia has brought
out the interesting fact that the Catholic
population, almost wholly Irish and very
large, sides with the priests on nearly
every public question, the educational
question among others. This is exactly
what has occurred in England. In the
late conflict over the schools in Eng-
land, the Irish voted with the Tories
in favor of denominational teaching.
Like most national oddities, there is for
this an historical explanation. The ban-
ishment of the old Irish gentry, begin-
ning in Elizabeth's time, and ending with
the Revolution of 1688, deprived the
Irish of their natural political leaders.
The new gentry were foreigners in race
and religion, and in political sympa-
thies. This threw the people back on
the priests, who became their only ad-
visers possessing any education or know-
ledge of the world, and assumed without
difficulty a political leadership which
has never been shaken to this day, in
spite of the growing activity of the lay
element in Irish politics. No Irish lay-
man has, as yet, proved a very successful
politician, in the long run, who has not
managed to keep the clergy at his back.

It may be said that, on the whole, the
educational movement in Australia has
been controlled by influences common to
the rest of the civilized world. In near-
ly all countries there is a struggle go-
ing on — which ended with us many
years ago — to wrest the control of the
popular schools, wherever they exist,
from the hands of the clergy, who have
held it for twelve hundred years. No
characteristic of the old regime in poli-
tics is more prominent than the belief
that the priests or ministers only should
have charge of the training of youth.
Almost the whole history of the educa-
tional movement in this century is the
history of the efforts of the " Liberals "
or " Radicals " to oust them.

The Australians resemble us also in
having an immense tract of land at the

disposition of the state. They came into
possession much later, when waste lands
were more accessible, before they were
covered by traditions of any sort, and
when the air had become charged with
the spirit of experimentation. They have
accordingly tried to do various things
with the land, which we never thought
of. South Australia, for instance, had
the plan of giving grants of land to small
cooperative associations, to be managed
by trustees, and supplied with capital by
a loan from the state of not more than
$250 a head. The state, in short, agreed
to do what our Populists think it ought
to do, — lend money to the farmers at a
low rate of interest. Some of these as-
sociations were plainly communistic, and
the members were often brought together
simply by poverty. As a whole, they
have not succeeded. Some have broken
up ; others remain and pay the govern-
ment its interest, but no one expects that
it will ever get back the principal.

In New South Wales, the state be-
came a landlord on an extensive scale
on the Henry George plan, and the ques-
tion of rents then grew into a great po-
litical question. Political " pressure "
is brought to bear on the fixing of the
rents, and the management, of course,
gives a very large field for " pulls " and
" influence." In Queensland, which has
a tropical sugar region, not only have
lands been rented by the state, but cheap
carriage has been provided for farm
and dairy produce on the state railway,
bonuses have been paid on the export of
dairy produce, advances have been made
to the proprietors of works for freezing
meat, and it has been proposed to estab-
lish state depots in London for the re-
ceipt and distribution of frozen meat
One act makes provision, under certain
conditions, for a state guarantee for loans
contracted to build sugar-works. In New
Zealand, there is a graduated tax intend-
ed to crush out large landholders ; but
any landholder who is dissatisfied with
his assessment can require the govern-

330

The Australian Democracy.

ment to purchase at its own valuation,
and land is rented in small holdings.
The government has also borrowed large
sums of money to lend to farmers on
mortgage. It sends lecturers on butter-
making and fruit - growing around the
country. It pays wages to labor associa-
tions who choose to settle on state lands
and clear or improve them, and then al-
lows them to take up the holdings thus
improved. It keeps a " state farm," on
which it gives work to the unemployed.
All these things, of course, give it a great
number of favors to bestow or withhold,
and open a wide field for political in-
trigue.

As a general rule, the suffrage is adult
and male, but there is a property quali-
fication for voters for the upper houses
of the legislatures, answering to our Sen-
ates. Members of both houses are paid
a small salary. At first they all served
voluntarily, as in England, and the pay-
ment of members was not brought about
without a good deal of agitation. But
the argument which carried the day for
payment was, not, as might be supposed,
the justice of giving poor men a chance
of seats, but the necessity, in a busy com-
munity, of securing for the work of gov-
ernment the services of many competent
men who could not afford to give their
time without pay. The " plum " idea of
a seat in the legislature can hardly be
said to have made its appearance yet.
The necessity of doing something for
"labor" very soon became prominent
in colonial policy, and one of its first
triumphs was the contraction of very
large loans in England for the construc-
tion of public works, mainly railroads
and common roads, the creation of vil-
lage settlements and the advance of
money to them. The result of all this,
after a while, was tremendous financial
collapse, and the discharge of large bod-
ies of the very laborers for whose benefit
the works were undertaken. This ca-
lamity seems to have stimulated the ten-
dency to tax the rich heavily, and to fos-

ter the policy of protection. Trade is
promoted not simply by duties on im-
ports, but by state aid to exports. A
depot in London, which does not pay its
own expenses, takes charge of Austra-
lian goods and guarantees their quality ;
bonuses are given to particular classes of
producers, and there is even talk of a
" produce export department "of the gov-
ernment. The protectionist policy has
taken possession of the Australian mind
even more firmly than it has taken posses-
sion of the mind of the Republican party
here. A free-trader comes nearer being
looked upon as a " crank " in most of the
colonies than he does here. But the " in-
fant industry " there has solid claims to
nurture which it does not possess in this
country. In fact, the dominance of the
protectionist theory is so strong that it
forms one of the obstacles in the promo-
tion of the proposed Australian confed-
eration, as no colony is quite willing to
give up its right to tax imports from all
the others, and still less is it willing to
join Mr. Chamberlain's followers and let
in free the goods of the mother country.
We may conjecture from this what ob-
stacles the policy of free internal trade
between our states would have met with
at the foundation of our government,
had America been more of a manufac-
turing community, and had intercom-
munication been easier. The difficulty
of carriage a hundred years ago formed
a natural tariff, which made the compe-
tition of foreigners seem comparatively
unimportant.

From the bestowal of responsible gov-
ernment in the fifties, down to 1893,
nearly all the colonies reveled in the ease
with which they could borrow money in
England. There was a great rush to
make state railroads, in order to open up
the lands of the great landholders to pro-
jects favored by labor, and to give em-
ployment to workingmen ; and, after the
railroads were made, they carried work-
ingmen for next to nothing. Along with
this came an enormous development of

The Australian Democracy.

331

the civil service, somewhat like our in-
crease of pensions. New South Wales
alone had 200,000 persons in govern-
ment offices, at a salary of $13,000,000,
and 10,000 railroad employees to boot.
This gave the ministries for the time
being great influence, which was in-
creased by the fact that the state was
the owner of large tracts of land, which
it rented on favorable terms to favored
tenants. The excitement of apparent
prosperity, too, brought into the legisla-
ture large numbers of men to whom sal-
ary was important, and the result was
perhaps the first serious decline in the
character of the Australian governments.
The colonies were founded between 1788
and 1855. Up to this time they have
spent $800,000,000 on public works.
They have made 80,000 miles of tele-
graph, and 10,000 miles of railway.
Though they have a revenue of only
$117,500,000 they have already a debt
of $875,000,000.

These "good times " came to their nat-
ural end. By 1893 the money was all
spent, the taxation was not sufficient to
meet the interest, the English capitalists
refused further advances, the banks failed
on all sides, and the colonies were left
with large numbers of unemployed on
their hands. There was nothing for it but
to spend more money on " relief works,"
and to keep almost permanently in the
employment of the state large bodies of
men, who liked it simply because it was
easy, and because hard times were a suffi-
cient excuse for seeking it. What one
learns from the experience of the colonies
in the matter of expenditure is the diffi-
culty, in a democratic government, of
moderation of any description, if it once
abandons the policy of laissez faire, and
undertakes to be a providence for the
masses. There is no limit to the human
appetite for unearned or easily earned
money. No class is exempt from it.
Under the old regime, the aristocrats got
all the sinecures, the pensions, and the
light jobs of every description. One of

the results of the triumph of democracy
has been to throw open this source of
gratification to the multitude, and every
attempt made to satisfy the multitude, in
this field, has failed. When the French
opened the national workshops in Paris
in 1848, the government speedily found
that it was likely to have the whole work-
ing class of Paris on its hands ; when we
started our pension list, we found that
peace soon became nearly as expensive
as war ; and when the Australians un-
dertook to develop the country on money
borrowed by the state, there was no re-
straint on their expenditure, except the
inability to find any more lenders. The
Australian financial crisis was brought
about, not by any popular perception that
the day of reckoning was at hand, but by
the refusal of the British capitalists to
make further loans.

Australian experience seems in many
ways to prove the value of our system
of written constitutions, to be construed
and enforced by the courts. The effect
on the minds of ill-informed legislators
of the knowledge that they can do any-
thing for which they can get a majority,
is naturally to beget extravagance and
an overweening sense of power, and lead
to excessive experimentation. The vot-
ers' knowledge that the minister can do
as he pleases has a tendency to increase
the exactions of the extremists of every
party. The Henry George system of
taxation, for instance, could be put into
execution in any Australian colony, at
any moment, by a mere act of the legis-
lature. The right to vote could be given
to women, and has been given in New
Zealand. The state can make any num-
ber of lines of railroad it pleases, pay
for them out of the taxes, and carry poor
men on them free. In fact, it can pro-
mote any scheme, however speculative,
that may take hold of the popular fancy.

It is in devices for the protection of
labor that most of this experimentation
occurs. New Zealand affords the best ex-
ample of it. It provides elaborate legal

332

The Australian Democracy.

protection for the eight-hour day. A
workman cannot consent to work over-
time without extra pay. The state sees
that he gets the extra pay. It looks close-
ly after the condition of women and chil-
dren in the factories. It sees that servant
girls are not overcharged by the registry
offices for getting them places. It pre-
scribes one half-holiday a week for all
persons employed in stores and offices,
and sees that they take it. It will not
allow even a shopkeeper who has no em-
ployees to dispense with his half-holiday ;
because if he does not take it, his com-
petition will injure those who do. The
" labor department " of the government
has an army of inspectors, who keep a
close watch on stores and factories, and
prosecute violations of the law which they
themselves discover. They do not wait
for complaints ; they ferret out infrac-
tions, so that the laborer may not have
to prejudice himself by making charges.
The department publishes a " journal "
once a month, which gives detailed re-
ports of the condition of the labor mar-
ket in all parts of the colony, and of the
prosecutions which have taken place any-
where of employers who have violated the
. law. It provides insurance for old age and
early death, and guarantees every policy.
It gives larger policies for lower premi-
ums than any of the private offices, and
depreciates the private offices in its doc-
uments. It distributes the profits of its
business as bonuses among the policy-
holders, and keeps a separate account for
teetotalers, so that they may get special
advantages from their abstinence. The
"journal" is, in fact, in a certain sense
a labor manual, in which everything per-
taining to the comfort of labor is free-
ly discussed. The poor accommodation
provided for servants in hotels and re-
staurants is deplored, and so is the dif-
ficulty which middle-aged men have in
finding employment. More attention to
the morals and manners of nursemaids
is recommended. All the little dodges
of employers are exposed and punished.

If they keep the factory door fastened,
they are fined. If housekeepers pretend
that their servants are lodgers, and there-
fore not liable to a compulsory half-holi-
day, they are fined. If manufacturers
are caught allowing girls to take their
meals in a workshop, they are fined.

As far as I can make out, too, without
visiting the country, there is as yet no
sign of reaction against this minute pa-
ternal care of the laborer. The tenden-
cy to use the powers of the government
chiefly for the promotion of the comfort
of the working classes, whether in the
matter of land settlement, education, or
employment, seems to undergo no dimi-
nution. The only thing which has ceased,
or slackened, is the borrowing of money
for improvements. The results of this
borrowing have been so disastrous that
the present generation, at least, will hard-
ly try that experiment again. Every
new country possessing a great body of
undeveloped resources, like those of the
North American continent and of Aus-
tralia, must rely largely on foreign cap-
ital for the working of its mines and
the making of its railroads. In this
country all that work has been left to
private enterprise, or, in other words,
to the activity of individuals and corpo-
rations. Apart from some recent land-
grants to railroads and the sale of public
lands at low rates, it may be said that our
government has done nothing whatever
to promote the growth of the national
wealth and population. The battle with
nature, on this continent, has been fought
mainly by individuals. The state in
America has contented itself, from the
earliest times, with supplying education
and security. Down to a very recent
period the American was distinguished
from the men of all other countries for
looking to the government for nothing but
protection to life and property. Tocque-
ville remarked strongly on this, when he
visited the United States in the thirties.
This habit has been a good deal broken up
by the growth of the wage-earning class

The Australian Democracy.

333

since the war, by the greatly increased
reliance 011 the tariff, and by the govern-
ment issue of paper money during the
rebellion. In the eyes of many, these
things have worked a change in the na-
tional character. But we are still a great
distance from the Australian policy. The
development of the country by the state,
in the Australian sense, has only recently
entered into the heads of our labor and
socialist agitators. The American plan
has hitherto been to facilitate private ac-
tivity, to make rising in the world easy
for the energetic individual, and to load
him with praise and influence after he
has risen. This policy has been pursued
so far that, in the opinion of many, the
individual has become too powerful, and
the government too subservient to pri-
vate interests. There are, in fact, few,
if any states in the Union which are not
said to be dominated by rich men or rich
corporations.

This is a not unnatural result of two
things. One is, as I have said, our hav-
ing left the development of the country
almost wholly to private enterprises. It
is individual capitalists who have worked
the mines, made the railroads, invited
the immigrants and lent them money to
improve their farms. The other is the
restrictions which the state constitutions,
and the courts construing them,1 place on
the use of the taxes. There are very
few things the state in America can con-
stitutionally do with its revenue, com-
pared with what European governments
can do. Aids to education are tolerated,
because education is supposed to equip
men more thoroughly for the battle of
life, but the American public shrinks
from any other use of the public funds
for private benefit. We give little or
no help to art, or literature, or charity,
or hospitals. We lend no money. We
issued legal tender paper under many
protests and in a time of great national
trial, have never ceased to regret it, and
shall probably never issue any more. We
are angry when we find that any one en-

joys comforts or luxury at the expense of
the state. We cannot bear sinecures.
But our plunge into pensions since the
war shows that there now exists among us
the same strong tendency to get things
out of the state, and to rely on its bounty,
which prevails in Australia. It is diffi-
cult to resist the conclusion that at pre-
sent we owe a good deal of what remains
of laissez faire in our policy to our con-
stitutions and courts. We owe the con-
stitutions and the courts to the habits
formed in an earlier stage of American
history. It was the bad or good fortune
of the Australian colonies to enter on
political life just as the let-alone policy
was declining under the influence of the
humanitarian feeling which the rise of
the democracy has brought with it every-
where. More constitution than was sup-
plied by the enabling acts of the British
Parliament was never thought of, and
the British Parliament did not think of
imposing any restraints on legislation ex-
cept those which long custom or British
opinion imposed on Parliament itself.

The result is that Australia is abso-
lutely free to democratic experimenta-
tion under extremely favorable circum-
stances. In each colony the state has
apparently existed for the benefit of the
working classes, who must always consti-
tute the majority of the people in every
community, and the masses have been
provided with work and protection, in
complete disregard of European tradi-
tions. The experiment has turned out
pretty well, owing to the abundance of
land, the natural wealth of the country,
and the fineness of the climate. But
each colony is forming its political habits,
and I cannot resist the conclusion that
some of them are habits which are likely
to plague the originators hereafter. For
instance, the task of finding work for the
unemployed, and borrowing money for
the purpose, though this generation has
seen it fail utterly in the first trial, will
probably be resorted to again, with no
more fortunate results. Nor can I be-

334

The Australian Democracy.

lieve that the growing paternalism, the
sedulous care of the business interests
of the masses, will not end by diminish-
ing self-reliance, and increasing depend-
ence on the state.

The worst effects of these two agen-
cies, of course, in a country of such
wonderful resources as Australia, must
be long postponed. There are hindrances
to progress in the direction of pure " col-
lectivism " yet in existence, many pro-
blems to be solved, Old World influences
to be got rid of, before Australia finds
herself perfectly free from the trammels
which the regime of competition still
throws around every modern society.
But so far as I can judge from the ac-
counts of even the most impartial obser-
vers, every tendency which is causing us
anxiety or alarm here is at work there,
without any hindrance from constitu-
tions ; though there is great comfort
among the people, and there is a hope-
fulness which cannot but exist in any new
country with immense areas of vacant
land and a rapidly growing population.

One check to all leveling tendencies
is the extremely strong hold which the
competitive system has taken of the
Anglo-Saxon race. There is no other
race in which there is still so much of
the rude energy of the earlier world, in
which men have such joy in rivalry and
find it so hard to surrender personal ad-
vantages. This renders communal life
of any kind, or any species of enforced
equality, exceedingly difficult. It will
probably endanger the permanence of all
the social experimentation in Australia,
as soon as this experimentation plainly
gives evidence of bestowing special ad-
vantages on the weak, or lazy, or unenter-
prising. There is not in Australia the
same extravagant admiration of wealth
as a sign of success that there is here, but
" there are signs of its coming. The state
has undertaken to do so many things, how-
ever, through which individuals make
fortunes here, that its coming may be
slow. The wealthy Australian, who dis-

likes rude colonial ways, and prefers to
live in England, is already a prominent
figure in London society, and, like the
rich Europeanized American, he is an
object of great reprobation to the plain
Australian, who has not yet " made his
pile " and cannot go abroad. Then there
is a steady growth of national pride,
which is displaying itself in all sorts of
ways, — in literature, art, and above all
athletics, as well as in trade and com-
merce. The development of athletic and
sporting tastes generally is greater than
elsewhere, and competition is the life of
athletics. An athlete is of little account
until he has beaten somebody in some-
thing. " The record " is the record of
superiority of somebody in something
over other people. The "duffer" is
the man who can never win anything.
The climate helps to foster these tastes,
and the abundance of everything makes
the cultivation of them easy ; but they
are tastes which must always make the
sinking of superiority — or, in other
words, any communal system — difficult.
Australia may develop a higher type of
character or better equipment for the
battle of life, and more numerous op-
portunities, but it is hardly likely to de-
velop any new form of society. When
the struggle grows keener, we are not
likely to see a corresponding growth of
state aid.

The very rapidity of the experimen-
tation now going on promises to bring
about illuminating crises earlier there
than here. Probably we shall not get
our currency experience here for many
years to come. Were the Australians en-
gaged in trying our problem, they would
reach a solution in one or two years.
We are likely in the next hundred years
to see a great many new social ventures
tried, something which the wreck of
authority makes almost inevitable ; but
there seems no reason to believe that
the desire of the Anglo-Saxon variety of
human nature to profit by superiority in
any quality will disappear. The cab-

The Australian Democracy.

335

inet system of government is in itself
a strong support to individuality, for
reasons I have already given.

Another steadying influence in Aus-
tralia, perhaps one of the most power-
ful in a democratic community, is the
press. The press, from all I can learn,
is still serious, able, and influential. It
gives very large space to athletics and
similar amusements, but seems to have
retained a high and potent position in
the discussions of the day. The love of
triviality which has descended on the
American press like a flood, since the
war, has apparently passed by that of
Australia. Why this should be I con-
fess I have not been able to discover, and
can hardly conjecture. If we judge by
what has happened in America, it would
be easy to conclude that the press in
all democracies is sure to become some-
what puerile, easily occupied with small
things, and prone to flippant treatment
of great subjects. This is true of the
French press, in a way ; but in that case
something of the tendency may be as-
cribed to temperament, and something
to want of practice in self-government.
I cannot see any signs of it in the coun-
try press in England. That, so far as
I have been able to observe, continues
grave, decorous, and mature. There is
nothing of the boyish spirit in it which
pervades much of our journalism. The
weight which still attaches to the tastes
and opinions of an educated upper class
may account for this in some degree, but
the fact is that Australian journals have
preserved these very characteristics, al-
though the beginnings of Australian jour-
nalism were as bad as possible. Its ear-
liest editing was done by ex-convicts,
and the journals which these men set on
foot were very like those that have the
worst reputation among us for venality
and triviality. Strange to say, the com-
munity did not sit down under them.
There was an immediate rising against
this sort of editors in New South Wales.
Their control of leading newspapers was

treated as a scandal too great to be borne,
and they were driven out of the profes-
sion. The newspapers then passed large-
ly into the hands of young university
men who had come out from England to
seek their fortunes ; they gave journal-
ism a tone which has lasted till now.
The opinions of the press still count in
politics. It can still discredit or over-
throw a ministry, because the duration
of a ministry depends on the opinion of
the legislature, and that, in turn, depends
on the opinion of the public. There can
be no defiant boss, indifferent to what
the public thinks, provided he has "got
the delegates." In fact, the Australian
system seems better adapted to the main-
tenance of really independent and influ-
ential journals than ours. The fixed
terms of executive officers and the boss
system of nomination are almost fatal to
newspaper power. So long as results
cannot be achieved quickly, the influence
of the press must be feeble.

Of course, in speaking of a country
which one does not know personally,
one must speak very cautiously. All
impressions one gets from books need
correction by actual observation, particu-
larly in the case of a country in which
changes are so rapid as in Australia.
Of this rapidity every traveler and wri-
ter I have consulted makes mention,
and every traveler soon finds his book
out of date. Sir Charles Dilke visited
Australia about 1870, but writing in
1890 he dwells on the enormous differ-
ences of every kind which twenty years
had brought about. The latest work on
Australia, Mr. Walker's Australasian
Democracy, gives as an illustration of
this transientness of everything the fact
that the three colonies of New South
Wales, South Australia, and Victoria
have had respectively twenty-eight, for-
ty-two, and twenty-six ministries in for-
ty years. One can readily imagine how
many changes of policy on all sorts of
subjects, and how many changes of men,
these figures represent. All travelers,

336

The Social and Domestic Life of Japan.

too, bear testimony to the optimism of
the people in every colony. Nothing is
more depressing in a new country than
officialism, or management of public af-
fairs by irresponsible rulers. From this
the Anglo-Saxons have always enjoyed
freedom in their new countries. The
result has always been free play for
individual energy and initiative ; and
with boundless resources, as in America
and Australia, these qualities are sure to
bring cheerfulness of temperament. The
mass of men are better off each year,

NOTE. As I have endeavored to give in this
article impressions rather than facts, I have
not thought it worth while to cite authorities
for all my statements. I will simply say that I
have formed these impressions frbm perusal of
the following works : The Australian Colonies
in 1896, E. A. Petherick, 1897 ; New Zealand
Rulers and Statesmen, 1840-97, William Gis-
borne ; Oceana, J. A. Froude, 1886 ; Queensland,
Rev. John D. Lang, D. D., 1864 ; The Coming
Commonwealth, R. R. Garlan, 1897 ; The Aus-

mistakes are not serious, mutual help-
fulness is the leading note of the com-
munity, nobody is looked down on by
anybody, and public opinion is all power-
ful. In Australia there is more reason
for this, as yet, than with us. The Aus-
tralians are not tormented by a race
question, they have never had any civil
strife, and they have not yet come into
contact with that greatest difficulty of
large democracies, the difficulty of com-
municating to the mass common ideas
and impulses.

E. L. Godkin.

tralians, Francis Adams, 1893 ; The Land of
Gold, Julius M. Price, 1896 ; New Zealand Offi-
cial Year Book, 1897; Reports of Department
of Labor, 1893-97 ; Journal of 1897 ; Problems
of Greater Britain, Sir Charles Dilke, 1890;
Historical and Statistical Account of New
South Wales, Dr. Lang, 1875 ; Thirty Years
of Colonial Government, Sir G. F. Bowen,
1889 ; Australian Democracy, Henry de R.
Walker, 1897 ; History of New Zealand, G. W.
Rusden, 1891 ; Western Australian Blue Book.

THE SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC LIFE OF JAPAN.

To a Japanese who to-day, after a
lapse of many years, revisits the United
States, nothing can be more amazing, as
well as gratifying, than the intense inter-
est which Americans take in his country.
It is not only the educated and thought-
ful who have come to appreciate the
deeper thought and peculiar genius of
the Sunrise Land, but the whole mass
of people seems to have become alive to
that friendly and almost romantic feel-
ing which has existed between the two
countries since (and probably because of)
the first opening of Japan by Commodore
Perry. One cannot help contrasting the
questions now asked with those that used
to be put to him in the early seventies,
and that revealed somewhat muddled
ideas in regard to the countries of the

Far East. It is found that in at least
one department of art — the decorative
— Japan has affected the Occident quite
as much as the Occident has influenced
Japan in various aspects of modern life.
Under these circumstances, a native of
Japan finds it a great pleasure to tell the
American reader what he can about his
own country. The following notes on
the social life of Japan were put together
as likely to answer best the questions that
were asked me most frequently, and
are taken from certain lectures which I
had the honor of delivering before the
Lowell Institute in Boston. If in any
way, however slight, they may help to
promote a better understanding of my
country, I shall feel that my task has
not been in vain.

The Social and Domestic Life of Japan.

337

The empire of Japan, I need hardly
say, consists of a chain of islands which
form the hulwark of the Asiatic conti-
nent in the Pacific Ocean. It is divided
from the continent by three comparative-
ly shallow seas, Okhotsk, Japan, and East
China, while toward the ocean the sea
deepens very rapidly to abyssal depths
within a short distance of Japan ; the
famous Tuscarora ground, the deepest
part of any ocean known until recently,
lying off the northern coast. The chain
begins with Shimshu, the first island
south of Kamtschatka, and extending
through the Kuriles expands into the
large island of Yezo, or Hokkaido. Then
comes the main island of Japan, which
has no special name, although the name
Honshu, or " Main Island," has frequent-
ly been applied to it lately. South of
the main island are two large islands,
Kyushu, or Kiusiu, and Shikoku. From
the southern extremity of Kyushu the
chain goes through a series of small
islands, the Ryukyu, or Loo Choo group,
and finally ends with the recently add-
ed Formosa and its dependent islands.
There is a branch to this main chain,
starting from the middle part of Hon-
shu, and extending to Bonin, or Ogasa-
wara, and Sulphur Islands.

The most northern point of the em-
pire is at about 51° N. Lat., and the most
southern at about 21° N. Lat. In other
words, the country stretches from the
latitude of Newfoundland or Vancouver
to that of Cuba or Yucatan. As a nat-
ural result of this range in latitude there
are all sorts of climate, from the sub-
arctic to the tropical.

The area of the whole empire is, in
round numbers, 161,000 square miles, a
little less than the New England and Mid-
dle States combined, or 40,000 square
miles larger than England. Scotland,
Ireland, and Wales.

Through the entire chain of islands
there extends a series of mountain ranges.
In fact, smaller islands are nothing but
the tops of peaks which arise from the

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 485. 22

bottom of the sea. Among them there
are many volcanoes, extinct and active.
Fujiyama is the most famous of these,
as everybody knows. From the very
nature of the country it is subject to
numerous earthquakes ; destructive ones,
killing thousands in a few minutes, not
having been infrequent. Rivers descend,
for the most part, very rapidly from the
mountains to the sea. At ordinary times
their wide and shallow beds are almost
dry, but heavy rainfalls soon transform
them into wild torrents, often causing
disastrous floods and much loss of life
and property.

These catastrophes, frightful as they
are, are not an unmixed evil. As Mr.
Knapp well points out, earthquakes make
tenement-houses, with their accompany-
ing miseries, impossible in large cities.
Still more important, perhaps, is the ef-
fect of these natural calamities on the
national character. There is, it seems
to me, hardly any question that they —
along with other influences, of course —
have helped to develop alertness, reso-
luteness, and fortitude in the presence
of an appalling danger or a dire mis-
fortune. A certain amount of fatalism
is also partly due to the same cause.

Another influence which environment
has exerted on the national character has
been the development of the love of
nature and the sense of the beautiful.
Charming mountain scenery and the ex-
quisite blending of mountain and sea
which one meets everywhere cannot fail
to cultivate the aesthetic sense of the peo-
ple. I have seen common workmen lost
in admiration of some incomparable view
of Fujiyama. It is hard to overestimate
the effect of this appreciation of nature
on the artistic and poetical life.

The island empire, whose geographical
position we have briefly sketched, has
forty-two million inhabitants. With the
exception of Formosa and the islands in
the extreme north, the population is as
homogeneous as it can be. Scientific

338

The Social and Domestic Life of Japan.

men claim that they can discover dif-
ferent types, and there is no doubt that
there are such ; but they are visible only
to keen and trained observation. The
whole nation is kin and kith, with the
same language, the same history and tra-
ditions, and the same ideals. Although
the Japanese have unquestionably de-
rived their inspiration from East Indi-
an and Chinese sources, yet by centu-
ries of isolation they have developed a
form of civilization which I venture to
affirm is in many respects as elaborate
and advanced as the Occidental, and yet
withal unique. It is only when Japan
is looked at in this light, as the repre-
sentative of a civilization different from
the Aryan, that she becomes interesting.
Thoughtless travelers are often disap-
pointed in Japan, because they have not
grasped this fact. Some of them look
on her as something amusing and gro-
tesque, not to be taken seriously. Oth-
ers apply the same standard in Japan
that they would in Europe and Amer-
ica. People in the United States have
said to me, " Your country has made
great progress lately : you will soon catch
up with us." To my mind, it is very
doubtful if we ever " catch up." The
Aryan and Japanese civilizations are in
different paths, and although they will
certainly exert mutual influence and ap-
proach each other more nearly as time
goes on, I feel assured that the history
of the centuries behind each civilization
will not enable the two ever to become
identical.

To the right understanding of any
social organization it is essential that
something of its past should be known.
I regret exceedingly that space does not
allow me to give a brief summary of the
history of Japan. Fortunately, however,
there are works within the easy reach
of everybody that will give a fair idea of
how out of mythological clouds the first
Emperor, Jimmu, appears ; how the dy-
nasty which he established has come
down to the present day ; how Japan

early attained a high state of civiliza-
tion ; how, more than a thousand years
ago, arts and literature flourished ; how
the government by shoguns gradually
arose, toward the end of the twelfth
century ; how that form of government
passed from one family to another ; how
it finally came into the hands of the To-
kugawas ; how that family secured to the
country a peace lasting over two hundred
and fifty years ; how an elaborate sys-
tem of feudalism was developed, and arts
and learning flourished ; how the Toku-
gawas' power came to an end in 1868
with the restoration of the Emperor to
full authority ; and finally, how this re-
storation has made possible all the recent
marvelous changes which have astonished
the world. I should, however, like to em-
phasize here one fact which should never
be lost sight of, in giving any account
of Japanese society. I think all Jap-
anese will agree in the statement that
the most precious heritage of our coun-
try from the past is the imperial dynasty.
Japan has never known any other rule
from time immemorial, the present Em-
peror being the one hundred and twenty-
first in the line of succession. Only
once in the long history of twenty-five
hundred years has a rebel been bold
enough to try to usurp the throne. If
there is any one thing well fixed in
Japan, it is that the Emperor is the only
natural and legitimate ruler of the coun-
try ; in the Japanese mind it amounts al-
most to a law of nature. Reverence paid
to the Emperor and the imperial family
is something which one not brought up
to it will find hard to realize. For my
own part, I have no hesitation in say-
ing that this feeling of love and loyalty
to the imperial dynasty is one of the
greatest blessings we have in Japan. It
is the keystone of the arch of the whole
social structure ; it gives stability to the
entire organization. So long as this feel-
ing lasts, anarchy is impossible. This
reverence has greatly increased within
the last decade, — since the promulgation

The Social and Domestic Life of Japan.

339

of the constitution in 1889. Yet this
has been a time of tremendous change.
Old institutions have been transformed,
new ones have been created, and there
has proceeded a development of popular
opinion so swift and radical as to be al-
most revolutionary.

Briefly speaking, the country, which
not many years ago was divided up into
about two hundred and fifty practically
independent daimiates, or principali-
ties, regarding one another with more or
less jealousy, has been transformed, in
the course of thirty years, into a thor-
oughly modern nation with a homoge-
neous population, looking back to and
proud of the same historical traditions,
and united and ready to face the world
under the government of a gracious sov-
ereign descended from an ancient dynas-
ty revered as heaven-sent. During this
transformation, Eui'opean and American
ideas and institutions were introduced
in such a wholesale way that at one time
it almost seemed as if old Japan would
be " civilized " off the face of the earth.
But now, if one looks below the surface,
one is surprised to find how Japan in her
innermost life has retained much that was
precious in her old self. In olden times,
when Buddhistic and Chinese ideas were
introduced, Japan digested them and
added to them in her own way. After
thirty years of apparently blind and in-
discriminate absorption of Occidental
ideas, Japan feels that she has assimi-
lated them well enough to be able to di-
vide the chaff from the grain ; and while
constantly increasing her knowledge from
outside, she will now, no doubt, develop
more in accordance with her peculiar ge-
nius, and not endeavor to follow blindly
a standard foreign to herself.

These things are not unfamiliar ; but
it is not of the exotic introductions that
I wish to treat ; I would rather speak
of the original Japanese type and form
of civilization, which is so attractive to
the American reader.

In Japan, individualism is not devel-
oped to the degree attained in this coun-
try. The family forms the unit of soci-
ety. In general the occupation of each
family is hereditary. Of course it is
natural that in the case of merchants and
farmers the son should follow the father's
business ; but the same thing happens in
regard to professional men, artists, and
artisans. Certain families are always
known as those of physicians. The fa-
mous actor Danjuro is the ninth of the
same name in his family. Every art
collector knows how f amilies of painters,
sword-makers, metal-workers, lacquer-
artists, etc., have distinguished them-
selves. Certain families of court musi-
cians have been in the profession for
about a thousand years. Even in such
a comparatively trifling matter as that
of cormorant-fishing in the Nagara Riv-
er, the occupation has been handed down
from father to son for generations. It
often happens that a child has no natural
talent or bent for the hereditary occupa-
tion. In such cases, the child may adopt
another profession or trade more conge-
nial to him ; but the head of the family
will try to find some young person to
transmit his calling to, training him in it,
and adopting him into the family, gen-
erally by marriage with a member of it.
It is, for instance, a point discussed with
considerable seriousness in some social
circles, what Danjuro is going to do about
a successor. He has no male child, but
it is out of the question that he should
let the great name which he bears die
with him. He will probably adopt some
youth ; but at the query who among the
young actors has talent enough, knowing
ones shake their heads. The rigor of
this hereditary transmission of occupa-
tion is much relaxed at the present
time, especially in the capital, but the
custom has still a very strong sway.
One good result of this usage is that the
occupation handed down from a line of
ancestors is something sacred to each
descendant, and not only the head, but

340

The Social and Domestic Life of Japan.

every member must devote his or her
energy to see that there is no deterio-
ration. The head of the family not
only does his best in his own work, but
strains every nerve to train his children
as worthy successors. Every little knack
of the profession or the trade is careful-
ly handed down, so that the accumulated
experience of generations is not lost. In
case of artists and artisans, designs and
drawings made by great ancestors are
set before each generation to study. It
seems to me that the unsurpassed beauty
of Japanese art works owes its origin
largely to this custom.

The fact that the family is the social
unit is seen in other circumstances.
Among the larger farmers and mer-
chants, in many instances, the head of a
family always bears the same name that
his predecessor did. As each person
succeeds to the dignity he changes his
youthful name. In respect to long-es-
tablished business firms, it is easy to see
what advantages there are in this. In
some especially wealthy houses of the
same classes there are family constitu-
tions, so to speak, which are calculated to
protect the common interests as against
spendthrift habits or rash deeds of the
occupant of the headship at any given
time.

The hereditary transmission of the oc-
cupation of professional men would do
no harm, and would work only good ; for
if any unworthy person appeared as the
representative of a family, the family
would simply drop out as the result of
natural selection, and no harm would be
done. But hereditary holders of po-
litical offices, supported by the great
power of a government behind them,
would soon drag the country down. For-
tunately for Japan, this form of heredi-
tary occupation is completely broken.
There is now no reason whatever why
the humblest cannot rise to the highest
office, if only he has merit.

I need hardly repeat that, with this
idea of the family, primogeniture prevails

largely in Japan. But with the rights of
the first-born go also heavy responsibili-
ties ; for headship carries with it the duty
of seeing that younger brothers and other
members are provided for.

The idea of the family as the social
unit also strengthens the bonds among
the relatives. Around the main branch
there gather minor branches, and all
keep together closely and help one an-
other. Let us analyze our feeling in re-
spect to the social unit. Filial piety is one
of the fundamental doctrines on which
Japanese are brought up. This not
only includes our immediate parents and
grandparents, or perhaps great-grand-
parents, with whom we come in personal
contact, but extends to a long line of an-
cestors, with of course diminishing feel-
ing, but with just as much respect. Spe-
cial reverence is paid to that ancestor
who is regarded as the founder of the
family. Not only is the genealogy kept
carefully, but the names of ancestors are
inscribed on tablets and preserved in
the most sacred place in the whole house-
hold, namely, the family shrine ; and
the anniversaries of their death are ob-
served with religious ceremonies at the
house and at the graves. In the case of
parents, love would naturally prompt the
performance of these offices, as does a
sense of reverence for remoter ancestors.
Wisely or foolishly, reasonably or un-
reasonably, there is a feeling in every
Japanese that he is lacking in filial piety
if he does not see to it that these obser-
vances are kept up, even after his death.
For that, the continuance of his family
as such is a necessity. Aside from the
natural love of parents for children, this
partly accounts for the important position
which children occupy among the Jap-
anese, and for a certain deference with
which they are treated. They represent
future generations. When there are no
children, adoption becomes a necessity,
from this point of view.

The desire of making the family a per-
manent institution has at bottom, it seems

The Social and Domestic Life of Japan.

341

to me, that universal longing for immor-
tality implanted in the human breast.
It is not only that a Japanese would
wish to have himself remembered after
he is gone, but he deems it a part of his
duty to see that the memory of those
who have gone before him shall be kept
green. Thus the idea of the family as
a social unit is kept up by two factors,
filial piety and the longing for immortal-
ity. Lafcadio Hearn, in one of his beau-
tiful essays, A Wish Fulfilled, shows this
phase of the Japanese thought.

An average Japanese family of the
respectable middle class consists of the
head, or master, and his wife, some years
younger ; and one or both of the par-
ents of the master, if living. These are
known as the go-inkyo sama (Honorable
Mr. or Mrs. Retired Person). They
are generally assigned a special wing or
room in the house, and in better families
usually take their meals by themselves.
Then there are, or must be, children. No
family can be complete without them.
They are the life and cheer of the whole
circle. Of course there are servants :
two would be considered a rather small
number, five or six a rather large one.

In almost every middle-class house
there is a room or rooms where students
live, in more or less close proximity to
the front entrance, or genkan. These
students are considered almost essential.
If you call at a Japanese house, very
likely it is one of these who will come
out to admit you. They are in some
cases youths whose parents in the coun-
try are anxious that their sons should
be under the supervision of some reliable
person in the city ; more generally they
are students of slender means, trying to
work their way upward in life. If the
master of the house takes pleasure in
helping young men, as is very often the
case, you will find several of them in his
genkan. They are usually given board
and lodging, and in return for these they
answer the calls at the front entrance,
run on errands that require intelligence,

help children in their lessons, and do
light household work. They are treated
more as equals than as servants. Most
of them attend some school ; and if any
distinguish themselves in after-life, the
family takes pride in them, while they
feel toward the house where they lived
affection and gratitude.

The women of Japan have often been
misunderstood. By those who have
known them they have been pronounced
the best part of Japan. They have been
described as gentle, graceful, beautiful,
and self-sacrificing. Not only in the
gentler virtues, but also in some sterner
aspects of life, the Japanese woman often
has shown what she is made of. The
rigid code of honor among the samurai
class applied equally to women and to
men. The short, sharp dagger which
in former times women of rank carried
concealed in their broad girdles, and
which they were as ready to plunge into
their own hearts as into their enemies',
rather than suffer any dishonor, was but
typical of their determination. In cases
of desperate struggles, have not mothers
and wives killed themselves, that their
sons and husbands might go out to bat-
tle with nothing to draw them back ?
There is a story of an heroic woman of
the olden time, whose husband, an arch-
er, had the grievous fault of not being
able to hold in his arrow until he was
entirely ready, letting it go prematurely.
One day, as the archer was practicing,
trying hard to remedy his shortcoming,
his determined wife, with their precious
child in her arms, stood up directly in
front of his arrow, and forced him to
hold it in. This man lived to be a fa-
mous archer. Fortunately, in our days
there is no occasion for the exercise of
these sterner virtues ; but they exist. If
the country shall ever be in danger, the
women will be found as determined as
the men.

Any one who speaks against the pu-
rity of the Japanese woman knows not
whereof he talks, or is a vile slanderer

342

The Social and Domestic Life of Japan.

who would deprive woman of what is
most precious to her. As the mistress of
the family, she has as much real authority
in the household as her Western sister.
As a mother, she is paid great deference
by her children. In society, a lady is
always treated with respect. There are,
without question, some regards in which
changes are desirable, but, on the whole,
I have no hesitation in saying that the
position of woman in Japan is a very
high one.

The aim. or ideal set before the Jap-
anese, especially of the middle samurai
class, is that their family life should be
simple and frugal. There are several
reasons why this ideal should become
emphasized in the Japanese life. Ac-
cording to the stern code of honor which
governed the conduct of the samurai in
feudal times, the gain of money was to
be looked down on, and this feeling was
carried so far that the merchant class
was placed lowest of all. Wealth was
out of the question with the samurai,
the highest class. The mere fact that a
samurai was rich betokened that some-
thing was wrong with him. " To be as
poor as if he had been washed clean "
was one of the good things that could
be said of a samurai. From the very
necessity of the case the samurai had to
lead a plain and frugal life. Yet they
were all men of culture, and we thus
had refinement combined with simpli-
city. All this was strictly true of a
time within the memory of men not very
far advanced in life, and many of these
notions hold sway to-day. Of course, I
do not pretend to say that money-get-
ting is not at the present time one of
the strong incentives to enterprise and
work, but all those rigorous ideas of old
tend to make life in contemporary Japan
simple. It is considered not well for a
man to give himself up to luxuries, even
if he can afford them. It is not the
question of affording that decides the
matter. There is a certain limit in the
style of living, beyond which a man,

however wealthy, should not go. In
olden times there were daimyos, noted
for their wisdom, who, while not spar-
ing in obtaining the very best they could
obtain of swords and other weapons, or
in giving education to their retainers, or
for other purposes of state, themselves
led an almost ascetic life, and the teach-
ings of those men are not forgotten to-
day. Some of the most delightful men
one meets in Japan are those who take
poverty as a matter of course, and de-
vote their lives to some scholarly pursuit.
You will find that, in spite of the bare-
ness of their houses, these men often
possess a precious library such as only
a scholar can bring together. " What !
Bend my knees to money or for money ? "
I have heard a man of this class say.
" No, thank you. This life of independ-
ence is enough for me."

Even in very well to do families, espe-
cially of the samurai class, children are
made to live a rigorous life, and par-
ents, to keep them company, often deny
themselves many little luxuries which
they can well afford. Young people —
boys in particular — are made to dress
in clothes of coarse stuff. Their com-
panions would laugh at them if they
decked themselves out in fine clothes.
They are made to face cold and heat in
short, scanty apparel. They are made
to take pedestrian journeys to famous
mountains or historical spots. On such
occasions they wear' the plebeian straw
sandals, always put up at inns of mod-
est pretensions, and the more hardships
they undergo, the better. They are made
to, and prefer to, ride third-class on the
railway, until their own merit entitles
them to a better place. I may add that
their mothers and sisters are often in
the first-class compartments on the same
train. I have known the sons of wealthy
families to go to foreign countries in the
steerage, from the feeling that young
men should taste the hardships of the
world.

Another social force tending to the

The Social and Domestic Life of Japan.

343

simplicity of life is the love people have
of being furyu. I can think of no ex-
act equivalent of this adjective in Eng-
lish. It may, perhaps, be defined as
aesthetic Bohemianism combined with a
strong love of nature, though that con-
veys only a faint idea. It is one of
those things which every one feels, but
cannot define. In an intense form it is
a cult, but its spirit pervades all society.
It probably arises in Buddhism. That
religion teaches us : " All is vanity ;
everything is void in this world ; only the
soul is great." " What is wealth, rank,
and power ? Why should men struggle
after that which is nothing ? Rather,
let us polish our souls and study the
beautiful," say men of this cult. It
is Bohemian in that there is an impa-
tience of the every-day conventional life.
It is aesthetic in that the sense of the
beautiful is assiduously cultivated. The
works of art are enjoyed, but nature
itself, the moon, stars, seas, mountains,
flowers, are the things sought after.
" Iza saraba yukimi ni korobu tokoro
made ! " (Let us now pursue this beau-
tiful snow scene until we perchance fall
down !) cries one of these men in a
famous hokku, or poem in seventeen
syllables. It brings out well a certain
abandon with which the beautiful is
wooed. This cult is impatient of all
vulgarities, whether of wealth or of pov-
erty. It has developed a standard of
simple refinement and taste. There can
be no doubt that it has had the greatest
influence on the life of Japan on the
artistic and aesthetic side. It has made
life simple and yet elegant ; it has af-
fected poetry ; it has permeated all artis-
tic works ; it has made its influence felt
on architecture ; it has developed a cer-
tain ease in social intercourse. So-called
tea-ceremonies and the art of floral ar-
rangements are phases of this culture.

Thus the rigorous ideas of the samu-
rai traditions and the aesthetic Bohemi-
anism of the furyu cult, working from
different directions, have acted like the

social parallelogram of forces, having for
its resultant Japanese society, which peo-
ple of other nations tell us is unique and
interesting to an unusual degree.

I should like to say here a few words
about the Japanese house. Fortunately,
I need not go into the subject in detail,
for it has been treated with minute ex-
actness by Professor Morse in his work
on Japanese Homes.

The traveler in Japan often speaks
of the entire openness of the houses of
humbler classes, — how the shop is wide-
ly open toward the front, how you can
look through the shop into the living-room
behind, and see the whole family life
from the street. In larger shops there
is not so much exposure, but from the
necessity of the case the front of the
house must be open toward the street.
When we come to the quarters of yashi-
ki, or residences, in Tokyo and other
cities, the state of things is very differ-
ent. A residence is carefully inclosed by
a high board fence, stone or brick walls,
or, in more suburban parts, by hedges,
so that nothing can be seen of the inside
of the house or of the grounds around
it. I have found it hard to make my
countrymen realize the fact that even
the best residences in America look di-
rectly on the street.

Japanese houses are almost universally
built of wood. On the outside they are
sometimes painted black, but as a gen-
eral thing the color of natural wood is
left, with only a coat of tannin. In
cities the roofs are commonly of black
tiles, but they are sometimes of shingles,
especially in suburbs and in the country.

Carefully as these houses are guarded
from outside, there is hardly any con-
cealment within. Not a single room has
a lock and key. Each room can be made
separate by sliding doors, but all can be
thrown open. It is believed in Japan
that members of the same family ought
to have very little to conceal from one
another.

344

The Social and Domestic Life of Japan.

The kitchen, the front entrance, and
the veranda have always wooden floors.
No paint is ever put on any part of the
inside of the houses, but the wooden
floor is wiped with a damp cloth once
or twice a day, so that in course of
time it acquires a beautiful polish, and
looks as if it had been lacquered or var-
nished. In all parts of the house other
than those mentioned, thick mats, or ta-
tami, are placed on the floor. Each of
these is three feet by six, and consists of
a thick straw bed of one or two inches,
over which a mat is spread and sewed
on. The longer edges are generally
hemmed with strips of strong black cloth.
The size of a room is measured by the
number of the tataini which cover its
floor.

These mats must be kept scrupulously
clean, for we sit on them. Small square
cushions are often provided, especially
in the winter time, but are considered
rather as luxuries. Little low tables are
used for writing and reading, but gen-
erally everything is placed directly on
the mats. This manner of living ac-
counts for the absence of chairs, sofas,
etc., which every traveler has noticed,
and also for the fact that shoes and clogs
are always left at the entrance.

Bare as rooms in our houses are thought
to look, they are not without ornaments.
In every parlor there is a recess called
tokonoma, the " bed space," but at the
present day it is very far from what its
name implies. Its plaster wall has usu-
ally a different color from the rest of
the room. At the rear is suspended at
least one kakemono, — hanging picture or
writing. When there are more than one,
they must be interrelated with one an-
other. The kakemonos are frequently
changed. On the slightly raised floor of
the tokonoma there is commonly placed
some precious art work, or a vase with
flowers beautifully arranged. Next to
the tokonoma there is a recess with
shelves, and often with closets closed by
tastefully decorated small sliding doors.

On these shelves are placed generally
one or two works of art. The shelves and
the front pillar of the partition between
the tokonoma and the shelf recess must
be of an extra fine quality of wood.
On the side of the tokonoma removed
from the shelf recess there is usually
an ornamental window. The ceiling of
the parlor is also very carefully made,
and if of wood must be of a fine qual-
ity. There are other ornaments, such as
carved panels, " nail covers," etc. It is
not very difficult to tell, from a glance
at the arrangements in the parlor, what
the circumstances of the family are, and
what tastes the master has.

Japanese houses must not, however, be
taken by themselves. Their relations
with the gardens should be considered.
Our mild climate renders it possible to
open the whole side of a house, so as to
make the garden a part of the dwelling.
There is no feature of our dwellings,
perhaps, more charming than this, espe-
cially when the garden has been taste-
fully laid out, giving a sense of retire-
ment and repose.

To give some idea of Japanese family
life, I cannot do better than describe a
day's doings.

We all know how we are constantly
hearing in our daily life various sounds,
the very familiarity of which makes us
oblivious to them, for the most part, but
the absence of which we feel instantly.
The sounds that are heard at daybreak
in Japan are thoroughly characteristic.
Almost simultaneously with cock - crow-
ing and the plaintive cries of numerous
crows that go out to feed during the day
is heard the opening of skylights in the
kitchens. If by chance one happen to
be up at this time of day, he soon sees
smoke begin to rise from those skylights,
as the kitchen fires are lighted. The
sounds of the well-wheels are heard, as
water is drawn. The preparations for
breakfast are evidently going on in the
kitchen. Then follows the sound of the

The Social and Domestic Life of Japan.

345

opening of the rain-doors that have shut
in the house during the night. Then is
heard the sound of dusting paper sliding
doors which shut the rooms from the
veranda. The duster is made of strips
of paper or cloth tied to a small bamboo
pole, and when a door is struck with it,
the paper tightly stretched over the door
frame acts almost like a sounding-board.
You would think that people could hard-
ly sleep through all these noises, but they
get accustomed to them easily enough.
When one wakes up, after these prepara-
tions are made, one hears first the cheer-
ful chirping of sparrows, and very often,
in mild days, the beautiful song of the
uguisu, or Japanese nightingale. Many
take pleasure in roaming about the gar-
den a little while in the morning before
breakfast, tending plants, perhaps water-
ing some favorite flowers, or snipping a
branch or two off some shrub to mend
its shape. This does not imply neces-
sarily a large garden. A space ten feet
square may be made a source of great
enjoyment to a man of taste.

After breakfast the older children go
to school, and the master of the house
goes to his business or office. The mis-
tress of the family is thus generally left
alone, but she also has plenty of duties
to perform. If there are old people in
the family, the parents of the master,
she usually sees them and looks after
their comforts. Children also take up a
great deal of her time. In Japan ladies
never go to market. Tradespeople come
to the house. The fish-dealer brings his
stock, and if any is bought he prepares
it for cooking. The greengrocer, the
sake - dealer, and nowadays the meat-
man come one after another. There is
much sewing to be done, also, for both
men's and women's clothes, except the
very best, are almost always made at
home, and they are made over every
year. I fear that my knowledge of this
department of household activities is ra-
ther limited, but I imagine that there
has to be a great deal of planning, cut-

ting, and basting, to make things go well
and economically. In the morning, you
will often find ladies in the character-
istic occupation of doing harimono ; that
is, of starching old pieces of cloth and
spreading them on large oblong boards
(harimono-ita) in order to let them dry
in the sun. It is the first process in the
making over of old clothes. All this is
done in the open air, and gives ladies an
hour or so of outdoor occupation.

The noonday meal was the meal of
the day in old times, but it is getting to
be only a light one in Tokyo, as many
of the family are apt to be away.

It is generally in the afternoon that
ladies go out, if they are inclined to do
so. They may go to see relatives or
to make calls on friends. One or more
of their children may often accompany
them. I think it shows the respect in
which ladies are held that the jinri-
kishas in which they are carried are
usually beautiful. While a man would
not care much about the appearance of
his vehicle, and often rides in a dilapi-
dated hired hack, the carriage which his
wife uses is likely to be very neat. All
private jinrikishas nowadays are painted
in the beautiful shining black lacquer,
with no ornament but the family crest
on the back. The drawer of the jinri-
kisha for a lady is also dressed in the ap-
proved style, and must be a steady man.

By four or five in the afternoon,
things that have been spread about the
house, children's toys, sewing, etc., are
put away in their places. The house is
again swept very carefully, and the ve-
randa is wiped once more with a damp
cloth. Soon all the members of the fam-
ily come home. If it is summer time,
they indulge in a bath to wash off the
sweat and dust of the day, and get
into cool and easy starched clothes. The
evening meal is taken comparatively
early, — at or a little before dusk, the
year through. A small table about a
foot square and eight inches high is set
before each person. There is space for

346

The Social and Domestic Life of Japan.

four or five dishes or bowls, only four
or five inches in diameter. There are
definite places for all kinds of food.
Thus, the bowl for rice is always on
the left, nearest to the person, and soup
next to it on the same side, and so forth.
Rice, boiled in such a way that every
grain is separate, is the great staple of
food. It is taken plain, without the ad-
dition of anything. When I tell people
in Japan that rice is taken with milk
and sugar in America, what dismay it
causes ! At a meal, there is a maid with
a box full of rice by her, ready to
replenish one's bowl. The strength of
one's appetite is measured by the num-
ber of bowlfuls of rice he eats. When
the maid receives a bowl from any one,
she looks into the bottom of it, and if
she sees any grains of rice left, she
knows that more is wanted. If the bowl
is entirely empty, it signifies that the
person is through, and she pours some
tea. Fish and vegetables are also taken
largely, and nowadays meat is sometimes
used.

When night comes, beds are prepared.
Bedding is brought out from the closets
where it has been put away during the
day. One or two large thick futons, or
cushions, are laid directly on the mats
of bedrooms, and coverings which look
like enormous kimono or clothes are
spread over them. Every traveler has
told of the pillow made of a wooden box
with a little cylindrical cushion on the
top, but this kind of pillow is going out
of fashion. Softer cylindrical pillows,
made by stuffing a cloth bag with husks
of buckwheat, are now more commonly
used. In the summer it is necessary to
have mosquito nets, which generally in-
close the whole room.

A great institution of a Japanese fam-
ily is the hibachi, or fire-box. It may
have been in the family for a number of
years ; or, if a young couple has started
in a new house, the hibachi is given by
the parents or elderly relatives, or by
some friends who have had care of the

young people more or less. It is large
in size, and has the inside covered with
copper which is always kept bright. It
is filled with wood or straw ashes up to
within two or three inches of the top,
and in one particular spot in it there
is a charcoal fire. All through the day
the water is kept hot over it in an iron
kettle, ready for use in making tea at
any time. In winter nights the hibachi
is apt to be the centre of the family life.
The master sits generally on one side
of it, the side on which its little drawers
do not open, and the mistress of the
house on the other side. Children and
other members of the family sit near,
usually making a circle with the lamp in
the centre. Cheerful conversation with
much laughter is likely to go around
such a family circle.

As a rule, Japanese families retire
early. Ten o'clock is about the aver-
age time. Eleven is considered late. A
function that begins at nine or ten and
lasts till the small hours of the morning
fairly staggers the Japanese. " Why,"
they say, " even ghosts, who are comme
ilfaut, retire by that hour/'

In Japan, outside of the diplomatic
corps, and a small circle of high officials
who have more or less to do with the
diplomatic corps, there is hardly any-
thing of what is called " society." Balls,
receptions, dances, afternoon teas, etc.,
are practically unknown. The code of
etiquette which governs these functions
and the system of formal calling in the
Occident is as amazing to us, perhaps, as
our tea-ceremonies are to the American.
The lack of these functions does not
mean, however, that there is not much
genuine hospitality among us. Friends
come and go when they please. With
ladies in Tokyo there is a great deal of
calling on one another, especially soon
after New Year's. When a visitor calls
at the house, he is shown to the parlor,
and a hibachi in the winter time, or a
small box for lighting tobacco pipes in

The Social and Domestic Life of Japan.

347

the summer time, is taken in. Then fol-
low a cup of tea and a bowl of cakes or
sweetmeats. After the host or hostess
appears, a tea-tray with cups, hot water,
tea, etc., is brought in, and either the
host or the maid makes tea and hands
it to the guest. If the hostess is present,
she ordinarily undertakes the office of
making tea. In case of a lady caller, a
piece of paper folded in a peculiar way
is laid on a tray, and some sweetmeats
or cakes are placed on it for her, as a
lady is not likely to help herself from
the bowl. When she leaves, the cakes
are wrapped up in the paper on which
they have lain, and she is invited to take
them with her ; or if she has come in a
jinrikisha. the package is quietly placed
in it by a maid. Little presents, per-
haps boxes of sweetmeats, are often
given by callers. On occasions of con-
gratulations, a large wooden box is taken
with eggs or the dried flesh of a fish
called bonito, used a great deal as stock
in cooking. All presents are beautifully
done up in one or two sheets of thick
white paper, tied in a certain neat way
with a bunch of small strings, of which
one half is dyed red and the other half
white. Certain characters expressing
good wishes are generally written on the
paper. Presents other than fish are al-
ways accompanied by what is called no-
shi, a piece of parti-colored paper fold-
ed in a peculiar way, holding a piece of
pressed and dried molluscan flesh. In
olden times, all presents were accompa-
nied by fish ; the noshi is the remnant of
that custom, and has come to symbolize
a present. If any one says he sent a
thing with a noshi, it means that he made
a present of it.

Little dinner parties are of frequent
occurrence. On special occasions large
feasts are given. These may be at the
house if it is of sufficient size, and espe-
cially if the host is proud of his parlor
or garden, but quite as often they are at
some approved tea - house, such as the
Maple Club in Tokyo, so well known to

tourists. At such festivities, little square
cushions are placed along the sides of
the room, one for each guest. Between
each pair of guests a hibachi or a tobac-
co-lighter is deposited. The seat of honor
is by the tokonoma of the room. At
feasts, the order of things is slightly dif-
ferent from that of an ordinary meal.
When guests take their seats, a square
tray with a bowl of soup and a tiny cup
is placed before each, but as the num-
ber of dishes increases in the course of
the feast, so that there is not room on
the tray for all of them, some may be
put directly on the mats. Those who
serve at such feasts are always women.
Before anything is touched, waitresses
appear, each with a small porcelain bot-
tle of warmed sake*, — a drink looking
very much like sherry, and brewed from
rice, — and the tiny cup of every guest
is filled. After this, one may begin to
eat. Dishes will continue to be brought
in at intervals, but no dish not empty
will be removed. After a while, if one
stands up, he will look over a sea of
plates, bowls, platters, and cups. A guest
may leave his place, and go to talk and
exchange cups with any friend. The
host exchanges cups with every guest, but
as that involves a great deal of drinking,
a merciful provision is made for those
who cannot endure much. Here and
there are found bowls of water, in which
one washes a cup before handing it to
his friend, and those who cannot drink
much are at liberty to pour off sake" into
them. The hardest drinkers at feasts
are these water-bowls. When any guest
calls for rice, it means that he is through
drinking and wants to finish his feast.
One hears often at such a feast, " Oh,
it is too early for you to take to rice."
If ladies are present, they are usually
ranged together along one side of a room,
and form the decorous gallery. They
are not pressed to drink, and begin their
rice quite early. A lady, unless it is the
hostess, never leaves her seat to go to a
friend. It is gentlemen, always, who

348

The Social and Domestic Life of Japan.

come to her and ask if she will conde-
scend to give them a cup. When a guest
has finished, the dishes which he has not
touched will be put into a wooden box,
and he will usually find this in his jinri-
kisha when he gets home.

During such feasts special entertain-
ments may be given. Often they con-
sist of dancing, but there may be story-
telling, legerdemain, little comedies, or
recitals with the accompaniment of mu-
sic, etc.

As to amusements, they are of many
kinds. The game of " go " is very pop-
ular. It is played on a board much
like a chessboard, but with many more
squares. It is played with black and
white circular pieces, one of superior
skill always taking the white. The game
consists. in capturing as much of the ter-
ritory on the board as one can accord-
ing to certain rules. This game and
chess (much like the European) are per-
haps the most scientific of Japanese
games, and enthusiastic players obtain
degrees in them. There are various
card-plays. One kind called hancwtwase
is often played, although it is in bad
odor, as there is a great deal of gam-
bling with it. European cards also have
been introduced. Perhaps the most pop-
ular game in which young people of
both sexes unite is that which is called
" poem cards." There is a famous se-
lection of a hundred poems which every-
body knows or which are known because
of this game. There are two packs of
one hundred cards each. On one set,
the whole or the first half of the poems
are written ; on the other pack, only the
second half. The latter set is scattered
without any order on the floor. As one
person reads off a poem from the pack
with whole pieces, each player tries to
find the card corresponding to it in the
pack that is scattered on the floor. The
one who gets the largest number wins.
Sometimes two sides are formed, and
the game is played according to a cer-
tain set of rules. When young men

alone engage in it, one sees a scrimmage
on the floor such as is seen on the foot-
ball field in America. This game is
played during the New Year's holidays
only.

There are other forms of amusements.
For men, there are archery, fishing with
lines and with nets, and, of late, shooting.
Ladies — and men too — frequently en-
gage in tea-ceremonials and floral ar-
rangements. I regret that it is not pos-
sible to describe these in detail in such
an article as the present. Young girls
often take lessons in these arts, because
they thus learn etiquette and become
graceful in their deportment. It is quite
characteristic of Japan that there are
several schools in each of these arts.

The theatre is a great institution, and
occupies a larger place in Japanese so-
cial life, I think, than it does in the
American. A performance in Tokyo
generally lasts from eleven in the morn-
ing till seven or eight in the evening, —
about eight hours. If things were or-
dered as in American theatres this would
be intolerable. Nobody could stay in a
seat for that length of time. Around a
Japanese theatre, however, there are
several tea-houses. These often serve as
rendezvous for theatre parties. One
spends the time between the acts in a
tea-house, taking one's ease. Meals are
served there. In fact, it is one's home
during the day, and one goes into the
theatre only when the curtain is about to
rise. Historical plays are probably the
most popular. A day always ends with
a bright, cheerful play, with a great
many beautiful dresses and much grace-
ful dancing. There are no actresses in
Japanese theatres ; occasionally there is
a company of women-players, but in such
a case there are no male actors. It is a
question if a man, however skillful, can
render truthfully a woman's feelings, but
the skill displayed is certainly wonder-
ful.

There are many peculiarities in the
construction of a Japanese playhouse —

The Social and Domestic Life of Japan.

349

such as the revolving stage and the Ao-
na-michi — which will repay the study
of a foreigner. The Japanese theatre
is perhaps the only institution which is
developing in its own way, without much
foreign influence. I advise all travelers
in Japan to visit a good theatre, tak-
ing pains to know something about the
play beforehand. It will give more in-
sight into Japanese life than anything
else. It is, moreover, the only place
where old Japan can be seen, for the
days of feudalism are very faithfully
portrayed in many of the plays.

Wrestling is also a popular amusement.
Wrestlers are enormous, fat giants with
prodigious strength. Two great tourna-
ments, each lasting ten days, are held
annually in Tokyo, one in January and
the other in May. Wrestlers are divided
into two sides, the east and the west, and
lovers of the sport wait eagerly to learn
how the list or order on each side at each
tournament is made out.

The New Year's time is a great festi-
val. Toward the last of the old year,
mats are often changed, or at least well
beaten, and every part of the house un-
dergoes extra cleaning. Every account
must be settled before midnight of De-
cember 31. The frantic effort of the
hard-pressed to make two ends meet in
some way or other is proverbial of the
last day of the year. When the morn-
ing of New Year's day dawns things are
utterly changed. Everybody is at peace
with everybody else. All put on new
clothes. The front of every house is
decked with pine, bamboo, and various
other things symbolic of longevity and
happiness, and the street assumes a fes-
tive appearance. Callers by thousands
are about. It is the season when every-
body has a good time.

Toward the end of March the wea-
ther begins to grow mild, and people be-
gin to think of taking outdoor excursions.

Plum - trees are the first to blossom.
Early in April the great cherry season
comes. This is getting to be more and
more like a carnival. In Tokyo the
trees in the Uyeno Park bloom first,
then those of the Sumida Bank, then
the Asuka-yama, the Koganei, etc. If
one wants to see the crowd, the after-
noon is the best time, but a ride through
the avenues or arches of cherry-trees
early in the morning, before people are
about, is most beautiful and refreshing.
After cherries follow in succession, in
the spring and summer, the peony, wis-
taria, iris, morning glory, and lotus. In
the autumn we have the glorious foliage,
and of course the chrysanthemum. For
each of these there is some special local-
ity, and during the season people take
delight in making excursions.

In conclusion, I should like to recall
a few facts. If I have succeeded in
making my points clear, the reader, I
hope, will see that, on her serious side,
Japan is as much in earnest as any mod-
ern nation can be ; she is straining
every nerve not to be left behind among
the first nations of the world. On her
lighter side she has a refinement of her
own, 'which, although peculiar, is yet of
a high quality. It has been said that
Japan has put on a " thin veneer of civ-
ilization," and is likely to relapse into
savagery or barbarism at any time. Is
that accusation based on anything but
ignorance ? It seems to me that there
is no savagery or barbarism for us to
relapse into. As to going back to the
old state, that is no more possible than
for the United States to go back to the
institution of slavery. In closing, let
me earnestly express the hope that the
good will and friendship which have
ever existed between America and Japan
will keep increasing as time goes on and
as we come to understand each other
better.

K. Mitsukuri.

350

The Battle of the Strong.

THE BATTLE OF THE STRONG.

IX.

AT eight o'clock, Guida and her fel-
low voyagers, bound for the Ecre'hos
rocks, had caught the first ebb of the
tide, and with a fair wind from the south-
west had skirted the south coast, rid-
den lightly over La Roque Platte and
the Bane des Violets, and shaped their
course northeast. Guida kept the helm
all the way, as she had been promised by
Ranulph Delagarde. It was still more
than half-tide when they approached the
rocks, and, with the fair wind, there
should be no difficulty in landing.

No more desolate spot could be ima-
gined. To the left, facing toward Jer-
sey, was a long sand-bank. Between the
rocks and the sand-bank shot up a tall,
lonely shaft of granite, with an evil his-
tory. It had been chosen as the last
refuge of safety for the women and chil-
dren of a shipwrecked vessel, in the be-
lief that high tide would not reach them.
But the wave rose maliciously, foot by
foot, till it drowned their cries forever
in the storm. The sand-bank was called
Ecriviere, and the rock was afterward
known as the Pierre des Femmes. Other
rocks, less prominent, but no less dan-
gerous, flanked it, — the Noir Sabloniere
and the Grande Galere.

To the right of the main island was a
group all reef and shingle, intersected by
treacherous channels ; in calm lapped by
water with the colors of a prism of crys-
tal, in storm beaten by a leaden surf and
flying foam. These isles were known
as the Colombiere, the Grosse Tete, Tas
de Pois, the Marmotiers, and so on, —
each with its retinue of sunken reefs and
needles of granitic gneiss lying low in
menace. Happy the sailor, caught in a
storm and making for the shelter which
the little curves in the island offer, who
escapes a twist of the current, a sweep

of the tide, and the impaling fingers of
the submarine palisades.

What evils had those seafaring Nor-
mans done, what blasphemy made that
ancient littoral of Normandy so cursed,
that the unseen powers dragged down
their land, forest and dune and cliff,
chapel and castle and hovel, and the sea
rose up and covered them ; so that Mont
St. Michel, once buried in the gloom of
a vast wood, stood out bare and staring
upon a lonely coast, the ocean washing
the fields at its feet, where once the cat-
tle on a thousand mielles had grazed ?
All that remained of the outworks of
this northern coast that Caesar knew
were Jersey and this long range of per-
ilous rocks, which from the Ecriviere
bank goes on to the Ecre'hos and to the
Dirouilles ; on to the Paternosters ; on
to Guernsey, Sark, Jethou, Herm ; to
the Casquets and to Alderney on the
north, and south to the Enqueues, the
Minquiers, and the Chausseys, until you
come to the bay of St. Malo and its an-
cient town, where the houses swarm be-
hind the wide walls like bees in a hive,
and you anchor free at the foot of Soli-
dor. If the gods intended that for the
sins his fathers sinned he who went or
came from the Norman or Breton coast
should find hard passage, they have had
their way : who goes at all goes warily
on these coasts.

After Armorica and the Forest of
Scissy had passed, and the time of the
great mourning was gone, the holy men
of the early Church, looking out over the
troubled sea to where Maitre He rose,
marked it for a place of prayer and
penance and refuge from the storms of
war and the follies of the world. So
it came to pass, for the honor of God
and the Virgin Mary, the Abbey of
Val Richer builded a priory there. It
prospered awhile : there the good men

The Battle of the Strong,

351

stayed, burning beacons to warn mari-
ners, and saying masses for the souls of
departed kings and warriors of France
and England ; and there are still the
ruins of the ancient monastery and
chapel, beneath which lie the bones of
the monks of Val Richer in peace be-
side the skeletons of unfortunate gentle-
men of the sea of later centuries, pirates
from France, buccaneers from England,
and smugglers from Jersey, who kept
their trysts in the precincts of the an-
cient chapel.

The brisk air of early autumn made
the blood in Guida's cheeks tingle. Her
eyes were big with light and enjoyment.
Her hair was caught close by a gay cap
of her own knitting, but a little of it es-
caped, making a pretty setting to her
face.

Jean Touzel's boat, the Talmouse,
rode under all her courses, until, as Jean
said, they had put the last lace on her
bonnet. Guida's hands were on the till-
er firmly, doing Jean Touzel's bidding
with an exact promptness. In all they
were five. Beside Guida and Ranulph,
Jean and Jean's wife, there was a young
English clergyman of the parish of St.
Michael's, who had come from England
to fill the place of the rector for a few
months. Word had been brought to
him that a man was dying on the Ecre'-
hos. He had heard that the boat was
going, he had found Jean Touzel, and
here he was, with a biscuit in his hand
and a black-jack of French wine within
easy reach. Not always in secret the
Reverend Lorenzo Dow loved the good
things of this world. His appetite was
large, and if wine was to his band he
drank it ; but then it must in justice be
said that cider or coffee would have done
quite as well, for he loved the mere exer-
cise of drinking, apart from its stimula-
tion.

What struck one most in the young
clergyman's appearance were his outer
guilelessness and the oddness of his face.
His head was rather big for his body ;

he had a large mouth which laughed
easily, a noble forehead, and big, short-
sighted eyes. Without his spectacles he
could scarcely see a foot before him.
He knew French well, but could speak
almost no Jersey patois ; so, in compli-
ment to him, Jean Touzel, Ranulph, and
Guida spoke English. This ability to
speak English was the pride of Jean's
life : he babbled it all the way, and
chiefly about a certain mythical uncle
EUas, who was the text for many ser-
mons.

" Times past," said'he, as they neared
Maitre He, " mon one' 'Lias he knows
dese Ecrdhoses better as all de peoples
of de world — respe" d'la compagnie !
Mon one' 'Lias he was a fine man.
Once when dere is a fight between de
English and de hopping Johnnies," — he
pointed toward France, — " dere is seven
French ship, dere is two English ship —
gentlemen-of-war dey are call. Ah bah !
one of de English ships he is not a gen-
tleman-of-war ; he is what you call go-
on-your-own-hook — privator. But it is
all de same — tres-ba, all right ! What
you t'ink coum to pass ? De big Eng-
lish ship she is hit ver' bad, she is all
break-up. Efin, dat leetle privator he
stan' round on de fighting side of de
gentleman-of-war and take de fire by
her loneliness. Say, den, wherever dere
is troub' mon one' 'Lias he is dere ; he
stan' outside de troub' an' look on —
dat is his hobby ! You call it hombog ?
Oh, nannin-gia ! Suppose two peoples
goes to fight : ah bah ! somebody must
pick up de pieces — dat is mon one'
'Lias ! He have his boat full of hoys-
ters ; so he sit dere all alone an' watch
dat great fight, an' heat de hoyster an'
drink de cider vine. Ah bah ! mon one'
'Lias he is standin' in de door dat day.
Dat is what we say on Jersey : when a
man have some ver' great luck, we say
he stan' bin de door. I t'ink it is from
de Bible or from de helmanac — sacre'
moi, I not know ! ... If I talk too
much, you give me dat black-jack."

352

The Battle of the Strong.

They gave him the black-jack. After
he had drunk and wiped his mouth on
his sleeve, he said : —

" Oh, my good — ma'm'selle, a leetle
more to de wind. Ah, dat is right —
tre"jous ! . . . Dat fight it go like two
bulls on a verge'e — respe' d'la com-
pagnie ! Mon one' 'Lias he have been
to England, he have sing ' God save our
greshus King ; ' so he t'ink a leetle. Ef
he go to de French, likely dey will hang
him. Mon one' 'Lias he is what you
call patreeteesm. He say, 'England,
she is mine — tre'jous ! ' Efin, he sail
straight for de English ships. Dat is
de greates' man, mon one' 'Lias — respe"
d'la compagnie ! He coum on de side
which is not fighting. Ah bah ! he tell
dem dat he save de gentleman-of-war.
He see a hofficier all bloodiness, and he
call hup. ' Es-tu gentiment ? ' he say.
' Gentiment,' say de hofficier ; ' han' you ? '
' Naicely, t'ank you ! ' mon one' 'Lias
he say. ' I will save you,' say mon one'
'Lias, ' I will save de ship of God save
our greshus King ! ' De hofficier wipe de
tears out of his face. ' De King will re-
ward you, man alive,' he say. Mon one'
'Lias he touch his breast and speak out :
' Mon hofficier, my reward is here — tre'-
jous ! I will take you into de Ecre'-
hoses.' ' Coum up and save de King's
ships,' says de hofficier. ' I will take no
reward,' say mon one' 'Lias, ' but, for a
leetle pourboire, you will give me de pri-
vator — eh ? ' ' Milles sacrds ! ' say de
hofficier, ' milles sacra's ! de privator ! '
he say, ver' surprise'. ' Mon doux d'la
vie — I am damned ! ' ' You are damned
trulee, if you do not get into de Ecre'-
hoses,' say mon one' 'Lias — ' a bi'tot,
good-by ! ' he say. De hofficier call
down to him, ' Is dere nosing else you
will take ? ' ' Nannin, do not tempt
me,' say mon one' 'Lias. ' I am not a
gourman'. I will take de privator —
dat is my hobby.' All de time de can-
nons grand dey ' Brou - brou ! Boum-
boum ! ' what you call discomfortable.
Time is de great t'ing, so de hofficier wipe

de tears out of his face again. ' Coum
up,' he say ; ' de privator is yours.'

"Away dey go. You see dat spot
where we coum to land, Ma'm'selle Lan-
dresse — where de shingle look white,
de leetle green grass above ? Dat is
where mon one' 'Lias he bring in de
King's ship and de privator. Gatd'en-
'ale — it is a journee awful ! He twist
to de right, he shape to de left t'rough
de teet' of de rocks — all safe — vera
happee — to dis nice leetle bay of de
Maitre He dey coum. De Frenchies dey
grind deir teet' and spit de fire. But
de English laugh at dem — dey are safe !
' Frien' of my heart,' say de hofficier to
mon one' 'Lias, ' pilot of pilots,' he say,
' in de name of our greshus King I t'ank
you — a bi'tot, good-by ! ' he say. ' Tres-
ba,' mon one' 'Lias he say den, ' I will
go to my privator.' ' You will go to de
shore ! ' say de hofficier. ' You will
wait on de shore till de captain and his
men of de privator coum to you. When
dey coum, de ship is yours — de priva-
tor is for you.' Mon one' 'Lias he is
like a child — he believe. He 'bout ship
and go ashore. Misery me, he sit on
dat rocking-stone which you see tipping
on de wind. But if he wait until de
men of de privator coum to him, he
will wait till we see him sitting dere !
Gache-a-penn, you say patriote ? Mon
one' 'Lias he has de patreeteesm, and
what happen to him ? He save de ship
of de greshus King God save — and dey
eat up his hoysters! He get nosing.
Gad'rabotin — respd d'la compagnie ! —
if dere is a ship of de King to coum to
de Ecre'hoses, and de hofficier say to
me," — he tapped his breast, — " ' Jean
Touzel, take de ships of de King t'rough
de rocks,' ah bah ! I would rememb'
mon one' 'Lias. I would say, ' A bi'tot,
good-by. . . . Slowlee ! Slowlee ! We
are at de place. Bear wid de land !
Steadee ! As you go ! Via ! hitch now,
Maitre Ranulph ! "

The keel of the boat grated on the
shingle.

The Battle of the Strong.

353

The air of the morning, the sailing,
the sport of skillfully utilizing the ele-
ments for one's pleasure, had given Guida
an almost elfish sprightliness of spirits.
Twenty times during Jean's recital she
had laughed gayly, and never sat a laugh
better on anyone's countenance than on
hers. Her teeth were strong, white, and
regular ; in themselves they gave off a
sort of shining mirth. Her lips were
full, but they never parted too widely,
and the upper one curled slightly with
that especial sort of gladness which comes
from enjoying a joke rather better than
your neighbors.

At first the lugubrious wife of the hap-
py Jean was inclined to resent Guida's
gayety as unseemly, for Jean's story
sounded to her as a serious statement
of fact, — which incapacity for humor
probably accounted for Jean's occasion-
al lapses from domestic grace. If Jean
had said that he had met a periwinkle
dancing a hornpipe with an oyster, she
would have muttered heavily, " Think
of that ! " The most she could say to
any one was, " I believe you, ma cou-
zaine." Some time in her life her voice
had dropped into that great well she
called her body, and it came up only
now and then like an echo. There never
was anything quite so fat as she. She
was discovered weeping, one day, on the
veille in her cottage, because she was no
longer able to get her shoulders out of
the window to use the clothes-lines that
stretched to her neighbor's over the way !
If she sat down in your presence, it was
impossible to do aught but speculate as
to whether she could get up alone. She
went abroad on the water a great deal
with Jean. At first the neighbors sug-
gested sinister suspicions as to Jean's in-
tentions, for sea-going with one's own
wife was uncommon among the sailors
of the coast. But at last these dark
suggestions settled down into a belief
that Jean took her chiefly for ballast,
and thereafter she was familiarly called
" femme de ballast."

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 485. 23

What was going on in her mind no
one ever knew. Talking was no virtue,
in her eyes. She was more phlegmatic
than an Indian, more docile than a cow ;
and the tails of the sheep on the town
hill showed no better the quarter of the
wind than the changing color of Aima-
ble's face indicated Jean's coming or
going. For Maitresse Aimable had one
eternal secret, — an unwavering passion
for Jean Touzel. He was probably un-
aware of it. If he patted her on the
back, on a day when the fishing was
extra fine, she breathed so hard with ex-
citement that she had to sit down ; if,
passing her lonely bed of a morning, he
shook her great toe to wake her, she
blushed, turned her face to the wall, and
smiled a placid smile which augured well
for the children who should come about
her door that day. She had no chil-
dren of her own, though the mother was
strong in her, and she kept in a little
glass jar in the coniethe sweets and lico-
rice and Jersey wonders for the " babas,"
as she called them. She was so credu-
lous and simple and matter of fact that
if Jean had told her that she must die on
the spot, she would have said, " Think
of that!" or "Je te crais," and then
died. If in the vague dusk of her brain
the thought glimmered that she was bal-
last for Jean on sea and anchor on land,
she still was content. For twenty years
the massive, straight-limbed Jean had
stood to her for all things since the
heavens and the earth were created.
Once, when she had burnt her hand in
cooking supper for him, his arm had
made a trial of her girth and he had
kissed her. The kiss was nearer her
ear than her lips, but to her mind this
was the most solemn proof of her con-
nubial happiness and Jean's devotion.
She was a Catholic, unlike Jean and
most people of her class in Jersey, and
ever after the night he kissed her she
told an extra bead on her rosary and
said another prayer.

All this was the reason why at first

354

The Battle of the Strong.

she was inclined to resent Guida's gay-
ety of heart. But when she saw that
Maitre Ranulph and the curate and Jean
himself laughed, she settled down in a
grave content which was not broken until
the moment came for her to step upon
the shore.

They had scarcely reached the desert-
ed chapel, where their dinner was to be
cooked by Maitresse Aimable, before
Ranulph bade them note a vessel bear-
ing in their direction.

" She 's not a coasting craft," said
Jean.

" She does n't look like a merchant
vessel," said Maitre Ranulph, examining
her through his telescope. "Why, ,she 's
a war-ship ! " he added.

Jean thought she was not, but Maitre
Ranulph said, " I ought to know, Jean.
Ship - building is my trade, to say no-
thing of the guns. I was n't two years
in the artillery for nothing. See how
low the bowsprit lies, and how high the
poop. She 's bearing* this way. She '11
be the Narcissus."

That was Philip d'Avranche's ship.

Guida's face lighted up, her heart beat
faster. Ranulph turned on his heel.

" Where are you going, Ro ? " Guida
asked, taking a step after him.

" On the other side, to my men and
the wreck," he replied, pointing.

Guida glanced once more toward the
man-o'-war, and then, with mischief in
her eye, turned toward Jean.

" Suppose," she said to him, with hu-
morous suggestion, " suppose that the
frigate should want to come in : of course
you'd remember your one' 'Lias, and
say, ' A bi'tot, good-by ' ! "

An evasive " Ah bah ! " with a shrug
of the shoulders, was the only reply Jean
vouchsafed to make.

In a few minutes they came to the
wreck. Ranulph joined his carpenters,
and the Reverend Lorenzo Dow went
about the Lord's business in the little
lean-to of sail-cloth and ship's lumber
which had been set up within sight and

sound of the toil of Maitre Ranulph' s
men.

When the curate entered the hut the
sick man was in a doze ; he turned his
head from side to side restlessly and
mumbled to himself. The curate sat
down on the ground beside the man, and,
taking from his pocket a book, began
writing in a strange, cramped hand.
This book was his journal. When a
youth he had been a stutterer, and had
taken refuge from talk in writing, and
the habit stayed even when his afflic-
tion grew less. The deeds of every day,
the weather, the wind, the tides, were
recorded, together with sundry medi-
tations and the inner sensations of the
Reverend Lorenzo Dow. The pages
were not large, and brevity of statement
was the journalistic virtue of the rever-
end gentleman. Beyond the keeping of
this record, this unwavering dissipation
of the intelligence, he had no habits,
certainly no precision, no remembrance,
no system : the business of his life end-
ed there. He had quietly vacated two
curacies because there had been bitter
complaints that the records of certain
baptisms, marriages, and burials might
be found only in the checkered journal
of his life, sandwiched between fantastic
meditations and remarks upon the Ru-
bric. The records had been exact enough,
but the system was not canonical, and it
depended too largely upon the personal
ubiquity of the itinerary priest, and the
safety of his journal — and of his life.

While Delagarde was busy at the
wreck, Jean Touzel in watching the ap-
proach of the third-rate war-ship, and
Maitresse Aimable with cooking, the cu-
rate wrote until the sick man woke.

Guida, after the instincts of her na-
ture, had at once sought the highest
point on the rocky islet, and there she
drank in the joy of sight and sound
and feeling. She could see the spire of
Coutances, the lofty sands of Hatain-
ville, even the white houses and the
cliffs of Carteret, and the trawlers busy

The Battle of the Strong.

355

along the shore. She could see — so
perfect was the day — the line which
marked the Minquiers far on the south-
ern horizon, the dark and perfect green
of the Jersey slopes, and the white flags
of foam which beat against the Dirou-
illes and the far-off Paternosters, dis-
solving as they flew, their places taken
by others, succeeding and succeeding, as
a soldier steps into the gap in the line
of battle when a comrade falls. Some-
thing in these rocks and something in
the Paternosters — perhaps their dis-
tance, perhaps their aloofness from all
other rocks — fascinated her. As she
looked at them, something seemed all at
once to chill her, to depress her, — a
premonition, a half-spiritual, half-mate-
rial telegraphy of the inanimate to the
animate : not from off cold rock to beau-
tiful, sentient life, but from out that at-
mosphere which surrounds the inanimate
thing, where the life of man has spent
itself and been dissolved, leaving • — who
can tell what ? — yet something which
speaks, but has no sound.

Guida's eyes were involuntarily held
by the lonely granite islets. She could
not help but think that somehow they
would speak to her if they could. She re-
called now the sensation of pain she had
often experienced when she had looked
into the eyes of dumb animals, because
they seemed to be trying to speak to
her, and were never able. Biribi, her
own dog, would come to her, lifting up
his head and looking with a numb in-
tentness into her face, and she would
say, " What is it, Biribi ? " Sometimes
this thought almost overpowered her :
that a whole dumb creation, thinking,
sentient, nervous beings, were trying to
declare themselves, to speak out of their
knowledge, to man whose tongue had
been loosed, and with all their striving
they might not ! It was to her one great
universal agony. She could not, with a
Jersey up-bringing, escape the supersti-
tion of the place of her birth, but in her
it took a higher form.

Presently, as she looked at the Pater-
nosters, a little shudder of fear passed
through her. Physical fear she had
never felt, not since that day when the
battle raged in the Vier Marchi, and
Philip d'Avranche had saved her from
the destroying scimiter of the Turk.
Now the scene all came back to her in a
flash, as it were, and, for the first time
remembered since the event, she saw the
dark face of the Mussulman, the blue
and white silk of his turban, the black
and white of his waistcoat, the red of
his long robe, and the glint of his up-
lifted sword. She remembered how the
lips of the ruffian had been curled in
upon his teeth like the snarl of a vicious
dog, and then, in contrast, the warmth,
brightness, and bravery on the face of
the lad in blue and gold braid who
struck aside the descending blade and
caught her up in his arms ; and she had
nestled there, — in the arms of Philip
d'Avranche. She remembered how he
had kissed her, and how she had kissed
him, — he a lad and she a little child, —
as he left her with her mother in the
watchmaker's shop in the Vier Marchi
that day. . . . And she had never seen
him again until yesterday.

She looked from the rocks to the ap-
proaching frigate. Was it the Narcissus
coming, — coming to this very island ?
She recalled Philip, — how gallant he
was yesterday, how cool, with what an
air of command! How light he had
made of the riot ! She did not see that
that lightness, command, and gallantry
came less from the man than from what,
as an officer, he represented. She did
not see how much less was Philip's power
than that of Ranulph. She accepted and
admired Ranulph's strength and courage
as a matter of course. She was glad that
he was so brave, generous, and good,
but the glamour of distance and mystery
was around d'Avranche, and remem-
brance, like a comet, circled through the
firmament of eleven years, from the Vier
Marchi to the Place du Vier Prison.

356

The Battle of the Strong.

The girl watched the frigate slowly
bearing with the land. The jack was fly-
ing from the mizzen. They were now tak-
ing in her topsails. She was so near that
Guida could see the anchor acockbill
and the poop lanterns ; she could count
the treble row of guns, like long black
horns shooting out from a rhinoceros
hide ; she could discern the figure-head
lion snarling into the spritsail. Present-
ly the frigate came up to the wind and
lay to. Then she signaled for a pilot,
and Guida ran toward the ruined chapel,
calling for Jean Touzel.

In spite of Jean's late protestations
as to piloting a " gentleman-of-war," this
was one of the joyful moments of his
life. He could not loosen his rowboat
quick enough ; he was away almost be-
fore you could have spoken his name.
Excited as Guida was, she could not
resist calling after him, mimicking his
own voice, " God save our greshus King!
A bi'tot, good-by ! "

As Maitre Ranulph had surmised, the
ship was the Narcissus, and its first lieu-
tenant was Philip d'Avranche. Orders
had reached the frigate from the Ad-
miralty the night before that soundings
were to be taken at the Ecre'hos. The
captain had immediately made inquiries
for a pilot, and Jean Touzel had been
commended to him. A messenger sent
to Jean found that he had already gone
to the Ecre'hos for his own purposes.
The captain at once set sail, and now,
under Jean's skillful pilotage, the Nar-
cissus twisted and crept through the teeth
of the rocks at the entrance, and slowly
into the cove, reefs on either side gaping
and snarling at her, her keel all but scrap-
ing the serrated granite beneath. She
anchored ; boats put off to take soundings
and explore the shore of the Marmotiers
and Maitre He, and Philip d'Avranche
was rowed in by Jean Touzel.

Stepping out upon the shore of Maitre
He, Philip slowly made his way over the
shingle to the chapel, in no good humor
with himself or with the world ; for ex-
ploring these barren rocks seemed a use-
less whim of the Admiralty, and he could
not conceive of any incident rising from
the monotony of duty to lighten the dark-
ness of this very brilliant day. His was
not the nature to enjoy the stony detail
of his profession. Excitement and ad-
venture were as the breath of life to him.
Since he had played his little part at the
Jersey battle in a bandbox, eleven years
before, he had touched hands with acci-
dents of flood and field in many countries.
He had been wrecked on the island of
Trinidad in a tornado, and lost his cap-
tain and his ship ; had seen active ser-
vice in America and in India ; had won
distinction off the coast of Arabia in an
engagement with Spanish cruisers ; was
now waiting for his papers as commander
of a frigate of his own, and fretted be-
cause the road of fame and promotion
was so toilsome. Rumors of war with
France had set his blood dancing a little,
but for him most things were robbed of
half their pleasure because they did not
come at once.

To-day he was moody, for he had
looked to spend it differently. As he
walked up the shingle, his thoughts were
hanging about a cottage in the Place du
Vier Prison. He had hoped to loiter in
a doorway there, and to empty his sail-
or's heart in well -practiced admiration
before the altar of village beauty. The
sight of Guida's face the day before had
given a poignant lilt to his emotions, un-
like the broken rhythm of past comedies
of sentiment and melodramas of pas-
sion. According to all logic of habit,
the acuteness of yesterday's impression
should have been followed up by to-day's
attack ; yet here he was, like another
Robinson Crusoe, " kicking up the shin-
gle of a cursed Patmos," — so he grum-
bled to himself. He said Patmos because
it was the first name that came to him

The Battle of the Strong.

357

and suggested dreariness of exile. It
was not so wild a shot, after all, for no
sooner had he spoken the word than,
looking up, he saw in the doorway of
the ruined chapel the gracious figure of
a girl, — and a book of revelation was
opened and begun.

At first he did not recognize Guida.
It was only a picture that he saw, — a
picture which, by some fantastic trans-
mission, fitted in with his reveries. What
he saw was an ancient building, — just
such a humble pile of stone and rough
mortar as one should see on some lonely
cliff of the ^Egean or on the abandoned
isles of the equatorial sea. There was
the gloom of a windowless vault behind
the girl, but the filtered sunshine of late
September was on her face. It bright-
ened the white kerchief and the bodice
and skirt of a faint pink, throwing the
face into a pleasing shadow where the
hand curved over the forehead. She
stood like some Diana of a ruined tem-
ple looking out into the staring light.

At once his pulse beat faster ; for at
all times a woman was to him the foun-
tain of adventure, and his unmanage-
able heart sent him headlong to the
oasis where he might loiter at the spring
of feminine vanity, or truth, or impen-
itent gayety, as the case might be. Just
in proportion as his spirits had sunk
into moodiness and sour reflection, they
shot up rocket-high at the sight of a
girl's joyous pose of body and the re-
fined color and form of the picture she
made. In him the shrewdness of a strong
intelligence was mingled with wild im-
pulse. In most men, rashness would
be the legitimate offspring of such a
marriage of characteristics ; but a cer-
tain clearness of sight, quickness of de-
cision, and a little unscrupulousness had
carried into success many things in his
life that otherwise should have been
counted foolhardy and impossible. It
was the very quality of daring which
saved him from disaster.

Impulse quickened his footsteps now.

It quickened them into a run when the
hand was dropped from the forehead,
and he saw the face whose image and
influence had banished sleep from his
eyes the night before.

" Guida ! " broke from his lips.

The man was transfigured. Bright-
ness leaped into his face, and the gray-
ness of his moody eye became as blue
as the sea. The mechanical straight-
ness of his figure relaxed into the elas-
tic grace of an athlete. He was a pipe
to be played on, an actor with the am-
bitious brain of a diplomatist ; as weak
as water, and as strong as steel; soft-
hearted to foolishness, or unyielding
when it pleased him.

Now, if the devil had sent a wise imp
to have watch and ward of this man and
maid, and report to him the progress of
their destiny, the instant Philip took
Guida's hand, and her violet-blue eyes
met his, monsieur the reporter of Hades
might have clapped to his book and gone
back to his dark master with the mes-
sage and the record : " The hour of
Destiny is struck ! " When the tide of
life beats high in two mortals, and they
meet in the moment it reaches its apo-
gee, and all the nature is sweeping
along without command, guilelessly, yet
thoughtlessly, the mere physical lift of
existence lulling to sleep the wisdom of
the brain and poor experience — specu-
lation points all one way. Many indeed
have been caught away by such a con-
junction of tides, and most of them have
paid the price.

But paying is part of the game of life ;
it is the joy of buying that we crave.
Go down into the dark markets of the
town. See the long, narrow, sordid
streets lined with the cheap commodities
of the poor. Mark how there is a sort
of spangled gayety, a reckless swing, a
grinning exultation, in the grimy cara-
vansary. The cheap colors of the shod-
dy open-air clothing-house, the blank
faded green of the coster's cart, the
dark bluish-red of the butcher's stall,

358

The Battle of the Strong.

they all take on a value not their own
in the garish lights which flare upon the
markets of the dusk. Pause to the
shrill music of the street musician, hark
to the tuneless voice of the dingy trou-
badour of the alley-ways, and then lis-
ten to the one voice that commands them
all, to the call which lightens up faces
sodden with devouring vices, eyes bleared
with long looking into the dark caverns
of crime: "Buy — buy — buy — buy —
buy ! " That is the tune which the piper
pipes. We would buy, and behold, we
must pay. Then the lights go out, the
voices stop, and only the dark, tumultu-
ous streets surround us, and the grime
of life is ours again. Whereupon we go
heavily to hard beds of despair, having
eaten the cake we bought, and now must
pay for unto Penalty, the dark inordinate
creditor. And the morning comes again,
and then, at last, the evening, when the
triste bazaars open once more, and those
who are strong of heart and nerve move
not from their doorways, but sit still in
the dusk to watch the grim world go by.
But mostly we hurry out to the bazaars
again, and answer to the fevering call,
"Buy — buy — buy — buy — buy!" . . .
And again we pay the price : and so on
to the last foreclosure and the immitiga-
ble end.

One of these two standing in the door
of the ruined chapel on the Ecre'hos was
of the nature of those who buy but once,
and pay the price but once ; the other
was of those who keep open accounts in
the markets of life : and the one was
the woman, and the other was the man.

There was nothing conventional in
their greeting.

" You remembered me ! " he said in
English, thinking of yesterday.

" I should not deserve to be here if
I 'd forgotten," she answered meaning-
ly. " Perhaps you forget the sword of
the Turk ? " she added.

He laughed, and his cheek flushed with
pleasure as he replied, " I should n't de-
serve to be here if I remembered ! "

Her face was full of exhilaration.
" The worst of it is," she said, " I never
can pay my debt. I have owed it for
eleven years, and if I should live to be
ninety I should still owe it."

His heart was beating hard, and he
became daring. " So — thou shalt save
my life," he said, speaking in French.
" We shall be quits, then, thou and I."

The familiar French " thou " startled
her greatly. To hide the instant's con-
fusion she turned her head away, using
a hand to gather in her hair, which the
wind was lifting lightly. She had not
as yet taught herself subtle control and
dissimulation of feeling.

" That would n't quite make us quits,"
she rejoined ; " your life is important,
mine is n't. You " — she nodded toward
the Narcissus — " you command men."

" So dost thou," he declared, persist-
ing in the endearing pronoun.

He meant it to be endearing. As he
had sailed up and down the world, a hun-
dred ports had offered him a hundred ad-
ventures, all light in the scales of purpose,
but not all bad. He had gossiped and
idled and coquetted with beauty before ;
but this was different, because the girl
was different in nature from all others
he had met. It had mostly been lightly
come and lightly go with himself, as with
the women it had been easily won and
easily loosed. Conscience had not smit-
ten him hard, because beauty as he had
known it, though often fair and of good
report, had bloomed for others before
he came. But here was a nature fresh
and unspoiled from the hand of the pot-
ter Life.

As her head slightly turned from him
again, he involuntarily noticed the pulse
beating in her neck, the rise and fall of
her bosom. Life, — here was life un-
poisoned by one drop of ill thought or
light experience.

" Thou dost command men, too," he
repeated.

She stepped forward a little from the
doorway and beyond him, answering

The Battle of the Strong.

359

back at him, " Oh, I knit, and keep a
garden, and command a little home, —
that 's all. . . . Won't you let me show
you the island ? " she added quickly,
pointing to the hillock where a flagstaff
was set on a cone of rock, and moving
toward it.

He followed, speaking over her shoul-
der. " That 's what you seem to do,"
he said, " not what you do." Then,
a little rhetorically, "I've seen a man
polishing the buckle of his shoe, and he
was planning to take a city or manoeuvre
a fleet ! "

She noticed that he had dropped the
" thou," and, much as its use had embar-
rassed her, the gap left when the bold-
ness was withdrawn was filled with re-
gret; for though no one had dared to
say it to her before, somehow it seemed
not rude on Philip's lips. Philip ? Yes,
Philip she had called him in her child-
hood, and the name had been carried on
into her girlhood ; he had always been
Philip to her.

"Oh no, girls don't think like that,
and they don't do big things," she re-
plied. " When I polish the pans " —
she laughed — " and when I scour my
buckles, I just think of pans and buckles."
She tossed up her fingers lightly, with a
perfect charm of archness.

He was very close to her now. " But
girls remember, — they have memories."

" If women had n't memory," she an-
swered, " they would n't have much,
would they ? They can't take cities and
manoeuvre fleets." She laughed a little
ironically. " I wonder that we think
at all, or have anything to think about
except the kitchen and the gaiden, and
baking and scouring and knitting," —
she paused slightly, her voice lowered a
little, — " and the sea, and the work
that men do round her. . . . Did you
ever go into a market ? " she added
abruptly.

Somehow she could talk easily and
naturally to him. There had been no
leading up to confidence. She felt a sud-

den impulse to tell him all her thoughts,

— all save a few. To know things, to
understand them, was a passion with
her. It seemed to flood and obliterate
in her all that was conventional ; it re-
moved her far from stereotyped feeling
and sensitive egotism. Already she had
begun " to take notice " in the world,
and that is like being born again ; it is
the beginning of wisdom. As it grows
life becomes less cliche* ; and when the
taking notice is supreme we call it ge-
nius ; and genius is simple and believ-
ing ; it has no pride, it is naive, it is
childlike.

Philip appeared to wear no mark of
convention, and Guida spoke freely to
him. " To go into a market seems to me
so wonderful," she continued. " There
are the cattle, the fruits, the vegetables,
the flowers, the fish, the wood ; the linen
from the loom, the clothes that women's
fingers have knitted. And it is n't just
those things that you see, — it 's all that 's
behind them : the houses, the fields, the
boats at sea, and the men and women
working and working, and sleeping and
eating, praying a little, it may be, and
dreaming a little, — perhaps a very lit-
tle." She sighed, and added, " That 's
as far as I get with thinking. What else
can one do in this little island ? Why,
on the globe which Maitre Damien has
at St. Aubin's, Jersey is no bigger than
the head of a pin. And what should one
think of here ? "

Her eyes were on the sea ; its mystery
was in them, the distance, the ebb and
flow, the light of wonder and of adven-
ture too. " You — you 've been every-
where," she went on. " Do you remem-
ber you sent me once from Malta a tiny
silver cross ? That was years ago, soon
after the battle of Jersey, when I was
a little bit of a girl. Well, after I got
big enough I used to find Malta and
other places on Mattre Damien's globe.
I 've lived always there, on that spot,"

— she pointed toward Jersey, — " on
that spot that one could walk round in

360

The Battle of the Strong.

a day. What do I know! You 've been
everywhere, everywhere. When you look
back, you 've got a thousand pictures in
your mind. You 've seen great cities,
temples, palaces, great armies, fleets ;
you 've done things ; you 've fought and
you 've commanded, though you 're so
young, and you 've learned about men
and about many countries. Look at what
you know, and then, if you only think,
you '11 laugh at what I know."

For a moment he was puzzled what to
answer. The revelation of the girl's na-
ture had come so quickly upon him. He
had looked for freshness, sweetness, in-
telligence, warmth of temperament, but
it seemed to him that here were flashes
of power. Yet she was only seventeen.
She had been taught to see things with
her own eyes, and not another's, and she
spoke of them as she saw them, — that
was all. Her mother, apprehensive al-
ways of her own death, had done all in
her power to make the child think for
herself, yet she had never let Guida ima-
gine that hers was an unusual way of
looking at things. The girl would have
been astonished if she had been told that
she had come to a point far beyond her
years, — the point of observation, of with-
drawal, when one looks less inward, con-
cerned acutely for one's own feelings, and
outward more to the passing show of life.
Never, however, save to her mother, had
Guida said so much to any human be-
ing as within these past few moments to
Philip d'Avranche.

The conditions were almost malicious-
ly favorable, and d'Avranche was as
simple and easy as a boy, with his sail-
or's bonhomie and his naturally facile
spirit. A fateful adaptability was his
greatest weapon in life, and his greatest
danger. He saw that Guida herself was
quite unconscious of the revelation she
was making, and he showed no surprise,
no marked eagerness, but he caught the
note of her simplicity and earnestness,
and he responded to it in kind. He flat-
tered her deftly ; not that she was pressed

unduly, — he was too wise for that. He
took her seriously : and this was not dis-
simulation, for every word that she had
spoken had a glamour, and he now ex-
alted her intelligence beyond reason. He
was quite sincere in it : he had never
met girl or woman who had talked just
as she talked ; and straightway, with
the fervid eloquence of his nature, he
thought he had discovered a new heaven
and a new earth. The perfect health of
her face, its unaffectedness and its nas-
cent power, the broad forehead, the hair
which a breath would lift in undulations,
the eyes like wells of light and flame,
all these cast a spell upon him. On the
instant his headlong spirit declared his
purpose : this was the one being for him
in all the world ; at" this altar he would
light a lamp of devotion, and he would
keep it burning. He knew what he want-
ed when he saw it. He had always made
up his mind suddenly, always acted on
the intelligent impulse of the moment.
He felt things, he did not study them ;
it was almost a woman's instinct. He
came by a leap to the goal of purpose,
not by the toilsome steps of reason.

" This is my day," he said to himself.
" I always knew that love would come
down on me like a storm." Then, aloud,
he said to her, " I wish I knew what
you know ; but I can't, because my mind
is different, my life has been different.
When you get out into the world and
see a great deal, and loosen a little the
strings of your principles, and watch how
sins and virtues contradict one another,
you see things after a while in a kind
of mist. But you, Guida, you see them
clearly, because your mind is clear. You
never make a mistake ; you are always
right, because your mind is right."

She interrupted him, a little shocked
and a good deal amazed : " Oh, you
must n't — must n't speak like that. It 's
not so. How can one see and learn un-
less one sees and knows the world ? Sure-
ly one can't think right if one does n't
see widely ? "

The Battle of the Strong.

361

He changed his tactics instantly. Per-
haps she was right, after all. The world,
— that was the thing ? Well, then, she
should see the world, through him, with
him.

" Yes, yes, you 're right," he answered.
" You can't know things unless you see
widely. You must see the world, you
must know it. You are right : this is-
land, — what is it ? I was born here ;
don't I know? It 's a foothold in the
world, but it 's no more ; it 's not a field
to walk in ; why, it 's not even a garden !
No ; it 's the little patch of green we play
in, in front of a house, behind the rail-
ings, before we go out into the world and
learn how to live."

They had now reached the highest
point on the island, where the flagstaff
stood. Guida was looking far beyond
Jersey to the horizon line. There was
little haze ; the sky was inviolably blue.
Far off against the horizon line lay the
low black rocks of the Minquiers. They
seemed to her. on the instant, like step-
ping-stones. Beyond them would be oth-
er stepping-stones, and others, and others
still again, and they would all mark the
way and lead to what Philip called the
world. The world ! She felt a sudden
twist of regret at her heart. Here she
was, like a bird tied by its foot to a
stake in a garden - bed ; or was n't it
more like a cow grazing within the circle
of its tether, just a docile, stupid cow ?
Yet it had all seemed so good to her in
the past ; broken only by slight bursts of
wonder and desire concerning that out-
side world.

"Do we ever learn how to live ? " she
asked. " Don't we just go on from one
thing to another, picking our way, but
never knowing quite what to do, because
we don't know what 's ahead ? I believe
we never do learn how to live," she add-
ed, half smiling, yet a little pensive, too ;
" but I am so very ignorant, and " —

She stopped, for suddenly it flashed
upon her : here she was baring her child-
ish heart, — he would think it was child-

ish, she was sure he would, — everything
she thought, to a man whom she had
never known till to-day ! She was wrong :
she had known him, but it was only as
Philip, the boy who had saved her life.
And the Philip of her memory was only a
picture, not a being ; something to think
about, not something to speak with, not
one to whom she might bare her heart.
She flushed hotly and turned her shoul-
der on him. Her eyes followed a lizard
creeping up the stones. As long as she
lived she remembered that lizard, its
color changing in the sun. She remem-
bered the hot stones, and how warm the
flagstaff was when she reached out her
hand to it mechanically. But the swift,
noiseless lizard running in and out among
the stones, it was ever afterward like a
coat-of-arms upon the shield of her life.

Philip came close to her. At first he
spoke over her shoulder ; then he faced
her. His words forced her eyes up to
his, and he held them.

" Yes, yes, we learn how to live," he
said. "It's only when we travel alone
that we don't see before us. I will teach
you how to live ; we will learn the way to-
gether ! Guida ! Guida ! " — he reached
out his hand toward her — " don't start
so ! Listen to me. I feel for you what I
have felt for no other being in all my life.
It came upon me yesterday when I saw
you in the window at the Vier Prison.
I did n't understand it. All night I lay
in my cabin or walked the deck thinking
of you. To-day, as soon as I saw your
face, as soon as I touched your hand, I
knew what it was, and " — He attempt-
ed to take her hand now.

" Oh no, no ! " She drew back as if
frightened.

u You need not fear me ! " he burst
out. " For now I know that I have but
two things to live for : for my work " —
he pointed to the Narcissus — " and for
you. You are frightened at me ! Why,
I want to have the right to protect you,
to drive away all fear from your life.
You shall be the garden, and I shall be

362

The Battle of the Strong.

the wall ; you the nest, and I the rock ;
you the breath of life, and I the body
that breathes it. Guida, ah, Guida, I
love you ! "

She drew back, leaning against the
stones, her eyes riveted upon his, and she
spoke scarcely above a whisper, in which
were much wonder and a little fear.

" It is not true, — it is not true.
You 've known me only for one day, —
only for one hour. How can you say
it ! " There was a tumult in her breast ;
her eyes shone and glistened ; wonder,
embarrassed yet happy wonder, looked at
him out of her face, which was touched
with an appealing, as of the heart which
dared not believe, and yet must believe
or suffer. " Oh, it is madness ! " she
added. " It is not true ; how can it be
true ! "

Yet it all had the look of reality : the
voice had the right ring ; the face had
truth ; the bearing was gallant, chival-
rous, and direct ; the force and power of
the man overwhelmed her.

She reached out her hand tremblingly,
as though to push him back. " It can-
not be true," she said. " To think — in
one day ! "

"It is true," he answered, "true as
that I stand here ! One day ! It is not
one day. I knew you years ago. The
seed was sown then, the flower springs up
to-day, — that is all. You think I can-
not know that it is love which I feel for
you ? It is admiration, it is faith, it is
desire ; but it is love. When you look
upon a flower in a garden, do you not
know on the instant if you like it or no ?
If it is beautiful you desire it. Do you
not know, the moment you look upon a
landscape, upon the beauty of a noble
building, whether it is beautiful to you ?
If, then, with these things one knows, —
these that have no speech, no life, like
yours or mine, — how much more when
it is a girl with a face like yours, when
it is a mind noble like yours, when it is a
touch that thrills and a voice that drowns
your heart in music ! Ah, Guida, be-

lieve me that I speak the truth ! I know
that you are the one passion, the one love,
of my life. All others would be as no-
thing, so long as you live, and I live to
see you, to be beside you ! "

" Beside me! " she broke in, with an
incredulous irony which fain would be
contradicted ; "a girl in a village, poor,
knowing nothing, seeing no farther " —
she looked out toward the island of Jer-
sey — " seeing no farther than the little
cottage in the little country where I was
born ! "

" But you shall see more," he said :
" you shall see all, feel all, if you will
but listen to me. Don't deny me that
which is life and breathing and hope
to me. I will show you the world; I
will take you where you may see and
know. We will learn it all together. I
shall succeed in life. I shall rise. I
have needed one thing to make me do
my best for some one's sake beside my
own ; you will make me do it for your
sake. Your ancestors were great peo-
ple in France ; and you know mine, cen-
turies ago, were great, also, — that the
d'Avranches were a noble family in
France. You and I will win our place
as high as the best of them. In this
war that 's coming between England and
France is my chance. Nelson said to
me the other day, — you have heard of
him, of young Captain Nelson, the man
they 're pointing to in the fleet as the
one man of them all ? — he said to me,
' We shall have our chance now, Philip.'
And we shall. I have wanted it till to-
day for my own selfish ambition ; now
I want it for you. This hour, when I
landed on this islet, I hated it, I hated
my ship, I hated my duty, I hated every-
thing, because I wanted to go where you
were, to be with you. It was destiny
that brought us both to this place at the
same moment. Ah, you can't escape de-
stiny ! It was to be that I should love
you, Guida ! "

He tried to take her hands, but she
put them behind her and drew back.

The Battle of the Strong.

363

The lizard suddenly shot out from a hole
and crossed over her fingers. She start-
ed, shivered at the cold touch, and caught
the hand away. A sense of prescience
awaked in her, and her eyes followed
the lizard's swift travel with a strange
fascination. She lifted her eyes to
Philip's, and the fear and premonition
passed.

" Oh, my brain is in a whirl ! " she
said. " I do not understand. I am so
young. No one has ever spoken to me
as you have done. You would not dare "
— she leaned forward a little, looking
him steadfastly in the face with that un-
wavering look which was the best sign
of her straightforward mind — "I do
not understand — you would not dare to
deceive — you would not dare to deceive
me. I have — no mother," she added,
with a simple pathos.

The moisture came into his eyes. He
must have been stone not to be touched
by the appealing, by the tender inquisi-
tion of that look.

" Guida," he cried impetuously, " if I
deceive you, may every fruit of life turn
to dust and ashes in my mouth ! If ever
I deceive you, may I die a black, dis-
honorable death, abandoned and alone !
I should deserve that if I deceived you,
Guida ! "

For the first time since he had spoken
she smiled, yet her eyes filled with tears,
too.

" You will let me tell you that I love
you, Guida? It is all I ask now, that
you will listen to me."

She sighed, but did not answer. She
kept looking at him, looking as though
she would read his inmost soul. Her
face was very young, though the eyes
were so wise in their simplicity.

" You will give me my chance, — you
will listen to me, Guida, and try to un-
derstand ? " he pleaded, leaning closer to
her and holding out his hands.

She drew herself up slightly, as with
an air of relief and resolve. She put a
hand in his.

" I will listen and try to understand,"
she answered.

"Won't you call me Philip?" he
said.

A slight, mischievous smile crossed
her lips, as eleven years before it had
done in the Rue d'Egypte, and, recalling
that moment, she replied, " Yes, sir —
Philip ! "

Just then the figure of a man ap-
peared on the shingle beneath, looking
up toward them. They did not see him.
Guida's hand was still in Philip's.

The man looked at them for an in-
stant ; then started and turned away. It
was Ranulph Delagarde.

They heard his feet upon the shingle
now. They turned and looked, and
Guida withdrew her hand.

XI.

There are moments when a kind of
curtain seems dropped over the brain,
covering it and smothering it, while yet
the body and its nerves are tingling with
sensations. It is like the fire-curtain of
a theatre let down between the stage and
the audience. Were it not for this mer-
ciful intervention between the brain and
the disaster which would set it aflame,
the vital spark of intelligence would burn
to white heat and die.

As the years had gone on Maitre Ra-
nulph's nature had grown more power-
ful, and his outdoor occupation had en-
larged and steadied his physical forces.
His trouble now was in proportion to
the force of his personality. The sight
of Guida and Philip hand in hand, of
the tender attitude and the light in their
faces, was overwhelming and unaccount-
able. Yesterday these two were stran-
gers ; it was plain to be seen that to-
day they were lovers, — lovers who had
reached a point of confidence and of
revelation. Nothing in the situation tal-
lied with Ranulph's ideas of Guida and
bis knowledge of life. He had been eye

364

The Battle of the Strong.

to eye with this girl, as one might say,
for fifteen years : he had told his love
for her in a thousand little ways, as the
ant builds its heap to a pyramid that
becomes a thousand times greater than
itself. He had watched at her door-
way, he had followed her footsteps, he
had fetched and carried, he had served
afar off, he had ministered within the
gates. Unknown to her, he had watched
like the keeper of the house over all
who came and went, neither envious nor
over-zealous, neither intrusive nor neg-
lectful ; leaving here a word and there
an act to prove himself, above all, the
friend whom she could trust, and in all
the lover whom she might wake to know
and reward. He had waited with pa-
tience, believing stubbornly that she
might come to put her hand in his one
day.

Long ago he would have left the island,
to widen his knowledge, earn experience
in his craft, or follow a career in the
army (he had been an expert gunner
when he served in the artillery four years
before), and hammer out fame upon the
anvils of fortune in England or in France;
but he had stayed here that he might
be near her when she needed him. His
love had been simple, it had been direct,
and in its considered and consistent re-
serve it had been more than wise. He
had been self -obliterating. His love de-
sired to make her happy : most lovers
desire that they themselves shall be made
happy. Because of the crime that his
father had committed years before — be-
cause of the shame of that hidden and
secret crime — he had tried the more to
make himself a good citizen, and he had
now formed the commendable and mod-
est ambition of making one human be-
ing happy. He had always kept this
ambition near him in the years that had
gone, and a supreme good nature and
cheerfulness of heart had welled up out
of his early sufferings and his honesty of
character. Hope had beckoned him on
from year to year, until it seemed at last

that the time had almost come when he
might speak. He would tell her all, —
his father's crime and the manner of his
death on the Grouville road ; of the de-
voted purpose of trying to expiate that
crime by his own uprightness and patri-
otism.

Now, all in a minute, his horizon was
blackened. This stranger, this adven-
turous gallant, this squire of dames, had
done in a day what he had worked, step
by step, to do through all these years.
This skipping seafarer, with his powder
and lace, cocked hat and gold-handled
sword, had whistled at the gates which
Ranulph had guarded and at which he
had prayed ; and instantly every defense
had been thrown down, and Guida —
his own Guida — had welcomed the in-
vader with a shameless eagerness.

The curtain dropped upon his brain,
numbing it ; else he had done some wild
and foolish thing, something which he
had no right to do. A hundred thoughts
had gone crowding together through his
mind, as the kaleidoscope of a life's
events rushes by the eyes of a drowning
man. Then he had turned on his heel
and walked away.

He crossed the islet slowly. It seemed
to him — and for a moment it was the
only thing of which he was conscious —
that the heels of his boots shrieked in
the shingle, and that with every step he
was lifting an immense weight. He
paused behind the chapel, where he was
hidden from view. The smother lifted
slowly from his brain.

" I '11 believe in her still," he said.
" It 's all his cursed tongue. As a boy
he could make every other boy do what
he wanted, because his tongue knew how
to twist words. She 's been used to
honest people ; he 's talked a new lan-
guage to her ; he 's caught the trick of
it in his travels. But she shall know
the truth. She shall find out what sort
of a man he is. She shall see beneath
the surface of his pretty tricks."

He turned and leaned against the

To Cleopatra's Mummy.

365

wall of the chapel. "Guida, Guida,"
he said, speaking as if she were there
before him, " you won't — you won't go
to him, and spoil your life and mine
too ! Guida, ma couzaine, you '11 stay
here, in the laud of your birth ; you '11
make your home here, here with me, ma
chere couzaine. You shall be my wife
in spite of him, in spite of a thousand
Philip d'Avranches ! "

He drew himself up as though a great
determination was made. His path was
clear. It was a fair fight ; the odds were
not so much against him, after all, for his
birth was as good as Philip d'Avranche's,
his energy was greater, and he was as
capable and as strong of brain in his
own fashion.

He walked firmly and quickly down
the shingle on the other side of the islet
toward the wreck. As he passed the
hut where the sick man lay, he heard a

querulous voice. It was not that of the
Reverend Lorenzo Dow.

Where had he heard that voice before ?
A strange shiver of fear ran through
him. Every sense and emotion in him
was arrested. His life seemed to reel
backward. Curtain after curtain of the
past unfolded.

He hurried to the door of the hut and
looked in.

A man with long white hair and strag-
gling gray beard turned to him a hag-
gard face, on which were written suffer-
ing, outlawry, and evil.

" Great God ! my father ! " Ranulph
said.

He drew back slowly, like a man who
gazes upon some horrible, fascinating
thing, and turned heavily toward the sea,
his face set, his senses paralyzed.

" My father not dead ! My father
— the traitor ! " he said again.

Gilbert Parker.

{To be continued.)

TO CLEOPATRA'S MUMMY.

IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

BEAUTY deceitful and favor vain !

Can it be for thif twisted sack of bones

Legends of passion were writ in pain,

And lustful monarchs forgot their thrones?

Be these the mangled wages of sin ?

Did the tiger crouch in this shrunken frame?

Could her silken sails and cohorts win

No haughtier fate for a storied name ?
Do dreams recall her those poisoned slaves,
Whose torment instructed her sultry charms
To walk seductive the way of graves
From Antony's pillow to Death's grim arms ?

Stolid she turns but a crumbling ear ;
She who was more than a Pagan's heaven !
Egypt as Ichabod moulders here, —
" Number six thousand eight hundred and seven " !

Martha, Gilbert Dickinson.

Penelope's Progress.

PENELOPE'S PROGRESS.

HER EXPERIENCES IN SCOTLAND.

PAKT SECOND. IN THE COUNTKY.

XXI.

" ' 0 has he chosen a bonny bride,

An' has he clean forgotten me ? '
An' sighing said that gay ladye,

' I would I were in my ain eountrie ! ' "
Lord Beichan.

IT rained in torrents, and Salemina
and I were darning stockings in our own
inglenook at Bide-a-Wee Cottage.

Francesca was golfing ; not on the
links, of course, but in our microscopic
sitting-room. It is twelve feet square,
and holds a tiny piano, desk, centre-table,
sofa, and chairs, but the spot between the
fireplace and the table is Francesca's fa-
vorite " putting green." She wishes to
become more deadly in the matter of ap-
proaches, and thinks her tee shots weak ;
so these two deficiencies she is trying to
make good by home practice in incle-
ment weather. She turns a tumbler on
its side on the floor, and " puts " the ball
into it, or at it, as the case may be, from
the opposite side of the room. It is ex-
cellent discipline, and as the tumblers
are inexpensive the breakage really does
not matter. Whenever Miss Grieve hears
the shivering of glass, she murmurs, not
without reason, " It is not for the know-
ing what they will be doing next."

" Penelope, has it ever occurred to
you that Elizabeth Ardmore is serious-
ly interested in Mr. Macdonald ? "

Salemina propounded this question to
me with the same innocence that a babe
would display in placing a match beside
a dynamite bomb.

Francesca naturally heard the remark,
— although it was addressed to me, —
pricked up her ears, and missed the tum-
bler by several feet.

It was a simple inquiry, but as I look
back upon it from the safe ground of
subsequent knowledge I perceive that
it had a certain amount of influence
upon Francesca's history. The sugges-
tion would have carried no weight with
me for two reasons. In the fii-st place,
Salemina is far-sighted. If objects are
located at some distance from her she
sees them clearly, but if they are under
her very nose she overlooks them alto-
gether, unless they are sufficiently fra-
grant or audible to address some other
sense. This physical peculiarity she car-
ries over into her mental processes. Her
impression of the Disruption movement,
for example, would be lively and distinct,
but her perception of a contemporary lov-
ers' quarrel (particularly if it was fought
at her own apron-strings) would be singu-
larly vague. Did she suggest, therefore,
that Elizabeth Ardmore is interested in
Mr. Beresford, who is the rightful cap-
tive of my bow and spear, I should be
perfectly calm.

My second reason for comfortable in-
diffe^'ence is that, frequently in novels,
and always in plays, the heroine is in-
stigated to violent jealousy by insinu-
ations of this sort, usually conveyed by
the villain of the piece, male or female.
I have seen this happen so often in the
modern drama that it has long since
ceased to be convincing; but though
Francesca has witnessed scores of plays
and read hundreds of novels, it did not
apparently strike her as a theatrical or
literary suggestion that Lady Ardmore's
daughter should be in love with Mr.
Macdonald. The effect of the new point
of view was most salutary, on the whole.
She had come to think herself the only

Penelope's Progress.

367

prominent figure in the Reverend Ron-
ald's landscape, and anything more im-
pertinent than her tone with him (un-
less it is his with her) I certainly never
heard. This criticism, however, relates
only to their public performances, and I
have long suspected that their private
conversations are of a kindlier character.
When it occurred to her that he might
simply be sharpening his mental sword
on her steel, but that his heart had wan-
dered into a more genial climate than
she had ever provided for it, she sof-
tened unconsciously ; the Scotsman and
the American receded into a truer per-
spective, and the man and the woman
approached each other with dangerous
nearness.

" What shall we do if Francesca and
Mr. Macdonald really fall in love with
each other ? " asked Salemina, when
Francesca had gone into the hall to try
long drives. (There is a good deal of
excitement in this, as Miss Grieve has to
cross the passage on her way from the
kitchen to the china - closet, and thus
often serves as a reluctant " hazard " or
"bunker.")

" Do you mean what should we have
done ? " I queried.

" Nonsense, don't be captious! It can't
be too late yet. They have known each
other only a little over two months ;
when would you have had me interfere,
pray ? "

" It depends upon what you expect to
accomplish. If you wish to stop the
marriage, interfere in a fortnight or so ;
if you wish to prevent an engagement,
speak — well, say to-morrow; if, however,
you did n't wish them to fall in love with
each other, you should have kept one of
them away from Lady Baird's dinner."

" I could have waited a little longer
than that," argued Salemina, " for you
remember how badly they got on at
first."

" I remember you thought so," I re-
sponded dryly ; " but I believe Mr. Mac-
donald has been interested in Francesca

from the outset, partly because her beau-
ty and vivacity attracted him, partly be-
cause he could keep her in order only by
putting his whole mind upon her. On
his side, he has succeeded in piquing her
into thinking of him continually, though
solely, as she fancies, for the purpose of
crossing swords with him. If they ever
drop their weapons for an instant, and
allow the din of warfare to subside so
that they can listen to their own heart-
beats, they will discover that they love
each other to distraction."

" It is pathetic," remarked Salemina,
as she put away her darning-ball, " to
see you waste your time painting me-
diocre pictures, when as a lecturer upon
love you could instruct your thousands."

" The thousands would never satisfy
me," I retorted, " so long as you remain
uninstructed ; for in your single person
you would so swell the sum of human
ignorance on that subject that my teach-
ing would be forever vain."

" Very clever indeed ! Well, what
will Mr. Monroe say to me when I land
in New York without his daughter, or
with his son-in-law ? "

" He has never denied Francesca any-
thing in her life ; why should he draw the
line at a Scotsman ? I am much more
concerned about Mr. Macdonald's con-
gregation."

" I am not anxious about that," said
Salemina loyally. " Francesca would be
the life of an Inchcaldy parish."

"I dare say," I observed, "but she
might be the death of the pastor."

" I am ashamed of you, Penelope ; or
I should be if you meant what you say.
She can make the people love her if she
tries ; when did she ever fail at that ?
But with Mr. Macdonald's talent, to say
nothing of his family connections, he is
sure to get a church in Edinburgh in a
few years, if he wishes. Undoubtedly, it
would not be a great match in a money
sense. I suppose he has a manse and
four or five hundred pounds a year."

" That sum would do nicely for cabs."

368

Penelope's Progress.

" Penelope, you are flippant ! "

" I don't mean it, dear ; it 's only for
fun; and it would be so absurd if we
should bring her over here and leave her
in Inchcaldy ! "

" It is n't as if she were penniless,"
continued Salemina ; " she has fortune
enough to assure her own independence,
and not enough to threaten his, — the
ideal amount. I doubt if the good Lord's
first intention was to make her a minis-
ter's wife, but he knows very well that
Love is a master architect. Francesca
is full of beautiful possibilities if Mr.
Macdonald is the man to bring them out,
and I am inclined to think he is. His
is the stronger and more serious na-
ture, Francesca's the sweeter and more
flexible. He will be the oak-tree, and
she will be the sunshine playing in the
branches."

" Salemina, dear," I said penitently,
kissing her gray hair, " I apologize : you
are not absolutely ignorant about Love,
after all, when you call him the master
architect; and that is very lovely and
very true about the oak-tree and the sun-
shine."

xxn.

" ' Love, I maun gang to Edinbrngh,
Love, I maun gang an' leave thee ! '
She sighed right sair, an' said nae mair
But ' O gin I were wi' ye ! '"

Andrew Lammie.

Jean Deeyell came to visit us a week
ago, and has put new life into our little
circle. I suppose it was playing Sir
Patrick Spens that set us thinking about
it, for one warm, idle day when we were
all in the Glen we began a series of bal-
lad revels, in which each of us assumed
a favorite character. The choice in-
duced so much argument and disagree-
ment that Mr. Beresford was at last
appointed head of the clan ; and having
announced himself formally as the Mack-
intosh, he was placed on the summit of
a hastily arranged pyramidal cairn. He

was given an ash wand and a rowan-tree
sword ; and then, according to ancient
custom, his pedigree and the exploits
of his ancestors were recounted, and he
was exhorted to emulate their example.
Now, it seems that a Highland chief of
the olden time, being as absolute in his
patriarchal authority as any prince, had
a corresponding number of officers at-
tached to his person. He had a body-
guard, who fought around him in battle,
and independent of them he had a staff
of officers who accompanied him wher-
ever he went. These our chief proceed-
ed to appoint as follows : —

Henchman, Ronald Macdonald ; bard,
Penelope Hamilton ; spokesman or fool,
Robin Anstruther ; sword-bearer, Fran-
cesca Monroe ; piper, Salemina ; piper's
attendant, Elizabeth Ardmore ; baggage
gillie, Jean Deeyell ; running footman,
Ralph ; bridle gillie, Jamie ; ford gillie,
Miss Grieve. (The ford gillie only car-
ries the chief across fords, and there are
no fords in the vicinity ; so Mr. Beres-
ford, not liking to leave a member of our
household out of office, thought this the
best post for Calamity Jane.)

With the Mackintosh on his pyramidal
cairn matters went very much better, and
at Jamie's instigation we began to hold
rehearsals for the Jubilee festivities at
Rowardennan ; for as Jamie's birthday
fell on the eve of the Queen's Jubilee,
there was to be a gay party at the castle.

All this occurred days ago, and yester-
day evening the ballad revels came off,
and Rowardennan was a scene of great
pageant and splendor. Lady Ardmore,
dressed as the Lady of Inverleith, re-
ceived the guests, and there were all man-
ner of tableaux, and ballads in costume,
and pantomimes, and a grand march by
the clan, in which we appeared in our
chosen rSles.

Salemina was Lady Maisry, — she
whom all the lords of the north countrie
came wooing.

" But a' that they could say to her,
Her answer still was ' Na. ' "

Penelope's Progress.

369

And again : —

" ' O baud your tongues, young men,' she said,

' And think nae mair on me ! ' '
Mr. Beresford was Lord Beichan, and
I was Shusy Pye.

" Lord Beichan was a Christian born,

And such resolved to live and dee,
So he was ta'en by a savage Moor,
Who treated him right cruellie.

" The Moor he had an only daughter,

The damsel's name was Shusy Pye ;
And ilka day as she took the air

Lord Beichan's prison she pass'd by."

Elizabeth Ardmore was Leezie Lind-
say, who kilted her coats o' green satin
to the knee, and was aff to the Hielands
so expeditiously when her lover declared
himself to be " Lord Ronald Macdonald,
a chieftain of high degree."

Francesca was Mary Ambree.

" When captaines couragious, whom death

cold not daunte,

Did march to the siege of the citty of Gaunt,
They mustred their souldiers by two and by

three,

And the foremost in battle was Mary Am-
bree.

*' When the brave sergeant-major was slaine

in her sight

Who was her true lover, her joy and delight,
Because he was slaine most treacherouslie,
Then vow'd to avenge him Mary Ambree."

Brenda Macrae from Pettybaw House
was Fairly Fair; Jamie, Sir Patrick
Spens ; Ralph, King Alexander of Dun-
fermline ; Mr. Anstruther, Bonnie Glen-
logie, " the flower of them a' ; " Mr. Mac-
donald and Miss Deeyell, Young Hynde
Horn and the king's daughter Jean re-
spectively.

" Oh, it 's seven long years he served the king,
But wages from him he ne'er got a thing ;
Oh, it 's seven long years he served, I ween,
And all for love of the king's daughter
Jean."

It is not to be supposed that all this
went off without any of the difficulties
and heart-burnings that are incident to
things dramatic. When Elizabeth Ard-
more chose to be Leezie Lindsay, she
asked me to sing the ballad behind the

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 485. 24

scenes. Mr. Beresford naturally thought
that Mr. Macdouald would take the op-
posite part in the tableau, inasmuch as
the hero bears his name ; but he posi-
tively declined to play Lord Ronald
Macdonald, and said it was altogether
too personal.

Mr. Anstruther was rather disagree-
able at the beginning, and upbraided
Miss Deeyell for offering to be the
king's daughter Jean to Mr. Macdonald's
Hynde Horn, when she knew very well
he wanted her for Ladye Jeanie in Glen-
logie. (She had meantime confided to me
that nothing could induce her to appear
in Glenlogie ; it was far too personal.)

Mr. Macdonald offended Francesca by
sending her his cast-off gown and beg-
ging her to be Sir Patrick Spens ; and
she was still more gloomy (so I ima-
gined) because he had not offered his six
feet of manly beauty for the part of the
captain in Mary Ambree, when the only
other man to take it was Jamie's tutor.
He is an Oxford don and a delightful
person, but very bow-legged ; added to
that, by the time the rehearsals had
ended she had been obliged to beg him
to love some one more worthy than her-
self, and did not wish to appear in the
same tableau with him, feeling that it
was much too personal.

When the eventful hour came, last
night, Willie and I were the only per-
sons really willing to take lovers' parts,
save Jamie and Ralph, who were full
of eagerness to play all the characters,
whatever their age, sex, color, or rela-
tions. Fortunately, the guests knew no-
thing of these trivial disagreements, and
at ten o'clock it would have been dif-
ficult to match Rowardennan Castle for
a scene of beauty and revelry. Every-
thing went merrily till we came to Young
Hynde Horn, the concluding tableau,
and the most effective and elaborate one
on the programme. At the very last
moment, when the opening scene was
nearly ready, Jean Deeyell fell down a
secret staircase that led from the tapestry

370

Penelope's Progress.

chamber into Lady Ardmore's boudoir,
where the rest of us were dressing. It
was a short flight of steps, but, as she
held a candle and was carrying her cos-
tume, she fell awkwardly, spraining her
wrist and ankle. Finding that she was
not maimed for life, Lady Ardmore
turned with comical and unsympathetic
haste to Francesca.

" Put on these clothes at once," she
said imperiously, knowing nothing of the
volcanoes beneath the surface. " Hynde
Horn is already on the stage, and some-
body must be Jean. Take care of Miss
Deeyell, girls, and ring for more maids.
Helene, help me dress Miss Monroe : put
on her slippers while I lace her gown ; run
and fetch more jewels, — more still, —
she can carry off any number ; not any
rouge, Helene, — she has too much color
now ; pull the frock more off the shoul-
ders, — it 's a pity to cover an inch of
them ; pile her hair higher, — here, take
my diamond tiara, child ; take her train,
Helene. Miss Hamilton, run and open
the doors ahead of them, please. I won't
go down for this tableau. I '11 put Miss
Deeyell right, and then I '11 slip into the
drawing-room, to be ready for the guests
when they come from the banquet-hall."

We hurried breathlessly through an
interminable series of rooms and corri-
dors. I gave the signal to Mr. Beres-
f ord, who was nervously waiting for it
in the wings, and the curtain went up
on Young Hynde Horn disguised as the
auld beggar man at the king's gate. Mr.
Beresford was reading the ballad, and
we took up the tableaux* at the point
where Hynde Horn has come from a far
countrie to see why the diamonds in the
ring given him by his own true-love have
grown pale and wan. He hears that the
king's daughter Jean has been married
to a knight these nine days past.
" But unto him a wife the bride winna be,

For love of Hynde Horn, far over the sea."
He therefore adopts the old beggar's
disguise and hobbles to the king's palace,
where he petitions the porter for a cup

of wine and a bit of cake to be handed
him by the fair bride herself, " for the
sake of Hynde Horn."

The curtain went up again. The por-
ter, moved to pity, has gone to give the
message to his lady. Hynde Horn is
watching the staircase at the rear of the
stage, his heart in his eyes. The tapes-
tries that hide it are drawn, and there
stands the king's daughter, who tripped
down the stair,

" And in her fair hands did lovingly bear
A cup of red wine, and a farle of cake,
To give the old man for loved Hynde Horn's
sake."

The hero of the ballad, who had not
seen his true-love for seven long years,
could not have been more amazed at the
change in her than was Ronald Macdon-
ald at the sight of the flushed, excited,
almost tearful, wholly beautiful king's
daughter on the staircase ; Lady Ard-
more's diamonds flashing from her crim-
son satin gown, Lady Ardmore's rubies
glowing on her white arms and throat.

In the next scene Hynde Horn has
drained the cup and dropped the ring
into it.

" ' Oh, found you that ring by sea or on land,
Or got you that ring off a dead man's hand ? '
' Oh, I found not that ring by sea or on land,
But I got that ring from a fair lady's hand.

" ' As a pledge of true love she gave it to me,
Full seven years ago as I sail'd o'er the sea ;
But now that the diamonds are chang'd in

their hue,

I know that my love has to me proved un-
true.' "

I never saw a prettier picture of sweet,
tremulous womanhood, a more enchant-
ing breathing image of fidelity, than
Francesca looked as Mr. Beresford read :

" ' Oh, I will cast off my gay costly gown,
And follow thee on from town unto town,
And I will take the gold kaiins from my hair
And follow my true love for ever mair.' "

Whereupon Young Hynde Horn lets his
beggar weed fall, and shines there the
foremost and noblest of ah1 the king's
companie as he says : —

Penelope's Progress.

371

" ' You need not cast off your gay costly gown,
To follow me on from town unto town ;
You need not take the gold kaims from your

hair,
For Hynde Horn has gold enough and to

spare.'

" Then the bridegrooms were chang'd, and the

lady re-wed

To Hynde Horn thus come back, like one
from the dead."

There is no doubt that this tableau
gained the success of the evening, and
the participants in it should have mod-
estly and gratefully received the choruses
of congratulation that were ready to be
offered during the supper and dance that
followed. Instead of that, what hap-
pened ? Francesca drove home with
Miss Deeyell before the quadrille d'hon-
neur, and when Willie bade me good-
night at the gate in the loaning he said,
" I shall not be early to-morrow, dear.
I am going to see Macdonald off."

" Off ! Where is he going ? "

" Only to Edinburgh and London, to
stay till the last of the week."

" But we may have left Pettybaw by
the last of the week."

" Of course ; that is probably what he
has in mind. But let me tell you this,
Penelope : my friend Macdonald is mad-
ly in love with Miss Monroe, and if she
plays fast and loose with him she shall
know what I think of her ! "

" And let me tell you this, sir : my
friend Miss Monroe is madly in love
with Ronald Macdonald, and if he plays
fast and loose with her he shall know
what I think of him ! "

xxrn.

" He set her on a coal-black steed,

Himsel lap on behind her,
An' he 's awa' to the Hieland hills

Whare her frien's they canna find her."
Bob Roy.

The occupants of Bide-a-Wee Cottage
awoke in anything but a Jubilee humor,

next day. Willie had intended to come
at nine, but of course did not appear.
Francesca took her breakfast in bed, and
came listlessly into the sitting-room at
ten o'clock, looking like a ghost. Jean's
ankle was much better, — the sprain
proved to be not even a strain, — but her
wrist was painful. It was drizzling, too,
and we had promised Miss Ardmore and
Miss Macrae to aid with the last Jubilee
decorations, the distribution of medals
at the church, and the children's games
and tea on the links in the afternoon.

We had determined not to desert our
beloved Pettybaw for the metropolis on
this great day, but to celebrate it with
the dear fowk o' Fife who had grown
to be a part of our lives.

Bide-a-Wee Cottage does not occupy
an imposing position in the landscape,
and the choice of art fabrics at the Pet-
tybaw draper's is small, but the moment
it should stop raining we were intending
to carry out a dazzling scheme of deco-
ration that would proclaim our affection-
ate respect for the " little lady in black "
on her Diamond Jubilee. But would it
stop raining ? — that was the question.
The draper wasna certain that so licht
a shoo'r could richtly be called rain ; the
chemist remarked, as he handed me a
bottle of arnica early in the morning,
" Won'erful blest in weather we are,
ma'm." The village weans were yearn-
ing for the hour to arrive when they
might sit on the wet golf - course and
have tea ; manifestly, therefore, it could
not be a bad day for Scotland ; but if it
should grow worse, what would become
of our mammoth subscription bonfire on
Pettybaw Law, — the bonfire that Bren-
da Macrae was to light, as the lady of
the manor ?

There were no deputations to request
the honor of Miss Macrae's distinguished
services on this occasion ; that is not
the way the self-respecting villager com-
ports himself in Fifeshire. The chair-
man of the local committee, a respect-
able gardener, called upon Miss Macrae

372

Penelope's Progress.

at Pettybaw House, and said, " I 'm sent
to tell ye ye 're to have the pleesure
an' the honor of lightin' the bonfire the
nicht ! Ay, it 's a grand chance ye 're
havin', miss ; ye '11 remember it as long
as ye live, I 'm thinkin' ! "

When I complimented this rugged soul
on his decoration of the triumphal arch
under which the schoolchildren were to
pass, I said, "I think if her Majesty
could see it, she would be pleased with
our village to-day, James."

"Ay, ye 're richt, miss," he replied
complacently. " She 'd see that Inch-
cawdy canna compeer wi' us ; we 've
patronized her weel in Pettybaw ! "

Truly, as Stevenson says, " he who
goes fishing among the Scots peasantry
with condescension for a bait will have
an empty basket by evening."

At eleven o'clock a boy arrived at
Bide-a-Wee with an interesting-looking
package, which I promptly opened. That
dear foolish lover of mine (whose fool-
ishness is one of the most adorable things
about him) makes me only two visits
a day, and is therefore constrained to
send me some reminder of himself in
the intervening hours, or minutes, — a
book, a flower, or a note. Uncovering
the pretty box, I found a long, slender
— something — of sparkling silver.

" What is it ? " I exclaimed, holding
it up. "It is too long and not wide
enough for a paper-knife, although it
would be famous for cutting magazines.
Is it a baton ? Where did Willie find
it, and what can it be ? There is some-
thing engraved on one side, something
that looks like birds on a twig, — yes,
three little birds ; and see the lovely
cairngorm set in the end ! Oh, it has
words cut in it : ' To Jean ' — Good-
ness me ! I 've opened Miss Deeyell's
package ! "

Francesca made a sudden swooping
motion, and caught box, cover, and con-
tents in her arms.

" It is mine ! I know it is mine ! " she
cried. " You really ought not to claim

everything that is sent to the house, Pe-
nelope, — as if nobody had any friends
or presents but you ! " and she rushed
upstairs like a whirlwind.

I examined the outside wrapper, lying
on the floor, and found, to my chagrin,
that it did bear Miss Monroe's name,
scrawled faintly and carelessly ; but if
the box was addressed to her, why was
the silver thing inscribed to Miss Dee-
yell? Well, Francesca would explain
the mystery within the hour, unless she
was a changed being.

^Fifteen minutes passed. Salemina was
making Jubilee sandwiches at Pettybaw
House, Miss Deeyell was asleep in her
room, I was being devoured slowly by
curiosity, when Francesca came down
without a word, walked out of the front
door, went up to the main street, and
entered the village post-office without so
much as a backward glance. She was a
changed being, then ! I might as well
be living in a Gaboriau novel, I thought,
and went up into my little painting and
writing room to address a programme of
the Pettybaw celebration to Lady Baird,
watch for the first glimpse of Willie
coming down the loaning, and see if I
could discover where Francesca went
from the post-office.

Sitting down by my desk, I could
find neither my wax nor my silver can-
dlestick, my scissors nor my ball of twine.
Plainly, Francesca had been on one of
her borrowing tours ; and she had left
an additional trace of herself — if one
were needed — in a book of old Scottish
ballads, open at Young Hynde Horn. I
glanced at it idly while I was waiting
for her to return. I was not familiar
with the opening verses, and these were
the first lines that met my eye : —

" Oh, he gave to his love a silver wand,
Her sceptre of rule over fair Scotland ;
With three singing laverocks set thereon
For to mind her of him when he was gone.

" And his love gave to him a gay gold ring
With three shining diamonds set therein ;

Penelope's Progress.

373

Oh, his love gave to him this gay gold ring,
Of virtue and value above all thing."

A light dawned upon ine ! The silver
baton, then, was intended for a wand, —
and a very pretty way of making love
to an American girl, too, to call it a
'' sceptre of rule over fair Scotland ; " and
the three birds were three singing laver-
ocks " to mind her of him when he was
gone."

But the real Hynde Horn in the dear
old ballad had a true-love who was not
captious and capricious and cold, like
Francesca. His love gave him a gay
gold ring, —

" Of virtue and value above all thing."

Yet stay : behind the ballad book flung
heedlessly on my desk was — what should
it be but a little morocco case in which
our Francesca keeps her dead mother's
engagement ring, — the mother who died
when she was a wee child. Truly a
very pretty modern ballad to be sung in
these unromantic, degenerate days !

Francesca came in at the door behind
me, saw her secret reflected in my tell-
tale face, saw the sympathetic tears in
my eyes, and, flinging herself into my
willing arms, burst into tears.

"Oh, Pen, dear, dear Pen, I am so
miserable and so happy; so afraid that he
won't come back, so frightened for fear
that he will ! I sent him away because
there were so many lions in the path,
and I did n't know how to slay them. I
thought of my f-father ; I thought of my
c-c-country. I did n't want to live with
him in Scotland, and I knew that I could
n't live without him in America ! I did
n't think I was s-suited to a minister, and
I am not ; but oh ! this p-particular min-
ister is so s-suited to me ! " and she threw
herself on the sofa and buried her head
in the cushions.

She was so absurd even in her grief
that I could hardly help smiling.

" Let us talk about the lions," I said
soothingly. " But when did the trouble
begin ? When did he speak to you ? "

" After the tableaux last night ; but
of course there had been other — other

— times — and things."
" Of course. Well?"

" He had told me a week before that
he should go away for a while, that it
made him too wretched to stay here just
now ; and I suppose that was when he
got the silver wand ready for me. It
was meant for the Jean of the poem, you
know."

" You don't think he had it made for
JeanDeeyell in the first place ? " I asked
this, thinking she needed some sort of
tonic in her relaxed condition.

"You know him better than that, Pene-
lope ! I am ashamed of you ! We had
read Hynde Horn together ages before
Jean Deeyell came ; but I imagine, when
the lines were to be acted, he thought it
would be better to have some other king's
daughter ; that is, that it would be less
personal. And I never, never would
have been in the tableau, if I had dared
refuse Lady Ardmore, or could have ex-
plained ; but I had no time to think. And
then, naturally, he thought by my being
there as the king's daughter that — that

— the lions were slain, you know ; in-
stead of which they were roaring so that
I could hardly hear the orchestra."

" Francesca, look me in the eye ! Do

— you — love him ? "

" Love him ? I adore him ! " she ex-
claimed in good clear decisive English,
as she rose impetuously and paced up
and down in front of the sofa. " But
in the first place there is the difference
in nationality."

" I have no patience with you. One
would think he was a Turk, an Eskimo,
or a cannibal. He is white, he speaks
English, and he believes in the Chris-
tian religion. The idea of calling such
a man a foreigner ! "

" Oh, it did n't prevent me from loving
him," she confessed, " but I thought at
first it would be unpatriotic to marry
him."

" Did you think Columbia could not

374

Penelope's Progress.

spare you even as a rare specimen to be
used for exhibition purposes ? " I asked
wickedly.

" You know I am not so conceited as
that ! No," she continued ingenuously,
'• I feared that if I accepted him it would
look as if the home supply of husbands
was of inferior quality ; and then we had
such disagreeable discussions at the be-
ginning, I simply could not bear to leave
my nice new fresh country, and ally
myself with his aeons of stirring history.
But it came to me in the night, a week
ago, that after all I should hate a man
who did n't love his own country ; and
in the illumination of that new idea
Ronald's character assumed a different
outline in my mind. How could he love
America when he had never seen it ?
How could I convince him that Ameri-
can women are the most charming in the
world better than by letting him live un-
der the same roof with a good example ?
How could I expect him to let me love
my country best unless I permitted him
to love his best ? "

" You need n't offer so many apolo-
gies for your love, my dear," I answered
dryly.

" I am not apologizing for it ! " she
exclaimed impulsively. "Oh, if you
could only keep it to yourself, I should
like to tell you how I trust and admire
and reverence Ronald Macdonald ! I
know very well what you all think:
you think he is mad about me, and has
been from the first. You think he has
gone on and on loving me against his
better judgment. You believe he has
fought against it because of my unfit-
ness, but that I am not capable of deep
feeling, and that I shall never appreci-
ate the sacrifices he makes in choosing
me ! Very well, then, I announce that
if I had to live in a damp manse the
rest of my life, drink tea and eat scones
for breakfast, and — and buy my hats
of the Inchcaldy milliner, I should still
glory in the possibility of. being Ronald
Macdonald 's wife, — a possibility hourly

growing more uncertain, I am sorry to
say ! "

" And the extreme aversion with which
you began," I asked, — " what has be-
come of that, and when did it begin to
turn in the opposite direction ? "

" Aversion ! " she cried, with derisive
and unblushing candor. " That aver-
sion was a cover, clapped on to keep my
self-respect warm. The fact is, — we
might as well throw light upon the whole
matter, and then never allude to it again ;
and if you tell Willie Beresf ord, you shall
never visit MY manse, nor see me pre-
side at my mothers' meetings, nor hear
me address the infant class in the Sun-
day-school, — the fact is I liked him from
the beginning at Lady Baird's dinner. I
liked the bow he made when he offered
me his arm (I wish it had been his hand);
I liked the top of his head when it was
bowed ; I liked his arm when I took it ;
I liked the height of his shoulder when
I stood beside it; I liked the way he
put me in my chair (that showed chival-
ry), and unfolded his napkin (that was
neat and businesslike), and pushed aside
all his wineglasses but one (that was tem-
perate) ; I liked the side view of his
nose, the shape of his collar, the clean-
ness of his shave, the manliness of his
tone, — oh, I liked him altogether, the
goodness and strength and simplicity that
radiated from him to me. And when he
said, within the first half-hour, that in-
ternational alliances presented even more
difficulties to the imagination than oth-
ers, I felt, to my confusion, a distinct
sense of disappointment. Even while I
was quarreling with him I said to myself,
' You poor darling, you can't have him
even if you should want him, so don't
look at him much ! ' '

" Then you are really sure this time,
and you have never advised him to love
somebody more worthy than yourself? "
I asked.

" Not I ! " she replied. " I would n't
put such an idea into his head for worlds !
He might adopt it ! "

Penelope's Progress.

375

XXIV.

" Pale and wan was she when Glenlogie gaed

ben,
But red rosy grew she whene'er he sat doun."

Glenlogie.

Just then the front door banged, and a
manly step sounded on the stair. Fran-
cesca sat up straight in a big chair, and
dried her eyes hastily with her poor lit-
tle wet ball of a handkerchief ; for she
knows that Willie is a privileged visitor
here. The door opened (it was ajar),
and Ronald Macdonald strode into the
room. I hope I may never have the
same sense of nothingness again ! To
be young, pleasing, gifted, and to be re-
garded no more than a fly upon the wall,
is death to one's self-respect.

He dropped on one knee beside Fran-
cesca and took her two hands in his with-
out removing his gaze from her speaking
face. She burned, but did not flinch un-
der the ordeal. The color leaped into
her cheeks. Love swam in her tears, but
was not drowned there ; it was too strong.

" Did you mean it ? " he asked.

She looked at him, trembling, as she
said, " I meant every word, and far, far
more. I meant all that a girl can say to
a man when she loves him, and wants to
be everything she is capable of being to
him, to his work, to his people, and to his
— country."

Even this brief colloquy had been
embarrassing, but I knew that worse was
still to come and could not be delayed
much longer, so I left the room hastily
and with no attempt at apology; not
that they minded my presence in the
least or observed my exit, though I was
obliged to leap over Mr. Macdonald's
feet in passing.

I found Mr. Beresford sitting on the
stairs, in the lower hall.

" Willie, you angel, you idol, where
did you find him ? " I exclaimed.

" When I went into the post-office, an
hour ago," he replied, " I met Francescao

She asked me for Macdonald's Edin-
burgh address, saying she had something
that belonged to him and wished to send
it after him. I offered to address the
package and see that it reached him as
expeditiously as possible. ' That is what
I wish,' she said, with elaborate formal-
ity. ' This is something I have just dis-
covered, something he needs very much,
something he does not know he has left
behind.' I did not think it best to tell
her at the moment that Macdonald had
not yet left Inchcaldy."

" Willie, you have the quickest intel-
ligence and the most exquisite insight of
any man I ever met ! "

" But the fact was that I had been to
see him off, and found him detained by
the sudden illness of one of his elders.
I rode over again to take him the little
parcel. Of course I don't know what it
contained ; by its size and shape I should
judge it might be a thimble, or a collar-
button, or a sixpence ; but, at all events,
he must have needed the thing, for he
certainly did not let the grass grow un-
der his feet after he received it ! Let
us go into the sitting-room until they
come down, — as they will have to, poor
wretches, sooner or later ; I know that I
am always being brought down against
my will. Salemina wants your advice
about the number of her Majesty's por-
traits to be hung on the front of the
cottage, and the number of candles to be
placed in each window."

It was a half -hour later when Mr. Mac-
donald came into the room, and walking
directly up to Salemina kissed her hand
respectfully. •

" Miss Salemina," he said, with evi-
dent emotion, " I want to borrow one
of your national jewels for my Queen's
crown.'

" And what will our President say to
lose a jewel from his crown ? "

" Good republicans do not wear gems,
as a matter of principle," he argued ;
" but in truth I fear I' am not thinking
of her Majesty — God bless her !

376

Penelope's Progress.

' I would wear it in my bosom,
Lest my jewel I should tine.'

It is the crowning of my own life rather
than that of the British Empire that en-
gages my present thought. Will you in-
tercede for me with Francesca's father ? "

" And this is the end of all your in-
ternational bickering ? " Salemina asked
teasingly.

" Yes," he answered ; " we have buried
the hatchet, signed articles of agreement,
made treaties of international comity.
Francesca stays over here as a kind of
missionary to Scotland, so she says, or
as a feminine diplomat ; she wishes to be
on hand to enforce the Monroe Doctrine
properly, in case her government's ac-
credited ambassadors relax in the per-
formance of their duty."

" Salemina ! " called a laughing voice
outside the door. " You will be a prood
woman the day, for I am now Estaib-
lished ! " and Francesca, entering, clad in
Miss Grieve's Sunday bonnet, shawl, and
black cotton gloves, curtsied demurely to
the floor. She held, as corroborative de-
tail, a life of John Knox in her hand,
and anything more incongruous than her
sparkling eyes and mutinous mouth un-
der the melancholy bonnet cannot well
be imagined.

" I am now Established," she repeat-
ed. " Div ye ken the new asseestant
frae Inchcawdy pairish ? I 'm the mon "
(a second deep curtsy here). " I trust,
leddies, that ye '11 mak' the maist o' your
releegious preevileges, an' that ye '11 be
constant at the kurruk. Have you given
papa's consent, Salemina ? And is n't
it dreadful that he is Scotch ? "

" Is n't it dreadful that she is not ? "
asked Mr. Macdonald. " Yet to my mind
no woman in Scotland is half as lovable
as she ! "

" And no man in America begins to
compare with him," Francesca confessed
sadly. " Is n't it pitiful that out of the
millions of our own countrypeople we
could n't have found somebody that would
do ? What do you think now, Ronald,

of these dangerous international alli-
ances ? "

" You never understood that speech of
mine," he replied, with audacious menda-
city. " When I said that international
marriages presented more difficulties to
the imagination than others, I was think-
ing of your marriage and mine, and I
knew from the first moment I saw you
that that would be extremely difficult to
arrange ! "

XXV.

" And soon a score of fires, I ween,
From height, and hill, and cliff, were seen ;

Each after each they glanced to sight,
As stars arise upon the night.
They gleamed on many a dusky tarn,
Haunted by the lonely earn ;
On many a cairn's grey pyramid,
Where urns of mighty chiefs lie hid."

The Lay of the Last Minstrel.

The rain continued at intervals
throughout the day, but as the afternoon
wore on the skies looked a trifle more
hopeful. It would be u saft," no doubt,
climbing the Law, but the bonfire must
be lighted. Would Pettybaw be behind
London ? Would Pettybaw desert the
Queen in her hour of need ? Not though
the rain were bursting the well-heads on
Cawdor ; not though the swollen moun-
tain burns drowned us to the knee ! So
off we started as the short midsummer
night descended.

We were to climb the Law, wait for
the signal from Cawdor's lonely height,
and then fire Pettybaw's torch of loyalty
to the little lady in black ; not a blaze
flaming out war and rumors of war, as
was the beacon-fire on the old gray battle-
ments of Edinburgh Castle in the days
of yore, but a message of peace and good
will. Pausing at a hut on the side of the
great green mountain, we looked north to-
ward Helva, white-crested with a wreath
of vapor. (You need not look on your
map of Scotland for Cawdor and Helva,
for you will not find them any more than

Penelope's Progress.

377

you will find Pettybaw and Inchcaldy.)
One by one the tops of the distant hills
began to clear, and with the glass we
could discern the bonfire cairns upbuilt
here and there for Scotland's evening
sacrifice of love and fealty. Cawdor was
still veiled, and Cawdor was to give the
signal for all the smaller fires. Petty-
baw's, I suppose, was counted as a flash
in the pan, but not one of the hundred
patriots climbing the mountain side would
have acknowledged it ; to us the good
name of the kingdom of Fife and the
glory of the British Empire depended
on Pettybaw fire. Some of us had mis-
givings, too, — misgivings founded upon
Miss Grieve's dismal prophecies. She
had agreed to put nine lighted candles
in each of our cottage windows at ten
o'clock, but she had declined to go out
of her kitchen to see a procession, hear
a band, or look at a bonfire. She had
had a sair sickenin' day, an amount of
work too wearifu' for one person by her
lane. She hoped that the bonfire wasna
built o' Mrs. Sinkler's coals nor Mr.
Macbrose's kindlings, nor soaked with
Mr. Cameron's paraffine ; and she fin-
ished with an appropriate allusion to the
exceedingly nice family with whom she
had lived in Glasgy.

And still we toiled upward, keeping
our doubts to ourselves. Jean was limp-
ing bravely, supported by Robin An-
struther's arm. Mr. Macdonald was ar-
dently helping Francesca, who can climb
like a chamois, but would doubtless ra-
ther be assisted. Her gypsy face shone
radiant out of her black cloth hood, and
Ronald's was no less luminous. I have
never seen two beings more love-daft.
They act as if they had read the manu-
script of love, and were moving in ex-
alted superiority through a less favored
world, — a world waiting impatiently
for the first number of the story to come
out. Still we climbed, and as we ap-
proached the Grey Lady (a curious rock
very near the summit) somebody pro-
posed three cheers for the Queen.

How the children hurrahed, — for the
infant heart is easily inflamed, — and
how their shrill Jubilee slogan pierced
the mystery of the night, and went roll-
ing on from glen to glen to the Firth of
Forth itself ! Then there was a shout
from the rocketmen far out on the open
moor, — " Cawdor 's clear ! Cawdor 's
clear ! " Back against a silver sky stood
the signal pile, and signal rockets flashed
upward, to be answered from all the
surrounding hills.

Now to light our own fire. One of the
village committee solemnly took off his
hat and poured on oil. The great moment
had come. Brenda Macrae approached
the sacred pile, and, tremulous from the
effect of much contradictory advice, ap-
plied the torch. Silence, false prophets
of disaster ! Who now could say that
Pettybaw bonfire had been badly built,
that its fifteen tons of coal and twenty
cords of wood had been unphilosophical-
ly heaped together !

The flames rushed toward the sky
with ruddy blaze, shining with weird
effect against the black fir-trees and the
blacker night. Three cheers more ! God
save the Queen ! May she reign over us,
happy and glorious ! And we cheered
lustily, too, you may be sure ! It was
more for the woman than the monarch ;
it was for the blameless life, not for the
splendid monarchy ; but there was every-
thing hearty, and nothing alien in our
tone, when we sang God Save the Queen
with the rest of the Pettybaw villagers.

The land darkened ; the wind blew
chill. Willie, Mr. Macdonald, and Mr.
Anstruther brought rugs, and found a
sheltered nook for us where we might
still watch the scene. There we sat,
looking at the plains below, with all the
village streets sparkling with light, with
rockets shooting into the air and falling
to earth in golden rain, with red lights
flickering on the gray lakes, and with
one beacon-fire after another gleaming
from the hilltops, till we could count
more than fifty answering one another

378

Penelope's Progress.

from the wooded crests along the shore,
some of them piercing the rifts of low-
lying clouds till they seemed to be burn-
ing in mid-heaven.

Then, one by one the distant fires
faded, and as some of us still sat there
silently, far, far away in the gray east
there was a faint, faint rosy flush where
the new dawn was kindling in secret.
Underneath that violet bank of cloud the
sun was forging his beams of light. The
pole-star paled. The breath of the new
morrow stole up out of the rosy gray.
The wings of the morning stirred and
trembled ; and in the darkness and chill
and mysterious awakening, eyes looked
into other eyes, hand sought hand, and
cheeks touched each other in mute ca-
ress.

XXVI.

" Sun. gallop down the westlin skies.

Gang soon to bed, an' quickly rise ;
0 lash your steeds, post time away,
And haste about our bridal day ! "

The Gentle Shepherd.

Every noon, during this last week, as
we have wended our way up the loaning
to the Pettybaw inn for our luncheon,
we have passed three magpies sitting to-
gether on the topmost rail of the fence.
I am not prepared to state that they
were always the same magpies ; I only
know there were always three of them.
We have just discovered what they were
about, and great is the excitement in our
little circle. I am to be married to-mor-
row, and married in Pettybaw, and Miss
Grieve says that in Scotland the number
of magpies one sees is of infinite sig-
nificance : that one means sorrow ; two,
mirth ; three, a marriage ; four, a birth.
(We now recall the fact that we saw one
magpie, our first, on the afternoon of her
arrival.)

Mr. Beresf ord has been cabled for, and
must return to America at once on im-
portant business connected with the final
settlement of his mother's estate. He

persuaded me that the Atlantic is an ower
large body of water to roll between two
lovers, and I agreed with all my heart.

A wedding was arranged, mostly by
telegraph, in six hours. The Reverend
Ronald and the Friar are to perform
the ceremony ; a dear old painter friend
of mine, a London R. A., will come to
give me away ; Francesca will be my
maid of honor ; Elizabeth Ardmore and
Jean Deeyell, my bridemaidens ; Robin
Anstruther, the best man ; while Jamie
and Ralph will be kilted pages-in-waiting,
and Lady Ardmore will give the break-
fast at the castle.

Never was there such generosity, such
hospitality, such wealth of friendship !
True, I have no wedding finery ; but as I
am perforce a Scottish bride, I can be
married in the white gown with the sil-
ver thistles in which I went to Holyrood.

Mr. Anstruther took a night train to
and from London, to choose the bouquets
and bridal souvenirs. Lady Baird has
sent the veil, and a wonderful diamond
thistle to pin it on, — a jewel fit for a
princess ! With the dear Dominie's note
promising to be an usher came an antique
silver casket filled with white heather.
And as for the bride-cake, it is one of Sa-
lemina's gifts, chosen as much in a spirit
of fun as affection. It is surely appro-
priate for this American wedding trans-
planted to Scottish soil, and what should
it be but a model, in fairy icing, of Sir
Walter's beautiful monument in Princes
Street ! Of course Francesca is full of
nonsensical quips about it, and says that
the Edinburgh jail would have been just
as fine architecturally (it is, in truth, a
building beautiful enough to tempt an
aesthete to crime), and a much more fit-
ting symbol for a wedding-cake ; unless,
indeed, she adds, Salemina intended her
gift to be a monument to my folly.

Pettybaw kirk is trimmed with yellow
broom from these dear Scottish banks
and braes ; and waving their green fans
and plumes up and down the aisle where
I shall walk a bride are tall ferns and

A First Performance in Shakespeare's Time.

379

bracken from Crummylowe Glen, where
we played ballads.

As I look back upon it, the life here
has been all a ballad, from first to last.
Like the elfin Tarn Lin,

" The queen o' fairies she caught me
In this green hill to dwell,"

and these hasty nuptials are a fittingly
romantic ending to the summer's poetry.
I am in a mood, were it necessary, to be
" ta'en by the milk-white hand," lifted
to a pillion on a coal-black charger,. and
spirited " o'er the border an' awa' " by
my dear Jock o' Hazledean. Unhappily,

(The

all is quite regular and aboveboard ; no
"lord of Langley dale " contests the prize
with the bridegroom, but the marriage
is at least unique and unconventional, —
no one can rob me of that sweet conso-
lation.

So " gallop down the westlin skies,"
dear Sun, but, prythee, gallop back to-
morrow ! " Gang soon to bed," an you
will, but rise again betimes ! Give me
Queen's weather, dear Sun, and shine a
benison upon my wedding morn !

[Exit Penelope into the ballad-land
of maiden dreams.]

Kate Douglas Wiggin.
end.)

A FIRST PERFORMANCE IN SHAKESPEARE'S TIME.

[THE young Govaert, at his London
lodgings, sits down to the composition of
a letter to his countryman. Date, 1599.]

You will recall, my dear Martyn, that
in a previous letter, which so barely es-
caped the depths of ocean, I claimed to
have discovered a man. Like Dioge-
nes, I had searched for him since my
unhappy departure from Holland. You
know me for a fanatic on prejudice and
convention, on religious irreligion and
the general inversion of nature in man-
kind. I shall not repeat my eulogy on
William Shakespeare, to which you hard-
ly assented. It is my present purpose,
in accordance with the promise of writ-
ing you all my experiences, to describe
a visit to an English theatre ; for to-day
I witnessed one of my friend's plays.
It was a novel experience, and I pre-
sume it will interest you.

Leaving my lodgings at about two in the
afternoon, I made my way toward Shore-
ditch, the northernmost playground of
London. Northward I trudged through
crooked Holywell High Street, with its
dingy shops and dwellings. I observed

but a few straggling pedestrians, as the
hour was yet early for theatre - goers.
Halting a little short of the Old Street
Road, which strikes Holywell High
Street and a toper's tavern simultaneous-
ly, and then lurches tipsily off in another
direction, I turned to the left into Holy-
well Lane. It is short and narrow. On
the north side is the previous location of
Holywell Priory, named from a sacred
spring. Defiantly glaring at it from the
south side, in token of the rising religious
warfare against places of amusement,
stands the Curtain Theatre, named from
the ground it covers.1 It was in quest
of this, the second resort of its kind in
England, that I had wandered forth.

It consists of a circular outside wall
three stories high. On entering (as a
privileged person, I entered early), I
found myself still in the open air, on a
dirt floor from fifty to seventy feet in
diameter. This is called " the pit."
Against the wall are arranged three gal-
leries. The lowest is slightly elevated,

1 Hence not from anything resembling the
modern veil to scenic transformations.

380

A First Performance in Shakespeare's Time.

and joined to the ground by steps. Over
the top tier a shedlike roof projects in-
ward from the main wall, while the floors
of the upper tiers serve as roofs to the
lower. These galleries are partitioned
off into so-called " boxes." As I entered
the door, I faced the square, rush-cov-
ered stage directly opposite, the galleries
being there discontinued to make room
for it. Part of it recedes under the
roof and part projects into the pit, ex-
posed on three sides and covering about
a quarter of the ground. The front is
removable, and rests on stilts as high as
your knees. The onepenny spectators
stand about it during performances.
Doors at the back communicate with the
actors' dressing-room. Above is an ac-
tors' balcony, on a line with the second
gallery. Still higher, the roof over the
uppermost gallery is carried further in,
to protect the forward part of the plat-
form ; and directly under this projec-
tion, supported by two oaken pillars, is
a diminutive house, from which boards
are suspended, from time to time, ex-
plaining whether a palace or a forest is
represented as the place of action.

These London resorts are the response
to an increasing public desire for amuse-
ment. The people were formerly satis-
fied with sitting in the galleries about an
inn court, and watching the grotesque
performance of a body of strolling
clowns, who used a cart at one end of
the yard for their stage. This explains
the shape and equipment of the present
theatre.

With considerable time at my disposal,
I stepped out Strolling on some dis-
tance, I reached the former site of the
Curtain's forerunner, called " The Thea-
tre." It was recently removed to Bank-
side. In the field beyond, I divided my
attention between some boisterous fel-
lows charging the quintain and the mot-
ley throng which was gathering from all
quarters toward the playhouse. The
majority of the latter were low idlers,
and idling dandies jingling their pol-

ished rapiers. The dandies were pro-
menading in flaming silken hose of end-
less shades, with short cloaks thrown
loosely over their shoulders to exhibit
the expensive linings and reveal the fan-
tastic slashes in their doublets. Of these
fops, many cannot read, more are in hour-
ly dread of creditors, and all are disso-
lute. You might have heard one on a
prancing palfrey discoursing loudly to a
companion about his " friend Lord So-
and-So " (probably fictitious), or ex-
pounding the superiority of R. Allen
over Will Shakespeare. Some of the
crowd around the entrance view the os-
tentatious exhibition with open-mouthed
wonder, while others express their ad-
miration in shouts, or disapproval in
jeers.

With upturned noses, the bloods were
entering to occupy their twelvepenny
stools on the sides of the stage, where
they can be seen to best advantage. I
followed, for by this time, as the hour
of three was approaching, the audience
was assembling within. The boys in the
field were deserting their football and
quintain, and those fortunate enough to
possess pennies made for the theatre.
Passing the doorkeeper with a wink in
lieu of a fee, I joined the groundlings.

You have already inferred that the
theatre is disreputable. However, it is
improving. Occasionally some honest
John Tugby entered one of the twopen-
ny boxes with his family. Under Shake-
speare's influence, the more refined are
gradually becoming interested in dra-
matic amusements. There is that ele-
ment in his plays which appeals to the
intellectual while retaining the interest
of the lower classes. Indeed, since last
you heard from me, I fear my admira-
tion for Shakespeare the dramatist has
outstripped my admiration for Shake-
speare the man. What I then called a
clever accomplishment I now call a won-
derful " art." I shall define it later.
The drama scheduled for to-day was a
history of the military achievements of

A First Performance in Shakespeare's Time.

381

Henry V., a sequel to Henry IV., whose
story I told you. My friend has made
better plays, but none which has met
such unqualified success as this. To ap-
preciate it, turn Englishman ; assume
that astonishing national pride that has
filled England's breast since a certain
Spanish fool became the self-appointed
champion of the Deity — and came to
grief.

But to return to the pit. It was rap-
idly filling with the rabble, which crowd-
ed me forward to the stage. A cloud
in the summer sky, which at first made
my unsheltered neighbors uneasy, had
cleared away. Vying with the din of
voices and shuffling of feet in the gal-
leries were heard the loud tongues of
the dandies. Some of them, in lower
tones, were plotting to disconcert the
company by stalking out in the midst of
the performance. This is their method
of wreaking vengeance for personal slurs
of playwright or actor. I failed to catch
the cause of their present wrath, for, on
either side of me, an apple-woman and
a tobacco-vender were screeching and
bellowing respectively in my already
deafened ears. Finding me no buyer,
they essayed to flounder, porpoise-like,
through the assembled mass, calling down
imprecations from sundry persons who
fancied their toes had some rights.

The unusual restlessness of the audi-
ence, which now packed the house six or
seven hundred strong, at last called my
attention to the fact that the appointed
hour was past. Five minutes, ten, fif-
teen, went by, and no change in the sit-
uation. Evidently something had gone
amiss, for the Burbage and Shakespeare
Company are famous for punctuality.
An impatient scuffling began, which de-
veloped into a steady tramp, tramp,
tramp, in the galleries, shaking the build-
ing to its foundations. Twice Shake-
speare's anxious face appeared from the
loft under the stage-roof. His glance
was directed toward an empty box near
the stage. Presently it was entered by

three masked ladies, attended. Their
elaborate angular head-gear and exten-
sive ruffs, their open skirts, exposing
brilliant underdresses and hung on gi-
gantic farthingales which spread in a
circular shelf from the hips, betrayed
high degree. One of the visitors, who
seemed to excel the others in rank, wore
at her girdle a gorgeous pendant of dia-
monds.

Before a derisive murmur could re-
sult in a hiss, a loud striking together of
two boards heralded the opening of the
play. There was silence in a moment.
The surrounding wall of faces in the gal-
leries and the sea of faces in the pit
turned by common impulse toward the
stage. These countenances were univer-
sally heavy-featured, but wore a variety
of expressions, anywhere on the graded
scale between enormous grins and jaws
dropped in a rapture of expectancy. A
youthful chorus stepped forth, and, with
a familiar smile and conversational ease
which won his audience immediately, re-
cited a few preliminary lines. Apolo-
gizing for the farce of representing two
armies " within this wooden O," he be-
sought us to use our imaginations for
lack of adequate imagery.

After he had withdrawn, the sign-
board was hung out denoting a part of
the palace. Two solemn archbishops en-
tered, robed in fourteenth-century style.
In lavish terms they praised the regal
virtues of the young Henry, marveling
at his apparently sudden reform. They
then began plotting to urge, with great
offers of money, his expedition after the
French crown. This was to divert him
from a bill of the commons taxing the
Church treasuries.

The dignitaries retire, and the sign-
board announces the presence chamber.
Henry enters in state, attended by the
nobility in sumptuous costumes. This
is what the audience has been await-
ing. " There a' comes ! " " There 's our
Harry ! " are the gleeful whispers about
me. Before anything can proceed, the

382

A First Performance in Shakespeare's Time.

bishops are summoned, and a debate on
the French adventure is held. There are
a few dissenting voices, which simply
serve to offset the subtle persuasion and
scriptural misinterpretation of the as-
tute churchmen. The dispute settled,
ambassadors from the Dauphin tell the
monarch, in view of his claims,

' ' there 's naught in France
That can be with a nimble galliatd won,"
presenting him with a tun of tennis-balls
in contemptuous reference to his past
life. This calls out a scornful reply from
Henry, making the Dauphin appear a
puerile trifler, and eliciting the huzzas of
the crowd.

Thus ended the first act with a flourish.
After the storm of clapping had sub-
sided, the multitude began like a flock
of magpies, and soon the theatre was a
confusion of sound and tobacco smoke.
The masked ladies were the target of
many surmises. As to the play, I dis-
cerned a tone of disappointment. " Ah,
but Harry 's changed, man," muttered a
beetling-browed giant near me ; " a' cares
no more for poor tavern-folk, stuck up
on his throne there ! " Yet no inclina-
tion to leave was manifest among these
dissenters. The adroit introduction of
the Dauphin's insult had aroused their
ire and their curiosity about the upshot.
They were well rewarded in remaining,
for Henry the king soon captivated them
more completely than had Harry the
prince.

Forget that this ruler, as a matter of
history, had no better claim to the Brit-
ish throne than you or I; believe his
still more atrocious assumption that he
owned France was just : then you can
perhaps view him as the London public
does, without that insinuating suspicion
that his religious fervor is more conceit-
ed than humble. Shakespeare repre-
sents him as the ripe product resulting
from sterling character after a youth of
folly. Touched by his father's sorrows,
he has assumed the responsibility of aton-
ing for a parent's guilt. He is hence

deep and reverent, full of compassion,
and by nature open and warm as the
sun. His wild youth has given him a
splendid personal knowledge of people.
He is quick to recognize hypoci'isy in
the great, and greatness in the lowly.
He is businesslike, yet sincere and whole-
hearted in love ; full of sentiment, yet
not sentimental. But Henry is king.
It is a king's greatness that these quali-
ties especially enhance, because so sel-
dom found in a king. His pure human-
ness and sense of humor, the hale fellow
often shining through his seriousness,
echo the people's sentiments without low-
ering his dignity. His sympathy with
plebeian nature is accepted as the gra-
cious condescension of a higher order of
being. In the fourth act he played a
joke on a private soldier, and then re-
warded the honest man's courage and
loyalty with a glove of money. After
that, the audience would have deemed
any humiliation at the royal hands a
privilege.

The other characters of interest were
those introduced to amuse. They suc-
ceeded. The gloomiest of misanthropes
could not resist the merriest of laughs
at the hot - headed yet warm - hearted
general in the last acts, with his ex-
traordinary way of expressing pride at
sharing Welsh blood with Henry : " I
am your majesty's countryman, I care
not who know it ; I will confess it to
all the world : I need not pe ashamed
of your majesty, praised pe Got, so long
as your majesty is an honest man."

The great fat man of Henry IV.
fame was reported to have died " bab-
bling l of green fields." The news was
a disappointment. The audience want-
ed more of him ; but Shakespeare never
overdoes a good thing. However, Bar-
dolph of the fiery face, with Nym and
Mistress Quickly's new husband Pistol,
appeared in a street in the first scene

1 The Dutch of the young Govaert gave
" babbelende," thus substantiating Theobald's
famous emendation.

A First Performance in Shakespeare's Time.

383

of Act II. These apologies for men
prove to be bound for the war ; but
Nym and Pistol quarrel with drawn
swords ; Bardolph acts as peacemaker ;
and as all three are unconscionable cow-
ards, the situation provoked shrieks of
laughter from these Britons, who love
nothing better than a good fight. Pis-
tol, ranting in doggerel blank verse laden
with alliteration, slays his foe with such
lines as these : —

" O braggart vile and damned furious wight !
The grave doth gape and doting death is near ;
Therefore exhale ! "

— whatever that means. After Bardolph,
seconded by the genuine disinclination
of the wranglers, has made reconcilia-
tion, Nym says at Pistol's concession,
"Well, then, that's the humor of %"
and the encounter ends. This is Nym's
most solemn and ever recurring senti-
ment. On Pistol's touching farewell to
bis spouse he invited Nym to kiss her,
but that worthy replied, " I cannot kiss,
that is the humor of it," — tickling the
spectators by bis squeamishness.

" What a pox would sir Nym say, an
the hostess were a woman," remarked a
fop, who was greeted with a coarse guf-
faw. The boys in the female parts, un-
encumbered by the self-consciousness of
their elders, serve so well that there
would really be little need for woman,
even should she ever take such a freak
as to appear on the stage.

In the rest of Act II., which is a sort
of second preliminary, we are introduced
to both sides of the situation, — the flip-
pant French camp and Henry's depar-
ture from Southampton. After his really
powerful rebuke of three traitors, their
absolutely unfeigned gratitude at the
privilege of dying is a bit of improbabil-
ity which panders to the people's furi-
ous admiration for the king. It is an
infrequent flaw in my ideal ; but I am
only astounded at the loftiness of his
work when I consider the baseness of
his audience.

The remainder of the play I need not

detail. You know its history. Several
things which befell me and others dur-
ing its progress, however, are worth re-
lating.

On one of my sojourns in the pit, a
soliloquizing boy actor attacked the
trade of thieves. A fellow at my elbow
was so obstreperous in bis approval of
the youngster's sentiments that I thought
best to put my hand to my belt. I found
his already there. I got not his wrist
nor he my purse, for the next instant
I saw a pair of heels disappearing un-
der the stage. The scamp is but one of
an enterprising guild.

At a compliment to the " Gracious
Empress," dropped by the chorus, the
chief of the masked ladies attracted
notice. Her mask suddenly dropped,
revealing a damsel of sixty-six, — Eliza-
beth of England ! The look of conster-
nation that fell like a shadow across the
flirting bloods, at sight of that wrinkled
visage, at first amused me. A second
thought dampened my spirits; for, as
her Majesty readjusted her mask, a few
tried to raise the shout, " Long live the
Queen ! " But the attempt was abortive,
partly because all were not awake to
her presence, but in some measure be-
cause the nation is just beginning to
show signs of coldness toward this lone-
ly old woman. Her childish frivolity
is with reason not relished. Yet she
has been England's greatest monarch.

The drama concluded with Henry's
engagement to Katherine, after the
starved condition of the British host had
magnified its glory at Agincourt. We
were, in most cases, introduced to a part
of the field where fighting was not in
progress. This averted a farce, while it
kept us informed. But during the ver-
bal assault on Harfleur (the besieged in
the balcony) a wooden horse, mounted
by an English knight, keeled over with
an unearthly racket, — - probably struck
by a stray word. It caused the stage
to tremble like a weak-kneed actor, and
the king to lose his vocal ammunition.

384

A First Performance in Shakespeare's Time.

This was restored to him with gallant
courtesy by a foe on the wall, who
prompted him ; and England victorious-
ly entered the town, inarching through
the stage door.

It was nearly six o'clock when, after
thunders of applause, the audience final-
ly poured out. Even the fops had been
entertained and had attempted no pre-
mature exodus, although they had occa-
sionally pelted each other with apples
across the stage.

You have been wondering why I call
Shakespeare's pursuit an " art." I claim
not merely an analogy, but an identity
in all but materials. An artist under-
stands the technical necessities, as the
laws of symmetry; he must have, be-
sides, a sense of fitness, a fruitful ima-
gination, a spontaneous intuition which
may be called the spark of genius, and
above all must follow nature. You and I
were never interested by those flights of
imagination, absurd because unnatural,
over which shallow seekers for sensation
rave. We agreed to call him the true
artist who is always natural, yet abounds
in calculated effects. If a sculptor, for
instance, is to place a group of animals
over a portal, he is careful to make the
attitudes and arrangement appear a mere
accident; yet the great essence of his
art is to choose an accident in conform-
ity with the outlines of the building, —
in careless symmetry, so to speak. It
would be a poor sculptor who fixed his
figures haphazard, — one horse with his
tail toward you, another his head ; it
would be an equally poor sculptor who
fixed them in exact symmetry, — the
outside horses the same distance below
the central one, and each with his head at
the same angle in reference to the others.

Now, all these functions belong to
the particular class of literature which
Shakespeare professes. Nature is his
keynote ; but the thought, the circum-
stance, the character, are suited to some
central conception, like the building with
the sculptor. The plot of his play, for

instance, possesses what you may call
the technical element of symmetry : the
imaginary events unfold a story in a
manner calculated to attract particular
attention, falling in, nevertheless, with
natural experience. By seeming chance
the actor drops the remark which is
found, at the climax, to pertain most
vitally to the revelation we are awaiting.
Everything, indeed, is studied to ap-
pear unstudied. This fact was subtly ex-
emplified by a detail in Act I. Henry
was delaying to admit the French em-
bassy till he could settle on a course. As
his last scruple against the exploit was
removed by his reverend adviser, he said,
with emphatic satisfaction,
' ' Call in the messengers sent from the Dau-
phin,"

instead of first formally stating his con-
viction to the court. Nothing could
more strikingly proclaim the victory of
the bishop's arguments ; yet such was not
the king's intent. His act was so spon-
taneous that no one realized how care-
fully the author had planned it. This is
the consummation of art.

Shakespeare's humor, as broad and
good-natured as Sir John Falstaff him-
self, is also as natural. But, contrary
to shallow notions, its art is vastly more
difficult than that of abstruse wit. It is
most appropriate when it expresses the
inappropriate, as an inadvertent remark,
a rubbing of incongruous characters.

Not the least of my friend's gifts is
his fine taste in seasoning his work with
this spice of fun. He told me that, be-
fore a production, he knew just when
and what would be the demonstrations
of his audience. This is but one phase
of his preeminent quality, namely, his
deep and universal knowledge of human
nature, and his power to express it.

Doubtless you have observed that pea-
sants can often better understand each
other than the higher classes. They
have small vocabulary, but an intuition
which puts them in touch with one an-
other. They are natural, — not buried

A first Performance in Shakespeare's Time.

385

under the paraphernalia of estranging
convention nor fossilized by the scholar's
reclusion. They are apt, under strong
feeling, to use figurative expressions de-
riving some special force from the cir-
cumstances, as Henry did, when he
threatened the Dauphin with his tennis-
halls, to

"play a set

Shall strike his father's crown into the haz-
ard,"

and said,

" Many a thousand widows
Shall this his mock mock out of their dear

husbands,
Mock mothers from their sons, mock castles

down."

These, with Henry's rebuke to the trai-
tors, are the best lines in the drama.
Shakespeare resembles the peasant, but,
in addition, has some of the education
and all of the intelligence of the scholar.
Hence his faultless interpretations of
his own and others' thoughts. He is
the perfect Son of Nature. Fancy my
learned acquaintance Francis Bacon in
a tavern with a jolly crowd of Falstaff's
calibre ! Shakespeare would be equally
at home here and in the court of the
Queen.

And so, human experience and hu-
man character are for him a keyboard.
He is familiar with every resource of his
instrument, from the deepest notes of
tragedy to the lightest tinklings and rip-
plings of mirth. He can produce all ef-
fects, from the seething ferment of mental
distress to the crystal harmonies of faith
and contentment ; from the wild melo-
dies of exhilaration to the soft, sweet
cooing of love. The note springs to be-
ing in perfect touch with the thought :
his words in the poetic passages roll
forth with an epic grandeur all his own ;
we forget the sham of the stage, dispar-
aged through his chorus, and are borne
away on the billows of his imagination,
on the stream of his diction, on the

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 485.

wings of his genius, or what you will !
Your indulgent smile will broaden at
what follows : this rival of the bear-gar-
dens— this " clever Will," as the Queen
called him after her visit to-day — is to
be numbered among the immortals.

Your objection is known to me as
well as if you spoke it. You believe
plays are trivial and transitory amuse-
ments, while the writings of the essay-
ist, philosopher, statesman, aim at some
worthy object — as a reform — which
will make their books eternal. Your
distinction should be reversed. These
works are the transitory things : the ob-
jects they attain simply fall in line with
the progress of man, and are forgotten
by future generations, which have not
the same external evils to contend with ;
while man's internal nature, which al-
ters not with the ages, is the muse of
this poet. Mankind may cease to take
interest in the dominion of England over
Ireland, but the time will never come
when it will cease to be interested in it-
self. The law of love and the human-
ness of humanity are as enduring as the
world. Great is that writer whose work
is twined with absolute success about
these subjects, for it will live as long as
they. Such a writer is William Shake-
speare. Seeks he to teach a lesson?
None — other than that vague one in-
herent in a thing of beauty. You can-
not define the teaching in a strain of
music or the silent eloquence of the
stars ; but will you deny their exalting
influence ?

Well-a-day ! I must cease if this is
to reach to-morrow's packet-vessel. My
candlelight waxes feeble. The rattle
of this rickety old table under the scrib-
bling quill has arrested the attention of
an errant mouse, who sits up in the mid-
dle of the room and eyes me suspicious-
ly. I '11 to bed, and yield the realm to
him. Good-night !

Your exiled theorist, GOVAERT.
Iferbert Wescott Fisher.

386

Caleb West.

CALEB WEST.

XX.

A TIGHT FIT.

IF The Pines was a refreshing rest to
Sanford after the daily anxieties .at the
Ledge, an enchanted castle to Helen and
Jack, and a mine of luxury to Smearly
and the other good Bohemians who fol-
lowed in Mrs. Leroy's train, to the ma-
jor it was a never ending source of pure
delight.

Until that day on which he had stepped
within its portals, his experience of
Northern hospitality had been confined
to Jack's and Sanford 's bachelor apart-
ments, for years ideal realms of elegance
and ease. These now seemed to him
both primitive and meagre. Where
Jack had but one room to spare for a
friend, and Sanford but two, The Pines
had whole suites opening into corridors
terminating in vistas of entrancing
lounging-places, with marvelous fittings
and draperies. Where Sam and Jeffer-
son, in their respective establishments,
performed unaided every household
duty, from making a cocktail to making
a bed, The Pines boasted two extra men
who assisted Buckles at the sideboard,
to say nothing of countless maids, gar-
deners, hostlers, stable-boys, and lesser
dependents.

Moreover, the major had come upon
a most capacious carriage-house and out-
buildings, sheltering a wonderful collec-
tion of drags, coupe's, and phaetons of
patterns never seen by him before, par-
ticularly a most surprising dog-cart with
canary-colored wheels ; and a stable full
of satin-skinned horses with incredible
pedigrees, together with countless har-
nesses mounted in silver, saddles, bri-
dles, whips, and blankets decorated
with monograms. Last, but by no
means least, he had discovered, to his
infinite joy, a spick-and-span perfectly

appointed steam yacht, with sailing-
master, engineer, firemen, and crew
constantly on board, and all ready, at a
moment's notice, to steam off to the
uttermost parts of the earth in search
of booty or adventure.

The major had found, in fact, all
that his wildest flights and his most
mendacious imaginings had pictured.
The spacious piazzas, velvet lawns, and
noble parks of which he had so often
boasted as being "upon the estate of a
ve'y dear friend of mine up No'th, suh,
where I spend so many happy days ; "
the wonderful cuisine, fragrant Hava-
nas, crusty port and old Hennessy, —
the property as well of this diaphanous
gentleman, — had at last become actual
realities. The women of charming
mien and apparel, so long creations of
his brain, — "Dianas, suh, clothed one
hour in yachtin' jackets, caps, and dain-
ty yellow shoes, and the next in webs
of gossamer, their lovely faces shaded
by ravishin' pa'asols and crowned by
wonderful hats, " — now floated daily
along the very gravel walks that his
own feet pressed, or were attended
nightly by gay gallants in immaculate
black and white, whose elbows touched
his own.

Of all these luxuries had he dreamed
for years, and about all these luxuries
had he lied, descanting on their glories
by the hour to that silent group of
thirsty Pocomokians before the village
bar, or to the untraveled neighbors who
lightened with their presence the lonely
hours at Crab Island; but never until
Mrs. Leroy had opened wide to him the
portals of The Pines had they been real
to his sight and touch.

It is not to be wondered at, therefore,
that, with the flavor of all this magnifi-
cence steeping his soul, a gradual change
took place in his tone and demeanor.
Before a week had passed he had some-

Caleb West.

387

how persuaded himself that although
the lamp of Aladdin was exclusively
the property of Mrs. Leroy, the privi-
lege of rubbing it was unquestionably
his own. Gradually, and by the same
mental process, he had become con-
vinced not only that he was firmly in-
stalled in the Leroy household as High
Rubber - in - Chief, the master of the
house being temporarily absent, and
there being no one else to fill his place,
but that the office, if not a life position,
at least would last long enough to tide
him over until cold weather set in.

Mrs. Leroy at first looked on in
amazement, and then, as the humor of
the situation dawned upon her, gave him
free rein to do as he would. Months
before she had seen through his harm-
less assumptions, and his present pre-
tensions amused her immensely.

"My dear madam," he would say,
"I see the lines of care about yo'r love-
ly eyes. Let me take you a spin down
the shell road in that yaller cyart. It
will bring the roses back to yo'r cheeks. "
Or, "Sanford, my dear fellow, try one
of those Reina Victorias; you '11 find
them much lighter. Buckles, open a
fresh box."

It is worthy of note, too, that when
once the surprise at the novelty of the
situation had passed away, his hostess
soon realized that no one could have
filled the post of major-domo to better
satisfaction. The same qualities that
served him at Crab Island, making him
the best of company when off on an
outing with the boys, were displayed in
even greater perfection at The Pines.
He was courteous, good-humored, un-
selfish, watchful of everybody's comfort,
buoyant as a rubber ball, and ultimately
so self -poised that even Buckles began
to stand in awe of him, — a victory, by
the way, which so delighted Jack Hardy
that he rolled over on the grass with
shouts of laughter when he discussed it
with Sanford and Smearly.

Nor were the greater duties neglect-
ed. He was constantly on the lookout

for various devices by which his hostess
might be relieved in the care of her
guests. Tennis tournaments, fishing
parties, and tableaux followed in quick
succession, each entertainment the re-
sult of his ingenious activity and his
untiring efforts at making everybody
happy.

This daily routine of gayety was in-
terrupted by the important announce-
ment that a committee of engineers,
headed by General Barton, would in-
spect the work at Shark Ledge in the
morning.

This visit of the engineers meant to
Sanford a possible solution of his em-
barrassment. Carleton still withheld
the certificate, and the young engineer
had had the greatest difficulty in tiding
over his payments. A second and last
section of the work was nearly com-
pleted, thanks to the untiring efforts of
Captain Joe and his men and to the
stability of the machinery, and there
was every probability that everything
included in these two sections would be
finished before the snow began to fly.
This had been the main purpose of San-
ford's summer, and the end was in sight.
And yet, with all that had been ac-
complished, Sanford knew that a tech-
nical ruling of the Board in sustaining
Carleton' s unjust report when reject-
ing the work might delay his payments
for months, and if prolonged through
the winter might eventually ruin him.

The inspection, then, was all the
more important at this time ; for while
the solidity of the masonry and the care
with which it was constructed would
speak for themselves, the details must
be seen and inspected to be appreciated.
If the day, therefore, were fine, and
the committee able to land, Sanford
had no fear of the outcome ; provided,
of course, that Carleton could be made
to speak the truth.

There was no question that parts of
the work as they then stood were in
open violation of the plans and specifi-
cations of the contract. The concrete

388

Caleb West.

base, or disk, was acknowledged by
Sanford to be six inches out of level.
This error was due to the positive or-
ders of Carleton against the equally
positive protest of Sanford and Captain
Joe. But the question remained whe-
ther the Board would sustain Carleton 's
refusal to give a certificate in view of
the error, and whether Carleton could
be made to admit that the error was his
own, and not Sanford 's.

So far as the permanence of the
structure was concerned, this six inches'
rise over so large an area as the base
was immaterial. The point — a vital
one — was whether the technical re-
quirements of the contract would be in-
sisted upon. Its final decision lay with
the Board.

To Mrs. Leroy the occasion was one
of more than usual importance. She
sent for the sailing - master, ordered
steam up at an early hour, gave Sam
— Buckles had assigned Sam certain
duties aboard the yacht — particular di-
rections as to luncheon the following
day, and prepared to entertain the
whole committee, provided that august
body could be induced to accept the
invitation she meant to extend. She
had already selected General Barton as
her especial victim, while Helen was to
make herself agreeable to some of the
younger members.

The value of linen, glass, cut flowers,
dry champagne, and pretty toilettes in
settling any of the affairs of life was
part of her social training, and while
she did not propose to say one word in
defense or commendation of Sanford and
his work, she fully intended so to soften
the rough edges of the chief engineer
and his assistants that any adverse rul-
ing would be well-nigh impossible.

If Mrs. Leroy lent a cheerful and
willing hand, the presiding genius of
the weather was equally considerate.
The morning broke clear and bright.
The sun silvered the tall grass of the
wide marsh crossed by the railroad tres-
tle and draw, and illumined the great

clouds of white steam puffed out by the
passing trains. The air was balmy and
soft, the sky a turquoise flecked with
sprays of pearl, the sea a sheet of sil-
ver.

When the maid opened her windows,
Mrs. Leroy stepped to the balcony and
drank in the beauty and freshness of
the morning. Even the weather pow-
ers, she said to herself, had ceased
hostilities, declared a truce for the day,
restraining their turbulent winds until
the council of war which was to decide
Sanford's.fate was over.

As her eye roamed over her perfectly
appointed and well kept lawns, her at-
tention was drawn to a singular-looking
figure crossing the grass in the direc-
tion of the dock where the yacht was
moored. It was that of a man dressed
in the jacket and cap of a club com-
modore. He bore himself with the
dignity of a lord high admiral walking
the quarter-deck. Closer inspection re-
vealed the manly form of no less distin-
guished a personage than Major Thomas
Slocomb of Pocomoke.

Subsequent inquiries disclosed these
facts : Finding in his room, the night be-
fore, a hitherto unsuspected closet door
standing partly open, the major, in
harmless curiosity, had entered the
closet and inspected the contents, and
had come upon some attractive gar-
ments. That these clothes had evident-
ly been worn by, and were then the sole
property of his host, Morgan Leroy,
Commodore N. Y. Y. C., a man whom
he had never seen, only added to the
charm of the discovery. Instantly a
dozen thoughts crowded through his
head, each more seductive than the one
before it. Evidently, this open door
and the carefully hung jacket and cap
meant something out of the ordinary !
It was the first time the door had been
left open ! It had been done purposely,
of course, that he might see the gar-
ments ! Everything in this wonderful
palace of luxury was free, — cigars,
brandy, even the stamps on the writing-

Caleb West.

389

table before him ; why not, then, these
yachting clothes ? To-morrow was the
great day for the yacht. His age and
position naturally made him the absent
commodore's rightful successor. Had
Leroy been at home, undoubtedly he
would have worn these clothes himself.
The duty of his substitute, therefore,
was too plain to admit of a moment's
hesitation. He must certainly wear the
clothes. One thing, however, touched
him deeply, — the delicacy of his host-
ess in putting them where he could find
them, and the exquisite tact with which
it had all been done. Even if every
other consideration failed, he could not
disappoint that queen among women,
that Cleopatra of modern times.

As he squeezed his arms into the
jacket — Leroy was two thirds the ma-
jor's size — and caught the glint of the
gilt buttons in the mirror, his last lin-
gering doubt faded.

This, then, was the figure Mrs. Le-
roy saw from her balcony.

When the major boarded the yacht
the sailing - master saluted him with
marked deference, remembering the
uniform even if he did not the wearer,
and the sailors holystoning the decks
came up to a half present as he passed
them on his way to the saloon to see if
Sam had carried out his instructions
about certain brews necessary for the
comfort of the day.

"Where the devil did you get that
rig, major ? " roared Smearly, when he
and Sanford came down the companion-
way, half an hour later. "You look
like a cross between Dick Deadeye and
Little Lord Fauntleroy. It 's about
two sizes too small for you."

"Do yo' think so, gentlemen ? " twist-
ing his back to the mirrors to get a bet-
ter view. His face was a study. "It 's
some time since I wore 'em ; they may
be a little tight. I 've noticed lately
that I am gaining flesh. Will you sit
.down here, gentlemen, or shall I order
something coolin' on deck?" — not a
quaver in his voice. "Here, Sam," he

called, catching sight of that darky's
face, "take these gentlemen's orders! "
When Helen and Mrs. Leroy ap-
peared, followed by several ladies, with
Hardy as escort, the major sprang for-
ward to meet them with all the sup-
pressed exuberance of a siphon of Vichy.
He greeted Helen first.

"Ah, my dear Helen, you look posi-
tively charmin' this mornin' ; you are
like a tea-rose wet with dew ; nothing
like these Maryland girls, — unless, my
dear madam," he added, turning to
Mrs. Leroy, bowing as low to his host-
ess as the grip of his shoulders would
permit, "unless it be yo'r own queenly
presence. Sam, put a cushion behind
the lady's back, — or shall I order cof-
fee for you on deck ? "

But it was not until the major came
up on the return curve of his bow to a
perpendicular that his hostess realized
in full the effect of Morgan Leroy 's nau-
tical outfit. She gave a little gasp, and
her face flushed.

"I hope none of these ladies will re-
cognize Morgan's clothes, Henry, " she
whispered behind her fan to Sanford.
"I must say this is going a step too far. "

"But didn't you send them to his
room, Kate? He told me this morn-
ing he wore them out of deference to
your wishes. He found them hanging
in his closet." Sanford's face wore a
quizzical smile.

"I send them?" Then the whole
thing burst upon her. With the keen-
est appreciation of the humor of the
situation in every line of her face, she
turned to the major and said, "I must
congratulate you, major, on your new
outfit, and I must thank you for wear-
ing it to-day. It was very good of
you to put it on. It is an important
occasion, you know, for Mr. Sanford.
Will you give me your arm and take
me on deck ? "

Helen stared in complete astonish-
ment as she listened to Mrs. Leroy.
This last addition to the major's con-
stantly increasing wardrobe — he had

390

Caleb West.

a way of borrowing the clothes of any
friend with whom he stayed — had for
the moment taken her breath away. It
was only when Jack whispered an ex-
planation to her that she too entered
into the spirit of the scene.

Before the yacht had passed through
the draw of the railroad trestle, on her
way to the Ledge, the several guests
had settled themselves in the many
nooks and corners about the deck, or on
the more luxurious cushions of the sa-
loon. Mrs. Leroy, now that her guests
were happily placed, sat well forward,
out of immediate hearing, where she
could talk over the probable outcome of
the day with Sanford, and lay her plans
if Carleton's opposition threatened seri-
ous trouble. Helen and Jack were as
far aft as they could get, watching the
gulls dive for scraps thrown from the
galley, while Smearly in the saloon be-
low was the centre of a circle of ladies,

— guests from the neighboring cottages,

— who were laughing at his stories, and
who, thus early in the day, had voted
him the most entertaining man they
had ever met, although a trifle cynical.

As for the major, he was as rest-
less as a newsboy, and everywhere at
once : in the galley, giving minute direc-
tions to the chef regarding the slicing of
the cucumbers and the proper mixing of
the salad; up in the pilot-house, inter-
viewing the sailing-master on the wea-
ther, on the tides, on the points of the
wind, on the various beacons, shoals,
and currents; and finally down in the
pantry, where Sam, in white apron and
immaculate waistcoat and tie, was pol-
ishing some pipe-stemmed glasses, in-
tended receptacles of cooling appetizers
composed of some ingredients of the
major's own selection.

"You lookin' mighty fine, major, dis
mornin', " said Sam, his mouth stretched
in a broad grin. "Dat 's de tip-nist,
top-nist git-up I done seen fur a coon's
age, " detecting a certain — to him —
cake-walk cut to the coat and white duck
trousers. " Did dat come up on de train

las' night, sah ? " he continued, walk-
ing round the major, and wiping a glass
as he looked him over admiringly.

"Yes, Sam, and it 's the first time I
wore 'em. Little tight in the sleeves,
ain't they? " he asked, holding out his
arm.

"Does seem ter pinch leetle mite
round de elbows ; but you do look good,
fur afac'."

These little confidences were not un-
usual. Indeed, of all the people about
him, the major understood Sam the best
and enjoyed him the most, — an un-
derstanding, by the way, which was
mutual. There never was any strain
upon the Pocomokian's many resources
of high spirits, willingness to please,
and general utility, when he was alone
with Sam. He never had to make an
effort to keep his position: that Sam
accorded him. But then, Sam believed
in the major.

As the yacht rounded the east end of
Crotch Island, Sanford made out quite
plainly over the port bow the lighthouse
tender steaming along from a point in
the direction of Little Gull Light.

"There they come," he said to Mrs.
Leroy. "Everything is in our favor
to-day, Kate. I was afraid they might
be detained. We '11 steam about here
for a while until the tender lands at
the new wharf which we have just fin-
ished at the Ledge. The yacht draws
a little too much water to risk the
wharf, and we had better lie outside of
the government boat. It 's as still as
a mill-pond at the Ledge to-day, and
we can all go ashore. If you will per-
mit me, Kate, I '11 call to your sailing-
master to slow down until the tender
reaches the wharf."

At this moment the major's head ap-
peared around the edge of the pilot-
house door. He had overheard San-
ford's remark. "Allow me, madam,"
he said in a voice of great dignity, and
with a look at Sanford as if somehow,
that gentleman had infringed upon his
own especial privileges. The next in-

Caleb West.

391

slant the young engineer's suggestion
to "slow down " was sent bounding up
to the sailing-master, who answered it
with a touch of two fingers to his cap,
an "Ay, ay, sir," and three sharp,
quick pulls on the engine-room gong.

Mrs. Leroy smiled at the major's
nautical knowledge and quarter-deck
air, and rose to her feet to see the ap-
proaching tender. Under Sanford's
guiding finger she followed the course
of the long thread of black smoke lying
on the still horizon, unwinding slowly
from the spool of the tender's funnel.

Everybody was now on deck. Helen
and the other younger ladies of the
party leaned over the yacht's rail watch-
ing the rapidly nearing steamer, and
the older ladies became fully persuaded
that the Ledge with its derricks and
shanty — a purple-gray mass under the
morning glare — was unquestionably
the expected boat.

Soon the Ledge loomed up in all its
proportions, with its huge rim of circu-
lar masonry lying on the water-line like
a low monitor rigged with derricks for
masts. When the rough shanty for the
men, and the platforms filled with piles
of cement-barrels, and the hoisting-
engine were distinctly outlined against
the sky, everybody crowded forward to
see the place of which they had heard
so much.

Mrs. Leroy stood on one side, that
Sanford might explain without inter-
ruption the several objects as they came
into view.

"Why, Henry," she exclaimed, after
everybody had said how wonderful it
all was, "how much work you have
really done since I saw it in the spring !
And there is the engine, is it, to which
the pump belonged that nearly drowned
Captain Joe and Caleb ? And are those
the big derricks you had so much trou-
ble over? They don't look very big."

"They are twice the size of your
body, Kate, " said Sanford, laughing.
"They may look to you like knitting-
needles from this distance, but that is

because everything around them is on
so large a scale. You would n't think
that shanty, which looks like a coal-bin,
could accommodate twenty men and
their stores."

As Sanford ceased speaking, the
major turned quickly, entered the pilot-
house, and almost instantly reappeared
with the yacht's spyglass. This he
carefully adjusted, resting the end on
the ratlines. "Victory is ours. We
are getting along splendidly, my dear
boy," he said slowly, closing the glass.
"I have n't a doubt about the result."

XXI.

THE RECORD OF NICKLES, THE COOK.

The yacht and the lighthouse tender
were not the only boats bound for the
Ledge. The Screamer, under charge of
a tug, — her sails would have been use-
less in the still air, — was already clear
of Keyport Light, and heading for the
landing- wharf, a mile away. Captain
Bob Brandt held the tiller, and Captain
Joe and Caleb leaned out of the windows
of the pilot-house of the towing tug.

If Carleton " played any monkey
tricks, " to quote Captain Brandt, they
wanted to be there to see. None of them
had had cause to entertain a friendly
spirit toward the superintendent. It had
often been difficult for Caleb to keep his
hands away from that official's throat,
since his experience with him under the
willows. As for Captain Brandt, he still
remembered the day the level was set,
when Carleton had virtually given him
the lie.

The Screamer arrived first ; she made
fast to the now completed dock, and the
tug dropped back in the eddy. Then
the lighthouse tender came alongside
and hooked a line into the Screamer's
deck-cleats. The yacht came last, ly-
ing outside the others. This made it
necessary for the passengers aboard the
yacht to cross the deck of the tender,

392

Caleb West.

and for those of both the yacht and the
tender to cross the deck of the Scream-
er, before stepping upon the completed
masonry of the lighthouse itself.

Nothing could have suited Mrs. Le-
roy better than this enforced intermin-
gling of guests and visitors. Inter-
changes of courtesy established at once
a cordiality which augured well for the
day's outcome, and added another touch
of sunshine to its happiness. Mrs. Le-
roy relaxed none of her efforts to pro-
pitiate the gods, so eager was she to
have a favorable decision rendered for
Sanford.

It is worthy of note that Carleton
played no part in the joyous programme
of the day. He sprang ashore as soon
as the tender made fast to the Scream-
er's side (he had met the party of en-
gineers at the railroad depot, and had
gone with them to Little Gull Light),
and began at once his work of "super-
intending " with a vigor and alertness
never seen in him before, and, to quote
Nickles, the cook, who was watching
the whole performance from the shanty
window, "with more airs than a Noank
goat with a hoop-skirt."

The moment the major's foot was
firmly planted upon the Ledge a marked
change was visible in him. The straight
back, head up, rear - admiral manner,
which had distinguished him, gave way
to one of a thoughtful repose. Engi-
neering problems began to absorb him.
Leaving Hardy and Smearly to help the
older ladies pick their way over the
mortar- incrusted platforms and up and
down the rude ladders to the top rim of
masonry, he commenced inspecting the
work with the eye of a skilled mechanic.
He examined carefully the mortar joints
of the masonry ; squinted his eye along
the edges of the cut stones to see if they
were true ; turned it aloft, taking in the
system of derricks, striking one with the
palm of his hand and listening for the
vibration, to assure himself of its sta-
bility. And he asked questions of the
men in a way that left no doubt in their

minds that he was past grand master in
the art of building lighthouses.

All but one.

This doubter was Lonny Bowles, the
big quarryman from Noank, whom the
Pocomokian had cared for in the old
warehouse hospital the night of the ex-
plosion. Bowles had quietly dogged the
major's steps over the work, in the hope
of being recognized. At last the good-
natured lineaments of the red-shirted
quarryman fastened themselves upon
the major's remembrance.

"My dear suh! " he broke out, as he
jumped down from a huge coping-stone
and grasped Lonny ' s hand . " Of co ' se I
remember you. I sincerely hope you 're
all right again, " stepping back, and
looking him over with an expression of
real pride and admiration.

"Oh yes, I 'm purty hearty, thank
ye, " said Bowles, laughing as he hitched
his sleeves up his arms, bared to the
elbow. "How's things gone 'long o'
yerself ? "

The major expressed his perfect sat-
isfaction with life in its every detail,
and was about to compliment Bowles on
the wonderful progress of the work so
largely due to his efforts, when the man
at the hoisting-engine interrupted with,
"Don't stand there, now, lalligaggin',
Lonny. Where ye been this half hour ?
Hurry up with that monkey - wrench.
Do ye want this drum to come off ? "

When Lonny, who had instantly
turned his attention to the work, had
given the last turn to the endangered
nut, the man said, "Who's the duck
with the bobtail coat, Lonny ? "

"Oh, he's one o' the boss's city
gang. Fust time I see him he come
inter th' warehouse when we was stove
up. I thought he was a sawbones till
I see him a-fetchin' water fur th' boys.
Then I thought he was a parson till he
began to swear. But he ain't neither
one; he 's an out-an'-out ol' sport, he
is, every time, an' a good un. He 's
struck it rich up here, I guess, from th'
way he 's boomin' things with them Le-

Caleb West,

393

roy folks, " — which conviction seemed
to be shared by the men around him,
now that they were assured of the ma-
jor's identity. Many of them remem-
bered the nankeen and bombazine suit
which the Pocomokian wore on that fa-
tal day, and the generally disheveled
appearance that he presented the follow-
ing morning, and they found the pre-
sent change in his attire incomprehen-
sible.

During all this time, Sanford, with
the assistance of Captain Joe and Caleb,
was adjusting his transit, in order that
he might measure for the committee the
exact difference between the level shown
on the plans and the level found in the
concrete base. In this adjustment, the
major, who had now joined the group,
took the deepest interest, discoursing
most learnedly, to the officers about him,
upon the marvels of modern science;
punctuating his remarks every few min-
utes with pointed allusions to his dear
friend Henry, "that Archimedes of the
New World, " who in this the greatest
of all of his undertakings had eclipsed
all former achievements. The general
listened with an amused smile, in which
the whole committee joined before long.
Either General Barton's practiced eye
forestalled any need of the instrument,
or Carleton had already fully posted him
as to which side of the circle was some
inches too high.

"Isn't the top of that concrete base
out of level, Mr. Sanford ? " he asked,
with some severity.

"Yes, sir; some inches too high near
the southeast derrick, " replied Sanford
promptly.

"How did that occur?"

"I should prefer you to ask the su-
perintendent, " said Sanford quietly.

Mrs. Leroy, who was standing a
short distance away on a dry plank that
Sanford had put under her feet, her
ears alert, stopped talking to Smearly
and turned her head. She did not
want to miss a word.

"What have you to say, Mr. Carle-

ton ? Did you give any orders to raise
that level ? " The general looked over
his glasses at the superintendent.

Carleton had evidently prepared him-
self for this ordeal, and had carefully
studied his line of answers. As long
as he kept to the written requirements
under the contract he was safe.

"If I understand my instructions,
sir, I am not here to give orders. The
plans show what is to be done." He
spoke in a low, almost gentle voice, and
with a certain deference of manner which
no one had ever seen in him before, and
which Sanford felt was even more to be
dreaded than his customary bluster.

Captain Joe stepped closer to San-
ford's side, and Caleb and Captain Bob
Brandt, who stood on the outside of the
circle of officers grouped around the tri-
pod, leaned forward, listening intently.
They too had noticed the change in
Carleton 's manner. The other men
dropped their shovels and tools, and
edged up, not obtrusively, but so as to
overhear everything.

" Is this the reason you have withheld
the certificate, of which the contractor
complains ? " said the general, with a
tone in his voice as of a judge interro-
gating a witness.

Carleton bowed his head meekly in
assent. "I can't sign for work that 's
done wrong, sir."

Captain Joe made a movement as if
to speak, when Sanford, checking him
with a look, began: "The superintend-
ent is right as far as he goes, general,
but there is another clause in the con-
tract which he seems to forget. I '11
quote it, " drawing an important-look-
ing document from his pocket and
spreading it out on the top of a cement-
barrel : " ' Any dispute arising be-
tween the United States engineer, or
his superintendent, and the contractor,
shall be decided by the former, and his
decision shall be final. ' If the level of
this concrete base does not conform to
the plans, there is no one to blame but
the superintendent himself."

394

Caleb West.

