HANDBOUND
AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF
TORONTO PRESS
THE
ATLANTIC MONTHLY
A MAGAZINE OF
literature, Science, &rt, ana Clitics
VOLUME LXXXYII
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLTN AND COMPANY
fte JSiber^ilie ^rc^^, Camfctitige
1901
COPYRIGHT, 1901,
Br HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY.
The Rirfrride Prr.tx, artmbriflgr. Mast.. U. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.
CONTENTS.
INDEX BY TITLES.
PAGE
American Literature, Three Centuries of,
William Morton Payne 411
American Prose Style, J. D. Logan . . . 689
Animals in Literature, George S. Hell-
man 391
Anthracite Coal Crisis, The, Talcott Wil-
liams 447
At the End of the Trail, Maximilian Fos-
ter 827
Audrey, Mary Johnston 593, 746
British Confederation, J. W. Root .
Broken Wings, Katharine Head . .
402
849
Century of American Diplomacy, A, S. M,
Macvane 269
Child in the Library, The, Edith Lanigan 122
Confederacy, In the Last Days of the,
Sara Matthews Handy 104
Confessions of a Minister's Wife .... 202
Criticism and ^Esthetics, Ethel D. Puffer 839
Dante's Quest of Liberty, Charles A. Dins-
more 515
Democracy and Efficiency, Woodrow Wil-
son 289
Difficult Minute, The, R. E. Young . . 73
Distinction of our Poetry, The, Josephine
Dodge Daskam 696
Dorr's, Mrs., Afterglow 419
Dull Season in Politics, The 865
Eleventh Hour, The, Basil King ... 253
Empress Dowager, The, R. Van Bergen . 23
England, A Letter from, jR. Brimley John-
son 55
Esmeralda Herders, The, Elia W. Peattie 111
Essence of American Humor, The, Charles
Johnston 195
Fiction, New and Old 127
Fields', Mrs., Orpheus 419
Fountains and Streams of the Yosemite,
John Muir 556
Gap in Education, A, II. D. Sedgwick,
Jr 68
Germany, A Letter from, William C.
Dreher 342
Give the Country the Facts 424
Great Preacher, The (Allen's Life and Let-
ters of Phillips Brooks) 262
Growth of Public Expenditures, The,
Charles A. Conant 45
Haworth Bronte, The 134
Hermit's Notes on Thoreau, A, Paul E.
More 857
Household of a Russian Prince, The, Mary
Louise Dunbar 566
How to Write a Novel for the Masses,
Charles Battell Loomis 421
Huxley, Reminiscences of, John Fiske . . 275
Italy, Two Books about, Harriet Waters
Preston 271
John Marshall, James Bradley Thayer . . 328
Law- Abiding Citizens, William R. Lighten 783
McKinley, Mr., as President, Henry B. F?
Macfarland 299
Mademoiselle Angele, Roy Rolfe Gilson . 398
Making the Crowd Beautiful, Gerald Stan-
ley Lee 240
Mandell Creighton, Bishop of London, Ed-
mund Gosse 677
Max Miiller at Oxford 867
Mifflin's The Fields of Dawn, and Later
Sonnets 419
Moody's The Masque of Judgment . . . 420
Moosilauke, Bradford Torrey 667
Mr. Hapgood's Gospel, Will Payne ... 706
Mr. Smedley's Guest, E. S. Chamberlayne 213
Municipal Reform, The Next Step in, Ed-
win Burritt Smith 583
My Cookery Books, Elizabeth Robins Pen-
nell 789
Napoleon, The Last Phase of, Gold win
Smith 166
New Industrial Revolution, The, Brooks
Adams 157
New York, A Plea for, J. K. Paulding . 172
On the Road to Crowninshield, Dora
Loomis Hastings 365
Opportunity of the Small College, The,
Herbert W. Horwill . 763
iv
Contents.
Passing of Mother's Portrait, The, Eoswell
Field 523
Peabody's, Miss, Fortune and Men's Eyes 420
Penelope's Irish Experiences, Kate Doug-
las Wiggin 30, 223, 313, 485
Phillips's Herod 421
Pittsburg, A Glimpse of, William Lucien
Scaife 83
Politics and the Public Schools, G. W. An-
derson 433
Productive Scholarship in America, Hugo
Mdnsterberg 615
Professor's Chance, The, Robert Herrick . 723
Recent Verse 419
Reconstruction Period, The :
The Reconstruction of the Southern
States, Woodrow Wilson 1
The Conditions of the Reconstruction
Problem, Hilary A. Herbert .... 145
The Freedmen's Bureau, W. E. Burg-
hardt Du Bois .354
Reconstruction in South Carolina, Daniel
H. Chamberlain 473
The Ku Klux Movement, William Gar-
rott Brown 634
Washington during Reconstruction,
8. W. McCall 817
Renaissance of the Tragic Stage, The,
Martha Anstice Harris 533
Rowland Robinson, Julia C. E. Dorr . . 117
Stockton's Novels and Stories 136
Teaching of English, The, Albert S.
Cook 710
Time -Spirit of the Twentieth Century,
The, Elizabeth Bisland 15
Tommy and Grizel 132
Tory Lover, The, Sarah Orne Jewett 90, 180,
373, 539, 645, 801
Trusts and Public Policy, Charles J. Bul-
lock 737
Two Lives of Cromwell, Rollo Ogden . . 138
Unfinished Portrait, An, Jennette Lee . . 577
Ward's, Mrs., Later Novels 127
Washington, The State of, W. D. Ly-
man 505
Weaker Sex, The, F. J. Stimson ... 456
Wellington, Goldwin Smith 771
INDEX BY AUTHORS.
Adams, Brooks, The New Industrial Revo-
lution 157
Anderson, G. W., Politics and the Public
Schools 433
Bisland, Elizabeth, The Time-Spirit of the
Twentieth Century 15
Brown, Alice, The Final Quest .... 126
Brown, William Garrott, The Ku Klux
Movement 634
Bullock, Charles J., Trusts and Public
Policy 737
Burroughs, John, The Trailing Arbu-
tus 532
Cawein, Madison, Rain in the Woods . . 782
Chamberlain, Daniel H., Reconstruction in
South Carolina 473
Chamberlayne, E. -S.,Mr.Smedley's Guest 213
Colton, Arthur, Victory 800
Conant, Charles A., The Growth of Pub-
lic Expenditures 45
Cook, Albert S., The Teaching of Eng-
lish 710
Daskam, Josephine Dodge, The Distinction
of our Poetry (!90
Dinsmore, Charles A., Dante's Quest of
Liberty 515
Dorr, Julia C. E., Rowland Robinson . . 117
Dreher, William C., A Letter from Ger-
many 342
Du Bois, W. E. Burghardt, The Freed-
men's Bureau 354
Dunbar, Mary Louise, The Household of
a Russian Prince . r>r>;
Field, Eoswell, The Passing of Mother's
Portrait 523
Fiske, John, Reminiscences of Huxley . . 275
Fletcher, Jefferson, Sky-Children .... 125
Foster, Maximilian, At the End of the
Trail 827
Foster, William Prescott, The Cities of the
World 401
Foster, William Prescott, The Phantom
Army 631
Gilson, Eoy Eolfe, Mademoiselle Ange"le . 398
Gosse, Edmund, Mandell Creighton, Bish-
op of London 677
Handy, Sara Matthews, In the Last Days
of the Confederacy 104
Harris, Martha Anstice, The Renaissance
of the Tragic Stage 533
Hastings, Dora Loomis, On the Road to
Crowninshield 365
Head, Katharine, Broken Wings ... 849
Hellman, George S., Animals in Literature 391
Herbert, Hilary A., The Conditions of the
Reconstruction Problem 145
Herrick, Eobert, The Professor's Chance . 723
Hor will, Herbert W., The Opportunity of
the Small College 763
Howe, M. A. De Wolfe, Fire of Apple-Wood 587
Ingham, John Hall, Outlook 222
Jewett, Sarah Orne, The Tory Lover 90, 180,
:;":;, 539, 645, 801
Johnson, E. Brimley, A Letter from Eng-
land . 55
Contents.
Johnson, Robert Underwood, Love the Con- Payne, William Morton, Three Centuries
queror came to Me 390 of American Literature 411
Johnston, Charles, The Essence of Ameri- Peattie, Elia W., The Esmeralda Herd-
can Humor 195
Johnston, Mary, Audrey 593, 746 Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, My Cookery
Johnstone, Henry, An April Sun-Picture . 588 Books
Pollock, Frank Lillie, The Lost Trail . .
848 Preston, Harriet Waters, Two Books
111
789
722
Kenyon, James B., The Jester
King. Basil, The Eleventh Hour ... 253 about Italy 271
Puffer, Ethel D., Criticism and .^Esthetics 839
Lanigan, Edith, The Child in the Library 122
Lee, Gerald Stanley, Making the Crowd Richardson, Grace, April's Return . . . 588
Beautiful 240 Root, J. W., British Confederation ... 402
Lee, Jennette, An Unfinished Portrait . . 577
Lighton, William R., Law-Abiding Citi- Scaife, William Lucien, A Glimpse of
783
Logan, J. D., American Prose Style . . 689
Loomis, Charles Battell, How to Write a
Pittsburg ........... 83
Sedgwick, H. D., Jr., A Gap in Educa-
tion ............. 68
Novel for the Masses 421 Smith, Edwin Burritt, The Next Step in
Lyman, W. D., The State of Washing- Municipal Reform 583
ton 505 Smith, Goldwin, The Last Phase of Napo-
leon 166
Me Arthur, Peter, Two Sonnets .... 864 Smith, Goldwin, Wellington 771
McCall, S. W., Washington during Recon- Stimson, F. J., The Weaker Sex ... 456
struetion 817
Macfarland, Henry B. F., Mr. McKinley Thayer, James Bradley, John Marshall . 328
as President 299 Thomas, Edith M., The Flutes of the God 352
Macvane, S. M., A Century of American Torrey, Bradford, Moosilauke .... 667
Diplomacy 269
Moody, William Vaughn, On a Soldier
Fallen in the Philippines 288 Van Dyke, Henry, Two Schools ....
Moody, William Vaughn, The Brute . . 88
More, Paul E., A Hermit's Notes on Tho- Webb, Charles Henry, An Age of Ink . .
reau 857 Wiggin, Kate Douglas, Penelope's Irish
Muir, John, Fountains and Streams of the Experiences ..... 30, 223, 313, 485
Yosemite 556 Williams, Talcott, The Anthracite Coal
Munsterberg, H ugo, Productive Scholarship Crisis 447
in America 615 Wilson, Woodrow, Democracy and Effi-
ciency 289
Ogden, Rollo, Two Lives of Cromwell . . 138 Wilson, Woodrow, The Reconstruction of
the Southern States 1
Paulding, J. K., A Plea for New York . 172
Payne, Will, Mr. Hapgood's Gospel . . 706 Young, R. E., The Difficult Minute . . 73
Van Bergen, R., The Empress Dowager . 23
. 566
666
Age of Ink, An, Charles Henry Webb . .
April's Return, Grace Richardson . . .
April Sun - Picture, An, Henry John-
stone
POETRY.
666 Love the Conqueror came to Me, Robert
588
Underwood Johnson
588 On a Soldier FaUen in the Philippines,
William Vaughn Moody
390
Brute, The, William Vaughn Moody . . 88 Outlook, John Hall Ingham 222
Cities of the World, The, William Prescott
Foster 401
Final Quest, The, Alice Brown .... 126
Fire of Apple-Wood, M. A. De Wolfe
Howe
Flutes of the God, The, Edith M. Thomas
Jester, The, James B. Kenyon ....
Lost Trail, The, Frank Lillie Pollock . . 722
Phantom Army, The, William Prescott
Foster . . 631
Rain in the Woods, Madison Cawein
. 782
. 125
587 Sky-Children, Jefferson Fletcher . .
352
Trailing Arbutus, The, John Burroughs . 532
848 Two Schools, Henry Van Dyke .... 566
Two Sonnets, Peter Me Arthur 864
Victory, Arthur Cotton 800
vi Contents.
CONTRIBUTORS' CLUB.
Advantages of Trucking, The .... 734 Lady of the Past, A 880
Back Number, A 143 Modern Astrology and Palmistry ... 736
Booker Washington and Benjamin Franklin 882 Mrs. Fiske's Acting 591
Breton Survival, A 878 My Friend Copperfield 873
Broken Idol, A 426
On Going a-Maying 732
Cant in Criticism 142 On Knowing your Missionary 872
Over a Copy of Keats 876
Dilemma of the Modern Poet 144
Parkman's Tenacity 429
Fallow Field, The 590
Rainy Sunday in Rome, A 429
Good Fortune of Benjamin Harrison, The 871
Sine Qua Non 143
Harvard College and the Atlantic ... 875
When I was a Boy 427
Japanese Book-Lover, A 735 Women and Politics 589
THE
ATLANTIC MONTHLY:
#iaga?tne of literature, Science, art, ann
VOL. LXXXVII. JANUARY, 1901. No. DXIX.
THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE SOUTHERN STATES.
IT is now full thirty years, and more,
since the processes of Reconstruction
were finished, and the southern states
restored to their place in the Union.
Those thirty years have counted for
more than any other thirty in our his-
tory, so great have been the speed and
range of our development, so compre-
hensive and irresistible has been the
sweep of change amongst us. We have
come out of the atmosphere of the six-
ties. The time seems remote, historic,
not of our day. We have dropped its
thinking, lost its passion, forgot its anxi-
eties, and should be ready to speak of it,
not as partisans, but as historians.
Most troublesome questions are thus
handed over, sooner or later, to the his-
torian. It is his vexation that they do
not cease to be troublesome because they
have been finished with by statesmen,
and laid aside as practically settled. To
him are left all the intellectual and moral
difficulties, and the subtle, hazardous,
responsible business of determining what
was well done, what ill done ; where mo-
tive ran clear and just, where clouded by
passion, poisoned by personal ambition,
or darkened by malevolence. More of
the elements of every policy are visible
to him than can have been visible to the
actors on the scene itself ; but he cannot
always be certain which they saw, which
they did not see. He is deciding old
questions in a new light. He is danger-
ously cool in dealing with questions of
passion ; too much informed about ques-
tions which had, in fact, to be settled
upon a momentary and first impression ;
scrupulous in view of things' which hap-
pened afterward, as well as of things
which happened before the acts upon
which he is sitting in judgment. It is
a wonder that historians who take their
business seriously can sleep at night.
Reconstruction is still revolutionary
matter. Those who delve in it find it
like a banked fire, still hot and fiery
within, for all it has lain under the ashes
a whole generation ; and a thing to take
fire from. It is hard to construct an ar-
gument here which shall not be heated,
a source of passion no less than of light.
And then the test of the stuff must be so
various. The American historian must
be both constitutional lawyer and states-
man in the judgments he utters ; and
the American constitutional lawyer must
always apply, not a single, but a double
standard. He must insist on the plain,
explicit command and letter of the law,
and yet he must not be impracticable. In-
stitutions must live and take their growth,
and the laws which clothe them must be
no strait- jacket, but rather living tissue,
themselves containing the power of nor-
mal growth and healthful expansion.
The powers of government must make
shift to live and adapt themselves to cir-
cumstances : it would be the very nega-
tion of wise conservatism to throttle them
with definitions too precise and rigid.
Such difficulties, however, are happily
more formidable in the mass than in de-
tail ; and even the period of Reconstruc-
tion can now be judged fairly enough,
The Reconstruction of the Southern States.
with but a little tolerance, breadth, and
moderation added to the just modicum
of knowledge. Some things about it are
very plain, among the rest, that it is
a period too little studied as yet, and of
capital importance in our constitutional
history. Indeed, it is not too much to
say that there crosses it, in full sight
of every one who will look, a great rift,
which breaks, and must always break,
the continuity and harmony of our con-
stitutional development. The national
government which came out of Recon-
struction was not the national govern-
ment which went into it. The civil war
had given leave to one set of revolution-
ary forces ; Reconstruction gave leave
to another still more formidable. The
effects of the first were temporary, the
inevitable accompaniments of civil war
and armed violence ; the effects of the
second were permanent, and struck to
the very centre of our forms of govern-
ment. Any narrative of the facts, how-
ever brief, carries that conclusion upon
its surface.
The war had been fought to preserve
the Union, to dislodge and drive out by
force the doctrine of the right of seces-
sion. The southern states could not le-
gally leave the Union, such had been
the doctrine of the victorious states
whose armies won under Grant and
Sherman, and the federal government
had been able to prevent their leaving,
in fact. In strict theory, though their
people had been in revolt, under organi-
zations which called themselves states,
and which had thrown off all allegiance
to the older Union and formed a new
confederation of their own, Virginia,
North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida,
Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisi-
ana, Texas, Arkansas, and Tennessee,
the historic states once solemnly embod-
ied in the Union, had never gone out
of it, could never go out of it and re-
main states. In fact, nevertheless, their
representatives had withdrawn from the
federal House and Senate ; their several
governments, without change of form
or personnel, had declared themselves
no longer joined with the rest of the
states in purpose or allegiance, had ar-
ranged a new and separate partnership,
and had for four years maintained an
organized resistance to the armies of the
Union which they had renounced. Now
that their resistance had been overcome
and their confederacy destroyed, how
were they to be treated ? As if they
had been all the while in the Union,
whether they would or no, and were now
at last simply brought to their senses
again, to take up their old-time rights
and duties intact, resume their familiar
functions within the Union as if nothing
had happened ? The theory of the case
was tolerably clear ; and the Supreme
Court of the United States presently
supplied lawyers, if not statesmen, with
a clear enough formulation of it. The
Constitution, it said (for example, in the
celebrated case of Texas vs. White, de-
cided in 1868), had created an inde-
structible Union of indestructible states.
The eleven states which had attempted
to secede had not been destroyed by their
secession. Everything that they had
done to bring about secession or main-
tain resistance to the Union was abso-
lutely null and void, and without legal
effect ; but their laws passed for other
purposes, even those passed while they
were in fact maintaining their resolution
of secession and defying the authority of
the national government, were valid, and
must be given effect to in respect of all
the ordinary concerns of business, pro-
perty, and personal obligation, just as if
they had been passed in ordinary times
and under ordinary circumstances. The
states had lost no legitimate authority ;
their acts were invalid only in respect of
what they had never had the right to do.
But it was infinitely hard to trans-
late such principles into a practicable
rule of statesmanship. It was as difficult
and hazardous a matter to reinstate the
states as it would have been had their
The Reconstruction of the Southern States.
3
legal right to secede been first admitted,
and then destroyed by the revolutionary
force of arms. It became, whatever the
theory, in fact a process of reconstruc-
tion. Had Mr. Lincoln lived, perhaps
the whole of the delicate business might
have been carried through with dignity,
good temper, and simplicity of method ;
with all necessary concessions to pas-
sion, with no pedantic insistence upon
consistent and uniform rules, with sen-
sible irregularities and compromises, and
yet with a straightforward, frank, and
open way of management which would
have assisted to find for every influence
its natural and legitimate and quieting
effect. It was of the nature of Mr.
Lincoln's mind to reduce complex situa-
tions to their simples, to guide men with-
out irritating them, to go forward and
be practical without being radical, to
serve as a genial force which supplied
heat enough to keep action warm, and
yet minimized the friction and eased the
whole progress of affairs.
It was characteristic of him that he
had kept his own theory clear and un-
confused throughout the whole struggle
to bring the southern people back to
their allegiance to the Union. He had
never recognized any man who spoke or
acted for the southern people in the
matter of secession as the representative
of any government whatever. It was,
in his view, not the southern states
which had taken up arms against the
Union, but merely the people dwelling
within them. State lines defined the
territory within which rebellion had
spread and men had organized under
arms to destroy the Union ; but their
organization had been effected without
color of law ; that could not be a state,
in any legal meaning of the term, which
denied what was the indispensable pre-
requisite of its every exercise of political
functions, its membership in the Union.
He was not fighting states, therefore, or
a confederacy of states, but only a body
of people who refused to act as states,
and could not, if they would, form an-
other Union. What he wished and strove
for, without passion save for the accom-
plishment of his purpose, without enmity
against persons, and yet with burning
hostility against what the southerners
meant to do, was to bring the people of
the southern states once more to submis-
sion and allegiance ; to assist them, when
subdued, to rehabilitate the states whose
territory and resources, whose very or-
ganization, they had used to effect a
revolution ; to do whatever the circum-
stances and his own powers, whether as
President or merely as an influential
man and earnest friend of peace, might
render possible to put them back, de-
feated, but not conquered or degraded,
into the old-time hierarchy of the Union.
There were difficulties and passions
in the way which possibly even Mr. Lin-
coln could not have forced within any
plan of good will and simple restoration ;
but he had made a hopeful beginning
before he died. He had issued a pro-
clamation of amnesty so early as 1863,
offering pardon and restoration to civil
rights to all who would abandon resist-
ance to the authority of the Union, and
take the oath of unreserved loyalty and
submission which he prescribed ; and as
the war drew to an end, and he saw the
power of the Union steadily prevail, now
here, now there, throughout an ever in-
creasing area, he earnestly begged that
those who had taken the oath and re-
turned to their allegiance would unite in
positive and concerted action, organize
their states upon the old footing, and
make ready for a full restoration of the
old conditions. Let those who had taken
the oath, and were ready to bind them-
selves in all good faith to accept the acts
and proclamations of the federal govern-
ment in the matter of slavery, let all,
in short, who were willing to accept the
actual results of the war, organize them-
selves and set up governments made con-
formable to the new order of things, and
he would recognize them as the people
The Reconstruction of the Southern States.
of the states within which they acted,
ask Congress to admit their representa-
tives, and aid them to gain in all respects
full acknowledgment and enjoyment of
statehood, even though the persons who
thus acted were but a tenth part of the
original voters of their states. He would
not insist upon even so many as a tenth,
if only he could get some body of loyal
citizens to deal and cooperate with in
this all-important matter upon which he
had set his heart ; that the roster of the
states might be complete again, and some
healing process follow the bitter anguish
of the war.
Andrew Johnson promptly made up
his mind, when summoned to the presi-
dency, to carry out Mr. Lincoln's plan,
practically without modification ; and he
knew clearly what Mr. Lincoln's plan
had been, for he himself had restored
Tennessee upon that plan, as the Pre-
sident's agent and representative. As
military governor of the state, he had
successfully organized a new government
out of abundant material, for Tennessee
was full of men who had had no sympa-
thy with secession ; and the government
which he had organized had gone into
full and vigorous operation during that
very spring which saw him become first
Vice President, and then President. In
Louisiana and Arkansas similar govern-
ments had been set up even before Mr.
Lincoln's death. Congress had not re-
cognized them, indeed ; and it did not,
until a year had gone by, recognize even
Tennessee, though her case was the sim-
plest of all. Within her borders the
southern revolt had been, not solid and
of a piece, but a thing of frayed edges
and a very doubtful texture of opinion.
But, though Congress doubted, the plan
had at least proved practicable, and Mr.
Johnson thought it also safe and direct.
Mr. Johnson himself, unhappily, was
not safe. He had been put on the same
ticket with Mr. Lincoln upon grounds
of expediency such as have too often
created Vice Presidents of the United
States. Like a great many other Ten-
nesseeans, he had been stanch and un-
wavering in his adherence to the Union,
even after his state had cast the Union
off ; but he was in all other respects a
Democrat of the old order rather than a
Republican of the new, and when he be-
came President the rank and file of the
Republicans in Congress looked upon him
askance, as was natural. He himself saw
to it, besides, that nobody should relish
or trust him whom bad temper could alien-
ate. He was self-willed, imperious, im-
placable ; as headstrong and tempestuous
as Jackson, without Jackson's power of
attracting men, and making and holding
parties. At first, knowing him a rad-
ical by nature, some of the radical lead-
ers in Congress had been inclined to
trust him ; had even hailed his accession
to the presidency with open satisfaction,
having chafed under Lincoln's power to
restrain them. " Johnson, we have faith
in you ! " Senator Wade had exclaimed.
" By the gods, there will be no trouble
now in running the government ! " But
Johnson was careful that there should be
trouble. He was determined to lead as
Lincoln had led, but without Lincoln's
insight, skill, or sweetness of temper,
by power and self-assertion rather than
by persuasion and the slow arts of man-
agement and patient accommodation ;
and the houses came to an open breach
with him almost at once.
Moreover, there was one very serious
and radical objection to Mr. Lincoln's
plan for restoring the states, which would
in all likelihood have forced even him
to modify it in many essential particu-
lars, if not to abandon it altogether. He
had foreseen difficulties, himself, and had
told Congress that his plan was meant to
serve only as a suggestion, around which
opinion might have an opportunity to
form, and out of which some practicable
method might be drawn. He had not
meant to insist upon it, but only to try
it. The main difficulty was that it did
not meet the wishes of the congressional
The Reconstruction of the Southern States.
leaders with regard to the protection of
the negroes in their new rights as free-
men. The men whom Mr. Lincoln had
called upon to reorganize the state gov-
ernments of the South were, indeed,
those who were readiest to accept the
results of the war, in respect of the abo-
lition of slavery as well as in all other
matters. No doubt they were in the be-
ginning men who had never felt any
strong belief in the right of secession,
men who had even withstood the pur-
pose of secession as long as they could,
and had wished all along to see the old
Union restored. They were a minority
now, and it might be pretty safely as-
sumed that they had been a minority
from the outset in all this fatal business.
But they were white men, bred to all
the opinions which necessarily went along
with the existence and practice of slav-
ery. They would certainly not wish to
give the negroes political rights. They
might be counted on, on the contrary, to
keep them still as much as possible un-
der restraint and tutelage. They would
probably accept nothing but the form of
freedom for the one-time slaves, and
their rule would be doubly unpalatable
to the men in the North who had gone
all these weary years through, either in
person or in heart, with the northern
armies upon their mission of emancipa-
tion.
The actual course of events speedi-
ly afforded means for justifying these
apprehensions. Throughout 1865 Mr.
Johnson pushed the presidential process
of reconstruction successfully and rapid'
ly forward. Provisional governors of
his own appointment in the South saw
to it that conventions were elected by
the voters who had taken the oath pre-
scribed in the amnesty proclamation,
which Mr. Johnson had reissued, with
little change either of form or of sub-
stance ; those conventions proceeded at
once to revise the state constitutions un-
der the supervision of the provisional
governors, who in their turn acted now
and again under direct telegraphic in-
structions from the President in Wash-
ington ; the several ordinances of seces-
sion were repealed, the war debts of the
states were repudiated, and the legisla-
tures set up under the new constitutions
hastened to accept and ratify the Thir-
teenth Amendment, abolishing slavery,
as the President demanded. By Decem-
ber of the very year of his inaugura-
tion, every southern state except Florida
and Texas had gone through the required
process, and was once more, so far as the
President was concerned, in its normal
relations with the federal government.
The federal courts resumed their ses-
sions in the restored states, and the
Supreme Court called up the southern
cases from its docket. On December 18,
1865, the Secretary of State formally
proclaimed the Thirteenth Amendment
ratified by the vote of twenty-seven states,
and thereby legally embodied in the Con-
stitution, though eight of the twenty-seven
were states which the President had thus
of his own motion reconstructed. With-
out their votes the amendment would have
lacked the constitutional three - fourths
majority.
The President had required nothing
of the new states with regard to the suf-
frage ; that was a matter, as he truly said,
in respect of which the several states had
" rightfully exercised " their free and
independent choice " from the origin of
the government to the present day ; "
and of course they had no thought of
admitting the negroes to the suffrage.
Moreover, the new governments, once
organized, fell more and more entirely
into the hands of the very persons who
had actively participated in secession.
The President's proclamation of amnes-
ty had, indeed, excepted certain classes
of persons from the privilege of taking
the oath which would make them voters
again, under his arrangements for recon-
struction : those who had taken a promi-
nent official part in secession, or who had
left the service of the United States for
The Reconstruction of the Southern States.
the service of the Confederate govern-
ment. But a majority of the southern-
ers were still at liberty to avail them-
selves of the privilege of accepting the
new order of things ; and it was to their
interest to do so, in order that the new
arrangements might be shaped as nearly
as possible to their own liking. What
was to their liking, however, proved as
distasteful to Congress as had been ex-
pected. The use they made of their re-
stored power brought absolute shipwreck
upon the President's plans, and radically
altered the whole process of reconstruc-
tion.
An extraordinary and very perilous
state of affairs had been created in the
South by the sudden and absolute eman-
cipation of the negroes, and it was not
strange that the southern legislatures
should deem it necessary to take extraor-
dinary steps to guard against the mani-
fest and pressing dangers which it en-
tailed. Here was a vast " laboring, land-
less, homeless class," once slaves, now
free ; unpracticed in liberty, unschooled
in self-control ; never sobered by the dis-
cipline of self-support, never established
in any habit of prudence ; excited by a
freedom they did not understand, ex-
alted by false hopes ; bewildered and
without leaders, and yet insolent and
aggressive ; sick of work, covetous of
pleasure, a host of dusky children un-
timely put out of school. In some of the
states they outnumbered the whites,
notably in Mississippi and South Caro-
lina. They were a danger to themselves
as well as to those whom they had once
served, and now feared and suspected ;
and the very legislatures which had ac-
cepted the Thirteenth Amendment has-
tened to pass laws which should put them
under new restraints. Stringent regula-
tions were adopted with regard to con-
tracts for labor, and with regard to the
prevention of vagrancy. Penalties were
denounced against those who refused to
work at the current rates of wages.
Fines were imposed upon a great num-
ber and variety of petty offenses, such as
the new freemen were most likely to
commit ; and it was provided that, in the
(extremely probable) event of the non-
payment of these fines, the culprits should
be hired out to labor by judicial process.
In some instances an elaborate system
of compulsory apprenticeship was estab-
lished for negroes under age, providing
that they should be bound out to la-
bor. In certain states the negroes were
required to sign written contracts of la-
bor, and were forbidden to do job work
without first obtaining licenses from the
police authorities of their places of re-
sidence. Those who failed to obtain
licenses were liable to the charge of
vagrancy, and upon that charge could be
arrested, fined, and put to compulsory
labor. There was not everywhere the
same rigor; but there was everywhere
the same determination to hold the ne-
groes very watchfully, and, if need were,
very sternly, within bounds in the exer-
cise of their unaccustomed freedom ; and
in many cases the restraints imposed
went the length of a veritable " involun-
tary servitude."
Congress had not waited to see these
things done before attempting to help
the negroes to make use of their free-
dom, and self-defensive use of it, at
that. By an act of March 3, 1865, it
established, as a branch of the War De-
partment, a Bureau of Refugees, Freed-
men, and Abandoned Lands, which was
authorized and empowered to assist the
one-time slaves in finding means of sub-
sistence, and in making good their new
privileges and immunities as citizens.
The officials of this bureau, with the
War Department behind them, had gone
the whole length of their extensive au-
thority ; putting away from the outset all
ideas of accommodation, and preferring
the interests of their wards to the inter-
ests of peaceable, wholesome, and heal-
ing progress. No doubt that was inevi-
table. What they did was but the final
and direct application of the rigorous,
The Reconstruction of the Southern States.
unsentimental logic of events. The ne-
groes, at any rate, had the full advan-
tage of the federal power. A very active
and officious branch of the War Depart-
ment saw to it that the new disabilities
which the southern legislatures sought to
put upon them should as far as possible
be rendered inoperative.
That, however, did not suffice to sweet-
en the temper of Congress. The fact
remained that Mr. Johnson had rehabili-
tated the governments of the southern
states without asking the leave of the
houses ; that the legislatures which he
had authorized them to call together had
sought, in the very same sessions in which
they gave their assent to the emancipat-
ing amendment, virtually to undo the
work of emancipation, substituting a slav-
ery of legal restraints and disabilities for
a slavery of private ownership ; and that
these same legislatures had sent men to
Washington, to seek admission to the
Senate, who were known, many of them,
still openly to avow their unshaken be-
lief in the right of secession. The south-
ern voters, too, who had qualified by tak-
ing the oath prescribed by the President's
proclamation, had in most instances sent
men similarly unconvinced to ask admis-
sion to the House of Representatives.
Here was indeed a surrender of all the
advantages of the contest of arms, as it
seemed to the radicals, very generous,
no doubt, but done by a Tennesseean and
a Democrat, who was evidently a little
more than generous ; done, too, to exalt
the Executive above Congress ; in any
light, perilous and not to be tolerated.
Even those who were not radicals wished
that the restoration of the states, which
all admitted to be necessary, had been
effected in some other way, and safe-
guarded against this manifest error, as
all deemed it, of putting the negroes back
into the hands of those who had been
their masters, and would not now willing-
ly consent to be their fellow citizens.
Congress, accordingly, determined to
take matters into its own hands. With
the southern representatives excluded,
there was a Republican majority in both
houses strong enough to do what it
pleased, even to the overriding, if neces-
sary, of the President's vetoes. Upon
assembling for their regular session in
December, 1865, therefore, the House
and Senate at once set up, by concurrent
resolution, a joint committee of nine Re-
presentatives and six Senators, which was
instructed to inquire into all the condi-
tions obtaining in the southern states,
and, after sufficient inquiry, advise the
houses upon the question whether, under
the governments which Mr. Johnson had
given them, those states were entitled
to representation. To this committee,
in other words, was intrusted the whole
guidance of Congress in the all-impor-
tant and delicate business of the full re-
habilitation of the southern states as
members of the Union. By February,
1866, it had virtually been settled that
the admission of their representatives
to Congress should await the action of
the reconstruction committee ; and that
purpose was very consistently adhered
to. An exception was made in the case
of Tennessee, but in her case only. The
houses presently agreed to be satisfied
with her " reconstruction," and admitted
her representatives to their seats in both
House and Senate by an act of the 24th
of July, 1865. But the other states
were put off until the joint committee
had forced them through a process of
" Thorough," which began their recon-
struction at the very beginning, again,
and executed at every stage the methods
preferred by the houses. The leader
throughout the drastic business was Mr.
Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania, the
chairman of the committee, the leader
of the House. He was foremost among
the radicals, and drew a following about
him, much as Stephen Douglas had at-
tached thoroughgoing Democrats to him-
self, in the old days when the legislative
battles were being fought over the ex-
tension of slavery into the territories,
8
The Reconstruction of the Southern States.
by audacity, plain speaking, and the
straightforward energy of unhesitating
opinion. He gave directness and speed
to all he proposed. He understood bet-
ter than Douglas did the coarse work of
hewing out practicable paths of action in
the midst of opinions and interests at
odds. He had no timidity, no scruples
about keeping to constitutional lines of
policy, no regard or thought for the sen-
sibilities of the minority, being rough-
hewn and without embarrassing sensi-
bilities himself, an ideal radical for
the service of the moment.
Careful men, trained in the older ways
of statesmanship and accustomed to read-
ing the Constitution into all that they
did, tried to form some consistent theory
of constitutional right with regard to the
way in which Congress ought to deal
with this new and unprecedented situ-
ation. The southern states were still
" states " within the meaning of the
Constitution as the Supreme Court had
interpreted it. They were communities
of free citizens ; each had kept its terri-
torial boundaries unchanged, unmistak-
able ; in each there was an organized
government, " sanctioned and limited by
a written constitution, and established
by the consent of the governed." Their
officers of government, like their people,
had for a time, indeed, repudiated the
authority of the federal government ;
but they were now ready to acknowledge
that authority again, and could resume
their normal relations with the other
states at a moment's notice, with all
proper submission. Both Mr. Lincoln
and Mr. Johnson had acted in part upon
these assumptions. They had objected
only that the governments actually in
existence at the close of the war had
been chosen by persons who were in fact
insurgents, and that their officers had
served to organize rebellion. Let those
citizens of the South who had made sub-
mission, and who had been pardoned un-
der the President's proclamation, recon-
stitute their governments, repudiating
their old leaders, and the only taint upon
their statehood would be removed : the
Executive would recognize them as again
normally constituted members of the
Union.
Not many members of Congress, how-
ever, accepted this view. The Repub-
lican party, it was true, had entered upon
the war emphatically disavowing either
wish or purpose to interfere with the con-
stitutional rights of the states ; declar-
ing its sole object to be the preservation
of the Union, the denial of a single
particular right which it could not but
view as revolutionary. But war had
brought many things in its train. The
heat and struggle of those four tremen-
dous years had burned and scarred the
body of affairs with many an ineffaceable
fact, which could not now be overlooked.
Legally or illegally, as states or as bodies
of individuals merely, the southern peo-
ple had been at war with the Union ; the
slaves had been freed by force of arms ;
their freedom had now been incorporated
in the supreme law of the land, and must
be made good to them ; there was mani-
fest danger that too liberal a theory of
restoration would bring about an impos-
sible tangle of principles, an intolerable
contradiction between fact and fact. Mr.
Sumner held that, by resisting the au-
thority of the Union, of which they were
members, the southern states had sim-
ply committed suicide, destroying their
own institutions along with their alle-
giance to the federal government. They
ceased to be states, he said, when they
ceased to fulfill the duties imposed upon
them by the fundamental law of the
land. Others declined any such doc-
trine. They adhered, with an instinct
almost of affection, to the idea of a veri-
table federal Union ; rejected Mr. Sum-
ner's presupposition that the states were
only subordinate parts of a consolidated
national government ; and insisted that,
whatever rights they had for a time for-
feited, the southern states were at least
not destroyed, but only estopped from ex-
The Reconstruction of the Southern States.
9
ercising their ordinary functions within
the Union, pending a readjustment.
Theories made Mr. Stevens very im-
patient. It made little difference with
him whether the southern states had for-
feited their rights by suicide, or tem-
porary disorganization, or individual re-
bellion. As a matter of fact, every de-
partment of the federal government, the
courts included, had declared the citi-
zens of those states public enemies ; the
Constitution itself had been for four
years practically laid aside, so far as
they were concerned, as a document of
peace ; they had been overwhelmed by
force, and were now held in subjection
under military rule, like conquered pro-
vinces. It was just as well, he thought,
to act upon the facts, and let theories
alone. It was enough that all Congress-
men were agreed at any rate, all who
were allowed a voice in the matter
that it was properly the part of Con-
gress, and not of the Executive, to bring
order out of the chaos : to see that feder-
al supremacy and federal law were made
good in the South ; the legal changes
brought about by the war forced upon
its acceptance ; and the negroes secured
in the enjoyment of the equality and
even the privileges of citizens, in ac-
cordance with the federal guarantee
that there should be a republican form
of government in every state, a gov-
ernment founded upon the consent of
a majority of its adult subjects. The
essential point was that Congress, the
lawmaking power, should be in control.
The President had been too easy to sat-
isfy, too prompt, and too lenient. Mr.
Stevens consented once and again that
the language of fine-drawn theories of
constitutional right should be used in the
reports of the joint Committee on Re-
construction, in which he managed to be
master ; but the motto of the committee
in all practical matters was his motto
of "Thorough," and its policy made
Congress supreme.
The year 1866 passed, with all things
at sixes and sevens. So far as the Presi-
dent was concerned, most of the southern
states were already reconstructed, and
had resumed their places in the Union.
Their assent had made the Thirteenth
Amendment a part of the Constitution.
And yet Congress forbade the with-
drawal of the troops, refused admit-
tance to the southern representatives,
and set aside southern laws through the
action of the Freedmen's Bureau and the
military authorities. By 1867 it had
made up its mind what to do to bring
the business to a conclusion. 1866 had
at least cleared its mind and defined
its purposes. Congress had still further
tested and made proof of the temper of
the South. In June it had adopted a
Fourteenth Amendment, which secured
to the blacks the status of citizens, both
of the United States and of the several
states of their residence, authorized a
reduction in the representation in Con-
gress of states which refused them the
suffrage, excluded the more prominent
servants of the Confederacy from fed-
eral office until Congress should pardon
them, and invalidated all debts or obli-
gations " incurred in aid of insurrection
or rebellion against the United States ; "
and this amendment had been submitted
to the vote of the states which Congress
had refused to recognize as well as to the
vote of those represented in the houses.
Tennessee had promptly adopted it, and
had been as promptly admitted to re-
presentation. But the other southern
states, as promptly as they could, had
begun, one by one, to reject it. Their
action confirmed the houses in their at-
titude toward Reconstruction.
Congressional views and purposes
were cleared the while with regard to
the President, also. He had not been
firm ; he had been stubborn and bitter.
He would yield nothing ; vetoed the
measures upon which Congress was most
steadfastly minded to insist ; alienated
his very friends by attacking Congress
in public with gross insult and abuse ;
10
The Reconstruction of the Southern States.
and lost credit with everybody. It came
to a direct issue, the President against
Congress : they went to the country with
their quarrel in the congressional elec-
tions, which fell opportunely in the au-
tumn of 1866, and the President lost
utterly. Until then some had hesitated
to override his vetoes, but after that no
one hesitated. 1867 saw Congress go
triumphantly forward with its policy of
reconstruction ab initio.
In July, 1866, it had overridden a
veto to continue and enlarge the powers
of the Freedmen's Bureau, in a bill
which directed that public lands should
be sold to the negroes upon easy terms,
that the property of the Confederate
government should be appropriated for
their education, and that their new-made
rights should be protected by military
authority. In March, 1867, two acts,
passed over the President's vetoes, in-
stituted the new process of reconstruc-
tion, followed and completed by another
act in July of the same year. The
southern states, with the exception, of
course, of Tennessee, were grouped in
five military districts, each of which was
put under the command of a general of
the United States. These commanders
were made practically absolute rulers,
until the task of reconstruction should
be ended. It was declared by the Re-
construction Acts that no other legal
state governments existed in the ten
states concerned. It was made the busi-
ness of the district commanders to erect
such governments as Congress pre-
scribed. They were to enroll in each
state, upon oath, all male citizens of
one year's residence, not disqualified
by reason of felony or excluded under
the terms of the proposed Fourteenth
Amendment, " of whatever race, color,
or previous condition " they might be ;
the persons thus registered were to
choose constitutional conventions, confin-
ing their choice of delegates to regis-
tered voters like themselves ; these con-
ventions were to be directed to frame
state constitutions, which should extend
the suffrage to all who had been per-
mitted by the military authorities to en-
roll for the purpose of taking part in
the election of delegates; and the con-
stitutions were to be submitted to the
same body of voters for ratification.
When Congress had approved the con-
stitutions thus framed and accepted, and
when the legislatures constituted under
them had adopted the Fourteenth
Amendment, the states thus reorganized
were to be readmitted to representation
in Congress, and in all respects fully re-
instated as members of the Union ; but
not before. Meanwhile, the civil gov-
ernments already existing within them,
though illegal, were to be permitted to
stand ; but as " provisional only, and in
all respects subject to the paramount au-
thority of the United States at any time
to abolish, control, or supersede the
same."
Such was the process which was rig-
orously and consistently carried through
during the memorable years 1867-70;
and upon the states which proved most
difficult and recalcitrant Congress did
not hesitate from time to time to impose
new conditions of recognition and rein-
statement before an end was made. By
the close of July, 1868, the reconstruc-
tion and reinstatement of Arkansas, the
two Carolinas, Florida, Alabama, and
Louisiana had been completed. Vir-
ginia, Mississippi, and Texas were
obliged to wait until the opening of 1870,
because their voters would not adopt the
constitutions offered them by their re-
constructing conventions ; and Georgia
was held off a few months longer, be-
cause she persisted in attempting to ex-
clude negroes from the right to hold
office. These four states, as a conse-
quence, were obliged to accept, as a con-
dition precedent to their reinstatement,
not only the Fourteenth Amendment,
but a Fifteenth also, which Congress
had passed in February, 1869, and
which forbade either the United States
The Reconstruction of the Southern States.
11
or any state to withhold from any citi-
zen the right to vote " on account of
race, color, or previous condition of ser-
vitude." The military commanders,
meanwhile, used or withheld their hand
of power according to their several tem-
peraments. They could deal with the
provisional civil governments as they
pleased, could remove officials, annul
laws, regulate administration, at will.
Some were dictatorial and petty ; some
were temperate and guarded in their
use of authority, with a creditable in-
stinct of statesmanship ; almost all were
straightforward and executive, as might
have been expected of soldiers.
Whatever their mistakes or weaknesses
of temper or of judgment, what followed
the reconstruction they effected was in
almost every instance much worse than
what had had to be endured under mili-
tary rule. The first practical result of
reconstruction under the acts of 1867 was
the disfranchisement, for several weary
years, of the better whites, and the con-
sequent giving over of the southern gov-
ernments into the hands of the negroes.
And yet not into their hands, after all.
They were but children still ; and unscru-
pulous men, " carpetbaggers," men not
come to be citizens, but come upon an
expedition of profit, come to make the
name of Republican forever hateful in
the South, came out of the North to
use the negroes as tools for their own self-
ish ends ; and succeeded, to the utmost
fulfillment of their dreams. Negro ma-
jorities for a little while filled the south-
ern legislatures ; but they won no power
or profit for themselves, beyond a pit-
tance here and there for a bribe. Their
leaders, strangers and adventurers, got
the lucrative offices, the handling of the
state moneys raised by loan, and of the
taxes spent no one knew how. Here
and there an able and upright man
cleansed administration, checked corrup-
tion, served them as a real friend and
an honest leader ; but not for long. The
negroes were exalted ; the states were
misgoverned and looted in their name ;
and a few men, not of their number,
not really of their interest, went away
with the gains. They were left to carry
the discredit and reap the consequences
of ruin, when at last the whites who
were real citizens got control again.
But that dark chapter of history is no
part of our present story. We are here
concerned, rather, with the far-reaching
constitutional and political influences and
results of Reconstruction. That it was a
revolutionary process is written upon its
face throughout ; but how deep did the
revolution go ? What permanent marks
has it left upon the great structure of
government, federal, republican ; a part-
nership of equal states, and yet a solidly
coherent national power, which the fa-
thers erected ?
First of all, it is clear to every one
who looks straight upon the facts, every
veil of theory withdrawn, and the naked
body of affairs uncovered to meet the
direct question of the eye, that civil
war discovered the foundations of our
government to be in fact unwritten ; set
deep in a sentiment which constitutions
can neither originate nor limit. The
law of the Constitution reigned until
war came. Then the stage was cleared,
and the forces of a mighty sentiment,
hitherto unorganized, deployed upon it.
A thing had happened for which the
Constitution had made no provision. In
the Constitution were written the rules
by which the associated states should
live in concert and union, with no word
added touching days of discord or dis-
ruption ; nothing about the use of force
to keep or to break the authority or-
dained in its quiet sentences, written,
it would seem, for lawyers, not for sol-
diers. When the war came, therefore,
and questions were broached to which
it gave no answer, the ultimate founda-
tion of the structure was laid bare : phy-
sical force, sustained by the stern loves
and rooted predilections of masses of
men, the strong ingrained prejudices
12
The Reconstruction of the Southern States.
which are the fibre of every system of
government. What gave the war its
passion, its hot energy as of a tragedy
from end to end, was that in it senti-
ment met sentiment, conviction convic-
tion. It was the sentiment, not of all,
but of the efficient majority, the convic-
tion of the major part, that won. A
minority, eager and absolute in another
conviction, devoted to the utmost pitch
of self-sacrifice to an opposite and in-
compatible ideal, was crushed and over-
whelmed. It was that which gave an
epic breadth and majesty to the awful
clash between bodies of men in all things
else of one strain and breeding ; it was
that which brought the bitterness of
death upon the side which lost, and the
dangerous intoxication of an absolute
triumph upon the side which won. But
it unmistakably uncovered the founda-
tions of force upon which the Union
rested.
It did more. The sentiment of union
and nationality, never before aroused to
full consciousness or knowledge of its
own thought and aspirations, was hence-
forth a new thing, aggressive and aware
of a sort of conquest. It had seen its
legions and felt its might in the field.
It saw the very Constitution, for whose
maintenance and defense it had acquired
the discipline of arms, itself subordinat-
ed for a time to the practical emergencies
of war, in order that the triumph might
be the more unimpeded and complete ;
and it naturally deemed nationality hence-
forth a thing above law. As much as
possible, so far as could be without
serious embarrassment, the forms of
the fundamental law had indeed been
respected and observed ; but wherever
the law clogged or did not suffice, it had
been laid aside and ignored. It was so
much the easier, therefore, to heed its
restrictions lightly, when the war was
orer, and it became necessary to force
the southern states to accept the new
model. The real revolution was not so
much in the form as in the spirit of af-
fairs. The spirit and temper and meth-
od of a federal Union had given place,
now that all the spaces of the air had
been swept and changed by the merciless
winds of war, to a spirit which was con-
sciously national and of a new age.
It was this spirit which brushed the-
ories and technicalities aside, and im-
pressed its touch of revolution on the
law itself. And not only upon the law,
but also upon the processes of lawmak-
ing, and upon the relative positions of
the President and Congress in the gen-
eral constitutional scheme of the govern-
ment, seeming to change its very adminis-
trative structure. While the war lasted
the President had been master ; the war
ended, and Mr. Lincoln gone, Congress
pushed its way to the front, and began
to transmute fact into law, law into fact.
In some matters it treated all the states
alike. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and
Fifteenth amendments bound all the
states at once, North and West as well
as South. But that was, after all, a mere
equality of form. The amendments were
aimed, of course, at the states which had
had slaves and had attempted secession,
and did not materially affect any others.
The votes which incorporated them in
the Constitution were voluntary on the
part of the states whose institutions they
did not affect, involuntary on the part
of the states whose institutions they revo-
lutionized. These states were then un-
der military rule. Congress had declared
their whole political organization to be
illegal ; had excluded their representa-
tives from their seats in the houses ; and
yet demanded that they assent, as states,
to the amendment of the Constitution
as a condition precedent to their rein-
statement in the Union ! No anomaly
or contradiction of lawyers' terms was
suffered to stand in the way of the su-
premacy of the lawmaking branch of
the general government. The Consti-
tution knew no such process as this of
Reconstruction, and could furnish no
rules for it. Two years and a half be-
The Reconstruction of the Southern States.
13
fore the Fifteenth Amendment was adopt-
ed by Congress, three years and a half
before it was put in force by its adop-
tion by the states, Congress had by mere
act forced the southern states, by the
hands of military governors, to put the
negroes upon the roll of their voters.
It had dictated to them a radical revi-
sion of their constitutions, whose items
should be framed to meet the views of
the houses rather than the views of
their own electors. It had pulled about
and rearranged what local institutions it
saw fit, and then had obliged the com-
munities affected to accept its alterations
as the price of their reinstatement as
self-governing bodies politic within the
Union.
It may be that much, if not all, of
this would have been inevitable under
any leadership, the temper of the times
and the posture of affairs being what
they were ; and it is certain that it was
inevitable under the actual circumstances
of leadership then existing at Washing-
ton. But to assess that matter is to
reckon with causes. For the moment
we are concerned only with consequences,
and are neither justifying nor con-
demning, but only comprehending. The
courts of the United States have held
that the southern states never were out
of the Union ; and yet they have justi-
fied the action of Congress throughout
the process of Reconstruction, on the
ground that it was no more than a pro-
per performance by Congress of a le-
gal duty, under the clause of the Consti-
tution which guarantees to every state
a republican form of government. It
was making the southern governments
republican by securing full standing and
legislative representation as citizens for
the negroes. But Congress went be-
yond that. It not only dictated to the
states it was reconstructing what their
suffrage should be ; it also required that
they should never afterward narrow
that suffrage. It required of Virginia,
Texas, and Mississippi that they should
accord to the negroes not only the right
to vote, but also the right to hold politi-
cal office ; and that they should grant to
all their citizens equal school privileges,
and never afterward abridge them. So
far as the right to vote was concerned,
the Fifteenth Amendment subsequently
imposed the same disability with regard
to withholding the suffrage upon all the
states alike ; but the southern states were
also forbidden by mere federal statute to
restrict it on any other ground ; and in
the cases of Virginia, Mississippi, and
Texas Congress assumed the right, which
the Constitution nowhere accorded it, to
regulate admission to political office and
the privileges of public education.
South Carolina and Mississippi, Lou-
isiana and North Carolina, have since
changed the basis of their suffrage, not-
withstanding ; Virginia and Mississippi
and Texas might now, no doubt, reor-
ganize their educational system as they
pleased, without endangering their status
in the Union, or even meeting rebuke at
the hands of the federal courts. The
temper of the times has changed ; the
federal structure has settled to a nor-
mal balance of parts and functions again ;
and the states are in fact unfettered ex-
cept by the terms of the Constitution it-
self. It is marvelous what healing and
oblivion peace has wrought, how the
traces of Reconstruction have worn away.
But a certain deep effect abides. It is
within, not upon the surface. It is of
the spirit, not of the body. A revolu-
tion was carried through when war was
done which may be better comprehended
if likened to England's subtle making
over, that memorable year 1688. Though
she punctiliously kept to the forms of
her law, England then dismissed a king
almost as, in later years, she would have
dismissed a minister ; though she pre-
served the procedure of her constitution
intact, she in fact gave a final touch of
change to its spirit. She struck irre-
sponsible power away, and made her
government once for all a constitutional
14
The Reconstruction of the Southern States.
government. The change had been in-
sensibly a-making for many a long age ;
but now it was accomplished consciously
and at a stroke. Her constitution, fin-
ished, was not what it had been until
this last stroke was given, when si-
lent forces had at last found sudden
voice, and the culminating change was
deliberately made.
Nearly the same can be said of the
effect of the war and of the reconstruc-
tion of the southern states upon our
own government. It was a revolution
of consciousness, of mind and pur-
pose. A government which had been
in its spirit federal became, almost of a
sudden, national in temper and point of
view. The national spirit had long been
a-making. Many a silent force, which
grew quite unobserved, from genera-
tion to generation, in pervasiveness and
might, in quiet times of wholesome peace
and mere increase of nature, had been
breeding these thoughts which now
sprang so vividly into consciousness.
The very growth of the nation, the very
lapse of time and uninterrupted habit of
united action, the mere mixture and
movement and distribution of popula-
tions, the mere accretions of policy, the
mere consolidation of interests, had been
building and strengthening new tissue of
nationality the years through, and draw-
ing links stronger than links of steel
round about the invisible body of com-
mon thought and purpose which is the
substance of nations. When the great
crisis of secession came, men knew at
once how their spirits were ruled, men of
the South as well as men of the North,
in what institutions and conceptions of
government their blood was fixed to run ;
and a great and instant readjustment
took place, which was for the South, the
minority, practically the readjustment of
conquest and fundamental reconstruc-
tion, but which was for the North, the
region which had been transformed, no-
thing more than an awakening.
It cannot be said that the forms of the
Constitution were observed in this quick
change as the forms of the English con-
stitution had been observed when the
Stuarts were finally shown the door.
There were no forms for such a business.
For several years, therefore, Congress
was permitted to do by statute what,
under the long-practiced conceptions of
our federal law, could properly be done
only by constitutional amendment. The
necessity for that gone by, it was suf-
fered to embody what it had already
enacted and put into force as law into
the Constitution, not by the free will of
the country at large, but by the compul-
sions of mere force exercised upon a mi-
nority whose assent was necessary to the
formal completion of its policy. The re-
sult restored, practically entire, the forms
of the Constitution ; but not before new
methods and irregular, the methods of
majorities, but not the methods of law,
had been openly learned and practiced,
and learned in a way not likely to be
forgot. Changes of law in the end gave
authentic body to many of the most sig-
nificant changes of thought which had
come, with its new consciousness, to the
nation. A citizenship of the United
States was created ; additional private
civil rights were taken within the juris-
diction of the general government ; addi-
tional prohibitions were put upon the
states ; the suffrage was in a measure
made subject to national regulation. But
the real change was the change of air,
a change of conception with regard to
the power of Congress, the guiding and
compulsive efficacy of national legisla-
tion, the relation of the life of the land
to the supremacy of the national law-
making body. All policy thenceforth
wore a different aspect. '
We realize it now, in the presence of
novel enterprises, at the threshold of an
unlooked-for future. It is evident that
empire is an affair of strong govern-
ment, and not of the nice and somewhat
artificial poise or of the delicate compro-
mises of structure and authority charac-
The Time-Spirit of the Twentieth Century.
15
teristic of a mere federal partnership.
Undoubtedly, the impulse of expansion
is the natural and wholesome impulse
which comes with a consciousness of
matured strength ; but it is also a direct
result of that national spirit which the
war between the states cried so wide
awake, and to which the processes of
Reconstruction gave the subtle assur-
ance of practically unimpeded sway and
a free choice of means. The revolution
lies there, as natural as it was remarka-
ble and full of prophecy. It is this which
makes the whole period of Reconstruc-
tion so peculiarly worthy of our study.
Every step of the policy, every feature
of the time, which wrought this subtle
transformation, should receive our care-
ful scrutiny. We are now far enough
removed from the time to make that
scrutiny both close and dispassionate.
A new age gives it a new significance.
Woodrow Wilson.
THE TIME-SPIRIT OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.
HAD we the faculty of the Greeks for
embodying our perceptions of life in
beautiful or terrifying myths, we should
probably possess some legend of a
Sphinx who lay across the path of en-
trance into life, and forced each genera-
tion to answer her conundrum of the cor-
rect formula for the search of the high-
est human good. In the legend, each
generation would cast aside with con-
tempt its predecessor's efforts at the so-
lution of the enigma, and enter gayly
upon the task of demonstrating the trium-
phant wisdom of its guess at the world-
old problems.
It was after some such fashion as this
that the last century nineteenth of its
era came into being. Flushed, happy,
confident, it came an army with banners ;
every standard having blazoned upon it
in letters of gold the magic device, " Lib-
erty, Equality, Fraternity." Here was
a potent formula indeed !
How we hustled the poor painted, for-
mal, withered old eighteenth century out
at the nether gate ! smashing its idols,
toppling over its altars, tearing down its
tarnished hangings of royalty from the
walls, and bundling its poor antiquated
furniture of authority out of the window.
All doors were flung wide ; the barriers
of caste, class, sex, religion, race, were
burst open, and light poured in. The
gloomy Ghettos were emptied of their
silent, stubborn, cringing population,
forged by the hammer of Christian hate
through two thousand years into a race
as keen, compact, and flexible as steel.
The slave stood up free of bonds ; half
exultant, half frightened, at the liberty
that brought with it responsibilities
heavier and more inexorable than the
old shackles. Woman caught her breath
and lifted up her arms. The old super-
stitious Asiatic curse fixed upon her by
the Church was scornfully laughed away.
She was as free as the Roman woman
again, free to be proud of her sex, free
to wed where she chose, free to claim
as her own the child for whom she had
travailed to give it life.
A vast bonfire was made of the stake,
the wheel, the gyve ; of crowns, of or-
ders, of robes of state. All wrongs
were to be righted, all oppressions re-
dressed, all inequalities leveled, all cru-
elties forbidden. Men shuddered when
they thought of the cruelties of the past,
shuddered when they talked of the ex-
ecution of Galas. Such a crime would
never be possible in this new golden age.
Only of oppression and cruelty was vice
bred. Given perfect liberty and perfect
justice, the warring world would become
16
The Time- Spirit of the Twentieth Century.
Arcadia once more. Lions, if not hunt-
ed, if judiciously trained by the constant
instilling of virtuous maxims, would ac-
quire a perfect disgust for mutton ; and
lambs would consequently lie down be-
side them, would grow as courageous and
self-reliant as wolves.
What a beautiful time it was, those
first thrilling days of the new era ! How
the spirit dilates in contemplating it,
even now ! The heart beat with the no-
ble new emotions, the cheek flushed, the
eye glistened with sensibility's ready
tear. It was so pleasant to be good, to
be kind, to be just ; to feel that even
the bonds of nationality were cast aside,
and that all mankind were brothers,
striving only for preeminence in virtue.
The heart could hardly hold without de-
licious pain this broad flood of universal
human-kindness.
It was then that Anarcharsis Clootz
presented to the National Assembly his
famous " deputation of mankind."
" On the 19th evening of June, 1790,
the sun's slant rays lighted a spectacle
such as our foolish little planet has not
often to show. Anarcharsis Clootz en-
tering the august Salle de Manege with
the human species at his heels. Swedes,
Spaniards, Polacks, Turks, Chaldeans,
Greeks, dwellers in Mesopotamia, come
to claim place in the grand Federation,
having an undoubted interest in it. ...
In the meantime we invite them to the
honors of the sitting, honneur de la se-
ance. A long-flowing Turk, for rejoin-
der, bows with Eastern solemnity, and
utters articulate sounds; but, owing to
his imperfect knowledge of the French
dialect, his words are like spilt water ;
the thought he had in him remains con-
jectural to this day. ... To such things
does the august National Assembly ever
and anon cheerfully listen, suspending
its regenerative labors."
It was at this time that big words be-
ginning with capital letters made their
appearance, and were taken very seri-
ously. One talked of the Good, the
True, the Beautiful, and the Ideal, and
felt one's bosom splendidly inflated by
these capitalized mouthf uls. There were
other nice phrases much affected at the
time, the Parliament of Man, the
Federation of the World, la Re'publique
de Genre Humain. The new generation
was intoxicated with its new theory of
life, with its own admirable sentiments.
Discrepancies existed, no doubt. The
fine theories were not always put into
complete practice. While the glittering
phrases of the Declaration of Independ-
ence were declaring all men free and
equal, some million of slaves were help-
ing to develop the new country with
their enforced labor. The original own-
ers of the soil were being mercilessly
hunted like vermin, and the women of
America had scarcely more legal claim
to their property, their children, or their
own persons than had the negro slaves.
Nor did the framers of the Declaration
show any undue haste in setting about
abolishing these anomalies. The Nation-
al Assembly of France decreed liberty,
equality, and fraternity to all men, and
hurried to cut off the heads and confis-
cate the property of all those equal bro-
thers who took the liberty of differing
with them.
But it was a poor nature that would
boggle at a few inconsistencies, would
quench this fresh enthusiasm with carp-
ing criticism. After all, mere facts were
unimportant. Given the proper emo-
tion, the lofty sentiment of liberty and
goodness, the rest would come right of
itself.
It was a period of upheaval, of polit-
ical and social chaos. A new heaven
and a new earth so they believed
were to be created by this virile young
generation, which had rid itself of the
useless lumber of the past. Emotion
displayed itself in a thousand forms :
in iconoclastic rages against wrong,
rages which could be exhausted only by
the destruction of customs, laws, and
religions that had bound the western
The Time- Spirit of the Twentieth Century.
17
world for two thousand years ; in san-
guinary furies against oppression which
were to be satiated only by seas of blood.
It showed itself in floods of sympathy
for the weak that swept away weak and
strong together in equal ruin. It was de-
monstrated in convulsions of philanthro-
py so violent that a man might not refuse
the offered brotherhood and kindness
save at the price of his life.
The cold dictates of the head were
ignored. The heart was the only guide.
Who can wonder that, driven by this
wind of feeling and with the rudder
thrown overboard, the ship pursued an
erratic and contradictory course ?
From this point of view, one is no
longer astounded at the lack of consist-
ency of the Declaration des Droits de
rHomme that declared : " All men are
born and continue free and equal in
rights ; " " Society is an association of
men to preserve the rights of man ; "
" Freedom of speech is one of the most
precious of rights." Nor yet that France,
crying aloud these noble phrases, slaugh-
tered the most silent and humble who
were supposed to maintain even secret
thoughts opposed to the opinions of the
majority. It is no longer surprising to
read the generous sentiments of our own
Declaration, and to remember the perse-
cutions, confiscations, and burnings that
drove thirty thousand of those not in
sympathy with the Revolution over the
borders of the New England states into
Canada, and hunted a multitude from the
South into Spanish Louisiana. One is
no longer amazed to hear de Tocqueville
declare that in no place had he found so
little independence of thought as in this
country during the early years of the re-
public. The revolutionary sentimental-
ist by the word " liberty " meant only lib-
erty to think as he himself did. All the
history of man is a record that there is
nothing crueler than a tender heart un-
governed by a cooler head. It is in this
same spirit that the inquisitor, yearning
in noble anguish over souls, burns the re-
VOL. LXXXVII. NO. 519. 2
calcitrant. It is plain to him that such
as are so gross and vicious as to refuse
to fall in with his admirable intentions
for their eternal welfare can be worthy
of nothing gentler than fire.
But, whatever the discrepancies might
be, the state of feeling was, of course,
vastly more wholesome, more promising,
than the dry formalism, the frivolous
cynicism, which it had annihilated, and
out of which it had been bred.
The delicate, fastidious, selfish for-
malists of the eighteenth century were
naturally aghast at the generation to
which they had given birth. It was as
if an elderly dainty cat had been deliv-
ered of a blundering, slobbering mastiff
puppy, a beast which was to tear its dis-
gusted arid terrified parent in pieces.
No doubt they asked themselves in hor-
ror, " When did we generate this wild
animal, that sheds ridiculous tears even
while drinking our blood ? " not seeing
that the creature was the natural child,
the natural reaction from the selfish
shortsightedness of " Que ne mangent-ils
de la brioche ? " from the frigid sneer of
" Apres nous le deluge."
The torrent of emotionalism to which
the early part of the nineteenth century
gave itself up is amazing to our colder
time. It manifested itself not only in
its public policy, in its schemes of uni-
versal regeneration ; it was also visible in
its whole attitude toward life.
Madame Necker could so ill bear
the thought of her friend Moulton's de-
parture, after a short visit, that he was
obliged to leave secretly and without a
farewell. She fainted when she learned
the truth, and says : " I gave myself up
to all the bitterness of grief. The most
gloomy ideas presented themselves to
my desolate heart, and torrents of tears
could not diminish the weight that
seemed to suffocate me." And all this
despair over the departure of an amiable
old gentleman from Paris to Geneva !
This young emotionalism had no re-
serves. The most secret sentiments of
18
The Time- Spirit of the Twentieth Century.
the heart were openly displayed, dis-
cussed. Tears were always flowing.
Nothing was too sacred for verbal ex-
pression. The people of that day wrote
out their prayers, formal compositions
of exquisite sentiments, and handed
them about among their friends, as Ital-
ian gentlemen did sonnets in the quattro-
cento. On every anniversary or special
occasion they penned lengthy epistles,
full of high-sounding phrases and invo-
cations to friends living under the same
roof, who received these letters next
morning with the breakfast tray, and
shed delicious tears over them into their
chocolate.
A " delicate female " was a creature
so finely constituted that the slightest
shock caused hysterics or a swoon, and
it was useless to hope for her recovery
until the person guilty of the blow to
her sensitiveness had shed the salt mois-
ture of repentance upon her cold and
lifeless hand, and had wildly adjured
her to " live ; " after which her friends
of the same sex ? themselves tremulous
and much shaken by the mere sight of
such sensibility, " recovered her with an
exhibition of lavender water," or with
some of those cordials which they all
carried in their capacious pockets for
just such exigencies. Nor did the deli-
cate female monopolize all the delicacy
and emotionalism. The " man of feel-
ing " was her fitting mate, and the manly
tear was as fluent and frequent as the
drop in Beauty's eye. Swooning was
not so much in his line ; there was, per-
haps, less competition for the privilege
of supporting his languishing frame, but
a mortal paleness was no stranger to his
sensitive countenance, his features con-
tracted in agony over the smallest an-
noyance, and he had an ominous fashion
of rushing madly from the presence of
the fair one in a way that left all his
female relatives panting with appre-
hension, though long experience might
have taught them that nothing serious
ever came of it.
Thus the nineteenth century entered
upon its experiment with the eternal
verities, beginning gloriously ; palpitat-
ing with generous emotion ; ready with
its " blazing ubiquities " to light the way
to the millennium. The truth had been
discovered, and needed but to be thor-
oughly applied to insure perfect happi-
ness. A few adherents of the old order
clung to their traditions, but by 1840
the tide of liberalism had risen to flood.
The minority were overawed and dumb.
To suggest doubts of the impeccable
ideals of democracy was to awaken only
contempt, as if one were to dispute the
theory of gravity. It was chose jugee.
It did not admit of question. The theory,
having swept away all opposition, had
free play for the creation of Arcadias.
Alas ! in a very similar fashion, in the
eighteenth period of our era, had au-
thority cleared the ground. It had
burned, hanged, shut up in Bastilles, all
cavilers ; and just as the scheme had a
chance to work, it crumbled suddenly to
pieces in the blood arid smoke of revo-
lutions. Democracy, from the very na-
ture of its principles, had no fear of a
like tragedy ; but it had decreed liberty,
and liberty began to be taken to doubt
its conclusions. Voices arose here and
there bewailing the lentils and the flesh-
pots of the ruined house of bondage.
Democracy had brought much good,
that was not denied. But what had it
done with the old dear things it had
swept away ? the sweet loyalties that
bound server to served ; the tender
lights of faith ; the mutual warm ties of
that enormous social and political edifice
reared by feudalism, which hid black
dungeons and noisome cloacae, perhaps,
but which was rich with beauty and glori-
ous with romance. The ugly rectangular
wholesome edifice which democracy had
substituted as a dwelling for the soul of
man, with its crude, fierce lights, left
many homesick for the past, with its in-
conveniences, its ruined beauties, and its
hoary charm.
The Time-Spirit of the Twentieth Century.
19
These plaints were swelled, too, by the
hard, unsentimental voice of Science,
who began to demonstrate the fallacies
of the heart's ardent reasoning. De-
mocracy had decreed with thunderous
finality that the feeble should be by law
placed in eternal equality with the strong,
and this was announced as the evident
intention of beneficent Nature. Science
relentlessly showed that Nature was not
beneficent, and even undertook to prove
that she was a heartless snob ; that to
"Nature's darling, the Strong," she
ruthlessly sacrificed multitudes of the fee-
ble. Science tore away the veil through
which sentiment had seen the peaceful
fields, and showed the faint-flushed or-
chard blossoms, the delicate springing
grass, the insects floating on the perfumed
breeze, the birds singing the praise of
Nature's God, all, all engaged in a
fierce battle for existence ; trampling on
the weak, snatching at food and place,
brutally crushing the feeble.
Democracy had made itself the cham-
pion of the humble, and had cursed the
greedy and powerful. Science proved
that not the meek and the unaggressive
were the fittest and noblest, as was shown
by their failing to survive in that terri-
ble struggle for life, of which the human
mele'e was but an articulate expression.
The conviction that humanity had once
known perfect equality, that freedom
had been filched by the unscrupulous,
was shown to be quite unfounded. Rous-
seau's Contrat Social was made ridicu-
lous by Darwin's Descent of Man. All
research tended to prove that from the
earliest Pliocene it was not the weak
nor the humble, but he who
" Stole the steadiest canoe,
Eat the quarry others slew,
Died, and took the finest grave,"
who had founded families, developed
races, brought order out of chaos, had
made civilizations possible, had ordained
peace and security, and had been the
force of upward evolution. It was thus
that the freedom which the heart had
given to the head was used to prove how
fallible that generous heart was.
Then out of all of this new knowledge,
this groping regret, there arose with ex-
cursions and alarums one of democracy's
most trenchant foes, Carlyle ; the first
who dared frankly to impeach the new
ruler, to question his decrees. Through
all his vocif erousness ; through all his
droning tautology, his buzzing, banging,
and butting among phrases, like an an-
gry cockchafer ; through the general
egregiousness of his intolerable style,
there rang out clear once again the paean
of the strong. Here was no talk of the
rights of man. His right, as of old, was
to do his duty and walk in the fear of
the Lord.
" A king or leader in all bodies of
men there must be," he says. " Be their
work what it may, there is one man
here who by character, faculty, and po-
sition is fittest of all to do it."
For the aggregate wisdom of the mul-
titude, to which democracy pinned its
faith, he had only scorn :
" To find a Parliament more and
more the expression of the people could,
unless the people chanced to be wise, give
no satisfaction. . . . But to find some sort
of King made in the image of God who
could a little achieve for the people, if
not their spoken wishes, yet their dumb
wants, and what they would at last find
to be their instinctive will, which is a
far different matter usually in this bab-
bling world of ours," that was the
thing to be desired. " He who is to
be my ruler, whose will is higher than
my will, was chosen for me by heaven.
Neither, except in obedience to the hea-
ven-chosen, is freedom so much as con-
ceivable."
Here was the old doctrine of divine
right come to life again, and masquerad-
ing in democratic garments.
The democratic theory did not fall
into ruins even at the blast of Carlyle's
stertorous trumpet, but the serious-mind-
ed of his day were deeply stirred by the
20
The Time-Spirit of the Twentieth Century.
seer's scornful words, more especially
since that comfortable middle-class pros-
perity and content, to which the demo-
crat pointed as the best testimony to the
virtue of his doctrines, was being attacked
at the same time from another quarter.
Not only did Carlyle contemptuously
declare that this bourgeois prosperity
was a thing unimportant, almost con-
temptible, but the proletarian a new
factor in the argument began to mut-
ter and growl that he had not had his
proper share in it, and that he found it as
oppressive and unjust as he had found
the arrogant prosperity of the nobles.
That old man vociferous has long
since passed to where, beyond these
voices, there is peace ; but the obscure
muttering of the man in the street, which
was once but a vague undertone, has
grown to an open menace. We of the
middle classes who threw off the yoke
of the aristocracy clamored just such
impeachments, a century back. We are
amazed to hear them now turned against
ourselves. To us this seems an admira-
ble world that we have made ; orderly,
peaceable, prosperous. We see no fault
in it. It has not worked out, perhaps,
on as generous lines as we had planned,
but, on the whole, each man gets, we
think, his deserts.
We begin to ask ourselves, wonder-
ingly, if that aristocrat of the eighteenth
century may not have seen his world
in the same way. He paid no taxes,
but he considered that he did his just
share of work for the body politic ; he
fought, he legislated, he administered.
Perhaps it seemed a good world to him,
well arranged. Perhaps he was as
honestly indignant at our protests as we
are at those of our accusers to-day. We
thought ourselves intolerably oppressed
by his expenditure of the money we
earned, by his monopoly of place and
power ; but we argue in our turn that, as
we are the brains of the new civiliza-
tion, we should have all the consequent
privileges. What, we ask ourselves, do
these mad creatures (who are very well
treated) mean by their talk of slavery,
of wage slavery ? How can there be
right or reason in their contention that
the laborer rather than the capitalist
should have the profit of labor ? Does
not the capitalist, as did the noble, gov-
ern, administer, defend ?
Attacked, abused, execrated, we be-
gin to sympathize with those dead no-
bles, who were perhaps as honest, as
well meaning, as we feel ourselves to be ;
who were as annoyed, as disgusted, as
little convinced, by our arguments as we
are by those which accuse us in our turn
of being greedy, idle feeders upon the
sweat of others. Perhaps to them the
established order of things seemed as just
and eternal as it does to us. We begin
to understand, we begin to sympathize
with, the dead aristocrats.
For one hundred years, now, demo-
cracy has been dominant, has had a free
hand for the full application of its hy-
potheses of life. It is well to brush aside
conventionalities and cant, and reckon
up the results of this century-long reign
of liberty, equality, and fraternity.
The millennium still remains a mirage
upon the horizon of hope. Many abuses
have been swept away, but power still
uses its strength to brush the feeble from
its path and grasp the things to be de-
sired. Out of the triumphant bour-
geoisie has grown a class as proud and
strong as the aristocracy it supplanted.
It has wealth, luxury, and power, such
as the nobles never dreamed of. The
lettres de cachet are no longer in use,
and tax farmers are mere tradition ; but
financiers, by a stroke of the pen, can
levy a tax upon the whole land whose
results make the horde of Fouquet ab-
surd, and the payers of the impost are as
helpless as any inmate of the cells of the
He Sainte Marguerite. Capital organ-
izes itself into incredibly potent aggrega-
tions, and labor in its turn has built up a
despotism far reaching and unescapable
as the Lex Romanorum, such as the work-
The Time- Spirit of the Twentieth Century.
man under the old regime would never
have tolerated. The two are arrayed
against each other "in struggles of ever
increasing intensity.
After a hundred years of acceptance
of the principle of the brotherhood of
man, all nations are exaggerating their
barriers and differences. The Celt re-
vives and renews his hatred of the Sax-
on. In Ireland and in Wales the abo-
riginal tongues and literatures are being
disinterred and taught, as a means of
loosening the corporate nationalism of
the British Isles. The Bretons protest
against the appellation of Frenchmen.
Hungary has repudiated the German
language, and the Hungarians, Czechs,
and Bohemians, held together by the
bond of Austrian government, are res-
tive and mutually repellent. The Em-
pire of Spain has fallen into jealous and
unsympathetic fragments. The conti-
nent of Europe is dominated by two au-
tocratic sovereigns, who overawe their
neighbors by the consistent and contin-
uous policy possible only to a despotism.
France and the republics of South
America are the prey of a military clique
and a horde of adventurers who only al-
ternate dictators. The armaments of the
world are so prodigious that each nation
fears to use its dangerous weapon. The
barriers of increasing tariffs wall peoples
apart. The great nations are dividing
the weak ones as lions do their prey.
Universal fraternity has become the dim-
mest of dreams.
And America ! America, the supreme
demonstration and embodiment of the
democratic ideal, what of her ? Amer-
ica has embarked upon imperial wars,
refuses sanctuary to the poor as inadmis-
sible paupers, and laughs at the claim
to brotherhood or citizenship of any man
with a yellow skin.
That Church which, by the very na-
ture of her being, is most opposed to lib-
erty of thought or conscience is more
powerful than ever, and sees a great
body of Protestants ardently repudiating
its protests against arbitrary religious
government, and earnestly endeavoring
to assimilate its beliefs and rule to her
ancient example. The Ghetto is open,
but the Jew is still hated and oppressed.
A Calas is no longer sacrificed to bigoted
churchmen, but an intolerant Catholic
nation makes possible an affaire Drey-
fus. After a century of democracy,
Zola is called upon to take up once again
the protests of Voltaire.
Thus time has one by one burst and
scattered the iridescent bubbles of demo-
cracy's sentimental hopes.
What wonder is it, then, that so sig-
nificant a change has taken place in our
attitude toward ourselves ? We, who be-
lieved ourselves the regenerators of the
world, are now humbler of mood. Man,
who spelled himself with reverent large
letters, who pictured a universe created
solely for his needs, who imagined a
Deity flattered by his homage and
wounded by his disrespect, who had but
to observe a respectable code of morals
to be received into eternal happiness
with all the august honors due a conde-
scending monarch, has fallen to the hu-
mility of such admissions as these :
" What a monstrous spectre is this
man, the disease of the agglutinated dust,
lifting alternate feet or lying drugged
with slumber ; killing, feeding, growing,
bringing forth small copies of himself ;
grown up with hair like grass, fitted
with eyes that glitter in his face ; a thing
to set children screaming ! . . . Poor
soul, here for so little, cast among so
many hardships, filled with desires so in-
commensurate and so inconsistent ; sav-
agely surrounded, savagely descended,
irremediably condemned to prey upon
his fellow lives ; . . . infinitely childish,
often admirably valiant, often touch-
ingly kind ; sitting down to debate of
right or wrong and the attributes of the
deity ; rising up to battle for an egg or
die for an idea. ... To touch the heart
of his mystery we find in him one
thought, strange to the point of lunacy,
22
The Time- Spirit of the Twentieth Century.
the thought of duty, the thought of
something owing to himself, to his neigh-
bor, to his God ; an ideal of decency to
which he would rise if possible ; a limit
of shame below which, if it be possible,
he will not stoop. . . . Not in man alone,
but we trace it in dogs and cats whom
we know fairly well, and doubtless some
similar point of honor sways the ele-
phant, the oyster, and the louse, of whom
we know so little."
Alas, poor Yorick ! how a century of
self-contemplation has humbled him !
It is thus the successors of Rousseau,
of Chateaubriand, of the believers in the
perfectibility of man, speak, saying
calmly, " The Empire of this world be-
longs to force." And again : " Hitherto,
in our judgments of men, we have taken
for our masters the oracles and poets, and
like them we have received for certain
truths the noble dreams of our imagina-
tions and the imperious suggestions of
our hearts. We have bound ourselves
by the partiality of religious divinations,
and we have shaped our doctrines by
our instincts and our vexations. . . . Sci-
ence at last approaches with exact and
penetrating implements ; . . . and in this
employment of science, in this concep-
tion of things, there is a new art, a new
morality, a new polity, a new religion,
and it is in the present time our task to
discover them."
Along with this changed attitude has
come an alteration in our heroic ideals.
For the sentimental rubbish, the drip-
ping egotism, of a Werther, of a Man-
fred, in whom the young of their day
found the most adequate expression of
their self-consciousness, we have substi-
tuted the Stevenson and the Kipling hero,
hard-headed, silent, practical, scornful
of abstractions, contemptuous of emo-
tions ; who has but two dominant no-
tions, patriotism and duty; who keeps
his pores open and his mouth shut.
The old democratic shibboleths re-
main on our lips, and still pass current
as if they were truisms, but we have
ceased to live by their precepts. We
have lost our youthful cocksureness and
intolerance in imposing them upon oth-
ers. We realize that, despite all we have
so proudly decreed, the strong still rule,
and often plunder the weak ; that the
weak still rage, and impotently imagine
a vain thing of legislation as a means of
redressing the eternal inequality of life.
We see the flaws in our tyranny of com-
mercialism and militarism. We regard
ourselves our erstwhile important and
impeccable selves with half -humorous
leniency.
Much of good we gave. How could
any ideal so tender, so high of purpose,
fail of righting a thousand wrongs ? How
could all those floods of sweet, foolish
tears leave the soil of life quite hard and
dry, or fail to cause a thousand lovely
flowers of goodness and gentleness to
bloom ?
That we have not solved the riddle of
the Sphinx is hardly cause for wonder
or shame. Neither will our successors
find the answer, but it will be interest-
ing to see the nature of their guess. It
is plain that our formula will not serve
for them, but the new programme is
not yet announced. The newcomers are
thoughtful and silent, daunted perhaps
by the failure of our own drums and
shoutings.
Will the wage earners shear the bour-
geoisie, as we shore the nobles a century
ago ? Or will Liberty sell herself to au-
thority, for protection from the dry hope-
lessness of socialism or the turmoil of
anarchy ? Or will the new generation
evolve some thought undreamed of, some
new and happier guess at the great cen-
tral truth which forever allures and for-
ever eludes our grasp ?
Elizabeth Bisland.
'The Empress Dowager.
23
THE EMPRESS DOWAGER.
A STRUGGLING mass of humanity was
crowding out of the northeast gate of
the Forbidden City. Order, etiquette,
ceremony, none of these amenities of
life, customary to the existence of the
Son of Heaven, was apparent on this oc-
casion. Here a stalwart Manchu was
shouting for a chair, but none was to be
had at any price. Eunuchs, loaded with
spoils, contested the right of way with
the poor creatures of the harem. " Sauve
qui peut ! " was the motto of all. The Son
of Heaven, Hsien Feng, had ordered his
chair, and, without troubling about his
council, had ridden off unceremoniously,
leaving his courtiers, women, and eunuchs
to follow as best they could. Unused to
contact with the world, these poor crea-
tures trailed in the wake of their lord
and master, many of them falling by the
wayside, without notice save that of a
cruel taunt from some coarse eunuch.
We may turn our eyes from the rest
of the Manchu women, on their toilsome
journey that hot summer day of 1860,
and observe one among them. Although
somewhat taller than the others, she
would not have attracted attention on
that account. Manchu women have not
adopted the Chinese fashion of compress-
ing the feet, and this one, although bur-
dened with a boy of five, stepped out as
if she did not know what fatigue meant.
There was determination in her very step.
She was twenty -four or twenty-five years
old, had blue-black hair and regular Tar-
tar features, with large, bold eyes. In
every movement there was a special but
almost mechanical alertness as regarded
her boy. It would have been impossible
to state if she loved the child or not ;
but there would have been no difficulty
in discovering that whatever passions she
possessed it was evident that she was
passionate centred in the child.
She was one of the eighty-one third-
class wives to which the Son of Heaven
is entitled, one of eighty-one nameless
toys of her lord and master. There is
probably nothing but malicious inven-
tion in the story that she had been a
slave girl. It is not from that class that
the harem of the Emperor is filled. This
might have been the case in the days
of Kang-hi or Kien-lung, who were in
touch with their people ; but it was next
to impossible with a palace-bred weak-
ling, like the man who was now running
away from a shadow. Her motherhood
always honorable in China, especially
when the child is a boy had excited
the envy, hatred, and malice of her less
favored sisters. Hers had been a hard
life. She had been tormented with the
law of Confucius, declaring that the child
she had borne was not hers, but that of
the Empress, if the latter should not
present the monarch with an heir. She
knew that she was no more than a hand-
maid. " There are three kinds of filial
impiety, the gravest of which is to be
without male descendants," declares
Mencius, after Confucius the greatest
sage. (Who should, in such a case, make
the sacrificial offerings before the tab-
lets of the ancestors ?) Therefore, if a
man has no children at the age of forty,
he is expected to take another wife. The
first, however, retains her original posi-
tion ; and if children are born of the sec-
ond, they belong by law to the first, or
legal wife.
These third-class wives are usually
nameless ; they may be distinguished by
numbers, but after they have borne a son
they are known as the mother of that boy.
Wholly uneducated and illiterate, the
women of the harem vegetate through
their melancholy lives, and die without
leaving a trace. During the two cen-
turies since the Manchu established the
dynasty, not one of all the successive
24
The Empress Dowager.
occupants of the women's apartments in
the Purple Forbidden was known even
by name. But this woman, stolidly plod-
ding along the dusty and rocky ruts,
would form a rude exception.
Yeh-ho, or Hot Springs, was reached in
safety, and couriers informed the Son of
Heaven of the arrival of the barbarians
in Peking, and later of their withdrawal.
This was beyond his comprehension, for
it was inexplicable by precedent.
The British and French plenipoten-
tiaries, on their part, knew nothing of
Chinese conditions, and were wholly at a
loss with regard to Oriental ratiocination,
which few of us can follow even at this
day. The act which appeared as wan-
ton barbarism, the burning of the sum-
mer palace, was the only penalty that
made an impression. The comparative-
ly lenient conditions of peace produced
a feeling of relief, but at the same time
a firm belief that it was only the con-
sciousness of impotence or inferiority
which restrained the allies from demand-
ing or taking more.
It was not only mental but also phy-
sical decadence which had overtaken the
Ta Tsing dynasty. Hsien Feng, while
trying to maintain the traditional su-
periority of the Middle Kingdom and
his own supremacy over all the mon-
archs in his capacity of Tien tsz', or Son
of Heaven, did not act the part of a
man. To do him justice, however, it is
admitted that he was facing conditions
which were wholly beyond his compre-
hension. Prior to the war with Eng-
land China was the Middle Kingdom,
and might even call itself the Middle
Flowery Kingdom, without much exag-
geration. The potentates of the adja-
cent countries looked upon the Son of
Heaven as upon their oldest brother,
whom they had been taught to revere.
The great monarch at Peking received
their homage with benevolent conde-
scension, as became his superior rank.
When they sent him congratulations
and presents on New Year's Day, he
accepted both, but gave more expensive
presents in return. If they had trouble
with their subjects, and appealed to
him, he was ready to go to their assist-
ance without remuneration or even re-
imbursement. Our sinologues translated
this relationship by the word " tributa-
ry," because the idea has no existence
in the Occident, and we have no word to
express it. It is Oriental in conception,
and arises from the Confucian formation
of the state, in which the family, and not
the individual, constitutes the unit.
The only nations having intercourse
with China had received whatever civili-
zation they possessed from the Middle
Kingdom. In the early days of the Ta
Tsing dynasty, Europeans had, indeed,
come to China, but, whether engaged in
trade or in the propagation of the gos-
pel, they had humbly obeyed the im-
perial decrees. Historical precedent,
therefore, served to confirm Hsien Feng's
belief in his own supremacy. He was
quite willing that the barbarians should
trade with his people. In theory, at
least, the autocrat at Peking ruled by
benevolence, and he was prepared to
extend his good will to the unfortunate
inhabitants of countries less favored than
the Middle Kingdom, to whom its tea
and other products were a necessary of
life. He was not averse to receiving their
ambassadors and to showing them kind-
ness, provided they observed the tradi-
tional rules of etiquette and paid him
the homage that was his due. It was
this question of homage and etiquette
which caused the war with Great Brit-
ain and France, and which drove Hsien
Feng from his capital, a fugitive, to his
palace at Yeh-ho.
Hsien Feng was urged by his brother,
Prince Kung, to return to the capital.
He refused. Scarcely had the court set-
tled at the Hot Springs palace, when one
of the older attendants remembered that
the spell of the Feng-shui, the spirit of
air and water, whose undisturbed repose
is essential to prosperity or " luck," was
broken, because the grandfather of the
Emperor, Kia King, had died at Yeh-ho.
From the moment when Hsien Feng was
reminded of this event a dark shadow
enshrouded him and his court. He felt
that he was a doomed man, and neither
astrologer nor geomancer, steeped as such
were in the murky waters of superstition,
could bring relief. The Emperor died
in the spring of the following year.
Who shall unravel the intrigues fos-
tered by his anticipated demise ? Legal
issue there was none, save a girl, and
girls have no legal existence. The boy
whom we have seen carried or led by his
vigorous mother was the undisputed heir,
and it was known that the deceased mon-
arch had appointed a council of regen-
cy. It was also said that some leading
Manchu had combined to obtain posses-
sion of the boy, and thereby proclaim
themselves regents de facto. Whatever
schemes and plots concentrated about the
child heir were defeated by the flight of
the Empress together with the mother
and child.
This event marks the beginning of a
government by palace intrigue, in which
eunuchs took a leading part. Such
government is not without precedent,
although it is almost purely Oriental.
These intrigues have had their day in
Constantinople and Moscow, where Oc-
cidental thought struggles with Oriental
conditions. It was only through the eu-
nuchs that the mother of the heir could
approach the legal wife of the dying
Emperor, and come to an understanding
with her ; and it was only by enlisting
the services of the leading eunuchs that
preparations for flight could be made.
Concealment was comparatively easy,
since the ceremonies attending the funer-
al engrossed the attention of the super-
stitious Manchu. The two women with
the boy arrived safely at Peking, and
enlisted the sympathy of Prince Kung.
The mother had decided, upon mak-
ing her arrangement with the real Em-
press Dowager, that the heir should be
The Empress Dowager.
25
proclaimed by the two characters stand-
ing for " Fortunate Union." Her am-
bition, at the time of her flight, went no
further. But as soon as her interview
with Prince Kung had shown her the
way of revenge upon her enemies, she
determined that she, and she alone,
should be supreme in the Purple For-
bidden City. A remnant of Seng Ko-
ling-sing's braves were dispatched to Yeh-
ho, and before the conspirators could
devise means of safety they were seized
and beheaded. The same fate overtook
the eunuchs who had incurred the ha-
tred of the Manchu women. As to the
fate of the occupants of the harem, life
is held cheaply in China, and women
are mere chattels at the best. The child
was at once proclaimed Emperor under
the title of Tung Chih, or United Rule ;
thus commemorating the agreement be-
tween the Empress Dowager and her
former handmaid.
The arrangement was not only law-
less, but it violated the highest statutes of
the country ; and it seems strange that
the Chinese, so punctilious as to prece-
dent, and horrified at the very idea of a
woman being consulted in men's affairs,
should have submitted without a mur-
mur. It must be remembered, however,
that at this time the Yang-tsz' provinces,
the first to be informed of the usurpa-
tion, were in the throes of the Tai P'ing
rebellion, and that their viceroys had all
they could do to maintain their own au-
thority. Besides, the occupation of the
capital by a hostile army, and its subse-
quent release, had set every precedent
at naught. The time was, consequently,
singularly propitious ; and when the re-
bellion was subdued, and the country had
settled down, the viceroys faced an ac-
complished fact, to which they submitted
with the stoicism of the race. An impe-
rial decree had imparted official signifi-
cance to the hitherto nameless woman.
She was given the title of Tsze Hsi An,
or Mother of the Sovereign. Inasmuch
as this act provoked no opposition, as it
26
The Empress Dowager.
undoubtedly would have done but for the
vigorous measures upon her enemies at
Yeh-ho, the title was soon afterward sup-
plemented by that of Empress of the
West, to distinguish her from the Em-
press Dowager, who received the title of
Empress of the East.
The first ten years of her reign may
be termed tentative. She was alert by
nature, and had demonstrated her innate
powers of intrigue. These faculties
were ever on the watch. When a high
Manchu approached her with broad in-
sinuations that the Empress of the East
was plotting against her, she suddenly
confronted him with that less masculine
woman, and discovered that he had come
to her rival with a similar tale. Calling
her chief eunuch, she ordered a box of
gold leaf to be brought, and scornfully
compelled the mischief-maker to swal-
low enough to stop his tongue forever.
With the palace eunuchs attached to
her, for she was extravagant in her re-
wards for faithful services, she could
bid defiance to any plot. The autonomy
of the provinces rendered each one obe-
dient to the viceroy appointed over it.
The people do not take any part what-
ever in the government. So long as the
taxation remains within reasonable lim-
its, it is immaterial who holds the ver-
milion pencil at Peking ; and the literati,
who, as candidates for office, stand be-
tween the government and the -people,
look to the former for preferment, and
are not disposed to interfere so long as
the violation of Confucian law does not
threaten their privileges or existence.
The administration rested chiefly in
the hands of Prince Kung, known to
the foreigners as Prince Regent. When,
however, Tung Chih approached his ma-
jority, Tsze Hsi An began to look for
support among the prominent officials of
Chinese birth, and with rare intuition
selected two men of very different char-
acter, Li Hung Chang and Chang Chih
Tung. The former had rendered val-
uable services during the Tai P'ing re-
bellion, where he had proved an unscru-
pulous, crafty, and daring leader, but
fond of wealth. Chang Chih Tung, on
the contrary, had patriotic impulses, was
opposed to the " foreign devils," but
was honest and far-sighted. These two
officials were called to Peking, where
Li Hung Chang, who had kept in his
own service some of the troops drilled
by " Chinese Gordon," was appointed
to the important position of viceroy of
Chih-lf.
When her son was sixteen years old
Tsze Hsi An selected a wife for him, and
he was duly proclaimed Emperor and
installed upon the Dragon Throne. The
foreign ministers, accredited to Peking,
now claimed the right of presenting their
credentials to the sovereign in person,
and, after many months of weary nego-
tiations, were finally admitted into the
hall where the ambassadors of younger
nations had paid their homage and pre-
sented the offerings of their respective
monarchs. Thus the ministers discov-
ered, but too late, that by tolerating this
reception they had acknowledged China's
superiority !
It is beyond doubt that Tsze Hsi An
was the real ruler during the life of her
son. Filial piety, the one inexorable law
of China, which, in its ramification into
ancestral worship, constitutes the reli-
gion, since it is the tie which binds the
nation into homogeneity, holds every son
in bondage during the life of his parents.
Tung Chih, however, was both vicious
and stubborn, and threatened his mo-
ther's autocracy. She must have taken
a dislike to him, as her actions immedi-
ately after his death indicate.
He died in the spring of 1875, from
an attack of smallpox, leaving his wife
pregnant. Sudden as was his death,
Tsze Hsi An, now Mother of the Sov-
ereign no longer, took instant and ap-
parently preconcerted measures to retain
her authority. The breath had scarcely
left the body before messengers were on
their way to summon such Manchu no-
The Empress Dowager.
27
bles as were well disposed toward her.
She invited none possessed of independ-
ence or respect of the statutes. At the
same time Li Hung Chang was ordered
to hold his troops in readiness. When
the council convened, she simply notified
its members that she had selected Tsai-
tien, the three-and-a-half-year-old son of
Prince Chung, as the heir to the throne.
The Manchu looked aghast. What if
Tung Chih's unborn child should prove
to be a son ? Tsze Hsi An asserted, im-
patiently but positively, that she would
have no grandson. To the almost insur-
mountable objection that Tsai-tien was of
the same generation as Tung Chih, and
was therefore excluded from worshiping
at his tablets, she replied that her " hus-
band," the late Hsien Feng, dead these
fourteen years, had adopted the boy by
" posthumous act." This brazen sug-
gestion stifled all opposition. The child
was sent for in the dead of night, and
brought to the ghostly council chamber,
where all present, including his own fa-
ther, prostrated themselves before him.
He was proclaimed Emperor under the
title of Kuang Hsu, or Illustrious Suc-
cessor.
The supposed adoption by Hsien Feng
restored to Tsze Hsi An her title, or as
much right as she had to it while the
Empress of the East was still living.
But this violation of China's most sa-
cred law, that of ancestral worship, pro-
voked so much opposition that Li Hung
Chang's troops were called upon to seize
numerous victims for the executioner.
Blood flowed freely at Peking; but it
served only to prove that the country at
large could be ruled from the capital by
the aid of a handful of loyal viceroys,
and in defiance of every law. The high-
handed action of one who was in every
respect a usurper caused scarcely a com-
ment in the provinces.
The foreign ministers were, of course,
accredited to the de facto powers, and,
even if they had been acquainted with
the facts, would have had no cause to in-
terfere. Li Hung Chang was promoted
to the Grand Secretariat, a position hith-
erto reserved exclusively to a Manchu,
and Tsze Hsi An was as much the sole
regent or ruler as after the death of the
Empress of the East in 1881. She did
not attempt to interfere with the ma-
chinery of the government, except in the
appointment of the viceroys and leading
officials, and in appropriating a good
share of the revenue to herself. It seems
that, as she grew older, the desire to ac-
cumulate wealth increased, a desire
easily gratified with the opportunity af-
forded to her.
Ruthless in her methods, she ordered
Alutch, Tung Chih's widow, to commit
suicide. After this, even the Manchu fa-
thers, little as they value their daughters,
were not anxious to furnish a bride to
Kuang Hsu when he approached his ma-
jority. His adoptive mother selected one
of her own nieces, and after the wedding
Kuang Hsu was duly installed. Tsze Hsi
An withdrew to the Eho Park palace,
which had been prepared for her, but
by no means released her hold upon the
government. The Peking Gazette, the
official organ of the administration, bears
ample evidence that every decree ema-
nating from Kuang Hsu had been pre-
viously submitted to, and approved by,
the imperious woman.
She might have continued to enjoy her
authority, if the uniform success of all
her schemes had not caused her ambi-
tion to go beyond the bounds controlled
by palace intrigue. She was sixty years
old in 1894, and this birthday, the oc-
casion of great honor in the life of the
Chinese, was to be appropriately cele-
brated. The viceroys were notified by
imperial edict, and received more pri-
vately a strong hint as to the presents
that would be acceptable to "her who
must be obeyed." It was expected that
this celebration would be made remark-
able by Japan's humiliation. It is cer-
tain that Li Hung Chang was devoted
to her ? and acted entirely upon her or-
The Empress Dowager.
ders. It is equally certain that Yuan
Shi Kai, the Chinese minister-resident
in Korea, was appointed by, and was a
creature of, the viceroy of Chih-lf ; nor
can it be denied that, beginning with the
assassination of Kim-6k-Kyun, the pro-
Japanese Korean refugee, on the 24th of
March, 1894, everything was done by
the Chinese government to insult Japan.
That proud nation had, indeed, ample
cause for resentment, even though its al-
leged cause of China's suzerainty over
Korea was ridiculous, and served only
to justify the war before the civilized
world. Li Hung Chang could have made
peace at any time before the battle of
A-san. That he did not do so, well in-
formed as he was as to Japan's strength,
goes far to prove that he was impelled
by a power superior to his own ; that is,
by Tsze Hsi An.
When the Chinese fleet was destroyed
and Port Arthur taken, the woman re-
membered the time of her flight, and
grew frightened. Her trepidation in-
creased a thousandfold when the capture
of Wei-hai-wei left the road to Peking
open to the victorious foe. Her scornful
behest, " to drive the wo-jin [pygmies]
back to their lair," had been answered
by the stirring sounds of Kimigayo, the
Japanese national anthem. She remem-
bered, but too late, that the enemy, in
this case, was no barbarian ignorant of
Chinese law and precedent, but a deeply
insulted people to whom both were an
open book. She knew that she had for-
feited her life many times by her crimes
against the statutes, and that the flimsy
pretext of her adoptive motherhood,
whatever influence it might exert upon
the weakling on the throne, would not
save her from the anger of Japanese
statesmen. She commanded and implored
Li Hung Chang to prevent the Japanese
from entering Peking, and authorized
him to make peace at any price. Her
fright assumed such dimensions that she
actually withdrew from the government,
and, intending to use the Emperor as a
scapegoat, thrust the vermilion pencil
into the untrained fingers of astonished
Kuang Hsu.
Those fingers, weak as they were,
grasped the pencil with greater firmness
than Tsze Hsi An had expected. Peace
was concluded upon comparatively easy
terms, for Marquis Ito was unwilling to
be the cause of China's disintegration.
But when Kuang Hsu scrutinized the sac-
rifices imposed upon China, and found
how the vast empire had been shameful-
ly defeated by its small but wiry foe, he
inquired into the causes producing such
abnormal results. The consequences of
this inquiry were soon visible in the inno-
vations ordered in no uncertain tone, and
published in the imperial yellow Court
Journal.
Tsze Hsi An had evidently relinquished
her authority prematurely. It was quite
clear that Kuang Hsu intended to be
Emperor in deed as well as in name. He
showed the relative authority of Tsze
Hsi An and himself, upon the return of
Li Hung Chang from the coronation
ceremonies at Moscow. The statesman,
upon arrival at Peking, hastened to Eho
Park to pay his respects to its owner.
When Kuang Hsu heard of it, he reproved
him publicly as failing in homage due to
the Emperor, deprived him of his yellow
jacket, and kept him prostrate upon the
stone floor for such a long time that the
old man was made seriously ill.
The reforms inaugurated under the
new regime demanded a vast supply of
money, and threatened the revenues of
Tsze Hsi An as well as the perquisites
of courtiers and officials. Worse than
this, the influence of Sir Robert Hart
was increasing rapidly, and unpleasant
inquiries as to the disbursement of large
amounts of specie might take place at
any time. To crown the danger threat-
ening Chinese officialdom, Tsze Hsi An
was rapidly losing whatever influence she
still possessed, and even she might be
called to account for past misdeeds.
The coup d'etat of the 21st of August,
1898, excites less wonder than the fact
that it was so long in maturing. Tsze
Hsi An needed all her previous experi-
ence in palace intrigue to spin the web
with due secrecy, since a single traitor
among that host of eunuchs would have
been fatal to her. That there was such
danger was proved at the last moment,
when Kuang Hsu was warned. It was
too late ! As he was trying to escape to
the British Legation, he was seized by
one of the head eunuchs, and unceremo-
niously carried back and placed under
arrest. Tsze Hsi An reentered the Pur-
ple Forbidden City, and openly resumed
her authority.
It would be profitless and beyond the
scope of this article to consider what the
ministers of the great powers might or
should have done. Moderate but firm
interference at that time could, beyond
doubt, have solved the problem of Chi-
na's rejuvenation. The nations most in-
terested in this desirable object were re-
presented by men to whom China was
a closed book. Neither Mr. Conger nor
Sir Claude Macdonald could be expected
to master the art of diplomacy, or to
acquire a correct knowledge of China
by intuition. Tsze Hsi An, silently re-
cognized, satisfied the frightened officials
by her wholesale abrogation of the de-
crees issued by the ex -Emperor, and
thereby gained their approbation. She
was seated more firmly on the throne
than ever.
But one difficulty confronted her. She
had never dealt directly with the barba-
rians ; and of the two men who had saved
her this trouble, Prince Kung was dead,
and Li Hung Chang, who had experi-
ence in carrying out her orders, abso-
lutely declined the responsibility. In
this connection, her long training in pal-
Jace intrigue proved of no avail ; and
among her creatures of the Tsung-li-
yamen there was not one competent to
take the lead.
What increased the difficulty was that
two powers, at least, could read between
The Empress Dowager.
29
the lines, and knew that she had no
shadow of right for her high-handed
proceedings. Russia and Japan knew
China well, and either could at any time
render her position untenable. That nei-
ther of them did so was, as she well
knew, not on her account, but from
motives of policy. Russia's information
was held over her head like the sword
of Damocles, until its presence drove her
almost mad. Japan, on the contrary, in
its desire to preserve China's integrity
as a guarantee for its own independence,
was disposed to be more friendly. At
last she decided to trust Japan ; but when
about to negotiate an offensive-defensive
treaty, M. de Giers interfered by declar-
ing that " such a treaty would be consid-
ered as an unfriendly act by his govern-
ment."
Thus, at the beginning of the year
1900, Tsze Hsi An was harassed upon
every side. All her experience in the
evasion of danger pointed toward the
shedding of blood as the only certain
means of success. It seems as if she
had adopted as motto the gory platform
of Robespierre : " II n'y a que les morts
qui ne reviennent pas." That was the
only solution which she was able to dis-
cover, and she seized upon it with avid-
ity. Her experience was not broad
enough to forecast the result, while her
superstition, ignorance, and hope led
her to accept the supposed invulnerabili-
ty of the Boxers as an established fact.
When that illusion vanished, and the al-
lies appeared at T'ung Chow, fourteen
miles from Peking, she fled, taking with
her sixty-nine carts filled with the most
valuable wealth, and poor Kuang Hsu,
who was to serve as a hostage for her
own safety and immunity.
Strong as she is physically, and mental-
ly as regards determination, it is scarcely
to be expected that this woman, now
sixty-six years old, will long survive the
incredible hardships of a journey of more
than six hundred miles. Yet the same
danger besets Kuang Hsu, whose health
Penelope's Irish Experiences.
has been at no time good. The question
is whether her death will in any way al-
ter the circumstances or affect China's
future. But from her life the lesson
may be learned that no law, however sa-
cred it may be, is considered inviolable in
the Middle Kingdom, and that, aided by
loyal viceroys, the regeneration of China
may be initiated and directed from Pe-
king, without any serious opposition, so
long as local interests and traditions are
not ruthlessly sacrificed. While with
nations of the Occident reforms usually
begin among the people, the recent his-
tory of Japan is ample proof that the re-
verse is the case in the Orient. That
history also demonstrates the feasibility
of gradually infusing new life and aims
of life by influencing the literati who
stand between the throne and the peo-
ple, and exert no little pressure upon
both. Their number, small if compared
with the dense population, renders such
regeneracy possible. A gradual change
in the programme of the triennial ex-
aminations, and a liberal revision of the
salary list, together with the abolition of
the fee system, should limit the attempts
at reform during at least one decade.
By watching the effect thus produced,
further measures tending in the same
direction might be inaugurated. But
if, looking toward the wealth concealed
within China's soil, violent means are
adopted either to reach those treasures or
to introduce reforms having in view the
same end, the whole of China may be
roused to a war compared to which the
late Boxer movement was mere child's
play.
R. Van Bergen.
PENELOPE'S IRISH EXPERIENCES. 1
PART THIRD.
XII.
"See where Mononia's heroes lie, proud Owen
More's descendants,
'T is they that won the glorious name and had
the grand attendants ! "
IT was a charming thing for us when
Dr. La Touche gave us introductions to
the Colquhouns of Ardnagreena ; and
when they, in turn, took us to tea with
Lord and Lady Killbally at Balkilly
Castle. I don't know what there is
about us : we try to live a sequestered
life, but there are certain kind forces in
the universe that are always bringing us
in contact with the good, the great, and
the powerful. Francesca enjoys it, but
secretly fears to have her democracy un-
dermined. Salemina wonders modestly
at her good fortune. I accept it as the
graceful tribute of an old civilization to
a younger one ; the older men grow the
better they like girls of sixteen, and why
should n't the same thing be true of coun-
tries?
As long ago as 1589, one of the Eng-
lish " undertakers " who obtained some
of the confiscated Desmond lands in
Munster wrote of the " better sorte " of
Irish : " Although they did never see
you before, they will make you the best
cheare their country yieldeth for two or
three days, and take not anything there-
for. . . . They have a common saying
which I am persuaded they speake un-
feinedly, which is, ' Defend me and
spend me.' Yet many doe utterly mis-
like this or any good thing that the poor
Irishman dothe."
Copyright, 1900, hy KATE DOUGLAS RIGOS.
Penelope's Irish Experiences.