Sanford's flashing eye and rising
voice had attracted the attention of the
ladies as well as that of their escorts.
They ceased talking, and played with
the points of their parasols, tracing lit-
tle diagrams in the cement dust, pre-
serving a strict neutrality, like most
people overhearing a quarrel in which
they have no interest, but alert to lose
no move in the contest. Sanford would
have liked less publicity in the settle-
ment of the matter, and so expressed
himself in a quick glance toward the
guests. This anxiety was instantly
seen by the major, who, with a tact
that Sanford had not given him credit
for, led the ladies away out of hearing
on pretense of showing them some of
the heavy masonry.

The engineer-in-chief looked curious-
ly at Carleton, and the awakened light
of a new impression gleamed in his eye.
Sanford's confident manner and Carle-
ton's momentary agitation, upsetting
for an instant his lamblike reserve, evi-
dently indicated something hidden be-
hind this dispute, which until then had
not come to the front.

"I '11 take any blame that 's coming
to me," said Carleton, his meekness
merging into a dogged, half-imposed-on
tone, "but I can't be responsible for
other folks' mistakes. I set that level
myself two months ago, and left the
bench-marks for 'em to work up to.
When I come out next time they 'd al-
tered them. I told 'em it would n't
do, and they 'd have to take up what
concrete they 'd set and lower the level
again. They said they was behind and
wanted to catch up, that it made no
difference anyhow, and they wouldn't
do it."

General Barton turned to Sanford and
was about to speak, when Captain Bob
Brandt's voice rang out clear and sharp,
"That's a lie!"

Everybody looked about for the
speaker. If a bomb had exploded above
their heads, the astonishment could not
have been greater.

Before any one could speak the skip-
per forced his way into the middle of
the group. His face was flushed with
anger, his lower lip was quivering. " I
say it again. That 's a lie, and you
know it," he said calmly, pointing his
finger at Carleton, whose cheek paled at
this sudden onslaught. "This ain't my
job, gentlemen," and he faced General
Barton and the committee, "an' it don't
make no difference to me whether it gits
done 'r not. I 'm hired here 'long with
my sloop a-layin' there at the wharf,
an' I git my pay. But I been here all
summer, an' I stood by when this 'ere
galoot you call a superintendent sot this
level; and when he says Cap'n Joe did
n't do the work as he ordered it he lies
like a thief, an' I don't care who hears
it. Ask Cap'n Joe Bell and Caleb West,
a-standin' right there 'longside o' ye:
they'll gin it to ye straight; they're
that kind."

Barton was an old man and accus-
tomed to the respectful deference of a
government office, but he was also a
keen observer of human nature. The
expression on the skipper's face and on
the faces of the others about him was
too fearless to admit of a moment's
doubt of their sincerity.

Carleton shrugged his shoulders, as if
it were to be expected that Sanford's
men would stand by him. Then he
said, with a half - sneer at Captain
Brandt, "Five dollars goes a long ways
with you fellers." The cat had uncon-
sciously uncovered its claws.

Brandt sprang forward, with a wicked
look in his eye, when the general raised
his hand.

"Come, men, stop this right away."
There was a tone in the chief engineer's
voice which impelled obedience. "We
are here to find out who is responsible
for this error. I am surprised, Mr.
Sanford," turning almost fiercely upon
him, "that a man of your experience
did not insist on a written order for this
change of plan. While six inches over
an area of this size do not materially

Caleb West.

395

injure the work, you are too old a con-
tractor to alter a level to one which you
admit now was wrong, and which at the
time you knew was wrong, without some
written order. It violates the contract. "

Here, Nickles, who had been craning
his neck out of the shanty window so as
not to lose a word of the talk, withdrew
it so suddenly that one of the men stand-
ing by the door hurried into the shanty,
thinking something unusual was the
matter.

" I have never been able to get a writ-
ten order from this superintendent for
any detail of the work since he has been
here, " said Sanf ord in a positive tone,
"and he has never raised his hand to
help us. What the cause of his enmity is
I do not know. We have all of us tried
to treat him courteously, and to fol-
low his orders whenever it was possible
to do so. He insisted on this change,
after both my master diver, Caleb West
here, Captain Joe Bell, and others of
my best men had protested against it,
and we had either to stop work and
appeal to the Board, and so lose the
summer's work and be liable to the
government for non-completion on time,
or obey him. I took the latter course,
and you can see the result. It was my
only way out of the difficulty."

At this instant there came a crash
which Bounded like breaking china, evi-
dently in the shanty, and a cloud of
white dust, the contents of a partly
empty flour-barrel, sifted out through
the open window.

The general turned his head in in-
quiry, and, seeing nothing, said, "You
should have stopped work, sir, and ap-
pealed. The government does not want
its work done in a careless, unwork-
manlike way, and will not pay for it."
His voice had a tone in it that sent a
pang of anxiety to Mrs. Leroy's heart.

Carleton smiled grimly. He was all
right, he said to himself. Nobody be-
lieved the Yankee skipper.

Before Sanford could gather his wits
to reply, the shanty door was flung wide

open, and Nickles backed out, carrying
in his arms a pine door, higher and
wider than himself. He had lifted it
from its hinges in the pantry, upsetting
everything about it.

"I guess mebbe I ain't been a- watch-
in' this all summer fur nothin', gents, "
he said, planting the door square before
the general. "You kin read it furyer-
self, — it's 's plain 's print. If ye
want what ye call an ' order, ' here it
is large as life."

It was the once clean pine door of the
shanty, on which Sanford and the men
had placed their signatures in blue pen-
cil the day the level was fixed, and Carle-
ton, defying Sanford, had said it should
"go that way," or he would stop the
work.

General Barton adjusted his eye-
glasses and began reading the inscrip-
tion. A verbatim record of Carleton's
instructions was before him. The other
members of the Board crowded around,
reading it in silence.

The general replaced his gold- rimmed
eyeglasses carefully in their case, and
for a moment looked seaward in an ab-
stracted sort of way. The curiously in-
scribed door had evidently made a deep
impression upon him.

"I had forgotten about that record,
general," said Sanford, "but I am very
glad it has been preserved. It was made
at the time, so we could exactly carry
out the superintendent's instructions.
As to its truth, I should prefer you to
ask the men who signed it. They are
all here around you."

The general looked again at Captain
Joe and Caleb. There was no question-
ing their integrity. Theirs were faces
that disarmed suspicion at once.

"Are these your signatures?" he
asked, pointing to the scrawls in blue
lead pencil subscribed under Sanford's.

"They are, sir," said Captain Joe
and Caleb almost simultaneously; Ca-
leb answering with a certain tone, as
if he were still in government service
and under oath, lifting his hat as he

396

Caleb West.

spoke. Men long in government em-
ploy have this sort of unconscious awe
in the presence of their superiors.

" Make a copy of it, " said the gen-
eral curtly to the secretary of the Board.
Then he turned on his heel, crossed the
Screamer's deck, and entered the cabin
of the tender, where he was followed by
the other members of the committee.

Ten minutes later the steward of
the tender called Carleton. The men
looked after him as he picked his way
over the platforms and across the deck
of the sloop. His face was flushed,
and a nervous twitching of the muscles
of his mouth showed his agitation over
the summons. The apparition of the
pantry door, they thought, had taken
the starch out of him.

Mrs. Leroy crossed to Sanford's side,
and whispered anxiously, " What do you
think, Henry?"

"I don't know yet, Kate. Barton is
a gruff, exact man, and a martinet, but
he has n't a dishonest hair on his head.
Wait."

The departure of the engineers aboard
the tender, followed almost immediately
by that of the superintendent, left the
opposition, so to speak, unrepresented.
Those of the ladies who were on suffi-
ciently intimate terms with Sanford to
mention the fact at all, and who, de-
spite the major's efforts to lead them
out of range, had heard every word of
the discussion, expressed the hope that
the affair would come out all right. One,
a Mrs. Corson, said in a half-queru-
lous tone that she thought they ought
to be ashamed of themselves- to find any
fault, after all the hard work he had
done. Jack and Smearly consulted
apart. They were somewhat disturbed,
but still believed that Sanford would
win his case.

To the major, however, the incident
had a far deeper and much more signifi-
cant meaning.

"It 's a part of their infernal system,
Henry, " he said in a sympathetic voice,
now really concerned for his friend's

welfare, — " a trick of the damnable
oligarchy, suh, that is crushing out the
life of the people. It is the first time
since the wah that I have come as close
as this to any of the representatives of
this government, and it will be the last,
suh."

Before Sanford could soothe the war-
like spirit of his champion, the stew-
ard of the tender again appeared, and,
touching his cap, said the committee
wished to see Mr. Sanford.

The young engineer excused himself
to those about him, and followed the
steward ; Mrs. Leroy looking after him
with a glance of anxiety as he crossed
the deck of the Screamer, — an anxiety
which Sanford tried to relieve by an en-
couraging wave of his hand.

As Sanford entered the saloon Carle-
ton was just leaving it, his eyes on the
floor, his hat in his hand. His face was
a blue- white. Little flecks of saliva were
sticking in the corners of his mouth, as
if his breath were dry.

General Barton sat at the head of
the saloon table. The other members
of the Board were seated below him.

"Mr. Sanford," said the general,
"we have investigated the differences
between yourself and the superintendent
with the following result : First, the
committee has accepted the work as it
stands, believing in the truthfulness of
yourself and your men, confirmed by a
record which it could not doubt. Sec-
ond, the withheld certificate will be
signed and checks forwarded to you as
soon as the necessary papers can be pre-
pared. Third, Superintendent Carle-
ton has been relieved from duty at Shark
Ledge Light."

XXII.

A BROKEN DRAW.

Carleton 's downfall was known all
over the Ledge and on board every boat
that lay at its wharf, long before either
he or Sanford regained the open air.

Caleb West.

397

The means of communication was that
same old silent current that requires
neither pole nor battery to put it into
working order. Within thirty seconds
of the time the ominous words fell from
the general's lips, the single word " Den-
nis," the universal sobriquet for a dis-
charged man our working world over,
was in every man's mouth. What-
ever medium was used, the meaning was
none the less clear and unmistakable.
The steward may have winked to the
captain in the pilot-house, or the cook
shrugged his shoulders, opening his
mouth with the gasping motion of a
strangling chicken, and so conveyed the
news to the forecastle; or one of the
crew, with ears wide open, may have
found it necessary to uncoil a rope out-
side the cabin window at the precise
moment the general gave his decision,
and have instantly passed the news
along to his nearest mate. Of one
thing there was no doubt : Carleton had
given his last order on Shark Ledge.

An animated discussion followed
among the men.

"Ought to give him six months,"
said Captain Bob Brandt, whose limit-
ed experience of government inspecting
boards led him to believe that its offi-
cers were clothed with certain judicial
powers. "Had n't 'a' been for old
Ham-fats" (Nickles's nickname) "an'
his pantry door, he 'd 'a' swore* Cap 'n
Joe's character away."

"Well, I'm kind o' sorry for him,
anyway, " replied Captain Joe, not noti-
cing the skipper's humorous allusion.
"Poor critter, he ain't real responsible.
What 's he goin' to do fur a livin', now
that the gov'ment ain't a-goin' to sup-
port him no more ? "

"Ain't nobody cares; he'll know
better 'n to lie, nex' time, " said Lonny
Bowles. "Is he comin' ashore here
agin, Caleb, er has he dug a hole fur
himself 'board the tender in the coal-
bunkers ? "

Caleb smiled grimly, but made no
reply. He never liked to think of

Carleton, much less to talk of him.
Since the night when he had waylaid
Betty coming home from Keyport, his
name had not passed the diver's lips.
He had always avoided him on the work,
keeping out. of his way, not so much
from fear of Carleton as from fear of
himself, — fear that in some uncontrol-
lable moment he might fall upon him
and throttle- him. No one except Bet-
ty, Carleton, and himself had known of
the night attack ; not even Captain Joe.
It was best not to talk about it; it
might injure her. Carleton's assault
had always caused Caleb, too, a slight
twinge about the heart. Was he doing
right in letting Betty shift for herself ?
The world would take its cue from him
as to how it should treat her. Had he
done his whole duty to the little wife
he had promised to protect ?

So it was not surprising that Caleb
only looked calmly out to sea, and turned
away without replying, when Lonny
Bowles inquired whether Carleton had
covered himself up in the coal-bunkers.
No one noticed his abstraction, nor the
fact that he did not answer Lonny
Bowles. His fellow workmen were
accustomed to the moodiness which had
come over him since Betty left him.
They knew he was thinking of her, but
they failed to read in his face the con-
flict that was raging in him ; and they
did not know that, besides Betty's face,
another's was always haunting him,
bringing the hot blood to his cheek and
setting his finger-nails deep into the
palms of his hands. That was Bill La-
cey's. It was only at rare intervals,
when Caleb had run into Stonington
aboard the Screamer or on one of the
tugs short of coal or water, that he h'ad
seen Lacey, and then only at a dis-
tance. The rigger was at work around
the cars on the dock. Caleb had never
known whether Lacey had seen him.
He thought not. The men said the
young fellow always moved away when
any of the Keyport boats came in, so
that really the two had never met,

398

Caleb West

These chance, far-off glimpses, how-
ever, left their mark upon Caleb's mind,
steeling his heart against Betty for days
after. "It ain't my fault she lef ' me, "
he would say bitterly, sitting alone by
his fire, "an' for a cur like him! "

These were the thoughts he was car-
rying in his heart as he went about his
work, or listened to the men as they
discussed the leading topics of the day.

If a certain sigh of relief went up
from the working force over Carleton's
downfall and Sanford's triumph, a
much more joyous feeling permeated
the yacht. Not only were Jack and
Smearly jubilant, but even Sam, with a
grin the width of his face, had a little
double shuffle of his own in the close
quarters of the galley, while the major
began forthwith to concoct a brew in
which to drink Sanford's health, and of
such mighty power that for once Sam
disobeyed his instructions, and poured
a pint of Medf ord spring water instead
of an equal amount of old Holland gin
into the seductive mixture. " 'Fo'
God, Mr. Sanford, dey would n't one
o' dem ladies knowed deir head from
a whirlumgig, if dey 'd drank dat
punch," he said afterward to his mas-
ter, in palliation of his sin.

But of all the happy souls that
breathed the air of this lovely autumn
day Mrs. Leroy was the happiest. She
felt, somehow, that the decision of the
committee was a triumph for both San-
ford and herself : for Sanford because of
his constant fight against the elements,
for her because of her advice and en-
couragement. As the words fell from
Sanford's lips, telling her of the joy-
ful news, — he had told her first of all,
— her face flushed and her eyes lighted
with genuine pleasure.

"What did I tell you! " she said,
holding out her hand in a hearty, gen-
erous way, as a man would have done.
"I knew you would do it. Oh, I am
so proud of you, you great splendid
fellow!"

If she had thought for a moment,
she would have known that really the
master spirits of the work were Cap-
tain Joe and Caleb and Captain Brandt,
— men whose pluck, devotion, and per-
sonal courage made possible the com-
pletion of the work, — a fact which
Sanford had never concealed from her.
And yet, deep down in her own mind
she could never forget his days and
nights of anxiety, and could not divest
herself of the belief that somehow he
had inspired these men to do their best,
and hence the credit was his, and in a
less degree her own.

As her mind dwelt on these things a
sudden inspiration seized her. Before
her guests were seated around the well-
appointed table in the cabin of the
yacht, she darted back again to the
Ledge in search of Captain Joe, her
dainty skirts raised about her tiny
boots to keep them from the rough plat-
forms.

"Do come and lunch with us, Cap-
tain Bell, " she said in her joyous way.
" I really want you, and the ladies would
so love to talk to you." She had not
forgotten his tenderness over Betty, the
morning he came for her; more than
that, he had stood by Sanford.

The captain, somewhat surprised,
looked down into her eyes with the
kindly expression of a big mastiff diag-
nosing a kitten.

"Well, that 's real nice o' ye, an' I
thank ye kindly," he said, his eyes
lighting up at her evident sincerity.
"But ye see yer vittles wouldn't do
me no good. Only man I know that
kin eat both kinds is Mr. Sanford. So
if ye won't take no offense, I '11 kind o'
grub in with the other men. Cook 's
jes' give notice to all hands."

Then Mrs. Leroy, seeing Caleb at a
little distance, turned and walked to-
ward him. But it was not to ask him
to luncheon.

"I have heard Mr. Sanford speak so
often of you that I wanted to know you
before I left the work, " she said, hold-

Caleb West.

399

ing out her little gloved hand. Caleb
looked into her face and touched the
dainty glove with two of his fingers, —
he was afraid to do more, it was so small
— and, with his eyes on hers, listened
while she spoke in a tender, sympathetic
tone, lowering her voice so that no one
could hear but himself, not even San-
ford. "I have heard all about your
troubles, Mr. West, and I am so sorry
for you both. She stayed with me one
night last summer. Poor child, she
was very miserable ; it 's an awful thing
to be alone in the world."

Sanford took the situation with a
calmness customary to him when things
were going well. His principle in life
was to do his level best every time, and
leave the rest to fate. When he wor-
ried, it was before a crisis. He had not
belittled the consequences of a rejec-
tion of the work. He knew how seri-
ous it might have been. Had the Board
become thoroughly convinced that he
had openly and without just cause vio-
lated both the written contract and the
instructions of the superintendent, they
might have been forced to make an ex-
ample of him, and to require all the
upper masonry to be torn down and re-
built on a true level, — a result which
would have entailed the loss of thou-
sands of dollars.

His reply to General Barton and the
Board had been a grim, reserved "I
thank you, gentlemen, " with an added
hope that the new superintendent might
be instructed to give written orders
when any departure from the contract
was insisted upon, to which the chief
engineer agreed.

Later, when he called his men about
him on the Ledge and gave them the
details of the interview, — he never
kept anything of this kind from his
working force, — he cautioned one and
all of them to exercise the greatest pa-
tience and good temper toward the new
superintendent, whoever he might be,
who was promised in a few days, so
that nothing might happen which would

incur his ill will ; reminding them that
it would not do for a second superintend-
ent to be disgruntled, no matter whose
fault it was : to which Captain Joe sen-
tentiously replied, "All right; let 'em
send who they like, — sooner the bet-
ter. But one thing I kin tell 'em, an'
that is that none on 'em can't stop us
now from gittin' through, no matter
how ornery they be."

And yet, even with the happiness of
his triumph, Sanford grew conscious of
a strange feeling of disappointment.
He began without reason to wonder
whether the companionship with Kate
would now be as close as before, and
whether the daily conferences would
end, since he had no longer any anxi-
eties to lay before her.

Something in her delight, and the
frank way in which she had held out
her hand like a man friend in congrat-
ulation, had chilled rather than cheered
him. He felt hurt, without knowing
why. A sense of indefinable personal
loss came over him. In the whirl of
contending emotions suddenly assailing
him, he began to doubt whether she had
understood his motives, that night on the
veranda, when he had kissed her hand,
— whether, in fact, he had understood
her at all. Had she really conquered
her feelings as he had his? Or had
there been nothing to conquer? Then
another feeling rose in his heart, — a
vague jealousy of the very work which
had bound them so closely together, and
which now seemed to claim all her in-
terest.

Throughout the luncheon that fol-
lowed aboard the yacht, the major had
been the life of the party. He had of-
fered no apology either to Sanford or
to any member of the committee for his
hasty conclusions regarding "the dam-
nable oligarchy." He considered that
he had wiped away all bitterness, when,
rising to his feet, and rapping with his
knife for order, he had said with great
dignity and suavity of manner : —

400

Caleb West.

"On behalf of this queen among wo-
men, " — turning to Mrs. Leroy, —
"our lovely hostess, as well as these fair
young buds " — a graceful wave of his
hand — (some of these buds had grand-
children) "who adorn her table, I rise
to thank you, suh, " — semi-military
salute to General Barton, — "for the
opportunity you have given them of do-
ing honor to a gentleman and a soldier, "

— a double-barreled compliment that
brought a smile to that gentleman's face,
and a suppressed ripple of laughter from
the other members of the committee.

In the same generous way he had
filled his own and everybody else's
bumper for Sanford out of the bowl that
Sam had rendered innocuous, addressing
his friend as that "young giant, who
has lighted up the pathway of the vasty
deep. " To which bit of grandiloquence
Sanford replied that the major was pre-
mature, but that he hoped to accomplish
it the following year.

In addition to conducting all these
functions, the Pocomokian had neglect-
ed no minor detail of the feast. He
had insisted upon making the coffee
after an especial formula of his own,
and had cooled in a new way and with
his own hands the several cordials
banked up on Sam's silver tray. He
had opened parasols for the ladies and
champagne for the men with equal grace
and dexterity; had been host, waiter,
valet, and host again; and throughout
the livelong day had been one unfail-
ing source of enthusiasm, courtesy, and
helpfulness. With all this he had never
overstepped the limits of his position,

— as High Rubber-in-Chief, of course,

— his main purpose having been to get
all the fun possible out of the situation,
not so much for himself as for those
about him. While the general and the
committee had several times, in their
own minds, put him down for a charla-
tan and a mountebank, especially when
they deliberated upon the fit of his
clothes and his bombastic and some-
times fulsome speeches, all the vaga-

ries of the distinguished Pocomokian
only endeared him the more to Sanford
and his many friends. They saw a
little deeper under the veneer, and
knew that if the major did smoke his
hostess's cigars and drink her cognac,
it was always as her guest and in her
presence ; that, poor and often thirsty
as he was, he would as soon have
thought of stuffing his carpet-bag with
the sheets that covered his tempo-
rary bed as of filling his private flask
with the contents of the decanter that
Buckles brought nightly to his room.
It was just this delicate sense of honor
that saved him from pure vagabondage.

When coffee and cigars had been
served, the general and his party again
crossed the gangplank to the tender,
the mooring-lines were thrown off, and
the two boats, with many wavings of
hands from yacht and Ledge, kept on
their respective courses. The tender
was to keep on to Keyport, where the
committee were to board the train for
New York, and the yacht was to idle
along until sundown, and so on into
Medford Harbor. Captain Joe and
Caleb were to follow later in the tug
that had towed out the Screamer, they
being needed in Keyport to load some
supplies.

As the* tender steamed away, the men
on the Ledge looked eagerly for Carle-
ton, that they might give him some lit-
tle leave - taking of their own, — it
would have been a pleasant one, — but
he was nowhere to be seen.

"Buried up in the coal-bunkers, jes'
's I said," laughed Lonny Bowles.

With the final wave of a red hand-
kerchief, the property of the major, to-
ward the fast disappearing tender, a
salute returned by the general standing
in the stern of the boat, Mrs. Leroy 's
party settled themselves on the forward
deck of the yacht to enjoy the run back
to Medford. The ladies were made
comfortable with cushions from the sa-
loon below, while some of the men threw

Caleb West.

401

themselves flat, on the deck cushions,
or sat Turkish fashion in those several
sprawling positions possible only under
like conditions, and most difficult for
an underbred man to learn to assume
properly. Jack Hardy knew to a nicety
how to stow his legs away, and so did
Sanford. Theirs were always invisi-
ble. Smear ly never tried the difficult
art. He thought it beneath his dig-
nity ; and then, again, there was too
much of him in the wrong place. The
major wanted to try it, and no doubt
would have done so with decorum and
grace but for his clothes. It was a
straight and narrow way that the major
had been walking all day, and he could
run no risks.

Everything aboard the yacht had been
going as merry as a marriage or any
other happy bell of good cheer, — the
major at his best, Smearly equally de-
lightful, Helen and Jack happy as two
song-birds, and Mrs. Leroy with a joy-
ous word for every one between her
confidences to Sanford.

It was just when the gayety was at
its height that two quick, sharp rings
in the engine-room below were heard,
and almost at the same moment one
of the crew touched Sanford on the
shoulder and whispered something in
his ear.

Sanford sprang to his feet and looked
eagerly toward the shore.

The yacht, at the moment, was en-
tering the narrow channel of Medford
Harbor, and the railroad trestle and
draw could be plainly seen from its
deck. Sanford' s quick eye had instant-
ly detected a break in the outlines.
The end of the railroad track placed
on the trestle, and crossing within a
few hundred feet of Mrs. Leroy 's cot-
tage, was evidently twisted out of
shape, while, across the channel, on its
opposite end rested an engine and two
cars, the outer one derailed and top-
pled over. On the water below were
crowded small boats of every conceivable
kind, hurrying to the scene. They filled

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 485. 26

the space under the draw, they blocked
up the broken ends of the structure,
while the surrounding banks were black
with people looking anxiously at a group
of men on board a scow, who were ap-
parently trying to keep above water a
large object which looked like a float-
ing house.

It was clear that something serious
had happened.

A panic of apprehension immediately
seized the guests on the yacht. Faces
which but a few moments before had
been rosy with smiles became suddenly
anxious and frightened. Some of the
ladies spoke in whispers; could it be
possible, every one asked, that the train
with General Barton and the commit-
tee on board had met with an accident ?

Sanford, followed by Mrs. Leroy,
hurried into- the pilot-house, to search
the hori/on from that elevation and see
the better. One moment's survey re-
moved all doubt from his mind. A train
had gone through the draw; whether
passenger or freight he could not tell.
One thing was certain : some lives must
be in danger, or the crowd would not
watch so intently the group who were
working with such energy aboard the
rescuing scow. At Sanford's request,
two quick, short bells sounded again in
the engine-room, and the yacht qui-
vered along her entire length as she
doubled her speed. When she came
within hailing distance of the shore, a
lobster-fisherman pulled out and crossed
the yacht's bow.

''What 's happened ? " shouted San-
ford, waving his hat to attract attention.

The fisherman stopped rowing, and
the yacht slowed down.

" Train through the draw, " came the
answer.

"Passenger or freight? "

" 'T ain't neither one. It 's a repair
train from Stonin'ton, with a lot o'
dagos an' men. Caboose went clean

under, an' two cars piled on top."

Sanford breathed freer; the Board
were safe, anyhow.

402

Caleb West,

"Anybody killed?"

"Yes. Some says six; some says
more. None in the caboose got out.
The dagos was on the dirt - car, an'
jumped."

The yacht sped on. As she neared
the railroad draw, Jack took Helen's
hand and led her down into the cabin.
He did not want her to see any sight
that would shock her. Mrs. Leroy
stood by Sanford. The yacht was her
house, so to speak; some one might
need its hospitality and shelter, and she
wanted to be the first to offer it. The
same idea had crossed Sanford 's mind.

"Major, "said Sanford, "please tell
Sam to get some brandy ready, and bring
some of the mattresses from the crew's
bunks up on deck; they may be use-
ful."

A voice hailed Sanford. It came
from the end of the scow nearest the
sunken house, now seen to be one end
of a caboose car. "Is there a doctor
aboard your yacht ? "

"Yes, half a one. Who wants
him ? " said Smearly, leaning over the
rail in the direction of the sound.

"We 've got a man here we can't
bring to. He 's alive, but that 's all."

The yacht backed water and moved
close to the scow. Sanford jumped
down, followed by Smearly carrying the
brandy and the major with a mattress,
and ran along her deck to where the
man lay. The yacht kept on. It
was to land the ladies a hundred yards
away, and then return.

"Hand me that brandy, quick, ma-
jor! " said Smearly, as he dropped on
one knee and bent over the sufferer,
parting the lips with his fingers and
pouring a little between the closed
teeth. "Now pull that mattress closer,
and some of you fellows make a pillow
of your coats, and find something to
throw over him when he comes to ; it 's
the cold that 's killing him. He '11 pull
through, I think."

The major was the first man in his
shirt- sleeves ; Leroy's coat was begin-

ning to be of some real service. Two
of the scow's crew added their own
coats, and then ran to the cabin for an
army blanket. The man was lifted upon
the mattress and made more comfort-
able, with the coats placed under his
head and the army blanket tucked about
him. Smear ly's early training in the
hospital service during the war had more
than once stood him in good stead.

The man gave a convulsive gasp and
partly opened his eyes. The brandy
was doing its work. Sanford leaned
over him to see if he could recognize
him, but the ooze and slime clung so
thickly to the mustache and closely
trimmed beard that he could not make
out his features. He seemed to be un-
der thirty years of age, strong and well
built. He was dressed in a blue shirt
and overalls, and looked like a me-
chanic.

" How many others ? " asked San-
ford, looking toward the wreck.

"He 's the only one alive," answered
the captain of the scow. "We hauled
him through the winder of the caboose
just as she was a-turnin' over. He 's
broke something, some'ers, I guess, or
he 'd 'a' come to quicker. There 's
two dead under there," pointing to the
sunken caboose, "so the brakeman says.
If we had a diver we could git 'em
up. The railroad superintendent 's been
here, an' says he '11 send for one; but
you know what that means, — he '11
send for a diver after they git this ca-
boose up; by that time their bodies '11
be smashed into pulp."

The yacht had now steamed back to
the wreck with word from Mrs. Leroy
to send for whatever would be needed
to make the injured men comfortable.
Sam delivered the message, standing in
the bow of the yacht. He had not
liked the idea of leaving Sanford, when
the yacht moved off from the scow, and
had so expressed himself to the sailing-
master. He was Sanford 's servant, —
not Mrs. Leroy's, — he had said; and
when people were getting blown up and

Caleb West.

403

his master had to stay and attend to
them, his place was beside him, not
waiting on ladies.

With the approach of the yacht San-
ford looked at his watch thoughtfully,
and raising his voice to the sailing-mas-
ter, who was standing in the pilot-house,
his hand on the wheel, said, "Cap-
tain, I want you to tow this scow to
Mrs. Leroy's dock, so the doctor can
get at this wounded fellow. He needs
hot blankets at once. Then crowd on
everything you 've got and run to Key-
port. Find Captain Joe Bell, and tell
him to put my big air-pump aboard and
bring Caleb West and his diving-dress.
There are two dead men down here
who must be got up before the wreck-
ing-train begins on the caboose. My
colored boy, Sam, will go with you and
help you find the captain's house, —
he knows where he lives. If you are
quick, you can make Keyport and back
in an hour."

XXIII.

THE SWINGING GATE.

When the tug landed Caleb at Key-
port, this same afternoon, he hurried
through his duties and went straight to
his cabin. Mrs. Leroy's sympathetic
words were still in his ears. He could
hear the very tones of her voice and re-
call the pleading look in her eyes. He
wished he had told her the whole truth
then and there, and how he felt toward
Betty ; and he might have done so had
not the other ladies been there, expect-
ing her aboard the yacht. He did not
feel hurt or angry ; he never was with
those who spoke well of his wife. Her
words had only deepened the conviction
that had lately taken possession of his
own mind, — that he alone, of all who
knew Betty, had shut his heart against
her. Even this woman — a total stran-
ger— had taken her out of the streets
and befriended her, and still pleaded
for her. Would his own heart ever be

softened ? What did he want her to do
for him ? Crawl back on her hands and
knees, and lie outside his door until he
took her in ? And if she never came,

— what then?

Would she be able to endure this be-
ing shut out from everything and every-
body? He had saved her from Carle-
ton, but who else would try to waylay
and insult her ? Maybe his holding out
so long against her would force her
into other temptations, and so ruin her.
What if it was already too late? La-
cey had been seen round Keyport lately,

— once at night. He knew the young
rigger wrote to her. Bert Simmons,
the postman, had shown him the letters
with the Stonington postmark. Was
Lacey hanging round Keyport because
she had sent for him ? And if she went
back to him, after all, — whose fault
was it?

At the thought of Lacey the beads of
sweat stood on his forehead. Various
conflicting emotions took possession of
him : haunting fears lest she should be
tempted beyond her strength, followed
by an almost uncontrollable anger
against the man who had broken up his
home. Then his mind reverted to Cap-
tain Joe, and to the night he pleaded
for her, and to the way he said over
and over again, "She ain't nothin' but
a child, Caleb, an' all of us is liable to
go astray." These words seemed to
burn themselves into his brain.

As the twilight came on he went up-
stairs on tiptoe, treading as lightly as
if he knew she was asleep and he feared
to waken her. Standing by the bed, he
looked about him in an aimless, help-
less way, his eyes resting finally on the
counterpane, and the pillow he had
placed every night for her on her side
of the bed. It was yellow and soiled
now. In the same half-dazed, dreamy
way he stepped to the closet, opened
the door cautiously, and laid his hand
upon her dresses, which hung where she
had left them, smoothing them softly.
He could easily have persuaded himself,

404

Caleb West.

had she been dead, that her spirit was
near him, whispering to him, leading
him about, her hand in his.

As he stood handling the dresses, with
their little sleeves and skirts, all the pa-
ternal seemed suddenly to come out in
him. She was no longer his wife, no
longer the keeper of his house, no long-
er the custodian of his good name. She
was his child, his daughter, his own flesh
and blood, — one who had gone astray,
one who had pleaded for forgiveness,
and who was now alone in the world,
with every door closed against her but
Captain Joe's.

In the brightness of this new light of
pity in him a great weight seemed lift-
ed from his heart. His own sorrow and
loneliness were trivial and selfish beside
hers : he big and strong, fearless to go
and come, able to look every man in
the face ; and she a timid girl, shrink-
ing, frightened, insulted, hiding even
from those who loved her. What sort
of man was he to shut his door in her
face, and send her shuddering down the
road?

With these new thoughts there came
a sudden desire to help, to reach out
his arms toward her, to stand up and
defend her, — defend her, out in the
open, before all the people.

Catching up his hat, he hurried from
the house and walked briskly down the
road. It was Betty's hour for coming
home. Since the encounter with Carle-
ton there had been few evenings in the
week he had not loitered along the
road, with one excuse or another, hiding
behind the fish-house until she passed,
watching her until she reached the
swinging gate. Soon the residents up
and down the road began to time his
movements. " Here conies Caleb, " they
would say; "Betty ain't far off. Ain't
nothin' goin' to touch her as long as
C.ileb 's round."

This watohf il care had had its effect.
Not only had Captain Joe and Aunty
Bell taken her part, but Caleb was look-
ing after her, too. When this became

common talk the little remaining gossip
ceased. Better not talk about Betty,
the neighbors said among themselves;
Caleb might hear it.

When the diver reached the top of
the hill overlooking Captain Joe's cot-
tage, his eye fell upon Betty's slight
figure stepping briskly up the hill, her
shawl drawn tightly about her shoulders,
her hat low down on her face. She had
passed the willows, and was halfway to
the swinging gate. Caleb quickened
his pace and walked straight toward her.

She saw him coming, and stopped in
sudden fright. For an instant she wa-
vered, undecided whether she would turn
and run, or brave it out and pass him.
If she could only get inside the garden
before he reached her! As she neared
the gate she heard his footsteps on the
road, and could see from under the rim
of her hat the rough shoes and coarse
trousers cement-stained up as far as his
knees. Only once since she had gone
with Lacey had she been so close to him.

She gathered all her strength and
sprang forward, her hand on the swing-
ing gate.

"I'll hold it back, child," came a
low, sweet voice, and an arm was
stretched out before her. "It shan't
slam to and hurt ye."

He was so close she could hav§ touched
him. She saw, even in her agony, the
gray, fluffy beard, and the wrinkled, wea-
ther - stained throat within the unbut-
toned collar of the flannel shirt. She
saw, too, the big brown hand, as it rest-
ed on the gate.

She did not see his eyes. She dared
not look so high.

As she entered the kitchen door she
gave a hurried glance behind. He was
following her slowly, as if in deep
thought ; his hands behind his back, his
eyes on the ground.

Aunty Bell was bending over the
stove when Betty dashed in.

" It 's Caleb ! He 's coming in ! Oh,
aunty, don't let him see me — please
— please ! "

Caleb West.

405

The little woman turned quickly,
startled at the sudden interruption.

"He don't want ye, child." The
girl's appearance alarmed her. She is
not often this way, she thought.

" He does — he does ! He spoke to
me — Oh, where shall I go ? " she
moaned, wringing her hands, her whole
body trembling like one with an ague.

"Go nowhere, " answered Aunty Bell
in decided tones. "Stay where ye be.
I '11 go see him. 'T ain't nothin',
chili, only somethin' for the cap'n."
She had long since given up all hope of
Caleb's softening.

As she spoke, the diver's slow and
measured step could be heard sounding
along the plank walk.

Aunty Bell let down her apron and
stepped to the door. Betty crept be-
hind the panels, watching him through
the crack, stifling her breath lest she
should miss his first word. Oh, the
music of his voice at the gate ! Not
his words, but the way he spoke, — the
gentleness, the pity, the compassion of
it all ! As this thought surged through
her mind she grew calmer ; a sudden im-
pulse to rush out and throw herself at
his feet took possession of her. He
could not repel her when his voice car-
ried such tenderness to her heart. A
great sob rose in her throat. The mea-
sured, slow step came closer.

At this instant she heard the outer
gate swing to a second time witli a re-
sounding bang, and Captain Joe's voice
calling, "Git yer dress, Caleb, quick
as God '11 let ye! Train through the
Medford draw an' two men drownded.
I 've been lookin' fur ye everywhere."

" Who says so ? " answered Caleb
calmly, without moving.

"Mr. Sanford 's sent the yacht. His
nigger 's outside now. Hurry, I tell
ye; we ain't got a minute."

Betty waited, her heart throbbing.
Caleb paused for an instant, and looked
earnestly and hesitatingly toward the
house. Then he turned quickly and fol-
lowed Captain Joe.

Aunty Bell waited until she saw both
men cross the road on their way to the
dock. Then she went in to find Betty.

She was still crouched behind the
door, her limbs trembling beneath her.
On her face was the dazed look of one
who had missed, without knowing why,
a great crisis.

"Don't cry, child," said the little
woman, patting her cheek. "It 's all
right. I knowed he didn't come for
ye."

"But, Aunty Bell, Aunty Bell," she
sobbed, as she threw her arms about
the older woman's neck, "I wanted him
so!"

XXIV.

CALEB TRIMS HIS LIGHTS.

The purple twilight had already set-
tled over Medford Harbor when the
yacht, with Captain Joe and Caleb on
board, glided beneath the wrecked tres-
tle with its toppling cars, and made fast
to one of the outlying spiles of the draw.
As the yacht's stern swung in toward
the sunken caboose which coffined the
bodies of the drowned men, a small boat
put off from the shore and Sanford
sprang aboard. He had succeeded in
persuading the section boss in charge of
the wrecking gang to delay wrecking
operations until Caleb could get the
bodies, insisting that it was inhuman to
disturb the wreck until they were recov-
ered. As the yacht was expected every
moment, and the services of the diver
would be free, the argument carried
weight.

" Everything is ready, sir, " said Cap-
tain Joe, as Sanford walked aft to meet
him. "We 've 'iled up the cylinders,
an' the pump can git to work in a min-
ute. I '11 tend Caleb; I know how he
likes his air. Come, Caleb, git inter
yer dress; this tide 's on the turn."

The three men walked along the
yacht's deck to where the captain had
been oiling the air-pump. It had been

406

Caleb West.

lifted clear of its wooden case and stood
near the rail, its polished brasses glis-
tening in the light of a ship's lantern
slung to the ratlines. Sprawled over a
deck settee lay the rubber diving-dress,
— body, arms, and legs in one piece,
like a suit of seamless underwear, —
and beside it the copper helmet, a trunk -
less head with a single staring eye. The
air-hose and life-line, together with the
back-plate and breast-plate of lead and
the iron-shod shoes, lay on the deck.

Caleb placed his folded coat on a
camp-stool, drew off his shoes, tucked
his trousers into his stocking legs, and
began twisting himself into his rubber
dress, Sanford helping him with the
arms and neckpiece. Captain Joe,
meanwhile, overhauled the plates and
loosened the fastenings of the weighted
shoes.

With the screwing on of Caleb's hel-
met and the tightening of his face-plate
the crowd increased. The news of the
coming diver had preceded the arrival
of the yacht, and the trestle and shores
were lined with people.

When Caleb, completely equipped,
stepped on the top round of the ladder
fastened to the yacht's side, the crowd
climbed hurriedly over the wrecked cars
to the stringers of the trestle, to get a
better view of the huge man-fish with
its distorted head and single eye, and
its long antennae of hose and life-line.
Such a sight would be uncanny even
when the blazing sun burnished the di-
ver's polished helmet and the one eye
of the face-plate glared ominously ; but
at night, under the wide sky, with only
a single swinging lamp to illumine the
gloomy shadows, the man-fish became
a thing of dread, — a ghoulish spectre
who prowled over foul and loathsome
things, and rose from the slime of deep
bottoms only to breathe and sink again.

Caleb slowly descended the yacht's
ladder, one iron-shod foot at a time,
until the water reached his armpits.
Then he swung himself clear, and the
black, oily ooze closed over him.

Captain Joe leaned over the yacht's
rail, the life-line wound about his wrist,
his sensitive hand alert for the slight-
est nibble of the man-fish below ; these
nibbles are the unspoken words of the
diver to his "tender" above. His
life often depends on these being in-
stantly understood and answered.

For the diver is more than amphi-
bious ; he is twice-bodied, — one man
below, one man above, with two heads
and four hands. The connecting links
between these two bodies — these Si-
amese twins — are the life-line and sig-
nal-cord through which they speak to
each other, and the air-hose carrying
their life-breath.

As Caleb dropped out of sight the
crew crowded to the yacht's rail, strain-
ing their eyes in the gloom. In the
steady light of the lantern they could
see the cord tighten and slacken, as the
diver felt his way among the wreckage
or sank to the bottom. They could
follow, too, the circle of air - bubbles
floating on the water above where he
worked. No one spoke ; no one moved.
An almost deathly stillness prevailed.
The only sounds were the wheezing of
the air-pump turned by the sailor, and
the swish of the life-line cutting through
the water as the diver talked to his
tender. With these were mingled the
unheeded sounds of the night and of the
sea, — the soft purring of the tall
grasses moving gently to and fro in the
night-wind, and the murmuring of the
sluggish water stirred by the rising tide
and gurgling along the yacht's side on
its way to the stern.

"Has he found them yet, Captain
Joe ? " Sanford asked, after some mo-
ments, under his breath.

"Not yet, sir. He 's been through
one car, an' is now crawlin' through
t'other. He says they 're badly broke
up. Run that air-hose overboard, sir;
let it all go ; he wants it all. Thank
ye. He says the men are in their
bunks at t'other end, if anywheres.
That's it, sir."

Caleb West.

407

There came a quick double jerk, an-
swered by one long pull.

"More air, sir, — more air ! " Cap-
tain Joe cried in a quick, rising voice.
"So-o, that '11 do."

The crew looked on in astonishment.
The talk of the man-fish was like the
telephone talk of a denizen from an-
other world.

Not a single tremor had been felt
along the life-line for a quarter of an
hour, nor had Captain Joe moved from
his position on the rail. His eye was
still on the circle of bubbles that rose
and were lost in the current. Sanford
grew uneasy.

"What's he doing now, captain?"
he asked in an anxious voice.

"Don't know, sir; ain't heard from
him in some time."

"Ask him."

"No, sir; better let him alone. He
might be crawlin' through somewheres ;
might tangle him up if I moved the
line. He 's got to feel his way, sir.
It 's black as mud down there. If the
men warn't in the caboose, he would n't
never find 'em at night."

A quick jerk from under the surface
now sent the life-line swishing through
the water, followed by a series of rapid
pulls, — strong seesaw pulls, as if some
great fish were struggling with the
line.

"He 's got one of 'em, sir," said the
captain, with sudden animation. " Says
that 's all. He 's been through two
cars an' felt along every inch o' the
way. If there 's another, he 's got
washed out o' the door."

As he spoke, the air-hose slackened
and the life-line began to sag.

Captain Joe turned quickly to San-
ford. "Pull in that hose, Mr. San-
ford," hauling in the slack of the life-
line himself. "He 's a-comin' up;
he '11 bring him with him."

These varied movements on the yacht
stirred the overhanging crowd into ac-
tion. They hoped the diver was coming
up; they hoped, too, he would bring

the dead man. His appearing with
his awful burden would be less terrible
than not knowing what the man-fish
was doing. The crew of the yacht
crowded still closer to the rail; this
fishing at night for the dead had a fas-
cination they could not resist. Some
of them even mounted the ratlines, and
others ran aft to see the diver rise from
the deep sea.

In a moment more the black water
heaved in widening circles, and Caleb's
head and shoulders were thrust up with-
in an oar's length of the yacht.

The light of the lantern fell upon his
wet helmet and extended arm.

The hand clutched a man's boot.
Attached to the boot were a pair of
blue overalls and a jacket. The head
of the drowned man hung down in the
water. The face was hidden.

Captain Joe leaned forward, lowered
the lantern that Caleb might see the
ladder, reeled in the life-line hand over
hand, and dragged the diver and his
burden nearer.

Caleb placed his foot on the ladder
and drew himself up until his waist was
clear of the water. Captain Joe dropped
the life-line, now that Caleb was safe,
called for a boat-hook, and, reaching
down, held the foot close to the yacht's
side; then a sailor threw a noose of
marline twine around the boot. The
body was now safe from the treacher-
ous tide.

Caleb raised himself slowly until his
helmet was just above the level of the
deck. Captain Joe removed the lead
plates from his breast and back, un-
screwed his glass face-plate, letting out
his big beard, and letting in the cool
night-air.

"Anymore down there? " he cried,
his mouth close to Caleb's face as he
spoke.

Caleb shook his head inside the cop-
per helmet. " No ; don't think so,
Cap'n Joe. Guess ye thought I wa8
a-goin' to stay all night, did n't ye? I
had ter crawl through two cars 'fore I

408

Caleb West.

got him ; when I found him he was un-
der a tool-chest. One o' them lower
cars, I see, has got its end stove out."
"Jes' 's I told ye, Mr. Sanford,"
said Captain Joe in a positive tone;
"t'other body went out with the tide."

The yacht, with the dead man on
board, steamed across the narrow chan-
nel, reversed her screw, and touched the
fender spiles of her wharf as gently as
one would tap an egg. Sanford, who
after the body was found had gone
ahead in the small boat in search of the
section boss, was waiting on the wharf
for the arrival of the yacht.

"There 's more trouble, Captain
Joe," he said. "There's a man here
that the scow saved from the wreck. Mr.
Smearly thought he would pull through,
but the doctor who 's with him says he
can't live an hour. His spine is injured.
Major Slocomb and Mr. Smearly are
now in Stonington in search of a sur-
geon. The section boss tells me his
name is Williams, and that he works in
the machine shops. Better look at him
and see if you know him."

Captain Joe and Caleb walked to-
ward the scow. She was moored close
to the grassy slope of the shore. On
her deck stood half a dozen men, the
injured man lying in the centre. Be-
side the sufferer, seated on one of Mrs.
Leroy's piazza chairs, was the village
doctor; his hand was on the patient's
pulse. One of Mrs. Leroy's maids
knelt at the wounded man's feet, wring-
ing out cloths that had been dipped in
buckets of boiling water brought by the
men servants. Mrs. Leroy and her
guests were on the lawn waiting for news
from the wounded man. Over by the
stable swinging lights could be seen
glimmering here and there, as if men
were hurrying. There were lights, too,
on the lawn and on the scow's deck ; one
hung back of the sufferer's head, where
it could not shine on his eyes.

The wounded man, who had been
stripped of his wet clothes, lay on a

clean mattress. Over him was thrown
a soft white blanket. His head was
propped up on a pillow taken from one
of Mrs. Leroy's beds. She had begged
to have him moved to the house, but the
doctor would not consent until the sur-
geon arrived. So he kept him out in
the warm night-air, lying face up under
the stars.

Dying and dead men were no new
sight to Captain Joe and Caleb. The
captain had sat by too many wounded
men, knocked breathless by falling der-
ricks, and seen their life-blood ooze
away, and Caleb had dragged too many
sailors from sunken cabins. This acci-
dent was not serious; only three killed
and one wounded out ox twenty. In
the morning their home people would
come and take them away, — in cloth-
covered boxes or in plain pine. That
was all.

Captain Joe walked toward the suf-
ferer, nodded to the Medford doctor sit-
ting beside him, picked up the lantern
which hung behind the man's head, and
turned the light full on the pale face.
Caleb stood at one side talking with the
captain of the scow.

"All broke up, ain't he? " said Cap-
tain Joe, as he turned to the doctor.
"He ain't no dago. Looks to me like
one o' them young fellers what 's " —
He stopped abruptly. Something
about the face attracted him.

Then he dropped on one knee beside
the bed, pushed back the matted hair
from the man's forehead, and examined
the skin carefully.

For some moments he remained silent,
scanning every line in the face. Then
he rose to his feet, folded his arms across
his chest, his eyes still fastened on the
sufferer, and said slowly and thought-
fully to himself, "Well, I 'm damned ! "

The doctor bent his head in expecta-
tion, eager to hear the captain's next
words, but the captain was too absorbed
to notice the gesture. For some min-
utes he continued looking at the dying
man.

Caleb West.

409

"Come here, Caleb ! " he called, beck-
oning to the diver. "Hold the lantern
close. Who's that?" His voice sank
almost to a whisper. "Look in his
face."

"I don't know, cap'n; I never see
him afore."

At the sound of the voices the head
on the pillow turned, and the man half
opened his eyes and groaned heavily.
He was evidently in great pain, — too
great for the opiates wholly to deaden.

" Look agin, Caleb ; see that scar on
his cheek; that 's where the Screamer
hit 'im. It 's Bill Lacey."

Caleb caught up the lantern as Cap-
tain Joe had done, and turned the light
full on the dying man's face. Slowly
and carefully he examined its every fea-
ture, — the broad forehead, deep-sunk
eyes, short curly hair about the temples,
and the mustache and close-trimmed
beard which had been worn as a dis-
guise, no doubt, along with his new
name of Williams. In the same search-
ing way his eye passed over the broad
shoulders and slender, supple body out-
lined under the clinging blanket, and
so on down to the small, well-shaped
feet that the kneeling maid was warm-
ing.

"It's him," he said quietly, step-
ping back to the mast, and folding his
arms behind his back, while his eyes
were fixed on the drawn face.

During this exhaustive search Cap-
tain Joe followed every expression that
swept over the diver's face. How would
the death of this man affect Betty?

He picked up an empty nail-keg and
crossing the deck with it sat down again
beside the mattress, his hands on his
knees, watching the sufferer. As he
looked at the twitching muscles of the
face and the fading color, the bitter-
ness cherished for months against this
man faded away. He saw only the
punishment that had come, its swift-
ness and its sureness. Then another
face came before him, — a smaller one,
with large and pleading eyes.

"Ain't no chance for him, I s'pose ? "
he said to the doctor in a low tone.

The only answer was an ominous
shake of the head and a significant rub-
bing of the edge of the doctor's hand
across the waist-line of the captain's
back. Captain Joe nodded his head ;
he knew, — the spine was broken.

The passing of a spirit is a sacred
and momentous thing, an impressive
spectacle even to rough men who have
seen it so often.

One by one the watchers on the scow
withdrew. Captain Joe and the doctor
remained beside the bed; Caleb stood
a few feet away, leaning against the
mast, the full glow of the lantern shed-
ding a warm light over his big frame
and throwing his face into shadow.
What wild, turbulent thoughts surged
through his brain no one knew but him-
self. Beads of sweat had trickled down
his face, and he loosened his collar to
breathe the better.

Presently the captain sank on his
knee again beside the mattress. His
face had the firm, determined expression
of one whose mind has been made up on
some line of action that has engrossed
his thoughts. He put his mouth close
to the dying man's ear.

"It 's me, Billy, — Cap'n Joe. Do
ye know me ? "

The eyes opened slowly and fastened
themselves for an instant upon the cap-
tain's face. A dull gleam of recogni-
tion stirred in their glassy depths ; then
the lids closed wearily. The glimpse
of Lacey 's mind was but momentary,
yet to the captain it was unmistakable.
The brain was still alert.

With a sigh of relief he leaned back
and beckoned to Caleb.

"Come over 'ere," he said in a low
whisper, "an' git down close to 'im.
He ain't got long ter live. Don't think
o' what he done to you, — git that
out o' yer head ; think o' where he 's
a-goin'. Don't let him go with that
on yer mind; it ain't decent, an' it '11
haunt ye. Git down close to 'im, an'

410

Caleb West.

tell 'im ye ain't got nothin' agin 'im;
do it for me. Ye won't never regret
it, Caleb."

The diver knelt in a passive, listless
way, as one drops in a church to the
sound of an altar-bell. The flame of
the lantern fell on his face and shaggy
beard, lighting up the earnest, thought-
ful eyes and tightly pressed lips.

"Pull yerself together, Billy, — jes'
once, fur me," said Captain Joe in a
half-coaxing voice. "It 's Caleb bend-
in' over ye ; he wants to tell ye some-
thing."

The sunken, shriveled lids parted
quickly, and the eyes rested for a mo-
ment on the diver's face. The lips
moved, as if the man were about to
speak. But no words came. Over the
cheeks and nose there passed a convul-
sive twitching, the neck stiffened, the
head straightened back upon the pillow.
Then the jaw fell.

"He's dead," said the doctor, lay-
ing his hand over Lacey's heart.

Captain Joe drew the blanket over
the dead face, rose from his knees, and,
with his arm in Caleb's, left the scow
and walked slowly toward the yacht.
The doctor gathered up his remedies,
gave some directions to the watchman,
and joined Mrs. Leroy and the ladies
on the lawn.

Only the watchman on the scow was
left, and the silent stars, — stern, un-
flinching, terrible, like the eyes of many
judges.

Caleb and Captain Joe sat on the
yacht's deck, on their way back to Key-
port. The air-pump had been lifted into
its case, and the dress and equipment
had been made ready to be put ashore
at the paraphernalia dock.

The moon had risen, flooding the
yacht with white light and striping the
deck with the clear-cut, black shadows
of the stanchions. On the starboard
bow burned Keyport Light, and beyond
flashed Little Gull, a tiny star on the
far-off horizon.

Caleb leaned back on a settee, his
eyes fixed on the glistening sea. He
had not spoken a word since his eyes
rested on Lacey's face.

"Caleb," said Captain Joe, laying
his hand on the diver's knee, "mebbe
ye don't feel right to me fur say in'
what I did, but I did n't want ye to let
'im go an' not tell 'im ye hadn't no
hatred in yer heart toward 'im. It 'd
come back to plague ye, and ye 've had
sufferin' enough already 'long o' him.
He won't worry you nor her no more.
He 's lived a mean, stinkin' life, an'
he 's died 's I allus knowed he would,
— with nobody's hand ter help 'im.
Caleb, " — he paused for an instant and
looked into the diver's face, — "you
'n' me 's knowed each other by an'
large a many a year; ye know what I
want ye to do ; ye know what hurts me,
an' has ever sence the child come back.
He 's out o' yer hands now. God 's
punished him. Be good to yerself an'
to her, an' forgive her. Take Betty
back."

The old man turned, and slipped his
hand over Captain Joe's, — a hard,
horny hand, with a heart -throb in every
finger-tip.

"Cap'n Joe, I know how ye feel.
There ain't nothin' between us ; but yer
wrong about him. As I stood over him
to-night I fit it all out with myself.
If he 'd V lived long 'nough I 'd 'a'
told him, jes' 's ye wanted me to.
But yer ain't never had this thing
right; I ain't a-blamin' him, an' I
ain't a-blamin' her."

"Then take 'er home, an' quit this
foolish life ye 're leadin', an' her heart
a-breakin' every day for love o' ye.
Ain't ye lonely 'nough without her?
God knows she is without you."

Caleb slowly withdrew his hand from
Captain Joe's and put his arms behind
his head, making a rest of his inter-
locked fingers.

"When ye say she 's a-breakin' her
heart for me, Cap'n Joe, ye don't know
it all." His eyes looked up at the sky

Caleb West.

411

as he spoke. "'T ain't that I ain't
willin' to take 'er back. I allus want-
ed to help her, an' I allus wanted to
take care of her, — not to have her
take care o' me. I made up my mind
this mornin', when I see how folks was
a-treatin' 'er, to ask 'er to come home.
If I 'd treat 'er right, they 'd treat 'er
right; I know it. But I warn't the
man for her, an' she don't love me now
no more 'n she did. That 's what hurts
me an' makes me afraid. Now I '11
tell ye why I know she don't love me,
tell ye something ye don't know at all, "

— he turned his head as he spoke, and
looked the captain full in the eyes, his
voice shaking; "an' when I tell ye, I
want to say I ain't a-blamin' 'em."
The words that followed came like the
slow ticking of a clock or the measured
dropping of water. "He 's — been —
a-writin' — to 'er — ever sence — she
left 'im. Bert Simmons — showed me
the letters."

"Ye found that out, did ye? " said
Captain Joe, a sudden angry tremor in
his voice. "Ye 're right; he has! Been
a-writin' to her ever sence she left 'im,

— sometimes once a month, sometimes
once a week, an' lately about every day. "

Caleb raised his head. This last was
news to him.

"And that ain't all. Every one o'
them letters she 's brought to me, jes'
's fast as she got 'em, an' I locked 'em
in my sea-chest, an' they 're there now.
An' there 's more to it yet. There
ain't nary seal broke on any one of 'em.
Whoever 's been a-lyin' to ye, Caleb,
ain't told ye one half o' what he ought
to know."

Captain Joe swung back his garden

(The

gate and walked quickly up the plank
walk, his big, burly body swaying as
he moved. The house was dark, ex-
cept for a light in the kitchen window,
and another in Betty's room. He saw
Aunty Bell in a chair by the table, but
he hurried by, on his way upstairs, with-
out a word. When Caleb, who had fol-
lowed him with slow and measured
steps, reached the porch, Aunty Bell had
left her seat and was standing on the
mat.

"Why, Caleb, be ye comin' in, too ? "
she said. "I '11 git supper for both o'
ye. Guess ye 're tuckered out."

"I don't want no supper," he an-
swered gravely, without looking at her.
"I '11 go into the settin'-room an' wait,
if ye '11 let me."

She opened the door silently for him,
wondering if he was in one of his moods.
The only light in the room came from
the street-lamp, stenciling the vines on
the drawn shades.

"I'll fetch a light for ye, Caleb,"
she said quietly, and turned toward the
kitchen. In the hall she paused, her
knees shaking, a prayer in her heart.
Captain Joe and Betty were coming
down the stairs, Betty's face hidden on
his shoulder, her trembling fingers cling-
ing to his coat.

"Ain't nothin' to scare ye, child,"
the captain said, patting the girl's cheek
as he stopped at the threshold. "It 's
all right. He 's in there waitin'," and
he closed the door upon them.

Then he walked straight toward
Aunty Bell, two big tears rolling down
his cheeks, and, laying his hand upon
her shoulder, said, "Caleb's got his
lights trimmed, an' Betty 's found har-
bor. The little gal 's home."

F. Hopkinson Smith,
end.)

412 Pity.

PITY.

ALONG the dawn the little star went singing,

Low-poised and clear to see.
Shaking the light, like drops of May-dew, clinging

Her bright locks mistily.
Like any snowflake faded in the winging,

Her voice fell white to me.

" O winds of Earth, that sorrow as ye fly

And take no rest,

"Why go ye ever seeking, with that cry,
Some ruined nest ?

" Why weep, my world ? Ah, strange and sad thou art,

Thou far-off one,

The saddest wanderer that hath warmed her heart
At yonder sun.

" And I would give thee comfort if I might,

That know not how ;
Haply I see not far, for all the light
About my brow.

" But who shall be thy sister, sorrowing ?

Ah me! Not I

That wander in a bond of joy and sing,
And know not why, —

"Along the dawn, across unfathomed deep,

Unspent, unbowed,

Through shallows of the moonlight thin as sleep,
Through fields of cloud.

" Poor world, thou aged world, I only know

That I am led

A songful journey : art not thou ? Nay, so,
Be comforted."

Along the dawn the little star went, winging

Glad ways across the wild,
Shaking the light that clung to her, enringing, —

An unremembering child.
Wide arms of morning gathered her, still singing :

And the Earth saw, and smiled.

Josephine Preston Peabody.

Bacchylides and his Native Isle.

413

BACCHYLIDES AND HIS NATIVE ISLE.

As long as men shall prize the things
of the mind, pilgrim feet will turn fondly
to the shrines of song. From Concord
to Colonus, and from Lesbos back again
to Weimar and Winder mere, every
haunt of the Muses, however long for-
saken, is always holy ground. For an
old nest may break forth into singing
anew ; and this miracle has even now
befallen. Across the silence of uncount-
ed centuries trills out again the liquid
note of "the honey-tongued nightingale
of Keos," and that " vine - clad isle "
springs once more into the foreground
of men's imagination.

The return of Bacchylides, not now in
time-worn tatters, but in his singing-robes
unsoiled, brings back with peculiar vivid-
ness a pilgrimage I made to Keos five
years ago, and one I would fain live
over again in the resurgent poet's compa-
ny. Possibly, some, who can never make
the pilgrimage in fact, may like to go
with me in fancy to look at the poet's
isle as it is to-day, to recall the great
features of its past, and to meet the old
singer himself in the atmosphere which
first quivered with his songs. We shall
find him in illustrious society, for the
fame of Keos was not bound up in a sin-
gle voice. After Athens, no soil was
richer than hers in the harvest of Hel-
lenic genius. For an isolated rock, bare-
ly five-and-twenty miles in circuit, Keos
bore no common crop. Her tiny terri-
tory was quartered by four cities, each
with its own laws and treaties, its own
mint, and, we may almost say, its own
religion ; and a single one of those cities
gave to the great age of Greece four of
its great names, — one of them among
the very greatest. Before Bacchylides
and beyond him in fame was his mother's
brother, Simonides. the laureate of Hellas
in her victorious conflict with the East ;
and both were sons of loulis, as were

Prodikos. the teacher of Socrates, and
that great master of ancient medicine,
Erasistratos.

Yet to-day the little isle is left to its
past, cut off from the world of modern
men. Not absolutely ; for there is a faint
hebdomadal circulation. Five days out
of every seven the circuit is broken, but
on Wednesdays the Piraeus steamer calls
there on its way to Syra, as it does again
on its return, twenty -four hours later.
Hence, if he would not retire from the
world for eight days, or some multiple
thereof, the pilgrim must do Keos be-
tween noon and noon, which is short
shrift for an old Hellenic tetrapolis.
Such were perforce the narrow limits of
my own pilgrimage, and I should hesitate
to write the meagre record of it if the
actual pilgrimage were all. But for four
years Keos had been pretty constantly in
my mind's eye, and I had sought out
every scrap of literature, ancient or mod-
ern, that bore upon it ; more than that,
the island itself, with its solitary town
perched like an eyrie at the summit, had
become familiar to my eyes from every
point of view, as I sailed among the Cy-
clades or gazed upon it day by day from
my summer home on Andros. Thus,
when I did set foot upon Keos I was
already at home there, and twenty-four
hours sufficed to steep with local color
my accumulated Keian lore.

It was high noon of a perfect June day
when we dropped anchor at Koressia,
which is the port of loulis, and were
rowed ashore ; for this spacious land-
locked harbor is as innocent of a pier
as it was when Nestor put in here on
his return from Troy. Of the harbor
town which flourished here in Bacchy-
lides' time, but had been absorbed by
loulis long before Strabo came in the
first century B. c. to take notes for his
geography, there are but slight remains ;

414

Bacchylides and his Native Isle.

and its modern successor is limited to
half a dozen summer cottages in one
bend of the bay, and as many mean
warehouses and cafe's in another. It is
a grateful solitude in which the Past as-
serts itself ; and one is free to try his
mind on the wealth of matter which the
ancient geographer has packed into half
a dozen sentences. Strabo himself is
primarily concerned with the lay of the
land, the four towns, the quartette of
great names hailing from loulis, and the
unique hemlock habit, to all of which we
shall attend in good time ; but on this
spot and in the mood of the moment it
is a fact postponed by him that most ap-
peals to me. The unique landmark of
Koressia was a temple of Apollo Smin-
theus, whose pestilent arrows are forever
raining on us as we open the Iliad. We
know not how the Mouse-god came to
Keos, unless old Nestor carried him away
captive from the flames of Troy. Any-
way, the Gerenian knight did build here
a shrine to his own Athene, — possibly
that she might watch the exiled Smin-
thian and keep him out of mischief.

Like most of these " isles of Greece,"
Keos is simply a mountain rock spring-
ing from the sea, with now and then a
bit of level border to offer foothold.
About Koressia this border may be half
a mile wide at the mouth of the Elixos,
which has cut itself a deep channel from
the top of the island. On the right of
the gorge thus formed our road winds
aloft, — a road " made with hands."
Broad, paved, wall-guarded on the side
of the precipice, it was built some fifty
years ago by a Keian engineer, and is the
pride of the Keian community. Far be-
neath the Elixos tumbles in its winding
way, — like the Helisson and the Ilissos
it seems to have got its name from its
sinuous course, — and leads with it a
band of greenery that charms the eye.
Halfway up we come upon a marble foun-
tain beset with spouting dolphins, and,
hard by, a little marble belvedere, — an
octagon with five door and window ways

framing glorious views of the glen and
harbor to the west, the Myrtoan main to
the north, and the town above. These
are public benefactions of a good burgo-
master, who has gone on — " in the prime
of life and fortune," as he says in the
inscription — to build himself a marble
tomb on the same sightly terrace. So far
as I know, the tomb is still waiting for
its tenant ; but the demarch must be fond
of traveling this road, and reflecting how
handy the water will come by and by.

As our cavalcade sets forth again, we
have above us the town, looking like a
flock of seagulls lit on a beetling cliff,
and the long line of whirling windmills
in the still higher distance ; and just with-
out the gates we halt at another foun-
tain, neighbored by a spreading plane-
tree. It is rather more archaic, and the
stone pavement before it is relieved by
a basis of old gold Pentelic, inscribed,
" The people [have erected this statue
of] Li via wife of the Imperator Caesar."
Thus, what time our new era was dawn-
ing on the world, the poor Keians were
paying court on this spot to the imperial
consort of Augustus; and the marble
record of the fact now does duty as a
paving-stone !

The wide road, here cut down in the
sheer cliff, leads across the saddle of the
two-hilled city, now and then dodging
round a corner and threatening to run
into people's houses. For here, as in
Naxos and Tenos, the houses often strad-
dle the street, and the street becomes an
arcade. Making our way through the
labyrinth, we dismount at a cafe* whose
back balcony looks down upon a deep
gorge, — the fellow of that by which we
had entered, — while over against us on
the southeast rises to a height of some
two thousand feet the real apex of the
island, now named for the Prophet Elias.

While a lamb is roasting for our
luncheon, we follow the same great road
a half mile or so around the head of the
defile to the Lion, still couchant on the
steep over against loulis on the east, as

Bacchylides and his Native Isle.

415

he may have been when Siraonides was
singing here, — some would even say,
when Nestor put in here. There are
lions and lions, but the Lion of loulis is
the Lion of Hellas. The lions on guard
above the gate of Mycenae may be older,
but they have lost their heads, and there-
with their main majesty. The lion sen-
tinel over Leonidas' grave at Thermo-
pylae disappeared ages ago, though we
still possess the inscription written for
it by Simonides : —

" Of beasts the bravest I, of mortals he,
Upon this mound of stone now watched by
me."

The Lion of Chaeroneia commemorates
a great and definite event, but he has
been broken to pieces. Better luck has
attended the Lion of Keos. Couched
here on his flank in the living rock, with
reverted head, twenty-eight feet from
tip to tail, every feature perfect, full of
life and majesty, it is hard to think of
him as a mere image made with hands.
He looks rather as if in some prehistoric
age — the colossus of his kind — he
might have lain down here alive, and
turned to stone, possibly after clearing
the island of its first occupants. For
there is a myth handed down to us by
an old writer that Keos was original-
ly inhabited by the nymphs, until they
were scared away by a lion and fled to
Karystos, leaving to the "jumping-off
place " the name of Lion Point. At all
events, the monument and the myth make
a perfect fit : our lion is the very beast to
strike terror into nymphs or any other
unwelcome neighbors. He lies just un-
der the great road, with the mountain
rising terrace on terrace above, and slop-
ing down to the gorge below. The ter-
race patches yield a scant growth of
barley, and the sheaves, already gathered
under the Lion's nose, afford good sitting
for the rest of us, while Dr. Quinn takes
a camera-shot at the Lion, and catches
a panorama of the Castle Hill and the
town, with the whirling windmills on the
lofty ridge beyond.

The identification of the present town of
Keos — bearing, as usual in the Cyclades,
the island name — with the ancient loulis
is placed beyond a doubt by Strabo's pre-
cise topography. " The city," he says,
" is pitched upon a mountain some five-
and-twenty stadia from the sea, and its
seaport is the place where Koressia once
stood, though that town has ceased to
be even a village settlement. . . . And
near Koressia is the river Elixos."
Mountain site, stream, distance, seaport,
all answer to a dot ; and yet, as we shall
see, old Tournefort (circa 1700) had
removed loulis to Karthaia, and Kar-
thaia to loulis. As Strabo found the
four towns merged in two, we find to-
day substantially the entire island pop-
ulation packed in one ; yet the greater
loulis counts less than five thousand
souls. They have the repute of manly
mountaineers, inclined to soldiering and
seafaring, and zealous of good works as
a community : witness their fine roads
and bridges and frequent fountains.

Nor is public spirit any new thing un-
der the Keian sun. In the Holy Struggle
for liberty (1821-28) the men of Keos
bore a leading and constant part, thus
emulating the example of a greater age.
For in the Persian wars, when most of
her island neighbors gave earth and water
to the Mede, Keos stood stoutly for the
good cause from first to last ; and her
name may still be read on the glorious
muster roll of Salamis and Plataea that
was set up at Delphi four-and-twenty
centuries ago, and which now, by the
irony of fate, adorns the Sultan's public
square. Time has spared one jewel,
three words long, of Simonides, which
finds its proper setting in all we know
of Keian history : iroAis av8pa Si8ao-*«.
(the state moulds the man). Keos was
a school of that larger patriotism which
found an organ voice in Simonides, while
Pindar was dumb for very shame of his
faithless " Mother Thebes." It was the
good fortune of Simonides to be bred in
this mountain air of the sea, aloof from

416

Bacchylides and his Native Isle.

the provincial feuds that kept the main-
land in ferment, and in a society famed
for that perfect poise which the old
Greeks styled sophrosyne.

Physically, it was a rare climate. The
fig-trees bore thrice a year, Theophrastus
says, and the honey rivaled that of Hy-
mettus and Hyblaea. The silkworm flour-
ished, and it was a Keian dame (Pam-
phile, LatoOs' daughter) who first turned
its labor to account by weaving those
diaphanous webs which later found their
way to Rome, and gave Lucretius a han-
dle against his degenerate countrywo-
men. Morally, the air was pure. Young
men and maidens refrained from wine,
and of courtesan and flute-girl the island
was innocent. This physical and moral
wholesomeness, strange to say, had its
drawback : it induced excessive longevi-
ty and consequent over-population. With
the economic question thus raised Keos
dealt in an original way, for which, I
think, Malthus never gave her credit.
Where other Greek states relieved their
congestion by the colonial route, Keos
chose what we may call the hemlock
route.

The Keian hemlock was a very dras-
tic article, and the draught it brewed (as
Theophrastus tells us) was one " of swift
and easy release." In the exercise of
their distinctive virtue, the aged Keians
numbered their own days, and, before
infirmity and dotage overtook them,
sought this euthanasy ; and Menander,
whose plays the sands of Egypt are now
giving up piecemeal along with the lyrics
of Bacchylides, applauded the practice :
" Noble the Keian fashion, Phanias ;
Who cannot nobly live spurns life ignoble."

They bade their friends as to a festi-
val, and, with garlands on their brows,
pledged them in the deadly cup. If
Thei-amenes was (as Plutarch avers) a
Keian, his dying pleasantry in pledging
"dear Kritias " in the hemlock draught
was as homely as it was grim.

The facts are certified by writers as
early as the fourth century, who speak

of the hemlock habit as already in the
established order of things ; and onfe his-
torical instance of this blessed " taking
off " is recorded by a Roman eye-witness,
Valerius Maximus, who visited Keos in
the suite of Pompey on his way to Asia.
Kere at loulis, a noble dame of ninety
winters, but of sound mind and body,
was setting forth on this free-will jour-
ney, and nothing loath to have her de-
parture dignified by Pompey's presence.
Unlike a Roman he would have detained
her, but she would not stay ; and, hav-
ing deliberately set her house in order,
she drained the mortal draught and
expired with circumstance, as Socrates
before her, while the Romans looked on
awestruck and bathed in tears.

Thus the Ionian stock of Keos had a
Doric strain, — a sort of iron in the
blood, — which we feel in the monumen-
tal lines of Simonides, " calm, simple,
terse, strong as the deeds they celebrate,
enduring as the brass or stone which
they adorned." Still, in the grain it was
Ionian, in cult Apolline. It was Apol-
lo, not in his malign Sminthian manifes-
tation, but in the person of his benign
son Aristseus, who was the fountain-head
of Keian culture ; and where Apollo
moves the Muses follow.

It was this unique blend that made
Keos at once a theatre of strenuous ac-
tion, a school of high thinking, and a
nest of song. And it was in song that
Keos won enduring fame. When jEschy-
lus was born at Eleusis, and Pindar at
Thebes, this isle was already ringing with
the chorals of Simonides. Up to thirty
the man and his Muse were home-bred ;
but even then his fame had gone abroad
in Greece. Athens, ever quick to hear
a great voice, wooed him ; and to their
brilliant court the Pisistratids wel-
comed him with open arms. There he
met Anacreon, and loved him well, as
he mourned him melodiously at last.
There he must have witnessed the early
plays of Thespis ; and, above all, he
watched from its very cradle the growth

Bacchylides and his Native Isle.

417

of the generation that was to make its
mark at Marathon and Salamis. He
saw the overthrow of the tyrants whose
praises he had sung, and the rise of the
Athenian democracy whose laureate he
became. Withal the Keian was broad-
ening into the Hellene, as in the society
of Thessalian princes and in the court-
ly circles of Syracuse — where his last
days were passed with such comrades as
.ZEschylus and Pindar — he was to at-
tain his full stature as an all-round man
of the world. Courtier and diplomat ;
in the largest sense a patriot, but no pu-
ritan ; illustrious at thirty, and still win-
ning Athenian choral crowns at eighty ;
at ninety going down to the grave with
princely pomp, and leaving behind a
fame that " filled antiquity as rich wine
fills a golden urn," few singers have
been happier in their day and lot. A
modern parallel has been sought in Vol-
taire ; but for a truer heredity of genius,
partial though it be, we need only look
to our own Lowell. Wide as was Si-
monides' range, we have but scant sal-
vage of a precious freight, and that chief-
ly in one kind. All things considered,
it is the kind we would have chosen, for
in these forty odd epigrams all the glory
of Greece in its most glorious age finds
fit utterance. From the day that Athens
chose his elegy on the heroic dead of
Marathon in preference to that of their
own comrade ^Eschylus, Simonides was
the " God-gifted organ voice " of Hellas:
and this is perhaps his loftiest organ
note : —

" Of those who at Thermopylae were slain,
Glorious the doom, and beautiful the lot :
Their tomb an altar ; men from tears refrain
To honor them, and praise, but mourn them

not.

Such sepulchre nor drear decay
Nor all-destroying time shall waste ; this

right have they.

Within their grave the home-bred glory
Of Greece was laid ; this witness gives
Leonidas the Spartan, in whose story
A wreath of famous virtue ever lives." *

1 The translation is John Sterling's.

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 485. 27

That goes beyond word-painting, — his
own definition of poetry ; and this is
antique sculpture, majestic as the Lion
of his native isle : —

" To those of Lacedaamon, stranger, tell
That as their laws commanded here we fell."

Bacchylides was born too late to par-
take the glow of battle and the wine of
victory ; and, compared with his great
kinsman, he must seem an idle singer of
an empty day. Yet, in his minor key,
what poet ever sang a sweeter note ?
One's lyric standard need not make him
prefer Bacchylides to Pindar, but even
in the eagle's presence the nightingale
is not to be scorned. It is the shadow
of greater names — the odious compar-
ison — that has obscured the real worth
of the younger Keian. Taking its cue
from the author of the De Sublimitate
(doubtless but half understood), modern
criticism has made him out a mere echo
of his uncle, — learned and painstaking,
flawless and ornate, but languid and
without any breath of divine inspiration.
Yet if Pindar himself, in his eagle
flights, deigned time and again to swoop
down and peck at Bacchylides, his must
have been a genius to be reckoned with
by the highest ; and even our fragments,
footing up one hundred and seven lines
all told, and the longest of them not a
sonnet's length, go far to justify the
appeal which Mahaffy had already taken
from the traditional judgment.

If Simonides was the master voice of
his own strenuous day, the serener day
that followed found a voice as true in
Bacchylides. Witness the familiar Paean
of Peace, and that other genial fragment,
where fancy, warmed by the wine-cup,
builds castle above castle in the air, — of
love and glory, of regal state and opu-
lence and

" Laden ships with Egypt's grain
Wafting o'er the glassy main."

Conning these lines on his native isle,
how little we dreamed that another ship
from Egypt was about to fetch us a richer
freight than the wheat-laden argosies he

418

Bacchylides and his Native Isle.

sang, — even his own songs ! More than
once he had spoken well of Egypt, as in
the flotsam line,

" Memphis unvisited by storm and reed-grown
Nile;"

and Egypt has repaid him well in safe-
guarding for two thousand years a vol-
ume of his verse tenfold greater than all
we had before, and in giving it up at
a moment when the world is ripe as it
never was before to test and treasure it.
And since this must be but an earnest
of richer gifts to come, we may dwell for
a moment on the manner of its coming.
Antiquity had its own strange ways of
handing down its wealth, — ways so
strange that we recover our legacies only
by robbing its tombs. The sepulchres
of Mycenae, furnished forth as dwellings
for the dead, have at last told us the ac-
tual life-story of Homer's idealized Acha-
ians ; while the tombs of Egypt are found
to be the archives, sacred and secular, of
uncounted generations. True, their illu-
minated texts do not much appeal to us ;
but it is to their funereal etiquette that
we owe the recovery of our poet, and of
many another precious scroll, notably
the Athenian Constitution of Aristotle.
The old Egyptian thought to while away
eternity with his favorite authors, and
so took with him to the long home not
only his Book of the Dead, but a stock
of light reading, — tales, love stories, and
the like. When Egypt became a province
of Alexander's Greater Greece, and Al-
exandria the literary capital of the world,
Greek books must have speedily asserted
their supreme charm, and crowded the
stiff old picture-writings to the wall. The
Muses, indeed, in their captivity on the
Nile, could not sing the old songs of Heli-
con and Castaly, — it is but for a moment
we catch the pipe -notes of Theocritus
above the stifling sands, — but all the
harvest of Hellenic genius was garnered

1 Even such was Schliemann's love for Ho-
mer ; and when we buried him at Athens, seven
years ago. it was with his precious poet on his
breast. Had a papyrus text been chosen, who

there. Not alone in the vast library that
flames were to devour, but in countless
homes of affluence and culture, Hellenic
and Hellenized, Greek letters found lov-
ing study. And, no doubt, following the
time-honored fashion of the country, Hel-
lene and Hellenist alike would indulge the
" ruling passion, strong in death." Thus
Flinders Petrie could have thought it no-
thing strange when he found the mummy
of a young girl with a papyrus roll of the
Iliad to pillow her head ; and he may yet
light upon some bookworm's tomb with
all its treasures intact.

Such a " bursting forth of genius from
the dust " was looked for when the bur-
ied cities of Campagna came to light ; and
Wordsworth, musing by Rydal Mount,
uttered this prophetic note : —

" O ye who patiently explore
The wreck of Herculauean lore,
What rapture ! could ye seize
Some Theban fragment, or unroll
One precious tender-hearted scroll
Of pure Simonides."

If " haughty Time " has failed as yet to
grant the letter of the poet's wish, the
essence of it is taking shape in accom-
plished fact. Instead of a single scroll
of the elder Keian, the younger is now
restored to us in a full score of his
sweetest songs. Some eighteen centu-
ries ago there died at Luxor a man
who loved Bacchylides so well that the
poet must needs bear him company be-
yond the bourne.1 That the dead man
thumbed the precious volume in the
tomb we cannot say ; but it was in safe-
keeping. Meantime, evety copy above-
ground would seem to have perished
within the four centuries following. At
least, for any trace we can get of Bac-
chylides beyond the hundred-odd lines
that had lodged here and there, as other
ancients quoted them to point a moral
or adorn a tale, the poet had been lost

knows but it might have turned up two thou-
sand years hence, the sole copy of a long-lost
Homer !

Bacchylides and his Native Isle.

419

to the world for fourteen hundred years,
until the tomb at Luxor gave up its trea-
sure a year or so ago.

We may turn, then, from the tatters
of the anthology to an editio princeps,
on which the learning of Britain assist-
ed by Germany has labored for a year,
and which has but now reached these
shores. Rash as it would be to pass
judgment at sight, the first reading of
these twenty poems, aggregating ten hun-
dred and seventy lines, bears out our
best prepossessions. If Bacchylides still
misses the splendor of the poet militant,
he sings with a clear, true note — at
times in lofty strain — the mimic wars
beside wide - whirling Alpheos and the
springs of Castaly. Fitly enough, these
new odes of victory begin at home. It
is a Keian compatriot, Melas, returning
crowned from the Isthmus, and again
from Nemea, to whom the first two odes
are dedicated ; and the sixth and seventh
celebrate another Keian, Lachon, who
has won the stadion at Olympia. The
first ode is of peculiar interest because
it gives the setting and correction of a
familiar fragment : " I declare, and will
declare, that highest glory waits on worth,
while wealth even with craven men doth
dwell." For the elegant trifler the poet
has been reputed, the ode is a noble trib-
ute to virtue, — that strenuous virtue,
which once won " leaves behind an im-
perishable crown of glory." The sixth
ode, of sixteen short lines, has a delicious
flavor. Lachon, crowned with the Olym-
pian olive, has returned to " vine - clad.
Keos," and this is his welcome home, —
an offhand serenade ending thus : —

" And now song-queen Urania's hymn
by grace of Victory doth honor thee, 0
wind-fleet son of Aristomenos, with songs
before thy doors, for that thou hast won
the course and brought good fame to
Keos."

But these are minor strains, and may
well mark the poet's homelier days. He
is but preening his wings for flights yet
to be tried with the Theban eagle. Of

the fourteen triumphal odes three cele-
brate events sung also by Pindar ; and
one of these — the fifth in Kenyon's ar-
rangement — is a poem of two hundred
lines, substantially intact, which may be
fairly regarded as giving the best measure
of the poet's powers. It is addressed to
his royal patron, Hiero of Syracuse, on
the same occasion that called out Pin-
dar's First Olympian ; and it opens with
a challenge that may well have made the
Theban wince. Bacchylides is an eagle,
too, and he asserts the claim in a lyric
flight that goes far to justify it : —

" With tawny pinions cleaving swift
the azure deep on high, the eagle, wide-
ruling and loud-crashing Zens' herald,
relying on his mighty strength, is bold,
while shrill-toned birds crouch in affright.
Him nor wide earth's mountain crests
nor rugged billows of the unwearied deep
restrain, but in the unmeasured Void with
Zephyr's blasts apace he plies his delicate
plumes, — a shining mark for men to see.
Even so have I a boundless range all
ways to hymn your worth, proud scions
of Deinomenes,1 by grace of Nike azure-
tressed and Ares of the brazen front."

I had already ventured with some mis-
giving to speak of our poet as a night-
ingale ; and it was not a little gratifying
to find he had owned up to the soft im-
peachment in advance by speaking of
himself as " the honey-tongued nightin-
gale of Keos " (Ode iii. end). But this
eagle claim, supported by an eagle flight,
goes farther, and must give the critics
much concern.

It could not be expected, and certainly
it cannot be said, that this lyric elevation
is sustained throughout this or any other
ode. Indeed, we can only be glad that
it is so rarely essayed. For the charm
of Bacchylides is that of sweetness and
light. From Pindar we turn to him,
as we turn from Browning to Tennyson.
JEtna. in eruption is sublime, but an At-
tic dawn delights us more. If Bacchy-
lides rarely soars, he is never lurid, he
1 The royal house of Hiero.

420

Bacchylides and his Native Isle.

never gives the sense of strain. He is
as lucid as the noonday, his verse as
crystal clear as the prose of Lysias. This
quality it may well have been that won
the heart of his Luxor votary, assuming
that the latter was a barbarian whose
Greek had come hard ; and it is bound
to make Bacchylides a reigning favorite,
in school and out. Then he is never
dull, never languid ; and more than once
we catch a fresh breeze that literature
had missed, — notably in the precious
seventeenth ode. There, young Theseus,
challenged by that bloody old Turk of
his day, Minos, leaps from the dark-
prowed ship as it bears the tribute-youth
to the Minotaur, and dolphins conduct
him down to the deep-sea halls of Amphi-
trite, who robes and crowns him as the
sea-god's true-born son ; so that, return-
ing in triumph to the ship, the hero con-
founds old Minos, and puts new heart into
his hapless company. Of this charm-
ing paean Lou's Dyer has well said that
" there is not in all literature a lyric more
saturated with the magic of the sea ; "
and indeed, the.smell of the sea is on all
the poet's works. How could it be oth-
erwise with one who had forever ringing
in his ears those two voices of the moun-
tain and the sea, blending here of all
places in that perfect unison as dear to
song as it ever was to liberty !

Of all this, to be sure, the Lion gave
no sign, — no more than the Sphinx, — as
he crouched in his native rock and gazed
over his shoulder on the eagle's nest of
men above him. No voice broke the still-
ness of the ancient hillside stadium,
where (as we now tnow) island athletes
had trained for victories at Olympia and
the Isthmus ; nor did the deserted streets
of the town even suggest an Olympian
serenade. Still, as we ate our lamb and
washed it down with good Keian wine,
we had enough to think of ; and more
yet as we rode for three hours over the
mountain whereon Aristseus had built
his altar to Ikmaian Zeus, and which is
now clothed to the crest with oak planta-

tions, at once the beauty and the wealth
of Keos. The acorn crop, prized of all
good tanners, yields more than half the
total island revenue, and the abundant
rich green foliage against the mountain
background makes a charming blend of
English and Alpine scenery. For the
most part it is a solitary way, but as we
approach Karthaia the solitude is broken.
From a little glen far below our feet
come up the bleat of lambs and notes of
articulate - speaking men ; it is a har-
vest group of men, women, and children
reaping barley, and keeping time to the
sickle with the song. What more pleas-
ing scene or sounds could have signalized
our sunset entry into the place where
Sinionides kept his chorus school four-
and-twenty centuries ago ?

loulis was a good place to be born in,
as Plutarch avers ; and perched aloft in
the teeth of the north wind it doubtless
offered good breeding for a laureate of
storm and stress. But Karthaia is a
poet's dream. Full on the southern sea
opens a little vale, mountain-walled on
the other three sides, and bisected near-
ly all its length by a ridge whose sea-
ward extremity bears the ancient acro-
polis. Into this we enter by a gateway
carved out of the living rock, to find our-
selves in a litter of marble ruins elo-
quent of a great past. At its extreme
point the acropolis spur rises twenty feet
higher in a symmetrical oval block some
two hundred feet in diameter, and still
bearing traces of a vast building. Brond-
sted believed it to be the choregeion of
Simonides, and the poet could have found
no more fitting spot. At its foot by the
sea are the ruins of Apollo's temple, and
a little to the west, under the acropolis
wall, the theatre, with the lower rows still
left to define the semicircle. There we
have the essential features of the poet's
place of business, if we may use the
phrase ; and that the business was a good
one we have his own word in an epigram
scoring six - and - fifty choral victories.
There are famous old tales told of chor-

Bacchylides and his Native Isle.

421

istry and temple, but we cannot stay to
tell them over.

At sunset, in a stillness broken only
by the gentle plashing of the sea and
the tinkle of sheep-bells, Karthaia is in-
deed a poet's dream. Here, and at such
an hour, Simonides may well have con-
ceived that exquisite threnody whose
pure pathos has hardly been approached
in all the ages since. It is Danae's lul-
laby to the babe Perseus, adrift with
her in a tiny ark upon this very sea ;
and in Symonds1 rendering we have its
beauty and its pathos unimpaired : —

" When, in the carven chest,
The winds that blew and waves in wild un-
rest
Smote her with fear, she, not with cheeks

unwet,
Her arms of love round Perseus set,

And said : O child, what grief is mine !
But tliou dost slumber, and thy baby breast

Is sunk in rest,

Here in the cheerless brass-bound bark,
Tossed amid starless night and pitchy dark.

Nor dost thou heed the scudding brine
Of waves that wash above thy curls so deep,
Nor the shrill winds that sweep, —
Lapped in thy purple robe's embrace,

Fair little face !

But if this dread were dreadful too to thee,
Then wouldst thou lend thy listening ear to

me ;

Therefore I cry, Sleep, babe, and sea be still,
And slumber our unmeasured ill !

Oh, may some change of fate, sire Zeus,

from thee

Descend, our woes to end !
But if this prayer, too overbold, offend
Thy justice, yet be merciful to me ! "

Indeed, it is a poem of place ; for the
choristry looks out over the very waters
that bore the carven chest, and toward
Seriphos, where the sea gave up its pre-
cious charge.

We are nowhere expressly told that
the nephew succeeded the uncle as choir-
master at Karthaia, though it is a fair
inference from an epigram of his own
as emended by Bergk, and would have
been in the due order of things. In any
case, we cannot doubt that he was him-
self trained here, and that he sang in

many a chorus, and so bore a part in
earning not a few of the six-and-fifty
victories which the elder poet gloried
in. Hence we might well believe that it
was in this serene air, on the morrow
of some sweet festival, — after the stout
struggle with the Mede was over, and
Hellas was launched upon her great ca-
reer, — that Bacchylides tuned his lyre
to that exquisite Paean of Peace or that
deep-sea idyl of Theseus and Amphitrite.

But we linger too long about this
ghost of a city ; for in all its domain
there is to-day but one visible tenant who
pays a rent of fifty drachmae a year, and
keeps a donkey, five head of cattle, and
as many black sheep, — all penned in a
bit of pasture which covers the ancient
theatre. There is, indeed, a tiny field-
chapel with three or four huts up the
vale to the west, which is watered by a
little brook. That way we would have
taken to visit the last of the Keian
towns, Poieessa, on our return ; but our
Keian escort would not budge an inch
out of the beaten track, and we had
to countermarch on Keos. It was near
midnight when we sat down to dinner
there, — in an upper room with an
earthen floor ; the ground-floor, as usual,
being reserved for other livestock. We
had not chosen our inn, — in fact, there
is no such thing on the island, — but
lodgings had been chosen for us in a
household innocent of the hemlock habit.
The grandmother with all her tribe —
for the house was hers — had waited
up for us, and a smoking dinner was at
once served. It was not bad, and went
far to put us in good humor again be-
fore we sought our bed. The bedroom
floor was only beaten earth, and windows
there were none ; but we found a pair
of slippers provided for each of us, and
the bed was a luxury. On our midnight
dinner we slept deliciously for four
hours, and were off again at five for a
second try at Poieessa.

It was a new kind of day for Keos,
as we rode straight up the steep street

422

Bacchylides and his Native Isle.

to the southwest, and past the line of
windmills whose vanes were fairly fly-
ing in the stiff west wind. To the old
Keian Zephyr was the " fattening " wind,
because it tilled the corn in the ear, —
a process which went on even after the
reaping, as Theocritus well knew ; and
no doubt the merry reapers among the
oaks by our roadside were alive to this
philosophy. But at the moment the
whirling windmills recalled Zephyr's
function as winnower of the grain, —
an office the ancient husbandman would
requite with votive shrines. Indeed, the
last word we hear of Bacchylides in the
old anthology is on this text : —

" To Zephyr, fattest wind that fans the air,

Eademos dedicates this rustic fane,
Who instant, as he poured the votive prayer,
Came winnowing from its husk the golden
grain."

All Greece still employs the open
threshing-floor, with no " power " save
the trampling hoof and the winnowing
wind ; but Keian husbandry offers a
more quaint survival. Instead of stor-
ing the grain in bins aboveground the
Keians bury it in spherical pits. On the
island of Karpathos, it is said, these pits
are dug in the form of narrow-necked
jars and cemented, exactly as we find
their prehistoric prototypes about the
Pnyx at Athens. When the Western
farmer " buries " his potatoes, he is in
grand old company.

A two hours' ride brought us to the
site of the fourth town of the old tetra-
polis, only to find peasants reaping and
cattle grazing where the ancient city-
state had coined its money, and made its
laws, and reared its temples. Poieessa,
like Karthaia, has reverted to nature,
and of its old-time glory naught is left
but the outlook on the Saronic Gulf and
Sunium.

In twenty-four hours we had made
the round of Keos and were on board
again. As we watched the receding
shore and the lonely harbor, once a city-

state, I found my mind dwelling on a
document I had recently spelled out in
a dusky crypt of the Museum at Athens.
It was a battered marble slab, and it
bore the text of a decree of the Senate
and Demos of the Koressians granting
to Athens the exclusive right to export
-the red ochre or vermilion of their
mines. The decree, which some close-
fisted Athenian might have written for
them, not only grants this monopoly, but
it fixes the duty and the freight-rates,
and forbids the carriage in any but duly
licensed vessels. This under stringent
penalties, — the informer to take half
the confiscated cargo ; if he be a slave
and the chattel of the illicit exporter, to
get his freedom to boot. And the de-
cree ends, as usual, by inviting the Athe-
nian envoys to dinner at the Prytaneion
.on the morrow ! Recorded with it is a
decree of the same tenor by the Senate
and Demos of loulis, and a fragment of
a third by the Karthaians.

The interest of the document is mani-
fold. It attests the autonomy of the
several Keian towns in making treaties
as well as in coming money. It lights
up Athens' way with the weak. In the
sixth century Keos was a commercial
power, as her abundant silver coinage
on the .ZEginetan standard attests; un-
der Athenian hegemony, the Attic stan-
dard, of course, comes in, and the Keian
mints coin nothing but copper. In her
vermilion — the best in the known world,
as Theophrastus tells us — the island
had one unique resource, indispensable
to every architect and artist. Athens
could afford the potter's clay, but not
his colors ; the pure Pentelic, but not the
skyey tints to light it up. If. she were to
enjoy a monopoly in art, she must mount
guard over the ochre veins of Keos.
The treaties still extant date only from
the middle of the fourth century, but they
are simply renewals of earlier ones; the
monopoly may have been in force when
Pheidias' painters were laying their bril-
liant colors on the marbles of the Par-

To the, Delight of the Mandarin.

423

thenon, if not when Polygnotos was fres-
coing the Stoa Poikile.

The vermilion mines are worked out ;
and, commercially, Keos now concerns
the tanner, not the artist. But, with her
poet son rising in his singing-robes again,

we may ask with the old Athenian player
ev Ke'wTis ^/te/aa; (What day on Keos ?)
Whatever Krates meant by the rub,
it is a good day for Keos and a good
day for the world that sees this old
song-centre recovering its voice.

J. Irving Manatt.

TO THE DELIGHT OF THE MANDARIN.

" TELL me, dear, when shall it be ? "

" In the spring."

" Spring ? That is a very indefinite
time. My spring, for instance, begins in
March. Shall we set it for the first of
March ? Or why not advance our spring
this year, be a law unto ourselves, and
begin our spring with the new year ? "

" Oh no ! People pay bills and set-
tle obligations on that date ; don't let us
mix ourselves up so early in those mat-
ters. Not till May."

" May ! Why, that is midsummer, not
spring."

" You don't remember that last year,
when we decided to go into the country
on the first of May, you exclaimed, ' The
first of May ! Why, that is midwinter ! ' '

" Circumstances alter seasons, says the
old proverb. You promise, then, that it
shall be in January ? "

" No, in May ; May or nothing, you
bad boy."

" As you will, and as / must. March
is not a bad month."

" I said May."

" April ? "

" Not March, not April, but May."

" Thank you, dear, for so much," said
he, kissing her hand. He had been play-
ing with her rings as he had stood plead-
ing with her for an earlier date. It had
begun with his trying to measure her fin-
ger for a plain band ; afterwards he had
slipped her rings on and off the smooth
fingers.

She had said May or never, and he

acquiesced reluctantly. He kissed her
hand as a tribute to her power as arbiter
of his destinies ; then he drew her to him,
placing the seal of his love on hair, eyes,
and mouth.

And so the date was settled.

" I suppose we are to accept the din-
ner invitation at cousin Fanny's to-mor-
row, and the other one from the Glen-
harts for Friday ? "

"Yes, I suppose so. It is nice of
them, and we must be victimized a little
for society's sake."

" Yes, and in turn next year we shall
be doing our duty to other young en-
gaged folk, who will accept as ' victims ; '
shall we not, Mrs." —

"Sh-h-h! Not till May, you know,"
said she, putting her hand lightly before
his face ; and he did tender homage to it
again.

" Good-night, and God keep you," and
Tom Lane went out into the night, with a
heart that thumped out an ecstatic rhythm
for his feet ; and Laura Bracebridge sat
down by the fire to spin long thoughts
which reached from this moment to the
altar, and beyond into misty, indefinite
probabilities, dotted here and there with
realities. She met dressmakers early on
the way to the altar, and then brides-
maids, and then the church, and flowers,
and friends, and the wedding march;
and she saw a bride walking up the aisle.
Then the vision became more diffused — •
was it Europe, or California, or where ?
And then —

424

To the Delight of the Mandarin.

She had for some time been slipping
her rings up and down her fingers, till
gradually they noted some deficiency, and
telegraphed it to her brain. She looked
at her hand in an abstracted way ; half
of her mind was still projecting itself into
that long future. As her thoughts came
back into the present, a pucker gathered
between her eyebrows. She looked puz-
zled. She held her hand stretched out
before her, gazing at it in an uncompre-
hending way ; then she glanced at the
other hand, and held the two spread out
before her. Where was her emerald
ring ?

She certainly had had it on that even-
ing. Had she been upstairs and taken
it off while she had washed her hands ?
No ; she felt sure she had not been up
since dinner. Had she dropped it in
her lap ? She rose and brushed out her
dress. The smooth black silk whished
under the down - strokes of her hand :
the ring was not there. It must have
dropped on the rug : she scanned that all
over, to its utmost limit ; then she rose
and rippled a wave across it. The ring
did not glisten on its black surface ; but
the fur was deep, — it may have found
its way down into the very depths. She
lifted the end of the rug, and held it
high over her head and shook it. The
pungent odor of the warm fur stifled her,
but the ring did not drop out ; it was
not there. Neither was it on the car-
pet : she searched carefully from the
fireplace to the window where Tom and
she had stood while she held out for
May against his pleadings. He had then
been playing with her rings, she remem-
bered. It must be somewhere. All over
the room she searched carefully. Could
it have dropped into the fire ? No ; she
was sure it could not by any possibility
have done so. She had sat down by it
only after Tom had left, and the stool she
had sat on was fully five feet from the
fire. How different the fire looked now
to her ! It seemed to glow so cruelly, as
if it could, given a chance, devour her

emerald, — yes, even her engagement
ring ; but that was still on her finger, —
the emerald was gone.

She could not believe it ; she again
mentally reviewed all that she had done
that evening, and brought up at the same
place : the ring was gone. She had not
been upstairs; she had not dropped it
in her lap nor on the rug ; she had not
dropped it anywhere. Why ! Tom had
taken it, of course, as a foolish joke !
But how unlike him ! Whimsical he cer-
tainly was in his imagination, but a prac-
tical joke, — it was n't in him ! And
what a stupid, vulgar joke ! Her face
was scornful at the very idea. She would
write to him at once — no, she would not
write, nor speak of it. She would not
lend herself to be a part of so tasteless
and trivial a joke. She would say no-
thing to him about it ; let him have the
ignominy of explaining it to her and re-
turning the ring.

But had he taken it ? Impossible ! —
and the search began again, from fire to
rug, and then to window. She shook the
curtains and felt along the window ledge.
There was no ring there. She called the
maid, and told her to search every cor-
ner of the room for the ring early in the
morning. What could she say to the ser-
vant if it were not found ? And then,
if Tom should return it and say it had
been taken for a joke — she would have
to fib. How intolerable ! She could not
sleep for the cruel humiliation of the
thing. It had vulgarized the whole even-
ing. The keenest sense of humor could
not enjoy such an admixture of sentiment
and buffoonery ; and up and down, here
and there, went her mind, trying to find
some lurking-place for the ring, rather
than in Tom's keeping.

Tom sent a note the next morning ask-
ing her what dress she meant to wear to
Fanny's, so that the flowers could bloom
to match.

She answered hastily, — she was sor-
ry afterwards : " Please do not send flow-
ers to-night ; " and then, after a moment's

To the Delight of the Mandarin.

425

pause, she merely put her initial, " L."
He ought to have spoken of the ring, she
thought.

Tom came at seven ; she was ready
to go, but she was not looking very well.
Tom was tender and solicitous as he
helped her into the coupe", — too kind to
ask her if she were not feeling well, for
he had that chivalrous sort of nature that
could forbear even the showing of his
sympathy by words. He had ventured
to bring some violets, " just for a whiff
of sweetness," he said, as he fastened
them to the strap of the carriage. Laura
did not wear any flowers that evening :
he noticed it with surprise.

The violets filled the little space with
perfume. Laura spoke rarely. Tom was
puzzled ; it hardly seemed like embar-
rassment, but more like coldness. Laura
felt the constraint of her own manner,
but she did not mean to help him explain
his stupid joke of the evening before.

The dinner was uncommonly dull.
Laura scarcely talked, she was so piqued
Jbecause Tom had not spoken of the ring.
Tom did valiantly ; but a man cannot do
duty for two.

Tom's cousin Fanny said to her hus-
band afterwards that she did n't see why
some persons' engagements seemed to
make the path to the altar so thorny.
" We did n't sulk when we were engaged,
did we, Frank, you trump ? "

" No," replied Frank. " If you held
trumps, why should you have sulked ? "

" Egotist ! " said Fanny. " Go and see
the baby in his crib, but don't you dare
to wake him."

Tom was more and more bewildered
on the way home. Laura was almost
haughty. There was no chance to men-
tion the plans for the wedding ; in fact,
the wedding spirit was swept away, or
wrapped in impenetrable mists. He
took her hand for a moment in the hall
at parting, and tried to look into her
eyes (the eyes are the first fortresses to
be stormed) ; but she turned her head,
and said simply, " Good-night."

He was for a second speechless with
amazement ; then setting aside the ridi-
culous formality of her manner, he said,
" Laura, my beloved, don't condemn me
without a hearing."

She turned and looked at him. A
smile was beginning to blossom round the
corners of her mouth, though under it
was a determination to make him feel his
want of tact in the manner of his jokes.

He did not speak, but stood smiling at
her, thinking now that the ice was broken,
she would tell him what had been the
matter. Swift messages of love were
passing from his eyes to hers.

They stood so for a perceptible space
of time, — he expectant, she waiting for
him to speak. Then her face began to
cloud before his : why did n't he speak ?
She had nursed her grievance till she
could not open the subject. He was
merely expectant ; he looked as if no-
thing stood between them but the word
" come," to be spoken by her.

" Well, dear ? " he said at last, with
a rising inflection.

" Why don't you explain ? " asked she,
forcing herself to speak. She would yield
that much.

" Explain what ? I will explain if you
will tell me where your sober thoughts
have been straying this evening. I can't
follow you without some clue."

" The emerald ring."

" The emerald ring ? The — emerald
— ring ? " repeated he slowly, as if to
get some inner meaning from the caba-
listic words. " That mystifies me more
than ever. You will have to enlarge upon
it a little. Is it a game of twenty ques-
tions ? "

He was still smiling : the atmosphere
was clearing ; she was going to tell him
what had been the matter ; and then
there would not be any more matter at all.

" How stupid ! " exclaimed she impa-
tiently.

Then both were silent. Her voice had
been more than impatient ; it had been
censorious.

426

To the Delight of the Mandarin.

She turned away again, as if for a
final good-night, and said, " Unfortunate-
ly we do not seem to be gifted with the
same sense of humor."

" You shall not leave me," said he,
half playfully, half urgently detaining
her by taking hold of her wrap. " What
is it all about ? What is this dreadful
thing that I have done ? What has come
between us ? Don't send me off in this
way. Tell me, dear one, and don't hold
me at arm's length. If I have offended,
it has been unwittingly or clumsily, —
by way of a joke, as you have intimated.
But surely you can pardon me, I can
make amends. You do not want to make
me suffer for something that I am sure
I can set right if you will only give me
a chance ? "

She was angered at his forcing an ex-
planation on her. She had wrought her-
self up to the highest nervous tension,
feeding her own doubts by construing
his silence to be a part of the poor joke,
and interpreting his remark, " Don't con-
demn me without a hearing," as a partial
admission of something that could be ex-
plained by him after he had won her for-
giveness, for he evidently was surprised
at the depth of her disapproval.

The whole thing was intolerable. It
made her tingle with shame, and being
detained by his hand seemed to bring the
matter down to the lowest level. It was
outrageous ! She turned hotly and said,
" I wish you would return my emerald
ring, and then leave me till I can forget
this most unpleasant episode."

The blood leaped to his face, yet still
he did not appear to understand her.
There was no mistaking the scathing
tone of her voice, even if the words had
not been insulting. Suddenly he remem-
bered himself as a boy, sitting with the
rest of the school before the master,
while he had arraigned them all in the
name of some boy who had wantonly
abstracted the weight from the school
clock. At that time his was the only face
in the entire bank of upturned physi-

ognomies which had had guilt written
plainly on it in red waves of self-con-
sciousness. And yet he had been utterly
innocent, never till that moment having
heard of the deed.

Tom felt that his face was now carry-
ing the same false impression. The acute
moment had passed in a flash. He was
stung by this very remembrance into
speech. " I have no idea, Laura, what
you are talking about ; but the matter is
too grave to be discussed here, stand-
ing where we may be overheard. We
must go and talk it out in the drawing-
room. It almost seems as if you had
placed things now beyond the power of
explanation."

. He turned the gas up to its fullest as
he spoke, and seated her where the light
was full on his face and on hers.

There was something rigidly formal
in the act. He had thrown back the front
of his overcoat and pulled the lapels
down, as if to meet some foe all cap-a-
pie and without shirking. His mouth
was set, and his eyes had a slightly pale
look, as if the fire had gone out or deep-
er down.

The senses of both were keenly alive.
The storm at the centre of each being
was no longer dissipating itself in flashes ;
it was gathering into ominous strength.
She saw not only his grim, fortified face,
but in her curiously alert state she saw
behind him, on the table a little to his
left, a Chinese mandarin with its deli-
cately balanced head. Tom had hit the
mandarin with his arm by chance, and
had set it into its monotonous nodding.
Its smile and its narrow slits of eyes
moved up and down in agonizing placid-
ity. Laura felt as if she should burst
into laughter when she saw it, but there
was a clutching at her throat that made
it ache, and she looked away into the fire.

Tom watched her. She was pale and
set of face and attitude. Her very anti-
pathy toward the whole thing had driven
her into a tenacious acceptance of the
worst construction of everything. She

To the Delight of the Mandarin.

427

felt that all Tom had said had been tri-
fling and quite compatible with the the-
ory that he had taken the ring for a joke,
and that now, driven to bay, he was
going to deny it.

Possibly no two persons in the whole
world had ever woven around themselves
a more complete misunderstanding ; and
certainly, no two were ever more com-
pletely unfitted to extricate themselves.
And the mandarin went on nodding, nod-
ding, nodding, just beyond Tom, with its
eternal smile and glittering eyes.

" Laura, will you tell me what is the
matter ? "

She looked up. The mandarin mad-
dened her, and brought to her again all
the miserable littleness of the circum-
stances. In a passion of anger she said,
" You took my emerald ring off my fin-
ger last night . . . and . . . well, that is
all." How could she go over with him
all the mental agitation ? He surely
could understand all that. He had the
ring ; let him set it right — if it could
be set right.

" You think I have taken your ring,
and kept it for a joke these twenty-four
hours ? You think that of me ? You
believe that I could have been with you
and planned with you our future life to-
gether, and at that sacred moment I was
purloining your ring, as a joke ? And
you do not admire my taste in jokes?
You are quite right ; it certainly would
be unpardonable and in the most execra-
ble taste ; even to imagine the thing is
beyond my comprehension. May I con-
sider myself dismissed ? "

Laura bowed her head, and the man-
darin kept on nodding and smiling, while
the light glinted on the narrow, slit-like
eyes. Tom went out into the night.

After this crisis in their affairs, Tom
and Laura both suffered. Each bore the
trouble and developed under it charac-
teristically. Tom went grinding on at
his life like a machine that has been jolt-
ed out of the true, but not demolished.
The cog-wheels impinged and made a

jarring as the motion of life went on, but
the machine worked.

Tom was a lawyer, and had won for
himself an Opportunity ; and that is so
much more than many lawyers ever get
that it had justified him in begging Laura
to set a day for the wedding. His op-
portunity was now apparently all that he
had left to him out of the wreck of his
engagement. He went to work with a
dogged determination not to let the ma-
chine stop till the opportunity had been
hammered into his own particular suc-
cess.

If he carried about with him galling
memories and indignant protests against
his lot, he did not ask for sympathy, or
reveal to any one the circumstances which
had so altered his matrimonial plans.
He accepted in silence all the rumored
blame that attached to him, and ignored
the tacitly proffered sympathy with a
grave face and non-committal manner.

Laura broke down for a while after
her first full acceptance of the situation.
There was a very short time during
which she was not seen in society, but
this was before any rumors of the broken
engagement came out.

She had dismissed Tom that evening
with a silent bend of the head, the man-
darin with its bland smile and glinting
eyes confirming the decision by nodding
in continued suave approval. There had
been a moment of keen pain as her lover
left the room. It was as if she had been
struck by a bullet in the midst of a bat-
tle ; it hardly counted at the time ; it
was the coming to her senses that racked
her and tore her to the very centre. It
was the long days of cruel adjustment
that counted ; the mental convalescence
when she took up her life with no heart
for it, no work before her, — only the
dreary commonplaces of an aimless ex-
istence. The only thing she retained un-
shaken was her belief in Tom's folly.

She had put all the force of her rather
limited nature into her love for Tom, —
or possibly, to be more accurate, into

428

To the Delight of the Mandarin.

her love of her love for Tom. It had
not made her nature any broader, but
it had determined its direction. A be-
lief in marriage was her social creed.
Her imagination had been satisfied, but
not stimulated, by her engagement to
Tom ; her ambitions had been sufficient-
ly gratified by his opportunity, which his
nature made a guarantee of success.

In her love she had never gone outside
of herself. It was her love, her joy ; and
now it was her grief and suffering. She
could not see beyond or through or over
the blank wall of suspicion she had built
around herself. The conviction of his
fault grew with her grief, and embittered
while it augmented it. She magnified
and embellished the flagrant sin of the
vulgar joke. Tom had desecrated the
holiest moment of her life, and then, driv-
en to bay by the sense of her scorn, he
had retreated under a pretended igno-
rance of the cause.

Of course, never for an instant did the
loss of the ring play any part in her tra-
gedy. It was the loss of her ideal, — the
violation of her sense of what was fitting,
reverential, at a sacred moment in her
life. She saw no other solution of the
matter. The ring was gone. Tom and
she had been the only persons in the room
that night. Tom had been slipping the
ring off and on, and that was the last that
was seen of it. Oh ! she knew all this
by heart. She had only to start the
thought, and on it would go till it brought
her round to the standstill conviction :
Tom had taken it, for a joke — and then
he had refused to stand by his act.

Laura's mother had accepted "poor,
dear Laura's " version of the affair.
Laura had told one friend about it, —
only one friend, — and of course, this
friend had really never told any one else ;
but everybody knew that it was some-
thing about a ring. Some said that Tom
had given Laura a so-called diamond
engagement ring ; then on investigation,
consequent upon adjusting the setting, it
had proved to be no diamond, but paste.

Some one else had heard that Tom had
insisted that the engagement ring should
be an opal surrounded by diamonds, and
that Laura was so very superstitious that
she returned it, and Tom had vowed that
he would not allow her to be so weak ;
and so the opal had justified its evil power,
and the engagement was broken. Still
another version was that some two weeks
after Tom had given Laura the engage-
ment ring, the bill for it had been sent
to her, as it could not be collected from
him.

In the months following Tom was not
invited to the places where Laura was
ostentatiously made the heroine. Laura
was dropped from the houses where Tom
was in high favor. When ignorance or
malice brought the two together, Tom
withdrew and left Laura in undisputed
possession of the field.

Tom changed somewhat during the
year. His chin seemed to grow more
square and more masterful as success fol-
lowed upon his indefatigable labors. He
was slightly heavier, too, and suggested
the thought that he was a man who could
order a good dinner at the club, and could
also make a good after-dinner speech.

Laura's family had a tendency to grow
thin as time went on. Laura began to
look like her mother ; her cheek-bones
were more in evidence ; her face had its
old vivacity, but the expression was more
restless than formerly, and her color had
swifter fluctuations. She took tea and
toast for two of her meals, also afternoon
tea, after which she did not feel the strain
of social life so much ; and she was al-
ways very chatty and entertaining be-
tween four and six of an afternoon.

One day, as Tom was sitting down to
his dinner at the club, a note was brought
to him. He knew the writing, and the
machinery of his being labored for a
moment, as if the cog-wheels, which had
begun to run pretty freely by this time,
had received a new jar. He ate his
dinner before he opened the note. Af-
ter reading it he went across to a friend

To the Delight of the Mandarin.

429

who was dining at another table, and
asked him to come to his room. To
this friend he told for the first time the
history of the broken engagement, and
then said : "I have received a note this
evening. It is a year ago to-day since
the affair. I have heard lately that she
has engaged herself to a cousin who has
always been in love with her, and that
they are shortly to be married. I do not
know how true the rumor is, but I fancy
it is true, and that they are to be married
in a few weeks. She sends me this note :

" ' Please consider this as a receipt in
full for the ring which you took from my
finger last spring.

LAURA BRACEBBIDGE.'

" If she were a man, I think I should
kill her. One can't strike a woman."

" Go and see her."

Tom went, and was shown into the
drawing-room, where Laura and the man-
darin were. There had been a mistake
on the part of the new maid : Laura had
given directions for her cousin Charlie,
to whom she was not yet engaged, to be
admitted. Tom was shown in, instead.

That afternoon, when Laura had come
home, the maid had handed her three
boxes, with a message to the effect that
the dressmaker had herself left them at
the house, and that she had waited an
hour to see Miss Laura, as she had an
important message for her, and that she
would come again at nine in the evening.
Two of the boxes contained dresses ; the
smallest of the three, about six inches
square, had still another box inclosed,
and within that was her emerald ring.
Laura told her mother that Tom had sent
back her ring without a word, — proba-
bly because he had heard rumors of her

engagement to Charlie, — and she had
written a note to him immediately, ac-
knowledging the ring, because it was a
relief to her to show him that she had
been justified in her own attitude, and it
seemed to close up all that terrible past
year. "I was right," she said. "He
was and is unworthy."

She had been right through it all.

Now they stood face to face, after a
year of strangeness. He held her note
in his hand, and said, " Will you kind-
ly explain this note, Miss Bracebridge ? "

" It explains itself ; it is only a receipt
for my emerald ring which you returned
to me this morning."

" Your emerald ring ! " he repeated
again, in the same tone he had used a
year ago that night. " I returned your
emerald ring ? "

" Miss Laura," said the maid, parting
the curtains that shut off the hallway,
" the dressmaker wants very much to
speak to you a moment."

" I cannot see her this evening."

" It is important," was heard the voice
of the dressmaker, and then it continued
beyond the curtains out of their sight like
the voice of a fate. " Tell Miss Brace-
bridge that I found her emerald ring be-
tween the dress and the lining, when I
ripped up her black silk to-day. It was
so valuable I did not want to run the risk
of its being lost. So I brought it back to
her myself. She will find it in the little
square box."

The outer door closed. The maid
passed through the hall and disappeared.
Tom and Laura stood facing each other.
The mandarin's head was still ; his eyes
gleamed. He was waiting for the next
move.

Madelene Yale Wynne.

430

The Great God Ram.

THE GREAT GOD RAM.

THE Wellspring of Life, the city of
the Sikhs, lay spent beneath the sun, and
sick for rain.

Fierce heat dragged out old secret
moistures from between her stones, and
wrung up fumes of stench from hidden
places. And winged pestilence went up
and sat upon her gates, and cast death
down upon the people, as sowers fling
forth grains of wheat at seedtime.

The gods were angry.

Fathers of sons went early in the
morning to the temple, bearing gifts, and
praying that the priests would earnestly
perform their offices, and render honor
to the gods for them, and pledge obedi-
ence for their children also.

Mothers lay upon their faces before
household shrines, quivering with fear,
and raining tears till they could weep no
more ; and then rose up and served
their children ceaselessly through all the
bitter heat of all the day.

The sacred scripture of the Sikhs lay
swathed in rich cloth wrought with gold,
upon its dais beneath the great dome of
the golden temple in the midst of the
still lake. The wall about was deep and
high and full of caves where holy men,
grown weak by pilgrimage from far,
stretched themselves out on damp stones
in the dark, to gather strength for bath-
ing in the holy well.

These prayed ; and all the priests
prayed also ; and the people bowed them-
selves and gave of all they had the ut-
most they could give, to win the gods
back from their anger till they should
send rain.

But it was not sufficient.
Then the priests went out at night-
time, along the narrow winding ways
within the city walls, and up and down
between her gates. And when the morn-
ing came, no father rose to go with gifts
of grain, or spice, or uncut gem, or fine-

wrought fabric, toward the temple gate ;
but each man lay and beat his brows
upon the earth, beside a woman, at the
household shrine. For in the night, by
all the paths the priests had trod, a word
had passed.

The gods required a sacrifice. A Per-
fect Sacrifice. It would be difficult. The
foreign people, who had come to rule
the land and hold its many peoples sub-
ject to their government by strange re-
lentless power, were ignoi'ant of custom.
They had no gods. They gave not gold
to gain their souls from death, but sold
their souls to death to gain more gold.
These could not understand a perfect
sacrifice. They would disturb — pre-
venting ; and so cause shame.

Therefore those working must move
softly, and the gates be kept.

Many children had been pledged un-
born against this day. These their fa-
thers knew, but not the women. Wo-
men will save one child and lose a race.
The gods themselves watched not so tire-
lessly as did those mothers, bending on
the roofs above the slender panting chil-
dren while they slept, — knowing not
that they were yet to work the sacrifice
which should appease the gods and save
the city, bringing rain.

They were due the gods. Were they
not given by the gods, and others also ?

These were but one child from every
house where any man had loved a wo-
man unto that degree whereby he pledged
his third child to the temple service if
the gods would give a son to him and
her before the time appointed should
be passed. So might his house and
honor stand, and she remain his wife
in peace, alone. And surely it was bet-
ter to have one son and another child, —
which by good fortune might be a son
also, — rendering for the safety of these
the third, than to have no son at all, but

The Great God Ram.

431

only the confusion of another marriage,
and a second woman to drive this one,
with scornful words, dull-eyed and heavy-
footed, into servitude. Also, the gods
do only sometimes gather need for chil-
dren : and if they are not called, the
mothers may remain without fear, be-
ing ignorant. If, being men, they are
called for priesthood, that will be later ;
and a woman will let her son slip from
between her fingers without sorrow if
his sinews have grown strong. If, being
but women, they are required for tem-
ple service, it will save the difficulty of
their marriage ; and no mother would
keep her daughter till she is old, for
without early marriage is disgrace.

So, in the evening of the third day,
after the word had passed, those fathers
who had pledged children which were
come to the age of running went up
softly to the roofs where they lay, and
lifted them from beneath the hands of
the women which bare them.

In that hour went up a great cry from
the city, — the first cry of the sacrifice.
From the lips of many women it went
up, on the hot throbbing air, past the
temple spires, into the curtainless vast-
ness toward the gods.

But they did not hear.

Priests and messengers who served
the temples were out gathering the lit-
tle children from the hands of their fa-
thers ; at the doorways, and at the gates
of courtyards, and at the mouths of al-
leys. These carried them gently, and re-
freshed them with water, and kept them
quietly, and taught them in the night till
near the dawn of day.

Before dawn came, all the children
had been taught that the gods were
angry, and had cursed the city that no
rain could fall ; that all the offerings of
the people had been refused, and now
the sons of every house would die, and
every name in all the city would perish
miserably in death and shame, unless the
voices of the little children could reach
the gods. But if they could persevere

and cry, and not cease, and the gods
would hear and send rain, they should
be called the children of the gods, and
lifted up in honor, and borne in the
hands of men, and given rich garments
and garlands, and a great feast in the
presence of all the people. Their fa-
thers had rendered them up to do this,
and their mothers were hidden away
from them.

Into their hands were put cymbals
and bells and drums, and every manner
of instrument to beat with the hands,
and they were placed in companies, with
those older, such as could run with sure
feet, before ; arid the younger, whose
steps were uncertain, behind. And back
of each company went four strong men
who served the temples, carrying long
staffs pointed with sharp steel.

The cry of the children was to the
name of the great god Ram : —

" Ai, Ram ! Bam !

Hum lok ko pani do !

Ai, Ram ! Ram ! "

So they were sent forth at the begin-
ning of dawn to go forward through the
city up and down, to beat with their
hands, and to cry ceaselessly until the
gods should hear and save the city for
their sakes, sending rain.

They went forth slowly, because their
feet were young and not swift. They
went bravely, lifting up their faces to
the dawn, and beating with their small
hands, and crying with their voices, clear
and high.

This was the second cry of the sacri-
fice, which went up at dawn ; for the
first was smothered against the earth,
deep in the houses where the mothers
lay-
But the gods heard not.
Then the sun rose, and the children's
voices broke and failed in the parching
pain of their throats, and they called
bitterly for the mothers whose faces
were turned away from them upon the

432

Echo.

earth. The heat smote down between
the high walls, and wavered in quick
quivering waves before their eyes, and
struck then} on the brow and on the
breast, and with shrieks they turned to
fly, and met the sharp steel points of the
staffs and went back, — forward, toward
the sun. Then the knees failed, and they
fell ; for they could not sit because of
the sharp steel ; or eat or drink, for
there was naught ; or cry any more, for
they were choked with the pain of the
striving blood in their breasts : so they
died.

One by one ; and each was carried by
a messenger softly and laid in the place
of sacrifice near some temple. And the
place of the dead was filled by a fresh
child, that the number should not wane
for the gods to see.

The day went over slowly with the
stain of blood in its face, and the chil-
dren of the sacrifice staggered forward
so long as they endured to live ; and the
numbers of the companies were not al-
lowed to wane.

And the cries went up, on into the
fierce night heat ; and the places of sac-
rifice near the temples were filled with
long rows of the little bodies of children
which had cried to the gods in vain.

Then, in the midst of night, after the

raging anguish of strong sobbing men
was spent, when the spirits of some mo-
thers had gone out after the sacrifices
they had given, — out through the piti-
less haze of heat, up through the mea-
sureless heights of space, toward the
gods, — at that time there fell on a roof
one drop of rain, and on seven other
roofs fell drops of rain.

And a cry went up from the city so
mighty that it tore the heavens open,
and the rain came.

It was the third cry of the sacrifice.

Men rushed like mad beasts along the
streets toward the great temple, each
man to see if his own yet lived.

The children which remained were
caught up, every one, and carried high
with shouts of honor and praise. Some
were laid in their fathers' arms alive, and
some just before their spirits got away.

Many men stood with their hands
empty, and returned so to the women ;
having no child to give back alive.
These went at dawn to the place where
the sacrifice was burned.

At the same hour a great feast was
made for the children which remained,
and they were given rich garments, and
garlands of tuberose and marigold and
jasmine flowers, and were called the chil-
dren of the gods before all the people.
WUlimina L. Armstrong.

ECHO.

AH, whither hath it flown?

Alas, the strain
To Memory alone

Shall live again !

Silence, wherever be

Its place of rest,
Keep thou for Love and me

A neighboring nest.

John B. Tabb.

From a Copley 1'rint.
Copyright i8q& By Curtis &r> Cameron

WINGED FIGURE

A Painting by Abbott H. Thayer, — from a COPLEY PRINT. These
COPLEY PRINTS are commended by artists as one of the really
important achievements in reproductive art. The subjects include the
Notable Paintings and Mural Decorations in America. For sale by the
leading art dealers. Every reader of The Atlantic is invited to send
for new ILLUSTRATED CATALOGUE — ten cents in stamps.
CURTIS & CAMERON, Publishers, 20 Pierce Building, Boston.

THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY:
a iftaga^ine of Literature, Science, art,, ant)

VOL. LXXXI. — APRIL, 1898. — No. CCCCLXXXVL

A DECADE OF FEDERAL RAILWAY REGULATION.

THE federal Act to Regulate Com-
merce went into effect April 5, 1887.
A decade in the life of a law, especially
if it has been the subject of adminis-
trative and legal discussion, is a suffi-
ciently long period to warrant an exam-
ination of the principles upon which it
rests, in the light of the experience that
it has encountered.

To insure a proper understanding of
the purpose of this law, and of its place
in industrial development, it may be well
to say a word about the peculiar charac-
ter of the business of transportation by
rail, and to explain why, in 1887, it be-
came necessary that a federal law for the
control of railways should be enacted.

, The merchant, the manufacturer, and
the farmer, working under conditions of
industrial liberty, do not seem to require
any peculiar supervision on the part of
the state ; for competition is adequate to
insure relative justice as between cus-
tomers, as well as to insure the sale of
goods at a fair price. But in the rail-
way industry competition does not work
so beneficent a result. On the contrary,
such is its nature that it imposes upon
railway managers the necessity of disre-
garding equity between customers, and
of fixing rates without considering their
fairness, whether judged from the point
of view of cost or of social results. Were
this not true, there would be no railway
problem.

But what, it will be asked, is there
peculiar about the business of transpor-
tation which renders it superior to the

satisfactory control of competition ? Even
at the risk of raising a larger number of
inquiries than can be satisfied by my
reply, I venture to submit a categorical
answer. The railway industry is an ex-
tensive, and not an intensive industry.
It conforms to the law of " increasing "
returns rather than to the law of " con-
stant " or of " diminishing " returns.
This being the case, ability to perform a
unit of service cheaply depends more
upon the quantity of business transacted
than upon attention to minute details.
Another way of saying the same thing is,
that the expenses incident to the opera-
tions of a railway do not increase in pro-
portion to the increase in the volume of
traffic. As an industrial fact, this does
not pertain to the business of the manu-
facturer, the merchant, or the farmer,
but is peculiar to the business of trans-
portation ; and it is adequate, when pro-
perly understood, to explain why all ad-
vanced peoples, without regard to the
form of government they may have
adopted or the social theories they may
entertain, have surrounded the adminis-
tration of railways with peculiar legal re-
strictions. The necessity of some sort of
government control lies in the nature of
the business itself.

Before the first federal law designed
to control the business of transportation
went into effect, most of the states had
already made legal expression of the con-
ditions under which those railways ly-
ing within their respective jurisdictions

434

A Decade of Federal Railway Regulation.

might follow the business of common car-
riers. Speaking broadly, this legislation
had been either restrictive or construc-
tive in its character. As an illustration
of restrictive legislation, mention may
be made of those laws, so common in the
statutory records of the states, which for-
bid the consolidation of parallel lines, or
which deny the right of association to
railway corporations.

It was not along this avenue, however,
that railway legislation found its most
easy and natural development, and a
moment's consideration will make it evi-
dent that such a development would
have been illogical and ill advised. For
if it be true that the source of the diffi-
culty in the railway industry lies in the
abnormal manner in which competition
works, or, as it is sometimes expressed,
in the excess of competition between rail-
ways bidding for the same traffic, it must
follow that laws which have for their
purpose the stimulation of an already
overactive struggle for commercial su-
premacy cannot be approved. Not only
do such laws tend, as their first result,
to aggravate the evil of which complaint
is made, but, in the long run, they lend
their influence to that consolidation of
interests the fear of which was the chief
reason for their enactment.

One cannot say that the sentiment in
favor of restrictive railway legislation is
entirely a thing of the past ; it is true,
however, that greater reliance is placed
at the present time upon what I have
termed constructive legislation. This
sentiment expressed itself among the
states in the creation of railway commis-
sions, entrusted with a more or less com-
plete jurisdiction over the administra-
tion of railway affairs ; and the strength
of this sentiment, no less than the trust
placed in it by the public, is shown by
the fact that when, in 1887, it became
necessary for the federal government to
take official notice of the public evils in-
cident to the manner in which the busi-
ness of inland transportation was car-

ried on, the law framed by Congress
incorporated the essential principles of
the stronger state commissions, and es-
tablished the Interstate Commerce Com-
mission.

To explain fully the occasion of a fed-
eral law in 1887 would demand a gen-
eral study of the evolution of industry in
the United States, so far, at least, as to
show why, about 1870, through traffic
came to be of relatively greater impor-
tance to railway managers than local
traffic. In accounting for this result, it
would be necessary to refer to such facts
as the development of agricultural ma-
chinery which followed the withdrawal
of adult labor from the farms during the
war of the rebellion, to the substitution
of steel for iron in railway construction
which enabled the railways to compete
with water-routes in the carriage of grain
and other heavy freight, and to many
more facts of the same sort. But we
cannot follow this line of investigation,
and must content ourselves with a tech-
nical answer to the question. Technical-
ly, then, the reason for the federal law
of 1887 was a decision of the Supreme
Court in 1886 which expressly limited
the jurisdiction of the states to local or
infra-state traffic. ~This was but an af-
firmation of a principle clearly expressed
in the Constitution ; but so anxious had
the courts been to assist the legislators
of the several states in their endeavor to
solve the railway problem, that they had
stretched a point and supported the states
in their claim that state governments had
the right to regulate through traffic as
well as local traffic so long as Congress
refrained from definite action. In the
decision referred to, this ruling was re-
versed. The jurisdiction of the states
was limited to traffic within their respec-
tive territories, and it was clearly shown
that, should the states be granted ju-
risdiction over traffic from or to other
states, the result would be inextricable
confusion and the absence of all efficient
control. Such being the condition of

A Decade of Federal Railway Regulation.

435

affairs, the necessity was presented to
Congress to undertake the formal regu-
lation of interstate commerce, or to allow
the most important and the most trouble-
some portion of railway traffic to develop
without regard to the rights of shippers
or the interests of the public. It could
hardly fail to choose the former alterna-
tive.

The chief aim of the law, as indeed
of all efforts to regulate transportation
when regarded from the public point of
view, is to guard against invidious dis-
crimination in the administration of rail-
way property. It lies in the theory of
modern society that men should succeed
or fail according to their abilities. As a
matter of fact, a railway manager has it
within his power, through the manipula-
tion of rates, to make or to destroy ; to
determine which persons in the commu-
nity, and which communities in the state,
shall attain commercial success, and
which shall struggle in vain for its at-
tainment. Such unusual powers cannot
be safely entrusted to the guidance of
private advantage, but must be brought
under the direction of the public inter-
est. Public control over railways, at
least so far as may be necessary to elimi-
nate from their administration invidious
discrimination, is essential to the per-
manency of a democratic society ; and
those sections of the law of 1887 which
are designed to secure the same service for
the same price to all persons and places
must meet with universal approval.

Three classes of discrimination are
specially mentioned as under the condem-
nation of the law : these are, discrimi-
nation between persons, discrimination
between carriers, and discrimination be-
tween places. It has been said that dis-
criminations of the sort referred to, fall-
ing under the heading of an unjust price,
are misdemeanors at common law, and,
therefore, that no necessity existed for
special legislation. It is not designed to
discuss this question, but rather to call
attention to the fact that common law

methods of procedure are not adequate
to secure for a shipper or a community
suffering under an invidious discrimina-
tion in the matter of rates that speedy
relief essential to the preservation of an
established business. Suppose, for ex-
ample, that one cattle-dealer in Chicago
is selected by a pool of railways to con-
trol the shipment of meats from Chicago
to the seaboard, and that, in order to
secure him this control, he receives a
rate ten per cent less than the rates
charged other dealers : it is evident that
the favored shipper will quickly destroy
the business of other shippers by bidding
more for cattle than they can afford to
bid. Even if it be true that the discrim-
ination is not approved by common law,
what remedy has the small shipper that
is speedy enough in its action to rescue
the business which he observes to be slip-
ping from him ? He has no remedy,
and for this reason it is essential that
discriminations of the sort referred to
should be made statutory misdemeanors,
and that some special method of proce-
dure, more rapid in its operations than
an ordinary court, should be established
to cause the railways to desist from their
wrong-doings.

In this line of reasoning there is pre-
sented the defense not only of a formal
law by which certain acts common to
railway management are declared to be
" unlawful," but of the establishment of
a special bureau or tribunal whose duty
it shall be to cause all unlawful discrim-
ination speedily to cease. Such is the
aim and spirit of the Act to Regulate
Commerce ; and in so far as it has failed
to grant relief to commerce and industry
from invidious discriminations in rail-
way charges, it has fallen short of the
high hopes that were entertained when
the act was passed.

Before inquiring what the interstate
commerce act has accomplished, it is
essential to explain something of the
method of procedure which the framers

436

A Decade of Federal Railway Regulation.

of the act contemplated in its execu-
tion ; for most of the difficulties have
arisen from the rules laid down which
are strange to the established character
and usual practices of the courts. It is
evident that a body of men charged with
the duty of protecting the public from
the maladministration of railway officials
must be provided with some means of
exerting an authoritative influence upon
the manner in which railways are ad-
ministered. It is equally evident, to one
familiar with the role played by the
courts in the political organization of the
United States, that this authority must
in some way rest upon the powers grant-
ed by the Constitution to the judiciary.
However this purpose might have been
accomplished in other ways, the method
which approved itself to Congress was
(to put the case concisely) to grant the
commission the liberty of appealing to
the courts for the exercise in its favor
of such authority as might be necessary
to the performance of the duties im-
posed.

According to the act, the commission
may invoke the aid of the courts to com-
pel the attendance of witnesses, and to
secure from them all lawful information.
In case a carrier shall refuse or neglect
to obey any lawful order of the commis-
sion, the commission may resort in a
summary way to the court, whose right
it shall be to select and apply such pro-
cess as may be necessary to secure com-
pliance with the order. When the court
is called upon to act, the record submit-
ted by the commission must be accepted
as prima facie evidence of the matters
therein stated. One is scarcely at lib-
erty to say, without the consent of the
Supreme Court, what the intention of
Congress was in creating the Interstate
Commerce Commission. If, however,
we accept the language of the act as
the only basis of interpretation, it seems
clear that the ability of the commission
to perform its duties was made depend-
ent upon the cooperation of the courts.

Had it been possible for the courts to
accept the spirit of the act, and to ren-
der their assistance heartily and without
reserve, there is reason to believe that
the pernicious discrimination in railway
service and the unjust charges for trans-
portation would now be in large measure
things of the past. As it is, the most
significant chapter in the history of the
commission pertains to its persistent en-
deavors to work out some modus vivendi
without disturbing the dignity of the
judiciary.

Two lines of action were open to the
commission : it might institute investiga-
tions on its own account, or it might sit
as a tribunal to hear complaints. Nei-
ther of these modes of procedure has been
followed to the exclusion of the other, but
the chief reliance seems to have been
placed upon the latter. This policy, on
the whole, must be regarded as wise, and
for two reasons. It is not possible for
five men, with a limited amount of money
at their disposal, to exercise an efficient
visitorial supervision over so vast an or-
ganization as the American railway sys-
tem. It must be remembered that the
railway industry employs between eight
and nine hundred thousand men, not
counting the shippers, who, if Mr. Albert
Fink be correct, are the persons who
make the rates. While it was undoubt-
edly wise for Congress to bestow upon the
commission the right to initiate cases, it
would have been a mistake for the com-
mission to make such use of this right as
to take upon itself the character of a de-
tective agency. A second reason why it
was wise for the commission to sit as a tri-
bunal for the investigation of complaints
is found in the fact that the commercial
and social principles which govern the
business of transportation by rail are as
yet undeveloped. In the first report of
the commission attention was called to
the fact that the modern railway system
is without precedent in the experience
of the world, and the implication was
carried throughout that a permanent sys-

A Decade of Federal Railway Regulation.

437

tern of administrative rules could be de-
veloped only by the crystallization of
opinions passed upon an extended series
of cases. The idea seemed to be that
authoritative principles of railway trans-
portation should be developed very much
as legal principles attain their growth.
It was necessary that a large variety of
cases should be presented, and this re-
sult the commission hoped to secure by
offering to adjudicate cases of discrimi-
nation and unjust rates that shippers or
others might bring before it. This is cer-
tainly a broad and comprehensive view of
the subject, and one which in some way
must be realized if the control of rail-
ways through commissions is to prove a
permanent part of our political organiza-
tion. The fact that the commission en-
tertained this opinion at the outset, and
has consistently held to it in the face of
most serious difficulties, is to its credit.
While I refrain from expressing an opin-
ion upon any of the points of law raised
in connection with the act, I must con-
fess to the impression that, had the
courts been willing to grant the law the
interpretation that Congress assumed for
it when it was passed, the railway pro-
blem would by this time have approached
more nearly its final solution.

In calling attention to what might have
been done under circumstances different
from those which really existed, there is
some danger of overlooking the impor-
tant work that has been accomplished.
That the Interstate Commerce Commis-
sion has been the centre of a most de-
cided influence for reform in railway
administration during the ten years of
its existence cannot be doubted by one
who has followed its persistent efforts
to execute the law. The record of this
influence, as found in the commission's
published reports, gives ample testimony
to the usefulness of the law ; but the
formal " opinions " rendered upon cases
brought for trial have, perhaps, exerted
an influence less potent than what, for

want of a better phrase, may be termed
the private correspondence of the com-
mission. Never in the history of Amer-
ican railways has there been such a
marked movement toward uniformity in
administration as during the last ten
years. It is not claimed that this has
been accomplished by the commission
against the wish of the railways, — in-
deed, the formal steps have not infre-
quently been taken upon the orders of
railway managers ; but no one who
knows the situation can for a moment
believe that they, of their own motion,
would have interested themselves in es-
tablishing uniformity of administration
to the extent that it has been estab-
lished. The chief merit of a public
body to which has been granted an au-
thoritative voice in the administration of
a quasi-public business consigned to pri-
vate ownership is, that such a body is
able to focalize the varied experiences
of independent managers upon a par-
ticular question, and to select a rule of
uniformity the best adapted to the ag-
gregate of industries considered as a
unit ; and in this manner the systemiza-
tion of the business will proceed under
the guidance of the public interest, and
will not be moulded exclusively by the
hope of personal gain. This merit the
Interstate Commerce Commission has ;
and while I shall make no attempt to
separate its influence from the sponta-
neous purpose of railway managers, in
the tendency toward uniformity of ad-
ministration, it is right to affirm that the
influence of the commission has been de-
cided and aggressive.

To appreciate the work of the com-
mission, one must consider again the law
as it was left by Congress. It is easy to
say, as the law says, that " all charges . . .
shall be reasonable and just," but who can
tell what a reasonable or just charge is ?
For industries that are subject to the
control of normal commercial forces, the
competitive price is assumed to be the
just price ; but were this true of railway

438

A Decade of Federal Railway Regulation.

charges, there would be no railway pro-
blem, and no need of a tribunal to
determine authoritatively the justice or
injustice of established charges. It is
easy, also, to say, as the law says, that
" it shall be unlawful ... to give any
undue or unreasonable preference or ad-
vantage to any particular person, com-
pany, firm, corporation, or locality, or
any particular description of traffic,"
and to enumerate certain sorts of dis-
crimination peculiarly repugnant to the
sense of common fairness ; but it is by
no means a simple task to discover any
general principle, either commercial or
sociologic, by which one may say with
precision under what conditions a discrim-
ination is undue or unreasonable. The
commission has approached the forma-
tion of an opinion upon these questions,
not by philosophic generalization, but by
the investigation and adjudication of
such cases as have been submitted to it.
This, then, is the significant fact in the
life of the commission : that out of the
opinions expressed upon cases there has
begun to develop a system of authorita-
tive rules and established interpretations,
which, sooner or later, will come to be
recognized as a body of administrative
law for inland transportation.

I have dwelt thus long upon the the-
ory of the law by which the delibera-
tions of the commission have been guid-
ed, because it is not possible to enter
into that detailed study of conditions,
precedents, principles, and results which
alone can make an investigation of cases
intelligent or interesting. Between eight
and nine hundred points have been de-
cided by the commission since its es-
tablishment in 1887. Its opinions make
five volumes of reports, which look down
from the shelves of every well-equipped
law office with all the dignity of law
reports. We must therefore content our-
selves, in this rapid sketch, with a sim-
ple statement of a few of the principles
laid down ; and these, it must be re-
membered, are given as illustrations of

the crystallizing influence of the work
that is in progress. There is no attempt
to present an exhaustive or a classified
statement, but of the opinions of the
commission the following may be men-
tioned as fairly typical.

It has been decided that a just sched-
ule of rates will not tend to destroy the
natural advantages for the production
and sale of goods possessed by locali-
ties ; but in judging of local advantages,
care must be taken not to confound
those that are artificial with those that
are natural.

Not only must a just schedule of rates
rest on a just base, but the relative rates
on competitive articles must be such as
not to disturb the natural order of com-
petition.

A just schedule of rates will conform
to the competitive equities that exist be-
tween goods shipped at different stages
in the process of their manufacture.

All shippers should have at their dis-'
posal equal facilities of transportation ;
and when the same commodity is trans-
ported by two or more different modes of
carriage, the charge should be uniform
for the unit of commodity.

" Group rates," by which a given
commodity produced at different points
within a prescribed territory is rated as
though shipped from a single point, do
not constitute a discrimination repug-
nant to the law ; but this opinion is lim-
ited to the cases presented, and is not
set forth as a general principle.

A rate on one commodity in a class,
or on one class of commodities, cannot
be justly depressed so as to become a
burden on the transportation of other
commodities or classes of commodities.

The law does not impose upon the
carrier the duty of providing such a
rate that goods may be sold at a profit
to their producers.

The car-load, and not the train-load, is
the proper transportation unit, but high-
er charges may be made for goods in
less than car-load lots : with this excep-

A Decade of Federal Railway Regulation.

439

tion, the decisions of the commission have
been consistently against the application
of the " wholesale " principle in the ad-
justment of railway charges.

Many other principles have been ar-
rived at through the opinions rendered by
the commission, bearing upon the ques-
tion of justifiable discrimination, upon
the classification of freight, upon the re-
lation that exists between the employees
of one corporation and the management
of another, upon the responsibilities of
carriers to those who purchase tickets,
and upon under-billing, through-billing,
the acceptance of foreign freight, and
similar questions of an administrative
and legal nature ; but a sufficient num-
ber have been presented to show how
the railway problem is in process of solu-
tion in the United States, and to indicate
the important work that is being accom-
plished by the Interstate Commerce Com-
mission.

The work of the commission has not
been confined to the enforcement and in-
terpretation of the Act to Regulate Com-
merce. Considerable attention has been
given also to the creation of those con-
ditions under which the law may become
what, for want of a better phrase, we
may term self-executory. All laws de-
pend for their execution upon the sur-
veillance of the police or upon the initi-
ative of interested parties. The Act to
Regulate Commerce can never be effect-
ively administered on the lines of crim-
inal procedure. Not to mention the
administrative difficulties of such an en-
deavor, public opinion would never sanc-
tion the severity that such procedure
necessitates, for the crime contemplated
by the act lies in the situation rather
than in the evil intent of the individual.
Moreover, the solution of the railway
problem demands above all else the ap-
plication of scientific analysis, a mental
process that cannot be well sustained in
connection with punishment for crime.
What has criminal procedure to do with
the practical interpretation of a reason-

able rate, or with tracing the effect of a
schedule of rates upon the evolution of
industrial and social relations ? The law
to regulate commerce finds its true the-
ory of administration in the fact that the
principles of transportation must evolve
themselves out of its execution, and it
is essential that all varieties of cases be
brought before the commission, and that
the energy of the commission be devoted
to their classification and adjudication
under the crystallizing influence of a
desire for uniformity of rule. This
means the bringing about of such a
state of affairs that a shipper will be
anxious to use his knowledge of dis-
crimination by a carrier in such man-
ner as to cause the discrimination under
which he is suffering to cease, rather
than, as is now too frequently the case,
as a means of blackmail upon the car-
rier to force in his own favor a yet more
flagrant discrimination. It means also
that a railway must be willing to testify
against another railway, and, by making
use of the machinery that Congress has
established, to secure for itself the pos-
sibility of a right administration of its
property.

Now this state of affairs, the only con-
ceivable one under which the theory of
commissions can succeed, can come about
only as the result of easy access to au-
thoritative evidence. One reason why
a shipper makes complaint to the general
manager of a railway rather than to the
commission, when he observes his busi-
ness slipping from him through no fault
of his own, is that he is not sure of his
evidence. With the manager, the mor&
indefinite the information, the more ef-
fective it may be; with a court, or a
commission whose findings may be re-
viewed by a court, indefinite testimony
is worthless. This is clearly recognized
by the members of the commission, and
explains why so considerable a portion
of the small amount of money placed at
their disposal for the execution of the
law has been devoted to the development

440

A Decade of Federal Railway Regulation.

of a statistical service. That the law
may become automatic in its execution,
that it may be comprehensive in its in-
fluence and may work with dispatch and
efficiency, the commission must possess
the means of arriving without embarrass-
ment at the fact in every case. Were
this condition attained, not only would
shippers readily lay their complaints be-
fore the commission, but the carriers
would be reluctant to give just cause for
complaint. The development of a di-
vision of statistics and accounts which,
so far as information is concerned, would
place the commission on the same foot-
ing as the management itself, may be
regarded as the groundwork upon which
the successful control of railways in the
United States rests.

The central aim of such a purpose is
undoubtedly the development of a uni-
form system of accounts for the railways
themselves. There are many thousands
of active accounts of which the commis-
sion is at any time liable to take notice,
and so long as it continues necessary to
inquire respecting the theory of book-
keeping and the classification of items
in every case, it will not be possible
speedily to appreciate the merits of a
controversy. On the other hand, if there
be but one system of accounts for all cor-
porations subject to the jurisdiction of
the commission, it is necessary only to
master the principles, rules, and classifi-
cations of one system in order to gain a
mastery of all. I am reminded of a re-
mark of the late President Francis A.
Walker, who, in response to an expres-
sion of astonishment that he was willing
to undertake so vast a work as the ad-
ministration of the United States census,
replied, " It is no more difficult to take
the census of a nation than of a village ;
the questions to be decided would be the
same in both cases." Congress certain-
ly appreciated the importance of a uni-
form system of railway accounting, or
it would not have given the commission
power "to prescribe a period of time

within which all carriers . . . shall have
... a uniform system of accounts, and
the manner in which such accounts shall
be kept."

The first step in the direction of es-
tablishing uniformity of accounts was to
secure the cooperation of the state rail-
way commissioners in working out a com-
mon form for annual report. These
officials were more than willing to render
their assistance, and no small part of
the deliberation of the annual conven-
tions of railroad commissioners has been
devoted to a consideration of questions
of statistics and accounts. The result is
practical uniformity in the form of re-
port demanded by all public bodies. In
this way the carriers are relieved of the
unnecessary work of making out three
or four different kinds of reports for the
same operations, and the student is re-
lieved of the confusion incident to many
different classifications of the same items.
Among the results of this step toward
uniformity may be mentioned the fact
that railway reports are now made out
with greater care than they were for-
merly, and in many cases the reports to
stockholders have been remodeled so as
to conform to the reports made to com-
missioners. He who compares the rail-
way reports of 1897 with those of 1887
will appreciate that one step, at least,
has been taken toward the establishment
of intelligent reports.

Uniformity in the structure of ac-
counts having been attained through the
cooperation of federal and state com-
missioners, the second step toward uni-
formity resulted in a revised " classifica-
tion of operating expenses." This was
the joint work of the convention of rail-
road commissioners and the Association
of American Accounting Officers. The
most significant account which a railway
keeps is its income account, and the
most significant ratio in railway statis-
tics is the ratio of operating expenses to
operating income. From the point of
view of every interest involved, whether

A Decade of Federal Railway Regulation.

441

of the public, of the management, or of
the investor, it is important that each
road should enter items of income and
expenditure in the same manner as every
other road, and that no road should be
allowed arbitrary charges in connection
therewith. In 1887 there were two gen-
eral systems of operating accounts, and
numerous modifications in each to meet
the whims of local officers; there is
now but one classification of operating
expenses, — the classification approved
by the accounting officers' association,
and authorized by the federal and state
commissioners. It is not claimed that
this is the work of the Interstate Com-
merce Commission ; to suggest such a
claim shows a failure to appreciate the
character of that body and the manner
in which it exerts its influence. The clas-
sification was the product of three years'
careful study on the part of many men.
Every railway auditor in the country was
appealed to for advice. But it is true
that the work would never have been
accomplished had there been no com-
mission to take the initiative and to au-
thorize it and put it in force when ac-
complished.

Any question touching the interpreta-
tion of the classification of operating ex-
penses, respecting which a railway offi-
cial may be in doubt, may be referred to
the statistician of the Interstate Com-
merce Commission, to which he makes
reply, after consultation with the execu-
tive committee of the auditors' associa-
tion. His replies are reported every
year to the convention of railroad com-
missioners through a standing committee
of that body, and to the auditors' associa-
tion through the report of its executive
committee ; if the actions of their respec-
tive committees are approved by these
bodies, the decisions are authoritative-
ly promulgated by the Interstate Com-
merce Commission, and they thus become
a part of the original classification. I
have dwelt upon this at length to show
the manner in which the evolution of uni-

formity in railway accounting is taking
place.

By reason of the success of the efforts to
attain uniformity in operating accounts,
other subjects equally important have
been taken up : for example, the compi-
lation of train-mileage, the classification
of railway employees, the rules for ar-
riving at daily wages, and the adjustment
of a balance-sheet. These matters can-
not be decided arbitrarily or in accord-
ance with the practice of any particular
road, for the commission is obliged to re-
member, what railway auditors so fre-
quently forget, that the accounts to which
it gives approval must contemplate the
railways of the country as a system. Whe-
ther or not all that is needed in this di-
rection can be secured without a more
strenuous exercise of authority than as
yet it has seemed wise to call into play
is doubtful. Such, at least, is the opinion
of the federal commission, as may be
seen by an argument contained in one of
its recent reports to Congress in favor of
the establishment of a Bureau of Statis-
tics and Accounts, more comprehensive
in its scope, and clothed with greater au-
thority, than the statistical division of
the commission service as at present or-
ganized. This project approves itself to
state commissioners also, as is shown by
the fact that it received formal approval
at their last annual convention. The influ-
ence that has been exerted upon the rail-
way situation during the past ten years is
perhaps nowhere more clearly manifest
than in this : that a plan for the estab-
lishment of a Bureau of Statistics and
Accounts, with authority to prescribe the
manner in which books shall be kept and
to enforce its own rules, which in 1887
would have been regarded as bizarre and
ill-advised, is now contemplated by con-
servative men as not only a practicable
but even a necessary scheme. It is a
definite part of the programme of the In-
terstate Commerce Commission, as laid
down in the reports which it has pre-
sented to Congress.

442

A Decade of Federal Railway Regulation.

This statement cannot be closed with-
out referring, at least, to three important
decisions of the courts. These are the
Brown case, the Kentucky and Indiana
Bridge case, and the Social Circle case.
No attempt will be made to discuss le-
gal principles.

The Brown case pertains to the right
of the commission to procure evidence.
In 1882 it was decided, in what is known
as the Counselman case, that a witness
need not testify should his testimony be
of such sort as to incriminate himself.
Under this decision, the propriety of
which is not questioned, any reluctant
witness could evade giving testimony.
Nothing could be more embarrassing to
the commission, or could prove a greater
obstacle to the work it had undertaken.
It is the evidence of a gentleman, who
from his professional position should
know, that at the time of the Counsel-
man decision there were but ninety per
cent of the discriminations that existed
in 1887, but that within a few months
thereafter the practice of special rates
and rebates, with all their social evils and
personal injustices, was as pronounced
as before the passage of the act. This
of course is the impression of a single
observer, but it is beyond question that
the effect of the decision in the Counsel-
man case was to cripple the work of the
commission.

In 1893, Congress endeavored to re-
move the embarrassment caused by the
Counselman decision, by enacting that no
person should be excused from testify-
ing on the ground referred to, but add-
ing that a person testifying should not
be prosecuted on account of his testi-
mony. The legality of this act also was
contested, and the uncertainty respecting
it continued to embarrass the commis-
sion, until, in 1896, the Supreme Court
declared the act to be constitutional. It
thus appears that for something over six
years of the ten under review, the Act
to Regulate Commerce was confined, for
all practical purposes, within the range

of voluntary testimony. Should one
consider that the commission needs an
apology for its record, it is found in this
statement.

The second case referred to need not
be so fully presented. It has already
been remarked that the law did not con-
template that a court should review a
case passed upon by the commission, ex-
cept so far as points of law may be in-
volved. The effect of the Kentucky
and Indiana Bridge case was to assert
that the court might take up a case re-
ferred to it for enforcement as though
it were an original case. Now it is clear
that such an attitude on the part of the
court must defeat the purpose of the act.
The purpose of that act is to cause dis-
crimination and unjust rates to cease, and
to open to the shipper a way by which he
may secure speedy relief ; and unless all
sorts and kinds of cases are brought to
the commission, that body cannot be ex-
pected to exert a very decided or endur-
ing influence upon railway administra-
tion. If, however, the investigations of
the commission are not final as regards
matters of fact, to say nothing of there
being a presumption in favor of the or-
ders of the commission where transpor-
tation principles are concerned, it is evi-
dent that shippers will not seek relief
from the unjust acts of carriers in the
manner contemplated by the act. The
attitude of the court in this regard, and
the advantage taken of it by the carriers
in refusing fully to open their cases be-
fore the commission, are the chief rea-
sons why after ten years the law has
brought the problem of railway control
in the United States no nearer to solution
than it has. Congress has on several oc-
casions been petitioned for relief. In the
report of December, 1896, nine amend-
ments were proposed, in order " to make
the substance of the law mean what it
was supposed to mean at the time of its
passage," and the first of these was, " to
confine the procedure in the courts for
enforcement of orders of the commission

A Decade of Federal Railway Regulation.

443

to the record made before the commis-
sion, and to provide that the order of the
commission shall be enforced, unless the
court shall find in the proceeding some
material error which furnishes sufficient
reason for refusing to enforce it." Should
Congress act on this suggestion and give
the commission a clearly defined power,
there is no reason why the theory of the
act could not be realized for the benefit
of the public.

The third case referred to is the So-
cial Circle case. The question raised
was, whether the commission has the
right to prescribe a rate that it believes
to be reasonable as well as to say that a
rate fixed by a carrier is unreasonable.
To discuss this question would be to pass
beyond the limits of established condi-
tions, and would lead to speculations re-
specting future adjustments. The de-
nial to the commission of the right to fix
a rate that shall be just under conditions
presented by a case — provided this is
what the court means — throws the en-
tire subject of railway regulation upon a
new footing. That the commission can
adjust itself to this interpretation of the
law is certain ; whether such an adjust-
ment is wise is quite another question.

What conclusion is warranted by this
rapid review of ten years' experience
with the federal Act to Regulate Com-
merce ? We cannot hope to give an
answer to so vital a question that will
commend itself to all the interests and
prejudices, to say nothing of the sociolo-
gical theories, that centre in this problem
of inland transportation. We may, how-
ever, venture upon a single observation.
The record of the Interstate Commerce
Commission during the past ten years, as
it bears upon the theory of public control

over monopolistic industries through the
agency of commissions, cannot be accept-
ed as in any sense final. It may ulti-
mately prove to be the case, as Ulrich
declares, that there is no compromise be-
tween public ownership and management
on the one hand and private ownership
and management on the other ; but one
has no right to quote the ten years'
experience of the Interstate Commerce
Commission in support of such a declara-
tion. This is true because the law itself
scarcely proceeded beyond the limit of
suggesting certain principles and indi-
cating certain processes, and Congress
has not, by the amendments passed since
1887, shown much solicitude respecting
the efficiency of the act. It is true, also,
because the courts have thought it neces-
sary to deny certain authorities claimed
by the commission, and again Congress
has not shown itself jealous for the dig-
nity of the administrative body which it
created. And finally, it is true because
the duty of administering the act was im-
posed upon the commission without ad-
equate provision in the way of adminis-
trative machinery, and ten years is too
short a time to create that machinery,
when every step is to be contested by
all the processes known to corporation
lawyers. For the public the case stands
where it stood ten years ago. Now as
then, it is necessary to decide on the
basis of theory, and in the light of po-
litical, social, and industrial considera-
tion, rather than on the basis of a satis-
factory test, whether the railways shall
be controlled by the government with-
out being owned, or controlled through
governmental ownership. The danger
is that the country will drift into an an-
swer of this question without an appre-
ciation of its tremendous significance.
Henry C. Adams.

444

The Evolution of Satellites.

THE EVOLUTION OF SATELLITES.

THE Atlantic Monthly for October,
1897, contains an interesting paper by
Mr. See on Recent Discoveries respect-
ing the Origin of the Universe. In the
present article I propose to explain, in
greater detail than the necessary limita-
tions of space permitted him, the theory
which forms the point of departure for
his speculations. Although the natural
sequence is thus inverted, it may be hoped
that the postponement of explanation to
application will be condoned. In any
case, this article owes its origin to the
former one, and it might not otherwise
have been justifiable to expound a theory
which was laid before the scientific world
some fifteen years ago in the pages of the
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
Society.1

After the explanation of this theory,
I have added some comments on Mr.
See's views.

If familiarity does not always breed
contempt, yet at least it generally breeds
indifference. This is the case with most
of us in regard to the rise and fall of
the tide by the seashore, and so the
problem as to whether the tide will serve
conveniently to allow the children to dig
in the sand or search for seaweed looms
larger than that presented by the gigan-
tic forces which now produce only these
somewhat insignificant pulsations of the
sea. Yet the tides should call forth in
us a deeper interest, — I might almost
say an emotion, — for, as I shall show,
they are the feeble residue of influences

1 It was very natural that Mr. See should
find in certain tidal investigations which I un-
dertook for Lord Kelvin the source of my pa-
pers, but as a fact the subject was brought be-
fore me in a somewhat different manner. Some
unpublished experiments on the viscosity of
pitch induced me to extend Lord Kelvin's

which have probably exercised a pre-
dominant control over the history of the
Earth and the Moon since an indetermi-
nate but remote epoch in the past, and
will continue that control into the distant
future.

Newton was the first to prove that the
tides are caused by the attractions of the
Moon and the Sun. It would need much
space to explain fully the manner in
which those attractions operate, yet it is
possible to give in a few words a rough
sketch of the mode in which the tide-
generating forces arise. It will suffice
for this purpose to confine our attention
to the more important of the two bodies,
the Moon, since the action of the Sun
will then follow by parity of reasoning.
According to the law of universal gravi-
tation, the Moon attracts matter which
stands near to her more strongly than
that which is more remote. It follows
that the attraction on the ocean, at the
side of the Earth which is nearest to the
Moon, must be greater than that exer-
cised on the solid Earth itself. Hence
there is a tendency for the sea to depart
from its natural spherical shape, and to
bulge outward toward the Moon. So far
the matter is simple ; but it is perplexing
to many that the Moon should apparent-
ly repel the water lying on the further
side of the Earth. This action, however,
is not due to any ideal repulsion from the
Moon, but results from the fact that on
the further side the Moon must attract
the solid Earth more strongly than she
does the water. On the nearer side the
Moon pulls the water away from the
Earth, and on the further side she pulls

beautiful investigation of the strain of an elas-
tic sphere to the tidal distortion of a viscous
planet. This naturally led to the consideration
of the tides of an ocean lying on such a planet,
which forms the subject of certain paragraphs
now incorporated in Thomson and Tait's Nat-
ural Philosophy.

The Evolution of Satellites.

445

the Earth away from the water, thus pro-
ducing an apparent repulsion of the water
to an extent equal to the attraction on
the other side. In this way there arises
a tendency for the ocean to bulge equally
toward and away from the Moon, and to
assume an egg-like shape, with the length
of the egg pointed toward the Moon.

If the whole planet were fluid, instead
of being partly fluid and partly solid, the
same tendency would still exist, but the
tide - generating force would have the
whole mass of the planet as its field of
operation, instead of merely the super-
ficial ocean. The fact that the Earth,
the Moon, and the planets are all nearly
spherical proves that in early times they
were molten and plastic, and that they
assumed their present round shape un-
der the influence of gravitation. When
the material of which any planet is formed
was semi-liquid through heat, its satel-
lites, or at any rate the Sun, must have
produced tidal oscillations in the molten
rock, just as the Sun and the Moon now
raise tides in our oceans.

Molten rock and molten iron are ra-
ther sticky or viscous substances, and any
movement which agitates them must be
subject to much friction. Even water,
which is a very good lubricant, is not
entirely free from friction, and so our
present oceanic tides must be influenced
by fluid friction, although to a far less
extent than the molten solid just referred
to. Now all moving systems which are
subject to friction gradually come to rest.
A train will run a long way when the
steam is turned off, but it stops at last,
and a fly-wheel will continue to spin for
only a limited time. This general law
renders it certain that the friction of the
tide, whether it consists in the swaying
of molten lava or of an ocean, must be
stopping the rotation of the planet, or at
any rate stopping the motion of the sys-
tem in some way.

It is the friction upon its bearings
which brings a fly-wheel to rest ; but as
the Earth has no bearings, it is not easy

to see how the friction of the tidal wave,
whether corporeal or oceanic, can tend to
stop its rate of rotation. The result must
clearly be brought about, in some way,
by the interaction between the Moon and
the Earth. Action and reaction must be
equal and opposite, and if we are correct
in supposing that the friction of the tides
is stopping the Earth's rotation, there
must be a reaction upon the Moon tend-
ing to hurry her onward. To give a
homely illustration of the effects of re-
action, I may recall to mind how a man
riding a high bicycle, on applying the
brake too suddenly, was shot over the
handles. The desired action was to stop
the front wheel, but this could not be
done without a reaction on the rider,
which sometimes led to unpleasant con-
sequences.

The general conclusion as to the action
and reaction due to tidal friction is of
so vague a character that it is desirable
to consider in detail how they operate.

The circle in the figure is supposed to
represent the undisturbed shape of the
planet, which rotates in the direction of
the curved arrow. A portion of the orbit
of the satellite is indicated by part of
a larger circle, and the direction of its
motion is shown by an arrow. I will
first suppose that the water lying on the
planet, or the molten rock of which it is
formed, is a perfect lubricant, devoid of
friction ; and that at the moment repre-
sented in the figure the satellite is at M'.
The fluid will then be distorted by the
tidal force until it assumes the egg-like
shape marked by the ellipse, projecting
on both sides beyond the circle. When
there is no friction, the long axis of the

446

The Evolution of Satellites.

egg is always directed straight toward
the satellite M', and the fluid maintains
a continuous rhythmical movement, so
that as the planet rotates and the satellite
revolves, it always preserves the same
shape and attitude toward the satellite.

But when, as in reality, the fluid is
subject to friction, it gets belated in its
rhythmical rise and fall, and the pro-
tuberance is carried onward by the ro-
tation of the planet beyond its proper
place. In order to make the same fig-
ure serve for this condition of affairs,
I set the satellite backward to M ; for
this amounts to just the same thing, and
is less confusing than re-drawing the pro-
tuberance in its more advanced position.
The planet then constantly maintains
this shape and attitude with regard to the
satellite, and the interaction between the
two will be the same as though the planet
were solid, but continually altering its
shape.

We have now to examine what effects
must follow from the attraction of the
satellite on an egg-shaped planet, 'when
the two bodies constantly maintain the
same attitude relatively to each other.
It will make the matter somewhat easier
of comprehension if we replace the tidal
protuberances by two particles of equal
masses, one at P, and the other at P'. If
the masses of these particles be properly
chosen, so as to represent the amount of
matter in the protuberances, the proposed
change will make no material difference
in the result.

The gravitational attraction of the sat-
ellite is greater on bodies which are near
than on those which are far, and accord-
ingly it attracts the particle P more
strongly than the particle P'. It is ob-
vious from the figure that the pull on P
must tend to stop the planet's rotation,

1 It is somewhat paradoxical that the effect
of attempting to hurry the satellite is to make
it actually move slower. It would be useless
to attempt an explanation of this in such an
article as the present one, but the converse
case, where a retarding force acts on the body,
may be more intelligible. When a meteorite

whilst the pull on P' must tend to accel*
erate it. If a man pushes equally on the
two pedals of a bicycle, the crank has no
tendency to turn ; and besides, there are
dead points in the revolution of the crank
where pushing and pulling have no ef-
fect. So also in the astronomical pro-
blem, if the two attractions were exactly
equal, or if the protuberances were at a
dead point, there would be no resultant
effect on the rotation of the planet. But
it is obvious that here the retarding pull
is stronger than the accelerating pull, and
that the set of the protuberances is such
that we have passed the dead point. It
follows from this that the primary effect
of fluid friction is to throw the tidal pro-
tuberance forward, and the secondary
effect is to retard the planet's rotation.

Action and reaction are equal and op-
posite, and if the satellite pulls at the
protuberances, they pull in return at the
satellite. The figure shows that the at-
traction of the protuberance P tends in
some measure to hurry the satellite on-
ward in its orbit, whilst that of P' tends
to retard it. But the attraction of P is
stronger than that of P', and therefore
the resultant of the two is a force tend-
ing to carry the satellite forward more
rapidly in the direction of the arrow.
When the satellite is thus influenced, it
must move in a spiral curve, ever increaa-
ing its distance from the planet. Besides
this, the satellite has a longer path to
travel in its circuit, and takes longer to
get round the planet, than was the case
before tidal friction began to operate.1

Now let us apply these ideas to the
case of the Earth and the Moon. A man
standing on the planet, as it rotates, is
carried past places where the fluid is
deeper and shallower alternately : at the
deep places he says that it is high tide,

rushes through the atmosphere it moves faster
and faster, because it gains more velocity by
the direct action of the Earth's gravity on it
than it loses by the friction of the air. And
yet it is the friction of the air which allows
gravity to have play ; so that we have the para-
dox of friction accelerating the motion.

The Evolution of Satellites.

447

and at the shallow places that it is low
tide. In the figure it is high tide when
the observer is carried past P. Now, it
was pointed out that when there is no
fluid friction we must put the Moon at
M', but when there is friction she must
be at M. Accordingly, if there is no
friction it is high tide when the Moon is
over the observer's head, but when there
is fluid friction the Moon has passed
his zenith before he reaches high tide.
Hence he would remark that fluid fric-
tion retards the time of high water.1

A day is the name for the time in
which the Earth rotates once, and a
month for the time in which the Moon
revolves once. Then, since tidal fric-
tion retards the Earth's rotation and the
Moon's revolution, we may state that
both the day and the month are being
lengthened, and that these results fol-
low from the retardation in the time of
high tide. It must also be noted that
the spiral in which the Moon moves is
an increasing one, so that her distance
from the Earth increases. These are
absolutely certain and inevitable results
of the mechanical interaction of the two
bodies.

At the present time the rates of increase
of the day and month are excessively
small, so that it has not been found pos-
sible to determine them with any ap-
proach to accuracy. It may be well to
notice in passing that if the rate of change
of either element were determinable,
that of the other would be deducible by
calculation.

The extreme slowness of the changes
within historical times is established by
the records in early Greek and Assyrian
history of eclipses of the Sun which oc-
curred on certain days and at certain
places. Notwithstanding the changes in
the calendar, it is possible to identify the
day according to our modern reckoning,

1 This must not be considered as a fair state-
ment of the case when the oceans are as shal-
low as in actuality. The reader must accept
the assurance that the friction of the tides of

and the identification of the place pre-
sents no difficulty. Astronomy affords
the means of calculating the exact time
and place of the occurrence of an eclipse
even three thousand years ago, on the
supposition that the Earth spun at the
same rate then as now, and that the com-
plex laws governing the Moon's motion
are unchanged. The particular eclipse
referred to in history is known, but any
considerable change in the Earth's rota-
tion and in the Moon's motion would have
shifted the position of visibility on the
Earth from the situation to which modern
computation would assign it. Most as-
tronomical observations would be worth-
less if the exact time of the occurrence
were uncertain, but in the case of eclipses
the place of observation affords just that
element of precision which is otherwise
wanting. As, then, the situations of the
ancient eclipses agree fairly well with
modern computations, we are sure that
there has been no great change within
the last three thousand years either in
the Earth's rotation or in the Moon's
motion. There is, however, a small out-
standing discrepancy which indicates that
there has been some change. But the
exact amount involves elements of un-
certainty, because our knowledge of the
laws of the Moon's motion is not yet
quite accurate enough for the absolutely
perfect calculation of eclipses which oc-
curred many centuries ago. In this way
it is known that within historical times
the retardation of the Earth's rotation
and the recession of the Moon have been,
at any rate, very slight.

It does not follow from this that the
changes have always been equally slow,
and indeed it may be shown by mathe-
matical arguments that the efficiency of
tidal friction increases with enormous ra-
pidity as we bring the tide-raising satel-
lite nearer to the planet. The law of

shallow seas also causes retardation of the plan-
et's rotation, although in a somewhat different
manner from that explained above.

448

The Evolution of Satellites.

tidal friction is that it varies according to
the inverse sixth power of the distance ;
so that with the Moon at half her pre-
sent distance, the rate of retardation of
the Earth's rotation would be sixty-four
times as great as it now is. Thus, al-
though the action may now be almost in-
sensibly slow, yet it must have proceeded
with much greater rapidity when the
Moon was nearer to us.

There are many problems in which
it would be very difficult to follow the
changes in the system according to the
times of their occurrence, but where it is
possible to banish time, and to trace the
changes themselves in due order, with-
out reference to time. In the sphere of
common life, we know the succession of
stations which a train must pass between
New York and Boston, although we may
have no time-table. This is the case with
our astronomical problem ; for although
we have no time-table, yet the sequence
of the changes in the system may be
traced accurately.

Let us then banish time, and look for-
ward to the ultimate outcome of the tidal
interaction of the Moon and the Earth.
The day and the month are now length-
ening at relative rates which are calcula-
ble, although the absolute rates in time
are unknown. It will suffice for a gen-
eral comprehension of the problem to
know that the present rate of increase
of the day is much more rapid than that
of the month, and that this will hold
good in the future. Thus, the number
of rotations of the Earth in the interval
comprised in one revolution of the Moon
diminishes ; or, in other words, the num-
ber of days in the month diminishes, al-
though the length of each day increases
so rapidly that the month itself is longer
than at present. For example, when the
day shall be equal in length to two of
our actual days, the month may be as
long as thirty-seven of our days, and then
the Earth will spin round only about
eighteen times in the month.

This gradual change in the day and

the month proceeds continuously until
the duration of a rotation of the Earth
is prolonged to fifty-five of our present
days. At the same time, the month, or
the time of a revolution of the Moon
round the Earth, will also occupy fifty-
five of our days. Since the month here
means the period of the return of the
Moon to the same place amongst the
stars, and since the day is to be estimat-
ed in the same way, the Moon must then
always face the same part of the Earth's
surface, and the two bodies must move as
though they were united by a bar. The
outcome of the lunar tidal friction will
therefore be that the Moon and the Earth
will go round as though locked together
in a period of fifty-five of our present
days, with day and month identical in
length.

Now, looking backward in time, we
find the day and the month shortening,
but the day changing more rapidly than
the month. The Earth was therefore
able to complete more revolutions in the
month, although that month was itself
shorter than it is now. We get back, in
fact, to a time when there were twenty-
nine rotations of the Earth in the time of
the Moon's revolution, instead of twenty-
seven and one third, as at present. This
epoch is a sort of crisis in the history
of the Moon and the Earth, for it may
be proved that there never could have
been more than twenty-nine days in the
month. Earlier than this epoch, the days
were fewer than twenty-nine ; and later,
fewer also. Although measured in years,
this epoch in the Earth's history must
be very remote ; yet when we contem-
plate the whole series of changes it must
be considered as a comparatively recent
event. In a sense, indeed, we may be
said to have passed recently through the
middle stage of our history.

Now, pursuing the series of changes
further back than the epoch when there
was the maximum number of days in the
month, we find the Earth still rotating
faster and faster, and the Moon drawing

The Evolution of Satellites.

449

nearer and nearer to the Earth and re-
volving in shorter and shorter periods.
But a change has supervened, so that the
rate at which the month is shortening
is more rapid than the rate of change in
the day. Consequently, the Moon now
gains, as it were, on the Earth, which
cannot get round so frequently in the
month as it did before. In other words,
the number of days in the month declines
from the maximum of twenty-nine, and
is finally reduced to one. When there
is only one day in the month, the Earth
and the Moon go round at the same rate,
so that the Moon always looks at the
same side of the Earth, and as far as con-
cerns the motion they might be fastened
together by iron bands.

This is the same conclusion at which
we arrived with respect to the remote fu-
ture. But the two cases differ widely ;
for whereas in the future the period of
the common rotation will be fifty-five of
our present days, in the past we find
the two bodies going round each other
in between three and five of our present
hours. A satellite revolving round the
Earth in so short a period must almost
touch the Earth's surface. The system
is therefore traced until the Moon nearly
touches the Earth, and the two go round
each other like a single solid body in
about three to five hours.

The series of changes has been traced
forward and backward from the present
time, but it will make the whole process
more intelligible, and the opportunity
will be afforded for certain further con-
siderations, if I sketch the history again
in the form of a continuous narrative.

Let us imagine a planet attended by
a satellite which revolves in a circular
orbit so as nearly to touch its surface,
and continuously to face the same side
of the planet. If now, for some cause,
the satellite's month comes to differ very
slightly from the planet's day, the satel-
lite will no longer continuously face the
same side of the planet, but will pass
over every part of the planet's equator

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 486. 29

in turn. This is the condition necessary
for the generation of tidal osciUations in
the planet, and as the molten lava, of
which we suppose the planet to be
formed, is a sticky or viscous fluid, the
tides must be subject to friction. Tidal
friction will then begin to do its work,
but the result will be very different ac-
cording as the satellite revolves a little
faster or a little slower than the planet.
If it revolves a little faster, so that the
month is shorter than the day, we have a
condition not contemplated in the figure
above ; it is easy to see, however, that as
the satellite is always leaving the planet
behind it, the apex of the tidal protuber-
ance must be directed to a point behind
the satellite in its orbit. In this case the
rotation of the planet must be accelerat-
ed by the tidal friction, and the satellite
must be drawn inward toward the plan-
et, into which it must ultimately fall.
In the application of this theory to the
Earth and the Moon, it is obvious that
the very existence of the Moon nega-
tives the hypothesis that the initial month
was even infinitesimally shorter than the
day. We must then suppose that the
Moon revolved a little more slowly than
the Earth rotated. In this case the tidal
friction would retard the Earth's rota-
tion, and force the Moon to recede from
the Earth, and so perform her orbit more
slowly. Accordingly, the primitive day
and the primitive month lengthen, but
the month increases much more rapidly
than the day, so that the number of days
in the month becomes greater. This pro-
ceeds until that number reaches a maxi-
mum, which in the case of our planet is
about twenty-nine.

After the epoch of maximum number
of days in the month, the rate of change
in the length of the day becomes less rapid
than that in the length of the month ;
and although both periods increase, the
number of days in the month begins to
diminish. The series of changes then
proceeds until the two periods come again
to an identity, when we have the Earth

450

The Evolution of Satellites.

and the Moon, as they were at the be-
ginning, revolving in the same period,
with the Moon always facing the same
side of the planet. But in her final con-
dition the Moon will be a long way off
from the Earth, instead of being quite
close to it.

Although the initial and final states re-
semble each other, yet they differ in one
respect which is of much importance ;
for in the initial condition the motion is
unstable, whilst finally it is stable. The
meaning of this is that if the Moon were
even infinitesimally disturbed from the
initial mode of motion, she would neces-
sarily either fall into the planet or recede
therefrom, and it would be impossible for
her to continue to move in that neigh-
borhood. She is unstable in the same
sense in which an egg balanced on its
point is unstable ; the smallest mote of
dust will upset it, and practically it can-
not stay in that position. But the final
condition resembles the case of an egg
lying on its side, which only rocks a lit-
tle when we disturb it. So if the Moon
were slightly disturbed from her final
condition, she would continue to describe
very nearly the same path round the
Earth, and would not assume some en-
tirely new form of orbit.

It is by methods of rigorous argu-
ment that the Moon is traced back to
the initial unstable condition when she
revolved close to the Earth. But the
argument here breaks down, and calcu-
lation is incompetent to tell us what oc-
curred before, and how she attained that
unstable mode of motion. We can only
speculate as to the preceding history,
but there is some basis for our specu-
lation ; for I say that if a planet, such
as the Earth, made each rotation in a pe-
riod of three hours, it would very nearly
fly to pieces. The attraction of gravity
would be barely strong enough to hold it
together, just as the cohesive strength of
iron is insufficient to hold a fly-wheel
together if it is spun too fast. There
is, of course, an important distinction be-

tween the case of the ruptured fly-wheel
and the supposed break-up of the Earth ;
for when the fly-wheel breaks, the pieces
are hurled apart as soon as the force
of cohesion fails, whereas when a planet
breaks up through too rapid rotation,
gravity must continue to hold the pieces
together after they have ceased to form
parts of a single body.

Hence we have grounds for conjectur-
ing that the Moon is composed of frag-
ments of the primitive planet which we
now call the Earth, which detached them-
selves when the planet spun very swiftly,
and afterward became consolidated. It
surpasses the powers of mathematical
calculation to trace the details of the pro-
cess of this rupture and subsequent con-
solidation, but we can hardly doubt that
the system would pass through a period
of turbulence before order was reestab-
lished in the formation of a satellite.

I have said that rapid rotation was
probably the cause of the birth of the
Moon, but this statement needs qualifi-
cation. There are certain considerations
which prevent us from ascertaining the
common period of revolution of the Moon
and the Earth with accuracy ; it may lie
between three and five hours. I think
that such a speed might not, perhaps,
be quite sufficient to cause the planet to
break up. Is it possible, then, to suggest
any other cause which might have coop-
erated with the tendency to instability of
the rotating planet ? I think that there
is such a cause ; and though we are here
dealing with guesswork, I will hazard
the suggestion.

The primitive planet, before the birth
of the Moon, was rotating rapidly with
reference to the Sun, and it must, there-
fore, have been agitated by tidal oscilla-
tions due to the Sun's attraction. Now,
the magnitude of these solar tides is
much influenced by the speed of rotation
of the planet, and mathematical reason-
ing appears to show that when the day
was about three or four hours in length
the oscillations must have been very great,

The Evolution of Satellites.

451

although the Sun stood no nearer to the
Earth then than it does now. May we
not conjecture that the oscillation, of the
molten planet became so violent that, in
cooperation with the rapid rotation, it
shook the planet to pieces, detaching huge
fragments which ultimately were consoli-
dated into the Moon ? There is nothing
to tell us whether this theory affords the
true explanation of the birth of the Moon,
and I say that it is only a wild specula-
tion, incapable of verification.

But the truth or falsity of this specula-
tion does not militate against the accept-
ance of the general theory of tidal fric-
tion, which, standing on the firm basis
of mechanical necessity, throws much
light on the history of the Earth and the
Moon, and correlates the lengths of our
present day and month.

I have said above that the sequence of
events has been stated without reference
to the scale of time. It is of the utmost
importance, however, to gain some idea
of the time requisite for all the changes
in the system. If millions of millions of
years were necessary, the applicability of
the theory to the Moon and the Earth
would have to be rejected, because it is
known from other lines of argument that
there is not an unlimited bank of time on
which to draw. The uncertainty as to
the duration of the solar system is wide,
yet we are sure that it has not existed
for an almost infinite past.

Now, although the actual time-scale is
indeterminate, it is possible to find the
minimum time adequate for the trans-
formation of the Moon's orbit from its
supposed initial condition to its present
shape. It may be proved, in fact, that
if tidal friction had always operated un-
der the conditions most favorable for
producing rapid change, the sequence of
events from the beginning until to-day
would have occupied a period of between
fifty and sixty millions of years. The

1 Kant, in the middle of the last century,
drew attention to the importance of tidal fric-
tion in celestial dynamics ; but as he did not

actual period, of course, must have been
much greater. Various lines of argu-
ment as to the age of the solar system
have led to results which differ widely
among themselves, yet I cannot think
that the applicability of the theory of
tidal friction is negatived by the magni-
tude of the period demanded. It may
be that science will have to reject the
theory in its full extent, but it seems
improbable that the ultimate verdict will
be adverse to the preponderating influ-
ence of the tide on the evolution of our
planet.

If this history be true of the Earth and
the Moon, it should throw light on many
peculiarities of the solar system. In
the first place, a corresponding series of
changes must have taken place in the
Moon herself. Once on a time she must
have been molten, and the great extinct
volcanoes revealed by the telescope are
evidences of her primitive heat. The
molten mass must have been semi-fluid,
and the Earth must have raised in it enor-
mous tides of molten lava. Doubtless the
Moon once rotated rapidly on her axis,
and the frictional resistance to her tides
must have impeded her rotation. She
rotated then more and more slowly un-
til the tide solidified, and thenceforward
and to the present day she has shown
the same face to the Earth. Helmholtz
was, I believe, amongst the first in mod-
ern times to suggest this as the explana-
tion of the fact that the Moon always
shows us the same face.1 Our theory,
then, receives a striking confirmation
from the Moon ; for, having ceased to
rotate relatively to us, she has actually
advanced to that condition which may
be foreseen as the fate of the Earth.

Thus far I have referred in only one
passage to the influence of solar tides,
but these are of considerable importance,
being large enough to cause the conspicu-

clothe his argument in mathematical form,
he was unable to deduce most of the results
which are explained in this paper.

452

The Evolution of Satellites.

ous phenomena of spring and neap tides.
Now, whilst the Moon is retarding the
Earth's rotation, the Sun is doing so also.
But these solar tides react only on the
Earth's motion round the Sun, leaving
the Moon's motion round the Earth un-
affected. It might perhaps be expected
that parallel changes in the Earth's orbit
would have proceeded step by step, and
that the Earth might be traced to an
origin close to the Sun. But the small-
ness of the Earth's mass compared with
that of the Sun here prohibits the appli-
cation of the theory of tidal friction, and
it is improbable that our year is now
longer, from this cause at any rate, by
more than a few seconds than it was at
the very birth of the solar system.

Although the solar tides can have had
no perceptible influence upon the Earth's
movement in its orbit, they will have
affected the rotation of the Earth to a
considerable extent. Let us imagine
ourselves transported to the indefinite
future, when the Moon and the Earth
shall be revolving together in fifty-five of
our days. The lunar tide in the Earth
will then be unchanging, just as the
Earth tide in the Moon is now fixed ;
but the Earth will be rotating with re-
ference to the Sun, and, if there are un-
frozen oceans, its rotation will still be
subject to retardation in consequence of
the solar tidal friction. The day will then
become longer than the month, which for
a very long time will continue to occupy
about fifty-five of our present days. It
is known that there are neither oceans
nor atmosphere on the Moon ; but if
there were, she would have been subject
to solar tidal friction, and would have
undergone a parallel series of changes.

Up to recent times it might have been
asserted plausibly that the absence of any
such mode of motion in the solar system
afforded a reason for rejecting the actual
efficiency of tidal friction in celestial evo-
lution. But in 1877 Professor Asaph
Hall discovered in the system of the
planet Mars a case of the kind of motion

which we have reason to foresee as the
future fate of the Earth and the Moon ;
for he found two satellites, one of which
has a month shorter than the planet's
day.

In his paper on the discovery of these
satellites, Professor Hall gives an inter-
esting account of what had been conjec-
tured, partly in jest and partly in earnest,
as to the existence of satellites attending
that planet. He quotes Kepler as writ-
ing, after the discovery of the satellites
of Jupiter, " I am so far from disbeliev-
ing the existence of the four circuinjovial
planets " (that is, satellites) " that I long
for a telescope to anticipate you, if pos-
sible, in discovering two round Mars,
six or eight round Saturn, as the pro-
portion seems to require, and perhaps
one each round Mercury and Venus."
This, was of course, serious, although
based on fantastic considerations. At a
later date Swift poured contempt on men
of science in his account of the inhab-
itants of Laputa, whom he describes as
dexterous enough on a piece of paper,
and in the management of the rule, the
pencil, and the dividers, but as a clum-
sy, awkward, and unhandy people, and
perplexed in their conceptions upon all
subjects except mathematics and music.
He writes, however, of the Laputans,
" They have likewise discovered two less-
er stars or satellites, which revolve about
Mars, whereof the innermost is distant
from the centre of the primary exactly
three of his diameters, and the outermost
five." In one of his satires, Voltaire also
represents an imaginary traveler from
Sirius as making a similar discovery.

These curious prognostications were
at length verified by Professor Asaph
Hall in the discovery of two satellites,
which he named Phobos and Deimos, —
Fear and Panic, the dogs of war. The
period of Deimos is about thirty hours,
and that of Phobos about eight hours,
whilst the Martian day is of nearly the
same length as our own. The month
of the inner minute satellite is thus less

The Evolution of Satellites.

453

than a third of the planet's day ; it rises
to the Martians in the west, and passes
through all its phases in a few hours ;
sometimes it must even rise twice in a
single Martian night. As we here find
an illustration of the condition foreseen
for our own planet and satellite, it seems
legitimate to suppose that solar tidal fric-
tion has slowed down the planet's rota-
tion. The ultimate fate of Phobos must
almost certainly be absorption by the
planet.

Several of the satellites of Jupiter and
Saturn present faint inequalities of color-
ing, and telescopic examination has led
astronomers to believe that they always
present the same face to their planets.
The theory of tidal friction would certain-
ly lead us to expect that these enormous
planets would have worked out the same
result for these relatively small satellites
that the Earth has effected in the Moon.
The efficiency of solar tidal frictionmust
be far greater in its action on the planets
Mercury and Venus than on the Earth.
The determination of the periods of ro-
tation of these planets thus becomes a
matter of much interest. But the mark-
ings on their disks are so obscure that
their rates of rotation have remained
under discussion for many years. Until
recently the prevailing opinion was that
in each case the day was of nearly the
same length as our own ; but a few
years ago Schiaparelli of Milan, an ob-
server endowed with extraordinary acute-
ness of vision, announced, as the result
of his observation, that both Mercury
and Venus rotate only once in their re-
spective years, and that each of them
always presents the same face to the
Sun. These conclusions have recently
been confirmed by Mr. Percival Lowell
from observations made in Arizona, and
are exactly conformable to our theoreti-
cal expectation. Whilst it is not easy
to see how these astronomers can have
been mistaken, yet it is proper to note
that others, possessing apparently equal
advantages, have failed to detect the

markings on the planets. Accepting,
however, this conclusion, we have the
planets Mercury and Venus, the satellites
of the Earth, and Jupiter and Saturn
presenting evidence favorable to the the-
ory of tidal friction, whilst the case of
the Martian system is yet more striking
as an instance of an advanced stage in
evolution.

It would need another article to dis-
cuss the various aspects of this theory in
relation to the histories of the planets
and of their satellites. I may say, how-
ever, that it serves in great measure to
explain the fact that the Earth is tilted
over with reference to its orbit round the
Sun, and that it throws light on the fact
that the plane of the Moon's orbit is
not coincident with that of the Earth.
The same cause may also be proved to
tend toward making the orbit of a satel'
lite eccentric, and it is this effect of tidal
friction to which Mr. See has appealed.
I shall not here repeat his arguments,
but in section iv. I will make some com-
ments on his theories.

With respect to the efficacy of tidal
friction as a factor in the evolution of
the Earth, it is not too much to say that
if we postulate a planet consisting part-
ly or wholly of molten lava, and rapidly
rotating about an axis at right angles
to its orbit round the Sun, and if that
planet have a single satellite, revolving
nearly as rapidly as the planet rotates,
then a system will necessarily be evolved
in time closely resembling our own.

A theory reposing on true causation,
which brings into quantitative correla-
tion the lengths of the present day and
month, the obliquity of the ecliptic, and
the eccentricity and inclination of the
Moon's orbit, must, I think, have strong
claims to acceptance.

IV.

There are in the heavens many pairs
of closely neighboring stars which re-
volve about each other under the influ-
ence of their mutual gravitation. The

454

The Evolution of Satellites.

fact that both members of a pair are
visible seems to indicate that they do
not differ widely in mass, and it is also
a striking peculiarity of these binary
systems that the orbit is commonly very
eccentric. The distinction is great be-
tween our solar system, with its large
central mass and infinitesimal planets
moving in nearly circular orbits, and
these binary systems, and hence there is
abundant reason for supposing that the
course of evolution has been very differ-
ent in the two cases.

Mr. See explains the high degree of
eccentricity in these binary orbits by the
influence of tidal friction. The tide
undoubtedly operates under conditions
which give it a wide scope, when two
large masses are revolving about one
another ; and tidal friction is the only
known cause capable of converting a
nearly circular orbit into a very eccen-
tric one. But this does not afford quite
sufficient reason for the acceptance of the
theory, for the assumption is involved
that orbits now very eccentric were for-
merly nearly circular. Mr. See accord-
ingly also puts forward a theory of the
method by which double stars originat-
ed, and to this I shall return later.

At first it may not be easy to see how
the truth of this theory of the origin of
the eccentricity is to be tested ; it may
be worth while, therefore, to point out
the direction which, to me at least, seems
the most promising in the search for con-
firmation or refutation.

It is thought by some spectroscopists
that the ages of stars are already deter-
minable by the nature of their spectra,
and although the theories which have
been advanced do not meet with uni-
versal acceptance, yet they foreshadow
views which may some day be universal-
ly accepted. It has been plausibly con-
tended that stars which are young in
their evolution must consist of incandes-
cent gas, and must therefore have spec-
tra furrowed by bright lines ; later in
their histories they are supposed to be-

come more condensed and to give con-
tinuous spectra. Now if, from theories
of this kind, we could ascertain the stage
of evolution of a binary system, we
should be able to form a judgment of
the truth of the tidal theory; for the
younger systems should present smaller
eccentricity of orbit than the older ones,
and the periodic times in the young sys-
tems should be shorter, on the whole,
than those in the old ones. Delicate
spectroscopic measurements make it the-
oretically possible to determine the rela-
tive masses of a binary pair, but hitherto
the measurements have been carried to a
successful issue in only a very few cases.
It is to be expected, however, that the
number of known masses will be largely
multiplied in the future. A small star
must cool more rapidly than a large one,
and should present the appearance of
greater age. We may hope, then, in
time, not only to attain to crucial tests of
spectroscopic theories of age, but also to
be furnished with the materials for judg-
ing of the truth of the tidal theory of
evolution of stellar systems.

The second and yet more speculative
branch of Mr. See's theory is that which
concerns the mode of origin of binary sys-
tems. Man must ultimately be brought
face to face with the incomprehensibility
of the origin of matter and motion, but
this consideration will never prevent him
from peering into the past to the utmost
of his powers. It is certain that the stars
are continually undergoing change, and
it seems impossible to accept their exist-
ence as an ultimate fact not susceptible
of explanation. Thus we feel bound to
trace their histories back to a past so re-
mote that their preceding course of evo-
lution becomes inscrutable.

The fact that two stars are now found
to be revolving about each other leads
to the conviction that their relationship is
not a casual one, but that they have been
connected from an early epoch, which
for convenience we may call the origin
of the system. It appears almost beyond

The Evolution of Satellites.

455

in such cases it would seem that the true
nature of the whole will be forever con-
cealed from us.

Another group of strange celestial ob-
jects is that of the spiral nebulae, whose
forms irresistibly suggest violent whirl-
pools of incandescent gas. Although in
all probability the motion of the gas is
very rapid, yet no change of form has
been detected. We are here reminded
of a rapid stream rushing past a post,
where the form of the surface remains
constant, whilst the water itself is in rapid
movement, and it seems reasonable to
suppose that in these nebulae it is only the
lines of flow of the gas which are visible.
Again, there are other cases in which
the telescopic view may be almost decep-
tive in its physical suggestions. Thus,
the Dumb-Bell Nebula (27 Messier Vul-
peculae), as viewed telescopically, might
be taken as a good illustration of a nebu-
la almost ready to split into two stars.
If this were so, the rotation would be
about an axis at right angles to the length
of the nebula. But a photograph of this
object shows that the system really con-
sists of a luminous globe surrounded by
a thick and less luminous ring, and that
the opacity of the sides of the ring takes
a bite, as it were, out of each side of the
disk, and so gives it the apparent form
of a dumb-bell. In this case the rotation
must be about an axis at right angles to
the ring, and therefore along the length
of the dumb-bell.1

From what I have said it must be ob-
vious that the subject is surrounded by
difficulties and uncertainties ; Mr. See
is therefore to be congratulated on hav-
ing laid before the world an hypothesis
which appears to explain the facts as far
as we know them. The subject is ne-
cessarily a speculative one, and we must
look forward to future spectroscopic and
photographic researches for the confirma-
tion or refutation of his theories.

G. H. Darwin.
1 It is proper to state that Mr. See does not refer to this nebula as confirmatory of his theory.

question that this starting - point must
have been at a time when the two stars
were united in a single rotating mass.
As the basis of his explanation of the
manner in which a single mass may split
into two, Mr. See takes certain theoreti-
cal investigations as to the shapes which
a mass of gravitating and rotating fluid
is capable of maintaining. I will not re-
capitulate his theories, but I wish to em-
phasize the uncertainties with which we
are here brought face to face.

Many years ago Sir John Herschel
drew a number of twin nebulae as they
appear through a powerful telescope.
The drawings probably possess the high-
est degree of accuracy attainable by this
method of delineation, and the shapes
present evidence confirmatory of Mr.
See's theory of the fission of nebulae.
But since Herschel's time it has been
discovered that many details, to which
our eyes must remain forever blind, are
revealed by celestial photography. The
photographic film is, in fact, sensitive to
those photographic rays which we may
call invisible light, and many nebulae are
now found to be hardly recognizable,
when photographs of them are compared
with drawings. A conspicuous example
of this is furnished by the great nebula
in Andromeda ; for whereas the drawing
exhibits a cloud with a few dark streaks
in it, the photograph shows a flattened
disk surrounding a central condensation ;
moreover, the disk is seen to be divided
into rings, so that the whole system might
have been drawn by Laplace to illustrate
his celebrated nebular hypothesis of the
origin of the solar system.

Photographs, however, do not always
aid interpretation, for there are some
which serve only to increase the chaos
visible with the telescope. We may sus-
pect, in fact, that the complete system of
a nebula often contains masses of cool
and photographically invisible gas, and

456

A Nook in the Alleghanies.

A NOOK IN THE ALLEGHANIES.

I LEFT Boston at nine o'clock on the
morning of April 23, and reached Pu-
laski, in southwestern Virginia, at ten
o'clock the next forenoon, exactly on
schedule time, — or within five minutes
of it, to give the railroad no more than
its due. It was a journey to meet the
spring, — which for a Massachusetts man
is always a month tardy, — and as such
it was speedily rewarded. Even in Con-
necticut there were vernal signs, a dash
of greenness here and there in the mead-
ows, and generous sproutings of skunk
cabbage about the edges of the swamps ;
and once out of Jersey City we were
almost in a green world. At Bound
Brook, I think it was, the train stopped
where a Norway maple opposite my win-
dow stood all in yellow mist of blos-
soms, and chimney-swifts were shooting
hither and thither athwart the bright
afternoon sky. By the time Philadel-
phia was reached, or by the time we
were done with running in and out of
its several stations, the night had com-
menced falling, and I saw nothing more
of the world, with all that famous val-
ley of the Shenandoah, till I left my
berth at Roanoke. There the orchards
— apple-trees and peach-trees together —
were in full bloom, and on the slopes of
the hills, as we pushed in among them,
rounding curve after curve, shone gor-
geous red patches of the Judas-tree, with
sprinklings of columbines, violets, marsh-
marigolds, and dandelions, and splashes
of deep orange - yellow, — clusters of
some flower then unknown to me, but
pretty certainly the Indian puccoon ; not
the daintiest of blossoms, perhaps, but
among the most effective under such
fugitive, arm's -length conditions. A
plaguing kind of pleasure it is to ride
past such things at a speed which makes

a good look at them impossible, as once,
for the better part of a long forenoon,
in the flatwoods of Florida and southern
Georgia, I rode through swampy places
bright with splendid pitcher-plants, of a
species I had never seen and knew no-
thing about ; straining my eyes to make
out the yellow blossoms, cursing the
speed of the train, — which, neverthe-
less, brought me into Macon several
hours after I should have been in Atlan-
ta, — wishing for my Chapman's Flora
(packed away in my trunk, of course),
and bewailing the certainty that I was
losing the only opportunity I should ever
have to see so interesting a novelty. And
still, — I can say it now, — half a look
is better than no vision.

For fifty miles beyond Roanoke we
traveled southward ; but an ascent of a
thousand feet offset, and more than off-
set, the change of latitude, so that at Pu-
laski we found the apple-trees not yet in
flower, but showing the pink of the buds.
The venerable, pleasingly unsymmetri-
cal sugar maples in the yard of the inn
(the reputed, and real, comforts of which
had drawn me to this particular spot)
were hung full of pale yellow tassels, and
vocal with honey-bees. Spring was here,
and I felt myself welcome.

Till luncheon should be ready, I
strayed into the border of the wood be-
hind the town, and, wandering quite at a
venture, came by good luck upon a path
which followed the tortuous, deeply worn
bed of a brook through a narrow pass
between steep, sparsely wooded, rocky
hills. Along the bank grew plenty of
the common rhododendron, now in early
bud, and on either side of the path were
trailing arbutus and other early flowers.
Yes, I had found the spring, not sum-
mer. The birds bore the same testi-
mony: thrashers, chippers, field spar-
rows, black-and-white creepers, and a

A Nook in the Alleghanies.

457

Carolina chickadee. Summer birds, like
summer flowers, were yet to come. A
brief song, repeated at intervals from
the ragged, half-cleared hillside near a
house, as I returned to the village, puz-
zled me agreeably. It should be the
voice of a Bewick's wren, I thought, but
the notes seemed not to tally exactly with
my recollections of a year ago, on Mis-
sionary Ridge. However, I made only a
half-hearted attempt to decide the point.
There would be time enough for such
investigations by and by. Meanwhile,
it would be a poor beginning to take
a first walk in a new country without
bringing back at least one uncertainty
for expectation to feed upon. It is al-
ways part of to-day's wisdom to leave
something for to-morrow's search. So
I seem to remember reasoning with my-
self ; but perhaps a thought of the noon-
day luncheon had something to do with
my temporizing mood.

In any case no harm came of it. The
singer was at home for the season, and
the very next morning I went up the hill
and made sure of him : a Bewick's wren,
as I had guessed. I heard him there
on sundry occasions afterward. Some-
times he sang one tune, sometimes an-
other. The song heard on the first day,
and most frequently, perhaps, at other
times, consisted of a prolonged indrawn
whistle, followed by a trill or jumble of
notes (not many birds trill, I suppose, in
the technical sense of that word), as if
the fellow had picked up his music from
two masters, — a Bachman finch and a
song sparrow. It soon transpired, great-
ly to my satisfaction, that this was one
of the characteristic songsters of the
town. One bird sang daily not far from
my window (the first time I heard him
I ran out in haste, looking for some new
sparrow, and only came to my senses
when halfway across the lawn), and I
never walked far in the town (the city,
I ought in civility to say) without pass-
ing at least two or three. Sometimes as
many as that would be within hearing at

once. They preferred the town to the
woods and fields, it was evident, and for
a singing-perch chose indifferently a fence
picket, the roof of a hen-coop, a chim-
ney-top, or the ridgepole of one of the
churches, — which latter,by the bye, were
most unchristianly numerous. The peo-
ple are to be congratulated upon having
so jolly and pretty a singer playing hide-
and-seek — the wren's game always —
in their house-yards and caroling un-
der their windows. As a musician he
far outshines the more widely known
house wren, though that bird, too, is ex-
cellent company, with his pert ways, at
once furtive and familiar, and his merry
gurgle of a tune. If he would only
come back to our sparrow-cursed Massa-
chusetts gardens and orchards, as I still
hope he will some time do, I for one
would never twit him upon his inferior-
ity to his Bewickian cousin or to any-
body else.

The city itself would have repaid
study, if only for its unlikeness to cities
in general. It had not " descended out
of heaven," so much was plain, though
this is not what I mean by its unlikeness
to other places ; neither did it seem to
have grown up after the old-fashioned
method, a " slow result of time," — first
a hamlet, then a village, then a town, and
last of all a city. On the contrary, it
bore all the marks of something built to
order ; in the strictest sense, a city made
with hands. And so, in fact, it is ; one
of the more fortunate survivals of what
the people of southwestern Virginia are
accustomed to speak of significantly as
" the boom," — a grand attempt, now a
thing of the past, but still bitterly re-
membered, to make everybody rich by a
concerted and enthusiastic multiplication
of nothing by nothing.

Such a community, I repeat, would
have been an interesting and very " pro-
per study ; " but I had not come south-
ward in a studious mood. I meant to
be idle, having a gift in that direction
which I am seldom able to cultivate as

458

A Nook in the Alleghanies.

it deserves. It is one of the best of
gifts. I could never fall in with what
the poet Gray says of it in one of his
letters. "Take my word and experi-
ence upon it," he writes, " doing nothing
is a most amusing business, and yet nei-
ther something nor nothing gives me any
pleasure." He begins bravely, although
the trivial word " amusing " wakens a
distrust of his sincerity ; but what a piti-
ful conclusion ! How quickly the boom
collapses ! It is to be said for him, how-
ever, that he was only twenty years old
at the time, and a relish for sentiment
and reverie — that is to say, for the plea-
sures of idleness — is apt to be little de-
veloped at that immature age. I had
passed that point by some years ; I was
sure I could enjoy a week of dreaming ;
and, unlike Bewick's wren, I took to the
woods.

To that end I returned again and
again to the brookside path, on which
I had so fortunately stumbled. A man
on my errand could have asked nothing
better, unless, perchance, there had been
a mile or two more of it. Following it
past two or three tumble-down cabins,
the stroller was at once out of the world ;
a single bend in the course of the brook,
and the hills closed in behind him, and
the town might have been a thousand
miles away. Life itself is such a path
as this, I reflected. The forest shuts be-
hind us, and is open only at our feet,
with here and there a flower or a butter-
fly or a strain of music to take up our
thoughts, as we travel on toward the
clearing at the end.

For the first day or two the deciduous
woods still showed no signs of leafage,
but tall, treelike shadbushes were in
flower, — fair brides, veiled as no prin-
cess ever was, — and a solitary red ma-
ple stood blushing at its own premature
fruitfulness. Here a man walked be-
tween acres of hepatica and trailing ar-
butus, — the brook dividing them, —
while the path was strewn with violets,
anemones, buttercups, bloodroot, and

houstonia. In one place was a patch
of some new yellow flowers, like five-
fingers, but more upright, and growing
on bracted scapes ; barren strawberries
(Waldsteinla) Dr. Gray told me they
were called, and one more Latin name
had blossomed into a picture. A manual
of botany, annotated with place-names
and dates, gets after a time to be truly
excellent reading, a refreshment to the
soul, in winter especially, as name after
name calls up the living plant and all
the wild beauty that goes with it. And
with the thought of the barren straw-
berry I can see, what I had all but for-
gotten, though it was one of the first
things I noticed, the sloping ground cov-
ered with large, round, shiny, purplish-
green (evergreen) leaves, all exquisitely
crinkled and toothed. With nothing but
the leaves to depend upon, I could only
conjecture the plant to be galax, a name
which caught my eye by the sheerest ac-
cident, as I turned the pages of the Man-
ual looking for something else ; but the
conjecture turned out to be a sound one,
as the sagacious reader will have already
inferred from the fact of its mention.

In such a place there was no taking
many steps without a halt. My gait was
rather a progressive standing still than
an actual progress ; so that it mattered
little whither or how far the path might
carry me. I was not going somewhere,
— I was already there ; or rather, I was
both at once. Every stroller will know
what I mean. Fruition and expectation
were on my tongue together ; to risk an
unscriptural paradox, what I saw I yet
hoped for. The brook, tumbling noisily
downward, — in some places over almost
regular flights of stone steps, — now in
broad sunshine, now in the shade of pines
and hemlocks and rhododendrons, was
of itself a cheerful companionship, its
inarticulate speech chiming in well with
thoughts that were not so much thoughts
as dumb sensations.

Here and there my footsteps disturbed
a tiny blue butterfly, a bumblebee, or an

A Nook in the Alleghaniea.

459

emerald beetle, — lovers of the sun all of
them, and therefore haunters of the path.
Once a grouse sprang up just before me,
and at another time I stopped to gain
sight of a winter wren, whose querulous
little song-sparrow-like note betrayed his
presence under the overhanging sod of
the bank, where he dodged in and out,
pausing between whiles upon a project-
ing root, to emphasize his displeasure
by nervous gesticulatory bobbings. He
meant I should know what he thought
of me ; and I would gladly have returned
the compliment, but saw no way of do-
ing so. It is a fault in the constitution
of the world that we receive so much
pleasure from innocent wild creatures,
and can never thank them in return.
Black-and-white creepers were singing
at short intervals, and several pairs of
hooded warblers seemed already to have
made themselves at home among the
rhododendron bushes. Just a year be-
fore I had taken my fill of their music
on Walden's Ridge, in Tennessee. Then
it became almost an old story ; now, if
the truth must be told, I mistook the
voice for a stranger's. It was much bet-
ter than I remembered it ; fuller, sweet-
er, less wiry. Perhaps the birds sang
better here in Virginia, I tried to think ;
but that comfortable explanation had
nothing else in its favor. It was more
probable, I was bound to conclude, that
the superior quality of the Kentucky
warbler's music, which was all the time
in my ears on Walden's Ridge, had put
me unjustly out of conceit with the per-
formance of its less taking neighbor. At
all events, I now voted the latter a singer
of decided merit, and was ready to unsay
pretty much all that I had formerly said
against it. I went so far, indeed, as to
grow sarcastic at my own expense, for in
my field memoranda I find this entry :
" The hooded warbler's song is very little
like the redstart's, in spite of what Tor-
rey has written." Verily the pencil is
mightier than the pen, and a note in the
field is worth two in the study. Yet that,

after all, is an unfair way of putting the
matter, since the Tennessee note also was
made in the field. Let one note correct
the other ; or, better still, let each stand
for whatever of truth it expresses. Hap-
pily, there is no final judgment on such
themes. One thing I remarked with
equal surprise and pleasure : the song re-
minded me again and again of the sing-
ing of Swainson's thrush ; not by any
resemblance between the two voices, it
need hardly be said, but by a similarity
in form. Oven-birds were here, speak-
ing their pieces in earnest schoolroom
fashion ; a few chippering snowbirds ex-
cited my curiosity (common Junco hye-
malis, for aught I could discover, but I
profess no certainty on so nice a point) ;
and here and there a flock of migrating
white-throated sparrows bestirred them-
selves lazily, as I brushed too near their
browsing-places.

So I dallied along, accompanied by a
staid, good - natured, woodchuck - loving
collie (he had joined me on the hotel
piazza, with a friendly look in his face,
as much as to say, " The top of the morn-
ing to you, stranger. If you are out for
a walk, I 'm your dog "), till presently I
came to a clearing. Here the path all at
once disappeared, and I made no serious
effort to pick it up again. Why should I
go farther ? I could never be farther
from the world, nor was I likely to find
anywhere a more inviting spot ; and so,
climbing the stony hillside, over beds of
trailing arbutus bloom and past bunches
of birdfoot violets, I sat down in the sun,
on a cushion of long, dry grass.

The gentlest of zephyrs was stirring,
the very breath of spring, soft and of a
delicious temperature. My New Eng-
land cheeks, winter-crusted and still half
benumbed, felt it only in intermittent
puffs, but the pine leaves, more sensitive,
kept up a continuous murmur. Close
about me — close enough, but not too
close — stood the hills. At my back, fill-
ing the horizon in that direction, stretched
an unbroken ridge, some hundreds of feet

460

A Nook in the Atteghanies.

loftier than my own position, and several
miles in length, up the almost perpendic-
ular slope of which, a very rampart for
steepness, ranks of evergreen-trees were
pushing in narrow file. Elsewhere the
land rose in separate elevations ; some of
them, pale with distance, showing through
a gap, or peeping over the shoulder of a
less remote neighbor. Nothing else was
in sight ; and there I sat alone, under
the blue sky, — alone, yet with no lack
of unobtrusive society.

At brief intervals a field sparrow
somewhere down the hillside gave out a
sweet and artless strain, clear as running
water and soft as the breath of spring-
time. How gently it caressed the ear !
The place and the day had found a
voice. Once a grouse drummed, — one
of the most restful of all natural sounds,
to me at least, " drumming " though it
be, speaking always of fair weather and
woodsy quietness and peace ; and once,
to my surprise, I heard a clatter of cross-
bill notes, though I saw nothing of the
birds, — restless souls, wanderers up and
down the earth, and, after the habit of
restless souls in general, gregarious to
the last. A buzzard drifted across the
sky. Like the swan on still St. Mary's
Lake, he floated double, bird and shadow.
A flicker shouted, and a chewink, under
the sweet-fern and laurel bushes, stopped
his scratching once in a while to address
by name a mate or fellow traveler. A
Canadian nuthatch, calling softly, hung
back downward from a pine cone ; and,
nearer by, a solitary vireo sat preening his
feathers, with sweet soliloquistic chatter-
ing, " the very sound of happy thoughts."
I was with him in feeling, though no
match for him in the expression of it.

Again and again I took the brookside
path, and spent an hour of dreams in
this sunny clearing among the hills.
Day by day the sun's heat did its work,
melting the snow of the shadbushes and
the bloodroot, and bringing out the first
scattered flashes of yellowish - green on
the lofty tulip- trees, while splashes of

lively purple soon made me aware that
the ground in some places was as thick
with fringed polygala as it was in other
places with hepatica and arbutus. No
doubt, the fair procession, beauty follow-
ing beauty, would last the season through.
A white violet, new to me ( Viola striata),
was sprinkled along the path, and on the
second day, as I went up the hill to my
usual seat, I dropped upon my knees
before a perfect vision of loveliness, —
a dwarf iris, only two or three inches
above the ground, of an exquisite, truly
heavenly shade, bluish-purple or violet-
blue, standing alone in the midst of the
brown last year's grass. Unless it may
have been by the cloudberry on Mount
Clinton, I was never so taken captive by
a blossom. I worshiped it in silence, —
the grass a natural prayer-rug, — feeling
all the while as if I were looking upon
a flower just created. It would not be
found in Gray, I told myself. But it
was ; and before many days, almost to
my sorrow, it grew to be fairly common.
Once I happened upon a white speci-
men, as to which, likewise, the Manual
had been before me. New flowers are
almost as rare as new thoughts.