31
This certificate of character from an
* undertaker " of the sixteenth century
certainly speaks volumes for Irish amia-
bility and hospitality, since it was given
at a time when grievances were as real
as plenty ; when unutterable resentment
must have been rankling in many minds ;
and when those traditions were growing
which have colored the whole texture of
Irish thought, until, with the poor and
unlettered, to be " agin the government "
is an inherited instinct, to be obliterated
only by time.
We supplement Mrs. Mullarkey's hel-
ter-skelter meals with frequent luncheons
and dinners with our new friends, who
send us home on our jaunting car laden
with flowers, fruit, even with jellies and
jams. Lady Killbally forces us to take
three cups of tea and a half dozen mar-
malade sandwiches whenever we go to
the Castle ; for I apologized for our ap-
petites, one day, by telling her that we
had lunched somewhat frugally, the meal
being sweetened, however, by Molly's
explanation that there was a fresh sole
in the house, but she thought she would
not inthrude on it before dinner !
We asked, on our arrival at Knock-
arney House, if we might breakfast at a
regular hour, say eight thirty. Mrs.
Mullarkey agreed, with that suavity
which is, after her untidiness, her dis-
tinguishing characteristic ; but notwith-
standing this arrangement we break our
fast sometimes at nine forty, sometimes
at nine twenty, sometimes at nine, but
never earlier. In order to achieve this
much, we are obliged to rise early and
make a combined attack on the execu-
tive and culinary departments. One
morning I opened the door leading from
the hall into the back part of the estab-
lishment, but closed it hastily, having
interrupted the toilets of three young
children, whose existence I had never sus-
pected, and of Mr. Mullarkey, whom I
had thought dead for many years. Each
child had donned one article of clothing,
and was apparently searching for the
mate to it, whatever it chanced to be.
Mrs. Mullarkey was fully clothed, and
was about to administer correction to one
of the children, who, unfortunately for
him, was not. I retired to my apartment
to report progress, but did not describe
the scene minutely, nor mention the fact
that I had seen Salemina's ivory-backed
hairbrush put to excellent if somewhat
unusual and unaccustomed service.
Each party in the house eats in soli-
tary splendor, like the MacDermott,
Prince of Coolavin. That royal per-
sonage of County Sligo, I believe, did
not allow his wife or his children (who
must have had the MacDermott blood in
their veins, even if somewhat diluted)
to sit at table with him. This method
introduces the last element of confusion
into the household arrangements, and
on two occasions we have had our cus-
tard pudding or stewed fruit served in
our bedrooms a full hour after we have
finished dinner. We have reasons for
wishing to be first to enter the dining
room, and we walk in with eyes fixed on
the ceiling, by far the cleanest part of
the place. Having wended our way
through an underbrush of corks, with
an empty bottle here and there, and
stumbled over the holes in the carpet,
we arrive at our table in the window.
It is as beautiful as heaven outside, and
the tablecloth is at least cleaner than it
will be later, for Mrs. Waterf ord of Mul-
linavat has an unsteady hand.
When Oonah brings in the toast rack
now she balances it carefully, remem-
bering the morning when she dropped
it on the floor, but picked up the slices
and offered them to Salemina. Never
shall I forget that dear martyr's expres-
sion, which was as if she had made up
her mind to renounce Ireland and leave
her to her fate. I know she often must
wonder if Dr. La Touche's servants, like
Mrs. Mullarkey's, feel of the potatoes to
see whether they are warm or cold !
At ten thirty there is great confusion
and laughter and excitement, for the
32
Penelope's Irish Experiences.
sportsmen are setting out for the day,
and the car has been waiting at the door
for an hour. Oonah is caroling up and
down the long passage, laden with dishes,
her cheerfulness not in the least impaired
by having served seven or eight separate
breakfasts. Molly has spilled a jug of
milk, and is wiping it up with a child's
undershirt. The Glasgy man is telling
them that yesterday they forgot the cork-
screw, the salt, the cup, and the jam from
the luncheon basket, facts so mirth-
provoking that Molly wipes tears of plea-
sure from her eyes with the milky un-
dershirt, and Oonah sets the hot-water
jug and the coffeepot on the stairs to
have her laugh out comfortably. When
once the car departs, comparative quiet
reigns in and about the house until the
passing bicyclers appear for luncheon or
tea, when Oonah picks up the napkins
that we have rolled into wads and flung
under the dining table, and spreads them
on tea trays, as appetizing details for the
weary traveler. There would naturally
be more time for housework if so large
a portion of the day were not spent in
pleasant interchange of thought and
speech. I can well understand Mrs. Col-
quhoun's objections to the housing of the
Dublin poor in tenements, even in
those of a better kind than the present
horrible examples ; for wherever they are
huddled together in any numbers they
will devote most of their time to conver-
sation. To them, talking is more attrac-
tive than eating ; it even adds a new joy
to drinking ; and if I may judge from
the groups I have seen gossiping over
a turf fire till midnight, it is preferable
to sleeping. But do not suppose they
will bubble over with joke and repartee,
with racy anecdote, to every casual new-
comer. The tourist who looks upon the
Irishman as the merry -andrew of the
English-speaking world, and who ex-
pects every jarvey he meets to be as
whimsical as Mickey Free, will be disap-
pointed. I have strong suspicions that
ragged, jovial Mickey Free himself, de-
licious as he is, was created by Lever to
satisfy the Anglo-Saxon idea of the low-
comedy Irishman. You will live in the
Emerald Isle for many a month, and not
meet the clown or the villain so familiar
to you in modern Irish plays. Drama-
tists have made a stage Irishman to suit
themselves, and the public and the gal-
lery are disappointed if anything more
reasonable is substituted for him. You
will find, too, that you do not easily gain
Paddy's confidence. Misled by his care-
less, reckless impetuosity of demeanor,
you might expect to be the confidant of
his joys and sorrows, his hopes and
expectations, his faiths and beliefs, his
aspirations, fears, longings, at the first
interview. Not at all ; you will sooner
be admitted to a glimpse of the traveling
Scotsman's or the Englishman's inner
life, family history, personal ambition.
Glacial enough at first and far less vol-
uble, he melts soon enough, if he likes
you. Meantime, your impulsive Irish
friend gives himself as freely at the first
interview as at the twentieth ; and you
know him as well at the end of a week
as you are likely to at the end of a year.
He is a product of the past, be he gen-
tleman or peasant. A few hundred years
of necessary reserve concerning articles
of political and religious belief have bred
caution and prudence in stronger natures,
cunning and hypocrisy in weaker ones.
XIII.
" The light-hearted daughters of Erin,
Like the wild mountain deer they can bound ;
Their feet never touch the green island,
But music is struck from the ground.
And oft in the glens and green meadows,
The ould jig they dance with such grace,
That even the daisies they tread on,
Look up with delight in their face."
One of our favorite diversions is an
occasional glimpse of a " crossroads
dance " on a pleasant Sunday afternoon,
when all the young people of the dis-
trict are gathered together. Their re-
Penelope's Irish Experiences.
33
ligious duties are over with their confes-
sions and their masses, and the priests
encourage these decorous Sabbath gaye-
ties. A place is generally chosen where
two or four roads meet, and the dancers
come from the scattered farmhouses in
every direction. In Ballyfuchsia, they
dance on a flat piece of road under some
fir trees and larches, with stretches of
mountain covered with yellow gorse or
purple heather and the quiet lakes lying
in the distance. A message comes down
to us at Ardnagreena where we com-
monly spend our Sunday afternoons
that they expect a good dance, and the
blind boy is coming to fiddle ; and " so
if you will be coming up, it '& welcome
you '11 be." We join them about five
o'clock, passing, on our way, groups
of " boys " of all ages from sixteen up-
wards, walking in twos and threes, and
parties of three or four girls by them-
selves ; for it would not be etiquette for
the boys and girls to walk together, such
strictness is observed in these matters
about here.
When we reach the rendezvous we find
quite a crowd of young men and maid-
ens assembled ; the girls all at one side
of the road, neatly dressed in dark skirts
and light blouses, with the national wool-
en shawl over their heads. Two wide
stone walls, or dikes, with turf on top,
make capital seats, and the boys are at
the opposite side, as custom demands.
When a young man wants a partner, he
steps across the road and asks a colleen,
who lays aside her shawl, generally giv-
ing it to a younger sister to keep until
the dance is over, when the girls go back
to their own side of the road and put on
their shawls again. Upon our arrival we
find the " sets " are already in progress ;
a " set " being a dance like a very intri-
cate and very long quadrille. We are
greeted with many friendly words, and
the young boatmen and farmers' sons ask
the ladies, " Will you be pleased to dance,
miss ? " Some of them are shy, and say
they are not familiar with the steps ; but
VOL. LXXXVII. NO. 519. 3
their would-be partners remark encour-
agingly : " Sure, and what matter ? I '11
see you through." Soon all are dan-
cing, and the state of the road is being
discussed with as much interest as the
floor of a ballroom. Eager directions
are given to the more ignorant newcom-
ers, such as " Twirl your girl, captain ! "
or " Turn your back to your face ! "
rather a difficult direction to carry out,
but one which conveys its meaning.
Salemina confided to her partner that
she feared she was getting a bit old to
dance. He looked at her gray hair care-
fully for a moment, and then said chiv-
alrously : " I 'd not say that that was
old age, ma'am. I'd say it was eddi-
cation."
When the sets, which are very long
and very decorous, are finished, some-
times a jig is danced for our benefit.
The spectators make a ring, and the
chosen dancers go into the middle, where
their steps are watched by a most crit-
ical and discriminating audience with
the most minute and intense interest.
Our Molly is one of the best jig dancers
among the girls here (would that she
were half as clever at cooking !) ; but
if you want to see an artist of the first
rank, you must watch Kitty O'Rourke,
from the neighboring village of Dooclone.
The half door of the barn is carried into
the ring by one or two of her admirers,
whom she numbers by the score, and on
this she dances her famous jig polthogue,
sometimes alone and sometimes with Art
Rooney, the only worthy partner for her
in the kingdom of Kerry. Art's mo-
ther, " Bid " Kooney, is a keen match-
maker, and we heard her the other day
advising her son, who was going to Doo-
clone to have a "weeny court" with
his colleen, to put a clane shirt on him
in the middle of the week, and disthract
Kitty intirely by showin' her he had
three of thim, annyway !
Kitty is a beauty, and does n't need to
be made " purty wid cows," a feat that
the old Irishman proposed to do when
34
Penelope's Irish Experiences.
he was consummating a match for his
plain daughter. But the gifts of the
gods seldom come singly, and Kitty is
well fortuned as well as beautiful : fifty
pounds, her own bedstead and its fit-
tings, a cow, a pig, and a web of linen
are supposed to be the dazzling total, so
that it is small wonder her deluderin'
ways are maddening half the boys in
Ballyfuchsia and Dooclone. She has
the prettiest pair of feet in the County
Kerry, and when they are encased in a
smart pair of shoes, bought for her by
Art's rival, the big constable from Bally-
fuchsia barracks, how they do twinkle
and caper over that half barn door, to
be sure ! Even Murty, the blind fiddler,
seems intoxicated by the plaudits of the
bystanders, and he certainly never plays
so well for anybody as for Kitty of the
Meadow. Blindness is still common in
Ireland, owing to the smoke in these
wretched cabins, where sometimes a hole
in the roof is the only chimney ; and al-
though the scores of blind fiddlers no
longer traverse the land, finding a wel-
come at all firesides, they are still to be
found in every community. Blind Mur-
ty is a favorite guest at the Rooneys'
cabin, which is never so full that there
is not room for one more. There is a
small wooden bed in the main room, a
settle that opens out at night, with hens
in the straw underneath, where a board
keeps them safely within until they have
finished laying. There are six children
beside Art, and my ambition is to photo-
graph, or, still better, to sketch the family
circle together ; the hens cackling under
the settle, the pig (" him as pays the
rint ") snoring in the doorway, as a pro-
prietor should, while the children are
picturesquely grouped about. I never
succeed, because Mrs. Rooney sees us as
we turn into the lane, and calls to the
family to make itself ready, as quality 's
comin' in sight. The older children
can scramble under the bed, slip shoes
over their bare feet, and be out in front
of the cabin without the loss of a single
minute. " Mickey jew'l," the baby, who
is only four, but " who can handle a stick
as bould as a man," is generally clad in
a ragged skirt, slit every few inches from
waist to hem, so that it resembles a cot-
ton fringe. The little coateen that tops
this costume is sometimes, by way of di-
version, transferred to the dog, who runs
off with it ; but if we appear at this un-
lucky moment, there is a stylish yoke of
pink ribbon and soiled lace which one of
the girls pins over Mickey jewTs naked
shoulders.
Moya, who has this eye for picturesque
propriety, is a great friend of mine, and
has many questions about the Big Coun-
try when we take our walks. She longs
to emigrate, but the time is not ripe yet.
" The girls that come back has a lovely
style to thim," she says wistfully, " but
they 're so polite they can't live in the
cabins anny more and be contint." The
" boys " are not always so improved, she
thinks. " You 'd niver find a boy in
Ballyfuchsia that would say annything
rude to a girl ; but when they come back
from Ameriky, it 's too free they 've
grown intirely." It is a dull life for
them, she says, when they have once been
away ; though to be sure Ballyfuchsia is
a pleasanter place than Dooclone, where
the priest does not approve of dancing,
and, however secretly you may do it, the
curate hears of it, and will speak your
name in church.
It was Moya who told me of Kitty's
fortune. " She 's not the match that
Farmer Brodigan's daughter Kathleen
is, to be sure ; for he 's a rich man, and
has given her an iligant eddication in
Cork, so that she can look high for a
husband. She won't be takin* up wid
anny of our boys, wid her two hundred
pounds and her twenty cows and her
pianya. Och, it 's a thrimmjus player
she is, ma'am. She's that quick and
that strong that you 'd say she would n't
lave a string on it."
Some of the young men and girls
never see each other before the marriage,
Penelope's Irish Experiences.
35
!oya says. " But sure," she adds shyly,
" I 'd niver be contint with that, though
some love matches does n't turn out anny
better than the others."
" I hope it will be a love match with
you, and that I shall dance at your wed-
ding, Moya," I say to her smilingly.
" Faith, I 'm thinkin' my husband's
intinded mother died an old maid in
Dublin," she answers merrily. " It 's
a small fortune I '11 be havin', and few
lovers ; but you '11 be soon dancing at
Kathleen Brodigan's wedding, or Kitty
O'Rourke's, maybe."
I do not pretend to understand these
humble romances, with their foundations
of cows and linen, which are after all no
more sordid than bank stock and trous-
seaux from Paris. The sentiment of the
Irish peasant lover seems to be frankly
and truly expressed in the verses :
"Oh! Moya's wise and beautiful, has wealth
in plenteous store,
And fortune fine in calves and kine, and
lovers half a score ;
Her faintest smile would saints beguile, or
sinners captivate,
Oh! I think a dale of Moya, but I'll surely
marry Kate.
Now to let you know the raison why I can-
not have my way,
Nor bid my heart decide the part the lover
must obey
The calves and kine of Kate are nine, while
Moya owns but eight,
So with all my love for Moya I 'm compelled
to marry Kate ! "
I gave Moya a lace neckerchief, the
other day, and she was rarely pleased,
running into the cabin with it and show-
ing it to her mother with great pride.
After we had walked a bit down the
boreen she excused herself for an instant,
and, returning to my side, explained that
she had gone back to ask her mother to
mind the kerchief, and not let the " cow
knock it " !
Lady Killbally tells us that some of
the girls who work in the mills deny
themselves proper food, and live on bread
and tea for a month, to save the price
of a gay ribbon. This is trying, no
doubt, to a philanthropist, but is it not
partly a starved sense of beauty assert-
ing itself ? If it has none of the usual
outlets, where can imagination express
itself if not in some paltry thing like a
ribbon ?
XIV.
" My love 's an arbutus by the waters of Lene,
So slender and shapely in her girdle of
green."
Mrs. Mullarkey cannot spoil this para-
dise for us. When I wake in the morn-
ing, the fuchsia tree outside my window
is such a glorious mass of color that it
distracts my eyes from the unwashed
glass. The air is still ; the mountains
in the far distance are clear purple ;
everything is fresh-washed and purified
for the new day. Francesca and I leave
the house sleeping, and make our way
to the bogs. We love to sit under a
blossoming sloe bush and see the silver
pools glistening here and there in the
turf cuttings, and watch the transparent
vapor rising from the red-brown or the
purple - shadowed bog fields. Dinnis
Rooney, half awake, leisurely, silent, is
moving among the stacks with his creel.
There is a moist, rich fragrance of mead-
owsweet and bog myrtle in the air ; and
how fresh and wild and verdant it is !
How the missel thrushes sing in the
woods, and the plaintive note of the cur-
lew gives the last touch of mysterious
tenderness to the scene.
As for Lough Lein itself, who could
speak its loveliness, lying like a crystal
mirror beneath the black Reeks of the
McGillicuddy, where, in the mountain
fastnesses, lie spellbound the sleeping war-
riors who, with their bridles and broad-
swords in hand, await but the word to
give Erin her own ! When we glide
along the surface of the lakes, on some
bright day after a heavy rain ; when we
look down through the clear water on
tiny submerged islets, with their grasses
Penelope's Irish Experiences.
and drowned daisies glancing up at us
from the blue ; when we moor the boat
and climb the hillsides, we are dazzled
by the luxuriant beauty of it all. It
hardly seems real, it is too green, too
perfect, to be believed ; and one thinks
of some fairy drop scene, painted by cun-
ning-fingered elves and sprites, who might
have a wee folk's way of mixing roses
and rainbows, dew-drenched greens and
sun-warmed yellows ; showing the picture
to you first all burnished, glittering and
radiant, then " veiled in mist and dia-
monded with showers." We climb, climb,
up, up, into the heart of the leafy love-
liness ; peering down into dewy dingles,
stopping now and again to watch one of
the countless streams as it tinkles and
gurgles down an emerald ravine to join
the lakes. The way is strewn with
lichens and mosses ; rich green hollies
and arbutus surround us on every side ;
the ivy hangs in sweet disorder from the
rocks ; and when we reach the innermost
recess of the glen we can find moist green
jungles of ferns and bracken, a very
bending, curling forest of fronds :
" The fairy's tall palm tree, the heath bird's
fresh nest,
And the couch the red deer deems the sweet-
est and best."
Carrantual rears its crested head high
above the other mountains, and on its
summits Shon the Outlaw, footsore,
weary, slept ; sighing, " For once, thank
God, I am above all my enemies."
You must go to sweet Innisfallen, too,
and you must not be prosaic or incredu-
lous at the boatman's stories, or turn the
"bodthered ear to them." These are
no ordinary hillsides : not only do the
wee folk troop through the frond forests
nightly, but great heroic figures of ro-
mance have stalked majestically along
these mountain summits. Every water-
fall foaming and dashing from its rocky
bed in the glen has a legend in the toss
and swirl of the water.
Can't you see the O'Sullivan, famous
for fleetness of foot and prowess in the
chase, starting forth in the cool o' the
morn to hunt the red deer ? His dogs
sniff the heather ; a splendid stag bounds
across the path ; swift as lightning the
dogs follow the scent across moors and
glens. Throughout the long day the
chieftain chases the stag, until at night-
fall, weary and thirsty, he loses the scent,
and blows a blast on his horn to call the
dogs homeward.
And then he hears a voice : " O'Sul-
livan, turn back ! "
He looks over his shoulder to behold
the great Finn McCool, central figure in
centuries of romance.
" Why do you dare chase my stag ? "
he asks.
"Because it is the finest man ever
saw," answers the chieftain composedly.
" You are a valiant man," says the
hero, pleased with the reply ; " and as
you thirst from the long chase, I will
give you to drink." So he crunched
his giant heel into the rock, and forth
burst the waters, seething and roaring
as they do to this day ; and may the
divil fly away wid me if I 've spoke an
unthrue word, ma'am !
Come to Lough Lein as did we, too
early for the crowd of sightseers ; but
when the " long light shakes across the
lakes," the blackest arts of the tourist
(and they are as black as they are many)
cannot break the spell. Sitting on one
of these hillsides, we heard a bugle call
taken up and repeated in delicate, ethe-
real echoes, sweet enough, indeed, to
be worthy of the fairy buglers who are
supposed to pass the sound along their
lines from crag to crag, until it faints
and dies in silence. And then came the
Lament for Owen Roe O'Neill. We were
thrilled to the very heart with the sor-
rowful strains ; and when we issued from
our leafy covert, and rounded the point
of rocks from which the sound came, we
found a fat man in uniform playing the
bugle. "Cook's Tours" was embroid-
ered on his cap ; and I have no doubt
that he is a good husband and father,
ever
upo:
Penelope's Irish Experiences.
37
even a good citizen, but he is a blight
upon the landscape, and fancy cannot
breathe in his presence. The typical
tourist should be encouraged within
bounds, both because he is of some bene-
fit to Ireland, and because Ireland is
of inestimable benefit to him; but he
should not be allowed to jeer and laugh
at the legends (the gentle smile of so-
phisticated unbelief, with its twinkle of
amusement, is unknown to and forever
beyond him) ; and above all, he should
never be allowed to carry or to play on
a concertina, for this is the unpardon-
able sin.
We had an adventure yesterday. We
were to dine at eight o'clock at Balkilly
Castle, where Dr. La Touche is staying
the week end with Lord and Lady Kill-
bally. We had been spending an hour
or two after tea in writing an Irish let-
ter, and were a bit late in dressing.
These letters, written in the vernacular,
are a favorite diversion of ours when
visiting in foreign lands ; and they are
very easily done when once you have
caught the idioms, for you can always
supplement your slender store of words
and expressions with choice selections
from native authors.
What Francesca and I wore to the
Castle dinner is, alas, no longer of any
consequence to the community at large.
In the mysterious purposes of that third
volume which we seem to be living in
Ireland, Francesca's beauty and mine,
her hats and frocks as well as mine, are
all reduced to the background ; but Sale-
mina's toilette had cost us some thought.
When she first issued from the discreet
and decorous fastnesses of Salem soci-
ety, she had never donned any dinner
dress that was not as high at the throat
and as long in the sleeves as the Puritan
mothers ever wore to meeting. In Eng-
land she lapsed sufficiently from the
rigid Salem standard to adopt a timid
compromise ; in Scotland we coaxed her
into still further modernities, until now
she is completely enfranchised. We
achieved this at considerable trouble,
but do not grudge the time spent in per-
suasion when we see her en grande toi-
lette. In day dress she has always been
inclined ever so little to a primness and
severity that suggest old-maidishness.
In her low gown of pale gray, with all
her silver hair waved softly, she is un-
expectedly lovely, her face softened,
transformed, and magically " brought
out " by the whiteness of her shoulders
and slender throat. Not an ornament,
not a jewel, will she wear ; and she is
right to keep the nunlike simplicity of
style which suits her so well, and which
holds its own even in the vicinity of Fran-
cesca's proud and glowing young beauty.
On this particular evening, Frances-
ca, who wished her to look her best,
had prudently hidden her eyeglasses, for
which we are now trying to substitute
a silver-handled lorgnette. Two years
ago we deliberately smashed her specta-
cles, which she had adopted at five-and-
twenty. " But they are more conven-
ient than eyeglasses," she urged obtuse-
ly. " That argument is beneath you,
dear," we replied. " If your hair were
not prematurely gray, we might permit
the spectacles, hideous as they are, but
a combination of the two is impossible ;
the world shall not convict you of failing
sight when you are guilty only of petty
astigmatism ! "
The gray satin had been chosen for
this dinner, and Salemina was dressed,
with the exception of the pretty pearl-
embroidered waist that has to be laced
at the last moment, and had slipped on
a dressing jacket to come down from
her room in the second story, to be ad-
vised in some trifling detail. She looked
unusually well, I thought : her eyes were
bright and her cheeks flushed, as she rus-
tled in, holding her satin skirts daintily
away from the dusty carpets.
Now, from the morning of our arrival
we have had trouble with the Mullarkey
doorknobs, which come off continually,
and lie on the floors at one side of the
Penelope's Irish Experiences.
door or the other. Benella followed
Salemina from her room, and, being in
haste, closed the door with unwonted en-
ergy. She heard the well-known rattle
and clang, but little suspected that, as
one knob dropped outside in the hall, the
other fell inside, carrying the rod of con-
nection with it. It was not long before
we heard a cry of despair from above,
and we responded to it promptly.
" It 's fell in on the inside, knob and
all, as I always knew it would some day ;
and now we can't get back into the
room ! " said Benella.
" Oh, nonsense ! We can open it with
something or other," I answered encour-
agingly, as I drew on my gloves ; " only
you must hasten, for the car is at the
door."
The curling iron was too large, the
shoe hook too short, a lead pencil too
smooth, a crochet needle too slender :
we tried them all, and the door resisted
all their insinuations. "Must you ne-
cessarily get in before we go ? " I asked
Salemina thoughtlessly.
She gave me a glance that almost
froze my blood, as she replied, " The
waist of my dress is in the room."
Francesca and I spent a moment in
irrepressible mirth, and then summoned
Mrs. Mullarkey. Whether the Irish
kings could be relied upon in an emer-
gency I do not know, but their descend-
ants cannot. Mrs. Mullarkey had gone
to the convent to see the Mother Supe-
rior about something ; Mr. Mullarkey
was at the Dooclone market ; Peter was
not to be found ; but Oonah and Molly
came, and also the old lady from Mulli-
navat, with a package of raffle tickets in
her hand.
We left this small army under Benel-
la's charge, and went down to my room
for a hasty consultation.
" Could you wear any evening bodice
of Francesca's ? " I asked.
" Of course not. Francesca's waist
measure is three inches smaller than
mine."
"Could you manage my black lace
dress ? "
" Penelope, you know it would only
reach to my ankles ! No, you must go
without me, and go at once. We are
too new acquaintances to keep Lady
Killbally's dinner waiting. Why did I
come to this place like a pauper, with
only one evening gown, when I should
have known that if there is a castle any-
where within forty miles you always
spend half your time in it ! "
This slur was totally unjustified, but I
pardoned it, because Salemina's temper
is ordinarily angelic, and the circum-
stances were somewhat tragic. " If you
had brought a dozen dresses, they would
all be in your room at this moment," I
replied ; " but we must think of some-
thing. It is impossible for you to remain
behind ; we were invited more on your
account than on our own, for you are
Dr. La Touche's friend, and the dinner
is especially in his honor. Molly, have
you a ladder ? "
" We have not, ma'am."
" Could we borrow one ? "
"We could not, Mrs. Beresford,
ma'am."
" Then see if you can break down the
door ; try hard, and if you succeed I will
buy you a nice new one ! Part of Miss
Peabody's dress is inside the room, and
we shall be late to the Castle dinner."
The entire corps, with Mrs. Water-
ford of Mullinavat on top, cast itself on
the door, which withstood the shock to
perfection. Then in a moment we
heard : " Weary 's on it, it will not come
down for us, ma'am. It 's the iligant
locks we do be havin' in the house ;
they 're mortial shtrong, ma'am ! "
" Strong indeed ! " exclaimed the in-
censed Benella, in a burst of New Eng-
land wrath. " There 's nothing strong
about the place but the impidence of the
people in it ! If you had told Peter to
get a carpenter or a locksmith, as I 've
been asking you to these two weeks, it
would have been all right ; but you never
Penelope's Irish Experiences.
39
do anything till a month after it 's too
late. I 've no patience with such a set
of doshies, dawdling around and leaving
everything to go to rack and ruin ! "
" Sure it was yourself that ruinated
the thing," responded Molly, with spirit,
for the unaccustomed word " doshy " had
kindled her quick Irish temper. " It 's
aisy handlin' the knob is used to, and
faith it would 'a' stuck there for you a
twelvemonth ! "
" They will be quarreling soon," said
Salemina nervously. " Do not wait an-
other instant ; you are late enough now,
and I insist on your going. Make any
excuse you see fit : say I am ill, say I am
dead, if you like, but don't tell the real
excuse, it 's too shiftless and wretched
and embarrassing. Don't cry, Benella.
Molly, Oonah, go downstairs to your
work. Mrs. Waterford, I think per-
haps you have forgotten that we have al-
ready purchased raffle tickets, and we '11
not take any more for fear that we may
draw the necklace. Good-by, dears ; tell
Lady Killbally I shall see her to-mor-
row."
XV.
" Why the shovel and tongs
To each other belongs,
And the kettle sings songs
Full of family glee,
While alone with your cup,
Like a hermit you sup,
Och hone, Widow Machree."
Francesca and I were gloomy enough,
as we drove along facing each other
in Ballyfuchsia's one " inside " car, a
strange and fearsome vehicle, partaking
of the nature of a broken-down omni-
bus, a hearse, and an overgrown black
beetle. It holds four, or at a squeeze
six, the seats being placed from stem to
stern lengthwise, and the balance being
so delicate that the passengers, when go-
ing uphill, are shaken into a heap at the
door, which is represented by a ragged
leather flap. I have often seen it strew
the hard highroad with passengers, as it
jolts up the steep incline that leads to
Ardnagreena, and the " fares " who suc-
ceed in staying in always sit in one an-
other's laps a good part of the way, a
method pleasing only to relatives or inti-
mate friends. Francesca and I agreed
to tell the real reason of Salemina's ab-
sence. " It is Ireland's fault, and I will
not have America blamed for it," she in-
sisted ; " but it is so embarrassing to be
going to the dinner ourselves, and leav-
ing behind the most important personage.
Think of Dr. La Touche's disappoint-
ment, think of Salemina's ; and they '11
never understand why she could n't have
come in a dressing jacket. I shall ad-
vise her to discharge Benella after this
episode, for no one can tell the effect it
may have upon our future lives."
It is a four-mile drive to Balkilly
Castle, and when we arrived there we
were so shaken that we had to retire to
a dressing room for repairs. Then came
the dreaded moment when we entered
the great hall and advanced to meet
Lady Killbally, who looked over our
heads to greet the missing Salemina.
Francesca's beauty, my supposed genius,
both fell flat ; it was Salemina whose
presence was especially desired. The
company was assembled, save for one
guest still more tardy than ourselves,
and we had a moment or two to tell our
story as sympathetically as possible. It
had an uncommonly good reception, and,
coupled with the Irish letter I read at
dessert, carried the dinner along on a
basis of such laughter and good-fellow-
ship that finally there was no place for
regret save in the hearts of those who
knew and loved Salemina, poor Sale-
mina, spending her dull, lonely evening
in our rooms, and later on in her own
uneventful bed, if indeed she was ever
lucky enough to gain access to that bed.
I had hoped Lady Killbally would put
one of us beside Dr. La Touche, so that
we might at least keep Salemina's mem-
ory green by tactful conversation ; but
40
Penelope's Irish Experiences.
it was too large a company to rearrange,
and he had to sit by an empty chair,
which perhaps was just as salutary, after
all. The dinner was very smart, and
the company interesting and clever, but
my thoughts were elsewhere. As there
were fewer squires than dames at the
feast, Lady Killbally kindly took me on
her left, with a view to better acquaint-
ance, and I was heartily glad of a pos-
sible chance to hear something of Dr.
La Touche's earlier life. In our previ-
ous interviews, Salemina's presence had
always precluded the possibility of lead-
ing the conversation in the wished-for
direction.
When I first saw Gerald La Touche
I felt that he required explanation.
Usually speaking, a human being ought
to be able, in an evening's conversation,
to explain himself, without any adven-
titious aid. If he is a man, alive, vigor-
ous, well poised, conscious of his own
personality, he shows you, without any
effort, as much of his past as you need
to form your impression, and as much
of his future as you have intuition to
read. As opposed to the vigorous per-
sonality, there is the colorless, flavorless,
insubstantial sort, forgotten as soon as
learned, and forever confused with the
previous or the next comer. When I
was a beginner in portrait painting,
I remember that, after I had succeeded
in making my background stay back
where it belonged, my figure sometimes
had a way of clinging to it in a kind of
smudgy weakness, as if it were afraid
to come out like a man and stand the
inspection of my eye. How often have
I squandered paint upon the ungrateful
object without adding a cubit to its stat-
ure ! It refused to look like flesh and
blood, but resembled rather some half-
made creature flung on the passive can-
vas in a liquid state, with its edges run-
ning over into the background. There
are a good many of these people in lit-
erature, too, heroes who, like home-
made paper dolls, do not stand up well ;
or if they manage to perform that feat,
one unexpectedly discovers, when they
are placed in a strong light, that they
have no vital organs whatever, and can
be seen through without the slightest
difficulty. Dr. La Touche does not be-
long to either of these two classes : he
is not warm, magnetic, powerful, impres-
sive ; neither is he by any means desti-
tute of vital organs ; but his personality
is blurred in some way. He seems a
bit remote, absent-minded, and a trifle,
just a trifle, over-resigned. Privately, I
think a man can afford to be resigned
only to one thing, and that is the will of
God ; against all other odds I prefer to
see him fight till the last armed foe ex-
pires. Dr. La Touche is devotedly at-
tached to his children, but quite helpless
in their hands ; so that he never looks at
them with pleasure or comfort or pride,
but always with an anxiety as to what
they may do next. I understand him
better now that I know the circum-
stances of which he has been the pro-
duct. (Of course one is always a pro-
duct of circumstances, unless one can
manage to be superior to them.) His
wife, the daughter of an American con-
sul in Ireland, was a charming but some-
what feather-brained person, rather given
to whims and caprices ; very pretty,
very young, very much spoiled, very at-
tractive, very undisciplined. All went
well enough with them until her father
was recalled to America, because of
some change in political administration.
The young Mrs. La Touche seemed to
have no resources apart from her fami-
ly, and even her baby " Jackeen " failed
to absorb her as might have been ex-
pected.
" We thought her a most trying wo-
man at this time," said Lady Killbally.
" She seemed to have no thought of her
husband's interests, and none of the re-
sponsibilities that she had assumed in
marrying him ; her only idea of life ap-
peared to be amusement and variety and
gayety. Gerald was a student, and al-
Penelope's Irish Experiences.
41
ways very grave and serious ; the kind
of man who invariably marries a but-
terfly, if he can find one to make him
miserable. He was exceedingly pa-
tient ; but after the birth of little Broona,
Adeline became so homesick and de-
pressed and discontented that, although
the journey was almost an impossibility
at the time, Gerald took her back to her
people, and left her with them, while he
returned to his duties at Trinity Col-
lege. Their life, I suppose, had been
very unhappy for a year or two before
this, and when he came home to Dub-
lin, without his children, he looked a sad
and broken man. He was absolutely
faithful to his ideals, I am glad to say,
and never wavered in his allegiance to
his wife, however disappointed he may
have been in her ; going over regularly
to spend his long vacations in America,
although she never seemed to wish to
see him. At last she fell into a state of
hopeless melancholia ; and it was rather
a relief to us all to feel that we had
judged her too severely, and that her
unreasonableness and her extraordinary
caprices had been born of mental disor-
der more than of moral obliquity. Ger-
ald gave up everything to nurse her and
rouse her from her apathy ; but she faded
away without ever once coming back to
a more normal self, and that was the
end of it all. Gerald's father had died
meanwhile, and he had fallen heir to the
property and the estates. They were
very much encumbered, but he is gradu-
ally getting affairs into a less chaotic
state ; and while his fortune would seem
a small one to you extravagant Ameri-
cans, he is what we Irish paupers would
call well to do."
Lady Killbally was suspiciously will-
ing to give me all this information,
so much so that I ventured to ask about
the children.
" They are captivating, neglected lit-
tle things," she said. "Madam La
Touche, an aged aunt, has the ostensi-
ble charge of them, and she is a most
easy-going person. The servants are of
the ' old family ' sort, the reckless, im-
provident, untidy, devoted, quarrelsome
creatures that always stand by the ruined
Irish gentry in all their misfortunes, and
generally make their life a burden to
them at the same time. Gerald is a
saint, and therefore never complains."
" It never seems to me that saints are
adapted to positions like these," I sighed ;
" sinners would do ever so much better.
I should like to see Dr. La Touche take
off his halo, lay it carefully on the bu-
reau, and wield a battle-axe. The world
will never acknowledge his merit ; it will
even forget him presently, and his life
will have been given up to the evolution
of the passive virtues. Do you suppose
he will ever marry again ? Do you sup-
pose he will recognize the tender pas-
sion if it ever does bud in his breast, or
will he think it a weed, instead of a
flower, and let it wither for want of at-
tention ? "
" I think his friends will have to
enhance his self-respect, or he will
forever be too modest to declare him-
self," said Lady Killbally. "Perhaps
you can help us : he is probably going
to America this winter to lecture at some
of your universities, and he may stay
there for a year or two, so he says. At
any rate, if the right woman ever appears
on the scene, I hope she will have the
instinct to admire and love and rever-
ence him as we do," and here she smiled
directly into my eyes, and slipping her
pretty hand under the tablecloth squeezed
mine in a manner that spoke volumes.
It is not easy to explain one's desire
to marry off all the unmarried persons
in one's vicinity. When I look stead-
fastly at any group of people, large or
small, they usually segregate themselves
into twos under my prophetic eye. If
they are nice and attractive, I am pleased
to see them mated ; if they are horrid
and disagreeable, I like to think of them
as improving under the discipline of
matrimony. It is joy to see beauty
42
Penelope's Irish Experiences.
meet a kindling eye, but I am more de-
lighted still to watch a man fall under
the glamour of a plain, dull girl, and it
is ecstasy for me to see a perfectly un-
attractive, stupid woman snapped up at
last, when I have given up hopes of
settling her in life. Sometimes there
are men so uninspiring that I cannot
converse with them a single moment
without yawning ; but though failures in
all other relations, one can conceive of
their being tolerably useful as husbands
and fathers ; not for one's self, you un-
derstand, but for one's neighbors.
Dr. La Touche's life now, to any un-
derstanding eye, is as incomplete as the
unfinished window in Aladdin's tower.
He is too wrinkled, too studious, too
quiet, too patient. His children need a
mother, his old family servants need
discipline, his baronial halls need sweep-
ing and cleaning (I have n't seen them,
but I know they do !), and his aged aunt
needs advice and guidance. On the
other hand, there are those (I speak
guardedly) who have walked in shady,
sequestered paths all their lives, looking
at hundreds of happy lovers on the sun-
ny highroad, but never joining them ;
those who adore scholarship, who love
children, who have a genius for unself-
ish devotion, who are sweet and refined
and clever, and who look perfectly love-
ly when they put on gray satin and
leave off eyeglasses. They say they are
over forty, and although this probably
is exaggeration, they may be thirty-nine
and three quarters ; and if so, the time
is limited in which to find for them a
worthy mate, since half of the mascu-
line population is looking for itself, and
always in the wrong quarter, needing
no assistance to discover rosy-cheeked
idiots of nineteen, whose obvious charms
draw thousands to a dull and unevent-
ful fate.
These thoughts were running idly
through my mind while the Honorable
Michael McGillicuddy was discoursing
to me of Mr. Gladstone's misunder-
standing of Irish questions. I was so
anxious to return to Salemina that I
wished I had ordered the car at ten
thirty instead of eleven ; but I made
up my mind, as we ladies went to the
drawing-room for coffee, that I would
seize the first favorable opportunity to
explore the secret chambers of Dr. La
Touche's being, and find out at the same
time whether he knows anything of that
lavender-scented guest room in Salemi-
na's heart. First, has he ever seen it ?
Second, has he ever stopped in it for
any length of time ? Third, was he suf-
ficiently enamored of it to occupy it on
a long lease ?
XVI.
" And what use is one's life widout chances ?
Ye Ve always a chance wid the tide."
I was walking with Lady Fincoss, and
Francesca with Miss Clondalkin, a very
learned personage, who has deciphered
more undecipherable inscriptions than
any lady in Ireland, when our eyes fell
upon an unexpected tableau.
Seated on a divan in the centre of the
drawing-room, in a most distinguished at-
titude, in unexceptionable attire, and with
the rose-colored lights making all her
soft grays opalescent, was Miss Salemina
Peabody. Our exclamations of aston-
ishment were so audible that they must
have reached the dining room, for Lord
Killbally did not keep the gentlemen
long at their wine.
Salemina cannot tell a story quite as
it ought to be told to produce an effect.
She is too reserved, too concise, too rigid-
ly conscientious. She does n't like to be
the centre of interest, even in a modest
contretemps like being locked out of a
room which contains part of her dress ;
but from her brief explanation to Lady
Killbally, her more complete and confi-
dential account on the way home, and
Benella's graphic story when we arrived
there, we were able to get all the details.
When the inside car passed out of
Penelope's Irish Experiences.
view with us, it appears that Benella
wept tears of rage, at the sight of which
Oonah and Molly trembled. In that
moment of despair and remorse her
mind worked as it must always have
done before the Salem priestess befogged
it with hazy philosophies, understood
neither by teacher nor by pupil. Peter
had come back, but could suggest no-
thing. Benella forgot her " science,"
which prohibits rage and recrimination,
and called him a great, hulking, lazy
vagabone, and told him she 'd like to
have him in Salem for five minutes, just
to show him a man with a head on his
shoulders.
" You call this a Christian country," she
said, " and you have n't a screw-driver,
nor a brad awl, nor a monkey wrench,
nor a rat-tail file, nor no kind of a useful
tool to bless yourselves with ; and my
Miss Peabody, that 's worth ten dozen of
you put together, has got to stay home
from the Castle and eat warmed - up
scraps. Now you do as I say : take the
dining table and put it outside under the
window, and the side table on top o'
that, and see how fur up it '11 reach. I
guess you can't stump a Salem woman
by telling her there ain't no ladder."
The two tables were finally in posi-
tion ; but there still remained nine feet
of distance to that key of the situation,
Salemina's window, and Mrs. Water-
ford's dressing table went on top of this
pile. " Now, Peter," were the next or-
ders, " if you 've got sprawl enough,
hold down the dining table, and you and
Oonah, Molly, keep the next two tables
stiddy, while I climb up."
The intrepid Benella could barely
reach the sill, and Mrs. Waterford and
Salemina were called on to " stiddy "
the tables, while Molly was bidden to
help by giving an heroic " boost " when
the word of command came. The de-
vice was completely successful, and in a
trice the conqueror disappeared, to reap-
pear at the window holding the precious
pearl-embroidered bodice wrapped in a
towel. " I would n't stop to fool with
the door till I dropped you this," she
said. " Oonah, you go and wash your
hands clean, and help Miss Peabody into
it, and mind you start the lacing right
at the top ; and you, Peter, run down to
Rooney's and get the donkey and the
cart, and bring 'em back with you, and
don't you let the grass grow under your
feet, neither ! "
There was literally no other mode of
conveyance within miles, and time was
precious. Salemina wrapped herself in
Francesca's long black cloak, and climbed
into the cart. Dinnis hauls turf in it,
takes a sack of potatoes or a pig to mar-
ket in it, and the stubborn little ass,
blind of one eye, has never in his wholly
elective course taken up the subject of
speed.
It was eight o'clock when Benella
mounted the seat beside Salemina, and
gave the donkey a preliminary touch of
the stick.
" Be aisy wid him," cautioned Peter.
" He 's a very arch donkey for a lady to
be dhrivin', and mebbe he 'd lay down
and not get up for you."
" Arrah ! shut yer mouth, Pether.
Give him a couple of belts anondher the
hind leg, melady, and that '11 put the fear
o' God in him ! " said Dinnis.
" I 'd rather not go at all," urged
Salemina timidly; "it's too late, and
too extraordinary."
" I 'm not going to have it on my con-
science to make you lose this dinner par-
ty, not if I have to carry you on my
back the whole way," said Benella dog-
gedly ; " and this donkey won't lay down
with me more 'n once, I can tell him
that right at the start."
" Sure, melady, he '11 go to Galway
for you, when oncet he 's started wid
himself ; and it 's only a couple o' fingers
to the Castle, annyways."
The four-mile drive, especially through
the village of Ballyf uchsia, was an event-
ful one, but by dint of prodding, poking,
and belting Benella had accomplished
44
Penelope's Irish Experiences.
half the distance in three quarters of
an hour, when the donkey suddenly lay
down "on her." This was luckily at
the town cross, where a group of idlers
rendered hearty assistance. Willing as
they were to succor a lady in disthress,
they did not know of any car which
could be secured in time to be of service,
but one of them offered to walk and run
by the side of the donkey, so as to kape
him on his legs. It was in this wise
that Miss Peabody approached Balkilly
Castle ; and when a gilded gentleman-in-
waiting lifted her from Rooney's " plain
cart," she was just on the verge of hyster-
ics. Fortunately his Magnificence was
English, and betrayed no surprise at the
arrival in this humble fashion of a din-
ner guest, but simply summoned the Irish
housekeeper, who revived her with wine,
and called on all the saints to witness
that she 'd never heard of such a shame-
ful thing, and such a disgrace to Bally-
fuchsia. The idea of not keeping a lad-
der in a house where the doorknobs were
apt to come off struck her as being the
worst feature of the accident, though
this unexpected and truly Milesian view
of the matter had never occurred to us.
"Well, I got Miss Peabody to the
dinner party," said Benella triumphant-
ly, when she was laboriously unlacing my
frock, later on, " or at least I got her
there before it broke up. I had to walk
every step o' the way home, and the
donkey laid down four times, but I was
so nerved up I did n't care a mite. I
was bound Miss Peabody should n't lose
her chance, after all she 's done for me ! "
" Her chance ? " I asked, somewhat
puzzled, for dinners, even castle dinners,
are not rare in Salemina's experience.
" Yes, her chance," repeated Benella
mysteriously ; " you 'd know well enough
what I mean, if you 'd ben born and
brought up in Salem, Massachusetts ! "
Copy of a letter read by Penelope
O'Connor, descendant of the king of
Connaught, at the dinner of Lord and
Lady Killbally at Balkilly Castle. It
needed no apology then, but we were
obliged to explain to our American
friends that though the Irish peasants
interlard their conversation with saints,
angels, and devils, and use the name of
the Virgin Mary, and even the Al-
mighty, with, to our ears, undue famil-
iarity and frequency, there is no pro-
fane or irreverent intent. They are
instinctively religious, and it is only
because they feel on terms of such friend-
ly intimacy with the powers above that
they speak of them so often.
At the Widdy Mullarkey's,
KNOCKARNEY HOUSE, BALLYFUCHSIA,
County Kerry.
Och ! musha bedad, man alive, but it 's
a fine counthry over here, and it bangs
all the jewel of a view we do be havin'
from the windys, begorra ! Knockarney
House is in a wild remoted place at the
back of beyant, and f aix we 're as much
alone as Robinson Crusoe on a dissolute
island ; but when we do be wishful to go
to the town, sure there 's ivery convan-
iency. There 's ayther a bit of a jaunt-
in' car wid a skewbald pony for drivin',
or we can borry the loan of Dinnis
Rooney's blind ass wid the plain cart,
or we can just take a fut in a hand and
leg it over the bog. Sure it 's no great
thing to go do, but only a taste of divar-
sion like, though it 's three good Irish
miles an' powerful hot weather, with
niver a dhrop of wet these manny days.
It 's a great old spring we 're havin' in-
tirely ; it has raison to be proud of it-
self, begob !
Paddy, the gossoon that drives the
car (it 's a gossoon we call him, but faix
he stands five fut nine in his stockin's,
when he wears anny), Paddy, as I 'm
afther tellin' you, lives in a cabin down
below the knockaun, a thrifle back of
the road. There 's a nate stack of turf
fornint it, and a pitaty pot sets beside
the doore, wid the hins and chuckens
The Growth of Public Expenditures.
45
rachin' over into it like aigles tryin' to like an' liberal with the whativer, an*
swally the smell.
Across the way there does be a bit of
sthrarae that 's fairly shtiff wid troutses
in the saison, and a growth of rooshes
under the edge lookin' that smooth and
greeny it must be a pleasure intirely to
the grand young pig and the goat that
spinds their time by the side of it when
out of doores, which is seldom. Paddy
himself is raggetty like, and a sight to
behould wid the daylight shinin' through
the ould coat on him ; but he 's a dacint
spalpeen, and sure we 'd be lost widout
him. His mother 's a widdy woman
with nine moidherin' childer, not count-
in' the pig an' the goat, which has aquil
advantages. It 's nine she has livin',
she says, and four slapin' in the beds o'
glory ; and faix I hope thim that 's in
glory is quieter than the wans that 's
here, for the divil is busy wid thim the
whole of the day. Here 's wan o' thim
now makin' me as onaisy as an ould hin
on a hot griddle, slappin' big sods of
turf over the dike, and ruinatin' the tim-
pers of our poulthry ; we 've a right to
be lambastin' thim this blessed minute,
the crathurs ! As sure as eggs is mate, if
they was mine they 'd sup sorrow wid a
spoon of grief, before they wint to bed
this night !
Misthress Colquhoun, that lives at
Ardnagreena on the road to the town, is
an iligant lady intirely, an' she 's uncom-
mon frindly, may the peace of heaven
be her sowl's rist ! She 's rale charitable-
as for Himself, sure he 's the darlin' fine
man ! He taches the dead - and - gone
languages in the grand sates of larnin',
and has more eddication and comper-
hinson than the whole of County Kerry
rowled together.
Then there 's Lord and Lady Kill-
bally ; faix there 's no iliganter family
on this counthryside, and they has the
beautiful quality stoppin' wid thim, be-
gob ! They have a pew o' their own in
the church, an' their coachman wears
top-boots wid yaller chimbleys to thim.
They do be very open-handed wid the
eatin' and the drinkin', and it bangs
Banagher the figurandyin' we do have
wid thim ! So you see ould Ireland is
not too disthressful a counthry to be di-
vartin' ourselves in, an' we have our
healths finely, glory be to God !
Well, we must be shankin' off wid
ourselves now to the Colquhouns', where
they 're wettin' a dhrop o' tay for us
this mortial instant.
It 's no good for yous to write to us
here, for we '11 be quittin' out o' this be-
fore the letther has a chanst to come ;
though sure it can folly us as we 're jig-
gin' along to the north.
Don't be thinkin' that you Ve shlipped
hould of our ricollections, though the
breadth of the ocean say 's betune us.
More power to your elbow ! May your
life be aisy, and may the heavens be
your bed !
PENELOPE O'CONNOR BEBESFORD.
Kate Douglas Wiggin.
(To be continued.}
THE GROWTH OF PUBLIC EXPENDITURES.
ONE of the most striking phenomena
of modern public finance is the growth
of public expenditures. Burdens of tax-
ation amounting in volume to many
times the amount which drove our Brit-
ish ancestors to take arms against the
Stuarts in the seventeenth century, or
which impoverished France before the
46
The Growth of Public Expenditures.
Revolution, are now borne almost with-
out a murmur by the people of every
civilized state ; and even where murmurs
occur, the new burdens have not pre-
vented an astonishing progress in accu-
mulated wealth and productive resources.
Before discussing the reasons for this
remarkable situation, which has excited
grave apprehension in many quarters, it
will be proper, without attempting a sys-
tematic presentation of comparative sta-
tistics, to give a few facts which will illus-
trate the change which has taken place
within our own century, and even within
a generation, in the volume of public ex-
penditure and of taxes collected in civi-
lized countries. Comparisons cannot be
reduced readily to a scientific basis, be-
cause of the wide variety in methods of
taxation, and the different distribution
of national, provincial, and local func-
tions in different countries. In such
matters, for the general reader, the im-
pression of the wide difference between
the past and the present is as truthful
as minute detail, and fastens a more
striking and permanent picture in the
mind. The purpose of this paper is
chiefly to point out the changes of the
last twenty-five or thirty years, rather
than those extending over a longer pe-
riod, but a few facts from the history of
the leading civilized countries at earlier
dates will serve to bring into bolder re-
lief the tendencies of the present gen-
eration. The few facts here given for
purposes of illustration will deal partly
with the revenue side of the budget, show-
ing the taxes collected, and partly with
the side of expenditures, showing the
great sums disbursed for civil and mili-
tary purposes under modern conditions.
It will appear, also, from the comparison
of the increased revenues collected from
the same sources from year to year, upon
what a growing volume of national wealth
the modern system of public revenue is
founded.
In France, when Napoleon was or-
ganizing the greatest of his armies for
the disastrous campaign against Russia,
the entire budget of expenditures sub-
mitted by his minister of finance, the
Comte de Mollien, was only 1,168,000,-
000 francs, or about $225,000,000, of
which nearly two thirds was for military
purposes. This comparatively modest
sum, equal to less than our internal re-
venue collections last year, was all that
it was proposed to gather by taxation
not alone from the France of the Bour-
bons, but from the great empire beyond
the Rhine and reaching to the Po, which
had been established by the victories of
a dozen years. The budget of France
to-day, shut within her old limits and
with the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, is near-
ly four times this amount in a time of
profound peace, and no one knows what
might be its amount in case of war.
France affords a convenient illustration
for economic discussions, because her
population has not increased greatly
within the century. It was 30,461,875
in 1821, 36,102,921 in 1872, and 38,-
343,192 in 1891. It is not, therefore,
an increase in population which has en-
abled the French government to swell
the figures of its budget. The reasons
must be sought in unusual extravagance,
or in causes growing out of the industrial
development of the nation.
In England, in the times of the re-
stored Stuart dynasty in 1660, the an-
nual revenue is computed by good au-
thorities at 1,200,000 for a population
of five and a half millions, or but little
more than $1 per head. In 1795, be-
fore the Continental wars had brought
disorder into imperial finances, the re-
venue of the United Kingdom was
19,657,993 for a population of less
than nine millions, or about $8 per
head. Even then the debt charge swal-
lowed up half the revenue, and dire
predictions were frequent of England's
collapse under the heavy burdens she
bore. The added burdens of the Napo-
leonic wars swelled the debt charge to
a startling amount, but it gradually fell
The Growth of Public Expenditures.
47
relatively to other expenditures, and up
to 1870 the exactions of the tax gather-
er tended to demand a smaller rather
than a larger proportion of the national
wealth. The expenditures of 1871 were
69,548,539, amounting to about $11
(2 4s. 5d.) for each inhabitant of the
United Kingdom. But the expenditures
of 1895 rose to 93,918,421, and those
of 1899 to 108,150,236, or about $13
per capita. It is significant that the en-
tire recent increase is exclusive of the
debt charge. This has been, roughly,
25,000,000 a year for fifty years, so
that expenditures for other purposes ad-
vanced from about 45,000,000 in 1871
to 83,000,000 in 1899, an increase
of about 84 per cent within less than a
generation.