It was amid the dead grass and rust-
colored stones of this same hillside that
I found, also, the velvety, pansy-like va-
riety of the birdfoot violet, ^here and
there a plant surrounded by its relatives
of the more every-day sort. This was
my first sight of it ; but I saw it after-
ward at Natural Bridge, and again at
Afton, from which I infer that it must
be rather common in the mountain region
of Virginia, notwithstanding Dr. Gray,
who, as I now notice, speaks as if Mary-
land were its southern limit. Indeed,
to judge from my hasty experience, Al-
leghanian Virginia is a thriving-place of
the violet family in general. In my very
brief visit, I was too busy (or too idle,
but my idleness was really of a busy
complexion) to give the point as much
attention as I now wish I had given to
it, else I am sure I could furnish the

A Nook in the Alleghanies.

461

particulars to bear oat my statement.
At Pulaski, without any thought of mak-
ing a list, I remarked abundance of
Viola pedata, V. palmata, and V. so-
gittata, with V. pubescens, V. canina
Muhlenbergii, and four forms new to
my eyes, — V. pedata bicolor and V.
striata, just mentioned, V- hastata and
V. pubescens scabriuscula. If to these
be added V. Canadensis and V, rostrata,
both of them common at Natural Bridge,
we have at least a pretty good assort-
ment to be picked up by a transient vis-
itor, whose eyes, moreover, were oftener
in the trees than on the ground.

My single white novelty, V. striata,
grew in numbers under the maples in
the grounds of the inn. The two yellow
ones were found farther away, and were
the means of more excitement. I had
gone down the creek, one afternoon, to
the neighborhood of the second furnace
(two smelting-furnaces being, as far as
a stranger could judge, the main reason
of the town's existence), and thence had
taken a side-road that runs up among the
hills in the direction of Peak Knob, the
highest point near Pulaski. A lucky
misdirection, or misunderstanding, sent
me too far to the right, and there my eye
rested suddenly upon a bank covered
with strange-looking yellow violets ; like
pubescens in their manner of growth,
but noticeably different in the shape of
the leaves, and noticeably not pubescent.
A reference to the Manual, on my re-
turn to the hotel, showed them to be
V. hastata, — " rare ; " and that magic
word, so inspiriting to all collectors,
made it indispensable that I should visit
the place again, with a view to addi-
tional specimens. The next morning it
rained heavily, and the road, true to its
Virginian character, was a discourage-
ment to travel, a diabolical misconjunc-
tion of slipperiness and supreme adhe-
siveness ; but I had come prepared for
such difficulties, and anyhow, in vaca-
tion time and in a strange country, there
was no staying all day within doors. I

had gathered my specimens, of which,
happily, there was no lack, and was wan-
dering about under an umbrella among
the dripping bushes, seeing what I could
see, thinking more of birds than of blos-
soms, when behold ! I stumbled upon a
second novelty, still another yellow vio-
let, suggestive neither of V. pubescens
nor of anything else that I had ever seen.
It went into the box (I could find but two
or three plants), and then I felt that it
might rain never so hard, the day was
saved.

A hurried reference to the Manual
brought me no satisfaction, and I dis-
patched one of the plants forthwith to a
friendly authority, for whom a compar-
ison with herbarium specimens would
supply any conceivable gaps in his own
knowledge. " Here is something not
described in Gray's Manual," I wrote to
him, " unless," I added (not to be caught
napping, if I could help it), " it be V.
pubescens scabriuscula." And I made
bold to say further, in my unscientific
enthusiasm, that whatever the plant
might or might not turn out to be, I did
not believe it was properly to be con-
sidered as a variety of V. pubescens. In
appearance and habit it was too unlike
that familiar Massachusetts species. If
he could see it growing, I was persuaded
he would be of the same opinion, though
I was well enough aware of my entire
unfitness for meddling with such high
questions.

He replied at once, knowing the symp-
toms of collector's fever, it is to be pre-
sumed, and the value of a prompt treat-
ment. The violet was V. pubescens sca-
briuscula, he said, — at least, it was the
plant so designated by the Manual ; but
he went on to tell me, for my comfort,
that some botanists accepted it as of spe-
cific rank, and that my own impression
about it would very likely prove to be
correct. Since then I have been glad to
find this view of the question supported
by Messrs. Britton and Brown in their
new Illustrated Flora, where the plant is

462

A Nook in the Alleghanies.

listed as V. scabriuscula. As to all of
which it may be subjoined that the less a
man knows, the prouder he feels at hav-
ing made a good guess. It would be too
bad if so common an evil as ignorance
were not attended by some slight com-
pensations.

These novelties in violets, so inter-
esting to the finder, if to nobody else
(though since the time here spoken of
he has seen the " rare " hastata growing
broadcast, literally by the acre, in the
woodlands of southwestern North Caro-
lina), were gathered, as before said, not
far from the foot of Peak Knob. From
the moment of my arrival in Pulaski I
had had my eye upon that eminence, the
highest of the hills round about, looking
to be, as I was told it was, a thousand
feet above the valley level, or some three
thousand feet above tide-water. I call
it Peak Knob, but that was not the name
I first heard for it. On the second af-
ternoon of my stay I had gone through
the town and over some shadeless fields
beyond, following a crooked, hard-baked,
deeply rutted road, till I found myself
in a fine piece of old woods, — oaks, tu-
lip-trees (poplars, the Southern people
call them), black walnuts, and the like ;
leafless now, all of them, and silent as
the grave, but certain a few days hence
to be alive with wings and vocal with
spring music. In imagination I was al-
ready beholding them populous with
chats, indigo-birds, wood pewees, wood
thrushes, and warblers (it is one of our
ornithological pleasures to make such
anticipatory catalogues in unfamiliar
places), when my prophetic vision was
interrupted by the approach of a cart, in
which sat a man driving a pair of oxen
by means of a single rope line. He
stopped at once on being accosted, and
we talked of this and that ; the inquisi-
tive traveler asking such questions as
came into his head, and the wood-carter
answering them one by one in a neigh-
borly, unhurried spirit. Along with the
rest of my interrogatories I inquired

the name of the high mountain yonder,
beyond the valley. " That is Peach
Knob," he replied, — or so I understood
him. "Peach Knob? "said I. "Why is
that ? Because of the peaches raised
there ? " " No, they just call it that,"
he answered ; but he added, as an after-
thought, that there were some peach or-
chards, he believed, on the southern slope.
Perhaps he had said " Peak Knob," and
was too polite to correct a stranger's
hardness of hearing. At all events, the
mountain appeared to be generally known
by that more reasonable - sounding if
somewhat tautological appellation.

By whatever name it should be called,
I was on my way to scale it when I
found the roadside bright with hastate-
leaved violets, as before described. My
mistaken course, and some ill-considered
attempts I made to correct the same by
striking across lots, took me so far out
of the way, and so much increased the
labor of the ascent, that the afternoon
was already growing short when I
reached the crest of the ridge below the
actual peak, or knob ; and as my mood
was not of the most ambitious, and the
clouds had begun threatening rain, I
gave over the climb at that point, and
sat down on the edge of the ridge, hav-
ing the wood behind me, to regain my
breath and enjoy the landscape.

A little below, on the knolls halfway
up the mountain, was a settlement of
colored mountaineers, a dozen or so of
scattered houses, each surrounded by a
garden and orchard patch, — apple-trees,
cherry-trees, and a few peach-trees, with
currant and gooseberry bushes ; a really
thrifty-seeming alpine hamlet, with a
maze of winding by-paths and half- worn
carriage-roads making down from it to
the highway below. With or without
reason, it struck me as a thing to be sur-
prised at, this colony of black high-
landers.

The distance was all a grand confusion
of mountains, one crowding another on
the horizon ; some nearer, some farther

A Nook in the Alleghanies.

463

away, and one lofty and massive peak
in the northeast lording it over the rest.
Close at hand in the valley, at my left,
lay the city of Pulaski, with its furnaces,
— a mile or two apart, having a stretch
of open country between, — its lazy
creek, and its multitudinous churches.
A Pulaskian would find it hard to miss
of heaven, it seemed to me. Everywhere
else the foreground was a grassy, pastoral
country, broken by occasional patches of
leafless woods, and showing here and
there a solitary house, — a scene wide-
ly unlike that from any Massachusetts
mountain of anything near the same al-
titude. Hereabout (and one reads the
same story in traveling over the state)
men do not huddle together in towns,
and get their bread by making things in
factories, but are still mostly tillers of the
soil, planters and graziers, with elbow-
room and breathing-space. The more
cities and villages, the more woods, —
such appears to be the law. In Massa-
chusetts there are six or seven times as
many inhabitants to the square mile as
there are in Virginia ; yet Massachusetts
seen from its hilltops is all a forest, and
Virginia a cleared country.

Rain began falling by the time the val-
ley was reached, on my return, and com-
ing to a store in the vicinity of the lower
furnace, — the one store of that suburb,
so far as I could discover, — I stepped
inside, partly for shelter, partly to see
the people at their Saturday shopping.
A glance at the walls and the show-cases
made it plain that one store was enough.
You had only to ask for what you want-
ed : a shotgun , a revolver, a violin case,
a shovel, a plug of tobacco, a pound of
sugar, a coifee-pot, a dress pattern, a rib-
bon, a necktie, a pair of trousers, or what
not. The merchant might have written
over his door, " Humani nihil alienum ; "
if he had been a city shopkeeper, he
might even have called his establishment
a department store, and filled the Sun-
day newspapers with the wonders of it.
Then it would have been but a step to

the governor's chair, or possibly to a seat
in the national council.

The place was like a beehive ; custom-
ers of both sexes and both colors going
and coming with a ceaseless buzz of gos-
sip and bargaining, while the proprietor
and his clerks — two of them smoking
cigarettes — bustled to and fro behind
the counters, improving the shining hour.
One strapping young colored man stand-
ing near me inquired for suspenders, and,
on having an assortment placed before
him, selected without hesitation (it is a
good customer who knows his own mind)
a brilliant yellow pair embroidered or
edged with equally brilliant red. Hav-
ing bought them, at an outlay of only
twelve cents, he proceeded to the piazza,
where he took off his coat and put them
on. That was what he had bought them
for. His taste was impressionistic, I
thought. He believed in the primary
colors. And why quarrel with him ?
" Dear child of Nature, let them rail,"
I was ready to say. It is not Mother
Nature, but Dame Fashion, another per-
son altogether, and a most ridiculous
old body, who prescribes that mascu-
line humanity shall never consider itself
" dressed " except in funereal black and
white.

What Nature herself thinks of colors,
and what freedom she uses in mixing
them, was to be newly impressed upon
me this very afternoon, on my walk home-
ward. In a wet place near the edge of
the woods, at some distance from the
road, — so sticky after the rain that I
was thankful to keep away from it, —
I came suddenly upon a truly magni-
ficent display of Virginia lungwort, a
flower that I half remembered to have
seen at one time and another in gardens,
but here growing in a garden of its own,
and after a manner to put cultivation to
the blush. The homely place, nothing
but the muddy border of a pool, was
glorified by it ; the flowers a vivid blue
or bluish-purple, and the buds bright
pink. The plants are of a weedy sort,

464

Love in the Winds.

little to my fancy, and the blossoms,
taken by themselves, are not to be com-
pared for an instant with such modest
woodland beauties as were spoken of a
few pages back, trailing arbutus, fringed
polygala, and the vernal fleur-de-lis ; but
the color, seen thus in the mass, and come
upon thus unexpectedly, was a memor-
able piece of splendor. Such pictures,
humble as they may seem, and little as
they may be regarded at the time, are
often among the best rewards of travel.
Memory has ways of her own, and trea-
sures what trifles she will.

And with another of her trifles let
me be done with this part of my story.
There was still the end of the afternoon
to spare, and, the rain being over, I
skirted the woods, walking and standing
still by turns, till all at once out of a
thicket just before me came the voice
of a bird, — a brown thrasher, I took
it to be, — running over his song in the
very smallest of undertones ; phrase af-
ter phrase, each with its natural empha-
sis and cadence, but all barely audible,
though the singer could be only a few
feet away. It was wonderful, the beauty

of the muted voice and the fluency and
perfection of the tune. The music
ceased ; and then, after a moment, I
heard, several times repeated, still only
a breath of sound, the mew of a cat-
bird. With that I drew a step or two
nearer, and there the bird sat, motion-
less and demure, as if music and a lis-
tener were things equally remote from
his consciousness. What was in his
thoughts I know not. He may have
been tuning up, simply, making sure of
his technic, rehearsing upon a dumb
keyboard. Possibly, as men and women
do, he had sung without knowing it, —
dreaming of a last year's mate or of
summer days coming, — or out of mere
comfortable vacancy of mind. Catbirds
are not among my dearest favorites ; a
little too fussy, somewhat too well aware
of themselves, I generally think ; more
than a little too fragmentary in their ef-
fusions, beginning and beginning, and
never getting under way, like an impro-
viser who cannot find his theme ; but
this bird in the Alleghanies sang as be-
witching a song as my ears ever lis-
tened to.

Bradford Torrey.

LOVE IN THE WINDS.

WHEN* I am standing on a mountain crest,
Or hold the tiller in the dashing spray,
My love of you leaps foaming in my breast,
Shouts with the winds and sweeps to their foray;
My heart bounds with the horses of the sea,
And plunges in the wild ride of the night,
Flaunts in the teeth of tempest the large glee
That rides out Fate and welcomes gods to fight.
Ho, love ! I laugh aloud for love of you,
Glad that our love is fellow to rough weather;
No fretful orchid hothoused from the dew,
But hale and hardy as the highland heather,

Rejoicing in the wind that stings and thrills,

Comrade of ocean, playmate of the hills.

Richard Hovey.

On the Teaching of English.

465

ON THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH.

IT is probably because we live in the
midst of it that we are not fully sensible
of the change now taking place in our
intellectual life. Possibly, too, because
we are looking for some general spec-
tacular transformation at the beginning
of the next century, we fail to see the
bearing of the one that has already
taken place in this. But the knowledge
we now have of the interrelation of nat-
ural phenomena, and the limitation such
knowledge places upon us, must, directly
or remotely, condition all our thought.
While the facts of life may have re-
mained the same, their significance is ir-
revocably altered. It is no longer pos-
sible for us, strive as we may, to have
the same ideas that our grandfathers had,
when we think about the things of most
concern to us. If we try to formulate
our notions as they formulated theirs,
we must perforce give the terms a mean-
ing which they have never had before.
If we make our notions anew, the break
with the past is apparent. But, obvious
or not, the break is a real one, and a
widening of the cleft is inevitable.

If we set ourselves to consider the in-
tellectual life of the last quarter-century
apart from all political and social mani-
festations, we shall see much in it to
suggest a parallel to that of western Eu-
rope in the last quarter of the fifteenth
century. Then the area of thought had
been enlarged by the discovery of a new
world, and the great pieces snatched
from the unknown had been found to be
much like the known. The operations
of nature were seen to be complex and
intricate, stretching out far beyond the
ken of what then constituted men's know-
ledge. A formal and mechanical idea
of the universe had thus to be superseded
by one more elastic and more in accord
with ascertained fact. So now, the bounds
of human knowledge have extended

VOL. T.XXXI. — NO. 486. 30

themselves with such rapidity as to leave
us temporarily without standards. What
in its first expression seemed to be a
promising method of biological study has
become the method of knowledge itself,
and has presented to the mind a new
conception of the unity of the universe.
At the same time, it has upset past no-
tions of the relation of the individual to
his environment, and has brought in its
train secondary changes which are rap-
idly altering the face of society.

The quickening of mental activity, the
expansion of the horizon of thought, the
reawakening of sympathy, the changed
notions of the physical world, the con-
cern for the future of the race, — there
seems but one thing missing to make the
parallel perfect, namely, the kindling of
the imagination to the creation of a new
art and a new literature. But it is yet
too early to say that even this feature is
absent : we may have already before us
a manifestation of such an art and such
a literature that is not yet intelligible ;
or the spark that is ultimately to burst
into flame may be still smouldering, and
we must await another generation to be-
hold its splendor.

When the Renaissance first came to
England, the men who were the bearers
of the newly kindled torch of learning
immediately set to work to reform the
educational system of their country.
They were unwilling to enjoy by them-
selves and in their own time what they
thought should be the property of all
for all time. They were fully aware
that the work of their generation was to
prepare the next to enter upon its in-
heritance. So the opposition they met in
the universities only strengthened them
in their endeavor to found good pre-
paratory schools ; they were content to
hold their own against their contempo-
raries, if they could win over posterity.

466

On the Teaching of English.

And no student of literature can fail to
see that the glorious development which
we find in the work of Spenser, Shake-
speare, and Milton is directly traceable
to the efforts of these men of the Eng-
lish Renaissance to adapt the English
educational system to the new condi-
tions.

In doing this they were able to seize
and expand a foreign ideal of culture, to
read into it a new meaning, to inspire it
with a new force, to make it their own
oy the simple process of extension. This
was the best they could do, — the only
thing they could do. England's intel-
lectual life had not yet furnished enough
material to build a new culture out of.
Its past literature, even if it had been
adequate, was not understood ; what it
might have done for men, had they been
able to understand it, is shown by the
influence the early printed texts of Chau-
cer, with all their mistakes and their
absence of rhythm, had upon Spenser.
There was nothing left but to graft upon
the native stock a richer growth, if they
were to secure the full fruitage they de-
sired. Nevertheless, the classical ideal
was a foreign ideal, and English learning
and English literature suffered, though
unavoidably, from the grafting. The
damage, however, was not apparent at
once. Spenser, though he did dabble in
English hexameters, was strong enough
to escape the infection ; Shakespeare de-
rived his learning from life ; Milton had
Spenser for a model. But the lesser
contemporary geniuses paid the penalty,
the literature of the following periods
suffered for it, and we of this generation
inherit a culture that is inadequate to
our needs because of it.

Our situation to-day is much the same
as the one England found itself in at
the opening of the sixteenth century.
We need a new ideal. We should be-
gin just as the English humanists did ;
we should readjust our educational ma-
chinery in the light of our new need.

But this time we should seek our ideal
at home, and try to find it in the fuller
development of our own national life.
Our first aim should be to make our chil-
dren masters of the form of thought that
is native to them, and familiar with its
best expression. Once they are given a
home in their own place and in their
own generation, we may safely attempt
to make them citizens of the world. To
reverse the process in our present situa-
tion is to defeat the best ends of culture.

The classical ideal transferred bodily
into our national life will no longer sat-
isfy us. There are too many contradic-
tions and anomalies in it ; it is not pos-
sible to revivify it, or even to galvanize
it into a semblance of life, and make it
do the work of the present time. We
may go on making successive attempts
to modify it, but we shall never find it
adequate, because it is a culture essen-
tially unsympathetic, aristocratic, exclu-
sive. Whether we view it from the
standpoint of ancient or from that of
post - mediaeval history, it will always
have a significance for us, and no small
one ; and in its historic setting it will
continue to be the richest field known
to human experience. But to make it
the norm of our education, to rely on the
diffusion of it to better and beautify the
world and to rectify all the horrible so-
cial unevennesses which confront us, is
to fail to realize the age we live in.

We are kept from abandoning the pre-
sent system chiefly because we do not
yet understand the fitness of our lan-
guage to impart disciplinary training,
and the richness of our literature to give
us the basis of intellectual culture. We
would rather

' ' bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of."

Yet if we fully understood the rich-
ness of the gift that modern scholarship
has made us, we should see that our
fears are idle. We should know that
the historical study of the English lan-
guage would bring us into contact with

On the Teaching of English.

467

a range of phenomena precisely simi-
lar to those presented by the study of
other natural phenomena, training the
mind to notice and classify essential dis-
tinctions, and not accidental ones. We
should know that the historical study of
our literature would put us in immediate
possession of a past national experience
which we now get only indirectly and
after long toil, through imperfect glossa-
ries and inapt annotations. We should
then cease to be surprised that Shake-
speare, who knew not Plato, could see
into the meaning of life with his Eng-
lish eyes as far as Plato did with his
Greek eyes, and give up all foolish at-
tempts to father his work on some one
else whom we consider a better philo-
sopher. English poetry would appeal
to us with a familiar voice that would
make its way without impediment to the
depths of our richest experience, and we
should cease to hypnotize ourselves with
imperfectly understood rhythms foreign
to our ears. After we had studied Eng-
lish in this way, the study of any lan-
guage or of any literature would fall into
its proper place, bringing its contribu-
tion to our experience unalloyed with
meaningless distinctions and transcen-
dental vaguenesses.

Again we are held back by the fear
that our love of beauty will fall victim
to our love of knowledge, if we forsake
our ancient ideal of beautiful form as it
is presented to us by classic culture.
Here we make the same difficulty in a
new way that we used to make for our-
selves when we set to work to under-
stand the world of sense. We precon-
ceive a norm of what things ought to be,
and strive to make things conform to it.
We make our pursuit of beauty an en-
deavor after a perfection that does not
exist, a conformity to a simple type
made out of a few intelligible elements
abstracted from a complex whole. We
naturally find such a type in its purest
state in a culture unenriched by an in-
tricate experience. There was a period

in the history of English literature when
the ideal of a perfect sentence was one
in which English thought was so run
into a classic mould as to make the Eng-
lish reader stand on his head to see the
meaning of it. That was because the
obvious fact in most Latin sentences
was a periodic structure ; it was an easy
road to beautiful expression to assume
this perfection for English sentences,
and make them conform to it. Men shut
their eyes to a multiplicity of form in
English writing which they did not un-
derstand, and chose out of a foreign
tongue a single form which they did.
In the same way, a false type of beauty
has often been set up in high places
where men should look for a real one.
" Truth is beauty," and art will never
starve on fact, if facts are rightly known.
Even if we had to abandon Hellenic
culture entirely, — which we need not
do, — we should not have to concern our-
selves with a possible loss of our sense
of beauty. If we devote ourselves,
therefore, to widening and deepening
the channels for the communication of
truth, we need not worry about the sor-
didness and ugliness of human life.
Art is meaningless that is not founded
upon universal sympathy, and sympathy
is but the refinement of the intelligence.

The study of our own language and
its literature thus lies at the root of the
whole matter. Any plan which leaves
it out, or gives it but second place, will
surely fail. Any plan based on it, no
matter how imperfect, will yield profit if
we follow it.

In the first place, language is not
only our means of expressing thought,
but is also the instrument of our think-
ing. Our minds are a sort of senate,
wherein we transact our little affairs of
state, — playing now the r6le of speech-
maker, now that of audience, now that
of president, — and our business is con-
ducted in the words which are native to
us. Language is thus part and parcel
of our thinking life. We cannot escape

468

On the Teaching of English.

from it. It becomes a part of us, and
throat and hand, ever in readiness to
wait upon the activities of the brain,
unite in the operation of thought, and
make the function a triple one, to for-
mulate, interpret, or record at the will
of the thinker. It is because language
is thus thought itself that it has a life of
its own, continually and unconsciously
changing its form with the mental opera-
tions of the individual and of the race.

Our knowledge, then, of our vernacu-
lar, our familiarity with its resources,
our consciousness of its limitations, de-
termine the quality of our thought.
The number of words we speak or write
each day may be small or great, accord-
ing to our habits of life, but if we are
thinking men, the number we actually
use is measured by the ten thousands ;
and to us users of the English language
they are English words.

And they will always be English words
so long as our mothers speak the Eng-
lish language. There is a sense, even,
in which we cannot Americanize them.
We may differentiate their forms or
modify their sounds, but we cannot
make a new language that will be Amer-
ican, as German speech is German, any
more than we could make for ourselves
six-fingered right hands. The teach-
ing of the English language, therefore,
ought to be the first and chief concern
of our education. Though the stu-
dent never expected to put pen to pa-
per, never expected to read a book for
anything but the absolute knowledge
contained in it, he ought to know, and
know thoroughly, the idiom of his ver-
nacular. Ignorance or half knowledge
of it is for him the greatest risk he can
incur. If he is to think clearly, he must
have clear notions of words, — what
they represent, what they convey. He
must formulate all that he is to know of
the relation he stands in to the world
about him by means of words, and in
proportion as they live in his mind will
his thought be quick and vital.

But, some one may say, we have
already this knowledge of our native
tongue through an experience dating
from childhood, and therefore education
need not concern itself with it. A partial
knowledge, yes, and a substantial know-
ledge as far as it goes, if it were only
let alone, and the " heir of all the ages "
were allowed undisturbed possession of
his heritage. His thought brings with
it its own words, the clearest, strong-
est words of the language. His natural
experience adds to their number and
power, and, were it not interfered with,
would lead him, as it has led so many
men who have not been forced through
the routine of our higher culture, to
something like ultimate mastery of idiom.
But the natural process is interfered
with. The interference begins so early
that it is difficult to appreciate its extent.
A child is learning to read English. Its
early progress is rapid. The mystery
begins to unravel. The cat catches the
rat in the picture ; the cat catches the
rat as the eye follows the signs beneath
the picture ; the cat catches the rat
as the hand follows the eye along the
straight and crooked lines beneath the
print. Ear, eye, and hand, each alone
and unaided, can make the cat catch the
rat, — three powers over an absent world
of sense where there was but one before.
So far all is simple and beautiful, and
he is a dull teacher who cannot make
the mind glow in its realization of such a
possession. Soon, however, there comes
confusion : there is cow, plough, and
furrow, there is rough, and though, and
slough. Some words sound like others,
but look quite different when printed or
written. Some words look like others,
but are sounded differently. The child
can write and read some words by a sim-
ple process of association which soon
becomes a reflex action. Others he has
to memorize, and it is a long time be-
fore he can reproduce their forms uncon-
sciously ; in some cases he never learns
to write them without a voluntary effort.

On the Teaching of English.

469

Thas, oatside his proper language, there
is a large number of written words
which are mere pictures learned and re-
produced bodily, Chinese-fashion, every
time they are needed. Now, he does
not know which of these forms are gen-
uine, and which are counterfeit ; that
is, he does not know which represent the
form of the language he uses, and which
represent something else. The whole
circulation is therefore confused, and he
grows suspicious of the genuine coin.

The confusion soon extends from the
representation of thought to thought it-
self. Meaningless and artificial distinc-
tions become a part of it, and the child
develops a literary sense in addition to
his common sense. What he is really
doing when he employs the written lan-
guage is to use symbols which were once
more or less accurate representations of
the sounds the words had in Middle
English and early New English. As
the changes which have taken place
since then have been uniform for the
most part, the discrepancy between the
New English word and its Middle Eng-
lish equivalent is not apparent except in
the case of letters which have been lost
out of the modern speech. The student
becomes aware of it only when he stud-
ies a foreign language which uses the
same alphabet. But there are a num-
ber of words — common ones, too —
where we have got hold of a written
form which never has represented the
spoken form we now yoke with it. It is
these words which cause the worst con-
fusion. The confusion, however, would
be one of form only, and would not taint
the thought, if the student, while learn-
ing to use his language, were also gain-
ing a knowledge of its development and
a power to classify its phenomena intel-
ligently. Unfortunately, our elemen-
tary education gives no knowledge of
historical English grammar, though the
subject is neither difficult nor recondite.

The student completes his early train-
ing with as little knowledge of the his-

tory of his speech as he would have if
it were Greek. Indeed, he often knows
more about Greek than he does about
English ; so that later on in his educa-
tional career, when he becomes a special
student of English and makes some at-
tempt to read it in its earlier form, he
fails to grasp the significance of its com-
monest phenomena, because he looks at
them through the blue spectacles of his
Hellenic culture.

The consequent ignorance of English
that is to be found among the most high-
ly educated men is amazing. The public
discussions that turn on points of " ety-
mology," pronunciation, or syntax rarely
fail to reveal it. Men cavil at idioms
that are as old as the language itself, and
argue with one another about questions
of authenticated fact until " philologist "
has almost come to mean " quibbler."

What wonder that the ignorance is
so widespread, when so little interest is
taken in the scientific study of the sub-
ject ? We have now associations for the
furtherance of almost every doctrine or
endeavor conceivable : the collection of
postage-stamps has its society, the pro-
pagation of esoteric Buddhism has its
band of enthusiasts, the study of Brown-
ing's poetry has its cultus, and hundreds
of other objects and aims, trivial or se-
rious, are thrust upon the notice of the
public through the organized effort of
unselfish propagandists. But there is no
American society or association in exist-
ence whose sole object is the dissemina-
tion of scientific knowledge of the history
and structure of the language by which
all such concerted action is rendered pos-
sible and effective. Nor are we better
off in respect to special journals. Ger-
many has two excellent ones devoted
solely to the scientific study of English ;
America and England have none.

A knowledge of the history and struc-
ture of English is necessary to the full
understanding of English literature, and
is a necessity which we cannot escape.
Our literature is written in a living Ian-

470

On the Teaching of English.

guage, constantly changing, and never
fixed in a classic form. While it is quite
true that in many cases he who makes
literature is conscious of a deliberate ef-
fort to transcend the limits of his own
generation and write for all time, he can
achieve his end only by making himself
intelligible to his own generation ; and
unless there is something in his work
to catch contemporary attention he does
not stand much chance of reaching pos-
terity. The literature of a living lan-
guage must always appeal to the ears
of contemporaries, for the maker of it
cannot forecast the language of the fu-
ture. Bacon knew this, and chose Latin
to be the vehicle of his thought when
he set about " raising his monument of
enduring bronze," because Latin, being a
classic, was not subject to change. Eng-
lish literature, therefore, to be read with
full intelligence, must be read in the lan-
guage of the time when it was written ;
it must needs suffer somewhat if trans-
lated into a subsequent vernacular.

The first thing to do, then, in the
study of English literature, is to read it
intelligently, to hear the very voice of
it speaking to us directly and without
impediment, to make its thought pass
through our minds as it passed through
the minds of those who created it, to
make its thought our thought. There
must be no half-knowledge, no vague
concepts. The words of it should not
convey hazy notions. If we are to know
the full force of it, we must know that
the words which the author chose were
the only words he could have chosen.
The turns of expression must be happy,
fitting the thought like a glove. It is
the perfection of form that makes it
literature and gives it a claim to our
attention.

Without an historical knowledge of our
language such a full appreciation of much
of our best literature is impossible. Crit-
icism with the best of intentions cannot
make up by any aesthetic fervor for what
it lacks of such knowledge. A concrete

case may make this clearer. There has
appeared but lately an imposing book
on the history of English poetry, which
speaks of the influence of Chaucer's har-
monious and scientific versification upon
the early Elizabethans. In the ten lines
quoted for illustration there are five
forms of expression that Chaucer could
not have used, two that he did not use,
and one that no writer or speaker of
English has ever used. The critic could
not read intelligently the poetry he was
criticising, — a disqualification which one
feels ought to be a serious one. If the
writer had chosen the history of Greek
poetry for his field, he would have been
laughed out of court for such errors.

It might be urged that such incom-
petence concerns only the early periods
of English literature ; that in the treat-
ment of the later periods our criticism
is quite adequate. But such ignorance
as that cited shows how important it is
to know, and know thoroughly, too, the
whole history of English literature, if one
is to understand any part of it. While
it may not be possible, in discussing
its later forms, to make such gross mis-
takes as those cited from our critic of
Chaucer, we do fail, and always shall
fail, to get the full force of its thought
where the words are strangers to us.
This is especially true of Shakespeare.
We do not need to cite examples in evi-
dence of half-knowledge of Shakespeare's
vocabulary and idiom. The common edi-
tions bristle with them. The amount of
good printers' ink that has been wasted
in tortuous discussions of Shakespeare's
text, where the text was perfectly clear
to Elizabethan ears, would have been far
better used if employed to disseminate a
knowledge of Shakespeare's idiom and
its historical development. The cum-
brous apparatus of annotation and glos-
sary could then be dispensed with, and
the poet would speak to us simply and
directly, without the need of an inter-
preter. Indeed, the burden of comment
on Shakespeare's text is already felt to

On the Teaching of English.

471

be intolerable, and one is tempted to
doubt the worth of literature which needs
so much explanation to make it clear.
We have at last a text constructed upon
sound principles of evidence from the
material which has come down to us.
Why not take it as being the best we
are likely to get, and study it in the
light of the best knowledge attainable of
Shakespeare's speech ; giving over such
idle speculations as whether he might
have written "shuffle off this mortal
veil" or "shuffle off the mortal soil,"
and trying to fathom the meaning of
"shuffle off this mortal coil"? Simi-
larly, in reading our English Bible, if
we are to use Tyndale's translation of
the New Testament, why not learn Tyn-
dale's language, and cease to think of it
as a sacred tongue ; or if it seems to us
to be mystical and but half intelligible,
why not make a new translation into
modern English for ourselves ?

Our present system of studying Eng-
lish literature from the standpoint of
New English grammar is creating for
us two languages where but one has ex-
isted in the past, — a formal language of
literary expression more or less tran-
scendental, and an informal language of
every-day life, practical, familiar, simple,
direct. In the case of the Bible, the one
has already become a sacerdotal tongue,
full of anomalies in syntax and idiom,
and set apart as a sacred speech because
of its obsolete pronouns and outgrown
verb-forms. The homely speech of an
early Christianity which sought inspira-
tion in the humblest walks of life has
thus become artificial, and has got sepa-
rated from actual experience. It now
stands in need of a gloss almost as much
as the Vulgate did when, in answer to
the homely cry " Give us the Scriptures,"
Tyndale translated it into the speech of
every-day life. When the historical de-
velopment of the English language and
literature is once clearly understood, this
artificial process will be at an end.

There is another advantage to be de-

rived from the historical study of Eng-
lish grammar, which is directly con-
nected with the study of our literature,
and that is the escape from the petty
tyrannies of shallow criticism. A book
like the one already cited, with its ar-
ray of unfamiliar names, its multitude
of terms which the reader assumes to
be technical because he does not un-
derstand them, its apparent familiarity
with the niceties of classical culture,
stands, like an imposing porter, haughti-
ly demanding credentials for admittance
to the walled garden of English liter-
ature. If the reader knew the English
language thoroughly, and could always
read it without having it explained to
him, he would easily be able to distinguish
between sound criticism and parade of
learning. The text itself would be in-
telligible to him, and he would resent all
attempts to make it mystical. Culture
would thus become a vital thing to him,
ever germane to his experience.

In like manner, he would escape the
petty tyrannies of artificial distinctions in
writing ; he would no longer be restricted
to an idiom that conformed to the prin-
ciples of the art of rhetoric as inter-
preted by men who knew more of Latin
than of English. Instead of being re-
stricted to a narrow range of unexcep-
tionable phraseology he would know the
literary power of his own speech, writing
it simply and clearly, and expecting oth-
ers to do the same. If they did not make
themselves clear, he would seek the rea-
son in the obscurity of their thinking,
and not in his un familiarity with their
idiom. He would thus gain independ-
ence and freedom in expressing his
thought, and his gain would undoubted-
ly be ultimately the gain of literature.

There remains another and perhaps
the most cogent reason why we should
give over our present system of English
teaching, and should devise one more
in accord with present needs in the light
of the best knowledge we can get. That

472

On the Teaching of English.

is the one of economy. If education is
to cope with the present, to say nothing
of the future, there must be a saving of
time somewhere. The development of
new sciences, the urgency of competi-
tion, the enhancing of practical achieve-
ments, the necessity for more thorough
preparation for life at an earlier age, and
above all the need for a culture that shall
be widespread and not confined to a for-
tunate few, — these have been putting
burdens on our educational system, until
now the load can no longer be borne.

It was earlier thought possible to solve
the problem by differentiating culture
and specializing training ; but the duali-
ty that has been supposed to exist be-
tween science and culture is not so ap-
parent as it used to be. We are coming
to think that there is only one kind of
knowledge, and that is knowledge. A cul-
ture that is built up in ignorance of the
world that lies about it is inadequate,
not to say foolish. A science that knows
the world as it is, and does not know
what man has thought about the world,
has lost its perspective. Neither hu-
manistic ignorance nor crude science is
a desirable ideal. So this division of la-
bor in education is not possible. But to
teach both science and the humanities
is not practicable, with our present sys-
tem ; for by the time the process of edu-
cation is complete, the individual, re-
maining a consumer, has run into the
period when he ought to be a producer
of wealth. He has practically been set
apart to receive his education, while oth-
ers, not so set apart, have had to sup-
port him. Such culture must always be
selfish, continually growing more so as
conditions of life become more complex.

To lengthen the period is out of the
question : we must make better use of
the time we have. Economy must be in-
troduced ; things of doubtful value must
give place to things of ascertained value ;
remote expediencies must be sacrificed
for immediate necessities.

It has already been shown how the

study of English will aid us in thinking
more clearly, in itself a saving of time ;
and in conveying thought more easily,
again a saving of time. Beside these and
the economy arising from substituting a
natural for an artificial process, we shall
gain to some better use the time we now
waste in teaching an unintelligible sys-
tem of orthography. Even if we con-
tinue to write the English of an earlier
day, as we think that of our own, it will
not take us so long to learn to write it
if we understand what we are doing.
Perhaps, too, when we have learned that
the difficulty of spelling is of our own
creating, standards will become more
flexible, and we shall gradually get rid
of the grosser anomalies of the written
language, such as that of thinking a
word of one dialect and writing that of
another. As the written language thus
becomes more uniform, we shall have to
spend less time in teaching children to
read it and to write it. Perhaps in the
twentieth century we shall get so far as
to be able to spell English as well, say,
as the people of the tenth century did ;
or shall take as common sense a view
of the matter as Chaucer's, contempora-
ries did, who tolerated as much varia-
tion when English was written as when
it was spoken ; or shall even get up to
Spenser's standpoint (and few poets have
been as careful in their rhythm as Spen-
ser was), who would write or allow his
printer to set up the same word in half
a dozen different ways.

The time we now take in trying to
coerce ourselves into the belief that
English is a dead language is time wast-
ed, whether we consider the effort from
a practical or from a scientific stand-
point. Indeed, from a scientific point of
view, time is worse than wasted which is
spent in confusing natural processes and
benumbing natural functions. From the
historian's point of view, to falsify evi-
dence, whether through ignorance or with
design, is nothing less than criminal.

While it may not be practicable to

In the North. 473

represent all the minute variations of need only teach the historical grammar

spoken language with scientific accuracy, of English, and let the matter take care

it certainly is practicable to write the of itself.

language we speak, and not an obsolete The question of changing the writing

form of it. And to do so we need not or printing of modern English is one

add a single letter to our alphabet, we of expediency ; the question of teaching

need not destroy an iota of evidence as historical English grammar is not one

to the sound of our language, we need of expediency, but one of paramount

not abandon a single book of our liter- necessity, if we are to preserve the

ature. Nor do we need to establish a power of our language to formulate our

new custom in writing our language. We thought aptly, clearly, and easily.

Mark H. Liddett.

IN THE NORTH.

COME, let us go and be glad again together

Where of old our eyes were opened and we knew that we were free !

Come, for it is April, and her hands have loosed the tether

That has bound for long her children, — who her children more than we ?

Hark ! hear you not how the strong waters thunder
Dowjn through the alders with the word they have to bring ?
Even now they win the meadow, and the withered turf is under,
And, above, the willows quiver with foreknowledge of the spring.

Yea, they come, and joy in coming ; for the giant hills have sent them, —
The hills that guard the portal where the South has built her throne ;
Unloitering their course is, — can wayside pools content them,
Who were born where old pine forests for the sea forever moan?

And they, behind the hills, where forever bloom the flowers,

Do they ever know the worship of the re-arisen Earth ?

Do their hands ever clasp such a happiness as ours,

Now the waters foam about us and the grasses have their birth ?

Fair is their land, — yea, fair beyond all dreaming, —
With its sun upon the roses and its long summer day ;
Yet surely they must envy us our vision of the gleaming
Of our lady's white throat as she comes her ancient way.

For their year is never April, — oh, what were Time without her !
Yea, the drifted snows may cover us, yet shall we not complain ;
Knowing well our Lady April — all her raiment blown about her —
Will return with many kisses for our unremembered pain !

Francis Sherman.

474

Shall we still Read Greek Tragedy?

SHALL WE STILL READ GREEK TRAGEDY?

IN the revolt against the long primacy
of the classics we find united temporarily,
by the bond of common hostility, several
camps that on other questions are much
at variance with one another. There
are, for example, men of practical af-
fairs who think lightly of things of the
mind ; there are some men of science
who think lightly of all literature and
art ; there are many who, seeing modern
life so rich and full, would allow an-
tiquity scant space in the crowded pre-
sent. In literature itself, the abundance
and range and manifold interest of the
world's best, from Dante to Tennyson,
in languages still living, and therefore
worth acquiring for reasons commercial
and social as well as literary, are in
truth persuasive arguments against what
seems so much more remote. Hence,
even serious students of literature, not a
few, would allow even to the greatest of
the ancients no primacy beyond priority
in date. No less a poet and scholar
than Robert Browning, as his friend and
biographer, Mrs. Sutherland Orr, has
told us,1 in spite of his " deep feeling
for the humanities of Greek literature,
and his almost passionate love for the
language," refused " to regard even the
first of Greek writers as models of liter-
ary style," and found " the pretensions
raised for them on this ground incon-
ceivable." The growing recognition —
in itself heartily to be welcomed — of
the importance of our own literature and
tongue as humanizing subjects of study
often brings with it, especially among
younger men, an inclination to depre-
ciate Greek literature in itself, apart
from any reference to its place in edu-
cation. The terms classicism and ro-
manticism, and notions more or less clear
as to old controversies that centred in
them, play no small part in developing
1 Life and Letters, ii. 477f.

the tendency. It is perhaps the Greek
dramatists who are oftenest alluded to
with depreciation : partly, no doubt, be-
cause they are so much read in college
by students who do not yet know the lan-
guage well enough to understand them ;
and partly because in them Greek litera-
ture comes into closest contact with the
modern, and the comparison with Shake-
speare lies so near. It was against
JEschylos that Browning delivered his
attack, in his version of the Agamemnon,
which puzzled so many readers before
Mrs. Orr gave us the explanation.

Under these circumstances, a student
of the Attic drama finds himself invol-
untarily reviewing the question from new
standpoints, and endeavoring to settle
in his mind where the truth lies. The
question is not, of course, whether jJEs-
chylos or Shakespeare is the greater, but
whether jEschylos and his compeers are
really great ; and if so, how and why.

Suppose we first sum up the indict-
ment. A Greek tragedy, we are told,
is but a slender streamlet beside the
mighty river of Shakespeare's presenta-
tion of human life and passion in a Ham-
let or a Macbeth. The plot is simple,
the characters are few, the total impres-
sion is that of meagreness. The chorus
is an essentially undramatic element that
in Greek times was never quite sloughed
off ; it takes slight part in the action, and
its lyric comments break the continuity
and make the tragedy an assemblage of
incongruous fragments rather than an
organic unit. Even in the dialogue there
is little action and much narrative ; long
speeches abound. But drama, by its very
name, is action ; if that is lacking, the
work is so far not drama, or at best is
dramatic in form only, — a poem to be
read instead of a play to be acted. Even
in this aspect, as poetry simply, the read-
er finds it comparatively tame and color-

Shall we still Read Greek Tragedy?

475

less. It has been called statuesque ; it is
indeed marble in its coldness. What is
vaunted as restraint and due observance
of bounds closely resembles poverty, and
seems to us lack of inspiration. The
poetry warms us but faintly, because the
internal fire burned low. The conclu-
sion of the whole matter is, the Greek
drama is merely the germ of which the
Elizabethan drama is the full flower, —
a germ exceedingly interesting for what
came of it, but of no great significance
otherwise.

Running all through this strain of
criticism, which has a very familiar
sound, and which I trust I have not ex-
aggerated, is that outspoken or tacit re-
ference to Shakespeare as the norm of
perfection, by which the world's drama
is to be judged. Now human thought
progresses by beating against the wind,
and the tacks are sometimes long. Once
it was the classicists who made Greek
tragedy the norm of perfection, and
judged Shakespeare by that ; and the
new school had a hard struggle to get
the critics to see that the end of that
tack had been reached, and it was time
to put about. Plainly, one principle is
no more right than the other. Any well-
defined school of art must be judged by
itself ; some method must be sought more
fruitful and conclusive than comparisons
of the sort that are odious, and some
other criterion than mere personal pre-
ference. By wider induction it must be
possible to find some principles that shall
be, not final, perhaps, but at least safer
guides to opinion than the preconceptions
of an individual, or even a race, whether
ancient or modern. Let us see.

First as to this view that for the mod-
ern world the Attic drama has interest
and value mainly, or even solely, as being
the seed from which sprang the Eliza-
bethan bloom. It was a precious seed,
if nothing more ; but one naturally asks,
How was it with other arts of Hellas ?
Are they also related to those of later
ages only as the germ to what comes of

it ? Sculptors are pretty well agreed that
in their branch of art that figure tells only
a small fragment of the truth. Since
the Parthenon marbles were made acces-
sible to Europe, they have been the won-
der and despair of sculptors, not prima-
rily on scientific grounds, as early stages
in the evolution of something finer, but
in themselves, as great artistic creations,
and in spite of mutilation and removal
from their architectural setting. They
and other Hellenic marbles brought to
light in this century have been the inspi-
ration of the recent and current revival
of sculpture in Europe and America.
The like is true of architecture, though
time's tooth and barbarian hands have
dealt still more hardly with its monu-
ments. The Doric temple is deemed the
peer of the Gothic church, and we cannot
spare either of them. Greek music is
lost ; even the fragments lately discovered
at Delphi tantalize more than they in-
form us. In painting, too, we have scant
materials for judgment ; but the vases,
gems, and other minor products of art in-
dustry that museums treasure from Greek
hands are valued and sought for their
own sake, as things of beauty perennial-
ly. Indeed, it was apropos of those very
late Hellenistic portraits from Egypt that
John La Farge, an artist saturated with
the best art of all times and many races,
exclaimed, — finding even the mere per-
functory trade - work in them full of
meaning for their methods and technique
as well as their historical associations, —
" Anything made, anything even influ-
enced by that little race of artists, the
Greeks, brings back our mind to its first
legitimate, ever continuing admiration ;
with them the floating Goddess of Chance
took off her sandals and remained." Of
course, a people may do great things in
many arts, and do lesser things or fail
in one. La Farge may be right, and
yet the drama be no more than Brown-
ing or still more unsympathetic readers
believe. But the example of the other
arts, whose products have been rated so

476

Shall we still Read Greek Tragedy?

high for their intrinsic beauty by the
most competent among many successive
peoples, does create a certain presump-
tion in favor of the belief that the ad-
miration for, say, the Agamemnon of
.ZEschylos as a great work of art, also an
admiration shared by many competent
critics of diverse races and times, rests,
after all, on a firmer and broader base
than personal preference or a taste creat-
ed by education. These tragedies come
to us from the same city and period that
raised the Parthenon and its sister tem-
ples, and carved the marbles that adorned
them. There is some probability that
the plays in which those generations of
that little clan delighted are themselves
informed with a like spirit. Another
branch of the same race created the epic ;
few would maintain that any later epic
is to Homer, in respect to intrinsic lit-
erary value, as maturity to infancy. Per-
haps the Attic drama is itself a flower,
of equal beauty and fragrance with the
Elizabethan, which grew after many sea-
sons and in a different soil from seed
that the Attic flower let fall.

But there is little action in a Greek
play, and the drama, by its very name,
is action. The appeal to etymology as
an argument may easily lead astray. A
little study of words makes it clear that
etymology merely shows us the start-
ing-point of a word's life ; usage devel-
ops, changes, and often completely trans-
forms its meaning, so that the truth in
such an argument may be like Grati-
ano's reasons, two grains of wheat hid
in two bushels of chaff. In any case, to
press an etymology too far is either men-
tal strabismus or sophistry. This ety-
mological argument about the drama re-
minds me of those shallow " educators "
— happily no longer common — for
whom the entire theory of education is
an elaboration of the dictum that educo
means draw out. Whatever theory one
may now hold about the importance of
action in a play, it was Greek tragedy,
not modern, to which the name drama

was first given by those who invented
both word and thing. They may be
presumed to have known what they were
doing. They called this new form of
the " goat-song " drama because its char-
acteristic feature, that which differenti-
ated it from epic narrative as from ,<Eolic
and Dorian lyric, was that the perform-
ers personated the people in the story,
instead of relating or singing in their own
character. The gods and the men who
figured in the myth were made to appear
bodily, in mimic presentation, doing and
saying in their own persons what they
were imagined to have done and said.
That has always been the generic mark
of drama, and gives the real meaning of
the term. Plato's mind was not befogged
on this point when he wrote the Republic.
The most undramatic prologues of Eu-
ripides are dramatic in the etymological
sense, because they are spoken by an
individual who personates another char-
acter ; and that fact may illustrate the
value of the etymological argument from
another side. The questions how complex
the plot thus acted should be, how many
or how few the characters, how many and
what acts shall be visibly performed be-
fore the audience, — these are questions
to be settled on a variety of grounds ;
but no play has ever dispensed entirely
with narrative, nor with certain elements
that in Greek tragedy were concentrated
in the choral songs. To demand that
narrative and reflection and the lyric
strain shall be quite excluded, and the
whole story be presented through action
alone, is to demand pantomime. There
everything is action; but a tragedy is
something higher. It would be instruc-
tive to go through several of the best
modern plays, noting all the passages of
pure narrative in them, — passages, I
mean, in which one character relates to
another, and so to the audience, events
that have taken place elsewhere, instead
of being enacted visibly.

It is quite true, however, that in Greek
tragedy the plot is simple and the char-

Shall we still Read Greek Tragedy?

477

acters are few. A theatre-goer, mak-
ing his first acquaintance with Sophokles
through a performance of the Antigone
in English, would inevitably find the ac-
tion slow and meagre. The world of
ideas and motives is not that to which he
is accustomed ; he cannot in a brief ses-
sion come to feel at home there. And
though he compel himself to make due
allowance on that score, and also for the
impoverishment caused by translation,
our theatre-goer may be pardoned if he
still find the plot wanting in variety and
" go." The question, however, may be
fairly raised, how far this impression
of meagreness is due to inherent defect,
and how far to association. Inasmuch
as all great English tragedies are more
elaborate in plot, and we rarely see on
our stage one of the Greek type, mere
unfamiliar ity with the type would be as
a thick mist before the eyes. Fanny
Kemble, in the recollections of her girl-
hood, records her gratitude that by her
French education she learned to know
and appreciate the great French drama-
tists before her introduction to Shake-
speare, by whose genius she was later so
completely overpowered that she could
not then have approached French trage-
dy for the first time without prejudice.
The lack of her fortunate experience in
that regard doubtless accounts in no
slight degree for the too common depre-
ciation of Corneille and Racine among
English-speaking people. And out of a
score of persons who admire Rembrandt
on first acquaintance, hardly one, of our
northern races, enjoys at first view, with-
out previous preparation, the great Ital-
ians who painted with and before Ra-
phael. Yet many out of the score, if
permitted by fortune to dwell for a while
in that sunnier atmosphere, may come
to enjoy the Italians far more than the
northern genius whose kinship with our-
selves appeals to us at once.

But farther, is a complex plot, involv-
ing many characters, essential to a great
play ? Some plot there must be, and

Aristotle, from his analysis of the plays
he knew, lays great stress on the impor-
tance of it : apparently he rates QEdipus
the King highest among Greek tragedies,
largely because its plot is unusually elab-
orate. Yet, though the CEdipus, in this
particular, touches the extreme limit per-
mitted by the Greek form, it falls far
short of that to which Shakespeare has
accustomed us ; and we may still ask,
Is the comparative simplicity of plot in
Greek tragedy in itself a defect ?

How is it in music ? We do not re-
gard the string quartette as an imperfect
form because the orchestral symphony
has been invented. The symphony is
more complex ; it embraces in one com-
position a wider range and greater rich-
ness of effect, and therefore pleases and
impresses more people who are not thor-
oughly musical. But the greatest sym-
phonic composers have also chosen fre-
quently to write in quartette form. The
truth is, the range of each single instru-
ment is so wide that the four combined
are an adequate vehicle for a great mu-
sical work. Four or five human souls
of tragic mould in the grip of tragic cir-
cumstance may be enough, in the hands
of a master, to produce a harmony that
shall move us to the depths of our being.
A Greek play is never so meagre as the
quartette. That comparison fits better
the plays of Racine. One might liken
Greek tragedy rather to a symphonic
movement for a small orchestra, omitting
or making slight use of the drums and
brasses. Analogies in detail to such
music often recur to me in reading the
plays. And in other arts ? The mas-
terpiece of Pheidias, we are told, was
not one of the groups in the Parthenon
gables, but the Zeus at Olympia ; not an
elaborate composition, in the sense of
one containing a great number of figures
in variously correlated action, but a sin-
gle figure, grand in conception, perfect
in detail. The compositions in marble,
whose remnants are the glory of the
British Museum, he left to other hands

478

Shall we still Read Greek Tragedy?

to execute ; his own strength found a
more congenial task in the endeavor to
embody in the more precious medium of
gold and ivory the ancient ideal of the
Olympian god, seated in a majestic re-
pose whose calm expressed more power
than any action could. And if we turn
to Raphael, is the School of Athens, or
any of the larger and more complex
compositions in the Vatican, a greater
work than the Sistine Madonna ? The
world has not thought so. To conceive
that greatness in art depends on multi-
plicity of larger constituents or complex-
ity of their arrangement is a mistake of
like nature with conceiving that national
greatness is identical with bigness and
wealth. In either sphere greatness is
something quite different. The quality
of the central idea, the perfection with
which that idea is rendered, with the just
amount and due subordination of con-
tributory detail, — these are far more
than mere size and number in whatever
wealth of circumstance. We apply this
principle elsewhere in literature. We
do not consider The Scarlet Letter, with
its few characters and simple external
incidents, and its revelation of the depths
of the human heart, as therefore infe-
rior to, let us say, Les Mise'rables. We
do not compare the two ; nor do I now,
farther than to illustrate this one point
in our inquiry. Without urging the par-
allel too far, I may say that they repre-
sent in the novel a like distinction of
class to that which I wish to point out
between Greek and Elizabethan tragedy.
In short, the wider the basis of our in-
duction, the clearer becomes the conclu-
sion which Amiel stated in the broad
and philosophic generalization, " The art
which is grand, and yet simple, is that
which presupposes the greatest elevation,
both in artist and in public."

Perhaps the ground is now sufficient-
ly cleared to enable us to approach, with
less risk of entanglement, two positive
features of Greek tragedy that some-
times repel the modern reader. First

the chorus, — to the Greek always the
central and perhaps most interesting ele-
ment, to us presenting rather the aspect
of an excrescence. It would be vain to
attempt here to conjure about us the
antique atmosphere of prepossession in
favor of the chorus ; it is enough if we
can dissipate our modern prepossession
against it, and see the matter as it is, if
we cannot see it as it was. Passing over,
therefore, the well-known historical ex-
planation of its presence, if we examine
the six or eight best plays that have sur-
vived the wreck of the Middle Ages, what
do we find the chorus to be, and how are
its odes related to the whole ? The Aga-
memnon of .ZEschylos may be taken as
one illustration ; his Eumenides and Pro-
metheus, as well as the two GEdipus plays
of Sophokles, and the Antigone and Elek-
tra, fairly belong with it; perhaps the
Medea and Tauric Iphigeneia of Euripi-
des may be added. In the Agamemnon,
then, the chorus is a company of twelve
elderly men, councilors of Klytaimnestra
and of the absent king, summoned to
meet the queen that they may hear the
great news of Troy's capture and receive
the returning monarch. Their presence
at the palace is thus as clearly called
for, dramatically, as that of the herald
or Kassandra. From this point of view,
they might be likened to the nobles of
various degree that fill so large a space
in attendance on Shakespeare's kings ;
the only marked difference is that the an-
cient poet unites his nobles into a group,
who generally, though not always, act
and speak as one. In the Antigone and
GEdipus the King the chorus is of the
same character. Its leader has about
the same interest and part in the action
as Polonius or Horatio ; the entire band
as much, at least, as the Players in Ham-
let, or those citizens and gentlemen and
other minor characters who make the
background of so many scenes. In the
Eumenides the interest is far greater, for
the members of the chorus are the dread
Furies themselves in pursuit of the crim-

Shall we still Read Greek Tragedy?

479

inal. In CEdipus at Kolonos they are the
men who dwell near the sacred grove ;
gathering to repel the profaning wander-
er, they hear his defense, and remain as
representative Athenians to share in pro-
tecting him, and in receiving the blessing
which his supernatural death and burial
are to confer on their country. In the
Aias of Sophokles they are the Salamin-
ians, sailors and fighting men, who have
accompanied Aias to Troy. The devot-
ed followers have heard rumors of their
lord's insane attempt, and have come to
his tent to learn the truth, to defend him
from his foes, and, as it proves, to guard
his corpse and to bury him. To another
class belong the women who come to
cheer, advise, and condole with a suffer-
ing woman, as Elektra or Medea. The
priestess Iphigeneia has her temple inin-
istrants about her. These may all be
fairly compared, in a way, with Juliet's
nurse, with Nerissa, with the inevitable
confidantes and waiting-women.

Such is the chorus from one side. On
the other side, what is its function in the
choral odes ? Regarded merely as the
formal divisions between acts or scenes,
the odes are certainly as pleasing, and de-
tract as little from unity of effect, as the
fall of a curtain and the tedious wait filled
in by inferior music that has nothing to
do with the play, and merely accompanies
the chat of the audience. In fact, how-
ever, these songs are not out of character
and are not an interruption : they are a
lyric utterance of participants in the ac-
tion, even if minor participants, — the
expression of their emotions and thoughts
called forth by specific events, by the dra-
matic situation. So much is plain even
to the reader who does not understand the
elaborate and beautiful versification ; and
some time a composer will be moved to
write such music for one of the plays as
will assist our imagination to realize the
stately antique chant in unison, with in-
strumental accompaniment, strictly con-
forming to the poetic rhythm. The in-
terpretative dance, which rendered the

sentiment in graceful motion and made
it visible, we can only imagine. But
two facts need to be emphasized : First,
the choral odes are dramatic, in the sense
in which Browning's Dramatic Lyrics
are, — the expression of emotion and
reflection called forth by the situation,
not in the bystander or spectator merely,
but in those who have a vital interest
and part in the action. Occasionally, it
is true, the choral song swerves a little
from the strictly dramatic function. It
exhibits a tendency on the one hand to
become the mouthpiece of the poet him-
self, and on the other to utter the senti-
ments of what has been called the ideal
spectator. Yet this tendency appears
but rarely in the best plays, and appears
only for an instant ; the dramatic idea
quickly resumes its normal sway. Sec-
ondly, such lyric material has a legiti-
mate place in the drama, which aims to
present life at its fullest, and is based
on the convention that the soul, in such
moments of most intense life, feels no
hindrance, from without or within, to
complete self-expression. In the modern
drama this emotional and reflective ele-
ment is more distributed. We find it
often in soliloquy, or scattered through
the conversation in comments on per-
sons or events, and in occasional snatches
of song. In part, however, it is left
unexpressed, and that is a loss. It is
characteristic of Greek art that this ele-
ment, distinctly recognized as belong-
ing in the drama, has its own medium
and style of presentation in appropriate
lyric form, — in essence the same form
that we employ for like purposes out-
side the drama, though we have isolated
the dance, and given it over to the bal-
let and to social amusement. The song
from the skene, or lyric solo by a more
prominent character, fits perfectly into
our conception, or is at least accepted
easily by one who accepts the Wagne-
rian music-drama, that latest direct off-
shoot of Attic tragedy.

Another feature that perhaps requires

480

Shall we still Read Greek Tragedy?

brief examination is the messenger and
his narrative. He is the result of two
well-known conventions of the Greek
theatre, which are natural enough in
themselves, but have been much misun-
derstood. The chorus ordinarily re-
mained on the scene when the leading
characters withdrew ; nearly everything
took place in the open air ; no curtain was
used. The play was thus continuous ;
a change of scene was so inconvenient
that it was seldom employed. Hence,
whatever the story required to take place
elsewhere than in the presence of the
council, or the confidantes, or whoever
the chorus were, had usually to be nar-
rated. Again, Athenian taste refused
to tolerate scenes of death and violence
before the eyes of the audience. The
Greeks were not less cruel or bloody in
actual life than we are, or than English-
men were three centuries ago ; but their
average artistic sense was finer. They
perceived that when death or bodily mu-
tilation is simulated in broad daylight
illusion undergoes a severe strain, and
they felt their aesthetic enjoyment of such
scenes interfered with or destroyed. At
any rate, such scenes were pretty nearly
banished ; hence the catastrophe itself is
usually narrated, and the messenger is
rather prominent among the minor per-
sonages. The device must be regarded
as part of that simplicity of structure
which we have already considered, — a
device that deepens the impression of
unity as much as it detracts from variety.
The poet, however, does not rely upon
narrative alone to present the catastro-
phe. Like the painter, who makes us be-
hold the deed in its effect, the dramatist
shows us CEdipus just blinded, — shows
us the bodies of Antigone and Haimon,
and the sorrow and too late repentance
of Kreon. It is open to question whether
such a method is not more effective in
the end than the cruder way of displaying
everything before the bodily eye. The
painter's art, in spite of being limited to a
single moment of the action, satisfies the

imagination better than the kinetoscope
and like mechanisms. I do not see how
a tragic event could be more powerful-
ly presented than is the king's murder
in the Agamemnon. Kassandra's wild
and whirling words foretell it and her
own fate as close at hand ; his last cry
reaches our ear ; and finally, the mur-
derous wife is seen holding the bloody
instrument of death over her prostrate
victims, while she acknowledges and glo-
ries in her crime. The sense of horror
could not have been deepened by sight of
the deed itself ; the pity and fear that
purge the soul would thereby have lost
in efficacy, debased by a coarser strain.

One other item of the indictment must
not be passed over, — the supposed lack
of force and fire, which, according to
one's attitude, is accounted either cause
or effect of the Greek principle of mod-
eration. Style, especially in a foreign
tongue, is a difficult thing to discuss con-
vincingly. The sense for it is much like
musical taste ; original endowment and
the degree and school of training create
differences of judgment ; mediation be-
tween them is dangerous, and the issue
must generally be left to the slow-sifting
process of time. In this case the sifting
process has been going on some centuries,
and perhaps one may venture on a tem-
perate search for a guiding principle or
two.

The close kinship between Greek po-
etry and Greek sculpture is a common-
place ; whoever finds one cold will prob-
ably find the other so. It is true, also,
that a little time and study are needful
before one becomes accustomed to the
Hellenic manner far enough to see fully
what it means. But if one fancies the
Hermes of Praxiteles or the torsos from
the eastern gable of the Parthenon cold,
the reason must be in the observer or his
circumstances. Perhaps he has not seen
the originals, but only a translation of
them into cold plaster or flat black and
white. Perhaps fortune has not favored
him with time enough : such things are

Shall we still Read Greek Tragedy?

481

not importunate ; they do not strive nor
cry ; they know they can wait. But af-
ter a time, unless one is by nature inca-
pable, the quiet marble begins to quiver
with life ; even the passion of grief, the
adequate expression of which is common-
ly j thought peculiar to Christian art, is
seen to be nowhere more movingly por-
trayed than in the calmly throned De-
meter of Knidos. All this in spite of
mutilation, and without the color with
which we know the ancients gave an
added warmth and life to detail in sculp-
ture. The contortions of Bernini's fig-
ures, on the bridge of St. Angelo and
in various Roman churches, are in one
sense just as true or even truer to na-
ture, but are by comparison frigid, un-
meaning, and false. Bernini's way was
less difficult. It is easier to model or
draw an old man, with the passion and
experience of a long generation graven
in furrows across his face, than to por-
tray a strong and well-poised soul that
finds a subtler outward expression in the
more flowing outlines of youth or middle
life. To make a simple transcript from
nature, caught in a moment of violent
action, is easier than to create after na-
ture, from a profound and sympathetic
comprehension of many such moments,
a work that shall embody their essence,
— a work full of their passionate life, yet
maintaining that comparative calm with-
out which nothing can please permanent-
ly. The mere transcript tells its tale
more quickly, but the artist's creation
more powerfully.

The principle may be verified in all the
arts, but nowhere better than in Greek
sculpture and Greek tragedy in contrast
with sculpture of the seventeenth century
and with the Elizabethan drama. Shake-
speare himself makes Hamlet enforce the
lesson on his Players : " For in the very
torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the
whirlwind of passion, you must acquire
and beget a temperance that may give it
smoothness." In every art this advice
is good, though conveyed with an iter-

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 486. 31

ation of metaphor that itself offends
against the principle. Accustomed as
we are to the ruder way that delights in
vehemence, in the sharpest contrast, in
the " torrent, tempest, and whirlwind of
passion," we are less quick to appreciate
under the finer manner that force which
is strong enough to hold in leash its
own strength. Hence, too, the common
mistake regarding character-drawing in
Greek tragedy. A careless reader finds
little of it, because it is mostly effected
by gentle means, a delicate stroke of
color sufficing where we look for the
light and shadow of a Rembrandt. The
analogy with sculpture here, also, is very
close. Once more Amiel may furnish
us a phrase : " The art of passion is sure
to please, but it is not the highest art."
And again : " A well - governed mind
learns in time to find pleasure in nothing
but the true and just." The world may
yet learn much from Hellas in this direc-
tion, and the drama is one of the best
means of teaching us. If we would see
in English verse what this quality in
tragic style is, Robert Browning is one
of the last among the great poets in
whom to;look for it. The best sustained
illustration, perhaps, is the dialogue of
Matthew Arnold's Merope. The choral
parts of that little -read play are very
inadequate ; Arnold was far from being
a Sophokles in original power, and the
antique subject is remote from our inter-
est ; but of the dialogue style and the
general structure of Greek tragedy his
Merope gives a truer notion than any
translation or any other imitation that I
know.

I have failed in my purpose unless I
have made it seem probable that in its
masterpieces Greek tragedy is worthy,
after all, to rank with the masterpieces
of any later dramatic school. Its pecu-
liar form and special qualities are the out-
growth of its own historical conditions.
The soil and air, though not our own,
were good ; the vine was vigorous, and
the product is of a sound and generous

482

Shall we still Read Greek Tragedy?

kind that has kept well. Due apprecia-
tion of one vintage need not dull our
taste for another ; why not be thankful
for both ? Like the Doric temple, Greek
tragedy is simple in its plan and struc-
ture, but of infinite elaboration and subtle
variety in detail. In the chorus, in the
messenger's narrative, and in the dia-
logue as well, the principle of grouping
details in larger masses reminds us of
the sculptured pediment, the metopes
alternating with triglyphs, the massive
yet graceful columns planted firmly to
withstand all destroyers but man ; every-
where grouping, symmetry, perfection
of workmanship, and delicate harmony.
In calling such masterpieces models,
one does not mean that the type is now
to be directly imitated. The form is
not adapted to express or serve, in new
examples of it, our modern life. So of
temples and sculptured gods ; modern
repetitions have at best an exotic air.
But that is no condemnation of the ori-
ginals, which were adapted to express the
best side of ancient life. The Shake-
spearean form of drama is also really
adapted only to the age that gave it
birth; witness the omissions and alter-
ations in our finest revivals of Shake-
speare's plays. Our more exacting de-
mands in regard to stage - setting and
machinery are alone enough to modify
greatly the notion of what is good in
dramatic structure, and in many other
respects taste has changed not a little
since Elizabeth's time. But to state this
is not to depreciate Shakespeare. Is
Cologne Cathedral any less noble be-
cause it would be ill adapted to the use
of a Protestant non-liturgical service ?

The Italian type of Madonna and Child
was worked out under special conditions
of the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries.
It is not one to be copied "now. Unless
the painter be a very great artist, who
knows thoroughly both his mind and the
cunning of his hand, he had better not
attempt to employ the type even with a
modern application and meaning. But
is the type, and are the great Madonnas
of Italian art, therefore not great ? They
remain among the accumulated treasures
wherewith the past has endowed the pre-
sent and the future. They, and what-
ever else goes to make up the sum of
the best that has been thought and done
in the world, are to be cherished and
used for the education of the race.

The great advantage that literature
has over the other arts, the advantage
that alone secures it a preeminence over
them in the general educational scheme,
is the readiness with which the mas-
terpieces can be indefinitely multiplied,
and brought in their original form di-
rectly before the mind. In the best plays
of .ZEschylos and Sophokles the force of
Hellenism is felt in concentration. The
reconstruction of the ancient theatre,
which the young science of archaeology
has but lately made possible, has en-
hanced their value to us, by freeing our
conception of them from the distorting
effect of later traditions, and restoring
them to our imagination in the simple
dignity of their original presentation.
Many generations will pass from the
scene, and many a little system and lit-
erary school will have its day, before
those plays lose their freshness and their
power to elevate and charm.

Thomas Dwight Goodell.

Thirst in the Desert.

483

THIRST IN THE DESERT.

IT is not a pleasant thing, thirst. It
is not soft or savory, hut harsh and hid-
eous ; something never to be forgotten,
though seldom to be mentioned, and then
lightly and reservedly, with the severer
features tempered or veiled. Yet it is a
phase of life — and death — which those
who would know the hard course of hu-
man pioneering must needs picture. It
has beenlirnnedby Lundgren and penned
by Owen Wister, skillful painters both,
yet both so fortunate as to have painted
partly — though not wholly — at second-
hand.

There is a suffering miscalled thirst
which sometimes adds to the pangs of
hunger in humid lands ; there is a thirst
of the sea, aggravated by the salt spray
on lip and nostril though the pores are
bathed in moist air, which is hardly
less horrible than hunger ; and there is
the dryness of the desert, the gradual
desiccation of mucus and skin and flesh,
which inflicts a torture that hunger only
palliates, and this alone is worthy to be
called thirst. In Death Valley, in far-
ther Papagueria (the desert borderland
of Arizona and Sonora), and elsewhere
in arid America, the region in which
routes are laid by " waters," and in
which the " last water " and " next wa-
ter" are ever present and dominant
ideas, the earth is soilless sand so hot as
to scorch thin-shod feet, and dry as fired
pottery. Daily for months the air is
120° F. or more in the shade, and dry,
— so dry that a basin of water evapo-
rates in an hour, so dry that no drop of
sweat is shed by hard-pushed horse or
toiling pedestrian. The only plants able
to survive the heat and drought are
water-storing monstrosities, living reser-
voirs like cacti and agaves ; the animals
are peculiar in structure and physiologi-
cal process ; even the Indians gathered
in the moister spots have a shrunken

and withered mien, half mummied be-
fore death as they are wholly after.
Here thirst abides ; and here tombless
skeletons whitening in the sun, and star-
ing skulls sowing teeth and shreds of
shriveled meninges as they bowl before
the sand-storm, give ghastly evidence of
its insatiate passion.

Even in the desert there are stages
of thirst. In the earlier stages the tis-
sues simply dry and shrink like lifeless
wood ; in the later stages, seldom seen
and scarce ever survived, vitality plays
a rare role, and the external tissues be-
come inflamed and suffused, and finally
disorganized, while yet the internal or-
gans continue to work, although with lit-
tle aim and less reason. The stages of
thirst arise and pass at a rate varying
with the condition of the sufferer as
much as with the heat and dryness of
the air. In the open-pored tenderfoot
or housling they may run their course
between sun and sun of a single day,
while in the long-inured and leather-
skinned vaquero the agony may stretch
over several days, mitigated nightly by
the extreme chilling yet imperceptible
moistening of the air ; for where thirst
holds sway the diurnal range of the mer-
cury is fifty or sixty, or even eighty de-
grees.

Perhaps doctors may disagree as to
the number of stages, yet patients will
detail symptoms in their own way ; and
to one who has run the gauntlet two
thirds through, exchanged confidences
with two or three equally fortunate vic-
tims, and gleaned external observations
on unsuccessful runners, five stages seem
clear and definite, though the first is but
a preface to the four gloomy chapters
that follow. The order is fixed, though
the features of the stages vary, particu-
larly when delirium disturbs the due
course of events and hastens the end.

484

Thirst in the Desert.

At first the mouth feels dry and hot,
and a tension in the throat leads to an in-
voluntary swallowing motion, and ducks
the chin when the motion occurs ; the
voice is commonly husky, the nape or
occiput may pain steadily or throbbing-
ly, and there is a diffused sense of un-
easiness, or even of irritation, leading to
querulous chatter and petulant activity.
The sensations and outward symptoms
suggest slight fever, and the tempera-
ture usually rises perceptibly.

The condition is alleviated by the
farmer-boy's device of carrying a pebble
or twig in the mouth to excite the flow
of saliva ; it is relieved by a pint of
liquid. The sensations are yet partly
subjective ; if the water is muddy or ill
smelling, half a pint will do ; and if a
hair or helpless bug is water-logged in
the cup, still less will suffice for the
stomach, though the feverish irritation
may increase apace.

This is the clamorous stage, or the
stage of complaining ; it is experienced
many times over by all men of arid re-
gions, and is of little note save as the
beginning of a series.

In the second stage of dryness, which
might be called the first stage of thirst,
the fever rises ; the scant saliva and mu-
cus spume sluggishly on lip and tongue
and catch in the teeth, clogging utter-
ance, and catching the tongue against
the roof of the mouth; a lump is felt
in the throat, as if suspended by tense
cords running from the Adam's apple
toward the ears, and the hand instinc-
tively seeks to loosen these aggravating
bands, but succeeds only in opening the
collar and exposing more skin to evap-
oration ; the head throbs fiercely, and
with each throe the nape travails and
the pains shoot down the spine. Mean-
time the ears ring and sometimes change
tone suddenly, as when a down-grade
train dashes into a tunnel ; the vision
is capricious, conjuring verdant foliage
near by and delectable lakes in the dis-
tance, though it is half blind to the trail.

The sense of uneasiness grows into strong
irritation, with a sort of mechanical mix-
ture of lethargy and ill-aimed activity ;
there is hot, perhaps half consciously
impotent wrath against the idiot of a
cook who provided the too small wa-
ter-barrel, the condemned broncho that
bucked off and " busted " the best can-
teen, the spring that failed, the satanic
sun that burns the shoulders through the
shirt and bakes the soles through the
shoes ; perhaps there is keen, crazing re-
morse for the sufferer's own neglect, if
he is honest enough to confess himself
to himself as the original sinner. Alone,
he is sullenly silent, but given to break-
ing out sporadically in viciously impas-
sioned invective or more continuous mon-
ologue, according to his habit of mind ;
with others, he commonly strains tongue
and throat to talk in a husky or queerly
cracked voice, — to talk and talk and
talk, without prevision of the next sen-
tence or memory of the last ; and all the
talk is of water in some of its inexpres-
sibly captivating aspects. A group of
ranchmen, tricked by an earthquake-
dried spring, creaked and croaked of
rivers that they had forded in '49, of the
verdure of the blue-grass region in which
one of them was born, of a great freshet
in the Hassayampa which drowned the
family of a friend and irrigated the val-
ley from mountain to mesa, of the acre-
inches of water required to irrigate a field
seeded to alfalfa, of the lay of the land
with respect to flowing wells, of the
coyote's cunning in " sensing" water five
feet down in the sand, of the fine water-
melons grown on Hank Wilson's ranch
in Salado valley. Now and then articu-
lation ceased, and lips and tongue moved
on in silent mockery of speech for a
sentence or two before the sound was
missed, when, with a painful effort, the
organs were whipped and spurred into
action, and the talk rambled on and on,
— all talking slowly, seriously, with ap-
propriate look and gesture, not one con-
sciously hearing a word.

Thirst in the Desert.

485

When I was deceived into depend-
ence upon the brine of a barranca on
Encinas desert, thirst came, though in
softer guise ; and some of the party bab-
bled continuously of portable apparatus
for well-boring, of keeping kine by means
of the bisnaga — a savagely spined cac-
tus yielding poisonless water — and re-
veling in milk, of the memory of certain
mint juleps in famous metropolitan hos-
telries on the other border of the conti-
nent, of the best form of canteen (which
should hold at least two gallons, — three
gallons would be better). They were
bright men, clear and straight and forci-
ble thinkers when fully sane ; yet they
knew not that their brilliant ideas and
grandiloquent phrases were but the ebul-
lition of incipient delirium, and they
seriously contracted for five gallons of
ice-cream, to be consumed by three per-
sons, on arriving at Hermosillo, and this
merely as a dessert.

In this stage of thirst, the face is
pinched and care-marked ; the eyes are
bloodshot and may be tearful ; the move-
ments are hasty, the utterances capri-
cious ; the sufferer is a walking fever
patient without ward or nurse.

The condition is hardly alleviated by
any device that does not yield actual
liquid ; it is relieved by half a gallon or
a gallon of water taken at a draught or
two, though the skin cries out for twice
as much more applied externally — and
the stray hair or drowned insect in the
cup is carefully lifted out and shaken
dry above the water, lest a drop be lost.
It is in this stage that the wanderer
eagerly seeks the bisnaga, cuts away the
spiny covering with a machete, or hunt-
ing-knife, and sucks or swallows the cool
pulp, and nibbles the deliciously re-
freshing lemon-acid fruit. The Mexican
nomads have learned by experience to
prevent the dry-mouthed patient from
drinking deeply at once, lest death fol-
low ; but their experience is mainly with
a microbe-laden fluid which is only slow-
er poison in small doses.

This is the cotton-mouth stage of
thirst ; hundreds have passed through it,
and scores have hit on the same expres-
sive designation for it.

The third stage is an intensification of
the second. The mouth-spume changes
to a tough, collodion-like coating, which
compresses and retracts the lips in a
sardonic smile, changing to a canine
grin ; the gums shrink and tear away
from the teeth, starting zones of blood
to thicken in irregular crusts ; the tongue,
exposed to the air by the retraction of
lips and gums, is invested with saliva
collodion, and stiffens into a heavy stick-
like something that swings and clicks
f oreignly against the teeth with the move-
ment of riding or walking, and speech
ends, though inarticulate bellowing, as
of battling bull or stricken horse, may
issue from the throat. There are other
pains, innumerable, excruciating. The
head is as if hooped with iron, and when
the sufferer spasmodically casts off his
hat, and snatches at hair and scalp, he is
surprised to find no relief ; the nape and
half the spine are like a swollen tumor
when pressed hard, with the surgeon's
lancet pushing through it; with each
heart-beat a throb of torment darts from
the head to the extremities with a sud-
den thunder and blackness apparently so
real and vast that it is a constant amaze-
ment to see the mountains still standing
in mocking fixity and the sun still gib-
bering gleefully. Tears flow until they
are exhausted ; then the eyelids stiffen
as the snarled lips have done, and the
eyeballs gradually set themselves in a
winkless stare. Between the slow earth-
quake throbs of the heart there are ka-
leidoscopic gleams before the eyes, and
crackling and tearing noises in the ears,
perhaps with singing sounds simulating
bursts of music, — all manifestations of
incipient disorganization in the sensitive
tissues. Then it becomes hard, very
hard, to keep the mind on the trail ; to
remember that the thorn-decked cactus
is not a sweating water-cooler, that the

486

Thirst in the Desert.

shimmering sand-flat is not a breeze-rip-
pled pond, that the musical twanging of
the tympanum is not a signal for rest.
Withal a numbness creeps over the face,
then over the hands, and under the cloth-
ing, imparting a dry, strange, rattling,
husklike sensation, as if one did not quite
belong to one's skin ; and as the numb-
**ess advances, ideas become more and
Hiore shadowy and incongruous.

An eminent naturalist caught on the
threshold of this stage was impressed by
the laborious beating of his heart, and he
gained a sense of the gradual thickening of
his blood as the water which forms nearly
ninety per cent of the body slowly evapo-
rated. He was unable to see, or saw in
mirage -like distortion when they were
pointed out to him, the familiar birds and
mammals of which he was in search. A
prospector, later in this stage, tore away
his sleeve when the puzzling numbness
was first felt ; afterwards, seeing dimly
a luscious-looking arm near by, he seized
it and mumbled it with his mouth, and
greedily sought to suck the blood. He
had a vague sense of protest by the
owner of the arm, who seemed a long
way off ; and he was astounded, two
days later, to find that the wounds were
inflicted upon himself. Deceived by a
leaky canteen on the plateau of the
Book Cliffs of Utah, I held myself in
the real world by constant effort, aided
by a mirror, an inch across, whereby for-
gotten members of my body could be con-
nected with the distorted face in which
my motionless eyes were set ; yet I was
rent with regret (keen, quivering, crazy
remorse) at the memory of wantonly
wasting — actually throwing away on
the ground — certain cups of water in
my boyhood ; and I gloried in the sud-
den discovery of a new standard of value
destined to revolutionize the commerce
of the world, the beneficent unit being
the rational and ever ready drop of
water. I collected half a dozen double-
eagles from each of four pockets, tossed
them in my hand, scorned their heavy

clumsiness and paltry worthlessness in
comparison with my precious unit, and
barely missed (through a chance gleam
of worldly wisdom) casting them away
on the equally worthless sand. In this
stage of thirst fierce fever burns in the
veins, but the deliberate doctor is not
there to measure it.

The condition is seldom alleviated save
through delirium, rarely relieved save by
water, — water in gallons, applied inside
and out ; any water will serve, however
many the hairs and drowned insects, how-
ever muddy or foul ; but it is well to
guard the thirsty man, lest he saturate
the desiccated tissues so suddenly and so
unequally as to initiate disorganization
and death.

This is the stage of the shriveled
tongue. It comes within the experience
of many pioneers and within the mem-
ory of some, though only the vigorous in
body and the well balanced in mind are
sane enough to remember the details of
the experience.

With the fourth stage of the drying
up of the tissues the dilatory process
changes to a more rapid action, and a
new phase of thirst begins. The collo-
dion-like coating of the lips cracks open
and curls up, as freshet-laid mud curls
when the sun shines after the storm, and
the clefts push into the membrane and
flesh beneath, so that thickened blood
and serum exude. This ooze evaporates
as fast as it is formed, and the residuum
dries on the deadened surface to extend
and to hasten the cracking. Each cleft
is a wound which excites inflammation,
and the fissuring and fevering proceed
cumulatively, until the lips are reverted,
swollen, shapeless masses of raw and
festering flesh. The gums and tongue
soon become similarly affected, and the
oasis in the desert appears in delirium
when the exuding liquid trickles in mouth
and throat. The shrunken tongue swells
quickly, pressing against the teeth, then
forcing the jaws asunder and squeez-
ing out beyond them, a reeking fungus,

Thirst in the Desert.

487

on which flies — coming unexpectedly,
no one knows whence — love to gather
and dig busily with a harsh, grating
sound, while an occasional wasp plunks
down with a dizzying shock to seize or
scatter them ; and stray drops of blood
escape the flies, and dribble down the
chin and neck with a searing sensation
penetrating the numbness ; for the with-
ered skin is ready to chap and exude
fresh ooze, which ever extends the ex-
travasation. Then the eyelids crack, and
the eyeballs are suffused and fissured
well up to the cornea and weep tears of
blood ; and as the gory drops trickle
down, the shrunken cheeks are welted
with raw flesh. The sluggishly exud-
ing ooze seems infectious ; wherever it
touches there is a remote, unreal prick-
ling, and lo, the skin is chapped, and
dark red blood dappled with serum wells
slowly forth. The agony at the nape
continues, the burden of the heart-throb
increases, but as the skin opens the pain
passes away ; the fingers wander me-
chanically over the tumid tongue and
lips, producing no sensation save an ill-
located stress, when they, too, begin to
chap and swell and change to useless
swinging weights, suggesting huge Span-
ish stirrups with over-heavy tapaderos.
The throat is as if plugged with a hot
and heavy mass, which gradually checks
the involuntary swallowing motion, caus-
ing at last a horrible drowning sensation,
followed by a dreamy gratification that
the trouble is over. The lightning in
the eyes glances, and the thunder in the
ears rolls, and the brow-bands tighten.
The thoughts are only vague flashes
of intelligence, though a threadlike clue
may be kept in sight by constant atten-
tion, — the trail, the trail, the elusive,
writhing, twisting trail that ever seeks to
escape and needs the closest watching ;
all else is gone until water is " sensed " in
some way which only dumb brutes know.
In this stage there is no alleviation
save by the mercy of madness, no relief
except judiciously administered water,

which brings hurt of tener than healing.
Rice remembered hearing his horse
(which, startled by a rattlesnake, had
escaped him twenty hours before, but
which he had trailed in half-blind de-
speration) battering at the cover of a
locked watering-trough with fierce paw-
ing like that of a dog digging to a fresh
scent. The vaqueros, awakened by the
horse, found the man wallowing, half
drowned, in the trough. He always as-
cribed the bursting of his lips and tongue
to his earlier efforts to get moisture by
chewing stray blades of grass, and he
never consciously recognized the normal
symptoms of the fourth stage. When
my deer-path trail on the Utah plateau
turned out of the gorge over a slope
too steep for the fixed eyes to trace, I
followed the ravine, to stumble into a
chance water-pocket, with a submerged
ledge, on which I soaked an hour before
a drop of water could be swallowed ;
then, despite a half-inch cream of flies
and wasps, squirming and buzzing above
and macerated into slime below, I tasted
ambrosia ! A poor devil on the Mojave
desert reached a neglected water-hole
early in this stage. Creeping over de*-
bris in the twilight, he paid no attention
to turgid toads, sodden snakes, and the
seething scum of drowned insects, until
a soggy, noisome mass turned under his
weight, and a half-fleshed skeleton, still
clad in flannel shirt and chaparejos,
leered in his face with vacant sockets and
fallen jaw. He fled, only to turn back
later, as his trail showed, seeking the
same water-hole. During his days of de-
lirium in the hands of rescuers he raved
unremitting repentance of his folly in
passing by the " last water."

This is the stage of blood-sweat. It
is not in the books, but it is burned into
some brains.

As the second stage of thirst intensi-
fies into the third, so the fourth grows
into the fifth and last. The external
symptoms are little changed ; the inter-
nal or subjective symptoms are known

488

The Holiday Evening.

only by extension of the knowledge of
the earlier stages, and by the movements
inscribed in the trail of the victim ; for
in the desert perception is sharpened,
and scarcely visible features in the track
of man or beast open a faithful pano-
rama to the trained vision of the trailer,
whether white or red. The benumbing
and chapping and suffusion of the peri-
phery and extremities continue ; in this
way the blood and serum and other
liquids of the body are conveyed to the
surface and cast out on the thirsty air,
and thus the desiccation of the organ-
ism is hastened. Perhaps the tumid
tongue and livid lips dry again as the
final spurts from the capillaries are evap-
orated. Thirsty insects gather to feast
on the increasing waste; the unclean
blow-fly hastes to plant its foul seed in
eyes and ears and nostrils, and the hun-
gry vulture soars low. The wanderer,
striving to loosen the tormenting brow-
bands, tears his scalp with his nails and
scatters stray locks of hair over the
sand ; the forbidding cholla, which is the
spiniest of the cruelly spined cacti, is
vaguely seen as a great carafe surround-
ed by crystal goblets, and the flesh-pier-
cing joints are greedily grasped and
pressed against the face, where they cling
like beggar-ticks to woolen garments,
with the spines penetrating cheeks and
perhaps tapping arteries ; the shadow

of shrub or rock is a Tantalus' pool, in
which the senseless automaton digs de-
sperately amid the gravel until his nails
are torn off. Then the face is forced
into the cavity, driving the thorns fur-
ther into the flesh, breaking the teeth
and bruising the bones, until the half-
stark and already festering carcass arises
to wander toward fresh torment.

In this stage there is no alleviation,
no relief, until the too persistent heart
or lungs show mercy, or kindly coyotes
close in to the final feast. A child in a
single garment wandered out on Mojave
desert and was lost before the distracted
mother thought of trailers ; his tracks
for thirty hours were traced, and showed
that the infant had aged to the acute-
ness of maturity in husbanding strength
and noting signs of water, and had then
slowly descended into the darkness and
automatic death of the fifth stage of
thirst, and had dug the shadow-cooled
sands with tender baby fingers, and then
courted and kissed the siren cactus, even
unto the final embrace in which he was
held by a hundred thorns too strong for
his feeble strength to break.

This is the stage of living death. In
it men die from without inward, as the
aged tree dies that casts top and branches
while yet the bole bears verdure.

And of these stages is the thirst of
the desert.

W. J. McGee.

THE HOLIDAY EVENING.

AN old house, having a long lower
room filled with old things. The colors
of the room are faded colors, soft, dim,
harmonious ; such yellows, browns, reds,
and greens as one sees in autumn leaves,
and in the rugs and hangings of ancient
dwellings. Furniture, bric-a-brac, and

pictures are the evident collection of a
traveler in foreign lands.

Geraldine Pearl, a woman of about
fifty, is shaking a dusting-cloth out of a
door from which a path leads through a
garden to a figure of Flora. The door
is of glass, so that when closed it serves
as a window. On the wall, in this part
of the room, is a crucifix of carved wood,

The Holiday Evening.

489

an extensive display of Tyrolean pho-
tographs and water - colors, and a pea-
sant's hat of dark green felt ornamented
with a tuft of feathers.

Geraldine Pearl, having vigorously
shaken her duster, turns back to her
work, making, as she proceeds, disap-
proving comments : " Old warming-pan :
no, I thank you, I prefer a hot-water bag.
Old harp," — runs her fingers over the
strings : " sounds as if it might be first
cousin to the one ' that once through
Tara's halls the soul of music shed.'
Now, why should people care for things
because they are old ? — making excep-
tion, of course, in favor of such rubbish
as has some connection with one's ances-
tors. Nice, pretty, old-fashioned man-
ners are about the only old things I care
for, — you don't see them any too often
nowadays ; and as for that modern meth-
od of shaking hands — well, all I can say
is, it is worse than no manners at all."

She opens a " bride's chest," and un-
folds different articles of feminine attire,
— bodices, aprons, quaint gowns and gay
petticoats, — selects a lace kerchief and
a white muslin dress sprigged with vio-
lets, spreads these over a chair and puts
the rest carefully back.

" Some one was asking, the other day,
if this house were going to be an insti-
tution, and have by-laws and a board of
managers. I said I was n't prepared to
state what it was going to be in the fu-
ture, but at present it was to be entirely
given over to a form of private hospital-
ity ; in other words, a number of friends
had been invited to visit and to stay as
long as they were contented. I should
have been ashamed to explain the actual
facts of the case, and how Miss Lavinia,
being carried away with a sort of mania
for collecting old things, could n't rest
easy until she had got together a set of
antiques in the shape of six old ladies, to
enliven her museum, as it were."

Geraldine closes the lid of the chest,
and from a table near by takes up an
hour-glass. " Now what does that re-

mind one of, if it is n't of the sands of
life ebbing out, and nobody able to stop
them ? Makes one think of gravestones
and funeral wreaths, and ' there is a reap-
er whose name is Death.' Cheerful as-
sortment Miss Lavinia has got to amuse
the aged on a rainy afternoon, when
they '11 be rummaging round the house.
It seems they are going to be allowed
to make tea in their rooms. Of course
they '11 set fire to something, — that 's
to be expected. I suppose there is a
heavy insurance ; and after all, every-
thing considered, a fire would n't be such
a very bad thing."

A jar of Venetian glass next attracts
her attention. She holds it so that the
light shines through it. " I really don't
see how that was brought so far without
breaking. I should think it would have
been in a thousand and one pieces before
it was out of sight of Venice. But you
never can tell. Sometimes it is the most
delicate things that last the longest : and
that makes me wonder how it is going
to be with the old ladies. I can't say I
particularly enjoy the prospect of watch-
ing by six death-beds ; of seeing six can-
dles flicker lower and lower, and just
as you think they have flickered out, all
of a sudden surprise you by flaring up
again. Speaking of death-beds, if I had
n't been so short-sighted as to promise
Miss Lavinia's mother on hers that I 'd
always stand by the family, come what
would, I might manage to extricate my-
self from this ridiculous situation. It
is n't right, when one is about to set off
for a better world, to complicate the
troubles of the survivors. It would be
a -good deal more Christian-like and con-
siderate to leave things trustingly in the
hands of the Lord, — although of course
it takes an awful sight of faith not to
attempt to assist Him. As far as trust-
ing in the Lord is concerned, being on
the subject, I suppose I may as well
make a personal application, and endea-
vor to believe that if there is any sort
of a worth-while side to Miss Lavinia's

490

The Holiday Evening.

plan, the Almighty will be the very first
to find it out, and act accordingly. I
really don't think, either, that Miss La-
vinia's mother would have taken such
an advantage of me, if she had had the
slightest suspicion of the way things
were coming out. Who could have fore-
seen that from collecting buttons, and
butterflies, and postage-stamps, and old
coins, and china, and pewter, and second-
hand books and furniture, one would be
eventually led to collecting aged per-
sons ? "

With the lace kerchief and violet-
sprigged gown over her arm she crosses
the room, stops before an old piano and
opens it, stops again before the portrait of
a brown-haired, brown-eyed girl dressed
in the fashion of some thirty years pre-
vious, and says, speaking to the pictured
face, " Now, you need n't put on such
a reproachful expression. I don't want
your old things burned, and I don't mind
your collecting old ladies, — no, not in
the least. I rather like it, and I *m go-
ing to do the best I can by them, and so
is Mary Roselle, and so is Mr. Fred."

On a rustic seat under the Flora in
the garden a girl of about two - and-
twenty is arranging flowers in diminutive
nosegays. She too is talking to herself,
and 'the little rippling murmur sounds
like the refrain of a song. " Purple
and yellow pansies for Mrs. Pearson, and
white ones for Mrs. Page ; and forget-
me-nots, of course, for Mrs. Preller, to
remind her of the Fatherland ; and clove
pinks for Miss Hamilton, who is so fond
of a bit of gay color ; and a rose for
Dear, and another for Darling ; and for
every precious one of them a sprig of
thyme and of lavender and of lemon
verbena."

"Thinking aloud, Miss Mary Ro-
selle ? " asks the voice of some one com-
ing up the path.

The girl rises quickly and makes a
deep curtsy.

The owner of the voice says admiring-
ly, " What is it, — what have you been
doing to yourself ? Is it a new gown ? "

"No, a very old one. Geraldine
brought it for me to wear in what she
calls the opening scene. She says she
puts the entire performance under the
head of private theatricals, and we need
n't expect to hear a pleasant word from
her till the curtain falls at the end of the
final act."

The man laughs, and asks if the pa-
per he sees protruding from the girl's
belt is an old love-letter found in the
pocket.

" It is a love - letter," Mary Roselle
answers, " but a modern one : it is Miss
Lavinia's first letter to me regarding my
new position. I brought it to read to
you." She ties the old ladies' flowers
with some narrow white ribbon, places
them on the bench, each bunch by itself,
unfolds the letter and reads : —

DEAR MART ROSELLE, — I knew and
loved your mother when we were girls,
and have loved her ever since. They
tell me you are exactly like her : there-
fore I know and love you.

And now to another important sub-
ject. I am about to open the old house
at home under the name of The Holiday
Evening. Some day when my own even-
ing shall come, which will be before very
long (I suppose you have never thought,
dear Mary Roselle, in how short a time
one can reach the age of seventy), I in-
tend to return and live in it myself. In
the meantime six old ladies have con-
sented to do this for me. Would you
be willing to become their professional
visitor and partial companion ? I should
like you to see that they are surrounded
with pleasant little attentions. I should
like you to let them hear the old harp
and the spinet. I should like you to
invite a few well-behaved little children
on a Saturday afternoon to play in the

The Holiday Evening.

491

garden, for the sake of the sound of
their voices. There will be a sum set
apart for use, at your discretion, in pro-
viding cap -ribbons, peppermints, posies
in the winter, birthday remembrances, —
in short, whatever your judgment sug-
gests. The other details of the estab-
lishment are already in the hands of my
valued Geraldine Pearl and my nephew
Frederick Dillingham. As a reference
for my sanity, I beg you to consult your
dear mother's memories. She will
doubtless tell you that I have always
been called somewhat eccentric, — a re-
putation which, intelligently considered,
may mean several things. Let it mean
in the present instance a sincere earnest-
ness of purpose. Be favorable to my
proposition, and thus make happy six
otherwise daughterless old women and
Your mother's friend and yours,

LAVTNIA DILLINGHAM.

The man, looking up as Mary Roselle
stops reading, notices that her eyes are
sweetly moist, and has a sensation of
having come unexpectedly upon a brook
hidden under violet leaves.

" It 's so kind," the girl says, " so
very, very kind. Think of Miss Lavi-
nia's expressing it in that way, instead of
writing that she had learned of our re-
verses and wanted to give me a pleasant
opportunity of earning a regular income !
And when I hesitated about accepting
the generous remuneration offered for
so little service, I was assured that I
need have no scruples on that score,
since I would be expected to spend a
considerable amount for the benefit of
the cause; that I was to keep myself
abundantly supplied with pretty hats
and gowns, because it would do the old
ladies so much good to see me in them.
Of course I understand that this is only
Miss Lavinia's lovely way of showing
her friendship for mamma, and I accept
most gratefully ; but imagine being paid
for such charming duties as playing on
the harp and the spinet ! "

" And buying peppermints ! " inter-
rupts the man. " It 's perfectly absurd,
is n't it ? By the way, I believe I have
aunt Lavinia's first letter to me on this
subject somewhere at hand."

He produces the letter, gives the six
nosegays in a bunch to Mary Roselle,
and the two walk up and down the path-
way, the man reading.

DEAR FRED, — ^ Fate, Providence, my
guardian angel, — call it what you will,
— has lately brought me into constant
and intimate relationship with a number
of industrious fellow countrywomen, all
of whom appear to be engaged, when at
home, in some professional pursuit, such
as conducting cooking-classes, giving lec-
tures, keeping bees, raising mushrooms ;
in short, honestly striving to do their
duty and earn their own living, or that
of some one dependent upon them.

This has been to me a rebuking reve-
lation. It is so long since I have lived
at home for any continued period that
I have fallen quite behind the times. I
thought the young girls were still grow-
ing up to wait for their wooing and win-
ning, whereas it seems they are growing
up with a view to obtaining proficiency
in some practical pursuit, so that the vir-
gins of to-day have oil in their lamps.
Under the influence of my new impres-
sions, I have been going through a pro-
cess of self-examination, have been ask-
ing myself if there were not some special
and individual work I could undertake
for the good of the few or the many ;
until, having arrived at the humiliating
discovery that I know how to do nothing,
unless it be to select, classify, and pre-
serve objects of art and antiquity, I said
aloud, half jestingly, "Why not go a step
further, — why not collect and preserve
ancient human beings ? "

Whereupon the friend before whom
this remark was uttered surprised me by

492

The Holiday Evening.

taking my hand and telling me, with
tears in her eyes, of this old woman and
that old woman who would be so happy
in those long-unused rooms of mine, and
more particularly of a certain two, famil-
iarly called Dear and Darling, who had
read, studied, and economized together
in devoted companionship through many
years, thus preparing their minds and
saving their money for a long European
journey, which should come when they
felt able to retire from their profession
as teachers.

One day Darling was taken ill. Win-
ters and summers passed before she
recovered ; even then she was not quite
well, and she would never be again.
Meanwhile, the expenses of the sickness
had so encroached upon what the two
friends had set aside as their "European
fund " that, little by little, all thought of
the journey was of necessity abandoned.
They bore the disappointment bravely.
What did it matter, after all, they said ;
they had had the delightful hours of
anticipated pleasure ; they had still re-
maining a slender income, enough for the
modest wants of their quiet life. But it
happened that they were to be deprived
of this, also. A bank failed, and their re-
sources were swept away as by the wind.
When I heard this story, I thought that
to offer an opportunity of living among
my foreign collections would be a cruel
aggravation, and that I ought, at any
sacrifice, to have these two old friends
comfortably transported across the At-
lantic, and then by easy stages to what-
ever spots they most desired to visit.
But my friend assures me they are too
feeble to travel, and too sweet and sen-
sible to be aggravated. So I have con-
cluded to make them as happy as I can
at home, and four others with them.

Thus a word spoken in jest has be-
come an affair of serious import, — al-
though, between ourselves, Fred, I am
heartily ashamed of its limitations, be-
cause, in looking for the four others, I
have heard of at least forty, and no

doubt should have heard of four hun-
dred, had I been conducting the search
in person.

Geraldine has written to say that if it
is in my heart to assist the aged, I ought
either to establish an old ladies' home
on approved plans, or give whatever I
intend to spend in this direction for the
enlargement of one already established,
and that there is nothing so woefully
needed as old ladies' homes; that she
herself could fill a dozen without going as
many miles ; moreover, that my scheme
in its present form is not philanthropic,
but merely the gratification of an idle
whim. She also alludes to my future
guests as the six " Figurines," exactly as
if they were to be made of terra cotta,
and would arrive packed in straw. But
I know Geraldine.

I hear that Tom Meadows has come
home and opened a studio. I wish you
would prevail upon him to drop in upon
the members of my household now and
then of an evening, in a neighborly way,
for a game of cards or a little music and
talk. Tell him I will remember that one
good turn deserves another.

This is all at present, written to pre-
pare you for what is coming, and to ask
you to love my Figurines as you love
your AUNT LAVINIA.

Mr. Fred and Mary Roselle are now
at the end of the path by the glass door.
They open this and go into the long
room. Under the portrait of Miss La-
vinia as a girl is a stand holding a tea-
service of white and gold. As Mary
Roselle places her nosegays on the stand,
the street bell is heard to ring. Direct-
ly Geraldine enters, announcing " Mrs.
Pearson," and is followed by a thin lit-
tle old lady wearing a black dress and
black bonnet and shawl. The shawl has
a palm-leaf border.

Mary Roselle greets her with pretty
cordiality, and leads her to a chair. Mr.
Fred offers his hand, saying, " I am glad
to see you, Mrs. Pearson." The door of

The Holiday Evening.

493

a Black Forest clock opens, and a little
bird, showing its head, calls '• Cuckoo."

Mrs. Pearson, who appears greatly
bewildered, exclaims, " Am I no longer
an aged and indigent female ? "

"No, certainly not," returns Mary
Roselle reassuringly.

" No, indeed. Don't think of such a
thing," says Mr. Fred.

" You '11 feel better when you 've had
some tea," observes Geraldine.

She takes the old lady's bonnet and
shawl, and then busies herself about the
tea-table.

" This is not like life," resumes the
old lady. " It is only in impossible
books that the rich search you out and
do for you at the right moment. I 'm
a great reader. I 've read quantities of
just such books. I never believed in
them. I don't believe in them now.
Either I am asleep, or this is a most
remarkable exception to what generally
happens."

She pulls out her handkerchief and
begins to weep, interrupting her tears
to relate how, for months and months,
she has been presented before door-
ways, some of which bore the inscrip-
tion "Home for Aged and Indigent
Females," and others " Home for Aged
and Indigent American Females," with-
out obtaining admittance, either because
there was no vacancy at the time, or be-
cause she was not the right kind of ap-
plicant, and that she is mortified beyond
measure on account of her present be-
havior ; but who could help being over-
come at finding one's self suddenly in
the midst of such a beautiful room and
such a friendly reception, with no ques-
tions asked as to the length of time one
had lived in the town or whether one
were a church member, and no subjec-
tion to scrutiny, and nobody trying to
discover if one had tendencies to blind-
ness or were of a quarrelsome disposition,
and nothing mandatory, nothing provok-
ing retort ? No, it was not like life, nor
like anything ever before heard of.

" Sometimes," says Mr. Fred, " life is
quite as improbable as the most improb-
able story."

" Life let us cherish," hums Mary
Roselle, and she goes to the piano and
sings the pleasant old song,

" Life let us cherish,

While yet the taper glows,
And the fresh flow' ret,
Pluck ere it close."

During the singing Mrs. Pearson re-
covers her composure, and is able to
drink the cup of tea which Geraldine
has prepared for her.

IV.

It is the afternoon of a twofold fes-
tival, — that of Miss Lavinia's birthday
and of the formal opening of the house.
In the Tyrolean corner stands a flower-
decked table, ready for the little feast
which is to be a part of the programme.
At one end of the room a white curtain
has been stretched like a screen, and
near it Tom Meadows is engaged in
making selections from a box of lantern-
slides. Two old ladies, dressed exactly
alike in gray with white kerchiefs folded
at the throat, are wandering about, arm
in arm, and uttering delighted ejacula-
tions as they consider the various objects.

One of them says to the other, " Did
you hear, Darling, how Geraldine said
we might dust this room, if it would be
any satisfaction to us ? " And Darling
replies, laughing gently, as over a plea-
sant joke, " We never expected, did we,
Dear, that it would one day be permit-
ted us to dust Europe ? "

Two more old ladies occupy the settle
by the fireplace, — one youthfully and
elegantly dressed, the other agedly and
simply. Both have beautiful snow-white
hair. The young old lady is Miss Ham-
ilton, the old old lady is Mrs. Page, and
to her Miss Hamilton is saying that she
never could see why people desired to
observe birthdays, and that as far as the

494

The Holiday Evening.

date of her own birthday is concerned,
she has absolutely forgotten it.

" I am sure I have forgotten mine,"
returns Mrs. Page, " but I never pretend
to remember anything now. I wonder
if I am ninety ? I know I have been
high in the eighties for a good while."

" You might be high in the nineties
and not be old," observes Miss Hamilton,
" and you might be nine and yet be
the oldest person living ; it 's all a matter
of temperament. You never hear peo-
ple called old because they happen to
live in old houses, neither ought they to
be called old because they happen to live
in old bodies. Still, I confess I have a
preference for bodies that are at least
comparatively young, they are so much
more convenient to get about in." Then
she relates how, when she had pneu-
monia the winter before, the family who
took care of her, thinking she was going
to die, sent for a minister, — not her own
minister, but some one she had never
seen ; and how, when this man bent over
her and asked, " Is there anything you
particularly desire, Miss Hamilton ? " she
had replied, in as distinct a whisper as
her weakened condition would permit,
that she desired youth and health and
wealth and beauty. " And after that,"
says Miss Hamilton, " there was no more
introducing of strangers into my pre-
sence without first ascertaining whether
it were going to be agreeable to my feel-
ings."

" Where 's that little boy who was
standing at my elbow ? " asks Mrs. Page
suddenly.

" I have n't seen any little boy," re-
turns Miss Hamilton, looking about. " I
don't think there has been one in the
room."

" I must have been dreaming," says
Mrs. Page. " I hope you will excuse me.
Falling asleep seems to be the only ac-
complishment I Ve got left. I can't read,
and I can't use my hands, and I 'm sure
I have n't any manners, but I can always
fall asleep."

Mrs. Pearson and Mrs. Preller are
chatting by the glass door in the Tyro-
lean corner. Mrs. Preller is a round,
sunny-faced old lady, with knots of he-
liotrope ribbon on her dainty white cap.
Her companion wears a shawl of cream-
colored merino having a border of shaded
roses.

Mrs. Pearson has been explaining to
her companion that she makes it a mat-
ter of principle, when possible, to wear
a shawl, not because she is cold, but be-
cause it is the easiest way of keeping the
moths out of it ; that she possesses a shawl
for every month in the year, besides a
dozen or so odd ones ; that every ac-
quaintance who dies is sure to leave her
a shawl, and she often wishes something
different might be left, but it appears to
be another case of to him that has much,
much shall be given.

" That is a handsome one you are
wearing to-day," says Mrs. Preller, feel-
ing the texture of the article in question ;
" it must have cost a good deal when it
was new ; it 's very becoming to you."

They walk about the table and admire
the flowers ; Mrs. Preller wishing they
could have eaten in the garden, and re-
gretting that there is no table in front
of the bench by the Flora. " It would
be so gemuthlich for afternoon coffee."
She opens the glass door and steps into
the garden, Mrs. Pearson following.

As they go out, Geraldine, Mary Ro-
selle, and Mr. Fred enter the room from
the opposite side. Mary Roselle is say-
ing to Mr. Fred, " What should you
think of having a little rustic stand
placed before the Flora, so that Mrs.
Preller can invite her German friends
to drink coffee on Sunday afternoons ?
I am confident that is what she is long-
ing for this very moment. Germans are
so fond of Sundaying together and drink-
ing coffee in gardens."

Mr. Fred replies that the suggestion
meets with his entire approval. He
speaks somewhat absently, being pre-
occupied with thoughts called up by a

The Holiday Evening.

495

cluster of Cherokee roses which Mary
Roselle wears. As a usual thing he
does not enjoy seeing a woman's dress
adorned with flowers, and is apt to be
filled with a desire to remove them and
put them into water ; he has often expe-
rienced a feeling of positive annoyance
at the sight of roses with yard-long stems,
or violets massed in a solid and enormous
bunch, as a supplement to some fashion-
able gown, such arrangements appearing
to him un-rose-like and un-violet-like.
When Mary Roselle wears flowers it
seems to be different, and he is con-
scious of perceiving a charming fitness of
things.

Geraldine arranges some chairs in a
group opposite Miss Lavinia's picture,
and gradually the company are seated.
Mr. Fred stands under the picture, Geral-
dine with the maids of the house some-
what in the background.

Mr. Fred begins by saying that he has
been thinking how happy his aunt must
be on account of this gift of six new
friends who have met to keep her birth-
day ; that a birthday is such a pleasant
thing; and that a long series of them
might be considered as resembling the
petals of a rose, and the development
they afforded like the growth of the rose
of character ; so that by letting sun or
shade, weal or woe, serve its purpose
of adding richness and depth to the
coloring, this rose of character would
every year grow rounder and fairer, un-
til it should become a fit flower for the
garden of paradise. " Therefore," says
Mr. Fred, " let us rejoice in the num-
ber of our birthdays." A pleasant way
to speak of growing old. Even Miss
Hamilton nods approvingly.

Mr. Fred continues by telling his lis-
teners that until he learned something
of the experiences of his aunt Lavinia's
guests he had never realized the appro-
priateness of comparing life to a voyage

across an untried and tempestuous sea :
how one does, indeed, set forth gayly
and confidently ; but, as time goes on, one
passes into regions of storm and peril, and
there are long days and longer nights of
drifting, one knows not whither, of strug-
gling against despondency and despair,
against allowing one's courage to ebb
and one's faith to fade. Occasionally
it may be that the sea is unruffled from
port to port ; and yet, to miss the oppor-
tunity of facing and defying danger —
of making, as his aunt Lavinia's guests
have done, a brave passage ; of bringing,
as they have brought, a wealth of kind-
liness and gentleness unharmed across
life's sea — would be, taking the voyage
for all it is worth, infinitely more of a
loss than a gain.

The old ladies are all smiles and tears.
They consider the words quite remark-
able, coming from so young a man. (Mr.
Fred is thirty-eight.)

He draws a little nearer to his listen-
ers now, and tells them he remembers
having heard his aunt say of things es-
pecially beautiful and peace-giving that
they reminded her of the one hundredth
psalm, and that he thinks she would like
this used at the opening of her house.
He repeats the psalm from memory, add-
ing at the close, " And may He who is
gracious, whose mercy is everlasting,
keep this house and its owner, keep us
all, who go in and out over its threshold,
from this time forth forever. Amen."

Then Tom Meadows jumps up, and
announces briskly that, since tea is to be
served in the Tyrol, it is necessary to
bestir themselves in order to reach that
country; and may he ask the birthday
party to arise, so that the chairs can be
turned facing the opposite direction.

The change being accomplished and
the room darkened, a succession of en-
chanting views, the fruit of Tom Mead-
ows's camera during a Tyrolean moun-
tain tramp, are thrown upon the screen.
There are glimpses of the old imperial
road of the Caesars, leading from Ger-

496

The Holiday Evening.

many through the Tyrol into Italy ; there
are snow-topped heights and fertile val-
leys ; there are wayside shrines, and
flowers, and picturesque houses and vil-
lages : and thus loveliness melts into
loveliness, until the quaint little town of
Botzen appears, with its statue of Walter
of the Vogelweide in the market-place,
and next the doorway of an inn, and
next a smiling peasant maid in the dress
of the country.

Then the pictures vanish, all but the
last, which seems to have stepped down
into the room ; for when the light is ad-
mitted, it shines upon Mary Roselle,
wearing a dark stuff skirt, a white che-
misette, a black bodice with silver orna-
ments, a sky-blue apron, and a canary-
colored kerchief caught at the neck with
a deep red rose, and waiting to receive
the little company, as, in the mood of the
happiest of travelers who ever passed
over the Brenner on a glad June day,
Miss Lavinia's guests seat themselves
around the birthday table.

VI.

This Tyrolean trip is followed by others
of a similar character, gay little impro-
vised journeys, occurring on an appointed
evening of every week, and participated
in by the six old ladies, Mary Roselle,
Geraldine, Mr. Fred, Tom Meadows,
and later by Father Paul, the venerable
clergyman of the neighboring church,
St. Ann's, in whom Miss Hamilton has
discovered an acquaintance dating back
to the time of her young - ladyhood.
The discovery proves a most useful one,
Miss Hamilton being in peculiar need
of what Mrs. Preller calls ein jugend
Freund.

To explain this need, it must first be
stated that, some months previous, Mary
Roselle, in sending her weekly report to
Miss Lavinia, had inclosed a water-color
of herself wearing the sprigged muslin
gown and playing on the old harp.

Thereupon, Miss Lavinia, delighted with
the sketch, and desiring to be helpful
to Tom Meadows, whose work it is, con-
ceives the idea of having the portraits
of the six old ladies painted, to hang in a
row on the walls of " Little Europe," as
Dear and Darling have christened the
long room. She communicates this wish,
and Tom Meadows begins the portraits,
finding, with one exception, willing sit-
ters. The exception is Miss Hamilton,
who says it is a very responsible thing
to leave a large oil painting of one's self
in the world ; it is n't like a miniature
that can be tucked out of sight or thrown
down a well. In her opinion, only the
young and beautiful ought to be painted,
and certainly no woman over forty, al-
though she does not wish to be thought
sweeping in this assertion, and she con-
siders the five portraits already finished
by Mr. Tom excellent as likenesses and
agreeable as works of art ; only she would
prefer not to add her own to the number,
unless it could be painted at a more fa-
vorable age than the one she has attained.
She also mentions the fact of having in
her possession an old daguerreotype,
taken when she was eighteen. Would
Mr. Tom think it worth while to make
a portrait from that ?

Yes, Mr. Tom thinks it would be de-
cidedly worth while, especially as this
appears to be the only manner in which
Miss Hamilton's portrait can be se-
cured.

The daguerreotype is produced, and
he sets to work on an enlarged copy, for
the intelligent criticism of which it is
very desirable that some one should be
found who knew Miss Hamilton in her
youth. Hence the renewal of friendship
with Father Paul is most opportune ; and
thanks to his suggestions, various altera-
tions are made, — something is changed
about the mouth, a flower is added to the
dress, and a necklace, — until a charm-
ing old-time belle smiles from out the
canvas, " and yet looking very much as
our Miss Hamilton looks to-day," say

The Holiday Evening.

497

the five old ladies standing in an approv-
ing row before it.

When the portraits are completed, a
" private view " is held in Little Europe ;
and not long after this, fame begins to
knock at Tom Meadows's door. He
spends a profitable year, and at the end
of it goes abroad for further study, and
to thank Miss Lavinia for the opportu-
nity she has given him. He does not
tell her of the great sorrow that has be-
fallen him, — his "first great sorrow,"
he calls it to himself : he has asked Mary
Roselle's hand in marriage, and not re-
ceived it.

Meanwhile, Geraldine Pearl, following
the bent of her own ideas, has written
to Miss Lavinia that half a dozen of any-
thing is a skimpy number, and has asked
why she does not branch out in a Chris-
tian spirit, and enlarge her accommoda-
tions by the addition of a few rooms to
her house, "it being a cheap time for
building, — although building, even at a
cheap time, is always costly."

Miss Lavinia writes back favorably,
and the family are awaiting the final
word which shall mean twelve instead
of six old ladies at The Holiday Even-
ing.

Things are progressing thus, when
Mary Roselle has a singular dream. She
seems to be watching in the room where
Dear and Darling sleep. From this she
can look, as through a glass partition,
across the room called Little Europe,
and beyond into the garden. Mr. Fred
is standing by the Flora. She remem-
bers having promised to meet him there.
She cannot keep her appointment, be-
cause she must watch by Dear and Dar-
ling ; only it does not appear to be exact-
ly they, but something they have left and
which bears their semblance. The two
old friends themselves she perceives mov-
ing about in the long room, dusting every
object lovingly and carefully. When
their work is completed, they pause for a
moment, say, " Good-by, Little Europe,"
and disappear.

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 486. 32

VII.

Mary Roselle awakes. It is seven in
the morning. She dresses hurriedly, and
goes to The Holiday Evening. Upstairs,
in the little sitting-room shared by Dear
and Darling, Mr. Fred is reading a let-
ter. As the girl comes into the room, he
holds out his hand and says, " How did
you know, dear ? "

The sun is shining across the floor ;
the canary-bird is singing in his cage, but
not disturbing any one. In the inner
room Dear and Darling sleep peacefully,
as they have hoped all their lives some
day to sleep. The letter is one which
they have written together. Mr. Fred
reads it to Mary Roselle, and after a
little the two go down to the garden, sit
on the bench by the Flora, and talk of
life and death, of joy and sorrow, of
the end that may hold so wonderful a
beginning, of that strange, sweet thing
that knows no end, — " there is no end
to love."

The letter contains a request that dur-
ing the first day following their depar-
ture the old harp shall stand in the outer
room, and Mary Roselle shall play upon
it now and then. Of course, so Dear and
Darling say, they do not quite expect to
be able to hear her ; still it is possible,
and in any case the music will be plea-
sant for the others. They also say that
they have never felt reconciled to fu-
nerals as generally conducted ; that they
have always thought there must be some
better way of managing, but that people
would perhaps never find it, because each
funeral must of necessity be a totally new
experience to those most interested. For
themselves, they desire that a brief ser-
vice be held on the Sunday after the
earthly garment of their souls has been
put away, provided this service can be
so arranged as to leave a glad and hap-
py impression. They should like it to
take place in Little Europe, and to con-
sist partly of the singing of their three

498

A Florida Farm.

favorite hymns, and of the reading of the
burial service of the Prayer Book with
certain modifications, such as the omis-
sion of all details touching the dissolu-
tion of the body, and all references to
the wrath of God. Furthermore, they
wish to be remembered and spoken of as
two would-be travelers, who, with hearts
full of thankfulness for the beautiful
things accorded during their time of wait-
ing, have finally set forth in perfect trust
and joy.

Early in the day Mrs. Pearson enters
the inner room, bringing two white crape
shawls, which she has always kept very
choice, and lays one on the foot of each
bed. After that, the well-behaved little
children who play on Saturdays in the
garden come, and say to one another
how sweet Dear and Darling look with
the pretty white shawls about them ; and
when they are told that the two friends
will awaken in a beautiful country, they
believe all that is said, prattle pleasant
things about the awakening, and go away
on tiptoe.

Then the family gather in the room
without, Mary Roselle plays softly on the
old harp, and Father Paul repeats a
prayer or two, and reads aloud passages
found marked in a Bible which Dear and
Darling have used ; among them is this :
" He asked life of thee, and thou gavest
it him, even length of days for ever and
ever."

On the following Sunday, the house-
hold and a number of invited guests meet
in Little Europe. The well-behaved

children are present, also ; likewise the
choir-boys from St. Ann's, and Father
Paul in his robe of office. Under the
portraits of Dear and Darling is a jar
filled with white immortelles and vines
of evergreen, fresh that day from the
woods. Father Paul renders the service
in the manner desired. The boys from
St. Ann's sing the three favorite hymns.
The first two are those of welcome : —

" ' Come to Me,' saith One, '' and coining,
Be at rest.' "

" Faith's journeys end in welcome to the

weary,

And heaven, the heart's true home, will
come at last.
Angels of Jesus,

Angels of light,
Singing to welcome

The pilgrims of the night."

The third is the triumph song of Ber-
nard of Cluny : —

" 0 sweet and blessed country,
The home of God's elect ! "

Then Mrs. Pearson, who has been
wearing a black cashmere shawl with a
black ribbon border, slips it off, and ap-
pears festively arrayed in one of deli-
cate green silk, showing vague flowers,
and Mary Roselle, the well-behaved lit-
tle children grouped about her, stands
with Mr. Fred before Father Paul.

" Dearly beloved," Father Paul be-
gins, " we are gathered together here in
the sight of God, and in the face of this
company, to join together this man and
this woman in holy matrimony."

And no one is in the least surprised.
Harriet Lewis Bradley.

A FLORIDA FARM.

OUR purpose in going thither was pri-
marily to make money. Incidentally,
we hoped to find vigor in an outdoor
life, and other pleasant possibilities al-
lured us and led us to embark in the

venture. The venture seemed promis-
ing. Immigrants were pouring into the
state, and land-prices were rising. Lake
Osseeyo was linked by its drainage canal
with a chain of navigable waters, which

A Florida Farm.

499

flowed at last into the sea, and by the
permanent lowering of its level a vast
margin of rich soil was dried. The chief
settlement of the region was already a
city, and the capital of a county ; not a
paper city of the land-speculators, but a
municipality, presided over by a mayor,
misruled by a board of councilmen, and
provided with schools, churches, and
drinking - saloons. A newspaper devot-
ed itself to its praises ; rail and water
carriage met on its long pier. A Mis-
sissippi steamer, with towering funnels,
swung at anchor in the offing. An-
other, belonging to the drainage compa-
ny, lay belching black smoke, or swept
away toward the horizon with a ribbon
of foam unwinding from its broad stern
wheel. The tattoo of the builder's ham-
mer sounded all day in the woods and
by the water.

We had seen many towns and villages,
in a prospecting tour ; we had an exten-
sive acquaintance with land-agents, and
we were disheartened by the memory of
many ineligible offers of property. We
liked little that was characteristically
Floridian, except certain agricultural
possibilities of the winter. In this mood
we had waked, one morning, at Osseeyo
City, and looked out to see what it was
like. For the first time in many days
we had slept refreshingly ; no mosqui-
toes, no sultry heats, had jaded us. A
steady wind laden with forest odors
was drawing through the open windows ;
the globe of the sun lay on the verge of
a wide rippled water, crimsoning fresh
meadows and the trunks of innumerable
pines. An intermittent tinkling of bells,
a smell of sawn cypress wood, a deli-
cious chill of the morning wind, stirred
certain fibres of happy memory. We
seemed suddenly to be listening to the
clank of Swiss cowbells, and inhaling
the fragrance of dew and unpainted
pine, in some inn of the Oberland. It
was a far reminiscence, for the meadows
and forest glades were level as the lake ;
but it pleased and curiously predisposed

us. Here, at last, was coolness ; here
was green grass, and a pleasant un-Flo-
ridian impression of Florida. We looked
sanguinely out into the blue morning.

After breakfast we lighted cigarettes,
and glanced about indulgently for the
city. At first we saw nothing more ur-
ban than sparse "pines and their steady
shade, cropping cattle and their moving
shadows. But the city disclosed itself,
as we wandered about, skeptically credu-
lous, subtly prepossessed by the absence
of mosquitoes and land-agents, ready to
have faith in a sub-tropical region where
the May breeze was vivifying and the
turf firm underfoot. The clusters of
dwellings proved to be more numerous
than we had thought, for the city was
laid out on a generous plan, with an eye
to the future. When we had visited the
residence quarters, we strolled upon the
hard sands of the lake shore and ad-
mired the vast bowl of blue ripples. As
we looked, the wind freshened ; dark
flurries scudded over the shining level;
a little sailing -boat bent to the gusts,
threw up a white furrow, and shot into
the sun-path. We loved wind and bright
water ; we felt a joy in sails as of a sea-
bird in its wings. We did not say so,
but our dream of farming in Florida
was blent with a vision of water, and
the ploughing of waves in this manner
seemed germane to the purpose.

So when we reached the blue frame
" blocks " at the pier, the basking steam-
er, the hardware store, the two grocery
stores, the dry-goods store, the druggist's,
and the saloons, — fronting the morn-
ing sun with blistered paint and foggy
glass, — we were already won over in
some measure. Our hearts did not sink
at the pyramids of scarlet canned goods
beneath a festoon of calf boots and cal-
icoes, at the loungers on the unswept
doorsills, at the whiff of spilled liquors
from the saloons. Rather, we smiled at
these things, and found them more ur-
ban than we had expected. A cowboy,
with a broad hat and jingling spurs, gave

500

A Florida Farm.

them a fine frontier flavor, as he issued
from a saloon and rode jauntily off, his
whip-lash whirling and pistoling about
his head.

In due season the land-agent ap-
peared, and we fell into his lap like
ripened fruit. It was of quite a little
principality that he disburdened himself
in our favor, — a great lake - fronting
meadow, fringed about with virgin pine-
lands. The woods came to the water's
brink at one corner, with a house-site,
as if we had so willed it. A strip of
silver sand, firm and broad as a high-
way, coasted the meadow and shelved
beneath the clear lip of the lake. We
departed, with lightened purses, to re-
turn in the autumn.

In September I engaged the services
of a young New Englander, named Ru-
f us, and put up with him at the Osseeyo
City Hotel. A camp -kit followed us
from the North, and a serviceable cedar
boat, with sculls and a jointed mast,
which we christened the Egret. We
bought a brisk-gaited gray gelding and a
green wagon, and drove daily to the prin-
cipality, the sawmill, and other points,
upon our business of settling. At last
all was made ready, and the trunks,
camp-kit, and provisions were loaded on
the green wagon. My heart sank a lit-
tle, now that the time was come. Os-
seeyo City assumed an unwonted plea-
santness ; the hotel was beginning to
exhale a faint prophecy of dinner. But
I was outward bound, in the r6le of a
sturdy pioneer, and I must cover my
qualms with a smiling face. I unmoored
the Egret with a great appearance of
unconcern, and ran out the oars, while
Ruf us drove off upon the load.

An alligator on the beach appeared
to be the only tenant of my demesne,
when I grounded the Egret ; but as I
entered the wood-edge I perceived oxen
yoked to a load of yellow lumber, and
the driver reclining on ' the grass. A
building-site was chosen, and the fresh
planks fell with a hollow clatter on the

grass. When the driver was gone, I
strolled off and reassured myself about
the spot. A small oak grove was on
the lakeside to the left, another to the
right. Two lanceolate tufts of saw-pal-
metto flanked an open way between, and
the blue water showed all along. The
land broke from a low terrace to the
beach. It was a site made to hand.

Ruf us admitted it, when he drove up
with the creaking load. We according-
ly fell to with hammer and saw ; and
when the dusk began to thicken, the
timber anatomy of a small cottage glim-
mered already among the pines. We
hastened to lay planks on the joists of
the upper floor, and had a tent stretched
on these, and the gray tethered beneath,
when the night closed in. Rufus made
coffee upon an oil-stove, and opened a
tin of meat ; and the tent, with cots
neatly spread and a swinging lantern
above, took a homelike look, as we supped
from a pine box. So I tried to think,
at all events, and I remarked upon it to
Rufus, who assented. But this was the
official view. The forest lay all about,
shuddering with breezes and vocal with
crickets and strange movings in the pal-
mettos, and the solitude seemed to creep
into the tent when the ladder was drawn
up and the light put out.

The sky was exquisitely mottled, as
we went down to the lake, after some
hours of uneasy tossing followed by a
sleep. The clouds stretched high and
far, like a vast frostwork, over the
dawn, and I thought I had never seen
anything so vivid and so delicately
flushed. The still lake glassed it to the
horizon, and -the mirrored sky rose like
a lifted banner in the ripple from our
feet. The splash of the water-buckets
startled some long-billed birds that were
spearing for fish in the margin, and we
made our toilets in a whir of withdraw-
ing wings. We kindled a fire, ate and
drank ; and the day's work began.

The woods rang with our hammers,
day by day ; but the little house grew

A Florida Farm,.

501

slowly. The grass went wintry with
sawdust and shavings ; billets and plank-
ends lay thick about, and the details of
construction appeared likewise to accu-
mulate. Doors, windows, stairs, closets,
verandas, fed on our brains like a fever.
Amateur house-building was an economy
of dollars, perhaps, but it proved to be
costly in time and strength. Finally, it
seemed best to call in a man of the craft.
Rufus's face grew visibly younger when
this decision was announced, and the
gray showed brisk heels as he galloped
off for a carpenter.

The carpenter came presently, — a
trim figure of a fellow, with a shotgun
over his shoulder, and a half -filled game-
pouch beside his tool-bag. He saw the
situation at a glance, and met it like
the quiet woods gentleman that he was.
I was n't a carpenter, was I, he tactful-
ly inquired. Well, he 'lowed perhaps I
was n't ; and carpentering was a trade,
sure enough. He had worked at it
himself a right smart while, but it was
puzzlin' even to him sometimes.

I was now a cognoscente in joinery,
and took pleasure in his skill. He
thumbed an edge-tool like an artist ; he
would sit on a heady scaffold, his long
legs dangling, plant a nail in the ceiling,
and bring his hammer nonchalantly true
upon it, where I must have lain on my
back,, and still have bruised the planks
with wild target-practice. Cupboards,
framings, rails, and lattices grew like
exhalations. A tiny stable was set up
as one builds a house of cards, and at
length the gray ceased to look over his
manger upon our dinners, and the tent
was furled.

My partner, Farley, had now joined
us with a reinforcement of energy, and
the time was come to settle down se-
riously to the business of husbandry.
Practically, Farley and I knew little of
this business, but we had an acquaint-
ance with the theory, like young physi-
cians ready for patients. We ploughed
several acres of grass-land by the lake,

and left the turf to decay for the spring
garden. The ploughed land " turned up
well," Rufus said ; and in the late win-
ter, as the sun began to rise from the
solstice, we sowed cucumber seeds in the
warming soil. This was pleasant, light
labor for breezy mornings, and we per-
mitted it to be irradiated with a hope of
profit. Winter cucumbers in New York,
we knew, were sold like choice roses.
We could not look for the top of the
market in late March or April, it was
true, but we were not avaricious : a few
hundred dollars per acre, we observed,
would do for a beginning.

The field lay along a low dune of beach
sand that gleamed against the lake. Tall
woods hedged the inland boundary, and
a great waterside prairie broadened from
one end. We made mounds with the hoe,
worked a handful of phosphate into each,
and leveled the top. In these we traced
trenches with the fingers, sprinkled a
line of seeds, and covered and " firmed "
them in. A week later we sowed a sec-
ond line, and in another week a third,
to make triply sure against mishaps of
cold. It was the third sowing that found
favoring heats, and far on in March the
vines were beginning to creep outward
from the hills. It was late even for a
return of a few modest hundreds of dol-
lars per acre ; but we blithely hoed and
hoped, and the mocking-birds sang, with
mellow throats, above the speckling blos-
soms.

The mocking-birds, much at ease, flut-
ed in the balmy noons ; and the cucum-
ber vines, likewise much at ease, length-
ened and branched, till the field was a
tangle of overlapping leaves. Market
quotations for cucumbers went slowly
down, and the vines manifested no con-
cern. We made ready for the crop, with
crates and shipping-plans, and the vines
nonchalantly sunned their rank leaves
and bedecked them with yellow bloom.
" Consider the cucumbers of the field ;
they toil not, neither do they spin." It
was a beautiful sight, and we tried to

502

A Florida Farm.

look upon it as Solomon might have
done. It occurred to us that we might
gather wisdom, even if we could not
gather cucumbers.

The blossoms began to fall, and we
moused sharply among the vines. And
lo ! on a sudden, a cucumber ! Farley
discovered it, and we gathered about it
with becoming emotions. There it was at
last, a cucumber, an indubitable cucum-
ber, — lilliputian, indeed, but complete
in all its parts, green and spiny, with a
festive blossom at the end. Farley and
I knelt and adored it, as it were. It
was like the joys of paternity.

Rufus looked on with a sardonic hu-
mor which he kept for rare occasions.
" Git out your crates, — git out your
crates," he said grimly : " time to ship
the crop. Crop 's small, but so are the
prices ! "

I turned to him, unaffected by the in-
nuendo, the flush of fruition in my face.
" I say, Rufus, how long does it take a
cucumber to grow up ? "

Rufus's face grew red, his spare frame
underwent a contortion ; he slapped his
knee and burst into a fit of laughter.
" Don't you know ? " he cried, choking.
" Oh, fifteen to twenty years, without
the weather 's warm. If it is, four or
five days."

In four or five days, the weather be-
ing warm, the cucumber had grown up,
and the vines were teeming with pickles.
We began to ship the crop toward the
end of April, and we ceased to ship it
when the first returns came in. We
kept the wisdom for our own consump-
tion.

After the cucumbers were gathered
the weather grew summer-like. We had
taken the precaution to acquaint our-
selves in advance with the seasons by
means of sundry pamphlets issued to in-
duce immigration. We were aware that
the Florida summer was more genial
than the torrid summer of the North.
Fanning winds spiced with the resin of
the woods, a shining equableness, show-

ers with a glint of lightning to manu-
facture ozone, brief aspersions with-
drawn at the sojourner's convenience, a
general blueness and balminess, — such
we understood to be the Florida sum-
mer.

We were a little surprised, therefore,
to find it hot, blazingly and blisteringly
hot. The May sun rose, every morning,
like a huge ruddy coal. Despite the re-
sinous breezes, possibly fanned by them,
it burned swiftly to an intolerable in-
candescence, and smote us with languor
as we toiled forth to our tasks. It fla-
gellated our backs, our knees weakened
beneath it, in the field ; our lips parched
with thirst ; we seemed about to ignite,
but when we had drunk rivers of water
a merciful perspiration burst forth and
prevented the conflagration. Neverthe-
less, we accomplished much. I do not
know how we did it, for it was a feat
merely to exist. Perhaps the heroism
of this performance nerved us to further
effort. We not only existed : we cooked
meals and ate them ; we cleared them
away, and went out to delve and plough ;
we routed pillaging cattle and pigs ; we
added a great stretch of tillage-land to
the cucumber field, and fenced it.

But it was not till the rains of sum-
mer came on that we fully realized the
horrors of this delightful season. The
first showers brought wafts of coolness
and allayed the burning of the sands.
They brought, too, a changed aspect of
the monotonous earth and sky. The
white scalp of a cloudy Himalaya would
appear in the blue, and soon there would
be a range of insufferable snows beetling
toward the zenith. After the languorous
dream of a sub-tropical morning, it was
stirring to see the splendid energies of
the air, the sweeping shadows, and the
dramatic burst of lightning and wind.
The ground trembled with the following
thunder, and the world went out in a
fog of driven water.

After a time the skyey pageants ceased
to be events ; the lightning began to jave-

A Florida Farm.

508

lin the pines about the cottage, and the
weather fell into a lamentable aqueous
intemperance. The soil filled to the
surface, and exuded water like a soaked
sponge. We could go nowhither with-
out wading ; and when the sun came out,
it was to blaze on a waste of wetness
and fill the air with steam. The time
was come to rest from our labors. We
abandoned the farm for a little to the
elements and the frogs.

We returned somewhat soberly for
the second season's work. Reports from
the farm region had been all of rains
and flooding waters. Despite its drain-
age canal the lake had come steadily
up, like a rising tide. The beach lay
beneath a fathom of water ; fishes swam
in the arable land ; the canal and the
drainage company were a mark for curses.
But the weather " faired off " at last, and
the ebb set in. When the higher soil
had dried, beds were made for cabbage
and cauliflower seeds. This was pretty
gardening work in the mellow autumn
sunshine. The beds were heaped, lev-
eled, and overlaid with fine mould;
then they were " firmed " with a trodden
plank, and sprinkled to a uniform moist-
ure. A toothed implement made shal-
low holes for the seeds, and these were
dropped in one by one and carefully
covered ; for the cauliflower seeds were
costly. Within a few days the beds
were quick with files and phalanges of
pale shoots.

There are, I dare say, keener de-
lights than the cultivation of cabbages
and cauliflowers, yet I am not sure of
it, as I recall the fascination of pottering
in the brown earth and taking a hand
in its miracles, — not with the languid
sense of the sedentary man, to whom a
cabbage is merely a cabbage, but with
faculties quickened by fresh air and good
blood, and a pocket modestly sanguine.
For the cabbage and the cauliflower and
most things that grow in a pot-garden
are but little known to him who sees
them only in the pot or on the plate.

To see them thus is to know them in
their death, and the man who merely as-
sists at their obsequies and inters them
stolidly in his belly has as small notion of
them as the citizen digesting a meadow
lark may have of the carol in the grasses
and the flash of the wings. If he have
a soul, and an eye which is more than
an optical convenience, the gardener will
walk among his vegetables with a joy
beyond the smacking of lips. He will
see a country-lass-like comeliness in the
lusty leaves of his cabbages, and thump
their green polls as he might fondle a
cheek. He will gaze tenderly into the
white faces of his cauliflowers, as with
pinned leaves he wimples them from the
sun.

Pleasant it was to sow seeds ; pleasant,
also, in the late afternoon, to sprinkle
the young plants with a rain of clatter-
ing drops. Farley and I would of tenest
do this by ourselves, our heads, necks,
and forearms bared to the soft wind,
our legs naked above the knees for the
lake-wading. It was an outward trip,
with the empty water-cans swinging, the
feet first in the cushiony plough-land, and
then on the firm beach and in among
the netting sunbeams of the margin ; the
eyes on the vast slumbrous level, melt-
ing to violet in the offing. It was an
inward trip, with the muscles stiffened
to the burden, the legs and arms cooled
by the dip, and the eyes on the curtain
of pines, taking redness of the low sun.
Forth and back, forth and back, each
turn a change in the deepening color,
perhaps till the sun was gone, and the
silver of the moon was in the long rip-
ple and the brimming cans. To walk
to and fro with the watering-cans and
whistle in the twilight, — this truly was
a wage of the day, if it had been weari-
some and parching; for the heat and
cares of it were done, and here was its
quintessence in the commerce with calm
beauty and the fluting of mellow notes,
— mellow notes for the maker, although
a sorry enough sibilation in others' ears,

504

A Florida Farm.

if they had listened; for the whistler
whistles to kindle his fancy, and wakens
fairy flutes and horns, unheard by others,
with the thin piping of his lips.

The ears of Rufus would now and
then hearken by the cottage stove, and
his mouth would echo nay staves — bet-
tering them, I dare say — in a mocking
travesty above the frying-pan. As I
came in, he would eye me quizzically and
ask if I had been whistling for my sup-
per. Upon my accepting the thought,
he would clap a mound of griddle-cakes
on the table, with the remark, " Well,
here it is, then." And with this we
would seat ourselves, Farley, Rufus, and
I, whilst the dogs beat their tails on the
floor.

The sun shot a milder and more
oblique ray as the autumn waned, and
the evenings grew chill enough for a
hearth-fire of pine-knots. But the cau-
liflower and cabbage plants throve with
the copious dews, and in November and
December we set them out in the field.
The transplanting on a large scale was
novel to us, but a system was soon de-
veloped, and the work took a military
method. A little force of hired hands
was marshaled as the sun began to de-
cline. One hauled water and filled casks
deposited about the field ; another drew
the marker and cross-marker; others up-
rooted plants from the beds. When the
sun was an hour or so from the lake-
rim, the plant-droppers went ahead, like
skirmishers, the main transplanting body
followed with flourishing trowels, and the
water er brought up the rear. Finally,
the whole force turned about and filled
the watering-holes with a motion of the
feet.

By the middle of December the fields
bristled with thrifty growth. The soil
had been made fat with muck from the
marshes composted with mineral plant-
foods. The cauliflowers shot up with
extraordinary vigor ; their leaves rustled
like crisp silk and drenched us with dew
to the waist as we walked the rows in a

search for heads. At last creamy buds
appeared here and there at the hearts of
the plants. Shipments began in Janu-
ary. The heads were cut late in the day,
when the air had cooled. After supper,
Farley, Rufus, and I would hang lanterns
in the packing-house, and labor till the
evening harvest was disposed of. The
heads were neatly trimmed of leaves,
mopped to remove vestiges of dew, cov-
ered with white paper, and closely packed
in crates or ventilated barrels. Some-
times the work would be over by mid-
night. Often the morning sun would
be scarlet on the pines as we marked the
last barrels. The loads went off early
to avoid the noon heat, and were dis-
patched from Osseeyo City by express.

The epicure garnishing his midwinter
meal with cauliflower guesses little of
the sedulous labors that purvey it for
his palate. I once sat near such an one
in a New York restaurant, and saw him
fastidiously degust the tender flowers
and growl at their costliness. " It 's
shameful, simply shameful! "he declared.
" The growers must be a parcel of rob-
bers ! " And he glanced at me as much
as to say, " You feel with me, I 'm sure."
But I did not. I looked at his smug
cheeks and gluttonous lips, at his soft
hands and bulging waistcoat, and wished
that he might earn his tidbits in the
sun. " Sir," I thought, " you are defi-
cient in imagination ; you reason hastily
upon abstruse matters. The gentle cauli-
flower is unvengeful, but there is indi-
gestion in it unless it be genially ab-
sorbed. You are gazing on a purveyor
unaware. He wishes you no ill, but he
is just. He mildly disagrees with you,
— and prays that the cauliflower may do
likewise."

At this period we were uncertain of
the profitableness of cauliflowers, but we
hoped much from them. The first re-
turns were fabulously encouraging. The
commission merchants poured dollars and
encomiums into our laps, and we went
about with a dream of wealth in our

A Florida Farm.

505

eyes. The fame of the crop and of the
returns went abroad like a murder, and
the world looked in upon us on a sud-
den. We were called upon day by day
to tell the secrets of our success and
blush in a circle of listeners. If we had
a key to wealth, it was plain that other
fingers were itching for it. A journalist
wrote us up, our story was blown upon
the winds, and the region and ourselves
were enveloped in an atmosphere of
fable. It appeared that we had raised
some hundreds of barrels of cauliflowers
per acre through the virgin richness of
the soil, and realized more than the profit
of an acre of wheat upon each barrel.
Our costly applications of fertilizer and
other minor facts were overlooked in a
spirit of statistical proportion, and the
account bristled with dollars.

We presently had occasion to take our
fame somewhat grimly, and to tarnish it
with a reputation for mendacity by re-
vealing the facts. The earliest cauliflow-
ers had been shipped in cool weather, —
that started them crisp and sound; but a
warm spell followed, and our consignees
wrote of decay and unsalable lots. There
was still an average profit, however, and
we hoped for better luck. But without
warning the cold returned in a long,
keen - blowing northern wind, and the
bulk of the crop was harvested with a
sickle of frost.

It was our first taste of freezing wea-
ther in Florida. The winter before had
been cool at times. We had looked out
in many a sharp dawn expecting to see
a rime on the fields ; but there had not
been so much as a feathered grass-spear.
The frost that killed our cauliflowers
was without a fellow for fifty years back,
and we inevitably took it for the excep-
tion to the rule of mildness. This was
the general view of it, till it was found
to be the beginning of a term of cold
winters, and but a balmy forerunner of
the great " freeze " of 1894.

As it settled upon us, we rallied cheer-
fully to fight it. The day went down

in a yellow burnished glow beyond the
woods ; the northern wind flowed out of
the twilight in a broad stream, and the
crisp grasses and pine needles sang with
it. Spanish moss was heaped over the
maturer plants ; great fires of fat pine
were kindled on the northern edges of
the field, and a curtain of smoke drift-
ed all night beneath the stars. But at
dawn the soil was frozen in the very lee
of the flames.

On the following day the sky darkened
as if for snow, and the wind whitened
the lake in a steady roaring blast that
sheeted the pier with frozen spray. The
distinctions of a thousand southerly miles
were done away, and for two days we
had the biting winds and iron furrows
of New England. On the third day the
thermometer rose above the freezing-
point, and a warm sun shone out. The
cauliflowers, which had been embalmed
by the frost, drooped and fell into de-
cay, and we began to practice philoso-
phy. The cauliflower field was replant-
ed with potatoes, beans, cucumbers, and
other garden crops, and something was
saved from the season's wreck. The
returns, indeed, were considerable, and
a qualified success with the frosted cab-
bages further heartened us.

We entered the third season with
some confidence. The greater part of
the plough-land was devoted to cabbages
and potatoes, which had specially thriven
and had proved marketable. The tillage
now included a great marsh, dried by a
further lowering of the lake, a mellow
residuum of decayed bog plants, on which
the thrifty crops lay like designs on vel-
vet. We had gathered an efficient force
of hands of the " poor white " class, a
class which our experience inclined us
to esteem. These came from various
Southern States, and brought a habit of
industry less nervous and superficially
energetic than the Northern, but not
less telling in the long result. Com-
monly, also, they had tact and a flavor
of courtesy, and were men with whom a

506

A Florida Farm.

gentleman might be at ease in the field
as with a homely variety of his own spe-
cies.

As the season advanced, the bulk of
the increased crops made us take to the
water for our freighting. A lighter was
built and moored off the beach, and this
was heaped, in the early morning, with
packed crates and barrels, and taken in
tow for Osseeyo City by a steamer. The
cabbage heads, gathered in sacks, were
stripped of loose leaves and wedged into
crates ; the potatoes were sorted by sizes
and barreled. If the weather allowed,
this was done on the beach, with the
lake shimmering at hand, and perhaps
the smoke of the approaching steamer
quickening the toil. Three hoarse blasts
of her whistle would be the signal for
every nerve to be strained ; the last loads
would be hurried aboard, the mules and
oxen splashing the bright water ; and
then all would be still again, save for the
farewell blast and the throb of the de-
parting engines.

The harvesting of potatoes was a so-
ciable toil. The men plied their digging-
hoes by twos and threes in adjoining
rows, with an accompaniment of gossip
and ringing laughter. It had, too, a zest
of subterraneous exploration like mining.
One stroke of the hoe would unearth a
disappointment, perhaps only a single big
tuber among a cluster of " seconds ; " but
the next would make up for it, and lay
bare a hatful of fat potatoes. The tu-
bers came clean and abundant out of the
brown marsh soil, and made a great vol-
ume of valuable shipments.

We now went often to town, for the
mail or groceries, in the little Egret;
and a sail in her was a delicate water-
pleasure, for she was apt in all sailing
points and a light pull for the oars. She
would slip swiftly over the shining miles,
the ripples tinkling at her bow, and
bring us home again with no more delay
than a little waiting on the wind, if it
were calm and we disinclined for the
oars. These trips to civilization polished

us and sensibly thinned the rust of the
woods. We affected a stoicism, as per-
sons not unused to the world ; but, emer-
ging fresh from the wilderness, we were
secretly a little dazed as we came among
men. The small city gleamed pleasant-
ly amid its pines, and cast a picture on
the wave. Here were the triple veran-
das and red roofs of the hotel ; yonder
the blue and white business " blocks ; "
the square belfry and green blinds of the
Methodist church rose among its live-
oaks, and the Baptist church uplifted
a horn ; here were cottages, and even
houses ; there the new bank, painted in
three colors, and some buildings of brick.
Pleasure-boats put forth with a freight
of muslined femininity ; people went to
and fro, in a holiday mood, on the ve-
randas ; a train drew up at the station,
and a locomotive bound for far cities
panted on the rails. We entered these
stirring scenes with a certain thrill and
a wary self-command, as of rustics mind-
ed not to stare too curiously. There
were lists of supplies to be filled ; per-
haps a hardware and a dry-goods store
to be nonchalantly visited, as if it were
quite an every-day thing to be at leisure
and make purchases. And when these
things were done, there were the newly
distributed mails, with precious letters.
Lastly came the strange experience of a
hotel dinner, served luxuriously in little
oval dishes that some one else washed.
When this was eaten, we commonly
lingered on the hotel piazzas with fel-
low farmers, gathered from about the
lake, and voluble upon drought, freight-
charges, and mutilated returns. Or there
might be a sojourning beauty or two,
curious about frontier ways, and, Desde-
mona-like, willing to listen sympatheti-
cally to a tale of tanned Othellos.

The sinking sun roused from these
dalliances : the Egret's sail was hoisted
to the breeze, and her stem once more
pointed for the wilds. There was a
strange delightful ness in these twilight
cruises, a sense of satisfied home-return-

A Florida Farm.

507

ing oddly at variance with the departure
from comfortable meals and the neigh-
borhood of men. The city sank away
in a mellow dusk, its lights sparkling out
here and there ; the bearded cypress on
the halfway point grew, on the darken-
ing waste ; the little Egret bounded san-
guinely over the waves ; and by and by,
lo ! yonder — the far pale curve of the
farm beach, and Rufus's lantern twin-
kling like a star !

Thus far the outlook had been pleasant-
ly auroral, but it now began to change.
Little by little, in our three laborious
seasons, we had learned to encounter the
difficulties of our undertaking, and we
fancied that we knew them all. The farm
had raised increasing harvests of vege-
tables, and it now began to raise a lit-
tle thrifty livestock : cattle ranging the
grass-land ; swine fattening on the crop
waste; and tow-haired children of the
hands, indirectly sprung from the re-
turns. These things had been fought
for and wrung from a raw soil and a
climate which was an ambush of sur-
prises. The farm had also begun to
yield a crop of expectations, and it
seemed as if these were to be harvested.
To recur to the metaphor I have used,
the aspects appeared to be those of a
slow sunrise, bound to be accompanied
with a little gold at last. But it was
really a sunset time, and the prospect
was brightening only to darken the more
blankly.

When we gathered for the fourth sea-
son, we found the lake overbrimmed and
rippling far inland. The unsubmerged
fallows were too soft for the foot ; even
the sandier earths were sodden with long
rains. The wet season had been phe-
nomenal, and it was still at its height a
month after it commonly closed. There
was nothing for it but to sow seeds for
transplants, and trust that there might
by and by be dry land to receive them.

The rain paused, the lake fell, the fields
here and there upbore the plough, and we
hastened to make up for lost weeks. The

rain paused till we had planted large
tracts. Then it fell upon our work, and
undid it. It held off again, and again
we planted ; and once more it fell upon
us, like a lurking cat upon mice. Writ-
ing after the event, I should seem to tell
only of fatuities if I were to say how
often we replanted, and how often we
were redeluged. We seized upon each
fair day, we contested every inch, as it
were, of the season and the farm, till
the lake had risen from the lowland to
the upland, and the last tilled acre was
expunged. The normal rainy season is
of about four months' length ; the heavy
rains of this year lasted for eight months.
When it was too late to plant for market,
the skies cleared and the lake withdrew
with our costly flotsams.

Certain weeks of this flood-time were
curiously pleasant. After the agony of
the struggle there came a truce. The
season was lost, the farm-hands were dis-
persed, and our hopes and cares were
ended for a time. We lay on our arms
and looked indifferently on the victorious
waters. Farley sat all day before an easel
in the still lakeside chamber, I thumbed
old classics by a crackling hearth, and
the rains tinkled on the roof. By turns,
we went down to light the kitchen fire
and tend the kettle and the skillets. We
grumbled at these tasks, yet we rather
enjoyed the making of meals. When
the table was cleared, we washed the
dishes sociably, in a little red kitchen
like a ship's galley. Afterward, Farley
mounted the latticed stair, and I paced
the veranda, above the flood, as Noah
may have paced the Ark's quarter-deck.
The scene had a primeval quality that
fits the parallel. The cottage lawn, in-
deed, was mown and set with orange-
trees, but all beyond was the immemo-
rial wilderness of the Seminoles. Their
arrow-heads lay thick in the beach sand,
— some sharp as if just chipped for
the shaft, others broken as they may
have rebounded from Spanish corselets.
The barky pillars of the pines loomed

508

A Florida Farm.

sparsely from the near palmettos, and
thickened to a blue curtain in the distance.
Gray mosses hung from their sombre
needles, and dripped with the showers
or flaunted in the wind-gusts. Thick-
ets of fantastic palms broke the gray
stretch of the lake. Except for the farm-
buildings to the north, and the lawn,
there was no hint of man in the wide
prospect, — only an aboriginal solitude of
woods and water.

But now and then a rifle-shot cracked
across the lake ; or a cowboy from the
saloons whooped in the forest, and dis-
charged the chambers of his revolver,
with a brisk, humanizing effect. If the
wind were right, it brought us, too, in the
mid-morning and the dusk, a far-away
thunder of trains and clarion blasts from
the northern express. And often the
clouds would lift for a few hours, the
leaden water would turn to silver, and
the brooding pines and palmettos kin-
dled with colors.

The fifth season opened with dry soil
in all parts of the farm. We had re-
ceived a blow between the eyes, and we
were still somewhat staggered ; but that,
clearly, was a reason for new efforts.
The crops were sown and planted ; they
came up well ; the lake drew far out upon
its sands. We ceased to tremble at a
cloud, and presently began to wish for one
with water in it. Sometimes the sky
thickened, and a few drops speckled the
dust ; but soon the sun was out again, and
the soil lay unslaked. The weeks went
by, and no rain fell but an occasional nig-
gard sprinkle ; the months passed with-
out any wetting of the parched fields.
The crops on the high land took autum-
nal tints, and withered ; the crops on the
lower land dried away ; the crops on the
lowest land still grew. It seemed that
we might yet make half a harvest. But
far on in March, when the thermometer
had long been in the eighties, the wind

whipped suddenly into the north, and the
air cooled fifty degrees in a night.

We were in the field, perspiring in
linens, when the change came, with an
abrupt overcasting of the sky. A whiff
like the breath from a glacier struck
us, the wind blew each moment keener,
and before we fairly saw how it was our
teeth were chattering. It was well-nigh
unbelievable ; but presently there could
be no doubt that a January norther was
upon us, two months out of season. When
we realized this, we set all hands at
work to earth over the half-grown po-
tato vines. Only a few hours of the day
were left, but the men worked desperate-
ly with hoes and ploughs through the
bleak twilight, and much was done. But
not all. When we came out, shivering, in
the first daybreak, we saw that our short
harvest was to be lamentably shortened.

We perceived now, at last, how it was
with us : we were not farming, but gam-
bling with the elements. The climate
had been merely toying with us, a trump-
card of spring frosts lying in its sleeve.
It had dealt with our venture as it dealt,
on a great scale, with the ill-fated or-
ange plantations. And this was a re-
finement of its craft : the local tempera-
ture kept a .certain proportion with the
latitude. By the record figures the late
frosts were mild enough, but they blight-
ed as ruthlessly as frosts further to the
north, for they fell in the midst of hotter
days and upon tenderer growths. The
thermometer itself had been a deceit.

The fortunes of the region were now
rapidly shifting. The tide of settlement
which brought us in had risen a little
higher, and then gradually ebbed. One
by one the farms about the lake had
been abandoned, and the wide water,
that used to be flecked with sails on blue
days, was grown desolate. The Egret's
weathered canvas winged it almost alone.
And soon this, too, was gone.

F. Whitmore.

The Yellowstone National Park.

509

THE YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK.

OF the four national parks of the
West, the Yellowstone is far the largest.
It is a big, wholesome wilderness on the
broad summit of the Rocky Mountains,
favored with abundance of rain and
snow, — a place of fountains where the
greatest of the American rivers take
their rise. The central portion is a
densely forested and comparatively level
volcanic plateau with an average eleva-
tion of about 8000 feet above the sea,
surrounded by an imposing host of
mountains belonging to the subordinate
Gallatin, Wind River, Teton, Absaroka,
and Snowy ranges. Unnumbered lakes
shine in it, united by a famous band of
streams that rush up out of hot lava
beds, or fall from the frosty peaks in
channels rocky and bare, mossy and
bosky, to the main rivers, singing cheer-
ily on through every difficulty, cunning-
ly dividing and finding their way east
and west to the two far-off seas.

Glacier meadows and beaver mead-
ows are outspread with charming effect
along the banks of the streams, park-
like expanses in the woods, and innu-
merable small gardens in rocky recesses
of the mountains, some of them contain-
ing more petals than leaves, while the
whole wilderness is enlivened with hap-
py animals.

Beside the treasures common to most
mountain regions that are wild and
blessed with a kind climate, the park is
full of exciting wonders. The wildest
geysers in the world, in bright, trium-
phant bands, are dancing and singing
in it amid thousands of boiling springs,
beautiful and awful, their basins arrayed
in gorgeous colors like gigantic flowers ;
and hot paint-pots, mud springs, mud
volcanoes, mush and broth caldrons whose
contents are of every color and consis-
tency, plashing, heaving, roaring, in be-
wildering abundance. In the adjacent

mountains, beneath the living trees the
edges of petrified forests are exposed to
view, like specimens on the shelves of a
museum, standing on ledges tier above
tier where they grew, solemnly silent in
rigid crystalline beauty after swaying in
the winds thousands of centuries ago,
opening marvelous views back into the
years and climates and life of the past.
Here, too, are hills of sparkling crystals,
hills of sulphur, hills of glass, hills of cin-
ders and ashes, mountains of every style
of architecture, icy or forested, moun-
tains covered with honey-bloom sweet as
Hymettus, mountains boiled soft like po-
tatoes and colored like a sunset sky. A*
that and a' that, and twice as muckle 's
a' that, Nature has on show in the Yel-
lowstone Park. Therefore it is called
Wonderland, and thousands of tourists
and travelers stream into it every sum-
mer, and wander about in it enchanted.
Fortunately, almost as soon as it was
discovered it was dedicated and set apart
for the benefit of the people, a piece of
legislation that shines benignly amid the
common dust-and-ashes history of the
public domain, for which the world must
thank Professor Hayden above all oth-
ers ; for he led the first scientific explor-
ing party into it, described it, and with
admirable enthusiasm urged Congress to
preserve it. As delineated in the year
1872, the park contained about 3344
square miles. On March 30, 1891, it
was enlarged by the Yellowstone Nation-
al Park Timber Reserve, and in Decem-
ber, 1897, by the Teton Forest Reserve ;
thus nearly doubling its original area,
and extending the southern boundary far
enough to take in the sublime Teton
range and the famous pasture-lands of
the big Rocky Mountain game animals.
The withdrawal of this large tract from
the public domain did no harm to any
one ; for its height, 6000 to over 13,000

510

The Yellowstone National Park.

feet above the sea, and its thick man-
tle of volcanic rocks, prevent its ever be-
ing available for agriculture or mining,
while on the other hand its geographical
position, reviving climate, and wonder-
ful scenery combine to make it a grand
health, pleasure, and study resort, — a
gathering - place for travelers from all
the world.

The national parks are not only with-
drawn from sale and entry like the for-
est reservations, but are efficiently man-
aged and guarded by small troops of
United States cavalry, directed by the
Secretary of the Interior. Under this
care the forests aretflourishing, protect-
ed from both axe and fire ; and so, of
course, are the shaggy beds of under-
brush and the herbaceous vegetation.
The so-called curiosities, also, are pre-
served, and the furred and feathered
tribes, many of which, in danger of
extinction a short time ago, are now
increasing in numbers, — a refreshing
thing to see amid the blind, ruthless de-
struction that is going on in the adjacent
regions. In pleasing contrast to the
noisy, ever changing management, or
mismanagement, of blundering, plunder-
ing, money-making vote-sellers who re-
ceive their places from boss politicians
as purchased goods, the soldiers do their
duty so quietly that the traveler is scarce
aware of their presence.

This is the coolest and highest of the
parks. Frosts occur every month of the
year. Nevertheless, the tenderest tourist
finds it warm enough in summer. The
air is electric and full of ozone, healing,
reviving, exhilarating, kept pure by frost
and fire, while the scenery is wild enough
to awaken the dead. It is a glorious
place to grow in and rest in ; camping
on the shores of the lakes, in the warm
openings of the woods golden with sun-
flowers, on the banks of the streams, by
the snowy waterfalls, beside the exciting
wonders or away from them in the scal-
lops of the mountain walls sheltered
from every wind, on smooth silky lawns

enameled with gentians, up in the foun-
tain hollows of the ancient glaciers be-
tween the peaks, where cool pools and
brooks and gardens of precious plants
charmingly embowered are never want-
ing, and good rough rocks with every
variety of cliff and scaur are invitingly
near for outlooks and exercise.

From these lovely dens you may make
excursions whenever you like into the
middle of the park, where the geysers
and hot springs are reeking and spout-
ing in their beautiful basins, displaying
an exuberance of color and strange mo-
tion and energy admirably calculated to
surprise and frighten, charm and shake
up, the least sensitive out of apathy into
newness of life.

However orderly your excursions or
aimless, again and again amid the calm-
est, stillest scenery you will be brought
to a standstill, hushed and awe-stricken,
before phenomena wholly new to you.
Boiling springs and huge deep pools of
purest green and azure water, thousands
of them, are plashing and heaving in
these high, cool mountains, as if a fierce
furnace fire were burning beneath each
one of them ; and a hundred geysers,
white torrents of boiling water and
steam, like inverted waterfalls, are ever
and anon rushing up out of the hot,
black underworld. Some of these pon-
derous geyser columns are as large as
sequoias, — five to sixty feet in diameter,
150 to 300 feet high, — and are sustained
at this great height with tremendous en-
ergy for a few minutes, or perhaps nearly
an hour, standing rigid and erect, hissing,
throbbing, booming, as if thunder-storms
were raging beneath their roots, their
sides roughened or fluted like the fur-
rowed boles of trees, their tops dissolv-
ing in feathery branches, while the irised
spray, like misty bloom, is at times blown
aside, revealing the massive shafts shin-
ing against a background of pine-cov-
ered hills. Some of them lean more or
less, as if storm-bent, and instead of be-
ing round are flat or fan-shaped, issuing

The Yellowstone National Park.

511

from irregular slits in silex pavements
with radiate structure, the sunbeams
sifting through them in ravishing splen-
dor. Some are broad and round-headed
like oaks ; others are low and bunchy,
branching near the ground like bushes ;
and a few are hollow in the centre like
big daisies or water-lilies. No frost
cools them, snow never covers them nor
lodges in their branches ; winter and
summer they welcome alike ; all of them,
of whatever form or size, faithfully ris-
ing and sinking in fairy rhythmic dance
night and day, in all sorts of weather,
at varying periods of minutes, hours, or
weeks, growing up rapidly, uncontrolla-
ble as fate, tossing their pearly branches
in the wind, bursting into bloom and van-
ishing like the frailest flowers, — plants
of which Nature raises hundreds or thou-
sands of crops a year with no apparent
exhaustion of the fiery soil.

The so-called geyser basins, in which
this rare sort of vegetation is growing,
are mostly open valleys on the central
plateau that were eroded by glaciers af-
ter the greater volcanic fires had ceased
to burn. Looking down over the forests
as you approach them from the sur-
rounding heights, you see a multitude of
white columns, broad, reeking masses,
and irregular jets and puffs of misty
vapor ascending from the bottom of the
valley, or entangled like smoke among the
neighboring trees, suggesting the facto-
ries of some busy town or the camp-fires
of an army. These mark the position
of each mush-pot, paint-pot, hot spring,
and geyser, or gusher, as the Icelandic
word means. And when you saunter
into the midst of them over the bright
sinter pavements, and see how pure and
white and pearly gray they are in the
shade of the mountains, and how radi-
ant in the sunshine, you are fairly en-
chanted. So numerous they are and
varied, Nature seems to have gathered
them from all the world as specimens of
her rarest fountains, to show in one place
what she can do. Over four thousand

hot springs have been counted in the
park, and a hundred geysers ; how many
more there are nobody knows.

These valleys at the heads of the great
rivers may be regarded as laboratories
and kitchens, in which, amid a thousand
retorts and pots, we may see Nature at
work as chemist or cook, cunningly com-
pounding an infinite variety of mineral
messes ; cooking whole mountains ; boil-
ing and steaming flinty rocks to smooth
paste and mush, — yellow, brown, red,
pink, lavender, gray, and creamy white,
— making the most beautiful mud in
the world ; and distilling the most ethe-
real essences. Many of these pots and
caldrons have been boiling thousands of
years. Pots of sulphurous mush, stringy
and lumpy, and pots of broth as black as
ink, are tossed and stirred with constant
care, and thin transparent essences, too
pure and fine to be called water, are kept
simmering gently in beautiful sinter cups
and bowls that grow ever more beautiful
the longer they are used. In some of
the spring basins, the waters, though still
warm, are perfectly calm, and shine
blandly in a sod of overleaning grass
and flowers, as if they were thoroughly
cooked at last, and set aside to settle and
cool. Others are wildly boiling over as
if running to waste, thousands of tons
of the precious liquids being thrown into
the air to fall in scalding floods on the
clean coral floor of the establishment,
keeping onlookers at a distance. Instead
of holding limpid pale green or azure
water, other pots and craters are filled
with scalding mud, which is tossed up
from three or four feet to thirty feet, in
sticky, rank-smelling masses, with gasp-
ing, belching, thudding sounds, plastering
the branches of neighboring trees ; every
flask, retort, hot spring, and geyser has
something special in it, no two being the
same in temperature, color, or composi-
tion.

In these natural laboratories one needs
stout faith to feel at ease. The ground
sounds hollow underfoot, and the awful

512

The Yellowstone National Park.

subterranean thunder shakes one's mind
as the ground is shaken, especially at
night in the pale moonlight, or when the
sky is overcast with storm-clouds. In the
solemn gloom, the geysers, dimly visi-
ble, look like monstrous dancing ghosts,
and their wild songs arid the earthquake
thunder replying to the storms overhead
seem doubly terrible, as if divine gov-
ernment were at an end. But the trem-
bling hills keep their places. The sky
clears, the rosy dawn is reassuring, and
up comes the sun like a god, pouring his
faithful beams across the mountains and
forest, lighting each peak and tree and
ghastly geyser alike, and shining into the
eyes of the reeking springs, clothing
them with rainbow light, and dissolving
the seeming chaos of darkness into va-
ried forms of harmony. The ordinary
work of the world goes on. Gladly we
see the flies dancing in the sunbeams,
birds feeding their young, squirrels ga-
thering nuts ; and hear the blessed ouzel
singing confidingly in the shallows of the
river, — most faithful evangel, calming
every fear, reducing everything to love.
The variously tinted sinter and tra-
vertine formations, outspread like pave-
ments over large areas of the geyser val-
leys, lining the spring basins and throats
of the craters, and forming beautiful
coral-like rims and curbs about them, al-
ways excite admiring attention ; so also
does the play of the waters from which
they are deposited. The various min-
erals in them are rich in fine colors, and
these are greatly heightened by a smooth,
silky growth of brilliantly colored con-
f ervae which lines many of the pools and
channels and terraces. No bed of flow-
er-bloom is more exquisite than these
myriads of minute plants, visible only in
mass, growing in the hot waters. Most
of the spring borders are low and dainti-
ly scalloped, crenelated, and beaded with
sinter pearls ; but some of the geyser
craters are massive and picturesque, like
ruined castles or old burned-out sequoia
stumps, and are adorned on a grand scale

with outbulging, cauliflower-like forma-
tions. From these as centres the silex
pavements slope gently away in thin,
crusty, overlapping layers, slightly inter-
rupted in some places by low terraces.
Or, as in the case of the Mammoth Hot
Springs, at the north end of the park,
where the building waters issue from the
side of a steep hill, the deposits form a
succession of higher and broader terraces
of white travertine tinged with purple,
like the famous Pink Terrace at Roto-
mahana, New Zealand, draped in front
with clustering stalactites, each terrace
having a pool of indescribably beautiful
water upon it in a basin with a raised
rim that glistens with confervas, — the
whole, when viewed at a distance of a
mile or two, looking like a broad, mas-
sive cascade pouring over shelving rocks
in snowy purpled foam.

The stones of this divine masonry, in-
visible particles of lime or silex, mined
in quarries no eye has seen, go to their
appointed places in gentle, tinkling, trans-
parent currents or through the dashing
turmoil of floods, as surely guided as the
sap of plants streaming into bole and
branch, leaf and flower. And thus from
century to century this beauty-work has
gone on and is going on.

Passing through many a mile of pine
and spruce woods, toward the centre of
the park you come to the famous Yel-
lowstone Lake. It is about twenty miles
long and fifteen wide, and lies at a
height of nearly 8000 feet above the
level of the sea, amid dense black forests
and snowy mountains. Around its wind-
ing, wavering shores, closely forested and
picturesquely varied with promontories
and bays, the distance is more than 100
miles. It is not very deep, only from
200 to 300 feet, and contains less wa-
ter than the celebrated Lake Tahoe of
the California Sierra, which is nearly
the same size, lies at a height of 6400
feet, and is over 1600 feet deep. But
no other lake in North America of equal
area lies so high as the Yellowstone, or

The Yellowstone National Park.

513

gives birth to so noble a river. The ter-
races around its shores show that at the
close of the glacial period its surface
was about 160 feet higher than it is now,
and its area nearly twice as great.

It is full of trout, and a vast multi-
tude of birds — swans, pelicans, geese,
ducks, cranes, herons, curlews, plovers,
snipe — feed in it and upon its shores ;
and many forest animals come out of
the woods, and wade a little way in
shallow, sandy places to drink and look
about them, and cool themselves in the
free flowing breezes.

In calm weather it is a magnificent
mirror for the woods and mountains and
sky, now pattered with hail and rain,
now roughened with sudden storms that
send waves to fringe the shores and wash
its border of gravel and sand. The Ab-
saroka Mountains and the Wind River
Plateau on the east and south pour their
gathered waters into it, and the river
issues from the north side in a broad,
smooth, stately current, silently gliding
with such serene majesty that one fancies
it knows the vast journey of four thou-
sand miles that lies before it, and the
work it has to do. For the first twenty
miles its course is in a level, sunny val-
ley lightly fringed with trees, through
which it flows in silvery reaches stirred
into spangles here and there by ducks
and leaping trout, making no sound save
a low whispering among the pebbles and
the dipping willows and sedges of its
banks. Then suddenly, as if preparing
for hard work, it rushes eagerly, impetu-
ously forward, rejoicing in its strength,
breaks into foam-bloom, and goes thun-
dering down into the Grand Caflon in
two magnificent falls, 100 and 300 feet
high.

The canon is so tremendously wild
and impressive that even these great
falls cannot hold your attention. It is
about twenty miles long and a thousand
feet deep, — a weird, unearthly-looking
gorge of jagged, fantastic architecture,
and most brilliantly colored. Here the

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 486. 33

Washburn range, forming the northern
rim of the Yellowstone basin, made up
mostly of beds of rhyolite decomposed
by the action of thermal waters, has
been cut through and laid open to view
by the river ; and a famous section it has
made. It is not the depth or the shape
of the canon, nor the waterfall, nor the
green and gray river chanting its brave
song as it goes foaming on its way, that
most impresses the observer, but the col-
ors of the decomposed volcanic rocks.
With few exceptions, the traveler in
strange lands finds that, however much
the scenery and vegetation in different
countries may change, Mother Earth is
ever familiar and the same. But here
the very ground is changed, as if belong-
ing to some other world. The walls
of the canon from top to bottom burn
in a perfect glory of color, confounding
and dazzling when the sun is shining,
— white, yellow, green, blue, vermilion,
and various other shades of red inde-
finitely blending. All the earth here-
abouts seems to be paint. Millions of
tons of it lie in sight, exposed to wind
and weather as if of no account, yet
marvelously fresh and bright, fast col-
ors not to be washed out or bleached
out by either sunshine or storms. The
effect is so novel and awful, we ima-
gine that even a river might be afraid
to enter such a place. But the rich and
gentle beauty of the vegetation is re-
assuring. The lovely Linncea borealis
hangs her twin bells over the brink of
the cliffs, forests and gardens extend
their treasures in smiling confidence on
either side, nuts and berries ripen well,
whatever may be going on below ; and
soon blind fears vanish, and the grand
gorge seems a kindly, beautiful part of
the general harmony, full of peace and
joy and good will.

The park is easy of access. Locomo-
tives drag you to its northern bounda-
ry at Cinnabar, and horses and guides
do the rest. From Cinnabar you will
be whirled in coaches along the foam-

514

The Yellowstone National Park.

ing Gardiner River to Mammoth Hot
Springs; thence through woods and
meadows, gulches and ravines along
branches of the Upper Gallatin, Madi-
son, and Firehole rivers to the main gey-
ser basins ; thence over the Continental
Divide and back again, up and down
through dense pine, spruce, and fir
woods to the magnificent Yellowstone
Lake, along its northern shore to the
outlet, down the river to the falls and
Grand Cafion, and thence back through
the woods to Mammoth Hot Springs
and Cinnabar; stopping here and there
at the so-called points of interest among
the geysers, springs, paint -pots, mud
volcanoes, etc., where you will be al-
lowed a few minutes or hours to saun-
ter over the sinter pavements, watch the
play of a few of sthe geysers, and peer
into some of the most beautiful and ter-
rible of the craters and pools. These
wonders you will enjoy, and also the
views of the mountains, especially the
Gallatin and Absaroka ranges, the long,
willowy glacier and beaver meadows,
the beds of violets, gentians, phloxes, as-
ters, phacelias, goldenrods, eriogonums,
and many other flowers, some species
giving color to whole meadows and hill-
sides. And you will enjoy your short
views of the great lake and river and
canon. No scalping Indians will you
see. The Blackfeet and Bannocks that
once roamed here are gone ; so are the
old beaver - catchers, the Coulters and
Bridgers, with all their attractive buck-
skin and romance. There are several
bands of buffaloes in the park, but you
will not thus cheaply in tourist fashion
see them nor many of the other large
animals hidden in the wilderness. The
song-birds, too, keep mostly out of sight
of the rushing tourist, though off the
roads thrushes, warblers, orioles, gros-
beaks, etc., keep the air sweet and merry.
Perhaps in passing rapids and falls you
may catch glimpses of the water ouzel,
but in the whirling noise you will not
hear his song. Fortunately, no road

noise frightens the Douglas squirrel, and
his merry play and gossip will amuse
you all through the woods. Here and
there a deer may be seen crossing the
road, or a bear. Most likely, however,
the only bears you will see are the half-
tame ones that go to the hotels every
night for dinner - table scraps, — yeast-
powder biscuit, Chicago canned stuff,
mixed pickles, and beefsteaks that have
proved too tough for porcelain teeth.

Among the gains of a coach trip are
the acquaintances made and the fresh
views into human nature ; for the wilder-
ness is a shrewd touchstone, even thus
lightly approached, and brings many a
curious trait to view. Setting out, the
driver cracks his whip, and the four
horses go off at half gallop, half trot, in
trained, showy style, until out of sight
of the hotel. The coach is crowded, old
and young side by side, blooming and
fading, full of hope and fun and care.
Some look at the scenery or the horses,
and all ask questions, an odd mixed lot of
them : Where is the umbrella ? What is
the name of that blue flower over there ?
Are you sure the little bag is aboard ? Is
that hollow yonder a crater ? How is
your throat this morning ? How high did
you say the geysers spout ? How does
the elevation affect your head ? Is that
a geyser reeking over there in the rocks,
or only a hot spring ? A long ascent is
made, the solemn mountains come to
view, small cares are quenched, and all
become natural and silent, save perhaps
some unfortunate expounder who has
been reading guidebook geology, and
rumbles forth foggy subsidences and up-
heavals until he is in danger of being
heaved overboard. The driver will give
you the names of the peaks and meadows
and streams as you come to them, call
attention to the glass road, tell how hard
it was to build, — how the obsidian cliffs
naturally pushed the surveyor's lines to
the right, and the industrious beavers, by
flooding the valley in front of the cliff,
pushed them to the left.

The Yellowstone National Park.

515

Geysers, however, are the main ob-
jects, and as soon as they come in sight
other wonders are forgotten. All gather
around the crater of the one that is ex-
pected to play first. During the erup-
tions of the smaller geysers, such as the
Beehive and Old Faithful, though a little
frightened at first, all welcome the glo-
rious show with enthusiasm, and shout,
Oh, how wonderful, beautiful, splendid,
majestic ! Some venture near enough
to stroke the column with a stick, as if
it were a stone pillar or a tree, so firm
and substantial and permanent it seems.
While tourists wait around a large gey-
ser, such as the Castle or the Giant, there
is a chatter of small talk in anything
but solemn mood ; and during the inter-
vals between the preliminary splashes
and upheavals some adventurer occasion-
ally looks down the throat of the cra-
ter, admiring the silex formations and
wondering whether Hades is as beautiful.
But when, with awful uproar as if ava-
lanches were falling and storms thunder-
ing in the depths, the tremendous out-
burst begins, all run away to a safe
distance, and look on, awe-stricken and
silent, in devout, worshiping wonder.

The largest and one of the most won-
derfully beautiful of the springs is the
Prismatic, which the guide will be sure
to show you. With a circumference of
300 yards, it is more like a lake than a
spring. The water is pure deep blue in
the centre, fading to green on the edges,
and its basin and the slightly terraced
pavement about it are astonishingly bright
and varied in color. This one of the
multitude of Yellowstone fountains is of
itself object enough for a trip across the
continent. No wonder that so many fine
myths have originated in springs ; that
so many fountains were held sacred in
the youth of the world, and had miracu-
lous virtues ascribed to them. Even in
these cold, doubting, questioning, scien-
tific times many of the Yellowstone foun-
tains seem able to work miracles. Near
the Prismatic Spring is the great Excel-

sior Geyser, which is said to throw a col-
umn of boiling water 60 to 70 feet in
diameter to a height of from 50 to 300
feet, at irregular periods. This is the
greatest of all the geysers yet discovered
anywhere. The Firehole River, which
sweeps past it, is, at ordinary stages, a
stream about 100 yards wide and three
feet deep ; but when the geyser is in
eruption, so great is the quantity of wa-
ter discharged that the volume of the
river is doubled, and it is rendered too
hot and rapid to be forded.

Geysers are found in many other vol-
canic regions, — in Iceland, New Zea-
land, Japan, the Himalayas, the Eastern
Archipelago, South America, the Azores,
and elsewhere ; but only in Iceland, New
Zealand, and this Rocky Mountain park
do they display their grandest forms, and
of these three famous regions the Yel-
lowstone is easily first, both in the num-
ber and in the size of its geysers. The
greatest height of the column of the Great
Geyser of Iceland actually measured was
212 feet, and of the Strokhr 162 feet.

In New Zealand, the Te Pueia at Lake
Taupo, the Waikite at Rotorna, and two
others are said to lift their waters oc-
casionally to a height of 100 feet, while
the celebrated Te Tarata at Rotomahana
sometimes lifts a boiling column 20 feet
in diameter to a height of 60 feet. But
all these are far surpassed by the Excel-
sior. Few tourists, however, will see the
Excelsior in action, or a thousand other
interesting features of the park that lie
beyond the wagon-roads and hotels. The
regular trips — from three to five days
— are too short. Nothing can be done
well at a speed of forty miles a day.
The multitude of mixed, novel impres-
sions rapidly piled on one another make
only a dreamy, bewildering, swirling
blur, most of which is unrememberable.
Far more time should be taken. Walk
away quietly in any direction and taste
the freedom of the mountaineer. Camp
out among the grass and gentians of
glacier meadows, in craggy garden nooks

516

The Yellowstone National Park.

full of Nature's darlings. Climb the
mountains and get their good tidings.
Nature's peace will flow into you as sun-
shine flows into trees. The winds will
blow their own freshness into you, and
the storms their energy, while cares will
drop off like autumn leaves. As age
comes on, one source of enjoyment after
another ir closed, but Nature's sources
never fail. Like a generous host, she
offers here brimming cups in endless va-
riety, served in a grand hall, the sky its
ceiling, the mountains its walls, deco-
rated with glorious paintings and enliv-
ened with bands of music ever playing.
The petty discomforts that beset the
awkward guest, the unskilled camper,
are quickly forgotten, while all that is
precious remains. Fears vanish as soon
as one is fairly free in the wilderness.

Most of the dangers that haunt the
unseasoned citizen are imaginary ; the
real ones are perhaps too few rather than
too many for his good. The bears that
always seem to spring up thick as trees,
in fighting, devouring attitudes before
the frightened tourist, whenever a camp-
ing trip is proposed, are gentle now, find-
ing they are no longer likely to be shot ;
and rattlesnakes, the other big irrational
dread of over-civilized people, are scarce
here, for most of the park lies above the
snake-line. Poor creatures, loved only
by their Maker, they are timid and bash-
ful, as mountaineers know ; and though
perhaps not possessed of much of that
charity that suffers long and is kind, sel-
dom, either by mistake or by mishap, do
harm to any one. Certainly they cause
not the hundredth part of the pain and
death that follow the footsteps of the ad-
mired Rocky Mountain trapper. Never-
theless, again and again, in season and
out of season, the question comes up,
" What are rattlesnakes good for ? " As
if nothing that does not obviously make
for the benefit of man had any right to
exist ; as if our ways were God's ways.
Long ago, an Indian to whom a French
traveler put this old question replied that

their tails were good for toothache, and
their heads for fever. Anyhow, they are
all, head and tail, good for themselves,
and we need not begrudge them their
share of life.

Fear nothing. No town park you
have been accustomed to saunter in is
so free from danger as the Yellowstone.
It is a hard place to leave. Even its
names in your guidebook are attractive,
and should draw you far from wagon-
roads, — all save the early ones, derived
from the infernal regions : Hell Roaring
River, Hell Broth Springs, The Devil's
Caldron, etc. Indeed, the whole region
was at first called Coulter's Hell, from
the fiery brimstone stories told by trap-
per Coulter, who left the Lewis and
Clark expedition, and wandered through
the park, in the year 1807, with a band
of Bannock Indians. The later names
of the Hayden Geological Surveys are so
telling and exhilarating that they set
our pulses dancing, and make us begin
to enjoy the pleasures of excursions ere
they are commenced. Three River Peak,
Two Ocean Pass, Continental Divide, are
capital geographical descriptions, sug-
gesting thousands of miles of rejoicing
streams and all that belongs to them.
Big Horn Pass, Bison Peak, Big Game
Ridge, bring brave mountain animals to
mind. Birch Hills, Garnet Hills, Ame-
thyst Mountain, Storm Peak, Electric
Peak, Roaring Mountain, are bright, bra-
cing names. Wapiti, Beaver, Tern, and
Swan lakes conjure up fine pictures, and
so also do Osprey and Ouzel falls. An-
telope Creek, Otter, Mink, and Grayling
creeks, Geode, Jasper, Opal, Carnelian,
and Chalcedony creeks, are lively and
sparkling names that help the streams
to shine ; and Azalea, Stellaria, Arnica,
Aster, and Phlox creeks, what pictures
these bring up ! Violet, Morning Mist,
Hygeia, Beryl, Vermilion, and Indigo
springs, and many beside, give us visions
of fountains more beautifully arrayed
than Solomon in all his purple and golden
glory. All these and a host of others

The Yellowstone National Park.

517

call you to camp. You may be a little
cold some nights, on mountain tops above
the timber-line, but you will see the stars,
and by and by you can sleep enough in
your town bed, or at least in your grave.
Keep awake while you may in mountain
mansions so rare.

If you are not very strong, try to climb
Electric Peak when a big, bossy, well-
charged thunder-cloud is on it, to breathe
the ozone set free, and get yourself kind-
ly shaken and shocked. You are sure
to be lost in wonder and praise, and every
hair of your head will stand up and hum
and sing like an enthusiastic congrega-
tion.

After this reviving experience, you
should take a look into a few of the ter-
tiary volumes of the grand geological
library of the park, and see how God
writes history. No technical knowledge
is required ; only a calm day and a calm
mind. Nowhere else in the Rocky
Mountains have the volcanic forces been
so fiercely busy. More than 10,000
square miles hereabouts have been cov-
ered to a depth of at least 5000 feet with
material spouted from chasms and cra-
ters during the tertiary period, forming
broad sheets of basalt, andesite, rhyolite,
etc., and marvelous masses of ashes, sand,
cinders, and stones now consolidated into
conglomerates, charged with the remains
of plants and animals that lived in the
calm, genial periods that separated the
volcanic outbursts.

Perhaps the most interesting and tell-
ing of these rocks, to the hasty tourist,
are those that make up the mass of Ame-
thyst Mountain. On its north side it
presents a section 2000 feet high of
roughly stratified beds of sand, ashes,
and conglomerates coarse and fine, form-
ing the untrimmed edges of a wonderful
set of volumes lying on their sides, —
books a million years old, well bound,
miles in size, with full-page illustrations.
On the ledges of this one section we see
trunks and stumps of fifteen or twenty
ancient forests ranged one above another,

standing where they grew, or prostrate
and broken like the pillars of ruined
temples in desert sands, — a forest fifteen
or twenty stories high, the roots of each
spread above the tops of the next be-
neath it, telling wonderful tales of the
bygone centuries, with their winters and
summers, growth and death, fire, ice,
and flood.

There were giants in those days. The
largest of the standing opal and agate
stumps and prostrate sections of the
trunks are from two or three to fifty
feet in height or length, and from five
to ten feet in diameter ; and so perfect is
the petrifaction that the annual rings and
ducts are clearer and more easily count-
ed than those of living trees, countless
centuries of burial having brightened the
records instead of blurring them. They
show that the winters of the tertiary pe-
riod gave as decided a check to vegetable
growth as do those of the present time.
Some trees favorably located grew rapid-
ly, increasing twenty inches in diameter
in as many years, while others of the
same species, on poorer soil or over-
shadowed, increased only two or three
inches in the same time.

Among the roots and stumps on the
old forest floors we find the remains of
ferns and bushes, and the seeds and
leaves of trees like those now growing
on the southern Alleghanies, — such as
magnolia, sassafras, laurel, linden, per-
simmon, ash, alder, dogwood. Studying
the lowest of these forests, the soil it
grew on and the deposits it is buried in,
we see that it was rich in species, and
flourished in a genial, sunny climate.
When its stately trees were in their
glory, volcanic fires broke forth from
chasms and craters, like larger geysers,
spouting ashes, cinders, stones, and
mud, which fell on the doomed forest in
tremendous floods, and like heavy hail
and snow ; sifting, hurtling through the
leaves and branches, choking the streams,
covering the ground, crushing bushes
and ferns, rapidly deepening, packing

518

The Yellowstone National Park.

around the trees and breaking them,
rising higher until the topmost boughs
of the giants were buried, leaving not
a leaf or twig in sight, so complete was
the desolation. At last the volcanic
storm began to abate, the fiery soil settled;
mud floods and boulder floods passed
over it, enriching it, cooling it ; rains fell
and mellow sunshine, and it became fer-
tile and ready for another crop. Birds,
and the winds, and roaming animals
brought seeds from more fortunate woods,
and a new forest grew up on the top of
the buried one. Centuries of genial grow-
ing seasons passed. The seedling trees
with strong outreaching branches became
giants, and spread a broad leafy canopy
over the gray land.

The sleeping subterranean fires again
awake and shake the mountains, and
every leaf trembles. The old craters
witli perhaps new ones are opened, and
immense quantities of ashes, pumice,
and cinders are again thrown into the
sky. The sun, shorn of his beams, glows
like a dull red ball, until hidden in sul-
phurous clouds. Volcanic snow, hail,
and floods fall on the new forest, bury-
ing it alive, like the one beneath its
roots. Then come another noisy band
of mud floods and boulder floods, mix-
ing, settling, enriching the new ground,
more seeds, quickening sunshine and
showers, and a third noble magnolia for-
est is carefully raised on the top of the
second. And so on. Forest was plant-
ed above forest and destroyed, as if
Nature were ever repenting and undoing
the work she had so industriously done ;
as if every lovely fern and tree she had
planted had in turn become a Sodomite
sinner to be utterly destroyed and put
out of sight.

But of course this destruction was
creation, progress in the march of beauty
through death. Few of the old world
monuments hereabouts so quickly excite
and hold the imagination. We see these
old stone stumps budding and blossom-
ing and waving in the wind as magnifi-

cent trees, standing shoulder to shoul-
der, branches interlacing in grand varied
round-headed forests; see the sunshine
of morning and evening gilding their
mossy trunks, and at high noon spangling
on the thick glossy leaves of the mag-
nolia, filtering through the translucent
canopies of linden and ash, and falling
in mellow patches on the ferny floor ;
see the shining after rain, breathe the
exhaling fragrance, and hear the winds
and birds and the murmur of brooks
and insects. We watch them from sea-
son to season ; we see the swelling buds
when the sap begins to flow in the spring,
the opening leaves and blossoms, the ri-
pening of summer fruits, the colors of au-
tumn, and the maze of leafless branches
and sprays in winter ; and we see the
sudden oncome of the storms that over-
whelmed them.

One calm morning at sunrise I saw
the oaks and pines in Yosemite Valley
shaken by an earthquake, their tops
swishing back and forth, and every
branch and needle shuddering as if in
distress, like the birds that flew, fright-
ened and screaming, from their snug
hiding-places. One may imagine the
trembling, rocking, tumultuous waving
of those ancient Yellowstone woods, and
the terror of their inhabitants, when the
first foreboding shocks were felt, the sky
grew dark, and rock-laden floods began to
roar. But though they were close-pressed
and buried, cut off from sun and wind,
all their happy leaf fluttering and wav-
ing done, other currents coursed through
them, fondling and thrilling every fibre,
and beautiful wood was replaced by
beautiful stone. Now their rocky sepul-
chres are broken open, and they are
marching back into the light singing a
new song, — shining examples of the
natural beauty of death. In these forest
Herculaneums Old Mortality is truly an
angel of light.

After the forest times and fire times
had passed away, and the volcanic fur-
naces were banked and held in abeyance,

The Yellowstone National Park.

519

another great change occurred in the his-
tory of the park. The glacial winter
came on. The sky was again darkened,
not with dust and ashes, but with snow
flowers which fell in glorious abundance,
piling deeper, deeper, slipping from the
overladen heights in booming avalanches
suggestive of their growing power. Com-
pacting into glaciers, they flowed forth,
meeting and welding into a ponderous
ice - mantle that covered all the land-
scape perhaps a mile deep ; wiping off
forests, grinding, sculpturing, fashion-
ing the comparatively featureless lava
beds into the beautiful rhythm of hill
and dale and ranges of mountains we
behold to-day ; forming basins for lakes,
channels for streams, new soils for for-
ests, gardens, and meadows. While this
ice-work was going on, the slumbering
volcanic fires were boiling the subterra-
nean waters, and with curious chemistry
decomposing the rocks, making beauty
in the darkness ; these forces, seemingly
antagonistic, working harmoniously to-
gether. How wild their meetings on the
surface were we may imagine. When
the glacier period began, geysers and hot
springs were playing in grander volume,
it may be, than those of to-day. The
glaciers flowed over them while they
spouted and thundered, carrying away
their fine sinter and travertine structures,
and shortening their mysterious channels.
The soils made in the down-grinding
required to bring the present features of
the landscape into relief are possibly no
better than were some of the old volcanic
soils that were carried away, and which,
as we have seen, nourished magnificent
forests, but the glacial landscapes are in-
comparably more beautiful than the old
volcanic ones were. The glacial winter
has passed away like the ancient sum-
mers and fire periods, though in the chro-
nology of the geologist all these times
are recent. Only small residual glaciers
on the cool northern slopes of the high-
est mountains are left of the vast all-
embracing ice-mantle, as solfataras and

geysers are all that are left of the an-
cient volcanoes.

Now the post-glacial agents are at
work on the grand old palimpsest of the
park, inscribing new characters ; but still
in its main telling features it remains
distinctly glacial. The moraine soils
are being leveled, sorted, refined, and
re-formed, and covered with vegetation ;
the polished pavements and scoring and
other superficial glacial inscriptions on
the crumbling lavas are being rapidly
obliterated ; gorges are being cut in the
decomposed rhyolites and loose conglom-
erates, and turrets and pinnacles seem
to be springing up like growing trees ;
while the geysers are depositing miles
of sinter and travertine. Nevertheless,
the ice-work is scarce blurred as yet.
These later effects are only spots and
wrinkles on the grand glacial counte-
nance of the park.

Perhaps you have already said that
you have seen enough for a lifetime. But
before you go away you should spend
at least one day and a night on a moun-
tain top, for a last general calming, set-
tling view. Mount Washburn is a good
one for the purpose, because it stands
in the middle of the park, is unincum-
bered with other peaks, and is so easy
of access that the climb to its summit
is only a saunter. First your eye goes
roving around the mountain rim amid
the hundreds of peaks : some with plain
flowing skirts, others abruptly precipitous
and defended by sheer battlemented es-
carpments, flat topped or round ; heaving
like sea -waves, or spired and turreted
like Gothic cathedrals ; streaked with
snow in the ravines, and darkened with
files of adventurous trees climbing the
ridges. The nearer peaks are perchance
clad in sapphire blue, others far off in
creamy white. In the broad glare of
noon they seem to shrink and crouch
to less than half their real stature, and
grow dull and uncommunicative, — mere
dead, draggled heaps of waste ashes and
stone, giving no hint of the multitude of

520

The Yellowstone National Park,

animals enjoying life in their fastnesses,
or of the bright bloom-bordered streams
and lakes. But when storms blow they
awake and arise, wearing robes of cloud
and mist in majestic speaking attitudes
like gods. In the color glory of morn-
ing and evening they become still more
impressive ; steeped in the divine light
of the alpenglow their earthiness disap-
pears, and, blending with the heavens,
they seem neither high nor low.

Over all the central plateau, which
from here seems level, and over the foot-
hills and lower slopes of the mountains,
the forest extends like a black uniform
bed of weeds, interrupted only by lakes
and meadows and small burned spots
called parks, — all of them, except the
Yellowstone Lake, being mere dots and
spangles in general views, made conspicu-
ous by their color and brightness. About
eighty-five per cent of the entire area
of the park is covered with trees, mostly
the indomitable lodge-pole pine (Pinus
contorta, var. Murray 'ana), with a few
patches and sprinklings of Douglas
spruce, Engelmann spruce, silver fir
(Abies lasiocarpa), P. flexilis, and a
few alders, aspens, and birches. The
Douglas spruce is found only on the low-
est portions, the silver fir on the high-
est, and the Engelmann spruce on the
dampest places, best defended from fire.
Some fine specimens of the flexilis pine
are growing on the margins of openings,
wide-branching, sturdy trees, as broad as
high, with trunks five feet in diameter,
leafy and shady, laden with purple cones
and rose-colored flowers. The Engel-
mann spruce and sub-alpine silver fir also
are beautiful and notable trees, — tall,
spiny, hardy, frost and snow defying,
and widely distributed over the West,
wherever there is a mountain to climb
or a cold moraine slope to cover. But
neither of these is a good fire -fighter.
With rather thin bark, and scattering
their seeds every year as soon as they
are ripe, they are quickly driven out of
fire-swept regions. When the glaciers

were melting^ these hardy mountaineer-
ing trees were probably among the first
to arrive on the new moraine soil beds ;
but as the plateau became drier and fires
began to run, they were driven up the
mountains, and into the wet spots and
islands where we now find them, leaving
nearly all the park to the lodge-pole
pine, which, though as thin-skinned as
they and as easily killed by fire, takes
pains to store up its seeds in firmly
closed cones, and holds them from three
to nine years, so that, let the fire come
when it may, it is ready to die and ready
to live again in a new generation. For
when the killing fires have devoured the
leaves and thin resinous bark, many of
the cones, only scorched, open as soon
as the smoke clears away, the hoarded
store of seeds is sown broadcast on the
cleared ground, and a new growth im-
mediately springs up triumphant out of
the ashes. Therefore, this tree not only
holds its ground, but extends its con-
quests farther after every fire. Thus
the evenness and closeness of its growth
are accounted for. In one part of the
forest that I examined, the growth was
about as close as a cane-brake. The
trees were from four to eight inches in
diameter, one hundred feet high, and
one hundred and seventy-five years old.
The lower limbs die young and drop off
for want of light. Life with these close-
planted trees is a race for light, more
light, and so they push straight for the
sky. Mowing off ten feet from the top
of the forest would make it look like a
crowded mass of telegraph-poles; for
only the sunny tops are leafy. A sap-
ling ten years old, growing in the sun-
shine, has as many leaves as a crowded
tree one or two hundred years old. As
fires are multiplied and the mountains
become drier, this wonderful lodge-pole
pine bids fair to obtain possession of
nearly all the forest ground in the West.
How still the woods seem from here,
yet how lively a stir the hidden animals
are making; digging, gnawing, biting,

The Yellowstone National Park.

521

eyes shining, at woi'k and play, getting
food, rearing young, roving through the
underbrush, climbing the rocks, wading
solitary marshes, tracing the banks of the
lakes and streams. Insect swarms are
dancing in the sunbeams, burrowing in
the ground, diving, swimming, — a cloud
of witnesses telling Nature's joy. The
plants are as busy as the animals, every
cell in a swirl of enjoyment, humming
like a hive, singing the old new song of
creation. A few columns and puffs of
steam are seen rising above the treetops,
some near, but most of them far off, in-
dicating geysers and hot springs, gentle-
looking and noiseless as downy clouds,
softly hinting at the reaction going on
between the surface and the hot interior.
From here you see them better than
when you are standing beside them,
frightened and confused, regarding them
as lawless cataclysms. The shocks and
outbursts of earthquakes, volcanoes, gey-
sers, storms, the pounding of waves, the
uprush of sap in plants, each and all tell
the orderly love-beats of Nature's heart.

Turning to the eastward, you have
the Grand Cafion and reaches of the
river in full view ; and yonder to the
southward lies the great lake, the lar-
gest and most important of all the high
fountains of the Missouri - Mississippi,
and the last to be discovered.

In the year 1541, when De Soto, with
a romantic band of adventurers, was
seeking gold and glory and the fountain
of youth, he found the Mississippi a few
hundred miles above its mouth, and made
his grave beneath its floods. La Salle, in
1682, after discovering the Ohio, one of
the largest and most beautiful branches
of the Mississippi, traced the latter to
the sea from the mouth of the Illinois,
through adventures and privations not
easily realized now. About the same time
Joliet and Father Marquette reached
the "Father of Waters" by way of
the Wisconsin, but more than a century
passed ere its highest sources in these
mountains were seen. The advancing

stream of civilization has ever followed
its guidance toward the west, but none
of the thousand tribes of Indians liv-
ing on its banks could tell the explorer
whence it came. From those roman-
tic De Soto and La Salle days to these
times of locomotives and tourists, how
much has the great river seen and done !
Great as it now is, and still growing
longer through the ground of its delta
and the basins of receding glaciers at its
head, it was immensely broader toward
the close of the glacial period, when the
ice-mantle of the mountains was melting:
then, with its 300,000 miles of branches
outspread over the plains and valleys of
the continent, laden with fertile mud, it
made the biggest and most generous bed
of soil in the world.

Think of this mighty stream spring-
ing in the first place in vapor from the
sea, flying on the wind, alighting on the
mountains in hail and snow and rain,
lingering in many a fountain feeding
the trees and grass ; then gathering its
scattered waters, gliding from its no-
ble lake, and going back home to the
sea, singing all the way. On it sweeps
through the gates of the mountains,
across the vast prairies and plains,
through many a wild, gloomy forest,
cane-brake, and sunny savanna, from
glaciers and snowbanks and pine woods
to warm groves of magnolia and palm,
geysers dancing at its head, keeping
time with the sea-waves at its mouth ;
roaring and gray in rapids, booming in
broad, bossy falls, murmuring, gleaming
in long, silvery reaches, swaying now
hither, now thither, whirling, bending in
huge doubling, eddying folds ; serene,
majestic, ungovernable ; overflowing all
its metes and bounds, frightening the
dwellers upon its banks ; building, wast-
ing, uprooting, planting; engulfing old
islands and making new ones, taking away
fields and towns as if in sport, carrying
canoes and ships of commerce in the
midst of its spoils and drift, fertilizing
the continent as one vast farm. Then.

522

The Yellowstone National Park.

its work done, it gladly vanishes in its
ocean home, welcomed by the waiting
waves.

Thus naturally, standing here in the
midst of its fountains, we trace the
fortunes of the great river. And how
much more comes to mind as we over-
look this wonderful wilderness ! Foun-
tains of the Columbia and Colorado lie
before us interlaced with those of the
Yellowstone and Missouri, and fine it
would be to go with them to the Pacific ;
but the sun is already in the west, and
soon our day will be done.

Yonder is Amethyst Mountain, and
other mountains hardly less rich in old
forests which now seem to spring up
again in their glory ; and you see the
storms that buried them, — the ashes
and torrents laden with boulders and
mud, the centuries of sunshine, and the
dark, lurid nights. You see again the
vast floods of lava, red-hot and white-
hot, pouring out from gigantic geysers,
usurping the basins of lakes and streams,
absorbing or driving away their hissing,
screaming waters, flowing around hills
and ridges, submerging every subordi-
nate feature. Then you see the snow
and glaciers taking possession of the
land, making new landscapes. How ad-
mirable it is that, after passing through
so many vicissitudes of frost and fire
and flood, the physiognomy and even
the complexion of the landscape should
still be so divinely fine !

Thus reviewing the eventful past, we
see Nature working with enthusiasm like
a man, blowing her volcanic forges like
a blacksmith blowing his smithy fires,
shoving glaciers over the landscapes like
a carpenter shoving his planes, clearing,
ploughing, harrowing, irrigating, plant-
ing, and sowing broadcast like a farmer
and gardener doing rough work and fine

work, planting sequoias and pines, rose-
bushes and daisies ; working in gems,
filling every crack and hollow with them ;
distilling fine essences ; painting plants
and shells, clouds, mountains, all the
earth and heavens, like an artist, — ever
working toward beauty higher and high-
er. Where may the mind find more
stimulating, quickening pasturage ? A
thousand Yellowstone wonders are call-
ing, " Look up and down and round
about you ! " And a multitude of still,
small voices may be heard directing you
to look through all this transient, shift-
ing show of things called " substantial "
into the truly substantial, spiritual world
whose forms flesh and wood, rock and
•water, air and sunshine, only veil and
conceal, and to learn that here is heaven
and the dwelling-place of the angels.

The sun is setting ; long, violet shad-
ows are growing out over the woods
from the mountains along the western
rim of the park ; the Absaroka range
is baptized in the divine light of the
alpenglow, and its rocks and trees are
transfigured. Next to the light of the
dawn on high mountain tops, the alpen-
glow is the most impressive of all the
terrestrial manifestations of God.

Now comes the gloaming. The alpen-
glow is fading into earthy, murky gloom,
but do not let your town habits draw you
away to the hotel. Stay on this good
fire-mountain and spend the night among
the stars. Watch their glorious bloom
until the dawn, and get one more bap-
tism of light. Then, with fresh heart, go
down to your work, and whatever your
fate, under whatever ignorance or know-
ledge you may afterward chance to suf-
fer, you will remember these fine, wild
views, and look back with joy to your
wanderings in the blessed old Yellow-
stone Wonderland.

John Muir.

William MarsdaVs Awakening.

523

WILLIAM MARSDAL'S AWAKENING.

IT was eight o'clock in the morning ;
Caesar was sweeping the broad porch of
the Marsdal mansion, his gray head and
wrinkled black face occasionally visible
through gaps in the tall oleanders that
spread their pink panicles against the
whiteness of Ionic columns. It was a
vision familiar to many of the passers-
by ; for so, in the freshness of morn, had
he swept it, when not traveling with his
master, for more than forty years. He
had reached the end where climbed an
immense Lamarque, and was shaking his
broom free of dust, when the slender
Moorish gate at the street entrance, a
hundred feet away, clicked and closed
beneath its arch, and the quick footsteps
of a child were heard upon the brick
walk leading to the short flight of stone
steps. There is character in every foot-
step, and there was decided character in
the crisp, clear echoes of these little
heels. Ere they had reached the steps
Caesar had transferred himself to the
landing, and was holding up his hands,
his earnest face wearing an anxious look,
and his puckered lips giving forth a
series of mysterious sounds intended to
attract attention and bring about silence.
The owner of the little heels, however,
was placidly indifferent to the panto-
mime. They hit brick and stone with
undiminished force until she neared him.
Moreover, she called to him in a clear,
silvery voice, not the least modulated,
" Where is Uncle William ? "

The negro was in despair. " For de
Lord sake, honey, ain't you see me
makin' signs for you ter stop er.comin'
so hard " —

" Where is Uncle William ? "

— "an' hesh yo' loud talkin'? Er
runaway horse would er shied roun' de
house fum me " —

" Where is Uncle William ? "

— " an' you am' so much as break yo'
pace ! "

" Where is Uncle William ? "

"He in dere tryin' to sleep in es
chair," the old man continued petulant-
ly, — " tryin' to snatch des er nap 'fo'
bre'kfus' ; an' you mus' n' 'sturb him,
nuther ! " As the little girl laughed and
passed on he raised his voice : " Don't
you do hit, honey ! 'Deed an' if he don't
get some sleep, I don't know what 's goin'
to happen ! "

" Caesar ! " The tones of a quick,
harsh voice floated out.

" Yes, sah ! I 'm er comin' ! — Now,
chile, you see what comes of trottin' so
hard on dem bricks, an' not payin' no
'tention."

"Caesar, what the thunder are you
talking about ? " said the voice testily.
" Come off that porch and " —

The sentence was suspended. The
owner stood in the hall. He was tall,
heavy, florid, and clean-shaven ; his thin
grayish blond hair was scattered care-
lessly over his round head and gently
waving in the draft. He was without
coat or vest ; his shirt was unbuttoned at
the throat, and he wore slippers. The
frown disappeared as he beheld his vis-
itor, and a hearty, cheery note came into
his voice.

" Ha, Humming-Bird ! Come in, come
in ! Why, God bless me, child, did Caesar
dare halt an angel upon my threshold ?
Caesar, you black rascal ! " But Csesar
had gone a roundabout way through the
shrubbery to sweep off the carriage-step,
and for the moment was not visible. The
gentleman thereupon lifted the child in
his arms and kissed her. He looked into
her eyes, and then quickly toward the
sky. " Bless me ! " he cried again, " you
are wearing your blue eyes this morning !
How becoming ! "

524

William MarsdaVs Awakening.

The child laughed and struggled down
to the floor. She clasped something in
her hand, and went into the sitting-room
without ceremony.

" I 'm going to make the birds sing,"
she said, with a precision of language
unusual with Southern children, and ex-
quisitely funny to her host.

" Oh, you are," he said, imitating her
walk and tones as he followed. " Then
I am coming to hear the birds sing. Si-
lence ! " he commanded, frowning around
him upon the heavy furniture, " silence
while the birds sing ! " And everything
obeyed, — everything except the gilt
clock under its tall glass cover on the
mantel.

The little girl climbed into a big leather
chair, and seated herself upon the edge
of the centre-table.

" Won't you try the chandelier ? " he
suggested. " Birds like high places."

But she was busy with the something
she had been tightly clasping in her hand,
and which proved to be a curious little
silver toy, half bird, half whistle, partly
filled with water. Blowing into this
gravely, her eyes meantime watching his
face for signs of delight, she produced a
series of birdlike notes and trills. He
dropped into the chair at her feet.

" And what," he said, with voice husky
from the intensity of his interest, and
with mouth corners drawn down, " what
bird in this world can sing as beau-u-u-
tifully as that ? "

She looked steadily at him and re-
flected.

"That's a mocking-bird!" she said
at last.

" Oh yes, so it is. How well you do
it!"

She tried again, looking to him for
approval.

" Seems like I have heard that song
somewhere ! " he mused, rubbing his red
ear. " Where could it have been ?
Surely " —

" That 's a canary," she declared.
Again she essayed her skill.

He clapped his hands. " Lovely ! love-
ly ! You beat them all ! But stay !
What bird sings now ? "

Her bird lore was limited. She re-
flected again.

" Oh, that 's a parrot ! "

And this time he really laughed. " It
is so natural ! I '11 have to give you a
cracker. Polly have a cracker ? "

She pushed away his hand, and went
on with her concert.

" That is my little dog barking at
night," she said in explanation.

" Good ! How does he bark in the
daytime ? "

She showed him. It was very much
like his night bark. And again her au-
ditor laughed.

" Listen to the dog's bark," he said to
the furniture.

Then the little girl from across the
street gave him the cow's moo, the little
calf's appeal for milk, and the hen's
cackle, waiting each time for applause.
Presently she remembered the circus me-
nagerie, and she gave him one by one
all the songs, from the elephant's down.
They all sang like the mocking-bird, —
a discovery that filled him with a huge
delight.

" I see now," he said gayly to the fur-
niture, " how great an artist the mock-
ing-bird really is."

And the concert went on.

Caesar had not returned. He was
outside the gate, broom in hand, talking.
A lady had come leisurely along the
shaded walk for the morning air, and
was turning back at the Marsdal man-
sion where the level land fell away ab-
ruptly, when Caesar's profound salutation
claimed her attention. It was but nat-
ural that, having inquired kindly as to
the old servitor's health, she should in-
quire as to her neighbor, his master, and
linger indulgently while he poured forth
his voluble reply.

" Des toler'ble, Miss Helen, — des tol-
er'ble ! When a man don't sleep, some-
p'n' is out er fix ; an' Marse William

William, MarsdaVs Awakening.

525

ain't sleep er wink in er week, — not er
wink ! "

" Is it possible ? "

" Yes, ma'am. He orter be ersleep
right dis minute, an' I 'spec' he would,
but de little gyurl fum 'cross de street
come in to blow her whistle for 'im, an'
he got to set up an' hear it."

" Blow a whistle for him ! "

" Yes, ma'am," and Caesar stopped
to laugh. " Child sorter got erway wid
Marse William yestiddy ; she sho' did.
She come 'long hyah, er whole passel of
'em, an' tore up an' down de yard an'
thoo de house like dey allus doing, an'
Marse William tell 'em, if dey don't
break down none of his rose-bushes, dey
can catch all de hummin'-birds dey want.
He been tellin' 'em dat for twenty years,
an' his ma befo' him."

" I remember that she used to tell me
that," said the lady, smiling. " There
was a tree on the other side of the house,
in the grove, that attracted humming-
birds. They seemed to gather some-
thing from the bark and twigs, — no one
could ever discover what."

" Hit 's dere yet, ma'am, de same tree.
Well, dese chillun des lak all de rest.
Dey hide in de bush, an' wait for hum-
min'-bird to git 'mongst de fo'-o'clocks
an' sech-like, an' dey run up an' try to
ketch 'em. Dey mos' ketch 'em, dey say
ev'y time ; an' Marse William set up
yonner on de po'ch, an' look lak he los'
his las' frien'. But dis here chile, de
one in yonner right now, she ain' lak
nair 'nother chile ever come to dis house.
She was born ole, an' she do lak she
please 'spite of ev'ybody. She was er
settin' up yonner on top step wid a big
lily in her han' yestiddy, an' done gone
soun' ersleep, when 'long come ole Mis'
Hummin'-Bird an' smell her flower. She
back off suspicious-like, but she come
ergin an' stick her head down in dere
fer to git de honey ; an' 'bout dat time
de chile wake up fum de hummin' of de
wings, — mebbe she ain' been 'sleep, —
an' clamp her han' down on dat flower,

an' des scream one time an' ernother
loud as she could, lak she done gone
plumb crazy, ' I got 'im ! I got 'im ! I
got 'im, Uncle William ! I got 'im ! I
got 'im ! ' An' Marse William so skeered
he mos' fall over back'ards. ' Got
what ? ' he say, ' got what ? Got er fit ?
got er spasm ? ' An', Miss Helen, she
had 'im !

" Den Marse William come an' set
down dere feelin' mighty bad. De hum-
min'-birds was his ma's special pets forty
years back, and dey was his. Ain' no-
body ever hurt one on de place. He
look solemn an' worried, 'cause his word
was out. First thing he do was to on-
clench her fingers, an' he say, ' Soft, soft,
my chile, or you '11 kill 'im. Soft ; lem-
me see 'im ; he shan't git erway,' — des
so. An' he tear open de flower an' give
de bird some air. Den he sont me to
fetch de big glass kiver fum over de gole
clock, an' he. put hit on de flo' wid de
edge prop up, an' ole Mis' Hummin'-
Bird under hit. Lord ! but de chillun
des fell over one ernother lak somep'n'
crazy, an' Marse William had er job to
keep 'em fum breakin' de glass. De
little gyurl say den she mus' take de bird
home to show her ma, an' Marse Wil-
liam look sad ergin. Bimeby he tell
me to watch de glass, an' he tell dat
chile to wait ; he mus' go roun' de cor-
ner an' inform ole Mis' Hummin'-Bird's
chillun dat she been ketched, an' dey
need n' 'spect to see her no mo', an'
not to wait supper for her. Little gyurl
look mighty bad when she hear dat ; but
bimeby she brighten up an' say, ' I
reck'n deir pa can take care of 'em.'
An' Marse William drop his eye on me
an' shet his lips tight ; an' I knowed hit
warn't no time to laugh.

" But he go roun' de corner, tellin'
all de chillun to stay back, 'cause he pro-
mise ole Mis' Hummin'-Bird long time
ago not to let nobody know where her
house was hid."

" I 'm not sure," said Caesar's listener
gravely, " that anything would justify a

526

William MarsdaVs Awakening.

deception of that kind. I think that
children should be told the truth."

" Lor', Miss Helen, I 'spect Marse
William, if it come to er pinch, would
tell er lie to save er hummin'-bird, or
his word. Anyhow, bimeby," continued
Caesar, laughing, " he come 'long back
wid his han'k'ch'ef up, an' say de hum-
min'-bird's chillun was carryin' on so he
could n' bear to stay, — said de baby of
de f ambly fairly moan an' sob like hits
po' little heart 'd break ; an' she ask him
to please tell de little gyurl to let her po'
ma come 'long home an' nuss her, for
she dat hongry she mos' perish for some-
p'n' to eat. She say, ' Ask little gyurl how
she lak for her little baby sister to starve
to death, an' for somebody to steal her
ma while she off 'cross de street.' Well,
missus, he mos' make me cry, hit soun'
so natchul. An' de little gyurl sorter lif '
de edge of de glass higher an' higher
while she was study in' 'bout somep'n',
— lif hit des a little at a time lak she
can't he'p herse'f ; an' ole Mis' Hummin'-
Bird bimeby see her way clear, an' gone
lak er streak er grease lightnin'. Well,
ma'am, de little gyurl fell to cryin' den
fit to kill herse'f ; but Marse William
ketch her up in his armo, an' tell her he
got somep'n' for her. An' he go unlock
de liberry, an' take out fum a drawer a
little silver whistle what you put water
in an' blow tell hit des fairly sings. His
ma gave him dat whistle when he was a
little boy hisse'f. He take hit an' show
her how hit work, an' tell her how much
better to have somep'n' what can sing
lak all de birds, an' not a po' little hum-
min'-bird what ain't good for nothin'
'cep'n' to nuss her babies. An' dat set-
tles it. But de little gyurl done caught
on to de blowin' herse'f, an' come 'long
back dis mornin'. She in yonner now
blowin' fit ter kill, — lissen ! Hear dat
fuss ? An' he des as much destracted as
if he warn't dyin' ter sleep. — Yes, sah ! "
continued the old man, lifting his voice
as he heard his name called. " I 'm er
comin' ! — t)es er dyin' for sleep. Morn-

in', missus ! Does me good to see you
sometimes. Lord, but you got yo' pa's
walk, — carry yo' head des like 'im,
high an' proud. Seem like hit warn't
but yestiddy I seen Colonel Bailey stan-
nin' right dere in yo' tracks, tellin' me,
' Caesar, 'spect some er dese days you
goin' to have er new ' " —

" Well, good-by, Caesar. Mr. Marsdal
is calling again."

" Good-by, Miss Helen ! — Yes, sah !
I 'm comin' ! "

" Caesar," said his master gravely,
when he did come, " the young lady will
honor us this morning at breakfast. Put
a suitable chair to the table for her."
Seeing a troubled look upon the little
face turned to his, he added, " And step
across the street and say to her mother
that I shall be greatly obliged if she will
not interfere with the arrangement."

The child's face brightened, and the
bird concert continued.

Out of the garret's dust came a child's
high-backed chair to do duty for the tiny
guest ; out of the great china closet, a lit-
tle cup and saucer and plate, with their
blue forget-me-nots and butterflies of
gold ; out of the velvet-lined recess be-
hind the sliding panel in the wall where
gleamed the old Marsdal silver, the little
knife, fork, and spoon. For Caesar's
greatest value lay in his quick percep-
tion of the fitness of things.

And such a breakfast as it was ! There
were the brownest of waffles, feathers
in weight, cooled milk rich with cream,
delicate broiled chicken, a golden omelet,
and delicious rolls. Piled up about the
vase of regal roses, behold the blended
hues of the vineyard !

Long and wistfully the man watched
his little guest and marked the workings
of her mind. When Caesar started the old
ebony music-box, whose enfeebled spring
failed in the middle of What are the
Wild Waves saying? she ceased for a
while to eat, and resumed her whistle, to
prove her loyalty ; and when at last, as
the wonderful hour was drawing to its

William Marsdal's Awakening.

527

close, a humming-bird invaded the win-
dow, hovered above a box of nasturtiums
a moment, and, remembering perhaps the
drama whispered of in bird circles the
day before, darted up a lane of sunlight
to freedom again, she looked grave and
startled.

" Got to go now," she said suddenly ;
and sliding from the chair, she trotted
out into the hall, her little feet making
sweet music on the floor.

" Good-by ! " he called to her. " Come
again and let the birds sing me asleep."

" Good-by ! " floated back from her
lips.

" What is it, Caesar ? " he asked of
that worthy, who was silently laughing.

" Gone to see if anybody done ketched
her ma."

" You have a mind, after all," said the
gentleman, turning quickly toward him.
Then, " Go to the door and see that she
gets back across the street safely."

He was looking thoughtfully on the
vacant chair ; perhaps he was dreaming
some old dream anew, when a vision
dawned upon him. Clad in the softest,
whitest of muslins, with broad summer
hat to match, a rich glow upon her dark
Southern face, balancing on her hand a
silver waiter full of blue celestial figs,
ripe and blushing peaches, and gorgeous
pomegranates laid open to their hearts,
stood a young woman, the daintier re-
production of Titian's daughter. Whe-
ther she interrupted or completed his
dream may not be known. William
Marsdal passed his hand across his eyes
and came forward quickly. He took her
face in both hands and kissed her fore-
head.

" Mother sends these with her best
wishes," she said, " and as soon as con-
venient would like to see you."

" See me ? " Then a smile came upon
his lips. " I understand. Are you very
happy, Marjory ? "

But blushing Marjory, putting the
waiter aside hurriedly, fled, looking back
from the front door to kiss her hand.

Few men have greater cause for con-
gratulation than had William Marsdal
at thirty. The only son in a family dis-
tinguished even in Southern society by its
gentility and elegance, possessed of wealth
and of a war record that would have
made him a field marshal under the Em-
pire, he came home from years of study
and travel, to take his father's place and
face the responsibilities of life. Barring
a slight haughtiness of manner which he
wore in public, yet so perfectly blended
with deferential courtesy that it did not
offend, he was an ideal gentleman from
even the critical standpoint of his own
neighbors. It was understood that he
would marry and settle down ; and aside
from the commotion in many a cote of
shy doves, there was public interest in
the fact that the old house would be
again thrown open to society.

The old house had seen many a gay
throng within its walls. Withdrawn be-
hind the loveliness of its shrubbery it
brooded now ; but within doors were
abundant evidences of refinement. The
harmony of artistic natures was felt in
the antique furnishings, and the total ab-
sence of the garish and bizarre ; a good
woman's heart, a good man's thought,
spoke in all that hand or eye might rest
upon, from ground to garret. Those
whose tastes were not blunted by con-
tact with the coarseness of life outside
caught there the flavor of lives that had
passed away. It takes many a year for
a house to earn such a character, — as
long as it takes to make a gentleman.
Dignity and that fine beauty which is
called indefinable are axillary blossoms
on family trees, and the home shares
them. How soon, how easily, are they
lost ! A vulgar family can debauch such
a house within a month, and break no
civil law. Herein lies the gravest defect
of the American system ; there should
be no way to sell the family home while

528

William MarsddTs Awakening.

the family lives ; for within is the foun-
tain-head of patriotism. That man who
has a home full of memories and tradi-
tions is his country's sentinel.

To his home came William Marsdal,
and people waited. Then, after some
months, society said, " They were made
for each other," — William and Helen,
the only child of Colonel Marcus Bailey,
whose little cottage was hidden behind
the magnolias and roses a few hundred
yards up the street, whose orchard of
fine fruits broadened out in the rear un-
til checked by the pasture for his splen-
did Jerseys, whose pasture was limited
by spreading fields of cotton growing
upon red levels, and whose cotton-fields
— well, there is an end to all things,
and the colonel's land ended somewhere.

Made for each other, — that was the
verdict. The verdict was seemingly in-
dorsed ; for soon the colonel was often
seen taking his martial form, with as-
sistance from his gold-headed cane, down
to the Marsdals', and fanning himself
upon the broad veranda, while old Mrs.
Marsdal, with her lace cap above her
aristocratic face, sat near, and they dis-
cussed the changes war had made, the
solid South in Congress, and the alleged
Kuklux. They discussed another mat-
ter with befitting dignity ; for Mrs. Mars-
dal mentioned her son's devotion to
Helen, now apparent to everybody, and
gave her host an impartial outline of
William's character and a frank state-
ment of his financial condition. The
colonel said that William had always
been a favorite of his, and that, however
the young people might decide matters,
he should be proud if Cupid brought
about an alliance between his family and
that of " Edward Marsdal, God rest his
soul, — than which no purer, broader,
truer, ever animated the form of man."
Whereupon Mrs. Marsdal gave him her
hand a moment, and pressed a filmy ker-
chief to her eyes, in which tears rivaled
the rays of the single diamond upon her
thin finger. From this Caesar felt au-

thorized to launch upon the undercur-
rents of society the announcement of an
engagement.

But the matter was not settled.

William and Helen were much to-
gether. He told her of the scene upon
the porch, and she blushed and looked
from him. He did not say the neces-
sary word ; he did not know how. Any
statement from him, he felt, would be
trite and useless. Could she not see for
herself ? Was he not telling her his love
every day in the most eloquent of lan-
guages, the language of the heart ? Alas,
he was fourteen years her senior, and
knew little of the girl's heart. He drift-
ed with the current, proud and happy.
There were rivals, and among them was
Robert Delamar, a cotton factor growing
rich in the world of trade ; and Robert
was confidently assiduous. But why
should William fear any of them ? He
had reason, but he did not know it.
Lacking the something in his make-up
that renders self-analysis possible, Rob-
ert did not perceive the truth of the sit-
uation. He had always been told that
he was handsome and irresistible ; how
could the old planter's daughter fail to
find him so ? When, one day, she gave
him hesitatingly a conditional " yes," he
was only surprised at the conditions and
at her refusal to add love's token.

The news came to William from a
source he could not doubt. Amazed, an-
gry, sick at heart, he went to Helen, and
stood by her side a moment. She looked
away from him.

" Is it true ? " he asked.

Her lips seemed not to move, but she
whispered, " Yes."

He was silent, the girl's bosom rising
and falling with agitation. He lifted his
hat, and went away. Her eyes sought
him then, full of fright and anguish.
She could not bring herself to speak. He
never came again until fourteen years
had passed, and, impoverished by specu-
lation, broken-spirited, broken-hearted,
Robert Delamar lay dying in the little

William MarsdaVs Awakening.

529

cottage from excess of drink. Then he
returned ; for the dying man, with a
clear perception of the truth and the no-
bility of his rival's heart, had sent for
him. "When he issued forth they were
rivals no longer : one was dead, and the
other a trustee and guardian.

The latter did his duty well. The
fields had long before been sold ; like-
wise the pasture and the orchard ; and
the cottage was mortgaged to its full
value. How Robert Delamar had lived
no one knew. But they came back, — the
orchard first, then the pasture, and then
the red levels ; and upon these levels, at
William's command, the patient mules
went to and fro as of old with the heavy
ploughs, until the fields were white with
the summer snows of the South. One
day the mortgage fell away from the life-
tie cottage, and a thrill of delight ran
through the town ; for with all their
bickerings, jealousies, and heart-burn-
ings, the people in these old towns love
one another and the past.

But William Marsdal was another
man in most respects. From the blow
delivered by a woman's hand he shrank
back and back within himself and the
old home, until he almost disappeared
from public view. The mantle of haugh-
tiness became as masque and mail of
iron. Still, as a rule, coldly polite, he
developed an irritability that made po-
liteness difficult ; and there were times
when, impatient from interference or the
neighborly efforts of uncongenial persons
to be friendly, he lost restraint. As the
years passed he found it easier to be
alone. People accepted him as an ec-
centric, explosive man, with whom it was
unsafe to trifle, but upon whom every
one might rely to do the right thing at
last in the wrong way.

And yet they loved him ! Little
Marjory Delamar, his ward, soon learned
to brave the dragon for the wonders of
the Marsdal house. He was no dragon
with her. She called him " Uncle Wil-
liam," and as one by one she led in her

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 486. 34

playmates, they called him " Uncle Wil-
liam " too, and none were afraid ; for,
tolerating the boys, he became at last al-
most the slave of the little girls. People
outside, who had felt the man's irascibili-
ty, his biting sarcasm, and the thunders
of his resentment, laughed to see his soft-
er side. They came to realize that, like
some strong tree crowded by wall or cliff,
he was developing toward all the sun-
shine that could reach him. In these
years no child's demand ever went unno-
ticed by William Marsdal. Can any one
ever forget the time when, losing a day
by an accident, John Robinson's circus
thought to slight the old town for a rival
in red and yellow paint, twenty miles
away ; and this after the bills were up,
and William Marsdal's promise had lain
for weeks next to the hearts of the children
who wore his flowers ? Not one of them,
at least. They were frightened and dis-
tressed, it is true, by the bad news and
William's strange disappearance, and
they paid many an anxious visit to Cae-
sar, much to that worthy's discomfiture.
One day there was a blare of trumpets,
and William Marsdal rode' into town
upon his big black horse at the head
of the circus procession, pointed out a
site for the tent in his own pasture,
went around and adjourned the schools,
closed up business houses, and gave a
free performance. The glory of that
day was William's, for had he not van-
quished an impudent rival, and plucked
victory from defeat ? But with William
the glorious feature of the day was the
bank of young girls rising to the canvas
roof itself, their faces radiant with de-
light, their ribbons and tresses dancing
under the swaying cloth, their little hands
beating time to the music of the scarlet
band.

He was the king ! For at his com-
mand the lady in short skirts came back
twice on the claybank horse and waltzed
through rings of living flame ; the trained
dogs went through their antics over and
over, and the trick mule stayed in the

530

William MarsdaVs Awakening.

ring until too tired to kick. He cor-
nered for his small guests the market for
peanuts and lemonade; and as though
this were not enough, he gave Csesar to
the clown to make more fun for them ;
but when the clown climbed the ropes
for his present, and Csesar, half afraid,
resisted, and they rolled together in the
dust, and the smallest girls began to cry,
he bought Caesar back for five dollars —
extortion he called it — and stilled the
rising tumult. Oh, the rapture of that
day !

There was the recent affair of the new
church organ. How violently, sarcasti-
cally, almost venomously, he opposed
the purchase ! And yet when the com-
mittee lacked sixty per cent of the need-
ed amount, and the local sheet outlined a
church fair, he called in Marjory one
day, and sent her with a check for the
sixty per cent, and a message to the ef-
fect that as between two evils he chose
the lesser one.

Marjory was twelve when she became
the ward of this strange man. Now she
was eighteen ; and as, rigidly erect in
his faultless dress, he walked to the cot-
tage responsive to her mother's sum-
mons, a long procession of events filed
past him in review. But he could count
upon the fingers of one hand the times
he had been to the cottage since Helen's
marriage : when Robert Delamar died ;
when he was buried ; when the trust
began ; and finally when, freed from all
incumbrances and productive, the little
property was turned over to its former
owner. This was the fifth time : he
would make it the last.

And Robert Delamar had been six
years dead !

He lifted the latch and passed along
the gravel walk to the -house, and then
into the living-room. The woman who
entered was Helen Bailey grown older.
He held her hand a moment, while her
eyes rested upon him with a sad, in-
quiring gaze that he seemed to under-
stand. It was a gaze that, passing rap-

idly over his attire, touched for a mo-
ment the thin gray hair upon his tem-
ples, and rested upon the stern, uncom-
promising lines of his face. He could
not endure even the suggestion of pity
in her. He flushed for an instant, and
the perpendicular line between his eyes
deepened ; but the gentility of his race
quickly swept away all resentment.

" I thank you, Helen," he said, " for
your kind remembrance this morning,
and dear Marjory's bright face. How
can I serve you ? "

Her sad smile came back ; for a wo-
man at thirty-eight is wiser than most
men at fifty-two. She hesitated.

" Caesar tells me you are not well ; is
it serious ? "

" Caesar is a babbling fool, Helen !
I have suffered a little from insomnia
for the week past."

" You have not slept at all ! But be
seated. There must be some cause for
this," she continued. " You should con-
sult a physician, Mr. Marsdal. Let me
insist that you see a physician."

A grim smile came upon his face.
" And you have one that you can recom-
mend, I suppose."

" Oh," she laughed, " yes. But I had
forgotten. It is of him I wish to speak.
He told me," she said, looking down,
" that you had given your consent to his
marriage with Marjory ; and now I have
to tell you — that — circumstances —
render it almost necessary for the mar-
riage to take place soon. In fact, they
have selected the date two weeks from to-
day. Henry is going North and abroad
for several years' study and hospital prac- <
tice and " —

" I see. Let them go." He said this
so bluntly that the woman resented it
with flashing eyes.

" That is your reply ? " she asked,
somewhat coldly. " I thought you would
be more interested, at least."

" I am sufficiently interested ; I have
neglected nothing. I know who Henry
Vernon is ; and his family for four gener-

William MarsdaVs Awakening.

531

ations back. I knew them when he came
to me ; for I am not blind, and found
out in advance. And when I gave my
consent, he signed a contract that will in
a measure protect her. There is no
longer any need of delay. He is able
and keen in his profession ; that is, he is
an accomplished humbug. But I make
no complaint. He is a necessary evil."

" I see you are still unchanged in
your opinion of physicians."

"Entirely so. Will you be pleased
to read the contract ? I guessed at the
nature of your business, and brought it
with me."

" I shall be glad to read it," she said,
surprised.

He drew forth a document and handed
it to her. It was in his own well-known
handwriting, she saw. She read : —

" In consideration of William Mars-
dal's consent to my marriage to his ward,
Marjory Delamar, before she is of age,
I hereby agree that one week after said
marriage I will send her back to her
mother to remain twenty-four hours. If
upon the expiration of that time she
fails to return to me, I pledge my honor
as a gentleman never again to seek her
presence or attempt to communicate with
her, and that I will consent to a legal
separation without prejudice. If she does
return to me, then at the expiration of
two years she shall again return to her
mother for one day, upon the same terms.
And I hereby give to this contract all
legal force possible, making it a part of
the religious contract yet to be solem-
nized, and will faithfully abide by it.

[Signed] HENRY VERNON."

Helen looked up from the paper,
startled and embarrassed.

" How strange ! " she whispered.
" And yet" —

" I told him," continued William Mars-
dal, " that the average marriage credit-
ed to a heavenly making was a slander
upon God Almighty ; that a woman at
eighteen knows nothing, and my object
was to save something of life for my

child if she erred in her judgment.
The fellow agreed with me instantly," —
he paused and stared at his listener, as
though not yet recovered from astonish-
ment ; " and I had never liked him until
then. He said he would sign anything
that would throw safeguards about Mar-
jory's future ; that the husband was the
only danger from which the law did not
guard a woman. A man with a heart
and mind like that ought to abandon
humbuggery."

" It was thoughtful of you, — thought-
ful of you," said Helen.

" The idea did not originate with me.
I only carried out the unformed plan of
your husband, revealed in his last mo-
ments."

She made no reply to this. Her
breath came in gasps for one instant, and
then she buried her face in her handker-
chief and wept silently.

He came to her side. "Yes, Helen,
Robert Delamar saw his mistake when
life's perspective was complete. All that
he could do was to turn it to account for
his daughter's sake. You were a good
wife, a devoted wife to him. Look up.
I have told you the truth, to — hallow
his memory." After a few moments'
silence he continued : " I have two re-
quests, Helen, to make of you : I want
Marjory to wear this," — he held out
an exquisite little coronet set with dia-
monds, — " and I wish her marriage to
take place in my house. It is eminent-
ly proper that it should, since I am her
guardian, and your house is small. I
want to see her a bride, crowned with
these jewels, in the home of William
Marsdal. I bought the trinket more
than twenty years ago. You will not
refuse me ! " He wavered slightly and
pressed his hand to his brow, a look of
confusion in his eyes ; but before she
could reach him with outstretched hand
he had steadied himself.

" Won't you let Henry come to see
you, Mr. Marsdal ? You are really ill.
Don't refuse me. I refuse you nothing."

532

William MarsdaVs Awakening.

He felt in his pocket and handed her
some papers.

"Here," said he, "are expressed a
week's efforts to calculate a year's in-
terest upon a simple note for six hun-
dred and ninety dollars. The interest
gets bigger and bigger every time, and
upon the first trial it was greater than
the principal. Something slipped in
here," he said, touching his forehead,
" and since then I have n't slept. If
Henry can prescribe for bad arithmetic,
send him around."

At the door he turned, to find her,
sad and distressed, watching him. " Let
nothing delay the marriage," he said.

III.

Keen, quick, modern, well balanced,
and bold, a healer by intuition and a
physician by conscientious acquisition,
Henry Vernon had begun his profession-
al life with the conviction that failure
was impossible. He grasped the new
solutions of old problems, and placed
himself in harmony with the new methods
as fast he could master them ; and he
mastered everything he attempted until
he met with William Marsdal. Behind
the abruptness, the cynicism, and the sar-
casm of this man he found an intellectu-
al force and perception unsuspected, an
ego unknown, unknowable, and elusive.
Moreover, he found a disbeliever in the
claims made for medicine. This op-
posing combination of forces placed him
at great disadvantage when he came to
study into the disorder which affected
the sick man. There was another dis-
advantage : he had not been called ; he
had been sent. The pressure was be-
hind. On the other hand, he and Wil-
liam Marsdal were practically of one
family, and that fact, with the ironical
message accompanying the arithmetical
attempts, must perforce suffice for ex-
cuse to beard the lion in his den ; and
putting aside pride he bearded him.

William Marsdal grasped the young
man's situation at once, and something
like a smile hovered about his mouth
when he contemplated the swarthy,
square - jawed professional. How the
data for a diagnosis were obtained Dr.
Vernon could never entirely recall ; but
a dozen times during the hour he was
sorely tempted to pick up his hat and
leave without ceremony. Yet his host's
outward manner was perfect. Still, he
seemed to be fencing with an unfriend-
ly antagonist in the dark, and despite
a determination and promise to keep his
temper, he from time to time received
thrusts and blows that were maddening.
Only the memory of Marjory and the
undoubted goodness of the older man
sustained him. But he satisfied himself
at last that his first suspicions were cor-
rect. Armed with his conviction he was
on better ground. He suited his action
to the strong character before him.

" Mr. Marsdal," he began, " I have
to tell you that you are not only ill, but
threatened with a serious danger. It is
best to tell you so frankly."

" Right so far, my young friend. Pro-
ceed."

" It may be paresis. It may be a
growing tumor. It may be the effects
of a slight lesion that will pass away
by absorption, or a trifling inflammation
that ten hours' sleep will relieve. What-
ever it is, it is in the brain."

William Marsdal laughed. "It is
but another way of saying that I con-
sider you a very able man, sir, when I
say again I agree with you. Proceed."

" My advice is to board the first train
with a competent nurse, and go to a
specialist in New York under whom I
studied. If any one can cure you, he
is the man." '

" I won't go. What next ? "

" Then you must put your life in my
hands."

" Ah ! That 's another question.
What do you propose to do with it,
young man ? "

William MarsdaVs Awakening.

533

" Preserve it."

" I see, — I see. Modest, but still it
is to the point. However, I won't do
that, either."

This was one of the times that Dr.
Vernon reached for his hat, but he
changed his mind. He looked his un-
willing patient straight in the eyes.

" You said ' yes ' to me, Mr. Marsdal,
when I asked you for Marjory Delamar,
and at the same time told me she was
dearer to you than life itself. I believe
those were the words ? But you seem
to be more careful of your life than of
your ward, after all."

The slightly raised eyebrows and dis-
tinct sarcasm, the impudence of it all,
astonished his hearer so that for a
moment he could but stare. William
Marsdal had one profane word that he
used on extra occasions, and on this oc-
casion he used it eloquently.

" I would not swear," said the young
man coolly, — " unless for amusement.
Avoid every form of mental excitement.
There is too much excitement now, or
you would sleep. My remark was not
irrelevant nor intended for impertinence.
I said you must put your life in my
hands, but I did not say that I would
accept the trust. I would do it only upon
conditions. These might not suit you.
There are other doctors in town " —

" All humbugs ! "

" As you please. I have nothing else
to suggest. I sincerely desire to help
you for reasons you know in advance,
but I cannot do it by main force."

" Young man," said William Marsdal,
after a moment of silence, during which
he perhaps tried to get his own consent
to apologize for the profanity, " you may
have diagnosed my present malady cor-
rectly, but there are other things in there
besides tumors and lesions and inflam-
mation. There is a love for Marjory
Delamar that escaped you. If William
Marsdal puts his life in your hands, and
you lose it, your future, in this town, is
ruined. You would never survive the

tongues of your professional brethren.
My interest in the matter lies in the
fact that professional ruin for you would
cast a shadow over Mai'jory's future.
My life is of little value ; it shall not
become a menace to her. I know my
case ; it is serious. Nothing but sleep
can save me." His manner had changed.
For one moment he was grave and se-
rious.

Touched to the heart, amazed, repent-
ant, Dr. Vernon sat silent, looking upon
the floor.

" Think no more of it," said the host.
" Come in occasionally with Marjory, and
suggest — mind you, I say suggest —
things to try. If I get well, I '11 tell the
world you saved me. If I die, you can
tell them that it happened because I
would n't let you." His old manner had
returned.

So the matter arranged itself. But
sleep would not come to the tired brain.
All medical remedies failed. And the
days passed.

The singular illness of William Mars-
dal soon became the absorbing topic of
the town. He was amazed to find how
many friends he had, and was touched by
their loving solicitude ; and then he raved
to Csesar about the annoyance. Every
one was forbidden the yard but Marjory
and her fiance', and the children. The
little ones tiptoed in and gathered flow-
ers as usual. They even invaded the
cool sitting-room and looked into the hag-
gard face for the old smile, and found
it. A thousand remedies were suggest-
ed, and the little girl across the street
broke loose from restraining hands and
one day brought another. She sat upon
the carriage-step and gravely took off her
shoes, and then went in, slamming the
gate with a little extra force ; so it seemed
to Caesar. She passed noiselessly on till
she found her friend stretched upon the
leather lounge, waiting. She had re-
membered his remark about the birds.

" Goin' to let the birds sing you to
sleep," she said positively.

534

William MarsdaVs Awakening.

He turned his head quickly, not hav-
ing heard her enter the room, and he
laughed silently.

" Good ! I have tried everything else ! "
he said. " Now, I '11 shut my eyes tight,
and you make the birds sing ; and when
I get to sleep, you can slip out and go
home and tell them you beat the town.
I 'm ready ; go ahead." And with a
smile still upon his face, he shut his eyes.

The little girl made the birds sing.
Caesar felt that their shrill voices would
never, never cease ; but the invalid, judg-
ing from his facial expression, was float-
ing in a sea of bliss. At last, however,
her breath gave out. Coming close to
her friend, she said, " Are you asleep? "

" Sound asleep," he replied. " Tell
the birds I 'm so much obliged."

Full of the glory of her conquest, the
child ran off. Caesar watched her out of
the gate.

" Oomhoo ! " he said. " Done lef dem
shoes settin' out dere."

That meant a trip across the street for
Csesar.

Dr. Vernon came up that evening
with Marjory, bringing a message from
her mother and a waiter of fruit. The
next day was the marriage day. Their
plans had been changed ; for William
Marsdal would not listen to a postpone-
ment, and the doctor would not consider
the performance of the ceremony in that
house under the circumstances. The old
Presbyterian church had been substi-
tuted.

" Since I have been lying here," the
sick man said, maintaining his playful-
ness, "I have been wondering how I
could have ever been so sleepy that I
could n't hold up my head ; and yet I
remember distinctly that, as a boy, there
were times when I thought I should die
if they did n't let me sleep. My parents
were strict church people, and I being an
only child, they tried all sorts of exper-
iments with me." He laughed silently
over some memory, and continued : " Sun-
day was to me a nightmare. I had to be

scrubbed by the nurse before breakfast,
have my ears bored out with a finger con-
cealed in a coarse towel, and study my
Sunday-school lesson. At nine o'clock
I was taken down to the school, — same
old school going on now every Sunday
under the same old church up the street,
— and very much as Abraham took Isaac
into the mountains, to be sacrificed. At
ten they led me upstairs for the two
hours of prayer and sermon. How sleepy
I used to get ! — for I was only a little
fellow at that time. My feet could n't
touch the floor of the pew, and my back
would n't reach the pew's back. I knew
about as much of what was going on
as a cow does of astronomy. I would
sit up, and wave to the right and left,
and bob forward, and my father or
mother would straighten me up patient-
ly and frown. There was a Greek bor-
der around the ceiling — I saw the same
thing in Italy when first I went abroad,
and it made me homesick — that I played
was a boulevard, and I drove my pony
around the church, nearly twisting my
head off when he went behind the or-
gan, and twisting it back in a complete
circle to see him come out on the other
side. And there was a circle in the
centre of the ceiling where I raced him.
Sometimes he went so fast I would get
dizzy and fall against mother, to be firm-
ly elbowed up again and reproved with a
grave face and compressed lips. Some-
times I would look at the cushioned seat
and think that if I could just stretch out
at full length there, with my head in
mother's lap. I should be willing to die
for it. But I was too much frightened
to try it, for in front of me was a being
of great power. He was bald on the
top of his head, with his hair roached
forward over his temples, and wore a
high stock that kept him from turning his
head. The sunlight would come down
through the round panes of colored glass
above the tall windows and crown him
with changing glories ; and it is a fact
that I picked him out as the person in-

William Marsdal's Awakening.

535

tended when the preacher spoke of an
awful being whose face was forever hid
from the eyes of man. When prayer-
time came, I prayed to him from behind.
I do not remember that I ever learned
his name."

So the excited brain worked and
worked, throwing off old impressions as
one who digs in the garden upturns roots
and bulbs, mementos of a bygone spring.
Dr. Vernon listened intently, his hrow in
his hand, his face in the shadow. To
him the pictured scenes were themselves
symptoms. He could have placed his
finger upon the localities of the brain
that were affected. As, with Marjory,
he walked home under the stars, he was
strangely silent and thoughtful for one
so near the realization of his dream.
Marjory wondered and was piqued. It
was the first but not the last time that a
jealous mistress interfered with her plans.

" Will, you give me an hour to-mor-
row ? " he asked. " I am going to try
an experiment."

" Certainly, Henry ; but to - morrow
will he my busiest day."

"I know, but my experiment is for
William Marsdal. You noticed that the
progress of his malady has reached the
mysterious records of youth; the little
cells are giving back their impressions.
I want to try and uncover some that
will exert a good influence. I will ex-
plain to-morrow."

" Just to oblige me, Uncle William ; it
is not far, and the walk will do you good.
You have not heard the new organ, and
you have never heard Marjory play.
Don't refuse ; remember that this is the
last day your little girl " —

" Get my hat."

Marjory danced off delighted, and the
two set out ; William Marsdal still erect,
but thin and haggard, and the old de-
fiant look in his eyes changed to that
of a hunted animal. Still, his splendid
strength sustained him.

But few passers-by saw the two, and

those who did supposed they were stroll-
ing for exercise only. They went into
the old church, and Dr. Vernon joined
them by what was apparently a mere
chance.

" Have you memory enough," he said,
smiling, "to find your boyhood's scene
of suffering ? "

William Marsdal had been standing,
gazing about him abstractedly, thinking
of the long-gone days.

" Yes," he said gravely, and together
they walked to the pew he designated.
Again he sat in the familiar spot. " It
is more comfortable now. I can touch
the floor and the back both. Nothing
else appears changed. Dear me ! dear
me ! but where are the faces, the forms,
I knew ? Forty years ! It is a long
time, and yet it was but yesterday ! "

" I must not tire you," said Mar-
jory, obeying a signal from Dr. Vernon.
" I '11 run np and try the organ now."

As she began to play, William Mars-
dal looked back and upward to where he
could see her curls above the rail.

Marjory made the beautiful instru-
ment sing all the old-time tunes. Dr.
Vernon excused himself to " keep an en-
gagement," but he stood outside in the
vestibule, and through a half - opened
door watched the little scene within.
And this is what he saw : The sick man
sat dreaming in the pew, his chin in his
hand, for many minutes, and then he be-
gan idly to study the surroundings, hav-
ing forgotten the music and the player.
His face was lifted, and his eyes fol-
lowed in its zigzag course the Greek
border under the ceiling, the boulevard
of his boyhood days. Then they ap-
peared to find the big circle. A half
smile lit his face ; his clinical aspect im-
proved. He lowered his head and sank
into reverie, and time and again he lift-
ed it and went through the familiar pan-
tomime. But when many minutes had
passed, and the fair player was gently
drawing from the instrument the strains
of that sadly beautiful old hymn, " Come,

536

William MarsdaTs Awakening.

ye disconsolate," Dr. Vernon started for-
ward quickly : the figure in the pew had
distinctly swayed. Instantly it recovered
and was rigid. And then again the un-
mistakable motion made in nodding was
apparent. William Marsdal was decid-
edly sleepy. He appeared to struggle
with his weakness ; then he involuntari-
ly yielded. He did that which brought
a smile of delight to the young man's
face : he looked about him cautiously,
measured the cushion with his eye, and,
with sudden surrender of his scruples,
calmly stretched himself out at full
length. Dr. Vernon rushed noiselessly,
breathlessly, to the organ-loft.

" Play on ! play on ! " he whispered
eagerly, for Marjory's pretty mouth and
eyes were open, and she was pausing in
sheer astonishment. But she rallied, and
played, " Come, ye disconsolate," over
and over and over, until she almost
dropped from the seat. Then Henry
came up again, radiant and joyful.

" Thank God, he sleeps ! " he said.
" Don't stop ! don't stop yet ! "

She made only one false note, which
was doing well when kisses were being
showered upon her lips and her head was
drawn back.

" Keep a thread of music running
through his dream, dear ; one hand will
do, — chords, fifths. I am afraid of
silence. Oh, if I could pray, I believe
I should try the Presbyterians' long
prayer ! "

She had never seen him in this mood.
" Henry ! " she said reprovingly.

And then he uttered an exclamation
that was not a prayer, and dashed down-
stairs again ; for a dos^en girls, laden
with flowers, had passed into the church,
and were preparing to decorate for Mar-
jory's marriage. In a moment he was
among them, and they were silenced with
six words : " William Marsdal is asleep
at last ! " But he suffered them to pass
noiselessly through the aisles, and wreathe
altar, lamp -stands, and brackets with
flowers, and fill the vases.

It was a strange scene for that dim
old church, the girls in white, working
so swiftly, silently, intelligently, banish-
ing the sadness of the solitude with their
regal blossoms. It was as though Spring
with her handmaidens had come into
the little world. When all was ended,
and the physician stood over the sleeper
with lifted hand, the fairies glided by,
each with a tender look into the familiar
face touched with the violet hues of the
painted glass, and were gone. In their
stead were the odor of flowers, the gleam
of white blossoms, and the thread of
melody descending from above.

So slept the sick man ; and another
problem arose. The bride was forced
away, and later, friends took the place
of the groom. A guard stood at the
door to bar intruders and answer ques-
tions, and one in the street to bar all
vehicles. Noon's short shadows length-
ened toward the east, and the sun set.
As the hour for the ceremony drew near,
the physician ruled the groom. Henry
Vernon declared that no consideration
would tempt any of those interested to
awaken the sleeper : that was out of
the question. " Postpone the wedding ?
No," said he promptly ; " that will ex-
cite him when he does awake. We will
carry out his original plan."

So they went to work again. This
time Caesar slaved for the fairies. The
old Marsdal mansion was thrown open,
and the windows flashed outward their
lights for the first time in many a year.
A young bride wearing a tiara of dia-
monds stood beneath the smilax, an
old man's dream made visible, and was
married to the man she loved. Nine
o'clock rang as she gave him her pledge,
and she did not notice a slight commo-
tion near the door. But when the prayer
was ended, and, pushing back her veil, she
faced the phalanx of well-wishing friends,
she saw standing there William Marsdal,
his face bright with the dews of rest, his
eyes lit by the old familiar flame. With
a cry she ran to him and hid her head

William MarsdaTs Awakening.

537

upon his breast, sobbing with happiness.
He could but kiss her forehead over and
over, and whisper. He turned from the
eager congratulations pouring in upon
him, and from the forms about him.

" Kind friends," he said, " you caught
William Marsdal napping. I missed
some sleep forty years ago, but I caught
up to-day. Enjoy yourselves ; the house
is yours." He retired precipitately, and
hid himself in the shadow of the La-
marque at the far end of the veranda to re-
cover his equanimity. As he stood there
he felt a touch upon his arm, and, look-
ing down, saw in a little patch of moon-
light the face of Helen Bailey.

" I am so glad," she said, " I must
tell you ! And, Mr. Marsdal, we have
not met often ; we may not meet again.
I want to thank you — oh, I wish I could
thank you for your kindness to me and
my child. I did not deserve it, — I did
not, I did not ! " She covered her face
with her hands and stood in the shadow.

"Helen, "he said, "how could you
do it ? " The question crying for utter-
ance so long had burst from him at last.

" Oh," she said brokenly, " you did
not understand, — no man understands !
I wanted to be asked, to be wooed, —
every girl wishes that. It was all so mat-
ter of fact — and I was proud ! If you
had spoken one word — that day — oh,
if you had touched me with your hand,
I would have thrown myself into your
arms ! "

"What!" he cried. "You loved
me!"

" Every minute of my life since I met
you ! "

" And I," he said in awe, as the sad
mistake began to be apparent, " thought
that my fourteen years — that I was too
old — I thought that the trouble was
there ! "

She did not speak, but stood strug-
gling with her emotion. He came and
put his hand reverently upon her head.

" Helen," he said, " in the hours of
that blessed sleep in the old church I

dreamed of you. My mind ran all the
way up from childhood to those happy
days of ours ; and I thought I saw you
standing in this house a bride. I got no
further than that. I awoke with the
moon looking down into my face, and
came away happy and yet sad. Is it too
late for that dream to come true ? Let
me see your face."

And he saw it with the love-light shin-
ing through wet lashes.

" To-night," he whispered, — " let it
be to-night ! "

She was too much amazed to answer.

Then William Marsdal was himself
again. " It shall be to - night, now,
madam ! You have robbed me of twen-
ty years. You shall not rob me of an-
other day."

Her protestations were useless. She
found herself laughing and half indig-
nant over her situation ; but resistance
was useless. He marched her in through
a side-window, and stood by while she
laved her eyes and arranged her hair,
and he checked her frequent rebellions
in their incipiency. When he took her
into the broad parlor, and, standing
where the young couple had just stood,
announced his intention, there was al-
most a cheer from the assemblage ; for
the romance in his life was a town le-
gend. And under the smilax, in a si-
lence that was almost too solemn, Wil-
liam Marsdal's dream came true.

Little more remains to be told. So-
ciety was shaken to its foundation, of
course ; and then it smiled over the
affair, which it called thoroughly Mars-
dalesque ; for who else could have looked
death in the face at nine A. M., and a bride
at nine P. M., and in the meantime have
secured twelve hours of sleep ?

Caesar came out on the sidewalk next
morning to sweep the carriage-step, and
found a good - looking mulatto woman
similarly engaged across the street.

" Tell de little gyurl Marse William
done ketch er hummin'-bird hisse'f up

538

The Romance of a Famous Library.

on de same po'ch," he said. " Ketched
her once befo' an' turn' her loose. Bet
he don't turn her loose no more ! "

" Caesar ! " called an imperative voice
from the porch.

" Yes, sah ! "

" Carry these roses down to your Miss
Helen with my compliments, and say
that I will call for her with the carriage
at ten o'clock ! "

Harry Stillwell Edwards.

THE ROMANCE OF A FAMOUS LIBRARY.

THE dispersion of a great collection
of books has necessarily its aspect of
melancholy. The chagrin is less keen,
however, when the greatness of the col-
lection has consisted rather in the rich-
ness of the individual items than in their
aggregate importance as representative
of any one subject. Of such a charac-
ter was that portion of the Ashburnham
library recently auctioned off in London.
Exceeding as was the interest of the
items individually, they had no special
significance in juxtaposition. Their dis-
persion, therefore, but carries forward
another stage the wanderings to which
books of their class are subject, and
which make their career one of incessant
adventure.

But the sale which brings to an end
this famous library naturally recalls its
origins, and these in turn an episode
perhaps the most extraordinary, involv-
ing circumstances among the most pic-
turesque, in hibliothecal history. This
episode has in it so much that is sugges-
tive of the vicissitudes which the literary
treasures of Europe have undergone that,
even apart from its special relation to

1 For simplicity in narrative the statement
•which follows assumes as proved certain alle-
gations which may yet be subject of contro-
versy. The career of Count Libri is even now,
however, not fully explicit. As to his motives,
as to his methods, and as to the extent of his
depredations, there is still room for disagree-
ment. Sympathetic agreement can hardly be
expected between those who were the victims
of his frauds and those who benefited by them.
The evidence for the former is detailed in a re-

the Ashburnham collection, it seems now
to deserve recital in full.1

About the year 1830 there came to
Paris from Florence one William Brutus
Timoleon Libri-Carrucci. He professed
the title of count, and explained himself
as a refugee from political persecution.
As Florence was at this time the scene
of various political disorders, he was very
likely a fugitive from prosecution, if not
from persecution. He was only twenty-
seven years old, but his talents soon
commended him to Arago, who made
him a protege*. He became a naturalized
French citizen in 1833, and very shortly,
in succession, a member of the Institute,
a member of the Faculty of Sciences of
Paris, a contributor to the Journal des
Savants, and, in 1843, professor in the
College of France. His early interest
was mathematics, but soon he turned to
the history of science, and then to biblio-
graphy and palaeography. His aptitude
for these latter studies appears to have
been remarkable. His taste for old
books and old manuscripts, rendered de-
finite and substantial as it was by erudi-
tion, soon became a passion. He formed

port submitted in 1883 by M. Delisle, director
of the BibliothSque Nationale, to the minister
of public instruction. It is this report which
in the main is followed in the subjoined narra-
tive. The evidence which it sets forth has not
been answered, I believe, by authorities from
the British side. It covers, however, but a por-
tion of the material to which the allegations of
fraud refer. That there was a fraud, ingenious,
daring, and of sufficient proportions, seems to
be'clearly established.

The Romance of a Famous Library.

539

a design for amassing a great collection
of his own, but before he had gone far
with this he seems to have been touched
with cupidities purely mercantile, and
thereafter he gave up almost his entire
time to the purchase and sale of rare
books, manuscripts, and autographs. In
1837 he had been considered for a posi-
tion in the National Library ; two years
later he was an applicant for one, but
his application did not succeed. The
minister of public instruction sent him
a polite note of regret, which, however,
threw him into a rage of mortified van-
ity. At the time this took the form
merely of a sarcastic letter to the minis-
ter, but seems to have found other satis-
faction later in such injury as he could
contrive against the library itself and
French Jibraries in general. In 1841,
under a different minister, a project was
formed for a general catalogue of the
manuscripts in the public (communal) li-
braries of France, and Libri was named
the secretary of a commission charged
with the preliminaries of this undertak-
ing. In the course of the following
year, fortified with letters of introduc-
tion from the minister, he made a tour
of the most important of these libra-
ries. Now, it is in these institutions
that are preserved many of the most
precious of the literary legacies of the
Dark Ages and of the Middle Ages.
This is true of Dijon, Lyons, Grenoble,
Carpentras, Montpellier, and Poitiers,
but especially of Tours and of Orleans.
The town library of Tours, for instance,
contains the spoils of the old abbey of
Marmoutier, of the famous community
of St. Martin of Tours, of the cathedral
chapter, and of many minor convents and
churches. It boasts an evangeliary of
the eighth century ; a charter given by
Henry II. of England to the Carthusians
whom he established in England as part

1 When he took a breviary of Alaric, No. 204,
he put in its place a copy of the Institutes of
Justinian. " He knew," says the chronicler,
" that the custodian was not in a case to dis-

of the expiatory offering for the murder
of Thomas a Becket; several manu-
scripts of Boethius of the ninth and tenth
centuries ; material rich in contribution
to local archive, to religious history, of
course, but the classics also : Plato, Aris-
totle, Cicero, Seneca, Horaces of the
ninth and tenth centuries, Lucans and
Virgils of the tenth and eleventh. These
libraries, representing in large part spoils
from religious institutions, had undergone
strange vicissitudes: that of Tours had
undergone the sack of Tours by the Nor-
mans in the ninth century, the pillage by
the Protestants in 1652, and the vandal-
ism of the revolutionary epoch ; and with
all the rest it had suffered a continual
petty pillage by amateurs in the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries. The
year 1842 found most of these collections
in sad disorder, ill housed, ill catalogued,
and without proper custodians.

Count Libri, however, brought to his
examination of them a knowledge of
their value, and in the ignorance and
negligence of their custodians he found
his opportunity. Proceeding systemat-
ically and at his leisure, he culled out
and carried off with him some of the
best of the manuscripts ; here taking the
full volume, sometimes substituting for
it one of less value, sometimes taking
only sections of a volume ; varying his
practice, apparently, as he found the
material in more or less disorder, and
the attendants more or less intelligent or
careful.1 In this way he seems to have
garnered several hundreds of manu-
scripts, among them some of the most
precious of the literary heirlooms of
France.

On returning to Paris, .he set about
disfiguring the manuscripts. One pur-
pose of this was, of course, to insure
against detection, — against their iden-
tification as having come from these par-

tinguish the Institutes of Justinian from the
breviary of Alaric." So in another place he
substituted an Hippocrates for an ancient man-
uscript of Oribase.

540

The Romance of a Famous Library.

ticular libraries ; but his design seems to
have gone beyond this. Perhaps it was
malice for the old affront that he had
received from France ; perhaps it was
merely the proper patriotism of a native
of Italy; at all events, he put much
ingenuity into alterations which should
indicate an Italian in place of a French
origin. He erased such notes as ex-
isted indicating the latter, and inserted
notes indicating Italian origin. Some
very slight changes sufficed, — the era-
sure of one earmark, and the substitu-
tion of another. Of the phrases sub-
stituted, " Est sancti Petri de Perusio "
was one ; " Liber Abbatise Sancti Maria
de Florentia," another; " Sancte Jus-
tin a de Padua," another. The Latin
names for Fleury and for Florence (the
one Floriacum, the other Florentia) were
so nearly alike that by changing the last
three syllables in the adjectival form of
the first he was able to attribute to a
Florentine church one of the incompara-
ble manuscripts of the abbey of Fleury.
In this way, the credit of beautiful
manuscripts which gave eloquent testi-
mony to the literary activities of the an-
cient schools of St. Denis, of Lyons, of
Tours, of Orleans, was transferred to
the religious houses of Grotta Ferrata,
Padua, Pistoia, Perugia, Mantua, Ve-
rona, and Florence. As an additional
safeguard, Libri had many of the old
French bindings taken off, and Italian
bindings substituted.

All these erasures, insertions, and for-
geries were done with exquisite skill and
learning, reproducing the characters ap-
propriate to the period with which the
main body of the manuscript in each
case corresponded. Finally, Libri hoped
to cloak the stolen manuscripts under a
collection bought by him from an Ital-
ian, Francesco Redi, and to this end he
forged upon some of them the name of
Francesco Redi.

Now, to these various manuscripts, so
disguised, — rendered in many cases un-
recognizable by inversion of sections or

of leaves, or by being dissected and hav-
ing their fragments scattered through
various volumes, — Libri added material
stolen from the National Library and
other Paris libraries, and some mate-
rial no doubt legitimately acquired. In
1845 he issued a catalogue of this collec-
tion, comprising about 2000 items ; but
he seems not to have pressed the sale in
France. He corresponded with Pauizzi
of the British Museum, and Panizzi
undertook to negotiate a sale to the
Museum, without, however, mentioning
Libri's name. These endeavors coming
to nothing, Libri tried to treat with the
University of Turin ; this also failed.
There then ensued a negotiation with
the Earl of Ashburnham.

The Earl of Ashburnham was one of
those wealthy British noblemen with the
fancies of a collector, with a country-
seat and with ample funds. Libri's col-
lection was brought to his attention first
through the medium of an official of the
Museum, John Holmes ; but the utmost
secrecy was urged and insisted upon, on
both sides. If Libri's insistence upon
secrecy mystified Lord Ashburnham, it
did not, apparently, lead him to inquiry.
He engaged a bookseller, named Rodd,
to act for him. Rodd was to go to Paris,
and to bring back with him a couple of
items as samples of the collection. He
went and examined the manuscripts,, and
selected two volumes. One of these ap-
pears to have been a Pentateuch stolen
by Libri from the library of Tours. On
the strength of this exhibit, and assum-
ing the rest of the collection to be as
indicated in the catalogue, Lord Ash-
burnham bought it entire for the sum of
£8000. In April, 1847, it was shipped,
and duly arrived at Ashburnham Place.

At about the same time with this sale
of his manuscripts, Libri announced a
sale of his printed books. But incon-
venient rumors had begun to circulate
as to the origins of his collection. He
received intimation of a criminal pro-
secution, and fled to England, trailing

The Romance of a Famous Library.

541

after him eighteen boxes of books. In
1850 a regular indictment was issued
against him, and he was condemned, on
non-appearance, to ten years' imprison-
ment.

In spite of his flight he continued to
assert his innocence, and his friends,
of whom he numbered many among the
savants, contended hotly for it. Paul
Lacroix was persistent on his behalf, and
Prosper Me'rime'e was so fiery in de-
fending him as to subject himself to a
fortnight's imprisonment. The battle
waged back and forth for years. In
time Libri left England and withdrew
to Fiesole, where he died on the 28th of
September, 1869.

In the meantime Ashburnham Place
gained distinction throughout Europe by
the presence there of a collection of such
extraordinary richness. Two years after
the purchase of the Libri material, Lord
Ashburnham bought a second collection,
— also in part culled from the libraries
of France. This collection, containing
some 700 numbers, he bought for £6000
from a Frenchman named Barrois. Bar-
rois appears to be entitled to rank, not
as a thief, but as a receiver of stolen
goods. He was accustomed to purchase
material purloined from the National
Library and other libraries of France,
and to disguise it in somewhat the same
manner as did Libri. It would natural-
ly be supposed that Lord Ashburnham
would have had his suspicions aroused
by the proceedings against Libri, and
would have looked with hesitation upon
material so nearly akin to that which
Libri was accused of having stolen ; but
if he had a suspicion, he did not permit
it to defeat his ambition of raising Ash-
burnham Place to renown as the seat of
a great collector.

In 1849 there came into the English
market a very famous English collec-
tion, known as the Stowe collection. It
grew out of the library of manuscripts
formed by the keeper of the records
in the Tower. It comprised 996 num-

bers, — Anglo-Saxon charters, wardrobe
books, state correspondence, early Eng-
lish homilies, registers, cartularies of
English monasteries, heraldic manu-
scripts, and the Irish collections of Dr.
O'Connor ; being mostly manuscripts of
the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries.
This collection, also, Lord Ashburnham
bought for a lump sum of £8000.

Finally, miscellaneous material, con-
sisting of about 250 manuscripts, pur-
chased from various sources at the cost
of about £8000, completed a collection
which has been one of the most famous
of modern times, — famous, not on ac-
count of its size (for the entire library
comprised less than 4000 items, of which
the Libri section made up 1923), but
from the extraordinary nature of the
material of which it was composed.
Nor was its reputation due to any ur-
gent publicity. On the contrary, in the
hands of the elder earl it seems to have
been kept unusually secluded even for
a private library. Indeed, there was
some complaint that it was unreason-
ably inaccessible to scholars. It would
be unfair to assert that such privacy
was due to a doubt on the part of the
owner as to the legitimacy of his title.
That he was not wholly oblivious, how-
ever, of an antecedent fraud — as re-
gards the Libri section — would appear
from a letter written by him to Delisle
in 1869, in which the following pas-
sage occurs : " I am naturally most in-
terested in your observations upon man-
uscripts in my possession. My books
are in the country, and therefore I will
not speak positively to the fact that the
Pentateuch, which, according to Signor
Libri, came from Grotta Ferrata, does
not contain any note to that effect, but
such is my impression. This, however,
is of little consequence, for Libri states
the fact in his catalogue, and other man-
uscripts from his collection contain what
I have long suspected and what you state
to be fraudulent attempts to conceal the
true ' Unde derivantur ' of property that

542

The Romance of a Famous Library.

has been lost or stolen. The numbers
1, 6, 14, in Libri's catalogue are all im-
portant manuscripts, and, if I mistake
not, are clearly traceable to churches and
monasteries at or in the neighborhood
of Tours."

In 1878 the elder Lord Ashburnham
died, and a couple of years later his son
announced that he was about to dispose
of the Ashburnham library by sale. He
offered it first to the British Museum,
and set the price at £160,000. (Its ac-
tual cost, thirty years before, had been
£32,000.) The Museum authorities, af-
ter a careful examination, were urgent
for purchase, and petitioned Parliament
for a special grant for the purpose ; and
to further the negotiation Lord Ash-
burnham intimated that he had received
proposals from an American for the en-
tire collection. In the meantime France
had awakened to a sense of its own in-
terest in the matter. Delisle had been
investigating : he now warned the trus-
tees of the British Museum that the
Libri and Barrois collections contained
many manuscripts stolen from French
libraries and falsified. He selected par-
ticular items, — fourteen of the most
ancient of the Libri manuscripts, — and
adduced evidence to show that in 1842
they had been in the libraries at Lyons,
Tours, Troyes, and Orleans. He secured
the appointment by the French govern-
ment of a commission to act for France,
and furnished this commission with a list
of 166 titles as to which he claimed his
evidence to be conclusive. This com-
mission arranged with the British Mu-
seum that in case the Museum should
purchase the entire Ashburnham libra-
ry these 166 manuscripts should be re-
turned to France, on the payment by
the latter of 600,000 francs, which was
deemed a fair proportion on the basis of
4,000,000 francs for the entire librasy.
Unfortunately, the British government
declined to consider the purchase of the
entire library for the Museum, assent-
ing finally to the purchase of the Stowe

collection alone, for the sum of £45,000
(for which the elder earl had paid £8000
thirty years before).

Meanwhile, Delisle had had corre-
spondence directly with Lord Ashburn-
ham ; he had been particularly positive
in his assertions as to " No. 7 " of the
Libri collection, claiming that it was
composed simply of sections torn by Li-
bri in 1842 from the Pentateuch " No.
329 " of Lyons. Lord Ashburnham de-
manded proof. Delisle replied with an
offer to submit his evidence to the libra-
rians of the British Museum, of the Bod-
leian, and of Cambridge. Lord Ashburn-
ham rejoined with an offer to consider
the evidence himself. The evidence
presented was a statement by a German,
Fleck, in a book of travels published at
Leipsic in 1835, describing the Penta-
teuch as examined by him at Lyons. On
this information Lord Ashburnham ad-
mitted the proof to be complete, and
placed in the hands of Leon Say, the
French ambassador at London, the frag-
ments of the precious Pentateuch, which,
he said, " the law of England would au-
thorize him to retain, but which he would
insist upon making a gift to France."

The grace of this episode was some-
what marred by an acrimonious corre-
spondence later, upon Delisle's assertion
that the above statement was an admis-
sion that all the Libri manuscripts had
been stolen from France.

The French government offered 700,-
000 francs for the Libri and Barrois
collections together, assuming that this
sum, representing twice the amount paid
by the elder earl, would be an adequate
price ; but Lord Ashburnham called their
attention to the fact that interest had
not been figured. In 1883, however, he
offered to sell the Libri, the Barrois,
and the Appendix together, which had
cost his father £22,000, for £140,000.

In both the Libri collection and the
Appendix were many manuscripts of in-
terest to Italy. At first Italy attempted
to pool with France : this failing, she ne-

The Romance of a Famous Library.

543

gotiated on her own account, but refused
to buy what was claimed by France.
In 1884 she bought the Libri collection
minus the 166 manuscripts claimed by
France and identified by Delisle ; and
in addition she bought forty-two Dante
manuscripts which formed part of the
Appendix collection.

Three years later, Lord Ashburnham
authorized Trubner, of Strasburg, to ef-
fect a sale of all that remained of the
original Ashburnham library ; the price
stated being £100,000 for the whole, or
£76,000 less the manuscripts claimed by
France.

Trubner's commercial cleverness de-
vised a plan bringing a fourth country
into the transaction. Germany also had
been mourning a loss ; but it was one
that antedated Count Libri's activities
by more than two hundred years. This
loss was that of the Manessische Lieder-
handschrif t, so called. In the early part
of the fourteenth century, Roger Ma-
nesse, a nobleman of Zurich, had brought
together a number of songs of love and
chivalry composed by nobles of Switzer-
land and Suabia. This collection sur-
vives in some 7000 strophes, interspersed
with miniatures. The text, as standing
for so large a body of the work of the
Minnesingers, is of value incalculable to
the literary history of Germany. In
1601 the manuscript was in the posses-
sion of a German noble in the Rhine
valley. Then it went to Zurich. In
1607 it went to Heidelberg, to the Kur-
fttrst Friedrich IV. In 1622 Tilly took
Heidelberg, and the Archduke Maximil-
ian sent its entire library to Pope Greg-
ory XV. in Rome. The next appear-
ance of the Manessische Liederhand-
schrift was in Paris in the latter half of
the seventeenth century, in a collection
belonging to the brothers Pierre and
Jacques du Puy. On the 4th of July,
1657, they gave it to the king of France,
who placed it in the Royal Library,
afterward the Bibliotheque Nationale ;
and there, although of interest predom-

inantly to Germany, it remained for
more than two hundred years.

So the year 1888, which found Eng-
land possessed of manuscripts passion-
ately coveted by France, found France
possessed of a manuscript ardently cov-
eted by Germany.

TrUbner, to whom these facts were
known, formed a project of triple ex-
change ; and on February 7, 1888, the
exchange was effected, Trttbner ceding
to the Bibliotheque Nationale the 166
manuscripts from the Ashburnham libra-
ry claimed by France, and the Biblio-
theque Nationale ceding to Trubner for
Germany the Manesse collection, with a
bonus of 150,000 francs. To complete
the transaction, the German government
presumably transmitted to Lord Ash-
burnham, through Trubner, the remain-
ing 450,000 francs which would repre-
sent the price of the Manesse on the
basis of 600,000 francs formerly quoted
for the stolen manuscripts. On February
23, 1888, there was a formal surrender
of the 166 stolen manuscripts. It took
place at the London Trubner's, on Lud-
gate Hill. On the same day and at the
same hour the Manesse was surrendered
to the German ambassador at Paris,
and on April 10 was formally deposit-
ed at Heidelberg, accompanied with a
letter of congratulation from the Em-
peror Frederick to the Grand Duke of
Baden.

In their negotiations with the British
Museum and with Lord Ashburnham,
the French representatives took a lofty
moral ground with reference to the stolen
manuscripts. They pointed out that
every principle of the higher justice re-
quired that France should be permitted
to regain that of which she had been
unlawfully dispossessed. When, how-
ever, the manuscripts had been received
by the National Library, and the ques-
tion was of replacing them in the town
libraries from which they had been
stolen, the authorities of the National
Library said the case was very differ-

544

The Romance of a Famous Library.

ent : it was the negligence of the town
libraries that had given opportunity for
the theft ; it was not for those libraries
now to profit by the diligent effort of
the national officials and of the admin-
istration of the National Library which
had recovered them at the expense of the
state. Accordingly, at the last account,
the manuscripts were still at Paris.

The sales which took place in London
in July and November last were sales of
the remnants of the Ashburnham collec-
tion still in the hands of the younger
earl. The books brought extraordinary
prices, — the aggregate sum realized be-
ing nearly $250,000. A copy of the
first printed edition of the Bible, with
miniatures and illuminations, was sold
for $20,000 ; a Caxton's Jason (which
had been sold twice before for $500)
brought $10,000. Assuming the entire
collection to have realized the £160,000
originally demanded, the $160,000 paid
for it thirty years before may be reck-
oned to have yielded interest at the rate
of sixteen per cent per annum, — an in-
dication that rare manuscripts offer a
profitable field for investment. •

The annals of great libraries bear in-
stances in plenty of thefts, and thefts
on a large scale and of important ma-
terial. Our own national library has
only within the past few weeks recov-
ered a portion of the five hundred au-
tograph manuscripts said to have been
stolen from it by an employee, and resold,
through dealers, to the Lenox and other
purchasers. In 1885 the library at
Parma reported five thousand volumes
stolen, and the secretary of the library
was arrested. At St. Petersburg, up-
ward of a thousand volumes and a
thousand pounds' worth of manuscripts,
which had been missing from the Impe-
rial Library, were found at the house
of Dr. Aloys Pichler. Dr. Pichler was
the director of the library : he had shown
great concern at the losses, and had insti-
tuted a process of rigid search of all per-

sons leaving the building. The zeal of
the doorkeeper finally extended to the
search of Dr. Pichler's own greatcoat,
on a day when the doctor's presence
seemed unusually imposing ; and there
were disclosed certain rare folios which
he was carrying off to add to his private
collection. Not long ago the Casana-
tensian Library at Rome reported stolen
the Mundus Novus, — four precious
parchment leaves written by Amerigo
Vespucci ; and a little later the Italian
government offered a reward of ten
thousand lire for information of the
whereabouts of a codex of Cicero, De
Officiis, stolen from the municipal li-
brary of Perugia. In 1882 a fine man-
uscript of the De Consolatione of Boe-
thius was stolen from the Vatican Libra-
ry, and within a few hours was resold
to another Roman library. We have a
parallel to this in a theft from the Astor
Library, in 1893, of an Ovid and a Za-
rate which were resold to the Columbia
College Library for eighty dollars. The
thief was a Greek named Douglas. He
had spent three years in Yale ; but in
his case a college career did not over-
come a disposition doubtless congenital.

In 1886 there were offered for sale in
Paris various rare books and fifteenth-
century manuscripts of wonderful beauty
which had come into the hands of a
bricabrac collector importing from Spain.
The consignment was tapestries ; and
the books and manuscripts had been
used merely as " packing." They bore
marks of mutilation ; and what had been
cut out was the signet of the Colum-
bine, bearing the inscription " Biblioteca
Columbiana," and certain notes at the
beginning and end of each book added
by Fernando Columbus, son of Chris-
topher Columbus ; for they had come
from the Columbian Library of Seville,
which had been turned over by Fernan-
do to the chapter of Seville Cathedral.

Nor have such depredations been con-
fined to libraries whose administration
is habitually slumbrous. In 1882 the

The Romance of a Famous Library.

545

Bibliotheque Nationals missed several
diplomas of Charles the Fat, Otho, and
the Emperor Louis ; charters of bishops
and lords of Lorraine, Burgundy, Cham-
pagne, and Languedoc, — in all sixty-six
parchments, valued at a million francs.
True, these all were found, on search of
the apartments of one Chevreux; but
the fact of the theft shows that the vi-
gilance of a well-conducted European
library does not suffice.

When to plunder by conquest is added
occasional theft on a large scale, and to
this, again, constant pillage by amateurs,1
it is not strange that many of the most
famous of existing manuscripts are scat-
tered in fragments throughout Europe ; 2
nor that few of them could present a
clear title in the present owners, — that
is, a title every link of which was lawful
in the conventional sense.

But with respect to books, habit, if
not convention, has tended to establish
a special code of ethics, distinct from
that applicable to ordinary properties.
It may well be that the property right in
a book is but a limited and provisional
right, — a right which continues in the
owner only until it appears that the vol-
ume will confer a greater benefit upon
some one else. This view, which may
justify — nay, which to a sensitive con-
science may sorrowfully compel — the
expropriation of a book, does not neces-
sarily extend to the expropriation of the
contents of a book : and we have it as a
singular contrast that many persons of
repute, who would hold it a theft to pla-

1 The French, according to Mr. Lang, have
a euphemistic term for this pillage by biblio-
philes, with great greed and little conscience :
they call it ind&icatesse !

2 M. Delisle instances : —

1. A Virgil in capital letters, of which part
is at the Vatican, part at Berlin (Royal Li-
brary).

2. Homilies of St. Augustin on papyrus and
parchment : part at the Bibliotheque Nationale,
part at the Library of Geneva.

3. Collection of barbaric laws : part at the

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 486. 35

giarize other men's ideas, hold it no
more than a plagiarism to purloin their
books. In using the term " theft " in
connection with books we should there-
fore explain that by theft we mean no
more than the dispossession of one hold-
er in favor of another ; and set apart
wholly the question of moral turpitude
in the transaction.

Of all the episodes in bibliothecal his-
tory involving the possible use of such
a term, that of Count Libri is entitled
to preeminence for many reasons : the
picturesque early career of the thief;
his ingenious learning ; the eminence of
his friendships ; his audacity in selecting
for theft material unique and of national
importance ; the skill with which he con-
trived to disguise its origin ; the senti-
ment which shaped this disguise so as
to transfer to his native Italy literary
credits which belonged to France ; the
credulity of the elder Earl of Ashburn-
ham in accepting the stolen material
without adequate inquiry ; the fame of
the collection in his possession ; his per-
sistent refusal to recognize any title in
the dispossessed libraries against his own
equities as a bona fide purchaser with-
out notice ; the canniness of the younger
earl in negotiating a sale ; the interest
which the sale aroused, bringing in as it
did four great governments of Europe,
which made the matter one of inter-
national concern ; the magnitude of the
price paid ; and the dramatic disposition
of the stolen material upon the final ad-
justment.

Herbert Putnam.

BibliothSque Nationale, part at Ashbnrnham
Place, part at the British Museum.

4. Horace of the tenth century : part at the
Bibliothgque Nationale, part at the Hamburg
Library.

5. Allegorical Bible of the thirteenth cen-
tury : part at the Bibliothgque Nationale, part
at the Bodleian, part at the British Museum.

6. A Mirror of History which belonged to
Pregent de Contivy : vol. i. at the Vatican,
vol. ii. at the British Museum, vol. iv. at the
Bibliotheque Nationale.

546

The Battle of the Strong.

THE BATTLE OF THE STRONG.

XII.

PHILIP D'AVBANCHE sauntered slowly
through the Vier Marchi, nodding right
and left to people who greeted him. It
was Saturday, and market-day. The
square was fast becoming crowded. All
was a cheerful babel ; there was move-
ment, color, everywhere. Here were the
high and the humble, the ugly and the
beautiful, — hardi vlon and hardi biaou ;
the dwarfed and the tall, the dandy and
the dowdy, the miser and the spend-
thrift ; young ladies gay in silks, laces,
and scarves from Spain, and gentlemen
with powdered wigs from Paris ; sailors
with red tunics from the Mediterranean,
and fishermen with blue and purple
blouses from Brazil ; man-o '-war's men
with Greek petticoats, Turkish fezes,
and Portuguese espadras. Jersey house-
wives, in bedgones and white caps, with
molleton dresses rolled up to the knees,
pushed their way through the crowd,
with baskets of eggs, or black butter, or
jugs of cinnamon brandy on their heads.
From La Pyramide — the hospitable
base of the statue of King George II.
— fishwives called the merits of their
conger-eels, lobsters, crack-fish, and or-
mers ; and the clatter of a thousand sa-
bots made the Vier Marchi to sound like
a ship-builder's yard.

In this square Philip had loitered and
played as a child. Down there, lean-
ing against a pillar of the Corn Market
piazza, was the grizzly-haired seller of
foreign cloths and silks and droll odds
and ends, who had given him a silver
flageolet when he was a little lad. There
were the same swaggering manners, the
big gold rings in his ears, the brown stock-
ings ; there was the same red sash about
the waist, the loose unbuttoned shirt, the
truculent knife-belt ; there were the same
keen brown eyes that looked you through

and through, and the mouth with a mid-
dle tooth in both jaws gone. He was
stooping over the beautiful brass-nailed
bahue, lifting out gay cloths, laces, neck-
lets, slippers, oddments and curios, just
as he had done twenty years before.

At least fifteen years had gone since
Philip had talked with this picturesque
merchant of the pavement, who opened
his chest where he pleased, and bought
and sold where no one else dared buy or
sell ; for most folk in Jersey shrank from
interfering with Elie Mattingley, pirate,
smuggler, and sometime master of a pri-
vateer. He had had dealings with peo-
ple high and low in the island, and they
had not always, nor often, been conduct-
ed in the open Vier Marchi.

Fifteen years ago he used to have his
little daughter Carterette always beside
him when he displayed and sold his
wares. Philip wondered what had be-
come of her. He glanced round. . . .
Ah ! there she was, not far from her fa-
ther, over in front of the guard-house, be-
tween the Rue des Vignes and the Coin
es Anes, selling, at a little counter with
a canopy of yellow silk (brought by her
father from that distant land called Pi-
racy), a famous stew made of milk, ba-
con, colewort, mackerel, and gooseber-
ries ; mogues of hot soupe a la graisse,
simnels, curds, coffee, and Jersey won-
ders, which last she made on the spot by
dipping little rings of dough in a bashin
of lard on a charcoal fire at her side.

Carterette was short and spare, with
soft yet snapping eyes as black as night
— or her hair ; with a warm, dusky skin ;
a tongue which clattered pleasantly, and
very often wisely ; a hand as small and
plump as a baby's ; a pretty foot, which,
to the disgust of some mothers and maid-
ens of greater degree, was encased in a
red French slipper instead of a wooden
sabot stuffed with straw, her ankles nicely

The Battle of the Strong.

547

dressed in soft black stockings in place
of the woolen native hose which became
her station. Once, the Lady of St. Mi-
chael's, passing through the square, and
seeing the gay broidered and laced cap
which Carterette wore, had snatched it
from her head, thrown it on the ground,
and bade her dress as became her place.
But the Lady of St. Michael's repented
her of that, because her lord saw fit, for
certain private reasons persistently urged
by Elie Mattingley, to apologize in writ-
ing for this high-handed exercise of his
wife's social governance. So Carterette
wore her red slippers and her cap when-
ever she came to the Vier Marchi, and
she continued to wear them on Sunday.
At all other times she wore the pink bed-
g6ne, the molleton dress, the blue stock-
ings, and the plain white cap and apron
tied with blue rib'bon, like other girls of
her class, though indeed she was unique
among them by reason of her father's
mysterious life and occupation.

Philip watched Carterette now for a
moment, a dozen laughing memories com-
ing back to him ; for he had teased her
and played with her when she was a child,
had even called her his little sweetheart.
But then he had always been doing that
sort of thing, even as a lad. Carterette
had a sunny, almost languorous temper,
and she was not easy to rouse, but when
roused she was as uncontrollable as an.
animal in its rage. Looking at her now,
he wondered what her fate would be. To
marry one of these fishermen or carters ?
No, she would look beyond that. Per-
haps it would be one of those adventur-
ers wearing bearskin caps and buckskin
vests, with strings of ivory ornaments
round their necks, home from Gaspe",
where they had toiled in the great fish-
eries, some as common fishermen, some
as mates, and maybe one or two as mas-
ters. No, she would look beyond that.
Perhaps a red coat and pipe-clay would
catch her eye : she would drift away to
camp or barracks, and become a dreary
slattern, -with every cheerful prospect

dead. No, her own shrewdness would
be her safety. Perhaps she would be
carried off by some well-to-do, black-
bearded young farmer, with red knitted
queminzolle, blue breeches, and black
cocked hat, with his great pile of Chau-
montel pears, kegs of cider, baskets of
gooseberries, and bunches of parsley.

Yes, that would be her fate, no doubt,
for there was every prejudice in her fa-
vor among the people of the island. She
was Jersey-born ; her father was reputed
to have laid by a goodly sum of money, —
not all got in this Vier Marchi ; and that
he was a smuggler, and had been a pi-
rate, roused a sentiment in their bosoms
nearer to envy than anything else. He
who went beyond this isle adventuring,
and brought back golden proofs that a
Jerseyman had gathered profit out of
other countries and with a minimum of
labor, was to be cherished. Go away
naked and come back clothed, empty
and come back filled, simple and come
back with a wink of knowledge, penni-
less and come back with the price of
numerous verge'es of land, and you shall
answer the catechism of the Vier Mar-
chi without apprehension. Be lambs in
Jersey, but harry the rest of the world
with a lion's tooth, was the eleventh com-
mandment in the Vier Marchi : hence
Mattingley's secure and enviable place
therein. Some there were who hated
the smuggler, but their time was not yet
come.

Yes, thought Philip idly now, as he
left the square, the girl would probably
marry a farmer, and when he came again
he should find her stout of body, and
maybe shrewish of face, crying up the
virtues of her butter and her knitted
stockings ; having made the yellow silk
canopy above her there into a gorgeous
quilt for the nuptial bed.

Yet the young farmers who hovered
near her, buying a glass of cider or a
mogue of soup, received but scant atten-
tion from the girl. She laughed with
them, treated them lightly, and went

548

The Battle of the Strong.

about her business again with a toss of
the head. Not once did she show a mo-
ment's real interest, not until a fine up-
standing fellow came round the corner
from the Rue des Vignes and passed her
booth.

She was dipping a doughnut into the
boiling lard, but she paused with it sus-
pended. The little dark face took on a
warm glow, the eyes glistened. She paid
no attention to the lieutenant-bailly, with
whom she was a favorite, and who half
paused with a "Lord love you, little
brown angel ! " as he was passing into
the Coin es Anes.

" Maitre Ranulph ! " called the girl
softly. Then, as the tall fellow turned
to her and lifted his cap, she said brisk-
ly, " Where away so fast, with face hard
as a hatchet ? "

" Gargon Cart'rette ! " he said ab-
stractedly, — he had always called her
that.

He was about to move on. She.
frowned in vexation, yet she saw that he
was pale and heavy-eyed, and she beck-
oned him to come to her.

" What 's gone wrong, my big wood-
worm ? " she asked, eying him closely,
striving anxiously to read his face.

He looked at her sharply, but the soft-
ness in her black eyes somehow reassured
him, and he said quite kindly, " Nannin,
'tite garcon, nothing 's the matter."

" I thought you 'd be blithe as a spar-
row, with your father back from the
grave ! " Ranulph's face seemed to
darken, and she added, " He 's not
worse, he 's not worse ? "

" No, no, he 's well enough now," he
replied, forcing a smile.

She was not satisfied, but she went on
talking, intent to find the cause of his
abstraction. " Only to think," she said,
" only to think that he was n't killed at
all at the battle of Jersey, and was a
prisoner in France, and comes back here
to you, — and we all thought him dead,
did n't we ? "

" I left him for dead, that morning, on

the Grouville road," he answered. Then,
as if with a great effort, and after the
manner of one who has learned a part,
he said, " As the French ran away mad,
the paw of one on the tail of the other,
they found him trying to drag himself
along the road. They nabbed him, and
made him go aboard one of their boats
and pilot them out from La Roque Platte
and over to France. Then, because they
had n't gobbled us up here, what did the
French gover'ment do ? They clapped
a lot of 'em in irons and sent 'em away
to South America, and my father with
'em. That 's why we heard neither click
nor clack of him. He escaped a year
ago. Afterward he fell sick. When he
got well he set sail for Jersey, was
wrecked off the Ecre'hos, and everybody
knows the rest. Diantre ! he had a
hard time, my father."'

The girl had listened intently. She
had heard all these things in flying ru-
mors, and she had believed the rumors ;
but now that Maitre Ranulph told her

— Ranulph, whose word she would have
taken quicker than the oath of a jurat

— she doubted ; and with that doubt her
face flushed, as though she herself had
been caught in a lie, had done a mean
thing. Somehow her heart was aching
for him, and yet why it was so she could
not have said. All this time she had
held the doughnut poised ; she seemed to
have forgotten her work. Suddenly the
wooden fork which held the cake was
taken deftly from her fingers by the daft
Dormy Jamais, who had crept near.

" Des monz a fous," he cried, " to spoil
good eating so ! What 's the old Jersey
saying ? — When sails flap, owner may
whistle for cargo. Tut, tut, goose Car-
t'rette ! "

Carterette took no note, but said to
Ranulph, " Of course he had to pilot the
Frenchmen back, or they 'd have killed
him, and it 'd done no good to refuse.
He was the first man that fought the
French on the day of the battle, was n't
he ? I 've always heard that."

The Battle of the Strong.

649

Unconsciously she was building up a
defense for Olivier Delagarde. She was,
as it were, anticipating insinuation from
other quarters. She was playing Ra-
nulph's game, because she instinctively
felt that behind this story there was gloom
in Maitre Ranulph's mind and mystery
in the tale itself. She noticed, too, that
Ranulph shrank from her words. She
was not very quick of intellect, so she had
to feel her way fumblingly. She must
have time to think, but she asked tenta-
tively, " I suppose it 's no secret ? I can
tell any one at all what happened to your
father ? "

" Oh yes, of course ! " he said rather
eagerly. " Tell every one about it. He
does n't mind."

Maitre Ranulph deceived but badly.
Bold and convincing in all honest things,
he was as yet unconvincing in this grave
deception. He had kept silence all these
years, enduring what he thought a buried
shame; but now how different it was,
and how terrible ! His father had con-
spired with the French, had sought to
betray the island into their hands : if the
truth were known to - day, he would be
hanged for a traitor on the Mont es Pen-
dus ; no mercy would be shown him.

Whatever came, Ranulph must drink
this bitter cup to the dregs. He could
never betray his own father. He must
consume with inward disgust while Oli-
vier Delagarde shamelessly babbled bis
monstrous lies to all who would listen.
And he must tell these lies, too, conceal,
deceive, and live in daily fear of discov-
ery. He must sit opposite his father
day by day at table, talk with him, care
for him, and shrink inwardly at every
knock at the door, lest it should be an
officer come to carry the pitiful traitor
off to prison. While this criminal lived,
his nights must be sleepless, his days
heavy and feverish, his thoughts clouded,
his work cheerless.

More than all a thousand times, he must
give up forever the thought of Guida.
Here was the acid that ate home, here

the torture, the black hopelessness, the
cloud upon his brain, the machine of fate
that clamped his heart. Never again
could he rise in the morning with a song
on his lips ; never again could his happy
meditations go lilting with the clanging
blows of the adze and the singing of the
saws ; never again could he lie at night
in his tent upon the shore thinking of
Guida in hope, and watching the stars
wheel past.

All these things had vanished when
he looked into the hut door on the Ecr£-
hos, and heard a querulous voice call his
name. Now, in spite of himself, when-
ever he thought upon Guida's face, this
other fateful figure, this Medusan head
of a traitor, shot in between.

His father had not been strong enough
to go abroad since his return, but to-day
he had determined to walk to the Vier
Marchi. At first Ranulph had decided
to go to his shipyard at St. Aubin's ; but
something held him in St. Helier's, and
at last, in fear and anxiety, he had come
to the Vier Marchi. There was a horri-
ble fascination in being where his father
was, in listening to his falsehoods, in
watching the turns and twists of his gross
hypocrisies.

But sometimes he was moved by a
strange pity, for Olivier Delagarde was,
in truth, far older than his years : a thin,
shuffling, pallid invalid, with a face of
mingled saintliness and viciousness. If
the old man lied, and had not been in
prison all these years, he must have had
misery far worse, for neither vice nor
poverty alone could so shatter a human
being. The son's pity seemed to look
down from a great height upon the con-
temptible figure with the soft, beautiful
hair, the fine forehead, the unstable eye,
and the abominable mouth. This com-
passion kept him from becoming hard,
but it would also preserve him to hour-
ly sacrifice and agony, — Prometheus
chained to his rock. In the short fort-
night that had gone since the day upon
the EcreTios he had changed as much as

650

The Battle of the Strong.

do most people in ten years. Since then
he had not seen Philip or Guida.

To Carterette he appeared not the man
she had known. With her woman's in-
stinct she knew that he loved Guida, but
she also knew that nothing that might
have happened between them could have
brought this look into his face : it had
in it something shrinking and shamed.
As these thoughts flashed through her
mind her heart grew warmer. Suppose
Ranulph was in some trouble : well, now
might be her great chance. All that the
stubborn, faithful little heart in the little
body could do for him she would do.
She might show him that he could not
live without her friendship, and then,
perhaps, by and by, that he could not
live without her love.

Ranulph was about to move on. She
stopped him.

" When you need me, Maitre Ranulph,
you know where to find me," she said,
scarce above a whisper.

He looked at her sharply, almost fierce-
ly ; but again the tenderness of her eyes,
the directness of her look, convinced him.
She might be, as she was, a little uncer-
tain with other people ; with himself she
was invincibly straightforward.

" P'r'aps you don't trust me ? " she
added, for she read his changing expres-
sion.

" Oh, I 'd trust you quick enough ! "
he replied.

" Then do it now — you 're having
some bad trouble," she rejoined.

He leaned over her stall, and said to
her steadily and with a little moroseness,
" If I was in trouble, I 'd bear it by my-
self ; I 'd ask no one to help me. I 'm
a man, and I can stand alone. Don't
go telling folk that I look as if I were
in trouble. I 'm going to launch to-mor-
row the biggest ship that has ever gone
from a Jersey building-yard : that does
n't look like trouble, does it ? Turn about
is fair play, garcon Cart'rette : so when
you 're in trouble come to me. You 're
not a man, and it 's a man's place to help

a woman, — all the more when she 's a
fine and good little stand-by like you."

He forced a smile, turned upon his
heel, and threaded his way through the
square, — nodding to people, answering
them shortly, moving on, and keeping a
lookout for his father. This he could do
easily, for he was the tallest man in the
Vier Marchi by at least three inches.

Carterette, quite oblivious of all else,
stood looking after him. She was re-
called to herself by Dormy Jamais, who
was humming some patois verses which
had been handed down from generation
to generation, passed on from veille to
veille, to which, when the whim seized
him, he added poignant local allusions.
He was diligently cooking Carterette's
Jersey wonders, occasionally turning his
eyes up at her, — eyes which were like
spots of grayish, yellowish light in a face
of putty and flour ; without eyelashes,
without eyebrows, a little like a fish's,
something like a monkey's. They were
never still. They were set in the face,
as it were, like little round glowworms
in a mould of clay. They burned on,
night and day ; no man had ever seen
Dormy Jamais asleep.

Carterette did not resent his officious-
ness. He had a kind of kennel in her
father's loft, and he was devoted to her.
More than all else, Dormy Jamais was
clean. His clothes were mostly rags, but
they were comely, compact rags. When
he washed them no one seemed to know,
but no languid young gentleman who
lounged where the sun was warmest
against the houses in the Vier Marchi
was better laundered.

As Carterette turned round to him he
was twirling a cake on the wooden fork,
and singing, or rather trolling : —

" Caderoussel he has a coat,

All lined with paper brown ;

And only when it freezes hard
He wears it in the town.

What do you think of Caderonssel ?
Ah, then, but list to me :

Caderoussel is a bon e'fant " —

" Come, come, dirty - fingers ! " she

The Battle of the Strong.

551

cried. " Leave my work alone, and stop
your chatter."

The daft one held up his fingers, but
to do so had to thrust a cake into his
mouth.

" They 're as clean as a ha'pendy," he
protested. Then he took the cake out
of his mouth, and was about to place it
with the others.

" Black be'ganne," she cried, " how
dare you ! Via — into your pocket with
it!"

He did as he was bid, humming to
himself again : —

" M'sieu' de la Palisse is dead,

Dead of a maladie ;
Quart' of an hour before his death
He could breathe like you and me !
Ah bah, the poor M'sieu'
De la Palisse is dead ! "

" Shut up ! Mon cloux d'la vie, you
chatter like a monkey ! "

"The poor Maitre, the poor Maitre
Ranulph ! " said Dormy.

" What 's the matter with him ? " asked
Carterette, turning on him sharply.

" Once he was as lively as a basket of
mice, but now " —

" Well, now, achocre ! " she exclaimed
irritably, and stamping her foot.

" Now the cat 's out of the bag, and
the mice are gone — oui-gia ! "

She looked at him keenly. What did
this simpleton know, or did he know any-
thing?

" You Ve got things in your noddle ! "
she said, in angry impatience.

He nodded, grinning. " As thick as
haws, but I can't get at them for the
brambles."

" And they call you an idiot ! " she
cried, in furious despair. This fool was
eluding her. She gripped her big wooden
fork with energy. If it had been a
hoe-handle she would have struck him.
" You 're as deep as the sea ! "

He nodded again, and his eyes rolled
in his head like marbles as he kept them
on the wooden fork in her hand, to dodge
at the right moment.

" As cunning as a Norman, "-he mum-
bled.

She heard a laugh behind her, a laugh
of foolish good nature, which made her
angry, too, for it seemed to be making
fun of her. She wheeled to see M.
Savary dit De'tricand leaning with both
elbows on the little counter, his chin in
his hand, grinning provokingly.

" Oh, it 's.you ! " she said snappishly.
" I hope you 're pleased."

" Don't be cross," he returned, his
head moving about a little unsteadily.
" I was n't laughing at you, heaven-born
Jersienne ! I was n't, 'pon my honor !
I was laughing at a thing I saw five
minutes ago." He shook his head from
side to side in a gurgling enjoyment now.
" You must n't mind me, seraphine," he
added ; " I 'd a hot night, and I 'm warm
as a thrush now. But I saw a thing five
minutes ago ! " He rolled on the stall.
" Sh ! " he said in a loud mock whisper.
" Here he comes now. Milles diables !
but here 's a tongue for you, and here 's
a royal gentleman that speaks truth like
a traveling dentist ! "

Carterette followed his gesture, and
saw coming out of the Route es Couo-
chons, where the brave Pierson issued
to his death eleven years before, the fa-
ther of Maitre Ranulph, Olivier Dela-
garde.

He walked with the air of a man who
courted observation. He imagined him-
self a hero ; he had told his lie so many
times that now he almost believed it
himself. The long nose, the overhang-
ing brows, the pale face, the white hair,
the rheumatic walk, which still was un-
like the stolid stiffness of his laborious
fellow countrymen, the unchanging smile,
almost a leer, made him an inescapable
figure.

He was soon surrounded. Never a
favorite when he lived in Jersey before
the invasion years ago, all that seemed
forgotten now ; for the word had gone
abroad that he was a patriot raised from
the dead, — an honor to his country.

552

The Battle of the Strong.

Many pressed forward to shake hands
with him.

" Help of heaven, is that you,
m'sieu' ! " said one.

" Misery me ! you owed me five che-
lins, but I wiped it out — oh my good ! "
cried another.

" Es-tu gentiment, Delagarde ? " asked
a third.

" Ah, man pethe be'nin, this man ! "
exclaimed a fourth.

" Shakez ! " said a tall carter, holding
out his hand. He had lived in England,
and now made English verbs into French
by adding a syllable.

" Holy morning — me too ! And
have a cup of cider ! " called another,
until it would seem as though the whole
Marchi were descending upon the hero
of the hour.

One after another called on him to
tell his story ; some tried to hurry him
to La Pyramide, but others placed a
cider-keg for him where he stood, almost
lifting him upon it.

" Go on, go on ! tell us the story ! " they
cried. " To the devil with the French-
ies ! "

" Here, — here 's a dish of Adam's
ale ! " said an old woman, handing him
a bowl of water.

They cheered him lustily. The pallor
of his face changed to a warmth. The
exaltation of his successful deceit was on
him. He had the fatuousness of those
who have deceived with impunity ; with
confidence he unreeled the dark line out
to the end. Still hungry for applause,
he repeated the account of how the som-
bre tatterdemalion brigade of French-
men came down upon him out of the
night, and how he should have killed
Rullecour himself had it not been for a
French officer who at the critical mo-
ment struck him down from behind.

During this recital both Ranulph and
De'tricand had drawn near. As it pro-
gressed Ranulph's face became gloomier
and gloomier. Of course this lie was
necessary from his father's standpoint,

but it was horrible. He watched the en-
thusiasm with which the crowd received
every little detail of the egregious his-
tory. Everybody believed the old man :
he was safe, no matter what happened to
himself, Ranulph Delagarde, ex-artillery-
man, ship-builder — and son of a crimi-
nal. At any rate, the worst was over
now, the first public statement of the life-
long lie. He drew a sigh of mingled re-
lief and misery.

At that instant he caught sight of a
flushed face, which broke into a laugh of
tipsy mirth when Olivier Delagarde told
how the French officer had stricken him
down just as he was about to finish off
Rullecour. It was De'tricand. All at
once the whole thing rushed upon Ra-
nulph.

What a fool he had been ! He had
met this officer of Rullecour's these ten
years past, and never once had the
Frenchman, by so much as a hint, sug-
gested that he knew the truth about his
father. Here and now the contemptu-
ous mirth upon the Frenchman's face
told the whole story. The danger and
horror of the situation descended on him.
He made up his mind immediately what
to do, and started toward De'tricand.

At that moment his father caught
sight of De'tricand, also, saw the laugh,
the sneer on his face, recognized him,
and, halting suddenly in his speech,
turned pale and trembled, staring as at
a ghost. He had not counted on this.
His breath almost stopped as he saw
Ranulph approach De'tricand.

Now the end was come. His fabric
of lies would be torn down ; he would
be tried and hanged on the Mont es
Pendus, or perhaps be torn to pieces by
this crowd. He could not have moved
a foot from where he was if he had been
given a million pounds.

The sight of Ranulph's face revealed
to De'tricand the true meaning of this
farce, and how easily it might become
tragedy. He read the story of Ranulph's
torture, of his sacrifice, and his decision

The Battle of the Strong.

553

was instantly made : he would befriend
the son. He looked straight into Ra-
nulph's eyes, and his own eyes said he
had resolved to know nothing whatever
about this criminal on the cider-cask. The
two men telegraphed to each other a
glance of perfect understanding, and then
De'tricand turned on his heel and walked
away into the crowd.

The sudden change in the old man's
appearance had not been lost on the
spectators, but they attributed it to weak-
ness or a sudden sickness. One ran
for a glass of brandy, another for cider,
and an old woman handed up to him a
hanap of cinnamon drops, saying, " Ah
bidemme, the poor old e'fant ! "

The old man lifted the brandy with a
trembling hand and drank it. When he
looked again De'tricand had disappeared.
A dark, sinister expression crossed his
face, and an evil thought pulled down
the corners of his mouth. He stepped
from the cask. His son went to him,
and, taking his arm, said, " Come, you
have done enough for to-day."

Delagarde made no reply, but sub-
missively walked away into the Coin es
Anes. Once, however, he turned and
looked the way De'tricand had gone, mut-
tering. Some of the peasants cheered
him as he passed. When they were
free of the crowd and entering the Rue
d'Egypte, he said, " I 'm going alone ;
I don't need you."

" Where are you going ? " asked Ra-
nulph.

" Home," answered the old man
gloomily.

" All right ; better not come out again
to-day."

" You 're not going to let the French-
man hurt me ? " asked Delagarde, with
a morose, querulous anxiety. " You 're
going to stop that ? They 'd put me in
prison."

Ranulph stooped over his father, his
eyes alive with anger, his face blurred
with disgust.

" Go home," said he, " and never

again while you live mention this, or I '11
take you to prison myself."

Ranulph watched his father disap-
pear down the Rue d'Egypte, and then
he retraced his steps to the Vier Marchi.
With a new -formed determination he
quickened his walk, and ruled his face
to a sort of forced gayety, lest any one
should think his moodiness strange. One
person after another accosted him. He
listened eagerly to hear if anything were
said which might show suspicion of his
father. The gossip, however, was all in
M. Delagarde's favor. From group to
group he went, answering greetings play-
fully, and steeling himself to the whole
disgusting business.

Presently he saw entering the square
from the Rue des Tres Pigeons the Che-
valier du Champsavoys and the Sieur de
Mauprat. This was the first public ap-
pearance of the chevalier since the lam-
entable business at the Vier Prison, a
fortnight before. The simple folk had
forgotten their insane treatment of him
then, and they saluted him now with a
chirping " Es-tu biaou, chevalier ? " and
" Es-tu gentiment, m'sieu' ? " to which he
responded with an amicable forgiveness.
To his idea they were only naughty chil-
dren, their minds reasoning no more
clearly than they saw the streets before
their homes through the tiny squares of
bottle-glass in the windows.

The two old gentlemen were offered
odd little drinks in odd little wooden cups,
as they threaded their way among the
clattering hucksters ; and once or twice,
with as odd little courtesies, they drank.
They even accepted bunches of leaves
from Manon Moignard, the witch, who
passed, feared yet favored, among the
frequenters of the Vier Marchi. These
leaves, steeped in brandy, were to cure
them of stiffness of step, to make them
young again. By and by they came face
to face with De'tricand. The chevalier
stopped short with pleased yet wistful
surprise. His fine smooth brow knitted
a little when he saw that his compatriot

554

The Battle of the Strong.

had been drinking again, and his eyes
had a pained look as he said eagerly,
" Have you heard from the Comte de
Tournay, monsieur ? I have not seen you
these weeks past ; you said you would
not disappoint me."

D^tricand drew from his pocket a let-
ter and handed it to the chevalier, say-
ing, " Here is a letter from the comte."

The old gentleman took the letter, ner-
vously opened it, and read it slowly, say-
ing each sentence over twice as though
to get the full meaning.

" Ah," he exclaimed, " he is going
back to France to fight for the King ! "
Then he looked at D&ricand sadly, be-
nevolently. "Mon cher," said he, "if
I could but persuade you to give up the
wine-cup and follow his example ! "

Ddtricand drew himself up with a jerk,
and made an abrupt motion of the hand.
" You can persuade me, chevalier," said
he. " This is my last bout. I had sworn
to have it with — with a soldier I knew,
and I 've kept my word. But it 's the
last, the very last in my life, on the
honor of — of the Ddtricands. And I 'm
going with the Comte de Tournay to
fight for the King."

The little chevalier's lips trembled,
and, taking the young man by the collar
of his coat, he stood on tiptoe and kissed
him on both cheeks.

" Will you accept something from
me ? " asked M. de Mauprat in a shak-
ing voice, joining in his friend's en-
thusiasm. He took from his pocket a
timepiece which he had carried for fifty
years. " It is a little gift to my France,
which I shall see no more," he added.
" May no time be ill spent that it records
for you, monsieur."

De*tricand laughed in his careless way,
but the face that had been seamed with
dissipation took on a new and better
look, as, with a hand-grasp of gratitude,
he put the timepiece in his pocket.

" I '11 do my best," he said simply.
"I'll be with de la Roche jaquelein and
the army of the Vendee to-morrow night."

Then he shook hands with both lit-
tle gentlemen, and moved away toward
the Rue des Ti-es Pigeons. Some one
touched his arm. He turned. It was
Ranulph.

" I stood near," said Ranulph ; " I
chanced to hear what you said to them.
You 've been a friend to me to-day —
and these eleven years past. You knew
— about my father, all the time."

Before replying Detricand looked
round to see that no one was listening.

" Look you, monsieur, a man must
keep some decencies in his life, or cut his
own throat. What a ruffian I 'd be to
do you or your father harm ! I 'm silent,
of course. Let your mind rest about me.
But there 's the baker Carcaud " —

" The baker escaped ? " asked Ra-
nulph, dumfounded. " I thought he was
tied to a rock and left to drown."

" I had him set free after Rullecour
had gone on. He got away to France.
I saw him at St. Brieuc four years ago."

Ranulph's anxiety deepened. " He
might come back, and then if anything
happened to him " —

" He 'd try to make things happen to
others, eh ? But there 's little danger
of his coming back. They know he 's a
traitor, and he knows he 'd be hung. If
he 's alive he '11 stay where he is. Cheer
up ! Take my word, Olivier Delagarde
has only himself to fear." He put out
his hand. " Good - by ! We '11 meet
again, if we both live. If ever I can do
anything for you, if you ever want to
find me, come or send to — No, I '11
write it," he suddenly added, and he
scribbled something on a piece of paper.

Ranulph took it, and, scarce looking
at the address, put it into his pocket.

They parted with another hand-shake,
De'tricand making his way down into the
Rue d'Egypte and toward the Place du
Vier Prison.

Ranulph stood looking at the crowd
before him dazedly, misery, revolt, and
bitterness in his heart. He who had de-
served well of fate, he must live a life of

The Battle of the Strong.

555

shame and deception, he must feel the
ground of his home and his honor crum-
bling beneath his feet, through no fault
of his own. This French adventurer,
De'tricand, after years of riotous living,
could pick up the threads of life again
with a laugh and no shame, while he felt
himself going down, down, down, with
no hope of rising.

As he stood buried in his reflections
the town crier entered the Vier Marchi,
and going to La Pyramide took his place
upon the steps of it, and in a loud voice
began reading a proclamation.

It was to the effect that the great fish-
ing company trading to Gaspe needed
twenty Jersiais to go out and replace a
number of the company's officers and
men who had been drowned in a gale off
the rock called Perce*. To these twenty,
if they went at once, good pay and rapid
promotion would be given. But they
must be men of intelligence and force,
of well-known character and vigor.

The critical moment in Maitre Ra-
nulph's life came now. Here he was
penned up in a little island with a crim-
inal who had the reputation of a mar-
tyr. It was not to be borne. Why not
leave it all behind? Why not let his
father shift for himself, abide his own
fate ? Why not leave him the home,
what money he had laid by, and go — go
— go where he could forget, go where
he could breathe ? Surely self-preserva-
tion was the first law ; surely no known
code of human opinion or practice called
upon him to share the daily crimes of
any living soul, — it was a daily repeti-
tion of his crime for this traitor to main-
tain the atrocious lie of patriotism.

He would go : it was his right.

Taking a few steps forward toward
the officer of the company, who stood by
the crier, he was about to speak. Some
one touched him.

He turned and saw Carterette. She
had divined his intention, and though
she was in the dark as to the motive,
she saw that he wished to go to Gaspe".

Her heart seemed to contract till the
pain of it hurt her ; then, as a thought
flashed into her mind, it was freed again,
and began to pound hard against her
breast. She must prevent him from
leaving Jersey, from leaving her. What
she might feel personally would have no
effect upon him ; she would appeal to
him from a different standpoint.

" You must not go," she said. " You
must not leave your father alone, Maitre
Ranulph."

For a minute he did not speak.
Through his dark wretchedness one
thought pierced its way : this girl was
his good friend.

" I '11 take him with me," he replied.

"He would die in the awful cold,"
she answered. " Nannin-gia, you must
stay."

" Eh ben ! " he said presently, with an
air of heavy resignation, and, turning,
walked away.

Her eyes followed him. As she went
back to her booth she smiled : he had
come one step her way.

XIII.

When De'tricand left the Vier Marchi,
he made his way along the Rue d'Egypte
to the house of M. de Mauprat. The
front door was open, and he could see
through to the kitchen, whence came a
voice singing an old chanson in the
quaint Jersey patois : —

" Ma comm&re, quand je danse,
Man cotillon va-t-i bain ?
I va chin, i va la,
I va fort bain comm' i va."

De'tricand listened for a moment, very
well pleased. Guida was singing at her
work, — singing unconsciously; for some-
times a line was dropped or broken off,
and the verse picked up again after a
slight pause. A nice savor of boiling
fruit came from within, and altogether
the place was so white and clean, so
sweet and comfortable, that De'tricand

556

The Battle of the Strong.

would have waited longer at the door-
way had he been an older friend in this
house. He knocked, and Guida ap-
peared, her sleeves rolled up to her el-
bows, her fingers stained with the rich
red of the black raspberries which she
was making into a preserve. Her face
was alight with some inward pleasure,
her eyes were as blue as the sea. She
was slightly flushed with her work, and
yet somehow she looked cool and fresh,
a wonder of perfect health.

A curious shade of disappointment
came into her face when she saw who
it was. It was clear to De"tricand that
she expected some one else ; it was also
clear that his coming gave no especial
pleasure to her, though she looked at him
not without interest. She had thought
of him more than once since that day
when the famous letter to the chevalier
was read, and she had wondered if he
had succeeded in getting the message to
the Comte de Tournay. She had also
instinctively compared him, this ribald,
roistering, notorious fellow, with Philip
d' Avranche, — Philip the brave, the am-
bitious, the conquering. She was sure
that Philip had never overdrunk himself
in his life ; and now, looking into the
face of De'tricand, she was sure that he
had been drinking again. One thing
was apparent, however : he was better
dressed than she remembered ever to
have seen him, — better pulled together
and more alert in movement, and bear-
ing himself with an air of purpose. But
there still was that curious gray white-
ness under the eyes, telling of recent dis-
sipation. There was also the red scar
along his temple, showing the track of
the bullet fired at him in the Place du
Vier Prison two weeks before.

" I 've fetched back your handker-
chief. You tied up my head with it,
you know," he said, taking it from his
pocket. " I 'm going away, and I want-
ed to thank you and return it to you."

" Come in, will you not, monsieur ? "

He readily entered the kitchen, still

holding the handkerchief in his hand,
but he did not give it to her.

" Where will you sit ? " she said, look-
ing round. " I 'm very busy. You must
n't mind my working," she added, going
back to the fire. "This preserve will
spoil if I don't watch it."

He seated himself on the veille, and
nodded his head.

" I like this. I 'm fond of kitchens ; I
always was. When I was fifteen, I was
sent away from home because I liked
the stables and the kitchen too well. I
remember I fell in love with the cook."

Guida flushed, frowned, her lips tight-
ened ; then presently a look of amuse-
ment broke over her face, and she burst
out laughing.

" Why do you tell me these things ? "
she said. " Excuse me, monsieur, but
why do you always tell unpleasant things
about yourself ? People think ill of you,
and otherwise they might think — bet-
ter."

"I don't want them to think better
till I am better," he answered. " The
only way I can prevent myself becoming
a sneak is by blabbing my faults. Now,
I was drunk last night, — very, very
drunk."

A look of disgust came into her face.
" Why do you relate this sort of thing
to me, monsieur ? Do — do I remind
you of the cook at home, or of an oyster-
girl in Jersey ? "

She was flushed, but her voice was
clear and vibrant, the look of the eyes
direct and fearless. How dared he hold
her handkerchief like that !

" I tell you them," he replied slowly,
looking at the handkerchief in his hand,
then raising his eyes to hers steadily and
with whimsical gravity, " because I want
you to ask me never to drink again."

She looked at him, scarcely compre-
hending, yet feeling a deep compliment
somewhere ; for this man was a gentle-
man by birth, and his manner was re-
spectful now, and had always been re-
spectful to her.

The Battle of the Strong.

557

" Why do you want me to ask you
that ? " she said.

" Because I 'm going to France to
join the war of the Vende'e, and " —

" With the Comte de Tournay ? " she
interrupted.

He nodded his head. " And if I
thought I was keeping a promise to a
woman of the right sort, I 'd not break
it. Anyhow, whatever my motive, I
want to make it to you."

" I 'm only a girl, — not a woman,"
she said.

" You '11 be a woman when I see you
again," he returned. " Will you ask
ine to promise ? " he persisted, watching
her intently.

" Why, of course," she answered kind-
ly, almost gently ; the compliment was
so friendly, he could not be all bad.

" Then say my name, and ask me,"
he said.

" Monsieur " —

" Leave out the ' monsieur,' " he inter-
rupted.

" Yves SavaVy dit De'tricand, will you
promise me, Guida Landresse " —

" De Landresse," he interposed.

— " Guida Landresse de Landresse,
that you will never again drink wine to
excess, and that you will never do any-
thing that any right sort of woman
would not like a man to do ? "

" On my honor I promise," he said
slowly ; " and I '11 keep the promise, too,
because Guida Landresse has asked me."

A strange feeling came over her. All
at once, in some indirect, allusive way,
she had become interested in a man's life.
Yet she had done nothing, and in truth
she cared nothing. They stood looking
at each other, she slightly embarrassed,
he hopeful and eager, when suddenly a
step sounded without, a voice called,
" Guida ! " and as Guida colored and De*-
tricand turned toward the door, Philip
d'Avranche entered impetuously.

He stopped short on seeing De'tricand.
They knew each other slightly, and they
bowed. Philip frowned. He saw that

something had occurred between the two.
De'tricand, on his part, realized the sig-
nificance of that familiar " Guida ! "
which had been called from outside.

He took up his cap. " It is greeting
and good-by. I am just off for France."

Philip eyed him coldly and not a lit-
tle maliciously, for he knew De'tricand's
reputation well ; the signs of a hard
life were thick on him, and he did not
like to think of Guida being alone with
him.

" France should offer a wide field for
your talents just now," he said dryly ;
" they seem wasted here."

De'tricand's eye flashed, but he an-
swered coolly, " It was not talent that
brought me here, but a boy's wayward-
ness and folly ; it 's not talent that has
kept me from starving here, I 'm afraid,
but the ingenuity of the desperate."

" Why stay here ? The world was
wide, and France was a step away. You
would not have needed talents there.
You would no doubt have been reward-
ed by the court which sent you and Rul-
lecour to ravage Jersey " —

" The proper order is, Rullecour and
me, monsieur."

De'tricand seemed suddenly to have
got back a manner to which he had been
long a stranger. His temper became
imperturbable, and this was not lost on
Philip ; his manner had a well-bred dis-
tinction and balanced serenity, while
Philip himself had no such perfect con-
trol, which made him the more impa-
tient and angry. De'tricand added, in a
composed and nonchalant tone, " I 've no
doubt there were those at court who 'd
have clothed me in purple and fine linen,
and given me wine and milk, but it was
my whim to work in the galleys here, as
it were."

" Then I trust you have enjoyed your
Botany Bay, monsieur," rejoined Philip
mockingly. " You have been your own
jailer : you could lay the strokes on heavy
or light." He moved to the veille, and
threw a leg across a corner of it. Guida

558

The Battle of the Strong.

busied herself at the fireplace, but lis-
tened intently.

" I 've certainly been my own enemy,
whether the strokes were heavy or light,"
replied De'tricand, with strange candor,
and lifting a shoulder slightly.

" And a friend to Jersey at the same
time, eh ? " was the sneering retort.

De'tricand was quite in the humor to
tell the truth even to this man who hated
him. He was giving himself the luxury
of auricular confession. But Philip did
not see that when once such a man has
stood in his own pillory and sat in his
own stocks, he has voluntarily given sat-
isfaction to the law and paid the piper,
and will take no after-insult.

De'tricand still would not be tempted
out of his composure. " No," he an-
swered, " I 've been an enemy to Jersey,
too, both by act and by example ; but
people here have been kind enough to
forget the act, and the example I set is
not unique."

" You 've never thought that you 've
outstayed your welcome, eh ? "

" As to that, every country is free to
whoever wills, if one cares to pay the
entrance fee and can endure the enter-
tainment. One has n't to apologize for
living in a country. You probably get
no better treatment than you deserve,
and no worse. One thing balances an-
other."

The man's composure of manner, his
cool impeachment and defense of him-
self, intensely irritated Philip, the more
so because Guida was present, and this
gentlemanly vagrant seemed to have
placed him at disadvantage.

" You paid no entrance fee here ; you
stole in through a hole in the wall. You
should have been hung."

" Monsieur d'Avranche ! " said Guida
reproachfully, turning round from the
fire.

De'tricand's answer came biting and
dry : " You are an officer of your King,
as was I. You should know that hang-
ing the invaders of Jersey would have

been butchery. We were soldiers of
France; we had the honor of being
treated as prisoners of war, monsieur."

This shot went home. Philip had
been touched in that nerve called mili-
tary honor. He got to his feet.

" You are right," he answered, with
a reluctant frankness. " Our grudge is
not individual ; it is against France, and
we'll pay it soon with good interest,
monsieur ! "

"The individual grudge will not be
lost sight of in the general, I hope ? "
rejoined De'tricand, with cool suggestion,
his clear, persistent gray eye looking
coldly into Philip's.

"I shall do you that honor," said
Philip, with a mistaken disdain.

De'tricand bowed low. " You shall
always find me in the suite of the Prince
of Vaufontaine, monsieur, and ready to
be so distinguished by you." Turning to
Guida, he added, " Mademoiselle will
perhaps do me the honor to notice me
again, one day ? " Then, with a mocking
nod to Philip, he left the house.

Philip and Guida stood looking after
him in silence for a minute. Suddenly
Guida said to herself, " My handkerchief !
Why did he take my handkerchief ? He
put it into his pocket again."

Philip turned on her impatiently.
" What was that adventurer saying to
you, Guida ? Prince of Vaufontaine in-
deed ! What did he come here for ? "

Guida looked at him for an instant in
surprise. She scarcely grasped the sig-
nificance of the question. Before she
had time to consider he pressed it again,
and without hesitation she told him all
that had happened — it was so very lit-
tle, of course — between De'tricand and
herself. She omitted nothing save that
De'tricand had carried off the handker-
chief, and she could not have told, if she
had been asked, why she did not men-
tion this.

Philip raged inwardly. He saw the
meaning of the whole situation from
De'tricand's standpoint, but he was wise

The, Battle, of the Strong.

559

enough from his own standpoint to keep
it to himself ; and so each of them re-
served something, — she from no motive
that she knew, he from an ulterior one.
He was angry, too, — angry at De'tricand,
angry at Guida for her very innocence,
and because she had caught and held
even this slight line of association which
De'tricand had thrown.

Yet in any case De'tricand was going
to-morrow, and to-day — to-day should
decide all between Guida and himself.
Used to bold moves, in this affair of love
he was living up to his custom ; and the
encounter with De'tricand added the last
touch to his resolution, nerved him to
follow his strong impulse to set all upon
one hazard. Two weeks ago he had told
Guida that he loved her ; to-day there
should be a still more daring venture, —
a thing which was not captured by a kind
of forlorn hope seemed not worth hav-
ing. The girl had seized his emotions
from the first moment, and had held
them. She was the most original crea-
ture he had ever met, the most natural,
the most humorous in temper, the most
sincere. She had no duplicity, no guile,
no arts.

He said to himself that he knew his
own mind always, he believed in inspi-
rations : very well, he would back his
knowledge, his inspiration, by an irre-
trievable move. Yesterday he had re-
ceived an important communication from
his commander : that had decided him,
and to-day a still more important com-
munication should be made to Guida.

" Won't you come into the garden ? "
he said presently.

" A moment — a moment ! " She an-
swered him lightly, for the frown had
passed from his face, and he was his old
buoyant self again. At this time in his
life he was not capable of sustained
gloom. " I 'm to make an end to this
bashin of berries first," she added. So
saying, she waved him away with a lit-
tle air of tyranny. He perched him-
self boyishly on the big chair in the cor-

ner, and began playing with the flax on
the spinning-wheel near by and swinging
his feet with idle impatience. Then he
took to humming a ditty which the Jer-
sey housewife used to sing as she spun,
while Guida disposed of the sweet-smell-
ing fruit. Suddenly Guida stopped and
stamped her foot.

" No, no, that 's not right, stupid sail-
orman," she said, and she sang a verse
at him over the last details of her work :

" Spin, spin, belle Mergaton !

The moon wheels full, and the tide flows

high,

And yonr wedding-dress you must put it on
Ere the night hath no moon in the sky —
Gigoton Mergaton, spin ! "

She paused. He was entranced. He
had never heard her sing, and the full,
beautiful notes of her contralto voice
thrilled him like organ music. His look
devoured her, her song captured him.

" Please go on," he begged. " I never
heard it that way."

She was embarrassed yet delighted
with his praise, and she threw into the
next verse a deep weirdness : —

" Spin, spin, belle Mergaton !

Your gown shall be stitched ere the old

moon fade :

The age of a moon shall your hands spin on,

Or a wife in her shroud shall be laid —

Gigoton Mergaton, spin ! "

" Yes, yes, that 's it ! " he exclaimed,
with gay ardor. " That 's it. Sing on.
There are two more verses."

"I'll only sing one," she answered,
with a little air of willfulness : —

" Spin, spin, belle Mergaton !

The Little Good Folk the spell they have

cast :
By your work well done while the moon hath

shone,

Ye shall cleave unto joy at last —
Gigoton Mergaton, spin ! "

As she sang the last verse she appeared
in a dream, and her rich voice, rising
with the spirit of the concluding lines,
poured out the notes like a bird drunk
with the air of spring.

560

The Battle of the Strong.

" Guida," he cried, springing to his
feet, " when you sing like that, it seems
to me that I live in a world that has
nothing to do with the sordid business of
life, with my dull craft, with getting the
weather-gauge or sailing in triple line !
You 're a planet all by yourself, Mistress
Guida ! Are you ready to come into the
garden ? "

" Yes, yes, in a minute," she answered.
" You go out to the big apple-tree, and
I '11 come in a minute."

The apple-tree was in the farthest cor-
ner of the large garden. Beehives and
currant bushes hid it on one side, and
from the other you looked over a low
wall to the grim pillars on the Mont
es Pendus, which, despite their horrid
associations, appeared like Druidic mon-
uments ; while the hill and the fields
around the hill were as green and as
sweet as this garden itself. Near to the
apple-tree was the little summer-house
where Guida and her mother used to sit
and read : Guida on the three - legged
stool, her mother on the low, wide seat
covered with ferns. This place Guida
used to flourish with flowers. The vines
crept through the rough lattice - work,
and all together made the place a bower,
secluded and serene. The water of the
little stream outside the hedge made mu-
sic, too.

Not here, but on the bench beneath the
apple-tree Philip placed himself. What
a change was all this, he thought, from
the staring hot stones of Malta, the squa-
lor of Constantinople, the frigid cliffs of
Spitzbergen, the noisome tropical forests
of the Indies ! This was Arcady ; it was
peace and it was content. His life was
bound to be varied and perhaps stormy,
— this would be the true change ; that
is, the spirit of this would be. Of course
he would have two sides to his life, like
most men : that which was lived before
the world, and that which was of the
home. He would have the fight for fame.
In that he would have to use, not dupli-
city, but diplomacy, to play a kind of

game ; but this other side to his life, the
side of love and home, should be simple,
direct, — all genuine and strong and
true. In this way he would have a won-
derful career, and Guida should be in
that career.

He heard her footstep now, and, stand-
ing up, he parted the apple boughs for her
entrance. She was dressed all in white,
without a touch of color save the wild
rose at her throat, and the pretty red
shoes with the broad buckles which M.
de Mauprat had purchased of Elie Mat-
tingley and given to her on her birthday.
Her face, too, had color, — the soft, warm
tint of the peach blossom, — and her au-
burn hair was like an aureole.

Philip's eyes gleamed. He stretched
out both his hands in greeting and ten-
derness.

" Guida — sweetheart ! "

She laughed up at him mischievously,
and put her hands behind her back.

" Ma fd ! you are so very forward,"
she said, seating herself on the bench.
" And you must not call me Guida, and
you have no right to call me sweetheart."

" I know I 've no right to call you any-
thing, but to myself I always call you
Guida and sweetheart too, and I 've liked
to think that you would care to know my
thoughts."

" Yes, I wish I knew your thoughts,"
she responded, looking up at him se-
riously and intently. " I should like to
know every thought in your mind. . . .
Do you know — you don't mind my say-
ing just what I think ? — I find myself
feeling that there 's something in you
that I never touch ; I mean, that a friend
ought to touch, if it 's a real friendship.
You appear to be so frank, and I know
you are frank and good and true, and
yet I seem always to be hunting for
something in your mind, and it slips
away from me always — always. I sup-
pose it 's because we 're two different
beings, and no two beings can ever
know each other in this world, not alto-
gether. We 're what the chevalier calls

The Battle of the Strong.

561

'separate entities.' I seem to under-
stand better lately his odd, wise talk.
He said the other day, ' Lonely we come
into the world, and lonely we go out of
it.' That 's what I mean. It makes me
shudder sometimes, — that part of us
which lives alone forever. We go run-
ning on as happy as can be, like Biribi
there in the garden, and all at once we
stop short at a hedge, as he does there,
— a hedge just too tall to look over, and
with no foothold for climbing. That 's
what I want so much : I want to look
over the Hedge."

How strong and fine her brow was !
How perfectly clear the eye ! How nat-
ural and powerful the intelligence of the
face ! When she spoke like this to Philip,
as she sometimes did, she seemed quite
unconscious that he was a listener ; it
was rather as if he were part of her and
thinking the same thoughts. Philip had
never bothered his head in that way
about serious or abstract things, when
he was her age, and he could not under-
stand it. What was more, he could not
have thought as she did if he had tried.
She had that sort of mind which ac-
cepts no stereotyped reflection or idea ;
she worked things out for herself. Her
words were her own. She was not imi-
tative, nor yet was she bizarre ; she was
individual, simple, and inquiring.

" That 's the thing that hurts most in
life," she added presently, — " that trying
to find and not being able to. Ah, voila,
what a child I am to babble so ! " she
broke off, with a little laugh, which had,
however, a plaintive note. There was a
touch of undeveloped pathos in her char-
acter, for she had been left alone too
young, been given responsibility too soon.

He knew he must say something, and
in a sympathetic tone he said, "Yes,
Guida ; but after a while we stop trying
to follow and see and find, and we walk
in the old paths and take things as they
are."

" Have you stopped ? " she asked wist-
fully.

" Oh no, not altogether," he replied,
dropping his tones to tenderness, " for
I 've been trying to peep over a hedge
this afternoon, and I have n't done it
yet."

" Have you ? " she rejoined ; then
paused, for the look in his eyes embar-
rassed her. " Why do you look at me
like that ? " she asked tremulously.

" Guida," he said earnestly, leaning
toward her, " two weeks ago I asked you
if you would listen to me when I told
you of my love, and you said you would.
Well, sometimes when we have met since
I have told you the same story, and you
have kept your promise and listened.
Guida, I want to keep on telling you the
same story for a long time, — even till
you or I die."

" Do you, — ah, then, do you ? " she
asked simply. " Do you really wish
that ? "

" It is the dearest wish of my life, and
always will be," he added, taking her
unresisting hands.

" I like to hear you say it," she an-
swered simply, " and it cannot be wrong,
can it ? Is there any wrong in my lis-
tening to you ? Yet why do I feel that
it is not quite right ? Sometimes I do
feel that."

" One thing will make all right," he
said eagerly, " one thing. I love you,
Guida, love you devotedly. Do you —
tell me — do you love me ? Do not fear
to tell me, dearest, for then will come
the thing that makes all right."

" I do not know," she responded, her
heart beating fast, her eyes drooping be-
fore him ; " but when you go from me,
I am not happy till I see you again.
When you are gone, I want to be alone,
that I may remember all that you have
said, and say it over to myself again.
When I hear you speak, I want to shut
my eyes, I am so happy ; and every word
of mine seems clumsy when you talk to
me ; and I feel of how little account I
am beside you. Is that love, Philip ?
Philip, do you think that is love ? "

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 486.

562

The Battle of the Strong.

They were standing now. The fruit
that hung above Guida's head was not
fairer and sweeter than she. Philip drew
her to him, and her eyes lifted to his.

" Is that love, Philip ? " she repeated.
" Tell me, for I do not know ; it lias all
come so soon. You are wiser ; do not de-
ceive nie ; you understand, and I do not.
Philip, do not let me deceive myself."

"As the judgment of life is before
us, I believe that you love me, Guida,
though I don't deserve it," he answered,
with tender seriousness.

" And it is right that you should love
me, — that we should love each other,
Philip ? "

" It will be right soon," he returned,
" right forever. . . . Guida, I want you
to marry me."

His arm tightened round her waist,
as though he half feared she would fly
from him. He was right ; she made a
motion backward, but he held her firm-
ly, tenderly.

" Marry — marry you, Philip ! " she
exclaimed, in trembling dismay.

It was true, she had never thought of
that ; there had not been time. Too
much had come all at once.

" Marry me, — yes, marry me, Guida.
That will make all right ; that will bind
us together forever. Have you never
thought of that ? "

" Oh, never, never ! " she replied, im-
patient to set him right. " Why should
I ? I cannot, cannot do it. Oh, it could
not be, — not at least for a long, long
time, not for years and years, Philip."

" Guida," he said, gravely and per-
sistently, " I want you to marry me to-
morrow."

She was overwhelmed. She could
scarcely speak. " To-morrow — to-mor-
row, Philip ! You are laughing at me.
I could not — how could I marry you
to-morrow ? "

" Guida dearest," — he took her hands
more tightly now, — " you must, Guida.
The day after to-morrow my ship is go-
ing to Portsmouth for two months ; then

we return again here. But I will not
go now unless I go as your husband."

" Oh no, I could not ; it is impossi-
ble, Philip ! It is madness, it is wrong !
My grandfather " —

"Your grandfather need not know,
sweetheart. "„

" How can you say such wicked things,
Philip?"

" My dearest, it is not necessary for
him to know. I don't want any one to
know until I come back from Ports-
mouth. Then I shall have a ship of my
own, — commander of the Aramiuta I
shall be then. I have word from the
Admiralty to that effect. But I dare not
let them know that I am married until
I get commissioned to my ship. The
Admiralty has set its face against lieu-
tenants marrying."

"Then do not marry, Philip. You
ought not, you see."

Her pleading was like the beating of
helpless wings against the bars of a
golden cage.

" But I must marry you, Guida. A
sailor's life is uncertain, and what I
want I want now. When I come back
from Portsmouth every one shall know,
but if you love me — and I know you do
— you must marry me to-morrow. Until
I come back no one shall know about
it except the clergyman, the Reverend
Lorenzo Dow, of St. Michael's, — I have
seen him, — and Shoreham, a brother
officer of mine. Ah, you must, Guida,
you must ! Whatever is worth doing is
better worth doing at the time one's own
heart says. I want it more, a thousand
times more, than I ever wanted anything
in my life ! "

She looked at him in a troubled sort
of way. Somehow she felt wiser than
he at that moment, wiser and stronger,
though she scarcely defined the feeling
to herself, though she knew that her
brain would yield to her heart in this.

" Would it make you so much hap-
pier, Philip ? " she said, more kindly
than joyfully, more in grave acquies-

The Battle of the Strong.

563

cence than in delighted belief and anti-
cipation.

" Yes, on my honor, — supremely hap-
py!»

" You are afraid that otherwise — by
some chance — you might lose me?"
She said it tenderly, yet with a little
pain.

" Yes, yes, that is it, Guida dearest ! "
he replied.

" I suppose women are different al-
together from men," she returned. " I
could have waited ever so long, believ-
ing that you would come again, and that
I should never lose you. But men are
different : I see, yes, I see that, Philip."

" We are more impetuous. We know,
we sailors, that now — to-day — is our
tune ; that to-morrow may be Fate's,
and Fate is a fickle jade : she beckons
you up with one hand to-day, and waves
you down with the other to-morrow."

" Philip," she said, scarcely above a
whisper, and putting her hands on his
arms, as her head sank toward him, " I
must be honest with you ; I must be that,
or nothing at all. I do not feel as you
do about it ; I can't. I would much —
much — rather everybody knew. And
I feel it almost wrong that they dp not."
She paused a minute ; her brow clouded
slightly, then cleared again, and she
went on bravely : " Philip, I want you
to promise me that you will leave me
just as soon as we are married, and that
you will not try to see me until you
come again from Portsmouth. I am
sure that is right, for the deception will
not then be so great. I should be better
able then to tell the poor grandfather !
Will you promise me, Philip — dear ?
It — it is so hard for me ! Ah, can't
you understand ? "

This hopeless everlasting cry of a wo-
man's soul !

He clasped her close. " Yes, Guida,
my heart, I understand, and I promise
you, — - 1 promise you."

Her head dropped on his breast, her
arms ran round his neck. He raised

her face ; her eyes were closed, — they
were dropping tears. He tenderly kissed
the tears away.

XIV.

" Oh, give to me my gui-l'anne'e,

I pray you, Monseigneur ;
The king's princess doth ride to-day,

And I ride forth -with her.
Oh, 1 will ride the maid beside

Till we come to the sea,
Till my good ship receive my bride,

And she sail far with me.
Oh, donnez-moi ma gui-l'annee,

Monseigneur, je vousprie!"

The singer was perched on a huge
broad stone, which, lying athwart sev-
eral tall perpendicular stones, made a
kind of hut, approached by a pathway
of other upright narrow pillars, irregular
and crude, such as a child might build
in miniature with ragged blocks or bricks.
Yet, standing alone on the little cliff
overlooking the sea, the primeval struc-
ture had a sort of rude nobleness and
dignity. How vast must have been the
labor of man's hands to lift the massive
table of rock upon the supporting shafts,
— relics of an age when they were the
only architecture, national monuments,
memorials, and barbaric mausoleums ;
when savage ancestors in lion-skins, with
stone weapons of war, led by white-robed
Druid priests, came here and left the
mistletoe wreath upon these Houses of
Death builded for their adored warriors.
As though some protecting spirit were
guarding them through the ages, no hu-
man habitation is near them, no modern
machinery of life touches them with
sordid irony or robs them of their lonely
pride of years. Castles and towers and
forts, Hollo's and Caesar's, have passed,
but these remain.

" Oh, donnez-moi ma gui-Vannte,
Monseigneur, je vous prie ! "

Even this song sung by the singer on
the rock carried on the ancient story,
the sacred legend that he who wore in
his breast the mistletoe got from the

564

The Battle of the Strong.

Druids' altar, bearing his bride forth by
sea or land, should suffer no mischance ;
and for the bride herself, the morgengifn
should fail not, but should attest richly
the perfect bliss of the nuptial hours.

The light had almost gone from the
day, though the last glittering crimson
petals had scarce dropped from the rose
of sunset. Upon the sea there was not
a ripple ; it was a lake of molten silver,
shading into a leaden silence far away.
The tide was high, and the ragged rocks
of the Bane des Violets in the south and
the Corbiere in the west were all but
hidden. Only two or three showed their
heads placidly above the flow. Who
might think that these rocky fields of the
main had been covered with dead men,
like any field of battle ? Less merciful
than the earth, the sea quickly and fur-
tively drags its dead men out of sight,
after maltreating and shamelessly dis-
gracing their ruined bodies, leaving the
fields of rock and reef deceitfully smil-
ing and forever relentlessly lying in
wait ; while the just earth in kindness
covers and protects those who die within
her boundaries. Her warring children
ravaging her fields and valleys and hills
no longer, — their own bodies nourish
her into benignant peace again.

"They smile and pass, the children of the

sword,

No more the sword they wield ;
But oh, how deep the corn upon the battle-
field ! "

Below the mound where the tuneful
youth loitered was a path, which led
down through the fields and into the
highway. In this path walked lingering-
ly a man and a maid. Despite the peace-
ful, almost dormant life about them, the
great event of their lives had just oc-
curred, that which is at once a vast ad-
venture and a simple testament of na-
ture : they had been joined in marriage
in the parish church of St. Michael's,
near by. As the voice of the singer
came down to them BOW, the two glanced
up, then passed out of view.

But still the voice followed them, and
the man looked down at the maid, re-
peating the refrain : —

" Oh, give to me my gui-1'anne'e,
Monseigneur, je vous prie ! "

The maid looked at the man tender-
ly, almost devoutly.

" I have no Druid's mistletoe from
the chapel of St. George, but I will give
you, — stoop down, Philip, — I will give
you the first kiss I have ever given to
any man."

He stooped. She kissed him on the
forehead, then upon the cheek, and last-
ly upon the lips.

" Guida, my wife ! " Philip said, and
drew her to his breast.

" My Philip ! " she answered softly.

" Won't you say, ' Philip, my hus-
band'?" ,

She did as he asked, in a voice no
louder than a bee's.

Presently she said, a little abashed, a
little anxious, yet tender withal, " Philip,
I wonder what we shall think of this day
a year from now ? No, don't frown ;
you look at things differently from me.
To-day is everything to you ; to-morrow
is very much to me. It is n't that I am
afraid ;. it is that thoughts of possibilities
will come, whether one likes it or not.
If I could n't tell you everything, I feel
I should be most unhappy. You see, I
want to be able to do that, — to tell you
everything."

"Of course, of course," he said, not quite
comprehending her, for his thoughts
were always more material. He was re-
veling in the beauty of the girl before
him, in her perfect outward self, in her
unique personality ; the more subtle and
the deeper part of her, the searching
soul never in this world to be satisfied
with superficial reasons and the obvious
cause, — these he did not know ; was
he ever to know ? It was the law of her
nature that she was never to deceive
herself, to pretend anything, nor to offer
pretense. To see things, to look beyond
the hedge, — that was to be a passion

The Battle of the Strong.

565

with her ; already it was nearly that.
But she was very young ; she was yet
to pass through the sacred and terrify-
ing ordeal of linking her life past all re-
call to another's, soul and body. " Of
course," Philip continued, " you must
tell me everything, and I '11 understand.
And as for what we 11 think of this in
another year, why, does n't it stand to
reason that we '11 think it the best day
of our lives — as it is, Guida ! " He
smiled at her, and touched her soft hair.
" Evil can't come out of good, can it ?
And this is good, — as good as anything
in the world can be. . . . There, look
into my eyes that way, — just that way."

"Are you happy, very, very happy,
Philip ? " she asked.

" Perfectly happy, Guida," he an-
swered ; and in truth ho seemed so, his
eyes were so bright, his face so eloquent,
his bearing so buoyant.

" And you think we have done quite
right, Philip ? " she asked earnestly.

" Of course, of course we have. We
are honorably disposing of our own fates.
We love each other. We are married
as surely as other people are married.
Where is the wrong? We have told
no one, simply because, for a couple of
months, it is best not to do so. The
clergyman would n't have married us if
there 'd been anything wrong."

" Oh, it is n't what the clergyman
might think that I mean ; it 's what we
ourselves think, down, down deep in our
hearts. If you, Philip, if you say it is
all right, I will believe that it is right ;
for you would not want your wife to have
one single wrong thing, like a dark spot,
on her life with you, would you ? If it
is all right to you, it must be all right
for me ; don't you see ? "

He did see that, and it made him
grave for an instant ; it made him not
quite so sure.

" If your mother were alive," he said,
" of course she should have known ; but
it was n't necessary for your grandfather
to know : he talks ; he could n't keep it

to himself even for a month. But we
have been properly married by a clergy-
man ; we have a witness, — Shoreham
over there " (he pointed toward the Dru-
ids' cromlech where the young man was
singing) ; " and it concerns only us now,
— just you and me."

" But if anything happened to you
during the next two months, Philip, and
you did not come back ! "

" My dearest, dearest Guida," he an-
swered, taking her hands in his and
laughing boyishly, " in that case you will
announce the marriage. Shoreham and
the clergyman are witnesses ; besides,
there 's the certificate which Mr. Dow
will give you to-morrow ; and, above all,
there 's the formal record on the parish
register. There, little critic and sweetest
interrogation mark in the world, there
is the law and the gospel. Come, come,
let us be gay ; let this be the happiest
hour we 've yet had in all our lives."

" How can I be altogether gay, Philip,
when we part now, and I shall not see
you for two whole long months ? "

" May n't I see you just for a minute
to-morrow morning, before I go ? "

" No, no, oh no, Philip, you must not ;
indeed, you must not ! Remember your
promise ; remember that you were not to
see me again until you came back from
Portsmouth. Even this is not quite what
we agreed, for you are still with me,
and we 've been married nearly half an
hour ! "

" Perhaps we were married a thou-
sand years ago, — I don't know ! " he an-
swered, drawing her to him. " It 's all
a magnificent dream so far."

" You must go, you must keep your
word. Don't break the first promise
you ever made me, Philip."

She did not say it very reproachfully,
for his look was ardent and worshipful,
and she could not be even a little austere
in her new joy.

" I am going," he said. " We will go
back to the town : I by the road, you by
the shore, so no one will see us, and " —

566

The Battle of the Strong.

" Philip," said Guida suddenly, " is it
just the same, being married without
banns ? "

His laugh had again a boyish ring of
delight. " Of course, just the same, my
doubting fay. Don't be frightened about
anything. Now promise me that: will
yon promise me ? "

She looked at him a moment steadily,
her eyes lingering on his face with great
tenderness, and then she said, "Yes,
Philip; I will not trouble nor question
any longer. I will only believe that
everything is all right. Say good-by to
me, Philip. I am happy now, but if
— if you stay any longer — ah, please,
please go, Philip ! "

A minute afterward Philip and Shore-
ham were entering the highroad, waving
their handkerchiefs to her as they went.

She was now seated on the Druids'
cromlech where Philip's friend had sat,
and, with swimming eyes and smiling
lips, she watched the young men until
they were lost to view. Her eyes lin-
gered on the road long after the two had
passed ; but presently they turned toward
the sea, and thoughts began to flash
through her mind, many at once, some
new, none quite the same as had ever
come to her before. She was growing
to a new consciousness ; a new glass
through which to see life was quickly
being adjusted to her inner sight.

Her eyes wandered over the sea. How
immense it was, how mysterious ! How
it begot in one feelings both of love and
of fear ! She was not at this moment
in sympathy with its wonderful calm.
There had been times when she had
seemed of it, part of it, absorbed by it,
till it flowed over her soul and wrapped
her in a sleep of content. Now it was
different. Mystery and the million hap-
penings of life lay hidden in that far sil-
ver haze. It was on the brink of such a
sea that her mind appeared to be hover-
ing now. Nothing was defined, nothing
was clear. She was too agitated to think ;
life, being, was one wide, vague sensa-

tion, partly of delight, partly of trepida-
tion. Everything had a bright tremu-
lousness. This mystery was not dark
clouds ; it was a shaking, glittering mist ;
and yet there came from it an air which
made her pulse beat hard, her breath
come with joyous lightness.

Many a time, with her mother, she
had sat upon the shore at St. Aubin's
Bay, and looked out where white sails
fluttered like the wings of restless doves ;
then nearer, maybe just beneath her,
there had risen the keen singing of the
saw, and she could see the white flash
of the adze as it shaped the beams •,
the skeleton of a noble ship being cov-
ered with its flesh of wood, and veined
with iron ; the tall masts quivering to
their places as the workmen hauled at
the 'pulleys, singing snatches of patois
rhymes. She had seen more than one
ship launched, and a strange shiver of
pleasure and of pain had gone through
her ; for as the water caught the grace-
ful figure of the vessel, and the wind
bellied out the sails, it seemed to her as
if some* ship of her own hopes were go-
ing out between the rocks and the reefs
to the open sea. What would the ship
bring back to her ? Or would anything
ever come back ?

The books of adventure, poetry, his-
tory, and mythology she had read with
her mother had quickened her mind,
had given her intuition, had made her
temperament more sensitive — and her
heart less peaceful. She suffered the
awe of imagination, its delights and its
penalties, the occasional contempt which
it brings for one's self, the frequent dis-
dain of the world, the vicarious suffer-
ing, and the joys that pain. She was a
pipe to be played on. In her was al-
most every note of human feeling : home
and duty, song and gayety, daring and
neighborly kindness, love of sky and sea
and air and orchards, the good-smelling
earth and wholesome animal life, and
all the incidents, tragic, comic, or com-
monplace, of human existence.

Personal Impressions of Bjornson and Ibsen.

567

How wonderful love was, she thought ;
how wonderful that so many millions
who had loved had come and gone, and
yet of all they felt they had spoken no
word that laid bare the exact feeling to
her or to any other. Every one must feel
in order to know. The barbarians who
had set up these stones she sat on, they
had loved and hated, and everything they
had dared or suffered was recorded —
but where ? And who could know exact-
ly what they felt ? There again the pain
of life came to her, the universal agony,
the trying to speak, to reveal ; and the
proof, the hourly proof the wisest and
most gifted have, that what they feel
they cannot quite express, by sound, or
by color, or by the graven stone, or by
the spoken word. . . . But life was good,
ah yes, and all that might be revealed
to her she would pray for ; and Philip
— her Philip — would help her to the
revelation !

Her Philip ! Her heart gave a great
throb, for the knowledge that she was a
wife came home to her with a pleasant
shock. Her name was no longer Guida
Landresse de Landresse, but Guida
d'Avranche. She had gone from one
tribe to another ; she had been adopted,
changed. A new life was begun.

She rose, slowly made her way down
to the sea, and proceeded along the sands
and shore paths to the town.

Presently a large vessel, with new sails,
beautiful white hull, and gracious form,
came slowly round a point. She shaded
her eyes to look at it.

" Why, it 's the boat Maitre Ranulph
has launched to-day," she said. Then she
stopped suddenly. " Poor Ranulph ! poor
Ro ! " she added gently. She knew that
he cared for her, loved her. Where had
he been these two weeks past ? She had
not seen him once since that great day
when they had visited the Ecre*hos.

Gilbert Parker.

(To be continued.)

PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS OF BJORNSON AND IBSEN.

THE day I reached Christiania, on
my first visit to Norway, the city was in
a state of great excitement. There was
evidently something unusual about to
happen. All Norwegians seemed to feel
that the morrow was certain to be a mem-
orable day in the annals of their coun-
try. They realized that then a splen-
did opportunity would be given them to
show their affection for Gaml,e Norge
(Old Norway), their native land; to de-
clare once more with earnest sincerity
that they were proud of their birthright ;
and that, undivided by party strife, they
all stood ready to receive with rejoicing
a countryman of theirs, who in crowning

himself with glory had brought honor to
the land he loved. Nansen was coming
home !

King Oscar had made the journey from
Stockholm to represent the government.
But who was to put into words the long-
pent-up enthusiasm of the citizens for
this brave patriot who seemed to them
to represent Young Norway rising to
take her place among the nations of the
world ? Who, I asked, would be the
spokesman of the people at this impor-
tant festival ? And there was but one
answer : BjOrnstjerne BjOrnson was the
only name suggested. Radicals and con-
servatives alike felt that he, above all
others, was the one fitted to bear the
message of the united, exultant nation

568

Personal Impressions of Bjornson and Ibsen.

to its heroic son ; that he was sure to
find suitable words in which to express
the bold patriotism of this proud though
comparatively powerless people.

Nor were they disappointed. The
morrow rose clear and bright, and
dense crowds filled the gala - decked
streets, and poured in unending stream
beneath triumphal arches, all hastening
to the spacious square by the ancient
fortress of Akershus. An eager, expec-
tant multitude encircled the central trib-
une. Nansen had been greeted with
tremendous cheers, which had subsided
for the moment, when a tall man, of
kingly bearing, of supreme, self-confi-
dent, imposing personality, stepped for-
ward from beside him, and stood erect
as if in rapt vision gazing over the heads
of his hearers to the beautiful fir-clad
hills beyond.

A few cheers arose, but were quickly
stifled, and then, as if by magic, the whole
gathering simultaneously broke forth
into a verse of the national anthem.

It was solemn. This inspiring hymn
thrilled every soul in the vast assembly.
Never before had it seemed to express
their patriotic devotion so completely.
And he, that fine, impressive figure, who
stood now with head bowed before them,
he had written it No wonder he was
chosen with one accord to voice their
feelings on this great occasion.

Bjornson was indeed a worthy repre-
sentative. His words poured forth, so-
norous, eloquent, burdened with emotion.
The hearts of the hearers went out
toward the moving orator as much as
toward the poet, who in reality had re-
ceived the dignity of laureate from their
hands. They found his eloquence irre-
sistible. They associated him with their
beloved land whose praises he had sung ;
and even his enemies loved him.

For Bjornson has enemies. The im-
petuousness of his nature has led him
into many distressing situations, from
which he has found difficulty in extricat-
ing himself with honor. He has been

accused of stirring up unnecessary strife,
of untrustworthiness, of faithlessness to
friends. He has apparently made such
a sorry mess of his political meddlings,
has created by his hasty, impolitic utter-
ances so much ill will between Norway
and its ally and neighbor-land Sweden,
has shown such obvious inability to keep
to one consistent policy, that he has come
near undermining, at least in the cities,
the beneficent influence which in his ear-
lier years he unquestionably exercised.

Few, in truth, can escape the spell of
Bj5rnson's presence. All feel drawn at
once to the big, generous, whole-souled
man, who, without losing dignity, can
stoop to play with a little child or make
merry with congenial friends. His per-
sonality is dominating. He was never
intended to play second fiddle to anoth-
er, and he never will. He is convinced
of his superior powers of management,
and no rebuff or failure jars his self-
confidence for more than a moment.
He may suffer humiliation in one mat-
ter ; he has soon forgotten this, and is
bubbling over with enthusiasm for some
new proposal. He throws all his ener-
gies into the movement which arouses
his interest for the time ; and his advo-
cacy is always brilliant and effective, but
it is rarely constant. His friends open
their mouths in astonishment at his va-
garies, and deplore his excesses ; but they
still admire and love him. The conserva-
tive papers call him a traitor and a fool ;
they still revere and honor him. One
moment he is termed " the uncrowned
king of Norway," the next " a blunder-
ing meddler who is bringing disgrace
and dishonor to his land."

Bjornson is certainly a bundle of con-
trasts. He has led an impulsive, incon-
sequent life ; and yet no one, perhaps, in
his generation has exerted in Norway a
more powerful dominion. Especially in
the country districts is his sway supreme.

" I always think my latest book my
best," he once said to me in conversa-
tion; and no remark could be more

Personal Impressions of Bjornson and Ibsen.

569

characteristic of the man. It is his ca-
pacity of concentrating his energy, his
enthusiasm, his brilliance, upon one sub-
ject, to the exclusion of all others, that
gives force and convincing reality to his
work. He has himself a nature so many-
sided, so sympathetic and imaginative,
so truly poetic, that it is no wonder his
books are marvelous in their charm.

I remember very well the first conver-
sation I had with him after his return
from Munich, where, as often before, he
had spent the winter months. When I
came in upon him that morning, he was
clad in a long dressing-gown, and wore
cocked carelessly on one side of his
head a picturesque silk Tarn O'Shanter,
somewhat like a college cap, though of
soft material, — a headgear which ac-
corded superbly with his stalwart figure
and striking face. He welcomed me
cordially, and, introductory politeness
over, began at once to talk of America.

" I have been at Harvard," he said.
" You have so much to be proud of there
on the other side of the ocean. I am
always indignant when I observe that
the European papers print only the ex-
traordinary things which happen in the
United States. It is because of this un-
fortunate habit our papers have got into
that such erroneous ideas of America are
widespread here among us. I myself
am very fond of your land, and have
great hopes for its future. I am always
delighted when my books receive a fa-
vorable reception there."

I spoke of the presentation of his
latest drama, Over ^Evne, in Paris, and
he expressed his satisfaction with the
event. The performance had been more
effective, he thought, because his son
BjbTn, the actor, had been present to
make the arrangements in person. He
mentioned his forthcoming translations
from the verse of Victor Hugo, and ex-
plained that he was even then trying to
commit them to memory, for use in a
proposed series of public entertainments,
when he would recite them to the people,

and his daughter would accompany him
and sing.

" Then you know I have written many
political articles, of late, in various re-
views."

" Yes," I replied. " We who are most
interested in literature grudge the time
you spend in this way."

" No," said he. " I feel that I can be
most useful there. I have always been
interested in politics : but before I was
only a dreamer, and talked and wrote a
great deal of stuff ; now , however, it is
different. People are beginning to ac-
cord me the right to have a sensible
opinion on practical things, even though
I am a poet. Perhaps you have seen
what has been written about me in the
papers ? "

" To be sure," I rejoined ; " opinions
seem to be divided as to the utility of
your political articles in the Russian re-
views."

" True, true, true ! They don't under-
stand me ! " he exclaimed. " And that
is just what I can't endure, — that my
own countrymen should judge me from
the Swedish point of view." Whereupon
he stood up beside the table and made
a glowing oration on the hopes he had
for the future prosperity of his land.
" That is what so many of my country-
men will not believe I am working for.
It pains me more than anything else to
know that they pass a Swedish judg-
ment on me."

A gentle tap. The door opened, and
in came'BjOrnson's daughter, Fru Sigurd
Ibsen, — married to the only son of the
great dramatist, though I may add that
since the appearance of The League of
Youth there has been little love lost be-
tween the two fathers.

"This is my daughter, Fru Sigurd
Ibsen," he said ; and as he presented me
to her, he broke out impulsively, " Now,
there is a man you should get to know
well."

I remarked that I had once heard
Dr. Ibsen give a trial lecture on soci-

570

Personal Impressions of Bjornson and Ibsen.

ology in the university before a great
throng of people, and that I had had the
pleasure of sitting near Fru Ibsen at the
premiere of John Gabriel Borkman.

" Oh, that 's a piece I can't stand,"
interrupted BjOrnson, — " entirely pessi-
mistic and useless ; not the kind of thing
we want at all. It won't do anybody
any good."

His daughter soon withdrew, and I
ventured to express my admiration for
her beauty, which had often riveted my
attention in public gatherings where I
had seen her. His face lighted up with
evident pleasure. " She is pretty, is n't
she ? " he exclaimed. " But you ought
to see them all together, — my children.
It is splendid to see them all happy."

The conversation then turned again to
the pessimism which he thought charac-
terized too much our modern literature ;
and Bjornson was very forcible in ex-
pressing his dissatisfaction with the way
things are drifting. " Have you met a
young man here, Christian Collin ? " he
asked. I bowed in the affirmative, and
he added, " Don't you think that he is
a pioneer in a new method of criticism ?
He takes moral questions into consider-
ation, and denounces what is not calcu-
lated to do good. What we want in the
future is a literature which will make
men better."

And with these words ringing in my
ears J took my leave ; not, however, be-
fore I had received from the impulsive,
generous man a hearty invitation to visit
him, on my return in the summer, at his
beautiful country home.

Could two men be more unlike than
Bjornson and Ibsen ? BjOrnson, as we
have seen, friendly, enthusiastic, out-
spoken, exuberant, fond of his family,
interested in his fellows. Ibsen, re-
served, cold, cautious, taciturn, never
caught off his guard, always alone.
BjOrnson has been called the heart of
Norway, Ibsen its head. BjOrnson de-

lights in being the centre of an admir-
ing gathering. Ibsen abhors the curi-
ous crowd. BjOrnson has always a word
for every one ; an opinion on every
question, an eloquent speech for every
occasion. Ibsen is one of the most un-
communicative of men : he has almost
never been induced to address a meet-
ing; he avoids expressing his opinion
on any subject whatever. BjOrnson
fill's columns of the radical newspapers
at a moment's notice. Ibsen keeps his
ideas to himself, broods over them, and
produces only one book every two years,
but that as regularly as the seasons re-
turn. BjOrnson tells you all about his
plans in advance. As for Ibsen, no
one (not even his most intimate friends,
if he may be said to have such) has the
remotest idea what a forthcoming drama
is to be about. He absolutely refuses
to give the slightest hint as to the -na-
ture of the work before it is in the
hands of the booksellers, though the day
on which it is to be obtained is announced
a month ahead. Even the actors who
are to play the piece almost immediate-
ly have to await its publication.

So great has been the secrecy of the
" buttoned-up " old man (if I may be
allowed to translate literally the expres-
sive Norwegian word tUknappet, which is
so often applied to him) that the inhab-
itants of the far-off Norwegian capital,
who have, as a rule, but little to disturb
their peaceful serenity, are wrought up
to an unusual pitch of curiosity on that
day during the Christmas-tide when Ib-
sen's latest work is expected from the
Copenhagen printers. Orders have been
placed with the booksellers long in ad-
vance, and invariably the first edition is
sold before it appears. The book then
becomes the one topic of conversation
for days and weeks afterward. " What
does it mean ? " is the question on every
lip ; and frequently no answer comes.

" Why not ask Ibsen himself ? " the
foreigner suggests. A sympathetic smile
comes over the Norwegian he addresses,

Personal Impressions of Bjornson and Ibsen.

571

who replies, " You have n't been here
long ; but try it, — there he comes now."
And in the distance I saw (for I was
the innocent foreigner who, not having
then seen Ibsen, ventured to make this
thoughtless remark) a thick-set man, ra-
ther under medium height, wearing a
silk hat and frock coat, his gloves in
one hand, a closely wrapped umbrella
in the other, approach slowly with short,
gingerly steps. When he came oppo-
site us, no impulse stirred me to ask
the question, and instead I watched
him, then as often afterward, make his
way slowly down Carl Johans Gade, the
main thoroughfare of Christiania, to the
Grand Hotel, where at a fixed hour
every day he drinks his coffee in a little
room reserved for him, and reads all the
Scandinavian and German papers to be
had. Ibsen, I felt, was unapproachable.
His unwillingness to speak of his own
works is proverbial in Norway. No
man ever was so loath to say anything
regarding what he himself had written.
It is thus he shields himself from the
importunities of curious travelers and
interviewers who plague him beyond en-
durance. Once I had the pleasure of
attending a ball at the royal palace, at
which Ibsen also was present ; for, curi-
ously enough, he seems to take delight
in such festivities, where he is not ex-
pected to talk at length with any one,
and where he can move about from one
to another, greet his acquaintances, and
gather impressions. Even at court balls,
however, he is not rid of the importu-
nate ; and on this occasion it was a Ger-
man lady who received one of those
quiet rebukes to impertinence which
have given him a well-merited reputa-
tion for silent reserve. Hardly had
she been presented to him before she
broke out into expressions of enthusi-
astic admiration, and finally wound up
with the question which Ibsen has heard
so often that he is now tired of it : " Do
you mind telling me, Dr. Ibsen, what
you meant by Peer Gynt ? "

A dead silence reigned for a moment
in the little group surrounding the old
man, and I expected him to change the
subject without answering the query.
But no ; he finally raised his head,
threw back his shock of white hair, ad-
justed his glasses, looked quizzically into
the woman's eyes, and then slowly
drawled out, "Oh, my dear madam,
when I wrote Peer Gynt only our Lord
and I knew what I meant ; and as for
me, I have entirely forgotten."

I must say, however, that Ibsen al-
ways treated me very kindly when I
was in Christiania, and invited me to his
house on several occasions.

His apartment is an index to the
man's character, — most carefully ar-
ranged, everything in its proper place,
precise in the extreme. In the Italian
paintings on the walls he takes quiet
delight, and of the delicate furniture
stiffly disposed in the drawing-room he
seems to be proud. Nor is there more
disorder in his study than in his parlor.
Very few books are to be seen any-
where, and what there are seemed to
me to be more ornamental than useful.
His working-table is in the recess of a
window looking out on a crowded street,
and is not much larger than the win-
dow-sill. Ibsen does not need a large
table on which to do his work. Nearly
all he writes is the result of personal
reflection on events in his own experi-
ence, and few ideas come to him sug-
gested by the thoughts of others. His
home has not been made as happy for
him as he deserved, and not a few of
his books (among others the latest, John
Gabriel Borkman) reveal much of that
home-life which has been so important
an aid to him in generalization.

One morning when I was sitting in
his study, on the sofa (the place of honor
in Norway as in Germany), he became
delightfully talkative. He spoke free-
ly of his plays, and explained why he
thought The Emperor and the Galilean
the best and most enduring of them all.

572

Personal Impressions of Bjornson and Ibsen.

He seemed for once to be off his guard,
and expressed opinions on various sub-
jects. Suddenly he fell into a reverie.
Unwilling to interrupt it, I was forced to
listen for some time — rather uneasy, I
admit — to the passing trolley cars, which
kept up their incessant hissing in the
street below. Finally, he said slowly, al-
most unconscious of my presence, " Yes,
I have tried always to live my own life,
— and I think I have been right."

This seemed to me a self-revelation of
the man's guiding principle. No writer
in recent times has been less influenced
by the works of other men. He has de-
liberately refrained from extensive read-
ing, and has kept himself from under
the sway of dominating personalities, an-
cient or modern. He does not under-
stand a word of English or French when
spoken, and can scarcely read even a
newspaper article in either language.
The assertion commonly made until late-
ly, that he has been much influenced by
French authors, is the veriest nonsense ;
he hardly knew of their existence.

He has narrated in charming verse
the ancient stories of the land of the
viking chieftains, but the old Norse sa-
gas in their original form he has never
examined. He has devoted his life al-
most exclusively to the drama, and has
made himself, as I believe, incomparably
the leading dramatist of his time ; but
even of Shakespeare, the greatest of all
play-writers, he knows practically no-
thing, and those of his works with which
he is acquainted he has read in a Danish
translation. He seemed reluctant to ac-
cept my assurance that Shakespeare is
still enjoyed by theatre - goers in both
England and America.

Indeed, his self-devotion seems almost
to have blinded his eyes to merit in
others. Very rarely is he betrayed into
making criticisms on other men. If he
has conceit, he seldom reveals it. But
I have noticed that sometimes his preju-
dices amount almost to intolerance. We
happened once to speak of Goethe, when

he shrugged his shoulders and said that
he did not think much of anything Goethe
had produced. I suggested that the First
Part of Faust was a masterpiece. " Yes,
that is the best," he agreed, "but" —
" Is there anything better in German ? "
I queried. " Oh no, nothing better in
German," he replied; but after a mo-
ment's hesitation he changed the subject
abruptly. Of English and French liter-
ature he knows practically nothing ; of
German, the only foreign literature with
which he is at all familiar, he is unwill-
ing to speak in admiration.

This may be a weakness, but it is the
result of his theories of life, or rather,
of the peculiar circumstances of the life
he himself has been forced to lead. He
is content to live within himself, and
refrains from blaming as much as from
praising others. It is possible, indeed,
that this ignoring of the works of other
writers may even have contributed to
make Ibsen what he is, one of the most
original authors of the century, the ac-
knowledged leader of a new movement
which has affected creative effort in al-
most every European land. It would, of
course, be a misfortune if many followed
his example with respect to lonely insu-
larity. But we dare not criticise in the
case of the master : his plan has permit-
ted the fruition of his genius.

Deliberately he decided years ago to
live his own life, to develop his own per-
sonality, to stand independent and ex-
press what he himself thought, unaffected
by the opinions of his fellows. And this
note resounds throughout his works : let
every man, he teaches, make the most
of the talents God has given him, strive
to develop to their full the peculiar pow-
ers with which he has been endowed,
so that dull uniformity shall cease, and
curbing conventionality no longer check
the advance of mankind.

Such feelings, occasioned, perhaps, by
the circumstances of his domestic life
from early boyhood, made Ibsen deter-
mine to live an isolated life. He has

The Contributors' Club.

573

been faithful to his purpose, and now in
his triumphant old age, on this 20th of
March, his seventieth birthday, when all
his countrymen, with hosts of others, are
ready to bow to him in grateful admira-
tion, he inhabits glory in solitude, self-
centred and alone.

Yet there is something inspiring in
such a picture. The poor apothecary
boy in a tiny country village, hopelessly

remote from the great centres of litera-
ry endeavor, has risen by the sheer force
of indomitable will and by unswerving
fixity of purpose to be perhaps the great-
est writer his land has ever known ; the
one Norwegian in this century who, above
all others, has succeeded in influencing
profoundly the thoughts of men far, far
beyond the confines of that wild but glo-
rious land which gave him birth.

William Henry Schofield.

THE CONTRIBUTORS' CLUB.

I HAVE just finished reading a volume
Detective °^ French stories, avowedly
Stories. o£ an impOSsible character, —
contes incroyables. One or two of them
are what we generally call detective
stories. The author speaks of two well-
known tales of Poe (whose name French-
men see fit to write Poe), The Murders
in the Rue Morgue and The Purloined
Letter, as if they had been models to him.

In the introduction to the former of
these stories, Poe has a great deal to
say about analytic power, skill in solv-
ing a mystery from following up indi-
cations : and such is indeed the art or
science of the actual " detective." But
in reading the whole mass of detective
stories, it is amusing to reflect that they
exhibit none of this analytic, this unfold-
ing art at all. Their art, such as it is,
is purely synthetic or constructive. The
author has the solution of his own mys-
tery all in his mind ; he knows perfectly
well who is the murderer ; he then pro-
ceeds carefully to cover up his own
tracks, and, having got them into the re-
quisite state of concealment, elaborately
to withdraw his own veils. Much skill
is often shown in the selection of circum-
stances which are to lead to the desired
solution ; but art in solving the mystery
there is none, for to the author it was no
mystery from the beginning.

The real way to write a detective story
would be this : Let one writer of fiction
conceive a criminal situation, and sur-
round the corpus delicti with as many
events and circumstances, slight or pro-
minent, as he sees fit. In this work, as
far as possible, he must keep his murder,
his forgery, or his abduction a mystery to
himself. Let another writer, not in co-
operation with the first, work out a com-
plete solution, accounting for every cir-
cumstance, and introducing no new ones
at all inconsistent with the asserted facts.
The interest might be prolonged by call-
ing on the original author to criticise
the offered solution, with reference not
to any theory in his own mind, but sole-
ly to the situation as he originally drew it.
Of course he will have been bound ori-
ginally by no restriction as to what this
is to be, except that he must not create
a purely physical impossibility ; his per-
sonages must not be described as being in
two places at once.

After author number one has written
his critique, author number two will be
invited to defend and develop his solu-
tion. If not, the fiction passes into the
realm of unsolved mysteries, — 'common
enough in real detective history.

A certain society at college once held
a mock trial, — a classmate was tried for
the murder of a tutor. The counsel for

574

The, Contributors' Club.

the prosecution were obliged to submit
the incriminating circumstances, as de-
vised by them, to the counsel for the pris-
oner, who were at liberty to present any
testimony they liked in their case ; six
witnesses only being called on each side.
The prisoner's counsel met the prosecu-
tion at nearly every point ; in fact, they
confined themselves so rigidly to this task
that they entirely forgot to make their
evidence amusing, and the succession of
laughs which greeted every step in the
witty case of the prosecution almost
wholly failed as we heard the sadly seri-
ous if close reply. Yet at the last they
left one circumstance unexplained, which,
though slight, told heavily against the ac-
cused. But the detective, whether in
fact or in fiction, must leave nothing un-
accounted for which concerns his solu-
tion of the mystery.

It may be remarked that Poe, in
The Purloined Letter, makes C. Au-
guste Dupin (the prototype of Sherlock
Holmes) see both the seal and the ad-
dress of the letter at once, while it is
stuffed in a cardboard rack several feet
from where he is sitting, and when, as
he himself says, to rise and take it in his
hand would have been fatal.

APROPOS of the interminable Bacon-
Why virril Shakespeare controversy there

did not write may be interest for the curi-
the JEneid. * .

ous and combative in the in-
genious case made out by Pere Jean
Hardouin, a seventeenth-century Jesuit
scholar, to prove that Virgil did not
write the ^Eneid. It may be added that
he succeeds as well as do the Baconians.
Pere Hardouin's theory is preserved
in a book entitled Pseudo-Virgilius, Ob-
servationes in .(Eneiden. The author be-
gins by saying that it never entered the
head of Virgil to write the JEneid. He
had considered the idea of writing a
poem, after finishing the Georgics, in
praise of the achievements of Augustus,
but not of those of ^Eneas. The evidence
of this intention may be found in the
third Georgic, verse 46. This Georgic

was written Anno Urbis 735, while Au-
gustus was campaigning on the Euphra-
tes. The ^Eneid could not have been
written before this, because Virgil speaks
of his intention to write an epic poem.
But Virgil died, according to Pliny, Anno
Urbis 740. Can any one believe that
he wrote the ^Eneid in the space of five
years ? The shortest time within which
the jEneid could have been written is
estimated at twelve years, — one year for
each book : is it to be believed that Vir-
gil accomplished the task in five years,
when, too, he was in failing health ?
Again, could any one believe that Virgil
would change his mind, break his pro-
mise to Augustus, and write during the
lifetime of that prince a poem in honor
of another person ?

If Virgil had written the JEneid, he
would not have selected Marcellus for
his highest praises. Marcellus was only
the nephew of Augustus ; and, moreover,
he was dead. Caius Caesar, the grand-
child of Augustus, was yet alive. Is it
not far more probable that Virgil should
have chosen the living grandson of Au-
gustus as the one to laud, rather than the
dead nephew ? — more especially as there
had been times when Augustus suspected
the fidelity of Marcellus. Yet there is
not a word about Caius in the ,ZEneid
from beginning to end.

Both Horace and Pliny, at various
times, mention the carmina of Virgil ;
but all commentators agree that the
Georgics or Bucolics are referred to,
and that the words do not apply to the
jEneid. There is nothing in either wri-
ter's works about the JEneid. Is it pos-
sible to believe that, if this poem had ex-
isted in their time, they would not have
ref erred to it ?

The poem contains internal evidence
that it could not have been written in the
time of Augustus, by Virgil. In several
places the author teaches the doctrine
of metempsychosis ; but Virgil, in the
Georgics, condemns and rejects that doc-
trine. In the Georgics the leadership

The Contributors' Club.

575

of the Trojan immigrants into Italy is
correctly ascribed to Tithonus ; but the
author of the ^Eneid gives that honor to
JEneas. Certainly, the author of the
Georgics and the author of the jfEneid
could not have been the same person.

If the ^Eneid had been published in
Pliny's time, — and it must have been,
if Virgil wrote it, — Pliny would not
have failed to notice and correct two se-
rious blunders in natural history : first,
the author puts bears and deer in north-
ern Africa so near the seacoast as to be
visible from a ship ; and again, he speaks
of the seed, calyx, and flower of the dio-
tarnum, which plant has neither seed,
calyx, nor flower.

If the .ZEneid had been written by Vir-
gil, Latinus would not have been por-
trayed tearing his garments for grief ;
for rending the garments in sign of grief
was a Jewish and not a Roman or Tro-
jan custom. Nor would Virgil have de-
scribed any prince as wearing a crown ;
he would have used the word " diadem."
The word "crown" (corona) was not
used in that sense until long after Vir-
gil's tune.

If Virgil had written the ^Eneid, he
would have described different ceremo-
nies ; for the ceremonies performed by
priest and king, as recounted in that
poem, are plainly drawn from the Chris-
tian Church, and belong to later times.
Besides, the poem is so full of Galli-
cisms as to furnish a sufficient reason in
that fact alone, if there were no other,
for believing that its author could not
have been a Roman of the time of Au-
gustus. It is plain to see that the poem
was born in a Gallic mind. This ap-
pears from the -<Eneid itself : see I. 296,
IV. 229, and X. 166. Indeed, it is im-
possible to resist the conclusion that it
was composed after the year 1230 of our
era.

The JEneid is a religious allegory. In
it everything occurs and exists by and
in subjection to the will of God. This
the poet calls Fate. It is above the de-

crees of Jupiter, and all the gods yield
obedience to it. The action of the poem
includes the victory of the Christian re-
ligion over the Mosaic and heathen reli-
gions ; the introduction of Christianity
into Italy and Europe ; its growth and
development ; the rise to supremacy of
the Holy See ; the wars with the Turks
and Infidels ; the gradual pacification of
the world as men and nations acknow-
ledged the power and authority of the
Church ; and the final triumph, when
wars should cease, dissensions should
come to an end, and the Holy Pontiff
should rule over a peaceful, prosperous,
happy, and pious world.

The author did not dare to treat these
things openly. He wrote them after the
manner of a fable, but the real intent
and meaning are not so darkly hidden
as to be indistinguishable. The Trojans
were the Christians ; the burning of Troy
was the destruction of Jerusalem ; the
coming of the Trojans into Italy was
the spread of Christianity over Europe ;
./Eneas was Christ ; the various adven-
tures of the Trojans were the early strug-
gles of the Church ; Turnus stood for the
Turks, battles with him for the crusades,
etc.

Following this interpretation there are
many pages of quotations, in which Har-
douin presents what he considers to be
ample proof of all his allegations. And
it is to be remembered that Hardouin
was a man of great intellectual power and
erudition. His illustrious contemporary,
Louis Dupin, the French ecclesiastical
historian, places him among the most
learned of his order.

His Pseudo-Virgilius was written in
Latin, and, I believe, has never^appeared
in any other language.

I WONDER whether other people get
Can a Clergy- ^ rom tne contemplation of
Qood^Fei-* clergymen in the haunts of
low " ? the laity the slightly pathetic
impression made on me ? I hope I am
not an unduly worldly man, and I am
far from being a man of the world, my

576

The Contributors' Club.

contact with it being both limited and
modest. I am sure that I have a lively
sympathy with the general motives of
clergymen, and a deep and rather tender
respect for the peculiar virtues manifest-
ed by most of those whom I have the
good fortune to know at all well. I meet
them with some frequency where duty
or pleasure calls them, except in their
churches, which, for various reasons, I
have for a long time failed to attend. I
am more or less associated with them on
committees, and have worked with them
in the charities to which they devote so
much of their energy. I have the plea-
sure of a certain social round in common
with some of them, and they are numer-
ous in my club, where they constitute
a considerable element, and what may
be called a varied assortment. My ac-
quaintance ranges from dignitaries of the
Catholic Church (both the Roman and
the other) through most of the grades
of seclusive and inclusive beliefs to the
apostles of Ethical Culture.

From all but a very few of them I
get the impression I have described as
slightly pathetic. I do not know exactly
whence it comes. I think that they are
not themselves conscious of producing it.
Some might resent the suggestion of it,
though there are some of them with
whom I should not hesitate to discuss it.
It is with me a sense that they are ex-
posed to a certain unflattering view of
their words and acts and motives, not
detected by them in their companions,
but plain to me ; it is sometimes amus-
ing, it is more often painful. This is
most likely to be seen in their moments
of relaxation. A clergyman in a com-
pany where wit follows wine, and both
— quite within conventional bounds —
flow with the discreet freedom that is

their common charm ; or at a billiard-
table, though an eminent judge may hold
the rival cue ; or in the gay excitement
of the athletic games that are the delight
and gain of modern society, is at a vague
but real disadvantage. If he win the
verdict that he is " a good fellow," — and
that we should all like to win, and ought
to like it, — it is apt to be qualified by
" for a clergyman." In the merry give-
and-take of the talk in such surround-
ings, he is, in a sense, the victim of his
calling. He is spared the keenest thrusts
of others ; his own lack the inspiration
of equal contest. It may not be too much
to say that by a common and wholly
amiable impulse he is generally — just
a little — patronized. And this attitude
of mind toward him I have noticed in
graver circumstances, in nearly all not
directly connected with his particular
branch of religious activities.

Thirty years ago, if my memory serves,
this was not so, and certainly not in the
same degree, — possibly because at that
time clergymen as a class confined them-
selves within narrower limits, where their
relations were more clearly defined, and
where they enjoyed a fairly recognized
authority. The present state of things
may be due to an imperfect adjustment
to the changes that have taken place. I
do not at all dispute the wholesomeness
of the changes. I am as far as any one
can be from regretting that the capital of
character and high motive with which I
believe the clergy, as a class, to be more
richly endowed than any other class, has,
so to speak, found an investment wider
and more variedly productive. But I
sometimes speculate as to what the com-
plex result may be when my clergyman
becomes, without qualification, expressed
or implied, " a good fellow."

From a. Copley Print.
Copyright i8qb By Curtis & Cameron

HISTORY

A Detail from a Mosaic, by Frederic Dielman in the Library of Congress,
Washington,— from a COPLEY PRINT. These COPLEY PRINTS
are commended by artists as one of the really important achievements in
reproductive art. The subjects include the Notable Paintings and Mural
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reader of The Atlantic is invited to send for new 1898 ILLUSTRATED
CATALOGUE — ten cents in stamps.
CURTIS & CAMERON, Publishers, 20 Pierce Building, Boston.

THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY:

of Literature,, ^ctence3 art, ana

VOL. LXXXI. — MA Y, 1898. — No. GCCCLXXXVIL

INTERNATIONAL ISOLATION OF THE UNITED STATES.1

THE "Civic duties," Mr. President,
upon which I have the honor of being
asked to address you this evening, are
doubtless those which attach to Ameri-
can citizens in their private capacities.
Those duties are both many and diverse.
There are those which are due to a town
or city, there are others which are due
to a particular state or commonwealth,
there are others which are due in re-
spect of the nation at large. As my
invitation here was coupled with a sug-
gestion that I speak to some theme con-
nected with my experience in the public
service, I shall ask your attention to a
subject related to national affairs and in
particular to the national foreign policy.
It may cross your minds, perhaps, that
the foreign relations of the government
are about the last things upon which the
private citizen can exert himself to ad-
vantage— and so far as specific cases and
particular occasions are concerned, the
thought is an entirely just one. Those
cases and those occasions must necessari-
ly be left to the discretion of the admin-
istration in power, which, as alone pos-
sessed of all the material facts, is alone
qualified to deal with them. But, though
the instances for their application must
be dealt with by the constituted authori-
ties, there is nothing in the principles of
foreign policy which is secret, or unknow-
able, or which justifies their not being un-
derstood. Domestic policy concerns more
nearly a greater number of persons and

1 Address delivered at Sanders Theatre, Har-
vard College, March 2, 1898.

is therefore more likely to be generally
investigated and apprehended. Domestic
policy and foreign policy, however, touch
at innumerable points, and the more the
latter is likely to be overlooked by the
public at large, the greater the importance
that it should be carefully studied by the
more thoughtful portion of the commu-
nity. The private citizen can influence
it, of course, and should as far as he
can, by his action at the polls. But no
citizen does his whole duty upon a pub-
lic question merely by his vote even if
he votes right, and when the issue pre-
sented relates to a" great principle of for-
eign policy, his vote is probably the least
potent of the weapons at his command.
In a free country, the real ruler i-n the
long run is found to be public opinion
— those who apparently fill the seats of
power are simply the registers of its
edicts — and he who would most thor-
oughly fulfill the obligations of citizen-
ship either generally or as regards any
particular juncture or subject-matter must
organize and bring to bear enlightened
public opinion — by private or public
speech, through the press, or through the
other various channels appropriate to
that end. Perhaps the importance of
such enlightened public opinion as well
as the lamentable absence of it was never
more strikingly demonstrated than by the
circumstances attending what has come
to be known as the Venezuela Boundary
incident. On the one hand, there was
the great mass of the people enthusias-
tically indorsing the stand of the govern-

578

International Isolation of the United States.

ment — yet at the same time only most
dimly and imperfectly comprehending
what the government had done or why it
hail done it. On the other hand, among
the natural and proper and would -he
leaders of public sentiment, there were
many equally hot against the govern-
ment ; who continued to denounce it long
after the British prime minister had ad-
mitted the government to be acting with-
in its right and in accord witli its tradi-
tional policy ; and who, in some instances,
when the American contention had be-
come wholly successful, could think of
nothing better to say than that the Brit-
ish were a pusillanimous set after all.
Surely, whoever was right or whoever
wrong, whether there was error in point
of substance or in point of form or no
error at all, whatever the merits or what-
ever the outcome, as an exhibition of
current comprehension of the foreign re-
lations of the country, the spectacle pre-
sented was by no means edifying. The
moral is obvious and the lesson is clear —
the foreign policy of the country is one
of the things a citizen* should study and
understand and aim to have studied and
understood by the community generally
— and I therefore do not hesitate to in-
vite you to consider for a few moments a
feature of our foreign policy which may
be described as the " international isola-
tion of the United States."

Whal is meant by the phrase " inter-
national isolation " as thus used is this.
The United States is certainly now en-
titled to rank among the great Powers
of the world. Yet, while its place among
the nations is assured, it purposely takes
its stand outside the European family
circle to which it belongs, and neither
accepts the responsibilities of its place
nor secures its advantages. It avowedly
restricts its activities to the American
continents and intentionally assumes an
attitude of absolute aloofness to every-
thing outside those continents. This rule
of policy is not infrequently associated
with another which is known as the Mon-

roe doctrine — as if the former grew
out of the Monroe doctrine or were, in
a sense, a kind of consideration for that
doctrine, or a sort of complement to
it. In reality the rule of isolation origi-
nated and was applied many years be-
fore the Monroe doctrine was proclaimed.
No doubt consistency requires that the
conduct toward America which America
expects of Europe should be observed by
America toward Europe. Nor is there
any more doubt that such reciprocal con-
duct is required of us not only by con-
sistency but by both principle and expe-
diency. The vital feature of the Monroe
doctrine is that no European Power shall
forcibly possess itself of American soil
and forcibly control the political fortunes
and destinies of its people. Assuredly
America can have no difficulty in gov-
erning its behavior toward Europe on
the same lines.

Tradition and precedent are a potent
force in the New World as well as in
the Old and dominate the counsels of
modern democracies as well as those of
ancient monarchies. The rule of inter-
national isolation for America was for-
mulated by Washington, was embalmed
in the earnest and solemn periods of the
Farewell Address, and has come down
to succeeding generations with all the
immense prestige attaching to the in-
junctions of the Father of his Country
and of the statesmen and soldiers who,
having first aided him to free llie peo-
ple of thirteen independent communities,
then joined him in the even greater task
of welding the incoherent mass into one
united nation. The Washington rule, in
the sense in which it has been commonly
understood and actually applied, could
hardly have been adhered to more faith-
fully if it had formed part of the text of
the Constitution. But there can be no
question that such common understand-
ing and practical application have given
an extension to the rule quite in excess
of its terms as well as of its true spirit
and meaning. Washington conveyed his

International Isolation of the United /States.

579

celebrated warning to his countrymen in
these words : —

" The great rule of conduct for us in
regard to foreign nations is, in extend-
ing our commercial relations, to have
with them as little political connection
as possible. . . .

" Europe has a set of pi-imary inter-
ests which to us have none or a veiy
remote relation. Hence she must be
engaged in frequent controversies the
causes of which are essentially foreign
to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it
must be un \vise in us to implicate our-
selves by artificial ties in the ordinary
vicissitudes of her politics or the ordi-
nary combinations and collisions of her
friendships or enmities.

" Our detached and distant situation
invites and enables us to pursue a dif-
ferent course. . . .

" Why forego the advantages of so
peculiar a situation ? Why quit our own
to stand upon foreign ground ? Why,
by interweaving our destiny with that of
any part of Europe, entangle our peace
and prosperity in the toils of European
ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or
caprice ?

" It is our true policy to steer clear
of permanent alliances with any portion
of the foreign world ; . . .

" Taking care always to keep our-
selves by suitable establishments on a
respectable defensive posture, we may
safely trust to temporary alliances for
extraordinary emergencies."

Now what is it that these utterances
enjoin us not to do ? What rule of ab-
stinence do they lay down for this coun-
try ? The rule is stated with entire ex-
plicitness. It is that this country shall
not participate in the ordinary vicissi-
tudes of European politics and shall
not make a permanent alliance with any
foreign power. It is coupled with the
express declaration that extraordinary
emergencies may arise to which the rule
does not apply, and that when they do
arise temporary alliances with foreign

powers may be properly resorted to.
Further, not only are proper exceptions
to the rule explicitly recognized, but its
author, with characteristic caution and
wisdom, carefully limits the field which
it covers by bounds which in practice
are either accidentally or intentionally
disregarded. For example, it cannot be
intermeddling with the current course of
European politics to protect American
citizens and American interests wherever
in the world they may need such protec-
tion. It cannot be such intermeddling
to guard our trade and commerce and
to see to it that its natural development
is not fraudulently or forcibly or unfair-
ly arrested. It is as open to America
as to Europe to undertake the coloniza-
tion of uninhabited and unappropriated
portions of the globe, and if the United
States were to enter upon such a policy,
it would not be implicating ourselves in
the ordinary vicissitudes of European pol-
itics. In short, the rule of the Farewell
Address does not include many important
subjects-matter its application to which
is commonly taken for granted, and does
not excuse the inaction of this govern-
ment in many classes of cases in which
the rule is pleaded as a sufficient justifi-
cation. Take, for instance, the case of
American missions and American mis-
sionaries in Turkey, and assume for pre-
sent purposes that missionaries have been
maltreated and their property destroyed
under circumstances which call upon
Turkey to make reparation. The duty
of government to exact the reparation
is clear — it can be exonerated from its
discharge only by some invincible obsta-
cle, such, for example, as the concert of
Europe. Suppose that concert did not
exist or were broken, and that by join-
ing hands with some competent Power,
having perhaps similar grievances, the
government could assert its rights and
could obtain redress for American citi-
zens. Does the rule of the Farewell Ad-
dress inhibit such an alliance in such a
case for such a purpose ? Nothing can

580

International Isolation of the United States.

be clearer than that it does not. To
protect American citizens wherever they
lawfully are, instead of being an imper-
tinent intrusion into foreign politics, is
to accomplish one of the chief ends for
which the national government is insti-
tuted — and if the government can do
its duty with an ally where it must fail
without, and even if it can more secure-
ly and efficiently do that duty with an
ally than it can without, it would be
not merely folly, but recreancy as well,
not to make the alliance. Again, for
another imaginary case, let us go to the
newspapers — for pure imaginings, you
will readily agree, there is nothing like
them. But a few weeks ago they had
all the leading Powers of Europe retali-
ating for the Dingley tariff by an im-
mense combination against American
trade — a subject from which their at-
tention was soon diverted by their dis-
covery of a conspiracy among those same
Powers for the partition of China. Sup-
pose by some extraordinary, almost mi-
raculous accident the newspapers had
guessed right in both cases, and that it
were now true not only that China is to
be divided up among certain European
states but that those states propose and
are likely, by all sorts of vexatious and
discriminating duties and impositions, to
utterly ruin the trade between China and
this country. Does the rule of the Fare-
well Address apply to such a case ? Are
the interests involved what Washington
describes as the primary interests of Eu-
rope and would resistance to the threat-
ened injury be participation in the ordi-
nary vicissitudes of European politics?
These questions can be answered in but
one way, and nothing can be plainer
than that the right and duty of such
resistance would be limited only by the
want of power to make the resistance ef-
fectual and by its cost as compared with
the loss from non-resistance. Doubtless,
whatever our rights, it would be folly
to contend against a united Europe.
Doubtless also, as we fence out all the

world from our own home markets, we
ought not to count upon finding any
nation to aid us in making the trade
with China open to us as to all other
nations on equal terms. It is conceiv-
able, however, that such an ally might
be found, and if it were found and the
alliance were reasonably sure to attain
the desired end at not disproportionate
cost, there could not be two opinions as
to its propriety. An illustration drawn
from actual facts may be more impres-
sive than any founded upon the conjec-
tures of press correspondents. In 1884,
most, if not all of the Powers of Europe
being then engaged in extending their
sovereignty over portions of the African
continent, Germany and France cooper-
ated in calling a general Conference at
Berlin, and among the Powers invited
included the United States, partly no-
doubt because of our peculiar relation to
the Republic of Liberia and partly be-
cause ot our present and prospective in-
terest in trade with Africa. The de-
clai-ed objects of the Conference were
briefly, first, freedom of commerce at the
mouth and in the valley of the Congo;
second, free navigation of the Congo and
Niger rivers ; and third, definition of the
characteristics of an effective occupation
of territory — it being understood that
each Power reserved the -right to ratify
or not to ratify the results of the Con-
ference. Our government, finding no-
thing in the objects of the Conference
that was not laudable, accepted the1 invi-
tation. The Conference took place, this
country being represented by our minis-
ter to Germany, who acquitted himself
with distinguished ability. Indeed, not
only did the Conference accomplish the
general purposes named in the invita-
tions to it, but, owing to the special ini-
tiative of the United States minister, the
area of territory covered was largely ex-
tended, propositions were adopted for
the neutralization of the region in case of
war between the Powers interested and
for mediation and arbitration between

International Isolation of the United States.

581

them before an appeal to arms, and in-
stead of taking the form of a treaty the
results of the Conference were embodied
in a declaration called the '• General
Act of the Berlin Conference." Never-
theless, though signed by all the other
parties to the Conference, and though we
are so largely responsible for its provi-
sions, the Act still remains without the
signature of the United States. It was
antagonized by resolutions in the House
of Representatives because of its sup-
posed conflict with the rule of the Fare-
well Address. It has never been sub-
mitted to the Senate on the hypothesis
that it engages us " to share in the ob-
ligation of enforcing neutrality in the
remote valley of the Congo " — an hy-
pothesis which, if well founded, might
properly be considered as making the
arrangement an improvident one for the
United States. So long as the United
States is without territory in the region
covered by the Berlin Act, its guaranty
of the neutrality of the territory of any
other Power would seem to lack the ele-
ment of reciprocal benefit. But in no
event can the Berlin Act be fairly brought
within the rule of the Farewell Address,
and if the Act does not bear the interpre-
tation put upon it as respects the guar-
anty of the neutrality of territory, or if
we should hereafter found a colony, a
second Liberia for example, in the Con-
go region, the signing of the Act by the
United States would violate no estab-
lished principle of our foreign policy,
would be justified by our interests, and
would be demanded on the simple grounds
that the United States should not hesi-
tate to bind itself by a compact it had
not hesitated to share in making, and
should not enjoy the fruits of a trans-
action without rendering the expected
consideration.

The Washington rule of isolation,
then, proves on examination to have a
much narrower scope than the general-
ly accepted versions give to it. Those
versions of it may and undoubtedly do

find countenance in loose and general
and unconsidered statements of public
men both of the Washington era and
of later times. Nevertheless it is the
rule of Washington, and not that of any
other man or men, that is authoritative
with the American people, so that the
inquiry what were Washington's reasons
for the rule and how far those reasons
are applicable to the facts of the present
day is both pertinent and important.
Washington states his reasons with sin-
gular clearness and force. " This na-
tion," he says in substance, " is young
and weak. Its remote and detached
geographical situation exempts it from
any necessary or natural connection with
the ordinary politics or quarrels of Eu-
ropean states. Let it therefore stand
aloof from such politics and such quar-
rels and avoid any alliances that might
connect it with them. This the nation
should do that it may gain time — that
the country may have peace during such
period as is necessary to enable it to set-
tle and mature its institutions and to
reach without interruption that degree
of strength and consistency which will
give it the command of its own for-
tunes." Such is the whole theory of the
Washington rule of isolation. Its sim-
ple statement shows that the consider-
ations justifying the rule to his mind
can no longer be urged in support of it.
Time has been gained — our institutions
are proven to have a stability and to
work with a success exceeding all ex-
pectation — and though the nation is still
young, it has long since ceased to be
feeble or to lack the power to command
its own fortunes. It is just as true that
the achievements of modern science have
annihilated the time and space that once
separated the Old World from the New.
In these days of telephones and railroads
and ocean cables and ocean steamships,
it is difficult to realize that Washington
could write to the French Ambassador
at London in 1790, " We at this great
distance from the northern parts of En-

582

International Isolation of the United States.

rope hear of wars and rumors of wars
as if they were the events or reports of
another planet." It was an ever pre-
sent fact to his mind, of course, and is
of the first importance in connection with
this subject, that notwithstanding our re-
moteness from Europe, not merely one,
as now, but three of the great Powers of
Europe had large adjoining possessions
on this continent — a feature of the sit-
uation so vital and so menacing in the
eyes of the statesmen of that day as to
force Jefferson to buy Louisiana despite
the national poverty and despite plausi-
ble, if not conclusive, constitutional ob-
jections. Nothing can be more obvious,
therefore, than that the conditions for
which Washington made his rule no
longer exist. The logical, if not the ne-
cessary result is that the rule itself should
now be considered as non-existent also.
Washington himself, it is believed, had
no doubt and made no mistake upon
that point. That he was of opinion
that the regimen suitable to the strug-
gling infancy of the nation would be
adapted to its lusty manhood is unsup-
ported by a particle of evidence. On
the contrary, there is authority of the
highest character for the statement that
he entertained an exactly opposite view
and " thought a time might come, when,
our institutions being firmly consolidated
and working with complete success, we
might safely and perhaps beneficially
take part in the consultations held by
foreign states for the common advantage
of the nations." Without further elab-
oration of the argument in favor of the
position that the rule of the Farewell
Address cannot be regarded as applica-
ble to present conditions — an argument,
which might be protracted indefinitely
— the inquiry at once arising is, What
follows ? What are the consequences if
the argument be assumed to be sound ?
Let us begin by realizing that certain
results which at first blush might be ap-
prehended as dangerous do not necessa-
rily follow and are not likely to follow.

It is a mistake to suppose, for exam-
ple, that if the doctrine of the Farewell
Address had never been formally pro-
mulgated or if it were now to be deemed
no longer extant, the United States
would have heretofore embroiled itself or
would now proceed to embroil itself in
all sorts of controversies with foreign
nations. We are now, as always-, under
the restraint of the principles of inter-
national law, which bid us respect the
sovereignty of every other nation and
forbid our intermeddling in its internal
affairs. The dynastic disputes of Eu-
ropean countries have been, arid would
still be, of no possible practical concern
to us. We covet no portion of Euro-
pean soil, and, if we had it, should be
at a loss what to do with it. And it
may be taken for granted with reason-
able certainty that no Executive and Sen-
ate are likely to bind us to any foreign
Power by such an alliance as Washing-
ton deprecated — by a permanent alli-
ance, that is, offensive and defensive,
and for all purposes of war as well as
peace. The temptation sufficient to in-
duce any administration to propose such
a partnership is hardly conceivable —
while an attempt to bring it about would
irretrievably ruin the men or the party
committed to it, and would as certainly
be frustrated by that reserve of good
sense and practical wisdom which in the
last resort the American people never
fail to bring to bear upon public affairs.

On these grounds, it is possible to re-
gard the isolation rule under consider-
ation as having outlived its usefulness
without exposing ourselves to any seri-
ous hazards. But it is to be and should
be so regarded on affirmative grounds —
because the continuance of its supposed
authoritativeness is hurtful in its ten-
dency — hurtful in many directions and
to large interests. To begin with, it is
necessarily unfortunate and injurious, in
various occult as well as open ways,
that a maxim stripped by time and
events of its original virtue should con-

International Isolation of the United States.

583

tinue current in the community under
the guise of a living rule of action. The
greater the prestige of such a maxim by
reason of its age or its origin, the greater
the mischief. Human affairs take their
shape and color hardly more from rea-
son and selfish interest than from imagi-
nation and sentiment. A rule of policy
originating with Washington, preemi-
nently wise for his epoch, ever since
taught in schools, lauded on the platform,
preached in the pulpit, and displayed
in capitals and italics in innumerable
political manuals and popular histories,
almost becomes part of the mental con-
stitution of the generations to which it
descends. They accept it without know-
ing why and they act upon it without the
least regard to their wholly new environ-
ment.

The practical results of such an in-
grained habit of thought, and of the at-
tempt to govern one set of circumstances
by a rule made for another totally un-
like, are as unfortunate as might be
expected, and might be illustrated quite
indefinitely^ The example most deserv-
ing of attention, however, is found in the
commercial policy of the government.
What Washington favored was political
isolation, not commercial. Indeed he
favored the former with a view to its
effect in promoting and extending com-
mercial relations with all the world.
Yet contrary to the design of its author,
the Washington rule of isolation has un-
questionably done much to fasten upon
the country protectionism in its most
extreme form. Washington and his co-
adjutors in the work of laying the foun-
dations of this government contemplated
protection only as incident to revenue.
Our first really protective tariff was that
of 1816 and was the direct result of Eu-
ropean wars which put us in a position
of complete isolation, both political and
commercial. As we would take sides nei-
ther with France nor with England, both
harried our sea-going commerce at will,
while the Jeffersonian embargo put the

finishing touches to its destruction by
shutting up our vessels in our own ports
so as to keep them out of harm's way.
During this period of thorough isolation
— which lasted some seven years and
ended only with the close of the war of
1812 — our manufacturing industries re-
ceived an extraordinary stimulus. Wool-
en mills, cotton mills, glass works, foun-
dries, potteries, and other industrial es-
tablishments of various sorts " sprang
up," to use the figure of a distinguished
author, " like mushrooms." When the
advent of peace broke down the dam be-
hind which British stocks had been accu-
mulating, the country was flooded with
them, and our manufacturers found them-
selves everywhere undersold. In this sit-
uation, and upon the plea of nourishing
infant industries, the tariff act of 1816
originated and what is called the " Amer-
ican system " had its birth. Never since
abandoned in principle though from time
to time subjected to more or less impor-
tant modifications of detail, that system
found in the civil war a plausible if not a
sufficient excuse for both greatly enlar-
ging and intensifying its action, and has
now reached its highest development in
the tariff legislation of last year. How
largely the protective theory and spirit
have been encouraged by the Washington
rule of political isolation as generally ac-
cepted and practiced is plain. Political
isolation may in a special case coexist
with entire freedom of commercial inter-
course — as where a country is weak and
small and its resources, natural and arti-
ficial, are too insignificant to excite jeal-
ousy. Such was the case with the United
States immediately after the war of in-
dependence, when its inhabited territory
consisted of a strip of Atlantic seaboard
and its people numbered less than four
million souls. But a policy of political
isolation for a continental Power, rapid-
ly rising in population, wealth, and all the
elements of strength, and able to cope
with the foremost in the struggle for the
trade of the world, naturally fosters, if it

584

International Isolation of the United States.

does not entail, a policy of commercial
isolation also. The two policies are nat-
urally allied in spirit and in the under-
lying considerations which can be urged
in their defense, and being once adopted
render each other mutual support. Po-
litical isolation deliberately resolved
upon by a great Power denotes its self-
confidence and its indifference to the
opinion or friendship of other nations ;
in like manner the commercial isolation
of such a Power denotes its conviction
that in matters of trade and commerce
it is sufficient unto itself and need ask
nothing of the world beyond. In the
case of the United States, the policy of
political seclusion has been intensified by
a somewhat prevalent theory that we are
a sort of chosen people ; possessed of su-
perior qualities natural and acquired ; re-
joicing in superior institutions and supe-
rior ideals ; and bound to be careful how
we connect ourselves with other nations
lest we get contaminated and deteriorate.
This conception of ourselves has asserted
itself in opposition to international ar-
rangements even when, as in the case
of the " General Act of the Berlin Con-
ference " already referred to, the only
object and effect were to open a new re-
gion to commerce and to give our mer-
chants equal privileges with those of any
other country. We accept the privi-
leges but at the same time decline to be-
come a party to the compact which se-
cures them to us as to all nations. The
transaction is on a par with various oth-
ers in which, with great flourish of trum-
pets and much apparent satisfaction at
the felicity of our attitude, we tender or
furnish what we call our " moral sup-
port." Do we want the Armenian butch-
eries stopped ? To any power that will
send its fleet through the Dardanelles
and knock the Sultan's palace about his
ears, we boldly tender our " moral sup-
port." Do we want the same rights and
facilities of trade in Chinese ports and
territory that are accorded to the people
of any other country ? We loudly hark

Great Britain on to the task of achieving
that result, but come to the rescue our-
selves with not a gun, nor a man, nor a
ship, with nothing but our " moral sup-
port." But, not to tarry too long on de-
tails, what are the general results of these
twin policies — of this foreign policy of
thorough isolation combined with a do-
mestic policy of thorough protection ?
So far as our foreign relations are con-
cerned, the result is that we stand with-
out a friend among the great Powers of
the world and that we impress them, how-
ever unjustly, as a nation of sympathizers
and sermonizers and swaggerers — with-
out purpose or power to turn our words
into deeds and not above the sharp prac-
tice of accepting advantages for which
we refuse to pay our share of the price.
So far as the domestic policy called the
" American system " is concerned, we
present a spectacle of determined effort
to hedge ourselves round with barriers
against intercourse with other countries
which, if not wholly successful, fails only
because statutes are no match for the
natural laws of trade. We decline to en-
ter the world's markets or to do business
over the world's counter. Instead, we
set up a shop of our own, a sort of de-
partment store ; to the extent that gov-
ernmental action can effect it, we limit
all buying and selling and exchanges of
products to our own home circle ; and, in
the endeavor to compass that end, we
have raised duties on imports to a height
never dreamed of even in the stress of
internecine war. In only one important
particular does protectionism still lack
completeness. The voice of the farmer
is heard in the land complaining that he
is proscribed and making the perfectly
logical demand — said to have been fa-
vored in the last Congress by eighteen
Senators and voted for by twelve — that
his principal industries should be protect-
ed as well as any others. Why not ? It
is merely a question of methods. We
cannot protect the farmer by customs
duties on articles which never enter our

International Isolation of the United States.

585

ports. But we can do it by export boun-
ties on those articles — an obvious meth-
od of reaching the end in view and the
method really proposed. It would be
worth considering as another method,
whether the government should not sim-
ply buy and burn the farmer's redun-
dant crops — a method equally benefi-
cial to the farmer, less costly to the
people at large because dispensing with
the machinery incident to bounty pay-
ments, more consonant with our general
policy of commercial isolation, and less
likely to be offensive to foreign countries
who may not care to serve as dumping-
grounds for our surplus products. To
governmental action in furtherance of
the policy of commercial isolation and
having special reference to the interests
of capital, has naturally been added kin-
dred action looking to the protection of
labor. The Chinese laboring class we
proscribe en bloc. We bar out any alien
workman, who, aspiring to better his con-
dition by coming to these shores, takes
the reasonable precaution of contract-
ing for employment before he makes
the venture. By recently proposed and
apparently not preventable legislation
on the same lines, this land of ours, so
long the boasted refuge of the oppressed
and downtrodden of the earth, is now
to be hermetically sealed against all to
whom an unkind fate has denied a cer-
tain amount of education. Thus is a
governmental policy, originally designed
to protect domestic capital, now rein-
forced by a like policy for the protection
of domestic labor, so that, were the ten-
dency of the twin policies of commercial
and political isolation to be unchecked
and were not natural laws too strong for
artificial restraints, we might well stand
in awe of a time when in their inter-
course with us and influence upon us the
other countries of the earth would for all
practical uses be as remote as Jupiter or
Saturn. Finally, one other feature of the
situation must not be overlooked. While
protectionism in this country has waxed

mighty and all-pervading — our foreign
shipping industry has languished and de-
clined until it has become a subject of
concern and mortification to public men
of all parties. Time was when we built
the best ships afloat and disputed the
carrying trade of the world with Great
Britain herself. Now we not only make
no serious attempt to carry for other
countries but are looking on while only
about twelve per cent, of our own foreign
commerce embarks in American bottoms.
What is the cause ? Here are seven to
eight thousand miles of coast, fronting
Europe to the east and Asia to the west,
belonging to seventy millions of people,
intelligent, prosperous, adventurous, with
aptitudes derived from ancestors whose
exploits on the seas have resounded
through the world and have not yet
ceased to be favorite themes of poetry
and romance. Why is it that such a
people no longer figures on such a con-
genial field of action ? The answer is
to be found nowhere else than in the
working of the twin policies we are con-
sidering— of commercial combined with
political isolation. Under the former
policy, when sails and timber gave way
to steam and iron, protectionism so en-
hanced the cost of the essentials of steam-
ship construction that any competition
between American shipyards and the
banks of the Clyde was wholly out of
the question. Under the latter, the policy
of political isolation, the public mind be-
came predisposed to regard the annihila-
tion of our foreign merchant service as
something not only to be acquiesced in
but welcomed. How could it be other-
wise ? If to stand apart from the group
of nations to which we belong and to
live to ourselves alone is the ideal we
aim at, why should we not view with
equanimity, or even with satisfaction,
the loss of an industry which provides
the connecting links between ourselves
and the outer world ? Though that loss
was at first and for a considerable period
in apparent accord with the popular

586

International Isolation of the United States.

temper, there is now a revulsion of sen-
timent, and a demand for the rehabili-
tation of our foreign merchant marine
which seems to be both strong and gen-
eral. Yet the predominance of political
and commercial isolation ideas could not
be better illustrated than by the only
proposed means of reaching the desired
end which seems to have any chance of
prevailing. It is but a few years ago
that one of the oldest and most eminent
of Boston merchants appeared before a
congressional committee to ask for such
a change of the laws that American pa-
pers could be got for a vessel of Ameri-
can ownership, though not of American
build. He was in the shipping business
and wanted to stay in it, he could buy
foreign vessels at much lower cost than
that for which he could procure Ameri-
can vessels, he must have the foreign
vessels if he was to compete with rival
ship-owners, and he appealed to the gov-
ernment simply to nationalize his pro-
perty — to let him have American re-
gisters for vessels which had become
American property. He was an. Ameri-
can — with the true American spirit —
who wanted to do business under the
American flag and who found it exceed-
ingly distasteful to do business under
any other. Yet his appeal was vain, his
proposition was scouted as of novel and
dangerous tendency, and it was even in-
sinuated that its author, instead of being
animated by patriotic impulses and pur-
poses, had succumbed to the blandish-
ments of foreigners and was insidiously
endeavoring to promote their interests.
Doubtless the same proposition made to
Congress to-day would meet the same
fate. The desire to resurrect our extinct
foreign merchant service no doubt pre-
vails in great and perhaps increasing
force. But, so far as present indications
are to be relied upon, the object is to
be accomplished not by liberalizing our
commercial code, but by intensifying its
narrow and stringent character. Protec-
tionism is to have a wider scope and to

include a new subject-matter, and the
shipping industry is to be resuscitated
and fostered by bounties and subsidies
and discriminating tonnage duties levied
upon all alien vessels that enter our
ports. Thus, and by this process, the
twin policies of political and commer-
cial isolation will be exploited as beyond
the imputation of failure or of flaw ; as
working in complete accord to great pub-
lic ends ; as keeping foreigners and for-
eign countries at a distance on the one
hand while on the other artificially
stimulating a particular industry at the
expense of the whole American people.
Clearly, what with import duties for the
manufacturer, export bounties for the
farmer, tonnage taxes for the ship-build-
er, racial and literary exactions for the
laborer, and political isolation for the
whole country, we ought soon to be far
advanced on the road to the millennium
— unless indeed we have unhappily
taken a wrong turn and are off the
track altogether.

A noted Republican statesman of our
day, a protectionist though not of the ex-
treme variety, is said to have remarked,
" It is not an ambitious destiny for so
great a country as ours to manufacture
only what we can consume or produce
only what we. can eat." But it is even
a more pitiful ambition for such a coun-
try to aim to seclude itself from the
world at large and to live a life as in-
sulated and independent as if it were
the only country on the foot-stool. A
nation is as much a member of a society
as an individual. Its membership, as in
the case of an individual, involves du-
ties which call for something more than
mere abstention from violations of posi-
tive law. The individual who should
deliberately undertake to ignore society
and social obligations, to mix with his
kind only under compulsion, to abstain
from all effort to make men wiser or
happier, to resist all appeals to charity,
to get the most possible and enjoy the
most possible consistent with the least

International Isolation of the United States.

587

possible intercourse with his fellows,
would be universally condemned as shap-
ing his life by a low and unworthy stan-
dard. Yet, what is true of the individ-
ual in his relations to his fellow men is
equally true of every nation in its rela-
tions to other nations. In this matter,
we have fallen into habits which, how-
ever excusable in their origin, are with-
out present justification. Does a foreign
question or controversy present itself
appealing however forcibly to our sym-
pathies or sense, of right — what hap-
pens the moment it is suggested that the
United States should seriously partici-
pate in its settlement ? A shiver runs
through all the ranks of capital lest the
uninterrupted course of money-making
be interfered with ; the cry of " Jingo ! "
comes up in various quarters ; advocates
of peace at any price make themselves
heard from innumerable pulpits and ros-
trums ; while practical politicians in-
voke the doctrine of the Farewell Ad-
dress as an absolute bar to all positive
action. The upshot is more or less ex-
plosions of sympathy or antipathy at
more or less public meetings, and, if the
case is a very strong one, a more or less
tardy tender by the government of its
" moral support." Is that a creditable
part for a great nation to play in the
affairs of the world ? The pioneer in
the wilderness, with a roof to build over
his head and a patch of ground to cul-
tivate and wife and children to provide
for and secure against savage beasts and
yet more savage men, finds in the great
law of self - preservation ample excuse
for not expending either his feelings or
his energies upon the joys or the sor-
rows of his neighboi-s. But surely he
is no pattern for the modern millionaire,
who can sell nine tenths of all he has and
give to the poor, and yet not miss a sin-
gle comfort or luxury of life. This coun-
try was once the pioneer and is now the
millionaire. It behooves it to recognize
the changed conditions and to realize
its great place among the Powers of the

earth. It behooves it to accept the com-
manding position belonging to it, with
all its advantages on the one hand and
all its burdens on the other. It is not
enough for it to vaunt its greatness and
superiority and to call upon the rest of
the world to admire and be duly im-
pressed. Posing before less favored
peoples as an exemplar of the superior-
ity of American institutions may be jus-
tified and may have its uses. But posing
alone is like answering the appeal of a
mendicant by bidding him admire your
own sleekness, your own tine clothes
and handsome house and your generally
comfortable and prosperous condition.
He possibly should do that and be grate-
ful for the spectacle, but what he really
asks and needs is a helping hand. The
mission of this country, if it has one, as
I verily believe it has, is not merely to
pose but to act — and, while always gov-
erning itself by the rules of prudence
and common sense and making its own
special interests the first and paramount
objects of its care, to forego no fitting
opportunity to further the progress of
civilization practically as well as theo-
retically, by timely deeds as well as by
eloquent words. There is such a thing
for a nation as a " splendid isolation " —
as when for a worthy cause, for its own
independence, or dignity, or vital inter-
ests, it unshrinkingly opposes itself to a
hostile world. But isolation that is no-
thing but a shirking of the responsibili-
ties of high place and great power is
simply ignominious. If we shall sooner
or later — and we certainly shall — __
shake off the spell of the Washington
legend and cease to act the role of a sort
of international recluse, it will not fol-
low that formal alliances with other na-
tions for permanent or even temporary
purposes will soon or often be found ex-
pedient. On the other hand, with which
of them we shall as a rule practically co-
operate cannot be doubtful. From the
point of view of our material interests
alone, our best friend as well as most

588

International Isolation of the United States.

formidable foe is that world-wide empire
whose navies rule the seas and which on
our northern frontier controls a dominion
itself imperial in extent and capabilities.
There is the same result if we consider
the present crying need of our commer-
cial interests. What is it ? It is more
markets and larger markets for the con-
sumption of the products of the industry
and inventive genius of the American
people. That genius and that industry
have done wonders in the way of burst-
ing the artificial barriers of the " Amer-
ican system " and reaching the foreign
consumer in spite of it. Nevertheless,
the cotton manufacturing industry of
New England bears but too painful wit-
ness to the inadequacy of the home mar-
ket to the home supply — and through
what agency are we so likely to gain
new outlets for our products as through
that of a Power whose possessions gir-
dle the earth and in whose ports equal
privileges and facilities of trade are ac-
corded to the flags of all nations ? But
our material interests only point in the
same direction as considerations of a
higher and less selfish character. There
is a patriotism of race as well as of
country — and the Anglo-American is
as little likely to be indifferent to the
one as to the other. Family quarrels
there have been heretofore and doubt-
less will be again, and the two peoples,
at the safe distance which the broad At-
lantic interposes, take with each other
liberties of speech which only the fond-
est and dearest relatives indulge in.

Nevertheless, that they would be found
standing together against any alien foe
by whom either was menaced with de-
struction or irreparable calamity, it is not
permissible to doubt. Nothing less could
be expected of the close community be-
tween them in origin, speech, thought,
literature, institutions, ideals — in the
kind and degree of the civilization en-
joyed by both. In that same community,
and in that cooperation in good works
which should result from it, lies, it is not
too much to say, the best hope for the
future not only of the two kindred peo-
ples but of the human race itself. To
be assured of it, we need not resort to a
priori reasoning, convincing as it would
be found, nor exhaust historical exam-
ples, numerous and cogent as they are.
It is enough to point out that, of all ob-
stacles to the onward march of civiliza-
tion, none approaches in magnitude and
obduracy " the scourge of war " and that
the English and American peoples, both
by precept, and by example, have done
more during the last century to do away
with war and to substitute peaceful and
civilized methods of settling international
controversies, than all the other nations
of the world combined have done during
all the world's history. It is not too
much to hope, let us trust, that the near
future will show them making even more
marked advances in the same direction,
and, while thus consulting their own best
interests, also setting an example sure to
have the most important and beneficent
influence upon the destinies of mankind.
Richard Olney.

The Dreyfus and Zola Trials.

589

THE DREYFUS AND ZOLA TRIALS.

THE echoes of these great trials have
come to our ears much enfeebled by their
long journey across the Atlantic. Un-
intelligible cablegrams, and a few stray
newspaper articles based on one or an-
other trifling feature supposed to be ser-
viceably dramatic, constitute our know-
ledge of an agitation which has shaken
France to the centre, which has intense-
ly excited the whole continent of Europe,
which has involved possibilities of politi-
cal and social revolution, which has led
to the serious suggestion of racial cru-
sades and massacres, and which the phi-
losophical historian writing an hundred
years hence will find a vastly more sig-
nificant, more expressive feature of this
age than a whole budget of Venezue-
lan episodes or Cuban questions. These
trials have been the exponent or the ex-
plosion, as you will, of anti-Semitism and
of militarism.

For the French nation, the point of
interest has been, not the treason, but
the Jew. No one upon this side of the
water, unless he has read the French
daily newspapers most industriously, can
form an idea of the savage, merciless
onslaught which they have combined to
make upon the unfortunate race. They
have stimulated that which needed no
stimulation, — the blind rage, mingled
with dread and cupidity, which often
means bloodshed. For many years past
anti-Semitism has been rapidly advan-
cing in France, somewhat less rapidly in
other Continental countries. This Drey-
fus case is only a measure whereby we
can gauge the height to which the race
hatred has risen. Will it now subside ?
The only cheering indication is the pre-
sent violence, such as usually foreruns re-
action. The state of feeling is mediaeval,
but probably the demonstration will stop
short of the St. Bartholomew which some
of the fanatics have dared to mention.

Nevertheless, in France to-day it is peril-
ous to be a Jew.

Yet, in spite of the fierce support given
by the anti-Semites, the small band of
distinguished citizens who condemned the
proceedings in the Dreyfus case would
have forced the government either to sub-
mit to a revision or to show that conclu-
sive evidence which it professed to have,
had it not been for the element of " our
dearest blessing, the army." The politi-
cal life of the Cabinet flickered dubiously
until the cry of " Vive I'arme'e ! " was
raised, and then all was safe. " Vive 1'ar-
me'e " might involve not only " Down with
Jews," " Down with Dreyfus and Zola,"
but also " Down with law and justice."
No matter ; down let them go, and let
the ruins make an altar for Esterhazy,
wretch and probably enough traitor, but
an officer, and not a Jew. As one French
officer, who seemed in his private opinion
to hold Dreyfus innocent, gallantly said,
" The verdict of the court-martial is for
me as conclusive as the word of God."
Precisely this has been the position in
which the French government has been
sustained by the French people. The
principle has been laid down that the gen-
erals of the French army are not only
trustworthy, but infallible. Not many
generations ago the French ventured to
set aside the Sermon on the Mount, but
to-day they cannot set aside the finding
of a board of army officers. The secret
proceedings in the Dreyfus case, the lim-
itations established for and during the
Zola trial, offend our sense of justice;
but the former are probably a necessary
part of militarism, and the latter were
in part proper, and in other parts they
awake the old discussion as to the merits
of French and Anglo-Saxon systems of
criminal procedure.

The whole business, in whatever as-
pect we regard it, undoubtedly soothes

590

The Dreyfus and Zola Trials.

our sense of self-satisfaction, so that we
thank Heaven that we are not as the
Frenchmen are. We ought also, how-
ever, to thank Heaven that we are not
subject to the same conditions which em-
barrass the French. If all the Jews of
Continental Europe were suddenly to be
transported to this continent, we might
find the national digestion, powerful as it
is, badly nauseated. Neither ought we
to forget our action as to the Chinese.
If Canada and Mexico were to us what
Germany and Italy are to France, we
should probably change our sentiments
about standing armies, court-martials,
and militarism in general. When a rich
man sees a poor man pick a pocket, he
must condemn the poor man, but mod-
erately, and he should not indulge in
self-glorification because he himself has
never appropriated ces alieni, at least in
the like manner.

October 29, 1894, la Libre Parole,
edited by M. Edouard Drumont, a very
lunatic among anti-Semites, hinted at an
important arrest. On November 1 it
stated that an attache* on the staff of the
Ministry of War had been arrested for
treason, afid maliciously added : " The
matter will be suppressed because the
officer is a Jew. Seek among the Drey-
fus, the Mayers, or the Levys, and you
w.ll find him. He has made full con-
fession, and there is absolute proof that
he has told our secrets to Germany." In
fact, Captain Alfred Dreyfus had al-
ready been for several days in the mili-
tary prison of Cherche Midi, but so se-
cretly immured that his name was not
on the register, and he had been seen by
only one attendant.

Many months before this time the
War Department had become convinced
that a leakage was going on toward Ger-
many. Thereupon, an employee at the
German Embassy, who habitually broke
instructions by selling, instead of destroy-
ing, the contents of the waste-paper bas-
kets, was induced, by the offer of a bet-

ter price, to sell his rubbish to two new
chiffoniers. One day, these persons,
French detectives of course, found in the
waste four fragments of a peculiar kind
of paper, used by photographers. These
pieces, being carefully put together, con-
stituted the famous bordereau. This was
a memorandum, specifying five docu-
ments relating to military secrets, which
purported to have been sent by the writer
to some one ; but by whom and to whom
did not appear, for there was neither ad-
dress nor signature. Immediately there
was an examination of handwritings of
employees at the War Department, and
Captain Dreyfus was singled out as an
object of suspicion. He was summoned
into a room around which looking-glasses
had been skillfully disposed, and was
ordered to write from dictation sentences
which repeated phrases of the bordereau ;
he was made to rewrite some of the
words as many as sixty times, now seat-
ed, now standing, now barehanded, now
with gloves on, now rapidly, now slowly.
Some say that he lost his self-posses-
sion, and that, when some one said his
hand trembled, lie attributed it to cold.
A different story is, that the remarkable
degree to which he kept his self-posses-
sion, under so trying and suggestive an
ordeal, was construed as indicating guilt.
Either way, the fact was turned against
him, and the arrest was made on the
spot. Simultaneously, Commandant du
Paty de Clam hastened to the house of
Dreyfus, and conducted a thorough ran-
sacking, hut without result ; for, said an
anti-Semite newspaper, all incriminating
papers were in the strong-box of an ac-
complice. But for seventeen days the
commandant improved his opportunity
to torture the unfortunate wife with va-
ried and ingenious barbarity ; refusing to
tell her where her husband was confined
or of what crime he was accused, but as-
suring her that his guilt was unquestion-
able, and illustrating this opinion by
drawing strange geometrical diagrams.
He said that the penalty of the crime

The Dreyfus and Zola Trials.