In the United States, dealing with the
federal revenue alone, the demand made
upon the American people in 1842 was
only $25,205,761, or $1.39 per capita.
The amount had risen in 1860 only to
$2.01 per capita. Then came the dis-
turbances of the Civil War, whose effect
was felt for many years upon the an-
nual budget. The lowest per capita ex-
penditure after the war was in 1886,
under the administration of President
Cleveland, when the total amount was
$242,483,138, and the amount per capita
was $4.22. Expenditures per capita
rose to $5.71 in 1891, but fell to $4.93
in 1896 and $5.01 in 1897. Then came
the disturbing influences of the Spanish
War, which it is not necessary to discuss
here. The expenses of the United States
upon a peace basis, even before the re-
cent increase of the army, may be said
to be about $5 per head, more than
three times what they were sixty years
ago, two and a half times what they
were before the Civil War, and 20 per
cent greater than they were even within
fourteen years. If the expenditures for
state and municipal purposes could be
presented, they would show at least a
proportional, and probably a much great-
er increase.
In Germany, the modest imperial
budget established after the war with
France called for expenditures of only
$135,000,000 (569,388,500 marks) in
1878, which swelled to double the amount
in 1889, and to $370,000,000 (1,551,-
709,400 marks) in 1899. In Russia,
the ordinary expenditures rose from
1,099,372,000 francs ($215,000,000) in
1866 to 2,433,388,000 francs in 1890,
and 3,622,789,000 francs ($700,000,-
000) in 1898. The receipts and ex-
penditures in Russia have been greatly
swelled in recent years by the extension
of the state railways, whose gross trans-
actions figure in the budget ; but a writer
in 1'Economiste Europe'en of January
19, 1900, puts the collections from taxes
at about two thirds of the total budget.
The question naturally arises, What is
the cause of this greatly increased bur-
den imposed upon the average citizen
for the expense of government ? Is it
the result of reckless extravagance by
public officials, and the needless multi-
plication of useless offices, or does it
afford substantial benefits to the com-
munity ? Such a question is not capa-
ble of an unqualified answer. There is,
without doubt, extravagance and need-
less multiplication of offices in the great
machines which constitute modern gov-
ernments. It is in the very nature of
government service to be less flexible,
less efficient, and more costly than pri-
vate service. The controlling reason is
the absence of competition. Methods
which would bankrupt a private estab-
lishment are the usual methods of gov-
ernments, partly because of the recog-
nized necessity for greater formality and
more strict accountability, but largely,
also, because the government generally
has no competitor in those fields which it
enters. In assuming control of the pos-
tal service, it legislates against private
post offices. In assuming charge of the
police, it practically prohibits rival police
companies except for special and private
services. In regulating the coinage of
48
The Growth of Public Expenditures.
money, it prohibits private mints. In
all these fields, the government service
is not self-supporting, but substitutes
forced levies upon the pockets of the
taxpayers for the favorable balance
sheet which is the vital necessity of pri-
vate business.
This statement of the evils inherent
in government methods does not, how-
ever, touch the question whether such
methods are becoming worse under mod-
ern conditions than they were a century
ago or a generation ago. The fact in
most cases is that these methods are be-
coming better ; that public servants render
better service ; that their compensation
is being brought more closely into har-
mony with that in private business, and
in many positions of honor and scientific
skill far below that in private business ;
and that the pressure of public opinion is
bringing public services into closer har-
mony with private methods. The rea-
son for the great increase in public ex-
penditures must be sought, therefore, in
other sources than the corruption of the
service or its lack of efficiency. Exam-
ination of the facts will show that it is
found in new and better services per-
formed by the state for the community.
In the words of Professor Maurice
Block :
" The citizen is becoming more and
more exacting. He demands much of
the state. On the other hand, he multi-
plies its attributes and powers ; there is
a sort of emulation in this respect be-
tween different countries. It follows
that functionaries are more and more
numerous and salaries higher ; there are
more railways and highways ; more ca-
nals, and harbors, bridges, aqueducts ;
more monuments, museums, schools, and
laboratories; alas, more soldiers, can-
nons, and fortifications, and more ships
of war."
These increased services, moreover,
are not, properly speaking, the result of
the encroachment by the state (except
perhaps in Germany) upon the field of
private enterprise, but are the result of
the greater social wealth which enables
the individual to provide himself with a
better livelihood than before by his pri-
vate expenditures, and at the same time
spare the means to the government for
rendering him services which were not
performed at all before, and could not
well be performed by private enterprise.
Under modern conditions of machine
production and the application of steam
and electricity even to farming, the pro-
ductive power of the individual has great-
ly increased. This increase was large
during the first half of the nineteenth
century, but has perhaps been greater
during the present generation, since the
full equipment of the civilized nations
with labor-saving devices. Man has not
chosen to take advantage of the whole of
his increased power to work fewer hours.
He has done this to some extent and in
certain exacting industries, but upon the
whole he has chosen to apply this added
power chiefly to getting more things ra-
ther than getting only the same things by
less work. Hence the wonderfully rapid
accumulation of wealth in modern soci-
ety. To illustrate again by the example
of France, 67,347 machines with a horse
power of 1,263,000,000 supplemented
the productive power of Frenchmen en-
gaged in industry in 1896, where only
26,221 machines with a horse power of
320,000 were available in 1869. It is
not surprising that, among other symp-
toms of wealth, depositors in the savings
banks increased in number from 2,131,-
000 in 1869 to 6,842,000 in 1898, and
that their deposits rose from 711,000,-
000 francs to 3,388,000,000 francs
($657,000,000), without counting the
postal savings banks, established in 1881,
and in 1898 showing 2,892,000 deposi-
tors and 844,000,000 francs of deposits.
If such growth in wealth has taken
place in France, one of the most heavily
taxed of all countries, it is not surpris-
ing that in Great Britain, within the short
interval of eighteen years, from 1880 to
The Growth of Public Expenditures.
49
1898, the deposits in the postal savings
banks were multiplied nearly fourfold
(from 33,744,637 to 123,144,099),
and amount to an average of nearly $75
for every family of five persons.
Facts like these are sufficient to show
that the increase of public expenditures
has not prevented saving by the masses
at a rate never before approached in the
world's history. Nor have the wealthier
classes borne the new burden of taxation
at the expense of continued progress. In
Prussia, the revenue subject to income
tax increased more than 20 per cent from
1893 to 1898. The amount in 1893
was 5,724,323,767 marks, and in 1898
6,774,937,505 marks ($1,650,000,000),
an increase of 1,050,613,738 marks
($200,000,000) within the short space
of five years. In France, the ordinary re-
ceipts of the treasury rose from 45 francs
per head in 1869 to 89 francs in 1898,
representing within about thirty years
the imposition of a charge of $18 upon
every Frenchman where $9 was for-
merly collected. But hand in hand with
this added burden has gone the increased
power to bear it. While France has un-
doubtedly been hampered in her devel-
opment by military expenditures, every
index of her wealth and earnings shows
astonishing progress within the present
generation. The property subject to the
succession tax in 1866 was 3,271,841,672
francs. The amount had risen in 1898
almost 50 per cent, or to 5,767,500,000
francs ($1,100,000,000). The estimat-
ed revenue from negotiable securities,
upon which a tax is levied, was 1,070,-
200,000 francs ($206,000,000) in 1874,
and 1,754,920,000 francs in 1898, an
increase of more than 70 per cent in
twenty - four years. This item of the
growth of the national wealth has been
subject, moreover, to the modifying in-
fluence of the fall in the rate of interest.
While French savings and French in-
vestments have greatly increased in their
face value within the present decade, the
advance in the net revenue and in the
VOL. LXXXVII. NO. 519. 4
amount of tax collected has been small,
because securities which formerly paid
five and six per cent have fallen in their
income-paying power, either by formal
conversion or by the premium in the mar-
ket, to rates of three and four per cent.
The civilized world is able, therefore,
to pay the cost of a larger official class,
if it renders services of value. Increased
social wealth permits additions to the
office -holding and professional classes,
because the community has gotten be-
yond the point where the efforts of all,
or nearly all, are needed for the work of
obtaining subsistence and the rudiments
of civilized life. The difference between
the old conditions and the new is thus set
forth by Professor William Smart :
"Society now supports and gladly
a great many people who add nothing
material. Once a day if a man had hint-
ed that he should like to be a poet, a
player, a singer, or even a journalist, he
would have been looked on with curios-
ity and even suspicion, and for an intel-
ligible reason. When bread and butter
were scarce and were got by hard labor,
it did look curious that a man should
expect other people to share their bread
and butter with one who did not pro-
duce, in return, something as tangible
and nourishing as bread and butter.
But, with the growth of wealth, all
these occupations have become legiti-
mate arid honorable callings, wherein it
is recognized that men give value for
value, and there is a par of exchange
between the products of the hand and
those of the brain."
That the increase of wealth permits
additions to the professional and office-
holding classes in a much greater ratio
than that borne by the new wealth to
the previous mass may be shown by a
mathematical illustration. A commu-
nity capable by its utmost exertions of
producing only enough to supply its food
and clothing would have no surplus for
the machinery of government or for the
support of the professional classes. If
50
The Growth of Public Expenditures.
the productive power necessary to sup-
ply food and clothing be represented by
10x, an increase of productive power by
10 per cent, applied to the support of a
small governing and professional class,
will be represented by lie. It is obvious
that a further increase in the productive
power of the community by the same
amount, or one eleventh of its whole pro-
ducing power, would raise the fund avail-
able for the governing and professional
classes, not by 10 per cent, but by 100
per cent. A further increase of the old
productive power by one eleventh (or of
the new power by one twelfth) would per-
mit three times the proportion of wealth
to be devoted to the professional and
office-holding classes that was devoted
to them under the original conditions.
If state expenditure alone were consid-
ered, an increase of one eleventh in the
producing power of the community, un-
der the conditions assumed, would per-
mit double the state expenditure under
previous conditions.
A small increase in productive power
or in wealth, therefore, would permit a
large increase in the ratio devoted to
the professional and governing classes.
These classes would not by any means
reap the whole benefit of the new wealth.
It would be necessary that all should pro-
duce more, and be able to exchange their
surplus purchasing power for profession-
al services, like those of physicians, law-
yers, actors, and artists, in order that this
exchange should permit the latter classes
to live. The distribution of the increased
wealth among the community would be
such that a smaller number of persons
than before would be able to produce all
the food of the community, and a smaller
number than before would be able to
produce all the clothing. These groups
would receive their compensation for in-
creased productive power in greater com-
forts of living, and some of those who
had formerly belonged to the food-pro-
ducing classes, or their children, would
ascend into the ranks of the skilled-labor
and professional classes. Whether the
distribution of the increased wealth was
entirely equitable or not, the general tend-
ency of its distribution could not fail to
follow this direction. The professional
classes, so far as they can be considered
as independent of the producing classes,
would in their turn have more wealth
than formerly to apply to the gratification
of their desires, and would increase their
demand upon the less efficient classes both
for products and for personal services.
The growth of the official and profes-
sional classes, so far as it is an index of
the increased wealth of the community,
is not to be deplored. The essential
test of the value of these classes is whe-
ther they are rendering genuine services.
If they are purely parasitic, they are a
burden upon the community, of the most
injurious character. This was conspic-
uously the case with the French nobility
just before the Revolution. Every one
remembers how vividly Taine sketches
their privileges and exemptions, the ab-
sentee landlordism which drained away
the riches of their estates, and their
purely ornamental functions at the royal
court, without even performing any of
the duties of civil leadership. Originat-
ing in the useful offices of governors and
leaders of the people, these functions
had been superseded by the central gov-
ernment, and the privileged classes had
become social vampires, drawing their
vitality from the impoverished blood of
the community. This has come to be
the case to some extent with the heredi-
tary nobility of many of the European
countries, where they have preserved
any real privileges. They have ceased
to perform valuable functions, except
perhaps to set the standards of taste in
living and in art, and are supported by
the labor of the community under pro-
perty laws which make them the bene-
ficiaries of the special privileges granted
their ancestors, even if they have ceased
to benefit directly by special privileges
and exemptions accorded them to-day.
The Growth of Public Expenditures.
51
The professional classes, in their turn,
may be little better than parasites, in
communities where the number of doc-
tors, lawyers, and the clergy is multi-
plied beyond normal needs. The best
evidence of the excess in their numbers
is found in their failure to earn a com-
fortable living. This condition, how-
ever, is not a permanent one in a grow-
ing country, as is the parasitism of the
hereditary nobility of Europe. In many
American cities and states, the diversion
of too much of the talent of the com-
munity to professional employments has
been gradually corrected by the accu-
mulation of wealth, and the increased
opportunities for professional employ-
ment which wealth and its management
afford. It is in accordance with the
laws of political economy that the pro-
fessional classes feel more keenly than
the producing classes the diminished
production of periods of depression.
With the masses, the need for food arid
other necessaries of living supersedes the
necessity for professional services and
entertainment, and diminishes the de-
mand for them. Among the more ad-
vanced classes, however, even this influ-
ence is counteracted by the elevation of
professional services, like those of the
physician and the dentist, to the rank
of necessities, which can no more be
dispensed with than tooth powder or the
bath.
How far the increase in public ex-
penditure has been usefully applied to
the benefit of the community is a prob-
lem which has been much discussed, and
which it would require exhaustive analy-
sis of many budgets to answer with pre-
cision. That it has been applied to
many new purposes, and to old ones
which were inadequately provided for,
may be easily established. Education,
improved highways, more and better
public buildings, and the thousand de-
tails of sanitation have absorbed most of
the increased expenditure which has not
gone to maintain standing armies. In
England and Wales, local expenditures
have risen by more than 150 per cent
within the past generation, from 30,-
454,523 in the fiscal year 1868 to 78,-
774,774 in 1897. This increase has been
applied largely to the expenses of po-
lice, sanitation, and local public works.
School boards alone increased their ex-
penditures, during the brief period be-
tween 1884 and 1897, from 4,530,242
to 10,139,366. In the United States,
also, according to some recent calcula-
tions by Secretary Gage, salaries paid to
school-teachers rose from $37,832,556
in 1870 to $55,942,972 in 1880, and
$123,809,412 in 1899.
Among the subjects of federal ex-
penditure in the United States are many
which contribute to the promotion of
commerce. Going back to the report of
Secretary Ho well Cobb for the fiscal
year 1860, one finds under the War De-
partment the trifling item, "Improve-
ment of rivers, harbors, etc., $221,973."
This may not have been an entirely re-
presentative year in such expenditures,
but it was pointed out by President
Arthur, in his message vetoing the ap-
propriation of 1882, that the appropria-
tions were only $3,975,000 in 1870, and
$8,976,500 in 1880. The appropriation
proposed in 1882, which aroused so much
resentment throughout the country, was
$18,743,875. The work of river and har-
bor improvement has since then received
a wonderful extension, and has been
made the subject of continuing contracts
instead of casual appropriations from
year to year. The net disbursements by
warrants for the fiscal year 1808 were
$20,785,049, and for 1899 $16,082,357.
This is only a small part, moreover, of
the appropriations now made for the pro-
motion of commerce. Deficiencies in the
postal revenue are a contribution toward
the extension of the mail service into re-
mote sections, and toward fast mail trains
and the carriage of great masses of pe-
riodical and advertising literature. The
postal deficiency of 1898 was $10,504,-
52
The Growth of Public Expenditures.
040, and that of 1899 $8,211,570. If
it fell to a less amount for the fiscal
year 1900, it was because of larger reve-
nues, and not because -of the unwilling-
ness of the government to thrust its hand
into the pocket of the taxpayer for the
purpose of promoting a widespread and
efficient service. The lighthouse estab-
lishment, which called for $835,373 in
1860 and $1,767,515 in 1874, received
$3,118,833 in 1899. While these figures
are small, they represent an increase of
300 per cent within forty years, and near-
ly 100 per cent within the present gen-
eration.
Items of this character, always recog-
nized as a necessary part of the duty
of the federal government, give only a
faint idea of the new fields in which the
accumulated wealth flowing into the cof-
fers of taxation is being spent on works
which contribute to the scientific educa-
tion, the public information, and the gen-
eral equipment of the country for rivalry
with foreign producing nations. Many
of the scientific bureaus of the govern-
ment, like the Weather Bureau, the Pat-
ent Office, colleges for agriculture and
mechanic arts, the Coast and Geodetic
Survey, eat up amounts which do not seem
large from the modern point of view, but
which would have made a serious impres-
sion on the modest budget of 1860 or
1870, even if due allowance were made
for the difference in population. It does
not affect the argument that some of
these offices, like the Patent Office, are
partly sustained by fees, since the gross
cost of their maintenance, as compared
with the similar cost in the past, is one of
the measures of the increased resources
of the country.
The growth in the public wealth is the
explanation of the patience with which
the country bears the munificence of
Congress toward the pensioners of the
Civil War. Never in the world's his-
tory have such sums been distributed to
soothe the declining years of those who
suffered for the flag as by the United
States during the last decade. The lar-
gest amount paid for pensions up to the
Civil War was in 1820, when $3,208,376
was distributed. The country then had
a population of a little less than ten mil-
lions, so that the pension charge per
capita was about 35 cents. This charge
rose in the fiscal year 1885 to $56,102,-
267, which was about $1 for each in-
habitant of the United States, or about
$5 for the average family. The pro-
gress of fifteen years raised the pension
expenditure for the fiscal year 1900 to
$140,875,992. This is not much less
than $2 per capita, or more than the
cost of the federal government for all
purposes (barring one year of the Mexi-
can war) down almost to 1860. If the
costs of the military and naval establish-
ment last year were added to the expend-
iture for pensions, the burden upon the
American people for these objects was
about $4.40 per head, or very close to
the entire military and naval expendi-
ture of the Empire of Napoleon when
he was leading the " Grand Army " of
600,000 men to its death amidst the
snows of Russia.
The growth of the official classes is
not to be feared so long as they are per-
forming functions which are clearly use-
ful. There is an unmistakable tendency,
in democratic countries, where the sys-
tem of using offices as political rewards
prevails, just as there used to be in
monarchical countries, where offices were
distributed as favors by the monarch,
to create useless functions, and to divide
up those which are useful among an
unnecessary number of public servants.
This was notably the tendency in Great
Britain under the Stuarts and the
Georges, when sinecures were freely
granted in order to pension the favorites
of the king. It has been a favorite de-
vice among the political bosses of our
great cities, where Tom, Mike, and Isaac
have to be " taken care of " by the city be-
cause they have a " pull " in their wards.
But these illustrations of an unfortunate
The Growth of Public Expenditures.
53
tendency to abuse the good nature of the
public should not obscure the truth : that
the public can afford to employ more
servants under modern conditions than
under old ones, and can obtain from
them valuable services in promoting the
comfort of the people and developing
the economic power of the community.
The lesson taught by abuses of political
power is only that of every-day business,
that the rules of honesty and efficien-
cy should be rigidly applied in public as
well as in private service.
Closely related to the subject of in-
creased public expenditure is that of the
creation of public debt. The growth of
such debts was the cause of grave anxi-
ety to political economists early in the
century, while they found defenders, on
the other hand, among those who saw
the benefits of negotiable securities in
attracting the wealth of a country from
its hiding places into a common mass,
and in affording a means of absorbing
the fund of surplus capital which was
just coming into being. The fact soon
came to be recognized that the virtue of
the debt depended in a large degree
upon its object. Primarily, a debt for
a useful and productive purpose is more
justifiable than one for a wasteful pur-
pose, like that of war. But the instinct
of self-preservation is a dominant one
among men, and has apparently led na-
tions to assume debts for war with light-
er hearts than for almost any other pur-
pose. In many cases such expenses have
been wanton and wasteful ; but where
national life has been the stake of war,
the creation of debt might perhaps be
defended for the preservation of politi-
cal independence, without which inde-
pendent economic life would cease to be
There is not room in this discussion to
go into all the aspects of debt creation,
nor to determine the limits of the sound
principle of John Stuart Mill, that the
expenses of war should be raised, as far
as possible, by taxation rather than by
loans. It is certain that the peace es-
tablishment of the army and navy, under
ordinary conditions, should fall within
the proceeds of taxation, and should not
be permitted to impose a burden upon
posterity. The justification for imposing
burdens upon future generations is found
only in the preservation of the national
life ; the extension of national power,
which carries with it wider economic op-
portunities ; or the creation of permanent
works, like railways and harbor improve-
ments, whose benefits as well as costs
will be shared by posterity. The latter
object has had a large share in the in-
crease in public debts in well-ordered
states, during the past generation. The
government of Russia increased its debt
more than a thousand millions of dollars
from 1887 to 1900, but nearly the whole
of the amount has been applied to the
creation of railways owned by the state,
whose net earnings of $70,000,000 (137,-
486,000 rubles) in 1898 much more than
paid the interest on cost of construction,
and left a handsome surplus for meeting
other public charges. In Australia, also,
$650,000,000 (132,910,524) has been
expended by the state in the construc-
tion of more than 14,000 miles of rail-
way, mostly by the creation of public
debt ; but the net earnings of these rail-
ways were $20,000,000 (4,069,805) in
1898, and they paid more than three
per cent upon their cost.
Whatever the merits in the abstract of
incurring public debts, there is no doubt
that they bring a powerful stimulus to
the development of new countries. The
issue of negotiable securities, whether
they come from the government or from
private railway and industrial enter-
prises, puts into the hands of a poor and
undeveloped community the means of
obtaining the most efficient tools of pro-
duction from abroad, without waiting un-
til the requisite capital can be saved at
home. Take the case of Australia, whose
development has perhaps been more rapid
within our generation than that of any
The Growth of Public Expenditures.
other country of the same population and
wealth. The people of Australia were
in the fortunate position of having an
almost unlimited credit with their Eng-
lish and Scotch countrymen, which en-
abled them to borrow more liberally and
on better terms than any other people.
They borrowed from 1871 to 1898 near-
ly a billion and a half of dollars (294,-
212,000) . This great sum was applied to
railway construction, to the improvement
of agricultural land and sheep-farming, to
the employment of the best machinery
for gold-mining, and to the development
of manufactures.
The result of this influx of foreign cap-
ital has been to create a large debt, both
public and private ; but it has been also
to give to Australia a rapidity and solidi-
ty of development which would hardly
have been possible by the unaided ef-
forts of her own people. With a popu-
lation increasing by more than 250 per
cent from 1861 to 1898, and more than
doubling in the twenty-seven years from
1871 to 1898, her industrial growth was
more remarkable still. Her total foreign
trade rose from 39,729,016 in 1871
to 83,678,859 in 1897, or more than
three times the amount per capita of the
trade of the United States. The pub-
lic revenues, including railway earnings,
increased from $45,000,000 (9,269,-
765) in 1871 to $150,000,000 (31,272,-
588) in 1898. Deposits in the banks
increased, during the same period, by five
hundred millions of dollars (from 28,-
833,761 to 128,303,360), and the value
of annual production per capita increased
100 per cent, and put Australia at the
head of all countries in volume of pro-
duction per head. The per capita pro-
duction of Australia is about $130 (26
14s. 9c?.), while that of France is only
$60 ; Great Britain, $40 ; Russia, $31 ;
and even the United States, only $70.
These results could not have been
achieved without the influx of foreign
capital by the creation of debt in the
form of negotiable securities. These
securities were exchanged, through the
usual medium of stock exchange trans-
actions, for English woolens, hardware,
mining machinery, wines, and other luxu-
ries. They might not be acceptable di-
rectly to those who had machinery, cloth,
and wines to sell ; but other people with
surplus savings in England and Scotland
were willing to buy these engraved pieces
of paper, the bonds of the Australian gov-
ernments, and the stocks and bonds of
mining, railway, and investment compa-
nies. Thus, by the process of borrowing
abroad, Australia was equipped, almost
in the twinkling of an eye, with a mech-
anism of production which could have
been built up out of her own savings
only by the laborious efforts of several
generations. By a somewhat similar pro-
cess of borrowing abroad, the Russian
Empire has increased its debt by nearly
a thousand millions of dollars, but has
encouraged an influx of foreign capital
which has resulted in the creation within
five years of stock companies showing a
capitalization of $600,000,000.
The history of the century in public
finance, therefore, and especially the his-
tory of the present generation, illustrates
the benefits which may come to the com-
munity from a well-directed use of a
part of its new wealth in the extension
of state functions. The character of this
extension need not be radically socialis-
tic nor disturbing to the existing order,
but may simply relieve the individual
of many minor duties which could not
be performed at all before, or were per-
formed inadequately or at great individ-
ual expense. Just as the average man
has ceased to try to be his own carpen-
ter, physician, or lawyer, in spite of a
breadth of culture which may include
some knowledge of their duties, he has
ceased to undertake the many functions
relating to public health, instruction, and
protection, which were formerly per-
formed by the individual, because he
could not afford to contribute from his
slender surplus above the cost of main-
A Letter from England.
55
tenance to have them performed by oth-
ers. The increase in public expenditures,
great as it has been, has by no means
kept pace with the increase of social
wealth above the subsistence point, but
has taken a fraction of these great re-
sjurces, and sought to apply it to those
improvements in social condition which
can be best provided through state ac-
tion. Modern social development, open-
ing new means of comfort and luxury
on every hand to the mass of men, would
be strangely one-sided, if it left the func-
tions of the state shut within the parsi-
monious limits of a century ago, or even
a generation ago.
Charles A. Conant.
A LETTER FROM ENGLAND.
THE past year has, indeed, been a
year of emotions. Never before, in the
memory of the immediately present gen-
eration, has so universal and so sincere
a wave of national feeling intoxicated
the average Englishman. Nor has the
occasion been wholly frivolous, the de-
monstration entirely without dignity.
For whether the existence of a well-de-
fined policy, dating many years before
the Raid, to " republicanize South
Africa " and to " drive the British into
the sea," is ever honestly proven, or
whether the cry of " The Empire in
danger" is found to have been no more
than the invention of a chartered press
in the service of alien financiers, we
have unquestionably stumbled into an
imperial crisis of unparalleled magnitude
and historic significance.
Until the secret history of the tor-
tuous and discreditable diplomacy pur-
sued alike by Boer and Briton toward
each other and toward the colored peo-
ple, their servants, is authentically ex-
posed, we cannot, in common justice,
refuse to face the two entirely divergent
interpretations to which it is liable.
A great majority of those who are not
mere slaves to militarism or commer-
cial greed still hold to the position, so
ably set forth in Mr. J. P. Fitzpatrick's
The Transvaal from Within, that every
difficulty in South Africa has been in
reality the direct consequence of an un-
dying struggle for domination between
the two European races in possession.
They discover a steady and unscrupu-
lous development of anti-English legis-
lation, designed to thwart the injured
outlander at every turn by denying his
political rights and hampering his pri-
vate life, and carried out with a bril-
liant combination of cunning, corrup-
tion, and brutality. Mr. Fitzpatrick has
manifestly overreached himself in the
attempt to whitewash the Reform Com-
mittee, even while throwing over Dr.
Jameson ; but he has created an almost
irresistible impression of the incompati-
bility of Boer methods and ideals with
that ostensibly humanitarian form of
decency and justice, so essential to com-
mercial prosperity, which we have al-
ways claimed as the British brand of
civilization. The average Boer, and
President Kruger in particular, would
certainly seem to have been continually
and consistently in opposition to our
ideas of progress. The eight hundred
and fifty-nine pages lately devoted by
"Vindex" to the Political Life and
Speeches of Cecil Rhodes, empire-mak-
er, provide a solid basis for such con-
tentions.
There is, on the other hand, a small
but increasing body of thoughtful and
resolute Liberals, whose contentions are
eloquently embodied in Mr. J. A. Hob-
son's The War in South Africa. They
56
A Letter from England.
dwell much on the natural community of
interests between the white races in the
colonies and the republics, particularly
for protective purposes toward colored
peoples, and maintain that honest over-
tures had already done much for a work-
ing federation. They view the attitude
and conduct of the Boers as entirely de-
fensive against a perpetually encroach-
ing and treacherous invader, to whom
the principle of patriotism in other
people is unintelligible, the neighbor-
hood of a weaker enemy a constant
temptation to plunder, and the posses-
sion of gold fields a perpetual incitement
to dishonesty. They consider that the
English nation has been tricked into this
war by a small ring of international capi-
talists, with the sole object of " securing
for the mines a full, cheap, regular, and
submissive supply of Kaffir and white
labor," under conditions of practical
slavery.
On neither reading is the record or
the prospect especially satisfactory. We
have been, in the past, at once perfidi-
ous to our enemies and ungrateful to
our loyal colonists. We have broken
promises in secession and pledges in ex-
pansion. The negotiations terminating
in the present war were at least as dis-
ingenuous on our side as on that of the
Boers, though both parties may claim
their previous experiences of each other
as an excuse for duplicity. And as Mr.
Hobson effectively points out, "what
basis for legitimate respect are we offer-
ing, by bearing down through sheer nu-
merical superiority a people who will
rightly boast that we tried to meet them
man to man, and ignominiously failed ? "
Yet now, at any rate, there is but one
question in South Africa, " the struggle
for British imperial or Boer republican
predominance ; " and it would seem that
the very existence of our Empire is turn-
ing on the inclusion or the exclusion of
South Africa from its sphere of influ-
ence. Has England shown, during the
progress of the war, any honest desire
to face the position and recognize her
responsibilities ? Imperialism is on its
trial. It may prove to be "a mere
catchword vaguely denoting our insular
self-conceit," or " a well-considered poli-
cy to be pursued by a commonwealth
of the communities flying the British
flag."
The occasion' has grown, however un-
expectedly, to be serious enough not only
politically, but personally. Every son
and daughter of the Empire has been
confronted with torturing anxiety, true
tales of primal heroism, and sudden
death.
Theoretically we despise emotion, still
more its expression; and when we do
forget ourselves, our check books, and
our top-hats, the result is not edifying.
Drunkenness and rioting have marred
our " carnivals ; " vulgarity and corrup-
tion have absorbed the press, with a few
honorable exceptions ; while some of our
newspaper posters, topical street toys,
and music hall " turns " have betrayed
a flagrant lack of taste. Liberty of
speech has been seriously, though tem-
porarily, of course, curtailed ; while all
opponents of the government's policy,
foolishly called pro-Boers, are publicly
insulted without official rebuke and
privately boycotted. Charges of treason
are flung broadcast by Khaki enthusi-
asts.
Such manifestations, however, can
never prove that England's nobler feel-
ings were untouched. Our reverses,
which M. de Bloch attributes mainly to
the fact that all military progress has
been to the advantage of the defense, were
accepted with clinched teeth and reso-
lute silence. We rejoiced most conspicu-
ously over the relief of our soldiers from
circumstances of cruel suffering, and re-
frained from malicious triumph over the
capture of Cronje and the death of Jou-
bert. " The moving rally of our citi-
zens from beyond the seas from snow-
land and sunland, from Canada, from
Australia and New Zealand has set
A Letter from England.
57
a seal on the unity of the Empire such
as no parchments of confederation can
bring." And finally there has arisen
among us a new moral force to be reck-
oned with, the power of a sentient crowd,
a new vitality, at once general and in-
dividual. There is much significance in
the mere fact of comradeship between
classes, evoked by common losses ; the
unwonted loosening of tongues, for ex-
ample, in 'buses, trains, and upon street
corners, the eager discussion of news.
And though many of the brute instincts,
lately shedding their veneer of civiliza-
tion, must afford a smart reproof to our
complacency, it is none the less become
evident that the practice and the dan-
gers of battlefields can actually teach a
man to look at life more seriously than
in times of peace. For war is not mere-
ly, as the military expert would have us
believe, a measure adopted by states-
men to gain their ends. It may be also
the vital expression of a sentiment ; and
it is not unduly paradoxical or optimis-
tic to suggest that the present crisis has
given an articulate voice to that vague
but strong emotion of wider citizenship
which stood behind the tawdry pomp
and circumstance of the Jubilee, and
inspired Mr. Kipling's Recessional.
Patriotism, in its narrower sense, has
long lost its power over Englishmen, for
the simple reason that they have no op-
portunities of exercising it. We can
benefit our country to-day only by execu-
tive detail and social reforms, which in
some way always fail to stir the imagi-
nation. Prosperity, material progress,
and undisputed supremacy have sapped
the national backbone, till that last
worst sign of idle luxury has gained its
fatal hold through indifference to life,
fear of death and forgetfulness of hero-
ism. The war has proved conclusively
that grit at the core is still our own ;
but if it should throw us back upon mere
pride of arms, so unfortunately suggested
by Lord Roberts's shocking reference to
the relief of Ladysmith as a revenge for
Majuba, we care little for the heritage.
It should more properly, and more
probably, awaken in the minds of every
true Englishman a new sense of the im-
portance of life and the virtue of cour-
age, through some realization, however
feeble, of new and wider responsibilities
in the interests of civilization as a whole.
The goal of modern imperialism has
been admirably stated in the manifesto
of the Fabian Society, the only party
here to-day with a definite policy, an ac-
tive conscience, and a living ideal :
" The problem before us is how the
world can be ordered by Great Powers
of practically international extent, ar-
rived at a degree of internal industrial
and political development far beyond the
primitive political economy of the foun-
ders of the United States and the Anti-
Corn Law League. The partition of the
greater part of the globe among such
Powers is, as a matter of fact that must
be faced, approvingly or deploringly, now
only a question of time ; and whether
England is to be the centre and nucleus
of one of these Great Powers of the fu-
ture, or to be cast off by its colonies,
ousted from its provinces, and reduced
to its old island status, will depend on
the ability with which the Empire is gov-
erned as a whole, and the freedom of its
government and its officials from com-
plicity in private financial interests, and
from the passions of newspaper corre-
spondents who describe our enemies as
' beasts.' "
And again : " The simple answer to
the military plan of holding the Empire
is that it is impossible. The pretension
to it only destroys the prodigious moral
force which is at our disposal the mo-
ment we make inclusion in the British
Empire a privilege to be earned instead
of a yoke to be enforced. Our one threat
should be the threat of repudiation and
the withdrawal of our officials. It would
be so powerful that no British province
would dare, in the face of it, to abuse
its powers of self-government to institute
58
A Letter from England.
slavery or debase the standard of life
for its workers."
A very similar note is struck in a
thoughtful and lucid work entitled The
Settlement after the War in South Africa,
by Dr. M. J. Farelli, an advocate of the
Supreme Court of Cape Colony, who has
himself played a distinguished and honor-
able part in attempting to secure a peace-
ful solution of the difficulties he is dis-
cussing. He conceives of " the heritage
of the British Empire as the most glorious
instrument of justice the world has yet
seen," and as " a trust for the whole hu-
man race." In the face of such language,
it is, indeed, somewhat disquieting to
discover that Dr. Farelli, in common with
our press imperialists of the moment, is
inclined to disclaim the particular moral
attitudes by which our expansions have
been commonly excused. He laments,
for example, that " British Parliaments,
until quite recently, have not taken wide
views of foreign relations, or of the ne-
cessity of safeguarding British trade"
He condemns at once the sturdy Puri-
tanism of the sixteenth century, and the
" humanitarian wave of sentiment " of
the nineteenth. Yet our claims as school-
master of the world pursuing a God-
given mission would seem to rest on
the upholding of small nationalities, the
teaching of Christianity, and the ideal,
at least, of being humane toward subject
races. From conquest the instrument
of justice, we are in danger of turning
justice into an instrument of conquest.
Dr. Farelli himself points the warning,
when he says of "the people in South
Africa : " " It will be a fatal error to
suppose that so-called * practical ' consid-
erations meaning those of immediate
pecuniary gain must necessarily de-
cide their future action. ... Of all facts,
the most stubborn and creative are the
ingrained beliefs and prejudices of a peo-
ple, which are mostly attributed to quite
other causes than a regard for their ma-
terial interests. A generalization which
is correct enough when applied to opera-
tors on the Stock Exchange fails to ex-
plain the action of a generation of Hu-
guenots who lost all in fleeing from
France."
Much has been wisely written, both
in Dr. Farelli's book and in the Fabian
manifesto aforesaid, concerning the de-
tails of future government in South Af-
rica, where military rule must be brief
and restricted, a free constitution and
responsible government guaranteed at
the earliest possible moment, and the ex-
ploitation of minerals regarded primarily
as a fund for state purposes.
The result of the general election af-
fords some indication of the country ap-
preciating its responsibilities. The ex-
ceptionally heavy polling despite an
almost foregone conclusion points to
our recognizing the seriousness of the
issues at stake; and the dishonorable
appeal for votes on the Khaki enthusi-
asm was treated according to its deserts.
In face of complete disorganization in
the Liberal party, and since neither side
of the House had chosen to formulate
a policy, the electorate naturally deter-
mined that those who caused the wound
should find the cure. The onus of set-
tlement comes by right to the Tory-
Unionist camp ; but their failure to se-
cure any increase in their majority will
have taught them that the Englishman
who rallies unquestionably to the flag
does not thereby resign his liberty of
speech and judgment. In the future we
must know exactly how far we intend
to go, and for what end.
Books on the war itself are more plen-
tiful than edifying or instructive. Re-
printed in most cases from newspaper
correspondence, they are little more than
clever snapshots ; caught on the run, as
it were, hastily grouped in series, and
loosely sewn in covers.
But Dr. Conan Doyle has produced
in The Great Boer War a responsible re-
cord with astonishing rapidity and most
commendable thoroughness. While ad-
mitting that a fuller knowledge may
A Letter from England.
59
give an entirely different meaning to
some of the events of the Boer war, he
has every right to claim that his judg-
ments and criticisms have been made
without fear or favor, under the ines-
timable advantage of having visited the
scene of this great drama, met many of
the chief actors in it, and seen with his
own eyes something of the actual opera-
tions. In rather more than fifty pages
of history, admirably concise and lucid,
if not quite impartial, he has traced
the course of events by which the na-
tion has come once more " to be tested
by that hammer of war and adversity
by which Providence still fashions us
to some nobler and higher end." The
summary is followed by a readable and
continuous narrative of an eventful cam-
paign, in which every detail becomes in-
telligible and every manoauvre is brought
to light. His final chapter is concerned
with the military lessons which can no
longer be neglected in the face of expe-
rience.
Dr. Doyle has no difficulty in justify-
ing the comments of a civilian in this
matter; for, to his thinking, the very
first lesson of the war has been " that
the army can no longer remain entirely
in the hands of the professional soldier
and the official, but that the general pub-
lic must recognize that the defense of the
Empire is not the business of a special
warrior caste, but of every able-bodied
citizen." He does not entirely realize,
perhaps, that popular control in military
affairs means the giving to the critical
expert of equal if not superior authority
to the practical; but his own thought-
ful suggestions of reform would not pro-
hibit cooperation. He advocates reserv-
ing a comparatively small force of highly
organized, well paid professionals
" constantly encouraged to think and to
act for themselves " for foreign ser-
vice, and trusting our home defense to
volunteers and to the militia, trained as
competent marksmen. He would re-
place cavalry by mounted infantry,
break down the prejudice against a di-
vided battery, and universalize " the
trench and the hidden gun."
From Dr. Doyle it has been an old
promise fulfilled ; but the reputation of
the moment is Mr. Winston Spencer
Churchill's. His capture and his escape,
his racy comments, his condescensions in
approval and audacities in criticism, have
sent the press man to Parliament. He
will have little difficulty in holding the
ear of the public ; for he can write nov-
els, and look after every one else's busi-
ness as well as his own.
The anxieties of a grave imperial is-
sue, with an inscrutable Eastern prob-
lem, have entirely overshadowed public
life, while a stationary majority has en-
couraged the government in its compla-
cent neglect of home duties. The much-
heralded visit of the Australian delegates
was but the fixing of a seal on the work
of past years, and social reform has been
officially at a standstill. Party politics
are not edifying in a national crisis, and
the reputation of every leading statesman
has suffered in some degree.
In the larger humanities men have
naturally done little ; though here, too,
there have been some very notable losses
to supplement the long roll call of the
battlefield. The death of John Ruskin
was scarcely, perhaps, a personal event ;
for his working days were long over, and
his mantle as reformer in art and econo-
my had fallen on William Morris, who
actually died before him. The staying
power of Ruskin's teaching, his plea for
dignity and cleanliness in art, and for
reverence toward nature and simple man-
hood, has become a national heritage, so
far modified to universal acceptance that
we no longer recognize its origin. It is
as a master of English style that Ruskin
lives to-day.
Among scholars, the work of Profes-
sor Max Miiller has suffered a similar
eclipse. To our fathers, with their pas-
sion for " information " and " general
knowledge," his popularizing gifts were
60
A Letter from England.
invaluable ; and the " Chips " from his
German Workshop have carried the
study of philology and comparative re-
ligions to unexpected quarters. To-day
we are all specialists, but the fact will
not justify any depreciation of cultivat-
ing influences so widespread as Max
Mtiller's.
Dr. Martineau was a very different
type of the last generation. His keen
and lucid intellect was active to the last,
and Unitarians can ill spare their schol-
arly and earnest leader. Lord Russell
of Killowen, on the other hand, was
scarcely older in years than in mind.
The first Roman Catholic Chief Justice
since the Reformation was an eager poli-
tician and a passionate lover of abstract
justice, with a keen eye for horseflesh.
He valued a clear head, common sense,
and the gift of concentration above all
other powers of the intellect. For " near-
ly twenty years the history of the com-
mon law bar was his history," and it was
only the other day that he startled civic
complacency by a public reproof of the
Lord Mayor of London for keeping si-
lence under suspicions of financial job-
bery and company promoting.
In Dr. Henry Sidgwick, professor of
moral philosophy at Cambridge, the
world has lost one of the wisest and
noblest of his generation. His intellect
was of the Greeks, sane, critical, temper-
ate, and in a sense unproductive. But
that very genius for seeing both sides,
illuminated as it was by polished humor
and incisive style, rendered his presence
and conversation unceasingly and pene-
tratingly suggestive. Passionate integ-
rity and phenomenal industry, again,
have their influence on a philosopher's
friends and pupils ; nor must it be for-
gotten that difficulties along every path
of learning were liable to be smoothed
over by his private generosity and cease-
less devotion. In actual daily hard work
no fanatic could be more zealous. He
was of the first and foremost among the
champions of women's education ; and
he proved himself a pioneer to the last by
his courageous conviction that, despite
the sneers and laughter of the Philistines,
an investigator of psychical phenomena
is surely fighting to-day in the very van-
guard of human thought for the pro-
gress of knowledge.
Cambridge has also some special right
to mourn for two, not bearing arms, who
yet have fallen in the service of the Em-
pire. Miss Kingsley, of the West Afri-
can Gold Coast, was nursing at Cam-
bridge for almost as many years as she
spent weeks in the hospital at Simons-
town. And in the little interval between
her experiences of the sickroom she be-
came famous, sought out by everybody,
universally honored. Yet to those who
knew her she was always the same ; pos-
sessing a genius for friendship, a sympa-
thetic and unflinching loyalty. Coura-
geous always, in domesticity as in explo-
ration ; vivid in thought and action ;
graphic ; humorous and witty without a
touch of malice, she was the prince of
good comrades, and a woman. On the
comparative study of races and religions ;
on many a field of natural history ; on
societies for exploration ; and, above all,
on councils of the pioneers of commerce
and the administrators of outposts, she
has left her mark. Her outlook was un-
questionably imperialistic, tempered by
large humanity, an intrepid zeal for hy-
gienic reform, rare sanity or balance in
affairs, and a marvelous sympathy, by
no means maudlin, with savage nature.
But yesterday she prefixed a memoir of
her father, with all the racy vigor and
frank veracity of her travels, to a col-
lection of his delightful papers on sport.
To-day she is of those whose lives and
letters are eagerly anticipated.
The brief record of George W. Stee-
vens, journalist of Egypt, India, Amer-
ica, and " the conquering Turk," has
certain points of similarity to Miss Kings-
ley's. After gaining academic distinc-
tions at the sister university, he became
for a short time a Cambridge coach, with
A Letter from England.
61
literary tastes unusual in that profession.
His development into the most brilliant
and most popular of our writers for the
press was phenomenally abrupt. Without
apparently possessing the imagination or
creative powers of Mr. Kipling, he ex-
hibited an almost equal gift for rapid,
unhewn, and picturesque description ;
while there seemed no limit to the sub-
jects which he could master at sight
and set down for all men's understand-
ing, with a vigor of line and an instinct
for values recalling Beardsley's methods
in decoration. He was a literary im-
pressionist, with a touch of genius ; and
good journalists are as rare as other
artists. And Steevens, perhaps, was a
partner of Mr. Kipling in another sense.
One is Laureate of the Empire, the other
her Historian. In his From Cape Town
to Ladysmith George Steevens has left
a few chapters of vivid and almost im-
passioned description, which stand for
more than the last words of one whom
Lord Kitchener has called a model cor-
respondent. He saw little, indeed, of
the country, and less of the war ; but
nothing escaped him that passed under
his eye, and all he gained is given.
Every Englishman may know just what
happened, just what our soldiers were
doing and feeling, where Steevens
crossed their path.
For the elder dead that noble collec-
tion of monuments entitled The National
Dictionary of Biography has been com-
pleted, and much has been worthily
written in separate volumes. Mr. Ed-
ward Clodd's Memoir of the versatile
Grant Allen is commendably brief and
readable ; providing a genial and suf-
ficient record of the man's life work,
though missing, perhaps, a little the faun-
like affinities underlying his nature.
Mr. Leonard Huxley's Life of his
father is a worthy tribute to the mem-
ory of one of the founders of modern
science, the comrade of Darwin and
Herbert Spencer Huxley belonged to
the school of agnostic propagandists, now
almost extinct, but he was a controver-
sialist by conviction rather than by taste.
We are drawn to him, as were his
contemporaries, by something over and
above his wise knowledge in many fields :
by his passionate sincerity, his interest
not only in pure knowledge, but in hu-
man life ; by his belief that the inter-
pretation of the book of nature was not
to be kept apart from the ultimate prob-
lems of existence ; by the love of truth,
in short, both theoretical and practical,
which gave the key to the character of
the man himself.
The recent revival of interest in the
author of The Angel of the House,
coincident with a wave of Romanism
among minor poets and essayists, fully
justifies the publication of the Memoirs
and Correspondence of Coventry Pat-
more, by Mr. Basil Champneys. Whether
Patmore's poetical fame is destined to
increase or diminish at the hands of
posterity, the man himself will remain
a significant and attractive personality.
The prophet of domestic emotion was
never a flabby sentimentalist : his reli-
gious conviction and spiritual mysticism
were exceptionally sincere ; his affections
were deep and his friendships loyal.
Miss Clare L. Thomson has produced
a reliable and convenient Life of Sam-
uel Richardson, curiously neglected for
nearly a hundred years by the biogra-
phers ; we have two volumes of Letters
by T. E. Brown, published almost si-
multaneously with a complete edition of
his poetical works ; and the two sumptu-
ous reprints of Byron, lately inaugurated,
are pursuing their leisurely way toward
completion.
In fiction, the most definite tendency
of the year has been a general yielding
to the temptation of writing quickly and
carelessly, on lines that pay. The gift
of writing after a fashion has become
well-nigh universal ; the channels of pro-
duction are widening and multiplying;
the agent has transformed the struggling
author into a man of business. As jour-
62
A Letter from England.
nalism develops, literature degenerates.
Contributions to the picturesque press of
to-day are just good enough to be reprint-
ed for a season ; mere novelists strain
their nerves to keep the pace ; and the
ideals of permanent work or a critical
reputation are reserved for the diminish-
ing elect.
Although the writing of novels is, per-
haps, the one occupation in which there
is no sound excuse, and even but little
temptation, for separating the work of
men and women, it may not be imper-
tinent to remark that every one of our
leading women writers is to be found
among the honorable exceptions to this
rule of unprofitable haste.
Deliberateness, indeed, gives a moral
and artistic strength to Mrs. Humphry
Ward, though it ruins her style. Her
Eleanor, like Mr. Barrie's Tommy and
Grizel, has been already reviewed in The
Atlantic, and must be passed over with
but a single word. It exhibits the real
power of Mrs. Ward: that she always
slowly awakens, with terrible intensity,
to the ideas which the advanced among
us have been fighting with for years, and
sets them plainly and effectively in the
public eye, under the fierce search light
of that honest religiosity, stern practical-
ness, and middle -class idealism which
compose the average English mind.
Charles Kingsley's daughter is an
equally serious writer, though she recog-
nizes no mission outside the service of art.
It is eminently characteristic of the two
women that while Mrs. Ward is still in
the toils of " problems " and introspec-
tion, Lucas Malet should be crossing the
threshold of psychic phenomena, whence
come the latest science and the newest
faith. The Gateless Barrier is an at-
tempt, of fine reverence and subtle au-
dacity, to imagine a complication in the
emotional possibilities of life which might
arise from the developments of contact
with the spirit world. The old immor-
tal ideal of choosing death in pursuit of
a higher life is placed in an entirely new
setting, and the picture is infinitely sug-
gestive.
While Mrs. Ward and Lucas Malet,
as novelists, were born mature, John
Oliver Hobbes is only now abandoning
the nursery. The petulant precocity and
restless brilliance of her first manner
have disappeared ; and she seems at last
to have realized that the greatest artists
are content to produce their effects in
patience, to prefer strong and steady
lines over flashing zigzags, and to mass
in their characters with sober values.
There were grown-up touches in A
School for Saints ; Robert Orange is al-
most entirely human, and it convinces
us that the author's penetrating insight
and command of language may one day
enable her to write a great novel.
Mrs. F. A. Steel's work is more diffi-
cult to appraise. In her Voices of the
Night, as elsewhere, she moves easily
amidst a wealth of local color which
would support a far less competent writ-
er. The hard brilliancy of Indian life,
with its violent contrasts of light and
shadow, its phantasmagoria of races, its
plagues, its passions, its heroisms, and
its vices, can hardly fail to make a novel
interesting. Mrs. Steel knows her ground
well ; she never overcrowds it, or loses
her head over its bewildering intrica-
cies. But though the harmony of the
picture as a whole is marvelous, its cen-
tral figures are lacking somewhat in
strength. The human story fails to
dominate the imagination. We have
been on a personally conducted tour and
seen life, undoubtedly ; but no new char-
acters have enriched our memory, no
mind torment or soul ecstasy has stirred
our heart. We look in vain for the
wand of the dramatic artist.
There is much unexpected power in
Love and Mr. Lewisham, by H. G.
Wells. The usual manner of this au-
thor, an up-to-date Jules Verne, is en-
tirely without distinction, though excel-
lent of its kind ; but his conversion to
the school of healthy realists is an event.
A JLetter from England.
His book is concerned with an almost
hackneyed subject, the struggle be-
tween the ambition of an egoist and the
love of a man. Despite the digression
of Alice Heydinger, a character re-
calling the "red-haired girl" in Mr.
Kipling's Light that Failed, and Julia in
Mr. Gissing's Crown of Life, its hero
is quite virtuous, respectable, and com-
monplace, like anybody in real life. He
is a normal product of evening contin-
uation classes or extension lectures, and
flounders pitifully at an emotional crisis.
His life is petty, and even his love is
not heroic, though Lucy's simple good-
ness makes a man of him in the end.
The whole story is spontaneous and nat-
ural, and one will expect much of Mr.
Wells henceforth.
While Mr. Robert Hichens has be-
trayed, in his Tongues of Conscience,
the strained artificiality which even the
brilliancy of his rapid style cannot con-
ceal, two younger writers have evinced
an even greater courage of simplicity
than Mr. Wells. Mr. Henry Harland
was formerly editor of The Yellow
Book, and contributed some masterly
short stories to that remarkable period-
ical. But his The Cardinal's Snuff-Box
is an idyllic love story, written with the
brain of a man of the world and the
heart of a schoolboy. Entirely unsup-
ported by plot, local color, crime, analy-
sis, or " character " parts, it captivates
the reader by sheer delicacy of form
and feeling. It is " literature " for the
young person, a rare possession.
Sunningwell, by Mr. F. Warre Cor-
nish, vice provost of Eton, is a quiet
picture of a cathedral close, and of
Philip More, canon thereof. The aim
is to create an atmosphere and a per-
sonality, interacting on each other, per-
meating their surroundings. The form
of mingled essay, dialogue, and descrip-
tion is well calculated to support so
slight a framework, and the book may
be gratefully acknowledged as a relief
from many of its contemporaries.
The sobriety of Mr. Henry James is
wholly different, for his work provides
always the keenest of intellectual stim-
ulants. In The Soft Side, however, he
has not given us of his best, though it
is a volume of short stories. They are
overwhimsical, supersubtle, and too fine-
ly drawn. The Great Condition, indeed,
will grip the heart ; but others are some-
way provoking, and Europe the pa-
thetic story of " the house in all the world
in which ' culture ' first came to the aid
of morning calls " compares unfavor-
ably with the earlier exquisite Four Meet-
ings, on a similar idea.
Two of our novelists have chosen the
field of modern politics, and worked on
an identical situation. Mr. Zangwill's
The Mantle of Elijah and Mr. Anthony
Hope's Quisante' are alike concerned
with the progress of an uncultured ego-
ist to the forefront of political life, over
the shoulders of his early teachers,
whose principles he has forsaken and
whose ideals he has crushed. The per-
sonal interest in both is supplied by the
marriage of the coarse demagogue to a
girl of refined and generous nature, suc-
cumbing at first to a dominant personal-
ity, and then hating herself for the mag-
netism of its influence.
Mr. Zangwill, perhaps, has allowed
his parable to be inartistically obvious.
He uses every detail of the present sit-
uation without demur, and indulges at
times in open defense of the minority
nicknamed " Little Englanders." But
the point of view has seldom been al-
lowed a fair hearing, of late years, and
Mr. Zangwill's partisanship is eloquent,
sincere, and spontaneous ; while no di-
gressions can weaken the charm of his
impulsive and generous heroine, spoil his
drawing of a practical Christian woman,
or fog the atmosphere of moral earnest-
ness that pervades his work. Quisante'
stands further aloof from current tempo-
ralities. The more detached study in a
conflict of temperaments gives clearer
sway to the dramatic development of a
64
A Letter from JZngland.
situation. But the book lacks conviction.