591

was death, and reminded her of the man
in the iron mask. He also told her that
her husband was leading " a double life,
unexceptionable at home, but in reality
monstrous."

A court - martial was promptly con-
vened, sat with closed doors, and found
the accused mao guilty^ He was pub-
licly degraded from his rank in the
army, the galons were torn from his uni-
form, and his sword was broken ; while
he maintained a defiant aspect, protest-
ing his innocence, and crying, " Vive la
France ! " His sentence, of unusual se-
verity, was deportation for life to He du
Diuble, a barren little island off the coast
of French Guiana.

If Dreyfus had not been a Jew, he
would have dropped into his exile with
little observation, and would have been
soon forgotten ; but the race element
came in to prevent the possibility of in-
difference or oblivion. The anti-Semites
triumphed in a Jewish treason, and
abused the government for putting a
Jew in the War Bureau, where he could
get at salable information. Of course
he dealt in it, they said. Also of course
they compared him to Judas ; forgetting
that if Judas was a Jew, so also was
Christ. La Croix boasted that French-
men were preeminently enemies du pew-
pie deicide, as if such hatred was credit-
able to Christians. M. Drumont talked
of la fatalile de la race. On the other
side, the Dreyfus family, strongly backed
among the haute Juioerie, and with
abundance of money, cried out that an
innocent man had been found guilty for
no other reason than because he was a
Jew ; and they kept up an untiring agi-
tation of the matter.

So long as rigid secrecy was preserved
the position of the government was ab-
solutely impregnable. But in the au-
tnmn of 1896 a false rumor of the pris-
oner's escape revived the waning interest,
and thereupon some one who knew the
facts could no longer hold his peace. This
leaky person was generally understood

to be General Mercier, who had been
Minister of War at the time of the court-
martial ; but he stoutly denied it, when
on the stand in the Zola case. Very ap-
propriately, 1' Eclair let in the first ray
of light by publishing the bordereau, —
at first incorrectly, afterward accurately ;
and soon le Matin gave a facsimile. In
the Zi>la trial General de Pellieux said :
" People talk much of this bordereau,
but few have seen it. ... Nothing can
be less like it than are the facsimiles."
But Me Demange, who also had seen it,
said that the facsimile in le Matin was
strikingly good (saisissant).

Prior to the court-martial three so-
called and miscalled experts in hand-
writing had been consulted by the gov-
ernment. There was the military man,
du Paty de Clam, who had no skill in
the difficult science of graphology ; there
was M. Gjbert, a person sometimes em-
ployed by the Bank of France, who ex-
pressed an opinion that the handwriting
of the bordereau might very well be that
of some other person than Dreyfus ; and
there was M. Bertillon, an attache" of
the police service, famous for his fad con-
cerning the study of criminals by physi-
cal measurements ; he reported that if
he were to set aside the hypothesis that
the document might have been most
carefully forged by some imitator of the
handwriting of Dreyfus, he should then
attribute it to Dreyfus. Precisely this
hypothesis, which he thus set aside, be-
came afterward the Dreyfusian theory
of the case. Such " expert " testimony
amounted to nothing. It was not mate-
rially strengthened by three other wit-
nesses, of like qualifications, who appeared
before the court-martial, and of whom one
was for Dreyfus and two \vere against
him. M. Bernard Lazare, a Parisian
journalist of repute and a strenuous
Dreyfusard, remarked that when prose-
cuting authorities consult experts it is
44 not in order to exculpate some one ; "
yet two of the government experts had
exculpated Dreyfus. Now the facsimile

592

The Dreyfus and Zola Trials.

gave this zealous friend his opportunity,
and M. Lazare immediately sought the
judgment of leading graphologists in
France and in other countries. As a
result he published twelve favorahle opin-
ioiib in a volume, in which he also gave
facsimiles of the handwriting of Dreyfus
in parallel columns with facsimiles of
the bordereau.

By all this examination it was estab-
lished that between the -handwriting of
the bordereau and that of Dreyfus there
was a general resemblance, but with
certain distinct differences. Some letters
were said even to stand the test of super-
position. Hence originated the sugges-
tion that these letters had been traced,
and other parts had been originally writ-
ten with intentional variations ; also that
the bordereau was a combination of the
writing of Alfred Dreyfus and that of his
brother Mathieu. The paper of the bor-
dereau was of a texture which admitted
tracing. The Dreyf usards sneered at so
laborious and so clumsy a resource, and
said that the combination of close like-
ness with slight yet essential differences
was precisely what would be expected in
the case of a forgery. They asked per-
tinently, Since Dreyfus was an Alsatian,
familiar with the German language and
writing, why, if he was writing to Ger-
mans, did he not safely use the German
script ? They urged that the peculiar
paper of the bordereau was of German
manufacture, and that none like it was
found at the house of Dreyfus. Also
they asked the fundamental question,
Why should Dreyfus have increased the
danger by sending this useless bordereau
at all ? Why not have simply dispatched
the documents which were named in it ?
They also criticised the failure to pro-
duce the persons who brought the borde-
reau, when it was upon their act that the
whole superstructure of the case rested.
Against this, however, was the firm prin-
ciple forbidding such use of government
detectives.

It was almost a matter of course that

there should be legends of confession.
Of these, the earlier one was almost cer-
tainly false ; but the later one is not
quite so easily disposed of. This was
that, at the time of his military degrada-
tion, Dreyfus had told Captain Lebrun-
Renault that he had indeed given infor-
mation to Germany, but in the hope of
drawing out in return much more impor-
tant information for France. This story,
however, never came at first-hand from
Lebrun-Renault himself, and there is no
direct evidence to sustain it. General
Cavaignac declared, in the Chamber of
Deputies, that the statement of the con-
fession was on file at the Ministry of
War, — a fact presumably within his
own personal and official knowledge ; but
upon being directly questioned he ad-
mitted that he had never seen the docu-
ment ; and being again asked for the
basis of his certainty, he replied that he
was " morally sure." The Dreyf usards,
betwixt ridicule and indignation, re-
sponded that they were much more than
morally sure of many facts in the case.
In the Zola trial, For/inetti, command-
er of the prison, being interrogated by
Me Labori as to a confession, was for-
bidden to answer ; but elsewhere he had
strenuously denied any such occurrence.
It is very difficult to believe that a con-
fession was made. If it had been, the
government could have quieted this
whole perilous excitement by merely
stating the fact, without infringing upon
the secrecy of their detective service.
Moreover, the consistent and persistent
behavior of Dreyfus indicates great reso-
lution in asserting innocence. On the
other hand, such efforts were made to
lead him into the blunder of confessing
that, if they had succeeded, the confession
would have lost much of its natural value.
A vital question was-, whether or not
Dreyfus had access to the documents
named in the bordereau. Apparently,
no evidence was offered to this point,
except that in the Ministry of War he
was known as a prying character, accus

The Dreyfus and Zola Trials.

593

tomed to ask questions and to look over
the shoulders of other employees. Now
a precise investigation revealed that as
to one document he could have got know-
ledge only by inquiiy from the Artillery
Bureau, and it was alleged that the of-
ficers of that bureau affirmatively testi-
fied that they had never been questioned
by him. Of another document only a
limited number of copies had been is-
sued for distribution to the army corps,
and the government had kept careful
.trace of each one of these, without be-
ing able to bring one home to him. Fi-
nally, the bordereau closed with the line,
" Je vais partir en manoeuvres." At
any time when it was possible that these
documents could have been transmitted,
Dreyfus was not going to any manoeu-
vres.

In the natural search for a motive la
Libre Parole suggested : " His treason
is probably a thoroughly Jewish act, —
an act of ingratitude and hate, whereby
Jews have always been wont to reward
nations who have harbored them."
Money, however, seemed more satisfac-
tory, and stories were circulated that
Dreyfus was a gambler and a dissolute
liver ; but he was neither the one nor
the other, and he was rich.

If the bordereau had been given out
in the hope of silencing the Dreyfusards,
all this criticism showed that it had sig-
nally failed. Accordingly, a second ef-
fort now followed, again by the familiar
channel of 1' Eclair. It was said that
a letter, written by a military attache* of
the German Embassy at Paris to a mem-
ber of the German Embassy in Italy, —
both names wei-e given eventually, —
had been held up in transitu sufficiently
long to be " skillfully read and prudent-
ly photographed ; " that when the court-
martial showed hesitation as to convict-
ing upon the sole evidence of the bor-
dereau, this letter was laid before the
members, and at once " induced unanim-
ity in their implacable decision ; " but
that it was not made known to Dreyfus

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 487. 38

or to his counsel. Reasons of state and
la haute politique compelled profound
secrecy. Some persons even believed
that if its contents should leak out, the
German army would start the next day
for Paris. Very soon, however, the cu-
rious public was assured that the sen-
tence supposed to be fatal to Dreyfus
was this simple remark : " Decidedly,
this animal, Dreyfus, is getting too ex-
acting." There did not seem anything
in these words to bring the Germans
again to Paris ! But even in these an
essential correction was soon made :
Dreyfus was not named in the letter at
all ; the last sentence had only the ini-
tial letter " D." This left it as a mere
item of evidence ; and it appeared that
the French government had had the
letter for many months before the arrest
of Dreyfus, and that it had fastened the
" D " upon at least two other persons.

The situation now was substantially
this : the admission that this secret let-
ter was necessary to induce conviction
involved the admission of the insuffi-
ciency of the bordereau ; but the fact
that in the letter there was only an ini-
tial left that also inconclusive ; finally,
the placing of secret evidence before the
judges created a great storm of indig-
nation ; it was a violation alike of tech-
nical law and substantial justice. Per-
sons who were neither Jews nor lovers
of Jews, even some who thought that
Dreyfus might very well be guilty, now
demanded a revision of his case ; and
these recruits came largely from the
more intelligent and thinking classes.
Me Demange took a skillful position :
he refused to be a party to these pro-
ceedings, because he would not believe
that any such " enormity," such " fla-
grant violation of the rights of the defend-
ant," could have been committed. But
the government stood stubbornly to its
colors, refused discussion, and said that
the affair was chose jugee and should
never be reopened. A majority in the
Chamber of Deputies sustained this po-

594

The Dreyfus and Zola Trials.

sition ; and the great multitude of the
people, strong in their hatred of Juda-
ism, remained well pleased. Neverthe-
less, the situation was by no means satis-
factory.

Now some newspapers revived an in-
teresting story. It was remembered that
M. Casimir Pe'rier had resigned the
presidency of the Republic about the
time of the Dreyfus trial, on the ground
that he could not endure the combina-
tion of moral responsibility and power-
lessness. The tale told by le Rappel
was, that M. de Munster, the German
Minister, had called upon the President,
and said that he was instructed by his
sovereign to give assurance that Dreyfus
had not, either in France or in Belgium,1
nearly or distantly, been in relation
with the secret service of the German
government. The ambassador further
suggested that one must be bien naif
to believe that a diplomat could have
thrown into a waste-paper basket so im-
portant a document. Further, it was
said that the Emperor of Germany had
addressed an autograph letter to the
President of France, saying : " I give
you my word of honor as a man that
Captain Dreyfus has never betrayed
France to the German government ; and
if need~should be, I will give you my
word as Emperor, with all the conse-
quences thereof." Finally, M. Casimir
Pe'rier was declared to have said of the
story, " It is not precisely so," thereby
confirming the substance by contradict-
ing only the detail. Now, if the Presi-
dent did in fact receive these communi-
cations, he could do absolutely nothing
except refer them to his ministers ; and
when the ministers refused to act on
them he was in a false and humiliating
position, out of which he might natural-
ly get by precisely that act of resig-
nation which had appeared so singular.
Probabilities seem to favor the truth of
this story ; and if it was false, there could

1 The reference to Belgium arose from a
story that Dreyfus had made a trip into Bel-

be no objection to contradicting it. In
the Zola case Casimir Pe'rier was on the
witness - stand, but gave out nothing of
interest. He said that it was his duty
not to tell the whole truth.

Probably out of this German story
grew the suggestion that the treason of
Dreyfus had moved, not toward Ger-
many, but toward Russia ; and this, as
many persons conceived, might explain
the unwillingness to make public the se-
cret letter. There is no way of abso-
lutely disproving this theory; but not
one particle of evidence supports it, and
it stands as an arbitrary and gratuitous
fancy. Moreover, much must be ex-
plained away before it can be admitted.
How came the bordereau in the Ger-
man waste-paper basket ? How did it
happen that the secret letter was writ-
ten by one German attache" to another ?
Why, when some one who knew the
whole story gave out the evidence, did
he state that the communications had
been made to Germany ? And why had
Casimir Pe'rier hesitated to clear the
German Emperor of alleged interfer-
ences ? The ingenious theory has pos-
sibility, for, as the Italian peasant said
to Dickens, " all things are possible ; "
but beyond this nothing can be said in
support of it.

In the procession of sensations, the
next to arrive was that of Esterhazy.
Lieutenant-Colonel Picquart, after eager
investigation, had satisfied himself that
this man was the real criminal. He
stated his discoveries to Mathieu Drey-
fus, who in turn formally denounced Es-
terhazy to the Minister of War. Es-
terhazy was not only a bad man in the
ordinary sense of the term, but he was a
thorough villain. Certain letters written
by him some time before were now made
public, and rendered it entirely probable
that he might be a traitor. There oc-
curred in them many venomous insults
toward the French army: "Our great

ginm, and there had met a secret agent of the
Berlin government.

The Dreyfus and Zola Trials.

595

chiefs, cowardly and ignorant, will go
once more to people the German pris-
ons." " After getting to Lyons, the Ger-
mans will throw away their guns, and
keep only their canes [or ramrods *] to
chase the French before them." There
was much more to the like purport with
these samples. With incredible effront-
ery Esterhazy admitted all save the fa-
mous " uhlan letter ; " and as to that he
admitted that the handwriting was close-
ly like his own. In it he spoke of, the
pleasure with which he would cause the
death of a hundred thousand French-
men ; said that to see Paris taken by
assault and given over to the pillage of
a hundred thousand drunken soldiers
was a fete of which he dreamed, and
that if he were told that he was to be
slain the next day as a captain of uhlans
sabring Frenchmen he should be per-
fectly happy. In view of public excite-
ment, it was deemed necessary to try
Esterhazy by court-martial ; yet the gov-
ernment stated beforehand its strange
position, that whatever might be the out-
come of his -case, the Dreyfus case would
remain unaffected thereby. Ministers
did not mean to be at all embarrassed
if they should find themselves with two
traitors and only one treason ! Yet the
assertion was superfluous, since Ester-
hazy was innocente par avance.

The only question at this trial was
whether or not Esterhazy wrote the bor-
dereau. The doors were closed. Colo-
nel Picquart made his statement. The
batch of graphologues filed into court,
and asserted in theatrical chorus that
Esterhazy never wrote that bordereau, —
never ! They even declared they were
doubtful whether he had written some
of the letters which he himself acknow-
ledged. One docile expert, who had said
that Dreyfus had traced some of his
own handwriting in the bordereau, now

1 The word is baguettes. Littre" says :
" Sorte de petit baton mince et flexible. Dans
quelques pays certains officiers portaient une
baguette quand ils e'taient en function. . . .

said that Dreyfus had also traced in the
bordereau some of Esterhazy's hand-
writing ! If there was a lack of origi-
nality in the suggestion, there was also a
lack of any plausible reason for it. Upon
such evidence the court could only ac-
quit the defendant. Thereupon came a
surprising scene. The accused man, his
breast sparkling with decorations, re-
ceived in his arms his weeping advocate,
and contributed his own tears ; the mem-
bers of the court-martial congratulated
him avec Emotion ; every one shook hands
with him, and the crowd outside shrieked,
" Vive I'arme'e ! " and " Vive Esterha-
zy!" — certainly a strange fellowship of
cries.

One cannot but reflect that if Drey-
fus had been tried in the same spirit in
which Esterhazy was tried, he would
have been acquitted, and vice versa. It
is impossible, upon the merits, much to
differentiate the two cases. At each
trial the substantial question was of
handwriting, and at neither did the ex-
perts deserve the name. In the Drey-
fus case they contradicted one another ;
in the Esterhazy case they stultified
themselves. Was there much to choose ?
Two women shall be grinding at the
mill ; one shah* be taken, and the other
shah1 be left. If one of these women
were a Jewess, and the other a Christian,
the French government would have no
difficulty in making the selection.

Dreyfus had now become a symbol
between Semites and anti-Semites; he
was the test of victory : —

" For Titus dragged him by the foot,
And Aulus by the head."

With the Jews stood a cohort composed
of men of brains and independence,
lovers of justice, who worried themselves
about neither Jew nor Gentile, but who
believed that a gross injustice had put in
jeopardy the safety of every citizen of

Baguette de fusil, de pistolet, baguette qui
sert a presser la charge dans le canon. Plur.
Supplice nrilitaire, qui cousiste a f rapper avec
uue baguette."

596

The Dreyfus and Zola Trials.

France. On the anti-Semite side were
the mass of the people, the government,
and the army, — an invincible combina-
tion, but unfortunate in having to adopt
as their symbol the disreputable Ester-
hazy.

On January 13, 1898, 1'Aurore pub-
lished Zola's famous letter to M. Fdlix
Faure, President of the Republic. It
tilled nearly eight columns, and was clear,
forcible, dramatic, — an admirable com-
position. What fuel it was ! The flames
of conflict roared and sprang aloft to-
ward the heavens. It was certainly an
act of reckless daring, and I believe
that it was also an honest act, though
others have seen in it only an adver-
tisement, — a novel and very perilous
experiment in that direction, one would
think. The press overwhelmed him with
abuse, repudiated him as a fellow coun-
tryman, and called him auteur de por-
nographies and ecrivain immonde, and
many unsavory names. When French
newspapers cried out against his coarse-
ness, it was evident that even the French
sense of humor had succumbed to the
intensity of the situation, and was fairly
drowned beneath the raging torrent of
anti-Semitism. They said that ''in an
epileptic attack he had insulted our dear-
est blessing, the army." In vain did
he explain that his attack was not upon
the army, but only upon a few individ-
uals ; none the less did the illogical mobs
continue to shriek, " A bas les Juifs ! "
" Vive I'arme'e ! " 4i A bas Zola ! " as an
allied trinity of cries.

The government, unable to ignore such
a defiance, at once instituted a prosecu-
tion against M. Zola and M. Perrenx,
editor of 1'Aurore. From the moment
of the Dreyfus arrest the government
had held ;' the inside track," and this
now meant the very great advantage of
selecting the field of battle. In the long
list of arraignments made by Zola was
this sentence : —

" I accuse the first Council of War of
having violated the law by condemning

the accused on a piece of evidence which
was kept secret ; and I accuse the sec-
ond Council of War of having, under
orders, covered this illegality by com-
mitting in its turn the crime at law of
knowingly acquitting a guilty man."

The government based its proceedings
only upon the second half of this charge.
In other words, the Esterhazy case was
to be retried, and that was all. A curi-
ous world was disappointed, but the gov-
ernment was well advised ; its whole
business was to convict the defendants
in the surest, simplest way. The advo-
cate-general, van Cassel, promptly de-
manded a strict limitation to the precise
question : " Have the judges of Com-
mandant Esterhazy committed the crime
of rendering a judgment to order ? "

Maitres Labori and Cle'menceau, coun-
sel for MM. Zola and Perrenx, resisted :
" It was impossible thus to get to the
bottom of the affair ; the incriminated
passage, taken in isolation, was incompre-
hensible ; it was against good sense and
justice to select arbitrarily a short pas-
sage from the letter, to the exclusion of
the general purport and bearing of the
whole."

Zola added : " How can we show that
an illegality has been covered, if we are
not allowed to show that an illegality
has been committed ? "

But the situation was Zola's misfor-
tune ; the ruling of the court in favor of
the advocate-general was inevitable.

When Me Labori began to name his
witnesses, the result was like that which
befell the man who made a great sup-
per and bade many guests, and they all
with one consent began to make excuse.
A number of military men were not free
to speak on grounds of " professional
secrecy," and the ladies were all ill.
The widow Chapelin had an influenza
and a sick baby, and frankly declared
that if forced to testify she would say
" the contrary of the truth." Me La-
bori argued fairly that these persons
could not know beforehand to what

The Dreyfus and Zola Trials.

597

point they would be questioned, and
complained that the military men made
themselves " a caste apart." The court
ordered most of them to appear.

Madame Dreyfus was the first wit-
ness, and was asked under what condi-
tions she learned of the arrest of her hus-
band, and what she thought of the good
faith of M. Zola. The president of the
court ruled the question out. M. Zola
said that he " claimed such advantages
as were accorded to robbers and assas-
sins, whose witnesses were named and
heard ; that he was insulted in the streets,
menaced with violence, his carriage win-
dows were broken ; the jury should have
those facts ; and was he not to be per-
mitted to show his good faith ? " The
president assured him that the question
was contrary to law. Zola responded :
" I do not know the law ; and, at the
moment, I do not wish to know it. I
am accused, and I ought to have the
right of defense."

More questions were ruled out, and
again M. Zola protested : " To present
a portion of my letter only in order to
bring me within reach of the law is a
disgrace to justice. I do not put myself
above the law, and have never said so ;
but I do put myself above the hypocrit-
ical procedure which seeks to close my
mouth." (Applause.)

Colonel Picquart had been practical-
ly the prosecutor of Esterhazy ; at the
court-martial his evidence had been
given within closed doors, but now he
told his story to the world. In 1896, the
fragments of a torn carte-telegramme,
the petit bleu, had " fallen into his
hands." He did not explain why these
fragments excited his interest, but they
did so, for he had them carefully put
together ; and thereby he found that the
card was addressed to Commandant Es-
terhazy, and that its contents and signa-
ture indicated something wrong. There-
upon he made inquiries about Ester-
hazy, and learned that he was a gambler,
a speculator, a borrower of money, a

coureur defemmes, and a general scoun-
drel, easily to be suspected of any base-
ness. He then had the petit bleu pho-
tographed, and two witnesses concerned
in this task said that he desired to have
the marks of tearing made to disappear,
also to omit certain words. This looked
disingenuous ; but Picquart explained,
reasonably, that he had only wished to
leave out titles, addresses, and signatures,
so that experts examining the handwrit-
ing should not know who was under in-
vestigation. Further, the card bore no
post-stamp to indicate delivery, and these
witnesses said that Picquart had desired
to have a postmark put upon it. This
he absolutely denied, saying that some
one of them, looking at the card, had
remarked, " It does not look authentic ;
there ought to be a postmark on it," —
which might have been distorted into the
evidence given.

Why, in connection with a card writ-
ten to Esterhazy, Picquart had desired
specimens of writing by Esterhazy does
not appear ; but he had sought them, and
had them in his possession when le Matin
published the facsimile of the bordereau.
Immediately Picquart was struck by the
resemblance of the handwriting to that
of Esterhazy. He hastened to M. Ber-
tillon, who at once said that the Ester-
hazy specimen was the handwriting of
the writer of the bordereau ; and being
told that the specimen was written sub-
sequent to the conviction of Dreyfus, he
said that evidently the Jews had had
some one at work learning to imitate
the writing of the bordereau. This evi-
dence of Picquart was corroborated by
the Deputy Hubbard, to whom the fool-
ish Bertillon said that he would not look
at Esterhazy's handwriting ; that Ester-
hazy would end by confession ; but that
at any rate there must be no revision,
which would mean a social revolution ;
that at times prefects of police bade one
speak, at other times they bade one keep
silence. Tile quasi expert du Paty de
Clam also admitted the likeness of the

598

The Dreyfus and Zola Trials.

writings, but suggested Mathieu Drey-
fus as the writer. A banker, who had
operated for Esterhazy on the Bourse,
was so struck by the resemblance that
he called the attention of Mathieu Drey-
fus to it. One other person, also, was
profoundly affected, and that was Com-
mandant Esterhazy himself, who hurried
about Paris for a couple of days, beneath
a pelting rain, behaving like one dement-
ed. In his wanderings he came into the
office of la Libre Parole, and there said :
" Yes, between the handwriting of the
bordereau and mine there is a fright-
ful [eff ray ante] resemblance ; and when
le Matin published the facsimile, I felt
myself lost."

Picquart had thus far pushed his
investigation with more satisfaction to
himself than to the government, which
apparently had no desire to have a sec-
ond traitor on its hands. Accordingly,
at this inopportune moment his chiefs
sent him to Tunis, in the hope, it was
said, that he would die upon an un-
wholesome expedition there. But the
generals testified that the fact was only
that he was so absorbed in one idea,
so "hypnotized " by it, that he had tem-
porarily lost his usefulness, and it was
expected that he would return in a more
" normal temper." While he was there
he received some puzzling telegrams : —

" Your sudden departure has thrown
us all into disorder ; the work is com-
promised."

" All is discovered. Matter very se-
rious."

" They have proof that the petit bleu
has been made up by George."

Picquart observed that upon one of
these telegrams his name was spelled
without the " c," and that it had been
spelled in the same manner in a letter re-
ceived by him at nearly the same time
from Esterhazy. He became suspicious
that Esterhazy was preparing charges of
forgery and conspiracy against him, and
sent two of the telegrams to the War
Department, with a request for an inves-

tigation. Later, it appeared that Ester-
hazy, in Paris, had knowledge of these
documents at an unaccountably early
date. When Picquart came back to
Paris for the trial, he found himself by
no means any longer a favorite, but, on
the contrary, he was received " rather as
one accused than as a witness." Appar-
ently, he now, at the Zola trial, made a
good impression by his testimony, for at
the end of his most important day he
" received an ovation," which was a rare
occurrence on his side of that case.

Also, in his character of prosecutor
of Esterhazy, Picquart went further, by
showing that Esterhazy had sought in-
formation in the direct line of the doc-
uments enumerated by the bordereau,
and that, in fact, soon after the proba-
ble date of the bordereau Esterhazy was
sent upon some manoeuvres. But there-
upon arose an angry discussion as to the
date of the bordereau, the generals set-
ting it in September, or possibly August,
while their opponents said that it had
always been set by every one in April.

General de Pellieux, who bore the bur-
den for the government, testified that
he had investigated the "charges against
Esterhazy prior to the court-martial, and
found no evidence of guilt, but that he
did find that Colonel Picquart was in
need of discipline (which he got in Af-
rica) ; that Colonel Picquart had failed
to show that the petit bleu was sent
by mail by a foreign military attache* to
Esterhazy ; that the card did not appear
genuine ; and that Picquart had shown
singular naivete* in fancying that such a
communication would be so openly made.
But this came with an ill grace after
the earlier naivete* of believing that the
bordereau had been thrown into a waste-
paper basket. The general was moved,
at one point, to exclaim : " I will not
admit that seven officers, several of
whom have spilled their blood on battle-
fields, while other persons were I know
not where, can.be accused of having ac-
quitted by order ! "

The Dreyfus and Zola Trials.

599

Zola interrupted : " There are different
ways of serving France ; one can serve
her by the sword or by the pen. M. le
ge'ne'ral de Pellieux has doubtless won
battles. I also have won mine. My
works have carried the French language
throughout all the universe. Posterity
will choose between General de Pellieux
and Emile Zola."

At another point in the case General
de Pellieux had quite a brush with M.
Jaures, the famous Socialist member of
the Chamber of Deputies, who addressed
to the jury an elaborate and sufficiently
eloquent speech, thinly salted with testi-
mony.

"I consider," said M. Jaures, "that
the conduct of the trial of Esterhazy
justifies the most vehement of M. Zola's
outbursts of indignation ; it justifies also
the alarm of those who, profoundly re-
specting the national army, yet do not
wish to see the military power raise it-
self above all control and all law."
" Why," he asked, " has it been neces-
sary to conduct in secrecy the examina-
tion of experts in handwriting?"

He referred also to the " very dis-
quieting " fact that no investigation had
been made to discover how the secret
letter, or a photographic copy thereof,
on which Dreyfus was condemned, had
come by the singular channel of a " veiled
lady " into the hands of Esterhazy, and
had there remained several days. When
this paper, of such immeasurable impor-
tance, was found to have reached Ester-
hazy, evidently by connivance on the
part of the Etat Major, no investigation
was ordered ! Did not this publish the
resolution of the Staff Office to protect
Esterhazy thoroughly and at all cost ?
Everything, he said, showed that the trial
had been conducted, " not with a view
to truth and justice, but for the syste-
matic justification of the great military
chiefs." Matters had gone in the same
way in the Chamber of Deputies, where
he had introduced the question whether
or not a document, which might prove

culpability, had been communicated to
the judges, but not to the accused and
his counsel. He had been able to ob-
tain no direct answer. M. Meline had
said, " I cannot answer you without
serving your schemes," — as though, in
the land of the Declaration of the Rights
of Man, it were a " scheme " to say that
a man could not be convicted on secret
evidence ! Afterward, however, the de-
puties had thronged around him, and
had said : " You are quite right ; but
how unfortunate that this affair should
have broken out just before election ! "

General de Pellieux replied to this
" admirable speech : " —

"I am not a soul of crystal, and I
have had enough of all these splashings
of mud with which people are trying to
bespatter men who have no other care
than their duty. I can stand it no long-
er ! I say that it is culpable, criminal,
to rob the army of the confidence which
it has in its chiefs. In the day of peril,
nearer perhaps than you think, what do
you expect this army to do ? It is to
butchery that your sons will be led, gen-
tlemen of the jury ! And on ' that day
M. Zola will have gained a new battle.
He will write a new Debacle, and it will
be spread abroad throughout a Europe
from which France will be erased."

His words were loudly applauded.
Me Labori turned to the audience and re-
buked them ; the president of the court
in turn rebuked him. He retorted :
" The lawyers are forbidden, and pro-
perly, to make manifestations. Why,
then, is it endured that officers of ar-
tillery, in full uniform, should applaud
ostentatiously ? " The president threat-
ened to forbid his speaking. " Do so ! "
exclaimed Me Labori. " M. le ge'ne'ral
de Pellieux has suggested future battles.
In him I respect my chief, for I also be-
long to the army. But I can tell him
that on that day of battle my blood will
be as good as his ! "

In fact, one can hardly be surprised
that Me Labori felt it as an unfair bur-

600

The Dreyfus and Zola Trials.

den that generals came daily into court
as witnesses ; not only addressing the
jury, sometimes with much eloquence,
but dazzling them hy the e'clat of their
military insignia and decorations, and
by their official character. After one of
the hearings, General de Pellieux, " pro-
foundly moved," passed out of the Palais
de Justice, weeping and shaking hands
with the crowd, whose patriotic fervor
was boiling. At the same moment Es-
terhazy appeared. Men took off their
hats and crushed around him, and one
kissed him, whilst all joined in shouting,
"Vive Esterhazy!" "Vive I'arme'e ! "
" Saluez la victime ! " "A has les
Juifs ! "

The conduct of Commandant Ester-
hazy was both prudent and simple. He
came upon the witness-stand, turned his
back upon Me Labori, and when a ques-
tion was put to him by that gentleman
stated that he should answer no ques-
tion whatsoever coming from that side.
Thereupon Me Labori requested the
president to put the question, and the
president did so. Esterhazy replied :
" Although you do me the honor, M. le
President, to transmit this question, it
remains all the same the question of Me
Labori ; therefore I will not answer."
Apparently, there is no process in French
law whereby a recalcitrant witness can
be made to answer a question, if he does
not wish to. Accoi'dingly, in this case
Maitres Laboi'i and Cle'menceau had no
other course than to put all their ques-
tions without receiving an answer to any
one of them. This they did, and in so
doing covered thoroughly all the points
which were charged against Esterhazy.
The interrogatories fill nearly three col-
umns of le Temps, and make, by implica-
tion, a terrible arraignment of the man
who dared not answer them.

In connection with Esterhazy, it is
worth while to mention the evidence of
M. Huret, who had been sent to Rouen
to find out what was thought of Ester-
hazy by his regimental comrades. He

testified that he was struck by the fact
that the news of the suspicion which had
fallen upon the commandant excited not
a ripple of astonishment. The officers
said that they were not surprised. When
he asked, " Why so ? " they gave no de-
finite reason ; but one of them told him
that when news had come that a com-
mandant, not on active duty, was under
suspicion of treason, several at the Rouen
garrison had suggested Esterhazy.

M. Bertillon, the government's expert
in handwriting, was as grotesque as a
character in a farce. He admitted that
he had no confidence in his art, and yet
alleged that by that art he was " sure "
that Dreyfus wrote the bordereau. He
said of the bordereau : " It obeys a geo-
metric rhythm of which the equation is
found in the blotter of Dreyfus." He
had much to say about dextrogyre and
senestrogyre. Altogether, he justified
Me Labori in exclaiming, " Experts are
not yet oracles ! " and in the sneering
charge that M. Bertillon had based the
culpability of Alfred Dreyfus on a let-
ter written by Mathieu Dreyfus.

The defendants called several experts
in graphology. One of them, M. He'ri-
court, stated that variations in handwrit-
ing are in harmony with physiological
variations of the writer ; and, applying
this subtle principle, he declared the
bordereau to be the handwriting of Es-
terhazy. For the most part, however,
these experts gave testimony in a man-
ner both intelligent and intelligible.

There were several instances of what
the French newspapers called " incidents
of vivacity." One of these vivacious oc-
currences consisted in the exchange of
the lie between Colonel Picquart and
Commandant Henry. This afterward
occasioned a duel, more serious than
most French duels, in which Henry re-
ceived a rather bad wound. Another
incident arose in the examination of
General Gonse, who lost his temper, and
exclaimed that the questions put to him
were " traps." For this discourtesy he

The Dreyfus and Zola Trials.

601

afterward apologized, saying that he re-
spected justice and had yielded to his
emotions. Thereupon, Me Ployer, ap-
parently a sort of amicus curice, said,
" General, I thank you in the name of
the whole bar ; " and the " incident vras
closed." This witness, by the way, took
the difficult position that the Dreyfus case
must not be opened, but that the ques-
tion of Esterhazy's guilt should be inves-
tigated, though independently.

General Mercier testified that he did
not know from what source 1'Eclair and
le Matin had derived their knowledge
about Dreyfus, and denied having ever
said that a document had been secret-
ly submitted to the court-martial. But
when pressed to state whether in fact
there had been such a secret document,
he refused to answer. " We will take
your word as a soldier," said Me Labori.
" I will give it," exclaimed the witness,
" that that man was a traitor, and justly
and legally condemned ! " Mc Labori
excepted to this answer ; but it had been
made.

The trial of MM. Zola and Perrenx
ended in the only possible way ; both
defendants were found guilty, and sen-
tenced to imprisonment in St. Pdlagie
nd to an insignificant fine. Zola re-
ceived one year, Perrenx four months.
The trial had been thoroughly unsatis-
factory ; it had proved absolutely no-
thing ; it had only established the fact
that it was quite as likely that the bor-
dereau had been written by Esterhazy
as that it had been written by Dreyfus,
for the two men wrote singularly alike.
In consequence, some persons who be-
lieved Dreyfus guilty now gave out the
theory that Esterhazy was his accom-
plice. If Esterhazy had previously had
any reputation for honor or decency, the
trial would have destroyed it ; but he had
had none, and he only exemplified that
from him that hath not shall be taken
away even that which he hath. So the
Zola case affected the Dreyfus question
only by making the enigma more enig-

matical ; and it did this by introducing
a rival claimant for the bordereau. The
impression left upon me is that, whether
or not Dreyfus had been mixed up in a
treason, Esterhazy almost surely had
been so.

Is Dreyfus guilty ? All the facts
known fall very far short of proving guilt. N

It does not follow, of course, as an af-
firmative proposition, that he is inno-
cent. Moreover, there is a vexatious
probability that important facts remain
unknown. From beginning to end the
government has not uttered one word ;
it has introduced no evidence in public ;
it did not call one witness nor cross-ex-
amine one witness in the Zola case ; it
has never admitted that the evidence
which has leaked into publicity is all, or
even an important part, of the evidence
in its possession ; on the contrary, in
defiance of all pressure, of all curiosity,
of all political peril, it has firmly and
consistently refused to show its hand.
Furthermore, three reputable witnesses,
generals of the army, have asserted most
solemnly, upon their word of honor,
that they kneiv Dreyfus to be guilty ;
that it was not matter of opinion, but of
knowledge ; that it was an absolute fact ;
and they have said that they based this
statement on their knowledge of things
which had not been published. In cor-
roboration of this, there occurred in the
course of the testimony distinct allusions
to the existence of documents on file at
the War Department, and strictly secret.
No one questioned the integrity of the
officers of the court-martial. Neither
was it comprehensible that the govern-
ment should have gratuitously pushed
a false charge against an insignificant
captain, or that so cruel a punishment
should have been inflicted, if there were
doubts of his guilt. Nor has it been
shown that he had any enemy likely to
enter upon the perilous task of man-
ufacturing false evidence against him.
On the other hand, the scandalous pro-
tection given by the government to the

602

Psychology and the Real Life.

wretched Esterhazy provokes suspicion
of bad faith. Neither is it easy to ex-
plain why the government should not
have permitted the occult leakage, by
which it had been put in so embarrassing
a position, to continue a little longer for
the purpose of extrication.

All these things, however, are specu-
lations only, and the affair remains an
unsolved mystery. But its mystery is
its charm. If we knew, as an absolute
fact, either that Dreyfus is guilty or that
he is innocent, we should forget his case
within twenty-four hours.

John T. Morse, Jr.

PSYCHOLOGY AND THE REAL LIFE.

THE world of science and learning,
as well as the social world, has its alter-
nating seasons and its capricious fashions.
Mathematics and philosophy, theology
and physics, philology and history, each
has had its great time ; each was once
favored by both the leaders of knowledge
and the crowd of imitating followers.
The nineteenth century, which began
with high philosophical inspirations, has
turned decidedly toward natural science ;
the description of the universe by dis-
solving it into its atomistic elements, and
the explanation by natural laws without
regard for the meaning and the value of
the world, has been the scientific goal.
But this movement toward naturalistic
dissolution has also gone through several
phases. It started with the rapid devel-
opment of physics and chemistry, which
brought as a practical result the wonder-
ful gifts of technique. From the inor-
ganic world the scientific interest turned
toward the organic world. For a few
decades, physiology, the science of the
living organism, enjoyed an almost un-
surpassed development, and brought as
its practical outcome modern medicine.
From the functions of the single organ-
ism the public interest has been drawn
to the problems of the evolution of the
organic world as a whole. Darwinism
has invaded the educated quarters, and
its practical consequence has been rightly
or wrongly a revolution against dogmatic
traditions.

Finally, the interests of the century
have gone a step further, — the last step
which naturalism can take. If the phy-
sical and the chemical, the physiological
and the biological world, in short the
whole world of outer experience, is atom-
ized and explained, there remains only
the world of inner experience, the world
of the conscious personality, to be brought
under the views of natural science. The
period of psychology, of the natural sci-
ence of the mental life, began. It began
ten, perhaps fifteen years ago, and we are
living in the middle of it. No Edison
and no Roentgen can make us forget that
the great historical time of physics and
physiology is gone ; psychology takes the
central place in the thought of our time,
and overflows into all channels of our life.
It began with an analysis of the simple
ideas and feelings, and it has developed
to an insight into the mechanism of the
highest acts and emotions, thoughts and
creations. It started by studying the
mental life of the individual, and it has
rushed forward to the psychical organi-
zation of society, to the social psycho-
logy, to the psychology of art and sci-
ence, religion and language, history and
law. It began with an increased care-
fulness of self-observation, and it has
developed to an experimental science,
with the most elaborate methods of tech-
nique, and with scores of big laboratories
in its service. It started in the narrow
circles of philosophers, and it is now at

Psychology and the Real Life.

603

home wherever mental life is touched.
The historian strives to-day for psycholo-
gical explanation, the economist for psy-
chological laws ; jurisprudence looks on
the criminal from a psychological stand-
point ; medicine emphasizes the psycho-
logical value of its assistance ; the realis-
tic artist and poet fight for psychological
truth ; the biologist mixes psychology in
his theories of evolution ; the philologist
explains the languages psychologically ;
and while aesthetical criticism systemati-
cally coquets with psychology, pedagogy
seems even ready to marry her.

As the earlier stages of naturalistic in-
terests, the rush toward physics, physio-
logy, biology, were each, as we have seen,
of characteristic influence on the practi-
cal questions of real life, it is a matter
of course that this highest and most radi-
cal type of naturalistic thinking, the
naturalistic dissolution of mental life,
must stir up and even revolutionize the
whole practical world. From the nursery
to the university, from the hospital to
the court of justice, from the theatre to
the church, from the parlor to the par-
liament, the new influence of psychology
on the real daily life is felt in this coun-
try as in Europe, producing new hopes
and new fears, new schemes and new re-
sponsibilities.

Let us consider the world we live in,
from the point of view of this new creed.
What becomes of the universe and what
of the human race, what becomes of our
duty and what of our freedom, what be-
comes of our friends and what of our-
selves, if psychology is not only true, but
the only truth, and has to determine the
values of our real life ?

What is our personality, seen from the
psychological point of view ? We sepa-
rate the consciousness and the content of
consciousness. From the standpoint of
psychology, — I mean a consistent psy-
chology, not a psychology that lives by
all kinds of compromises with philoso-
phy and ethics, — from the standpoint
of psychology the consciousness itself is

in no way a personality ; it is only an
abstraction from the totality of conscious
facts, — an abstraction just as the con-
ception of nature is abstracted from the
natural physical objects. Consciousness
does not do anything ; consciousness is
only the empty place for the manifold-
ness of psychical facts ; it is the mere
presupposition making possible the ex-
istence of the content of consciousness,
but every thought and feeling and voli-
tion must be itself such a content of con-
sciousness. Personality, too, is thus a
content ; it is the central content of our
consciousness, and psychology can show
in a convincing way how this funda-
mental idea grows and influences the
development of mental life. We know
how the whole idea of personality crys-
tallizes about those tactual and muscular
and optical sensations which come from
the body; how at first the child does
not discriminate his own limbs from the
outside objects he sees ; and how slowly
the experiences, the pains, the successes,
which connect themselves with the move-
ments and contacts of this one body
blur into the idea of that central object,
our physical personality, into which the
mental experiences become gradually in-
trojected.

Psychology shows how this idea of the
Ego grows steadily together with the
idea of the Alter, and how it associates
itself with the whole manifoldness of
personal achievements and experiences.
Psychology shows how it develops itself
toward a sociological personality, includ-
ing now everything which works in the
world under the control of our will, in
the interest of our influence, just as our
body works, including thus our name and
our clothing, our friends and our work,
our property and our social community.
Psychology shows how, on the other hand,
this idea can shrink and expel every-
thing which is not essential for the con-
tinuity of this central group of psychical
contents. Our personality does not de-
pend upon our chance knowledge and

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chance sensations ; it remains, once
formed, if we lose even our arms and
legs with their sensations ; and thus the
personality becomes that most central
group of psychical contents which ac-
company the transformation of experi-
ences into actions ; that is, feelings and
will. Psychology demonstrates thus a
whole scale of personalities in every one
of us, — the psychological one, the socio-
logical one, the ideal one ; but each one
is and can be only a group of psychical
contents, a bundle of sensational elements.
It is an idea which is endlessly more com-
plicated, but in principle not otherwise
constituted, than the idea of our table or
our horse ; just as, from the point of view
of chemistry, the substance which we call
a human body is in principle not other-
wise constituted than any other physical
thing. The influence of the idea of per-
sonality means psychologically, then, its
associative and inhibitory effects on the
mechanism of the other contents of con-
sciousness, and the unity and continuity
of the personality mean that causal con-
nection of its parts by which anything
that has once entered our psychical life
may be at any time reproduced, and may
help to change the associative effects
which come from the idea of ourselves.

Has this psychological personality free-
dom of will ? Certainly. Everything de-
pends in this case upon the definitions,
and the psychologist can easily construct
a conception of freedom which is in the
highest degree realized in the psychophy-
sical organism and its psychological ex-
periences. Freedom of will means to
him absence of an outer force, or of path-
ological disturbance in the causation of
our actions. We are free, as our actions
are not the mere outcome of conditions
which lie outside of our organism, but
the product of our own motives and their
normal connections. All our experiences
and thoughts, our inherited dispositions
and trained habits, our hopes and fears,
are cooperating in our consciousness and
its physiological substratum, in our brain,

to bring out the action. Under the same
outer conditions, somebody else would
have acted otherwise ; or we ourselves
should have preferred and done some-
thing else, if our memory or our imagi-
nation or our reason had furnished some
other associations. The act is ours, we
are responsible, we could have stopped
it ; and only those are unfree, and there-
fore irresponsible, who are the passive
sufferers from an outer force, or who
have no normal mental mechanism for
the production of their action, a psycho-
physical disturbance which might come
as a kind of outer force to paralyze the
organism ; it might be alcohol or poison,
hypnotism or brain disease, which comes
as an intruder to inhibit the regular free
play of the motives.

Of course, if we should ask the psycho-
logist whether this unfree and that free
action stand differently to the psycholo-
gical and physiological laws, he would
answer only with a smile. To think that
freedom of will means independence of
psychological laws is to him an absurd-
ity ; our free action is just as much de-
termined by laws, and just as psycholo-
gically necessary, as the irresponsible ac-
tion of the hypnotized or of the maniacal
subject. That the whole world of men-
tal facts is determined by laws, and that
therefore in the mental world just as lit-
tle as in the physical universe do wonders
happen, — that is the necessary presup-
position of psychology, which it does not
discuss, but takes for granted. If the
perceptions and associations and feelings
and emotions and dispositions are all
given, the action must necessarily happen
as it does. The effect is absolutely de-
termined by the combination of causes ;
only the effect is a free one, because those
causes were lying within us. To be
sure, those causes and motives in us have
themselves again causes, and these deep-
er causes may not lie in ourselves. We
have not ourselves chosen all the expe-
riences of our lives ; we have not our-
selves picked out the knowledge with

Psychology and the Real Life.

605

which our early instruction provided us ;
we have not ourselves created those
brain dispositions and talents and ten-
dencies which form in us the decisions
and actions. And so the causes refer to
our ancestors and our teachers and the
surrounding conditions of society, and
with the causes must the responsibility
be pushed backwards. The unhealthy
parents, and not the immoral children,
are responsible ; the unfitted teacher, and
not the misbehaving pupil, should be
blamed ; society, and not the criminal, is
guilty. To take it in its most general
meaning, the cosmical elements, with
their general laws, and not we single
mortals, are the fools !

The actions of personalities form the
substance of history. Whatever men
have created by their will in politics and
social relations, in art and science, in
technics and law, is the object of the his-
torian's interest. What that all means,
seen through the spectacles of psycho-
logy, is easily deduced. The historical
material is made up of will functions
of personalities ; personalities are special
groups of psychophysical elements ; free-
will functions are necessary products of
the foregoing psychophysical conditions;
history, therefore, is the report about a
large series of causally determined psy-
chophysical processes which happened to
happen. But it is a matter of course
that the photographic and phonographic
copy of raw material does not constitute
a science. Science has everywhere to
go forward from the single unconnected
data to the general relations and con-
nections. Consequently, history as a sci-
entific undertaking is not satisfied with
the kinematographic view of all the men-
tal processes which ever passed through
human brains, but it presses toward gen-
eral connection, and the generalizations
for single processes are the causal laws
which underlie them. The aim of his-
tory, then, must be to find the constant
psychological laws which control the de-
velopment of nations and races, and

which produce the leader and the mob,
the genius and the crowd, war and peace,
progress and social diseases. The great
economic and climatic factors in the evo-
lution of the human race come into the
foreground ; the single individual and
the single event disappear from sight ;
the extraordinary man becomes now the
extreme case of the average crowd, pro-
duced by a chance combination of dispo-
sitions and conditions ; genius and insan-
ity begin to touch each other ; nothing
is new ; the same conditions bring again
and again the same effects in new masks
and gowns ; history, with all its branches,
becomes a vast department of social psy-
chology.

But if the free actions of the histori-
cal personalities are the necessarily deter-
mined functions of the psychophysical
organisms, what else are and can be the
norms and laws which these personali-
ties obey? Certainly, the question which
such laws answer, the question what
ought to be, does not coincide with the
question what is ; but even that " ought "
exists only as a psychical content in the
consciousness of men, as a content which
gets the character of a command only by
its associative and inhibitory relations to
our feelings and emotions. In short, it
is a psychical content which may be char-
acterized by special effects on the psy-
chological mechanism of associations and
actions, but which is in principle coordi-
nated to every other psychical idea, and
which grows and varies, therefore, in
human minds, under the same laws of
adaptation and inheritance and tradition
as every other mental thing. Our ethi-
cal laws are, then, the necessary products
of psychological laws, changing with cli-
mate and race and food and institutions,
types of action desirable for the conser-
vation of the social organism. And just
the same must be true for the aesthetical
and even for the logical rules and laws.
Natural processes have in a long evo-
lutionary development produced brains
which connect psychological facts in a

606

Psychology and the Real Life.

useful correspondence to the surround-
ing physical world ; an apparatus which
connects psychical facts in a way which
misleads in the outer physical world is
badly adapted, and must be lost in the
struggle for existence. Logical laws are,
then, just so many types of useful psychi-
cal processes, depending upon the psy-
chophysical laws, and changing with the
conditions and complications of life.

The psychologist will add : Do not
feel worried by that merely psychologi-
cal origin of all our inner laws. Is not
their final goal in any case also only
the production of a special psychophysi-
cal state ? What else can our thinking
and feeling and acting strive for than
to produce a mental state of agreeable
character ? We think logically because
the result is useful for us ; that is, secures
the desired agreeable, practical ends. We
seek beauty because we enjoy beautiful
creations of art and nature. We act
morally because we wish to give to others
also that happiness which we desire for
ourselves. In short, the production of
the psychological states of delight and
enjoyment in us and others, and the re-
duction of the opposite mental states of
pain and sorrow, are the only aim and
goal of a full, sound life. Were all the
disagreeable feelings in human conscious-
ness replaced by happy feelings, one psy-
chological content thus replaced by an-
other, heaven would be on earth.

But psychology can go one more step
forward. We know what life means to
it, but what does the world mean ? What
is its metaphysical credo? There need
not be much speculative fight about it.
All who understand the necessary pre-
mises of psychology ought to agree as to
the necessary conclusions. Psychology
starts with the presupposition that all
objects which have existence in the uni-
verse are physical or psychical, objects
in matter or objects in consciousness.
Other objects are not perceivable by us,
and therefore do not exist. To come from
this to a philosophical insight into the ul-

timate reality, we must ask whether these
physical and psychical facts are equally
true. To doubt that anything at all exists
is absurd, as such a thought shows al-
ready that at least thoughts exist. The
question is, then, only whether both phy-
sical and psychical facts are real, or phy-
sical only, or psychical only. The first
view is philosophical dualism ; the sec-
ond is materialistic monism ; the third is
spiritualistic monism. Psychology can-
not hesitate long. What absurdity to be-
lieve in materialism, or even in dualism,
as it is clear that in the last reality all
matter is given to us only as idea in our
consciousness ! We may see and touch
and hear and smell the physical world,
but whatever we see we know only as
our visual sensations, and what we touch
is given to us as our tactual sensations ;
in short, we have an absolute knowledge
which no philosophical criticism can
shake, only in our own sensations and
other contents of consciousness. Phy-
sical things may be acknowledged as a
practical working hypothesis for the sim-
ple explanation of the order of our sen-
sations, but the philosophical truth must
be that our psychical facts alone are cer-
tain, and therefore undoubtedly real.

Only our mind -stuff is real. Yet I
have no right to call it " ours," as those
other personalities whom I perceive exist
also only as my perceptions ; they are
philosophically all in my own conscious-
ness, which I never can transcend. But
have I still the right to call that my con-
sciousness ? An I has a meaning only
where a Thou is granted ; where no Alter
is there cannot be an Ego. The real
world is, therefore, not my conscious-
ness, but an absolutely impersonal con-
sciousness in which a series of psychical
states goes on in succession. Have I
the right to call it a succession? Suc-
cession presupposes time, but whence do
I know about time ? The past and the
future are given to me, of course, only
by my present thinking of them. I do
not know the past ; I know only that I

Psychology and the Real Life.

607

at present think the past; the present
thought is, then, the only absolutely real
thing. But if there is no past and no
future, to speak of a present has no mean-
ing. The real psychical fact is without
time as without personality ; it is for
nobody, for no end, and with no value.
That is the last word of a psychology
which pretends to be philosophy.

Now let us return to our starting-point :
are we really obliged to accept this view
of the world as the last word of the know-
ledge of our century ? Can our histori-
cal and political, our ethical and aestheti-
cal, our logical and philosophical think-
ing, — in short, can the world of our
real practical life be satisfied with such
a credo ? And if we wish to escape it, ,
is it true that we have to deny in our con-
science all that the century calls learn-
ing and knowledge ? Is it true that only
a mysterious belief can overcome such
positivistic misery, and that we have to
accept thus the most anti-philosophical
attitude toward the world which exists ;
that is, a mixture of positivism and mys-
ticism ?

To be sure, we cannot, no, we cannot
be satisfied with that practical outcome
of psychology, with those conclusions
about the final character of personality
and freedom, about history and logic
and ethics, about man and the universe.
Every fibre in us revolts, every value in
our real life rejects such a construction.
We do not feel ourselves such conglom-
erates of psychophysical elements, and
the men whom we admire and condemn,
love and hate, are for us not identical
with those combinations of psychical at-
oms which pull and push one another
after psychological laws. We do not
mean, with our responsibility and with
our freedom in the moral world, that our
consciousness is the passive spectator of
psychological processes which go on cau-
sally determined by laws, satisfied that
some of the causes are inside of our
skull, and not outside. The child is to
us in real life no vegetable which has to

be raised like tomatoes, and the criminal
is no weed which does not feel that it
destroys the garden.

Does history really mean to us what
psychological and economical and statis-
tical laws put in its place ? Are " hero-
ism " and " hero-worship " empty words ?
Have Kant and Fichte, Carlyle and Em-
erson, really nothing to say any more, and
are Comte and Buckle our only apostles ?
Do we mean, in speaking of Napoleon and
Washington, Newton and Goethe, those
complicated chemical processes which
the physiologist sees in their life, and
those accompanying psychical processes
which the psychologist enumerates be-
tween their birth and their death ? Do
we really still think historically, if we
consider the growth of the nations and
this gigantic civilization on earth as the
botanist studies the growth of the mould
which covers a rotten apple ? Is it really
only a difference of complication ?

But worse things are offered to our
belief. We are asked not only to con-
sider all that the past has brought as the
necessary product of psychological laws,
but also to believe that all we are striv-
ing and working for, all our life's fight,
— it may be the noblest one, — means
nothing else than the production of some
psychological states of mind, of some
feelings of agreeableness ; in short, that
the tickling sensations are the ideal goal
of our life. The greatest possible hap-
piness of the greatest possible number,
that discouraging phrase in which the
whole vulgarity of a naturalistic century
seems condensed, is it really the source
of inspiration for an ideal soul, and does
our conscience really look out for titilla-
tion in connection with a majority vote ?

If you repeat again and again that
there are only relative laws, no absolute
truth and beauty and morality, that they
are changing products of the outer con-
ditions without binding power, you con-
tradict yourself by the assertion. Do
you not demand already for your skep-
tical denial that at least this denial itself

608

Psychology and the Heal Life.

is an absolute truth ? And when you
discuss it, and stand for your conviction
that there is no morality, does not this in-
volve your acknowledgment of the moral
law to stand for one's conviction ? If
you do not acknowledge that, you allow
the inference that you yourself do not
believe that which you stand for, and
that you know, therefore, that an abso-
lute morality does exist. The psycholo-
gical skepticism contradicts itself by its
pretensions ; there is a truth, a beauty, a
morality, which is independent of psycho-
logical conditions. When such ideal du-
ties penetrate our life, we cannot rest at
last in a psychological metaphysics where
the universe is an impersonal content
of consciousness ;, and every straightfor-
ward man, to whom the duties of his real
life are no sounding brass, speaks with
a calm voice to the psychologist : There
are more things in heaven and earth than
are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Is there really no possible combination
of these two attitudes ? Certainly such
combination is not given by an incon-
sistent compromise. If we say to the
intellect, Go on with your analyzing and
explaining psychology, but stop halfway,
before you come to practical acting ; and
say to our feeling and conscience, Go on
with your noble life, but do not try to
think about it, for all your values would
show themselves as a poor illusion ; then
there remains only one thing doubtful,
whether the conscience or the intellect is
in the more pitiful state. Thinking that
is too faint-hearted to act, and acting that
is ashamed to think, are a miserable pair
who cannot live together through a real
life. No such coward compromise comes
here in question, and still less do we ac-
cept the position that the imperfectness
of the sciences of to-day must be the
comfort of our conscience.

The combination of the two attitudes
is possible ; more than that, it is neces-
sary in the right interests of both sides,
as the whole apparent contradiction rests
on an entire misunderstanding. It is not

psychology that contradicts the demands
of life, but the misuse of psychology.
Psychology has the right and the duty
to consider everything from the psycho-
logical standpoint, but life and history,
ethics and philosophy, have neither the
duty nor the right to accept as a picture
of reality the impression which is reached
from the psychological standpoint.

We have asked the question whether
the psychical objects or the physical ob-
jects, or both, represent the last reality ;
we saw that dualistic realism and mate-
rialism decided for the last two interpre-
tations, while psychology voted for the
first. It seems that one of these three
decisions must be correct, and just here
is the great misunderstanding. No, all
three are equally wrong and worthless ;
a fourth alone is right, which says that
neither the physical objects nor the psy-
chical objects represent reality, but both
are ideal constructions of the subject,
both deduced from the reality which is
no physical object, no psychical object,
and even no existing object at all, as the
very conception of an existing object
means a transformation of the reality.
Such transformation has its purpose for
our thoughts and is logically valuable, and
therefore it represents scientific truth ;
but this truth nevertheless does not reach
the reality of the untransformed life. It
is exactly the same relation as that be-
tween natural science and materialism.
Natural science considers the world a
mechanism, and for that purpose trans-
forms the reality in a most complicated
and ingenious way. It puts in the place
of the perceivable objects unperceivable
atoms which are merely products of
mathematical construction quite unlike
every known thing ; and nevertheless
these atoms are scientifically true, as their
construction is necessary for that special
logical purpose. To affirm that they are
true means that they are of objective
value for thought. But it is absurd to
think, with the materialistic philosopher,
that these atoms form a reality which is

Psychology and the Real Life.

609

more real than the known things, or even
the only reality, excluding the right of
all not space-tilling realities. The phy-
sical science of matter is true, and is true
without limit and without exception ; ma-
terialism is wrong from the beginning to
the end. There is, indeed, no physical
object in the world which natural sci-
ence ought not to transmute into atoms,
but no atom in the world has reality, and
these two statements do not contradict
each other.

In the same way psychology is right,
but the psychologism which considers the
psychological elements and their mechan-
ism as reality is wrong from its root to
its top, and this psychdlogism is not a
bit better than materialism. It makes
practically no difference whether the real
substance is of the clumsy space-filling
material or of the finer stuff that dreams
are made of ; both are existing objects,
both are combinations of atomistic indi-
visible elements, both are in their changes
controlled and determined by general
laws, both make the world a succession of
causes and effects. The psychical mech-
anism has no advantage over the physi-
cal one ; both mean a dead world without
ends and values, — laws, but no duties ;
effects, but no purposes ; causes, but no
ideals.

There is no mental fact which the
psychologist has not to metamorphose
into psychical elements ; and as this trans-
formation is logically valuable, his psy-
chical elements and their associative and
inhibitory play are scientifically true.
But a psychical element, and anything
which is thought as combination of psy-
chical elements and as working under
the laws of these psychical constructions,
has as little reality as have the atoms of
the physicist. Our body is not a heap of
atoms ; our inner life is still less a heap
of ideas and feelings and emotions and
volitions and judgments, if we take these
mental things in the way the psychologist
has to take them, as contents of conscious-
ness made up from psychical elements.

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 487. 39

If it is understood that any naturalistic
science has not to discover a reality which
is more real than our life and its imme-
diate battlefield, but has only to trans-
form the reality in a special way, then it
must be clear that the demands of our
real life can never be contradicted by the
outcome of the empirical sciences. The
sciences, therefore, find their way free to
advance without fear till they have mas-
tered and transmuted the physical and
the psychical universe.

But we can go a step farther. A con-
tradiction is the more impossible since
this transformation is itself under the
influence of the elements of real life,
and by that the apparent ruler becomes
the vassal. If psychology pretends that
there is no really logical value, no ab-
solute truth, because everything shows
itself under psychological laws, we must
answer, This very fact, that we consider
even the logical thinking from the psy-
chological point of view, and that we
have psychology at all, is only an out-
come of the primary truth that we have
logical ends and purposes. The logical
thinking creates psychology for its own
ends ; psychology cannot be itself the
basis for the logical thinking. And if
psychology denies all values because they
prove to be psychical fancies only, we
must confess that this striving for the un-
derstanding of the world by transform-
ing it through our science would have
no meaning if it were not work toward
an end which we appreciate as valuable.
Every act of thought, every affirmation
and denial, every yes or no which con-
stitutes a scientific judgment, is an act of
a will which acknowledges the over-in-
dividual obligation to decide so, and not
otherwise, — acknowledges an " ought,"
and works thus for duty. Far from al-
lowing psychology to doubt whether the
real life has duties, we must understand
that there is no psychology, no science,
no thought, no doubt, which does not by
its very appearance solemnly acknow-
ledge that it is the child of duties. Psy-

610

Psychology and the Real Life.

chology may dissolve our will and our
personality and our freedom, and it is
constrained by duty to do so, but it must
not forget that it speaks only of that will
and that personality which are by meta-
morphosis substituted for the personality
and the will of real life, and that it is this
real personality and its free will which
create psychology in the service of its
ends and aims and ideals.

In emphasizing thus the will as the
bearer of all science and thought, we
have reached the point from which we
can see the full relations between life
and psychology. In the real life we are
willing subjects whose reality is given in
our will attitudes, in our liking and dis-
liking, loving and hating, affirming and
denying, agreeing and fighting ; and as
these attitudes overlap and bind one an-
other, this willing personality has unity.
We know ourselves by feeling ourselves
as those willing subjects ; we do not per-
ceive that will in ourselves ; we will it.
But do we perceive the other subjects ?
No, as little as ourselves. In real life,
the other subjects also are not perceived,
but acknowledged ; wherever subjective
attitudes stir us up, and ask for agree-
ment or disagreement, there we appreci-
ate personalities. These attitudes of the
subjects turn toward a world of objects,
— a world which means in real life a
world of tools and helps and obstacles
and ends ; in short, a world of objects
of appreciation.

Do those subjects and their objects
exist ? No, they do not exist. I do not
mean that they are a fairy tale ; even the
figures of the fairy tale are for the instant
thought as existing. The real world we
live in has no existence, because it has a
form of reality which is endlessly fuller
and richer than that shadow of reality
which we mean by existence. Existence
of an object means that it is a possible
object of mere passive perception ; in real
life, there is no passive perception, but
only active appreciation, and to think
anything as object of perception only

means a transmutation by which reality
evaporates. Whatever is thought as ex-
isting cannot have reality. Our real will
does not exist, either as a substance which
lasts or as a process which is going on ;
but our will is valid, and has a form of
reality which cannot be described because
it is the last foothold of all description
and agreement. Whoever has not known
himself as willing cannot learn by de-
scription what kind of reality is given to
us in that act of life ; but whoever has
willed knows that the act means some-
thing else than the fact that some object
of passive perception was in conscious-
ness ; in short, he knows a reality which
means more tha'h existence.

The existing world, then, does not lack
reality because it is merely a shadow of
a world beyond it, a shadow of a Platon-
istic world of potentialities. No, it is a
shadow of a real world, which stands not
farther from us, but still nearer to us,
than the existing world. The world we
will is the reality ; the world we perceive
is the deduced, and therefore unreal sys-
tem ; and the world of potential forms
and relations, as it is deduced from this
perceivable system, is a construction of
a still higher degree of unreality. The
potentialities that form the only possible
metaphysical background of reality are
not the potentialities of existing objects,
but the potentialities of will acts. This
world of not existing but valid subjective
will relations is the only world which his-
tory and society, morality and philoso-
phy, have to deal with.

The willing subjects and their mutual
relations are the only matter history can
speak of, but not those subjects thought
as perceivable existing objects ; no, as
willing subjects whose reality we can un-
derstand, not by describing their physical
or psychical elements, but by interpret-
ing and appreciating their purposes and
means. The stones, the animals, even
the savages, have no history ; only where
a network of individual will relations has
to be acknowledged by our will have we

Psychology and the Real Life.

611

really history ; and our own historical po-
sition means the system of will attitudes
by which we acknowledge other willing
subjects. To be sure, history, like every
other science, has to go from the raw ma-
terial of single facts to generalities ; but
if we are in a world of not existing but
valid realities, the generalities cannot be
laws, but will relations of more and more
general importance. Existing processes
are scientifically generalized by laws ;
valid relations are generalized by more
and more embracing relations. The aim
of the real historian, therefore, is, not to
copy the natural laws of physics and so-
cial psychology, but to work out the more
and more general inner relations of man-
kind by following up the will influence
of great men, till finally philosophy of
history comprises this total development
from paradise to the day of judgment
by one all - embracing will connection.
Thus, history in all its departments, his-
tory of politics and constitutions, of art
and science, of language and law, has as
its object the system of those human
will relations which we ourselves as will-
ing subjects acknowledge, and which are
for us objects of understanding, of inter-
pretation, of appreciation, even of criti-
cism, but not objects of description and
explanation, as they are valid subjective
will functions, not existing perceivable
objects.

But history speaks only of those will
acts which are acknowledged as merely
individual. We know other will acts in
ourselves which we will with an over-
individual meaning, those attitudes we
take when we feel ourselves beyond the
desires of our purely personal wishes.
The will remains our own, but its sig-
nificance transcends our individual atti-
tudes ; it has over-individual value ; we
call it our duty. To be sure, our duty
is our own central will ; there is no duty
which conies from the outside. The order
which comes from outside is force which
seduces or threatens us ; duty lies only
in ourselves ; it is our own will, but our

will in so far as we are creators of over-
individual attitude.

If the system of our individual will
acts is interpreted and connected in the
historical sciences, the system of our
over-individual will acts is interpreted
and connected in the normative sciences,
logic, aesthetics, ethics, and philosophy of
religion. Logic speaks about the over-
individual will acts of affirming the
world, aesthetics about those of appre-
ciating the world, religion about those
of transcending the world, ethics about
those of acting for the world ; and this
attitude has, then, to control also all the
side branches of ethics, as jurisprudence
and pedagogy. All speak of over-indi-
vidual valid will relations, and no one
has therefore directly to deal with exist-
ing psychical objects. On the basis of
these normative sciences the idealistic
philosophy has to build up its metaphy-
sical system, which may connect the dis-
connected will attitudes of our ethical,
aesthetical, religious, and logical duties in
one ideal dome of thoughts. But how-
ever we may formulate this logically ul-
timate source of all reality, we know at
least one thing surely, that we have de-
prived it of all meaning and of all values
and of all dignity, if we picture it as
something which exists. The least crea-
ture of all mortals, acknowledged as a
willing subject, has more dignity and
value than even an almighty God, if he
is thought of merely as a gigantic psycho-
logical mechanism ; that is, as an object
the reality of which has the form of ex-
istence.

How do we come, then, to the idea of
existing objects ? There is no difficulty
in understanding that. Our life is will,
and our will has its duties ; but every ac-
tion turns toward those means and obsta-
cles and ends, those objects of apprecia-
tion, which are material for our will and
our duties. Every act is thus coopera-
tion of subjects and subjectively appreci-
ated objects ; we cannot fulfill our duty,
therefore, if we do not know what we

612

Psychology and the Real Life.

have to expect in this cooperation from
the objects. There must arise, then, the
will, to isolate our expectation about the
objects ; that is, to think what we should
have to expect from the objects if they
were independent of the willing subjects.
In reality, they are never independent ;
in our thoughts, we can cut them loose
from the willing subjects, and think of
them as objects which are not any more
objects of appreciation, but objects of
perception only. These objects in their
artificial separation from the real sub-
ject, thought of as objects of a passive
spectator, take by that change a form
which we call existence, and it is the
aim of natural science to study these ex-
isting things. The path of their study
is indicated to them by the goal they try
to reach. They have to determine the
expectations the objects bring up ; at
first, therefore, they look out for those
features of the objects which suggest the
different expectations, and natural sci-
ence calls these features of the objects
their elements. These elements are not
really in the objects, but they 'represent
all that which determines the possible
variations of the objects in the future.
Thus science considers the present thing
a combination of elements to determine
its relation to the future thing ; but the
present thing is, then, itself the future
of the past thing, and it stands, in conse-
quence, between past and future ; that is,
as a link in a chain in which everything
is determining the future and determined
by the past, everything cause and every-
thing effect.

Natural science finds in this attempt
that there may be two classes of such
existing objects : objects which are pos-
sible, perceivable objects for every sub-
ject, and others which are perceivable
only for one subject. Natural science
calls the first group physical objects, the
second group psychical objects, and sepa-
rates the study of them, as this relation to
the one or the many brings with it numer-
ous characteristic differences, the differ-

ences between physics and psychology.
But the point of view for both is exactly
the same ; both consider their material
as merely perceivable objects which are
made up from elements, and which de-
termine one another by causal connec-
tions. As they are thought cut loose
from the attitude of the will, neither the
physical nor the psychical objects can
have a value or teleological relations.

But the will itself? If psychology,
like physics, deals with the objects of the
world in their artificial separation from
the will, how can the will itself be an
object of psychology ? The presuppo-
sition of this question is in some way
wrong ; the will is primarily not at all
an object of psychology. The real psy-
chological objects are the ideas of our
perception and memory and imagination
and reason. Only if psychology pro-
gresses, it must come to the point where
it undertakes to consider every factor
of our mental life from a psychological
point of view ; that is, as an object made
up from atomistic elements which the
psychologist calls sensations. The will
is not a possible object ; psychology must
make a substitution, therefore ; it iden-
tifies the real personality with the psy-
chophysical organism, and calls the will
the set of conditions which psychologi-
cally and physiologically determine the
actions of this organism. This will is
now made up of sensations, too, muscle
sensations and others ; and this will is
depending upon psychological laws, is
the effect of conditions and the cause of
effects ; it is ironed with the chains of
natural laws to the rock of necessity.
The real will is not a perceivable ob-
ject, and therefore neither cause nor ef-
fect, but has its meaning and its value
in itself; it is not an exception of the
world of laws and causes ; no, there
would not be any meaning in asking
whether it has a cause or not, as only
existing objects can belong to the series
of causal relations. The real will is free,
and it is the work of such free will to

Psychology and the Real Life.

613

picture, for its own purposes, the world
as an unfree, a causally connected, an
existing system ; and if it is the triumph
of modern psychology to master even
the best in man, the will, and to dissolve
even the will into its atomistic sensa-
tions and their causal unfree play, we are
blind if we forget that this transforma-
tion and construction is itself the work
of the will which dictates ends, and the
finest herald of its freedom.

Of course, as soon as the psychologist
enters into the study of the will, he has
absolutely to abstract from the fact that
a complicated substitution is the presup-
position for his work. He has now to
consider the will as if it were really com-
posed of sensational elements, and as if
his analysis discovered them. The will is
for him really a complex of sensations ; '
that is, a complex of possible elements
of perceptive ideas. As soon as the psy-
chologist, as such, acknowledges in the
analysis of the will a factor which is not
a possible element of perception, he de-
stroys the possibility of psychology just
as much as the physicist who acknow-
ledges miracles in the explanation of the
material world denies physics. There is
nothing more absurd than to blame the
psychologist because his account of the
will does not do justice to the whole
reality of it, and to believe that it is a
climax of forcible arguments against the
atomizing psychology of to-day if philo-
sophers exclaim that there is no real will
at all in those compounds of sensations
which the psychologist substitutes. Cer-
tainly not, as it was just the presupposi-
tion of psychology to abstract from that
real will. It is not wiser than to cast
up against the physicist that his moving
atoms do not represent the physical world
because they have no color and sound
and smell. If they sounded and smelled

still, the physicist would not have fulfilled
his purpose.

Psychology can mean an end, and can
mean also a beginning. Psychology can
be, and in this century, indeed, has been,
the last word of a naturalistic attitude
toward the world, — an attitude which
emphasized only the expectations from
the objects, and neglected the duties of
the subjects. But psychology degener-
ates into an unphilosophical psycholo-
gism, just as natural science degenerates
into materialism, if it does not understand
that it works only from one side, and that
the other side, the reality which is not
existence, and therefore no possible ob-
ject of psychology and natural science,
is the primary reality. Psychology can
be also a beginning. It can mean that
we ought to abandon exaggerated devo-
tion for the physical world, that we ought
to look out for our inner world ; then a
good psychology is the most important
supplement to those sciences which con-
sider the inner life, not as existing, de-
scribable, explainable objects, but as a
will system to be interpreted and to be
appreciated. If that is the attitude, the
psychological sciences on. the one side,
the historical and normative sciences on
the other side, can really do justice to the
totality of the problems of the inner Jife.
If psychology tries to stand on both sides,
its end must be near ; the real life will
tear it up and rend it in pieces. If it
stands with strong feet on the one side,
and acknowledges the right of the other
side, it will have a future. The psycho-
logy of our time too often seems deter-
mined to die out in psychologism ; that
must be stopped. Psychology is an end
as the last word of the naturalistic centu-
ry which lies behind us ; it may become
a beginning as the introductory word of
an idealistic century to be hoped for.
Hugo Mttnsterberg.

614

English Literature and the Vernacular.

ENGLISH LITERATURE AND THE VERNACULAR.

BETWEEN the language of literature
and the language of common life there
must be, whether in a living tongue or a
dead one, differences growing out of the
nature of literature. The very making
of literature is an attempt to give more
or less permanence to thought which
would otherwise pass away with the mo-
ment which gave it birth, and to give
wider utterance to thought which would
otherwise be confined to one's immediate
audience. It is natural, therefore, that
literature should hesitate to use forms
of expression which, though quite unex-
ceptionable in conversation, would defeat
either its end of permanence or the one
of intelligibility by offending the reader's
prejudice or puzzling his understanding.

There thus grows up a distinction be-
tween the language of literature and the
vernacular. In the one, the best and
surest expression of thought is every-
where and always to be striven for ; in
the other, thought may appear in what-
ever dress fancy and the expediency of
the moment give it.

There are, for instance, constantly
cropping up in language a number of
forms of expression which gain a local
or temporary currency only to give place
to others like them, which in turn have
their little day and disappear. Such
flotsam and jetsam are no real part of
the stream of speech moving steadily
along from generation to generation, and
are unsuited to purposes of literature.
Many of these folk of the hour, it is
true, though but merest gutter-snipes in
their origin, having once caught atten-
tion and gained importance by accident,
do eventually become most useful mem-
bers of literary society ; but until their
social status is recognized it is not safe
to trust them with the serious business of
literature.

Then, again, many words, owing to

the fact that they do not catch the stress
of the voice, get contracted. While
really due to the operation of natural
laws of speech, such contractions, to the
ordinary mind, seem to be the result of
carelessness, and are not easily toler-
ated in literature. When they are re-
presented in writing, a pedantic apostro-
phe takes the place of the lost element
of the word. The printer points his fin-
ger at them every time they appear, as
much as to say, " You 've forgot to put
on your cravat." One prays for the
time when users of English will make
the discovery that these are integral
words of the language, and not curtail-
ments. But until that time the delib-
erate effort to write literature makes it
necessary to use them sparingly, and al-
ways to attach to them their sign of
ignominy.

Then there is the necessity of avoid-
ing repeated words and turns of expres-
sion. In speaking, the same ideas are
expressed over and over again in the
same words without making the repeti-
tion of them tiresome ; for they are dif-
ferentiated from time to time by differ-
ences of stress or intonation or accom-
panying gesture. In writing, however,
such a differentiation is possible only to
a limited extent. How far repetition is
tolerable depends upon the prejudice of
the reader. If the written word were
recognized as the spoken word, and not
the letters of it committed to type, the
reader would have little cause for offense
in these apparent repetitions. But he
thinks he has abundant cause ; the art of
rhetoric teaches him that. The writer,
then, unless he have the power of com-
pelling the reader to follow him up hill
and down dale, over hedges and through
the mire, must be careful how he taxes
the reader's patience.

Still another difference between the

English Literature and the Vernacular.

615

two arises from the fact that the spoken
word is more easily intelligible because
accompanied by certain dramatic acces-
sories of tone and gesture which help to
make it clear, while the written word
must depend wholly upon the connota-
tion which experience has given it. This
difference, however, is not so great as
at first sight it would seem to be ; for
the written words themselves, always
appealing to the ear, carry with them in
their context the tones and inflections
they have when uttered. There is not
here, as in repetitions, anything to offend
the reader's taste. It only makes ne-
cessary a greater number of words and
fuller expression. And here, again, the
question depends largely upon the power
of the writer. It is quite possible for
English that was originally intended
solely for the ear to maintain its quality
as the best literature when printed and
directed to the eye. We are so used to
thinking orally that the moment a word
appears before us we recognize it as
sound ; and as the words weave them-
selves into thought, tone and emphasis
take care of themselves. The eternal
drama of human experience thus unfolds
itself in the pages of Shakespeare with-
out let or hindrance ; the actors are ever
ready for their cue, in the railway train,
on the street, in the library, anywhere.
Ariel comes with the swiftness of light,
and the play is on ; we 've but to whis-
tle and it 's gone again. And so with
rhythm ; the words in a line of Spen-
ser's, silently appealing to the eye, will
" drop melting honey " into ears still
tortured with the griding screech of a
trolley car. There needs nothing more
than attention and a knowledge of Eng-
lish ; the rest will take care of itself.

There is another difference, like the
last of dramatic quality, growing out of
the fact that 'we leave more to be in-
ferred when we talk than when we write.
But here, again, the difference is more
apparent than real. The same quality
of connected reasoning and clear expres-

sion is to be found in good conversation
as in good writing ; the same discon-
nectednesses and abruptnesses in both
forms of expression. If we use more of
the one sort of thinking when we talk
than we do when we write, it is merely
because we choose to do so.

These distinctions between the lan-
guage of literature and the vernacular
are formal, not essential distinctions ;
they grow out of the differing physical
conditions of representation, and are not
of language itself ; they do not make
two kinds of language. Indeed, it would
be easily possible for us to ignore them
entirely. For where the written form
of expression has kept pace historically
with the spoken form, as is the case with
English, there are not two vehicles, one
for written thought and the other for
spoken thought ; there is but one. So
for us there is but one kind of English,
and that is the English we think with.

The successive attempts to create a
special language for English literature
have been failures. It is our lasting
glory that our greatest writers have been
men who were not bred in the schools.
The language has successfully resisted
every effort that has been made to re-
duce it to a uniform logical formula of
literary expression. We can now look
back with a feeling of pity for the early
Elizabethans, striving to improve Eng-
lish poetry by squaring it with classical
quantity, and to make Alfred's vernacu-
lar worthy of Cicero's praise.

Were no disturbing conditions pre-
sent, it would be evident to any one who
could read that written English is the
same as spoken English, due allowance
having been made for the different phy-
sical conditions of expression. It would
be no harder to write English well than
to speak English well, and both would
depend upon the power to think English
well. Education would then have no
difficulty in coordinating a writing and
reading power with a thinking and talk-
ing power, to such a degree of perfection

616

English Literature and the Vernacular.

that all four could be exercised as easily
as one of them. That the ear, the tongue,
the eye, the hand, do not now work to-
gether in perfect accord, in this process
of receiving and ti'ansmitting thought, is
evidence that the matter is not one of
merely coordinating physical powers in
an unconscious effort to secure a given
end. The ear and the tongue can unite
perfectly and easily and unconsciously,
in normal cases, to perform in different
ways the same function. That the ear
and the hand cannot do so without em-
barrassment, confusion, and artificiality
shows that disturbing conditions are pre-
sent.

And disturbing conditions are present.
They are due mainly to two causes : the
one, a too early familiarity with classic
literature combined with an ignorance
of English; the other, an archaic sys-
tem of writing English no longer repre-
sentative of the language, and not un-
derstood as archaic writing. To escape
these two dangers, and arrive at a clear
forthright use of one's native idiom, re-
quires no small amount of skillful pilot-
ing. The siren voice of the one, the
confusing currents of the other, have
numbered among their victims some of
the brightest names in English litera-
ture.

To examine the first cause. The lit-
eratures of Greece and Rome attained
their perfection under conditions which
it is not probable will be repeated soon
in human history. They became classic
through the very fact that it was then
possible to atrophy language and fix it
in an artificial way by an education es-
sentially aristocratic and exclusive. The
normal process of growth was arrested
by referring continually to a previously
fixed standard of correctness. Gram-
mar became a thing of books and pre-
cepts, and was not the unconscious ex-
pression of the logic of the race. All
this while, however, the common tongue
of the people, untrained in the schools
and unfamiliar with forms of expression

other than those of experience, was obey-
ing natural laws of growth. But to the
minds of the upper classes this growth
was a decay, and they constantly arrest-
ed it by adherence to an ancient form re-
garded as normal and fixed in their liter-
ature. There were thus two languages
in the place of one : a literary speech
which was also the vernacular of the up-
per classes, and a vulgar idiom of the
masses which had no literature.

It became possible, therefore, to elab-
orate fixed rules of literary expression
in formulae which were scarcely subject
to change, and the highest beauty of
the literature was found in 'the strictest
adherence to them. Violations of such
rules were barbarisms (a term we still
have with us), unintelligible combinations
of words or sounds, and were considered
to be corruptions of the standard speech,
— there was no other way to explain
them in an absence of a knowledge of
historical grammar, — just as many
good people nowadays feel called upon
to excuse Shakespeare for using corrupt
English. In the case of Latin, the break-
ing up of the Roman Empire spread the
vulgar Roman idiom over Europe, to
become the parent of the Romance lan-
guages. The Roman Church and Chris-
tianity perpetuated and spread the classic
idiom, until the Renaissance came to re-
inforce it and make it the norm of lit-
erary expression. The Romance lan-
guages were not regarded as Latin, so
that for mediaeval Europe there was but
one Latin tongue, that of the literature.
There was thus imposed upon the living
languages of Europe the dead language
of a foreign literature, whose skillful use
depended upon the observance of certain
inflexible rules. This became the high-
est ideal of literary expression. The at-
tempt to fit it to contemporary thinking
was a failure, — a failure which led to
the immediate development of vernacu-
lar literatures all over Europe.

But for a long time the vernacular
literatures were ignored. Writers who

English Literature and the Vernacular.

617

used the vulgar idiom felt called upon
to excuse themselves for doing so, on the
ground of a patriotic desire .to relieve
the ignorance of the masses, or some
such thing. The literature of the uni-
versities was still in Latin and Greek.
The ideal of literature continued to be
a classic one. Aristotle was dethroned,
but Plato took his place. This ideal
has continued to dominate our vernacu-
lar literature to this day, and the writer
of English still strives to imitate a form
of literary expression which is not con-
sistent with his habit of thought, and
has never been consistent with his na-
tive forms of expression.

He may not do this directly ; but un-
less he knows English thoroughly, and
has unusual confidence in the power of
his thought, he can hardly escape an in-
direct imitation ; for the grammars and
rhetorics which he uses are full of prin-
ciples derived from the study of classic
literature, and not from English master-
pieces. His education soaks him in
these principles. He learns to make his
sentences rather than to allow them to
make themselves ; he turns them this way
and that way, so they '11 parse, — that
is, fit into certain mediaeval categories
of thought ; he avoids forms of expres-
sion which will not square with bokara
and bramantip, torturing and twisting
his native idiom to fit this Procrustes bed
until it is a limp mass of lifeless para-
graphs : logical ? — yes ; well propor-
tioned ? — yes ; connected ? — yes ; but
at what a sacrifice of point and vigor,
of that forthright quality that calls a
spade a spade and has done with it,
that incisive quality that cuts straight to
the core of the matter and exposes it,
that robust English that Chaucer and
Shakespeare knew ! All this carefully
constructed rhetoric he spells out in a
painful effort after what he supposes to
be accuracy, knowing full well that if
he trips in this fine footing he lays him-
self open to the charge of ignorance and
barbarism.

Simplicity and sincerity are far to
seek in such writing ; self-consciousness
is everywhere over it, subterfuge lies
close to it. The best writers of English
do escape from these things, — they are
forced to by our modern conditions ; but
the escape is one of the difficulties of
learning to write easily and well.

Not until our grammars and rhetoric
textbooks are founded in the intelligent
study of English literature, and based
only upon principles derived from what
the world agrees to consider the best
English writing, shall we get rid of these
artificial standards. •

But besides these writers of English
who come thus indirectly in contact with
the ideal of a classic literature, there
are a great number who are brought
directly in contact with it through study
of Latin and Greek. If they had a thor-
ough knowledge of English literature be-
fore they turned to Latin and Greek, the
result would be only to plant them more
firmly in the use of their own idiom. But
it has been the fault of our educational
system that this contact was too early,
and the familiarity bred of it only a su-
perficial one. Because the student does
not know the strength and wealth of his
own literature, classic literature becomes
to him the first unfolding of the power
of literary expression, and he naturally
seeks to imitate it. The contrast be-
tween his idea of the poverty of his own
idiom and the richness of this foreign
one is made more sharp by the fact that
to get it into his own mind he sets it
over into combinations of English words
quite unknown to English thought, and
lacking its vitality. He is now learning
two things : not only to warp his vernac-
ular, but to use for purposes of literary
expression words which he does not think
with, and which cannot be used for Eng-
lish thought because such combinations
of English words have never existed.
His teacher is often quite convinced that
intelligent effort prevents this, as he re-
quires " English " translations. But he

618

English Literature and the Vernacular.

is not really doing this at all so long
as he allows the student to fix any part
of the Latin idiom he reads into corre-
sponding English words. Quite satis-
fied with Gallia est omnis being put
into English clothes as " Gaul as a
whole," he forgets that in English coun-
tries are not " divided ; " that no English
mind would think, " Dakota as a whole
is divided into North and South Dakota."
Even if he were constantly aware of the
cast of the equivalent English thought
for every Latin passage his students
read, he could not impart it save to a
few of them ; the others would carry
away with them, despite his best efforts,
un-English forms of expression to trip
and clog them " all their lives after."
The young mind thus early begins to
think English that is not English, and
is not long in coming to believe that the
English language is inadequate to many
forms of thought. What wonder that
he should so think ? He knows nothing
of Chaucer, and learns Shakespeare's
English — what little of it he does learn
— in the same way as he learns "Caesar's
Latin.

We do not tell him that our own lit-
erary product is barbarous and vulgar
when we compare it with classic ideals,
but we often allow him to infer that it
is. If he grows into anything like an
adequate appreciation of the literature
written in his own tongue, he always
feels that it is a pity that it does not
more nearly conform, at least in out-
ward aspect, to classic literature. He
never understands the technique of its
poetry ; he is always thinking about dac-
tyls and spondees (though his idea of
Greek and Latin hexameters is gener-
ally an impossible one), and forever dis-
tributing stresses according to the rules
of quantitative rhythm. He fails to
catch the magnificent splendor of Eng-
lish rhythm ; he is unable to discern the
nice adjustment of sentence-stress with
word-stress, to perceive the infinite va-
riety that English verse is capable of.

His idea of prose is artificial, too. He
feels that somehow English has never
reached the stage of adequate prose
expression, and he is always torturing
his idiom into " balanced " sentences or
" periodic " sentences, or judiciously dis-
tributing it in." short " and " long " sen-
tences. He never learns that the best
Greek and Latin would be quite insuffi-
cient to express the thought of a single
day of our present life. He is like a
boy who has grown up in a foreign land,
and finds a perfect home nowhere.

It scarcely needs to be pointed out
that self-confidence is the first thing ne-
cessary to clear expression. The Com-
mittee of Ten, in their survey of edu-
cational method and their attempt to fit
it to the probable needs of the coming
generation, have, to a certain extent,
overlooked this fact. And we shall prob-
ably go on wondering for some time to
come why it is that our young people
require such an inordinate amount of
instruction to enable them to express
their thought simply and clearly, and
still be puzzled to know why it is that
they do not lay hold of their native liter-
ature with a firmer grasp.

The very end for which the student
is studying Latin is thus being defeated
at every step of his training. His study,
instead of giving him a wider idea of
the power and means of literary expres-
sion, and teaching him thereby to real-
ize the strength of his own idiom, is
robbing him of what little confidence he
has in it. He gets more pusillanimous
and pedantic every day, and if some-
thing does not intervene to change the
current of his development, he will fix
himself in a habit of expression that will
prevent him even from seeing truth
clearly, let alone expressing it.

The trouble lies, not in the fact that
he is studying Latin and Greek, — were
he prepared for it, nothing could be bet-
ter for him, — but in the fact that he is
doing so before he knows his own lan-
guage and his own literature ; indeed,

English Literature and the Vernacular.

619

often before he has any idea of what
language and literature are. He is not
studying either language or literature ;
he is merely exercising such faculties as
would be useful in solving the puzzles in
a weekly newspaper.

Suppose, however, his education had
been started along another path. Sup-
pose his English thinking, as it unfolded
itself from his experience, was contin-
ually seized upon as thought ; that he
was constantly shown how a widening
knowledge of English idiom was a wid-
ening power of English thought ; that
he was not allowed to express in words
any English thought that was not clear
in his own mind ; that he was not al-
lowed to read English words without
getting the full meaning out of every
one of them, and understanding the fit-
ness of just those words for just that
thought ; that to do this for the best
English literature he was taught the
grammar of English for every piece of
literature he read ; that he was rea-
sonably at home in all the great works
of his native literature, and was fully
aware that at every point where he did
not and could not understand an Eng-
lish literary form of expression but one
of three things was possible : either the
writer did not know what he was saying,
or he had not been reported correctly,
or the student did not understand the
English of the period when the author
wrote. Suppose such a student were
then set at Latin or Greek. He would
worry every word, every phrase, every
sentence, until he got its full meaning
as thought, and would not be satisfied
until he had done so. He would thus
get at the foreign literature in a way
that would strengthen his knowledge of
his own. If he went on to read other
literatures in this way, it would not be
long till he saw the meaning of all lit-
erature and of all language ; till he re-
cognized language as the function of
thought, and literature as the millioned
recorded impulses of the human brain.

This kind of study would soon drive
the absurd methods of literature-teach-
ing out of our universities. Students
with such a training would cease to be
interested in committing to paper and
memorizing the prejudiced opinions of
superficial journalists. They would cease
to care for an aesthetic that had no foun-
dation. They would not waste time in
learning that Professor A liked this, or
that Professor B liked this, 6r that Pro-
fessor C was glad that Mr. Swinburne
agreed with him in thinking that there
were certain elements in Dekker's char-
acterization, etc. The Subjective Ele-
ments in Browning's Poetry or the Ob-
jective Elements in Tennyson's would
cease to be attractive lecture-subjects.
The number of predications to the square
inch on a page of Chaucer would like-
wise scarcely seem of importance, espe-
cially when the student was ignorant of
what Chaucer meant to say with that
x per cent of predication. Students
would cease to think of " literature " as
a mixture of George Meredith, Kipling,
Paul Verlaine, Quo Vadis, The Chris-
tian, and the Dolly Dialogues. There
would then be some hope of reaching a
rational system of teaching English lit-
erature and a rational basis of criticism.

A familiarity with English literature,
derived at first hand from contact with
the literature itself read intelligently in
the light of a full knowledge of the lan-
guage in which it was written, would not
be long in developing the power of think-
ing clearly and writing easily in English
forms of expression. Having thought
through his own mind the best English
literature in the best English words, the
student would not be at a loss for apt
forms of expression : they would be his
mother tongue. He would not think of
using words correctly or incorrectly any
more than he would think of walking
correctly or incorrectly. The distinc-
tions of "loose," "balanced," and "pe-
riodic " in sentence-structure would have
no terrors for him; figures of speech

620

English Literature and the Vernacular.

with their long Greek names would not
trouble him. These things would not
enter into his writing any more than the
distinctions of a mediaeval metaphysic
enter into his conduct. He would bid
them defiance, and say what he had
to say in bold, straightforward English
words. The writing them into litera-
ture, if they were worthy and fit to be
made literature, would be the mere
mechanical process of representing his
words by conventional signs.

Such a habit of direct expression would
surely bring with it clear thinking. The
teaching of English would become what
it ought to be, — the training of the mind
to think clearly, to formulate thought
unconsciously, to get knowledge through
the channels of thought worn for it by
countless generations of English-thinking
minds.

But there would still be an obstacle
to remove from the way to clear forth-
right English writing, — the obstacle al-
ready referred to as the second cause of
the embarrassment of the written word.
We have in English, to a greater extent
than in any other language of western
Europe, unless it be French, an irregu-
lar and arbitrary system of represent-
ing words. It is an obvious fact that
the forms of the words we write down
cannot represent the words we speak.
Though an educated man does to a
certain extent overcome this difficulty
by memorizing every written form for
every word he uses, it is not only a
process that takes years of valuable
time, but is also one that establishes in
his mind, willy-nilly, a distinction that
ought not to be there. He comes to
feel that in literature one must not ex-
pect to get that clear and sharp impres-
sion which one demands in the speech of
every-day life ; that in literature thought
may be suggestive, transcendental, and
need not make pertinent indubitable
sense. The reading of Shakespeare never
fails to bring out clearly this underlying
assumption. For there are passages —

the average reader does not realize how
many they are — that cannot possibly
convey any thought at all without an
intimate knowledge of the English of
Shakespeare's time. These may be read
to almost any intelligent audience, inno-
cent of such knowledge, and they will
never be questioned. It requires argu-
ment to convince those who hear them
that, understood as they understand them,
such passages are meaningless nonsense.

If any one wants to make the experi-
ment for himself, let him take some pas-
sage of Shakespeare the key to which
lies in a familiarity with a delicate turn
of Elizabethan idiom. Let him read it
with unction, and note the effect it pro-
duces. I doubt — and I 've tried it my-
self repeatedly — if a single one of his
hearers will give the slightest manifesta-
tion that the words have not for them a
pertinency and an aptness leaving no-
thing to be desired. They think they
have been listening to Shakespeare, when
all the while they have been taking into
their ears a lot of nonsense which, to sup-
pose it comes from Shakespeare, would
be an insult to the greatest master of
English the world has ever known.

They see Shakespeare printed in mod-
ern English (there is no complete text
in existence, so far as I know, that does
not put Shakespeare into our modern
strait-jacket of orthography) ; they hear
Shakespeare's words spoken as modern
English words ; they feel that Shake-
speare must have known what he was
about when he wrote, and that if his
words do not seem clear and sharp to
their thought it must be because it is
great literature they are reading. The
conclusion is that literature has in it a
certain element which transcends com-
mon sense, passing beyond every-day
processes of thought and forms of ex-
pression.

The cause of this confusion lies in the
nature of language, and in the fact that
English is a living tongue, constantly
changing in process of development.

English Literature and the Vernacular.

621

Now, we can think only with the lan-
guage in which our experiences uncon-
sciously formulate themselves. We ac-
quire our thinking language from expe-
rience, and not from hooks. Books may
give us thought that is the outcome of
the experience of others, and we can add
this to our own ; but we cannot get the
thought into our own minds until we
formulate it in terms of our own experi-
ence. When the thought is so expressed
that the words in which it is expressed
are not those which the receiving mind
uses for its own thinking, the unfamiliar
words must be translated into corre-
sponding words which are familiar. It
makes no difference how close the ap-
proximation is between the words said
and the words heard ; there is no perfect
understanding unless the two are iden-
tical. The thought of the imparting
mind cannot become the thought of the
receiving mind unless the formulation
of it is exactly the same for both. As
far as the imparting of thought goes, it
is a case where a miss is as good as
a mile. If it is not exactly the same
in both cases, a third or intermediate
thought links the two minds, together.
It is in this middle that the trouble lies.
It may be a fairly good translation of
the thought to be imparted ; it may be,
and it is far oftener than we have any
idea of, merely a rough guess at it. But
in neither case does the thought pass
from one mind to the other. The only
words which will convey thought to our
mind are those we think with.

English is constantly changing as it
passes through the minds of succeed-
ing generations, in a process of develop-
ment conditioned by physical and mental
characteristics which at present we don't
know anything about. The develop-
ment is not apparent to us, for we hear
only the speech current in our own gen-
eration. If, however, we could make
ourselves citizens of the universe, — as
we can partially do by the study of his-
tory, — we should clearly perceive this

March of Speech alongside of the March
of Thought. Reconstructing the past
stages of English as well as we can
from the internal evidence of literature
and the external evidence of records, we
know that the cbanges, even for a pe-
riod of three centuries, practically give
us a new language. These changes take
place in the sound of words, in their ac-
cent, in their form, in their meaning, and
in their arrangement. Written English
takes little cognizance of them, so that
we are not generally aware of their ex-
istence, and we print Shakespeare in
our spelling and read it as if it were
our own language. But we do not think
Shakespeare's thought ; we make a trans-
lation of it into our late New English
and think that. Shakespeare's genera-
tion, however, did not have to do this.
To them it was vernacular. And there
is no good literature in English that was
not immediately intelligible to those who
read it at the time it was written. If
we could only realize this truth and the
more general one I have been trying to
make clear, the importance of studying
English historically would be apparent.
For though in nine cases out of ten the
translation is a correct one, in the tenth
case it is grossly and palpably wrong.
It is this tenth case that makes the trou-
ble and introduces the confusion into
writing by giving countenance to vague-
ness and inaptness of expression.

To illustrate, suppose we take some
passages from Shakespeare.

I am reading Love's Labour 's Lost.
I meet with this (IV. ii. 78) : —

" Jaq. God give you good morrow,
master Parson.

" Hoi. Master Parson, quasi pers-on.
An if one should be pierced, which is
the one ?

" Cost. Marry, master schoolmaster,
he that is likest to a hogshead.

" Hoi. Piercing a hogshead ! a good
lustre of conceit in a turf of earth," etc.

Assuming that I know the thought
these words carried to Elizabethan ears,

622

English Literature and the Vernacular.

I say to myself, " The schoolmaster has
connected ' parson ' with ' pierce one '
and made a stupid pun, and Costard
has carried this one step further." But
what a travesty my English makes of
Shakespeare's ! His word for " par-
son " was person (not " pursun ") ; that
for "parse" was perse ("p8rs"); that
for " one," on (not " wun ") ; that for
"pierce" (to broach), perse ("p6rs").
Our printers have flattened the passage
to stupidity ; our editors have emended
the perst of the Folio and Quarto into a
pointless "pierced," and the persing (that
is, "parsing"), which shows that even
the editor of the Quarto knew Holofernes
did not see that Costard's joke was at
his expense, into an equally pointless
" piercing." Here it is our ignorance
of the sound of Shakespeare's language
that makes us miss the point entirely.

Let us take another case, still in
Love's Labour 's Lost, where we are led
astray by the meaning we attach to Shake-
speare's words. I read (I. i. 92) : —
" Too much to know, is to know nought but
fame."

I get no idea from it. I infer that
Shakespeare intended to make Biron say
something about too much knowledge,
and so I think something about too
much knowledge ; probably, " Too much
knowledge leads one to care for no-
thing but fame." I suppose Shakespeare
meant that I cannot see why Birori
wanted to say such a thing just at that
point, nor why he chose to say it in such
a clumsy way. But after all, it sounds
well, and it is as clear as hundreds of
statements I read every day. But I
have not really read the verse at all. I
have merely translated it incorrectly
without knowing that I have done so.
Suppose, however, I know that in Shake-
speare's English " fame " meant some-
thing like what I should call " hearsay."
The meaning of the words becomes ap-
parent, clear, apt, strong. They fit right
into the context, —

" Small have continual plodders ever won

Save base authority from others' books,"

(supposing, for the nonce, that I under-
stand these verses), and I have an eter-
nal truth. But still I have it in my own
words, — I don't think " fame." I say
•' fame " for the sake of the rhythm and
rhyme, but I think " hearsay " in its
place. It is still a translation, though
this time a correct translation, and not
a guess. I cannot make this " fame "
a word of my own, because I cannot
think it. It is not intelligible in terms of
my experience. Shakespeare's thought
can reach my mind only by an interme-
diate process of translation into my ver-
nacular.

So we might illustrate the difference
between Shakespeare's accent and ours,
or the difference between his syntax
•and ours, such as that contained in the
" small " quoted above. These instances
suffice to show how, in reading Shake-
speare's English as our own English, we
are continually translating it, and fre-
quently missing the thought. We forget
that Shakespeare could not convey the
thought in his mind by using the corre-
sponding nineteenth-century f onus of ex-
pression, because he did not know them.
We assume that he did do so, and content
ourselves with the badly focused photo-
graph of his thought that we get in con-
sequence of our assumption. We thus
come to think that written words are
different from spoken words, an idea
that is strengthened by the fact that as
soon as we write down our words we put
them into forms that are different from
those we use in thinking. We thus rob
literature of its vitality, come to tolerate
crude thought as literature, learn to write
in vague and half-understood terms, —
we, who have the best language in the
world for clear thinking, speech moulded
by generations of people impatient of
nonsense, and a literature that plunges
into the uttermost depths of human ex-
perience.

Mark H. Liddell.

Her Last Appearance.

623

HER LAST APPEARANCE.

THE weight of dullness oppressing the
groups of passengers gathered on the deck
of a great ocean steamer suddenly lifted.
A whisper ran round that, for the first
time on the voyage, Miss Vivienne was
about to issue from her cabine de luxe.
A file of deck -stewards appeared; the
first bringing a reclining-chair ; the sec-
ond, rugs and cushions ; the third, a low
table, a bag, and a pile of books. Next
came a correct - looking English maid,
with foot - warmer, vinaigrette, and a
beautiful little Skye terrier. Lastly, a
tall, slender woman took all eyes : she
wore a loose-fitting garment of sealskin ;
on her head was a sealskin cap, while
over her face was a veil of brown tissue
which crossed behind her neck and knot-
ted under the chin.

Little comments were buzzed about
as Miss Vivienne nestled into her chair.
There was a dramatic effectiveness in the
way she permitted herself to be propped
with cushions and covered with rugs.
One woman remarked that she wished
she possessed the actress's secret of pre-
serving her figure ; another said it was
her inborn natural stateliness which gave
distinction to all she did ; a third de-
clared that almost any woman could show
elegance and distinction in such a seal-
skin redingote, which must have cost at
least five hundred dollars, while as for
that rug of Russian sable and silver fox
fur, conjecture lost itself in trying to fix
a price ; then still another murmured,
" No, it is the business of these actresses
to be diabolically effective."

She was their spectacle, and curiosity,
observation, criticism, carried to almost
any limit, were legitimate. Miss Vivi-
enne, whether by chance or by intention,
had established herself, not side by side
with the other passengers, but at a suffi-

cient distance to create the illusion of the
line of footlights. The lookers-on saw
study, pose, even in the way she turned
and faced the sea, as if enjoying the keen
air, the fresh scent, the joyous dappled
expanse where whitecaps were dancing
over dazzling stretches of blue and green.
Society, besides applauding and patroniz-
ing Miss Vivienne, had recognized her all
her life, since she had forced it to respect
her and accept her profession for her
sake. Still, at this moment it was the
impulse of no one among the group of
women to cross that line of demarcation.
The men were chiefly gathered in the
smoking-room, discussing the probabili-
ties of the day's run. One man, how-
ever, who had been leaning against the
rail, now went slowly up to Miss Vivi-
enne.

" Who is that ? " the women questioned
one another.

" His name is Dwight. I was curious
about him and asked the purser. His
name is not in the passenger-list."

Mr. Dwight continued to stand quietly
by the recumbent figure, until the Skye
terrier, peeping jealously from between
the rugs, snapped and growled. At this
sound Miss Vivienne turned, and looked
at the middle-aged man, whose well-set,
capable head was gray, whose eyes were
gray, whose mustache and also his suit of
tweed were gray, — at first with languid
indifference ; then, recognizing him, she
started up and caught his hand between
both of hers.

" What, you, Owen ? " she murmured,
with intense surprise.

" It is I," he said, smiling, — " most
surely I."

" You coming back from Europe ? I
did not know that you had ever crossed
the ocean in your life."

" I never did until a fortnight ago.
I happened to see in the paper, on the

624

Her Last Appearance.

morning of September 20, that you were
very ill at Geneva of Roman fever. I
sailed that afternoon at three o'clock."

She uttered a slight exclamation ; then
after a moment's pause said, " Luckily
it was not Roman fever. Do you mean
that you went to Geneva to find me ? "

" I reached Geneva the 29th. You
had left for Clar ens several days before."

" Yes, I reached Clarens the 24th. I
was there just five days."

" When I got to Clarens I found that
you were sailing from Bremen that very
morning. I set off, and caught the steam-
er at Southampton."

She had lifted her veil. A clearly cut,
fine, leather worn face with dark heavy-
lidded eyes was disclosed.

" Oh," she exclaimed, " if I had had
any idea that a friend was looking for
me, was thinking of me ! Of course
there was my manager cabling message
after message, but I knew he was chiefly
anxious about the play he had set for
the beginning of the season. If you had
only written " —

" I ought to have sent a dispatch from
New York that I was on the point of sail-
ing ; but," he laughed, " I did not have
the presumption to feel sure you would
be glad to see me. All I felt was that
I must reach you, must know what was
happening to you."

" I first felt feverish and ill on the way
from Milan," Miss Vivienne now said,
with evident relief in having a friend to
confide in. " I was with the Cheneys,
— not people to endure anybody who is
sick or out of spirits. I had no idea that
it was more than a bad headache, but I
decided to stop in Geneva for two days,
and then join them in Paris. I was to
sail with them September 12th. The
headache was only the beginning. I
doubt if I was ever dangerously ill, but
from the first, the doctor, the landlord, the
servants, even my maid, seemed to have
given me over, and to be ready to have
me dead and buried without loss of time.
If I had not had such a horror of dying

alone, I might have died out of pure
good nature, in order to oblige them. As
it was, presently there came a day when
I made them carry me on board the
steamboat, and the air of the lake gave
me new life on the instant. By the time
I reached Montreux I was better, and
my forces soon regathered. But I had
never calculated on dying before I was
a very old woman, and the experience
gave me a feeling of earthquake. Not
even yet does anything seem solid."

" How are you now ? "

" Only needing strength and spirits.
This is the first time I have ventured
out of my stateroom. The weather was
dreadful, and besides I had such a sense
of nothingness. Why did you not let
me know you were on board ? "

He shook his head, smiling.

" It must have been horribly incon-
venient," she said under her breath.

" What ? "

" Crossing in such haste."

" I had no choice. I wanted news of
you."

She burst out again : " It is such a
relief to see a familiar face. I experi-
enced a great void." She met his vivid
look, and turned away with a little ges-
ture. " Madeline, my maid, is an excel-
lent woman," she pursued, with a low
laugh, '" but I could read her every
thought, and I knew that she was trying
to decide whether to stay and claini my
effects, or to run away and shirk all re-
sponsibility. I was never actually delir-
ious, but I was sleepless, and the new
part I had been studying ran in my
head ; I had the nightmarish feeling that
I must get up and be dressed, for Mr.
Benson insisted I should act that very
night, although I told him I had not even
learned the lines. All sorts of such ter-
rors took hold of me. I have not yet
recovered my balance. I dread the going
back. I say to myself fifty times a day
that I hate the stage and everything be-
longing to it."

He looked at her with a curious in-

Her Last Appearance.

625

tensity of glance. " The reality falls be-
low your idea of it ? The life does not
satisfy you ? "

" There is no reality ; it is always like
Sisyphus trying to roll up the stone, —
what you have done to-day with all your
strength has to be done over again to-
morrow."

'' Why go back to such a bondage ? "
he asked, with strong feeling in his face.

" I may say I want to give it up," she
now confessed, laughing, " but I could
n't. Ask a drunkard " —

She broke off. The steward, making
his rounds with cups of bouillon, offered
one to Miss Vivienne. Her maid ap-
proached, and Owen Dwight, remarking
that he feared he had tired her, raised
his cap and was withdrawing, when she
cried eagerly, " You will keep in sight,
cousin Owen ? "

He nodded.

For the remainder of the voyage Miss
Vivienne was absolutely dependent upon
Dwight. He waited for her at her state-
room door ; she leaned upon his arm as
she paced the deck. She discoursed to
him, and to him alone, in spite of the
palpable envy of the men who would
have been glad to take his place. There
was a secret intoxication for Dwight in
the mere situation. Kate (for she was
his cousin by three removes, and her
name was Katharine Vivienne Marcy)
had been ill ; she had become disen-
chanted with the stage, and for once in
his life he had not missed his opportuni-
ty. He told her about himself. His busi-
ness had prospered. He owned a place
in the country, and spent but a few hours
each day at his office in town. He was
fond of gardening, had an orchid-house,
and prided himself on his chrysanthe-
mums. He confessed to some extrava-
gance in pictures, but his joy was in his
library. He could not help feeling that
such a rounded and complete existence
as he described must be acceptable to
every instinct of a woman who realized
her loneliness, who dreaded the renewed

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 487. 40

struggle of her profession, and confessed
that even its victories brought disillusion
and disappointment.

But on the last day of the voyage
came a change. Miss Vivienne did not
leave her stateroom until towards even-
ing, and when she met him she was in
a new mood, eager and absorbed. She
had been hard at work, she said ; and
how delightful it was, after this listless,
idealess existence, to set to work !

" Work is the only tonic," she de-
clared. " The springs of activity it gives
the mind are necessary to the body as
well. The moment I actually set to
work, I feel braced ; I am now just my
usual self."

Her words stabbed him with the sharp-
est irony. " Do you mean that you have
been studying your new part ? "

" Yes, and I am ready to say I never
liked any part so well. It is so fresh,
so full of life. At first it eluded me.
I dreaded lest I had altogether lost the
old elan ; I could not throw myself into
it. The whole play is intensely mod-
ern ; it touches everything, it invades
everything ; not a chord of human na-
ture escapes. The modern school of act-
ing refuses to recognize anything save
the making a vivid and personal repre-
sentation ; and to be individual and vivid
you must be charming, or the result is
caricature. I am always dreading lest
I should lose my flexibility, my pliancy,
— lest I should grow old. There is a
great deal one can do without much work
which has its own charm, grace, and
logic ; but that juvenile audacity expends
itself ; and when it is expended, one has,
to take its place, experience, hard study,
experiment, with endless touchings and
retouchings. And all this conscientious
work is tedious ; it is all thrown away
unless one is bewitching. Now, to-day I
have for the first time approached my
conception of the part of Corisande."
She laughed and looked into his face.
"You see, Owen, I do not mind con-
fessing to you that I have no genius."

626

Her Last Appearance,

"That means you have a great deal
of talent."

" But talent does sometimes seem such
a negative thing. Genius goes straight
to the mark. Genius pierces right
through theatricality and convention, —
grasps the core of the matter ; says and
does what is most absolutely familiar,
even trite, in a way which makes you
feel it was never done before. There is
a young actor in our company " —

" Paul Devine ? " he asked quickly.

" You have seen him, then ? "

" Seen him ? Of course I have seen
him. Whoever sees you sees him. He 's
always your lover or your husband. I
hate the fellow."

She laughed mischievously. " Confess
that he has genius."

" Genius ? Not a bit, except that he
knows how to make love without appear-
ing like a fool. I grant that he is nat-
ural and unaffected, — does not pose, —
which is a relief." Then, with a note of
indignation in his voice, he added, " I
have heard that the women call him hand-
some."

She laughed again, but went on with
eagerness : " I made him all he is. Cav-
endish, who used to take those parts, had
grown unbearable. We were no longer
on speaking terms. One day at rehearsal
I stopped short and said to the manager,
' That may be Mr. Cavendish's notion of
a lover, but to me it suggests a tiger.' He
had to go. Benson gave him a company
and sent him on the road. It was then
that I brought Paul forward. There was
a certain integrity about his acting ; he
had taken the most ordinary parts with-
out any pretension, but I liked the way he
looked, stood, and spoke. His father and
mother had been on the stage ; they had
tried to keep him away from it, but he
came back from pure love of the art. And
heredity counts for a great deal. The art
of the great actors is lost, but it is some-
thing to have even the tradition of it. A
modern actor who has received in child-
hood the least hint of their method —

the clear-cut speech, the sharp incisive
emphasis, the search after strong effects
— never slurs over passages as the new
slipshod people do. The secret of the old
acting — of all good acting — is to give
color, character, human feeling, to the
most indifferent passage. Nowadays,
being unable to express emotion, actors
and actresses rely on slow music, electric
lights, the most obvious and trivial ef-
fects. I taught Paul first how to feel,
then to express his feeling with insight
into real emotion. He is one of the
most poignantly realistic actors at times.
There are at least two scenes in the new
play where we shall be great." She said
this with the quiet assurance of one who
has studied one's self, for whom flattery
does not exist. "You have seen me
sometimes ? " she now asked.

" I always buy a ticket for your first
night in any part," Dwight answered.

" One is not quite at home, not quite
at one's best, on a first night. One is
tliinking too much of the house, — one
listens longing for the echo. I never
see the audience until I have played a
part at least half a dozen times. I won-
der, however, that I never saw you ? "
A slight emphasis dwelt on the pronoun,
and she looked at him with a smile that
flattered. " I want you to see me in my
new part," she went on. " I am rather
a charming woman in it. It oppressed
me for a time, but little by little I assim-
ilated it, and now I have mastered it.
I hope to make it superb."

He uttered an exclamation.

" What is it ? " she asked.

" I am not glad to hear that you like
your part. I should prefer to have you
go back to the mood you were in that first
day you came on deck. It was the great-
est pleasure I have had for years to hear
you say that you hated the stage, that you
wished you need not go back to it."

" What do you want me to do ? " she
inquired, with some archness.

" Marry me, and come and live in the
country."

Her Last Appearance.

627

She shook her head. " Go and live in
the country," she repeated. " I always
associate the phrase with the story that
a dog bit the Duke of Buckingham, who
anathematized the animal by bidding him
go and live in the country."

" People like Buckingham " —

" Yes, people like Buckingham and
like me do not long for the country.
They need to be carried along by the full
current of life in order to feel themselves
alive."

" But, Kate, you have had your day,
and a long, brilliant day it has been. It
cannot last forever."

" It is still at its zenith," she de-
clared.

" Call this the zenith, but from the
moment it reaches the zenith it must de-
cline."

" The moment the least hint reaches
me that my powers are declining," re-
torted Miss Vivienne with spirit, " I will
give up my place. ' Superfluous lags the
veteran on the stage ' shall never be
said of me. The most sensitive barome-
ter of any change in the weather is in
the tone of the manager, and you should
have seen Benson's distracted messages.
Everything is hanging on my return.
Paul Devine's part waits to be created.
If I had not known that I was needed
to set everything going, I should have
stayed ten days longer in Switzerland.
But they are all at my mercy."

" I have not a particle of doubt," ob-
served D wight, " that some pretty ac-
tress is longing to step into your shoes,
and is not too well pleased that you have
recovered so speedily."

She turned upon him ; then saw the
quizzical smile on his face, and content-
ed herself with saying, " How furious
I should be with you for making that
speech, if I did n't like you so much ! "

" If you like me, listen to me, Kate.
Abdicate at this moment, when your pow-
ers are most felt and your presence will
be most missed. You asked if I had
gone to see you act. I told you I had

seen you in every part you had played.
What I did not tell you was that al-
ways there mingled with my admira-
tion a feeling of its being a profanation
that you were on the stage at all. But
you longed for the life, and I have re-
joiced that you have had the very flower
of it. Still, I have said to myself that
finally the time must come ; that you
could not be content to grow old in that
career ; that you would long for a pri-
vate life, for some one to turn to, some
one to love, — at least somebody who
loves you ; and the only man who loves
a woman of forty is the one who has
loved her in her youth."

A cry escaped her. " Horrible ! " she
exclaimed, with a shudder. " People
don't say such things."

" I 'm not people. I 'm Owen. I 'm
the man who has worshiped you all your
life, — who has gone on all these years
making a home fit for you."

" Nevertheless," she murmured, with
a little smile at the corners of her lips,
" this man who has loved me all his life
married."

" Yes, I married. Circumstances made
it a duty; and had she lived, had the
child lived, even," — he drew in a deep
breath, — "I — I should n't perhaps
have felt free to' rush across the ocean
after you. But both are dead, fifteen —
sixteen years ago. I am a wifeless, child-
less, lonely man except for you. I have
no other duty anywhere, I have no other
inclination anywhere. I am under the
bondage of a feeling that has never set
me free, — that never will set me free.
Kate, old, gray, dull, commonplace as I
am, if you will marry me, I will make
you a happy woman."

He had spoken well. She was grate-
ful to him, — indeed, he had moved her ;
for this old unalterable love of his, dat-
ing back to her girlhood, had meanings
for her beyond the power of any present
speech. She could recall how, when as
a willful girl, without father or mother,
brother or sister, she had declared her

628

Her Last Appearance.

intention of going on the stage, he had
given her up with an agony of renunci-
ation, saying that he felt as if it were a
crime to let her go; that it was like
watching a little boat pushing out into
deep seas where it must founder. She
realized now how all these years he had
watched her course. She had a vision,
too, of the sort of fate which awaited
her if she became his wife, — a happy
woman — yes — perhaps. .. . . Then she
recalled the sweet insistence of another
man's eyes and smile, the charm of his
presence, his grateful, ardent words. A
quick leap of the heart towards emotion,
excitement, success, sent her thoughts
traveling back to her profession.

" So long as I was ill," she said, " any
temptation you could offer would have
been powerful. But I am absolutely
wedded to the stage. I have always
said nothing could induce me to marry
and give up my career. If I were to
marry " — She broke off ; then added,
without finishing her sentence, " What
you said just now about my age " —

"I was only quoting. I know that
you are years and years younger than I
am."

" I was going to say that it is only .on
the stage that age makes no difference to
a woman. It does not matter whether
I am forty so long as I look twenty."

" Is there then no magic in the idea
of youth?"

" Those elegant young creatures who
seem to have been transferred from a
fashion-plate cannot act," said Miss Vivi-
enne with disdain. " They have studied
how to keep their trains in correct sweep ;
they can faint to admiration, and can
coil their bodies like peacocks, so that
you can behold the full spread of the
tail while the face is turned toward you.
But they move nobody ; they are lim-
ited by their lack of feeling, by the com-
monness of mind that does not permit
them to efface their vanity, and they re-
main cold, artificial, ill accepted. You
remember the French saying, ' If youth

knew, if old age could.' Now I flatter
myself that I am at the age when I know,
and yet have not lost my efficacy."

He stood looking at her, wondering at
her.

" Perhaps ten years hence ! " he cried
abruptly out of his inner thought ; then
said, with a different note in his voice,
" Of course I ought not to have spoken ;
but that first day when you seemed so
ill, when you confessed yourself so
tired" —

" It was pity, then ? " she interrupted,
smiling.

" Call it pity, if you like. Certainly
I had but one longing, and that was to
offer you all.I possessed. I have offered
it. Possibly ten years hence you may
be glad to accept me as a refuge."

She had her hand inside his arm, and
she pressed it slightly. " Owen," she
murmured, " I 'm horribly ungrateful.
You are too good to be taken as a refuge,
even as a foretaste of divine rest."

" I don't care so much how you take
me. I only want you to take me," said
Dwight.

II.

Miss Vivienne slept in her own luxu-
rious little suite at the Vandyck on the
following night. On Monday morning,
she awoke with a sense of comfort in
her familiar surroundings ; in the feeling
that work, successful work to the full
measure of her strength, awaited her.
She had said once to Owen Dwight that
the worst of the stage was that publicity
was the very breath of its nostrils, that
everything was an advertisement, and
that she hated the necessity of being ad-
vertised which her profession imposed.
To - day, nevertheless, she was flushed
with a sense of victory, for the ovation of
yesterday had made it the most trium-
phant experience of her life, all the more
that it had the charm of the unexpected.
Mr. Benson and Paul Devine had come
down in a steamer to meet her in the bay,

Her Last Appearance.

629

with a party of friends. She had found
her rooms full of flowers ; on a basket of
exquisite roses was Paul's card with the
lines, —

" For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And, thou away, the very birds are mute."

Then, at eight o'clock, Mr. Benson had
given her a dinner, an elegant, sumptu-
ous affair, with many artistic and literary
guests, herself and Paul Devine the only
actors.

While she ate her breakfast she was
glancing at the morning papers, each of
which devoted at least a column to an
account of her reception. One reporter
described her sitting between her man-
ager and her favorite jeune premier,
Paul Devine, wearing a gown of steel-
gray cloth, the perfect fit of which was
revealed as she carelessly threw back a
superb Russian mantle lined with fox
and edged with sable. He went on to
speak of the symmetrical impression the
actress always produced ; her quiet, non-
chalant bearing, her dress, her whole
movement and tone pervaded by that
individual distinction which gave her
charm and finesse as a woman. She had
renewed her youth, he declared ; no sign
of age was apparent on that ever beauti-
ful face.

Another recounted the dialogue he
had enjoyed with the leading lady of the
New Century Theatre. The actress had
kindled into animation at the mention of
the new play, Corisande, observing that
she had never liked any part so well
as the title role. Some parts had to be
carried through by sheer force of will ;
this seized, stimulated, lent wings to the
artist.

A third said there had been rumors
that Miss Vivienne was out of health,
and was about to relinquish the stage,
and let her mantle fall on some younger
member of the profession. Miss Vivi-
enne had, however, put to flight such re-
ports, declaring that never had she been
in better health or more eager for the
season to begin.

One writer eked out his plain state-
ment of facts by a re'sume' of Miss Vivi-
enne's long-established successes, the re-
sult of a method rounded to a perfect
style ; a genius which owed nothing to
its spontaneity, everything to study, to
a delight in the grasp of technical de-
tails. Hers was no restless spirit on the
lookout for novelties ; she pushed no-
thing to extremes, plucked no feathers
from birds whose wings could essay high-
er flights than her own, but rested satis-
fied with her own traditions, and in the
intense premeditation of her art was al-
ways to be commended and admired.

Miss Vivienne more than once knitted
her brows while reading this.

" That is Louis Dupont," she said to
herself. " He likes what he calls spon-
taneity and freedom ; that is, he likes an
actress who, whatever she does, seems al-
ways longing to dance the cancan."

Another reporter had asked the ac-
tress if the coming play demanded hand-
some gowns ; and she had told him she
had six, each a masterpiece, a creation
of the best men-milliners in Paris. It
needed but this statement, which was not
even exaggeration, but pure fiction, to
show the impressionistic tricks of the re-
porter's trade. It was nevertheless true
that six new gowns were at this moment
being ranged round the room by the pains-
taking Madeline, who declared that the
customs people had creased them. It
had just occurred to Miss Vivienne that
it was perhaps her maid who had thus
enlightened the paragraphist, and she
was turning to put the question, when
the woman, answering a knock at the
door of the apartment, returned with a
card on a salver. Miss Vivienne, bend-
ing to read the name, exclaimed in sur-
prise, " Mr. Benson ? "

" No, ma'am, a young lady."

Looking again, Miss Vivienne saw
penciled above the manager's name,
" Introducing Miss Lucy Angell."

" Who is Miss Lucy Angell ? " she
said to herself ; then asked aloud, " A

630

Her Last Appearance.

young lady, you say ? What sort of a
young lady ? "

" Quite the lady, ma'am."

Miss Vivienne rose. '• Have them take
these things away," she said, making a
gesture towards the breakfast service.
" Then tell the young lady I am but just
off the steamer, that I am very busy,
and that if she does not object to coming
to me here " — ,

She sat down at her desk, began to
open a pile of letters and notes, and be-
came absorbed in their contents. Pre-
sently permitting herself to be aware
that some one had entered the room, she
turned. A girl with a slight, elegant fig-
ure, dressed in dark serge, with a cravat
of pale blue knotted at the throat under
a turn-down collar, stood at a little dis-
tance looking wistfully at her. The face
was charming ; the hair was brown, the
complexion fair and pure as a child's ;
only to meet the eyes, which were of
some dark indefinable tint, and to notice
the expression of the lips, was to feel the
eloquence of a moving, unusual sort of
beauty. Conjectures shot through Miss
Vivienne's mind. Why had her mana-
ger sent this girl to her ?

" You will forgive me for receiving
you here ? I am still giddy from my
voyage." She took up the card again.
" Can I do anything for you, Miss An-
gell?"

" You don't seem to remember me,"
the girl said tremulously.

Miss Vivienne gazed at the soft child's
face, — a face with a curious courage
and pride in its steadfast look.

" Have I ever met you before ? " she
inquired.

Miss Angell laughed slightly. " I 've
been your understudy for three years,
Miss Vivienne," she answered.

" Probably, then, you know me better
than I know you, Miss Angell," Miss
Vivienne observed, with the slightest pos-
sible change of tone. " Pray sit down.
Take that seat."

Miss Angell advanced a step, and put

her hand on the back of the chair indi-
cated. Perhaps she preferred to stand.
She burst out impulsively : " I know
every change in your face ; I know every
inflection in your voice, your every ges-
ture and movement. I have moulded
myself upon you, Miss Vivienne. Peo-
ple who have heard me go through your
parts say that if they had closed their
eyes they would have supposed it could
be no one but yourself."

" Imitation is the sincerest flattery,
they say," Miss Vivienne replied bland-
ly. " Still, it seems a pity not to be
more original."

" Oh, I 'm original, I 'm always ori-
ginal, — that 's my strong point," Miss
Angell insisted. " That 's what makes
me succeed."

" Ah, you succeed." Miss Vivienne,
as she spoke, looked at the girl with a
slight narrowing of the eyelids. " As
until lately I was never ill, and have
never lost a day of my engagement, I
feared I had been so disobliging as to
give you no chance to try your powers."

" I 'm what they call ' Corisande up
to date,' " explained Miss Angell. " I 've
been rehearsing the part for a month."

Miss Vivienne could not have told
why the effect of this announcement was
a sudden sense of eclipse. Was it be-
cause envy, jealousy, plucked at her heart
with the reminder that Paul Devine had
been acting up to this girl's Corisande,
looking into these violet eyes, watching
the play of expression on these red dewy
lips ? But what folly ! Until he has en-
tire freedom in a new part, an actor is all
the time working like a slave at it ; and,
under the eye of a martinet like Ben-
son, — who while early rehearsals were
in progress was absolutely merciless, sit-
ting down in the middle of the stage,
ready to pounce upon the unhappy cul-
prit who diverged a hair's breadth from
the stringent rules, to breathe forth fire,
almost slaughter, at the least sign of pre-
occupation, — there could be no oppor-
tunity for a whisper, hardly for a glance.

Her Last Appearance.

631

No; Miss Vivienne reviled herself for
the suggestion. Had not Paul told her
yesterday that he was still as tired as a
dog because the taskmaster, after four
hours' rehearsal on Saturday, when they
were all dropping with fatigue and star-
vation, had insisted on going through the
last two acts again ?

" Mr. Benson says he has hopes of
the play," said Miss Vivienne, after this
momentary reflection. " My absence has
given you a very nice chance."

" I have been waiting for three years
for something to happen," Miss Angell
answered, with a sigh. " Twice I went
traveling with the other company, but
nothing worth having turned up. You
see, Miss Vivienne, the stage is so crowd-
ed with leading ladies, there is very little
demand for a girl with nothing but " —
She broke off without finishing her sen-
tence.

"Her face?" Miss Vivienne suggested.
" ' My face is my fortune, sir, she said ! "

" Oh, I 'm no beauty," said Miss
Angell, smiling and dimpling, " and Mr.
Benson says I don't make up worth a
button. I never in my life had a dress
fit to wear on the stage. But I do be-
lieve I can act."

Again that premonitory shiver passed
through Miss Vivienne. The moment she
spoke with feeling the girl was electrical.

" Why, the other day," Miss Angell
resumed after an instant's pause, " when
I was saying the lines at the beginning
of the third act, the company all stopped
and applauded." She looked at Miss
Vivienne a moment in silence, and al-
though something in the actress's face
froze the question, she faltered humbly,
" Will you let me recite them to you ? "

" I cannot spare the time," replied
Miss Vivienne quietly. " More than
that, I cannot afford to sacrifice my own
individual study of the part. I have pro-
mised to be at the rehearsal to-morrow.
Then, if you are present, you can hear
me in it."

Miss Angell had listened, the smile

going off her lips, the expression chan-
ging in her eyes. Now she drew a long
breath, as if summoning up her resolu-
tion.

" Can't you guess what I came to ask
you to do for me ? " she asked softly.

" No."

" I ca.me to ask if, considering that
you are not strong, you would not let
me act Corisande for a week, — for two
nights, — even for one night ? "

" Act before the public ? "

"Before the public."

" Your name on the bills ? "

"My name on the bills."

Miss Vivienne was a mature woman,
also an accomplished actress, but the
torment of this moment tried her acute-
ly. Her face flushed, her brain whirled.
Her hands, as they lay clasped in her
lap, turned cold and clammy.

" I know," faltered Miss Angell, with
a sound in her voice not unlike a sob,
" I know it 's horrible presumption, but
it 's my one chance. It will make a dif-
ference with my whole life. If you had
not got well " —

" You mean that if I had died, you
would have taken my place."

But irony and innuendo were quite
thrown away on the girl, whose whole
face, her dark eyes and their darker
lashes, her fitful color, the dimples about
the sad little mouth that was made for
joy, all showed that she was terribly in
earnest.

" I only meant if you had not been
able to come back before the opening of
the season," she went on. " You see, I
feel the part so much — if you would
only be willing to wait a little — to let
me have this one chance."

Miss Vivienne laughed. " What be-
comes of me while you are enjoying your
triumph ? "

Miss Angell again drew a deep breath.
" You have had a thousand triumphs,"
she rejoined. " You do not need this.
You have nothing to look forward to.
All the prizes of the profession were

632

Her Last Appearance.

yours years and years ago. You are
rich, you are famous ; while I — I am
only twenty-one, and I am so poor."

" I am very sorry for you," Miss Vi-
vienne now said kindly. " I will help
you in some way. But in this you seem
not to know what you are asking. You
are like a child reaching out for the
moon."

" I told you I knew I was presumptu-
ous," the girl proceeded, " but it 's my
whole life that weighs in the scale. I
know that I am selfish, but just put youi'-
self in my place. I am sure that I have
talent. I am sure that I can act. Just
think, with this sense of power pent up,
with this longing to put it into speech
and action, — think, I say, how hard it
is to be put by, passed over. Acting is
different from the other arts. It can-
not exist without opportunity. One may
make a statue, one may paint a picture,
one may write a book, to show what is
in one. But to act " — She broke off ;
then asked abruptly, " Don't you see
what you are depriving me of ? "

Miss Vivienne could not understand
why she was so wrought upon by the
girl's indignant look and speech that she
could not seem to keep her hold of her
place, but felt herself slipping down the
incline. She tried her wits at the riddle.

" Did Mr. Benson send you to me ? "
she inquired.

" He knew that I was coming."

"And for what?"

" Yes."

" Did he give his sanction to your re-
quest that I should step aside in your
behalf ? "

" No : he only laughed ; he told me he
should like to know what you would say
to me."

" You see what he thought of it."

" But he has praised me to the skies."

" How praised you ? "

" He says I light up the play, — that
I have youth on my side. Then once
he burst out, ' Ah, Miss Angell, you dare
to be spontaneous ! ' '

" He said that ! " cried Miss Vivienne
as if pierced.

" Then again he exclaimed, ' We shall
begin the season with a thunderclap ! ' "

" Ah," said Miss Vivienne with dis-
dain, " that is a phrase of Mr. Benson's.
He used it twice over to me yesterday.
One has one's own vocabulary." She
was silent for a moment, averting her
glance from the girl, whose eyes were
full of anguished expectancy, then asked
in a studiously quiet manner, " How
about Paul Devine ? Did he advise you
to come ? "

" No : he was angry with me for pro-
posing it. He declared the thing was
absurd, quite out of the question."

An exclamation burst from Miss Vivi-
enne irresistibly. Her face lighted up
as if what she had just heard had been
what she had waited for, longed for.

The girl had flushed deeply as she
spoke. Her eyes filled. " But he believes
in me ! " she cried. " He says that " —
She broke off, her lips quivering.

" He says what ? "

" That — he — should — like — to —
act — Romeo — to — my -r- Juliet."

Miss Vivienne smiled. She had risen.
Her whole manner had changed from
luke - warm to blood - warm kindness.
" My dear little girl," she said gently, " I
am sorry to clip your glorious impulse.
Of course you and Paul Devine could act
Romeo and Juliet very prettily. You
have youth on your side, and youth is a
power in itself. But youth is not every-
thing. You seem to consider that the
advantages I have gained are something
to keep or to hand over, as the case may
be. I doubt if you begin to know what
study and hard work are. Your wishes
color everything for you. And if I had
died, it seems as if you might have slipped
easily into the r6le of Corisande." She
made a little gesture. " As it is, I re-
covered. I expect to make a great suc-
cess of Corisande."

It was clear that Miss Angell had hoped
everything, and now saw that she had

Her Last Appearance.

633

lost everything. There was no stoicism
in her demeanor, — nothing but visible
acute disappointment.

" I know," she said, speaking only by
a great effort, " that it is like asking a
queen to come down from her throne."

" Do queens ever come down from
their thrones until they are obliged to
come ? "

The girl looked at the older woman
as if she would have liked to exchange
irony for irony.

" But your day may come," Miss Vi-
vienne continued kindly.

" I want it now. Unless it comes
now I shall miss all that I care about
having."

" That is what it is to be young," Miss
Vivienne said lightly. " You will find
out a little later that it is better to have
missed what seems at twenty - one the
most splendid thing in life." Then, for
a feminine diversion, she pointed to the
toilettes laid out on the lounge and chairs.
" Have you any curiosity to look at the
gowns I am to wear in the play ? " she
asked.

" I saw them when I first came in.
I have seen them all the time we have
been talking, and what they have made
me feel is that I should like to play Cori-
sande in this old serge and make a suc-
cess of it. I am certain that I could."

" I have played often enough in gowns
I have made myself," Miss Vivienne re-
torted ; " and fearfully and wonderful-
ly made they were, too. But, unluckily,
nowadays the public are educated up to
a certain standard of taste, and like per-
fection, harmony, and symmetry."

In spite of her disavowal, curiosity,
jealousy, or the mere feminine instinct
for chiffons had made Miss Angell walk
a few steps nearer the dresses, and now,
lifting one, she uttered an exclamation
of delight.

" Should you like to try it on ? " Miss
Vivienne asked indulgently.

" Not unless you will let me recite the
first scene in the third act."

" Do you think, my dear, you are
quite generous ? " Miss Vivienne asked.

Miss Angell looked first blank, then
puzxled, then stricken. But presently, as
if she had argued the case anew in her
own mind, she burst out, "I have no
right to ask anything; only, you see, Miss
Vivienne, I have nothing, and you — you
have everything. I simply hold out my
hand to you like a beggar. It does seem
to me that you might give me just this
one little chance. It ought to touch you
as a woman. You were young once."

" I am a woman. I was young once,
— I was young once, and now I suppose
I am old," Miss Vivienne said, with a
slight bitterness of tone ; " but I have al-
ways had a scruple against insisting on
receiving what I had not won by my
own powers. I cannot afford to dimin-
ish my well-earned privileges."

" You could increase them if you did
me this favor."

« How ? "

" You would make me love you, —
love you forever and forever."

" Ah ! "

Five minutes later Miss Vivienne was
still standing staring straight before her,
although the door had closed on her vis-
itor. The interview had ended abruptly,
for at her skeptical, half-ironical " Ah ! "
the girl had faltered, in breathless in-
coherence, " They all wish it — they all
hoped for it. You are cruel — cruel —
cruel ! " then had rushed away. Left
in possession of the field, Miss Vivienne
still felt her rival like a living presence ;
still seemed to hear her say, " You were
young once," " I hold out my hand to you
like a beggar," " This is my one chance,"
" You are cruel — cruel — cruel ! "

She suffered in remembering that such
speeches had been hurled at her. They
disturbed her sense of fairness. They
were not only unjust, they were absurd.
Now that it was too late she could think

634

Her Last Appearance.

of a hundred cogent things to have an-
swered. She ought, in a vein of good-
natured sarcasm, to have remonstrated ;
to have pointed out to the girl, with a
touch of humor, that she could hardly
have supposed this, was it possible she
had forgotten that ? to have summoned
logic and reason, and demanded some
fair play in their behalf. Miss Vivienne
was far from satisfied with the part she
had played in the interview. It was in-
credible how little she had maintained
her dignity, how easily she had been de-
pressed by the girl's infatuated belief in
her own talent. It seemed as if some
hidden efficacy in the appeal had dis-
armed her ordinary good judgment.

"But one does not give up what is
one's own ! " she now exclaimed in pas-
sionate self- justification. " Except for
her own statement, I do not even know
that the girl can act."

The manager had said nothing of the
" Corisande up to date." Instead, he was
jubilant over his chief actress's return.
" We shall begin the season with a thun-
derclap ! " he had exclaimed ; . he had
confided to her his belief that Corisande
would be the most successful play he
had ever put on the stage.

Paul Devine had alluded to the play
but once, and then only to explain his fa-
tigue and dullness by the prolonged re-
hearsal. His manner, always quiet and
self-contained, had been touched with
more than usual delicacy and tenderness
when they had met the day before. The
moment he had approached her, Owen
Dwight, with his grimmest smile, had
yielded up his place beside Miss Vivienne
to the newcomer, and had gone to collect
her luggage. She and Paul had said lit-
tle that was personal or direct. She had
talked chiefly, and he had listened, with
sympathizing comment, to her accounts
of her illness, the bad weather in the
early part of the voyage, the sulks and
despair of Toby, the terrier, her own joy
in being at home again.

Of course one inward thought had ab-

sorbed her as it must have absorbed him.
She had avoided his direct glance, for
his eyes had looked the question he had
had no chance to utter aloud. When,
four months before, she and the young
actor had parted, she had promised to
tell him, when they met again, whether
she would consent to become his wife.
They had acted together for the season.
He owed everything to her, although his
own abilities, his good looks, his energy,
his tenacity of purpose, had helped him.
It was easily within her power to help
him further yet in his profession ; and
when, with passionate gratitude, he had
told her he wished to marry her, she
could justify the quick leap of her heart
towards this belated bloom of passion by
the thought that he needed her money,
her experience ; that without her he would
be condemned to a long, arduous strug-
gle, with no sure rewards. However, she
had not yielded at once. She had said to
herself she must impose some test. She
had, indeed, held him at arm's length,
derided him, told him that she was years
too old for him. He said he wanted her
to be his inspiration, his enthroned queen ;
that she could never grow old, never be-
come less than adorable. She had lis-
tened readily enough. She had ascribed
to herself something above and beyond
mere beauty, and it had always been her
own belief that she was not one of the
women whose charm is a mere morning-
glory freshness.

Now, with the clear vision in her
mind of that absolutely fresh thing of
the dawn which had just left her, — that
girl with her translucent skin, dewy lips,
eyes like a gazelle's, a whole aspect made
up, as it were, of fire and dew, — Miss
Vivienne moved to the mirror and looked
at the image of the woman who had re-
pulsed her.

She was startled to find herself old,
gray, furrowed. She had let her vexa-
tion and annoyance show themselves only
too palpably. Her well-chiseled features,
her flexible lips, her fine clear eyes, the

Her Last Appearance.

635

way her hair grew off her forehead and
temples, — these points, which she had
considered the unalterable part of her
beauty, could not redeem her. Her
glance was cold, her lips were angry,
her whole face was haggard. With the
instinct of an actress, she set a. smile go-
ing on her lips and lighted up the fire
in her eyes. There was again the famil-
iar reflection full of charm and finesse,
but she had had a bad moment. With
a sharp pang she realized that she had
lost her youth.

But fact is always depressing to a wo-
man after she is twenty-five. She must
correct it by the persistence of an ideal
which dowers her with the lost radiance
of her early youth. Thus, after pulling
herself together, as it were, Miss Vivi-
enne regained her usual attitude of mind.
What is success in life but the under-
standing how to win against odds ? One
must struggle in order to conquer. That
human heing who permits himself to be
supplanted deserves to be supplanted.
What she experienced at this moment
was indignation, contempt, a wish to
crush whatever impeded her free action.
Reason and logic showed her that she
dominated the situation. Why, then, ir-
rationally, did she demand more than
reason and logic? Why did the solid
earth seem to shake under her feet?
Why should she so long to be reassured,
reinstated ? Why was it that only one
person in the world could reassure and
reinstate her ?

She did not try to analyze or answer
this question. Instead, she darted to her
desk, wrote a few words, tore the leaf
from a tablet, inclosed it in an envelope,
directed it to Paul Devine, New Century
Theatre, rang the bell, and gave orders
that the note should be sent by special
messenger and the answer brought back ;
for it was not worth while to try to live
at the mercy of these doubts, suspicions,
apprehensions. The sting which had
touched her at a single point multiplied
into a thousand, and each dart was dipped

in venom. Who was it the girl had
meant when she said " they all wished "
her, the Corisande up to date, to have
the part ? Of course it was not Paul ;
yet she must know, and at once. Every-
thing precious hung on Paul's caring for
no woman but herself ; she must be loved
by Paul absolutely. If he had looked at
this girl ; if, feature by feature, smile by
smile, glance by glance, he had weighed
her against the older woman, and found
the balance in her favor —

What then ? Until this instant she
had hardly known how she had learned
to look to Paul for all the charm, the
flavor, the compensation of her life. Un-
til he had come into the company she
had gone on acting just as she had gone
on eating and sleeping. Almost without
knowing it, she had grown very tired of
the stage ; its triumphs had been neces-
sary, but she realized their emptiness.
She knew that the world behind the
scenes bristled with strife, competitions,
bitterness, but she had walked along her
course blind to them. She did not like
the members of her profession in gen-
eral. She had little of the laisser-aller,
the Bohemian point of view, the easy give
and take, which insure popularity. She
had contented herself with work, which
had been in danger of becoming mere con-
scientious touching and retouching, pol-
ishing and repolishing. Then Paul had
begun to act with her. He had brought
back the passion, the illusion, of her art.
Why did she now look forward so ar-
dently to the part of Corisande ? Was
it not simply and wholly because he was
the man who loved Corisande, and whom
Corisande at last loved ?

While she was walking to and fro,
chafing restlessly under these thoughts,
she heard a voice in the next room, and,
believing that Paul had come, she opened
the door and darted forward to meet
him ; then perceived that it was not he,
but Owen Dwight.

" Oh, it is you ! " she exclaimed, stop-
ping short.

636

Her Last Appearance.

"Were you expecting some one else?"

" Not quite yet. It is a relief to see
you. I am so glad you came."

But he had only dropped in for a
moment, he said, to tell her that the cus-
tom-house people were at last through
with the box they had detained. All
was right, all was arranged, and he had
brought the key. Then observing the
signs of spent emotion on her face, he
added, " I expected to find you radiant."

" Radiant ? Radiant about what ? "

" When I read the morning papers, I
said to myself, ' Well, Owen Dwight, this
is the goddess you were inviting to sit
opposite you at table the rest of your
life, to pour out your coffee at breakfast
and watch your slumbers before the fire
in the evening.' I called myself a fool."

" One calls one's self such names some-
times, even if one does not quite believe
in the truth of them. Yet there are dis-
illusions the memory of which stings eter-
nally."

" Kate, what has happened ? "

" A mere trifle, yet it has spoiled my
peace of mind."

" After the tribute you received yester-
day, after such a perfect ovation, certain-
ly no trifle ought to disturb you. How-
ever, I suppose what seems a triumphant
success to us insignificant beings, whose
comings and goings make no difference
to anybody but ourselves, is mere every-
day experience to you."

" Possibly you read what the reporter
in the Prism said, — that my genius owed
nothing to spontaneity, that it showed too
much premeditation."

" Surely such nonsense could n't wreck
your peace of mind. He only meant
that you did good work, had a style of
your own, respected your art, and did.
not juggle and experiment with it."

" It is not Louis Dupont's criticism
that upset me, but something quite dif-
ferent." Her whole face showed that
she was deeply in earnest.

" Tell me, Kate." He laid his hand
on hers. She felt the cordiality of his

look, the strength of his sustaining clasp.
" I want to know what has happened."

" Just fancy ! A girl who calls her-
self Miss Angell — the girl who says she
is my understudy, who has been reading
my part while the company have been
rehearsing Corisande — came here ! "

" Well, what did she want ? "

" Wanted me to give up the part to
her ! "

" Give up the part for good and all ? "

" For a night, she said, — two nights,
— a whole week ! "

" What was her justification for such
an extraordinary request ? "

" She declared that the happiness of
her whole future depended on her hav-
ing this chance."

" The happiness of her whole future ?
What sort of a person is she ? "

" Charming, young, a light graceful
figure, a rose-leaf skin, eyes like — but
I have not the words at hand to describe
her. I assure you, her beauty made the
whole thing superb. Her challenge left
me breathless. ' The part of Corisande
or your life,' she seemed to say."

" What did you tell her ? "

" If I did not surrender on the instant,
it was not that I did not feel myself
dwindle to the vanishing-point. ' You
are old, I am young,' she said, with a
little more circumlocution, and I felt ac-
tually apologetic for spoiling her sun-
shine."

" The girl must be a presumptuous
fool," Dwight said, his whole manner
showing sympathy and concern. " Sure-
ly she had no backing ? "

" Mr. Benson had lent her his card to
introduce her. But she expressly said
he laughed at her for coming. That is
his way. He would tell me cynically, if
I asked him what he meant, that he was
sure her audacity would amuse me, — that
I might get a hint from the situation."

" She has been rehearsing your part ? "

" She says that the whole company
stopped and applauded her. Benson told
her she had youth on her side."

Her Last Appearance.

637

" The insolence of youth, the insolence
of life ! "

" She had the grace to say that she
knew it was like asking a queen to come
down from her throne."

" Exactly. What did the queen say ? "

" What do you suppose ? " Miss Vivi-
enne looked into Dwight's face, her own
full of pride and determination. " What
should you have wished me to say ? "

" Of course my wish is that you should
give up the whole thing," he responded
in a perfectly matter - of - fact manner.
" But what she asked was absurd."

" It was more than absurd ; it was in-
credible, impossible ! If I were to give
up for a night, I should give up for all
time. Humpty Dumpty could not have
a greater fall."

Dwight not only saw that she suffered,
but he suffered with her and for her.
At the same time he saw beyond the
present moment, and he realized that
neither his sympathy nor her resolution
could avert a result which was working
itself out irresistibly. He was not a
man to dogmatize on any subject, nor
was it possible for him to insist on his
own wishes, his own wants. But even
while, with more and more soreness of
feeling, she went on recalling the vari-
ous aspects of her grievance, discussing
it anew from every point of view, he
could feel that she was every moment
coming nearer and nearer to him, rees-
tablishing the old intimacy, the old habit
of absolute frankness.

" The sting of it lies in the fact that
she is younger, that she is more beauti-
ful," she said, always returning by a dif-
ferent argument to the same climax.

" There is always a younger, there is
always a fairer," Dwight said. " You
are young for me, Kate ; you will always
be young for me. You are beautiful for
me ; you will always be beautiful for
me." He had no time to say more. The
words were hardly uttered when another
man entered the room, — the man who
had displaced him yesterday ; a far

younger man, slim, tall, rather delicate
of aspect, but with deep-set blue eyes of
peculiar brilliancy, and all his features,
his whole bearing, showing character and
capacity.

He went straight to Miss Vivien ne.
" You sent for me," he said.

" Yes." The look she bent on the new-
comer was at once intimate, inquisitive,
commanding. Dwight saw that this was
no idle visit, and made haste to get away.

Left alone with Paul, Miss Vivienne
stood passive. He studied her face. It
seemed to accuse him.

" I know what it is ! " he burst out,
perhaps taking refuge in irritability from
some conflict of feeling. " But I told
her not to come."

" Are you alluding to Miss Lucy
Angell ? "

" Yes. I see from your face that,
since yesterday, something has displeased
you. I know of nothing else."

She did not spea"k, only continued to
look at him. He advanced a step.

" Tell me what is troubling you,
Kate," he said caressingly.

" Troubling me ? " She evaded the
hand reached out to take hers. She sat
down in an armchair, and motioned that
he should take the one opposite. •' I sim-
ply wish to be sure where I stand. You
know how it is with Benson, — he never
really answers a question. I feel sure
that you will be direct and candid. You
evidently know that a very pretty young
girl, calling herself Miss Angell, came
here before I had finished my breakfast.
She informed me that she had been re-
hearsing Corisande, that my part suited
her, and that she wished me to give it
up to her for a week, or at least for a
night or two."

It was clear that as she spoke he fol-
lowed her account with some anxiety.
When she paused, he kept his eyes fixed
on her as if expecting to hear more.
Seeing that he waited, she continued,
" I wanted to ask if she plays my part
well?"

638

Her Last Appearance.

At this question his lips showed a
slight quivering. He answered, however,
in a quiet, even tone. " She has a good
deal of talent. She has wonderful natu-
ralness ; whatever she says or does seems
to go straight to the mark. Of course
she has certain little awkwardnesses."

" With such a face and figure, she
could not do anything very awkward.
Beauty covers a multitude of sins."

He sat silent, staring at her ; then said
under his breath, " She does very well ;
all her work has life in it."

" Then you advise me to give up my
part to her ? "

" I do not advise it. I told her she
was too ambitious."

" She described how you all broke into
applause in the opening scene of the third
act. She said that when it was believed
I could not get well " —

" Did she dare speak of such a thing? "

" Mr. Benson told her the season would
open with a thunderclap."

Paul uttered an exclamation.

Miss Vivienne went on : " She flung
her youth in my face."

" Shame on her, — shame on her ! "
cried Paul, his features working, his
voice hoarse. " But she did not mean it,
she is not so brutal. It is only that
she has worked herself up into an in-
tense longing for this chance. It means
so much to her. She has been trying
so hard to get a paying engagement.
This part suits her, and she feels as if
the opportunity would be everything to
her."

" So she told me. She wants her
share of the good things of the world.
She wants my share."

He threw up his arms as if something
cramped and fettered him. " She had
no right to come," he said again. " I
told her the idea was monstrous ; it 's
intolerable. Only " —

" Only what ? "

" She knew that I owed everything to
you — she believed that you might be
willing " —

" Might be willing to do everything
for her ? "

" Yes," he said with dejection.

" She thought me*so benevolent ? "

" She was sure of it. You have every-
thing, she has nothing."

" It was not her poverty which she
thrust in my face ; rather it was her
youth, her talent, her beauty." Miss
Vivienne flung this taunt ; then when she
saw that he was somehow gathering his
forces to answer rl, her mood seemed
suddenly to change. " Paul," she said
in a different tone, " it is a little strange
that we should begin at once to talk about
this girl. When we parted last May " —

He made a spring towards her, caught
her hand and bent above her. " Yes,"
he said resolutely. " I know. That is
the real question. What have you de-
cided ? " There was manliness, chivalry,
devotion, in his manner, everything ex-
cept what she longed for, — the passion-
ate craving of a lover. Her eyes, raised
to his, rested on his face. " Tell me,
Kate," he said.

" What am I to tell you ? "

" You were to come back and tell me
whether you could find it in your heart
to marry me."

" Tell me something first," said Miss
Vivienne.

He drew a long breath. " Anything."

" Do you still wish me to marry
you ? "

" I expect it. I count on it. I have
planned for it." But he spoke hoarsely
and with an effort.

" Last spring you said you loved me."

" Surely, Kate, you have no doubt of
me?"

" But tell me, do you still love me ? "

"I love you devotedly." His eyes
met hers ; his whole face was intensely
serious.

" You have heard," she now said gen-
tly, " that I was very ill. For three days
it seemed possible that I might die."

His clasp tightened. "Thank God
that you are here."

Her Last Appearance.

" I had made niy will. It was in rny
letter - case, but it was not signed. I
asked the landlord to send for a notary,
and it was signed before witnesses. I
left everything to you, Paul."

" I do not deserve such goodness," he
said in a broken voice.

" If you love me, why not ? I have
no near relatives. Who ought to profit
by my death but the man I had made
up my mind to marry ? "

" Thank you," he said simply and
breathlessly. For a moment he seemed
lost to realities ; then when he met her
clear, unfaltering look, he said with deci-
sion, " When shall it be ? " His look,
as he asked this, was the look which had
always pleased her. She had loved him
for his youth, his grace, his expressive
eyes and smile, but also for the capacity
for kindling into high emotion which his
whole face now showed.

" When shall what be ? " she asked,
smiling and coloring.

" When shall we be married ? "

" Oh, not until the season is over ! "

" The season has not begun."

" After it has begun and ended."

" No, now ! " he cried, no longer mere-
ly trying to be fervent, but alive with
feeling and driven by impatience.

" But why such haste ? " she demand-
ed archly.

" Can you ask ? "

As he spoke, he bent over her with a
caress which thrilled her. Why did she
not let herself be moved to tenderness, —
why not shut her eyes, her ears, permit
herself to be borne along by the current
of his ardor ? His ardor ? Was it that,
in spite of his words, his manner, his
readiness, his apparent desire to go be-
yond the mark rather than not to reach
it, she felt his coldness, — that it made
her cold as well ? But she had always
said that she had never had time or
thought for love. In almost making up
her mind to marry Paul, what she had felt
had been that they were linked together
by circumstance ; not only their interests,

but their tastes and aspirations were in
common. He loved, admired, and be-
lieved in her, and she held the golden
key which could open a future before
him as an actor-manager. There was a
secret intoxication in the idea of saying,
" Yes, let us be married now ; " in feel-
ing that after a decisive step, a step which
could not be retraced, doubts, hesita-
tions, scruples, would settle themselves.
Why should she yearn for warmth, for
tenderness ?

" You do love me, Paul, — love me
with all your heart ? " she demanded.

His brow furrowed. He bit his lip ;
he turned away and stamped his foot.
" Why do you doubt me ? Has some-
body been telling you tales against
me?"

"I have seen no one who has men-
tioned your name except Miss Angell."

They had drawn far apart.

" What can I say more than that I love
you ? " he asked, with a dignity that al-
most surprised her. " What can I do
more than ask you to marry me, and at
once ? Surely, when I act in this way
you cannot suspect me of being false to
you ! "

" False ! I had not thought of call-
ing you false, Paul. I sent for you, — I
hardly know why, but I was disturbed,
upset ; everything was vague. That girl
had threatened me. I saw how young
she was, how pretty she was, — too love-
ly to be looked at, and" — Without
finishing her sentence, she waited — fix-
ing her eyes on his face — for him to
speak. He had averted his glance.

" Yes," he said in a stiff tone, " she
is young, she is pretty."

" Too young, too pretty, to be looked
at coldly."

"Yes."

" And she acts well."

" She acts charmingly."

" And you fell in love with her."

" Yes," he returned in the same heavy,
stiff tone, " I fell in love with her."

Her actual belief, her actual hope, had

640

lit i' Last Appearance.

been in suspense until this moment. Now
something in her heart or brain seemed
to turn to lead, and with a sombre and
speechless load oppress her senses. She
did not try to answer this confession, and
when she remained silent he turned and
looked at her.

" I see," he said in a hopeless voice,
"you despise me."

" No, I only despise myself for believ-
ing in you."

"You don't realize that a man may
suddenly fall in love, and yet hold an-
other woman sacred in his heart all the
time " —

" That he suddenly catches love like
a cold, and gets over it ? "

" That a passion drags his heart and
body at its heels, but that with his mind
and soul " — He broke off. There was
a pause ; he glanced at her, and saw that
her face was dark, her hands clenched
in her lap. " It was the accident of our
playing together," he faltered. " The
words would have stirred me, no matter
to whom I had to speak them, but when
she " —

It seemed to him that she was suffering
physically. Her whole body swayed.

" You have spoken to her — of love
— outside of the play ? " she asked.

" Once."

" Are you engaged to her ? "

"No."

" The point of honor kept you true to
me?"

" She knew that it was an impulse re-
gretted as soon as yielded to."

" Did you tell her you were bound to
me?"

" No."

" What then ? "

" I have told her nothing. I have let
her believe that I drew back because it
was all rash, imprudent, foolish, — be-
cause she was poor, had no position.
That is the reason she is so anxious to
take the part of Corisande, — to be more
nearly equal to me. She little realizes
the horrible perfidy " —

"Horrible perfidy," — she repeated
the words, still sitting in her chair as if
stunned. Then suddenly flinging her-
self into the question, as if her vitality
had been repressed until she saw this
outlet for her emotion, she rose, crying
out, " You say you love me ! "

" I am yours. I have every feeling
towards you a woman needs to ask of
the man she consents to marry."

" Gratitude, admiration, loyalty ! " —
she enumerated these with feverish ea-
gerness.

"Yes."

" You ask me to marry you at once."

" To-day."

" Not to-day ; to-morrow, perhaps, —
say next day."

" I thank you."

"I shall tell Mr. Benson that Miss
Angell must be dismissed."

" She shall be dismissed."

Having thus established a basis, she
began to analyze her position, to reduce
it to its rational requirements, to justify
her antagonism to what she had rejected.
A woman has some rights. Surely, af-
ter her long struggle she deserved some
compensation. Her whole life, her whole
heart, her whole world, were in her art.
Although she had had her successes,
they had not come to -her wholly un-
spoiled ; they left her asking something
more.

" You and I could do wonderful things
together, Paul," she said with enthusi-
asm.

" Yes."

" And you do love me a little ? " she
faltered pitifully.

He said in a low, deliberate voice that
he loved her, — he would be true to her,
he would be good to her. At the same
moment that he spoke he drew out his
watch. " I have to go ! " he exclaimed.
" It is time for rehearsal."

" Rehearsal ! "

" Yes, at one o'clock to-day."

She looked at him eagerly. She came
nearer to him, with entreaty in her eyes.

Her Last Appearance.

641

" I have to go," he repeated, as if an-
swering her unuttered question.

" She will be there ? "

" Of course," he returned sharply.

" Why did I tell Benson I could not
rehearse to-day ? " she cried. " I can,
— I must. I will not sit down tamely
and let that girl rob me of everything I
had looked forward to and cared about.
Call a carriage, Paul. Madeline can get
me ready in five minutes."

Her mood was so restless that her
words carried no weight with him.

" You would be flurried, Kate," he
said compassionately. " You would not
do your best." He paused a moment.
" As — for — Miss — Angell," he then
went on, " if it will be any comfort to
you, I promise on my word and honor
not to say a word to her outside of my
part, — not even to look at her." As he
spoke his tone indicated intense strength
of will and purpose.

" I must go," he said again. He
glanced at her, hesitated, then took a few
steps towards the door.

" Kiss me good-by, Paul," she mur-
mured in a trembling voice. But as he
approached, panic and confusion beset
her, — a sense of unfeminine presump-
tion. " No, no, no ! " she exclaimed,
with a poignant note in her voice. " I
did not mean it. Go, Paul, — go to re-
hearsal."

He stood irresolute for a moment ; his
lips moved, but no words came ; perhaps
none offered themselves. Once more he
glanced at his watch, then with an ejac-
ulation hurried away.

rv.

The theatre was dark, the obscurity of
the great empty space of the auditorium
traversed only here and there by a dusty
sunbeam. The stage too was dark ; for
although at the sides an occasional jet
of gas flared, it illumined nothing, — ra-
ther rendered the twilight more dull and

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 487. 41

gloomy. It was Tuesday morning. The
rehearsal of Corisande was in progress.
The first two acts were over ; the third
was about to begin. The roll-call had
been gone through two hours before,
when Mr. Benson had dryly explained
that the chief part would once more be
read by Miss Angell. This announce-
ment not only roused surprise among
the actors, but Mr. Benson's manner, as
he made it, showed that something had
happened to ruffle his temper. There
was an ominous pucker between his
brows, as he sat down in the middle of
the stage, just in front of the footlights,
and studied the mise en scene, resting
his elbow on the arm of his chair and
rubbing his clean-shaven chin with his
hand. In spite of this attitude of re-
pose, his whole figure had an active
earnestness as if he longed for action.
Every other moment, after an angry
glance round the stage, he bounced out
of his seat to re-chalk the position of a
piece of furniture, calling on heaven, call-
ing on the universe ; when they did not
respond, summoning the stage-manager,
the property-man, the scene - shifter, —
demanding, entreating, objurgating, all
in a breath.

" Where is that tabouret ? Send me
that property-man. Where, I ask, sir,
is that tabouret ? Not ready, and I gave
you twenty-four hours ? Heavens and
earth ! " infusing into this apostrophe all
the solemnity it was capable of express-
ing, " is the rehearsal to stop because the
essential properties are not forthcoming ?
A low table, — a table exactly twenty-
eight inches high, this instant. If not a
table, a packing-case ; if not a packing-
case, a chair. The play cannot be ob-
structed by such imbecile inefficiency.
It must go on"

Then, when something to supply the
place of the missing tabouret was trem-
blingly produced and set down, there
came a snarl : " Not there ! Not there ! "
The unhappy supernumerary lifted the
substitute, staring about him helplessly.

642

Her Last Appearance.

" That was an inch, a whole inch, out-
side the mark. Here — here, I say !
Where is the armchair ? I said the
armchair. Put that armchair by the
side of the tabouret. At the right hand,
I say. Do you know your right hand
from your left ? Are you aware of the
fact that on the stage the right hand is
fixed, immutable ? Heavens and earth !
the right, I say, — to the right ! "

This ominous mood had communicated
itself to the whole company. Everybody
was nervous. All through the first act the
manager was merciless. Nothing suited
him. The actors, conscious that a good
six hours of agony and struggle were
before them this day, looked at one an-
other with a silent shrug of the shoul-
ders. At the least deviation from posi-
tion, at the faintest sign of hesitation in
the lines or in the prescribed movement,
there would come a despairing cry.

" Six inches to the left centre, — six
inches, I say, madam." It was the heavy
lady, a capital actress, but unwieldy and
inert except in real action, and the
manager's special abhorrence at rehear-
sal. " We must have a wheel-chair, — a
wheel-chair at once I would have, if that
devil of a property-man ever brought
anything I wanted." In default of the
wheel -chair the manager himself flew
towards the actress, who, having seated
herself in the nearest chair, seemed to
refuse to budge.

" Sir," he demanded presently of an-
other, " is that a bag of potatoes you
are carrying ? Good God, have I got
the leisure to bother with, your legs and
elbows ? "

Even Paul Devine, usually a first fa-
vorite, was declared to mumble his part
to such a degree of extinction of voice
that nobody heard his cues.

" You seem to be under a mistake, Mr.
Devine : you think you are a mute at a
funeral. You are not a mute at a funer-
al ; we do not want a mute at a funeral ;
there is no one cast for a mute at a fu-
neral in the entire play. What we want

is a lively young fellow, a divine crea-
ture on two legs, — something between
a man and an angel."

But this exordium failed to put spi-
rit into Paul. It was clear that he liked
neither objections nor suggestions ; that
he was nervous, rather irritable, acting
feverishly by fits and starts. Even the
scenes where he and Miss Angell had
hitherto lighted up the dullness, and for
a few kindling moments banished the
terrors of rehearsal, passed off coldly.

The third act, as we have said before,
was about to begin. Again there had
been a conference between the manager
and the various stage-setters, comparing
lists, making notes, discussing positions.
The actors, chafing restlessly, were ga-
thered in groups, talking in low voices,
all but Paul Devine, who was walking
up and down alone behind the scenes.
Miss Angell was standing at the corner
of the stage with a walking-lady who
was complaining in a whisper, when it
seemed to the former that two figures
had entered the opposite proscenium.
There had been a momentary gleam of
light as the door opened ; then nothing
but a deeper trail of shadow across the
broad bars of darkness.

" Did you see ? " the young actress
said to her companion, with sudden ex-
citement. " There are two people in
that box."

" I thought something moved. But
every door is locked, — Benson insists
on that. Not a soul is to be let into the
house. It must be somebody connected
with the theatre."

Perhaps Miss Angell had seen what
she longed for ; at least no one else on
the stage had had the vision revealed to
her.

But still it is something to see even
in mirage what one has longed for, and
when she told herself that it might be
Katharine Vivienne who had come to
hear her in the third act, the wild con-
jecture brought inspiration. She had no-
thing to lose ; she had everything to gain.

Her Last Appearance.

643

She had the passionate will which made
her believe in herself, in her own facul-
ty, in her own right.

The first words she uttered, as she
came forward at the signal, thrilled even
the most sluggish actor. The scene-
shifter, the carpenter, peeped from be-
hind the wings. More than once a cry
came from the manager.

" Good, excellent, my child. Just a
little more pause, — stop and count ten."
" A little farther away." " Crescendo
— crescendo — not too much at the be-
ginning — leave a little for the thunder-
bolt." " There, there, gently." " I only
point out the defects ; the beauties will
take care of themselves. But heavens
and earth ! I want to ask, where did
you get your style ? It takes other peo-
ple years and years ! "

These interjections, thrown in as if ir-
repressibly as the play proceeded, were
suddenly accented by a soft clapping of
hands from the right-hand proscenium
box.

" Who is that ? " demanded Mr. Ben-
son irascibly. " There is some one there.
Who has been admitted against my ex-
press order ? Who has had the audacity
to give any permission ? "

" Mr. Benson, — Mr. Benson, I say."

But Miss Vivienne — for it was she —
had by this time reached the stage. She
was followed by Owen Dwight, who, as
if not in the least surprised at the novel
role imposed upon him, played it with
an ease, a quiet radiance of demeanor,
which showed that he had no hesitations
and no doubts.

" I have come," said Miss Vivienne,
addressing the manager, "to explain

why I broke my promise to attend re-
hearsal. I have come to tell you I am
forced to break my engagement, — to
give up my position. I have also come,
Mr. Benson, to congratulate you on the
acquisition of a Corisande who will make
the play a brilliant success. I might
use twenty adjectives, but I will content
myself with one : Miss Angell is charm-
ing."

Mr. Benson, crimson, embarrassed,
perplexed, doubtful whether he was to
take Miss Vivienne seriously or consider
it one of the actress's caprices, began to
splutter : " But — but — but what is the
matter ? I don't understand this. What
has gone wrong ? Why, let me hear
what reasons " —

Miss Vivienne, however, had gone up
to Miss Angell. She put a hand on each
of the girl's shoulders, leaned forward
and kissed first one cheek and then the
other.

" My dear," she said, " you see that,
after all, I did hear you in the third
act. You do it beautifully. I have stud-
ied the part for three months. I know
the difficulties. I understand how fully
you have overcome them. I shall insist
on sending you the gown you liked, to
play in." Then she let her eyes travel
over the group of actors until they rest-
ed on Paul Devine's face. The expres-
sion it wore was full of pain, — startled
and incredulous. " For this is my last
appearance on the stage," she went on,
with a peculiar inflection in her voice.
" I am going to be married." She turned
towards Dwight and rested her hand on
his arm. " We are going to be married
to-morrow."

EUen Olney Kirk.

644

A Nook in the Alleghanies.

A NOOK IN THE ALLEGHANIES.

II.

My spring campaign in Virginia was
planned in the spirit of the old war-time
bulletin, " All quiet on the Potomac ; "
happiness was to be its end, and idleness
its means ; and so far, at least, as my
stay at Pulaski was concerned, this peace-
ful design was well carried out. There
was nothing there to induce excessive
activity : no glorious mountain summit
whose daily beckoning must sooner or
later be heeded; no long forest roads
of the kind that will not let a man's
imagination alone till he has seen the
end of them. The town itself is small
and compact, so that it was no great
jaunt, even in sunny weather, to get
away from it in any direction, — an
unusual piece of good fortune, highly
appreciated by a walking naturalist in
our Southern country, — and such woods
as especially invited exploration" lay close
at hand. In short, it was a place where,
even to the walking naturalist aforesaid,
it was easy to go slowly, and to spend
a due share of every day in sitting still,
which latter occupation, so it be engaged
in neither upon a piazza nor on a lawn,
is one of the best uses of those fullest
parts of a busy man's life, his so-called
vacations.

The measure of my indolence may be
estimated from the fact that the one
really picturesque road in the neighbor-
hood was left undiscovered till nearly
the last day of my sojourn. It takes its
departure from the village 1 within a
quarter of a mile of the hotel, and the
friendly manager of the house, who
seemed himself to have some idea of
such pleasures as I was in quest of,

1 Pulaski, or Pulaski City (the place goes by
both names, — the second a reminiscence of its
"booming" days, I should suppose), is so in-
termediate in size and appearance that I find

commended its charms to me very short-
ly after my arrival. So I recollected
afterward, but for the time I somehow
allowed the significance of his words to
escape me, else I should, no doubt, have
traveled the road again and again. As
things were, I spent but a single fore-
noon upon it, and went only as far as
the " height of land."

The mountain road, as the townspeople
call it, runs over the long ridge which
fills the horizon east of Pulaski, and
down into the valley on the other side.
It has its beginning, at least, in a gap
similar in all respects to the one, some
half a mile to the northward, into which
I had so many times followed a footpath,
as already fully set forth. The traveler
has first to pass half a dozen or more
of cabins, where, if he is a stranger, he
will probably find himself watched out
of sight with flattering unanimity by the
curious inmates. In my time, at all
events, a solitary foot-passenger seemed
to be regarded as nothing short of a
phenomenon. What was more agree-
able, I met here a little procession of
happy-looking black children returning
to the town loaded with big branches of
flowering apple-trees ; a sight which for
some reason put me in mind of a child,
a tiny thing, — a veritable pickaninny, —
whom I had passed, some years before,
near Tallahassee, and who pleased me by
exclaiming to a companion, as a dove
cooed in the distance, "Listen dat mourn-
in' dove ! " I wondered whether such
children, living nearer to nature than
some of us, might not be peculiarly sus-
ceptible to natural sights and sounds.

Before one of the last cabins stood
three white children, and as they gazed

myself speaking of it by turns as village, town,
and city, with no thought of inconsistency or
special inappropriate ness.

A Nook in the Alleghanies.

645

at me fixedly I wished them " Good-
morning ; " but they stared and answered
nothing. Then, when I had passed, a
woman's sharp voice called from within,
" Why don't you speak when anybody
speaks to you ? I 'd have some man-
ners, if I was you." And I perceived
that if the boys and girls were growing
up in rustic diffidence (not the most ill-
mannered condition in the world, by any
means), it was not for lack of careful
maternal instruction.

This gap, like its fellow, had its own
brook, which after a time the road left
on one side, and began climbing the
mountain by a steeper and more direct
course than the water had followed.
Here were more of the rare hastate-
leaved violets, and another bunch of the
barren strawberry, with hepatica, fringed
polygala, mitrewort, bloodroot, and a pret-
ty show of a remarkably large and hand-
some chickweed, of which I had seen
much also in other places, — Stellaria
pubera, or " great chickweed," as I made
it out.

I was admiring these lowly beauties
as I idled along (there was little else to
admire just then, the wood being scrub-
by and the ground lately burned over),
when I came to a standstill at the sound
of a strange song from the bushy hill-
side a few paces behind me. The bird,
whatever it was, had let me go by, —
as birds so often do, — and then had
broken out into music. I turned back
at once, and made short work of the mys-
tery, — a worm-eating warbler. Thanks
to the fire, there was no cover for it, had
it desired any. I had seen a bird of the
same species a few days previously on the
opposite side of the town, — looking like
a red-eyed vireo rigged out with a fan-
ciful striped head-dress, — and sixteen
years before I had fallen in with a few
specimens in the District of Columbia,
but this was my first hearing of the song.
The queer little creature was picking
about the ground, feeding, but every min-
ute or two mounted some low perch, —

a few inches seemed to satisfy its ambi-
tion, — and delivered itself of a simple,
short trill, similar to the pine warbler's
for length and form, but in a guttural
voice decidedly unlike the pine warbler's
clear, musical whistle. It was not a very
pleasing song, in itself considered, but I
was very much pleased to hear it ; for let
the worldly-minded say what they will, a
new bird-song is an event. With a sin-
gle exception, it was the only new one,
I believe, of my Virginia trip.

The worm-eating warbler, it may be
worth while to add, is one of the less
widely known members of its numerous
family ; plainness itself in its appearance,
save for its showy cap, and very lowly
and sedate in its habits. The few that
I have ever had sight of, perhaps a dozen
in all, have been on the ground or close
to it, though one, I remember, was travel-
ing about the lower part of a tree-trunk
after the manner of a black-and-white
creeper ; and all observers, so far as I
know, agree in pronouncing the song an
exceptionally meagre and dry affair. Or-
dinarily it has been likened to that of the
chipper, but my bird had nothing like
the chipper's gift of continuance.

This worm-eater's song must count as
the best ornithological incident of the
forenoon, since nothing else is quite so
good as absolute novelty ; but I was glad
also to see for the first time hereabouts
four commoner birds, — the pileated
woodpecker, the sapsucker (yellow-bel-
lied woodpecker), the rose-breasted gros-
beak, and the black-throated blue war-
bler. I had undertaken a local list, of
course, — a lazier kind of collecting, —
and so was thankful for small favors.
In the way of putting a shine upon com-
mon things the collecting spirit is sec-
ond only to genius. I was glad to see
them, I say ; but, to be exact, I saw only
three out of the four. The big wood-
pecker was heard, not seen. And while
I stood still, hoping that he would repeat
himself, and possibly show himself, I
heard a chorus of crossbill notes, — like

646

A Nook in the Alleghanies.

the cries of barnyard chickens a few
weeks old, — and, looking up, descried
the authors of them, a flock of ten birds
flying across the valley. They were not
new, even to my Pulaski notebook, but
they gave me, for all that, an exhilarat-
ing sensation of unexpectedness. Cross-
bills are associated in my mind with
Massachusetts winters and New Hamp-
shire summers and autumns. On the
30th of April, and in southwestern Vir-
ginia, — a long way from New Hamp-
shire to the mind of a creature whose
handiest mode of locomotion is by rail,
— they seemed out of place and out of
season ; the more so because, to the best
of my knowledge, there were no very
high mountains or extensive coniferous
forests anywhere in the neighborhood.
However, my sensation of surprise, agree-
able though it was, and therefore not to
be regretted, had, on reflection, no very
good reason to give for itself. Crossbills
are a kind of gypsies among birds, and
one ought not to be astonished, I sup-
pose, at meeting them almost anywhere.
Some days after this (May 12), in the
national cemetery at Arlington (across
the Potomac from Washington), I glanced
up into a low spruce-tree in response to
the call of an orchard oriole, and there,
at work upon the cones, hung a flock of
five crossbills, three of them in red plu-
mage. They were feeding, and had no
thought of doing anything else. For the
half-hour that I stayed by them — some
other interesting birds, a true migratory
wave, in fact, being near at hand —
they remained in that treetop without ut-
tering a syllable ; and two hours later,
when I came down the same path again,
they had moved but two trees away,
and were still eating in silence, paying
absolutely no heed to me as I walked
under them. Many kinds of northward-
bound migrants were in the cemetery
woods. Perhaps these ravenous cross-
bills l were of the party. I took them

1 Mr. H. W. Henshaw once told me about a
flock that appeared in winter in the grounds of

for stragglers, at any rate, not remem-
bering at the time that birds of their
sort are b'elieved to have bred, at least
in one instance, within the District of
Columbia. Probably they were strag-
glers, but whether from the forests of
the North or from the peaks of the
southern Alleghanies is of course a point
beyond my ken.

So far as our present knowledge of
them goes, crossbills seem in a peculiar
sense to be a law unto themselves. In
northern New England they are said to lay
their eggs in late winter or early spring,
when the temperature is liable, or even
certain, to run many degrees below zero.
Yet, if the notion takes them, a pair will
raise a brood in Massachusetts or in
Maryland in the midde of May ; which
strikes me, I am bound to say, as a far
more reasonable and Christian-like pro-
ceeding. And the same erratic quality
pertains to their ordinary, every-day be-
havior. Even their simplest flight from
one hill to another, as I witnessed it here
in Virginia, for example, has an air of
being all a matter of chance. Now they
tack to the right, now to the left, now in
close order, now every one for himself ;
no member of the flock appearing to know
just how the coui'se lies, and all hands
calling incessantly, as the only means of
coming into port together.

When I spoke just now of the worm-
eating warbler's song as almost the only
new one heard in Virginia, I ought per-
haps to have guarded my words. I meant
to say that the worm-eater was almost
the only species that I there heard sing
for the first time, — a somewhat different
matter ; for new songs, happily, — songs
new to the individual listener, — are by
no means so infrequent as the songs of
new birds. On the very forenoon of
which I am now writing, I heard another
strain that was every whit as novel to
my ear as the worm-eater's, — as novel,
indeed, as if it had been the work of

the Smithsonian Institution, so exhausted that
they could be picked off the trees like apples.

A Nook in the Alleghanies.

647

some bird from the other side of the
planet. Again and again it was given
out, at tantalizing intervals, and I could
not so much as guess at the identity of
the singer ; partly, it may be, because
of the feverish anxiety I was in lest he
should get away from me in that endless
mountain-side forest. Every repetition
I thought would be the last, and the bird
gone forever. Finally, as I edged nearer
and nearer, half a step at once, with in-
finite precaution, I caught a glimpse of
a chickadee. A chickadee ! Could he
be doing that ? Yes ; for I watched him,
and saw it done. And these were the
notes, or the best that my pencil could
make of them : twee, twee, twee (very
quick), twitty, twitty, — the first mea-
sure in a thin, wire - drawn tone, the
second a full, clear whistle. Sometimes
the three twees were slurred almost into
one. Altogether, the effect was most
singular. I had never heard anything
in the least resembling it, familiar as I
had thought myself for some years with
the normal four-syllabled song of Parus
carolinensis. For the moment I was
half disposed to be angry, — so much
excitement, and so absurd an outcome ;
but on the whole it is very good fun to
be fooled in this way by a bird who hap-
pens to have invented a tune of his own.
Besides, we are all believers in original-
ity, — are we not ? — whatever our own
practice.

Human travelers were infrequent
enough to be little more than a welcome
diversion : two young men on horseback ;
a solitary foot - passenger, who kindly
pointed out a trail by which a long el-
bow in the road could be saved on the
descent ; and, near the top of the moun-
tain, a four -horse cart, the driver of
which was riding one of the wheel-horses.
At the summit I chose a seat (not the
first one of the jaunt, by any means) and
surveyed the valley beyond. It lay di-
rectly at my feet, the mountain dropping
to it almost at a bound, and the stunted
budding trees offered the least possible

obstruction to the view. Narrow as the
valley was, there was nothing else to be
seen in that direction. Immediately be-
hind it dense clouds hung so low that
from my altitude there was no looking
under them. In one respect it was bet-
ter so, as sometimes, for the undistract-
ed enjoyment of it, a single painting is
better than a gallery.

There was nothing peculiar or striking
in the scene, nothing in the slightest de-
gree romantic or extraordinary : a com-
mon patch of earth, without so much as
the play of sunlight and shadow to set it
off ; a pretty valley, closely shut in be-
tween a mountain and a cloud ; a quiet,
grassy place, fenced into small farms,
the few scattered houses, perhaps half a
dozen, each with its cluster of outbuild-
ings and its orchard of blossoming fruit-
trees. Here and there cattle were graz-
ing, guinea fowls were calling potrack in
tones which not even the magic of dis-
tance could render musical, and once the
loud baa of a sheep came all the way up
the mountain side. If the best reward
of climbing be to look afar off, the next
best is to look down thus into a tiny val-
ley of a world. In either case, the gazer
must take time enough, and be free
enough in his spirit, to become a part of
what he sees. Then he may hope to
carry something of it home with him.

It was soon after quitting the summit,
on my return, — for I left the valley a
picture (I can see it yet), and turned
back by the way I had come, — that I
fell in with the grosbeaks before alluded
to : a single taciturn female with two
handsome males in devoted and tuneful
attendance upon her. Happy creature !
Among birds, so far as I have ever been
able to gather, the gentler and more
backward sex have never to wait for ad-
mirers. Their only anxiety lies in choos-
ing one rather than another. That, no
doubt, must be sometimes a trouble, since,
as this imperfect world is constituted,
choice includes rejection.

The law is general. Even in the mod-

648

A Nook in the Alleghanies.

ern pastime which we dignify as the " ob-
servation of nature " there is no evading
it. If we see one thing, we for that rea-
son are blind to another. I had ascend-
ed this mountain road at a snail's pace,
never walking many rods together with-
out a halt, — whatever was to be seen,
I meant to see it ; yet now, on my way
down, my eyes fell all at once upon a
bank thickly set with plants quite un-
known to me. There they stood, in all
the charms of novelty, waiting to be dis-
covered : low shrubs, perhaps two feet
in height, of a very odd appearance, —
not conspicuous, exactly, but decidedly
noticeable, — covered with drooping ra-
cemes of small chocolate-colored flowers.
They were directly upon the roadside.
With half an eye, a man would have
found it hard work to miss them. " The
observation of nature " ! Verily it is a
great study, and its devotees acquire an
amazing sharpness of vision. How many
other things, equally strange and inter-
esting, had I left unseen, both going and
coming ? I ought perhaps to have been
surprised and humiliated by such an ex-
perience ; but I cannot say that either
emotion was what could be called poi-
gnant. I have been living with myself
for a good many years ; and besides, as
was remarked just now, all our doings
are under the universal law of selection
and exclusion. On the whole, I am glad
of it. Life will relish the longer for our
not finding everything at once.

The identity of the shrub was quickly
made out, the vivid yellow of the inner
bark furnishing a clue which spared me
the labor of a formal " analysis." It was
Xanthorrhiza apiifolia, shrub yellow-
root, — a name long familiar to my eye
from having been read so many times in
turning the leaves of the Manual, on one
hunt and another. With a new song
and a new flowering plant, the mountain
road had used me pretty well, after all
my neglect of it.

My one new bird at Pulaski — and
the only one seen in Virginia — was

stumbled upon in a grassy field on the
farther border of the town. I had set
out to spend an hour or two in a small
wood beyond the brickyard, and was
cutting the corner of a field by a foot-
path, still feeling myself in the city,
and not yet on the alert, when a bird
flew up before me, crossed the street,
and dropped on the other side of the
wall. Half seen as it was, its appearance
suggested nothing in particular ; but it
seemed not to be an English sparrow, —
too common here, as it is getting to be
everywhere, — and of course it might be
worth attention. It is one capital ad-
vantage of being away from home that
we take additional encouragement to in-
vestigate whatever falls in our way. Be-
fore I could get to the wall, however,
the bird rose, along with two or three
Britishers, and perched before me in a
thorn -bush. Then I saw at a glance
that it must be a lark sparrow (Chon-
destes). With those magnificent head-
stripes it could hardly be anything else.
What a prince it looked ! — a prince in
most ignoble company. It would have
held its rank even among white-crowns,
of which it made me think not only by
its head - markings, but by its general
color and — what was perhaps only the
same thing — a certain cleanness of as-
pect. Presently it flew back to the field
out of which I had frightened it ; and
there in the short grass it continued feed-
ing for a long half-hour, while I stood,
glass in hand, ogling it, and making
penciled notes of its plumage, point by
point, for comparison with Dr. Coues's
description after I should return to the
inn. I was almost directly under the
windows of a house, — of a Sunday af-
ternoon, — but that did not matter. Two
or three carriages passed along the street,
but I let them go. A new bird is a
new bird. And it must be admitted that
neither the occupants of the house nor
the people in the carriages betrayed the
slightest curiosity as to my unconven-
tional behavior. The bird, for its part,

A Nook in the Alleghanies.

649

minded me little more. It was engrossed
with its dinner, and uttered no sound
beyond two or three tseeps, in which I
could recognize nothing distinctive. Its
silence was a disappointment ; and since
I could not waste the afternoon in watch-
ing a bird, no matter how new and hand-
some, that would do nothing but eat
grass seed (or something else), I finally
took the road again and passed on. I
did not see it afterward, though, under
fresh accessions of curiosity, and for the
chance of hearing it sing, I went in search
of it twice.

From a reference to Dr. Rives's Cata-
logue of the Birds of the Virginias, which
I had brought with me, I learned, what
I thought I knew already, that the lark
sparrow, abundantly at home in the in-
terior of North America, is merely an
accidental visitor in Virginia. The only
records cited by Dr. Rives are those of
two specimens, one captured, the other
seen, in and near Washington. It
seemed like a perversity of fate that I,
hardly more than an accidental visitor
myself, should be shown a bird which
Dr. Rives — the ornithologist of the
state, we may fairly call him — had
never seen within the state limits. But
it was. not for me to complain ; and for
that matter, it is nothing new to say that
it takes a green hand to make discov-
eries. I knew a man, only a few years
ago, who, one season, was so uninstructed
that he called me out to see a Henslow's
bunting, which proved to be a song spar-
row ; but the very next year he found a
snowbird summering a few miles from
Boston (there was no mistake this time),
— a thing utterly without precedent. In
the same way, I knew of one lad who
discovered a brown thrasher wintering
in Massachusetts, the only recorded in-
stance ; and of another who went to an
ornithologist of experience begging him
to come into the woods and see a most
wonderful many - colored bird, which
turned out, to the experienced man's as-
tonishment, to be nothing less rare than

a nonpareil bunting ! Providence favors
the beginner, or so it seems ; and the
beginner, on his part, is prepared to be
favored, because to him everything is
worth looking at.

Dr. Rives's catalogue helped me to a
somewhat lively interest in another bird,
one so much an old story to me for many
years that of itself its presence or ab-
sence here would scarcely have received
a second thought. I speak of the blue
golden-winged warbler. It is common
in Massachusetts, — in that part of it, at
least, where I happen to live, — and I
have found it abundant in eastern Ten-
nessee. That it should be at home here
in southwestern Virginia, so near the
Tennessee line and in a country so well
adapted to its tastes, would have ap-
peared to me the most natural thing in
the world. But when I had noted my
first specimens — on this same Sunday
afternoon — and was back at the hotel,
I took up the catalogue to check the
name ; and there I found the bird en-
tered as a rare migrant, with only one
record of its capture in Virginia proper,
and that near Washington. Dr. Rives
had never met with it !

This was on the 28th of April. Two
days later I noticed one or two more, —
probably two, but there was no certainty
that I had not run upon the same bird
twice ; and on the morning of May 1,
in a last hurried visit to the woods, I
saw two together. All were males in
full plumage, and one of the last two
was singing. The warbler migration
was just coming on, and I could not help
believing that with a little time blue
golden - wings would grow to be fairly
numerous. That, of course, was matter
of conjecture. I found no sign of the
species at Natural Bridge, which is about
a hundred miles from Pulaski in a north-
easterly direction. In Massachusetts
this beautiful warbler's distribution is
decidedly local, and its commonness is
believed to have increased greatly in the
last twenty years. Possibly the same

650

A Nook in the Alleghanies.

may be true in Virginia. Possibly, too,
my seeing of five or six specimens, on
opposite sides of the city, was nothing but
a happy chance, and my inference from
it a pure delusion.

I have implied that the warbler mi-
gration was approaching its height on
the 1st of May. In point of fact, how-
ever, the brevity of my visit — and per-
haps also its date, neither quite early
enough nor quite late enough — rendered
it impossible for me to gather much as
to the course of this always interesting
movement, or even to understand the
significance of the little of it that came
under my eye. My first day's walks —
very short and altogether at haphazard,
and that of the afternoon as good as
thrown away — showed but three spe-
cies of warblers ; an anomalous state of
things, especially as two of the birds
were the oven-bird and the golden war-
bler, neither of them to be reckoned
among the early comers of the family.
The next day I saw six other species,
including such prompt ones as the pine-
creeper and the myrtle bird, and such a
comparatively tardy one as the Black-
burnian. On the 26th three additional
names were listed, — the blue yellow-
back, the chestnut-side, and the worm-
eater. Not until the fourth day was
anything seen or heard of the black-
throated green. This fact of itself
would establish the worthlessness of any
conclusions that might be drawn from
the progress of events as I had noted
them.

On the 28th, when my first blue gold-
en-wings made their appearance, there
were present also in the same place three
palm warblers, — my only meeting with
them in Virginia, where Dr. Rives marks
them "not common." With them, or
in the same small wood, were a group of
silent red-eyed vireos, several yellow-
throated vireos, also silent, myrtle birds,
one or two Blackburnians, one or two
chestnut-sides, two or three redstarts,
and one oven-bird, with black-and-white

creepers, and something like a flock (a
rare sight for me) of white-breasted nut-
hatches, — a typical body of migrants, to
which may be added, though less clearly
members of the same party, tufted tit-
mice, Carolina chickadees, white-throated
sparrows, Carolina doves, flickers, downy
woodpeckers, and brown thrashers.

It is a curious circumstance, univer-
sally observed, that warblers, with a few
partial exceptions, — blackpolls and
myrtle birds especially, — travel thus in
mixed companies ; so that a flock of
twenty birds may be found to contain
representatives of six, eight, or ten spe-
cies. Whatever its explanation, the
habit is one to be thankful for from the
field student's point of view. The plea-
surable excitement which the semi-an-
nual warbler movement affords him is
at least several times greater than it
could be if each species made the jour-
ney by itself. Every observer must have
realized, for example, how comparative-
ly uninteresting the blackpoll migration
is, particularly in the autumn. Compar-
atively uninteresting, I say ; for even with
the birch-trees swarming with blackpolls,
each exactly like its fellow, the hope,
slight as it may be, of lighting upon a
stray bay breast among them may encour-
age a man to keep up his scrutiny, level-
ing his glass upon bird after bird, look-
ing for a dash of telltale color along the
flanks, till at last he says, " Nothing but
blackpolls," and turns away in search of
more stirring adventures.

Students of natural history, like less
favored people, should cultivate philoso-
phy ; and the primary lesson of philo-
sophy is to make the best of things as
they are. If an expected bird fails us,
we are not therefore without resources
and compensations ; we may be interest-
ed in the fact of its absence ; and so
long as we are interested, though it be
only in the endurance of privation, life
has still something left for us. Herein,
in part, lies the value to the traveling
student of a local list of the things in

A Nook in the Alleghanies.

651

his own line. It enables him to keep in
view what he is missing, and so to in-
crease the sum of his sensations. One
of my surprises at Pulaski (and a sur-
prise is better than nothing, even if it
be on the wrong side of the account)
was the absence of the phoebe, — " al-
most everywhere a common summer re-
sident," says Dr. Rives. Another un-
expected thing was the absence of the
white-eyed vireo, — also a " common
summer resident," — for which portions
of the surrounding country seemed to
be admirably suited. I should have
thought, too, that Carolina wrens would
have been here, — a pair or two, at least.
As it was, Bewick seemed to have the
field mostly to himself, although a house
wren was singing on the morning of
May 1, and I have already mentioned
a winter wren which was seen on three
or four occasions. He, however, may
be assumed to have taken his departure
northward (or southward) very soon af-
ter my final sight of him. Thrashers
and catbirds are wrens, I know, — though
I doubt whether they know it, — but it
has not yet become natural for me to
speak of them under that designation.
The mocking-bird, another big wren, I
did not find here, nor had I supposed
myself likely to do so. Robins were
common, I was glad to see, — one pair
were building a nest in the vines of the
hotel veranda, — and several pairs of
song sparrows appeared to have estab-
lished themselves along the banks of the
creek north of the city. I saw them no-
where else. One need not go much be-
yond Virginia to find these omnipresent
New Englanders endowed with all the
attractions of rarity. I remember with
what delight, in mid-May, I heard and
saw one in North Carolina, very near
the South Carolina line, — farther south
than any of the books carry birds of his
kind, in the breeding season, so far as
my reading has gone.

Two or three spotted sandpipers about
the stony bed of the creek (a dribbling

stream at present, though within a month
or so it had carried away bridges and
set houses adrift), and a few killdeer
plovers there and in the dry fields be-
yond, were the only water birds seen at
Pulaski. One of the killdeers gave me
a pretty display of what I took to be his
antics as a wooer. I was returning over
the grassy hills, where on the way out a
colored boy's dog in advance of me had
stirred up several killdeers, when sud-
denly I heard a strange kind of hum-
ming noise, — a sort of double-ton guing,
I called it to myself, — and very soon re-
cognized in it, as I thought, something
of the killdeer's vocal quality. Sure
enough, as I drew near the place I found
the fellow in the midst of a real lover's
ecstasy ; his tail straight in the air, fully
spread (the value of the bright cinna-
mon-colored rump and tail feathers be-
ing at once apparent), and he spinning
round like a dervish, almost as if stand-
ing on his head (it was a wonder how
he did it), and all the while emitting
that quick throbbing whistle. His mate
(that was, or was to be) maintained an
air of perfect indifference, — maidenly
reserve it might have been called, for
aught I know, by a spectator possessed
of a charitable imagination, — as female
birds generally do in such cases ; unless,
as often happens, they repel their adorers
with beak and claw. I have seen court-
ships that looked more ridiculous, because
more human-like, — the flicker's, for ex-
ample, — but never a crazier one, or one
less describable. In the language of the
boards, it was a star performance.

The same birds amused me at another
time by their senseless conduct in the
stony margins of the creek, where they
had taken refuge when I pressed them
too nearly. There they squatted close
among the pebbles, as other plovers do,
till it was all but impossible to tell feather
from stone, though I had watched the
whole proceeding ; yet while they stood
thus motionless and practically invisible
(no cinnamon color in sight, now !),

652

A Nook in the Alleghanies.

they could not for their lives keep their
tongues still, but every little while uttered
loud, characteristic cries. Their behavior
was a mixture of shrewdness and stupidi-
ty such as even human beings would have
been hard put to it to surpass.

Swallows were scarce, almost of course.
A few pairs of rough-wings were most
likely at home in the city or near it, and
more than once two or three barn swal-
lows were noticed hawking up and down
the creek. There was small prospect of
their settling hereabout, from any indi-
cations that I could discover. Chimney
swifts, happily, were better provided for ;
pretty good substitutes for swallows, —
so good, indeed, that people in general do
not know the difference. And even an
ornithologist may be glad to confess that
the rarity of swallows throughout the
Alleghanies is not an unmitigated mis-
fortune, if it be connected in any way
with the immunity of the same region
from the plague of mosquitoes. It would
be difficult to exaggerate the luxury to
a dreaming naturalist, used to New Eng-
land forests, of woods in which, he can
lounge at his ease, in warm weather,
with no mosquito, black fly, or midge
— " more formidable than wolves," as
Thoreau says — to disturb his medita-
tions.

By far the most characteristic birds of
the city were the Bewick wrens, of whose
town-loving habits I have already spoken.
Constantly as I heard them, I could
never become accustomed to the unwren-
nish character of their music. Again
and again, when the bird happened to
be a little way off, so that only the con-
cluding measure of his tune reached me,
I caught myself thinking of him as a
song sparrow. If I had been in Massa-
chusetts, I should certainly have passed
on without a suspicion of the truth.

The tall old rock maples in the hotel
yard — decaying at the tops — were oc-
cupied by a colony of bronzed grackles,
busy and noisy from morning till night ;
excellent company, as they stalked about

the lawn under my windows. In the
same trees a gorgeous Baltimore oriole
whistled for three or four days, and once
I heard there a warbling vireo. Neither
oriole nor vireo was detected elsewhere.

Of my seventy - five Pulaski species
(April 24-May 1), eighteen were war-
blers and fifteen belonged to the sparrow-
finch family. Six of the seventy-five
names were added in a bunch at the very
last moment, making me think with lively
regret how much more respectable my
list would be if I could remain a week
or two longer. With my trunk packed
and everything ready for my departure,
I ran out once more to the border of the
woods, at the point where I had first
entered them a week before ; and there,
in the trees and shrubbery along the
brookside path, I found myself all at
once surrounded by a most interesting
bevy of fresh arrivals, among which a
hurried investigation disclosed a scarlet
tanager, a humming-bird, a house wren,
a chat, a wood pewee, and a Louisiana
water thrush. The pewee was calling
and the house wren singing (an unspeak-
able convenience when a man has but
ten minutes in which to take the census
of a thicket full of birds), and the water
thrush, as he flew up the stream, keep-
ing just ahead of me among the rhodo-
dendrons, stopped every few minutes to
sing his prettiest, as if he were over-
joyed to be once more at home after a
winter's absence. I did not wonder at
his happiness. The spot had been made
for him. I was as sorry to leave it, per-
haps, as he was glad to get back to it.

And while I followed the water thrush,
Bruce, the hotel collie, my true friend
of a week, whose frequent companion-
ship on the mountain road and elsewhere
has been too much ignored, was having
a livelier chase on his own account, — a
chase which I found time to enjoy, for
the minute that it lasted, in spite of my
preoccupation. He had stolen out of the
house by a back door, and followed me
to the woods without an invitation, —

A Nook in the Alleghanies.

653

though he might have had one, since, be-
ing non-ornithological in his pursuits, he
was never iu the way, — and now was
thrown into a sudden frenzy by the start-
ing up before him of a rabbit. Hearing
his bark, I turned about in season to see
the two creatures going at lightning
speed up the hillside, the rabbit's " cot-
ton tail " (a fine " mark of direction,"
as naturalists say) immediately in front
of the collie's nose. Once the rabbit ran
plump into a log, and for an instant was
fairly off its legs. I trembled for its
safety ; but it recovered itself, and in a
moment more disappeared from view.
Then after a few minutes Bruce came
back, panting. It had been a great morn-
ing for him as well as for me, — a morn-
ing to haunt his after-dinner dreams,
and set his legs twitching, for a week to
come. I hope he has found many an-
other walking guest and " fellow wood-
lander " since then, with whom to enjoy
the pleasures of the road and the excite-
ment of the chase.

For myself, there was no leisure for
sentiment. I posted back to the inn on
the run, and only after boarding the
train was able to make a minute of the
good things which the run of the forest
had shown me.

It was quite as well so. With prudent
forethought, my farewell to the brook
path and the clearing at the head of it
had been taken the afternoon before.
Here, again, Fortune smiled upon me.
After three days of cloudiness and rain
the sun was once more shining, and I
took my usual seat on the dry grassy
knoll among the rusty boulders for a
last look at the world about me, — this
peaceful, sequestered nook in the Alle-
ghanies, into which by so happy a chance
I had wandered on my first morning in
Virginia. (How well I remembered the
years when Virginia was anything but an

abode of quietness !) The arbutus was
still in plentiful bloom, and the dwarf
fleur-de-lis also. On my way up the slope
I had stopped to admire a close bunch of
a dozen blossoms. The same soft breeze
was blowing, and the same field spar-
row chanting. Yes, and the same buz-
zard floated overhead and dropped the
same moving shadow upon the hillside.
Now a prairie warbler sang or a hyla
peeped, but mostly the air was silent,
except for the murmur of pine needles
and the faint rustling of dry oak leaves.
And all around me stood the hills, the
nearest of them, to-day, blue with haze.

For a while I went farther up the slope,
to a spot where I could look through a
break in the circle and out upon the
world. In one direction were green fields
and blossoming apple-trees, and beyond
them, of course, a wilderness of moun-
tains. But I returned soon to my lower
seat. It was pleasanter there, where I
was quite shut in. The ground about
me was sprinkled with low azalea bushes,
unnoticed a week ago, now brightening
with clustered pink buds. What a pic-
ture the hill would make a few days
hence, and again, later still, when the
laurel should come into its glory !

Parting is sweet pain. It must be
a mark of inferiority, I suppose, to be
fonder of places than of persons, — as
cats are inferior to dogs. But then, on
a vacation one goes to see places. And
right or wrong, so it was. Kindly as
the hotel people had treated me, — and
none could have been kinder or more
efficient, — there was nothing in Pulaski
that I left with half so much regret, or
have remembered half so often, as this
hollow among the hills, wherein a man
could look and listen and be quiet, with
no thought of anything new or strange,
contented for the time with the old
thoughts and the old dreams.

Bradford Torrey.

654

The Battle of the Strong.

THE BATTLE OF THE STRONG.

XV.

THE house of Elie Mattingley, the
smuggler, stood in the Rue d'Egypte,
not far east of the Vier Prison. It was
a little larger than any other house in
the street, a little higher, a little wider,
a little older. It had belonged to a jurat
of some repute, who had parted with it
to Mattingley not long before he died,
— on what terms no one had discovered.
There was no doubt as to the validity
of the transfer, for the deed was duly
registered au greffe, and it said, " In
consideration of one livre turnois," etc. ;
but not even the greffier believed that
this was the real purchase money, and
he was used to seeing strange examples
of deed and purchase. Possibly, how-
ever, it was a libel on the departed
jurat that he and Mattingley had had
dealings unrecognized by customs laws,
crystallizing at last into this legacy to
the famous pirate-smuggler.

Unlike any other house in the street,
this one had a high stone wall in front,
inclosing a small square paved with flat
stones. In this square was an old ivy-
covered well, with beautiful ferns grow-
ing inside its hood. The well had a
small antique iron gate, and the bucket,
which hung on a hook inside the hood,
was an old open wine-keg, — appropri-
ate emblem for a smuggler's house. In
one corner, girdled by about five square
feet of green earth, grew a pear-tree,
bearing large juicy fruit, reserved sole-
ly for the use of a certain distinguished
lodger, the Chevalier du Champsavoys de
Beaumanoir.

In the summer the chevalier always
had his breakfast under this tree. It
consisted of a cup of coffee made by his
faithful chatelaine, Carterette, a roll of
bread, an omelet, and two ripe pears.
This was his breakfast while the pears

lasted ; when they were done, he had
the grapes that grew on the wall ; and
when they in turn were gone, it was
time to take his breakfast indoors, and
have done with fruits and summering.

Occasionally one other person had
breakfast under the pear-tree with the
chevalier. This was Savary dit De"tri-
cand, whom the chevalier met less fre-
quently, however, than many people of
the town, though they lived in the same
house. De*tricand had been but a fitful
lodger, absent at times for a month or
so, and running up bills for food and
wine, of which payment was never sum-
marily demanded by Mattingley, for some
time or other he always paid. When he
did pay he never questioned the bill,
and, what was most important, whether
he was sober or " warm as a thrush," he
always treated Carterette with respect ;
though they quarreled often, too, and she
was not sparing with her tongue under
slight temptation. Yet, when he chanced
to be there, Carterette herself usually
cooked his breakfast ; for Ddtricand had
once said that no one could roast a con-
ger as she could, and she had promptly
succumbed to the frank flattery. But
Carterette did more: she gave De"tricand
gopd advice in as candid and peremptory
a way, yet with as good feeling, as ever
woman gave to man. He accepted it
nonchalantly, but he did not follow it ;
for he had no desire to reform for the
sake of principle, and he did not care
enough for Carterette to do it from per-
sonal feeling. It was given to Guida
Landresse to rouse that personal feeling,
and on his own part he had made a pro-
mise to her, and he intended to keep it.

Despite their many differences and
Carterette's frequent bad tempers, when
the day came for De"tricand to leave for
France; when, sober and in his right
mind, and with an air of purpose in his

The Battle of the Strong.

655

face, he sat down under the pear-tree
for his last breakfast with the cheva-
lier, Carterette was very unhappy. The
chevalier politely insisted on her sitting
at table with them, — a thing he had
never done before. Ever since yester-
day, when Olivier Delagarde had ap-
peared in the Vier Marcbi, she had
longed to speak to De'tricand about him ;
but there had been no opportunity, and
she had not dared do it with any ob-
vious intention. Once or twice during
breakfast Maitre Ranulph's name was
mentioned, and Carterette listened with
beating heart ; then the chevalier praised
Ranulph's father, and De'tricand turned
the conversation. She noticed this.

Carterette spent the rest of the day in
wondering what Ranulph's trouble was,
and in what way it was associated with
his father. Toward evening she deter-
mined that she would go to Ranulph's
house to see M. Delagarde. Ranulph
was not likely to return from St. Aubin's
until sundown, and no doubt his father
would be at home.

She was just starting when the door
in the garden wall opened, and Olivier
Delagarde entered. The evening sun
was shining softly over the house and
the granite wall, which in the soft light
was mauve-tinted, while the well-worn
paving-stones looked like some choice
mineral. Carterette was standing in the
door as the old man came in, and when
he doffed his hat to her she thought she
had never seen anything more beautiful
than the smooth forehead, white hair,
and long beard of the returned patriot.
That was the first impression he pro-
duced ; but as one looked closer one
saw the quick, furtive, watery eye ; and
when by chance the mustache was lifted,
the unwholesome, drooping mouth re-
vealed a dark depth of depravity, and
the teeth were broken, blackened, and
irregular. There was, too, something
sinister in the yellow stockings, luridly
contrasting with the black knickerbock-
ers and rusty blue coat

At first Carterette was inclined to run
toward the prophet-like figure, — it was
Ranulph's father ; next she drew back
with dislike, — the smile was leering
malice under the guise of amiable mirth.
But he was old and he looked feeble,
so her mind instantly changed again, and
she offered him a seat on a bench beside
the arched doorway with the inscription
above it, —

" Nor Poverty nor Riches, but Daily Bread
Under Mine Own Fig Tree."

In front of the bench was a table, where
Mattingley and Carterette were wont to
eat their meals in summer, and in the
table were round holes wherein small
wooden bowls or trenchers were sunk.
After the custom of the country, Car-
terette at once offered the old man re-
freshment. He asked for something to
drink, and she brought him brandy.
Good old brandy was always to be got
at the house of Elie Mattingley. Then
she brought forth a fine old delft bowl,
with handles like a loving-cup, reserved
for honored guests. It was full of con-
ger-eel soup, and she fitted it into the
hole occupied by the wooden trencher.
As Olivier Delagarde drank, Carterette
noticed a peculiar, uncanny twitching of
the fingers and eyelids. The old man's
eyes were continually watching, always
shifting from place to place. He asked
Carterette several questions. He had
known the house years before. Did the
deep stream still run beneath it? Was
the round hole in the floor of the back
room, from which water used to be drawn
in old days ? Yes, Carterette said, that
was M. DeVicand's bedroom now, and
you could plainly hear the stream run-
ning beneath the house. Did not the
noise of the water worry poor M. De'tri-
cand ? And so it still went straight on
into the sea, — and, of course, much
swifter after such a heavy rain as they
had had the day before !

Carterette took him into every room
in the house, save her own and those of
the Chevalier du Champsavoys. In the

656

The Battle of the Strong.

kitchen and in De"tricand's bedroom
Olivier Delagarde's eyes were very busy.
He saw that the door of the kitchen
opened immediately into a garden, with
a gate in the wall at the back ; he also
saw that the lozenge - paned windows
opened like doors, and were not secure-
ly fastened ; and he tried the trap-door
in De'tricand's bedroom to see if the
water flowed beneath just as it did when
he was young. . . . Yes, there it was,
running swiftly away to the sea !

At first Carterette thought it strange
that Delagarde should show such inter-
est in all this ; but then, again, why
should he not? He had known the
house as a boy. Then he babbled all the
way to the door that led into the street ;
for now he would stay no longer. He
seemed in a hurry to be gone, nor could
the suggestion that ElieMattingley would
soon return induce him to remain.

When he had gone, Carterette sat
wondering why it was that Ranulph's
father should inspire her with so much
dislike. She knew that at this moment
no man in Jersey was so popular as Oli-
vier Delagarde. The longer she thought,
the more puzzled she became. No soon-
er had she got one theory than another
forced her to move on. In the language
of her people, she did not know on which
foot to dance.

As she sat and thought, De'tricand en-
tered, loaded with parcels and bundles,
mostly gifts for her father and herself ;
and for Champsavoys there was a fine
delft shaving-dish, shaped like a quarter-
moon to fit the neck. These were dis-
tributed, and then came the packing of
De'tricand's bags ; and by the time sup-
per was over, and this was done, it was
quite dark. Then De'tricand said that
he would go to bed at once, for it was
ten o'clock, and he must be up at three,
when his boat was to steal away to Brit-
tany, and land him near to the outposts
of the Royalist army led by La Roche-
jaquelein.

De'tricand was having the best hour

of an ill-spent life ; he was enjoying that
rare virtue, enthusiasm, which in his
case was joined to that dangerous temp-
tation, repentance with reformation, —
deep pitfalls of pride and self-righteous-
ness. No man so vain as he who, having
erred and gone astray, is now returned
to the dazzling heights of a self-conroious
virtue.

He was, however, of those to whom
is given the gift of humor, which saveth
from haughtiness and the pious despot-
ism of the returned prodigal. He was
going back to France, to fight in what
he believed to be a hopeless cause ; but
the very hopelessness of it appealed to
him, and he would not have gone if it
were sure to be successful. In a pro-
sperous cause his gallantry and devotion
would not necessarily count for much ; in
a despairing one they might put another
stone on the pyramid of sacrifice and
chivalry. He was quite ready to have
it out with the ravagers of France, and
to pay the price with his life, if need be.

Now at last the packing was finished,
everything was done, and he was stoop-
ing over a bag to fasten it. The candle
was in the window. Suddenly a hand
— a long, skinny hand — reached softly
out from behind a large press, and swal-
lowed and crushed out the flame. De'-
tricand raised his head quickly, aston-
ished. There was no wind blowing;
the candle had not even flickered when
burning. But then, again, he had not
heard a sound ; perhaps that was be-
cause his foot was scraping the floor at
the moment the light went out. He
looked out of the window, but there was
only starlight, and he could not see dis-
tinctly. Turning round, he went to the
door of the outer hallway, opened it,
and stepped into the garden. As he
did so, a figure slipped from behind the
press in the bedroom, swiftly raised the
trap-door in the flooring, then, shadowed
by the door leading into the hallway,
waited for De'tricand.

Presently De'tricand's footstep was

The Battle of the Strong.

657

heard. He entered the hall, stood in
the doorway of the bedroom for an in-
stant, then stepped inside.

At once his attention was arrested.
There was the sound of flowing water
beneath his feet. This could always be
heard in his room, but now how distinct
and loud it was ! He realized immedi-
ately that the trap-door was open, and he
listened for a second. He was conscious
of some one in the room. He made a
step toward the door, but it closed softly.
He moved swiftly to the window, for the
presence was near the door.

What did it mean ? Who was it ?
Was there one, or more ? Was mur-
der intended ? The silence, the weird-
ness, stopped his tongue ; besides, what
was the good of crying out ? Whatever
was to happen would happen at once.
He struck a light, and held it up. As
he did so some one or something rushed
at him. What a fool he had been, he
thought : the light had revealed his sit-
uation perfectly. But at the same mo-
ment came the instinct to throw himself
to one side. In that one flash he had
seen — a man's white beard.

Next instant there was a sharp sting
in his right shoulder. The knife had
missed his breast, — the quick swerving
had saved him. Even as the knife
struck he threw himself on his assailant.
Then came a struggle for the weapon.
The long fingers of the man with the
white beard clove to it like a dead sol-
dier's to the handle of a sword. Once
the knife gashed De'tricand's hand, and
then he pinioned the wrist of his enemy
and tripped him up. The miscreant fell
half across the opening in the floor. One
foot, hanging down, almost touched the
running water.

De'tricand had his foe at his mercy.
There was at first an inclination to drop
him into the stream, but that was put
away as quickly as it came. Presently
he gave the wretch a sudden twist, pull-
ing him clear of the hole, and wrenched
the knife from his fingers.

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 487. 42

" Now, monsieur," said he, " now we
'11 have a look at you."

The figure lay quiet beneath him. The
nervous strength was gone, the body was
limp, the breathing was that of a fright-
ened man. The light flared. De'tricand
held it down, and there was revealed the
face of Olivier Delagarde, haggard, ma-
licious, cowardly.

" So, monsieur the traitor," said De'-
tricand, " so you 'd be a murderer, too,
eh ? "

The old man mumbled an oath.

" Hand of the devil," continued De'-
tricand, " was there ever a greater beast
than you ! I have held my tongue about
you these eleven years past, and I held
it yesterday and saved your paltry life,
and you 'd repay me by stabbing me in
the dark, — in a fine old-fashioned way,
too, with your trap-doors, and blown-out
candle, and Italian tricks, and " — He
held the candle down near the white beard
as though he would singe it. " Come,
sit up against the wall there, and let me
look at you."

Cringingly the old man drew himself
over to the wall. De'tricand, seating
himself in a chair, held the candle up
before him. After a moment he said,
" What I want to know is, how could a
low-flying cormorant like you beget a
gull of the cliffs like Maitre Ranulph ? "

The old man did not answer, but sat
blinking with malignant yet fearful eyes
at Detricand, who continued : —

" What did you come back for ? Why
did n't you stay dead ? Ranulph had a
name as clean as a piece of paper from
the mill, and he can't write it now with-
out turning sick because it 's the same
name as yours. You 're the choice black-
amoor of creation, are n't you ! Now,
what have you got to say ? "

" Let me go, let me go," whined the
other. " Let me go, monsieur. Don't
send me to prison."

De'tricand stirred him with his foot
as one might stir a pile of dirt.

" Listen," said he. " Down there in

658

The Battle of the Strong.

the Vier March! they 're cutting off the
ear of a man and nailing it to a post,
because he ill used a cow ! What do
you suppose they 'd do to you, if I took
you down to the Vier Marchi and told
them that it was through you Rullecour
landed, and that you 'd have seen them
all murdered eleven years ago, — eh,
maitre cormorant ? "

The old man crawled toward De*tri-
cand on his knees. " Let me go, let
me go," he begged. " I was mad ; I did
n't know what I was doing ; I have n't
been right in the head since I was in the
Guiana prison."

It struck De'tricand that the man must
have had some awful experience in pris-
on, for now the most painful terror was
in his eyes, the most abject fear. He
had never seen so pitiable and craven a
sight. This seemed more like an animal
which had been cowed by torture than
a man who had endured punishment.

" What were you in prison for in
Guiana, and what did they do to you
there ? " asked De'tricand curiously.

Again Delagarde shivered horribly,
and tears streamed down his cheeks as
he whined piteously, " Oh no, no, no !
For the mercy of Christ, no ! " He threw
up his hands as if to ward off a blow.

De'tricand saw that this was not act-
ing, — that it was a supreme terror, an
awful momentary aberration ; for the
traitor's eyes were staring and dilated,
the mouth was contracted in agony, the
hands were rigidly clutching an imagi-
nary something, the body stiffened where
it crouched.

De'tricand understood now. The old
man had been tied to a triangle and
whipped, — how horribly who might
know ? His mood toward the miserable
creature changed ; he spoke to him in
a firm tone : " There, that 's enough ;
you 're not going to be hurt. Be quiet
now, and you shall not be touched."

Then he stooped over, and quickly un-
doing Delagarde's vest, he pulled down
the coat, waistcoat, and shirt, and looked

at his back. As far as he could see it
was scarred as though by a red-hot iron,
and the healed welts were like whipcords
on the shriveled skin. Buttoning the
shirt and straightening the coat again
with his own fingers, De'tricand said : —

" Now, monsieur, you 're to go home
and sleep the sleep of the unjust, and
you 're to keep the sixth commandment,
and you 're to make no more lying
speeches in the Vier Marchi. You 've
made a shameful mess of your son's life,
and you 're to die now as soon as you
can without attracting attention. You 're
to pray for an accident to take you out
of the world : a wind to blow you over
a cliff, a roof to fall on you, a boat to
go down with you, a hole in the ground
to swallow you up, a fever or a plague
to end you in a day."

He opened the door to let him go ;
but suddenly catching his arms he held
him in a close grip. " Hush ! " he said
in a mysterious whisper. " Listen ! "

There was only the weird sound of
the running water through the open trap-
door of the floor. He knew how super-
stitious was every Jersey man, and he
worked upon that weakness now.

" You hear that flood running to the
sea," he said solemnly. " You tried to
kill and drown me to-night. You Ve
heard how, when one man has drowned
another, an invisible stream will follow
the murderer wherever he goes, and he
will hear it, hour after hour, month af-
ter month, year after year, until one day
it will come on him in a huge flood, and
he will be found, whether in the road,
or in his bed, or at the table, or in the
field, drowned and dead ! "

The old man shivered violently.

" You know Manon Moignard, the
witch ? " continued De'tricand. " Well,
if you don't do what I say — and I shall
find out, mind you — she shall bewitch
the flood on you. Listen ! . . . hear it !
That 's the sound you '11 hear every day
of your life, if you break the promise
you 've got to make to me now."

The Battle of the Strong.

659

He spoke the promise with ghostly
deliberation, and Delagarde, all the de-
sperado gone out of him, repeated it in
a husky voice. Whereupon Ddtricand
led him into the garden, saw him safe
out into the road, watched him disap-
pear ; then, slapping his hands as though
to rid them of some pollution, and with
an exclamation of disgust, he went back
into the house.

Before morning he was standing on
the soil of France, and by another sun-
down he saw the lights of the army of
La Rochejaquelein in the valley of the
Vendee.

XVI.

The night and morning after Guida's
marriage came and went. The day drew
on to the hour fixed for the going of the
Narcissus. Guida had worked all the
forenoon with a feverish unrest, not
trusting herself, though the temptation
was great, to go where she might see
Philip's vessel lying in the tideway. She
had determined that only when the mo-
ment for sailing arrived would she visit
the shore ; but from her kitchen door-
way there was spread before her a wide
acreage of blue water and a perfect sky ;
and out there was Noirmont Point, round
which Philip's ship would go, and be lost
to her vision thereafter.

The day wore on. She got her grand-
father's dinner, saw him bestowed in
his great armchair for his afternoon
sleep, and when her household work was
done settled herself at the spinning-
wheel. The old man loved to have her
spin and sing as he drowsed into a sound
sleep. To-day his eyes had followed
her everywhere. He could not have told
why it was, but somehow all at once he
seemed deeply to realize her, — her beau-
ty, the joy of this innocent living intel-
ligence moving through his home. She
had always been necessary to him, but
he had taken her presence as a matter

of course. She had always been to him
the most wonderful child ever given to
comfort an old man's life, but now, as he
abstractedly took a pinch of snuff from
his little tortoise-shell case, and then for-
got to put it to his nose, he seemed sud-
denly to get that clearness of sight, that
separateness, that perspective, which en-
abled him to see her as she really was.
He took another pinch of snuff, and
again forgot to put it to his nose, but
brushed imaginary dust from his coat,
as was his wont, and whispered to him-
self : —

" Why now, why now, I had not
thought she was so much a woman.
Flowers of the sea, but what eyes, what
a carriage, and what an air ! I had not
thought, — h'm ! how strange, blind old
bat that I am ! — I had not thought she
was grown such a lady. Why, it was
only yesterday, surely but yesterday,
that I rocked her to sleep there in the
corner. Larchant de Mauprat," — he
shook his head at himself, — " you are
growing old. Let me see, — why yes,
she was born the day I sold the blue
enameled timepiece to his highness the
Due de Mauban. The due was but put-
ting the watch to his ear when a mes-
sage comes to say the child there is born.
4 Good,' says the Due de Mauban, when
he hears. ' Give me the honor, de Mau-
prat,' says he, ' for the sake of old days
in France, to offer a name to the brave
innocent, — for the sake of old associa-
tions,' says de Mauban. ' You knew my
wife, de Mauprat,' says he ; ' you knew the
Duchesse Guida, — Guidabaldine. She 's
been gone these ten years, alas ! You
were with me when we were married,
de Mauprat,' says the due ; ' I should
care to return the compliment, if you will
allow me to offer a name, eh ? ' ' Mon-
sieur le Due,' said I, ' there is no honor
I more desire for my grandchild.' ' Then
let the name of Guidabaldine be some-
where among others she will carry, and
— and I '11 not forget her, de Mauprat,
I '11 not forget her.' . . . Eh, eh, I won-

GGU

The JJattlc' of the titroity.

der — I wonder it' he has forgotten the
little Guidabaldine there ? He sent her
a golden cup for the christening, but I
wonder — I wonder — if he has forgot-
ten her since ? So quick of tongue, so
bright of eye, so light of foot, so sweet
a face — if one could but be always
young ! When her grandmother, my
wife, my Julie, when she was young —
ah ! she was fair, fairer than Guida, but
not so tall — not quite so tall. Ah ! "

He was growing more drowsy. The
days of his life, though they lengthened
on beyond fourscore, each in itself grew
shorter. Sleep and a babbling memory,
the pleasure of the sun, the calm and
comfort of an existence freed from all
passion, all ambition, all care, — this was
his life.

He was slipping away into uncon-
sciousness when he realized that Guida
was singing : —

" Spin, spin, belle Mergaton ! .

The iiiiion wheels full, and the tide flows

high,

And your wedding-dress you must put it on
Ere the night hath no moon in the sky —
Gigoton, Mergaton, spin ! *'

She was smiling. She seemed quite
unconscious of his presence ; and how
bright her eyes were, how alive with
thought and vision was the face !

" I had never thought she was so
much a woman," he said drowsily ; " I

— I wonder why — I never noticed it ? "
He roused himself again, brushed imagi-
nary snuff from his coat, keeping time
with his foot to the wheel as it went
round. '• I — I suppose she will wed
soon. ... I had forgotten. But she
must marry well, she must marry well —
she is the godchild of the Due de Mau-
ban. How the wheel goes round ! I
used to hear — her mother — sing that
song, ' Gigoton, Mergaton — spin — spin

— spin'" —
He was asleep.

Guida put by the wheel, and left the
house. Passing through the Rue des
Sablons, she came to the shore. It was

high tide. This was the time that
Philip's ship was to go. She had dressed
herself with as much solicitude as to
what might please his eye as though she
were going to meet him in person. And
not without reason, for, though she could
not see him from the land, she knew he
could see her plainly through his tele-
scope, if he chose.

She reached the shore. The time had
come for Philip to go, but there was his
ship rocking in the tideway with no sails
set. Perhaps the Narcissus was not
going ; perhaps, after all, Philip was to
remain ! She laughed with pleasure at
the thought of that. Her eyes lingered
lovingly upon the ship which was her
husband's home upon the sea. Just such
another vessel Philip would command.
At a word from him, those guns, like
long, black, threatening arms thrust out,
would strike for England with thunder
and fire.

A bugle-call came across the water to
her. It was clear, vibrant, and com-
pelling. It represented power. Power,
— that was what Philip, with his shipr
would stand for in the name of England.
Danger, — oh yes, there would be dan-
ger, but Heaven would be good to her ;
Philip should go safe through storm and
war, and some day great honors would
be done him. He should be an admiral,
and more, perhaps : he had said so. He
was going to do it as much for her as
for himself ; and when he had done it,
to be proud of it more for her than for
himself : he had said so ; she believed in
him utterly. Since that day upon the
Ecre'hos it had never occurred to her
not to believe him. Where she gave her
faith she gave it wholly ; where she
withdrew it —

The bugle-call sounded again. Per-
haps that was the signal to set sail. No,
a boat was putting out from the side of
the Narcissus ! It was coming landward.
As she watched its approach she heard
a chorus of boisterous voices behind her.
She turned, and saw nearing the shore

The Battle of the Strong.

661

from the Rue d'Egypte a half dozen sail-
ors, singing cheerily : —

" Get you on, get you on, get you on.
Get you on to your fo'c'stle 'orae ;
Leave your lasses, leave your beer,
For the bugle what you 'ear

Pipes you on to your fo'c'stle 'orae —
'Ome, 'ome, 'ome —
Pipes you on to your fo'c'stle 'ome."

Guida drew near.

" The Narcissus is not leaving to-
day ? " she asked of the foremost sailor.

The man touched his cap. " Not to-
day, lady."

" When does she leave ? "

" Well, that 's more nor I can say,
lady, but the cap'n of the maintop, yan-
der, 'e knows."

She approached the captain of the
maintop. " When does the Narcissus
leave ? " she asked.

He looked her up and down, at first
with something like boldness, but in-
stantly he touched his hat. " To-mor-
row, mistress, — she leaves at 'igh tide
to-morrow."

With an eye for a fee or a bribe, he
drew a little away from the others, and
said to her in a low tone, " Is there any-
thing what I could do for you, mistress ?
P'r'aps you wanted some word carried
aboard, mistress ? "

She hesitated an instant, then said,
"No — no, thank you."

He still waited, however, rubbing his
hand on his hip with a mock bashfulness.
There was an instant's pause ; then she
divined his meaning.

She took from her pocket a shilling.
She had never given away so much
money in her life before, but she seemed
to feel instinctively that now she must
give freely, now that she was the wife
of an officer of the navy. . Strange how
these sailors to-day appeared so different
to her from any she had ever met before.
She felt as if they all belonged to her.
She offered the shilling to the captain of
the maintop.

His eyes gloated over the money, but
he protested with an affected surprise,

" Oh, I could n't think of it, yer leddy-
ship."

She smiled at him appealingly. Of
course, she said to herself, he must take
it : he was one of Philip's sailors, — one
of her sailors now.

" Ah, but you will take it ! I — I have
a r-relative " — she hesitated at the word
— " in the navy."

" 'Ave you now, yer leddyship ? " he
returned. " Well, then, I 'm proud to
'ave the shilling to drink 'is 'ealth, yer
leddyship." He touched his hat, and
was about to turn away.

" Stay a little," she said, with bashful
boldness. The joy of giving was rapidly
growing to a vice. " Here 's something
for them," she added, nodding toward
his fellows, and a second shilling came
from her pocket.

" Just as you say, yer leddyship," he
said doubtfully and selfishly ; " but for
my part, I think they 've 'ad enough. I
don't 'old with temptin' the weak pas-
sions of man."

"Well, then, perhaps you wouldn't
mind keeping it ? " she said sweetly.

" Yer 'ighness," he answered, draw-
ing himself up, " if it was n't a werry
hextrordinary occasion, I could n't never
think on it. But seein' as you 're a sea-
goin' family, yer 'ighness, why, I 'opes
yer 'ighness '11 give me leave to drink
yer 'ighness' 'ealth this werry night as
ever is." He tossed the shilling into his
mouth, and touched his hat again.

A moment afterward the sailors were
in the boat, rowing out toward the Nar-
cissus. Their song came back across the
water : —

" Oh, you A. B. sailor-man,
Wet your whistle while you can,

For the piping of the bugle calls you

'ome —
'Ome — 'ome — 'ome —

Calls you on to your fo'c'stle 'ome."

As the night came down, and Guida
sat at the kitchen doorway looking out
over the sea, she wondered that Philip
had sent her no message. Of course he

662

The Battle of the Strong.

would not come himself ; he must not :
he had promised her. And yet how
much she would like to see him for just
one minute, to feel his arms about her,
to hear him say good-by once more !
Yet, too, she liked him the more for not
coming.

By and by she became very restless.
She would have been almost happier if
he had gone that day : he was within
call of her, yet they were not to see
each other. She walked up and down
the garden, Biribi, the dog, at her side.
Sitting down on the bench beneath the
apple-tree, she recalled every word that
Philip had said to her two days before.
Every tone of his voice, every look that
he had given her, she went over in
her mind, now smiling and now sighing.
There is no reporting in the world so
exact, so perfect, as that given by a
woman's brain of the words, looks, and
acts of her lover in the first days of
mutual confession and understanding.

It can come but once, this dream,
fantasy, illusion, — call it what you will :
it belongs to the birth hour of a new and
powerful feeling ; it is the first sunrise
of the heart. What comes after may be
the calmer joy of a more truthful, a less
ideal emotion, but the transitory glory
of the love and passion of youth shoots
higher than all other glories into the sky
of time. The splendor of youth is its
madness, and the splendor of that mad-
ness is its unconquerable belief. And
great is the strength of it, because vio-
lence alone can destroy it. It does not
yield to time nor to decay, to the long
wash of experience that wears away the
stone nor to disintegration. It is always
broken into pieces at a blow. In the
morning all is well, and ere the evening
come the radiant temple is in ruins.

At night, when Guida went to bed, at
first she could not sleep. Then came a
drowsing, a floating between waking and
sleeping, in which a hundred swift im-
ages of her short past flashed through her
mind. A butterfly floating in the white

haze of a dusty road, and the cap of the
careless lad that struck it down. . . .
Berry-picking along the hedges beyond
the quarries of Mont Mado, and washing
her hands in the strange green pools at
the bottom of the quarries. . . . Stoop-
ing to a stream, and saying of it to a lad,
" Ro, won't it never come back ? " . . .
From the front doorway watching a poor
criminal shrink beneath the lash with
which he was being flogged from the
Vier Marchi to the Vier Prison. . . .
Seeing a procession of bride and bride-
groom with young men and women gay
in ribbons and pretty cottons, calling
from house to house to receive the good
wishes of their friends, and drinking
cinnamon wine and mulled cider, — the
frolic, the buoyancy, the gayety of it all.
Now, in a room full of people, she
was standing on a veille all beautifully
flourished with posies of broom and wild
flowers, and Philip was there beside her,
and he was holding her hand, and they
were waiting and waiting for some one
who never came. Nobody took any no-
tice of her and Philip, she thought ; they
stood there waiting and waiting — Why,
there was M. Savary dit De*tricand in the
doorway, waving a handkerchief at her,
and saying, " I 've found it ! I 've found
it ! " And she awoke with a start.

Her heart was beating hard, and for
a moment she was dazed ; but presently
she went to sleep again, and dreamed
once more.

This time she was on a great warship,
in a storm which was driving them to-
ward a rocky shore. The sea was wash-
ing over the deck. She recognized the
shore : it was the cliff at Plemont, in
the north of Jersey, and behind the ship
lay the awful Paternosters. They were
drifting, drifting on the wall of rock.
High above on the shore there was a
solitary stone hut. The ship came near-
er and nearer. The storm increased in
strength. In the midst of the violence
she looked up and saw a man standing
in the doorway of the hut. He turned

The Battle of the Strong.

663

his face toward her : it was Ranulph
Delagarde, and he had a rope in his
hand. He saw her and called to her,
and made ready to throw the rope, but
suddenly some one drew her back. She
cried out, and then all grew black. . . .
And then, again, she knew she was in
a small, dark cabin of the ship. She
could hear the storm breaking over the
deck. Now the ship struck. She could
feel her grinding upon tlie rocks. She
appeared to be sinking, sinking. There
was a knocking, knocking at the door of
the cabin, and a voice calling to her.
How far away it seemed ! Was she dy-
ing, was she drowning ? The words of
a nursery rhyme rang in her ears dis-
tinctly, keeping time to the knocking.
She wondered who should be singing a
nursery rhyme on a sinking ship.

" La main morte,
La main morte,
Tapp1 a la porte,
Tapp' & la porte."

She shuddered. Why should the dead
hand tap at her door ? Yet there it was
tapping louder, louder. . . . She strug-
gled, she tried to cry out ; then sudden-
ly she grew quiet, and the tapping got
fainter and fainter ; her eyes opened ;
she was awake.

For an instant she did not know
where she was. Was it a dream still ?
For there was a tapping — tapping at
her door — no, it was at the window. A
shiver ran through her. Her heart al-
most stopped beating. Some one was
calling to her.

" Guida ! Guida ! "

It was Philip's voice. Her cheek had
been cold the moment before ; now she
felt the blood tingling in her face. She
slid to the floor, threw a shawl round her,
and went to the casement. The tapping
began again. At first she could not open
the window. She was trembling from
head to foot. Philip's voice quickly re-
assured her.

"Guida, Guida, open the window a
minute ! "

She hesitated. She could not — no
— she could not do it. He tapped still
louder.

" Guida, don't you hear me ? " he
asked.

She undid the catch, but she had hard-
ly the courage even yet. He heard her
now, and pressed the window a little.
Then she opened it slowly, and her white
face showed. " Oh, Philip," she said
breathlessly, " why have you frightened
me so? "•

He caught her hand in his own.
" Come out into the garden," he said.
" Put on a dress and slippers, and come,"
he urged again, and kissed her hand.

" Philip," she protested, " oh, Philip, I
cannot ! It is too late. It is midnight.
Do not ask me. Oh, why did you
come ? "

" Because I wanted to speak with you
for one minute. I have only a little
while. Please come and say good-by
to me again. We are going to-morrow ;
there 's no doubt about it this time."

" Oh, Philip," she answered, her voice
quivering, " how can I ? Say good-by
to me here, now."

" No, no, Guida, you must come. I
can't kiss you good-by where you are."

" Must I come to you ? " she asked
helplessly. "Well, then, Philip," she
added, " go to the bench by the apple-
tree, and I shall be there in a moment."

" Dearest ! " he exclaimed ardently.

She closed the window.

For a moment he looked about him ;
then went lightly through the garden,
and sat down on the bench under the
apple-tree, near to the summer-house.
At last he heard her footstep. He rose
quickly to meet her, and as she came
timidly to him clasped her in his arms.

" Philip," she said, " I 'm sure this
is n't right. You ought not to have
come ; you have broken your promise."

" Are you not glad to see me ? "

" Oh, you know, you know that I 'm
glad to see you, but you should n't have
come — Hark ! what 's that ? "

664

The Battle of the Strong.

They both held their breath, for there
was a sound outside the garden wall.
Clac-clac ! clac-clac ! — a strange, un-
canny footstep. It seemed to be hurry-
ing away, — clac-clac ! clac-clac !

" Ah, I know," whispered Guida : " it
is Dovmy Jamais. How foolish of me
to be afraid ! "

" Of course, of course," said Philip,
— " Dormy Jamais, who never sleeps."

" Philip — if he saw us ! "

" Foolish child, the garden wall is too
high for that. Besides " —

« Yes, Philip ? "

" Besides, you are my wife, Guida ! "

" Oh no, Philip, no ; not really so un-
til all the world is told."

" My beloved Guida, what difference
can that make ? "

She sighed and shook her head. " To
me, Philip, it is only that which makes
it right, — that the whole woi-ld knows.
Ah, Philip, I am so afraid of — of se-
crecy."

" Nonsense ! " he answered, " non-
sense ! Poor little wood - bird, you 're
frightened at nothing at all. Come and
sit by me." He drew her close to him.

Her trembling presently grew less.
Hundreds of glowworms were shimmer-
ing in the hedge. The grasshoppers
were whirring in the mielles beyond ; a
flutter of wings went by overhead. The
leaves were rustling softly ; a fresh wind
was coming up from the sea upon the
soft, fragrant dusk.

They talked a little while in whispers,
her hands in his, his voice soothing her,
bis low, hurried words giving her no
time to think. But presently she shiv-
ered again, though her heart was throb-
bing hotly.

" Come into the summer - house, my
Guida ; you are cold, you are shivering."
He rose, with his arm round her waist,
raising her gently at the same time.

" Oh no, Philip dear," she said, " I 'm
not really cold — I don't know what it
is" —

" Oh, but you are cold," he answered.

" There 's a stiff southeaster rising, and
your hands are like ice. Come into the
arbor for a minute. It 's warm there,
and then — then we '11 say good-by,
sweetheart ! "

His arm round her, he drew her with
him to the summer-house, talking to her
tenderly all the time. There were re-
assurance and comfort and loving care
in his very tones.

How brightly the stars shone ! How
clearly the music of the stream came
over the hedge ! With what lazy rest-
fulness the distant " All 's well ! " floated
across the mielles from a ship at anchor
in the tideway ! How like a slumber
song the wash of the sea rolled drowsily
along the wind ! How gracious the smell
of the earth, drinking up the dew of the
affluent air, which the sun on the mor-
row should turn into life-blood for the
grass and trees and flowers !

XVII.

Philip was gone. Before breakfast
was set upon the table Guida saw the
Narcissus sail round Noirmont Point and
disappear. Her face had taken on a
new expression since yesterday. An old
touch of dreaminess, of vague anticipa-
tion, was gone, — that look which belongs
to youth, which feels the confident charm
of the unknown future. Life was re-
vealed, but, together with joy, wonder
and pain and knowledge informed the
revelation.

To Guida the marvel was brought
home with vivid force : her life was
linked to another's ; she was a wife.
Like the Spanish maiden who looks
down from her window into the street
and calls to her lover, so from the win-
dow of her brain Guida looked down
into the highway of life, and saw one
figure draw aside from the great pro-
gression and cry to her, " Mio destine ! "

That was it. Philip would signal,
and she must come until either he or she

The Battle of the Strong.

665

should die. He had taken her hand, and
she must never withdraw it ; the breath
of his being must henceforth give her
new and healthy life, or fill her veins
with a fever which should corrode the
heart and burn away the spirit. Young
though she was, she realized it ; but she
realized it without defining it. Her
knowledge was expressed in her person,
was diffused in her character, in her face.
This gave her a spiritual force, an air.
a dignity which can come only through
the influence of some deep and powerful
joy, or through as great and deep a suf-
fering.

Seldom had a day of Guida's life been
so busy. It seemed to her that people
came and went more than usual. She
did all that was required of her. She
talked, she laughed a little, she answered
back the pleasantries of the seafaring
folk who passed her doorway or her gar-
den. She was attentive to her grand-
father ; she was punctual and exact with
her household duties. But all the time
she was thinking — thinking — think-
ing. Now and again she smiled, but at
times, too, tears sprang to her eyes, and
were quickly dried. More than once she
drew in her breath with a quick, sibilant
sound, as though some thought wound-
ed her ; and she flushed suddenly, then
turned pale, then came to her natural
color again. Yet there was an unusual
transparency in her face to-day ; a sort
of shining, neither of joy nor of sorrow,
but the light that comes from life's first
deep experiences.

Among those who chanced to come to
the cottage was Maitresse Amiable. She
came to ask Guida to go with her and
Jean to the island of Sark, twelve miles
away, where Guida had never been,
but whither Jean had long promised to
take her. They would be gone only one
night, and, as Maitresse Aimable said,
the Sieur de Mauprat could very well
make shift that long for once.

The invitation came to Guida like wa-
ter to a thirsty land. She longed to get

away from the town, to be where she
could breathe ; for all this day the earth
seemed too small for breath : she gasped
for the sea, to be alone there. To sail
with Jean Touzel was practically to
be alone ; for Maitresse Aimable never
talked, and Jean knew Guida's ways,
'knew when she wished to be quiet, for
he had an acuteness of temperament be-
yond his appearance or his reputation.
In Jersey phrase, he saw beyond his
spectacles, — great brass-rimmed things,
which, added to the humorous rotundity
of his cheeks, gave a droll, childlike
kind of wisdom to his look.

Guida said that she would gladly go
to Sark, at which Maitresse Aimable
smiled placidly, and seemed about to
leave, when all at once, without any
warning, she lowered herself like a vast
crate upon the veille, and sat there look-
ing at Guida with meditative inquiry.

Maitresse Aimable was far from clever;
she was thought to be as stupid as she was
heavy : she spoke so little, she appeared
so opaque, that only the children had
any opinion of her. Yet, too, there were
a few sick and bedridden folk who longed
for her coming with something almost
like pleasure, — not with excitement, but
certainly with a sense of satisfaction ;
for though she brought only some soupe
a la graisse, or a fresh-cooked conger-eel,
or a little cider, and did nothing but sit
and stare, and try hopelessly to find her
voice, she exuded a sort of drowsy be-
nevolence from her face. If by chance
she said, " I believe you," or " Body of
my life ! " she was thought to be getting
garrulous. •

At first the grave inquiry of her look
startled Guida. She was beginning to
know that sensitive fear and timidity
which assail those who are possessed and
tyrannized over by a secret. Under the
meditative regard of her visitor, Guida
said to herself, witli a quick suspicion,
" What does Maitresse Aimable know
about Philip and me ? "

How she loathed this secrecy ! How

666

The, Battle of the Strong.

guilty she now felt, where indeed no
guilt was ! How she longed to call her
name, her new name, from the house-
tops, to testify to her absolute innocence ;
that her own verdict upon herself might
not be like the antique verdict in the
criminal procedure of the Jersey Royal
Court, More innocent than guilty, — as
if in her case there were any guilt at
all ! Nothing could satisfy her but the
absolute, — that was her nature. She
was not made for half-lights.

The voice of Maitresse Aimable roused
her. Her ponderous visitor had here
made a discovery which had yet been
made by no other human being. After
her fashion, Maitresse Aimable loved
Jean Touzel as was given to few to love.
Her absurd romance, her ancient illu-
sion, had remained with her, vivifying
her intelligence only in one direction.
She knew when love lay behind a wo-
man's face. Her portly stupidity gave
way to intelligence now, and into the
well where her voice had fallen there
flashed a light from her own love-lorn,
lonely, faithful heart, and the voice
came up and spake freely, yet with that
certainty belonging to a mechanical state-
ment of fact. She said, " I was sixteen
when I fell in love ; you 're seventeen
— you ! Ah bah, so it goes ! "

Guida's face crimsoned. What — how
much did Maitresse Aimable know ? By
what necromancy had this dull, fat, si-
lent fisher-wife learned the secret which
was the heart of her life, the soul of her
being, — which was Philip ? She was
frightened, but danger made her cau-
tious. She suddenly took her first step
into that strange wood called by some
Diplomacy, by others Ingenuity, by oth-
ers, and not always rightly, Duplicity.

" Can you guess who it is ? " she
asked, without replying directly to the
oblique charge.

" It is not Maitre Ranulph," answered
her friendly inquisitor ; " it is not that
M'sieu' Delricand, the vaurien." Guida
flushed with annoyance. " It is not

Maitre Blampied, that farmer with fifty
verge*es, all potatoes. It is not M'sieu'
Janvrin, that bat' d'la goule of an ecri-
vain. Ah bah, so it goes ! "

" Who is it, then ? " persisted Guida.

" Ah bah, that is the thing ! " And
Maitresse Aimable's voice dropped again
into the well of silence, and for a time
defied all efforts to bring it up.

" How can you tell that I am in love,
Maitresse Aimabla ? " asked Guida.

The other smiled with a torturing
placidity, then opened her mouth ; but
nothing came of it. She watched Guida
moving about the kitchen abstractedly.
Her eye wandered to the raclyi, from
which hung flitches of bacon, to the bel-
lows hanging by the chimney, to the
sanded floor, to the bottle-glass window
with the lozenge - shaped panes set in
lead, to the great Elizabethan oak chair,
and at last back to Guida, as if through
her the lost voice might be charmed up
again.

The eyes of the two met at last, fair-
ly, firmly ; and now Guida was conscious
of a look in Maitresse Aimable's face
which she had never seen before. Had
she herself received a new sight ? Was
it that we never can see until we are
touched by the finger of experience,
which has been dipped in the pool of
pain ? Then and there Guida realized
that, though seeing is joy, there is the
painful moment when the light breaks
in on the tender sight. Guida saw and
understood the look in Maitresse Aima-
ble's face, and instantly knew it to be
the same look which was in her own.

With a sudden impulse she laid down
the bashin she was polishing, and, go-
ing over quickly, she leaned her cheek
against Maitresse Aimable silently. She
could feel the huge breast heave, she
felt the vast cheek turn hot, she was
conscious of a voice struggling up from
the well of silence to speech, and she
heard it say at last, " Gatd'en'ale ! rose-
mary tea cures a cough, but nothing cures
the love. Ah bah, so it goes ! "

The Battle of the Strong.

667

" Do you love Jean ? " whispered
Guida, not showing her face, but long-
ing to hear the experience of another
who suffered that joy called love.

Maitresse Aimable's face got hotter ;
she did not speak, but patted Guida's back
softly with her heavy hand and nodded
complacently.

" Have you always loved him ? " asked
Guida again, with eager inquisition,
which can be likened only to that of a
wayside sinner turned chapel-going saint,
who is hungry to know what chanced
to others when they trod the primrose
path.

Maitresse Aimable again nodded, and
her arm drew closer about Guida.

Then came an unsophisticated and
disconcerting question : " Has Jean al-
ways loved you ? "

There was a pause ; the fingers did
not noticeably caress Guida's shoulder,
and the voice said, with the deliberate
foresight and prudence of an unwilling
and adroit witness, " It is not the man
who wears the wedding-ring." Then, as
if she had been disloyal in even sug-
gesting that Jean might hold her lightly,
she added, almost eagerly, — an enthu-
siasm tempered by the pathos of a half-
truth, — " But my Jean always sleeps at
home."

This larger excursion into speech gave
her courage, and she said more ; and even
as Guida listened hungrily (so soon had
come upon her the apprehensions and
wavering moods of loving woman), she
was wondering to hear this creature, con-
sidered so dull by all, speak as though
out of a watchful and capable mind.
What further Maitresse Aimable said
was proof that if she knew little and
spake little, she knew that little well ;
and if she had gathered meagrely from
life, she had at least winnowed out some
small handful- of grain from the straw
and chaff. Her sagacity impelled her
to say at last, " If a man's eyes won't
see, elder-water can't make him ; if he
will — ah bah, glad and good ! " And

both arms went round Guida and hugged
her awkwardly.

Maitresse Aimable had, however, ex-
hausted her reflections (for indeed she
had talked more than she had ever done
in any day of her life since she mar-
ried), and her voice came up but once
more that morning. As she left Guida
in the doorway, she said, with a last
effort, " I will have one bead to pray
for you, tre"jous." She showed her ro-
sary, and, Huguenot though she was,
Guida touched the bead reverently.
" And if there is war, I will have two
beads, trdjous. A bi'tot — good-by ! "

Such was the self-revelation of Mai-
tresse Aimable, wife of Jean Touzel, who
was cruelly called in St. Helier's " la
femme de ballast."

Guida stood watching her from the
doorway, and the last words of the fisher-
wife kept repeating themselves through
her brain : "And if there is war, I will
have two beads, trejous."

The allusion in the words was clear.
It meant that Maitresse Aimable knew
she loved Philip. How strange it was
that one should read so truly without
words spoken, or even from seeing acts
which reveal ! She herself seemed to
read Maitresse Aimable all at once, —
read her by virtue and in the light of
the love, the consuming and primitive
feeling in the breast of each for a man.
Were not words necessary for speech,
after all ? But she stopped short sud-
denly ; for if love might find and read
love, why was it she needed speech of
Philip ? Why was it her spirit kept
beating up against the hedge beyond
which his inner self was, and, unable to
see that beyond, needed reassurance by
words, by promises and protestations ?

All at once she was angry with her-
self for thinking thus where Philip was
concerned. Of course Philip loved her
deeply. Of course she had seen the
light of love in his eyes, had felt the
arms of love about her. . . . She shud-
dered and grew bitter, and a strange

668

Washington Reminiscences.

rebellion broke loose in her. Why had
Philip failed to keep his promise ? It
was selfish, painfully, terribly selfish, of
Philip. Why, even though she had been
foolish in her request, why had he not
done as she wished ? Was that love,
— was it love to break the first promise
he had ever made to his wife ? Did he
not know f

Yet she excused him to herself. Wo-
men were different from men, and men
did not understand what troubled a wo-
man's heart and spirit ; they were not
shaken by the same gusts of emotion ;
they — they were not so fine ; they did
not think so deeply on what a woman,
when she loves, thinks always, and acts
according to her thought. If Philip
were only here to resolve these fears,
these perplexities, to quiet this storm in
her ! And yet, somehow, she felt that
the storm was rooting up something very
deep and radical in her. It frightened
her, but she fought it down.

She went into her garden : and here
among her flowers and her animals she
grew brighter and gayer of heart ; and
she laughed a little, and was most tender
and pretty with her grandfather when
he came home from spending the day
with the chevalier.

In this manner the day passed, — in
happy reminiscence and in vague fore-
boding ; in love and in reproaches as the

secret wife, and yet as a loving, distract-
ed girl, frightened at her own bitterness,
though knowing it to be justified.

The late afternoon was spent in gay-
ety with her grandfather and Amice In-
gouville, the fat avocat ; but at night,
when she went to bed, she could not
sleep. She tossed from side to side ; a
hundred thoughts came and went. She
grew feverish, her breath choked her,
and she got up and opened the window.
It was clear, bright moonlight, and from
where she lay she could see the mielles
and the ocean, and the star - sown sky
above and beyond. Myriad thoughts,
illusions, and imaginings swept through
her brain. Supersensitive, acute, filled
with impressions of things she had seen
and things and places of which she had
read, her brain danced through an area
of intense fancies, as a kaleidoscope
flashes past the eye. She was in that
halfway country where the tangible is
merged into the intangible ; with a con-
sciousness of being awake, while the
feeling is that of an egregious, unnatu-
ral sleep. At first her dreaming was all
patches, — pictures of gulls and cormo-
rants and tall rocks and cliffs and the
surf - making sea ; but by and by her
flaming fancies took form and continuity,
and she dreamed a strange dream of an
island in the sea, and of a terrible thing
that happened to Philip there.

Gilbert Parker.

(To be continued.)

WASHINGTON REMINISCENCES.

FOR more than a generation, a pe-
riod covering the most memorable events
in American annals since we became a
nation, I have been a quiet observer of

seen Congresses and administrations
come and go, the Union temporarily
broken asunder and again united, and
I have watched with keen interest the
revolutions in politics which have rapid-
ly succeeded one another. Most of the

men and things in Washington. I have public men of the last generation have

Washington Reminiscences.

669

been familiar figures to me. Asked to
contribute my own impressions of men
and events during this stirring and mo-
mentous period, I have not felt at liberty
to decline. Preserving the rule of reti-
cence as to living persons, I will endea-
vor to convey as frank and impartial an
estimate of the characteristics of some
public men of the past, whether in legis-
lative, executive, or judicial life, as my
experience and judgment permit. No
other merit is claimed for these sketches
than that they are the fruit of a candid
observation and an experience somewhat
prolonged.

WILLIAM PITT FESSENDEN.

Few of our public men have had a
more marked and engaging personality
than Senator William Pitt Fessenden of
Maine. A great lawyer, an incorrupti-
ble patriot, a man of almost haughty in-
dependence, he left behind, at immea-
surable distance, the rank and file of
politicians. His small, fine, classically
cut head and face, his feeble, dyspep-
tic body, his severe and quiet look, as
of incessant pain overmastered by main
force of will, united to mark a man cast
in no common mould. His ripe judg-
ment and wisdom brought to him in his
later years the title of " the Father of
the Senate." Even his faults, his some-
what irascible temper, his cool scorn of
the weaklings and the fanatics of his
party, the extreme literalness and almost
narrowness of his unpoetic mind, and his
habitual conservatism, which led him to
cling to things established, even some-
times to established abuses, are rather
remembered as salient traits of charac-
ter than cited to his disparagement. He
despised demagogues, and had a lifelong
contempt for time-servers, sycophants,
and bores.

When Fessenden first came to Wash-
ington, at the age of thirty-five, in the
days of the great Whig victory of 1840,
he was a young and ardent Whig, yet
full of that even judgment and grasp of

practical affairs which always rendered
him an invaluable aid in the business of
Congress. His first notable speech was
on a proposed reduction of the army ;
and it is significant that he began by op-
posing his party, whose watchword of
" retrenchment and reform " was to be
carried out by cutting down the military
force to a point which he deemed nig-
gardly and insufficient. The new mem-
ber was heard with wonder and some
impatience, but his intellectual force was
such as to give to his array of facts a
weight which few new members ever
command. Then he " wore the rose of
youth upon him," and his straight, lithe
figure, jet-black hair, piercing eye, and
finely cut face, out of which intellect
looked, made him one of the most ad-
mired men in the House. The Portland
district, always until then Democratic,
wished to send him back to Congress,
but he obstinately declined ; for he had
no patrimony, and felt obliged to culti-
vate his profession to enable him to edu-
cate his family, an end which was in-
compatible with serving in Congress.
He toiled at the bar during the next ten
years with rare zeal and success.

Elected to the Senate early in 1854,
he bore a conspicuous part in the whole
anti-slavery struggle, which began with
the " compromise " measures of 1850,
followed by the Kansas-Nebraska bill of
Douglas, and ended with the extinction of
slavery and the elevation of the negro to
citizenship. He has often been criticised,
and even fiercely denounced, as unduly
conservative in the anti-slavery struggle.
The charge is not sustained by a perusal
of his speeches and his record. No more
signal proof of his fidelity to freedom
need be adduced than the fact that, after
President Andrew Johnson had broken
wholly with the party which brought him
into power, Fessenden was chosen by his
colleagues chairman of the important
joint committee of both Houses on Re-
construction. As such, he wrote that able
Report which, for clearness, terseness,

670

Washington Reminiscences.

and vigorous treatment of the great ques-
tions then still at issue, stands unsur-
passed in the political literature of the
time.

Fessenden's manner and delivery as a
speaker were almost unique in the Sen-
ate, where set speeches read from manu-
script have been so common. He rarely
used so much as a note of what he was
to say, stood with easy grace in the aisle
next to his seat, and talked in a quiet,
almost conversational tone, but with clear,
distinct utterance, and a precision of
statement which marked his intellectual
acuteness. He spoke often, but never
at much length. Charles Sumner said
of him that " nobody could match him .
in immediate and incisive reply."

His first speech in the Senate, March 3,
1854, on that revolutionary measure the
Kansas-Nebraska bill, at once raised him
to a front rank among the senatorial op-
ponents of slavery extension. The little
band of Senators who confronted the
aggressive forces of the South, joined to
the well-nigh compact democracy of the
North, included Seward, Sumner, Chase,
Wade, Everett, Hamlin, Fish, and Foot.
Fessenden, as yet but little known on the
stage of national affairs, made his maiden
speech just before midnight, when the
debate was about to be closed by Senator
Douglas in behalf of the bill. With cool
force of logic, he exposed the claim that
the territories ought to be opened to sla-
very, notwithstanding their dedication to
freedom by the compromise of 1820, and
showed how the South had since secured
the admission of four new slave states,
while only the same number of free
states had been admitted. Then he took
up the compromise measures of 1850
(which he had vigorously opposed when
the Whig National Convention of 1852
had indorsed them), and proceeded : —
" It has been claimed for these com-
promise measures of 1850 that they sat-
isfied all parties, and restored peace to a
distracted country. All differences had
been settled. We were a happy people.

Suddenly, in the midst of this concord,
comes a proposition to take from the
free states just that which had been
given for all these advantages which had
accrued to the South, — to take the little
that was allowed to the free states by
the compromise of 1820. ... If this is
designed as a measure of peace, let me
tell you that anything but peace you
will have. If this restriction is repealed,
as to that territory, it is not yet in the
Union, and it never will come into the
Union except with exclusion of slavery."

This speech was heard by many South-
erners, one of whom said to another as
it proceeded, " What sort of a new Sena-
tor is this ? All his guns are double-
shotted."

As chairman of the Senate committee
on finance, which at that day had entire
charge of all appropriations as well as
of revenue measures, Mr. Fessenden
stood virtually as the leader of the Sen-
ate, at the head of its most important
committee. In this responsible position
his sagacity and ability were so fully
demonstrated that when Mr. Chase re-
signed the office of Secretary of the Trea-
sury, in June, 1864, President Lincoln
chose Mr. Fessenden as his successor.
Scruples against accepting so onerous
an office in his rather precarious state of
health led him to decline, for he greatly
preferred the Senate. But his reluc-
tance was overborne by Mr. Lincoln's
good-humored pertinacity, and by the
urgent expi'essions which came from all
parts of the country, pressing him as the
one fit man for the place.

Congress was about to adjourn, after
a long and anxious and laborious session,
in which he had borne the conspicuous
and responsible part of leader in the Sen-
ate, where he had been charged with all
revenue measures and the financial policy
of the government. He was weary with
daily and nightly labor, and had looked
forward longingly to the accustomed rest
of the summer vacation. He went to
the White House one morning (it was

Washington Reminiscences.

671

five days before the adjournment) to
confer with Mr. Lincoln as to the mea-
sures of legislation then in their final
stages, and to consult as to a proper can-
didate to be proposed for the Treasury
Department. It was all essential to se-
cure some one who would command pub-
lic confidence at such a critical juncture.
Mr. Lincoln put his hand upon Fessen-
den's shoulder and declared that he
himself was that man. Surprised and
almost confounded, the Senator told the
President that he could not accept ; that
he was nearly worn out with the respon-
sibilities and toils of the protracted ses-
sion ; and that for him to assume the
onerous duties of the Treasury in the
burning heat of Washington, at such a
moment, would be dangerous, if not sui-
cidal. He could not, would not accept
the office, for, aside from his frail health,
he did not feel himself qualified for it.
Mr. Lincoln replied with feeling and
energy in a strong appeal to Fessen-
den's patriotic impulses, with assurances
that he had the confidence of the finan-
cial interests of the country, and that he
should have the way smoothed by the
aid of able lieutenants ; and closed by
telling him that the nomination had al-
ready been sent to the Senate. In fact,
Fessenden's appointment had that day
been unanimously confirmed.

He at once resolved to sink personal
considerations, and to enter upon the
office, with the proviso that he should be
at liberty to withdraw whenever a fit
successor should be found to relieve
him. He himself said of it, " I took
the office reluctantly and as a matter of
duty, and vacated it just as soon as I
could."

Secretary Chase, after the great vic-
tories which had attended the arms of
the Union in preceding years, and aided
by the eager and overwhelming patriot-
ism of the country, had made a signal
reputation by the marked success of the
large popular loans negotiated during
his administration. The price of gold —

that infallible barometer of public con-
fidence — had fallen, while the national
revenues had steadily improved. But
there came a time when the tide changed.
In May and June, 1864, the slow pro-
gress of Grant's army toward Richmond,
the ineffective battles of the Wilderness,
and the losses at Cold Harbor, with the
delay of Sherman's army in the move-
ment upon Atlanta, had chilled the en-
thusiasm of the people, and had shaken
their confidence in the early termination
of the war. The result was seen in the
financial situation quite as conspicuous-
ly as in the military. The government
bonds, issued in ever increasing volume,
went heavily. The willingness to invest
slowly gave place to a feeling of distrust,
A renewed attempt by Secretary Chase
to secure a loan met with no response.
Gold, which had hovered between 150
and 180, went up to 250 in June, 1864,
and then to 285, the highest point reached
during the entire period of the war. It
was at this gloomy crisis, with the legal-
tender money of the government worth
barely thirty-five cents on the dollar,
with a new loan of fifty millions unsal-
able, with an eminent Secretary of the
Treasury just resigning his office, with
revenues totally inadequate to daily ex-
penditures, with a great army in the
field no longer scoring victories, and
with doubt and distrust on every side,
that Fessenden was called to take charge
of the Treasury Department.

In this new and untried position Fes-
senden exhibited the same qualities of
energy, foresight, and grasp of affairs
which had marked his career in the Sen-
ate. As a notable evidence of the ap-
preciation in which his distinguished
character and services were held in the
public mind, the price of gold, which had
stood at 280, fell to 225 on the day that
his acceptance of the Treasury appoint-
ment was announced. The press of the
country joined its voice to that of capi-
talists and bankers in declaring that a
great crisis had been averted.

072

Washington Reminiscences.

But the situation was very far from re-
assuring. The expenditures were stead-
ily in excess of the estimates which had
been made for the year. Requisitions
upon the Treasury, suspended because
there was a lack of funds to meet them,
had reached almost a hundred million
dollars. The enormous scale upon which
the armies of the Union were pushing
the war in the South, under the lead of
Grant and Sherman, had been unexam-
pled in the history of modern warfare.
The daily expenditure exceeded two mil-
lion dollars, and sometimes reached two
and a half millions. The depreciated
greenback was a perpetual object-lesson
and menace to the credit of the govern-
ment.

Secretary Fesseuden confronted this
difficult situation with a courage which
only an uncommonly strong man could
have shown. He announced that no
more paper money would be issued ;
but, with characteristic prudence, he did
not put forth any declaration of an in-
flexible financial policy. He carefully
watched developments, assuring the pub-
lic creditors that temporary obligations
would be met as soon as possible, that
no new forms of indebtedness would be
created, and that the discretionary power
vested in him by law would be exerted
to reduce the interest on the public debt.
He asked the exhausted banks of New
York for a loan of fifty millions ; but
they were unable to respond at that time,
as they had strained their resources to
take up former issues of bonds. Then
he offered all the six per cent gold bonds
yet unsold, proposing to take compound-
interest notes in exchange at par ; and,
though opposed by the banks, this policy
was vindicated by almost doubling the
subscriptions. The demands for army
needs still increasing, an authorized loan
at seven and three tenths per cent inter-
est was offered, but met with only mod-
erate success. Then, by Secretary Fes-
senden's direction, the Treasury issued
small denominations of the 7-30 bonds

to the army paymasters, to be tendered
to such officers and soldiers as chose to
receive them in part payment of their
overdue salaries. This met with much
favor, and multitudes of brave and pa-
triotic soldiers thus loaned their pay to
the government, while fighting to pre-
serve its integrity. Still there was a
constantly yawning deficit between re-
ceipts and expenditures. Criticism of
the Treasury policy was rife, and dicta-
torial leaders in the press and menacing
letters from banking interests poured in
on the new Secretary. -He calmly went
on his course, disregarding the claim for
" more money ; " well knowing that it was
not more, but better money that was need-
ed. Yet the subscriptions to the 7—30
loan had stopped ; the demand certificates
of indebtedness had mounted to over
two hundred and forty millions ; ninety-
two cents was their current value in the
market. Mr. Fessenden strove to arrest
this rapid depreciation, and suspended
further issues of these certificates. He
also withdrew the six per cent bonds, and
appealed once more to the banks for a
7-30 loan. But when he found that their
resources were exhausted, he resolved to
appeal to the people, and to popularize
the loan by the aid of the same Philadel-
phia firm of bankers who in 1863 had suc-
ceeded in placing five hundred millions
of six per cents at par. This plan met
with great success ; in the judgment of
many, it saved the Treasury from bank-
ruptcy. Nearly two hundred million
dollars were secured. At the same time
military victories revived drooping hopes,
and fresh streams of money began to flow
in through the operation of the amended
tax-laws. Mr. Fessenden had a leading
share in framing these, and their success-
ful operation gratified him exceedingly.
He had still much labor to perform,
however, before he could leave the Trea-
sury. The war was yet in progress, and
revenues for the ensuing year must be
provided upon a scale at least as exten-
sive as for the current one. He drew up

Washington Reminiscences.

673

a financial measure, which became a law
March 3, 1865, providing for deficiencies
by new authority for loans, and also em-
powering the Secretary to fund all forms
of non-interest-bearing debt into a new
form of bond : first into a five per cent
issue, to run ten to forty years, at the
option of the government ; and then into
four and four and a half per cents, after
ten years from date of the first issue.

For this far-sighted and comprehensive
policy of reducing debt, and thus at once
cutting down expenses and strengthen-
ing incalculably the credit of the govern-
ment, the country is largely indebted to
Mr. Fessenden's sagacity. Having now
arrived at a point where he could safely
and honorably lay down the burdens of
his exacting administrative office, and
having been reflected by the. legislature
of Maine to a third full term in the Sen-
ate from the 4th of March, 1865, he
again took his seat in that body. He
resumed, by unanimous choice of his
Republican colleagues, his post as chair-
man of the committee on finance.

Here the great and difficult problems
involved in the reconstruction of civil
government in the Southern states were
added to the questions of financial pol-
icy which had formed so large a share
of his senatorial and administrative re-
sponsibility. He was made chairman
not only of the finance committee, but
also of the important joint committee of
both Houses of Congress on Reconstruc-
tion. The task of that committee of fif-
teen was one of almost unprecedented
difficulty. It had to make thorough in-
quiry into the condition of all the lately
seceded states ; to determine their actual
status under the Constitution and public
law ; to define the powers of Congress
over them as against their own autonomy ;
and to frame such legislation as would
insure peace, safety, and the permanent
preservation of the Union. The situa-
tion was entirely anomalous, and taxed
to the utmost the knowledge, the politi-
cal skill, and the patriotism of those who

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 487. 43

confronted it. Mr. Fessenden's Report,
with accompanying bills, met with the
acceptance of both Houses of Congress,
and the measures of reconstruction pro-
posed, which were the result of con-
cessions of many conflicting opinions,
became laws, including the recommen-
dation to the states of a fourteenth con-
stitutional amendment, fixing the basis of
representation in Congress, and reducing
it in the states in proportion to the exclu-
sion by them from the elective franchise
of any portion of their population. It
also excluded from Congress and from
federal office all the active participants
in the rebellion, until relieved from dis-
ability by act of Congress ; declared the
sacredness of the public debt, and pro-
hibited the recognition of any debts or
claims incurred in aid of the insurrec-
tion or for the emancipation of slaves.
This far-reaching amendment was rati-
fied by thirty-three states, and became a
part of the Constitution. '

Mr. Fessenden had a strong man's
indifference, which often amounted to
contempt, for that public opinion which
is manufactured by newspapers. The
world's notion of a particular course of
conduct, the party's notion of political
necessity or expediency, had little impor-
tance in his eyes, when his own mind led
him to a different conclusion.

As early as 1854, when catechised in
the Senate upon the doctrine of instruc-
tions, he declared that a legislature had
no right to instruct a Senator how he
should vote. To him the post of Sena-
tor of the United States was a great trust,
to be guarded jealously against all dicta-
tion or interference. When he came to
pronounce his verdict in the impeach-
ment trial of President Andrew Johnson,
it was curious to see how like a disinter-
ested critic or spectator he spoke. He
appeared completely to have dismissed
all political feeling, and to have judged
the case solely with regard to the law and
the evidence.

The almost unexampled political ex-

674

Washington Reminiscences.

citement of that time can be but imper-
fectly apprehended by those who were
neither participants nor witnesses of its
scenes. With an overwhelming majori-
ty in both Houses opposed to the Presi-
dent, with the public in the North against
him in immense and almost vindictive
preponderance, with his own obstinate,
imprudent, and exasperating utterances
against Congress itself, it required an in-
dependence of party spirit very rare in
the members of representative bodies, to
rise above the clamor of the time, and
to pronounce a calm, judicial judgment.
This, Fessenden, a Republican of the
Republicans, did ; and in it he was joined
by only seven out of forty-three of his
colleagues belonging to that party. Af-
ter a clear and searching review of the
evidence, which he found insufficient to
justify the removal of the President from
office, he said : —

" To the suggestion that popular opin-
ion demands the conviction of the Pre-
sident on these charges, I reply that he
is not now on trial before the people,
but before the Senate. They have not
taken an oath 'to do impartial justice,
according to the Constitution and the
laws.' I have taken that oath. I can-
not render judgment upon their convic-
tions. The consequences which may f ok
low either from conviction or acquittal
are not for me to consider. . . . And I
should consider myself undeserving the
confidence of that just and intelligent
people who imposed upon me this great
responsibility, and unworthy a place
among honorable men, if, for any fear
of public reprobation, I should disregard
the conviction of my judgment and my
conscience."

The acquittal of President Johnson,
by failure of only one vote to make a
two-thirds majority, was the signal for
opening upon Mr. Fessenden the bat-
teries of denunciation and abuse. He
was threatened with political destruc-
tion, with being read out of the Repub-
lican party ; but he defended his vote

with signal ability, and ultimately gained
more respect than opprobrium by the
act. In the National Republican Con-
vention which met two months later
and nominated General Grant for the
presidency, hot-headed resolutions de-
nouncing Republican Senators who had
voted against impeachment were laid
upon the table. And the sober second
thought of the public, as in the simi-
lar case of the condemnation of Charles
Sumner by the Massachusetts legislature
for his resolutions against perpetuating
the names of victories over fellow citi-
zens in the civil war, may be said to
have reversed the judgment first hastily
rendered under stress of popular excite-
ment.

Mr. Fessenden was always a compre-
hensive reader. In the severely labo-
rious later years of his life novels and
whist were his favorite recreations of an
evening. The stores of biography and
of history in the Congressional Library
were frequently drawn upon by him.
The works of Swift, Dryden, Pope, and
De Quincey were among his familiar
readings, and he keenly appreciated the
masterly History of Gibbon. Thackeray
and Balzac, Dumas and Edgar Poe, he
read with zest. Goethe also he read
much, and among American books he
had a special admiration for the histori-
cal works of Motley.

Senator Fessenden was for nearly ten
years a member of the Committee on
the Library of Congress, and while it
occupied the long, narrow room on the
west front of the Capitol it was his de-
light to browse at will among its stores.
When the question of purchasing for the
library of the United States the great
historical collection of books, pamphlets,
periodicals, and manuscripts of Peter
Force came up, in 1866, he was an ear-
nest advocate of its acquisition, arid his
influence in the library committee and
in Congress was a potential factor in its
favor. For some years during his sena-
torial term he was a regent of the Smith-

Washington Reminiscences.

675

sonian Institution, an honor highly ap-
preciated, and in his case well deserved.
Mr. Fessenden was one of the victims
of the " National Hotel disease," which
in 1857, by its fatal results to some
prominent men in Washington, caused
such a horror throughout the country,
and the effect of it probably remained
in his system to the last and embittered
his final hours. This once inexplicable
mystery is now supposed to be clearly
traced to arsenic. About eighty dead
rats were found in a water-tank in a cer-
tain part of the hotel, most of which had
been poisoned. Mr. Fessenden's life,
like those of some other public men who
had their place of sojourn in that hostel-
ry, was doubtless shortened by that most
unfortunate calamity. He died at Port-
land, September 8, 1869, at the age of
sixty-three.

PETER FORCE.

The life of such a man as Peter
Force, who died in Washington in 1868,
at the ripe old age of seventy-seven years,
was worth more to American letters and
to human history than the lives of a
score of the military generals and other
notables whose names are so generally
blazoned abroad. He lived for more than
half a century in Washington, having
gone thither in 1815 from New York.
He found the capital a straggling village
of wood, and saw it become a stately city
of brick and marble. He filled many pub-
lic and responsible positions, and he was
for nine years editor and proprietor of
a daily journal which enjoyed the con-
fidence of Henry Clay and John Quincy
Adams ; but it is not as mayor of Wash-
ington nor as an editor that he will be
best remembered. His characteristic
merit, which distinguishes him from the
Ritchies, the Duff Greens, and the F. P.
Blairs, who also bore an active part in
political journalism at the national cap-
ital, is that he was more than a journal-
ist, — he was an historian.

Born near Passaic Falls, N. J., on

November 26, 1790 (his father, William
Force, being a veteran of the Revolu-
tionary War), Peter Force was by line-
age, as well as by native tastes and tal-
ent, a worthy exponent of that branch
of American history to which he dedi-
cated so many years. Very early in
life he evinced a zealous interest in his-
torical investigations, and four years af-
ter coming to Washington he originated
and published an annual of history, with
statistical and official information of a
varied character. The National Calen-
dar and Annals of the United States,
as he called it, antedated by ten years
the publication of the old American Al-
manac, and was continuously published
from 1820 to 1836, except the years
1825, 1826, and 1827. In 1823 he es-
tablished a newspaper, the National
Journal, which was continued until 1831.
This drew to its columns some noted
contributors, among them John Quincy
Adams. The high-minded conduct of
this paper in doing justice to the oppo-
nents of the administration once led to
a committee of the ruling party waiting
upon Mr. Force, and asking him to per-
mit them to edit or to revise the political
columns, with a view to more thorough
partisan effect. He drew himself up to
his full height (he was six feet tall), and,
with that dignity of bearing which sat
so naturally upon him, said, " I did not
suppose that any gentleman would make
such a proposition to me."

Among Mr. Force's publications of
very great value to the students of Ameri-
can history were his series, in four vol-
umes, octavo, of Historical Tracts. These
were careful reprints of the rarest early
pamphlets concerning America, long out
of print, some of which could not be pur-
chased, and others of which he could not
afford to own; but he borrowed them
from libraries for the purpose of repro-
ducing them. " Whenever," said he, " I
found a little more money in my purse
than I absolutely needed, I printed a
volume of Tracts." Many of the raris-

676

Washington Reminiscences.

simi of early American history or ex-
ploration thus owe to Peter Force their
sole chance of preservation.

The series of American Archives, the
great monumental work of his life, was
published at intervals from 1837 to
1853. It embraces the period of Amer-
ican colonial history from March, 1774,
to December, 1776, in nine stately folio
volumes, printed in double columns, and
most thoroughly indexed. These ar-
chives constitute a thesaurus of original
information about the first two momen-
tous years of the Revolutionary strug-
gle, and especially concerning the De-
claration of Independence and the early
revolutionaiy action of the colonial as-
semblies, North and South, — of inesti-
mable value. To this work, the bold con-
ception of his own mind, to contain no-
thing less than the original fountains of
American history, reproduced in syste-
matic chronological order, he dedicated
his long and useful life. For it he as-
sembled, with keen, discriminating judg-
ment and unwearied toil, that great col-
lection of historical material, which now
forms an invaluable part of the Con-
gressional Library.

Nor was his literary and historical
zeal by any means confined to the early
history of America. He dignified and
adorned his profession of printer by
original authorship in many fields. He
was profoundly interested in the an-
nals of the art of printing, and the con-
troversies over its true inventor. He
gathered, by persistent search, a small
library of incunabula, or books printed
in the infancy of the art, representing
every year from 1467 (his earliest black-
letter imprint) up to 1500 and beyond.
He studied the subject of arctic explo-
ration, collecting all books published in
that field, and himself writing upon it.
He was the first to discover and publish,
in the columns of the National Intelli-
gencer, the true history of the Meck-
lenburg Declaration of Independence of
May, 1775 ; proving by contemporane-

ous newspapers he had acquired that the
true Resolutions were of date May 31,
and that the so-called Mecklenburg De-
claration of May 20, 1775, was spurious.

The American Archives imposed upon
Mr. Force a devoted, patient, assidu-
ous life-labor, in one spot, surrounded
by the continually growing collection of
books, pamphlets, newspapers, manu-
scripts, maps, and engravings, which con-
tributed to throw light upon some pe-
riod of his inquiry. To say that his
library alone filled his commodious house
almost to overflowing ; that it embraced,
besides the largest assemblage of books
accumulated up to that time by a pri-
vate citizen in this country, thirty thou-
sand pamphlets and eight hundred vol-
umes of newspapers ; that it was rich in
Revolutionary autographs, military pa-
pers, maps, portraits, and engravings;
and that it embraced between forty and
fifty thousand titles, — all this is to con-
vey but a mechanical idea of the life-
long and unintermitted labor which Mr.
Force expended upon his favorite subject.
He began to collect American books long
before the birth of the extensive and
mostly undiscriminating mania of book-
collecting which of late years has be-
come the rage, and he continued the un-
ceasing pursuit until the very week be-
fore he was laid in his grave. He carried
off prizes at book - auctions which no
competitor had the nerve or the know-
ledge to dispute with him. He ran-
sacked the bookshops of the United
States, from Boston to Charleston, for
rare volumes.

He had agents to pick up " unconsid-
ered trifles " out of the garrets of New
England housewives, and he read eager-
ly all the multifarious catalogues which
swarmed in upon him, of books on sale
in London and on the Continent. On
one occasion he was a bidder against the
United States for a large and valuable
collection of bound pamphlets, the pro-
perty of an early collector, which were
brought to the hammer in Philadelphia.

Washington Reminiscences.

677

The Library of Congress had sent on a
bid — a limited one — for the coveted
volumes ; but Mr. Force's order to his
agent was peremptory, — " Buy me those
pamphlets in an unbroken lot." They
were bought. His purchases were often
made at prices which would now seem
fabulously cheap, yet he never boggled
at a high price when once he was satis-
fied that he had an opportunity to pro-
cure a rare or unique volume. Thus, he
used to tell how he had endeavored to
buy two thin foolscap volumes contain-
ing Major-General Greene's manuscript
letters and dispatches during the South-
ern Revolutionary campaign of 1781-82.
The price demanded was two hundred
dollars. Mr. Force offered one hundred
and fifty dollars, which was refused.
He then offered fifty dollars for the
privilege of making a copy ; this was
also declined. Seeing that he could not
otherwise possess himself of them, he
wisely paid the two hundred dollars, and
marched off with the precious volumes
under his arm.

He carried away from an antiquari-
an bookseller in Boston the only file of
Massachusetts Revolutionary newspapers
which had been offered for sale in a
quarter of a century, and when good-
natnredly reproached by some Yankee
visitors for thus stripping New England,
he conclusively replied, " Why did n't
you buy them yourselves, then ? " To
the last he was untiring in his efforts to
secure complete and unbroken files of
all the Washington newspapers. These
were carefully laid in piles day by day,
after such perusal as he chose to give
them, and the mass of journals thus ac-
cumulated, for thirty years or upwards,
occupied nearly all the large basement
of his house. His file of the printed
Army Orders issued by the War De-
partment was a marvel of completeness,
and it was secured only by the same un-
tiring vigilance which he applied to all
matters connected with the increase of
his library. With the weight of seventy-

five winters on his shoulders, he would
drag himself up to the War Department
regularly, to claim from some officer who
knew him and his passion the current ad-
ditions to the printed series promulgated
in all branches of the military service
during the civil war. He thus obtained
for his private collection — now become
the historic heirloom of the American
people — articles which librarians and
other functionaries, trusting to official
channels of communication alone, have
sought in vain to gather.

It was my good fortune, in the closing
years of his life, to see him daily, and
in his company to go through all the
more precious stores of his vast collec-
tion. At eight o'clock each morning I
found him already immersed in work.
No luxurious library furnishings, no
glazed bookcases of walnut or mahog-
any, no easy-chairs inviting to soft re-
pose or slumber, were there, but only
plain rough pine shelves and pine ta-
bles, heaped and piled with books, pam-
phlets, and journals. Among them moved
familiarly two or more cats and a favor-
ite dog ; for the lonely scholar was fond
of pets, as he was of children. He had
near by bits of bread or broken meat or
a saucer of milk, to feed his favorites in
the intervals of his work.

As we went together through the vari-
ous treasures of the collection, to enable
me to make the needful notes for my
report to Congress, he had frequent an-
ecdotes to tell, — how he had picked up
many a rare volume or tract on neglect-
ed and dust-laden shelves or from street
bookstalls, how he had competed at auc-
tion for a coveted volume and borne it
away in triumph, how he had by mere
accident completed an imperfect copy of
Stith's History of Virginia by finding in
a heap of printed rubbish a missing sig-
nature, and how precious old pamphlets
and early newspapers had been fished
by him out of chests and barrels in the
garrets of Virginia or Maryland.

In the rear of his workroom was a

678

Washington Reminiscences.

little garden, — now all built over by the
brick edifice erected for the Washington
Post, — in which he had planted trees,
then grown to stately size, interspersed
with grass and rose-bushes and box and
tangled shrubbery. This green retreat,
or thicket, he called his " wilderness "
(and it had actually the wildness of na-
ture, though begirt with busy streets),
and here he walked when resting from
his sedentary work.

His domestic life was singularly fortu-
nate. He brought up and educated a
family of seven well-gifted children, some
of whom inherited the paternal zeal for
historical investigation, and produced
writings of recognized value.

The one supreme object which over-
shadowed allj other objects with Peter
Force was to amass the materials out of
which a complete documentary history
of the United States could be compiled.
His work as an historiographer is known
to comparatively few, since the great
bulk and cost of the published volumes
of his American Archives confine them
chiefly to the large libraries of .the coun-
try. The plan of the work comprised, in
the language of its prospectus, "a collec-
tion of authentic records, state papers,
debates, and letters, and other notices of
public affairs ; the whole forming a doc-
umentary history of the origin and pro-
gress of the North American colonies, of
the causes and accomplishment of the
American Revolution, and of the Con-
stitution and. government of the United
States to the final ratification thereof."

His contract with the Department of
State (executed in pursuance of an act
of Congress) was to embrace about twen-
ty folio volumes. He entered upon the
work with such zeal that the fourth se-
ries, in six volumes, was completed and
published in the seven years from 1837
to 1844. Three more volumes, forming
the commencement of the fifth series,
and bringing the history down to the
close of 1776, were also printed, when
Secretary of State Marcy arbitrarily

stopped the work by withholding his ap-
proval of the contents of the volumes
submitted to him for the continuation.
This was in the year 1853 ; and this
sudden and unlooked-for interruption of
his cherished plans, and demolition of
the fair and perfect historical edifice
which was to be his lifelong labor and
his monument, was a blow from which
he never fully recovered,. It was not
alone that he had entered upon a scale
of expenditure for materials commensu-
rate with the projected extent of the
work; that he had procured, at great
cost, thousands of pages of manuscript,
copied from the original archives of the
various colonies and those of the State
Department; that he had amassed an
enormous library of books and newspa-
pers, which encroached so heavily upon
his means that he was compelled to
mortgage his property to meet his bills ;
but it was the rude interruption of an im-
portant national work by those incompe-
tent to judge of its true merits ; it was
the vexatious and unjust rescinding, by
an officer of the government, of a con-
tract to which Mr. Force had reason to
believe that the faith of the government
was pledged.

He was already past sixty years of age
when this event happened. He never
renewed his labor upon the Archives :
the masses of manuscript remained un-
touched in the very spot where his work
on them had been broken off; and he
could never allude to the subject with-
out some pardonable bitterness of feel-
ing. Friends urged him to appeal to
Congress, to try to prevail with new sec-
retaries of state to renew the work, to
sue for damages, to petition for relief.
Not one of these things would he do.
He had a sensitive pride of character
joined to a true stoic loftiness of mind.
He could suffer, but he could not beg.
He never approached a member of Con-
gress upon the subject, nor asked a fa-
vor where he might justly have claimed
a right. He bore his heavy burdens

Great Explorers of the Southern Heavens,

679

manfully, cheered by no hope of recom-
pense, struggling with debt, yet still la-
boring, day by day, amidst his books, and
hospitably receiving and answering all
persons who called upon him for infor-
mation and historical aid. For this un-
recompensed service, which became a
constantly increasing tax upon his time,
he got only thanks. He never made any
overtures to sell his library to the gov-
ernment, nor did he, until two or three
years before his death, entertain any idea
of parting with it in his lifetime.

Many proposals had been made to him
to buy his collection, either as a whole
or by portions. Finally, in 1866, the
matter was taken up in earnest by the
Librarian of Congress, who shared in
the strongest manner the conviction of
those who knew its value, that it would
be a national misfortune and disgrace if
this great historical library should be
dispersed ; and Mr. Force consented to
part with the entire collection for the
price that had been put upon it by per-
sons who sought to buy it for New York,
namely, one hundred thousand dollars.
The press of the country warmly sec-
onded the effort, and the appropriation
went through Congress without a word
of objection in either House, — a rare
example of wise and liberal legislation
effected on its own merits. Rutherford
B. Hayes, at that time chairman of the
library committee on the part of the

House, took a zealous interest, as did
the entire committee, in the object of se-
curing this invaluable and unique collec-
tion. Many of its volumes are enriched
with the notes of Mr. Force, correcting
errors of date, citing pages of Panzer or
other catalogues of incunabula, or refer-
ring to books or newspapers in which
other sources of information are to be
found.

The transfer of the library to the
Capitol took place in the spring of 1867.
It was watched with careful interest by
its venerable owner, who was left to his
desolated shelves, and often lamented
that he never again felt at home without
his old companions around him. He was
made free of the Library of Congress,
and invited to take a desk there and
continue his studies ; but though he often
came, he could not bring himself to sit
down and work there.

He died January 23, 1868. His chil-
dren erected a marble monument over
his grave, on which is carved, above the
name of Force, as a beautiful and ap-
propriate device, a shelf of books bear-
ing nine volumes inscribed " American
Archives," with a civic crown of laurel.
But his library, and his historical works,
though unfinished, are his fitting monu-
ment, and these will preserve his name
to the future ages of the great republic
as that of a pure and unselfish patriot
and student.

Ainsworth R. Spofford.

GREAT EXPLORERS OF THE SOUTHERN HEAVENS.

THE origin of the constellations is ob-
scure. Some of them have been recog-
nized from time immemorial, but tjiey
were first definitely fixed by Ptolemy
about 140 A. D. As outlined by him

Omar they passed into the knowledge of
the Arabians. This singular people, still
in the state of natural youth, were bare-
ly able to understand and preserve the
treasure of astronomical science that had

they were used by the decadent Greeks fallen into their hands, but could not
and Romans, and with the fall of Al- materially enlarge it. Thus, the constel-
exandria before the victorious arms of lations of Ptolemy, who was probably a

680

Great Explorers of the Southern Heavens.

priest in the temple of Canopus. near Al-
exandria, passed unchanged to the Eu-
ropeans after the crusades, and were
maintained in the subsequent revival of
letters and science.

Europe, however, is further north than
Egypt, and hence fewer of the southern
constellations are visible to the north-
ern nations than were seen by Ptolemy
at Alexandria. Yet, as the latitude of
Ptolemy's station was about thirty-one
degrees, there was a circle of stars round
the south pole of this radius which never
rose above his horizon, and hence for
this hidden region no constellations were
formed by the ancients. Nevertheless,
the constellations extended well south,
and included parts of the brilliant re-
gions of the great ship Argo, the Cen-
taur, the Cross, the Wolf, the Scorpion,
the Altar, the Phoenix, and the river
Eridanus. The present constellations,
however, are not identical with those of
Ptolemy ; they have been considerably
modified and rearranged by several mod-
ern astronomers.

When the early navigators, after the
heroic expeditions of Columbus, began
to pass beyond the equator, they realized
for the first time that the richest and
finest portion of the celestial sphere is
invisible in Europe, and had either never
been seen by the ancients, or seen only
very near the southern horizon, where
the density of the air obscured the real
wonders of the heavens.

Magellan and his sailors recognized
for the first time the great group of
bright stars in the Galaxy near Centau-
rus and in Argo, and the dark holes in
the Milky Way known as the Coal Sacks ;
nor could they fail to be impressed with
those luminous starry patches separated
from the Milky Way, and known as the
two Magellanic Clouds, the most extraor-
dinary objects in the face of the sky.
The reports of these celestial wonders
excited the interest of mankind, and in
due course of events men of science were
found eager to explore the new regions,

and to extend the constellations over the
expanse near the south pole.

Before giving an account of the di-
vision of the heavens into constellations
— a process of apportionment somewhat
analogous to the formation of states from
the national domain, although it was ac-
complished, I believe, with less violence
than has sometimes marked the creation
of new states — let me say a few words
about the precession of the equinoxes,
and the effect of this motion of the poles
among the stars, as respects the constel-
lations visible in a given latitude.

The plane of the equator is inclined to
the ecliptic by an angle of twenty-three
and one half degrees, and as the earth's
figure is oblate, owing to the rotatory
motion it had when in a molten condi-
tion, the attraction of the sun and moon
on the protuberant ring of matter about
the equator tends to bring that plane into
coincidence with the ecliptic ; this slight
turning caused by the sun and moon,
combined with the rapid rotation of the
earth about its axis, produces a shifting
of the intersection of the two planes ;
and this westward motion of the equinox
(as the intersection is called) along the
ecliptic is known as the precession of
the equinoxes. The effect of the pre-
cession is to make a great change in
the apparent places of the fixed stars.
For the pole is slowly revolved through
a circle round the pole of the ecliptic
about forty-seven degrees in diameter ;
and this change in the place of the pole
shifts the apparent place of all the stars
in the heavens. As the pole revolves
on its long journey of twenty-five thou-
sand eight hundred years, it passes suc-
cessively by various stars ; and the decli-
nations of many of the stars may be
changed by forty-seven degrees. Thus,
a s$ar which at the present epoch is
twenty-three and a half degrees south
of the equator may in twelve thousand
nine hundred years be found the same
distance north of the equator of that
epoch. This great change in the decli-

Great Explorers of the Southern Heavens.

681

nations of the heavenly bodies is accom-
panied by a shifting of the orientation
of the constellations with respect to the
temporary position of the pole, though
the situations of the constellations with
respect to one another do not change
from this cause. If Hipparchus or Job
were now to rise from the dead and look
upon the heavens, he would see the con-
stellations related to one another as of
old, but he would find that the pole had
shifted its position among the stars ; and
if an immortal could witness the grand
phenomenon which the precession pro-
duces, in about twelve thousand nine
hundred years he would find the heavens
so altered that the former aspect could
be recognized only by an understanding
of the changes which had intervened.
As Humboldt justly remarks, the beau-
tiful and celebrated constellation of the
Southern Cross, never seen by the pre-
sent inhabitants of Europe, and visible
in the United States only on the south-
ern coast, formerly shone on the shores
of the Baltic, and may again be seen in
that latitude in about eighteen thousand
years. The Cross will then be visible
on the shores of Hudson's Bay, but at
present it is going rapidly southward,
and in -a few thousand years will be in-
visible even at the extreme point of
Florida. In like manner, the brilliant
star Canopus in the constellation Argo,
situated some thirty-seven degrees south
of Sirius, can now be seen in the southern
portion of the United States ; in about
twelve thousand years it will cease to rise
even in Central America. The changes
thus resulting from the precession are
among the grandest phenomena of which
the mind can conceive, but they come
about so slowly that they are hardly
perceptible to an unscientific observer in
an ordinary lifetime. Yet Hipparchus,
who discovered the precession by com-
paring observations made one hundred
and fifty years before Christ with others
made a century before, mentions the fact
traditionally reported by the inhabitants

of Rhodes, that certain stars formerly to
be seen there on the southern horizon had
disappeared. From the same cause, if
Ptolemy were to look again upon the
heavens at Alexandria, he would be un-
able to find Alpha and Beta Centauri,
which he easily saw and catalogued in
the time of Hadrian ; at present these
magnificent stars are just visible at the
pyramids near Cairo, and in a few thou-
sand years they will be seen by dwellers
on the Nile only in Upper Egypt.

While Hipparchus discovered the fact
of the precession of the equinoxes, the
cause of this grand phenomenon was un-
explained for over eighteen centuries,
till Newton showed that it arose from
the attraction of the sun and moon upon
the protuberant matter about the earth's
equator.

After the general aspects of the south-
ern skies were made known by the early
navigators, the first to make a more sci-
entific exploration of that region were
the French Jesuit Fathers, men like Ri-
chaud and Feuille'e, who were actuated
by a religious zeal which overcame • all
difficulties and endured the hardships in-
cident to adventures among the barbari-
ans of the new hemisphere. But though
the French Jesuits made known a num-
ber of striking individual objects, as for
example the double star Alpha Centau-
ri, they were not able to make good tele-
scopic exploration of the heavens, or
even a good catalogue of the stars visi-
ble to the naked eye. When instruments
of precision had been much improved
by Graham, and chronometers had been
brought to a high state of perfection by
Harrison, it was possible to make an ac-
curate catalogue of the principal fixed
stars. Accordingly, in 1676 the cele-
brated Dr. Edmund Halley, then a youth
of twenty years, landed at St. Helena for
the purpose of cataloguing the conspic-
uous stars of the southern hemisphere.
The station chosen for the observations
was sufficiently far south, and had the
great advantage at that time of being ac-

682

Great Explorers of the Southern Heavens.

cessible to merchant vessels trading with
India ; but it proved to be in a cloudy
region, and was otherwise unsuitable for
the prosecution of astronomical research ;
yet Halley's perseverance enabled him
to fix with reasonable accuracy the places
of 360 stars, and the labor was so im-
portant from every point of view that
it gave him the title of the Southern
Tycho. His expedition is also forever
memorable for the observation of the re-
tardation of the pendulum on approach-
ing the equator, — a phenomenon prov-
ing that gravity is greater near the poles,
and of the highest consequence for the
establishment of the theory of universal
gravitation, in which he was afterward
to play so great a part as the friend and
benefactor of Newton. Yet valuable
as was Halley's work on the southern
stars, and fruitful as were his numerous
and profound astronomical researches, he
had the misfortune to place among his
new southern constellations one in mem-
ory of the Royal Oak ; and as this per-
sonal allusion to his patron and friend,
King James II., was not acceptable to
astronomers of other nationalities, this
apportionment of the sky was frustrated
by his successors.

Some earlier astronomers of Holland
and Spain had vaguely outlined certain
southern constellations, and Bayer him-
self had given some stars in these regions
when he published his maps of the north-
ern heavens, and introduced the Greek
letters for designating the stars in a
given constellation according to bright-
ness. For example, the Cross, whose
stars had been observed by Ptolemy at
Alexandria, and mentioned in 1515 by
Andrea Corsali, and in 1520 by Piga-
fetta, who had accompanied Magellan
and Del Cano in their circumnavigation
of the globe, was depicted by Bayer. In
like manner, Monoceros was given by
Bartsch in a planisphere published in
1624, four years after the landing of the
Mayflower, while the Dove of Noah had
been introduced some years earlier by

the Dutch geographer Petrus Plancius.
These, with the Sextant and the Shield
of Sobieski, introduced by Hevelius,
were the only constellations, beside those
given by Ptolemy, which were generally
adopted by astronomers at the time of
Lacaille's memorable expedition to the
Cape of Good Hope in 1750.

Lacaille has been justly called the
true Columbus of the southern skies.
Born near Rheims in 1713, and left de-
stitute at an early age, he was educated
at the expense of the Duke of Bourbon.
Having acquired proficiency in theolo-
gy, like Laplace he abandoned that pro-
fession for the study of science, and by
the favor of Cassini became one of the
surveyors of the coast from Nantes to
Bayonne, and in 1739 took part in the
remeasurement of the French arc of the
meridian. The perfection with which
this work was done secured him admis-
sion to the Academy of Sciences, and a
professorship at the College Mazarin,
where he worked energetically in a small
observatory fitted up for determining
the places of the fixed stars. While
occupied with this work he became im-
pressed with the need of good observa-
tions of the stars of the southern hemi-
sphere. Accordingly, he proposed an
expedition to the Cape of Good Hope,
which was officially sanctioned, and car-
ried out with marvelous rapidity and
success. Landing in April, 1751, at the
Cape, which was then a mere signal sta-
tion for Indian vessels, he secured a lo-
cation in the wild country near the great
Table Mountain, and in fourteen months
had observed the positions of nearly ten
thousand stars with a degree of preci-
sion never before attempted in that re-
gion of the heavens. The great cata-
logue which he formed from these ob-
servations was published in 1763, and
reprinted in 1847 by the British Associ-
ation for the Advancement of Science,
and until within the last twenty years
was the chief source of our knowledge
of the southern hemisphere.

Great Explorers of the Southern Heavens.

683

As we have seen, there were few con-
stellations well defined at that time, and
Lacaille had the pleasant but perplex-
ing problem of apportioning the heavens
for the guidance of future ages ; and
well did he perform this delicate and
difficult task. A French savant of high
order, in full sympathy with the schol-
arly ideals then dominating the French
capital, he considered that nothing could
be more appropriately commemorated in
the skies than the principal implements of
the sciences and the fine arts. Accord-
ingly, after revising as best he could the
boundaries and details of the constella-
tions used by Ptolemy sixteen centuries
before, and those added more recently
by modern authors, he assigned to the
remaining stellar regions the names of
familiar objects, as, for instance, the Al-
tar, the Clock, the Fly, the Crane, the
Net, the Cross, the Rule.

A map of the southern heavens pre-
sents a fine, picturesque representation
of the interests, beliefs, and achievements
of mankind. The mixture of animals
and birds, real and imaginary, with im-
plements of the fine arts and physical
apparatus has but little scientific founda-
tion ; yet it has prevailed in the north-
ern skies from the earliest times, and it
was felt that approximate homogeneity
in the constellations spread over the
celestial sphere was a desideratum, and
that a sudden break for a new system
in the regions unknown to the ancients
would be incongruous, if not inelegant.
Moreover, as the old names of the north-
ern constellations were scattered through-
out all literature, and rendered sacred
by history and poetic association, there
was no possibility of re-forming, except
in minor details, the spaces assigned
to various objects in the northern hemi-
sphere. Under these circumstances, the
picturesque system, representing mytho-
logy, history, tradition, and the arts and
sciences, was extended and completed,
so that the constellations are more or less
homogeneous from pole to pole. In the

case of the great ship Argo, which in-
cludes the most brilliant large region on
the face of the celestial sphere, it was
found that the constellation was too large
for the convenience of astronomers ; and
hence Lacaille introduced the subdivi-
sions of the Mast, the Sails, the Poop,
and the Keel. With the exception of
the Mast this apportionment has been re-
tained, and each of the new constella-
tions is in reality large and brilliant, and
full of objects of high interest.

After Lacaille had returned to France
the fame of his illustrious services to
science rendered him an object of pub-
lic attention, which caused a true philo-
sopher of his modesty some uneasiness
and embarrassment, and with a reticence
so characteristic of high genius, and yet
so seldom observed in the bearing of
the noisy and the pushing, he retired
to the seclusion of the College Maza-
rin, and continued his unremitting la-
bors. Unfortunately his powers were
overtaxed, and in 1762 his career came
to a premature close, at the early age
of forty-nine years. It was said of him
by Lalande that in a short life he had
made more observations and calculations
than all other astronomers of his time
put together, and this eulogy is amply
justified by the judgment of posterity.

If the honor for having made the first
great catalogue of the southern stars
must go to France, we must concede to
England the credit for a continuation of
this glorious work. The provinces of
the British Empire lying in the southern
hemisphere offered ample opportunity
for studying that region of the heavens,
and in 1822 Sir Thomas Brisbane, a
wealthy and illustrious nobleman who
lived in Paramatta, New South Wales,
founded an observatory for determin-
ing the places of the southern stars.
Several professional observers were em-
ployed, and their activity was very great
for a number of years ; from 1822 to
1826 were accumulated the observations
which served as the basis of the famous

684

Great Explorers of the Southern Heavens.

Brisbane catalogue, reduced by Rich-
ardson, and published in London in
1835. This grand work contained the
places of 7385 stars ; and although it did
not see the light for nearly ten years
after the observations were concluded,
it had in the meantime left its impress
on the astronomy of future ages. For
at the time of Sir John Herschel's ex-
pedition to the Cape of Good Hope La-
caille's results were not reduced in a
manner adapted to his needs, and hence
there was no large published work which
could serve as a convenient catalogue of
the stars of that region ; he had accord-
ingly applied to Brisbane for a working
list of the places of the principal fixed
stars in the constellations around the
south pole. The star places given by
Herschel in the Results of Astronomical
Observations at the Cape of Good Hope
depend, therefore, directly on the work
done at Paramatta, and the discoveries
made in Africa are thus associated with
the labors previously executed in Aus-
tralia.

Before the appearance of the Bris-
bane catalogue, another Englishman,
Manuel J. Johnson, had made a series
of accurate and reliable observations
near the station originally chosen by the
youthful Dr. Edmund Halley, in St. He-
lena; he supplied a most useful cata-
logue, with good places of 606 of the
principal stars of the austral heavens.

Nor did the commercial spirit, which
has always been a conspicuous trait of
the English character, fail to contribute
its share to the progress of science ; for
in 1830 the Honorable East India Com-
pany established an observatory at Ma-
dras, and the astronomer Mr. T. G.
Taylor, during the next thirteen years,
determined the places of about eleven
thousand stars. From this long series of
observations he prepared the fine gen-
eral catalogue of the principal fixed stars
published at Madras in 1844. While
this work, like that of Brisbane, was of
a less epoch-making character than that

of Lacaille, it was nevertheless of very
high value, and in the period before the
great survey begun by Gould at Cordoba
in 1870 occupied a distinguished place.

Deeper popular interest in the south-
ern heavens had already been awakened
by Humboldt's description of the steadi-
ness and lustre of the stars in the Amer-
ican tropics, and the extraordinary im-
pressiveness of the part of the heavens
invisible in Europe. This, among other
things, led to the expedition of Sir John
Herschel to the Cape of Good Hope in
1834. The expedition of Herschel in
turn exercised a determining influence
on the founding of the National Observa-
tory of the Argentine Republic, through
the efforts of the great American astro-
nomer Benjamin Apthorp Gould, whose
work in the southern hemisphere has
brought our knowledge of that region
to almost as perfect a state as that of
the northern heavens, and thus marked a
great epoch in modern astronomy.

The results of the explorations of Her-
schel and Gould may be properly de-
scribed as the first census of the south-
ern stars ; for Herschel first discerned
with characteristic penetration, and made
known in a clear and lucid style, the
class of objects abounding in the regions
about the south pole ; and Gould, forty
years later, determined their places and
other peculiarities with a degree of pre-
cision never before attempted.

Sir John Herschel was the only son
of the illustrious Sir "William Herschel,
whose fame toward the close of the
eighteenth and in the early years of the
nineteenth century filled the earth as had
that of no other man since the days of
Galileo. Thus born in the purple, and
possessed of the highest intellectual en-
dowments and the most noble qualities
of mind, he was singularly fitted by na-
ture and by his station in life to continue
worthily the traditions developed by the
many years of hardship and by the
ceaseless exertion of the poor music
teacher who was to shine in all future

Great Explorers of the Southern Heavens.

685

time as the discoverer of Uranus, and
the true Copernicus of the starry hea-
vens. Herschel, with a modesty not un-
like that of Newton, always claimed that
in his early years he had no strongly
fixed predilections, but turned with
equal facility to all subjects, to tire of
each without being able to accomplish
much. It is certain that he had a de-
cided taste for physics, in particular for
light, and for astronomy and mathemat-
ics, and he early made the celebrated
compact with Babbage to " leave the
world wiser than they had found it."
In 1816 he began some preliminary
work on double stars in connection with
Sir James South, and during the next
fifteen years these two observers were
the principal contributors to this branch
of science. In 1825, after formally
pledging himself to astronomy, he un-
dertook a review of all of his father's
discoveries in the northern heavens ; and
finally presented the results of this ex-
tensive survey to the Royal Society in a
series of papers of much value. The
noteworthy reception of this work, and
the interest now attaching to the part of
the heavens unseen by his father, induced
him to transport his twenty-foot reflector,
five-inch refractor, and other instruments
used at Slough, to the Cape of Good
Hope, for the purpose of completing the
review of the whole face of the sidereal
heavens on a uniform plan.

The first objects examined by Her-
schel were the brilliant double star Alpha
Crucis and the great nebula about the
variable star Eta Carinae. The regular
sweeps were begun on March 5, 1834,
and continued with zeal and regularity
till the whole region round the pole was
swept over and reviewed. On January
22, 1838, the last work was done, and
the expedition set sail for England.

Of the 1708 nebulae noted by Herschel
at least 300 were new ; yet whether the
nebulas be new or old, his observations are
accompanied by condensed but accurate
descriptions of each mass. The Greater

Magellanic Cloud, an object of wonder
from the earliest times, was submitted to
a searching examination, and found to be
a vast system sui generis, situated in a
desert region of the sky, and composed of
innumerable masses of convoluted nebu-
losity intermixed with masses and groups
of stars. He reckoned in this luminous
area 278 distinct nebulae and clusters,
with numerous neighboring objects of a
similar character ; and, including the
stars which are sprinkled so copiously
over the region, he catalogued in all 919
bodies. In the case of the Lesser Ma-
gellanic Cloud he fixed the places of 244
objects, and executed a general sketch
of the region, of high value to future
observers. Though" the study of south-
ern double stars was made of secondary
interest, he yet managed, in the four
years of his activity at the Cape, to cata-
logue 2102 new systems. Many of these
stars are of great interest, and several
are already known to be in comparative-
ly rapid orbital motion.

Herschel's survey may be said to
have established the continuity of the
scheme of stellar arrangement observed
in the northern hemisphere, in addition
to showing a striking richness of ex-
traordinary objects in the regions around
the south pole. For example, we have
in the northern sky no clusters compara-
ble to 47 Toucanae, or Omega Centauri,
" the noble globular cluster, beyond all
comparison the richest and largest object
of the kind in the heavens." "The
stars are literally innumerable, and as
their total light, when received by the
naked eye, affects it hardly more than a
star of the fifth magnitude, the minute-
ness of each may be imagined." This
description of Omega Centauri by Her-
schel is amply justified by the photo-
graphs recently taken of it at the Har-
vard station in Peru and at the Cape,
and by our own examination of it with
the great Lowell telescope in Mexico.

Nor have we any objects so remarkable
as the Magellanic Clouds or the Coal

686

Great Explorers of the Southern Heavens.

Sacks, — phenomena in the most striking
contrast with their surroundings. On
the other hand, the bright stars are more
numerous in the region of Argo, Centau-
rus, Lupus, Scorpion, and the Cross than
in any other corresponding area of the
heavens. It may also be borne in mind
that the three brightest of all the fixed
stars, Sirius, Canopus, and Alpha Cen-
tauri, are in the southern hemisphere.
These individual objects of the greatest
lustre combined with the large group
of bright stars just mentioned give the
southern heavens an impressiveness diffi-
cult of conception by those who are ac-
quainted only with the part of the sky
visible in northern latitudes.

About the year 1848, Captain Gilliss,
who had virtually founded the United
States Naval Observatory in 1846, pre-
vailed on the government and Congress
to organize the United States Naval As-
tronomical Expedition to the Southern
Hemisphere, for securing parallax obser-
vations of Venus, and for cataloguing the
fixed stars within thirty degrees of the
south pole. The expedition was at last
set in motion, and finally better equipped
than its earliest friends had dared to an-
ticipate. Provided with the most essen-
tial instruments, and such means for run-
ning expenses as would meet necessary
outlays, but give few luxuries, they se-
lected a site at Santiago, in Chile, and
for four years the work was carried on
with a degree of zeal not unworthy of
the successors of Lacaille. When the
observations were concluded, it was ar-
ranged to print them in a series of quarto
volumes, which should include a detailed
account of the geography and the cli-
matic and economic condition of Chile ;
but owing to unfortunate political machi-
nations only a part of the work ever saw
the light. Astronomers had given up
hope of getting the rest of the results
in print, but the Gilliss catalogue, con-
taining good places of 16,748 stars, has
at last appeared, after a delay of more
than forty years.

Great and important as were the la-
bors of Herschel and Gilliss in exploring
and cataloguing the stars of the southern
skies, their work for the future of stellar
astronomy is insignificant when set be-
side the incomparable survey executed
by Dr. Gould at Cordoba, in the Argen-
tine Republic, from 1870 to 1885.

Benjamin Apthorp Gould was born
in Boston, September 27, 1824. Com-
ing of an ancient and illustrious family,
he enjoyed the best educational advan-
tages to be found in the United States.
Graduating at Harvard College in the
class of 1844, he was for a year master
of the Roxbury Latin School. A student
and friend of Professor Benjamin Peirce,
he early formed the project of consecrat-
ing his life to science, — a career at that
time unique, and hardly considered le-
gitimate, — and in July, 1845, set sail
for England, to study astronomy at the
Royal Observatory, Greenwich. After
passing a year with Airy, he proceeded
to Paris, hoping that he might derive
some benefit from the genius of Arago,
who was then inspiring all France by
his defense of pure science and by his
apostolic eloquence in popularizing its
results. After a short stay in France
he started for Germany, to study under
the illustrious Bessel, then the recog-
nized leader of European astronomers;
but, unfortunately, that great man, al-
ready weak from his indefatigable exer-
tions and the ravages of a wasting dis-
ease, died the day Gould passed the
border, and his only course then was to
proceed to Berlin and seek the favor of
Encke. The young man carried with
him letters from Jphn Quincy Adams,
and these gave him the friendship of the
American Minister, who in turn intro-
duced him to Alexander von Humboldt.
Encke would not listen to the idea of
any one, least of all an American, study-
ing at the new Royal Observatory, though
Gould offered to clean the lamps or do
anything that might give him the cov-
eted privilege. Since no progress could

Great Explorers of the Southern Heavens.

687

be made by the offer of services, Gould's
only course was to apply to Humboldt ;
and that great man, with a generosity
characteristic of high genius, immediate-
ly championed the cause of the young
American. As Encke was dependent
upon the favor of Humboldt for certain
appropriations, it did not require much
further persuasion to admit young Gould
to the observatory. After concluding his
labors at Berlin he proceeded to Gsttin-
gen, where he was admitted to Gauss's
household, and signalized his residence
there by the computation of a number
of planetary and cometary orbits. Gauss
was very much taken with the young
American, and Gould was equally devot-
ed to his master, and to the end of his
life preserved a lock of the great mathe-
matician's hair, secured while at Gbttin-
gen. A short stay at Gotha and at Poul-
kowa concluded his residence abroad,
and he returned to his native land full
of enthusiasm for the advancement of
science.

One of the earliest matters to receive
his attention was the founding, in 1849,
of the Astronomical Journal, for the
publication of purely scientific papers.
This at once took rank with the fore-
most astronomical publications of the
world. In assuming the directorship of
the Dudley Observatory at Albany, Gould
entered upon an important and promis-
ing piece of work, which was destined to
be cut short a few years later by the
jealous intrigues of certain trustees who
brought about his enforced retirement.
He then passed several years in the ser-
vice of the Coast Survey and of the
government during the war for the pre-
servation of the Union.

About 1865 Dr. Gould became great-
ly impressed with the need of a thor-
ough survey of the southern hemisphere
for the purpose of determining the exact
places of the fixed stars. His high sci-
entific standing and the influence of a
large circle of friends and admirers in
Boston soon proved adequate to provide

the necessary means for a private as-
tronomical expedition. The news of this
venture reached the ear of the Argentine
Minister at Washington, Senor Sarmi-
ento, who not only welcomed the enter-
prise, but showed himself a zealous and
active champion of the interests of sci-
ence. Cordoba was selected as the ob-
serving station, chiefly from the know-
ledge of South America gained by the
lamented Gilliss. Sarmiento transmitted
Dr. Gould's application for certain privi-
leges and assurances to the Argentine
government, then under the presidency
of Mitre, and these requests were at once
conceded. These negotiations increased
Sarmiento's interest in the plan ; and
when, soon afterward, he was himself
elected President of the Republic, he ob-
tained the assent of the Argentine Con-
gress to the establishment of a per-
manent national observatory, and wrote
asking Gould to change his plans ac-
cordingly. The government assumed
the expense of the instruments and equip-
ment already bespoken, and authorized
the engagement of the requisite assist-
ants. The task then devolved upon Dr.
Gould of selecting men of ability, if not
of special experience, in astronomical
work, and of inspiring them with the
degree of zeal and enthusiasm necessary
for maintaining continued effort in so
distant and unattractive a country, at
the most laborious work ; of purchasing
instruments, and building and equipping
the observatory; and of managing the
whole undertaking in so acceptable a
manner that change of political parties
would not endanger an undertaking which
had been founded or supported by the
opposition. How well Dr. Gould carried
out this enormous enterprise history is
now a witness. Having reached his de-
stination in 1870, previous to the arrival
of any instruments, and while the ob-
servatory was still building, he set about
the determination of the brightness of
every naked-eye star within one hundred
degrees of the south pole. This work

688

Great Explorers of the Southern Heavens.

included the critical study of over seven
thousand stars, and led to the detec-
tion of a large number of variable stars.
When completed, it made the much-
desired Uranometria of the southern
hemisphere. Along with the investiga-
tion of the brightness of the southern
stars, Dr. Gould reviewed and carried
into execution an idea suggested by Sir
John Herschel of re-forming and recti-
fying the boundaries of the constella-
tions, and embodied all this splendid
work in the classic Uranometria Argen-
tina, which fixes the southern constella-
tions for future ages, as the Almagest
of Ptolemy essentially fixes those in the
northern hemisphere.

Dr. Gould's great work with the me-
ridian circle consisted in observing the
right ascensions and declinations of the
stars in zones of a certain width. When
the places were thus fixed by innumer-
able pointings of the telescope, notings
of times of transits, and readings of the
circles, and the resulting positions were
reduced to a common epoch by infinite
labor and calculation, he obtained the
huge mass of material for the great
Argentine Star Catalogues, which con-
tain more than one hundred thousand
stars. The immensity of the labor will
be somewhat more intelligible to the lay
reader if I say that when printed in fine
type, with no waste space, these obser-
vations fill sixteen large quarto volumes
of over five hundred pages each ; and
Dr. Gould's part in it can be appreci-
ated when we recall that he not only
organized and managed the observatory,
but made the greater part of the obser-
vations and supervised all the calcula-
tions and printing.

Such a record is absolutely unique in
astronomical history, and is in no way
even approached by the labors of the
greatest astronomers of past ages. We
may even assert that the Cordoba ob-
servatory alone, from 1870 to 1885, by
the wise direction and energy of one
man, made more observations than all

the observatories in the northern hemi-
sphere put together. Though the deter-
mination of the places of the fixed stars
in the northern hemisphere has engaged
the attention of many observatories dur-
ing the whole of this century, and our
knowledge of the places of the north-
ern stars would therefore presumably be
nearly perfect, it is a fact that Gould's
work practically equalized our know-
ledge of the two celestial hemispheres.
Such an achievement is a veritable mon-
ument to the American nation, and has
added new lustre to the American name.
Had the American people never con-
tributed anything beyond the labors of
Gould to the world's knowledge of astro-
nomy, this magnificent contribution alone
would entitle the nation to an honorable
place in the eyes of posterity. And yet
how little is the work of Gould known
to even the best circle of American read-
ers ! So great was his devotion to the
cause of pure science, and so oblivious
was he of contemporary fame, that none
but professional men of science are able
to appreciate his incomparable services
to the sublimest of the sciences. It is
certain that he has gained a place among
the greatest astronomers of all ages and
countries, and that the estimate now
placed on his work will only increase
with the flight of centuries. If England
is justly proud of her Newton and Her-
schel, France of her Lagrange and La-
place, Germany of her Copernicus and
Kepler, Italy of her Leonardo and Gali-
leo, well may America honor her Peirce
and Gould ! The following stanzas by
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, read at the
complimentary dinner given to Dr. Gould
on his return from Cordoba in 1885, will
appropriately conclude this estimate of
his character and illustrious services : —

" Thine was unstinted zeal, unchilled devo-
tion,

While the blue realm had kingdoms to ex-
plore, —

Patience, like his who ploughed the nnfur-
rowed ocean,

Till o'er its margin loomed San Salvador.

Western Real Estate Booms, and After.

689

" Through the long nights I see thee ever wak-

"!£>

Thy footstool earth, thy roof the hemisphere,
While with thy griefs our weaker hearts are

aching,
Firm as thine equatorial's rock-based pier.

" The souls that voyaged the azure depths be-
fore thee

Watch with thy tireless vigils, all unseen, —
Tycho and Kepler bend benignant o'er thee,
And with his toylike tube the Florentine, —

"He at whose word the orb that bore him

shivered
To find her central sovereignty disowned,

While the wan lips of priest and pontiff quiv-
ered,
Their jargon stilled, their Baal disenthroned.

'' Flamsteed and Newton look with brows un-
clouded,

Their strife forgotten with its faded scars, —
(Titans, who found the world of space too

crowded
To walk in peace among its myriad stars.)

" All cluster round thee, — seers of earliest

ages,

Persians, lonians, Mizraim's learned kings,
From the dim days of Shinar's hoary sages
To his who weighed the planet's fluid rings."

T. J. J. See.

WESTERN REAL ESTATE BOOMS, AND AFTER.

THE West is now so vast in population
and wealth, as well as in extent, that
whatever economic condition affects it
profoundly must be of immense conse-
quence to the whole country. Here is
the chief market for the consumption of
manufactured articles, here is produced
in great measure the food for the na-
tion, and here are invested a large part
of the people's savings.

Most men now feel confident that after
seven or eight years of industrial depres-
sion, which deepened in 1893 into finan-
cial storm and darkness, a season of pro-
sperity is beginning. While I shall not
undertake to present an explanation of
every phenomenon of this long period of
gloom, nor to enumerate all its causes,
I shall briefly review antecedent condi-
tions in the West, in an effort to arrive
at some clear conclusions at least regard-
ing large economic and financial influ-
ences.

During the years from 1880 to 1887
or 1890, the date of the climax varying
in different sections, there developed in
Minnesota, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kan-
sas, Texas, in all the states and territo-
ries further west, and in some parts of
Iowa, Wisconsin, and Missouri, a fever

VOL. LXXXI. — xo. 487. 44

of speculation in real estate which affect-
ed the whole population, destroyed all
true sense of value, created an enormous
volume of fictitious wealth, infected with
its poison all the veins and arteries of
business, and swelled the cities to abnor-
mal proportions. The East invested vast
sums in Western property and securities ;
every hamlet contained people whose
savings were thus hazarded ; every West-
ern concern had its clients, sometimes by
the thousands, scattered throughout the
cities, towns, and rural districts of the
East. The rapid development of the
resources of the West lent plausibility to
every reckless prophecy of higher prices ;
the continued inundation of Eastern
money seeking chances of speculation
falsified the predictions of the forebod-
ing. When the culmination was reached
there was no explosion, — the region af-
fected was too widely extended for that ;
as the " boom " collapsed by degrees in
Kansas City or Omaha, the professional
gamblers in city lots quietly slipped away
to Galveston or to Los Angeles, and
there organized another riot of high
values. As the price of property be-
came stationary, and then began to fall,
at first very slowly, then more rapidly,

690

Western Real Estate Booms, and After.

the truth gradually dawned on the peo-
ple, who were reluctant to believe it,
that all their wealth had an appearance
of unreality; and this conviction deep-
ened as the volume of debt contracted
in " flush " times pressed with deadly
weight upon every community, flattening
industries, breaking banks, and ruining
individuals by thousands.

The ties connecting the two sections
were too numerous and intimate for the
distress so universal in the West not to
be felt soon in the East. Distrust of all
Western enterprises eventually permeat-
ed the East, and reacted injuriously upon
those Western institutions which least
deserved criticism. Then the great load
of debt, apparently insupportable, sug-
gested in some sections of the West the
idea of repudiation, or at least of repay-
ment in whatever form of money was
cheapest ; and the East became panic-
stricken through fear that the integrity
of the nation's money might be success-
fully assailed. So the disturbance, which
was at first local, spread and deepened
until it involved the finances of the whole
country. It was checked when the elec-
tion of 1896 showed that the people were
honest at heart, and meant to bear their
burdens with unflinching courage ; but
no marked relief could reasonably be ex-
pected until, by settlement, liquidation,
limitation, or payment, the incubus of
debt which lay upon the West should be
lifted or adjusted.

All this seems so clear in the retro-
spect that it is difficult to see why it was
not better apprehended in the first years
of this decade. Yet many well-informed
men, just before the panic of 1893, be-
lieved that we were entering on a period
of great prosperity. Those who, at the
end of 1892 and the beginning of 1893,
believed that a crisis was at hand, did
not at all agree as to the cause that
would produce it. Some were confident
that the advent of a Democratic admin-
istration, with its threat of a change in
the tariff laws, would upset the business

of the country, throw labor out of em-
ployment, increase the volume of im-
ports, send a flood of gold out of the
country, reduce the gold in the treasury
below the danger -line, and bring on a
panic. Others contended that the con-
tinued purchase of vast quantities of
silver by the government, in the futile
effort artificially to sustain its price, is-
suing hi payment treasury notes which
could be used to draw gold from the
treasury, was fast destroying the confi-
dence of the financial public in the abil-
ity of the government to maintain the
parity of gold and silver. This opin-
ion was expressed by President Cleve-
land, when, at the height of the disturb-
ance in 1893, he convened Congress in
extra session for the purpose of repeal-
ing the silver purchase clause of the
so-called Sherman act. " Our unfortu-
nate financial plight," he said, " is not
the result of untoward events nor of con-
ditions related to our natural resources,
nor is it traceable to any of the afflic-
tions which frequently check national
growth and prosperity. ... I believe
these things are principally chargeable
to congressional legislation touching the
purchase and coinage of silver by the
general government."

" Our interests are not moribund,"
said the Financial Chronicle of New
York, on August 5, 1893 ; " they are not
in a state of insolvency or approaching
insolvency. Nothing of that kind ex-
plains the idle spindles, the noiseless ma-
chinery, the stilled workshops, — anima-
tion is suspended, that is all ; awaiting
what ? Is it liquidation or anything of
that character? By no means — just
waiting, ready to start up at any moment
on the repeal by Congress of a little piece
of injudicious legislation."

After some delay the little piece of
legislation was repealed, but the wheels
did not start up ; the machinery remained
almost as noiseless as before, during three
years of anxious waiting, while values
of both real and personal property con-

Western Heal JZstate Booms, and After.

691

tinued to shrink ; banks, business houses,
and individuals by thousands gradually
sank into insolvency, and the pressure
of hard times was felt in every corner
of the land. And now, when the crisis
is past, observers are not wanting who,
while they give due heed to the influ-
ences of tariff changes, to the govern-
ment's purchase of silver, and to the dis-
turbing influences of both, believe that
the people had grievously and persistent-
ly sinned in other ways against the laws
of economic health.

The great financial and manufactur-
ing companies of the East study the
markets, concern themselves actively in
legislation, foresee political changes, and
watch anxiously the financial barometer ;
they are nervously sensitive to every
fluctuation, and constantly apprehensive
of storms. To them, a panic is a short,
sharp convulsion that manifests itself in
business failures, bank suspensions, and
shrinkage in stocks and bonds. To the
people of the West, on the other hand,
the panic of 1893 was merely an episode
in a long and complicated series of events
beginning eight years or more before.
It meant not merely bank failures, the
shutting down of mills and factories,
the passing of dividends ; it meant pri-
marily an enormous and universal de-
preciation in the value of real estate,
and the vanishing of fortunes based on
real estate values ; while the suspension
of banks, the collapse of mortgage loan
companies, the failure of " bonused "
corporate enterprises, were secondary re-
sults. Such disasters as these strike first
the inhabitants of the West, who have
borrowed money to develop their vast
resources, and afterward the people of
the East, who have loaned their money
and cannot recover it. The gravest cause
of the long depression, therefore, had its
origin in the West. Here was bred the
unwholesome condition which made it
possible that the apprehension of a seven
per cent reduction of the tariff and an
unwise policy regarding silver should

conjure up in the minds of the financial
public a vision of impending ruin. The
country was ripe for panic.

In any new country, when population
is spreading rapidly over fresh territo-
ries, speculation in land is sure to be-
come extravagant. The most striking
feature of the panic of 1837 was the
mania for the purchase of wild lands in
the West. At no other time in our his-
tory, probably, has speculation gone so
far beyond the bounds of reason : peo-
ple seemed to believe that the advance
in prices would never cease. The wild-
est speculation of all was in real estate.
Paper cities sprang up in the wilderness,
and lands in the inaccessible West were
bought and sold at high prices decades
in advance of any possible needs of the
people. Everybody had speculated, and
all who had bought lands or town lots
had suddenly become rich. The coun-
try was at the zenith of apparent pro-
sperity when the crash came. Then this
imaginary wealth vanished more quickly
than it grew. The distress of the peo-
ple was as real as their fortunes had
been unsubstantial. Naturally, they did
not believe that the calamity was in any
degree the result of their own folly.
The banks, the manufacturers, the par-
ty out of power, and most of the great
orators denounced Jackson as having de-
liberately caused the ruin of the coun-
try. The city of New York turned out
in an immense mass meeting, and with
one voice vehemently charged the whole
trouble to Jackson's attack upon the
National Bank and his specie circular.
A committee of fifty was appointed, who
waited upon the President and presented
their petition, in which, after depicting
with the greatest earnestness the mag-
nitude of the calamity that had befallen
the city and the country, they declared
that these evils flowed, not from any
excessive development of mercantile en-
terprise, but " from the unwise system
which aimed to substitute a metallic for
a paper currency." The President re-

692

Western Real JZstate Booms, and After.

fused to rescind the circular, but was
finally compelled to call a special ses-
sion of Congress. In his message he
gave a vivid picture of the excessive
speculations and .enormous indebtedness
in which all classes had become involved,
and he attributed the present condition
to " overaction in all the departments of
business," — - an opinion in which every
student of the period must concur. This
was what had brought the country to a
state of unsoundness, in which any act of
the government, wise or unwise, which
called the people's attention sharply to
their own condition, would bring the in-
evitable day of liquidation and produce
crash.

There are few more curious parallels
than that between the condition of things
at the beginning of Van Buren's admin-
istration in 1837 and of Cleveland's in
1893. The chief difference was that in
1893 the banking system was sound, and
the only feature of the national currency
which had any element of unsoundness
was the effort o? the government to keep
an immense and constantly increasing
volume of silver at a parity with gold ;
while in 1837 the currency consisted al-
most wholly of bank paper in all degrees
of depreciation, and constantly swelling
in volume to meet the demands of an
insatiable thirst for speculation. This
difference is, of course, of the highest im-
portance ; and to it is due the fact that
the panic of 1893 came some years after
the crest of the wave of speculation,
which reached its maximum in 1887
and the years immediately following.
The reaction, instead of being instanta-
neous and explosive, came on by degrees.
If prosperity has now come, it is because
the reaction has fully spent its force.

How general and excessive through-
out the West this speculation was dur-
ing the ten years preceding the crisis of
1893 is shown by the following illustra-
tions. The city of Milwaukee has been
regarded as a comparatively conserva-
tive town, though full of enterprise and

animated by the true Western spirit.
As compared with Duluth, Kansas City,
Seattle, and Wichita, for example, it is
regarded as quite sober. After a few
years of active but moderate speculation,
when the excitement had begun to sub-
side in many cities, it broke out afresh
in Milwaukee. The record of sales and
mortgages for three successive years was
as follows : —

Sales.
1889* $10,203,335

1890 16,491,302

1891 19,790,751

Mortgages.
$8,254,225
12,327,717
19,921,431

The Chamber of Commerce regarded
this state of things with much satisfac-
tion. In its report for 1892 it says : —

" One of the best indications of the
growth and prosperity of Milwaukee is
furnished by the continued activity and
enhanced value of real estate, not only
within the limits of the city, but in all
the territory surrounding it for miles
beyond. The people who expected that
the great ' boom ' of 1890 would be fol-
lowed by reaction made a greater mis-
take than those who supposed that values
had reached the top for many years to
come, in 1889. On the contrary, that
was only the beginning of the upward
movement. Desirable inside property
has advanced steadily from year to year,
with a better demand and greater con-
fidence in values than has ever before
been known in the history of Milwaukee,
while outlying and suburban property
has risen from fifty to one hundred per
cent annually for the last three years."

It would be interesting to know how
many of the holders of the twenty mil-
lion dollars of mortgages given in Mil-
waukee in 1891 have received their
money, and whether they still have an
abiding faith that outlying lots can al-
ways go on advancing at the rate of fifty
or one hundred per cent a year.

The cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul
were no less abundantly blessed, although
there the speculative movement reached
its culmination as early as 1887, since

Western Real Estate Booms, and After.

693

No.

1884

8,382

1885

8,560

1886

14,250

1887

16,700

1888

11,400

1889

10,087

1890

9,194

1891

7,397

1892

7,075

1893

6,272

which time the holders of city lots have
been suffering the pangs of gradual and
irresistible depreciation. If Milwaukee
was happy with twenty millions a year,
the Minneapolis speculators with fifty-
nine millions were jubilant. During the
decade beginning with 1884 the yearly
sales were : —

Amount.
$21,076,000
24,788,000
38,319,000
58,915,000
42,100,000
33,039,000
32,145,000
28,733,000
28,538,000
22,544,000

As in Milwaukee, nearly all of the pro-
perty thus purchased was heavily mort-
gaged, and the wealth of thousands of

O O 9

citizens consisted either in such mort-
gages or in the property so encumbered,
— wealth which, in the succeeding years,
gradually evaporated. As the popula-
tion of Minneapolis in 1887 was about
160,000, there was one purchase for every
ten of her inhabitants, including babies,
during the year. After the lapse of ten
years, the prices of 1887 seem like the
golden visions of a vanished dream.

St. Paul closely paralleled this record.
Her sales reached fourteen millions in
1885, twenty-seven millions in 1886, and
fifty-eight millions in 1887 ; and this ex-
cess was followed by exhaustion so in-
tense that scarcely a sign of recovery is
yet visible. Another century will dawn
before vacant real estate, not required
for business, will have a definite value.

Omaha had the same experience. Her
citizens speculated in city property with
even greater recklessness. Between 1885
and 1888 sales increased more than seven
hundred per cent : —

1885 $4,426,143

1886 15,178,448

1887 31,148,425

In Seattle the assessed valuation rose
by leaps from $1,626,275 in 1880 to

$26,431,455 in 1890, while the sales of
real estate from 1887 to 1890 increased
from three millions to twenty-three mil-
lions. It would be easy to trace the
evidences of this passion for gambling
throughout the western three quarters of
the continent in all the cities and large
towns from Lake Superior to Texas,
from Galveston to San Diego, thence to
Tacoma and Seattle, and back to Duluth ;
accompanied everywhere by boundless
individual indebtedness incurred in buy-
ing land, and in some sections by city,
county, and township debts created in
aid of railroads, water-works, electric
lights, and all sorts of public improve-
ments. The mania for land was curi-
ously illustrated by the rush of settlers
and speculators upon the opening of new
lands in Oklahoma. An immense mul-
titude left homes in a dozen states, and
flocked thither by rail, in wagons, on
horseback, and on foot, camped out for
weeks and months along the borders of
the promised land, suffered all kinds of
privations, and raced madly across the
line when the gun was fired ; only to
find that there were ten competitors for
every quarter section, and that the land,
when they got it, was far inferior to
that which they had left behind. The
unsuccessful ones eked out a miserable
existence as long as they could in the
mushroom towns, and finally drifted for-
lornly away. Many Western towns de-
liberately intoxicated themselves in im-
itation of their neighbors. Prices were
forced up by means of brass-band auc-
tions and artificial excitement. Raw vil-
lages on the prairies indulged in rosy
dreams of greatness, and gaslights twin-
kled where the coyotes should have been
left undisturbed. Every city and town
in the regions chiefly affected by the
great " boom " contained families impov-
erished by the collapse. It had its root
in the true spirit of gambling, and has
borne its legitimate fruit.

In the train of the real estate craze
came a great number of loan and invest-

694

Western Real Estate JBooms, and After.

ment companies. Many of them were
conducted by honest men, who lent the
money of Eastern clients in immense
quantities, their estimate of value being,
of course, affected by the prevailing ex-
aggeration ; many more institutions were
organized to burst, and, after flourish-
ing a few years in the hot atmosphere of
speculation, fulfilled their destiny, and
spread ruin among thousands of inno-
cent victims. No large Western town
has been exempt from these two classes
of concerns, and their collapse justly
aroused in the East a deep feeling of
distrust and insecurity, and led to a con-
demnation of Western investments and
Western business methods, in which
good and bad were confounded. Hon-
est Western business men even yet com-
plain of this suspicion ; but in a measure
they have deserved it, because in the
" flush" times, without investigation, they
permitted their names to be used as di-
rectors and figureheads of companies or-
ganized on the worst principles and run
by the most corrupt men, and thus al-
lowed themselves to be used as decoys
for the undoing of thousands.

Hard times cannot be regarded as
evils, if they arrest evil tendencies. The
only means by which a wayward commu-
nity can be turned back into the right
path is the severe lashing of its indi-
viduals when they go wrong. Many of
the most valuable results of hard times
are reaped whether or not the people
understand their causes ahd correctly in-
terpret their lessons. The shifting of
population during the last fifteen years
is a good illustration of this principle.

The years preceding the panic of
1893 saw a most remarkable migration
toward the cities, — streams of people
drawn thither by the extraordinary op-
portunities to make money in real estate,
and by the fictitious prosperity which
such easily acquired wealth diffused
among all the inhabitants. During this
period of enormous increase in the size
of the large cities, the villages and rural

districts lost their population relatively
so fast that thousands of townships were
less populous in 1890 than in 1880. In-
dustries as well as persons migrated.
The village shops and factories disap-
peared. Land companies offered big
bonuses in land and money to induce
mills and shops to remove from small
towns. The smaller towns were thus
plundered of their institutions, and also
of their skilled workers. Industries
flourish best where they have grown up,
and endure bodily transplanting hardly
better than full-grown trees. Accord-
ingly, every large Western town can
show a long list of such " assisted emi-
grants," stranded high and dry like
driftwood after a freshet, — great build-
ings silent and deserted, with hundreds of
idle employees walking the streets. The
wrecks among manufacturing concerns in
the West have come, in a very large pro-
portion, from among those which joined
the general movement in the eighties and
removed from smaller places. The rail-
roads actively assisted the movement.
In their eager competition for the busi-
ness of the large towns, they deliberately
sacrificed the interests of non-competing
points. They practically levied upon
the local towns the expense of incessant
rate wars, so that no industry could sur-
vive in a place having but one railroad,
and a removal to a city enjoying cheap
rates was a necessity. The phenomenal
growth of the large cities was thus due,
in great part, to unjustifiable discrimi-
nations in their favor. But cities and
towns must depend for existence upon
the adjacent territories, and when their
growth is out of proportion to that of
the region tributary, depression follows
hard upon the heels of prosperity. A
state is not prosperous when only its
large cities are thriving ; its real wel-
fare may be most substantial whe'n the
cities are stagnant from too rapid growth.
Hunger drives the redundant population
of the cities back to the country, and
their labor finds once more a productive

Western Real Estate Booms, and After.

695

field. Hence it is that, though the cen-
sus of 1890 showed an unparalleled rush
to the cities, and an absolute diminution
of numbers in a majority of rural town-
ships and small villages in many states,
this movement was in a great measure
arrested by the hard times culminating
in the panic of 1893. Thus the nation
automatically corrects its unequal devel-
opment. The people once more turn to
the upbuilding of their own industries ;
the stream of humanity that pours from
a hundred rills into the great centres of
population is stopped, — at least for a
time, — the evils of overgrown cities are
to a degree cured, and the just balance
between city and country is reestab-
lished.

The hard times have taught the peo-
ple of the West a truth they had well-
nigh forgotten, — that the slow accumu-
lations of legitimate industry are a more
solid foundation for wealth 'than the
gains from gambling in any form. Men
who have doubled their investment in a
single year in a real estate venture find
savings in ordinary business very tedi-
ous; their neighbors catch the conta-
gion of their success ; the old ways of
making money are too slow ; the com-
munity becomes accustomed to the dis-
play of sudden wealth ; though everybody
is in debt, no one thinks of payment ;
extravagance in personal expenditure
and official salaries, prodigality in the
use of public funds, become the rule ;
sound banking and mercantile prin-
ciples are disregarded; stock jobbing
corporations are hatched in swarms ;
there is a letting down of moral princi-
ple in all the affairs of business, a tol-
eration of bad men in places of trust, a
general envious admiration of success,
however won. It was the consciousness
that the foundations of credit were false
and hollow which made it possible for the
threat of tariff changes to send a thrill
of fear through the community ; it was
the consciousness of insolvency through-

out wide reaches of Western territory
which conjured up the spectre of free
silver repudiation ; it was the demorali-
zation caused by unsound business meth-
ods which inspired the attack upon the
creditor classes in Kansas and other
Western states, and which in turn is
still, in some districts, shutting the door
in the face of returning prosperity. The
people of the West are being led, through
a long experience of suffering, back to
a basis of happiness, surer, more endur-
ing, because founded in truth and hon-
esty. They are learning that fictitious
wealth is no wealth at all, and that solid
progress is not heralded with a brass
band.

It hardly need be said that the peo-
ple of the Western states are not differ-
ent from, certainly not inferior to, those
of other communities, in their apprecia-
tion of the virtue of honesty, whether
personal or political ; and their intelli-
gence and patriotism are no more open
to doubt. If they departed from the
path that leads to true prosperity, it was
in obedience to impulses which nearly
always affect human nature in the same
way. Keen enterprise and unbounded
opportunity, if unchecked by the recol-
lections of bitter experience and a con-
servatism born of established custom
and tradition, will carry most men into
excess, whether in England, America,
Argentina, Australia, or South Africa.
The consciousness, in new countries, that
the present is the golden opportunity for
men who are rich in nerve, but poor in
purse, impels them to take all chances.
When a community runs headlong into
riotous speculation, it requires the casti-
gation of hard times to bring it back,
and keep it thereafter within the lines
wherein alone lies permanent safety.
This experience the West has had in
abundant measure ; and with a spirit
chastened, but not subdued by affliction,
its people are now resuming the task of
developing its mighty resources.

Henry J. Fletcher.

696 Gillespie.

GILLESPIE.

(1806.)

RIDING at dawn, riding alone,

Gillespie left the town behind ;
Before he turned by the westward road

A horseman crossed him, staggering blind.

" The devil 's abroad in false Vellore, —
The devil that stabs by night," he said.

"Women and children, rank and file,
Dying and dead, dying and dead."

Without a word, without a groan.
Sudden and swift Gillespie turned ;

The blood roared in his ears like fire,
Like fire the road beneath him burned.

He thundered back to Arcot gate,

He thundered up through Arcot town ; •

Before he thought a second thought
In the barrack yard he lighted down.

" Trumpeter, sound for the Light Dragoons !

Sound to saddle and spur ! " he said.
" He that is ready may ride with me,

And he that can may ride ahead."

Fierce and fain, fierce and fain,

Behind him went the troopers grim;

They rode as ride the Light Dragoons.
But never a man could ride with him.

Their rowels ripped their horses' sides,

Their hearts were red with a deeper goad,

But ever alone before them all
Gillespie rode, Gillespie rode.

Alone he came to false Vellore ;

The walls were lined, the gates were barred;
Alone he walked where the bullets bit,

And called above to the sergeant's guard.

"Sergeant, sergeant, over the gate.

Where are your officers all ? " he said.
Heavily came the sergeant's voice,

"There are two living and forty dead."

Song of the Wandering Dust. 697

; A rope, a rope ! " Gillespie cried.

They bound their belts to serve his need.
There was not a rebel behind the wall

But laid his barrel and drew his bead.

There was not a rebel among them all

But pulled his trigger and cursed his aim,
For lightly swung and rightly swung

Over the gate Gillespie came.

He dressed the line, he led the charge ;

They swept the wall like a stream in spate,
And roaring over the roar they heard

The galloper guns that burst the gate.

Fierce and fain, fierce and fain,

The troopers rode the reeking flight:
The very stones remember still

The end of them that stab by night.

They 've kept the tale a hundred years,

They '11 keep the tale a hundred more :
Riding at dawn, riding alone,

Gillespie came to false Vellore.

Henry Newbolt.

SONG OF THE WANDERING DUST.

WE are of one kindred, wheresoe'er we be, —
Red upon the highroad or yellow on the plain,
White against the sea drift that girts the heavy sea;
Thou hast made us brothers, God of wind and rain !

Yellow all along the fields, hey ho, the morn!
All the throb of those old days lingers in my feet,
Pleasant moods of growing grass and young laugh of the corn,
And the life of the yellow dust is sweet!

When I bend my head low and listen at the ground,
I can hear vague voices that I used to know,
Stirring in dim places, faint and restless sound ;
I remember how it was when the grass began to grow!

We are of one kindred, wheresoe'er we be, —

Red upon the highroad or yellow on the plain,

White against the glistening kelp that girts the heavy sea;

Thou hast made us brothers, God of wind and rain!

698 Song of the Wandering Dust.

Blown along the sea beach ! Oh, but those were days !
How we loved the lightning, straight and keen and white !
Bosomed with the ribboned kelp ! Hist ! through all the ways
Of my brain I hear the sea, calling through the night.

How we used to jostle, braced together each to each,

When the sea came booming, stalwart, up the strand !

Ridged our shoulders, met the thunder, groaned and held the beach !

I thank the God that made me I am brother to the sand !

We are of one kindred, wheresoe'er we be, —
Red upon the highroad or yellow on the plain,
White against the sea drift that girts the heavy sea ;
Thou hast made us brothers, God of wind and rain !

Red upon the highroad that travels up to town !
I have nigh forgotten how the old way goes.
Ay, but I was there once, trampled up and down !
Shod feet and bare feet, I was friend to those!

Old feet and young feet, — still within my breast

I can feel the steady march, tread, tread, tread !

In my heart they left their blood, — God give them rest !

In my bones I feel the dust raised from their dead !

We are of one kindred, wheresoe'er we be, —
Dumb along the highroad or fashioned in the brain ;
Once my flesh was beaten from the white sand by the sea;
Thou hast made us brothers, God of wind and rain !

Red dust and yellow dust, whither shall we go?
Up the road and by the sea and through the hearts of men !
Red dust and yellow dust, when the great winds blow,
We shall meet and mingle, pass and meet again.

Red dust and yellow dust, I can feel them yet,
On my lips and through my soul, fine-grained in my mood.
Still the solemn kinship calls, the old loves will not forget,
And my heart answers back to its blood.

Old dust and strange dust, wheresoe'er we be, —
Red along the highroad or yellow on the plain,
White against the sea drift that girts the heavy sea,
Thou hast made us brothers, God of wind and rain !

Anna Hempstead Branch.

After Rain. 699

AFTER RAIN.

AFTER rain, after rain,

O sparkling Earth!
All things are new again,

Bathed as at birth.
Now the lovely storm hath ceased,

Drenched and released
Upward springs the glistening bough,

In sunshine now ;
And the raindrop from the leaf

Runs and slips;
Ancient forests have relief;

Old foliage drips.
All the Earth doth seem

Like to Diana issuing from the stream,
Her body flushing from the wave,

Glistening in beauty grave ;
Or like perhaps to Venus, when she rose,

And looked with dreamy stare across the sea,
As yet unconscious of her woes,

Her woes, and all her wounds that were to be.
Or now again !
After the rain,

Earth like that early garden shines,
Vested in vines.
Oh, green, green
Eden is seen !
After weeping skies
Rising Paradise!
God there for his pleasure,
In divinest leisure,
Walking in the sun,
Which hath newly run.
Soon I might perceive
The long-tressed Eve,
Startled by the shower,
Venture from her bower,
Looking for Adam under perilous sky ;
While he hard by

Emerges from the slowly dropping blooms,
And odorous green glooms.

Stephen Phillips.

700 Good Friday Night.

GOOD FRIDAY NIGHT.

AT last the bird that sang so long
In twilight circles hushed his song ;
Above the ancient square
The stars came here and there.

Good Friday night ! Some hearts were bowed,
But some within the waiting crowd,
Because of too much youth,
Felt not that mystic ruth ;

And of these hearts my heart was one :
Nor when beneath the arch of stone,
With dirge and candle-flame,
The cross of Passion came,

Did my glad being feel reproof;
Though on the awful tree aloof,
Unspiritual, dead,
Drooped the ensanguined Head.

To one who stood where myrtles made
A little space of deeper shade
(As I could half descry,
A stranger, even as I),

I said : " These youths who bear along
The symbols of their Saviour's wrong, —
The spear, the garment torn,
The flagel, and the thorn, —

"Why do they make this mummery?
Would not a brave man gladly die
For a much smaller thing
Than to be Christ and king?"

He answered nothing, and I turned:
Throned 'mid its hundred candles, burned
The jeweled eidolon
Of her who bore the Son.

The crowd was prostrate; still, I felt
No shame until the stranger knelt ;
Then not to kneel, almost
Seemed like a vulgar boast.

Good Friday NigU. 701

I knelt : the idol's waxen stare
Grew soft and speaking ; slowly there
Dawned the dear mortal grace
Of my own mother's face.

When we were risen up, the street
Was vacant ; all the air hung sweet
With lemon flowers ; and soon
The sky would hold the moon.

More silently than new-found friends,
To whom much silence makes amends
For the much babble vain
While yet their lives were twain,

We walked toward the odorous hill.
The light was little yet; his will
I could not see to trace
Upon his form or face.

So when aloft the gold moon broke,
I cried, heart-stung. As one who woke
He turned unto my cries
The anguish of his eyes.

" Friend ! Master ! " I said falteringly,

" Thou seest the thing they make of thee !

But by the light divine

My mother shares with thine,

"I beg that I may lay my head
Upon thy shoulder, and be fed
With thoughts of brotherhood ! "
So, through the odorous wood,

More silently than friends new-found
We walked. At the last orchard bound,
His figure ashen-stoled
Sank in the moon's broad gold.

William Vaughn Moody.

702

No Quarter.

NO QUARTER.

THE room was square, with a window
piercing each broad side except one ; on
that side, a door connected it with the
rest of the ill-constructed house. That
particular room gained by the non-exist-
ence of any architectural finger in its
erection. It was big, unmodified, and
delightful ; no portions of it were cut
off; it stood undefaced, a whole room,
and was called the library. Books there
were, certainly, a fireplace in the corner,
some tables, very little bricabrac, but in-
dications of occupation of a varied na-
ture, — skates hanging on a nail, sewing
in a basket, a half-written letter, a book
on its face, a piano open, and a cigarette
half smoked. It looked like an inhabited
spot, and in so much was a pleasant room.

Elizabeth sat before the fire in a chair
framed for a giant ; it enabled her to
draw her feet up beside her, a luxury to
a long-limbed, loosely built person. She
was flushed a little, — with sleep, per-
haps, for her eyelids looked heavy, and
a winter's afternoon before a fire ends
in sleep sometimes. A note lay open on
her lap. Raising it, she read it again.
It had come an hour before from town ;
for the Winters lived in the suburbs.

DEAR Miss WINTER, — I am sorry
that I cannot come to see you this after-
noon, but I find I have so many things
to do, before my train leaves to-night,
that I shall not have a moment's breath-
ing-space. Perhaps it is just as well ;
good-bys are not pleasant things, and
discretion is the better part of valor. A
year is a long time to wait, but do not
forget me, and I will write from San
Francisco.

Yours faithfully,

EDWARD GRAHAM.

It sounded sensible enough ; but that
is the kind of note that people get some-

times, which is opened eagerly, is read
fast, and, like a chill through wine, slowly
penetrates, and ends by freezing some-
where in the middle.

Miss Winter was considered cool, off-
hand, easily interested, difficult of access,
— a character more common in men
than women, and yet she was not in the
least like a man. She was good-look-
ing, fair, finely made, of middle height,
but slender, and so giving an impression
of length. Her eyes were indifferently
called gray, blue, or green, as the ob-
server felt inclined, but at this moment
the pupils were dilated, and a stranger
might almost have thought them black.

It was not late ; the room was full
of pleasant sunlight still, and the fire
was in an especially merry and dancing
mood : it suggested to Miss Winter the
advisability of burning her note, but
she refused, — she might want to read
it again ; to her it seemed less simple
than it may seem to you or me.

" A gentleman to see you, miss." An-
nie was a new servant, and gave her mis-
tress the card which she had insisted on
bringing.

Having grown red twice in Annie's
presence that day, Elizabeth exercised
some self-control, and looking at the card
read the name, — Mr. Austin Bryant.

" Well, I suppose he can come in.
Show him in here, Annie. If any one
else comes, let me see the card ; don't
send any one away." For Annie had
seemed somewhat disposed to exercise
her own discretion.

The maid left the room, and Eliza-
beth settled back into her chair, mani-
festing no intention to prepare for the
coming of her visitor.

He came in, and, putting his hat down,
crossed the room directly to her. He
had closed the door behind him.

" How d' you do ? " Bryant stood near

No Quarter.

703

the fire, looking down at her. " Won't
you shake hands ? "

" Too much trouble." She had the
grace to smile after this speech.

" But if it gives me a good deal of
innocent pleasure ? I think you are self-
ish, rather, don't you ? "

" Perhaps, but why should n't I be ? "
She put her hand under her chin and
looked him over. His dark eyes roved.

" Well, there is no reason, if you want
to be. How are you this afternoon?
Been skating lately ? " He drew off his
gloves as he spoke.

" Yesterday." She sat up with some
animation. " It was immense ! Why
don't you come some time, you great big
impostor ? What is the use of your six
feet of length, and forty four or six or
eight inches round the chest, whatever
it is, if you don't do anything with them ?
Now don't say you used to play foot-
ball, because that is worn threadbare.
When I was a little girl I jumped rope,
but I haven't been going on that ever
since."

Bryant's handsome face, with its brick-
red color and dark finishings, lowered.
" I wonder why I like you so much ? "
he said slowly. " You are neither civil
nor friendly at times."

" Am I not ? " Elizabeth looked to-
ward the fire. " Well, perhaps that is
the very thing you like ; you get a good
deal of civility, in one way or another,
— more than you should, in fact."

" No, it is n't that that I like. I may
be peculiar, but I prefer to be treated
with politeness. I stand it with you be-
cause — well, because I have something
to gain."

She turned toward him. "What a
characteristic speech ! "

" In what way ? "

" It gives the keynote of your life, —
something to gain. Don't be angry, for
after all you have the requisite quality,
whatever it is, to fulfill your wishes ;
you get things pretty generally." She
smiled at him in a friendly way that he

would have thought devilish if he had
known her inward frame of mind.

"You think I get what I want?"
Bryant smiled back at her. " You would
back me to succeed in most things,
then ? " His clean - shaven lips were
well cut, but restless ; his deep-set eyes
were keen, but not direct. One thinks of
big, heavily built men as with few nerves
and sensibilities ; this big, heavily built
man was conscious and sensitive to his
finger-tips.

Miss Winter played with the fringe
on the arm of her great chair. She had
rebuffed Bryant for months, and now
had an impulse to see what he would be
like when roused. Besides, when you
are choked with dust and ashes, you are
not particular in what spring you seek
the waters of oblivion. To be amused,
— that is always something.

" Yes, certainly, and lay long odds you
would win. But what took you from
the charms of Mrs. Bristow's Wednes-
days ? I thought you were her stand-
by." She raised her brilliant eyes and
looked at him, gravely, innocently.

" I thought you would be tired after
last night's dance. I heard of your be-
ing at the Hansons', and I chanced your
staying in to-day. I see some one has
been before me." He glanced at the
cigarette.

She looked at him keenly. " Do you ?
Why do you think that? "

He made a gesture.

" That ? That is mine. Will you
have one ? We allow smoking here after
lunch."

Bryant leaned back in his chair and
looked at her ; he did not know whe-
ther he was a little jarred or a little
attracted, but a certain adherence to a
standard of womanliness which made it
dangerous for women to enjoy them-
selves except in gratifying men made
him protest. " I did n't know you were
a smoking woman," he said.

Elizabeth felt that to spring from the
depths of her chair and strike him would

704

No Quarter.

be natural, proper, and right ; then the
idea of her hand in contact with his face
followed fast, and she merely stared at
him ; then, " A smoking woman ? It
sounds like a half - burnt house. But
there are a number of things you don't
know about me, Mr. Bryant ; did you
think there were not ? " She leaned
forward, and the firelight rendered her
for the moment irresistible, — to Bryant,
at least ; he threw his standards to the
wind, and laid his hand on the arm of
her chair.

" Whatever I do know about you
makes me hopelessly in love with you,
Miss Winter."

When a woman does not feel any de-
sire to protect a man ; when she feels a
moral certainty that what she is treading
on is, not his heart, but his vanity ; when
he is a good-looking brute, whose com-
placency has offended her, the tempta-
tion is great. Elizabeth had some mis-
ery to work out, and felt a reckless re-
lief in playing with fire ; for Bryant was
no contemptible antagonist. She did
not draw back, grow rigid and civil, and
change the subject ; she looked toward the
fire and said, " Hopelessly ? " which was
very wrong ; then added quickly, " Yes,
I suppose it is hopelessly. But, Mr. Bry-
ant, you would n't find me at all satis-
factory on further acquaintance. I can
assure you, you may be glad I have n't "
— she hesitated — " fallen in love with
you or your money," she finished, and
laughed with a sudden impudent gayety.

Bryant colored ; then threw away his
conventionality as he had his standards,
and, being really in earnest, showed his
hand.

" Miss Winter," he began, pressingly,
not eagerly, — he was not oblivious even
then of their future relations, — " money
is n't to be despised. Wait one mo-
ment," as she made a gesture ; " think of
it, won't you ? I have a great deal,
which would be entirely at your dispo-
sal. There are things in life, such as
travel, pleasure, the power to do good,

which money alone gives. I am not in
the least unwilling to use it as an argu-
ment, if it will get me the desire of my
heart. I believe I can make you —
make you " —

Elizabeth interrupted him with a sort
of frowning smile. " Make me happy,
is that it ? How ? Part of the pro-
gramme would be my gradually becom-
ing as devoted to you as you would be
to me, would it not ? But if I did not,
what would happen then ? No, Mr.
Bryant, I will confess I have let you go
thus far because you do interest me,
and I thought I should like to see your
real self. I don't think I have succeed-
ed, and now I am done. I have n't the
least intention of even considering your
proposal. I don't even like you."

The young man stood up with some-
thing that suggested an oath.

" Yes, I know that seems rude, but it
is n't. Let me say something more. You
are very rich, you are not stupid, and
you are rather handsome. You have, as
a consequence, treated me with a sub-
dued insolence which I have resented ;
you have been perfectly sure that in
the long run I would agree to any
proposal you should make me. I have
seen you gradually making up your mind
that though you disliked certain things
I did, you found me sufficiently attrac-
tive to induce you to overlook them.
You have done various things to women
whom I like, said and done things for
which I thought you required correction.
Some women like cavalier manners and
the compliments of a pasha ; I do not."
She stood by the fireplace, and pushed
a log with her boot-tip. There was si-
lence.

" Have you quite done ? " He rested
one hand on the table, with the other
buttoned his coat.

She faced him. " Quite, I think."

" Then I will say good - afternoon,
Miss Winter. If I have an opportunity,
you may be sure I shall do my best to
overtake it and cry quits." He walked

No Quarter.

705

to the door, and tried to turn the knob ;
his fingers shook.

Miss Winter crossed the room, and
stood by the table. " In other words, I
may expect reprisals ? "

He gave her a steady look that sug-
gested to her what life was like when peo-
ple used physical force with one another,
and managing the door-knob opened the
door and left the room.

Elizabeth stood a moment, impressed
with something very like dread ; then
going back to the fire, she looked at the
clock. " He will catch the five o'clock
train ; only five minutes to wait at the
station. I hope nobody will get in his
way ; if they do — murder and sudden
death ! Well ! " She threw herself into
a chair and rumpled her hair. " Well ! "
she repeated aloud ; a nervous tension
made her treat herself dramatically. " I
don't care a pennyworth. What can
Austin Bryant do to me? Cut me?
He won't dare to ; it would look too
badly. Say nasty things ? Let him ;
every one knows he has wanted to marry
me, which draws his sting somewhat.
I am glad I did it. I had some injuries
to wipe out. Fanny's account is squared,
and so is Helen's. The great black
hound, without magnanimity enough to
let little dogs alone! If he only bit
beasts of his size, — but trust him not
to do that. And he is attractive to many
women : that was what nerved my hand,
— it dried up any pity." The clock
struck five. " Off to town he goes, and
the up train came in five minutes ago.
By rights — by rights " — and, with a
sudden revulsion of feeling, Miss Win-
ter's eyes filled with tears.

She sat by the fire in silence. Mrs.
Winter had gone to town for the day
and night. Elizabeth was not sure whe-
ther the absence of any one to whom it
was possible to speak was a relief or an
added trial. The door opened to admit
Annie. " Mr. Graham, miss." No card
this time.

" Mr. Graham ? " repeated Elizabeth

VOL. LXXXI — NO. 487. 45

dully. The twilight lightened. What a
blazing fire she had made ! " Say I
will see him, Annie."

The maid closed the door. For a mo-
ment Elizabeth was alone. She instinc-
tively put her hands to her hair and
smoothed it, then turned to the fire. The
door opened, and she rose to meet her
second visitor as he came into the room.

" I did not expect you," said Eliza-
beth. They shook hands.

" You got my note ? " There was an
unusual constraint in his manner ; he
stood leaning his arm on the little shelf
over the fire. " I thought I could n't
get out, and then at the last moment
found I could."

She could not understand the barrier
he erected between them, and, as she
talked, tried to account for it.

" When does your train leave ? Late ?
Have you been busy ? " What stupid
questions !

" Yes, I get off at twelve, and I have
been a good deal rushed toward the end.
I had many last things to decide with
Harold, you see. Australia is a good
way off, after all, and I can't come back
in a hurry ; it will be a year or two,
certainly." He stopped abruptly, and
walked to the window.

Elizabeth leaped to a conclusion : he
did not want to commit himself, and had
intended to stay away to avoid doing so ;
he had come out thoroughly decided not
to say anything that would lead to an
explanation. In other words, he liked
her, yes, but not enough to ask her to go
to Australia with him or to tie himself
down. Many miles and a few months
would cure him, he thought. It all came
with the rapidity that is characteristic of
such insights. She felt a sense of utter
blinding pain.

He stood looking through the wide
casement. " How beautiful the hills are
against that last faint light in the west !
I shall not forget this room." He turned
back toward her, his eyes searching for
her through the gathering darkness.

706

No Quarter.

" Will you ring for the lamp and tea ? "
she asked.

He obeyed, and going back to the win-
dow stood there in silence till the light
was brought, and the tea-things. It was
not long, but it seemed long to both of
them.

" Come over here," said Elizabeth.
"Sit there," — she pointed to a chair
near her. " I must look at you carefully,
since I may never see you again." She
stopped pouring the tea to look at him ;
their eyes met. Should she ever forget
the look of his black hair on his temples ?
— the skin showed its natural white
there. How long would it take to put
out of mind the blue eyes, clear and cold
as spring water, the handsome jut of
the nose, the dark line on the short up-
per lip, the long, graceful, clever hands ?
Turning away, she stared into the fire.

" You are very silent," said Graham.
" Have you no good wishes to give me ?
I shall think of you very often, Miss
Winter,"

She turned toward him. " Did you
come out to say that, Mr. Graham? "

" Yes, partly. I came — I came —
God knows why I came ! " and getting
up he took a hasty turn up and down
the room, then sat down again. " For-
give me ; I will be cheerful and sensible.
We have only half an hour together, —
let us enjoy it ; we have enjoyed many
before this."

" And shall enjoy many again," she
added quickly. " So tell me, have you
settled everything for your brother, and
when will you come back again ? " She
handed him his cup.

" Harold ? Oh yes, he 's all right now 5
and I was selfishly glad of his difficulties,
since it brought me home for these six
months. But about coming back, — that
is in the limbo of the future. I must
look after myself, Miss Winter. I should
hate to fail, and leaving the ranch has
been a dangerous experiment, not to be
tried soon again." He had forgotten
his constraint.

" What do you heai- from your over-
seer ? "

" Excellent news ; but they need me,
and I shall be glad to be back, too, in
many ways. I love the life, you know.
I" —

" Yes," she said slowly, " I know. You
have told me enough to make me feel
as though I understood it all pretty well,
and it must be a pleasant life."

Graham looked at her, stared at her
almost, then turned away and put his
cup down. " I fear I must have bored
you very often when you were too kind
to say so, and I want to tell you how
kind I think you have been. I should
have felt awfully out of place here, after
my long absence, if — if " —

" If I had not been kind to you ? Have
I been kind to you ? " It seemed im-
possible the pain in her voice should not
reach his ears ; for all her dignity, she
wished it would.

" You have indeed, most kind ; when
I look back with open eyes, I thank you
for it all. But I must not keep you now.
The skating yesterday and the dance
must have tired you. You do things
hard when you do them, and you must
want rest. I ought to go." He got up
and stood near her. " I wish you every
happiness, I wish you every good thing.
Don't forget me utterly, and good-by,
Miss Winter." He held out his hand.

She put hers in it and stood up beside
him ; there was a moment's painful pres-
sure, then he turned to leave the room.

" Mr. Graham, I have said nothing ;
I have n't even wished you luck. You
know how much interest I take, how
much I want your welfare. Won't you
write to me when you get home, to say
how it all is, — how the sheep are, and
the ranch, and " —

Graham took her outstretched hand
and raised it to his lips ; then, without
an answer, he left the room. A minute
later, opening the door of the library, she
heard the house door close. Very quick-
ly Miss Winter went up the wide stair-

No Quarter.

707

case to her own room, and locked the
door.

Mrs. Washburn's tea was almost over,
and the hostess, her niece, and the two
girls who had received with her were
beginning to relax their attention. Half
a dozen men who were to stay and have
supper at half past seven had gathered
round the fire, and Elizabeth Winter
threw herself on a sofa in the front room,
for the moment alone.

She was not tired. She had felt as
though her muscles were of steel and
would compel her to move restlessly
about ; but now she sat relaxed and quiet,
consumed with a longing for the hour
when she could leave the house and take
the train home ; only ten minutes more
then, and she would be in peace. Look-
ing across the room, she caught a glimpse
of herself in the mirror, fine gray gown
and all, and it seemed as though it must
be some other woman who had such red
lips and bright eyes. Another figure
blotted out hers in the mirror, and a man
sat down beside her on the sofa.

" Mr. Bryant ? " Her voice demanded
an explanation.

" I have only come to square accounts,
Miss Winter. I warned you last week,
and my opportunity was sudden. I took
it. Will you hear what it was ? May
I say in parenthesis that, much as I re-
gret having to acknowledge it, you are
certainly very beautiful to-night ? "

She looked at him steadily. " What
have you said or done, Mr. Bryant, if I
am to be told, though why " —

" I think you will be glad to know."
He had less color than usual, but his
eyes had a certain savage steadiness that
improved his expression. "I had five
minutes at the station ; while I waited
a train came in from town, and on it —
Graham." He stopped.

" Yes ? "

" I am not a fool, Miss Winter. I
had seen a letter lying on the mantel-
piece, and recognized the hand. When

I saw Graham I remembered, and some-
thing in his expression led me to a con-
clusion. He was going out to propose
to you before he left for Australia."
He stopped again, his eyes unwavering.
They were directly facing each other,
each with an arm on the back of the
sofa. Bryant resumed : " I had guessed
somewhat of his feelings before ; I knew
you liked him, — liked him a good deal,

— and it occurred to me that at any
rate his saying nothing would not please
you ; you like men to propose in full
form, even when you intend to refuse
them. I stopped him, said I had come
from you, looked radiant, he stared, and
then I was overcome with friendly con-
fidence, took his arm, and told him that
of course he had seen how it would end.
I loved you. You — well, I was the hap-
piest man in the world. Nothing settled

— not to be spoken of — but — I did it
pretty well. He took it like a man, drew
a deep breath, and went on to see you
instead of going back to town with me,
as most men would have done. The rest
you know better than I, Miss Winter.
What do you think of my story ? Are
we quits ? "

It was touch and go. She pressed the
sofa with rigid fingers, but the look of
exultation in Bryant's eyes ran like wild-
fire through her veins. She dragged her-
self together, and there entered into her
a great rage.

" Quits ? " She spoke with delibera-
tion. " Not yet. Give me time, Mr.
Bryant. Come, we will have our sup-
per first." Bryant stared at her, speech-
less. " Come," and she moved past him
into the other room.

" Are you all ready ? " Miss Winter
drew off her gloves, and sat down at the
table where her aunt was seated. " I am
hungry ; come, let us begin. Miss Rose
March can flirt with uncle Charles after
supper."

They all sat down with laughing alacri-
ty, — all except Bryant ; he had grown
gray as Miss Winter's dress, and took his

708

JVb Quarter.

place by her aunt with a sort of horror
in his eyes.

" Are all the glasses filled ? " Miss
Winter was in high spirits. "I propose
as a toast — let me see — aunt and
uncle first, of course."

The health was drunk, and the party
became a merry one. Elizabeth's sallies
were especially applauded, and Bryant's
cheek regained some of its native red.
There was a pause, and Miss Winter
leaned forward.

" Ladies and gentlemen, I have a
story to tell you." She threw" back her
head and laughed. " It is to illustrate
the changes that have taken place in the
principles of warfare. Will you have
it ? " Applause and assent. She pushed
back her chair and fanned herself.

" Very well, to begin ! It used to be
the custom in America, is still in places,
that a blow in the face should be re-
turned in kind ; in fact, if dealt by a
woman, I have heard it is at times not
returned at all. However, granting the
justice of hitting back when you are
struck, the injured man attacks his ad-
versary in open fight, does he not ? "

A roar of yeas from the men ; the
girls laughed.

" Well, a variation has been intro-
duced, and I want your opinion on it.
A week ago I struck Mr. Bryant in the
face, morally speaking, and he stabbed
me in the back in return. Is this ac-
cording to the rules of honest warfare ? "
She paused ; there was an intense silence.

" The details are these. Mr. Bryant
proposed to me," — her aunt gave a gasp,
the girls were white, the men red, feel-
ing ran with Bryant, — " and I refused
him. I then took the opportunity to
tell him my opinion of him ; it was not
a pleasant one. Wait ! " Public feeling
still with Bryant ; the room horribly still.
Bryant, with his arms folded, looked at
Elizabeth.

" He left me, saying he would be quits,
and at the station met Mr. Graham. He

decided that Mr. Graham was coming
to do as he had done ; he thought his
chances good, so, displaying some dra-
matic gift, he told Mr. Graham that he
had proposed to me and been accepted —
and been accepted." The passionate ut-
terance of those last three words echoed
in a sort of groan from the men.

" Now, ladies and gentlemen, I have
ruined your supper, and made myself
most disagreeable ; but I will relieve
you of the necessity of saying anything
to me. You can discuss us at your lei-
sure. Good-night, aunt," and before any
one had answered, Elizabeth had disap-
peared through the doorway.

A moment later, coming downstairs in
her wraps, with her maid, she found her
aunt and uncle waiting for her in the
hall.

" Elizabeth, Elizabeth dearest," began
Mrs. Washburn. " How terrible this all
is, but why, why " —

Mr. Washburn interposed. " Let the
child go home, my dear. She is what
few women are, — game."

Elizabeth gave him an answering look,
and, kissing Mrs. Washburn, saw Bry-
ant coming down the stairway.

He stopped before her, and there was
a silence that made the hum of voices in
the dining-room audible.

"You asked me to say quits, Mr.
Bryant : I will do so. Will you open
the door ? "

He complied mechanically, and she
passed out, followed by her maid.

Bryant bowed to Mr. and Mi's. Wash-
burn, who stood speechless, and going
out closed the door behind him. He
turned toward the Club. A sudden
realization of what would greet him in
the next hour, if one of the men he had
left at the Washburns' came in, pene-
trated his being. Could he face it all
down ? Hardly. Europe for a year
would be the best solution ; he hated the
continent of America, — and with this
in his heart he walked home.

Francis Willing Wkarton.

The Evolution of the Gentleman.

709

THE EVOLUTION OF THE GENTLEMAN.

WHEN I venture to discuss the evolu-
tion of the gentleman, I may be expect-
ed to begin with a definition ; but for the
present I must decline this invidious
task. In the Century Dictionary I find
as the first definition, " A man of good
family ; a man of gentle birth." The
sixth definition is, " An apparatus used
in soldering circular pewter ware." Be-
tween the gentleman who is born and
the gentleman who is made, in connec-
tion with pewter ware, there is a wide
range for choice. After all, definitions
are luxuries, not necessities of thought.
When Alice told her name to Humpty
Dumpty, that intolerable pedant asked,
" ' What does it mean ? '

" ' Must a name mean something ? '
Alice asked doubtfully.

" ' Of course it must,' Humpty Dump-
ty said, with a short laugh. ' My name
means the shape I am, — and a good
handsome shape I am, too.' "

I suppose that almost any man, if he
were asked what a gentleman is, would
be inclined to answer, " It is the shape
I am." I judge this because, though the
average man would not be insulted if
you were to say, "You are no saint,"
it would not be safe to say, " You are
no gentleman." Perhaps, then, we may
as well follow the formula of Humpty
Dumpty, and say that a gentleman, if
not the shape that every man actually is,
is the shape in which every man desires
to appear to others.

It is needless to remark that this aspi-
ration is not always adequately fulfilled.
Sometimes we see only the actual boor
in our acquaintance, while the astral
body of the gentleman which he is en-
deavoring to project at us is not suffi-
ciently materialized for our imperfect
vision. There are those who have to ad-
mit as did Boss Tweed when reviewing
his attempts at lofty political virtue, " I

tried to do right, but somehow I seemed
to have bad luck." All this is but to say
that the word "gentleman " represents an
ideal. Above whatever coarseness and
sordidness there • may be in actual life
there rises the idea of a finer kind of man,
with gentler manners and truer speech
and braver actions.

It follows, also, that the idea of the
gentleman has grown, as from time to
time new elements have been added to it.
In every age we shall find the real gentle-
man, — that is, the man who in genuine
fashion represents the best ideal of his
time ; and we shall find the mimicry of
him, the would-be gentleman, who copies
the form, while ignorant of the substance.
These two characters furnish the mate-
rial, on the one hand for the romancer,
and on the other hand for the satirist.

If there had been no real gentlemen,
the epics, the solemn tragedies, and the
stirring tales of chivalry would have re-
mained unwritten ; and if there had been
no pretended gentlemen, the humorist
would find his occupation gone. But al-
ways these contrasted characters are on
the stage together. Simple dignity is
followed by strutting pomposity, and af-
ter the hero the braggart swaggers and
storms. So ridicule and admiration bear
rule by turns.

For the sake of convenience, it might
be well to indicate the difference by call-
ing one the gentleman, and the other
the genteelman. Below the genteelman
there is still another species. Parasites
have parasites of their own, and the
genteelman has his admiring but unsuc-
cessful imitators. I do not know the
scientific name for an individual of this
species, but I believe that he calls him-
self a " gent."

The process of evolution, as we know,
is a continual play between the organ-
ism and the environment. It is a cosmic

710

The Evolution of the Gentleman.

game of " Pussy wants a corner." Each
creature wants to get into a snug corner
of its own ; but no sooner does it find it
than it is tempted out by the prospect of
another. Then ensues a scramble with
other aspirants for the coveted position ;
and as there are never enough corners to
go around, some one must fail. Though
this is hard on the disappointed players,
the philosophers find it easy to show
that it is an admirable arrangement. If
there were enough corners to .go around,
and every one were content to stay in
the corner in which he found himself,
the game would be over. That would be
an end of progress, which, after all, most
of us, in our more energetic moods, ac-
knowledge to be worth what it costs.

We do not always find the gentleman
in his proper environment. Nature seems
sometimes like the careless nurse in the
story books who mixes the children up,
so that the rightful heir does not come
to his own. But in the long run the
type is preserved and improved.

The idea of the gentleman involves
the sense of personal dignity and worth.
He is not a means to an end : he is an
end in himself. How early this sense
arose we may not know. Professor Hux-
ley made merry over the sentimentalists
who picture the simple dignity of primi-
tive man. He had no admiration to throw
away on " the dignified and unclothed
savage sitting in solitary meditation un-
der trees." And yet I am inclined to
think that the gentleman may have ap-
peared even before the advent of tailors.
The peasants who followed Wat Tyler
sang, —

" When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then a gentleman ? "

But a writer in the age of Queen Eliza-
beth published a book in which he argued
that Adam himself was a perfect gentle-
man. He had, at least, the advantage,
dear to the theological mind, that though
affirmative proof might be lacking, it
was equally difficult to prove the nega-
tive.

As civilization advances and literature
catches its changing features, the outlines
of the gentleman grow distinct. Read
the book of Genesis, the Analects of Con-
fucius, and Plutarch's Lives. What a
portrait gallery of gentlemen of the an-
tique world ! And yet how different
each from the others !

In the book of Genesis we see Abra-
ham sitting at his tent door. Three
strangers appear. When he sees them,
he goes to meet them, and bows, and says
to the foremost, " My Lord, if now I
have found favour in thy sight, pass not
away, I pray thee, from thy servant. Let
a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and
wash your feet, and rest yourselves un-
der the tree ; and I will fetch a morsel
of bread, and comfort ye your hearts ;
after that ye shall pass on."

There may have been giants in those
days, and churls, and all manner of bar-
barians, but as we watch the strangers
resting under the oak we say, " There
were also gentlemen in those days."
How simple it all is ! It is like a single
palm-tree outlined against the desert and
the sky.

How different the Chinese gentleman !
Everything with him is exact. The dis-
ciples of Confucius are careful to tell
us how he adjusted the skirts of his robe
before and behind, how he insisted that
his mince-meat should be cut quite small
and should have exactly the right pro-
portion of rice, and that his mat must
be laid straight before he would sit on
it. Such details of deportment were
thought very important. But we forget
the mats and the mince-meat when we
read : " Three things the master had not,
— he had no prejudices, he had no ob-
stinacy, he had no egotism." And we
forget the fantastic garb and the stiff
Chinese genuflections, and come to the
conclusion that the true gentleman is as
simple-hearted amid the etiquette of the
court as in the tent in the desert, when we
hear the master saying : " Sincerity is the
way of Heaven ; the wise are the unas-

The Evolution of the Gentleman.

711

suming. It is said of Virtue that over
her embroidered robe she puts a plain
single garment."

Turn to the pages of Plutarch, where
are fixed for all time the Greek and Ro-
man ideals of the gentleman. No em-
broidered robes here, but a masculine
virtue, in a plain single garment. What
a breed of men they were, brave, force-
ful, self-contained ! No holiday gentle-
men these ! Their manners were not
veneered, but part of themselves. With
the same lofty gravity they faced life
and death. When fortune smiled there
was no unseemly exultation ; when for-
tune frowned there was no unseemly re-
pining. With the same dignity the Ro-
man rode in his triumphal chariot through
the streets and lay down to die when his
hour had come. No wonder that men
who thus learned how to conquer them-
selves conquered the world.

Most of Plutarch's worthies were
gentlemen, though there were excep-
tions. There was, for example, Cato the
Censor, who bullied the Roman youth
into virtue, and got a statue erected to
himself as the restorer of the good old
manners. Poor Plutarch, who likes to
do well by his heroes, is put to his wits'
end to know what to do with testy, patri-
otic, honest, fearless, parsimonious Cato.
Cato was undoubtedly a great man and
a good citizen ; but when we are told
how he sold his old slaves, at a bargain,
when they became infirm, and how he
left his war-horse in Spain to save the
cost of transportation, Plutarch adds,
" Whether such things be an evidence of
greatness or littleness of soul let the read-
er judge for himself." The judicious
reader will conclude that it is possible to
be a great man and a reformer, and yet
not be quite a gentleman.

When the Roman Empire was de-
stroyed the antique type of gentleman
perished. The very names of the tribes
which destroyed him have yet terrible
associations. Goths, Vandals, Huns, —
to the civilized man of the fifth and sixth

centuries these sounded like the names
of wild beasts rather than of men. You
might as well have said tigers, hyenas,
wolves. The end had come of a civili-
zation that had been the slow growth of
centuries.

Yet out of these fierce tribes, destroy-
ers of the old order, a new order was to
arise. Out of chaos and might a new
kind of gentleman was to be evolved.
The romances of the Middle Ages are
variations on a single theme, the appear-
ance of the finer type of manhood and
its struggle for existence. In the palace
built by the enchantment of Merlin were
four zones of sculpture.

" And in the lowest beasts are slaying men,
And in the second men are slaying beasts,
And on the third are warriors, perfect men,
And on the fourth are men with growing
wings."

Europe was in the second stage, when
men were slaying beasts and what was
most brutal in humanity. If the higher
manhood was to live, it must fight, and
so the gentleman appears, sword in hand.
Whether we are reading of Charlemagne
and his paladins, or of Siegfried, or of
Arthur, the story is the same. The gen-
tleman has appeared. He has come into
a waste land,

" Thick with wet woods and many a beast

therein,
And none or few to scare or chase the beast."

He comes amid savage anarchy where
heathen hordes are " reddening the sun
with smoke and earth with blood." The
gentleman sends forth his clear defiance.
All this shall no longer be. He is ready
to meet force with force ; he is ready to
stake his life upon the issue, the hazard
of new fortunes for the race.

It is as a pioneer of the new civiliza-
tion that the gentleman has " pitched

" His tent beside the forest. And he drave
The heathen, and he slew the beast, and felled
The forest, and let in the sun."

The ballads and romances chronicle
a struggle desperate in its beginning and
triumphant in its conclusion. They are

712

The Evolution of the Gentleman.

in praise of force, but it is a noble force.
There is something better, they say, than
brute force : it is manly force. The giant
is no match for the gentleman.

If we would get at the mediaeval idea
of the gentleman, we must not listen
merely to the romances as they are re-
told by men of genius in our own day.
Scott and Tennyson clothe their charac-
ters in the old draperies, but their ideals
are those of the nineteenth century ra-
ther than of the Middle Age's. Tenny-
son expressly disclaims the attempt to
reproduce the King Arthur

' ' whose name, a ghost,

Streams like a cloud, man-shaped, from moun-
tain peak,

And cleaves to cairn and cromlech still ; or him
Of Geoffrey's book, or him of Malleor's, one
Touched by the adulterous finger of a time
That hovered between war and wantonness."

When we go back and read Sir Thomas
Malory's Morte Darthur, we find our-
selves among men of somewhat different
mould from the knights of Tennyson's
idylls. It is not the blameless King Ar-
thur, but the passionate Sir Launcelot,
who wins admiration. We hear Sir Ec-
tor crying over Launcelot's body, " Ah,
Launcelot, thou wert the head of the
Christian knights. Thou wert the court-
liest knight that ever bare shield ; and
thou wert the truest friend to thy lover
that ever bestrode horse ; and thou wert
the truest lover for a sinful man that
ever loved woman ; and thou wert the
kindest man that ever strake with sword ;
and thou wert the goodliest person that
ever came among press of knights ; and
thou wert the meekest man and the gen-
tlest that ever ate in hall with ladies ; and
thou wert the sternest knight to thy mor-
tal foe that ever put spear in the rest."
We must take, not one of these quali-
ties, but all of them together, to under-
stand the gentleman of those ages when
good and evil struggled so fiercely for
the mastery. No saint was this Sir
Launcelot. There was in him no fine
balance of virtues, but only a wild tu-

mult of the blood. He was proud, self-
willed, passionate, pleasure-loving ; capa-
ble of great sin and of sublime expia-
tion. What shall we say of this gentlest,
sternest, kindest, goodliest, sinfulest, of
knights, — this man who knew no mid-
dle path, but who, when treading in peril-
ous places and following false lights, yet
draws all men admiringly to himself ?

We can only say this : he was the pro-
totype of those mighty men who were
the makers of the modern world. They
were the men who fought with Charle-
magne, and with William the Conqueror,
and with Richard ; they were the men
who " beat down the heathen, and upheld
the Christ ; " they were the men from
whom came the crusades, and the feudal
system, and the great charter. As we
read the history, we say at one moment,
"These men were mail-clad ruffians,"
and at the next, " What great - hearted
gentlemen ! "

Perhaps the wisest thing would be to
confess to both judgments at once. In
this stage of his evolution the gentleman
may boast of feats that would now be
rehearsed only in bar-rooms. This in-
dicates that the standard of society has
improved, and that what was possible
once for the nobler sort of men is now
characteristic of the baser sort. The
modern rowdy frequently appears in the
cast-off manners of the old-time gentle-
man. Time, the old-clothes man, thus fur-
nishes his customers with many strange
misfits. What is of importance is that
through these transition years there was
a ceaseless struggle to preserve the finer
types of manhood.

The ideal of the mediaeval gentleman
was expressed in the word " gallantry."
The essence of gallantry is courage ; but
it is not the sober courage of the stoic.
It is courage charged with qualities that
give it sparkle and effervescence. It is
the courage that not only faces danger,
but delights in it. What suggestions of
physical and mental elasticity are in
Shakespeare's description of the " spring-

The Evolution of the Gentleman.

713

ing, brave Plantagenet " ! Scott's lines
express the gallant spirit : —

" One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name."

Gallantry came to have another impli-
cation, equally characteristic. The knight
was gallant not only in war, but in love
also. There had come a new worship,
the worship of woman. In the Church
it found expression in the adoration of
the Madonna, but in the camp and the
court it found its place as well. Chiv-
alry was the elaborate and often fantas-
tic ritual, and the gentleman was minis-
ter at the altar. The ancient gentleman
stood alone ; the mediaeval gentleman
offered all to the lady of his love. Here,
too, gallantry implied the same overflow-
ing joy in life. If you are anxious to
have a test by which to recognize the
time when you are growing old, — so old
that imagination is chilled within you,
— I should advise you to turn to the
chapter in the Romance of King Arthur
entitled " How Queen Guenever went
maying with certain Knights of the Ta-
ble Round, clad all in green." Then
read : " So it befell in the month of May,
Queen Guenever called unto her knights
and she gave them warning that early
upon the morrow she would ride maying
into the woods and fields besides West-
minster, and I warn you that none of
you but that he be well horsed and that
ye all be clothed in green. ... I shall
bring with me ten ladies and every knight
shall have a squire and two yeomen.
So upon the morn they took their horses
with the Queen and rode on maying
through the woods and meadows in
great joy and delights."

If you cannot see them riding on, a
gallant company over the meadows, and
you hear no echoes of their laughter, and
if there is no longer any enchantment
in the vision of that time when all were
"blithe and debonair," then undoubt-
edly you are growing old. It is time to
close the romances : perhaps you may
still find solace in Young's Night

Thoughts or Pollock's Course of Time.
Happy are they who far into the seven-
ties still see Queen Guenever riding in
the pleasant month of May : these are
they who have found the true fountain of
youth.

The gentleman militant will always
be the hero of ballads and romances;
and in spite of the apostles of realism,
I fancy he has not lost his charm.
There are Jeremiahs of evolution, who
tell us that after a time men will be
so highly developed as to have neither
hair nor teeth. In that day, when the
operating dentists have ceased from
troubling, and given way to the manu-
facturing dentists, and the barbers have
been superseded by the wig-makers, it is
quite possible that the romances may
give place to some tedious department
of comparative mythology. In that day,
Chaucer's knight who " loved chevalrie,
trouthe and honour, fredom and curte-
sie," will be forgotten, though his armor
on the museum walls will be learnedly
described. But that dreadful day is still
far distant ; before it comes, not only
teeth and hair must be improved out of
existence, but a substitute must be found
for good red blood. Till that time " no
laggard in love or dastard in war " can
steal our hearts from young Lochinvar.

The sixteenth century marks an epoch
in the history of the gentleman, as in all
else. Old ideas disappear, to come again
in new combinations. Cervantes " laughs
Spain's chivalry away," and his merry
laughter echoes through all Europe. The
same hands wielded the sword and the
pen. The scholars, the artists, the poets,
began to feel a sense of personal worth,
and carried the gallant spirit of the gen-
tleman into their work. They were not
mere specialists, but men of action. The
artist was not only an instrument to give
pleasure to others, but he was himself a
centre of admiration. Out of this new
consciousness how many interesting char-
acters were produced ! There were men
who engaged in controversies as if they

714

The Evolution of the Gentleman.

were tournaments, and who wrote books
and painted pictures and carved statues,
not in the spirit of professionalism, but
as those who would in this activity en-
joy " one crowded hour of glorious life."
Very frequently, these gentlemen and
scholars, and gentlemen and artists, over-
did the matter, and were more belliger-
ent in disposition than were the warriors
with whom they began to claim equality.

To this self-assertion we owe the most
delightful of autobiographies, — that of
Benvenuto Cellini. He aspired to be
not only an artist, but a fine gentleman.
No one could be more certain of the
sufficiency of Humpty Dumpty's defini-
tion of a gentleman than was he.

If we did not have his word for it, we
could scarcely believe that any one could
be so valiant in fight and so uninterrupt-
ed in the pursuit of honor without its
interfering with his professional work.
Take, for example, that memorable day
when, escaping from the magistrates, he
makes an attack upon the household of
his enemy, Gherardo Guascanti. " I
found them at table ; and Gherardo, who
had been the cause of the quarrel, flung
himself upon me. I stabbed him in the
breast, piercing doublet and jerkin, but
doing him not the least harm in the
world." After this attack, and after
magnanimously pardoning Gherardo's
father, mother, and sisters, he says : " I
ran storming down the staircase, and
when I reached the street, I found all
the rest of the household, more than
twelve persons : one of them seized an
iron shovel, another a thick iron pipe ;
one had an anvil, some hammers, some
cudgels. When I got among them,
raging like a mad bull, I flung four or
five to the earth, and fell down with
them myself, continually aiming my dag-
ger now at one, and now at another.
Those who remained upright plied with
both hands with all their force, giving it
me with hammers, cudgels, and the anvil ;
but inasmuch as God does sometimes
mercifully intervene, he so ordered that

neither they nor I did any harm to one
another."

What fine old days those were, when
the toughness of skin matched so wonder-
fully the stoutness of heart ! One has a
suspicion that in these degenerate days,
were a family dinner - party interrupted
by such an avalanche of daggers, cudgels,
and anvils, some one would be hurt. As
for Benvenuto, he does not so much as
complain of a headache.

There is an easy, gentleman-like grace
in the way in which he recounts his in-
cidental homicides. When he is hiding
behind a hedge at midnight, waiting for
the opportunity to assassinate his ene-
mies, his heart is open to all the sweet
influences of nature, and he enjoys " the
glorious heaven of stars." He was not
only an artist and a fine gentleman, but
a saint as well, and " often had recourse
with pious heart to holy prayers." Above
all, he had the indubitable evidence of
sainthood, a halo. " I will not omit to
relate another circumstance, which is per-
haps the most remarkable that ever hap-
pened to any one,, I do so in order to
justify the divinity of God and of his
secrets, who deigned to grant me this
great favor : forever since the time of
my strange vision until now, an aureole
of glory (marvelous to relate) has rested
on my head. This is visible to every
sort of man to whom I have chosen to
point it out, but these have been few."
He adds ingenuously, " I am always able
to see it." He says, "I first became
aware of it in France, at Paris ; for the
air in those parts is so much freer from
mists that one can see it far better than
in Italy."

Happy Benvenuto with his Parisian
halo, which did not interfere with the
manly arts of self - defense ! His self-
complacency was possible only in a stage
of evolution when the saint and the as-
sassin were not altogether clearly differ-
entiated. Some one has said, " Give me
the luxuries of life, and I can get along
without the necessities." Like many of

The Evolution of the Gentleman.

715

his time, Benvenuto had all the luxuries
that belong to the character of a Chris-
tian gentleman, though he was destitute
of the necessities. An appreciation of
common honesty as an essential to a gen-
tleman seems to he more slowly devel-
oped than the more romantic sentiment
that is called honor.

The evolution of the gentleman has
its main line of progress where there is
a constant though slow advance ; but, on
the other hand, there are arrested de-
velopments, and quaint survivals, and
abortive attempts.

In each generation there have been
men of fashion who have mistaken them-
selves for gentlemen. They are unin-
teresting enough while in the flesh, but
after a generation or two they become
very quaint and curious, when consid-
ered as specimens. Each generation im-
agines that it has discovered a new va-
riety, and invents a name for it. The
dude, the swell, the dandy, the fop, the
spark, the macaroni, the blade, the pop-
injay, the coxcomb, — these are butter-
flies of different summers. There is
here endless variation, but no advance-
ment. One fashion comes after another,
but we cannot call it better. One would
like to see representatives of the differ-
ent generations together in full dress.
What variety in oaths and small talk !
What anachronisms in swords and canes
and eye-glasses, in ruffles, in collars, in
wigs ! What affluence in powders and
perfumes and colors ! But would they
" know each other there " ? The real gen-
tlemen would be sure to recognize each
other. Abraham and Marcus Aurelius
and Confucius would find much in com-
mon. Launcelot and Sir Philip Sidney
and Chinese Gordon would need no intro-
duction. Montaigne and Mr. Spectator
and the Autocrat of the Breakfast - Ta-
ble would fall iflto delightful chat. But
would a " swell " recognize a " spark " ?
And might we not expect a " dude " to
fall into immoderate laughter at the sight
of a " popinjay " ?

Fashion has its revenges. Nothing
seems so ridiculous to it as an old fash-
ion. The fop has no toleration for the
obsolete foppery. The artificial gentle-
man is as inconceivable out of his arti-
ficial surroundings as the waxen-faced
gentleman of the clothing store outside
his show window.

There was Beau Nash, for example, —
a much-admired person in his day, when
he ruled from his throne in the pump-
room in Bath. Everything was in keep-
ing. There was Queen Anne architec-
ture, and Queen Anne furniture, and
Queen Anne religion, and the Queen
Anne fashion in fine gentlemen. What
a curious piece of bricabrac this fine gen-
tleman was, to be sure ! He was not
fitted for any useful purpose under the
sun, but in his place he was quite orna-
mental, and undoubtedly very expensive.
Art was as self-complacent as if nature
had never been invented. What mul-
titudes of the baser sort must be em-
ployed in furnishing the fine gentleman
with clothes ! All Bath admired the way
in which Beau Nash refused to pay for
them. Once when a vulgar tradesman
insisted on payment, Nash compromised
by lending him twenty pounds, — which
he did with the air of a prince. So
great was the impression he made upon
his time that a statue was erected to
him, while beneath were placed the busts
of two minor contemporaries, Pope and
Newton. This led Lord Chesterfield to
write : —

" This statue placed the busts between
Adds to the satire strength,
Wisdom and wit are little seen,
But folly at full length."

Lord Chesterfield himself had nothing
in common with the absurd imitation
gentlemen, and yet the gentleman whom
he described and pretended to admire
was altogether artificial. He was the
Machiavelli of the fashionable world.
He saw through it, and recognized its
hollowness ; but such as it was it must
be accepted. The only thing was to

716

The Evolution of the Gentleman.

learn how to get on in it. " In courts
you may expect to meet connections with-
out friendships, enmities without hatred,
honor without virtue, appearances saved
and realities sacrificed, good manners
and had morals."

There is something earnestly didactic
about Lord Chesterfield. He gives line
upon line, and precept upon precept, to
his " dear boy." Never did a Puritan
father teach more conscientiously the
shorter catechism than did he the whole
duty of the gentleman, which was to
save appearances even though he must
sacrifice reality. " My dear boy," he
writes affectionately, " I advise you to
trust neither man nor woman more than
is absolutely necessaiy. Accept proffered
friendships with great civility, but with
great incredulity."

Poor little Rollo was not more strenu-
ously prodded up the steep and narrow
path of virtue than was little Philip
Stanhope up the steep and narrow path
of fashion. Worldliness made into a
religion was not without its asceticism.
" Though you think you dance well,
do not think you dance well enough.
Though you are told that you are gen-
teel, still aim at being genteeler. . . .
Airs, address, manners, graces, are of
such infinite importance and are so es-
sentially necessary to you that now, as
the time of meeting draws near, I trem-
ble for fear that I may not find you
possessed of them."

Lord Chesterfield's gentleman was a
man of the world ; but it was, after all,
a very hard and empty world. It was
a world that had no eternal laws, only
changing fashions. It had no broken
hearts, only broken vows. It was a
world covered with glittering ice, and
the gentleman was one who had learned
to skim over its dangerous places, not
caring what happened to those who fol-
lowed him.

It is a relief to get away from such a
world, and, leaving the fine gentleman
behind, to take the rumbling stagecoach

to the estates of Sir Roger de Coverley.
His is not the great world at all, and
his interests are limited to his own par-
ish. But it is a real world, and much
better suited to a real gentleman. His
fashions are not the fashions of the
court, but they are the fashions that
wear. Even when following the hounds
Sir Roger has time for friendly greet-
ings. " The farmers' sons thought them-
selves happy if they could open a gate
for the good old knight, which he re-
quited with a nod or a smile, and a kind
inquiry after their fathers and uncles."

But even dear old Roger de Cover-
ley cannot rest undisturbed as an ideal
gentleman. He belonged, after all, to a
privileged order, and there is a force at
work to destroy all social privileges. A
generation of farmers' sons must arise
not to be so easily satisfied with a kindly
nod and smile. Liberty, fraternity, and
equality have to be reckoned with. De-
mocracy has come with its leveling pro-
cesses.

" The calm Olympian height
Of ancient order feels its bases yield."

In a revolutionary period the virtues of
an aristocracy become more irritating
than their vices. People cease to attrib-
ute merit to what comes through good
fortune. No wonder that the disciples
of the older time ciy : —

" What hope for the fine-nerved humanities
That made earth gracious once with gentler
arts?"

What becomes of the gentleman in an
age of democratic equality ? Just what
becomes of every ideal when the time
has arrived for a larger fulfillment.
What is unessential drops off; what is
essential remains. Under the influence of
democracy, the word "gentleman" ceases
to denote a privilege, and comes to de-
note a character. This step in the evo-
lution of the idea is a necessary one.

When, in 1485, Caxton, printed the
Romance of King Arthur, he declared,
"I William Caxton, simple person, pre-
sent the book following, . . . which treat-

The Contributors' Club.

717

eth of noble acts, feats of arms, of chiv-
alry, prowess, hardiness, humanity, love,
courtesy and very gentleness." These
were the elements which constituted the
gentleman. What we see now is that
they might be as truly manifested in
William Caxton, simple person, as in
any of the high - born knights whose
deeds he chronicled.

Milton, in memorable words, pointed
out the transition which must take place
from the gentleman of romance to the

gentleman of enduring reality. After
narrating how, in his youth, he betook
himself " to those lofty fables and ro-
mances which recount in solemn cantos
the deeds of knighthood founded by our
victorious kings, and thence had in re-
nown through all Christendom," he says,
"This my mind gave me, that every
free and gentle spirit, without that oath,
ought to be born a knight, nor needed
to expect a gilt spur or the laying on of
a sword upon his shoulder."

S. M. Croth&rs.

THE CONTRIBUTORS' CLUB.

I WAS going downhill, feeling tired
An Expert- an<l discouraged. The land-
mentiaTlme. scape was monotonous, the
hills seemed low, and the birds sang only
occasionally in the hedges.

Suddenly it came to me how good,
how very good, everything had been to
my palate as a child. I thought how
much easier the journey would be if I
could go back just for a few minutes.

I turned quickly, retraced the few feet
of descent from the brow of the hill over
which I had come ; then I made a de-
sperate leap across the chasm of middle
life, and passed rapidly back over the
highway of time.

I stood for a moment by the enchant-
ed pool of youth, where those who sail
know not whether the boat be in the sky,
or the sky in the water, but sit watching
the reflections of themselves and their
companions entangled with the stars.

I passed through the white birches on
the bank to the further side, then along
the fields till I came to the browr house
by the river ; I did not look carefully at
the house, but I knew that the shutters
were closed. I went through the or-
chard, up the hill, climbed the fence, and
found myself at the edge of the beech
woods. There, on a stone, exactly where

I expected to find him, sat the little
brown kobold.

" Good-afternoon," said I.

" Good-afternoon," he returned plea-
santly.

" I am glad to find you here," said L

" I expected you," he answered.

" Then you know what I want ? "

" I can guess," replied he.

I sat down on a stone near him, for
my knees felt tired after my climb. The
kobold looked exactly like the picture
of him in my heart, which was taken
directly from a portrait that was in an
old book I once had.

I waited for him to speak, but as
he sat still I said, " What is it that I
want ? "

" You want checkerberries and birch
bark to taste just as they did when you
were a child."

"I do indeed," I returned. "What
else ? "

" You want to fight violets with me."

"What else?"

" You want to make a burdock basket
with a handle that won't fit on straight,
and that breaks every time you lift the
basket"

" Oh, I do," and I laughed. " What
else ? "

718

The Contributors' Club.

" You want to make a whistle out of
willow, yellow willow, in early spring
when the sap is running."

" Of course I do. What else ? "

" You want to dig flag-root, and boil
it in sugar till it is all sweet ; and then
when it is cold, but still sticky, you want
to carry it round in your pocket."

'• Yes, yes, I do. What else ? "

" You want to squeeze the blue juice
out of the spiderwort flowers and call it
ink" —

"Yes. What else?"

" Don't interrupt me so. I had n't
finished. And you want to be always
thinking that you are going to make
some ink out of pokeweed berries, so
you want to be always looking for the
berries that you think you are going to
make ink of."

" Oh yes, I understand."

" You want to eat sassafras leaves be-
cause they are sticky, and sassafras bark
and sassafras root because they smart,
and to cut spicewood because it is spicy,
and chew beech leaves because they are
sour, and suck the honey -bags of col-
umbine flowers because they are sweet,
and eat the false apple of the wild azalea
because it has no taste."

" And other things, too ? "

" Oh yes : you must eat the young roots
of early grass, and call them onions."

" Anything else ? "

" You want to make horsehair rings,
three of them, — one pure black, one a
yellowish-white, and one mixed, — fasten
them very clumsily together, and wear
the prickly knot on the inside of your
finger."

" Dear me, — yes, yes, yes."

" You want to make a doll out of the
rose of Jerusalem, with sash and bon-
net-strings of striped grass."

" Of course, and " —

" You want to squeeze the yellow juice
of a weed that grows by the stone step
on the north side of the house and put
it on your fingers to cure warts."

" Yes, I will, and " —

, " You never must kill a toad, because
if you do you will find blood in the milk
that you have for supper."

" I never will kill a toad," said I.

" You want to tell all the lady-bugs
to fly away home, because their houses
are on fire and the children alone."

" Yes, to be sure."

"You want to chew the gum of the
spruce, also the gum of cherry-trees."

" I do."

" And to eat the cheeses that grow on
marshmallows. ' '

" Yes."

" And you want to make trumpets out
of pumpkin-vine stalks, and corn-stalk
fiddles ; you can't make the fiddles ever
play, of course."

" Oh no, of course not, never."

" But you must go on making them,
just the same."

" Indeed I shall."

" You want to brew rose-water wine."

" Yes."

" And eat the seeds of sweet-fern."

" Of course."

" You must steal cinnamon sticks and
ground cinnamon and sugar, and carry
them round in a wooden pill-box."

"Must I steal them?"

" Certainly you must, a good many
times ; and then some evening when the
frogs are piping, and the sky is a green-
blue, and there is one very white star
looking at you, you must tell your mother
all about it."

" Oh — yes." After a pause I asked,
"What else?"

" Did I mention eating violets with
salt ? " inquired the kobold.

" No, you said 'fight violets.' "

" Well, you must eat them, too, some-
times with salt and sometimes with su-
gar."

" I '11 remember that. What else ? "

" Whenever you eat oysters you must
always look for a pearl, — always, no
matter whether they are stewed or raw ;
remember that, — always expect to find
a pearl."

The Contributors' Club.

719

" I will," said I, " always."

" And you must have a secret hoard."

The kobold said this impressively in a
low, hollow voice, and I asked him in a
whisper, " What of ? "

" Of a piece of shoemaker's wax, of
one big drop of quicksilver in a homoe-
opathic glass bottle, a broken awl, and
four pieces of chalk, — one piece red,
soft and crumbly, one yellow, and two
white bits of different lengths ; they must
all be so dirty that you have to scratch
them to know which is which, — you
understand that ? "

" Oh yes, I understand."

" And you must have one leather shoe-
string, a piece of red sealing-wax and one
very small, ' teenty ' bit of goldstone
sealing-wax, one piece of iridescent but-
ton-paper that crinkles when you bend
it, and a button-mould."

" What shall I do with the button-
mould?"

" Make a top, of course, with a match
for a stem."

" Kobold, should I be happy if I had
all these things ? "

" Perfectly," said he, with decision ;
" but you would n't know that you were
happy."

"Why should n't I?"

"The answer to that is a question."

" What is it ? "

" Do you know it now ? " asked he,
with his eyes suddenly turned in toward
his own nose, till I could n't tell whether
he was looking at hie or not.

UNTIL a few years ago, we were able
The Changed to revel in the proposal and
S^Proposal acceptance, and in the love
in Fiction, scenes which gradually led up
to them. There were the happy ac-
cidental meetings, the occult way one
knew when the other was in the room,
and the electro-magnetic hand-clasp, —
all fortunate precursors to a certain moon-
light night, with the soft; splashing of
the fountain, and softer music in the dis-
tance (a conservatory has long been the
favored spot). The mise en scene was

perfect ; so seemed the proposal and ac-
ceptance.

But the woman with a mission is now
upon us, the head of a large and rapidly
increasing army. With their nursing
and college settlement work, the Avises
and Marcellas of fiction have almost
thrown the proposal out of date.

Nor is it to be wondered at when the
favored replies are something like this :
" I do not know whether you will be-
lieve me or not, but, unlike other wo-
men, I have never thought of marriage."
Sometimes it is : " I do care for you,
but life means more to me than individ-
ual happiness. Marriage is for some
women, but not for me." And it is the
hard-heartedness of these modern hero-
ines which has caused the decline of the
lover on bended knee, since it is difficult
for even a novel-hero to get up grace-
fully, after a refusal, without an awk-
ward pause. He must be able at once
to " turn on his heel and stride toward
the door."

Richardson and the earlier novelists
had no refractory heroines like ours of
to-day. They were often coy and seem-
ingly indifferent, but always to be won
at the end of the fifth or seventh volume.

The priggish Sir Charles Grandisom
makes his offer first to Harriet's grand-
mother, and then humbly asks for an in-
terview in the presence of both grand-
mother and aunt ; " for neither Miss
Byron nor I can wish the absence of two
such parental relations." Through seven
volumes he is beset with all the becom-
ing doubts and fears of a modern lover,
until his " Can you, madame ? " and her
" I can, I do," close the scene.

Miss Burney's Evelina ushers in an
array of tearful and moist heroines, es-
pecially at proposal time. " The pearly
fugitives " are constantly chasing one an-
other down the cheeks of Queechy, and
of Gertrude in The Lamplighter. These
heroines do not sob, as many children
do, but utter " a succession of piercing
shrieks." When the proposal comes, and

720

The Contributors' Club.

the original " brother and sister " joke is
born, — Willie having exclaimed, " But
even then I did not dream that you would
refuse me at least a brother's claim to
your affection," and Gertrude having
cried eagerly, *' Oh, Willie, you must not
be angry with me. Let me be your sis-
ter," — we are not surprised that " a tear
started to her eye " !

In Miss Edgeworth is seen a faint
foreshadowing of modern heroines. She
is able to show with true feminine deli-
cacy their unwillingness to have love
thrust upon them. When Falconer has
at last proposed, Caroline, who is only
eighteen, listens calmly, and then delivers
herself of the following : " I am at pre-
sent happily occupied in various ways,
endeavoring to improve myself, and I
should be sorry to have my mind turned
from these pursuits."

With Miss Bronte" came the modern
treatment of the proposal, one in which
there was no tame surrender, but a fight
and struggle. This " duel of hearts "
has been followed by most of our wo-
men novelists of to-day, notably Eliza-
beth Stuart Phelps and Mary Wilkins.
" ' Come,' " says Ostrander in The Story
of Avis, " ' I am starving. Come ! '
Slowly at first, with her head bent as
if she resisted some opposing pressure,
then swiftly as if she had been drawn
by irresistible forces, then blindly like
the bird to the lighthouse, she passed the
length of the silent room, and put both
hands, the pair} p pressed together as if
they had be a j tended, into his."

No other / mce C y>velist has devoted
so much tin/. 'nan, and so little

to love-makihg.jb thi .e Eliot. Gwen-
dolen of " the ,dyi?lfc. 'jffice " makes
a close approach to «. modern woman
who never hesitates — i. .v^jular report
can be trusted — to take a hand in her
own wooing. " But can you marry ? "
" Yes ; " and we are thankful to know
that Daniel Deronda has the good grace
to say it in a low voice, a/id then goes off
to the colorless Mirah, leaving Gwendo-

len to suffer the fate of the innovator,
and become the victim of his happiness.
More fortunate is Dorothea after the
declaration of Will Ladislow : " We can
never be married." " Some time — we
might." Tito humbly asks Romola,
" May I love you ? " but Adam Bede
cries, " Dinah. I love you with my whole
heart and soul ! "

In a remarkable book recently given
to the world, the heroine is Irene Flow-
er, " in weight about one hundred and
twelve pounds. She had a heavy suit
of black hair, and in it a gold pin set
with diamonds. She wore this evening "
(the evening of the proposal) " a pale
blue satin just a little low in the neck,
short sleeves, a bouquet of pink roses
on her bosom, a diamond ring on her
finger, and pale velvet slippers." We
are told elsewhere that these were "4
on a D last." Lester Wortley proposes
to her in the following words : " I offer
myself, a pure heart, filled with love ;
one that will always love you, and never
deceive you ; one who will always sup-
port you." With this last, which is an
especially comforting thought, he closes,
and she inquires, " Mr. Wortley, do you
think that your heart would break and
your life be thwarted, were I to reject
you ? " which he answers in the follow-
ing melodramatic style : " I will not be
poetical and sickening, Miss Irene. To-
morrow at nine o'clock I expect to be ac-
cepted or rejected by you." And when
that hour came, and with it acceptance,
" rivers of delight ran through his soul."

One of the most puzzling and original
proposals in modern fiction is that of
Levin to Kitty, in Anna Kare"nina, when
he traces on the table with chalk, " w. y.
s. i. i. i. w. i. t. o. a.," which Kitty reads
without hesitation as, " When you said,
It is impossible, was it then or always ? "
and she answers with " t. I. c. n. a. d.,"
which he reads with equal facility, " Then
I could not answer differently." Cer-
tainly the traditional keen vision of the
lovers was not wanting.

THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY:
Jftaga^ine of Literature, ^cience, art, an&

VOL. LXXXL — JUNE, 1898. — No. CCCCLXXXVIIL

THE WAR WITH SPAIN, AND AFTER.

IN the summary of his chapter on
Spanish civilization, Mr. Buckle wrote :

" A people who regard the past with
too wistful an eye will never bestir them-
selves to help the onward progress ; they
will hardly helieve that progress is possi-
ble. To them antiquity is synonymous
with wisdom, and every improvement is
a dangerous innovation. In this state
Europe lingered for many centuries ; in
this state Spain still lingers. . . . Con-
tent with what has been bequeathed, they
[the Spaniards] are excluded from that
great European movement, which, first
clearly perceptible in the sixteenth cen-
tury, has ever since been steadily advan-
cing, unsettling old opinions, destroying
old follies, reforming and improving on
eveiy side, influencing even such barba-
rous countries as Russia and Turkey, but
leaving Spain untouched. . . . While Eu-
rope is ringing with the noise of intellec-
tual achievements, with which even des-
potic governments affect to sympathize,
in order that they may divert them from
their natural course, and use them as new
instruments whereby to oppress yet more
the liberties of the people ; while, amidst
this general din and excitement, the pub-
lic mind, swayed to and fro, is tossed
and agitated, — Spain sleeps on, untrou-
bled, unheeding, impassive, receiving no
impressions from \he rest of the world,
and making no impressions upon it.
There she lies, at the furthest extremity
of the continent, a huge and torpid mass,
the sole representative now remaining
of the feelings and knowledge of the

Middle Ages. And what is the worst
symptom of all, she is satisfied with her
own condition. Though she is the most
backward country in Europe, she be-
lieves herself to be the foremost."

In President Eliot's summary of the
most important contributions that the
United States has made to civilization,
he says : —

" These five contributions to civiliza-
tion — peace - keeping, religious tolera-
tion, the development of manhood suf-
frage, the welcoming of newcomers, and
the diffusion of well-being — I hold to
have been eminently characteristic of
our country, and so important that, in
spite of the qualifications and deductions
which every candid citizen would admit
with regard to them, they will ever be
held in the grateful remembrance of
mankind. They are reasonable grounds
for a steady, glowing patriotism. They
have had much to do, both as causes and
as effects, with the material prosperity
of the United States • it they are all

five essentially mor VT 'Vlbutions, be-

Jf , ibhc \%

ing triumphs of ret" , * . »"pnse, cour-
age, faith, and jv T ' passion, self-
ishness, inertnes , , and distrust.
Beneath eacl .nebe developments

there lies as' . ethical sentiment, a
strenuous moi . and social purpose. It
is for such work that multitudinous de-
mocracies are fit."

In the fertile but devastated island
that is the pathetic remnant of Spain's
dominion in the New World, these New

722

The War with Spain, and After.

World virtues have never thriven. As
for the diffusion of well-heing, Spanish
rule has been a rule of colonial oppres-
sion and of open plunder even in times
of nominal peace. As for religious tol-
eration, and confidence in manhood suf-
frage, and a welcome to newcomers, men
do not think of these things when they
say either " Cuba " or " Spain." As for
peace-keeping, not to recall the rebellion
of 1823 and subsequent disturbances, an
organized revolt was begun in 1868,
which, though formally ended in 1878
by the characteristic Spanish method of
bribing the rebel leaders, has never real-
ly ceased ; for the present revolt, which
has gone on since 1895, is only a con-
tinuation of the old struggle. By the
persistence of the insurgents, and by the
exterminating method of General Wey-
ler, one of the richest islands in the world
has been brought to starvation. A large
Spanish army has perished, and a large
population has died of hunger. In the
history of barbarities it would be hard
to find a parallel to the misery of the
colony. Spain has not been able either
to govern it respectably or to keep the
peace.1

Here, then, if Mr. Buckle's and Mr.
Eliot's summaries of the two civilizations
be accurate, is an irreconcilable difference
of civilizations, — a difference that lies
deeper than the difference between any
other two " Christian " civilizations that
are brought close together anywhere in
the world. If irreconcilable civilizations
are brought close '•uajether, there will be
a clash ; and.-^nce C jba is within a hun-

1 In summing up ( th» narrative of the loss
of Spain's other coloi*1** in the New World,
Justin Winsor says, in The Narrative and Crit-
ical History of America .(vol. viii. p. 341) :
" The Spanish colonies commenced their inde-
pendent careers under every possible disadvan-
tage. All important posts, both in church and
state, had almost invariably been given to Span-
iards. Out of six hundred and seventy-two
viceroys, captains-general, and governors who
had ruled in America since its discovery, only
eighteen had been Americans ; and there had

dred miles of our coast, at a time when
all the earth is become one community
in the bonds of commerce, a clash of
ideals and of interests has been unavoid-
able.

It is no wonder, then, that we have
had a Cuban question for more than
ninety years. At times it has disap-
peared from our politics, but it has al-
ways reappeared. Once we thought it
wise to prevent the island from winning
its independence from Spain, and there-
by, perhaps, we entered into moral bonds
to make sure that Spain governed it de-
cently. Whether we definitely contract-
ed such an obligation or not, the Cuban
question has never ceased to annoy us.
The controversies about it make a long
series of chapters in one continuous story
of diplomatic trouble. Many of our
ablest statesmen have had to deal with
it as secretaries of state and as ministers
to Spain, and not one of them has been
able to settle it. One President after
another has taken it up, and every one
has transmitted it to his successor. It
has at various times been a " plank " in
the platforms of all our political parties,
— as it was in both the party platforms
of 1896, — and it has been the subject
of messages of nearly all our Presidents,
as it was of President Cleveland's mes-
sage in December, 1896, in which he dis-
tinctly expressed the opinion that the
United States might feel forced to recog-
nize " higher obligations " than neutral-
ity to Spain. In spite of periods of ap-
parent quiet, the old trouble has always
reappeared in an acute form, and it has

been one hundred and five native bishops out
of a total of seven hundred and six. The same
system of exclusion existed in the appointments
of the presidents and judges of the Audiencias.
This injustice not only gave rise to bitter com-
plaints, but it was permanently injurious to the
colonists, because it deprived them of a trained
governing class when the need arose. Their
exclusion from intercourse with the rest of the
world had been still more injurious, and had
thrown them back both as regards material
prosperity and educational facilities."

The War with Spain, and After.

723

never been settled ; nor has there recent-
ly been any strong reason for hope that
it could be settled merely by diplomatic
negotiation with Spain. Our diplomats
have long had an experience with Span-
ish character and methods such as the
public can better understand since war
has been in progress. The pathetic in-
efficiency and the continual indirection
of the Spanish character are now appar-
ent to the world ; they were long ago ap-
parent to those who have had our diplo-
matic duties to do.

Thus the negotiations dragged on. We
were put to trouble and expense to pre-
vent filibustering, and filibustering con-
tinued in spite of us. More than once
heretofore has there been danger of in-
ternational conflict, as for instance when
American sailors on the Virginius were
executed in Cuba in 1873. Propositions
have been made to buy the island, and
plans have been formed to annex it. All
the while there have been American in-
terests in Cuba. Our citizens have owned
property and made investments there,
and done much to develop its fertility.
They have paid tribute, unlawful as well
as lawful, both to insurgents and to Span-
ish officials. They have lost property,
for much of which no indemnity has been
paid. All the while we have had a trade
with the island, important during periods
of quiet, irritating during periods of un-
rest.

The Cuban trouble is, therefore, not a
new trouble even in an acute form. It
had been moving toward a crisis for a
long time. Still, while our government
suffered these diplomatic vexations, and
our citizens these losses, and our mer-
chants these annoyances, the mass of
the American people gave little serious
thought to it. The newspapers kept us
reminded of an opera-bouffe war that was
going on, and now and then there came
information of delicate and troublesome
diplomatic duties for our minister to
Spain. If Cuba were within a hundred
miles of the coast of one of our populous

states and near one of our great ports,
periods of acute interest in its condition
would doubtless have come earlier and
oftener, and we should long ago have
had to deal with a crisis by warlike mea-
sures. Or if the insurgents had com-
manded respect instead of mere pity, we
should have paid heed to their struggle
sooner ; for it is almost an American
maxim that a people cannot govern it-
self till it can win its own independence.

When it began to be known that Wey-
ler's method of extermination was pro-
ducing want in the island, and when ap-
peals were made to American charity,
we became more interested. President
Cleveland found increasing difficulty
with the problem. Our Department of
State was again obliged to give it in-
creasingly serious attention, and a reso-
lute determination was reached by the
administration that this scandal to civi-
lization should cease, — we yet supposed
peacefully, — and Spain was informed
of our resolution. When Mr. McKinley
came to the presidency, the people, con-
scious of a Cuban problem, were yet not
greatly aroused about it. Indeed, a pre-
diction of war made a year or even six
months ago would have seemed wild and
foolish. Most persons still gave little
thought to Cuba, and there seemed a like-
lihood that they would go on indefinitely
without giving serious thought to it ; for
neither the insurgents, nor the Cuban
Junta, nor the Cuban party in the United
States, if there was such a party, com-
manded respect.

The American public was in this mood
when the battleship Maine was blown up
in the harbor of Havana. The masses
think in events, and not in syllogisms,
and this was an event. This event pro-
voked suspicions in the public mind.
The thought of the whole nation was
instantly directed to Cuba. The fate
of the sailors on the Virginius, twenty-
five years ago, was recalled. The public
curiosity about everything Cuban and
Spanish became intense. The Weyler

724

The War loith Spain, and After.

method of warfare became more gener-
ally known. The story of our long diplo-
matic trouble with Spain was recalled.
Diplomacy was obliged to proceed with
doors less securely shut. The country
watched for news from Washington and
from Madrid with eagerness. It hap-
pened to be a singularly 'quiet and even
dull time in our own political life, — a
time favorable for the concentration of
public attention on any subject that pro-
minently presented itself. The better
the condition of Cuba was understood,
the more deplorable it was seen to be ;
the more the government of the island
was examined, the wider seemed the di-
vergence between Spain's methods and
our own ; the more the diplomatic his-
tory of the case was considered, the plain-
er became Spain's purpose to brook no
interference, whether in the name of hu-
manity or in the name of friendly com-
mercial interests. The calm report of
the naval court of inquiry on the blowing
up of the Maine and Senator Proctor's
report of the condition of Cuba put the
whole people in a very serious mood.

There is no need to discuss minor and
accidental causes that hastened the rush
of events ; but such causes were not lack-
ing either in number or in influence.
Newspapers conducted by lost souls that
make merchandise of all things that in-
flame men's worst passions, a Congress
with no attractive political programme
for the next election, and a spirit of un-
rest among those classes of the people
who had not wholly recovered from the
riot in false hopes that inspired the fol-
lowers of Mr. Bryan in 1896, — these
and more made their contributions to
the rapidly rising excitement. But all
these together could not have driven us
to war if we had not been willing to
be driven, — if the conviction had not
become firm in the minds of the people
that Spanish rule in Cuba was a blot on
civilization that had now begun to bring
reproach to us ; and when the President,
who favored peace, declared it "intoler-

able," the people were ready to accept
his judgment.

It is always a most difficult art to dis-
cern, in so large a country as ours, when
a tide of public opinion is rising ; and it
is an art at which men who are most con-
tentedly engaged with their own affairs,
or who think much of other lands or of
things in other times, are not likely to ex-
cel. The undercurrents of public opin-
ion sometimes find accurate expression
in the newspapers and in Congress, and
sometimes they do not ; but there are
moods when the public temper shows it-
self in ways all its own, sweeping slowly
and strongly like an undertow beneath
the customary forms of expression ; and
it moves not always logically, but from
event to event. Now, there can no longer
be doubt that after the blowing up of the
Maine public opinion moved forward in-
stinctively to a strong pitch of indigna-
tion, impelled not only by lesser causes,
but by the institutional differences laid
down by Mr. Buckle and Mr. Eliot. It
felt its way toward the conviction that
the republic does stand for something, —
for fair play, for humanity, and for direct
dealing, — and that these things do put
obligations on us ; and the delays and
indirections of diplomacy became annoy-
ing. We rushed into war almost before
we knew it, not because we desired war,
but because we desired something to be
done with the old problem that should
be direct and definite and final. Let us
end it once for all.

Congress, it is true, in quiet times, is
likely to represent the shallows and the
passing excitements of our life rather
than its deeper moods, but there is
among the members of Congress a con-
siderable body of conservative men ; and
the vote for war was practically unani-
mous, and public opinion sustained it.
Among the people during the period
when war seemed inevitable, but had not
yet been declared, — a period during
which the Powers of Europe found time
and mind to express a hope for peace3

The War with Spain, and After.

725

— hardly a peace meeting was held by
influential men. The President and his
cabinet were known to wish longer to try
diplomatic means of averting war, but
no organized peace party came into ex-
istence. Except expressions of the hope
of peace made by commercial and eccle-
siastical organizations, no protest was
heard against the approaching action of
Congress. Many thought that war could
have been postponed, if not prevented,
but the popular mood was at least acqui-
escent, if not insistent, and it has since
become unmistakably approving.

Not only is there in the United States
an unmistakable popular approval of war
as the only effective means of restoring
civilization in Cuba, but the judgment of
the English people promptly approved it,

— giving evidence of an instinctive race
and institutional sympathy. If Anglo-
Saxon institutions and methods stand for
anything, the institutions and methods
of Spanish rule in Cuba are an abomi-
nation and a reproach. And English
sympathy is not more significant as an
evidence of the necessity of the war and
as a good omen for the future of free
institutions than the equally instinctive
sympathy with Spain that has been ex-
pressed by some of the decadent influ-
ences on the Continent ; indeed, the real
meaning of American civilization and
ideals will henceforth be somewhat more
clearly understood in several quarters of
the world.

American character will be still bet-
ter understood when the whole world
clearly perceives that the purpose of the
war is only to remove from our very doors
this cruel and inefficient piece of medi-
aevalism which is one of the two great
scandals of the closing years of the cen-
tury ; for it is not a war of conquest.
There is a strong and definite sentiment
against the annexation of Cuba, and
against our responsibility for its govern-
ment further than we are now bound to
be responsible. Once free, let it govern
itself ; and it ought to govern itself at

least as well as other Spanish- American
countries have governed themselves since
they achieved their independence.

The problems that seem likely to fol-
low the war are graver than those that
have led up to it ; and if it be too late
to ask whether we entered into it without
sufficient deliberation, it is not too soon
to make sure of every step that we now
take. The inspiring unanimity of the
people in following their leaders proves
to be as earnest and strong as it ever
was under any form of government ; and
this popular acquiescence in war puts
a new responsibility on those leaders, and
may put our institutions and our people
themselves to a new test. A change in
our national policy may change our very
character ; and we are now playing with
the great forces that may shape the fu-
ture of the world — almost before we
know it.

Yesterday we were going about the pro-
saic tasks of peace, content with our own
problems of administration and finance,
a nation to ourselves, — " commercials,"
as our enemies call us in derision. To-
day we are face to face with the sort of
problems that have grown up in the
management of world-empires, and the
policies of other nations are of intimate
concern to us. Shall we still be content
with peaceful industry, or does there yet
lurk in us the adventurous spirit of our
Anglo-Saxon forefathers ? And have we
come to a time when, no more great en-
terprises awaiting us at home, we shall
be tempted to seek them abroad ?

The race from which we are sprung
is a race that for a thousand years has
done the adventurous and outdoor tasks
of the world. The English have been
explorers, colonizers, conquerors of con-
tinents, founders of states. We ourselves,
every generation since we came to Amer-
ica, have had great practical enterprises
to engage us, — the fighting with Indi-
ans, the clearing of forests, the war for
independence, the construction of a gov-

726

The War with Spain, and After.

ernment, the extension of our territory,
the pushing backward of the frontier, the
development of an El Dorado (which
the Spaniards owned", but never found),
the long internal conflict about slavery,
a great civil war, the. building of rail-
roads, and the compact unification of a
continental domain. These have been as
great enterprises and as exciting, coming
in rapid succession, as any race of men
has ever had to engage it, — as great
enterprises for the play of the love of
adventure in the blood as our kinsmen
over the sea have had in the extension
and the management of their world-em-
pire. The old outdoor spirit of the An-
glo - Saxon has till lately found wider
scope in our own history than we are apt
to remember.