It reads like an experiment, and, what
is even less pardonable, the repetition of
an experiment. The recurrence of types
and atmospheres would seem to come
from the man who writes because he will,
and not because he must. There is much
of A Man of Mark, and perhaps even
more of The God in a Car, in Quisante'.
Mr. Hope is seldom, indeed, at his
best on subjects of modern life, always
excepting the Dolly Dialogues. In the
hands of most men romance moves on
broader lines than realism ; with him it
is more subtle. And, contrariwise, Mr.
E. F. Benson works more surely and
easily in the society he knows first hand.
His The Princess Sophia is a clever ex-
travagance, but no more. The plot de-
velops in a small principality, frankly
borrowed from Stevenson or Mr. Hope,
and may be given due license according-
ly. But the requisite graces of style
and a tender imagination are not here,
and the innovation proves unfortunate
for Mr. Benson.
Mr. Kipling has done little new work
this year ; but the papers included in
From Sea to Sea have been long in-
accessible, and are welcome. Somehow
they suggest Mr. Stead, written in vig-
orous English and lit up by imagination.
They form the diary of a journalist of
genius, having a taste for slums, which
yet fill him with hatred and indignation.
One almost wonders why Mr. Kipling
should have studied so closely the terri-
ble problems of the vices of the East,
when he tells you with such insistence
how sick they make him. Perhaps in
those days he had not learnt to take him-
self quite seriously, and actually " did "
things in search of copy. There is no
question about what he found, and the
use he made of it.
In almost every department of liter-
ature the numerical output shows no
sign of diminishing, however inferior its
quality, although the immediate develop-
ments of civilization seem hostile to the
mere production of poetry. But The
Wild Knight, and Other Poems, by Gil-
bert Chesterton, is a volume of rare pro-
mise. We have here the revelation of
positive originality, the expression of in-
dependent thought, and the music of dar-
ing imagination. Mr. Chesterton has a
message, an outlook, and a style of his
own ; he is not afraid of himself ; he loves
mankind and honors God. Though ob-
viously admiring, and influenced by,
Robert Browning, he is not imitative in
form or matter ; and his inspiration
comes more from life than from books.
He is at once strenuous and romantic ;
vibrant to every wail and every song of
humanity, but full of visions and pro-
phecies. His intensely religious nature
sings ever of the joy of life and the
laughter of heaven ; not in blindness, but
by right of spiritual intrepidity. The
two verses of Ecclesiastes contain a sum-
mary of his philosophy :
" There is one sin : to call green leaf gray,
Whereat the sun in heaven shuddereth.
There is one blasphemy : for death to pray,
For God alone knoweth the praise of
death.
" There is one creed : 'neath no world-terror's
wing
Apples forget to grow on apple-trees.
There is one thing is needful everything
The rest is vanity of vanities."
At times Mr. Chesterton is perhaps
unwisely fantastic, and his love of em-
phasis has ruined some of his best work ;
but such faults may be forgiven to im-
maturity. For the most part, his appar-
ent extravagance or obscurity may be
explained by the freshness of his point of
view. A new poet does not speak the
language of his fellows : he sees where
they are groping in deep shadows ; he
feels what is stirring beneath their con-
sciousness. The Wild Knight is frank
and full-blooded, indignantly anti-deca-
dent and genially humane. It is in tune
with our noblest and most recent impulses
toward high seriousness, manly enthusi-
asm, and spiritual faith. A lyrical gift,
A Letter from England.
65
too seldom indulged, a rare command of
language, and richness of imagination are
the ingredients of true poetry. In all
probability, when Mr. Chesterton is bet-
ter known his first volume will be more
appreciated. Some of it will survive its
author.
It is a pleasing coincidence, perhaps
not unwholly undesigned, that the year in
which the English nation has received the
Wallace Collection in Hertford House
the most princely of artistic endow-
ments should be marked by unusu-
al activity in the production of illustra-
tions and biographies of painters. Sir
Walter Armstrong's Sir Joshua Rey-
nolds, Lord Gower's Sir Thomas Law-
rence, haply coupled, and Mr. Andrew
Lang's beautifully decorated work on
Prince Charles, are fine examples of
modern technique. Mr. Byam Shaw has
executed some strong and imaginative
pictures from Shakespeare, which are
worthy of a better setting than the neat
pocket edition in which they are issued ;
and Mr. William Nicholson has sur-
passed his genius for caricature in a
brilliant series of pastels of Characters
from Romances, where Mr. Tony Weller
follows Don Quixote, and Sophia West-
ern smiles but a page or two from Gar-
gantua. Dr. G. C. Williamson's admi-
rable handbooks of the Great Masters in
Painting and Sculpture, with their sound
critical biographies and adequate illus-
trations, are gradually forming a com-
plete and readable encyclopaedia of the
subject ; while The Artist's Library of
Mr. Lawrence Binyon, in which some-
what less established genius is more un-
conventionally treated, provides a wel-
come appendix for the initiate.
Dramatically it has been an eventful
year, both for stage and study. The
practice of publishing plays has grown
apace : Mr. Benson has established a
"repertoire" season; the problem play
has taken a new lease of life ; the drama
in blank verse has been revived. Lit-
erary craftsmen, wisely dissatisfied with
VOL. LXXXVII. NO. 519. 5
the dramatized novel, have embarked on
original work, and style is reasserting
its sway behind the footlights. Mana-
gers have shown a certain amount of
courage in the choice of old or new work,
and there have even been cases in which
the persons of the drama are suffered to
divert attention from the personators.
Mr. Benson's Shakespearean Series,
now permanently though privately en-
dowed, is a solid achievement of artistic
integrity. Though hampered, like Sir
Henry Irving, by several obvious per-
sonal limitations and mannerisms, and
not possessed of that master's dominant
genius, he always presents a definite and
serious conception of his part with careful
energy. Where most of the company
are well trained and competent, some
even original, and where the primary re-
sponsibility for our entertainment rests
with Shakespeare, the personality of the
" star " actor is, fortunately, not all-im-
portant. Mr. Benson's triumph is gained
by intellectual courage, and more by
what he does than by the way in which
it is done. The opportunity of seeing a
complete Hamlet twice the length of
the usual stage version, and producing
an entirely different effect and of liv-
ing for weeks under the spell of Shake-
speare's imagination, as the long run of
a single play can never render it, is a
benefaction for which one cannot forget
to be grateful.
For playwrights of to-day a some-
what similar service is being rendered
by a private club, called the Stage So-
ciety, which arranges one or two per-
formances of Ibsen, Maeterlinck, and
Hauptmann, George Bernard and the
Henley-Stevenson partnership, and there-
by gives its members the chance of test-
ing the finest contemporary work. Haupt-
mann has never before appeared on the
English stage, and his vivid dramatic
instinct, defying tradition, strikes a new
note.
The Second Mrs. Tanqueray has re-
ceived a new and fascinating interpreta-
66
A Letter from England.
tion at the hands of Madame Duse. The
exciting and novel episode of a visit from
native Japanese actors, performing in
their own language, has been supplement-
ed by the exquisite and daring Madam
Butterfly, adapted from Mr. Luther
Long's story of that name. Mr. Henry
Arthur Jones has tried his hand at a
farce, The Lackey's Carnival, which does
not please the public ; and written a
conventional " problem " play for Mr.
Wyndham, redeemed by the technical
mastery of its second act. The same old
tiresome story of a noble woman with a
past is fluently handled in Mr. Sydney
Grundy's A Debt of Honour.
Mr. J. M. Barrie, indeed, cannot es-
cape the familiar topic ; but his Wedding
Guest is informed by a moral and artistic
sincerity of rare distinction. The play
is not, properly speaking, constructed at
all ; its dramatic movements vanish and
reappear like a jack-in-the-box, and the
situation wanders away to nowhere in
particular. The author's power rests en-
tirely in his devotion to the creatures of
his invention, which forces response from
the audience. It is the conquest of a
frank and eager personality. Fresh ma-
terials and new treatment are reserved
for Mr. Frank Harris, whose Mr. and
Mrs. Daventry is an offense to many, be-
cause it shows vice attracting vice, and
virtue loving virtue, where stage conven-
tions demand cross links. It touches,
moreover, a normally " unpleasant "
problem, and there is safety in the ab-
normal. Mr. Harris seems to have stud-
ied character from real life, and his tra-
gedy does not rest on the old cry against
" one law for men and another for wo-
men." It lies deeper, and is more fear-
lessly exposed. His language, also, is
simple and effective, and his stagecraft
illuminates the plot without being flashy
or melodramatic.
Mr. Stephen Phillips is no less daring
than Mr. Harris, but he produces quite
different effects by methods entirely dis-
similar. Summoning to his aid the full
" pomp and circumstance " of Elizabeth-
an romanticism, he hazards comparisons
with Shakespeare by a free treatment of
the historic magnificence and passion of
Herod. Situation and diction alike bring
Antony and Cleopatra to mind, and his
verse has many an echo, on the other
hand, of Tennyson. There is no ques-
tion, of course, that he stands far below
the masters ; but his courage is fully justi-
fied, and he has taught us, what no one
else of his generation has dared even to
suggest, that poetical drama is neither
dead nor dying. Mr. Phillips had a long
training as an actor, and gained there-
by a mastery in construction and stage
effects. In spite of certain hauntingly
beautiful and stirring lines, Herod does
not contain so much good poetry as Paolo
and Francesca, but it is gorgeous melo-
drama.
Alongside of the intellectual and moral
activity distinguishing the churches of
to-day, we have had, this year, many
notable witnesses among laymen of the
highest culture and education to the re-
vived interest in the problems of theolo-
gy and religion which marks our age and
country. The time would seem, indeed,
to be past beyond recall when scientific
discoveries were regarded as the direct
enemies of theology, with a message en-
tirely destructive. For the church, es-
sentially a diplomatic organization, with
infinite powers of adaptability, was not
slow to recover the ascendency by preach-
ing science and history, somewhat hastily
digested, and thus ingeniously diverting
the immediate necessity for a revision of
faith. The delay was probably to the
advantage of truth, since the first pride
of science adopted an arrogant material-
ism, no less dogmatic than the old ortho-
doxies.
And the reconciliation of science, his-
tory, and religion stands upon a firmer
basis to-day. In ultimate language, natu-
ral science can present us with nothing
more definite than " a universal flux, in
which something, we know not what.
A Letter from England.
67
moves, we know not why, we know not
whither." It does not forbid, but rather
commands, the assumption that behind
the discovered there is the discoverable,
beyond the actual the possible.
In religion, again, we may fearlessly
apply the scientific method to transfer
the burden of support of Christian doc-
trine, and of religion generally, " from
history to psychology, perhaps rather
from the history of facts to the history
of ideas ; " to justify faith by the study
of religious psychology in conjunction
with the history of religious ideas. Thus
we recognize that the facts, or perma-
nent and inspired part, of religion are
subjective, founded on individual expe-
rience and consciousness ; its illusions,
or temporary structure, are reports of
historical events, the translation of spir-
itual doctrines into the sphere of material-
ism, and the acceptance of creeds on au-
thority.
Dr. James Ward, professor of logic
at Cambridge, in his Naturalism and
Agnosticism, has cleared the ground by
a masterly and comprehensive attack on
agnostic materialism, followed by an un-
proven deduction of spiritual certitude.
Dr. Percy Gardner, professor of archae-
ology at Oxford, noting his delight in
much agreement with Professor William
James of Harvard, has devoted facul-
ties trained in other fields of observation
to a most reverent and suggestive treatise
on the origin of Christianity, entitled Ex-
ploratio Evangelica. And Mr. George
Santayana, another Harvard professor,
with a rare command of English style,
has attempted, in a study of religions
at once eloquent, scholarly, and sympa-
thetic, to establish the tenet that ' re-
ligion and poetry are identical in es-
sence, and differ merely in the way in
which they are attached to practical
affairs. Poetry is called religion when
it intervenes in life ; and religion, when
it merely supervenes upon life, is seen
to be nothing but poetry."
From his Interpretations of Poetry and
Religion and from Dr. Gardner's book
the foregoing analysis of a current atti-
tude has been entirely derived ; and it
only remains to note a striking parallel
between two writers, approaching the
subject from such different points of
view, in their conjectures for the future.
Mr. Santayana has written : " Human
life is always essentially the same, and
therefore a religion which, like Chris-
tianity, seizes the essence of that life
ought to be an eternal religion. Can
it reform its claim, or can it overwhelm
all opposition, and take the human heart
once more by storm ? "
Dr. Gardner states unhesitatingly that
the principles of his book are in favor
of the revival of collective control : " If
religious doctrine be really the intellec-
tual statement of principles of conduct,
it at once appears to have an ethical
bearing. . . . Any such revival of dis-
cipline, of course, involves as a prelimi-
nary a revival of belief and an outpour-
ing of religious enthusiasm. . . . The
process of crystallization has begun, and
it may be that that process is destined
to proceed with a rapidity which will
astonish those who regard religion as a
matter quite private between the soul and
its Maker."
Science is once more confined to its
legitimate sphere ; morality cannot stir
imagination, "the great unifier of hu-
manity," and hence may arise the work
of the new century, to inspire the
body politic with some higher and spirit-
ual purpose ; to build up, from the deep
convictions of her noblest sons, a corpo-
rate conscience and a universal church.
R. Brimley Johnson.
68
A Gap in Education.
A GAP IN EDUCATION.
EDUCATION is the working of all forces
that fashion a man during the plastic
years, before his habits become fixed and
his character determined. No one can
escape education even if he would ; what-
ever may be his lot, his spirit will be led
toward one desire or another, his mind
will fasten and feed upon some chosen
thoughts, his heart will make something
dear to itself. There is a natural divi-
sion of education into two parts. One part
is the domain of chance ; it is compact of
the manifold influences, the countless hap-
penings, complicated and subtle, which
press about a man like the atmosphere.
The other part is the domain of instruc-
tion, and is subject to the deliberate pur-
pose of the teacher. Since the part under
our control is the smaller, so much the
more does it deserve careful thought and
plain speech.
It would be curious to construct in
our minds a youth of an age from twelve
years to twenty-two, out of materials
furnished by discussions concerning the
proper education for him. We hear
about primary and secondary education,
about periods and times for preparato-
ry, academic, and special studies, about
cultivating observation and imagination,
about literature and science, about athlet-
ics, about the elective system, about re-
ligious worship. Some say that a young
man should be turned into an instrument
to ascertain truth ; some say, into an in-
strument to increase wealth ; others, that
he should learn, in this way or in that,
to minister to a particular need of socie-
ty ; others, that he should be made a gen-
tleman, a good citizen, a Christian. Out
of all these things rises up a creature
quite different from the young human
animal that we know.
A boy is made up of mind and body.
These two elements, mysteriously bound
together, yet separated by the widest gap
in the universe, jog on side by side, each
dependent upon the other. Education
must take this union into account ; it
must remember that the body is animal,
and that it has received two great com-
mandments, " Thou shalt live," and
" Thou shalt multiply." The education
of man must be shaped with reference
to these two fundamental commands.
Our civilization has reckoned with the
first. The desire for life has been deep-
ened, broadened, and transformed ; no
longer content with filling the belly from
day to day, it demands architecture, art,
literature, means of travel, devices for
diversion. Education, eager to lead civ-
ilization onward, endeavors, by chosen
studies, by special schools, by the culti-
vation of predominant tastes and capaci-
ties, to use this desire for the nobler de-
velopment of man. Under the control
of education, the desire for life seeks
satisfaction in ever greater knowledge,
ever greater dominion over nature. Col-
lege assumes that this desire is a noble
want of noble things, and teaches it to
be such.
But when we consider the second im-
perious command, what do we find ?
Civilization has established the institu-
tion of marriage, it has decreed that a
man may lawfully have only one wife,
but it has done little else. Civilization
is a great brute force that needs to be
led! What does education? It halts
timidly to see what civilization will do ;
and the desire to multiply roams at will.
Shall not education tame it, train it, and
manage it? Shall not that desire be
deepened, broadened, and transformed,
till it too help make life far nobler than
it is ? With this passion for a lever we
might uplift the world, but education is
afraid of it.
A Gap in Education.
69
From what masters of education say,
we should suppose boys to be sexless,
were it not for sundry regulations, mat-
ters of police, and for certain customary
vague assurances, smoothed out into gin-
gerbread phrases, that sons will be care-
fully protected. The reason that educa-
tion is silent upon this desire is in part
because schoolmasters and college mas-
ters deem it the parents' affair, and
parents toss it back to the masters. The
fault belongs to both. Teachers may
not separate one strand of education
from other strands, and say to fathers,
"You are responsible for this wisp in
the rope." Nor are they workmen whose
concern is bounded by the section of a
boy's life committed to their care. Each
master is one of a crew, all working to-
gether : the success of one is of little
value without the success of all, and
worse than useless if it interfere with
the success of the others. A bow oar
might as well say, " What have I to do
with stroke ? " as the schoolmaster say,
" What have I to do with the boy at
college ? " School and college and par-
ent are all working together, working
to fashion a man.
If the masters are at fault, fathers are
far more to blame. The duty of using
as an educational force the power given
by this second commandment rests upon
them. They cannot shift it from their
shoulders. It is of continuing, uninter-
mittent obligation. It is bound on the fa-
ther's back by the birth of his son : there
it rests until death shall loose it. A fa-
ther cannot release himself by putting
another in' his place. A man shall an-
swer for every act and for every omission
of the factor to whom he has intrusted
his own son. If a son do wrong, if he
surrender to low things, if he come to
misery, then must the father be con-
demned. It is not safe to let this duty
be of less than absolute obligation. If
society shall entertain a plea of not guilty,
in that the father did as other fathers
do, chose the best school, the wisest mas-
ters, or in that evil company, or some
hereditary taint of blood, or ill luck,
caught up the boy and bore him off,
then the possibility of such a plea de-
generates into a probability, that prob-
ability into use, that use into a pretext,
that pretext into a habit of mind, until
at last a man comes to think that his
son's education, like a suit of clothes,
once put into the hands of an artisan of
good repute, ceases to be a matter for
which he is responsible. A father may
not, by gift of staff and scrip, by cries of
"Good luck" and "God speed," break
the great seal of the paternal bond.
Doubtless our unformed civilization en-
ables masters and fathers to evade this
heavy responsibility. But a more defi-
nite cause is at hand.
II.
What is it that shuts our mouths upon
this great problem of education ? Dur-
ing the long centuries in which decency,
manners, and refinement have been strug-
gling with our animal nature; while the
conception of home with one wife, with
children gathered together, has been
contending with the dissipating influ-
ences of savage customs, and the spir-
itual has been fighting with the bestial,
it was natural that all means to win the
contest should have been laid hold upon,
some wiser and nobler, some less
wise and less noble. Jealousy, love of
dominion, asceticism, monasticism, celi-
bacy, have all been instruments by which
men have wrought modesty. These in-
struments have served well, and have
much yet to accomplish ; nevertheless,
it was almost inevitable that, in fashion-
ing modesty, certain other qualities of
an allied nature, distorted and mis-
shapen likenesses, prudery, shame-
facedness, false modesty, should also
have been made. These mock virtues,
too, may have done good service in main-
taining an outward semblance of respect
for the real virtue ; but they have done
harm by taking to themselves part of the
70
A Gap in Education.
honor due to their original, and by con-
founding notions so that men mistake
false modesty for modesty, shamefaced-
ness for decency, prudery for virtue.
Thus a notion has grown strong in this
country that decent people shall not talk
openly upon matters of sex, but shall
throw a cloak over them and keep them
out of sight and hearing.
If prudery, shamefacedness, and false
modesty have given us the grace of vir-
gin innocence, we must honor them ac-
cordingly ; or if, by maintaining seclu-
sion and respect, and by holding back
knowledge, they have built a fence around
that grace in the leastwise helpful to
its growth, we must be most considerate
before we lay a finger on them. But
when we have once made up our minds
that here is mere confusion of thought,
that life is the rock on which everything
is founded, that " more life and fuller "
is what we want, that the powers of life
are good, and that only by perversion
can they be turned to ill, then we must
honor the powers of life as pure and
holy, and we must treat vulgar disbelief
as blasphemy and infidelity to the spirit
of life. Real modesty misunderstood,
false shame, fear of derision, have kept
fathers from facing this problem of edu-
cation. Here are the false doctrine and
confused thought that underlie the si-
lence of education as to sex. We must
turn about. We must cast off prudery
for the sake of modesty ; we must draw
our necks out of the yoke of an inherit-
ed, atrophied shamefacedness. For our
sons' sake, we must recognize and pro-
claim that this passion is good, not bad ;
that it can be put to the noblest uses ;
that it must be put to the noblest uses.
We must teach our sons that the union
of man and woman is a sacrament.
Yet we need not be impatient with those
who cannot accept our faith at once.
We must always remember that men,
reckless of chastity, have been good and
great, poets, heroes, men who have
toiled and denied themselves for their
fellows, and have set up unshakable their
title to our gratitude ; we know that
countless men in private and obscure
life are reckless of chastity, who are
good, kind, simple, and upright. We
are not blind to man as he is, but we
may not tolerate for ourselves a system
of education which treats this passion
as of the devil, and does not try to put
it to noble use.
In order to set clearly before our-
selves a notion of what current educa-
tion is in this regard, let us avail our-
selves of our own recollections of the
teachings which boys at college receive
from their fathers. Those fathers, for
this purpose, may be divided into two
classes.
There is the refined, sensitive father,
who hates the idea of vice and turns his
back upon it, pretending to himself that,
by some process of subconscious instruc-
tion, his son shall learn from him its
odiousness. He sends his son to school,
and from school to college, advising him
about Latin and Greek, about physics
and chemistry, about history and art,
and other petty matters of education.
Equipped with platitudes concerning
virtue, his son goes forth into a world
where the union of man and woman is
not recognized as a sacrament, to hear
boon companions plead for vice with all
the persuasiveness of youth and gayety.
Thus the father hands over his son to
the great educating force of sexual de-
sire which he knows is stretching out
its hands to the boy, which he knows is
bound to lead him higher or lower.
Then there is the coarse father, who
accepts the period of puberty as one of
the corridors or gardens of life, through
which his son shall walk lightly. He
hopes that the lad will make merry with-
out vexation to the father. He warns
him against disease and against the po-
lice court. So each father hands down
his tradition to his son ; and so the pri-
mal fact of life hides beneath the mod-
esty of the decent man, and flaunts on
A Gap in Education.
71
the lips of the loose liver, and education
busies itself with classics, mathematics,
boat races, and special studies.
Quitting their fathers, our boys, our
young animals, they the most carefully
guarded, the most tenderly prayed for,
go forth and find our cities, our towns,
even our villages, swarming with prosti-
tutes, while ladies gather up their skirts
and drop their veils, and gentlemen laugh
and wink, and public opinion puts forth
conventional protest. Here is a course
of study which is not set down in the
college catalogue. Then, too, our boys
read the experience of men bred with-
out or maybe stripped of what they call
illusions, men of the world, Epicureans,
a Boccaccio, a Maupassant, a d' An-
nunzio, and take the sayings of these
backward men for bold truth, honest ut-
terance, as the casting out of hypocrisy
and humbug. They learn also that there
are familiar conceptions of life in which
this sacrament is deemed a mere mat-
ter of physical pleasure ; and that, too,
by men successful in the management
of affairs and high in the community's
esteem. They suspect that modesty is
a priestly contrivance fashioned by old
men, home-keeping wits, unlearned in
the ways of the world, ignorant of life.
So they go. Thus the sexual instinct
educates them, and this great power for
breeding noble men is suffered to be a
hindrance and a hurt. What can fa-
thers do ?
in.
This is a difficult matter. Yet can we
not outline some course of action which
shall at least save us from the ignominy
of doing nothing ? When the first curious
questioning concerning sex comes into a
boy's mind, who is to answer it but the fa-
ther ? That questioning will come. We
cannot, if we would, hide our animal na-
ture ; we cannot convert a boy into a dis-
embodied spirit. On every other matter
the father tells his son what he can ;
here he fobs him off ; and the son goes
to books or to companions who care not
for him ; and then the sense of nakedness
comes upon him, sin has entered into
his world. What right has a father, by
disingenuousness, by false shame, to teach
his boy, by concealment, that sex is a
shameful thing ? Thence springs a desire
for forbidden fruit, an eagerness of pruri-
ent curiosity, a recognition that there is
a barrier betwixt his father and himself.
How dare a father violate his first great
duty to his son ? Here is the mighty force
of sexual attraction, awakening in the
boy, ready to work for good, ready to
work for evil, and the great task of edu-
cation is to put that power to use for
good ; but the father stealthily slinks
away, and leaves the son to associate that
force in his mind with vice and sin, weld-
ing this false combination together with
all the strength of early thought. Sexual
passion is at the base of life : it serves the
noblest ends ; it manifests itself in poet-
ry and religion ; it has made our homes ;
it has given us our children. Every day
we see that passion put to use in labor, pa-
tience, self-denial, and noble discontent.
Must we not teach our boys always to
link it in their minds with the highest
conceptions of nobility, aspiration, and
divinity ? Is it not blasphemy and idola-
try to confound it with grossness and
bestiality ? Fathers look on the sexual
passion with fear instead of reverence.
We act as if it came from the devil in-
stead of from God ; we shun it as a tempt-
er when we should welcome it as an
angel. How do we make use of all
those aspirations which break, like April
blossoms, into flower at the first awaken-
ing of passion ? How do we encourage
all the youthful readiness for chivalry ?
What do we do with that longing for a
noble quest ? The service for fourteen
years of Jacob for Rachel is but the type
of the service that we should demand of
every youth in the first flood of passion.
Expectation should exact from him some
noble proof that he understands the sac-
rament of union. Nor should it be ne-
cessary to wait until his love had singled
72
A Gap in Education.
out a maiden ; all the knightliness of
boyish manhood should be called to arms
at the first trumpet of passion. We let
this great seedtime run to waste in mere
enjoyment unhusbanded. What right
has a youth to the great joy of love, un-
ess, like Jacob with the angel, he wrestle,
and will not suffer it to go until it bless
him ? We are wont to deem this peri-
od a mere animal mating time ; we talk
lightly of happy youth ; whereas it is
the great solemn opportunity of life, and
the best proof of man's communion with
some Being high and holy.
With like vulgarity of mind we look
on the dark side of sexual passion. For
example, we teach our boys that they must
pity and help wretched men, but we for-
bear to let them pity the cruel misery of
numberless women, fearing lest they be
contaminated. What is our civilization
to be valued at, while we suffer our
young men to treat these women with
laughter, and only ask of our choice
young men that they turn aside their
heads and pass ? And yet are these wo-
men one whit more contaminating than
the gay young men, their companions
for a brief season, till need of diversion
take them elsewhere ?
Sage heads shake ; voices with which
we are familiar say : " We are animals
just as much as the simplest brutes from
which we are descended. In this world
life is one continuous struggle ; the battle-
ground shifts, but the battle continues ;
passionate animals cannot be bridled
by sentimentality, however maidenly."
How pleasant it is to hear the old fa-
miliar voices ; but we have greater power
than they fear. There is nothing good or
bad but thinking makes it so ; even our
physical world takes all its attributes
its weight, heat, light, color, its desira-
bleness, and its excellence from our
thoughts. If in our animal nature we
inhabit a world where the laws of gravi-
tation and evolution are the explaining
principles, with our minds we live in the
world of ideas and feelings, wherein
men, feeble in their power over the
physical world, exercise great dominion.
Out of thought we can make a world in
which honor and love shall be elemental
forces. " In the beginning God created
the heaven and the earth." What was
that heaven but the world of thought
which God created to take precedence
before the earth, in which the minds of
men are the instruments by which di-
vine energies are still at work? Here
is perpetual creation; and that part of
this creation intrusted to fathers is the
thoughts of their sons. We call it our
children's education. Shall we be faith-
ful servants?
It is no priestly chastity that we mean
to preach. This great fact of life
which nature has commanded and in the
beasts is mere brute instinct, which in
man has uprisen into love, giving us
hope by this rising from the dead that
love is the revelation to man of the na-
ture of Deity must be acknowledged
to be divine, and not bestial. When
once this truth shall be believed, then no
father will let his son go into the world
untaught at home ; but he will himself
teach him the greatest of the miracles
of life, how a brute fact has been made
holy, and then the son will go forth con-
scious of all the obligation of love.
H. D. Sedgwick, Jr.
The Difficult Minute.
73
THE DIFFICULT MINUTE.
FROM the depot at Penangton, Morn-
ing County, Missouri, to the one line
of street cars it is ten miles. Hender-
son figured that out for himself, as he
stumbled irritably over the rough road,
across the bridge, up the plank walk, to
the car. It was an October evening, and
the day was trailing off in a gray, shin-
ing halation that was neither mist nor
fog, but dancing haze. Henderson saw
far-away houses brooded over by gray
wings; he saw rickety wheels of gray
spiked by the small gleam of the street
lamps ; and he saw occasional people
work up out of, and twist back into, the
farther distance in gray spirals. The
whole town and the hills beyond it were
one wavering, lightening, deepening
scheme of gray, except where, far to the
west, a stubborn stretch of red lay along
the sky.
As he came on toward the car, Hen-
derson had a half-dashed, half-defiant
look in his eyes. " You 're a pretty
cuss ! " he mumbled once or twice.
" Better have stayed in Chicago in the
first place. Better have stayed in Dix-
burn in the last place. Penangton ! "
He looked about him disgustedly. To
the west he could distinguish the outline
of a tall building, shadowy and uncer-
tain in the gloom ; he picked out the
white letters across its sides : " P-e-n-r-y-n
M-i-1-l-s." He looked to the east, and
saw a straggling line of sheds. He read
the letters on their sides easily enough,
because his eyes had become accustomed
to the first part of the combination:
"Penryn C-o-a-1 Penryn Coal P-o-c-
Penryn Coal Pockets." He stopped
halfway up the plank walk, dropped his
heavy traveling case, and worked the
fingers of his achmg hand. His eyes,
sweeping southward, were caught by a
trim brick building beyond the depot.
It had white letters across its front.
" The first word is Penryn," said Hen-
derson, at a guess. " No, the first word
is T-h-o-r-l-e-y. Thorley-P-e-n-r Uh-
unh ! I knew Penryn would be along.
Now what 's the rest ? Thprley-Penryn
S-e-r-o-t-h Oh, go to the dickens ! "
he finished impotently. "I don't care
what you are." Still farther south he
descried the headstones of a cemetery.
" Good ! One can at least die in Pe-
nangton. I'll bet the tallest shaft is
named Penryn." The night's blacker
shadow leaped up out of the earth then,
and the haze became thick gloom. The
last red flare was gone from the west.
Two men came up'the plank walk toward
Henderson.
" Coolish night," he.heard one saying,
as they clacked off northward.
" Brrrt ! It is a coolish night," said
Henderson to himself. He turned to
pick up his valise, but for some reason
his hands went together first, -and he
held them so convulsively. " A coolish
night," he heard himself repeating, with
a witless, wandering intonation. Then
he shook himself threateningly. " Oh,
I '11 try again. Of course I '11 try," he
said, but he said it like a man who is try-
ing to anaesthetiz^ his soul ; and when he
got into the car, the look in his eyes was
more distinctively dashed than defiant.
" Is there a driver ? " he by and by
asked wistfully of the one other occu-
pant of the car.
"Yes, there's a driver," the other
occupant looked out of the window at a
frame house which stood just where the
plank walk ended, and the brick pave-
ment and the car track began, " but
there 's also a saloon."
Henderson bit his lower lip in a confi-
dential enjoyment of the quality of that
voice. There was a note in it of stand-
ing things good - naturedly when they
could n't be helped.
74
The Difficult Minute.
" I wonder if there 's no way of break-
ing the connection?" he said, getting
back to the driver and the saloon with
a jerk. He went to the car door and
hallooed at the frame house. A man
came to the door.
"Dave ain't quite ready yet," called
the man, thickly but genially. "Jes'
wait a minute till he wets his whis'le, will
you?"
It seemed the thing to do under the
circumstances. The air had the crisp-
ness of early autumn, and Henderson
saw that the woman in the car felt it ;
so he shut the door, and came patiently
back to his seat.
"It's just.one of Penangton's ways,"
she explained, with a funny little lift of
her brows.
Henderson took his lower lip into con-
fidence again, and deliberately poised
himself in midair, as it were, on the
sound of that voice. It had so many
kinds of suggestion in it. She had said
only two sentences to him, but the first
had made him aware that whatever was
worth laughing at in the world she was
ready to laugh at, and the next had made
him aware that she had run the gamut
of Penangton from end to end. After
the atony of the past few weeks he was
almost feverishly glad of his rising in-
terest in that voice, in anything. His
soul, he knew, was somewhere near in
the same tense, wrung attitude his body
had assumed out on the plank walk, but
he had a curious, hurried desire to tell
his soul to shut up, to come along, to
make the best of it.
" It's quite a town, Penangton ? "
"The lamp is sputtering," said the
woman, in reply. " Could n't you turn
the wick higher ? Oh, goodness, it 's
going out ! Why, there 's no oil in it."
They both got up hurriedly, but the
lamp was too far gone for rescue. It
began to smoke dismally.
" I '11 go get the driver," said Hender-
son. " Just wait here a minute." He
jumped off the car and ran up the steps
to the saloon. Presently he came back,
shaking his head. " The driver 's drunk
for fair," he said. " Everybody in
there 's drunk. What '11 we do ? "
"Couldn't you drive?" she asked
merrily.
He looked down the silent street, and
his eyes lit up a little. " I '11 drive you
home, if you'll let me," he said, with
decision. " I can just do it." He ran
through to the front of the car, and un-
wound the reins from the brake. The
mules stirred slowly and sorrowfully.
"Shall I?" asked Henderson. The
woman began to laugh. " Do you live
on the car line ? " went on Henderson
gleefully. He laughed, too. It seemed
good to be pulling his soul along out of
its tragics into something humorous and
commonplace. " Come up ! " He shook
the reins out over the mules. " It 's my
idea to drive until I stop to let you out,
then drive on a little farther, and leave
the car standing on the track, while I cut
for a hotel. Do you think it will work ?
The mules seem to like to stand."
His voice broke up into little chuckles,
like a schoolboy's.
The woman came out on the front
platform to him. She could hardly talk
for laughing. "It will work," she said,
" unless somebody else gets on the car."
Henderson's face wrinkled a little, but
he shot the leather quirt out over the
mules briskly. " Nobody will get on,"
he said. " I '11 never be able to stop this
team." He felt so exhilarated that it was
like pain. The car began to make a great
banging noise that just suited him. The
way the sparks flew from the hoofs of
the mules just suited him. The way
that woman leaned back against the car
door and laughed just suited him. It
was all so exactly on the outside. There
was nothing introspective about it. He
looked back at her gayly. " I hope you
live at the other end of the line ? " he
queried.
" About halfway."
" I hope it 's a long line."
The Difficult Minute.
75
"About two miles, not counting the
roughness."
" Don't count the roughness. Nothing
counts."
" That 's it, nothing counts. Is n't
this a lark?"
Henderson nodded brightly. "Will
it be dark like this all the way ? " he
asked ; and when she said yes, he began
to sing the first bars of a gay little air
under his breath ; the woman sang too,
both of them holding their voices down
cautiously.
" Don't you ever finish things ? " she
complained finally, after trying in vain
to adapt her voice to Henderson's many-
tuned melody.
" No," said Henderson. " No ; I
don't like the finish of anything." He
moved back to where she was, and leaned
against the car frame, with the reins
dangling carelessly. " The beginning is
always so much more interesting."
She rocked her head on the door jamb
at her back. " Mmh! I don't know."
" Oh yes ! " cried Henderson. " In
the beginning you have the beginning
and all you can imagine about the end."
" But in the end you have the end and
all you can remember about the begin-
ning."
" Remember " ! It was a bad word
for Henderson. Something like a shiver
passed over him. " I '11 back imagina-
tion, anticipation, against memory, seven
days in the week, won't you ? "
" Hold in your mule steeds here," said
the woman. " Steady for the corner."
They swung around the corner, and
started on a gentle down grade between
two rows of splendid trees. " Say,"
said Henderson, following her lead like
a happy child, and shunting the conver-
sation off on a side track again, "say,
are n't you cold ? "
" No, indeed. Is n't this air fine ?
That's one good thing we have in Pe-
nangton."
" What other good things do you have
in Penangton ? "
"Oh, mills and coal mines and an
academy. Then there 's the county,"
she gave a wide sweep of her arm
which seemed to skip over the town
and to encircle something outside it,
" wheat ! "
" Many doctors here ? "
She looked back into the car at the
small case which sat beside his large one.
"Oh! I see. Yes, there are a great
many doctors."
" What school ? "
" Two who get their bills paid eventu-
ally, three who never get paid, two who
forget to send out bills, and one rascal."
Henderson propped one foot on the
splashboard of the car. " The last class
seems to invite as being least crowded,"
he commented gravely.
" Well, I don't know ; if it comes to
that, they are all more or less rascals,
at least they don't believe in themselves.
That 's a pretty bad sort of rascality, you
know. Are you coming here to live ? "
she asked suddenly, turning her face to-
ward him.
"Like as not."
" Well, if you do, there 's one thing
in Penangton you want to look out for.
There 's one thing that is n't a good
thing. It 's Penrynism."
" What 's Penrynism ? "
" It 's the money disease. Some doc-
tors get it. The rascal here has it."
Henderson dropped his head, and
whacked at his shoes with the butt of his
quirt. " I expect I '11 get it, then. I
feel particularly susceptible to infection
of that kind just at this writing." Im-
mediately he was as sombre as he had
been out there on the plank walk ; his
merriment had been a thin cloak, after
all, and it had worn through.
" Slow up now," said the woman next.
" I 'm almost home. Just around this
last corner."
He drew his breath in sharply, and
made the mules take the corner very
slowly. He made them go slower yet
when he found that he was on a street
7t;
The Difficult Minute.
where the trees were so big and so close
together, and the street lamps were so lit-
tle and so far apart, that it was as black
as Egypt, and as mysteriously pleasant.
" Stop. I 'm home."
" Now you see," said Henderson rue-
fully, " why I hate the end of things."
He stepped down to help her from the
car.
" Remember the beginning. Oh, you
are going to have to learn to stand re-
membering," she insisted, laughing light-
ly. " Here, this is my gate."
He ran ahead and opened it for her,
and as she passed through he lifted his
hat high and made her a sweeping bow.
" I 'd rather hope it is n't the end," he
said.
She only laughed again, and stood
looking at him for a short moment. " I
think it is. But it was a nice ride. I
shan't forget it. Good-night." She
called back another cheerful good-night,
as she went up the walk to the house.
Henderson, at the gate, watched her,
with a lonely look on bis face. Ahead
of her he traced out a big frowning house
front, across the lower part of which ran
a light veranda, like a misplaced smile.
When the door had opened to her, she
paused for a moment in the light from
the hall, with her face turned his way ;
then the door shut quietly. Henderson
rubbed his hand softly over the brass
head of the low gatepost, until presently
his eyes traveled to it. " P-e-n-r-y-n,"
he spelled unseeingly. When he did be-
gin to see it, he said flat-footedly, " Well,
I 'm damned ! " and turned back to his
mules.
They were gone. As far down the
street as he could see there was no sign
of them. "Now, how the mischief am
I to find a hotel ? " mused Henderson,
without concern. "Follow the track.
Light her up, Fate, my lady ; I follow,"
and with that he looked at the Penryn
house purposefully.
He was sure the car track would pass
a hotel somewhere, and he had turned
but another corner when he came upon
one, with the car and the sad mules stand-
ing before it. A crowd of mild-looking
men were around the car.
" But how you going to account for
the satchels? " one man was asking, with
the hope of excitement vibrating blithely
in his voice.
Henderson got into the crowd at this
juncture. " I '11 account for the satchels,"
he volunteered. " You '11 find my name
on them, Henderson. I left them in
the car while I went into the saloon for
the driver. The mules ambled off while
I was out of the car." It was a long hia-
tus, but Henderson saw that there was
no need of bridging it over ; that the men
around him were used to the driver, the
saloon, and the mules.
Once in the hotel, he went directly to
his room, took off his top-coat, and sat
down in front of a comfortably glow-
ing grate. " Very beautiful," he said,
straight at the red coals. For a few
minutes longer a half-blunted interest re-
mained in his face ; then his hands spread
out weakly on the arms of the chair, and
he dropped his chin as though he were
going down in his clothes with the shame-
faced resolution never to come up again.
Slowly and reluctantly his mind went
back over his most recent past, the Illi-
nois days.
First of all came the medical college
in Chicago ; and clearest of all was the
vision of Alden, the dean, on the rostrum
before the class, his burning eyes throw-
ing off some kind of white illumination,
his thin hands knotted with enthusiasm,
conviction radiating from every inch of
his long, swaying body. And loudest of
all rang the recollection of Alden's voice,
high and quivering in its advocacy of the
Hahnemannian creed, the beauty of the
" law," the totality of the symptoms, the
central modality ; or fiercely earnest in
its denunciation of routinism, specifics,
prescribing in the lump. Ah, Alden had
believed. That had been the intrinsic
beauty of sitting under him. Hender-
The Difficult Minute.
77
son's perception had always been of the
keenest, and Henderson, of all the men
and women who had listened to Alden,
and learned of him, in the first four years
of the college's struggle for existence,
had been the one to carry away with him
the deepest impress of Alden' s spirit.
He, of them all, had gone out from the
college doors with the feeling most strong
upon him that he had had a glorious bath
in some deep, clean current of ethics. He
had never been able to account to him-
self for Alden's influence upon him. Be-
fore he went up to college he had been
commonplace enough, a quick, shrewd
fellow, with a good business head, acute
sympathies, and one strong inclination in
the world, the inclination to study
medicine ; but when he left Alden he was
like a finely charged wire, across which
hummed and sang concepts of his pro-
fession as the " noble profession," the
scientific possibilities of the " noble pro-
fession," life as an opportunity for the
"noble profession," all that went to
make Alden's life like a benediction.
And what happened ? What always
happens to the young physician who has
n't money enough to wait three years for
patients, and abide by the Code while
waiting ? He had first " located " in
Chicago, in a South Side boarding house ;
a little later he had located in a town in
central Illinois ; and after that he had
variously located all over the state, until
he found himself at Dixburn, in southern
Illinois. Henderson's memory could lin-
ger in any one of the half dozen towns
that had preceded Dixburn, and could
find in each some pleasant friendship
begun, some little addendum to the se-
ries of drug provings he had taken up,
something halfway pleasant or halfway
worth while ; but Dixburn had been hell
from start to finish. He had to admit
that his acute sufferings in Dixburn had
had no better or bigger excuse than that
his clothes had begun there to show signs
of irreparable wear, and he had had no
money for new ones. Something psy-
chical worked itself out in him during
the second month that he loafed and
suffered around that sun-baked Illinois
town. It might have been change, or
it might have been development, or it
might have been reversion. " I have got
down to my clothes," was the way he
passed judgment upon himself ; and, as
he had the time, he began to outline, with
some contemptuous amusement, the sort
of man he would have been if it had
happened that he had never been influ-
enced by Alden. When he had put him-
self to himself as " ordinary," he went
under a wet blanket of conviction that
he must get at life on a different plane ;
that he had been keyed up too high hi
the beginning. A little later on in that
last month, there had come a day when
one of his shoes cracked straight across
the top ; and in the black, helpless curs-
ing that Henderson stuffed into the crack
he checked off self-potentialities never
before suspected. As he sat and glared
at the crack, he told himself unqualified-
ly that he was done with trying to meet
the conditions of life in the Alden way ;
that he was ready to do anything now
for money, money ! and that fate would
better not tempt him. His face assumed
too sharp an expression ; it became the
face of a man in danger of overreaching
himself, in his greediness for gain. He
felt sure that, if opportunity had come
his way, he would have done things that
much worse men than he never do. The
whiteness and the fineness of Alden's in-
fluence lifted from him entirely, and cir-
cled off above him with a cool backward
fanning.
Then a medical magazine offered a prize
of one hundred and fifty dollars for the
best essay on The Spirit of Hahnemann's
Teachings, and Henderson, with rebel-
lion and blasphemy and battered-down
belief in his heart, wrote ethically, and
got the one hundred and fifty dollars.
Inevitably, the next thing he did was to
buy some shoes. That the ethical should
have stretched out a hand to him with
78
The Difficult Minute.
a purse in it just at this moment half
frightened him. He walked about Dix-
burn in his new shoes for another month
in crushed incompetency, and when he
crossed over to Penangton he was still
effectually flattened out. The truth was,
he told himself in final review, as he sat
there with his face tucked away from
the comfort in the grate, the truth was
that he had primed himself for wicked-
ness in Dixburn, had hung around and
waited for temptation, and temptation
had not come. Instead of temptation had
come a chance of the right sort. " But
if the wrong sort of chance had come,"
Henderson pointed out to his soul, with
that pitilessly keen insight that was his,
" if the wrong sort had come, and I
had profited by it more than by the one
hundred and fifty, I wonder, O my Soul,
if you would be whining around now like
an abused house cat ? "
He tumbled into bed a few minutes
later, glad to find that he was sleepy.
Before he was done felicitating himself
upon that fact he sat up, staringly awake.
" If I don't win out here," he said, as
though he had dragged up a large conclu-
sion from the edge of the land of dreams,
"if I don't win out here, I '11 never
win out. It 's now or never, and I don't
think I '11 ever forget how she looked
there in that doorway." The dying
gleam in the grate shot up and broke
into small gaseous bubbles as he lay back
on his pillow.
When he had dressed and breakfasted,
the next morning, and had made his way
to the street, he felt immeasurably better.
He sat down in one of the loafing chairs
outside the hotel door, and smoked, with
two clearly defined notions in his head :
one was to finish his cigar, and the oth-
er was to beat back along that car track
to the house whose door had opened and
shut in front of him the night before.
Every time he thought of the woman
who had stood framed in that door, he
found his determination to stay in Pe-
nangton strengthening. He was very
near the end of his cigar, and very near
the beginning of a dream, when a man
stopped in front of him.
" Scrape my shins if 't ain't ! " said
the man, holding out his hand. The
big, assertive voice pushed through Hen-
derson's dream like a steam roller, and
bowled him back, willy - nilly, to the
medical college, Alden, and the Chicago
days.
" Oh, you, Thorley ? How d' you
do?" Henderson's greeting was slow,
but it had the amiability that curls off
the end of a good cigar, and he got up
and shook hands with the man, whom
he could place as one of the fellows of
the '90 class. He had not seen Thor-
ley since the finish in April, two years
and more before, and he hardly recog-
nized him because of the bushy side whis-
kers on his face. Still, when he came to
think of it, it was inevitable that Thor-
ley should have sprung those whiskers.
One never saw a man with his kind of
face who did n't sooner or later come to
side whiskers, and stop there permanent-
ly. All that Henderson immediately re-
called about him was, that he was the one
chap at college who did n't have to get
" used " to the dissecting room. Thor-
ley had n't sickened or blinked from the
first. And that odor of fresh blood, still
warm enough to run, which sorely tried
every freshman's stomach in the operat-
ing rooms, had n't bothered Thorley in
the least. He hadn't even noticed it,
until a boy in front of him reeled, and
had to be swung out by his shoulders and
heels.
" Live here ? " asked Henderson.
" Yes. How are you making it ? "
Thorley laughed a good-natured, rollick-
ing laugh as soon as Henderson opened
his mouth to reply. " Need n't tell me.
About eighteen of the twenty in the '90
class have told me already. I 'm mak-
ing it," he rounded off, with a dogged
down jerk of his head.
" How ? "
" Whiskey cure."
The Difficult Minute.
79
Oh, Lord ! "
"And morphine," went on Thorley,
untouched.
" What 's your your cure ? " Hen-
derson smiled down at Thorley from the
heights of the Code, as he nicked the ash
from his cigar.
" Something new. It 's a serotherapy
wrinkle."
Henderson's smile became a deep-
lunged laugh, and Thorley's round eyes
twinkled. " Hair of the dog for the
bite," Thorley insisted. " Only mine 's
cows. It 's simple." His eyes fairly
danced. " Inoculate a cow with alcohol ;
then draw off the serum from the cow's
blood, and use as an antidote for inebri-
ety. You 'd be surprised at the way it
works, Henderson."
For a moment Henderson made no
reply ; a direct line of comparison had
projected itself from the face of Thorley,
standing there with his fat neck spilling
over his collar, to the face of Alden, all
aglow with splendid dignity. " You 've
got a long way from Alden," he demurred
at last.
" Oh, Alden hell ! " said Thorley, with
a short laugh which stayed good-natured.
" Alden's wife has enough money for him
to live on. Mine has n't. That 's the
difference between me and Alden." He
rocked back on his heels easily. " Going
to be here long ? " he asked.
" Maybe."
" I tell you what you do," suggested
Thorley quickly, and with some empha-
sis. " Come up and see my sanitarium.
And say, one of these days I '11 take you
out to the depot and show you the Thor-
ley-Penryn Serotherapy Stables, where
we draw off anti-alcoholic serum for alco-
holism."
" Quack, quack, quack ! " laughed Hen-
derson ; and Thorley went off with his
own mouth puckered.
After Thorley had left him, Henderson
started up the street toward the Penryn
house. He had no trouble in finding it ;
but when he got within a block of it he
had trouble in accounting for its being
there, in Penangton. It was so much
of a castle that while it .had ten times
more ground than the Chicago castles, it
still did n't have half ground enough.
The effect was not good, "though it
would be if there were two miles of
park," thought Henderson. " Now, how
did she ever make a mistake of that
kind ? Must have been built before she
grew up and took hold of things." He
walked on a little farther, and examined
the house more carefully " It was built
before she grew up and took hold of
things," he said finally, his eyes, agile
as squirrels, running up and down the
weather marks of the house. He felt im-
mediately relieved. It somehow seemed
to him very important, just then, that that
woman should not fail him anywhere,
should come quite up to what he expect-
ed of her. Suddenly he decided not to
go any nearer the house. It occurred
to him that if she should see him loiter-
ing about, their " beginning " might be
cheapened. He made a detour around
the house, and came back to the main
street a block above it, and continued his
walk. He took that walk and made
that detour every day for a week ; and
although he never got a glimpse of her,
he refrained from making any inquiries
about her at the hotel, from the same
fear of cheapening their beginning. Dur-
ing that week, however, he learned in-
cidentally that the various signs which
had glared him out of countenance, the
night of his arrival, did not begin to
cover all of the Penryn consequence to
Penangton. Every enterprise in the
town or around it was a Penryn enter-
prise, and the town itself was thickly
coated with an adulation of Penryn
which was yet not thick enough to hide
its deep dislike for him.
It was on Tuesday of Henderson's
second week of the old business of wait-
ing for business that Thorley came into
the hotel and asked for him. Thorley
had that concentrated look that most
The Difficult Minute.
people wear when they are acting under
a rigid determination to bring up some-
thing casually before they have done with
you.
" Suppose you come up and take a look
at my sanitarium to-day," said he, early
in the conversation. " Suppose you come
along now. Would n't you care to ? I'd
like to show you over."
They went down the street together,
and Henderson knew that Thorley was
telling some hard-luck story of his own
about early struggles ; but as that same
kind of story was already marked across
Henderson's memory with a great puck-
ered cicatrix that pinched every nerve in
him, he made a point of not listening,
until Thorley said, " There she is," and
turned his fat hand on his wrist by way
of indicating the sanitarium. It was a
two-story main building of brick, with
frame annexes that cluttered it up like
an oversupply of white wings. The
main building was well out toward the
street, and had on its front windows,
" Serotherapy Cure for Alcoholism. If
I Don't Cure You, You Don't Pay Me."
The subtle, half-sweet, half-cutting odor
of some never before smelled drug com-
bination assailed Henderson as soon as
he was inside. He sniffed at it curious-
ly, as Thorley led the way into a front
room, which seemed to be an office be-
cause of the desk and safe in it, and a
laboratory because of the long vial cabi-
net against one wall. The other walls
were hung with what looked like framed
certificates, at first glance, but what
proved, on closer inspection, to be en-
grossed letters, all beginning, " My dear
Dr. Thorley," and all ending, "Very
gratefully yours."
" What 's that I smell, Thorley ? "
asked Henderson, still sniffing.
" That ? Oh, that 's my secret."
" You ought to keep your secret bet-
ter bottled, then," retorted Henderson.
" It smells to heaven."
"Well, now," said Thorley, sitting
down at the desk, " I was just thinking
of unbottling it, in a way. Look here,
Henderson, what's lacking about you
that you useter have ? Tussle been too
devilish hard for you ? Sit down over
there, sit down. You want to try your
hand at something 't ain't so hard ?
Something that '11 pay ? "
" Depends on the something," smiled
Henderson, as he took the chair pointed
out to him.
" Oh no, it don't," Thorley answered
emphatically. " No, it don't. You can
just bet your life on that, as long as
you have n't a wife with the money.
Let 's make a long story short, Hender-
son. What I want to tell you is this :
I 'm making a go of this show. I guess
you ain't been here long enough to know
all it means to be hitched to the name
of Penryn with a hyphen. It 's mean-
ing so much that I can hardly keep
track of it. I gotter have a partner,
a parlor partner, Henderson. Trouble
with me is, I 'm getting a lot of people
in here that I can't han'le. I 'm plain
to say they are up the scale from me
a ways. I haveter keep my mouth shut
just for fear of not saying the right thing.
They come from St. Louis and Kansas
City and round about, and I don't go with
'em. 'Specially I don't go with the wo-
men. When you add morphine jim-jams
to women's natural fits you 've got too
much for me, Henderson. They want
you to be sympathetic, and they 're afraid
you '11 be fresh. They keep me twirling.
The fact is, I gotter have some help."
" Count me out, Thorley."
" Well, now, I don't see why. You
need n't think I ain't straight. It 's
all legitimate. There are hundreds of
places, or similar, in this state and in
every state in the Union." Thorley
glanced up at Henderson, and then con-
tinued, a little sheepishly : " They do
some good. My medicine is a sort of
antidote, don't care what you say."
" I guess your medicine is n't the se-
rum, then. I guess you fall back on the
muriate or the bichloride a little."