But now a generation has come to
manhood that has had no part in any
great adventure. In politics we have
had difficult and important tasks, in-
deed, but they have not been exciting,
— the reform of the civil service and of
the system of currency, and the improve-
ment of municipal government. These
are chiefly administrative. In a sense
they are not new nor positive tasks,
but the correction of past errors. In
some communities politics has fallen into
the hands of petty brigands, and in oth-
ers into those of second-rate men, partly
because it has offered little constructive
work to do. Its duties have been rou-
tine, regulative duties ; its prizes, only a
commonplace distinction to honest men,
and the vulgar spoil of office to dishon-
est ones. The decline in the character
of our public life has been a natural re-
sult of the lack of large constructive op-
portunities. The best equipped men of
this generation have abstained from it,
and sought careers by criticism of the
public servants who owe their power to
the practical inactivity of the very men
who criticise them. In literature as well
we have well-nigh lost the art of construc-
tive writing, for we work too much on
indoor problems, and content ourselves

with adventures in criticism. It is note
worthy that the three books which have
found most readers, and had perhaps the
widest influence on the masses of this gen-
eration, are books of Utopian social pro-
grammes (mingled with very different
proportions of truth), by whose fantastic
philosophy, thanks to the dullness of the
times, men have tried seriously to shape
our national conduct, — Progress and
Poverty, Looking Backward, and Coin's
Financial School. Apostolic fervor, ro-
mantic dreaming, and blatant misinfor-
mation have each captivated the idle-
minded masses, because their imagina-
tions were not duly exercised in their
routine toil. It has been a time of social
reforms, of the " emancipation " of wo-
men, of national organizations of chil-
dren, of societies for the prevention of
minor vices and for the encouragement
of minor virtues, of the study of genealo-
gy, of the rise of morbid fiction, of jour-
nals for " ladies," of literature for babes,
of melodrama on the stage because we
have had melodrama in life also, — of crit-
icism and reform rather than of thought
and action. These things all denote a
lack of adventurous opportunities, an in-
door life such as we have never before
had a chance to enjoy ; and there are
many indications that a life of quiet may
have become irksome, and may not yet
be natural to us. Greater facts than
these denote a period also of peace and
such well-being as men oi our race never
before enjoyed, — sanitary improve-
ments, the multiplication and the devel-
opment of universities, the establishment
of hospitals, and the application of be-
nevolence to the whole circle of human
life, — such a growth of good will as we
had come to think had surely made war
impossible.

Is this dream true? Or is it true
that with a thousand years of adventure
behind us we are unable to endure a life
of occupations that do not feed the im-
agination ? After all, it is temperament
that tells, and not schemes of national

The War with Spain, and After.

727

policy, whether laid down in Farewell
Addresses or in Utopian books. No
national character was ever shaped by
formula or by philosophy ; for greater
forces than these lie behind it, — the
forces of inheritance and of events. Are
we, by virtue of our surroundings and in-
stitutions, become a different people from
our ancestors, or are we yet the same race
of Anglo-Saxons, whose restless energy
in colonization, in conquest, in trade, in
" the spread of civilization," has carried
their speech into every part of the world,
and planted their habits everywhere ?

Within a week such a question, which
we had hitherto hardly thought seriously
to ask during our whole national exist-
ence, has been put before us by the first
foreign war that we have had since we
became firmly established as a nation.
Before we knew the meaning of foreign
possessions in a world ever growing more
jealous, we have found ourselves the cap-
tors of islands in both great oceans ; and
from our home-staying policy of yester-
day we are brought face to face with
world-wide forces in Asia as well as in
Europe, which seem to be working, by
the opening of the Orient, for one of the
greatest changes in human history. Un-
til a little while ago our latest war dis-
patches came from Appomattox. Now
our latest dispatches (when this is writ-
ten) come from Manila. The news from
Appomattox concerned us only. The
news from Manila sets every statesman
and soldier in the world to thinking new
thoughts about us, and to asking new ques-
tions. And to nobody has the change
come more unexpectedly than to our-
selves. Has it come without our know-
ing the meaning of it ? The very swift-
ness of these events and the ease with
which they have come to pass are matter
for more serioife thought than the unjust

rule of Spain in Cuba, or than any tasks
that have engaged us since we rose to
commanding physical power.

The removal of the scandal of Spain's
control of its last American colony is
as just and merciful as it is pathetic,

— a necessary act of surgery for the
health of civilization. Of the two dis-
graceful scandals of modern misgovern-
ment, the one which lay within our cor-
rection will no longer deface the world.
But when we have removed it, let us
make sure that we stop; for the Old
World's troubles are not our troubles,
nor its tasks our tasks, and we should
not become sharers in its jealousies and
entanglements. The continued progress
of the race in the equalization of op-
portunity and in well-being depends on
democratic institutions, of which we, un-
der God, are yet, in spite of all our
shortcomings, the chief beneficiaries and
custodians. Our greatest victory will
not be over Spain, but over ourselves,

— to show once more that even in its
righteous wrath the republic has the virtue
of self-restraint. At every great emer-
gency in our history we have had men
equal to the duties that faced us. The
men of the Revolution were the giants of
their generation. Our civil war brought
forward the most striking personality of
the century. As during a period of peace
we did not forget our courage and effi-
ciency in war, so, we believe, during a
period of routine domestic politics we
have not lost our capacity for the lar-
gest statesmanship. The great merit of
democracy is that, out of its multitudes,
who have all had a chance for natural
development, there arise, when occasion
demands, stronger and wiser men than
any class - governed societies have ever
bred.

728

The Uncertain Factors in Naval Conflicts.

THE UNCERTAIN FACTORS IN NAVAL CONFLICTS.

THE outbreak of war has filled our
people with forebodings as to the possi-
ble result of a naval conflict, and in the
mind of the non-technical citizen the bat-
tleship has become almost the synonym
for disaster. This huge machine is con-
sidered uncertain, unwieldy, and unsafe,
and the friends of our sailors are await-
ing anxiously the experiments which must
determine its place in the system of na-
tional defense. When a landsman, or
even a sailor of the old navy, steps on
board a modern battleship, he finds him-
self in an unknown country. The crew
is probably scattered and hidden away
in small compartments, and a few for-
bidding guns look out at the visitor from
behind heavy masses of metal ; altogether
there is a decided air of unfriendliness
which leaves him depressed and uncer-
tain. It is the unknownness, like that
which strikes a lad upon entering a vast
forest.

No nation has had really decisive prac-
tical experience with modern weapons at
sea, and we have proceeded upon theory
as invention after invention has been
added to our resources. The past gen-
eration has witnessed a complete revolu-
tion in the manufacture of guns, armor,
machinery, and ships. Those, therefore,
who have not learned the naval profes-
sion have a natural lack of confidence.
The newspapers have contained many
illustrations of terrific conflicts, in which
ships have been drawn crashing into one
another, and plunging into the depths,
carrying men and guns down with them.
One of the pictorial weeklies has gone
so far as to represent a battleship as a
huge sphinx. Only a few months ago,
a Japanese periodical gave us a picture
of the battle of the Yalu in a cross-
section of the sky, air, water, and earth.
Bombs were bursting in the air, ships
were plunging into the water, and men

in submarine armor were hacking at one
another with battle-axes on the bottom
of the sea.

Something like this picture, it would
seem, must be present in the minds of
many over - anxious people, no doubt
strongly impressed upon them by the dis-
asters which have occurred to warships
during the past few years. The ill-fated
Captain which capsized in the British
Channel, the Victoria sunk by collision,
and lately the Maine have partly de-
stroyed our faith in every floating thing
made of iron or steel. People forget
that about the time the Captain was cap-
sized the English wooden sailing vessel
Eurydice suffered the same fate off the
Isle of Wight ; that her sister ship left
the West Indies never to be heard of
again ; that although the Victoria was
sunk by a ram, so also was the wooden
frigate Cumberland when struck by the
Merrimac ; and that the end of the Maine
was paralleled by that of the Albemarle.
We have lost our terror of wooden sail-
ing vessels through centuries of use and
the traditional reliability of the hearts of
oak.

There is really no essential differ-
ence, as an element of danger, between
wood and metal when properly used. A
wooden pail and an iron kettle will float
equally well if they displace the same
amount of water ; and if they have holes
of the same size punched below the wa-
ter-line they will sink with equal rapidity,
and will carry the same weights down
with them. The only difference in the
two cases is the element of time ; but
with the same reserve of buoyancy this
difference is reduced to a minimum. The
complexity of a ship's construction and
the enormous increase in the power of
our weapons account in a large measure
for the uncertainty felt throughout our
own country, and the curiosity in all other

The Uncertain Factors in Naval Conflicts.

729

parts of the world to see how the new
things are going to work in skillful hands.
It is a sad fate which forces the latest
builder of a navy to make a trial of its
ships. Humanity might be better off if
the problem were never solved, and if we
could go on for centuries building upon
theory.

Have our doubts any justification ?
Have the modern guns and torpedoes in-
creased the chances of procuring that
hole below the water-line which is thought
to be almost certain to send a ship to
the bottom ? These are questions which,
when this is written,1 are waiting for an-
swers. At this stage of our affairs it is
hazardous to predict, as a battle may
come quickly enough to prove the un-
doing of one who attempts to foretell its
results ; yet there is much less cause for
uneasiness than we are led to believe.
Our vessels are not the death-traps that
they are often thought to be. The re-
sults will depend much upon the class of
ships engaged.

We are not quite so uninformed as
might at first thought be supposed, for
our theories have been based upon the
experience of four wars since the intro-
duction of iron and steel for ship-building
purposes. Our own civil war with its nu-
merous examples of the monitor in action,
the battle of Lissa between the Italians
and Austrians, the battles off the South
American coast between Chile and Peru,
and lastly the decisive action near the
mouth of the Yalu River afford a suffi-
cient basis of judgment on many points.
One thing we know well, and that is the
absolute uselessness of wooden hulls as
opposed to iron and steel. One large bat-
tleship of the latest construction would
have been fatal to the whole of both
fleets at Trafalgar, and one modern com-
merce-destroyer* could probably have
swept from the sea the entire commerce
of England during Nelson's time. The
experience of our war and of that be-
tween Chile and Peru has taught us how
1 April 30.

to design a turret and to protect the
men behind the guns. We have learned,
also, the fearlessness of trained men when
cooped up in boxes of iron and steel.
The battle of the Yalu has demonstrated
that battleships with heavy armor are
not easily sent to the bottom even when
attacked by much superior force, and
that cruisers and gunboats are in great
danger when carried into fleet action.
As might have been supposed, the splin-
ters and fire from all woodwork above
the water-line have proved trying to the
crew even of a battleship.

Naval vessels may be divided into
four classes : battleships, capable of mak-
ing an attack and of taking heavy blows ;
cruisers, whose chief function is block-
ade duty and commerce-destroying, but
which would not stand a very heavy fire ;
armed merchant ships, employed as scouts
and patrols ; and finally, torpedo boats
and destroyers, exclusively for offense,
having no protection whatever against
even the smaller rapid-fire guns. It is
not to be doubted that all these ships
would be carried fearlessly into action,
if it seemed advisable to the commander-
in-chief, but prudence would remand all
vulnerable craft to the rear or to points
within easy reach of a safe harbor. The
chief reliance must necessarily be placed
on ships built especially for the line of
battle, and we may well consider what
is likely to be their fate when opposed
by vessels of their own class.

There are three types of heavy fight-
ing vessels in our navy : the harbor
defense monitor, capable of service in
smooth water ; the coast-line battleship,
for coast defenses ; and the sea-going
battleship, which can handle its guns in
a fairly heavy sea. None of these have
a speed exceeding sixteen or seventeen
knots, the principal differences among
the three classes being in the height of
the guns above the water-line, and the
capacity to maintain their highest speed
in rough water. The Iowa, as the best of
its class, is our only completed example

730

The Uncertain Factors in Naval Conflicts.

of a sea-going battleship, and she may
be taken as a type. She has been de-
scribed as " a vast honeycomb of steel."
Doubts have been expressed as to the
stability of this honeycomb under the
shock of a heavy projectile. Writers
who have had no experience on the sea
are likely to forget the heavy shock which
the hulls of all our ships have already
withstood in firing their own guns. In
fact, there is not much difference be-
tween the jar to the turret and its ma-
chinery from the reaction of a twelve-
inch shell and that resulting from a blow.

The Iowa carries forty-six guns, two
more than the rating of our old Constitu-
tion, and, like that vessel, is among the
first of a new type. Four twelve-inch
guns are mounted near the ends of the
ship in steel turrets fifteen inches thick,
and four eight-inch guns are placed on
each side in smaller steel turrets six
inches thick. These turrets have steel
covers and are like in verted cheese-boxes,
with holes for the muzzles of the guns,
nearly all of which are fully twenty-five
feet above the water. The other guns
are of smaller calibre, of the rapid-firing
class. Four Gatling guns are mounted
on platforms on the single mast, called
the fighting-tops. They are placed high
in the air for the purpose of delivering
a plunging fire upon the decks of an op-
ponent. While the Constitution fired a
broadside weighing about seven hundred
pounds, the Iowa is capable of dischar-
ging forty-five hundred and sixty pounds
in one broadside. If we reckon the total
weight of metal which can be thrown
by the Iowa in the time required by the
Constitution to fire a broadside, we have
not far from nine thousand pounds.

A feature of the modern gun will
doubtless be its accuracy of aim. The
guns of the first monitor had the ordi-
nary sights, and the men had to look out
through the port-holes of a revolving tur-
ret to find the enemy. We might say
they often fired " on the wing," with very
indefinite notions of the range and the

briefest instant for training the guns.
The Iowa's turrets have small boxes
projecting above the covers for lookouts.
Horizontal slits are cut near the tops of
these boxes, giving a view around the
horizon. The guns themselves are aimed
by means of cross-hairs in telescopes,
and fired by electric buttons which are
instantaneous in their action. Once the
cross-hair is on the object, the projectile
may be sent on its way at a velocity of
two thousand feet a second before the
roll of the ship has time to impair its
accuracy. The range is found by means
of instruments set up as far apart as
possible, which make the ship the base
line of a triangle having the target for
its apex. In case of failure of the in-
struments the range may be found by
trial of the rapid-fire guns, which deliver
from six to twenty shots a minute.

While the ship is built for her guns, a
great number of machines are required
to bring them into action and to make
them effective as offensive weapons.
There are two powerful engines for
propulsion, many machines for auxiliary
purposes in the engine and fire rooms,
and other smaller machines for steering
the ship, turning the turrets, hoisting the
ammunition, and ventilating and light-
ing the compartments. One of the main
objects in the design is to provide for
the protection of all these machines which
constitute the vitals of a 'ship, and to en-
able her, in case her guns are crippled,
to ram or to get out of the way. A
very good idea of this protection would
be obtained by imagining all the upper
works removed down to the deck three
feet above the water-line. An inverted
box, about one hundred and fifty feet
long and seventy-two feet broad, would
be found, made of fourteen inches of
steel on the sides, twelve inches on the
ends, and two and three quarters on the
top, constituting a huge house containing
all the machinery whose derangement
might prove disastrous. In the living
space above this iron box are placed

The Uncertain Factors in Naval Conflicts.

731

various rapid-fire guns with five -inch
steel armor on the sides to protect the
men from small -arm fire. The four-
teen - inch armor on the sides extends
four or five feet below the water - line
for the more effective protection of the
hull between wind and water. The tur-
rets communicate with the magazines by
means of heavy steel tubes extending
to the armored deck. In addition to
all this armor there is a steel tower or
lookout, placed high above the batteries,
from which the commanding officer may
con the ship and direct her movements,
communicating, through a tube seven
inches thick, with all important points
below the water-line. About eighteen
hundred tons of coal are carried, to en-
able the ship to keep the sea for a rea-
sonable period. The spread of water in
case a shot penetrates near the water-
line is prevented by placing the coal in
thirty separate water-tight compartments
or rooms. For the same purpose, the
subdivision of all parts of the hull below
the water-line is carried out with equal
minuteness.

All these constructions have proceed-
ed along the line of theory, as our na-
val officers have pictured in their minds
the contingencies likely to arise in ac-
tion ; but it is hard to believe that prac-
tical experience will justify any very
vital changes. The batteries may be re-
arranged and increased, the guns may
be reduced in size, and better protection
may be given to the men ; still, the ships
will be substantially the same. There is
no reason to think that we are less skill-
ful in engineering applied to warfare
than in engineering in its many appli-
cations for peace. For a generation we
have designed steam-boilers, bridges,
ships, and buildings upon theory, and
few great disasters have followed when
the laws of science have been faithfully
observed. Technical men are not more
afraid of a boiler which carries two hun-
dred pounds of steam than of one which
carries only twenty. The same factor

of safety is provided in both cases, and
both boilers are reliable in service. In
fact, we have found high-pressure boil-
ers the more reliable, as greater care has
been taken in their design and construc-
tion. The same thing may be said of
the higher power guns, and we can fire
a shot weighing half a ton with as much
safety as our forefathers could fire a shot
weighing twenty-four pounds. Hence it
would seem unreasonable to expect such
disastrous results as we are sometimes
led to anticipate. The battle of the Yalu
showed that an armored ship could go
into action, suffer a terrific fire, and still
have the ability to steam out of action
and proceed to a place of safety.

It is almost certain to be the small
things which give trouble under stress.
Take the different important elements
of the Iowa, for instance, and let us see
what are likely to be the difficulties in
store for our officers and men. The
first thing which presents itself is the
complicated system by which the cap-
tain gives his oi'ders to the divisions un-
der his command. The conning-tower
contains speaking-tubes to the engine-
rooms, the magazines, the turrets, the
steering-room, and the guns mounted
separately. There is, besides, a central
station below the water-line communicat-
ing with these compartments, and con-
nected by a single tube within easy reach
of the commanding officer. There are
also telephone connections with all parts,
and a system of mechanical bell-pulls to
direct the motion of the engines. The
cutting of one of these tubes or wires
would bring another, or reserve, into use,
and the cutting of them all would throw
the conning-tower out of action. But
even this would not necessarily impair
the fighting efficiency, as the central sta-
tion below the conning-tower would still
be available. If worse came to worst, a
system of communication could be estab-
lished by stationing a line of men along
the berth deck. There would also be at
hand, for directing the engineers, bell-

732

The Uncertain Factors in Naval Conflicts.

pulls in the pilot-house, on the bridge,
and at the steering-wheels aft. It will
readily be seen that while the destruction
of all means of communication would
seriously hamper the ship, it would not
follow that she must retreat or even
go out of action. Experience with the
Huascar, a monitor belonging to the
Peruvian navy, has proved this. This
little ship fought two battleships for
several hours after her conning-tower
had been practically destroyed. In the
fight between the Monitor and the Mer-
rimac, the former's speaking-tube con-
necting the conning-tower with the other
parts of the ship was broken early in
the action, and yet it was the Merrimac
which had to retreat.

The derangement of machinery pre-
sents much greater difficulty, and an
accident to even a small element might
cause the loss of a ship, by placing her
at the mercy of a ram or a torpedo.
The propelling machinery and the boil-
ers are below the water-line. They are
very substantially built, and it seems
doubtful if they are more likely to give
out at so critical a time as a sea-fight
than in stress of heavy weather. As a
matter of course, greater chances would
be taken in the former case, and the en-
gines might be forced to their utmost at
times. The danger from shot is not so
serious as the liability to the development
of hidden defects under high tension,
and the lack of reliable communication
among the engineers and firemen, shut
off from one another in small water-tight
compartments. Almost all conceivable
contingencies, however, have been pro-
vided for.

The steering machinery also is entire-
ly below the water-line, and is of a type
with which we have had much practical
experience. The eight-inch turrets are
turned by steam-engines so near the
ship's bottom that a shot could not pos-
sibly disturb them. The same may be
said of the hydraulic machinery which
turns the turrets containing the twelve-

inch guns. The eight-inch guns can be
turned by hand as well. The only acci-
dent likely to happen is the disturbance
of the gearing, due to the impact of a
heavy shot. Even if the turrets could
not be turned, the guns could be fought
by turning the ship. The ammunition is
hoisted by electricity, with a reserve of
hand power. The electric current is pro-
vided by dynamos, of which there are
four, forming a very large reserve. A
breakage or short circuit in the wire
would plunge the lower part of the ship
into darkness but for the dim glow of
oil lamps or candles.

This array of machinery would be
disheartening if we did not know that
every machine is in the hands of trained
men, whose practical experience will go
far toward securing safety and prompt-
ness in action, and eliminating the dan-
ger of breakdowns. Up to this time
the examples which may be cited as evi-
dence are few, but we may be sure that
our men will prove equal to the require-
ments of the occasion. The battle of
the Yalu is inconclusive, on account of
the lack of intelligence with which the
ships on the Chinese side were handled.
Only those ships not designed for fight-
ing in fleet were destroyed by the Jap-
anese.

It is an axiom to say that with equal-
ly good ships on both sides the result of
a fight will depend upon the steadiness,
the intelligence, and the training of the
men. After all, it is they who form the
chief factor in these days as they did in
the past, when our weapons and ships
were of a more elementary type. The
ability and bravery of our seamen cannot
be questioned. One of the finest episodes
in history is the sinking of the Cumber-
land at Hampton Roads. Her crew went
down firing the guns until the ship was
submerged, and the flag was never low-
ered. In calculating the chances of vic-
tory we must take into account the dis-
positions and character of our opponents.
Any deficiency in their mechanical know-

The Uncertain Factors in Naval Conflicts.

733

ledge and skill is certain to invite defeat.
Bravery goes for naught in the presence
of machinery, if a people be hampered
by tradition and methods belonging to the
Middle Ages. Evidence for the present
case may be gathered from the behavior
of the descendants of the Spaniards in
South America. The machinery of their
ships has always suffered except in the
hands of foreign engineers, principally
Scotch and English, hired for the pur-
pose.

That they have courage, when they
are cornered, is undoubted. In the war
between Chile and Peru, the Huascar
made herself famous in two naval bat-
tles, in which was exhibited the splendid
bravery of the Spaniards on both sides.
She had a small turret five or six inches
thick, and side armor of three or four
inches. She went down to Iquique un-
der a German captain named Grau, who
found the Chilean ship Esmeralda in
the harbor, an old-style wooden frigate,
not at all adapted to fighting a monitor.
The action began at long range, no shot
taking effect, however, until the vessels
were close together. Early in the fight
three of the boilers of the Chilean ex-
ploded, and very nearly disabled her.
A shot passed through the engine-room,
exploded there, and completely destroyed
the machinery, so that the ship had no
motive power thereafter. Of course the
men suffered meanwhile, but the ship
made no pretense of surrendering. The
Huascar endeavored to ram the Esme-
ralda, and struck her a glancing blow
with no serious effect. But while the
two ships were in contact, the Chilean
commander, Arturo Pratt, calling to his
men to follow him, leaped on board the
Huascar. Only one man was able to
join him before the ships separated.
Captain Grau called to him to surrender,
saying that he did not want to kill a
gallant man. As Captain Pratt shot one
of the crew, both he and his man were
killed. The Huascar made another at-
tempt to ram, and was boarded by the

third officer of the Esmeralda, followed
by six or seven men. They too were
swept from the deck. A third attempt
to ram was successful, and the Esmeral-
da went down, with her men cheering
and her flag still flying. A few mouths
later the Huascar was captured by two
ironclads, after nearly all her officers and «
crew had been killed. When the Chilean
officer came on board to take possession
of her, he found her chief engineer open-
ing a sea-valve in the engine-room, with
the intention of sinking the ship.

The distinction between those men
and ours is not one of bravery, but one
of mechanical knowledge and force, and
these seem likely to be the determining
factors in the present war. Accidents
are most common with men who have no
mechanical foresight and no steadiness
in the handling of machinery and guns.

This fact was very plainly exemplified
after the destruction of the Alabama. A
nine-inch shell from the Alabama struck
the Kearsarge in the sternpost and lodged
there without exploding. It should have
torn the stern out of the ship, and the
struggle would have ended otherwise.
The failure to explode must be attributed
mainly to lack of care of the fuses on
the part of the Alabama's crew. A sec-
tion of the sternpost containing the shell
was subsequently sawed out and sent to
the Naval Academy to serve as a living
example to our young officers.

There is another consideration which
distinguishes modern warfare from that
in the days of the sailing navy, and that
is the coal supply. A ship can no longer
keep the sea for an unlimited time, and
we bid fair to acquire experience in the
method of providing for our steamers at
a distance from their coaling stations.
As many indefinite notions upon this
subject are held by our people, an ex-
ample may be taken from the navy in
time of peace. Just after the Baltimore
affair at Valparaiso, the Charleston was
ordered from Shanghai to Honolulu,
and upon reaching the latter place found

734

The Uncertain Factors in Naval Conflicts.

orders to proceed to Valparaiso. She
took on eight hundred tons of coal, which
was sufficient, under ordinary circum-
stances, to carry her five or six thousand
miles. She left Honolulu and headed
for Callao, but about three days out she
struck a very heavy gale of wind dead
ahead. After steaming for ten days
against this wind and a tremendous sea
she was obliged to put in to San Diego,
California, with coal for only one day's
steaming left. The distance actually
covered was a little more than two thou-
sand miles. It may readily be seen from
this that the contingency of wind and
weather cannot be taken into account
when leaving port, and that a fleet would
find the question of coal a very serious
one indeed. The difficulty of coaling at
sea is so great that ships or fleets would
probably be helpless, if taken more than
twenty-five hundred miles from the base
of supply, unless an enemy's port could
be captured or a place in quiet waters
could be found where the coal might be
transferred. A few commerce-destroy-
ers have large bunker capacity, and would
be effective across the Atlantic, but the
experiment has never been tried.

The next important consideration is
the facility for docking and repairs in
case of damage to hull or machinery.
A great part of this work can be done
on board ship, with the class of men
we now provide for our navy ; but any
heavy repairs would inevitably involve
the proximity of a navy yard, a repair
station, and a dock. The success of our
ships in stress of weather and in their
general reliability is a proof that we have
little to fear in comparison with other
nations, and especially with nations hav-
ing no mechanical ability. No device
has yet been able to cope with the foul-
ing of an iron ship's bottom at sea. We
can send divers down to scrape off the
barnacles, which at once begin to grow
again, and in a few months seriously re-
duce the speed.

While it seems probable that our bat-

tleships would be able to make a vigor-
ous and effective attack, and to take
heavy blows without fear, the really un-
certain elements in modern naval war-
fare are the torpedo and the ram. It is
scarcely to be doubted that a ship would
sink if pierced below the water-line by
either. Actual experience, however, has
given us few data upon the use of these
weapons between ships in motion. There
is a record of ships at anchor destroyed
by torpedoes, but the two cases are not
the same. The Chilean ironclad Blan-
co Encalada was sunk in the harbor of
Caldera by a Whitehead torpedo fired
from the torpedo boat Almirante Lynch.
Her water - tight doors had not been
closed, and her crew is said to have been
asleep when the torpedo boats came into
the harbor. At any rate, she went down
without having made any attempt to get
out of the way. Very few guns were
fired. The Albemarle was sunk at her
anchorage on a dark night. The Aqui-
daban was destroyed by night in Santa
Catharina Bay.

All these, however, are cases of ships
lying at anchor without picket boats, and
we have nothing to tell us what torpedo
boats can accomplish against battleships
in motion or at anchor surrounded by
proper scouts. They may prove to be-
more -dangerous in imagination than in
reality. At best they are frail structures
in which everything is sacrificed to speed.
Even a voyage across the Atlantic is
perilous, and they are of no use whatever
unless accompanied by a coal supply.
The protection against torpedo boats is
provided by a number of rapid-fire guns,
and when we consider that one shot
would be likely to destroy the motive
power of one of these little crafts we can
understand what a slender chance she
would have if discovered. The Iowa
could fire at least one hundred and
twenty shots per minute on each broad-
side, and could thus encircle the ship
with a shower of projectiles delivered
with great accuracy of aim. Is it un*

The Uncertain Factors in Naval Conflicts.

735

warrantable to believe that our ships will
scarcely find torpedo boats a grave ele-
ment of danger ? They undoubtedly
create a feeling of nervousness and ap-
prehension on a battleship, only exceed-
ed by that on the torpedo boats, whose
sole defense against large vessels is their
speed. The stake in men, time, and
money is far greater for the former, but
the risk is almost prohibitive for the lat-
ter. In fleet action, such a small vessel
would be like a small boy who has in-
terfered in a street fight among men.
A fleet of torpedo boats could, however,
wait beyond the range of the guns, and
come up to destroy an enemy whose gun
fire had been silenced.

The place of the ram cannot be stated
definitely from past experience. Its use
will probably be confined to the delivery
of a death-blow after an antagonist is
disabled. While one ship may attempt
to ram, the other may have equal facility
in avoiding the blow. Besides this, the
torpedo, with which every battleship is
armed, acts as an efficient deterrent. Our
battleships are provided with four or six
torpedo tubes from which automobile tor-
pedoes may be fired. It seems likely
that these would be in place, ready for
use, in case two ships were very close
together. The danger from their pre-
mature explosion, if struck by a shot,
would be likely to keep them below the
water-line until occasion for use arose.
It is reported that the Chinese actually
fired their torpedoes into the water, and
left them to wander aimlessly around,
rather than to trust them in the tubes,
where they were exposed to rapid-fire
guns.

The subdivision of the ship below the
water-line is made with great minuteness,
and its effectiveness in preventing the
entrance of a larg>e quantity of water de-
pends upon the prompt closing of the
water-tight doors. These doors must be
closed upon the slightest indication of
danger, and the crew must be thoroughly
trained in the care of apparatus required

to make them tight. The penalty of
carelessness is well understood. One
needs only to read the records of the
marine insurance companies to establish
the fact that water-tight bulkheads have
saved many ships that would otherwise
have been lost. It is still within the
memory of those who cross the Atlantic
that the Arizona ran into an iceberg and
had the greater part of her bow torn off,
but that the ship made her port without
serious apprehension on the part of her
captain. A few years ago, the officers of
the Hartford, lying in Valparaiso, saw a
Chilean torpedo boat, going at full speed,
accidentally ram a large ironclad. The
bow was doubled up on itself and the
hull badly torn, but no great amount of
water entered, and the boat easily made
her landing. There are many records
of grounding where the bottom-plates
have been pierced without seriously en-
dangering the safety of the ship. The
use of wood does not give us immunity
from accident and its results, and we are
prone to exaggerate the faults of metal.
No wooden vessel could possibly have re-
mained afloat after a collision like that
of the Arizona, and we are but too fa-
miliar with the stories of pumps going
for days in a slowly settling ship.

The Chinese war, while not to be
taken as reliable evidence, affords some
little information on the subject of rapid-
fire guns. The deck of a battleship
would probably be swept by a torrent of
small shot. The fire from the Gatling
guns in the fighting-tops of the Iowa
would quickly drive the men from the
upper deck of an antagonist. If this tor-
rent were directed at the openings around
the heavy guns, it might render the inside
of the turrets very uncomfortable. The
turret of the Huascar was cleaned out
three times by the fire from the Chilean
ships, and one of her officers was struck
by a shell entering a gun-port. A shot
had previously penetrated the five inches
of metal and disabled one of the guns.
An accident to the Iowa is exceedingly

736

The Uncertain Factors in Naval Conflicts.

unlikely, as there is hardly a gun afloat
which could penetrate her steel armor
under ordinary circumstances of an ac-
tion at sea.

The forward and after parts of a bat-
tleship contain nothing of vital impor-
tance above the water-line, and therefore
are not protected by armor. A three-
foot thickness of corn pith is packed in
along the sides to prevent the entrance
of water in case the metal be riddled.
No great damage could be done, as the
ship could use her guns even though the
ends were converted into pepper-boxes.

The use of cruisers whose vitals are
protected by a thick steel turtle - back
deck hidden within the hull is fairly well
worked out. They are provided with
high speed to run away, and no com-
mander would feel himself justified in
combating battleships with cruisers ex-
cept in the gravest emergency, where
dash and skill might win the day. A
blockade may be conducted with both
cruisers and gunboats, and an enemy's
port might even be entered without the
support of heavy ships, if the fortifica-
tions were not well manned. All similar
vessels belonging to an enemy would be
on equal terms, and we may be sure that
our officers would accept the gage of bat-
tle in such cases. From what we know
of Anglo-Saxon blood, it is doubtful if
they could be restrained.

Our strongest tendency is to take alarm
at the differences between ships of the
present day and those of the past ; yet
by taking another view of the case, and
dwelling rather on the likenesses be-
tween the past and present, we may well
feel reassured. The men who command
our ships and those who man them are of

the same blood as those who have gained
victories on the sea for America and for
England. Our sailors are bred to the
sea, and may be trusted to uphold the
traditions of the service. War has al-
ways been risky, and men will not be
free from danger now any more than
they were in the past, but that danger
does not bear a greater proportion to
their ability to meet it. The newspapers
have a strong tendency to exaggerate
the sensational side of war. We have
been assured that many surprises are in
store for us, but it is difficult to see how
that which is anticipated and provided
for can be called a surprise. It is true
that a battleship is a very complicated
machine, liable to accidents ; but we may
feel sure that here the genius of our peo-
ple has not gone far astray. The Amer-
icans are naturally mechanical, and in-
stead of surprises we may look for many
confirmations of our theories. We may
lose some of our smaller ships, but there
is no reason to anticipate any great dis-
aster, unless one of our battleships should
be taken by surprise or overwhelmed by
a number of ships.

In conclusion, it may be said that the
machine is not an untried factor in war-
fare. Its possibilities are really the un-
known quantity to be determined in
practice. Our guns will probably do Just
what they are expected to do, and unless
a new weapon, more certain and deadly
than anything we now have, be devised, a
single naval battle is likely to affect only
the arrangement of details in the future.
The qualities of the men must, after all,
remain the determining element, and we
have no cause to think that they have
changed.

Ira Nelson Hollis.

The Mojitanians.

737

THE MONTANIANS.

THERE is opportunity for a very en-
tertaining essay by Mr. Owen Wister, if
he cared to write it, on The Passing
of the Wild and Woolly. For the old
West — the West of Buffalo Bill and
W. G. Puddefoot, the West of Bret
Harte stagecoaches and Remington bron-
cho-busters — is fast vanishing away.

But the new West has not altogether
evolved. The inner impulse has already
"rent the veil of the old husk," but
not as yet has the new creature come
forth in " clear plates of sapphire mail."
Montana is still the chrysalis, — old and
new in one, either, neither, or both, as
you will, — transitional, and, like every
healthy chrysalis, very much alive. In
just this lies the intellectual fascination
of Montana ; it is social evolution caught
in the act.

As Paris is France, so Sapphira is
Montana. Says the Queen City of the
Rockies, " L'e'tat, c'est moi." The his-
tory of Sapphira is the history of the
entire commonwealth. First there was
gold, — thirty million dollars of it in
Humbug Gulch. Then there were pio-
neers. Immediately there was a camp.
Upon the camp settled the vampires.
Upon the vampires pounced the Vigi-
lantes. Out of Vigilantism came law.
With law came women. With women
came civilization. With civilization came
the " boom." The boom " busted," and
you have — Sapphira.

If- Sapphira is a chrysalis, what, pray,
is a chrysalis ? A worm ? Assuredly.
A dragon-fly ? a butterfly ? As truly.
So of Sapphira. All the men in Butte
and half the men in Sapphira carry
" guns," but who shoots ? " Hold-ups "
are frequent enough in Montana (I have
myself carried my money in my boot),
but are highwaymen totally extinct in

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 488. 47

Massachusetts and Pennsylvania ? The
bandit is neither Eastern nor Western :
he is American, — at least just at present.
To be sure, Sapphira has still a saloon
called The Bucket of Blood, but " neck-
tie parties " and that sort of thing are
long since well gone by. Until the pre-
sent year the gambling-hells were licensed
by the state, and as you passed along
the street you could look in through the
open doors and see the crowds around the
green tables playing faro, poker, craps,
and fan-tan under the benign sanction of
the law. This condition of things, how-
ever, owing to the courageous efforts of
the Reverend T. V. Moore, of Helena,
has been finally done away. Thus, little
by little, " the old order changeth, yield-
ing place to new."

" The vices die," says one ; " the vir-
tues never die." Sapphira has progressed
many a moral parasang since the old
days, and there has been no appreciable
reversion to type. The city is rapidly
learning the art of applied decency. It
would not now be prudent for an exalt-
ed politician to ride down Main Street
in the company of a notorious woman.
In these days, if a pretty adventuress
" goes over the Great Divide," she is not
buried in state, nor do the merchants of
Sapphira shut up their shops to attend
her funeral, nor do they vie with one
another as of yore in the extravagance
of their floral tributes. The arrival of
wives and children changed all that.
Moreover, it is now some years since
fine dames were accustomed to horse-
whip objectionable young gentlemen by
daylight. Sunday is no longer a carni-
val of blood. Indeed, so far as I can
see, life in Montana is swiftly losing its
pink-newspaper flavoring.

And there are yet better things in
store. Suicides will become less frequent
when the hazards of finance reduce them-

738

The Montanians.

selves to comparative stability. Some
day there will be less fact tban fun in
the Montana definition of a millionaire,
namely, " a man who owes a million dol-
lars." The time will come, I even ven-
ture to predict, when the social oligarchy
of Sapphira will no longer afford an
interesting study in criminology. When
that time does come, — and I hope it
will be soon, — race-track betting will be
thought unladylike, to say the least ; and
in that happy day a man may move in
" good society " without being exposed to
contact with the families of embezzlers,
defaulters, and professional gamblers.

My first glimpse of Sapphira, I am
free to confess, was by no means plea-
sant. I loathed it, I hated it, I ridiculed
it. I borrowed the pungent phrase of
Corporal MacFadden, who, having com-
manded the awkward squad to " presint
arrums," cried out impatiently, " Begor-
rah, what a presint ! Stand off and look
at yersilves ! " I have, however, no longer
any such feeling. I think I have seen
deeper.

For the fast set is already an ana-
chronism. It is a sui'vival of the old
days. It is one of many such survivals.
The community is rapidly sloughing them
off. The emergent new Montana is tak-
ing to itself " clear plates of sapphire
mail." Sturdier character you will no-
where find than in lovely Sapphira.
What zest for life ! What freedom from
self-consciousness ! What exuberant per-
ennial youthf ulness ! They have never
caught the disease of our time, those vig-
orous Montanians, and they never will !
Middle age, disillusionment, the cynical
weariness of life, — you cannot, by the
wildest stretch of fancy, associate any
such thing witli the gay, light-hearted
folk of Sapphira. Socially, they have
grace without affectation, brilliancy with-
out pedantry, cordiality without insin-
cerity. Intellectually, they take you for
granted. That a man is traveled, that
he is college-bred, that he reads because
he loves to read, are things to be ex-

pected. ^Esthetically, they are sincerely
fond of the best the world offers. Lit-
tle, indeed, have they ready at hand, —
save what any man of culture may find
in his own luxurious home. But you
forget : is not St. Paul but a paltry thou-
sand miles away, or is it more than a
five days' journey to Boston and New
York ? Morally, your Sapphiran is em-
phatically himself. He is self-reliant,
self-poised, self-sufficient. Nobody con-
ceals his faults. Nobody assumes a vir-
tue if he has it not. Conduct exactly
represents character, — what 's in comes
out. Montana character is the result of
a rigorous process of moral evolution.
The fittest survive ; the weak succumb.
The Treasure State is still the haven of
runaways from everywhere else ; it is
still the haven and heaven of adventur-
ers ; it is still thought very bad form to
ask a man what his name was back East :
and yet, in the midst of all this moral
Bohemianism, the Montanians are devel-
oping a splendid type of rugged Ameri-
can manhood.

Mr. Kidd, I suppose, would ask what
part religion has played in the social
evolution of Sapphira. Apparently, a
very little part.

Look down from the rocky crest of
Mount Sapphira and ask yourself why the
city looks so singularly flat and thick-set.
Is it because there are no trees, or, at
any rate, none that rise above the second-
story window-sills ? Perhaps. Or is it
because the houses are all so much of a
size ? Possibly. But there is a better
explanation than either : it is because
there are no church spires. Churches
there are, but you must have sharp eyes
to find them. They are little, they are
insignificant, they are monuments of a
disgraced and unpopular cause. Says
Broncho Billy, " Look at them darned,
contemptible churches, — all-same shacks!
I could buy out any three of 'em ! "
Out of ten thousand people, only fifteen
hundred Protestant church-goers !

Sapphira is a peculiar town, too, for in

The Montanians.

739

Sapphira there are classes and no masses,
unless you call the Chinese merchants,
mechanics, and launclrymen masses. It
is not the old problem of reaching the
masses ; it is the entirely new problem of
reaching the classes. Cultured, law-abid-
ing, progressive Sapphira has little tol-
eration for religion. The tiny congrega-
tions in the tiny churches are made up
mainly of women ; a Sapphira church is
a "lady chapel." A Montana business
man objects to walking on the same side
of the street with a church. There is still
more truth than fiction in the old saying
that " west of Bismarck there is no Sun-
day, and west of Miles City no God."

For this state of public opinion the
church is largely to blame. The denom-
inations have made Montana their min-
isterial ash - heap and dumping - ground.
Upon it they have flung their outcast
clergy, — vicious men, disgraced men,
renegades of all shades and colors. In
Sapphira, at least, nearly every denomi-
nation has at some time or other support-
ed an adept in applied scalawagics as its
clerical representative, with the result
that in that splendid little city Chinamen,
Indians, and ministers rank about alike.
A minister may win respect in Sapphira,
but he wins it in spite of his profession,
not by virtue of it.

Some of the blame, too, lies with the
home missionary popes (there are popes
in all denominations but ours), who have
fancied that anything would do for the
wild and woolly. There is no wild and
woolly now. Instead there is cultured
agnosticism. When the warring sects
learn to divide the field, and to maintain
a dignified representative in the limited
section each assumes responsibility for,
they will save both souls and dollars.

But if I at all understand the situa-
tion, the shifting character of the popu-
lation as largely accounts for the failure
of the churches. When a fellow goes
out a-buccaneering, it is not likely that
he will " dig up " to pay pew-rent. The
bumblebees never yet lent loyal tribute

to Jack - in - the - pulpit. When a whole
community regards life as a picnic, the
parson can be dispensed with. Nobody
expects to stay in Montana, — nobody
save a very few. Hardly anybody means
to bring up a family in Sapphira. Every
one hopes to get rich and get away.
Your Montanian is just now an adven-
turer, just now a holiday-maker; he is
taking a moral and spiritual vacation.
Some say they -have left their religion in
North Dakota. Some seem to believe
in a stay-at-home Eastern divinity who
cannot follow them West. All this will
change. Change it must ; for Sabatier
is right in saying that humanity, as a spe-
cies, is " incurably religious." Though
in Montana religion has as yet been only
a minor factor in social progress, social
progress wilt yet become a potent factor
in religious development. Montana needs
women. Montana needs homes. Mon-
tana needs to acquire the art of staying
put. Given a normal community, and
you will have a normal church.

II.

Incongruity, then, is a leading char-
acteristic of life in Montana, — incon-
gruity by reason of transition. The
chrysalis is neither worm nor dragon-fly,
but both at once and both in one.

Naturally, the streets of Sapphira
abound in curious contrasts of old and
new. That sombre row of log shacks, —
observe them carefully. They were set
down in Humbug Gulch (for so it was
called then) away back in the .early six-
ties, while the left wing of Price's army
was first settling Montana. They are
relics of the early days : the days when
flour sold for one hundred and forty
dollars a sack ; the days when a glass
of whiskey was worth a pinch of gold-
dust ; the days when miners stood (like
Wordsworth's daffodils "in never-end-
ing line ") waiting their turn to buy
Larry Finnigan's incomparable apple
pies, made of dried apples with brown
paper upper crust, one dollar each ; the

740

The Montanians.

days — the dear golden days ! — when
the Hangman's Tree, a little farther up
the gulch, bore, on certain memorable
mornings, a most extraordinary fruitage.
Yet see ! a blank wall vaults skyward
eight stories : it is close against the
chalet-like cabins ; it is the blank side
wall of the gilded palace of the Oro Fino
Club ; it is part of the magnificent pile
for which that exclusive coterie is still
inconceivably in debt, and ever will so
remain. Or what of the Energy Block ?
Yes, it is a twentieth-century sky-scraper,
— carved stone, plate glass, tessellated
floors, twin elevators : and this in a town
of only ten thousand people ! Sidewalks,
wooden death-traps that would disgrace
an Idaho mining camp, annoy one be-
yond endurance ; yet in the same thor-
oughfares with such dilapidated foot-
ways are rows of splendid houses that
might be set down in the lovely residen-
tial districts of any Eastern city, and
would there attract attention only by
their beauty ! Covered wagons, peram-
bulatory flats of the sort that used to be
called prairie schooners, graze the hubs
of luxurious traps and barouches. The
mounted ranchman yonder, — how fero-
cious he looks, how Remingtonian, in his
ten-dollar sombrero and fringed leather
" chaps," and how straight he sits in his
high-pommeled embossed saddle ! Can
he ride a pitching horse ? Yes, indeed,
" ride him plenty ; " and he is just now
very likely to give you full evidence
of his equestrian tenacity, for sudden-
ly round the corner comes a scorch-
ing Vassar girl on her chainless Hum-
ber ! Street fights between colored
coachmen and social dons ; concerts in
the Auditorium, by Scalchi, or Yaw, or
Juch ; masonic funerals in Chinatown ;
extensive additions to the Public Libra-
ry, which already numbers fifteen thou-
sand volumes ; a more than Austrian
" rough house " in the legislature at
Helena (the Montana legislature is prob-
ably the funniest governmental body in
the world), — these are some of the

things you may read about in either of
Sapphira's two daily newspapers. Some-
times you meet an individual who him-
self embodies the most discordant ele-
ments of the Montanian genius. I know
a man who has two avocations, — he is
now a lawyer, but he used to be a cow-
boy, and his father was a college pre-
sident — he has, I say, two avocations :
one is broncho-busting ; the other is the
writing of society verse. He is equally
good at both.

One gradually loses the faculty of as-
tonishment. Sapphira is everything, by
turns or all at once. So are the Sap-
phirans. They are incoherently Amer-
ican, — a national vaudeville, a social
kaleidoscope, an incongruous complex of
the innumerable, irreconcilable, incom-
patible elements that make up the na-
tion. Speak any dialect you choose, and
nobody will call you peculiar. Dodge
your r's, like a New Yorker ; put them
on where they do not belong, like a bour-
geois New Englander ; say " cain't,"
like a Missourian ; ape the Oregonian
webfoot, and say " like I did ; " or adopt
the speech of the native Montanian, and
obscure the short i in " it," saying, for
instance, " I believe ut ; " but no matter
what be the turn of your tongue, you
will find yourself in the company of your
kind.

Nearly everybody has come from
somewhere else ; and nearly everybody
has brought along a title, — colonel,
major, commodore, or whatever sort of
tinsel caught his fancy. Some of these
titles are no doubt authentic. In a state
whose population numbers only one hun-
dred and fifty thousand everybody has
a chance of sooner- or later going on
the governor's staff. I asked a Monta-
nian how Colonel Brinckerhoff got his
title. " Oh," said he, " he was jigadier-
brindle on somebody's body-guard."

The population is cosmopolitan ; so
are the aspects and incidents of life and
its surroundings. From the top of Mount
Sapphira you can see the Continental

The Mbntanians.

741

Divide, whose melting snows flow west-
ward into Puget Sound, and eastward
into the Gulf of Mexico. The cold wind
comes from Hudson's Bay, the warm
Chinook from Oregon and the coast.
The grass — what grass there is — bristles
with little cacti, " prickly-pears," which
suggest Southern California. The howl-
ing coyote is the same predatory crea-
ture that roams the Middle West under
the humbler guise and name of prairie
wolf. The hot tamale (pronounced ta-
mofly) — a molten, pepper-sauced chick-
en croquette, with a coat of Indian meal
and an overcoat of corn - husk, and
steamed in a portable boiler, the result
being a diabolical combination that tastes
like a bonfire — was introduced by cow-
boys from the Mexican frontier. The
Montanians eat oysters from two oceans.
The miners have plagiarized the garb of
the Michigan lumbermen. A Sapphiran
belle goes gowned in a robe from Paris.
So utterly atrophied is your sense of
novelty that you even cease to marvel at
the climate. You become meteorologi-
cally blase. On the first day of Novem-
ber, nasturtiums (who ever heard of pink
ones ?) and gorgeous sweet peas (crimson
and purple at their richest and deep-
est) were still blooming in our gardens.
Four weeks later the mercury shrank to
twenty-eight below zero. On the 5th of
December live dandelions appeared on
the lawn. Then the storm-god treated
us to thunder and lightning, and after
that a snowfall. But with all their ca-
pi'icious ups and downs Montana win-
ters are mild. The mountain tops are
white from fall to spring, but there is
little snow in the valleys. Who rides
in a sleigh ? For weeks at a stretch, last
winter, skaters went cycling to the pond
with their skates slung over their shoul-
ders. Matching one season with another,
the Sapphirans have played tennis every
month in the year. Extreme cold comes
like a Nansen lecture, and is as soon
gone. It is something to be seen rather
than felt. For when the mercury drops

so amazingly low, and all Sapphira struts
forth in buffalo-skins like a community
of motor-men, the air is absolutely still.
That is why you do not realize the inten-
sity of the cold. From every chimney
in town, on such a day, there rises a
white column of steam a hundred feet
high and as straight as a flag-staff. But
when the Chinook wind comes, there is
no room for debate, no recourse to the
thermometer, no appeal to the eye. The
Chinook is unmistakable. It comes roar-
ing and raging over the Rockies ; it
catches the snowdrifts on their gleaming
summits and swirls them out into long,
horizontal, Vedder-like streamers point-
ing eastward : and the noise of the ap-
proaching Chinook is heard in the val-
ley while all below is still calm ; for
though the clouds are already racing
with the wind, and the topmost mountain
pines madly shouting their protest, it
will be yet a matter of minutes before
the lower atmosphere leaps to join the
frolic. The mercury rises fifty degrees.
The snow has hardly time to melt and
run away. It seems to be picked up
magically, smitten with invisibility, and
hurriedly whisked skyward. And as for
the people, — oh, pity the people ! They
feel like ten thousand hard-boiled owls,
— enervated, demoralized, " let down."
But from July to November is not
that climate ideal, idyllic ? Why dread
the summer's heat ? It is invariably
cool in the shade, and the nights are
always refreshing; people never have
sunstrokes, dogs never have hydropho-
bia ; in fact, Montana is the best place
in the world to keep cool in summer and
warm in winter. Saving only the brief
cold snaps and the rainy month of June,
the climate of the Treasure State is in-
comparable ; and of this fact the home-
sick exotics are continually reminding
one another by way of consolation.

in.

I protest that mortals have no busi-
ness to live in the high heavens. The

742

The Montanians.

Montanians, however, set my protest at
defiance. They have found their Babel
Tower ready - built. Sapphira is four
fifths of a mile above the sea. It has
altitude, and of that you are immediate-
ly made aware. At first you are sleepy.
That wears off. Then you can't sleep.
No wonder, — it 's the altitude.

This is one's introduction to the fun-
damental principle of Montana philoso-
phy. The altitude accounts for every-
thing. Knock off forty - two hundred
vertical feet of the dense lower atmo-
sphere, and what remains is marvelously
thin and clear. Its properties are magi-
cal. Breathe it for a year and a day
(there 's champagne in the air), and you
will be altogether a new creature, saying
to yourself, I doubt not, " Lawk-a-massy
on us, this is none of I ! "

You will get into sympathy with Shel-
ley's skylark. You will exclaim appre-
ciatively : —

" Hail to thee, blithe spirit !

Bird them never wert,
That from heaven, or near it,
Poorest thy full heart. "

You will know precisely how a skylark
feels. You are as high in the air as he.
Then why should not the altitude affect
your spirits, also ? The altitude affects
flowers, so that the blossoms of a single
species become more gorgeous the high-
er up you go. The altitude puts such
exuberant life into horses that runaways
are twice as common as here at home,
and it gives the ordinary roadster such
hardihood that the Rocky Mountain
" cayuse " will travel fifty miles with
less fatigue than the New England ani-
mal would suffer from a journey of
twenty. The altitude inspires cattle
with such temperamental viciousness
that you will look long and far to find
a meek-eyed cow, one that would sug-
gest /JOWTTIS 'A.6^vr) ; for in Montana they
have only the glaring, fierce-faced vari-
ety, with nervously twitching tails, —
provided that those tails have not been
frozen off in a " cold snap." The alti-

tude has also its effect upon cats. There
are parts of Montana where cats cannot
live. In Sapphira, a cat with two lungs
is, biology aside, a rara avis. Kittens
assume a more than Parisian frivolity ;
half of them die young, of dissipation.
Then why, pray, should there be any mar-
vel that human nerves respond to the
stimulation that comes with every breath
of that exhilarating but most unwhole-
some mountain air ?

Women feel it first. Montana wo-
men look older than they are, and act
younger. The settled-down, matronly,
family-tree composure that comes to our
women at forty-five or fifty is a thing
unknown in the Rockies. Yet the out-
ward signs of age are sooner seen : a
girl begins to fade at twenty ; faint lines,
the beginnings of wrinkles, appear in the
faces of mere maids of seventeen. The
complexion loses its freshness ; the hair
turns gray prematurely and falls out
at an unexampled rate, because of the
extreme dryness of the air in a coun-
try where the sun shines three hundred
days in the year. Young woman, stay
East!

But que voulez-vous ? If you will
have perennial sunshine and live in the
upper heavens, why, bless you, you must
brave the consequences ! Men — they
say Montana is " a good place for men
and steers " — men, if they work out of
doors, will sleep like rattlesnakes and eat
like grizzlies. However, they will die
young. The pace is delightful ; one's
heart beats faster and stronger, one's
lungs breathe deeper and fuller, till it is
a perfect exultant, bounding joy just to
exist ; but it is nevertheless the pace that
kills. Yet not a red penny cares the
Sapphiran for that. (As a matter of
solemn fact, there are no pennies in Sap-
phira ) He has no desire to be old. As
he gallops through life, he means to live
with a boisterous vengeance all along
the hurrying way. No distant day he
will be " shipped East in a box ; " but
why worry ? There is little hope of es-

The Montanians.

743

cape. Montana is the land of the lotus-
eaters. Once a Montanian, always a
Montanian. When a man has got him-
self well acclimated in Sapphira, and
then goes home — alive, I mean — to
" the states," or, as he says, to " God's
country," he is disgusted with the heavy
air and torpid life of the " effete East."
So westward again to Butte, or Great
Falls, or Helena, or Sapphira, he hies
him, sorry that ever he sought to leave
that dewless and treeless wonderland of
golden sunshine.

Pity the thinker, pity the writer, pity
the speaker, in heaven - high Sapphira !
Upon such the ceaseless nervous tension
tugs most cruelly. You can think more
clearly, talk more directly, and write
with greater precision and vivacity ; but
whither, meanwhile, has fled your old en-
durance ? You can do more in an hour,
but you cannot work so many hours.
Nobody pretends to exert himself. Sap-
phirans walk slowly, avoid " rustling,"
and never open their shops before nine
in the morning. You can wear your-
self out without knowing it. To-day
you would like to fight dragons, to-mor-
row you are in bed with nervous pro-
stration, day after to-morrow you are
" shipped East in a box."

The principal plague is insomnia. Not
that you cannot go to sleep, — you can ;
but you wake at four, or three, or even
two o'clock in the morning, and so ends
your slumber. Your eyes pop open of a
sudden, and you find yourself as wholly
refreshed as a newly awakened Rip Van
Winkle. There until dawn you lie, hear-
ing at intervals the cry of the hot-tamale
man : " Hot tamales ! Red-hot tamales !
Hot lunch and wiener-wurst ! Chickie
tamales ! " The man is a mile away, but
through that thin, vibrant, resonant at-
mosphere you cafcch every syllable that
he utters. Then there is the sunrise.
Montanians are great authorities on sun-
rises. And very splendid they are, —
blue clouds such as you never saw be-
fore, dazzling combinations of gorgeous

colors, amazing effects of unimaginable
beauty.

But suppose Morpheus plays you false
after this fashion three or four nights a
week ; then, beyond a doubt, you are
growing old at double the normal rate.

There is just one way to beat the al-
titude. Sit up. Eleven is not late, nei-
ther is twelve. Will Hannah, who lives
in Helena, — or did, — says he regularly
reads the morning paper before going to
bed.

All things considered, it comes nat-
urally about that, jocosely or seriously
(or, as Browning would say, jocoserious-
ly), the Montanians expect the altitude
to account for everything. When little
boys pull up one's sidewalks, tear down
one's fences, and lodge one's veranda
chairs in the top of one's favorite syca-
more-tree, they are celebrating Allhal-
lowe'en. The altitude explains their
methods. When an " old - timer " be-
comes testy and irritable and altogether
uncompanionable, the Sapphirans call
him " cranky." Crankiness results from
the altitude. When a girl eats opium, and
sees things and says things, it is because
she is suffering from insomnia. Again
the altitude. Yes, and when some vic-
tim of a " deal," or of a " freeze - out
game," or of the " annual ascension " of
the First National Bank blows out his
jaded brains, it is chiefly the altitude that
drove him to distraction. The altitude
pardons beer - drinking, excuses late
hours, and accounts alike for the effer-
vescent, not to say explosive hilarity of
Sapphira society, and for the appalling
dimensions, out of all proportion to the
size of the town, of Sapphira's vicious
and dangerous slums.

The altitude grants plenary indul-
gence. It is Pontifex Maximus.

IV.

Victor Hugo wrote Fourscore Thir-
teen. That is French for " Ninety-
Three." The Sapphirans have also writ-
ten Fourscore Thirteen, — they have

744

The Montanians.

written it in anguish, they have written
it upon their hearts; for Ninety-Three
was the year of the " crash."

Just before the crash Sapphira was
nearly twice as big as it is now, in popu-
lation. It was the richest city of its size
in the world. It had one thousand dol-
lars per capita, — counting every negro,
every Chinaman, and every baby, — one
thousand dollars per capita deposited in
banks, to say nothing of other invest-
ments. It had a millionaire for every
thousand of the population. It was grow-
ing as if forced by electricity. It jug-
gled lobby politics at Washington till it
got Fort Bandersnatch, it stretched out
long financial tentacles and seized two
railroads, it secured the capacious mosque-
like Bayswater Natatorium and made
the town a summer resort, it wrote it-
self up in a leading magazine, it became
a supply-station for a ranching and min-
ing district as big as the state of Maine.
The people said, " We shall be a Detroit,
a Minneapolis, a Chicago." The whole
Grub Stake Valley was laid out in town
lots, — twelve continuous miles of them.
Palaces, warehouses, and public build-
ings rose out of the earth as by enchant-
ment. The entire community lost their
heads, — invested insanely, lived like
princes, feasted, gamed, squandered.

And then the bubble burst. The wires
thrilled with agonizing messages. There
was a hasty packing of trunks at the
World's Fair, a mad rush for the scene
of the disaster, a wringing of hands and
a gnashing of teeth, a sudden and hide-
ous disillusionment. That was the crash.
That was Ninety-Three. That was the
inciting moment of a financial tragedy,
banks breaking, real estate values diving
to nowhere, vast fortunes going up in
clouds of disappointment, the sheriff and
the receiver turned loose in the land.
The more property you had, the poorer
you were. The city was suddenly filled
with ruined millionaires. People went to
church who had never been seen there
before. A third of the population " va-

moosed the ranch " and went " back to
God's country."

As in the sunset a certain moment
" cuts the deed off, calls the glory from
the gray," so in Sapphira a certain mo-
ment called a halt in the supernatural
progress of the city. The marks remain.
The Presbyterians were building a new
church edifice ; they are now the proud
possessors of a cellar and a Sunday-
school. The Kensington School was to
have been two hundred feet long. Only
one section had been built, and there
are not children enough to warrant the
continued existence of even that section.
The Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute
(that is what they call it, though the Sap-
phira High School does not prepare for
college, and pupils who cannot keep them-
selves intellectually afloat in the High
School are sent to the " Polly ") was be-
ing built on the installment plan. There
had been only one installment. With
that the work " stopped short, never to
go again," like grandfather's clock. The
city, laid out as for a vast metropolis,
had " staked off a claim " of such dimen-
sions that it entails enormous expense to
light and pave and drain it. The sur-
vivors are consequently taxed to death.

Apparently, the hard times ground
Sapphira more cruelly than any other
town in the country. Its growth had
been artificially stimulated, its wealth
had been largely fictitious, its enormous
enterprises had been based upon bor-
rowed capital, and when the evil days
came, and the years drew nigh, when the
Sapphirans said, " We have no pleasure
in them," it was necessary not only to
live upon a reduced income, but to float
a colossal indebtedness. Matters grew
worse and worse. The depression con-
tinued, even increased. You " could n't
raise a hundred dollars on your right
eye."

In the spring of 1897, the city of Sap-
phira had two wrecked banks and three
wrecked churches, commodious stores
stood vacant in Main Street, the second-

The Jtyontanians.

745

hand shops were filled with abandoned
office furniture, the fire department had
been reduced to eight men and the po-
lice force to four patrolmen, while the
city water department was in the hands
of a receiver, and the town had given
up the collection of garbage. You could
rent a white stone mansion out in Ken-
sington, the west end of Sapphira, for
eight dollars a month.

Since then matters have begun to
improve. But the spell is broken for-
ever. The romance has gone out of Sap-
phiran enterprise. Investors no longer
manipulate the supernatural. The task
is now the mere prosaic, brown-colored,
matter - of - fact process of recuperation.
There is no vision, and the people perish.
Enterprise used to mean a sort of actual-
ized epic poetry ; now it means a dull
materialism.

Materialistic the Montanians undeni-
ably are. Their patron saint should be
Martha, who was troubled about many
things. Everybody has a considerable
assortment of industrial irons in the fire.
Beside the inevitable exactions of his
calling, nearly everybody has mining and
ranching interests to be troubled about.
You are amazed to hear seamstresses,
petty drummers, news-venders, and wait-
er-girls talking of their mining stock, — a
hundred shares in the Bald Butte mine,
five hundred shares in the Marble Heart,
two hundred and fifty shares in the
Never Sweat, seven hundred shares in
the Wake-Up Jim. But later the won-
der ceases. A share can be bought for
a song. Its par value is one dollar ; it
may fall to five cents. Hence even the
tawdry poor may enter the lists and tilt
for millions. Our cook was grub - stak-
ing her husband ; that is, paying his
expenses while he went out a-prospect-
ing. Occasionally she would send in a
little box of " spressmens " (specimens)
for us to admire. " Shure," said Nora,
" Oi '11 be a foine lady wan av these days,
begobs ! " And no doubt she will. Gold
is a great leveler. It levels up, not

down. Colonel Patsy Rafferty, who can
write nothing but his own name, can
make that name worth five million dol-
lars whenever he chooses to sign a check
for that amount. He was once a pro-
spector ; he is now an imperial Caesar.

Not only do mining interests enlist
the attention of the whole community ;
they are all-absorbing and all-engrossing
in their power over the individual. For
mining is a gambling game, — legitimate,
to be sure, for a successful miner is an
adder to the world's wealth, but never-
theless a game of hazard played against
nature. Montana is Monte Carlo mor-
alized. Your mine may pay " from the
grass-roots ; " you may, on the other
hand, put a superb fortune, if you can
borrow it back East, into a mere " hole
in the ground ; " the richest vein may
"peter" to-morrow; and when your
mine begins to " play out " and " the
grade runs low," you are afraid to sell,
lest the purchaser, running the tunnel a
few yards farther into the mountain, lo-
cate immense ore-bodies that would have
made you a multi-millionaire.

Hence Sapphirans think in terms of
quartz and placer. A boarding-house
table is a school of mines. Mining terms
are absorbed into the vocabulary of com-
mon talk. Things " pan out ; " people
"get right down to hard-pan ; " to beat
an opponent at cards is to " clean him
up ; " and to secure funds is to " raise
the riffles." The Montanians " pack "
everything, — they pack water, they pack
umbrellas, they pack the baby ; for the
word " pack " means to carry. In the
old days mining outfits were carried on
pack-horses. One even finds the gro-
tesque names of mining claims set down
in solemn gravity upon the map. The
town of Ubet was originally the You
Bet mine ; Oka was formerly the O. K.

As of mining, so in less degree of
ranching. Stock-raising, precarious at
best, is exposed to the hazards of a
capricious climate. Your huge " bunch
of cattle " and your immense " band of

746

The Montfnians.

sheep " are turned loose on the ranges
and are shelterless all the year round.
Heavy snows will work a measureless
havoc. Sheep know how to huddle to-
gether for warmth and to burrow for
food, but the poor senseless cattle will
stand up in the snow till they die of ex-
haustion. Several winters ago a great
storm wrecked the ranching interests of
half the state, and the cattle-kings were
reduced to bankruptcy. The banks, how-
ever, by the " wild - cat " methods for
which they are deservedly famous, set
them all on their feet again.

When a Montanian has worried him-
self into brain-fag over his mining ven-
tures, he may rest his cortex by consid-
ering his flocks and herds. So ranching
terms, like the talk of the camp, find their
way into social parlance. You are in-
vited to a New England " round-up."
You are " corraled " by your hostess.
You ask a Sapphira girl what she has
been doing of late, and perhaps you get
an answer like this, — I did. " Not very
much," said she, with a toss of her pretty
head. " Father and mother have gone
to the National Park, and I 've had to
stay at home and herd the kid"

Montanians will do anything for money.
People of education will go into delib-
erate exile to " hold down a claim."
Young men of social training and refined
tastes will live in intolerable mining
camps like Rimini (pronounced Rimin-
eye), and there are even some forty
thousand abandoned wretches who are
wasting their days in Butte.

Butte (pronounced Bewt) is the most
ridiculous city in the world. It is pre-
cisely on a level with Mount Washington,
provided it can be said to be on a level
at all, for it is built on a steep mountain
side. There is no night in Butte. The
mines are continually worked, and the
smelters never shut down. Moreover, as
five tons of sulphur, arsenic, and other
poisons are thrown out into the air every
twenty-four hours, there is in all that
city no tree, nor any shrub, nor so much

as a single spear of grass. You wake
coughing ; you wander about all day in
a dense fog of brimstone ; you have
continually the sensation of lighting a
parlor match. It is only in summer
that the air is clear. Had Dante seen
Butte, he would never have taken the
trouble to invent an imaginary Inferno.
Morally, the city justifies its suggestive
appearance. It has been rightly named
the Perch of the Devil. And yet there
are people in Butte, — forty thousand of
them. They stay there to make money.

I have never yet been able to say
whether Montana is more beautiful than
every other place, or whether a Sapphi-
ran is merely more intensely alive to its
beauty. Perhaps that too is a matter of
altitude. But in either case the spell is
irresistible.

One views all the grandeur of the
world with a babelike freshness.

" There was a time when meadow, grove, and

stream,
The earth and every common sight,

To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream."

That is my memory of Montana.

The blinding glare of the sunshine ;
the depth of 'the altogether Neapolitan
skies ; the undimmed lustre of the land-
scape ; the immeasurable panoramic
sweep of mountain masses, swung chain
upon chain, sierra upon sierra, across the
world ; the thrill of exalted masterhood
in nature, and the buoyant, joyous sense
of out of doors, — it makes my heart
leap up even now at the thought of it.

It was not so at first. The landscape
troubled me : I could not interpret it ;
it bore no sort of rationality. Those
miniature blue crags, — they defied per-
spective ; they had the shape of immense
mountains, but they had the apparent
size of mere hillocks. They looked five
miles off ; they were in reality thirty-five
miles away, and in any lower altitude

The Mbntanians.

747

they would have been so dimmed by the
pellucid vapor-masses hung between as
to be obviously and legibly remote. But
gradually the eye learns a new grammar
of aerial perspective, and then — behold
the overwhelming Milton ic majesty of
those inconceivable piles of living rock.

A glory of primeval romance hangs
over the northern Rockies. There are
the forests of low-grown pines as yet
untouched ; there are the Titans' trea-
sure-hoards as yet unrifled ; there are
the haunts of elk and grizzly, of moun-
tain lion and antelope, of gray wolf and
huge-horned mountain sheep, whose do-
mains are all but uninvaded ; while be-
low those rock-strewn steeps surges the
newly violated Missouri. It all meets
the eye with a glow of stirring actuality ;
the horizon is within reach of your hand ;
nature becomes compendious ; you are in
conscious command of totality.

As the day wanes, the mountains
appear to be crossing the valley. The
slant lights of late afternoon make them
seem increasingly near. The mountains
come up to be admired, to be loved.
They shrink away in the twilight. One
by one the glorious stars come out, twice
as bright as here in the East, and twice
as big. It is, as Stevenson would say,
" a wonderful clear night of stars." The
Milky Way is a radiant mist. Meteors
trail fire. And the moon, — oh, if it
be but winter ! — the moon fills all that
wonderland with an unutterable beauty
that starts the same sense of white-robed
purity, the same response of sparkling
loveliness, that one's heart throbs with
while reading Tennyson's St. Agnes' Eve.

" All heaven bursts her starry floors,
And strows her lights below."

And then the mountains, silvern-blue
and snow-capped* are yours once more.
In spring Montana is laden with flow-
ers. Valley, caftan, gulch, and coulee
are a many-tinted fairy spectacle. The
prickly-pears color all the landscape with
their gorgeous blossoms. Purple lupines

blaze amongst the Nile-green sage-brush.
The sand-rose turns from white to pink.
The night-blooming cereus droops in the
sunlight. Whole fields are gilded with
yellow daisies. A botanist, they tell me,
has collected a thousand species of native
flora.

And the beauty of Montana is touched
with a wistful air of melancholy. Some-
how you cannot escape a feeling of re-
gret for the days gone by, and for the
aboriginal inhabitants, both man and
beast, so recently dispossessed. I am no
fond lover of Indians ; Flatheads, Black-
feet, and Nez Perec's never charmed me.
I saw enough of the Sioux when they
took me behind the scenes at Colonel
Cody's Wild West show ; the Crees, who
want a dime to pose before your kodak,
and who regale themselves with dog
'soup (I saw them do it), are rather the
worst of the lot ; but yet I cannot re-
concile myself to the Weyler-like warfare
that exterminated the bison to keep the
Indians in order.

The red man lived on the bison ;
where the bison roved, nibbling the
bunch-grass, there roved the red man.
When the soldiers had slaughtered the
bison herds, and the Indian began to
prey upon the ranches for food, his tra-
veling days were done. He was between
the devil and the deep sea. The sol-
diers hunted him into the camps of the
cowboys. The cowboys, in their turn,
hunted him into the camps of the sol-
diers. He has since submitted, though
not with the best of grace, and lives upon
his reservation in involuntary peace and
quiet. But the bison, — there is only
one pen in North America sympathetic
enough to tell the story of the bison, and
that is the pen that wrote the tenderest
of all our nature essays, A-Hunting of
the Deer.

Even the beauty of life is tinged with a
similar pathos. Friendships in Sapphira
are mournfully transitory. You no sooner
bind a man to you than forth he betakes
him to Livingston, or Billings, or Glen-

748

The Mbntanians.

dive, or Missoula. The town is like an
eddy in the river. The water runs into
the eddy, the water runs out of the eddy ;
the eddy is always changing, yet the
eddy remains unchanged. So the streams
of newcomers pour into Sapphira, and
the streams of disappointed fortune-seek-
ers pour out of Sapphira ; Sapphira is
always changing, yet Sapphira remains
unchanged. The Sapphiran beauties
make eyes at a procession. There is in
Montana more opportunity for acquaint-
ances and less opportunity for acquaint-
ance than in any other part of the world.
But when all has been said, the social
result of that restless shift and change
is only an exaggeration of a universal
law. For so we go through the world,
touching many hands, clasping but few.

And out of this very transitoriness
comes, if you would know the truth, the
hospitable geniality of Sapphira society.
For the Sapphirans are compelled to
keep their friendships in constant re-
pair. They welcome you in, like Lewis
Carroll's crocodile, " with gently smil-
ing jaws." They welcome the next new-
comer with a similar cordiality. People
entertain one another at a desperate rate.
They have to ; for life in Sapphira is
like life in a garrison, and all the fun
the Sapphirans can get is what they get
out of one another. " Shows " rarely
visit Sapphira ; the city itself becomes
monotonous after three weeks, and it is a
hundred miles to the next town, and there
is nothing to see when you get there.
Hence the ceaseless round of dances, card
parties, musicales, clubs, chafing-dish
parties, mountain parties, coasting par-
ties (what would a Bostonian think of a
slide five miles long with a descent of
twelve hundred feet?), and social dissi-
pations of every imaginable and unima-
ginable sort.

At last, you, in your turn, move out and
away. Perhaps you are ordered East

by your physician as the only possible
device for postponing that which you are
naturally somewhat anxious to defer,
namely, total extinction ; or perhaps
professional reasons forbid you to live
any longer in the Treasure State of the
Rockies.

Accordingly you lay in a stock of
mementos. You must have a ranching
scene in water-color by Charlie Russell,
the cowboy artist ; and to that you will
add a group of miners panning out gold
by the inimitable Swaim. Then to the
taxidermist's for mounted heads, — an
elk, surely, and no doubt an antelope or
a mountain sheep. If you can afford it,
you buy a fine grizzly rug. And after
that you choose a pretty handful of Mon-
tana sapphires (the red and the yellow
ones are lovely, but the blue are love-
liest of all) set in Montana gold by
Montana workmanship.

You buy your yard-long railway ticket
(five cents a mile to St. Paul) ; you pay
a scandalous fee by way of advance
charges on your freight ; you yield up
your last dollar to silence the accusation
of " excess baggage ; " and you depart
amid the cheers of your friends and ad-
mirers.

Then you think you have bid adieu
to Montana. But in that you are wrong.
Montana awaits you in Boston. You
meet former Sapphirans upon Common-
wealth Avenue. You are presented to
the friends of Sapphirans in Beacon
Street. You are invited to Montana
" round-ups " in Brookline and the Back
Bay. You drop in at the Touraine for
a rare - bit with a Harvard man from
Helena. You sit down in the Boston
Public Library and peruse the columns
of the Sapphira Daily Globule. Indeed,
the sun never sets upon Montana. Go
where you will, its charmed associations
are ever around you. You are a mem-
ber of a world-wide fraternity.

Rollin Lynde Hartt.

Washington Reminiscences.

749

WASHINGTON EEMINISCENCES

II. CONGRESSIONAL ORATORS.

THOMAS CORWIN.

AMONG congressional orators of dis-
tinctively Western type Thomas Corwin
holds perhaps the foremost place. Born
in Kentucky in 1794, he went in boy-
hood to the little village of Lebanon,
Ohio, thirty miles north from Cincinnati,
where he picked up a common school
education and studied for the bar. His
quick intelligence and address soon
brought him a large practice. Elected
to Congress in 1830 by the Whigs, he
served ten years in the House, and was
then chosen governor of Ohio. In 1844
he was elected to represent Ohio in the
Senate of the United States, and in 1850
he was appointed Secretary of the Trea-
sury by President Fillmore. Three years
later he resumed the practice of his pro-
fession. He was again elected a Repre-
sentative in Congress in 1858 and 1860,
but resigned in 1861 to go as Minister
to Mexico, whence he returned after the
accession of Maximilian, and died at
Washington December 18, 1865.

Corwin very early evinced that native
aptitude for oratory which gave him
such distinction in later years. His in-
tellectual faculty was keen, his grasp of
principles firm, and his sense of humor,
which made him a master of the art of
ridicule, was delightfully spontaneous.
In physical aspect he was large, though
but of medium height, his complexion
was notably swarthy, he had jet-black
hair, and his eyes were dark. He had
a mobility of feature that was marvel-
ous, and I never saw the man in public
life who could so surely throw a crowded
audience into roars of laughter by appo-
site witty appeal, or anecdote set off by
an irresistibly comic facial expression.
This was perfectly natural with Corwin ;

he never went in search of ancient and
mouldy jokes, nor lugged in illustrations
which did not fit his theme. Those who
had heard him oftenest were the most
eager to hear him again ; and they would
watch expectantly the quick play of his
twinkling eyes and the mercurial expres-
sion of his features, which gave warning
beforehand of a comical interlude. In-
deed, so marked were Corwin's rare tal-
ents for amusing an audience that it was
said if he had chosen a less serious pro-
fession he might have made one of the
best comedians in the world. In per-
sonal appearance he resembled the late
comedian William E. Burton.

But, great as were Corwin's powers
of humor, they were always kept subor-
dinate, in his speeches, to the aim of con-
vincing his audience. He carefully pre-
pared the topics and the general outline
of his speeches, relying upon his copious
vocabulary for expression at the time
of utterance. In Congress he spoke but
rarely. He hated all display, and was
the most modest, unassuming, and ami-
able of men. He had studied closely in
early years the great law writers and
the best books in modern history, and
his retentive memory was stored with
illustrations which led many to credit
him with far wider learning than he
actually possessed. He had a clear, co-
gent method of statement, using lan-
guage so plain as to be comprehended
by all. His style has been character-
ized as rhetorical rather than logical,
and yet I have heard from him, in and
out of Congress, some of the finest ar-
gumentative statements ever expressed.
None who heard him speak could doubt
the entire sincerity and deep conviction
of the orator. To those who, misled by
popular rumor of his facetious qualities,

750

Washington Reminiscences.

expected to hear only a jester, the grave
earnestness and frequent solemnity of
his appeals came in the nature of a sur-
prise. In nearly all his speeches there
were moments of intense strength. No
crude and unconsidered speech ever fell
from his lips, and he was free from that
common vice of the stump orator, vo-
ciferation. His voice was one of rare
compass and flexibility, soft, yet full-
toned, and he often changed from the
higher notes to a confidential tone hard-
ly above a whisper, with the varying ex-
igencies of his subject.

The most remarkable of Senator Cor-
win's public efforts was his famous
speech on the Mexican war, on the llth
of February, 1847. This was in the
midst of the campaign of invasion un-
der Generals Scott and Taylor, which
resulted in the capture of the Mexican
capital and a peace dictated by the
United States, with pecuniary indem-
nity and about seven hundred thousand
square miles of territory added to our
domain. The war was generally popu-
lar, the army was marching from vic-
tory to victory, and the few dissentient
voices in Congress were drowned in the
tumult of overbearing majorities which
urged on the war. A bill for three million
dollars and ten thousand more men to
carry it forward was before the Senate.
Corwin cherished a profound conviction
that the government was wrong ; that in
its origin and principles the Mexican
war was wholly without justification ;
that the declaration by Congress that
war existed by the act of Mexico was
false ; and that the projected plundering
of a weak government by the great re-
public would end in acquiring vast ter-
ritories, which would lead to an embit-
tered struggle between North and South
for their possession, and would seriously
imperil the Union. He took the unpop-
ular side ; he boldly proclaimed what
he deemed the right against the expe-
diency of the hour ; he refused to vote
money or men to prosecute the war ; and

he calmly took all the odium which his
course entailed, strong in the conscien-
tious conviction that he had done his
duty.

The result might have been foreseen :
his speech, powerful as it was, was de-
nounced from one end of the country to
the other ; the dominant party poured
out upon him all the vials of its wrath ;
" Tom Corwin " was burned in effigy,
execrated in public meetings, declared
unpatriotic and anti-American. Yet it
is difficult to see wherein he was more
unpatriotic in uttering his condemnation
of what he deemed an unjust war than
was Lord Chatham when he declared
on the floor of Parliament, " I rejoice
that America has resisted."

Said a Southern newspaper, the Lou-
isville Journal : " While reading this de-
bate, we could not but feel that Mr. Cor-
win towered in the Senate like a giant
among pygmies. He deliberately sur-
veyed his ground, and duty made him
brave the fires of persecution and the
anathemas of party. The oft-repeated
sophistries of slavery are trampled into
dust by Mr. Corwin, with as much dis-
dain as Mirabeau spurned and trampled
on the formulas of royalty. When did
falsehood ever receive a quietus more
effectually than this mendicant plea of
the ultras for more slave territory on
account of their worn-out lands ? "

It may be pertinent to recall, as a fa-
vorable specimen of the eloquence of Cor-
win at his best, one passage of this nota-
ble senatorial speech of fifty years ago :

"I am somewhat at a loss to know
on what plan of operations gentlemen
having charge of this war intend to pro-
ceed. We hear much of the terror of
your arms. The affrighted Mexican, it
is said, when you shall have drenched
his country in blood, will sue for peace,
and thus you will indeed ' conquer peace.'
This is the heroic and savage tone in
which we have heretofore been lectured
by our friends on the other side of the
chamber, especially by the Senator from

Washington Reminiscences.

751

Michigan [General Cass]. But suddenly
the chairman of the Committee on For-
eign Relations comes to us with a smooth
phrase of diplomacy, made potent by the
gentle suasion of gold. The chairman
of the Committee on Military Affairs
calls for thirty millions of money and
ten thousand regular troops ; these, we
are assured, shall ' conquer peace.' . . .
Sir, I scarcely understand the meaning
of all this myself. If we are to vindi-
cate our rights by battles, in bloody
fields of war, let us do it. If that is
not the plan, then let us call back our
armies into our own territory, and pro-
pose a treaty with Mexico, based upon
the proposition that money is better for
her, and land is better for us. Thus we
can treat Mexico like an equal, and do
honor to ourselves. But what is it you
ask ? You have taken from Mexico one
fourth of her territory, and you now
propose to run a line comprehending
about another third, — and for what ?
She has given you ample redress for
every injury of which you have com-
plained. She has submitted to the
award of your commissioners, and up
to the time of the rupture with Texas
faithfully paid it. And for all that she
has lost (not through or by you, but
which loss has been your gain) what re-
quital do we, her strong, rich, robust
neighbor, make ? Do we send our mis-
sionaries there, ' to point the way to
heaven ' ? Or do we send the school-
masters to pour daylight into her dark
places, to aid her infant strength to con-
quer freedom and reap the fruit of the
independence herself alone had won ?
No, no, none of this do we. But we
send regiments, storm towns, and our
colonels prate of liberty in the midst of
solitudes their ravages have made.

"In return, ifrp comes your Anglo-
Saxon gentleman, with the New Testa-
ment in one hand and a Bill of Rights
in the other, — your evangelical colonel
and law-practicing divine, Don Walter
Colton, who gives up Christ's Sermon on

the Mount, quits the New Testament,
and betakes him to Blackstone and Kent,
is elected justice of the peace, takes
military possession of California, and, in-
stead of teaching the way of repentance
and plan of salvation to the poor igno-
rant Celt, holds one of Colt's pistols to
his ear and says, ' Take trial by jury, or
nine bullets in your head.' "

This remarkable speech, though quite
ineffective as an attempt to stem the tide
of war sentiment which was sweeping
through the country, planted seeds of
thought which germinated in after-years.
It is notable that Mr. Corwin, in cor-
recting the speech for the Congressional
Globe, while he did not soften down
any of its vigorous denunciations of the
war and the administration which was
waging it, corrected a good deal of the
wit out of it by expanding some passages
and omitting others. The speech as re-
ported in the New York Tribune, just
after delivery, by one of the most accu-
rate of reporters, is far more fresh and
incisive than the official report. Mr.
Corwin, reversing the prevalent rule, did
not write as well as he talked. One
pointed and epigrammatic phrase at the
expense of Walter Colton, a navy chap-
lain who made himself conspicuous in
California before it was conquered from
Mexico, describing him as " your evan-
gelical colonel and law-practicing divine,"
is wholly omitted in the official report,
though restored in the foregoing quota-
tion.

One of the peculiar characteristics of
Mr. Corwin's speeches was the very fre-
quent introduction of Scriptural phrases
and illustrations. His early reading had
included the Bible and Blackstone's Com-
mentaries, and the former must have
made the deeper impression of the two.
I have heard him, when defending a
poor newspaper reporter in Cincinnati,
charged before a United States court
with aiding in the escape of a fugitive
slave, after convulsing the court with
merriment at his picture of " the majesty

752

Washington Reminiscences.

of the United States " in hot pursuit of
an unhappy negro making toward Cana-
da as fast as his feet would carry him,
turn the fun into solemn silence by apt
allusions drawn from the golden rule and
the Sermon on the Mount.

Corwin's speech in the House in 1840,
in reply to General Crary, of Michigan,
who had attacked the military record of
General Harrison, is still often referred
to as a fine example of irony and sar-
casm. It covered the unhappy Crary
with ridicule, and even the sedate and
serious John Quincy Adams, then in the
House, alluded to the victim immediate-
ly afterward as " the late Mr. Crary."
But there were in nearly every one of
Corwin's speeches some scintillations of
wit or humor to enliven the ordinarily
dull debates, and whenever he took the
floor the members were sure to listen
eagerly.

Speaking upon internal improvement
of rivers, he said, "Your Constitution is
a fish that can live and thrive in a lit-
tle tide-creek which a thirsty mosquito
would drink dry in a hot day."

In ridiculing the Southern claim of
the right to dissolve the Union if pre-
cluded from carrying slavery into New
Mexico and adjacent territory, he de-
scribed the great American desert as a
"land in which no human creature could
raise either corn or cotton, — a land
wherein, for over a thousand miles, a
buzzard would starve as he winged his
flight, unless he took a lunch along with
him."

In the dark foreboding days of 1860-
61, Mr. Corwin was honored by being
chosen chairman of the Congressional
Committee of Thirty-Three (one mem-
ber from each state) upon the state of
the Union and the perilous condition of
the country. The election of Lincoln
to the presidency in November, 1860,
had alarmed the Southern states beyond
measure. In spite of all assurances of
Republican Congressmen and of the or-
gans of Northern public opinion of the

moderation likely to prevail in the course
of the incoming administration, the agi-
tation for breaking up the Union was
diligently fomented from Maryland to
Florida by political leaders and by the
Southei-n press. Conventions were called
and excitement grew, until the Southern
secession fever had so alarmed the North
as to bring on a financial panic, in which
all values tumbled downward month by
month. By the end of January, 1861,
five Southern states had withdrawn their
Senators and Representatives from Con-
gress, and others were planning to secede.
The Union seemed to be breaking in
pieces day by day, and the seizure of the
capital by insurgents was a topic of every-
day discussion in Washington. A " peace
conference " of more than one hundred
members was in session there, elected
from twenty-one states out of thirty-
three, to recommend measures of agree-
ment or pacification between the sections.
In these critical circumstances, while the
Crittenden Compromise was held back
in the Senate, as reported by its Commit-
tee of Fifteen, Corwin reported from his
committee a series of resolutions, which
were passed by the heavy majority of
136 to 53, declaring that no sufficient
cause for dissolution of the government
existed ; that it was its duty to enforce
the laws, protect federal property, and
preserve the Union ; that no authority
to interfere with slavery existed ; and
recommending the states to repeal all
obstructive laws, whether aimed at the
Fugitive Slave Law at the North or at
citizens deemed obnoxious at the South.
Its final measure, proposing an amend-
ment to the Constitution, declaring that
no amendment should be made- to that
instrument giving Congress the power to
abolish slavery, was also adopted by more
than two-thirds majority, — 133 to 65.
This amendment also passed the Senate
March 2, 1861, by a majority of two
thirds, twelve radical anti-slavery Sena-
tors only voting against it. It is instruc-
tive to note that just four years later

Washington Reminiscences.

753

Congress, by more than the same ma-
jority, recommended to the states an
amendment to the Constitution prohib-
iting slavery, and that amendment was
adopted.

HENRY WINTER DAVIS.

Henry Winter Davis, of Maryland,
who died in 1865, at the early age of
forty-eight, is to be reckoned among the
more eloquent of congressional orators
of recent times. He was a rare speci-
men of the scholar in politics, a vari-
ously gifted man, who brought into the
House of Representatives the ripe fruit
of a studious and laborious youth, de-
voted to jurisprudence, history, and lit-
erature. First elected in 1854 from a
Baltimore district, he came into public
life just when the issues which culminat-
ed in civil war were violently agitated,
and he took so vigorous and influential
a part in them that he became the ac-
knowledged leader of the liberal party
in Maryland. The position of that state

— with a slave population of nearly one
hundred thousand, with the ingrained
conservatism of generations, with a pro-
slavery policy ruling her legislation, ly-
ing on the border line between the se-
ceding states and the loyal states of the
North, with powerful interests and sym-
pathies zealously enlisted with the South

— was a most critical one. How near
Maryland came to joining the Southern
Confederacy is known to but few of the
present generation. She was held back
by the influence of the strong national
sentiment inspired by a few patriotic
leaders, of whom Henry Winter Davis
was the foremost.

He spoke in the halls of legislation
and upon the hustings, always in favor
of the most vigorous and thorough mea-
sures for prosecutJhg the war against se-
cession, and for ultimate emancipation.
Denounced, vilified, threatened with as-
sassination, he turned a deaf ear alike
to the assaults of enemies and the timid
counsels of friends, spurning all com-

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 488. 48

promise, and with indomitable courage
kept on his steadfast way. Born in a
slave state, and himself in early years a
slaveholder, he is to be reckoned among
that honorable and high-minded band
of Southern statesmen, including Wash-
ington, Jefferson, Henry, Madison, and
others, who have left on record their ab-
horrence of human slavery. He lived
to wield a strong influence in bringing
about the abolition of slavery in Mary-
land by the adoption of the state Con-
stitution of 1864, passed in the midst of
the civil war, and the subsequent ratifi-
cation of the thirteenth amendment to
the Constitution of the United States,
forever prohibiting slavery.

The advanced anti-slavery views of
Davis led him to oppose, in Congress
and elsewhere, the plan of Mr. Lincoln
for compensated emancipation and colo-
nization of the negroes ; at a later date
he was found even more radical than his
party on the state reconstruction issues,
and wrote, in 1864, the Wade - Davis
manifesto, criticising the position of
President Lincoln upon that question.
But bis opposition took no personal or
permanent form, and he loyally support-
ed Mr. Lincoln's reelection, making pow-
erful speeches in advocacy of the Re-
publican ticket.

The characteristics of Henry Winter
Davis as an orator were so marked as
always to hold the attention of his hear-
ers. I heard him often in the House of
Representatives, when the hush of ab-
sorbed listeners was such that even his
lightest tones penetrated to the remot-
est "corners of the galleries. He never
read from manuscript, nor wrote out his
speeches beforehand, trusting to a brief
of topics or note of illustrations, and was
thus free to impress his audience by the
spontaneous utterance of his ideas, en-
forced by graceful gesture, and depend-
ing for choice of words upon his well-
furnished vocabulary. His finely modu-
lated voice was singularly sweet, almost
musical in its more effective tones, and in

754

Washington Reminiscences,

loftier passages rousing the hearer like
the sound of a trumpet.

In person he was a graceful, attrac-
tive figure, slightly below the medium
height, his well-knit frame without an
ounce of superfluous flesh, his fine head
and studious face showing a strong in-
tellectual force. In personal intercourse
he was reserved with most whom he met,
gravely courteous rather than familiar ;
but he was a fascinating companion to
friends, who were charmed by his spar-
kling conversation, bearing always the
impress of a refined nature.

The literary merit of his speeches lay
in their simplicity, force, and dialectic
skill. He was sometimes classical, but
never florid. His style was singularly
chaste, free from that involved rhetoric
and rambling inconsecutiveness which
mark so many congressional efforts at
oratory. He seldom used quotations, but
when he did it was with the apposite-
ness of a scholar. In his early years
Tacitus and Gibbon were his favorite
authors, and he delighted in translating
into English the masterly and succinct
chapters of the great Roman historian.
To this exercise, and to the highly con-
densed and stately march of the style of
Gibbon, may be ascribed a certain sever-
ity of taste, which prevented him from
falling into the habit of diffuseness.

Another element of his success as an
orator was his characteristic enthusiasm.
A man of strong and sincere convictions,
lofty aspiration, and earnest purpose, he
threw into his public utterances all the
energy of his nature. With him was no
trimming, no half-hearted advocacy or
opposition, none of that double-faced sub-
serviency which discriminates the dema-
gogue from the statesman. His yea was
always yea, and his nay, nay, whether
in speech or in vote. Such were his in-
dependence and self-reliance that they
sometimes alienated personal friends and
political allies ; but he believed in choos-
ing his own path and following his own
advice.

With an idea and a principle before
him as clear as the sunlight, his indom-
itable will and singleness of purpose
carried him forward to advocacy of an
unpopular cause in the face of all oppo-
sition. He fought the battle of freedom
in slaveholding Maryland with a moral
courage that was sublime. Before great
popular audiences in Baltimore and in
the country towns he championed the
cause of a free Constitution with a pow-
er of reasoning as persuasive as that
with which he urged in Congress the
amendment abolishing slavery. Some-
times his audiences, too large to be con-
tained in any hall, would stand for more
than an hour in the rain to listen to his
arguments. While his speeches were
always plain and clearly reasoned, he
often had impassioned passages of ap-
peal to patriotism and love of the Union.
These were sometimes so powerful and
affecting as to carry his audience to
the highest pitch of enthusiasm. Under
the inspiration of a great cause, and
against opposition so strenuous and de-
termined, all the energies of his nature
were called forth. So effective with the
people were his efforts, so irresistible
were the arguments by which he bore
down the sophistries of slavery, that he
sent his hearers home convinced, or far
advanced on the road to conviction, and
in the end wrested a great moral and
political victoiy from what seemed at
the beginning only the forlorn hope of
freedom.

It is rarely quite safe to attempt any
illustration of an orator's characteristic
style, since so much depends upon the
occasion, and upon the more complete
context than can be given by quoting
an isolated extract ; but an example of
what may be called the cumulative state-
ment, not infrequent in the utterances
of Henry Winter Davis, may interest
the reader. It is from a speech in the
House of Representatives in 1864, when
the great military struggle for the integ-
rity of the Union was at its height : —

Washington Reminiscences.

755

"When exultant rebels shall sweep
over the fortifications, and their bomb-
shells shall crash against the dome of
the Capitol ; when the people — exhaust-
ed by taxation, wearied of sacrifices,
drained of blood, betrayed by their rul-
ers, deluded by demagogues into believ-
ing that peace is the way to union and
submission the path to victory — shall
throw down their arms before the ad-
vancing foe ; when vast chasms across
every state shall make apparent to every
eye, when too late to remedy it, that di-
vision from the South is anarchy at the
North, and that peace without union is
the end of the republic, — then the in-
dependence of the South will be an ac-
complished fact, and gentlemen may,
without treason to the dead republic, rise
in this migratory House, wherever it
may then be in America, and declare
themselves for recognizing their masters
at the South rather than exterminating
them. Until that day, in the name of
the American nation, in the name of
every house in the land where there is
one dead for the holy cause, in the
name of those who stand before us in
the ranks of battle, in the name of the
liberty our ancestors have confided to us,
I devote to eternal execration the name
of him who shall propose to destroy this
blessed land rather than its enemies.

"But until that time arrive it is the
judgment of the American people that
there shall be no compromise ; that ruin
to ourselves or ruin to the Southern
rebels are the only alternatives. It is
only by resolutions of this kind that na-
tions can rise above great dangers and
overcome them in a crisis like this. . . .
It is by such a resolve that the Amer-
ican people, coercing a reluctant gov-
ernment to draw the sword and stake
the national existence on the integrity of
the republic, are now anything but the
fragments of a nation before the world,
the scorn and hiss of every petty tyrant.
It is because the people of the United
States, rising to the height of the occa-

sion, dedicated this generation to the
sword, and pouring out the blood of
their children as of no account, and
avowing before high Heaven that there
should be no end to this conflict but
ruin absolute or absolute triumph, that
we now are what we are ; that the ban-
ner of the republic, still pointing.onward,
floats proudly in the face of the enemy ;
that vast regions are reduced to obedi-
ence to the laws ; and that a great host
in armed array now presses with steady
step into the dark regions of the rebel-
lion. It is only by the earnest and abid-
ing resolution of the people that what-
ever shall be our fate, it shall be grand
as the American nation, worthy of that
republic which first trod the path of
empire, and made no peace but under
the banners of victory, that the Ameri-
can people will survive in history."

MATTHEW HALE CARPENTEB.

Among the senatorial orators of re-
cent years, Matthew Hale Carpenter,
of Wisconsin, was ranked as one of the
foremost. Contemporary in Congress
with such speakers as Sumner, Conkling,
Edmunds, Trumbull, Morton, Schurz,
and Blaine, he was the peer in debate
of any of his colleagues. Born in 1824
in Vermont, and studying for the bar in
the office of Rut'us Choate, young Car-
penter, well convinced that in the West
were the surest avenues to success in his
profession, migrated to Wisconsin in
1848. He records that when he arrived
at Beloit he had but seventy-five cents,
and no visible means of support but a
law library and his own brains. The li-
brary, too, quite large for that day, had
been bought on credit, upon the volun-
teered guarantee of Choate to the Bos-
ton booksellers. Thus equipped, young
Carpenter soon found clients, though
much of his legal business was without
fees. While in his earliest practice he
charged a client a dollar for conducting
a case, ten years later he received from
a railroad capitalist six thousand dollars

756

Washington Reminiscences.

as annual fees for attending to his legal
business. So speedily did his natural
abilities, with untiring labor and a per-
sonal popularity which has rarely been
equaled, raise him to the foremost rank
in his profession.

The strong personality and intellec-
tual force of Carpenter, with the great
number of noted legal causes and politi-
cal struggles in which he was associated,
give a kind of dramatic interest to his
career. His was a person of singular
attractiveness. Tall, graceful, well pro-
portioned, his massive head set upon
broad shoulders and crowned with a
heavy profusion of dark hair carelessly
worn, his blue eyes full of spirit and
humor, he at once impressed every one
in his favor. His smile was perhaps
the sunniest I ever saw, and his peculiar
stride carried with it a breezy, confident
air which marked the healthy, self-reliant
man that he was. His manners in per-
sonal intercourse were charming. All
who knew him testified to the ready
freshness, variety, and exuberant wit of
his conversation. With his graceful
courtesy to women he was a universal
favorite with them, and his fascinating
speech and buoyant flow of spirits were
often accompanied with a laugh so mu-
sical and hearty as to be fairly conta-
gious in any circle. He was notable for
the easy and confidential way in which
he addressed his friends, and on his
visits to the Library, to which he often
resorted for aid, he would familiarly call
me " my son," though I was but a little
his junior in age.

Carpenter had a voice of wonderful
sweetness and compass. I have heard
him on many occasions when he put
forth all his powers, and the varying
impressions, from the softest tones when
some tender sentiment caused his voice
to vibrate with emotion, to the thrilling
emphasis of his most powerful denuncia-
tion, dwelt long in memory. He was a
natural orator, and the combined versa-
tility and acuteness of his intellect were

such that he charmed equally by the mat-
ter of his speeches and by their manner.
Whether addressing a great popular au-
dience (and it is said that he once spoke
to forty thousand people at Chicago) or
a court or a jury, where his arguments
generally drew a crowd, or in the Senate
at Washington, or in the Supreme Court
room, where he very frequently appeared,
Carpenter was always a magnet of at-
traction. As a lawyer, he was said by
the almost unanimous judgment of men
of his profession to have few equals and
no superior. He was thoroughly famil-
iar with the textbooks in jurisprudence,
and with what is known as case - law.
His clear and analytic brain grasped
the principles that lay at the basis of
every case, and his method was to pursue
. it through the precedents of the whole Li-
brary until he had thoroughly mastered
it. Then, but not till then, he would
rest.

Ex-Senator George F. Edmunds said
of him, " His arguments, both in the Sen-
ate and the courts, were unsurpassed for
learning, logic, and eloquence." Judge
J. S. Black declared, " He was worthy
to stand, as he did, at the head of the
legal profession." And Chief Justice
Chase said of him, " We regard that boy
as one of the ablest jurists in the coun-
try. I am not the only justice on this
bench who delights in his eloquence and
his reasoning." The expression referred
to the fresh, youthful, jaunty air which
Carpenter carried with him, though he
was fully thirty-eight years of age when it
was made. Into the grave and decorous
presence of the Supreme Court he bore
the easy, good-humored look and twin-
kle of the eyes which characterized him
everywhere. He was a great favorite
with all the members of the court, and
was for years almost the only man who
could be jocular and playful while con-
ducting a case before them, without sac-
rifice of dignity or good taste. It is to
be said that the justices of that tribunal,
with all their gravity and learning, have

Washington Reminiscences.

757

been men who dearly loved a joke, and
neither Marshall nor Taney, any more
than Chase or Waite, rose superior to
that weakness.

Carpenter was counsel in more impor-
tant causes than any other lawyer in the
West, and had his full share in that lucra-
tive railway litigation which has made
the fortunes of a few great lawyers. Yet
he spent his money as freely as he earned
it, telling the law students at Columbian
University, " Save money if you can, but
how you are to do it must be learned of
somebody besides me." He was chari-
table and generous to a fault. His sym-
pathies were acute, his heart always ten-
der to the appeals of those in distress.
Though making great sums every year,
he usually had little money, and he left
no large property to his family beyond a
life insurance of fifty thousand dollars,
and a fine library of five thousand vol-
umes of law and six thousand of miscel-
laneous books. His taste for literature
and his eagerness for learning of every
kind were strong from very boyhood.
Choate said of him, " Young Carpenter
was possessed of a passion for devouring
books that was more than remarkable ;
it amounted almost to a mania." He
had an innate love of work, and few
who listened to his luminous and ap-
parently spontaneous arguments (for he
almost never wrote out a speech) were
aware how much labor they had cost
him. One of the busiest men in Amer-
ica, he yet found time to read, and he
spent many hours in the Congressional
Library digging out decisions and his-
torical data for use. He had a power
of absorption that would appear marvel-
ous to the ordinary reader who plods
through a book sentence by sentence.
Carpenter seemed to read a sentence by
one glance of the eye. In his later years
he was so engrossed by professional stud-
ies and public speaking that he read less
literature, but his mind was stored with
many of the masterpieces of prose and
poetry. For a year or two of his early

life in Wisconsin he had been afflicted
with blindness, and his friends had read
to him the Bible, Shakespeare, and the
poetry of Walter Scott. In after-years
he could repeat the whole of The Lady
of the Lake from memory.

In politics, Carpenter acted with the
Democratic party in early years, and
voted for Douglas in 1860. But the
moment that the authority of the United
States was resisted in the South he was
the first noted Democrat in the West to
range himself on the side of the gov-
ernment, and he went farther than the
farthest in his zeal for emancipating
the slaves and maintaining the Union.
Elected to the Senate as a Republican in
1869, he served six years, was defeated
in 1875 by a coalition of Democrats and
bolting Republicans, and re-chosen Sena-
tor in 1879. In that body he at once
took rank as one of the foremost of its
able debaters, and his ready command of
language, fullness of information, clear
and incisive style, and distinct and pleas-
ing utterance rendered hig speeches al-
most uniformly effective.

He spoke often, but never without
saying something which elucidated the
subject before the Senatet He excelled
in the perspicuous statement of a case.
He was clear-headed, straightforward,
sincere, and always thoroughly in ear-
nest. As a constitutional lawyer, who
had read much and thought deeply upon
American institutions and our political
history from the beginning, he opposed
or defended measures according to his
own independent judgment. He thus
found himself not unfrequently opposed
to his party. He pronounced some Re-
publican measures unconstitutional, while
on others he went beyond the radicalism
even of Mr. Sumner.

His early attachment to the principles
of Jeffersonian democracy led him, on
many questions, to stand for state rights
and against a consolidated or paternal
government. He opposed the Bureau of
Education, the Department of Agrieul-

758

Washington Reminiscences.

tare, all propositions for a Labor Com-
mission, railway monopoly, payment of
Southern claims, amnesty to rebels, and
civil service reform. He favored Chi-
nese citizenship, increase of salaries (in-
cluding "back pay"), the extension of
the Ku-Klux act, and the franking pri-
vilege.

Elected in 1873 president pro tempore
of the Senate, an honor due to his ac-
knowledged abilities as a parliamentari-
an, he presided with impartiality, digni-
ty, and unfailing courtesy. There were
several acrimonious episodes during Car-
penter's service in the Senate, involving
sharp interpellations with Senators Sum-
ner, Morton, and Elaine, upon St. Do-
mingo, the French arms question, and
the public character of President Grant ;
but as public interest in these questions
has passed away, it is not fitting to recall
thern. here. The controversy over the
New York Tribune's publication of a
treaty, surreptitiously obtained before its
consideration by the Senate, brought a
prodigious volume of obloquy and de-
nunciation by newspapers upon Senator
Carpenter, who was chairman of the com-
mittee upon whose report the Tribune
correspondents were imprisoned by the
Senate. He reciprocated the denunci-
ations with sufficient violence, and was
warned to drop the investigation, or the
press "would never rest until it had
ruined him," — meaning, no doubt, po-
litically. The rancor thus engendered
outlasted the efforts to discover the Sen-
ator whose name the reporters had re-
fused to disclose.

It may be said of Senator Carpenter
that while his great and admirable quali-
ties brought him more devoted and en-
thusiastic friends than fall to the lot
of most public men, he also stirred up
animosities which were fomented and
spread by many bitter enemies. Perhaps
no Senator was ever pursued with more
untiring denunciation, much of which
was due to the bold independence, ag-
gressiveness, and positive character of

the man. Faults he had in abundance,
but they were those of a man of a sin-
gularly ardent temperament, and will
be viewed with the most charity by those
who are duly conscious of their own.

I will give but a short specimen of
Senator Carpenter's forensic utterances.
In December, 1869, he offered a resolu-
tion declaring that the thirty gunboats
then fitting out by Spain in the ports of
the United States, to be employed against
the insurgents in Cuba, should not be al-
lowed to depart from the United States
during the continuance of the rebellion
then in progress. It is interesting as
exhibiting nearly the same unhappy con-
dition regarding Cuba thirty years ago
as has recently existed.

"The Cubans are now struggling to
throw off this unendurable tyranny.
They have appealed to the God of bat-
tles in vindication of the inalienable
right of man to self-government. Of the
inhabitants within the district now con-
trolled by the revolutionists, about one
hundred and five" thousand are capable
of bearing arms. Of this number, from
twenty to thirty thousand are now ac-
tually in military array, commanded by
officers appointed by the Cuban republic,
and but for the difficulty of obtaining
arms the number which would 'instantly
take the field would exceed those already
under arms.

" It is claimed and represented that a
large district of the island, capable of
exact delineation and geographical de-
scription, is held by the patriots, and
can only be entered by the Spaniards by
military force ; and that in this district
there exists a regular government es-
tablished by the Cubans, and which is
in regular administration, except when
disturbed by military operations ; that it
has a constitution, a judicial force ac-
tually exercising the functions which
pertain to the office of judge ; that it has
a regular postal system, and that a vast
majority of the inhabitants of this dis-
trict pay habitual obedience to its com-

Washington Reminiscences.

759

mands ; that it has a flag and an or-
ganized army ; that battles have been
fought, towns besieged, and other acts
of war committed by the Cubans under
officers appointed by the new govern-
ment ; that messages under flags of truce
have been exchanged, and that regular
warfare is now being carried on in the
island to support the constitution of the
republic of Cuba : and these facts have
been shown by judicial proceedings here-
after to be mentioned.

" The constitution of the young re-
public of Cuba emancipates all slaves,
and the contest of arms now going on
to support that constitution involves the
liberty or slavery of all who were slaves
when the war broke out. This feature
appeals strongly to our sympathies, and
constitutes an irresistible claim of right
to our observing an honest neutrality, if
we cannot aid the Cubans. And I be-
seech the learned Senator from Massa-
chusetts, the chairman of our Commit-
tee on Foreign Relations [Senator Sum-
ner], to whom this resolution may be
referred, whose voice was clearest and
sweetest of the chorus of liberty in the
early morn, to lend his experienced ear
to the cry of humanity that comes up
from this island of the sea. The weight
of his influence to-day might pluck an-
other jewel from the crown of despotism,
and release other thousands threatened
with the master's lash and rebelling
against the clanking chain.

" I cannot express how much I regret
that some step has not already been
taken upon this subject by that honor-
able and honored Senator. But there are
truths so mighty that if men hold their
peace the stones will cry out ; and it is
the silence of that Senator that leads me
now to address the Senate. We have hap-
pily escaped frojpi the curse of human
slavery ourselves, but as benevolence is
stayed by no barrier of nature, acknow-
ledges no limits of human dominion, we
cannot, blameless, remain indifferent to

such a contest within gunshot of our own
shores.

" Now, sir, I submit upon this state of
facts, which the Cubans offer to establish
by judicial evidence, a great wrong, or
rather an unaccountable series of wrongs,
has been committed by our government.
We are solemnly bound by the law of
nations properly construed, expressly
pledged by our own declarations upon
this subject, to stand entirely neutral be-
tween Spain and Cuba ; but as the law
has been administered, it has been a
shield to Spain, a sword to Cuba. Lib-
erty in Cuba is in the helplessness of in-
fancy ; its life is feeble, its pulse low.
I do not invoke your aid on behalf of
Cuba ; I only ask that to be done the
neglect of which would justly bring war
upon us, if Cuba had the strength to en-
force her rights. As it is, whether the
United States does its duty or violates
its duty, Cuba is without remedy. But
there is a bar, the bar of impartial his-
tory, before which all governments must
stand ; there is a God, and a great book
in which the deeds of nations are writ-
ten ; and there is retribution for every
nation which, knowing its duty, does it
not."

On the delivery of this speech the
Spanish authorities were quickly on the
alert, and the warships to put down the
Cuban revolt had sailed before Carpen-
ter's resolution came to a vote. But
the influential press of the country took
sides with the Senator, declaring that the
incident redounded much more to his
credit than to Sumner's, who had vigor-
ously opposed the resolution.

Senator Carpenter closed his career in
the second year of his last senatorial
term ; he died in Washington, February
24, 1881. He had been warned by his
physicians nearly a year before that he
would die of an incurable malady within
a few months. With his habitual firm-
ness, and cheerful to the last, he set his
house in order.

Ainsworth R. Spofford.

760

A New Programme in Education.

A NEW PROGRAMME IN EDUCATION.

IN Greece, in the golden age of Peri-
cles, in those wonderful eight-and-twenty
years which represent the flowering time
of the human spirit, the impulse in edu-
cation was national and contemporary.
There was no past whose achievements
were so notable as those of the present.
The ideals of life were the ideals of edu-
cation, and the servant still served his
master. Education was distinctly a pro-
cess, never an end. The one language
was the Greek tongue ; the one effort
was the cultivation of personal power,
the strong and beautiful body, the subtle
and alert mind, the development of that
sense of beauty and proportion which has
left Greek art and literature unrivaled
after more than two thousand years of
human effort. Education, like life, was
preeminently a thing of the present mo-
ment.

But this redeeming thought faded in
the less beautiful culture of Rome, and
went almost entirely out in that dark-
ness which preceded our own dawn.
When the fires of the Renaissance were
kindled in the hearts of men, there
seemed for them but one source to which
they might turn for inspiration, — that
bright light which still lingered like a
memory over the shores of the JEgean
and the Adriatic. The mechanism of
culture became formal, for the culture
sought was no longer an element of daily
life, to be found in the hearts and the
lives of their fellow men. It was an ex-
otic, to be brought to a less friendly clime
and coaxed into such growth as might be.
The open sesame to this priceless culture
of the past was not found in the ideali-
zation of the contemporary national life,
which of all lessons was, it seems to me,
the great lesson that Greek culture had
to teach, but was found in keeping that
culture wrapped up in the dead languages
of Greece and Rome, and making educa-

tion consist in learning how to get through
the wrappings.

It would be an ungrateful spirit that
denied, or perhaps even doubted, the
spiritual value of the Renaissance, but
we come here upon a picture which is
at least calculated to make us stop and
think. The two spiritual forces were
the church and the university. But
neither seemed to be laying very seri-
ously to heart those pertinent words of
Paul about the present nature of salva-
tion. The Christian church was busily
teaching pessimism, teaching how un-
profitable is the present world, and
claiming all that was fairest and best
for a more shadowy realm. In the dis-
couraging contrast between the things
of this world and the things of the
kingdom, in that constant antithesis
which made the present moment an illu-
sion, there was little to inspire an ideal
of contemporary achievement. Even
art was steeped in the same spirit. It
expressed itself in cathedrals that stood
for a kingdom which was to come, and
painted saints and angels who had been.
The schoolmen were as busily teaching
a variety of scholastic pessimism ; were
practically demanding contempt for the
present, and unlimited veneration for the
past. Both of the spiritual forces of the
time were making straight away from
the artistic perfectness of daily life.

One almost trembles to think what
would have happened had the men of
those times been logical, and as devout
and learned as priest and scholar would
have made them. The priest would have
been for sending them all straight to
heaven through the renunciation of this
world ; the scholar would have been for
sending the best of them out of warm,
palpitating life into the thought world of
the past. Both were for denying the
present moment ; but both failed. Hu-

A New Programme in Education.

761

man nature admitted the premises, but
declined the conclusions. It would not
be so devout and it would not be so
learned as the current thought demand-
ed. Through this failure, which doubt-
less cost many a heartburn, the contem-
porary national life was saved from utter
extinction, and was brought down the
centuries to a later generation. To us
remains the task of idealizing this con-
temporary national life, and accomplish-
ing democracy.

The occasion for trembling has not yet
passed. Theoretically, the majority of
our people are steeped in quite as danger-
ous illogic as were the men of the Mid-
dle Ages. They are being saved by the
practical denial of their own beliefs. I
need not point out that salvation of such
a type does not mean the liberation of
the human spirit. The majority of our
people are still avowed pessimists. The
things of God still stand for light, the
things of God's world for darkness.
Those of us who live in an atmosphere
of liberal and cultivated thought do not
sufficiently realize, I think, that in the
less cultured communions of the Chris-
tian church this thoroughgoing pessimism
is being persistently preached to a people
who nominally accept it, but who daily
fail to live up to it.

Now, we can have no sincere national
life which is not founded upon a deep
religious sentiment. Nor can we have
a sincere contemporary life which is not
founded upon a belief in the sacredness
of the present moment, and upon a gen-
uine faith in the essential beauty and
goodness of life. When we put these
two truths together, we are forced to
realize that we can hope for no sincere
national, contemporary life that is f ouhd-
ed upon the creed of pessimism. Some-
what the same thmg exists in the schools.
They too, to fulfill their purpose, must
turn more and more from other coun-
tries, other times, and other people to the
rich content of the present moment. To
come up to the Greek standard, the in-

struction must offer less representation
and greater reality.

But while in the official world of
church and school things have been go-
ing rather badly, better things have been
happening in God's greater world. In
the fresh open of life, in the sacred
cloisters of the human heart, forces have
been gathering and growing and shaping,
— forces, I am bound to believe, that
will in the end do greater things than
Greece was able to do. In Greece, the
human body reached the highest degree
of excellence and of beauty. In Greece,
the human mind attained the acme of
its power. Yet in this superb human
animal there lurked an element of fatal
weakness. It was in the human heart.
Grecian civilization rested upon a foun-
dation of human slavery. The down-
fall of Greece was brought about by her
disregard of the rights of others. Su-
premacy passed away from Greece be-
cause she had not a humanity broad
enough to extend beyond the family and
the immediate state, beyond the bounda-
ries of accident and circumstance, and
give the hand of loving comradeship to
the individual man. Greatly as we must
deplore the overthrow of so much that
was beautiful and precious, the travail
of the centuries has brought a sweeter
fruit. The force which I detect at the
very heart of the modern impulse to life,
stronger than Greece, more lusty than
institutions, is just this giant cup-bearer
of all my own hope, — it is the individ-
ual man.

There were men in Greece, magnifi-
cent men, and there have been men in
all countries and in all times. The his-
tory of the world is the history of a few
men. But their power has not limited
itself to the wholesome personal power
of the individual man. It has added
the offensive power of undue possession,
and a subservient following. It has
lacked the saving grace of reverence for
the individuality of the other man.
What we want is the Grecian ideal of

762

A New Programme in Education.

personal beauty and power touched with
the modern ideal of human brotherhood
and solidarity.

In the face of the undeniable strug-
gle for wealth and peace and power, it
may seem an over-optimism to declare
that this is but an accident and circum-
stance of the time, and lacks significance.
Yet I venture so to regard it. It is a
passing fever which will spend itself and
die. Meanwhile, the cause of humanity
rests with a scattered handful of men and
women, a saving minority, weak in num-
bers, but strong in destiny, — rests with
them, and is perfectly safe. Their creed,
if anything so informal may be called a
creed, expresses itself in the same social
terms, but terms that have been given a
human interpretation. These men and
women believe in wealth, but in a wealth
that is human, in bodies that are both
beautiful and strong, in senses that are
alert and discriminating, in intellects that
are sound and appreciative and creative ;
above all, in hearts that are warm and
human. They believe in rank, but in the
rank that is self-conferred and bears no
stamp save its own excellence. They
believe in institutions, but in institutions
which are alive to the present needs of
the spirit ; which will keep fresh and
green the social and moral and aesthetic
and religious emotion of mankind, and
will let the dead bury their dead. In
this organic wealth we have a store of
good fortune, of which there is quite
enough to go all around, and which, hap-
pily, does not depend for its power upon
another's poverty. In this it is a 'strong
contrast to that inorganic wealth which is
the passing idol of the hour, — a wealth
whose sole power, mark you, depends,
not upon human good will and loving-
service, but upon the pressure of grind-
ing human need. To even up this in-
organic wealth would be to rob it of its
power ; but the more organic wealth we
have, the richer is every man's delight.

The modern impulse which in the
midst of much that is accidental remains

the significant fact, that impulse which
is the timeless element in our restless
American life, is just this insistence upon
the individual man, upon personality, and
upon the surpassing worth of the present
moment. It is the spirit which declares,
/ am.

The poets have a way of going straight
to the heart of matters which quite
shames our own feebler efforts. They are
forever proclaiming the unknown, reveal-
ing the unknowable, and seemingly with-
out being aware of it. I remember, some
years ago, telling a friend of mine, a
literary woman, about my enthusiasm for
Paracelsus, a poem which still seems to
me one of the noblest in our language.
It is a true picture of the way a young
man feels, a young man who aspires and
is ready to browbeat Fate herself. My
friend answered rather drolly, " I have
some hope for you, if you are caring for
poetry." I had never myself felt other
than hopeful, and so I hastened to ex-
plain, by way of defense, and perhaps
fearing she might think I had taken to
verse-making myself, that it was because
I found so much true science in our
poets, and because they had such a turn
for getting at the real news of the uni-
verse. " Ah," she rejoined, " that in-
terests me. I have always cared for po-
etry, and of late it has given me a love
for science, just as your care for science
has brought you to poetry." We had
traveled different paths, but reached the
same milestone. It is in the poets, then,
that you will find the truest expression
of this modern yet timeless spirit. If I
were asked to sum it up in a single line,
I could not do better than to turn to that
sturdy Homeric and yet twentieth-cen-
tury poet, Walt Whitman. Indeed, I
could nowhere else do so well. It is in
his Song of the Open Road : —

' ' Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I, my-
self, am good fortune."

In these few words you have the whole
of the modern impulse, — the denial of
outside possession, conferment, prefer-

A New Programme in Education.

763

ment ; the assertion of the individual
man ; the present moment.

I must believe, in spite of the appar-
ently contradictory signs of the times,
I must believe that men and women are
slowly coming to this sturdy, magnificent
faith. It is difficult to exchange our trust
in property, our trust in what other peo-
ple say that we are, our trust in the san-
ity of the corporate mind, — to exchange
this trust in outside possessions 'for an
equally certain trust in our own personal
prowess, a trust in our own knowledge of
what we are, a trust in the sanity of our
own spirit. It is difficult until we have
once done it, and then it is difficult —
nay, it is impossible — to do otherwise.
In the heart where this faith resides die
fear and the last lingering doubts of im-
mortality.

The point is that this giving up of the
illusions of life for the realities, this turn-
ing from mdyd to dtman, as our Indian
brother would say, does not come in the
guise of renunciation. It is an exchange
of quite a different sort, the surrender
of a small good for a great good. It is
that in the intellectual and emotional
world, and in the bodily and intellectual
and emotional wealth, we have the great-
er source of human delight. One does
not need to be an idealist to realize this.
The poor fellow who has spent youth and
health in adding house to house and land
to land, and then spends land and house
in trying to regain health and youth,
knows very well that yonder naked boy,
exultant in the summer sunshine, and
ready to plunge into the cool, sweet water,
is richer than he. The tired man of af-
fairs, in the very moment of his triumph,
knows full well that the rosy youngster,
lying stomach downward on the hearth-
rug and kicking his heels together in
glee over his de*r Walter Scott, is hap-
pier than he. And we all know, if we
are lonely and unloved and unattached,
whatever our other triumphs may have
been, that in the nearest true home circle
there are men and women more blessed

than we. It is in these simple joys of a
sound body, an alert mind, a warm and
generous heart, that the delight and the
poetry of life reside ; and it is in the
beautiful men and beautiful women and
beautiful children, who feel this delight
and live this poetry, that the wealth of
the world is to be found. These are the
materials, the rich human materials, in
which our civilization is to express itself,
and not in the magnitude of our indus-
tries, the complete division of our labor,
the speed of our transit, the giant pro-
portions of our commerce, the size of our
button-factories, the story upon story of
our office tombs. The charm and the suc-
cess of life do not reside in these. They
reside in persons. The work of the sav-
ing minority is in the humanizing of this
too material civilization. To make good
fortune consist in one's own superb per-
son, this is the modern impulse, — an
impulse which will have expressed itself
only when all our people shall be beau-
tiful, and accomplished, and noble, and
free.

I cordially disapprove of much of the
work of our current education, just be-
cause it is not expressing this modern
spirit, is not laying the emphasis upon
human beauty and power and emotion.
But the modern spirit is abroad. The
little prig who tells us that he has not
missed a day at school for Heaven knows
how many weary years is no longer
praised. He has to answer the more
searching question as to what good he
got out of his school-going ; or probably
we look at him and answer the question
ourselves. The same human spirit makes
us take more kindly to the little truant,
for often he turns out to be the more in-
teresting boy.

It is in no ungracious or unfriendly
spirit that I challenge the schools, but
nevertheless I do challenge them. And
back of me stands the more serious chal-
lenge of events. It is surely a significant
fact that the men and women whose per-
formances in art, in science, in literature,

764

A New Programme in Education.

have most touched the heart and the
imagination of our time have been, for
the most part, men and women who have
taught themselves. Lincoln, our first
American, was quite untaught in any
academic sense, but nevertheless in his
Gettysburg speech he reached a level in
both thought and language that had not
been reached in America before. As we
all know, his two masters were the Bible
and Shakespeare. It is true that on the
other side of the water the best English
of the century has perhaps been written
by Matthew Arnold, an academician to
the backbone. I read both his poetry
and his prose over and over again with
delight, and yet I know that in his lack
of human warmth he has failed, in any
very vital way, to touch the imagination
of his time. I cannot forget the com-
ment of the clever woman who said to
me, in reference to the minor chord
which pervades Arnold's poetry, "Yes,
I like him, but he always seems to me
to be saying, ' Cheer up ; the worst is
still to come.' " A message so discour-
aging as this is not the utterance of first-
class power. And we must confess, even
if we do read Culture and Anarchy once
a year, that there is a certain academic
strut about it that we would gladly dis-
pense with. The most considerable fig-
ures in current literature, men like Walt
Whitman, Stevenson, and Kipling, are
not academicians, but men who have seen
and reported life, master workmen who
have learned their craft at first-hand.

In science, it would be useless to ask
who taught Darwin and Audubon, Agas-
siz and John Muir, for we all know that
largely they taught themselves. Fara-
day, the great electrician of the early
half of the century, was little more than
a college servant, and yet when Sir Hum-
phry Davy, the discoverer of the alka-
lis, the inventor of the safety-lamp, was
asked which of his own discoveries he
considered the greatest, he promptly re-
plied, " Michael Faraday." And Edison,
the great electrician of the latter half

of the century, the man whose work has
been so original that it has startled both
continents, and whose inventions have
changed the outer aspect and circum-
stance of daily life, — we know his his-
tory, know how completely lie eluded the
schools. In the world of art, of paint-
ing, sculpture, architecture, and music,
the cases are even more abundant and
striking. Indeed, the schools would al-
most have been fatal. Art is to do ; and
to do with skill, one must set about the
doing very young. In the studios of
Paris, — and Paris, gay, cheerful, human
Paris, is still the capital of the art world,
— in these studios they attempt nothing
so impossible as to teach art. There is
your place, there are the materials and
the studies, and you go to work. They
do not mark your work 10, or 100, or A.
If it is too bad, they say nothing. If
it shows promise, they say, " Pas mal ; "
and on this encouragement you must live
and work a month.

Now, the point is that the men and
women whose performances have most
touched the heart and the imagination of
their time have been men and women who
have done something that they wanted
to do, some task prompted by their own
activity, suggested by the consciousness
of their own powers. They have done
the work that was proper to themselves,
and no one else in all God's world could
know what .that work was to be.

When I was quite a young man, I
went to New York to try my fortunes in
a literary way. Besides my scroll and
inkhorn I carried a letter to Mr. Ros-
well Smith, of The Century Magazine.
He received me very kindly, and talked
with me for some time. Finally he said,
" Well, if you want to write, write," and
he held out his hand, — the interview
was over. As I journeyed back to Phil-
adelphia, I could not quite smother the
reflection that I had gone considerable
distance to get so obvious advice. But
the more I thought about it, the more I
saw that it was good advice, and just the

A New Programme in Education.

765

sort of advice that, after all, when we
address ourselves to the serious art of
living, we must every one of us follow.

I repeat, it is a grave challenge to the
schools that they are turning out, year
after year, commonplace men and wo-
men, — somewhat informed, it is true,
but too often ungracious and unattractive
and unaccomplished, and in the main less
capable than before of any truly original
thought ; while the flower of humanity,
the men and women whom we delight to
love and honor, have a way of coming to
us from the open of life. I resent this
social crime the more because common-
placeness and dull routine are precisely
those unnecessary forms of destiny which
I can tolerate with least patience. Life
is so tremendously interesting : there is
so much to be done and seen, and thought
and felt ; there are so many places of
beauty and interest to be visited and ap-
propriated ; there are so many noble men
and women to be known and enjoyed, —
what ungracious guests are we if, in this
magnificent hostelry of God, we do not
accept so royal entertaining. I speak
as warmly as I do because I rebel to see
the tragedy of Esau regnacted on our
modern stage ; because I rebel to see
boys and girls, men and women, selling
their birthright for the cheap adorn-
ment of a formal education, for a bit of
property, for a snug position, or for any
other mess of pottage, however savory it
may appear in a moment of conserva-
tism and of weakness, when I know that
the real charm of life is the beautiful
and accomplished organism, the inquir-
ing mind, the undismayed heart.

But I should ill serve the cause of hu-
man culture, to which I am in a way
dedicated, if I simply tried to sow the
seeds of discontent. Happily, my task
is more gracious tHkn that. It is a part
of the present purpose to suggest briefly
what seems to me ample remedy for the
academic abuses of the hour. The pro-
blem of education is full of promise, full
of the same bountiful promise as is the

problem of society at large. And yet,
just as I have been unable to say smooth
things of the schools as they are, so I am
unable to say smooth things of those half-
and-half measures of reform which take
the present school as a basis, and pro-
pose to mend it by an elaborate system
of patching. From what I have seen of
this operation, I am less hopeful than I
am of the original article. Where the
patching is most complete the results
seem to me to be the worst. For this
patching consists, not in renovating the
curriculum along organic lines of cause
and effect, but in adding to the cur-
riculum in hopefessly ineffectual doses,
perhaps one or two hours a week, the
modern branches of gymnastic, manual
training, sewing, cooking, clay modeling,
science lessons, free-hand drawing, and
the rest. I think we have but one result
to expect, and that is failure. Some of
these branches are added with the ami-
able thought that they may serve as
opening wedges. But if we put so many
wedges into a child's day and into a
child's attention, we split them both into
mere fragments, and the result is confu-
sion. The children save themselves by
not taking the matter too seriously.

It is not in the schools that light is to
be found. It is in the great open world
of life. If we start from this basis, the
renovation of the schools is very simple,
but it is also very thoroughgoing. The
modern impulse which is to redeem so-
ciety will also redeem the educational
process. I have tried to point out what
this modern impulse stands for ; to show
that it stands for personality, for organic
wealth, for beautiful men and beautiful
women and beautiful children, beautiful
alike in body and in spirit and in heart,
and that this personality is to manifest
itself here and now, in a strong, national,
contemporary life.

To carry out this impulse, the school
must stand resolutely for the present
moment : not for the past, as is done in
classical education ; not for the future,

766

A New Programme in Education.

as is done in industrial education ; but
resolutely for the present moment. The
character of the present is reality. All
representation is of the past or the fu-
ture. The work of the school must limit
itself to reality, and must put aside those
interminable representations which have
hitherto been its chief stock in trade.
The school must be a place for training.
The library is a better guardian of facts
and representations.

This one condition, this demand for
present reality, simplifies the problem
tremendously, for at a stroke it cuts out
nearly all of the present complicated cur-
riculum. I have a little friend, a most
artistic boy, from whom I expect great
things in the future. He goes to school
when it pleases him, but he has rather a
distaste for work assigned him by other
people. He was charged recently with
wasting his time by playing around so
much. He replied quite indignantly, " I
never ' play around.' I make plans, and
carry them out." These childish plans
may seem trivial ; but when we come to
think about it, they are quite as impor-
tant as many of the stupid things that fill
our own days, and much more human and
diverting. The particular injury which
I think the schools do, in this matter, is
to interfere with the child's plan without
enlisting sufficient interest in the school
plan to make it sincere and real. Both
plans are thwarted, and the child falls
between them into that deplorable abyss
whose name is apathy. I like, myself,
to have my own way, I like it very much ;
and you, if you are human, like to have
yours. Why should we think it so naugh-
ty when children show the same predi-
lection? I believe quite seriously that
we shall have more interesting and more
successful men and women when we con-
scientiously allow children to have their
own way just as far as it is possible. The
line of possibility is to be drawn very
sharply at all acts of aggression, and less
sharply at suspected danger. Childish
aggression is to be resisted to the utmost,

and especially for the sake of the ag-
gressor himself ; but children can do
many things with perfect safety that
would be quite dangerous for us oldlings.
There are few forms of exposure so fatal
as the forms that protection takes. Na-
ture has a way of looking out for the lit-
tle people who fend for themselves.

We can do in life only what we want
to do, and we can do with graciousness
and success only what we want to do
very much. If we are to accomplish
anything worthy in education, we must
do it by carrying out the process through
the self-interest and the se(/^activity of
the children themselves, and we must set
up as our ideal living, breathing men
and women, charming people of flesh
and blood, and not scholastic phantoms.
This method and this aim, this shifting
of the ground from the outside to the
inside, represent the first step in the at-
tainment of that oi'ganic personal good
fortune which is the burden of Whitman's
song.

But while I believe so strongly in the
doctrine of non - interference, that we
must come to our own, there is plenty of
positive, present work for the schools to
do, and I am not for a moment calling
in question their ultimate usefulness. I
am only recommending that they select
the right work, and do it in the right
way. To carry out the rich emotional
and intellectual life of humanity, we need
a good tool, a good body, a strong and
beautiful and well-trained organism, and
this is gained only through cultivation.
This seems to me the right work of the
schools. To seek this perfect organism
through practical, organic training, along
lines of cause and effect, seems the right
way. In a word, I am commending or-
ganic education.

In our present official attempt at cul-
ture, we have the lower schools up to
fourteen years of age, the high school
from fourteen to eighteen, the college
from eighteen to twenty-two, the univer-
sity or professional school as long as we

A New Programme in Education.

767

will. It is an appalling sequence, and
we ought to do much more than we do
toward realizing the charm and the suc-
cess of life. For the present we may
deal only with the lower schools. The
modern impulse to life would reform
these schools, not by patching them up,
but by wholly reorganizing them ; by
abolishing entirely the present curricu-
lum of formal study, and substituting a
thoroughgoing system of bodily training,
— a system carried out for the explicit
purpose of furnishing an adequate tool
for the full expression of the emotional
and intellectual life. Such a system
would include but five branches of in-
struction, — gymnastic, music, manual
training, free-hand drawing, and lan-
guage. I am naming them in what I
consider the order of their importance.
I place language last, because I believe
that expression in action is incomparably
better than expression in words ; that it
is far better to help our brother man than
to commend helpfulness, to be brave than
to praise bravery, to paint a beautiful
picture than to talk about art, to love
than to write love sonnets ; and also be-
cause I am quite sure that sound content
will find suitable dress. The present
wail over our deficient English compo-
sition is at bottom a wail over deficient
thought. It is overwhelmingly difficult
to say anything when you have nothing
to say. Dr. Holmes is responsible, I be-
lieve, for the observation that the boys
on the Boston Common never .misuse
"shall" and "will." I need not add
that the Boston school children some-
times do. It is the same in art : no
amount of technique atones for the ab-
sence of a true sentiment.

I omit mathematics ^altogether, and
the other formal studies, except as they
come in incidentally, because they are
not a part of the present moment for a
child, and may safely be left to the boys
and girls of the high school.

I place gymnastic first, — not athlet-
ics, but gymnastic, — because it seems to

me that good health and abounding vi-
tality are the foundations of all other
excellence. I believe with Dr. Johnson
that sick men are rascals. Ill health is
a form of serious immorality, and a most
prolific source of social unhappiness and
vice. But gymnastic has a larger mis-
sion even than good health. As an edu-
cational agent, it is to add to the body
beauty and grace and usableness, to make
it an admirable tool for the admirable
purposes of the heart and mind.

The same human motive makes me
place music second ; and by music I mean
the artistic cultivation of the voice in
both speech and song, as well as distinct
musical training on some suitable instru-
ment What a tremendous contribution
to the charm and success of life would
be wrought by this simple innovation !
We lose much through our harsh voices,
in the gentle art of living. And then,
too, music and song add so much to the
joy of life. The sailor singing at the
capstan, the negro singing in the cotton-
fields, experience an uplifting of spirit
that we cheat ourselves by not sharing.

In the third branch, manual train-
ing, we have profitable occupation for as
many hours a day as we will, — occupa-
tion touched with sincerity and reality,
and therefore morally acceptable. It is
possible to make many beautiful and
useful things and to cultivate a cunning
hand. But meanwhile, and better even
than this, while the children are gaining
muscular dexterity they are also gain-
ing an equal mental dexterity, and are
coming into that best of all possessions,
the possession of themselves. I value
manual training so highly, not because
I want to turn our boys into artisans
and our girls into clever housewives, but
because I want to turn them into men
and women of large personal power.

In free - hand drawing we have only
another method of expressing the self,
and one to be cultivated purely for this
purpose, not, therefore, by giving the
children set tasks, but by allowing them

768

A New Programme in Education.

to express themselves in such drawings
as they choose to make, helping them
only in the method of representation and
by limited suggestion.

I come once more to the question of
language, and I want again to call at-
tention to the fact that in importance it
stands at the end of the list. All the
other branches, in the hands of culti-
vated teachers, would involve constant
practice in expression, and the specific
study of English might even be omitted.
Where it is undertaken, however, it might
profitably be limited to spoken English,
and the classes in reading and writing
might be made entirely voluntary, allow-
ing the children to come to these arts in
their own good time and as the result of
their own impulse. If at fourteen they
did not know how to read, it would be
surprising, but not in the least alarming.
Few children in educated families, if left
to themselves, pass the age of eight with-
out learning to read, and many learn at
four. At the same time one other spoken
language might be learned, for a perfect
pronunciation can hardly be acquired
later than fourteen. French has the ad-
vantage of being still the language of art
and of the world, and of being a great
practical help in the formation of a clear
and beautiful English style. The men
who write the most exquisite English,
men like Matthew Arnold and Cardinal
Newman, have been much influenced by
French literature. The reading of a
good French book will be found a most
helpful preparation, when one has a diffi-
cult article to write, for the French have
the wonderful gift of lucidity. German
may act the other way. Americans who
study at the German universities show a
curious awkwardness in their style, not
entirely attributable to their being doc-
tors of philosophy. German, with its
immense wealth of thought, may safely
be left to the high school.

Up to fourteen, then, a scheme of or-
ganic education would limit school work
resolutely to the present moment, — to

gymnastic, music, manual training, draw-
ing, English and French. All of this
work must enlist the good will, the good
feeling, of the child, and the subtle spirit
of noblesse oblige must be forever in the
air. The best teacher of all is the one
given to each child when it comes into
the world, the mother. Poor indeed is
the man who cannot say that from her
have been learned the most priceless les-
sons. But of the many good and beau-
tiful things which the mother tries to
teach, nothing else is quite so helpful as
that one lesson of the good expectation.
More compelling than any spoken word
is the sense that the good act is expected.

If one were limited to a single expres-
sion in which to sum up all virtue, one
might safely choose " good breeding; "
for in the generous interpretation of these
two words is wrapped up everything in
life that is beautiful and fair.

We should be sending up the most
excellent material to the high school,
were we to carry out such a scheme of
organic culture, and in four years the
children would be amply qualified for
college. I speak so confidently because
it is a matter of experience. In my
own case school life covered only two
years in all, and of this only five months
were given to direct preparatory work.
The requirements are more exacting now,
but, with such splendid bodily equipment
as these children would have, surely the
work could be well accomplished in four
years.

One may feel disposed to ask, however,
What of the children who do not go to
college, or do not even go to the high
school ? It requires, I think, no great
boldness to maintain that even for them,
perhaps especially for them, this scheme
of organic training would still be the best ;
for it has as its goal personal power and
accomplishment and goodness and beau-
ty, and these qualities count vastly more,
in the practical conduct of life, than the
entire content of the present lower school
formalism. And so I commend the

Normal Schools and the Training of Teachers.

769

scheme to Jack and to Margaret, whether
they go to school many years or few.

It is quite time that I should bring this
essay to an end, and yet I cannot resist
the temptation of a final view.

The timeless impulse of the world is
human. The imagination is stirred less
and less by the giant apparition of the
state, of the institution, of property, and
more and more by the vision of the hu-
man, individual man. We are begin-
ning to realize the true source of wealth,
and to seek it where alone it can be
found, — in personal power and beauty
and sentiment, in the present moment,
in the dear fatherland. The estimable
part of life is human, beautiful men and
beautiful women and beautiful children,

— beautiful, and accomplished, and lov-
able, and free. I linger over these choice
words, for, as I write them, a group of
such goodly and gracious persons come
crowding into my brain that I would fain
have them stop and keep me company.
The secret of their incomparable charm
is that it has been gained, not at the price
of another's undoing, another's pain, an-
other's exclusion, but with all helpfulness
for their brother man. This timeless hu-
man impulse will prevail. The educa-
tional process which is to carry it out is
one which brings to each little child, not
information, but personal, organic good
fortune, in a moment which is present
and is good, and in a land which is ours
and is great.

C. Hanford Henderson.

NORMAL SCHOOLS AND THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS.

THE increase of normal schools in the
United States, which within a recent
period has been phenomenal, shows the
liberality with which the American peo-
ple further any project that gives hope
of advancing education. The first of
these schools was established in Massa-
chusetts in 1839, and since then the nor-
mal schools in that commonwealth have
been fostered by state aid. They there-
fore offer a fair field for the study of the
educational problem presented by them,
the problem of the training of teachers.
The conditions and the tendencies shown
in Massachusetts, it may be assumed,
will be found in varying degrees in the
normal schools throughout the country.
With regard to buildings, grounds, equip-
ment, and modern conveniences, they
rank with the other educational institu-
tions of the commonwealth. The teach-
ers are as earnest and industrious as could
be desired. Yet the number of pupils
has been decreasing. In the nine years
1888-97 there was a loss of twenty-three

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 488. 49

per cent as against a gain of thirty-eight
per cent in the previous nine years. Sec-
retary Hill, of the State Board of Edu-
cation, in his report of 1895-96, suggests
three reasons for this falling off : the in-
fluence of the local training-schools for
teachers ; the influence of the colleges
in attracting to their courses many who
would otherwise attend normal schools ;
and the influence of the higher standard
of admission.

The last reason can hardly be con-
sidered a primary cause, for the higher
standard of admission, requiring high
school graduation or its equivalent, was
not enforced until 1896, whereas the
ebb tide in attendance set in as early as
1888. The total enrollment of pupils in
normal schools, exclusive of the Normal
Art School, shows this decreasing ten-
dency. For example, the enrollment in
the five schools from 1885 to 1890 ex-
ceeded one thousand (in one year it was
1152), whereas in the six schools of
1895-96 the enrollment was 903, and

770

Normal /Schools and the Training of Teachers.

in the seven schools of 1896-97 it was
only 894. The raising of the standard
of admission, then, is clearly not the
prime cause of this falling off.1 The
steadily increased attendance up to the
year 1888, and since then the steadily
decreased attendance, indicate that other
forces have been at work to which ad-
justment has not been successfully made.
The cause of the falling off in attend-
ance is not evident upon the surface.
A statement of some of the conditions
under which the normal schools work is
necessary to make the situation clear.

There were in Massachusetts, up to
1895, five state normal schools, exclusive
of the Normal Art School. In addition
to these there is the Boston Normal and
Training School, of the same scope, un-
der municipal supervision. The regular
course of study is two years; and though
there is an extra provision for a four
years' course, it is a dead letter except
in the Bridgewater school. The number
of graduates from the state schools has
been about two hundred and fifty annu-
ally, and the Boston Normal School grad-
uates fifty or sixty pupils every year.
The whole number of recruits annually
needed as teachers by the schools of Mas-
sachusetts, according to careful estimates,
is between twelve and fifteen hundred.
In all probability nearly twice that num-
ber of vacancies occur, many of which
are, of course, filled by the transfer of
teachers already in the service. It is
clear, therefore, that even if all the nor-
mal school graduates become public
school teachers, the supply is inadequate
to the demand.

That there is abundant room in the

1 This view is sustained by the fact that the
enrollment of new pupils at the beginning of
the present academic year (1897-98) shows a
significant increase. Secretary Hill accounts
for this increase on the ground that the raising
of the standard has inspired the public gener-
ally with a degree of respect for normal schools
that was wanting when the standard of admis-
sion was low ; for high school principals, when
the normal school admission was lower than

public school service for normal school
graduates is shown by the reports of the
State Board of Education. In the re-
port of 1895-96 the total number of
teachers in the common schools of the
state was given as 12,275, of whom only
3903, or less than thirty-two per cent,
were graduates of normal schools. Of
the number of teachers in the service
who were not normal school graduates,
there were 1637 who had attended nor-
mal schools for a longer or shorter pe-
riod without graduating. In 1885-86,
with a total enrollment of 9670 teachers
in the state, 2420, or about twenty-five
per cent, were normal school graduates ;
from which it appears that there was
an increase of nearly seven per cent in
the number of normal school teachers
within the ten years ending in 1896.
Almost all of those who have had no spe-
cial training — about one half the whole
number — are graduates of high schools,
or persons of less qualification, who have
gone directly into their work without any
preparatory instruction or training.

The evident uncertainty in the minds
of educators as to the right method
of training teachers has, no doubt, had
something to do with the decadence of
our normal schools. Two opposite views
regarding the preparation of teachers are
held. One, which may be called the
college view, is that the chief element in
the training of teachers is a wide know-
ledge of the subjects to be taught. The
other view, held by many professional
teachers and normal school men, is that
the thing of chief importance in a teach-
er's equipment is training in methods of
instruction.

that of their own schools, were naturally not
inclined to recommend normal courses to their
graduates. The opinion of Secretary Hill will
be found to be in harmony with the general
conclusions of this article. The next step, after
raising the standard, is to improve the quality
of the work within the normal schools, to con-
form to the higher standard of admission, so
that the renewed confidence of the public ma;
not be disappointed.

Normal Schools and the Training of Teachers.

771

As is so often the case, the middle
coarse, perhaps, is the right one. Wide
knowledge of life in all its relations to
the world is indispensable, hut equally in-
dispensable is the specially trained mind,
responding instinctively to pedagogic in-
terests. Such a conception, however, has
not yet been worked out to practical re-
sults. The normal schools of the country
have been too much hampered by ele-
mentary difficulties to carry out the con-
ception, even had they held it. But the
normal schools of Massachusetts, with the
higher standards recently put in force,
are now ready to go forward in working
out this larger problem.

The regular course — as established by
the Massachusetts State Board of Edu-
cation — embraces : (1) psychology, his-
tory and principles of education, methods
of instruction and discipline, school or-
ganization, school laws of Massachusetts ;

(2) methods of teaching reading, lan-
guage, rhetoric, composition, literature,
history, arithmetic, bookkeeping, elemen-
tary algebra and geometry, elementary
physics and chemistry, geography, phy-
siology and hygiene, mineralogy, botany,
natural history, drawing, vocal music,
physical culture and manual training ;

(3) observation and practice in the train-
ing-school, and observation in other public
schools.

One fact is evident from a glance at
this course of study. The normal school
does not offer any new material of know-
ledge except psychology, history of edu-
cation, and methods of instruction. The
second and third divisions of the work
aim to teach the methods of teaching those
common school branches with which the
normal school pupils are supposed al-
ready to be familiar. A crucial pro-
blem, therefore, «pnfronts the normal
school at the very beginning of its work.
In natural science, for example, we have
a mountain of knowledge piled up by
modern investigators ; in history and the
social sciences there is another mass of

facts, upon which modern civilization —
its economics, its statecraft, its social life,
and its forms of religion — is built ; the
common school is supposed to lay the
foundation of a knowledge of these
groups of facts, and the teachers of the
common schools should know something
about them. How then shall the normal
schools, whose time is limited, fit their
pupils for this important work ? Two
alternatives are offered : to grapple with
this mass of knowledge ; or, upon the
other hand, to discover some substitute
for it. As the course of study shows, the
normal school has chosen the latter alter-
native, and has staked its fortune — per-
haps perilously — upon the assumption
that for the preparation of teachers a
substitute for knowledge is possible and
practicable. The substitute chosen is the
selected facts required by the common
school curricula, together with certain
specific methods of teaching them ac-
cording to the ordained principles which
pupils are trained to believe are more or
less fixed.

It is necessary to consider somewhat
this principle of " substitution." Normal
school training in the sciences offers a
fair illustration ; for in these branches,
my observation assures me, the normal
schools appear at their best. Their lab-
oratories, museums, and general equip-
ment for science work are, almost with-
out exception, admirable. The Bridge-
water laboratories, the fruit of years of
patient attention by the principal to the
needs of his pupils, are models of com-
pleteness and convenience. The common
school curriculum draws from several
sciences, — physics, chemistry, geology,
botany, zoology, mineralogy, physiology,
hygiene, and biology. The time given to
any one of these sciences in the normal
school varies with the subject and with
different schools. I found in one school
a course of twenty-four lessons sufficient
for a study of plant life, and in another
seventy-two lessons were allowed. Prob-
ably about fifty lessons, or a course of

772

Normal Schools and the Training of Teachers.

twelve weeks, may be assumed as a lib-
eral average time given to any of these
sciences.

It must not be inferred that this
average time of twelve weeks is wholly
or even chiefly devoted to the acquire-
ment of the knowledge of the science.
On the contrary, substitution is pushed
to its utmost limits, and the " knowledge
portion " of the instruction is curtailed
at every possible point, to give place and
time to the drill upon the applications
of the fixed principles of teaching. The
requirements of the common school cur-
riculum determine the range of facts
that are taught, and just enough know-
ledge of science is instilled to furnish
material for the elaboration of methods
of teaching. The fact is plain that prac-
tically nothing of science, as science, can
be taught in these brief courses, even
were there a disposition to impart know-
ledge for its own sake. Substitution,
therefore, ever tends necessarily to make
the store of the teacher's knowledge the
exact equivalent of what she teaches.

It is a fact that will excite some as-
tonishment, perhaps, that the stock of
science knowledge and of training with
which pupils from the high schools enter
the normal schools is such that no ac-
count is taken of it in the normal school
courses. I was emphatically assured, at
the six normal schools which I visited
(with the partial exception of the Boston
Normal School), that the normal work in
science is necessarily arranged upon the
assumption of no previous knowledge.
The explanation of this state of affairs
is said to be that the high schools, in
the work of preparing for college, throw
emphasis upon the classics to the neglect
of the sciences. Some pupils come to
the normal school with no previous train-
ing in science ; with others — notably in
those schools which draw from the rural
high schools — the preparation has been
mere brief " memory work " without
laboratory experience. Some pupils have
had training in but one science, and their

preparation, as a rule, is so uneven and
unsatisfactory that, in the opinion of
normal teachers, no use can be made
of it.

There is nothing in the normal school
curriculum that suggests even the exist-
ence of that immense body of culture ma-
terial, the social sciences, upon which
modern civilization is so largely built.
The theory of the satisfactory equiva-
lence of that which a teacher knows and
that which she teaches allows no place
for them. Even the term " history," as
it is generally defined in normal school
phraseology, is covered by a brief review
of the bare bones of fact in American
history. In one school, however, I found
an enthusiastic teacher rapidly review-
ing mediaeval history, for the purpose of
laying some slight foundation for an ad-
mirable plan of history stories in the
practice and model school. But her nor-
mal pupils were not doing the work of
selection ; they had no mass knowledge
of these stories ; they had no time to in-
vestigate, to absorb, and to select. This
plan of substitution raises the question
here, as it ever must, whether the real-
ly essential training for teachers is not
mass study, with its wide reading and its
training, which investigation, absorption,
and selection require. Perhaps the end
would be better accomplished by empha-
sizing that which is omitted.

The second and third purposes of nor-
mal school work are to furnish pupils
with the technique of teaching. This
end is sought in general : (1) by giving
precepts of technique and specific ad-
vice, and by describing, in advance of
actual teaching by pupils, the applica-
tions of the fixed principles learned in
the courses of psychology ; (2) by al-
lowing members of the class to practice
teaching upon their fellow members, un-
der criticism of the teacher and of the
temporary pupils ; (3) by observation in
a model school or in the public schools ;
(4) and by teaching in the practice schools
under critic teachers.

Normal Schools and the Training of Teachers.

773

It is evident that we are again met by
substitution in another form. Much ad-
vice and many precepts which are given
to pupils in advance of actual experience
are true, and a part, perhaps, is remem-
bered. In that form of substitution for
experience in which a member of the
class conducts the recitation, the other
members serving as pupils, the pupil
teacher generally plans the recitation in
detail, and submits the plan in advance
to the regular teacher. If approved, the
work is put into operation. This sort of
exercise is very general, even in schools
which have practice schools. The fol-
lowing exercise, which I witnessed, while
probably an extreme example, presents
the typical tendencies of this substitution
method.

The pupil, a young man, began the
recitation by stating his problem some-
what as follows. " I went to Mr. K.,"
he said, " to borrow one hundred dollars,
promising to pay the debt in two years.
I gave a paper stating this fact. This
paper is called a promissory note." He
then went to the blackboard, and, taking
a piece of chalk, asked in tones of great
politeness, " Where shall I write the
date ? Perhaps Miss M. would like to
tell me."

" In' the upper right - hand corner,"
replied Miss M.

" Correct ! " said the young man ap-
provingly. " Now, Miss R., perhaps you
would kindly tell me where I must write
the face."

" In the upper left-hand corner," re-
plied Miss R.

"Correct! Now how shall I com-
mence the body of the note ? Perhaps,
Miss J., you would tell me."

In this manner the recitation contin-
ued, with the use of practically the same
formulae, until tne note was written.
Then the young man took the pointer
and said, " We have now finished writ-
ing the note. The class will read it with
me."

He pointed out the words one by one,

and the class proceeded to read with
him. But the class read faster than he
pointed. In some distress, the class
teacher sprang forward, took the pointer,
and showed how to " phrase " while the
class read, so that the stick should al-
ways fall upon the words as they were
pronounced. The teacher also corrected
the tone and form used in directing the
pupils to read : he said it was too man-
datory.

" Say it something like this ! " he ex-
claimed : " ' Now that we have the note
written, perhaps the class might like to
read it before we rub it out.' "

The pupil again took the pointer, and
obediently repeated, " Now that we have
the note written, perhaps the class might
like to read it before we rub it out."
His pointing also showed some improve-
ment.

The second stage of the proceedings
was to write a similar note, using colored
chalks.

" Miss F., would you not like to write
the date for us in red chalk ? " asked the
young man, encouragingly holding out a
piece of tempting red chalk.

Miss F. rose, walked across the room,
and gravely wrote in flaming color the
place and date ; she then, as gravely, re-
turned to her seat. On similar invita-
tions, other young women wrote the face,
the time, and the name, in chalk of dif-
ferent colors, until the note was written
in the hues of Joseph's coat.

Both notes having been written and
read aloud, the young man politely asked,
" Who will now kindly point out for us
the date in the second note ? "

A volunteer took the pointer, and with
utmost gravity pointed out the date-line.

" Correct ! " said the young man.
" Now perhaps some one would like to
point out the date in the first note."

The process was- repeated, and with
such accuracy that the young man was
moved again to exclaim approvingly,
« Correct ! "

" What is the face of the note ? "

774

Normal /Schools and the Training of Teachers.

The definition being given, the face
in each note was pointed out by separate
pupils. In a similar manner, under this
polite and encouraging direction, the
play gravely continued.

This exercise was witnessed in a school
whose pupils have opportunities for prac-
tice-teaching. Why it is allowed to oc-
cupy the time of such a school, and of
young men and women who are not
feeble-minded, is a mystery to which no
intelligent answer can be given. Do these
substitutes for experience fill the place
of actual teaching so perfectly that the
normal schools are justified in giving
time to them, to the limitation of actual
practice with real children and real pro-
blems ?

Last year, of the seven schools in op-
eration in Massachusetts, exclusive of the
North Adams school, one had no prac-
tice or model school, one provided a
practice course of five to eight weeks,
three gave about twelve weeks, and the
Worcester school required, in addition
to the two years' course, six months' ap-
prenticeship 1 under regular teachers in
the public schools and a special critic
teacher. It is clearly manifest that if the
normal school proposes to supply teach-
ers fully equipped to take up the work
of the public schools, the usual time given
to practice and observation is insufficient.
The model and practice schools ought to
supply a class of work which, by reason
of the criticism of experienced teachers,
shall be the equivalent of actual expe-
rience. But there is good experience,
and there is bad experience. If the
model and critic teachers are themselves
the products of training upon the prin-
ciple of substitution of something else
for knowledge and experience, and are
merely handing down what was similar-
ly handed down to them, then the value
of such training is doubtful. This form
of training directly suppresses essential
elements of experience, — independent

1 The term of apprenticeship in this school
has recently been extended to a year.

decision, and training in personal judg-
ment. Without these essentials, model
and practice school training can in no
sense be considered equivalent substi-
tutes for experience.

It is evident that the elaborate system
of methods derived from mediaeval times,
based upon the assumption that substi-
tutes for knowledge and experience are
possible, has absorbed too much of the
energy, the interest, and the time of the
normal schools, and they have already
ceased to train and to supply teachers in
the proportion in which it was meant that
they should train and supply them. The
demand for teachers has not decreased,
but has rapidly increased ; yet the state
normal schools have been supplanted by
colleges, especially by colleges for wo-
men, and by training-schools, which to-
gether now have in Massachusetts alone
considerably over one thousand pupils in
training for the work of teaching.

Behind the fact that a large propor-
tion of the class of pupils who formerly
went to the normal schools is now divert-
ed is a matter of the gravest significance
to educational interests. " The normal
school pupil of the present, in point of
native endowment and that personal cul-
ture dependent upon home influences,
is distinctly the inferior of the normal
school pupil of twenty or twenty-five
years ago," said a gentleman whose po-
sition qualified him to make this state-
ment. I have been assured of the truth
of this assertion by so many different
persons that there is no reason to doubt
it. The time once was, before the high
school had been brought to the door of
every hamlet, offering a paved pathway
to the college, when the ambitious youth
of the land went to normal schools. The
normal school was to them a sort of con-
venient compromise for the college. At
that period, also, there were no colleges
for women, and the normal school was
woman's one educational opportunity.
But within a few years these conditions
have all been changed. Men no longer

Normal Schools and the Training of Teachers.

775

go to normal schools, and in Massachu-
setts alone the doors to Radcliffe, Smith,
Wellesley, and Mount Holyoke — all ex-
clusively for women — stand open, offer-
ing collegiate advantages. Their com-
bined accommodations are now providing
college education for more than two thou-
sand women. A normal school principal
with whom I was discussing the situation
said frankly : " The better class of minds,
those from the homes of culture, are go-
ing to the colleges. We normal school
people are taking second pickings." An-
other normal school teacher ruefully ad-
mitted the situation somewhat as follows :
" Education is too easy in these modern
days. When I was a boy, it required
some exceptional effort to go beyond the
district school. Only those of exceptional
purpose and ambition went beyond. The
others dropped off into domestic service,
into shops, or into other places where
they would be directed what to do and
how to do it. But now children go to
school as the easiest thing to do. The
better class, when they complete the high
school course, as a rule go to college ; of
the others, some find work as clerks, as
shop-girls, and the like. But these po-
sitions are already overcrowded. Two
years more in a normal school make a
teacher and the assurance of a livelihood.
Some come to us, — teaching does not
soil the hands, and is more ladylike."

We touch here a condition of the most
dangerous significance. The ideal func-
tion of the normal school must be to at-
tract to the field of education the better
class of minds ; for the problems of edu-
cation, in importance and difficulty, are
among the most subtile of all problems.
When the normal school fails in this
service, and sinks to the level of putting
young women of the lower mental capa-
city into places where they can easily
earn a living at the public expense, and
thereby burdening the cause of educa-
tion with an inert mass of dependents,
then the institution becomes a positive
evil. The sole purpose of the public

schools is to educate. To confuse the
educational functions of the normal
school with those of eleemosynary insti-
tutions marks a point where a friend
steps out, and an enemy steps in.

Facts in the history, environment, and
internal structure of the normal schools
explain their weakness. Fifty years ago
Horace Mann was leading the campaign
against the narrow theory of education
then in practice, — the theory that a col-
lection of school facts was the teacher's
essential stock in trade, the textbook the
authority ex cathedra, the memory the
only means of learning, and the rod the
only motive for it. The campaign he
waged was for professional training as
a means of modifying the existing cru-
dities of practice. The campaign was
won, and normal schools were estab-
lished. Yet, while education has gone
forward upon new waters in these fifty
years, the normal school, strangely
enough, is still upon the same old raft,
paddled by substitutes for knowledge
and experience, " contentedly round and
round, still fancying it is forward and
forward." Fifty years ago normal school
graduates were competing with untrained
teachers. The competition still goes on,
and untrained teachers are still able to
hold their own in the contest. Why ?

Flaws in the internal structure of nor-
mal schools make this condition possi-
ble. There has been a breeding-in pro-
cess in Massachusetts, and nowhere are
the results more manifest than in the
normal schools. During the year 1896
there were, approximately, one hundred
and twenty-four teachers and principals
in the state normal schools. Of these,
fifteen, or twelve per cent, were college
graduates ; of the seven principals, four
were college men, and one other held
an honorary degree. From the records
of the academic training and experience
of one hundred and three of these one
hundred and twenty-four teachers, on file
in the office of the State Board of Edu-
cation, it appears that ten others attended

776

Normal Schools and the Training of Teachers.

some college for periods ranging from
a few months to two years ; sixty were
graduates of normal schools, almost ex-
clusively of this state ; fifty-four, or more
than fifty per cent, had had no training
higher than that offered by the normal
school ; eleven had had less than normal
school preparation, and eleven had re-
ceived their training in special schools
of gymnastics, music, and the like. In
the case of twenty-four of these teachers
there is no record of high school gradua-
tion prior to their entrance to the normal
schools. In the matter of experience,
eleven had had no experience in teach-
ing prior to their normal school appoint-
ment; thirty-nine had taught in ungraded
or graded schools only ; eighteen had
taught in high schools, eleven in other
normal schools, seven in training-schools,
one in college, a few in various private
or special schools ; and four had been
school superintendents. The striking
fact that, of the eighty-five teachers in
the five older schools, forty-three were
graduates of the same schools in which
they taught bears its significant import
and suggestion. In one school, eleven
teachers out of eighteen were graduates
of this school, and the seven others in-
cluded the four special teachers of mu-
sic, gymnastics, sloyd, and drawing. In
another school, nine out of fifteen were
graduates of the school, with little or no
evidence of any training outside its walls.
These are unpleasant facts to refer to,
but they are essential to a frank state-
ment of the conditions upon which the
normal school idea depends for suste-
nance, and are necessary for the compre-
hension of the problem.

With the pursuit of knowledge, with
the broader view of education which the
knowledge of modern social and natu-
ral sciences gives, with the scope of edu-
cation, its broader purposes and ideals,
the mass of these teachers have had no
personal contact other than that which the
normal school has provided them. They
are good people, earnest people, and many

are enthusiastic teachers, eager for pro-
gress and for opportunities to broaden
themselves. But we must consider prin-
ciples, and not individuals. The water
of a brook, as a rule, is of the same char-
acter as the water of the spring from
which it flows. This breeding-in insures
in education what it insures in stock-rais-
ing, — perpetuation of original peculiari-
ties, good and bad alike, — and hinders
the infusion of other qualities. The tem-
porary expedients, representing the con-
ditions of the times of Horace Mann,
naturally tend, by this process, to be per-
petuated. In the report of the board of
visitors of one of the normal schools, a
few years ago, the statement is made with
pride that there had not been a single
change in the staff of teachers for ten
years ! In the six older normal schools
in the state up to 1896, one of the prin-
cipals had served more than thirty-five
years, one more than thirty, and three
had been at their posts between twenty
and twenty-five years. Two were gradu-
ates of the schools over which they pre-
sided, and were teachers in these schools
many years before they became princi-
pals. Taken separately, many of these
facts are matters for congratulation ; but
in the mass they offer one significant ex-
planation for the vigorous survival in
modern times of the temporary expedi-
ents, purposes, and methods of early
pioneer work.

The normal schools of Massachusetts
are under the immediate management of
the State Board of Education, and the
system of supervision is to-day practi-
cally what it has always been since the
schools were established. Theoretically
the Board acts as a whole, but in reality
each school is directed by two or three
members of the Board, called " visitors,"
and it is not considered good form for
the visitors of one school to interfere with
the affairs of another. The recommen-
dations of the visitors for the respective
schools in the appointment of principals
and teachers are followed practically

Normal Schools and the Training of Teachers.

Ill

without exception. But the old district
system, now driven from nearly all the
towns in the state, seems nevertheless to
have settled in the State Board. Once
a year the visitors of each school report
to the Board. These reports, which are
printed, demonstrate prima facie the pu-
erility of such a system of supervision in
the present age. They show some inge-
nuity in paying graceful and meaning-
less compliments and in writing obituary
notices, but outside this literary function
it is difficult to imagine their utility. Sec-
retary Hill, in his last report, suggests,
with due modesty, the employment of an
expert board of supervisors.

I met at one of the normal schools
one of these visitors paying an official
visit. He was a kind old gentleman,
whose vocation, while not that of teach-
ing, was one of eminent respectability.
I asked him how he, not being a school
man, was able to select competent teach-
ers. His reply was charming in its
naivete*. He said that when he was a
student at college he had taught school
during some of his vacations. He had,
therefore, personal experience. " And
besides," he added, with a gentle touch of
conceit, " I know pretty well a good teach-
er as soon as I set my eyes upon one."
While there are elements of strength in
the State Board, nevertheless the finger-
marks of patronage methods show on
the wall. It has been demonstrated to
the satisfaction of every one concerned
in education, time and time again, that
educational interests cannot live in an
atmosphere tainted by the patronage sys-
tem of professional politicians. The in-
ternal conditions of the normal schools
which have been described find abundant
explanation in this outworn, diseased, and
hopelessly inadequate system of man-
agement. *

But the trouble is not wholly internal.
I was the third party in a conversation
between a normal school principal and
a visiting school executive from another
state. The latter was giving the princi-

pal some unsolicited advice upon how to
conduct his normal school. When the
adviser had finished, the principal replied
in substance : —

" I agree to a great deal of what you
say, but if I should follow your advice
this normal school would soon be with-
out pupils. If I should carry out your
views, a particular superintendent, who
usually takes eight or ten of our gradu-
ates, would look through our school and
tell me that he was obliged to do his
shopping at another store. He wants a
teacher who can do things just so-and-
so. It would be the same with other
superintendents, and pupils would soon
find out that this was a poor place from
which to seek positions."

I sat one afternoon in a normal school
listening to a lesson in devices. Each
pupil in the class had a little box, and
whenever, in the course of visiting schools,
she saw a pretty method, or her own in-
ventive genius suggested one, she made
a note of it and dropped it into her box.
Once a week these boxes were opened in
the presence of the critic teacher, and the
contents displayed. I was present on
one of these occasions. One of the pu-
pils drew out of her box some cardboard
elephants, horses, bears, and the like.
She explained that the child would draw
around these, and make a much more
accurate drawing than he could by free-
hand. Another drew a circle with sev-
eral diagonals on the blackboard ; at the
centre she wrote " at," and at the ex-
tremities of the diagonals she wrote the
letters m, c, r, s. By the use of one
of the consonants and the " at " in the
centre, words could be constructed by
the pupil, thus : m-at, c-at, r-at, s-at. It
would help to teach spelling, she said.
Another had a device for teaching addi-
tion of numbers. She drew two small
oblongs on the blackboard, wrote " and "
between them, and after the second ob-
long she made the sign of equality and
another oblong. In the first oblong she
put " 3," in the second " 7," and ex-

778

Normal Schools and the Training of Teachers.

plained that the pupil could be required
to put the sum in the last oblong. In
this manner the class proceeded ; and
when the recitation was done I inquired
of the teacher her views as to the utility
of the work. She gave me a patient look,
and wearily replied : —

" Do you suppose that I approve of
this class of work ? I do not. I thought
I had done with all such, work when I
came to this school ; for the principal,
you know, does not believe in the ex-
tremity to which the study of methods
goes. But now it seems that we are
drilling more than ever upon devices,
— so many of our pupils go into schools
where devices are required more than
anything else."

At the meeting of the New England
school superintendents held in Boston
last May, the following topics were dis-
cussed : what constitutes a visit, inspect-
ing, teaching, criticism of teachers, and
supervision through teachers. One su-
perintendent said that visiting included
inspection not only of the instruction, but
of everything pertaining to the school
work, — even the janitors. Another ven-
tured the trite declaration that at the first
glance into a teacher's room she could
discover the general character of instruc-
tion given. This assertion was disputed,
and the disputant declared it to be the
superintendent's duty to go into the room
and sit awhile. A discussion arose here
as to where the visitor should sit, — whe-
ther in front of the class, or off in a cor-
ner where the teacher could be watched
at a distance. The problem of how to
correct a teacher caught in the act of
using an incorrect method consumed a
good deal of time. One speaker insisted
that the correction and criticism should
take place on the spot, while the iron was
hot, or the offense might be forgotten.
An opponent favored postponing the cor-
rection until after school, and another
thought it better to direct the teacher to
come to the office. A good old gentle-
man explained at considerable length that

when he wanted to see how pupils were
getting on he sent for the class to come
to his office without their teacher. Other
details of superintendent's duties upon a
similar level of importance were broached,
and aroused active discussion. As the
clock was striking twelve, Superintend-
ent Dutton, of Brookline, arose, and turn-
ing upon his brother superintendents
said : " Gentlemen, really, what have we
been talking about this entire session?
Have we not simply been threshing out
the old straw of twenty-five years ago ?
Do let us tiy to get out of this fearful
rut. Many schools to-day are where our
fathers left them. Our practice is too
far behind our theory. We know that
hundreds of children in every city have
physical defects and need special treat-
ment. We have plenty of data at hand
to prove this, and yet not a word has
been spoken this morning to indicate
that we are conscious of the trouble.
Why should we spend an entire morning
discussing matters which our fathers set-
tled long ago, while so many vital ques-
tions, yet untouched, are pressing for
solution? We have had our annual,
warmed-over discussions on inspecting
and testing. Inspecting and testing
what ? The intellectual, of course, for
no word has been uttered touching the
importance of the physical."

When Superintendent Dutton sat down
there was no applause, and an adjourn-
ment was taken in silence.

The effect of the normal school doc-
trine of substitution has been to dis-
seminate the fallacy, as repugnant to
common sense as to the scientific view
of pedagogy, that the normal school is
necessarily a blind alley among educa-
tional institutions, and that the student
of the rearing of children cuts himself
loose from all the common concerns of
men. Yet some one has asked the ques-
tion, as pertinent as it is unkind, why it
is that the " trained " kindergartner and
the " trained " normal graduate never

Normal Schools and the Training of Teachers.

779

use their acquired methods in the rear-
ing of their own children. The doctrine
that special tricks or devices can take
the place of the parental instinct and
a liberal education is not a doctrine of
pedagogy : it is a disease of the normal
school, a green scum which gathers
upon the surface of an educational pool
which has become stagnant. Many of
the universities and colleges are finding
a place in their regular curricula for
the material of pedagogy, as valuable
for those who teach as for those who do
not. But when I asked the presidents
of two New England colleges, exclusive-
ly for women, from twenty-five to fifty
per cent of whose students intended to
teach, why no pedagogical courses were
offered, each replied, with just a touch
of loftiness, that it is not the function
of the college to prepare for the spe-
cial vocations ! When and by what act
has it been established that the rear-
ing of children is a special vocation ?
What duty is further from specializa-
tion, if the tenet of biological philosophy
be true, that the chief end of man is to
conserve the interests of posterity? But
this incident indicates how widespread
and deep has grown the confusion of
pedagogy with mere device and parasitic
method. However, the New England
colleges are private institutions, and
when they declare that it is not their
wish to give courses in pedagogy the
subject is closed in this quarter. It be-
comes the duty of the state to take
charge of the matter.

What is needed, then, at the present
juncture, is the appointment of a state
commission, with legislative power to in-
quire into this problem, and to estab-
lish the normal schools and the machin-

ery for the preparation of teachers upon
some plan fitted to present conditions
and to the educational conceptions of the
time. The codes of present procedure,
purpose, method, and scope of normal
school work were established by Horace
Mann to meet temporary conditions fifty
or sixty years ago, and they have never
been changed.

Massachusetts, of all the states, is at
present in the best position to seize upon
a grand educational opportunity and set
an example in the field of preparing
teachers. From the educators of Mas-
sachusetts there could be chosen a com-
mission that would be worthy of the
task. The commonwealth already has
a magnificent " plant " that has cost
nearly $2,000,000, and it spends between
$150,000 and $200,000 annually in
its support. Massachusetts has never
shirked its educational duties. The lib-
erality of the state, the intelligence of
the people, their ever ready and prompt
recognition of educational progress, the
demand for professional teachers, the
supply of students from high school lev-
els, — all these are factors which could
not be so happily combined in any other
community. The time is ripe for tak-
ing a definite step in lifting the normal
school into its logical position of leader-
ship in pedagogical affairs. The teach-
ers of the normal schools must be of that
timbre and scholarship which lead the
teaching body, and the pedagogy which
comes from these schools must be such as
to lead educational thought. The pro-
blem of the preparation of teachers must
be clearly recognized as pivotal, and the
most important of the time. All other
educational problems hinge upon it, and
their solution waits upon its solution.
Frederic Burk.

780

High School Extension.

HIGH SCHOOL EXTENSION.

IF we may believe President Eliot,
one of the five great contributions to
civilization made by the United States
is the diffusion of well-being among the
people. Not the least important of many
agencies working to this end is the pub-
lic school system, and I wish to consider
briefly the responsibility which rests upon
the high school in this movement, and
the methods whereby it may most ef-
fectually promote systematic self-culture
among the masses, making it one of the
enduring interests of life.

At a leading New England college,
some years ago, when the Commence-
ment exercises were over and the di-
plomas had been distributed, a member
of the graduating class, who had been
distinguished more by conviviality than
by studiousness, and who had barely es-
caped losing his degree, appeared upon
the campus, and, waving the much-prized
parchment over his head, shouted glee-
fully, " Educated, by Jove ! Educated ! "
The idea expressed by the rollicking
student, more in jest than in earnest,
illustrates a notion of education which
dies hard. The popular prejudice that
culture is something extracted from
books, picked up in a lecture-hall or a
laboratory, or seized during the fleeting
years of one's school or college life, is
so prevalent that it becomes the obvious
duty of the school to press home to the
consciousness of every person the con-
viction that an obligation rests upon him
to undertake a course of education last-
ing throughout his life.

Secondary school teachers are not like-
ly to forget the needs of popular educa-
tion for the masses. Most of us have
regretted to see our pupils, some from
necessity, others from a lack of ambi-
tion, leave school before the completion
of the course. Not infrequently, a few
years of business life wholly change the

attitude of the indifferent boy ; and even
to those upon whom the burden of life
falls early there come times when, with
proper guidance, they would make sub-
stantial progress in self - culture. We
have also been repeatedly humiliated to
see how little the school has done to
establish habits of systematic reading.
To a great many the newspaper repre-
sents the only literary resource. Scrap-
py, desultory reading is the rule with all
classes, not excepting those who have had
good educational advantages.

There is abundant proof that in many
high schools the extension movement
has made considerable progress. Under
ideal conditions, the high school numbers
among its pupils representatives of every
grade of society. Through these it has
a more or less intimate connection with
homes of every sort. Where this con-
nection is a sympathetic one, there are
not lacking opportunities for the teach-
er to impress himself upon others than
those under his immediate instruction ;
and it would be easy to cite instances of
the uplifting influence of the school upon
the home. Through his pupils many an
inspired teacher has imparted to the fam-
ily group something of his own ideals and
enthusiasm. In so far as the reading
and thought of adults in these homes are
influenced by the stimulating and sug-
gestive work of such a teacher, to that ex-
tent is school extension an accomplished
fact. We all know devoted teachers who
are conducting, unobtrusively but perse-
veringly, extension movements of this
character. By suggestion they determine
very largely the class of books which are
carried from the school or public library
into the homes of their children.

The young of to-day are confronted
and environed by a new set of interests.
The social club, the Christian Endeavor
Society, the athletic association, claim a

High School Extension.

781

large measure of the pupil's attention.
From the standpoint of the schoolmaster,
these are at first sight costly ventures,
interfering with the amount of history
that can be absorbed and the amount of
Caesar and algebra that can be mastered
in a given time. We sometimes fume at
such distractions, and sigh, perchance,
for the good old times when there was
but one educational thoroughfare, albeit
a narrow one, and the schoolmaster alone
was the guide thereto.

It is a juster view which recognizes
in the many collateral interests of the
modern schoolboy rare opportunities for
social and civic training. Surely, the
courage, the sense of fair play, the team
work or cooperative effort which results
from a participation in these, and the ex-
ecutive ability which comes from direct-
ing them, are not lightly to be esteemed.
" The regular course of studies, the years
of academical and professional educa-
tion," says Emerson, " have not yielded
me better facts than some idle books
under the bench of the Latin School.
What we do not call education is more
precious than that which we call so.
We form no guess, at the time of receivr
ing a thought, of its comparative value.
And education often wastes its effort in
attempts to thwart and balk this natural
magnetism, which is sure to select what
belongs to it."

A mediaeval school in a world of li-
braries, museums, and art collections, in
a world of books and periodicals, and,
above all, in a world of independent
thought and conscious efforts at social
and political reforms, is an anachronism.
It cannot enter into competition with
other better educational forces. There
must be a sympathetic connection be-
tween the school and the best life in the
community around it. With enlarged
conceptions of the province of educa-
tion comes a host of auxiliaries never
dreamed of when narrower views pre-
vailed. When the strength of the school-
master was expended in attempting to

establish certain school arts, with little
regard to the content of the subjects pre-
sented, his work was beneath the notice
of all other intellectual toilers.

It should, therefore, be put to the
credit of the new education — using the
term somewhat loosely, it may be, to
characterize that educational regime
which is based upon sympathy with the
educated, and which believes in a nutri-
tious and vitalizing course of study —
that by the very enrichment of its school
courses it has touched adult life at so
many more points. Education comes to
be more generally recognized as a life-
long process, in which all, old and young,
are together participating. Who can
doubt that the reconstructed curriculum
of our public schools, placing so much
emphasis upon literature, art, music, and
cooking, will produce immediate results
in many homes, — that there will be
choicer books on the centre-table, less
crowded, more simply furnished rooms,
and better and more wholesome food ?

In physics and natural history there
are opportunities to direct and control
the out-of-school activities of young peo-
ple, of which the enthusiastic teacher of
science is not slow to avail himself. One
of the most astonishing facts of the time
is the ingenuity of boys in constructing
electrical apparatus, with but a few hints
and out of the most meagre materials.
I know boys who have belt-lines of elec-
tric tramways circulating in their gar-
rets ; and a boy who, last year, was the
despair of his teachers won deserved re-
cognition in the manual training exhibit
as the clever inventor of a novel electri-
cal boat. An invitation to boys to bring
to school products of their own ingenu-
ity, or the natural history specimens that
they have collected, will result in an ex-
hibition which in variety and quality will
be a revelation to one who is not used to
following them in these interests.

So general and so wholesome a tenden-
cy is too significant to be ignored, and yet
one almost hesitates to meddle with it, lest

782

High School Extension.

official recognition may rob it of its in-
dependence and spontaneity. With sym-
pathy from the school, however, it may
be directed and made more intelligent.
The interest in nature, for instance, may
help to fill profitably the long summer va-
cations. A pamphlet issued to the chil-
dren in the Brookline (Massachusetts)
schools at the close of the school year
tells them what to observe and how to
collect natural objects. It contains sug-
gestions as to the study of trees, leaves,
ferns, flowers, lichens and fungi, the dis-
semination of seeds, insects, birds, shells,
rocks and minerals. In the fall there
is an exhibition of the collections made
by the pupils during the summer, and
in all this out-of-door work, which pro-
motes good-comradeship between old and
young, the parents are asked to cooper-
ate. If the schools of the country, in-
stead of spending their force during the
last of June in trying to discover how
much their pupils have learned, were
content, as a substitute for their exami-
nations, to anticipate the summer's ex-
periences and to prepare their pupils to
profit by them, there would be far less
physical and mental weariness, far more
intellectual growth and vigor.

Wisely conceived courses in domestic
science and home sanitation exert a pow-
erful influence in a direction where there
is the greatest need for reform. Muni-
cipal housekeeping is but one step re-
moved from the care of the home. The
public high school is the best of all places
for training in citizenship. It is better
than the home, the church, the special
fitting-school, or the university, for it is
a more perfect democracy than any of
these. It shares with all public schools
the advantage of being non - sectarian.
It is in no sense a class school. There
need be no arbitrary or artificial stan-
dards. For a boy to grow from youth
to manhood in a school created and sup-
ported by the state, never breaking with
the community life into which he was
born, meeting representatives of every

social class, learning to know them, mea-
suring himself by them, and coming to
realize that merit alone will win recog-
nition among them, is to get a training
in manly self-reliance, in sympathy for
others less fortunate, it may be, than
himself, and in respect for the rights of
all, that no private school can give.

The high school is frequently more
thoroughly representative of all classes
than the district grammar school. Under
favorable conditions, it is a community
school in very close touch with the homes
of its pupils and with the social and po-
litical world about it. Its pupils are at
an age when they are peculiarly suscep-
tible to impressions from this political
and social environment. The precocity
of the American boy with reference to
current politics is quite without a par-
allel.

Educational experts are telling us much
nowadays about nascent periods, times
of the birth of faculty, which must be
taken advantage of if we are to teach
with the greatest economy. Now, I am
convinced that the nascent period for
the acquisition of social and political
knowledge for most of our boys and girls
is during their secondary school life.
It is then that their institutional and
governmental instincts are in the bud.
They are capable of a large measure of
self - government. "Many of the neces-
sary restraints, instead of being arbitrari-
ly imposed by one in authority, may be
self - assumed. Most, if not all misde-
meanors may be so corrected as to teach
an important lesson, which will not be
forgotten when the pupil becomes an ac-
tive member in the larger society outside
the school. The boy who thoughtless-
ly scatters papers about the school yard
may be led to see that it is just such care-
lessness with reference to refuse which
endangers the health of our crowded
cities. In guarding against the abuse of
school property something may be done,
I am sure, to correct the pernicious no-
tion, at the root of much extravagant

High School Extension.

783

expenditure, that what everybody pays
for nobody pays for.

The idea of stewardship, of holding pro-
perty in trust, can be and must be estab-
lished ; and if the adornment of our mod-
ern school buildings counts for anything,
we may expect standards of taste to be
established which will save us from many
of the atrocious examples of architecture
and statuary which have been foisted
upon an ignorant public. The most im-
portant lesson for some of us pedagogues
to learn is that our chief function is, not
to keep our boys from whispering, or
even to teach them mathematics and
Greek, but so to connect the school with
the world that their school experiences
may in very truth be a preparation for
good citizenship after school.

But the subject of this paper suggests
a specific and organized effort to extend
the influence and advantages of the high
school by enlisting, at certain seasons of
the year, adults — parents, relatives,
and friends of the pupils — in common
courses of study. High school extension
is the child of university extension. It
has inherited the same spirit, the same
aims, and much the same methods. Like
the university, the high school has been
for the few, and, like the university, it
now aims to reach the many.

Any extension movement should be
the outgrowth of the actual needs of a
community. This is a lesson which the
promoters of university extension have
learned from experience, and from the
first they have aimed to work through
local organizations. No other local or-
ganization in America is so well suited
to this purpose as the high school. Many
of its teachers are college-bred men and
women ; they are in touch with the com-
munity ; they understand its needs as no
stranger can. The high school has re-
sources which the traveling lecturer can-
not well supply. A well-equipped high
school building, with laboratories, art
and natural history collections, reference
library, and lecture-hall, is the natural

centre for such educational work ; and
the community has a right to expect the
largest possible return from the expen-
sive educational outlay when it rears a
modern high school building.

There is reason to suppose that a num-
ber of instances of high school extension
could be brought to light, if data were
collected.

Many high schools have long had post-
graduate students, and the growth of the
elective system in secondary schools will
undoubtedly increase this class of pupils.

At Newton, Massachusetts, the Eng-
lish teacher has for years had large pri-
vate classes of adults in the homes of his
pupils.

At Danielsonville, Connecticut, the
principal of the high school has given an
evening course in geology to the teachers
and some others for several consecutive
winters.

At Stamford, Connecticut, a few years
ago, the high school principal delivered
a short course of Saturday morning lec-
tures to a general audience of adults,
upon political economy.

At Westfield, Massachusetts, " an at-
tempt to utilize the potential usefulness of
high school teachers," by offering courses
to the public in literature, history, Ger-
man, Greek, economics, and art, was be-
gun with the present school year.

At Drexel Institute, Philadelphia, or-
gan recitals for the students and the pub-
lic have long been considered a valuable
means of culture.

At Brookline, Massachusetts, we have
had what have been called high school ex-
tension courses for the past five winters.
Six years ago, we were prompted to pro-
ject a three months' course in literature
for the seniors, and to invite to the class
the parents of the pupils and other per-
sons who might be interested ; and at its
close to procure a university professor
to give a course of lectures upon the pe-
riod studied by the class. It was thought
that these lectures could be made self-
supporting. The plan was explained to

784

High School Extension.

certain members of the school commit-
tee. They were sympathetic, but not
enthusiastic, although they were willing
to cooperate. The development of other
lines of school work interfered, how-
ever, so that nothing was done. I still
believe that such a plan could be made
a success. Late in the fall of 1892, one
of the English teachers outlined a five
years' extension course in literature. Di-
vision I., to be devoted to poetry, was
subdivided into the Epic, the Lyric, and
the Drama ; Division II., devoted to
prose, into the Essay and the Novel.

A syllabus covering the first year's
work upon the Epic in English Litera-
ture was printed and sent to every re-
cent graduate of the school. Bi-weekly
evening meetings were arranged. The
course was advertised in the local paper,
and all except pupils in the schools were
invited. Fifty persons presented them-
selves the first night, and the class soon
numbered nearly one hundred; the av-
erage attendance was considerably less
than this. Between the meetings, the
class was supposed to read forty min-
utes a day, — eight hours in all, — and
the class exercise consisted mainly of
a " quiz," running comments upon the
works read, and the presentation for il-
lustrative purposes of numerous selec-
tions from the leading epics. The class
was enthusiastic. Not a few did all the
required reading, and more besides.

The second year's course, on the lyric,
did not call out as large a number, only
fifty names being registered. Such of
the school textbooks as pertained to the
subject under consideration were freely
lent. Some new books, a few in dupli-
cate, were added to the school's refer-
ence library. The public library placed
all its resources at the disposal of the
class, bringing the desired volumes to-
gether in an alcove by themselves. It
was something of a disappointment to
the teacher that she did not reach more
of the poorer homes, though representa-
tives of these were not lacking. Many

of the members were public school teach-
ers, and middle-aged women whose chil-
dren were or had been in the school. In
some instances children and parents un-
dertook the work together. Boys and
men were in the minority.

Encouraged by the first year's exper-
iment, we announced three extension
courses for the second season : in elec-
tricity, in French literature, and in art.
These also were given by teachers in the
school.

The first course, which was illustrated
by experiments and stereopticon views,
proved very popular, one hundred being
the average attendance. Men and boys
were far more numerous than in the
course on the lyric. It was to one of
these lectures that an English laboring
man walked over from Faneuil with his
three boys ; explaining to me, after the
lecture, that he wanted them to learn
something about a subject which he, " as
a young man at 'ome," had heard Mi-
chael Faraday lecture upon.

The other two courses, Romanticism
in French Literature and The Barbizon
Group of French Painters, which were
closely related, were thoroughly appre-
ciated, although the audiences were not
so large (not exceeding thirty or forty).
The art lectures were illustrated by nu-
merous photographs and reproductions
of paintings by Rousseau, Ge'rome, Millet,
and others, loaned for the occasion by a
Boston firm. These were examined and
discussed by the class after the lecture.

It has been found pleasant and profit-
able to have, at stated intervals, public
Shakespearean readings, at which plays
studied in the literature classes are pre-
sented in their entirety. This has been
done by a local clergyman, a man of
dramatic power and a student of Shake-
speare, who has been willing to meet in
this way a more representative audience
than would perhaps gather to hear such
readings in his own church parlors.

The school debating club has given
annually, after careful preparation, mock

High School t Extension.

785

sessions of the town meeting, of the state
Senate, or of other deliberative assem-
blies. Modest attempts have been made,
too, at dramatic representation of pictur-
esque episodes of literature and history.
Such appeals to the dramatic instincts of
the school children might well be made
with much more frequency.

Courses of lectures have also been
given in astronomy, local history, Span-
ish literature, and X-ray photography.
A morning course, for which a charge
was made, and which proved very popu-
lar with women of leisure, was devoted
to the history of Greek and Roman art.
The lecturer met her class in the school
art room, used freely the casts and pho-
tographs of the school collection, and
occasionally conducted her class to the
art museums in Boston and Cambridge.
Two series of lectures have been given to
the seniors, the first of which dealt with
The Place of the Family in Society, The
Relation of its Members, and The Care
and Administration of the Home ; the
second, with such topics as Choice of Vo-
cation, The First Year of College Life,
Systematic Self-Culture after School.

Up to this point the instruction was
given without extra expense, except the
cost of printing syllabi and bibliographies.
The lecturers, who were teachers of the
school, citizens, or college professors,
had received no compensation for their
services. A new phase of the experi-
ment was reached when private indi-
viduals furnished money for this sup-
plementary teaching. The music com-
mittee of the Education Society has
provided two series of young people's
concerts, which have been highly appre-
ciated by the parents as well as the chil-
dren. And finally, a public - spirited
citizen, seeing the possibilities in this ex-
tension movement) has given the school,
for the past two winters, courses of uni-

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 488.

versity lectures : one by Professor Davis
R. Dewey, of the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, on Political Economy ;
the other on the Relation of Man to the
Earth, by Professor William M. Davis, of
Harvard University. In both instances
the subjects have been chosen with re-
ference to existing courses in the school,
and the lectures have been accompanied
by syllabus and bibliography.

The results in Brookline have fully
equaled our expectations. The sustained
interest justifies this effort to extend the
influence of the high school. Still fur-
ther justification is found in the commu-
nity of interest it promotes in the home.
Not infrequently, several members of the
same family, parents as well as children,
are reading the same books and pursu-
ing the same course of study. This is
one of the best things that can be said of
it. Again, it is to be commended for its
excellent reflex action upon the school
itself. A teacher cannot meet the wants
of an adult class by preparing lessons or
lectures for an extension course without
gaining greatly in the grasp and compre-
hension of his subject. It gives him a
new point of view, as well as a new in-
centive to master, in some of its larger
aspects, a subject which for him is in
danger of being dwarfed by the limita-
tions of the schoolroom. Incidentally,
such work enlarges the constituency of
the school, and, best of all, gives opportu-
nity for the better acquaintance of teach-
ers and parents.

In a community within thirty minutes
of the Lowell Institute and all in the way
of lectures and music that Boston has to
offer, these extension courses have proved
their usefulness. In a country village,
where there were not too many distrac-
tions, and where there were fewer intel-
lectual resources, much more might be
expected of high school extension.

D. S. Sanford.

786

The Battle of the Strong,

THE BATTLE OF THE STRONG.

XVIII.

AT precisely the same moment, the
next morning, two boats set sail from
the south coast of Jersey, — one from
Grouville Bay, one from the harbor of
St. Helier's, — and both bound for the
same point; but the first was to sail
round the east coast of the island, and
the second round the west coast. As to
distance, little advantage was with either,
the course of sailing practically making
two sides of an acute-angled triangle.
Once the boat leaving St. Helier's had
rounded the Corbiere, the farther the two
went, the nearer they should come to each
other. The boat from Grouville Bay
would have on her right the Ecre*hos and
the coast of France from Granville to Cap
de la Hague, and the Dirouilles in her
course ; the other would have the wide
Atlantic on her left, and the Paternos-
ters in her course. The two converging
lines should meet at the island of Sark.

The boat leaving Grouville Bay was a
yacht carrying twelve swivel-guns, bear-
ing Admiralty dispatches to the Chan-
nel Islands. The boat from St. Helier's
harbor was a new yawl-rigged craft be-
longing to Jean Touzel. She was the
fruit of ten years' labor, and he called
her the Hardi Biaou, which, in plain
English, means " very beautiful." This
was the third time she had sailed under
Jean's hand. She carried two carron-
ades, for war with France was in the
air, and it was Jean's whim to, make a
show of preparation. " If the war-dogs
come," he said, " my pups can bark too.
If they don't, why, glad and good ; the
Hardi Biaou is big enough to hold the
cough-drops."

But Jean was quite sure that there
would be war, for Easter had fallen in
March this year ; and when that hap-
pened there must be pestilence, war, and

famine. In any case, Jean was the true
sailor ; he was always ready for the
chances of life. It was his custom to
say that it was easy enough to find a
good road when the cart was overturned.
So he had his carronades on the Hardi
Biaou.

The business of the yacht Dorset was
important : that was why so small a boat
was sent on the Admiralty's affairs. Had
she been a sloop, she might have attract-
ed the attention of a French frigate or
privateer wandering the seas in the in-
terests of Vive la Nation ! The business
of the yawl was quite unimportant : Jean
Touzel was going to Sark with kegs of
wine and tobacco for the seigneur, and
to bring back whatever small cargo might
be waiting for Jersey. The yacht Dorset
had aboard her the Reverend Lorenzo
Dow, an old friend of her commander.
He was to be dropped at Sark, and was to
come back with Jean Touzel in the Hardi
Biaou, the matter having been arranged
the evening before in the Vier Marchi.
The Hardi Biaou had aboard her Mai-
tresse Aimable, Guida, and a lad to assist
Jean in working the yawl. Guida count-
ed as one of the crew, for there was little
in the sailing of a boat she did not know.

As the Hardi Biaou was leaving the
harbor of St. Helier's, Jean told Guida
that Lorenzo Dow was to join them in
the journey back. She had a thrill of
excitement : this man was privy to her
secret ; he was connected with her life
history, — to how great purpose she was
yet to know. Before the Hardi Biaou
passed St. Brelade's Bay she was lost in
her thoughts : in picturing Philip on the
Narcissus, in inwardly commenting upon
the ambitious designs of his life. What
he might yet be who could tell ! She
had read more than a little of the doings
of great naval commanders, both French
and British. She knew how simple mid-

The BcMle of the Strong.

787

shipmen had sometimes become admi-
rals, and afterward peers of the realm.

Suddenly a new thought came to her.
Suppose that Philip should rise to a very
high place, should she be able to follow ?
What had she seen? What did she
know ? What social opportunities had
been hers ? How would she fit into an
exalted station ?

Yet Philip had said that she could
take her place anywhere with grace and
dignity, and surely Philip knew. If she
were gauche or crude in manners, he
would not have cared for her; if she
were not intelligent, he would scarcely
have loved her. Of course she had read
French and English to some purpose;
she could speak Spanish, — her grand-
father had taught her that; she could
read Italian fairly, — she had read it
aloud on Sunday evenings with the Che-
valier du Champsavoys. Then there
were Corneille, Shakespeare, Petrarch,
Cervantes, — she had read them, and
even Wace, the old Norman Jersey trou-
vere, whose Roman de Bou she knew
almost by heart. Was she so very igno-
rant ?

Though, to be sure, what was a little
knowledge like that to all Philip knew!
Philip had seen nearly every country;
he had spoken nearly every language ;
he knew astronomy, mathematics, his-
tory, all sorts of sciences ; and he knew
the arts, too, for could he not draw de-
lightfully ? Had he not shown her the
model for a new kind of battleship that
he was to bring to the notice of the Ad-
miralty ? Had not the Admiralty com-
mended some wonderful observations he
had taken in the arctic seas, and had
not the Royal Society in London made
him a member because of these same
observations ? Then as to ships and na-
val warfare, one day, as they were sit-
ting in the garden, he had drawn for
her in the sand a series of plans — one
after the other — of naval engagements
and that sort of thing. He had made a
diagram of how a line of battle must be

disposed, when the centre, or the van, or
the middle of the wing is attacked ; of
how to lay an enemy thwart the hawse ;
of how to set up a boom in a tideway ;
of how to fortify upon a point ; of how
to dispose of fireships within booms ; of
how to make gabions before cannon, —
and so on. It was surely wonderful,
she thought. Then, too, how gentle and
good-natured he always was in showing
her everything and in explaining naval
terms ; for her little knowledge of sea
and ships went no farther than this coast
of Jersey, and at the most the sailing of
a small schooner. Indeed, but it was
worth while doing something well, know-
ing one thing perfectly. It seemed to
her that she knew nothing worth know-
ing.

There was only one thing to do : she
must interest herself in what interested
Philip ; she must read what he read ;
she must study naval history ; she must
learn every little thing about a ship of
war. Philip would be glad of that, for
then he could talk with her of all he did
at sea, and she would understand it.

And still, when, a few days ago, she
had s%id to him that she did not know
how she was going to be all that his
wife ought to be, he had answered her,
" All I ask is that you be your own
sweet self ; for it is just you that I want,
you with your own thoughts and opin-
ions and imaginings, and not a Guida
who has dropped her own way of look-
ing at things to take on some one else's,
— even mine. It 's the people who try
to be who never are clever ; the people
who are clever never really try to be."

Was Philip right? Was she really,
in some way, a little bit clever? She
would like to believe so, for then she
would be a better companion for him.
How little she knew of Philip ! Now,
why did that thought always come up ?
It made her shudder. They two would
really have to begin with the ABC
of understanding. To understand was
breathing and life to her ; it was a pas-

788

The Battle of the Strong.

sion. She would never, could never, be
satisfied with skimming the surface of
life, as the gulls out there skimmed the
water. Ah, how beautiful the morning
was, and how the bracing air soothed her
feverishness ! All this sky and air and
uplifting sea were hers ; they fed her
with their strength, — they were so com-
panionable.

Since Philip had gone she had sat
down a dozen times to write to him, but
each time found she could not. She drew
back from it because she wanted to emp-
ty out her heart, and yet somehow she
dared not. She wanted to tell Philip
all the feelings that possessed her, but
how dared she write just what she felt,
— love and bitterness, joy and indigna-
tion, exaltation and disappointment, all
in one ? How was it these could all ex-
ist in a woman's heart at once ? Was
it because Love was greater than all,
deeper than all, overpowered all, for-
gave all? Was that what women felt
and did always? Was that their lot,
their destiny ? Must they begin in blind
faith, be plunged into the darkness of

disillusion, be shaken by the storm of

* 0

emotion, and taste the sting in the fruit
of the tree of knowledge, and then go on
again the same, yet not the same ?

More or less indefinitely and vaguely
these thoughts flitted through Guida's
mind. As yet her experiences were too
new for her to fasten securely upon the
meaning of them. In a day or two she
would write to Philip freely and warmly
of her love and of her hopes ; for may-
be by that time nothing but joy and
pleasure would be left in the caldron of
feeling. There was a packet going to
England in three days, — yes, she would
wait for that. And Philip — alas! a
letter from him could not reach her for
at least a fortnight ; and then in an-
other month after that he would be with
her, and she would be able to tell the
whole world that she was the wife of
Commander Philip d'Avranche, of the
good ship Araminta, — for that he was

to be when he came again. Once com-
missioned, he could whistle at Admiralty
prejudices and official whims concerning
marriage and what not.

What would she not give just to see
him, to hear him speak ! What did other
wives do when they were separated from
their husbands ? But then, was there
ever another wife wed as she had been,
to part from her husband on the wed-
ding-day ? She had no custom to guide
her, no knowledge save her own meagre
experience of life to serve her, no coun-
sel from any one to direct her ; nothing
except her own instinct and the feelings
of her simple heart to prompt her.

She was not sad ; indeed, she was al-
most happy, for her thoughts had brought
her so close to Philip that she could feel
his blue eyes looking at her, the strong
clasp of his hand ; she could almost touch
the brown hair waving back carelessly
from the forehead, untouched by powder,
in the fashion of the time ; and she could
hear his cheery laugh quite plainly. How
foolish had been her dream the night be-
fore ! What mad, dreary fancies she
had had !

St. Ouen's Bay, L'Etacq, Plemont,
dropped behind them as they sailed.
They drew on to where the rocks of the
Paternosters foamed to the unquiet sea.
Far over between the Nez du Guet and
the sprawling granite pack of the Di-
rouilles was the Admiralty yacht wing-
ing to the northwest. Far beyond it,
again, lay the coast of France, the tall
white cliffs, the dark blue smoky curve
ending in Cap de la Hague.

To-day there was something new in
the picture of this coast of France.
Against the far-off sands were some lit-
tle black spots, seemingly no bigger than
a man's hand. Again and again Jean
Touzel eyed these moving specks with
serious interest ; and Maitresse Aimable
eyed Jean, for Jean never looked so
often at anything without good reason.
If, perchance, he looked three times at
her consecutively, she gaped with expec-

The Battle of the Strong.

789

tation, and hoped that he would tell her
that her face was not so red to-day as
usual, — a mark of rare affection.

Guida noticed Jean's watchfulness,
also. " What is it that you see, Maitre
Jean ? " she said.

" Little black wasps, I think, ma'm'-
selle, — little black wasps that sting."

Guida did not understand.

Jean gave a curious cackle, and con-
tinued : " Ah, those wasps, — they have
a sting so nasty." He paused an in-
stant ; then he added in a lower voice,
and not quite so gayly, " That is the way
that war begins."

Guida's fingers suddenly clenched the
tiller rigidly. " War ? Do — do you
think that's a French fleet, Maitre
Jean ? "

" Steadee — steadee — keep her head
up, ma'm'selle," he answered, for Guida
had neglected her steering for the in-
stant. " Steadee — ah bah ! that 's right.
I remember twenty years ago the black
wasps they fly on the coast of France
like that. Who can tell now?" He
shrugged his shoulders. " P'rhaps they
have come out to play ; but see you, when
there is trouble in the nest, it is my no-
tion that wasps come out to sting. Look
at France, now : they all fight each other
there, ma finfre ! When folks begin to
slap faces at home, look out when they
get into the street. That is when the
devil he have a grand f§te."

Guida's face grew paler as he spoke.
The eyes of Maitresse Aim able were
fixed on her now, and unconsciously the
ponderous goodwife felt in that ware-
house she called her pocket for her rosa-
ry. An extra bead was there for Guida,
and one for another than Guida. But
Maitresse Aimable did more : she not
only fumbled through the warehouse for
her rosary, she dfcred into the well of si-
lence for her voice, and for the first time
in her life she showed impatience with
Jean. As her voice came forth she col-
ored and her cheeks expanded, and the
words sallied out in puffs : —

" Nannin, Jean, you smell shark when
it is but herring ! And you cry wasp
when the critchett sing! I will believe
war when I see the splinters fly — me ! "

Jean looked at his wife in astonish-
ment. That was the longest speech he
had ever heard her make. It was the
first time, also, that her rasp of criticism
had ever been applied to him, and with
such asperity, too. He could not make
it out. He looked from his wife to
Guida ; then, suddenly arrested by the
look in Guida's face, he scratched his
tousled head in despair and moved about
in his seat.

" Sit you still, Jean," said his wife
sharply ; " you 're like a pea on a hot
griddle."

This confused Jean beyond recovery,
for never in his life had Aimable spoken
to him like that. He saw there was
something wrong, and he did not know
whether to speak or to hold his tongue ;
or, as he afterward said to himself, he
" did n't know which eye to wink." He
adjusted his spectacles, and pulling him-
self together — for to a man nothing is
more trying than a delicate situation —
muttered, " Sacre* fume'e, what 's all
this ? "

He knew Guida to have unusual nerve
and courage. She was not a wisp of
quality to shiver with terror at the first
breath of danger ; but, ba sfi, there was
now in her face a sharp, fixed look of
pain, in her eyes a bewildered anxiety.

Jean scratched his head still more.
Nothing particular came of that. There
was no good in trying to work the thing
out suddenly ; he was not clever enough.
His mention of the French fleet and
possible war had roused his wife out of
the still waters of twenty years' good
nature to shake a shower of irritability
upon his foolish head, and had turned
Guida from a cheerful aspect to a dis-
concerting seriousness. He. resorted to
man's final proof to himself of his own
intelligence, and said that it was the way
of woman. Then out of an habitual good

790

The Battle of the Strong.

nature he tried to bring better weather
fore and aft.

" Et ben," said he, " in the dark you
can't tell a wasp from a honey-bee till
he lights on you ; and that 's too far off,
there," — he jerked a finger toward the
French shore, — " to be certain sure.
But if the wasp nip, you make him pay
for it, the head and the tail — yes, I think
— me. . . . There 's the Eperque*rie,"
he added quickly, nodding in front of
him toward the island of Sark, which lift-
ed a green bosom above its perpendicu-
lar cliffs, with the pride of an affluent
mother among her brood. Dowered by
sun and softened by a delicate haze, like
an exquisite veil of modesty, this young-
est daughter of the isles lay among her
kinsfolk in the emerald archipelago be-
tween the great seas.

The outlines of the coast grew plainer
as the Hardi Biaou drew nearer and
nearer. From end to end there was no
harbor upon this southern side. There
was no roadway, as it appeared, no path-
way at all, up the overhanging cliffs.
To Guida's face, as she looked, the old
charm of openness and pleasure and
blitheness came back. Jean Touzel had
startled her with his suggestions of war
between England and France ; for though
she longed to have Philip win some great
naval battle, yet the first natural thought
was the peril of war, the personal dan-
ger to the man she loved. When Jean
spoke of war, her heart seemed to shrink
within her as shrinks the red anemone to
the rock when touched by churlish fin-
ger. But the tides of her temperament
were fast to flow as quick to ebb. The
reaction from pain was in proportion to
her splendid natural health. She had
never seen Sark nearer than from Ple-
mont, on the northwest shore of Jersey,
and her eyes dwelt upon it now with the
loving excitement of a spirit keenly sen-
sitive to beauty.

There it was, — ridges of granite and
fringes of tall gray and green cliff, belt-
ed with mist, crowned by sun, and fret-

ted by the milky, upcasting surf, with
little islands like outworks before it,
some lying low and slumberously to the
sea, as a dog lays its head in its paws
and hugs the ground close, with vague,
soft-blinking eyes. By the shore the air
was white with gulls, flying and circling,
rising and descending, shooting up
straight into the air, their bodies smooth
and long like the body of a babe in white
samite, their feathering tails spread like
fans, their wings expanding on the am-
bient air. In the tall cliffs were the
sea-gulls' nests of dried seaweed, fastened
to the edges of rocky brackets on lofty
ledges, the little ones within piping at the
little ones without. Every point of rock
had its sentinel gull, looking, looking out
to sea, like some watchful defender of
a mystic city. Piercing might be the
cries of pain or of joy from the earth,
more piercing were their cries ; dark and
dreadful might be the woe of those who
went down to the sea in ships, but they
shrilled on, their yellow beaks still yel-
lowing in the sun, keeping their everlast-
ing watch and ward.

Now and again, other birds, dark,
quick-winged, low-flying, shot in among
the white companies of sea-gulls, and
stretched their long necks, and turned
their whirling, swift, cowardly eyes here
and there, the cruel beak extended, the
black body gorged with carrion. Black
marauders among blithe birds of peace
and joy, they watched like sable spirits
near the nests, or on some near sea rocks,
sombre and alone, blinked evilly at the
tall bright cliffs and the lightsome legions
which nested there.

To Guida these gloomy loiterers on the
verge of happiness, these swart watchers
among the nests of the young, were spirits
of fate who might not destroy, who had
no power to harm the living, yet who
could not be driven forth : the ever pre-
sent death's-heads at the feast, the im-
passive acolytes serving at the altars of
destiny.

As the Hardi Biaou drew nearer the

The Battle of the Strong.

791

lofty, inviolate cliffs, there opened up
plainly sombre clefts and caverns which
honeycombed the island at all points of
the compass. Now slipped past rugged
pinnacles, like buttresses to the island,
here trailed with vines and ferns and
shrubs of inexpressible beauty, and yon-
der shriveled and bare like the skin of
an elephant.

Some rocks, indeed, were like vast
animals round which molten granite had
been poured, preserving them eternally.
The heads of great dogs, like the dogs
of Ossian, sprang out in profile from
the repulsing mainland ; stupendous gar-
goyles laughed hideously at them from
dark clefts in excoriated cliffs. Farther
off, the face of a battered sphinx stared
with unheeding look into the vast sea
and sky beyond. Eyes flamed suddenly
from the dark depths of mystic crypts,
and hollow groanings, like the roaring
of lions penned beside the caves of mar-
tyrs, broke out upon the sea, followed by
plaintive crying as of sleepless children.

Guida, entranced, seemed to lose the
sense of concrete things about her. As
one is caught up on a wave of exquisite
music, and the material is mastered by
the intangibly sensuous and beautiful, so
she was lost, absorbed, in the poetry of
the scene before her.

As she gazed, a strange little feeling
stole into her mind, and grew and grew,
and presently trembled into a sensitive
shiver of discovery and surprise. She had
never seen Sark closely in her life, yet
it pierced her consciousness that she had
looked upon this scene before. Where ?
Where ? What was this painful delight
and recognition and this familiar sensa-
tion that possessed her ? When had she
felt just such a scene, had just such an
impression ? What acute reminiscence
was this ?

All at once she gave an exclamation of
amazement. Why, this — this was the
island of last night's dream ! Yes, yes,
there it was just as she had dreamed !

What strange second-sight was this ?

In the morning when she woke she could
have drawn the outlines of this island ;
to-day there was the island in very truth,
living and tangible, — there it was be-
fore her !

As a discoverer stands on the tall
prow of his ship, looking out upon the
new continent to which he has sailed
with divers perils and losses, so, for one
moment, Guida looked into this picture
before her, exalted by the joy of discov-
ery, bewildered by the realization of a
dream.

It touched the deepest chord in her
nature, — the f ulfillment of imagination.
Unconsciously she enjoyed the greatest
delight that may be given to the human
mind, — not merely the contemplation of
the thing done, but the remembrance of
the moment when the thing was dreamed ;
unto which is added in due time the glory
of a worthy realization.

She had that moment, and it passed.
Then came the misery of significance,
for now she remembered what had been
the end of her dream. She remem-
bered that in a dark cavern Philip had
dropped down*into darkness from her
sight, and only his mocking laughter had
come up to her, and he returned no more.

Her thoughts flew to Philip now.
Philip would come back, — she was as
sure of that as that there was sun in the
sky, and that morning and evening duly
came. He would come back within the
two months, — nothing would prevent
his doing that. He loved her. True, he
had not kept a promise solemnly made to
her, but — but even that was because he
loved her !

So the heart of the trusting pleads in
its council-chambers for the guilty and
the beloved. Somehow — and strange
as it may seem — the smile came back
again to her lips ; for what can long de-
press the young and the loving when
they dream that they are entirely be-
loved ? Lands and thrones may perish,
plague and devastation walk abroad with
death, misery and beggary crawl naked

792

The Battle of the Strong.

to the doorway, and crime cower in the
hedges ; but to the egregious egotism of
young love there are only two identities
bulking in the crowded universe. To
these immensities all other beings are au-
dacious who dream of gaining even com-
fort and obscurity, — happiness would
be a presumption, — as though it were
intended that each living human being
should at some moment in his life have
the whole world to himself. Who shall
cry out against that egotism with which
all are diseased !

So busy was Guida with her own
thoughts that she scarcely noticed that
their course was changed, and they were
skirting the coast westerly, whereby to
reach Havre Gosselin, on the other side
of the island. On the shore above Havre
Gosselin lay the Seigneurie, the destina-
tion of the Hardi Biaou.

As they rounded the western point of
the island, and made their course easterly
by a channel between rocky bulwarks
opening Havre Gosselin and the Gouliot
Rocks and He Brechou, they suddenly
saw a large brig rounding the Eperqu£-
rie. She was making to the southeast
under full sail. Her main and mizzen
masts were not visible and her colors
could not be seen, but Jean's quick eye
had lighted on something which made
him cast an apprehensive glance at his
wife and Guida. What he saw was a
gun in the stern port-hole of the vanish-
ing brig ; and he also noted that it was
run out for action. His swift glance at
his wife and Guida and the lad who sat
by the main-sheet assured him that they
had not noticed the gun.

Jean's brain began to work with un-
usual celerity ; he was certain that the
brig which had just rounded the Eper-
•que'rie was a French sloop or a priva-
teer. In other circumstances, that in
itself might not have given him much
trouble of mind, for more than once
French frigates had sailed round the
Channel Isles in insulting strength and
mockery ; but every man knew that

France and England at this moment
were only waiting to see who should
throw the ball first and set the red game
going. Twenty French frigates could
do little harm to the island of Sark, —
there a hundred men could keep off an
army and a navy ; but Jean knew that
the Admiralty yacht Dorset was sailing
within half a league of the Eperque'rie.
He would stake his life that the brig was
French and hostile, and he instantly made
up his mind as to his course. At all
costs he must watch the designs of the
brig and know the fate of the yacht.

If he landed at Havre Gosselin and
crossed the island on foot, whatever was
to happen would be over and done, and
that did not suit the book of Jean Tou-
zel. More than once he had seen a lit-
tle fighting, and more than once he had
shared in it. He would not willfully
precipitate a combat, but if there was to
be a fight, — he looked affectionately at
his carronades, — then he wanted to be
within seeing or striking distance.

So, instead of running into Havre
Gosselin, he made the course between
Brechou and the Moi de Mouton, then
the Gouliot Rocks and the Autelets.
Running inshore as near as he dared, he
set for the Bee du Nez, the eastern point
of the island. His object was to land
upon the rocks of the Eperque'rie, where
the women would be safe, whatever be-
fell. The tide was strong round the point
and the surf was heavy, so that once or
twice the boat was almost overturned
vertically, but Jean had measured well
the currents and the wind.

He experienced now one of the most
exciting moments in his life ; for as they
rounded the Bee du Nez there was the
Dorset suddenly going about to make
for Guernsey, and the brig, under full
sail, bearing down upon her. Even as
they rounded the point, up ran the tri-
color to the brig's mizzenmast, and the
militant shouts of the French sailors
came over the water to them.

Too late had the little yacht with her

The Battle of the Strong.

793

handful of guns seen the danger and
gone about. The wind was fair for her ;
but it was as fair for the brig, able to
outsail her twice over. As the Hardi
Biaou neared the landing-place of the
Eperque'rie a gun was fired from the
privateer across the bows of the Dorset,
and Guida realized what was happen-
ing there before her eyes. She realized
that this was war, — at first no more, —
that it was war. She trembled with ex-
citement ; she had not now that uncon-
sciousness of peril which, when a little
child, had sent her into the Vier March!
after Ranulph Delagarde, among the
slaughtering battalions. Years and wis-
dom bring also the fears of life.

As they landed from the Hardi Biaou
another shot was fired. Guida put her
hands before her eyes, and when she
looked again the mainmast of the yacht
was gone. And now from the heights
of Sark above there rang out a cry from
the lips of the affrighted islanders :
" War! war! war! war!"

Guida sank down upon the rock, and
her face dropped into her hands. She
trembled violently. Somehow, all at once
and for the first time in her life, there
was borne in upon her a feeling of awful
desolation and loneliness. She was alone
— she was alone — she was alone : that
was the refrain of her thoughts.

" War ! war ! war ! war ! " The
cry rang along the cliff tops ; and war
would take Philip from her. Perhaps
she should never see him again. The
horror of it, the pity of it, the peril of it !

Shot after shot the 12-pounders of the
privateer drove like dun hail at the white
timbers of the yacht, and her masts and
spars were flying. The privateer was
drawing down to where she lay lurching.

A hand touched Guida upon the
shoulder. " Che* thee, my de-are," a
voice said. It was Maitresse Aimable.
Below, Jean Touzel had eyes only for
this sea-fight before him ; for, despite
the enormous difference of numbers, the
Englishmen were now fighting their lit-

tle craft for all that she was capable.
But the odds were terribly against her,
though she had the windward side and
the firing of the privateer was bad. The
carronades on her flush decks were re-
plying valiantly and gallantly to the 12-
pounders of the brig. At last a chance
shot carried away her mizzenmast, and
another dismounted her single great gun,
killing a number of men. Carronades
being good for only a few discharges,
presently the yacht was no better than a
battered raisin - box. Her commander
had destroyed his dispatches, and no-
thing remained now but to be sunk or to
surrender. In not more than five min-
utes from the time the first shot was
fired, the commander and his brave crew
yielded to the foe, and the Dorset's flag
was hauled down.

When her officers and crew were trans-
ferred to the brig, her one passenger
and guest, the Reverend Lorenzo Dow,
passed quietly from the gallant little
wreck to the deck of the privateer with
a finger between the leaves of his book
of meditations. As a prisoner of war,
with as much equanimity as he would
have breakfasted with his bishop, made
bre'aches of the rubric, or drunk from a
sailor's black-jack, he went calmly into
captivity in France, giving no thought to
what he left behind, and quite forgetful
that his going would affect for good or ill
the destiny of the young wife of Philip
d'Avranche, of the frigate Narcissus.

Guida watched the yacht go down and
the brig bear away toward France, where
those black wasps of war were as motes
against the white sands. Then she re-
membered that there had gone with it
one of the three persons who knew her
secret, — the man who had married her
to Philip. She shivered a little, she
scarcely knew why, for it did not seem
of consequence to her whether Mr. Dow
went or stayed. Indeed, was it not bet-
ter he should go ? Then one less would
know her secret. But still an undefined
fear possessed her.

794

The Battle of the Strong.

" Cheer thee, cheer thee, my de-are,
my sweet dormitte ! " said Maitresse
Aimable, patting her shoulder. " It can-
not harm thee, ba sfi ! 'T is but a flash
in the pan."

Guida's first impulse was to throw her-
self into the arms of the slow-tongued,
great-hearted woman who hung above
her like a cloud of mercy, and tell her
whole story. But no, the one necessity
of her forlorn condition was secrecy.
Placed in a false position, she was com-
pelled to do the thing she loathed ; for to
her secrecy was deception. Whatever
Maitresse Aimable suspected, she should
not surmise the truth. Guida would
keep her word to Philip till Philip came
again. Her love — the love of the young,
lonely wife — should be buried deep in
her own heart until he appeared and
gave her the right to speak.

Jean was calling to them. They rose
to go. Guida looked about her. Was
it all a dream, — all that had happened
to her and around her ? How sweet the
world was to look upon, and yet was
it true that here before her eyes there
had been war, and that out of war peril
might come to her ?

How strange it was ! A week ago she
was as free as air, as happy as healthy
body, truthful mind, simple nature, and
tender love can make a human being.
She was then only a young, young girl.
To-day ? She sighed. A pathetic smile
passed over the beautiful face, now grow-
ing wiser and wiser every hour. Long
after they put out to sea again she could
still hear the affrighted cry of the pea-
sants from the cliff, — or was it only the
plaintive echo of her own thoughts ? —
" War ! war ! war ! war ! "

XIX.

" A moment, Monsieur le Due."
The duke turned at the door, and
looked with listless inquiry into the face
of the minister of marine, who, picking

up an official paper from his table, ran
an eye down it, marked a point with the
sharp corner of his snuff-box, and hand-
ed the document to his visitor, saying,
" Our roster of English prisoners taken
in the action off Brest."

The duke, puzzled, lifted his glass and
scanned the roster mechanically.

" No, no ; just where I have marked,"
interposed the minister.

" My dear Monsieur Dalbarade," re-
marked the other a little querulously, " I
do not see what interest " —

He stopped short, however, looked
closer at the document, and then lower-
ing it in a sort of amazement seemed
about to speak ; but instead he raised the
paper again and fixed his eyes intently
on the spot indicated by the minister.

" Most curious," he said after a mo-
ment, making little nods of his head to-
ward Dalbarade ; " my own name — and
an English prisoner, you say ? "

" Exactly so ; and he gave our fellows
some hard knocks before his frigate went
on the reefs."

" Strange that the name should be my
own. I never heard of an English branch
of our family."

A quizzical smile passed over the face
of the minister, adding to his visitor's
mystification. " But suppose he were
English, yet French too ? " he rejoined.

" I fail to understand the internation-
al entanglement," answered the duke
stiffly.

" He is an Englishman whose name
and native language are French ; he
speaks as good French as your own."

The duke peevishly tapped a chair
with his stick. " I am no reader of rid-
dles, monsieur," he said with acidity, al-
though eager to know more concerning
this Englishman of the same name as
himself, the ruler of the sovereign duchy
of Bercy.

"Shall I bid him enter?" asked the
minister.

The duke's face relaxed a little, for
the truth was, at this moment of his long

The Battle of the Strong.

795

life he was deeply concerned with his
own name and all who bore it.

" Is he here, then ? " he asked, nodding
assent.

" In the next room," answered the
minister, turning to a bell and ringing.
" I have him here for examination, and
was but beginning when I was honored
by your highness's presence." He bowed
politely, yet there was, too, a little mock-
ery in the bow, which did not escape his
visitor.

A subaltern entered, received an or-
der, and disappeared. The duke with-
drew to the embrasure of a window, and
immediately the prisoner was gruffly an-
nounced.

The young Englishman stood quietly
waiting, his quick eyes going from Dal-
barade to the wizened figure by the win-
dow and back again to the minister. His
look carried both calmness and defiance,
but the defiance came from a sense of
injury and unmerited disgrace.

" Monsieur," said the minister with
austerity, " in your further examination
we shall need to repeat some questions."

The prisoner nodded indifferently, and
for a brief space there was silence. The
duke stood by the window, the minister
by his table. Suddenly, the prisoner,
with an abrupt motion of the hand to-
ward two chairs, said, with an assump-
tion of ordinary politeness, " Will you
not be seated ? "

The remark was so odd in its coolness
and effrontery, it struck the duke as so
whimsical, that he chuckled audibly. The
minister was completely taken aback. He
glanced stupidly at the two chairs — the
only ones in the room — and at the pri-
soner. Then the insolence of the thing
began to work upon him, and he was
about to burst forth, when the duke came
forward, and, politely moving a chair
near to the young commander, said, " My
profound compliments, Monsieur le Capi-
taine. I pray you accept this chair."

With quiet self-possession and a mat-
ter-of-course air the Englishman bowed

politely and seated himself ; then, with
a motion of the hand backward toward
the door, he said, " I 've been standing
five hours with some of those moutons
in the anteroom. My profound thanks
to monseigneur ! "

Touching the angry minister on the
arm, the duke remarked quietly, " Dear
monsieur, will you permit me a few ques-
tions to the young gentleman ? "

At that moment there came a tap at
the door, and an orderly entered with a
letter to the minister, who glanced at it
hurriedly, then turned to his companions,
as though in doubt what to do-.

" I will be responsible for the prison-
er, if you must leave us," said the duke
at once.

" For a little, for a little, — a matter
of moment with the minister of war,"
answered Dalbarade, nodding ; and with
an air of abstraction he left the room.

The duke withdrew to the window
again, and seated himself in the embra-
sure, at some little distance from the
Englishman, who got up and brought his
chair closer. The warm sunlight, stream-
ing through the window, was now upon
his face, which hitherto had been a lit-
tle pale, and strengthened it, giving it
f ullness and fire, and making more vivid
the eye.

" How long have you been a prisoner,
monsieur ? " inquired the duke, at the
same time acknowledging the other's po-
liteness with a bow.

" Since March, monseigneur."

" Monseigneur again, — a man of
judgment," said the duke to himself,
pleased to have his exalted station recog-
nized. " H'm ! and it is now June, —
three months, monsieur ! You have been
well used, monsieur ? "

"Vilely, monseigneur," answered the
other. " A shipwrecked enemy should
never be made a prisoner, or at least he
should be enlarged on parole ; but I have
been confined like a pirate in a sink of
a jail."

" Of what country are you ? "

796

The Battle of the Strong.

Raising his eyebrows in amazement,
the young man answered, " I am an
Englishman, monseigneur."

" Monsieur is of England, then ? "

" Monseigneur, I am an English of-
ficer."

" You speak French well, monsieur."

" Which serves me well in France, as
you see, monseigneur."

The duke was a trifle nettled. " Where
were you born, monsieur ? "

There was a short pause, and then
the prisoner, who had enjoyed the other's
mystification, said, " On the Isle of Jer-
sey, monseigneur."

The perplexed and petulant look passed
immediately from the face of the ques-
tioner ; the horizon was clear at once.

" Ah, then you are French, mon-
sieur ! "

" My flag is the English flag ; I was
born a British subject, and I shall die
one," replied the other steadily, and it
might seem somewhat obstinately.

" The sentiment sounds estimable," re-
turned the duke ; " but as for life and
death, and what we are or what we may
be, we are the sport of Fate." His brow
clouded. " I myself was born under a
monarchy ; I shall probably die under a
republic. I was born a Frenchman ; I
may die " — His tone had become low
and cynical, and he broke off suddenly,
as though he had said more than he
meant. " Then you are a Norman, mon-
sieur," he added in a louder tone.

" Once all Jerseymen were Normans,
and so were many Englishmen, monsei-
gneur."

"I come of Norman stock, too, mon-
sieur," remarked the duke graciously, yet
eying the young man keenly.

" Monseigneur has not the kindred ad-
vantage of being English," said the pri-
soner dryly.

The Frenchman protested with a de-
precatory wave of the fingers and a flash
of the sharp eyes, and then, after a slight
pause, asked, " What is your name, mon-
sieur ? "

" Philip d'Avranche," was the brief
reply. Then he added, with a droll im«
pudence, " And monseigneur 's, by mon-
seigneur's leave ? "

The duke smiled, and that smile re-
lieved the sourness, the fret, of a face
which had care and discontent written
upon every line of it. It was a face
that had never known happiness. It
had known diversion, however, and un-
usual diversion it knew at this moment.

" My name," he said, with curious
deliberation and a penetrating, quizzical
look, " my name is Philip d'Avranche."

The young man's quick, watchful eyes
fixed themselves like needles on the
duke's face. Through his brain there
ran a succession of queries and specula-
tions, and dominating them all was one
clear question, — was he to gain any-
thing by this strange conversation ? Who
was this great man with a name the
same as his own, this crabbed nobleman
with skin as yellow as an orange and a
body like an orange squeezed dry ? He
could surely mean him no harm, how-
ever, for flashes of kindliness had light-
ed the shriveled face as he talked. His
look was bent in piercing comment and
humor upon Philip, who, trying hard to
solve the mystery, now made a tentative
rejoinder to the duke's statement. Ris-
ing from his chair and bowing profound-
ly, he said, with a shrewd foreknowledge
of the effect of his words, " I had not
before thought my own name of such
consequence."

The old man grunted amiably. " My
faith, the very name begets a towering
conceit wherever it goes," he answered,
and he brought his stick down on the floor
with such vehemence that the emerald
and ruby rings rattled on his shrunken
fingers. " Be seated — cousin," he said,
with dry compliment, for Philip had re-
mained standing, as if with the unfeigned
respect of a cadet in the august presence
of the head of his house. It was a sud-
den and bold suggestion, and it was not
lost on the duke. The aged nobleman

The Battle of the Strong.

797

was too keen an observer not to see the
designed flattery ; but he was in a mood
when flattery was palatable, inasmuch
as many of his own class were arrayed
against him for not having joined the
army of the Vende'e, and the revolution-
ists, with whom he had compromised, for
the safety of his lands of d'Avranche
and his duchy of Bercy, regarded him
with suspicion, — sometimes with a sinis-
ter suspicion. Between the two — for at
heart he was most profoundly a royalist
— he bided his time, in some peril, but
with no fear. The spirit of this young
Englishman of his own name pleased
him ; the flattery, patent as it was, grati-
fied him, for in revolutionary France few
treated him now with becoming respect ;
even the minister of marine, with whom
he was on good terms, called him " citi-
zen " at times.

AH at once it flashed upon Philip
that this old man must be the Prince
d'Avranche, Due de Bercy, of that fam-
ily of d'Avranche from which his own
came in long descent, — even from the
days of Hollo, Duke of Normandy. He
recalled on the instant the token of fealty
of the ancient house of d'Avranche, —
the offering of a sword.

" Your serene highness," he said, with
great deference and as great tact, "I
must first offer my homage to the Prince
d'Avranche, Due de Bercy " — Then
with a sudden pause, as though he had
but now remembered, and a whimsical
look, he added, " But indeed, I had for-
gotten ; they have taken away my sword."

" We shall see," answered the prince,
well pleased, " we shall see about that
sword. Be seated," he said once again.
Then, " Tell me now, monsieur, of your
family, of your ancestry." His eyes were
bent on Philip with great intentness, and
his thin lips tightened in some unaccount-
able agitation.

Philip instantly responded. He ex-
plained how, in the early part of the thir-
teenth century, after the great crusade
against the Albigenses, a cadet of the

house of d'Avranche had emigrated to
England, and had come to place and
honor under Henry III., who gave to the
son of this d'Avranche certain tracts of
land in Jersey, where he settled. Philip
had descended in a direct line from this
same receiver of king's favors, and was
now the only representative of his family.

While Philip spoke, the duke never
took eyes from his face, — that face so
facile in the display of feeling or emo-
tion. The voice, too, had a lilt of health
and vitality which rang on the ears of
age pleasantly. As he listened, he
thought of his eldest son, partly imbecile,
all but a lustis naturae, separated from
his wife immediately after marriage, and
through whom there could never be suc-
cession,— he thought of him, and for
the millionth time in his life he winced
in impotent disdain. He thought, too,
of his beloved second son, lying in a sol-
dier's grave in Macedonia ; of the buoy-
ant resonance of that bygone voice; of
the soldierly good spirits like to the good
spirits of the prisoner before him ; and
"his heart yearned toward the young
man exceedingly." If — if that second
son had lived, there would be now no
compromising with this republican gov-
ernment of France ; he would be fight-
ing for the white flag with the golden
lilies over in the Vende'e.

" Your ancestors were mine, then," re-
marked the duke gravely, after a pause,
" though I had not heard of that emi-
gration to England. However — how-
ever. Come, tell me of the engagement
in which you lost your ship," he added
hurriedly, in a low tone. He was now so
intent that he did not stir in his seat, but
sat rigidly still, regarding Philip kindly.
Something in the last few moments' ex-
perience had loosened the puckered skin,
had softened the crabbed look in the
face, and Philip had no longer doubt of
the duke's friendly intentions.

" I had the frigate Araminta, twenty-
four guns, a fortnight out from Ports-
mouth," responded Philip at once. " We

798

The Battle of the Strong.

fell in with a French frigate, thirty guns.
She was well to leeward of us, and the
Araminta bore up under all sail, keen
for action. The enemy was as ready
as ourselves for a brush, and tried to
get the weather of us ; but, failing, she
shortened sail and gallantly waited for
us. The Araminta overhauled her on
the weather quarter, and hailed. She
responded with cheers and defiance, —
as sturdy a foe as man could wish. We
lost no time in getting to work, and,
both running before the wind, we fired
broadsides as we cracked on. It was
tit for tat for a while, with splinters fly-
ing and neither of us in the eye of ad-
vantage ; but at last the Araminta shot
away the mainmast and wheel of the
Niobe, and she wallowed like a tub in
the trough of the sea. We bore down
on her, and our carronades raked her
like a comb. Then we fell thwart her
hawse, and a couple of 32-pounders
through her stern-ports made wild havoc.
But before we could board her she
veered, and, lurching, fell upon us, carry-
ing away our foremast. We had scarce
cut clear of the tangle, and were mak-
ing once more to board her, when I saw
to windward two French frigates bear-
ing down on us under full sail. And
then " —

The prince exclaimed in surprise, " I
had not heard of that ! They did not
tell the world of those odds against you."

" Odds and to spare, Monsieur le Due !
We had had all we could manage in the
Niobe, though she was now disabled,
and we could hurt her no more. If the
others came up on our weather, we should
be chewed like a bone in a mastiff's
jaws. If she must fight again, the Ara-
minta would be little fit for action till
we cleared away the wreckage of masts
and rigging ; so I sheered off to make
all sail. We ran under courses with
what canvas we had, and got away with
a fair breeze and a good squall whiten-
ing to windward, while our decks were
being cleared for action again. The

guns on the main deck had done good
service and kept their places ; we were
all right there. On the quarter-deck
and fo'castle there was more amiss ; but
as I watched the frigates overhauling us
I took heart of grace still, for I could
hear the creaking and screaming of the
carronade-slides, the rattling of the car-
riages of the long 12-pounders amidships
as they were shotted and run out again,
the thud of the carpenters' hammers as
the shot - holes were plugged, — good
sounds in the ears of a fighter " —

" Of a d'Avranche, of a d'Avranche ! "
interposed the prince softly.

"We were in no bad way, and my
men were" ready for another brush with
our enemies, everything being done that
could be done, everything in its place,"
continued Philip. " When the frigates
were a fair gunshot off, I saw that the
squall was overhauling us faster than
they. This meant good fortune if we
wished escape, bad luck if we would
rather fight. But I had no time to think
of that, for up comes Shoreham, my
lieutenant, with a face all white. ' For
God's sake, d'Avranche,' says he, ' shoal
water, — shoal water ! We 're ashore ! '
So much, Monsieur le Prince, for Ad-
miralty charts and soundings ! It 's a
hateful thing to see, — the light green
water, the deadly sissing of the straight
narrow ripples like the grooves of a wash-
board ; a ship's length ahead the water
breaking over the reefs, two frigates be-
hind ready to eat us.

" Up we came to the wind ; the sheets
were let run, and away flew the hal-
yards. All to no purpose, for a minute
later we came broadside on the reef, and
were impaled on a pinnacle of rock.
The end was n't long in coming. The
Araminta lurched off the reef on the
swell. We watched our chance as she
rolled, and hove overboard our broadside
of long 12-pounders. But it was no
use. The swishing of the water as it
spouted from the scuppers was a deal
louder than the clang of the chain-pumps.

The Battle of the Strong.

^99

It did n't last long. The gale spilled it-
self upon us, and the Araininta, sick and
spent, slowly settled down. The last I
saw of her " — Philip raised his voice
as though he would hide what he felt be-
hind an unsentimental loudness — " was
the white pennant at the maintopgallant
masthead. A little while, and then I
did n't see it, and — and so good-by to
my first command ! . . . Then," — he
smiled ironically, — " then I was made
prisoner by the two French frigates, and
have been held in confinement ever since,
contrary to every decent principle of war-
fare ; and now here I am, Monsieur le
Due ! "

The duke had listened with an im-
movable attention, his gray eyebrows
twitching now and then, his eyes look-
ing out beneath them like sentinels, his
arid face betraying a grim enjoyment.
When Philip had finished, he still sat
looking at him with steady, slow-blink-
ing eyes, as though unwilling to break
the spell which the tale had thrown
round him. But a semi-abstraction, an
inquisition of the eye, a slight cocking
of the head as though weighing impor-
tant things, the ringed fingers softly
drumming on the stick before him, — all
these told Philip that something was at
stake concerning himself.

The old man was just about to speak,
when the door of the room opened, and
the minister of marine entered. The
minister looked at the two inquiringly,
and the duke, rising and courteously lay-
ing a hand on Dalbarade's arm, drew
him aside, and engaged him in whispered
conversation, of which the subject seemed
unwelcome to the minister, for now and
then he interrupted sharply.

As the two stood fretfully debating,
the' door of the room again opened, and
there appeared an Athletic, adventurous-
looking officer in brilliant uniform, who
was smiling at something called after
him from the antechamber. His blue
coat was spick and span, and very gay
with double embroidery at the collar,

coat-tails, and pockets. His white waist-
coat and trousers were spotless. His net-
ted sash of blue with its stars on the
silver tassels had a look of studied ele-
gance. His black three-cornered hat,
broidered with gold and adorned with
three ostrich tips of red and a white and
blue aigrette, was, however, the glory of
his bravery. Philip thought him young
to be a general of division, for such his
double embroideries and aigrette pro-
claimed him.

He had a face of considerable force,
and as much humor, with also a touch
of unscrupulousness, and more than a
touch of egotism. He glanced at Philip,
and with a half-quizzical but good-na-
tured smile replied to his salute.

" Dalbarade, Dalbarade," said he to
the minister, " I have but an hour —
Ah, Monsieur le Prince ! " he added sud-
denly, as the latter came hurriedly to-
ward him, and, grasping his hand warm-
ly, drew him over where Dalbarade was
standing. Philip now knew beyond doubt
that he was the subject of debate, for
all the time that the duke, in a low tone,
half cordial, half querulous, spoke to the
newcomer, the latter let his eyes wander
curiously toward Philip. That he was
an officer of unusual importance was to
be seen from the deference paid him by
Dalbarade.

All at once he made a polite gesture
toward the duke, and, turning to the
minister, said in a cavalier-like tone and
with a touch of patronage, " Yes, yes,
Dalbarade ; it is of no consequence, and
I myself will be surety for both." Then
turning to the nobleman, he added, " We
are beginning to square accounts, duke.
Last time we met I had a large favor of
you, and to-day you have a small favor
of me. Pray present me to your kins-
man here before you take him with you,"
and he turned squarely toward Philip.

Philip could scarcely believe his ears.
The duke's kinsman ! Had the duke
then asked for and obtained his release
on the ground that they were of kin, —

800

The Battle, of the Strong.

a kinship which, even if authentic, must
go back six centuries for proof ?

Yet here he was being introduced to
the revolutionary general as " my kins-
man of the isles of Normandy." Here,
too, was the same General Grandjon-
Larisse applauding him on his rare for-
tune to be thus released on parole through
the Due de Bercy, and quoting with a
laugh, half sneer and half raillery, the
old Norman proverb, " A Norman dead
a thousand years will still cry, ' Haro !
Haro ! ' if you tread on his grave." So
saying, he saluted the duke with a lib-
eral flourish of the hand and a friendly
bow, and turned away to Dalbarade.

A half - hour later Philip was outside
with the duke, walking slowly through
the courtyard to an open gateway, where
waited a carriage with unliveried coach-
man and outriders. No word was spoken
till they entered the carriage and were
driven swiftly away.

"Whither now, your serene highness?"
asked Philip.

" To the duchy," answered the other
shortly, and relapsed into sombre medi-
tation.

XX.

The castle of the Prince d'Avranche,
Due de Bercy, was set upon a vast rock,
and the town of Bercy huddled round
the foot of it and on great granite ledges
some distance up. With two hundred
defenders, the castle, on its lofty pedes-
tal, might have resisted ten times two
thousand assailants ; and indeed, it had
done so more times than there were pearls
in the rings of the present duke who had
rescued Commander Philip d'Avranche
from the clutches of the red government.

Upon the castle waved the republican
tricolor, where for a thousand years had
floated a royal banner. When France's
great trouble came to her, and the no-
bles fled or went to fight for the King
in the Vende'e, the old duke, with a
dreamy indifference to the opinion of

Europe, had proclaimed alliance with the
new government. He had felt, rightly
or wrongly, that he was privileged in
being thus selfish, and he had made the
alliance that he might pursue unchecked
the one remaining object of his existence.

This object had now grown from a
habit into a passion. He let nothing
stand in the way of it ; he hoisted the
tricolor because of it, and he compro-
mised his principles for peace in which
to pursue it. It was now his life, his
goal, to arrange a new succession which
should exclude the Vauf ontaines, a de-
tested branch of the Bercy family. There
had been an ancient feud between his
family and this house of Vaufontaine,
whose rights to the succession, following
his eldest son, were thus far paramount.
For three years past he had had a mon-
astery of Benedictine monks at work to
find some collateral branch from which
he might take a representative to make
successor to Leopold John, his imbecile
heir, but to no purpose.

In more than a little the duke was su-
perstitious, and on the day when he met
Philip d'Avranche in the chamber of M.
Dalbarade he had twice turned back to-
ward his hotel in Paris after starting, so
extreme was his dislike to pay the visit
to the revolutionary minister. He had
nerved himself to the distasteful duty,
however, and had gone. When he saw
the name of the young English prisoner
— his own name — staring him in the
face, he had had such a thrill as a mira-
cle might have sent through the veins of
a doubting 'Christian.

Since that minute, he, like Philip, had
been in a kind of dream, pleasing, but
anxious : on his part, to find in the
young man, if possible, an heir and suc-
cessor ; on Philip's, to make real great
possibilities. There had slipped past
two months, wherein Philip had seen a
new avenue of life opening before him.
He had been shut out from the world,
cut off from all connection with Eng-
land and his past ; for M. Dalbarade

The Battle of the Strong.

801

had made it a condition of release that
he should hold no communication with
any one whatever while at Chateau Ber-
cy. He was as completely in a new
world as though he had been trans-
planted ; he was as entirely in the at-
mosphere of fresh ambitions as though
he were beginning the world again.
For almost from the first the old noble-
man treated him like a son. He spoke
freely to him of the most private fam-
ily matters ; he consulted with him ; he
seemed to lean upon him. He alluded
often, in oblique phrase, to adoption and
succession. To imagine that Philip was
idly watching the miraculous possibility
without furthering its certainty would
argue an arch-unconsciousness not his
own. From the first moment of their
meeting he had seen the bent of the old
nobleman's mind, and had fostered and
fed it. Ambition was the deepest pas-
sion in him, even as defeating the hopes
of the Vaufontaines was a religion with
the duke. Philip's habit of life was to
encourage all favors that came his way,
upon the ground that even every gift or
advantage declined only makes a man
more secure in the good will of the world
he courts. By no trickery, but by a per-
sistent good nature, alertness of speech,
avoidance of dangerous topics, and apt-
ness in anecdote or information, he had
hourly made his position stronger in the
castle of Bercy. He had also tactfully
declined an offer of money from the
prince, — none the less decidedly because
he was nearly penniless. The duke's
hospitality he was ready to accept, but
not his purse.

Yet he was not in all acting a part.
He was sincere in his liking for the
soured, bereaved sovereign, with an heir
who was at ofcce an offense and a re-
proach, and forced to endure alliance
with a government he loathed. He even
admired the duke for his vexing idiosyn-
crasies, for they came of a strong indi-
viduality which, in happier case, should
have made him a contented and beloved

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 488. 51

monarch. As it was, the people of his
duchy were loyal to him beyond telling,
doing his bidding without cavil, stand-
ing for the King of France at his will,
declaring for the republic at his com-
mand ; for, whatever the duke was to
the world outside, within his duchy he
was just and benevolent, if imperious.
The people endured his furies uncom-
plainingly, for they knew that it was for
the sake of the duchy as much as for
his own house that he mourned the im-
becile son ; and they, like himself, had
no wish to see the house of Bercy in-
grafted with the house of Vaufontaine.

All these things Philip had come to
know in his short sojourn. He had, with
the duke, mingled freely among the peo-
ple of the duchy, and had been intro-
duced everywhere and at all times as
the duke's kinsman, — "in a direct line
from an ancient branch," as his highness
declared. He had been received gladly,
and he knew well a rumor had gone
abroad that the old nobleman had chosen
him for heir. A wild rumor, maybe,
yet who could tell ? He had made him-
self an agreeable figure in the duchy, to
the delight of his patron, who watched
his every motion, every word, and their
effect.

One day the duke arranged a confer-
ence of the civil and military officers of
his duchy. He chuckled to see how re-
luctant they all were at first to concede
their homage to his favorite, and how
soon they fell under that favorite's in-
fluence, — all save one man, the intend-
ant of the duchy, charged with the trus-
teeship of the eldest son, Leopold John.
Philip himself was quick to see that this
man, Comte Carignan Damour, was bit-
terly opposed to him, apprehensive for
his own selfish ends. But Damour was
one among many, and the duke was en-
tirely satisfied.

On this very day, too, was laid before
him the result of the long researches
of the monks into the genealogy of the
d' Avranches ; and there, clearly enough,

802

The Battle of the Strong.

was confirmation of all Philip had said
about his ancestors and their relation to
the ancient house of d'Avranche. The
duke was overjoyed, and thereupon qui-
etly made ready for the formal adop-
tion and establishment in succession. It
never occurred to him that Philip might
refuse.

One afternoon he sent for Philip to
come to him in the highest room of the
tower. It was in tliis room that, many
years before, his young and noble wife,
from the province of Aquitaine, had given
birth to the second son of the house of
Bercy, and had died a year later, happy
that she should at last leave behind a
healthy, beautiful child to do her honor
in her lord's eyes.

In this same room the duke and the
brave second son had spent unnumbered
hours ; and here it had come home to
him that the young wife was faultless as
to the elder, else she had not borne
him this perfect younger son. Thus her
memory came to be adored ; and thus,
when the noble second son, the glory of
his house and of his heart, was slain,
the duke still went to the little upper
room for his communion of remem-
brance. Hour after hour he would sit
looking from the great window out over
the wide green valley, mourning bitterly,
and feeling his heart shrivel up within
him, his body grow crabbed and cold,
and his face sour and scornful.

When Philip now entered this sanctu-
ary, the duke nodded and motioned him
to a chair. In silence he accepted, and
in silence they sat for a long time. Phil-
ip knew the history of this little room ;
he had learned it first from Frange Per-
got, the porter at the castle gates. The
silence gave him opportunity to recall
the whole story.

At last the motionless brown figure
huddled in the great chair, not looking
at Philip, but out over the wide green
valley, began to speak in a low, mea-
sured tone, as a dreamer might recite his
dream or a priest proclaim his vision : —

" A breath of life has come again to
me through you. Centuries ago our an-
cestors were brothers, — far back in the
direct line, brothers, — the monks have
proved it. Now I shall have my spite of
the Vaufontaines, and now shall I have
another son, strong, and with good blood
to beget good blood."

A strange, lean sort of smile passed
over his lips, his eyebrows twitched, his
hands clenched the arm of the chair
wherein he sat, and he made a motion
of his jaws as though he were enjoying
some toothsome morsel.

" H'm ! Henri Vaufontaine shall see,

— and all his tribe shall see ! They
shall not feed upon these lands of the
d'Avranches, they shall not carouse at
my table, when I am gone and the fool
I begot has returned to his Maker. The
fault of him was never mine, but God's,

— does the Almighty think we can for-
get that ? I was ever sound and strong.
When I was twenty I killed two men
with my own sword at a blow ; when I
was thirty, to serve the King, I rode a
hundred and twenty miles in one day,

— from Paris to Dracourt it was. We
d'Avranches have been men of power
always. We fought for Christ's sepul-
chre in the Holy Land, and three bishops
and two archbishops have gone from us
to speak God's cause to the world. And
my wife, — she came of the purest stock
of Aquitaine, and she was constant in
her prayers. What distemper and dis-
courtesy was it, then, for God, who hath
been served well by us, to serve me in
return so churlishly, with such mockery,

— to send me a bloodless zany, whom
his wife left ere the wedding-meats were
cold ! "

His foot tapped the floor in anger,
his eyes wandered restlessly out over the
green expanse. Suddenly a dove perched
upon the window-sill before him. His
quick, shifting gaze settled upon it and
stayed, softening and quieting. Pre-
sently he said in a low voice : —

" It was just such a dove came on the

The Battle of the Strong.

803

very day that my second son was born,
and my princess said to me : ' Behold
the good omen ! Now shall my agony
be as nothing, for this is my assurance
of a good gift from God.' So it was,
for back and forward the dove came
while her pangs and sufferings were on
her, and she smiled in hope, till that a
brave strong man child was born into the
world. She lived a little longer by rea-
son of her pride and joy, and then she
died. Yet it was but the mockery of
God, for the lad was swept down in his
youth like a wisp of corn in the wind ! "

After a slight pause he turned to
Philip and spoke in a still lower tone :
" Last night in the chapel I spake to God,
and I said : ' Lord God, let there be fair
speech between us. Wherefore hast thou
nailed me like a malefactor to the tree ?
Why didst thou send me a fool to lead
our house, and afterward a lad as fine
and strong as Absalom, and again snatch
him from me, and leave me wifeless, with
a prince to follow me who is the byword
of men, the scorn of women — and of
the Vaufontaines ? ' '

He paused again, and his eyes seemed
to pierce Philip's, as though he would
read if each word was burning its way
into his brain.

" As I stood there alone, a voice spoke
to me as plainly as now I speak to you,
and said : ' Have done with railing. It
is written, the first shall be last, and the
last first. That which was the elder's
shall be given to the younger. The tree
hath grown crabbed and old ; it beareth
no longer. Behold the young sapling
by thy door ; I have planted it there.
The seed is the seed of the old tree.
Cherish it, lest it have no nourishment
and die, and ^ grafted tree mock thee.' "
His voice rose triumphantly. " Yes, yes,
I heard it with my own ears, the voice.
The crabbed tree, that is the main line,
dying in me ; the grafted tree is the Vau-
f ontaine, the interloper and the mongrel ;
and the sapling from the same seed as
the crabbed old tree," — he reached out

as though to clutch Philip's arm, but drew
back, sat erect in his chair, and said in a
voice of decision, — " the sapling is Phil-
ip d'Avranche, of the Isle of Jersey."

For a moment there was silence be-
tween the two. A strong wind came
rushing up the "valley in the clear sun-
light, the great trees beneath the castle
swayed, and the flapping of the tricolor
could be heard within. The dove, caught
up on the wave of wind, sailed away down
the widening glade.

Philip's first motion was to stand up
and say, " I dare not think your high-
ness intends in very truth to accept me
as your kinsman."

" And why not, why not ? " testily an-
swered the duke. Then he added more
kindly, " Why not ? Come, tell me that,
cousin. Is it then distasteful ? "

Philip's heart gave a leap and his face
flushed. " I have no other kinsman,"
he replied, in a low tone of feeling. " I
knew I had your friendship, — else all
the evidences of your goodness to me
were mockery ; but I had scarce let my-
self count on the higher, more intimate
honor, — I, a poor commander in the
English navy."

He said the last words slowly, for,
whatever else he was, he was a loyal
English sailor, and he wished the Due
de Bercy to know it, — the more con-
vincingly, the better for the part he was
going to play in this duchy, if all things
favored.

" Tut, tut ! what has that to do with
it ? " returned the duke. " What has
poverty to do with blood ? Younger sons
are always poor, younger cousins poorer.
As for the captaincy of an English war-
ship, that 's of no consequence where
greater games are playing, eh ? "

He eyed Philip keenly, yet rather
quizzically too, and there was an unasked
question in his look. He was a critic of
human nature ; he understood the code
of honor, — none better ; his was a mind
that might be willfully but never crassly
blind. He was selfish where this young

804

The Battle of the Strong.

gentleman was concerned, yet he knew
well how the same gentleman ought to
think, speak, and act.

The moment of the great test was
come.

Philip could not read behind the
strange, shriveled face. Instinct could
help him much, but it could not inter-
pret that parchment. He did not know
whether his intended reply would alien-
ate the duke or not ; but if it did, then
he must bear it. He had come, as he
thought, to the crux of this adventure.
Whatever he was, he was an officer of
the English navy, and he was not the
man to break the code of professional
honor lightly. If favor and adoption
must depend upon his answer, well, let
it be ; his last state could not be worse
than his first.

So, still standing, he gave his answer
boldly, yet quietly, his new kinsman
watching him with a grim curiosity.
" Monsieur le Prince," said Philip, " I
am used to poverty, — that matters lit-
tle ; but whatever you intend toward me,
— and I am persuaded it is to my great
honor and happiness, — I am, and must
still remain, an officer of the English
navy."

The old man's brow contracted, and
his reply came cold and incisive : " The
navy, — that is a bagatelle ; I had hoped
to offer you kinship and heritage. Pooh,
pooh ! commanding a frigate is a trade,
a mere trade ! "

Philip's face did not stir a muscle.
He was in spirit the born adventurer,
the gamester who could play for life's
largest stakes, lose all, draw a long
breath — and begin all over again.

" It 's a busy time in my trade* now,
as Monsieur Dalbarade would tell you."

The duke's lips compressed as though
in anger. " You mean to say, monsieur,
that you would let this wretched war
between France and England stand be-
fore our personal kinship and alliance !
What are you and I in this great shuffle
of events ? Have less egotism, less van-

ity, monsieur. You are no more than a
million others ; and I — I am nothing.
Come, come, there is more than one
duty in the life of every man, and he
must choose some time between one and
the other. England does not need you,"
— his voice and manner softened, he
leaned toward Philip, the eyes almost
closing as he peered into his face, — " but
you are necessary to — to the house of
Bercy."

" I was commissioned to a man-of-war
in time of war," answered Philip quietly,
" and I lost that man-of-war. When I
can, it is my duty to go back to the pow-
ers that sent me forth. I am still an
officer in full commission. Your high-
ness knows well what honor demands of
me."

" There are hundreds of officers to
take your place ; in the duchy of Bercy
there is none to stand for you. You
must choose between your trade and the
claims of name and blood, — older than
the English navy, older than Norman
England."

Philip's color was as good, his man-
ner as easy, as if nothing were at stake,
but in his heart he felt that the game
was lost ; he saw a storm gathering in
the duke's eyes, — the disappointment
which would break out into wrath, the
injured vanity which would presently
speak in snarling disdain. But he replied
boldly, nevertheless, for he was resolved
that even if he had to return from this
duchy to prison, he would go with colors
flying.

" The proudest moment of my life was
when the Due de Bercy called me kins-
man," he responded ; " the best " (had
he then so utterly forgotten ?) " was
when he showed me friendship. Yet if
my trade may not be reconciled with
what he may intend for me, I must ask
to be sent back to Monsieur Dalbarade."
He smiled rather hopelessly, yet with a
stoical disregard of consequences, and
continued : " For my trade is in full
swing these days, and I stand my chance

A Successful Bachelor.

805

of being exchanged and earning my
daily bread again. At the Admiralty I
am a master workman on full pay, but
I 'm not earning my salt here. With
Monsieur Dalbarade my conscience would
be easier."

He had played his last card, and he
waited for the storm to break. Now he
was prepared for the fury of a jaundiced,
peevish, self-willed old man, who could
not brook to be thwarted. He had
quickly imagined it all, and not without
reason ; for surely a furious disdain was
at the gray lips, lines of anger were cor-
rugating the forehead, the rugose parch-
ment face was fiery with distemper.

But what Philip expected did not
come to pass, for, rising quickly to his
feet, the duke took him by the shoulders,
kissed him on both cheeks, and said,
" My mind is made up, — my mind is
made up. Nothing can change it. You
have no father, cousin, — well, I will be
your father. You shall retain your post
in the English navy. Officer and patriot

you shall be, if you choose. A brave
man makes a better ruler. But now
there is much to do. There is the con-
currence of the English King to secure :
that shall be — has already been — my
business. There is the assent of Leopold
John, the fool, to achieve : that I shall
command. There are the grave formali-
ties of adoption to arrange : these I shall
expedite. You shall see, Master Inso-
lence, you who 'd throw me and my duchy
over for your trade, you shall see how
we '11 make the Vaufontaines gnash their
teeth ! "

In his heart Philip was exultant,
though outwardly he was calm. He was,
however, unprepared for what followed.
Suddenly the duke said, " One thing, cou-
sin, one thing. You must marry in our
order, and at once. There shall be no
delay. Succession must be secured. I
know the very woman, — the Comtesse
Chantavoine, — young, rich, amiable.
You shall meet her to - morrow, — to-
morrow."

Gilbert Parker.

(To be continued.)

A SUCCESSFUL BACHELOR.

FEW books are quite as amusing as
the volumes which profess to give advice
on how to live peacefully with one's wife
or one's husband. Marriage is accounted
a serious matter, but advice about mar-
riage is sure to be humorous. Swift,
Fielding, and^ Sterne are good to read,
but one cannot read them always ; their
humor is too robust and virile, they are
at times almost painfully intellectual.
It is a relief to turn from Tom Jones
and Tristram Shandy to those master-
pieces of unconscious humor which set
forth with the exactness of a newly paint-

ed guide-post the order of his going who
wishes to achieve happiness in the mar-
ried state. The contented man laughs
as he reads such books, because he knows
how independent is his own marital feli-
city of small rules and infinitesimal plot-
tings. The man who is unhappily married
laughs, too ; in a way, however, which
may mean that he wishes the author of
the book had his wife to contend with.

For these Guides to a Prosperous
Domestic Career are written by men, —
a fact which needs interpretation. Men
have always shown a pathetic courage in
grappling with such high themes. From
John Lyly who maintained that wives

806

A Successful Bachelor.

should be subdued with kindness, and
Jeremy Taylor who took the advanced
and perilous position that a husband
ought not to beat his wife, down to the
latest theorizer who imagines that his
placid domestic state is of his own shap-
ing, and who does not perceive how
adroitly he is managed by the feminine
element of his household, men, and only
men, have had the desperate courage
to explain to the married world what it
must do to be content. And these bold
spirits have had their financial reward.
There are many roads to fame, but this
way fortune lies. If you would be noted,
— or quite as likely, notorious, — write a
novel. If you would have your human
document in the magazines, and your
opinions on subjects about which you
know nothing set forth in the Sunday
newspapers, write a novel. But if you
would be rich, write a book which shall
instruct married people how to make the
best of their uncomfortable situation.

On the whole, it may be conceded that
this department of literature is overdone.
We want books of quite another descrip-
tion. More interest should be taken in
bachelors. Their need is greater, and
their condition really deplorable. It is
a misfortune to be unhappily married,
but it comes near to being a disgrace
not to be married at all. Marriage is a
perilous undertaking, but what shall be
thought of him who hesitates because it
is perilous ? We may not care to go to
the length of affirming that bachelors
are cowardly, but we must grant that
they are socially nondescript. It is pos-
sible to respect a bachelor, but it is im-
possible to be at ease with him. Not
without reason does the world speak of
a married man as " settled." There is
something final in the condition of a
Benedict. You know where to find him,
or at least you know where he should be
found. But of a bachelor you know no-
thing. Bachelorhood is a normal condi-
tion up to a certain period in a man's
life, and after that it is abnormal. He

who elects to remain unmarried elects
to become queer. It is wonderful how
readily most men adapt themselves to
the conditions of matrimonial existence.
Almost any man can become a fairly
respectable husband ; but to be a suc-
cessful bachelor implies unusual gifts. I
once met in the Northwest a middle-
aged writer of verse who gave me four
volumes of his works, " composed, print-
ed, and bound " by himself. He said,
" This country is crying for a national
poet, and I want the job." But he was
mistaken. This country is crying for
help in taking care of its timid bache-
lors, help in marrying them off ; and if
they will not marry, help in getting them
well housed and neatly mended. And
the greatest need is the book which shall
instruct the bachelor how to make glad
the desert regions of his solitary exist-
ence, how to fill the vacuities with which
his life is perforated.

There have been successful bachelors,
and among them none more successful
than Hemy Crabb Robinson. He died
in February, 1867, at the age of ninety-
two. The inscription on his tomb re-
cords the names of eight men of renown
to whom he had sustained the relation of
" friend and associate." The eight names
are Goethe, Wordsworth, Wieland, Cole-
ridge, Flaxman, Blake, Clarkson, and
Charles Lamb. The list is striking, and
clearly indicates the wide range of Crabb
Robinson's sympathies. To each of these
men he rendered the tribute of a hearty
and discriminating admiration. His
place in the world of literature and art
was peculiar. He had a strong mascu-
line regard for men of genius because
they were men of genius, but no measure
of self-interest mixed with this regard.
He had not the creative power himself,
but he understood that power in others.
He was not a mere satellite, for he held
distinctly a critical attitude at times ;
and no commonplace moon ever thinks
of passing strictures upon the central
sun. We need a word to express the

A Successful Bachelor.

807

relation. To men of genius he gave the
encouragement and stimulus of a digni-
fied admiration based on solid reasons.
To the general reading public he was a
sort of mentor ; his good sense in other
matters awakened confidence in the
soundness of his judgment ; his catholi-
city of taste operated to allay that pre-
judice which the mob always conceives
against a poet who is both new and
queer.

One of Crabb Robinson's qualifications
for successful bachelorhood lay in the
fact that he was not good-looking. I
have heard men who were handsome com-
plain about it as a positive disadvantage.
Tawno Chikno did not find beauty em-
barrassing ; he only regretted that he
was not a writer, so that he might tell
the world how beautiful he was. Con-
ventional persons would hardly dare to
express themselves with the naivete*
which characterized the speech of this
gypsy gentleman.

Robinson early learned to make the
best of his physical disadvantages, and
to view himself objectively with an
amused interest. When he was in Wei-
mar, in 1829, he spent five evenings with
Goethe. Goethe was fond of " portrait
memorials," and had several hundred of
them. Robinson thought it an " ex-
treme instance " of this taste that the
poet should have insisted upon having
his portrait. It was done in crayons
by " one Schmeller," and must have been
a success, for Crabb says, " It was fright-
fully ugly, and very like." And when
he was once complimented on the suc-
cess of his portrait by Masquerier, and
told that it was just the picture one
would wish to have of a friend, his
" very best expression," Robinson dryly
observed, " It need be the best to be
endurable."

Walter Bagehot, who used to figure
at Crabb Robinson's famous breakfasts,
expatiates on Robinson's chin, — "a chin
of excessive length and portentous power
of extension." The old gentleman

" made very able use of the chin at a
conversational crisis." " Just at the
point of the story he pushed it out and
then very slowly drew it in again, so that
you always knew when to laugh."

Miss Fenwick (Wordsworth's Miss
Fenwick) pronounced Mr. Robinson
downright ugly, and underscored the
word. It seems that there was a great
variety in his ugliness, — "a series of
ugliness in quick succession, one look
more ugly than the one which preceded
it, particularly when he is asleep. He
is always asleep when he is not talking."
" On which occasions little Willy con-
templates him with great interest, and
often inquires, ' What kind of face has
Mr. Robinson ? ' 'A very nice face,' is
the constant answer ; then a different look
comes, and another inquiry of ' What
kind of face was that ? ' 'A nice face
too.' What an odd idea he must have
of nice faces ! " *

Miss Fenwick was of the opinion that
a man could not preserve kindliness and
courtesy in the bachelor state unless he
had something the matter with him ;
that is, unless he was the victim of some
misfortune which kept him " humble,
grateful, and loving." " I remember,"
she says in the letter just quoted, " mak-
ing out to my own satisfaction that
old Wishaw preserved his benevolence
through the want of his leg, a want that
made him feel his dependence on his
fellow creatures." And she concludes
that " Robinson's ugliness had done for
him what the want of a leg had done for
old Wishaw."

If one were to take out the impor-
tant episodes of Crabb Robinson's life,
pack them together, suppress the dull
passages and the monotonous incidents,
it would seem that this man had had a
brilliant career. He lived long, which
gave him time to see many things ; he
had good health, which enabled him to

1 Letter from Miss Fenwick to Henry Tay-
lor, January 26, 1839.

808

A Successful Bachelor.

enjoy what he saw. Life tasted sweet
to him up to the last day, and almost to
the last hour. His wholesome curiosity
about good books and good people never
failed. The effect of reading his Diary
is to make one ambitious to live long ;
and if the book were more generally
read, I am sure that longevity would be
greatly on the increase among us.

Let us note a few facts which bring
out the stretch of time through which
his experiences lay. Many men have
lived more years than he, but they have
not had Robinson's gift for friendship
nor Robinson's opportunities. He was
born in 1775. In 1790 he heard John
Wesley preach " in the great round meet-
ing-house at Colchester." " On each
side of him stood a minister, and the
two held him up, having their hands
under his armpits. His feeble voice
was barely audible. But his reverend
countenance, especially his long white
locks, formed a picture never to be for-
gotten." Sixty-two years after this date
Crabb Robinson was attending church
at Brighton, listening to that gifted man
the Reverend Frederick W. Robertson ;
and when he was told that Robertson
unsettled people's minds, he replied that
nobody could be awakened out of a deep
sleep without being unsettled.

He was able, as a matter of course,
distinctly to remember the breaking out
of the French Revolution, and the uni-
versal rejoicing in it as an " event of
great promise." Though he was brought
up an orthodox Dissenter, he, like many
other orthodox Dissenters, sympathized
with Dr. Priestley during the Birming-
ham riots. At a banquet he defended
Priestley. A toast was given " in honor
of Dr. Priestley and other Christian suf-
ferers." Some bigot present objected
that he did not know the doctor to be a
Christian. Young Robinson answered
that if this gentleman had read Priest-
ley's Letter to the Swedenborgians he
would have " learned more of real Chris-
tianity than he seemed to know."

From the French Revolution and the
sufferings of English sympathizers there-
with down to our American civil war
is a long stretch, not by years alone, but
by the multitude of changes which have
on the whole bettered the conditions of
human life. Crabb Robinson appears
to have followed the events of the Amer-
ican struggle with keen interest, and on
March 19, 1865, he writes to a friend :
" Nothing has brought me so near to
being a partisan of President Lincoln
as his inaugural speech. How short
and how wise ! How true and how un-
affected ! It must make many converts.
At least I should despair of any man
who needs to be converted."

Crabb Robinson was past his majority
when Lyrical Ballads was published. He
outlived Wordsworth by twenty-seven
years, and Coleridge by thirty -three
years. He had seen Matthew Arnold as
a boy in his father's house. In 1866,
meeting Arnold at the Athenaeum, he
asked him for the name of his most re-
markable book. The author of Essays
in Criticism denied having written any-
thing remarkable. " Then," said Robin-
son, "it must be some other Matthew
Arnold whom they are talking about."
Subsequently Arnold sent the old gen-
tleman the volume of his essays, and the
last note in the Diary records the inter-
est he took in reading the essay on the
Function of Criticism at the Present
Time.

These facts bring out the limits of
Robinson's experiences. He was eleven
years old when Burns printed his poems
at Kilmarnock, sixteen years old when
Boswell's Life of Johnson was published,
twenty-three when the Lyrical Ballads
appeared, and he lived into the very
year which saw the publication of Wil-
liam Morris's Jason and Swinburne's
Song of Italy. Between these extremes
lay his intellectual life ; and there were
few things worth knowing of which he
did not know something, and few peo-
ple worth cultivating whom he had not

A Successful Bachelor.

809

cultivated. It is a temptation to roll
the great namee of great people as sweet
morsels under the tongue.

In early life Robinson studied in Ger-
many. He met Goethe and Schiller.
He saw a performance of Wallenstein's
Tod at the court theatre of Weimar,
both the great poets being present ; Schil-
ler in his seat near the ducal box, and
Goethe in his armchair in the centre
aisle. Robinson declared that Goethe
was the most oppressively handsome man
he had ever seen. He met Wieland,
who told him that Pilgrim's Progress
was the book in which he had learned
to read English. He heard Gall lecture
on craniology, " attended by Spurzheim
as his famulus." He met Wolf and
Griesbach, and also Herder, to whom he
loaned the Lyrical Ballads. He saw
Kotzebue, the dramatist, who was a star
of considerable magnitude in those days.
Robinson describes him as " a lively lit-
tle man with black eyes." Another star
rose above the Weimar horizon in the
year 1803, and it was Madame de Stael.
Robinson helped her in getting materi-
als for her book on Germany, notably
for the portions which related to German
philosophy. Some years later, he was
able to render her a considerable service
in coming to terms with her English
publisher.

When he returned to England to live
he lost in no degree his " facility in
forming acquaintance." He knew every-
body outside of the circles which were
purely fashionable. Being born a Dis-
senter, his " Dissenting connection " (I
believe that is the phrase) would be
very large. His attitude in this matter
of the Church and Dissent was unusual,
but easy to comprehend. He said he
liked Dissent better than the Church, but
he liked Churchmen better than Dissent-
ers.

To mention but a few of the interest-
ing people with whom he had personal
relations. He knew Wakefield and Thel-
wall. He had an early passion for the

writings of Godwin, used to see him
occasionally, and once met Shelley at
Godwin's house. He was interested in
some plan to relieve Godwin from his
financial difficulties, being one of many
friends who were imposed upon by God-
win's incapability for doing anything
financially productive.

He had been a Times correspondent
in 1807, and his friendship for Walter
was an undying one. In Walter's par-
lor he used to meet Peter Fraser, who in
those days wrote the great leaders, the
" flash articles which made the sensa-
tion." There it was that he saw old
Combe, whose Dr. Syntax rich book-
collectors still buy under the impression
that it has something to do with liter-
ature. He used to play chess and drink
tea with Mrs. Barbauld, and drink tea
and play whist with Charles and Mary
Lamb. One of his early loves was Will-
iam Hazlitt, whom he pronounced clever
before other people had learned to say it.
He knew Coleridge, Southey, Flaxman,
and Blake. His accounts of Coleridge
give us some of the best side-lights that
have been thrown upon that brilliant
genius. He once heard Coleridge talk
from three o'clock in the afternoon until
twelve at night.

He knew Walter Savage Landor in
Florence. Landor told him that he
could not bear contradiction. " Certain-
ly I frequently did contradict him," says
Robinson. " Yet his attentions to me
were unwearied." Landor gave Robin-
son a good word in a letter to a friend.
It runs thus : " I wish some accident
may have brought you acquainted with
Mr. Robinson, a friend of Wordsworth^
He was a barrister, and notwithstand-
ing, both honest and modest, — a char-
acter I never heard of before." One of
the prettiest incidents in the Diary is of
Lander's sending his mastiff dog to take
care of Crabb Robinson when he returned
from Fiesole to Florence after midnight.
" I could never make him leave me un-
til I was at the city gate ; and then on my

810

A Successful Bachelor.

patting him on the head, as if he were
conscious his protection was no longer
needed, he would run off rapidly."

ill.

Crabb Robinson justified his exist-
ence if only by the services he rendered
Wordsworth. He was an early and dis-
criminating admirer. He championed
Wordsworth's poetry at a time when
champions were few and not influential.
It must have been with special reference
to the needs of poets like the author of
Lyrical Ballads that the saying " Woe
unto you when all men shall speak well
of you " was uttered. Yet I am not sure
but there is a measure of woe in the
condition of him of whom all men speak
ill. At a time when critical disappro-
bation was pretty nearly unanimous
Crabb Robinson's was one of the few
voices in commendation. It was not a
loud voice, but it was clear and impres-
sive.

Friends of Wordsworth's art some-
times express surprise, and even anger,
that the public should have been so slow
in awaking to the merits of that art.
There is at least no occasion for surprise.
When one considers the length of time
it takes to interest the public mind in
the high qualities of a new brand of
soap, he may reasonably conclude that
it will take even longer to arouse inter-
est in the transcendental qualities of a
new brand of poetry. Some of Words-
worth's verse was not encouraging. One
of the volumes of 1807 contains a poem
beginning, " I met Louisa in the shade."
This possibly struck readers as grotesque.
Such a line provokes to irreverence. It
is human nature to laugh and throw the
volumes aside. But exactly at this point
admirers like Henry Crabb Robinson
began to exert their beneficent influence
and to pay their unselfish homage.

Two sorts of homage are paid by
lesser men to greater. The first sort
consists in following one's idol about,
noting the externals of his life, his diet,

his dress, his gait ; being solicitous as to
the color of his necktie rather than the
measure of his intellect. Homage of
this kind seems to proceed on the theory
that if you only stare long enough at a
man's head, you will presently be re-
warded by a sight of his mind. It in-
vokes the aid of photography. The au-
thor is exhibited in his study, his pen in
hand. An admiring world beholds him
in literary surroundings with a flash-
light expression of countenance. Per-
haps we have him in six different posi-
tions, with a quoted remark supposed to
be in keeping with each position. He
is in the act of telling how his mind rose
to the great thought which has made
him famous and worthy to be illustrated.
He is photographed saying to the ca-
mera, " This idea came to me as I was
on the way from my front porch to my
front gate."

Homage like this, so careful about ex-
ternals, is not very good for the author,
and is apt to be wholly bad in its effect
upon the worshiper. Everybody has
read Henry James's book entitled Ter-
minations. It contains a story of a
young American girl who waited upon
a famous English novelist with a very
large autograph album, in which she
wished him to write a sentiment. I be-
lieve it is a quite general practice of
young American girls abroad to travel
with large autograph albums under their
arms. It will be' remembered, too, that
the novelist's friend gently explained to
the fair visitor that true worship of genius
does not consist in collecting autographs,
but in reading an author's works, in seek-
ing their deeper meaning, and in mak-
ing those works known in places where
they will be understood. And the young
lady was persuaded to depart, with tears
in her eyes, and without the great novel-
ist's autograph.

Crabb Robinson's way of paying hom-
age was very delicate. I think that it
would have met with the hearty appro-
val of even the author of Terminations.

A Successful Bachelor.

811

He liked Wordsworth's poetry, and he
did his unostentatious best to make oth-
ers like it. He did not cry aloud from
the housetop that the messiah of Eng-
lish verse had at last arrived, neither did
he found a society. He spoke to people
of Wordsworth's verse, got them to read
it, occasionally read poems himself to
receptive listeners. If people balked
at Louisa in the Shade, or were unsym-
pathetic in attitude toward the Spade,
with which Wilkinson hath tilPd his
Lands, he urged upon them the necessi-
ty and the wisdom of judging a man by
the noble parts of his work, and not by
the less • fortunate parts. If they had
read Wordsworth only to laugh at him,
he insisted upon reading to them those
poems which compelled their admira-
tion ; for there are poems with respect
to which the public cannot hold a non-
committal attitude. The public must
either admire, or else consent to stultify
itself by not admiring.

By this method he did more to ad-
vance Wordsworth's reputation than if
he had written a dozen eulogistic arti-
cles in the great reviews. And we can-
not overpraise the single-heartedness of
his aim. There was positively no thought
of self in it. With many men that which
begins as pure admiration of genius ends
as a form of self-love. They worship the
great man two thirds for his own sake,
and one third for the sake of themselves.
There is pleasure in being known as the
friend of him about whom everybody is
talking. But we shall look in vain for
any evidence that Crabb Robinson was
impelled by motives of this lower sort.

He may, therefore, be imagined as
reading Wordsworth's poetry to more or
less willing listeners all his life. He
had too much tact to overdo it, and he
was too catholic in his poetic tastes ever
to grow an intolerant Wordsworthian.
He was content to sow the seed, and let
come of it what would. In his German
tour of 1829 he spent a considerable por-
tion of his time in reading poetry with

his friend Knebel, " and after all I did
not fully impress him with Wordsworth's
power." He may even be suspected of
having read Wordsworth to Goethe, for
in his correspondence with Zelter Goe-
the speaks of Robinson as " a kind of
missionary of English literature." " He
read to me and my daughter, together
and apart, single poems." In short, the
Diary is studded with such entries as :
" Took tea with the Flaxmans, and read
to them extracts from Wordsworth's new
poems." " My visit to Witham was
made partly that I might have the plea-
sure of reading The Excursion to Mrs.
W. Pattison." " A call on Blake, — my
third interview. I read to him Words-
worth's incomparable ode, which he heart-
ily enjoyed."

Crabb Robinson sacrificed in no de-
gree his independence because of his
personal relation to the poet. He re-
gretted that Wordsworth should have
reproached the bad taste of the times in
his published notes and prefaces ; and
in a talk over the alterations which had
been made in the poems Robinson frank-
ly told Wordsworth that he did not dare
to read aloud in company the lines
" Three feet long and two feet wide."
Wordsworth's reply was, " They ought
to be liked."

It is rather a comfort to find from
one or two of Wordsworth's letters how
thoroughly human he was, even to the
extent of getting out of conceit of his
own trade, and wishing that petty prac-
titioners in the same trade were out of
conceit of it, too. He disliked minor
poets. " I am sick of poetry," he says ;
"it overruns the country in all the shapes
of the plagues of Egypt." Wordsworth
grew less intolerant, and was more will-
ing to acknowledge the merits of other
poets, as he grew older. No one wel-
comed this change more than Crabb
Robinson. It is assuming too much to
assume that he was influential in bring-
ing about such modification in the poet's
attitude toward men or things, but his

812

Ned Stirling his Story.

influence would be in that direction ra-
ther than in any other. In later years
Crabb Robinson used regularly to spend
his Christmas holidays at Rydal Mount.
His presence was regarded as essential
to the sober merrymaking of the house-
hold there. They had a family saying,
"No Crabb, no Christmas."

IV.

The Diary is filled with suggestive
points. To mention but one out of
many. Without intending it Robinson
makes clear the almost total extinction
of Southey's life in mere books. He
was a slave to the printed page. Words-
worth said, " It is painful to see how
completely dead Southey is become to
all but books." Robinson had himself
noticed it. Rogers had noticed it. The
talk of it in Dr. Arnold's presence fright-
ened him for his own safety, and he
wondered whether he too was in danger
of losing his interest in things, and retain-
ing " an interest in books only." Southey
made a visit to Paris, but all the time he
was there he did not go once to the Lou-
vre ; " he cared for nothing but the old
book-shops." But he must have gathered
a few impressions of the French capital,
for he wrote to his daughter, " I would
rather live in Paris than be hanged."

I believe that the evidence of the Di-
ary goes to show that Crabb Robinson
was able to pronounce upon new poetry.
This is one of the most difficult and deli-
cate of undertakings. People with that
gift are few. With respect to poetry,
most of us follow the hue and cry raised
in the newspapers and literary journals.
We are able to admire what we are told
is admirable. When the road is point-
ed out for us we can travel it, but we
are not able to find the road ourselves.
Crabb Robinson placed himself upon re-
cord more than once. The most nota-
ble entry concerns Keats. In December,
1820, he wrote, " I am greatly mistaken
if Keats do not very soon take a high
place among our poets."

Of many good books which a man
may read, if he will, this Diary of Henry
Crabb Robinson is one of the " sweetest
and most fortifying." It is a fine illus-
tration of literary sanity. Literaiy san-
ity is not entirely fashionable just now,
and a perusal of these thirty-years-old
volumes may be good for us. Certainly,
it is well for us to know about the Dia-
rist himself. A life like his is among
the most potent influences for culture.
He was modest, unassuming, gentle, and
strong. He was a successful bachelor
and a good man.

Leon H. Vincent.

NED STIRLING HIS STORY.

WHEN I was a boy, my head was no
good to me, and I never used it. I had
no wit, except such as pertains to the
legs and the stomach, and to the girth
of the chest under the arms ; though I
should not make too light of that, for
those are very good places to have wit,
when a boy is pitching hay or digging
potatoes. I was like a clod in a ploughed
furrow, taking the wind and the rain
as they came down from heaven upon

me. I was proud of my healthy strength,
and all day long, while I did a man's
work on the farm, I thanked God for
the yellow uncurtained sunlight, and for
the honestness of the sweat which wet
my laboring body. When the day was
done, and the sky cherished only a soft
memory of it, I would thank God again
for the cool air to which I bared my head,
and for the bigness of my appetite. And
after feeding until feeding was no longer

Ned Stirling his Story.

813

a delight, I would go to bed and sleep,
with mouth agape and arms and legs
widespread, until the new day stood un-
der my window and laughed at me for a
laggard.

Time went all alike with me, — the
spring with its planting, the summer and
fall (or autumn, as I maybe ought to call
it in writing) with cultivating and har-
vesting, and winter with eating up the
result ; so that there seemed no good of
the year, when it was done, except the
pure joy of it In winter - time, too,
when there was not so much work to
do, I went somewhat to school, and lost
no little weight and color by the study-
ing of books, though they could scarce
soften the hard shell of my understand-
ing, so that what I read in them did not
much soak inward.

As I have writ down before (and I
do not relish saying the same thing twice
over, for the fear of wearying you and
myself with much writing), the years
were all alike, except the one when my
father died.

I did not know him much, though he
worked beside me in the fields and barns ;
for he talked rarely (I mean, not often),
and one could only get at what he was
by seeing the kindness in his eyes, and
the slow way he had of getting angry
when things went wrong. Since I have
had sons I have often wondered if my
father loved me, though I thought little
of it when he was alive and might have
told me if I had asked him. He died
when I was at the elbow, as we say, of
my nineteenth year, which is that I was
eighteen and a half years old, or there-
about ; and then my mother managed the
farm, doing the head-work, but using my
muscle and wind.

I remember, as an old man will re-
member such things when he begins to
grow forgetful of the things that hap-
pened yesterday or last week, that my
mother said to me on the day my father
was buried, stroking my hair back from
my forehead (though she had to stretch

up on her toes to do it, even when I bent
down a little), " You are a man now,
Ned." And I remember how the words
sounded to me, through that being the
first time I had thought of being a man.
I was so vain of them that I carried
them in my ears all day, and they kept
time to the sound of the frozen clods
shoveled down into the grave where my
father was.

But in spite of what my mother said,
and what I thought about it. I was not
yet a man. My becoming a man hap-
pened afterward.

I went about my work soberer for a
few days than before, by the outward
sign of laughing, but not losing my relish
for fried bacon and roasted potatoes for
dinner. It was only a little while until
I knew that I was still a boy. It is hard
to break the habit of being a boy.

It may be you think we were poor,
as most book folk are in tales like this ;
but we were not. My father left more
than a hundred and fifty acres of good
land, all under plough except the apple
orchard, and all without any debts, so
that we had plenty. I tell you this, not
to boast of our possessions, but for the
fear that you might be sorrowing for
my mother and thinking her ill provided
for.

It went on so, with much hard work,
and much affection between my mother
and me, until I was turned twenty-two,
when I had my full breadth of shoul-
der, with my cheeks bearing their first
crop of yellow beard, very thin, like new
ground when first sown to tame grass
for meadow. I was of great size, and
not to brag, but only to tell what might
have a bearing on the matter, when I
had on my best coat, with breeches and
waistcoat to match, and boots too, the
maids were wont to look twice at me,
turning their heads around for the sec-
ond glance, as the habit of women folk
is, when they had passed by me. And
I, as was the custom (which God forbid*
that any honest man should fail to keep),

814

Ned Stirling his Story.

would kiss one now and then, when she
pleased me, but meaning nothing by it,
and not against her will.

Then one day it happened, about mid-
summer, that I had to walk to town, go-
ing in the cool of the morning, and go-
ing on foot, because our horses were all
at work with the harvesting (so firmly
do I remember all about the day). I
meant to come back after sunset, when
the air was cooler, but in the late after-
noon the great heat hatched a brood of
fluffy cloudlings, like young chicks, white
at first, but growing big and dark ; and
the wind began to handle them roughly,
turning their feathers the wrong way,
and tearing off from them ragged plumes
of vapor. Then their storm -mother
clucked to them hoarsely from behind
the low hills to the west, and they ran
to her ; so I, from much living out of
doors and watching the signs of such
things, knew that we should have a
grievous time of it with the elements,
and, mindful of my good clothes, started
home before the time set.

Though it was two hours before the
time for sunset, the darkness had grown
heavy, and the swallows were troubled,
tumbling about in the high air at first,
and then skimming close to the ground,
and chattering. The wind had left the
earth and gone to where the strife was,
as though eager to have a part in it, so
that the trees stood straight and move-
less, and the heat rested on me like a
heavy weight, making my body wet and
panting, and the motion of my legs,
when I hurried on by the road, came
hard and unwilling.

I never feared a storm, but take joy
in all fierce conflict, whether it be of the
elements or of strong men struggling ;
but there was that awfulness in the high-
banked blackness, growing momently,
which did away with lightness of heart,
and made my eyes to shrink deeper un-
der their brows.

The sun was not to be seen, but only
guessed at, because of here and there a

flush on the bulk of the cloud-masses,
like the flush of fever on a sick man's
face, unhealthy and not good to look at.
Then the lightning began to show, dimly
at first, as forebodings of trouble come
athwart the mind, but growing keener,
until the jagged streaks flashed out each
for itself, and made the cloud-bank seem
a place of drunken riot, without fear of
the law.

So closely was I watching all this, and
thinking of my coat, that my eyes had no
inclination earthward until I was near
to home and knew that I should not get
wet. Then all at once my legs stopped
work, and my heart with them, and I
knew that I was a man, and thanked
God that I had my good clothes on, for
my love was before me.

In the book called Revelation a man
tells of what he saw in heaven. I know
he must have left out much, although he
was inspired in the writing. How then
can I, who am not inspired, nor anything
like it, but only a common fellow, hope
to tell of what I saw, though the picture
is strongly before me ?

The wind, which had risen, had loosed
her hair, and it fell about her, all a dark
glory, hiding half her face, so that only
her frightened eyes and her pale cheek
peeped outward. She held her hat by
its strings in one hand, and her petti-
coat's hem in the other, to free her little
feet for running, and she was trying to
beat against the harsh wind, while cow-
ering before the terrible wild flashes of
the lightning, as I have seen wild ani-
mals do, and pitied them.

When she saw me, she ran to me as
a child might, from deep fear, and laid
her hands on my arm, and her beautiful
head down upon them, and I felt her all
a-tremble. I stooped to speak to her,
to encourage her, if such might be ; but
the storm was already breaking over us,
a great black terror, spitting purple and
red, and roaring like a mad thing, so
that no other voice could have been
heard though an archangel had spoken.

Ned Stirling his Story.

815

I lifted her in my arms and ran, so
light she was, and I was reconciled more
than ever to be broad across the shoul-
ders. She laid her head down on me,
hiding her face, and the wind lifted the
silken strands of her loosened hair and
blew them on my lips and cheek, and
my heart was brave to face anything it
might please God to send upon us.

So it was that I came home, and laid
my burden (though far too slight to be
called so) down upon the settle in our
best room, while I went to call my
mother.

As long as old men could remember
there was never such a storm before in
our county, though its fury lasted but
half an hour. All outdoors reeled and
tottered, and the crash of it in our ears
was terrible. I doubt if words have been
made to tell of such things ; at least, I
cannot find them in my head, nor have
I seen them in the writings of scholars,
which I have read in my later years,
since I cannot do a man's work any more
on the farm. But the storm outdoors
was not to be compared for the smallest
time with what was going on inside me,
about the poor girl who lay with her
face hid on the cushions of the settle,
though my mother tried to comfort her.
I saw with my eyes, but not with my
understanding, what was happening out-
side, with rugged old trees coming down
groaning, and with cattle standing help-
less, their heads lowered away from
the fierceness of the storm, while the
sky writhed in mighty convulsions. My
heart knocked strongly against my ribs,
though not f rory any fear of harm to my-
self, and my feet took me restlessly here
and there over the house, until the rage
of the hurricane was gone, and its breath
too, and it slunk away, growling, leaving
only the rain coming down in broad
sheets, as if to cover up the ruin which
had been wrought, and to lay it all down
out of sight. When that time came, my
little love lifted her dear face from the
cushions and told us her name, and that

she had come to a neighbor's house to
get color in her cheeks ; though the color
they bore, when she looked up at me
from under her shy lids, with her dark
hair in deep disorder, was the beauti-
fulest ever seen, and she had no need
of mending it. Her name was Ruth ;
and since that day, when it has befallen
that I put my eyes upon a lovely woman,
combining purity and all sweetness, I
have wondered if her name might be
Ruth, too.

Now, though I have written over and
spoiled many sheets of my paper (at a
cost of three shillings to the bundle), and
have laid my head back on the pillow of
my chair in between the times of trying,
I cannot think how to tell what came
afterward, except to say that thus love
laid hold of me, and I took to acting as
a man will. And now I know that what-
ever may be the outcome of it, love is
good for a man, because of the fermenta-
tion which is bred in him thereby. When
love has mingled with his essence, he is
never again the same (though I suppose
a man is never twice the same in any
case). I know not any fit expression
for it, except a poor and mean one,
which is that love is like the yeast which
the housewife adds to dough, leavening
a man, no matter how mere a lump he
be, and making him fit for the baking
he must needs get in life, if he live his
allotted years. And it encourages him
to look at himself, to see what there may
be in him ; thereby showing him most
strange things which before he did not
even guess at. Not wanting to be tedi-
ous in the saying of it, I have come in
my life to times when I have stood in
familiar places and longed for change
and greater mystery ; yet when I would
but look at the things covered by the
span of my legs (growing things, with
life in them, living according to God), I
would find greater mystery than a man
may solve in all his life long. So it
seemed to me after that I had begun
loving. My own nature, which every man

816

Ned Stirling his Stoi'y.

thinks he knows somewhat of, showed
fresh tokens, when I looked closer, and
left me never tired of turning it over
and wondering at it. I do not say that
I thought of all these things then, or
even had the wit to think of them, being
slow, but that some of them (or at least
the ways of saying them) have come to
me since. Then I only knew that I
loved, and that love was a new and
strange delight.

I went about my work, not thinking
what I did, but because working had be-
come a habit with me. I would not see
the things to which my hand was turned,
but saw instead, floating in mist, like the
little heads of cherubs painted upon the
roof of our church, a saucy small head,
the lips mocking at me and the cheeks
mantling over with the fairness of youth,
until a warm chilliness would sweep over
me, and my legs, which were wont to
be as sturdy as oak-trunks, would grow
limp and uncertain. The fields of wheat
grew ripe for cutting, and all day long
we swung our reaping-hooks under the
summer sun. Though I did my part,
according to custom, yet I saw little of
the beautiful golden grain, but saw in-
stead a waving mass of black soft hair,
and took to thinking black the fairest
color of all, unless it might be pink or
white such as touched her cheeks, or
red such as lay upon her lips. I grew
a very zany, as I know now, but had no
time or inclination to think then.

But at night, when darkness put a stop
to all work, the worst of it was upon me.
Then would I walk out, when folk with
pulses unstirred were honestly a-snore,
and wander about, smelling the sweet
night -smells and looking at the stars,
though only thinking of these things
dully, but thinking of my little love's
face, until it grew most strange how all
fair things bore semblance to it, whether
at morning when life awoke, or at noon-
tide when life sought ease of the ef-
fort of living, or at night when life lay
slumbering and whispering in its dreams.

Then by and by, from knowing not what
else to do, I would go to bed, to lie long
awake (after a way new born in me),
with my eyeballs staring up into the
blackness. And my thoughts were so
ill trained that I did but half know what
ailed me. Yet would I live all the eigh-
ty years of my life over again, not think-
ing it hard or unwelcome, for the sake
of one day of that joy.

Sometimes I saw her, for she got a
marvelous fondness for my mother, and
would come often to sit with her under
the trees. But when I sat near her I
was not happier than when I walked
alone, thinking of her ; for to be near
her made of me such a mere lump of
clay that it seemed the Almighty had
only fashioned my body, and forgot to
breathe life into it. She would talk to
me sometimes, but I could not say any-
thing back to her, only hard yes and no.
Then would she laugh at me, with shin-
ing eyes ; and I could not laugh too, but
could only get red in the face and pull
at the hair on my chin and cheeks. I
felt that I was a fool, and feeling it only
made me a bigger one. I was a very
oaf, and manhood seemed but a small
part of me.

All this went on so, without my taking
thought of time going by, or without my
taking thought of anything at all except
naked loving, until one day, in the even-
ing, I came back from seeing how the
fields of Indian corn were making silken
promises of a plenteous harvest of gold-
en ears. I remember how that content
hovered lightly in the air above me, and
how it alighted upon me, as if to rest
there, when I came in sight of my little
love in her accustomed place by my mo-
ther's side, and how it took sudden star-
tled flight when I saw a horse tied at
our gate, and a gay gentleman walking
up the path to the place where the two
women sat together, — so jealous is a
man's love. I can see now, between me
and my sheet of paper, how graceful his
step was, how thin and fine his face, and

Ned Stirling his Story.

817

how his clothes looked, with his long
boots, his pot-hat, and his silken waist-
coat spotted over with scarlet. He lifted
his hat to the women with a very fine
manner, and I saw his head covered
with close knots of shining yellow hair,
soft and fine as the silk on my corn ;
then my heart seemed to die down al-
together within me.

"I crave your pardon, madam," I
heard him say in a voice so soft it
seemed hardly a man's voice at all, " and
I also crave a draught of water at your
hand ; for I have come a long way, and
a hot and dusty one."

My mother had risen to greet him,
and she bade him welcome as though
she meant it, and gave him her own
chair to sit on, while she went about of-
fering him hospitality.

He sat down with a fine air, for which
I hated him, and spoke some soft words
of commonplace to Ruth, who bent her
head above her handiwork in her lap,
so that there was no getting at her eyes,
only the line of her little chin showing
under her hair's shelter; a thing I liked
not, though knowing the ways of women
so ill, for she would always look straight-
forwardly at me, and I burned at seeing
her head droop before him.

My mother brought a pitcher of home-
brewed ale, cool, brown, and foaming
above the pitcher's brim, and some of
her sweet cake dotted over the top with
spice seeds, which made the gentleman's
eyes to glisten.

"I thank you, madam, with all my
heart," I heard him say ; " and if such
is your treatment of strangers, I must
give thanks that my lot is to be cast
among you for a time." Whereat I
could but set my lips between my teeth,
and wish that it might be the will of
Providence that his stay be much for-
shortened ; though I knew it was a feel-
ing which did me no credit, for we have
always been famed, in our part of the
county, for our goodness to strangers.

He filled his glass with the ale and

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 488. 52

held it before him, standing up. " I
pledge your good health through a long
and peaceful life, madam," he said,
" and the little damsel's." He tipped
back his head in the drinking, in the
doing of which his eyes fell upon me,
where I hung back from them.

" My soul ! " he cried aloud, when he
could take his glass from his lips, the
last drop being gone, " what a great
fine lad it is ! " and his eyes ran over
my bulk in so easy and familiar a way
that I began to swell even bigger in my
resentment of his assurance. " Come
closer, lad," he called to me ; " it were
a pity to let your bashfulness spoil a
friendship." Which speech, so well
timed to my knowledge of myself, would
have brought me to him though he had
been the Evil One himself.

" My name is Arthur Dunwoody," he
said, and held out a small hand of fine
softness (a thing I cannot bear in a
man).

"My name is Ned Stirling," I told
him in my biggest and coarsest voice,
for the sake of contrast, and to make it
as strong as I could, and I gave his hand
such a grasp as I warrant it had never
had, which made the small bones to
wrinkle up, though his face bore naught
but his easy smile.

" A fine lad, truly," he said again ;
" and if this be a product of your coun-
ty's air and feeding, I must take fresh
joy, for I am come among you to get
back a little lost health."

He sat so with us for a time, talking
in light fashion of many things, but for
the most part in praise of what he saw
around him, and of us, and listening
sometimes, with much show of respect,
to what my mother said (as became her
as a good countrywoman) of our coun-
ty's richness and abundance in all good
things, for which men are wont to pray
as blessings, and of the good hearts and
neighborliness of all the people of our
countryside. In all this converse I took
no part, except with my eyes, to watch,

818

Stirling his Story.

and with my ears, to listen ; neither did
little Ruth take part, only lifting a shy
glance to mother's face now and again.
When he was gone, with invitation to
come again, my mother said how fine a
gentleman he was ; but Ruth said naught,
nor did I, for listening for what Ruth
might say.

And thereafter he did come again,
and yet again ; so that often, when com-
ing hot and smoking from my labor in
the fields, I would .find him sitting, as
though he had the right, with the two
women, who made him welcome, and lis-
tened in wonderment to his talk. Mar-
velous tales he told, as I know from
listening somewhat, though much against
my will (only that I was jealous of his
being there), of travelings in other lands,
and of adventure with wild things and
with men. At this I felt as a man must
feel when the chirurgeon says to him
that there is not much hope ; for I was
at the disadvantage of a man who has
been trained to plain straightforward-
ness, without the power to ornament my
speech with prettinesses. I hate a lie,
but not so much as I hate a liar ; and
his tales sounded like lies, from their
semblance to some that I had heard and
read, made to amuse children.

Sometimes I thought, for my love's
sake, to learn of him his ways, and sat
by, looking on and listening, until often,
from very dizziness of the head, I would
fall asleep in my chair, to the forgetting
of even the little good manners I knew.
But as well might I have tried to learn
the wind's ways, or the lightning's, or
the ways of death ; so far was he from
me in manners and breeding, as I only
needed to look inward to prove. Out
of doors, when I was in my fields, fol-
lowing after my plough, bedding my
horses or feeding my pigs, where fine
manners and graces fretted me none, I
could have made him envy me my healthy
cheeks, and the strong muscles in my
back, and the bulk of my legs, and may-
be my outdoor way of honesty. But

when I dropped my plough-handles and
my bran - bucket, and was by him, with
whom manners and graces seemed to
make the bigness of life, I was only a
lout and a bumpkin, and no help for
it. My sunburned skin was but a poor
match for fine clothes ; my legs were too
tight for my town-made breeches, when
every sitting down and getting up was
like to crack the stitches ; my thick hands
and broad feet, though it pleased God
to have them so, made but a poor show-
ing in company, where hands and feet
are to look at ; and through the smell of
the fashionable scents which I took to
putting on my hair and handkerchief,
sometimes, there would come up the hon-
ester smells of the barnyard and the
sty, which are very good smells outdoors,
where God kindly changes the air right
often, but unwelcome to nostrils not bred
to them.

Another gift he had, and used to his
advantage. He could take a pen of
goose-quill and a drop of ink and make a
wondrous fine picture, — heads and faces,
horses, birds, and all animals ; whereat
the women stared with eyes wide open,
and even I, in spite of my dislike of
him for love's sake, could do naught but
gape at him. But once, when he had
gone, I found a bit of paper lying on the
grass, whereon was drawn a great pud-
ding, round and fat, with dried currants
for the eyes, a plum for the nose, and
little wreaths of steam for the beard,
the whole made to look so like my own
face in its heavy roundness that I could
only stare stupidly, no doubt to the in-
creasing of the likeness ; and then my
face, to carry out the whole semblance,
flashed burning hot, until it seemed that
steam must issue from it in very truth ;
and I swore firmly under my breath, as
I crumpled the bit of paper in my hands,
that I would have my spite of him, and
prayed for wit for the working of it.

I made out to ask sly questions about
him in town, at the inn where he lived ;
and some sorry tales I heard of him,

Ned Stirling his Story.

819

though glad am I to own that mayhap
his sins were multiplied in the telling,
as is the manner of those who gossip.
I heard how that he could drink through
a whole night, of good stout liquor,
until all who tried to sit with him were
turned to mere nerveless heaps under
the table, though he kept his cool smile,
and was ready for breakfast in the morn-
ing ; also how that he loved all women,
the good and the bad, and made no ques-
tion as to what one he should kiss or pat
upon the chin, when the chance ripened :
and this I liked least of all I heard of
him, through my having been trained to
look upon all women, no matter what, as
exempt from all evil, even of thought.
After this I was minded to forbid him
our house, but knew not how to go about
it, from never having known the need of
such in our county, our men being of a
different quality, though maybe coarser
bred.

But by and by I saw a change grow
in him, — a way of talking less buoyant-
ly, and of sitting with his chin in his
fingers, looking downward ; and by the
means of what had been going on in me
I knew that love was working its way
in him, too ; and indeed, I saw not how
it could be avoided, with him so much
in Ruth's company. And being honest
with myself sometimes, when I thought
about it alone, I tried to think that may-
be it was better for her sake to let God
shape it than to try the shaping myself.
I thought (as maybe all men have
thought who have loved sweet women)
that I was not fit for her ; for I doubted
much if the soft cheek of a girl, bred
to gentle ways, could take kindly to the
caressing of a coarse rough hand, or if
her soul could long enjoy contact with
a rude nature like mine. And yet, as
a strong man, used to meeting strife
halfway and having the matter out, I
hated to yield myself up ; but day after
day, as I went about my work, I laid
my bare soul open to God, making no
bones of it, and prayed about it in

Christ's name, who had lost love himself,
and must know how I felt. But while
I talked of it so intimately with God,
and even sometimes with my horses and
cattle, being lonesome, I said nothing to
Ruth. For God takes much for granted
out of the heart of a man which would
have to be explained to a woman, with
maybe no words for the explaining.
So I only asked of God, who had made
us what we were and had shaped things
thus far, to make the best end of it he
might.

One time they two went away together
(as they had got the way of doing), upon
a great, slow, and lazy day in September,
and were gone until evening began to
darken. When they came back, walk-
ing by the way of a lane which went by
the side of our pasture lot, I too was in
the lane, and (not to justify, but only
to tell what happened) I kept very still
where I stood and heard what they said ;
and so much of it as struck into me I
here put down.

" Only I feel that I have lived most
unworthily," he said, " and in a way to
unfit a man to ask for a pure woman's
love."

Thereat she bent her head, with her
eyes thoughtfully cast downward. " Do
you think yourself past the power of God
to purify ? " she asked him.

Then I saw his eyes turned toward
her sweet face, and his lips took to trem-
bling ; but by and by he said, " Dear
girl, all my life has only been the means
of proving to me how weak I am in all
goodness. I thank God you may not
understand that."

" There is no one of God's creatures
but is weak in goodness, when he goes
his own way," she said ; " but I think
(and I think myself right) that when
a man walks in God's ways and asks for
a share of God's strength, he may be
what he will, and reach what heights of
goodness he will."

She looked fairly into his face while
she said this, slowly, until his whole

820

Ned Stirling his /Story.

body went away under her pure glance,
and the tears ran down his face, he
making no trial to check them. Then
all at once a fierce change came on him,
and he raised his closed hand high over
his head as though to strike, and he
cried out in a voice with the sound of
clashing swords in it, and his face flash-
ing scarlet, " By the living God, I will
try ! " Then, though in so short a time,
all fierceness died out of him, as the fire
died out of his cheeks, and he laid his
hands upon her shoulders, bending down.
"Little sweetheart," he said, so softly
and gently that it seemed not the same
voice any more, " pure little soul, will
you not kiss me, to give me strength for
the trying ? "

And straightway, without delay, she
held up her face to him, and he kissed
her upon the mouth.

Then (and I tell this gladly, because
of the quality of resolution which I love
to find in a man) when they sat in the
evening before our house, and my mo-
ther brought for his refreshment a tiny
glass of her peach brandy, rich and
sweet-scented, he took it in his hand and
stood for a time looking into its shadowy
clearness, and then raised it over his
head and tipped the glass so that the
brandy fell down drop by drop upon the
grass at his feet ; he keeping his eyes
upon little Ruth's face. Then when he
had put the glass down he went away
without any more ado.

That night, while I could not sleep for
thinking of what had passed, both in
point of fact and in my imagining, I set
about plucking hope out of me, as some-
thing which did not belong to me any
more, and which I therefore had no
right to keep. But the giving up of it
was a sad thing, as I found it.

I much doubt if all men will under-
stand this as I have told it, forasmuch
as with some men love seems but a light-
ly fashioned toy for life's playtime ; but
with me life and love have been part
each of the other.

And on this happening, though I could
not forego eating, after the fashion of
lovers in books, yet I had but a bad en-
joyment of it, and without longing for
the time for it (or at least not much).
I worked, trying to forget about it, only
failing to do it, any more than I could
have lost my great right hand and for-
gotten it, or any more than the sun
might die out of the sky, and the moon,
and let us forget them.

Thereafter I heard no evil of him
at the town, but only that he drank no
more, and that he gave up his compan-
ions, as though he had done with them,
and passed his days and nights in quiet-
ness, for the most part away with his
horse in the woodlands or on the hills :
all of which I know ought to have pleased
me, and I think it did, for Ruth's sake,
but not much for his own. This I say
with shame, after all these years ; but
then I was as God made me, young, and
with love dying hard in me.

But my understanding was at fault
when I found that he came less often to
our house, and then only to sit for the
most part silent, as I had of late ob-
served in him, with his face bent in
thought, maybe worrying the heads of
clover with his riding-whip, or maybe
telling tales, not of adventure any more,
but of wars and of love and death, so
that even I was moved sometimes to
pity of all poor humankind. His was
a most strange face when he sat so,
sheltering his eyes under their brows,
and letting all his old gay life lie dead
upon his features, as brown leaves lie
after frost upon the yet green grass.

One day, but a little time after his
walk with Ruth, as I have told about, I
took my gun and went out upon the hills ;
and knowing the ways of things in our
outdoor neighborhood, I hid myself far
up beside a pathway, but little used,
where sometimes a red deer would pass.
Here, having set me down, with my back
against a tree and my gun across my
knees, I took to thinking, not of red

Ned Stirling his Story,

821

deer, as might be expected, but of Ruth,
and of Arthur Dun woody, and of my-
self, and of what death might be like,
and of how soon I should be finding out
(being in good health and of a long-
lived race) ; and so I fell asleep sitting
there (a thing not very seemly in a man
waiting for red deer to pass, but I had
lost much sleep of late time).

By and by I awoke again, hearing a
light step and the leaves rustling in the
pathway. Quickly I raised the flint of
my gun and leaned over, peering out,
without making any noise, and without
thinking of anything, not even of Ruth,
but of the red deer. So my senses were
all much surprised when I saw there a
woman, young and very comely, who
stepped slowly back and forth, as though
that were her fit place.

She was of a different mould and make
from little Ruth, and therefore not so
beautiful as Ruth. She was tall and
straight and dark, like the trees around
her, but gracef uler than they, even when
the wind moved them, and her face was
full of softness and kindness, with little
places for smiles to lie upon, or tears, if
such might be.

So I sat quite still, not to startle her,
for the fear that she might go away be-
fore I had my fill of looking, and try-
ing to think what her name might be,
through thinking that I knew all the
women of our part of the county (at
least, all the comely ones). By and by,
while I looked, I knew that she was
Alice Mooreland, the daughter of Judge
Jeffrey Mooreland, a stern old man, who
spent his later years in cherishing the
things he had got possession of. I had
missed knowing her at first because she
went but little abroad from home, and
because I had not seen her since she was
three years younger, or maybe four (so
does time go), when her petticoats came
only down to the upper lacings of her
shoes.

So I sat and gazed, and seemed not
to get enough of gazing at her, until

I saw her start on a sudden, and stand
listening, and then I heard the sound of
horse's hoofbeats far away down the
hillside. And not to be too long in the
telling of it, in a little time Arthur Dun-
woody rode up the pathway, making all
speed, so that his horse was in a foam,
though the day was but a mild one. He
gave no thought to the beast, but when he
had come up to Alice, where she stood
waiting, he threw himself down from
his saddle and ran to her, taking her in
his arms and holding her close, while
she lifted her face to be kissed.

And here, as maybe can be guessed,
I was filled with many thoughts in strong
conflict, but none of them very clear, so
as to be set down here in order ; only I
wondered, and thought dimly of Ruth,
and then flashed hot with anger and re-
sentment of his deceit of her sweet trust
and love. For I hate a liar more than
any other of the devil's imps. I can
forgive to a man some evil intentions ;
but for a lie, planned with care and car-
ried out with fortitude, I have no love.
For the heart that bears one lie is like to
bear others, and do it better for the skill
of practice, and you have to watch for
it, which is not good for confidence. I
did not think of all these things then,
but have set them down as they come to
me now : then I could only bend over
and look, wondering so much at seeing
them thus that I heard nothing of what
they said (at least not to remember it)
for a long time. I had only wit enough
to sit quietly, through having been caught
so, against my will, and thinking to keep
quiet as the best way out of it.

Soon I heard Alice say, " It must be
good-by, now, with longing for the sweet
time when there need be no more of
good-by said between us."

Yet he held her close. " Sweetheart,
tell me that you love me," he said.

Light and life and all love's bright-
ness shone in her face, as she lay there
in his arms and looking up at him.

" Why must you always be told so ? "

822

Ned Stirling his /Story.

she said, smiling at him in a woman's
way, feigning unwillingness.

" Because," he said, and he would not
let her look away from him, " because
of the wonder that you should love me,
which goes beyond my power of believ-
ing unless you tell me."

So she stood away from him a small
arm's length, looking into his eyes and
putting away all shyness.

" I love you," she said, " for all that
you have been, and for all that you are
and yet shall be to me in my life, more
than life itself; therefore have I given
my life to you, and love along with it.
Now let me go."

But he drew her close to him again for
a brief time, saying no words, but using
love's expression, until I was near to
forgetting all my other feelings in love
of looking on. Then he loosed her from
his arms, and stood with a still and firm
countenance while she went away, turn-
ing once or twice to hold out her hand
to him before she went beyond reach of
sight. When she was gone he yet stood,
forgetting his horse, which pushed its
nose among the stones of the pathway,
sniffing, until it came up and laid its
head against his arm ; then he roused
himself, like a man half slumbering, and
got into his saddle, and went away.

Now, for the most part, I have found
it to be so that slow and unwilling wits
do contribute to peace more than do ac-
tive ones, being not so like to be stirred
or troubled with every light circum-
stance ; wherefore slow-witted men, hav-
ing more time and inclination for it, are
mostly fatter. Yet in spite of the peace
of it, I have sometimes longed for more
vigilant understanding (though finding
no fault with God over the lack of it),
and never did I long for it more than
then. What should I do about it ? So
I questioned myself, sitting there, while
all the deer of the county might have
passed by without my knowing it. But
though I persisted in the asking, not any
answer could I make myself, except that

maybe God might find a way out of it,
as simple folk get a way of believing.
And there I had to let it rest, though
thinking mightily (for me), and not de-
siring anything but Ruth's perfect hap-
piness, as I do verily believe. So I kept
silence, and right glad I was afterward
to have done so wisely (though taking
no credit for the wisdom).

Again one day, not long after that of
which I have last told, being restless in
spirit, and my legs following the bent
of my head, I went abroad upon the
hills ; but where there were no trees,
only low shrubs and such like, and where
the quail were whistling (for quail was
something to which my appetite did
cling through all, when toasted). To-
ward midday,' when I had climbed far
up to the hills' greatest height, and
stepped along with much caution for
fear of noise to alarm the quail, I came
to where I saw Arthur Dunwoody sit-
ting at the edge of a steep place, with a
broad black rock before him, at which
he worked busily with his hands ; and
so firm a hold had curiosity and spying
got upon me (though I hate it) that I
went forward with much circumspection
of step, and concealed as much as might
be, with my bigness, behind sheltering
points of rock and bush, until \I could
see closely what he did. He had taken
a bit of white chalk from . the hillside,
and with it, upon the surface of the stone
before him, he had drawn, with won-
drous exactness of line and shadow, the
faces of Ruth and of Alice Mooreland,
side by side ; and as I regarded him, he
regarded his work intently, with many
smiles and softenings of expression, look-
ing first at one and then at the other.
Then did I see him lean forward of a
sudden, and fondly and gently kiss the
pictured face of little Ruth. And when
I saw this, then were all my doubts and
troubled fears aroused again within me,
and I longed to get away.

While I was thinking of it so closely,
and of how to set my feet in going that

Ned Stirling his Story.

823

he might not hear me, at a moment he
rose, with his eyes lingering upon his
portraitures, so that he stepped, without
heeding it, upon the very edge of the
steepness, and the shelving rock betrayed
a weakness, and he went down out of my
sight ere he or I could cry out.

Now, forasmuch as this tale partakes
very much (in some places) of confes-
sion, I would confess it all, to give it due
and just proportion ; and the very sad-
dest of all is here to be confessed, as
being the hardest and meanest of the
hard and mean things of my nature,
namely, that when I saw him go down,
with a face of agony and arms uplifted,
there came into my soul a sense of glad-
ness ; not for very long (maybe the half
part of a lightning's flash), yet did it
print itself upon me, so that I shall al-
ways carry the shame of it. So little a
time it endured that before he was well
down out of sight of my eyes, my feet
were moving to aid him, and I swung
myself down from point to point, cling-
ing to every jutting place and scraping
myself grievously, so that the places
were many days in healing over. He had
fallen for six yards' length, and lay quite
still, with white face, and his yellow hair
spread over with blood, one arm being
crushed beside him on the rocks.

I took him up in my arms very gently
(or as gently as I might, with my clum-
sy greatness) and carried him home,
three English miles, over the rough hills ;
and each stumbling step of the hard way
jarred loose within me a little thank-
fulness to God that he had made me
strong. When I got my burden home I
laid it down on my bed, with ail the
household in commotion, while I went
for a chirurgeon. On the way I stopped
to tell Ruth of what had befallen, and
for the rest of the way I saw alternately
(as a scholar would no doubt say it) his
white face and hers, not less white, when
I told her.

Not to dwell too long upon it, because
I do not remember all the total of the

circumstances (being dazed nearly as
senseless as he was), he lay so without
any sign of living, only that he breathed
brokenly, and that his heart went on
somewhat with beating, for the rest of
the day and through the night until morn-
ing ; the chirurgeon not leaving him,
though not hoping much for any good
outcome, and Ruth and my mother and
I doing what was needful.

When he had been so for four-and-
twenty hours, Ruth came out to me,
where I walked about without the house,
a new showing of trouble in her dear
eyes.

" He knows us," she told me softly,
with her hand upon my arm, " but the
chirurgeon fears it is not for long."
Then she stood for a moment regarding
me clearly. " Will you go and fetch
Parson Arrowsmith ? " she asked, with
much of my own directness of speech.

And I went away to fetch him, eight
miles or more, sorrowing meanwhile that
belike the end was near, and not glad,
as I can say in very truth, though won-
dering what might happen when he was
gone.

When I was come again with the par-
son (a little fat man, and short of breath-
ing, who traveled hard, though he rode
my best horse), Ruth met me.

" He wants you to come, too," she
said : and I followed to where Arthur
Dunwoody lay, his eyes open, though
they were shadowed over with the pain
of dying, and with the fear of how to
go about it. What little of wit I had
left in me went speedily out when I saw
standing by the bedside, tall and stately
and beautiful, Alice Mooreland, with her
two hands locked in Arthur Dunwoody's
whole one. And there they remained
while Parson Arrowsmith, being made
acquainted with the matter, wedded them
together solemnly.

When this was done, Arthur looked
from one to another until his eyes lit
upon Ruth's face, and he said in a weak
voice and far away, " Dear little coun-

824

The Teacher and the Laboratory: A Reply.

selor and sweetest of friends, kiss me."
And she stooped down and kissed his lips.
Then we went away, leaving Alice his
wife with him, that he might be about
the business of dying. Only (to hasten
on with matters, for I am getting impa-
tient of the long delaying of the end) it
took him two - and - twenty years there-
after to die ; and they were two-and-twen-
ty years of gentle goodness and peace,
though old Judge Mooreland made a
great to-do and strife about it at first,
but to no purpose, Parson Arrowsmith
having done his work orderly and well.

And now, for one time in my life, re-
solution and firmness got hold of me
and I of them, and together we set about
mending matters. And I would give it
as the sum of my experience thus, to wit :
when there is anything to be said to a wo-
man, say it, and have done with it with
all speed.

This happened in a sweet, dusky even-
ing, with the new moon and the biggest
and boldest of the stars looking on, and
a soft breath of air stirring in the trees,
flushing with the first touch of frost,
though there was no other sign of it. I
met Ruth in our pasture lane, a sweet
place, and fit for love's avowal, and
where I have been wont to walk all my
life long for the strengthening of my
heart. Here I made her stop by me,
while the night grew momently more
fair and beautiful.

" I Lad thought, Ruth," I said, call-

ing her so for the first time before her
face, " that you were to be wife to him."

Her glance went away to the distance,
but soon came back to rest upon my
face, though very briefly, and then to
fall away to the ground, while I saw her
soft breast stirred with deeper breath-
ing and stronger beating of her gentle
heart.

" Look at me, Ruth," I said. But she
would not until I had laid my hands
upon her head and with my gentlest
strength made her to do it. Then in her
eyes, though the darkness gathered thick-
ly beneath the trees, I saw that which a
man may look at once in a long life, the
sweetest and fairest sight of earth, —
the light of pure love and the promise
of love's fruition.

We know why God loves us, and no
puzzle about it, as I have read in the
sayings of wise men, to whom God was
no mystery, but the ways of a woman's
love be past discovering, as this proved
to me.

" Ruth, sweetheart, do you love me ? "
I asked of her, hardly daring, yet with
a great courage after all.

And all things stopped and waited
while she answered me, her soft voice
sifting upward through the dark meshes
of her hair, " Yes, I do love you, dear."

God made that night for us two, and
then left us alone in the hollow of it, and
our love filled the whole of its great depth
and vastness.

William R. Lighten.

THE TEACHER AND THE LABORATORY: A REPLY.

IN the April number of The Forum
there appeared an interesting article, by
Professor Bliss, of the School of Peda-
gogy at New York University, entitled
Professor Miinsterberg's Attack on Ex-
perimental Psychology. It was a reply
to a paper which I had published in the

February number of The Atlantic Month-
ly, about the value of experimental psy-
chology to methods of teaching.

On the question itself there is no rea-
son for me to say an additional word.
I have said what I had to say, and I
have not changed my views. I believe

The Teacher and the Laboratory : A Reply.

825

still in every word of my original essay,
and I have no desire to repeat it. But
I find in it some little misunderstandings,
and some little confusions, and some lit-
tle misstatements, and some little absurd-
ities, all of which suggest my attempting
a slight readjustment for the sake of a
clear understanding.

My personal interests also urge me to
reply, for I tremble to think what psy-
chologists may finally do with me, if this
kind of metamorphosis of my views is al-
lowed to continue. Professor Bliss calls
my words against the psychologists so
" direful " that they " remind us of those
which years ago thundered forth from
these same New England hills, portray-
ing the terrors of future punishment."
After this, surely I may be allowed a few
words to clear up my real intentions.

Professor Bliss, in his title, calls my
paper an " attack on experimental psy-
chology," and condenses its content into
the significant phrases that I " attempt
to crush the rising spirit of the Ameri-
can teachers ; " that I tell them, " in
tones of authority, that if they value
their pedagogical lives they will never
again set foot within a psychological
laboratory ; " and that the psychology
courses in the universities, " so far as
teachers are concerned, are all nonsense."
Professor Bliss ought to have concealed
from his readers the fact that experi-
mental psychology is my own field of
work, and that I have devoted to it the
greater part of my researches ; but since
he says all these things himself, his read-
ers will hardly believe that I suddenly
" attack " my own line of work, and that
I choose for such a suicidal onslaught the
publicity of a popular magazine. They
will perhaps themselves come to the sus-
picion that I did not " attack " experi-
mental psychology itself, but only its friv-
olous misuse. There remains, of course,
the other possibility, that I have suddenly
changed my views ; that I believed in ex-
perimental psychology till 1897, and that
I attack it in 1898. But there are some

witnesses who know better. I have given
my lecture course on empirical psycho-
logy in Harvard University, this year,
before three hundred and sixty-five stu-
dents, perhaps the largest psychology
course ever given anywhere, and I think
even Professor Bliss could not introduce
into these lectures more demonstrations
and discussions of experiments than I do.
A very large proportion of these students
will become teachers. Is it probable
that before so many witnesses I would
do three times every week what I pub-
licly call " nonsense " ? Is it probable
that I intentionally force so many men
to do just what I publicly pray them not
to do " if they value their pedagogical
lives " ?

It may be that the readers of Pro-
fessor Bliss are prepared to expect from
me even such improbable tricks ; for the
greater part of his eloquent essay has no
other purpose than to show that inner con-
tradiction is my specialty. My words
are " inconsistent both among themselves
and with their author's own position in
educational matters." Let us consider
first the latter case. The contradiction
between my paper and my practical po-
sition in educational matters is indeed
shocking. I have said that experimental
psychology cannot give to teachers to-day
any pedagogical prescriptions, and now
Professor Bliss unmasks and discloses
the fact that " the writer of this article is
the sole deviser of a set of psychological
apparatus, designed by him especially
because of their pedagogical value in
furthering psychological experiments in
the schools." I must confess that I am
guilty : I designed a set of apparatus
for the school teaching of psychology.
I had at that time no presentiment that
any one would ever fail to see the dif-
ference between the teaching of psycho-
logy and psychological teaching. If I
say that school children ought to be
taught about electricity, I do not mean
that the teaching itself ought to go on
by electricity ; and if I instruct my stu-

826

The Teacher and the Laboratory : A Reply.

dents about insanity, I do not think that
my instruction itself needs the methods
of madness. Why is the willingness to
teach psychology, then, an acknowledg-
ment that all teaching must apply psy-
chological schemes ?

Professor Bliss and many other friends
do not see that the relation between ex-
perimental psychology and the teacher
can have a threefold character. First,
the teacher may become prepared to
teach elementary experimental psycho-
logy in the schoolroom, just as he would
become prepared to teach physics or zo-
ology. Second, the teacher may use his
school children as material to study ex-
perimentally the mind of the child in
the interest of theoretical scientific psy-
chology, and thus to supply the psycho-
logist with new facts about mental life.
Third, the teacher may try to apply his
knowledge of experimental psychology
in his methods of teaching. These three
possibilities have almost nothing at all to
do with one another. Any one of the
three propositions can be accepted while
the two others are declined. My own
opinion is that the first is sound, the sec- .
ond doubtful, the third decidedly bad ;
and only with the third did my paper
deal.

The teaching of elementary psycho-
logy in the school seems to me, indeed,
possible and desirable, and I have always
done my best to help it, not only by that
suspicious set of apparatus, but by other
means as well. I have taught some bits
of psychology even to my two little chil-
dren, who are less than ten years old, but
I have never made a psychological ex-
periment on them ; and above all, I have
never misused my little theoretical psy-
chology by mixing it with my practical
educational work. I call the second pro-
position doubtful, the proposition that
the teacher makes psychological experi-
ments on the childi'en in the interest, not
of pedagogics, but of psychology. The-
oretically there is no objection to it, but
practically there is a grave objection. It

seems to me harmful for the child, mis-
leading to the teacher, and dangerous for
psychology, because the teacher cannot
do experimental work in a schoolroom in
a way which will satisfy the demands of
real science. Almost everything of that
kind that has yet been done shows the
most uncritical dilettanteism. But even
if all this were not so, — if psychologi-
cal experiments were the most healthful
recreations for children, and the most
inspiring sources of ethical feeling for
teachers, and the most precious treasures
of information for psychologists, — what
has all this to do with our question whe-
ther the individual teacher can make use
of our laboratory psychology for the im-
provement of his general teaching ? It
is only this pretension that I have em-
phatically denied. Psychology, I have
tried to show, will give later to scientific
pedagogy the material from which pre-
scriptions for the art of teaching may be
formed ; but if the individual teacher
should try to transform the facts we know
to-day into educational schemes, nothing
can result but confusion and disturbance.
I showed that this is the more certain as
the idea that experimental psychology
measures mental facts is perfectly illu-
sory ; there is no quantitative mathemat-
ical psychology, and the hope of exact
determination in the service of education
is vain.

In every one of these points Professor
Bliss discovers contradictions between
my words and my actions, between my
article in The Atlantic Monthly and my
scientific publications. Especially in two
points every denial seems hopeless. I
say that mental facts cannot be mea-
sured, and nevertheless I have published
experimental psychological papers with
" long columns of figures." He exclaims
dramatically : " If mental measurements
are not being made in the Harvard lab-
oratory, pray, forsooth, what is being
done ? What means that vast assem-
blage of delicate apparatus ? "

I think that this question can be an-

The Teacher and the Laboratory : A Reply.

827

swered in a few words. We cannot mea-
sure mental facts, because they have
no constant units which can be added,
but we can analyze mental facts in our
self-observation. If the self-observation
goes on under the natural conditions of
daily life, we have the ordinary psycho-
logy ; but if we introduce for our self-
observation artificial outer conditions
which are planned for the special pur-
pose of the observation, then we have
experimental psychology. These artifi-
cial outer conditions are represented in
that delicate apparatus, and the exact
description of their physical work often,
indeed, requires columns of figures. We
can never measure a feeling, but we can
measure the physical stimulus which
produces a feeling ; and if we ascertain
exactly the quantitative variations of the
stimulus, and analyze in the self -observa-
tion the corresponding qualitative varia-
tions of the feeling, we may get a schol-
arly paper about the feeling, in which
many figures leap before the eyes, but in
which the feeling itself has not been mea-
sured. Even if my publications looked
like logarithm tables, I should stick to
my conviction.

But I must defend myself against still
stronger suspicions. I said that the re-
sults of experimental psychology are to-
day useless bits for the teacher who is
looking for practical help in his teaching
methods, and that we have nothing to
give him. And now it is found that I
myself have given to teachers by my ac-
tions all that help which I cruelly denied
them by my words : the opposite would
have been worse, but this seems bad
enough. Professor Bliss writes : " Among
all this work, none is more suggestive
than that of the laboratory whence come
these notes of warning. In the first vol-
umes of the Psychological Review we
notice among the Harvard Studies the
following titles : Memory ; The Intensi-
fying Effect of Attention ; The Motor
Power of Ideas ; ^Esthetics of Simple
Forms ; Fluctuations of Attention, etc.

All these investigations were reported by
our critic himself."

I do not deny it, and I regret only one
thing, — that my critic, instead of devot-
ing his attention only to the titles of
these papers, did not take the trouble to
consider also their content. Certainly
memory and attention and ideas are of
great importance for the educator, and
I should at once conclude that papers
about such subjects are highly important
for him if I found that the papers deal
with those subjects from a point of view
related to that of the teacher. I am sor-
ry to say, the papers which I have pub-
lished, in spite of their seductive names,
do just the contrary. They work toward
a most subtle theoretical analysis of the
elements of objects that must interest the
educator only as wholes. Every teacher
makes use of the chalk a hundred times
in the classroom. Will you tell him that
he needs chemistry because in the maga-
zines of that science there are papers in
the titles of which the word " chalk "
appears ?

I take a simple illustration. " Atten-
tion " is certainly the great thing in the
classroom ; every teacher suffers from the
fluctuations of attention, and tries to in-
tensify attention, and these things are
the subjects of my papers. One of them
studies how in fractions of seconds differ-
ent just perceivable optical stimuli vary
for our apperception if the eye remains
absolutely unmoved ; the other seeks to
determine whether the sensations of
acoustical and tactual stimuli lose by dis-
traction not only vividness, but also in-
tensity, — a change in any case so small
that statistical methods become necessary
to find it. These researches were the
starting-points for important theoretical
discussions about the most subtle pro-
cesses going on in attention ; but if a
teacher, in an unfoitunate hour, should
begin to catch the attention of his pupils
on the basis of these papers, it would be
advisable to send a warning notice about
him to the teachers' agencies of the whole

828

The Teacher and the Laboratory : A Reply.

country. And if my own papers are of
no use to the teacher, how must it be
with the other literature of this kind, if
even my critic says that " among all this
work none is more suggestive than that
of the Harvard laboratory " ? He is
quite right in that : all the publications
of the other laboratories are just as un-
suggestive for the immediate practical
use of teachers as my own.

But why should there be such an un-
just preference for the teachers ? If the
community of headings and titles forms
the fraternity between psychologists and
teachers, why not give the bliss of psy-
chology also to other good fellows in
the cities and towns who have the same
right to demand that those walls about
our work at last fall ? I think, for in-
stance, of the artists. It would be un-
just to conceal the fact that we now
make in the psychological laboratory
studies on the fusion of tone sensations ;
of what use is it to the virtuoso to prac-
tice piano-playing instead of investigat-
ing with us first the whole psychology of
tones ? and what a perspective for the
piano-tuners ! In our dark room we
work on colors, — the relation of blue to
the rods of the retina is under discus-
sion ; how can a painter dare to use ultra-
marine in his brush before he has labored
through these experimental studies ? One
thing lies especially near my heart. We
have in our laboratory a complicated ap-
paratus with which we experiment on
the psychology of poetical rhythm. I
do not see how a poetical soul can hope
in future to write a poem in good rhythm
before he has seen at least a photograph
of that apparatus.

However, I do not wish to exagger-
ate Professor Bliss's forgetf ulness. It is
true he forgets the artists, but that does
not mean that he favors the teachers
only ; no, we are told that " experimen-
tal psychology with this spirit contains
the promise and potency of great assist-
ance for law, medicine, and theology."
Especially does his suggestion about the-

ology seem to me excellent; after the
kymograph education, certainly the ky-
mograph religion with a chronoscope the-
ology must be the next step of civiliza-
tion. The best thing would be that our
laboratories should arrange a kind of col-
lege settlement in every group of the
population ; they all need us, — the min-
isters, and the physicians, and the law-
yers, and the teachers, and the children.

Finally, a word about the attitude of
the schoolmen themselves. Professor
Bliss has here, it seems, his strongest
foothold, — at least his words swell up
to an unusual energy : " Professor Miln-
sterberg has not realized the inspiration
of the hour. He misses the whole spirit
of modern science and American science
teaching. He betrays a low ideal of what
teaching should be, and an almost inten-
tional ignorance of schoolroom work."
" The idea of the American teacher
abandoning psychology at this late day is
humorous," he says, and so on in a score of
variations. There seemed little hope for
me, but I began to inquire what the offi-
cial educators had said about the matter.
I looked into the different educational
magazines and school journals. Almost
all discussed my paper, and I could not
find one that was not in sympathy with
my endeavor.

Professor Bliss emphasized the con-
trast between " the fair New England
hills " from which I see the world and
the rest of the universe. But I find that
even in his Greater New York the best
educators and schoolmen are on my side.
The Educational Review is regarded as
our best pedagogical magazine, and its
well-known editor, Professor Butler, of
New York, as one of the best champions
of the teachers. He began his editorial
for March with the following words, in
which I drop only the too friendly epi-
thets : " Sober students of education have
been pointing out for some time past the
illusory character of the belief that some-
how these laboratory movements could
be applied in the technique of school-

The. End of All Living.

829

room work, and we have been waiting
to see some one step out from the ranks
of the psychologists and call attention to
the utterly unphilosophical and unscien-
tific character of this assumption. Pro-
fessor Munsterberg has performed this
service ; and while the representatives of
the other view may wriggle a little in his
grasp, they will find that their occupation
and influence are gone." Does the Edu-
cational Review also " betray a low ideal
of what teaching should be " ? Does
Professor Butler, too, the head of the
pedagogical department in Columbia
University, suffer from " an almost inten-
tional ignorance of schoolroom work " ?
Not only the papers, but hundreds of
letters from schoolmen have brought me
the same approval. If the newspapers
report him correctly, one educational ora-
tor from Chicago said, the other day,
amid the cheers of his audience, that I
will do a vast amount of damage, but
only in the East. I am obliged to con-
fess that two thirds of the approving let-

ters to me have come from the West.
Indeed, as I consider all the literature
which has found its way to my desk, it
reminds me more and more of an experi-
ence which I had some time ago. There
came to me here in Cambridge the presi-
dent of a teachers' club in another town,
asking me to give a talk before his club
on the importance of physiological psy-
chology for the methods of teaching. He
made a long speech about the brain, and
the ganglion cells, and the gyri, and the
nerve fibres, and Harvard, and pedago-
gics, and how it was absolutely necessary
that I should accept his invitation to talk
on these favorite subjects. I listened pa-
tiently, and when he had finished I told
him that I could not go, as I should not
satisfy the members of the club, because I
did not believe in the connection of brain
physiology and pedagogics. But the ef-
fect I produced on him was quite unex-
pected : he clapped me jovially on the
knee and cried, " Then you must come
the more, as we none of us believe in it ! "
Hugo Munsterberg.

THE END OF ALL LIVING.

THE First Church of Tiverton stands
on a hill, whence it overlooks the little vil-
lage, with one or two pine-shaded neigh-
borhoods beyond, and, when the air is
clear, a thin blue line of upland delu-
sively like the sea. Set thus austerely
aloft, it seems now a survival of the day
when men used to go to meeting gun in
hand, and when one stayed, a lookout
by the door, to watch and listen. But
this the present dwellers do not remem-
ber. Conceding not a sigh to the holy
and strenuous past, they lament — and
the more as they grow older — the stiff
climb up the hill, albeit to rest in so
sweet a sanctuary at the top. For it is
sweet indeed. A soft little wind seems
always to be stirring there, on summer

Sundays a messenger of good. It runs
whispering about, and wafts in all sorts
of odors : honey of the milkweed and
wild rose, and a Christmas tang of the
evergreens just below. It carries away
something, too, — scents calculated to
bewilder the thrift-hunting bee : some-
times a whiff of peppermint from an
old lady's pew, but oftener the breath
of musk and southernwood, gathered in
ancient gardens, and borne up here to
embroider the preacher's drowsy homi-
lies, and remind us, when we faint, of
the keen savor of righteousness.

Here in the church do we congregate
from week to week ; but behind it, on a
sloping hillside, is the last home of us
all, the old burying-ground, overrun with

830

The End of All Lining.

a briery tangle, and relieved by Nature's
sweet and cunning hand from the severe
decorum set ordinarily about the dead.
Our very faithlessness has made it fair.
There was a time when we were a little
ashamed of it. We regarded it with af-
fection, indeed, but affection of the sort
accorded some rusty relative who has lain
too supine in the rut of years. Thus, with
growing ambition came, in due course,
the project of a new burying - ground.
This we dignified, even in common
speech ; it was always grandly " the Cem-
etery." While it lay unrealized in the
distance, the home of our forbears fell
into neglect, and Nature marched in, ac-
cording to her lavishness, and adorned
what we ignored. The white alder crept
farther and farther from its bounds ; tan-
sy and wild rose rioted in profusion, and
soft patches of violets smiled to meet the
spring. Here were, indeed, great riches,
" a little of everything " that pasture life
affords : a hardy bed of checkerberry,
crimson strawberries nodding on long
stalks, and in one sequestered corner
the beloved Linnaea. It seemed a con-
secrated pasture shut off from daily use,
and so given up to pleasantness that you
could scarcely walk there without setting
foot on some precious outgrowth of the
spring, or pushing aside a summer love-
liness better made for wear.

Ambition had its fulfillment. We
bought our Cemetery, a large, green tract,
quite square, and lying open to the sun.
But our pendulum had swung too wide.
Like many folk who suffer from one
discomfort, we had gone to the utmost
extreme and courted another. We were
tired of climbing hills, and so we pressed
too far into the lowland ; and the first
grave dug in our Cemetery showed three
inches of water at the bottom. It was in
" Prince's new lot," and there his young
daughter was to lie. But her lover had
stood by while the men were making the
grave ; and, looking into the ooze below,
he woke to the thought of her fair young
body there.

" God ! " they heard him say, " she
shan't lay so. Leave it as it is, and
come up into the old buryin' - ground.
There 's room enough by me."

The men, all mates of his, stopped
work without a glance and followed him ;
and up there in the dearer shrine her
place was made. The father said but a
word at her changed estate. Neighbors
had hurried in to bring him the news ;
he went first to the unfinished grave in
the Cemetery, and then strode up the
hill, where the men had not yet done.
After watching them for a while in si-
lence, he turned aside ; but he came back
to drop a trembling hand upon the lover's
arm.

" I guess," he said miserably, " she 'd
full as lieves lay here by you."

And she will be quite beside him,
though, in the beaten ways of earth, oth-
ers have come between. For years he
lived silently and apart ; but when his
mother died, and he and his father were
left staring at the dulled embers of life,
he married a good woman, who perhaps
does not deify early dreams ; yet she is
tender of them, and at the death of her
own child it was she who went toiling up
to the graveyard to see that its little place
did not encroach too far. She gave no
reason, but we all knew it was because
she meant to let her husband lie there by
the long-loved guest.

Naturally enough, after this incident
of the forsaken grave, we conceived a
strange horror of the new Cemetery, and
it has remained deserted to this day. It
is nothing but a meadow now, with that
one little grassy hollow in it to tell a pite-
ous tale. It is mown by any farmer who
chooses to take it for a price ; but we re-
gard it differently from any other plot of
ground. It is "the Cemetery," and al-
ways will be. We wonder who has bought
the grass. " Eli 's got the Cemetery this
year," we say. And sometimes awe-
stricken little squads of school children
lead one another there, hand in hand, to
look at the grave where Annie Prince

The End of All Living.

831

was going to be buried when her beau
took her away. They never seem to
connect that heart-broken wraith of a
lover with the bent farmer who goes to
and fro driving the cows. He wears
patched overalls, and has sciatica in win-
ter ; but I have seen the gleam of youth
awakened, though remotely, in his eyes.
I do not believe he ever quite forgets ;
there are moments, now and then, at dusk
or midnight, all his for poring over those
dulled pages of the past.

After we had elected to abide by our
old home we voted an enlargement of
its bounds ; and thereby hangs a tale
of outlawed revenge. Long years ago
" old Abe Eaton " quarreled with his
twin brother, and vowed, as the last fiat
of an eternal divorce, " I won't be buried
in the same yard with ye ! "

The brother died first ; and because he
lay within a little knoll beside the fence,
Abe willfully set a public seal on that
iron oath by purchasing a strip of land
outside, wherein he should himself be
buried. Thus they would rest in a hol-
low correspondence, the fence between.
It all fell out as he ordained, for we in
Tiverton are cheerfully willing to give
the dead their way. Lax enough is the
helpless hand in the fictitious stiffness
of its grasp ; and we are not the people
to deny it holding, by courtesy at least.
Soon enough does the sceptre of mortal-
ity crumble and fall. So Abe was buried
according to his wish. But when neces-
sity commanded us to add unto ourselves
another acre, we took in his grave with
it, and the fence, falling into decay, was
never renewed. There he lies, in affec-
tionate decorum, beside the brother he
hated ; and thus does the greater good
wipe out the individual wrong.

So now, as in ancient times, we toil
steeply up here, with the dead upon his
bier ; for not often in Tiverton do we
depend on that uncouth monstrosity, the
hearse. It is not that we do not own
one, — a rigid box of that name has be-
longed to us now for many a year ; and

when Sudleigh came out with a new one,
plumes, trappings, and all, we broached
the idea of emulating her. But the pro-
ject fell through after Brad Freeman's
contented remark that he guessed the
old one would last us out. He " never
heard no complaint from anybody 't ever
rode in it." That placed our last jour-
ney on a homely, humorous basis, and
we smiled, and reflected that we pre-
ferred going up the hill borne by friend-
ly hands, with the light of heaven fall-
ing on our coffin-lids.

The antiquary would set much store
by our headstones, did he ever find them
out. Certain of them are very ancient,
according to our ideas ; for they came
over from England, and are now fallen
into the grayness of age. They are wo-
ven all over with lichens, and the black-
berry binds them fast. Well, too, for
them ! They need the grace of some
such veiling ; for most of them are alive,
even to this day, with warning skulls,
and awful cherubs compounded of bleak
bald faces and sparsely feathered wings.
One discovery, made there on a summer
day, has not, I fancy, been duplicated
in another New England town. On six
of the larger tombstones are carved, be-
low the grass level, a row of tiny imps,
grinning faces and humanized animals.
Whose was the hand that wrought ?
The Tivertonians know nothing about it.
They say there was a certain old Veasey
who, some eighty odd years ago, used to
steal into the graveyard with his tools,
and there, for love, scrape the mosses
from the stones and chip the letters clear.
He liked to draw " creatur's " especially,
and would trace them for children on
their slates. He lived alone in a little
house long since fallen, and he would eat
no meat. That is all they know of him.
I can guess but one thing more : that
when no looker-on was by, he pushed
away the grass, and wrote his little jokes,
safe in the kindly tolerance of the dead.
This was the identical soul who should,
in good old days, have been carving gar-

832

The End of All Living.

goyles and misereres ; here his only field
was the obscurity of Tiverton churchyard,
his only monument these grotesqueries so
cunningly concealed.

We have epitaphs, too, — all our own
as yet, for the world has not discovered
them. One couple lies in well - to - do
respectability under a tiny monument
not much taller than the conventional
gravestone, but shaped on a pretentious
model.

" We 'd ruther have it nice," said the
builders, " even if there ain't much of it."

These were Eliza Marden and Peleg
her husband, who worked from sun to
sun, with scant reward save that of pride
in their own f orehandeduess. I can im-
agine them as they drove to church in
the open wagon, a couple portentously
large and prosperous ; their one child,
Hannah, sitting between them, and glan-
cing about her, in a flickering, intermit-
tent way, at the pleasant holiday world.
Hannah was no worker ; she liked a
long afternoon in the sun, her thin little
hands busied about nothing weightier
than crochet ; and her mother regarded
her with a horrified patience, as one who
might some time be trusted to sow all her
wild oats of idleness. The well-mated
pair died within the same year, and it
was Hannah who composed their epitaph,
with an artistic accuracy, but a defective
sense of rhyme : —

" Here lies Eliza

She was a striver

Here lies Peleg

He was a select

Man"

We townsfolk found something haunt-
ing and bewildering in the lines ; they
drew and yet they baffled us, with their
suggested echoes luring only to betray.
Hannah never wrote anything else, but
we always cherished the belief that she
could do " 'most anything " with words
and their possibilities. Still, we accept-
ed her one crowning achievement, and
never urged her to further proof. In
Tiverton we never look genius in the

mouth. Nor did Hannah herself pro-
pose developing her gift. Relieved from
the spur of those two unquiet spirits who
had begotten her, she settled down to
sit all day in the sun, learning new pat-
terns of crochet ; and having cheerfully
let her farm run down, she died at last
in a placid poverty.

Then there was Desire Baker, who
belonged to the era of colonial hardship,
and who, through a redundant punctua-
tion, is relegated to a day still more re-
mote. For some stone-cutter, scornful
of working by the card, or born with an
inordinate taste for periods, set forth,
below her obiit, the astounding state-
ment : —

" The first woman. She made the
journey to Boston. By Stage."

Here, too, are the ironies whereof de-
parted life is prodigal. This is the tidy
lot of Peter Merrick, who had a desire to
stand well with the world in leaving it,
and whose purple and fine linen were em-
bodied in the pomp of death. He was
a cobbler, and he put his small savings
together to erect a modest monument to
his own memory. Every Sunday he vis-
ited it, " after meetin'," and perhaps his
day-dreams, as he sat leather-aproned on
his bench, were still of that white marble
idealism. The inscription upon it was
full of significant blanks ; they seemed
an interrogation of the destiny which gov-
erns man.

" Here lies Peter Merrick " ran

the unfinished scroll, " and his wife who
died-

But ambitious Peter never lay there
at all ; for in his later prime, with one
flash of sharp desire to see the world, he
went on a voyage to the Banks, and was
drowned. And his wife ? The story
grows somewhat threadbare. She sum-
moned his step-brother to settle the estate,
and he, a marble-cutter by trade, filled
in the date of Peter's death with letters
English and illegible. In the process of
the carving, the widow stood by, hands
folded under her apron from the midsum-

The End of All Living.

833

mer sun. They got excellent well ac-
quainted, and the stone-cutter prolonged
his stay. He came again in a little over
a year, at Thanksgiving time, and the
two were married. Which shows that
nothing is certain in life, — no, not the
proprieties of our leaving it, — and that
even there we must walk softly, writing
no boastful legend for time to ••annul.

At one period, a certain quatrain had
a great run in Tiverton ; it was the epi-
taph of the day. Noting how it over-
spread that stony soil, you picture to
yourself the modest pride of its com-
poser ; unless, indeed, it had been copied
from an older inscription in an English
yard, and transplanted through the heart
and brain of some settler whose thoughts
were ever flitting back. Thus it runs in
decorous metre : —

" Dear husband, now my life is passed,
You have dearly loved me to the last.
Grieve not for me, but pity take
On my dear children for my sake."

But one sorrowing widower amended it,
according to his wife's direction, so that
it bore a new and significant meaning.
He was charged to

" pity take
On my dear parent for my sake."

The lesson was patent. His mother-
in-law had always lived with him, and
she was " difficult." Who knows how
keenly the sick woman's mind ran on the
possibilities of reef and quicksand for
the alien two left alone without her guid-
ing hand ? So she set the warning of
her love and fear to be no more forgot-
ten while she herself should be remem-
bered.

The husband was a silent man. He
said very little about his intentions ; per-
formance was enough for him. There-
fore it happened that his " parent," adopt-
ed perforce, knew nothing about this
public charge until she came upon it, on
her first Sunday visit, surveying the new
glory of the stone. The story goes that
she stood before it, a square, portentous
figure in black alpaca and warlike mitts,

VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 488. 53

and that she uttered these irrevocable
words : —

" Pity on me ! Well, I guess he won't !
I '11 go to the poor-farm fust ! "

And Monday morning, spite of his
loyal dissuasions, she packed her " blue
chist " and drove off to a far-away cousin,
who got her " nussin' " to do. Another
lesson from the warning finger of Death :
let what was life not dream that it can
sway the life that is, after the two part
company.

Not always were mothers-in-law such
breakers of the peace. There is a story
in Tiverton of one man who went re-
morsefully mad after his wife's death,
and whose mind dwelt unceasingly on
the things he had denied her. These
were not many, yet the sum seemed to
him colossal. It piled the Ossa of his
grief. Especially did he writhe under
the remembrance of certain blue dishes
she had desired the week before her sud-
den death ; and one night, driven by an
insane impulse to expiate his blindness,
he walked to town, bought them, and
placed them in a foolish order about her
grave. It was a puerile, crazy deed, but
no one smiled, not even the little chil-
dren who heard of it next day, on the
way home from school, and went trudg-
ing up there to see. To their stirring
minds it seemed a strange departure from
the comfortable order of things, chiefly
because their elders stood about with fur-
tive glances at one another and murmurs
of " Poor creatur' ! " But one man,
wiser than the rest, " harnessed up," and
went to tell the dead woman's mother, a
mile away. Jonas was " shackled ; " he
might " do himself a mischief." In the
late afternoon the guest so summoned
walked quietly into the silent house,
where Jonas sat by the window, beating
one hand incessantly upon the sill and
staring at the air. His sister, also, had
come ; she was frightened, however, and
had betaken herself to the bedroom, to
sob. But in walked this little plump,
soft-footed woman, with her banded hair,

834

The End of All Living.

her benevolent spectacles, and her atmo-
sphere of calm.

" I guess 1 11 blaze a fire, Jonas," said
she. " You step out an' git me a mite o'
kindlin'."

The air of homely living enwrapped
him once again, and mechanically, with
the inertia of old habit, he obeyed. They
had a " cup o' tea " together ; and then,
when the dishes were washed, and the
peaceful twilight began to settle down
upon them like a sifting mist, she drew
a little rocking-chair to the window where
he sat opposite, and spoke.

"Jonas," said she, in that still voice
which had been harmonized by the ex-
periences of life, " arter dark, you jest
go up an' bring home them blue dishes.
Mary 's got an awful lot o' fun in her,
an' if she ain't laughin' over that, I 'm
beat. Now, Jonas, you do it ! Do you
s'pose she wants them nice blue pieces
out there through wind an' weather ?
She 'd ruther by half see 'em on the par-
lor cluzzet shelves ; an' if you '11 fetch
'em home, I '11 scallop some white paper,
jest as she liked, an' we '11 set 'em up
there."

Jonas wakened a little from his men-
tal swoon. Life seemed warmer, more
tangible, again.

" Law, do go," said the mother sooth-
ingly. " She don't want the whole town-
ship tramplin' up there to eye over her
chiny. Make her as nervous as a witch.
Here 's the ha' -bushel basket, an' some
paper to put between 'em. You go, Jo-
nas, an' I '11 clear off the shelves."

So Jonas, whether he was tired of
guiding the impulses of his own unquiet
mind, or whether he had become a child
again, glad to yield to the maternal, as
we all do in our grief, took the basket and
went. He stood by, still like a cliild,
while this comfortable woman put the
china on the shelves, speaking warmly,
as she worked, of the pretty curving of
the cups, and her belief that the pitcher
was " one you could pour out of." She
stayed on at the house, and Jonas, through

liis sickness of the mind, lay back upon
her soothing will as a baby lies in its
mother's arms. But the china was never
used, even when he had come to his nor-
mal estate, and bought and sold as before.
The mother's prescience was too keen
for that.

Here in this ground are the ambigui-
ties of life carried over into that other
state, its pathos and its small misunder-
standings. This was a much-married
man whose last spouse had been a triple
widow. Even to him the situation proved
mathematically complex, and the sump-
tuous stone to her memory bears the
dizzying legend that " Enoch Nudd who
erects this stone is her fourth husband
and his fifth wife." Perhaps it was the
exigencies of space which brought about
this amazing elision ; but surely, in its
very apparent intention, there is only a
modest pride. For indubitably the much-
married may plume themselves upon be-
ing also the widely-sought. If it is the
crown of sex to be desired, here you
have it, under seal of the civil bond. No
baseless, windy boasting that " I might
an if I would ! " Nay, here be the mar-
riage ties to testify.

In this pleasant, weedy corner is a lit-
tle white stone, not so long erected. " I
shall arise in thine image," runs the in-
scription ; and reading it, you shall re-
member that the dust within belonged to
a little hunchback, who played the fiddle
divinely and had beseeching eyes. With
that cry he escaped from the marred
conditions of the clay. Here, too (for
this is a sort of bachelor nook), is the
grave of a man whom we unconscious-
ly thrust into a permanent masquerade.
Years and years ago he broke into a
house, — an unknown felony in our quiet
limits, — and was incontinently shot.
The burglar lost his arm, and went about
at first under a cloud of disgrace and hor-
ror, which became, with healing of the
public conscience, a veil of sympathy.
After his brief imprisonment indoors dur-
ing the healing of the mutilated stump,

The End of All Living.

835

he came forth among us again, a man
sadder and wiser in that he had learned
how slow and sure may be the road to
wealth. He had sown his wild oats in
one night's foolish work, and now he set-
tled down to doing such odd jobs as he
might with one hand. We got accus-
tomed to his loss. Those of us who were
children when it happened never really
discovered that it was disgrace at all ;
we thought it misfortune, and no one said
us nay. Then one day it occurred to
us that he must have been shot " in the
war," and so, all unwittingly to himself,
the silent man became a hero. We ac-
cepted him. He was part of our poetic
time, and when he died we held him still
in the memory among those who fell wor-
thily. ' When Decoration Day was first
observed in Tiverton, one of us remem-
bered him and dropped some apple blos-
soms on his grave ; and so it had its posy
like the rest, although it bore no flag.
It was the doctor who set us right there.
" I would n't do that," he said, withhold-
ing the hand of one unthinking child;
and she took back her flag. But she left
the blossoms, and, being fond of prece-
dent, we still do the same ; unless we stop
to think, we know not why. You may
say there is here some perfidy to the re-
public and the honored dead, or at least
some laxity of morals. We are lax, in-
deed, but possibly that is why we are so
kind. We are not willing to " hurt folks'
feelings " even when they have migrated
to another star ; and a flower more or
less from the overplus given to men who
made the greater choice will do no harm,
tossed to one whose soul may be sitting,
like Lazarus, at their riches' gate.

But of all these fleeting legends made
to hold the soul a moment on its way,
and keep it here in fickle permanence,
one is more dramatic than all, more
charged with power and pathos. Years
ago there came into Tiverton an unknown
man, very handsome, showing the marks
of high breeding, and yet in his bearing
strangely solitary and remote. He wore

a cloak, and had a foreign look. He
came walking into the town one night,
with dust upon his shoes, and we judged
that he had been traveling a long time.
He had the appearance of one who was
not nearly at his journey's end, and would
pass through the village, continuing on a
longer way. He glanced at no one, but
we all stared at him. He seemed, though
we had not the words to put it so, an
exiled prince. He went straight through
Tiverton Street until he came to the par-
sonage ; and something about it (per-
haps its garden, hot with flowers, lark-
spur, -coreopsis, and the rest) detained
his eye, and he walked in. Next day the
old doctor was there, also, with his little
black case ; but we were none the wiser
for that. For the old doctor was of the
sort who intrench themselves in a pro-
fessional reserve. You might draw up
beside the road to question him, but you
could as well deter the course of nature.
He would give the roan a flick, and his
sulky would flash by.

" What 's the matter with so-and-so ? "
would ask a mousing neighbor.

" He 's sick," ran the laconic reply.

" Goin' to die ? " one daring querist
ventured further.

" Some time," said the doctor.

But though he assumed a right to com-
bat thus the outer world, no one was
gentler with a sick man or with those
about him in their grief. To the latter
he would speak ; but he used to say he
drew his line at second cousins.

Into his hands and the true old par-
son's fell the stranger's confidence, if
confidence it were. He may have died
solitary and unexplained ; but no matter
what he said, his story was safe. In a
week he was carried out for burial ; and
so solemn was the parson's manner as he
spoke a brief service over him, so thrill-
ing his enunciation of the words " our
brother," that we dared not even ask
what else he should be called. And we
never knew. The headstone, set up by
the parson, bore the words " Peccator

836

The End of All Llviny.

Maximus." For a long time we thought
they made the stranger's name, and
judged that he must have been a foreign-
er ; but a new schoolmistress taught us
otherwise. It was Latin, she said, and
it meant " the chiefest among sinners."
When that report flew round the parson
got wind of it, and then, in the pulpit
one morning, he announced that he felt
it necessary to say that the words had
been used "at our brother's request,"
and that it was his own decision to write
below them, " For this cause came I into
the world."

We have accepted the stranger as we
accept many things in Tiverton. Parson
and doctor kept his secret well. He is
quite safe from our questioning ; but for
years I expected a lady, always young
and full of grief, to seek out his grave
and shrive him with her tears. She will
not appear now, unless she come as an
old, old woman, to lie beside him. It is
too late.

One more record of our vanished
time, — this full of poesy only, and the
pathos of farewell. It was not the aged
and heartsick alone who lay down here
to rest. We have been no more for-
tunate than others. Youth and beauty
came also, and returned no more. This,
where the white rose-bush grows un-
tended, was the young daughter of a
squire in far-off days : too young to have
known the pangs of love or the sweet
desire of Death, save that, in primrose
time, he always paints himself so fair. I
have thought the inscription must have
been borrowed from another grave, in
some yard shaded by yews and silent

under the cawing of the rooks ; perhaps,
from its stiffness, translated from a state-
ly Latin verse. This it is, snatched not
too soon from oblivion ; for a few more
years will wear it quite away : —

" Here lies the purple flower of a maid
Having to envious Death due tribute paid.
Her suddeu Loss her Parents did lament,
And all her Friends with grief their hearts

did Rent.
Life's short. Your wicked Lives amend

with care,
For Mortals know we Dust and Shadows

are."

" The purple flower of a maid " ! All
the blossomy sweetness, the fragrant la-
menting of Lycidas, lies in that one
line. Alas, poor love - lies - bleeding !
And yet not poor according to the
barren pity we accord the dead, but
dowered with another youth set like a
crown upon the unstained front of this.
Not going with sparse blossoms ripened
or decayed, but heaped with buds and
dripping over in perfume. She seems so
sweet in her still loveliness, the empty
promise of her balmy spring, that, for
a moment, fain are you to snatch her
back into the pageant of your day.
Reading that phrase, you feel the earth
is poorer for her loss. And yet not so,
since the world holds other greater worlds
as well. Elsewhere she may have grown
to age and stature ; but here she lives
yet in beauteous permanence, — as true a
part of youth and joy and rapture as the
immortal figures on the Grecian Urn.
While she was but a flying phantom on
the frieze of time, Death fixed her there
forever, — a haunting spirit in perennial
bliss.

Alice Brown.

The Captive. 837

THE CAPTIVE.

WHOSE will, or whether law transgressed or wrath

Incurred, hath bound me captive to this rock,

Poised in the windy hollow of the skies,

To fret for the blue empyrean where

My fancy sails, I know not. Were I free

To plunge and with the stars companion me,

Happy were I, at will returning here,

To make of this Tellurian orb a home.

To be a captive, this my spirit irks.

For not of choice, a willing immigrant,

I came, but by some mandate stern constrained

And unrelenting force ; where all these years

Pent up I watch to snatch from the abyss

Some grain of truth, at random here and there

By unseen hands flung blazing down the night.

And now the world, like an oft-traveled road,

Shrinks, till it scarce exceeds the rocky isle

Ulysses found too small for his large wish.

But yonder fathomless profundity

Hath scope and freedom, — nothing lacking save

Courage and a contriving mind. There gleams

Expanse uncharted, where no admiral

E'er sailed, and undiscovered continents

And ports beyond the utmost Hyades.

Cut off from which — and God knows what of sweet

Companionship and fruit of wisest minds —

Must I crouch here, as little thought of as

A naked islander in the South Sea,

Who from some vantage of his shipless strand

Beholds the sails that bear the commerce of

The world?

Must I be dumb while great events
To mighty being heave in yonder space
Unrecked by me, or in some furthest star
A work begins — perhaps to-day — whose end
Shall shape all life anew ? I cannot rest
To sleep and feed and nurse an ebbing might,
While hearing with Imagination's ear
The shining beaches of a million worlds
Thunder beneath the on-rush of the wave
That bathes yon peak with Neptune's light! This earth,
Upon the cold periphery of heaven
Heaved up, is not enough! One spot hath still
Its secret : where the north wind heaps the waste

838 The Captive.

With hoarded winter, filched from lands despoiled
Of coolness, where the iceberg-builder toils
To launch his miracles of frost. My fires
Draw nearer ; soon the Hyperborean
Upon his door will hear my knock.

But yon

Abyss that sparkles down on this rude shore
Its nightly blaze, like some rich ocean seen
In dream of a poor diver, thwarts my will
With tantalizing vision. Shall no stout
Discoverer — beyond night's ebon cone
Pushing far out his solitary prow —
To that charmed deep e'er bear intelligence
Of me ? No cairn or sea-mark reared on crag
Or precipice record where man hath been ?

In dreams oft have I seen the earth recede

And wane far down the vault, and the brave sun

Plunge after her ; and thus left lone have heard

The creaking tackle, felt the canvas puff

With the shrill wind that blows among the stars.

And domes of airy capitals I saw,

And ports and cities thronged ; the carven beaks

Of ships encrusted with salt spray and rich

With spoil, from some adventure to the north

Of Taurus, or from voyaging to some old,

Most fabulous Orient of the universe.

A dream ! but in a dream all things begin.

The reptile's dream of wings the alchemy

Of some millennial spring hides in an egg.

Amid the austral solitudes of space
It may be that I dwell, afar from thronged
Highways and charted main. Yet if I read
Aright the starry drift, this restless sphere,
That steadfast wheels with its companion orbs,
Like a migrating flock of birds, in flight
Toward its far doomsday, bears me to a fate
Nobler than poets sing. Who knows what warm
Gulf Streams of heaven, what light of other stars,
Await my coming, whose sweet influence may
Uncoil the sinuous perplexities
That vex me here, and wake a finer strength,
Now slumbering unsuspected in my soul?

Spirits there are, no doubt, in yonder space,

As keen as mine for new discovery,

And eyes that burn to see strange coasts. Some swift

Celestial bark erelong will heave in sight

The Peace of God. 839

With news of mighty import, or bright forms
Be visible descending from the stars.
Meanwhile, impatient, pondering all things, I
Peruse the blue depth of the upper sea,
Hungry to hear of other worlds than mine.

William Prescott Foster.

THE PEACE OF GOD.

O LOFTIEST peak of all the noble range

Towering majestic, massive height on height,

Far as the eye can reach, in endless change

Of line and tint and curve, and dark and light, —

Nearest the midnight stars, O proudest hill,

How quiet are thy paths ! how still, how still !

In what unbroken silence dost thou lie,

Beneath a sunlit or a storm-filled sky,

Rain, wind, or trailing cloud, or whirling snow,

'Neath the first golden touch of rising day,

Or mellow evening's last empurpling ray,

Untouched, unmoved from granite top to base,

When fiercest thunderbolts about thee play,

As by the shadow of a bird below,

That drifts some summer morn across thy face!

Unshaken since that hour when long ago,

Eons on hoary eons far away,

When mayhap 'mid the fiery pangs and throes

Of earth and sea, fused in one molten glow

Of liquid flame, thy swelling grandeur rose !

This of thy garnered secrets didst thou yield,

As through slow ages our dim eyes, unsealed,

With halting wisdom learned to read at last

Thy own brief story from the lips locked fast

In stony silence. Yet we could not wrest

One hint, one whisper, from thy rock-ribbed breast,

Solving the primal, awful mystery

Of life and death, which has unceasingly,

Since earth and time and consciousness began,

Haunted and mocked the searching soul of man.

Man in his greatness yet how infinite small !

Thou shalt behold his empires rise and fall,

His marble cities crumble to decay,

And of himself, for all his boasting, see

Unnumbered generations pass away,

And leave no lasting sign beneath the sky

840 The Venetian in Bergamo, 1588.

More than the chaff the chilly wind sweeps by.
While thou endurest in changeless majesty.
And still while furthest oceans ebb and flow,
And day and night their light and shadow trace,
And countless rolling seasons come and go,
Through russet autumn or the summer's green,
The winter's white or springtide's tender sheen, —
On thee there dwells from granite top to base,
Through all thy trackless wastes and paths untrod.
The deathless, everlasting Peace of God !

Stuart Sterne.

THE VENETIAN IN BERGAMO, 1588.

HARK, the sea is calling, calling ! Prithee, Surgeon, let me go !
Venice calls me ; would you keep me like a slave in Bergamo ?
Let me forth and haste to Venice, down the many-channeled Po.

Hear the little waves a-lapping on the cold gray Lido sand,
Each a whisper, each a signal clearer than a beck'ning hand ;
Were you once a youth, a lover, yet you do not understand ?

I or you, which best should know the dovelike language of my home?
All the little waves they lisp it as they break in rainbow foam,
And the sunbeams flash its greeting from the Redentore's dome.

Will you tell me 't is the May wind stirs the orchard-trees again,
And that yonder Adriatic 's but the vernal Lombard plain ?
Ah, you never were in Venice, and you plead to me in vain.

You convince me, you, a stranger ? Nay, I marvel how you dare
Talk of beauty, boast your mountains, call your crag-built cities fair,
Spend your praise on glen and river : Beauty dwelleth only there !

Could you conjure up the colors of your most ethereal dream, —
Roseleaf dawn and Tyrian sunset, turquoise noon and diamond beam,
Tint of sea-shells, nameless jewels that in rippling waters gleam,

Liquid, lovely, evanescent, — still you could not quite retrieve
Just the magic of the mantle sea and sky for Venice weave,
From the earliest flush of morning to the last faint glow of eve.

That the mantle! She who wears it mocks the brush and ties the tongue
Of all painters and all poets ; only we from Venice sprung
Feel the charm that passes painting, and the queenliness unsung.

The Venetian in Bergamo, 1588. 841

Gondoliers, row not too swiftly through the opaline lagoon ;
Venice dazzles, — let me slowly teach my eyes to bear her noon,
Drop by drop drink in her splendor, else the flooded senses swoon.

Ere we reach the Doge's Palace take me through the narrow ways
Where the quiet seldom ceases and the shadow longer stays,
Where we children swam together in the sultry summer days.

All unchanged, but fairer, dearer ! At yon steps I '11 disembark ;
Well I know the winding passage that will bring me to St. Mark,
Whom I thank first, and Madonna ; then to greet my kinsmen. — Hark'!

As of old the south wind hoarsens, and the angry billows beat
On the Lido, sand and sea-wall, mighty wind that brings the fleet
Like a flock of homing pigeons, rushing to the Mother's feet.

In they sweep past Malamocco, up the channel serpentine :
Swift, majestic galleys driven by the long oars, line on line ;
Many a battle prize in convoy, vessels of a strange design ;

Merchantmen with swelling canvas, broad of beam and laden deep;
Saucy, gaudy-sailed feluccas ; fisher-boats that lurch and leap :
Shuttles in the loom of Venice, tow'rds the Grand Canal they sweep.

They have come at last to haven, as their guns a welcome roar,

Furled their sails and dropt their anchors, and the skiffs are ferrying o'er

Admiral and crews and captains to the Piazzetta shore.

In august array to meet them Doge and Procurators fare,

Women watching from the windows, throngs huzzaing in the Square, —

Oh, the women's eyes in Venice, and the sunbeams in their hair !

Here are surly Turkish captives from Aleppo and beyond,

Bearers of the Cyprus tribute, hostages from Trebizond,

Slaves that roamed the hot equator, swarthy Moors, and Persians blond.

Some as spoils of Venice Victrix, some to barter, some to see ;
By her strength or by her splendor, whatsoever men may be,
Eager friend or foe reluctant, Venice draws them to her quay.

God be thanked who brings me to thee, Mother of the twofold crown, —
Thine the Beauty more than mortal, Strength to beat thy foemen down, —
Humblest of thy sons, I beg thee use my life for thy renown !

What, again beside me, Surgeon ? Still pent up in Bergamo ?

But a wound-bred vision, quotha ? Thick your mountain shadows grow.

Hark, the sea is calling, calling ! Venice summons, and I go.

William Roscoe Thayer.

842

A New Estimate of Cromwell.

A NEW ESTIMATE OF CROMWELL.

THE most notable contributions to the
historical literature of England during
the year 1897 are two volumes by Sam-
uel R. Gardiner : the Oxford lectures,
Cromwell's Place in History, published
in the spring ; and the second volume of
History of the Commonwealth and Pro-
tectorate, which appeared in the autumn.
These present, probably, a new view of
Cromwell.

If one love a country or an historic
epoch, it is natural for the mind to seek
a hero to represent it. We are fortu-
nate in having Washington and Lincoln,
whose characters and whose lives sum
up well the periods in which they were
our benefactors. But if we look upon
our history as being the continuation of
a branch of that of England, who is the
political hero in the nation from which
we sprang who represents a great prin-
ciple or idea that we love to cherish ?
Hampden might answer if only we knew
more about him. It occurs to me that
Gray, in his poem which is read and
conned from boyhood to age, has done
more than any one else to spread abroad
the fame of Hampden. Included in the
same stanza with Milton and with Crom-
well, he seems to the mere reader of the
poem to occupy the same place in his-
tory. In truth, however, as Mr. Gar-
diner writes, " it is remarkable how lit-
tle can be discovered about Hampden.
All that is known is to his credit, but
his greatness appears from the impres-
sion he created upon others more than
from the circumstances of his own life
as they have been handed down to us."

The minds of boys educated under
Puritan influences before and during the
war of secession accordingly turned to
Cromwell. Had our Puritan ancestors
remained at home till the civil war in
England, they would have fought un-
der Oliver, and it is natural that their

descendants should place a halo about
the head of this great leader. All boys
of the time I speak of, between seven-
teen and twenty-two, who were interest-
ed in history, read Macaulay, the first
volume of whose history appeared in
1848, and they found a hero to their
mind in Cromwell. Carlyle's Cromwell
was published thi-ee years before, and
those who could digest stronger food
found the great man therein portrayed
a chosen one of God to lead his people in
the right path. Everybody echoed the
thought of Carlyle when he averred that
ten years more of Oliver Cromwell's life
would have given another history to all
the centuries of England.

In these two volumes Gardiner pre-
sents an entirely different conception of
Cromwell from that of Carlyle and Ma-
caulay, and in greater detail. We ar-
rive at Gardiner's notion by degrees,
being prepared by the reversal of some
of our pretty well established opinions
about the Puritans. Macaulay's epi-
grammatic sentence touching their atti-
tude to amusements undoubtedly colored
the opinions of men for at least a gen-
eration. " The Puritan hated bear-bait-
ing," he says, " not because it gave pain
to the bear, but because it gave pleasure
to the spectators." How coolly Gardiner
disposes of this well -turned rhetorical
phrase : " The order for the complete
suppression of bear - baiting and bull-
baiting at Southwark and elsewhere was
grounded, not, as has been often repeat-
ed, on Puritan aversion to amusements
giving ' pleasure to the spectators,' but
upon Puritan disgust at the immorality
which these exhibitionsfostered." Again
he writes : " Zealous as were the leaders
of the Commonwealth in the suppression
of vice, they displayed but little of that
sour austerity with which they have fre-
quently been credited. On his way to

A New Estimate of Cromwell.

843

Dunbar, Cromwell laughed heartily at
the sight of one soldier overturning a
full cream tub and slamming it down on
the head of another, whilst on his return
from Worcester he spent a day hawking
in the fields near Aylesbury. ' Oliver,'
we hear, ' loved an innocent jest.' Music
and song were cultivated in his family.
If the graver Puritans did not admit
what has been called ' promiscuous dan-
cing ' into their households, they made
no attempt to prohibit it elsewhere. In
the spring of 1651 appeared the Eng-
lish Dancing Master, containing rules for
country dances, and the tunes by which
they were to be accompanied."

Macaulay's description of Cromwell's
army has so pervaded our literature as
to be accepted as historic truth ; and de-
spite the acumen of Green, he seems, con-
sciously or unconsciously, to have been
affected by it, which is not a matter of
wonderment, indeed, for such is its rhe-
torical force that it leaves an impression
hard to be obliterated. Macaulay writes :
" That which chiefly distinguished the
army of Cromwell from other armies
was the austere morality and the fear
of God which pervaded all ranks. It is
acknowledged by the most zealous Roy-
alists that in that singular camp no oath
was heard, no drunkenness or gambling
was seen, and that during the long do-
minion of the soldiery the property of
the peaceable citizen and the honor of
woman were held sacred. If outrages
were committed, they were outrages of a
very different kind from those of which
a victorious army is generally guilty.
No servant girl complained of the rough
gallantry of the redcoats ; not an ounce
of plate was taken from the shops of the
goldsmiths ; but a Pelagian sermon, or
a window on which the Virgin and Child
were painted, produced in the Puritan
ranks an excitement which it required
the utmost exertions of the officers to
quell. One of Cromwell's chief difficul-
ties was to restrain his musketeers and
dragoons from invading by main force

the pulpits of ministers whose discourses,
to use the language of that time, were not
savory."

What a different impression we get
from Gardiner ! " Much that has been
said of Cromwell's army has no evidence
behind it," he declares. " The majority
of the soldiers were pressed men, select-
ed because they had strong bodies, and
not because of their religion. The re-
mainder were taken out of the armies
already in existence. . . . The distinc-
tive feature of the army was its officers.
All existing commands having been va-
cated, men of a distinctly Puritan and
for the most part of an Independent type
were appointed to their places. . . . The
strictest discipline was enforced, and the
soldiers, whether Puritan or not, were
thus brought firmly under the control of
officers bent upon the one object of de-
feating the King."

To those who have regarded the men
who governed England, from the time the
Long Parliament became supreme to the
death of Cromwell, as saints in conduct
as well as in name, Mr. Gardiner's facts
about the members of the rump of the
Long Parliament will be an awakening.
" It was notorious," he records, " that
many members who entered the House
poor were now rolling in wealth." From
Gardiner's references and quotations, it
is not a strained inference that in sub-
jection to lobbying, in log-rolling and
corruption, this Parliament would hardly
be surpassed by a Pennsylvania legisla-
ture. As to personal morality, he by
implication confirms the truth of Crom-
well's bitter speech on the memorable
day when he forced the dissolution of
the Long Parliament. " Some of you,"
he said, " are whoremasters. Others,"
he continued, pointing to one and an-
other with his hands, " are drunkards,
and some corrupt and unjust men, and
scandalous to the profession of the gos-
pel. It is not fit that you should sit as
a Parliament any longer."

While I am well aware that to him

844

A New Estimate of Cromwell.

who makes but a casual study of any
historic period matters will appear fresh
that to the master of it are well-worn in-
ferences and generalizations, and while
therefore I can pretend to offer only a
shallow experience, I confess that on
the points to which I have referred I
received new light, and it prepared me
for the overturning of the view of Crom-
well which I had derived from the Pu-
ritanical instruction of my early days
and from Macaulay.

In his foreign policy Cromwell was
irresolute, vacillating, and tricky. " A
study of the foreign policy of the Protec-
torate," writes Mr. Gardiner, " reveals a
distracting maze of fluctuations. Oliver
is seen alternately courting France and
Spain, constant only in inconstancy."

Cromwell lacked constructive states-
manship. " The tragedy of his career
lies in the inevitable result that his ef-
forts to establish religion and morality
melted away as the morning mist, whilst
his abiding influence was built upon the
vigor with which he promoted the ma-
terial aims of his countrymen." In an-
other place Mr. Gardiner says : " Crom-
well's negative work lasted ; his positive
work vanished away. His constitutions
perished with him, his Protectorate de-
scended from the proud position to which
he had raised it, his peace with the Dutch
Republic was followed by two wars with
the United Provinces, his alliance with
the French monarchy only led to a suc-
cession of wars with France lasting into
the nineteenth century. All that lasted
was the support given by him to mari-
time enterprise, and in that he followed
the tradition of the governments preced-
ing him."

What is Cromwell's place in history ?
Thus Mr. Gardiner answers the ques-
tion : " He stands forth as the typical
Englishman of the modern world. . . .
It is in England that' his fame has grown
up since the publication of Carlyle's
monumental work, and it is as an Eng-
lishman that he must be judged. . . .

With Cromwell's memory it has fared as
with ourselves. Royalists painted him
as a devil. Carlyle painted him as the
masterful saint who suited his peculiar
Valhalla. It is time for us to regard
him as he really was, with all his physi-
cal and moral audacity, with all his ten-
derness and spiritual yearnings, in the
world of action what Shakespeare was
in the world of thought, the greatest be-
cause the most typical Englishman of all
time. This, in the most enduring sense,
is Cromwell's place in history."

The most difficult thing for me to give
up is that Cromwell was not one link in
the historic chain that brought about the
Revolution of 1688, with its blessed com-
bination of liberty and order. I have
loved to think, as Carlyle expressed it :
" ' Their works follow them,' as I think
this Oliver Cromwell's works have done
and are still doing ! We have had our
' Revolution of '88 ' officially called ' glo-
rious,' and other Revolutions not yet
called glorious ; and somewhat has been
gained for poor mankind. Men's ears
are not now slit off by rash Officiality.
Officiality will for long henceforth be
more cautious about men's ears. The
tyrannous star chambers, branding irons,
chimerical kings and surplices at Allhal-
lowtide, they are gone or with immense
velocity going. Oliver's works do follow
him ! "

In these two volumes of Gardiner it is
not from what is said, but from what is
omitted, that one may deduce the au-
thor's opinion that Cromwell's career as
Protector contributed in no wise to the
Revolution of 1688. But touching this
matter he has thus written me : "I am
inclined to question your view that Crom-
well paved the way for the Revolution
of 1688, except so far as his victories
and the King's execution frightened off
James II. Pym and Hampden did pave
the way, but Cromwell's work took other
lines. The Instrument of Government
was framed on quite different principles,
and the extension of the suffrage and re-

A Study of the French.

845

formed franchise found no place in Eng-
land until 1832. It was not Cromwell's
fault that it was so."

If I relinquish this one of my old his-
toric notions, I feel that I must do it for
the reason that Lord Auckland agreed
with Macaulay after reading the first vol-
ume of his history. " I had also hated
Cromwell more than I now do," he
said ; " for I always agree with Tom
Macaulay ; and it saves trouble to agree
with him at once, because he is sure to
make you do so at last."

I asked Professor Edward Channing,
of Harvard College, who teaches Eng-
lish history of the Tudor and Stuart pe-

riods, his opinion of Gardiner. " I firm-
ly believe," he told me, " that Mr. Gar-
diner is the greatest English historical
writer who has appeared since Gibbon.
He has the instinct of the truth-seeker as
no other English student I know of has
shown it since the end of the last cen-
tury."

General J. D. Cox, a statesman and a
lawyer, a student of history and of law,
writes me : " In reading Gardiner, I feel
that I am sitting at the feet of an his-
torical chief justice, a sort of John Mar-
shall in his genius for putting the final
results of learning in the garb of simple
common sense."

James Ford Rhodes.

A STUDY OF THE FRENCH.

MR. J. E. C. BODLEY: has written a
book 1 which challenges comparison with
the works of Mr. Bryce on the Amer-
ican Commonwealth, Sir Donald Wal-
lace on Russia, and de Tocqueville on
Democracy in America. The possibili-
ty of a book which should combine the
philosophic insight and treatment of de
Tocqueville with the precise, multifarious
personal observations of Arthur Young's
Travels in pre-Revolutionary France ap-
pears to have suggested itself to Mr.
Bodley ; and although he expressly dis-
claims the imitation of either, both these
writers were evidently before his mind,
for he begins by saying that it behooves
any one who has undertaken such a labor
as his to consider the methods of their
two masterpieces. Whatever his ideal
may have been, Mr. Bodley has at all
events written a notable book. He has
devoted seven years' residence in France
to his task ; he has enjoyed very wide
and unusual opportunities for seeing

1 France. By JOHN EDWARD COURTENAY
BODLEY. In two volumes. New York : The
Macmillan Company. 1898.

French places and French people of
every sort and rank; and while his vol-
umes do not contain much that we
should have expected to find under the
title he has chosen, they are graced with
a wealth of allusion, anecdote, and inci-
dent which illuminate subjects he does
not formally treat, and it is not too
much to say that Bodley's France will
hereafter be essential, as well to students
as to every English-speaking person who
cares to know the state of government
and society in contemporary France.

In the preface to a portion of his his-
tory of Cardinal de Richelieu which has
lately been published as a separate vol-
ume, M. Hanotaux says of France that
it is " one of the most perfect social or-
ganisms which the history of humanity
has ever known. . . . The more we
learn of the history of a great people,
the more we perceive that the substance
changes little; that even across the ages
the great lines remain the same ; and
that the mere thumb-touch which at a
given moment determines the character-
istic features of a nation moulds them

846

A /Study of the French.

for all time. The French people has
now existed for more than one thou-
sand years. It is ever the same, gentle,
light, mobile in its temper, easily given
to enthusiasm, easily discouraged, easy
to govern, easy to mislead, capable of
generous enthusiasms and of the wildest
violence, agile of wit, warm of heart.
It is still the people which Caesar saw,
and which throughout the ages all who
have approached it and known it have
found the same. It becomes animated,
inflamed, and excited, and then of a
sudden unbends and laughs. It often
earns the hatred and always wins the
pardon of other nations. A foundation
of seriousness, courage, and good sense
saves and sustains it in the most criti-
cal circumstances. When Paris warms
up and boils, the provinces calm down.
Even when revolution rumbles, people
amuse themselves. Even when all seems
lost, hope remains deep-seated in French
hearts. This people is, in spite of all,
incurably optimistic, and the fogs and
gloom emanating from without have hard-
ly affected its good demeanor or caused
the smile on its lips to hesitate."

Mr. Bodley's opinion is that, after
Greater Britain, France is the most in-
teresting member of the human family.
Those who have seen the new birth and
studied the consolidation of the mighty
German fatherland, and who have wit-
nessed the accomplishment of the more
difficult and almost equally important
work of Cavour in Italy, cannot quite
agree in this respect with Mr. Bodley,
who appears to regard Germany mainly
as a breeder of princesses for the rest
of Christendom. Still less can they
wholly agree with M. Hanotaux. The
Gauls are, indeed, to-day as Caesar found
them, but Tacitus' description of the
German tribes can be still fitted to the
German people ; and where in the his-
tory of humanity is there a more preg-
nant and thrilling episode than the pro-
clamation of the Kaiser by the German
princes, in the great hall of Versailles ?

Where is there a sterner lesson of the ne-
cessity for a national righteousness than
Bismarck's and Moltke's splendid fulfill-
ment of a long revenge for le Grand
Monarque's appropriation of Elsass and
Lorraine, his thirty or more unprovoked
raids across the Rhine, and the insults
of Napoleon's soldiers, of which every
German family has its traditions ? The
French are a great and interesting peo-
ple, but their place is not what they
themselves and their panegyrists assume
it to be. M. Hanotaux's sentences are,
however, quoted at length, because they
give even better than Mr. Bodley him-
self the reason for his opinion about
France, and also because they illustrate
the difficulty of studying, still more of
judging, the institutions of a people so
described.

For all practical purposes, the Revolu-
tion was, as Mr. Bodley has put it, the
beginning of modern France. Yet for
an American there remain many aston-
ishing relics of the ancient regime which
survived what we are apt to regard as
a social and political deluge. Aigues-
Mortes stands to-day — except that the
Mediterranean has receded from its
walls — exactly as it was when Louis IX.
embarked from it on his two crusades ;
the miracles, and the sublime or infan-
tile faith, as one chooses to regard it,
shown at Lourdes belong rather to the
age of St. Louis than to the age of steam
and electricity ; one could see, a few
years ago, and perhaps to-day can still
see, in the vaults of the abbey of Fonte-
vrault, the original effigies of Henry II.
and his son, Richard Coaur de Lion, in
their royal robes ; and even in practi-
cal business the land is full of evidences
of a society we supposed was effaced.
In a certain country place known to the
writer there is, for instance, a mill which
has been held for three hundred years
at the same nominal rent, on condition
that the tenant should deliver at the cha-
teau every spring a salmon of a certain
weight ; and having delivered his fish,

A Study of the French.

847

the tenant was thereupon entitled to dine
with the landlord and to wear his hat at
dinner. Salmon have ceased to ascend
the river which turns the mill, and the
miller must procure his fish at great ex-
pense from Paris, but he does it, and
gets his dinner.

If the Revolution was not, therefore,
so complete a deluge as we have ima-
gined, it was nevertheless a tremendous
event, and has controlled the minds of
Frenchmen for nearly a century. The
July monarchy, the revolution of 1848,
the second empire, and the third repub-
lic were all proclaimed as asserting the
principles of the Revolution. Jules Si-
mon said it came " like the law from
Sinai ; " and in March, 1898, the Comte
de Hun, in his address on his reception
into the Academy, said, " The French
Revolution is in this century the divid-
ing line between men, the touchstone
of their ideas." Only of late has the
exact criticism and vast knowledge of
M. Taine, in his Origines de la France
Contemporaine, begun to undermine the
influence of the Revolution, until now it
is beginning to be regarded as a mere
historical phenomenon, "like the wars
of religion under the last of the Valois."

However it be now regarded, it is
clear, at least, that the Revolution re-
organized France, and Mr. Bodley well
describes its apotheosis as the scene in
Notre Dame when the Vicar of Christ,
surrounded by the Revolutionary gen-
erals in unwonted trappings, crowned
Bonaparte as Emperor, and then the
latter, unheeding the gesture of the Pon-
tiff, himself crowned the ex-mistress of
Barras as Empress of the French.

The newly made Emperor finished as
well as glorified the work of the Revo-
lution ; and after he had been succeeded
by Louis XVIII., and the Bourbons and
the allies had put back the hands of the
clock, as they thought, what was left of
the Revolution was the work of Napo-
leon ; " that is, the whole framework of
modern France." Napoleon's, more than

Richelieu's, was the thumb-touch which
" determines the characteristic features
of the nation." He created the whole
centralized administrative system of
France ; he organized the departments
and the work of their officials. It is a
pity that Mr. Bodley does not give us an
account of this system and of the manner
of its working, for it is the chief tangible
result of the Revolution. No other one
institution has so deeply affected French
character by teaching men to look for
what they want, not within and to them-
selves, but outside to the authorities ; or
has so widely influenced French politics
by giving to the central government an
influence over elections unknown in Eng-
lish-speaking communities. Besides this
administrative system, the relations of
church and state are still regulated by
Napoleon's concordat. The university,
which is the basis of public education, the
codes, the Conseil d'Etat, the judicial and
fiscal systems, and in fine " every institu-
tion which a law-abiding Frenchman re-
spects, from the Legion of Honor to the
Bank of France and the Coine'die Fran-
caise, was either formed or reorganized
by Napoleon." He left France exhaust-
ed after the twenty years of intoxication
with destruction and victory, so that the
restoration and the white flag were wel-
come ; but presently the growth of the
Napoleonic legend began. Las Casas'
Memorial of St. Helena and Thiers'
History of the Consulate and the Empire
nourished it ; and after Louis Philippe
had brought home the Emperor's ashes,
and interred them with great pomp at
the Invalides, the sentiment was so strong
that the mere name of Louis Napoleon,
who was then an unknown personality,
swept him through the presidency of the
third republic and a dictatorship into the
imperial chair. Within the past five
years, after Sedan and the debdcle, we
have again seen, in plays and numerous
biographies, a visible recrudescence of
the legend which, as Mr. Bodley points
out, may one day place at the disposal

848

A Study of the French.

of a leader with only the genius of one
of Napoleon's marshals, but who happens
to touch the popular fancy, the disci-
plined legions which the democracy now
maintains on a war footing, compared
with which the conquering armies of Bo-
naparte were but ill-equipped levies.

Besides the work of Napoleon, the
French Revolution bequeathed to posteri-
ty three principles which are still writ-
ten all over France, arid as to the fate
of which Mr. Bodley inquires at some
length. " Liberty, Equality, and Frater-
nity," what has become of them ? There
is a saying, attributed to Mr. Rudyard
Kipling, that the French know nothing at
all about liberty, have an offensive pas-
sion for equality, and like to talk about
fraternity ; that the English never fra-
ternize with anybody, know nothing of
equality and care nothing for it except
before the law, but insist always and
everywhere on liberty, and will sacrifice
anything they possess to get it ; that the
American has loose notions about liberty,
assumes the fact of equality with every-
body, and is ready to fraternize with any-
body.

So far as France is concerned, there
is a good deal of wisdom in the saying.
Liberty to a Frenchman, as Mr. Bod-
ley truly says, is " a dogma to define or
to expound rather than a factor in the
every - day life of a community ; " and
certainly, from the standpoint of Eng-
lish law, the fundamental safeguards of
personal liberty do not exist in France.
Domiciliary visits of the police, under-
taken on purely ex parte denunciations,
are lawful, and the procedure in the case
of persons accused of a breach of the
criminal law seems incredible to men
of the Anglo-Saxon race. The French
theory is that an accused person is pre-
sumed to be guilty until his innocence
is proved. He may be kept in solitary
confinement, interrogated day by day in
private audiences by a magistrate who
seeks to extort an avowal of guilt, and
all the time the police are at work to

get up evidence against the untried pri-
soner, who may even be in ignorance of
the charge against him ; and only in
1897 was a law passed which permitted
the accused to have counsel in preparing
his defense. The accounts of the Zola
trial which have recently been published
show the sort of performances which are
possible when the defendant is finally
brought into court. This procedure is
merely indicative of the indifference of
Frenchmen to what we consider the es-
sentials of personal liberty. The same
indifference is manifest in many other
directions. A Frenchman, as he looks
backward, is apt to think of himself at
the Lyce'es, for instance, as having been
in a prison where he was subjected to per-
petual espionage and servitude. From
every sort of subordinate officials, private
as well as public, the individual suffers
infractions of his personal liberty ; and
often these infractions seem to be in-
spired, as is frequently the case on an
American railroad or in a city hall, by
the mere desire to convince the traveler
or the citizen that he is one of the mass,
and no better than his neighbors. In
matters of opinion, too, the objection to
letting people think what they like is
apparently insuperable. The virulence
of the odium theologicum in France can
hardly be imagined in this country by
any one who does not know the tradi-
tions of the Unitarian movement, or has
not had the opportunity to observe the
temper — and absence of humor — of
the members of a Presbyterian general
convention engaged at the same moment
in revising their creed and prosecuting
some of their members for heresy. In
France there is no personal toleration
for agnostics, and Mr. Bodley says that
Voltaire pccupies there the place which
" Jews and Turks " hold in the English
liturgy. On the other hand, he quotes
with approval from the Journal des De*-
bats a statement that ." no one has any
idea of what a noxious and insupporta-
ble creature is the anti-clerical of the

A /Study of the French.

849

provinces." He gives an instance where
a postmaster in the Vende'e was warned
by the sous-pre'fet that he had been
observed to be a constant attendant at
church, and that one of his daughters
sang in a chapel choir, and he was there-
fore in danger of being considered a
" clerical." The warning was intended
to be a friendly one, and the postmaster
thereupon ceased going to church.

As to equality, Mr. Bodley is of the
opinion that it is neither found nor cul-
tivated among Frenchmen, except in the
sense mentioned by de Tocqueville, who
said that equality on the lips of a French
politician signified, " No one shall be in
a better position than mine ; " but this,
Mr. Bodley thinks, is no reproach to
them, for if it were otherwise French-
men would have "ceased to belong to
the human family." Absolute equality,
we should all agree, is a mere philo-
sophic abstraction. It was possible for a
comparatively primitive community, in
which there were no great dissimilarities
of fortune, taste, or education, to adopt
Jefferson's declaration that " all men are
created free and equal." But that de-
claration was promptly interpreted to
mean political equality for white men.
Taking equality in that sense, Mr. Bod-
ley has hardly done the French justice.
He notices that civilization has sunk
down among the people, so that it is
more difficult in France than elsewhere
to judge from the conversation or ad-
dress of the man in the railway carriage
or in the street what his position really
is. That is true, and it indicates a con-
siderable advance toward equality. The
recognition by the republic of titles to
which no privileges are attached is of
no significance, because apparently most
of the titles are self -conferred, and the
passion for the Legion of Honor, like the
desire for knighthoods and baronetcies
in England, usually to please the appli-
cant's wife, is no more important than
the passion of numerous otherwise de-
cent people jn the United States to travel
VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 488. 54

on a free pass. Mr. Labouchere upholds
the English titles and even the peerage
as a most valuable party asset, and most
of our great railroad managers like to
have passes to distribute in moderation.
They certainly ^like to ride on them ; and
though the use of passes may show an
absence of self-respect, and may be a piti-
ful and comic evidence of an apostate
democracy, neither passes, nor titles, nor
the Legion of Honor show the absence
of equality before the law.

In regard to fraternity, there is not
much to be said, and there never has
been, since the fever of the Revolution
spent itself. The intimacy of strangers
in times of great public excitement is a
well-known phenomenon, and there were
public dinner-tables spread through the
Rue de Rivoli before the days of the Ter-
ror ; but otherwise the doctrine of fra-
ternity existed, and exists, for purposes
of declamation only. Mr. Bodley notes
the cruelty which has often been shown
to Frenchmen by Frenchmen, the at-
tachment of the French to the soil, their
consequent inaptitude for colonization,
the absence of race patriotism, and the
separation of aristocratic and plutocratic
society — which are rapidly becoming
identical — from the intellectual and po-
litical side of the nation. The isolation
of society from affairs, and its surrender
to mere amusement, is greatly regretted
by Frenchmen, who think its tendency is
to make Paris, the centre of society, not
the intellectual, still less the political
capital of Europe, — which is what they
like to think it used to be, — but a great
cosmopolitan casino, given over to tlve
idle, frivolous, and rich of all nations.
That isolation is not, however, peculiar
to France ; we hear a good deal about
it in America, and it is beginning to be
said of " smart " society in England,
where a good conservative will tell you
it is a necessary consequence of giving a
vote to everybody and of paying salaries
to your legislators. Perhaps those causes
are efficient in producing the result ; per-

850

haps also in America it is largely ima-
ginary. It may be that such separation
of rich and educated people from affairs
is a necessary consequence of democra-
cy ; but certainly no state is any worse
off because of it than it was, or would
be again, under the pre - revolutionary
regimes of exclusive privilege to those
who now hold aloof.

When Mr. Bodley comes to consider
the actual constitution and form of gov-
ernment in France, he is not compact,
and a better and more orderly view than
he gives can be obtained elsewhere, —
in Burgess's Political Science and Con-
stitutional Law, for example. In con-
sidering, however, how the constitution
and the machinery of government have
actually worked during the past twenty-
five years, Mr. Bodley's book is vivid
and admirable. It might almost be
called a history of the third republic,
and nowhere else can the English reader
get such a complete and accurate view of
what has been happening in France dur-
ing the past generation, or of the people
through whom it has come about.

The French President is " the head of
the state." Mr. Bodley gives us a brief
history of the term of each President ;
then goes on to treat, in the longest divi-
sion of his book, the parliamentary sys-
tem ; and finally gives a sketch of the va-
rious political parties. The constitution
of the Senate ; the method of legislation
through the bureaus, which suggests our
committee system ; the method of regis-
tering votes, of elections ; the corruption
of politicians, the restriction of corrupt
practices ; the ministers, their functions
and positions ; the origin and purposes of
the parliamentary groups, are all treated,
but the general impression left by the
parliamentary history of the last repub-
lic is of disorderly fractions of parties
headed by innumerable ministries, com-
posed almost wholly of unknown men,
hardly one of whom has held office for
a year, marching across the scene like
the battalions of a stage army. The

A Study of the French.

keynote of Mr. Bodley's treatment of
this part of his subject is contained in a
quotation from a romance of Disraeli's ;
though found in the introduction, it
might have been placed at the end of
the book as the author's conclusion : " ' I
go to a land,' said Tancred, ' that has
never been blessed by that fatal drollery
called a representative government.' "
This, comments Mr. Bodley, it is useful
to recall at a time " when France, having
made unexampled trial of parliamentary
government, has found it to be, in the
words of its consummate master, a ' fatal
drollery.' "

One thing of which we can learn
much from the French is in reference
to elections and the selection of candi-
dates. Their system is far simpler,
more democratic, and cheaper than ours.
" No nomination or similar formality is
needed as preliminary to a parliamenta-
ry candidature." All that is necessary
is for a candidate to make a declaration,
witnessed by a mayor, that he intends to
run in a certain constituency, which de-
claration must be lodged five days be-
fore the election in_the prefecture of the
department in which the constituency is
situated. Another thing that we ought
to learn from the French is the disgrace
of a shameless, venal, and pornographic
press. It is quite possible, if M. Pres-
sense*, the accomplished editor of Le
Temps, or any other Frenchman of sim-
ilar position, had ever read the pounds
of trivial stuff furnished by our Sunday
journals, or had studied during the last
six months what it is possible for our
newspapers to accomplish, by sheer igno-
rant or sinful misrepresentation, that he
might say the Americans could learn no-
thing bad from France. But our news-
papers can hardly be bought with money
alone, and it is well known to be an inci-
dent of every important financial transac-
tion in Paris that a large payment must
be made to the press ; partly for this
reason a good deal of French business
is now transacted in the city of London.

A /Study of the French.

851

This system 1 was well enough shown
during the Panama scandals ; and on
one memorable occasion when it was pro-
posed to investigate such payments, a
minister went into the tribune and advo-
cated the quashing of the inquiry, on the
ground that such payments, however re-
grettable they might be, were customary
in France.

One final observation made by Mr.
Bodley it is good for us to mention, and
our countrymen may just now well take
it to heart. He comments on the growth
of pessimism and the joylessness of the
French people. The old blitheness and
courtesy of the people have gone. This
change, he says, dates from the Franco-
Prussian war. The observation is just.
The French have waged war for the sake
of humanity and to liberate the oppressed
of adjacent lands ; they have satisfied
the lust for fighting, which we are told in
these days strong men should feel ; they
have sacked the capitals of Europe, and
they have quaffed the cup of glory to the
full. But they have transgressed the
law.

Therefore they are changed, and are
silent, stern, weighted with taxes, com-
pelled to a frugality we cannot conceive,
wasting themselves from time to time in
wild colonial ventures for which they are
unfit, sickened with the mediocrity and
corruption of their rulers and governors,
and with the red spectre always before
them.

Retribution, human or divine, has
never been a popular doctrine among
transgressors, but let those who disbe-
lieve in it for nations study the history
of France. The writer recalls a scene
which enforced the lesson, and of which
the impression is indelible. He hap-
pened, on a lovely winter's day, to be

1 We do not at all mean that financial cor-
ruption is universal among French newspapers.

in the market-place at Frdjus, the town
to which Bonaparte returned from the
expedition to Egypt as the saviour of
France, and where he later landed from
Elba. It was the day on which the
young men who had attained the requi-
site age to render military service drew
for the numbers which decided in what
branch they were to serve. There were
perhaps a hundred of them, somewhat
undersized, looking less rather than more
than eighteen years of age. They were
dressed in their best, and were doing
their best to make a holiday of it. Most
of them were evidently poor, some of
them delicate looking, and many were
accompanied by their mothers or sisters.
Drawn from their vocations or from
school, they were about to become for
three years part of that vast military
machine which a century of liberty has
made necessary in France. A few of
those who were well-to-do had appar-
ently been indulging in stimulants, and
were going through the forms of a me-
chanical good time. On the cheeks of
a few the tears were running down, but
most of them were standing about look-
ing as silent and vacant as their friends
looked depressed. A sadder sight one
never saw, and of elation or gayety
there was no more suggestion than there
would have been among the youths of
Athens about to embark for the Mino-
taur. No American could see the sight
without thanking Heaven that his coun-
try was free from the necessity, or, as
he might then have supposed, the desire
to make such sacrifices as the scene re-
vealed ; and no American would then
have believed that within three years he
would hear the President of the United
States reproached with having tried to
avert a war.

There are honorable exceptions, but apparently
they are only exceptions.

852

Henry George's Political Economy.

HENRY GEORGE'S POLITICAL ECONOMY.

To be a teacher is one thing ; to be a
reformer is to be more and less. To
possess but a single idea is often intoler-
able weakness ; to be possessed of but a
single idea is often intolerant strength.
To propound an economic theory is an
affair of intellect ; to propagate an eco-
nomic gospel is a matter of heart and
soul and strength and mind. To those
who are at all familiar with the writings
of Henry George, the key to his influ-
ence is not far to seek. He was a re-
former ; heart and soul and mind and
strength, he was possessed of one idea ;
he was the eloquent apostle of an eco-
nomic gospel, — the " new philosophy of
the natural order, best known as the Sin-
gle Tax." Here are his weakness and
strength, his narrowness and breadth, his
power for good and power for harm. In
earlier and later writings, controversial
or explanatory, the same merits and the
same defects appear.

Obviously, a single set of criteria may
not be applied to gospel and to science.
For while the scientist is everlastingly
seeking the truth, the apostle is proclaim-
ing the everlasting truth. The one is
calm, cool, and dispassionate ; the other,
enthusiastic, ardent, and intolerant.

Henry George's apostolic fervor, no
less than the supplementary relation of
this posthumous volume * to his earlier
work, is sufficiently indicated by an ex-
tract from the preface, supposed to have
been written in 1894, fifteen years af-
ter the first appearance of Progress and
Poverty : " On the night on which I fin-
ished the first chapter of Progress and
Poverty I felt that the talent entrusted
to me had been accounted for, — felt
more fully satisfied, more deeply grate-
ful, than if all the kingdoms of the earth

1 The Science of Political Economy. By
HENRY GEORGE. New York: Doubleday &
McClureCo. 1898.

had been laid at my feet ; and though
the years have justified, not diminished,
my faith, there is still left for me some-
thing to do." This " something " was no
less than the attempted reconstruction
of political economy, — begun in 1891,
and presented to the public in its incom-
plete condition, " exactly as it was left
by the author " at his sudden death in
October, 1897.

Like all his later writings, this book is
primarily a restatement of " the new phi-
losophy of the natural order, best known
as the Single Tax." Incidentally, how-
ever, it gives a cosmic introduction to
this philosophy; demonstrates the emi-
nently respectable ancestry of the single-
tax doctrines ; insists that they embody
all that is good in the economic thought
of the past ; and asserts vehemently that
in departing from these principles as im-
perfectly enunciated by the physiocrats
and Adam Smith, the science of political
economy during the present century has
first been betrayed into a mass of hope-
less confusions, and then been entirely
abandoned by its professed teachers in
favor of an incoherent pseudo- science
called " economics," — the subservient
tool of tremendous pecuniary, special,
anti- social, class interests which have
everywhere captured the educational
machinery of thinking and teaching in
higher institutions of learning. More in
contempt than in sorrow, he admits that
he once hoped for better tilings, and
thought the constructive work to which
he now addresses himself would be un-
dertaken by at least some of the pro-
fessed teachers of political economy.
"Had these teachers frankly admitted
the changes called for by Progress and
Poverty," he condescendingly suggests
that "some of the structure on which
they built might have been retained."
But that was not in human nature.

Henry George's Political Economy.

853

" What," he childishly exclaims, " were
their training and laborious study worth
if it could thus be ignored, and if one
who had never seen the inside of a col-
lege except when he had attempted to
teach professors the fundamentals of
their science, whose education was of the
mere common school branches, whose
alma mater had been the forecastle and
the printing-office, should be admitted to
prove the inconsistency of what they had
been teaching as science ? It was not to
be thought of. And so while a few of
these professional economists, driven to
say something about Progress and Pov-
erty, resorted to misrepresentation, the
majority preferred to rely upon their
official positions, in which they were se-
cure by the interests of the dominant
class, and to treat as beneath contempt
a book circulating by thousands in the
three great English-speaking countries,
and translated into all the important
modern languages."

The temper revealed by such passages
is obviously a painful contrast to the
devout magnanimity to which attention
has already been called, and seems at
first sight inconsistent with it. To the
unsympathetic reader there would seem
to be something almost pathological in
the persistent recurrence of such naive
autobiographic self-appreciation, on the
one hand, and such constant imputation
of stultification, subserviency, and un-
worthy motives to the learned, rich, and
dominant classes who have failed to re-
ceive Mr. George's gospel. In a smaller
personality than his, such self-compla-
cent vehemence and vilification would be
construed as evidence of personal pique,
chagrin, and conceit. In the main, how-
ever, the apostolic fervor, the self-appre-
ciation, and the unsparing denunciation
may all be traced to essentially the same
source. He is proclaiming a gospel. His
personality is sunk in his cause. He is
filled with what he himself compares to
an " ecstatic vision " of the only true
social and economic order. He believes

that his lips have been touched by a live
coal from off the altar of eternal justice.
He sees one thing, sees it intensely, —
has it so impressed upon his mind that
he sees it everywhere and always, to
the exclusion of everything else ; and he
cannot understand how any but the per-
versely blind can fail to see as he does.

It is characteristic of his religious fer-
vor that all this weight of disagreement
and of " contemptuous silence " never for
a moment shakes his faith in himself or
his mission. The common people have
heard him gladly; and the opposition
of the scribes, pharisees, and dominant
classes is no new experience in the pro-
pagation of truth. Christ, he explains
to us, also " always expressed sympathy
with the poor and repugnance of the
rich " and mighty, because poverty then,
like poverty to-day, was caused by un-
just wealth and power. " And so it is
utterly impossible, in this or in any con-
ceivable world, to abolish unjust poverty
without at the same time abolishing un-
just possessions." Unhappily, this type
of teaching increases social distrust, and
raises between social classes barriers of
suspicion that are not easily removed.

It is needless to say that the historical
and critical aspects of this latest work
are least valuable and least accurate.
Mr. George often exercises the propa-
gandist privilege of refuting the alleged
teachings of a group of economists in
the lump, sometimes simply demolishing
his own misapprehensions, or setting up
a man of straw, and securing a triumph
which may win the applause of the
groundlings, but cannot fail to make the
judicious grieve.

The constructive exposition has much
of the customary charm of the author's
genial, vigorous, imaginative style. The
chapters are very short, definite, and
correspondingly numerous. Endless as-
sistance is furnished the reader in the
form of preliminary tables of contents ;
the style is pitched at the level of the
average man, and enlivened with scraps

854

The Contributors' Club.

of history, biography, reminiscence, and
humor.

There is little in terminology and
arrangement to suggest any radical de-
parture. It is in the new definition of
accepted and fundamental terms that
the changes are wrought which lead the
reader by way of the new and restricted
meanings assigned to political economy,

wealth, and value to the inevitable con-
clusion of the single tax and its corol-
laries.

It is to be regretted that the exigen-
cies of active propaganda and economic
controversy have so embittered the leg-
acy which a powerful and dramatic per-
sonality has left to the thought of his
time.

THE CONTRIBUTORS' CLUB.

" THERE is a thin coating of ice over
The Club ol the bricks this morning," said
Old Stories. old Charles Harcourt, walk-
ing into the hall, where his man servant
stood waiting to engulf him in a sable-
lined coat. " I shall need overshoes,
Dinan."

Dinan laid the coat on the oaken set-
tle, and hurried away to find the over-
shoes. The moment his back was turned,
Mr. Harcourt lifted the heavy coat, with
much exertion, and struggled into it.
Then he seized his hat, gloves, and stick,
and, opening the door noiselessly, passed
out of the house as stealthily as a bur-
glar.

In his effort to hasten down Beacon
Hill, his feet slid along the icy sidewalk
several inches in front of his pivot-act-
ing stick, upon which he leaned heavily.
As he drew near the house of Judge
Langhorne, he saw his elderly friend
standing at the library window, nodding
his head and waving a newspaper at
him.

Forgetful of the ice, Harcourt raised
his stick and waved it merrily in reply.
Down dropped the sable coat in a heap
on the sidewalk, while the venerable silk
hat rolled into a pool of sawdust water.

" By George, sir ! " he cried to his
friend, as, a moment later, assisted by
the judge's butler, he mounted the steps
leading to the house, " I was fresh when

I started, but my antediluvian legs gave
way at last."

" Never mind, Charles," laughed the
judge, putting his hand upon the other
man's shoulder and drawing him into
the library. " We all know who ' stand
in slippery places,' eh ? But how does it
happen you are walking without Dinan's
arm to lean on ? I have n't seen you on
the street alone for six months ! "

" George," answered Harcourt solemn-
ly, " I have run away, and without my
overshoes ! What will my daughter
Anna say to me when I am once again
in my nursery on Beacon Hill ? I am
trying my legs, sir, and I find that I can
stand alone."

As he spoke, he rose with an effort
from the great leather chair into which
he had feebly sunk a moment before,
walked to the hearth, and stood with his
back to the fire in a boyish attitude, feet
wide apart and hands clasped behind
him ; but his ancient knees trembled, and
his shoulders had a weary stoop.

" George," he continued plaintively,
"life has not been a comedy with me
these last few years. How is it with you,
old fellow ? "

The judge peered through his specta-
cles quizzically at his friend.

" Are you suffering from an overdose
of nurturing, too ? " he asked, with a
half-sad laugh.

The Contributors' Club.

855

" Decidedly so," replied the other,
straightening his bent figure, which im-
mediately relaxed into its customary
stooping pose. " I am treated like a
modern baby. I am not allowed to walk
alone. I can't eat anything I wish, nor
at the time I choose ; late dinner is for-
bidden. I take a nap in the morning,
and one again in the afternoon. All my
business is transacted by my son. Why,
it is monstrous, sir, and it is unfair that
I should obey all my life. When / was
a child, you see, it was the fashion for
children to obey their parents ; and when
I became a man, it was then the fashion
for parents to obey their children. Why
should it be so ? " he asked, half seri-
ously, half jestingly.

The judge gave a dry laugh. " My
grandson accounted for it one day. I
was trying to make him understand the
advantages of a protective tariff, and he
contested every point. Finally I asked
him how it happened that he, who had
lived so short a time, should know so
much more than I about national affairs.
And what do you think the young dog
replied ? ' Oh, I began where you left
off-'"'

" Confound his impertinence ! " said
Harcourt, but nevertheless he joined his
friend in his delighted laugh at the " im-
pertinence " of the " young dog."

As their laughter died away, a little
echo of it came from the hall, followed
by a clear young voice.

"Oh, mamma," it said, "just hear
grandpa and that dear Mr. Harcourt
laugh ! I suppose they are telling each
other their century-old stories. I know
them by heart myself. I can say, ' Real-
ly ? ' now in just the right places with-
out listening. Poor old dears ! They
forget how often they have told them
before."

The front door closed on the reply, if
one were made, and the carriage door
banged. The judge listened to the click
of the horses' feet on the pavements till
the sound became inaudible. Then he

turned his eyes from their deep scruti-
ny of the fire, and again peered warily
through his spectacles at Harcourt.

" Charles," he said suspiciously, " have
I ever told you that remark of Richard's
before ? "

" Not a bit of it," replied his friend
stoutly. " Or if you have, I have for-
gotten it. That's the benefit of min-
gling with your contemporaries, George,
and not with two generations later. Our
memories keep pace with each other. If
you forget that you have told the stories,
I forget that I have heard them."

" And that puts in my mind again an
idea I had some months ago," said the
judge thoughtfully. " What do you say
to forming a club of our classmates, to
meet fortnightly, and dine and wine to-
gether ? There are enough of us 183-
men left. Eight would do for a begin-
ning. Hire a sunny little house, put
into it as much old college furniture as
we can find, and make a bold strike for
independence. What is the Somerset
Club now ? Composed of striplings who
ought to be at school. Not half a dozen
men over seventy. We will have no
nurses or attendants allowed in the house,
and we will dine together there every
Friday fortnight, and tell all our pet an-
ecdotes."

" And laugh over them, by George, as
we used to do ! " put in Harcourt enthu-
siastically. " That is a capital idea. We
will anticipate criticism by calling it the
Club of Old Stories. Now whom shall
we have ? Dalton for one ? "

" Dalton, of course. It would be like
dinner without wine to have the club
without Jack Dalton."

" Do you remember the night in Hoi-
worthy," said Harcourt, with a sudden
laugh, " when we were making that
racket with Browne's drum ? The proc-
tor hammered at the door, and we all
hid except Jack. He was left to open
it ; and how neatly he stepped behind it
when he did so, and slid into the hall
without being seen, and heaved a pillow

856

The, Contributors' Club.

at the candles, so that every one but the
proctor got away ! "

" Do I ! " chuckled the judge. " And
how he made the freshmen hold up the
Waverly coach, thinking it was part of
the initiation."

" And how he smashed the chapel
window ! " added Harcourt. " But gad,
sir," he broke off, interrupting himself,
"if we continue our reminiscences of
Jack Dalton, we shall never get any fur-
ther with the club. What do you say
to Langdon and Richardson ? "

"That makes five," was the response.
" And then there 's Jim Green, poor old
boy ! Ever since Andersonville he has
had his ups and downs, but on his well
days he will come, I know, and — What
do you think of Bennet ? "

" Oh," groaned Harcourt, " he is so
deaf, so unnecessarily deaf ! I know he
must put it on."

" Yes," assented the judge, " Jack Dal-
ton said of him the other day, ' There 's
none so deaf as those who can't hear.'
But think, Charles, what Bennet did for
us at college. We should never have won
our sheepskins if he had n't drummed
mathematics into our heads and labored
with us over our Greek and Latin."

Harcourt relented. " Well, we will
have him, then. Now we need only one
more. Who shall it be ? "

There was a long silence. " Charles,"
said the judge at last in an awed voice,
" is it possible there are only seven of us
who have not — gone ? "

" Never mind," said his friend hasti-
ly. " Seven is a good number. It 's an
odd number. There is luck in it. We
don't want but seven. Now, George, I
will make you secretary of the club.
You write to the boys. I would do it
myself, but I have to buy some new
glasses ; mine don't fit my eyes. Miser-
able opticians they have in these days.
I will constitute «iyself president, and
will look up a house for us. We will ar-
range the first meeting for Friday fort-
night. Open it with a dinner. Now I

must be off. I have that long hill to
climb, and I must take it slowly."

" Wait a moment and have a glass of
sherry," responded the judge, touching
a bell. " It will halve the distance and
double the view, Charles," he added,
laughing.

The president of the newly formed
club — or rather, the president's daugh-
ter— had no difficulty in finding the
sunny little house which was desired.
In its rooms each delighted old fellow
deposited the relics of his college days,
— books, tables, chairs, desks, and pic-
tures which had been buried in attics
and cellars for over half a century, —
and they thanked Heaven for the senti-
ment which had saved these antiquated
pieces from auctions for this happier
fate.

Old Charles Harcourt and the judge
walked arm in arm through the rooms,
the night of the opening of the club-
house, and surveyed its fittings with
great satisfaction.

In the reading-room they paused be-
fore a bookcase, through whose newly
polished surface faintly appeared count-
less carved "J. D.'s," and Harcourt
drew from a shelf a musty volume of
Tom Jones, and squinted over its yellow
pages to find dimly remembered witti-
cisms of Fielding.

They passed from the library into the
dining-room. A servant was lighting
the seven candles which stood in old-
fashioned silver sticks in a circle about
the table.

"It must be nearly time the boys
were here," observed Harcourt cheerful-
ly, as he watched the man. " What do
you say, George, to betting on the first
arrival ? Do you recollect how we al-
ways bet on every imaginable incident,
and what a zest it gave to life ? "

" Beg pardon, sir, here are some let-
ters I found on the desk in the library,"
said the servant, who had left the din-
ing-room a moment before, and now re-

The Contributors' Club.

857

appeared for an instant to deliver the
notes.

There were four letters in all, and
they were addressed to the secretary of
the club. The judge tore open the first
one and scanned it with troubled eyes.
" Well, well," he remarked, laying it on
the table with a sigh, and tearing open
the next. " This is melancholy. Here
is Langdon ill with the gout. No dining
and wining for him to-night. And Bill
Richardson is in bed with rheumatism.
Deuce take the man ! Serves him right
for being so imprudent. Actually went
sleighriding yesterday, Charles. And
this one — let me see. It 's from Ben-
net, I should say. Yes, Bennet has pleu-
risy, poor old boy ! And here Letitia
Green tells us in this note that her grand-
father is in the clutches of the grippe.
Dear me ! I call this ' hospital '-ity."
He gave a forced laugh at his feeble
joke. " But we have n't heard a word
from Jack Dalton," he continued more
cheerfully. " He never failed us yet,
thank Heaven ! We shall have a lively
evening with him, at any rate, Charles."

" He ought to be here any moment,"
said Harcourt listlessly. " He had a
bad cold a week ago, and so I sent Di-
nan out in my carriage for him. It is
too long a drive from Chestnut Hill in
a drafty hired cab. He should be here
by this time," he said again, looking anx-
iously at his watch.

A carriage drove hastily down the
street, and stopped at the club - house
door.

" This must be he," said the judge,
brightening visibly. " There will be
three of us here to-night, and there is
luck in odd numbers, as you said, — eh,
Charles ? "

At the sound of heavy footsteps in
the hall, both men started eagerly for-
ward from their chairs ; but when a rap
came at the door, and Dinan entered the
room alone, they sank back tremblingly
and looked at him with anxious eyes.

" 'Ave a bit of sherry, sir," said the old

man servant, taking a decanter from the
table and pouring wine into two glasses.
" It 's cold in this room. Better 'ave it.
It '11 warm you up, sir."

" Yes, yes, so it will," quavered Har-
court. He lifted the tiny glass unstead-
ily and put it to his trembling lips.
When he set it down, empty, he looked
inquiringly up at Dinan, but the servant's
face remained stolid until the judge's
wineglass was emptied, also, and placed
beside the other. Then he said quietly,
" I found Mr. Dalton ill, sir."

" Very ill ? " faltered Mr. Harcourt.

" Very ill, sir."

" Dead ? " breathed his master almost
inaudibly.

" Yes, sir," answered Dinan. " And
'ere 's a letter from 'is wife, sir." He
handed it to him, and then left the room.

Harcourt slowly drew the note from
the envelope. The sheet fluttered in
his fingers, and his voice failed him
when he tried to read aloud the sad
words it held. So the two men, with
silent accord, drew their chairs to the
gayly decorated table, spread the letter
out before their dim eyes, and together
read the widow's piteous words.

They finished it. Still neither spoke
nor changed his position. Their eyes
wandered about the table till they rested
on the chair designed for Dalton, on the
dinner-card which bore his name and a
merry old college squib. Then Charles
Harcourt rose weakly from his chair,
leaned over the table, and took from the
centre vase a great bunch of Mare'chal
Niel roses.

"Shall we take them to her?" he
said simply.

The judge bowed his head reverently
in assent.

When they opened the door to leave
the room, a blast of wintry air rushed
by them and blew fiercely about the
table. The light from the candles in
the seven massive silver sticks flickered,
and finally yielded to the lusty breath,
and died out.

858

The Contributors' Club.

IN all the expressions of appreciation
R. Kipling: that Mr. Kipling's Jungle
PsycK Books sti11 arouse, I wonder
gist. if any one has yet pointed out

the change these works have quietly
wrought in our attitude toward the rest
of the animal world ? Before these
books, and since Darwin, we have be-
lieved, or have known vaguely that we
ought to believe, that our " in'ards," both
of body and of brain, are very much the
same kind of " in'ards " as those of a
cat or a monkey ; and we have perhaps
prided ourselves on our openness of mind
in being ready to accept such lowly re-
latives without repugnance. What Mr.
Kipling has done for us is to make us
really know and feel that the larger part
of our mental composition is of the same
substance as that of our cousins the an-
imals, with a certain superstructure of
reasoning faculty which has enabled us
to become their masters. Mr. Kipling,
indeed, has expounded relationships in
the psychology of the animal world as
far-reaching as those which Darwin dis-
covered in its morphology.

Mr. Kipling's animals, in the first
place, are real ; not men in the skins of
animals, hunting a moral or a fancy.
No matter how much the Bandar-log in
the Cold Lairs may remind us of the
chronic turmoils of Paris, we never
think of Mr. Kipling as a satirist : the
monkeys are like the Frenchmen be-
cause so much of what we call human na-
ture was, as a matter of fact, brought to
its full growth before the fortunate va-
riation which split off the branch of the
monkeys who were to be monkeys no
more. Or again, if on some warm, sweet
afternoon in May, recalling the inimitable
diagnosis of spring fever in the Spring
Running, we are tempted to let work
slide, with the comfortable confession
that after all, since we are animals, it is
vain to think that long days of furnace
and roll-top desk can or ought to smo-
ther out the animal spirit in us, there
will come to mind that other scene of

the great black panther going wild with
the smells of the night, until Mowgli's
single human word brought him to a full
stop and held him quivering while the
human eye stared him into subjection.
Indeed, Mowgli is always thrusting in
his difference, and showing his unaffect-
ed consciousness that he is master of the
jungle, just because the animals are an-
imals and he is man.

In spite, however, of this distinction
that Mr. Kipling keeps so clear ; in spite
of the fact that Mowgli, living with the
animals, can hear what they hear, can
smell what they smell, can talk their
talk, though they cannot think what he
thinks, — in spite of all this, it is true
that, except for such artificialities of life
as civil engineering or municipal gov-
ernment or the higher education, the
differences are skin-deep. You do not
choose a wife because your immortal
reason tells you that she is a superior
woman, but because her eyes please
your eye, or because she has an exqui-
site manner of making you feel that
you are after all stronger or wiser or
handsomer than most men have the
sense to see. On the other hand, your
hate or your fear is not to be traced to
any gifts of mind which you do not
share with the animals : the silly panics
which overcome crowds are in no way
different from those so wisely illuminat-
ed in Her Majesty's Servants. More
certainly still does the spring fever I
have spoken of — that which stirs in us
at the call of the moist, earthy April
wind — go back beyond the cave-dweller
and the maker of flint spear-heads to
the ancestor of whom Stevenson speaks,
who was " probably arboreal." Passing
by the sensations and intuitions which
M. Pierre Loti and other Frenchmen
have exploited so effectively, farthest of
all, perhaps, go those vague curiosities
of mental life which the Society for Psy-
chical Research has preempted for its
own field. Professor Wendell, in an
essay on the Salem Witches, lays down

The Contributors' Club.

859

the hypothesis that all the phenomena
of suggestion and hypnotism, of clair-
voyance and mediumship, which science
uses now to explain what was miracu-
lous to our ancestors, may very plausi-
bly be considered rudimentary vestiges
of powers of perception and communi-
cation which belonged to what was man
before he stood upright on his hind legs
and knew how to use his tongue for
speech. Such a doctrine finds much
illumination in the Jungle Books. In
short, in whatever direction we turn we
find ourselves filled with instincts and
prejudices, with sensations or intuitions,
that beyond doubt make up the whole
mental life of the other animals.

Man, as we usually think of him, is a
being of pure reason, the product and
the aim of countless ages of slow and
halting development. But underneath
all this brilliant flower of the intellect
there still lies, for all time and of neces-
sity, the mass of sensations, the network
of likes and dislikes, of repulsions, of
desires, of instinctive activities and judg-
ments, which, taken together, form most
of his active existence. And these are
much more real to some of us since we
have read all that Mr. Kipling has had
to tell us of Akela, of the Bandar-log, of
Baloo, and of the great Kaa, who was
older than many trees, and who had seen
all that the jungle has done.

MY friend the musician dropped into

my den, the other afternoon,
A Story on
the Color- for our annual talk.

" I read that last book of
yours," said he. " It 's the best thing
you 've done. How 's it going ? "

I suppose my gesture must have been
expressive of small financial success.

" Ah ! " he exclaimed commiserating-
ly. " I don't understand that."

" I do," said I. " I killed the book
by making the hero a colored man."

" But he was n't ! " cried Storson.

" I let people think so for a dozen
chapters. It 's the same thing."

" But, hang it, that was just where the

art came in ! That uncertainty was pre-
cisely the point of the story."

" Thank you. Would you have had
me say that in the preface ? "

" Say it in the preface to the next
one. Take the very same theme, old
fellow, — the color-line in the North, —
and hammer away. There 's an Uncle
Tom's Cabin in it for somebody."

I shook my head. " Not for me. I 'm
no crusader. And besides, a year's work
is all I can afford to lose. I 'm going
back to the old thing : that sells very
decently."

" Yes, I know," he flung in impatient-
ly 5 " genial banter, a knack for descrip-
tion, and a romanticism that you don't
quite dare own. It 's delicate, and it 's
well done. But in that book you spoke
out, — you cut to the bone, man. And
I want to see you do it again."

I smoked in silence.

" If you will," he went on, " I '11 give
you a plot, here and now."

" That does n't tempt me," I said.
" There are plots enough, Heaven knows.
But go ahead. Do you begin with a
sort of overture, lights turned down,
pianissimo ? "

" I 'm quite serious," replied Storson.
" It 's about a fellow I know very well ;
white as the man in your story, and the
grandson of a United States Senator to
boot. He was a pupil of Reif, in Ber-
lin. I met him there, and afterward at
the Conservatory at Leipsic. He had
studied music for two years at Oberlin
before he went abroad, and he thinks
now that that was his ruin."

« Why ? "

"They treated him as they treated
any other student, and it fooled him. It
gave him the feeling that there was a
professional future for him. He went
to Europe on that idea."

" But the color - line could n't have
troubled him over there ? "

" No. He might have stayed there
and been happy. But the foreign mar-
ket is terribly overcrowded, and when

860

The Conti ibutors* Club.

his money gave out he had to come
home."

" Well ? "

" I want you to understand," said
Storson deliberately, " that this fellow
was, "and is, a genius, in the full sense
of that spoiled word ; and that he has a
sound musical education, and a physique
that permits him to practice eight hours
a day. I 've seen darkies enough with a
marvelous knack at picking out a tune.
Generally they never get any farther.
This man is different. I 've known pret-
ty nearly a thousand pianists — fellow
students and pupils — since I began my-
self, and not more than two are in that
fellow's class."

" Now for the plot," said I. ;< Your
gifted ' might have been ' is a rather
conventional character."

" Very well. Where do you suppose
he is to-day ? "

I waited, watching the musician's leo-
nine face darken.

" I see him whenever I play in Chi-
cago," he went on. " Four years ago
he had just come back from Leipsic.
He made an engagement as church or-
ganist in a little town out on the Bur-
lington road, and had a dozen pupils on
the piano. He was radiant ; but the
game lasted just six weeks. Then it got
abroad that the organist at the Method-
ist Church was a colored man, and the
music committee forced him to resign.
His pupils stopped taking lessons, and
he had to leave town. Then he tried
giving concerts in colored churches, at
ten cents admission ; two years ago he
was starving at that. A year ago I gave
a concert in a college town in Michigan,
and who do you think waited on me at
the hotel table ? My fellow student at
Reif's ! He came up to my room, after
the hotel was quiet, and we had a talk.
He was absolutely discouraged. He had
no money. It had been a choice between
waiting on the table and the Potter's
Field. Well, I gave him letters to some
musical people in Chicago, and lent him

fifty dollars to try his luck once more.
He had not touched a piano for months."

" And you have n't heard from him ? "
I asked.

" He called on me last week at the
Auditorium," said Storson, tossing away
his cigar nervously. " For a long time
I could n't get out of him what he was
doing. Then he told me that he was
playing the piano at a dance-house. He
was well paid, well dressed, and he gave
me my fifty dollars. He plays Bach
there, do you know, Bach and Beetho-
ven, transposed and the time changed
into the devil's own gallop, and nobody
knows the difference. They don't draw
the color-line on him. It 's a very de-
mocratic place. He has found out at
last, he says, what an American colored
man with a gift for music is expected to
do with it. He '11 shoot himself some
day, but he is n't going to starve any
more."

I stared out of the window into the
twilight. For a whole year, once, I had
brooded over such tragedies ^ as this,
fancying that one of them might be
turned into art.

" There 's your story," Storson said.

" And after all," I replied, " what 's
the use ? If you announced that your
musician was colored, nobody would read
the story. If you made him of doubtful
blood, they would like it less still : I 've
tried that, you see. In fact, the whole
thing is too unpleasant to the contem-
porary American public. If it were far
enough away, — in Mashona Land, for
instance, — or a couple of hundred years
ago" —

" Uncle Tom's Cabin ? " argued Stor-
son.

" Or if I were Mrs. Stowe," I admit-
ted. " But suppose I wrote it out just
as you have told it, without changing
anything, — a story based on the color-
line, — do you know what it would be
worth, as copy ? It would n't be worth
the stamps for returning the manuscript.
Editors know the public taste too well."

AP The Atlantic monthly

v.81

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