The Difficult Minute.
81
"Keep on guessing," laughed Thor-
ley. " Whatever it is, it helps my pa-
tients to stop, if they wanter stop; it
helps 'em get 'emselves back. Say, Hen-
derson, if you want the truth, I got just
one qualm of conscience about this busi-
ness. The patients are siich a damn
bad lot in general, I feel some guilty
about helping 'em to get 'emselves back.
There 's nothing in 'em worth saving.
When you -fish 'em up, and dry 'em out,
and put 'em on their feet, you feel like
you 'd played a joke on 'em."
" Thorley, what the dickens did you
ever pick out a missionary business
for ? " Henderson got up, frowning.
" You don't care a continental about giv-
ing people a chance, yet "
" Blue blazes, man," cried Thorley,
" it 's my own chance I 'm concerned
about, not theirs ! See here, Hender-
son. I suppose if I were a damn fool,
who went about this thing with his face
shining and his lips twitching, like Al-
den, you 'd think the thing was. all right,
and that I was all right. I know the
enthusiasm dodge ; but I got two eyes,
let me tell you, and I 'm none the worse
man for seeing on both sides and straight
to the bottom."
"You are the worse man, though,
Thorley, for never seeing straight to the
top. Wall your eyes up a little once in
a way, and you '11 get still another view."
When Henderson parted from Thor-
ley, that day, he went home directly past
the Penryn house. He felt justified in
it ; and though he did not see Miss Pen-
ryn about the place, a fine and unsullied
glow lasted him all the way to the hotel.
After that he walked directly past the
house every day. It seemed to him that
he would have to find out more about
her soon, whether the " beginning "
were to be cheapened by his inquiries or
not. The amount of pleasure he got
out of just remembering that woman
was a wonder to him, and the hope of
knowing her better some day was a joy
and a support to him. From the sort of
VOL. LXXXVII. NO. 519. 6
ivory frame, rich and creamy, in which
memory had placed her, Miss Penryn
dominated him, waking or sleeping.
During the next week he was at Thor-
ley's a number of times. There was no
other place to go, and Mrs. Thorley 's
room, with its glowing fire and cushioned
chairs, was inviting. It was up there,
one blustering evening, that Thorley said
to him suddenly, " Henderson, I wish
to goodness you 'd quit your hesitating,
and come on in here with us."
" Why, I did n't know that I was
hesitating."
Thorley gave a peculiar grunt, and
then went on, as though some things
were too patent to be talked about:
" You seem to think it 's wrong for me
to do a little good to these howling hye-
nas I cage up here, just because I do
myself a lot more. That's about the
size of your argument. Why, my prin-
ciple is the principle every syndicate and
every trust fattens on. Do somebody
else a little good, and do yourself a lot
more. It 's the Penryn principle, and
look at Penryn."
" And look at this bilious town," re-
plied Henderson. " It 's jaundiced with
Penrynism."
" Oh, come off ! If it was n't for
Penryn, this town would be a sand bar in
the Missouri River. It 's Penryn that
worked the railroad in, and Penryn that
got the elevators away from the river,
where the grain boats could n't come no
more, up to the depot, where trains can
come. It 's Penryn that got the mines
going, and Penryn that 's getting us elec-
tricity for the cars. You need n't tell
me that kind of a man don't deserve
credit. It 's good religion to call him a
cheat and a rascal, and I guess he 's all
of it ; but he does things that other peo-
ple get the benefit of, no matter how you
look at him."
" Has Mr. Penryn any children ? "
Irresistibly quick, the question clipped
through the barrier of the careful days
with bullet-like radicalism.
82
The Difficult Minute.
" Lord, yes. Them three boys at the
Bank 's his."
"Any daughters?" Henderson sat
up straight, to let the questions volley as
they would.
" He 's got a daughter."
" Is she here ? " This close to that
woman again, this close to her name
even, she seemed to step down from her
frame and to come toward him, richly
alive, with all the promising significance
she had had for him that first evening.
There had been nothing in his life more
foolish than that woman's effect upon
him, and nothing more vital. He was
trembling as he waited for Thorley's
answer.
" Is she here now, Zu ? " called Thor-
ley to his wife, who was bending over
some knitting, close to the lamp. " She 's
not here much any more." Thorley
raised his voice and called again : " Zu,
is Mrs. Shore here now ? "
" Purl one, two wait a minute
purl two that 's it. Why, I don't think
so. She stopped on her way up from St.
Louis, a week ago, but she did n't stay
over but one night."
" Where 'd you ever meet her?"
asked Thorley. It was strangely as it
should be that Thorley's emphasis uncon-
sciously put that woman on a pedestal,
high and white.
" Why," said Henderson, like a man
in a fog, "somewhere a long way
from here if she is the woman I think
she is. What does she look like ? "
" Queen. And she rules, let me tell
you. She 's the one person living who 's
been too much for Lowry Penryn. They
say this town owes a good deal to her."
Thorley chuckled as he continued :
" They say she 's headed Lowry off a time
or two." He put his clumsy thumbs to-
gether and leaned toward Henderson a
little. " Say, Henderson, I don't mind
telling you that Penryn 's agreed to back
me a long way further on the serum.
We are going to buy Al Hickam's farm,
down Weaver Road, for the cows, and we
are going to work the cure for all there
is in it. And there 's plenty in it."
" So." The word clumped at Hender-
son's ears heavily, without interrogation
and full of finish. " That 's good." He
recognized that what Thorley had just
been telling him had set him fairly back
in the old-clothes Dixburn period, with-
out any of the bitter vigor and combative-
ness of that period. In two seconds he
had become as pallid and anamic, as un-
able to fight for his ideal, and as little de-
sirous of fighting, as though Alden had
never existed, as though that woman in
the frame had never existed. She had
n't ever existed. That was the worst of
it. He knew what Thorley was going to
say next, and as he picked up his hat and
coat his answer stood out in his mind
with great clearness. It was about the
only clear thing in his mind. He was
going to accept Thorley's offer. That
was all there was to it. Nothing could
be simpler. His upper lip strained back
from the. simplicity of it, and his nostrils
widened fastidiously to let the simplicity
of it down his dry throat. The next
thing was Thorley's voice :
" Tell you what I '11 do, Henderson :
I '11 guarantee you three thousand for
the first year. After that there will be
five, and after that ten, if there 's a cent.
And there 's always a cent in a Penryn
deal. Will you take it ? "
"No," said Henderson. That was
simple, too ; but his mind, crouched low
to receive the expected blow, lumbered
through a good half minute as though
the blow had really fallen. Then he
put on his hat and went down the steps,
all his nerves alive again, and flashing
jubilant notice to his brain that he had
n't been able to get down to that lower
plane even when he had wanted to ; that
he had underrated the protective value
of his ideals, had underrated himself
there in Dixburn. He might have trust-
ed himself then, as he could trust him-
self now, to hold out for the right sort
of finish, as right went with him. He
A Glimpse of Pittsburg.
83
was bound to do it. He could n't do
anything else. " That 's the good thing
about it," he told himself. " Could n't
strike that gait even when I wanted to.
Lord, Alden, it was a precious leaven
you gave me." He deliberately stopped
on the street and hugged himself. " It 's
bound to keep you quick, you old lump,"
he said. Then, as he was opposite the
Penryn house, he looked over that way.
" And I guess I can learn to stand re-
membering," he decided fearlessly.
" I 'm afraid you 've lost him," lament-
ed Mrs. Thorley, when Thorley came
back from the sanitarium door, after let-
ting Henderson out.
" Yes, he 's got that damn Alden look
back on his face. I 've lost him."
E. E. Young.
A GLIMPSE OF PITTSBURG.
HERBERT SPENCER, after visiting a
large rail mill of the Pittsburg district,
once remarked that what he had seen
there had enlarged his previous ideas of
the capability of the human mind. A
well-known painter of the impressionist
school came to Pittsburg a year ago, as
a member of the international jury of
the annual art exhibition, and during
his stay painted a picture representing a
squalid cul-de-sac, where sky, bluff, goat,
chicken, house, and woman, all seemed
painted with soot. The majority of
those who know the Smoky City imper-
fectly, or only by reputation, fancy it
throughout like this picture. Very few
study it with the eyes of the philoso-
pher, who, penetrating the non-essential
though at times displeasing veil, at once
understood its real meaning and mission,
namely, the conquest of nature by intel-
ligent energy directing suitable machin-
ery, whose life comes from that smoke
and dirt producer, bituminous coal.
The origin of Pittsburg dates back mil-
lions of years ago to the Carboniferous
Period. Then immense forests of trees
and dense vegetation grew in swamps
upon a warm earth and beneath a trop-
ical sun ; while the atmosphere was laden
with carbonic acid, from which the plants
extracted the precious carbon, leaving
oxygen in the air for the future use of
man.
Before the Glacial Period the Monon-
gahela River was much larger than it
is now. It then covered most of the
triangular site of the present city of
Pittsburg, which owes to it the deep
strata of sand, loam, and gravel that
have contributed largely to the health,
industries, and buildings of the inhabit-
ants. The Ohio River was then a part
of the Monongahela, but subsequent gla-
cial deposits not only filled the ancient
channel, but completely turned the
course of the river, which accounts for
the sudden southward bend of the Ohio
at Rochester.
During the later geological periods,
the undisturbed strata of coal and clay
schist were deeply cut and eroded, leav-
ing coal beds, the height of a man, ex-
posed along the canon-like valleys and
above the streams which now transport,
at very small expense, the cheaply mined
fuel to adjacent and distant markets.
As a final result of the decomposition
and compression of the vegetation of the
Carboniferous Period, western Pennsyl-
vania possesses to-day deposits of coal
which a German geologist has declared
to be tlfe finest in the world, considering
their extent, thickness, quality, and avail
ability.
Thousands of years of erosion, and the
wild growth of vegetation, finally left
the region picturesque and beautiful, as
84
A Glimpse of Pittsburg.
Washington probably saw it from the top
of the high bluffs which still bear his
name. Several hundred feet beneath
him, the Allegheny and Monongahela
rivers flowed in majestic curves to min-
gle their waters in the broad Ohio. At
their angular intersection, now appropri-
ately named the Point, was the site of
Fort Duquesne, and of its successor, Fort
Pitt, commanding the navigation of
the three rivers, of which Colonel Bou-
quet's redoubt alone remains, sole witness
of the incredibly rapid transformation of
a savage wilderness into the iron, steel,
and glass centre of the world.
When James Parton, the historian,
looked down at night, from the encircling
hills, upon the weird fountains of flame
and smoke, he could think only of " hell
with the lid off." A stranger, looking
to-day from the top of Mount Washing-
ton down upon the narrow strips of land
left between high bluffs by the eroding
rivers, must notice the tremendous activ-
ity, and he cannot fail to recognize the
prime mover in this intense industrial
drama. The housetops and hillsides
wear its colors ; and numberless columns,
like gigantic organ pipes, breathe forth
graceful plumes of black and white. The
city and its environs bear testimony to
the sovereignty of Coal. Foreign engi-
neers say this region is the world's in-
dustrial school, because here they find
men manufacturing iron, steel, and glass
cheaply enough to sell throughout the
world, in spite of the fact that the high-
est wages are paid to all, and that many
of the workers earn more than most pro-
fessional men.
A little over a century ago, Pittsburg
was noted chiefly for its Monongahela
whiskey and its independent, belligerent
Scotch-Irish settlers, who cared very little
for the dark bands of coal everywhere vis-
ible along the hillsides. The growth of
Pittsburg, however, in wealth, population,
and production has been directly in pro-
portion to the amount of coal it has mined
and consumed. Yet its coal still unused
represents a future market value greater
than that of the world's present total
stock of gold, aside from the vast trea-
sures of petroleum and natural gas in
this district. It is therefore not surpris-
ing that all the great manufacturing cor-
porations are buying up available coal
lands, to cover their future requirements.
Early in this century, the steamboat
and steam engine were introduced here,
to utilize these precious deposits ; and
Pittsburg began to manufacture a large
variety of articles of iron, copper, glass,
and other materials, for distribution by
river over the West and South. The sub-
sequent extension of railroads greatly in-
creased its manufactures, but temporarily
diminished its relative importance as the
navigable key to the West and South.
During the Civil War, however, its pro-
duction and wealth were enormously in-
creased. Its gunboats and ordnance and
its efficient men were of the greatest ser-
vice in that struggle. If members of
Congress are wise, they will do all in
their power to encourage the attempt
now being made to connect this most
important manufacturing centre with the
Great Lakes by a ship canal, which re-
cent surveys have shown to be entirely
practicable at a reasonable expense. Its
annual tonnage would probably exceed
that of the Suez Canal ; and it would
enable the Northwest to receive cheap
fuel, iron, and steel, in return for its
cheaply transported ores. The probable
profits for this year of one Pittsburg
corporation which uses the largest quan-
tity of Lake iron ores would suffice to
build the entire ship canal as recom-
mended by the Commission ; and the
saving on the present coal freights by
rail to the Lakes would alone warrant
its construction, to say nothing of the
vast tonnage of heavy and bulky manu-
factured products now shipped to the
Northwest from this region.
The industrial history of Pittsburg is
largely the history of the steam engine
and of modern applied science. We are
A Glimpse of Pittsburg.
85
astonished at the low wages in China,
where a man will work for ten cents per
day ; yet in Pittsburg machines are do-
ing, at a cost of less than half a cent per
day, more and better work than any un-
aided artisan could do. At almost every
step, in many works, one can see a youth
or man operating, with little effort, a ma-
chine accomplishing results which three
thousand skilled handworkers could not
duplicate in the same time. And yet
three men can mine all the coal neces-
sary to supply the energy for such a ma-
chine ; while the total coal product of the
region could supply steam engines of
greater horse power than could be ob-
tained from the entire falls of Niagara.
So concentrated and intense is the ac-
tivity of machinery and men in the Pitts-
burg district that their efficient work is
more than could be done, without ma-
chinery, by the entire working popula-
tion of the United States ; while their
annual product is about equal in value to
the yearly gold production of the whole
world.
Pittsburgh machinery is the result of
the world's best mechanical thought and
of the expenditure of possibly half a bil-
lion of dollars, most of which will be de-
stroyed or displaced in less than a gen-
eration; for the struggle for existence
among men is nothing compared with
that among machines, in this region.
Pittsburg has always been noted for
its population of intensely active and ef-
ficient workers. It has never had a lei-
sure class. The first question asked about
a new acquaintance is, " What does he
do ? " If there be a latter-day idler in
Pittsburg, he is compelled to have a
nominal occupation, to receive any con-
sideration from others. He is led to
make periodic trips to Philadelphia, New
York, or Europe, in order to preserve his
self-respect and to find congenial friends ;
for here his acquaintances are likely to
regard him as a "degenerate." Pitts-
burg's aristocracy, if it recognizes any,
is founded on continuous productive la-
bor. Its chief worker is the large manu-
facturer, who has grown with his mills,
and has become so saturated with his
business that it engrosses his waking
hours and colors his dreams ; follows him
to his home, to his amusements, and does
not always leave him at church.
Such a man, having succeeded with-
out much schooling, is apt to agree with
the view of life indicated by a fellow
townsman's remark apropos of an ac-
quaintance of scholarly attainments :
" What a hell of a lot of useless informa-
tion that man possesses ! " Yet, in all
that pertains, directly or indirectly, to his
business interests, the Pittsburg manufac-
turer is thoroughly informed, and eager
to adopt improvements from any source ;
but he must first be convinced that they
are genuine improvements, and that he
can afford to make them. He is ex-
tremely practical and matter of fact;
keen of observation ; logical and accurate
in his judgment of men and things, in
so far as they affect his business inter-
ests. Like the original Scotch-Irish set-
tlers, he is energetic, independent in
thought and action ; generous where his
sympathies are aroused ; peaceful if let
alone, but a fearless fighter if threatened
or attacked. He is a manly man, a
judge and leader of active men. Per-
sonally economical, his home and family
are his sole objets de luxe, aside from
his works, which often absorb all of, or
more than, his capital. He makes a fine
executive committee of one, but is not
always a tractable colleague or subordi-
nate. Whatever his religion may be, the
first article of his daily creed is to ful-
fill his contracts at any cost, be they large
or small, verbal or written. Easily ap-
proached, careless as to dress during
business hours, unpretentious socially,
clear an(J laconic in his statements, he
inspires confidence and respect in any
one who confers with him on business
matters. He is the effective type of
the modern industrial general, possess-
ing all the personal qualities of an army
86
A Glimpse of Pittsburg.
commander, plus that power to manage
human pride and prejudice which may
be called business tact. He is a modern
Stoic determined to succeed in business ;
his usual lack of ready money, due to
constant betterments of his works, re-
minding one of the industrious American
boy who boasted to a playmate that his
father intended to buy him a fine new
axe with the money he earned by chop-
ping with the old one.
The successful manufacturer must be
something of a prophet, to foresee com-
ing changes in the supply and demand
of his products in different parts of the
world. He must prepare for labor trou-
bles, often caused by distant events over
which he has no control ; must see that
his personnel and plant keep pace with
those of his competitors, or he will be
impoverished and ruined. He is con-
stantly menaced by fire, explosions, busi-
ness failures and changes, serious acci-
dents to men and machines : all of which
may come suddenly, without warning,
and must be met at once with appropri-
ate remedies. The world at large does
not, in fact, appreciate the great execu-
tive power, special knowledge, inventive
ability, courage, fidelity, perseverance,
continuous thought, and patience required
of an active and successful ironmaster.
Perhaps his daily experience might be
likened to Wagner's Ride of the Val-
kyrs, in its intensity of action, its appar-
ent noise and confusion, its terrific rush-
ing to and fro of struggling energies ;
while above all the strife and din there
presides a rhythmic control, a domi-
nating force or fate, ceaselessly directing
to some specific end this seeming mixture
of chaos and battle of the giants.
Scarcely less remarkable is the daily
experience of the glass manufacturers.
Although still somewhat behind the iron-
masters in the use of machinery, yet
so great has been their progress in this
direction that one company has fifteen
thousand different objects for use or or-
nament, which it sells at a profit not only
throughout the continents of America
and Europe, but even to the distant em-
pires of China and Japan ; another com-
pany sends its products around the world
to help our petroleum light the hum-
blest dwellings ; while a third has, in
a few years, beautified and illumined
numberless habitations with plate glass,
so long a luxury for the rich alone.
Meanwhile, the manufacturers of ordi-
nary window glass, by using continuous
melting furnaces, have so cheapened their
product that it is now within the reach
of all.
As abundant coal caused the erection
of the first glass works here over a cen-
tury ago, so the use of natural gas,
formed ages before the coal, has of re-
cent years confirmed the Iron City's su-
premacy in glass manufacture, which had
been gained by means of its coal and
ingenious machinery. Considering the
enormous increase in the uses of glass,
and the possibilities of the toughened va-
rieties in road and building construction,
may we not reasonably expect that, with
the help of Pittsburg, some future cen-
tury will be known as the Glass Age ?
But before that epoch the Iron City will
probably hasten the advent of an Elec-
trical Age, although glass is the old-
est, and electrical machinery one of the
youngest, of its important industries.
The recent giant strides of applied elec-
tricity almost baffle description and com-
prehension, so diverse and intricate are
the ramifications of these " etheric " ap-
plications.
When one considers the great Pitts-
burg dynamos which lighted the World's
Fair, and the five thousand horse-power
generators which utilize a fraction of
Niagara Falls ; when he calls to mind the
motors which animate, and the currents
which heat and light, the ubiquitous trol-
ley cars, Holmes's broomstick trains,
whose " witches " are banishing horses
and even locomotives from city and sub-
urban service in all parts of the world ;
when he thinks of the sensitiveness of
A Glimpse of Pittsburg.
87
the telephone, of the multiplex telegraph,
and of the multitude of electrical instru-
ments, in connection with the dazzling
light, the irresistible heat and power of
electrical currents, he is forced to the
conclusion that electricity is the form in
which our successors will utilize most of
the sources of power which nature has
placed at their disposal.
Pittsburg has, of course, the failings of
its virtues, of which individualism is per-
haps chief. Individualism characterized
the original settlers, and, later, shaped
the industrial and social development of
the region ; which correspondingly suf-
fered in much that depends upon public
and private cooperation. The resulting
exclusive and exhaustive attention to
business has caused what might be called
civic absenteeism, the abandonment
of personal public duties to the politi-
cal " boss " and " ring ; " for bossism in
public life parallels individualism in pri-
vate life. " After me the deluge," is
the motto of both. But fortunately they
have reached their culmination. Even
Pittsburg, although at times enshrouded
in the smoke of its industries, and still
in its pioneer, all-laboring condition, has
already broken with its political Dark
Ages, and entered its Renaissance of bet-
ter municipal government.
The universal use of natural gas, some
years ago, demonstrated to the inhabit-
ants that, with clear skies, a clean city,
and a site of great natural beauty, Pitts-
burg might be made one of the most at-
tractive places of residence in the United
States. Accordingly, with the gradual
disappearance of natural gas, and the re-
turn to coal consumption, there has been
developed a very strong movement to-
ward smoke prevention, which has al-
ready accomplished a great deal, and
bids fair to be ultimately successful. As
a slight indication of the drift of public
opinion may be mentioned the pictorial
advertising signs of a prominent manu-
facturer, which show the sunlight break-
ing through a mass of black clouds, and
illuminating a large edifice marked " A
Clean Spot in Pittsburg ; " while a re-
staurant, once painted white, puts forth
this inviting sign, alas ! now growing
dim, " Cleanliness next to Godliness."
Pittsburg's aesthetic growth is shown
by the establishment of beautiful parks
and conservatories, during the past few
years, and by the quiet enjoyment of the
vast working population who visit them,
principally on Sundays. It is doubtful
if the magnificent Easter displays of
massed flowers in the.Phipps Conserva-
tory are equaled anywhere, at home or
abroad. They might well be called Eas-
ter choruses, divinely chanting " Peace on
earth and good will to men " to the tens
of thousands of toilers of the Iron City,
whose skill, fidelity, courage, and energy
can be appreciated only by those who see
them daily exercised, in spite of troubles,
accidents, sorrows, and discouragements
of every description. From the conser-
vatories it is but a step to the Carnegie
Institute, which contains the Museum,
already noted for its collections, with
the Academy of Science and Art, and
associated societies, to aid its educational
work ; the reference and circulating li-
braries, with their phenomenal growth ;
the art galleries, with their choice collec-
tions, and "their yearly Salon of estab-
lished international character and influ-
ence ; finally, the beautiful Music Hall,
where the working population show their
appreciation of the weekly free organ
concerts by a master of the instrument ;
while every winter cultivated and atten-
tive audiences assemble to listen to their
Symphony Orchestra, which private gen-
erosity and exertion have made among
the best in the country.
Science also has its votaries here, and
a fitting temple under the care of the
Western University. Thanks to the in-
dustry and generosity of its friends, the
old Allegheny Observatory, whose work
and astronomers hold a high rank in the
scientific world, is soon to have a worthy
successor. The new Observatorv will
88 The Brute.
occupy a well-chosen site, surrounded by Would it not be a remarkable example
an atmosphere especially adapted for of cosmic compensation if this new Al-
solar and other work, and possessing a legheny Observatory standing on the
home-made equipment superior in many very coal where ages ago the sun stored
respects to that of any existing observa- his abundant treasures of heat, and found-
tory. There celestial images will be car- ed the future Pittsburg should be the
ried down into the various physical labo- means of revealing to the world the in-
ratories, and be made to reveal to the timate history and probable future of the
astro-physicist the secrets of infinitely dis- sun, whose extinction would sweep all life
tant, and perhaps long-vanished worlds, from the planet ?
William Lucien Scaife.
THE BRUTE.
THROUGH his might men work their wills.
They have boweled out the hills
For food to keep him toiling in the cages they have wrought:
And they fling him, hour by hour,
Limbs of men to give him power ;
Brains of men to give him cunning ; and for dainties to devour,
Children's souls, the little worth ; hearts of women, cheaply bought.
He takes them and he breaks them, but he gives them scanty thought.
For, about the noisy land,
Roaring, quivering 'neath his hand,
His thoughts brood fierce and sullen or laugh in lust of pride
O'er the stubborn things that he
Breaks to dust and brings to be :
Some he mightily establishes, some flings down utterly ;
There is thunder in his stride, nothing ancient can abide,
When he hales the hills together and bridles up the tide.
Quietude and loveliness,
Holy sights that heal and bless,
They are scattered and abolished where his iron hoof is set;
When he splashes through the brae,
Silver streams are choked with clay,
When he snorts, the bright cliffs crumble and the woods go down like hay;
He lairs in pleasant cities, and the haggard people fret
Squalid 'mid their new-got riches, soot-begrimed and desolate.
They who caught and bound him tight
Laughed exultant at his might,
Saying: "Now behold the good time comes, for the weariest and the least!
We will use this lusty knave ;
No more need for men to slave;
The Brute. 89
We may rise and look about us and have knowledge, ere the grave."
But the Brute said in his breast: "Till the mills I grind have ceased,
The riches shall be dust of dust, dry ashes be the feast !
" On the strong and cunning few
Cynic favors I will strew ;
I will stuff their maw with overplus until their spirit dies :
From the patient and the low
I will take the joys they know ;
They shall hunger after vanities and still anhungered go.
Madness shall be on the people, ghastly jealousies arise ;
Brother's blood shall cry on brother up the dead and empty skies.
" I will burn and dig and hack
Till the heavens suffer lack ;
God shall feel a pleasure fail Him, crying to his cherubim,
'Who hath flung yon mudball there
Where my world went green and fair ? '
I shall laugh and hug me, hearing how his sentinels declare :
"Tis the Brute they chained to labor! He has made the bright earth dim.
Store of wares and pelf a plenty, but they got no good of him.' "
So he plotted in his rage;
So he deals it, age by age.
But even as he roared his curse a still small Voice befell ;
Lo, a still and pleasant voice
Bade them none the less rejoice,
For the Brute must bring the good time on ; he has no other choice.
He may struggle, sweat, and yell, but he knows exceeding well
He must work them out salvation ere they send him back to hell.
All the desert that he made
He must treble bless with shade,
In primal wastes set precious seed of rapture and of pain ;
All the strongholds that he built
For the powers of greed and guilt,
He must strew their bastions down the sea and choke their towers with silt ;
He must make the temples clean for the gods to come again,
And lift the lordly cities under skies without a stain.
In a very cunning tether
He must lead the tyrant weather ;
He must loose the curse of Adam from the worn neck of the race;
He must cast out hate and fear,
Dry away each fruitless tear
And make the fruitful tears to gush from the deep heart and clear.
He must give each man his portion, each his pride and worthy place;
He must batter down the arrogant and lift the weary face ;
On each vile mouth set purity, on each low forehead grace.
90
The Tory Lover.
Then, perhaps, at the last day,
They will whistle him away,
Lay a hand upon his muzzle in the face of God, and say :
" Honor, Lord, the Thing we tamed !
Let him not be scourged or blamed.
Even through his wrath and fierceness was thy fierce wroth world reclaimed !
Honor Thou thy servant's servant; let thy justice now be shown."
Then the Lord will heed their saying, and the Brute come to his own,
'Twixt the Lion and the Eagle, by the arm-post of the throne.
William Vaughn Moody.
THE TORY LOVER. 1
LATE the next afternoon Mary Ham-
ilton appeared at the north door of the
house, and went quickly down the steep
garden side toward the water. In the
shallow slip between two large wharves
lay some idle rowboats, which belonged
to workmen who came every morning
from up and down the river. The day's
short hurry was nearly over ; there was
still a noise of heavy adzes hewing at a
solid piece of oak timber, but a group of
men had begun to cluster about a store-
house door to talk over the day's news.
The tide was going out, and a birch
canoe which the young mistress had be-
spoken was already left high on the
shore. She gave no anxious glance for
her boatman, but got into a stranded skiff,
and, reaching with a strong hand, caught
the canoe and dragged it down along
the slippery mud until she had it well
afloat ; then, stepping lightly aboard,
took up her carved paddle, and looked
before her to mark her course across the
swift current. Wind and current and
tide were all going seaward together
with a determined rush.
There was a heavy gundelow floating
down the stream toward the lower ware-
house, to be loaded with potatoes for the
Portsmouth market, and this was com-
ing across the slip. The men on board
gave a warning cry as they caught sight
of a slender figure in the fragile craft ;
but Mary only laughed, and, with suffi-
cient strength to court the emergency,
struck her paddle deep into the water
and shot out into the channel right
across their bow. The current served
well to keep her out of reach ; the men
had been holding back their clumsy
great boat lest it should pass the wharf.
One of them ran forward anxiously
with his long sweep, as if he expected to
see the canoe in distress like a drowning
fly ; but Mary, without looking back, was
pushing on across the river to gain the
eddy on the farther side.
" She might ha' held back a minute ;
she was liable to be catched an' ploughed
right under ! A gal 's just young enough
to do that ; men that 's met danger don't
see no sport in them tricks," grumbled
the boatman.
" Some fools would ha' tried to run
astarn," said old Mr. Philpot, his com-
panion, " an' the suck o' the water would
ha' catched 'em side up ag'in' us ; no, she
knowed what she was about. Kind of
scairt me, though. Look at her set her
paddle, strong as a man ! Lord, she 's a
beauty, an' 's good 's they make 'em ! "
1 Copyright, 1900, by SARAH ORNE JEWETT.
The Tory Lover.
" Folks all thinks, down our way,
she 's took it master hard the way young
Wallin'ford went off, 'thout note or warn-
in'. They 've b'en a-hoverin' round all
ready to fall to love-makin', till this ob-
jection got roused 'bout his favorin' the
Tories. There 'd b'en trouble a'ready
if he 'd stayed to home. I misdoubt
they 'd smoked him out within half a
week's time. Some o' them fellows that
hangs about Dover Landin' and Chris-
tian Shore was bent on it, an' they 'd had
some better men 'long of 'em."
" Then 't would have been as black a
wrong as ever was done on this river ! "
exclaimed the elder man indignantly,
looking back over his shoulder toward
the long house of the Wallingfords, that
stood peaceful in the autumn sunshine
high above the river. " They 've been
good folks in all their ginerations. The
lad was young, an' had n't formed his
mind. As for Madam, why, women
folks is natural Tories ; they hold by the
past, same as men are fain to reach out
and want change. She 's feeble and
fearful since the judge was taken away,
an' can't grope out to nothin' new. I
heared tell that one o' her own brothers
is different from the rest as all holds by
the King, an' has given as much as
any man in Boston to carry on this war.
There ain't no Loyalist inside my skin,
but I despise to see a low lot o' fools
think smart o' theirselves for bein' sassy
to their betters."
The other man looked a little crest-
fallen. " There 's those as has it that
the cap'n o' the Ranger would n't let
nobody look at young miss whilst he
was by," he hastened to say. " Folks
say they 're good as promised an' have
changed rings. I al'ays heared he was
a gre't man for the ladies ; loves 'em
an' leaves 'em. I knowed men that had
sailed with him in times past, an' they
said he kept the highest company in
every port. But if all tales is true "
" Mostly they ain't," retorted old Mr.
Philpot scornfully.
" I don't know nothin' 't all about it ;
that's what folks say," answered his
mate. "He's got the look of a bold
commander, anyway, and a voice an' eye
that would wile a bird from a bush."
But at this moment the gundelow bumped
heavily against the wharf, and there was
no more time for general conversation.
Mary Hamilton paddled steadily up
river in the smooth water of the eddy,
now and then working hard to get
round some rocky point that bit into the
hurrying stream. The wind had driven
the ebbing tide before it, so that the
water had fallen quickly, and sometimes
the still dripping boughs of overhanging
alders and oaks swept the canoe from
end to end, and spattered the kneeling
girl with a cold shower by way of greet-
ing. Sometimes a musquash splashed
into the water or scuttled into his chilly
hole under the bank, clattering an un-
tidy heap of empty mussel shells as he
went. All the shy little beasts, weasels
and minks and squirrels, made haste to
disappear before this harmless voyager,
and came back again as she passed.
The great fishhawks and crows sailed
high overhead, secure but curious, and
harder for civilization to dispossess of
their rights than wild creatures that
lived aground.
The air was dry and sweet, as if snow
were coming, and all the falling leaves
were down. Here and there might
linger a tuft of latest frost flowers in a
sheltered place, and the witch-hazel in
the thickets was still sprinkled with
bright bloom. Mary stopped once under
the shore where a bough of this strange,
spring-in-autumn flower grew over the
water, and broke some twigs to lay gently
before her in the canoe. The old In-
dian, last descendant of the chief Pas-
saconaway, who had made the light
craft and taught her to guide it, had
taught her many other things of his wild
and wise inheritance. This flower of
mystery brought up deep associations
92
The Tory Lover.
with that gentle-hearted old friend, the
child of savagery and a shadowy past
The river broadened now at Madam's
Cove. There was a great roaring in the
main channel beyond, where the river
was vexed by rocky falls ; inside the cove
there was little water left except in the
straight channel that led to the landing
place and quaint heavy-timbered boat-
house. From the shore a grassy avenue
went winding up to the house above.
Against the northwestern sky the old
home of the Wallingfords looked sad and
lonely; its windows were like anxious
eyes that followed the river's course to-
ward a dark sea where its master had
gone adventuring.
Mary stood on land, looking back the
way she had come ; her heart was beat-
ing fast, but it was not from any effort
of fighting against wind or tide. She did
not know why she began to remember
with strange vividness the solemn pageant
of Judge Wallingford's funeral, which
had followed the water highway from
Portsmouth, one summer evening, on the
flood tide. It was only six years before,
when she was already the young and
anxious mistress of her brother's house,
careful and troubled about many things,
like Martha, in spite of her gentler name.
She had looked out of an upper window
to see the black procession of boats with
slow-moving oars come curving and wind-
ing across the bay ; the muffled black of
mourning trailed from the sides ; there
were soldiers of the judge's regiment,
sitting straight in their bright uniforms,
for pallbearers, and they sounded a sol-
emn tap of drum as they came.
They drew nearer : the large coffin
with its tasseled pall, the long train of
boats which followed filled with sorrow-
ing friends, the President and many
of the chief men of the Province, had
all passed slowly by.
The tears rushed to Mary's eyes,
that day, when she saw her brother's
serious young head among the elder
gentlemen, and close beside him was the
fair tear-reddened face and blond un-
covered hair of the fatherless son. Roger
Wallingford was but a boy then ; his
father had been the kind friend and
generous founder of all her brother's
fortunes. She remembered how she had
thanked him from a grateful heart, and
meant to be unsparing in her service
and unfailing in duty toward the good
man's widow and son. They had read
prayers for him in old St. John's at
Portsmouth ; they were but bringing him
to his own plot of ground in Somers-
worth, at eventide, and Mary Hamilton
had prayed for him out of a full heart
as his funeral went by. The color came
in her young cheeks at the remembrance.
What had she dared to do, what respon-
sibility had she not taken upon her now ?
She was but an ignorant girl, and driven
by the whip of Fate. A strange enthu-
siasm, for which she could not in this
dark moment defend herself, had led her
on. It was like the moment of helpless
agony that' comes with a bad dream.
She turned again and faced the house ;
and the house, like a great conscious crea-
ture on the hillside, seemed to wait for
her quietly and with patience. She was
standing on Wallingford's ground, and
bent upon a most difficult errand. There
was neither any 'wish for escape, in her
heart, nor any thought of it, and yet for
one moment she trembled as if the wind
shook her as it shook the naked trees.
Then she went her way, young and
strong-footed, up the long slope. It was
one of the strange symbolic correspond-
ences of life that her path led steadily
up the hill.
The great door of the house opened
wide before her, as if the whole future
must have room to enter ; old Rodney,
the house servant, stood within, as if he
had been watching for succor. In the
spacious hall the portraits looked proud
and serene, as if they were still capable
of all hospitalities save that of speech.
" Will you say that Miss Hamilton
The, Tory Lover.
waits upon Madam Wallingford ? " said
Mary ; and the white-headed old man
bowed with much ceremony, and went
up the broad stairway, still nodding, and
pausing once, with his hand on the high
banister, to look back at so spirited and
beautiful a guest. A faithful heart ached
within him to see her look so young, so
fresh-blooming, so untouched by sorrow,
and to think of his stricken mistress.
Yet she had come into the chilly house
like a brave, warm reassurance, and all
Rodney's resentment was swift to fade.
The quick instincts of his race were con-
fronted by something that had power to
master them ; he comprehended the truth
because it was a simple truth and his
was a simple heart.
He disappeared at the turn of the
staircase into the upper hall, and Mary
took a few impatient steps to and fro.
On the great moose antlers was flung
some of the young master's riding gear ;
there was his rack of whips below, and
a pair of leather gloves with his own
firm grasp still showing in the rounded
fingers. There were his rods and guns ;
even his old dog leash and the silver
whistle. She knew them all as well as
he, with their significance of past activi-
ties and the joys of life and combat.
They made their owner seem so close at
hand, and the pleasures of his youth all
snatched away. Oh, what a sharp long-
ing for the old lively companionship was
in her heart ! It was like knowing that
poor Roger was dead instead of gone
away to sea. He would come no more
in the winter evenings to tell his hunter's
tales of what had happened at the lakes,
or to plan a snowshoe journey up the
country. Mary stamped her foot impa-
tiently ; was she going to fall into help-
less weakness now, when she had most
need to be quiet and to keep her steadi-
ness ? Old Rodney was stepping care-
fully down the stairs again, and she wore
a paler look than when they had parted.
Somehow, she felt like a stranger in the
familiar house.
Once Rodney would have been a mere
reflection of his mistress's ready welcome,
but now he came close to Miss Hamil-
ton's side and spoke in an anxious whis-
per.
" You '11 be monst'ous gentle with her
dis day, young mistis ? " he asked plead-
ingly. " Oh yis, mistis ; her heart 's done
broke ! "
Then he shuffled away to the dining
room to move the tankards on the great
sideboard. One could feel everything,
but an old black man, born in the jungle
and stolen by a slaver's crew, knew when
he had said enough.
XI.
The low afternoon sun slanted its rays
into the stately chamber, and brightened
the dull East Indian red of some old
pictured cottons that made the tasseled
hangings. There were glowing coals in
the deep fireplace, and Madam Walling-
ford sat at the left, in one of those great
easy-chairs that seem to offer refuge to
both illness and sorrow. She had turned
away so that she could not see the river,
and even the wistful sunshine was all
behind her. There was a slender light-
stand with some white knitting work at
her side, but her hands were lying idle
in her lap. She had never been called
beautiful ; she had no great learning,
though on a shelf near by she had ga-
thered a little treasury of good books.
She had manners rather than manner ;
she was plainly enough that unmistak-
able and easily recognized person, a great
lady. They are but few in every gen-
eration, but the simplicity and royalty of
their lovely succession have never disap-
peared from an admiring world.
" Come in, Mary," said Madam Wal-
lingford, with a wan look of gentleness
and patience. " * Here I and Sorrow
sit ! ' "
She motioned toward a chair which
her attendant, an ancient countrywoman,
94
The Tory Lover.
was placing near. Mary crossed the
room quickly, and took her appointed
place ; then she clasped her hands tight
together, and her head drooped. At
that moment patriotism and all its high
resolves may have seemed too high ; she
forgot everything except that she was in
the presence of a lonely woman, sad and
old and bereft. She saw the woeful
change that grief had made in this Tory
mother of a Patriot son. She could but
sit in silence with maidenly self-efface-
ment, and a wistful affectionateness that
was like the timidest caress, this young
creature of high spirit, who had so lately
thrown down her bold challenge of a
man's loyalty. She sat there before the
fire, afraid of nothing but her own in-
sistent tears ; she could not conquer a sud-
den dumbness that had forgotten speech.
She could not bear to look again at the
piteous beloved face of Madam Walling-
ford.
The march of events had withered the
elder woman and trampled her under-
foot, like a flower in the road that every
wheel went over ; she had grown old in
two short days, while the girl who sat
before her had only changed into bright-
er bloom.
" You may leave us now, Susan," said
Madam Wallingford ; and with many an
anxious glance the old serving woman
went away.
Still there fell silence between the two.
The wind was droning its perpetual com-
plaining note in the chimney ; a belated
song sparrow lifted its happy little tune
outside the southern windows, and they
both listened to the very end. Then
their eyes turned to each other's faces ;
the bird had spoken first in the wintry
air. Then Mary Hamilton, with a quick
cry, took a hurried step, and fell upon
her knees at the mother's side, and took
her in her arms, hiding her own face
from sight.
" What can I say ? Oh, what can I
say ? " she cried again. " It will break
my heart if you love me no more ! "
The elder woman shrank for a mo-
ment ; there was a quick flash in her eyes ;
then she drew Mary still nearer and held
her fast. The comfort of a warm young
life so close to her shivering loneliness,
the sense of her own weakness and that
Mary was the stronger, kept her from
breaking now into the stern speech of
which her heart was full. She said no-
thing for a long time, but sat waiting ;
and now and then she laid her hand on
the girl's soft hair, until Mary's fit of
weeping had passed.
"Bring the little footstool here and
sit by me ; we must talk of many things
together," she gave command at last ; and
Mary, doing the errand like a child, lin-
gered by the window, and then returned
with calmness to her old friend's side.
The childish sense of distance between
them had strangely returned, and yet she
was conscious that she must take a new
charge upon herself, and keep nearer
than ever to this sad heart.
" I did not know his plans until that
very night," she said to Madam Walling-
ford, looking bravely and sweetly now
into the mother's face. " I could not
understand at first why there was sucli
excitement in the very air. Then I found
out that the mob was ready to come and
ruin you, and to drag him out to answer
them, as they did the Loyalists in Bos-
ton. And there were many strangers on
our side the river. I heard a horrid
humming in the crowd that gathered
when the captain came ; they kept to-
gether after he was in the house, and I
feared that they were bent upon a worse
errand. I was thankful to know that
Roger was in Portsmouth, so that no-
thing could be done that night. When
he came to me suddenly, a little later,"
the girl's voice began to falter, "I was
angry with him at first ; I thought only
of you. I see now that I was cruel."
" My son has been taught to honor
and to serve his King," said Madam Wal-
lingford coldly.
" He has put his country above his
The Tory Lover.
95
King, now," answered Mary Hamilton,
who had steadied herself and could go
on ; yet something hindered her from say-
ing more, and the wind kept up its steady
plaint in the chimney, but in this diffi-
cult moment the little bird was still.
" To us, our King and country have
been but one. I own that the colonies
have suffered hardship, and not alone
through willfulness ; but to give the reins
of government to unfit men, to put high
matters into the hands of rioters and law-
breakers, can only bring ruin. I could
not find it in my heart to blame him,
even after the hasty Declaration, when he
would not join with English troops to
fight the colonies ; but to join the rebels
to fight England should shame a house
like this. Our government is held a high
profession among the wise of England ;
these foolish people will bring us all upon
the quicksands. If my son had sailed
with officers and gentlemen, such "
" He has sailed with a hero," said
Mary hotly, " and in company with good
men of our own neighborhood, in whom
he can put his trust."
" Let us not quarrel," answered the
lady more gently. She leaned her head
against the chair side, and looked strange-
ly pale and old. " T is true I sent for
you to accuse you, and now you are here
I only long for comfort. I am the mo-
ther of an only son ; I am a widow, lit-
tle you know what that can mean, and
my prop has gone. Yet I would have
sent him proudly to the wars, like a
mother of ancient days, did I but think
the quarrel just. I could but bless him
when he wakened me and knelt beside
my bed, and looked so noble, telling his
eager story. I did not think his own
heart altogether fixed upon this change
till he said his country would have need
of him. ' All your country, boy ! ' I
begged him then, ' not alone this willful
portion of our heritage. Can you forget
that you are English born ? '
" Then he rose up and stood upon his
feet, and I saw that I had looked my
last upon his boyish days. 'No, dear
mother,' he told me, ' I am beginning
to remember it ! ' and he stooped and
kissed me, and stood between the cur-
tains looking down at me, till I myself
could see his face no more, I was so
blind with tears. Then he kissed me
yet again, and went quick away, and I
could hear him sobbing in the hall. I
would not have him break his word
though my own heart should break in-
stead, and I rose then and put on my
double-gown, and I called to Susan, who
wept aloud, I even chid her at last for
that, and her foolish questions ; and all
through the dead of night we gathered
the poor child's hasty plenishings. Now
I can only weep for things forgotten.
'T was still dark when ,he rode away ;
when the tide turned, the river cried all
along its banks, as it did that long night
when his father lay dead in the house. I
prayed ; I even lingered, hoping that he
might be too late, and the ship gone to
sea. When he unpacks the chest, he will
not see the tears that fell there. I can-
not think of our parting, it hurts my heart
so. ... He bade me give his love to
you ; he said that God could not be so
cruel as to forbid his return.
" Mary Hamilton ! " and suddenly, as
she spoke, all the plaintive bewailing of
her voice, all the regretful memories, were
left behind. " Oh, Mary Hamilton, tell
me why you have done this ! All my
children are in their graves save this
one youngest son. Since I was widowed
I have gathered age even beyond my
years, and a heavy burden of care be-
longs to this masterless house. I am a
woman full of fears and weak in body.
My own forefathers and my husband's
house alike have never refused their
loyal service to church and state. Who
can stand in my son's place now ? He
was early and late at his business ; the
poor boy's one ambition was to make
his father less missed by those who look
to us for help. What is a little soldier-
ing, a trading vessel sunk or an English
96
The Tory Lover.
town affrighted, to the service he could
give at home ? Had you only thought
of this, had you only listened to those
who are wiser than we, had you re-
membered that these troubles must be,
in the end, put down, you could not have
been unjust. I never dreamed that the
worst blow that could fall upon me, ex-
cept my dear son had died, could be
struck me by your hand. Had you no
pity, that you urged my boy to go ? Tell
me why you were willing. Tell me, I
command you, why you have done
this I "
Mary was standing, white as a flower
now, before her dear accuser. The
quick scarlet flickered for one moment
in her cheeks ; her frightened .eyes never
for one moment left Madam Walling-
ford's face.
" You must answer me ! " the old
mother cried again, shaken with passion
and despair.
" Because I loved you," said the girl
then, and a flash of light was on her
face that matched the thrill in her
voice. " God forgive me, I had no
other reason," she answered, as if she
were a prisoner at the bar, and her very
life hung upon the words.
Madam Wallingford had spent all the
life that was in her. Sleepless nights
had robbed her of her strength ; she
was withered by her grief into something
like the very looks of death. All the
long nights, all the long hours since she
had lost her son, she had said these
things over to herself, that she might
say them clear to those who ought to lis-
ten. They had now been said, and her
poor brain that had shot its force of
anger and misery to another heart was
cold like the firelock that has sped its
ball. She sank back into the chair, faint
with weakness ; she put out her hands as
if she groped for help. "Oh, Mary,
Mary ! " she entreated now ; and again
Mary, forgetting all, was ready with
fond heart to comfort her.
" It is of no use ! *' exclaimed Madam
Wallingford, rousing herself at last,
and speaking more coldly than before.
" I can only keep to one thought, that
my son has gone. 'T is Love brings all
our pain ; this is what it means to have
a child ; my joy and my sorrow are one,
and the light of my life casts its shadow !
And I have always loved you ; I have
wished many a time, in the old days, that
you were my own little girl. And now
I am told that this adventurer has won
your heart, this man who speaks much
of Glory, lest Glory should forget to
speak of him ; that you have even made
my son a sacrifice to pride and ambi-
tion ! "
Mary's cheeks flamed, her eyes grew
dark and angry ; she tried to speak, but
she looked in her accuser's face, and
first a natural rage, and then a sudden
pity and the old love, held her dumb.
" Forgive me, then," said Madam
Wallingford, looking at her, and into
her heart there crept unwonted shame.
" You do me wrong ; you would wrong
both your son and me ! " and Mary had
sprung away next moment from her
side. " I have told only the truth. I was
harsh to Roger when I had never known
him false, and I almost hated him be-
cause he seemed unsettled in his course.
I even thought that the rising against
the Loyalists had frighted him, and I
hated him when I thought he was seek-
ing shelter. He came that very night
to tell me that he was for the Patriots, and
was doing all a brave man could, and
standing for liberty with the rest of us.
Then I knew better than he how far the
distrust of him had gone, and I took it
upon myself to plead with the captain
of the Ranger. I knew too well that
if, already prejudiced by envious tales,
he turned the commission down, the
mob would quick take the signal. 'T was
for love of my friends I acted ; some-
thing drove me past myself, that night.
If Roger should die, if indeed I have
robbed you of your son, this was the
part I took. I would not have done
The Tory Lover.
97
ua ;
otherwise. He has taken a man's part
for Liberty, and I thank God. Now I
have told you all."
They were facing each other again.
Mary's voice was broken ; she could say
no more. Then, with a quick change of
look and with a splendid gesture, Mad-
am Wallingford rose from her place
like a queen. Her face shone with sud-
den happiness ; she held out her arms,
no queen and no accuser, but only a be-
reft woman, a loving heart that had been
beggared of all comfort. " Come, my
darling," she whispered ; " you must for-
give me everything, and love me the
more for my poor weakness ; you will
help me to have patience all these weary
months."
The sun broke out again from behind
a thick, low-hanging cloud, and flooded
all the dark chamber. Again the Indian
stuffs looked warm and bright ; the fire
sprang on the hearth as if upon an altar :
it was as if Heaven's own light had
smiled into the room. Poor Mary's
young pride was sore hurt and distressed,
but her old friend's wonted look of kind-
ness was strangely coming back ; she
showed all her familiar affectionateness
as if she had passed a great crisis. As
for the lad whom they had wept and
quarreled over, and for whose sake they
had come back again to each other's
hearts, he was far out upon the gray and
tumbling sea ; every hour took him far-
ther and farther from home.
And now Madam Wallingford must
talk of him with Mary, and tell her
everything ; how he had chosen but two
books, his Bible and an old volume
of French essays that Master Sullivan
had given him when he went to college.
" 'T was his copy of Shakespeare's
plays," said she, " that he wanted most ;
but in all our hurry, and with dullest
candlelight, we could find it nowhere,
and yesterday I saw it lying here on my
chest of drawers. 'T is not so many
days since he read me a pretty piece of
VOL. LXXXVII. NO. 519. 7
The Tempest, as we sat together. I can
hear his voice now as he read : 't was
like a lover, the way he said ' my noble
mistress ! ' and I could but smile to
hear him. He saw the great Garrick
in his best plays, when he was in Lon-
don. Roger was ever a pretty reader
when he was a boy. 'T is a gift the
dullest child might learn from Master
Sullivan."
The mother spoke fondly between
smiles and tears ; the old book lay open
on her knee, and something dropped to
the floor, a twig of faded witch-hazel
blossoms that her son had held in his
fingers as he read, and left between the
leaves for a marker ; a twig of witch-
hazel, perhaps from the same bough that
Mary had broken as she came. It were
easy to count it for a message where
some one else might think of but a pret-
ty accident. Mary stooped and picked
the withered twig of blossoms from the
floor, and played with it, smiling as
Madam Wallingford talked on, and they
sat together late into the autumn twi-
light. The poor lady was like one who,
by force of habit, takes up the life of
every day again when death has been
in the house. The familiar presence of
her young neighbor had cured her for
the moment of the pain of loneliness, but
the sharp words she had spoken in her
distress would ache for many a day in
Mary's heart.
Mary did not understand that strange
moment when she had been forgiven.
Yet the hardest soul might have compas-
sion for a poor woman so overwrought
and defeated ; she was still staggering
from a heavy blow.
It was dark when they parted, and
Madam Wallingford showed a strange
solicitude after her earlier reproaches,
and forbade Mary when she would have
crossed the river alone. She took a
new air of rightful command, and Rod-
ney must send two of the men with their
own boat, and put by the canoe until
morning. The stars were bright and
98
The Tory Lover.
quick as diamonds overhead, and it was
light enough on the water, as they crossed.
The candle-light in the upper chamber
on the hill looked dim, as if there were
illness in the house.
Indeed, Madam Wallingford was trem-
bling with cold since her young guest
had gone. Susan wrapped her in an old
cloak of soft fur, as she sat beside the
fire, and turned often to look at her
anxiously, as she piled the fagots and
logs on the hearth until their flame tow-
ered high.
" Dear child, dear child,** the poor
lady said over and over in her heart.
" I think she does not know it yet, but
I believe she loves my son."
That night old Susan hovered about
her mistress, altering the droop of the
bed curtains and untwisting the balls of
their fringe with a businesslike air ; then
she put some heavy knots of wood on
the fire for the night, and built it solidly
together, until the leaping lights and
shadows played fast about the room.
She glanced as often as she dared at the
tired face on the pillow.
" 'T is a wild night, Susan," said
Madam Wallingford. "I thought the
wind was going down with the sun.
How often I have watched for my dear
man such nights as this, when he was
kept late in Portsmouth ! 'T was well we
lived in town those latest winters. You
remember that Rodney always kept the
fire bright in the dining parlor ('t is a
cosy place in winter), and put a tankard
of mulled wine inside the fender ; 't would
bring back the color to his face all chilled
with winter rain, and the light into his
eyes. And Roger would come in with
him, holding his father's hand ; he would
ever run out bareheaded in the wet, while
I called from the door to them to come
in and let the horse go to stable, and they
laughed at me for my fears. Where is
Roger to-night, I wonder, Susan ? They
cannot be in port for a long time yet.
I hate to think of him on the sea ! '
" Maybe 't is morning there, and the
sun out, madam."
" Susan," said Madam Wallingford,
" you used to sing to him when he was
a baby ; sit near the fire awhile, there
is no more for you to do. Sing one of
your old hymns, so that I may go to
sleep; perhaps it will quiet his heart,
too, if we are quiet and try to be at
peace."
The very shadows grew stiller, as if
to listen as the patient old handmaiden
came and sat beside the bed and began
to sing, moving her foot as if she still
held the restless baby who had grown to
be a man. There were quavering notes
in her voice, but when she had sung all
her pious verses of the Cradle Hymn to
their very end Madam Wallingford was
fast asleep.
XII.
The Ranger was under full sail, and
ran like a hound ; she had cleared the
Banks, with all their snow squalls and
thick nights, without let or hindrance.
The captain's boast that he would land
his dispatches and spread the news of
Burgoyne's surrender in France in thirty
days seemed likely to come true. The
men were already beginning to show ef-
fects of constant vigilance and over-
work; but whatever discomforts might
arrive, the splendid seamanship of Paul
Jones could only be admired by such
thoroughgoing sailors as made up the
greater portion of his crew. The young-
er members of the ship's company were
full of gayety if the wind and work eased
ever so little, and at any time, by night
or day, some hearty voice might be heard
practicing the strains of a stirring song
new made by one of the midshipmen :
" That is why we Brave the Blast
To carry the news to Lon-don."
There were plenty of rival factions
and jealousies. The river men were
against all strangers ; and even the river
men had their own divisions, their warm
The Tory Lover.
99
friendships and cold aversions, so that
now and then some smouldering fire
came perilously near an outbreak. The
tremendous pressure of work alow and
aloft, the driving wind, the heavy tum-
bling seas, the constant exposure and
strain in such trying duty and incessant
service of the sails, put upon every man
all that he could well bear, and sent him
to his berth as tired as a dog.
It takes but little while for a good
shipmaster to discover who are the diffi-
cult men in his crew, the sea lawyers and
breeders of dissatisfaction. The captain
of the Ranger was a man of astonish-
ing readiness both to blame and praise ;
nobody could resist his inspiriting enthu-
siasm and dominating presence, but in
absence he was often proved wrong, and
roundly cursed, as captains are, with solid
satisfaction of resentment. Everybody
cheered when he boldly declared against
flogging, and even tossed that horrid sea-
going implement, the cat, lightly over the
ship's side. Even in that surprising mo-
ment, one of the old seamen had growled
that when you saw a man too good, 't was
the time to look out for him.
" I dasen't say but it 's about time to
get a fuss going," said one of these mari-
ners to a friend, later on. " Ginerally
takes about ten days to start a row
atween decks, 'less you 're extra eased
off with good weather."
" This bad weather 's all along o'
Dickson," ventured his comrade ; " if
they 'd known what they was about, he 'd
been the fust man they 'd hasted to set
ashore. I know him ; I 've knowed
him ever since he was a boy. I seen
him get a black stripe o' rage acrost
his face when he see Mr. Wallin'ford
come aboard, that mornin'. Wallin'-
ford's folks cotched him thievin' when
he had his fat chance o' surveyor up
country, after the old judge died. He
cut their growth on his own account and
done a sight o' tricks, and Madam dis-
missed him, and would ha' jailed him
but for pity o' his folks. I always
wished she 'd done it ; 't would ha'
stamped him plain, if he 'd seen the
inside o' old York jail for a couple o'
years. As 't was, he had his own story
to tell, and made out how he was the
injured one ; so there was some o' them
fools that likes to be on the off side that
went an' upheld him. Oh, Dickson 's
smart, and some calls him pious, but I
wish you 'd seen him the day Madam
Wallin'ford sent for him to speak her
mind ! That mornin' we was sailin' out
o' Porchmouth, I see him watch the
young man as if he was layin' for him
like a tiger ! There he is now, comin'
out o' the cabin. I guess the cap'n 's
been rakiri' him fore an' aft. He hates
him ; an' Simpson hates him, too, but
not so bad. Simpson don't jibe with the
cap'n hisself , so he demeans himself to
hark to Dickson more 'n he otherwise
would. Lord, what a cur'ous world this
is!"
" What 's that n'ise risin' out o' the
fo'c's'le now, Cooper ? Le' 's go see ! "
and the two old comrades made haste to
go below.
Paul Jones gave a hearty sigh, as he
sat alone in his cabin, and struck his
fist into the empty air. He also could
hear the sound of a loud quarrel from
the gun deck, and for a moment in-
dulged a fierce hope that somebody
might be well punished, or even killed,
just to lessen the number of citizens in
this wrangling village with which he had
put to sea. They had brought aboard
all the unsettled rivalries and jealousies
of a most independent neighborhood.
He looked about him as he sat ; then
rose and impatiently closed one of his
lockers where there was an untidy fold of
crumpled clothing hanging out. What
miserable surroundings and conditions
for a man of inborn fastidiousness and
refinement of nature !
Yet this new ship, so fast growing to-
ward the disgusting squalor of an old
one ; these men, with their cheap sus-
100
The Tory Lover.
picions and narrow ambitions, were the
strong tools ready to his hand. 'T was
a manly crew as crews go, and like-
minded in respect to their country's
wrongs.
" I feel it in my breast that I shall
some day be master in a great sea
fight ! " said the little captain as he sat
alone, while the Ranger labored against
the waves, and the light of heroic en-
durance came back to his eyes as he saw
again the splendid vision that had ever
led him on.
" Curse that scoundrel Dickson ! "
and his look darkened. " Patience, pa-
tience ! If I were a better sleeper, I
could face everything that can come in
a man's day ; I could face the devil
himself. The wind 's in the right quar-
ter now, and the sea 's going down. I '11
go on deck and give all hands some grog,
I '11 give it them myself ; the poor fel-
lows are cold and wet, and they serve
me like men. We 're getting past the
worst," and again Paul Jones fell to
studying his charts as if they were love
letters writ by his lady's hand.
Cooper and Hanscom had come be-
low to join the rest of their watch, and
still sat side by side, being old shipmates
and friends. There was an easy sort
of comfort in being together. Just now
they spoke again in low voices of young
Mr. Wallingford.
" Young master looks wamble-cropped
to me," said Hanscom. "Don't fancy
privateerin' so well as ridin' a blood horse
on Porchmouth parade, and bein' courted
by the Tory big-bugs. Looks wintry in
the face to me."
" Lord bless us, when he 's old 's we
are, he'll 1'arn that spring al'ays gets
round again long 's a creatur' 's alive,"
answered Cooper, who instinctively gave
a general turn to the discussion. " Ary
thing that 's livin' knows its four sea-
sons, an' I 've long maintained that after
the wust o' winter, spring usu'lly doos
come follerin' right on."
"I don't know but it's so," agreed
his mate politely. Cooper would have
these fanciful notions, while Hanscom
was a plain-spoken man.
" What I 'd like to know," said he,
" yes, what I 'd like to ascertain, is what
young Squire Wallin'f ord ever come for ;
't ain't in his blood to fight on our side,
an' he 's too straight-minded to play the
sneak. Also, he never come from cow-
ardice. No, I can't make it out noway.
Sometimes folks mistakes their duty,
and risks their all. Bain't spyin' round
to do no hurt, is he ? or is he ? "
There was a sharp suggestion in the
way this question was put, and Cooper
turned fiercely upon his companion.
" Hunscom, I be ashamed of you ! "
he said scornfully, and said no more.
There was a dull warmth of color in his
hard, sea-smitten face ; he was an elderly,
quiet man, with a round, pleasant coun-
tenance, unaltered in the worst of wea-
ther, and a look of kindly tolerance.
" There 's b'en some consid'able
changin' o' sides in our neighborhood,
as you know," he said, a few moments
later, in his usual tone. " Young Wal-
lin'ford went to school to Master Sulli-
van, and the old master 1'arnt everybody
he could 1'arn to be honest an' square,
to hold by their word, an' be afeard o'
nothin'."
"Pity 'twas that Dickson couldn't
ha' got a term o' such schoolin'," said
Hanscom, as they beheld that shipmate's
unwelcome face peering down the com-
panion.
" Sometimes I wish I was to home
again," announced Cooper, in an unex-
pected fit of despondency. "I don'
know why ; 't ain't usual with me to
have such feelin's in the outset of a
v'y'ge. I grow sicker every day o' this
flat, strivin' sea. I was raised on a good
hill. I don' know how I ever come to
f oiler the sea, anyway ! "
The forecastle was a forlorn abiding
place at best, and crowded at any hour
The Tory Lover.
101
almost past endurance. The one hint
of homeliness and decency was in the
well-made sea chests, which had not
been out of place against a steadier wall
in the farmhouses whence most of them
had come. They were of plain wood,
with a touch of art in their rude carv-
ing ; many of them were painted dull
green or blue. There were others with
really handsome escutcheons of wrought
iron, and all were graced with fine turk's-
heads to their rope handles, and every
ingenuity of sailors' fancywork.
There was a grumbling company of
able seamen, their owners, who had no
better place to sit than the chest tops,
or to stretch at idle length with these
treasuries to lean against. The cold sea
was nearer to a man than when he was
on deck and could reassure himself of
freedom by a look at the sky. The
hammocks were here and there sagging
with the rounded bulk of a sleeping
owner, and all jerked uneasily as the
vessel pitched and rolled by turns. The
air was close and heavy with dampness
and tobacco smoke.
At this moment the great sea boots
of Simon Staples were seen descending
from the deck above, and stumbling dan-
gerously on the slippery straight ladder.
" Handsomely, handsomely," urged a
spectator, with deep solicitude.
" She 's goin' large now, ain't she ?
How 's she headin' now ? " asked a man
named Grant.
" She 's full an' by, an' headin' east
by south half east, same 's we struck
out past the Isles o' Shoals," was the
mirthful answer. " She can't keep to
nothin', an' the cap'n 's got to make an-
other night on 't. But she 's full an' by,
just now, all you lazy larbowlines," he
repeated cheerfully, at last getting his
head down under decks as his foot found
the last step. " She 's been on a good
leadin' wind this half hour back, an'
he 's got the stu'n'sails set again ; 't is
all luff an' touch her, this v'y'ge."
There was a loud groan from the lis-
teners. The captain insisted upon
spreading every rag the ship could stag-
ger under, and while they admired his
persistent daring, it was sometimes too
much for flesh and blood.
Staples was looking ruefully at his
yarn mittens. They were far beyond
the possibility of repair, and he took off
first one and then the other of these cher-
ished reminders of much logging experi-
ence, and, sitting on his sea chest, began
to ravel what broken gray yarn was left
and to wind it into a ball.
" Goin' to knit you another pair ? "
inquired Hanscom. " That 's clever ;
empl'y your idle moments."
" Mend up his stockin's, you fool ! "
explained Grant, who was evidently
gifted with some sympathetic imagina-
tion.
" I wish they was thumbs up on the
stakes o' my old wood-sled," said Sta-
ples. " There, when I 'in to sea I wish
's how I was lumberin', an' when I 'm
in the woods I 'm plottin' how to git to
sea again ; ain't no suitin' of me neither
way. I al'ays wanted to be aboard a
fast sailer, an' here I be thrashin' along,
an' lamentin' 'cause my mittins is wore
out the fust fortnight."
" My ! I wish old Master Hackett that
built her could see how she runs ! " he
exclaimed next moment, as if a warm
admiration still had power to cheer him.
" I marked her lines for a beauty the
day I see her launched : 't was what
drove me here. There was plenty
a-watchin' her on Langdon's Island that
hoped she 'd stick in the stays, but she
took the water like a young duck."
" He 'd best not carry so much sail
when she 's clawin' to wind'ard close-
hauled," growled James Chase, an old
Nantucket seaman, with a warning shake
of the head. " 'T won't take much to
lay her down, I can tell him ! I never
see a ship drove so, in my time. Lord
help every soul aboard if she wa'n't so
weatherly ! "
Fernald and Sherburne, old Ports^
102
The Tory Lover.
mouth sailors, wagged their sage heads
in solemn agreement ; but William
Young, a Dover man, with a responsible
look, was waiting with some impatience
for Chase to stand out of the poor sup-
ply of light that came down the narrow
hatchway. Young was reading an old
copy of the New Hampshire Gazette
that had already been the solace of every
reading man aboard.
" What in time 's been the matter
amongst ye ?" Staples now inquired, with
interest. " I heard as how there was a
fuss goin' down below ; ain't ary bully-
raggin' as I can see ; dull as meetin' ! "
Han scorn and Cooper looked up eagerly ;
some of the other men only laughed for
answer ; but Chase signified that the
trouble lay with their messmate Star-
buck, who appeared surly, and sat with
his back to the company. He now
turned and displayed a much-disfigured
countenance, but said nothing.
" What 's the cap'n about now ? " Chase
hastened to inquire pointedly.
"He's up there a-cunnin' the ship,"
answered Staples. " He 's workin' the
life out o' Grosvenor at the wheel. I
just come from the maintop ; my arms
aches as if they 'd been broke with a
crowbar. I lost my holt o' the life line
whilst we was settin' the stu'n's'l there
on the maintops'l yard, an' I give me a
dreadful wrench. He had n't ought to
send them green boys to such places,
neither ; pore little Johnny Downes was
makin' out to do his stent like a man,
but the halyards got fouled in the jewel
blocks, an' for all he 's so willin'-hearted
the tears was a-runnin' down his cheeks
when he come back. I was skeert the
wind 'd blow him off like a whirligig off
a stick, an' I spoke sharp to him so 's to
brace him, an' give him a good boxed
ear when I got him in reach. He was
about beat, an' half froze anyway ; his
fingers looked like the p'ints o' parsnips.
When he got back he laid right over
acrost the cap. I left him up there
a-clingin' on."
" He worked as handsome a pair o'
man-rope knots as I ever see, settin'
here this mornin'," said Cooper com-
passionately. " He '11 make a good
smart sailor, but he needs to grow ; he 's
dreadful small to send aloft in a spell o'
weather. The cap'n don't save himself,
this v'y'ge, nor nobody else."
" Come, you 'd as good 's hear what
Starbuck 's b'en saying," said Chase, with
a wink. He had been waiting impa-
tiently for this digression to end.
"That spry -. tempered admiral o'
yourn don't know how to treat a crew ! "
Starbuck burst forth, at this convenient
opportunity. " Some on us gits a whack
ivery time he parades the deck. He 's
re'lly too outdacious for decent folks.
This arternoon I was a-loungin' on the
gratin's an' got sort o' drowsin' off, an'
I niver heared him comin' nor knowed
he was there. Along he come like
some upstropelous poppet an' give me a
cuff side o' my head. I dodged the
next one, an* spoke up smart 'fore I
knowed what I was doin'. 'Damn ye,
le' me be ! ' says I, an' he fetched me an-
other on my nose here; most stunded
me.
" ' I '11 1'arn ye to make yourself sca'ce !
Keep to the port-hand side where ye be-
long ! Remember you 're aboard a inan-
o'-war ! ' says he, hollerin like a crowin'
pullet. ' 'T ain't no fishin' smack ! Go
forrard ! Out o' the way with ye ! ' says
he, same 's I was a stray dog. I run to
the side, my nose was a-bleedin' so, an' I
fumbled after somethin' to serve me for
a hankicher.
" ' Here 's mine,' says he, ' but you 've
got to understand there 's discipline on
this frigate,' says he. Joseph Fernald
knows where I was," continued the suf-
ferer ; " you see me, Joseph, when you
come past. 'T wa'n't larboard nor star-
board ; 't was right 'midships, 'less I may
have rolled one way or t'other. I could
ha' squinched him so all the friends he 'd
ever needed 'd be clargy an' saxon, an'
then to pass me his linning hankicher 's
The Tory Lover.
103
if I was a young lady ! I dove into my
pockets an' come upon this old piece o'
callamink I 'd wropped up some 'baccy
in. I never give a look at him ; I d'
know but he gallded me more when he
was pleasant 'n when he fetched me the
clip. I ketched up a Iingum-vita3 mar-
linspike I see by me an' took arter hinio
I should ha' hit him good, but he niver
turned to look arter me, an' I come to
reason. If I 'd had time, I 'd ha' hit
him, if I 'd made the rest o' this v'y'ge
in irons."
" Lord sakes ! don't you bluster no
more ! " advised old Mr. Cooper sooth
ingly, with a disapproving glance at the
pleased audience. "Shipmasters like
him ain't goin' to ask ye every mornin'
how seafarin' agrees with ye. He ain't
goin' to treat hisself nor none on us like
passengers. He ain't had three hours'
sleep a night sence this v'y'ge begun.
He 's been studyin' his charts this day,
with his head set to 'em on the cabin
table 's if they showed the path to hea-
ven. They was English charts, too, 'long
by Bristol an' up there in the Irish Sea.
I see 'em through the skylight."
" I '11 bate he 's figurin' to lay outside
some o' them very ports an' cut out some
han'some prizes," said Falls, one of the
gunners, looking down out of his ham-
mock. Falls was a young man full of
enthusiasm, who played the fiddle.
" You '11 find 't will be all glory for
him, an' no prizes for you, my young
musicianer ! " answered Starbuck, who
was a discouraged person by nature.
Now that he had a real grievance his
spirits seemed to rise. " Up hammocks
all ! Show a leg ! " he gayly ordered
the gunner.
" Wall, I seldom seen so good a navi-
gator as the cap 'n in my time," insisted
Staples. " He knows every man's duty
well 's his own, an' that he knows to a
maracle."
" I '11 bate any man in this fo'c's'le
that he 's a gre't fighter ; you wait an'
see the little wasp when he 's gittin' into
action ! " exclaimed Chase, who had been
with Paul Jones on the Alfred. " He
knows no fear an' he sticks at nothin' !
You hold on till we 're safe in Channel,
an' sight one o' them fat-bellied old West
Injymen lo'ded deep an' headed up for
London. Then you '11 see Gre't Works
in a way you niver expected."
This local allusion was not lost upon
most members of the larboard watch,
and Starbuck's wrongs, with the increas-
ing size of his once useful nose, were
quite disregarded in the hopeful laughter
which followed.
" Hand me the keerds," said one of
the men lazily. " Falls, there, knows a
couple o' rale queer tricks."
" You keep 'em dowsed ; if he thinks
we ain't sleepin' or eatin', so 's to git our
courage up," said Staples, "he'll have
every soul on us aloft. Le' 's set here
where 't 's warm an' put some kecklin' on
Starbuck ; the cap'n 's 'n all places to
once, with eyes like gimblets, an' the
wind 's a-blowin' up there round the lub-
ber holes like the mouth o' hell ! "
Chase, the Nantucket sailor, looked at
him, with a laugh.
" What a farmer you be ! " he ex-
claimed. " Makes me think of a country-
man, shipmate o' mine on the brig Polly
Dunn. We was whaling in the South
Seas, an' it come on to blow like fury ; we
was rollin' rails under, an' I was well
skeert myself ; feared I could n't keep
my holt; him an' me was on the fore
yard together. He looked dreadful easy
an' pleasant. I thought he 'd be skeert
too, if he knowed enough, an' I kind o'
swore at the fool an' axed him what he
was a-thinkin' of. Why, 't is the 20th
o' May,' says he : * all the caows goes to
pastur' to-day, to home in Eppin' ! ' '
There was a cheerful chuckle from
the audience. Grant alone looked much
perplexed.
" Why, 't is the day, ain't it ? " he pro-
tested. " What be you all a-laughin'
at?"
At this moment there was a strange
104
In the Last Days of the Confederacy.
lull; the wind fell, and the Ranger
stopped rolling, and then staggered as if
she balked at some unexpected danger.
One of the elder seamen gave an odd
warning cry. A monstrous hammer
seemed to strike the side, and a great
wave swept over as if to bury them for-
ever in the sea. The water came pour-
ing down and flooded the forecastle
knee-deep. There was an outcry on
deck, and an instant later three loud
knocks on the scuttle.
" All the larboard watch ahoy ! "
bawled John DougalL " Hear the news,
can't ye ? All hands up ! All hands on
deck ! "
Sarah Orne Jewett.
(To be continued.)
IN THE LAST DAYS OF THE CONFEDERACY.
IN April, 1865, my home was in Cum-
berland County, Virginia, near what, be-
fore the days of railroads, had been the
old stage road between Richmond and
Lynchburg. There were then left in the
whole state but four counties which had
neither been reached by raiders nor occu-
pied by the contending armies : Patrick
and Henry in the southwestern part, and
Buckingham and Cumberland near the
centre south of the James River. At the
approach of the enemy, the planters on
the north side of the river ferried their
valuable horses and other stock across to
the last two counties, whence Sheridan's
troopers derisively nicknamed them
" the horse heaven."
Again and again had we been threat-
ened, and once narrowly saved by a
spring freshet which hindered Sheridan
and Custer from laying their pontoons
across James River, Every one felt
that the " anaconda folds " were tight-
ening, and we looked forward helplessly
to the fast approaching time when we
too, whose county had been a favorite
harbor for refugees, should be left with-
in the enemy's lines, an enemy from
whom we had been persistently taught
that we were to expect no mercy. On
Monday morning, April 3, a neighbor
sent to ask the loan of our buggy, to take
to the railway station her son, a surgeon
on duty at Richmond, who had been at
home on a brief leave of absence. Early
in the afternoon came word that he had
returned, bringing tidings that Rich-
mond had been evacuated the previous
night, and that Lee's army was in full
retreat. The wildest rumors were afloat,
all of them pregnant with disaster, death,
and defeat. That night the advance
guard of the treasure train arrived, on
its way to North Carolina, and from mid-
night until early dawn its wagons thun-
dered across the bridge at the foot of the
hill on which our house was built.
Tuesday, our breakfast table was kept
standing from six o'clock, the hour of the
early breakfast given to the half dozen
officers quartered under our roof the
night before, until one P. M., when it
was cleared for early dinner. During
the day over forty commissioned officers
sat down thereto ; of the soldiers whom
we fed outside no count was taken, and
I arn unable even to guess at their num-
ber. From the officers we learned that
the retreating army trains had been divid-
ed into three branches ; or rather, four.
Jefferson Davis had fled, taking the pub-
lic documents, by railroad to Danville,
and a provision train had been sent, by
the Danville Railroad, also, to meet Lee's
army at Amelia Court House. That
Davis, in his panic, had taken this train
In the Last Days of the Confederacy.
105
on to Danville, leaving the army to al-
most certain starvation, we heard later
on, when the end had come. The quar-
termaster's train had gone in the wake
of the army, through Amelia, by way of
Jetersville; the ordnance and hospital
train was in front of the army ; while
the treasure train, as already stated, had
come our way.
Among our guests was Major Isaac
Carrington, provost marshal of Rich-
mond, with some of his staff, and the
firing of the city was naturally among
the chief topics of conversation. The
version which he gave may be regarded
as official, and I believe has never yet
been in print :
There had been a heated discussion
on the subject in a council held by the
Confederate Cabinet and generals. Gen-
eral Lee had opposed the measure, on
the score of the suffering which it must
necessarily entail on the crowded town.
Davis urged it strongly, and cited the
examples of the Dutch who cut their
dikes, and the Russians who fired Mos-
cow. The cotton and tobacco stored in
the government warehouses an im-
mense amount would go far to defray
the Federal war debt : were they to be
tamely surrendered ? This last argu-
ment carried the vote. The warehouses
were ordered to be burned, and to Ma-
jor Carrington was assigned the duty of
executing the order. The fire brigade
was called out, and every possible pre-
caution taken to confine the fire to these
warehouses. The Home Guard, a mili-
tia composed of old men and boys, with
the aid of a small detachment of regu-
lar soldiers, were, at the same time, de-
tailed to break open the liquor stores in
the city and empty the liquor into the
gutters, in order to mitigate as far as
possible the horrors of the expected sack.
The work was begun according to pro-
gramme ; but its projectors had reck-
oned without their hosts. Out from
every slum and alley poured the scum
of the city, fugitives from justice, de-
serters, etc. The troops were knocked
down over the barrels they were striving
to empty, and a free fight ensued. Men,
women, and children threw themselves
flat on the pavement and lapped the
liquor from the gutters ; or, seizing axes,
broke into any and every store they
chose. The fire caught the inflammable
fluids, and ran in a stream of flame along
the streets. The firemen abandoned their
hose, and joined the mob in the work of
wholesale plunder ; and riot and rob-
bery held high carnival, while the flames
raged without let or hindrance, until the
morning, when the Union army entered
quietly and decorously, and at once set
to work to extinguish the conflagration,
thus presenting the spectacle, unique
in history, of a besieging army occupy-
ing a town, and, instead of harrowing
the residents, at once proceeding to re-
lieve their sufferings from fire and fam-
ine.
Major Turner, commandant of Libby
Prison, was among our visitors, on Tues-
day morning. He had spent the night
and breakfasted at the house of a neigh-
boring planter. My sister's husband,
the adjutant general of the cavalry, at
that time with Hampton in the south,
was by birth a Philadelphian, and his
immediate relatives were all officers in
the Union army. His brother, a cap-
tain on Custer's staff, had some months
previous, to use his own expression, been
" picked up by General Heath, while re-
connoitring," and sent to the Libby.
Hearing of his capture, my sister at
once sent him a box of eatables and
some underclothing. The box reached
Richmond after his exchange, which,
through his brother's influence, had been
promptly effected. In accordance with
his parting instructions, the supplies were
delivered to his messmates. It was to
remind Mrs. McC. (my sister) of this,
and to furnish her with the names of
the Federal officers who had thus inad-
vertently been made to break our bread,
that Major Turner called, thinking that
106
In the Last Days of the Confederacy.
she might find the incident useful when
left within the Union lines.
He seemed to me nervous and anxious,
perhaps because I thought he had good
cause to be so, but the testimony of oth-
ers is that he was remarkably cool and
collected. My father, by virtue of his
more than threescore years, urged him
to lose no time in making his escape, since
from his position he was doubly obnox-
ious to the enemy.
Major Turner insisted, however, with
evident sincerity, that he had no special
reason for apprehension. He had, he
said, merely done his duty in the office,
which he had never sought, to which
the Confederate government had called
him. He had always tried to be kind
to the prisoners under his charge ; for
the meagre rations served to them he
was in no wise to blame, a govern-
ment which could not feed its soldiers
could scarcely be expected to feast its
prisoners. His fellow officers did not
agree with him in his view of the case,
and joined my father in his advice.
When next we heard from him he had
been sent to the Dry Tortugas, and
news of his death soon followed.
Later in the day came General Walk-
er and his quartermaster. His brigade
was without rations ; what supplies had
we on hand ? He was shown papers
certifying that we had already respond-
ed to General Lee's appeal, and put
ourselves on half rations in order to
feed the army at Petersburg. " In that
case," he said, " we have no right to
take more ; but," he pleaded, " my men
are absolutely starving." Such a plea
was not to be resisted, and so our slen-
der stores were again divided, though
we knew that we ourselves must go
hungry in consequence. Next came a
pitiful appeal from a party of officers
trying to rejoin their command. Their
horses had not been fed for thirty-six
hours, and had fallen, exhausted, almost
at our gates. These too were helped
and sent on, the men walking to rest the
horses ; and so the train passed. It re-
minded me of nothing so much as a fu-
neral procession.
Wednesday morning was damp and
cloudy, though no rain fell. Before
daybreak we heard the booming of can-
non far away to the southeast, moving
slowly toward the west, in the arc of an
ellipse, until on Sunday morning, after
a pause of some hours, there came a
final volley, the salute fired for Lee's
surrender. On Wednesday, also, the
stream of stragglers began, hungry-eyed,
ragged, and footsore, begging, one and
all, for the food which we had not to
give them. The flood which had swept
away Lee's dams at Petersburg had
broken our milldam, and the mill wheels
stood idle. We had given away corn
and meal freely, until little was left for
ourselves. We had ordered supplies
from Richmond some three weeks pre-
vious, and could only hope that the flat-
boat which was bringing them had left
the James and entered our little river
before the enemy's cavalry had over-
hauled it, a hope destroyed later on by
the arrival of the free negro who owned
the boat, with the news that Sheridan's
troopers had sunk craft and cargo to the
bottom of the river. " I could er stood
it better," he said, " if dey had er took-
en en took de t'ings fur demselves ; but
ter see all dat good vittles jes' bodily
'stroyed, sah, it hu't my feelin's, sah, it
p'intedly did."
Wednesday afternoon we had a nota-
ble caller, a handsome fellow in a brand-
new Confederate uniform, with a cap-
tain's bars on his collar. He asked for
Mrs. McC. by name, claimed to be well
acquainted with her husband, the major,
and said that he had been a scout at
Stuart's headquarters. He knew the
names of the whole staff, claimed String-
fellow as a brother in craft, and talked
of officers and men as near and dear
friends. I took an instant antipathy to
him, principally, I must confess, because
he called me " missy ; " but my clear-
In the, Last Days of the Confederacy.
107
sighted father distrusted him on better
grounds, and gave me a hint not to be
too communicative. He thirsted for in-
formation, and, won by his praise of her
husband and his evident familiarity
with army matters, my sister was ready
to tell him all she knew. Then it was
that, for the only time in my life, I told
falsehood after falsehood, deliberately
and unblushingly. I contradicted her
statements flatly : it was the ordnance,
and not the treasure train, that had
passed our way ; the treasure had gone
to Danville by rail with Davis. In the
midst of my fabrications my father came
in, and I gave myself up for lost. The
unpardonable sin, in his eyes, was false-
hood, and he had no patience whatever
with prevarication. But I stuck to my
story stubbornly, determined to " die in
the last ditch," even when she appealed
to him to corroborate her account of the
matter. I could scarcely believe my ears
when he threw his weight into my false
balance. " I think S. is right, my daugh-
ter ; you know her memory is unusually
good, and you were out of the room a
great deal yesterday, while she was pre-
sent nearly all the time." Then my sis-
ter backed down, and went off to write
a hasty note to her husband, to be sent
by the stranger, who professed to be on
his way to join Johnston, and I was left
to perjure myself still further in the ser-
vice of the Southern Confederacy. The
major never received his letter, and he
and others afterwards identified our
friend as one of Sheridan's most trusted
scouts.
As I look back to those days, they
appear as a horrible nightmare. We lay
down at night in our clothes, not daring
to go regularly to bed, for fear lest we
might be roused at any hour by the
blaze of our burning mills. I had a
small five - shooter, which I wore con-
stantly, and thus felt that, to some de-
gree, I held my fate in my own hands ;
but it is not an exhilarating conscious-
ness to know that at any moment you
may be called upon to save yourself
from dishonor by taking your own life.
Fortunately for us, the armies were kept
well together, and the stragglers were
too cowed and exhausted to be danger-
ous ; but, for all that, my feminine fancy
for gilt braid and brass buttons died a
violent death, and I never see a military
uniform without recalling the sickening
dread of that time.
Ours was apprehension, not actual
suffering, and others fared far worse. It
was almost by accident that I was at
home during that terrible first week in
April, instead of being, as I had planned,
on a visit to an intimate friend, whose
home lay directly in the line of retreat
and pursuit. The last battle of the war,
that of Sailor's Creek, was fought two
miles away, on a corner of her father's
plantation, and for four days the house
was filled with Federal soldiers, coming
and going. At one time kerosene oil
was poured on the floors preparatory to
burning the house, on the ground that it
afforded shelter for Confederate sharp-
shooters, an intention which, however,
fortunately for the family, was not car-
ried out.
When it first became certain that the
armies were coming, the owner of the
plantation made ready for them by emp-
tying the valuable contents of his liquor
closet into the river, -^ a measure which
did little good, since his more avaricious
neighbors hid their liquor, instead of
destroying it, and the soldiers had no
difficulty in finding plenty in the vicin-
ity. Such provisions and valuables as
could be hastily concealed were hidden
with the aid of a faithful slave, and the
women and children of the family, four
generations, grandmother, mother,
daughter, and grandchildren, with their
governess and her sister, were assem-
bled in one room, which as far as possible
was prepared for a siege. Their num-
bers were more than quadrupled when,
early in the first day, between forty and
fifty refugees, women and children from
108
In the Last Days of the Confederacy.
the wagon train, which had been raided
at Sailor's Creek, rushed in, tired and di-
sheveled and draggled, begging for shel-
ter, which was freely given ; no one in
need was ever turned away from that
hospitable door. The refugees were
packed into the chamber with the fam-
ily, and, as it proved, the crowd was in
itself a means of safety. As one of the
young ladies said afterwards : " Nobody
could get into the door ; we were packed
like herrings. Now and then drunken
soldiers would stagger to door or window
and peep in, but there were so many of
us that they made no attempt to enter.
Mother had thought we could make out
with three beds, by close squeezing ; but
after the refugees came they seemed like
nothing. We put two of the mattresses on
the floor, and then took turns in lying
down, six and eight of us on a bed at
once." The food stored in a closet for
the family was merely a bite among so
many ; and after it gave out they lived
on Irish potatoes, handed in through the
windows by the faithful slaves, and roast-
ed in the ashes of the fire, kept up by
wood supplied in the same way. For
three days they had nothing else to eat.
The family plate was concealed in the
cellar, under a huge pile of potatoes.
The soldiers cleared the premises of
everything else eatable, but left the po-
tatoes untouched, in spite of the fact
that the cellar door stood wide open,
and the headman, who had hidden the
silver, cordially invited them to help
themselves. " I thought ef I did n' pear
to kyar 'bout 'um, dey would n' 'spicion
nothin','' he said afterwards. Our own
silver was tied up in a stout bag, and
dropped at midnight into the well. This
well had been dug in the hill itself by a
former owner of the place, who declared
that at any cost he would have water
close at hand. He dug ninety feet, and
then struck a perennial stream of pure,
cold water, which at its normal height
was about fifteen feet deep. There the
silver lay, like truth, until the next fall,
before we could secure the services of a
well-cleaner willing and able to go to the
bottom in search of it.
The telegraph poles were down, the
mails stopped, and it was not until Mon-
day, April 10, that Confederate cavalry-
men, returning on parole, brought us
tidings of the surrender at Appomat-
tox Court House. First, of course, was
the crushing sense of defeat, the helpless
and hopeless looking forward to confisca-
tion and possible exile ; and, having no
expectation of amnesty, next to that
came astonishment at the liberal terms
which Grant had accorded. The Con-
federates, men as well as officers, owned
their horses ; and only a cavalryman,
whose steed has for years been his com-
rade and best friend, knows what that
sentence, " Let them keep their horses,"
meant to men who had fought to the
bitter end, and had looked for no clem-
ency from their conquerors. There was
much wild talk of joining Johnston in
North Carolina, and retreating thence
to the Trans-Mississippi, among those
who had come away unparoled, at the
first knowledge that the surrender was
inevitable. Others took a more practi-
cal view of the situation. " I tell you,"
said one ingenuous lad, " the Southern
Confederacy has gone up the spout, and
I 'm goin' home to plant corn."
We did not realize fully, however,
that, so far as we Virginians were con-
cerned, the end had come, until the next
day, when General Fitz Lee and his
staff stopped to rest and water their
horses, on their way they scarcely knew
whither. We set before them the best
we had for lunch ; but while the mem-
bers of his staff ate like hungry men,
the general scarcely tasted food, and
sat with his head in his hands, as one
who has suffered a crushing blow. Only
once did he really rouse himself, when
my sister spoke bitterly of the strag-
gling from the ranks of our army ; then
his eyes flashed, and his voice took on
its old tone. "Madam," he said, "the
In the, Last Days of the Confederacy.
109
men were not to blame. They fought
like devils, until they were faint with
hunger, and their officers sent them in
quest of food. Our rations from Ame-
lia Court House to Appomattox were
an ear of corn a day apiece for the
men ; nothing for the horses" None
of the party had been paroled, and most
of the staff were hoping to make their
way by bridle paths to North Carolina
and Johnston. They implored their
leader to go with them. " We have
surely the right to regard ourselves as
escaped prisoners," urged one, a young
lieutenant, whose story, as he told it to
us in his despair, was a pitiful one. He
was from West Virginia, and his family,
one and all, were strong Unionists. He
had been a Lexington cadet, and had
entered the Confederate army under
age and against his father's positive
command ; and now there seemed no
choice for him but that of joining John-
ston, or the role of the prodigal son
with apparently little chance of success.
Some of the officers, with my father's
aid, were tracing the route on a large
map of the state, spread out on the pi-
ano, through Buckingham and Amherst,
and so, by way of the mountains, to the
desired goal, only to prove clearly that
there was barely a chance of escape.
Suddenly the general lifted his bowed
head, and looked my father straight in the
eyes. "What do you think?" he said.
"You know best, general," was the
answer ; "but if an old man may advise
you, I think that your uncle is the best
guide for us all in this strait. Moreover,
it seems to me impossible that Johnston,
hemmed in as he is between Grant and
Sherman, can do otherwise than follow
his example. If he cuts his way out, it
must be at fearful loss of life."
" Yes, I suppose you are right ; only
I felt yesterday that I could not give
up. Come, boys," and bidding us a
hasty good-by, they rode away on the
Farmville road.
As soon as definite intelligence of the
surrender reached us. my father called
his slaves together and formally an-
nounced to them that they were free.
" I have no money," he told them,
" and I cannot promise you wages ;
but while you are free to go, you are
also welcome to remain, and earn a
living for yourselves and your children
by your labor, until you can do better
for yourselves, or I can do better for
you." Like almost all the negroes in
the country, they behaved admirably ;
gave us no trouble, but remained and
did their work as though there had
been no change in our mutual relations.
This pleasant state of affairs was soon
interrupted. There came two men, one
in the uniform of a United States ser-
geant, the other a private, who curtly
asked how our ex-slaves were conducting
themselves. My father answered that
they were behaving much better than we
had any right to expect.
" Do any of them talk of leaving ? "
" Only one : a woman whose husband
is headman on a plantation in another
county, and who naturally wishes to be
with him."
" H'm ! let me see this woman."
My father was about to accompany
them to the cabin, when he was rudely
repulsed.
" We prefer to talk to her alone."
A few moments later he heard screams,
and he followed them to find the men
whipping her brutally. Again and again
he assured them that she had done no-
thing whatever to deserve punishment,
and vainly ordered them to desist. Af-
ter a savage beating they left, and her
stripes were dressed. Her sufferings
were intense, and blacks and whites were
alike indignant at the outrage. The
same men went to various other places in
the neighborhood, with the same results.
No one ventured to oppose them, and
their conduct was, as might have been
expected, followed by more or less of a
stampede among the colored people, who,
suspecting their former owners, flocked
110
In the Last Days of the Confederacy.
to the military stations for protection.
We were never able to find out, still
less to punish, the perpetrators of these
high-handed outrages. The military
authorities at Farmville disclaimed all
knowledge of them, but made no effort
to trace them ; and they disappeared as
they had come, no one knew whither.
To realize how well the negroes be-
haved, it must be remembered that we
were, for the time being, comparatively
in their power. Cumberland lies in
what is known as the Black District,
where they outnumber the whites seven
to one ; or, to give the exact figures by
the census of 1860, there were six thou-
sand five hundred people in the county,
of whom less than nine hundred were
white. In 1865 the fortunes of war had
more than decimated the able-bodied
white men, so that at any time, by a bold
and simultaneous uprising, the blacks,
had they been so disposed, might have
blotted the whites out of existence. It
was to this state of affairs, and the fears
to which it gave birth, that the Ku-
Klux Klan owed its origin. Whatever
may have been the outrages of that so-
ciety later on, and farther south, at first
it represented a means of self-protection
against numbers by working upon the
superstitious fears of the negro.
Sunday, April 16, brought us news of
Lincoln's assassination. To us young-
er folk the murder of the President of
the United States was of little moment as
compared with our own trials, a gate-
post near by may hide a mountain in
the distance, but our father took it
sorely to heart. " It is the worst mis-
fortune that was left to befall us," said
he. " Lincoln was the one man in all
the North who could well afford to be
magnanimous, and I say it, not forget-
ting Grant's leniency at Appomattox
was the one man wholly inclined to be
so. 'Sic semper tyrannis,' forsooth!
What 's Virginia to Booth, or he to Vir-
ginia ? and how should he serve her
by cutting her throat.? " Months after-
wards, when that wise gray head lay at
rest under the sod, we appreciated its
wisdom only too well.
For the near future, so far as we per-
sonally were concerned, the darkest
hour was over. That we were under
military rule seemed a little thing, after
having been without any government at
all, and in terror of our lives. When
my brother-in-law, from whom for six
weeks we had heard nothing, returned
safe and sound, we were thankful indeed.
He had surrendered with Johnston, and
brought with him his share of the mili-
tary stores which Sherman allowed John-
ston to divide among his men, rather than
risk a battle with an army at bay and
strongly intrenched. Those who blamed
Sherman for his liberality in conceding
such terms took no thought of the lives
saved on both sides ; still less of what
those army stores, so little to the United
States government, were to the beggared
people among whom they were distrib-
uted. To us, for example, the train of
mules, the provisions, and the silver
which the major brought home as his
share meant salvation, if not from star-
vation, at least from pinching want.
Sara Matthews Handy.
The Esmeralda Herders.
THE ESMERALDA HERDERS.
Ill
Louis PAPEST laid his thumbed Shake-
speare on the table, after many ineffec-
tual attempts to read it, and said aloud
in a speculative tone of voice, " Per-
haps I 'd better try a game of solitaire."
He spread the cards out before him
with much care ; but the game proceeded
slowly, for the reason that he seemed to
have difficulty in recognizing the value
of a card, staring at a three spot or a
knave of clubs with uncomprehending
eyes, as if he had never seen the like be-
fore. All of which meant, of course,
that the enterprising impresario of the
Esmeralda ranch had something on his
mind.
Something was, indeed, so imperatively
upon his mind that, after fifteen min-
utes of uncomprehending devotion to his
game, he gathered up his cards, and, put-
ting them in their case, began to pace
the floor of his room. He had, no doubt,
plenty of troubles of a personal sort, if
he had had the time to think about them.
But his perplexity on this night was of
another kind. The truth was, he stood
face to face with the most vexatious prob-
lem which had confronted him since he
came down from San Francisco to look
after eight thousand merinos for Leon-
ard and Filbin. One year there had
been an epidemic of acute tonsillitis, but
he had nursed the men through that so
successfully that not one grave on the
wind-ravaged desert told the tale ; an-
other season the sheep had been stricken
with influenza, but that was weathered
with the loss of a few hundred head ;
and once, in the dead of the wet season,
the season of black nights, a series
of disastrous raids had been made by
the Mexicans, in which nearly two thou-
sand of the long-wooled sheep had been
" cut out."
Papin congratulated himself upon hav-
ing met all of these difficulties with
decision and a heart for the struggle.
Neither he nor his men had faltered till
order and normality were restored. But
it was a different matter now. A mal-
ady of more serious character than ton-
sillitis had broken out among the men.
It was homesickness, endemic, conta-
gious, malignant homesickness.
Three of the men were down in bed
from sheer sullenness, and there was
hardly a man about the place who would
vouchsafe an intelligible and frank an-
swer to a question. The home-madness
was on them, and deeper each day grew
their disgust for the desert, where the
senseless sheep browsed and the rabid
sun made its frantic course.
It had come about naturally enough.
The season had been unusually hot and
dusty, and it seemed as if the sun grudged
every hour which the night claimed for
its own. The stars were well upon their
way before the eyes of the herders could
discover them, and the dawn was hustled,
dry and breathless, over the mountains.
They hardly caught a glimpse of her
pale draperies before the day, swagger-
ing and insolent, was there, holding her
place with evil assurance. The quar-
ters looked even more than usually un-
inviting. Lee Hang, the Chinaman, was
an evil fellow, careless and ill-natured,
and things got at their worst under his
management. It seemed as if the men
breathed and ate dust. It was actually
in their food. It was on their beds.
They could not escape it ; the sky ap-
peared to be blurred with it. They be-
gan to see visions in the twilight hour,
visions of trees beside running brooks,
and dewy paths where women walked.
The desert was womanless, and thereby
doubly a desert. All of these things
Papin reviewed in his weary mind. He
wished more than he could say that some
perfectly sane and disinterested person
112
The Esmeralda Herders.
would come along, to whom he might ex-
plain his perplexities. Perhaps he was
a trifle anxious about his own poise. It
had come to him once or twice that if
there should be an hegira of the whole
gang, the dogs would follow merrily,
he, Papin, would have a good and
legitimate excuse for ceasing to be fac-
tor of the dreariest ranch in Southern
California. And this thought, upon re-
flection, did not seem to be just the sort
which Leonard and Filbin would expect
their manager to entertain.
He was granted his wish for a com-
panion much sooner than could possibly
have been expected.
The next afternoon, just as the west
was getting red, along came a white-cov-
ered wagon, driven by a coolie, and con-
taining Mrs. Ambrose Herrick, wife of
the manager for Stebbins of the 'Toinette
ranch, with her baby and two maids.
" I 've been up in the mountains all
summer, Mr. Papin," she explained,
when she had been lifted out of her
roomy vehicle. "Mr. Herrick said it
was n't fit for the sheep down here in
midsummer. But I'm worn out with
sunrise excursions and horseback parties
and hops. I made up my mind that if
the rest of you could stand it down here,
we could. Besides," she added, some-
what anxiously, "it's the middle of
September. Don't you think Mr. Her-
rick will forgive me for surprising him
by my return ? "
" I should think it would be an offense
easy to overlook," answered Papin.
" The first night we put up at Farns-
worth's Inn, but there was no hope for a
roof over our heads to-night unless we
reached the Esmeralda. I hope you are
not going to be inconvenienced. We '11
put up with any sort of accommodation."
" Don't you know you are conferring
a favor, Mrs. Herrick ? Lee Hang will
be tickled to death at sight of your coo-
lie ; and the maids can have more admir-
ers than they ever dreamed of, if they '11
only consent to talk with my lonely fel-
lows. The sight of women will do us
all good."
It was an enthusiastic welcome, as she
had known that it would be. Papin made
her pour the coffee at dinner, while he
gave himself up to the enjoyment of an
evanescent sense of domesticity.
" I wish I could commend your im-
pulsiveness, Mrs. Herrick," he said.
" Herrick will certainly congratulate
himself because of it. But the actual
truth is that you have come back four
weeks too soon. You have n't had a
chance yet to learn what the Californian
desert can do. Pity may sit in the hea-
vens elsewhere, but not here. The
world's hidden batteries may hold swift
currents for others ; for us they have no-
thing, not even the boon of swift de-
struction."
And he told her of the madness that
had come upon the men.
"They are preposterous children,
Mrs. Herrick. If they were down with
the fever, I might see some hope ahead.
But they 're in the dumps, and it 's dan-
gerous."
" I suppose I am to take you seri-
ously ? "
" Quite seriously, madam. I have
told them my best stories, and had the
pain of seeing them fall flat. I have
essayed jokes ; they might as well have
been lamentations. I have played jigs
on my violin, but I might better have
devoted myself to funeral marches."
The Chinese sweets had been served
and eaten, and Mrs. Herrick's host led
the way out to the gallery.
They seated themselves comfortably
in the low chairs, and Mrs. Herrick
clasped her hands and watched the stars
beginning to burn fervidly through the
dust-laden atmosphere.
" Our stars have all turned red," com-
mented Papin ; " and as for our sunsets,
they are bloody."
" I *m afraid it was too soon to bring
the baby back," Mrs. Herrick said anx-
iously.
The Esmeralda Herders.
113
A penetrating and imperative cry
broke the stillness.
" There is the baby now ! " She
arose and ran to her chamber, returning
with the little creature in her arms.
" The maids are at dinner, so I
thought I would bring him out here, Mr.
Papin. I hope you don't mind."
" A man who has seen only saddle-
skinned herders with sun-bleached elf-
locks for four months is not likely to ob-
ject to this," was Papin's ardent reply.
The baby was undressed, and its flesh
showed the tint of a half - opened wild
rose. Its shy azure eyes contemplated
Papin curiously, and it finally reached
out a moist and clinging hand and in-
closed one of the impresario's fingers.
It gave inarticulate, wild-bird cries ; and
when the moon showed a florid face above
the horizon, it stretched out its arms in
longing for this celestial toy.
"The immemorial aspiration of ba-
bies," said Papin, really very much
amused at the offended manner in which
the baby buried its face in its mother's
breast and wailed, when it found that
the glorious object was not handed over
to it.
" Everything seems immemorial," Mrs.
Herrick said, "the desert most of all."
" I know what you mean," responded
Papin. " I have felt it. The herders,
how ancient is their vocation ! The
sheep, they are of eld ! I believe these
are the same flocks that the holy shep-
herds tended ; the same ones that Phillis
and Corydon piped to. And I, am I
not the most ancient of all ? I, the man
who does nothing, who waits for some
event within his own soul, knowing it
will never come ? "
" I read Amiel's Journal while I was
up in the hills," commented Mrs. Herrick.
" Did you ? I started to read it, but
I feared I might be trying to extenuate
myself by means of its logic. It will
make me melancholy if we talk of Amiel.
See what a flush the moonlight has ! No
one could call this a silver light."
VOL. LXXXVII. NO. 519. 8
" No ; it is red gold."
A silence fell, a tribute to the beau-
ty of the night. Then the baby grew
restless, and Mrs. Herrick nuzzled it, and
sent it to Banbury Cross and brought it
back again. Somehow, all this gave a
certain pang to Papin. It even embar-
rassed him. He ventured a suggestion.
" Mrs. Herrick, I wonder if you
would have the great goodness to take
the baby to the quarters and show him
to the men ? You have no idea how
they would appreciate it ! "
u If any poor creature wants to see
the baby, he must not be denied. It is
really pitiable to me to think of the num-
ber of persons in the world who have
never seen the baby." She arose, laugh-
ing and eager, and followed her host.
Such of the herders as were not upon
the night shift were sitting on benches
without the house, looking off with un-
anticipatory eyes toward the arching sky,
when Victoria Herrick went out to them
in her fragrant white garments, carrying
her half-naked baby in her arms. The
glorifying radiance of the night lit up
her young face, elate with its maternal
joy, picked out the rounded whiteness
of her arm, and glimmered through the
drifting draperies of her gown.
The men stared from her to the babe,
and something clinked hard and dry in
their throats. Louis Papin had made a
mistake, and he realized it. Still, the
scene must be gone through with some-
how.
" We are all a trifle awkward with
babies," he said, addressing Mrs. Her-
rick, but speaking for the benefit of the
men. " The only ones we see are at
lambing time."
Mrs. Herrick's clear and happy laugh
rang out.
" I like all kinds of babies, from pigs
to monkeys," she said. " I am sure I
should like little lambs. But this kind
of a baby is my choice ! " And she
snatched her little son close to her, fair-
ly wreathing him about her neck, while
114
The Esmeralda Herders.
the baby clutched at his mother's hair,
and gave little shrieks as penetrating as
the cries of a young jay. Then, under
cover of the little one's happy clamor
and the shy compliments of the men,
Mrs. Herrick made good her retreat.
" You should not have asked me to go
out there ! " she cried reprovingly, when
she was alone again with the impresario.
" The baby quite upset them,"
Louis Papin looked at the glowing and
beautiful face of the young woman, and
smiled.
" The vision was too fair," he admit-
ted. " I would better have left them to
a contemplation of the desert."
When the serving women had made
all comfortable for the night, and the
lady and her little one were sleeping,
Louis Papin paced the earthen floor of
the gallery, and indulged himself in a
luxury of reminiscence, which, unfortu-
nately, he could confide to none. The
great lack in his life was a friend. As
star dust may float in space, luminous
and unformed, so the friendliness of this
man failed to find any creature to whom,
it could attach itself. There had once
been a man, out there at the Edge of
Things, to whom Papin might have told
many secrets, but somehow the chances
had slipped by ; and just when he had
reached the point where he might have
unburdened his heart, the man had gone
off toward the North, with exultant heart,
following a phantom, and Papin saw him
no more.
To-night there came to him, with cruel
tantali/ation, a vision of the home po-
tential, the home to which he had not
attained, and which, because of some in-
herent hesitancy of his nature, compact-
ed of delicacy and melancholy, he seemed
never to be likely to achieve. As a convict
in his cell dreams of joy, so this man, en-
vironed by the desert, who had sucked
solitude into his soul, permitted himself,
for an hour, to picture eagerly the com-
forts, the fine amenities, of a life about
a hearthstone. He reproached himself
for having been false to his generation.
He blamed himself bitterly for what
seemed, to-night, to be nothing better
than criminal stupidity. He had turned
his back, with silly cowardice, upon the
beauty and fire of life, and, secure, as he
had thought, from all assaults of passion
or ambition, had fixed himself here in
the wilderness among these sullen men.
Perhaps never in his experience with
them had he been so willing to apply un-
pleasant epithets as he was this night.
For a fortnight he had seen them slouch-
ing about their tasks, cross to the dogs
and brutal to the sheep. He had heard
them using ugly words in the quarters.
" We 're ripe for murder," he thought.
" We must have a diversion of some na-
ture. If I were to break my leg, even,
it would have a bracing effect. But it 's
absurd to hope for the unexpected. It
is the expected that always happens out
here."
But for once he was unfair to the
land of eternal heartbreak, for even while
he complained a horse's hoofs pounded
the earth with a message of haste.
Papin heard. He was glad to hear
anything. He hastened to the gallery,
and by the starlight he saw approach-
ing a mounted figure in headlong haste,
and heard a short barking cry, the
danger signal of the Esmeraldas. The
factor sent back a cheerful shout. The
unexpected was arriving, in the form
of disaster, perhaps, but welcome never-
theless.
" The Salita gang ! " the man cried,
as his horse plunged forward and was
brought up on his haunches at the edge
of the gallery. " They crept up by the
arroyo and shot into the crowd."
" Anybody hit ? "
Dox."
"Not killed!"
" I did n't stay to see, sir. I saw a
black crowd of fellows, and I lit out to
git help."
" Going to have a pitched battle,
think ? "
The Esmeralda Herders.
115
It 's on now."
Papin walked with a quick step to the
outer door of the quarters.
" Out, men ! Out ! " he cried, his
voice trumpet-clear. " The Salita gang
is making a raid ! Billy Dox has been
shot ! Best hurry, or he '11 have com-
pany ! "
There was no excitement in Papin's
voice. Certainly vociferation would have
been superfluous. The men were on
their feet before he had finished speak-
ing. It does not take a herder of the
sun-blistered desert long to make his
toilet. His articles of clothing are not nu-
merous, even when his cartridge belt, his
pistols, and his short rifle are counted in.
Now the men dressed themselves with
the rapidity of firemen, and ran shouting
to the corral where the saddles lay in a
heap. They had no trouble, however,
in finding their own, no more trouble
than soldiers do to pick their muskets
from a stack of arms. The ponies strug-
gled up, snorting and curious ; sniffed the
air to make sure that it was not yet dawn ;
and then, smelling adventure, nervously
submitted to the adjustment of the sad-
dles and the rough haste of the men who
mounted them.
Papin did not stop to get out of his
white linens, but put himself at the head
of his men, armed like the rest, and with
riding boots adding to the incongruity
of his costume. The men fell into their
places behind him, riding four abreast as
was their habit, and the ponies, roweled
to the feat, scurried over the plain like
frightened rabbits.
After fifteen minutes of this kind of
riding, the sound of firing reached their
ears, a brisk fusillade. The men sent
a shout ahead of them that scared the
breathless desert, but which was intend-
ed to convey reassurance to their fight-
ing comrades. A moment later the stars
showed them bunches of sheep plunging
aimlessly forward, and it was necessary
to drive carefully to avoid trampling
them.
" Push ahead ! Push ahead \ " came
Papin's voice. The firing reached their
ears spasmodically, and each time the
advancing herders sent their wild cry
of warning through the startled night.
Then, a moment more, they were in the
thick of the tumult. At first it was al-
most impossible to distinguish friend
from foe. Then it became apparent that
the Mexicans had ranged themselves so
as to protect a great body of the sheep
which they had succeeded in detaching
from the herd ; but Papin led a flanking
movement, and pressed down on them
relentlessly. They made a feint of fight-
ing, but gave way almost immediately
before the onslaught of avenging men
and frantic horses, and were blown be-
fore the herders like flies before a wind.
Papin laughed aloud at the flight, and
then sent out warnings to his men, too
headlong to note the arroyo, now not a
hundred yards distant.
" Steady ! Steady ! " came his voice
above the din.
They halted on the verge of the rocky
declivity.
" They 're brilliant thieves, but rather
dull fighters," commented the factor.
" They might have given us more of a
party than this ! "
The men were rending the air with
their derisive calls, and curveting their
horses in sheer excess of activity.
" Who 's hurt ? " called out Papin.
" I got plunked in the arm," sang
Basil Watts cheerfully.
" Richards," said Papin sharply, " why
are you sitting limp like that? Why
don't you own you 're wounded ? "
" All I need is a screw-driver, sir.
Something seems a leetle loose about my
right ribs."
" Ride home slowly, Richards. Some
one go with him. Now, how about
Dox?"
A man rode to find out, and the herd-
ers, once more the swaggering guardians
of the desert, sent out their long, wild
sheep cry :
116
The Esmeralda Herders.
" Coo-ee ! Coo-ee ! Coo-ee ! "
The beat of a myriad little hoofs was
heard. The sheep began to answer to
the homing call, and came running to-
gether excitedly, and still full of vague
alarms. Seeing this, the call of the men
became steadier and more reassuring.
Papin gave orders that the trampled
sheep should be carried to a designated
spot, watered, and left till morning, when
the experienced surgery of the men might
benefit some of them. No one wanted
to go home. The wind of the dawn be-
gan singing afar off in the east, and the
pink and yellow clouds that danced about
the horizon appeared as a procession of
Aurora's servitors.
It was decided finally not to return to
the ranch for breakfast. No man had a
notion for an indoor meal. Some one
was dispatched for the wagons, and a fire
made on the ground ready for the coffee
when it appeared in the guardianship of
the smiling Chinese, who brought word
incidentally that Mrs. Herrick had a
sufficient guard in her coolie, and would
set out upon her journey without delay.
" Dey lun, dose Salita lascals ? " que-
ried Lee Hang.
" Run ! " responded Papin. " They
ran so, my friend, that if they had had
pigtails like yours they would have all
been whipped off."
The smoke of the fire flirted up through
the golden air. The strange voices of
the waste whispered along the ground.
Then the fragrant scent of the coffee
reached the nostrils of the hungry men,
and Lee Hang began tossing griddle
cakes in the air. The horses, staked at
a little distance, called out their con-
gratulations to their masters in tremu-
lous whinnies, and the sheep kept up a
sociable bleating. The men were full of
noise, and told stock jokes, at which
everybody roared.
"They'd even laugh at one of my
jokes, this morning," thought Papin.
The man who had been sent to inquire
about the wounded herder returned with
word that Dox wanted coffee. A great
shout went up.
" What 's the matter with Billy Dox ? "
they inquired of the scurrying coyote
who appeared above the edge of the ar-
royo. Then, as he vouchsafed no an-
swer to this vociferous inquiry, they sup-
plied the antiphon, " He 's all right ! "
He was, in fact, lying in the shelter of
a clump of bushes, suffering from a ra-
ther serious head wound.
"Thank God the Mexicans are not
better marksmen ! " said Papin devoutly.
" We 're all alive ; but the real question
is, are we glad of it ? "
A chorus of yells greeted him. The
homesickness was gone. The desert
claimed its children again. The familiar
scene appealed to the men with elo-
quence. The arch of the sky, the limit-
less space, the friendly beasts, the daunt-
less company, the comradeship, the lib-
erty from man's yea and nay, was this
not better a thousand times than a life of
rules between walls or along thronging
streets, with women forever cluttering
the world ?
" Lyon," said Papin, " where 's your
music box ? Out of order ? "
Lyon was the singer among the Es-
meraldas.
He set his cup of coffee down between
his knees, and, as the dawn gilded the
low sky behind the scrub of twisted oaks,
he opened his mouth like one who utters
a challenge to destiny, and cheered his
messmates thus :
"Sonny, there was seven cities a-builded on
th' plain ;
Coronado, he beheld 'em, so he said.
But I Ve hunted high an' low, under sun an'
in th' rain,
An' them highf alutin' cities, they is fled.
I have ranged this hlisterin' desert for a
pretty turn of years,
I ken f oiler paths no mortal man ken see,
But I 'd ruther take my chances roundin' up
unhranded steers,
Then a-verif yin' statements of a giddy ole
grandee."
To this there was added a chorus,
ribald and strident :
Rowland Robinson.
117
" He was talkin' thro' his hat,
Don't you see ?
Oh, where could he have bin at,
That grandee ?
Coo-ee ! Coo-ee ! Coo-ee ! "
The wild and melancholy sheep call,
uttered by fifty throats at once, heralded
the scarlet face of the sun as it swung
arrogantly upon the habitated desert,
a desert which, upon that morning, found
no man sad among all the tribe of the
Esmeraldas.
Elia W. Peattie.
ROWLAND ROBINSON.
WHEN a personality as strong, as
vivid, as unique and picturesque as that of
the creator of Uncle 'Lisha, Sam Lovel,
Antoine, and Gran'ther Hill passes be-
yond our sight into the undiscovered
country, it is surely fitting that something
should be said of him in the columns of
the monthly that has given to the world
Gran'ther Hill's Patridge, Out of Bond-
age, A Voyage in the Dark, and other
stories and essays that will not soon be
forgotten. The many readers of Danvis
Folks, Uncle 'Lisha's Outing, Sam Lov-
el's Camps, and In New England Fields
and Woods hold something in memory
for which they may well be grateful.
Rowland Robinson was born in Ferris-
burg, Vermont, May 14, 1833. He died
there, October 15, 1900, in the very
room in which he was born. This is in
itself a distinction, for it falls to the lot
of very few of our migratory race to live
a long life and, at the end, to draw the
last breath under the same roof.
His grandfather came to Vermont from
Newport, Rhode Island, in 1791, and a
few years later bought a farm in Ferris-
burg, four miles north of the thriving
little city of Vergennes. Here he built
a small, unpretentious house, which is
now only an adjunct of the larger build-
ing erected in 1812.
Mr. Robinson's mother was Rachel
Gilpin, granddaughter of George Gilpin,
of Alexandria, Virginia, who, although a
stanch Quaker, was colonel of the cele-
brated Fairfax militia in the war of the
Revolution, aide to General Washington,
and one of the pallbearers at his funeral.
In this connection, it is interesting to
know that the two " beautiful Quaker
sisters " alluded to by Colonel T. W.
Higginson in his charming Oldport Days
were great-aunts of Mr. Robinson.
The families on both the paternal and
maternal sides were Quakers, richly en-
dowed with the quiet strength and lofty
conscientiousness to be looked for in that
sect. Mr. Robinson's father was an ac-
tive worker in the anti-slavery cause, and
a warm friend of Garrison, May, John-
son, and other noted abolitionists. They
always found a welcome in his house,
which, being so near to the Canadian
line, was, it is almost needless to say, a
convenient and secret station of the Un-
derground Railroad. He was a ready
and forcible writer, and his pen was often
employed in the service of the cause that
was so near his heart.
So much for the forbears of Mr. Rob-
inson. Now for himself. His early train-
ing was that of the average country boy
sixty years ago. He attended the dis-
trict school, taught in winter by college
students, generally from Burlington or
Middlebury ; and in summer by a suc-
cession of schoolmistresses, young girls,
for the most part, who did their best
to drill the unruly urchins in the rudi-
ments of the three R's. When he grew
older, he went to the Ferrisburg Acad-
emy for a while ; but he says of him-
self that he was an unwilling scholar,
118
Rowland Robinson.
and did not make the most of even such
small opportunities as he had. He was,
however, a persistent and omnivorous
reader ; and as his father's house was well
supplied with books, he made amends
for lack of study by reading over and
over again, with ever increasing delight,
the Waverley novels, The Lady of the
Lake and Marmion, histories galore,
and many books of travel and adven-
ture. And he had, moreover, spread out
before his keenly observant eyes the
vast domain of nature : its mountain fast-
nesses, its wide forests, its pure streams
and silver lakes ; the world of bird and
beast and fish, of tree and shrub, fern
and wild flower, of all which he was
to become in later years so true an inter-
preter.
From his mother he had inherited an
artistic temperament ; and, as he ap-
proached manhood, there is little doubt
that he shrank somewhat from the more
prosaic details of farm life. At all events
he fled from the farm to New York,
where he soon found employment as
draughtsman and wood engraver. From
1866 to 1873 a large number of his draw-
ings appeared in the columns of Har-
per's, Frank Leslie's, and other illustrat-
ed periodicals. But this was all experi-
mental, tentative, and not oversuccessful.
In 1873 he gladly returned to the home
of his boyhood.
Meanwhile he had married Anna Ste-
vens, a lovely girl then, a charming
woman now, of great executive ability,
and much talent in the direction of both
art and literature. She was his encour-
ager and inspirer ; and, urged by her, he
wrote and illustrated Fox Hunting in
New England, and offered it to Scrib-
ner's Magazine. Somewhat to his sur-
prise, the article was accepted; and it
was followed by others in Scribner's, The
Century, Harper's, Lippincott's, and The
Atlantic.
In 1888 a series of sketches written
for Forest and Stream was published in
book form, under the title of Uncle
'Lisha's Shop. Another of like charac-
ter, Sam Level's Camps, appeared in
1890, followed by Danvis Folks and Un-
cle 'Lisha's Outing, Vermont : A Study
of Independence (one of the American
Commonwealth Series), In New Eng-
land Fields and Woods, A Danvis Pio-
neer, and one or two other books. His
last story, Sara Level's Boy, in which
Sam teaches his son many a secret of
the hunter's craft, is now in press.
This list of works is a long one, indeed,
when one recalls the fact, known to so
few of his readers, that all these books,
with the exception of Uncle 'Lisha's
Shop, are the work of a blind man. For
in 1887 his eyes began to fail him.
Gradually, slowly, but steadily, the light
grew dimmer and dimmer, then flick-
ered and went out, leaving him in total
darkness. When Sam Lovel's Camps
was placed in his hands, he was able to
see the faint outline, the size and shape
of the book, perhaps, but that was all.
While it may be doubted if Mr. Rob-
inson was ever a very enthusiastic farm-
er, he was too sane and prudent to
neglect his farm. The two things that
especially interested him were his fine
orchard and his butter-making. Of his
skill in the latter, and of the pencil
sketches, rhymes, and caricatures with
which he was wont to adorn the covers
of his butter tubs, many amusing stories
are told. It was a gala day with New
York and Boston dealers when " Robin-
son's butter " came in. But all this was
before the light went out. After that,
though he superintended and gave or-
ders, his real work was done with his
pen ; or rather, with his pencil. He wrote
by means of the grooved board which
enabled him to guide and space the lines ;
and his loyal wife afterwards revised the
manuscript, and prepared it for the press.
She was at once his amanuensis, private
secretary, friend, and devoted comrade.
Then it was that his ardent love of
Nature, his intimate knowledge of her
deepest secrets, his admission into her
Rowland Robinson.
119
very holy of holies, stood him in good
stead. From boyhood he had been a
keen sportsman, sharp-eyed, strangely
observant, familiar with all the ways of
woodland creatures ; reading leaf and
flower, moss, lichen, and fungus, the phe-
nomena of the changing seasons, dawn
and sunset, moonshine and starbeam, the
hoary frost and the dew of summer
nights, as one reads from an open book.
Few persons ever see as much as did
Rowland Robinson. No minutest detail
escaped him. He knew the haunts of
every wild thing as he knew the path to
his own fireside.
His memory was as remarkable as
were his powers of observation ; and thus
it was that, lying sightless on his bed, to
which he was confined for nearly two
years before the end came, he was able
to portray every varying phase of nature
in words so tender, so graphic, so pic-
turesque, so illuminating, that the reader
saw as the writer had seen.
But his powers of interpretation were
not confined to the outside world alone.
He studied human nature as faithfully
as he studied the ways of bird and beast,
of tree and wild flower. His ear was as
keen and unerring as his eye. Let no
one suppose that Mr. Robinson's stories
are meant to be actual transcripts of
the life of Vermont to-day as it exists
even in her mountain towns. They are
stories of old Vermont, the Vermont of
sixty years ago, and even earlier ; before
the railroad had penetrated her fast-
nesses, or the telegraph brought her into
close and vital connection with the outer
world. I have heard the question asked,
nay, more, I admit I have asked it
myself : " Did New Englanders ever talk
like Sam Lovel and Uncle 'Lisha and
Joseph Hill ? " A friend once said to me :
" I have known Vermont many years,
and I never heard any one say ' julluck '
for ' just like,' or ' seem 's 'ough,' or
'hayth' for 'height,' or sundry other
queer expressions and pronunciations that
Mr. Robinson gives as Yankeeisms."
Shortly after this I went into my "gar-
den, where a man-of-all-work was remov-
ing some bulbs.
" Say, Mis' Dorr," he remarked,
" don't them roots look julluck turnups?
Seem 's 'ough they did ! "
Whereupon I concluded it was not a
proof of superior wisdom to question Mr.
Robinson's use of Yankee dialect. It is
well to believe that his ear was quicker
than that of most men, and that he was
familiar with every phase of the vernacu-
lar in which his men and women speak.
As for Antoine, he is inimitable. No
one else has so perfectly caught the queer
jargon of the French " Canuck " when
trying to wrestle with the vagaries of the
English tongue.
Mr. Robinson makes no attempt to
depict the life of cities, towns, or even
large villages. His characters, which re-
appear in most of his stories, live and
breathe in secluded mountain hamlets, to
the life of which he is absolutely true.
Once in a while, as when the dignified
and elegant lawyer of whom Antoine as-
serts, "He was be de biggest 1'yer in
Vairgenne ; he goin' be judge, prob'ly
gov'ner, mebby," goes hunting up the
Slang, electrifying Sam at once by his skill
as a sportsman and by the beautiful gun
that was such a contrast to his own heavy
rifle, we get a glimpse of another world.
But it is only momentary, and in an in-
stant we are back again with the simple,
kindly, rural folk who dominate the
stage. There are not many of them left
now. The tide of progress has swept
away the old landmarks. Uncle 'Lisha's
Shop is a thing of the past. Yet even
now one who, with observant eye and ear,
wanders up and down New England
will still find proof that Mr. Robinson is
true to the life of old New England.
Perhaps one charm of these stories
lies in the fact that they are written so
sympathetically. Mr. Robinson never
condescends, or apologizes, or pities. It
never occurs to him that there is any
need of doing either. He values his men
120
Rowland Robinson.
and women for their own sakes and for
what they are. If they are queer and
quaint, so much the better for the artist,
and the picture he would paint. Their
strange expletives, and even their occa-
sional mild profanities, are by no means
coarse or irreligious. They swear from
force of habit, with no more idea of
breaking the third commandment than a
baby has when it says, " Now I lay
me."
To turn from what he wrote to what
he was is a pleasing task, for the man
was greater than his books. In person
Mr. Robinson was strikingly like the late
Francis H. Underwood, so well known
to many readers of The Atlantic : tall,
well built, with a ruddy color that he
kept almost to the last. His eyes were
blue. His hair and his patriarchal beard
had been snow-white for many years,
but in his younger days they were a rich
reddish, or golden, brown. Entirely un-
assuming, with faith in his own powers,
yet with seemingly very little idea that
they were recognized by others, he was
the most modest of men. A few years
ago a club in a Vermont town dramatized
Dan vis Folks, after a fashion, for the
benefit of a local charity, and put it on
the stage. The author was invited to be
present on the opening night, and he ac-
cepted. As he entered the crowded hall,
guided by a friend on either hand, the
audience, recognizing him, broke into
loud applause. He paid no attention to
it, but quietly felt his way to the chair
assigned to him. As he seated himself,
he said, with a smile : " They seem to be
in very good spirits here. Whom are
they applauding now ? "
"Why, Mr. Robinson, they are ap-
plauding you ! " was the reply. " Don't
you know that you are the hero of this
occasion ? " And he sank back in his
chair with an air of bewilderment and
surprise that was unmistakable. That
he should be applauded had never en-
tered his brain.
The legislature of his native state was
in session when he died, and in joint as-
sembly passed most appreciative resolu-
tions of regret and condolence. Mrs.
Robinson's comment thereon, as I sat
by her side a few days ago, was charac-
teristic of both herself and her husband.
" Oh," she said, " if Rowland had been
told that the legislature of Vermont
would take any notice of his death, he
would not have believed it. He did not
think people cared much for him."
This was due in part, no doubt, to his
isolation. He knew very few "literary
people," so called. He had little or no
intercourse with his peers. It has been
said that reputations are made at dinner
tables. If this be true, as it certainly is
in a measure, the man fights against
great odds who, from environment or
force of circumstances, is almost com-
pletely shut out set apart, as it were
from the great body of his fellow
workers in the field of letters.
Let us glance at the home of this
brave and lonely craftsman. The Rob-
inson homestead a large, square, gray
farmhouse, having the broad porch, with
high railing and bracketed seats on either
side, that is almost invariably to be
found in mansions of that date stands
twenty or thirty rods back from the road,
on a slight, rocky elevation. It is ap-
proached by a fine avenue of elms, the
entrance to which is marked by groups
of stately Lombardy poplars. On either
side are other groups, locusts, maples,
and beeches. On the October day when
I first saw the place, the greensward was
thickly strewn with the crimson and gold
of the falling leaves. Over the wall, at
the right, a few white sheep were crop-
ping the short grass among the gray
ledges of the pasture. The outlook is
one of unusual beauty. On the east is
the lovely Champlain Valley, stretching
away in broad reaches, above which soar
the Green Mountains, with Mount Mans-
field and Camel's Hump in the distance.
On the west, past green, fertile meadows
and rolling pastures, lie the clear waters
Rowland Robinson.
121
of Lake Champlain, of which glimpses
may be caught here and there through
the thick fringe of pine and hemlock.
And farther still beyond the lake rise
the mighty Adirondacks, range on range,
tier above tier, until their heads are lost
in the clouds.
But on that October day it was not of
the house, nor of its surroundings, that I
thought. Its master lay prone and help-
less somewhere within its walls, and it
was he whom I sought. I was ushered
first into the living room, on the right
of the hall of entrance, and from there,
through the great old-fashioned kitchen
and a short passageway, into what has
always been known as the " East Room."
There, incurably ill of a wasting disease,
and blind to all the beauty of the au-
tumnal day, lay Rowland Robinson, with
a smile on his lips, and all the implements
of his craft about him, the grooved
board, the pencil, and a great pile of
manuscript. But as I sat in the flood of
sunshine by his bedside, and listened to
his eager talk of this and that, I felt
again, as I had felt at other times, that
it was impossible to realize that he was
a blind man. His eyes were bright,
seeming to seek mine as he talked, their
blue depths giving not the slightest hint
that they were sightless. He spoke of
" seeing " things ; he called my attention
to the dish of fine pears on the table ; he
was as alert and interested in the life
around him as if he had had a dozen
pairs of eyes.
" Do you never leave your bed, Mr.
Robinson ? " I asked.
"Not often," he answered. " But I
wanted to see the procession go by on
Dewey day, and they managed to wheel
me out on the porch for a little while.
It was very interesting."
Not a complaint, not a murmur, not
a suggestion of repining, nothing but
splendid courage, patient hopefulness,
tender regard for others, and a determi-
nation to work to the last.
The old house is in itself most in-
teresting. Antique furniture meets the
eye in every room. There is a queer
old grand piano that was brought from
Vienna by a member of the family early
in the century, and that has been voice-
less and tuneless for at least one genera-
tion. There is a chair that Washington
and Lafayette must often have seen, even
if it cannot be proved that they ever re-
posed in its ample depths ; for it had an
honored place in the parlor of a house
in which they were often guests. There
are old tables that have histories, and blue
Delft ware and bits of china antedating
the Revolution. Over the piano hangs
a full-length portrait of its former own-
er, the work of an Austrian artist,
a dark-haired lady in a crimson velvet
gown, with a little boy at her feet who
is playing with an American flag. There
are other old family portraits, and one
of Mr. Robinson himself, painted by his
daughter. There are Indian relics, and
trophies of the chase, hunting imple-
ments, and above all books, books
everywhere, overflowing the cases and
finding lodgment wherever they can.
Some of them are exceedingly rare,
heirlooms in the shape of old doctrinal
works relating to the Friends, which were
hidden away in the far-off days when it
was against the law of New England to
possess them, and brought to light again
when the persecutions were over.
In the old kitchen, which is the main
part of the first building, the doorlatches
are of hard wood, whittled into shape by
Mr. Robinson's grandfather. They are
like polished ivory now, with its rare yel-
lowish-brown tint, worn smooth by the
touch of many generations.
Here, too, is the secret staircase men-
tioned in Out of Bondage, narrow, dark,
and forbidding, up which many a fugi-
tive slave has glided like a phantom of
the gloaming, to find refuge in the cham-
ber above. This chamber was partitioned
off from the rest of the house, and to
the children of the family was at once a
terror and a mystery. Whenever they
122
The Child in the Library.
saw Aunt Eliza surreptitiously convey-
ing plates of food upstairs, they knew
there was some one in the chamber whom
they were not to see, and of whose pre-
sence they were never to speak.
The great kitchen, as "neat as wax,"
with an indescribable air of homely com-
fort and dignity, is also the dining room of
the establishment. A long table, about
which a small army might gather, stands
just where it stood seventy-five years
or more ago ; and here the Queen her-
self would dine, if she had the honor of
being admitted to the hospitality of the
house. At one end the family and their
guests ; at the other the stalwart Yan-
kee yeomen, who are not servants, but
helpers. It is like one of the old stories
of a baron and his retainers, above
and below the salt.
On yet another October day I visited
the old farmhouse ; but the master had
gone thence. The autumn leaves were
as bright as ever, the sunshine as brilliant ;
and still the white sheep huddled among
the gray ledges, and the broad landscape
stretched to right and left, as beautiful
as a dream.
I went again into the East Room,
the room of birth and death. Near the
white bed lay the grooved board, with
the pencil slipped in between the paper
and the board, just as it had been left.
I copied the last sentence, written three
days before the busy hand was stilled :
" The lifting veil disclosed the last
flash of blue plumage disappearing in
the mist of budding leaves from behind
the cloud of smoke that now hid my
mark."
Julia C. E. Dorr.
THE CHILD IN THE LIBRARY.
HE was an only child and a mother-
less one. I may say a relationless one,
except for a stray aunt or uncle, seldom
heard of and never seen. His father
was a busy man, and the slow change in
his son from babyhood to boyhood was
unnoticed. A succession of kind-heart-
ed nurses had taken care of the child's
physical comfort, but otherwise had left
him to his own devices. In some inexpli-
cable way he learned to read by the time
he was eight years old. It had been a
quick step from ignorance to this delight-
ful accomplishment. First he could not
read, then he could ; there seemed to be
no intermediate stage. He was a pale,
delicate boy, and when his busy father
took time to consult a physician the ver-
dict was " no school ; " so the child had
all his days to himself.
He had no friends, and time hung
heavily, until one day, entering his fa-
ther's library, he made the acquaintance
of a large number of people. His father
had no great love for books, but he felt
it was a proper thing to have a well-
stocked library ; so he had filled his book-
shelves, with a delightful ignorance of
the inside of the books, but with the
knowledge that the outside was irre-
proachable. It was a curiously mixed
collection ; there were books of all kinds,
and all jumbled together without regard
to subject or character. With this mixed
assemblage the child made acquaintance,
one cold, bleak November day.
He had come in with a vague idea of
getting a picture book to look at. He
knew the illustrations of the books on
the table by heart ; he was tired of
them, and craved something new. I
think it was almost entirely from illus-
trations that the child had learned to
read. The pictures meant much; and
after gathering their meaning he knew
the words below must correspond, as
The Child in the Library.
123
they did, and the child read. On this
day he determined to try to find pictures
in the books on the shelves. He stood
before the cases and gazed at the pros-
pect before him. The books all gazed
back solemnly at him ; they did n't look
inviting.
The ones that appeared less forbidding
than the rest were a long line of fellows
which reminded him of his soldiers.
They stood shoulder to shoulder, dressed
in a dark chocolate - brown uniform
striped with gold. They were sober
enough in color. There were many books
in the cases gayer in dress, but these par-
ticular ones were fat, quite fat, and not
very tall, and they appeared to be good-
natured. He opened the case where
they were, and looked at their names.
They almost all seemed to be about men :
one was Barnaby Rudge ; one, Nicholas
Nickleby ; one, Martin Chuzzlewit ; one,
David Copperfield ; and so on down the
line. Somehow, after reading all their
names, he returned to David Copper-
field ; the name haunted him, David,
David Copperfield. What was there so
bewitching in the sound ? He put out
his hand and took down the volume.
The pictures were queer, very queer.
He studied them gravely and carefully.
He found himself saying under his
breath, " David, David, David Copper-
field," with a curious sense of having
met the name before. He glanced at
the first page; it was headed, "I am
born." He glanced down the page, and
some one seemed to be talking, talking
in a delightfully confidential way to him,
the child himself. He turned over the
pages : it was David who was speaking,
David Copperfield.
Suddenly an idea struck him: why
should he not read the book ? It was
such a tremendous idea that the blood tin-
gled in his veins from excitement. Why
not ? The book was here ; he had no-
thing to do ; and the story might tell more
about the curious pictures. He took the
book, cuddled up in a chair, and began
to read. He read till luncheon time ; he
lunched, and read till dinner time ; he
dined, and read till bedtime ; and then
dreamed the story all through again.
The next day he began bright and early
another rapturous ten hours. There was
no one to disturb him; his nurse was
only too glad to have him quiet, and his
father was away till dinner time. How
he read !
It seemed to him, as he read, that in-
stead of the story coming from the book
it came from the lips of a boy who sat
opposite him by the library fire, a boy
with big brown eyes, curly chestnut hair,
and a sweet, grave face. It was David
who talked to him, David Copperfield,
and he spoke of his life with curiously
bated breath.
To be sure, in the book he grew up,
but the child across the fire did n't. It
almost seemed as if David had lived his
life, and been changed from manhood
back to boyhood, with a man's knowledge
of the world and a child's sweetness and
faith. He told the child of his baby-
hood, of his pretty mother and honest
nurse ; he spoke in a lowered tone of his
aunt, a Miss Betsey Trotwood ; he drew
nearer and spoke of a Mr. and Miss
Murdstone: and the two children held
each other close. He told of a school
and some boy friends ; he told of his boy-
hood's sweetheart, a little Em'ly : and the
child followed on. He wandered around
London with David ; he trudged to Can-
terbury with him on his memorable pil-
grimage. He shared his fortunes, and
rose and fell with them.
When the book was finished the boy
had an enlarged acquaintance with peo-
ple and places. He was an American
child, but he knew London the docks,
that is to say intimately. A certain
home at Canterbury he knew by heart,
old, substantial, so very dear, with shin-
ing wood and glass. He had new friends :
a man Peggotty, a little Miss Mowcher,
the best of nurses and the kindest of
aunts, a Micawber and a Traddles, a
124
The Child in the Library.
most beloved one named Steerforth, and
one, the best of all, one who sat with him
and talked with him, a fidus Achates,
David, David Coppertield.
The next door he opened was one that
took him straight to a twilight fairyland.
It was labeled Pilgrim's Progress, and
he and David followed a man named
Christian through a marvelous land. The
child was n't quite clear as to why Chris-
tian fled from his home, beyond the fact
that something was to happen to the city
where he lived, and then he was of an
adventurous spirit and wanted to find a
place called " the Celestial City." He
joined David and the child by their fire-
side and told them of his adventures. He
was a tall, dark man, quaintly clad, and
had a big bundle on his back. He told
them marvelous things of fights with
lions, of a dreadful place called " Vanity
Fair," of a dark valley, and finally of a
river and the Shining City. I do not
know why he had left this city and come
to this fireside with his pack, but there
he was in the group, and David and the
child and he went on to new lands to-
gether.
There was a wonderful' land back of
these big bookcases, and each book was
a key to it. David had taken him to
London, and to Canterbury, and down to
Suffolk. Christian took him to a land,
no less real, abounding in danger and in
adventure, and they were now ready for
a trip to a new part of this marvelous
country.
The new key was a little book that
had fallen behind the rest. It was all
the more strange that they tried this key,
for it had no pictures, and the spelling
was curious and foreign ; but the child
opened it and read this : " Sweet Lord
have mercy upon me, for I may not live
after the death of my love Sir Tristram
de Lyoness, for he was ray first love and
he shall be my last." It sounded sweet
and sad to the child, and yet half real
and wholly good. He turned to the
front : there was a man, and a king, and
a fair lady ; and now he and Christian
and David were in a new country. I
suppose Christian must have enjoyed it,
for he had been an adventurous man in
his day, and I am sure David and the
child loved the country with their whole
hearts. They brought back new friends
to join their group : a tall, fair man, who
I fear slightly tyrannized over them all,
and yet whom they loved, a King Ar-
thur ; and by his side, a tall, dark man
with a sad, grave face, named Lancelot ;
and they felt that sometimes another man
was there, an old man in brown, with
a long white beard arid long hair, yet
with a young face. They could never be
sure he was there, for he came and went
mysteriously, and his name was Merlin.
They made other friends in Britain,
Tristram, and Gawain, and Geraint, and
others ; but these did n't join the fireside
group, though one had only to open the
little blue book to join them. Soon the
five became great friends, and told one
another tales that were not in their books,
new tales, and their friendship grew into
comradeship.
One day a brightly bound book caught
the child's eye. It was all spotted with
gold, and the child played it was a golden
key. It certainly opened a golden door
and took them into a golden country.
This man that met them at the door,
and led them across a country called Bon-
ny England, was a jolly fellow, a kind of
superior ragamuffin named Robin Hood.
Oh, the gay times he gave them ! What
merry adventures beneath the green-
wood tree ! What jolly excursions after
lazy abbots and fat priests ! Another big
fellow with a twinkling eye, a great ras-
cal in his way, yet a most genial com-
rade, was Little John ; and there were
besides him Maid Marian, and Will Scar-
let, and King Richard himself. Christian
and Lancelot and Arthur enjoyed this
roving kind of life, and David and the
child thought it wonderful. To be sure,
they cried for hours over Robin Hood's
death, until they found that he and
Sky- Children.
125
jelot had gone to Avalon with Ar-
thur, and Robin Hood, green coat and
great bow and all, came and joined their
company, and they went on enriched by
him. Sometimes they would all go with
Christian to fight with Apollyon, or
would accompany Lancelot and Arthur
to rescue distressed damsels, or else
journey with Robin Hood in mere idle
quest, or David and the child would
slip quietly into London. In all these
lands the shadowy Merlin would go
making curious things happen, " for he
was a great wise man."
After a little time the child made
a new friend, a certain Greek named
Ulysses. He was entirely a new kind
of character. I think the whole group
mistrusted him at first ; but they soon got
over that, and loved him dearly. He
was so clever, and thought of such en-
tirely new ways of doing things. When
Arthur wanted to summon his knights
and make a charge on Troy, and Lance-
lot wished to try a single combat with
Hector, Ulysses thought of the Wooden
Horse, which was such a complete suc-
cess. After accompanying him for years,
and finding how stanch and true he
was, they asked him to join them ; and
he, finding them good fellows, left Ithaca
and Penelope, and came with his dog and
made one of them.
And so they traveled on : Arthur and
Lancelot, friends again through the
child, were able still to journey on in
wide Britain, seeking adventures ; and
there was Robin Hood, jolly fellow that
he was, brave as a lion and full of jest
and grit ; and there was Christian, daunt-
less in trial, bearing still his mysterious
bundle, the contents of which often puz-
zled the child ; and there was Ulysses,
their guide and counselor, looking for-
ward with crafty eyes, and occasionally
turning to whistle to his good dog ; and
last of all, hand clasped in hand, came
David and the child.
Edith Lanigan.
SKY-CHILDREN.
CHILDREN.
CHERUBIM ! Cherubim !
How will you dance ?
CHERUBIM.
Just as wee motes where
Sunbeams glance.
CHILDREN.
Cherubim ! Cherubim !
Supposing one cries,
How shall he wipe
His poor wet eyes ?
CHERUBIM.
Innocents ! Innocents !
If one should cry,
Out in the wind
He would fly, fly, fly,
126 The Final Quest.
Just as the dewy
Dripping bees
Back in the Earth-time
Dried in the breeze.
CHILDREN.
Cherubim ! Cherubim !
Tired are we ;
Put us to sleep
Where the light won't see.
CHERUBIM.
Lullaby ! LuUaby !
On our soft wings,
When the winds blow,
Every one swings.
When the stars whisper,
Little ears, hark !
Lower, lids, lower !
Hush! all's dark.
Jefferson Fletcher
THE FINAL QUEST.
AT last I feel my freedom. So a leaf,
Under some swift, keen prompting of the spring,
Aches with great light and air, and, stretching forth
Into the circled wonder overhead,
Unfolds to breath and being. So the stream,
Wounded by boulders, fretted into foam,
But flows with mightier passion on and on
(O mystic prescience born of watery ways!)
Into the wide, sweet hope awaiting him
Of ample banks and murmurous plenitudes.
So I, by midnight mothered, lift my voice
And cry to mine old enemies encamped,
Fear, dread of fear and dark bewilderment :
" Ye cannot harm me. O unreal shapes,
Wherewith Life garnishes her golden house
To urge us forth upon our further quest,
I see you now for what you truly are,
Usurping slaves, pale mimicries of power,
Air held in armor to amaze a child.
In your grim company I lie at ease
And look alone upon the vistaed light,
The grave, pure track of worlds beyond the world."
Fiction, New and Old.
127
Oh, the still wells of life, the conquering winds
In this wide garden once my wilderness !
Who that hath felt these brooding silences
Could sigh for June, her rose and nightingale,
Or, when a dry leaf trembles from the branch,
Fear, in that flitting, aught but other Junes ?
Doth this immortal need mortality,
She, the fair soul, the spark of all that is,
She who can ride upon the changing flood
Of dim desires, or, if she faint,
Creep into caves of her own fashioning ?
It is her garment now, the while she wields
This battered blade of earthly circumstance.
A breath and she walks naked, like the dawn,
Led, through some western radiance of surmise,
By arc as true as orbed planets hold,
Home to that house where birth and death are one,
And dreams keep tryst with hearts that died of them.
Alice Brown.
FICTION, NEW AND OLD.
WHEN we are told with authority, con-
Mrs. Ward's cerning a forthcoming book,
Later Novels. that s i xt y_fi ve thousand copies
have been ordered in advance ; that sixty
thousand pounds of paper will be re-
quired for the plebeian one-volume edi-
tion, to say nothing of the Edition bour-
geoise in two volumes, and the edition de
luxe of two hundred numbered copies ;
also, that if this paper were piled sheet
upon sheet it would make a tower five
hundred and fifty feet high, and that if
the sheets were placed end to end, in a
straight line, they would extend one thou-
sand miles, we are forced to admit,
whatever we may think of the taste of
the advertisement, that we are on the eve
of an important event. The writer whose
work can be thus heralded wields an in-
calculable power ; and it is well when,
as in the present case, we know before-
hand that it is a power which will make
both for righteousness in conduct and
refinement in art.
The writer is Mrs. Humphry Ward, of
course, and the book is Eleanor, 1 and I
hasten to record my own impression, after
reading the skillfully reserved and ex-
tremely beautiful winding up of the story,
that no discerning reader can be disap-
pointed therewith, and that the new ro-
mance is, upon the whole, altogether the
finest thing that Mrs. Ward has done.
Yet Eleanor will be a surprise, in
some ways, to those who have not fol-
lowed attentively, in its author's later
work, the gradual alteration of her meth-
od and the new development of her dis-
tinguished talent. It will hardly, I sup-
pose, be disputed that, at a time when
there are multitudes of women at work
in the literary mills, turning off, with
reasonable success', many kinds of skilled
labor which used to be supposed impossi-
ble for any woman, Mrs. Ward's place
in the honor list is among the very few
double-firsts of her sex : with Charlotte
Bronte, certainly, and George Sand, and
1 Eleanor. By Mrs. HUMPHRY WARD, Ne\v
York ; Harper & Brothers. 1900,
128
Fiction, New and Old.
Matilde Serao ; and only a little lower
than Emily BrontQ and Mrs. Browning
and George Eliot.
But Mrs. Ward's idea of her own vo-
cation, when she first began, hardly more
than a dozen years ago, her remarkable
career as a novelist, was essentially dif-
ferent from any of theirs. I always dis-
like using of a writer the word " artist,"
which is almost more " soiled by ignoble
use " than the greater word " gentleman."
But I do not know what else to say than
that the other famous women named
above were all, in their different ways
and degrees, artists ; while Mrs. Ward,
with all her dramatic instinct and ana-
lytic acumen, the wealth of her acquired
knowledge and the grace of her inher-
ited culture, began by being resolutely
and even aggressively the moralist. She
stooped to illustrate her lectures by fas-
cinating parables ; but lecture she must
and would. The parables made the lec-
tures go down with a vast majority of
her readers ; but there will always re-
main an impatient and impenitent few
who cannot long stand being lectured,
not even though the soundest precepts
be presented with a maximum of femi-
nine grace. And how much, after all,
is ever accomplished by the lecture?
How many converts did Robert Els-
mere make to agnosticism ? How many
people were deterred from the dangers
and indecorums of the union libre by
David Grieve's mythical experiences in
Paris ? And then, after a suitable in-
terval, for Mrs. Ward is not one of
those who tend to write too much, we
were invited to a treatise on the new wo-
man and her possibilities, in Marcella.
The book opened most attractively.
Marcella was the new woman to the life,
and the new young woman : courageous
and sincere, though crude and chaotic ;
self-centred and self-exaggerated; full
of generous impulses and audacious am-
bitions ; her brain disproportionately de-
veloped rather than soberly and effectu-
ally disciplined ; philanthropical, but not
affectionate, the strangest compound,
surely, of nobility and absurdity that the
world has ever seen. But Mrs. Ward
has not a quick eye for absurdity. One
of the few marked defects which go along
with her many brilliant qualities is an
insufficient, not to say absent sense of
humor. She meant to portray a type in
Marcella, and she meant to portray it se-
riously and respectfully ; sympathetically
also, and, if we may judge by her inces-
sant and almost fatiguing insistence on
the heroine's transcendent personal beau-
ty, even flatteringly. Here, however, she
labored in vain. The Marcellas of this
world may be admirably handsome ; and,
indeed, the conditions of life in the class
from which they mostly come, especially
in England and America, undoubtedly
favor the development of a high order
of personal comeliness. But they seldom
produce the effect of beauty. What we
all recognize as charm is a nicely pro-
portioned compound of many different
qualities, mental, sentimental, and,
above all, physical ; but, like a perfect
salad dressing, the product should be
neutral, retaining the distinct flavor of
no one of its ingredients. Now, in Mar-
cella and the daily growing class whom
she represents, every pungent condi-
ment speaks, or rather stings, for itself.
" Macta virtute ! " we murmur, a little
awestruck, as the intrepid young Ama-
zon adjusts her armor and essays her
exercise.
Howbeit, the highly aspiring, grossly
blundering, and unconsciously appeal-
ing Marcella of Mrs. Ward's first vivid
conception, unclassed through no fault
of her own, and held at arm's length
by her embittered mother (one of the
author's most powerful character stud-
ies), that faulty but entirely natural
being did really enlist our sympathies
and compel our belief. But the same
girl, rescued from her grim struggle by
the fairy prince of the nursery tale, and
established on a social pinnacle ; re-
warded, like the virtuous Periwinkle-
Fiction, New and Old.
129
Girl in the ballad, with a coronet and a
clear income of thirty thousand pounds,
was as unreal as one of Ouida's most
lavishly bespangled heroines ; and the
sequel to her story in Sir George Tres-
sady came perilously near a fiasco. Her
gross abuse of the opportunities of her
new position, and her truly inexcusa-
ble behavior with the fatuous and ill-
starred hero of Mrs. Ward's feeblest
book, accused, upon every page, her bad
up-bringing, and must have been a sad
mortification to her intimidated but in-
finitely correct lord. For a laborious
attempt was made in Sir George Tres-
sady to represent the married and pro-
moted Marcella as a political force, an
influential voice upon the liberal side of
English legislation. Now it is matter
of history that, sometimes in England,
though less often perhaps than in France,
women have exercised that kind of in-
fluence in one or the other of the highly
trained and privileged coteries which al-
ternately govern England. But they
never have exercised it in the least after
the fashion of the intense and irrepres-
sible Marcella. Neither preaching nor
" slumming " has been in the line of these
clever ladies. Their ways have been
and it were well for civilized society that
they should continue to be the supple,
suave, indirect, and chiefly anonymous
ways of the granddaughters of Sheridan,
the wives of Palmerston and Beacons-
field, and the benign stars of the scru-
pulously guarded circles of Bo wood,
Panshanger, and Holland House. One
hardly sees, indeed, how, with her own
traditions and environment, Mrs. Ward
could so signally have failed to catch the
tone and reflect the manners of that para-
mount section of the English great world.
She goes astray in the House of Com-
mons, and loses her head completely
among the Lords. And it is the more
remarkable because she had such excel-
lent models to study. The thing which
the. biographer of Marcella tried to do
was done to admiration, twenty-odd years
ago, both in Endymion, with its full
flow of patrician gossip and perfect fa-
miliarity with the subject in hand, and
in those easy, unassuming, garrulous, and
yet thoroughbred chronicles of contem-
porary life, so rich in humor and insight,
so full of social and civic intelligence,
the political novels of the too lightly ap-
preciated and too soon forgotten Antho-
ny Trollope.
But the power handsomely to retrieve
an error, whether in literature or in life,
is almost more 'rare than the power to
avoid the same. It proves, at all events,
the penitent's possession of some admi-
rable qualities, both moral and intellec-
tual, such as breadth and versatility of
mind, candor of spirit, and the most ex-
cellent kind of humility. When Hel-
beck of Bannisdale appeared, a com-
plete story, not anticipated by periodical
publication and announced by no pom-
pous headlines, the sympathetic reader
perceived at once in its author an
altered, more graceful, and less authori-
tative manner. The theme was still a
grave, even a sombre one, the light
and playful is never in Mrs. Ward's
line, but it was a theme, and not a
thesis; and it was developed earnestly,
indeed, but quietly and without argu-
ment. The intellectual tragedy involved
in the hapless loves of the Catholic mag-
nate and the agnostic maiden was yet
a tragedy of pure circumstance, the
occult and awe-inspiring tragedy of the
legitimate Greek drama; the clash of
souls driven to their own mutual undo-
ing by cosmic forces, incomprehensible
and seemingly blind. It was not that
Mrs. Ward had not studied, and studied
profoundly, the terms of one of the most
painful spiritual problems of her time ;
and the conditions of her own young
life had given her an exceptional advan-
tage in grappling with it. But she offers
no solution, pronounces no judgment.
How, indeed, could she have given sen-
tence between the two sponsors of her own
prophetic soul, her father and her uncle ?
VOL. LXXXVII. NO. 519.
9
130
Fiction, New and Old.
The figure of Helbeck is an heroic one,
and drawn with astonishing power. It
haunts the reader like some lately dis-
covered portrait, dark with the accre-
tions of age, but commanding in its au-
thenticity, by Titian or Velasquez. The
author, formerly so salient and emphatic,
is forgotten at last in the creation ; the
tale achieves, as it goes along, its own
sad symmetry, and moves with touching
dignity to the inevitable end, without a
flaw, if we except a touch of unnecessary
melodrama in the concluding chapter.
In Eleanor, one is tempted, in the glow
of one's first enthusiasm over the deli-
cate and restrained yet infinitely mov-
ing conclusion of the story, to say that
there is no flaw whatever. The plot of
Eleanor is even simpler than that of
Helbeck, the annalist more innocent of
ulterior views, the treatment more en-
tirely natural. We have the ardent,
self-consuming love of an already fading
woman, of exquisite nature, for a man of
many gifts and little heart, who care-
lessly accepts all homage and almost all
sacrifice as his due. The pure and prim-
itive passion of the woman pierces the
conventionalities of her caste, and shoots
heavenward like a tongue of lambent
altar flame. It speaks the matchless
language of the Portuguese Sonnets, but
receives no such fitting response as did
they. Enter then the fresh, young, inex-
perienced, almost rustic rival, unconscious
at first, and then unwilling ; ingenuous,
loyal, and proud. The man's unstable
nature swings from its old allegiance and
tumbles to a new, as the darkling tide
obeys the rising moon. There is no
need to anticipate here, for those who
have not yet read it, the precise end of
the story. The loveliest feature of it,
as a psychological study, is the noble
reaction of the two women upon one an-
other. Let us do justice, after all, to
the uneasy age in which we live ; whose
fads do fret, whose manners displease,
whose hitherto unheard-of claims and
innovations often fairly appall us. Wo-
men are less petty, upon the whole, than
they were, let us say in the days of
Miss Austen. Never before our time
would the invigorating truth have been
instantly and widely recognized of the
great scenes between Dinah and Hetty
in Adam Bede, between Dorothea and
Rosamund in Middlemarch, between
Eleanor and Lucy in the last chapters of
Mrs. Ward's new story.
Of Lucy herself, the remorseful rival,
the magnanimous ingenue, with her cool
temperament, her stern conscience, her
self-collected sweetness, a word must be
said as embodying Mrs. Ward's idea
of the unfashionable and unspoiled
American girl. On the whole, I con-
sider this one of the Englishwoman's
most remarkable pieces of divination ;
lacking but a shade here and a touch
there of consummate veracity. We all
know the type : the flower of the old-
fashioned provincial town; a creature
of gentle blood, but often stringent cir-
cumstances, of heroic instincts, whole-
some training, and a spotless imagina-
tion. But Mrs. Ward cannot have seen
much of this type in the phalanx of
those who march every summer to the
conquest of Mayfair, in such marvelous
bravery of equipment ; and she is the
less likely to have done so, because we
are beginning to think of it even here
as a blossom of seasons gone by. Cer-
tainly we have more Marcellas than
Lucys among us at the present moment,
though we may hope that it will not
always be so. Lucy is essentially of
New England (mons viridis genuit),
but with odd touches here and there of
the remoter West, which do not detract
from her piquancy ; and Manisty was
quite right in his complacent prevision
that she would adapt herself easily and
rapidly to the tone of his monde, and
" become the grande dame of the future
that his labor, his ambitions, and his
gifts should make for her."
That Lucy will play well her untried
part of great lady in an old society seems
Fiction, New and Old.
131
more certain, indeed, than that she will
be a happy woman as the wife of Ed-
ward Manisty. Mrs. Ward's complex, in-
consistent, and highly sophisticated hero
is a very real being to herself, and she
succeeds in making him almost equally
so to her readers. Our feeling about
him does but oscillate with her own, be-
tween delight in his rich temperament
and his intellectual gifts, and impatience
with his astonishing spiritual coxcombry ;
his inveterate coquetries with all the wo-
men he meets, including the scarlet one.
It is, of course, impossible not to remem-
ber that Manisty's purely sentimental
attraction toward the Catholic Church,
and the grand dementi of his effusive
but highly unphilosophical book, have a
parallel in the case of that English man
of letters who has introduced into his
latest novel a harsh and vulgar but un-
mistakable caricature of Mrs. Ward. In
so far, however, as the character of Man-
isty is a retort for that of Mrs. Norham
in Mallock's Tristram Lacy, it is a
wholly dignified and magnanimous one,
which leaves the advantage, in this curi-
ous battle, overwhelmingly upon the wo-
man's side.
The scene of Eleanor all passes in
rural Italy: first, among the storied
hills to the south of Rome ; later, in the
sylvan tract that is dominated by the
isolated Arx of Orvieto, and the rarely
explored nooks and valleys of that minor
mountain range which culminates in the
visionary peak of Monte Amiata. How
deeply the enchantment of that scenery
is felt, and how exquisitely it is rendered
in Eleanor, only the lifelong lover of
Italy perhaps only her unwilling exile
can fully appreciate. It is all here,
painted in soft yet vivid hues, the
classic lineaments, the purpureal air, the
haunting sense of immemorial habitation,
and what Mrs. Ward herself so aptly
calls the " Virgilian grace " of the " Sa-
turnia tellus."
But she has done more and better
than faithfully to reproduce upon her
English canvas the finest stage setting
ever yet provided for every possible act
in the human drama. Her eloquent dedi-
cation of the book to the country shows
that hers is no mere sentimental infatu-
ation, but a tried and sacred love ; and
the same exceptional experience which
enabled her to handle with so masterly
a freedom, in Helbeck of Bannisdale, the
sore problem presented by the clash of
hoary faith with modern thought assists
her to understand and analyze, as few
outsiders have done, the desperate and
still undecided struggle between the old
church and the new state in Italy. Here
all her learning tells, and tells as learn-
ing should ; not loudly, vauntingly, im-
periously, but with the still small voice
that wins to a wider comprehension and
a more sincere and searching charity.
Mrs. Ward's Italians are not always
drawn with a flattering pen, but she in-
troduces us to one peculiarly fine type
of Italian womanhood and not a very
rare type, either in the Contessa Guer-
rini. She is a minor character, indeed,
and comes rather late into the story, but,
as not infrequently happens, with Mrs.
Ward as with other writers, the figure
on the second plane seems drawn with
a firmer and more expert hand than even
those foremost ones on which a more
anxious industry has been bestowed.
A brave, wise woman is the old countess,
a woman of the oldest race and the
youngest sympathies; a good Catholic,
and an equally good patriot ; and I, for
one, could embrace Mrs. Ward for the
word of sober and yet thrilling hope
for her country's future which she puts
into the mouth of this deeply chastened
but indomitable creature who would have
" no pessimism about Italy : "
" I dare say the taxes are heavy, and
that our officials and bankers and im-
piegati are not on as good terms as they
might be with the Eighth Command-
ment. Well ! was ever a nation made
in a night before ? When your Queen
came to the throne, were you English
182
Fiction, New and Old.
so immaculate ? You talk about our
Socialists have we any disturbances,
pray, worse than your disturbances in
the twenties and thirties ? The parroco
says to me day after day, * The African
campaign has been the ruin of Italy ! '
That 's only because he wants it to be so.
The machine marches, and the people
pay their taxes, and farming improves
every year, all the same. A month or
two ago, the newspapers were full of the
mobbing of trains starting with soldiers
for Erythrea. Yet all that time, if you
went down into the Campo de' Fiori, you
could find poems sold for a soldo, that
only the people wrote and the people
read, that were as patriotic as the poor
King himself."
The " poor King " has fallen well asleep
after his fitful fever, since these words
were written, and a younger, and it may
be stronger, reigns in his stead. But when
we find a gem of political wisdom, like
this, incidentally dropped in the pages of
the most poetic and highly wrought ro-
mance of the year, we can only rejoice
that sixty -five thousand people have
pledged themselves, on peril of pecunia-
ry sacrifice, to read the book, and hope
that the number may be largely increased.
It is a little doubtful if Sentimental
Tommy and Tommy is not to be called a
Grizel. prelude to Tommy and Grizel, 1
rather than Tommy and Grizel to be
called a sequel to Sentimental Tommy.
This newer tale, though for a more per-
fect understanding of the characters one
needs to have read the earlier, is so large
an undertaking that the former book gets
a good deal of its value as an interpreta-
tion of it. For Tommy and Grizel is no
less an undertaking than a penetrative
study of the soul of an artist in relation
to his art and his life. The parable is
homely enough, it is the nature of par-
ables to be homely. A Scottish youth
who has won fame as an analyst of the
human soul, in terms either of fiction or
1 Tommy and Grizel. By JAMES M. BABBIE.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1900.
of the essay, is called upon to settle his
own case in actual life, to put to the test
all his noble sentiments. And the girl
who is the touchstone is a daughter born
out of wedlock, and herself conscious of
a terrible tendency to follow in her mo-
ther's steps.
These two characters, who had been
boy and girl together in the earlier book,
come once more into each other's ken
when they have reached maturity, and
the field of their experience is the same
Scottish village of Thrums, which Gri-
zel had never left, and to which Tommy,
now Mr. T. Sandys, returns, full of honor
and with unsated thirst for applause.
The other figures, admirably subordi-
nated, are Tommy's sister Elspeth and
her lover, the old village gossips, and a
certain Lady Pippinworth, who comes
upon the scene with an apparent air of
being a supernumerary, and remains
hardly materialized to the reader, but a
malignant force in the development of
Tommy's drama.
The stage upon which the play is set
is a small one. The scenes shift from
London to Thrums, and back to London,
and for a brief space to a Continental
watering place. The incidents, moreover,
are, with two exceptions, of the most triv-
ial character, mere meetings of the
dramatis personce under ordinary village
conditions; and yet even before the
fourth act of the tragedy for tragedy
it is, of a very powerful sort the read-
er is aware of some impending disaster.
Beneath the extraordinarily light move-
ment of the story one perceives a re-
pressed power gathering for some sort 
